text stringlengths 222 548k | id stringlengths 47 47 | dump stringclasses 95 values | url stringlengths 14 1.08k | file_path stringlengths 110 155 | language stringclasses 1 value | language_score float64 0.65 1 | token_count int64 53 113k | score float64 2.52 5.03 | int_score int64 3 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Paper to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association session on "Before the Flood: PreColumbian World-Systems in the Americas."
Draft v. 6-24-99. Comments and corrections welcome.
Table of Contents
Rise and Fall
The Chesapeake in the Time of Captain Smith
Bounding the Chesapeake Interaction Nets
The Bulk Goods Net
The Prestige Goods Networks
The Political/Military Net
Eleven Millennia on the Chesapeake
Early and Middle Archaic
Late and Terminal Archaic
Early Woodland and the Chesapeake Adena
The Middle Woodland
The Late Woodland
Rhyolite Fall-off from Paleoindian to Late Woodland
The Chesapeake in Comparative and Macroregional Perspective
Interaction Nets Over the Long Run
Pulsation, Rise and Fall
Interaction and Evolution on the Chesapeake
This paper provides a brief overview of the comparative world-systems approach and explicates our concepts of "pulsation" and "rise and fall." It then paints a synchronic portrait of the structures of the world-system of the Chesapeake in 1608 and examines the phenomena of pulsations and rise and fall in the previous eleven millennia in comparative perspective. Why was the Chesapeake influenced by development in adjacent regions during some periods but not others? Was the Chesapeake a periphery of the Mississippian world-system? Why did maize cultivation come into the Chesapeake so late, and why did its adoption correspond with a decrease in societal complexity and hierarchy? These are the questions we are asking.World-systems ideas have been widely applied to premodern systems and the relevant literature on North America before the coming of the Europeans has grown in recent years (e.g. Nassaney and Sassaman 1995; Peregrine and Feinman1996; Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997; Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998). This paper focuses on the Chesapeake region in order to comprehend both its uniquenesses and its relevance to questions posed by the comparative world-systems approach.
The world-systems perspective emerged as a theoretical approach for modeling and interpreting the expansion and deepening of the European system as it engulfed the globe over the past 500 years (Wallerstein 1974; Chase-Dunn 1998; Arrighi 1994). The idea of a core/periphery hierarchy composed of "advanced" economically developed and powerful states dominating and exploiting "less developed" peripheral regions has been a central concept in the world-systems perspective. In the last decade the world-systems approach has been extended to the analysis of earlier and smaller intersocietal systems. Andre Gunder Frank and Barry Gills (1993) have argued that the contemporary world system is a continuation of a 5000-year old system that emerged with the first states in Mesopotamia. Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997) have modified the basic world-systems concepts to make them useful for a comparative study of very different kinds of systems. We include very small intergroup networks composed of sedentary foragers, as well as larger systems containing chiefdoms, early states, agrarian empires and the contemporary global political economy in our scope of comparison.
The comparative world-systems perspective is designed to be general enough to allow comparisons between quite different systems. We define world-systems as important networks of interaction that impinge upon a local society and condition social reproduction and social change. We note that different kinds of interaction often have distinct spatial characteristics and degrees of importance in different sorts of systems. We hold that the question of the nature and degree of systemic interaction between two locales is prior to the question of core/periphery relations. Indeed we make the existence of core/periphery relations an empirical question in each case, rather than an assumed characteristic of all world-systems.
Spatially bounding world-systems necessarily must proceed from a locale-centric beginning rather than from a whole-system focus. This is because all human societies, even nomadic hunter-gatherers, interact importantly with neighboring societies. Thus if we consider all indirect interactions to be of systemic importance (even very indirect ones) then there has been a single global world-system since humankind spread to all the continents. But we note that interaction networks, while they were always intersocietal, have not always been global in the sense that actions in one region had major and relatively quick effects on distant regions. When transportation and communications were over short distances the world-systems that affected people were small.
Thus we use the notion of "fall-off" of effects over space to bound the networks of interaction that importantly impinge upon any focal locale. The world-system of which any locality is a part includes those peoples whose actions in production, communication, warfare, alliance and trade have a large and interactive impact on that locality. It is also important to distinguish between endogenous systemic interaction processes and exogenous impacts that may importantly change a system but are not part of that system. So maize diffused from Mesoamerica to Eastern North America, but that need not mean that the two areas were part of the same world-system. Or a virulent microparasite might contact a population with no developed immunity and ravage that population. But such an event does not necessarily mean that the region from which the microparasite came and the region it penetrated are parts of a single interactive system. Interactions must be two-way and regularized to be systemic. One shot deals do not a system make.
We note that in most intersocietal systems there are several important networks of different spatial scales that impinge upon any particular locale:
The first question for any focal locale is about the nature and spatial characteristics of its links with the above four interaction nets. This is prior to any consideration of core/periphery position because one region must be linked to another by systemic interaction in order for consideration of core/periphery relations to be relevant.
The spatial characteristics of these networks clearly depend on many things - the costs of transportation and communications, and whether or not interaction is only with neighbors or there are regularized long-distance trips being made. But these factors affect all kinds of interaction and so the relative size of networks are expected to approximate what is shown in Figure 1. As an educated guess we would suppose that fall-off in the PMN generally occurs after two or three indirect links. Suppose group A is fighting and allying with its immediate neighbors and with the immediate neighbors of its neighbors. So its direct links extend to the neighbors of the neighbors. But how many indirect links will involve actions that will importantly affect this original group? It is our guess that the number of indirect links that bound a PMN are either two or three. As polities get larger and interactions occur over greater distances each indirect link extends much farther across space. But the point of important fall-off will usually be after either two or three indirect links.
We divide the conceptualization of core/periphery relations into two analytically separate aspects:
Using this conceptual apparatus we can construct spatio-temporal chronographs for how the social structures and interaction nets of the human population changed their spatial scales to eventuate in the single global political economy of today. In Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997: 203) Figure 10.1 uses PMNs as the unit of analysis to show how a "Central" PMN composed of the merging of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian PMNs in about 1500 BCE eventually incorporated all the other PMNs into itself.
World-system Cycles: Rise-and-Fall and Pulsations
Comparative study reveals that all world-systems exhibit cyclical processes of change. We focus here on two major cyclical phenomena: the rise and fall of large polities, and pulsations in the spatial extent and intensity of trade networks. What we call "rise and fall" corresponds to changes in the centralization of political/military power in a set of polities. It is a question of the relative size of and distribution of power across a set of interacting polities. The term "cycling" has been used to describe this phenomenon as it operates among chiefdoms (Anderson 1994 and below).
We note that all world-systems in which there are hierarchical polities experience a cycle in which relatively larger polities grow in power and size and then decline. This applies to interchiefdom systems as well as interstate systems, to systems composed of empires, and to the modern rise and fall of hegemonic core powers (e.g. Britain and the United States). Though very egalitarian and small scale systems such as the sedentary foragers of Northern California (Chase-Dunn and Mann, 1998) do not display a cycle of rise and fall, they may experience other related sorts of cycle.
All systems, including even very small and egalitarian ones, exhibit cyclical expansions and contractions in the spatial extent and intensity of exchange networks. We call this sequence of trade expansion and contraction pulsation. Different kinds of trade (especially bulk goods trade vs. prestige goods trade) usually have different spatial characteristics. It is also possible that different sorts of trade exhibit different temporal sequences of expansion and contraction. It should be an empirical question in each case as to whether or not changes in the volume of exchange correspond to changes in its spatial extent.
The simplest hypothesis regarding the temporal relationships between rise-and-fall and pulsation is that they occur in tandem. Whether or not this is so, and how it might differ in distinct types of world-systems, is a set of problems that are amenable to empirical research.
In earlier work we have presented evidence regarding the answer to some of these questions. We have contended that the causal processes of rise and fall differ depending on the predominant mode of accumulation. One big difference between the rise and fall of empires and the rise and fall of modern hegemons is in the degree of centralization achieved within the core. Tributary systems alternate back and forth between a structure of multiple and competing core states on the one hand and core-wide (or nearly core-wide) empires on the other. The modern interstate system experiences the rise and fall of hegemons, but these never take over the other core states to form a core-wide empire. This is the case because modern hegemons are pursuing a capitalist, rather than a tributary form of accumulation.
Analogously rise and fall works somewhat differently in interchiefdom systems because the institutions that facilitate the extraction of resources from distant groups are less fully developed in chiefdom systems. David G. Anderson's (1994) study of the rise and fall of Mississippian chiefdoms in the Savannah River valley provides an excellent and comprehensive review of the anthropological and sociological literature about what Anderson calls "cycling," the processes by which a chiefly polity extended control over adjacent chiefdoms and erected a two-tiered hierarchy of administration over the tops of local communities. At a later point these regionally-centralized chiefly polities disintegrated back toward a system of smaller and less hierarchical polities.
Chiefs relied more completely on hierarchical kinship relations, control of ritual hierarchies, and control of prestige goods imports than do the rulers of true states. These chiefly techniques of power are all highly dependent on normative integration and ideological consensus. States developed specialized organizations for extracting resources that chiefdoms lacked -- standing armies and bureaucracies. And states and empires in the tributary world-systems were more dependent on the projection of armed force over great distances than modern hegemonic core states have been. The development of commodity production and mechanisms of financial control, as well as further development of bureaucratic techniques of power, have allowed modern hegemons to extract resources from far-away places with much less overhead cost.
The development of techniques of power have made core/periphery relations ever more important for competition among core powers and have altered the way in which the rise-and-fall process works in other respects.
We have argued that population growth in interaction with the environment, and changes in productive technology and social structure produce social evolution that is marked by cycles and periodic jumps (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997:Chapter 6). This is because any world-system varies around an equilibrium or mean due both to internal instabilities and environmental fluctuations. Occasionally, on one of the upswings a system solves its problems in a new way that allows substantial expansion. We want to explain expansions, evolutionary changes in system logic, and collapses. That is the point of comparing world-systems.
The plan of this paper is to present a synchronic portrayal of the Chesapeake system in the early seventeenth century and then to explore the processes of rise and fall and pulsation that led up to that consequence. Multiscalar spatial analysis has recently been advocated and applied to the Southeast and the Midwest by the studies contained in Nassaney and Sassaman (1995). Decisions about the importance of diffusion, migration and in situ development should not be a matter of the predilections of lumpers or splitters. In each case we need to examine the evidence to decide what happened. Nassaney and Sassaman also recommend a multiscalar temporal analysis that compehends short-run, middle-run and the longue duree in a single comparative framework. This is the approach that we wish to apply to the Chesapeake.
The Chesapeake System in the Time of Captain Smith
Captain John Smith's reconnaissance of the Chesapeake Bay in 1607 and 1608 and his detailed map provide a window on the indigenous world-system before it was massively disrupted by the coming of Europeans. Smith knew the Powhatan dialect of Algonquian and his geopolitical strategies made him pay close attention to the niceties of alliances and enmities among the native groups that he encountered (Potter 1993:181).
Figure 2: John Smith's map of the Chesapeake.
The literature on this region and period is huge and we have only been able to read some of it. The combination of documentary, linguistic and archaeological evidence has produced a fairly clear picture of the world-system of the Chesapeake in 1608 and this helps us to interpret the archaeological evidence from earlier periods.
The linguistic situation in the early sixteenth century had different dialects of the Eastern Algonquian language stock spoken on the entire Chesapeake (See Figure 3). The Algonquian-speaking peoples may have migrated from the Great Lakes region in a number of waves over the past two millennia (Potter 1993:3) To the west in the piedmont of the Blue Ridge mountains were groups of Souixan speakers (the Monacans and the Mannahoacs) and on the Susquehanna River at the northern end of the Chesapeake Bay there were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks. Another group of Iroquoian-speaking people, the Massawomecks, were raiding and trading into the Chesapeake from a homeland somewhere to the northwest (Pendergast 1991). To the south of the Chesapeake there were Algonquin speakers near the coast (Chawanoc, Weapemeoc and Roanoke) and southern Iroquoian speakers near the fall line between the coastal plain and the piedmont terrain (Nottoway, Meherrin and Tuscarora). Thus there were three major language stocks, each with several dialects, and many of the dialects were mutually unintelligible.
Figure 3: Language stocks and dialects in the Chesapeake region circa 1607 (Rountree 1993a: frontispiece).
Bounding the Chesapeake Interaction Networks
This is a rough effort to determine the nature and scale of the interaction networks of the Chesapeake world-system based on the descriptions found in the published literature. A more thorough study would code reports of interaction events from the documentary literature and utilize linguistic and archaeological evidence to test hypotheses about interaction densities, ranges and fall-off (e.g. Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998).
As we have mentioned above, the bounding of world-systems requires that we begin at some point in space. The obvious choice, because of evidence and structure, is to put the Powhatan paramount chiefdom in the center and to survey the interaction networks and core/periphery relations from this vantage point.
The Powhatan chiefdom is named after the individual (also called Wahunsenacawh) who held the position of paramount chief (mamanatowick) over about thirty smaller chiefdoms or districts, each with its own "werowance," or chief. Powhatan's original home village was very near what is now Richmond, Virginia on the James River. Chief Powhatan had inherited control of nine small districts on the upper portions of the James and York Rivers. In the last years of the sixteenth century he initiated a series of campaigns of expansion by conquest which successfully extended his control over all the districts on the lower James and York Rivers as well as the south end of the Chesapeake Bay. The Powhatan paramountcy also induced tribute payments from districts on the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers and across the bay (what is now Virginia's Eastern Shore).
Just north of the Powhatan paramountcy was another large polity on the north shore of the tidewater Potomac River just below what is now the District of Columbia, the so-called Conoy paramount chiefdom, whose paramount chief ("tayac") was a Piscataway. The smaller chiefdoms of the Patuxent River were not part of the Conoy paramountcy, and neither were the groups along the southern shore of the tidewater Potomac. The Conoy paramountcy probably emerged by about 1500 as the first large chiefly polity of the protohistoric period. By the time of Captain Smith it had already begun to decline with the secession of the Patowomeke (Potter 1993:150). Here is a Chesapeake instance of rise and fall, or at least rise and decline.
The Bulk Goods Networks
The bulk goods network (BGN) was composed of a local subsistence net in which commoner families produced most of their own food by means of hunting, fishing, gathering and horticulture, and a larger political economy of tribute in which local chiefs collected from their own commoners and passed food and other valuables on to regional paramounts. Corn was transported across the Chesapeake from Eastern Shore chiefdoms tributary to Powhatan. Commoners stored food in concealed household storage pits while chiefs displayed their wealth in granaries and store-houses (Potter 1993:172).
The subsistence of the Powhatan and surrounding groups was based on horticulture supplemented by hunting and gathering. It is estimated that over 50% of the food consumed was maize (Potter 1993: 40). Other crops were beans, squash, pumpkins, gourds, sunflowers and tobacco. Deer hunting was done mainly in the winter in upland regions. Deer were scarce in the heavily populated riverine and estuarine regions. But shellfish and other marine resources were an important part of the diet. The political economy was primarily one in which matrilineal families supplied there own needs, but there was an important overarching structure of accumulation.
Class formation had emerged in these societies such that there was an important degree of inequality between chiefs and commoners. Chiefs were understood to be a special and powerful group with claims on the labor and produce of commoners. The holders of chiefly offices were served by priests and by war leaders chosen from the commoners. Local chiefs collected food and other valuables and then paid tribute to paramount chiefs. The collected goods were stored in special mortuary temples (see Figure 4) that also served as storehouses containing maize, animal skins, copper, beads, pearls and dyes. Only priests and werowances were allowed to enter these temples. These valuables were used by chiefs and paramounts to reward subalterns and for trade.
Figure 4. North Carolina Mortuary temple/store house. [Water color by John White about 1585. Chesapeake Algonquian chiefdoms had similar structures.]
The Prestige Goods Networks (PGNs)
Prestige goods moved locally and over great distances by means of both trade and direct procurement. The amount of long-distance trade was less than had been the case a few hundred years earlier, before the adoption of horticulture and the most recent rise of the chiefdoms. Antimony, a silvery substance used for body paint, was mined near the head of Aquia Creek in the territory of the Patowomeke, an important chiefdom on the south shore of the tidewater Potomac. Antimony paint was observed in use on the south bank of the James River and was considered a luxury item by the Powhatans. Potter(1993:161) contends that control of this valuable mineral enhanced the power of the Patowomeke werowance. Marine shells from the Atlantic, copper from the Blue Ridge and from the Great Lakes region, puccoon ( a red pigment used to dye the skin) from the southern piedmont, and pearls (probably from the north) were all important prestige goods in the Powhatan and Conoy paramountcies (see Figure 5).
Figure 5: Luxury goods entering the Chesapeake in 1608 (Rountree 1993a: 221)
The scale of the PGN was not uniform regarding different luxury goods. Some of the copper came from the Great Lakes while shells and shell beads came from the Eastern Shore. There are important questions regarding the form and institutional nature of exchange in this system. Obviously copper merchants were not travelling from Lake Superior to the Chesapeake to sell their wares. Copper must have been traded down-the-line, passing from group to group. And all the other goods could have also been traded in this manner in the absence of long-distance trading missions. But Rountree (1993b) contends that traders and travelers did make long journeys, and she cites accounts from the historical period about institutions of hospitality for travelers. Of course the transportation situation changed greatly in the historic period, so these instances may not accurately reflect the prehistoric situation. The rather high level of warfare in this region (see below) would have made long-distance trade journeys quite risky.
Regarding the institutional nature of exchange, there is little discussion in the published literature. We know that some luxury goods and corn were accumulated as tribute by paramount chiefs and that gifts were given in order to secure military alliances among chiefdoms. There is little discussion of the existence of standardized media of exchange (money), and yet shell beads and copper were used to purchase goods. Apparently most of the disk-shaped shell bead strings used in trade, called "roanoke," were manufactured at Cuscarawaoke, a village on the Eastern Shore that was outside of the Powhatan realm (Turner 1993:83). Roanoke was taken on trade missions and used to purchase other goods. But was it a standardized medium such that rates of exchange (prices) were known and important features of trade? Davidson says, "Smith and other early English visitors to the Chesapeake region considered roanoke and peak to be types of Indian 'money,' and these beads were commonly used as currency by both the Indians and the English later in the seventeenth century." (1993:145)
Another question is about who the traders were. In many stateless world-systems only chiefs engaged in trade. But there seem to have been instances in the early historic Chesapeake in which commoners engaged in trade with the English. Did commoners also engage in certain kinds of trade in the prehistoric indigenous system?
The Political/Military Network
The political/military network (PMN) was an interchiefdom system in which each small chiefdom held a fixed territory with known boundaries. The best succinct description comes from Potter:
Figure 6: Political/military and trade relations of the Powhatans circa 1608 (Rountree 1993c: 214)
The settlement system was composed of small hamlets and larger villages distinguished by the residence of a chief and usually a nearby mortuary/storehouse temple. Villages varied in size from two to fifty houses, with from six to twenty residents in each house (Potter 1993: 23; 27). Most of the villages had houses and other features spread over a large area of the sort illustrated in Figure 7.
Figure 7: John White's drawing of Secoton, North Carolina. The Virginia Algonquian villages are thought to have been quite similar.
On the other hand, there were also palisaded villages in which the houses and other features were crowded close together and enclosed in a defensive wall of stakes set into the ground (see Figure 8). These palisaded villages were a recent development and they tended to be either important political centers containing chiefs' houses and temple/mortuaries or else to be located along conflictive territorial boundaries.
Figure 8: North Carolina Algonquian palisaded village similar to those known historically and archaeologically on the Chesapeake.
Some of the polities had not yet adopted chiefdom level organization. The Chickahominies, near the heartland of the Powhatan paramountcy, were governed by a council of elders and refused to accept a chief appointed by Powhatan (Potter 1993:170).
Beyond the matrilineal inheritance of chiefships, not much is known about Chesapeake Algonquin kinship. This is unfortunate because chiefdom formation is a process of reorganizing kin relations to create social classes and to delineate claims to social authority based on hierarchized kinship. Kinship can facilitate or undercut the power of leaders depending on how it is structured and it would be nice to know more about how the different Algonquian speakers reckoned blood relations.
Potter (1993:211-213) contends that mortuary customs for deceased chiefs and priests were quite different from those for commoners. He also quotes John Smith about Algonquian beliefs regarding the afterlife. Chiefs and priests go beyond the mountains and the setting sun and dance and sing forever. And Smith says, " But the common people they suppose shall not live after death" (quoted in Potter 1993:213). This implies a rather radical differentiation between the chiefly class and the commoners, though it is unknown whether or not the commoners also held these beliefs. An additional element that indicates a substantial degree of inequality in Chesapeake societies is the institution of polygyny. Many egalitarian societies have polygyny in which the head man has more than one wife, perhaps two or three or four. Chief Powhatan reportedly had over 100 wives (Potter 1993: 17).
And yet Rountree (1993a:7-13) argues strongly that the power of the paramount was greatly limited with regard to control over the actions and attitudes of commoners and district chiefs within the paramountcy. She gives many examples that illustrate a good degree of autonomy from the will of the paramount. It would also appear that authority was largely charismatic rather than bureaucratic. Opechanecough, a younger brother of Powhatan, was the effective leader for many years after Powhatan died despite that his older brother Opitchapam officially held the position of paramount (Potter 1993:185).
A key question for class formation is about the control of necessary resources such as land, water, mines, fishing places, hunting grounds and etc. In complex chiefdoms with severe class structures the commoners have been separated from legitimate claims over necessaries and must rely on chiefs. In simple chiefdoms the chiefly class often tries to legitimate the accumulation of surplus product from commoners by monopolizing the importation of symbolic goods held necessary for social reproduction, marriage, etc. or by promoting an ideology in which the chiefs ritually intervene with powerful forces of the universe. It is most likely that the Algonquian chiefdoms were of this latter sort.
So two rather large paramountcies, the Powhatan and the Conoy, were surrounded mainly by rather more autonomous district chiefdoms and less hierarchical polities. According to Hantman (1993) both the Monacans and the Mannahoacs had multidistrict polities in which several districts paid tribute to one. Clark and Rountree (1993) describe the organizational differences between the more centralized Conoy paramountcy and the confederation of district chiefdoms on the Patuxent River. According to Potter "The people of the chiefdoms were more sedentary than their more egalitarian neighbors and the settlements were usually smaller, but there were more of them and they were closer together…"(1993:170).
The Souixan-speaking Monacans and Mannahoacs in the piedmont to the west of the Powhatan were his traditional enemies and a wide uninhabited buffer zone separated the Algonquians from the Souixans. Hantman has shown that the Monacans and Mannahoacs were maize agriculturalists who probably inhabited large villages and had multivillage polities. They were not nomadic hunter-gatherers as had been earlier surmised. Thus there was no radical valley people/hill people core/periphery differentiation in the seventeenth century. There were also smaller uninhabited buffer zones between the districts of Algonquian-speakers (see Figure 9).
Figure 9: Map of Maryland and Northern Virginia Algonquians showing estimated chiefdom boundaries (Rountree 1993: 114).
Anthropologists have disputed whether these uninhabited zones were neutral deer parks (Turner 1978) or were no-mans-lands between conflicting groups (Mouer 1986). Based on the reports of Smith's reconnaissance it is agreed that the entire northwestern portion of the Chesapeake Bay, including the Magothy, Patapsco and Bush Rivers, were uninhabited in 1608. Smith's map indicates by the mark of a cross that he ascended the Patapsco (which he named the "Bolus") past what is now Baltimore and he reported seeing no indigenes or villages (See Figure 10). Both archaeologists and ethnohistorians contend that the northwest Chesapeake was a vast buffer zone that was abandoned about 1500, probably by Algonquian-speakers who were escaping the predations of invading Iroquoians (Susquehannocks and Massawomecks) from the west and north.
Figure 10: Detail from John Smith's map of Chesapeake showing the Patapsco River (Bolus flu).
All scholars agree that the Chesapeake system before the arrival of the Europeans was already experiencing a rather high level of warfare. Potter (1993:147) contends that warfare had increased after 1400 and became endemic after 1500. Most observers also point out that the level of warfare among indigenous groups increased to an even higher level with the arrival of the Europeans as groups contended against one another to control the influx of trade goods and to make alliances with different European factions. But the indigenous system was already quite warlike. We have mentioned the existence of buffer zones, depopulated regions and palisaded villages. Another indicator is the institution of the "huskenaw," a warrior initiation rite for adolescent boys (except priests) who were trained to endure torture and to fight. The institutional channeling and intensification of aggressive male identity is a known aspect of societal adaptation to high levels of warfare.
Regarding the spatial scale of the Powhatan PMN, we generally surmise that important political/military interaction includes two or at most three indirect interactions. The direct interactions displayed in Figure 6 above do not extend beyond the Blue Ridge mountains to the west, nor above the Susquehanna River to the north. But to the northwest, we have the mysterious Massawomecks. Much ink has been used on the question of the identity and homeland of these raiders and traders who came into the Chesapeake in birchbark canoes. In a most thorough review of the evidence Pendergast (1991) concludes that the Massawomecks were a contingent of the Iroquois confederation who originally inhabited the Niagara River valley near Lake Erie and who moved south in protohistoric times driven by indigenous conflict and the desire to control European trade goods. Pendergast has the later Massawomeck homeland at the headwaters of the Potomac River or thereabouts.
It is not clear whether the long-distance movements of the Massawomecks should be considered a typical feature of the indigenous PMN, or to what extent these journeys were stimulated by the arrival of the French in the St. Lawrence Valley. The literature on incorporation into the modern world-system and incorporation processes in earlier systems shows that when a state-based system begins to engulf a stateless one the amount of warfare in the "tribal zone" goes up (Ferguson and Whitehead 1992). Potter (1993) casts doubt on Pendergast's claim that the Massawomecks were motivated to move into the Chesapeake because of a desire to control access to European goods. Potter does not find archaeological evidence of European goods in the protohistoric Chesapeake. But information does not show up archaeologically. The Chesapeake appears on a Spanish map as early as 1527. It is not impossible that knowledge of European contact in the Chesapeake could have been a factor in the Massawomeck forays, but we agree with Potter that it is unlikely. If the Massawomeck were mainly run out by losing a struggle on Lake Erie and irrupted into the Chesapeake because of this, this would perhaps be an instance of one world-system impinging on another, but not an example of regularized interaction. We think the best guess about the Powhatan PMN's spatial extent is about a 300 mile radius from the Virginia tidewater.
The comparative world-systems perspective is also concerned with information flows (INs) and the cosmography of peoples. Information can flow across cultural and linguistic boundaries, and it may or may not accompany trade goods. Information fall-off is usually rather rapid in trade network organized as down-the-line trade. And in a situation of endemic warfare we can imagine not only barriers to information flows, but also the probability of disinformation. In a geopolitically complex situation actors may want to represent themselves as allies by telling lies about their relations with other players. John Smith did this when he traded with the Massawomecks and then displayed the received goods as prizes taken in battle to the Chesapeake Algonquians. This tactic may have also been employed in indigenous "diplomacy."
Regarding cosmography (ethnogeography) , Helen Rountree (1993b) has argued that Chesapeake indigenes probably knew more about distant places than they were letting on to Europeans. John Smith's map portrays a saltwater sea beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains on the shores of which are the four villages of the Massawomecks. Was this a misunderstanding spurred by English wishfulness regarding the "northwest passage" to the Orient, or was Powhatan really quite ignorant about the territory beyond the mountains? Smith also reports that the Tockwoghs, Algonquian-speakers at the north end of the Chesapeake, had little knowledge of the Powhatan at the south end of the Bay. If this is so, the scale of the information network would be less than 200 miles, at least in the north-south direction. Rountree (1993b:22) reports that one Tockwogh spoke the Powhatan dialect, but her map (Rountree 1993c: 214) designates Powhatan relations with the north end of the bay in terms of "infrequent relations" (See Figure 6 above).
Were there core/periphery relations in the Chesapeake system? The comparative world-systems approach treats the issue of core/periphery structures as a problematic. We do not assume them. Earlier research has shown that state-based systems all have core/periphery structures and very egalitarian systems of sedentary foragers have only mild ones (e.g. Chase-Dunn and Mann 1998). This makes world-systems composed of chiefdoms important, because it was in these that core/periphery relations first emerged and became central to uneven development and institutional evolution.
Recall that there are two analytically separable aspects of core/periphery relations. The first, core/periphery differentiation, refers to a situation in which societies at different levels of complexity and internal hierarchy are interacting regularly and importantly with one another. The second, core/periphery hierarchy, refers to a situation in which one or more societies are exploiting and/or dominating other societies.
In practice core/periphery differentiation usually involves not only differences in complexity and hierarchy, but also differences in population density and modes of subsistence. In the Chesapeake in 1608 we find paramount chiefdoms interacting with simple chiefdoms and these interacting with egalitarian tribal societies. We also find important differences in the size and concentration of settlements that are probably related to important differences in social organization. We have already mentioned the somewhat unusual situation described by Potter in which core areas with chiefdoms had slightly smaller villages that were closer together, while non-core neighbors had larger villages but more spaced out.
The most relevant overview of the entire range of organizational diversity is Custer's survey of the MidAtlantic, which includes the Chesapeake and the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. Custer notes that the Lenape on the Delaware River never adopted maize planting and they remained at a band level of organization until contact. These were the last foragers in the region. But other groups differed greatly in the extent to which they had become involved in maize planting. The Munsee were planting maize, but it was not a large component of their mode of subsistence. Custer makes several important distinctions regarding the continua of complexity and hierarchy. He distinguished between bands and tribes. Tribes have pan-tribal sodalities, meaning kinship or other organizational categories that extend beyond the local group. Custer mentions age grades, clans, lineages and secret societies. Bands do not have these features of intergroup social structure. Custer also distinguished two different kinds of tribes: cognatic and lineal. Cognatic tribes have intergroup relations but these are weak and do not promote intergroup economic cooperation. Segmental tribes have kinship structures that sustain obligations among kin groups when growing villages hive-off. The lineage or clan then remains an important family tie in an intervillage cooperation network. Custer points out that this segmented tribal organization is most likely to develop in coarse-grained ecological situations that encourage exchange between different groups because of access to different kinds of natural resources. Custer contends that segmented lineage tribes are indicated in the archaeological record by longhouses in which extended families reside, whereas the people of cognatic tribes are more likely to live in smaller houses for nuclear families. Custer's typology of hierarchical organization also includes simple and complex chiefdoms.
One key advantage in a system in which warfare is an important institutional form of competition is population density, because the ability to concentrate a greater number of warriors is crucial in a confrontation. Most of the groups living around the Chesapeake had adopted horticulture in the Late Woodland period so there was not an important core/periphery differentiation based on interactions between farmers and foragers. But there were important differences among groups with regard to the degree of internal hierarchy and the nature of central authority. This is an important aspect of core/periphery differentiation.
Turner (1993) contends that the core area of the Powhatan paramountcy was the population dense territory of the Pamunkey chiefdom (at the confluence of the Pamunkey and Mattoponi branches of the York River). The Pamunkeys had a long-standing rivalry with the Chickahominies, also a powerful and population dense core polity (See Figure 11). This rivalry and the strategic importance of the home district of Powhatan at the James River fall line with regard to trade routes and protection from the piedmont Souixans, led to the formation of an alliance between Powhatan and Pamunkey which was the basis of Powhatan expansion ( Turner 1993:86;90-92).
Figure 11: The district chiefdoms in the Powhatan paramountcy in 1607 (Rountree 1993a: 77).
If Turner is right this sounds like a possible instance of semiperipheral development, a phenomenon known mostly from state-based world-systems. Polities from semiperipheral regions are often able to take over older cores and to implement changes in the scale of polities and institutional structures. Semiperipheral marcher chiefdoms are known from Polynesia (Kirch 1984: 199-202) and elsewhere (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1997: 83-4). The phenomenon of cycling, in which interchiefdom systems experience the rise of larger and more hierarchical polities, and then these collapse back into smaller chiefdoms, has already been mention above. It may be that the rise phase of the cycle is often due to the action of semiperipheral chiefly polities, and that the Powhatans were an example of this phenomenon.
The most obvious instance of core/periphery hierarchy in the Chesapeake was the tribute extraction by paramount chiefs from local districts. This was core/periphery exploitation and unequal exchange. Most Powhatan scholars are quick to point out that it is a mistake to characterize the tribute system as "redistribution" because very little was redistributed to the original contributors. But as Davidson (1993) points out, it is often difficult to distinguish tribute-paying from exchange in interchiefdom systems. The contemporary accounts of corn and shell beads being brought in canoes from the Eastern Shore as tribute to Powhatan may not have represented exploitation if an equal value of goods was being returned. Davidson contends that this "tribute" was simply the continuation of a long tradition of east-west exchange across the bay. He supposes that the chiefdoms of the Eastern Shore would have been difficult for Powhatan exploit because of the difficulties of projecting coercion so far.
There are a number of considerations here. Unequal exchange can take place in the absence of direct coercion if peripheral agents can be induced to exercise their own coercion over others in order to obtain core goods. An example is the slave trade in the Pacific Northwest (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1998). It is possible that Eastern Shore chiefs were so desirous of copper or puccoon supplied by Powhatan that they were willing to extract beads and/or corn from their own people in order to obtain these valuables. It is also possible that Davidson is wrong about the spatial extent of the power capabilities of Powhatan. Canoes full of warriors may have been quite capable of threatening villages across the bay.
Davidson also points out that the Conoy paramountcy had similar relations with those Eastern Shore groups north of those that were linked with Powhatan. This case is also problematic with regard to the question of core/periphery hierarchy. In 1660 the brother of the Piscataway tayac testified that thirteen reigns earlier the Conoy had been led by a chief from the Eastern Shore whose name was Uttapoingassinem (Potter 1993:132). It is possible that a peripheral chief peacefully became the paramount of a regional core, but not likely. More likely is that an important Conoy chiefess married an Eastern shore chief and he moved to Maryland and rose to the top. If this is what happened it would support the hypothesis of Davidson that the east-west interaction was between societies of equal power.
It is likely that most core/periphery exploitation and domination was rather local in the Chesapeake system. The paramountcies did not sufficiently control trade valuables, or produce great quantities of surplus food to make unequal exchange with distant regions possible. Nor were they able to project military power very far. Despite a rather high level of warfare among different groups, there were no conquest-based polities that were very large. The Powhatan expansion had probably gone about as far as it could go.
Eleven Millennia on the Chesapeake
The general model of social evolution that has been applied to North America, as elsewhere, is that groups migrated to fill the land, then population increased, and trade, complexity and hierarchy emerged. The common picture is one of increasing population density and the development of more complex societies in each region and increasing trade within and between regions. But this general model becomes more complicated when we look more closely. The overall trends toward greater population density, complexity and trade are broken by cyclical processes of rise and fall, changes in the patterns of interaction within and between regions and uneven develop with regard to time a space.
Humans may have first arrived in the Chesapeake region around 11,000 years ago. Archaeologists delineate the Paleoindian period from 9,500 BC to 8,000 BC. The first pioneers of the Chesapeake were small nomadic groups of big game hunters who helped to extinguish the remaining MidAtlantic Pleistocene megafauna (e.g. mammoths, mastodons, caribou, moose, bison and musk-ox) at the end of the last ice age. The early Paleoindians are known archaeologically mainly by their lanceloate fluted Clovis-style spear points, usually made from exotic lithic materials in shapes that are quite similar across all of North America. During the Wisconsin ice age glaciers extended into northern Pennsylvania and northern New Jersey. Because the sea level was much lower, most of what is now the broad Chesapeake Bay was instead narrow rivers and streams and what is now the ocean shelf was exposed. Many riverside and shoreside Paleoindian camps were inundated as the water rose over the millennia. The early Paleoindians wandered freely over large areas pursuing megafauna. These small bands probably encountered other bands infrequently, but they must have had arrangements to come together seasonally in order to exchange marriage partners. It is thought that these small bands exchanged stone materials and other valuables when they met one another, but many of the exotic lithics may have been obtained by direct procurement during the wide-ranging movements of these nomadic hunters.
It is difficult to conceptualize world-systems completely inhabited by nomads because territoriality is such an important feature of most world-systems. Once sedentary societies have emerged there is an extremely important interaction between sedentary and nomadic societies that begs for analysis with world-systems concepts (Hall 1991). The paleolithic and subsequent periods are particularly fascinating because it was in these times that the cultural institutions of territoriality were first invented.
While a few isolated Paleoindian spear points are found all over the Chesapeake region, the most important known habitation site is the Flint Run complex on the south branch of the Shenandoah River (Fagan 1991: 109-110). This site was adjacent to a jasper quarry and was a major manufacturing center where finished artifacts and tool blanks were produced. The Flint Run sites were utilized from 9500 BC to 6500 BC.
It is probably mistaken to assume the complete absence of territoriality even among the early paleolithic nomads. The processes of population pressure, migration and competition for territorial resources operated on these nomadic societies, especially in a situation in which a major food source, the Pleistocene megafauna, were disappearing. The fact that Paleoindians spread over the Americas in a rather short time shows that they were quick to migrate rather than to stay and defend territory from newly arriving groups. The dominant image of peaceful exchange among these small groups that allowed valuables to move thousands of miles by means of down-the-line exchange should not be read to mean a completely pacific relationship among groups. The question of who should stay and who should move on, especially from food-rich areas, was probably not settled by consensus. There is little archaeological indication of these conflicts, but they would have been only small scale encounters.
In the middle and late Paleoindian period new projectile point types developed that were more regionally differentiated than the Clovis points had been. Anderson (1995) interprets this as indicating a transition to bounded habitual base areas or settlement ranges and decreased mobility.
Early and Middle Archaic
The Early Archaic (8000-6000 BC) is represented in Chesapeake region by certain new kinds of projectile points. Their are indications of population growth, more habitation sites, a more diversified foraging including hunting of smaller game, fishing and more trade. In the Middle Archaic (6000-4000 BC) there are indications of increased decreasing nomadism. It is estimated that a "middle Atlantic macroband" occupied the region with about 8 or 10 smaller nomadic bands containing a total of from 500 to 1500 people who came together seasonally to exchange gifts and marriage partners (Fagan 1991:315).
There was increased trade of rhyolite, a dense and workable lithic material that is only found in quarries in a restricted area on the west side of the Catoctin Mountains (near Camp David in piedmont Maryland). Between a quarter and a third of the projectile points found at sites near the Chesapeake Bay were made of rhyolite in the Early and Middle Archaic. Rhyolite had long been used to make projectile points. Indeed several Paleoindian points that have been found on the Eastern Shore 150 miles from the Catoctin were made of rhyolite (see Table 1 below). The proportion of all points made of rhyolite increase greatly all over the Chesapeake region during the Early and Middle Archaic. This indicates the emergence of stable long distance trade relationships.
We also see the first beginnings of increased attention to ritualized burials. Archaeologists reason that ritualized burials in cemeteries appear when people start passing vital resources from one generation to the next through lineages and other kin organizations. The most likely resource is ancestral claims to territory. Here we have the beginnings of institutionalized territoriality, the symbolization of claims to place.
The Middle Archaic may have seen the emergence of an early core/periphery interaction system between more sedentary riverine and estuarine peoples and more nomadic hunter-gatherers living in the hills. Sassaman (1995) interprets evidence from the Southeastern Middle Archaic as indicating such a pattern.
Late and Terminal Archaic
The Late Archaic period in the Chesapeake is designated from 4000 to 1500 BC and the Terminal Archaic from 1500 to 1000 BC. During these periods there is evidence of increased usage of gathered vegetable materials such as acorns and more systematic fishing with harpoons and fish wiers. There is also the first emergence of mild social ranking, but long-distance exchange networks have declined somewhat as indicated by less use of rhyolite at sites distant from its source. Habitation sites are closer to rivers, indicating more intensive use of fishing. The greater occurrence of gouges and adzes suggests that dug-out canoes were being produced (Kavanagh 1982: 97). There is also increased use of heavy bowls and other objects carved of steatite (soapstone). This is deemed an indicator of increased sedentism.
Beginning near the end of the Late Archaic in the Chesapeake there was a development in the Mississippi Valley in Louisiana that presaged later events in the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys that would have relevance for the Chesapeake. This was the Poverty Point culture, a concentrated group of sedentary diversified foragers who constructed large ceremonial mound complexes and were central to long-distance trade networks.
Early Woodland and the Chesapeake Adena
The Early Woodland period in the Chesapeake is designated as from 1000 BC to 200 AD. The residents of the Chesapeake region began fashioning pots out of clay during this period. Trade, as indicated by the usage of rhyolite at places distant from its source, continued to decrease in the Early Woodland period.
In the river valleys of the midwest groups supplemented their hunted and gathered foods by the cultivation on a small scale of certain domestic plant species (Smith 1992). But in the Chesapeake there is no evidence of the cultivation of domesticated plants before the Late Woodland period (Potter 1993:109).
In the valley of the Ohio there emerged the Adena ceremonial complex that constructed elaborate mounds for the dead (Dragoo 1963). Early Adena burials contain mostly utilitarian objects, but later Adena mounds contain definite evidence of social hierarchy, probably big man systems, because of rich exotic goods contained in the elaborate and large-scale interments. Whereas the religion may have originated as a way of symbolizing the claims of egalitarian groups to territory, it appears that this led to the emergence of an elite that traded luxury goods over a wide area. The exchange networks were quite developed and there may have been long-distance trade missions carried out by religious specialists to obtain rare goods. At the same time local identities were becoming more important as indicated by the emergence of distinctive styles of propoints and pottery.
Of significance in the Chesapeake is the discovery of Adena residential and mortuary sites in Delaware (Custer 1984a), the Eastern Shore near Cambridge and Salisbury, Maryland (Bastian 1975) and on the West River on the western shore of the Chesapeake (Ford 1976). The Adena sites on the Delaware Bay emerged about 500 BC. These MidAtlantic sites are identified as Adena because of the presence of certain items that are known to be associated with the Adena religious complex, especially tubular Ohio pipestone pipes and short, thick-walled copper beads, but also elaborate burial mound complexes. These Adena big man societies were surrounded by the more egalitarian Early Woodland inhabitants of the Chesapeake region. This constituted an early instance of core/periphery differentiation between big man societies and neighboring more egalitarian societies.
It is not clear whether the Chesapeake Adena were immigrants from the West as claimed by Dragoo (1963) or whether indigenous groups had become converts to the Ohio religion through ritualized long-distance trade relationships (Custer 1984a). Custer(1984a: 113-130) reports many stylistic continuities between the Wolfe Neck complex and the Adena sites on the Delaware Bay that would indicate in situ adoption rather than immigrant intrusion. The long-distance trade networks had long involved the importation of goods such as copper from Lake Superior and etc. and so the presence of Adena goods might only signify trade. But the building of mortuary complexes in the Adena style indicates the presence of the religious ideology and customs of the Adena ceremonial complex. If it was in situ groups adopting a new religion from distant contacts we can wonder why these would have differentiated themselves from their neighbors in this way? Custer (1993) has argued that the Adena complex on the Delaware Bay emerged because of the circumscribed environmental richness of this coastal location. The same consideration would not seem to apply to the other Chesapeake Adena sites. While most were estuarine, the Nassawango Creek site near Salisbury, Maryland was riverine, about midway between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean (Bastian 1975). It is hard to see how ecological circumscription could have determined the location of all these sites.
The Middle Woodland
In any case the Adena complex declined and disappeared in the Chesapeake by the last century BC, whereas in Illinois and Ohio a new and more flambouyant ceremonial culture, the Hopewell interaction sphere (Caldwell 1964), emerged in about 200 BC and declined by AD 400. The Hopewell religion involved the wearing of ear spools and the glorification of "big men." This ceremonial complex extended into the Southeast, but not into the Chesapeake region nor into New England.
The Middle Woodland in the Chesapeake is designated as from 200 to 900 AD. Potter (1993: Chapter 3) examines the evidence for the lower Potomac River Basin and adjacent areas for this period. Mockley phase pottery is diagnostic in the lower Potomac from 200 to 900 AD. On Maryland's western shore this same artifact assemblage is called Selby Bay after a site on the South River. During this period the bow and arrow was adopted and replaced the atlatl, a spear-throwing device that had been used for millennia. Cultivation of domesticated crops may have begun, but it would have only contributed a small amount to the total supply of food. Specialization of gathering increased, indicated by a larger proportion of oyster shells per volume of midden. Both burials and some rather large storage pits were found at the late Middle Woodland sites on the Potomac and the Patuxent. Population density continued to rise in the whole region and there was continued differentiation of local cultural styles indicating ever-greater symbolization of territorial holdings. Large special purpose occupation sites increased and more sites were located in the lowlands and on estuaries. Steponaitis (1986) interprets these changes as indicating an increasing sedentism, with fewer moves and greater concentration of population at centers with large food storage capabilities. Potter (1993:112) interprets Mockley phase evidence from the James, Rappahanock and the lower Potomac Rivers as indicating villages where a local or regional band gathered for several months a year and some members of the group maintained year-around residency.
Both broad-based trade networks (down-the-line trade) and long-distance procurement treks brought a new expansion of rhyolite usage. Sites in the Monocacy River valley adjacent to the rhyolite quarries indicate seasonally occupied camps where rhyolite blanks and projectile points were manufactured. Potter says,
The Late Woodland in the Chesapeake is designated as from 900 to 1550 AD. This is the period just prior the protohistoric period we have described above. The key development at the beginning of the Late Woodland was the adoption of maize agriculture, or the immigration of maize-planting groups. Maize, squash and beans were domesticated somewhere in Mesoamerica before 5000 BC. They diffused to the American Southwest by 1000 BC. The shift to maize agriculture in the Chesapeake occured from 800 AD to 1100 AD.
The development of varieties of corn that could be grown in regions having a short growing season took a long time, but once this happened the diffusion of maize planting was rather rapid. The first evidence of maize in the midwest is around AD 200 and the northern Iroquoians began planting maize during the same centuries that it arrived in the Chesapeake (800-1100 AD) (Smith 1992). In the midwest garden horticulture using local domestics had long been practiced prior to the coming of maize, but in the Chesapeake region the advent of horticulture and maize planting were likely the same event.
In the midwestern river valleys there developed a complex and hierarchical civilization that is called Mississippian. Large urban centers at Cahokia (East St. Louis), Moundville in Alabama and Spiro in Oklahoma were important controllers of long-distance trade and builders of large-scale monumental complexes. These were complex chiefdoms or early states. As with early states elsewhere, the death of a king was the occasion for the sacrifice of a large retinue to accompany him to the afterlife. The riverine locations of these centers were a function of the importance of large-scale maize agriculture and the control of long-distance trade (Peregrine 1996). Mississippian culture emerged about 900 AD. By 1200 Cahokia had collapsed but other Mississippian centers, especially Moundville, continued to thrive until the fourteenth century. The Mississippian cultural complex spread to the Southeast. In the Savannah River valley local chiefdoms emerged using the religious symbols of the Mississipian civilization (Anderson 1994).
The Mississippian religion did not extend into the Chesapeake region nor into New England or the northern Iroquoian territories. Dincauze and Hasenstab (1989) have contended that Iroquoian tribe-formation, the development of large settlements and inter-tribal confederacy for resolving conflicts, may have been partly due to long-distance interaction with the Fort Ancient Mississippian chiefdoms in the Ohio river valley. But this has been greatly contested by other archaeologists who see these developments as due to local changes and the adoption of maize agriculture. The Mississippian group closest to the Chesapeake was in western Virginia.
In the Chesapeake region the Late Woodland adoption of maize agriculture was accomplished over a wide area by peoples who had already moved toward a rather sedentary round of specialized foraging. It seems that maize planting diffused rapidly across the whole region, though some groups used it more intensively than others. As in earlier periods, population density continued to increase in the region as a whole with settlements located near lands best suited for growing corn. But there are indications that in the early part of the Late Woodland period social ranking decreased. Burials became simpler. And the long-distance exchange networks that had become so important in the Middle Woodland period declined. This is indicated by fewer exotic trade goods and the "import substitution" of local lithic materials for imports. In the early Late Woodland period there was a dramatic drop-off throughout the Chesapeake and surrounding regions in the use of Catoctin rhyolite.
Potter identifies the early Late Woodland period with Rappahannock and Townsend style ceramics found widely in the Chesapeake following the Mockley phase. The similarities between Mockley and Rappahannock/Townsend pots indicate that this was an in situ culture change, not an intrusion of a new immigrant group. In the estuarine areas the Late Woodland settlement patterns reveal scattered farmsteads interspersed among garden plots, and specialized oyster-gathering sites in which oyster meat was probably dried for storage and trade (Potter 1993:115). The settlement system appears to have been two-tiered with a larger village surrounded by outlying hamlets and specialized foraging camps. Larger occupation sites continued to increase in size and frequency along the Patuxent (Steponaitis 1986).
A cut piece of whelk shell, probably a blank for the manufacture of a human maskette (gorget) of the type that appears on the cover of this paper, was dated in a context between 1400 and 1500. The shell gorget was found in an early historic elite burial. This kind of art object was usually the property of sacred chiefs and this may indicate the emergence of chiefdoms in the upper tidewater Potomac. The design on the gorget is known as the weeping eye or thunderbird motif in Mississipian contexts. This may indicate some limited contact and influence of Mississippian societies on the emerging chiefdoms of the Chesapeake's western shore.
After about 1300 a new type of pottery and other artifacts known as the Potomac Creek complex appears at the head of the estuarine Potomac. Potter(1993) and Kavanagh (1982) interpret the abrupt intrusion of these new features as evidence of a migration of corn-planting people coming down the Potomac from the west and north. Potter (1993: 141) identifies the Potomac Creek complex with the historically known Piscataways and the eventual Conoy paramountcy. Potter (1993: sees the Owasco culture from the west and north as the original source of the Potomac Creek (Piscataway) immigrants. This group moved into the Maryland piedmont as early as 900 AD.
Rhyolite Fall-off from Paleoindian to Late Woodland Times
Ideally we would like to know how interaction networks of different kinds (BGNs, PMNs, PGNs and INs) changed over time in terms of extent, intensity and fall-off. It would also be extremely desirable to have DNA evidence to sort out migration and intermarriage patterns. At present we have mainly projectile point types, ceramic types, information about mortuary styles, some indication of settlement numbers and sizes, and indicators of subsistence. The data on these are being increasingly organized into systematic Geographical Information Systems, but there is much to be done to get all the information into a form that can be comparatively analyzed on a multiscalar basis. Here we will use one indicator as a measure of pulsations of trade network expansion and contraction - the fall-off of usage of rhyolite for projectile points. This is not an ideal indicator even for lithic networks because different materials often have different network patterns. What is needed is an analysis of local, regional and long distance exchange networks of different kinds of goods. But for now rhyolite is what we have.
Stewart (1996:82-85) reports a decline in trade volume, but not in extent, during the Early Woodland period from 1000 B.C to 600 B.C and then a trade expansion from 600/500 to 400 B.C.. This was followed by a trade contraction from 400 B.C. to 200 AD. and then another expansion from 200 to 800 AD. In this last expansion there was no sign of cultural influence from the Hopewell heartland despite expanded trade. This was followed by a severe disruption of trade networks during the Late Woodland from 900 AD. on. This was the period of the rise of the Mississippian interaction sphere in the Midwest, and yet neither trade nor cultural influence linked this distant florescence with the Mid-Atlantic region.
Figure 12 shows the transect from the Catoctin to the Patomac and Patuxent drainages and over to the Eastern Shore examined in Stewart's (1984: Table 5) survey of rhyolite fall-off. The percentage of rhyolite propoints in Figure 12 means the relative abundance of projectile points made of rhyolite in the total count of propoints. It does not include debitage or cores. Time is indicated by the propoint types used as period markers.
Stewart reviewed site reports and regional overviews
for data on ryolite abundance. One problem indicated in Figure 12 and Table
1 is the consistently low percentage of rhyolite reported for the 60 mile
site, which was Accokeek Creek. This can be seen in Table 1, which contains
the numbers from Stewart's Table 5 that were used in Figure 12.
|Miles from Catoctic||0||20||60||80||100||150|
Stewart agrees that the apparent lack of rhyolite at Accokeek Creek may have been due to the failure of the excavators of that site to correctly identify rhyolite projectile points (personal communication). It is unlikely that the people living at Accokeek Creek on the upper tidewater Potomac refused to use rhyolite over ten millennia even while there neighbors on the Patuxent, further away from Catoctin, were using great quantities of it in the Early and Middle Archaic and the Middle Woodland periods. If we ignore Accokeek Creek (60 miles), Figure 12 and Table 1 indicate a pattern of repeated increase and decrease in the use of rhyolite at locations distant from its source.
Consonant with the notion of exotic lithics in the Paleoindian period, 15% of the Paleo points found on the Eastern Shore 150 miles from Catoctin were rhyolite, a rhyolite abundance level that was not seen again until the Middle Woodland period. The Early and Middle Archaic periods show a normal drop-off with distance from the source (ignoring Accokeek Creek), but with rather high usage as far as 100 miles from Catoctin. These were the long-distance exchange networks mentioned above. Late Archaic and Early Woodland show abrupt fall-off and decreased usage. The Middle Woodland shows another expansion of long-distance trade, which then declines again in the Late Woodland period. These alternating periods of trade expansion and contraction are similar to the phenomenon of pulsation found in other world-systems
Kavanagh and Stewart do not believe that the immigrant groups arriving around 900 AD into the Monacacy River valley near the Catoctin were responsible for cutting off the access to rhyolite (personal communication) in the Late Woodland period. The decline in early Late Woodland trade is also seen in other lithic materials from sources distant from the Catoctin. It is possible that local trade of foodstuffs among more specialized producers was increasing while more long range trade was decreasing. Kavanagh says that shell and shell bead trade seems to continue while other kinds of exchange are drying up (personal communication).
The Chesapeake in Comparative and Macroregional Perspective
The comparative world-systems perspective leads us to wonder why the Adena complex expanded from Ohio into the Chesapeake, whereas the Hopewell and Mississippian traditions did not.
The Late Woodland Chesapeake is a significant a mystery from the perspective of the population pressure model of the development of complexity, hierarchy and trade. In the usual conception, greater population density associated with either in situ adoption or immigrant intrusion of maize agriculture (or both) would be accompanied by greater social ranking because more food would make it possible for the elite to devote their time to pursuits other than producing food, and more trade would be needed as a buffer against crop failures. But in the Chesapeake the appearance of maize agriculture is associated with smaller sites, less social hierarchy and less trade. Why? And what might this have to do with the questions raised earlier about Adena influence and the lack of Hopewell and Mississippian influence?
