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NIST cybersecurity framework: What it means Regardless of where one lives in the world, we all know that our country’s national infrastructures are very important to our economies and our national defense. And with incidents like the attacks on the gas pipeline industry and the details revealed in the Madiant Report, nowhere has this point been driven home more than in the U.S. You may have heard some buzz in the press about the release of the Cybersecurity Framework Draft from the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). However, you may not know much about its background. And you probably don’t know what it may mean to you as a control or security professional. This should give you a high level overview of the genesis of this document and some handy points of reference. Due to the growing concerns over continued cyber attacks on U.S. national infrastructure – such as the electric grid, water systems, transportation networks, banks/financial institutions, critical manufacturing – President Obama issued Executive Order 13636, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity,” on February 12, 2013. This document is fondly referred to as the “EO.” The EO called for development of a voluntary Cybersecurity Framework to provide a “prioritized, flexible, repeatable, performance-based, and cost-effective approach” for assisting organizations responsible for critical infrastructure services to thus manage cybersecurity risk. Critical infrastructure is defined in the EO as “systems and assets – whether physical or virtual – so vital to the U.S. that the incapacity or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination of those matters.” Example industry sectors and the corresponding Federal oversight agency in the U.S. considered “critical infrastructure” are shown in the table below. Designated Critical Infrastructure Sectors and Sector-Specific Agencies in the U.S. As a follow up to the EO, NIST was assigned responsibility for development of the Framework in collaboration with industry feedback. The Framework is intended to provide guidance to an organization on managing cyber security risk. A key objective of the Framework is to encourage organizations to consider cyber security risk as a priority similar to financial, safety and operational risk, while factoring in larger systemic risks inherent to critical infrastructure. The previous sentence is important – if the framework is accepted, then cyber security risk and considerations need to be included in the day-to-day discussions at your company or organization. As you expand your business, build new facilities, install new equipment and hire new people, cyber security must be part of the management discussion. First, the EO instructed NIST to be the lead in developing the Framework. They did and now you can find the Framework DRAFT document (and supporting information) at the NIST site. So what does the Framework contain? According to the Cybersecurity Framework Overview, the Framework shall: - Include a set of standards, methodologies, procedures, and processes that align policy, business, and technological approaches to address cyber risks. - Shall incorporate voluntary consensus standards and industry best practices to the fullest extent possible. - Shall be consistent with voluntary international standards when such international standards will advance the objectives of this order. - What is the Framework supposed to do? According to the overview documents, the Framework: - Shall provide a prioritized, flexible, repeatable, performance-based, and cost-effective approach, including information security measures and controls, to help owners and operators of critical infrastructure identify, assess, and manage cyber risk. - Shall focus on identifying cross-sector security standards and guidelines applicable to critical infrastructure. - Will also identify areas for improvement that should be addressed through future collaboration with particular sectors and standards-developing organizations. - Should provide guidance that is technology neutral and enables critical infrastructure sectors to benefit from a competitive market for products and services that meet the standards, methodologies procedures and processed developed to address cyber risks. With the guidance above – and with input from industry – the draft of the Framework is intended to provide a common language and mechanism for organizations to: - Describe their current cyber security posture (and a semblance of maturity level) - Describe their target state for cyber security - Identify and prioritize opportunities for cyber security improvement within the context of risk management - Assess progress toward the target state - Foster communications among internal and external stakeholders. A key aspect of the Framework is that it is not intended to replace an organization’s existing business or cyber security risk-management process and cyber security program. Instead, the organization can use its current processes and leverage the Framework to identify areas to improve its cyber security risk management. Also, the Framework can be helpful to a company that does not have a currently existing cyber security program so they can build in key elements raised by the Framework. First of all, take a look at the list of the critical infrastructures listed above. Does your company fall into any of those categories? If not, is your company substantially reliant on any of those key infrastructures for your success and even existence? If the answer to either is YES then I’d suggest you take time to read the draft Framework as it stands and figure out how you can apply it to your current cyber security risk management. Secondly, acquaint your executive management and board nembers with the Framework. Give them a sense of how your company stands today relative to the Framework Implementation Tiers listed. Use this as a means of highlighting your organization’s “Cybersecurity maturity level.” If you aren’t near the top, use it to highlight the resources (people, time and money) you need to raise your game. Thirdly, take a hard look at the Framework and “test drive” it as it stands. When you read the draft Framework, recognize that it is not a “checklist” or a simple “compliance” item to be fulfilled. Nor is it a “how-to” on building a security program (check out ISA/IEC-62443.02.01 for that). Instead the framework provides a set of performance objectives for your cybersecurity risk program to achieve against your prioritized list of key assets. So, consider the framework to be a nationwide score card for security preparedness. Maybe even an international score card. Either way, you don’t want to be at the bottom of the class with the hackers come calling. Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from the Practical SCADA Security blog at Tofino Security. Ernie Hayden, CISSP, CEH, is an executive consultant with Securicon LLC. His email is Ernie.Hayden@securicon.com. Click here to read the full version of the Practical SCADA Security blog.
Reference (How Do I in Visual C++) This page links to reference topics for the Visual C++ language and its libraries. To view other categories of popular tasks covered in Help, see How Do I in Visual C++. C Language Reference Describes the C programming language as implemented in Microsoft C. C++ Language Reference Explains the C++ programming language as implemented in Microsoft C++. C/C++ Preprocessor Reference Explains the preprocessor as it is implemented in Microsoft C/C++. - C Run-Time Libraries Discusses the various .lib files that comprise the C run-time libraries as well as their associated compiler options and preprocessor directives. Standard C++ Library - Standard C++ Library Reference Discusses the ways a C++ program can call on a large number of functions from this conforming implementation of the Standard C++ Library. These functions perform essential services such as input and output and provide efficient implementations of frequently used operations. .NET Framework Programming in Visual Studio Discusses application development with the .NET Framework in Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual J#, or Visual C++. .NET Framework Class Library Reference Introduces the .NET Framework class library, a library of classes, interfaces, and value types that are included in the Microsoft .NET Framework. Documents the Active Template Library (ATL), a set of template-based Visual C++ classes that simplify the programming of Component Object Model (COM) objects. ATL/MFC Shared Classes Documents the classes that are shared between ATL and MFC. - MFC Reference Covers the classes, global functions, global variables, and macros that make up the Microsoft Foundation Class Library. C++ Support Library - C++ Support Library Provides classes that support managed programming in C++.
In total, the bird flies more than 9,500 kilometres across the African continent from the Balearic and Columbretes Islands before reaching the island of Madagascar. Some of the previously-obscure secrets now revealed by the scientists show that these falcons migrate by both day and night, and cross supposed ecological barriers such as the Sahara Desert. Until recently, the scientific community had almost no knowledge of the biology and life strategies of Eleanora's falcon (Falco eleonorae), a migratory bird of prey with low population numbers that nests on marine islands. However, researchers from the Universities of Valencia (UV) and Alicante (UA) tagged 11 individuals (7 adults and 4 chicks) in the colonies of the Balearic Islands between 2007 and 2008 and in the Columbretes Islands in the province of Castellón in 2008, with a further five individuals tagged in 2009. "This represents a landmark in the study of this species, because to date nobody had been able to catch any Eleanora's falcon individuals and tag them using satellite technology anywhere in their colonies in the western Mediterranean", Pascual López, a researcher at the UV and lead author of the study, which has been published recently in the journal Zoological Studies, tells SINC. During the two-month migration undertaken by the falcons in order to winter in Madagascar, the biologists received hundreds of position signals for the adults (throughout 10 countries) and the juveniles (in 14 countries). Their migratory route to return to Europe in the spring once again crosses the African continent, "but they follow a completely different path from that used for the autumn migration, flying for more than 1,500km non-stop over the Indian Ocean from Madagascar to Somalia, a phenomenon that has never before been described in birds of prey of this genus, and which pushes them to the limits of their physiological capacity ", says the researcher. A very special bird Some of the peculiarities of this bird of prey, which migrates over long distances and evolved only recently, include "a reproductive cycle adapted to the migration of other bird species, starting at the end of the summer and not in the spring (the latest among all European birds of prey). This makes it a model organism for looking into questions about its phylogeography and evolution", adds López, who also wants to find out how the Eleonora's falcons manage to navigate during such a long journey. Eleonora's falcon was named after Giudicessa Eleonora de Arborea (1350-1404), a Sardinian princess who fought for Sardinia's independence from the Kingdom of Aragon, and who drafted the first laws in Europe protecting birds of prey. López-López, Pascual; Limiñana, Rubén; Urios, Vicente. "Autumn Migration of Eleonora's Falcon Falco eleonorae Tracked by Satellite Telemetry" Zoological Studies 48(4): 485-491, julio de 2009. SINC \| EurekAlert! New CRISPR-based system targets amplified antibiotic-resistant genes 16.12.2019 \| University of California - San Diego New yeast species discovered in Braunschweig, Germany 13.12.2019 \| Leibniz-Institut DSMZ-Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen GmbH A new paper to be published on 16 December provides a significant new insight into our understanding of uranium biogeochemistry and could help with the UK's... Vaccinia viruses serve as a vaccine against human smallpox and as the basis of new cancer therapies. Two studies now provide fascinating insights into their unusual propagation strategy at the atomic level. For viruses to multiply, they usually need the support of the cells they infect. In many cases, only in their host’s nucleus can they find the machines,... More than one hundred and fifty years have passed since the publication of James Clerk Maxwell's "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" (1865). What would our lives be without this publication? It is difficult to imagine, as this treatise revolutionized our fundamental understanding of electric fields, magnetic fields, and light. The twenty original... In a joint experimental and theoretical work performed at the Heidelberg Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, an international team of physicists detected for the first time an orbital crossing in the highly charged ion Pr⁹⁺. Optical spectra were recorded employing an electron beam ion trap and analysed with the aid of atomic structure calculations. A proposed nHz-wide transition has been identified and its energy was determined with high precision. Theory predicts a very high sensitivity to new physics and extremely low susceptibility to external perturbations for this “clock line” making it a unique candidate for proposed precision studies. Laser spectroscopy of neutral atoms and singly charged ions has reached astonishing precision by merit of a chain of technological advances during the past... The ability to investigate the dynamics of single particle at the nano-scale and femtosecond level remained an unfathomed dream for years. It was not until the dawn of the 21st century that nanotechnology and femtoscience gradually merged together and the first ultrafast microscopy of individual quantum dots (QDs) and molecules was accomplished. Ultrafast microscopy studies entirely rely on detecting nanoparticles or single molecules with luminescence techniques, which require efficient emitters to... 03.12.2019 \| Event News 15.11.2019 \| Event News 15.11.2019 \| Event News 16.12.2019 \| Earth Sciences 16.12.2019 \| Life Sciences 13.12.2019 \| Physics and Astronomy
Perfecting A Required SkillYou can help your student to improve his or her understanding of maneuvering skills by practicing S-turns across a road. This maneuver is a task on the Private Pilot Practical Test Standards (PTS). The maneuver will develop positional awareness, demonstrate corrections required for wind drift, and improve performance for forced landings. This maneuver also is a good preview of the skills required to perform turns around a point - the same skills are involved. The maneuver is comparatively simple. Have your student pick a road that is perpendicular to the direction of the wind. Cross the road downwind at an altitude of between 600 and 1,000 feet above ground level (AGL). When over the road, make the first turn to the left. Note: The student can start the maneuver either way, but the PTS calls for the first turn to be to the left. The initial bank should be about 45 degrees. Caution - if the 45-degree bank is held too long, it can make the first half-circle too small. The student needs to start the turn and begin reducing the bank to achieve a perfect half-circle. If the student begins to lose altitude in the maneuver, make certain he or she does not pull back on the yoke to increase altitude unless the bank angle is reduced first. Cross the road going the opposite direction with the wings parallel to the road. Roll from the left bank to a right bank. That bank starts shallow and increases as the circle progresses. Increasing the bank too early will make the half-circle too small. The student should cross the road again with the wings parallel with the road. That completes the S-turn. The important thing to look for is the student's proper use of wind drift correction so that the same radius half-circle is made on each side of the road. One very important word of caution regarding this maneuver: Make certain your student does clearing turns before entering the S-turns, and emphasize that the student must divide his or her attention between the ground, the instruments, and the horizon in order to see traffic. Looking at the horizon also helps to maintain a constant altitude. Make sure that your student is prepared for a forced landing. The PTS says the road or reference line selected for the maneuver must be within gliding distance of a suitable emergency landing site. At 600 feet agl, the aircraft is just about at the altitude it would be if on base leg for a normal landing. Have the student keep that in mind when selecting the road used for S-turns. By Ken Medley
Original article from Designs for Health The development of the microbiome from infancy to childhood is dependent on numerous factors such as mode of delivery, mode of feeding, fatty acid consumption of breast milk, type or consumption of infant formula, weaning, type of solid food, siblings, pets, hygiene, probiotics, and antibiotics. According to a study published two days ago in Nature, researchers demonstrated the importance of the diet during infancy and its effect on long term gut health. There have been no studies performed on the extensive characterization of the microbiome in early life. In this study, 12,500 stool samples from 903 children from 3 to 46 months of age were analyzed from three European countries (Germany, Sweden and Finland) and three US states (Colorado, Georgia and Washington) as part of The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study. The researchers demonstrated that the gut microbiome goes through 3 distinct phases: a developmental phase (3–14 months), a transitional phase (15–30 months), and a stable phase (31–46 months). As a result, breastfeeding was the most significant factor associated with the microbiome structure. It was associated with higher levels of Bifidobacterium species and the cessation of breast milk resulted in faster maturation of the gut microbiome. Once infants were weaned, there was a rapid turnover in the microbiome and a loss of most of the Bifidobacterium, replaced by bacteria within the Firmicutes phyla. Firmicutes are typical of an adult microbiome and the appearance of these bacteria occurred much quicker than experts expected once breastfeeding was stopped. Probiotic powders should be considered containing Bifidobacterium when breast milk is not available. In addition, the type of birth was significantly associated with the microbiome during the developmental phase. Higher levels of Bacteroides species were seen in infants delivered vaginally. The presence of Bacteroides is associated with increased gut diversity and faster maturation. In a sister paper also published in Nature, researchers analyzed approximately 11,000 stool samples from 783 infants in the TEDDY study to characterize the early gut microbiome in children progressing to type 1 diabetes. They identified that the microbiomes of infants without type 1 diabetes have more genes related to fermentation and short-chain fatty-acid synthesis, which are associated with a protective effect. I have shared a previous study published earlier this year in PLOS Medicine in which researchers demonstrated how diet during pregnancy and infancy contributes to atopic disease in infants. This was one of the largest ever research reviews assessing over 400 studies involving 1.5 million people. Another study in Nature Medicine from September 2016 demonstrated the link between the gut microbiome of 1 month old infants and an increased risk of allergies later in life. There was also a study in March 2015 published in Psychoneuroendocrinology that demonstrated women who experience stress during pregnancy are more likely to have babies with a dysbiosis with a higher incidence of gastrointestinal issues and allergic reactions. Environmental factors including geographical location and exposures from siblings and pets affect differences in the microbiome. The first few years of life are important for the development of the microbiome. Everyone is born with very few microbes and microbial communities assemble in the body through the first few years of life. By Michael Jurgelewicz, DC, DACBN, DCBCN, CNS Source: Christopher J. Stewart, Nadim J. Ajami, Jacqueline L. O’Brien, Diane S. Hutchinson, Daniel P. Smith, Matthew C. Wong, Matthew C. Ross, Richard E. Lloyd, HarshaVardhan Doddapaneni, Ginger A. Metcalf, Donna Muzny, Richard A. Gibbs, Tommi Vatanen, Curtis Huttenhower, Ramnik J. Xavier, Marian Rewers, William Hagopian, Jorma Toppari, Anette-G. Ziegler, Jin-Xiong She, Beena Akolkar, Ake Lernmark, Heikki Hyoty, Kendra Vehik, Jeffrey P. Krischer, Joseph F. Petrosino. Temporal development of the gut microbiome in early childhood from the TEDDY study. Nature, 2018; 562 (7728): 583 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0617-x
This Saturday, NASA’s InSight spacecraft will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, taking us somewhere we’ve never been: the Red Planet’s deep interior. As Shannon Stirone reports for Popular Science, researchers have actually sent more than 21 different spacecraft to study the planet. But this mission is the first time we’re exploring deep inside Mars’ core — something we still know relatively little about. The launch time is planned for 7:05 AM EST Saturday, and you can catch the show on NASA’s livestream. But if weather or mechanical issues intervene, the team will keep trying. The launch period is open till June 8. Until then, here’s a few things you should know about the InSight mission to Mars: Why Are We Studying Mars' Interior? “We know a lot about the surface of Mars, we know a lot about its atmosphere and even about its ionosphere,” says Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s principal investigator, in a NASA video. “But we don’t know very much about what goes on a mile below the surface, much less 2,000 miles below the surface.” The goal of InSight is to fill that knowledge gap, helping NASA map out the deep structure of Mars. By better understanding Mars’ interior, scientists hope to advance our understanding of how rocky planets, like both Mars and Earth, evolve and develop overtime, reports Stirone. While this mission is not directly focused on the search for life, as past missions have been, some of the findings about Mars’ mysterious core could hold clues to ancient conditions that may have supported life, The New York Times’ Kenneth Chang reports. It could also help provide answers the question: Why is modern Earth so habitable but the Red Planet is not? Where Will InSight Land? InSight is planned to touch down November 26 on Mars’ Elysium Planitia—a super-flat expanse. “We picked something as close to a 100 kilometer-long parking lot as we could find anywhere,” Banerdt tells Chang. The idea is that the flatter the region, the easier it will be for InSight to deploy its various instruments. What Can This Nifty Lander Do? InSight will spend its first two months placing instruments on the surface to investigate Mars’ interior. “I like to say we’re playing the claw game on Mars with no joystick,” says Jamie Singer, InSight instrumental deployment lead. According to NASA, these instruments include the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Probe, which will drill up to 16 feet into the ground to measure the heat emanating from deep inside the planet. A tool known as Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment, or RISE is a radio science experiment that will measure wobbles as the planet rotates. RISE will help glean information about the composition and state of Mars’ core. The lander will also deploy a super sensitive seismometer that can monitor tiny tremors of the planet’s surface or “marsquakes.” This device, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS), is so sensitive it can measure “the movement of the ground by the distance of single atoms,” writes Stirone. What Are “Marsquakes”? Similar to earthquakes, marsquakes are tremors on the Red Planet. Though such quakes have not yet been detected, scientists are nearly positive they occur. As the planet cools and shrinks, it’s believed that the crust also cracks, setting off marsquakes of 6- or 7-magnitude. Similar activity has already been recorded on the moon. Meteoroid strikes may play a role in additional quakes, writes Katarina Miljkovic, planetary scientist at Curtin University and a collaborator to the InSight mission, for The Conversation. Such quakes can be used to image the interior of the planet, notes Milijkovic, since such waves " travel at different speeds when passing through different materials." In the two years of Insight’s primary mission, the team expects to observe at least 10 to 12 marsquakes, Chang reports. Have Scientists Ever Attempted to Measure “Marsquakes”? In the 1970s, NASA’s Viking 2 carried the only seismometer ever to have worked on Mars. Because it wasn’t placed directly on the ground, wind often obscured the measurements. It only measured one rumble that may have been a quake, but even that “was ambiguous and not particularly useful,” Banerdt tells Chang. Russia’s 1996 mission to Mars also attempted to measure seismic activity, but that mission failed, Chang reports. Perhaps InSight will give scientists their first clues to the tremors of this far-flung world.
Presented at the International Online Meeting, London, Dec. 5-7, 1995: Keywords: World Wide Web, WWW, Internet, humanities scholarship, on-line publishing, digitizing images, primary sources, electronic text centers Abstract: Humanities scholarship is alive and well on the Internet and in many cases is pushing the technology beyond that which is needed for the simple electronic billboard approach taken by many commercial sites on the World Wide Web. This discussion looks at some of the resources to be found on the Internet, both those created by large organizations and those developed by individuals. The Web provides an exciting environment that is eagerly being enlarged, strengthened and challenged by humanities scholars. 1. Humanities Before the Web A growing number of real-world humanities scholars would scoff at the popular stereotype of the tweedy professor, surrounded by dusty tomes, who doesn't know a laptop computer from a walkman. Today's scholar is more likely to point with pride to the growing wealth of digital manuscripts, many of them in imaged formats, and then complain that computing has lagged behind the needs of the Arts and Humanities. Even before the World Wide Web and its associated browsers made access to Internet-based multimedia projects easy, humanities scholars have used the Internet to further their teaching and research. The earliest on-line resources of electronic mail and discussion groups continue to be the lively stomping grounds of scholars. In the area of History alone the H-Net lists, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and hosted by the University of Illinois Chicago and Michigan State University, sponsors fifty-seven electronic discussion groups on subjects ranging from agricultural history to the design of historical databases. Like most lists, these groups allow scholars to discuss new ideas, share methodologies and teaching approaches, publish book reviews, job announcements, syllabi, course materials, and other materials. They also serve as a forum for asking and answering questions for colleagues and students. Early Internet projects involved putting public domain text corpora into digital format. The Online Book Initiative, the Gutenberg Project and the Wiretap site are just a few of the many efforts to make electronic versions of texts freely available to the Internet community. Electronic text centers generally housed in university libraries, bring these and CD-ROM based texts to their local communities as well. In addition, centers like the Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia are working on ways to make Internet-available texts as robust as CD-ROM texts by adding images and searching capabilities. Internet versions of that mainstay of academic life, the scholarly journal, are slowly being accepted. Many of these are an outgrowth, augmentation, or derivation of paper journals. For example, a recent electronic journal on p aremiology, or the study of proverbs, De Proverbio, began with many articles originally published in Proverbium, a paper journal. Other journals, particularly those exploring the possibilities of hypertext literature, eschew the paper world and thrive in electronic form only. 2. Humanities Without the Web The vision many scholars have of the Web is that of a giant repository of all the world's knowledge. This perennial quest to capture and store information has been pursued throughout time from the creation of the library of Alexandria to Ted Nelson's early incarnations of Xanadu. In this vision we wish to orgiastically consume information, glutting ourselves on more and more detail. But it is a vision that quickly pales in the light of reality. There is too much information. There has always been too much information, hence the development of indexes, tables of contents, reference works, finding aids, library catalogs, and on-line search tools. We have spent years developing ways to cope with this information in the paper environment, often by simply ignoring large sections of it. In the traditional library model the answer to too much information is to have a reasonable selection of materials available at each discrete geographical location. Given the growing wealth of material, not to mention the wealth it takes to maintain it, it is not surprising that the concept of “reasonable selection” is breaking down. The impulse to store more information more cheaply via such media as CD ROM does not solve the problem of access as a recent scholar pointed out when he sent the following plea to an on-line discussion group: "Is there any way to use the internet to search the Chadwick-Healy data bases in English poetry and drama? The nearest school with both sets is ten hours away."(1) The answer, of course, was no. Moreover, individual libraries have always had items that were singular or rare, the Special Collections. For the scholar, travel has often been the only option for viewing these unique documents. 3. Humanities on the Web The Web allows us to rethink this model. It is here that the most exciting possibilities for scholars are to be found. This is not simply due to the ease with which digital documents, including graphics, sound and video can be created and stored. The Web allows for self-publishing, for timely dissemination of new materials and ideas, and for flexibility. It encourages synthesis and linking rather than duplication and rehashing. It allows for a depth, a richness not duplicated in other media or other models. One year ago the number of humanities Web sites could be covered fairly comprehensively in a paper of this length. Today that is no longer possible. Indeed there are a substantial number of Web pages whose sole purpose is to collect lists of humanities-related sites and projects. (Some of these are provided at the end of this paper.) However, a brief look at a few sites shows the diversity and broad range possible in this networked environment. It seems appropriate to begin with one of the earliest, the Vatican Exhibit: Rome Reborn. Found on-line at EXPO, the project originally presented information from the Library of Congress. EXPO now contains six large exhibits. The Vatican Exhibit grew out of a physical exhibit on display from January 8, 1993 through April 30, 1993. It presented some 200 manuscripts, books, and maps from the Vatican Library, particularly those focusing on humanists and their studies. According to the exhibitors, it "presents the untold story of the Vatican Library as the intellectual driving force behind the emergence of Rome as a political and scholarly superpower during the Renaissance." Although the physical exhibit has long since left Washington, D.C., the on-line exhibit is still visited by thousands of people. This particular exhibit bridged the old and the new by offering a large full color hardcover exhibit catalog as well. Also, resident at EXPO are 1492: An Ongoing Voyage, an exhibit titled Scrolls from the Dead Sea: An Exhibition of Scrolls and Archeological Artifacts from the Collections of the Israel Antiquities Authority as well as a collection of materials from the Soviet Archives. More recent additions, and those whose materials are not drawn directly from the Library of Congress, are the Exhibition of Fossil Life from the University of California, Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology and the exhibit The "Palace" of Diocletian at Split , an architectural history exhibit focusing on the city of Spalato founded by the emperor Diocletian. As might be expected by its title, The Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, or IATH, at the University of Virginia, contains several compelling Web projects. The Valley of the Shadow: Living the Civil War in Pennsylvania and Virginia looks at two communities in the Shennandoah Valley, each on either side of the Mason Dixon line. Conceived by Professor Edward Ayers of the History department the project draws on population and agricultural censuses, rosters of both the Union and Confederate soldiers, official records, maps and diaries. It uses a hypertextual narrative form with connection to the source materials because it intends to "make available not merely information about the past but also to make palpable the complexity of the past, its interconnectedness, its contingency and multiplicity." IATH is also home to Jerome McGann's Rossetti Archive. McGann's goal is to create a "structured database holding digitized images of Rossetti's works in their original documentary forms." To do so he is not relying solely on the Web but has developed tools using SGML applications. This is partly due to the search limitations of the current incarnation of HTML and partly due to copyright considerations for the original images. However, he has developed a Web prototy pe to experiment with. Dscriptorium is another image collection "devoted to collecting, storing and distributing digital images of Medieval manuscripts." Other image collections, like those from the iconography collection of the Bodleian library or the Papyrus Archive at Duke University , are also being brought online. Several projects involve a combination of Web and other digital methods. The Electronic Beowulf, for example, is creating an electronic archive of digitized images from manuscripts of the epic poem. At the moment the Web serves as a vehicle for sharing information about the project as well as some samples. Projects like these have inspired many others on the Web including the Ovid Project. The University of Vermont, houses a broad collection of Ovid materials from which the multimedia Ovid Project will draw its content as it evolves. Today it includes electronically imaged engravings from a rare 17th century German edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses by artist Johann Wilhelm Baur. This collection of 150 engravings has been photographed, stored on PhotoCD and is currently being brought on-line. Ultimately, other rare illustrated editions from UVM's collection will be made available on this Web site and with them links to related resources. This digitization and digital dissemination of primary resources provides an advantage to scholarship beyond that of simply making large image collections accessible. The creators of the Blake Archive, in making available the writings and graphical works of William Blake express this advantage as "a hope that the archive will set a new standard of accessibility to a vast collection of visual materials that are central to an adequate understanding of romantic art and literature. Difficulty of access has handicapped and distorted even the best scholarly efforts." Thus, the added dimension provided by an on-line development of these works provides the scholar with a richer, more complete, experience not possible through other reproduction media. The Web also brings the ability to share newly discovered or rediscovered works to a broad and geographically disparate audience quickly. The discovery of a series of previously unknown prehistoric cave paintings in the south of France is one such example. Discovered only in late December 1994, the first images were available on the Web in January 1995. From there they can be seen by thousands of visitors immediately without physical incursion and damage to this rare resource, leaving the original site intact so that it can be studied in its entirety. However, one of the most exciting possibilities for scholars is the fact that The Web is indeed a web, that is, an environment that encourages collaboration. Materials can be shared and created jointly, without concern for geographic limitations. An example of this kind o collaboration can be found at George Welling's From Revolution to Reconstruction site. The objective of this project focusing on United States history "is to provide a starting point, to which scholars and students from all over the world could add in an attempt at collective authoring. Initially begun as a student assignment at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, the project now invites contributions from history students and professionals alike. Another dimension of this multifaceted Web (though some might argue that this is the Web's most annoying feature) is the fact that it is not limited to major projects but can be a publishing vehicle for all. Smaller projects with a limited focus, even individual portfolios, for example, are just as much a part of the Web as massive undertakings. Hope Hall for the Humanities, whimsically named by the author who never expects to endow a brick and mortar building, contains several such projects. Historic barns in a northern Vermont town and images, texts and commentary on Godey's Lady's Book, a popular mid nineteenth century magazine are represented along with papers and related materials. This type of portfolio allows the scholar a way to not only collect their work but to share it easily. 4. Whither the Web? This ability for all participants to self publish, is, however, one of the most controversial. Traditional publishers see their roles threatened, maintaining that unlimited publishing means including the worthless with the worthwhile. Scholars wonder how the peer review process, a process which is supposed to add validity to published items, can be maintained in this environment. Libraries and other collectors of archives wonder how Web projects, as ephemeral as they can be, will survive. The Web, in its present incarnation, is not yet a tool that can be applied to all scholarly endeavors. How it can be improved to meet the needs of scholars, how it will adjust to the realities of the scholarly world and how it will survive (even outlive?) Academia are the topics of many conferences and articles. However, most agree that its potential is enormous. Its capacity for providing an environment that encourages a multiplicity of possibilities is central to the Web vision. It can be an exhibit space for images, a collection of related resources, links to other Web sites, a focal point for a small course or for a broad discourse, a portfolio for a scholar's work or a vast museum-like space, all at once. When I first broached the subject of the Ovid project to the University of Vermont's Director of Computing, he enthusiastically gave the approval for a limited amount of funds to get the project off the ground. When he saw the first set of images he conjectured that digitizing these sorts of holdings, of which the library has many, could become a massive project—one that might be, he suggested wryly, more appropriately funded by the library. When I suggested the project to a professor of Classics, who uses the Ovid materials regularly in his classes, he immediately asked if we could include all the slides he has been using for his course along with his syllabi and related documents. (The answer, of course, was yes, and these materials will be added to the Ovid Project site as they become available.) An art professor, seeing the images, has encouraged her students to use portions of them in their computer art works. These three responses, one envisioning expanding possibilities, the other suggesting ways to utilize the project as a whole, and the third focusing on drawing from specific portions of the project images to create new works, show not only how Web projects can be adapted to many uses but how they also act as sparks to generate new ideas and new ways of looking at resources. Combined with the communications capabilities that the Internet makes possible, this potential has generated the kind of excitement among humanities scholars that some see as equalling that ascribed to the era that gave birth to the humanists, the Renaissance. 1) From the archives of FICINO@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU, an electronic discussion group devoted to exploring the Renaissance (back) voice: (802) 656-1176 fax: (802) 656-8148 Selected Web Humanities Resources 18th Century Resources on the Net: \|Guide to resources\| \|Textual database of French texts. Some areas available only to consortium members.\| Association for History and Computing: \|Web and other resources for computing historians\| \|A full-text electronic library\| \|Collection of humanities related Web sites\| Egyptology Resources, Univ. of Cambridge: \|A collection of references to Web and other Internet resources\| \|Rome Reborn, 1492, Dead Sea Scrolls, Soviet Archives and other exhibits\| From Revolution to Reconstruction: \|Collaborative project in United States History, from George Welling, University of Groningen, The Netherlands\| Humanities Computing at Oxford University Computing Services: \|Guides to their projects and related humanities resources\| Institute for Advanced Technologies in the Humanities: \|Web-based and other humanities computing projects\| \|Hypertext versions of her works, related documents and links\| Library of Congress: \|Exhibits, links to records, Thomas: congressional records database, etc.\| Multiple Author's and E-Text Centers: \|Linked list of humanities projects, e-text centers\| \|Medieval Studies resources and links\| The World of the Vikings: \|Resources, museums, educational materials about Vikings including a link to the Electronic Beowulf project\| Voice of the Shuttle: \|Alan Liu's collection of humanities resources\| WWW Virtual Library: Humanities: \|Large index of resources maintained by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Göteborg University\|
Wednesday, February 10, 2010 AS SEEN IN: "Equal Justice Under Law" AS PLAYED BY: John Marshall (September 24, 1755 – July 6, 1835) was an American statesman and jurist who shaped American constitutional law and made the Supreme Court a center of power. Marshall was Chief Justice of the United States, serving from February 4, 1801, until his death in 1835. He served in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1799, to June 7, 1800, and, under President John Adams, was Secretary of State from June 6, 1800, to March 4, 1801. Marshall was from the Commonwealth of Virginia and a leader of the Federalist Party. The longest serving Chief Justice in Supreme Court history, Marshall dominated the Court for over three decades (a term outliving his own Federalist Party) and played a significant role in the development of the American legal system. Most notably, he established that the courts are entitled to exercise judicial review, the power to strike down laws that violate the Constitution. Thus, Marshall has been credited with cementing the position of the judiciary as an independent and influential branch of government. Furthermore, Marshall made several important decisions relating to federalism, shaping the balance of power between the federal government and the states during the early years of the republic. In particular, he repeatedly confirmed the supremacy of federal law over state law and supported an expansive reading of the enumerated powers.
Imagine (or maybe you don’t have to imagine!) that you are an able-bodied adult male. If you were asked to keep a hold back a parked car from rolling down a gently sloped hill, you could probably do it, right? Now imagine that you are in the direct path of a car coming down the same hill at 40 m.p.h. Would you be able to survive such an impact? Of course not. Why should you expect a tiny snow guard to stop a heavy, moving ice and snow avalanche anymore than you could expect yourself to stop a fast moving car? This scenario might seem a little comical, but in reality, it isn’t funny. Lives are lost each year due snow and ice avalanching off a roof and landing on someone below. Keeping the snow and ice on a roof isn’t accomplished by placing one or two rows of snow guards at the edge of the roof. How do roof avalanches start? Roof snow melts into water which then runs underneath the build up of snow on the surface of the roofing product. If there is enough water flow, the snow and ice release from the friction of the roofing product and an avalanche begins. If snow guards are placed throughout the roof area, protruding up three or more inches from the roofing product, then when the snow melts into ice, the field of snow and ice will freeze in place around the projections and prevent the ice from sliding off in a sheet. If the snow guards aren’t spaced close enough and spread throughout the roof, you will get an avalanche of heavy snow and ice. Roof snow guards frequently fail because critical factors are not taken into consideration. - The snow load. How much snow will fall on this roof? How much does it weigh? This data is available online and from the building department. - The roof’s slope. A steeper roof will need more snow retention products. - The type of roofing material. Each type has its own unique factors as to how the snow slips off. Each type will need a different type of snow guard - The method of fastening. Are nails, screws or adhesives used? Each type can pull out at varying rates. Plastic snow guards are generally attached with adhesive which must be attached to a clean surface under optimum temperatures. - The sheathing type. This is important because fasteners pull out at varying rates based on the type and thickness. Many snow guards fail because fasteners and sheathing type/thickness are not considered. Snow guards should be designed for the roof type (asphalt, metal, shake, tile) and should be attached securely and effectively for the sheathing type. The effectiveness of a snow retention system relies on each of these unique factors. Factoring in each item results in snow guards arranged throughout the roof area in an exact layout which, when working together as a system, prevent uneven loads and eventual avalanches. Other reasons for snow guard failure - Force loads are too high for the snow guard and its attachment system. When snow gets moving, it’s like a speeding car going downhill. A couple of snow guards haphazardly placed with little consideration to attachment pull-out rate or sheathing thickness or slope and snow load, just like one man, can’t stop it. - Weight of the snow and ice in a given space. It’s important to place the snow guards all over the roof based on how much weight is expected. As snow melts and ice freezes around the part of the snow guard that sticks up from the roof (at least 3 inches is best), the whole field of snow/ice is anchored in place on the roof and less likely to slide off, but only if this layout is specifically engineered based on the specific factors. In conclusion, the right layout and installation of snow guards work against the force of heavy snow. Too few snow guards will fail unless you have an engineered layout with the correct calculated number of snow guards than you can stop avalanching. If you can’t remember all the details, just think about how hard it would be for one man to hold back a car and how it’s just as impossible for a couple of snow guards attached randomly to hold back an avalanche of snow. Then call us and we’ll do the calculating and engineering for you!
Types of Social Work Degrees There are a few different types of social work degrees. To be a social worker, you need to hold a degree in social work from an accredited college or university program. The undergraduate degree is the bachelor of social work (BSW). Graduate degrees include the master of social work (MSW), and a doctorate (DSW) or PhD in Social Work. Even if you have a bachelor's degree in another field of study, you can still pursue a graduate degree in social work. Social work education is unique in a number of ways. The social work profession has its own body of knowledge, values, and code of ethics. While graduates of other human service fields may perform functions that social workers do, their educational backgrounds are distinctly different from that of social workers. One unique feature of social work education is field placement. In addition to classroom study, all social work students have field experiences, that provide them an opportunity to apply their knowledge and skills in a real world setting. A field placement can be any work setting in which social workers practice. Some examples include mental health clinics, child and family service agencies, and policy organizations. Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) and Master of Social Work (MSW) With the bachelor of social work (BSW), you will be qualified for entry level positions in areas such as mental heath, aging services, or residential treatment. You will need an MSW to become a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). With this credential, you can provide one-on-one psychotherapy or deliver advanced clinical services. If you want to hold a program management or supervisory position in social work, or work in politics on social justice matters, an MSW is a degree you should earn. Doctorate (DSW) or PhD in Social Work With a doctorate in social work (DSW), or a PhD in Social Work, you will pursue advanced training in research, supervision, and policy analysis. Social workers with doctoral degrees are qualified to teach at the university level and to hold high-level program or systems management positions. It's important that you get your social work degree from a college or university program accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). There are more than 600 accredited schools of social work in the United States. These programs have met standards designed by social work educators and practitioners, to ensure that students are adequately prepared for professional practice. Your chances of being licensed or hired as a social worker are greatly enhanced by an accredited social work degree.
Nanosponges are an innovative drug delivery system that has recently emerged as a result of rapid advances in nanotechnology and the need for precise, targeted drug delivery. They are very small, microscopic, sponge-like particles, about the size of a virus, that consist of a number of cavities that can be filled with medications. Sebastian Kaulitzki \| Shutterstock Nanosponges can be used to “soak up” pathogens and toxins, such as snake venom, to quickly eliminate the harmful substance from the bloodstream. Nanosponges consist of a polymeric nanoparticle core surrounded by red blood cell membranes. Materials used in the preparation of nanosponges include polymers, co-polymers, and cross-linkers. The nanomaterial (polyester) forms a three-dimensional network that is biodegradable, which allows it to be degraded gradually in the body and release the drug slowly. The core allows for toxin absorption and can be loaded with a number of drugs, including enzymes, proteins, vaccines, and antibodies. A significant advantage is that the substances that can be carried through the body include both hydrophilic and lipophilic drugs, with nanosponges improving the solubility, stability, and bioavailability of medications. How are nanosponges used in drug delivery? Nanosponges can be delivered as topical treatment (in the form of hydro gels), orally, or intravenously. A number of different methods can be used for loading the drug onto the nanosponge. Because nanosponges have an open, mesh-like structure, an entrapping agent must be added to ensure that the active substance is released slowly from the core as it reaches the desired target destination in the body. The two main therapeutic uses for nanosponges are targeted delivery to ensure that the drug reaches the destination cells in the body (e.g., cancer cells) and improved drug delivery to allow for improved physical properties of medications (e.g., solubility). Advantages of nanosponges use are reduced toxicity, precise targeting, and improved drug solubility and stability. Nanosponges are non-toxic and stable at higher temperatures compared to other nanoparticles. High efficacy and fast delivery is achieved without irritation. Because nanosponges bind particular cells and slowly release their drugs, administration of medications is predictable and modifiable. There is potential of scaling up nanosponges use for commercial production as well, although cost effectiveness is still a concern. One limitation in nanosponge use is the size limitation for drugs, as only small molecules can be loaded into the microscopic pores of nanosponges (molecular weight, 100 to 400 kDa). Furthermore, dose dumping may occur as an unwanted side effect during therapy. How can nanosponges be used in toxin absorption? Another potential use for nanosponges is in toxin absorption. A number of viral and bacterial infections can be treated by targeting the toxins released into the body by pathogens. Pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Bacillus anthracis, and Streptococcus pneumoniae create toxins that may be targeted by nanosponges treatment. Nanosponges can aid in counteracting the toxicity by binding and neutralizing harmful substances. As such, they could be used as adjuvant therapy alongside antibiotics or anti-viral drugs, or as an alternative in the treatment of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. The latter is of particular significance, as antibiotic resistance continue to be an important problem. Another advantage is the lack of harmful effects on naturally occurring bacterial flora of the gut. Pathogens synthesize and release a number of virulence factors that allow them to occupy the host’s body ad induce cellular damage. These virulence factors include pore forming toxins (PFTs) that affect cell membrane integrity. By capturing and neutralising the PFTs released by bacterial cells, nanosponges can aid in the treatment without the risk of bacteria developing further drug resistance. - Hu, Che-Ming & H Fang, Ronnie & Copp, Jonathan & Luk, Brian & Zhang, Liangfang. (2013). A biomimetic nanosponge that absorbs pore-forming toxins. Nature nanotechnology. 8. - Singh D, Soni GC, Prajapati SK. Recent advances in nanosponges as drug delivery system: a review. Eur J Pharm Med Res 2016;3:364-71. - Shringirishi M, Prajapati SK, Mahor A. Nanosponges: a potential nanocarrier for novel drug delivery-a review. Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Disease 2014;4:S519-26. - Ahmed, Rana & Patil, Gunjan & Zaheer, Zahid. (2012). Nanosponges – A completely new nano-horizon: Pharmaceutical applications and recent advances. Drug development and industrial pharmacy. 39. - Hu CM, Fang RH, Copp J, Luk BT, Zhang L. A biomimetic nanosponge that absorbs pore-forming toxins. Nat Nanotechnol. 2013;8(5):336-40. - All Blood Content - Blood Group - Blood Type and Giving Blood - What is Rh Blood Group? - Blood Plasma Components and Function Last Updated: Jan 29, 2019 Source: Read Full Article
Music is all around us. It’s on the radio, on TV, in the background in department stores and restaurants, and even on our smartphones! Usually house music is the music of choice during training sessions, because the type of beats used in such music encourages one to move around, and helps you give that little bit extra to make some proper much needed training after a day at the office. If you decide to go out on your own, it’s a lot of work, some would say a large percentage of the whole work of the art(whole being from beginning of creative idea to payback of sale), which is why a large percentage is taken in the complete development(from product to marketing to sales) of the art of music. In moving from symbolic to contextualist explanations of music, it is well to note that a source of great confusion, in the former, is the fact that tone painting (with explicit signals that yield, when the code is understood, designative meanings) is widely regarded as musical symbolism. Although English operas had been performed in the colonies during the eighteenth century, Italian opera was not performed in the United States until the 1825-1826 season, when the Manuel Garcia family performed Gioacchino Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni at New York’s Park Theatre. A final major focus that has emerged as central in recent years is a questioning of the adequacy of conceptual distinctions between folk,” art,” and popular” musics, with the last category grounding an increasingly forceful critique of the investment of Western musical disciplines in an ideologically narrow conception of musical meaning and value.
Dr. Don McLean, Founder and CEO, Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) (November 2011) The rules for building used to be fairly straightforward. Architects and engineers were focused on one thing - production. How quickly and cheaply could they build a beautiful looking building? The tough decisions architects and engineers now make are inextricably linked to energy - both its reduction and its source. A building is no longer just a combination of shapes and forms; it represents the efforts to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint. According to Lord Kelvin, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." Stated another way, "If you can't quantify, then you are guessing." So the question becomes, how can we quantify? Building performance analysis is a vital component in designing truly sustainable buildings. By using technology to calculate the impact of different design strategies, architects and engineers can make more informed decisions on elements that play an important role in reducing the energy consumption of a building. Performance analysis software allows designers to virtually test the feasibility of different energy-saving strategies and new low-carbon technologies that facilitate very efficient high-performance designs. A sustainable, energy-efficient design requires an understanding of how a building will perform under predictable circumstances. This is what performance analysis delivers. It looks at how climate impacts on performance and can be used as a resource, determining usage and comfort criteria; driving decisions about building site, form, and organization; and investigating the most appropriate design strategies (daylighting, natural ventilation, shading, etc.), as well as the most appropriate materials. Unfortunately, building performance analysis is too often only undertaken in the later stages of design compliance rather than incorporated into the process right from the earliest architectural design stages. By working together and utilizing building performance analysis software from day one, architects and engineers can make the biggest impact in terms of designing a sustainable building. Performance analysis as a function needs to be integrated into the design process as an integral part of the project, and ideally should continuously advocate for better energy performance at every step of the way. Different activities and tools must be brought to the table at different stages. There are several ways to split the division of labor, from integrating its consideration into architects' and engineers' job functions or introducing an independent function to the design team. Regardless of how the team is formed, it's essential that it is part of an integrated design process. Call to Action Conceptual performance analysis is the idea that the impact of design can be understood even before the shape of the building is defined - at the earliest stage of a project. The results from performance analysis provide indicative actions, not predictive ones. If the key drivers are identified early in the process, the chance of error or missed opportunities later in the design is greatly reduced. In order to reach carbon-neutral levels by 2030, for example, designers need to have access to intelligent building information in the earliest stages. Imagine being able to determine which floor-to-area ratio is most energy-efficient before geometry or room layout is considered? Or imagine having access to information on seasonal weather patterns, theoretical energy required in order to achieve occupant comfort, and bio-climatic responsive design suggestions based on the coordinates of your building. What if determining a starting point and focusing on your conceptual design using these performance indicators as guidance is all you need to help your team quantify and form energy-saving strategies, while still keeping design integrity? Imagine tying in checks against LEED targets at key stages from schematic design onward, thereby guiding and focusing decisions to take design performance into consideration alongside the LEED rating - the goals can often be conflicting. And, if you need to make decisions about tradeoffs, wouldn't you feel better if they were based on facts rather than guesses? All this is now possible, but architects and engineers need to work together to incorporate lean, clean, and green into the process as a core concept. Lean: Using climate-responsive design to make passive and hybrid strategies part of the solution and reduce energy requirements Clean: Applying low-carbon technologies where appropriate Green: Leveraging renewable technologies to a higher degree because the energy requirements of the building are now greatly reduced Performance analysis guides this by identifying and understanding the big issues related to building energy use and performance, which supports the setting of realistic energy goals and the ability to choose and design strategies to reach these. For the full impact of performance simulation to be realized, early analysis must continue throughout the entire process to design completion and beyond. Detailed analysis can provide accurate figures and results for system sizing, fine-tuning, compliance, costing, and documentation. However, the key point is that because the foundations are strong, the design can now be refined to achieve greater efficiencies as it progresses - rather than today's all-too-familiar situation, i.e., trying to fix energy-related issues in the concept, when it's impossible and too costly to go back to the drawing board. By implementing indicative actions based on performance analysis metrics, and identifying the key drivers for an energy-efficient foundation early in the design process, i.e., by quantifying, true sustainable design can be achieved.
August is National Back to School Month! When we think of back to school, getting supplies, backpacks, and clothes come are top concerns. Besides shopping for new clothes and supplies, and planning school schedules– planning how to get to school is also important. Spend some time with your children to share some tips that will help them get to school safe, energized and ready to learn. First, remember, walking and biking are great ways to get children in the mood to learn. Next, take a walk or bike ride with your kids to their school or bus stop and encourage them to make it their usual way to get to school. We have put together some resources to help you figure out how to get your children walking and biking to school safely. - Make sure younger children know their home address and phone number and who to call if they need help. - Map the route and practice walking or biking to school with your child. Ask GMTMA for assistance to find a route. - Practice walking safety skills – you can find a refresher here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLxLYdLgzwQ - Practice biking safety skills – you can find a refresher here https://www.childrens.com/health-wellness/riding-a-bike-to-school - Organize a Walking School Bus and use the Walking School Bus App to organize walks to/from school. Parents can create walking groups and invite neighbors to join, plan walks to and from school, assign parent leaders to walk with students, group text within the app, and alert parents when students have arrived safely at school. App available here. - Or organize a Bike Train- a group of children biking to school together accompanied by an adult. You could use the Walking School Bus App to organize a bike train too. - Ask us to help with a school travel plan in your community. GMTMA works with schools and towns to create a plan to improve pedestrian and bicycle travel to and from school. A School Travel Plan identifies current walking patterns, where students would walk and bike if they could, and what changes need to be made so that students can and will walk and bike to school. The plan identifies short and long-term solutions and is supporting material for grant applications. - Ask us to help with a walkability audit in your community. Students, parents, and interested community members can get involved in improving the walkability and bikeability of their community by conducting “audits” of the area around the school. GMTMA can provide audit checklists and facilitate this outdoor activity. - Hold a Bike and Pedestrian Safety presentation at your school to help students learn about walking and biking safety. GMTMA’s presentations are tailored to grade level and different ages. - Conduct a bicycle rodeo/skills clinic in your community. These are held during or after school, usually in a parking lot, where kids can practice riding a bike, reinforce and practice basic biking safety skills, and learn how to properly fit a helmet. GMTMA can help organize these and may be able to provide helmets. We hope these tips and resources help you make a walk and bike to school plan and if you have any questions, you can always contact us. Have fun!
