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Flat or Inverted Nipples An effective breastfeeding baby usually has little trouble breastfeeding even if his/her mother's nipples appear to be flatter. A less effective breastfeeder may need some time to figure out how he/she can draw the nipple into the mouth with latch-on. Although the benefit of using hard plastic breast shells is not conclusive, some mothers find it helps to wear them in the bra between feedings. Breast shells exert a small amount of traction to help draw the nipple outward. Using a breast pump to draw the nipple out just prior to breastfeeding may also help. If nipples invert, or "dent" inward, with stimulation, try the interventions mentioned for flat nipples. Nipple eversion devices are available. Ask a certified lactation consultant (IBCLC) for information. Occasionally, a mother has one or more severely inverted nipples. If one breast is less affected, your baby can breastfeed on only one breast. Most women can produce enough milk in one breast to exclusively breastfeed their babies. Click here to view the Online Resources of Pregnancy & Childbirth
Platform Developed To Help Find Treatments for Mental Health Illnesses Complete the form below to unlock access to ALL audio articles. An estimated 46.6 million U.S. adults struggle with mental illnesses, such as anxiety disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. About half of millennials and 75% of Gen-Zers report having quit jobs for mental health reasons. Now, Purdue University scientists have created a platform focused on finding new medication options for people dealing with mental illnesses. The Computational Analysis of Novel Drug Opportunities (CANDO) drug discovery platform is designed to predict the effectiveness of certain psychoactive drugs, which act primarily upon the central nervous system. Details about the platform are published in the Sept. 11 edition of Scientific Reports. “One of the areas we are looking at with the platform is the use of non-addictive cannabis-based drugs that may help people with mental illness,” said Gaurav Chopra, an assistant professor of analytical and physical chemistry in Purdue’s College of Science, who led the creation of the platform. “Our approach is unique because we look at compound interactions with the entire proteome, rather than the traditional approach of focusing on the interaction with just one target or just by looking at the structure of the drug.” The CANDO drug discovery platform analyzes how a drug may work for a certain mental illnesses, based on a collective comparison with all other drugs already approved to treat those same conditions or symptoms of the underlying disease. The platform also looks for signature compound interactions with proteins that are similar in the proposed drugs with those already being used to treat people. “Our goal with this platform is mapping potential uses for selected drugs to serve as a starting point to ignite further research into the once forbidden field of mental illnesses,” Chopra said. “Our work on compound interactions of all known psychoactive substances provides a resource to further verify the use of selected psychoactives, identify mechanisms of action and suggest relationships between different mental health indications. This will enhance research in drug discovery for several mental health conditions as well as help with identifying mechanisms for eventual treatment of indications such as pain and substance use disorder.” Reference: Fine, et al. (2019) Computational chemoproteomics to understand the role of selected psychoactives in treating mental health indications. Scientific Reports. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49515-0 This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.
This archaeology project or "excavation" took place on several historic blocks located on the south side of the Stockton Channel in downtown Stockton. It is called the "WorkNet" project since that is the name of the office building that was built over a portion of the archaeological site. The excavation, or dig, took place in the summer of 2001. Since then, the archaeologists have been studying the artifacts found at this location. This exciting project uncovered information about the lives of everyday people in Stockton 120 years ago, documenting the lives of people seldom found in books or records of that era. Archaeologists worked for several months conducting research in history books and with old maps to determine who the 19th century inhabitants of the WorkNet project area were and what types of items they used in their daily lives. From this archaeology project, we were able to learn that people began building houses in the neighborhood in the 1860s, and that over the years, the neighborhood continued to grow as stores, restaurants, and saloons were also built. Most of the occupants were families who worked in the nearby grain and woolen mills as clerks and laborers, although several families were associated with the shipping industry. The people who lived in the neighborhood were of mixed ethnicity, including Anglo-American, European, Italian, Irish, German, and other nationalities. Families continued to live in the neighborhood until the 1940s, when industrialization in the downtown Stockton area changed the character of the neighborhood and people moved away. The historic map below illustrates how this neighborhood looked back in the 1870s. By the 1950s, the downtown neighborhoods had declined dramatically. The construction of Crosstown Freeway tore down the remains of the houses in the neighborhood and left only the archaeological sites we are able to study today. There are currently no external links. This City of Stockton web page last reviewed on --- 5/12/2015
in partnership withADI The event was momentous—and the statement announcing it to the world came in a duly excited tone, while also being spare and to the point: “Ladies and gentlemen, we…have detected…gravitational waves! We did it!” With those words, David Reitze, executive director of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), revealed the discovery to a room packed with journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on February 11, 2016. (The actual detection occurred on September 14, 2015.) The discovery provided the first evidence to support Albert Einstein’s belief in the existence of gravitational waves that was part of his general theory of relativity. A new field of scientific inquiry, called gravitational wave astronomy, fueled this notable achievement at LIGO—through the use of a laser device, called an interferometer, that includes high-precision sensors, operational amplifiers, and other products from Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI). The source of the gravitational wave was the collision of two black holes, 1.3 billion light years away from Earth, which created a gravitational-wave power 10 times greater than the combined radiated energy of all the stars in the universe. “They found Einstein’s [gravitational] waves 100 years later, and it happened right here, and here’s the machine that did it,” marvels David Kress, director of technical marketing at ADI and an MIT alumnus. “There’s nothing better—and I know that our parts are in it.” Listening to the Universe LIGO consists of two observatories and facilities—one in Hanford, Washington, and the other in Livingston, Louisiana—both of which began operating in 2002. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded that large-scale physics project, and these facilities were then created, built, and operated by Caltech and MIT. The twin observatories, which are among the largest and most ambitious NSF-funded projects to date, were designed to “observe” astrophysical gravitational waves—which can’t actually be seen. The only way to detect the existence of gravitational waves is to “listen” to the heavens. Each LIGO facility places a laser within an ultra-high vacuum, splits the laser in two, and sends each beam down one of two 2.5-mile arms set perpendicular to one another. The laser beams are then reflected back from mirrors placed at the ends of the arms. Interferometers are investigative tools routinely used in science and engineering. They work by merging two or more sources of light to create an interference pattern, which can be measured and analyzed. LIGO’s interferometers are designed to detect measurements too small to be obtained through other methods. When a gravitational wave passes, it alters time in the surrounding area, causing a minute movement of the arms relative to each other, on the order of 1/1000th the width of a proton. That changes the relative phases of the returned light once the devices receive the data, releasing light to an optical sensor, which results in a measurable signal or “chirp.” “When you think of a traditional observatory, you get a mental picture of someone peeking through a viewfinder, looking out into space through a telescope that is designed to receive light,” says Rich Abbott, lead analog circuit designer at LIGO. “What LIGO does—and what makes it unique—is that it measures gravitational waves, which don’t show up like light.” To describe the exceptional sensitivity of LIGO’s interferometer, he compares it to a weighing scale: “If you could take all the sand off all our beaches on Earth and pile it on the weighing scale, the LIGO detector is sufficiently sensitive that you could detect the removal of less than a grain of sand.” High Performance: LIGO and ADI Technology LIGO uses a host of integrated circuit technologies from ADI. The LIGO interferometers work by predicting and compensating for all possible ambient noise and vibration sources. That means that the laser output used by the interferometer must remain ultra-stable, with extremely slight variations in frequency and amplitude. For that reason, the LIGO team needed a feedback system to adequately measure light output while controlling the amplitude. That called for an ultra-low-noise amplifier with high performance. The LIGO team chose ADI’s AD797 operational amplifier (or “op amp”) for its very low-noise and low-distortion capabilities. The AD797 op amp is also used in infrared and sonar imaging applications, among other uses. Other ADI products are also used in the LIGO technology: - ADI’s AD590 high-precision temperature sensor stabilizes laser frequency and measures the average temperature of the glass vacuum chamber that houses the laser. - Output in the laser can quickly build up to kilowatts within the resonant cavities of the arms, distorting the measurements. LIGO uses an ADA4700 high-voltage op amp to drive electrostatic actuators to keep the mirrors in alignment. - Solenoids drive LIGO’s mirror-suspension system. In that system, the AD736 RMS chip measures the power delivery to the solenoids, enabling any required and precise tilt, pitch, and yaw. Stabilizing the laser’s amplitude is among the keys to its successful recognition of the gravitational waves because “fluctuations could appear like signals,” Abbott notes. “That’s why we needed such a focused, non-garden-variety, solution.” Proving Einstein Right Through Performance The first-ever image of a real gravitational wave signal was initially detected at LIGO Livingston; then just 7 milliseconds later, it arrived at the Hanford site. The discovery happened during the first week of using new “advanced” LIGO laser detectors, which included the ADI integrated circuit technologies. The LIGO team was thrilled to detect the gravitational waves so soon after installing the new device—and that the signal was so “loud” as to be unmistakable. The lag between the gravitational wave signal’s discovery and its public unveiling reflected the team’s need to investigate and confirm that it was, indeed, real. For several weeks, LIGO scientists conducted experiments at both observatories to rule out the possibility that an instrumental anomaly or software glitch caused the signals. Eventually, scientists completed what’s known as a correlation and coupling analysis, which concluded that the signal could only have originated in deep space. All LIGO staff were sworn to secrecy from then until the public announcement. Later, a second gravitational wave was detected on Christmas Day, 2015. Again, scientists thoroughly investigated, and, after confirming the signal’s cosmic origin, announced its detection on June 15, 2016. When Einstein proposed the existence of gravitational waves and black holes, he believed that it would be essentially impossible to actually ascertain them. The fact that ADI sensors and other devices contributed to the precision of the interferometers that eventually accomplished this feat remains a source of great pride for those involved with developing the technology. “Analog Devices has been supporting precision applications for Earth observation, space- communication positioning, launch vehicles, and space exploration for over 40 years now,” says Bob Barfield, director of aerospace and defense at ADI. “When you think about what is in space and what is beyond what we know right now, it is mind-boggling. Some of the things that are being discovered—it’s just exciting to think that we’re on the edge of that.” To learn more and to view a video about the LIGO project, visit www.analog.com/en/landing-pages/001/ligo.html?icid=ligo_en_hp. This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models. Rogue superintelligence and merging with machines: Inside the mind of OpenAI’s chief scientist An exclusive conversation with Ilya Sutskever on his fears for the future of AI and why they’ve made him change the focus of his life’s work. Data analytics reveal real business value Sophisticated analytics tools mine insights from data, optimizing operational processes across the enterprise. The Biggest Questions: What is death? New neuroscience is challenging our understanding of the dying process—bringing opportunities for the living. Get the latest updates from MIT Technology Review Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.
Here, we find out about first-principles computer simulations performed in the group of Prof Mark E. Tuckerman, who uncover principles for designing high-performance alkaline anion exchange membrane (AEM) fuel cells Climate change is an issue we have all become increasingly aware of over the last decade. It is known that its main cause is the production of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Many research groups are working to develop renewable energy technologies that will reduce the need to burn fossil fuels and ultimately, eliminate our reliance on them altogether. Currently, considerable attention is focused on electrochemical energy sources such as batteries and fuel cells. Our team are employing techniques of mathematical modelling and computer simulation to design new realisations of these technologies. This article will briefly describe our work in the area of alkaline anion exchange membrane (AEM) fuel cells. Generally, fuel cells are electrochemical devices capable of delivering power by converting the chemical energy stored in a fuel, such as hydrogen, into electricity. When hydrogen fuel is used, the only waste products are water – which can be recycled back into the fuel cell – and heat. Fuel cells can be used to power anything that runs on electricity, making them ideal for common devices, such as computers and mobile phones. They can, additionally, be used to power vehicles, where efficiencies can reach 40-60% compared to the approximately 20% efficiency of typical petrol engines. Commonly used proton-exchange membrane (or PEM) fuel cells operate under acidic conditions, employing electrochemical reactions that produce protons at the anode, which are consumed at the cathode. Transporting the protons from anode to cathode using an electrolyte material – the PEM – consisting of an acidic polymer dissolved in water. Breaking down the fuel requires a precious-metal catalyst, such as platinum, that can withstand the corrosive effect of the acidic environment. Although AEM fuel cells bear some similarity to PEM fuel cells, their primary advantage is that they operate under alkaline or basic conditions for which non-precious metal catalysts can be employed, thus making them better for mass production. At the cathode of an AEM fuel cell, oxygen is combined with water and electrons to produce hydroxide ions. When fed with hydrogen fuel, the hydrogen molecules at the anode are combined with the hydroxide ions produced in the cathode reaction to produce water and electrons. The role of the AEM is to transport hydroxide ions from the cathode to the anode. Analogous to PEMs, AEMs generally consist of a basic polymer dissolved in water. However, designing polymeric materials capable of achieving the high rate of hydroxide transport necessary for efficient fuel-cell operation constitutes a significant challenge in polymer engineering and synthesis that can benefit significantly by leveraging the mathematical methods of theoretical chemistry and computational modelling. The role and impact of computational modelling The transport of protons and hydroxide ions through water does not occur via simple hydrodynamic diffusion but rather through a chemical process whose mechanism was first revealed by first-principles computer simulation1,2. The approach employed in these studies involves numerically solving the fundamental equations of mechanics (F = ma or Newton’s 2nd law) for the motion of every atom in a system, with interatomic forces (F) obtained from electronic structure calculations that are performed “on the fly” at each step of the simulation. These simulations reveal that transport of aqueous protons and hydroxide ions, which should be viewed as local topological defects in water’s complex and dynamic network of hydrogen bonds, occurs via specific rearrangements of the hydrogen bonds between the ions and surrounding water molecules that “activate” the local environment to promote a proton transfer reaction between the ion and a nearby water molecule. This reaction moves the core of the topological defect from one point to another in the hydrogen bond network. In this process, it is not a single ion that diffuses but rather a core of positive or negative charge that hops from site to site in the liquid through the interconversion of water molecules into ions via sequential proton-transfer reactions. AEMs generally consist of a polymer backbone functionalised by cation groups that, when the AEM is hydrated, dangle into the aqueous region3. Laboriously synthesising and testing, in actual fuel cells, all the possible membrane systems that can be made would be an intractable feat. Computational modelling can inform synthetic efforts by rapidly exploring the parameter space and revealing key design features. Our computational model consists of an idealised confined environment that mimics the ion diffusion channels revealed by coarse-grained simulation4 (Figure 1). Within our model, a large number of design parameters are being explored, such as the chemical composition of the polymer, placement of the positively charged groups, chemical structure of the positively charged groups, and optimal water content. Our simulations indicate that two key factors in AEMs are the water distribution within the membrane and water mobility around the cations5,6. All other design parameters should be chosen to produce morphologies that promote such optimal water distributions and hydrogen-bond topologies; tuning the temperature proves instrumental in influencing the mobility. Importantly, we have identified design strategies for producing favourable water distributions at both high and low levels of hydration. The simulation studies we have carried out, thus far, have already identified several candidate materials. Nevertheless, we will continue to explore more AEM prototypes. A long-term goal of our work will be to arrive at a general set of design principles which, if applied, could lead to AEMs of a greater efficiency and, ultimately, to the creation of a class of new, clean electrochemical power sources. 1 M. E. Tuckerman, D. Marx, M. Parrinello, The nature and transport mechanism of hydrated hydroxide ions in aqueous solution, Nature, 417, 925-929, 2002. 2 D. Marx, A. Chandra, M. E. Tuckerman, Aqueous basic solutions: Hydroxide solvation, structural diffusion, and comparison to the hydrated proton, Chem. Rev. 110, 2174-2216, 2010. 3 J. R. Varcoe, et al. Anion-exchange membranes in electrochemical systems. Energy & Environ. Sci. 7, 3135-3191, 2014. 4 F. Sepehr, et al. Mesoscale simulations of anion exchange membranes based on quaternary ammonium tethered triblock copolymers. Macromol. 50, 4397-4405, 2017. 5 T. Zelovich, et al. Ab initio molecular dynamics study of hydroxide diffusion mechanisms in nanoconfined structural mimics of anion exchange membranes. J. Phys. Chem. C 128, 4639-4653, 2019. 6 T. Zelovich, et al. Hydroxide ion diffusion in anion-exchange membranes at low hydration: Insights from ab initio molecular dynamics. Chem. Mater. 31, 5778-5787, 2019. *Please note: This is a commercial profile
• Set out cold-hardy color. Brighten up the garden with English primroses and pansies. Before planting, harden off these greenhouse-grown flowers by placing them outdoors in a shady area for a few hours a day and gradually increasing their exposure to sunlight over a week; bring them indoors at night. After planting, cover plants with an old sheet or frost blanket if freezing temperatures are forecast. • Sow cool-season vegetables. As soon as the soil can be worked, till in several inches of compost or well-rotted manure. Then plant seeds of beets, carrots, endive, kohlrabi, lettuce and other salad greens, onions, parsnips, peas, radishes, spinach, Swiss chard, and turnips. Keep soil evenly moist and mulch with 2 inches of pine needles or straw. As the plants grow taller, add more mulch, until it is 4 to 6 inches deep. To protect crops from frost and insects, cover them with floating row covers. (Remove covers from peas when blossoms appear so bees can pollinate them.) • Sow hardy annuals. Broadcast seeds of hardy annuals directly onto bare soil, then rake lightly to cover. Among the flowers whose seeds germinate well in cold, moist soil are annual phlox (P. drummondii), bachelor's button, calendula, California poppy, clarkia, Johnny-jump-up, larkspur, love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena), moss rose, Shirley poppy, snapdragon, sweet alyssum, and wallflower. Broadcast seeds directly onto bare soil, then rake lightly to cover. • Start a strawberry patch. Good choices for the Rocky Mountain region include everbearing varieties such as 'Fort Laramie' and 'Ogallala' and June-bearing types like 'Dunlap', 'Honeoye', and 'Trumpeter'. Choose a site in full sun and amend the soil with an all-purpose fertilizer and 4 inches of compost or well-rotted manure. Place strawberries 1 foot apart in rows or in a block. After planting, mulch with several inches of pine needles or straw. • Protect plants from damping off. Seedlings started indoors in pots are susceptible to damping off, a fungal disease that causes the plants to suddenly wilt and die. There is no cure, but you can guard against the disease by starting seeds in sterile potting mix. As soon as the seeds germinate, remove plastic wrap or any other cover that you've placed over the soil. To water, place pots in a shallow container so moisture is wicked up from the bottom. Let the soil surface dry out slightly between waterings. • Relocate wayward seedlings. Bachelor's buttons, larkspur, poppies, and snapdragons often pop up where you don't want them. These seedlings are easily moved to more desirable locations. When plants are 2 to 3 inches tall, dig them up, roots and all, with a fist-size clump of soil and replant immediately. • Transplant shrubs. Move shrubs or roses now while they are dormant. Prune large shrubs back to a manageable size, then dig up as large a rootball as is practical. Replant immediately and water thoroughly to keep the rootball moist until new growth starts.