It is quite important to determine whether different developments in the Chesapeake were primarily due to immigration of new groups or rather due to the adoption of new cultural characteristics by indigenous residents. As with the Chesapeake Adena, there are great disputes among archaeologists regarding the advent of e.g. atlatls, bows, pottery, ossuaries and maize. It is possible to distinguish between immigration and local development by looking carefully at archaeological evidence. If pottery or propoint styles change abruptly with no overlap of earlier and later styles or intermediate adaptations, this indicates immigration.
Potter (1993) concludes from the evidence at Patawomeke and Accokeek Creek that the adoption of Potomac Creek pottery in the Late Woodland period was due to the intrusion of groups moving down the Potomac valley from the west. Kavanagh's (1982) study of the Monocacy watershed concurs that waves of immigration are indicated by the advent of Montgomery, Mason Island and Luray complexes. In view of what we see happening in protohistoric times with the Iroquoians moving into the Bay, it should not be surprising that earlier changes may have involved the arrival of new groups.
What is perhaps surprising for the Late Woodland period is that these new arrivals seem to have been more egalitarian and less involved in regional exchange networks than the indigenous residents. It might seem that maize agriculture would be brought by groups devoted to the Mississippian religion in which sacred chiefs mediated between commoners and the powers of the universe. This kind of ideology was found by Captain Smith in the seventeenth century, but it may have been a recent development that accompanied the rise of paramountcies and the late advent of epidemic warfare.
There are two rather different possible explanations for the lack of Mississipian influence in the Chesapeake. One might suppose that a new religion that glorified the elite would not be adopted if a similar religion was already present. It seems unlikely that this was the case in the period in the early Late Woodland when maize agriculturists came in. There is no evidence of hierarchical societies in the Chesapeake in the Middle Woodland period.
A different explanation would paint the immigrants as escapees from Mississippian religion who, because of the productivity of corn agriculture, did not need the long-distance and regional exchange networks that had been a necessary hedge against shortages for the earlier residents. Not needing the ritualized gift-giving and trade meant they could dispense with sacred chiefs. Families of direct producers could get along quite well by storing their own food against hard times because they produced a lot of food. Fagan (1991:383) suggests a similar explanation for the decline of the Hopewell ceremonial complex in the midwest. Well before the arrival of maize in the midwest cultivation of indigenous crops had become so productive that regional exchange relations were less needed. Thus, according to Fagan, the commoners no longer needed their chiefs and could return to a more egalitarian form of organization. Stewart has suggested a similar explanation for the decline of complexity and trade with the coming of maize in the Late Woodland Chesapeake (personal communication). If this is right it constitutes an instance of the circumscription hypothesis's claim that people will run away from hierarchy unless it is the least worst alternative.
Interaction Nets over the Long Run
Rather than a simple model of interaction nets getting larger, we find two complications. The first we have remarked upon before. They get larger and then smaller again, and then once again larger. This is pulsation. But the consideration of nomadism and gradually increasing sedentism changes the overall pattern to some extent. The early Paleoindians were explorers and colonizers of land that was yet uninhabited. They chased big game, but they also tended to concentrate in areas that had greater concentrations of game and other foods (Anderson 1995). As with other colonization sequences, the first arrivals probably took the best locations and then tried to hang on to them. Population density was so low at first that there were plenty of good new locations, and so interaction among groups was mainly friendly. But as the options dried up and the mastodons became scarce, more competition emerged. Some groups developed seasonal migration rounds in particular territories and tried to defend the best camping sites against new arrivals. The small bands always needed to gather with other bands seasonally to trade and exchange marriage partners. But the size of these seasonal gatherings were limited by the availability of food stocks at the meeting place.
Territoriality emerged, but it was probably not well-institutionalized. We do not know whether or not the Paleoindian pioneers brought with them the cultural apparatus of territoriality. The Polynesian pioneers of the Pacific brought with them an ancestral culture that included the concepts of mana an tapu that were the basis of sacred chiefdoms. They probably dispensed with ceremony and hierarchy to become egalitarian foragers when they landed on islands populated by delicious flightless megabirds (e.g. New Zealand). But when the birds were eaten, they reconstructed class societies and territoriality using the linguistic and ideological equipment that was their ancestral culture. Very likely the immigrants to North America did not have such equipment because the Asian societies from whence they came had not yet developed ideas and kin relations appropriate to the symbolization of the linkage between place and blood. This means that the original America pioneers had to invent these things as they came to need them.
The Paleoindian interaction networks were large, especially for exchanging fine and useful objects such as Clovis points and exotic lithic blanks. Cultural styles were widely shared across macroregions. And the territories exploited by human groups were huge, though the numbers of people in each band, and macroband were small. As bands became somewhat less mobile they developed more differentiated tool-kits depending in part on the nature of the territories they inhabited, but also as a way of constructing alliances with friends and differences with foes.
Exchange networks in the Archaic periods exhibited pulsation, and in the midwest a double-movement of localization and cosmopolitanization emerged. Localization, as indicated by the emergence of more and more local distinctive propoint and pottery styles, was cultural differentiation from neighboring peoples. This led eventually to the emergence of elites who's legitimation was based in part on the claim to represent "universal" powers larger than the localized world (Helms 1988). These were the interaction spheres and mortuary religions such as the Adena, Hopewell and Mississippian ideologies. At the same time warfare and the mobilization of labor became more important and the new religions were used to reward brave warriors and to mobilize social labor. Polity sizes grew and hierarchies became steeper. Interaction networks got larger. But these systems regularly overshot their systemic capabilities and collapsed.
Stephen Kowalewski (1995) has proposed the notion that the Eastern United States was a half-continent sized single world-system for ten thousand years, especially understood as an ecological macroregion. Our study of the Chesapeake has begun with the local, and has brought in long-distance processes of trade, diffusion and migration as they have seemed to intrude on local developments. We agree with Kowalewski that the macroperspective is important for understanding what happened on the Chesapeake, but we disagree that the world-system concept should be applied to the entire eastern half of North America. While we agree that environmental factors are important constraints and opportunities for human action, we do not define world-systems as interactions with the environment, but rather as regularized interactions among humans.
It is our contention, then, that the scale of systemic interaction was never at the half-continental level in prehistoric North America. Rather what we had were regional systems that sometimes impacted upon one another, but that were never systemically integrated at the continental or half-continental level. The closest thing to that was the Mississippian world-system, not understood as a religion but as a social, economic and political/military interaction network. And the Mississippian system never included the Mid-Atlantic or New England. The decline of the Mississipian networks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries returned eastern North America to a condition of smaller regional systems similar in scale to those that had existed before the rise of the Mississippian system.
In this view the Chesapeake system was never a peripheral region of the central system in the great river valleys of the midcontinent. There were important differentials in settlement size, degree of hierarchy, polity size and etc. But the two areas were never strongly enough integrated by regularized trade and political/military interaction networks to constitute a single system. The closest these two regions came to this was during the Early Woodland period when specialized trade and religious interactions were rather strong. After the demise of the Chesapeake Adena these two regions were again on separate tracks.
This is not to argue that occasional interactions
did not have important effects on the development of the Chesapeake, but
rather to point out that these were conjunctural rather than systemic.
This sort of thing happened several times, in several
places in North America. We sketched this in a diagram depicted such connections
(See Figure 13).
As Figure 13 shows, we see distinct core-periphery systems. We disagree strongly with Kowalewski that interactions and variations are "incremental in space with no consistent or clear boundaries…" (Kowalewski 1995: 153). Rather, we argue there are relative densities-which in principle are empirically mapable-that when plotted as contour lines will show regions of sharp fall-off, even while a modicum of continuity persists. Figure 13 is our "best guess" of the distribution of core-periphery systems in North America.
We have argued that world-systems, or core-periphery
systems, have at least four sets of such boundaries, in decreasing size:
information, prestige goods, political/military, and bulk goods. What seems
to happen over large regions-midwest to eastern woodlands-are occasional
linkages at the largest one or two networks, but not at the next smaller
two. We show this possibility in following two figures, taken from Chase-Dunn
and Hall (1997: 60,61):
Figure 14: Schematic representation of 3 isolated world-systems.
Here we see three separate world-systems or core-periphery
systems that are not in contact. Typically, but now always contact will
be at either information (wavy boundary) or at the prestige/luxury goods
boundary (larger circle). Silent trade would allow prestige goods merger,
without information exchange. Once such contact is made, the situation
might look like this:
Figure 15: 3 world-systems merged at information and prestige goods exchange boundaries.
Figure 15 shows the same three systems merged at both information and prestige goods exchange level, but not at political/military or bulk goods levels. We might imagine mergers at either only information or only prestige goods levels. This would constitute a larger, multi-cored core-periphery system. This is what, we argue, happened between Adena and Chesapeake but did not happen between Mississippian and Chesapeake.
The earlier merger seems to have been an inversion where some goods - possibly corn - went beyond information in the form of religion, which was rejected. Once people had the seeds, and a bit of knowledge about how to use and to maintain them, they no longer need the religious fol-de-rol that the original bringers may have associated with corn. It may well be, that bringers of corn were fleeing the other system, but brought their corn with them.
Finally, region wide shifts, as Stewart and Kowalewski have noted, may not mean uniform connections and processes. Rather, slight shifts in climate may push local zones over or below corn cultivation thresholds. Similarly, slight to moderate changes in population densities may strain or alleviate stresses on the ecological carrying capacity and hence make hierarchy more, or less, attractive.
The cycling that Anderson (1994) describes so well, clearly indicates that in Michael Mann's apt phrase (1986), "prehistoric people evaded power" whenever they could. The rich estuarine environment in the Chesapeake which supplemented horticulture allowed people to evade it longer. If we imagine the core-periphery systems in Figure 14 somewhat larger, somewhat closer, and "pulsing," we can readily see how various temporary mergers might occur at the outer boundaries. However, when the cycling was downward, that is, when the system contracted, the merger would again be broken. In this case, there is no "cause" of the cessation of trade in the conventional sense of a blockade, interdiction, or whatever. Rather, the normal cycling undermines the fragile merger, allowing a return to more or less autonomy. But if a new technology [corn, or steatite tempered pots] crossed during the merger it might well continue in the absence of continued contact.
Indeed, if the new technology was of the right sort [say corn to supplement volatile hunting] it might actually facilitate downward oscillation or contraction, and "evasion of power." Anderson (1994) argues that evolution from egalitarian to paramount chiefdoms involved long periods of cycling [thousands of years] before it stuck. Under such circumstances, we should expect repeated mergers and disarticulations. This would produce just the types of patterns we sketched for North America, and the puzzling connection-disconnections noted in the greater Chesapeake region.
The trick, in this type of analysis, is to be multiscalar, as Nassaney and Sassaman (1995) argue. To see how these large processes play out in local situations. Under very specific conditions, as we argue below, trade need not be necessary for development of hierarchy. That, that was the case in the Chesapeake need not vitiate the rule of thumb that trade promotes hierarchy.
The failure of the Hopewell and Mississippian traditions to resonate in the Chesapeake is perhaps the most important evidence in favor of our approach over that of Kowalewski. But the somewhat anomalous developments in the Late Woodland Chesapeake also support our approach. Here we have maize agriculture, diffused from the midwest, being adopted by peoples who have not yet developed chiefdoms and in a region that has yet a rather low level of population density relative to the amount of food available for foraging. And, ironically, the adoption of maize raises food productivity to a level where population pressures and chiefdom formation can be put off for several centuries.
In the early historic period we see chiefdom formation getting under way. This is due in part to the rise of population pressure, but another important stimulus is the pressure put on the Chesapeake Algonquians from invading northern Iroquoians. The abandonment of the northwest corner of the Chesapeake must have led to migrations to the south and to the Eastern Shore. And the threat and example of the Iroquois warriors probably encouraged the Algonquians to shift toward a more combative definition of manhood.
Late development of complexity and hierarchy in the Chesapeake was probably related to the incredible fecundity of the land and the bay. This was also an important reason why the peoples of the MidAtlantic could enjoy their autarkic development and egalitarian societies for so long.
Pulsation and Rise and Fall
Did the sequence of pulsation correspond with the rise and fall of hierarchical and large polities, or were there instances in which these cycles occurred independently, or even counter-cyclically? In the Chesapeake we see some developments that seem to go against a simple characterization of trade and hierarchy cycles in phase. But these may be important clues about how evolutionary models might not work at one level of spatial scale, but might work at another.
Table 2 shows roughly how the instances of rise
and fall are related to the pulsations of long-distance trade.
|Period||Dates||Rise and Fall Complexity/Hierarchy||Pulsation of Trade|
|Paleoindian||9500-8000 BC||Early Macroband Meetings|
|Early Archaic||8000-6000 BC||Expand|
|Middle Archaic||6000-4000 BC||Middle Atlantic Macroband||Still Expanded|
|Late Archaic||4000-1000 BC||Contract|
|Early Woodland||1000 BC-200 AD||Chesapeake Adena||Still Contracted|
|Middle Woodland||200-900 AD||Expand|
|Late Woodland||900-1550 AD||Fall-line Paramountcies||Contract|
From this it is apparent that there is no regular temporal relationship between these two kinds of sequences in the Chesapeake. Trade expansion in the Early and Middle Archaic is not associated with the emergence of complexity. There is a general increase in population density and more restricted regional nomadism, as well as localization as indicated by regionally differentiated propoint styles. The expansion of long-distance trade may have facilitated these developments, but there are no indications of that tribes had emerged in these periods.
The Chesapeake Adena (500 BC to 1 AD) instance of rise and fall apparently occurred in a period in which long-distance trade was both expanding and contracting. Stewart (1996:82-85) reports that long-distance trade expanded from 600/500 to 400 BC, then contracted from 400 BC to 200 AD. So most of the Chesapeake Adena occurred during a period of trade contraction.
Likewise the final rise of the fall-line paramountcies occurred during a period of relatively little long-distance trade. These patterns do not mean that long-distance interaction is wholly unrelated to hierarchy formation. What would seem to indicated is that that periods of less long distance trade were more likely to support hierarchy formation. It is possible that long distance trade operated to prevent the emergence of hierarchy and complexity. How could this be? Or, alternatively it could be that our temporal considerations have been too crude to catch finer pulsations of trade. In the case of Adena, it looks as though there was an early expansion that could have allowed local groups to import holy goods from Ohio and to develop their own interpretations of the mortuary rituals. The later collapse of the long-distance trade would not have prevented them from circulating these goods on a local basis, as Custer (1984a) claims that they may have done. And possibly the collapse of the trade was due to factors beyond their control, and the inability to contact the Adena homeland did contribute to the eventual abandonment of the rituals.
In the case of the better known fall-line paramountcies, the rather low level of long distance trade did not mean that precious goods from far away were unavailable, but rather that they were scarcer than they had been in Middle Woodland times. The rise of the paramountcies was not hindered by the lack of long distance trade goods in part because these were not primarily prestige goods hierarchies anyway. They were military alliances in which gifts tribute composed of food as well as luxury goods were important, but the ability to cooperate against other enemies was perhaps as important. So the lack of long-distance trade did not either prevent nor facilitate the rise of paramountcies. And it was not the paramountcies that had cut off the trade because the trade collapse had occurred in the early Late Woodland period, whereas the paramountcies did not emerge until centuries later.
Interaction and Evolution in the Chesapeake
Jay Custer's (1986) essay on diversity and evolution in the MidAtlantic region is perhaps the most ambitious effort to summarize what is known about similarities and differences among societies in the Late Woodland period and to provide an explanation of why complexity and hierarchy emerged in some areas but not others. Custer's approach is world-systemic because he includes intersocietal interaction as a main element in his explanation.
Custer's(1986: 162) theory of why hierarchy in the MidAtlantic developed in some areas but not others combines the factors of interaction among groups, the nature of the groups and the adoption of maize agriculture. He contends that once cognatic tribal organization has emerged it is a kind of evolutionary cul de sac in which greater levels of complexity cannot emerge. Thus only segmentary tribes have the possibility of developing class relations and chiefly leadership. He also contends the ecological diversity relative to the kind of subsistence technology being employed is an important part of explaining why hierarchy emerges where it does.
The comparative world-systems perspective would suggest a few refinements here. The most obvious one is that interaction is not a singular phenomenon. There are very different kinds of interaction and they probably have rather different effects on social change or stability. In all of Custer's uses of interaction it promotes the development of complexity and hierarchy. The idea here is that a society that is near to another society with a greater degree of complexity or hierarchy is likely to itself develop complexity and hierarchy as a means of dealing with its neighbor. We know that in some types of systems interaction can lead to devolution, the so-called development of underdevelopment. The other point is that hierarchy-formation is not a one-way process. Hierarchies rise and fall, and this should be explained as well. Custer mentions that apparent decrease in complexity in the early Late Woodland, but he does not explain it.
Nevertheless, Custer's approach has important advantages for explaining what happened on the Chesapeake. He contends that the Powhatan paramountcy may have emerged in large part because of its interactions with more complex groups to the south and west. The idea of course-grained ecology promoting complexity and hierarchy is echoed in Stephen Potter's contention that societies along the border between estuarine and riverine ecologies had a locational advantage for developing hierarchy. Thus both the Conoy and Powhatan paramountcies were in advantageous positions to facilitate a division of labor and to benefit from inter-regional trade.
Our overview of the prehistoric Chesapeake world-systems
points to some questions raised by the comparative world-systems perspective
and we have made a stab at some answers. Our consideration of nomadic
systems and the long-run emergence of sedentism has caused us to revise
our general depiction of the spatial nature of world-systems. The
occasional (non-systemic) interaction between macro-regions sometimes complicates
the evolution of complexity and hierarchy. Inventions such as maize had
rather different consequences for development in the midwest that in the
Chesapeake. Efforts to build a general model of evolution need to
take these sorts of sequences into account.
Arrighi, Giovanni 1994 The Long twentieth Century.
Bastian, Tyler 1975 "New radiocarbon dates for a Maryland Adena site," Archeological Society of Maryland Newsletter 1,2, (December).
Baugh, Timothy G. and Jonathan E. Ericson (eds.)
Prehistoric Exchange Systems in
North America. New York: Plenum Press.
Caldwell, Joseph R. 1964 "Interaction spheres in prehistory." Hopewellian Studies 12,6:133-156 Springfield,IL.: Illinois State Museum Scientific Papers
Chase-Dunn, Christopher 1998 Global Formation:
Structures of the World-Economy.
Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield.
Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Thomas D. Hall 1997 Rise and Demise: Comparing World-Systems Boulder, CO.: Westview Press.
______1998 "World-systems in North America: networks, rise and fall and pulsations of trade in stateless systems." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 22:1:23-72.
Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Thomas D. Hall and Susan
Manning. 1998. "Rise and Fall: East-West Synchronicity and Indic Exceptionalism
Reexamined" Forthcoming in Social Science History
Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Kelly M. Mann 1998 The Wintu and Their Neighbors: A Very Small World-System in Northern California. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Chase-Dunn, Christopher and Alice Willard 1993 "Systems of cities and world-
systems: settlement size hierarchies and cycles of political centralization, 2000 BC-1988AD" A paper presented at the International Studies Association meeting, March 24-27, 1993, Acapulco. http://www.jhu.edu:80/~soc/pcid/papers/17/pcidpap17.htm
Clark, Wayne E. And Helen C. Rountree 1993 "The Powhatans and the Maryland Mainland," Pp. 112-135 in Rountree (ed.) 1993a.
Collings, Frances d'A. 1988 The Discovery of the Chesapeake Bay: An Account of the Explorations of Captain John Smith in the Year 1608. St. Michaels, MD.: Chesapeake Bay Museum.
Collins, Randall 1992 "The geographical and economic world-systems of kinship-based and agrarian-coercive societies." Review 15,3:373-88 (Summer).
Curry, Dennis 1999 Feast of the Dead: aboriginal ossuaries in Maryland Maryland Historical Trust.
Curry, Dennis C. And Maureen Kavanagh 1991 "The Middle to Late Woodland Transition in Maryland," North American Archaeologist 12,1:3-28.
Custer, Jay F. 1984 Delaware Prehistoric Archaeology:
An Ecological Approach. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
_______ 1986 "Late Woodland cultural diversity in the Middle Atlantic: an
evolutionary perspective," Pp. 143-168 in Jay F. Custer (ed.) Late Woodland
Cultures of the Middle Atlantic Region. Newark: University of Delaware Press.
Davidson, Thomas E. 1993 "Relations between Powhatan and the Eastern Shore," Pp. 136-153 in Rountree (ed.) 1993a.
Dragoo, Don W. 1963 Mounds for the Dean: An analysis of the Adena Culture. Pittsburgh: Annals of the Carnegie Museum Vol. 37.
Dincauze, Dena F. And Robert J. Hasensstab 1989 "Explaining the Iroquois: tribalization on a prehistoric periphery" Pp. 67-87 in Timothy C. Champion (ed.) Centre and Periphery: Comparative Studies in Archaeology London: Unwin Hyman.
Dunaway, Wilma. 1994. "The Southern Fur Trade and the Incorporation of Southern Appalachia into the World-Economy, 1690-1763." Review 18:2(Spring):215-242.
Ebright, Carol A. 1992 Early Native American Prehistory on the Maryland Western Shore: Archeological Investigations at the Higgins Site. Prepared for Maryland State Railroad Administration by the maryland State Highway Administration and Maryland Geological Survey, Department of Natural Resources. State Highway Administration Archeological report #1.
Egloff, Keith and Deborah Woodward 1992 First People: The Early Indians of Virginia, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Ekholm, Kasja and Jonathan Friedman. 1980. "Toward
a Global Anthropology." Pp. 61-76 in History and Underdevelopment,
edited by L. Blusse, H. L. Wesseling and G. D. Winius Leyden: Center for
the History of European Expansion, Leyden University.
_____. 1982. "'Capital' Imperialism and Exploitation in the Ancient World-systems." Review 6:1(Summer):87-110.
Ericson, Jonathan and Timothy Baugh (eds.) 1993 The American Southwest and Mesoamerica: Systems of Prehistoric Change. New York: Plenum.
Fagan, Brian M. 1991 Ancient North America. London: Thames and Hudson.
Ferguson, Alice L, and Henry G. 1960 Piscataway Indians of Southern Maryland. Accokeek, MD: Alice Ferguson Foundation.
Ferguson, R. Brian and Neil L. Whitehead (eds.) 1992 War In the Tribal Zone: Expanding States and Indigenous Warfare. Santa Fe. N.M.: School of American Research Press.
Ford, T. L. 1976 "Adena sites on the Chesapeake Bay," Archaeology of Eastern North America 4:63-89.
Frank, Andre Gunder and Barry Gills (eds.) 1993 The World System: Five Hundred or Five Thousand Years? London. Routledge.
Friedman, Jonathan 1992 "General Historical and
Culturally Specific Properties of Global Systems." Review 15:3:
Friedman, Jonathan and Michael Rowlands. 1977. "Notes Towards an Epigenetic Model of the Evolution of 'Civilization'." Pp. 201-278 in The Evolution of Social Systems, edited by J. Friedman and M. J. Rowlands. London: Duckworth (also published in same title and pages, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1978).
Galloway, Patrica (ed.) 1989 The Southeaster
Ceremonial Complex: Artifacts and
Analysis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Hall, Thomas D. 1986. "Incorporation into the
World-system: Toward a Critique." American Sociological Review 51:3(June):390-402.
_____. 1989. Social Change in the Southwest, 1350-1880. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
______1991 "The role of nomads in core/periphery relations," Chapter 7 in C. Chase- Dunn and T. D. Hall, Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds. Boulder, CO.: Westview.
Hall, Thomas D. and Christopher Chase-Dunn. 1993. "The World-Systems Perspective and Archaeology: Forward into the Past." Journal of Archaeological Research 1:2:121-143.
Hantman, Jeffrey L. 1990 "Between Powhatan and Quirank: reconstructing Monacan
culture and history in the context of Jamestown," American Anthropologist 92,3:676-90.
______1993 "Powhatan's relations with the Piedmont Monacans" Pp. 94-111 in Rountree (ed.) 1993a.
Helms, Mary W. 1988 Ulysses' Sail: An Ethnographic Odyssey of Power, Knowledge, and Geographical Distance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kavanagh, Maureen 1982 Archaeological Resources
of the Monocacy River Region.
Maryland Geological Survey, Division of Archaeology, File Report #164.
Kowalewski, Stephen A. 1995 "Large scale ecology
in aboriginal Eastern North
America," Pp 147-173 in Nassaney and Sassaman.
King, Adam and Jennifer A. Freer 1995 "The Mississippian
Southeast: a World-
systems Perspective," Pp 266-289 in Nassaney and Sassaman.
Kirch, Patrick 1984 The Evolution of Polynesian Chiefdoms. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
Luckenbach, Alvin H. Wayne E. Clark and Richard
Levy 1987 "Rethinking cultural
stability in Eastern North American prehistory: linguistic evidence from Eastern Algonquian." Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology 3:1-33.
Mann, Barbara A. And Jerry L. Fields 1997 "A Sign in the Sky: Dating League of the Haudenosaunee." American Indian Culture and Research Journal 21,2:105-64.
Mouer, L. Daniel 1986 "DMZ or deer park? Buffer zones as boundary sysstems." Ms. on file, Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Richmond.
Nassaney, Michael S. And Kenneth E. Sassaman (eds.) 1995 Native American Interactions: Multiscalar Analyses and Interpretations in the Eastern Woodlands. Knoxville: University of Tennessee press.
Pendergast, James F. 1991 "The Massawomeck: Raiders and Traders into the Chesapeake Bay in the Seventeenth Century" Transactions of American Philosophical Society, Vol. 81, Part 2. Philadelphia, PA.: The American Philosophical Society.
Peregrine, Peter 1996 "Hyperopia or hyperbole?:
The Mississippian World-System," Pp.39-50
in Peter Peregrine and Gary M. Feinman (eds.) Pre-Columbian World Systems.
Madison, WI.: Prehistory Press
Peregrine, Peter N. And Gary M. Feinman (eds.) 1996 Pre-Columbian World Systems. Madison, WI.: Prehistory Press.
Potter, Stephen R. 1993 Commoners, Tribute and Chiefs: The development of Algonquian culture in the Potomac Valley. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Renfrew, Colin 1987 Archaeology and Language:
The Puzzle of IndoEuropean
Origins. London: Jonathan Cape.
Rountree, Helen C. 1989 The Powhatan Indians
of Virginia: Their Traditional Culture. Norman, OK.: University of
______1990 Pocahontas's People: the Powhatan Indians of Virginia Through Four Centuries. Norman, OK.: University of Oklahoma Press.
______1993a (ed.) Powhatan Foreign Relations, 1500-1722 Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
______1993b "The Powhatans and other Woodland Indians as Travelers," Pp. 21-52 in Rountree (ed.) 1993a
______1993c "Summary and Implications." Pp. 206-228 in Rountree (ed.) 1993a.
Rountree, Helen C. And Thomas E. Davidson 1997 Eastern Shore Indians of Virginia and Maryland. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.
Sassaman, Kenneth E. 1995 "The cultural diversity
of interactions among Mid-
Holicene societies of the American Southeast," Pp. 174-204 in Nassaney and
Schmitt, Karl Jr. 1965 "Patawomeke: an historic Algonkian site," Quarterly Bulletin, Archeological Society of Virginia 20,1:1-36.
Shannon, Thomas R. 1989 An Introduction to the World-Systems Perspective Boulder, CO.:Westview.
Smith, Bruce D. 1992 Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America. Washington: Smithsonian.
Stephenson, Robert L. The Prehistoric People of Accokeek Creek. Accokeek, MD. Alice Ferguson Foundation.
Steponaitis, Laurie C. 1983 An Archaeological Study of the Patuxent Drainage. Vol. 1. Maryland Historical Trust Manuscript Series #34.
Stewart, R. Michael 1984. "South Mountain (meta) rhyolite: a perspective on prehistoric trade and exchange in the Middle Atlantic Region," in Jay F. Custer (ed.) Prehistoric lithic exchange systems in the Middle Atlantic Region, University of Delaware Center for Archaeological Research, Monograph #3.
______1994 "Late Archaic through Late Woodland
exchange in the Middle Atlantic region." Pp. 73-97 in Baugh and Ericson.
_______1999 "Changing patterns of native trade in the prehistoric Middle Atlantic region," A paper presented at the annual meetings of the International Studies Association, Washington, DC, February 1999.
Turner, E. Randolph III 1978 "An intertribal deer exploitation buffer zone for the Virginia Coastal Plain-Piedmont regions," Archeological Society of Virginia, Quarterly Bulletin 32,3.
______1993 "Native American protohistoric interactions in the Powhatan core area," Pp. 76-93 in Rountree (ed.) 1993a.
Upham, Stedman. 1992. "Interaction and Isolation: The Empty Spaces in Panregional Political and Economic Systems." Pp 139-152 in Resources, Power, and Interregional Interaction, edited by Edward Schortman and Patricia Urban. New York: Plenum Press.
Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974 The Modern World-System, Vol.l. New York: Academic Press.
Wood, Peter H. Gregory A. Waselkov and M. Thomas Hatley (eds.) 1989 Powhatan's Mantle: Indians in the Colonial Southeast. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Wilkinson, David 1987 "Central civilization" Comparative
Civilizations Review 17:31- 59.
_____. 1991. "Cores, Peripheries and Civilizations." Pp. 113-166 in Core/Periphery Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, edited by Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
_____. 1995a. "Central Civilization." Pp. 32-60 in Civilizations and World-Systems: Two Approaches to the Study of World-Historical Change, edited by Stephen K. Sanderson. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. | <urn:uuid:7eee146d-9062-4db0-b2f2-2ccb159cd010> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://wsarch.ucr.edu/archive/papers/c-d&hall/asa99b/asa99b.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570987773711.75/warc/CC-MAIN-20191021120639-20191021144139-00500.warc.gz | en | 0.945858 | 22,117 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Cutline at bottom. Click here for high-resolution image.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — For years, citrus growers have feared that abandoned groves provided refuge for the Asian citrus psyllid, an invasive insect that transmits citrus greening—now, University of Florida researchers say they were right.
A study published in the current issue of the Journal of Economic Entomology shows that the psyllid not only survives in abandoned groves, it often travels to commercially active groves nearby, bringing along the bacterium responsible for the disease.
First detected in Florida in 2005, greening is incurable and fatal to citrus trees. It is considered the biggest threat to the state’s $9 billion citrus industry. Asian citrus psyllids pick up the greening bacterium by feeding on sap from infected trees and later transmit the pathogen while feeding on healthy trees.
The results underscore the need for landowners to remove or destroy unmanaged trees, something the state is urging, said entomologist Lukasz Stelinski, an assistant professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and one of the study’s authors.
“There was very much anecdotal evidence that these abandoned areas are harboring citrus psyllids,” Stelinski said. “It’s just one of those things that had to be confirmed.”
An estimated 140,000 acres of citrus groves go untended in Florida, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The state has an estimated 550,000 acres of active groves.
Much of the abandoned grove acreage is believed to be owned by developers or investors who expected to clear the land rather than produce citrus, Stelinski said. Consequently, the owners never provided basic management such as pest control.
In the study, Stelinski and colleagues from UF’s Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred sprayed nontoxic “marker” chemicals on trees in seven abandoned groves, where psyllids might be present. They also placed insect traps in nearby commercially active groves.
When the traps were checked, researchers found psyllids bearing the marker chemicals, indicating that the pests had traveled from abandoned groves to active ones. Laboratory analysis revealed that some of these psyllids carried the bacterium that causes greening disease.
Researchers also took leaf samples from citrus trees and found the presence of greening was about the same in abandoned and managed groves. Other members of the research team were Siddharth Tiwari, Hannah Lewis-Rosenblum and Kirsten Pelz-Stelinski, all with UF’s entomology and nematology department.
Stelinski added that as-yet unpublished findings showed the insects could fly up to 1.25 miles in 10 days, and could probably travel farther over time.
“So you don’t necessarily need to be right next to an abandoned grove to be at risk,” he said.
Currently, the state is asking local property appraisers to urge landowners to remove or destroy untended citrus trees by offering tax incentives to do so, said Mike Sparks, executive vice president and chief executive officer of Florida Citrus Mutual, Florida’s largest citrus grower trade organization.
“Even though we’ve had some success, it’s not nearly enough,” Sparks said. “This study could help us mold public policy.”
Sparks said he hopes that the UF research will persuade state and local officials to take further action to reduce the amount of abandoned citrus acreage.
“We have a $9 billion industry and 76,000 jobs at stake,” Sparks said. “Abandoned groves are putting all of that at risk and policymakers need to know that.”
Writer: Tom Nordlie, 352-273-3567, firstname.lastname@example.org
Source: Lukasz Stelinski, 863-956-1151, ext. 1281, email@example.com
Insect expert Lukasz Stelinski, an assistant professor with the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, poses in a greenhouse in this undated file photo. Stelinski was part of a research team that confirmed the invasive Asian citrus psyllid can transmit citrus greening disease from abandoned citrus groves to commercially active ones. The study, published in the Journal of Economic Entomology, underscores the need for landowners to remove or destroy citrus trees on Florida’s estimated 140,000 acres of abandoned groves, he said. UF/IFAS photo by Tyler Jones | <urn:uuid:72b343b6-b205-4cfa-97f6-6b80061ada43> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://news.ifas.ufl.edu/2011/02/disease-carrying-asian-citrus-psyllids-find-refuge-in-abandoned-groves-uf-study-shows/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049278887.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002118-00028-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936251 | 982 | 3.1875 | 3 |
The following list of titles are recommended shared reading for children in preschool and early elementary grades and their caregivers.
Thanks a Million: Poems
by Nikki Grimes
J 811.54 GRI
Gratitude; self awareness and social awareness.
by Kevin Henkes
Move Your Mood
by Brenda S. Miles and Colleen A. Patterson
Accurate self-perception; identifying emotions and stress management.
by Jon Muth
Mindfulness and self-awareness.
A World of Pausabilites: An Exercise in Mindfulness
by Frank J. Sileo
Accurate self perception; mindfulness and self-awareness.
The Most Magnificent Thing
by Ashley Spires
Emotions; solving problems.
Is Everyone Ready for Fun?
by Jan Thomas
Emotions; patience and relationship skills.
And Two Boys Booed
by Judith Viorst
Empathy; fear, self-management and resilience.
For more social emotional learning titles for young people, please click here to download a brochure from the Library. | <urn:uuid:2aea8fd1-5cf4-4619-9eba-ff7556b07d67> | CC-MAIN-2018-43 | http://www.hptx.org/index.aspx?NID=668 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-43/segments/1539583513441.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20181020205254-20181020230754-00064.warc.gz | en | 0.821394 | 219 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Presidential elections: Electoral College increases ad spending in typical election
The advertising landscape during presidential elections could look a whole lot different if each American were to vote for his or her own preferred candidate, instead of having to do so collectively through the current Electoral College system. This is according to Brett Gordon of Northwestern University and Wesley Hartmann of Stanford Graduate School of Business in the US, in a study published in Springer's journal Quantitative Marketing and Economics.
During the US presidential election, candidates strategically allocate their resources to states most likely to tip the election outcome. Under the current state-level Electoral College, so-called battleground states arise where competition is especially intense. This is because most states use a winner-take-all rule to assign all their electoral votes to the candidate who receives most of that state's popular votes. This currently leads to candidates' spending most of their time and money on advertising, visits, get-out-the-vote activities and supporter mobilization just to sway a minority of voters in these states. In the process, scant attention is paid to the majority of the electorate who reside in more polarized states with foregone outcomes.
When reforming the presidential electoral process is discussed, a direct voting system is most often bandied about as a viable alternative. Such a system would eliminate state-level contests and allow for each vote to count equally in a national contest. It would also eliminate the power of marginal voters to determine the election outcome.
Gordon and Hartmann set out to quantify how such a direct vote could change the intensity of advertising competition and the degree to which it would be more evenly distributed across markets during presidential elections. They modelled voters' decisions using a simple aggregate market share model. Four sources of data from the 2000 and 2004 election were combined and analyzed. This included data collected by the Campaign Media Analysis Group about how much candidates spent on advertising in the top 75 markets (which account for 78 percent of the national population), advertising cost and actual voting outcomes at a county level. Information such as local demographics, economic conditions and what the weather was like on Election Day were also taken into account.
They found that if a direct vote system were to be followed, advertising would indeed be spread more evenly across states. Total spending levels would either decrease or increase depending on the contestability of the popular vote. If it had been used during the extremely closely contested 2000 election (Al Gore vs George W. Bush), spending would have been 13 percent higher than it actually was. On the other hand, it would have dropped 54 percent during the more clear-cut 2004 elections (John Kerry vs George W. Bush). How much funding candidates have available, and the actual cost of advertising, influences how much will be spent during a campaign.
"These results suggest that the Electoral College greatly increases advertising spending in typical elections," says Gordon.
"With a direct vote during a typical election, one would either see substantially less advertising spending or a substantial change in other candidate strategies, such as their policy positions," adds Hartmann.
Reference: Gordon, B. & Hartmann, W. (2016). Advertising Competition in Presidential Elections, Quantitative Marketing and Economics. DOI 10.1007/s11129-016-9165-6 | <urn:uuid:6ca1c493-e3c8-44e2-8882-6c74ba2fda86> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | https://scienmag.com/presidential-elections-electoral-college-increases-ad-spending-in-typical-election/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886106865.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20170820170023-20170820190023-00563.warc.gz | en | 0.963418 | 654 | 2.75 | 3 |
Book Title: Coromandel: South India /P
By Author(s):CHARLES ALLEN
By Publisher:LITTLE BROWN
COROMANDEL. A name which has been long applied by Europeans to the Northern Tamil Country, or (more comprehensively) to the eastern coast of the Peninsula of India.
This is the India highly acclaimed historian Charles Allen visits in this fascinating book. Coromandel journeys south, exploring the less well known, often neglected and very different history and identity of the pre-Aryan Dravidian south.
During Allen's exploration of the Indian south he meets local historians, gurus and politicians and with their help uncovers some extraordinary stories about the past. His sweeping narrative takes in the archaeology, religion, linguistics and anthropology of the region - and how these have influenced contemporary politics.
Known for his vivid storytelling, for decades Allen has travelled the length and breadth of India, revealing the spirit of the sub-continent through its history and people. In Coromandel, he moves through modern-day India, discovering as much about the present as he does about the past. | <urn:uuid:dda0dc08-bb04-44bf-9e22-1b050faba384> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://www.bookmarket.com.sg/products/coromandel-south-india-p | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030331677.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20220924151538-20220924181538-00582.warc.gz | en | 0.941235 | 247 | 2.625 | 3 |
Headlines are buzzing about a new study, conducted by the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona, which determined that half of the meat and poultry sold in supermarkets may be tainted with the staph germ.
Proper cooking kills the germ, which is estimated to be responsible for less than 3 percent of foodborne illnesses. Consumers understand there are germs in beef and poultry that are killed through proper cooking and if the article stopped there, it wouldn’t have been so detrimental so the industry.
But the damage is done through a comment made by one of the study’s authors who “believes” some strains of the staph germ found in the samples are resistant to antibiotics because “industrial” farms feed cattle a low-dose of antibiotics through their lifetime.
That statement is not true for our farm – and likely not for others. We do use antibiotics to boost our cattle’s immune systems when they are sick or have gone through a stressful situation. Just like in humans. People are notorious for taking antibiotics before riding on airplanes or when they “feel a cold coming on.” We like to cure and fend off sickness in ourselves and try to do the same in our cattle. Our animals can’t tell us when they are sick. They do, however, act sick and when we see these behaviors we do what we can to prevent our animals – and potentially the entire herd – from getting ill.
We do not have IV drips hooked to our animals. We care for them like we care for our children. We immunize them against common diseases, provide them with protection against flees and ticks and give them antibiotics when they are sick. | <urn:uuid:3e76ea5a-c818-4def-9707-65f5652813e3> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://newtothefarm.com/2011/04/18/staf-in-beef-samples/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514574286.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20190921063658-20190921085658-00048.warc.gz | en | 0.959089 | 348 | 2.765625 | 3 |
A clear favourite as far as science in the kitchen goes. A classic, one that every kids must try at least once if not hundreds of time.
What you will need...
To make the salt dough:
Flour 2 cups
salt 2 cups
water 1 cup
The rest of the volcano:
A baking tray
A small drinking bottle
For the lava:
washing up liquid
Food colouring (red is a good choice)
vinegar (white is best)
Make your salt dough which is really easy. All you do is put the flour, salt and water in a mixing bowl and stir until you have a lovely not sticky ball of dough.
Put the drinking bottle on the baking tray and fill it half way with water, a generous amount of washing up liquid (fairy works really well) and 2-3 heaped teaspoons of baking powder.
Mix well and then use the salt dough to make a volcano shape around the bottle.
Now for the fun bit. Drop some vinegar into the solution in the bottle. Do it bit by bit until you get the effect you desire. When it starts fizzing you may need to stir it a little to start the reaction but you will find yourself a scene like this... | <urn:uuid:951c5025-46de-4bb7-8b20-d5bf6d216cfb> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | http://www.anordinarylife.co.uk/2011/11/volcano-experiment.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178368608.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20210304051942-20210304081942-00401.warc.gz | en | 0.923183 | 257 | 2.671875 | 3 |
* This is the Consumer Version. *
Craniocervical Junction Disorders
Craniocervical junction disorders are abnormalities of the bones that join the head and neck. (Cranio- means skull, and cervical means neck.)
These disorders may be present at birth or result from injuries or disorders that occur later.
Most commonly, people have neck pain and headache, but if the spinal cord or lowest part of the brain (brain stem) is affected, people may have difficulty sensing vibration, pain, and temperature and may have weak muscles, dizziness, and impaired vision.
Doctors suspect the diagnosis based on symptoms, and magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography is done to confirm it.
To relieve pressure on the brain, spinal cord, or nerves, doctors use traction or manipulate the head, then immobilize the neck, but sometimes surgery is needed.
The craniocervical junction consists of the bone that forms the base of the skull (occipital bone) and the first two bones in the spine (which are in the neck): the atlas and axis. Disorders that affect the large opening at the bottom of the occipital bone (called the foramen magnum) are a particular concern because important structures pass through this opening. These structures include the lowest part of the brain (brain stem), which connects to the spine, as well as some nerves and blood vessels.
Craniocervical junction disorders may involve bones that are
Misaligned bones may be completely separated (dislocated) or partially misaligned (subluxed).
These disorders can put pressure on the lower parts of the brain, the top part of the spinal cord, or nearby nerves. The resulting symptoms can be serious. For example, misalignment of the first and second spinal bones (atlantoaxial subluxation or dislocation) can put pressure on the spinal cord. Such pressure can result in paralysis, weakness, and loss of sensation.
Craniocervical junction disorders may be present at birth (congenital) or acquired later.
Some of these disorders—called isolated disorders—affect only the craniocervical junction. Other craniocervical junction disorders result from conditions that also affect many other parts of the body (general disorders).
Isolated disorders include the following:
Platybasia: The bone at the base of the skull (occipital bone) is flattened.
Basilar invagination: Parts of the occipital bone are malformed, shortening the neck and putting pressure on parts of the brain, nerves, and spinal cord.
Atlas assimilation: The occipital bone and first spinal bone are fused.
Atlantoaxial subluxation or dislocation: The first and second spinal bones are misaligned.
Atlas hypoplasia: The first spinal bone develops incompletely.
Klippel-Feil malformation: The first two spinal bones are fused, limiting movement of the neck but usually causing no other problems.
Chiari malformation: The cerebellum (the part of the brain that controls balance) protrudes through the opening in the occipital bone. The protruding cerebellum may put pressure on the brain stem or spinal cord.
Os odontoideum: Part of the second spinal bone is replaced by abnormal bone.
General disorders may cause the same abnormalities as isolated disorders, but the abnormalities occur as part of a group of abnormalities, as in the following:
Disorders that affect bone formation in children (achondroplasia): These disorders affect all newly developing bone, particularly the long bones in the arms and legs. The long bones may be abnormally short and malformed, causing dwarfism. These disorders sometimes also cause the opening in the occipital bone to narrow or the occipital bone to fuse with the first spinal bone, putting pressure on the brain stem or spinal cord.
Down syndrome, mucopolysaccharidosis (a rare hereditary disorder that impairs the body's processing of carbohydrates), or osteogenesis imperfecta (a rare hereditary disorder that results in fragile bones): These disorders cause various symptoms, which may include misalignment of the first two spinal bones.
Craniocervical junction disorders may occur later in life. They can result from injuries or certain disorders.
Injuries may affect bone, ligaments, or both. They are usually caused by motor vehicle or bicycle accidents, falls, or often diving. Some injuries are immediately fatal.
The most common disorders that affect craniocervical structures are
Tumors can also affect craniocervical structures. If tumors spread to the bones of the neck, the first two spinal bones may become misaligned. A rare, slow-growing bone tumor (called a chordoma) can develop at the craniocervical junction and press on the brain or spinal cord.
Typically, people have neck pain, often with a headache that starts at the back of the head. Symptoms can start after a slight neck injury or for no apparent reason. Moving the head usually makes neck pain and headache worse, and coughing or bending forward can trigger the pain.
If there is pressure on the spinal cord, the arms and/or legs may feel weak, and people may have difficulty moving them. People may be unable to sense where their limbs are (called position sense) or feel vibration. When they bend their neck forward, they may feel an electrical shock or a tingling sensation shooting down their back, often into their legs (called Lhermitte sign). Occasionally, people become less sensitive to pain and temperature in their hands and feet.
Depending on the specific disorder, the neck may be short, webbed, or twisted in an abnormal position. Movement of the head may be limited.
Pressure on parts of the brain or cranial nerves (which connect the brain directly to various parts of the head, neck, and trunk) can affect eye movements. People may have double vision or be unable to move their eyes in certain directions, or the eyes may move involuntarily in certain ways (called nystagmus). People may be hoarse and have difficulty swallowing. Speech may be slurred. Coordination may be lost. Some people develop sleep apnea. In this serious disorder, breathing repeatedly stops, often long enough to temporarily decrease the amount of oxygen and increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the blood.
Changing the position of the head can sometimes put pressure on arteries, cutting off the blood supply to the head. Then, people may faint or feel light-headed, confused, or weak. They may have a sensation of spinning (vertigo). Vision and eye movement are sometimes affected.
In some people with Chiari malformation, a cavity (called a syringomyelia) forms in the spinal cord. These people may lose their ability to feel pain and temperature in the neck, upper arms, and parts of the back. The muscles may feel weak or become paralyzed, particularly in the hands.
If symptoms appear suddenly or suddenly worsen, people should see a doctor immediately. Immediate diagnosis and treatment are essential and can sometimes reverse symptoms or prevent permanent disability.
Doctors suspect a craniocervical junction disorder if people have
The diagnosis can be confirmed by imaging tests, usually magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT). If problems appeared suddenly or suddenly worsen, an imaging test is done immediately. CT shows bone better than MRI and may be done more easily in an emergency. If MRI and CT are unavailable, plain x-rays are taken.
If MRI and CT are inconclusive, myelography with CT may be done. For this procedure, x-rays are taken after a radiopaque contrast agent (dye)—one that can be seen on x-rays—is injected into the space around the spinal cord.
If MRI or CT suggests abnormalities that affect blood vessels, angiography, which provides detailed images of bloods vessels, is done. Doctors may use magnetic resonance angiography (which uses a strong magnetic field and very high frequency radio waves rather than x-rays), CT angiography (CT done after a radiopaque dye is injected) or conventional angiography (which uses x-rays taken after a radiopaque contrast agent is injected).
If the craniocervical junction structures are putting pressure on the brain, spinal cord, or nerves, doctors try to realign (reduce) the structures by using traction or by manipulating the head into different positions. These techniques may relieve the pressure. After the structures are realigned, the head and neck are immobilized.
Usually, realignment requires traction. Traction typically involves a device that encircles and is fixed to the head (called a halo crown or ring). It may have to remain in place for 5 to 6 days. After the structures are realigned, the halo ring is attached to a brace around the person's torso. This device, called a halo vest, immobilizes the neck. It must remain in place for 8 to 12 wk. After it is applied, x-rays are taken to make sure the structures are being held securely in the correct alignment.
If traction or manipulation is ineffective, surgery is done to relieve the pressure, stabilize the structures, or both. If the cause is rheumatoid arthritis, surgery is usually needed. Various devices, such as metal plates or rods with screws, are used to securely hold the structures in place until bones fuse and become stable.
If problems are due to a bone tumor, radiation therapy and a rigid collar (neck brace) to keep the neck from moving often help.
If the cause is Paget disease of bone, drugs such as bisphosphonates (which increase bone density) or calcitonin may help.
* This is the Consumer Version. * | <urn:uuid:6ee5df30-ba75-4278-86ca-b2cbd1301a18> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://www.msdmanuals.com/home/brain,-spinal-cord,-and-nerve-disorders/craniocervical-junction-disorders/craniocervical-junction-disorders | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189083.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00108-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926145 | 2,041 | 3.75 | 4 |
Medical tourism is known as medical travel or global healthcare. It refers where peoples travel one country to another country to receive medical facility, while at the same time receiving equal to or greater care than they would have to get in their own country, and are travelling for medical care because of affordability, better access to care or a higher level of quality of care. Earlier Medical travel usually referred to those who travelled from less-developed countries to major medical place in highly developed countries for treatment which is unavailable in their country. However, in recent years it may equally refer to those from developed countries who travel to developing countries for lower-priced medical treatments.
India has evolved to become one of such top-notch medical travel destinations which boasts to provide affordable yet qualitative treatment, thus scoring high on several aspects, including patient satisfaction, quality hospitals and renowned doctors to name a few. “Domestic Medical Tourism” is where people travel in the same country where they leave; they travel to another city, region or state to get medical service.
Why Traveling Internationally for Medical Tourmism?
- Peoples are travelling for medical care because of affordability, better access to care or a higher level of quality of care.
- People travel to developing countries for
lower pricedmedical treatments.
- People may travel also for medical services which may be unavailable or illegal in the home country.
Top Medical Travel Destinations in the World:
- Thailand: Foreigners seeking treatment in
Thailandais populardestination for medical tourism, attracting an estimated 2.81 million patients in 2015, up 10.2 percent. In 2013, medical tourists spent as much as US$4.7 billion, according to government statistics. According to the Malaysia Healthcare Travel Council, Malaysia reportedly received 641,000 foreign patients in 2011, 728,800 in 2012, 881,000 in 2013, 882,000 in 2014, 859,000 in 2015, and 921,000 in 2016. The majority of the foreign patients seeking medical treatments in Malaysia are from Indonesia, with smaller numbers of foreign patients coming from India, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Europe, the USA and the Middle East. Revenue from medical travel to Malaysia grew from MYR 299 million in 2008 to MYR 511 in 2011 to MYR 683 million in 2013.
- India: India is becoming the second most medical travel destination after Thailand. India is the great destination of medical travel because quality with the affordable cost; people can get quality treatment at a lower cost if we compare with other developed countries. A person coming to India for his/her medical treatment can save anywhere between 30 to 70 per cent, including the cost of tickets & accommodation. It is one of the grown sectors in India. In October 2015, India’s this sector was estimated to be worth US$3 billion. It is projected to grow to $7–8 billion by 2020. Foreign patients travelling to India to seek medical treatment in 2012 about 171,021, 2013 numbered about 236,898 and 2014 numbered about 184,298 respectively. United States, United Kingdom, Bangladeshis, Russia and Afghans have been the largest source countries for tourism to India. It is also very easy to get
visafor tourism for medical reason in India.
- Other courtiers the top Medical Travel Destinations in the World are Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey, Mexico, Singapore & Costa Rica etc.
Some problems you may face in Medical Tourism:
- Communication may be a problem: If you travel for medical treatment you may face language problems, because in every part of the country there may speak a different language.
- If you don’t have any experience or connection you may face problems to find the best medical service provider & service.
- Medication may be counterfeit or of poor quality in some countries
- Time: It may take some time to get treatment & recovery; you have to spend that time in that country. Flying after surgery can increase the risk for blood clots.
- You need to apply for visa properly,
What You Can Do if you planning for Medical Tourism:
- If you are planning to travel for treatment, contact at least before 4–5 weeks & take necessary advice from medical service provider where you are travelling for treatment. Discuss general information for healthy travel and specific risks related to the procedure and travel before and after the procedure.
- Check the qualifications of the health care providers who will be doing the procedure and the credentials of the facility where the procedure will be done. Know about the approximate cost of the treatment.
- Better to contact a good Medical Tourism company, which may help you to know the best medical service provider information, approximate the treatment cost & also minimize language problems. The Medical Travel Company can also help provide your local interpreter, which may help to solve language problem & also they can guide you.
- Take with you copies of your medical records that include the lab and other studies done related to the condition for which you are obtaining care and any allergies you may have.
- Arrange for follow-up care with your local health care provider before you leave.
Medical tourism companies in India help foreign patients seek affordable treatment at some of the best hospitals in India, which are located across the length and breadth of the country. If you want to get treatment in India you can contact us, we can guide you. | <urn:uuid:466cb8b7-f89f-479f-9a28-409a4dcb75aa> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://www.medihelp365.com/medical-tourism/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514572556.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20190916120037-20190916142037-00383.warc.gz | en | 0.944829 | 1,100 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Table of Contents
The fundamental forces (or fundamental interactions) of physics are the ways that individual particles interact with each other. It turns out that for every single interaction that we’ve observed take place in the universe, they can be broken down to be described by only four (well, generally four – more on that later) types of interactions:
- Weak Interaction (or Weak Nuclear Force)
- Strong Interaction (or Strong Nuclear Force)
Of these forces, gravity has the furthest reach but it’s the weakest in actual magnitude.
It is a purely attractive force which reaches through even the “empty” void of space to draw two masses toward each other. It keeps the planets in orbit around the sun and the moon in orbit around the Earth.
Gravitation is described under the theory of general relativity, which defines it as the curvature of spacetime around an object of mass. This curvature, in turn, creates a situation where the path of least energy is toward the other object of mass.
Electromagnetism is the interaction of particles with an electrical charge. Charged particles at rest interact through electrostatic forces, while in motion they interact through both electrical and magnetic forces.
For a long time, the electric and magnetic forces were considered to be different forces, but they were finally unified by James Clerk Maxwell in 1864, under Maxwell’s equations. In the 1940s, quantum electrodynamics consolidated electromagnetism with quantum physics.
Electromagnetism is perhaps the most obviously prevalent force in our world, as it can affect things at a reasonable distance and with a fair amount of force.
The weak interaction is a very powerful force that acts on the scale of the atomic nucleus. It causes phenomena such as beta decay. It has been consolidated with electromagnetism as a single interaction called the “electroweak interaction.” The weak interaction is mediated by the W boson (there are actually two types, the W+ and W– bosons) and also the Z boson.
The strongest of the forces is the aptly-named strong interaction, which is the force that, among other things, keeps nucleons (protons & neutrons) bound together. In the helium atom, for example, it is strong enough to bind two protons together despite the fact that their positive electrical charges cause them to repulse each other.