GAINSVILLE — COVID-19 led many people to start gardening, and it’s no passing fancy. Recent research shows that about 80% of those who took up gardening since the beginning of COVID-19 will continue the pastime in 2021. Growing in the outdoor garden is one thing. Tending to plants indoors at home presents other challenges and opportunities. As they recognized the increasing popularity of growing indoors, University of Florida scientists Celina Gómez and Paul Fisher, UF/IFAS faculty members in environmental horticulture, co-hosted a virtual webinar recently. There, they introduced new plant varieties and how home gardeners can grow them indoors. Their program focuses on developing and producing edible plants for gardening. Home growers can eat these crops, but the plants likely won’t produce enough fruits or vegetables for an entire family, said Gómez, a UF/IFAS assistant professor. “I think of them as both ornamental and edible crops, as they are typically grown for the pleasure of growing a plant — like most ornamentals — with the added benefit that they will produce a fruit or vegetable to be harvested and consumed, like most edible crops,” Gómez said. Several factors have driven the increase in home gardening: Food insecurity and the pandemic are two of them. “People are gardening in part to make sure that there is enough food on the table during times of so much uncertainty,” Gómez said. “Mental and physical well-being are also important drivers of the ‘pandemic gardening’ movement, as people seem to experience positive health benefits when gardening indoors and outdoors. During lockdown, people had more time to spend at home and many turned to gardening to keep themselves occupied.” Many people who want to start growing fruits and vegetables indoors at home turn to social media. So, Gómez conducted research recently that shows about half of the people who used the platform Reddit received misinformation about how to grow hydroponic plants indoors. She and her team looked at Reddit because those who use the platform and it’s “subreddits,” topic- or community-focused discussions, are hobbyists, most with no formal training in horticulture. “A lot of the advice given to consumers via Reddit is based on experiences that may not be enough to educate someone on how to grow plants hydroponically,” she said. “Another big reason is that because indoor gardening is a relatively new horticultural trend, there is not a lot of easy-to-understand information available to consumers.” To truly educate home indoor gardeners, UF/IFAS researchers will continue to give seminars and webinars, upload YouTube videos and provide research-based recommendations to help consumers interested in learning more about home gardening. Here is a link to their recorded presentations from a recent field day. “We can also use social media platforms like Reddit to connect with consumers, in subreddits like AMA (“Ask Me Anything”), where it is not uncommon for scientists to connect with Reddit users to answer questions within a pre-defined window of time,” Gómez said. “We are writing updated UF/IFAS Extension documents about these new, growing gardening trends, which can also be helpful.” For now, Gómez and Fisher, a UF/IFAS professor, will continue to test new cultivars for vegetables that are compact. That is, they’re bred for urban agriculture. “We will also expand our research in hydroponics and indoor gardening to evaluate different light qualities and quantities that can help maximize yield and quality of fruiting vegetables,” she said. “Our hope is to host another field day in 2022 and make this an annual event.” For more information on the indoor gardening efforts at UF/IFAS, contact Gómez at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Before rollerblades there was a curious invention known as cycling-skates. Skaters would ride along on one wheel per foot, tightened to their shoes via skate keys just like old fashioned roller skates used. But, in the film reel below we notice that over rough terrain they’re using skiing or hiking poles to stabilize and propel themselves. The truly talented go without, although it looks quite a bit harder than plain old roller skating. Perhaps there’s a reason why this particular design never caught on like roller skates and rollerblades did! This sport seems kind of dangerous, but it was the hot new thing in 1923, having come direct from Paris! Have a look in the clip below from British Pathé.
Overview of Frameworks The liturgical life of the Church operates at two levels. Annually, we remember the events of Jesus’ life. We begin our year with Advent, during which we prepare for the coming of God into our world, and then we move through to Lent and Easter and the life of the early Church at Pentecost, with a lot of ‘ordinary time’ in between. In conjunction with our annual cycle a second cycle rotates us through the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke so that over three years we hear their account of the life of Jesus. Year A is the Year of Matthew; Year B, the Year of Mark; Year C, the Year of Luke. The resources are themed and coded in keeping with the Liturgical life of the Church so that C1 represents the first resources in the Year of Luke, Year C. Note: As Advent does not start until November, resource 6, which falls at the commencement of the academic year, is in fact part of the previous Liturgical Year. Three Year Cycle : Content and Strands Connecting Ideas for Year C \|File Size:\|\|20 kb\|
The Soviet attack on the reality of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932 and 1933 was coterminous with the Holodomor itself. As I pointed out in my first post, Red Famine author Anne Applebaum, and before her, the Hoover Institution scholar Robert Conquest, have emphasized the militancy and vast scale of this effort. According to Conquest one can break Soviet strategy down into two strategies: first, outright denial of the event; second, the spreading of ameliorating falsehoods, often with the assistance of key allies in the West. The denial of the event of course began with ignoring it. The Holodomor was never spoken of by public figures, never mentioned in newspapers or any other Soviet publications, and official statistics, such as census figures, were altered. While it was going on, access to famine areas was severely restricted, as was travel from these areas by those trying to escape in search of food. The Soviets went to great lengths to enforce this silence. Military conscript Ivan Shewchuk received a letter during the famine from his wife back home in a small Ukrainian village called Barashne. She spoke of everyone in the place being swollen with hunger, including their son. Ivan, reading the letter to his friends, was interrupted by the political instructor and called to the regimental office in Feodosiya. The following day he was forced to read a statement that said the letter had been written not by his wife but by class enemies intent on sowing distrust and disorder in the Red Army. Ivan’s wife and son did not survive. The next stage was the dissemination of outright falsehoods. The international context made this even more important than routine propaganda efforts. As Applebaum notes, although by 1933 world revolution had come to seem a rather distant hope, radical political transformation seemed plausible. There was an economic crisis in the Western democracies that assisted the rise of Adolf Hitler to the chancellorship of Germany. The rise of fascism, according to Soviet ideology, meant the onset of the final crisis of capitalism. Here was an opportunity to reassert the promise of the superiority of the Soviet system. Moreover, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was on the verge of receiving official diplomatic recognition from the United States (extended by President Roosevelt in November 1933). So the Soviets used foreign visitors to spread the gospel of socialism abroad and buttress domestic support. Writers with international reputations like Anatole France and George Bernard Shaw were welcomed and feted—the latter spent his 75th birthday in Moscow in 1931. During the summer of 1933, Edouard Herriot, a former French premier, visited Ukraine. The Soviets welcomed him expressly to refute rumors about the famine, while Herriot’s intentions seem to have been related to trade relations between his home country and the USSR. He visited a variety of Soviet institutions—all carefully refurbished before his visit and managed during it. After his two-week excursion, Herriot declared: “I’ve traveled across Ukraine. I assure you that I have seen a garden in full bloom.” According to Applebaum, OGPU (Soviet secret police) reports note that Herriot did ask about the famine, but that he seemed satisfied by assertions that shortages of food had been overcome. A Welshman’s Sojourn Contrast Herriot’s story with that of a young Welshman named Gareth Jones. A linguist fluent in Russian, French, and German, Jones (whose story will be the subject of a major feature film next year directed by Agnieszka Holland) signed on as a researcher for David Lloyd George, the Liberal Party statesman and former Prime Minister, shortly after taking his degree from Cambridge. As Andrew Stuttaford has noted, Jones was ripe for conversion to communism. He was “ornery, high-minded, pacifist, egalitarian, a touch goofy, [and] a little bit utopian.” Jones first visited the Soviet Union on a tourist visa in 1930. Afterward the 25-year-old sent a note home to the United Kingdom from Berlin: “Russia is in a very bad state, rotten, no food, only bread; oppression, injustice . . . It makes me mad to think that people like [names crossed out] go there and come back, after having been led around by the nose and had enough to eat, and say that Russia is a paradise.” Thus Jones already had a sense of the inaccuracy of what was being written in the West about the USSR—where famine was in fact widespread. He was to witness much more devastating scenes three years later. In the interim, Jones’s star rose quickly in the world of British journalism. He befriended other foreign correspondents and continued to gather information about what was happening in the Soviet Union. In early 1933, he planned a visit to Germany and the USSR. The Soviets were eager to cultivate this aide to Lloyd George, a significant player in British politics. The Soviet ambassador in London worked with colleagues back in Moscow to arrange Jones’s visit, which was to include stops in the Russian capital and also in Kharkiv, one of the larger cities in Ukraine. Jones stayed in the USSR for about three weeks. His visit and the diaries he kept became the basis for 21 articles published in the spring of 1933. (Available here. They have been transcribed and published, and make fascinating reading.) While in Russia and Ukraine, he read newspapers, talked with Soviet officials and diplomats from many countries, gathered statistics, walked into shops and noted prices, and interacted with people he met on the street. In Moscow he was approached by beggars from Ukraine searching for food and was told, “The best people in Russia are in Solovki [a labor camp in northern Siberia].” He also heard the following joke: When there is bread in the villages and no bread in the towns, that is a Right Wing Deviation. When there’s bread in the towns and no bread in the villages, that is a Left Wing Deviation. When there is no bread in the towns and no bread in the villages that’s the Party Line. The contrast between what was said by officials and what people told Jones in private must have been shocking. If so, he kept his reactions to himself, for his real coup was his totally unsupervised trek through small Ukrianian villages in mid-March of 1933. He was invited to tour a tractor factory in Kharkiv as a guest of the German consulate there. He boarded an overnight train bound for Kharkiv but he got off about 70 kilometers from the city. Lodging with peasants in the villages, he saw the devastation first hand. Nothing could have prepared him for what he encountered. He was told by one woman: “We are looking forward to death.” Jones held a press conference in Berlin on March 29 and revealed what he had seen and heard in Moscow and Ukraine—whereupon the Soviets acted swiftly and decisively, with all the tools of influence and propaganda at their disposal. The foreign correspondents working in Moscow were enlisted in an effort to undermine Jones’s reporting. Many denounced him, and none more shamefully than Walter Duranty of the New York Times. In an article printed in that newspaper published on March 31, 1933, Duranty claimed Jones had only seen a small and insignificant portion of the Soviet Union, that any “food shortages” could be blamed on the “novelty” of collective farming and a conspiracy of enemies, and that Duranty himself had undertaken exhaustive research of his own with Soviet commissariats and foreign embassies. The latter enabled Duranty to assert, “There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition.” And the article included that infamous line, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” likening the Soviet leaders’ situation to a general’s attitude toward his troops when he orders a costly attack. Jones wrote a judicious, and what should have been devastating, letter to the Times defending himself and explaining his sources. But Duranty was a superstar of journalism and Jones a rather unknown Welshman. As Eugene Lyons, the United Press International correspondent in Moscow, would later admit in his memoir Assignment in Utopia (1938): “Throwing down Jones was as unpleasant a chore as fell to any of us in years of juggling facts to please dictatorial regimes—but throw him down we did, unanimously and in almost identical formulations of equivocation.” It is a depressing spectacle. The accounts published by Gareth Jones (21 articles published between March 31 and April 30) and his fellow Briton, Malcolm Muggeridge (who wrote three unsigned articles for the Manchester Guardian published on March 25, 27, and 28, recapping his visit to the USSR that took place months before Jones’s) did reach Western audiences and provide a vivid and accurate picture of the famine. As Conquest writes: “This lobby of the blind and the blindfold could not actually prevent true accounts by those who were neither dupes nor liars from reaching the West. But they could, and did, succeed in giving the impression that there was at least genuine doubt about what was happening and insinuating that reports of starvation came only from those hostile to the Soviet government and hence of dubious reliability.” These falsifications then entered academic scholarship (through such prominent figures as Beatrice and Sydney Webb) and even popular culture, for instance in the grotesque Hollywood film North Star (1940), a portrayal of the wonders of Soviet collective farming. Applebaum’s chapter called “The Holodomor in History and Memory” is instructive here. She explains that firsthand accounts of the famine from Ukrainians themselves started to emerge in the postwar period from Ukrainian émigrés who had managed to escape to Canada. Though dismissed by the Sovietologists in the West as “period pieces,” these accounts are absolutely essential to a proper understanding of what happened in Ukraine in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In this regard, Olexa Woropay’s The Ninth Circle (published in London in the late 1940s and in the United States in 1983) and Semen Pidhainy’s collection The Black Deeds of the Kremlin (1953) both deserve a wide audience. They are eyewitness accounts of the atrocities, and they were ignored by academic historians for many years. Not until the collapse of the Soviet Union would such authors begin to be given a fair hearing rather than disdained for their alleged Cold Warrior bias.
It has been a while now that the two authors of this particular academic blog have been interested in computational methods applied to authorship attribution. Until now, our research have been focused on texts, mostly from the Middle Ages and the XVIIth century. Given our shared scientific interest for digital musicology, one question arised: can our methods, designed for textual sources, apply to scores ? Finding out which compositor wrote a specific piece of music seems even more tricky than finding the author of text. Looking for fingerprints To understand who could be a text’s author, we know which clues to look for. Most of the time, the author of a text will reveal his identity through the unconscious repetition of certain grammatical structures, the use of certain function words, or, for versified texts, the choice of a specific vocabulary for his rhymes. What would be the equivalent of all these phenomena in a musical work ? Is it possible to define a short list of specific phenomena that we should spot to identify a composer’s signature, no matter the style or the era ? Here are a few insights gained from this year’s edition of the Digital Humanities at Oxford Summer School. Are improvisations signatures ? Using material from Stanford University’s Josquin Research Project (ca. 1420- ca 1520) (Stanford University) and from the CESR (Tours) Les livres de Chansons Nouvelles de Nicolas Du Chemin (1549–1568) project, Catherine Motuz gives us a first possible answer. During the the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, musicians were used to improvise codified and sometimes very complex polyphony. The structures of these improvisations follow very strict rules, recorded in various treatises by several authors, from Guillelmus Monachus around 1480 to Tomàs de Santa Maria in the middle of the 1560s. Yet, these rules leave a composer with a few choices, and each composer seems to favour specific formulas, that could give his identity away. To work on the structure of these polyphony, one have to study the succession of vertical intervals – which Catherine Motuz does through the Electronic Locator of Vertical Interval Successions (ELVIS). Working on polyphonic n-grams (yes, musicologists use n-grams for authorship attribution too!), she detects the use of different polyphonic models – canons, parallel sixths, parallel tenths… With two-grams, the separation between Josquin and Du Chemin is not obvious ; but with three-grams, the contrast is striking! Tell me how you end, I will tell you who you are Another work by Frauke Jurgensen points in the same direction. Studying chansons written by composers from the “Burgundian school”, mostly by Gilles Binchois (ca 1400- 1460) and Guillaume du Fay (1397-1474), she tries to identify unique features of those composers. Binchois writed tunes more jagged than du Fay. He also differentiated more among voices than Du Fay, in terms of voice leading style. One place though looks like a reasonable candidate to look for specificities: cadences. Even if identifying a cadence, especially when they are somewhat elaborate, can be tricky for the computer, Jurgensen manages to clearly isolate 8000 cadences. Their study shows that, even if there is no such thing as a cadence specific to Binchois or du Fay, big differences can be exhibited between the way these two authors write their cadences. They mostly use the same patterns, but not with the same frequency. Computing the proportion of certain cadences in an unattributed piece could then help find its plausible author. What is next ? Following these two studies, it seems that authorship attribution in musicology will not easily be able to reproduce the methodology used in text studies. For now, only an expert view on the compositions from a certain place and period might allow to identify the markers of a certain composer. To understand who is the author of an unattributed piece of music, we would have to spot a certain feature in this piece, different according to the genre, place and time, and compare it to the way this feature is normally executed by one or the other composer. Will we find techniques that we could apply more generally ? The properly digitized corpora are still rare, and the studies in this field look quite rare (I would be grateful to any reader pointing me to papers addressing this problem). It is thus very difficult to answer this question – but I am eager to find out ! ANTILA Christopher, CUMMING Julie, “The VIS Framework: Analyzing Counterpoint in Large Datasets”, in ISMIR (pp. 71-76), 2014 JURGENSEN Frauke, “Symbolic Music Analysis of Renaissance Counterpoint: current challenges”, Digital Humanities at the Oxford Summer School, Oxford University, July 5th 2017 MOTUZ Catherine, “Authorial fingerprinting for Renaissance Polyphony: Finding Contrapuntal Formulas in Two Corpora of French Chansons”, Digital Humanities at the Oxford Summer School, Oxford University, July 4th, 2017
Food and Nutritional Security At the core of human health is nutrition. Nutrition and food security is achieved when “all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO, 1996). The absence of food and nutrition security can have significant short and long term consequences for individuals and for society, including malnutrition, obesity, disease, and poverty. Work within Food and Nutritional Security aims to address both underlying and proximate determinants of food and nutritional security, including access to foods, care and feeding practices, and access to health care and treatment of illness. At the Department of Environmental and Global Health, researchers in food and nutritional security work on complex social issues, including women’s empowerment, behavior change, livelihood resilience, and adaptations to climate change. Researchers employ a systems perspective to study and understanding the complex drivers of nutrition and seek to identify effective pathways for global development interventions to improve nutrition among vulnerable populations. Several faculty members with expertise and current research initiatives in this area are listed below. Visit their profiles to explore what research our department is doing in Food and Nutritional Security.
The Role of CTE in Entrepreneurship ERIC Identifier: ED482537 Publication Date: 2003-00-00 Author: Brown, Bettina Lankard Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult Career and Vocational Education Columbus OH. Entrepreneurship, or small business ownership, is an increasingly attractive option to young people as well as adults who are striving to find careers that are exciting to them and offer the potential for personal and financial success. In recent years, the majority of new jobs in both professional and technical areas have been in the small business sector (Scherrer 2002). In addition, over half of the U.S. private work force is employed in small businesses (Ries 2000). Low-income populations, at-risk youth, and women are especially attracted to entrepreneurial ventures as they offer an opportunity to apply creativity, risk-taking inclinations, and complex life experience to educational and career endeavors that have the potential to deliver them from poverty, uncertainty, and conflicts they experience in their current environments (Saboe, Kanter, and Walsh 2002; Stanforth and Muske 1999). For these populations, and for all students who are motivated to be self-employed, career and technical education (CTE) can provide the help they need to prepare for success as small business owners and operators. This Digest reviews the literature on CTE's role in providing entrepreneurship education, including the behaviors and skills that contribute to entrepreneurial success, curriculum components and delivery strategies that have proven to be effective, and networking opportunities that offer students support they need to start their own businesses. A RATIONALE FOR PROVIDING ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION Entrepreneurship education focuses on the start-up of new business ventures. It tends to draw the interest of students who want the opportunity to operate on their own, make money, and be successful. A Gallup survey of 600 high school students revealed that 7 of 10 had a desire to start their own businesses and gave "independence" as their major reason (Saboe et al. 2002). The characteristics, traits, and abilities of entrepreneurs are those that individuals in impoverished neighborhoods have learned, to some extent, on the street. These skills are ones that must be nurtured through proper education and coaching so that can be directed to responsible and enriching small business endeavors that will benefit the individuals and the communities in which they live (ibid.). Entrepreneurs must be self-starters, innovative, willing to try new things and take risks; they must be able to get along well with others and be receptive to suggestions and criticism (Nelson and Johnson 1997; Stanforth and Muske 1999). They must be able to look at a situation, identify opportunities, gather resources, make business plans, and persistent in reaching their goals (ibid.). CTE can help students develop these skills by integrating entrepreneurship education with academic and technical curriculum that stresses financial, people management, interpersonal/communication, and business planning skills (Billett 2001). CTE'S ROLE IN HELPING STUDENTS DEVELOP CORE ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS Several curriculum projects have had positive results in delivering entrepreneurial directing them to choose a business to develop and devise a business plan that would help them start up and run the business using information available through Web resources (Kavan and O'Hara 2003). In this process, students used the Small Business Administration loan guidelines to develop their business plans for obtaining funding. Stipulations of their business plans were that they must accomplish the following (ibid., By participating in the project, students received exposure to the resources of the Web, developed an understanding of the various functional areas within a business and how these functions were interdependent, enhanced their electronic communication skills, and experienced the entrepreneurial behavioral, affective, and cognitive attitudes that motivate individuals to succeed in small business endeavors (ibid.). - Convince the audience that they understand the business, including critical issues and the financial case - Demonstrate their credibility by the thoroughness of their fact gathering - Show that they can logically devise a business plan based upon the evidence - Help the audience understand the implications of the venture. Another school-based curriculum program that is designed to introduce participants to the skills required to start and run a business is the Rural Entrepreneurship through Action Learning (REAL) program (Hanham et al. 1999). Annually, the REAL organization provides hands-on instruction to more than 4,000 students nationwide at more than 400 high schools, community or technical colleges, universities, elementary and middle schools, and community organizations (National Alliance of Business 1999). REAL was evaluated through a demographic survey of 1,011 student participants and pre/posttest scores from 93. Community college students showed significant gains in communication skills, high school students in business knowledge. Community college students had greater gains than high school students in analytical and thinking skills. Brown (2000b) identifies three components required for entrepreneurship education: opportunity recognition, marshaling and commitment of resources, and the creation of an operating business organization. Participation in these components requires students to develop skills in problem solving, decision making, teamwork, written communication, and public speaking (Scherrer 2002). Schools must provide students with current technology so that they can learn to create multimedia presentations, spreadsheets, and written documents (ibid.). Entrepreneurship education, because it is especially well suited to interdisciplinary approaches, can be most effective when it is integrated into various courses in the school curriculum, e.g., marketing, communication, finance (Boethel 2000). Two programs that integrate entrepreneurship into the curricula through business education are the Program for Acquiring Competence in Entrepreneurship (PACE), Level 2, which engages older students in developing business plans; and Own The Place, which teaches students career skills and provides them with first-hand business experience For program developers who are considering the implementation of entrepreneurship curriculum, the National Standards for Business Education, developed by the National Business Education Association, offer guidelines for development (Scherrer 2002). Course units could include One commercial program that has been highlighted in the literature is FastTrac(TM), a hands-on, noncredit entrepreneurship program which was initiated as part of the University of Southern California's Entrepreneurship Program in 1986 and is now available nationally through the sponsorship of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. "Today there are nine various FastTracT programs offered in both urban and rural settings through organizations and colleges/universities to help people pursue their entrepreneurship goals" (FastTrac(TM) Fact Sheet 2001, p. 2). Information about FastTrac(TM) and its programs may be found at http://www.fasttrac.org. - a description of what businesses do and how they function. - explanations of the concepts of market share and market segmentation. - identification of the basics of marketing; - introduction to the concepts of supply and demand, - demonstration of successful management and motivational techniques, - strategies of financial planning, and - the process to be followed to develop a business plan (ibid.). Instructional strategies for delivering entrepreneurship education should engage students in experiential learning and lead them to observe, interpret, analyze, make decisions, and consider consequences (Daly 2001). Teaching strategies should contextualize learning, provide students with opportunities to work and reflection over an extended period of time, emphasize self-reliance and flexibility, provide diverse ways of learning, deliver prompt feedback, and contain ongoing assessment. By engaging students in entrepreneurship projects, teachers serve as facilitators, allowing students to construct their own knowledge through learning, application, action, review, and reflection (Dwerryhouse 2001). THE ROLE OF NETWORKING Entrepreneurship education must include access to the community and to community leaders and businesses that care about promoting entrepreneurs in the local community. organizations that have a history of involvement are Chambers of Commerce, Small Business Development Centers, Women's and Minority Business Centers, community colleges and individual consultants (FastTrac(TM) 2001). Through such partnerships, instructors can expose students to successful small businesses, provide opportunities for students to practice their skills, enable students to become familiar with entrepreneurial and management tasks, and introduce students to contacts that they can draw upon to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams (Nelson and Johnson Community partners could be recruited to host economic forums patterned after science fairs, hold business plan competitions, and sponsor youth entrepreneurship trade shows in which students could showcase their ideas. They could provide personnel to serve as guest speakers, mentors or judges; they could host field trips and provide seed capital to help students with business start-ups. There is a motivation for community enterprises to partner with educators to support entrepreneurship education: "With many communities facing a widening gulf between the haves and have nots, entrepreneurship education provides an option that can transform at-risk and underachieving students into a generation of successful business people and contributors to revitalized communities" (Saboe et al. 2002, p. 82). Entrepreneurship education is of value to anyone who has an interest in being self-employed, especially those who are from low-income and minority populations and who have traditionally been underserved. Of significance in promoting entrepreneurship are curriculum approaches and delivery techniques that motivate students to stay connected to school and learn the skills required to succeed as small business owners. Flexibility in program structure and delivery, cultural competence, and collaboration are key components to entrepreneurship programs. School environments must nurture students' self-development and administrators must be willing to adapt traditional modes of operation to accommodate the program's needs (Boethel 2002). This project has been funded at least in part with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract No. ED-99-CO-0013. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. Digests may be freely reproduced. Billett, S. "Increasing Small Business Participation in VET: A 'Hard Ask.'" EDUCATION + TRAINING 43, no. 8-9 (2001): 416-425. Boethel, M. RURAL STUDENT ENTREPRENEURS: LINKING COMMERCE AND COMMUNITY. (BENEFITS)2: THE EXPONENTIAL RESULTS OF LINKING SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, ISSUE NO. 3. Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Lab, 2000. (ED 440 805) http://www.sedl.org/prep/benefits2/issue3/ Brown, C. CURRICULUM FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP EDUCATION: A REVIEW. CELCEE DIGEST 00-8. Los Angeles, CA: Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Entrepreneurship Education, 2000a. (ED 452 897) http://www.celcee.edu/publications/digest/Dig00-8.html Brown, C. ENTREPRENEURIAL EDUCATION TEACHING GUIDE. CELCEE DIGEST 00-7. Los Angeles, CA: Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Entrepreneurship Education, 2000b.(ED 452 430) http://www.celcee.edu/products/digest/Dig00-7.html Daly, S. P. "Student-Operated Internet Businesses: True Experiential Learning in Entrepreneurship and Retail Management." JOURNAL OF MARKETING EDUCATION 23, no. 3 (December 2001): 204-215. Dwerryhouse, R. "Real Work in the 16-19 Curriculum: AVCE Business and Young Enterprise." EDUCATION + TRAINING 43, no. 3 (2001): 153-161. FASTTRAC(TM) FACT SHEET. Kansas City, MO: FastTrac(TM) National Headquarters, 2001. http://www.fasttrac.org/pages/factsheet.cfm Hanham, A. C.; Loveridge, S.; and Richardson, B. "A National School-Based Entrepreneurship Program Offers Promise." JOURNAL OF THE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SOCIETY 30, no. 2 (1999): 115-130. Kavan, C. B., and O'Hara, M. T. "Stimulating Entrepreneurship in the Classroom." BUSINESS EDUCATION FORUM 57, no. 3 (February 2003): 41-43. National Alliance of Business. "Training Young Entrepreneurs to Get Down to Business." WORKFORCE ECONOMICS 5, no. 3 (December 1999): 9-11. (ED 436 675) Nelson, R. E., and Johnson, S. D. "Entrepreneurship Education as a Strategic Approach to Economic Growth in Kenya." JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL TEACHER EDUCATION 35, no.1 (Fall 1997): 7-21. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v35n1/nelson.pdf Ries, E. "Owning Their Education." TECHNIQUES: CONNECTING EDUCATION AND CAREERS 75, no. 4 (April 2000): 26-29. Saboe, L. R.; Kantor, J.; and Walsh, J. "Cultivating Entrepreneurship." EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 59, no. 7 (April 2002): 80-82. Scherrer, B. "Making Entrepreneurship Come Alive in the Classroom: How to Develop a National Award-Winning Entrepreneurship Program." BUSINESS EDUCATION FORUM 56, no. 3 (February 2002): 40-42. Stanforth, N., and Muske, G. "Family and Consumer Sciences Students' Interest in Entrepreneurship Education." JOURNAL OF FAMILY AND CONSUMER SCIENCES: FROM RESEARCH TO PRACTICE 91, no. 4 (1999): 34-38. Menu Page \| Parenting the Next Generation
It seems every few months there is a new report on the health benefits or concerns about foods or products such as wine, chocolate and multivitamins. With the beginning of a new year being a common time for people to reevaluate their eating habits, we asked two local dietitians what their thoughts were on these widely debated topics. Laura Ronen is a clinical nutritionist with Crystal Run Healthcare; Shelly DeHaan is the director of the Dunkelman Diabetes Center at Orange Regional Medical Center and the Catskill Regional Diabetes Self-Management Program. Wine LR: Basically the consensus of opinion is that moderate drinking is considered safe, and that it does have some health benefits. So if someone already does drink a moderate amount — and that's considered one drink a day for women and two drinks a day for men, and a drink is considered a five-ounce glass of wine or a 12 oz. beer or 1.5 oz. of hard liquor 80 proof — studies have been shown to show some health benefits such as reduced blood pressure, less instances of heart disease. But by the same token, excessive drinking has the opposite effect. It can cause high blood pressure, can cause alcoholic liver disease and can cause impaired driving. So you have to be careful about making recommendations about alcohol in general. SD: Wine specifically does have some medicinal benefits in regards to cardioprotectants. It can lower your LDLs (bad cholesterol). Calorically, wine or beer or any kind of alcohol does have a lot of calories, so it's not something that's conducive for weight loss. Chocolate LR: I get this question a lot. So dark chocolate does have antioxidants in it. Similar to wine, a little bit of dark chocolate is probably fine. To be totally honest, I don't know that there is a health study that shows the benefit of eating dark chocolate on any specific health issue, but it does have antioxidants, and antioxidants have been shown to have positive effects on lowering inflammation. But you have to keep in mind that chocolate has a lot of fat, saturated fat in particular, so eating too much chocolate can be bad for your cholesterol, which has negative effects on your health. So I would say if you like chocolate, dark chocolate is probably healthier for you. It has less sugar, too, than milk chocolate does, but still enjoy it in moderation. SD: The flavonols (antioxidants) are in the cocoa bean itself. So when cocoa beans are processed, they're processed and a lot of those benefits are lost. Milk chocolate would be a diluted type of product because they've added sugar, they've added fat to the product. Dark chocolate would retain more of its benefits, but even when chocolate is processed to make dark chocolate, you still have some loss there. But there is a beneficial effect, helping to improve LDL cholesterol. So those flavonols are also found in cranberries, apples, peanuts, onions, and wine, specifically red wine. Coffee LR: They consider 400 mg of caffeine or less safe to consume everyday if you're an adult. But coffee can definitely make you more alert. There are studies that come out every couple of years which sway one way or the other with coffee, or with caffeine in general. But coffee is safe to drink, unless you're having issues of overstimulation or lack of sleep at night. Coffee in particular stimulates acid production in your stomach, so if you have any sort of heartburn issue, coffee is not something that you should be drinking. SD: Americans can't give up their coffee. We know that. Drink a limited amount, which is what most physicians tell their patients. As far as quantity, dieticians will usually say no more than two cups per day. Multivitamins LR: So I think that it's perfectly safe for most people to take a multivitamin, because most multivitamins are water-soluble vitamins and they're giving you the recommended daily value for those certain vitamins and minerals. But it's possible to overdose on vitamins, so I would say just one multivitamin a day is probably not a bad thing to do. I usually feel like it's better to get your vitamins and minerals from food, but if you feel like you're not eating well enough, that you might be deficient in something in your diet, it certainly doesn't hurt and would probably be a good thing to take a multivitamin. There are definitely different doses of different nutrients that can interfere with certain medications that you're taking, so if you are taking several medications, ask your doctor if it's okay to take a multivitamin. SD: It's very difficult to get 100 percent of our daily need in a day, so multivitamins are good insurance to take because they supplement or fill in. But vitamins should never be used as a substitute to replace our key vitamins, minerals and nutrients. It is a good idea to make sure before you start any supplement, that you speak to your primary care provider or dietician, and to make sure that you disclose if you're taking anything. And that includes vitamins, minerals and any herbal supplements as well, because there can be a lot of drug-to-drug interaction or even food-to-drug interaction. A lot of people don't think of taking vitamins or supplements as a pharmaceutical, but it is. Gluten (This excludes those with celiac disease or a wheat allergy, who should definitely stay away from gluten.) LR: There are people who think that following a gluten-free diet has health benefits. I don't believe this is scientifically proven, but I've heard that the gluten-free diet is good for children with attention deficit disorder. A gluten-free diet can help you lose weight in the sense that if you cut out all bread and pasta, you're getting rid of a lot of calories in that way and that could potentially help people lose weight. And you can follow a gluten-free diet in a very healthy way. For example, gluten is found in products that contain barley, rye or wheat. You eat rice and corn and potato in place of the pasta on your plate. And they do have several kinds of gluten-free bread available on the market or you could just not eat sandwiches. They have cauliflower crust pizza. I think the downside of a gluten-free diet is when people sort of run with the idea that anything that's gluten-free is good for them, because there are a lot of junk foods that are marketed toward this audience. So you can get yourself into trouble if that's all you're following. SD: The tolerance for wheat varies from person to person. We can't say that a gluten-free diet is good for everyone. I think it does depend on the person, and their history, and their symptoms of what they experience when they do eat gluten-containing products. Dairy (This excludes those with lactose intolerance or a milk allergy, who should definitely stay away from dairy.) SD: When talking about children and adolescents, calcium is an important piece for bone development, tooth development and growth. And dairy is the highest as far as getting calcium into the diet. Other things can be calcium-fortified, or calcium-rich, so there are other ways to get calcium in, but dairy is and will be our highest calcium-containing products. A lot of times dairy is given a bad rap because of things such as bovine growth hormone that's used, but you can get non-BGH milk. You can buy organic milk. A lot of farms have a raw-milk license. So you can get healthy alternatives for dairy products. It's a choice (to stay away from that hormone.) And it's just like organic and GMO. I think people need to have an understanding of what's in our food and make an informed decision as to whether they want to go organic. I think we need to make those informed decisions. For me, when educating patients around nutrition, my focus is usually on eating unprocessed, whole foods — trying to stay away from highly processed foods, added fat and added sugar. Just go back to basics. LR: As far as people who feel like they are clearer-headed or they have more energy if they're staying away from dairy, I don't know that there is scientific evidence to support a dairy-free diet for that reason. Dairy products are a very good source of calcium, and I think that a lot of women in particular are lacking calcium in their diet. So if you want to go dairy-free, I'm sure there's a way to do it and still be healthy, but in all likelihood, you probably need some sort of a calcium supplement. Final thoughts: SD: I think that a lot of times what people are looking for is the one perfect diet or the one perfect food. There's not one of anything. A lot of times, people are looking for the quick fix. But while weight loss is good, we need to look at the long term and chronic complications that need to be managed. Numbers are going up for obesity and then diabetes. We do need to take a hard look at what it is that we do individually, not just as a community, and be more mindful in our approach to how we eat, what we eat and how much. More than 84 million people have prediabetes as of 2015. You may not even know because there are no signs or symptoms. Prevention of diabetes does link to obesity, links to cancer and cardiovascular disease. More than 80 percent of adults in this country are either overweight or obese. Readers can find out their risk for diabetes at Doihaveprediabetes.org. LR: The bottom line is — eating a healthy, low-fat diet, with not too much processed food, plenty of fruits and vegetables, a good amount of fiber, drinking plenty of water — having all of those things as part of your diet sets the base for health, and then if you add a little chocolate or a little wine, there's no harm to it. But I feel like people are searching for the one thing that's going to make them healthy and I don't know that that really exists. I think it's really balancing your diet.
\|Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys. 1997. 35: Copyright © 1997 by . All rights reserved In this section, I discuss some implications and uses of the most basic chemical composition information, namely metallicity. The word metallicity has more than one meaning: The precise definition is that metallicity is the mass fraction of all elements heavier than helium, denoted by the symbol Z; this is not always practical for observers because information usually does not exist for all elements. For observational stellar astronomy, metallicity is more often used to refer to the iron abundance. Unless explicitly stated the word metallicity used here refers to [Fe/H], the logarithmic iron abundance relative to the solar value. 4.1. The Disk Because the main-sequence lifetimes of G and F dwarfs are comparable to the age of the Galaxy, all the G dwarfs ever born are assumed to still exist (although see discussion of metallicity-dependent lifetimes by Bazan & Mathews 1990), and so these stars can provide a complete picture of Galactic chemical evolution. Early studies of the metallicity distribution of G dwarfs, within about 25 pc of the sun (van den Bergh 1962, Schmidt 1963, Pagel & Patchett 1975), showed that there is a deficit of metal-poor stars relative to the prediction of the Simple model; this is the well-known G-dwarf problem. The metallicities of these early studies were based on UV excesses (see Wallerstein & Carlson 1960, Sandage 1969), which are accurate to approximately 1 = 0.25 dex (Pagel & Patchett 1975); although Norris & Ryan (1989) claim uncertainties of ± 0.45 dex. The observed metallicity distributions contain biases that must be taken into account in order to obtain the true metallicity function (e.g. see Sommer-Larsen 1991, Pagel 1989). Many possible explanations were presented to account for the G-dwarf problem (e.g. Audouze & Tinsley 1976), but infall of metal-poor gas onto the disk was the most favored solution. To fit the observed metallicity function by this scheme, the original disk was at most 5% of the present disk mass (Pagel 1989), with mass infall occurring over several billion years. Variants of the Simple model exist that include gas infall in various ways (e.g. Larson 1974, 1976, Lynden-Bell 1975, Clayton 1985, 1988, Pagel 1989). All of these models predict a strict age-metallicity relation (AMR) with no abundance dispersion. In these models, the halo could not have been responsible for the bulk of the gas infall because the present-day luminous halo mass is only a few percent of the disk (Sandage 1987, Pagel 1989); a metallicity function of the disk+halo still suffers a paucity of metal-poor stars relative to the simple model (e.g. Worthey 1996). (Tosi 1988) showed that infall of gas with metallicity 0.1 Z provides as effective an explanation of the observed disk metallicity distribution function as infall of zero metallicity gas; however, infalling gas with Z = 0.4 Z is excluded by observations. A number of studies over the last decade and a half have combined star count and kinematic information with metallicities estimated from UV excesses (e.g. Sandage & Fouts 1987), ubvy photometry (e.g. Nissen & Schuster 1991), and low S/N spectra (e.g. Carney et al 1987, Jones et al 1995). The assembled databases have been used to imply the existence of various Galactic populations. For example, the thick disk of Gilmore & Reid (1983) is characterized by scale height of ~ 1.3 pc, mean [Fe/H] ~ -0.6 dex, and dispersion 0.3 dex (Gilmore & Reid 1983, Gilmore 1984, Gilmore & Wyse 1985, Wyse & Gilmore 1986), with no apparent metallicity gradient. (Wyse & Gilmore 1995) conclude that the data are best fit by overlapping thick and thin disks; the thick disk has a mean metallicity of [Fe/H] ~ -0.7 dex, ranging from -0.2 to -1.4 dex. A low metallicity tail, extending down to [Fe/H] ~ -2 to -3, was claimed by (Norris & Ryan (1991), Beers & Sommer-Larsen (1995), Pagel & Tautvaisiene (1995). Typical star count models yield thick disk to thin disk ratios of a few percent (e.g. Majewski 1993). The thin disk metallicity peaks near [Fe/H] = -0.25 dex, ranging from +0.2 to -0.8 dex (Wyse & Gilmore 1995).
Years ago a well-known comedian imagined what that first conversation God had with Noah must have been like. It is absolutely fascinating to find millennia old blueprints for a massive ocean liner in the Bible, but there it is. God commenced with precise and explicit instructions, down to the cubit. In fact, the dimensions and seaworthiness of the ark were once tested on a smaller scale and sure enough, the ark could have stayed afloat with all that weight aboard. Still, whether you accept the ark of antiquity as a real artifact, or an ancient legend, the ark does serve as a symbol or type, pointing to something else. - It was made of gopher wood. No one today knows what type of wood that is, but the word “gopher” holds meaning. “Gopher” and the word “pitch” which occurs in this passage, is the same Hebrew word used later in Exodus to mean “atonement.” All three of these words come from the same basic Hebrew root, which means “to cover.” Thus, the ark was made from “atonement wood,” and it was made water-proof with “atonement pitch.” You can see where this headed. The ark of the covenant, described in Exodus, had an “atonement cover,” also called the “mercy seat” of God, which leads to the Lord Jesus Christ, Who carried, in a mysterious way, all believers with Him as He brought His own through death and into the newness of eternal life. - There was only one door in the ark. God provided only one way of salvation (an ark) and only one door into that salvation. People could not be saved by any method they wished, but only through God’s provision. The same is true today. The apostle John quoted Jesus as saying, “I am the door: by me if anyone enter in, you shall be saved,” and “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.” That is a hard saying, and there are several ways to understand what Jesus meant by that. It is not a saying meant to exclude, I think. It is rather a revelation to bring clarity. So, Noah persevered in faith, and expressed his faith in his willingness to continue building, and to continue explaining what he was doing to whomever would listen. He and his family must have often felt discouraged, and felt tempted to give up. This was not an immediate rescue. What God asked of Noah was going to take a long time, involving hardship, sacrifice, focus and perseverance. Let’s look at the numbers, - In Genesis 5:32, we find out Noah was 500 years old when his sons were born (whether they were triplets, or born close together, we don’t know). - In Genesis 6:30, God began the countdown at 120 years. - In Genesis 7:6, we discover Noah was 600 years old when the Flood came. If we take the story at face value, then Noah started his work alone, at 480 years old, or possibly his father and grandfather joined him, in those earlier years, though they were certainly very old men by that point. (For a fascinating prophecy, embedded in the meaning of Noah’s ancestors’ names, see “His Death Shall Bring It”) After about twenty years, Noah’s sons were born, and they grew up in their unusual family, building the ark as their after-school activity. For another hundred years Noah, his wife, and their small family were a tiny island of godliness in a sea of godlessness. Noah’s sons joined with their father in this long, hard walk of obedience, patiently sharing their faith, and God’s plan of rescue. They stockpiled vast quantities of food. They became naturalists, observing and capturing every kind of creature, making sure they had a viable breeding pair of each. They created habitats for these creatures within the ark, and prepared for the long sojourn they would be spending together. And, Noah preached to all who would listen. Imagine how he might have felt, as a preacher and teacher, when the only people who consistently listened, and ended up believing, were his own family and no others. Even after 100 years of solid, faithful ministry… [Glass Ark \| Pixabay]
What is a thermal imager? A thermal imager is a device which uses infrared technology. Its purpose is to detect and measure the temperature of objects. It can measure surfaces and living matter as well. It creates a visual image of temperature changes. You can use this to identify cold spots and hot spots. And any other temperature anomalies. How does a thermal imager work? A thermal imager works by measuring infrared radiation. It uses the radiation emitted by objects and surfaces. And this data can be used by the device to show temperature. The imager uses an infrared sensor to create a visual display. And you can see the temperature differences within its screen. How are thermal imagers used in ghost hunting? Ghost hunters believe temperature changes can reveal the presence of a ghost. They may use a thermal imager to detect cold spots or hot spots. And if you find temperature anomalies, you can investigate further. Are thermal imagers reliable for detecting ghosts? Thermal imagers can be a helpful tool. And are good at detecting temperature changes. People believe spirits can cause hot spots and cold spots. But this fact isn't backed up by scientific evidence. Which natural factors cause temperature changes? There are natural factors that can cause temperature changes. Examples are air currents, drafts and sunlight. And changes in humidity or barometric pressure.
Pets and children share a deep bond, one that teaches children empathy, compassion and respect. When Cynthia was five years old, her family acquired a cockapoo named Nellis from a neighbor who no longer wanted it. "I still consider Nellis to be the brother I never had," wrote Cynthia one afternoon a few months ago on the New York Times blog. Nellis played baseball with Cynthia by holding a plastic bat in his teeth and running the bases. When her family moved to a new location, he was the bridge who enticed neighborhood kids to visit, helping Cynthia make new friends. He was also her mother's late-night TV watching companion when the children went to bed and her father was out. "He set the tone for all the pets I've had since," Cynthia wrote, "and a big factor in why I volunteer with animals today. His legacy is a rich one, as is the legacy of all companion animals." Legacy of empathy That legacy includes the lifelong skill of empathy - feeling the feelings of others, knowing when someone is uncomfortable, caring enough to change your behavior so that the other person becomes more comfortable. "Parents have traditionally encouraged children to respect and care for animals in the belief that this would enable children to become more caring, compassionate, and responsible," said Elizabeth Omerod, companion animal veterinary surgeon, and member of the Pet Health Council in London, England. "Studies demonstrate that children who interact with animals have higher levels of self esteem, greater empathy, and better social skills." Evidence on animals and nurturing Research around the world demonstrates the tremendous benefits of owning a pet. Studies show that children who own pets have more empathy and nurturing ability, and as they grow into adulthood, essential skills to develop meaningful relationships. - Researchers in Poland studied the impact of keeping dogs or cats at home on the social development of 530 children 4-8 years old. Those children with pets had higher scores in pro-social behavior and self-reliance than those without pets. - A study in Germany found that children 6-17 years old with diagnoses of anorexia, bulimia, anxiety disorder, and autism had improved behavior with a therapy dog than without one. - A study in Australia concluded that animal-assisted preventive efforts are an optimal vehicle for promoting nurturing and empathy. Pets can teach compassion to children TLC is a violence prevention program designed for at-risk youth in Los Angeles, part of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This program is helping 400 middle school age teens feel empathy and compassion for others. These children are in this program because of gang affiliation, drug use, history of violence, being severely withdrawn, decreasing grades, decreasing socialization, severe shyness, or being a victim of bullying or being the bully. One such child arrived at TLC dressed in black. He spoke to no one and seemed angry, recalls Melanie Wagner, director of this program. He had no friends and was bullied often. After he was assigned a dog, he had someone to talk to. Slowly, his self-esteem rose and he became friendlier, so much so that he is now a peer leader with the program, helping other at-risk children turn their lives around. The children spend a month working with shelter dogs, teaching them basic obedience and giving them attention and companionship. They also learn about conflict resolution, anger management, coping skills, tolerance, and teamwork. For many children, it stops the cycle of violence and helps them become productive citizens. Teaching children to respect animals helps them learn to respect people - others and themselves. By tuning in to an animal's feelings of wanting attention, love, food, companionship and respect, a child can grow up into a caring adult who can more intuitively tune in to other people's feelings as well.