Designed specifically for First Grade, Second Grade, and Third Grade students, this pack includes four engaging word search worksheets to help students learn about the significance of ANZAC Day. These worksheets are perfect for history lessons, fast finishers, or as part of a HASS unit. Each worksheet contains a variety of words related to ANZAC Day that students must find and circle. - 4 ANZAC Day Word Searches with answer sheets ANZAC Day Word Search PDF 4 worksheets with answer pages Foundation Year HASS the celebrations and commemorations of significant events shared with their families and others (AC9HSFK02) Year 3 HASS significant events, symbols and emblems that are important to Australia’s identity and diversity, and how they are celebrated, commemorated or recognised in Australia, including Australia Day, Anzac Day, NAIDOC Week, National Sorry Day, Easter, Christmas, and other religious and cultural festivals (AC9HS3K02)
Odd radio circles, also known as ORCs, are the latest wonder phenomena in astronomy, and they have been brought into clear focus by a multinational group of scientists utilizing the planet’s most powerful radio telescopes. (Credit: J. English (U. Manitoba) / EMU / MeerKAT / DES(CTIO)) Cosmic shockwaves, wormhole mouths, and a variety of other theories have been proposed as possible reasons. One of the most comprehensive images ever taken by the MeerKAT space telescope of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory is supplying scientists with more data to aid narrow down the range of possible explanations. In recent years, 3 major ideas have emerged to describe what produces ORCs: They may be the remnants of a huge blast at the core of their mother galaxy, such as the crash of 2 supermassive black holes; they could very well be mighty jets of high energy particles gushing out from the galaxy’s core; or they could be the outcome of a starburst termination shock wave caused by the birth of stars in the cosmos, among other possibilities. Scientists have only been able to identify ORCs via the use of radio telescopes so far and have found no evidence of them through the use of visual, infrared, or even X-ray observatories. The loops are massive, measuring over a million light-years wide, making them 16 fold the size of our own galaxy. Odd radio circles, nonetheless, are difficult to detect. ORCs are known to be rings of feeble radio radiation encircling a galaxy with a very energetic black hole being at the core, but researchers don’t yet understand what creates these or why they would be so uncommon. Researchers will require accessibility to far more powerful radio telescopes, notably those at the SKA Observatory, in order to fully comprehend the phenomenon of strange radio circles. Between now and the time when the SKA goes active, ASKAP & MeerKAT are poised to transform our knowledge of the cosmos at a rate never previously seen. The findings were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Research on Computational Thinking & the Game Zoombinis (2017) Computational Thinking, the set of ideas and practices considered vital for computer science skills, has been attracting increased attention over the past several years in K-12 education. Zoombinis, an award-winning adventure game, engages players in guiding little blue Zoombinis on a “fun but perilous” journey featuring 12 puzzles, each with 4 levels of difficulty, designed around logic and computational thinking. Our research involves educational data mining techniques to assess students’ learning in conjunction with pre-post computational thinking assessments (external to the game), teacher interviews, classroom observations, and case studies of classroom use. The goal is to understand both students’ learning of computational thinking and how to bridge the formal and informal learning via classroom implementation of the Zoombinis game. Learn more about Zoombinis. NSF Award: 1502882
- This page includes the show Transcript and the Daily Curriculum - Use the Transcript to help students with reading comprehension and vocabulary - The Daily Curriculum offers the Media Literacy Question of the Day, Key Concepts, Fast Facts and Discussion Questions - At the bottom of the page, please share your feedback about our show and curriculum March 12, 2014 There's a new development - but still no closure - in the search for a missing passenger plane in Southeast Asia. Today, we'll tell you what a transponder is and how it fits into the puzzle. We also cover three space travelers' return from the ISS, and we explain some reasons for and effects of deforestation. On this page you will find today's show Transcript, the Daily Curriculum, and a place for you to leave feedback. Please note that there may be a delay between the time when the video is available and when the transcript is published. Media Literacy Question of the Day: What sources do you think you would have had for credible information in the days before the Internet? Key Concepts: Identify or explain these subjects you heard about in today's show: 2. Tim Berners-Lee 3. circadian rhythm Fast Facts: How well were you listening to today's program? 1. What do we now know about Malaysia Airlines Flight 370? Where is the C-130 aircraft seen in the video searching for the plane? Why does the Malaysian defense minister say he is overwhelmed? How can you tell that he is determined to find the plane and its passengers? 2. What countries were represented by astronauts who just returned to Earth from the International Space Station? What vehicle did they use to return to Earth? 3. What technical innovation made its debut 25 years ago this week? Who created it? What were the first Web pages like? According to the video: What percentage of Americans had Internet access six years after the World Wide Web was introduced? What percentage has access today? 4. How do circadian rhythms influence sleep patterns? According to the report, what happens when your body gets too far off track from these natural cycles? 5. What is palm oil? How is it obtained? What statement has the Mars Company made about how it's going to get its palm oil? What is deforestation? Where is it common? What are its causes? How can deforestation affect the environment? 1. How does current space exploration illustrate one benefit of international cooperation? Are there any other stories in today's show that demonstrate international cooperation? Explain. 2. Talk to your parents or other family members about what life was like in the days before the Internet. Where did they go for information and entertainment? Do they feel that the Internet has had a positive or negative impact on their overall quality of life? 3. How does a lack of sleep affect you? If you live in an area that observes Daylight Saving Time, did the time change impact your sleep pattern? Explain. What advice would you give students who don't seem to get enough sleep? CNN Student News is created by a team of journalists and educators who consider the Common Core State Standards, national standards in different subject areas, and state standards when producing the show and curriculum. We hope you use our free daily materials along with the program, and we welcome your feedback on them. We're looking for your feedback about CNN Student News. Please use this page to leave us comments about today's program, including what you think about our stories and our resources. Also, feel free to tell us how you use them in your classroom. The educators on our staff will monitor this page and may respond to your comments as well. Thank you for using CNN Student News!
George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron, was one of the greatest of the Romantic poets, responsible for such works as Don Juan, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and the short lyric “She Walks in Beauty.” He was only 36 when he died, although that probably came as little surprise to those who knew him by his “mad, bad and dangerous to know” reputation – think of him as an 18th century Jim Morrison and you won’t be too far wide of the mark. A restless man, in the months before his death Byron had cast his lot with the Greek side in their War of Independence. But he saw no combat in his time with them. Before Byron could reach the front, he was struck ill, and his condition only worsened when the doctors treated him with bloodletting, which weakened him further and led to an infection. He developed a terrible fever which quickly led to his death on April 19, 1824, in Missolonghi, Greece, but his body was then transported back to England, and the Baron was buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.
Almost everyone knows someone who has suffered from heart disease or a stroke. As the leading cause of death in the United States, cardiovascular disease claims 2,200 lives every day. February is American Heart Month, a time to raise awareness about heart health. Using these resources from USA.gov, you can get a head start on preventing heart disease: In September 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services started the Million Hearts campaign, which aims to prevent 1 million heart attacks and strokes in the United States by the end of year 2016. The campaign empowers Americans to make healthy choices and to improve the care of those who need treatment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) offers tips to help prevent heart attack and stroke. The most common heart ailment is coronary artery disease (CAD) which leads to heart attack. CAD is a narrowing of the small blood vessels that supply blood and oxygen to the heart. CAD can most easily be prevented with lifestyle changes, like consuming less salt, and staying away from secondhand smoke. Heart disease is also the number one killer of women. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s (NHLBI) The Heart Truth campaign focuses on women’s heart disease prevention and hopes to give women a wake up call about their risk of heart disease. Heart disease can build gradually, so even young women must know the signs and prevention tips so they can stop the process before it is too late. Symptoms of heart disease include chest pain or discomfort, which can make your heart feel heavy, or as if someone is squeezing it. Shortness of breath, fatigue and general weakness are also signs. While many people do feel these symptoms, some people with heart disease won’t experience any of them. Doctors can also run certain tests before making a diagnosis. For a full list of resources from the government on heart disease and heart health tips, USA.gov puts them all in one place for you. Learn what a heart attack really is, view a guide to healthy living, and order a packet of free publications to learn more.
Thrusting up off the shore of the southeastern Peloponnese is the rock of Monemvasia, attached to the mainland by a narrow causeway. It was originally part of the mainland, then in 375 AD, an earthquake broke it off and turned it into an island. The island became a refuge for Greeks from Lakonia when the area was overrun by Slavs around 583 AD. Over time it has been occupied by Greeks, Franks, Byzantines, Venetians, Ottomans, and finally Greeks again. The first non-Greek to possess the rock was William de Villehardouin, a Frankish prince who ruled most of the Peloponnesos - then called the Morea - in the 1200s. It was given to the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos when the Byzantines captured de Villehardouin and held him for ransom. The next rulers were the Venetians - the Mediterranean superpower of the time who owned huge swaths of Greece. They turned it into a prosperous trading town, famous for it's sweet Malvasia wine, which was known as Malmsey in Europe. In 1540 the Venetians handed it off to the Ottomans in a treaty, where it remained until the Greek revolution in 1821. The name Monemvasia comes from "moni" and "emvasis", which mean "single entry" or "single passage", and the walled medieval town does, in fact, have a single way in (if you don't count the sea ladder where people can go swimming directly off the rocks). To get there, you have to park your car on the (frequently full!) causeway and walk to the entrance - a stone arch that leads through a cobblestoned entry and out into the twisty paths of the town. This is a pedestrian-only place; not even bicycles or the ubiquitous Greek motorbikes can navigate the bumpy, labyrinthine paths and the many stairs. There is an upper and a lower town. The lower town is the walled area, stuffed full of beautiful stone houses, shops selling Malvasia wine and other local products, and tiny churches, with the protective wall of the rock rising behind it. If you want to take the many steps up to the upper town, you'll be rewarded with a visit to the Agia Sophia church, clinging to the edge of a cliff, as well as some absolutely stunning views. Monemvasia is one of the most photogenic places in Greece, and that's saying something. The pinkish stone, dazzling sunrises and sunsets, and fascinating architectural surprises around every twisty corner make it a devastatingly beautiful destination. A small word of warning, though; this is not a great place for people with mobility issues. The old rocky cobblestones, myriad steps and lack of handrails means this a place that requires at least a middling level of fitness. There are excellent restaurants in town, and it's a great base for exploring the nearby area of Lakonia. Back on the mainland, very nice beaches abound. Day trips to charming towns like Gythieon, Leonidio and Ierakas Limeni provide even more to do, and returning back to your cozy, several-hundred-year-old guesthouse is a lovely way to end the day. If the Peloponnese is in your travel plans, try to make a stop at beautiful and historic Monemvasia. It's unlike anything else in Greece, and you won't be disappointed! All photos by me except one. Click on photos to enlarge.
Brexit: The Students’ Guide If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what on earth a Brexit is, or been left frustrated by news articles that assume an existing level of knowledge on the subject, then this is the post for you! We’ve put together the ultimate students’ guide to Brexit, covering everything from why it’s taken so long, to how it could affect students in the coming years. What is ‘Brexit’? The word ‘Brexit’ is a combination of ‘Britain’ and ‘exit’. It’s the process of Britain, also known as the United Kingdom (UK), leaving the European Union (EU). The UK includes England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Brexit has caused a huge amount of debate and controversy because it will probably affect trade, security, and UK immigration. In June 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU in something called a referendum. This is a general vote where a country’s entire electorate is asked to weigh in on a single question, and the result directly influences the decision of the government. What is the EU? The European Union is a group of 28 countries in an economic and political union. It allows free trade and movement of people across all of its member states. A single market was created to increase trade between countries, leading to more jobs and lower-priced goods. The EU was born from the legacy of World War II. Countries believed that if they were linked economically and constantly cooperated, then they were less likely to go to war. This led to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), founded by the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and signed by Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. Britain applied to join the EEC, but the French president Charles de Gaulle vetoed its application in 1963 and 1969. The UK finally joined the EEC in 1973 under the Conservative government of Ted Heath, but even then its membership was debated. In 1975 the UK held its first referendum on its EEC membership. The Labour party was now in government, and it was divided over the issue of Europe. The new Prime Minister Harold Wilson promised to put the question to a referendum, and 67% of voters wanted to stay. However, the role of the UK in the EU continued to be debated. Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher argued from 1979 that the UK was contributing too much to the EU budget. In 1984, Thatcher negotiated a reduction in British contributions to the EEC budget, called the ‘rebate arrangement’. In 1992, the British pound sterling fell in value so much that Britain was asked to leave the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The ERM was a system introduced by the EEC in 1979, to reduce the fluctuation of exchange rates between European countries. The aim was to achieve monetary stability, which was a step towards creating a single currency, the Euro. Britain never adopted this, but most of the EU started using it in January 1999. In 2004, ten new countries joined the EU, including eight from Eastern Europe, which saw an increase in EU citizens moving to the UK. How did the Brexit vote happen? The Brexit referendum In 2013, the UK’s Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron promised to hold a national referendum on the UK’s EU membership. He argued that the British people were disillusioned with the EU and that they should have a direct say. This took place in a context of economic uncertainty, just six years after the financial crisis of 2007-2008. Cameron believed that he could renegotiate the UK’s relationship with the EU, so he could give the British people a choice between staying under new terms, or leaving completely. Britons were asked to choose whether they wished to ‘Leave’ or ‘Remain’ in the EU. A Leave win was unprecedented; no country has ever fully left the EU before. 1985 saw Greenland leave, but it is within the kingdom of Denmark, which remained. The Brexit referendum was held on Thursday the 23rd June 2016. Voter turnout was 72.2% of the British electorate, with 52% voting leave and 48% choosing remain. Find a more detailed breakdown of the results here. Why did people vote ‘Leave’? The Brexit referendum took place in the context of a refugee crisis in Europe, making migration levels a key issue at the time. To Brexit supporters, the prospect of leaving the EU was a promise to end the free movement of people into the UK and decrease the number of people moving here. Pro-Brexiteers claimed immigrants put too much pressure on public services in the UK, such as the National Health Service (NHS) and social welfare schemes. Many people disliked the way the European Parliament decided on rules the UK had to follow and wanted the UK to have more control over its own affairs. Several different political organisations campaigned for the Leave vote. The UK Independence Party (UKIP), led by Nigel Farage, carried out an aggressive campaign based on anti-immigration views. It was not, however, affiliated with the official Vote Leave campaign, which included Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, amongst other key politicians. The Vote Leave campaign was accused of breaking election laws and having used outright lies to sway the electorate. Johnson, one of the foremost players in the Leave campaign, organised a bus painted with the slogan: ‘We send the EU £350m a week: let’s fund our NHS instead’. It was later proven that this figure was false, but it did motivate some people to vote Leave. Why did people vote ‘Remain’? Many of the 48% of the British population who voted ‘Remain’ argued for the business benefits of being in the EU. They believed the single market system was good for the British economy, bringing in immigrants to develop the British workforce and public service projects. They also thought that being members of a wider economic and cultural community provided an element of security. The majority of people between the ages of 18 and 24 voted Remain. People over the age of 65 were more than twice as likely to vote Leave. When is Brexit happening? The UK officially left the EU at 11pm on Friday 31st January 2020. This marked the beginning of a “transition period”, which will last until the end of 2020. In reality, the transition period means not much will actually change until 2021, when trade, travel and businesses will have to fall into line with post-Brexit legislation. Why did Brexit take so long? It has taken over three and a half years for Brexit to actually happen. The main problem is the lack of precedent; since no other country has officially left the EU before, no one really knew how this was supposed to happen. Some people also argued that a second referendum should be held, since many were uncertain about what Brexit meant in 2016. False information was used in campaigns both for ‘Leave’ and for ‘Remain’, and ‘what is the EU’ Google searches peaked in the hours after the results of the vote were announced. What are the different kinds of Brexit? The exact nature of Brexit is still relatively unknown. The current agreement is really just an extension, meaning politicians are still trying to work out the bounds of the “real” deal, which will set legislation on trade, travel and our political relationship with the EU. ‘Deal’ or ‘no-deal’ Brexit? A ‘deal’ Brexit is what many people are hoping for. This would mean the UK and the EU reach an agreement before Britain leaves, ideally preserving trade links and the customs union until a more detailed relationship is worked out. A ‘no-deal’ Brexit is what would happen if the UK leaves the EU without this agreement. In this case, the UK would leave the customs union and single market overnight. EU checks on UK goods could lead to delays at ports, increased traffic, and a fall in the value of the British pound. ‘Soft’ or ‘hard’ Brexit? A ‘soft’ Brexit would see Britain remain close to the EU and keep some form of the EU’s single market. This option would minimise economic disruption. The main sticking point with this is the EU’s insistence that access to the single market will only be granted if free movement of people into the UK is accepted too. As immigration was one of the cornerstones of the Leave campaign, politicians have been reluctant to accept this compromise. A ‘hard’ Brexit means a clean break from Europe. Britain would give up its membership in the EU’s single market and customs union entirely. Supporters of a hard Brexit want freedom for the UK to draw up its trade deals and rules. Attempts at a Brexit deal Undoing 46 years of economic integration is not simple. Officially Brexit was supposed to happen on the 29th March 2019, two years after the Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May triggered Article 50, beginning the formal process of leaving the EU and kicking off negotiations. While May was PM, this deadline was delayed twice. For her Brexit deal to pass, she needed the approval of Parliament, but members of the British Parliament (MPs) repeatedly rejected the deals she presented. Parliament’s opposition pushed May to resign in July 2019, and she was replaced by Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. On the 19th October 2019, Johnson tried to put forward a new Brexit deal but this was also denied by MPs. He was forced to request another delay from the EU, with the new deadline for a Brexit deal being the 31st January 2020. After Parliament blocked his deal, Johnson called another general election, on the 12th December 2019. His aim was to achieve a Conservative Party majority, and he was successful. Key issue: the Irish backstop The main reason May’s successive deals were not voted through was the issue of the Irish border ‘backstop’. This is a special policy in May’s deal that addresses the how Brexit will affect the Irish border. Northern Ireland is part of the UK and governed by the British Prime Minister, while the Republic of Ireland has its own head of state and government. As part of the UK, Northern Ireland is set to leave the EU, while the Republic will remain a part of it. Currently, they have an ‘open border’, meaning people and goods can cross it freely. This was a condition of the last peace agreement, which saw the historic conflict between the two states cease. Creating a new ‘hard border’ threatens a renewal of hostilities on this front. May’s attempted deal aimed to keep the UK and EU linked in a trading relationship, so customs checks would not have to take place at the Irish border. Critics argued that this could prevent the UK from making trade deals with other countries. Boris Johnson’s new withdrawal agreement did not include a backstop, which he called ‘anti-democratic’. His own plan for customs arrangements would allow the UK to sign trade agreements with other countries. It would also have led to a customs and regulatory border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. This agreement was opposed by the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (DUP) as it would economically separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. This was problematic for the Conservative Party as the DUP had previously been one of its major sources of support. What happens next? Prime Minister Boris Johnson won the general election on the 12th December 2019. This vote was heavily influenced by people’s views on Brexit. The four largest political parties currently in Parliament are the Conservatives, Labour, the Scottish National Party (SNP) and the Liberal Democrats. The results of the vote mean that the Conservative party, led by Boris Johnson, will continue to head up the Brexit plans. Labour, the main opposition party, were very critical of Johnson’s deal and plans for Brexit. Led by Jeremy Corbyn, the Party said they would put it to a second referendum, or ‘People’s Vote’, if they were elected. The Liberal Democrats campaigned to stop Brexit immediately if they were voted in. Technically, the UK could have revoked Article 50 and reversed Brexit, as the European Court of Justice has ruled this would be legal. However, following the results of the general election on the 12th December and the passing of the European Union Withdrawal Agreement Act 2020, a second referendum forms no part of the government’s plans. Consequences of Brexit on a global level The extent of the impact Brexit may have on an international level depends on the kind of deal with which Britain leaves the EU. The UK has the fifth biggest economy in the world. Brexit could lead to political and economic uncertainty, which would negatively impact the world’s markets. The Great British Pound has significantly lost value against the Euro since the Brexit vote. How does Brexit affect students? Many academics fear that Brexit could cut research funding from Europe, make exchanges with European academics more complicated, and lead to a decline in students from the EU studying at UK univiersities. In 2014 EU students represented 5% of university enrolments, and supported more than 34,000 jobs. EU students are currently treated as domestic and pay the same yearly fees as their British counterparts, rather than the higher amounts paid by those coming from further afield. Brexit could also lead to the loss of Erasmus funding for academic exchange across the EU, which has been in place since the 1980s. For international students, it’s currently cheaper to visit the UK right now due to the fall of the pound. Brexit’s unknown impact on the global financial market means we don’t know how much it will impact students internationally in the long run. However, the current Conservative government is considering plans to limit student immigration. Brexit is complex, and almost impossible to predict. Much of the debate around it stems from the fact no one really knows what will happen if and when it goes through. Polls show that, even three years after the initial vote, the country is still divided. While we can’t predict the future, we do hope our guide has made the process of Brexit so far easier to understand. Keep an eye out for updates as the transition period progresses! Seriously considering a career in Politics? Take your political understanding to the next level with an Oxford summer course in International Relations, Politics and Leadership.