In essence, the strong interaction allows particles called gluons to bind together quarks to create the nucleons in the first place. Gluons can also interact with other gluons, which gives the strong interaction a theoretically infinite distance, although it’s major manifestations are all at the subatomic level.
Unifying the Fundamental Forces
Many physicists believe that all four of the fundamental forces are, in fact, the manifestations of a single underlying (or unified) force which has yet to be discovered. Just as electricity, magnetism, and the weak force were unified into the electroweak interaction, they work to unify all of the fundamental forces.
The current quantum mechanical interpretation of these forces is that the particles do not interact directly, but rather manifest virtual particles that mediate the actual interactions. All of the forces except for gravity have been consolidated into this “Standard Model” of interaction.
The effort to unify gravity with the other three fundamental forces is called quantum gravity. It postulates the existence of a virtual particle called the graviton, which would be the mediating element in gravity interactions. To date, gravitons have not been detected and no theories of quantum gravity have been successful or universally adopted. | <urn:uuid:2b04b6f9-fb70-4f32-8e7f-365411fe9d0f> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://gauravtiwari.org/glossary/the-four-fundamental-forces/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038921860.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20210419235235-20210420025235-00542.warc.gz | en | 0.93773 | 751 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Re-discovered in central China in 1941, the dawn redwood is a deciduous conifer that combines the benefits of a stately and upright shape of a conifer with the lovely fall color associated with deciduous trees.
This tree is eligible for a $50 Tree Rebate.
More detail: Dawn Redwood’s Tree of the Month.
Opposite, deciduous, green to yellow-green in color; thin and flat, generally appearing two-ranked in a flattened display; can resemble a compound leaf
Male flowers are light yellow brown, in narrow hanging clusters up to 12 inches long; female flowers are yellow-green, solitary and erect with fused scales
Four-sided, box-like cones that hang on long stalks, round to cylindrical in shape, 1/2 to 1 inch long, light brown
Slender, light reddish brown in color, smooth, with short, cylindrical buds protruding at right angles
Reddish brown, fibrous and stringy, develops an irregular fluted pattern, exfoliates in strips and has a rope-like appearance
Very straight, single trunk with numerous branches forming a narrow conical crown
Grows to between 70 and 100 feet in height, but has been seen to reach 200 feet in height
Originally native to large parts of the eastern seaboard and parts of Asia, but today the natural range is limited to China in Asia and North Carolina in the U.S.
Large deciduous tree
Needles can turn an orange-red in the fall
Grows in acidic, loamy, moist, sandy, well drained, wet, clay soils
Prefers full sun
Pests and Diseases
Japanese beetles and spider mites can be problems for this tree, but otherwise there are no other serious problems.
Considered a “living fossil” and is the sole living species of the genus Metasequoia, and one of only three species of conifers known as redwoods.
Dawn redwood is often confused with common bald cypress. The needles on dawn redwood are opposite, meaning directly across from each other, while those on a bald cypress are staggered.
Dawn redwood was thought to be extinct before it was rediscovered in China and brought back to the United States in 1941. | <urn:uuid:be88775b-c933-4c20-a2c3-c4847fb1b139> | CC-MAIN-2016-07 | http://caseytrees.org/tree-species/dawn-redwood/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701154221.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193914-00145-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91146 | 483 | 3.09375 | 3 |
Samba is the open source version of the protocol that Windows machines use to share files. It is useful because it is fairly well supported on Linux, Mac and Windows machines although Windows likes to change things to make it harder sometimes. The steps below will set up a simple share using the Public folder in
To install samba on KDE neon, open Konsole and type,
sudo apt install samba
This will install the server. The next step is to add yourself as a samba user. You have to be a user already to be a samba user so use your existing username or it won’t work.
sudo smbpasswd -a <insert username>
It will then ask you to enter your password and then confirm it. You don’t have to use your account password, in fact it is more secure to use a different one for networking as you tend to have to give it out so other can access it.
The next step is to backup the configuration file and then edit it. You can backup the file by typing,
sudo cp /etc/samba/smb.conf /etc/samba/smb.conf_backup
Then edit it using nano.
sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf
At the very bottom of the file I am going to at the share definitions for a folder called Public in my home directory. This will probably already exist but if it doesn’t then create it. Change the <partstochange> to suit yourself.
[<share name>] path = /home/<username>/Public/ available = yes valid users = <username> read only = no browseable = yes public = yes writable = yes
So if my user name was squalidh then the share would look like,
[Squalidh Share] path = /home/squalidh/Public/ available = yes valid users = squalidh read only = no browseable = yes public = yes writable = yes
After finishing save the file and restart the samba server with,
sudo systemctl restart smbd
Then open up Dolphin, the file manager, and on the left should be a heading Remote with Network under it. Select that and then Shared Folders (SMB) and your Workgroup should show up. It should also be called Workgroup as that is the default. Entering that should show your computer name and then entering that should show your share name (Squalidh Share from above). You will be asked to enter your samba user password before being able to enter that directory.
That should be it. You should be able to create and destroy files in that directory and so should anyone on the network with your user name and password. | <urn:uuid:cd72ed4a-c21b-454e-a3a1-e509414436c3> | CC-MAIN-2019-47 | https://masonbee.nz/samba-file-sharing-setup-for-kde-neon/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-47/segments/1573496665976.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20191113012959-20191113040959-00058.warc.gz | en | 0.913542 | 570 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Emma M. Nutt Day
Emma M Nutt became the first female phone operator when she joined the New England Telephone Company in Boston, Massachusetts on Sept. 1, 1878,. She was hired by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the first practical telephone. Shortly after her sister Stella was also hired and they became the first “sister team” to work as telephone operators.
While Stella only worked for a couple years at the company, leaving her job to get married, Emma ended up there for thirty years. She worked a 54-hour week at a rate of $10 a month and memorizing every number in the New England Telephone Company directory.
In 1878 the New England Telephone Company started out hiring only men. After complaints of men being pretty gruff with their swearing and impatience the company decided to hire women.
This was before the era or equality, and to qualify for a job as an operator, women had to be unmarried and between ages 17 and 26. They had to be tall enough to reach to top of the telephone switchboard. African American and Jewish women couldn’t get jobs as operators. the women that were hired were not treated nicely and worked two shifts a day.
During World War I, the telephone operators decided to take advantage of the resulting labor shortage. They ended up striking for better wages and hours, and they won. Sadly after the war, things started to turn back around again for the employers.
On April 15, 1919, New England’s night shift operators walked off the job. This resulted in a five-state telephone operator strike. Thousands of women with with the community’s support walked out. Five days later, management granted wage increases and union recognition.
But not to be outdone, the telephone company soon introduced the automatic dial phone, which didn’t require an operator for a local call. | <urn:uuid:8afddc72-b6be-47a5-b872-9bb73f228d42> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://timefortheholidays.net/emma-m-nutt-day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057303.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20210922011746-20210922041746-00008.warc.gz | en | 0.97751 | 387 | 4.09375 | 4 |
Catholic Activity: Nameday Ideas for the Birth of Mary
The Birth of Mary, also known as the Nativity of Mary is celebrated on September 8. Mrs. McLoughlin has some wonderful ideas for a nameday celebration.
Nameday of Maria Lily and Lillian.
Father: From a homily of St. Augustine:
Dearly beloved: the much-desired feast of Blessed Mary ever Virgin has come; so let the earth made bright by her birth rejoice with exceeding great joy. For she is the wild rose on the lowland plain from whom bloomed the precious Lily of the valley. Now let Mary play upon musical instruments and let timbrels reverberate under the fleet fingers of this young Mother. Let joyous choirs sing together harmoniously and let sweet songs be blended together now with one melody and now with another. Hear how our timbrel player has sung. For she has said: "My soul magnifies the Lord because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid. For behold, all generations shall call me blessed, because He who is mighty has done great things to me."
All: This is the birthday of the glorious Virgin Mary, sprung from the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Juda, of the renowned family of David.
Father: Let us pray. O Lord, grant to Your servants the gift of Your heavenly grace, that as the childbearing of the Blessed Virgin was the beginning of salvation, so the joyful feast of her birthday may bring us an increase of peace. Through Christ our Lord.
All: Amen. Christ conquers, Christ reigns!
Hymn: Any Marian hymn.
Dessert and decorations. The first fancy nameday cake in our house was decorated by our youngsters. A cake decorating set had been given to us, but it seemed too complicated to use. Somehow the children had caught the mystery of holiness in so great a feast which the Church celebrates with praise and thanksgiving, for the birthday of Blessed Mary announces joy and the near approach of salvation to a sin-lost world.
The rose petal cake (see Rose Petal Coconut Cake) is appropriate today. It ought to be a pure white cake, and the reason for its whiteness should be explained to children so that they will relate it to Mary's sanctity. Another choice might be the dessert with musical notation (see Musical Cake) to symbolize the homily read in today's prayers.
Activity Source: My Nameday — Come for Dessert by Helen McLoughlin, The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 1962 | <urn:uuid:d1b1175c-83e0-481d-8364-749b7f77d462> | CC-MAIN-2014-52 | http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/activities/view.cfm?id=1248 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-52/segments/1418802772416.132/warc/CC-MAIN-20141217075252-00142-ip-10-231-17-201.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943291 | 534 | 2.75 | 3 |
- Historic Sites
The Fort Barrancas Area is on Taylor Road approximately a half mile east from the Museum of Naval Aviation. The area includes the historic Water Battery, Fort Barrancas, trails, visitor center, picnic areas, and the Advanced Redoubt. Fort Barrancas sits on a bluff overlooking the entrance to Pensacola Bay. The natural advantages of this location have inspired engineers of three nations to build forts. The British built the Royal Navy Redoubt here in 1763 of earth and logs. The Spanish built two forts here around 1797. Bateria de San Antonio was a masonry water battery at the foot of the bluff. Above it was earth and log Fort San Carlos de Barrancas.
American engineers remodeled the Water Battery in 1840 and built a masonry fort on the bluff between 1839 and 1844, connected by a tunnel to the Water Battery. This is the current Fort Barrancas. A $1.2 million, eighteen-month restoration project led to its reopening in 1980. Bateria de San Antonio stands today at the base of the barranca, or bluff, just below Fort Barrancas. While retaining some of the Spanish ornamentation, the current structure includes a rifle gallery and rear wall added by U. S. Army engineers. An underground passage connects the Water Battery to Fort Barrancas. | <urn:uuid:0164e7e3-c36b-4d7a-a412-d6ac61e84c39> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.americanheritage.com/content/fort-barrancas?nid=20087 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00070-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.915719 | 279 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Apr 7, 2016
Hello Everyone! Thank so much for following "The Science of Magic" on Inkshares! Remember to preorder your copy today and share with your friends. As a thank you for following the book, here’s a present!
Part of the book will focus on how magic evolved in various creatures (including dragons). Here’s an explanation of the history of evolutionists as well as a table with all of the current magical creatures, their scientific names, and what those names mean. Enjoy!
Evolution is the process by which living organisms developed from earlier forms, their ancestors, over the history of life on earth. This is usually considered to be the development of a complex form from a simpler form gradually over time, though this is not always the case.
In the broadest terms, evolution is change that occurs in a specific order, usually to the advantage of a particular group or species. Evolution can be used to refer to general change, of everything from astronomical phenomena to computer technology, but normally refers to the evolution of biological organisms. The term was first used by the ancient Greeks. Today it is used in reference to Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, popularly called “survival of the fittest”. This theory was first proposed in publication by Charles Darwin in 1859.
The Ancient Greeks did not use the term evolution. However, there are many references made by philosophers of creatures coming from something else. For instance, Thales states that all things came from water. Anaximenes asserts that air is the principle of all things. Anaximander took this thought further and suggested that men came from other animals and that all life came from moisture and warmth. In Empedocles, there are general mentions of evolutionary thought, including an adaptation of natural selection.
Heraclitus conceives the rational development process, stating that air leads to water which leads to earth. Empedocles and Democritus also discuss development and change. Like the other Greek philosophers, Deinocritus concludes that organisms come from inorganic matter, like moist earth.
In contrast, Plato, though he reiterates the idea of flux in the phenomenal world, denies the idea that there is continuous change in ideas. The idea of evolution is convoluted in Plato’s writing, but is made clearer by Aristotle. Aristotle states that the transition of life from lifeless matter is gradual, leading to a blurred line between the two states. Aristotle believed that life was constantly improving to reach perfection, with man being closer to perfection than any other form of life. Finally, the Neoplatonists believed that the highest principle remains unchanged and that all things come from this principle.
The concept of evolution was not popular during Medieval times, largely due to the widespread acceptance of the Christian theory of creation. Yet, evolution was not denied in the general sense. Augustine used evolution as the basis for his philosophy of history. Erigena and several of his followers may have taught a form of evolution. Nicholas of Cusa taught a similar theory to Erigena’s, though heavily influenced and colored by Pythagoreanism. That is to say, Nicholas taught an undeveloped, pantheistic form of evolution, in which God contains all things within himself, thus connecting all opposites.
Giordano Bruno’s philosophy may be a bit clearer. Bruno believed that all things proceed from a universal nucleus, meaning that the worlds originated through inner necessity of the divine nature, rather than arbitrary acts. Again, God, or the operative nature of God known as the natitra naturans, is said to be present in all things. Bruno’s philosophy is similar to the Greek Stoics, showing a clear concept of evolution in metaphysics and physics.
The modern philosophy of evolution is quite a bit more involved. Descartes wrote in Principia philosphitce that nature, whether lifeless or living, is merely mechanical or the mechanism. However, Descartes placed metaphysics above physics and the idea of God had an important place, indicating that mechanical evolution did not explain all matter. Leibniz attempted to reconcile this mechanical-physical view with previous teleological views.
For Leibnitz, the principles of physics and mechanics are wholly dependent on the will of a supreme being. He states the the directionality of a supreme intelligence is what allows the human mind to conceive order and the continuity of one ordered thing to another. Leibnitz greatly valued the law of continuity, which states that the genera of all things are in a continuous spectrum. Though we make distinctions between animals and vegetables, the law of continuity states that there must be intermediary forms which create a continuous sequence between the two.
The German philosophers of the eighteenth century also accounted for pioneers of modern evolution. Herder, one of the first, explained a doctrine of unity in the continuous development of nature. This included examples of inorganic to organic, stone to plant, plant to animal, and animal to man. Lessing dwelt on the education of the human race, believing it to be the mechanism to become more perfect. Goethe also wrote on the idea of evolution, creating a theory of metamorphosis. Goethe spent part of his career attempting to discover the unity in different organisms.
German Idealism led to many writings related to evolution. Kant, for instance, is often cited as being an early teacher of the modern theory of descent. Kant considered analogous forms to indicate that organisms may have come from a common source. Kant even entertained the notion that an orang or chimpanzee could develop the organs necessary for walking, speaking, and grasping objects, anticipating Darwinian thought but unable to allow it predominance.
German idealistic successors showed stronger inclinations to the idea of evolution. Schelling indicated strong leanings to evolution, stating that nature was a preliminary stage of mind and that the process of physical development would continue throughout history. According to Schelling, all stages of nature are connected by a common life and show unity throughout their development.
Schelling’s followers further developed this idea. Oken, for instance, conceived natural science as the eternal transformation of God into our world. This development is carried through the vegetable and animal kingdoms up to man. Oken believed man to be the sole object of animal development, concluding that all other animals were failed attempts to create man. This idea was later controverted by Cuvier and Ernst von Baer. Von Baer is noted for standing in a somewhat opposing role to Darwin.
Though Krause and Schleiermacher wrote on some evolutionistic ideas, these ideas are better represented by Hegel and his notion of absolute idealism. For Hegel, philosophy is the science of the Absolute. Hegel accepted the teachings of Heraclitus in his logic and, thus, taught eternal proceeding. Hegel differed from Heraclitus in that Hegel believed that the abstract idea or reason as what truly is. For Hegel, nature was a necessary but ultimately temporary state on the road of development. For Heraclitus, evolution was the return of all things to the primal principle which would be followed by a new world-development. For Hegel, evolution was the eternal process of thought with no clear end.
Prior to Darwin, evolution was a concept born from ideas and the abstract, rather than practical knowledge. Darwin and Wallace, however, outlined their arguments for evolution with a large quantity of ascertained facts. As noted in this chapter, however, Darwin was clearly not the first person to conclude in a formal doctrine that species develop from one to another. Charles Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, outlined his belief in evolution with an emphasis on organic variability. Furthermore, Lamarck preceded Darwin in his view of evolution. Lamarck denied the immutability of species and forms, but stated that he observed the gradual development possible in the animal kingdom.
Indeed, Charles Darwin did not create new the theory of descent, but was the first to describe the mechanism of this descent. Charles Darwin proposed the theory of natural selection and survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. Darwin described a rational end to a mechanical process without any teleological principles or innate tendency within the organisms themselves to reach a higher state. In essence, Darwin’s theory is that later organisms deviated from earlier ones and that the deviations, assuming they are improvements, perpetuate themselves to become generic marks of differentiation. This does not explain the origin of the first deviations.
The concept of evolution as a mechanical process spread quickly after Darwin’s publication, though it was by no means universally accepted. Still, may scientists and philosophers expanded on Darwin’s work. Ernst Haeckel of Germany created his biogenetic law which stated that the development of an individual is congruent with the history of the race. France’s Alfred Fouillee created a theory of idea-forces which combined Platonic idealism with English evolutionism. Marie-Jean Guyau concluded that the most intensive life is also the most extensive, spreading the teachings of universal sociomorphism, which united man with the entire cosmos.
The most thorough development of the system of evolution occurred in England, principally represented by the work of Herbert Spencer. Spencer is noted for having supported evolution even prior to Darwin’s publication of the Origin of Species. Spencer, in his System of Synthetic Philosophy, illustrates that development is the highest law of nature, rather than just the highest law of organisms. For Spencer, natural selection is not necessary to account for the varying species. Rather, the gradual conditions of life created them. Spencer concluded that the purpose of development is to reach perfect balance. Once that is attained, development will cease. Spencer attempted to resolve the mechanical nature of evolution with the teleological thought of his time.
In modern times, scientists rarely attempt to unify the mechanisms of evolution with any deity. There are, however, fundamental concepts of natural selection. One concept, the idea of change by common descent, implies that all living organisms are related to each other to varying degrees. Basically, if we are able to look back far enough in evolutionary history, we will find a common ancestor. This is a far cry from Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being, which stated that each species was formed for its personal space in nature.
It is also important to note that evolution by natural selection is a purely mechanical theory. There is no attempt within the theory to explain a purpose of designer, nor is there any mention in the theory which would refute a purpose or designer. There is no foresight in nature, nor any implication that any species is more perfect than another. For the theory of evolution by natural selection, all that matters is the change, which is driven by selection pressures found in the environment. This theory is widely accepted among professional biologists, but there is controversy regarding whether natural selection works on the molecular, individual, or species level.
Although Darwin’s original theory did not state that genes account for the heritable traits of any given organism, it is now universally accepted by modern evolutionists. In any given population, natural selection will occur when genetically-based traits, like the ability to camouflage, promote survival and are passed on to, and become more frequent in, future generations. Organisms, therefore, will gradually develop different survival enhancing traits dependent on their environments. Given enough time and environmental changes, the small changes within organisms will accumulate until they are a separate species. For instance, a cactus is highly developed to retain water for long periods of time because it lives in a desert, a place with little water. The cactus would not thrive in a rain forest, a place which receives much more rainfall than the home it adapted to. But a fern is adapted to the rainforest and will thrive.
For Darwin, there is no sharp distinction between new variations and new species, harkening back to previous views on the continuity of things. This theory allows for the diversity of the Earth’s organisms far better than any competing scientific theories (such as Lamarck’s theory of acquired traits) or theological design theories.
There are, therefore, three principles of evolution by natural selection. The first principle is that, within a generation, there will be variation, specifically of traits. Some of these traits will aid survival and reproduction while others will not. Similarly, some of the traits have a genetic basis while others do not. The second principle is that there are limited resources and individuals must compete for those resources. Traits which aid survival and reproduction will help in this competition. The final principle is that of heritability, which states that only traits which aid survival and reproduction and have a genetic basis can be passed on to future generations. The theory of evolution by natural selection explains the diversification of life, but this life must still be classified.
Taxonomy is the branch of science which focuses on the systematic classification of things, especially organisms. There have been many taxonomies proposed over the years, so it is important to note that the taxonomy mentioned is an adapted form from Linnaeus’ proposed taxonomy, adapted to classify based on the knowledge of organisms we have as of today. The classification of organisms is grouped. The largest group is the domain.
For our purposes, there are three domains of life. These domains are the Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. This three-tiered system was designed by Carl Woese, an American biophysicist and microbiologist, and introduced in 1990. Archaea and Bacteria are all single-celled organisms which have no nucleus, otherwise known as prokaryotic microorganisms. Any and all life which has membrane-bound organelles and a nucleus, including most multicellular life, belongs to the domain Eukarya.
Other alternative classifications of life include the two-empire or superdomain system and the eocyte hypothesis. The superdomain system separates the groupings into Prokaryota (aka Monera) and Eukaryota. The eocyte hypothesis was first proposed in 1984 by James A. Lake et al. This hypothesis posits that there are two domains, Bacteria and Archaea. All Eukarya would be considered Archaea by this hypothesis.
It is important to note that non-cellular life, such as viruses, are not included in these systems. There has been support since 2011 to include a fourth domain of life which would be composed of Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses. In 2012, researchers made the case that the discovery of giant viruses which have genomes and a physical size comparable to cellular organisms, virus-specific parasites called virophages, and remains of protein translation machinery, indicates that viruses are a distinct form of life and need to be reclassified as such. Yet, viruses are still not classified as a form of life and the debate rages on.
Link to Magical Creatures: | <urn:uuid:b00f1479-9cda-4dd6-909c-7d7664a109fd> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.inkshares.com/books/the-science-of-magic/backer_updates/d202c29d | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296949533.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20230331020535-20230331050535-00277.warc.gz | en | 0.954133 | 3,123 | 2.953125 | 3 |
by Rod Navajas
Ask anyone who exercises regularly and I bet they’ve all heard at some point about the importance of consuming protein to improve body composition parameters.
But the question is: Does protein consumption really matter when you are trying to improve body composition and how much you actually need?
Let’s start by talking about Macronutrients and Micronutrients.
Macronutrients are nutrients that provide us energy or calories. It includes Protein, Fat, Carbohydrate and…Alcohol.
Micronutrients on the other hand, do not provide us with energy, but are vital for the optimal functioning of the body. Micronutrients include mostly Vitamins and Minerals, but also Phytonutrients.
Protein is the macronutrient constantly linked to fitness and body composition. But why?
There are a couple of reasons why protein is frequently mentioned when we are talking about body composition.
One of the big arguments is that the protein intake recommended by government agencies are too low. A quick search on the Dietitians Australia website and you will find that the recommended daily protein intake to prevent deficiency ranges from 0.75g/kg of body weight/day for an adult women and 1g/kg of body weight/day for an older adult (over 70yo).
For example, for an adult woman weighting 60kg, the recommended intake would be 45g of protein/day.
How to measure protein intake
The most common mistake people make when measuring their protein intake is to think that the protein content in protein rich foods like meat and seafood, is equal to the actual weight of that particular food. This is actually not true.
On average, 20-25% of the raw weight of red meat, chicken and seafood is made of protein. In comparison, only 8% of tofu and 3% of cooked white rice is made of protein (1). You can see a comparison table on figure 1.
So, for the example given above, our 60kg adult woman, would need to consume 100g of lean chicken breast (22g of protein), 100g of tofu (8g), 2 eggs (12g) and 100g of cooked rice (3g), to reach the recommended amount of 45g of protein per day/day.
Remember that this is the amount necessary to avoid health complications from protein deficiency.
But what if your goal is to improve body composition?
Well, then simply avoiding protein deficiency may not be enough.
A meta-analysis and scientific review of 49 studies that included 1863 participants, concluded that the optimal amount of protein intake for a healthy adult to be 1.6g/kg of body weight/day if you want to maximize training stimulus to improve body composition (2).
In our previous example, our 60kg adult women, would then need to consume 95g of protein per day. This would equate to 200g of chicken breast (44g of protein), 200g of tofu (16g), 4 eggs (24g), 200g of cooked rice (6g) and 100g of natural yoghurt (5g).
I can safely say that most people are consuming less than 1.6g of body weight/day.
What happens when we reduce our total energy intake and consume more protein?
It appears that even a higher amount of protein per day is necessary during an energy restricted diet to improve body composition parameters.
For example, individuals who followed a 40% energy restricted diet for 4 weeks, and consumed a higher protein intake diet (2.4g of protein per kg of body weight/day), not only decreased their body fat mass more than the group that consumed a lower protein intake (1.2g of protein per kg of body weight/day), but also increased their lean mass more than the lower protein intake group (3).
Long term fat loss success is highly dependent on the ability to preserve or increase lean mass.
What happens when we increase our total energy intake and consume more protein?
A higher protein intake, also appears beneficial during an overfeeding diet (40% energy surplus) (4).
Although the increase of body fat mass across 3 groups consuming different protein intakes was similar (as expected all groups increased their body fat mass), participants who consumed 3g of protein per kg of body weight/day, not only had a lower increase of body fat mass than the group that consumed less protein (1.79g of protein per kg of body weight /day), but also had a higher increase of lean mass gain.
Interestingly, the authors also included a very low protein intake group (0.68g of protein per kg of body weight/day). Not surprisingly, this group had the worst body composition outcomes. Despite consuming 40% more calories than baseline, this group decreased their lean mass (as oppose to the other 2 groups), and had the highest increase in body fat mass than the other 2 groups.
Protein is your macronutrient ally when it comes to positive changes in body composition.
If you are someone who is looking to improve body composition, a higher protein intake than the recommended amount to avoid deficiency is necessary.
An individualised protein intake amount will be dependent on other factors such as age, training experience, training schedule and intensity and long term goals. | <urn:uuid:16d5fc0f-98ad-4fd0-9d06-d945562c1807> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.fitnesslab.com.au/is-a-higher-protein-intake-a-fitness-hype/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947475422.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20240301161412-20240301191412-00328.warc.gz | en | 0.945838 | 1,090 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Introduction to the Environment Rating Scales, Supporting Programs Participating in YoungStar-online
May 12, 2021 - 12:00 am
Introduction to the Environment Rating Scales, Supporting Programs Participating in YoungStar – ONLINE
May 12 – May 18 (complete at your own pace)
This five-hour course will provide you with an introduction to the Environment Rating Scales, referred to as ERS tools. The ERS tools provide an overall picture of the environment that has been created for the children and adults who share an early childhood setting. There are four Environment Rating Scales used in the different segments of the early childhood field, this course will introduce you to each scale, providing an overview of how and when to use each scale to assess program quality. This online training will enable participants to work closely with a YoungStar Technical Consultant, explore the scales, ask questions, add additional notes for clarification, and highlight required interactions. Participants are encouraged to take one or more of Exploring courses after completion of this course, for a comprehensive look at the individual scales. | <urn:uuid:723b1415-864a-4bf2-8559-171083f13d30> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.fcrnew.org/events/introduction-to-the-environment-rating-scales-supporting-programs-participating-in-youngstar-online/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178360293.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20210228054509-20210228084509-00607.warc.gz | en | 0.904406 | 217 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Date of Award
Bachelor of Science
Richard P. Cunningham
With a growing concern of healthcare crises like the current COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare sector is in a dire need of finding solutions to the increasing multidrug resistance in microbial organisms. In the 2019, the UN Ad hoc Interagency Coordinating Group on Antimicrobial Resistance stated that if ignored, multidrug resistance organisms (MDROs) could cost 10 million lives each year by 2050. However, this is not a problem of the “future” per say, it is rather of the past, the present, and the future. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 700,000 people die of multidrug resistance (MDR) each year. Considering the present situation, the misuse of antibiotics in trying to combat the COVID-19 pandemic will likely accelerate antibacterial resistant genes (ARGs) spread across the globe. Hence, this is another wake up call for the urgent need of actions against antimicrobial resistance. For this literature review, I analyzed multiple scientific studies on various antibiotic alternatives that can treat bacterial infections including MDR. Due to time constraints, this library thesis only focuses on bacteriophages, CRISPR-Cas based antibacterial, nanoparticles, and anti-plasmid & plasmid curing agents. These therapeutics are proposed to have better outcome in the management of ARGs’ spread than the conventional antibiotics.
Muyizere, Benitha, "Finding Alternatives to Conventional Antibiotics in Face of Multidrug Resistance (MDR) Bacteria Crisis" (2021). Biological Sciences. 76.
Available for download on Wednesday, December 01, 2021 | <urn:uuid:9f3e690d-98e5-4b2b-99b5-07f2f5427068> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/honorscollege_biology/76/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320299927.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20220129032406-20220129062406-00487.warc.gz | en | 0.883884 | 422 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Another long-awaited addition to AutoCAD LT is the Align command. Familiar to AutoCAD users, ALIGN enables you to move, rotate, and scale objects to line them up with other objects.
It's currently available only at the command line, but you can always make a button for it to put it on a CUI element like a ribbon panel or toolbar.
ALIGN is based on the relationship between source points and destination points. Each pair defines part of the relationship, and how many pairs you pick defines the rest of the relationship.
For example, here's what happens when you pick one source point, one destination point, and press Enter.
Looks just like the Move command, and it's about as exciting. But watch what happens when you pick two pairs, and then press Enter:
Now, the selected object not only moves, but also rotates and scales based on the angles and distances of the pairs of points. (You don't have to scale the objects if you don't want to -- it's an option that appears after pressing Enter.)
You can also align objects based on three pairs of points. It's mostly useful for 3D work, so it happens more in AutoCAD than AutoCAD LT. But just for fun, here's what it looks like: | <urn:uuid:da2d182c-8c66-4602-abce-975fc11748ad> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://ltunlimited.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/05/align-objects-in-autocad-lt-2010.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416400379320.39/warc/CC-MAIN-20141119123259-00089-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945466 | 270 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Anatomy of an Anglo-Saxon Sword
Anglo-Saxon swords had straight, double-edged blades, averaging about 33″ long. The blades tapered but slightly and had somewhat rounded points – a weapon used for hacking and slicing, not piercing. A shallow indentation, the fuller, ran along the centre of the blade upon both sides and served to lighten the weight of the weapon. The hilt was often of wood or horn, oftentimes enriched with copper, silver, or gold wire or plates. The security of the hilt was of vital importance; a hilt that loosened or broke during battle could quickly prove lethal to its owner as the uncovered continuation of the blade itself, the tang, offered no purchase for a warrior’s grip.
The guard is very short on Anglo-Saxon swords, just enough to keep the hand from sliding down upon the sharp blade. The pommel is the knob or termination at the end of the hilt, and could be highly ornamented. Some early 7th century Kentish swords, and later Scandinavian ones, have been found with metal rings in their hilts – perhaps to help to secure the weapon to the warrior’s hand via a leather thong, or of magical significance, or perhaps to mark that the sword was a gift from one warrior to another: ‘sword brothers’.
Throughout most of the Anglo-Saxon period (450 CE to 1100) the sword was worn not at the waist but high on the chest in a shoulder-slung leather baldric which held the wooden scabbard. Indeed, in poetic kennings the sword has been referred to as a “shoulder companion”. The compound term is illustrative not only of the physical position of the weapon over a man’s heart but its nature as a warrior’s boon friend. Riddle 79 from the Exeter Book (written in about 975 CE) begins:
I am the shoulder-companion (eaxlgestealla) of the prince, the warrior’s comrade, the associate of a king, dear to my lord. Sometimes a fair-haired lady, and earl’s daughter, noble as she is, lays her hand upon me….
translation by H.R. Ellis Davidson The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England
The English Warrior from Earliest Times to 1066 by Stephen Pollington (1996 Anglo-Saxon Books) is a treasure trove of information about the men and their weapons. | <urn:uuid:da3a09e3-5fdf-4224-9ce7-dc128dd74e76> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://octavia.net/anatomy-of-a-sword/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618039375537.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20210420025739-20210420055739-00479.warc.gz | en | 0.956757 | 519 | 3.65625 | 4 |
Bypass navigation bar
Before you can register for credit classes, you are required to demonstrate certain computer skills to ensure that you can use technology as a learning tool.
You can meet the computer literacy requirement by passing the ACCUPLACER Computer Skills Placement Test or completing one of several computer courses. The ACCUPLACER Computer Skills Placement Test is available at no charge to give you information that will help you and an advisor select your course of study.
Here’s how it works:
If you are uncertain about your computer literacy skills and feel that a computer science class will be helpful to your college experience, you do not need to take the Computer Skills Placement Test. Visit with your advisor to explore your computer science course options.
Here are resources that describe the Computer Skills Placement Test objectives and provide you practice before taking the test:
See our official catalog for more information about the Core Curriculum and Pre-Core requirements. | <urn:uuid:c126a546-333c-4e2d-a6e7-77a5b1964966> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://www.dcccd.edu/CD/DCC/Acad/Core/PreC/Pages/CompLit.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246641054.14/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045721-00251-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.91269 | 196 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Reports on a subset of findings from a study that explored the support roles of African American child care providers in poor Chicago neighborhoods. Based on ten in-depth interviews with relative caregivers, Bromer discusses five themes: caregiver's adult-focused and child-focused motivations for caring, daily work with children, childrearing advice to parents, and caregiver-parent conflict. Caregivers’ motivations to provide child care and the meanings they ascribe to this daily work suggest new ways of defining a child-focused approach to caregiving.
Bromer, J. (2005). Ways of Caring: How Relative Caregivers Support Children and Parents. Occasional Paper Series, 2005 (15). Retrieved from https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2005/iss15/3 | <urn:uuid:b7c12e6e-c2ae-4b7b-a450-cb3b6586ea29> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://educate.bankstreet.edu/occasional-paper-series/vol2005/iss15/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251789055.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20200129071944-20200129101944-00098.warc.gz | en | 0.871673 | 171 | 2.921875 | 3 |
What Is the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU)?
The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU) is an industry trade group founded in 1967 to represent the interests of federal credit unions, and promote the success and efficiency of the industry. Its membership is made up of both large and small credit unions.
NAFCU represents 72% of total federal credit union (FCU) assets and 51% of all FICU assets. NAFCU’s membership includes over 180 federally-insured state-chartered credit unions (FISCUs). Its activities include representing, informing, educating, and assisting its members regarding industry issues. Headquartered in Arlington, Va., one of its main purposes is to influence the laws and regulations affecting federal credit unions.
Understanding the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU)
The National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions (NAFCU) is a trade group for federal credit unions. Federal credit unions are similar to banks, but are owned by their members and are organized under federal rather than state law. They are regulated by the National Credit Union Administration, and members' deposits are protected by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, which is similar to FDIC insurance.
The Federal Credit Union system was established by the Federal Credit Union Act in 1934 to promote savings and the financing of homeownership and other productive purposes. Credit Unions that are recognized by the federal government through the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), an independent federal agency, are tax-exempt under Section 501(c)14 of the United States Internal Revenue Code.
Though federal credit unions don’t earn income and pay no corporate income tax, they are required to pay fees to fund regulatory functions and deposit insurance. Federal credit unions are also required to report their finances to the NCUA at least once per year, but they also may be required to report more than once per year.
Priorities of the National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions
The NAFCU was formed in 1967, and its first major policy victory was the establishment of the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, which is the deposit insurance program for credit unions.
The next big policy battle for the NAFCU was in the 1990s when the organization fought off efforts to roll back deposit insurance for credit unions. It also took great interest in the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation, fighting efforts to make credit unions subject to oversight by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The National Association of Federal Credit Unions argued that due to credit unions’ non-profit and member-owned structure, they do not deserve the same level of scrutiny as for-profit banks and that compliance with CFPB regulations would be unduly burdensome. | <urn:uuid:be109e46-8e3a-4112-9c5d-be25961e632c> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/national-association-federal-credit-unions.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945473.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20230326142035-20230326172035-00514.warc.gz | en | 0.959893 | 582 | 2.75 | 3 |
What is the use of the serial to Ethernet hardware?
The main purpose of this tool is to provide communication between serial devices and a computer via its COM ports that recognize the signals sent by a serial port over Ethernet. In practice, this means that using RS-232 to Ethernet hardware, you can access any serial device located within Ethernet (LAN) network from your machine, or manage a remote COM port peripheral over the Internet in case you use a Virtual Personal Network (VPN) or DNS.
The use of an RS-485 to Ethernet connector can simplify the work of both a regular customer and the whole enterprise. The device can be applied in dispatching systems, commercial or technological automated metering systems, serial to IP communications and many other areas.
How does a serial to Ethernet technology work?
- First of all, when you buy RS-232 Ethernet device, together with the hardware you get a driver software that needs to be installed on your PC. The program serves for creating virtual COM ports in the system when the hardware is connected to your machine.
- All virtual serial ports created with the help of the device’s software appear in your computer’s Device Manager as local ones.
- This way, any COM port embedded in a serial to Ethernet hardware can be displayed in a remote computer as though it was its own physical port.
- Now, any time you attach a serial device to a COM port of your RS-232 Ethernet connector, the peripheral is redirected to the virtual serial port of your computer and recognized by your PC as a local device. | <urn:uuid:5cc32c4c-2e4b-49bf-a728-08069e631363> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.serial-over-ethernet.com/serial-to-ethernet-guide/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662573189.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20220524173011-20220524203011-00466.warc.gz | en | 0.926592 | 320 | 3.09375 | 3 |
• hangover •
Pronunciation: hæng-o-vêr • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Something or someone left over from a prior time period; a vestige, a holdover, a leftover, a remnant. 2. The unpleasant effects of overdrinking the night before or a short period before, a katzenjammer.
Notes: Today's word is an interesting bit of evidence of the importance of word order in language: an overhang is quite a different thing from a hangover. The only derivation ever tried for this word is hangoverish reported in 1939. The word currently appears only 5,350 times on the Web, mostly in dictionaries.
In Play: First things first: "This dorm must be a hangover from an old insane asylum!" The second meaning was derived from the first by means of narrowing to a strictly pejorative sense: "I had such a hangover from the party last night that I think I might have flunked the chemistry exam."
Word History: Today's Good Word is obviously a compound comprising hang + over. Hang, the verb, is related to Hittite gang- "to hang", Sanskrit sankate "wavers", and Latin cunctari "to delay", so the Proto-Indo-European root pervaded the Indo-European languages pretty thoroughly. The original past tense was hanged, but a northern British form, hung, emerged in the 16th century as the past participle, then moved on to take over as the past tense form. Hanged remained only in the legal sense, legalese being more conservative than the general language. Stonehenge originally meant "stone gallows", presumably from the resemblance to gallows of the three-piece ensembles. | <urn:uuid:fc631612-b436-4d84-8f33-a7435711afbd> | CC-MAIN-2016-22 | http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6034 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-22/segments/1464049277807.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160524002117-00071-ip-10-185-217-139.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925119 | 375 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Yes, the US had a major biological weapons program for many years. So did the Soviet Union and so did the United Kingdom. Numerous other countries dabbled in biological weapons research at one time or another. Some programs did experiment with various exotic viruses and bacterial conditions. In general, pathogenic bacteria have been preferred for weapons use, as they can be easily cultured in mass and will grow in the environment, not requiring direct contact between hosts to transmit the infection. The ability to sequence and combine genetic material existed in only the most rudimentary forms prior to the 1990′s, but biological weapons programs did use the genetic engineering technologies and hybridization methods available to some extent.
However, AIDS didn’t come from any of these programs. It came from non-human primates and made the jump to humans some time in the 19th or early 20th century – although it is remotely possible that it existed in humans even earlier. The most likely explanation for the transmission to humans is the consumption of bushmeat. It existed in isolated populations in Africa for some time before entering the industrial world and rapidly spreading worldwide in the 1970′s.
Lets stop and consider something. If HIV was actually created as a biological weapon, it’s arguably the worst, most ineffective, most poorly chosen biological weapon ever created. It has none of the traits that an effective biological weapon should have and nearly all the traits that make an organism a very very poor choice of biological weapon.
- It’s not very easily spread. It requires direct body fluid contact. It can be transmitted by blood to blood contact or sexual intercourse, but even sex is not a very effective means of transmission, as the probability of transmission from a single sexual encounter between an infected individual and uninfected individual is less than 1%. It’s not airborne, can’t be dispersed as a weapon, is not prone to transmission orally or even by close physical contact. The only contact of transmission that actually results in transmission more than 50% of the time is a blood transfusion.
- It’s fairly easy to prevent transmission. Condom use alone can reduce sexual transmission risk by more than 85%. Screening of blood and tissue can reduce the danger from transplantation or transfusion to nearly zero. Outside the body, the virus can be easily destroyed with even mild disinfectants. Just washing surfaces will usually kill or remove the virus. Even an item contaminated with the live virus is unlikely to cause infection, as blood to blood contact is usually required.
- It takes years and sometimes decades to reach the point where it incapacitates or kills. Some individuals are carriers HIV and never even manifest symptoms of full blown AIDS. In the mean time, they’re perfectly capable of going about their business and reproducing, which, when they do, will result in a healthy baby, even for a female with HIV, more than 50% of the time
- There is no cure for HIV nor is there any effective vaccine, and while there are treatments, they are of varying effectiveness and must be taken for life. Having no cure or vaccine is a big disadvantage for a biological weapon, because it makes it difficult to prevent the weapon from infecting friendly forces or those who are deploying the weapon.
For example, if anthrax were to be used on the battlefield, the force that released it would likely already be vaccinated and would be prepared with stockpiles of antibiotics for immediate treatment. Even biological weapons which are engineered to be resistant to most antibiotics usually are created with a selected “antidote” treatment. The unpredictable nature of biological weapons demands that there be a method to avoid a “friendly fire” outbreak once it has been released.
- HIV does not discriminate. Despite claims that it was created to wipe out blacks or homosexuals, HIV can infect any person of any race, any sexual orientation and any gender. Many straight men and women have been infected with HIV and the fastest growing group of HIV sufferers is heterosexual women.
The fact that HIV has historically been seen in higher proportions in homosexual males is because of a number of factors. Certain sexual activities, such as anal sex tend to be more likely to transmit the virus. It is also believed that prior to the publication of the risks of HIV in the mid 1980′s, homosexuals may have been less likely than heterosexuals to use condoms (due to the fact that most STD’s were mild and curable with antibiotics, and unlike heterosexuals, there was no concern of pregnancy.)
AIDS does indeed kill millions in the poorest countries of the world, especially in Africa, but the impact is not nearly enough to tip the population balance or possibly wipe out African societies and races, as some have claimed its goal is. Especially given the impact of famine and war on Africa, the actual impact on the population by AIDS is not enormous. While it is tragic on an individual scale and has left hundreds of thousands orphaned, it is not depopulating Africa or even making a dent on world population. Furthermore the impact can be reduced, dramatically, by simple and inexpensive programs like condom distribution and education. The fact that it has not been reduced as much as it could be is more of a political issue than a scientific one.
It may seem like an attractive conspiracy theory to attribute something as sensational as HIV and AIDS to a conspiracy to create a weapon, but it’s not hard to see that the virus is actually about as poorly suited for biological weapon use as an infectious organism could possibly be. HIV is certainly not a “designer disease.” It also has no relation to any other viruses that conspiracy theorists have claimed were used as the basis for the virus.
This entry was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, media, Not Even Wrong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions | <urn:uuid:bfba20f8-d75c-48ad-a64a-b2c0ff7baf79> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://depletedcranium.com/aids-most-ineffective-biological-weapon-ever/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936461848.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074101-00222-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961976 | 1,230 | 3.15625 | 3 |
19th-century American literature, with particular focus on works by women and African-Americans; the novel; the antislavery movement; digital humanities; open educational resources; writing in and about the disciplines.
Catherine E. Saunders teaches introductory and advanced composition and literature in face to face, hybrid, and online formats. Her research interests include 19th-century American literature, with particular focus on works by women and African-Americans; the antislavery movement; the novel, and digital humanities. Her current research projects include the life and work of Emily Clemens Pearson, a little-known antislavery novelist, and Harriet Jacobs' writings from Civil War Alexandria. With GMU colleagues Jessica Matthews and Lisa Koch, Saunders is co-founder of the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Mid-Atlantic Study Group. She is also the coordinator of the English 302 Open Educational Resources Working Group.
“Poetic Representations of African-American Soldiers.” Teaching the Literatures of the American Civil War, ed. Colleen Glenney Boggs. New York: MLA, 2016.
“Emily Clemens Pearson.” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers 29.2 (Summer 2012): 300-317 (profile and reprint of Pearson’s sketch “Old Delia”).
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Ramona,” “Declaration of Sentiments,” “American Slavery As It Is,” “Sojourner Truth’s Speech at the Woman’s Rights Convention at Akron, Ohio,” “The Negro Declaration of Independence,” “Army Life in a Black Regiment,” “Letter to the Rev. Samson Occom,” “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano,” and “The History of Mary Prince.” Entries for The Literature of Propaganda, The Manifesto in Literature, and The Literature of Autobiography, St. James (Gale/Cengage), 2013.
“Lydia Maria Child.” Major Author Entry and Student Guide. Encyclopedia of American Literature. New York: Facts on File, 2007.
“Mulatto.” Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature by and About Women of Color, ed. Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu. Westport:Greenwood Press, 2006.
“Marilynne Robinson’s Home.” Invited review for Reformed Institute of Metropolitan Washington website, with accompanying study guide, http://www.reformedinstitute.org/documents/HomeReview.pdf, 2008.
"Makers or Bearers of Meaning? Sex and the Struggle for Self-Definition in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man." Critical Matrix, Fall/Winter 1989: 1-28.
Writing the Margins: Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and the Literary Tradition of the Ruined Woman. Harvard University Press, LeBaron Russell Briggs Prize series, 1987. 73 pp.
Mason 4-VA OER grant, May 2016-May 2017
Term Faculty Development Fund Grant (for developing the English 302 OER collection), summer 2016
Term Faculty Teaching Development Fund Grant (for incorporating Omeka into an introductory literature class), spring semester 2014
Mellon Research Fellowship, Virginia Historical Society, 1 week, 2011-2012
ENGH 101: Composition
ENGH 201: Reading & Writing About Texts
ENGH 202: Texts & Contexts: American Women's Bestsellers: Digital Humanities Perspectives
ENGH 302H: Advanced Composition (Humanities)
ENGH 302M: Advanced Composition (Multidisciplinary)
ENGH 302N: Advanced Composition (Natural Sciences & Technology)
ENGH 302S: Advanced Composition (Social Sciences)
Ph.D, M.A., English, Princeton University, 2002
A.B., English, Harvard University, 1986
Presented my approach to using Omeka-based projects in English 202 as part of roundtable, "Teaching American Women Writers with Digital Tools, Platforms, and Projects ," Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference, Philadelphia, November 2015.
“Building Community from a Contact Zone: Harriet Jacobs’ Writings from Civil War Alexandria, Virginia.” Virginia Forum, Fairfax, March 2014.
“Americans’ Debts to Each Other: Civilization and Citizenship in Harriet Jacobs’ Civil War Writings.” American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., Nov. 2013.
“Taking Inquiry-Based Learning Online: Possibilities and Challenges.” Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference, Fairfax, Sept. 2013.
“Emily Clemens Pearson.” Presenter on “What is New in the Old: Archival Discoveries” roundtable. Society for the Study of American Women Writers conference, Denver, Oct. 2012.
Review of SSAWW 2015 conference, including "Teaching American Women Writers with Digital Tools, Platforms, and Projects" roundtable: http://www.baas.ac.uk/usso/review-ssaww-2015-conference-liminal-spaces-hybrid-lives/ .
“Emily Clemens Pearson: A Granby Abolitionist.” Invited talk at Lost Acres Orchard, Granby CT (childhood home of Emily Clemens Pearson), July 2012. Covered by Granby-East Granby Patch, July 30, 2012. | <urn:uuid:bd113c48-d7ac-4f8b-9757-690228829297> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://chss.gmu.edu/people/csaunde1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128323842.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20170629015021-20170629035021-00198.warc.gz | en | 0.817595 | 1,162 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Lyme disease is a not-so-known disease that is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria that is transmitted through bites in human beings by infected black legged ticks. The symptoms of Lyme disease are known to be visible within a range of three to thirty days after the tick bites you for the first time.
There can be a wide range of symptoms. In many cases, Lyme disease leads to fatigue and flu-like symptoms. If treated early, Lyme Disease can be treated, but it is exhausting. However, if you are careful with what you eat and how many meals you take in a day, you can do wonders for your energy levels.
Foods for Energy to Fight Lyme Disease
Firstly, it is imperative that you avoid any food that facilitates the growth of the infectious bacteria (or bacteria in general) in your body. A list of such food items which you must absolutely avoid is given below.
- Diet rich in sugar
Lyme bacteria feed on sugar. If you eat food rich in sugar, you will help them multiply quickly in your body, and it’ll take longer for you to get better.
- Food rich in gluten
Food rich in gluten can also cause a problem if you already have the Lyme bacteria in your body, so it is best to have a gluten-free diet.
- Dairy products
Dairy products are rich in lactose and are hard to digest for some people. They can also be highly inflammatory, so it is best to avoid dairy products.
If you avoid these foods, Lyme bacteria will not have anything to feed on, and they won’t be able to multiply. Additionally, external drugs will kill the bacteria within your body so all the food that you eat will give the energy to your body and not the bacteria.
What CAN you eat?
Once you know what NOT to eat, we can move on to the food that would give you high levels of energy to fight the Lyme disease, and recover quickly. Below is a list of the types of food that will benefit you.
Food rich in Omega 3 fatty acids
Having salmon or oily fish that are rich in Omega 3 fatty acids can aid in regaining your energy levels immensely. However, you must go for the fresh ones that are caught in the wild and not the ones that are treated and might have pesticides, hormones, antibiotics or any other chemicals that can be harmful to your body.
Omega 3 rich foods are incredibly vital for your body and will provide tons of energy to you.
Gut flora plays a vital role in boosting your immune system. Therefore, having fermented vegetables or other traditionally made vegetables can enhance your gut flora. With this, you can ensure that your immune system is working at its best. You must note that an imbalance in the microbiome leads to several inflammatory diseases in the gut. So, including fermented vegetables in your diet can do wonders.
Include green and leafy Vegetables in your Diet
There is no doubt that green and leafy vegetables are great to include in the diet because of the high amount of antioxidants, flavonoids, and carotenoids that they have in them. Therefore, they can help immensely against any cellular damage. Some of the green and leafy vegetables that you can include are collard greens, kale, and spinach. These are great for helping against the joint pain that is a common symptom of Lyme disease.
You can make your diet interesting by cooking exciting meals including the foods mentioned above like:
- Clear soups with vegetables
- Smoked salmon with salad
- Spinach soup with some fatty fish
- Organic green salad, etc.
If you feel that your food intake and diet are not able to give proper nutrients that your body requires, you can always take some external supplements that will give your body an additional boost that is much needed if you have Lyme disease.
Lastly, trust your body! If a particular kind of recommended food item is making you nauseous or causing uneasiness, you can ditch it. Switch to other alternatives or consult a doctor. With perseverance and right balance of great food and medicinal treatment, you are sure to defeat Lyme disease.
Authors Bio – Mitravinda is a Nutritionist at DietChart with a doctoral degree in Food Science and Nutrition. She is a teacher, researcher and an author. Her passion for the subject prompted her to start writing. She blogs on various nutrition-related topics such as diet chart for weight loss, diet chart for weight loss in 7 days, how to remove dark circles in 2 days etc. Through her blogs, she wishes to help people gain a deeper understanding about the relationship between nutrition and health. | <urn:uuid:4009ae4b-6391-46a7-845d-ec1d49f02305> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://fireflydance.net/2018/08/08/eating-for-energy-when-diagnosed-with-lyme-disease/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912202704.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20190323000443-20190323022443-00288.warc.gz | en | 0.95631 | 956 | 3.25 | 3 |
MIC 101 - Basic Microbiology
||The course deals with the basic knowledge of different groups of microorganisms and also a detailed study of morphology, nutrition, growth, cultivation and preservation of bacteria. Introduction to microbiology: Scope and evolution of microbiology. Protista. Prokaryotic and eukaryotic microorganisms. Different areas of microbiology. Microorganisms other than bacteria such as yeasts, molds, rickettsiae and viruses (brief study).
[Credit Hours: 3] | <urn:uuid:7abfeb57-67f3-4bf9-9512-e0efda430571> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.northsouth.edu/php/course/course_detail.php?course_id=861&ret=bpharm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705790741/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120310-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.80304 | 103 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Osteopathic physicians practice the full range of modern medicine with a patient-centered focus on holistic treatment. More than 20 percent of medical students in the United States are training to be osteopathic physicians, and DOs consist of 7 percent of all U.S. physicians. Osteopathic physicians can choose any specialty, prescribe drugs, perform surgeries and practice medicine anywhere in the United States.
What makes an DO degree different from an MD?
Osteopathic medicine adds the benefit of hands-on diagnosis and treatment, emphasizing health promotion and disease prevention. It was developed to promote the body’s innate ability to heal itself.
DOs are similar to MDs (allopathic medicine practitioners) in that they can prescribe drugs, choose any specialty, perform surgeries and practice medicine anywhere in the U.S. Like MDs, DOs must pass a national or state medical board examination in order to obtain a license to practice medicine.
Because of their focus on the whole body, spirit and mind, the majority of osteopathic medical school graduates choose careers in primary care. | <urn:uuid:bfe1d9fc-bd58-4de6-90b1-d077bc18569f> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | http://charlotteintegrativepsychiatry.com/osteopathic-medicine/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243989819.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20210518094809-20210518124809-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.941946 | 218 | 2.90625 | 3 |
The Parents' Review
A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture
"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."
Songs and Species.
by Mary L. Armitt.
Close together, with only the width between them of a quarry road and its two walls, overhung by the boughs of the coppice trees they perch in, sing a Garden Warbler and a Blackcap Warbler. It is a rare hearing.
Now sounds the one long strophe, made up of rapid, bubbling, even notes, each light and limpid as the spray of water showered from a fall, a as fleeting; now, again, as that ceases, the opposing straining, too like for words to do more than maul the differences; a strophe, yes! of rapid rippling notes, yet shorter, more resonantly full and sharp, more flutey-tones, more loud-and-soft combined. Then again; for they sing antiphonally, clearly listening each to each, and maybe roused and irritated to response.
But this will not last. Once in a while the birds may even be seen on the same beechen bough, the Blackcap hopping inquisitively closer tot he Garden Warbler, till this flies off. But such meetings seem accidental, prolonged for a few moments only from curiosity; then a natural aversion, born perhaps of their great similarity, asserts itself, and the birds drift apart, to establish stations out of hearing the one of the other.