Giraffes move closer to endangered species protection GENEVA (AP) — Nations around the world moved Thursday to protect giraffes as an endangered species for the first time, drawing praise from conservationists and scowls from some sub-Saharan African nations. Thursday’s vote by a key committee at the World Wildlife Conference known as CITES paves the way for the measure’s likely approval by its plenary next week. The plan would regulate world trade in giraffe parts, including hides, bone carvings and meat, while stopping short of a full ban. It passed 106-21 with seven abstentions. “So many people are so familiar with giraffes that they think they’re abundant,” said Susan Lieberman, vice president of international policy for the Wildlife Conservation Society. “And in Southern Africa, they may be doing OK, but giraffes are critically endangered.” Lieberman said giraffes were particularly at risk in parts of West, Central and East Africa. The Wildlife Conservation Society said it was concerned about the multiple threats to giraffes that have already resulted in population decline, citing habitat loss, droughts worsened by climate change and the illegal killings and trade in giraffe body parts. The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, hailed the move, noting that giraffes are a vulnerable species facing habitat loss and population decline. A key African conservationist said it could help reverse drops in giraffe populations, as the move would help better track numbers of giraffes. “The giraffe has experienced over 40% decline in the last 30 years, said Maina Philip Muruthi of the African Wildlife Foundation. “If that trend continues, it means that we are headed toward extinction.” Still, not all African countries supported the move. “We see no reason as to why we should support this decision, because Tanzania has a stable and increasing population of giraffes,” said Maurus Msuha, director of wildlife at the Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism. “Over 50% of our giraffe population is within the Serengeti ecosystem, which is well protected. Why should we then go for this?” CITES says the population of wild giraffes is actually much smaller than that of wild African elephants. “We’re talking about a few tens of thousands of giraffes and we’re talking about a few hundreds of thousands of African elephants,” said Tom De Meulenaar, chief of scientific services at CITES. He said the convention was intended to specifically address the international trade in giraffes and their parts. “With fewer giraffes than elephants in Africa, it was a no-brainer to simply regulate giraffe exports,” said Tanya Sanerib, international legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. The U.S. is the world’s biggest consumer of giraffe products, conservationists said. Sanerib said it was important for the U.S. to act on its own as well. “It’s still urgent for the Trump administration to protect these imperiled animals under the U.S. Endangered Species Act,” she said in a statement. The meeting in Geneva comes after President Donald Trump’s administration last week announced plans to water down the U.S. Endangered Species Ac — a message that could echo among attendees at the CITES conference, even if the U.S. move is more about domestic policy than international trade. Desktop NewsClick to open Continuous News in a sidebar that updates in real-time. Parents say Baton Rouge police took 20 minutes to respond to potential... 'It's a long time coming': Iberville Parish President pleased with potential bridge... In wake of two boating fatalities, Pointe Coupee officials hoping for safe... Some hurricane plans to change in Tangipahoa after Ida Location for new bridge narrowed down to three options, all in Iberville... Southern baseball walks off Jackson State in SWAC Tournament Southern baseball wins game one 21-2 over Alcorn VIDEO: Former Saints and Tiger Devery Henderson talks about the difference between... New NCAA rules tweak opens door for more SEC dominance VIDEO: Devery Henderson Talk about Bluegrass Miracle and the Saints "Rebirth game"
Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) \|French:\|\|Galantine d'Hiver, Niveole, Perceneige\| \|Spanish:\|\|Flor de Nieve\| \|Size\|\|Leaf length: 10 - 25 cm (2)\| Bulb diameter: 1 cm (2) The snowdrop is classified as Near Threatened (NT) on the IUCN Red List (1) and is listed on Appendix II of CITES (3). The snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) is an early flowering bulbous plant; the pure white blooms are a cheering sight in late winter (4). The narrow leaves are bluish-green in colour, and the leaf-tips are hardened in order to break through frozen ground (4). The solitary white flowers hang down loosely, and are enclosed by a papery sheath in the early stages of development (5). The segments of the perianth are petal-like; the outer 3 segments are 14 to 17 millimetres in length, while the inner 3 are typically half as long, and have a green patch at the tips (2). Although often thought to be a native species in some areas, the snowdrop is now believed to have been introduced to Britain, and has since become naturalised. It was growing in cultivation in 1597, but it was not until 1778 that it was recorded in the wild (6). Outside of Britain, the snowdrop is known from the Pyrenees and northern Spain eastwards to the Ukraine and as far as Russia, and southwards from Germany and Poland to southern Italy, Albania and northern Greece. Introduced populations have naturalised further north than these areas (1) (2), including in the Netherlands (1). The snowdrop has also been introduced to Canada and the United States (1). The delicate-looking snowdrop thrives in moist woodlands and other shaded areas, and is typically found in gardens, churchyards, parks, damp grassland, road verges and by watercourses (6). This species occurs over a wide range of elevations, but the majority of populations are found below 900 metres above sea level (1). This perennial plant flowers in February and March (6) and is pollinated by bees (1) (2). The snowdrop spreads mainly by division of the bulbs, and seed production is extremely poor, either because cross-pollination is rare as there are so few insects around in February, or because cultivated populations are usually sterile (4). However, some seeds are spread by ants which carry them through their underground tunnels, therefore helping with dispersal (1). The pure white flowers have been accepted by the Christian church as symbols of Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary (2 February), and snowdrops are often typical sights in monastic grounds (4). Galanthus is the most heavily traded wild-collected bulb genus in the world (1). Despite this entire genus being listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which restricts international trade (3), the snowdrop is still being harvested and traded on a local scale, posing a threat to its future survival (1). Habitat destruction is an additional threat to the snowdrop, with climate change being likely to exacerbate this issue by contributing to the loss of suitable snowdrop micro-habitats (1). At present, the snowdrop is classified as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List, but due to the threats listed above, it could potentially qualify as Vulnerable in the near future. Several European countries have listed the snowdrop as Near Threatened, Vulnerable, or even Critically Endangered on their national Red Lists, including Germany, Switzerland and Bulgaria (1). Being listed under Appendix II of CITES, trade in wild specimens of the snowdrop is highly restricted. In addition, the need for harvesting wild populations has been diminished by nurseries selling stock that has been raised from selected reliable clones (1). The snowdrop is also listed under Annex B of the EU Wildlife Trade Regulation (1) and on Annex V of the EC Habitats Directive, which means that the species is of community interest, and that collection from the wild may be subject to management measures (7). Several protected areas throughout Europe currently cover part of the snowdrop’s range, including Massis del Montseny Nature Park in Spain, Ecrins National Park Buffer Zone in France, and Rila National Park in Bulgaria. The snowdrop is also found in several Ramsar wetland sites, including Wattenmeer and Unterer Niederrhein, Wadden Sea (1). For more information on British plants and their conservation, see: Plantlife - the wild plant conservation charity: Botanical Society of the British Isles: This information is awaiting authentication by a species expert, and will be updated as soon as possible. If you are able to help please contact: - Genus: a category used in taxonomy, which is below ‘family’ and above ‘species’. A genus tends to contain species that have characteristics in common. The genus forms the first part of a ‘binomial’ Latin species name; the second part is the specific name. - Naturalised: term used to describe a species that was originally introduced from another country, but becomes established, maintains itself and invades native populations. - Perennial: plants that live for at least three seasons; after an initial period they produce flowers once a year. - Perianth: the outer envelope of a flower, typically comprising of an inner whorl (calyx) of sepals or floral leaves, and an inner whorl (corolla) of petals. - Pollinate: to transfer pollen grains from the stamen (male part of a flower) to the stigma (female part of a flower) of a flowering plant. This usually leads to fertilisation, the development of seeds and, eventually, a new plant. - Pollination: the transfer of pollen grains from the stamen (male part of a flower) to the stigma (female part of a flower) of a flowering plant. This usually leads to fertilisation, the development of seeds and, eventually, a new plant. IUCN Red List (April, 2012) - Clapham, A.R., Tutin, T.G. and Moore, D.M. (1987) Flora of the British Isles. 3rd Edition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. CITES (April, 2012) - Mabey, R. (1996) Flora Britannica. Sinclair-Stevenson, London. - Press, B. and Gibbons, B. (1993) Photographic Field Guide to Wild Flowers of Britain and Europe. New Holland Publishers Ltd., London. - Preston, C.D., Pearman, D.A. and Dines, T.D. (2002) The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora. Oxford University Press, Oxford. EC Habitats Directive (April, 2012)
WASHINGTON — Six major categories of plastic packaging significantly reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions compared to packaging made with alternative materials, according to a new study. Compiled by Franklin Associates for the American Chemistry Council and the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, and using 2010 as a baseline year, the data shows replacing plastic packaging with alternative materials would result in a 4.5 times more packaging weight, an 80 percent increase in energy use and 130 percent more global warming potential. “The benefits hold up across a range of different kinds of applications and materials,” said Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets for ACC. “Because plastics use so much less material in the first place it results in dramatic greenhouse gas reduction, and that’s just the start. It really adds up across the different types of packaging, to the equivalent of taking more than 15 million cars off the road.” The study pits the six major packaging resins — low density polyethylene, high density PE, polypropylene, PVC, polystyrene, expanded PS, PET — against paper, glass, steel, aluminum, textiles, rubber, and cork. It considers the implications of the materials used in caps and closures, beverage containers, other rigid containers, shopping bags, shrink wrap, and other flexible packaging in a detailed life cycle assessment. Individual studies on particular products have been done before, Christman said, on products ranging from plastic pouches vs. cans for tuna and EPS vs. paper cups. But the new study, titled Impact of Plastics Packaging on Life Cycle Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the United States and Canada, is comparatively sweeping. It contains more than 50 tables and 16 charts and illustrations and examines each of the major life cycle stages for packaging: raw material production, packaging fabrication, distribution transport, post-consumer disposal and recycling. The study also offers a glimpse into the potential unintended consequences of proposed and recently enacted bans on plastic packaging products, Christman said. While a plastic bottle ban might keep bottles out of waterways, the increase in energy use to manufacture, transport and even recycle their glass counterparts would be dramatic, according to the numbers. “I don’t think that’s what people intend by some of those policies,” Christman said. “But it could happen if policies force people back to alternatives that use more energy and produce more greenhouse gas emissions.”
YOU probably haven’t heard of ‘conflict timber’, but it was the fuel for war in Liberia. Former President Charles Taylor, now in exile, used the logging industry to prolong regional violence, traffic arms and boost his personal wealth. Sections of the timber industry played an integral role in helping rebel movements seize power throughout the region, supporting criminal, mercenary and arms-smuggling networks. Logging concessions were often given out as political patronage. The companies would be permitted to extract Liberia’s wood, as long as they followed the Taylor regime’s orders. For some this involved shipping illegal weapons in vessels that would then transport timber out, principally to European and Asian markets. The regime would skim money off the top while the Liberian people not only saw none of the proceeds, but were the victims of widespread abuses committed by logging-company militia members.1 In eastern Liberia logging interests2 helped sustain the brutal Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in neighbouring Sierra Leone.3 In southeastern Liberia, on numerous occasions local residents reported seeing Liberian Government security forces removing weapons from the warehouse of the logging company Maryland Wood Processing Industries (MWPI) and loading them on to company trucks which Government security forces then drove away. Rebel fighters from eastern Côte d’Ivoire, as well as pro-Liberian Government forces, also made use of MWPI facilities at the company’s River Gbeh bush camp, located near the Ivorian border with Liberia.4 All the time the rebel groups and the timber industry were actively encouraged, assisted and co-ordinated by the Liberian Government. The result is a region that is one of the most violent and unstable in the world. Today, peace has been declared in Liberia, but there has been virtually no time for the industry to reform. Timber sanctions were imposed from July 2003, yet pressure is on from those who profit from this highly lucrative industry to restart logging operations. Meanwhile, there is virtually no medical care, clean water or sanitation in the country. Liberia has recently seen the installation of an interim government, the deployment of UN peacekeeping forces, the UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), as well as donor pledges of $520 million to rebuild the country. However, if the UN and the Liberian Government are unable to exert control over the country’s resources before the logging trade resumes, the region could be plunged back into chaos. In short, if a natural resource, such as timber or diamonds, plays a key role in prolonging conflict then its industry must be completely reformed in order to secure the country’s recovery. Without this, the industry’s ties to criminal networks, illicit arms and mercenary activity will endure, threatening long-term peace and recovery. - Global Witness, ‘Against the People, for the Resources: the need for stronger enforcement of UN timber sanctions and prevention of plunder’, Annex 1, September 2003. - The UN Expert Panel (S/2003/779) lists 49 timber companies operating in Liberia. - UN Expert Panel Report on Sierra Leone (S/2000/1195). - Global Witness research and investigations, 2003. See also ‘The Usual Suspects: Liberia’s weapons and mercenaries in Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone’, Global Witness, March 2003. This first appeared in our award-winning magazine - to read more, subscribe from just £7
Written for voice professionals, their teachers and those who care for their voices, this unique book covers voice acoustics, the effect of the acoustics of spaces on the voice, and how to make a voice recording properly. The book is wholly practical and written in a manner which is rooted in science but which is designed to enable understanding by non-scientists and voice practitioners alike. The authors provide an outline of acoustics and the human voice, before going on to cover ways in which voice users - from professional and amateur singers and performers, through lawyers, to school teachers - the largest group reporting to clinics with vocal problems - can improve vocal efficiency, regardless of location, and vocal health. Also covered are methods of amplification, whether through microphones, or simply by posture or stance and best methods for sound recording. Adrienne B. Hancock, PhD (George Washington University), Doody's Review Service (2008): "...A wonderful overview of acoustics and how to understand human voice produciton and the effects various spaces have on measuring vocal acoustics.... A useful resource for professionals involved in voice performance or recording. I also suspect that speech-language pathology undergraduate acoustic/speech science courses would benefit from using this book." - Overall scope. - Introductory acoustics. - The performer's voice. - The human voice. - Voice production. - Acoustics of the vocal output. - Speech and singing. - Tactics for maintaining a healthy voice. - The voice on location. - Acoustics of spaces. - Modifying the acoustics of a space. - The spoken word in different spaces. - Singing in different spaces. - Tactics for working the space to best advantage. - Making a voice recording. - Recording equipment. - Recording for the market. - Recording for research. - Tactics for making a high-quality recording. - Amplifying the voice. - Loudspeakers and equipment. - Public address. - Sound reinforcement. - Tactics for achieving high-quality voice amplification. - Glossary of terms. About The Authors David M. Howard, PhD is Professor in the Department of Electronics, University of York. (www.davidmhoward.com) Damian T. Murphy, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Electronics, University of York. 277 pages, Illustrated (B/W), Softcover, 6 x 9" 461 pages, Hardcover, 7 x 10" 709 pages, Illustrated (B/W), Softcover, 7 x 10" 416 pages, Illustrated (B/W), Softcover, 8.5 x 11"
\|Date:\|\|Fri September 25, 1970 01:19:03 AM (PDT)\| This report supersedes any earlier report of this event This event has been reviewed by a seismologist Depth within the Earth where an earthquake rupture initiated. PNSN reports depths relative to sea level, so the elevation of the ground above sea level at the location of the epicenter must be added to estimate the depth beneath the Earth's surface. A measure of how well network seismic stations surround the earthquake. Measured from the epicenter (in degrees), the largest azimuthal gap between azimuthally adjacent stations. The smaller this number, the more reliable the calculated horizontal position of the earthquake. How well the given earthquake location predicts the observed phase arrivals (in seconds). Smaller misfits mean more precise locations. The best locations have RMS Misfits smaller than 0.1 seconds. A P first motion is the direction in which the ground moves at the seismometer when the first P wave arrives. We distinguish between upward and downward first motions. This is the number of observations that were used to obtain the fault plane solution. Orientation of first possible fault plane The strike is the angle between the north direction and the direction of the fault trace on the surface, while keeping the dipping fault plane to your right. The dip is the steepness of the fault plane measured as an angle between the fault plane and the surface. For example, 0 degrees is a horizontal fault and 90 degrees is a vertical fault. Rake is the angle, measure in the fault plane, between the strike and the direction in which the material above the fault moved relative to the material on the bottom of the fault (slip direction). Orientation of second possible fault plane The orientation of the two possible fault planes is the best solution we can find to match the observed first motions at the seismometers using a grid search method. The uncertainty of the strike, dip, and rake indicate the number of degrees by which those values can vary and still match the observations satisfactorily. Code, or name, to designate a particular seismic station Network Code indicates the organization responsible for a particular station, the PNSN consists of UW=University of Washington, UO=University of Oregon, and CC=Cascade Volcano Observatory The quality of an observed P arrival polarity indicates how well you can tell whether it is up or down and can range from 0 (poor) to 1 (good). The channel name allows one to distinguish between data from different kinds of sensors. The first character indicates the sample rate of the data, examples are E=100Hz, B=40 or 50Hz, H=80 or 100 Hz. The second character indicates whether the channel is a high (H) gain or low (L) gain velocity channel or a strong-motion acceleration channel (N). The third character indicates the direction of motion measured, Z=up/down, E=east/west, N=north/south. Polarity means the direction of motion, in this context it means whether it is up (U) or down (D).
It could be a long, cold winter. If your workers have to dig out, can they do it without hurting themselves? Most workers know that shoveling snow and breaking up ice can be exhausting, but they may not be aware of the extent of their risks. Cold Weather Hazards Encourage workers to take the hazards of heavy work in cold weather seriously: - Snow shoveling causes an average of nearly 100 deaths and 11,500 emergency department visits each year in the United States. - The most frequently injured area of the body is the lower back (34%). - Heart problems make up 7% of the injuries—but 100% of the deaths. - The most common cause of injuries was acute musculoskeletal exertion (54%). - Slips or falls (20%) are the second most common cause of injuries. Snow Shovel Safety Shoveling snow is an extremely strenuous activity, especially if there’s a lot of snow or if the snow is wet and heavy. - Use ice melt, salt, or sand to decrease the hazard of icy surfaces—and the stress of clearing them. - Snow shoveling may cause a quick increase in heart rate and blood pressure. - Cold air makes it harder to work and breathe, which adds extra strain on the body. - Check with your doctor to see if you should be able to do at least moderate shoveling. - Pick the right shovel for you. A smaller blade will require you to lift less snow, putting less strain on your body. - Plastic shovels weigh less than metal shovels, and snow is not as likely to stick to them. These factors add less weight to your load. Spray the blade with a lubricant to keep snow from sticking. - Pick up smaller loads of snow. It’s best to shovel by sections. If you are experiencing snowfall levels of 12-inches or higher, take it easy and shovel 2 inches off at a time. - Try to clear snow early and often—take frequent breaks. Begin shoveling/blowing when a light covering of snow is on the ground. - Push snow rather than lift it when possible, especially when the snow is heavy.
Clean drinking water and hygiene are an important component in the prevention of diseases. This has been brought home to us once again by the Corona crisis. The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project is designed to provide not only clean drinking water but also important hygiene. With WASH, wells are built to supply people with sufficient drinking water. At the same time, WASH raises awareness among local people about the importance of hygiene. How does it work? It is assumed that children are a particularly important factor in the spread of hygiene measures. Therefore, they are already introduced to the topic in school and thus also in lessons. With their help, it is also possible to reach the older generations, who then implement what the children tell them at home from school. In this way, the risk of becoming ill can be significantly reduced. It is especially important for women to learn these things, as they need hygienic conditions during their menstruation even more urgently than men. Girls and women are thus supported in yet another direction to protect them from infections. Moreover, the people concerned are not radically forced to change their way of thinking. Through universal languages such as music, art or sports, people are slowly introduced to more hygienic ways of living. At the same time, this promotes community among each other. Unfortunately, building a well does not solve the problem. The well has to be maintained, sanitary facilities have to be installed and also maintained, just to mention a few things. In order to ensure that people are not dependent on others in such situations, they are also given the knowledge they need to take care of these problems themselves. In order to be able to pay for possible repairs, the use of the well is subject to a fee. However, the amount to be paid is based on what the people have at their disposal, because the amount should not be a reason not to use the well. So care is taken to ensure that people have access to the well in any case, but at the same time their independence is promoted so that they will no longer be dependent on outside help at some point.
Doing 30 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio exercise five times a week is enough to meet the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommendations for maintaining good health. But is it enough to lose weight? If you're already eating a healthy, nutrient-rich diet with an appropriate amount of calories, the answer is probably yes — but some people will need more physical activity to lose weight. Doing 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise, five days a week, satisfies the Department of Health and Human Services guidelines for physical activity. Whether that results in weight loss depends on your diet; if you're consuming too many excess calories, you may need to add more physical activity to your day. Why Calories Matter While you do need physical activity to stay healthy, it's only part of the weight-loss puzzle. Your diet matters, too, because in order to lose weight you must establish a calorie deficit or, to put it another way, you must burn more calories than you consume. You can establish that deficit by cutting calories out of your diet or increasing your physical activity. But, according to research from the National Weight Control Registry, the vast majority of subjects who lost weight and kept it off accomplished it by using both methods. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015-2020, includes a useful table of estimates to help you determine ideal calorie intake based on your age, gender and activity level. For example, a sedentary 42-year-old man needs an estimated 2,200 calories per day, while a very active 42-year-old man needs about 2,800 calories per day. If you're already meeting and not exceeding your calorie needs, and you're consuming plenty of nutrient-rich foods like colorful fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean protein and healthy unsaturated oils, then adding 30 minutes of cardio five days a week may be all you need to lose weight. But if you're consuming more than your estimated calorie needs, you may need more physical activity to hit the calorie deficit that triggers weight loss. Or, you'll need to reduce your calorie intake. A good target for weight loss is working out for an hour a day, five days a week; you can also spread those five hours of exercise out however you like in the week. For example, you might go for a brisk two-hour hike on one day, then work out for an hour on another three days of the week. Troubleshooting Your Plan If you're faithfully doing 30 minutes of cardio five days a week plus eating an appropriate amount of calories, but you're still not losing weight, try increasing the intensity of your workouts. This can make a big difference because the harder you work out, the more calories you burn. For example, according to figures from Harvard Health Publishing, a 185-pound person using a stationary rower at a moderate pace burns approximately 311 calories in a half-hour workout, but that same person would burn 377 calories by rowing at an intense pace for the same length of time. Don't want to go all out for half an hour? Sprint intervals are a fun, effective way of increasing your workout intensity. For example, if you're cycling, you would pedal all-out for one minute, then recover by pedaling at a more moderate pace for two minutes. Other factors may affect your weight-loss efforts, too, including hormone fluctuations, some prescription medications, dehydration and lack of sleep. If you think you're doing everything right but the weight just won't come off, a doctor, nutritionist or personal trainer can help you problem-solve. Health Benefits of Regular Cardio Cardiovascular exercise is great for weight loss, but that's not the only benefit you'll get from doing 30 minutes of cardio five days a week. Regular cardio exercise also provides a number of health-related benefits, including reduced risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and other chronic conditions. Exercising regularly also functions as a natural mood booster, and it can bolster your immune system. And if you have a condition such as diabetes, arthritis or high blood pressure, doing regular cardio workouts can help you manage symptoms. It also improves your quality of life, especially as you near your senior years, when having good physical stamina can be the key to maintaining an independent lifestyle. If you're pressed for time, you can work out at a vigorous intensity for 75 minutes a week (15 minutes, five days a week) and get the same health benefits gained by working out at a moderate intensity for 150 minutes a week (30 minutes, five days a week). For even more benefit, double that workout prescription to 300 minutes of moderate intensity cardio or 150 minutes of vigorous cardio. Read more: 5 Workouts for Strength Training at Home But Wait, There's More Although doing your 150 minutes of weekly cardio or 30 minutes five days a week meets the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidelines for physical activity, the guidelines also recommend strength-training all your major muscle groups twice a week. This will help your weight-loss efforts for two reasons: First, lifting weights burns calories; according to Harvard Health Publishing, a 185-pound person burns about 266 calories in a half-hour of vigorous weightlifting. Second, muscle is up to four times more metabolically active than fat, so the more muscle you build, the more calories you'll burn, even at rest. Strength training also offers its own range of health benefits, from giving you the strength and endurance to make everyday chores — like lifting your kids or carrying groceries — easier to increasing bone density. If you have a chronic condition such as back pain, depression, arthritis or diabetes, strength training can help you manage those conditions; and it's even been shown to improve cognition in several small studies. For example, in a study published in the March 2017 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, 100 elderly female subjects with mild cognitive impairment showed significant improvements in cognitive function after a six-month program of high-intensity, progressive strength training twice a day. And in a meta-analysis published in a June 2019 issue of Sports Medicine, researchers found that one session of strength training offered immediate improvement in cognitive function for healthy adults. Getting a good strength-training workout doesn't have to mean spending all day in the gym. You can work all your major muscle groups in a short time with compound exercises such as leg presses, bench presses, lat pulldowns and planks for your core. If you don't have a gym membership, you can work out with a few free weights at home, purchase elastic resistance bands or do body-weight exercises such as squats, lunges, push-ups and pull-ups. - Health.gov: "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015-2020: Appendix 1. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans" - The National Weight Control Registry: "NWCR Facts" - Health.gov: "Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2015-2020: Appendix 2. Estimated Dietary Needs per Day by Age, Sex, and Physical Activity Level" - Harvard Health Publishing: "Calories Burned in 30 Minutes for People of Three Different Weights" - University of New Mexico: "Controversies in Metabolism" - Mayo Clinic: "Strength Training: Get Stronger, Leaner, Healthier" - Mayo Clinic: Aerobic Exercise: "Top 10 Reasons to Get Physical" - Journal of the American Geriatrics Society: "Mediation of Cognitive Function Improvements by Strength Gains After Resistance Training in Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment: Outcomes of the Study of Mental and Resistance Training" - Sports Medicine: "Acute Effects of Resistance Exercise on Cognitive Function in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review With Multilevel Meta-Analysis"
Benefits of Cycling on Hills Cycling on hills can be intimidating. But it shouldn't be. Climbing hills will train your body to respond with more muscle, endurance and confidence -- as well as higher aerobic capacity. Lance Armstrong knew this and focused much of his training on climbing hills to dominate the Tour De France for seven years. The benefits of cycling on flat ground are good, but cycling on hills enhances those benefits. Almost nothing will build raw muscle like climbing hills. The more hills you climb, the more your legs will respond by building lean fiber that give your legs more definition. Take a look at road biker legs. They are wiry, lean and elongated. Take a look at a mountain biker legs. They are husky, more compact and thicker with legs that bulge and flex with more muscle. If you climb until you hurt, you are breaking down small fibers in your muscles. When these fibers grow back there are more of them and they are bigger and tougher. The more hills you climb, the better your endurance. Hills demand more from your body. You can't sit back on the seat for a leisurely ride. The constant demand of mashing the pedals builds your endurance by maxing out your body's systems. Your body begins to reciprocate by increasing limitations and what it can handle. Each hill you climb will get easier. The difference might be subtle at first but the more you push yourself, the more your endurance will continue to grow. Road riding also builds endurance, but not at the same rate as a routine of cycling on hills. Aerobic capacity is the limit at which you can run your pulmonary system without overloading it. You may have heard the term "going aerobic," this means that you run out of breath before you reach the top of the hill. We all have an aerobic threshold. If you cross it you can't breath and will have to stop the bike and recover. Every time you push yourself to climb farther your aerobic threshold increases. This means you have more wind in your lungs, and are more capable for anything requiring strenuous activity. Your body relies on your circulatory system for oxygen. Your veins, arteries and heart work together to deliver the oxygen-rich blood to the muscles. The heart speeds up as needed to get the blood through the system as fast as it can, but if you climb too fast, it can't keep up. The heart is also a muscle, and just like the other muscles in your body, it can grow stronger and obtain more endurance. Your veins respond in kind by actually growing more tributaries to handle the extra demand for blood. This benefits you against heart and vein problems. Riding on hills puts heavy demands on your circulatory system -- much heavier than any other discipline in cycling -- and your circulatory system responds by increasing its capabilities. It responds much like your muscles as they increase in size to accommodate heavier and heavier loads. Hill climbing -- unlike ordinary road riding -- builds upper body strength. The weight-forward position for hill climbing engages the muscles in the stomach and the constant pulling on the handlebars for leverage engages the arms, shoulders, hands and wrists. This also shows on a mountain biker's body. Compare the lean, wiry look of road bikers to the husky, muscular look of mountain bikers and the difference is obvious. Specializing in hardwood furniture, trim carpentry, cabinets, home improvement and architectural millwork, Wade Shaddy has worked in homebuilding since 1972. Shaddy has also worked as a newspaper reporter and writer, and as a contributing writer for Bicycling Magazine. Shaddy began publishing in various magazines in 1992, and published a novel, “Dark Canyon,” in 2008.
Dice is a small object that generally has six faces (cube) containing number 1 to 6. You can throw single or double dices to generate random numbers between 1 to 12. There are different forms of games based on generating random numbers by throwing dices. Dice games like snakes & ladders are very popular in some countries. Here are the keyboard shortcuts for typing dice faces in Windows and Mac. Windows and Mac Shortcuts for Dice Faces Unicode character encoding assigns a unique code point for each symbol that you can type. For example, dice face-2 has a code point U+2681 where the code 2681 is in hexadecimal format. You can use this hexadecimal code in Mac and convert it into decimal format and use in Windows along with alt key. With this logic, below table contains the alt code keyboard shortcuts for typing dice symbols in Windows and Mac. \|Die Face Symbol\|\|Name\|\|Windows Shortcut\|\|Mac Shortcut\| \|⚀\|\|Die Face-1\|\|Alt + 9856\|\|Option + 2680\| \|⚁\|\|Die Face-2\|\|Alt + 9857\|\|Option + 2681\| \|⚂\|\|Die Face-3\|\|Alt + 9858\|\|Option + 2682\| \|⚃\|\|Die Face-4\|\|Alt + 9859\|\|Option + 2683\| \|⚄\|\|Die Face-5\|\|Alt + 9860\|\|Option + 2684\| \|⚅\|\|Die Face-6\|\|Alt + 9861\|\|Option + 2685\| Typing Dice Faces in Windows Windows computers offer multiple ways to type dice face symbols. Alt Code Shortcuts for Dice Symbols First option is to use the alt keys on your keyboard along with the decimal code for the symbol. For example, alt + 9856 will make dice face-1 symbol like ⚀. In order to use this method, you need to turn on numeric lock and type the code using number pad on your keyboard. Alt + X Method On Microsoft Word documents, you can use alternate method using the hexadecimal code. Type the code like 2685 and then press alt + x keys to make the dice face-6 like ⚅. Typing Dice Faces in Mac There are two way to type theses symbols in Mac. Using Option Code Shortcuts Go to the preferences section on your Mac and add Unicode Hex Input as an additional keyboard input source. Now, toggle the input to Unicode Hex Input and type the hexadecimal code by holding one of the option keys. For example, option + 2682 will make dice face-3 symbol like ⚂. Using Character Viewer in Mac The easiest option in Mac to type dice face symbols is to use the Character Viewer app. Press “Command + Control + Space” keys to open the app. You can search for the word “dice” to filter the symbols. Double click on the symbol to insert on your documents. As you can see the above screenshot, Character Viewer app in Mac by default offers font variation. This will help you to choose customize dice face symbols from the available variation. This is not the case with Windows and you have to customize manually after inserting the symbols. However, this is easy in Office applications and you can apply text effects like any other text content. Gaming Die Emoji Dice face 1 to 6 are not part of Unicode emoji symbols. However, some mobile apps may show them as a colorful symbols like below: Unicode has also an official emoji symbol for dice called Gaming Die that will look like a cuboid dice showing three faces like below. You can insert this Gaming die emoji using alt + 127922 in Windows. In addition, you can use emoji panel in Windows to insert Gaming Die emoji. - Place the cursor where you want to insert the emoji. - Press “Win + Dot” or “Win + Semicolon” keys. - This will open an emoji panel pop-up. - Type “dice” to filter the Gaming Die emoji. - Click on the symbol to insert in cursor’s position. On Mac, you can use the same Character Viewer app to insert Gaming Die emoji.
Sweden’s Overshoot Day just came and went. What does that mean? Global Footprint Network tracks the world's resources. Every year they calculate the date in which we’ll use up all the resources that the planet is capable of naturally renewing over the entire year. That day is referred to as Earth Overshoot day. The way we live is unsustainable That day is July 29. That means 210 days into the year, we’ll be living on credit or digging into our savings to live and survive on this planet. Sounds hopeless, right? Well, it kind of is 🥺. Whywaste’s home is in Sweden (mostly) and our Overshoot Day has already happened. Since this Sunday (April 3), going forward Sweden are living on credit. It’s easy to think that Scandinavia are frontrunners when it comes to sustainability, we are sure happy to brand ourselves that way. It is not entirely untrue but the sad reality is that the way we consume and live is unsustainable. How is it calculated? Earth Overshoot Day was created by the Global Footprint Network to help us reduce our pressure on the planet. It’s determined by measuring biocapacity. That means the biological capacity of the planet to regenerate natural resources and absorb waste materials. They calculate this by taking a biocapacity number and dividing it by humankind’s ecological footprint. Then it’s multiplied by 365 to determine Earth’s Overshoot Day. To end on a brighter note and to give you some hope back, here is a link to Global Footprint Network where you can explore new initiatives and food waste related solutions. Go get your hopes up! Wanna know more? Tell us a little about yourself and we'll tell you a lot about us
Recently, researchers have uncovered the presence of many long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) in embryonic stem cells and believe they are important regulators of the differentiation process. However, there are only a few examples explicitly linking lncRNA activity to transcriptional regulation. Here, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania used transcript counting and spatial localization to characterize a lncRNA (dubbed linc-HOXA1) located ∼50 kb from the Hoxa gene cluster in mouse embryonic stem cells. Single-cell transcript counting revealed that linc-HOXA1 and Hoxa1 RNA are highly variable at the single-cell level and that whenever linc-HOXA1 RNA abundance was high, Hoxa1 mRNA abundance was low and vice versa. Knockdown analysis revealed that depletion of linc-HOXA1 RNA at its site of transcription increased transcription of the Hoxa1 gene cis to the chromosome and that exposure of cells to retinoic acid can disrupt this interaction. They further showed that linc-HOXA1 RNA represses Hoxa1 by recruiting the protein PURB as a transcriptional cofactor. These results highlight the power of transcript visualization to characterize lncRNA function and also suggest that PURB can facilitate lncRNA-mediated transcriptional regulation. - Maamar H, Cabili MN, Rinn J, Raj A. (2013) linc-HOXA1 is a noncoding RNA that represses Hoxa1 transcription in cis. Genes Dev [Epub ahead of print]. [abstract]
Antennas for the VHF and UHF bands are similar in many ways to HF antennas. The main differences are that VHF/UHF antennas are smaller and the losses caused by poor feed lines and elevated SWRs (or both) are more critical. This type of VHF antenna transmits and receives in all directions at once (the same is true of the dipoles, loops and vertical antennas for HF use). All commonly used mobile antennas are omnidirectional. This makes sense because it is impractical to stop and point your car in the direction of the station you want to contact. Instead, the omnidirectional mobile antenna blasts your signal in all directions so that you’ll stand a decent chance of communicating no matter where you are driving. Omnidirectional antennas are also found in base stations where the goal is to transmit and receive from any direction with minimal hassle and expense. Common omnidirectional antenna designs for base stations include ground planes, loops and J-poles, but there are others. An omnidirectional antenna spreads your signal over a broad area, depending on how high you install it. Height is critical to the performance of all antennas at VHF and UHF frequencies. Higher is always better, whether that means putting the antenna on a flagpole, tower or a rooftop. If you are fortunate enough to operate from the summit of a hill or mountain where Mother Earth provides the altitude, that works, too. If the advantage of an omni is that it radiates in all directions, that can be its disadvantage as well. An omnidirectional antenna can’t focus your reception or transmission. Once you put it in place, what you get is…well…what you get. There is little you can do to change it. If the station you’re talking to is west of your location, for example, all the power you are sending north, south and east is wasted. You will also receive signals--possibly interfering signals--from the same useless directions. As the name implies, directional “beam” antennas focus your power and reception in a single direction. Just like HF antennas, directional VHF designs work by canceling the energy that radiates toward the back of the antenna and reinforcing the energy going toward the front. The result is a beam of RF power (and concentrated receive sensitivity) not unlike a searchlight or a magnifying glass. Directional antennas are ideal at VHF and UHF when you want maximum distance and minimum interference. They are almost mandatory for VHF DX work and satellite operating. Directional antennas also help tremendously on VHF FM when you’re trying to communicate with a distant station. Common directional antenna designs include the Yagi, quad and Moxon. Parabolic dish antennas—the kind you’ve likely seen for satellite TV reception—are also directional antennas. So what is the downside? Directional antennas tend to be more complex and difficult to assemble. They can also be quite large in some configurations. For instance, a highly directional Yagi antenna for the 6-meter band, a model with 11 sections known as elements, can include a boom assembly that’s nearly 70 feet in length. And what happens if your antenna is pointing north and the station you want to talk to is south? Unless you can turn your antenna, communication will be difficult or impossible. This is where the antenna rotator comes into play, just as it did for HF beam antennas. You may recall that a rotator is an electric motor that you install below your directional antenna. Its job is to turn your antenna to the direction you require. Rotators add to the cost and complexity of a directional antenna system. A light duty rotator can cost about $100. If you need a heavy duty rotator to turn a bigger antenna (or more than one antenna), the cost can reach $500 or more. In addition to the hassle of stringing your feed line from the antenna back to your radio, you must also string a cable for the rotator. More wires equal more work, although the reward can be considerable!
SCMs impart a wide range of exceptional properties to concrete, which are particularly sought after by construction professionals. While the advantages to concrete in its plastic state are quite numerous (workability, finishability, etc.), perhaps the greatest benefits imparted by SCMs can be seen in the hardened properties. Enhanced strength—SCMs contribute to the strength gain of concrete. Typically, slag cement and fly ash will lower early strengths (1 to 14 days) but significantly improve long-term strengths (28 day and beyond), depending upon the proportions and materials used. For example, Class F fly ashes tend to have a slow strength gain curve contributing mainly to the strength beyond 28 days, whereas silica fume contributes primarily to strengths at 3 to 28 days. Both compressive and flexural strengths can increase markedly at 28 days and beyond with the addition of SCMs. Reduced permeability—SCMs significantly extends the life of concrete by reducing permeability to chlorides and other aggressive agents, especially at later ages. Silica fume has a very profound effect on permeability, exhibiting as much as a five-fold reduction in permeability. In concrete structures, permeability is generally the critical factor affecting durability. Resistance to alkali-silica reaction (ASR)—SCMs can prevent excessive expansion and cracking of concrete due to ASR. The amount of slag cement required depends on the nature of the slag cement, the reactivity of the aggregate, and the alkali loading of the concrete. In most cases, 50% slag cement is sufficient with highly reactive aggregates. The amount of fly ash required typically is in the range of 15 to 55%, depending on the chemical composition of the ash, reactivity of the aggregate, and the alkali loading of the concrete. Generally, Class F ashes are much more effective in controlling expansion due to ASR than Class C ashes. Silica fume can control ASR; however, the amount required generally results in poor constructability. Blends of slag cement and silica fume, as well as blends of fly ash and silica fume, have a synergistic effect in mitigating expansion due to ASR, while producing a very workable concrete. Resistance to sulfate attack—Sulfates, which are present in seawater, wastewater, and some soils, can react with the alumina in portland cement, causing expansion. SCMs offer superior resistance to these attacks because they contain fewer of the compounds that react with sulfates and because their low permeability keeps sulfate-bearing waters out. Typically, slag cement, silica fume, and Class F fly ashes are very effective in improving sulfate resistance. The effectiveness of Class C fly ashes is dependent on the ash chemistry and the replacement level. Resistance to thermal stress—If the temperature differential between the concrete’s surface and interior is too high, cracking and loss of structural integrity can result. High replacement levels of slag cement and/or fly ash in properly proportioned mixes can reduce the peak temperatures as well as the rate of heat generation. Reducing the heat of hydration of the mix can moderate the development of thermal stresses within the concrete and prevent cracking. The environmental movement in general—and strong interest with LEED certification in particular—will continue to drive the demand for sustainable construction materials that lower the carbon footprint of our built environment. One proven solution for reducing greenhouse gases per ton of cement—without sacrificing performance—is portland limestone cement (PLC). One proven solution for reducing greenhouse gases per ton of cement—without sacrificing performance—is portland limestone cement (PLC). Widely used around the world for decades with satisfactory performance, PLC contains between 6% and 15% interground limestone. In the U.S., ASTM permitted up to 5% limestone in portland cement in 2004 (ASTM C595), with AASHTO following suite in 2007 (AASHTO M240). At that time, it was estimated that these changes would reduce energy consumption by 11.8 trillion Btu’s and carbon dioxide emissions by more than 2.5 million tons per year. In response to increasing calls to reduce the carbon footprint of the building sector even further, ASTM C595 and AASHTO M240 were revised in 2012 to allow up to 15% limestone in portland cement. These changes resulted in a new Type IL cement classification, which provides similar strength development, durability, workability, and other properties as Type I and II cements. With Type IL cement, similar percentages of SCMs can be used in concrete mixes while also replacing up to 15% of the portland cement with limestone. This results in an additional 12 percent reduction in green gas emissions associated with the production of portland cement clinker. When combined with 40% to 50% SCMs, the effective reduction in the CO2 footprint of concrete is highly significant. Materials do matter: Building a better world together While the performance benefits of SCMs are quite numerous, their effect on the trend toward ever more green construction practices cannot be overstated. Specifiers, architects, and property owners are clamoring for buildings that are not only attractive, durable, and low maintenance, but also energy efficient and eco-friendly. At LafargeHolcim in the US, our people across the country collaborate with customers to meet these stakeholder demands with a reliable supply of high-quality SCMs, blended cements, PLC and other innovative solutions. Contact your local LafargeHolcim sales representative to learn more about how our LEED-accredited professionals and technical teams can assist you with detailed recommendations on using these products to achieve high-performance sustainable construction goals. David Diedrick is the Director of Quality & Product Performance for LafargeHolcim in the United States’ cement business. He can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.org.
35 relations: Absolute zero, Atomic nucleus, Atomic orbital, Bohr radius, Bound state, Bravais lattice, Caesium, Commutator, Degenerate energy levels, Electron, Energy, Entropy, Excited state, Exponential distribution, Hamiltonian (quantum mechanics), Hyperfine structure, International Bureau of Weights and Measures, Ionization energy, Negative temperature, Node (physics), Particle in a box, Planck constant, Quantum field theory, Quantum mechanics, Schrödinger equation, Second, Sine wave, Stationary state, Temperature, Third law of thermodynamics, Time, Unitary operator, Vacuum state, Wave function, Zero-point energy. Absolute zero is the lower limit of the thermodynamic temperature scale, a state at which the enthalpy and entropy of a cooled ideal gas reach their minimum value, taken as 0. The atomic nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment. In quantum mechanics, an atomic orbital is a mathematical function that describes the wave-like behavior of either one electron or a pair of electrons in an atom. The Bohr radius (a0 or rBohr) is a physical constant, approximately equal to the most probable distance between the nucleus and the electron in a hydrogen atom in its ground state. In quantum physics, a bound state is a special quantum state of a particle subject to a potential such that the particle has a tendency to remain localised in one or more regions of space. In geometry and crystallography, a Bravais lattice, named after, is an infinite array of discrete points in three dimensional space generated by a set of discrete translation operations described by: where ni are any integers and ai are known as the primitive vectors which lie in different directions and span the lattice. Caesium (British spelling and IUPAC spelling) or cesium (American spelling) is a chemical element with symbol Cs and atomic number 55. In mathematics, the commutator gives an indication of the extent to which a certain binary operation fails to be commutative. In quantum mechanics, an energy level is degenerate if it corresponds to two or more different measurable states of a quantum system. The electron is a subatomic particle, symbol or, whose electric charge is negative one elementary charge. In physics, energy is the quantitative property that must be transferred to an object in order to perform work on, or to heat, the object. In statistical mechanics, entropy is an extensive property of a thermodynamic system. In quantum mechanics, an excited state of a system (such as an atom, molecule or nucleus) is any quantum state of the system that has a higher energy than the ground state (that is, more energy than the absolute minimum). In quantum mechanics, a Hamiltonian is an operator corresponding to the total energy of the system in most of the cases. In atomic physics, hyperfine structure refers to small shifts and splittings in the energy levels of atoms, molecules and ions, due to interaction between the state of the nucleus and the state of the electron clouds. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (Bureau international des poids et mesures) is an intergovernmental organization established by the Metre Convention, through which Member States act together on matters related to measurement science and measurement standards. The ionization energy (Ei) is qualitatively defined as the amount of energy required to remove the most loosely bound electron, the valence electron, of an isolated gaseous atom to form a cation. In physics, certain systems can achieve negative temperature; that is, their thermodynamic temperature can be expressed as a negative quantity on the Kelvin or Rankine scales. A node is a point along a standing wave where the wave has minimum amplitude. In quantum mechanics, the particle in a box model (also known as the infinite potential well or the infinite square well) describes a particle free to move in a small space surrounded by impenetrable barriers. The Planck constant (denoted, also called Planck's constant) is a physical constant that is the quantum of action, central in quantum mechanics. In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is the theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of subatomic particles in particle physics and quasiparticles in condensed matter physics. Quantum mechanics (QM; also known as quantum physics, quantum theory, the wave mechanical model, or matrix mechanics), including quantum field theory, is a fundamental theory in physics which describes nature at the smallest scales of energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles. In quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation is a mathematical equation that describes the changes over time of a physical system in which quantum effects, such as wave–particle duality, are significant. The second is the SI base unit of time, commonly understood and historically defined as 1/86,400 of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds each. A sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical curve that describes a smooth periodic oscillation. A stationary state is a quantum state with all observables independent of time. Temperature is a physical quantity expressing hot and cold. The third law of thermodynamics is sometimes stated as follows, regarding the properties of systems in thermodynamic equilibrium: At absolute zero (zero kelvin) the system must be in a state with the minimum possible energy. Time is the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. In functional analysis, a branch of mathematics, a unitary operator is a surjective bounded operator on a Hilbert space preserving the inner product. In quantum field theory, the quantum vacuum state (also called the quantum vacuum or vacuum state) is the quantum state with the lowest possible energy. A wave function in quantum physics is a mathematical description of the quantum state of an isolated quantum system. Zero-point energy (ZPE) or ground state energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system may have.
Article Courtesy of The New York Times By RONI CARYN RABIN Babies born just three to six weeks before their due dates are more likely than full-term babies to have disabilities or developmental delays in kindergarten, a study has found. The children also are slightly more likely to be suspended or held back in kindergarten and to require special education. Over all, the risk is small, and doctors emphasized that parents should not be alarmed. While almost 3 percent of full-term babies in the study had a developmental delay or disability in kindergarten, just more than 4 percent of the late-preterm babies did. Still, that amounts to a 36 percent increase in risk. Researchers said they were surprised by the results, in large part because babies born after 34 or 35 weeks of gestation, though not full-term, have long been considered in the clear. “The biggest take-home point is that the late-preterm baby is not exactly the same as the term baby,” said Dr. Steven Benjamin Morse, an author of the study and an associate professor of pediatrics at University of Florida. “They go home from the hospital in two to three days, and they look great, and they act like full-term babies,” he said. “But now we’ve found that they do have some increased risk of problems when they enter school. We were surprised.” The study is in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics. Researchers tracked the development of healthy single babies born in Florida between Jan. 1, 1996, and Aug. 31, 1997. They compared 7,152 babies born after 34 weeks but before 37 weeks of pregnancy with 152,661 babies born after 37 weeks. They found that the risk for a developmental delay or disability was 36 percent higher among the late-preterm infants, compared with those born at term, while the risk for suspension in kindergarten was 19 percent higher. The late-preterm babies were at a 10 percent to 13 percent increased risk for four other developmental problems, including diagnoses of a disability at age 3 or 4, requiring special education services or being kept back in kindergarten. Although the problems affect only a fraction of babies, preterm births are on the rise in the United States and have increased to 12.3 percent in 2003, from 9.4 percent of all live births in 1981. The vast majority of preterm births, about 70 percent, are in this late-preterm category. Though many preterm deliveries are medically necessary, some may be preventable, said Dr. Alan Fleischman, medical director of the March of Dimes. “We need to make sure the obstetricians are not suggesting early deliveries and Caesarean sections to be done at their convenience, and that the mothers are not requesting early deliveries,” Dr. Fleischman said.
Age-related Macular Degeneration Central Vision is Blurred Dry AMD occurs when the light-sensitive cells in the macula slowly break down, gradually blurring central vision in the affected eye. As dry AMD gets worse, you may see a blurred spot in the center of your vision. Over time, as less of the macula functions, central vision in the affected eye can be lost gradually. The most common symptom of dry AMD is slightly blurred vision. You may have difficulty recognizing faces. You may need more light for reading and other tasks. Dry AMD generally affects both eyes, but vision can be lost in one eye while the other eye seems unaffected. What Are Drusen? One of the most common early signs of dry AMD is drusen. Drusen are yellow deposits under the retina. They often are found in people over age 60. Your eye care professional can detect drusen during a comprehensive dilated eye exam. Three Stages of Dry AMD Dry AMD has three stages -- early AMD, intermediate AMD, and advanced dry AMD. All of these may occur in one or both eyes. - People with early dry AMD have either several small drusen or a few medium-sized drusen. At this stage, there are no symptoms and no vision loss. - People with intermediate dry AMD have either many medium-sized drusen or one or more large drusen. Some people see a blurred spot in the center of their vision. More light may be needed for reading and other tasks. - In addition to drusen, people with advanced dry AMD have a breakdown of light-sensitive cells and supporting tissue in the macula. This breakdown can cause a blurred spot in the center of your vision. In addition to drusen, people with advanced dry AMD have a breakdown of light-sensitive cells and supporting tissue in the macula. This breakdown can cause a blurred spot in the center of your vision. Over time, the blurred spot may get bigger and darker, taking more of your central vision. You may have difficulty reading or recognizing faces until they are very close to you. If Only One Eye is Affected If you have vision loss from dry AMD in one eye only, you may not notice any changes in your overall vision. With the other eye seeing clearly, you can still drive, read, and see fine details. You may notice changes in your vision only if AMD affects both eyes. If you experience blurry vision, see an eye care professional for a comprehensive dilated eye exam.