\|Photo: Patrick Laurie\| Reprinted from a Statistical News Release circulated by SNH. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) has today released the latest figures tracking the abundance of Scotland’s terrestrial breeding birds 1994 - 2011. Over the long term, the abundance of terrestrial breeding birds increased by 11% from 1994 to 2011 (using the smoothed indices – see note 2). Farmland and woodland birds have increased (by 12% and 44% respectively) and upland birds have decreased by 11%. Between 2010 and 2011, the main findings show that the abundance of all-species, woodland, and farmland terrestrial breeding birds were unchanged overall. However, the upland bird index decreased by 8%. The reasons for changes are not known for certain. Some evidence points towards land use changes as a possible cause. The recent harsh winters in 2009 and 2010 may have also had an effect on some of our resident birds such as wrens and robins. Notes for editors 1. The full statistical publication can be accessed at: http://www.snh.gov.uk/publications-data-and-research/officialstatistics/official-stats/terrestrial-breeding-birds 2. Smoothed indices are a statistical way of removing the year to year fluctuations that naturally appear, for example because of weather conditions or sampling variations, to allow the underlying trend to be more easily seen. 3. The data used in the report primarily come from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) (http://www.bto.org/volunteersurveys/bbs ) 4. Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. 5. Scottish Natural Heritage is the government's adviser on all aspects of nature and landscape across Scotland. Our role is to help everyone understand, value and enjoy Scotland's nature now and in the future. For more information, visit our website at www.snh.gov.uk. SNH media is also now on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/SNH_Tweets 6. Trend notes can be found at http://www.snh.gov.uk/publications-data-andresearch/trends/scotlands-trends/
NATIONAL CAMERA DAY National Camera Day is observed each year on June 29th. This day commemorates photographs, the camera, and their invention. A camera is an irreplaceable tool used to record and replicate memories, events, and people/places. Before the invention of the camera, the only resource to document a vision was a painting. There are very few who can perfectly capture the image of a person or a place in a drawing. The power of a camera provided many with a simple, inexpensive and fast solution. George Eastman, also known as “The Father of Photography,” brought the camera to the masses. While he did not invent the camera, he did invent many additions that improved the use, ease, and production of the camera, making it widely available to homes around the world. The original camera was large and bulky but has now evolved into something that can be as small as a pen. Cameras have many features and variations, making them appealing to men and women of all ages for personal and professional use. HOW TO OBSERVE NATIONAL CAMERA DAY To celebrate National Camera Day, snap a picture of something or someone you enjoy and cherish the memory. Post photos on social media using #NationalCameraDay. HISTORY NATIONAL CAMERA DAY Within our research, we were unable to find the origin of National Camera Day. NATIONAL ALMOND BUTTERCRUNCH DAY National Almond Buttercrunch Day is observed annually on June 29th. Toffee covered in chocolate come together to create buttercrunch. It has a crunchy texture and a caramel flavor. Variations on the recipe include toasted almond sprinkles. Making buttercrunch calls for a good candy thermometer and some cooking experience. It takes the right tools, precision, timing, and safety to create toffee because it requires cooking sugar at high temperatures. When all these elements come together, success is sweet. Buttercrunch can be served on top of ice cream or enjoyed on its own. Buttercrunch flavored cookies or cakes are other ways to enjoy the sweet treat. Bakers love crumbly bits sprinkled along the tops of cupcakes for just a hint of crunch. Another terrific way to enjoy this delicious toffee is to drink it. Its creamy, sweet nuttiness adds the perfect flavor to coffees, espressos, and cappuccinos. Since several brands of creamers and syrups make this flavor, you can brew a cup in the comfort of your home. Better yet, get out and visit your favorite coffee shop. Order an almond buttercrunch biscotti to dip into a black coffee to celebrate the day instead. The candy is so versatile, mix it into a scone and enjoy it with tea. HOW TO OBSERVE NATIONAL ALMOND BUTTERCRUNCH DAY Try this Almond Buttercrunch recipe or stop by a local candy shop for a taste of this sweet treat. Share your almond buttercrunch recipe here! Use #NationalAlmondButtercrunchDay to share on social media. HISTORY OF NATIONAL ALMOND BUTTERCRUNCH DAY Within our research, we were unable to identify the creator of National Almond Buttercrunch Day. NATIONAL WAFFLE IRON DAY Waffle lovers finally have their day of recognition on June 29, which is the day National Waffle Iron Day is observed. Some people enjoy their waffles plain with syrup, but we like ours topped with berries, whipped cream, and syrup. Who knew a simple machine would make such a big impact on our lives! The waffle iron is usually two honeycomb-patterned metal plates hinged together. A person pours or places the dough between the heated plates and then closes it to bake the waffle. Other patterns are also currently on the market in modern time to reflect pop culture as the waffles are baked into famous animated characters and other shapes. Waffle irons got their start in the 14th century in the Low Countries. Even the earliest designs that were used over an open fire would have elaborate designs such as coats of arms and religious symbols. The first patent in the USA for a waffle iron was in 1869, submitted by Cornelius Swarthout. In 1911, General Electric produced a prototype electric waffle iron. The first electric waffle iron was available to the general public in 1918. Nike Co-Founder Bill Bowerman, an Oregon Track Coach at the time, used his wife’s waffle iron to create a sole for footwear that would be lightweight but also grip a surface. This design would soon be called the “Moon Shoe” in 1972 and the “Waffle Trainer” in 1974. His waffle iron shoe helped spur the growth of Blue Ribbon Sports / Nike. Waffle iron makers today offer a large variety of choices from waffle irons that make very thin waffles to those that can make waffle cones. HOW TO OBSERVE NATIONAL WAFFLE IRON DAY Break out your waffle iron and give it a good work out. Use #NationalWaffleIronDay to share your masterpieces on social media. HISTORY NATIONAL WAFFLE IRON DAY The origins of National Waffle Iron Day are unknown at this time. About National Day Calendar National Day Calendar® is the authoritative source for fun, unusual and unique National Days! Since our humble beginnings on National Popcorn Day in 2013, we now track nearly 1,500 National Days, National Weeks and National Months. In addition, our research team continues to uncover the origins of existing National Days as well as discover new, exciting days for everyone to celebrate. Whether you want to celebrate your favorite mail carrier and flip flops, share your joy for bacon and chocolate cake or enjoy popcorn (our office favorite) on National Popcorn Day, stay in-the-know by signing up for our e-mail updates, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Don’t find yourself unprepared on Talk Like a Pirate Day or Answer the Phone Like Buddy the Elf Day – join us as we #CelebrateEveryDay!
At first, I felt that Delpit’s reading could not be connected in any way to the Allan Johnson reading entitled “Privilege, Power, and Difference”. However, when Delpit stated, “…because it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense of who you are, and being willing to see yourself in the unflattering light of another’s angry gaze…”, I automatically started making connections to Johnson’s reading from last week and looked at Delpit’s reading with a new perspective. Delpit focuses on communicating across cultures in order to address the idea of “power” and how the voice of white people tends to overpower the voices of minority groups. Throughout her article, she seems to side with the African American race in order to point out the power struggle between blacks and whites. At first when reading the article, I was taken back how she seemed to point her finger at the white population and the accusations she made about how we treat black people, but as the article went on I soon realized what she meant. Delpit gave an example of how a Native American student didn’t possess “acceptable writing skills”, yet was still passed anyways and allowed into a teacher education program. This student’s teachers passed her with improper writing skills, knowing that she was not prepared for her future career. Delpit then goes on to say that certain teachers argued that this student should not have been let into the teaching program. I began to wonder why her teachers passed her and why she was admitted into the program with the lack of these skills. I then remembered when Johnson was sitting at a restaurant with his black colleague, and how it was hard for him to discuss certain issues with her. It is almost like the white race “avoids” anything that has to do with language, race, diversity, etc. that they think will cause conflict. This is why I believe the teachers that Delpit referred to passed the Native American student and accepted her into the teaching program, even if her written language wasn’t up to par. The faculty wanted to prevent any conflict that would make them seem that they declined a student due to her written language skills, and therefore were discriminating against her. Another example that Delpit gave that made me think of Johnson was when teachers speak “indirectly” to African American students and do not demonstrate the authoritarian power in which the students expect. This made me think of Johnson’s idea of how “all people are the problem” and how the dominant race subconsciously categorize people. If the teachers would take the time to think about it from the students’ perspective, this problem may be solvable. Going back to Delpit’s quote that was stated at the beginning of this blog, I feel that her and Allan Johnson have the same overall idea. People need to “…put our beliefs on hold and crease to exist as ourselves for a moment…” in order to view the problem that we have as a society and try to solve it. I think that this statement summarizes the overall idea of both these articles, even though Johnson and Delpit take a completely different approach of explaining it.
Introduction: By the First Sunday after Christmas, by and large, our culture has completely finished with its observance of the holidays. As Christians, though, we realize that the celebration of our Savior’s birth goes on and on, and we remember that with a full twelve days of Christmas, a celebration that only ends then by transitioning to Epiphany, a further celebration of the incarnation. In some parts of the world, there’s another custom that can help us celebrate the ongoing feast. December 26 is—or at least was—observed as Boxing Day. I understand that our English friends joke about Boxing Day as the day you box up all the Christmas decorations and put them back up in the attic. But actually, the tradition is that on Boxing Day, December 26, masters would present gifts to their servants. At least in this small way, the roles of master and servant were reversed, with the master rendering a sort of service to the servants. In our Epistle this morning, we hear about the Master giving a gift to his servants that truly does reverse the traditional roles. The Master gives his Son so that the servants—slaves even—actually become sons, heirs, themselves. We might think of this First Sunday after Christmas as a spiritual Boxing Day. By the Master, God the Father, sending forth his Son, you are no longer a slave. Instead, Christ Was Born to Deliver Us from Slavery for Sonship. I. We were all once slaves. A. Paul says immediately before our text that we were “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” (4:3). 1. If you want to get elementary about things, here’s the way the world works: if you want something, you have to earn it. (Give examples: a paycheck, groceries, affection from another person.) 2. But if you can’t pay whatever it costs, you’ll always be a slave to trying. 3. If we had to cut our own deal with God, that’s the way it would be. We’d have to do or pay whatever it took to earn God’s favor and a ticket to paradise. B. We were, in fact, under the principle of the Law and therefore slaves. 1. God’s Holy Law declares what we are to do and not do, the price of holiness. 2. But we can’t pay up, can’t fulfill the Law’s holy demands. (Give examples of sins that are common among your hearers.) 3. That left us, by nature, always trying, never achieving—slaves to the Law. II. But Christ, God’s Son, came to redeem us from our slavery (vv 4–5). A. He came in “the fullness of time.” (Elaborate from Textual Notes section.) 1. When God had prepared receptive communities throughout the Mediterranean. 2. When the temple had been rebuilt. 3. When the region shared a common language. 4. When Roman rule led to fulfillment of the messianic prophecies. 5. When the pax Romana facilitated the spread of the Gospel. B. At the incarnation, God, the Master, sent the eternal Christ to reverse roles with us. 1. He was God, the Son, from all eternity. 2. But he was born of the Virgin Mary, becoming truly one of us. 3. And he was born under the Law, taking our place as a slave to keeping the Law. C. For us, then, Christ rendered obedience to the Law. 1. He kept the Law perfectly, fulfilling what we had failed to do. 2. But he endured the curse of the Law anyway, taking our punishment upon himself. 3. He took this curse as the price necessary to redeem us (Gal 3:13). III. Therefore, we now live as sons and heirs of God (Gal 4:5–7). A. Christ’s reversing roles with us—taking our place under the Law, fulfilling it, and paying the price for our breaking it—has put us in his role, adopted as sons. 1. This adoption is given by way of Baptism (Gal 3:27–29). 2. This adoption is ours through faith in Christ (Gal 3:26). 3. This adoption is demonstrated by the gift of the Spirit. B. So we have the full rights as sons. 1. The right to make requests of God. a. We pray as sons, not as slaves. b. We have the closest possible relationship to our God. As Jesus taught his disciples to call God “Father,” we have the privilege of calling him “Abba.” c. The Holy Spirit even helps us to pray. 2. The right to an inheritance through God. a. We have our share in the inheritance now—this privileged, forgiven relationship. b. We look forward to an eternal inheritance. Conclusion: For one day a year, Boxing Day makes a fine tradition—the master reversing roles with his servants. But our Christmas celebration isn’t one day a year, or two, or even twelve. Because Christ reversed roles with us, taking our place as slaves under the Law, we can celebrate every day as our spiritual Boxing Day. Amen.