These two species of birds are practically the same size, the same weight, have much the same habits, take the same food, make the same kind of nests, lay the same number of eggs, sing so much the same song that it needs a practised ear to determine them. Yet they are different, with a difference that shows to the human being in song, slightly, and in colour of head, clearly. Whatever other differences there may be, they and these are sufficient to hold the two apart. An incommunicable quality lies like a gulf between them. They will not inter-breed. They are two species; aliens, foreign to each other.
Nor are these two the sole similar members of the avian world that live contiguously, yet dwell apart in a careful avoidance. There are not only numbers of other bird-species nesting around--a whole gamut of forms readily distinguishable one from another, but there are one or two others so intimately connected with these that they are often confused.
The Whitethroat, for instance, is so similar to these that it seems of old to have shared in our parts a common name with the Garden Warbler, while the scientists call the three by the same generic name. It is similar in size and colour, its nest is very similar, its voice is appreciably similar, so that the Whitethroat's best strain is confusingly like the Garden Warbler's worst. Then the Whitethroat, not avoiding, but rather courting comparison, often camps out for the summer on the very ground occupied by the Garden Warbler, and acting as his double, bold when he is shy, comes to the front when he retires. To the utter confusion of the generally obtuse observer, he often appears to dissemble, and to act the part of the Garden Warbler.
But even here, similar and close as these two forms are, there apparently exists no confusion of individuality between themselves. Alike and near, they are quite apart. Mimic and mocker as the Whitethroat occasionally is, his fundamental differences of race are maintained. There seems to be no tendency to inter-breed.
And so we might go on, running up the gamut of kinds,--the Lesser Whitethroat next, so like again; then other Warblers,--step by step, through all that class of closely-connected dun-coloured birds of migratory habit, whose identity it took years of acute observation by noted naturalists to establish, to clear up the confusion amongst them, and finally to sever them, and fix them as species.
"Every winged fowl after its kind," as the old Book hath it. A marvellous thing indeed, this kindship, in the kingdom of birds! Not seven species now, such as tided the fowls of the air over the flood-time in the ark, we are told, but seven hundred times seven and more. Nigh seven times ten of different kinds nesting in this one little parish, side by side, yet all of them preserving their boundaries of race; singing for and mating only with their own; no Buzzard coupling with Kestrel, no Crow with Rook, no Waterhen with Coot, no Throstle with Blackbird. All, even when so closely allied that the differences may baffle us, keeping strictly to their own "kinds."
Man experiences nothing comparable to it. Ancient, or savage man, indeed preserving more distinctions of race; and with tribal instincts strong, sought to live apart from a kindred though contiguous people. Laws, written and un-written, fostered division, and forbad marriage with the stranger. The closer the ties of race, the nearer the dwelling place, the more fiercely often did the instinct of division, through hatred and war, burn. But the effort after division proved useless for the race: in the genus homo, there remains but one species. Man indeed now rarely lives side by side or equality with another race than his own. If he does, there is at once a struggle for ascendancy, and when one is master of the other--supposing intelligences to be pretty equal (and if not, the inferior dies out)--intermarriage begins and distinction ends. So that he knows nothing of that art of living amongst many others formed on the same ground plan as himself, from whom, because of certain racial differences, he religiously keeps himself apart. Separatism as a species is unknown to him; the feeling exists only as a casual impulse in the individual. Try as we may, therefore, to understand that amicable aloofness among birds that holds species from species, there is yet nothing comparable to it in our range of life.
There is no doubt that birds have made room for themselves, so to speak, by the cultivation of those differences that make species. They can exist in greater numbers, because they play different parts in the great field of nature. The Dipper's fledgling, when it leaves the nest, hardly understands as yet that its food is to be sought for in the water; but having learnt this from its parents' actions, it enters at once into the peculiar domain of its species, and fears no competition, though food be scarce, from any other Ousel. The young Creeper, scrambling from its nest, hangs itself up on the bark at once, and never attempts to take food from the green leaves where so many other birds feed. Every species has its own habit, its own nook in the cupboard of mother Nature; and by preserving its individualities, it saves its own life, and that of the species.
This is easy to understand upon the broad lines of difference; we can see perfectly how it acts between, for instance, Titmice and Tree-creeper, Dipper and Warblers. It is only when the dim, blurred lines of similar habits in similar species come in, that the mystery of the matter strikes us. Six kinds of Warblers nesting on one woodland mile alone; three kinds of Terns nesting on one short stretch of sand-dune! How are the differences preserved? How did they come to exist? How came the Common and the Arctic Tern to be two species, when, as a proof of difference, the tarsus of the dead bird has to be measured?
How is the unwritten law of kind fulfilled, after--say--some new-invented method or habit puts the first sundering line between bird and bird? We know that Rooks resent a pair of their kind breaking loose from the colony, and will punish the procedure by destruction of the nest. Would something of the kind occur, if a pair of Sandwich Terns crossed to the Common Tern's colony a furlong off, and laid eggs there, or began--not only to fish side by side with the stranger (for this often happens) but to nob-nob familiarly with him? We must suppose--though it is difficult to see where toleration would end and scruple begin--there would then be war to the beak, and that that active intolerance or persecution would be set up which is no doubt the safeguard of species.
For only the utmost conservatism of habit, the most jealous regard of racial marks, could preserve these sharp lines of demarcation amidst so much similarity. In spite of a certain amount of amicable tolerance, which permits species like Green and Golden Plovers, Bullfinch and Redpole, and the different Titmice, to associate by flocks in winter, there must be rigid rules of division, never crossed. I have seen the Great Titmouse "go for" a Blue Titmouse that--accidentally, no doubt--approached too closely, in a mixed winter company, a hen of his own kind.
And species-jealousy, as well as sex-jealousy, must be enormously increased at breeding-time, when each pair falls apart to nest. It is the crucial period for race or species preservation. Each bird pairs with its kind, and seeks the most individual of its kind to pair with. All the access of energy, special to the period, goes towards differentiation. The badge of species, in feather and song, is then the most vividly defined. Colour and marking that subsided in winter, glow again into sudden brilliance; voices, lost in winter, peal forth again, in the special refrain of the tribe. Wherever its pre-eminence lies, each bird puts that point of pre-eminence prominently forth. When choosing time comes there has to be no mistake. And there can be consequently no intermarriages between species in a natural state, no tolerance of any other charms than those belonging to the one kind alone. Though nearly related species will breed in confinement, when instinct is baulked, such an anomaly in more than the exception in nature. Odd birds of either sex, failing to find a mate of their own race, drift back a thousand miles to their winter homes, unmarried. This fact, suspected before, is proved by the observations of Herr Gätke. No Willow Warbler mates with Chiff-chaff, like as they are, except in song; no Wood Warbler with Willow Warbler; no Garden Warbler with Wood Warbler. These little brown birds all know themselves and their cousin-germains to finest feature; there is no confusion with them, no breaking the law of kind, no crossing the sharp dividing line of species.
Thus while colours brighten and voices strengthen for the breeding-time, how keenly must the faculties behind those flags of species begin to work! What powers of discrimination and perception must the little birds possess! What keenness of eye and ear, particular of ear! Those two voices of Warblers, sounding now antiphonally, rich and full alike to us, are no doubt to themselves and their hens totally different. No shy Garden Warbler hen, creeping new-come about the foliage, would draw to that ambush where the Blackcap sounds out his mellifluous song. Rather would she avoid it in fear, and pass on, till the voice of her own species striking her ear, she would move into the magic circle of song, and reveal herself to the songster.
And probably the reason why all our greater songsters are dun and brown, is because the strongest force of their racial instinct is directed to the exercise of the vocal organs. All the excess of vitality, that comes to them then, is spent on the voice. Voice is to them the hall-mark of race; by it they assert themselves, by it they select their mates. The chiff-chaff's note rings as plain (even to us) as if it called "It is I, it is I" though his little body cannot be told, at a glimpse, from his cousins; and he goes on calling it all the time, for fear of mistakes. It is his great characteristic. The ayer-plumaged birds, on the other hand, such as Titmice, have indifferent voices, and--unlike the songsters that pour forth at breeding-time an almost incessant and amazing flow of melody--use their breeding note but little. They choose by sight and colour, and throw the force of their exuberant vitality into that. The Redstart, indeed, most brilliant of plumage, does sing, though his voice is not sweet; but, beautiful and most nervous, he needs a song as a signal in the ambush he seeks after migration; and when his hen has come, he gives it mostly up, and shows off his colours in antics before her. So that if a hen Redstart has two rivals to choose from, the rivalry seems (judging from observation) to lie in colour and not in song: she chooses by eye and not by ear.
Thus, these two brown Warblers, that linger together on each side of the road, singing so exquisitely in turns, belong to races that choose by ear, and not by eye. They value sound more than colour. That aesthetic sense that belongs to the period of passion, is directed to the voice instead of feather. They are musicians; they know by long ancestral practice how to attune their burning sense of species, of separation, of desire after their kind, to exquisite melody. No wonder that, though but dimly followed, that melody delights us!
|Top||Copyright © 2002-2014 AmblesideOnline. All rights reserved. Use of these resources subject to the terms of our License Agreement.||Home| | <urn:uuid:a6e1e524-f62b-49cd-a550-6345dfb7c051> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://mail.amblesideonline.org/PR/PR10p167SongsAndSpecies.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187824104.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20171020120608-20171020140608-00373.warc.gz | en | 0.96308 | 2,919 | 3.1875 | 3 |
The new distinction between social panic attacks and anxiety disorder is amongst the most misinterpreted topic in regards to the panic disorders. Many clinicians and therapists have not been sufficiently trained to see or identify panic disorders typically — in addition to obvious-slashed distinction between these two anxiety disorders is often misunderstood.
These types of very first variations is imporant while making, however it is also necessary to see some people fall-in the center of which symptomatic category system. An individual can features one another panic and anxiety attack And personal panic attacks, it is likely that one is far more prominent compared to almost every other. One another standards will likely be changed.
Complicated the picture a whole lot more would be the fact the majority of people which have any type of anxiety disorder are generally misdiagnosed as being “depressed”. This occurs because most individuals with a panic, and panic and anxiety attack and personal nervousness, is actually definitely “depressed” over their anxiety and tall disability they explanations inside their daily lifetime.
Officially, it could be significantly more specific to diagnose people with anxiety disorders because the “dysthymic”. An element of the part, yet not, would be the fact this is the stress that causes the depression (i.age., dysthymia) rather than the other way around. As the nervousness shrinks and that is beat, the latest depression goes away completely inside it.
Individuals with stress believe extremely highly that the “panic and anxiety attack” they knowledgeable means that anything is privately wrong using them.
Such as for instance, a lot of people with panic disorder worry they are having an effective stroke, that they’re about to beat control, or they are supposed in love. Others with stress accept that while they cannot hook its inhale that they’re suffocating, or that dizziness, lightheadedness, and you may “unreal” impact it sense setting he has a negative undiagnosed issues.
For example, the individual with a rigidity within the head fears he’s a mind tumor. The individual which have muscle spasms concerns these include decreasing having a great muscular state. Cardiovascular system palpitations and/or missed heartbeats “prove” that there surely is something amiss toward cardio.
People who have panic and anxiety attacks will likely be looked, rechecked, and you can many times use the health crisis room earlier actually ever will get obvious to them that they are legitimately experiencing stress, and never a physical, medical condition.
To start with, individuals with worry feel like they might be dropping control or going crazy, or that they’re with a stroke.
The fresh new central point is the fact people with panic concern that they possess an actual, medical situation. If not, what more you may give an explanation for suddenness and you will awfulness of the very first panic and anxiety attack? przykЕ‚ady profili omegle How could your brain has one thing to create toward horrible swirling attitude and you will emotions you to definitely overload the individual in this traumatic and you may mental attack?
A great many people who experience their very first anxiety attack get a hold of its way to a medical facility emergency room otherwise go right to their physician’s workplace. They think the life is at risk plus they legitimately wanted a diagnosis to explain it.
Whenever doctors report that capable discover no problem with the person clinically, it only increases the person’s stress. Whatsoever, anything must be incorrect normally how can you explain the horrifying sensations and you may ideas they experienced for the panic and anxiety attack?
Regrettably, most people are never advised that they’re experience stress, and therefore an anxiety and panic attack could be the offender.
Possibly, specially when new anxiety disorder can be found appear to along with of several diverse locations, the person feels a little more about limited about where they can go but still end up being safe. When a person feels the “defense area” was a finite area doing their residence, and additionally they concern they’ll provides anxiety down seriously to getting too far away from that it safety and you will security, they might feel agoraphobic. Which is, they are going to generally speaking stay in their homes, steering clear of the exterior world, to have concern with which have a panic attack. | <urn:uuid:d6775070-0a0c-4798-9605-df7a64b81312> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | http://flcaudubon.org/differences-between-personal-panic-attacks-and-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710764.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20221130124353-20221130154353-00563.warc.gz | en | 0.963333 | 918 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Board games are a great way to explore and reinforce reading skills. And although Scrabble and Boggle are wonderful word games for ages 8 and up, Scrabble Junior and Boggle Junior are less-than-stellar alternatives for the budding readers in our lives. Thankfully, there are plenty of alternative, lesser-known board games to keep your kids learning and having fun!
Here are five best board games that bring out the wordplay for beginning and early readers:
In What’s GNU?, players flip up letter tiles and race to create 3-letter words. This is great for kids just gaining confidence in their reading.
Toot and Otto
This is another fabulous choice for beginners. It’s a four-in-a-row game where one player tries to spell TOOT while the other tries to make the same letters spell OTTO. It’s more of a strategy game than a word game, but still good for getting kids to think about letters and how they can be arranged to form words.
Cariboo is a game that includes matching up letters and sounds. Note that it is one of those rare games for really young kids (age 3 and up) that doesn’t just involve moving a piece from start to finish over and over again. It does employ the use of question cards, but comes with two sets (beginner and advanced), so the whole family can play at their own pace!
A to Z Junior
Like Scrabble and Boggle, A to Z has a junior counterpart, which has been a big favorite in my house for several years running. Players pick categories such as ice cream flavors and try to come up with answers that begin with as many different letters as they can.
Rubberneckers Jr. is a scavenger hunt card game to be played while riding in the car. It’s solid entertainment for long car rides. And searching for words, like bump and stop on road signs, is a GREAT reading exercise. In fact, I know a lot of people who tell me that “stop” was the very first word their child learned to read.
Finally, for more advanced readers, consider Bananagrams. It’s a fast-paced challenge where two or more players arrange a great big collection of letters into a crossword. Some word game fans will recognize this as the traditional game sometimes called Speed Scrabble. Hey! This version comes packaged inside a banana! | <urn:uuid:5eac2948-c752-4fdb-acda-6dac5b405e0a> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | https://blog.earlymoments.com/let-the-games-begin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780057524.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20210924110455-20210924140455-00224.warc.gz | en | 0.960993 | 507 | 2.625 | 3 |
Meta Economic is predicted to be an economic trend in the development of Internet Web 3.0, along with large companies that are transforming maximum physical concepts into digital platforms.
1. Metaverse along with the development of Web 3.0
1.1 What is the Metaverse?
Metaverse is a virtual super world with three-dimensional space generated by merging virtual and augmented reality. The Metaverse is expected to be a location where people from all over the world may connect to exchange, work, and economic activities while having surreal 3D experiences.
Many essential elements have formed and changed everything that has propelled Metaverse to become a location to trade commodities with a diverse range of real-life economic sectors, from e-commerce to media & entertainment, education, real estate, etc.
1.2 Development of Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
People have always been connected through the Internet, and it is increasingly being developed to improve users’ interactive experiences. The Internet has progressed during the last three decades by:
- Web 1.0 – Online nescept connextion.
- Web 2.0 – Facebook connect online community.
- Web 3.0 – A metaverse platform linking the community
1.3 Outstanding features of web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0
Web 2.0 has revolutionized how, where, when, and why we utilize the Internet. As a result, the products, services, and enterprises we use, as well as our economic model, culture, and politics, have all altered – and the Web 3.0 Metaverse has the potential to do the same.
2. Meta Economy
2.1 Some Meta Economy Highlights
Web 3.0 metaverse ushers in the Meta Economy movement, which combines numerous technological strengths such as Digital Twin, Blockchain, Vr360, VR/AR, and others to continually develop goods and services, as well as digital assets that provide real-world value to users. Some of the highlights of the metaverse’s economy will be:
- Virtual Worlds: Digital spaces are designed for human activities. Simply said, when a matter is digitally converted, the surrounding region becomes digitized as a digital infrastructure.
- NFT Assets: The assets within the Meta Economy are all limited, unique, non-substitutable, and counterfeit.
- NFT exchange: a marketplace where users can trade assets or goods they’ve created.
- Digital Twin technology, Blockchain, Vr360, VA/AR, ..the main point of convergence of this technology will be to bring digital matter and space, perfecting the metaverse.
2.2. Meta Economy for Business
Users are beginning to find e-commerce more appealing as large corporations try to adapt their business strategies to the metaverse. In this Meta-Economy model, below are some of the earliest typical business practices:
- Performing Arts: CEEK is a VR/AR technology application platform for streaming events and virtual experiences. It allows singers, sports teams, and other content providers to earn money directly from their followers by selling participation tickets as NFTs.
- Fashion: Fashion behemoth H&M and Gucci open a 3D store, design runway presentations, and sell 3D fashion creations in NFT format.
- Advertising: Many companies, such as Coca-Cola and Adidas, use metaverse games là to advertise their products. Owners have since built digital billboards for a fee on advertising enterprises.
- Sales office: With the help of technology and infinite connectivity, businesses can create virtual stores in the metaverse, allowing them to grow their client databases globally.
- Other products: comparable to the rise of Web 2.0, which ushered in a slew of new business models, when the “falling point of technological convergence for digital transformation” arrives. Products, as well as all aspects of the old economy, will gradually migrate to the Metaverse…
The metaverse is a digital realm that is the next step in the internet’s evolution. This picture of the web’s future state has the ability to change social interactions and economic transactions. This “dropping point of technological convergence” ushers in a new economic trend known as Meta Economy. | <urn:uuid:5fbf368e-4988-457c-be81-2a021f2efbc1> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://blog.bizverse.world/meta-economy-economic-trends-with-web-3-0/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100523.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20231204020432-20231204050432-00552.warc.gz | en | 0.910617 | 883 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Can we conclude that thalidomide is beginning to redeem its awful reputation?
Answer to relevant QuestionsGive two examples of studies in which our primary interest is in looking at group differences. Give three examples of discrete variables and three examples of continuous variables. Make up five data points and show that S1X 1 C2 = SX 1 NC, where C is any constant (e.g., 4) and N is the number of data points. Why might it not make much sense to examine the results for heterogeneity of effects? Bisson and Andrew (2007) conducted a meta-analysis of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder ...Create a forest plot for the data in Bloch’s study. Mazzucchelli, Kane, and Rees (2010) examined studies of behavioral activation as a way to improve feelings of subjective well-being. (They defined behavioral activation ...
Post your question | <urn:uuid:a42b75dc-696f-4ee2-8e5f-daaafb1cf763> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.solutioninn.com/can-we-conclude-that-thalidomide-is-beginning-to-redeem-its | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988719453.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183839-00566-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926513 | 192 | 2.625 | 3 |
Firefly landscaping and design consultants help you make the most out of your outdoor space. Fireflies can grow up to 6 inches in diameter, sometimes 1 or 2 inches, depending on the weather and how you grow them. A variety of sizes and colors exist in the bioluminescent family, offering varying benefits. Living in the Northeastern US, I’ve seen Red Alder and Acer rubrum (Rock Maple), among many more. Most of these trees can grow up to 45 feet tall and require a generous amount of room to grow.
Firefly Photo courtesy of Shutterstock
Firefly uses were originally intended for special lighting, like ghostlight lanterns, but are now used as common lighting in landscapes. Firefly lighting can be grown as plants, lamps, and lanterns to create a custom lighting solution. Firefly experts discuss firefly growing tips and how to put them to use in your landscape.
Where Do Firefly Grow Best?
The best option for most of us would be to plant some of your own fireflies in the ground, or you can have them shipped to you! One thing you may want to think about is if you have city water running through your property, you may need to get a special fixture installed or you may not be able to use your existing water source.
A third option is to have a landscaping company plant them for you, it would be the most economical option and for the most part, can provide you with healthier growth.
Firefly for Gardens
Firefly gardening experts explain that fireflies need plenty of sun in a garden, can tolerate wet feet, and will be happy to grow along a grass or shrub border or under a canopy of some sort. Any plants that don’t like to get watered or receive consistent moisture may not like fireflies. You can always give them a mist of water in the late evening. Fireflies will be happy to grow in any place other than high heat.
Landscaping experts also have ideas about what to plant next to fireflies. They can help you plant what will work with your style of garden. If you like “easy living” fireflies, they suggest rock roses (mostly planted with Acer), wood strawberries, and Sedum (as long as it is not compacted soil). Good soil texture should also help with drainage. The landscape experts will suggest a pond or bog, as these plants will do well in these conditions.
Firefly gardening is a unique activity to add to your yard. Your landscape design, property management or landscaping company can make this a very practical addition to your property. Make your Firefly dreams come true with your expert team.
I thought of this interesting discussion with an article I read today. You can still keep your lawn that’s generally deemed to be the best thing for your home. People should be doing it, but not everyone will make the necessary changes. Having a grass lawn is not something to discount, especially if you’ve had it since birth. It can make a great yard that’s appealing to your neighbors as well. Here are some reasons why having a lawn is better for your home.
In my home, grass has always made my street look very pretty. Since it has always been there, it’s now a familiar scene that my family is accustomed to. At the same time, it keeps my street appealing and gives my home a different aura than what it would have without the lawn. Curb appeal is one of the top five reasons to have a lawn, according to this article.
It’s More Eco-Friendly
Grass is a good source of fuel that can be used to heat your home. Grass uses very little water. Since it uses very little water, it doesn’t require water-intensive plumbing. Grasses also use very little fertilizer. Additionally, grass is a great filter. Plant roots can filter out toxins and chemical residues that may have infiltrated your home over the years. Grass is able to suck up the bad stuff and remove it. This can help to keep your home free of toxins and harmful chemicals. In the article, the author wrote that only 1 in 5 urban homes have a lawn. However, many people actually have no idea what they’re doing and would benefit from having a lawn. Because the grass will provide a filter for your house and will also help to heat your home, you’ll save money on your water and energy bills.
It Increases Property Values
According to this article, putting in a lawn can increase your property value by around $6,000 to $8,000. This could pay for new shingles or a new roof, among many other things. Another reason for having a lawn is that it adds curb appeal to your home. This is something that can only be known by others. It shows you have pride in your home and the area in which it is situated.
If you’re in the market for an investment property, then a home with a lawn could be just what you need to take off.
A low-maintenance lawn doesn’t require too much maintenance. This will save you from spending money on things that may need replacing. Some of the options that can be applied to your lawn include, keeping it clean, fixing holes, and mowing it regularly.
Low-maintenance landscaping is extremely affordable. You can use this same landscaping design to save on your house.
Water usage can be reduced with a low-maintenance lawn.
Lawn is the oldest landscaping design. There is no debate. If you want to make sure your property looks good and your neighbors feel safe, then you should get a lawn.
Backyard landscaping is a good choice. It’s a low-maintenance alternative that doesn’t require too much extra work to maintain it. There are many things that a lawn requires that you should do on a yearly basis, but backyard landscaping has a lot of choices that make it easy to manage. For instance, you can grow flowers, grow vegetables, and even have a dog. One of the | <urn:uuid:7cbba437-6c2d-4d8b-83e2-546892ce8f62> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://bw.kech.live/4154-firefly-landscaping-and-design.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320304915.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20220126041016-20220126071016-00124.warc.gz | en | 0.962331 | 1,262 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Cryopreservation is a freezing method that stores spermatozoa to be used for reproduction. Although it is a widespread process, its main issue is the ice formation that occurs during said process, which ends up affecting sperm structure and quality. In order to diminish this harm, usually permeable cryoprotectants are used, which are substances that penetrate tissues and act inside cells in order to stop ice crystals from forming when temperatures go down.
Though these kinds of substances improve the process, they are far from perfect. Upon entering a cell, they damage the sperm membrane and cause permanent harm that affects fertility. Facing this issue, the Veterinary Reproduction research group from the University of Cordoba Animal Medicine and Surgery Department came up with an alternative that improves the quality of spermatozoa when they are frozen. After researching with a group of samples of horse sperm provided by the Centro Militar de Cría Caballar de Ávila (Avila's Horse Breeding Military Center), the research group opted to use a different, less invasive kind of cryoprotectants.
These kinds of impermeable cryoprotectants are substances that protect the spermatozoon but instead of acting on the inner part, they act on the external part of the cell. Specifically, the researchers used protectants made up of Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) -an antioxidant protein- and sucrose, a sugar whose main function is to increase viscosity and dehydrate the cell, which in turn decreases ice formation that happens in the freezing process.
As the lead author of the research project, César Consuegra, points out "once we determined the appropriate concentration of this cryoprotectant that had to be used, we observed that the results were similar or even better than when using glycerol, the traditional permeable cryoprotectant." In addition, the research group has determined that this new method better protects the acrosome, a small deposit located at the tip of the spermatozoon that contains certain enzymes.
The group's next challenge, according to its members, is to employ these same cryoprotectants using vitrificaiton, a freezing method in which the sample is directly put in liquid nitrogen and the drop in temperatura is much faster compared to other conventional methods. In this way, even less harm would be done to the sperm.
Consuegra, C; Crespo, F; Bottrel, M; Ortiz, I; Dorado, J; Diaz-Jimenez, M; Pereira, B; Hidalgo, M. Stallion sperm freezing with sucrose extenders: A strategy to avoid permeable cryoprotectants. ANIMAL REPRODUCTION SCIENCE. 2018 Apr;191:85-91. doi: 10.1016/j.anireprosci.2018.02.013. Epub 2018 Feb 21. | <urn:uuid:be060150-2ad1-4911-9bcc-4230ad439ee7> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-05/uoc-ans051718.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570987841291.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20191024040131-20191024063631-00297.warc.gz | en | 0.903241 | 609 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Convert 593 Centimeters to Feet
To calculate 593 Centimeters to the corresponding value in Feet, multiply the quantity in Centimeters by 0.032808398950131 (conversion factor). In this case we should multiply 593 Centimeters by 0.032808398950131 to get the equivalent result in Feet:
593 Centimeters x 0.032808398950131 = 19.455380577428 Feet
593 Centimeters is equivalent to 19.455380577428 Feet.
How to convert from Centimeters to Feet
The conversion factor from Centimeters to Feet is 0.032808398950131. To find out how many Centimeters in Feet, multiply by the conversion factor or use the Length converter above. Five hundred ninety-three Centimeters is equivalent to nineteen point four five five Feet.
Definition of Centimeter
The centimeter (symbol: cm) is a unit of length in the metric system. It is also the base unit in the centimeter-gram-second system of units. The centimeter practical unit of length for many everyday measurements. A centimeter is equal to 0.01(or 1E-2) meter.
Definition of Foot
A foot (symbol: ft) is a unit of length. It is equal to 0.3048 m, and used in the imperial system of units and United States customary units. The unit of foot derived from the human foot. It is subdivided into 12 inches.
Using the Centimeters to Feet converter you can get answers to questions like the following:
- How many Feet are in 593 Centimeters?
- 593 Centimeters is equal to how many Feet?
- How to convert 593 Centimeters to Feet?
- How many is 593 Centimeters in Feet?
- What is 593 Centimeters in Feet?
- How much is 593 Centimeters in Feet?
- How many ft are in 593 cm?
- 593 cm is equal to how many ft?
- How to convert 593 cm to ft?
- How many is 593 cm in ft?
- What is 593 cm in ft?
- How much is 593 cm in ft? | <urn:uuid:d087dbe9-8a70-4329-bd8d-ba085ce3b5f2> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://whatisconvert.com/593-centimeters-in-feet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100540.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20231205010358-20231205040358-00343.warc.gz | en | 0.864921 | 464 | 2.765625 | 3 |
April 21, 2017
by Philip Howard
The World Submarine Invitational
1996, a human-powered submarine race pitting design teams from around the world,
was held in San Diego, California, 3-12 April 1996.
Twenty-two teams were entered in
the race, including Florida Atlantic University, MIT, the University of
Massachusetts, the University of California, the U.S. Naval Academy…and Calvin
Wilkerson of Ocracoke Island!
Calvin’s vision, and his design,
were unique. A 50-year-old creative tinkerer, Calvin was ready to build a
human-powered submarine. And he wanted to promote safe sex at a time when
Americans were still skittish about having that conversation. He had friends
who had died of AIDS. “People’s lives depend on discussing condoms and using them,”
So Calvin decided to incorporate
condoms in the design of his submarine’s propulsion system. “I thought this was
as good a way as any to bring condoms into table conversation,” he said.
“People might laugh when they talk about it, but hopefully the conversation
would turn more serious.”
In the fall of 1995 Calvin
Wilkerson began construction of his submarine which he dubbed the Condomed
Nautilus. Calvin had already been accepted to compete in the World Submarine
Invitational. He had less than six months to complete his project.
The vessel was to be three feet
wide, torpedo-shaped, with a round bow (reminiscent of the bulbous bows on
sea-going vessels), and a “fish tail” stern, webbed like a “Chinese fingertrap.”
One writer who saw the vessel described it “a big, blue sea slug.” The flexible
tail was designed to allow the pilot to move the tail side-to-side with his
feet in order to steer the vessel in much the same way as a fish navigates. No
rudder was necessary.
Paint rollers were arranged
inside the perimeter of the cylindrical submarine frame, and rotated by a
pedaled bicycle mechanism. In the course of their rotation, the paint rollers
pushed water through 42 condoms. The resulting propulsion mimicked the
operation of the marine mollusk, the chambered nautilus. No pump or other
mechanical advantage was employed. The idea was that the forward motion of the
vessel would force water into the condoms which were then squeezed by the paint
rollers, creating a “peristaltic” drive for the submarine. Calvin explained it
as “1950s technology with a 1990s message.”
Calvin Wilkerson inside his Condomed Nautilus:
When completed, Calvin’s
single-person vessel, built in his back yard for about $10,000, weighed 280
pounds, was 13 feet long, 3 feet wide, and constructed of Kevlar tubes. It was
a free-flooding “wet” submarine powered
by one pilot breathing with scuba gear, lying face down. Calvin was hoping his
vessel would be capable of breaking the existing speed record (2.9 knots/hour)
for a human-powered submarine without a propeller.
Condomed Nautilus & Crew:
(l.to r.: Ray, Chris, Cathy, Clark, Calvin, Tommy, Chip)
In December, 1995, Calvin called
Tommy Burruss, a former Ocracoke resident and now a film maker in New York
City, and asked him to use his professional connections to contact the
Carter-Wallace Company (makers of Trojan condoms) and Durex (also makers of
condoms) as possible sponsors for the submarine. Both companies refused.
However, a southern California thrift store, Out of the Closet, donated free
condoms for the project.
Fascinated with Calvin’s project,
and eager to be a part of the team, Tommy moved back to Ocracoke in January,
1996. By springtime, Calvin and his volunteer crew were scrambling to complete
their vessel in time to compete in the April race in California.
At the very last opportunity,
Tommy and Calvin rented a van in Norfolk, Virginia, loaded the disassembled
Condomed Nautilus inside, and drove to California. Forty hours later they were
in Escondido. The submarine had never
The submarine was tested for the
first time, in a swimming pool in California. The condoms burst, validating the
condom companies’ reluctance about sponsoring the project. Bicycle inner tubes
were quickly substituted for condoms.
The following day the Condomed
Nautilus was trucked to the Offshore Model Basin, Escondido, San Diego County,
California, for entrance in the World Submarine Invitational '96. The indoor
freshwater model tow basin, the largest in the US, measures approximately 91 m
(300 ft) long, 15 m (50 ft) wide and 4.5 m (15 ft) deep. Sponsors of the race
wanted it to be staged in a controlled environment, encouraging the designers
to challenge the medium, not the environment; and the clock, not each other.
Contestants were divided into
three divisions with four categories in each division. The Condomed Nautilus
competed in the Open Division, one-person, non-propeller.
Because of the unconventional
construction of Calvin’s submarine, and the perception that there was little
chance of its succeeding, the vessel was registered as the last entrant. When
its time came, with Clark Eddy piloting and relying only on a “spare air” tank,
the sub moved forward very slowly (at about ¼ knot per hour), proved
unsteerable, and ran into the side of the pool, knocking off the round Plexiglas nose piece. The Condomed
Nautilus never completed the race.
Calvin was undeterred, however, and
continued to work on his vessel. The next year he attempted to enter his
submarine in the International Submarine Races at the David Taylor Model Basin in Carderock, Maryland, hosted by the
Naval Surface Warfare Center. His application was rejected. According to the
ISR director, the policy of the host was that “…there can be no display of
anything that can be considered illegal, offensive, in bad taste or in
violation of Department of Defense or Department of the Navy policy. The Center
reserves the exclusive right to determine what fits into this category.”
In spite of enthusiastic support
for his project by such notables as Dr. Martin Gorosh, clinical professor of
public health at Columbia University School of Public Health and the Center for
Population and Family Health, and retired Navy Capt. Jim Stubstadt, one of the
world’s leading authorities on human-powered underwater vehicles, the Condomed
Nautilus never participated in another race.
Today, more than twenty years
after that race in San Diego, Calvin Wilkerson’s quirky and unconventional
Condomed Nautilus is still remembered fondly on Ocracoke Island, and still has
the potential to help legitimize public talk about the use of condoms.
(Many thanks to Tommy Burruss and Cathy Scarborough for sharing their memories and photos of this historic endeavor!)
We can trace the idea of
submersibles to Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th century conceptual
drawings. But it was not until the mid-eighteenth century that the first
submarine (a vessel capable of independent underwater operation and movement)
was constructed. This was the single-person acorn-shaped military submarine, Turtle, invented by American David
Bushnell in 1775.
The design and construction of
submarines continued to improve. In 1864 the Confederate Navy built the H. L. Hunley, a human-powered military
submarine, the first to sink an enemy
vessel. By WWI, submarines were an essential component of the world’s major
In 1989 Stann Dunn, at Florida
Atlantic University, and Hap Perry, with the H. A. Perry Foundation, organized
the first human-powered submarine competition. The following three races were
held in 1991, 1993, and 1996. As of this writing at least thirteen races have
been held. The next race will be in June, 2017. History and information about these
races is available at http://internationalsubmarineraces.org/.
of teams participating in the WSI'96:
Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona, CA DaVinci, San Diego, CA Florida
Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL Florida International University, Miami, FL
Dr. Robert Iannello, Moreno Valley, CA Millersville University, Millersville,
PA MIT, Cambridge, MA (tentative) Penn State University, University Park, PA
Port Hueneme Aquatic Race Team, Pt Hueneme, CA Rose-Hulman Institute of
Technology, Terre Haute, IN Sub Diego, San Diego, CA SubSound, Silverdale, WA
Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN Texas A &M University,
College Station, TX Texas A & M University-Galveston, Galveston, TX
University of California, San Diego University of Massachusetts-Lowell
University of Washington, Seattle, WA University of Western Ontario, London,
Ontario, Canada U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD (tentative) West Virginia
University, Morgantown, WV, Calvin Wilkerson, Ocracoke, NC | <urn:uuid:7b1487f4-ea76-4a8f-bf26-dec49879027c> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/news042117.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463607862.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20170524211702-20170524231702-00488.warc.gz | en | 0.933659 | 2,084 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Translation of succulent in Spanish:
- 1 (juicy)(fruit/meat)
- The pork was deliciously succulent and tender with a great flavour being imparted from the meat's fat.
- The crispy and succulent beans fried with tasty prawn paste and sweet grated coconut may be one of the few vegetarian dishes in the restaurant.
- The food in Jerez in southern Spain is unforgettable: succulent seafood and delicious ham from black-trottered, acorn-eating pigs.
- 2 (Botany)(leaves/stems)succulent plant
- This incredible trailing groundcover has vivid fleshy leaves and succulent stems that enable it to store water and thrive in even the harshest climates.
- For example, thick, waxy, succulent leaves indicate arid environments in which the plant must conserve water.
- The plant is succulent with leaves in tight rosettes more or less four centimetres or more across in diameter.
- (Botany)Example sentences
- As a rule of thumb, it's hard to go wrong with classics like the parlour palm, dracaenas, rubber plants, aspidistra (I've always fancied a variegated one), cacti, succulents and the umbrella plant.
- If you don't live where ferns thrive, you can adapt the idea, using other low growers such as sedums, succulents, rockery plants, or well-mannered ground covers.
- In sunnier, drier areas (often in their own micro-climates just a few miles away on the leeward side of the island) they plant succulents and even cacti.
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed. | <urn:uuid:98605368-5a18-4ad9-bb0f-48bd7b24d3bf> | CC-MAIN-2016-30 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/translate/english-spanish/succulent | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-30/segments/1469257824109.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20160723071024-00157-ip-10-185-27-174.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901662 | 390 | 2.609375 | 3 |
Intro to Meiosis with a comparison to Mitosis
Amoeba Sisters Videos:
Updated 11.25.18 – click links for most updated versions:
I made these cheat sheets for my 7s to help them with our Meiosis and DNA unit. These are two of the most complex topics we cover in Life Science and it helps them synthesize all of the information into one page.
Download these free PDFs below:
DNA Cheat Sheet – 2017 – Google Docs – this covers the fundamentals of DNA at a 7th grade level
Meiosis Summary Cheat Sheet – 2017 – this covers the basics of Meiosis along with a comparison to Mitosis at each stage for a 7th grade level
It is that time of year again: time to ask everyone you know to save their plastic Easter eggs and that you will be more than happy to take them off their hands – once the kids have emptied out the goodies, of course!
Below are some links to teachers who have used this lesson in the past:
- University of Southern California (link)
- Western Kentucky University (link)
- Science Matters (link)
- Homeschool Life Journal (link)
- And a big thank you to Brent from Georgia who did a great job explaining how to set up and use this activity with your students, see his detailed video below.
- Original Lesson Plan (link)
- Student Worksheet I created for the lesson plan (pdf)
- NOTE: the colors in this activity represent Incomplete Dominance and their outcomes
- Here is a nice review of the three different types of dominance from Khan Academy (video link)
- For Dominant and Recessive Traits only, this lesson would have to be modified and use 1 whole egg for each parent, and the answers would NOT be inside the eggs:
- Blue & Yellow only (BB, Bb = blue, bb = yellow)
- Blue egg – 2 blue pieces
- Blue egg – 1 blue piece, 1 yellow piece
- Yellow egg – 2 yellow pieces
- Open eggs for genotypes, then make punnett squares
- Purple & Pink only (PP, Pp = Purple, pp = pink)
- BrainPOP Video: Heredity (free link)
- BrainPOP Video: DNA (free link)
If you have used this lesson in the past, would love to hear how it went! If you wrote about it on your blog, I would love to add your link to the site as well! | <urn:uuid:f4710bda-c31d-46d7-930f-52378a734adb> | CC-MAIN-2019-51 | https://middleschoolscience.com/tag/ls3-a/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-51/segments/1575540529516.84/warc/CC-MAIN-20191210233444-20191211021444-00165.warc.gz | en | 0.91604 | 525 | 4.03125 | 4 |
This is another building that was part of Ralph, Lord Cromwell’s great building programme in Tattershall!
The building served as a grammar school for tenants of Lord Cromwell and his successors, providing a free education in a time when few had access to it. But only to male children of local Lords!
In the 18thCentury it was converted into a maltings to process grain into malt for the brewing of beer.
But why does it have no roof? What was your guess?
In 1972 it was taken into the care of the Ministry of Public Building and Works and had its roof and structural timbers removed to have it made safe for visitors. It was then handed over to English Heritage. The decision to remove the roof and timbers is still controversial, as we now endeavour to conserve the roofs of historic ruins, as they help to keep vegetation, pest activity and the impact of the elements much more manageable. This shows how approaches to long-term and sustainable conservation work has changed over time. | <urn:uuid:503c88e7-aae0-4eaa-9e5f-cd68d4b4eeda> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://lovetattershall.deearo.co.uk/tattershall-college/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623488249738.50/warc/CC-MAIN-20210620144819-20210620174819-00608.warc.gz | en | 0.986272 | 208 | 3.125 | 3 |
Birding in the
Monongahela National Forest
Many of you are already aware that there is abundant wildlife, but the diversity of the birds is particularly intersting in this area. The Monongahela National Forest is over 909,137 acres of diverse habitat and is used by 230 species of birds.
The Monongahela, located in the Appalachian Mountains of east central West Virginia, has elevations of 1,000 to 4,861 feet. The diversity, forest stands of varous tree species and age classes and the non-forested areas such as wetlands, cliffs, grassy meadows and cascading streams, all provide places for birds to feed, rest and raise there young. This diverse landscape provides habititat for 70 species of resident birds, 89 breeding neotropical migrants and 71 non-breeding migratory bird species.
The Forest Service
encourages you to try birding in the National Forest.
Special efforts are taken to protect and provide necessary
habitats for birds - food producting trees and shrubs are
planted for feed and cover, during timber harvest/firewood
cutting, many cavity trys and snags are saved for nesting,
feeding and roosting sights. Through birding you can become
familiar with the Forest Service's role in protection and
management wich includes recreation, timber, wildlife,
water, wilderness and range resources. | <urn:uuid:593ffceb-e3d4-41b8-bd0e-57b612ca96f7> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | http://eaglesnestoutfitters.com/birding.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084889473.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20180120063253-20180120083253-00319.warc.gz | en | 0.914479 | 293 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Goji berries are a fruit that grows in Asia and can be found in most health food stores in dried, powder and chocolate-covered forms.
They are packed with beta-carotene, which promotes healthy skin. Count me in on anything that gives me glowy skin! Goji berries also contain vitamin C, so they’ll boost your immune system too!
Fun Fact: In China, goji berries are known as the fountain of youth fruit!
Goji berries are a good source of vitamins and minerals, including:
· vitamin C
· vitamin A
These berries contain all 8 essential amino acids. A single 4 ounce serving provides nearly 10 percent of your daily value for protein. For fruit, this is a surprising amount of protein.
The carbohydrates in goji berries are also complex carbs. This means your blood sugar will raise slowly, reducing your risk of a sugar crash afterwards.
Always talk to your doctor before you begin eating goji berries. Some companies may say they have less side effects than medications. But goji berries can interact with any medications you’re currently taking.
You should avoid adding goji berries to your diet if you:
· have low blood sugar
· are using blood thinners such as warfarin
· have low or high blood pressure
· are breastfeeding or pregnant (can cause miscarriage)
· are allergic to the fruit
One-fourth cup of goji berries also fulfills 340 percent of your intake for vitamin A. You may want to limit how much you eat to reduce the risk of vitamin A toxicity.
Boosted immune system and flu protection
A boosted immune system and flu protection can go hand-in-hand. The vitamins in goji berries may be able to increase and support both.
Early testing in laboratories shows that goji berries help enhance the effectiveness of flu vaccinations in aged mice. This is important because the flu vaccine doesn’t always provide adequate protection against the virus.
The study suggests that goji berries may prevent subsequent infections for older adults who’ve received a flu vaccine. But remember, goji berries aren’t a replacement protection against the flu. Be sure that you and your family members get your flu shot every year.
Potential weight loss aid
Goji berries pack healthy food energy into small servings. Their rich, sweet taste, along with their high fiber content, can help you stay on track with eating healthy. Turn to them for a light snack to prevent overindulgence at mealtime. Add them in your yogurt or salad in the same way you would use raisins.
Their nutrition value as a low-calorie, low-sugar option makes them a perfect substitute to other dried fruits with higher sugar content. A one ounce serving of goji berries has only 23 calories.
Antioxidants for eyes and skin
Studies have cited the high level of antioxidants in goji berries, especially zeaxanthin. It’s the zeaxanthin that gives goji berries, saffron, and bell peppers their bright color.
Antioxidants protect cells against breaking down when they are exposed to elements such as smoke and radiation. What’s more, foods with healthy levels of antioxidants are often high in fiber and low in unhealthy fats.
The same study also found that older adults who ate a daily dietary supplementation with goji berries for 90 days had less hypopigmentation and less drusen, or yellow deposits, in their eye
Maintain blood sugar
Sweet goji berries may your new favorite food if you have a particular sweet tooth. Goji berries can help:
· potentially lower blood sugar
· improve sugar tolerance
· alleviate insulin resistance
· improve and recover cells that help produce insulin
Talk to your doctor before you start adding goji berries to your diet, especially if you already have low blood sugar. If you do start eating them regularly, you may want to check your blood sugar more often.
Goji berries have a long history tied to sexual fertility. One study in rats showed that goji berries significantly:
· increased sperm quantity and movement
· shortened erection, capture, and ejaculation response
· improved sexual ability
· improved recovery of testosterone levels
Research suggests that goji berries may be an alternative to prescription for erectile dysfunction like Viagra.
Some brands may market goji berries as a superfood. A recent study compared the results of participants who consumed goji berry juice daily for 14 days to those who didn’t. People who drank goji berry juice reported an increase in:
· athletic performance
· quality of sleep
· ability to focus
· overall well-being
The same group also reported significantly better outcomes for issues of fatigue, stress, and digestion. But the results were also self-reported and didn’t account for other conditions.
Some health claims also state that goji berries can:
· increase life expectancy
· lower heart risks
· lower blood pressure
· reduce arthritis pain
One popular Chinese study also claims that goji berries can treat cancer tumors. Goji berries contain a chemical component called beta-sitosterol. This can help decrease the size of overgrown cells and can cause apoptosis, or “cell suicide” in tumor cells.
But according to the National Health Services (NHS) in the United Kingdom, these studies are poorly designed, or have inconclusive and insignificant results. More studies are needed to confirm the health benefits of goji berries. | <urn:uuid:63470f67-af47-4fc4-91c1-c323a8aa08c8> | CC-MAIN-2019-35 | https://www.worldboxingnews.net/2019/02/04/boxing-nutrition-goji-berries-fountain-youth-fruit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-35/segments/1566027315544.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20190820133527-20190820155527-00126.warc.gz | en | 0.91933 | 1,135 | 2.5625 | 3 |
The Coastal Weeds of Tasmania booklet contains descriptions and management recommendations for 50 environmental weeds and has a list of alternative Tasmanian native coastal plants for use in garden plantings. Includes colour photographs for each weed.
This booklet is a collaborative publication of the Australian Plant Society, Coastcare and the DPIPWE and was funded by the Natural Heritage Trust and Nokia
Environmental Weeds - Where do they come from?
Environmental Weeds can come from all over the world. They can even be Australian native plants outside their natural range. These out-of-place natives can be as devastating as foreign plants. Environmental weeds can out-compete natives and reduce biodiversity.
In the last 30 years at least 35% of all plants that have become weeds in Tasmania were deliberately introduced as garden plants!
Environmental weeds, spread by wind, birds or dumped garden waste, can take over natural coastal and bush areas. Weeds can also be spread by boots, vehicles, contaminated soil, mud, gravel, agricultural produce, stock and feed.
Coastal Weeds of Tasmania booklet (827 KB)
If you wish to download this document double click on the icon, or to save it to your computer place the cursor over the link and use your right mouse button to bring up an options box. Select the "Save target as ..." option. This will allow you to save the file direct to your computer, and you can open it to read or use later.
For a copy of this booklet contact: | <urn:uuid:d224604e-6751-403a-8d0f-e1575dbcb8b2> | CC-MAIN-2021-25 | https://dpipwe.tas.gov.au/invasive-species/weeds/weed-publications-and-resources/coastal-weeds-of-tasmania-booklet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-25/segments/1623488539764.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20210623165014-20210623195014-00528.warc.gz | en | 0.935232 | 303 | 3.375 | 3 |
16 Jan Why is wheel alignment so important?
Wheel Alignment Definition
Wheel alignment, often referred to as Tracking, is a standard part of your vehicles maintenance. Tracking consists of aligning the angle of the wheels to each cars specific setting. Having the alignment correctly set ensures the car will travel in a straight direction.
Why is wheel alignment so important
Simply, when your wheel alignment is not set correctly, your wheels are not facing the completely correct direction. This can cause uneven tyre wear, steering wheel being off centre when travelling in a straight line and most importantly the general handling or your car.
What causes your wheel alignment to alter
Wheel alignment can be altered unexpectedly due to a number of reasons. The main and most common is from heavy impact. The culprit is usually an ever increasing problem, ‘the pothole’. But other constants are speed bumps and curbs.
You will find that also suspension problems can cause tyre wear which should also be checked regularly.
Putting you wheel alignment right
This will increase the efficiency of your vehicle performance tremendously. The tyres will last longer due to travelling straight and true, reducing the tyres rolling resistance.
In turn this gives you better road handling and improves the fuel efficiency.
A1 Tyres will always check your wheel alignment FREE of charge if you expect you have a problem. If you require wheel alignment, the job only costs you £25. | <urn:uuid:cd611787-4521-4126-8f03-c10e64570978> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | http://a1tyres-mobile.co.uk/example-blog-post-1-7-2/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875144167.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20200219184416-20200219214416-00196.warc.gz | en | 0.91905 | 287 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Bed wetting or Enuresis is a psychosomatic disorder. Its an emotional disturbance causing dysfunction of organs controlled by autonomic nervous system. Many children with this disorder also have behavioural disorders. Such children are usually timid and nervous. By age 5, one in five still wets the bed and at age 6, the numbers drop to one in 10. Boys are more likely than girls to wet their beds.
Stages of Bladder Control in children
- At 6 months – the child usually wakes up before wetting.
- Between 12 and 18 months the child urinated when placed on the pot.
- After 2 years the child is capable of retaining urine even when the bladder is full.
- At 3 years – the child goes to the toilet, takes off this clothes and passes urine.
- At 5 years – the child can empty the bladder even when its not full.
It is also suspected that bed-wetting may be caused by slow development of the nerves that control the bladder. Among other less common causes is Small Bladder. Even a small bladder unable to hold the urine produced during the night can result in bed-wetting. Bed-wetting can be a symptom of a serious illness (e.g., diabetes or a urinary tract infection), especially if it starts in a child who has previously been dry through the night.
Large majority of children who wet the bed have no underlying disease. In fact, a true organic cause is identified in only about 1% of children who wet the bed.
Secondary bedwetting is bedwetting that starts again after the child has been dry at night for a significant period of time (at least six months). Secondary bedwetting can be a sign of an underlying medical or emotional problem. The child with secondary bedwetting is much more likely to have other symptoms, such as daytime wetting.
Common causes of secondary bedwetting are:
- Urinary Tract Infection
- Structural or anatomical abnormality: An abnormality in the organs, muscles, or nerves involved in urination can cause incontinence or other urinary problems that could show up as bed wetting.
- Emotional problems: A stressful home life, as in a home where the parents are in conflict, sometimes causes children to wet the bed. Major changes, such as starting school, a new baby, or moving to a new home, are other stresses that can also cause bed wetting.
- Pinworm infection: characterized by intense itching of the anal and/or genital area.
It is probably a good time to seek medical help when the child is 5-7 years of age.
Bedwetting is typically seen more as a social disturbance than a medical disease. It creates embarrassment and anxiety in the child and sometimes conflict with parents. The single most important thing parents can and should do is to be supportive and reassuring rather than blaming and punishing. Primary nocturnal enuresis has a very high rate of spontaneous resolution.
- Your patience and love will go a long way to help a child who wets the bed. Making the child feel guilty, getting angry or acting disgusted will only delay solving this problem. Try to be understanding and supportive.
- Set an alarm clock two to three hours after your child falls asleep so he or she can be awakened to go to the bathroom.
- Make sure your child urinates before getting into bed.
Desmopressin, Imipramine, Oxybutynin and Hyoscyamine
Desmopressin acetate is a synthetic form of antidiuretic hormone (ADH), a substance that occurs naturally in the body and is responsible for limiting the formation of urine.
Imipramine is a tricyclic antidepressant that has been used to treat bedwetting for about more than 30 years. How it works is not clear, but it is known to have a relaxing effect on the bladder and to decrease the depth of sleep in the last third of the night. | <urn:uuid:55333fc0-4dfd-460d-a984-1e36fe747a6a> | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | https://manbironline.com/2011/05/09/bed-wetting/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141204453.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20201130004748-20201130034748-00012.warc.gz | en | 0.944759 | 821 | 3.375 | 3 |
1. Introduction to Financial Markets
In this course you will learn the general concepts of financial markets. You will see the difference between primary and secondary markets and learn about markets for different financial products. You will also look at various economic indicators and their influence on the markets. After completing this course, you will have a much stronger background in financial markets and you will be ready to go to the next stage in the Specialization. This course is designed to help students with very little or no finance background to learn the basics of investments.
2. Portfolio and Risk Management
This course teaches you the concepts of risk and expected return. This course presents an overview of the basic concepts and techniques used to construct financial portfolios. You will learn about the investment process and get a very good understanding of economic, industry, and company analyses. We will also look at understanding and interpreting major portfolio management and risk concepts. Through this course, you will discover the basic concepts of Modern Portfolio Theory. In the second half of the course you will explore the frameworks to measure investment performance, as well as the various measures of investment performance. Finally, you will learn how to measure performance of equity, bonds and hedge funds. After completing this course, you will be able to appreciate the details that go into the creation of investment portfolios.
3. Behavioral Investing
Through this course, you will learn how individuals and firms make financial decisions, and how those decisions might deviate from those predicted by traditional finance or economic theory. We will explore the nature of these biases and their origins, using insights from psychology, neurosciences and experimental economics on how the human mind works. From these biases, you will be able to examine how the insights of behavioral finance complement the traditional finance paradigm. Finally, you will explore how these insights describe more complicated topics such as fat tail events and financial crises.
4. Investment Strategy, Philosophy, Client Management and Current Trends
Discover the basic concepts of need analysis, investment policy, asset allocation, product selection, portfolio monitoring and re-balancing. We will look at the types of institutional investors - pension funds and insurance companies. You will learn the client management life cycle and dive into portfolio management as a process. You will learn the basic concepts, principles, and the major styles of investing in alternative assets. Finally, we study the impact of digitization on investment strategies.