Submitted to: International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: June 28, 2008 Publication Date: August 21, 2008 Citation: Knight, S.S., Cullum, R.F., Cooper, C.M., Lizotte Jr, R.E. 2008. Effects of Suspended Sediments on the Chlorophyll-phosphorus Relationship in Oxbow Lakes. International Journal of Ecology and Environmental Sciences 34(1): 01-06. Interpretive Summary: Agricultural activities have been implicated as the sources of such pollutants as sediments, pesticides and nutrients. The Clean Water Act requires states to improve impaired waters by establishing Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) of these pollutants that will be allowed in our rivers, lakes and streams. Research conducted as a part of the Mississippi Delta Management Systems Evaluation Area project (MSEA), showed that the amounts of sediment and nutrients in oxbow lakes were related. Furthermore this research showed that reducing sediment using good conservation practices allowed the plankton in the lake water to more effectively use nutrients such as phosphorus. The results were increased productivity and improved fisheries. Since most states attempt to establish nutrient TMDLs to achieve a balance between nutrient and plankton that maintains fish productivity, this information should prove quite valuable. Technical Abstract: Agricultural activities are considered to be a major source of nonpoint source pollution in the United States. The Clean Water Act requires states to improve water quality by setting Total Maximum Daily Loads of such pollutants as sediment, nutrients and pesticides. A common approach for setting nutrient levels is to use chlorophyll ' phosphorus relationships. Unfortunately these relationships will not necessary be valid in light limited lakes damaged by sediment. Analysis of total phosphorus, total sediment and chlorophyll concentrations indicate significant relationships between all three water quality parameters in three Mississippi Delta oxbow lakes. Total phosphorus and total sediment concentrations were positively correlated, while total phosphorus and chlorophyll a were negatively correlated. While this relationship seems counterintuitive further analysis indicates that when suspended solids is less than 150 mg/L there is a positive significant relationship between chlorophyll a and total phosphorus. When suspended solids exceed 150 mg/L there is a negative significant relationship between chlorophyll a and total phosphorus. This information should prove useful to water resource managers responsible for establishing TMDLs and water quality criteria where both sediments and nutrients cause impairment.
GLRPPR has developed two new school-related Topic Hubs as part of the P2Rx Topic Hub project. Before any Topic Hub is published, topical experts review its narrative portions for accuracy and completeness. “Energy Efficient Schools and Students” describes energy efficient practices and research available to schools and introduces resources that support changes in operations, maintenance, and behavior. Numerous ways exist to reduce escalating energy costs and this Topic Hub assembles guidelines and comprehensive energy programs, identifies educational efforts and case studies, and provides examples of best practices for schools. “Sustainable School Design” addresses many areas, including: indoor air quality; energy consumption and options; construction materials; education materials; water use; waste management; transportation; community interaction; landscaping and the building envelope. It draws upon the myriad resources available to school administrators, school boards, and community planners with the hope that these tools will guide the design of more optimally sustainable schools. The Topic Hub deals with the big issues of construction and retrofitting, siting and commissioning, and actual design of new and remodeled schools. Pollution prevention opportunities and alternative technologies that include lighting, acoustics, air quality, and well-being needs for students and school staff for a healthy and safe learning environment, are presented. If you’re interested in reading the narrative portions of these hubs and providing some voluntary feedback, please contact Joy Scrogum or Bob Iverson. We’re looking for 2-4 experts to evaluate each of these new hubs; one person may evaluate both hubs if they desire. If you are selected to review the hubs, we’ll contact you with a link to the information you’ll need to read and further instructions. Your name will be included in the “Acknowledgments” section of the final published Topic Hub as a “Technical Reviewer.” See the Acknowledgments section of the Pollution Prevention for Arts Education Topic Hub for an example. Our greatest asset is the technical expertise of our members and their willingness to share their knowledge with colleagues throughout the region. We appreciate your input and look forward to working with those selected to review these new resources.
The Good Samaritan: A Lesson in Mercy The Parable in Brief In order to understand the full context of the parable, we must first consider the Gospel passage directly preceding it – Luke 10:25-28. In these verses, a scholar of the law had asked Jesus what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. In the end, the scholar provided his own answer by citing the two great commandments: to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. When Jesus confirmed his answer, the scholar asked a follow-up question, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus offered this parable as his response. Jesus told the story of a man who was robbed, beaten, stripped and left for dead on the side of a road. A priest and a Levite each, in turn, saw the man and responded to him by moving to the opposite side of the road and continuing on their respective travels. Then, a Samaritan happened upon the man and had a very different response. He was “moved with compassion.” This led him to dress the man’s wounds, put him on his animal, take him to an inn and care for him. The next day, he even gave some money to the innkeeper (with the promise of more on his return trip), and charged him with the care of the man. After this, Jesus asked the scholar which of the three travelers in the story “was neighbor to the robber’s victim?” The scholar answered that it was the “one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus then instructed the scholar: “Go and do likewise.” Learning the ‘Who’s who’ of Mercy What a powerful turn of events for the scholar! He began by asking, “And who is my neighbor?” This was such a reasonable question. After all, if inheriting eternal life rested on his successfully loving his neighbor, he had best find out who this neighbor was. This neighbor needed to be identified so that he or she might be loved. In other words, this neighbor needed to be made known. And yet, by the end of the parable, Jesus is asking who in the story “was neighbor to the robber’s victim?” In other words, Jesus reveals that the scholar is asking the wrong question. We are not to be busying ourselves with evaluating who qualifies as our neighbor – who is worthy or deserving of our love. Rather, Jesus makes it clear that eternal life is not “out there” dependent on a successful search to identify our neighbor. Eternal life is to be encountered in the conversion of our hearts. That is, we are the tree that will be judged by its fruits, so we are to be the neighbor to all those we encounter. It is each one of us who will be made known to others by our love. And so we must ask ourselves, are we “moved with compassion,” and do we act with mercy when we see the wounded, the ignored and the excluded? Ultimately, it is mercy that makes the neighbor in the parable recognizable. It is mercy, or being moved with compassion, that reveals the neighbor. That the neighbor is known through his or her mercy is an indication that to be “neighbor” is to be in communion with God, who is merciful and in whom there is eternal life alone. It is this communion that allows the neighbor to fulfill the second of the great commandments, i.e., we can only love our neighbor by being neighbor. A Bonus Lesson: Becoming Merciful Father Howard Gray, SJ, of Georgetown University asserts that the parable of the good samaritan actually provides us with a process for becoming merciful. In a lecture to seminarians several years ago, he explained that the parable teaches us that the first lesson of compassion is to look beyond ourselves toward others. This involves developing a contemplative way of seeing. This type of seeing leads to a “suffering with” the other, which is the very meaning of compassion. However, this “seeing” also elicits a response “from the gut” that moves us to action on behalf of the other in a way that naturally seeks to involve others. In fact, Father Howard argues that all acts of compassion have in them the grace to build “networks of compassion.” The Samaritan illustrates this process, Father Howard says, by doing four things: 1) he sees the victim, 2) draws close to him, 3) allows his heart to be moved with compassion, and 4) acts. In other words, he was moved beyond the act of seeing and feeling for the victim to actually give up time, money and priorities in order to care for him. In addition, he begins to build a network of compassion by involving the innkeeper and adding a promise to follow-up on his return trip. Theology 101 Quiz Test your knowledge of what the Bible has to say about mercy … “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the _______ he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” A. deep pity B. tremendous despair C. great love D. wondrous hope Answer: (C) – great love (Eph. 2:4-5) St. Alphonsus de Liguori (1696-1787) was the founder of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorists) and is a doctor of the Church. He once said that without good books and spiritual reading, it would be morally impossible to save our souls. In this spirit, consider a prayerful reading of The Art of Loving God by St. Francis de Sales during this Year of Mercy. St. Francis de Sales (1567–1622) was a bishop of Geneva in Switzerland. He was known for his faith and his gentle approach to the religious divisions that arose in Switzerland after the Protestant Reformation. In The Art of Loving God, St. Francis explains how each one of us can practice the art of loving God through the simple things in life. Along the way, he teaches the reader how to develop patience, courage, selflessness and many other virtues of the Christian life.
The Australian Greens are committed to building a peaceful and just world, seeking nonviolent means for resolving conflict when it arises. Where violence and militarism does arise, we are committed to using the resources Australia has to minimise and reduce the incidences of armed conflict and violence. We must also ensure that current and former defence and military personnel are treated fairly, appropriately and with the respect they are due. The Australian Greens believe that: 1. Nonviolent conflict resolution is the most effective way of promoting peace. 2. Global cooperation facilitated by peaceful nonviolent conflict resolution is essential to ensuring human and environmental wellbeing. 3. The glorification and normalisation of armed conflict detracts from the significant loss of life and the human and environmental devastation that is the reality of war. 4. All nuclear weapons, and the policy of “nuclear deterrence” which perpetuates their existence, must be abolished. 5. The Climate Crisis and nuclear weapons represent two of the greatest threats to meaningful world peace, and therefore human and environmental wellbeing. 6. Environmental degradation caused by the impacts of the climate crisis will increasingly result in the displacement of people, undermining global peace. 7. Veterans and their families face unique financial, employment and health challenges which require strong policy responses. 8. Investment in offensive military capabilities undermines the environmental sustainability and social development necessary for global cooperation and peaceful non-violent conflict resolution. 9. Truth, Justice and Healing for First Nations peoples and the acknowledgement of the continuing impact of the frontier wars is central to enabling Australia to play a role in creating a peaceful and nonviolent community. 10. Veterans and their families have historically been subjected to systemic injustices caused by failures of government administered Veteran’s support systems. These systems require significant change to ensure Veterans and their families receive the support they need to live a good life. 11. First Nations Veterans have historically been subjected to discrimination and have had their contribution to Australia’s war history erased. 12. Involvement in military actions has broad and long-lasting consequences, including economic and social costs to those directly involved, their families and the broader community. 13. United Nations-mandated military action should be a last resort and can only be justified if it is necessary either to avert a major violation of human rights or attempted genocide, or to counter the military invasion of a country. 14. Civil society organisations, including ethnic and women's groups, should be fully involved in conflict prevention, peacemaking and post-conflict reconstruction, including at the highest level. 15. Conscription has no place in a democratic society. 16. The deployment of Australian Defence Forces (ADF) must be for defence and peace-keeping and emergency relief operations, and not for offensive action. 17. No nuclear armed or powered forces should be deployed within Australia's maritime boundaries. 18. Any deployment of Australian military forces in international conflicts, including for UN-sanctioned interventions, must require the approval of both houses of Australian federal parliament. 19. Australia’s defences require and ability to respond to natural disasters if requested by civil authorities and only in times of serious emergency. 20. Military bases on Australian territory must be in Australia’s control, and all military activities must be accountable to Australia and its civilian authorities. 21. Joint defence facilities and the presence of foreign troops puts Australia at unnecessary risk of attack and prevents us from building cooperative peace-based relationships with our regional friends and neighbours. 22. While the joint facility at Pine Gap remains operational, Australia is complicit in targeting weapons of mass destruction and in unlawful drone assassinations conducted by the United States of America. 23. Lethal autonomous weapons are a serious threat to global peace. 24. Deliberately restricting another country’s access to critical resources such as food and water is a hostile action. Action should be taken to address such restrictions peacefully. 25. The use and promotion of violence against civilians or elected governments or representatives, whether perpetrated by a state, an organisation or individuals, should be rejected as a means to achieve political ends. 26. Rape and sexual violence in armed conflict are war crimes and constitute violations of the first Protocol of the Geneva Conventions. 27. To reduce the threat of terrorism, the social and economic injustices which contribute to terrorist actions should be addressed. 28. Continued militarisation of the digital space undermines peace and democracy. The Australian Greens want: 1. Governments to take urgent climate action to reduce the destabilising risks of climate-related disasters. 2. To ensure that the Australian Defences forces are ready and available to assist civilian-led climate and disaster responses if needed. 3. The elimination of weapons of mass destruction. 4. An explicit rejection of the doctrine of “nuclear deterrence” in Australia’s domestic and foreign policy. 5. Australia to sign and ratify the Treaty on the prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 6. The Australian Government to campaign for all countries to sign, ratify and implement all other outstanding international human rights and disarmament agreements. 7. The reconstruction and empowerment of all communities impacted by war to facilitate sustained peace. 8. A legislated requirement for military neutrality in international conflicts in the absence of parliamentary approvals. 9. An Australian Defence Force that is equipped, trained, and resourced to meet Australia’s peacekeeping needs. 10. A reallocation and reduction in Australian military expenditure consistent with the defensive security needs of Australia and the peace-keeping role of Australian forces. 11. The Australian Defence Force and other public security agencies to have an inclusive and non-discriminatory culture, to reflect the diversity of Australian society and to be supported by a transparent military justice system. 12. The Australian Defence Force and other public security agencies to adopt a zero tolerance approach to all forms of violence, abuse, degradation and exploitation within their organisations. 13. An Australian Defence Force where personnel have the right to conscientiously object to taking part in actions they believe to be illegal. 14. To ensure that Australian Defence Force personnel are not used in strikebreaking or policing activities which go beyond their remit. 15. A high-level international peace conference, under UN auspices, to reach consensus on a comprehensive global disarmament strategy. 16. An international ban on the manufacture and use of arms that indiscriminately kill, maim or cause long-lasting pollution including but not limited to landmines, cluster bombs and depleted uranium; and an immediate end to Australian Defence Force participation in any joint training or military operations with other military forces, where those forces are utilising such weapons. 17. An international ban on the development of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems. 18. To reinvigorate peace and conflict studies in Australian schools, universities and national institutions. 19. The active promotion of peace and non-violence through education. 20. To promote the role of women, LGBTQIA+ people, First Nations peoples, and multicultural communities in decision making in all stages of peace processes, agreements and transitional governance structures. 21. To ensure that trade embargoes and other economic sanctions are used as part of a strategy of conflict resolution, and have minimal harm to civilians. 22. To ensure that regional defence agreements support an independent and peaceful role for Australia in the region and are consistent with our international and human rights obligations 23. A review of the ANZUS treaty. 24. No Australian participation in United States missile defence programs and a global ban on the militarisation of space. 25. The closure of all existing foreign bases and joint defence facilities on Australian territory and an end to foreign troop deployment, training and hosting on Australian territory. 26. The demilitarisation of border and coastal policing. 27. An end to training and joint exercises by the Australian Defence Forces with armed forces known to have committed human rights abuses. 28. Australian military training overseas to promote a democratically-controlled minimal security sector and to be focussed on sustainability and democracy issues. 29. Regular, comprehensive and transparent accounting of the costs, including social, health and environmental costs, associated with all Australian Defence Force military action. 30. An end to Australia’s participation in the development and production of military systems for the international arms trade. 31. An end to Australian government subsidies for the sale of weaponry or components, and a prohibition on arms fairs and on the promotion of weaponry in public places. 32. To raise the minimum age for recruitment to 18 years and end recruitment programs targeting school leavers and school-aged young people into the Australian Defence Force. 33. To end pro-active public recruitment advertising campaigns by the Australian Defence Force. 34. To ensure that our care systems or veterans and their dependents are comprehensive, accessible, transparent, and accountable so that they provide the services and supports needed for veterans and their families to live a good life. 35. The extension of the UN Register of Arms Transfers to include production and stocks and the establishment of an independent inspectorate associated with the Register to ensure transparency. 36. The United Nations and associated agencies to strengthen the push for strong limits on the manufacture and trading of armaments of all kinds. 37. Full implementation of Australia’s obligations under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and other UN resolutions on Women, Peace and Security, and the Australian National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security. 38. Perpetrators of rape and sexual violence in armed conflict to be prosecuted under war crimes legislation. 39. Decisions on defence procurement to be based on Australia's defence needs. 40. Defence procurements that do not restrict the operations of the Australian Defence Forces by increased reliance on any one country. 41. Australia to commit to prosecute war crimes. 42. All civilians and military war criminals to face accountability for their crimes through a judicial process which accords with international human rights obligations. (Peace, Disarmament and Demilitarisation Policy as renamed and amended by National Council May 2021)
- Author: Myriam Grajales-Hall California residents not only enjoy an enviable climate and diverse regions, but also a wide selection of fresh produce year around. As consumers, we want to stretch our food budget and provide a nutritious diet to our families; but we are not always sure about how to select the best fruits and vegetables, how to store them when we get home, new ways to serve them, and the nutrition benefits they offer. Placer-Nevada Cooperative Extension has come to the rescue! As part of the Nutrition Best program, UCCE nutrition educators have prepared "Reasons for the Seasons - Produce tips for Placer County consumers," a series of seasonal produce handouts that provide practical information for families and children on purchasing, storing, preparing and serving locally grown seasonal produce. Each handout also includes tips for families on the importance of family meals and snacks, a couple of tasty and easy-to-prepare recipes, and a coloring page for the children. News & Information Outreach in Spanish has started to adapt into Spanish these handouts, and produced short video clips. The first one is for strawberries. To tickle your interest, here is a sampling of some of the tips and information you'll find: Apples – Over 7,000 varieties have been identified, however most consumers are only familiar with half a dozen or so varieties. Munching on an apple is a tooth cleaner and a gum stimulator. Apples may last up to three months if stored correctly. Broccoli – Its name comes from the Latin word Brachium which means "branch" or "arm." Broccoli is one of the most nutritious vegetables you can eat. Instead of loading it with a cream sauce that is high in fat, try serving it with silvered almonds, sesame seeds, toasted bread crumbs or parmesan cheese. The leaves can also be eaten and contain more beta carotene than the florets. Store broccoli in an open plastic bag in the refrigerator vegetable drawer. For boiling or steaming, use a non-aluminum pot or pan. Aluminum seems to increase broccoli's cooking odors. Cherries – Cherries are among the best foods for a snack. The riper the cherry, the larger the size, the deeper the color and the sweeter the fruit. Sour cherries are lower in calories and higher in vitamin C and beta carotene than sweet cherries. You can extend the cherry season by freezing them. They will keep for up to a year in your freezer. Tomatoes - Botanically, tomatoes are a fruit. This is because, generally, a fruit is the edible part of the plant that contains the seeds, while a vegetable is the edible stems, leaves and roots of the plants. Tomatoes are the leading source of vitamin C in the American diet because of the quantities we eat. Store tomatoes at room temperature for up to one week; longer if still ripening. Potatoes - Keep the potatoes in a burlap or a brown paper bag. Do not store onions with potatoes. The gases given off by onions accelerate the decay of potatoes and vice versa. Melons – Most melons originated in the Near East. They are a good source of vitamin A, C and potassium. Serve melons slightly chilled; if they are too cold, you'll miss their full fragrance. Ripe melons are very fragrant, and the aroma of a cut melon can penetrate and effect other foods Cauliflower – A good source of vitamin C, potassium and fiber. It has been associated with reducing the risk of cancer. Cauliflower should not be cooked in an aluminum or iron pot. It will turn yellow if cooked in an aluminum pot, and blue-green or brown if cooked in an iron pot. Beets – Beets come in a glistening array of color, from garnet red, to red-white striped, to deep gold, to creamy white. The entire beet, from its robust and flavorful root to its buttery green top, is sweet and delicious. To maintain firmness, cut off beet greens before storing, but leave at least an inch of the stem attached. May and June are cherry season, so why not look for new ways to enjoy this delicious and nutritious fruit? 1- 1/3 cups tart cherries, frozen 1/4 cup red onion, finely chopped 1 tablespoon jalapeños, diced 1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped 1 teaspoon cornstarch Coarsely chop cherries. Let cherries thaw and drain, reserving 1 tablespoon cherry juice. When cherries are thawed, combine drained cherries dried cherries, onion, jalapenos, garlic, and cilantro in a medium saucepan; mix well. Combine reserved cherry juice and cornstarch in a small bowl; mix until smooth. Stir into cherry mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, over medium-high heat until mixture is thickened. Let cool. Serve with tortilla chips. This recipe can also be served over cooked chicken or pork Southwestern-style cherry slaw Yield: 6 -8 servings 4 cups shredded green cabbage 3 cups sweet cherries, pitted and halved 2 cups torn fresh spinach leaves 1 cup shredded jicama (optional) 1 cup shredded carrot 1/2 cup snipped fresh cilantro 1/2 cup diced red onion 1 avocado, peeled and diced Toasted pine nuts for garnish 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice 2 tablespoons frozen lime juice concentrate, thawed 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced 1/2 teaspoon lime zest 1/4 teaspoon each chili powder, ground cumin and salt In large serving bowl, combine ingredients for Slaw. In small saucepan, combine Dressing ingredients; heat to boil. Pour over salad and toss gently to coat. Garnish with pine nuts and serve. Recipe: Northwest Cherries Online
Welcome to 2004. Are we ready to start another year of wondering which months have 30 days and which have 31? It seems easy when we say long and short alternate, starting with a long one. It’s a matter of 31, 30 and so on, right? Well, not quite. There is the matter of July and August (consecutive months with 31 days). Then we have February with 28 days — unless it’s a leap year. On top of that, some months are really incorrectly named. October means eighth month in Latin when it is actually the 10th month. How did that happen? November means ninth month, and December means 10th month. The rest are pagan names. That really seems odd in a year full of non-pagan religious holidays. What are we going to do about all this confusion? I suppose we can complicate the matter by mentioning that the word month probably comes from the word moon, and the length of the month is based on completion of a lunar cycle. However, the lunar cycle is 28 days, not 30 or 31, matching only February, but not on a leap year. Should we call this lunar or loony? All this sure seems dumb to me. It’s like the Weather Channel showing sunset at 4:46 and mostly sunny skies at 5 p.m. (which it did through most of December, the 12th month called the 10th month, remember?). This certainly sets up a call to action in my mind. We need to forget about trivial matters like war-and-peace, the economy, the environment, global warming, and if JLo really wants to marry Ward Cleaver. We have a matter of intergalactic importance here. Calendar confusion must come to its well-deserved end, friends and neighbors. We must take immediate action! We can make all the months match the lunar cycle and be the same number of days. All we have to do is add a month and a day. If we institute 13 months of 28 days each, we will have 364 days. We can have a year of 364 days with a day between the years called No Year Day to celebrate like we do New Year’s Day now. On leap years we have No Year One and No Year Two. The only problem now is naming that 13th month. We can keep the same names of the months now and simply name the additional one. Or we can use the opportunity to rename them all, this time doing it properly. Either way, it could be a big naming contest on a weekly television-reality show culminating at the conclusion of the final old-style year in a big pay-TV special hosted by our favorite celebrity idiot. I’m sure everyone will agree to give me the pay-TV profits in return for saving the world with the concept. I mean, fair is fair, right? See how easily the monumental problems of the world can be solved? As humans, we can figure out absolutely anything (except how to get along instead of killing off each other, of course). All that is left of this vexing annual measurement debacle now is seeing to the naming and physically forcing everyone else to agree with us by democratic means. Now, about this business of changing the clocks twice a year … Jim Lee is news director for KENW-FM radio. He also is an English instructor. He can be contacted at 359-2204. His e-mail:
Cobb’s The Most Southern Place on Earth: A Review In The Most Southern Place on Earth, James Cobb reveals the Mississippi Delta region as a place of life’s extremes, especially to those who spent a great deal of their lives in the region from one generation to the next. These extremes range from the region’s shifting environmental conditions to its diversity in social class and power. Cobb’s main concern is to answer why the unrelenting planter dominance in the region perpetuated from the 1830s until the time after the civil rights era. Cobb asserts that the planters’ adaptability as well as their sophisticated use of the federal government and of their external financiers maintained their sovereignty in the Mississippi Delta. Cobb even goes on to argue that federal programs subverted the great civil rights breakthroughs during the 1960s which eventually kept economic power in the grasp of the Mississippi whites. The argument of Cobb is successful because he is able to provide statistics and other detailed information which supports most of his central claims in his book. For instance, Cobb cites figures with regard to the disparities in the Delta region, specifically the numbers pertaining to the lynching of blacks between the years 1900 and 1930. Using such figures, Cobb goes on to assert that the blacks who refused to leave the region and opted to remain were left with no other choice but to accept and comply with the caste system that is filled with “inerrant consistency and an almost exaggerated vigor” (p. 153). The situation faced by Mississippi blacks reaffirms the claim of Cobb that the Mississippi Delta region was a place where “white affluence and privileged” not only were sustained but thrived to “equally striking levels of black deprivation and powerlessness” (p. 153). The fact that Cobb used the previous works of several authors who focused on the conditions in the Mississippi Delta on specific periods gives credence to the narrative book. More importantly, those previous works together with Cobb’s own researches illustrate the survival of the planters such as Andrew J. Polk and George Collins to name a few despite the odds that they faced. Here we find one of the extremes that Cobb is trying to point-out—the region became “the domain of an exceptionally prosperous, powerful and socially and politically conservative planter elite” (p. 125). At the same time, Cobb also emphasizes the other side of such an extreme, one that has also survived the years partly because of the prevailing caste system and partly because of the social forces that tied the blacks to peonage despite the social breakthroughs. That other side is the case of the blacks whose only autonomy is that of the autonomy to transfer from one field to the next, under one plantation owner to the next. Apparently, the weakness of the book rests on its use of in-depth research and statistics as bases to prove the major points of the author. Its use of a narrative style in approaching the task of revealing the conditions in the Mississippi Delta through the years helps readers get a closer feel of such conditions. On the other hand, some of the weaknesses of the book include its seemingly hurried discussion of the civil rights movement during the 1950s and the 1960s. Its quick discussion of the Delta Blues music, although central to our understanding of the conditions in the Mississippi Delta, appears close to the end of the book, thereby making it a fleeting topic that serves to close the social narrative rather than one that opens up more worthwhile topics for discussion. Cobb, James. The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
If Mwanyika Thomas had a choice, she would lock herself inside her small home and not venture outside at all. "I have to leave my house to get money for food. But if I didn't have to, I would never leave," the 48-year-old said. "I'm very scared of this virus," she added, referring to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic that has swept across the globe. "I have been thinking about it a lot. I know that if I get it, I will die." Thomas, who makes a living by finding sporadic farming and cultivation jobs around the northern city of Arusha, is among the 1.6 million Tanzanians who are living with HIV. Michel Yao, programme manager for the COVID-19 emergency response at the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Africa regional office, told Al Jazeera that even though not enough studies have been conducted to determine how exactly coronavirus affects those living with immune deficiency disorders such as HIV-AIDS, people suffering from them would likely be more vulnerable to developing serious illness from COVID-19. HIV also makes individuals more prone to developing tuberculosis (TB), a respiratory illness that Yao said could make the COVID-19 cases in affected populations more severe. According to WHO data, in 2016 the African region accounted for a quarter of new TB cases worldwide. 'Next wave could be Africa' As of Monday, there were more than 1.8 million known coronavirus cases and almost 115,000 deaths wordwide. The virus was slow to arrive on the African continent, but within a few weeks the confirmed number of COVID-19 infections has climbed to more than 14,500, with at least 788 coronavirus-related fatalities. In Tanzania, there are 46 confirmed cases, including three deaths, although some fear the actual number of infections is higher than reported. While COVID-19 can affect people of all ages, older adults, whose immune systems have declined with age, appear to be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill after contracting the pathogen. Africa has the youngest population in the world, with 211 million people aged between 15 and 24. This has led some to predict that the continent's seemingly favourable demographics may protect it from experiencing the catastrophic death tolls seen in Europe and the United States. Yao said, however, that this is a shaky theory and does not account for the millions living with HIV-AIDS and other pre-existing conditions. Eastern and southern Africa are home to 54 percent of the world's people living with HIV, according to the UN. "The disease started in Asia and then Europe; the next wave could be Africa," Yao said. "So we're advising countries that we should learn from what has happened [in the rest of the world] and adjust it into our context." 'We need help' In Tanzania, antiretroviral medications are free for those suffering from HIV-AIDS. Davota Faustini, 41, was diagnosed with HIV more than two decades ago. But Faustini, who makes a meagre living going door-to-door in search of work cleaning homes and doing laundry, at times cannot afford the food she must take with her medication. "It's a big challenge for me," she told Al Jazeera. "When I take the medication I get sick and feel very dizzy because I don't have enough money to eat a lot of the time." "I heard about coronavirus on the TV and radio," she added. "I know that I should wash my hands and keep my distance from people. Other than this, we haven't gotten any more information from the government." Faustini said that even the extra $0.09 it takes to buy soap is unaffordable for her, never mind the $2 it costs to purchase a 100ml bottle of hand sanitiser. "No one sits us down and tells us what HIV people are supposed to do in this situation. We are getting no direction from the government. But we are scared and we need someone to help us," she said. 'This isn't a joke' Many countries in Africa have taken drastic measures to curb the spread of COVID-19, including nationwide lockdowns, curfews and fiscal measures to assist the poor. Tanzania, however, split with its neighbours during what has been described as a "mild" response to the pandemic, avoiding some of the most sweeping measures imposed elsewhere. The government has cancelled schools, including university, and suspended all international passenger flights to the country but does not plan to introduce a lockdown. "When you look at the dynamics, most Tanzanians live from hand to mouth - they have to leave their households in order to survive. So when you go for a total lockdown it means some will instead die of hunger," Faustine Ndugulile, Tanzania's deputy health minister, told The Citizen earlier this month. Meanwhile, a ban on public gatherings announced soon after the first COVID-19 case was reported does not seem to be rigorously enforced; people continue to crowd into bars and clubs undisturbed. In fact, besides the presence of more hand-washing stations outside businesses and hotels, not much appears to have changed in Tanzania's daily life. "No one here is taking this virus seriously," Thomas said. "People need to open their eyes in Tanzania and see how other countries are suffering," she added. "People here are still making jokes about coronavirus. If we [HIV positive people] get this disease, we are going to die. This isn't a joke." But Tanzanian authorities have delivered mixed messages to the public. While the health ministry has promoted social distancing, Tanzanian President John Magufuli has encouraged the public to continue gathering in places of worship to "pray" the virus away, referring to the highly contagious disease as "the devil". Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam, which has the highest number of COVID-19 cases in the country, recently mocked Tanzanians who have decided to self-quarantine, claiming they were "waiting around for the virus". He encouraged Tanzanians to instead "get out and work". Jeremia Msweta, 50, has no choice but to spend most of his days at a crowded market in Arusha selling fish. "I can't avoid crowds or avoid the market. If I stay inside and don't work, hunger will kill me before coronavirus does," he told Al Jazeera. Msweta said he tries to take precautions owing to his HIV status, like washing his hands whenever he has the opportunity. But it is difficult to find places to wash properly at the market, he noted, and there is no running water at his home. "[The virus] makes me feel sad that there is yet another disease we have to worry about," Msweta said. "Of course, I'm afraid. But there's nothing I can do. Whatever happens, will happen. I don't have control over anything." "I believe in God and I pray that God will save us," he added. Other countries in Africa, including Rwanda and Uganda, have introduced measures to assist those who are adversely affected by lockdowns, including free food distribution. Tanzania, however, has not announced any such plans to date. Thomas said the government should be putting more effort into providing special attention to at-risk segments of the population, like those suffering from HIV-AIDS, to stay home and self-quarantine while other citizens can continue living as usual. "They could provide food for us, and other necessary items like soap, so that we can stay at home without starving," she added. Faustini, meanwhile says she fears Tanzanians living with HIV-AIDS may also face more difficulty seeking treatment for their pre-existing condition while the government's resources are allocated to fighting the spread of coronavirus. According to Yao, this is a major concern for African countries. "Having thousands of people accessing treatment for COVID-19 could reduce access for those suffering from other conditions," he said. He noted that governments must develop additional "dedicated services" to people living with HIV-AIDS, or other vulnerable groups, by providing protective equipment and soap or hydroalcoholic solutions to assist them in maintaining precautionary hygiene, and making sure they become more "alert on the seriousness of a potential infection". This all needs to be done while also ensuring that the official COVID-19 response does not reduce the ability of those living with HIV-AIDS to access necessary treatment. Al Jazeera reached out for comment to various individuals in the health ministry, including Ndugulile, the prime minister's office, and the Tanzanian government's chief spokesperson Hassan Abbas, who is in charge of communicating details of the state's COVID-19 response. However, despite numerous attempts over several days, no one replied to Al Jazeera's requests for information on the government's plans to protect its at-risk citizens. Critics, including activists and opposition politicians, have urged the government to develop a comprehensive national plan to curb the virus's spread and share this strategy with the public. Mariam, the director of a small NGO in Arusha that assists Tanzanians living with HIV-AIDS and who requested to use a pseudonym in fear of government reprisal, believes the government needs to do more to communicate its COVID-19 response to the general public. "Many HIV positive people are feeling so hopeless in this situation. They are concerned about their lives. If the government is more open with us, I think people will start to feel safer," Mariam told Al Jazeera, noting that she has not been made aware of any plans that will assist Tanzania's most vulnerable. Last year, the WHO issued a rare public rebuke against the Tanzanian government for refusing to cooperate and withholding information about suspected Ebola cases in the country. "People have completely lost trust in the government," said Thabit Jacob, a Tanzanian academic. "Decision-making has gone from being influenced by technical experts to being solely about politics." Over the last few years, Magufuli's administration has been the target of widespread criticism over his authoritarian style of governance. Press watchdogs and rights groups say increasingly restrictive laws have undermined freedom of expression and sowed fear into civil society. The government has also faced accusations of maintaining control on who can gather and disseminate statistical information, denying citizens alternative sources of independently verified data, while routinely harassing, intimidating and arresting journalists and others. "If you question their statistics or their official narrative, you will have to pay the price," Jacob said, underscoring the case of Mwele Malecela, the former director-general of Tanzania's National Institute for Medical Research. In 2016, Malecela, who now heads the department of control of neglected tropical diseases at the WHO, was fired by Magufuli after she went public with research findings that indicated the presence of the Zika virus in Tanzania. Magufuli later admitted to firing Malecela because she was working for "imperialists" and had tried to tarnish the country's image. Tanzanians living with HIV-AIDS, meanwhile, feel left in the dark by their government. "We feel abandoned," Thomas said. "We're not seen and our struggle is not being acknowledged. "They tell us to keep washing our hands. But that's not enough. We are going to die. They need to do more to protect us." This article was published by Al Jazeera.
Submitted to: Agronomy Abstracts Publication Type: Abstract Only Publication Acceptance Date: July 30, 2000 Publication Date: November 1, 2000 Citation: Wilhelm, W.W., Varvel, G.E. 2000. Nitrogen uptake efficiency in grain crops. Agronomy Abstracts p. 122. Technical Abstract: Although N is one of the most abundant elements on earth, it is the second most critical substance (next to water) limiting crop production. Accept for very specialized cases, N must be in the relatively scarce forms of ammonium or nitrate, dissolved in the soil solution, and near an active root to be taken up. The difficulty in achieving truly ¿efficient¿ N uptake is underscored by the fact that concentrations of available nitrate and ammonium in soil and N in the plant differ by three orders of magnitude. Although diffusion and mass flow contribute to total N uptake, crops must rely upon active transport to take up sufficient quantities of N to support economically viable levels of yield. Active N uptake is fueled by ATP that drives ion pumps and opens ion channels in the plasmalemma. Improved N uptake efficiency may rely upon such creative approaches as use of mycorrhiza and genetic engineering to change uptake characteristics or be achieved through more classical breeding and management approaches. Classical possibilities include selection for genotypes with greater root surface area or uptake potential, managing tillage, water, and fertilizer so that greatest N availability coincides with maximum crop demand, and maintenance of a vigorous crop with a healthy root system capable of efficiently gleaning N from the rhizosphere.
This reviewer admits to not being a fan of Coulter’s “take no prisoners” style. That having been said, this book should be read to understand how the struggle for equal rights was won and why racial divisions are back some 40 years later. Coulter writes that contrary to myths propagated by Democrats, “The entire history of civil rights legislation consists of Republicans battling Democrats to guarantee the constitutional rights of black people. Not all Democrats were segregationists, but all segregationists were Democrats and there were enough of them to demand compliance from the rest of the party …” She points out that from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century black Americans were denied civil rights in places controlled by Democrats. She lists leading segregationist Democrats and the Republicans who battled them. In addition, she chronicles civil rights legislation beginning with the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery, which had “80 percent of Democrats voting against it.” Republicans also unanimously “enacted the Fourteenth Amendment, granting freed slaves the rights of citizenship” – again with unanimous opposition from Democrats. It was Republicans who passed the Fifteenth Amendment, giving blacks the right to vote, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (providing citizenship and “full and equal benefit of all laws”), the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and civil rights measures in 1875, 1890, 1922, 1935, 1938 (the latter three anti-lynching laws opposed by Democrats) and anti-poll tax bills in 1942, 1944, and 1946. Coulter also points out that the Civil Rights laws of 1957, 1964 and 1965 were all passed because of Republican support. Eisenhower, she writes, “put a slew of blacks into prominent positions in his administration–unlike Barack Obama he chose competent ones–and quickly moved to desegregate the military, something President Harry Truman had announced but failed to fully implement.” In the election of 1956, the Republican Party platform endorsed the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education desegregating public schools. The Democrat platform did not. Eisenhower pushed through two major civil rights laws and created the Civil Rights Commission over the objections of Democrats such as then Senator Lyndon Johnson who warned fellow segregationist Democrats: “Be ready to take up the goddamned nigra bill again.” Democrats cast all eighteen votes against both bills. President Richard Nixon desegregated the building trades and dramatically decreased the number of black children attending segregated school in the South from 70 percent to 18.4 percent. It was only after the struggle for civil rights was essentially finished that Democrats came forth against racial discrimination. Coulter explains: “What really made the Democrats sit up and take notice was that blacks began voting, and would soon outnumber the Democrats’ segregationist wing.” President LBJ “did a complete turnaround” and pushed through a dramatic civil rights bill. Even so, a far larger number of Republicans than Democrats voted for it. The nay voters included Senators Sam Ervin and Albert Gore Sr., among others. Coulter also chides such Democrat worthies as Bob Beckel, History professor Joseph Ellis, and journalist Carl Bernstein for fabricating claims of having participated in the civil rights struggle. “Every liberal over a certain age claims to have marched in Selma and accompanied the Freedom Rides.” But what Democrats did do in the name of civil rights was to forge new chains for blacks with misguided government policies. Under LBJ’s Great Society programs, welfare requirements such as having a husband, were jettisoned. By 1960 more than 60 percent of Aid to Families with Dependent Children payments went to “absent father” homes. Just how destructive that was for blacks families is evident. “Erol Ricketts, a demographer and sociologist with the Rockefeller Foundation, found that between 1890 and 1950, blacks had higher marriage rates than whites, according to the US Census bureau. “ 1960 was the very year that black marriage rates began a gradual but precipitous decline “with the marriage rate for black women falling below 70 percent for the first time only in 1970. As late as that, a majority of black children were still living with both parents.” According to Ricketts: “The argument that current levels of female-headed families among blacks are due to the cultural legacy of slavery and that black family formation patterns are fundamentally different from whites are not supported by the data.” In fact, black Americans were moving forward on the same well-trod path taken by the Irish, the Jews and countless others who started at the bottom of the economic heap. But by 2010, thanks to the “specific policy of paying women to have children out of wedlock,” only 30.1 percent of blacks above the age of 15 were married compared to 52.7 percent of whites. “If blacks managed to get married again at the their pre–Great Society rates, the entire black ‘culture of poverty’ would be wiped out. Black people know this: The vital institution of marriage, felt by its absence, is reflected in the overwhelming, ferocious opposition to gay marriage in the black community.” Next, liberal judges and air-headed academics decided it was a bad idea to punish criminals, especially black criminals; instead we should try to understand them. “Democrats simply would not treat blacks as the equal of whites, deserving rebuke for bad behavior just like a white person.” Anyone who objected was called a racist. The result was that the crime rate in general and especially the black crime rate soared. Black on black crimes (by far the greatest number) went virtually unnoticed by the left, but the much less frequent white on black crimes were an opportunity to win black allegiance by vocally defending black “victims.” Coulter details case after case (over 52 pages and some 24 different cases) of bogus racist crimes abetted by a liberal media and demagogued by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Never mind that fake claims of race-based attacks often resulted in real “retaliatory” crimes against innocents. Coulter reveals how the 1992 Los Angeles riots were the product of a television network’s editing of the Rodney King tape to make it appear a case of police brutality. Her analysis of the Rodney King debacle is worth the price of the book. Coulter credits the race-based acquittal of OJ Simpson, which she examines in fascinating detail, for draining the white guilt bank. She reveals how fomenting racial division and reactivating white guilt were key to Barack Obama’s political success. It is also helpful that criticizing Obama for any reason is deemed racist. Democrats have most recently expanded from peddling bogus discrimination victims to inventing racist “code” words with which to bludgeon political opponents. Words like law and order, Chicago and welfare are designated as racial slurs. It’s all Republicans’ fault for failing to say anything that objectively can be called racist. Democrats also have been adding to the causes they want to cram under the civil rights umbrella ”and thus enlarge their pool of debtors.” The list is long and growing: homosexual marriage, abortion on demand, women’s rights. Amnesty for illegal’s, publicly funded sex change operations, blocking voter ID laws and so on. “These are not policies that help blacks, nor are they supported by most black people. But Democrats believe blacks should be like children; seen and not heard. Shut up and vote for us.” Blacks have been hurt the most by Democrat policies that insulate them from responsibility, encourage out of wedlock births and reward dependency. As Coulter writes at the end of the book: “The national obsession with racism is a self-inflicted punishment that resulted in disaster for everyone, but most of all for black people. The initial lie from which all other lies flow is the idea that black people’s condition in America depends upon white people’s beneficence.” A couple of quibbles: This reviewer recommends Mugged without hesitation. It documents the true history of civil rights and exposes the many hoaxes perpetrated upon the nation by the Democrat Party. But at the same time, a word or two about Reconstruction would have been appreciated. History also includes the depredations visited upon white southerners by carpet-bagging northerners (mostly Republicans), the majority of whom were not there to help blacks but to exploit and profit from the region’s misfortunes. Similarly, acknowledgment that although the struggle for equal rights is long over, it doesn’t necessarily mean that sweetness and light always prevails. Not because we are “a racist society” but because Americans, like other humans, lack perfection: whether white, black, brown, or shades in between, all have virtues and opinions. Winning some hearts and minds is on-going and is not accomplished by bullying or government edicts. Admittedly, both additions would have been diversions from Coulter’s well-documented and important book. But this reader yearned for a bit more completeness in her recounting of the historical record.
SINGAPORE -- Methanol, a fuel used to power light aircraft and racing cars, is being tried out as alternative power for ships, highlighting its potential in an industry under pressure to cut emissions. From next year, shipping firms will have to cut polluting sulfur emissions in vessels going to parts of Europe and North America, sparking a race for alternatives to standard diesel between fuel sources such as methanol and liquefied natural gas. As well as being considered a green fuel, methanol is potentially cheaper and more plentiful than diesel or LNG. But it is trickier to handle than some fuels, such as diesel, due to its lower flash point -- the temperature where it vaporizes and could ignite -- so it needs care to prevent fires. "Compared with LNG as an alternative shipping fuel, we see methanol in an early stage of development," said Thomas Wybierek, a shipping analyst at Norddeutsche Landesbank. Methanol is more costly than diesel and less efficient to burn, though prices could come down as new projects to produce it come on stream. South Korean and Japanese shipyards recently won the first orders for ships running on methanol. Engines, using 95 percent methanol and 5 percent diesel, are being developed and should be delivered in mid-2015, said engine builder MAN Diesel & Turbo. "From a risk perspective I can't see that methanol has any drawbacks as compared to LNG," said Joanne Ellis at Swedish maritime transport consultant SSPA, which is working on one of two research programs looking at methanol as a marine fuel. Methanol can be stored in existing tanks on ships and -- since it is not kept under pressure -- will not expand and explode in the way LNG could, she said. Because LNG is superchilled, it also needs special tanks and could freeze ship equipment or cause injuries if it leaked. Draft safety guidelines should be finalized this year for ships powered by fuels with low flash points such as methanol, the U.N.'s International Maritime Organization said. There are about 50 LNG-fueled ships operating globally, excluding dual-fuel LNG carriers. This will double with around 55 LNG-fueled ships on order as firms in emission control areas opt to use LNG to comply with tougher IMO rules on emissions. But a lack of LNG refueling infrastructure at ports and the tanks needed to store it on ships, taking up space for cargo, are obstacles to its wider use, some experts say. On the other hand, methanol can be stored in existing fuel tanks and transported to port by road tanker. It is usually produced from natural gas, though can also be made from biomass, carbon dioxide and even household rubbish. Methanol is cheaper than LNG, which costs between $900 and $1,100 a ton Methanol is priced at $460-$560 per ton, but twice as much needs to be burnt to generate the same energy as marine diesel, said Michael Teusch, business development manager at Danish catalysts firm Haldor Topsoe. Marine diesel costs about $600 a ton, though with low sulfur it is much more expensive. Japan's Minaminippon Shipbuilding Co., and South Korea's Hyundai Mipo Dockyards Ltd are building seven methanol-fueled tankers due to be completed in 2016. Three of the vessels, costing $140 million in total, will be owned by Japan's Mitsui OSK Lines, the company said. The ships have been chartered by Canada's Waterfront Shipping Company, a subsidiary of Methanex Corporation, the world's top supplier of methanol. There is also a trial, partly financed by the European Commission, starting early next year using methanol to help power a ferry. If successful, a fleet of methanol-powered ferries could be operating in Europe and Scandinavia by 2020. George Cambanis, who heads Deloitte's Global Shipping and ports group, said the host of players involved in various biodiesel projects for ships from engine manufacturers to ship safety classification society Lloyd's Register meant methanol was likely to be used more in the future. "How soon the future comes is anybody's guess," he added.
The period of emerging adulthood, or between the ages of 16 – 24 years old, is a critical developmental period marked by a great deal of exciting life changes which are often accompanied by periods of uncertainty. During this time period many changes are occurring in the brain, socially, emotionally, financially, and relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners, leisure activities, and cultural beliefs. Emerging adults are grappling with financial independence, exploring romantic relationships, and making decisions with longer-term consequences. Key points to consider in cognitive development, social development, emotional development, financial challenges, leisure activities, cultural beliefs and physical/mental health are outlined below. The ability to think in a complex, sophisticated manner begins to develop and/or undergoes many changes during emerging adulthood. When you think about difficult situations that you encounter there are always many sides to it. Around the age of 16, we start to develop something called cognitive flexibility. This is the ability to look at a situation and see different facets, it also allows us to recognize that things change from one situation to the next and allow us to respond in an effective way. All the decisions of emerging adults, for example studying for final exams, choosing a college, choosing a gap year, choosing a job, and developing healthy friendships are all tasks which require cognitive flexibility. As these abilities are developing they may result in challenging situations ranging from not attending to class/work up to and including an inability to function. Our program works to support this development in a healthy, effective manner where you have room to try out new things to sort out what behavior is effective for you. Social development goes hand-in-hand with cognitive development. In contrast to earlier generations, this stage is more complex with the advent of social media, gap years, and remote working. At this stage, the possibilities are truly endless. Emerging adults need to utilize all of their emotional, cognitive, and coping skills to navigate college applications, job applications, or pursuing non-traditional paths. Each of these different choices requires a different, sophisticated, and nuanced skill set to be able to thrive. For example, emails to friends should be written differently than emails to prospective employers. Even when you have cell phone numbers for bosses and teachers, we need to think about how to interact with them appropriately. Social skills developed during this time period, in conjunction with cognitive growth, allow for emerging adults to navigate different situations and adjust their own approach to move them closer to their goal. There are many changes that are occurring within and around emerging adults. The endless possibilities at this age usually go hand-in-hand with trying to figure out who you are and how you want to live your life. Often this is the stage where you enter into your first, serious, romantic relationship or begin to think about social issues. This is also important because we want to encourage emerging adults healthy exploration in emerging adults. This might mean taking a class you would not otherwise have tried out or exploring new hobbies, jobs or sports to get a sense of what is possible for you! Mental health is a necessary part of healthy and adaptive functioning as a human. When we say mental health we mean a “state of well-being in which we have the ability to realize our potential, cope with normal stresses, and be a contributing community member” (Tanner, 2016). From a psychological perspective, this period is characterized by identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling transitory, and exciting possibility. This is also the time period when psychiatric symptoms often emerge for the first time. In fact, more than 40% of emerging adults meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder in a 12-month period (Kessler, Chiu, Demler, & Walters, 2005); really what this means is that nearly half of emerging adults have difficulties in their psychological functioning at some point during this transition period. In college populations, more than 50% meet criteria for an anxiety disorder. From our perspective at the LAUNCH clinic, we believe that it is important to provide meaningful support before or during periods when symptoms emerge. This looks different for each person, but we do know that early help can make a difference to functioning in the future.