Power generated in power stations pass through large and complex networks like transformers, overhead lines, cables and other equipment and reaches at the end users. It is fact that the unit of electric energy generated by Power Station does not match with the units distributed to the consumers. Some percentage of the units is lost in the distribution network. This difference in the generated and distributed units is known as Transmission and Distribution loss. Transmission and Distribution loss are the amounts that are not paid for by users. T&D Losses = (Energy Input to feeder(Kwh) – Billed Energy to Consumer(Kwh)) / Energy Input kwh x 100 There are two types of Transmission and Distribution Losses: - Technical Losses - Non Technical Losses (Commercial Losses) 1. Technical Losses The technical losses are due to energy dissipated in the conductors, equipment used for transmission line, transformer, subtransmission line and distribution line and magnetic losses in transformers. Technical losses are normally 22.5%, and directly depend on the network characteristics and the mode of operation. The major amount of losses in a power system is in primary and secondary distribution lines. While transmission and sub-transmission lines account for only about 30% of the total losses. Therefore the primary and secondary distribution systems must be properly planned to ensure within limits. - The unexpected load increase was reflected in the increase of technical losses above the normal level - Losses are inherent to the distribution of electricity and cannot be eliminated. There are two Type of Technical Losses. 1. Permanent / Fixed Technical losses - Fixed losses do not vary according to current. These losses take the form of heat and noise and occur as long as a transformer is energized - Between 1/4 and 1/3 of technical losses on distribution networks are fixed losses. Fixed losses on a network can be influenced in the ways set out below - Corona Losses - Leakage Current Losses - Dielectric Losses - Open-circuit Losses - Losses caused by continuous load of measuring elements - Losses caused by continuous load of control elements 2. Variable Technical losses Variable losses vary with the amount of electricity distributed and are, more precisely, proportional to the square of the current. Consequently, a 1% increase in current leads to an increase in losses of more than 1%. - Between 2/3 and 3/4 of technical (or physical) losses on distribution networks are variable Losses. - By increasing the cross sectional area of lines and cables for a given load, losses will fall. This leads to a direct trade-off between cost of losses and cost of capital expenditure. It has been suggested that optimal average utilization rate on a distribution network that considers the cost of losses in its design could be as low as 30 per cent. - Joule losses in lines in each voltage level - Impedance losses - Losses caused by contact resistance. Main Reasons for Technical Losses 1. Lengthy Distribution lines In practically 11 KV and 415 volts lines, in rural areas are extended over long distances to feed loads scattered over large areas. Thus the primary and secondary distributions lines in rural areas are largely radial laid usually extend over long distances. This results in high line resistance and therefore high I2R losses in the line. - Haphazard growths of sub-transmission and distribution system in to new areas. - Large scale rural electrification through long 11kV and LT lines. 2. Inadequate Size of Conductors of Distribution lines The size of the conductors should be selected on the basis of KVA x KM capacity of standard conductor for a required voltage regulation, but rural loads are usually scattered and generally fed by radial feeders. The conductor size of these feeders should be adequate. 3. Installation of Distribution transformers away from load centers Distribution Transformers are not located at Load center on the Secondary Distribution System. In most of case Distribution Transformers are not located centrally with respect to consumers. Consequently, the farthest consumers obtain an extremity low voltage even though a good voltage levels maintained at the transformers secondary. This again leads to higher line losses. (The reason for the line losses increasing as a result of decreased voltage at the consumers end therefore in order to reduce the voltage drop in the line to the farthest consumers, the distribution transformer should be located at the load center to keep voltage drop within permissible limits.) 4. Low Power Factor of Primary and secondary distribution system In most LT distribution circuits normally the Power Factor ranges from 0.65 to 0.75. A low Power Factor contributes towards high distribution losses. For a given load, if the Power Factor is low, the current drawn in high And the losses proportional to square of the current will be more. Thus, line losses owing to the poor PF can be reduced by improving the Power Factor. This can be done by application of shunt capacitors. - Shunt capacitors can be connected either in secondary side (11 KV side) of the 33/11 KV power transformers or at various point of Distribution Line. - The optimum rating of capacitor banks for a distribution system is 2/3rd of the average KVAR requirement of that distribution system. - The vantage point is at 2/3rd the length of the main distributor from the transformer. - A more appropriate manner of improving this PF of the distribution system and thereby reduce the line losses is to connect capacitors across the terminals of the consumers having inductive loads. - By connecting the capacitors across individual loads, the line loss is reduced from 4 to 9% depending upon the extent of PF improvement. 5. Bad Workmanship Bad Workmanship contributes significantly role towards increasing distribution losses. Joints are a source of power loss. Therefore the number of joints should be kept to a minimum. Proper jointing techniques should be used to ensure firm connections. Replacement of deteriorated wires and services should also be made timely to avoid any cause of leaking and loss of power. 6. Feeder Phase Current and Load Balancing> One of the easiest loss savings of the distribution system is balancing current along three-phase circuits. Feeder phase balancing also tends to balance voltage drop among phases giving three-phase customers less voltage unbalance. Amperage magnitude at the substation doesn’t guarantee load is balanced throughout the feeder length. Feeder phase unbalance may vary during the day and with different seasons. Feeders are usually considered “balanced” when phase current magnitudes are within 10.Similarly, balancing load among distribution feeders will also lower losses assuming similar conductor resistance. This may require installing additional switches between feeders to allow for appropriate load transfer. Bifurcation of feeders according to Voltage regulation and Load. 7. Load Factor Effect on Losses Power consumption of customer varies throughout the day and over seasons. Residential customers generally draw their highest power demand in the evening hours. Same commercial customer load generally peak in the early afternoon. Because current level (hence, load) is the primary driver in distribution power losses, keeping power consumption more level throughout the day will lower peak power loss and overall energy losses. Load Factor = Average load in a specified time period / peak load during that time period. For example, for 30 days month (720 hours) peak Load of the feeder is 10 MW. If the feeder supplied a total energy of 5,000 MWH, the load factor for that month is (5,000 MWh)/ (10MW x 720) =0.69. Lower power and energy losses are reduced by raising the load factor, which, evens out feeder demand variation throughout the feeder. The load factor has been increase by offering customers “time-of-use” rates. Companies use pricing power to influence consumers to shift electric-intensive activities during off-peak times (such as, electric water and space heating, air conditioning, irrigating, and pool filter pumping). 8. Transformer Sizing and Selection Distribution transformers use copper conductor windings to induce a magnetic field into a grain-oriented silicon steel core. Therefore, transformers have both load losses and no-load core losses. Transformer copper losses vary with load based on the resistive power loss equation (P loss = I2R). For some utilities, economic transformer loading means loading distribution transformers to capacity-or slightly above capacity for a short time-in an effort to minimize capital costs and still maintain long transformer life. However, since peak generation is usually the most expensive, total cost of ownership (TCO) studies should take into account the cost of peak transformer losses. Increasing distribution transformer capacity during peak by one size will often result in lower total peak power dissipation-more so if it is overloaded. Transformer no-load excitation loss (iron loss) occurs from a changing magnetic field in the transformer core whenever it is energized. Core loss varies slightly with voltage but is essentially considered constant. Fixed iron loss depends on transformer core design and steel lamination molecular structure. Improved manufacturing of steel cores and introducing amorphous metals (such as metallic glass) have reduced core losses. 9. Balancing 3 phase loads Balancing 3-phase loads periodically throughout a network can reduce losses significantly. It can be done relatively easily on overhead networks and consequently offers considerable scope for cost effective loss reduction, given suitable incentives. 10. Switching off transformers One method of reducing fixed losses is to switch off transformers in periods of low demand. If two transformers of a certain size are required at a substation during peak periods, only one might be required during times of low demand so that the other transformer might be switched off in order to reduce fixed losses. This will produce some offsetting increase in variable losses and might affect security and quality of supply as well as the operational condition of the transformer itself. However, these trade-offs will not be explored and optimized unless the cost of losses are taken into account. 11. Other Reasons for Technical Losses - Unequal load distribution among three phases in L.T system causing high neutral currents. - leaking and loss of power - Over loading of lines. - Abnormal operating conditions at which power and distribution transformers are operated - Low voltages at consumer terminals causing higher drawl of currents by inductive loads. - Poor quality of equipment used in agricultural pumping in rural areas, cooler air-conditioners and industrial loads in urban areas.
Bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) infects many types of epithelial cells in both the upper and lower respiratory tracts, including tonsilar epithelium. In humans, HRSV is considered one of the “common cold” viruses in older children, adolescents and adults. It is likely that the same thing occurs in cattle with BRSV infections explains John Ellis, DVM, PhD, Dipl. ACVP, Dipl. ACVM, Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan. In a pure RSV infection you have what could be called an upstairs/downstairs lung. “You have an anterior-ventral atelectasis and dorsally you have either emphysema, interlobular emphysema or even subcutaneous emphysema when you get rupture of some of the alveoli,” Ellis says. “You can often see big bullae but you might not always. You may just see interstitial emphysema. It’s pretty dramatic and pretty characteristic. Interestingly, you don’t seem to see that degree of emphysema with a pure PI3V infection.” Shawn Blood, DVM, Hitch Consulting Service, Guymon, Okla., says the emphysema is the most profound thing he and his feedyard technicians see on a postmortem exam. “Most of the routine postmortem exams on cattle that die with respiratory disease are typical Mannheimia pneumonias; it would be the one that rises to the top and what our technicians and I see the most.” Ellis agrees and says from a teaching perspective maybe that’s part of the confusion. “In virtually every dead feedlot animal we see there are going to be multiple agents involved, so it’s hard to implicate any one, BRSV in particular. It becomes really difficult. I think anytime you get bronchial constriction, whether it is because there is debris in there or whether you get hyperresponsiveness of the airways, you’re going to have a tendency to get that emphysema. In fact, cattle are prone to develop emphysema because they have poor collateral ventilation in the lung.” How BRSV works Unlike some other viruses, Ellis says it’s rare to have viremia with either BRSV or parainfluenza-3 virus (PI3V). “The reason is where the virus replicates and also where it buds,” he explains. “It buds from the apical surface, so it doesn’t really have a chance to get into the circulation, whereas herpes viruses bud from the basal lateral surfaces as well, as does bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV), so that gives those viruses a chance to get beyond the basement membrane and into the circulation, then you get viremia.” Ellis says immunosuppressed individuals can have viremia with RSV, which is documented in humans, and PI3V as well, but that probably doesn’t happen that often in cattle. “The thing about viremia is it’s generally going to be with systemic infections like bovine herpesvirus-1 (BHV-1) and BVDV that have a viremic phase, and not something that just infects the respiratory epithelium and buds from the apical surface.” Ellis says probably most of the budding that occurs is non-cytopathic. “It’s only at the end of the infection in the individual cell that you get death of the cell, and that makes sense from the virus’ perspective,” he says. “You don’t want to be killing the cell you’re living in too early.” That tends to happen maybe four to five days after infection. It’s not clear, however, how those cells actually die. Ellis notes that it used to be that cells died by either necrosis or apoptosis. Now there’s many more pathways recognized as to how cells die. “It turns out that most viruses, including BRSV and PI3V, have anti-apoptic mechanisms which prevent the death of the cell, which makes a lot of sense from the virus’ perspective,” he says. “You want to prolong the life of the cell you’re replicating in and increase the number of progeny you have. It’s pretty complicated at the cellular level and we don’t really understand completely what’s going on, with any of these viruses, in terms of the interactions between the virus and the cell.” BRSV damages the respiratory epithelium. Ellis says it’s controversial whether it’s from necrosis and apoptois, but there’s direct damage to the mucociliary escalator, setting animals up for secondary bacterial infection. The airways are disrupted because of the virus and there is a dramatic expiratory dyspnea because of the clogging of airways with dead epithelial cells and inflammatory debris. “That’s what leads to the dramatic expiratory dyspnea with BRSV that doesn’t seem to be as dramatic with PI3V,” Ellis says. BRSV targets naïve cattle Calvin Booker, DVM, Feedlot Health Management Services, Okotoks, Alberta, says there are two main populations where he sees BRSV. “One factor is age or some proxy of age which is probably size/body weight,” he says. “I think if they’re lighter we’re more likely to see disease with BRSV. But in older populations or bigger populations, if they’re naïve populations coming in, they’re probably as susceptible as anything because they’ve never been to town before; they’ve never seen the virus.” Kelly Lechtenberg, DVM, PhD, Midwest Veterinary Services, Oakland, Neb., sees the same thing. “Where we’ve seen our most severe clinical effects are in big, naïve cattle that have come off of grass into the feedyards. Our experience a couple of different times has been that naïve groups of cattle come in, get exposed, get stressed and crash.” Two cases that stick out in his mind were in the same feedyard. Cattle arrived during very hot weather in July or August. “I believe that we had some of the cattle shedding the virus and conditions of cattle grouping closely together under sprinkler systems combined with extremely high respiratory rates contributed to a viral epidemic. I didn’t think too much about this until we had a second case that was very similar.” Blood has not seen much BRSV in his Oklahoma feedyards, but he used to see quite a bit of it in Nebraska. “We saw some on nursing calves in the summertime. The guys call it summer pneumonia in calves. We saw some in the feedyard, but I haven’t seen it in big yearling cattle as some of the others have described. In general, I’ve seen it more in younger or smaller animals.” Blood adds that in the Oklahoma Panhandle and Kansas, he doesn’t have many situations where naïve yearlings are coming in. “The cattle that we typically receive have had several incidences where they’ve been commingled with other cattle over their lifetime,” he says. “To have a population of naïve yearlings would be rare for us.” Naivety seems to be the key, says Dan Givens, DVM, PhD, Auburn University. “It’s interesting how, sometimes unintentionally, ‘good management’ without strategic vaccination or serendipitous exposure to viruses can set up more of a train wreck than management that involves some commingling where calves develop natural immunity because of the groups that they’ve been exposed to. So, we’ve seen a couple of situations where well-intentioned management that lacked strategic vaccination would result in naïve calves that can really be problematic when the virus gets into the group of calves and then disseminates within the group to cause problems.” From infection to clinical signs From an experimental standpoint, Ellis has seen clinical signs of BRSV as early as three days after challenge, and severe clinical signs usually five days after challenge. Booker agrees and says if you go back and look at situations where BRSV outbreaks have occurred in some naive populations, they usually don’t happen the day that the cattle arrive. “It’s usually some time near the end of the first week when you start to see clinical signs of BRSV, or maybe even two weeks at times,” Booker says. “So that probably fits with exposure post-feedlot followed by a time period for the virus to both replicate within individual animals and spread within the population.” Booker says the outbreaks usually last two or three days, “But that’s usually because, as opposed to just counting the sick ones and the dead ones, we usually try to step in and mass medicate. I’m not sure we’re accomplishing anything that wouldn’t happen if we left them alone or not.” Lechtenberg says in challenge models he starts to see a pretty significant virus shedding by day three, with temperature increases and some respiratory distress at five to seven days post-challenge, which last about five to seven days. “In a clinical situation, onset would be less predictable because you never really know the exposure pattern,” he explains. “Usually I expect onset within the first two weeks of arrival. The duration will spread out also, since susceptible cattle are not all exposed at the same time. New cases are generally recognized for several days. We usually intervene with modified-live vaccination once we figure out what’s going on.” When dealing the BRSV-infected cattle, Lechtenberg hears cowboys describe the cattle more in terms of “respiratory character” than “depression”, which is typically associated with most BRD cases. “I used to have a bias that a lot of the depression we saw was due to fever and that the cattle were showing signs of depression because they had elevated temperatures. Now I believe that most of the depression we see is seemingly related to bacterial components of BRD and the associated toxemia and immune response related to the bacterial infection.” Lechtenberg conducts several viral challenge studies every year and says it’s interesting to observe a specific viral infection without confounding factors of other viruses, other bacteria or environmental stressors that are usually present in most clinical feedlot cases. “Based our experience, BHV-1 and BRSV are really prime examples of pathogens (especially BHV-1) that cause cattle to elicit a very strong febrile response and at the same time only minimal clinical depression. The cowboys would say that cattle look pretty darn good for being ‘that hot’. These are the type of cattle that a cowboy will ride past today and make a mental note to himself and say ‘I want to see that calf again tomorrow’.” Lechtenberg says if that calf was pulled, put in the chute and temped, they might find that he is running 106–107°F and might be a little off feed that day. He might have dropped a few pounds, have a serous nasal discharge and the eyes might be a little bit watery. Compared to BHV-1, Lechtenberg says both viral infections take a little time to clear. “In both cases, most calves will look better several days later. BRSV calves will clinically recover quicker than BHV-1 calves. In addition to lung pathology, the BHV-1 cattle also need to heal the upper respiratory tract and repair the clearance mechanism and are more prone to secondary bacterial infections.” Booker has had similar experiences and says when you have a clinical outbreak of BRSV and a clinical outbreak of BHV-1, the clinical outbreak of BRSV ends much sooner and the cattle look better very quickly once it stops. “BHV-1 drags on forever and probably part of that is because of all the secondary bacterial infections that occur. It can take weeks or months to clear up a BHV-1 outbreak. If it’s a true BHV-1 outbreak with clinical disease in the pen, it takes a long time to clear it up. With BRSV, a few days to a week later, they don’t look like the same cattle.” Calves and BRSV “Summer pneumonia” of beef calves is caused by BRSV, but how it circulates through the cowherd can be confusing. Ellis says most of the adults can have repeated infections, and there can even be subclinical infection at some level. “I think you can have subclinical infection with most respiratory pathogens,” Ellis says. “With herpes virus such as BHV-1, it’s different because there’s actually a latent infection when you’re not expressing many of the genes and then at some point the infection recrudesces or comes back with replication of the virus, which is very different from the situation with BRSV and other viruses. They don’t hide out in neurons and not express their genes. It’s a very different scenario.” The term “summer pneumonia”, however, is really a misnomer, says Ellis. “It often happens in the summer but, but it coincides when the maternal antibodies are gone. I think it probably doesn’t have that much to do with it being summer.” “It’s the timing of the maternal antibodies in the spring calving herd,” adds Givens. “The duration of maternal immunity against BRSV is relatively short. It all depends on the initial antibody titer in the calf to determine when the calf becomes susceptible.” It doesn’t really matter what the specificity of the colostral antibodies is for, notes Ellis. “They are all going to fall off at a set interval; about a three-week half-life for IgG in the absence of infection.” Do calves have more of one antibody than another from maternal immunity? Ellis doesn’t think at an individual antibody molecule level it matters what the specificity is. “If it’s an IgG molecule it’s going to decay at a given rate, in the absence of infection or ‘using it up’. It’s poorly documented, but an active infection probably depletes the antibody specific to it, which would