5. Capstone Project
In the Capstone project, you have to design an investment plan for an individual at three different stages of his life. Depending on the stage of his life, the individuals biases, risk preferences and wealth requirements change. You have to keep in mind all of these and design an appropriate investment plan for each stage of his life. You will use the concepts learned in the 4 courses to achieve this target. You should consider different assets and different markets to achieve the investors goals by building an optimal portfolio which matches his profile. In the end you should also evaluate the performance of his portfolio. | <urn:uuid:ed5b3c7a-9388-4bf1-aeda-addb60daaed2> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.isb.edu/financial-markets-and-investment-strategy-specialisation/specialisation-overview | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501172783.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104612-00190-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941481 | 602 | 2.625 | 3 |
atoms have more affinity for electrons than do other atoms,
and this affinity is based upon the size of the atom and the
distance of its valence electrons from its positvely charged
nucleus. The measure of an atom's electron affinity is called
it's electronegativity. Some atoms are highly electronegative
and steal electrons from any atom it bonds to; other atoms
donate electrons to any atom that it bonds to.
a general rule of thumb, as you go up and to the right of
the periodic table, the electronegativity of an atom increases.
Thus, as you go up and to the right on the periodic table,
you reach the bully elements such as fluorine, oxygen, and
nitrogen who like to hog electrons in a bond (fluorine, at
the top right, is the most electronegative element). As you
go down and to the left, you reach the 98-pound weakling elements
such as the metals and silicon (and carbon, to some extent)
the illustration below, carbon atoms are shown as "weaker"
than fluorine atoms at holding onto the bonding electrons
(important note: "atoms" not drawn to scale. Fluorine,
despite being heavier, is actually smaller than carbon, although
is much more of an electron pig).
hogs such as fluorine selfishly steal electron density
from less electronegative atoms like carbon, creating
a bond dipole
there is a difference in electronegativity between two bonding
atoms (a carbon bonded to fluorine for example), you get a
separation of charge, or a dipole moment. In the C-F bond
example, carbon has some of its electron density stolen from
it by the highly electronegative fluorine atom and becomes
partially positive charged, while fluorine, having stolen
the electron density, becomes partially negative charged.
You can use the dipole vector (shown below) to indicate the
direction of the dipole moment in a bond, with the head pointing
towards the direction of negative charge.
is very important to understand how electronegative atoms
attached to carbons form dipoles, as it is essential in the
understanding of the reactivity of organic molecules. It's
a good idea to look at many different bonds and predict the
dipole moment of the bond using the dipole vector. | <urn:uuid:ff79fce3-4f50-422d-86e0-d913ed32a6b0> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://chemhelper.com/molatt1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891813431.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20180221044156-20180221064156-00527.warc.gz | en | 0.90308 | 517 | 4.34375 | 4 |
Why Do We Celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25?
There are several reasons Christmas is celebrated on Dec. 25. The date is nine months after March 25, a day recognized by Christians as Annunciation. It was the day Mary was told she would was having a baby. The nine months that follow are an approximation of Jesus’ birth. Dec. 25 also coincides with pagan Winter Solstice celebrations like Saturnalia' and Dies Natalis Solis Invicti. Since they were historically celebrated around that time of year there was precedent for holiday festivities during this time of year.
1 of 3
Next: What Does the Name 'Christmas' Mean and What Is the Meaning of Christmas?
What Does the Name 'Christmas' Mean and What Is the Meaning of Christmas?
Christmas is a shortened from the words “Christ’s mass.” It’s derived from the Middle English word "Cristemasse" which has Greek, Hebrew and Latin origins. Christmas is an annual holiday that honors the birth of Jesus Christ. It is celebrated by Christians around the world and is regarded as an important religious and cultural holiday.
2 of 3
Next: How Can We Celebrate Christmas?
How Can We Celebrate Christmas?
Christmas is traditionally celebrated in many ways and celebrations vary across cultures. In the days leading up to Christmas, people usually put up special decorations including colorful lights and evergreen trees. Gifts are often placed under the tree and exchanged on Christmas day among loved ones. Large meals are also typically served as part of the celebration as well.
3 of 3
Next: Why Do We Celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25?
Orange bitters add a hint of citrus flavor and round out any cocktail. Enjoy this homemade version in your next Elder Fashion.
What to buy: We used Everclear 151 grain alcohol in these bitters. Its lack of impurities and sugar allows it to pick up the flavoring elements much faster than vodka.
Dried orange peel is the key flavor note in these bitters. It can often be found in the bulk tea or dried herb section of grocery stores.
Gentian extract is taken from the root of the gentian flower and is used to aid digestion; it packs a potent kick.
Game plan: Simply straining the alcohol through a fine-mesh strainer will leave a few cloudy particles behind (which aren’t harmful). If you want completely clear bitters, strain through a coffee filter nested in the strainer.
The bitters will last indefinitely when stored in an airtight container in a dark spot.
This recipe was featured as part of our Bringing Bitters Back project. | <urn:uuid:966e2ebc-0662-435c-857d-03a10054b77f> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | https://www.chowhound.com/recipes/orange-bitters-12038 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125946120.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20180423164921-20180423184921-00413.warc.gz | en | 0.956696 | 544 | 2.984375 | 3 |
There are just three simple things to look for!
Think you can spot someone that is being untruthful? Do shift expressions, a lack of eye contact and stumbling over words give the game away? Well, apparently not.
New research from the University of Michigan suggests that you can tell someone is lying from three simple tests, and they might not be the ones you would first think of…
The study was carried out on footage of high stake court houses, where some of the speakers were lying and some telling the truth. After analysing their behaviour, there were clear differences in expressions and behaviour.
Here is the foolproof guide to how to tell if someone is lying…
1. They retain eye contact
Contrary to popular belief, if someone makes direct eye contact they are actually more likely to be lying. Rada Mihalcea, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, said this is because “the liars are trying so very hard to convince that they are not lying, that in a rational way, they’re just using everything they can” to emphasise their trustworthiness.“the liars are trying so very hard to convince that they are not lying, that in a rational way, they’re just using everything they can” to emphasise their trustworthiness.
2. Using filler words like um and er
Liars are MUCH more likely to use fillers than those who are telling the truth. “This is something that is hard to control,” explains Mihalcea. “When you are thinking about what you are going to say, the words are rational and logical to convince other people of what you want to in dialogue. But the other sounds, you can’t control as much,” and they may inevitably slip out despite a liar’s best attempt otherwise.
3. Gesturing a lot with both hands
Liars are much more animated than truth tellers, as they have to prove their story more. Mihalcea says “might have to do with them trying to fabricate something. When there is more explanation going on, they need both hands to create more of the story. | <urn:uuid:95a26bc2-1340-4ce7-9bdd-1d39406ccacc> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://www.womanmagazine.co.uk/lifestyle/how-to-tell-if-someone-is-lying-according-to-science-40545 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618039603582.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20210422100106-20210422130106-00401.warc.gz | en | 0.977258 | 460 | 2.890625 | 3 |
U.S FLAG HISTORY
Beginnings of the American Flag
The flag of the United States of America has storied beginnings. The first official flag of what came to be our United States was the “Continental Colors” flag, which featured the stripes that are familiar to us, but had the British Union in place of the stars. The “Betsy Ross” flag is a highly debated topic among Americans and Vexillologists (those who study flags) alike, as there is circumstantial evidence that links Betsy Ross to the flag, but nothing concrete. Either way, the first “13 Star” flag with five-pointed stars in an equal circle was first hoisted in June 1777.
Progression of the American Flag
The number of American States grew, as did the number of stars of the American Flag, which led to some unique organizations of those stars. Even with the number of stars slowly growing from 13 to our present day of 50, the number of stripes has never changed.
The American Flag as a Symbol
The American Flag is easily the most recognized flag internationally, and while most people would relate the Bald Eagle as the chief symbol of the United States, the flag is more significant. The American Flag represents freedom, justice, and the struggle of the oppressed colonists who rebelled against an unjust ruling nation. The flag is indicative of the spirit that embodies all free people to have free will.
THE AMERICAN FLAG TODAY
When Alaska and Hawaii were being considered for statehood in the 1950s, more than 1,500 designs were spontaneously submitted to President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although some of them were 49-star versions, the vast majority were 50-star proposals. Of these proposals, one created by 17-year-old Robert G. Heft in 1958 as a school project received the most publicity. Heft’s flag design was chosen and adopted by presidential proclamation after Alaska and before Hawaii was admitted into the Union in 1959. Both the 49 and 50 star flags were each flown for the first time ever at Fort McHenry on the Fourth of July one year apart, 1959 and 1960 respectively.
H.R. 42 (109TH): FREEDOM TO DISPLAY THE AMERICAN FLAG ACT OF 2005
To learn more about this act, please visit https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr42/text.
For purposes of this Act–
- the term `flag of the United States’ has the meaning given the term `flag, standard, colors, or ensign’ under section 3 of title 4, United States Code;
- the terms `condominium association’ and `cooperative association’ have the meanings given such terms under section 604 of Public Law 96-399 (15 U.S.C. 3603);
- the term `residential real estate management association’ has the meaning given such term under section 528 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (26 U.S.C. 528); and
- the term `member’–
- as used with respect to a condominium association, means an owner of a condominium unit (as defined under section 604 of Public Law 96-399 (15 U.S.C. 3603)) within such association;
- as used with respect to a cooperative association, means a cooperative unit owner (as defined under section 604 of Public Law 96-399 (15 U.S.C. 3603)) within such association; and
- as used with respect to a residential real estate management association, means an owner of a residential property within a subdivision, development, or similar area subject to any policy or restriction adopted by such association.
RIGHT TO DISPLAY THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES
A condominium association, cooperative association, or residential real estate management association may not adopt or enforce any policy, or enter into any agreement, that would restrict or prevent a member of the association from displaying the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use.
Nothing in this Act shall be considered to permit any display or use that is inconsistent with–
- any provision of chapter 1 of title 4, United States Code, or any rule or custom pertaining to the proper display or use of the flag of the United States (as established pursuant to such chapter or any otherwise applicable provision of law); or
- any reasonable restriction pertaining to the time, place, or manner of displaying the flag of the United States necessary to protect a substantial interest of the condominium association, cooperative association, or residential real estate management association.
FLAG CARE TIPS
HOW TO CARE FOR A FLAG
Over time, any outdoor flag will show signs of wear and tear. With reasonable care, the effects of wind, water, sun, and dirt can be minimize to extend the life of the flag. Nylon and cotton flags are generally expected to last around 3 months (90 days). Studies have shown that the lifespan of flags flown 24 hours a day is approximately one fourth of what is expected. Some people may replace the flag as soon as it shows signs of damage, but it is possible to make unnoticeable repairs to the flag, allowing it to fly high and beautiful- as long as it looks undamaged. For beauty and longevity- we recommend keeping two flags, and rotating them throughout the year.
THE DO’S & DON’TS OF FLAG CARE:
- Do repair the flag at the first sign of fraying before further damage is done
- Do gently wash the flag in cool water with mild detergent
- Do line or flat dry thoroughly- in order to prevent mildew
- Do store the flag in a well-ventilated are
- Do iron the flag with the appropriate heat setting to remove wrinkles
- Do Not roll up, fold, store, or otherwise crease a wet flag
- Do Not expose the flag to unfavorable or inclement weather (extreme winds, heavy rain, snow)
OUTDOOR FLAG CARE
Unless properly lit, flags should only be flown during the day time- in appropriate weather. This is in accordance with USA Government. For your flagpole lighting needs, we recommend using the Flagpole Beacon©.
INDOOR FLAG CARE
Dry cleaning is recommended for Indoor Flags. In the months of June and July, some dry cleaners offer free flag cleaning services, so be sure to check your area.
PROPER FLAG DISPOSAL
Extremely torn or frayed flags should be disposed of properly- in accordance with the U.S. Flag Code. | <urn:uuid:ba9df63d-7037-4a73-881b-2d4b904e527a> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.flagco.com/flag-info/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439735989.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20200805212258-20200806002258-00157.warc.gz | en | 0.935879 | 1,387 | 3.359375 | 3 |
eso1231 — Photo Release
A Blue Whirlpool in The River
Tranquil galaxy home to violent events
1 August 2012
A new image taken with ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the galaxy NGC 1187. This impressive spiral lies about 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Eridanus (The River). NGC 1187 has hosted two supernova explosions during the last thirty years, the latest one in 2007. This picture of the galaxy is the most detailed ever taken.
The galaxy NGC 1187 is seen almost face-on, which gives us a good view of its spiral structure. About half a dozen prominent spiral arms can be seen, each containing large amounts of gas and dust. The bluish features in the spiral arms indicate the presence of young stars born out of clouds of interstellar gas.
Looking towards the central regions, we see the bulge of the galaxy glowing yellow. This part of the galaxy is mostly made up of old stars, gas and dust. In the case of NGC 1187, rather than a round bulge, there is a subtle central bar structure. Such bar features are thought to act as mechanisms that channel gas from the spiral arms to the centre, enhancing star formation there.
Around the outside of the galaxy many much fainter and more distant galaxies can also be seen. Some even shine right through the disc of NGC 1187 itself. Their mostly reddish hues contrast with the pale blue star clusters of the much closer object.
NGC 1187 looks tranquil and unchanging, but it has hosted two supernovae explosions since 1982. A supernova is a violent stellar explosion, resulting from the death of either a massive star or a white dwarf in a binary system . Supernovae are amongst the most energetic events in the Universe and are so bright that they often briefly outshine an entire galaxy before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short period a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span.
In October 1982, the first supernova seen in NGC 1187 — SN 1982R was discovered at ESO’s La Silla Observatory and more recently, in 2007, the amateur astronomer Berto Monard in South Africa spotted another supernova in this galaxy — SN 2007Y. A team of astronomers subsequently performed a detailed study and monitored SN 2007Y for about a year using many different telescopes . This new image of NGC 1187 was created from observations taken as part of this study and the supernova can be seen, long after the time of maximum brightness, near the bottom of the image.
These data were acquired using the FORS1 instrument attached to the ESO’s Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
One class of supernova explosions occur at the end of a massive star’s lifetime — stars more massive than eight solar masses — when its nuclear fuel is exhausted and the star is not longer able to counteract gravitational collapse, producing a violent explosion. Alternatively, a supernova explosion can also occur in a binary star system, in which a carbon-oxygen white dwarf is pulling matter from a higher-mass companion star. If enough matter is transferred, the star will begin to collapse, producing the supernova explosion.
The International Astronomical Union is responsible for naming supernovae after they are discovered. The name is formed by the year of discovery, followed by a one or two letter designation. The first 26 supernovae of the year get an upper case letter from A to Z. Subsequent supernovae are designated with two lower-case letters.
Further information about SN 2007Y is available in a paper by Stritzinger et al.
The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world’s most productive astronomical observatory. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world’s most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world’s largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning a 40-metre-class European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become “the world’s biggest eye on the sky”.
ESO, La Silla, Paranal, E-ELT and Survey Telescopes Public Information Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591 | <urn:uuid:12b06a0e-2bcb-463b-9c24-82a23de1afe4> | CC-MAIN-2018-09 | http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1231/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-09/segments/1518891815918.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20180224172043-20180224192043-00485.warc.gz | en | 0.906962 | 1,118 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Everyone is concerned about getting a proper breakfast, since it’s supposed to “break the fast”, or the long hours since the last consumption of food at dinner. We are so hyped about eating a “quick” and “traditional” breakfast and running out the door to work that we somehow forget to see what is in these breakfast foods, and how it may affect our health. A breakfast that is unhealthy can actually make you feel sluggish during the day, instead of giving you a head start on your activities. Aside from that, there are health issues that might come up in the long run if you continue with the habit of ingesting unhealthy foods for breakfast. Here are a dozen foods you should steer clear of in the morning.
Cereals have become a breakfast staple for kids and adults alike. A lot of people think that a bowl of sugary cereal is enough to hold them until lunch. While this may be true in large amounts, you have to consider that the usual pack of cereal is mostly a carbohydrate source, converted into sugar inside the body. This sugar gives you your much-needed energy spike, for an hour or two only, unfortunately. After this period comes the sugar crash, the time wherein you will feel lazy and wanting to consume another sugar-filled snack. This cycle goes on and on.
Bad news for bacon-lovers, processed meats for breakfast aren’t good for you. Processed meats contain nitrates, substances linked to the development of colorectal cancer. Although it is one of the few breakfast options that can supply you with a good amount of protein without the danger of added sugars, it is a costly alternative, health-wise. Opt for eggs or nuts, instead.
From the name itself, “breakfast bars” imply that they provide complete nutrition equivalent to a healthy breakfast meal. This can be true, if what you consider “a healthy breakfast meal” is a large portion of sugar. Breakfast bars have nuts and granola, so at least some form of protein and fiber, but most of them only contain minimal amounts of both (fiber is 1-3 grams per bar). What it is loaded with is added sugar, which makes you feel full for a short period of time.
A lot of people simply grab a glass of juice for breakfast and consider themselves ready to face the morning. This is not a healthy option for your energy level, your stomach, and your health. A lot of juices in the market contain only a small amount of real juice. Most of them are added with high-fructose corn syrup as well as other added sugars that increase your risk for type-II diabetes. Juice is also an acid, and will not be good for an empty stomach, increasing your risk for developing ulcers in the long run.
Donuts and Danishes
The convenience of grabbing a donut at some drive-through on the way to work is not worth the long-term consequences. These baked/fried flour-based treats are empty of true nutrition, and will lead to a hunger pang before lunch. The sweet toppings add to the temptation, yet also add to the health risk. You wouldn’t want to start the day with a very unhealthy pastry; it’s like eating candy for breakfast!
Muffins can be a very deceiving breakfast option, giving you the notion that it’s a healthy option, especially when paired with names such as “bran, all-natural”. The typical muffin size sold in the US actually exceeds the USDA portion size by 333%! That means you are consuming the worth of 3.33 regular muffins for your breakfast. Aside from that, we all know that muffins are just small cakes in disguise with added chocolate chips, dried fruit and maybe even syrup and sprinkles! When it comes to nutrition, they’re basically breakfast cakes, so you can do the math.
This quick breakfast fix can be a go-to for people who love sweets and want a quick dose of sugar overload in the morning. Flour, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and soybean oil are the ingredients for a perfect sugary cocktail, which can lead to diabetes and other health problems in the long run. All of these ingredients are also found in toaster pastries, making it a recipe for disaster early in the morning. The sugar does give you an energy boost for breakfast, but makes you hungrier during the day, making you eat more and gain weight.
This goes without saying, because burgers are a form of processed meat just fried and packaged in a bun. It might be tempting to just grab a burger from a fast food joint on your way to work, but the risk associated with breakfast burgers outweighs the benefits. The cholesterol and fat accumulation can lead to serious diseases after some time.
Having a cup of joe in the morning is one of the basic breakfast necessities of millions of people around the world. Coffee in itself is good to stimulate the brain and give you a kick when you’re still groggy, however, the coffee add-ons aren’t good for you. Most of these are sugar bombs sneaking calories into your system, and a lot of them come in packages wherein the serving size isn’t clear, and you end up putting worth three cups of add-ons to your morning brew. Syrups and creamy sweeteners are no exception to this, and is just an excuse to satisfy sugary cravings in the morning.
No matter how many kinds of foods aren’t good for breakfast, having none at all will always be more detrimental. Your brain and body requires energy after a good 8-10 hour fast, and if you deprive it of nutrition, it might cost you serious health risks in the long run. It increases the stress in your body when you attempt to work on an empty stomach, and will lead to high blood pressure, weight gain, and an accumulation of unhealthy fats, which can contribute to the risk of diseases such as stroke and coronary artery disease. | <urn:uuid:770f9a5c-bae7-4283-985c-7c431cb98755> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.health2blog.com/10-breakfast-foods-to-avoid/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170651.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00168-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94987 | 1,252 | 2.640625 | 3 |
1) Document migration corridors and affiliations to breeding and wintering areas of female lesser scaup captured during spring stop-over on Pool 19.
2) Document chronology and estimate rates of movement (km/day) and flight distances (km) of individual females and test for relationships among these flight parameters and female body mass at capture.
3) Identify specific lakes and large wetlands used by migrating females and estimate the proportion of time spent in various regions (upper-Midwest, prairie Canada) of North America during migration.
4) Band a large sample (>2000) of lesser scaup at Pool 19 to support and encourage subsequent annual operational bandings there that would provide opportunity for direct estimates of harvest rate and survival using new band analysis techniques.
We will capture lesser scaup at Pool 19 of the Mississippi River, between Hamilton and Dallas City, IL and between Keokuk and Fort Madison, IA. Pool 19 is an important middle latitude migration area for lesser scaup, where large numbers stopover prior to migrating through the upper-Midwest in spring (Thompson 1973, Havera 1999, Anteau 2006). Pool 19 has been described in detail by Thompson (1973) and Havera (1999). | <urn:uuid:9c99f7ea-9b9e-4a98-a356-d6238933b873> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://www.ducks.org/conservation/research/scaup-research-project/scaup-research-project-objectives-and-study-area | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936463458.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074103-00087-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.903676 | 254 | 3.0625 | 3 |
• affray •
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. A fray, a noisy quarrel. 2. A brawl or fight. 3. In law, the fighting of two or more persons in a public place. (A fight in which one person attack another is an assault and battery.)
Notes: Words that begin with A are always at risk of reanalysis, the misinterpretation of the initial A as the article a. Orange was originally Arabic narange but "a narange" was reanalyzed as "an orange". Apron comes from Old French naperon "small tablecloth", reanalyzed in English from "a napron" to "an apron". (An even smaller 'tablecloth', of course, is a napkin.) Affray, too, is being reanalyzed as "a fray" and is being replaced by fray. Why not keep the original?
In Play: The meaning of today's Good Word varies from that of an argument to that of a short fight. This is more likely a heated argument: "Our team lost the game when our high scorer, Stretch Hightower, got into a nasty affray with the referee and was sent to the showers." In this example, the implication is a physical altercation: "Brea Little intervened and very narrowly averted an affray when Al Pacca called Perry Yare a quiche-eating sissy."
Word History: Middle English, from Old French effrei, from esfraier "to disturb". It all started with PIE *pri- "to love", as in Russian prij-atel' "friend". In the Germanic languages, of course, the [p] became [f], so it turns up in English free and German Frieden "peace". An ancestor of German Frieden seems to have been borrowed into Gaulish Latin, perhaps *ex-fried-are "to remove from peacefulness", which then went on to become French esfraier. By the way, this same French word is the source of afraid, which originally meant "disturbed". (Today's Good Word came to us courtesy of Luciano Eduardo de Oliveira, one of the editors of the Good Word series and Dr. Goodword's books.)
Come visit our website at <http://www.alphadictionary.com> for more Good Words and other language resources! | <urn:uuid:9c9bbb22-0cd5-4d9e-bd3d-102ff737fb4f> | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | http://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/affray | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1393999679121/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305060759-00082-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949517 | 493 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Main content | back to top
Natural gas: building a cleaner energy future
Natural gas is the cleanest-burning fossil fuel. It is affordable: a gas-fired power station cost far less to build than a coal-fired plant. It is acceptable because of its environmental benefits. And it is abundant, with 250 years’ worth of natural gas resources left in the world at current rates.
Natural gas has an essential and growing role to play in building a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy future.
It burns more cleanly than any other fossil fuel, emitting 50-70% less carbon dioxide (CO2) than coal in electricity generation. A modern gas-fired power plant is also 40% more efficient than a coal-fired plant.
The economic benefits of natural gas are clear: a gas-fired power plant costs less than half what it costs to build a coal-fired plant. There is also plenty of natural gas left. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that enough natural gas exists to meet global demand for the next 250 years at today’s production rates.
Increased access to natural gas supplies – particularly from shale formations – can boost domestic energy security and help countries meet CO2-emission reduction targets faster and more affordably.
Natural gas is also the preferred fuel for combined cycle heat and power plants. In these plants the heat produced from generating electricity is used for industrial or domestic heating, raising overall efficiency.
Natural gas trapped in densely-packed shale formations, known as unconventional gas, is increasingly helping to meet the world’s growing demand for reliable energy. These resources have been baked hard by heat and pressure over millions of years. The natural gas that lies deep beneath the Karoo is this type of gas. | <urn:uuid:46ba1519-07a3-441e-9f34-94f883cbadca> | CC-MAIN-2015-27 | http://www.shell.com/zaf/aboutshell/shell-businesses/e-and-p/karoo/natural-gas.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-27/segments/1435375096738.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20150627031816-00138-ip-10-179-60-89.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933432 | 361 | 3.734375 | 4 |
Most gangs use hand signs to identify their gang and as a form of communication.
Hand signs are also used to "flash" a warning or a threat to rival gangs.
Some gangs have elaborate hand and body signals, so advanced, that they can have complete conversations without saying a word.
These signs are frequently used when they don't want others to know what they are about to do. Gang knowledge is very fluent in nature.
Keep Your Child Out Of Jail will update any new info or any changes.
dog paw mark
Gang Identifiers: Blood gang symbols include but are not limited to the following: a Five-point star (symbolizing the Bloods affiliation with People Nation), "PIRU" (L.A. street name), "DAMU" (Swahili for Blood), "CK" (Crip killer) and various numbers representing Blood street sets. The Bloods primary choice of color is red. Blood members also wear sports apparel such as Chicago Bulls, Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Forty-Niners. According to the Federal Gang Task Force in Long Island, New York, East Coast Blood identifiers may include graffiti such as "031" (I have love for you Blood). The letter "S" may be crossed out because it represents Slobs (an offensive expression for Bloods). Tattoos may include the acronym M.O.B. (Member of Blood / Money Over Bitches), a dog paw mark (represented by three dots), a bulldog, and/or the letter "B" (Blood).
Gang Identifiers: The Crips dominant color is Blue. On the West Coast, however, many of them no longer openly display their gang affiliation. The Grape Street Crips in Watts and New Jersey wear the color purple. Most Crips "represent" to the right by tilting their hats to the right side, wearing blue-colored laces on the right shoe, and rolling up the right pant's leg, etc. The Crips in Minnesota represent to the left. Crips have been known to replace the letter “B” with the letter “C” in writings. Crips’ symbols include the six-pointed star which represents Life, Loyalty, Love, Knowledge, Wisdom, and Understanding.
Learn how gangs use color of clothing, hand gestures, tattoos and graffiti.
Parents should know that just because your child wears sport apparel or dress in hip hop styles doesn't mean he or she is in a gang.
However if your child becomes fixated on one color and refuses to wear other colors this may be a warning sign.
Gang members dress for strategic reasons. Their clothing color, hats and jewelry all play a part in their identity.
Baseball caps and jackets with logos of popular professional sports teams have become a common item worn by gang members. They take pride in their gang and openly display their membership in this manner.
Gangs have taken on different types of dress and identification, such as the Los Angeles Raider's logo because of the team's reputation for toughness. This identity creates a reputation which is used to intimidate other rival gangs.
Other gangs have chosen athletic teams based on their colors or the symbols associated with the team insignia. Gang fashion and fashion itself are very fluent in nature and change often these are just some examples below
Atlanta Braves: People- initial “A” for Almighty
Boston Celtics: Spanish Cobras - Colors - Green/Black
British Knights: Crips - initials “B” & “K” for Blood Killers
Burger King: Crips - initials “B” & “K” for Blood Killers
Charlotte Hornets: 4 Corner Hustlers - initials “C” & “H”
Charlotte Hornets: Imperial Gangsters - Colors - Black/Pink
Chicago Bulls: Vice Lords, Latin Counts, Mickey Cobras - colors - Black/Red
Chicago Bulls: Black Peace Stone Nation - “Bulls” stands for “Boy You Look Like Stone”
Chicago Black Hawks: Vice Lords - Colors - Black/Red
Chicago Cubs: Spanish Cobras - initial “C”
Cincinnati Reds: 4 Corner Hustlers - put a “4″ next to the “C” and an “H” inside of the “C”
Colorado Rockies: Simon City Royals - sometimes place a white “S” in front of the “C”
Columbia Knights: Bloods - initials “C” & “K” for Crip Killer
Converse All Star shoe: People - five point star in the logo of label
Dallas Cowboys: People - five point star
Denver Broncos: Black Disciples switch “DB” for initials “BD”
Detroit Lions: Gangster Disciples - Colors - Black/Blue
Detroit Tigers: Folks - initial “D” for Disciples
Detroit Tigers: Gangster Disciples - Colors: Black/Blue
Duke: Folks - Colors - Black/Blue; “Duke” = “Disciples Utilizing Knowledge Everyday”
Georgetown: Folks - initial “G” for Gangster
Georgetown Hoyas: Gangster Disciples - Colors: Black/Blue; “Hoyas” stands for “Hoover’s On Your Ass” (Larry Hoover)
Georgia Tech: Folks - initial “G” for Gangster
Indiana University: Imperial Gangsters - initials “I” & “U” overlapping appear to make the shape of a pitchfork showing “Folks” affiliation
Kansas City Royals: Folks - Colors: Black/Blue
Kansas City Royals: Simon City Royals - “Royals”
LA Dodgers: Gangster Disciples - initial “D” for Disciples
LA Kings: Latin Kings - “Kings”
LA Kings: People - “Kings” stands for “Kill Inglewood Nasty Gangsters”
Los Angeles Raiders: Folks - “Raiders” stands for “Ruthless Ass Insane Disciples Running Shit”
Los Angeles Raiders: People - “Raiders” stands for “Raggedy Ass Iced Donuts Everywhere Running Scared”: used to “Disrespect” Folks
Louis Vitton Cap: Vice Lords Initials “LV” reversed
Miami Hurricanes: People - Color -Orange
Michigan: Initial “M” for Maniac Latin Disciples
Minnesota Twins: Initial “M” for Maniac Latin Disciples
NY Yankees: Gangster Disciples Colors - Black/Blue/White
North Carolina Tar Heels: Folks - Colors - Black/Blue
Nike: Folks - Colors - Black/Blue
Oakland A’s: Ambrose - initial “A” for Ambrose
Oakland A’s: Orchestra Albany Initials “O” & “A”
Oakland A’s: Spanish Cobras - Color - Green
Orlando Magic: Folks - “Magic” stands for “Maniacs and Gangsters in Chicago”; Colors - Black/Blue represents numerous “Folks” gangs
Philadelphia Phillies: People - initial “P” for “People”
Phoenix Suns: Black Peace Stone Nation - initials “P” & “S”
Pittsburgh Pirates: Colors - Black/Gold for Latin Kings; Bloods - Initial “P”; for Pirus (Bloods)
San Francisco Giants: Folks - switch initials for “Super Gangster Folk”
San Francisco Giants: Future Stones Initials “S” & “F” spelled backwards San Francisco (Any) Stone Freaks Initials “S” & “F”
St. Louis Cardinals: Spanish Vice Lords - red-colored hat
Starter Symbol: Folks - crack the five point star to disrespect the “People”
Starter Symbol: People - five point star
Texas Rangers: People - initial “T” looks like pitchfork pointing down
University of Illinois: Folks - initials “U” & “I” together appear to be a pitchfork pointing upUniversity of Nevada at Las Vegas: (UNLV ) -Vice Lords Colors: Red/Black; “UNLV” backwards stands for “Vice Lords Nation United”
Crip Alphabet Code and Hand Signs
Blood Alphabet Code and Hand Signs | <urn:uuid:4c1a746f-2784-448a-a400-2805f399c347> | CC-MAIN-2015-18 | http://keepyourchildoutofjail.com/Gang_Signs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-18/segments/1429246652114.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20150417045732-00135-ip-10-235-10-82.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.860665 | 1,828 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The fine, dust-sized particles of ice in the F ring and Encke Gap ringlets shine brilliantly here, with the rings positioned almost directly between Cassini and the Sun.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 2 degrees above the ringplane. At bottom, the planet's shadow casts the rings into darkness.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Oct. 24, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 298,000 kilometers (185,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 152 degrees. Image scale is 14 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. | <urn:uuid:09da6f69-2d91-4220-a14f-8866eee6a152> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | http://ciclops.org/view/3914/Bright-Dust | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320489.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20170625101427-20170625121427-00450.warc.gz | en | 0.900913 | 259 | 3.296875 | 3 |
by Patricia Robles
(Imperial, CA, USA)
My favorite person from Deaf History is William “Dummy” Hoy.
William “Dummy” Hoy lived from 1862 to 1961 (almost 100 years!). He was born hearing, but became deaf at age 3 due to meningitis. He was a great athlete and played baseball, making it all the way to the Major Leagues! During his 15 years in the Major Leagues, he broke so many baseball records. He has the longest Major League Baseball career of any Deaf person. Additionally, he is the 2nd longest-living MLB player in history.
I grew up in a sports family, meaning my dad played baseball while I was a baby and child, and my brother played baseball while I was a child and teenager. All of my children have at one point played baseball, softball, basketball, and mostly soccer. During the years that my son played baseball, I would sometimes volunteer as official scorekeeper. This meant I had to play very close attention to every single part of the game. It always fascinated me how the catchers would communicate to the pitchers with signs, since they cannot communicate verbally during play.
Little did I know that a Deaf Major League Baseball player, yes, Dummy Hoy, had a huge impact on that enormous part of baseball! He is also credited for the umpire signs used in baseball, such as “out” and “safe.” These signs are used worldwide in the major leagues, in college/school baseball, in little leagues, in softball, etc. This is an important piece of history that I did not know and when I learned about Dummy, it made me happy to know that a Deaf MLB player did all this. Just look at the impact he made in the world of sports! | <urn:uuid:1e54285e-5515-4efd-b2d0-1e2ab65597b6> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | https://www.startasl.com/dummy-is-no-dummy_html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917123318.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031203-00179-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989334 | 380 | 2.953125 | 3 |
How to Play Twelve-Bar Blues on the Guitar
After you know how to approach a dominant 7th chord in a blues fashion on the guitar, you’re ready to tackle a whole chord progression. The most common type of blues chord progression is the so-called twelve-bar blues. It’s based on what appears to be the I-IV-V chords of a key, and it’s actually one of the most popular chord progressions in all of popular music.
The twelve-bar blues chord progression has many variations. Here is one very basic example in A. This example has three parts. The first guitar is playing a typical shuffle rhythm, using 5ths and 6ths, while the second guitar is strumming some 7th and 9th chords on the upbeat. The third part is a walking bass line drawn from the dominant scale of each chord.
Blues progressions like the one shown are considered to be I-IV-V progressions. However, only one scale degree produces a dominant 7th chord, and that’s the 5th, V. So because each chord is some form of dominant 7th, each one is actually a V7 chord from a different scale. In other words, blues progressions are really V7-V7-V7, with each V7 chord representing a different parent major scale.
The chords in the diagram break down like this:
A7 is V7 from the D major scale.
D7 is V7 from the G major scale.
E7 is V7 from the A major scale.
You can see these in the bass line. The bass plays the 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and f7th on each chord. These intervals are drawn from each chord’s parent major. You can think of each scale as being Mixolydian since the 5th is the tonic. Because the 5th mode is better known as the dominant scale, the scales used over each chord are A dominant, D dominant, and E dominant.
Here’s another thing to consider: Each chord is drawn from a different parent major scale, so each chord change is technically a key change. But because the tonic chord in the whole progression is A, musicians think of everything as being in the key of A, which is why they still count the chords as I-IV-V.
Notice that the key signature is A major throughout and that each chord requires the use of accidentals, except for E7, which is drawn from the A major scale.
Here are different ways to play the twelve-bar blues progression, using the example shown. As you experiment with these options, remember to walk before you run. Start with an easy option, like sticking with one pentatonic scale over a whole progression, and gradually add on from there as you become more proficient.
How to switch dominant scales on the blues guitar
As you play over these blues changes, you can switch dominant scales as you go. You don’t have to stick to the intervals and patterns that the bass uses. Instead, feel free to play in any position on the neck and use any degrees from the scales. Here is one way to switch scales by staying near the 5th position.
Note: The patterns shown here are simply major scale patterns. Just because they are labeled as dominant scales doesn’t mean they’re new patterns. Refer to the parent major scales in parentheses if you need help identifying them. Each pattern starts on the tonic of each dominant scale, but you’re free to play any other notes that belong to the scale, including those that may occur below the tonics.
How to play minor pentatonic on the blues guitar
Knowing how to play and switch full dominant scales is important to understanding how a blues progression is put together and how you can approach such a progression as a soloist. However, blues guitarists usually opt for a different and much simpler approach. The preferred scale among blues players is the minor pentatonic, and instead of switching scales, they stick with one minor pentatonic scale over the whole progression.
How to use a major pentatonic scale on the blues guitar
Using minor over major is by far the most common choice among blues soloists, but another option is to play a major pentatonic scale over a whole blues progression. For example, you can use A major pentatonic over everything. The sound isn’t quite as bluesy, but it works.
When bluesmen use the major pentatonic, they usually mix it with the minor pentatonic, as you hear in songs like Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, Crossroads by Cream, and All Right Now by Free. Keep in mind that this blues technique is very popular and also applies to other styles of music, especially rock, pop, country, folk, and jazz.
How to change pentatonic scales on each chord
Aside from sticking with one pentatonic scale over a whole blues progression, you can also change pentatonic scales on each chord. So in you’d play A pentatonic over A7, D pentatonic over D7, and E pentatonic over E7, with the use of major or minor, or a mix thereof, being your choice.
Generally speaking, rock and blues players like to keep things simple and stick with pentatonic scales that correspond only to the tonic chord in a progression. Changing scales over each chord is far more common in country and jazz. However, a good example of a blues-based song that does some switching over chords with major and minor pentatonic scales is Keep Your Hands to Yourself by Georgia Satellites. | <urn:uuid:872ddc69-4c55-4ffd-95a8-e9b8a92d9d30> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-play-twelvebar-blues-on-the-guitar.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448399326483.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124210846-00111-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940189 | 1,187 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Synopses & Reviews
What gave Christopher Columbus the confidence in 1492 to set out across the Atlantic Ocean? What persuaded the king and queen of Spain to commission the voyage? It would be convenient to believe that Columbus and his men were uniquely courageous. A more reasonable explanation, however, is that Columbus was heir to a body of knowledge about seas and ships acquired at great cost over many centuries. Fish on Friday tells a new story of the discovery of America. In Brian Fagan's view, that discovery is the product of the long sweep of history: the spread of Christianity and the radical cultural changes it brought to Europe, the interaction of economic necessity with a changing climate, and generations of unknown fishermen who explored the North Atlantic in the centuries before Columbus. The Church's tradition of not eating meats on holy days created a vast market for fish that could not be fully satisfied by fish farms, better boats, or new preservation techniques. Then, when climate change in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries diminished fish stocks off Norway and Iceland, fishermen were forced to range ever farther to the west-eventually discovering incredibly rich shoals within sight of the Nova Scotia coast. In Ireland in 1490, Columbus could well have heard about this unknown land. The rest is history.
"It was fish, not spices, that led to the discovery of North America,' speculates anthropologist Fagan. From 1495 to 1525, he tells us, the monks at Westminster Abbey consumed almost 11,000 kilograms of fish per year. The sheer enormity of this piscine cuisine offers a snapshot of the exalted place fish held in the life of religious communities. Fagan (The Little Ice Age) regales readers with a fast-paced, edge-of the-seat tale of Christianity's role in the development of fishing and fisheries as commercial ventures. By the fourth century, fish had become the center of Christian fast days and holy feasts. Early forms of aquaculture were developed to meet the demand, but eventually, as Fagan points out, Europe's rapidly growing Catholic population and its demand for fish on Fridays and fast days led, as early as the Middle Ages, to a North Atlantic fishing industry providing herring and cod and developing salting and smoking to preserve the fish for the transatlantic trip. But the onset of the Little Ice Age forced fishermen further south, and eventually they followed cod down to their winter waters off the coast of Maine. Fagan's rich prose creates a lively social history that will captivate readers of Mark Kurlansky and Jared Diamond. B&w illus." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
From the world's leading writer on archaeology, a new theory of how climate, technology, and the rituals of the medieval Christian Church combined to bring Europeans to the New World
About the Author
Brian Fagan is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he has written many internationally acclaimed popular books about archaeology, including The Little Ice Age, Floods, Famines, and Emperors, and The Long Summer. He lives in Santa Barbara, California. | <urn:uuid:01334156-a170-420b-8283-e65c2a0e02f3> | CC-MAIN-2016-07 | http://www.powells.com/book/fish-on-friday-9780465022847 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701153585.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193913-00226-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944619 | 649 | 3.609375 | 4 |
Lothar Haselberger was often asked, “Are you crazy?” when people learned of his effort to map the known structure of Augustan Rome. “This is Rome,” they said. “With so many [structures], and you want to [map them] in a short period of time.”
After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
During the past four years, Haselberger, the Williams Associate Professor in the Art History Department, along with 11 graduate students and one undergraduate, have compiled information on structures that were known to have existed during Augustan period of Rome. For the first time in the hundreds of years of scholarship in Rome, a map of a specific time period has been constructed.
The map covers an area of approximately 18 square kilometers and, in addition to the structures, also indicates retaining walls, gardens, temples and streets. To give an impression of where the excavated structures are currently located in Rome, the Augustan map is superimposed over a light gray map of contemporary Rome. To obtain a feel for the layout of the city and its topography, Charles Williams funded a 10-day trip to Rome for Haselberger and his students, as well as aided in the costs of the maps’ production.
The project officially began in January 1999 with a seminar, “Mapping Augustan Rome,” which was geared towards publishing the results. Haselberger had already garnered interest from the publisher of the Journal of Roman Archaeology. However, it was known from the beginning that this was not going to be accomplished in the standard three months a seminar is normally allotted.
Two published dictionaries on Roman architecture, both with lengthy entries about everything that has been found in Rome during its existence, gave the first indication of the amount of information that needed to be sifted through. The problem for the group was to come up with a visualization of what was known to have existed from scholarship on this period. Collaboration with the computer lab of David G. Romano, a senior investigator of the Mediterranean section in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, was vital for collecting and processing all visual data.
“We had to apply strict and rigid methods to what is essentially a big mess,” Haselberger said. “We had to bring rhyme and reason to several hundred years’ worth of scholarship and to determine if it qualified for being visualized.”
A book, “Mapping Augustan Rome” (Portsmourth, 2002), is a companion to the map. The book contains about 400 entries that correspond to the information printed on the map.
“Research on Rome goes on,” he said. “In the field of archaeology, never is everything known, it’s always fragmentary. We tried to visualize something that brings us further in scholarship and focuses new questions and spawns new ideas for what one hopes in another enterprise.
“This is why we called the project not a map of Augustan Rome, we simply don’t know enough; it’s “Mapping Augustan Rome”—the process.”
Originally published on February 27, 2003 | <urn:uuid:32bc9884-621f-4f48-9c47-931e282d6297> | CC-MAIN-2016-07 | http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/node/1977 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-07/segments/1454701158811.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160205193918-00253-ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974356 | 666 | 3.015625 | 3 |
THE REBEL SURPRISE NEAR TAMAI
by William McGonagall
TWAS on the 22nd of March, in the year 1885,
That the Arabs rushed like a mountain torrent in full drive,
And quickly attacked General McNeill's transport-zereba,
But in a short time they were forced to withdraw.
And in the suddenness of surprise the men were carried away,
Also camels, mules, and horses were thrown into wild disarray,
By thousands of the Arabs that in ambush lay,
But our brave British heroes held the enemy at bay.
There was a multitude of camels heaped upon one another,
Kicking and screaming, while many of them did smother,
Owing to the heavy pressure of the entangled mass,
That were tramping o'er one another as they lay on the grass.
The scene was indescribable, and sickening to behold,
To see the mass of innocent brutes lying stiff and cold,
And the moaning cries of them were pitiful to hear,
Likewise the cries of the dying men that lay wounded in the rear.
Then General McNeill ordered his men to form in solid square,
Whilst deafening shouts and shrieks of animals did tend the air,
And the rush of stampeded camels made a fearful din,
While the Arabs they did yell, and fiendishly did grin.
Then the gallant Marines formed the east side of the square,
While clouds of dust and smoke did darken the air,
And on the west side the Berkshire were engaged in the fight,
Firing steadily and cooly with all their might.
Still camp followers were carried along by the huge animal mass,
And along the face of the zereba 'twas difficult to pass,
Because the mass of brutes swept on in wild dismay,
Which caused the troops to be thrown into disorderly array.
Then Indians and Bluejackets were all mixed together back to back,
And for half-an-hour the fire and din didn't slack;
And none but steady troops could have stood that fearful shock,
Because against overwhelming numbers they stood as firm as a rock.
The Arabs crept among the legs of the animals without any dread,
But by the British bullets many were killed dead,
And left dead on the field and weltering in their gore,
Whilst the dying moans of the camels made a hideous roar.
Then General McNeill to his men did say,
Forward! my lads, and keep them at bay!
Come, make ready, my men, and stand to your arms,
And don't be afraid of war's alarms
So forward! and charge them in front and rear,
And remember you are fighting for your Queen and country dear,
Therefore, charge them with your bayonets, left and right,
And we'll soon put this rebel horde to flight.
Then forward at the bayonet-charge they did rush,
And the rebel horde they soon did crush;
And by the charge of the bayonet they kept them at bay,
And in confusion and terror they all fled away.
The Marines held their own while engaged hand-to-hand,
And the courage they displayed was really very grand;
But it would be unfair to praise one corps more than another,
Because each man fought as if he'd been avenging the death of a brother.
The Berkshire men and the Naval Brigade fought with might and main,
And, thank God! the British have defeated the Arabs again,
And have added fresh laurels to their name,
Which will be enrolled in the book of fame.
'Tis lamentable to think of the horrors of war,
That men must leave their homes and go abroad afar,
To fight for their Queen and country in a foreign land,
Beneath the whirlwind's drifting scorching sand.
But whatsoever God wills must come to pass,
The fall of a sparrow, or a tiny blade of grass;
Also, man must fall at home by His command,
Just equally the same as in a foreign land.
More gems are available here at McGonagall Online | <urn:uuid:fff18be5-396f-49ff-b11b-ac47bc10b204> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://thepoormouth.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-gem.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948521188.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20171213030444-20171213050444-00542.warc.gz | en | 0.964528 | 886 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
... forms the interest on his capital. The worker is the subjective manifestation of the fact that capital is man wholly lost to himself, just as capital is the objective manifestation of the fact that labour is man lost to himself. But the worker has the misfortune to be a living capital, and therefore an indigent capital, one which loses its interest, and hence its livelihood, every moment it is not working. The value of the worker as capital rises according to demand and supply, and physically too his existence, his life, was and is looked upon as a supply of a commodity like any other. The worker produces capital, capital produces him – hence he produces himself, and man as worker, as a commodity, is the product of this entire cycle. To the man who is nothing more than a worker – and to him as a worker – his human qualities only exist insofar as they exist for capital alien to him. Because man and capital are alien, foreign to each other, however, and thus stand in an indifferent, external and accidental relationship to each other, it is inevitable that this foreignness should also appear as something real. As soon, therefore, as it occurs to capital (whether from necessity or caprice) no longer to be for the worker, he himself is no longer for himself: he has no work, hence no wages, and since he has no existence as a human being but only as a worker, he can go and bury himself, starve to death, etc. The worker exists as a worker only when he exists for himself as capital; and he exists as capital only when some capital exists for him. The existence of capital is his existence, his life; as it determines the tenor of his life in a manner indifferent to him.
Political economy, therefore, does not recognise the unemployed worker, the workingman, insofar as he happens to be outside this labour relationship. The rascal, swindler, beggar, the unemployed, the starving, wretched and criminal workingman – these are figures who do not exist for political economy but only for other eyes, those of the doctor, the judge, the grave-digger, and bum-bailiff, etc.; such figures are spectres outside its domain. For it, therefore, the worker's needs are but the one need – to maintain him whilst he is working and insofar as may be necessary to prevent the race of labourers from [dying] out. The wages of labour have thus exactly the same significance as the maintenance and servicing of any other productive instrument, or as the consumption of capital in general, required for its reproduction with interest, like the oil which is applied to wheels to keep them turning. Wages, therefore, belong to capital's and the capitalist's necessary costs, and must not exceed the bounds of this necessity. It was therefore quite logical for the English factory owners, before the Amendment Bill of 1834 to deduct from the wages of the worker the public charity which he was receiving out of the Poor Rate and to consider this to be an integral part of wages.
Production does not simply produce man as a commodity, the human commodity, man in the role of commodity; it produces him in keeping with this role as a mentally and physically dehumanised being. – Immorality, deformity, and dulling of the workers and the capitalists. – Its product is the self-conscious and self-acting commodity ... the human commodity.... Great advance of Ricardo, Mill, etc., on Smith and Say, to declare the existence of the human being – the greater or lesser human productivity of the commodity – to be indifferent and even harmful. Not how many workers are maintained by a given capital, but rather how much interest it brings in, the sum-total of the annual savings, is said to be the true purpose of production.
It was likewise a great and consistent advance of modern English political economy, that, whilst elevating labour to the position of its sole principle, it should at the same time expound with complete clarity the inverse relation between wages and interest on capital, and the fact that the capitalist could normally only gain by pressing down wages, and vice versa. Not the defrauding of the consumer, but the capitalist and the worker taking advantage of each other, is shown to be the normal relationship.
The relations of private property contain latent within them the relation of private property as labour, the relation of private property as capital, and the mutual relation of these two to one another. There is the production of human activity as labour – that is, as an activity quite alien to itself, to man and to nature, and therefore to consciousness and the expression of life – the abstract existence of man as a mere workman who may therefore daily fall from his filled void into the absolute void – into his social, and therefore actual, non-existence. On the other hand, there is the production of the object of human activity as capital – in which all the natural and social characteristic of the object is extinguished; in which private property has lost its natural and social quality (and therefore every political and social illusion, and is not associated with any apparently human relations); in which the selfsame capital remains the same in the most diverse natural and social manifestations, totally indifferent to its real content. This contradiction, driven to the limit, is of necessity the limit, the culmination, and the downfall of the whole private-property relationship.
It is therefore another great achievement of modern English political economy to have declared rent of land to be the difference in the interest yielded by the worst and the best land under cultivation; to have [exposed] the landowner's romantic illusions – his alleged social importance and the identity of his interest with the interest of society, a view still maintained by Adam Smith after the Physiocrats; and to [have] anticipated and prepared the movement of the real world which will transform the landowner into an ordinary, prosaic capitalist, and thus simplify and sharpen the contradiction [between capital and labour] and. hasten its resolution. Land as land, and rent as rent, have lost their distinction of rank and become insignificant capital and interest – or rather, capital and interest that signify only money.
The distinction between capital and land, between profit and rent, and between both and wages, and industry, and agriculture, and immovable and movable private property – this distinction is not rooted in the nature of things, but is a historical distinction, a fixed historical moment in the formation and development of the contradiction between capital and labour. In industry, etc., as opposed to immovable landed property, is only expressed the way in which [industry] came into being and the contradiction to agriculture in which industry developed. This distinction only continues to exist as a special sort of work – as an essential, important and life-embracing distinction – so long as industry (town life) develops over and against landed property (aristocratic feudal life) and itself continues to bear the feudal character of its opposite in the form of monopoly, craft, guild, corporation, etc., within which labour still has a seemingly social significance, still the significance of the real community, and has not yet reached the stage of indifference to its content, of complete being-for-self, i. e., of abstraction from all other being, and hence has not yet become liberated capital.
But liberated industry, industry constituted for itself as such, and liberated capital, are the necessary development of labour. The power of industry over its opposite is at once revealed in the emergence of agriculture as a real industry, while previously it left most of the work to the soil and to the slave of the soil, through whom the land cultivated itself. With the transformation of the slave into a free worker – i.e., into a hireling – the landlord himself is transformed into a captain of industry, into a capitalist – a transformation which takes place at first through the intermediacy of the tenant farmer. The tenant farmer, however, is the landowner's representative – the landowner's revealed secret: it is only through him that the landowner has his economic existence – his existence as a private proprietor – for the rent of his land only exists due to the competition between the farmers.
Thus, in the person of the tenant farmer the landlord has already become in essence a common capitalist. And this must come to pass, too, in actual fact: the capitalist engaged in agriculture – the tenant – must become a landlord, or vice versa. The tenant's industrial hucksterism is the landowner's industrial hucksterism, for the being of the former postulates the being of the latter.
But mindful of their contrasting origin, of their line of descent, the landowner knows the capitalist as his insolent, liberated, enriched slave of yesterday and sees himself as a capitalist who is threatened by him. The capitalist knows the landowner as the idle, cruel, egotistical master of yesterday; he knows that he injures him as a capitalist, but that it is to industry that he owes all his present social significance, his possessions and his pleasures; he sees in him a contradiction to free industry and to free capital – to capital independent of every natural limitation. This contradiction is extremely bitter, and each side tells the truth about the other. One need only read the attacks of immovable on movable property and vice versa to obtain a clear picture of their respective worthlessness. The landowner lays stress on the noble lineage of his property, on feudal souvenirs or reminiscences, the poetry of recollection, on his romantic disposition, on his political importance, etc.; and when he talks economics, it is only agriculture that he holds to be productive. At the same time he depicts his adversary as a sly, hawking, carping, deceitful, greedy, mercenary, rebellious, heartless and spiritless person who is estranged from the community and freely trades it away, who breeds, nourishes and cherishes competition, and with it pauperism, crime, and the dissolution of all social bonds, an extorting, pimping, servile, smooth, flattering, fleecing, dried-up rogue without honour, principles, poetry, substance, or anything else. (Amongst others see the Physiocrat Bergasse, whom Camille Desmoulins flays in his journal, Révolutions de France et de Brabant ; see von Vincke, Lancizolle, Haller, Leo, Kosegarten and also Sismondi.)
[See on the other hand the garrulous, old-Hegelian theologian Funke who tells, after Herr Leo, with tears in his eyes how a slave had refused, when serfdom was abolished, to cease being the property of the gentry . See also the patriotic visions of Justus Möser, which distinguish themselves by the fact that they never for a moment ... abandon the respectable, petty-bourgeois "home-baked", ordinary, narrow horizon of the philistine, and which nevertheless remain pure fancy. This contradiction has given them such an appeal to the German heart.- Note by Marx.]
Movable property, for its part, points to the miracles of industry and progress. It is the child of modern times, whose legitimate, native-born son it is. It pities its adversary as a simpleton, unenlightened about his own nature (and in this it is completely right), who wants to replace moral capital and free labour by brute, immoral violence and serfdom. It depicts him as a Don Quixote, who under the guise of bluntness, respectability, the general interest, and stability, conceals incapacity for progress, greedy self-indulgence, selfishness, sectional interest, and evil intent. It declares him an artful monopolist; it pours cold water on his reminiscences, his poetry, and his romanticism by a historical and sarcastic enumeration of the baseness, cruelty, degradation, prostitution, infamy, anarchy and rebellion, of which romantic castles were the workshops.