Tao Te Ching, Verses #4, 6, 11, 33 Lao Tzu in Chinese means literally "old boy" or "old-young". He was the father of Taoism, whose symbol of Yin-Yang seems to personify him as embracing and transcending the opposites. According to the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145-90 B.C.), Lao Tzu was a historian in charge of the Archives in the state of Chou. Lao Tzu reprimanded Confucius when the latter paid him a visit, "Rid yourself of your arrogance, your ingratiaing manners, and your excessive ambitions. These are all detrimental to you. This is all I have to say to you." On leaving, Confucius told his disciples, "I know a corded arrow can bring down a flying bird, a net can trap a running animal, and a swimming fish can be caught with a line & hook. But a dragon's ascent to heaven on wind and cloud is beyond our reach. Today I met Lao Tzu what a dragon!" When Lao Tzu left for the hills, the Gatekeeper requested him to write some words of wisdom for his children. The 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching was what Lao Tzu left behind. This text is the most translated book after the Bible. My first copy of Tao Te Ching was translated by D. C. Lau in the Penguin Classics edition (1967). The smiling countenance of Lao Tzu on the cover (left) was a detail from a Chinese silk painting in the British Museum. It became my favorite book, and I carried it around with me often. While shopping in New York's Chinatown with my Mom, we went to the Chinatown Book Company at 70A Mott Street. I found a copy of Tao Te Ching with the original Chinese text. It was titled Truth and Nature by Cheng Lin, published in Hong Kong (May 1968). I bought it for 90¢ and consulted the Chinese text with the many English translations. During Intersession week at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (January 1979), I taught a course "Philosophy of Enlightenment: Teachings of Greek & Oriental Sages" to 20 engineering students. I translated 18 of the 81 verses and gave the handout to students when lecturing on Taoism. In April 1988, I gave a seminar "Tao of Writing" at Writers Connection, Cupertino, CA. As I was learning to write poetry at this time, my translations of 21 verses were more succinct, trying to capture the simplicity of the original. I'm including Verses #4, 6, 11, 33 with added titles that give some flavor of the Tao. (Peter Y. Chou) Tao Te Ching IV: NATURE OF THE TAO The Tao is an empty vessel, yet use will not exhaust it. Like a deep fathomless abyss it is the source of all things. It smooths the sharpness, unravels the knots, softens the glare, clarifies the obscure. Its fountain is deep and everlasting. I know not who gave it birth, it came even before the gods. VI: SPIRIT OF THE VALLEY The Spirit of the Valley never dies, it is the Eternal Feminine. The gateway of the mysterious female is the root of heaven and earth. Darkly veiled, it remains forever. It may be used, but cannot be exhausted. XI: UTILITY OF NON-EXISTENCE Thirty spokes converge in the hub of a wheel; It is the center hole which makes it useful. Mold clay to form the walls of a pot; It is the emptiness within which gives its use. Cut out doors and windows to make a room; It is the space therein which makes it useful. Therefore, we profit from the existence of things, but are served by things which are non-existent. XXXIII: KNOW THYSELF Knowing others, one is learned; Knowing thyself, one is enlightened. Conquering others requires force; Conquering oneself requires strength. Knowing contentment, one is rich; Having perseverance, one is firm; Abiding in the center, one endures; Even in dying, one enjoys eternal life. Translated by Peter Y. Chou for Tao of Writing Seminar presented at Writers Connection, Cupertino, CA (April 23, 1988) Lao Tzu: Father of Taoism \| © Peter Y. Chou, WisdomPortal.com P.O. Box 390707, Mountain View, CA 94039
How Thomas Jefferson's Obsession With Mastodons Partly Fueled the Lewis and Clark Expedition By the 1800s, American mastodons—prehistoric relatives of the elephant—had been extinct for roughly 10,000 years. Thomas Jefferson didn’t know that, though. The Founding Father dreamed of finding a living, breathing mastodon in America, and this lofty goal ended up being a motivating force throughout much of his life. Even during the Revolutionary War, and even when he ran for the highest office in the land, he had mastodons on the mind. Jefferson was convinced that the hairy beasts still roamed the continent, probably somewhere on the uncharted western frontier, and he was determined to find them—or, at the very least, enlist a couple of intrepid explorers by the names of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to do the hunting on his behalf. The Corps of Discovery departed from St. Louis on May 14, 1804 and headed into the great unknown of the Louisiana Purchase in search of an all-water route to the Pacific. The adventurers made many discoveries on the two-and-a-half-year round trip—mapping the geography of the region and logging hundreds of species of flora and fauna unknown to science—but the directive to look for mastodons is a little-known footnote to their famous expedition. At the start of their trip, Jefferson instructed Lewis and Clark to be on the lookout for “the remains and accounts of any [animal] which may be deemed rare or extinct.” Although he didn’t mention mastodons specifically—at least not in any of the written correspondence on record—the two explorers were all too familiar with Jefferson’s mammoth ambition. “Surely Jefferson still had the M-word in mind, and surely Lewis knew it,” author Robert A. Saindon writes in Explorations Into the World of Lewis and Clark, Volume 2. Jefferson had long been interested in paleontology, but his mastodon obsession was fueled by a longstanding beef he had with a French naturalist who thought America’s animals and people were puny. Jefferson’s bone-collecting hobby quickly evolved into a mission to assert America’s dominance in the Western world and prove that it was "a land full of big and beautiful things," as journalist Jon Mooallem put it in his book, Wild Ones. Indeed, there are worse ways to become a political and cultural heavyweight than to prove your country is home to a 12,000-pound monster. A Rivalry Forms For much of his adult life, Jefferson was an avid collector of fossils and bones. At various points in time, he owned a bison fossil, elk and moose antlers, giant ground sloth fossils, and naturally, a number of mastodon bones. Though his original interest may have been purely academic, Jefferson's exposure to the writings of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon fanned the flames of his obsession. Buffon’s “Theory of American Degeneracy,” published in the 1760s, postulated that the people and animals of America were small and weak because the climate (he assumed, without much evidence) was too cold and wet to encourage growth. Jefferson was furious. He formulated a rebuttal, which partly drew attention to the inconsistencies in Buffon's beliefs about the mastodon. Buffon suggested that the American mastodon was a combination of elephant and hippopotamus bones, but because Jefferson had inspected the bones, he knew that the measurements didn't match those of previously known species. Instead, Jefferson argued that the bones belonged to a different animal entirely. (Although they’re distinct species, woolly mammoths and mastodons were lumped into the same category at the time, and were called one of two names: mammoths or the American incognitum.) “The skeleton of the mammoth … bespeaks an animal of five or six times the cubic volume of the elephant,” Jefferson wrote. He later scaled back his argument a bit, adding, “But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain such a one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings.” He didn’t just believe that mastodons had existed at one point in time, though—he believed they were still out there somewhere. It wasn’t unusual for thinkers and scientists of Jefferson's era to assume that bones were evidence of a still-living species. After all, dinosaurs had not yet been discovered (though their bones had been found, no one would call them dinosaurs until the early 19th century), and the concept of extinction wasn’t widely accepted or understood. Dominant religious beliefs also reinforced the idea that God’s creations couldn't be destroyed. For his part, Jefferson believed that animals fell into a natural order, and that removing a link in “nature’s chain” would throw the whole system into disarray. Taking the tone of a philosopher, he once questioned, “It may be asked, why I insert the Mammoth, as if it still existed? I ask in return, why I should omit it, as if it did not exist?” This position may have been partly fueled by wishful thinking. Jefferson believed that tracking down a living mastodon would be the most satisfying way to stick it to Buffon and say, “I told you so.” (In the meantime, though, he had to settle for a dead moose, which he sent overseas to the Frenchman’s doorstep in Paris to prove that large animals did, in fact, exist in America.) The Hunt Continues In late 1781, Jefferson wrote to his buddy George Rogers Clark in the Ohio valley and asked him to fetch some mastodon teeth from a nearby "mastodon boneyard" in northern Kentucky called Big Bone Lick. “Were it possible to get a tooth of each kind, that is to say a foretooth, grinder, &c, it would particularly oblige me,” Jefferson wrote. Clark politely explained that the possibility of Native American attacks made this task impossible, but he was able to procure a thighbone, jaw bone, grinder, and tusk from travelers who had managed to visit the frontier. However, Jefferson didn’t receive Clark's reply until six months later in August 1782 (because of, you know, the Revolutionary War). Although the war technically didn't end until the following year, peace talks between the two sides were nearing a conclusion, and everybody knew it. With an end to the conflict in sight, Jefferson doubled down on his request for mastodon bones. He wrote to Clark, “A specimen of each of the several species of bones now to be found is to me the most desireable object in Natural History, and there is no expence of package or of safe transportation which I will not gladly reimburse to procure them safely.” Later, while serving as America’s first Secretary of State, Jefferson supported a proposed Western exploration that would have preceded the Lewis and Clark expedition. Before the expedition was called off, Jefferson had instructed the would-be explorer, French botanist André Michaux, to look for mastodons along the way. He wrote to Michaux in 1793, “Under the head of Animal history, that of the Mammoth is particularly recommended to your enquiries.” Even when Jefferson turned his attention to national politics and ran for president against incumbent John Adams in 1800, he was still thinking about mastodons. His preoccupations were so widely known that his opponents, the Federalists, called him a “mammoth infidel” in reference to his unusual hobby and supposed secular leanings. As an 1885 article in the Magazine of American History recalled, “When Congress was vainly trying to untangle the difficulties arising from the tie vote between Jefferson and [Aaron] Burr, when every politician at the capital was busy with schemes and counter-schemes, this man, whose political fate was balanced on a razor’s edge, was corresponding with [physician and professor] Dr. [Caspar] Wistar in regard to some bones of the mammoth which he had just procured from Shawangunk, Ulster County.” Once president, Jefferson used his office to further the field of paleontology. Not long after he was elected, he loaned one of the Navy’s pumps to artist and naturalist Charles Willson Peale, who wanted to extract a pile of freshly unearthed mastodon bones from a water-filled pit. It ultimately became the first fossilized skeleton to ever be assembled in America. Of course, there is also evidence that Jefferson silently hoped Lewis and Clark would stumble upon a living mastodon during their expedition, which formally kicked off in 1804 and ended in 1806. That, as we now know, was impossible. After their return, Jefferson sent William Clark on a second assignment to collect artifacts from Big Bone Lick. He sent three big boxes of bones back to Jefferson, who got to work unloading and studying them in the East Room of the White House—the same room where John and Abigail Adams once hung their laundry. Still, something wasn’t quite right, and Jefferson may have known it even then. By 1809, the animal in question had been identified and given the name mastodon, and Jefferson started to reverse some of his previously held opinions. In a letter to William Clark, he conceded that the mastodon was not a carnivore, as he once believed, but an herbivore. "Nature seems not to have provided other food sufficient for him," he wrote, "and the limb of a tree would be no more to him than a bough of cotton tree to a horse." Accepting the Mastodon’s Fate The fact that Lewis and Clark never spotted any giants roaming out West may have helped Jefferson accept the inevitable: Mastodons had gone extinct long ago. Waxing poetic in a letter to John Adams in 1823, Jefferson wrote, “Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view, comets, in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and, were there no restoring power, all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos.” Although he was unsuccessful in his quest to find a living mastodon, Jefferson made other meaningful contributions to the field of paleontology. The fossils of another mysterious creature he believed to be a lion were later revealed to be that of a giant ground sloth. He named it Megalonyx (Greek for “great claw”), and in 1822, the extinct creature was renamed Megalonyx jeffersonii in Jefferson’s honor. Nowadays, the ground sloth fossils—and several other items that formed the "cabinet of curiosities" Jefferson displayed at his Monticello estate—are part of The Academy of Natural Science collection at Drexel University. Considering that Jefferson is sometimes called "the founder of North American paleontology,” it would appear he got his revenge against Buffon after all.
Statistics on Monday showed that the birth rate in mainland China reached its lowest level in 2021, continuing the previous downward trend that allowed Beijing last year to allow couples to have up to three children. According to Reuters, China abandoned its decades-old one-child policy in 2016 and replaced it with a two-child restriction to avoid the economic risks of rapid population aging. But the high cost of urban living has discouraged couples from having more children. The 7.52 birth rate in 2021 was the lowest in China since 1949, when the country's National Bureau of Statistics began collecting data and put more pressure on officials to encourage more births. The birth rate in China in 2020 was 8.52 births per 1,000 people. China's natural population growth rate without immigration was only 0.034 percent for 2021, the lowest level since 1960. "Zhiwi Zhang," a Chinese economist, said: The population challenge is well known, but the rate of population aging is clearly faster than expected. This suggests that China's total population may peak in 2021.
Write an essay where you tell us what test preparation practices work best for you and why. Availability of educational platforms have allowed many within the workforce to return to school and obtain a higher education. Thus, study methods that help us as individuals are quite significant and play a fundamental roles in learning, studying, and retaining the information learned. The one thing that has helped me throughout high school identify some of the best ways to study was by taking an electronic learning style assessment that automatically calculated my results based on a variety of questions from my hobbies, preferences, habits, likes and dislikes. This helped identify my strongest learning style and provided great examples of the best study techniques to retain the information. Therefore, when I study I review my notes and refer back to my books to draw my own graphs and pictures. I also use a multiple array of colors to shade and pinpoint my weakest areas to focus on. A great example of this is studying the names and anatomical location of the skeletal system. Bones such as the tibia and fibula were one of the easiest to learn because my mother always associated them with growing pains, thus, I only outlined them signifying I was comfortable with these. On the other hand, the ulnar was difficult to retain, therefore, I used a color pencil and shaded this one with a reddish tone indicating that I needed a little more focus on this particular bone. Building my own stack of cards with colorful hand-drawn pictures helps me in two ways: rewriting the information, repetition, and visually engraving the information in my brain to be able to retain the information. At times, I cannot remember the answers when I take my tests, but if I sit and visualize what my specific notecard look like in particular my picture, I can normally remember and answer the questions correctly. The best advice for others when studying is definitely to take a learning style test and building your own colorful graphs and pictures to help remember what you prioritized and what is ne Jocelynn from Arizona High School Senior Cibola High SChool
How did Pluto form (is it an asteroid or a planet?) Written by Edo Loenen and Marco Westerkamp. Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Clyde W. Tombaugh, who used a 33-cm photographic telescope at Lowell Obersvatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The search for Pluto at Flagstaff had been initiated by the founder of the obervatory, Percival Lowell, who had estimated the ninth planet's position on the basis off its presumed gravitational pull on Uranus and Neptune. Scientist now know, however, that the mass of Pluto is insufficient to affect the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. The fact that Pluto was found relatively close to the position that had been predicted by Lowell was due to luck. After the discovery of Pluto, it was quickly determined that Pluto was too small to account for the discrepancies in the orbits of the other planets. The search for Planet X continued but nothing is found yet. To answer the question about the formation of Pluto , it is necessary to know what Pluto is. Because the formation of a planet is different from the formation of, for example, an astroid. Therefore the following subquestions must be answered: What is a planet? Officially Pluto is a planet. The IAU (International Astronomical Union) declared in a pressrelease that: "No proposal to change the status of Pluto as the ninth planet in the solar system has been made". In what way does Pluto differ from the other eight planets? We don't know the exact definition of a planet and the reason why the IAU made it's decision aren't known by us. Inclination of it's orbit compared to the ecliptic is 17.148°Full article Large orbital eccentricity: 0.248 Earth's eccentricity: 0.0167 Pluto is composed of: core of hydrated rock (70% of mass) mantle of water ice atmosphere containing methane ice (and possibly: N2, CO, CO2) This is very different from the other outerplanets, because they are mainly composed of gas. Therefore Pluto's density is larger than the other outerplanets. Pluto has a high albedo: ±0.5 Extraordinary is that it is irregular, Pluto has the largest global-scale contrast in the solar system. Which indicates that the planet is active. Charon (Pluto's satellite) is extraordinary large compared to Pluto: radius Pluto : radius Charon 1 : 0.5 in comparison with: radius Earth : radius Moon 1 : 0.3 radius Mars : radius Phobos 1 : 0.003 Because of all the differences between Pluto and the other eight planets, it isn't hard to believe that Pluto belongs to an other group of objects. Pluto therefore might be formed in a different way. Because the size and composition of Pluto resemble the sizes and composition of Kuiper Belt Objects, science nowadays believes that Pluto might be formed as a Kuiper Belt Object. What are Kuiper Belt Objects? The Kuiper Belt is a large population (over 70,000) of small bodies orbiting the sun beyond Pluto.Full article These Kuiper Belt Objects (or trans-Neptunians) are mostly confined within a few degrees of the ecliptic. This is why The Kuiper Belt is called Belt. There are three types of KBO's: Plutino's, Classical and Scattered KBO's. Plutino's are KBO's who revolve arround the sun in an orbit which has a 3:2 resonance with Neptune. This is the same resonance Pluto has. This is why the are called Plutino's (little Plutos). CKBO's do not orbit in the 3:2 resonance with Neptune. They are called "classical" because their orbits have small eccentricities, as is expected from bodies formed by quiet agglomoration in the early solar system. Scattered KBO's are KBO's which possess large, eccentric, inclined orbits that have perihelion distances near 35 AU. SKBO's are hard to detect due to theire large distance. The SKBO's form a fat doughnut around the Classical KBO's and the Plutino's, extending to large distances. It is likely that the Kuiper Belt Objects are extremely primitive debris from the formation of the solar system. The inner, dense parts of the proto-planetary disc condensed into the major planets, probably within a few millions to tens of millions of years. The outer parts were less dense, and accretion progressed slowly. Evidently, a lots of small objects were formed. As far as we can tell little is known about the exact conditions of the formation of KBO's.We weren't able to find information about this subject. How did Pluto end up in it's current orbit? There are several models created to explain the orbit of Pluto:Full article Dormand & Woolfson - 1977 Collision between major planets Pluto (satellite of one of those planets) ejected at collision Interacted with Triton (One of Neptune's satellite), reversing it's orbit. Harrington & Van Flandern - 1979 Triton and Pluto natural satellites of Neptune Object of mass 5 Mearth passed through system Orbit Triton reversed, Pluto ejected Farinella et. al. - 1979 Pluto natural satellite of Neptune Triton captured from heliocentric orbit Interaction between Pluto and Triton Orbit Triton reversed, Pluto ejected Charon formed due to tidal forces Dormand & Woolfson - 1980 similar to Farinella et. al. but more precise None of these models proved to be true. The current model is one were Pluto was a natural satellite of Neptune and Triton was in a heliocentric orbit. Their orbits were changed by a collision. This collision also created Charon. The mechanism for producing Pluto in its present orbit accompanied by Charon and also Triton as a retrograde satellite cannot be uniquely defined by modelling. Nevertheless, the collision-model with Pluto as a natural satellite of Neptune and Triton as a body originally in a heliocentric orbit is strongly indicated. In order to answer our subquestion, we have to answer two questions : What is Pluto?: Despite of all the differences between Pluto and the other planets, Pluto officially is a planet. However Pluto probably wasn't always a planet. Current models indicate that Pluto was formed as a KBO, became a satellite of Neptune, collided with Triton and then ended up in it's current orbit and became one of the nine planets. How did Pluto form?: Pluto didn't form exactly like the other planets. Because of the similarities between Pluto and KBO's it is most likely that Pluto was formed the way KBO's were formed. As far as we know little is known about the formation of KBO's.
The display of brash, color-splashed paintings at the Salon d'Automne in 1905 both astonished and amused Parisians. The exhibiting artists became known as the Les Fauves— the wild beasts. The name long outlasted the brief movement known as Fauvism, but the trend setting colorists influenced the course of twentieth century art. Among those exhibiting were Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Georges Rouault, and others. Scholars have explored the explosive work of the Fauves searching for clues to the break in custom and conformity from academy art. Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the contemporaneous interest in Japanese and Primitive art that preceded the first Fauve exhibit are generally acknowledged as influential. Another factor—the impact of Coptic tapestry art—is less well known. Independent textile scholar, author and educator Nancy Arthur Hoskins will provide some clues for curious art historians and tapestry scholars to the complex connection between Coptic tapestry art, the Fauves, and a few other artists. The scene shifts from Coptic Egypt to turn of the century Paris when a French archaeologist, an Armenian antiquarian, and all of the Fauves-to-be were there. In our Echoes of Egypt: Conjuring the Land of the Pharaohs lecture series, prominent experts discuss their research and unique perspectives on themes in the exhibition. Join us for Part I of the series in April; Part II will take place during the fall semester.
Modern Building Technology Kris De Decker of No Tech Magazine " refuses to assume that each issue has actually a high-tech answer", and points to still another exemplory case of just how low-tech solutions can perhaps work perfectly, without burning plenty of power or needing most fancy technology. TreeHugger has revealed a number of projects in temperate climates that use old tricks, but Jaipur, India is HOT, like 45 levels C or 113 F. The outside is clad in a perforated display screen, described by the designer: The building is protected through the environment by a double epidermis which can be produced from a normal building element called the ‘Jaali’ which can be predominant in Rajasthani design. The double epidermis acts as a thermal buffer between your building together with environment. The thickness of perforated external epidermis has-been derived using computational shadow analysis based on orientation. The outer epidermis sits 4 foot out of the building and lowers the direct heat gain through fenestrations, however enabling diffused sunlight. The jaali hence, acts the event of 3 filters- atmosphere, light, and privacy. A conventional way of cooling in Asia was the Stepwell, a pond dug in to the ground or in the middle of wall space above surface so the air is cooled by evaporating water in a specific, shaded area. Rastogi informs CNN: "How performed they think up one thing so sophisticated but therefore quick in its fundamental philosophy? "How do you begin to believe you can dig to the surface and make use of the earth as a heat sink, get access to liquid, place a pavilion involved with it in order that its comfortable through 12 months? It takes some technology for people to believe up something which easy now." The architect writes:The whole building is raised above the surface and a scooped out under stomach types a natural thermal sink which can be cooled by water bodies through evaporative air conditioning. These liquid bodies are provided by the recycled water through the sewage treatment plant and help inside creation of a microclimate through evaporative air conditioning. The materials employed for building are a mix of regional rock, steel, cup, and cement chosen remember the climatic requirements regarding the region while keeping the progressive design intent. Energy efficiency is a prime concern plus the institute is 100per cent self sufficient with regards to captive power and water-supply and encourages rain water harvesting and waste liquid re-cycling.
The three branches of the woodwind family have different sources of sound. Vibrations begin when air is blown across the top of an instrument, across a single reed, or across two reeds. Reeds are small pieces of cane. A single reed is clamped to a mouthpiece at the top of the instrument and vibrates against the mouthpiece when air is blown between the reed and the mouthpiece. Two reeds tied together are commonly known as a double reed. This double reed fits into a tube at the top of the instrument and vibrates when air is forced between the two reeds. The oboe is similar to the clarinet in many ways. Both are made from wood and have metal keys that can produce many notes rapidly. Unlike the clarinet, the oboe does not have a mouthpiece, but has two reeds tied together. By placing them between one's lips and blowing air through them, the reeds vibrate and produce a sound.
Family events are key elements of genealogy and family history research. An individual's life is composed of events that occurred at different times such as birth, marriage and death. From early times to the present, baptisms, marriages and burials have been recorded in Church Records and Indexes . In the late 1800s and early 1900s, provincial and territorial governments introduced the civil registration of births, marriages and deaths. In order to ensure the accuracy of information, it is important to trace the records relating those events and, if possible, to obtain copies of these records. As civil registration (birth, marriage and death records) is not a federal jurisdiction, Library and Archives Canada does not hold the civil registers and does not issue certificates. Read more about how to obtain copies of certificates from the provinces and the territories under Genealogy and Family History: Places. External Links to Research Aids
Learning in and beyond the classroom SymbolStix PRIME provides a universal, consistent and engaging way for educators to connect with their students. But these powerful language tools are not just for building knowledge in the classroom. They’re also for helping unique learners connect with the world—and reach their greatest potential. Create access with recognizable, age‑appropriate symbols The vibrant, instantly identifiable symbols in SymbolStix PRIME give learners of all ages the visual context to help them decode, stimulating communication and enabling them not only to make connections, but also to actively participate in life beyond the classroom. and foundational skills Educators create materials and activities with SymbolStix PRIME that provide the visual clues for helping learners who have speech, language, reading and other communication disabilities build foundational and conceptual understanding. The endless variation of possible activities also can strengthen vocabulary and literacy skills, and help students express themselves creatively. Bridge barriers and minimize communication challenges SymbolStix PRIME symbols and the many learning opportunities they provide are ideal for bridging language barriers in educational settings and beyond. And these crucial tools are not just for educators who are committed to helping students with disabilities and those with brain injuries or aphasia. The universal language within SymbolStix PRIME is also an ideal way to connect with both emergent learners and English Learners. You Might Also Like… American Sign Language with Symbols Learn how American Sign Language (ASL) symbols can build communication skills. Incorporating Visuals at Home Strategies for using visual schedules and communication tools at home. Summer Innovations on SymbolStix PRIME Speed, flexibility and customization will enhance your symbol creations.
When it comes to learning about or exploring a complex idea, what helps it stick in your brain? A long, detailed written report…or a colorful graphic that highlights the main points of the topic? If you said the latter, you’re in good company – the majority of people are better able to comprehend and retain complex information when there are graphics to support it. Using graphics to support ideas is nothing new, but leveraging this principle when you’re doing group work can make a huge impact on how people interact and connect – both with the concepts and each other. That’s why many companies and organizations use graphic facilitation to make meetings and group sessions more effective. What is Graphic Facilitation? Graphic facilitation is a way to help people solidify their learnings and deepen their thinking by using the power of visuals in real time, at an event or meeting.
Huge ice island could pose threat to oil, shipping STOCKHOLM – An island of ice more than four times the size of Manhattan is drifting across the Arctic Ocean after breaking off from a glacier in Greenland. Potentially in the path of this unstoppable giant are oil platforms and shipping lanes — and any collision could do untold damage. In a worst case scenario, large chunks could reach the heavily trafficked waters where another Greenland iceberg sank the Titanic in 1912. It's been a summer of near biblical climatic havoc across the planet, with wildfires, heat and smog in Russia and killer floods in Asia. But the moment the Petermann glacier cracked last week — creating the biggest Arctic ice island in half a century — may symbolize a warming world like no other. "It's so big that you can't prevent it from drifting. You can't stop it," said Jon-Ove Methlie Hagen, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100810/ap_on_sc/eu_ice_island
Once you have the majority of the emergencies taken care of - God on your side, proper mentality, awareness of the situation, awareness of time and space, and first aide, - the next thing to take care of, and perhaps the one thing you need to keep track of as you go along, is the development of tools, supplies, and equipment. The first time we see any mention of tools of any sort in the Bible is in Genesis 4:20-22. "And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah." Some of the most famous mentions of tools come from the books of Exodus and Leviticus, and while they were taken from the spoils of other civilizations that had wronged the Israelites, some of them were built up from surrounding materials. You might wonder why we're even discussing the tools at use in Exodus and Leviticus, when they were made for the Tabernacle; put simply, the Tabernacle was supposed to be like God's dwelling, where His people could visit on Earth, like the Temple would later become (there are plenty of examples of important tools used in the Temple, as well). Furthermore, the priests spent a lot of time at the Tabernacle, practically taking turns living there for certain parts of the day. As such, the Tabernacle, and it's tools and fixtures, were all made like the tools and fixtures of a person's dwelling. That's why it can be useful to the novice to consult the Bible on making tools, as well as consulting their own memories of tools they needed and used prior to their survival situations; nothing can teach you better than experience. It's important to initially focus on utilitarian construction and use of tools, before you decorate them to look nice; after all, necessity comes before anything else. It's also important to improvise anything you may not have, or anything you may have had that broke on you. Granted, you may not be able to improvise another communication device to take the place of your cell-phone or walkie-talkie, yet... that doesn't mean you can't improvise a hammering device out of a rock. A key to survival is this: everything you had before your survival situation, was based on previous observations and recreations of natural designs. Initially, people realized that God must have known what He was doing, when He designed things, and reasoned that nobody would know better; they took what they could observe about God's designs, and imitated them in the invention of new tools, equipment, and supplies. These initial designs were altered throughout time, and now, we have much more advanced versions of those very simple, early supplies. That means you can do something that's called "reverse engineering": by remembering how the things you used, before, are designed to work, you can piece together lower-tech versions that will work about as well. Believe it or not, the stories of Jael and Samson, in Judges 4:17-24 and 13-16, are great examples of improvising tools from your surroundings... though, of course, not good for following, outside of the principle of improvisation, itself. Your first tool should be some kind of knife, if you don't have one. Knives are extremely useful, for all kinds of things. You can use them for stabbing and cutting, of course; you can also use them for splitting and chopping, for hollowing and digging, for prying and anchoring, and even for hammering, if you use the flats of the blade or the handle. If you don't have a knife, you can make something like a knife out of easily-chipped stone (similar to a ceramic knife, which can be sharper than metal knives), pliable metal, or even wood (if you don't mind having a much more dull blade). Your knife should have at least a smooth edge, if not a serrated or partially-serrated edge, and a point at one end. You can wrap some kind of fabric around the other end, so as to make gripping it easier and more comfortable, and many basic knives today have a notch for the lead finger to rest inside, so it's that much harder for the hand to slip on the blade and cut you. Of course, this makes the use of a blunt object necessary, if not also another sharp or pointed object, to form the blade of the knife; however, that can be a temporary tool, to fashion a more permanent one. Another thing you can do with your knife, is split a small piece of wood, stick one end of the knife into the split, and lash it together to the blade, to secure it better. Once you have a knife, you can use it to make other tools out of raw materials, help you build up a shelter and gather materials for a fire, and even put together some traps. Once you get some tools put together, your next concern will be fire. Fire has multiple uses. It can help you see in the dark; the light can blind other predators, as can the smoke; walking through the smoke can cover your scent; it can cook food, and burn wooden objects just enough to make it harder; it can boil water, and aide in cauterizing serious wounds (something you should only do in a dire emergency); it can warm you up, and scare away pests... the list goes on. In fact, God has used fire, multiple times; mainly, as a sign, or a way to smite people, but there have been times that God used it to consume sacrifices, cover His image, and do a host of other things. In Psalm 104:4, it even says that He makes His angels spirits (the word for "spirit" is the same as "wind" or "air"), and His ministers a flaming fire. This is of great importance, especially since oxygen helps fuel fire. There are three important aspects to making fire, emphasized by the so-called "fire triangle": oxygen, heat, and fuel. To make a fire, you need some form of tinder to catch on fire, kindling to get it to grow to a sustainable level, and then fuel to keep it burning. There are multiple ways to make a fire, including focusing light intensely into one area with a lens or reflective surface, and getting certain elements wet, or combining certain elements to make an unstable chemical reaction. There are also friction-related methods, such as the use of the fire-bow, or fire-drill: a slab of wood, with a pock-mark for an ember, a piece of wood to fit in the pock-mark, and the energy to grind and twist that wood in the mark, to get it heated up enough to spark up the material in the mark and make a coal. There's also striking flint and metal together, or the use of a magnesium or ferro-rod, sending sparks down into the tinder to make it light up. Speaking of tinder, there's the use of the feather-stick, and the nest; you can get a bunch of wood shavings, dry grass, etc., mash it together, and twist it into a nest-shape, or you can shave sections of a branch into frayed ends, which is called "feathering", which can then be sparked and made to burn. Then, you can use as little as zero sticks (by using fuel, and a ton of tinder), or as many as can make a huge, pyramidal stack, with tinder and kindling on top, burning down to the fuel below. Next, you need to feed it with oxygen; you can do this, by making trenches for fire to travel along (a great way to hide fire is to make a Dakota fire-hole, which involves two holes and a tunnel between, so air can be fed through one to the fire in the other; another is the scout-fire, in which you light a very small fire between your legs, wrapped around it, perhaps with a trench leading to the fire to keep it burning with oxygen flow, and wrap a coat or poncho around yourself as you sit there, heating it up), or you can stack the wood up with a ton of gaps for air to flow through. You can do this with urban material, as well, provided you use something that can contain the fire (like a bowl, a hobo stove - an upside-down can, with a notch open at the bottom, and holes in the top, - or a donohi, which is an old Japanese cylinder, used to hold lit coals, both for heat and light, and to light other fires), but as usual, you have to come up with a method of containing the fire, and put it out when not in use. In an urban environment, you can also use a small candle for heat and light, in an enclosed space; in a wilderness environment, you can bury the fire beneath yourself, which will put it out and keep a warm space for you to sleep on. You can use fire to do anything involving heating, lighting, and making smoke, which can be used for anything requiring darkness or obscuring smells and sights in general. Afterward, the ashes can be used to darken things you need to darken, by being smeared on them; as mentioned previously, ashes can also be used to make soap. Did you know that you can also use some kinds of ashes for flavoring, in cooking? Yeah, that's a major plus... Once you have the ability to make and control a fire, you'll need to build up your location into a shelter. Your shelter should take your surroundings into account, and fill in the "gaps" and weaknesses in that location; for example, making a snow-pit or igloo in the snow, or making a "swamp bed" in the swamps (sort of like making a bed-frame out of raw wood, in the swamps, to elevate yourself above the waters). In so doing, of course, you have to make sure your shelter conforms to the following anagram, "B.L.I.S.S.": Blend in with the surroundings Low silhouette (shadow) Irregular shape (no perfect circles; they're not natural) Some great types of shelters are seen in the Bible, including the aforementioned passages in Genesis about tents (Paul was a tentmaker, by the way; Acts 18:3), tabernacles (remember earlier? Exodus 26), and booths (Leviticus 23:34-42). Booths combined the best of both worlds, giving a sturdy frame for a shelter, and then covering it with the easily portable and versatile material for a tent. Even today, Jews around the world still celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, in which they dwell in small booths for the whole feast. Take a look at some. In fact, take a look at some Native shelters, which use the same principles. What about traps? Why would we need traps, when the Bible talks about how bad traps are (such as Psalm 141:9)? There are also passages about God setting traps for evildoers (sometimes, turning their own traps on them, such as in Proverbs 28:10), and setting traps was often an acceptable method of hunting in the days of the Bible. I'll include a link, here, to 74 verses on traps, and you'll all be able to read about different kinds.http://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Trap Traps can also be set to protect oneself from predators, by setting them and covering them up in seemingly open "gaps"; unknown to predators that try to close in on your location, through these gaps, they will stumble upon traps, trigger them to change the gap in a way that suddenly makes getting through too difficult, and be caught. The #1 thing to remember, when setting traps, is to hide the triggers, as well as the traps, well enough to prevent their being spotted; the close second thing to remember is where they are and what triggers them, so you can avoid them or free yourself. I'm sure I don't need to explain the value of trapping, when it comes to catching animals you intend to use for food, and other purposes... Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you all come back next time, when we discuss getting, filtering, purifying, storing, and using water. By the way... a few important websites, for survival and self-improvement. They're all free.https://www.khanacademy.org/http://www.social-engineer.org/http://www.changingminds.org/http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... y/army/fm/http://www.equipped.com/fm21-76.htm
More Math Videos One Penny - US Coins Song Description: Learn about the value of US coins and the dollar. Note: This video requires Adobe Flash Player. If video does not load, try installing the newest Flash Player. This video takes a few seconds to load. Common Core State Standards: CCSS.Math.Content.2.MD.C.8 - Solve word problems involving dollar bills, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, using $ and ¢ symbols appropriately. Example: If you have 2 dimes and 3 pennies, how many cents do you have? Play games, win ourWorld money, and get clothing and accessories to create your own style.
believe in constant celebration of life so 'events' in India mean nothing but festivals and fairs. Very rich and diverse culture of this multi-faceted country makes India a land of festivals and fairs. Almost every day of the year is celebrated as a festival here. Some of these festivals are celebrated as a welcome of seasons, the rains, the full moon or the harvest. Religious occasions, birthdays of saints, and gurus (revered teachers) or divine beings, or the advent of the new year are also celebrated as festivals. Many of these festivals are very popular among Indians. Even if different names may be used for them or the way of celebration many vary some how. As these festivals are celebrated by varied cultures and through their special rituals, these add to the colours of Indian heritage. Some of the important festivals in India are as follows. This is the most important national event of India. Celebrated on January 26th every year, this festival unites whole of the country with patriotic fervor. Way back in 1950 on this very day Indian constitution came into force and India became a truly sovereign and democratic republic. A grand procession in Delhi is the main attraction of Republic Day. in February/March, Holi is the most colourful festival of this country. Celebrating the beginning of spring and death of demoness Holika, Holi is, in fact, is the celebration of joy and hope. This festival of colours brings an opportunity to let off some steam and settle old scores in a playful Held four times very twelve years, this riverside festival is known for its crowd, largest in the world. Sacred site festivals in India are called melas. These are a vital part of the pilgrimage tradition of Hinduism. Held at Famous Jagannath Temple at Puri (Orissa), this chariot festival is celebrated for eight days. Thousands of devout Hindus reach Puri during this festival with the firm belief that even the glimpse of Lord Jagannath on chariot gives salvation. of Light Deepawali is one of the most important festivals of Hindus. Devoted to Mother Lakshmi (Goddess of Wealth), Deepawali marks the victory of light over darkness. Light here means knowledge and darkness Festival of Dussera is celebrated in many parts of the country with great fanfare in Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and West Bengal in slightly different forms. The most important festival in India, Dussera symbolizes the defeat of Ravana by lord Rama and the triumph of warrior Goddess Durga over buffalo demon, Mahishasura. Popularly known as the 'Festival of the Breaking of th Fast', Id-Ul-Fitr is celebrated as soon as the new moon is sighted at the end of the month of fasting, Ramadan. Intended to be a festive and joyous occasion, special foods and delicacies are prepared for the day and are distributed among friends and neighbours.
The island of Gotland has yielded a great deal of Viking treasure and archaeological data over the years. This particular find on Gotland may be the largest Viking treasure trove ever discovered anywhere. (Ed.) Evidence of trade, diplomacy, and vast wealth on an unassuming island in the Baltic Sea By DANIEL WEISS Tuesday, January 17, 2017 This array of silver coins, bracelets, and other forms of Viking wealth typifies the hoards found deposited at numerous sites across the island of Gotland. The accepted image of the Vikings as fearsome marauders who struck terror in the hearts of their innocent victims has endured for more than 1,000 years. Historians’ accounts of the first major Viking attack, in 793, on a monastery on Lindisfarne off the northeast coast of England, have informed the Viking story. “The church of St. Cuthbert is spattered with the blood of the priests of God,” wrote the Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin of York, “stripped of all its furnishings, exposed to the plundering of pagans....Who is not afraid at this?” The Vikings are known to have gone on to launch a series of daring raids elsewhere in England, Ireland, and Scotland. They made inroads into France, Spain, and Portugal. They colonized Iceland and Greenland, and even crossed the Atlantic, establishing a settlement in the northern reaches of Newfoundland. But these were primarily the exploits of Vikings from Norway and Denmark. Less well known are the Vikings of Sweden. Now, the archaeological site of Fröjel on Gotland, a large island in the Baltic Sea around 50 miles east of the Swedish mainland, is helping advance a more nuanced understanding of their activities. While they, too, embarked on ambitious journeys, they came into contact with a very different set of cultures—largely those of Eastern Europe and the Arab world. In addition, these Vikings combined a knack for trading, business, and diplomacy with a willingness to use their own brand of violence to amass great wealth and protect their autonomy. The accumulation of riches on the island from that time is exceptional. More than 700 silver hoards have been found there, and they include around 180,000 coins. By comparison, only 80,000 coins have been found in hoards on all of mainland Sweden, which is more than 100 times as large and had 10 times the population at the time. Just how an island that seemed largely given over to farming and had little in the way of natural resources, aside from sheep and limestone, built up such wealth has been puzzling. Excavations led by archaeologist Dan Carlsson, who runs an annual field school on the island through his cultural heritage management company, Arendus, are beginning to provide some answers. Traces of around 60 Viking Age coastal settlements have been found on Gotland, says Carlsson. Most were small fishing hamlets with jetties apportioned among nearby farms. Fröjel, which was active from around 600 to 1150, was one of about 10 settlements that grew into small towns, and Carlsson believes that it became a key player in a far-reaching trade network. “Gotlanders were middlemen,” he says, “and they benefited greatly from the exchange of goods from the West to the East, and the other way around.” \|Brooches found in a graveyard in Visby, Gotland’s largest town, were used by Viking women to hold their clothing in place.\| Situated between the Swedish mainland and the Baltic states, Gotland was a natural stopping-off point for trading voyages, and Carlsson’s excavations at Fröjel have turned up an abundance of materials that came from afar: antler from mainland Sweden, glass from Italy, amber from Poland or Lithuania, rock crystal from the Caucasus, carnelian from the East, and even a clay egg from the Kiev area thought to symbolize the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then, of course, there are the coins. Tens of thousands of the silver coins found in hoards on the island came from the Arab world. Many Gotlanders themselves plied these trade routes. They would sail east to the shores of Eastern Europe and make their way down the great rivers of western Russia, trading and raiding along the way at least as far south as Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, via the Black Sea. Some reports suggest that they also crossed the Caspian Sea and traveled all the way to Baghdad, then the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Entire Viking families are believed to have made their way east. “In the beginning, we thought it was just for trading,” says Carlsson, “but now we see there was a kind of settlement. You find Viking cemeteries far away from the main rivers, in the uplands.” Other evidence of Scandinavian presence in the region is plentiful. As early as the seventh century, there was a Gotlandic settlement at Grobina in Latvia, just inland from the point on the coast closest to Gotland. Large numbers of Scandinavian artifacts have been excavated in northwest Russia, including coin hoards, brooches, and other women’s bronze jewelry. The Rus, the people that gave Russia its name, were made up in part of these Viking transplants. The term’s origins are unclear, but it may have been derived from the Old Norse for “a crew of oarsmen” or a Greek word for “blondes.” Combs such as this one, excavated at Fröjel, were made locally of antler imported from mainland Sweden. To investigate the links between the Gotland Vikings and the East, Carlsson turned his attention to museum collections and archaeological sites in northwest Russia. “It is fascinating how many artifacts you find in every small museum,” he says. “If they have a museum, they probably have Scandinavian artifacts.” For example, at the museum in Staraya Ladoga, east of St. Petersburg, Carlsson found a large number of Scandinavian items, oval brooches from mainland Sweden, combs, beads, pendants, and objects with runic inscriptions, and even three brooches in the Gotlandic style dating to the seventh and eighth centuries. Scandinavians were initially drawn to the area to obtain furs from local Finns, particularly miniver, the highly desirable white winter coat of the stoat, which they would then trade in Western Europe. As time went on, Staraya Ladoga served as a launching point for Viking forays to the Black and Caspian Seas. These journeys entailed a good deal of risk. The route south from Kiev toward Constantinople along the Dnieper River was particularly hazardous. A mid-tenth-century document by the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus tells of Vikings traveling this stretch each year after the spring thaw, which required portaging around a series of dangerous rapids and fending off attacks by local bandits known as the Pechenegs. The name of one of these rapids—Aifur, meaning “ever-noisy” or “impassable”—appears on a runestone on Gotland dedicated to the memory of a man named Hrafn who died there. \|Silver arm rings with a zigzag pattern, believed to have been manufactured on Gotland, are part of an enormous hoard unearthed on the island.\| People from the East may have traveled back to Gotland with the Vikings as well. At Fröjel, Carlsson has uncovered two Viking Age cemeteries, one dating from roughly 600 to 900, and the other from 900 to 1000. In all, Carlsson has excavated around 60 burials there, and isotopic analysis has shown that some 15 percent of the people whose graves have been excavated—all buried in the earlier cemetery—came from elsewhere, possibly the East. In their voyages, the Vikings of Gotland are thought to have traded a broad range of goods such as furs, beeswax, honey, cloth, salt, and iron, which they obtained through a combination of trade and violent theft. This activity, though, doesn’t entirely account for the wealth that archaeologists have uncovered. In recent years, Carlsson and other experts have begun to suspect that a significant portion of their trade may have consisted of a commodity that has left little trace in the archaeological record: slaves. “We still have some problems in explaining what made this island so rich,” says Carlsson. “We know from written Arabic sources that the Rus—the Scandinavians in Russia—were transporting slaves. We just don’t know how big their trading in slaves was.” According to an early tenth-century account by Ibn Rusta, a Persian geographer, the Rus were nomadic raiders who would set upon Slavic people in their boats and take them captive. They would then transport them to Khazaria or Bulgar, a Silk Road trading hub on the Volga River, where they were offered for sale along with furs. “They sell them for silver coins, which they set in belts and wear around their waists,” writes Ibn Rusta. Another source, Ibn Fadlan, a representative of the Abbasid Caliph of Baghdad who traveled to Bulgar in 921, reports seeing the Rus disembark from their boats with slave girls and sable skins for sale. The Rus warriors, according to his account, would pray to their gods: “I would like you to do me the favor of sending me a merchant who has large quantities of dinars and dirhams [Arab coins] and who will buy everything that I want and not argue with me over my price.” Whenever one of these warriors accumulated 10,000 coins, Ibn Fadlan says, he would melt them down into a neck ring for his wife. It is unclear whether the Vikings transported Slavic slaves back to Gotland, but the practice of slavery appears to have been well established there. The Guta Lag, a compendium of Gotlandic law thought to have been written down in 1220 includes rules regarding purchasing slaves, or thralls. “The law says that if you buy a man, try him for six days, and if you are not satisfied, bring him back,” says Carlsson. “It sounds like buying an ox or a cow.” Burials belonging to people who came from places other than Gotland are generally situated on the periphery of the graveyards with fewer grave goods, suggesting that they may have occupied a secondary tier of society—perhaps as slaves. \|A silver coin from the early 10th century (obverse, far left; reverse, left) is one of tens of thousands excavated on Gotland that had originated in the Arab world.\| For the Gotland Vikings, accumulation of wealth in the form of silver coins was clearly a priority, but they weren’t interested in just any coins. They were unusually sensitive to the quality of imported silver and appear to have taken steps to gauge its purity. Until the mid-tenth century, almost all the coins found on Gotland came from the Arab world and were around 95 percent pure. According to Stockholm University numismatist Kenneth Jonsson, beginning around 955, these Arab coins were increasingly cut with copper, probably due to reduced silver production. Gotlanders stopped importing them. Near the end of the tenth century, when silver mining in Germany took off, Gotlanders began to trade and import high-quality German coins. Around 1055, coins from Frisia in northern Germany became debased, and Gotlanders halted imports of all German coins. At this juncture, ingots from the East became the island’s primary source of silver. Interestingly, when a silver source from the Arab or German world slipped in quality, Jonsson points out, and the Gotlanders rapidly cut off the debased supplies, their contemporaries on mainland Sweden and in areas of Eastern Europe did not. “Word must have spread around the island, saying, ‘Don’t use these German coins anymore!’” says Jonsson. To test imported silver, Gotlanders would shave a bit of the metal with a knife so its contents could be assessed based on color and consistency, says Ny Björn Gustafsson of the Swedish National Heritage Board. He notes that many imported silver items found on Gotland were “pecked” in this way, and that Gotlanders may also have tested imported coins by bending them. By contrast, silver items thought to have been made on Gotland—including heavy arm rings with a zigzag pattern pressed into them—were not generally pecked or otherwise tested. “My interpretation,” Gustafsson says, “is that this jewelry acted as a traditional form of currency and was assumed to contain pure silver.” These arm rings are among the most commonly found items in Gotland’s hoards, along with coins, and experts had long assumed they were made on the island, but no evidence of their manufacture had been found until Carlsson’s team uncovered a workshop area at Fröjel. “We found the artifacts exactly where they had been dropped,” says Carlsson. There are precious stones: amber, carnelian, garnet. There are half-finished beads, cracked during drilling and discarded. There is elk antler for crafting combs. There is also a large lump of iron, as well as rivets for use in boats, coffins, and storage chests. And, providing evidence of a smelting operation, there are drops of silver. Researchers found that the metalworkers of Fröjel used an apparatus called a cupellation hearth to transform a suspect source of imported silver, such as coins or ingots, into jewelry or decorated weapons with precisely calibrated silver content. They would melt the silver source with lead and blow air over the molten mélange with a bellows, causing the lead and other impurities to oxidize, separate from the silver, and attach to the hearth lining. The resulting pure silver would then be combined with other metals to produce a desired alloy. The cupellation technique is known from classical times, says Gustafsson, but so far this is the first and only time such a hearth has been found on Gotland. Only one other intact example from the Viking Age has been found in Sweden, at the mainland settlement of Sigtuna. \|This imported silver piece found on Gotland shows signs of “pecking,” where a bit of metal was gouged out to test its purity.\| Traces of lead and other impurities were found embedded in pieces of the cupellation hearth among the material excavated from the workshop area at Fröjel. The hearth has been radiocarbon dated to around 1100. Also unearthed from the workshop area were fragments of molds imprinted with the zigzag patterns found on Gotlandic silver arm rings, establishing that they were, in fact, made on the island—and that the workshop was the site of the full chain of production, from metal refinement to casting. “We have these silver arm rings in many hoards all over Gotland,” says Carlsson. “But we never before saw exactly where they were making them.” During the Viking Age, Gotland seems to have been a more egalitarian society than mainland Sweden, which had a structure of nobles led by a king dating from at least the late tenth century. On Gotland, by contrast, farmers and merchants appear to have formed the upper class and, while some were more prosperous than others, they shared in governance through a series of local assemblies called things, which were overseen by a central authority called the Althing. According to the Guta Saga, the saga of the Gotlanders, which was written down around 1220, an emissary from Gotland forged a peace treaty with the Swedish king, ending a period of strife with the mainland Swedes. The treaty, believed to have been established in the eleventh century, required Gotland to pay an annual tax in exchange for continued independence, protection, and freedom to travel and trade. Stratification did increase on the island as time passed, though. Archaeologists have found that, throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, silver hoards were distributed throughout Gotland, suggesting that wealth was more or less uniformly shared among the island’s farmers. But around 1050, this pattern shifted. “In the late eleventh century, you start to have fewer hoards overall, but, instead, there are some really massive hoards, usually found along the coast, containing many, many thousands of coins,” says Jonsson. This suggests that trading was increasingly controlled by a small number of coastal merchants. This stratification accelerated near the end of the Viking Age, around 1140, when Gotland began to mint its own coins, becoming the first authority in the eastern Baltic region to do so. “Gotlandic coins were used on mainland Sweden and in the Baltic countries,” says Majvor Östergren, an archaeologist who has studied the island’s silver hoards. Whereas Gotlanders had valued foreign coins based on their weight alone, these coins, though hastily hammered out into an irregular shape, had a generally accepted value. More than eight million of these early Gotlandic coins are estimated to have been minted between 1140 and 1220, and more than 22,000 have been found, including 11,000 on Gotland alone. \|An example of one of the earliest silver coins minted on Gotland (obverse, top left; reverse, bottom left) dates from around 1140.\| Gotland is thought to have begun its coinage operation to take advantage of new trading opportunities made possible by strife among feuding groups on mainland Sweden and in western Russia. This allowed Gotland to make direct trading agreements with the Novgorod area of Russia and with powers to the island’s southwest, including Denmark, Frisia, and northern Germany. Gotland’s new coins helped facilitate trade between its Eastern and Western trading partners, and brought added profits to the island’s elite through tolls, fees, and taxes levied on visiting traders. In order to maintain control over trade on the island, it was limited to a single harbor, Visby, which remains the island’s largest town. As a result, the rest of Gotland’s trading harbors, including Fröjel, declined in importance around 1150. Gotland remained a wealthy island in the medieval period that followed the Viking Age, but, says Carlsson, “Gotlanders stopped putting their silver in the ground. Instead, they built more than 90 stone churches during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.” Although many archaeologists believe that the Gotland Vikings stashed their wealth in hoards for safekeeping, Carlsson thinks that, just as did the churches that were built later, they served a devotional purpose. In many cases, he argues, hoards do not appear to have been buried in houses but rather atop graves, roads, or borderlands. Indeed, some were barely buried at all because, he argues, others in the community knew not to touch them. “These hoards were not meant to be taken up,” he says, “because they were meant as a sort of sacrifice to the gods, to ensure a good harvest, good fortune, or a safer life.” In light of the scale, sophistication, and success of the Gotland Vikings’ activities, these ritual depositions may have seemed to them a small price to pay. Daniel Weiss is a senior editor at ARCHAEOLOGY.