effectively decrease the half-life. So in the case of a BVDV, maybe you generally have higher titers in cows that are passed to calves, so it’s a ‘more is better’ type of thing.” Givens says that perhaps, as that calf loses the BHV-1 titer from maternal antibodies, there might be enough recrudescence in the herd that there’s exposure at the right time and just as the maternal antibodies are declining, the calf is exposed, resulting in immunity rather than disease. “In contrast, BRSV maternal antibodies decline but there’s not that low level of exposure, so finally when it does reappear with the long-term or prolonged infection, we’re not sure how it gets entry. Then you get a situation where you truly have a naive calf and get disease. But a lot of that is hypothetical.” Ellis believes that most calves, and most human babies, are going to be exposed to RSV while they have maternal antibodies. “That’s the reason why most kids don’t have clinical RSV even though the virus is all over the place. The virus is all over the place in the human population but very few kids are hospitalized for it. Subclinical endemic infection is free vaccination for young animals. When that occurs in the face of maternal antibodies that’s nature’s way of protecting the population.” Whether it’s bovine or human RSV, it’s an endemic virus. Most kids are probably exposed while they have maternal antibodies; they’re primed effectively, Ellis says. The RSV disease in humans and cattle doesn’t get sequentially worse, which would be hypersensitivity, it gets sequentially less severe because you have a better immune response, a more mature immune response. “This is completely opposite of the hypersensitivity idea, because you tend to get worse upon re-exposure, or at least not better if you are hypersensitive to something,” Ellis explains. “The whole hypersensitivity thing conveys the wrong idea. You just look at the population level and it can’t be right because otherwise most cattle would be having hypersensitivity reactions because the virus is all over the place.” He adds that just because a 2-month old calf with clinical signs and BRSV might die, it’s probably a naïve calf and very susceptible to BRSV, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it had hypersensitivity. But how does the BRSV get into the cowherd in the first place? Both of the paramyxoviruses, BRSV and PI3V, are endemic, and “Most individuals have free vaccination and don’t ever get sick,” Ellis says. “So, we only see the tip of the iceberg of those that haven’t been exposed when they had maternal antibodies. That’s a hypothesis but I think that explains the epidemiology. We focus on the sick animals, which is a minority.” Booker and Ellis make the parallel between calves to sending kids to kindergarten. “Whether it be kids or calves, you want some combination of free vaccination and iatrogenic vaccination to occur before they get there, otherwise it’s not going to be very effective and, and in the case of your kids, they frequently bring those respiratory pathogens home to you,” Ellis says. PI3V is included in many viral respiratory vaccinations, but as a disease itself it is significant? PI3V is not usually implicated in mortality by itself. Even in experimental situations, there is generally not going to be deaths without secondary bacterial infection. Ellis says in cow colostrum samples it’s virtually impossible to find a colostrum sample that doesn’t have antibodies to PI3V, which implies that it’s endemic at some level, and is widely vaccinated for. “It’s all over the place. Similarly to the situation in human medicine where they focus on RSV, it’s certainly still a major league player. There are not a lot of data that substantiate that, at least recent data from the United States. I’d be very surprised if it didn’t play a role in BRD, and I guess probably the best way to prove that is to just stop vaccinating for it.” One of the problems with quantifying the significance of PI3V, says Booker, is lack of updated research. “There has been a lot of research done on BRSV, BVDV and BHV-1, some that is older, some that is newer, but if you go try to look for research on PI3V, there just isn’t much of it there.” Ellis says there is a lot of good research on PI3V, but it’s old. One of the factors contributing to a failure to implicate PI3V is that it’s difficult to isolate because it’s shed for a relatively short time and it is labile. “You have sample at the right time, optimally four to five days after exposure,” he says. “You’re very unlikely to find it, or virtually any other respiratory virus, if you look with immunohistochemistry in the lungs of dead animals; it’s just gone. The viruses are there and gone, and you’re not usually going to find them postmortem in feedlot cattle that are sick for more than a week. So I think from a diagnostic perspective we have a sampling bias that has led to the false negatives in terms of its involvement.” Booker says if you look at the seroepidemiologic work, there’s not really good evidence, at least in Canada, that evidence of PI3V antibodies prior to feedlot arrival are associated with the subsequent occurrence of disease. “That’s different than the other three viral pathogens,” he says. IBR at the feedlot When Booker went to veterinary school, the most common pathogenesis of feedlot respiratory disease a.k.a. shipping fever, was infection with a respiratory virus — either a virus associated with a respiratory disease or an actual respiratory virus — and it was most commonly thought to be from bovine herpesvirus-1 (BHV-1), which causes infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR). “Having immersed myself in the field side of things, I’ve found it does occur, I’m just not sure it occurs that commonly, now or even 25 years ago,” Booker says. Ellis says Booker is referring to Martin’s work from eastern Canada which found very little IBR when they actually looked for it. “In western Canada we found very little association between BHV-1 titers and protection or susceptibility to disease,” Booker adds. “If there is one common virus that everybody vaccinated for, it was BHV-1, even at the cow herd level, so that may be a confounding factor.” How BHV-1 works Bovine herpesvirus-1 enters epithelial cells (and eventually nerves) in the upper airways of the respiratory system. Erosions and ulcers in the upper respiratory tract, notably the trachea, are the pathological hallmark of BHV-1 infections. These lesions occur from the lysis of infected cells which involves cell death by both necrosis and apoptosis, or programmed cell death. Widespread lysis of ciliated epithelium in the trachea disrupts the housekeeping functions of the mucociliary escalator, and results in a failure to clear bacteria from the upper airways, thereby resulting in deposition of bacteria in alveoli. One way the virus can be shed and spread is when the latent BHV-1 in a carrier animal recrudesces in situations such as stress. “There’s certainly the potential for that latency,” says Givens. “We’ve also seen that effective subcutaneous vaccination against BHV-1 does not prevent infection of the exposed animal and resulting nasal shed of low concentrations of BHV-1,” he says. “In contrast, calves that are vaccinated well for BVDV will not have a nasal shed of BVDV after they are challenged or exposed, but that’s not at all the case for BHV-1. Well-vaccinated calves for this herpes virus will shed a significantly lower titer of virus, but 70% of subcutaneously vaccinated calves that are challenged with BHV-1 by natural exposure to acutely infected animals will have some nasal shed of virus.” It’s a little bit of a different game, Givens says. “You’ve got those latently infected animals that when stressed certainly can recrudesce and shed some virus, but it’s interesting that calves that are effectively vaccinated and protected from disease, meaning you don’t see the spike in temperature or other clinical signs, still are likely to shed a low titer of BHV-1 from their nose. We realize that BHV-1 is replicating in those peripheral epithelial cells and being shed into the environment before the immune system totally gets to it.” Ellis says that’s true for PI3V and BRSV in terms of shedding and he believes part of that is due to the fact that we get clinical efficacy with parenteral vaccination to reduce shed, but to prevent infection, at least in the short term, we need an IgA response. “Parenteral vaccination usually doesn’t give a very robust IgA response,” he says. “Most of the efficacy studies done today have been done with parenteral vaccination and I think one of the big confounding variables is maternal antibodies at the time of parenteral vaccination.” Herpes viruses in general have a relatively short duration of clinical immunity; it could be over by 3 months of age, and they generally don’t elicit a very good antibody response to begin with. “I think we tend to disregard the importance of antibodies in reducing infection,” Ellis says. “T-cells are really only efficacious once a cell has been infected. So if you want to reduce the chances of shed and spread in an outbreak, what you really want is a good antibody response, and herpes virus antibodies tend not to be very high to begin with; following vaccination they tend to fall off rapidly. So that’s probably why re-vaccination, or re-exposure is necessary to boost that immunity and reduce infection.” Lechtenberg says it’s a common practice to boost with a modified-live IBR vaccine when cattle are re-implanted. “The major cost associated with re-vaccination when were facing an outbreak is all about the logistics of putting the cattle through the chute and the negative performance affect associated with the chute trip,” he says. “It has little to do with the cost of the product administered. I think it’s the BRD cases that can happen with certain groups of cattle on feed for 90–100 days are the reason that many sets of cattle have the IBR boosted. Booker doesn’t think there is very good published data that shows that routine revaccination of cattle with IBR vaccine at 70, 80, 90 days or whenever they come back through for re-implant, prevents late-days-on-feed respiratory disease or more specifically, IBR outbreaks. ”But having said that, probably any of us who have been in private practice have been through feedlots that have had IBR outbreaks and have found classic cases of clinical IBR. It’s a pretty nasty disease syndrome when it goes through a feedlot, or any group of cattle for that matter.” Booker says he goes back and looks, there’s usually been some break down in the revaccination programs so that there are extended periods of time when large groups of animals in a feedlot haven’t been routinely revaccinated. “And in feedlots with a very systematic management style where things don’t get missed, you hardly ever see an IBR case pop up. We had a feedlot where we had a full blown IBR outbreak in western Canada this January–February–March, but we haven’t seen one for a few years.” Clinical examination, post-mortem examination and nasal swabs for laboratory confirmation of clinical cases are common ways to diagnose IBR. Booker has had both viral cultures and polymerase chain reaction tests (PCR) done at two different diagnostic laboratories. Ellis says it’s not hard to isolate BHV-1. “If you’ve got to be dealing with one respiratory virus in terms of diagnostic approach, BHV-1 is probably the easiest to deal with because it’s pretty straightforward to culture,” he says. “There is a lot of it generally shed, and it’s pretty robust compared to the other respiratory viruses. The paramyxo viruses in general are a lot more difficult to culture Coronavirus requires a special cell line to culture; BRSV and PI3V are labile. BHV-1 is pretty straight-forward.” BRSV vs. AIP Acute interstitial pneumonia (AIP) can be confused with BRSV, but they are very different. “From a clinical perspective in the live animal they look the same because affected animals have trouble breathing, trouble moving air out of the lung, so clinically they look very similar,” Calvin Booker, DVM, explains. “Once they’re dead though, AIP and BRSV look like different lesions on postmortem and the clinical progression or picture is different.” Booker says the type 2 pneumocyte hyperplasia in the chronic stages of the process in the lung looks the same. But AIP usually happens in heavy cattle, long days on feed and closer to slaughter weight. “We don’t usually see BRSV in those populations probably because they’ve been exposed to the virus much earlier in their stay in the feedlot with the exception of some really bizarre circumstances when the cattle didn’t get exposed or vaccinated,” he says.
In the 1970s, an archaeological dig located at La Cotta de St. Brelade on the island called Jersey, one of the Channel Islands that makes up the Bailiwick of Jersey, uncovered a cave that has produced evidence of Neanderthals who stayed in the area periodically. The island, located between Britain and France, is believed to have once been an extension of Normandy, France along with the other Channel Islands, Alderney, Brecqhou, Burhou, Casquets, Écréhous , Grande-Île, Guernsey, Herm, Jethou, Les Dirouilles, Les Pierres de Lecq, Lihou, Minquiers, and Sark. While Jersey is closer to France, it is considered to be one of the British Crown Dependencies. Tools made of stone and flint that have been sharpened to almost razor-like edges and pieces of bone which have been there anywhere from 180 thousand to 40 thousand years reveal that Neanderthals may have visited the site when the land masses were joined together before the English Channel appeared. Although glaciers covered the region at the time, the mouth of the cave would have been visible and accessible. The fact that the tools are from rocks not native to the area leads researchers to believe these early hominins traveled there across the ice taking several days to complete the trip on foot but did not stay for very long. Even after the ice receded it is believed that Neanderthals continued to visit the site for many generations. Dr. Matt Pope, a Senior Research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, a component college of the federal University of London, has stated that he believes this area to be one of the most significant Neanderthal sites in Europe and indicates that is one of the most recent places they would have congregated. Studies have shown that early Neanderthals, formerly believed to be plodding cavemen that did their best to eke out a living during the ice age in Europe, were more advanced than archaeologists originally thought. Discoveries have shown detailed tools, and bone carvings were used to fashion homes from mammoth bones and surrounding materials. The National Museum of Natural History in Paris discovered a 44 thousand-year-old structure built from mammoth bones that were 26 feet wide, indicating possible communal living. Intricate carvings embellished the inside. In other locations in Europe, more cave carvings have been found, as well as bird talons that may have served as personal adornments, the first known to exist. Some of the carvings display ocher coloring, suggesting that Neanderthals were making crude dyes from natural materials. Evidence of fire and burnt flint has also been found at the La Cotta site. Why this site was so popular with the Neanderthal population is presently unknown. It may have been a gathering place for the trading of goods and news, or a stopover station for those traveling even further into the European continent. It could have been a religious site drawing pilgrimages on a regular basis or even a vacation spot enjoyed by early humans due to its close proximity to water. Herd mammals would have been plentiful in the area so it is possible the Neanderthals may have come to harvest food and skins, Mail Online reported. Researchers plan to use advanced archaeological techniques to study the seabed of the English Channel in hopes of finding more evidence of Neanderthal ephemera and possible population movements during the early post ice age years. The National Environment Research Council at Polaris House in Swindon, Wiltshire, England – just east of London and the UK’s largest sponsor of independent environmental science, which attracts some of the most talented science-based researchers – has provided funds to improve the area, lessening the chance of future erosion and providing for the technologies needed to continue excavation work.
Yá’át’ééh shik’éí dóó shidiné’é. (Greetings my relatives and my people.) This is a more formal, yet intimate, way of greeting a large group. It’s part of an introduction that commonly precedes a speech, or address, of some sort. Ak’éí, and most nouns that are preceded by a-, is a non-possessive from of “relatives” and “family.” Add shi/ni/bi/nihi/etc. to say my/your/his (or her)/our (their) family. Here are a few elder family terms that are useful to know: \|In English\|\|In Navajo (Diné Bizaad)\| \|amá sání\|\|maternal grandmother\| \|análí asdzą́ą́\|\|maternal grandmother\| \|análí hastiin\|\|paternal grandfather\| In combination with the Diné (Navajo) clan system, these words can extend outside the immediate family. For example, if a woman’s second clan (her father’s clan) were the same as another man’s first clan (his mother’s clan), she calls him her older/younger father depending on his age relative to her own father’s age. There are many unique relationships that arise from this system.
With the Indian government going ahead with the proposed Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur, environmentalists in India continued to mount their protest in north-eastern region of India. Originally conceptualised and awarded to Indian state-owned North Eastern Electric Power Corporation Ltd. (Neepco) in 1999, the giant power project was handed over to a consortium comprising National Hydroelectric Power Corp (NHPC) and Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam (SJVN) and the Manipur government last year. "The mega hydel power project would be commissioned despite opposition within the country and outside," Prem Chand Pankaj, chairman-cum-managing director of Neepco, told in an interview with Indo Asian News Service last week. Pankaj said, "We would soon ask the government to return the project again to Neepco for its early commissioning. The delay in execution of the vital power project would create numerous problems. Some so-called environmentalists and NGOs for the past few years have been campaigning against the project and misleading people," said Pankaj, who took over as Neepco CMD last month. Setting aside fears, he said only 74 families would be rehabilitated elsewhere due to the implementation of the Rs 8,138-crore ($1.7-billion) Tipaimukh project. But the environmentalists and activists in North-eastern India and Bangladesh fear that rivers flowing down the stream in both the countries could be adversely impacted by the project. Desertification in Bangladesh Environmental activists fear, this project will start desertification in Bangladesh, which is already suffering desertification in northwestern districts due to Farakka Dam. It will also change the ecosystem of Sylhet region. It would affect the production of rice, the staple food, which require huge amount of water to grow. It will also affect fish production because fish is mainly found in the monsoon when many part of that area goes under water. This will immensely affect the flora and fauna and the entire biodiversity of the region. Apart from the experts and environmental groups, the opposition parties in Bangladesh and the people of Sylhet region in particular demanding the project to be scrapped. Assam students' group Meanwhile in North-Eastern India, members of Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba-Chhatra Parishad (AJYCP) on July 12 staged demonstrations at the district and subdivisional headquarters all over the state of Assam in support of their demand for abandoning the existing and proposed mega dam hydel projects of the NE region and neighbouring Bhutan. The AJYCP members also sent memorandums to Dr Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, demanding immediate steps to scrap all the mega dam projects. In Guwahati city, the members of the Guwahati district committee of the AJYCP staged a demonstration near the Panbazar ferry station. Later they sent a memorandum to the Prime Minister through the Deputy Commissioner of Kamrup (Metro) district. Meanwhile, Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti general secretary Akhil Gogoi, in an open letter to Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi, questioned the legitimacy of his claim that the mega dam projects would solve the State's problem of floods. He also described the bid of the Government of India to set up 168 hydel projects in Arunachal Pradesh as a colonial attempt to exploit the water resources of the region. The State Government should not extend support to the Central Government in this respect, said the KMSS general secretary. The KMSS general secretary also alleged that the Central Government has been ignoring the rights of Assam over the inter-State rivers flowing through its territory. The environment impact assessment (EIA) studies conducted for setting up the hydel projects in the NE region have not covered the issue of impact of these projects in downstream Assam, he alleged. The cumulative impact of these projects, together with the Bhutanese ones with the joint capacity of generating 15,000 MW of power, should be properly studied before going for setting up such projects, said the KMSS general secretary. The Tipaimukh project, located on the Barak river under Churachandpur district in western Manipur, is under attack from opposition parties and environmental groups in Bangladesh, which say it could cause desertification in their country. Part of the Brahmaputra river system, the Barak bifurcates into the Surma and Kushiyara rivers on entering Sylhet district in eastern Bangladesh. Khaleda's letter to Indian PM Bangladesh's opposition leader and former Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia in a letter also asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to stop construction of the project. Incidentally, at the end of the three-day India visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in January last year, a joint communiqué by the two countries had said: "The Prime Minister of India reiterated the assurance that India would not take steps on the Tipaimukh project that would adversely impact Bangladesh." Additionally, a 10-member Bangladeshi parliamentary delegation conducted an aerial survey of the Tipaimukh dam in July 2009 after opposition intensified in Dhaka over the hydel project's possible ecological impact. India's Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde had then told the delegation that the Tipaimukh project was not an irrigation project or a water diversion scheme. "He said it was a hydel project and in no way would harm Bangladesh's interest," an official of the Manipur power department told journalists at Imphal quoting Union Power Minister. Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna in his recent visit to Bangladesh has told his counterpart Dipu Moni that India would not harm its neighbour's interests. The project, said TC Borgohain, a senior Neepco engineer, will regulate excess water and help control floods in Sylhet district of Bangladesh as well as western Manipur and southern Assam in India. "It will open a new waterway from Haldia port in West Bengal to landlocked northeastern India via Bangladesh," Borgohain told IANS, and added that water used for generating electricity would be released back into the river.