It claims to have obtained political freedom for everybody; to have loosed the chains which fettered civil society; to have linked together different worlds; to have created trade promoting friendship between the peoples; to have created pure morality and a pleasant culture; to have given the people civilised needs in place of their crude wants, and the means of satisfying them. Meanwhile, it claims, the landowner – this idle, parasitic grain-profiteer – raises the price of the people's basic necessities and so forces the capitalist to raise wages without being able to increase productivity, thus impeding [the growth of] the nation's annual income, the accumulation of capital, and therefore the possibility of providing work for the people and wealth for the country, eventually cancelling it, thus producing a general decline – whilst he parasitically exploits every advantage of modern civilisation without doing the least thing for it, and without even abating in the slightest his feudal prejudices. Finally, let him – for whom the cultivation of the land and the land itself exist only as a source of money, which comes to him as a present - let him just take a look at his tenant farmer and say whether he himself is not a downright, fantastic, sly scoundrel who in his heart and in actual fact has for a long time belonged to free industry and to lovely trade, however much he may protest and prattle about historical memories and ethical or political goals. Everything which he can really advance to justify himself is true only of the cultivator of the land (the capitalist and the labourers), of whom the landowner is rather the enemy. Thus he gives evidence against himself. [Movable property claims that] without capital landed property is dead, worthless matter; that its civilised victory has discovered and made human labour the source of wealth in place of the dead thing. (See Paul Louis Courier, Saint-Simon, Ganilh, Ricardo, Mill, McCulloch and Destutt de Tracy and Michel Chevalier.)
The real course of development (to be inserted at this point) results in the necessary victory of the capitalist over the landowner – that is to say, of developed over undeveloped, immature private property – just as in general, movement must triumph over immobility; open, self-conscious baseness over hidden, unconscious baseness; cupidity over self-indulgence; the avowedly restless, adroit self-interest of enlightenment over the parochial, worldly-wise, respectable, idle and fantastic self-interest of superstition; and money over the other forms of private property.
Those states which sense something of the danger attaching to fully developed free industry, to fully developed pure morality and to fully developed philanthropic trade, try, but in vain, to hold in check the capitalisation of landed property.
Landed property in its distinction from capital is private property – capital – still afflicted with local and political prejudices; it is capital which has not yet extricated itself from its entanglement with the world and found the form proper to itself – capital not yet fully developed. It must achieve its abstract, that is, its pure, expression in the course of its cosmogony.
The character of private property is expressed by labour, capital, and the relations between these two. The movement through which these constituents have to pass is:
First. Unmediated or mediated unity of the two.
Capital and labour are at first still united. Then, though separated and estranged, they reciprocally develop and promote each other as positive conditions.
[Second.] The two in opposition, mutually excluding each other. The worker knows the capitalist as his own non-existence, and vice versa: each tries to rob the other of his existence.
[Third.] Opposition of each to itself. Capital = stored-up labour = labour. As such it splits into capital itself and its interest, and this latter again into interest and profit. The capitalist is completely sacrificed. He falls into the working class, whilst the worker (but only exceptionally) becomes a capitalist. Labour as a moment of capital – its costs. Thus the wages of labour - a sacrifice of capital.
Splitting of labour into labour itself and the wages of labour. The worker himself a capital, a commodity.
Clash of mutual contradictions.
Preface and Table of Contents | Third Manuscript | <urn:uuid:c732f4d9-b80c-4ab4-8810-894f39263983> | CC-MAIN-2016-40 | https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/second.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738661781.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173741-00291-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965012 | 3,373 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Custom report writing help
At bestcustomwritings.com we have a custom report writing department that specializes in writing such assignments. A good report requires a lot of knowledge and preparation as well as personal investigation and documented details such as experimental data and statistical data. They are different categories and types that you are required to accomplish during your education and they differ by writing manner or by disciplines.
Examples of reports
Business reports- They are used in business environment to describe the company, market situation or present ideas. They can be either formal or informal. Informal reports are usually short and are written as memos or letter while formal reports requires detailed information.
Formal reports- They collect and interpret then report the information to the audience. They are major accounts of major accounts. They require a lot of research, analytical research and are very complex. They mainly start with presenting information, analyzing and making conclusions then recommendations on the basis of collected and presented information.
Field reports- These reports mainly studies the field. They are a final product and presentation of a field study that has been carried in natural settings.
Book reports- Dedicate majority of their space to plot information summary of a book. They end with brief and extensive personal statements.
Technical reports- These reports are technical in nature and are required by specific disciplines. They focus on specific audience, have a constant format and reflect on the needs and principles of discipline. | <urn:uuid:115c8473-bc41-4f50-ba00-5d2b493324a5> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://bestcustomwritings.com/report-writing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267159193.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20180923095108-20180923115508-00444.warc.gz | en | 0.955412 | 285 | 2.703125 | 3 |
A Culture of Bias
Today, we have a culture of bias, one which celebrates our irrationalities rather than seeking to minimize them. This culture infects our politics, relationships, and economy—all negatively—not just in the United States but around the world.1 Most prominently, the widespread and unchecked influence of confirmation bias is worsening divisions in racial and gender prejudice, class tensions, and politics.2 I’m in plentiful company when I say irrationality in today’s discourse, never mind a dearth of empathy, is threatening to kill us.
Alas, this essay won’t do much to fix these global woes. My sights aren’t so high.
Instead, I intend to focus here on a specific subset of consumer bias, though one that speaks volumes to our larger social ills: biases in what we read, as individuals, and how we think about what we read. What we read, as a society, has a strong bearing on the health of our society. How much we read, similarly, hints at our society’s well-being, stability, and growth. Viewed through a contemporary capitalist lens,3 what we read, how we read, and how much we read reflect the ethical and intellectual makeup of our consumer choices, especially in a society which so clearly exchanges time for money. Every hour spent reading caries with it, after all, an opportunity cost.4 In this narrow sense, then, to read is to consume, but what are we consuming and how does it affect us? Are today’s consumers rational readers or, if you will, are readers rational consumers?
The (Ir)Rational Reader
Decades of business research contradict the narrative of the “rational consumer.” Biases lead consumers to be both irrationally critical of goods and services which may be helpful to them, as well as accepting of what may harm them. Contrary to the message of many first-year business or economics courses, consumers are neither particularly well informed nor systematic in their decisions.5 They are driven mostly by the paradoxes of choice, by availability bias, and by social pressures—not by reason.6 These emotionally embedded forces lead most people to predictably rote behavior, patterns driven not by analysis but by their subconscious. In fact, absent a systematic approach to decision making, we now know that our “preferences are malleable and context-dependent, that memory and perceptions are often biased and statistically flawed, and decision tasks are often neglected or misunderstood.”7
In other words, most people make most of their decisions, most of the time, on subconscious autopilot. They are not, in the strictest sense, making any decisions whatsoever.8 Worse, the literature tells us, they then post-rationalize these irrationalities, convincing themselves that their choices were in fact in their own best interest, when in fact they were anything but.9
Our biases, the literature tells us, are extremely difficult to counteract. They underpin our cognitive wiring, leftovers from survival strategies critical to our ancestors. A tendency toward availability bias, for example, made sense when our entire species lived in small tribes, with limited social choices and even more limited environmental opportunities; negativity bias made sense when, every day, our worst-case scenarios almost invariably ended in death.
As individuals, we are wired for irrational biases. It takes systematic, analytical, logical efforts to triumph against them.
Unfortunately, most of us have no idea our biases bind us so completely, or that there’s any fight against them to be won. We live too much in a culture which revels in them.
What, then, is this culture of bias? In a culture of bias, individual feelings, preferences, loyalties, and habits are more celebrated, more prevalent, and carry more weight than observable facts, empiricism, logic, and analysis. This system minimizes, ignores, or is largely ignorant of the effect of biases on all of us. Emotivism may be long out of vogue as a formal system of moral thinking,10 but in practice it’s alive and well in today’s globalist super-society, and Americans aren’t the only ones living by their impulses.
That this doesn’t fill the masses with horror, that we’re not collectively aghast and prepared to do anything to make more capable decisions, is a proof of the culture’s existence.11 Instead of seeking reason, in our culture we tend to accept our own discernment prima facie, untested and unchecked. Many of us do not learn, in our lifetimes, the basics of logic or rhetoric, either to utilize them or to fight their misuse; insidiously, our society accepts and even celebrates irrationality. That logical biases exist, and what they mean for our day-to-day behavior, seems to be information utilized mostly by marketing gurus and advertisers, who take advantage of our ignorance to twist our perceptions—a variety of Roland Barthes’s mythologies,12 the worst kind, what Harry Frankfurt labelled bullshit.13 We are a society aswim in it.
We can rewire our biases, to some extent, but they will remain with us throughout our lives. What are we to do? We can question them, check them against formal analyses, and point them to more factual and helpful ends.14
Unfortunately, this requires real work.
The Importance of Reading
People often read to escape work, the doldrums, or other unpleasantnesses. We use fiction especially to live through another’s eyes, to let someone else’s troubles eclipse our own. Excepting the books assigned to us in our education, most of what we read, we read by choice. If I read, I may choose between non-fiction and fiction. In fiction, I can choose between “literature” and “genre”15, and in “genre” I might choose between science fiction, romance, mystery, adventure, and so on. Within each “genre,” of course, I can choose between authors.
For example, I may choose Anne Rice or Stephenie Meyer over E.L. James, whose “genres” do not quite align but who share some qualities in common. (More on these three in a bit.)16 Since we choose what we read, it stands to follow that we make irrational choices in what we read as much as we make irrational choices for anything else. For those who say that what we read, or whether we read, are unimportant or are entirely arbitrary choices and have no impact beyond individual preference, consider: reading fiction strongly impacts our personality;17 television or film do much less to develop critical thinking, vocabulary, and cognition than does the written word, so reading A Song of Ice and Fire really is much better for you than watching A Game of Thrones;18 and without reading—especially deep, difficult reading—humans typically do not learn disembedded thinking, a crucial skill in any advanced society.19 Literally, a democracy or republic which does not read will, almost by definition, wither; its members will lack both the dialectical abilities to debate one another and to resolve their differences, as well as the empathy to desire what’s best for their fellow citizens.20
In other words, reading (even reading fiction) is in itself an exceptionally rational act, one which can deliver extraordinary benefits. Reading contributes to an individual’s development, and it plays an incalculable, central role in the functioning of a healthy democracy or republic. It follows that what we read and how we read matters.
Bias in reading exists aside from mere preference. We all have preferences; for example, I prefer to read science fiction over romance, and when we say that someone has a preference, we generally accept that such preference is personal and unforced. Sometimes we even mean that it is informed, though often the idea of an informed preference is troubled from the start. Thus, for now, let us leave questions of reader preference aside. What matters here is that bias exists and that it is a separate phenomenon from preference.
In the more academic sense, bias “is defined as any process at any stage of inference that tends to produce results or conclusions that differ systematically from the truth.”21 Though similar, this definition differs from my dictionary’s: “An inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair.”
Now, let’s apply something like the spirit of these definitions to the concepts of readers and books. We could, I suppose, apply it to drivers and cars, chefs and foodies, or climbers and ropes, but I’m interested in bias as it applies to books because I’m a writer, and because I believe that a greater focus on bias by a greater number of writers and readers could shift the book industry, and our society, for the better. Read better words, make a better world.
Preference, Reader Bias, and Analysis: Non-Fiction
While I want to focus most of this essay on fiction, we should obviously analyze non-fiction, as well, to weigh its value for us and for others. If I try to read Ken Ham’s Demolishing Supposed Bible Contradictions, for example, I can do so as generously as possible and yet I can scarcely move past Jason Lisle’s introduction. Notably, Lisle establishes the criteria by which Ham later categorizes the various “non-contradictions” of the Bible; Ham’s own structure depends on Lisle’s. Yet by page 19, Lisle’s propositions show serious fractures, and by page 20 I can reject the entirety of the text because Lisle’s argument dismisses millennia-old foundations of logic, causality, and reason. For me to accept either Lisle or Ham, I would have to jettison formal reason, Aristotelean logic, and centuries of observation. Furthermore, I would need to adopt a worldview which permits, and even requires, capricious intercessions by an arbitrary deity.22 Additionally, I would need to ignore arguments presented by more respected, capable, and careful theologians,23 ones whose rigor I might respect even while remaining an agnostic and a sceptic. I would, lastly, need to obliterate any respect I had for any kind of humanism; indeed, I would have to return to a mindset more appropriate to 617 CE than 2017 CE, and I would have to forget the histories and definitions of both secularism and science.24 I can only conclude that neither Dr. Lisle nor Mr. Ham have any intention of convincing logicians, or anyone capable of a modicum of critical reflection—that cannot be their goal—and that their texts exist only to reinforce the gullibility of the uncritical and the uneducated, to lend their followers a flickering sense of empty superiority. I can’t recommend anything by Ham, but may I suggest The Blind Watchmaker25 or Cosmos?26
Before shifting to discussions of fiction, it’s also worth noting the concept of preference in non-fiction reading. One may prefer to read no non-fiction—most illogical—but assuming that one reads non-fiction, what about preferences? Are religious apologetics or treatises on astrology on equal footing with books about economics or neurobiology by peer-reviewed experts? Are tomes about flat-Earth theory, billed as non-fiction, on par with readings on the latest findings in extraterrestrial geology? The answer to these last two questions is a resounding no.27 But what about preferring astronomy texts to applied biology? Or any two texts from physics or chemistry, from well-argued historians, or from the humanities?
Read as you choose.
We can’t read everything, and certainly not in a timely fashion. Available knowledge about real phenomena, with real bearing on our lives, has outstripped any individual’s ability to learn; we passed this threshold long ago. What are we to do? Read critically and learn deeply, for understanding the rigors of any one field or discipline is likely to give us an appreciation for and something of the ability to judge quality and capability in other fields and disciplines, to recognize when others are also rigorous in their thinking, reading, and studies; this isn’t foolproof, but it’s a start. We can develop a network of writers, thinkers, speakers, researchers, debaters, and others who we know to be as exacting in their approaches as necessary, who understand the sciences and other secular institutions such that we can trust them. We must, in the end, join a web of experts, relying on each other in a spirit of situational leadership.
Preference, Reader Bias, and Analysis: Fiction
Now, to the meat of it: Reading fiction can increase empathy28 and reinforce learning in ways which reading nothing but non-fiction cannot.29 A habit of fiction reading reduces stress, frees the mind of obsessive thoughts, and broadens thinking. For proof of this, ask any fiction junkie. Preference in subject matter or theme do not seem to matter much, but reading broadly and choosing strong authors over less-capable writers can. While we all have preferences, I strongly encourage readers—and especially writers—to reach frequently outside their own preferences. Science-fiction writers should read romance, horror writers should explore historical fiction, mystery writers should sample speculative fiction, Caucasian writers should survey African American writers, male writers should study the books of female writers, and so on. Reading outside our experiences widens our appreciation for others’ voices and views, but on a more fundamental level it wrenches our cognition into new shapes, prods our brain with unfamiliar words, and furthers us as human beings.
Except when it doesn’t. Not all writing is created equally, and much of it is crap, but how can we begin to assess its quality?
One Aspect of the Author Function
First, learn something of the authors whose work you read. Though it matters differently for different works, the “author function” does matter.30 We should be cautious about assessing work based upon knowledge about the author, even as much as we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be ignorant of the author. In fiction as much as in non-fiction, we should keep an open mind to fresh voices. First readings should be, if at all possible, generous ones, yet we can infer a certain amount of a text’s value by its author.31
For all authors, what if anything do we know about their backgrounds and training? What do they say, if anything, outside their fiction? With what organizations and causes do they align themselves? In examining the author, though, we should try to avoid our own confirmation biases, any tendency toward out-group homogeneity bias, and certainly our own in-group biases.32
If we are liberals and an author is an avowed conservative, for example, we should probably keep an open mind about the ideas and themes which emerge from the text, at least until we are convinced of the author’s own biases and position.33 Context still matters. As for myself, if an author is an out-and-proud neo-nazi, I’ll either skip the reading or, at least, approach it with my defences in place; if an advocate of crystal healing, I’ll heighten my scepticism of the author’s underlying messages, even in a work of fiction;34 if someone with whom I’m likely to agree, I still want to limit the likelihood I’ll absorb themes and messages without reflection.
Beyond the creator, of course, exists the creation. In non-fiction, I’m ever grateful for good, clear writers, but we should be exceedingly slow to judge the merit of non-fiction by the quality of the writing or, for that matter, by the moral fiber of the writer; the list of awful people who have given us great discoveries and inventions is a long one.35 True, if any idea has merit, it’ll appear in someone else’s writing sooner or later, often more clearly than in the original, but we should be careful in non-fiction to separate the value of information from either the quality of the writer or faults in the writing.
In fiction, however, the situation becomes more complex. As important as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species might be, the facts of his observations about evolution by natural selection exist separately from the work itself. Had Darwin not written his famous observations, the phenomena would have been noted, sooner or later, by someone else in some other way. The concept of evolution by natural selection exists distinctly from observations about it. I cannot, however, say the same of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Had Joyce not written Ulysses, himself and at the exact time he wrote it, that work and those ideas expressed with that artistry would never have existed. Period. Non-fiction is invariably about something, some subject outside itself; fiction may wrestle with ideas outside itself, but possesses an essence independent of yet interwoven with its subject matter. Fiction is a fact unto itself.
This makes the judging of fiction a somewhat different ordeal, beginning with the author and the context of its creation. H.G. Wells was an awful racist; can I still enjoy The War of the Worlds? Virginia Woolf was a deplorable classist; does that make Orlando any less impressive? Does knowing these facts about Wells or Woolf alter our views of these works, change their meanings, or give them a richer subtext? I hope so. Both books still occupy space on my shelves.
The Words Themselves
The second way we might assess the value of what we read is to examine, with extreme care, even a limited portion of it. Like medical doctors, we can examine minutiae in an effort to diagnosis the condition of the larger organism. In a book, we might analyze a few pages, drawn from a pivotal or foundational scene. Smart fiction matters, fiction with rich language, well-considered themes, new ideas, and a voice. Garbage in, garbage out is a real danger. Can we identify garbage and avoid it? The first hint appears in the prose. Neil Clarke, the publisher and editor of one of science fiction’s most prominent and award-winning magazines, lists the following as the number-one criterion for assessing a story—it must be:
- Well-written. Language is important. There is no distinction between “style” and “substance” or “story” and “writing.”
I agree. How a work of fiction is written cannot be entirely unknotted from how worthy the work is. If the prose is fundamentally poor, allowing for quirks of style and uniqueness of voice, then the work as a whole is probably empty.
With that in mind, let’s return to Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, and E.L. James, and let’s employ them for comparison. I could, of course, talk about any work, but these three provide particularly juicy and illustrative similarities and differences.
Both Rice and Meyer list nineteenth-century romantics and Shakespeare among their influences. To my knowledge, Meyer has never explicitly admitted Rice as an influence but, shall we acknowledge, their works share some sparkly, beautiful, obsessive vampires. James, by contrast, expressly began by writing Twilight fan fiction, triggering copyright infringement; she is, by some accounts, still infringing.36 In terms of ethos and pathos, Rice’s body of work reflects her varying relationships with Catholicism and atheism. Meyer has stated that her Mormonism didn’t directly inform her creations, but those are distinctly contrite, well-mannered, and abstinent bloodsuckers between the covers of her novels.
How to assess these series? A complete thematic analysis would deserve a book-length treatment—I neither have the time nor the inclination—but with a brief summary we can approach our goal. The themes in Rice’s work, taken as a whole, run vastly deeper than Meyer’s; then by comparison, Meyer buries James. A clear hierarchy of richness, complexity, and content divides these authors.
In ways that Meyer fails to do, Rice explores centuries of changing zeitgeists, the slow impact of secular philosophies across the sociological landscape, the effect of humanism and the Enlightenment upon the spirit, the erotic nature of violence, gender fluidity, ennui, the weight of modern history, and the corrupting nature of power. Conversely, throughout her series, Meyer reinforces themes of feminine inferiority, objectification, and stalking-as-love; her attempts at larger themes ring hollow. Through Fifty Shades of Grey, James repeats Meyer’s themes, then adds a worship of oligarch-style capitalism, dangerous mythologies about “fixing a man”,37 and a good dose of sociopathy which can’t be explained by vampiric bloodlust. For good measure, she gave millions of readers an extremely bad education in responsible BDSM.38 Both Meyer and James fail, in any real sense, to resolve their plots in ways that shatter or alter expectations about the more harmful tropes at the centers of their work; they give us comedies when only tragedies would do. Rice, being the stronger writer, makes no such mistake.39
If we comb these works, does anything appear in the page-by-page text which might warn us? Could we, at the glance of a few paragraphs, make some educated guesses about Rice vs. Meyer vs. James? While we should never judge an entire work by a few paragraphs,40 we can certainly make some assertions, and quickly. Here is a passage from Twilight:
There were five of them. They weren’t talking, and they weren’t eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of then. They weren’t gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.
They didn’t look anything alike. Of the three boys, one was big—muscled like a serious weight lifter [sic], with dark, curly hair. Another was taller, leaner, but still muscular, and honey blond. The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair. He was more boyish than the others, who looked like they could be in college, or even teachers rather than students.
The girls were opposites. The tall one was statuesque. She had a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, the kind that made every girl around her take a hit on her self-esteem just by being in the same room. Her hair was golden, gently waving to the middle of her back. The short girl was pixielike [sic], thin in the extreme, with small features. Her hair was deep black, cropped short and pointing in every direction.
And yet, they were all exactly alike. Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes—purplish, bruise-like shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose. Though their noses, all their features, were straight, perfect, angular.
But all this is not why I couldn’t look away.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel. It was hard to decide who was the most beautiful—maybe the perfect blond girl, or the bronze-haired boy.
They were all looking away—away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything particular as far as I could tell. As I watched, the small girl rose with her tray—unopened soda, unbitten apple—and walked away with a quick, graceful lope that belonged on a runway. I watched, amazed at her lithe dancer’s step, till she dumped her tray and glided through the back door, faster than I would have thought possible. My eyes darted to the others, who sat unchanging.
“Who are they?” I asked the girl from my Spanish class, whose name I’d forgotten.
As she looked up to see who I meant—though already knowing, probably, from my tone—suddenly he looked at her, the thinner one, the boyish one, the youngest, perhaps. He looked at my neighbor for just a fraction of a second, and then his dark eyes flickered to mine.
This foundational scene, in which Bella and Edward become conscious of each other, signifies much about the rest of Twilight, and its symbols may or may not mean more than Meyer intended. For those who’ve also seen the film, the apple takes on a different role, and may or may not convey the obvious. In the film, what does it mean that Edward bounces an apple off his foot? In the book, what does it signal that Alice throws the uneaten apple into the trashcan? That apple is both a blunt metaphor and a muddled one.
What about Meyer’s language, her control of it? How many words does she waste? Most of them.41 How deeply do her metaphors delve, and how many meanings does each contain? (Not deep, and not many.) By comparison, let’s examine the introduction of another vampire, this time from Rice:
“But what happened to you?” asked the boy. “You said they bled you to cure you, and that must have nearly killed you.”
The vampire laughed. “Yes. It certainly did. But the vampire came back that night. You see, he wanted Pointe du Lac, my plantation.
“It was very late, after my sister had fallen asleep. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. He came in from the courtyard, opening the French doors without a sound, a tall fair-skinned man with a mass of blond hair and a graceful, almost feline quality to his movements. And gently, he draped a shawl over my sister’s eyes and lowered the wick of the lamp. She dozed there beside the basin and the cloth with which she’d bathed my forehead, and she never once stirred under that shawl until morning. But by that time I was greatly changed.”
“What was that change?” asked the boy.
The vampire sighed. He leaned back against the chair and looked at the walls. “At first I thought he was another doctor, or someone summoned by the family to try to reason with me. But this suspicion was removed at once. He stepped close to my bed and leaned down so that his face was in the lamplight, and I saw that he was no ordinary man at all. His gray eyes burned with an incandescence, and the long white hands which hung by his sides were not those of a human being. I think I knew everything in that instant, and all that he told me was only the aftermath. What I mean is, the moment I saw him, saw his extraordinary aura and knew him to be no creature I’d ever known, I was reduced to nothing. That ego which could not accept the presence of an extraordinary human being in its midst was crushed. All my conceptions, even my guilt and wish to die, seemed utterly unimportant. I completely forgot myself!” he said, now silently touching his breast with his fist. “I forgot myself totally. And in the same instant knew totally the meaning of possibility. From then on I experienced only increasing wonder. As he talked to me and told me of what I might become, of what his life had been and stood to be, my past shrank to embers. I saw my life as if I stood apart from it, the vanity, the self-serving, the constant fleeting from one petty annoyance after another, the lip service to God and the Virgin and a host of saints whose name filled my prayer books, none of whom made the slightest difference in a narrow, materialistic, and selfish existence. I saw my real gods…the gods of most men. Food, drink, and security in conformity. Cinders.”
In one sense, a comparison between these two texts is impossible. Rice taps into a collective neurosis; Meyer, into a kiddie pool of teen angst. They’re an order of magnitude apart. The clichés in Meyer’s passage are numerous; Rice invented the clichés, which had no existence before she wrote them, not even in Stoker.42 Meyer tells rather than shows, wasting her prose along the way. Two steps removed, Rice shows us through the notable mechanism of her characters telling us, and the prose of Interview is rich but tight; in Interview, it would be difficult to cut more than ten percent of her sentences. In Rice’s passage exists the angst of three hundred years; in Meyer’s, we must believe that decades- or centuries-old vampires have no greater strategy for blending into the human world than trying to fit in badly (so extremely badly) at the local high school.
The excuse that Meyer’s work is “young adult” while Rice’s is decidedly adult ignores the slippery and shifting nature of YA literature itself, whose boundaries shift and slither between maturity and youthfulness. It also suggests that YA writing should somehow be worse or dumber than writing for adults—something every enthusiastic childhood reader knows to be wrong. Rice is simply a more competent writer than is Meyer.43 Now, if Meyer is a derivative of Rice, what about James as a derivative of Meyer? Let’s examine the introduction between Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey:44
If this guy is over thirty, then I’m a monkey’s uncle. In a daze, I place my hand in his and we shake. As our fingers touch, I feel an odd exhilarating shiver run through me. I withdraw my hand hastily, embarrassed. Must be static. I blink rapidly, my eyelids matching my heart rate.
“Miss Kavanagh is indisposed, so she sent me. I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Grey.”
“And you are?” His voice is warm, possibly amused, but it’s difficult to tell from his impassive expression. He looks mildly interested but, above all, polite.
“Anastasia Steele. I’m studying English literature with Kate…um…Katherine…um…Miss Kavanagh, at WSU Vancouver.”
“I see,” he says simply. I think I see the ghost of a smile in his expression, but I’m not sure.
“Would you like to sit?” He waves me toward an L-shaped white leather seat.
His office is way too big for just one man. In front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, there’s a modern dark wood desk that six people could comfortably eat around. It matches the coffee table by the couch. Everything else is white—ceiling, floors, and walls, except for the wall by the door, where a mosaic of small paintings hang, thirty-six of them arranged in a square. They are exquisite—a series of mundane, forgotten objects painted in such precise detail they look like photographs. Displayed together, they are breathtaking.
“A local artist. Trouton,” says Grey when he catches my gaze.
“They’re lovely. Raising the ordinary to extraordinary,” I murmur, distracted by both him and the paintings. He cocks his head to one side and regards me intently.
“I couldn’t agree more, Miss Steele,” he replies, his voice soft, and for some inexplicable reason I find myself blushing.
Apart from the paintings, the rest of the office is cold, clean, and clinical. I wonder if it reflects the personality of the Adonis who sinks gracefully into one of the white leather chairs opposite me. I shake my head, disturbed at the direction of my thoughts, and retrieve Kate’s questions from my backpack. Next, I set up the digital recorder and am all fingers and thumbs, dropping it twice on the coffee table in front of me. Mr. Grey says nothing, waiting patiently—I hope—as I become increasingly embarrassed and flustered. When I pluck up the courage to look at him, he’s watching me, one hand relaxed in his lap and the other cupping his chin and trailing his long index finger along his lips. I think he’s trying to suppress a smile.
“S–sorry,” I stutter. “I’m not used to this.”
“Take all the time you need, Miss Steele,” he says.
“Do you mind if I record your answers?”
“After you’ve taken so much trouble to set up the recorder, you ask me now?”
I flush. He’s teasing me? I hope. I blink at him, unsure what to say, and I think he takes pity on me because he relents.
This establishing scene opens with a cliché, and the reader experiences much of the novel’s most important meeting as pure telling rather than showing. Not one, not two, but five qualifying verbs appear in this sequence: three thinks, one hope, and one sure with an “I’m not.” Does Anastasia give us any hint here, any whatsoever, that she might ever transcend her mousiness?45 Can we find in these words any sign that the slave may become the mistress? No, and indeed the long arc of Fifty Shades becomes a fix-the-broken-man story, rather than a tale fundamentally about the actualization of Anastasia—not only a problematic theme, but one which ultimately robs both characters of any legitimate agency. That lack of agency should, upon careful reading, not surprise us. These pages present us with a language equal to the protagonist, and even the sentences are weak. This was five hundred words which could be three hundred. As an experiment, let’s cut, add a trifle, and see what emerges:
Is this guy over thirty? In a daze, I shake his hand, and a shiver runs through me.
“Miss Kavanagh is indisposed,” I say, “so she sent me. I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Grey?”
“And you are?” he asks, his voice warm, his expression impassive.
“Anastasia Steele. I’m studying English literature with Kate—Katherine—Miss Kavanagh, at WSU Vancouver.”
“I see,” he says with the ghost of a smile. He waves me toward a white leather seat. “Would you like to sit?”
His office is too big for one man. In front of the floor-to-ceiling windows sits a gargantuan desk. It matches the modern coffee table, carved in dark mahogany. Everything else is white—ceiling, floors, and walls. Beside the door hangs a mosaic of small paintings, thirty-six arranged in a square, mundane but in precise, photographic detail.
Grey catches my gaze. ”A local artist. Trouton.”
“They’re lovely,” I say, “raising the ordinary to extraordinary.”
He cocks his head and regards me intently. “I couldn’t agree more, Miss Steele.”
I blush. He sinks into the chair opposite me.
Apart from the paintings, his office is cold, clean, and clinical. Does this reflect his personality? I shake my head, disturbed by my desire for him, and from my backpack I retrieve Kate’s questions. Next, I set up the digital recorder, dropping it twice on the coffee table.
Mr. Grey waits while I pluck up the courage to look at him, and I do, determined to see this encounter through. He watches me, one hand in his lap and the other cupping his chin. He trails his long index finger along his lips.
“Sorry,” I stutter. “I’m not used to this.”
“Take all the time you need, Miss Steele.”
“Do you mind if I record you?”
“After you’ve taken so much trouble to set up the recorder?”
I blink. He’s teasing me, surely?
Forty percent of the text has vanished, but the core and spirit remain. Yes, this would be a different book, a more honest one, a sharper one, in which we can already believe that Anastasia might prove a stronger protagonist. The qualifiers disappear. Not only were they lazy writing, but who wants to exist in that head for multiple volumes? Now Anastasia is at least determined to see this encounter through, though she doesn’t yet know it will last for so long.
I dissect most text this way, but especially fiction. Doing so isn’t foolproof—sometimes a few lazy pages in an early, key scene can still give way to an excellent story with rich ideas and a powerful voice. Sometimes. Rarely. In the vast majority, a few pages will proclaim the novel; write a few pages well, write a book well, and vice versa.
Lest you think I’m being unfair to James or have no appreciation for erotica, let’s return to Rice, not to her Vampire Chronicles but to a later work, The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty. Let us join the Prince right after he has stormed the castle, claimed the Beauty, and awakened the King and all the cursed servants:
The King glanced up very quickly to accept the Prince’s commands and with unfailing courtesy he backed out of the doorway.
The Prince turned his full attention to Beauty.
Lifting a napkin he wiped at her tears. She kept her hands obediently on her thighs, exposing her sex, and he observed that she did not try to hide her stiff little pink nipples with her arms and he approved of this.
“Now don’t be frightened,” he said to her softly, feeding a little on her trembling mouth again, and then slapping her breasts so they shivered lightly. “I could be old and ugly.”
“Ah, but then I could feel sorry for you,” she said in a sweet, tremulous voice.
He laughed. “I’m going to punish you for that,” he said to her tenderly. “But now and then just a little very ladylike impertinence is amusing.”
Rice communicates a great deal with these lines. The King realizes he is addressing the great-grandson of the emperor he once served—at once we understand Rice’s homoerotic world, where sexual servitude between royal lines is a norm—and he yields. The submissiveness of Beauty, even from these early scenes, is a purer and more intensive submission than we see from Anastasia at any point in Fifty Shades, but immediately it contains a hint of Beauty’s own arc: “Ah, but then I could feel sorry for you.” That impertinence carries resistance, a promise of growth and strength, a hint at the fundamental and real tension in Rice’s erotica—in other words, in a tale otherwise intended to titillate, the story promises real if subtle conflict.
Is the prose perfect? No. Rice’s language is more active and masterful than James’s, though the Beauty series uses it in less-inventive ways than does Interview. Here, Rice abuses the word little, for example. In the interest of impartiality, let’s give these one hundred fifty words from Beauty the same treatment as those from Fifty Shades:
The King glanced up to accept the Prince’s commands and, with unfailing courtesy, he backed out of the doorway. The Prince turned his full attention to Beauty.
Lifting a napkin he wiped her tears. She kept her hands on her thighs, exposing her sex, revealing her stiff, pink, tiny nipples. He approved of this.
“Now don’t be frightened,” he said softly, feeding on her trembling mouth again, then slapping her breasts so they shivered. “I could be old and ugly.”
“Ah, but then I could feel sorry for you,” she said in a sweet, tremulous voice.
He laughed tenderly. “I’m going to punish you for that. But now and then a ladylike impertinence is amusing.”
Eighteen percent gone, without shaving any meaning from these lines, less than half the superfluousness of James’s writing. Though this passage is short, we would find the rest of Sleeping Beauty to be similarly rich and concise. More importantly, though, Rice exhibits throughout her catalogue an awareness of meaning in imagery, subtle foreshadowing, and richness that both James and Meyer lack. She’s simply better with language and narrative.
And what else is fiction but language and narrative? Why do we accept anything less than excellence in writing? We don’t watch the Olympics to see sort-of-good athletes, we don’t go to the symphony to hear kind-of-okay musicians, so why do we consume books with halfway-all-right words? I recognize that mediocrity exists in the other arts too,46 but that is because the culture of bias extends now across the human experience.
In 2012, the good news was that the fervor over Fifty Shades of Grey sparked a renewed interest in Rice’s Sleeping Beauty Series. Plume books printed 350,000 copies of Beauty, which I’m certain is more than sold in the 1980s.47 Not bad, Anne, but by 2015 the Fifty Shades series had sold more than 125 million copies worldwide, more than a hundred times the volume of Rice’s erotic collection. Yet Rice’s books are objectively, by almost every measure, the better books—the language is richer, the themes and layers of meaning much deeper, the arc more satisfying, and even the erotica better written and more tantalizing. Examining her career as a whole, Rice exceeds her copycats, so why would Beauty not outsell Fifty Shades? One can argue, of course, that Rice’s books were first published in the buttoned-down ’80s, and they were never allowed to shine, but books sometimes get second lives, and for Fifty Shades’ 125 million copies to generate only 350,000 copies’ worth of interest in Beauty—
Well, that’s simply irrational. It’s as if there’s a culture of bias which steers us toward mediocrity.
The Culture of Bias, Mediocrity, and the Lie of Five Stars
Mediocre books, even awful books, often outsell great books. This is regardless of the so-called genre.
Am I being unfair? Can we reduce the overwhelming popularity of the rather badly written Fifty Shades of Grey to preference, rather than to bias? It’s logically inconsistent to argue that 125 million rational readers, whose preference is for erotica, chose Fifty Shades over obviously better works, like Sleeping Beauty. Is it that the public merely prefers “realism,” set in a modern era, without supernatural trappings or the gloss of fairytales? Obviously not, since Meyer’s supernatural, fairytale-like novels (even marketed with that Snow White-like apple on the cover) have sold roughly the same number of copies, worldwide, as James’s.48 Clearly, there is in our culture of bias a tendency to shift us toward a popularity of the lowest common denominator, and this contributes to or perhaps creates the possibility for books like Fifty Shades to rise to meteoric success while a resurrected collection like Beauty only receives the marketing engine required to move a mere hundreds of thousands.49
People have a limited capacity for choice. Availability bias, recency effect, spacing effect, suggestibility—these and other cognitive biases make choosing what is popular the easy choice, and in a culture of bias, the popular choice will almost certainly be mediocre, if not bad. The average brick-and-mortar Barnes & Noble gives a shopper so many choices that, in the interest of time, he or she might fall victim to a less-is-better effect, a list-length effect, or sheer marketing overload. Without strategies to guide us, and the discipline to check our own tendencies, too many choices overwhelm us. In the interest of saving brain capacity, we select what’s hot now, what’s sold most aggressively, or what “everyone else is talking about,” as if “everyone else” was a trustworthy authority.
In issues of nutrition or physical training, it is easier to accept that most people have little idea what they’re talking about, even more so in medicine or architecture; yet in the literary world, our cousin’s best friend’s teacher’s sister babbles on about Fifty Shades, adds to the noise-signal problem of what-to-read, and the buzz grows to an unstoppable tidal wave. It becomes easier, for most readers, to join the wave. The nutritional equivalent is the Starbuck’s pumpkin-spice latte—you know you shouldn’t order it, but everyone else is, so why not?50
Yet as I’ve already posited, overcoming our own biases and the biases of our society, as a whole, takes real work. As a culture, we would need to overwhelmingly value smart words over dumb ones, intelligent themes over lazy ones, careful writing over sloppy, and so on. Reading well, however, is like physical exercise: extremely unpleasant at first, then much easier and more satisfying as practice develops. It is much better, on the whole, to be in shape than out of shape. It is much better, as a whole, to read well than read shit. Yet here we are, a society of people who more or less do little but read the literary equivalent of that pumpkin-spice latte.
A culture of reader bias has a negative effect on writers, because the opinions of readers are these days so public, and because those opinions are often connected with ratings systems which inadvertently harm a book’s sales. The rating systems reflect the mediocre tide. This culture also hurts readers, because it distorts the value of books. This shows up most often in five-star systems and, because Amazon is the biggest bookseller on Earth, bias shows up in the ratings of Amazon’s offerings more than anywhere else.
If an objectively well-written book, with rich language and difficult but valuable themes, presents too much of a challenge to too many readers, they’ll give it three stars, two stars, one star. If their biases are disguised as preferences, they’ll give any book outside their comfort zone three stars, two stars, one star.51 If any book offends their sensibilities, they won’t judge it by its quality but by their emotional response to it, giving it three stars, two stars, one star.
Kim Stanley Robinson is arguably one of the most important authors of the last half century.52 One of the most notable works of science fiction in the last ten years has been his 2312. Its rating on Amazon is 3.5 stars. Its readers give it three stars for being “a little bit boring” or having “a challenging style at times.” One author calls it a “Good character driven story,” proceeds to miss the novel’s entire point, and still gives it three stars. Another called it, “A lot to read,” three stars. A two-star review labels it, “A little too quirky.” Robinson paints us a path to a grand human future, and one critic calls it, “Lame,” one star. Heaven help us.
As they say these days, “I can’t even.”
By comparison, Fifty Shades of Grey has an average of four stars. While James definitely takes her lumps from reviewers,53 she earns reviews like these: “It’s awful, but oh so addicting,” four stars; “50 shades of awesomeness,” five stars; “Trashy guilty pleasure,” four stars; and “interesting,” four stars. As an average across all her reviews, E.L. James beats out Kim Stanley Robinson by 12.5% in terms of ratings. I can scarcely make this clearer: an author who gives us irresponsible, badly informed BDSM fantasies written with lazy prose and poor character development beats one of the most important futurists of all time in the ratings game. My guess is that she outsells him, too, by a lot.
Many authors depend on the rating system for marketing, for exposure, and for sales. Yet, because of the culture of bias, the five-star rating system is toxic. There is no such thing as a five-star book (or a book which is defined by any other number of stars); there are only the accumulated noises of an entire biased system, expressed in yellow stars.
A Takeaway and Larger Social Ills
Reader bias is simply a subset of consumer bias; consumer bias, merely a strain of the greater culture of bias. Perhaps, in the end, all this discussion of books, words, vampires, science fiction, Kim Stanley Robinson, and bad BDSM advice really does point to something much bigger than five-star reviews and book sales. It’s no great stretch to connect books and reading with a society’s overall education, intelligence, and thoughtfulness. As a whole, if our society’s popular-reading habits, the quality and intelligence of our book-rating systems, and our choices in high-volume bestsellers are any indication, our society might be in trouble.
I don’t know how to solve society’s ills. I do have some ideas for how to cure our reading ills:
- Appeal to Writers — Fellow writers, please be better writers. Be the best writer you can be, and try to define how good your writing is by standards other than how popularly appealing it happens to be. If you haven’t already, study the greats, and presume them to be great until your careful study shows you otherwise. No matter what your genre happens to be, or what you think you like to read, please read the classics and the major award winners, read outside your comfort zone, and let that reading inform your own work. As I hope I have shown, popular is not necessarily good. Have something important to say. You, yourself, should read more intelligently, broadly, and critically. Learn to use language excellently. All of us, collectively, should challenge readers to rise to the highest level of our skill and, indeed, to the highest level of theirs.
- Support K–12 Schools — Drop any libertarian fantasies that schools are only the concern of parents and their children, and should be paid for only by those constituents or only by private dollars. Even our system of funding public schools through property taxes is, was, and has always been grossly misguided because it funds some schools so well, while funding others not at all. As Thomas Jefferson knew, schools are the cornerstones of society. All of us, through our taxes, volunteerism, and votes, must support an educational system which works for all. What I mean by this is schools which serve every child, from the richest to the poorest, equally and well. Included in this education must be a strong foundation in reading and literature, primarily in English, but with ample opportunity to study, learn, and read in other languages. As a democracy (or if you insist, a representational republic), we are only as strong as the least-educated segments of our population.
- Support University Reform — The university system has been under a forty-year-long siege of privatization, and we must reverse this. For reasons similar to K–12 education, the system must serve this entire nation, not only its moneyed elites. Programs in the humanities and arts, including English and literature programs, must be strengthened, made more diverse, and appeal to the brightest and best students. Inasmuch as we bolster education and research in the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, so too we need the Arts and Humanities—not STEM, but STEAM or THAMES.54 University admission must be extremely competitive, but free to the best students, and inexpensive to everyone else who qualifies. We should seriously consider strengthening our nation’s vocational programs, where vocation includes technology training; coders don’t need masters degrees in computer science, but nor do they need to be paying $25,000 or more for dubious one-year private programs.
- Do Away with Popular Rating Systems for Books, Films, and Other Arts — As much as people may hate gatekeepers, as much as our society rails against them, and as much as they once quashed diverse voices, they did (and still do) serve important functions. They offer historical and comparative contexts which most people simply don’t possess, as well as a degree of objectivity about the complexity, richness, and competency of art, including literature. While I do not defend the worst aspects of such a system, I do defend the value of trained critics, reviewers, publishers, editors, and academics. While we may be too committed to the five-star popular rating system to completely jettison it, I strongly encourage Amazon and other “distribution gateways”55 to develop a hybrid system. The system will work better, too, if there is more nuance in it. A book may be rated by the general public on “look and design,” “entertainment value,” or any number of other qualities, but this would always be balanced against “ratings” by a handful of certified reviewers, or even professional critics. Critics would themselves be beholden to a professional body, one which held them to high standards and prevented abuses. We have too few now—a handful of newspapers and journals, a smattering of powerful blogs, Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly, and not much else. An objectively terrible book should never see an overall five-star rating; an objectively excellent book should never see a two-star rating, much less a one, and reader preferences should not be the end all and be all of books’ ratings.
“I found this book to be slow and tedious,” writes one reviewer of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Another writes, “I enjoyed this book until the ending, which leaves the reader in limbo,” two stars; a third writes, “Very underwhelming. Just seemed to end in the middle of the story,” two stars. When reviews like that carry any weight against the likes of Atwood, we’ve already fallen a long, long way indeed, and the village idiots are minding the bookstore, ripping out all the pages they don’t like.
Let us recognize the damage done by the culture of bias, and let us do everything we can to overcome it.
- Applebaum, Anne. (2017). Merkel can’t ignore the far-right echo chamber. The Washington Post, 15 September.
- See Pew’s March 2017 study. Despite Pollyannaish declarations insisting that American is not polarizing, culturally, I’m afraid all the data say otherwise.
- Or conversely through a Marxist lens.
- In the time it takes me to binge an entire Netflix series, I can usually read a significant work of non-fiction or fiction. I’m neither the world’s fastest, nor the slowest, of readers, and the price for wasting my time is high.
- Capitalism, as it exists today, depends on the myth of the rationally self-interested consumer. Despite the deluge of evidence which disproves this myth, we should not be surprised to find it still taught so prominently, nor to hear it repeated so often by business leaders and corporations. If indeed we are all irrational, a system of irrational capitalist decisions cannot help but harm.
- Thompson, Derek. (2013). The Irrational Consumer: Why Economics Is Dead Wrong About How We Make Choices. The Atlantic, 16 January.
- McFadden, Daniel. (2013). The New Science of Pleasure. NBER Working Paper Series. National Bureau of Economic Research.
- This may be true of all of us, all of the time, but that’s a matter more appropriate for strict philosophy. See Free Will.
- This all leaves aside the fundamental problems of rational self-interest, as such. Even when the members of a society act “rationally,” in this sense, the Tragedy of the Commons looms large. A sufficiently sized society of rational individuals may still come to extremely bad ends without a super-rationality that accounts not only for the well-being of individuals, but for the well-being of the whole over time. On this point alone, sociopolitical systems such as Libertarianism, especially in its Rand-style Objectivist form, cannot help but fail colossally.
- For a quick refresher on Emotivism.
- Some might argue that this is a tautology; it’s not. If (smoke) is a sign of (fire), then (fire) is likely to exist. The culture of bias is a strange case: If (
smokethe culture of bias) exists and (is not noticed), then ( firethe culture of bias) is likely to exist. If the culture of bias did not exist, we would collectively acknowledge our biases and would master methods to resist them, in which case we would necessarily recognize the non-existence of the culture of bias. Since we are not, as a society, aware of such a non-existence, it logically follows that it exists. It’s a strange phenomenon.
- Barthes, Roland. (2013). Mythologies: The Complete Edition, in a New Translation. 2nd Edition. Richard Howard (trans.), Annette Lavers (trans.). Hill and Wang.
- Frankfurt, Harry. (2005). On Bullshit. Princeton University Press.
- Here I lean again on Aristotle. By helpful, I mean happiness in the sense that Aristotle meant it, or perhaps in the way Spinoza described joy: That which increases one’s command of life and the world, brings one closer to the facts of life, connects one more deeply with other people of reason, and so forth.
- The division between “literature” and “genre” is a false dichotomy, but that’s a topic for another essay
- I’ll actually only choose one of these authors, for pleasure, and even that one inconsistently.
- Oatley, Keith. (2014). How Reading Transforms Us. The New York Times, 19 December.
- Chu, Melissa. (2017). Are Books Superior to TV? Thrive Global, 10 May.
- Mills, Billy. (2007). Does reading matter? You bet it does. The Guardian, 7 June.
- See Aristotle’s treatment of the political science in Nichomachean Ethics.
- Owen, R. (1982). Reader Bias. JAMA, 247(18): 2533–2534.
- One might even say that these would be deceitful intercessions, a logical contradiction in the concept of God addressed by far better apologists than either Lisle or Ham.
- Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Francis of Assisi, William Pope, Soren Kierkegaard, et al.
- Lisle writes, “[For the critic of the Bible], secular beliefs are assumed to be facts that are beyond question.” No, they are not; if someone demonstrates with evidence that, for example, the speed of light in a vacuum is not constant or the Planck length is something other than what we have recorded it to be, then we will change our models of the universe. Here, Dr. Lisle seems to utterly misunderstand science’s most foundational qualities, that the scientific process questions and re-questions the nature of the universe and that, in the face of evidence, explanatory theories change. He then continues, “[The critic] argues that since the Bible contradicts these ‘facts,’ it must be wrong. But this is the fallacy of begging the question.” No, we hold the Bible to the same calibre of empirical evidence as any other source, and it regularly and predictably fails when taken as a literalist account of reality. Furthermore, Lisle misapplies begging the question or petitio principii, suggesting that non-believers simply assume the Bible to be false while secular ideas to be true; again, this misunderstands the very nature of science and secular society itself. Lisle adds, “The critic has simply assumed that the Bible is wrong (by assuming the secular claims are true), and then uses this to argue that the Bible is wrong. This is nothing more than a vicious circular argument.” No, Dr. Lisle, it’s not a tautology, nor have we secularists assumed anything; we have tested the causal nature of the universe and found the Bible to have extremely poor explanatory power when compared to the scientific theories, mathematical models, and other secular tools we possess today. This process began with the birth scholasticism, roughly one thousand years ago.
- Dawkins, Richard. (2015). The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design. W.W. Norton & Company.
- Sagan, Carl. (2013). Cosmos. Ballantine Books.
- There are exactly zero rigorous, reproducible studies which demonstrate that astrology has predictive power as a model of the universe, though at least my astrology-believing friends aren’t trying to tell me I’ll go to hell if I fail to take my signs seriously. As far as flat-Earth theory, reading the arguments of its adherents is an exercise in untying the Gordian knot; they contradict each other, themselves, the established literature, and nary a predictive, useful theory is to be found anywhere in the flat-Earther catalogue.
- Chiaet, Julianne. (2013). Novel Finding: Reading Literary Fiction Improves Empathy. Scientific American, 4 October.
- Webb, Beth. (2007). Fiction is just as important as fact in learning about history. The Guardian, 30 October.
- Foucault, Michel. (1984). What Is an Author? The Foucault Reader. Pantheon: 101–120.
- I can hear all you faux postmodernists out there. There is “nothing outside the text,” you say, but you know that’s not what Derrida meant by “il n’y a pas de hors-texte.” Let’s not misinterpret him, and let’s be sure to qualify text with some context. See Bryce Rich’s review of Derrida. For those of you who say, more prosaically, that you simply don’t care to know anything about who writes the words you read—stop being lazy.
- Though I’ve no statistical data to reinforce my anecdotal experiences, it astounds me how many readers pay little to no attention to the writers of the books they’re consuming. (Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!) Absorbing the writing of the reclusive Thomas Harris is one thing, but if Hannibal Lecter could write a novel, I’m pretty sure I’d want to know something about him before I let his words into my head.
- I am socially liberal and fiscally complex—no economic pigeonholes here, please.
- Sorry, crystal healing is nonsense.
- In this essay, I invoke Aristotle and Richard Dawkins. Aristotle was a misogynist of the first order; Dawkins’s insights have been truly powerful, and he’s an awful troll who should never be allowed near social media. Isaac Newton was absolutely a genius, and he was also a egotistical twit. Thomas Edison was a thief and a torturer of animals. Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest minds of the last thousand years, believed in the merits of eugenics. (Notably, he never married or had children of his own.) Henry Ford, pioneer of the living wage and inventor of modern mass production, was an antisemite and an inspiration to Adolph Hitler. Let’s not throw out the baby, even when the bathwater is pure vitriol.
- Mulligan, Christina. (2015). The most scandalous part of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ isn’t the sex and bondage. The Washington Post, 11 February. Note: I strongly disagree with Mulligan—fan fiction is almost invariably a violation of copyright, and authors should make a habit of expressly giving, or denying, the rights of others to publish fan fiction. The public should respect those boundaries. This doesn’t mean I believe that today’s intellectual-property laws are functioning; they’re not, but that’s a whole different essay.
- Anand, Aakriti. (2017). Hey Fifty Shades, A Woman’s Job Is Not To Fix A Man’s Life. Blush, 16 February.
- Green, Emma. (2015). Fifty Shades of Grey Gets BDSM Dangerously Wrong: Consent Isn’t Enough. The Atlantic, 10 February.
- Rice does get precious with Lestat, doesn’t she? Were the entire body of her work to depend on Lestat alone, she too would fall prey to loving her character more than she loves her themes, her honesty, or her readers. Taken as a whole, however, Rice’s work escapes that fate. Tragedy is always a tool of warning, and Rice warns us plenty. Meyer and James both lose that contest. Their writing says, “Go ahead, act like an irresponsible emo or an objectified doll, no problem. Everything will work out fine.”
- Re: The rule of a generous reading. Hold off judgment as long as possible, unless you’re a slush reader working at an overtaxed magazine.
- We could cut this passage by fifty percent without losing its meaning, and it would grow in impact as a result. Better, we could explode this scene entirely, peppering all this telling into more appropriately placed showing, connecting it with the actions and words of the characters.
- Stoker, Bram. (1897). Dracula. Would the bands Bauhaus or Siouxsie and the Banshees have existed without Rice? I’m not certain, but I doubt it, since Rice’s novel was published in 1976, while Banshees didn’t form until later that same year and Bauhaus didn’t come into existence until two years later.
- Full disclosure: My position is that the best of YA fiction should actually be labelled fiction, and the worst of YA fiction should simply never have been published. YA is, in my humble opinion, as much a marketing ploy as any other genre. The concept of a “genre” is, generally, extremely bad for culture, publishing, writers, readers, and the world as a whole.
- Anastasia Steele, really? CHRISTIAN Grey, really?! Is that how this goes down?
- Recognizing that James’s portrayal of submission captures only one aspect, and not the healthiest, of contemporary BDSM.
- It dominates our politics, and has since at least 1980. Now we live in the Trump era, when not only does style exceed substance, but indeed stylelessness itself is no barrier to a rabid fanbase.
- Bosman, Julie. (2012). In Race Toward the Erotic, Reviving an Old Trilogy. The New York Times, 8 July.
- I hear you—I’m comparing leather and chains with apples—two erotica novels against a YA supernatural romance. Let us be clear. Mechanically, Meyer wrote a Mormon erotica novel, which is precisely what James perceived. James’s fan fiction was a stripping of the “Mormon” from “erotica novel,” an acknowledgment that the only thing missing from Meyer’s stories to make them erotica was the explicit sex. Mull that.
- Not that 350,000 copies is anything to shake a finger at. I’d take a 350,000-copy deal any day.
- A pumpkin-spice latte is not your friend. A venti contains almost a quarter of your recommended calories for the day, provides little nutrition, but gives you a whopping sixty-four grams of sugar. How much sugar is that? Dip a teaspoon into a bowl of sugar, eat that sugar, and then do that fifteen more times. Diabetes, anyone?
- “I don’t really like science-fiction novels, so I’m giving this science-fiction novel one star!”
- Not most important science-fiction author, but most important author. Period. See: Beauchamp, Scott. (2013). In 300 Years, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science Fiction May Not Be Fiction. The Atlantic, 1 April.
- “Bestseller? Really?!” One star! “Did a teenager write this?!” Two stars!