Is Architecture Interior Design. Difference between architect and interior designer: It takes a good knowledge of building regulations, and an understanding of the structure of buildings, in order to make. Most designers and architects will do both types of work; Design is a plan to create something.an easy way to think about the difference between architecture and design is to consider the architecture of an office building as compared with its interior design. However, if the structure is finished then the only option for incorporating new and fabulous architectural design. And Textile, Furniture, And Lighting Design). In the design development, the architect will take the schematic designs and develop them to an approved design concept. In conclusion, we must know that the design of the architecture focuses on providing art or an artistic. However, if the structure is finished then the only option for incorporating new and fabulous architectural design. When It Comes To Functionality, We Know You Want The Most Efficient And Seamless Space Possible. Interior architecture or interior design (not interior decorators which basicly choose paint color and fabric and very shallow). Here are the differences between these two career paths. Architecture’s influence on interior design. Architectural Design Is A Discipline That Focuses On Covering And Meeting The Needs And Demands, To Create Living Spaces, Using Certain Tools And Especially, Creativity. Interior design \| plan n design. The architecture design is also responsible for interior design and presenting all kinds of solutions at the technical level for the construction, so that any problem or circumstance, such as lighting or the size of the space to be designed. To conclude, we can say that while the term interior designing is quite. Its Like Comparing Skin And Flesh, Both Part Of The. It takes into account the possible aspects of human spaces and interior design as its solution. The primary way they do this is through spatial design and planning. Interior designers today often have some training or expertise in architectural and likewise, many architects have education and skills as designers, thus blurring the line between these two roles. Interior Architecture And Design Is The Knowledge Of And The Ability To Intelligently Apply Design Concepts To Create Functionally And Structurally Sound And Aesthetically Appealing Interiors. What is an interior architecture degree? It can refer to the initial design and plan used for a building's interior, to that interior's later redesign made to accommodate a changed purpose, or to the significant revision of an original design for the adaptive reuse of the shell of the. While architecture deals with enclosure and envelopes of a structure, interior architecture courses deal with creating a balance between aesthetics and practicality;
Every spring, thousands of beehives are trucked into the San Joaquin Valley in California for a massive pollination of almond trees. Now all that could change as plant scientists and farmers begin trials of self-pollinating almond trees that have been in development for years. If it works, growers could save hundreds of thousands of dollars in pollination costs. "That is like the Holy Grail," said Roger Duncan, a University of California pomologist in Stanislaus County. Almonds are grown statewide on more than 600,000 acres, and it is not unusual for larger operations to spend more than $1 million to rent bees. To help shave that expense, plant breeders have spent more than a decade trying to develop an almond tree that can pollinate itself. Those in the hunt to develop and market a self-pollinating almond tree include Craig Ledbetter, a U.S. Department of Agriculture geneticist; the University of California; and private breeders. The concept is not new. Self-pollinating trees have been used in Spain for years. But Spanish almonds tend to have a hairy texture and a strong almond taste. Ledbetter's challenge was to isolate the self-pollination traits of the Spanish tree and the mild taste and smoother texture of the nonpareil to create a new tree. After years of crossbreeding, Ledbetter believes he's found the right combination. The USDA's new tree will be part of a field trial by the Almond Board of California, the industry's marketing and research arm. Trees from the University of California and private nurseries also will be evaluated. Some growers have started their own trials. Last year, Chowchilla farmer Jim Maxwell planted 40 acres of a new self-pollinating tree variety called Independence. The tree was developed by a private breeder. "We have been watching the new trees with great interest, and we are very pleased with what we see so far," said Maxwell, CEO of Agriland, a farm management company that operates 4,000 acres of almond trees. The next big step for growers and the almond industry is to see how well the trees perform in a commercial orchard setting. And that process could take several years. Bob Curtis, director of agricultural affairs for the Almond Board, said new varieties must go through rigorous testing and evaluation to see whether the self-pollinating trees perform. "It may take as many as eight years before we find out if we have a winner or a dog," Curtis said. "But there is no question that this is the future of the almond industry." Beekeepers say they aren't overly concerned about being put out of business. "I think you will see a natural gravitation to these new trees," said Roger Everett, a Tulare County beekeeper and president of the California State Beekeepers Association. "But ... some growers won't change because they know bees improve their yields, and they won't want to stop." Explore further: Probing Question: What's killing the honey bees?
Shadowing as an Observational Method Shadowing is method of qualitative research that is sometimes incorporated into Accompanied Shopping Trips (ASTs) and involves tracking someone in his or her role to experience the situations of his or her daily life or work in parallel with him or her, collecting insights through the detailed nuance of first hand, real time exposure. Where possible, shadowing observations should be extremely well documented, with photographs, detailed notes and sketches or audio. Shadowing is contextualized information about how, when and why people act is needed to generate the understanding of human need and to develop meaningful insights for innovation. Traditional observations or diary studies do not provide the same depth of contextual information or detail about purpose that is achieved through the shadowing method. This methodology is used when exploring a research domain to gain a rich understanding of customer, such as; cooking, cleaning a car, booking a holiday or the regular weekly shop, Shadowing can also be used in a business context such as employee research and to capture what people actually do, not just what they say they do. Once the researcher is given access, the researcher must then create a healthy rapport to the person being followed. This method involved a great deal of trust. The researcher then closely follows the individual over a set period of time while writing an almost continuous set of field notes. The researcher asks frequent questions for clarification and prompts the participants to give a running commentary on his or her actions and choices. Best practices include video recording the observation, because there are plenty of impressions and small details which cannot be fully reconstructed later just through with notes. The main advantage of shadowing is that all observations are made in the natural context of the observed person and the study is open ended. Please talk to our ‘Qually’ experts Victoria Wood and Tony Lewis for more information or complete the contact form below.
Geranium (Pelargonium x hortorum) 'Crystal Palace Gem' We have about a dozen varieties in all, and the one above stands out as my favorite. 'Crystal Palace Gem' is from 1869, and it was named after the Crystal Palace, a large glass and iron structure designed by greenhouse-architect Joseph Paxton for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London's Hyde Park. The exhibition celebrated the artistic and scientific advances of the Industrial Revolution, particularly those of England. In this catalog you can see engravings of some of the items that were on display at the Crystal Palace in all of their Victorian glory. The building was moved to another part of London after the six-month exhibition and eventually burned down in 1936.
Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do! Have you ever wondered what that phrase means or where it came from? Probably not, but read on. You’ll be glad you did! Let’s start at the very beginning. First, let’s talk music theory. This little dollop of theory will be necessary to understanding the history behind it. Solmization is just a fancy word for using sounds or syllables rather than the official names of musical tones and pitches. People have been doing this since the beginning of music really, but each culture has developed its own unique systems and forms that changed over time. Western cultures use the solfege system (also known as sol-fa). This system has been in use for around 1,000 years, but not exactly in its current state. In European-based music theory there are 7 major tones/pitches that are used to create all music. The official names of these tones are C, D, E, F, G, A and B. There are also half-step tones called sharps and flats that fill in the musical gaps, but they are irrelevant at the moment. When the 7 major tones are put in order from lowest pitch to highest it becomes a scale, also known in hard-core musical theory circles as a gamut (from the Latin phrase gamma ut). The C scale (the first and most basic scale, which does not use any sharps or flats) begins on the C tone and ends on a C tone an octave higher. C D E F G A B C. Listen: Solmization gives each of these tones its own unique syllable. So the sol-fa system goes like this: Do (C) Re (D) Mi (E) Fa (F) Sol (G) La (A) Ti (B) Do (C). The purpose of using syllables rather than proper names of notes is to learn vocal pitch and musical intervals, which come in handy when sightsinging. *Note: There are two ways of using the sol-fa system: 1. Fixed Do, meaning Do is always on a C. 2. Movable Do, meaning Do begins on the first note of whichever scale that you are singing (there are many). For the purposes of understanding the history of music theory let’s pretend that it is always a Fixed Do, which is how the system began in the first place. So now that you know what solmization and solfege/sol-fa are, let’s talk about where they came from and why anybody even cares. Guido Aretinus was born in France sometime between the years 990 and 995. Let’s say 991. In Guido’s world, music was basically split into two genres: sacred (church) and secular (dances, minstrels, etc.). As a child he certainly would have heard plenty of music, whether it was the upbeat folk dance tunes played at the local festivals or the other-worldly Gregorian chants used in the cathedrals. Perhaps he heard his mother humming a tune while doing the laundry or making dinner? Who knows how early his love for music began. Very little to nothing is known about his early life. Regardless, It is doubtful anyone could have predicted the impact Guido would have on the future of musical theory and notation. At some point before 1025 he became a Benedictine monk in a monastery near Paris. The Catholic church held more influence over European society than just about anyone at the time so monks (and nuns) were revered and respected. Clergy were highly educated and were the only members of society at the time who were professionally trained in music. Everyone else in medieval Europe just taught themselves or learned by ear. Only very select people have been known to write both sacred and secular music. Secular music at this time wasn’t even written down because there wasn’t a way to notate the instrumental parts. Some texts and poems survive, but anything written and performed outside the confines of the church during Guido’s life was only passed down through oral tradition. Guido was a choir director. He found his job to be a bit stressful early on since he could only teach his choir the chants and hymns if he had already heard the melodies beforehand. If he was assigned a new chant to sing for a specific holiday or mass he had to arrange for someone from another city or monastery to perform it for the singers before they could even learn it. Learning and teaching songs this way was complicated and not very efficient. Songs had to be sung in a specific way, in a specific order on specific days (according to the ever-changing liturgical calendar). When singers only have the option to learn songs from each other it leaves a lot of room for individual interpretation and personal preference, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Now this issue didn’t arise from the melodies not being written down. Most sacred songs were notated in manuscripts at this point. But the notation only indicated phrasing, not pitch, which was certainly better than nothing. Pitch was indicated (kind of) by placing one neume slightly higher or lower than the other, or above and below a line (indicating high voice and low voice for polyphonic songs). Neumes are the little markings that became the musical notes we know today. Guido thought this system was confusing and ridiculous. So he developed a new one. It was pretty crazy, but it worked. Most music notation was written on top of text with the neumes above and/or below 2 lines. So Guido added two more lines, a red and a yellow one. He placed the neumes on lines and spaces, each unique position belonging to a specific tone. So he created a 4 lined musical staff that ended up eventually looking like this: Not only that, but he decided to teach his students the tones and pitches with a form of solmization he developed using an old hymn about St. John the Baptist. He noticed that the first phrase began on C and each new phrase began one note higher on the scale. At the time, sacred music only used 6 tones. He called them ut (C), re (D), mi (E), fa (F), sol (G), la (A). Ut queant laxis, Labii reatum, Sancte Joannes! Turned out that Guido’s innovations didn’t win him any friends at the monastery. According to him, the other monks were jealous and forced him out of Paris. He was sent to Pomposa, Italy, where he again found nothing but trouble from the other brothers regarding his unorthodox teaching methods. Between 1033 and 1036 he asked to be sent to the monastery in Arezzo, Italy, where it is presumed he remained for the rest of his life. Hence his new title: Guido d’Arezzo. In Arezzo, Guido perfected his new notation system and found great success with and support for his choral instruction. For the first time ever, singers could be given a hymn and sightread it. Singers in Italy could sing the same version of the hymn as those in France and they could do it quickly and accurately! This was an exciting event to be sure. Opposition to the innovations eventually waned because, well, they worked. News spread about Guido’s work and his fame earned him the personal approval from Pope John XIX himself. The Pope was pleased with the new notation system that allowed him the ability to decipher and learn the hymn melodies without help. Music was forever changed and thanks to Guido, this change enabled countless musicians and composers after him to develop entirely new styles of music and preserve their melodies for generations to come. So how did ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la become do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do? The short answer is that as time passed new styles of music had different needs. Another tone (B) was added to sacred music once chant music became a bit more complex sometime before the 1200’s. It wasn’t until the 1600’s that B earned itself an official name in the sol-fa system. It was called Si (the Italian initials for Sancte Joannes in Guido’s hymn above). Ut was changed to Do because it was easier to sing for pretty much everyone but the French. Do was added at the end to complete the scale. It sounds nicer that way. Si was changed to Ti in the 1800s by Sarah Glover, a highly successful singing instructor in England. She thought it was better that every syllable in the system start with a different letter. Apparently the musical powers-that-be agreed. Si, however, is still used in some places. There you have it. Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do! Everist, Mark. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Print. 2011. Print. Randel, Don Michael. The Harvard Concise Dictionary of Music and Musicians. USA: The President and Fellows of Harvard College. 1999. Print.
SSAB SmartSteel forms a basis for the circular economy February 03, 2017 8:15 CET 6 min read The idea behind SSAB SmartSteel is to make available information and instructions relating to any steel item wherever the item is processed. Each link in the production chain can utilize and accumulate information. This forms a basis for both the circular and platform economy. The result would be less waste than at present and improved productivity and flexibility. The amount of information accumulated throughout the manufacturing chain would enable the development of new services and accelerate and improve the efficiency of product development at each stage. On top of this, the information accumulated would enable end users ensure the quality, safety and durability of the product. Material and manual go hand in hand Products in the metal industry are typically processed in many different companies’ production facilities before dispatch to end users. Materials and items flow from one site and company to another. Nowadays, however, the material and associated information take different routes. The material is transported by road or rail, whereas the information goes by email. They also end up in different places at the customer’s site and very often also remain separated. In the worst case, for example, someone might cycle around a component manufacturer’s site looking for a particular item. Certainly items are marked, but the information relating to them is in an office email or archive database. Let alone the instructions for use, which are in a thick manual or handbook on the designer’s shelf. When a machine or piece of equipment needs repairing, it takes quite a lot of time and effort to find out what material has been used and how it can be repaired. SSAB SmartSteel is a concept designed to help solve this problem. Steel plate is marked with a unique identity code, which links the material and associated information, i.e. the exact history, composition, properties and instructions for use for that particular item. This is an idea that is currently being trialed and developed together with partners. Material and machine in dialogue SSAB SmartSteel enables dialogue between the material and machine. In future, a machine that tools smart steel will be able to read the identity code of the steel plate to be processed and correctly adjust automatically. This will considerably reduce errors and material waste, and the benefits could be further highlighted when fine-tuned robots are used. Transparent total optimization One of the aims of the SSAB SmartSteel concept is to provide continuous lifecycle traceability from the mine throughout the manufacturing process to scrap and re-use. This can be done if all manufacturers involved in a product add information relating to the product and its use to a cloud-based repository. Sharing and combining information must be secure and security solutions are an important area for development in the SSAB SmartSteel concept. The same idea can also be applied to control of the production chain. The entire chain could be tuned for optimal operation, which is not the same as the current goal to minimize costs in all stages. The costs or use of time in one stage might well increase if another stage can save or produce more. Heading towards a platform economy and ecosystems In future, companies will not necessarily compete with each other in quite the same way as they do today. Instead, competitiveness will be built on entire processing chains and networks. Smart steel could create a basis on which to build ecosystems in the metal industry. Looking ahead, information accumulated by different parties could be combined, thereby taking a great leap towards transparency and sustainability. Nor will excess quality or safety margins be required. In the same context, the basis for a digital platform economy will be built. The imagination is the only limit to all the new business that could be built on the information that can be shared. The implications for productivity and reliability could be just as great as automation was in its day within the factory context. The information accompanying the material could revolutionize the entire manufacturing industry if we are bold enough to open up the borders and see the common interest as being bigger than our own. Boost to the circular economy In the circular economy, production and consumption generate minimum loss and waste. Steel is already fully recyclable. The new smart steel idea will enable better classification regarding steel composition, which will make it more efficient and attractive also to users to recycle steel. When customers know the exact composition and properties of steel plate, they do not need to buy excess quality. This improves material efficiency throughout the manufacturing chain. Precision adjustment of machinery based on batch-specific information results in reduced waste and re-ordering. In addition, a common database will allow the development of new services without additional physical outlay. More partners being sought for development work The SSAB SmartSteel concept has been developed in collaboration with a number of universities and industrial actors in projects funded by Tekes - the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation and the Academy of Finland. International researcher networks have checked to make sure that no similar idea has been carried out earlier. The idea has been tested and piloted with a number of customers and equipment suppliers. Actual development work is starting up. Areas for development include the marking of metal components, information architecture, cloud systems, data security, ways of sharing information and business models. Common standards are also required. Since no company can do this kind of work alone, we need to partner with different manufacturing chains, customers, subcontractors and logistics companies. The idea can be honed and clarified in small, quick trials. The same idea can be applied in principle to any material whatsoever. In this way we can speak about the internet of materials. Experts in different fields working together The best ideas are created when top people in different fields work together. Likewise, the SSAB SmartSteel idea was also created in a project where top researchers in user experience, industrial engineering, service development and materials science were working with challenges arising in a steel mill. It takes time to build a common language and mutual trust, but is well worth the effort involved. Seija Junno, DSc (Tech), Director, business model development at SSAB SSAB has recently completed the first stage in a research and development project to examine the smart steel (SSAB SmartSteel) concept, which is a digital platform that can be used to share information about steel. A unique identity code links steel plate and the information applying to it to provide customers and their machines with information about how to choose and use SSAB’s steel in different applications. The idea is to share SSAB’s steel knowledge with partners. The vision is a cloud-based platform that contains instructions for the use of SSAB’s steel for different stakeholders in the value chain and which can be linked to similar cloud systems of other actors in the manufacturing chain.
The considerations founded on the laws relative to the proportions of chemical compounds enable us to form respecting the constitution of bodies, ideas which, though arbitrarily established in several points, cannot, however, be regarded as absolutely vague and sterile. Convinced likewise that certain properties of matter would present themselves under more simple forms, and could be expressed by more regular and less complicated laws, if we could refer them to the elements upon which they immediately depend, we have endeavoured to introduce into the study of some of the properties which appear more intimately connected with the individual action of the material molecules, the most certain results of the atomic theory. The success which we have already met with makes us hope not only that his kind of consideration may contribute materially to the further progress of physics; but that the atomic theory itself will receive from it a new degree of probability, and will from it derive sure methods of determining the truth among different hypotheses all equally probable. Among the properties of matter to which the considerations just mentioned are applicable, we shall choose, in the first place, as having more particularly fixed our attention, those which depend upon the action of heat. By directing our observations in a suitable manner, we have been led to discover simple relations between phenomena, the connexion of which had not been previously attended to; but the numerous points of view under which these phenomena may be examined, giving to our researches an extent which does not permit us to embrace the whole at one time, we have thought that it might be useful at present to make known the results to which we have come. These first results relate to specific heats. The determination of this important element has been, as is well known, the object of the labours of many philosophers, who have extended to a great number of bodies the methods which they have either contrived or improved. Several of them have likewise endeavoured to confirm, by their own experiments, some consequences deduced from the notions which they have formed to themselves of the nature of heat, and of its mode of existence in bodies. Accordingly Irvine and Crawford, admitting that the quantity of heat contained in bodies is proportional to their capacity, have concluded, that whenever the specific heat of a compound is greater or less than the sum of the specific heats of its elements, there ought to take place at the instant of combination either an absorption or disengagement of heat; but this principle, which Irvine had already applied to the circumstances which accompany the changes in the state of aggregation, and which Crawford made the basis of his theory of animal heat, is in opposition with too many facts to be adopted. The same is the case with a very ingenious hypothesis proposed by Mr. Dalton. According to the ideas of this celebrated philosopher, the quantities of heat united to the elementary particles of the elastic fluids are the same for each. Hence we may, setting out from our knowledge of the number of particles contained in the same weight or the same volume of the different gases, calculate the specific heats of these bodies. This M. Dalton has done; but the numbers which he obtained, and those likewise deduced from several other better founded hypotheses on the constitution of gases, are so inconsistent with experiment that it is impossible for us not to reject the principle upon which such determinations are founded, which Dalton has presented merely in a theoretic manner. The attempts hitherto made to discover some laws in the specific heats of bodies have then been entirely unsuccessful. We shall not be surprized at this if we attend to the great inaccuracy of some of the measurements; for if we except those of Lavoisier and Laplace (unfortunately very few) and those by Laroche and Berard for elastic fluids, we are forced to admit that the greatest part of the others are extremely inaccurate; as our own experiments have informed us, and as might indeed be concluded from the great discordance in the results obtained for the same bodies by different experimenters. It is not uncommon, for example, to meet with numbers in the best tables three or four times as great as they ought to be. Our first care then was necessarily directed to what could render the measurements that we were to use as accurate as possible. Among the methods of determining the capacities of bodies, those in which the melting of ice or the mixture of bodies with water is employed, may doubtless, when properly conducted, lead to very exact results; but the greater number of the substances on which it is indispensable to operate can rarely be obtained in sufficient mass to enable us to apply either of these methods. It was necessary, therefore, to have recourse to a different method. The one which we have chosen appears to us to unite all the requisite conditions. It is founded upon the laws of cooling. It is known that there exist between the velocity of cooling of different bodies placed in the same circumstances and the specific heats of the same bodies, relations, in consequence of which the ratio of the capacities may be deduced from that of the times of cooling. The first application of this principle was by Mayer, who satisfied himself that the capacities determined in this way differ little from those obtained for the same bodies by the method of mixture. Mr. Leslie, who has adopted the method of Mayer, has pointed out an additional precaution, of which the latter did not suspect the necessity; namely, to enclose the body on which we operate in an envelope, which must be always the same, in order to avoid the error which would result from any inequality in the radiating power of the surfaces. But the most important of all the causes of uncertainty, and to which neither Mayer nor Leslie paid any attention, is that which results from the unequal conductibility of the substances compared with each other. the influence of this cause is so much the less, the smaller the volume is of the bodies operated upon, and the slower the heat makes its escape from it. Our object then must be to fulfil these two conditions; but it is difficult to reconcile them, because when we diminish the mass of a body, we augment the velocity with which its heat is dissipated. However, by endeavouring to unite all the causes which contribute to retard the cooling of a given mass, we are enabled, as the experiments have shown, to place it in such circumstances that the difference in the conductibility of the substances operated on has non longer any sensible influence on the measure of the capacities. The first method which presents itself for attaining that end is not to begin the observation till the temperature of the body is only a few degrees higher than that of the surrounding bodies. Accordingly all our experiments were made in an interval of temperature included between 10° and 5° centigrade of excess above the ambient medium. It is indispensable to measure the changes of temperature with the greatest possible care; for even a slight error in the estimation might occasion a great mistake in the result which it is the object to obtain. By operating, as we have said, at the same temperature for all the bodies, we avoid errors resulting from the graduation of the thermometer; and by observing this instrument through a glass, we can increase the size of its degrees so much as not to commit an error exceeding the 50th of a degree, which occasions a degree of uncertainty respecting the specific heat that may be overlooked. It is well known that all these precautions would be delusive if the temperature of the ambient medium were not rigorously the same in each case, and during the total duration of every experiment.; but this condition was likewise fulfilled, for the body was always plunged into a vessel, the sides of which were blackened interiorly, and covered on all parts with a thick coating of melting ice. To this first method of diminishing the rate of cooling, without any diminution of the requisite accuracy, we added another, the influence of which we could calculate from our knowledge of the laws of the communication of heat. It results from these laws that the velocity of cooling of a body may, ceteris paribus, be considerably diminished when its surface possesses but a very weak radiating power, and is plunged in an air very much dilated. To realize these circumstances, we resolved to operate upon solid bodies only in a state of very fine powder. In this state they were contained, and strongly pressed into a cylindrical vessel of silver very thin, very small, and the axis of which was occupied by the reservoir of the thermometer that served to point out the rate of cooling. This vessel was then placed in the centre of the vessel; and the air contained in it was dilated till its tension did not exceed two millimetres; and care was taken to reproduce the same vacuum in each experiment. By the precautions just stated, we succeeded in making the cooling of very small bodies exceedingly slow, and consequently easy to observe with precision. To give an idea of the limit which we have obtained in this respect, it may be sufficient to say, that when we measured the capacities of the densest bodies, such as gold and platinum, the masses on which we operated did not exceed the weight of 30 grammes; and that in the cases in which the cooling was most rapid, its duration was not less than 15 minutes. It would now be requisite to give the formula which served for the calculation of the observations; but the details into which we should be obliged to enter respecting the manner of making the different corrections depending on the method of proceeding would lead us into a discussion which we reserve for the publication of the definitive results of all the direct experiments which we have made on the subject. We shall add only a single remark, that having compared the specific heats thus obtained for the worst conductors with those given by the method of mixture, or by the calorimeter, the remarkable agreement has afforded the most convincing proof of the accuracy of the process which we have adopted. We shall now present in a table the specific heat of several simple bodies, restricting ourselves to those results about which we entertain no doubt. \|Specific heats\|\|Relative weights of the atoms\|\|Products of the weight of each atom by the corresponding capacity\| To make the law intelligible, which we propose to make known, we have joined, in the preceding table, to the specific heats of the different bodies, the relative weights of their atoms. These weights are deduced, as is known, from the ratios observed between the weights of the elementary substances that unite together. The care taken for some years in the determination of the proportions of most chemical compounds can only leave slight uncertainties with respect to the data which we have employed; but as no precise method exists of discovering the real number of atoms of each kind which enter into a combination, it is obvious that there must always be something arbitrary in the choice of the specific weight of the elementary molecules; but the uncertainty can be only in the choice of two or three numbers which have the most simple relation to each other. The reasons which have directed us in our choice will be sufficiently explained by what follows. We shall satisfy ourselves at present with saying, that there is none of the numbers on which we have fixed which does not agree with the best established chemical analogies. We may now, in consequence of the data contained in the preceding table, calculate easily the ratio which exists between the capacity of atoms of a different kind. We may remark, that in order to pass from the specific heats furnished by the observations to those of the particles themselves, it is sufficient to divide the former by the number of particles contained in the same weight of the substances which we compare; but it is clear that the number of particles for equal weights of matter are reciprocally proportional to the density of the atoms. We shall obtain, therefore, the result wanted by multiplying each of the capacities deduced from experiment by the weight of the corresponding atom. These different products are contained in the last column of the table. The simple inspection of these numbers exhibits an approximation too remarkable by its simplicity not to immediately recognize in it the existence of a physical law capable of being generalized and extended to all elementary substances. These products, which express the capacities of the different atoms, approach so near equality that the slight differences must be owing to slight errors either in the measurement of the capacities, or in the chemical analyses; especially, if we consider that in certain cases these errors derived from these two sources may be on the same side, and consequently found multiplied in the result. The number and diversity of the substances on which we operated not permitting us to consider the relation thus pointed out, as simply accidental, we are authorized to deduce from them the following law: The atoms of all simple bodies have exactly the same capacity for heat. If we recollect what has been said above respecting the kind of uncertainty which exists in fixing the specific weight of the atoms, it will be easy to conceive that the law which we have just established will change if we adopt for the density of the particles, a supposition different from that which we have chosen; but in all cases the law will exhibit a simple ratio between the weights and the specific heats of the elementary atoms; and it is obvious that when we had to choose among hypotheses equally probable, we were naturally led to decide in favour of that which established the most simple relation between the elements which we compared. But whatever opinion be adopted respecting this relation, it will enable us hereafter to control the results of chemical analysis; and in certain cases will give us the most exact method of arriving at the knowledge of the proportions of certain combinations; but if, in the subsequent part of our experiments, no fact occur to invalidate the probability of the opinion, which we entertain at present, we shall find in this method the advantage of fixing in a certain and uniform manner the specific weight of the atoms of all simple bodies that can be subjected to direct observations. The law, which we have announced, appears to be independent of the form which the bodies affect, provided always that we consider them in the same circumstances. This at least is a consequence deducible from the experiments of MM. Laroche and Berard on the specific heat of the gases. The numbers which they give for oxygen and azotic gases do not differ from what they ought to be to agree accurately with our law, except by a quantity less than the probable errors of such experiments. The number relative to hydrogen, it is true, is rather too small; but on examining with attention all the corrections which the authors were obliged to make on the immediate results of their observations, it is easy to see that the rapidity with which hydrogen gas cools down to the temperature of the surrounding bodies, compared with other elastic fluids, ought necessarily to introduce into the determination relative to that gas an inaccuracy from which they did not attempt to free it. By taking into consideration this cause of error, we are enabled to explain the difference alluded to without being obliged to make any forced supposition. The law of specific heats being thus established for elementary bodies, it became very important to examine, under the same point of view, the specific heats of compound bodies. Our process applying indifferently to all substances, whatever be their conductibility or state of aggregation, we had it in our power to subject to experiment a great many bodies whose proportions may be considered as fixed; but wen we endeavour to mount from these determinations to that of the specific heat of each compound atom by a method analogous to that which we employed for the simple bodies, we find ourselves soon stopped by the number of equally probable suppositions among which we must choose. If the method of fixing the weight of the atoms of simple bodies has not yet been subjected to any certain rule, that of the atoms of compound bodies has bee, à fortiori, deduced from suppositions purely arbitrary. But instead of adding our own conjectures to those which have been already advanced on the subject, we choose rather to wait till the new order of considerations which we have just established can be applied to a sufficiently great number of bodies, and in circumstances sufficiently varied that the opinion adopted may be founded on decisive conclusions. We shall satisfy ourselves with saying, that in abstracting every particular supposition, the observations which we have hitherto made tend to establish this remarkable law; viz. that there always exists a very simple ratio between the capacity of the compound atoms and that of the elementary atoms. We may likewise deduce from our researches another very important consequence for the general theory of chemical actions, that the quantity of heat developed at the instant of the combination of bodies has no relation to the capacity of the elements; and that in the greatest number of cases this loss of heat is not followed by any diminution in the capacity of the compounds formed. Thus, for example, the combination of oxygen and hydrogen, or of sulphur and lead, which produces so great a quantity of heat, occasions no greater alteration in the capacity of water or of sulphuret of lead than the combination of oxygen with copper, lead, silver, or of sulphur, with carbon, produces in the capacity of the oxides of these metals, or of carburet of sulphur. It would be very difficult to reconcile these facts with the ideas generally received respecting the production of heat in chemical phenomena; for in order to do so, it would be necessary to admit the very improbable supposition that heat exists in bodies in two very different states, and that the portion which we consider as united to the particles of matter is entirely independent of the specific heats. Besides, there is so much vagueness and incoherence in the explanations relative to the kind of phenomena of which we speak. There exist with respect to them opinions so different that they cannot be subjected to a regular discussion, nor exposed to a complete refutation. But, perhaps, it will not be useless to recall in a few words the principal facts and the inductions belonging to this important part of science. Of all the chemical actions considered as sources of heat, none has been recognized till very lately, except combustion. It would be useless to look for a plausible theory for this mode of the production of heat before the epoch marked by the memorable discoveries of Lavoisier. This illustrious chemist having more particularly studied the action of oxygen in the state of gas, he formed an opinion respecting the cause of the phenomenon in question naturally suggested by the observations of Black on latent heat. Hence the idea that the heat disengaged during combustion comes from the change of state of the oxygen. The determination which he made, together with M. Laplace, of the quantities of heat disengaged by the combustion of several substances appeared to furnish a powerful argument in favour of his conjectures. Experiment showed that when the same quantity of oxygen was united successively with phosphorus, hydrogen and carbon, it disengaged more heat in the first case than in the second, and more in the second than in the third. This was what might have been concluded from the theory, since the result of the first combustion is solid, that of the second liquid, and that of the third gaseous. But on considering that the two elements which concur to form water lose both the gaseous state and that notwithstanding the heat developed is less than what results from the combustion of phosphorus naturally solid, it was necessary to conclude that the latent heat of oxygen must be superior to that of the other elastic fluids. Another difficulty soon after presented itself. Nitric acid in which the oxygen has already lost the form of an elastic fluid, and still more nitre, which is in a solid state, produce, when decomposed by combustibles, quantities of heat very little different from that which would be produced by a weight of gaseous oxygen equal to that which they contain. This observation, which ought to have excited doubts respecting the primitive explanation, only restricted its generality. It was then supposed that in certain combinations the oxygen was capable of retaining a dose of heat almost as great as that which it contains when in the elastic state. Some facts more lately observed could not be explained according to the theory without admitting that the oxygen contained in certain combinations retained a quantity of heat superior to that which it contains when in the elastic state. Such are the detonations produced by mixtures of chlorate of potash with certain combustibles, or the spontaneous explosions of the euchlorine of Davy, and of the chloride and iodide of azote. This explanation was afterwards extended to all combinations, and it was considered as a principle sufficiently established that a body in combining with a certain number of others might abandon a more or less considerable part of its heat, according as in each case the different degrees of affinity of the elements in contact occasioned the molecules to approach more or less nearly to each other. It is the degree oft his approach, essentially variable, which has been denoted by the word condensation, so frequently employed in the language of chemistry. Such is the theory almost generally adopted in France. Several foreign chemists have pointed out its inaccuracy, and have modified it in different points, but without producing any conclusive proof either against the opinion which they combat, or in support of that which they wish to substitute in its place. We see then that the different explanations relative to the development of heat in chemical combinations are reducible to simple assertions derived from the first hypothesis of Lavoisier. It is astonishing that since the time in which this doctrine originated, it has not been subjected to a more rigid examination; and that even from the results already known, all the arguments have not been drawn against it which they are capable of furnishing. We conceive that the relations which we have pointed out between the specific heats of simple bodies and those of their compounds prevents the possibility of supposing that the heat developed by chemical actions owes its origin merely to the heat produced by changes of state, or to that supposed to be combined with the material molecules. We have still a better reason to reject this purely gratuitous hypothesis, as we can explain the phenomenon in a much more satisfactory manner. In fact Davy has long ago shown that when the two poles of a voltaic pile are united by means of pieces of charcoal placed in a gas incapable or supporting combustion, the charcoal may be kept in a state of violent ignition as long as the pile remains in activity, and without the charcoal undergoing any chemical change. On the other side, we are warranted to conclude from a great number of galvanic experiments made by Hisinger and Berzelius, and by Davy, that all bodies which combine are, with respect to each other, at the moment of combination precisely in the same electric conditions as the two poles of the pile. Is it not then probable that the cause which produces the incandescence of the charcoal in the fine experiment just mentioned is likewise the cause of the greater or less elevation of temperature of a body during the act of combination? This conclusion at least is founded on the strongest analogies, and ought to be followed through all its consequences. We are far from pretending that the changes of constitution, which are the result of chemical combinations, have no part in the development of the heat which accompanies them. We mean to say merely that in very energetic combinations this cause produces in general but a very small part of the total effect. We cannot pass in silence, in termination this memoir, another very important application to which the exact knowledge of the specific weight of the atoms will lead. If, as we have reason to expect, we succeed by the foregoing considerations to determine this element with accuracy, we may, setting out from the proper densities of bodies, calculate the ratios which exist between the distances of their atoms. But it is easy to see how important it will be in a great many physical theories to be able to establish a comparison between the distances of the particles and certain phenomena, which it is natural to suppose connected with this new element. It is, for example, by examining the question of dilations under this new point of view that we may expect to arrive at simple laws, at present altogether unknown. Some trials made on the observations of different philosophers, and upon some of our own made with a different object, lead us to consider it as very probable that there exists a simple relation between the dilatability of liquids and the distances of their particles. The fine observations of Gay-Lussac on the identity of the contractions of the carburet of sulphur and alcohol, setting out from their respective boiling points, support our opinion; for these two liquids present this remarkable particularity, that at the temperatures in which they were compared, the distances between their particles are almost exactly the same. But before prosecuting the researches on this subject, it is necessary to elucidate as much as possible the question of specific heats, and to deduce from it all the consequences to which it may lead relative to the knowledge of the constitution of bodies. \|Back to the list of selected historical papers\| \|Back to the top of the Classic Chemistry site\|
Old Tech that has built our World: Sheep and Cattle Kinkajou: Why do cows and sheep deserve to be mentioned in a technology web site? Erasmus: Cows and Sheep represent amazing pieces of biotechnology that marked the first steps of humans onto the path of civilisation. With cows and sheep, humans began the transition away from hunter gathering to a more technological form of food production. These animals take inedible materials in the form of grass (cellulose) and Turn this into food: meat and milk Turn this into clothing: skins. Cow and Sheep Erasmus: Human beings cannot obtain nutrition from grass. Cows and sheep as ruminants are capable of creating food for humans from grass with great efficiency compared to many animals. Their herding tendencies make them manageable for semi-nomadic humans. Humans help to protect and feed the animals and in turn are fed by the herd animals. I don’t think civilisation is possible without the behavioural modifications in these animals. For example, the Australian aborigines would probably never be able to make the transition to becoming nomadic herders since their only herd animal was the kangaroo. The behavioural characteristic of these animals makes them difficult to use in herd animals. They don’t cluster well enough, are too fast and are difficult to manage for people. So cattle and sheep are amazing bits of technology that enabled one of the basic steps of civilisation: the progression from hunter gatherer to nomadic or seminomadic herdsmen. The growth of human population fostered by herding essentially guaranteed that this lifestyle overpowered the resistance of the hunter gatherer lifestyle, resulting in the spread of technological civilisation. Wheat and Rye and Barley Kinkajou: Why should cereal grains make an appearance in a technology web site? Erasmus: Funny you should ask. These grains are probably the spark that built the civilisation that we know today. Indications are that about ten thousand years ago, give or take a few thousand years, new grains spread throughout the pre- Sumerian civilisations of the Tigris – Euphrates river systems. These grains mark the first step towards agriculture and the movement of civilisation away from nomadic herding as food production. In a similar fashion to herder populations crowding out hunter gatherers, the extra food production inherent in farming meant that more people could be supported by a given unit of land by farming technology. This would result in farming civilisation crowding out nomadic herders in many of the richer soil, better rainfall areas of the earth. Egyptian civilisation based on farming the margins of the Nile River dominated the Middle East for a long time. Kinkajou: I heard that humans have been wild gathering cereal or vegetable crops for some time. For example in pre-Sumerian times, humans would dig up nut grass copses. This gave a high yield in terms of calories per square metre and the digging harvesting process also guaranteed that there would be a better denser crop in years to come. (Due to the nature of growth of nut grass). So what’s so special about rye and wheat and barley? Erasmus: again, there are some indications that there were some major changes in the genetic nature of these grasses about ten thousand years ago, give or take a few thousand years. Firstly, Barley developed 6 lines of seeds per head of grass instead of the usual two. While crop yields were fairly similar due to the higher lateralisation of stalk growth in the older grass variants, this resulted in some changes. First the yield per stalk is higher, requiring less work to extract a given amount of seed from a given number of heads. It is less work to harvest a few high density seed heads than it is to harvest a lot of low density seed heads. The other consequence of this style of growth is that more of a plants resources were directed into producing the target seed crop, rather than into vegetative growth. This tech breakthrough is akin to that of the green revolution when dwarf strains of many cereal crops especially rice, meant that more of a plants energy was put into seed production and less into vegetative growth. The resultant increase in crop yields has allowed human food production to keep pace with population growth for the last forty years. Secondly, there was the appearance of the stiff rachis on the seed heads. The head of the cereal crop forms on a softer outgrowth of the plant called the “rachis”. Naturally as the seeds mature, the rachis kinks and the seed head droops. This allows the seeds to fall to the ground and the crop becomes self-seeding. Unfortunately, for agriculture this process is a disaster as the crop (the seeds) become hard to gather from the ground. A rachis or stalk that does not kink, requires human intervention to collect the grain and to plant the grain. It is a basic essential requirement to allow the agricultural way of life. There are some authors who believe that it would be difficult for this to appear as spontaneous mutation as a number of genes are involved and the probability of all the necessary changes coming together by accident is remote. Nonetheless, the appearance of these grains marked the next step on the upward path to civilisation. Our western civilisation would not exist if not for this tech from the past. Kinkajou: so what have you learned, Goo? Goo: Once my people, the numbat, dominated the Australian Savannah. Although we were not well physically adapted to living on our prey namely termites, we were able to flourish across this harsh arid landscape. We are one of the few diurnally active small marsupials. This is because we need to attack the termites when they are active. We had learned to break into the tunnel tracts connecting the termite mounds with their farmed landscape. Our senses were able to detect the presence of termites in their accessible tunnels. With the coming of predatory species such as foxes and cats, the Numbat faced circumstances with which we had difficulty coping. Our diurnal lifestyle and solitary life habit made us easier prey for predators. We had genetically evolved few coping strategies to deal with the actions of predators. Humans by contrast, are able to utilise the biological strengths of other species using their intelligence. Humans are able to work together to achieve common goals. Humans are individuals as well as social animals. The development of herd animals such as sheep and cattle were the first technological steps on the road to technological civilisation. The development of wheat Rye and Barley also made possible the next step on the road to logical civilisation. Each step on the road upward was marked by ability to sustain larger and larger units of human population. The path along which humans marched forward began to lead ever upward. But I have seen on this site that walking in the upward path is not without its detractors. For humans, your road continues. The challenges you will face may well be even more difficult than those faced by my people with the advent of the Europeans to the Australian landscape. Beware. Beware! Beware!
'Superfoods': A healthy way to eat? A type of nutrient-rich broccoli can boost your metabolism, scientists believe. But are such "superfoods" a healthy way to eat? Fancy eating a stem cell beef burger, with some genetically modified rice? Perhaps with some specially bred broccoli that can "retune" your metabolism? It's not outlandish, each has recently been announced by food technologists and scientists working to modify and improve the food we eat. The burger, grown in the lab rather than grown as part of a living animal, is designed as a way to provide protein-rich meat while avoiding the killing of livestock. The broccoli, a recently published study shows, contains an active compound that helps human cells work more efficiently. While the release of a rice in the Philippines, genetically modified to contain more vitamin A to boost our immune systems and avoid blindness, edges closer. Boost your nutrients: Modifying our food isn't itself new. Since the dawn of agriculture, we've bred crops to be larger, sweeter, yield more, or resist disease. But that trend continues with greater urgency. Many of the world's soils are losing nutrients, and with the rise of monocultures, and loss of fruit and vegetable varieties, our fresh food contains less 'goodness' than 50 years ago, some experts say. So scientists are looking to artificially boost the amount of nutrients in our food, particularly to help feed millions of malnourished people in developing countries. A related trend is also emerging; foods in developed countries including the UK are also increasingly being modified and fortified. But they are marketed and sold to us to boost our health, rather than provide a basic level of nutrition. The hope is that one day such foods might even mitigate the impact of certain cancers.Manipulating micronutrients For plants, there are different ways to manipulate the nutrients they contain. One powerful method is selective breeding, seeking out varieties and strains that take up more nutrients from the soil, for example. - Means searching for a specific characteristics within varieties of crop and then inter-breeding them. - Scientists use: Seed banks of older varieties - Mutagenesis - chemical or physical induction of genetic mutations to create new variation - Wide crosses: interbreeding between cultivated species and closely related species Genetic modification (GM): - Used to transfer a single gene or several genes from one species into another - Scientists can control when a gene is turned on in a plant's development and where it is expressed to change the characteristics of a crop Most people don't eat enough of the micronutrient selenium, which helps our cells grow. So scientists are trying to boost the selenium content in wheat by producing varieties that harvest it more efficiently. Around the world, billions of people are deficient in other vitamins or minerals. About two billion people are deficient in iodine, and two billion anaemic due to a lack of iron. A quarter of people are at risk of not getting enough zinc, which is vital for growth, while hundreds of thousands of children go blind each year due to a lack of vitamin A. In China, scientists are attempting to fortify ten different vegetables with iodine, as adding iodine to dietary salt isn't contributing enough to people's diets. Both leaf vegetables and fruit absorb iodine from soil, and a recent study found that adding iodised fertiliser to the soil, in the form of organic algae, boosted iodine levels in vegetables. Microsoft billionaire and co-founder Bill Gates helps fund HarvestPlus, an international programme attempting to modify food to better feed the poor. The project has developed an orange sweet potato boosted with vitamin A, and is using conventional breeding to work on six more crops: vitamin A-rich cassava and maize, iron-rich beans and pearl millet, and zinc-rich wheat and rice. Meanwhile, genetically modified (GM) "Golden Rice" which is grown to produce beta-carotene, is being grown in the Philippines, and scientists are weeks away from submitting it for safety evaluations. The human body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A, and scientists estimate that one cup of Golden Rice could provide up to 50% of an adult's recommended daily intake. Some are cautious about modifying food in this way. There's still "so much we don't know", says Emma Hockridge, head of policy at the Soil Association, a UK-based charity campaigning for organic food and farming. "Are we able to absorb the extra nutrients? To do so, for some nutrients we need other vitamins and minerals as well, to get them to work. We are not exactly sure what's in (differing vegetables)," she says. In the developing world, she would like to see a different approach to solving malnutrition. "It is less about getting particular vitamins and minerals but more about access to food or [helping people] grow their own food," she explains. She points out that someone eating a lot of Golden Rice "may have too much of some vitamins and minerals" and that there are other non-GM crops such as plantain, that contain higher levels of vitamin A.Quick fix? But modifying food to contain added nutrients and benefits, a process called biofortification, is increasingly popular in developed countries too. In July, the government launched a £160m Agri-Tech strategy, to encourage more scientific study of foods for the future. Not enough good stuff: - Undernutrition: Caused by an inadequate diet, inability to absorb nutrients or excessive loss of nutrients. - Micronutrient malnutrition: Deficient in one or more vitamins or minerals, such as iron, zinc or Vitamin A. - Protein-energy Malnutrition (PEM): Inadequate intake of protein leads to stunting, wasting and other childhood conditions. 1 in 4 children are affected In 2011, one such food went on sale in British supermarkets. Beneforte is a type of broccoli grown in East Anglia. Scientists bred it to contain three times the normal level of the compound glucoraphanin, which reduces inflammation and inhibits the cell division associated with some early-stage cancers. A study of the broccoli's impact when eaten has just been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It shows eating the fortified broccoli boosts metabolism, and reduces levels of fatty acids and other lipids. The crop has taken almost 20 years to develop, says project leader Prof Richard Mithen of the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, UK. "It was cross-bred with a wild species from Sicily - this is plant breeding and is not genetic modification," he says. "We looked at people who ate Beneforte and their metabolisms worked just a little bit better," he explains. "They were eating four portions a week, of 100 grams a portion for 12 weeks. "It takes up more sulphur from the soil, to create more glucoraphanin and broccoli is the only plant that produces this compound." Emma Hockridge of the Soil Association says this broccoli is "mainly aimed at people in the richer West". Marketing enhanced produce to the masses could mean people increasing look for quick fixes, she fears. Find out more: "There is a danger how people are receiving that message - 'if I eat less broccoli, I can do whatever else I want'," she says. Though the broccoli is being sold to consumers in two large supermarket chains, Prof Mithen warns it won't solve problems caused by a bad diet. "People need to have a healthy lifestyle, and include a bit of broccoli, with other fruit and vegetables. I am not advocating it as a 'magic bullet', it won't cure every disease." He is also keen to explore how to get more folate into our diets, and says a "high folate broccoli could be very interesting, as it would be better than taking supplements, eating it raw". Ms Hockridge would rather people eat organic produce, which she says is higher in nutrients, a view backed by Katy Mottershead, of the Better Food Organic Food Company in Bristol, UK. "Courgettes - they come to us in the shop within 24 hours of being picked eight miles away - it doesn't take long to get here, and vegetables after you pick them, the vitamins degrade in them," says Ms Mottershead. "They get to us much quicker than supermarkets get air freight... that means they have more nutrients in them. I certainly feel like they taste better," she adds. Recent figures show that organic produce sales in the UK are increasing, particularly via home-delivered box schemes. But researchers at Stanford University in the US have found that eating organic food will not necessarily make you healthier either, although it can cut your exposure to pesticides by 30%. So the quest for high nutrient "superfoods" looks set to continue. In the meantime, there is one approach to healthy eating that most experts agree on. Instead of seeking out a single "superfood", it is far healthier to eat a wide variety of foods such as fruits and vegetables, which together, should provide the nutrients we need.