The History of Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Efforts Bay Agreement Update: The draft of a new Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement was released January 29, 2014 by the Chesapeake Bay Program. What the draft contains is commendable. But what it is missing is shocking: any commitment to reduce or eliminate toxics in the Bay or its watershed. Read More The first 20 words of the 1972 Clean Water Act are straightforward and completely impossible to misinterpret: "The objective of this Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation's waters." Thirty-seven years later, bodies of water across the U.S. are so polluted that huge areas are unable to support aquatic life, human health is at risk, and our economy is hurt. The Chesapeake Bay, one of the most polluted water bodies, is on EPA's "dirty waters" list. The Chesapeake Bay is arguably the most studied large body of water on earth. It is an unusually complex ecosystem, but there is a great deal of scientific consensus on the causes of its decline. First and foremost among these causes is a huge and systemic overabundance of human-introduced nitrogen and phosphorous flowing into the Bay from the land and the air. This excess of human-introduced nitrogen and phosphorous degrades water quality and contributes to the decline of the Bay's living resources. On September 3, 2013, CBF President Will Baker testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife at a field hearing entitled "Chesapeake Bay Restoration: Progress and Challenges." The purpose of the hearing was to explore the progress that has been made through the Chesapeake Bay Program toward Bay recovery, the effectiveness of current restoration programs and activities. Read the complete testimony Past Efforts: 1983-2010 - 1983: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) signed an agreement with the state of Maryland, the Commonwealths of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and the District of Columbia recognizing the need to act to clean up the Bay. - 1987: The governments signed another agreement that required a 40 percent reduction in nutrient pollution to the Bay by 2000. - 1992: The 1987 agreement was reaffirmed. - 1998: CBF published the first "State of the Bay" report card on the Bay's health, grading it a 27 on a scale of 100. - 2000: When it became apparent that the 2000 deadline would not be met, the United States and the other governments signed a third agreement. The Chesapeake 2000 agreement set a goal of improving water quality in the Bay sufficiently to get it off the Clean Water Act's "dirty waters list" by 2010. Among other steps, the 2000 agreement requires a 40 percent reduction in nitrogen and phosphorus pollution. - 2006: EPA admitted the terms of the 2000 agreement would not be met by the 2010 deadline—indeed likely not until 2020 or later. - 2010: CBF's 2010 "State of the Bay" report card grades the Bay a 31. It has long been noted that people cannot keep doing the same thing over and over and hope for different results. If we have any hope of breaking out of the static or even worsening conditions in which we find ourselves despite our best efforts, the federal, state, and local governments of the region simply must take dramatic action to bring about a major reduction in nitrogen and phosphorus entering the tributary system and the mainstem of the Bay. Forty years of intense scientific investigation by leading estuarine scientists have documented precisely why the Chesapeake is degraded and how to fix it. No other water body in the world can boast this level of scientific understanding. From the molecular to the macro, we know how this marvel of nature works, or doesn't. Most important, science has taught us that the 200-mile-long Chesapeake Bay with its 8,000 miles of shoreline are only one part of a much larger ecological system (see sidebar). Its boundary is defined by its drainage basin of 64,000 square miles natural boundaries which declare the political lines of states as insignificant and meaningless. However, with rare exceptions, the six states that make up the watershed have made their own plans and programs independent of one another. It's time for a systems approach to management, one which would address the entire system as single ecological entity. The Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint: 2010-2025 - May 12, 2010: A new federal strategy for protecting and restoring the Chesapeake Bay watershed, drafted under President Obama's Executive Order, is released. - July 1, 2010: EPA announced draft allocations for nitrogen and phosphorus as part of the rigorous pollution diet for meeting water quality standards in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. - September 1, 2010: The six watershed states and the District of Columbia submit draft Phase 1 Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs). - September 24, 2010: EPA released its draft Chesapeake Bay pollution limits, which contain evaluations of the draft WIP's released by the six watershed states and the District of Columbia. A public comment period for EPA's draft TMDL and for watershed states' draft Phase 1 Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) ran through November 8. - December 2010: The states published their Phase 1 Watershed Implementation Plans (WIPs) and EPA and its partners developed a Total Maximum Daily Load for the Bay watershed. When taken to the local jurisdictional scale through the state WIPs, the TMDL will create point and nonpoint nitrogen and phosphorus load caps for jurisdictions throughout the Bay watershed. - December 15, 2011: Jurisdictions submit draft Phase II Watershed Implementation Plans. - December 31, 2011: The first set of two-year milestones is completed. - February 15, 2012: EPA provides formal comments on draft Phase II Watershed Implementation Plans. - March 30, 2012: Jurisdictions submit final Phase II Watershed Implementation Plans. - Prior to 2017, EPA reviews the full suite of the partnership's Bay models based on the best available science and decision-support tools and considers whether updated models should be developed to support Phase III implementation plans and potential modifications to Bay TMDL allocations. - In 2017, the states and the District submit draft Phase III Watershed Implementation Plans by June 1 and final plans by Nov. 1 with a focus on ensuring that all practices are in place by 2025 as need to fully restore the Bay and its tidal waters. - EPA modifies the Bay pollution limits, if necessary, in December 2017. - Pollution levels are reduced to the point that the Chesapeake Bay can be removed from EPA's "dirty waters" list by 2025.
based on biology , especially when used in agriculture , food science , and medicine Of the many different definitions available the one formulated by the UN "Convention on Biological Diversity[?]" is the most all encompassing: - "Biotechnology is any technological application that uses biological systems, living organisms, or derivatives thereof, to make or modify products or processes for specific use." One section of biotechnology is the directed use of organisms[?] by humans for production (beer, milk-products, skin). Naturally present bacteria are also involved in the mining industry in bioleaching. Other uses of biotechnology involve recycling, treatment of waste, or production of biowar agents. There are also applications of biotechnology that do not use living organisms[?]. An example are DNA chips[?] used in genetics, or radioactive tracers used in medicine. Although biotechnology is publicly associated with cloning and selecting the traits of a child prior to birth, the goal of biotechnology is to advance the tools of medicine and solve problems related to the production of biologically derived products, not the whimsical manipulation of life. Today, biotechnology, or modern biotechnology, is often associated to the use of genetically altered microorganisms such as E. coli or yeast for producing substances like insulin or antibiotics. It can also refer to transgenic animals or plants, such as Bt corn. Here is a brief history of biotechnology: - 8000BC collecting of seeds for replanting. Evidence that Babylonians, Egyptians and Romans used selective breeding practices to improve livestock. - 6000BC brewing beer, fermenting wine, baking bread with help of yeast - 4000BC Chinese made yoghurt and cheese with lactic-acid-producing bacteria - 1500AD plant collecting around the world - 1800AD Nikolai I. Vavilov[?] created comprehensive research on breeding animals - 1880AD microorganisms discovered - 1856AD Gregor Mendel started recombinant plant genetics - 1919AD Karl Ereky[?], a Hungarian engineer, first used the word biotechnology - 1980AD modern biotech with recombinant DNA, mostly on best studied E. coli bacteria to produce insulin and other medicins, in human form (rather than before used animal insulins, to which about 5% of diabetics are allergic) - much more to add here - 2000 completion of Human Genome Project See also : biochemistry -- molecular biology -- genetic engineering All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
C. H. Corn Hydroelectric Generating Station - Year built - 1929 - Primary fuel used - Water - Power capacity - 11 MW (megawatts) - Located - 20 miles southwest of Tallahassee The C. H. Corn Hydroelectric power generating plant is one of only two hydroelectric plants in the state of Florida. Operated by the City of Tallahassee Electric Utility Services, the Corn Hydro Plant is saving money for City of Tallahassee electric customers, helping to further the City's commitment to renewable energy sources and protecting the environment ... all at the same time. Florida Power operated the facility until 1970, when it was abandoned as a power plant and turned over to the Florida Department of Natural Resources, who managed the dam, without producing power, through 1981. That year, the City of Tallahassee applied for and received a federal grant to rebuild and operate the dam as a hydroelectric demonstration project. The City completely refurbished the dam and power plant and reinstalled generators. The plant became operational in August, 1985 and was formally dedicated on April 4, 1986. The facility was named in honor of Clemer H. “Clem” Corn, the Electric Utility's supervisor of power production, who served in that capacity since 1972, and spearheaded efforts to reactivate the dormant facility. > Request a facility tour of C.H. Corn > Watch the C.H. Corn video now Please call 891.4YOU (4968) for more information. How a Hydroelectric Plant Works An electric power generator is nothing more than a huge magnet spinning inside a huge coil of wire. The most common way to drive electric generators is to connect them to a turbine powered by steam, and that's the way most power plants in Florida work. But there are other ways to turn a turbine, and one of them is with water. In a hydroelectric plant, the water that is held up behind the dam is pushing forward with a lot of force. Water is routed through the dam in a huge pipe, spinning a turbine placed in the middle of the pipe. The spinning turbine is connected by a drive shaft to a generator located in the dam's powerhouse directly above the turbine. The drive shaft spins the generator's big magnet inside its coil of wire, generating electricity. The hydro plant's three generators are capable of a maximum output of 12 megawatts when there is adequate water available to operate all three of the dam's turbines. Generating Power With Water The energy to turn the turbine, and generator, is provided by gravity pulling the water down through the dam, so no fuel is necessary. Since no fuel is burned, there are no pollutants released into the environment. It's Essentially Inexhaustible Within the limits of the water supply (see "disadvantage" below), the power source will keep replenishing itself. Generating Savings For Customers At maximum output during high water periods, the Corn Hydro Plant is capable of providing Tallahassee with a constant 12 megawatts of electricity output, but on an average day, it's about 3 megawatts. Tallahassee requires about 425 megawatts of electricity on a typical day, so the power provided by the hydro plant isn't a huge percentage of the City's requirements. But seen another way, the power produced by the plant, using only water power, saves over a half million dollars in fuel per year, a significant fuel cost savings for the customers of Tallahassee's electric utility. So the next time you get chased in out of the rain, remember there's a silver lining in the rain clouds. A great deal of the rain water that falls on Tallahassee flows into Lake Talquin and eventually through the turbines of the Lake Talquin dam, sending inexpensive electricity back to your home - courtesy of the City of Tallahassee's C. H. Corn Hydroelectric Plant. There is one drawback, the amount of electricity that can be generated is limited by the amount of water available. The Corn Plant has three turbines, and running even one of them requires a lot of water. Often, the amount of water running through just one turbine is enough to supply the needs of the river below the dam. The plant's three turbines are each connected to a giant electricity generator. The number of generators that can be used at one time, and the amount of power that can generated is determined by how much water is allowed to pass through the dam, and that is determined by how much recent rainfall there has been in the area which drains into Lake Talquin. So the amount of water behind the dam determines how much power can be produced. A difference of just a few inches in depth behind the dam can be the difference between generating a lot of electricity, or none at all. The Most Environmentally Friendly Way To Produce Electricity When we use water power to generate electricity, money isn't the only thing we're saving. The power plant co-exists in wonderful harmony with its environment. The area surrounding the dam is home to a wide array of animals, especially birds like herons, ospreys and egrets. Fish are so plentiful in the waters above and below the dam that researchers from the Game and Freshwater Fish Commission use the river and reservoir as a huge research lab. Aside from producing electricity or providing flood control, one beneficial side effect of the dam is the beautiful lake that was created - Lake Talquin - stretching some 14 miles back towards Tallahassee. In fact, one of the City's primary objectives in managing the dam is to maintain Lake Talquin as a recreational lake and to preserve this beautiful environment. There is great fishing both above and below the dam, and on summer weekends, the lake is alive with recreational skiers and boaters. Lake Talquin's normal lake level is 68.5 feet. There is not a "flood stage" level for the lake per se. By contract with the State, during normal operations the lake cannot fluctuate more than 1 foot in either direction. The lake is typically within a couple of inches of the 68.5 feet at all times during normal operations. During high water flow events, we will sometimes drop the lake level anywhere from a couple of inches to the 1-foot below normal to allow for room for the incoming flows. This allows us to minimize the flooding downstream. We can go more than the 2 foot bandwidth during emergencies.
Protecting Workers from Anthrax Infection DHHS (NIOSH) Publication Number 2002-142 The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is the federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related disease and injury. NIOSH is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In October 2001, anthrax attacks through the mail presented a new and deadly health threat to postal workers, government employees, and news media offices. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), quickly sent scientists to every location where workers were at risk. NIOSH developed sampling procedures, recommended effective interim protective measures, safeguarded workers who decontaminated affected workplaces, assessed the effectiveness of decontamination, and disseminated information widely. When workers raised concerns about handling irradiated mail, NIOSH again mobilized to help answer their questions. - Collaborated with partners to design reliable protocols for collecting samples at postal facilities, Congressional offices, and media offices as part of the initial responses to the anthrax incidents. - Used sampling technologies in innovative ways. For example, NIOSH adapted a vacuuming technique using an "allergy sock," a method originally developed to measure allergens, to provide a more sensitive, comprehensive way to collect anthrax samples at large postal facilities. - Provided ready, technical assistance and information on-site to employers, workers, and facility managers in efforts with partner agencies to assess exposures at postal facilities and on Capitol Hill. - Worked with other CDC centers, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the U.S. Postal Service, and postal worker unions to develop and disseminate guidelines on engineering controls and personal protective equipment for protecting postal workers and other mail handlers from anthrax exposure. - Worked with other CDC centers and stakeholders to help develop CDC interim recommendations for fire fighters and other first responders for selection and use of protective clothing and respirators. - Provided technical assistance on workplace sampling procedures and personal protective equipment for decontamination workers to help the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) clean-up of contaminated government buildings. - Trained FBI, U.S. Coast Guard, independent contractors, and other personnel in appropriate anthrax decontamination procedures. - Worked with EPA, the Office of the Senate Sergeant at Arms, the U.S. Capitol Police, and others to determine that remediated Congressional buildings were ready for reooccupancy. - Provided daily on-site technical advice and information on worker safety to a labor-management task force of the U.S. Postal Service and postal worker unions. - Helped develop a widely distributed CDC educational video to protect workers who process, sort, and deliver mail. - Answered questions by employees in the Hart Senate Office Building after remediation. - Participated in the CDC command center, working around the clock to respond to requests for help and information from workers, employers, and the general public for more than two-and-a-half months. - Posted a wide range of documents pertaining to anthrax and worker health and safety on the NIOSH Web page, providing stakeholders with convenient access to information. - Evaluated, at the request of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, OPM employees' concerns about symptoms such as nose bleeds, eye irritation, skin rashes, and upper and lower respiratory irritation. - Responded to a request by the U.S. Postal Service for a health hazard evaluation addressing worker concerns about possible exposure to carbon monoxide from large bags of irradiated mail. - With the help of an interagency technical team, conducted a health hazard evaluation of workers' concerns about irradiated mail in the U.S. Capitol, Senate, and House offices. - Provided information to federal and U.S. Postal Service employees in the Washington, D.C. area about irradiated mail and addressed questions from workers. NIOSH's contributions were integral to the national effort to protect workers from the deadly threat of anthrax-contaminated mail. The lessons learned will strengthen future preparedness. Protecting Workers from Anthrax Infection [PDF - 281.07 KB] - Page last reviewed: June 6, 2014 - Page last updated: June 6, 2014 - Content source: - National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Education and Information Division
"The uprising in 2011 gained momentum through public support as it ignited a popular cause, which was the torture of Daraa’s children. It responded to the people’s political, social, and economic grievances, and was also influenced by the waves of revolutions in the region. By 2011 the Arab Spring demonstrated the changing of people’s consciousness in the region. Those revolutions derived their power from breaking the wall of fear that had been instilled in the people for long decades. The slogan ‘death rather than life in humiliation’ had been absent or forgotten for a long time, so Bashar Assad could not teach the Syrians the “lesson for one hundred years.” In fact, it was the people of the uprising who taught the world lessons in determination and lessons in sacrifice.Bashar Assad, did not realize the changes in the people’s consciousness and underestimated the power of their will. Moreover, he relied on a sectarian strategy to crush the uprising, so the role of the Baath ideology was inoperative in this war. Consequently, Bashar Assad not only failed to suppress the uprising, but in fact, he fueled a vicious and lengthy sectarian conflict in the region that could change the shape of the whole Middle East."