- Hats of to England for having the only word or place-name which uses all six letters.
- Amazon is the “gatekeeper” of this century. Yes, anyone can publish with Amazon, but for most they’ll never do more than pad Amazon’s coffers. Amazon controls distribution to a ridiculous degree. Where is our Antitrust protection again? | <urn:uuid:746dd345-1d0a-4069-a55e-2ec974aec2be> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://jlforrest.com/2017/09/25/reader-bias-analysis-lie-five-stars/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948599549.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20171218005540-20171218031540-00252.warc.gz | en | 0.951416 | 15,016 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Dinner, a moveable feast
Dinner originally referred to the first meal of a two-meal day, a heavy meal occurring about noon, which broke the night’s fast in the new day. The word “dinner” comes from the French word diner, “the main meal of the day” from Old French disner (ca 1300).
The standard schedule for centuries was breakfast as the first meal and dinner at noon with a light supper at evening due to an early rise to the day (for the peasants, middle class workers and even royals) and with only oil or candlelight for the evening, it was always early to bed usually at dusk. However, having dinner at noon was sometimes shifted around or delayed due to work. Thus it would take place later in the afternoon around four or five.
With capitalism, colonialism and then the industrial revolution came economic growth for the middle class. People had more money to buy more goods, including lamps and candles. This allowed them to stay up later at night and the dinner hour was pushed ahead to four or five in the afternoon or even later. In the late 1700s and the 1900s people began to work further from home and the mid-day meal had to become something light, thus lunch was introduced; the main meal called dinner was pushed to the evening hours after work. | <urn:uuid:a0398406-868c-45cd-86c6-cce5510a155f> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.gazettejournal.net/index.php/food/food_article/dinner_a_moveable_feast | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398444139.37/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205404-00311-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.985498 | 277 | 3.59375 | 4 |
What Is A Plotter?
November 28th, 2018
One of the first questions I had while on the job was, "What the heck is a plotter?" It's one that I still get from family and friends when I tell them what I'm doing these days.
Prior to working at Source Graphics, I never gave much thought to how architecture and construction companies produced their work. I knew that plans were involved at some point in the process. But how they actually got to that point was, until recently, a complete mystery to me.
If you search "construction" or "architecture" on a stock image site, chances are you'll see an office with a set of plans on a table or rolled up somewhere in a corner. Or maybe two or three people bent over looking down at them. Those plans didn't manifest themselves out of thin air.
That's where a plotter comes in.
In short, the term "plotter" comes from the old pen plotters that were designed to save companies time and money. Before plotters were a thing, you'd have a whole room dedicated to drafters sitting at a table drawing out architectural and construction designs using triangles, compasses, rulers, etc. Of course the size of that room and the number of drafters depended on the size of the company.
But you can imagine how much time it took to craft multiple pages, multiple sets of those pages...and what if a change needed to be made halfway through??
Early pen plotters had pens mounted to a bar that traveled on an x and y axis. Drafters used computer programs such as AutoCAD, SolidWorks or Revit to tell the pen exactly what to do on the page. Compared to having a room full of people drawing all day, this was a huge advancement.
Nowadays, large format plotters/printers are often ink or toner based. There's no longer a pen plotting each drawing out, but a printhead (or multiple printheads!) that reproduces the design. Drafters can make changes easily in AutoCAD, design multiple layers in different colors, print multiple sets all at once.
And they are FAST, some printing up to 30 D size (24" x 36'") sheets per minute.
So that's what a plotter is: a large printer capable of printing architecture and engineering drawings. Some are 24 inches, some have integrated scanners, and some can print in full color, while others only in monochrome.
There's a whole world that was previously unbeknownst to me surrounding wide format printing. I hope I was able to peel back the tiniest sliver of that world for you. | <urn:uuid:9b53c51a-a8eb-4737-9f0f-6ddb1001288b> | CC-MAIN-2019-43 | https://sourcegraphics.com/company/blog/what-plotter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-43/segments/1570987829507.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20191023071040-20191023094540-00195.warc.gz | en | 0.97132 | 556 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Fibromyalgia is a complex, chronic, and debilitating condition. It is characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain, in conjunction with specific tender (trigger) points, generalized fatigue, and sleep disturbance. People with this syndrome may also experience gastrointestinal disorders, headaches, trouble concentrating, or psychological symptoms, such as anxiety or depression.
It is estimated that approximately 2% of adults in the US have fibromyalgia. The majority of the people with fibromyalgia are women, but the condition can occur in men and children as well. Most cases occur between the ages of 20 and 60 years, although fibromyalgia can develop at any age.
The exact cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, and there has been significant controversy in the medical community about its origin.
Currently, there are several theories regarding possible causes of fibromyalgia, including the following:
Sleep disorders —Sleep researchers have noted that people with fibromyalgia consistently show a disturbance during the stage IV (delta) cycle of sleep, which is considered the deepest and most restorative phase of sleep. Lack of restful sleep may be the cause of the overwhelming fatigue experienced by many with fibromyalgia.
Infections —Some researchers believe that there may be a viral or infectious agent that triggers the onset of fibromyalgia.
Preceding incidence of trauma —A high percentage of people with fibromyalgia have reported traumatic emotional or physical events, such as an automobile accident or divorce, shortly before the onset of fibromyalgia symptoms. Although it is not believed that the events themselves cause fibromyalgia, they may serve as triggers in people who are genetically or otherwise susceptible to developing this syndrome.
Biochemical abnormalities in the nervous system —Studies have shown that people with fibromyalgia often have highly elevated levels of Substance P, a pain neurotransmitter, in their spinal fluid. Levels of other neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and norepinephrine, or hormones, such as cortisol and growth hormone, may play a role.
Researchers continue to explore these and other explanations for the possible causes of fibromyalgia. Currently there is no cure, but symptoms can be diminished by a combination of pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic treatments.
Doctors have noted that many people with fibromyalgia are also likely to have other syndromes, such as:
- Chronic fatigue syndrome
- Multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome
- Myofascial pain syndrome
- Temporomandibular disorder (TMD)
- Tension headaches or migraines
- Chronic pelvic pain
- Restless leg syndrome
- Irritable bowel syndrome
There has been some speculation that fibromyalgia may not be a separate condition, but instead represents a constellation of symptoms that overlap with other illnesses, all of which may have the same cause or causes, which are still unknown.What are the risk factors for fibromyalgia?What are the symptoms of fibromyalgia?How is fibromyalgia diagnosed?What are the treatments for fibromyalgia?Are there screening tests for fibromyalgia?How can I reduce my risk of fibromyalgia?What questions should I ask my doctor?What is it like to live with fibromyalgia?Where can I get more information about fibromyalgia?
- Reviewer: Michael Woods, MD
- Review Date: 09/2017 -
- Update Date: 11/21/2017 - | <urn:uuid:8158de87-7c79-41f1-82ca-92122f9d8931> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://skyridgemedcenter.com/hl/?/19450/Treatments-for-Fibromyalgia~Main-Page | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370497301.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20200330181842-20200330211842-00441.warc.gz | en | 0.941508 | 694 | 3.375 | 3 |
Robotic Surgery (da Vinci)
da Vinci robotic surgery at a glance
- Robotic surgery uses a robotic medical device controlled by a surgeon enabling him or her to perform complex movements in a minimally invasive manner.
- The device allows the surgeon to perform precise actions in hard to reach locations inside the body.
- Robotic surgery may be used to treat prostate cancer, urinary blockage and removal of the kidneys or the bladder.
- Patients who undergo robotic surgery experience less scarring, reduced infection risk, faster recovery and fewer complications.
- Risks and considerations of robotic surgery include short-term nerve damage, prolonged time under anesthesia, as well as general surgical risks such as bleeding and infection.
What is robotic surgery?
Robotic surgery, a type of minimally invasive surgery (MIS), uses a human-controlled robotic device to achieve complex surgical procedures. Robotic surgery may be a better course of treatment for patients compared with traditional (open) surgery or MIS laparoscopy procedures.
Robotic surgery has many benefits over traditional surgery. These include:
- Shorter hospital stay
- Fewer post-operation complications
- Reduced pain
- Less risk of infection, blood loss and scarring
- Shorter recovery time.
In cases of prostate cancer, robotic surgery reduces the chances of side effects commonly associated with traditional open surgery, such as reduced sexual function and performance.
Many urologic procedures can now be done robotically, including the following:
- Prostatectomy to treat prostate cancer
- Nephrectomy, which is kidney removal
- Pyeloplasty surgery to treat urinary blockage
- Cystectomy to completely or partially remove the bladder.
Pacific Urology uses the da Vinci robotic surgical system, considered to be the most advanced robotic system and also the most commonly used.
The first choice of physicians and patients.
How does da Vinci robotic surgery work?
The patient lies on an operating table with the robotic patient side cart positioned over them. This is located several feet away from the surgeon, who controls the da Vinci robotic device from a console where he or she can view the surgery area on a monitor receiving high-definition 3D images from a small video camera inside the patient. The surgeon operates the robotic arm from the console. The robotic arm holds instruments positioned at the surgical site.
The robotic arm of the device translates a surgeon’s hand movements and directions into even more precise action and contact with the patient’s surgical site. The robotic arm of the da Vinci Surgical System performs a larger range of motions with more precise actions than a surgeon’s hands could ever execute.
da Vinci robotic surgery risks and considerations
Surgery of any kind may result in such complications as infections, blood loss, pain and undesired anesthesia reactions. da Vinci and other robotic surgery methods come with some particular risks and considerations, including longer operating times, resulting in a higher than normal amount of anesthesia administered, as well as short-term nerve damage. In rare cases, a portion of the robotic arm may be accidentally dropped into a patient’s body during the surgery.
Robotic surgery may not suit every patient and every case. Questions or concerns regarding the treatment should be discussed by the physician and patient before the surgery. | <urn:uuid:3eaa8782-aa8b-4042-9c06-63dea5b70f8b> | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | https://pacificurology.com/treatments/robotic-surgery/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141191511.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20201127073750-20201127103750-00329.warc.gz | en | 0.930594 | 681 | 3.046875 | 3 |
NATRUM SULPH or sodium sulphate when imbalanced produces edema in the tissues, dry skin with watery eruptions, poor bile and pancreas activity, headaches, and gouty symptoms. Nat Sulph acts to remove wastes from the cells. Use this cell salt when there are symptoms such as chills, malaria, influenza, watery infiltration, and other conditions where there is a need to regulate the excretion of superfluous water. Nat Sulph is also important as a liver salt. It controls the healthy function of the liver. This cell salt is also useful in the later stages of digestion.
Cell Salt, Nat Sulf can help with the following
An essential mineral that our bodies regulate and conserve. Excess sodium retention increases the fluid volume (edema) and low sodium leads to less fluid and relative dehydration. The adult body averages a total content of over 100 grams of sodium, of which a surprising one-third is in bone. A small amount of sodium does get into cell interiors, but this represents only about ten percent of the body content. The remaining 57 percent or so of the body sodium content is in the fluid immediately surrounding the cells, where it is the major cation (positive ion). The role of sodium in the extracellular fluid is maintaining osmotic equilibrium (the proper difference in ions dissolved in the fluids inside and outside the cell) and extracellular fluid volume. Sodium is also involved in nerve impulse transmission, muscle tone and nutrient transport. All of these functions are interrelated with potassium.
Abnormal accumulation of fluids within tissues resulting in swelling.
A bitter, yellow-green secretion of the liver. Bile is stored in the gallbladder and is released when fat enters the first part of the small intestine (duodenum) in order to aid digestion. | <urn:uuid:579d0be9-817b-4086-934d-52b5133dff71> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | https://www.digitalnaturopath.com/treatments/cell-salt-nat-sulf/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247505838.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20190221152543-20190221174543-00060.warc.gz | en | 0.904512 | 375 | 3.75 | 4 |
Seeing wildlife when on a camp out can be a real highlight of your adventure. These sightings can be a real treat but can also be dangerous. Attacks by mountain lions on humans have happened but are rare. Knowing what to do when you’re caught in this situation is very important.
Mountain lions are also known as pumas, panthers, or cougars. Another name for them is catamount. These creatures are shy and isolated so they are seldom seen. If you happen to come upon one of these cougars, think smart. Cluster together with your hiking companions, representing yourself as a big, noisy group. If you’re hiking alone, extend your arms or pack up as high as you can so you look bigger. Wave your trekking poles and shout. Never run or bend down as this will make you look like prey. Call children to come next to you.
These cats roam anywhere from central Canada down to Patagonia. They can be anywhere from sea level up to the high alpine areas. They can survive from swamps to forests to timberline.
The female will fiercely protect its young. Don’t even approach that darling, little kitten. Back away slowly if you happen to come upon an adult or baby. If the cat continues to follow you, throw sticks or rocks while backing away.
A camper’s fear of mountain lions is unjustified. They’re not going to come and get you in your tent while you sleep. These animals are rarely seen, but you may be able to catch a fleeting glimpse of one. Even though sightings are rare, be sure to use caution at all times. These cats’ stealth and adaptability allow them to survive well in a wide environment.
They’ve been known to jump 20 feet in one leap. The puma creeps up on its prey until it’s close enough to leap upon it. Their diet consists of deer, rabbits, turkeys, and grouse. Juvenile cats are trying to establish their territory while the mother cats will protect their young.
My own personal sightings have occurred in areas with an abundance of young rabbits. My sightings have been in the morning hours or at dusk. When my wife and I were in the High Uintahs, we witnessed a Canadian Lynx. It was in an area where lots of naïve, young cottontail rabbits abound. | <urn:uuid:5a6ebdbe-77ed-4d13-93a1-acdec86f0409> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lovetheoutdoors.com/camping-adventures/Mountain-Lions.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960425 | 493 | 2.53125 | 3 |
A few days ago I blogged about people's last names. Today let's talk about street names. That includes roads, avenues, etc.
Lots of streets are either identified by numbers or letters. That's especially true in urban areas. Some cities have numbered streets going in one direction and those identified by letters crossing them.
Others may be named after famous people. In the United States many streets are named after former presidents.
Other streets, especially in areas that were originally rural, are named after a family that once lived there. Others are named after businesses originally located on them such as a mill, mine, factory, farm or ranch. There are School and Church streets in most towns, too.
A lot of street names tell something about the geography, such as a beach, hill, river, or mountain.
Sometimes streets in certain areas, especially housing developments, may all have the names of certain flowers, trees, birds, or animals or even people's first names, usually in alphabetical order. Names of states or countries might be used, too.
And, if people of various nationalities have lived in an area the street names might be in languages other than English.
Does your street name fall into one of these categories? | <urn:uuid:aebb26b5-023b-42fe-84ec-0ba42f6dffe6> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://onwordsblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/street-names.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886107720.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20170821060924-20170821080924-00527.warc.gz | en | 0.973752 | 254 | 2.875 | 3 |
In a recent 2019 study, researchers from the University of Freiburg, Germany have found that an anti-inflammatory plant-based diet can help reduce gingivitis.
What is gingivitis?
Gingivitis is a preventable oral condition in which gum irritation, bleeding and inflammation occurs, usually as a result of bacterial infection below the gum line.
Gingivitis is a common condition and usually precedes the onset of periodontitis. Both are serious forms of gum disease, and if left untreated can eventually result in tooth loss and other oral health complications.
Vegetarian whole food diet helps reduce symptoms of gingivitis in patients
For the trial study, the German researchers changed the diet of the experimental patient group. For four weeks, they were given anti-inflammatory plant-based foods high in:
- omega-3 fatty acids,
- vitamin c/d,
- plant nitrates,
- antioxidants and
Processed refined carbohydrates and meat were not included in their diet. Whereas the control group had an unchanged diet.
The results of the study showed that although plaque values between the two groups were similar, symptoms of gingivitis – such as gingival bleeding – were significantly reduced in the group on the plant-based diet. Additionally, the patients from this group had higher vitamin D levels and experienced weight loss.
Anti-inflammatory food choices may promote better oral health
The authors of the German study believe that their study results demonstrate the potential oral health benefits of an anti-inflammatory plant-based diet. With regards to gingivitis, the researchers also pointed out that this oral condition may be a possible side-effect of the overconsumption of pro-inflammatory foods.
Pro-inflammatory foods include:
- Added sugar in the form of cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup
- Processed, refined carbohydrates
- Processed meat
- Polyunsaturated omega-6 “vegetable” seed oils, such as canola, corn, sunflower, peanut and safflower oil
- Processed trans fat
Johan P. Woelber, Maximilian Gärtner, Lilian Breuninger, Annette Anderson, Daniel König, Elmar Hellwig, Ali Al‐Ahmad, Kirstin Vach, Andreas Dötsch, Petra Ratka‐Krüger, Christian Tennert. The influence of an anti‐inflammatory diet on gingivitis. A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Periodontology, 2019; DOI: 10.1111/jcpe.13094 | <urn:uuid:e6d5bf99-6ae6-4815-99ab-0ba4a10372f3> | CC-MAIN-2020-50 | https://healthysmiledental.com.au/whole-food-plant-based-diet-helps-reduce-gingivitis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-50/segments/1606141213431.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20201130100208-20201130130208-00423.warc.gz | en | 0.91483 | 538 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Manic-Depression is a term that has fallen mostly out of use, and refers to the mood disorder that is now termed bi-polar disorder. The name references the two “poles” experienced, in varying degree and severity, by individuals who suffer from it. The “manic” pole–mania–is characterized as an intense, often uncontrollable euphoria that is often accompanied by psychosis, and which can severely impair judgment. On the other extreme, individuals with manic-depression (now bi-polar disorder) can also experience intense, prolonged feelings of depression. How rapidly and severely the mood of someone who suffers from manic-depression shifts varies from person to person, and has important implications for treatment. More information can be found on this site regarding treatment options for bi-polar disorder here, and information on group therapy options for bi-polar disorder can be found here. | <urn:uuid:8e033c53-34a8-4ceb-b73e-c43dd17d69ca> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | https://tribecatherapy.com/manic-depression/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125938462.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20180420135859-20180420155859-00289.warc.gz | en | 0.948894 | 188 | 2.890625 | 3 |
By: Michael Camber
Compressed air dryers are commonly rated to achieve a specific moisture level (e.g. 40°F pressure dew point) for a certain volume of air flow (cfm). This nominal flow rating is typically based on a set of standard conditions (100 psig, 100°F inlet temperature, and 100°F ambient temperature). In practice, your actual conditions can change from day to day and are rarely the standard conditions, and the dryer may be over or undersized depending on how it is selected.
When sizing a dryer, it’s important to understand how temperature and pressure affect water content in the air. The water vapor content of air varies directly with temperature—if temperature increases, the air’s ability to hold water increases. As a rule of thumb, every 20°F rise in inlet air temperature may double the water load on a dryer. Pressure is the opposite. The water vapor content of air varies inversely with pressure—if pressure increases, it squeezes moisture out. Because of these two relationships, compressed air dryers have correction factors (supplied by the manufacturer) to help determine how much air a dryer can actually handle for specific conditions.
We have updated our website to include sizing correction factors and provide a sizing example using one our SECOTEC refrigerated dryer series: How to size compressed air dryers | <urn:uuid:c4bcc28e-7b15-4c25-99ff-f2b498be971f> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://kaesertalksshop.com/tag/dryer-sizing/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446711126.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20221207021130-20221207051130-00407.warc.gz | en | 0.878199 | 287 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Members of the cryonics movement -- estimated at 1,000 strong
and growing -- are taking perhaps the biggest gamble a person
can take; that they will be frozen in liquid nitrogen immediately
after their death and later be brought back to life.
Architect Steven Valentine's "Timeship" --
a "life extension research and cryopreservation"
facility -- will house research laboratories, animal
and plant DNA, and as many as 10,000 frozen people.
About 142 people currently have their body or head held in
one of two cryonics storage facilities in the United States
-- Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona,
and the Cryonics Institute of Clinton Township, Michigan --
and many more have signed up. Among them are Baseball Hall
of Famer Ted Williams and a handful of wealthy U.S. and foreign
businessmen who have created "revival trusts" that
would allow them to reclaim their fortunes hundreds or thousands
of years down the road.
"This is going to be the century of immortality,"
says Stephen Valentine, an architect who has designed the
Timeship -- a "life extension research and cryopreservation"
facility that will house research laboratories, animal and
plant DNA, and as many as 10,000 frozen people.
"Children being born today are probably going to live
an average lifespan of 120 years. Their children, it is being
predicted, will never die. There will be a time when people
won't be able to comprehend the thought of not existing any
more and just becoming fertilizer," Valentine says.
How Does Cryopreservation Work?
In cryopreservation, a body is put in a glycerin-based solution,
cooled with dry ice, then held in a pool of liquid nitrogen
until the body temperature reaches minus-320 degrees Fahrenheit
(at which temperature all cell movement is stopped).
The idea is that people with incurable diseases could be
frozen today, then rewarmed decades later when medicine has
advanced and a cure is available.
A steel, liquid-nitrogen-filled capsule used for cryopreservation
at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale,
Currently, only certain cells and tissues, such as sperm
and embryos, can be frozen and successfully rewarmed. One
of the biggest hurdles facing the technology is how to stop
the formation of ice crystals, which damage cells.
New Research Suggests Cryopreservation IS Possible
Most cryonics centers require that interested parties register
and pay in advance of their death, anywhere from $28,000 to
$120,000. While some members opt to freeze their entire body,
others preserve only their heads, with the idea that their
consciousness will be transported into a "fresh"
While critics claim the centers are offering false hope and
scamming people out of money, new research by University of
Helsinki researcher Anatoli Bogdan, Ph.D. suggests that the
entire human body could be cyropreserved without the formation
of damaging ice crystals.
"Damage of the cells occurs due to the extra-cellular
and intra-cellular ice formation, which leads to dehydration
and separation into the ice and concentrated unfrozen solution.
If we could, by slow cooling/warming, supercool and then warm
the cells without the crystallization of water then the cells
would be undamaged," Bogdan says.
His research looked into a form of water called "glassy
water," or low-density amorphous ice (LDA). The glassy
water, which is produced by slowly supercooling diluted aqueous
droplets, melts into a highly viscous water (HVW), which Bogdan
says could have important applications for cryonics:
"It may seem fantastic, but the fact that in aqueous
solution, [the] water component can be slowly supercooled
to the glassy state and warmed back without the crystallization
implies that, in principle, if the suitable cyroprotectant
is created, cells in plants and living matter could withstand
a large supercooling and survive."
The Ethics of Immortality
The details of a world where no one dies, or at least one
in which not dying is a possibility, raises an unforeseen
number of legal and ethical questions. For instance, would
someone who is pronounced dead and then later revived have
to pay back their life insurance? And doesn't the prospect
of cryopreservation already exclude those who are poor and
unable to afford it?
At the very least, the notion of cryopreservation would alter
the very definition of death.
"Death is just the point at current technology when
the doctor gives up," said David Ettinger, whose father,
Robert Ettinger, is said to have founded the cryonics movement.
"It's a legal definition, not a medical one."
But while cryopreservation still remains, to most, something
out of a science fiction novel, Valentine views it as a natural
progression of humans' innate desire to live longer:
"Since the beginning of time we've done everything we
can to make ourselves live longer. We've invented vaccines.
We've cured diseases. What do we do that for? So people can
live better and longer."
Really Now, How Likely Are They? If They Exist How Likely
is it They'd be Friendly?
to Live Longer? Be Wealthier? And Happier? Here is the One
PROVEN Secret: Reading!
Daily June 20, 2006
Unlimited: House of the Temporarily Dead
Wall Street Journal Online January 21, 2006
News: Would Freezing Ted Williams Really Work? | <urn:uuid:9f4b2110-d249-4841-9f06-bdb4cf2c3812> | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/06/10/05/is_cryopreservation_actually_possible.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394010901252/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305091501-00095-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933043 | 1,224 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Making geocaching more responsive to place … and educational
Traditionally, geocaches can be educational with lots of information about the location (for example a historical site) or a tree species (see geocache: Sequoia Sempervivens) … but many geocaches are not at all encouraging of the finder making a connection with the location or environs or the living and non-living things found there.
In many cases, geocaches are plastic tubs with some small tokens – often ‘macdonalds’ toys – inside (and the usual log book). Some geocachers take these away and leave other ‘stuff’ for the next finder .. this is all good fun but not perhaps that educational or engaging for people who are interested in more than the process of using the technology and the business of bagging as many caches as possible.
On our ‘Making Sense of Place’ project – we wanted to address this by trying to design some geocaches that would be encouraging of response making with and in place. We also wanted the geocache to help the finders learn a bit about science. Take a look at the other posts to see what kinds of designs we came up with … | <urn:uuid:02c5ae54-dc46-499b-87db-3150acc73eeb> | CC-MAIN-2021-39 | http://geocachingforschools.co.uk/2015/03/23/making-geocaching-more-responsive-to-place-and-educational/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-39/segments/1631780056297.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20210918032926-20210918062926-00525.warc.gz | en | 0.956426 | 259 | 2.796875 | 3 |
IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR PARENTS REGARDING INFLUENZA
FROM THE FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH
The Florida Department of Health (DOH) reports that influenza, or "flu," activity levels have begun increasing across the state in recent weeks. This increase in activity is typical for this time of the year. Flu is a contagious respiratory disease caused by influenza viruses. It can cause mild to severe illness. Serious outcomes of flu infection can result in hospitalization or death. Some people, such as young children, the elderly, and people with certain health condit ions are at high risk for serious complications from flu. DOH is encouraging families to get vaccinated for flu now.
Vaccination is the best way to protect against the flu and severe complications from the flu. Vaccinat ion is most crucial for children with underlying health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease, and neurological and neurodevelopmental conditions. The flu vaccineis offered in many locations including pharmacies, clinics, employers, and schools. Contact your physician, county health department, or visit http://www.floridahealth.gov/programs-and-services/prevention/flu-prevention/locate-a-flu-shot.html?utm_source=articleResource to find a flu vaccine center near you.
The flu vaccine is safe. The national Adv isory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recommends that all individuals six months of age and older receive the flu vaccine each year. Since infants under six months of age are too young to get vaccinated against influenza, it is important that family members (including pregnant or breastfeeding mothers) and other caregivers for these children be vaccinated to help protect them from the disease.
It is especially important that parents keep sick children at home to prevent spreading the flu virus to others. Additional flu prevent ion steps include staying away from people who are sick, covering sneezes or coughs with a tissue or your elbow , avoid touching your eyes , nose and mouth, and frequent handwashing.
If your child becomes sick with flu-like illness, contact your health care provider soon after symptoms begin to discuss medical care options. Symptoms of the flu often include fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, body aches, headaches, or fatigue .Ant iviral medication for flu has been shown to reduce severity and length of disease, decrease the risk of complications from influenza, and reduce the risk of death among hospitalized patients, particularly in those that start treatment early in their illness.
The best way to keep yourself and your family safe and healthy during flu season is to:
1. get vaccinated,
2. keep sick family members home,
3. contact your health care provider if you or your child are experiencing flu-like symptoms, and
4. follow your physician's guidance on treatment. | <urn:uuid:b5d27477-0989-4203-9d05-92508b08a037> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://www.collierschools.com/Page/7817 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593657151761.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20200714212401-20200715002401-00111.warc.gz | en | 0.950794 | 585 | 3.21875 | 3 |
- lily (n.)
- Old English lilie, from Latin lilia, plural of lilium "a lily," cognate with Greek leirion, both perhaps borrowed from a corrupted pronunciation of an Egyptian word. Used in Old Testament to translate Hebrew shoshanna and in New Testament to translate Greek krinon. As an adjective, 1530s, "white, pure, lovely;" later "pale, colorless" (1580s).
Also from the Latin word are German lilie, French lis, Spanish lirio, Italian giglio. The lily of the valley translates Latin lilium convallium (Vulgate), a literal rendition of the Hebrew term in Song of Solomon ii:1. It apparently was applied to a particular plant (Convallaria majalis) first by 16c. German herbalists. Lily pad is from 1834, American English. | <urn:uuid:a4963b8b-bc46-42bd-abd9-542886a9ab52> | CC-MAIN-2014-10 | http://etymonline.com/index.php?term=lily&allowed_in_frame=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-10/segments/1394011232483/warc/CC-MAIN-20140305092032-00012-ip-10-183-142-35.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.917804 | 188 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Introduction to the Subject
The MFL Department currently offers three modern foreign languages, German, French and Spanish as well as Latin.
All pupils choose between German and French in Year 7 – the majority of pupils are able to study their chosen language in Year 7.
The most able pupils continue with their chosen language from Year 7 into Year 8, where they get to learn a second modern foreign language, which this year is Spanish. We are looking to extend the second foreign language offer in Year 8 so pupils can choose from all three languages.
Latin is currently taught as enrichment on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
The vision of the MFL Department: MFL Vision.pdf
|Year 7: Aims
To teach pupils the basics of vocabulary and grammar of either German or French, with a view to preparing them for GCSE study. Each topic has been chosen to reflect the requirements of the GCSE curriculum and pupils are taught the most important grammar aspects in each language right from the beginning to allow them to transfer those skills to all topic areas in the coming years.
All four core skills (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) are practised in equal measure and we have high expectations on knowledge and application of grammar and a wide range of vocabulary.
|Year 7: Content
|Year 7: Assessment
Each topic is assessed in half termly assessments with focus on grammatical accuracy and range of vocabulary
|Year 7: Teaching
Each language has been allocated two period per week in the timetable
Pupils who study two languages in Year 8 have four periods of MFL altogether
|Year 8: Aims
To extend pupils’ knowledge and application of vocabulary and grammar
To allow pupils to communicate effectively and accurately, with a focus on frequently used words and phrases in German, French and Spanish
|Year 8: Content
|Year 8: Assessment
All topics are assessed in half termly assessments, with a focus on independent writing and consistent application of grammar.
The assessments are based on GCSE assessments tasks and take a similar format to enable pupils to get used to the expectations of GCSE exams.
|Year 8: Teaching
Pupils have two periods per language in Year 8. The most able pupils are learning either German or French as well as Spanish.
|Year 9: Aims
The Year 9 syllabus focuses on providing pupils with the fundamental skills in all four areas (Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing) to ensure the confidence of pupils in their GCSE Foundation Year. We aim to solidify pupil knowledge in at least four tenses through introduction and reinforcement, providing pupils with the opportunity to build more complex sentences.
|Year 9: Content
|Year 9: Assessment
All topics are assessed in half termly assessments, with a focus on independent writing and consistent application of grammar. The assessments are based on GCSE assessments tasks and take a similar format to enable pupils to get used to the expectations of GCSE exams.
|Year 9: Teaching
Pupils have two periods per language in Year 9. The most able pupils are learning German or French, as well as Spanish.
|Year 9: Further information
Recent events and opportunities.
We are in the process of building relationships with schools within the target country to provide pupils with more purposeful opportunities to use the target language. The Department is also putting in place provision for native speakers to enable them to take the GCSE this year.
|SUMMER 1 Resources|
|Accurate spelling is the foundation of good grades and making progress at Key Stage 3 and 4. Each pupil should be learning a minimum of 6-8 new words / phrases each week. There will be weekly tests on these in class. Learning spellings can be fun – create flashcards, games and get other people involved to quiz you. Getting spellings right is a really easy way to feel success with your language learning.
Please use the “Big Picture” guides below for this half term. We would really like parents/carers to be involved in their child’s learning, so please let us know if you find any strategies for learning spellings particularly useful with your child. Do not hesitate contact the MFL department if you have any questions. Merci! | <urn:uuid:e2f8a9a7-7ce9-4db2-a362-6997a8542d9c> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://arkbolingbrokeacademy.org/curriculum/mfl-curriculum | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886105712.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20170819182059-20170819202059-00527.warc.gz | en | 0.943152 | 874 | 3.484375 | 3 |
by Catherine Casson (University of Manchester), Mark Casson (University of Reading), John Lee (University of York), Katie Phillips (University of Reading)
How can modern economies reconcile the pursuit of international competitiveness with promotion of the common good? They could learn from the medieval period!
Contrary to popular belief, England in the late thirteenth century had a dynamic economy. Legal advances created a lively property market; cutting-edge technologies improved water management and bridge-building; commodity trade expanded; and towns grew dramatically, both in number and size.
But this was not an early form of individualistic capitalism. Family bonds were strong and community loyalty was intense. Economic ‘winners’ showed compassion for losers, rather than contempt.
Thirteenth-century expansion was not based on a consumer-driven boom. Its focus was on local infrastructure and local wellbeing. City churches were financed by local people to meet the needs of local people. Hospitals cared for the old, the poor and the needy, including special facilities for those affected by disease. Their legacy remains with us today: the most valuable real estate in a modern city is often occupied by medieval churches and hospitals.
Using recently discovered documents and novel statistical techniques, we have analysed the histories of over one thousand properties in medieval Cambridge over this period. Using evidence from the so-called ‘Second Domesday’ – the Hundred Rolls of 1279 – we show how wealth accumulated by successful businesses was recycled back into the community through support for local churches and hospitals and for itinerant preachers based in the town.
Town government was devolved by the king and queen to the mayor and bailiffs, and they encouraged the development of guilds, which promoted cooperation. New professions emerged in response to the growing demand for legal and administrative services.
The business centre of Cambridge shifted south as the town expanded. ‘New wealth’ replaced ‘old wealth’ as a local commercial class replaced Norman aristocrats. But local pride and religious devotion – expressed through high levels of charitable giving – helped spread the economic benefits throughout the town community.
This self-sustaining system was, however, broken in the 1340s by the Black Death, the outbreak of the Hundred Years War and the punitive levels of taxation imposed on towns thereafter. When prosperity returned in the Tudor period, a more ruthless form of capitalism took root, and it is this ruthless form of capitalism whose legacy remains with us today. | <urn:uuid:122800bc-983b-4787-a2d6-8fd8a66fd9ba> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://ehsthelongrun.net/2017/03/27/how-to-achieve-a-more-compassionate-capitalism-look-back-to-medieval-cambridge/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371620338.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20200406070848-20200406101348-00400.warc.gz | en | 0.963795 | 503 | 3.125 | 3 |
Sjoerd de Jong will take a comprehensive look at creating and using Materials in a production environment. You'll learn the different types of Materials in Unreal Engine, the ingredients of creating them, and how to use them in your projects.
You will learn how to:
Identify the preferred sizes, formats, and compression settings when creating or working with texture imports.
- Navigate the Material Editor user interface.
- Modify material inputs such as physically based rendering, normal maps, emissive, and world position offset to achieve different visual effects.
- Combine material expressions to create larger networks.
Preview this course
Explore more courses | <urn:uuid:dc11d347-f357-46db-a2a7-562b6500c1e8> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/onlinelearning-courses/materials---exploring-essential-concepts?lang=en-US | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703529331.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20210122113332-20210122143332-00352.warc.gz | en | 0.805412 | 131 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Women In The Labour Force The past decades their has been a dramatic increase of women participating in the labour force from countries all over the world including Canada. Inone Canadian worker in five was a woman. By this percentage had doubled, and women are expected to make up more than 44 percent of the labour force by the end of this century. The increase in female participation started occurring during the 's.
Employment Women in the workforce Introduction The entry and participation of women in the workforce have for long been restricted by the cultural and religious practices.
Compared to men, the socio-economic status of women is poor leading to their economic dependency on men. But today, the situation has slightly changed; women are beginning to realize their contribution to the workforce. The realization has come with the struggle for recognition as the women are beginning to eye well-paying jobs in the workforce.
Compared to men, women are much less in the workforce. They are still exposed to sex and race discrimination that influences their pay, hiring or promotions.
For equality to be achieved then occupational segregation needs to be wiped out. Occupational segregation sets job limits in the workforce such that men will do jobs that are meant for men and women stick to jobs that are done by women.
The most discriminating fact is that women earn less than men in all of the most common occupations for both women and men; they also earn less in broad occupations by race or ethnicity. Besides, the work done by men tends to fetch Essay about women in the workforce lot more than the work that is done by women.
It has become part of their life; for them to take long vacations to take care of the children, more so in the case of the newborns.
Such absence from work may hinder any immediate promotions at place of work. This can explain why more men are in higher ranks than women. The current laws prohibiting discrimination are not being implemented strongly.
The laws lack the requisite strength that can form a viable platform on which women can complain against discriminatory pay practices.
For example, Equal Pay Act does not allow women to file class-action lawsuits, and it provides very insubstantial damages. The position of women in the workforce has for long been stereotyped.
It has been believed that women do not have as much social responsibility as their counterparts. They therefore, even under the same level as men, should not ask pay equality since they are partly or entirely dependent on their husbands.
Men are therefore placed at higher social rank than women.
In addition, most of the jobs are male-dominated. There are therefore not many jobs available for women, and if there are, then women will mostly serve in the lower ranks. However, in some cases, there are women who take up the uppermost roles in a company.
It is devastating that such women receive less support as they are viewed misplaced. The feminine nature of women generally sets some limit. In the workforce, other than the academic qualifications, some jobs may be quite involving that a woman may not perfectly fit.
Jobs that involve longs hours of sitting, long hours of travel or jobs that are dangerous in nature may be much weightier than a female can bear. Once a woman has established a relationship with one of her bosses, it will be very hard, at any given point in time, for that woman to get a higher position than the said sex partner.
Due to such sex relationship, women remain at lower ranks because they cannot complain about their employer lest they lose their job or the relationship breaks. Research has shown that a rewarding work experience can reduce the stress associated with one of the multiple roles that women occupy: The work experience can make women match the competition in the workforce.
Moreover, once a person attains the requisite experience for a given job, the work will not become very strenuous as opposed to a person who lacks experience. This will enable women to multitask, and owing to their multiple responsibilities, they can be able to split time accordingly.
Women still struggle for equality at work place, the fight is still on. But it is likely to take long before the labour industry levels at an equal pay for men and women.
Some case studies that the struggle may go up to for such equality to be achieved. Many proposals have been made but their effect is yet to be felt in the labour industry. For example, a draft proposal was brought forward in September that would see all women on maternity leave compensated.
Businesses disagreed and were strongly opposed to it.
Women in the workforce essay. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Google+. Describe at least two causes of the american revolution essay essay on beauty rediscovers the male body trimellitic acid synthesis essay, world war 2 short essay about life. Although it focuses on one career instead of the workforce as a whole it is very specific how the workforce change has affected the nursing and medical industries. The change in technology seems to be the hardest adjustment for the ones who have been in the workforce the longest. Spinks, N. (n.d.). The changing workforce, workplace and nature of work. Women in the workforce earning wages or salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men, but women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce. Until modern times.
Strategies and plans are still being laid down on how to tackle the gender parity at work place. Organizations such as Women Movements, Labour Unions and Human Right Commissions are still coming out strongly to push for fairness in the workforce. References Hegewisch A, Matite M. Accessed May 21 from National Committee on pay equity.
Accessed May 21 Freedman J. Accessed May 21 About percent of women (including percent of women aged 20 to 24) were absent in the average week, compared with percent of men Among those absent, women were somewhat more likely to be absent for reasons other than injury or illness.
It seems to me that in the workforce, a woman is a person just as a man is a person, if that person gets the job done right, he or she should be paid for doing so, if not, that person receives repercussions.
As a result, “ CA’s 11,strong workforce in 36 countries reports a high level of satisfaction, with women scoring higher than men on 80 percent of the company’s key .
Women in the workforce earning wages or salary are part of a modern phenomenon, one that developed at the same time as the growth of paid employment for men, but women have been challenged by inequality in the workforce.
Until modern times. Today, women make up half of the U.S.
workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women . Women in the Workplace If one takes a closer look at the issues surrounding the differences between the male and female roles in the workforce and in education, one will notice that women tend to be one step below men on the "status" or "importance" ladder. | <urn:uuid:b63847af-ba31-4d8b-af7b-54f3a41cbb61> | CC-MAIN-2022-49 | https://zukytorywoqyvalos.caninariojana.com/essay-about-women-in-the-workforce-9505xk.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-49/segments/1669446710417.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20221127173917-20221127203917-00439.warc.gz | en | 0.973498 | 1,447 | 3.21875 | 3 |
All stainless steels have a high resistance to corrosion. Low alloyed grades resist corrosion in atmospheric conditions; highly alloyed grades can resist corrosion in most acids, alkaline solutions, and chloride bearing environments, even at elevated temperatures and pressures.
High and low temperature resistance
Some grades will resist scaling and maintain high strength at very high temperatures, while others show exceptional toughness at cryogenic temperatures.
Ease of fabrication
The majority of stainless steels can be cut, welded, formed, machined and fabricated readily.
The cold work hardening properties of many stainless steels can be used in design to reduce material thicknesses and reduce weight and costs. Other stainless steels may be heat treated to make very high strength components.
Stainless steel is available in many surface finishes. It is easily and simply maintained resulting in a high quality, pleasing appearance.
The cleanability of stainless steel makes it the first choice in hospitals, kitchens, food and pharmaceutical processing facilities.
Life cycle characteristics
Stainless steel is a durable, low maintenance material and is often the least expensive choice in a life cycle cost comparison. | <urn:uuid:f87b4dd2-909e-4e53-ac6c-9d17b4e7d378> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | http://www.assda.asn.au/benefits-of-stainless-steel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187823462.26/warc/CC-MAIN-20171019194011-20171019214011-00722.warc.gz | en | 0.903103 | 229 | 3 | 3 |
Saskatchewan Foundational and Learning Objective
I.B.1: Define the following terms: vector quantity, scalar quantity, resultant vector, vector resolution, equivalent vectors, collinear vectors.
I.B.2: Identify vector and scalar quantities.
I.B.3: Distinguish between vector and scalar quantities.
I.B.6: Explain or demonstrate an understanding of the following important concepts: a resultant vector, vector addition, resolving a vector into components.
I.B.8: Add two or more collinear vectors algebraically and graphically to determine the resultant vector.
I.B.9: Identify collinear and non-collinear vectors.
I.B.10: Identify equivalent vectors.
I.B.14: Demonstrate an understanding of vector addition and subtraction in two dimensions.
I.B.15: Determine the magnitude and the direction of a resultant vector, both graphically and mathematically, given any two or more vectors acting in two dimensions.
I.B.16: Demonstrate an understanding that both magnitude and direction must be stated to specify vector quantities.
I.B.21: Resolve a vector into the effective values of two independent component vectors.
I.B.22: Determine the resultant vector of two or more non-perpendicular vectors acting in two dimensions using the vector component method.
I.C.1: Define the following terms: position, reference point, number line, displacement, equivalent displacements, distance, negative vector.
I.C.7: Determine the displacement of an object on a velocity versus time graph or a position versus time graph.
I.D.1: Define the following terms: speed, velocity, average speed, average velocity, instantaneous speed, instantaneous velocity.
I.D.2: Distinguish among: speed and velocity; velocity, average velocity, and instantaneous velocity; speed, average speed, and instantaneous speed.
I.D.3: Calculate speed, average speed, velocity and average velocity.
I.D.6: Interpret the type of motion depicted by a displacement versus time graph or a position versus time graph.
I.D.9: Analyze position versus time graphs or displacement versus time graphs to determine velocity, average velocity, and instantaneous velocity.
I.D.10: Solve problems relating to speed and velocity.
I.D.12: Determine the slope on a graph and derive the correct units depending on the physical quantities which have been plotted on the graph.
I.E.1: Define the following terms: acceleration, average acceleration, instantaneous acceleration.
I.E.4: Give examples of objects undergoing constant acceleration.
I.E.5: Determine the average velocity of an object graphically and algebraically.
I.E.7: Distinguish between positive and negative acceleration.
I.E.8: Recognize situations which illustrate an acceleration of zero.
I.E.9: Analyze velocity versus time graphs to determine acceleration, average acceleration, and instantaneous acceleration.
I.E.10: Analyze velocity versus time graphs to determine an object's displacement during specified time intervals.
I.E.12: Obtain instantaneous accelerations from a velocity versus time graph and use them to develop an acceleration versus time graph.
I.E.13: Recognize that the equations for uniformly accelerated motion can be derived from first principles.
I.E.14: Solve problems involving acceleration using the equations for uniformly accelerated motion.
I.E.15: Use a velocity versus time graph to develop a displacement versus time graph and an acceleration versus time graph.
I.E.18: Relate an understanding of acceleration to familiar experiences and practical applications.
I.F.1: Define the following terms: inertia, free body diagram, unbalanced force, net force, inertial mass.
I.F.2: Explain what is meant by inertia.
I.F.6: Explain what is meant by an unbalanced force.
I.F.7: Analyze situations involving balanced and unbalanced forces on various objects with the aid of free body diagrams.
I.F.11: Solve problems involving Newton's laws of motion.
I.F.12: Predict the direction of acceleration on an object, given the direction of the unbalanced force.
I.F.13: Predict the direction of the unbalanced force acting on an object, given the direction of the acceleration.
I.F.14: Interpret direct and inverse relationships, as they occur in Newton's second law.
I.F.16: Explain how the inertial mass of an object can be determined.
II.A.1: Define the following terms: applied force, work, energy, positive work, negative work.
II.A.2: Distinguish between positive work and negative work.
II.A.5: Express the correct SI fundamental or derived units for work, energy, and various other types of physical quantities.
II.A.8: Give examples to illustrate how energy is transferred from one object to another when work is done.
II.A.10: Solve problems involving work and energy.
II.B.4: Solve problems involving work, power, and energy.
II.C.3: Show how the fundamental units for kinetic energy or potential energy are related to the derived units (J) for energy.
II.C.4: Solve problems relating to kinetic energy.
II.D.1: Define the following terms: gravitational potential energy, base level, ground level, total mechanical energy.
II.D.2: Distinguish between ground level and an arbitrary base level.
II.D.3: Recognize that as an object is raised vertically, the work done on the object results in an equivalent increase in gravitational potential energy.
II.D.4: Solve problems relating to gravitational potential energy, and to its relationship with kinetic energy and total mechanical energy.
III.B.1.1: Define the following terms: elementary charge, electric circuit, electric current, ammeter, schematic diagram, direct current, alternating current.
III.B.1.10: Draw a schematic diagram of an electric circuit.
III.B.2: Electric Potential Difference
III.B.2.1: Define the following terms: electric field, positive test charge, electric lines of force, chassis ground, electric potential difference.
III.B.2.2: State the convention used to represent electric lines of force in an electric field.
III.B.2.3: Explain what happens to a charge in an electric field.
III.B.2.11: Explain that there is a zero potential difference between a ground and the rest of the circuit.
III.B.2.14: Show the correct method for connecting a voltmeter in an electric circuit.
III.B.2.15: Explain how the terminals of both a voltmeter and an ammeter must be connected in an electric circuit.
III.B.3: Ohm's Law
III.B.3.1: Define the following terms: resistance, conductance, superconductivity, resistivity.
III.B.3.2: Recognize that a relationship exists between the potential difference and the current in an electric circuit.
III.B.3.3: State Ohm's Law.
III.B.3.4: Apply Ohm's Law to problems in electricity.
III.B.3.5: Use the correct units and symbol for resistance.
III.C.2: Series and Parallel Circuits
III.C.2.1: Define the following terms: series circuit, parallel circuit, equivalent resistance.
III.C.2.2: Draw a schematic diagram of a series circuit and a parallel circuit.
III.C.2.4: Determine an equivalent resistance to replace two or more resistors in an electric circuit.
III.C.2.6: Recognize the importance of using Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's Laws in analyzing electric circuits.
III.D.13: Understand overloading of circuits in the home (circuit breakers and fuses).
IV.A.1: Define the following terms: radioactivity, isotopes, alpha particles, beta particles, gamma rays, dosimetry, absorbed dose, dose equivalent, quality factor.
V.A.1: Impulse and Momentum
V.A.1.1: Define the following terms: momentum, impulse.
V.A.1.4: Compare the directions of the momentum, impulse, force, and velocity vectors in a given situation.
V.A.2: The Law of Conservation of Momentum
V.A.2.1: Define the following terms: isolated system, centre of mass.
V.A.2.3: Recognize that momentum is conserved in an isolated system in one or more dimensions.
V.A.2.4: Apply mathematical expressions of the Law of Conservation of Momentum to problem solving.
V.A.2.5: Recognize the significance of the centre of mass of an isolated system.
V.B.3: Give examples of some moving objects which will eventually come to rest due to friction.
V.B.4: Explain that a sufficient force needs to be applied to an object before it will begin to move.
V.B.5: Identify situations in which it is desirable to increase or reduce the amount of friction between surfaces in contact.
V.B.6: Give examples of various ways in which frictional forces can either be increased or decreased.
V.B.7: Explain that the normal force acts to oppose the force of gravity.
V.B.8: Explain that the normal force must be equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to the force of gravity for the object to remain in equilibrium.
V.B.9: Explain that the structure supporting an object must be capable of producing a normal force to withstand the force of gravity acting on the structure by the object, otherwise the structure will undergo failure.
V.B.11: Solve problems involving kinetic or static friction.
V.C.1: Define the following terms: acceleration due to gravity, projectile, firing angle, trajectory, frame of reference, and terminal velocity.
V.C.2: Explain that mass will not substantially influence the motion of objects falling in a vacuum.
V.C.3: State the approximate value of the acceleration due to gravity for an object falling freely near the surface of the Earth.
V.C.4: State that an object dropped from rest experiences a downward acceleration.
V.C.5: Explain that an object thrown vertically upward experiences a downward acceleration.
V.C.6: Explain the effect of air resistance on falling bodies.
V.C.7: Predict the motion that would be experienced by various different types of falling objects.
V.C.8: Devise strategies for changing the terminal velocity of falling objects.
V.C.10: Solve problems involving vertical free fall using equations for uniformly accelerated motion.
V.C.11: Recognize that projectile motion can be analyzed by considering the horizontal and vertical components of the motion separately.
V.C.14: Apply kinematic equations for uniform acceleration to analyze the vertical motion of a projectile.
V.C.15: Solve a variety of problems related to projectile motion.
V.D.1: Define the following terms: centripetal acceleration, centripetal force.
V.D.2: Explain why an object travelling in a circular path at a constant speed undergoes a change in velocity.
V.D.3: Illustrate the direction of the velocity vector, the centripetal acceleration vector, and the centripetal force vector for a moving object at a specific position on a circular path.
V.D.5: Recognize that if an object were suddenly released from its circular path, it would tend to continue to move in the direction of the velocity vector, unless it was acted upon by some external force.
V.D.6: Explain that centripetal acceleration acts in the same direction as the change in velocity.
V.D.7: Explain that centripetal force acts in the same direction as centripetal acceleration.
V.D.8: Use mathematical relationships for centripetal acceleration and centripetal force to solve problems involving circular motion.
V.E.1: Define the following terms: field, force, mass, weight, gravitational field strength.
V.E.2: State the correct SI units and symbols for force, mass, and weight.
V.E.3: Describe the effects that a force can have when acting on an object.
V.E.12: Solve problems relating to gravitational force.
V.E.14: Determine the gravitational force on an object at various distances, expressed in multiples of Earth radii, from the centre of the Earth.
VI.A.1: Define the following terms: density, relative density (specific gravity).
VI.A.2: Recognize that density is a characteristic property of matter.
VI.A.3: State the SI unit for density.
VI.A.4: Solve problems based on an understanding of density.
VI.A.5: Apply concepts of length, mass, area, volume (etc.) to specific tasks.
VI.D.1: Define the following terms: buoyant force, apparent weight.
VI.D.4: Solve problems relating to Archimedes principle.
VII.A.1: Define the following terms: ferromagnetic, soft ferromagnetic, hard ferromagnetic, compass, magnetic field, magnetic lines of force, north- seeking pole, angle of declination, south- seeking pole, angle of magnetic dip.
VII.A.7: State some important properties of magnetic lines of force.
VII.A.10: Investigate important uses of magnets in different technological applications.
VII.B.9: State Ampere's Rule (right-hand rule) for a solenoid.
VII.B.13: Transfer an understanding of electromagnetism to practical applications.
VII.B.14: Solve problems relating to electromagnetism.
VII.C.1: State the motor principle.
VII.C.4: Apply the motor principle to explain important applications such as electric meters or electric motors.
VII.C.5: Identify the main components of an electric motor.
VII.D.1: Define the following terms: induce, induced field, inducing field.
VII.D.2: Identify the conditions which must occur before a current can be induced within a conductor.
VII.D.4: Explain that the interaction between the induced and inducing magnetic fields produces a temporary change in the external magnetic field.
VII.D.5: State Lenz's Law.
VII.D.7: Apply Lenz's Law to investigate electromagnetic induction.
VIII.A.1: Define the following terms: atomic number, isotope, radioisotopes, nuclear binding force, average binding energy, nuclear mass defect, nuclear binding energy, photon.
VIII.A.8: Explain some of the important characteristics of the Bohr model of the atom.
VIII.A.14: Describe some of the electron orbital descriptions provided by quantum theory.
VIII.B.1: Define the following terms: transmutation, alpha decay, beta decay, gamma decay, neutrino, disintegration (decay) series, nuclide charts, background radiation, decay constant, half-life.
VIII.B.4: Explain that in alpha particle decay an element with a lower mass is formed.
VIII.B.7: Recognize that in beta particle decay the beta particle released originated in the nucleus of the atom, not in the electron orbital. A neutron disappears, and in its place a proton and an electron appear.
VIII.B.8: Develop general expressions for alpha and beta decay.
VIII.B.9: Identify alpha, beta, and gamma decay from generalized expressions or nuclear equations.
VIII.B.14: Write equations representing nuclear decay.
VIII.B.15: Balance nuclear equations correctly for atomic number and atomic mass number.
VIII.B.25: Determine the decay constant from the half-life and vice versa.
Correlation last revised: 9/16/2020 | <urn:uuid:95426928-4660-4031-bc23-09f5dc944004> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspStandardCorrelation&id=1588 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400197946.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20200920094130-20200920124130-00730.warc.gz | en | 0.845236 | 3,551 | 3.734375 | 4 |
Refugee Protection Research Guide
This guide on refugee protection includes norms and principles of international law, focusing on refugee, human rights, and humanitarian law (or a combination thereof).
The focus of this research guide is refugee protection. The types of sources outlined below include norms and principles of international law, focusing on refugee, human rights, and humanitarian law (or a combination thereof). When researching in this area, one may also need sources of law (statutes, rules and procedures) from other jurisdictions. If you have questions, please feel free to contact the Wolff Library reference desk at 202-662-4195 or by email: email@example.com. You may also submit your question via this online form.
Locating Norms and Principles of International Law
Often you will need to locate international agreements and documents from various international organizations, such as the UN, the UNHCR, and other IGOs. For help locating treaties and agreements, see the Treaty Research Guide. For help locating documents issued by the UN and UNHCR, see Researching the United Nations.