Penyelesaian Persamaan Telegraph Dan Simulasinya Keywords:Green's function, Wave equation, Equation telegraph Equation Telegraph is one of type from wave equation. Solving of the wave equation obtainable by using Green's function with the method of boundary condition problem. This research aim to to show the process obtain;get the mathematical formula from wave equation and also know the form of solution of wave equation by using Green's function. Result of analysis indicate that the process get the mathematical formula from wave equation from applicable Green's function in equation which deal with the wave equation, that is applied in equation Telegraph. Solution started with searching public form from Green's function, hereinafter look for the solving of wave equation in Green's function. Application from the wave equation used to look for the solving of equation Telegraph. Result from equation Telegraph which have been obtained will be shown in the form of picture (knowable to simulasi) so that form of the the equation Telegraph.
Lynchburg Birth Records Birth certificates in the United States are a document that is often used in order to document the event of an individual's birth. Quite often, the birth records are submitted through the hospital where the individual was born. A birth certificate can help a authenticate a person's identity, family history and date of birth. A birth record is an uncertified copy of the birth certificate. That means that it has the exact same information, however, you cannot use it, for example, when you apply for a passport. The birth record is available to anyone who applies from any number of online services. Genealogy has always been a major concern in the United States. This is no surprise as almost all citizens had an ancestry that goes back to other places. It is thanks to the information superhighway known as the internet that people from all corners of the globe are connecting like never before. Tracing one's past ancestry become easier every day. The most significant document in any search is the birth certificate. The birth certificate not only states where and when your relatives came into existence, but it is also the requirement for almost any form of documentation such as a passport or any other governmental identification.
The Squatters' rights and Cooperative Ownership in the LES Libguide is an overview of the political, public history of squatters' collective struggle in reclaiming New York City-owned abandoned buildings in the 1990s through 2000s, in the form of a bibliographic resource guide to the movement's primary and secondary sources. This guide is meant as a starting point for deeper archival research and study. Welcome! "You are homeless, living with friends, unable to afford your rent and live satisfactorily. Whatever the reason, need or desire, you decide to squat. In other words, you decide that you are going to make a place to live in an abandoned building. You are going to renovate a vacant space in order to secure the kind of life you desire. Squatting is about self-determination, taking control of your life, your resources and doing for yourself with the skills and energy you possess." -- F. Morales, ABC's of Squatting Here's what New York State Law, Real Property Actions and Proceedings Law Article 5 says about squatters, or the legal term "adverse possessors:" § 501. Adverse possession; defined. For the purposes of this article: 1. Adverse possessor. A person or entity is an "adverse possessor" of real property when the person or entity occupies real property of another person or entity with or without knowledge of the other's superior ownership rights, in a manner that would give the owner a cause of action for ejectment.
Too Long; Didn't Read AI machines that we have created today are nothing but a machine automating some processes. The word artificial intelligence isn’t fit for these types of systems. To make artificial intelligence intelligent, we need to make them think like humans and process information like our brain does. Combining different human abilities will make true Artificial General Intelligence possible. In 2020 most of the research in this field will focus on structuring and mining actual relevant data instead of just collecting and feeding data to machine learning prediction systems.
(For discussions of the latest topics, check out the Human Nature Fray.) China pledged to prevent rain during this year's Olympics. Methods: 1) Inject clouds with chemicals that increase droplet size and flush out rain before clouds reach the stadium. 2) Inject chemicals that shrink droplets so the rain doesn't fall till clouds have passed the stadium. Delivery systems: 7,000 anti-aircraft guns, 4,000 rocket launchers, and 30 aircraft that can fire the chemicals. Supervising agency: The "bureau of weather modification." Critique: Weather modification doesn't work. Chinese rebuttals: 1) We've used it for decades to alleviate droughts. 2) We've validated current methods experimentally. 3) Weather modification can't stop heavy rain, but it can mitigate light rain. (Human Nature's view: Why should Americans resort to cloud-seeding when we can already control rainfall through prayer?) Social scientists are debating whether the housing boom has caused a baby boom. Data: 1) The fertility rate in 2006 reached replacement level (2.1 kids per woman) for the first time in 35 years. 2) This followed record rates of home-buying. 3) In previous times when homes were scarce or too expensive, fertility rates declined. 4) In countries where homes are scare or too expensive, fertility rates decline. Theories: 1) The house gives you space to expand your family. 2) The house is so far out of the city that you bag the commute, stay home, and raise kids. Alternative theories: Fertility rates are more responsive to income, immigration, religion, and confidence in the economy. Upside of the fertility surge: Today's babies will help pay for the boomers' retirement. Downside: Today's babies will become the new boomers. (Related: 1) Bigger houses let more couples sleep apart. 2) Giving workers a day off to have sex and make babies.) Three studies suggest marijuana may be more harmful than tobacco. Study #1: "Smoking a joint is equivalent to 20 cigarettes in terms of lung cancer risk." Reasons: Joint smoke has "twice the level of carcinogens"; joints "are typically smoked without a proper filter and almost to the very tip"; and "the cannabis smoker inhales more deeply and for longer." Study #2: "Pot smokers may experience pathological changes in their lungs decades earlier than such changes usually occur in cigarette smokers." (The gap is 20 years.) Study #3: "Withdrawal from the use of marijuana is similar to what is experienced by people when they quit smoking cigarettes," including "irritability, anger and trouble sleeping." Critique: The three studies covered only 100 people altogether, and none was representative. (Related: Is tobacco really worse than pot?) Vending machines are dispensing marijuana in Los Angeles. Cost: $40 per eighth of an ounce. Rationale: Pain relief and other medicinal purposes. Requirements: You have to 1) be registered in a database of medically approved users, 2) submit a fingerprint to prove your identity, and 3) insert a prepaid card. Buzzword: "Prescription Vending Machine." Supporters' arguments: 1) The pot relieves pain. 2) Machine dispensing is convenient. 3) It's private, to help you get past your embarrassment at buying pot. 4) By eliminating human dispensers, it reduces costs. 5) By eliminating human dispensers, it reduces pot theft. 6) By eliminating human dispensers, it reduces the number of people busted when the feds raid the dispensary, since the feds treat medical marijuana like any other illegal drug. DEA reaction: We'll bust whoever stocks the machine. Connoisseurs' critique: Some users prefer "to see and smell the drug before they buy it." (Related: Genetically altering pot to defeat drug enforcement.) Investigators are unraveling India's biggest known ring of organ thieves and sellers. Participants: 30 to 50 doctors, nurses, paramedics, and clinic and hospital workers. Merchandise sold: 400 to 500 kidneys. Methods: 1) "Kidney scouts" looked for susceptible laborers. 2) Foreign clients were kept in a "luxury guesthouse." 3) Mobile equipment was used to test targets for biological matches to the clients. 4) Some targets were offered $1,000 to $2,500 for kidneys that were later sold at a 900 percent markup. 5) Other targets were deceived, kidnapped, blood-tested, knocked out with injections, and robbed of their kidneys. 6) Critics suspect hospitals and cops were in on it. Previous scandal: Organs purchased from Indians impoverished by the 2004 tsunami. (Related: Human Nature's take on the worldwide market in human organs.) A big study suggests that exercise significantly slows aging. Previously known effects: Exercise prevents heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. New finding: It also slows the shortening of telomeres, which mark biological (not necessarily chronological) age. Data: 1) Counting by telomeres, moderate exercisers were 4 to 6 years younger than non-exercisers. 2) Heavy exercisers were 9 years younger. 3) Even among twins (who share genes and birthdays), heavy exercisers were 4 years younger. Theories: 1) Exercise reduces "oxidative stress" on cells. 2) It reduces inflammation. 3) It reduces psychological stress. Critiques: 1) Biological susceptibility to faster aging may cause lack of exercise, instead of the other way around. 2) Or the two variables may be joint products of some other factor. Rebuttal: The study ruled out such alternate factors. Old futuristic advice: Take these pills, and you'll live 10 years longer. New old-fashioned advice: Stop relying on pills, and get off your duff. An Italian court rejected a law that restricts in vitro fertilization and genetic testing of embryos. The law bans such testing, prohibits creation of more than three embryos per cycle, and requires all created embryos to be implanted. Ruling: 1) The test ban is an "abuse of power." 2) The three-embryo limit violates the woman's rights if multiple pregnancies (which might be required because the limit lowers the odds of an embryo surviving to term) pose a risk to her health. Liberal reactions: 1) It's a victory for women's rights. 2) It's good for embryos, since they'll be tested for health. 3) Now couples can try for kids instead of holding back in fear of genetic disease. 4) Now couples can do IVF and testing in Italy instead of circumventing the law by leaving the country. Conservative reactions: 1) The test doesn't protect embryos with disease genes; it marks them for killing. 2) The ruling legitimizes eugenics. (Related: Take this embryo and shove it.) A study suggests extreme happiness may be bad for you. Findings: 1) "The highest levels of income, education and political participation were reported not by the most satisfied individuals, but by moderately satisfied individuals." 2) Extremely happy people "earned significantly less money" and earned lower school grades than moderately happy people. 3) They "may not live as long," either. Theories: 1) Happiness makes you complacent and kills your drive. 2) It makes you slow to adapt. 3) It makes you too optimistic and insufficiently vigilant about your health. 4) It may overstimulate your cardiovascular system. Researchers' conclusions: 1) "Happiness may need to be moderated for success." 2) "Extremely high levels of happiness might not be a desirable goal." Human Nature's conclusions: 1) Success may need to be moderated for happiness. 2) Extremely high levels of success might not be a desirable goal. Companies are genetically engineering crops to endure global warming. Problem: Warming means more heat and drought. Solution: Breeding and genetic engineering. Result: Crops that 1) have roots long enough to get more water from the ground, 2) conserve water more efficiently in stalks and leaves, and 3) direct more water to grow grain than to grow leaves. Objections: 1) This could pose unknown health risks. 2) It could worsen the environment. 3) Nature knows better than we do. Rebuttals: 1) You're already eating biotech crops. 2) They can help the environment by cutting water use. 3) They can grow enough food to prevent starvation on a warmed planet. (Related: HN's previous update on global warming and genetic engineering.) Doctors are learning to assist transplants by helping donor cells take over parts of the recipient's body. Case study: A liver transplant 1) changed a girl's blood type to that of her dead donor and 2) changed most of her immune system to match her donor. Technical term for this human merger: chimerism. Gut reaction: It's a freaky invasion. Educated reactions: 1) It's no freakier than a marrow transplant. 2) It eliminates the usual problem of transplant rejection, since your body treats the new organ as yours. 3) Now let's figure out how to replicate this bizarre case. Related: 1) Doctors proved they can cause temporary chimerism by partially destroying your marrow and substituting the donor's marrow along with his kidney. 2) Blood-cell transplants can lead to chimerism, but not reliably. 3) The goal is to make the chimerism permanent. (Also related: DNA tests suggest "50 to 70 percent of healthy people are chimeras.") Latest Human Nature columns: 1) Bush, stem cells, and stubbornness. 2) Abortion and teen sex. 3) Why the polls botched New Hampshire. 4) The best Human Nature stories of 2007. 5) The top privacy threats of 2007. 6) Are cultural trends changing our genes? 7) The travesty of political robo-calls. 8) Are Jews genetically smart? 9) Rethinking the age of consent.
November 25, 2008 Galactic Molecule Could Point To Signs Of Alien Life An organic sugar molecule that is directly linked to the origin of life has been located in a relatively hospitable part of the galaxy, scientists said. Glyceraldehyde is a molecule with significant ties to the origins of life, as it can react to form ribose, a key constituent of the nucleic acid RNA."This is an important discovery as it is the first time glycolaldehyde, a basic sugar, has been detected towards a star-forming region where planets that could potentially harbor life may exist," said Dr. Serena Viti, one of the paper's authors from University College London. The finding could be a positive step in the search for alien life, as a wide spread of the molecule improves the chances of it existing along side other molecules vital to life and in regions where Earth-like planets may exist. Glycolaldehyde was first discovered toward the galactic center in 2000. However, the extreme conditions there made scientists unsure as to whether the molecule could form in the rest of the galaxy. In order to find a more definitive answer, Maria Teresa Beltran of the University of Barcelona and colleagues trained the Plateau de Bure array of radio telescopes on a large star-forming region called G31.41+031, about 26,000 light years away. The region, known as a hot molecular core, is dense with newly formed stars. The team found several radio and microwave signatures of the presence of glycolaldehyde inside the radio emission from the core. When those spectral signatures were compared with those from a computer model of how the molecules form on tiny grains of interstellar dust, the data suggested the glycolaldehyde is a few hundred thousand years old. The study's co-author, Claudio Codella of the Institute of Radio Astronomy in Florence, Italy, said the importance of the discovery lies in the fact that the glycolaldehyde has been detected towards a region where planets orbiting newly formed stars are expected to exist - and planets could be the cradle of life. "The discovery of an organic sugar molecule in a star forming region of space is very exciting and will provide incredibly useful information in our search for alien life," said Professor Keith Mason, Chief Executive of the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Further research is needed to look for complex molecules that up to now have only been seen in the galactic center. "The search for prebiotic molecules in star-forming regions is still in the fledgling stages but the door is open now," says co-author Roberto Neri, an astronomer at the Institute for Millimeter Radio Astronomy, home to the Plateau de Bure facility. "I believe that many more of these molecules will show up in the near future," he adds. The discovery, partly funded by the UK's Science and Technology Facilities Council is published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. On the Net: - University College London - University of Barcelona - Science and Technology Facilities Council - Institute for Millimeter Radio Astronomy - Astrophysical Journal Letters
Disease-fighters in our mouths provide clues to enhancing the immune system Studies of natural antibiotics in our mouths may lead to new treatments for oral infections, as well as ways to boost the infection-fighting powers of mouthwashes, denture coatings, and wound dressings, according to a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). These compounds, called beta-defensins, are key components of our innate immune system. "Innate immunity describes the defenses that we're are born with; they're coded in our genes. In contrast, we develop the antibodies of our acquired immune system over time as we're exposed to bacteria and viruses," said Dr. Beverly Dale, professor in the University of Washington Department of Oral Biology, School of Dentistry, and scientific director of the UW Comprehensive Center for Oral Health Research. "It's when our innate defenses fail that the acquired immune system picks up the slack." The innate immune system has some remarkable characteristics, including the ability to distinguish between harmless and harmful bacteria. For example, disease-causing and harmless, or commensal, bacteria trigger the activation of beta-defensins through different chemical signaling pathways. The role of commensal bacteria may be to alert the immune system to the possible presence of invading bacteria, according to Dale. The mouth is "a perfect place to study the innate immune system because it's such an incredibly complex and challenging ecological system," Dale said. "Our mouth is full of moist surfaces, perfect for bacteria to adhere to; we feed these bacteria at regular intervals with nutritious foods and snacks." As a result, and despite efforts to brush them away, we have millions of bacteria in our mouths, according to Dale. "Yet most of us remain healthy--without infections--most of the time." Dale and colleagues from the Comprehensive Center for Oral Health Research, Dr. Richard Darveau of the departments of Periodontics and Oral Biology, and Dr. Edward Clark of the Department of Microbiology, School of Medicine, will join Dr. David Relman of Stanford University's departments of Microbiology & Immunology, and Medicine for a 12:30 p.m. session Monday, Feb. 16, on "Innate Immunity and Oral Health" at the AAAS's annual meeting in Seattle. Knowledge of the ways harmful and harmless bacteria interact with our immune systems has been limited by the fact that many kinds of bacteria won't grow in a laboratory. Relman has developed high-throughput methods to better analyze oral microbial communities and will discuss his results in the session "Microbial Diversity and Oral Health." The microorganisms in our mouths are most obvious when they collect on our teeth as plaque, a tough sticky mixture that can contain over 300 species of bacteria. Most of these bacteria are harmless commensals, but a minority, such as the bacteria Porphyromonas gingivalis, can cause periodontal or gum disease. Darveau's session will include an overview of innate immunity and how is it affected by the presence of disease-causing bacteria, such as P. gingivalis. Special receptors on sentinel cells may help them detect invading pathogens. Clark's session will discuss how these sentinels activate both the innate and acquired immune systems. In her session on beta-defensins, Dale will discuss the ways that these natural antibiotics are activated and could be used to treat or prevent infection. Some institutions are already testing the use of simple antimicrobial peptides similar to beta-defensins to prevent oral mucositis, an infection that is a side effect of some chemotherapy treatments. Other possible uses for beta-defensins, or natural compounds that stimulate their production, may include mouthwashes, denture coatings, wound dressings, and coatings for catheters and other medical equipment. "The innate immune system is a very subtle system that keeps us healthy most of the time," Dale said. A better understanding how the system works can help us understand how to enhance it, she said: "If our cells can tell the difference between different types of bacteria, what else are they doing that may protect our bodies from infection?" Source: Eurekalert & othersLast reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009 Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
Have you noticed your children regularly breathe through her mouth during sleep, or even during the day? We usually do not pay heed to this habit and mouth breathing in children is usually ignored. Mouth breathing has been a concern among health care professionals because it can affect the long-term development of the face. Children normally breathe through their mouth when they have a cold but chronic and regular mouth breathing leads to abnormal facial growth and dental development. It also leads to poor sleep due to obstructed upper airways, and this sleep can adversely affect their growth and academic performance. What causes mouth breathing? • Allergic Rhinitis: Caused by allergies with dust mites, animal dander, grasses and pollens. • Intra nasal defects, a common example is a Deviated Nasal Septum where it is difficult to breathe through the nose. • Enlarged tonsils or adenoids: Repeated infection leads to overgrowth of lymphatic tissue in the adenoids obstructing the airway space and making mouth breathing necessary. • Habitual: In some children, mouth breathing becomes a habit which needs to be interrupted. What are the things that should be looked out for in children by the parents? • Does the child sleep with his mouth open? • Does the child keep his mouth open when distracted? • Does the child snore? • Does the child drool on the pillow? • Is the child always sleepy during the day? • Does the child get tired easily? • Does the child often have a stuffy nose and/or runny nose? • Does the child have difficulty concentrating? If your answer to the above questions is a yes, your child could be a mouth breather and requires a visit to a pediatric dentist. What are the signs of mouth breathing the doctor will look out for? • Dry lips • Open mouth with lack of lip seal • Dry mouth with inflamed gums and increased risk of decay • Increasingly long and narrow face • Narrow high vaulted palate • Retrognathic mandible and maxilla • Crowded teeth or lack of spacing between baby teeth • Enlarged tonsils • Dark circles under the eyes • Forward head posture What Can Be Done to Treat Mouth Breathing? Mouth breathing may seem like an easy habit to change but unfortunately, it is not. All the muscles of the face and mouth have been programmed and trained to help the child breathe in an abnormal manner. Therefore, in order to stop mouth breathing, the muscles must be re-trained to breathe in a normal manner that may require professional assistance. The dental surgeon or pediatric dentist will: • Assess the child for mouth breathing symptoms • Screen for enlarged tonsils, deviated nasal septum or any underlying cause • Intercept the habit and redirect normal facial growth and dental development through myofunctional therapy or exercises. Mouth breathing if not corrected can lead to problems with general health, speech, dental health, under developed jaws, etc. But early intervention (as early as the age of 5) intercepts the habit and avoids its harmful impact. Give your child the gift of a healthy life by helping them to breathe normally all of the time. Photo Credit : Shutterstock By Dr. Anveeta Agarwal, BDS, MDS Consultant Oral Pathologist, Associate Dental Surgeon Specialist at Dantah Email : email@example.com more recommended stories Senior White House Official Testifies Privately in Trump Impeachment Probe A senior White House budget official. Watson after Texans’ 41-7 loss: ‘Flush it and move forward’ When he met Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson. Kings snap Celtics’ 10-game win streak with 100-99 Victory The Boston Celtics were an unlucky. Tiger-Cats beat Eskimos 36-16 to advance to Grey Cup Dane Evans led the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Sandy Hook Lawsuit Could Force Remington to Open Books A recent ruling by the U.S..
Immunization (or immunisation in British English) is the process of conferring increased resistance to an infectious disease by a means other than experiencing the natural infection. Typically, this involves exposure to an agent (antigen or immunogen) that is designed to fortify the person's immune system against that agent or similar infectious agents (active immunization). Immunization also can include providing the subject with protective antibodies developed by someone else or another organism (passive immunization). When the human immune system is exposed to a disease once, it can develop the ability to quickly respond to a subsequent infection. Therefore, by exposing an individual to an immunogen in a controlled way, the person's body will then be able to protect itself from infection later on in life. The term immunization often is used interchangeably with vaccination and inoculation, all of which use a viable infecting agent. Like active immunization, vaccination involves administration of antigenic material to produce immunity to a disease, which will prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by a pathogen. This material can either be live, but weakened forms of pathogens (such as bacteria or viruses); killed or inactivated forms of these pathogens; or purified material such as proteins. While vaccination is used today in the same sense as immunization, in a strict sense the term refers to its original meaning, which is protection conferred against smallpox by material taken from cow infected with Cowpox virus, which is related to the vaccinia virus (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). While in common use, the term inoculation can be used synonymously for immunization, it is often limited to a process involving unweakened, live pathogens. The term inoculation is used less frequently nowadays (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). Medical researchers have developed diverse immunization processes for a vast number of diseases, beginning on a large scale about a century ago. Immunization has proved to be one of the most cost-effective public health measures available (Breslow 2002), with vaccines providing the means for eradicating smallpox and bringing into sight the goal of making the world free from polio, measles, and other serious diseases. However, mastery of the agents causing human disease can be a two-edged sword as that mastery can also be applied toward developing biological weapons that cause diseases. Even now there remains the fear that smallpox could be used as such a weapon, now that it has been eradicated and people are no longer being immunized. Recognizing that an infectious disease, once overcome, did not normally reappear, people have tried to prevent getting a disease by purposely inoculating themselves with infected material. This is first known with smallpox before 200 B.C.E. (NMAH 2007). In 1718, Lady Mary Wortley Montague reported that the Turks have a habit of deliberately inoculating themselves with fluid taken from mild cases of smallpox and she inoculated her own children (Behbehani 1983). In 1796, Edward Jenner (1749-1823) inoculated against smallpox using cowpox (a mild relative of the deadly smallpox virus). While Edward Jenner has been recognized as the first doctor to give sophisticated immunization, it was British dairy farmer Benjamin Jestey who noticed that "milkmaids" did not become infected with smallpox, or displayed a milder form. Jestey took the pus from an infected cow's udder and inoculated his wife and children with cowpox, in order to artificially induce immunity to smallpox during the epidemic of 1774, thereby making them immune to smallpox. Twenty-two years later, by injecting a human with the cowpox virus (which was harmless to humans), Jenner swiftly found that the immunized human was then also immune to smallpox. The process spread quickly, and the use of cowpox immunization and later the vaccinia virus (of the same family as the cowpox virus and the smallpox virus or Variola) led to the almost total eradication of smallpox in modern human society. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the eradication of smallpox in 1979. Vaccination to prevent smallpox was soon practiced all over the world. During the 19th century, the cowpox virus used for smallpox vaccination was replaced by vaccinia virus. Vaccinia is in the same family as cowpox and variola but is genetically distinct from both. Louis Pasteur developed a fowl cholera vaccine in 1880, was involved in the introduction of anthrax vaccine in 1881, and developed a rabies vaccine in 1885. In 1898, Almoth Wright developed typhoid vaccine, and in 1954 Salk (killed) polio vaccine was introduced, while in 1957 Sabin (live) polio vaccine was introduced. In 1960, measles vaccine was introduced, and later vaccines were developed for rubella, mumps, and hepatitis B. Passive immunization is where pre-made antibodies developed by one organism are given to another organism. This may involve administration of antibodies from one individual organism to another, such as the transfer of human immunoglobulin from one human to another or transfer of antisera prepared in animals. Passive immunity also includes the natural transfer of antibodies developed by a mother to her child across the placenta during pregnancy, helping to protect the child before and shortly after birth (Breslow 2002). This passive method of immunization begins to work very quickly, but it is temporary and generally short-lasting, because the antibodies are naturally broken down, and not stored for later use. It can also result in serum sickness and anaphylaxis. Artificial passive immunization is normally given by injection and is used if there has been a recent outbreak of a particular disease or as an emergency treatment to poisons from insects, and so forth. For example, special risk groups likely to suffer from complications of infection, such as with HIV, asthma, or congenital heart disease, may received passive immunization, as can individuals traveling to a country with high incidences of the disease. Active immunization involves stimulating the individual's own immune system by the administration of an antigenic substance into a person then the recipient will develop antibodies. This may involve introduction of an inactivated (killed) agent or an attenuated (live, but enfeebled) agent (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). The inactivated agents may involve killed whole organisms, sub-units of the killed organisms, or the inactivated toxins released by the organisms (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). Toxoids are made by using the toxins excreted by microorganisms and inactivating them chemically or physically (Breslow 2002). Attenuated agents may involve modified strains of the causal organisms (such as ones containing the genetic markers to stimulate antibody production but not the genetic components to produce the infection) or may involve related organisms (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). Examples of attenuated (live) vaccines include those for yellow fever, poliomyelitis (Sabin), measles, rubella, mumps, and rabies (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). Examples of inactivated (killed) toxoids include influenza, poliomyelitis (Salk), hepatitis A, and hepatitis B (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). The most commonly used toxoids are diphtheria and tetanus (Breslow 2002). Normally, protection from active immunization lasts for years or even confers lifetime immunity (Breslow 2002). Some vaccines, such as for diphtheria and tetanus, require periodic booster doses to maintain immunity (Breslow 2002). For a vaccine to be suitable for general use, the following are broad principles applicable for its use (Blakemore and Jennett 2001): Ideally, vaccines should yield long-lasting protection, be inexpensive, have no adverse effect on the recipient, and be stable for transportation and storage (Blakemore and Jennett 2001). In the United States, each state provides school districts with an obligation to regulate those eligible to enter public schooling. Since schools are congregate settings, and thus communication of diseases is a consideration, school districts may exclude children who seek to attend without the protection of certain immunizations. For example, in the state of Ohio, each student is required to provide proof of specific immunizations or have an authorized waiver from the requirement upon entry to school at age six. If a student does not have the necessary immunizations or a waiver acceptable to the state, the school principal may refuse entry and require compliance with a set deadline. This procedure is for the safety of all students and the public health and follows Ohio State law. Unless given a waiver, students must meet the following requirements: Additionally, for schools offering a pre-school program, add the requirements for two doses of haemophilus influenzae. All links retrieved February 25, 2018. \|Vaccination/Vaccine (and Immunization, Inoculation. See also List of vaccine topics and Epidemiology)\| \|Development: Models - Timeline - Toxoid - Trial Administration: ACIP - GAVI - VAERS - Vaccination schedule - VSD Specific vaccines: Anthrax - BCG - Cancer - DPT - Flu - HIV - HPV - MMR - Pneumonia - Polio - Smallpox Controversy: A-CHAMP - Anti-vaccinationists - NCVIA - Pox party - Safe Minds - Simpsonwood - Thimerosal controversy - Vaccine injury New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here: The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:
IELTS is a hugely popular and significant test of English these days. It is now the standard English language test for entry to British Universities and Colleges and is now being used worldwide for academic and work related purposes. The following twelve tips will go a long way in ensuring you achieve your best possible IELTS score. IELTS Writing module 1)When writing an essay always allow time at the end to check through what you have written. 2)Write at least 150 words in Task 1 and at least 250 words in Task 2. If you write less than these minimums you will lose marks. Don’t write too much though, as you must stick to your time limits for each question. 3)Keep to the topic set!. Make sure you answer what is being asked of you and never try to prepare sections of text before the exam IELTS Speaking module 4)Remember! you are being assessed on your ability to communicate in English not on your general knowledge. 5)Be talkative ! Don’t just answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the examiner’s questions, add details to your answer. 6)Don’t try to give a prepared speech, or talk about a different theme from the one you are asked to discuss. You will lose marks for this. IELTS Reading module 7)Keep to stated word limits in your answers e.g use no more than eight words. 8)Check the instructions carefully! sometimes tasks expect you to use words from the text in your answer and at other times your own words. 9)Remember! At first read for general meaning. Don’t try to understand every word or phrase, you just don’t have the time!. IELTS Listening module 10)At the end of the Listening you have time to transfer your answers to the Answer sheet. This is a great opportunity to check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. 11)After each section there is usually a break in the recording. Use this short break to prepare for the next set of questions. 12)There is always an example At the beginning of the IELTS listening module, which you should use to familiarise yourself with the sound, the speakers and the situation they are speaking in. Good Luck!!! It is hard to believe but we have almost reached the end of
South Africa profile A chronology of key events: 4th century - Migrants from the north settle, joining the indigenous San and Khoikhoi people. National hero: Nelson Mandela Anti-Apartheid icon walks free after 25 years in prison to become a revered statesman 1480s - Portuguese navigator Bartholomeu Dias is the first European to travel round the southern tip of Africa. 1497 - Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama lands on Natal coast. 1652 - Jan van Riebeeck, representing the Dutch East India Company, founds the Cape Colony at Table Bay. 1795 - British forces seize Cape Colony from the Netherlands. Territory is returned to the Dutch in 1803; ceded to the British in 1806. 1816-1826 - Shaka Zulu founds and expands the Zulu empire, creates a formidable fighting force. 1835-1840 - Boers leave Cape Colony in the 'Great Trek' and found the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. 1852 - British grant limited self-government to the Transvaal. 1856 - Natal separates from the Cape Colony. Late 1850s - Boers proclaim the Transvaal a republic. 1860-1911 - Arrival of thousands of labourers and traders from India, forebears of the majority of South Africa's current Indian population. 1867 - Diamonds discovered at Kimberley. 1877 - Britain annexes the Transvaal. 1879 - British defeat the Zulus in Natal. 1880-81 - Boers rebel against the British, sparking the first Anglo-Boer War. Conflict ends with a negotiated peace. Transvaal is restored as a republic. Mid 1880s - Gold is discovered in the Transvaal, triggering the gold rush. 1899 - British troops gather on the Transvaal border and ignore an ultimatum to disperse. The second Anglo-Boer War begins. 1902 - Treaty of Vereeniging ends the second Anglo-Boer War. The Transvaal and Orange Free State are made self-governing colonies of the British Empire. 1910 - Formation of Union of South Africa by former British colonies of the Cape and Natal, and the Boer republics of Transvaal, and Orange Free State. 1912 - Native National Congress founded, later renamed the African National Congress (ANC). 1913 - Land Act introduced to prevent blacks, except those living in Cape Province, from buying land outside reserves. 1914 - National Party founded. 1918 - Secret Broederbond (brotherhood) established to advance the Afrikaner cause. Police killed protesters, sparking international outrage 1919 - South West Africa (Namibia) comes under South African administration. 1934 - The Union of South Africa parliament enacts the Status of the Union Act, which declares the country to be "a sovereign independent state". The move followed on from Britain's passing of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, which removed the last vestiges of British legal authority over South Africa.Apartheid set in law 1948 - Policy of apartheid (separateness) adopted when National Party (NP) takes power. 1950 - Population classified by race. Group Areas Act passed to segregate blacks and whites. Communist Party banned. ANC responds with campaign of civil disobedience, led by Nelson Mandela. 1960 - Seventy black demonstrators killed at Sharpeville. ANC banned. 1961 - South Africa declared a republic, leaves the Commonwealth. Mandela heads ANC's new military wing, which launches sabotage campaign. 1960s - International pressure against government begins, South Africa excluded from Olympic Games. 1964 - ANC leader Nelson Mandela sentenced to life imprisonment. 1966 September - Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd assassinated. 1970s - More than 3 million people forcibly resettled in black 'homelands'. 1976 - More than 600 killed in clashes between black protesters and security forces during uprising which starts in Soweto. 1976: Black anger boils over People rallied against the white government, which hit back violently 1984-89 - Township revolt, state of emergency. 1989 - FW de Klerk replaces PW Botha as president, meets Mandela. Public facilities desegregated. Many ANC activists freed. 1990 - ANC unbanned, Mandela released after 27 years in prison. Namibia becomes independent. 1991 - Start of multi-party talks. De Klerk repeals remaining apartheid laws, international sanctions lifted. Major fighting between ANC and Zulu Inkatha movement. 1993 - Agreement on interim constitution. 1994 April - ANC wins first non-racial elections. Mandela becomes president, Government of National Unity formed, Commonwealth membership restored, remaining sanctions lifted. South Africa takes seat in UN General Assembly after 20-year absence.Seeking truth 1996 - Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu begins hearings on human rights crimes committed by former government and liberation movements during apartheid era. Last white leader: FW de Klerk FW de Klerk, left, oversaw the end of apartheid and won the Nobel Peace Prize with his successor, Nelson Mandela, right 1996 - Parliament adopts new constitution. National Party withdraws from coalition, saying it is being ignored. 1998 - Truth and Reconciliation Commission report brands apartheid a crime against humanity and finds the ANC accountable for human rights abuses. 1999 - ANC wins general elections, Thabo Mbeki takes over as president. 2000 December - ANC prevails in local elections. Recently-formed Democratic Alliance captures nearly a quarter of the votes. The Inkatha Freedom Party wins 9%. 2001 April - 39 multi-national pharmaceutical companies halt a legal battle to stop South Africa importing generic Aids drugs. The decision is hailed as a victory for the world's poorest countries in their efforts to import cheaper drugs to combat the virus. 2001 May - An official panel considers allegations of corruption surrounding a 1999 arms deal involving British, French, German, Italian, Swedish and South African firms. In November the panel clears the government of unlawful conduct. 2001 September - Durban hosts UN race conference. 2001 December - High Court rules that pregnant women must be given Aids drugs to help prevent transmission of the virus to their babies. 2002 April - Court acquits Dr Wouter Basson - dubbed "Dr Death" - who ran apartheid-era germ warfare programme. Basson had faced charges of murder and conspiracy. ANC condemns verdict. 2002 July - Constitutional court orders government to provide key anti-Aids drug at all public hospitals. Government had argued drug was too costly. 2002 October - Bomb explosions in Soweto and a blast near Pretoria are thought to be the work of right-wing extremists. Separately, police charge 17 right-wingers with plotting against the state. 2003 May - Walter Sisulu, a key figure in the anti-apartheid struggle, dies aged 91. Thousands gather to pay their last respects. 2003 November - Government approves major programme to treat and tackle HIV/Aids. It envisages network of drug-distributon centres and preventative programmes. Cabinet had previously refused to provide anti-Aids medicine via public health system. 2004 April - Ruling ANC wins landslide election victory, gaining nearly 70% of votes. Thabo Mbeki begins a second term as president. Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi is dropped from the cabinet. 2005 March - Investigators exhume the first bodies in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation into the fates of hundreds of people who disappeared in the apartheid era. 2005 May - Geographical names committee recommends that the culture minister should approve a name change for the capital from Pretoria to Tshwane.Zuma sacked 2005 June - President Mbeki sacks his deputy, Jacob Zuma, in the aftermath of a corruption case. Mr Mandela's successor, Thabo Mbeki, was ousted in 2008 and succeeded by his rival, Jacob Zuma 2005 August - Around 100,000 gold miners strike over pay, bringing the industry to a standstill. 2006 May - Former deputy president Jacob Zuma is acquitted of rape charges by the High Court in Johannesburg. He is reinstated as deputy leader of the governing African National Congress. 2006 June - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visits and promises to limit clothing exports to help South Africa's ailing textile industry. 2006 September - Corruption charges against former deputy president Zuma are dismissed, boosting his bid for the presidency. 2006 December - South Africa becomes the first African country, and the fifth in the world, to allow same-sex unions. 2007 April - President Mbeki, often accused of turning a blind eye to crime, urges South Africans to join forces to bring rapists, drug dealers and corrupt officials to justice. 2007 May - Cape Town mayor Helen Zille is elected as new leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA).Mass strike 2007 June - Hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers take part in the biggest strike since the end of apartheid. The strike lasts for four weeks and causes widespread disruption to schools, hospitals and public transport. Early rights activist Political leader Mahatma Gandhi is revered in South Africa where he spent two decades fighting for basic rights of Indians 2007 December - Zuma is elected chairman of the ANC, placing him in a strong position to become the next president. Prosecutors bring new corruption charges against him. 2008 May - Wave of violence directed at foreigners hits townships across the country. Dozens of people die and thousands of Zimbabweans, Malawians and Mozambicans return home. 2008 September - A judge throws out a corruption case against ruling ANC party chief Jacob Zuma, opening the way for him to stand as the country's president in 2009. President Mbeki resigns over allegations that he interfered in the corruption case against Mr Zuma. ANC deputy leader Kgalema Motlanthe is chosen by parliament as president. New party launched 2008 December - A new political party is launched in Bloemfontein, in the first real challenge to the governing ANC. The Congress of the People - or Cope - is made up largely of defectors from the ANC and is headed by former defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota. 2009 January - Appeals court rules that state prosecutors can resurrect their corruption case against ANC leader Jacob Zuma, opening the way for Mr Zuma's trial to be resumed, just months before general election. 2009 April - Public prosecutors drop corruption case against Jacob Zuma. ANC wins general election. 2009 May - Parliament elects Jacob Zuma as president. Economy goes into recession for first time in 17 years. 2009 July - Township residents complaining about poor living conditions mount violent protests. 2010 June - South Africa hosts the World Cup football tournament. 2010 August - Civil servants stage nation-wide strike. 2011 May - Local elections, with opposition Democratic Alliance nearly doubling its share of the vote since the last poll. President Zuma mediates in Libyan conflict. 2011 October - President Zuma sacks two ministers accused of corruption. Opposition Democratic Alliance picks a black woman - Lindiwe Mazibuko - as its leader in parliament.Trouble within ANC 2011 November - The ANC suspends its controversial and influential youth leader, Julius Malema, for five years for bringing the party into disrepute. The killing of 34 striking miners at the Marikana platinum mine shocked South Africa National Assembly overwhelmingly approves information bill accused by critics of posing a threat to freedom of speech. The ANC says it is needed to safeguard national security. 2012 July - Member of white extremist group found guilty of plotting to kill Mandela and trying to overthrow government. 2012 August-October - Police open fire on workers at a platinum mine in Marikana, killing at least 34 people, and leaving at least 78 injured and arresting more than 200 others. Prosecutors drop murder charges in September against 270 miners after a public outcry, and the government sets up a judicial commission of inquiry in October. 2012 September - Former ANC youth leader Julius Malema is charged with money laundering over a government tender awarded to a company partly owned by his family trust. Mr Malema says the case is a politically motivated attempt to silence his campaign against President Zuma, in particular over the Marikana shootings. 2012 October - Platinum mine owner Amplats fires 12,000 striking miners as wave of wildcat strikes shows little sign of abating. 2012 December - President Zuma re-elected as leader of the ANC. 2013 June - Former president Nelson Mandela, aged 94, admitted to hospital for the fourth time in the past year. 2013 September - Nelson Mandela discharged after spending three months in hospital with a lung infection. Doctors say he remains in a stable but critical condition and will be treated at home. 2013 October - Members of a white supremacist group accused of bombings in Johannesburg's Soweto township in 2002, and of plotting to murder Nelson Mandela, are found guilty and given long sentences. 2013 December - Nelson Mandela dies, aged 95. Tributes to "the father of the nation" flood in from throughout the world. 2013 March - The anti-corruption ombudsman heavily criticises President Zuma for a twenty million dollar upgrade to his private home. 2014 May - Ruling ANC party wins a majority in general elections.
Traditionally, mathematics is communicated by a person standing at a chalkboard and talking. This time-honored method still has many adherents, but the development of computer technology has made new techniques available for communicating mathematics. This course covers all modalities of communication: oral, written, visual, electronic; but the primary emphasis is on the application of computer technology to facilitate the communication of mathematics. Some of the skills you will develop in this course are the following: Now you may read the opening day handout, view the list of course projects, or jump to the first class. You may also view the table of contents or the list of resource materials. Comments to Harold P. Created August 12, 1996. Last modified: Mon Aug 1 17:24:20 EDT 2022
The unstoppable march of the upward inflection? Whether it's called the upward inflection, high-rising terminal or simply "uptalk", the habit of making statements sound like questions is a genuine linguistic mystery, writes Chris Stokel-Walker. The habit of ending statements with a stress that makes them sound a bit like questions is one that winds many people up. Surveys have suggested bosses dislike it. Stephen Fry admitted on the TV show Room 101 that he hated it. Numerous older people have picked up numerous younger people on their use of it. But the question of how even the UK was infected with this speech pattern has never been adequately answered. Many people in California assume the pattern developed there. In this theory, it developed first among young women in the San Fernando Valley. The Frank Zappa song Valley Girl, from 1982, is a musical testament to the phenomenon. Today the most notable proponents would be the likes of Paris Hilton, New York-born but a long-term resident of Los Angeles. Uptalk had been spotted even earlier, in 1975 by linguist Robin Lakoff, who wrote that "there is a peculiar sentence pattern… which has the form of a declarative answer to a question, and is used as such, but has the rising inflection typical of a yes-no question." But the actual term "uptalk"' wasn't used until a New York Times piece in 1993. But in the UK many people take it as a given that the speech pattern arrived from Australia, going so far as to dub it the Australian Question Intonation. Some laymen go even further and trace the shift in British speech patterns to the arrival of soap opera Neighbours on British television in 1986. Suddenly, a whole generation of British children and young adults were simultaneously exposed to the upward inflection. So does this claim trump the California theory? The problem is that trends in speech can be very hard to nail down. It isn't easy to even tell how the pattern developed in either the US or Australia, let alone how it was exported. Many New Zealanders would assert the pattern started there rather than in Australia, for instance. "The short answer is no-one knows," says Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Until recently, recorded language "corpora" (bodies of words) didn't exist. Linguists often have to rely on written accounts. Liberman and other linguists hypothesise that uptalk could date as far back as the 9th Century. "It has been suggested that this distribution of rising inflection in sentences in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland probably had something to do with the Scandinavian influence there," he says, "but that's just a hypothesis, like everything else." Liberman cites Henry Sweet's A Handbook of Phonetics, a language primer from the 1870s, in which the author writes that "in Scotch the rising tone is often employed monotonously, not only in questions but also in answers and statements of facts". Then there's the Northern Irish theory, that migration into England and Scotland could have sown the roots of uptalking. Supporters of this theory point to the occasionally sing-song tone of some Northern Irish accents. Some Americans have a similar theory - attributing the influx of Spanish speakers into California as a possible explanation. But migration theory would also back Australia or New Zealand as the source of the UK's uptalk. Either it was British expats travelling out to Australia and New Zealand and bringing back their manner of speaking. Or just the volume of antipodean immigration to London. The process could have been well under way before the first episode of Neighbours was even aired. The potential spread of vocal fry could be an interesting case study. The phenomenon sees the speaker use their larynx in such way that a lower creaking or rattling quality enters their voice. There has been a great deal of discussion about it in the last few years in the US, with Kim Kardashian and Lena Dunham - when acting in TV comedy Girls - cited as examples. One of the problems about tracing the rise of any speech pattern is that the point at which people noticed it as a "thing" does not necessarily reflect the period when it started. We don't fully recognise it, but our manner of speech is constantly changing based on how those around us speak. And as Liberman points out, uptalk is something that's always been in our manner of speech, just not necessarily as pronounced as today. "In all variations of English," he explains," there are a set of circumstances in which rising patterns are used not in polar questions - that is, yes or no questions. Uptalk has always been available, just below the surface, because there are circumstances in which speakers not thought to be uptalkers use uptalking characteristics." Sharyn Collins, a voice coach and elocution expert, has strong opinions on uptalk. "It's perfectly fine in Australia, New Zealand and America," she intones in a cut-glass accent. "But not here [in the UK], I believe. We've adopted it in a different way." Some people believe the phenomenon is used by uncertain speakers hoping to win their audience over. It acts as a constant check that listeners follow - phrasing every sentence, no matter how declarative, is a subconscious begging by the speaker to be reassured. It's a use Robin Lakoff first noticed 40 years ago. "The effect," she wrote, "is as though one were seeking confirmation, though at the same time the speaker may be the only one who has the requisite information." "If you hear it from younger women you suspect of being excessively insecure, though it's not intended as such it can be interpreted as a form of conversational weakness," says Liberman. That's something Collins agrees with. "It's a bit meek; a bit everyman," Collins says. "To me it's not the language of business and power. But a lot of people are using it now, including men." Liberman suggests that uptalk is a way to assert dominance. He points to a 2005 study by Winnie Cheng and Martin Warren, who highlighted that speakers in dominant positions (the chair of a meeting, or an academic supervisor) use uptalk between three and seven times as often as the people they're talking to. One theory as to why simple declarative statements sound like questions is that in many cases, they actually are. English is a notoriously woolly language, full of ways to say one thing and mean another. The use of uptalk could be a way to subconsciously hint that a simple statement such as "I think we should choose the left hand turn?" has a hidden meaning. Implicit within the sentence is a question: "Do you also think we should choose the left hand turn?" Uptalk has also become more popular, Collins believes, because of our dwindling attention span. A staunch traditionalist, she believes that the rising tones we so often hear in snatches of conversation are in fact people striving to divert their companion's attention away from their mobile phone. "People are checking as they speak to make sure you're paying attention," she says. "Whenever a student comes to me for elocution I try to eliminate uptalk," she notes, "but English is evolving and this is something I may just have to accept at some point." Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.