From the rituals of the Greeks and Egyptians to the formation of countries and culture, alcohol has lubricated the minds of some of our greatest thinkers. Whether spearheading an empire or founding a cultural movement, some of our most famous drinkers have achieved monumental things despite having a fondness for the sauce. While their achievements can be admired, their alcohol intake is probably not to be imitated. Alexander the Great He was arguably the drunkest overachiever in history! By the time of his death at the age of 32, very likely related to malaria exacerbated by excessive alcohol consumption, Alexander the Great had conquered most of the known world, murdered one of his best friends in a drunken rage, and was responsible for a drunken orgy which led to the burning of a Persian palace in Persepolis in 330 BC. Being the father of western philosophy may not have happened if it hadn’t been for the Ancient Greek tradition of holding symposia. At a symposium, men would dine together and then drink into the night discussing the big ideas of the time. Socrates was known to drink big but never appear drunk, holding court among his admirers including Aristotle. Fresh water during Benjamin Franklin’s time was so unsanitary that it was safer to drink fermented and distilled beverages. The Founding Father seems to have enjoyed this more than others and is famously quoted as saying “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” One of the leading lights in the Romantic Movement and arguably one of the most influential English poets of all time, Lord Byron was known for spending big and partying hard. He drank his libations from a skull-shaped cup and is known for writing “Man being reasonable must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication.” One of his many mistresses, Lady Caroline Lamb, said of Byron that he was “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” The man who inspired the dictators everywhere was famous for excessive boozing. Along with his partner in thought, Friedrich Engels, the two drank their way across Europe and changed the course of political history along the way. Marx and Engels met in 1844 and during ten beer-soaked days formed a lifelong partnership that resulted in the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Elizabeth the Queen Mother A bastion of old English reserve and beloved matriarch of the Royal Family, the Queen Mother was known to start the day with a cocktail at noon and end with two glasses of Veuve Cliquot at dinner. During the war, after refusing to leave London, she held court at Buckingham Palace, raiding the wine cellars and ensuring everyone maintained their high spirits. The Queen Mother, who lived to the age of 101, famously said that “I couldn’t get through all my engagements without a little something.” And her staff made sure there was always a bottle of gin in her carriage for between engagements. Two-time Prime Minister, Nobel Prize winner, and accomplished watercolorist, Winston Churchill also served on the front lines of Cuba, India, Sudan, and South Africa, all while cultivating a mammoth drinking habit. He would start the day with a Johnny Walker and water, a habit he picked up in India where the water was almost unpalatable, and would end the day with a few glasses of scotch, champagne, and a highball. There is some debate among biographers about the breadth of Churchill’s drinking, but Churchill himself acknowledged that alcohol had a significant impact on his life when he famously said, “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” Vincent Van Gogh While he was in Paris from 1886-88, Vincent Van Gogh drank copious amounts of wine and absinthe, which was his favorite. He even wrote to his brother Theo saying that he’d become “almost an alcoholic as a result of overdoing it.” He became heavily dependent on alcohol and tried, unsuccessfully, to reduce his intake. Van Gogh featured his choice beverage in his famous painting Café Table With Absinthe. Hemingway’s love affair with booze started as a young fifteen-year-old reporter in Kansas City and was kicked into overdrive when he went to Europe during World War One. He proceeded to drink his way around the world and write books that captured the emotional heartache of a generation. Having moved to Paris to escape prohibition, he took full advantage of the bars of Europe and famously shared wine with Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Of his drunken escapades Hemingway wrote, “I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure.” Hemingway would publish numerous works including For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises, precipitating a new wave of American literature. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954.
The idea of encrypting physical verification information has been around for some time. It emerged in the early, anxiety-filled days of design for manufacturing (DFM). Engineers needed manufacturing process information to verify that designs were free from systematic yield limiters, but foundries were reluctant to distribute process information that could reveal best practices and trade secrets. Encryption enabled the protection of selected design rules, process data and other information while still giving customers the details they needed. In this discussion, you must understand that the required protection is much more than just an obfuscation of rule definitions so they are no longer human readable. The process also includes the encryption of related files and control over all the outputs from the tool environment that provide information about any checks. To illustrate, in the base case the Calibre verification platform is designed to provide virtually everything there is to know about design rules and how they interact with a layout. So to protect intellectual property, Calibre’s reports and displays must also be constrained to hide the information to be protected. Today, the amount of collaboration required across designers, foundries, IP suppliers and EDA vendors to ensure successful designs at leading edge nodes has increased tremendously. This has created a need for more information sharing and more targeted protection schemes. For example, design companies often create proprietary rules and data that they need to share with third-party IP providers and other partners but shield from competitors. The supply chain stakeholders each need access to specific information to do their jobs, but want to protect their own critical information. When the rules and data associated with design rule checks are ‘locked up’ it becomes all but impossible for anyone other than the owner to diagnose, debug or modify them. This does not work for the designers who need to debug violations, nor IP suppliers that need to understand the rules they are trying to pass. Figure 1 is a simplified diagram of some stakeholders in the verification environment and some activities that require access to protected information. It helps show why a more sophisticated and flexible solution than simple text or file encryption is needed to manage information access across all users and use models. Various stakeholders’ sensitivity to exposing their data can vary greatly. A vendor or foundry may want to hide unique rule syntax from non-licensed users who may intercept a rule file, but want that information to be accessible to licensed users. Or a foundry may want certain rules to be protected, but not care if variables and constants are revealed. To illustrate some of the inherent complexity of these protection requirements, consider that PV rule definition languages now have programming constructs like variables, constants, loops, macros and procedures. When portions of the rule definitions are hidden it becomes difficult to see how these elements interact and what all the dependencies are. Setting up a proper runtime environment and diagnosing errors can become all but impossible. A standard practice for early protection schemes was to precompile rule files with any associated dependencies (include files, data files, etc.) to ensure that they would run successfully in the end-user’s environment. But pre-compilation makes it difficult—sometimes impossible—to incrementally and collaboratively modify or add to existing rule decks because some of the bindings will change, leading to compile or runtime errors. If some of the structure and dependencies are hidden, the tool user cannot fix these problems. Another common scenario is when a rule deck is modified by several players in the supply chain. A foundry’s golden rule deck may be extended by one of its fabless customers to enforce a proprietary design style within the boundaries of the foundry’s requirements. The modified rule deck is then sent to an IP supplier for qualification of an IP library. The fabless customer wants the IP supplier to see output from, say, Calibre to help debug violations, but does not want to reveal the foundry’s proprietary data or its own proprietary rules. The protection scheme must honor several levels of protection, and ensure the IP suppliers see only what they need to in terms of the rule definitions and all the output provided by the Calibre run. Providing such flexibility requires more robust rights management for physical verification—one that allows users to define what to protect, to specify multiple levels of access and visibility, and to easily manage access lists and associated encryption keys. It must be hierarchical, like traditional access privileges, so that stakeholders can add additional protections for their IP, but cannot remove protection from other stakeholder’s IP. Also, as new physical verification tools and syntaxes are created, the rights management mechanisms must be forward- and backward-compatible. Given a flexible rights management methodology, it becomes simpler for multiple parties to pass and share physical verification rules without inadvertently exposing a partner’s IP. Collaboration between foundries, IP designers, ASIC design houses, EDA vendors and third party contractors becomes a smoother process, easing the concerns of IP and NDAs.
He was the first astronaut to orbit the Earth. Nearly four decades later, as the world's oldest astronaut, his courage reveted a nation. But these two historical events only bracketed a life that covers the sweep of an extraordinary century. John Glenn's autobiography spans the seminal events of the twentieth century. It is a story that begins with his childhood in Ohio where he learned the importance of family, community, and patriotism. He took these values with him as a marine fighter pilot during World War II and into the skies over Korea, for which he would be decorated. Always a gifted flier, it was during the war that he contemplated the unlimited possibilities of aviation and its frontiers. We see the early days of NASA, where he first served as a backup pilot for astronauts Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom. In 1962 Glenn piloted the Mercury-Atlas 6 Friendship 7 spacecraft on the first manned orbital mission of the United States. Then came several years in international business, followed by a twenty-four year career as a U.S. Senator-and in 1998 a return to space for his remarkable Discover mission at the age of seventy-seven. About the Author John Glenn has spent most of his life in public service, as a distinguished U.S. Senator and a veteran of twenty-three years in the Marine corps, during which time he was awarded numerous medals for his achievements, as well as the NASA Distinguished Service medal and the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. He and his wife of fifty-six years, Annie, have two grown children and two grandchildren. Nick Taylor is the author of seven nonfiction books and collaborated with John Glenn on his memoir. He lives in New York City.
Limited mobility doesn't mean you can't exercise. If injury, disability, illness, or weight problems have limited your mobility, there are still ways you can use exercise to relieve stress and anxiety, decrease depression, increase your confidence and improve your quality of life. If you have become frailer with age you may be worried about falling or injuring yourself if you try to exercise. However, regardless of your age or current physical condition, there are many ways to overcome mobility issues and benefit from the physical and mental aspects of exercise. Any type of exercise can offer health benefits. Mobility issues can make some types of exercise more difficult than others. Whatever your level of physical function is you should aim to incorporate 3 types of exercise into your routines: These exercises raise your heart rate and increase your endurance. They can include walking, running, cycling, dancing, tennis, swimming or exercises in water. Many people with mobility issues find exercising in water beneficial as it supports the body and can reduce pain when moving. Even if you’re confined to a chair or wheelchair, it is still possible to perform cardiovascular exercise. 2. Strength training exercises These involve using weights or other resistance (eg tin cans from the kitchen cupboard!) to build muscle, improve balance, and prevent falls. If you have limited mobility in your legs, your focus will be on upper body strength training. Similarly, if you have a shoulder injury, for example, your focus will be more on strength training for your legs and core. 3. Flexibility exercises These help to improve how much you can move, prevent injury, and reduce pain and stiffness. They may include stretching exercises, Pilates or yoga. Even if you have limited mobility in your legs, you can still benefit from stretches and flexibility exercises. To exercise successfully with limited mobility, illness, or weight problems it is important to talk to your doctor or Physiotherapist about which activities will be suitable for you. Start slowly and gradually increase your activity level. Start with an activity you enjoy. Go at your own pace and set realistic goals. Accomplishing even the smallest fitness goals will help you gain confidence and keep you motivated. Plan to exercise at the same time every day and combine a variety of exercises to keep you from getting bored. Stick with it. It takes time for a new activity to become a habit. Write down your reasons for exercising and a list of goals and put them somewhere visible to keep you motivated. Focus on short-term goals. It’s easier to stay motivated if you enjoy what you’re doing, so find ways to make exercise fun. Listen to music or watch a TV show while you exercise or carry out an activity with friends. Expect ups and downs. Don’t be discouraged if you skip a few days or even a few weeks. It happens. Just get started again and slowly build up. Stop exercising if you experience pain Discomfort, nausea, dizziness, light-headedness, chest pain, irregular heartbeat, shortness of breath, or clammy hands. Listening to your body is the best way to avoid injury. Avoid activity involving an injured body part. If you have an upper body injury, exercise your lower body while the injury heals, and vice versa. When exercising after an injury, start slowly and gradually build up. Warm up, stretch, and cool down. Warm up with a few minutes of light activity such as walking, arm swinging, and shoulder rolls, followed by some light stretching. After your exercise routine (whether it’s cardiovascular, strength training, or flexibility exercise), cool down with a few more minutes of light activity and deeper stretching. Drink plenty of water. Your body performs best when it is properly hydrated. Wear appropriate clothing, such as supportive footwear and comfortable clothes that won’t restrict your movement. As well as physical challenges to exercise you may also experience mental or emotional barriers to exercising. It’s common for people to feel self-conscious about their weight, disability, illness, or injury and want to avoid working out in public places. Some older people also find they are fearful about falling or injuring themselves. Don’t focus on your mobility or health issue If you are scared of injuring yourself when exercising, choose low risk activities such as walking or chair-based exercises. Always make sure you warm-up and cool- down correctly to avoid muscle strains and other injuries Instead of worrying about the activities you can’t enjoy, concentrate on finding activities that you can. The more physical challenges you face, the more creative you’ll need to be to find an exercise routine that works for you. If you used to enjoy jogging or cycling, for example, but injury, disability, or illness means that they’re no longer options, be prepared to try new exercises. With some experimenting, it is possible you’ll find something you enjoy just as much. Be proud when you make the effort to exercise. Even if it’s not very successful at first it will get easier the more you practice. How to exercise with an injury or disability People with disabilities or long-term injuries tend to live less-active lifestyles, it can be even more important for you to exercise on a regular basis. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, adults with disabilities should aim for: At least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity, or 75 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity cardiovascular activity (or a combination of both), with each workout lasting for at least 10 minutes. Two or more sessions a week of moderate- or high-intensity strength-training activities involving all the major muscle groups. If your disability or injury makes it impossible for you to meet these guidelines, aim to engage in regular physical activity according to your ability, and avoid inactivity whenever possible. Remember, limited mobility doesn't mean you can't exercise. EXERCISE IS IMPORTANT NOT ONLY FOR PHYSICAL HEALTH BUT ALSO FOR MENTAL HEALTH.
Whether you’re an avid follower of the latest technological developments or just have a casual interest, it’s probable that you’ve come across the term WebRTC. This new technology is gaining a lot of attention for how it not only promises to revolutionize communication through the Internet, but also drastically change how businesses and customers interact. In light of all of the growing interest and hype around this subject, those of us here at Telecom Monthly think it’s a good time to take a look at WebRTC and some of the potential implications of this developing technology. First, let’s consider a basic question: What is WebRTC? To put it simply, WebRTC is a technology that allows real time communication (hence the RTC) between people through a web browser. What makes it different from other forms of online video or chat is that Web RTC does not require users to create accounts or download additional applications or plugins. With WebRTC, the browser is the application, so to speak, and includes all the necessary capabilities to support audio and video communication, as well as data exchange such as file sharing and text chat. One of the persistent problems with online communications is the issue of incompatibility between software. Communication takes place through propriety software that requires both parties to have the same program in order to contact with each other. A central idea behind the WebRTC concept is that it is compatible across different browsers, making communication both instant and ubiquitous by allowing anyone to contact anyone else regardless of the software being used. WebRTC is part of HTML5 and, as befits it goal to bridge communications between all browsers, is an open-source project rather than being tied to one particular company. Still, there are a couple of organizations that oversee the standardization of WebRTC. The first of these is the IETF, or Internet Engineering Task Force, which handles protocols and interoperability. The second is the W3C, or World Wide Web Consortium, which deals with the APIs, or application programming interfaces (keeping track of all these acronyms?), for web development. There are three APIs that make up WebRTC, consisting of GetUserMedia (for camera and microphone access), PeerConnection (for peer-to-peer video and voice calls), and DataChannel (for sending peer-to-peer data). In terms of support from the browser side, Google, Mozilla, and Opera are all on board with WebRTC. Microsoft was for a while pushing its own specification called CU-RTC-Web that allowed better interoperability with existing VoIP services, such as the company’s own Skype, but that proposal has been rejected. Though it hasn’t declared its support for WebRTC, Microsoft will likely sign up as the technology becomes more widespread. Apple has so far remained silent on the issue and given no sign of either support or opposition to WebRTC. Hopefully you now have an understanding of the nature of WebRTC. Of course, this is a developing technology and numerous resources are available on the Internet for those who wish to learn more or dig into the technical details. At this point, however, we’re going to look at the practical implications of WebRTC for businesses in regards to contact centers. Traditionally, organizations have had separate website and contact center departments. WebRTC alters this structure by bridging the gap between these two groups. When communication is available right through the browser as a customer views a company’s website, every web page becomes a potential point of contact. Rather than hunt down contact information on a website and then place a call, a customer can instead be looking at a product or reading technical documentation online and contact a representative to answer questions with a simple click right in the browser itself. Not only does this facilitate communication between a company and its customers, but it also provides a context for communication. What this means is that interactions through WebRTC will include the availability of metadata to make calls more effective and relevant. For example, a representative can see what items a customer has in his or her shopping cart for purchase and which product pages he or she has looked at but passed on. Thanks to the metadata, a representative begins a call prepared with a sense of a specific customer’s reason for calling and can then identify other products and services that are relevant. Businesses can also see the specific areas of their website that generate a call to a representative, and which areas don’t, and further tailor web pages to enhance customer browsing. If one page is consistently generating queries, then a company can get a clear sense of customers’ needs and interests. WebRTC has the potential to further streamline customer service interactions by allowing customers to avoid having to identify themselves multiple times. Customers that have logged in on a website will already be authenticated upon contacting a representative, allowing them to jump straight to the question or issue at hand. While it’s still developing, WebRTC shows a lot of promise and, after reading this article, you should now have an idea why it’s attracting such intense attention. The examples outlined above are only scratching the surface of what is possible with this new technology. At its heart, the Internet has always been about communication between people. WebRTC takes that communication to the next stage by opening up channels to make it more open and direct than ever before.
Dongguan Opium War Museum is a memorial museum which collects, exhibits, and researches the cultural relics and historical data about Lin Zexu and the Opium War. The museum is composed of four sections: Lin Zexu Memorial Hall, Shajiao Fortress, Weiyuan Fortress, and Sea Battle Museum. The most important are Lin Zexu’s Opium Burning Pool and Humen Fortresses, which are under the key national-level protection. Placed on the seashore of Sanyuan Islands in Humen Town, Weiyuan Fortress, Zhenyuan Fortress and Jingyuan Fortress join together, occupying the “throat” of the Pearl River. The museum has beautiful surroundings and distinctive exterior architectural style. The front gate of the museum is castle-like. At the entrance, there is a large pink statuary featuring several heroes, those in the middle holding firmly falchions or halberds, staring angrily at the enemy, and two at the side holding a cannon, ready to attack. This faithfully describes the people who fought bravely against western invaders in the Opium War. In addition, the emplacements, cannons, dark rooms, fighting lanes, and soldiers’ rooms at the sites of Shajiao Fortress and Weiyuan Fortress will naturally bring you back to the fierce and cruel sea battle in the Opium War.
Views: 6325 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2021-03-04 Origin: Site In March, 2021 local time, Venice, the world-famous Italian water city, recently suffered a rare "low tide ". Affected by this, The water level of the local canal had fallen, Many rivers run dry, Riverbed exposed. Gondola, the main local vehicle, was also stranded in the mud. Right now, The average water level of the Venice inland river is minus 0.35 m above sea level, And on February 26th some of the river's lowest level reduced to minus 0.48 meters, This contrasts sharply with Venice's 1.87-meter-high water level during the floods last year. Fongming cable factory, pays attention to environmental changes, a special cable expert by your side.