To locate basic instruments and documents related to refugees specifically, see the following resources:
- Basic Documents on International Migration Law INTL K3275.A35 B37 1997
- Collection of International Instruments and Other Legal Texts Concerning Refugees and Displaced Persons INTL K3230.R45 A265 1995
- Conclusions on the International Protection of Refugees INTL K3230.R45 C66 1992 More recent conclusions can be found on the UNHCR website.
- Goodwin-Gill, Guy. The Refugee in International Law (2nd ed.) INTL KZ6530.G66 1996
- Refworld website has a wealth of information on the agreements and other supporting documentation.
- The International Humanitarian Law Database is available on the ICRC web site.
- UNHCR main site, as well as Country of Origin Information and Protecting Refugees pages.
- University of Minnesota Human Rights Library
Includes human rights instruments as well as refugee and humanitarian law.
- Guide to International Refugee Law Sources on the Web
Locating Relevant Foreign Law
For more in depth assistance with researching foreign and comparative law, see the Researching Foreign and Comparative Law research guide.
- Online version also available.
- Constitutions of the Countries of the World INTL K3157.A2B4. An online version is also available.
- International Constitutional Law
- Constitutional Law Links (WashLaw)
Asylum, Aliens, Citizenship and Nationality Laws
- Foreign Law Guide This online database is the #1 resource for foreign law research. See especially "citizenship and nationality" under the subject headings for each jurisdiction.
- International Immigration and Nationality Law INTL K3275.A48 1993
- Refworld Contains many of the laws in English for countries around the world.
- Gender Asylum Law in Different Countries : Decisions and Guidelines
INTL K3230.R45 G46 1999
- Guild, E. and P. Minderhoud, Security of Residence and Expulsion : Protection of Aliens in Europe INTL KJC6050.S43 2001
- National Implementation of Humanitarian Law (ICRC website)
To locate relevant books and journals in the Library, try title or keyword searching in the online catalog. Below is a list of some relevant titles.
- Benvenisti, Eyal et al., Israel and the Palestinian Refugees INTL K3230.R45 I87 2007
- Eggli, Ann Vibeke, Mass Refugee Influx and the Limits of Public International Law
INTL KZ6530.E38 2002
- Lomba, Sylvie da, The Right to Seek Refugee Status in the European Union
INTL KJE5124.L66 2004
- Ogata, Sadako N., The Turbulent Decade : Confronting the Refugee Crises of the 1990s INTL HV640.3.O45 2005
- Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World's Refugees INTL K3230.R45 S675 Also available on the UNHCR web site.
- Berstein, Ann & Weiner, Myron, eds., Migration and Refugee Policies : An Overview
INTL JV6038.M54 1999
- Spijkerboer, Thomas, Gender and Refugee Status INTL K3230.R45 S66 2000
- Waldman, Lorne, Canadian Immigration & Refugee Law Practice INTL KE4454.W352 2005
Journals & Indexes
Many periodicals (both legal and non-legal) contain articles on human rights issues. Be sure to expand your search for articles beyond Westlaw and Lexis for a more global outlook. Consider using indexes and not just full-text sources for more comprehensive and historical coverage. For other indexes, see the Library's Using Articles for Legal & Non-Legal Research research guide.
- Cambridge University Press Journals
Full text access to journals published by Cambridge University Press. Search by title, abstract, or by full text. You can also limit by journal title or subject. Some relevant subjects besides law include African studies, history, latin american studies and history.
- Oxford University Journal Press Journals
Online access to journals covering legal, regional affairs, social sciences, and other subjects. Search by title, abstract, or by full text. You can also limit by journal title or subject.
- Legal Periodicals and Books (formerly ILP) and Legal Resource Index are two indexes that are more comprehensive than the full text on Westlaw and Lexis. These are not full text, so you can be somewhat general with your search terms.
- PAIS International (Public Affairs Information Service)
Want to find out if you can get electronic access to a journal article through the library? Just search for the title of the journal in Gulliver and look for the computer icon and any call number with the word electronic. You can also check the E-Journal Finder from the library homepage. To use the E-Journal Finder, type in the name of the journal, and see what sources will give you full-text electronic access. If we don't have the journal electronically, you can request the article through interlibrary loan.
- International Journal of Refugee Law INTL K9.N7882 Also available electronically.
- International Journal on Minority and Group Rights INTL K9.N7896 Also available electronically.
- International Review of the Red Cross INTL K9.N886 Also available electronically.
- Journal of Refugee Studies INTL K10.O6944 Also available electronically.
- Refugees INTL KZ6530.U51 Also on the UNHCR website in pdf
- Refugee Survey Quarterly INTL K18.Z385 Reprints many important UNHCR documents and contains literature surveys and current status information on the Refugee Convention. Also available electronically.
- World Refugee Survey INTL HV640.W63
There are many NGOs and institutions which are involved in refugee and related issues (especially human rights). Use the following directories to locate the relevant organizations. See also the Researching Human Rights and IGOs & NGOs research guides for detailed information about researching NGOs and for additional NGO directories.
- International Organizations List from Northwestern University Library
- UIA's International Organizations Web Sites Index Page
- University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, Refugee and Aid Links
- Refugee and Asylum Resources
Links to many Internet sites and includes a good list of available country condition reports.
- Guide to International Refugee Law Resources on the Web is written by a former UNHCR information specialist and offers many links including some full text articles, some national legislation, and case law.
- University of Michigan Law School Refugee Caselaw Site collects and indexes selected court decisions from Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States that interpret the legal definition of "refugee."
- University of Minnesota Human Rights Meta Search Engine allows users to choose up to 15 human rights and refugee sites to search simultaneously.
These electronic databases are available to GULC only.
Readex United Nations Index provides access to current and retrospective (1956-2000) UN documents and publications. Some full-text documents are available.
- Ethnic News Watch
Full-text collection of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. Includes articles, editorials, columns, and reviews which provide a broad diversity of perspectives and viewpoints. Coverage is back at least to 1994.
- Human Rights Internet
This collection is a vast storehouse of international and a good starting point for conducting human rights research. Their databases include information on human rights organizations, bibliographic abstracts of the literature, bodies which fund human rights work, human rights awards, education programs on human rights and children's rights information.
- World News Connection
This database contains the full-text or summaries of non-U.S. newspaper articles, conference proceedings, radio and television broadcasts, periodicals and non-classified technical reports. Also available on Westlaw.
- United Nations Treaty Collection
Includes the UN Treaty Series, Status of Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary General, and recently deposited multilateral treaties.
- Centre for Refugee Studies
- Council of Europe Human Rights Web includes conventions, case law, and other useful information.
- European Council on Refugees and Exiles
- Inter-American Commission on Human Rights includes basic documents, conventions, and ratification information.
- International Committee of the Red Cross
- United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
- United Nations High Commission for Human Rights includes documentation for all seven major human rights treaties.
- U.S. Committee for Refugees includes statistics, Internet resources, and news from the field.
- Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and Protocol
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa
- Cartagena Declaration on Refugees
- Conventions on Statelessness
Many of these sites provide relevant laws, rules and procedures, and other useful information.
- Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
- Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs
- Danish Immigration Service (English page available and includes some legislation)
- New Zealand Immigration Service
- United Kingdom Immigration and Nationality Directorate
Revised March 2007 (aeb)
Content Updated January 2008 (mms)
© Georgetown University Law Library. These guides may be used for educational purposes, as long as proper credit is given. These guides may not be sold. Requests to republish or adapt a guide should be directed to the Head of Reference. Proper credit includes the statement: Written by, or adapted from, Georgetown Law Library (current as of .....). | <urn:uuid:169f248b-074d-4500-912b-981ff106aacd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.law.georgetown.edu/library/research/guides/RefugeeProtection.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00076-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.84673 | 2,248 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Let’s stop talking about bad robots and start talking about what makes a robot good. A good or ethical robot must be carefully designed. Good robot design is about much more than just the physical robot, and at the same time good robot design is about ‘less’. Less means no extra features, and in robotics that includes not adding unnecessary interactions. It may seem like a joke, but humanoids are not always the best robots.
‘Less’ is the closing principle of the “10 laws of design” from world famous industrial designer Dieter Rams, and design thinking has informed the discussion around guidelines for good robot design, as ethicists, philosophers. lawyers, designers and roboticists try to proactively create the best possible robots for the 21st century.
Silicon Valley Robotics has launched a Good Robot Design Council and our “5 Laws of Robotics” are:
Robots should not be designed as weapons.
Robots should comply with existing law, including privacy.
Robots are products: and as such, should be safe, reliable and not misrepresent their capabilities.
Robots are manufactured artifacts: the illusion of emotions and agency should not be used to exploit vulnerable users.
It should be possible to find out who is responsible for any robot.
These have been adapted from the EPSRC 2010 “Principles of Robotics” and we greatly thank all the researchers and practitioners who are informing this ongoing topic.
Silicon Valley is at the epicenter of the emerging service robotics industry, robots that are no longer just factory workers but will be interacting with us in many ways, at home, at work, even on holiday.
In 2015, we produced our first Service Robotics Case Studies featuring robotics companies: Fetch Robotics, Fellow Robots, Adept and Savioke. We will shortly release our second report featuring Catalia Health, Cleverpet, RobotLab and Simbe.
Design guidelines can not only create delightful products but can fill the ethical gap in between standards and laws.
After all, if our robots behave badly, we have only ourselves to blame. | <urn:uuid:2c1680e8-61de-4592-8462-bae951bc2e7d> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://svrobo.org/what-is-good-robot-design/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947473472.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20240221102433-20240221132433-00488.warc.gz | en | 0.942197 | 432 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Pitra Paksha is that period of sixteen days which is dedicated to the worship of ancestors. The phrase - Pitra Paksha itself translates to 'the fortnight of the ancestors'. Every year it falls at the end of the Bhadrapad month and the beginning of the Ashvin month. This year the dates are from September 24 to October 8. Just after the Pitra Paksha, follows the period of nine days of Navratri.
Besides the rituals that are performed as a duty towards one's ancestors, the Pitra Paksha days are also considered for removing the Pitra Dosha. Pitra Dosha is that inauspicious occurrence which is caused when the ancestors of a family are displeased with the members. Reasons for it might be failing to observe the Shradh or not performing the post-death rituals properly.
This Dosha becomes a cause of many problems including health problems of the children in the family or financial problems as well. Removal of this Dosha is necessary to remove the associated problems. Here is what you should do during the Pitra Paksha in order to remove Pitra Dosha. (Based on the Lagna Rashi.) Take a look.
1. Offer water to a Peepal tree in the morning.
2. Light a lamp under a Peepal tree in the evening.
3. Be respectful towards your teachers, Gurus and elders and be of service to them.
1. You need to practice celibacy for these sixteen days.
2. You should recite the Chandi Path.
3. Offering kheer to girls between the age of two and nine years will also prove beneficial.
4. Make donations in the form of food to the poor and the needy, especially the ladies.
1. Making donations will help you. Donate milk and rice in a temple.
2. Providing financial help in the marriage of a poor girl will be beneficial.
3. Finance the medical treatment of a person or buy him medicines.
1. Light a lamp in ghee and offer prayers asking for forgiveness for the mistakes done by you or by your ancestors.
2. Donating milk products will also help.
3. Donating items made of urad daal will also help you in removing Pitra Dosha.
1. Making donations has always proved beneficial for you. Donate food to the needy. You can also donate bed sheets and blankets. Donating sesame seeds is another way.
2. You should offer food to the poor people as well as the Gurus and the priests.
3. Offering services to the blind, especially distributing sweets among them will be highly beneficial.
1. You should not forget to offer prayers to Lord Shiva.
2. Recite the Bhagvad Geeta to remove Pitra Dosha.
3. Mahamrityunjaya Mantra also helps in achieving salvation. You can recite the Laghu Mrityunjaya Mantra to remove Pitra Dosha.
1. Making donations have always helped add to your good Karma also. You should donate sesame seeds.
2. You can also consider iron or objects made of iron such as utensils for donation. Along with these you can donate items made of urad daal (black gram) as well.
3. Sprinkling Gomutra (cow's urine) in all areas of the house might also help in removing Pitra Dosha.
1. Scorpios need to pay service to the saints in order to remove Pitra Dosha.
2. You can also offer food, especially sweet chapatis (those made using flour and jaggery) to the saints and the poor.
3. Performing a Yagna under the supervision of a priest will also be beneficial.
1. Offer water to a Peepal tree and worship it to remove Pitra Dosha.
2. Offering food to the poor and needy continuously during the sixteen days will also help.
1. You should offer prayers to the Rudra form of Lord Shiva not just during Pitra Paksha or for removing Pitra Dosha, but every day.
2. Reciting the Shiva Mahima Stotra will also help.
3. Making donations of bananas along with mishri will be beneficial. Jaggery can also be used in the place of mishri.
1. You can donate oil, urad daal and sesame seeds on Saturdays.
2. However, the most important thing for you to do is to perform Pitra Tarpan under the guidance of a priest.
3. You may also recite the Bhagvad Geeta.
1. Donating clothes to the needy will help you; donate to the poor children in or near a temple if possible.
2. You should recite Ganesha Path along with Bhairav Path or Hanuman Path.
TRENDING ON ONEINDIA
- Nirbhaya Death Anniversary — A Timeline
- New Mahindra Thar Spy Pics Out — Almost As Big As A Toyota Innova
- India vs Australia: 2nd Test; Day 3 — Full Updates
- Banks May Be Closed For Five Days From December 21
- How To Use TRAI DND iOS App To Block Spam Calls
- Exclusive Interview: Emraan Hashmi Said, "I Don't Take My Films Back Home"
- Siliguri Shopstops: A Bucket List For Shopaholics
- 20 Wonderful Benefits Of Red Spinach | <urn:uuid:996ee0f8-2f28-4b54-99fc-c52f5024c613> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | https://www.boldsky.com/astrology/remedies/astrological-remedies-to-remove-pitra-dosha-as-per-lagna-rashi-125848.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376827998.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20181216213120-20181216235120-00599.warc.gz | en | 0.935429 | 1,145 | 2.734375 | 3 |
1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data ''A machineoutputs a 4kHz sine wave signal of amplitude 2 volts peak, plus a 100Hz interference component of amplitude 1 V peak'' Given equation: Vout/Vin = 1/((1+(f0/f^2))^0.5 phase lead = inverse tan (f0/f) f0 = 1/(2*pi*R*C) I'm given a 4 kilo-ohm resistor and need to choose a capacitor to reduce the interference (100 Hz signal) to 0.05 V peak; I need to design a high pass RC circuit. 2. Relevant equations given in the Q 3. The attempt at a solution I'm not sure what f0 and f actually is. Equations I can find which are similar to this have 'critical frequencies' mentioned. | <urn:uuid:9ea50d11-b2d6-481a-bcaf-f0a0395d454d> | CC-MAIN-2017-43 | https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/high-pass-filter.796189/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-43/segments/1508187821189.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20171017125144-20171017145144-00820.warc.gz | en | 0.842025 | 179 | 2.625 | 3 |
Classroom management is when a teacher exhibits complete control over their classroom through a series of strategies and techniques that encourage positive student behaviour. The practice of effective classroom management turns your classroom into the optimum learning environment for students to engage with their studies and work to the best of their ability.
Establishing effective classroom management takes time, and differs from teacher to teacher based on their personality and preferred teaching style, as well as being dependent on subject and age group. There are many different types of classroom management, as well as, just as there are many different approaches to pedagogy.
Due to the fluidity of how classroom management works, there is no set ‘how-to’ on securing complete control of your classroom, however there are guidelines and core components that make some approaches more successful than others.
4. Lesson Plans
Importance of Classroom Management
Classroom management is at the very heart of teaching and ultimately affects your students’ learning outcomes and can have an impact on your wellbeing. Good classroom management means a thriving learning environment and dedicated students, and unfortunately - no matter how dedicated you are as a teacher or how passionate you are about your students and subject, poor classroom management is detrimental to student achievement and development.
Good Classroom Management:
- Creates an environment for students that allows them to learn without distractions
- Reduces poor behaviour and distractions so students are all focused on learning
- Facilitates social and emotional development
- Promotes positive interactions between peers and decreases bullying
- Allows for more time to be focused on teaching and learning
Poor Classroom Management:
- Disruptive and chaotic classrooms which lead to teacher stress and burnout
- Lack of focus on teaching and a hostile environment for learning
- Students are unclear of what’s expected of them
- Overpraising of students for expected behaviours resulting in lowered expectations
- Lack of rules, routine and preparation
Back to top
The Main Types of Classroom Management
As previously stated, there is no ‘how-to’ on effective classroom management, there are however, common denominators which should to be taken into consideration when teachers approach how they want to exert control over their classroom:
Perhaps the most obvious, and arguably most complex, component of classroom management is good pupil behaviour. It’s no secret that the key to an engaged classroom and effective classroom management is well behaved students, but it’s not always easy to achieve this.
Before we look at how to achieve ‘good’ behaviour we must first define what we mean by this, again, this may differ from subject to subject (for example, the desired behaviour of a student in a physical PE class would be starkly different to that of a Maths class), however there are a multiple behaviours which are considered ‘good’ school wide:
- Listening attentively when the teacher or others are speaking
- Raising hands in order to speak
- Staying on task and not distracting others from their work
- Sitting in assigned seats unless otherwise specified
- Using appropriate language
- Coming to class on time and prepared
- Treating others as you wish to be treated
- Being respectful to staff and students
- Keeping your area/desk clean and tidying away after yourself
Depending on your teaching approach, there may be behaviours that haven’t been included in the above list or ones that you’d choose to omit, but regardless of what these positive behaviours are, the most tasking part of this area of classroom management is fostering them. Here are some guidelines on how you can ensure good behaviour in your classroom:
- Whether you’re starting a new school year, are an NQT, or have been assigned a new class, take some time to observe your students before fully implementing your behaviour policy. By doing this you’ll be able to identify the types of poor behaviour the class is inclined to exhibit, and tailor your policy accordingly.
- In order for your students to portray good behaviour, they need to be aware of what is expected of them. Clearly communicate the behaviour policy to your students and outline your rules and expectations, along with rewards and sanctions for following it.
- The crux of students behaving well often comes down to whether or not they respect their teacher. A way in which this can be achieved is through holding yourself accountable alongside your students - when communicating to your class how you expect them to behave, also provide expectations for your own behaviour and how you should act.
- When trying to encourage good behaviour, the way you hold yourself as a teacher is almost as important as the procedures you implement. Remain calm and in control of your emotions even when reprimanding students, and act confident even when you don’t feel it.
- Another way to encourage positive student behaviour is to build meaningful and effective relationships with your students, this helps to build respect between you and your pupils and helps you to understand them better. This includes why they’re misbehaving, what sanctions are most effective and what incentives work.
Back to top
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. It’s a mantra we preach to our students, but it is also one that rings true for us teachers as well. If we walk into a classroom with no clear plan for what’s about to happen, we can almost guarantee the results will be a room full of unruly, uninterested and unengaged students.
Lesson plans and good classroom management are practically intertwined. When you have a carefully constructed lesson, it minimises the opportunity for classroom distractions and, if executed well, keeps students on-task and engaged.
Benefits of lesson plans on classroom management:
- Gives teachers confidence: Being confident in yourself and your material is important for classroom management. Spending time creating a lesson plan that hits all your success criteria, means you can walk into a classroom confident in the lesson you’re about to deliver.
- Keeps students on task: A carefully executed lesson plan will include intricate timings which allow for students to carry out activities and for teachers to deliver information at the right pace - this careful planning means there are no lulls throughout the lesson, so students don’t become distracted and instead remain on task.
- Come to class prepared: The beauty of a lesson plan is that it means before coming to class, you’re aware of the resources you need to execute a successful lesson and can come to class fully prepared. If your lesson includes technology, where possible give it a trial run before the actual lesson and also have a plan B - no matter how good the technology is that we use, there’s always rooms for glitches and it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Back to top
Student interaction has a huge impact on how well behaved your class is and as a result, overall classroom management. Seating plans are one of the best preventative measures a teacher can implement and one of the strongest influences they can have on student outcomes and behaviour.
Where students sit in class is critical to how well they perform and there are a multitude of variables that need to be taken into consideration when creating a seating plan and deciding on the layout of your classroom.
In order to fully understand how best to seat your students, allowing them to sit where they wish for the first couple of lessons will give you the opportunity to observe how they interact with each other, their behaviour and their preferred seat. Collecting this knowledge will then allow you to make informed decisions as to where best to seat your class. Key considerations to take into account when creating a seating plan for effective classroom management:
The way in which you decide to organise your desks is dependent on your individual teaching style and the layout of your classroom, however, there are certain factors that will be consistent across every classroom: all students need to be able to see the board clearly, you too need to be able to direct whole class from the front of the room, and there needs to be enough space for you to freely walk around the classroom and observe students whilst working.
Before organising your classroom, it’s important that you take into consideration any medical notes students may have - for example, those who are visually or hearing-impaired will need a seat closer to the board and front of the class. Students who have medical passes and need to leave the classroom more frequently are better placed close to an exit so they can leave with minimal disruption or attention being brought to them.
If when making seating plans you aren’t aware of students’ medical history, be sure to give them the opportunity to bring these to your attention by addressing the class and asking them to come to you at the end of the lesson if they aren’t happy with their seat.
It’s also worthwhile making notes on your seating plans relating to any medical issues that are brought to your attention, for example if any students have allergies or long term illnesses such as diabetes or epilepsy, this way you’ll be able to provide support if necessary. By taking this information into account you’re helping to create a learning environment in which your students are comfortable, and more likely to engage in the lesson you’re delivering.
Students’ learning requirements and personal data are important factors to take into account when creating your seating plan and help with general positive classroom management.
For example, seating higher and lower achieving students together doesn’t have a detrimental impact on either student, instead just encourages lower ability students through peer-to-peer learning and can encourage collaboration and knowledge consolidation for both.
When seating EAL students, avoid seating them together - if they’re sat with native English speakers they’ll have a better chance at learning and using English. SEN students should have enough space for additional support from Teaching Assistants or next to students who are good examples and will be able to provide a helping hand. Alternatively, they should be placed nearer the front of the class so you’re easily available to help them when needed.
Making learning enjoyable
As much as seating plans help you to manage student behaviour and disruptions, engaging students in their work and making them want to learn is equally as important when managing your classroom and where you seat students has an impact on this.
When creating your seating plan, take into account who in your class gets along - don’t purposefully separate friends who aren’t impeding one another’s learning. Equally, if you find yourself having to split up a talkative pair of students, don’t use one student as a breaker - they’ll end up talking over them and distracting them, instead fully separate the students.
It’s also important to take into account students’ personality, for example if you want a shy student to come out of their shell, don’t place them next to the loudest student in class as they may become overwhelmed. Instead, try seating them next to someone who isn’t afraid to speak up in class, who they get on with, and could help to ease them into contributing more in class.
Sharing your observations and notes with additional teachers can help you to achieve better classroom management throughout the school, and will provide NQTs and supply teachers with valuable nuggets of information, allowing them to come into class one-step ahead of students.
Seating plans are a core pillar of classroom management, seating students in a place that is best suited to them can help to orchestrate successful learning. The points outlined above are key considerations to take into account, however, the first draft of a seating plan rarely works perfectly.
Student habits come to light the more you get to know them, and you’ll learn to understand what works best for specific students, so tweaking or rearranging plans to achieve optimum classroom management is completely normal.
Positive behaviour is fundamental to good classroom management and one of the most effective ways of achieving this is through effective praise management. Praise, when used effectively, can improve not only the behaviour of students but also their attainment.
Praise can be seen as a universally positive tool to enhance classroom management and behaviour; however, it can be used ineffectively, and when done so, has detrimental effects on student behaviour and attainment.
One of the most common misconceptions about praise, is the more the better, and many a teacher can fall into the trap of overpraising students. We’ve outlined some of the negative effects of overpraising below:
- Loses meaning: When we dish out positive feedback in excess we run the risk of praise becoming meaningless to students. If students hear the same compliments and feedback consistently, it’s like white noise to them and becomes expected. Furthermore, it’s difficult to differentiate between generic praise and when they’ve done something that is really exceptional.
- Expectations are lowered: Too much praise can lower the expectations of students. When your class is used to hearing praise for even the slightest of achievements, it lowers the bar for praise and as such, students won’t seek the approval of the teacher.
- Behaviour remains the same: When used effectively, praise helps to reinforce positive behaviours in the classroom. However, it can have quite the opposite effect when used excessively - by praising students consistently the idea of positive reinforcement is lost and behaviour doesn’t improve.
Instead of using praise in excess, it is a much better technique for both classroom management and student progression, to use praise when it is deserved and in a way that makes the student believe that it is meaningful.
When recognising positive behaviour, it’s important that the feedback you provide to your students is descriptive - a generic ‘well done’ or ‘great work’ doesn’t encourage specific actions and doesn’t tell the student exactly what they’re doing right. By being specific with your praise it communicates to students which actions are good, and how they should continue to behave and perform.
Giving praise only when praise is due, is one of the simplest ways to ensure that students believe it is meaningful. Not only this, but providing students with positive feedback when they’ve put in real effort raises the benchmark for the quality you expect - encouraging students to strive for better results.
This includes giving praise to students that is specific to their strengths and performance - by doing this and steering away from generic praise, the student knows that they’re giving their best and excelling in their own right. Providing this sort of praise one-to-one can really make students believe the feedback you are telling them.
In terms of classroom management, arguably the most powerful use of praise is positive reinforcement for good behaviour. When we acknowledge and applaud positive actions as opposed to focusing on students who are acting out or misbehaving, we encourage those types of behaviours and for students follow suit, seeking the same praise and attention from the teacher.
Through the acknowledgement of good behaviour, teachers are providing students with a framework for what good behaviour looks like which students can begin to follow. When providing behaviour-specific praise (BSP), the praise should be specific, positive, verbal and in acknowledgement of positive social or academic actions. This improves student behaviour as it tells students exactly what they are doing right.
The encouragement of good behaviour can have a profound impact on your classroom - when students are well behaved, there are fewer disruptions in class which results in more time left for you to provide direction in class, students with more time to spend on-task and there have been indications that a well-behaved class has increased academic responses.
Successful use of BSP makes for efficient and effective lessons. Not to mention, that use of genuine praise, helps to build students’ confidence and helps them to realise their potential.
As with all aspects of teaching there is no exact guideline on how you can achieve complete classroom management. Teaching is affected by a number of external variables such as the students in your class, available resources and your personality as a teacher.
However, we have identified what we believe to be, the core pillars of classroom management; behaviour, seating, praise & feedback and sufficient planning. If you take these four segments into consideration when deciding how you’re going to approach classroom management you could results such as, an engaged classroom, material that is captivating and curriculum matched, a warm and enjoyable classroom environment, more time allocated to teaching and higher academic results.
Back to top | <urn:uuid:593c3222-d836-48e9-af28-5437ed7d6f7d> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://blog.teamsatchel.com/the-impact-of-effective-classroom-management | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250601615.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20200121044233-20200121073233-00385.warc.gz | en | 0.955563 | 3,394 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Substitutional Doping of Amorph ous Silicon
DOI link for Substitutional Doping of Amorph ous Silicon
Substitutional Doping of Amorph ous Silicon book
The control of the electronic properties of crystalline semiconductors achieved by doping with substitutional impurities was a most significant factor in the development of semiconductor physics and solid state electronics. Several workers in the field have expressed the opinion that amorphous semiconductors may well be insensitive to doping. It is argued that if, for instance, a pentavalent atom is introduced during the deposition of the amorphous germanium (a-Ge) or Silicon (Si) specimen it will be accommodated into the random network structure in such a way that the additional bond is satisfied. The fact that the electrical properties of the amorphous n-type or p-type films can be varied over a wide range in a systematic and reproducible manner could lead to more extensive applications of test materials. A series of experiments was carried out to investigate the possibility of producing p-type a-Si by adding small amounts of diborane to the silane. | <urn:uuid:88ce76fb-c3a7-4774-830c-600d5fcd8290> | CC-MAIN-2021-43 | https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315793245-53/substitutional-doping-amorph-ous-silicon-spear-le-comber | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-43/segments/1634323585449.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20211021230549-20211022020549-00718.warc.gz | en | 0.904405 | 235 | 2.71875 | 3 |
What's Next for Oil Pipeline Under Great Lakes?
By Angelica Morrison
The hot button issue of oil pipelines continues to get a lot of attention. In the Great Lakes there’s a long-running battle over a crude and natural gas line that runs through a waterway connecting Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.
It’s known as Line 5 and it carries about 20 million gallons of oil and natural gas liquids. But because it’s 63-years-old, environmental activists say the line is past its useful life and poses a threat to the lakes.
Enbridge, the Canadian company that operates the pipeline, insists that it's safe.
The U.S. government recently took steps to strengthen protections for the Great Lakes. Late last month, President Obama signed into law the PIPES Act, which was designed to help protect the fresh water source from potential oil catastrophes.
Mike Shriberg, the National Wildlife Federation's regional executive director, says the law is a strong step forward. But he adds, it “isn’t a silver bullet. This does not make the Great Lakes safe from oil spills, but this does provide an additional layers of protection.”
Some of those additional layers include the designation of the Great Lakes as a high consequence area for oil spills. That means additional requirements for inspection and monitoring. It also requires pipeline operators to have a plan for leaks in the winter season.
Still, when it comes to pipelines, environmentalists say their fears aren’t unfounded. Enbridge was responsible for a 2010 spill in the Kalamazoo River that dumped more than 800 thousand gallons of oil.
Shriberg says what's ultimately needed is a complete shutdown of Line 5.
“There are right and wrong places for oil transport in our opinion. The National Wildlife Federation does not oppose the transportation of oil, but it needs to be done in a safe manner," he says.
There’s a lot consider when discussing shutting down the line. Nate Drag of the Alliance for the Great Lakes says rail lines carrying crude pass through the Great Lakes corridor daily, triggering concern about derailments. Vessel transport poses a concern as well, he says.
"We see that as a big threat both on the open waters and then in shipping lanes that go near our drinking water sources," Drag says. "So if you have a vessel moving through Lake Erie, that’s a challenge, but if there’s a spill near either Buffalo, Cleveland or Erie -- any of our drinking water intakes -- how are we going to manage that?”
Enbridge spokesman Ryan Duffy says the company’s top priority is, and always has been, safety.
"If there was ever a problem at all that we saw with Line 5, then we would not be using it," Duffy says. The company constantly monitors the line and performs inspections, he says.
The Great Lakes provide fresh drinking water to more than 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada. Concerns about keeping the lakes safe from spills are shared on both sides of the border.
Mark Mattson of Waterkeeper Ontario says the public outlook needs to change before any real progress can occur.
“We have to start protecting the Great Lakes with much greater, much stronger laws that just say 'no' to certain types of toxic substances that could destroy the economic and the cultural future of the Great Lakes," he says. "So, from our perspective the idea of putting bitumen in pipelines under our drinking water is just a nonstarter. I think the more Great Lakes citizens think about it, the more they’ll agree.”
For now, the issue lies with the state of Michigan. State officials have ordered an independent analysis to look at the overall risks and alternatives to the pipeline. The analysis will cost $3.6 million and Enbridge has agreed to pay for it. | <urn:uuid:f291ccb7-5a6a-41e4-b44a-1a0decd111b2> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | https://www.ideastream.org/news/whats-next-for-oil-pipeline-under-great-lakes | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232262369.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20190527105804-20190527131804-00430.warc.gz | en | 0.959692 | 806 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Egypt does not receive much rainfall except in the winter months. South of Cairo, rainfall averages only around 2 to 5 mm (0.1 to 0.2 in) per year and at intervals of many years. On a very thin strip of the northern coast the rainfall can be as high as 410 mm (16 in), with most of the rainfall between October and March. Snow falls on Sinai's mountains and some of the north coastal cities such as Damietta, Baltim, Sidi Barrany, etc. and rarely in Alexandria, frost is also known in mid-Sinai and mid-Egypt.
Temperatures average between 80 °F (27 °C) and 90 °F (32 °C) in summer, and up to 109 °F (43 °C) on the Red Sea coast. Temperatures average between 55 °F (13 °C) and 70 °F (21 °C) in winter. A steady wind from the northwest helps hold down the temperature near the Mediterranean coast. The Khamaseen is a wind that blows from the south in Egypt in spring, bringing sand and dust, and sometimes raises the temperature in the desert to more than 100 °F (38 °C).
Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about 1,010,000 square kilometers (390,000 sq mi), Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west.
Egypt is one of the most populous countries in Africa and the Middle East. The great majority of its estimated 82 million live near the banks of the Nile River, in an area of about 40,000 square kilometers (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable agricultural land is found. The large areas of the Sahara Desert are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypt's residents live in urban areas, with the majority spread across the densely-populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
Egypt's economy depends mainly on agriculture, media, petroleum exports, and tourism; there are also more than three million Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf and Europe. The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1970 and the resultant Lake Nasser have altered the time-honored place of the Nile River in the agriculture and ecology of Egypt. A rapidly-growing population, limited arable land, and dependence on the Nile all continue to overtax resources and stress the economy.
The government has struggled to prepare the economy for the new millennium through economic reform and massive investments in communications and physical infrastructure. Egypt has been receiving U.S. foreign aid (since 1979, an average of $2.2 billion per year) and is the third-largest recipient of such funds from the United States following the Iraq war. Its main revenues however come from tourism as well as traffic that goes through the Suez Canal.
Egypt has a developed energy market based on coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro power. Substantial coal deposits are in the north-east Sinai, and are mined at the rate of about 600,000 tonnes (590,000 LT/660,000 ST) per year. Oil and gas are produced in the western desert regions, the Gulf of Suez, and the Nile Delta. Egypt has huge reserves of gas, estimated at 1,940 cubic kilometres, and LNG is exported to many countries. | <urn:uuid:1b71ddf4-f5c9-414d-a832-da5d5e808b59> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | http://omc.ap.gov.in/egypt.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463608684.93/warc/CC-MAIN-20170526203511-20170526223511-00306.warc.gz | en | 0.95389 | 727 | 3.28125 | 3 |
How to Install the Java Software Development Kit (JDK)
First of all you need to install JDK (Java development kit) in your system. The Java Software Development Kit (Java SDK or JDK) is an application created by Sun Microsystems to create and modify Java programs. So your next question will be “How to download Java or JDK”. Click here to download Java and install Java Development Kit (JDK) in your system as per given installation guide over there or follow the below mentioned steps.
1) Visit the Java downloads page on Oracle’s website to find the JDK environment download. Scroll down until you find Java SE Latest Version and download JDK.
Note: On 4th June’15, latest version of Java is (JDK) 8u45. This JDK version comes bundled with Java Runtime Environment (JRE) so you do not need to download and install the JRE separately.
2) Select the radio button to “Accept License Agreement” and choose the JDK that corresponds to your OS (Operation System -Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.)
3) The File Download dialog box appears prompting you to Save the download file.
4) Once the downloading is complete, double click the file to begin the installation of JDK.
5) To run the installer, click Run.
6) The installation process starts. Click the Next button to continue the installation.
7) On the next screen you will encounter some options. Just leave these alone and click Next unless you know what you are doing.
8) After the initial installation is done, a pop up asking you where your source java files will be. You can choose to change where you want to keep your folder but it’s best to stick with what you were given first. Click Next to continue.
Note: Make a note of this location, as this location of JDK installation will be required to Set up Java Environment Variable in the next chapter.
9) Let the installation finish.
10) A few brief dialogs confirm the last steps of the installation process; click Close on the last dialog. This will complete Java installation process. | <urn:uuid:6dd5b6b8-82f1-455d-ae33-f2f8b2879e8c> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://toolsqa.com/mobile-automation/appium/install-the-java-development-kit-jdk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698541839.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170901-00036-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.858396 | 452 | 2.515625 | 3 |
LOCATED 29 kilometers east of Livermore, the Laboratory’s Site 300 houses experimental facilities for explosives testing and research. One safety issue affecting operations is the frequent thunderstorms that occur in the Altamont Hills. The staff at Site 300 tracks weather systems in the area, and safety procedures include different levels of lightning alerts, up to and including halting work on explosives and evacuating personnel. Each alert day could reduce the efficiency of the site’s operations. To better protect employees and facilities, a team of electrical engineers has developed a certified protection system that eliminates the need for costly work stoppages and building evacuations.
Lightning is random, unpredictable, and dangerous. It occurs when rapidly rising air in a thunderstorm interacts with rapidly falling air to create widely separated positive and negative charges within a cloud. The electrical current in a flash averages about 25,000 amperes and can go up to 400,000 amperes. Voltages can be hundreds of millions of volts, and the air ionized by a flash can reach nearly 28,000°C, more than four times the temperature on the surface of the Sun.
In the most common type of cloud-to-ground lightning, negative charges emerge from the bottom of a cloud and create ionized channels, called stepped leaders. The leaders’ strong electric field induces streamers of positively charged ions to develop at the tips of grounded pointed objects, such as lightning rods, trees, and blades of grass. The streamers flow upward and join the negatively charged leaders, creating a pathway to the ground. A pulse of current, called a return stroke, travels through the streamer object and up the ionized channel to the charge center within the cloud. Additional negative discharges, called dart leaders, often move down this ionized path, thus forming subsequent return strokes.
The Explosive Connection
According to the National Lightning Safety Institute, some 2,000 ongoing thunderstorms around the world cause about 100 cloud-to-ground strikes each second. Site 300 averages 50 alert days per year based on data from the last 3 years, and each alert may reduce the efficiency of operations. No strikes to Site 300 facilities have been verified, but lightning has struck nearby power poles and lines and the open ground.
Personnel and facility safety is always the top priority in operational planning at Site 300. In analyzing the work procedures during thunderstorm alerts, Cal Dibble, a project manager in Livermore’s Plant Engineering Department, believed the operations could be improved. He proposed to investigate structural improvements at the site and worked with a team of Livermore engineers to develop and certify a lightning protection system.
“In the past, we depended on lightning rods attached to buildings,” says Livermore engineer Mike Ong, who researches electrical safety. When used on a wooden structure, lightning rods will guide a current along the path of least resistance—down the metal pole or wire and into the ground. However, lightning rods are not as effective with typical explosives facilities, which have rebar in the walls and ceiling.
Work involving explosives is of particular concern during lightning storms. The safety limit for currents flowing through some detonators is less than 1 ampere, but peak lightning currents may hit tens of thousands of amperes. Therefore, a critical part of the lightning protection system is to separate explosive components from the current-conducting objects and possible arcs from objects in a room.
To do that, the Livermore engineers want each room, or cell, to act like a Faraday cage and shield the components inside the room from lightning strikes outside. In an ideal world of frictionless surfaces and massless springs, the Faraday cage would be a solid metal shell of perfectly conducting metal. If the outside of this ideal cage were struck by lightning, currents and electric fields would be conducted down the outside surface of the shell to the ground, never reaching the shell’s interior surface. In the real world, buildings or rooms can only approximate a Faraday cage, and measurable fields and currents will leak inside the structure. Faraday cages prevent internal arcs by minimizing the electric fields within a cage.
“A car’s metal frame approximates a Faraday cage,” says Ong, “so being inside a car can be a fairly safe place during a lightning storm, as long as the person inside stays away from the ‘shell’ of the car. At Site 300, we want to design rooms so most of the electric fields from a lightning strike will remain outside the building and not penetrate enough to create an arc of current that can reach an explosive.”
|For the Site 300 experiments, wires connected grounded rods to likely strike points at the top of the building being tested. Milliamperes of current were inductively injected through the strike point and driven through the facility’s ceilings and walls to the ground. The current then traveled through the ground rods and back through the wires.
Re-creating a Bolt from the Blue
To determine each facility’s Faraday-cage effectiveness, Livermore engineer Todd Clancy worked with Dibble and others to measure the conducting capability of each wall in a room. Most buildings at Site 300 are made of concrete reinforced with metal rebar, which provides a pathway for a lightning current to travel to the ground. Moisture absorbed by the concrete also acts as a conductor, drawing current down the wall into ground. The reinforced concrete thus creates a Faraday-cage effect for those buildings.
However, any metal that penetrates a structure’s wall, such as a water pipe or phone line, provides an alternate pathway for the currents and fields to enter a building. To retain the integrity of the Faraday cage, electricians bonded these metallic structures to the building’s rebar, so that all of the conducting material is interconnected.
Clancy then conducted experiments to determine the potential currents and electric fields that a lightning strike might generate inside each cell. For these experiments, wires connected likely strike points at the top of a building to metallic rods driven into the ground around the facility. Milliamperes of current with a frequency range similar to that of lightning were injected inductively through the strike point. A broadband antenna measured the fields at various points along the wall and in the center of the cell. A probe was used to measure the currents injected at likely strike points.
The current was driven through the facility’s ceilings and walls to the ground, and then it traveled through the ground rods and back through the wires. “The voltages produced were generally highest at the ceiling and the top of walls and lowest at the foot of the wall and on the floor,” says Clancy.
Team member Charles Brown ran the experimental data through signal-processing calculations to extrapolate the measured currents to lightning-strike proportions. “First, we used experimental data to compute a wall’s impedance, which relates the wall’s floor-to-ceiling voltage to the injected current,” says Brown. “Then using signal-processing techniques, we extrapolated the wall’s response to that of a current of lightning-strike proportions and computed the necessary standoff distance.”
Even when the standoff distance is doubled to increase the safety margin, it is about 15 centimeters from the wall. Standoff lines are then painted on the floors of each room, and all explosives components must be located inside the painted lines before a building can be certified for lightning protection. “This requirement mitigates the danger of an electrical arc hitting the explosive,” Brown says. “Our team is very conservative in determining standoff distances.”
Certification and Staying Safe
According to Clancy, the team has certified most of the appropriate facilities at Site 300, and personnel are being trained. With this certified protection system, the facilities do not have to shut down under threatening conditions, which will save the Laboratory close to $250,000 a year.
Now, when the thunder rolls, employees at Site 300 can continue their jobs, knowing that they and the explosives inside the buildings are safe from any bolts from the blue.
Key Words: explosives, Faraday cage, hazard management, lightning, signal processing, Site 300, workplace safety.
For further information contact Charles G. Brown (925) 423-4435 (email@example.com).
a printer-friendly version of this article. | <urn:uuid:c97c4b22-9107-4c8f-99f7-349c4391c42a> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | https://str.llnl.gov/str/December05/Brown.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376824601.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20181213080138-20181213101638-00390.warc.gz | en | 0.931559 | 1,726 | 3.546875 | 4 |
The Arts and Crafts movement was a British and American aesthetic movement occurring in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. It enjoyed great success during the period between 1880 and 1910. The Arts and Crafts movement was in large part a reaction to industrialization and move away from european residential styles. Moreover, some even considered it a rejection to building and creating homes using mass production and lack-luster design associated with the industrial revolution. In America, the term "arts and crafts movement" is not commonly use when describing this shift in residential architecture, rather it is more commonly referred to and known as "american craftsman" or "craftsman".
The arts and crafts architectural movement also brought about America's interpretation of European art and crafts ideals in the form of craftsman style furniture and other decorative items associated with the movement. | <urn:uuid:f25d0ed6-f699-4cbf-8be2-a14e2553c0e3> | CC-MAIN-2014-41 | http://www.designevolutions.com/architecturalstyles/artsandcraftshouseplans.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-41/segments/1412037663218.28/warc/CC-MAIN-20140930004103-00103-ip-10-234-18-248.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962113 | 178 | 3.734375 | 4 |
When the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into space in 1957, reactions among political leaders in the United States ran the gamut from outrage to indifference. Governor Averell Harriman of New York, arguing that the American scientific community lacked sufficient financial and other support, remarked, “To me it is shocking that a backward nation, which, as I know, was far behind us at the end of the war, has now caught up and apparently surpassed us in the vital field of outer space and missile development.” On the other hand, Senator Jacob Javits, also of New York, maintained that there had been no race between the United States and Russia to launch a satellite and that to create one in response to the Soviet satellite launch would be “directly contrary to our policy.” Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana kicked it up a notch. “What is at stake in all this is nothing less than survival,” he said, adding that this latest achievement by the Soviet Union “should not be tossed off lightly by the White House,” then occupied by President Dwight Eisenhower. Within a year, the U.S. Congress had passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA). In addition to significantly expanding federal support for higher education, the bill called for improvements in science, math, and foreign language programs at the elementary and secondary level. Ultimately, NDEA served as a major source of educational loans that enabled thousands of Americans to go to college. It was the most comprehensive federal education legislation ever passed--aimed directly at increasing U.S. competitiveness during the Cold War Era.
Like the debate over Sputnik, disagreements over federal education policy are wide-ranging and, in some cases, politically charged. And, although there is universal agreement over the importance of educating the millions of students in our nation’s public schools, there is ample debate over how much the federal government should spend, how that money should be spent, and what the federal government’s role should be in shaping education policy.
Federal Education Legislation
The history of federal education policy reads like a primer on party politics. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty and a growing recognition of the importance of civil rights expanded education legislation at the federal level. In 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Title I of that bill serves as the foundation for programs to fund schools serving a high percentage of low-income students. ESEA also led to the creation of the National Diffusion Network, which promoted and funded substantial education innovations in the nation’s schools from 1975-1995--programs that achieved measurable results. Funding for the National Diffusion Network ended with the introduction of federal budget-cutting initiatives of the 1990s under the Republican Party’s Contract with America. But Title I is still in place, and ESEA has been reauthorized every five years since 1970. As a result, ESEA remains the primary piece of federal legislation governing federal spending on education--and, ultimately, governing federal involvement in education reform. In 2001, ESEA was amended and rebranded as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and signed into law in January 2002 under the Bush administration. On March 13, 2011, the Obama administration released its blueprint for revising the ESEA--and overhauling the education policies embraced in No Child Left Behind.
In addition to legislation promoting policies aimed at improving the education system, federal legislation has also focused on expanding access to education--for the disabled, minorities, women, low-income groups, and immigrants. Today, in addition to ESEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is a major source of federal education funding. IDEA’s predecessor, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, was originally passed in 1975. In addition to ESEA and IDEA, there are scores of programs and initiatives that make federal funds available to improve education for specific groups of students including the Early Learning Challenge Fund, Reading First, and English-language instruction programs. “Throughout history, the United States has broadened educational opportunities for the less fortunate,” writes Jack Jennings, president and chief executive officer of the Center on Education Policy (CEP), in a February 7, 2011 article entitled “Get the Federal Government Out of Education? That Wasn’t the Founding Fathers’ Vision.” The article continues, “After the Civil War, the federal government helped create public schools for freed slaves. After great waves of immigration of the early 20th century, vocational programs provided job training for newcomers. In the 1950s, federal courts moved to expand educational opportunity, and in the 1960s, Congress broadened civil rights, economic opportunities, and improvements in schooling. African-American adults and children benefited as did women and girls who gained from Title IX, which opened up educational and sports opportunities. As a result, the achievement gap narrowed between adolescent white and black students. And the percentage of children with disabilities who attended public school rose from only 20 percent in 1970 to 95 percent in 2007.”
When Ronald Reagan became president in 1981, his administration strongly opposed expanding federal funding and in fact even contemplated abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. From 1981 to 1986, federal funding for education actually decreased as a percentage of total spending from 7.4 to 6.4 percent, but President Reagan did commission a study that significantly influenced education policy--the National Commission on Excellence in Education. With the release of the commission’s findings in 1983, the issue of U.S. competitiveness--like that embodied in the Sputnik debate that had sparked the education legislation of 1958--reared its head again. The 1983 report--A Nation at Risk--raised the specter that the United States would fall behind in a global economy, and countries like Japan could in fact surpass the United States. The report’s opening was dramatic: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.” The 1983 commission reported that
- an estimated 13 percent of all 17-year-olds in the United States could be considered functionally illiterate and that functional illiteracy among minority youth was as high as 40 percent;
- average achievement of high school students on most standardized tests was “lower than 26 years ago when Sputnik was launched”;
- there had been a steady decline in science achievement scores of U.S. 17-year-olds as measured by national assessments of science in 1969, 1973, and 1977.
In response, education reformers proposed the creation of a common core curriculum, academic standards, and strong accountability systems. Building on these efforts and ideas, President George H. W. Bush convened the nation’s governors in September 1989 for the inaugural National Education Summit. The governors, led by then-Governor Bill Clinton, established an ambitious agenda entitled America 2000. By the year 2000
- all children in America would start school ready to learn;
- the high school graduation rate would increase to at least 90 percent;
- American students would leave grades four, eight, and twelve having demonstrated competency in challenging subject matter, including English, mathematics, science, history, and geography. In addition, every school in America would ensure that all students learned to use their minds well, so that they could be prepared for responsible citizenship, further learning, and productive employment in our modern economy;
- U.S. students would be first in the world in science and mathematics achievement;
- every adult American would be literate and would possess the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in a global economy and exercise the rights and responsibilities of citizenship;
- every school in America would be free of drugs and violence and would offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning.
Although the goals of America 2000 were not achieved, the 1989 education summit set the stage for an increasing emphasis on accountability and standards-based education reform, opening the way for the major overhaul of ESEA proposed by President George W. Bush in 2001--No Child Left Behind. The law set standards for educational attainment by individual students, requiring any state that receives federal funding to develop assessment tests that must be administered at the fourth and eighth grade levels. The act did not, however, set a national achievement standard--that was left up to the states. Students were expected to achieve proficiency by 2014 as measured by those state standards. And the debate began.
No Child Left Behind
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was a milestone in federal education reform. As a result of the bill Congress supported huge increases in funding for elementary and secondary education. In addition, by making academic standard setting and assessment testing a condition for receiving federal education dollars, NCLB expanded federal influence in the area of student testing. It also focused on improving results among low-income students. States were required to break down performance data by four student subgroups: economically disadvantaged, minority, English-language learners, and special education students. This approach was seen by many as one of the strongest elements of NCLB. In the past, state accountability systems generally looked at the overall performance of a school, without measuring the performance of subgroups of students. Many education reformers believed such systems hid the achievement gaps that persisted between different groups of students. But the bill also included sanctions against schools that do not make progress against standards set by states under NCLB. Here’s how the New York Times characterizes those sanctions on its website under Times Topics: “Schools that fail to make the required annual progress, whether overall or for subgroups, face a mounting scale of sanctions, from being required to provide tutoring to students in poor-performing schools to the threat of state takeovers or the shutting down of individual schools.”
From its beginnings, discussions over NCLB were plagued by conflict. While everyone seemed to agree with the basic concept of attempting to increase education standards, the bill was controversial for a number of reasons. Some conservatives opposed it as an expansion of the federal government’s role in education. Some education reformers criticized the punitive approach of imposing sanctions on “failing” schools, which, in some cases, are schools that face the greatest challenges and have the fewest resources--particularly those struggling with large low-income populations. Others raised a common criticism of any standardized testing system--that it encourages educators to teach to the test, focusing on skills that will raise test scores instead of taking a broader approach to develop thinking skills and help children learn. Finally, there were those who argued that the goals set out in NCLB were simply too ambitious and unrealistic.
In the end, the results themselves proved to be NCLB’s undoing. On December 17, 2010, the Center on Education Policy released a report on the results of NCLB titled “How Many Schools and Districts Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress? Four Year Trends.” The report found that fully “one-third (33%) of the nation’s schools did not make adequate yearly progress in 2009” and that “this was an increase from 29 percent in 2006, but a decrease from the high point of 35 percent in 2008.” According to the New York Times, “In October 2009, the latest results on the most important nationwide math test--the National Assessment of Educational Progress--showed that student achievement grew faster during the years before the No Child Left Behind law, when states dictated most education policy. Scores increased only marginally for eighth graders and not at all for fourth graders, continuing a sluggish six-year trend of slowing achievement growth since passage of the law.”
In 2011, as the U.S. government embarks on the next ESEA reauthorization and revisions to NCLB, politics will likely play a major role in the outcome. According to ESEA Reauthorization: NCLB and the Blueprint, released by the U.S. Department of Education in March 2011, which compares NLCB with the Obama Administration’s Blueprint for Reform, the new plan would retain some of the key elements of the original NCLB--including the focus on equity, standards-based reform and accountability, and improving academic performance across the student population by continuing to break down test results by student subgroups such as low-income students and English-language learners. But it also focuses on addressing some of the key shortcomings of the older legislation. For example, under NCLB, schools that were not making progress were classified as “failing.” The new plan calls for differentiating schools based on student growth and progress rather than attainment of a specific level of achievement. Instead of sanctions, the program proposes to provide “real rewards for high-poverty schools, districts and states showing real progress, especially in serving underserved populations and closing achievement gaps.” Whereas NCLB focused almost exclusively on assessment tests, the Blueprint calls for the development and use of better assessment--and looking beyond assessment to measures such as attendance, conditions for learning, and course completion to “paint a fuller picture of a school.” Moreover, the Blueprint proposes to promote “meaningful change in persistently low-performing schools,” by allowing more flexibility in setting standards at a local level and making “meaningful investments” in low-income and low-performing schools.
According to a January 15, 2011 Associated Press story entitled “Obama’s Education Focus Faces Big Hurdles,” the Democratic president faces a significant challenge in an environment where Republicans--many of whom would “prefer a series of small measures to a broad rewrite of NCLB, as they are wary of another giant bill”--make up a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. A host of interest groups--including the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Schools Boards--have a stake in the debate. These groups have pressed for much-needed revisions to NCLB, and while they support many of the new plan’s broad principles, they oppose specific elements of President Obama’s Blueprint for Reform. The Center on Education Policy has been tracking education progress against NCLB objectives for the past decade. According to a December 2010 article—“The Policy and Politics of Rewriting the Nation’s Main Education Law”--written by Jack Jennings of CEP, “Renewing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2011 will be particularly challenging. The issues are difficult and the politics tricky. To succeed, the President will have to make ESEA a high-priority issue, Republicans will have to make an exception to their general policy of opposing President Obama, and national education organizations and newer reform groups will have to support compromises. The nation needs a new education law. In the eight years since NCLB was enacted, we have learned a lot, and new issues have arisen. We simply cannot tolerate two years of political deadlock before we again address the country’s need to improve its schools.” The outcome remains uncertain. And, as of April 2011, federal education policy--and the future of America’s schools--is in political limbo.
U.S. Department of Education1
Up-to-date news and information on federal education policies and programs, including ESEA Reauthorization: A Blueprint for Reform, the Obama administration’s plan for revising the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), released on March 13, 2011.
U.S. Department of Education/Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE)2
For a comprehensive list of the federal education programs administered by the OESE.
Center on Education Policy3
Research on public education and federal education programs.
See related article in Issues in Public Education, “How Schools Are Funded.” | <urn:uuid:8f38269a-ff1a-448a-9cd8-7ab0bd3a952d> | CC-MAIN-2015-06 | http://www.realtor.org/articles/federal-education-programs-the-politics-of-reform | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-06/segments/1422115855094.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20150124161055-00210-ip-10-180-212-252.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963434 | 3,367 | 3.046875 | 3 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.