Harding and McVean (2005) present a review of current genetic evidence addressing the origin of modern humans. Unlike other recent reviews, they do not present a litany of evidence in favor of a recent African origin. Instead they step away from the past to look at the prospects for more complex metapopulation models to explain all of the genetic data, rather than merely one part of it. Their basic theme is that contradictions between evidence that suggest a recent single origin and contrary evidence that suggests regional continuity may be resolved by considering a fuller range of demographic models. Such models encompass geographic structure in the ancestral population leading to modern humans. Harding and McVean never make explicit the difference between effective population size (Ne) and census population size. Ne describes the apparent rate of inbreeding in the ancient human population, while census population size describes the actual number of people that existed at any one time in the past. These values are widely divergent for most living animal species, including most mammals. This means that for most mammal populations, inbreeding is not merely a consequence of small population size, but also other evolutionary forces--chiefly natural selection. I think that Harding and McVean do not mean to confuse Ne with census size, and indeed they do not make the equation between the two that has led to so many errors in other papers. But their failure to note the difference between them leads to some conceptual mistakes. Consider: The search for an ancestral history that can satisfactorily explain the genetic architecture of modern human phenotypies will require models that include positive selection within a structured population. Compelling genetic evidence has been found for geographically local adaptation from analysis of FST values [citing Akey et al. 2002]. However, the relatively small Ne values for humans and other primates, compared with Drosophila or rodents, implies weakened purifying selection and an expectation for some level of polymorphism among slightly deleterious variants. It will be easy to misinterpret the latter as evidence for positive selection in the form of local adaptation (671). This quote brings up a really interesting idea--that human populations may appear to be locally adapted because their demography has exposed them more or less to a single global pattern of selection. But demography is not the only influence on Ne. Although humans certainly are on a different scale from Drosophila or mice in terms of genetic drift, nevertheless, the most important influence on genetic diversity in all these species has probably been purifying selection and hitchhiking. Likewise, Harding and McVean (2005) confuse the issue of Ne when referring to the demographic implications of particular gene genealogies: It has become easy to accept the recent age for mitochondrial Eve, and also to justify the many older TMRCA estimates for autosomal gene geneaologies, by assumng that Ne has not been reduced from 10 000, but an NRY TMRCA estimate of 60 000 years, which is so much younger than mitochondrial Eve, has produced a quiet sense of unease (669). They ignore the easiest explanation for these problems with young genealogies, which is positive selection. This again was necessitated by their focus on Ne as a meaningful demographic parameter. In effect, they argue that the recent coalescence dates of NRY and mtDNA challenge the idea that there was a panmictic population before 100,000 years ago, because in such a population there should have been less heterogeneity of gene genealogies. To be honest, I can't follow this argument (on page 669) that the NRY somehow shows that: African populations must have been more strongly subdivided and isolated from each other than non-African populations, and that some African populations were not a direct source for the range expansions out of Africa (669). This idea seems completely in opposition to the Y chromosome evidence, taken at face value. A low variability for any genetic locus should be evidence for a recent origin in a small population that had no subdivision, except in the case where the gene was subject to positive selection. But of course if the Y chromosome, mtDNA, and other genes with recent coalescence dates were actually under selection, there would be no reason at all to oppose Harding and McVean's other scenario: An additional and more contentious possibility is that not all modern human diversity presently found outside of Africa evolved from recent African ancestry. The greater time-depth of autosomal and X chromosome loci, compared with mtDNA and Y chromosomes, allows subdivision in the ancestral population to date to a time when modern human morphology was evolving from an archaic form. Patterns in these genetic data do suggest admixture between the Late Pleistocene humans, whose range expansions are visible in mtDNA and Y chromosome data, and populations established earlier. Probably, most of this gene flow took place within sub-Saharan Africa, but we cannot rule out admixture elsewhere in the world (669). The last part of this is not supported by the data; Templeton (2002), Garrigan et al. (2005) and others have shown evidence for ancient genetic contributions from Middle Pleistocene non-Africans. As far as I can tell, the idea that this contribution mysteriously occurred by the translocation of ancient Asians to sub-Saharan Africa is a fiction. Nor is the major issue time depth, since a deep time depth for autosomal DNA would easily be consistent with a purely African origin. The issue is geographic distribution, and the same observations that make a single panmictic population unlikely within a purely African context certainly cannot rule out a wider geographic context. And as Templeton (2002) points out, an origin limited exclusively to Africa may already be falsified by the genetic data. Is there any point to examining metapopulation models for human evolution? I speak as a believer in the idea that humans were a geographically structured metapopulation. But Harding and McVean (2005) do little but raise a few intriguing scenarios for past human metapopulations. They do not draw attention to the problems of metapopulation models. The most critical problem is deciding which parameters will be allowed to vary and which will be constant. It may be true that a more complex demographic scenario fits the pattern of data better than panmixia and constant population size. But it is probably true that multiple models provide a better fit. Certainly the best of all possible fits would be if natural selection was considered to act in a unique and independent way on every genetic locus. In this way, every gene would be maximally explained. But that hypothesis, we would object, is overparameterized -- in other words, it isn't parsimonious. The question is which of the potential parameters should we consider first to maximize both parsimony and explanatory power? The answer to this question is of course that we should test many, and include those that test out as potentially important. Moving to a metapopulation concept of ancient humans is undoubtedly a good idea, since ancient humans must have been a metapopulation. But I think that including selection as a parameter can explain more that we currently consider to be problematic with the panmixia model. This would include the recent coalescence dates of mtDNA, NRY, FoxP2, and other low-variation genes. It might also include the estimate of Ne at 10,000. On the other hand, there are metapopulation models that can also explain human Ne, and these may be part of the story. I tend to reject them because they would require that many other species also have distinctive metapopulation structures like ancient humans, and that seems less parsimonious than the idea that genomic selection in animal species is more common and powerful than usually thought. On the other hand, considering the distinctiveness of some fossil human populations, I think a metapopulation model makes a lot of sense. In particular, I am working on explaining many aspects of Neandertal evolution by reference to the idea that Pleistocene Europe was a population sink. This metapopulation concept is potentially very explanatory, and does have consequences for the interpretation of ancient DNA evidence and modern human variation. So metapopulation models must be considered as part of the overall explanation of human evolution. The question that we all face is which kinds of models we should turn to when the panmictic model is shown to be wrong. Harding RM and McVean G. 2005. A structured ancestral population for the evolution of modern humans. Curr Op Genet Devel 14:667-674.
ISO 11784/85 "STANDARD" WITH BLEMISH A discussion of the ISO standard for RFID: its provenance, feasibility and limitations The ISO transponder-based standard was originally intended for agricultural use to identify agricultural equipment and livestock. During the evolution of the standard, it was expanded to include companion and exotic animals as well as endangered species. The standard has a number of serious flaws which make it unsuitable for its intended applications. In the barcode market, the product being supplied is a commodity: ink on paper, with the associated production means (printers) and readers. The readers and printers of different manufacturers may provide different features. However, they are by and large interchangeable in that they can all produce/read the desired barcode. This type of interchangeability has not been forthcoming in RFID, due to the fact that the technologies involved are significantly more complex and highly proprietary. There are currently a number of systems on the market, which are based on a range of mutually incompatible technological approaches. No parallel can be drawn between barcode and RFID: RFID does not lend itself to standardisation in the conventional sense. Approaches to Standardisation A number of standardisation efforts have been initiated for animal applications by and on behalf of various user groups. Two distinct approaches have been taken by all of these past and current standardisation efforts. In a nut-shell these are: - Transponder-based standard: where all manufacturers choosing to compete in a particular market manufacture transponders conforming to one set of specifications, utilising technology and protocols in the public domain. Transponder-based standards are based on OPEN STANDARDS. - Reader-based standard: where all manufacturers competing in a particular market cross-license their reader interfaces, so that each manufacturer can provide readers that read the other manufacturers' transponders. The essential requirement for RFID to do its job for companion animal identification is that positive identification of each animal must be assured. On a global basis this can only be achieved by unique, unduplicated ID codes. The uniqueness of the code numbers must be assured. In both read-only and read-write systems, the code number must provide unique and positive identification of animals in the manner of a license plate number. The presence of duplicate code numbers compromises the integrity of the identification system. RFID with duplicate numbers provides very little in the way of improvement over existing identification methods for animals (such as tattooing). The existence of duplicate code numbers opens the way to rampant fraud and record-keeping problems. Methodology: one company's system is selected (FECAVA's approach for the European companion animals), or an entirely new system is specified (ISO's approach for livestock and, now, companion animals). All relevant technology, including the interface and protocols, is placed in the public domain. Interested companies can then manufacture transponders complying to the new open standard, without having to pay royalties or only minimal royalties, to the patent owner. Intended benefit: an unlimited number of manufacturers can produce transponders independently, without having to pay any royalties or only minimal royalties to patent holders. Permits multiple-sourcing of transponders and readers. Implementation: An OPEN STANDARD relies on an honour system, the implication being, that somehow all manufacturers will agree on who manufactures which numbers, to prevent duplicates. Caveat: Without legal barriers to the uncontrolled use of the technology (in the form of patents and trademarks) there is no way to enforce compliance by various manufacturers. A case study: the FECAVA "open standard" FECAVA proposed the Destron/Hughes system as the basis of its "open standard." Destron has placed its interface and protocols in the public domain, and any company can manufacture any transponder ID number using the Destron protocol quite legitimately. The transponders can all be read by Destron readers and look exactly like Destron transponders. They are indistinguishable clones. Currently there are several companies manufacturing product or preparing to manufacture transponders complying with this OPEN STANDARD. Destron is programming from one end of the numbers spectrum and AVID, another manufacturer subscribing to the standard, is programming from the other end. It will be a while, but at some point the programmed numbers will begin to overlap and duplicates will begin to appear. A third company has declared that it will sell Destron-clone transponders. (1) It has announced that, for a price, it will manufacture any code number the user desires. They call this service the Designer Chip. There will undoubtedly be further entrants if the market proves lucrative. Clearly, no "orderly" approach can be maintained under these circumstances. It is likely that duplicate numbers have already occured. The reason people want to use RFID in their pets is to make sure they can be identified for life. Therefore, the ID chip of a champion cocker spaniel should not be duplicated in a mongrel dog or in a goldfish. This unique RFID number is associated to a single animal's record in the breed registry and/or a national recovery database. The uniqueness of the ID numbers is essential for any national database concept to work. The presence of a multitude of manufacturers, all building transponders under a single protocol, opens the door to duplication of numbers, whether on purpose or by accident. The ISO "open standard" The technology was developed specifically for livestock identification, based on a proposal to WG3 of the ISO by the Group of Four (AEG, Datamars, Nedap and Trovan) and Texas Instruments. Subsequently expanded to companion animals, the ISO "open standard" has been five years in the making, and is now in legal limbo. Two companies have begun asserting patents in the market in a manner that is non-conformant to the ISO patent policy. It is doubtful whether, under these circumstances, the ISO "open standard" is a viable approach to standardisation. This problem, while well-known to the ISO officials, was never disclosed by them to the voting members prior to solicitation of their yes vote for the standard. There are a number of other problems that would adversely impact implementation of the standard in its present form. The legal problems ISO/DIS 11785 is impacted by a Destron patent and an AVID patent, which effectively violate the ISO patent policy which states: Clause A.2 (b) "if the right holder does not provide a [Letter of Intent to comply with ISO Patent Policy], the technical committee or sub-committee concerned shall not proceed with inclusion of an item covered by a patent right in the international Standard without authorization from ISO Council or IEC Council." Destron, the holder of U.S. Patent Number 5,211,129, pertaining to glass encapsulated implantable transponders which are the subject of the ISO/DIS 11785 standard, has in the past made demands from their competitors amounting to $3 million up front license fees and 7% royalties (for a single regional license). Their recent demand, calculated on wholesale prices, was 22.4% royalties. These demands should be of the utmost concern to user groups, because they would eliminate many potential vendors from the market at the discretion of the patent holders. There are two more patents issued to AVID under U.S. Patent Number 5,235,326 and U.S. Patent Number 5,499,017. In this case, AVID has clearly stated in their letters to the ISO that they will not conform to the ISO's Patent Policy. The patent conflicts affecting ISO/DIS 11785 have not been resolved. The problem of duplicate numbers Like the FECAVA "open standard," the ISO standard is a transponder-based "open standard." The ISO "open standard," like FECAVA, is based on technology that is currently in the public domain. Because there are no legal "teeth" (in the form of patented technology), there is no means to interdict the production of unsanctioned transponders or to prevent their being imported into individual European countries. The ISO "open standard" by its nature depends upon an honour code. It is susceptible to compromise by manufacturers, whose cooperation cannot be enforced. There are three ways that the uniqueness of ID codes can be undermined under any "open standard": Chips can be ordered ex works, factory-programmed, with the desired ID number. There have already been companies offering "made-to-measure," factory programmed ICs. (see ID Boutique's "designer chip") for a number of years. More recently, several manufacturers are selling OTP or re-programmable transponders that conform with ISO 11784/85. These are ISO-compliant transponders which are field programmable by the user. Physically, they are indistinguishable from the factory-programmed IC. OTP = One-time-programmable. WORM = Write-once-read-many. These can be programmed to the desired code number in the field, by the end user. This is the configuration which as a matter of fact was discussed in the ISO SC19, WG3 meetings as the preferred configuration, as it allows manufacturers to minimise the number of transponders held in inventory. WMRM = Write-many-read-many. These can be reprogrammed as many times as desired. The code could potentially even be changed once it is implanted in the animal. Several such products are already on the market today or on the verge of being introduced. Some WMRM type transponders may mimic pre-programmed transponders, because they can be temporarily "locked," and accessed for reprogramming through the use of a password code known only to privileged users. One possible scenario would be that animals from an embargoed country (due to a highly infectious disease like BSE) could have their code numbers changed en route to their destination. The point of origin of such animals could be completely obscured. Due to the fact that the ISO standard is an open standard, even obtaining transponders from selected manufacturers and filtering all these ISO-conforming transponders through a single hub would not prevent ISO-conforming transponders with duplicate ID numbers from entering the market. The ISO "open standard" by its nature depends upon an honour code because the ISO organisation does not enforce compliance with its standards. As a matter of fact, it appears that three companies have already declared that they will make codes to order when the ISO standard is implemented - without going through the Brussels bureaucracy to have numbers assigned. In the ISO system, as currently specified, corruption of the ID numbering system is virtually built-in. While duplicate ID numbers are of no consequence in the small, closed-loop dairy herd and feed lot applications the ISO standard originally targeted, they would wreak havoc in national database programs. As of this writing, several manufacturers have entered the market with custom-programmed, OTP and read/write transponders. ICs of all three types are now readily available on the market. The problem of duplicate numbers is inherent to transponder-based "open standards," including the ISO standard. Furthermore, the ISO 11784 stipulates that, even for manufacturers who adhere strictly to the ISO honour code, identification numbers can be "recycled" every 33 years. The recycling of numbers poses no problem in the original, intended target market, as cattle and pigs lives ordinarily do not exceed five to seven years. (Agricultural use for livestock and equipment was the original, intended target application of the ISO "open standard.") Some companies have lobbied heavily to have the I.S.O. standard expanded to small animals, in spite of its obvious lack of suitability. In long-lived animals, such as exotics, endangered species in controlled breeding projects, the 33 year time frame may pose some problems. The problem of manufacturers' accountability A pervasive though little-discussed problem in all "open standards" is the accountability of individual manufacturers. Seen from the outside, an implantable, glass-encapsulated transponder is virtually indistinguishable from other makes of the same size. The problem becomes even more acute once the transponder is implanted. All "open standard" transponders can be read by a common reader protocol. The idea of requiring each participating manufacturer to program an assigned manufacturer's code into his transponders was put forward, in order to give the user a means of distinguishing among different transponder makes, in the event quality control problems should arise. In this way, so the thinking went, it would be possible for the user to identify inferior product, or manufacturers who didn't strictly control their numbering schemes, and avoid the offending manufacturer's product in the future. The problem with RFID, however, is that a defective transponder is a non-functional transponder. Consequently, it would not be possible to read the manufacturer's code in those instances where it would be most urgent to do so. The owner of a prize Korat cat, or even of a beloved household pet, would hardly suffer his pet to be subjected to surgery to remove a transponder, so that said transponder could be submitted for a lengthy and costly laboratory analysis to ascertain the manufacturer's code. Even if the manufacturer's code of a defective (failed) transponder could be ascertained, which is highly doubtful, there is no guarantee that it is, in fact, the code of said manufacturer. Some manufacturers, in their desire to preempt FECAVA's situation, have requested a Rome-based institute (ICAR) to take upon itself the job of allocating code numbers to interested manufacturers. It must be noted, however, that ISO 11784 and ISO 11785 do not assign this role to ICAR or to any other party. Neither ICAR nor ISO can enforce their respective recommendations. In an environment where there is uncontrolled manufacture of transponders with ID codes made to order, manufacturer's codes are no guarantee for product origin, quality and manufacturer's accountability. In the world of the ISO open standard, there is no guarantee that a manufacturer's three-digit ID number ensures that that this manufacturer has in fact made the transponder in question. Some of the available custom-programmed, OTP and read/write transponders already duplicate ID numbers provided by Destron, Datamars and Texas Instruments. The problem of transponder performance Neither ISO 11784 nor ISO/DIS 11785 stipulates any minimum transponder performance requirements for microtransponders (the size of transponder that is suitable for use in companion animals, exotics etc.) Therefore, a transponder reading at "touch" reading distance (a matter of 1 cm or less) would be fully ISO-compliant. Companion animal veterinaries around the world have repeatedly expressed their strong reservations about systems with short reading distances (2). Users in the livestock business require even longer read ranges in order for RFID to be effective for them. ISO-compliance is therefore no guarantee to the veterinary of suitability of a given RFID product for use in animal applications. The problem of feasibility: can the product be manufactured cost-effectively, in large quantities? It should be understood by the consumer that the ISO process is a committee-based process. Compromise is the key tool to arriving at any solution. Like all committee-based approaches involving manufacturers with conflicting interests in a high-stakes market, this is an extremely lengthy and political process. The hybrid solutions that result from such committee-based engineering efforts are based on political compromises and not on performance considerations, cost control or technical feasibility. Two standards in one: a political compromise Currently there are two fundamentally different design principles being championed in the passive, low-frequency RFID market: the full-duplex approach and the half-duplex approach. By way of a quick back-ground explanation, the transponder has no energy source of its own but receives its power from the interrogation signal that is transmitted by the transmitter/receiver antenna. The resonance circuit of the transponder oscillates at the same frequency as that of the interrogation signal and charges the power capacitor. At a certain voltage level on the power capacitor, the transponder oscillates at the same frequency as that of the interrogation signal and charges the power capacitor. At a certain voltage level on the power capacitor, the transponder electronics are ready to start operating and transmit the transponder code (return signal) via the coil of the resonant circuit. With a so-called full-duplex approach (FDX) the return signal initiates as soon as the beginning of the interrogation signal is received and the smoothing capacitor has been charged. The return signal is received repetitively and without interruption for as long as a continuous interrogation signal is maintained. An FDX-transponder therefore does not have to store energy to be able to return its entire code. With a half-duplex approach (HDX) the return signal starts only after the end of the interrogation signal has been received and only after the storage capacitor has been fully charged. The return signal is then only sent once, since the transponder has emptied its storage capacitor after it has sent its code. The full-duplex and half-duplex approaches are fundamentally incompatible. Currently only one company is marketing a half-duplex system. Every other company in the business today is marketing a full-duplex system of one type or another. In spite of the fact that a preponderance of the manufacturers has proceeded with the full-duplex approach, a political compromise has been reached in the ISO WG3 which stipulates that the new ISO standard has incorporated both half-duplex and full-duplex technology. As conceptualised in the ISO 11784 and 11785 documents, ISO-compliant transponders can be either full-duplex transponders or half-duplex transponders, and the readers will have to read both types of transponders. In essence, this will require two readers in one box. A reader capable of detecting both HDX and FDX transponders would involve the disadvantages inherent in the HDX-system degrading the performance of FDX. This degradation, unfortunately, cannot be avoided. Of course it is technically possible to design and manufacture a reader that can read two systems i.e. HDX and FDX. In the case of a reader compatible with HDX, an FDX transponder can easily be read during the time that the power capacitor of an HDX transponder is being charged, in order for the IC to give its code at a later moment in time. The drawback of such a reader is that its timing is made dependent on the slower HDX-system. Thus, the read speed performance of FDX, will be reduced to that of HDX. Repeated reliable readings with moving transponders or readers can thus not be performed. Needless to say, the resulting readers will be less efficient and more costly than readers designed to read only a single type of technology. In the envisioned core application area, livestock, and now companion animal identification, cost of RFID has already proven to be a major sticking point in acceptance of the technology. It remains to be seen whether the users will find this political compromise, resulting in higher costs to them, palatable. Strictly speaking, this "compromise" has resulted in a standard that is no standard, since it embraces the co-existence of two mutually incompatible systems. The issue of transponder design: a "high-Q" product Both the FDX and HDX components of the ISO "open standard" are conceptualised as so-called "high-Q" transponders. Reading distances for high-Q systems are accomplished primarily by transponder design and require careful tuning of both the transponder and the reader. The result is an expensive and cumbersome manufacturing process with comparatively lower yields, resulting in a more-costly transponder. The problem of suitability: a livestock standard for endangered species and pedigree dogs? The conceptual standard proposed to ISO WG3 by the Group of Four and T.I. was intended for use in livestock and agricultural equipment. The code structure of the standard reflects this pedigree. bit no. information combinations 1 flag for animal (1) or non-animal (0) application 2 2-15 reserved field (reserved for future use) 16 834 16 flag indicating the existence of a datablock (1) or no data block (0) 2 17-26 ISO-3166 numeric-3 country code 1,024 27-64 national identification code 274 877 906 944 In the livestock application, government authorities, farmers and abbatoirs are more interested in the animal's country of origin and possibly its producer. The issue of ID code uniqueness, to identify individual animals, is of relatively minor importance in closed-loop operations (i.e. inside one farmer's dairy herd). In the area of companion animals, the issue of ID code uniqueness is of primary concern. In the case of pedigree cats, dogs and horses, where significant sums of money hinge upon the positive identification of individual animals, it is the overriding concern. The country of origin, or the determination whether the "item" on hand is an animal or not, are not particularly relevant issues. What matters is a unique identification code, and access to a databank which will allow determination of the relevant associated information, particularly ownership information. In the case of companion animals (dogs and cats of indeterminate ancestry) the owner does not require that any particular information encoded on the chip: what is required is a unique ID number and a central database, inaccessible to tampering hands, which will inform finders of the animal's true ownership. In the area of endangered species identification, where species survival is at stake with each individual animal, the inviolability of data (to preclude reprogramming by unauthorised individuals) and the uniqueness of the ID code are of the most pressing importance. The problem of backward compatibility The ISO standard currently stipulates a two-year "transition period." This stipulation is another hallmark of the total orientation of ISO/DIS 11784 and 11785 toward livestock. The life expectancy of livestock is about two years, meaning that all animals are cycled out of the system within that period of time. The two-year "transition period" does not even begin to address the requirement of backward compatibility in other areas of animal identification. Dogs and cats can live in excess of twenty years. Horses can live more than thirty years. Many endangered species, such as certain reptiles and avian species, have life expectancies upward of 70 years. All of these animals, which the standard purports to accommodate, require protection for their entire lives. If the standard should apply to these areas, it must fully address backward compatibility for the animals it is intended to protect. The problem of built-in obsolescence A transponder-based standard is by definition static. It precludes introduction of new technologies and technological enhancements, because the technical parameters of the transponder are rigidly defined. The ISO standard, as defined in ISO/DIS 11784/11785 does not accommodate innovation and improvement in the technology. If technological enhancements become available, entities subscribing to ISO/DIS 11784/11785 will be confronted with a difficult choice: either continue with the existing, out-moded technology; or junk the standard and begin the whole, arduous process of standardisation (which thus far has taken in excess of five years for the current proposal) anew, for the new technology. The problem of bureaucratic overhead: inflated cost to the end user Administrative infrastructure required of individual countries is extremely expensive and bureaucratic. ISO/DIS 11785 devolves the responsibility of ensuring uniqueness of codes to the individual countries, in other words, to appropriate official agencies. No country has implemented the necessary administrative infrastructure at this time; in this day of increasing fiscal consciousness and tight budgets, many do not have the financial means or the political will to assume the financial burden. Certain countries have floated proposals that would require every manufacturer selling transponders into that country, to physically pass all their product through a central database, to register individual code numbers. The cost of implementing additional administrative layers will ultimately be passed on to the users. It has been calculated that transponder costs could double through the additional administration costs incurred by the structures conceptualised by the ISO. Furthermore, the filtering process would require all transponders to physically pass through a central checking point. Each manufacturer would be shipping all product, irrespective of final destination, through this check point, where all new transponders would have to be manually checked against a database listing all transponders previously entered into the market. Once checked, the transponders would need to be forwarded to the appropriate distributor(s) for each manufacturer. Such a process would entail substantial logistical challenges, since of course there should be no inadvertent switches of different manufacturers' batches at the central checking point, rapid turn-around should be assured and ideally all of this should happen at no additional cost. Alternatively, the government would distribute transponders arbitrarily, without regard to the needs of open markets and free commerce. The extension of a standard developed for livestock and agricultural equipment to these other areas, for which it was not designed and for which it is clearly unsuited, has been undertaken in ISO WG3 by interested parties. It is essential that expansion of this standard to other, unrelated, application areas not be accepted uncritically, but that the issues at stake be made known to the veterinary community so that they can be subjected to open debate. Only in this way can an informed decision be reached: one which will serve the user community's requirements and which is in keeping with its professional standards and its interests. The implementation of the ISO standard, instead of introducing and promoting a new and exciting technology, may lead to its being shunned by potential users. For information and questions please contact: Info@EIDLtd.com
There is one way that accreditation is highly important: if you receive a degree from an alternative source, such as online distance learning. When it comes to a traditional college, name recognition may be more important than accreditation. While most brick and mortar schools are accredited, some colleges have a greater impact than others. Everyone knows that Harvard is an elite school. It plainly looks better on your resume no matter what profession you may be entering—medical, engineer, computer, etc. Name recognition also depends on the field of study. Some colleges have a better known and more well respected program in a specific field than others. Harvard may be the king of colleges, but there are a number of good departments in colleges throughout the country. Apart from accreditation, getting a degree from a good department can be as helpful in the job market as getting a degree from an Ivy League school. For these top schools accreditation is implied. There is no need for a potential employer to investigate the college's accreditation. In this sense, accreditation is not nearly as important in top universities than it is in smaller colleges or online universities. Accreditation is proof that the college has given out a quality education. In the case of distance learning programs, there are non-accredited colleges that will give out a degree for little to no coursework. Really, students are just buying the diploma. If you are using such a degree to apply to a graduate program, these types of degrees may not even be recognized. The same goes for applying for a job. Accreditation is a peer review process in which institutions of higher learning assess each other's educational standards. There are also accrediting institutions, such as the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, which overseas schools in a particular region. If you are applying within a particular program it is important to check the department's accreditation. Do not assume that just because a school has been accredited that each department is accredited as well. In many cases, a school's accreditation applies to every department. In other cases, accreditation is granted on a department-by-department basis. So it is recommended that you not only apply to an accredited school, but that your department of study is accredited. To further confuse the issue, there are colleges that claim accreditation when in fact the school is not. Just as there are online colleges that administer fake diplomas, there are also less-than-reputable accrediting boards that give out false accreditation. A school must be accredited by a board recognized by the U.S. Department of Education. What it comes down to is this: accreditation is important according to type of career you will be entering and the type of college where you are getting your degree. If there is some question about a college's accreditation, it is important to be able to show an employer that your degree comes from an accredited institution or program. It is not enough that you have good grades, the college itself needs to have a good grade as well.
The world is already almost halfway to nearly 1°C, and many countries have advocated for a stricter target of 1.5°C – including leaders of low-lying countries facing unsustainable sea-level rise in a warming world. Since the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the Clean Development Mechanism has been criticised for not having led in most cases to significant emission reductions or benefits for sustainable development. It has also suffered from low prices for certified emission reductions (CERs), which has led to a decline in project demand. This criticism has motivated the recommendations of various stakeholders who, through working groups and reports, have provided new elements that they hope to see in msDs that will strengthen their success. Details of the governance structure, modalities of project proposals and the overall approach are expected to be presented at the 2016 Conference of the Parties in Marrakesh. [needs to be updated] A preliminary study with inventory implications was published in April 2020 in Nature Communications. Based on a public policy database and multi-model scenario analysis, the authors showed that the implementation of current policies leaves a median emissions gap of 22.4 to 28.2 GtCO2eq by 2030 with optimal trajectories to achieve the Paris targets well below 2°C and 1.5°C. If nationally determined contributions were fully implemented, this gap would be reduced by one third. It was found that the countries assessed had not achieved the promised contributions with the implemented policy (implementation gap) or that they had an ambition deficit with optimal trajectories well below 2°C. This is the first time that a universal agreement has been reached in the fight against climate change. President Obama was able to formally include the United States in the international agreement through executive action, as he did not impose any new legal obligations on the country. The U.S. already has a number of tools on its books, under laws already passed by Congress to reduce carbon pollution. The country formally acceded to the agreement in September 2016 after submitting its proposal for participation. The Paris Agreement could not enter into force until at least 55 countries representing at least 55% of global emissions had officially acceded to it. This happened on October 5, 2016 and the agreement entered into force 30 days later, on November 4, 2016. The Paris Agreement establishes a set of binding measures to monitor, review and publicly report on progress towards a country`s emission reduction targets. The enhanced transparency rules apply to all countries with common frameworks, with arrangements and support provided to countries that are currently unable to strengthen their systems over time. In the run-up to the Paris meeting, the United Nations asked countries to submit plans detailing how they wanted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These plans were technically referred to as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). As of December 10, 2015, 185 countries had submitted measures to limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 or 2030. In 2014, the United States announced its intention to reduce its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. To achieve this goal, the country`s Clean Power Plan called for limiting existing and projected emissions from power plants. China, the country with the largest total greenhouse gas emissions, has set a goal of reaching its peak in carbon dioxide emissions ”by 2030 and doing everything possible to reach an early peak.” Chinese officials have also sought to reduce carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) by 60 to 65 percent from 2005 levels. Adaptation issues were further emphasized in the drafting of the Paris Agreement. Collective long-term adaptation objectives are included in the agreement and countries are held accountable for their adaptation measures, making adaptation a parallel component of the agreement with mitigation. Adaptation objectives focus on improving adaptive capacity, increasing resilience and limiting vulnerability. Pursuant to Article 28 of the Agreement, parties may withdraw from the Agreement after sending a notice of withdrawal to the depositary […].
Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1963 Some Aspects of the Mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross The International Committee of the Red Cross, being an institution unique of its kind, I feel I should say a few words about what it is and what its activities are. It is a private, independent body, composed only of Swiss citizens. At the present time there are eighteen members who were recruited by co-optation, that is to say invited by the Committee itself, to become members. The International Committee is, therefore, completely national by composition, but international in its mission. This is not a contradiction. The International Committee is admitted on the territory of belligerents for the sole reason that its members are citizens of a small country, with no political ambitions but with a tradition of complete neutrality. Governments can, therefore, have full confidence in its impartiality. The International Committee has no material power. It has no arms and would not even know how to resort to diplomatic maneuver. But its apparent weakness is offset by its moral authority. For just one hundred years now, governments have considered the existence of the International Committee useful. They expect it to carry out tasks which cannot be accomplished by anyone else. They know that, in a world where selfish or ideological interests are in conflict, one institution alone stands apart from struggles of this nature, even in the climax of war, and that it will always act, without any thought of self-interest, in complete independence and in obedience to its belief that suffering, being a cruel reality, must be alleviated without prejudice of any kind. The practical activities of the International Committee are threefold: protection of war victims, information on missing persons, relief in countries afflicted by war. To discharge its first function of giving protection, the International Committee sends out delegates, who are all Swiss also, to the countries at war, particularly in order to visit prisoner-of-war camps and ensure humane treatment to those who are held captive. These delegates watch over the situation in the detention quarters, diet, medical care, working and living conditions. They interview prisoners without witness. Detailed reports are then sent to the detaining power and to the government of the prisoner’s country of origin. The delegates submit on the spot requests for any necessary improvements. If need be, the International Committee itself takes the matter up with the higher authorities, using the principle of reciprocity as a lever to achieve its aim. During the Second World War the International Committee’s delegates carried out some eleven thousand camp visits. The Geneva Conventions of 1949 added strength to the International Committee in its role as the protector of prisoners of war. These Conventions1 extended its field of activity to all civilians who might be interned, in time of war, for any reason whatsoever, and the camps – I mean the concentration camps – where they are interned are now also open to inspection. To carry out its second function of supplying information on missing persons, the International Committee has been entrusted with setting up and running the Central Tracing Agency for prisoners of war and civilians. This Agency communicates to anxious families news of their kin, held captive or who are missing. During the last World War, the Agency assembled some forty million information cards. It brought news to as many as six thousand families a day. The Agency is now a permanent establishment. Furthermore, the Committee manages the International Tracing Service at Arolsen, in the Federal Republic of Germany, whose duty it is to supply information on persons missing from concentration camps and, also, to issue certificates of incarceration to those who survived. A staff of over two hundred and fifty persons is necessary for this colossal task. The third aspect of the Committee’s work is to supply material relief. During the Second World War it distributed, to the camps in which Allied soldiers were detained in Germany, for instance, relief in the form of food, clothing, medical supplies, and books, to a value of some three and a half billion Swiss francs. In order to transport this material through the blockade, the International Committee had to organize a fleet of fourteen ships which sailed the seas under the Red Cross flag. Since the war this activity has continued. Two examples are the supplies to Hungary, at the time of the 1956 uprising2, and, at the present time, the setting up, in the heart of the Arabian desert, of a field hospital, in order to bring relief to the victims of the cruel war of which the Yemen is the theatre3. But there are also tasks of a more general order which the International Committee has to perform. It is the recognized guardian of the Red Cross ideal. It must, therefore, exercise vigilance to ensure respect for humanitarian principles: non discrimination, independence, and neutrality, which are the common heritage of our universal movement. Yet a further, primary duty is to work for the development of international humanitarian law which protects the human person in the time of war. As early as 1864, the International Committee persuaded governments to conclude the first Geneva Convention4 for – as its title indicates the Amelioration of the Condition of the Sick and Wounded in the Field. This treaty was strengthened in 1929 by a second Convention, relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. This Convention affected the lives of millions of captives during the Second World War. In order to demonstrate its usefulness, let me say that wherever it was applied the mortality rate did not exceed ten percent! In the concentration camps for civil prisoners – where the Committee’s delegates never penetrated, despite repeated appeals to Hitler himself – the mortality rate was as high as ninety percent! That is why it was absolutely necessary to revise and extend these Conventions. This was done in 1949 when two new Conventions were also drawn up. The first of these brought humanitarian protection to the victims of war at sea, whilst the second – of capital importance – extended it to civilians. In fact, despite all the efforts of the International Committee, no complete, up-to-date Convention to protect civilians was in force when the Second World War broke out. Civilians were, therefore, in some countries, subject to deportation and even to extermination! This tragic gap has now been bridged. Civilians have been given the status and the guarantees which were previously so cruelly lacking. They are now entitled to treatment of at least the same standard as that which is given to prisoners of war. What is even more important is that this fourth Convention, as well as the three others, contains a common article, which is revolutionary in international law. This is Article Three. It gives certain guarantees to combatants in civil wars. It prohibits the taking of hostages and summary executions without fair trial. It lays down humane conditions of internment and the right to protection by the International Committee. Article Three has enabled the International Committee to intervene in the civil wars which have ravaged various countries during the past fifteen years. I am thinking, more particularly, of the subcontinent of India at the time of its division into two great countries: India and Pakistan. Also in Latin America, Algeria, Vietnam, Laos, and recently again, in the Congo. The new Geneva Conventions were soon signed and ratified by nearly every country in the world. Ninety-eight governments have ratified so far. The International Committee has drawn up detailed commentaries of these Conventions. It has also undertaken to ensure their diffusion, for they must be known to all those who will be called upon to apply them. Here in Oslo, two years ago, I explained how the International Committee’s mission has developed in civil wars. I shall, therefore, not dwell on this point. I would, however, like to add a further example to those I have just mentioned. It is a venture, the scene of which is set in the burning sands of Arabia and the Yemen, where civil war is raging. These are the only regions in the world where the Red Cross and the Geneva Convention have not yet penetrated, But they are doing so now, little by little. This exploration in unknown territory, I assure you, is most exalting. Indeed, the heads of the two opposing forces have decided to give up their traditional practice of slaughtering the vanquished. And now, for my example. A sheikh in the desert found himself suddenly face to face with an enemy officer. In the course of the fight both were wounded, but the sheikh, who was less seriously hurt, was able to bandage the wounds of his opponent. He leant over the man who a moment before had sought to kill him and took care of him. Then he brought him as his prisoner to his own tribe. But there, all his family and warrior friends insulted him, urging him to put the enemy to death. “If you are a man, prove it!” shouted his mother. But the sheikh was steadfast and delivered his prisoner to his king. Thus a life – and several hundred others – was saved, and the flag of the Red Cross flies over the mysterious landscapes of Arabia. There is a point I would like to make here in connection with the intervention of the United Nations in civil wars, not only in the Yemen, but also, for instance, at the frontiers of Israel and in the Congo. It may be presumed that they will be called upon, more and more frequently, to maintain or to reestablish peace and that the troops they send for that purpose may sometimes be in action in the trouble spots of the world. The United Nations Organization, as such, is not, however, a party to the Geneva Conventions. Already, in 1956 immediately after the Suez crisis5, the International Committee made known to the late – and regretted – Mr. Hammarskjöld6, its concern with this question. It repeated this in 1960, when the United Nations acted in the Congo. Each time the Committee received the assurance that the United Nations intended to observe the broad principles – that was the word used – of the Geneva Conventions. But incidents which resulted in the tragic death of three Red Cross workers, including an International Committee delegate, proves that the problem is far from being solved. It was again raised at the Centenary Congress of the International Red Cross which was held this summer in Geneva. The Congress passed a unanimous resolution. I give you the essential passages: (a) “The Council of Delegates – of the International Red Cross – recommends: that the United Nations be invited to adopt a solemn declaration, accepting that the Geneva Conventions equally apply to their Emergency Forces, as they apply to the forces of States parties to the said Conventions; (b) That the Governments of countries providing contingents to the United Nations should, as a matter of prime importance, give them before departure from their country of origin, adequate instruction on the Geneva Conventions, as well as orders to comply with them…” In this way, the International Committee hopes that this important question will be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, thanks to the goodwill of all concerned. Despite the great extension of the Geneva Conventions they still do not cover the whole field of human suffering. We have just seen that, since 1949, there exists an Article Three, common to all four Geneva Conventions, for the protection of the victims of civil wars. This article, however, is only applicable in the event of armed conflicts, but governments often deny the existence of such conflicts on their territory. The International Committee is, therefore, trying to extend the scope of humanitarian law further still. The first objective is to bring assistance to persons interned in their own countries as a result of internal tensions. Here the International Committee is on difficult ground. Indeed, this raises the problem of intervention in matters affecting national sovereignty or the superior interests of the state. Today, individuals are often treated in their own countries less favorably than enemy soldiers captured with weapons in their hands. Paradoxically, therefore, it seems that humanitarian law might, sometimes, be applied to the domestic affairs of states. Experts of international renown, consulted by the Committee, have recognized the legitimacy of the intervention of the Red Cross in this particular field. They laid down a definition of humane treatment which should be applied to detainees in such cases. On the basis of this, the Committee has been able to act, in the course of disturbances or troubles, in several countries on the American, African, and Asian continents. Thus law and fact, theory and practice, give support the one to the other and to the work of the Red Cross. But there is a greater problem still: the evolution of war towards an ever increasingly “total” form. It approaches this climax through the development of aviation and explosives, via systematic bombing, V-two, and napalm to the hydrogen bomb, which threatens to destroy all humanity and civilization. The rules of air warfare, drawn up in 1907 and laid down in the Hague Conventions7, were already, at the time of the first air raid in 1911, outmoded and buried beneath the ruins of the towns laid waste. But governments, in the face of the menacing progress of nuclear physics, are doing nothing to revise and restore these regulations. The International Committee had, therefore, the duty to do something. It proceeded from the fact that the wholesale bombing of towns during the Second World War did not “pay” from a purely military point of view. Indeed, in the bombed industrial regions, factories never ceased work and even increased production. If governments, therefore, do not admit that total, indiscriminate war is criminal, they will, perhaps, heed the argument that it is not good tactics. The International Committee has had an idea which may perhaps provide the key to the problem: It should not concentrate its effort against any particular weapon, such as the atom bomb, as this would go unheeded by governments and would, in any case, be insufficient. What must be done is to oppose a particular form of war. In fact, the bombing of Hamburg resulted in as many victims as the bombing of Hiroshima. Once a weapon is prohibited, an even more frightful one will be invented to take its place. In the French village of Oradour, where the entire population was burnt alive in the church, the weapon was a mere box of matches! The principle to be established is, therefore, that whatever weapons are employed, the civilian population must not be harmed or at least not exposed to risks out of all proportion to the military objectives. With the assistance of experts, the International Committee drew up draft regulations which were approved, in principle, by the last International Red Cross Conference in 1957. This draft was then communicated to governments. But alas, the answer was silence! The time was, perhaps, not ripe. The Red Cross, however, never lets itself be discouraged. When one door is closed, it seeks to open others. We shall not abandon our intention of protecting the civilian population. In autumn, 1962, the International Committee was asked to act and to step beyond the limits of its traditional mission. This was during the Cuban crisis8. You will recall that the world was then on the brink of disaster. War was liable to break out from one minute to the next -a “press button” war, involving extermination on a massive scale, by remote-controlled thermonuclear rockets. Faced by this ghastly prospect, the United Nations turned to the International Committee as the only organization still, perhaps, able to maintain peace. It was asked to set up a system to control the ships bound for Cuba, to ensure, through a force of some thirty inspectors, that no long-range atomic weapons were being delivered to Cuba. The International Committee did not see how it could refuse to undertake this task. Indeed, when the Red Cross movement codified the “Red Cross principles” in 1961, defining , its fundamental doctrine, an additional duty was embodied, that is, to promote mutual understanding, friendship, cooperation and a lasting peace amongst all peoples. No one intended this principle to remain a dead letter. So it came about that, in the grave tensions of the Cuban crisis, the International Committee was called upon to perform a task which it alone perhaps could undertake: to maintain peace in the world. For at least two days there was every reason to fear the worst, that a conflict breaking out under these conditions would soon become an atomic war which would inevitably have caused the loss of millions of human lives, inflicted untold suffering and terrible destruction. At the same time, the Red Cross itself was likely to see its work reduced to nought or rendered impossible. The International Committee mustered all the conditions which its experience and the principle of neutrality demanded. The first step was to obtain the consent of the three parties concerned – the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba – which was given. The International Committee, thereupon, delegated one of its members to the United Nations. There he examined, with the Secretary-General, the further conditions for possible action by the Committee: among others that there be a real threat of atomic war and that the International Committee be in a position to give its assistance, in an effective manner, within the framework of the Red Cross principles. These principles are consistent with those of international public law. One of the most important of the latter principles is the freedom of the high seas. That is why the International Committee also laid down the prior condition that the control which it was called upon to carry out be accepted by all maritime powers whose ships call at Cuba. Had this last condition been better known by the public at large, the opposition to the International Committee’s intervention, which was raised in several countries having large merchant fleets, would certainly have been withdrawn. Tension over Cuba subsided without the International Committee’s having to intervene in fact. But the Committee’s cooperative attitude facilitated the easing of tension. By contributing to the maintenance of peace, it remained faithful to its mission. Every institution, like every individual, should contribute to the crusade for peace, with the means at its disposal, The Red Cross, for its part, struggles against war by making it less inhuman; does it not rescue war victims, even on the battlefield? But, given the present state of the world, it cannot pretend to be able to eliminate the scourge of war; it therefore tries to alleviate its evils. By promoting the first Geneva Convention, the Red Cross dealt war one of the first and most serious blows it has ever received. In August, 1864, states sacrificed a fraction of their sovereignty for the benefit of human needs. This was the price paid in order to force a breach in the ancestral hatred of man for man. War gave ground to law. The first Geneva Convention, which was revolutionary at the time, is the basis of all humanitarian law which aims at protecting the victims of hostilities. Within a century, the mortality rate of wounded on the battlefield fell from sixty percent to two percent. These figures speak louder than words. The impetus created by this Convention resulted in the conclusion of the Hague Conventions which govern the conduct of hostilities and restrict the use of certain weapons9. On the moral plane also, the Red Cross promotes understanding amongst peoples by developing an active sense of brotherhood and by promoting a feeling of mutual responsibility for the good of mankind. The Red Cross knows better than anyone the wounds caused by war, for it is the Red Cross which heals those wounds; it reveals to men the hideous aspect of war and turns them from it. The achievements of the Red Cross have a symbolic value and stand out as an example. Its accomplishments at the height of battle are acts of peace. When war creates its tragic gap between nations, the Red Cross remains the last link. Its struggle against suffering is a vivid reproach to those who inflict it. It intervenes in the midst of violence but does not have recourse thereto. The Red Cross, therefore, makes a powerful appeal to all men in favor of peace. Mr. Léopold Boissier (1893-1968), Swiss jurist, professor, and diplomat, a former secretary-general of the Interparliamentary Union, a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross since 1946 and its president 1955-1964, delivered this Nobel lecture in the name of the International Committee on December II, 1963, in the Auditorium of the University of Oslo. The text is taken from Les Prix Nobel en 1963. 1. The Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, covered the following: (1) The Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field; (2) The Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick, and Shipwrecked Members of the Armed Forces at Sea; (3) The Treatment of Prisoners of War; (4) The Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. 8. The crisis, involving the U.S. and the USSR, arose over the building of Russian missile sites in Cuba in 1962; it ended when the USSR agreed to withdraw offensive weapons threatening U.S. security. Their work and discoveries range from how cells adapt to changes in levels of oxygen to our ability to fight global poverty. See them all presented here.
Caught in a Net The last of the great Queens of Egypt, Cleopatra nearly altered the face of the world by seeking to unite her realm with that of the Roman Empire. Born in Alexandria, Cleopatra received an extensive education preparing her to govern Egypt wisely. She was able to secure the throne from her brother Ptolemy through an alliance with Julius Caesar, with whom she bore a son, Caesarian. Rome divided after Caesar's death and Cleopatra formed another alliance, this time with Mark Anthony. Their nine year love affair ended tragically when their campaigns against Parthia and Actium were unsuccessful. Believing Cleopatra committed suicide, Mark Anthony took his own life. Cleopatra rushed to his side where he died in her arms. Soon after, she took her own life to prevent capture by Octavian. 1. Swallows* - In Egypt the deceased wished to be transformed into a swallow so he might go forth by day unrestrained by any gate in God's domain. Here, they are a symbol of one's inability to soar which was Cleopatra's situation as she took her own life. Also, swallows are sacred to Isis as the Great Mother, "The imperishable northern stars, flying above the tree of life." *The background is reminiscent of an Egyptian wall painting entitled, Pigeons Caught in a Net. 2. Cat - Sacred to the Egyptian Goddess Bastet who, in myth was the eye of the moon, thus the domestic cat attained special significance. 3. Fish - The phallus of Osiris; sacred to Hathor, Isis and Hatmekit; said to have warned of the approach of the hostile. Here, they form a quiet funeral procession for Cleopatra, submitting to her request. 4. Lotus - "It is the flower that was in the Beginning, the glorious lily of the Great Waters and the Great Mother wherein all existence comes to be and passes away." The Lotus closes its petals at night and retreats to the deep -- rising with its blossoms open to the sun. 5. Moon - Regarded as the sun shining at night, the crescent moon is an attribute of Isisas Queen of the Nile and Queen of Heaven. 6. Brown - Uraeus band - "She who rears up," represented as a rearing cobra with inflated hood -- symbol of Goddess Buto and Hawthor. Represents Lower Egypt. 7. Vulture - National Goddess of Upper Egypt, Nehhbet. Royal symbolism. Sacred animal of Goddesses Mut and Neith. A symbol of the female principle. 8. Ladder - Ladder of Heaven which the deceased used to climb to heaven. 9. Bracelets - Wedjet-eye - Left eye of Horus -- symbol of protection. 10. Isis assuming form of vulture - Purification and good works; maternity and love. 11. Ear - Very sacred; readiness of the mind to be receptive to knowledge and prayers. 12. Earring - The dead live on in the stars -- a small lamp among the constellations. 13. Perfumed incense cone - Worn to sweeten and purify the body -- especially at death. 14. Knot of Isis - Symbol of the hidden force of germination which grows anew motivated by its divine power of the beginning. Knot holds magic power fast.