For almost two decades, teachers have looked to Reading, Writing, and Rising Up as a trusted text to integrate social justice teaching in language arts classrooms. This new and expanded edition collects the best articles dealing with race and culture in the classroom that have appeared in Rethinking Schools magazine. Five years in the making, A People’s Curriculum for the Earth is a collection of articles, role plays, simulations, stories, poems, and graphics to help breathe life into teaching about the environmental crisis. Volume 15, No.3 - Spring 2001 The energy and unpredictability of the classroom are wonderful antidotes to weary policy debates A veteran classroom teacher finds inspiration in the everyday work of committed coworkers A parent community activist reflects on more than 40 years of organizing for better schools In order to fulfill our nation's promise of an equal and high quality education for all children, teachers need to be innovative yet bold as they counter the prevailing political climate. Wrapped in compassionate rhetoric, the President's proposals center on mandatory testing voucher programs that would leave millions of children behind. A middle school teacher works with maps to help students use mathematics to "read the world" As part of Project HIP-HOP, Boston-area students embark on a 5,000-mile journey to meet with veterans of the civil rights movement. A teach introduces his suburban students to the often-ignored issues of migrant farm labor.
As part of our assembly today, we discussed what it is like to be a member of our school community. The conversation quickly turned to our school values of kindness and hard work. From there, we thought about the opposite of kindness: unkindness. We discussed what this might look like and importantly thought about what we should do if we experience or see unkindness. The children were reminded of their network hands which they have created in PSHE lessons and also about who in our school is there to listen. Mrs George, Miss Morgan and Mrs Chubb all provide 1:1 or small group support for our pupils and they are always there to listen. All of our staff devote time to our pupils and will always listen to them. Our conversation about unkindness lead us to talk about bullying. We looked at our school's definition of bullying: We then spoke about what we should and can do if we feel we are experiencing bullying, or we witness it. The children were all in agreement that the most important thing to do is to tell someone. Again, we spoke about who that could be and how we might tell them. We then discussed what our school does if they suspect or know that bullying is occurring. As a school, we listen, we act, we discuss, we educate, and we monitor. Whilst doing all of this, we work hard to ensure the safety of our pupils, and we make sure that their voice is heard and responded to. We finished our assembly by thinking about what we do as a school to keep our pupils safe. We spoke about physical things like fences and secure doors, how we check on adults entering our school building to ensure they are safe to be around the children, our behaviour policy, the GCA way, PSHE lessons, e-safety lessons, and how all members of staff prioritise our pupils' safety. The assembly ended with some children sharing what it is like to be at our school for them. "It feels heart-warming because the teachers make sure we feel safe and work really hard to do the best for us." Gus, Year 3
In all Christian Bibles the translators wrote this verse in the same language and translated it, (maybe it's Hebrew which I don't know) but why only Mark 15:34 in the whole, is it because when Jesus was crying He cried in another language? It's Syriac. Matthew Henry's commentary in the sidebar at this link says The sentence is a direct quotation of Psalm 22:1, and as well as Mark 15:34 it does appear in the same form at Matt 27:46. Matthew Henry's commentary on the Matthew verse in the sidebar at this link says The New Testament was written in Greek, but the Greek text records Jesus' words in Aramaic (in Mark, Hebrew in Matthew). The Gospel writers transliterated the Aramaic (Mk 15) and Hebrew (Mt 27) into the Greek script. It is important here to distinguish between script and language. For instance, I can write in Spanish, Latin, German, English, etc. all with (basically) the same Latin script, even though the languages are all different. And likewise, I can take the Hebrew word אֶל and transliterate it into Latin characters, eʾl. The language is still Hebrew, but the script is Latin. Short answer: It's Aramaic (or Hebrew in Matthew) transliterated into the Greek script. Since the text provides a Greek translation immediately thereafter, it makes sense that the translators would retain it. The ancient Eastern text translation, "My God, My God, for this (cause/purpose) was I spared," agrees with Jesus' own declaration to His disciples in John 12:27: In the following verse, Jesus asks, "Father, glorify Thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again." When those standing nearby heard God answer Jesus, they couldn't agree on what they heard. Jesus, in answer, replied in the following verse. These verses from John, taken together with the cry of Jesus to the unbelieving masses in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34 as translated in the ancient Eastern text, fit hand in glove with Christ's purpose on earth. I concur with Waeshael. Let me answer this question from the perspective of an Eastern Christian Tradition where Aramaic NT is used instead of Greek NT. Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani is a clumsy Greek transliteration of Aramaic words "Elahi, Elahi, lmana shwaqthani?" Greeks often clumsily transliterates Aramaic words. For Example, Haqal Dama is transliterated as Akel Dama in Greek NT of Acts 1:19 (Source - Book "What do Jewish People think about Jesus?" by Dr. Michael Brown, Page 39). In Aramaic, Eil and Elaha are the words for God. Hebrews in Judea commonly preferred "Eil" while "Elaha" is commonly preferred in Galilee and Syria. For Example, Americans prefer to use the word "Yuca or Cassava" while People in England prefer to use the word "Tapioca." So "Eil Eil Lmana Shwaqthani?" in Matthew 27:46 of Peshitta (Source - http://www.peshitta.org/pdf/Mattich27.pdf) is transliterated as "Elahi, Elahi, lmana shwaqthani?" by Mark 15:34 (Source - http://www.peshitta.org/pdf/Marqsch15.pdf) Aramaic is also known as Syriac, because Greeks called Arameans or Aramites as Syrians or Syriacs. So Aramaic came to be known as Syriac among Greeks. Poseidonios from Apamea (ca. 135 BC - 51 BC) - "The people we Greek call Syriacs, they call themselves Arameans." [Source - J.G. Kidd, Posidonius (Cambridge Classical Texts and Commentaries, 1988), vol. 2, pt. 2, pp. 955-956]. Josephus wrote - "Aram had the Aramites, which the Greeks called Syrians."(Source - Antiquities of the Jews, translated by William Whiston in 1737, Book I, Chapt. 6, Paragraph 4). German Orientalist Theodore Nöldeke also wrote this: "It is well understandable that people have started to transfer the name of the country to the most important nationality and so the name 'syriac' was apprehended ethnological and was equated with 'aramaic'." [Source - Theodor Nöldeke: Book "Assyrios Syrios Syros, in Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie", Hermes 5, Berlin 1871, p. 461)]. In first century AD, Josephus points out that Aramaic was a widespread language and understood accurately among Aramaic speakers. Josephus points out how Parthians, Babylonians, the remotest Arabians, and those of his nation beyond Euphrates with the Adiabeni knew accurately about Jewish Wars by his means (mentioned below) and why he translated his work from the language of his country into Greek for Greeks and Romans. Jewish Wars (Book 1, Preface, Paragraph 1): "I have proposed to myself, for the sake of such as live under the government of the Romans, to translate those books into the Greek tongue, which I formerly composed in the language of our country, and sent to the Upper Barbarians. Joseph, the son of Matthias, by birth a Hebrew, a priest also, and one who at first fought against the Romans myself, and was forced to be present at what was done afterwards, [am the author of this work]." Jewish Wars Book 1 Preface, Paragraph 2 - "I thought it therefore an absurd thing to see the truth falsified in affairs of such great consequence, and to take no notice of it; but to suffer those Greeks and Romans that were not in the wars to be ignorant of these things, and to read either flatteries or fictions, while the Parthians, and the Babylonians, and the remotest Arabians, and those of our nation beyond Euphrates, with the Adiabeni, by my means, knew accurately both whence the war begun, what miseries it brought upon us, and after what manner it ended." In first century AD, Greek wasn't spoken in first century Israel. This is confirmed by the testimony of Jewish Priest Josephus who points out that Greek wasn't spoken in first century Israel and the extreme rarity in terms of a Jew knowing Greek. "I have also taken a great deal of pains to obtain the learning of the Greeks, and understand the elements of the Greek language, although I have so long accustomed myself to speak our own tongue, that I cannot pronounce Greek with sufficient exactness; for our nation does not encourage those that learn the languages of many nations, and so adorn their discourses with the smoothness of their periods; because they look upon this sort of accomplishment as common, not only to all sorts of free-men, but to as many of the servants as please to learn them. But they give him the testimony of being a wise man who is fully acquainted with our laws, and is able to interpret their meaning; on which account, as there have been many who have done their endeavors with great patience to obtain this learning, there have yet hardly been so many as two or three that have succeeded therein, who were immediately well rewarded for their pains." —Antiquities of Jews XX, XI. More information about this can be read here (with sources) - http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/New_Testament The unity of Aramaic (a.k.a Syriac) among Aramaic speakers began to fall apart only after Simon Bar Kokhba came to power in 131/132 AD. It was Simon Bar Kokhba who revived Hebrew and tried to make Hebrew as the official language of the state during Bar Kokhba revolt (132-135 AD) [Source - Book "A Roadmap to the Heavens: An Anthropological Study of Hegemony among Priests, Sages, and Laymen (Judaism and Jewish Life)" by Sigalit Ben-Zion (Page 155)]. More information about this can be read here - http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Language_of_Jesus The expression is Aramaic - a Syrian dialect. The Greek author did not understand the expression. Luckily the English translation retained the underlying Aramaic sentence structure. Sometime during the war with the Turks in the first world war, some isolated villages were discovered where the locals spoke Aramaic, and used an Aramaic bible. Scholars from Oxbridge were sent to teach the English language, and so the first Aramaic/English lexicon was born. By 1938 it was published, and for the first time we were able to understand, not only the meaning of the words but also the meaning of the many colloquialisms. In the Aramaic bible of the East, in the introductory notes by the translator, who was an Aramaic speaker (Lamsa) he explains how easy it was for the Greeks to misread the small inflections of the Aramaic symbols, and so mistranslate the words. The phrase mentioned, would be better translated as "My God, My God, for this was I born." It seems that the Greek translator selected from the OT a phrase appropriate to the situation. In those days there was no agreement as to whether or not God was on the cross, influential Bishops thought not, so the expression was translated to confirm the humanity of Jesus over the gnostic teaching of some Bishops that Jesus was divine himself and therefore could not have suffered. This was a heated argument for a century or so, and was not fully decided until the first ecumenical council in the 4th. Cent. The translation of this phrase in our bible is western catholic tradition. So much commentary has been published on this phrase that it seems a bit unkind to make any change to text.
‘Good bread cannot be baked out of bad wheat’ Mishle Yisrael was right on the money when he said this. Even though it may seem obvious to many, lines may blur or even disappear in today’s world of artificial ingredients and over processed foods. What makes food great is the ingredients and the process. It’s these two sisters that join hands to make food both delectable and satisfying. Finding kosher chocolate may be easy, but it takes a lot of effort to properly kosherize this sweet treat. For precisely this reason, when it comes to kosher, it’s only the professionals who put their hands up and say ‘Certified’. Like everything else, chocolate in order to be kosher, needs to have the right ingredients and must be cooked the right way. So if you are looking for Kosher Chocolate, you may want to keep the following points in mind. - Right Equipment for the Right Chocolate Chocolate production equipment needs to be ‘kosherized’ in order to eliminate any traces of non kosher ingredients. Equipment can be ‘kosherized’ by boiling it in water. Sounds simple right. There is a catch. Many chocolate manufacturers are hesitant to boil their equipment. Reason being, water reacts adversely with chocolate and there is a higher chance of bacterial contamination. Also chocolate does not mix well with water, unless you want fudge. - Preventing Bloom Dark Chocolate may have been considered as a ‘Pareve’ ingredient in the past, but that might not be the case. The equipment on which this delicacy is produced is usually used to prepare dairy, which is difficult to kosherize. Also dark chocolate may contain butter oil as it prevents the chocolate from going white. The industry insiders call this process ‘Bloom Prevention’. - Citric Acid and Passover don’t mix well Citric Acid may create issues if it comes in contact with cocoa, chocolate liquor and cocoa butter. It is important to note that this situation may not be that frequent but may happen sometime. This contamination of citric acid in this case can create problems for Passover. - Cocoa Butter Rocks! Some of our European cousins allow the use of CBE (Cocoa Butter Equivalent) in the production of chocolate. Now this may be perfectly legal, however the origins of these fats may be non kosher. CBE may have the same ‘melt in your mouth’ texture and consistency, but it doesn’t have the same great taste of good ol’ cocoa butter. - Beware of Whey Powder Whey powder is another ingredient whose origins are dubious and may be of a non kosher nature. This ingredient is used widely in the manufacture of chocolates and sometimes in the production of chocolate advertised as kosher. The reason is some butters are produced from whey which is a red flag altogether. If all of the above information seems complicated or too much of a headache, here’s a simpler way to follow your faith and enjoy chocolate all at the same time. When shopping for kosher chocolate, check the ingredients. Kosher chocolate must be made only from pure cocoa butter. If it has other ingredients, then it’s not kosher. Pareve is another sign you should look out for, this basically confirms that the chocolate does not contain dairy and has not come in contact with non kosher food. The beauty of Kosher chocolate is that it tastes great whatever the ingredients may be. Chocolate does not discriminate, only people do. It invokes the same feelings in everyone and doesn’t care if you are a Jew, Christian or a Twilight fan.
Back on August 3, 1981, 12,000 air-traffic controllers went on strike after negotiation with the federal government about wages, hours, and benefits broke down. Then-president Ronald Reagan took an uncompromising stand, using aggressive negotiation tactics to threaten the workers that if they didn’t report to work within 48 hours, they would lose their jobs. The Role of Threats in Negotiation On August 5, 1981 true to his word, Reagan carried out his threat and fired the 11,359 air-traffic controllers who had not returned to work. Many observers view Reagan’s controversial threat and follow-through as a pivotal moment in his presidency and the foundation for future political victories. This story highlights the important role of threats in negotiations. Broadly speaking, a threat is a proposition that issues demands and warns of the costs of noncompliance. Even if neither party resorts to them, potential threats shadow most negotiations. A wise threat satisfies your own interests and targets the other side’s interests. Consider whether the threat will truly help you achieve your broader goals. Issuing a threat might provide gratification, but it can also lock you into a course of action and could be costly. Three Factors to Consider Before Making a Threat during a Negotiation To assess whether your negotiation tactics will satisfy or violate your interests, answer these three questions: 1. Is your threat based on emotion? Effective negotiators must be immune to momentary pressures and volatile emotions. And a threat should never be made under the influence of anger: multiple studies have linked anger to reduced information processing, risky behaviors, and clouded judgment. A reliable rule of thumb is never to make a threat that you did not plan in advance. 2. Will your threat incite a counter-threat that dwarfs your own? Driven by reaction and revenge, threats often provoke counter-threats. Before making a threat, assess the potential impact of a retaliatory response, lest you initiate a battle that you aren’t prepared to fight. 3. Will aggressive negotiation tactics cost you more than it will cost the other side? Threats are not about punishing the opposition; they are about fulfilling your own interests. When you forget this important point, your desire to teach the other side a lesson may cause you to escalate a threat without regard to the toll it could take on you. If you’ve determined that a threat would indeed serve your interests, make sure the threat will function as a motivator, not a punishment. Frame it in terms of how compliance will further your counterpart’s interests rather than how noncompliance will thwart them. Imagine a dispute between a handheld computer company, Jansen, and a community hospital, Riverside. Jansen wanted to become a leading player in the lucrative health-care market. At the same time, Riverside needed handheld computers to increase efficiency and improve its precarious financial situation. Jansen and Riverside agreed on an information management system but, once it was installed, they argued about whether customized software was included in the deal. Without the specialized software, Riverside might be forced into bankruptcy and Jansen probably would not be paid. Riverside could have threatened to secure the software in the language of punishment: “If we can’t reach an agreement, you’ll see little of your money.” Instead, it framed the threat in terms of Jansen’s broader interests: “If we are forced into bankruptcy, you’re unlikely to make progress in this attractive market. However, if we can reach an agreement, you will be seen as our savior and could become a market leader.” By centering the threat on the benefits of compliance, Riverside increased the probability of reaching an integrative agreement. What are your favorite negotiation tactics? Share them with us in the comments below. Related Article: How to DEAL with Threats Adapted from “Putting on the Pressure: How to Make Wise Threats in Negotiation,” by Adam D. Galinsky (Professor, Northwestern University) and Katie A. Liljenquist (Assistant Professor, Brigham Young University), first published in the Negotiation newsletter.
Just west of Lewis lies the island of Great Bernera, not to be confused with the island of Berneray off North Uist. On its northern end lies the beach of Bostadh [Bosta]. This area is uninhabited, but in years gone by people did live there. Nowadays, there is only a cemetery. In 1992, a violent storm shifted the sands on the beach and the adjacent hillside to reveal the remains of an iron-age house. Little is known about it or the people that lived there some 2,000 years ago, but a valiant effort has been made to recreate the Iron Age House. Below is copied the information from the plaque at the house: This house is a reconstruction based upon the late Iron Age "jelly baby" houses excavated nearby. It was built using the techniques that were available at that time. No physical evidence of roofing survived on the archeological site; the design of this roof was dictated by the shape and strength of the walls; the dividing walls between the two cells are too weak to support a superstructure. The ridged roof is a major departure from the circular roofs of the wheelhouses and brochs of the earlier Iron Age, and a precursor of the traditional blackhouse roof. The entrance passage was curved to break the strength of any high winds and sloped from ground level to the interior floor level. The purpose of the small chamber in this passage is unknown. The main room may have been subdivided into living and sleeping areas. The use of the space in the roof is conjectural, we have indicated a sleeping area. The small chamber was possibly used by the women for their work. The artefacts represent those discovered on the original site. The central hearth is aligned north to south. This may have been for practical of ritual reason. We do not know if there was any artificial or indeed natural lighting. Perhaps a piece of the thatch was removed when practicable. Many questions that arose from the excavations were answered by a practical exercise such as this, and much has been learnt that aids interpretation of future excavations at similar sites. It is hoped that the reconstruction will also help visitors to the site to have a more complex and realistic experience of the reality of living in this type of dwelling.
Harold Proshansky, Abbe Fabian, and Robert Kaminoff “Place-Identity” Dolores Hayden “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place & Politics of Space” Kay Anderson “The Idea of Chinatown” Judith Jack Halberstam “The Brandon Archive” Adolf Loos “The Poor Little Rich Man” Daniel Miller “Migration, Material Culture and Tragedy: Four Moments in Caribbean Migration” Thoughts of Brighton, Brisbane, Chicago, Omsk, Lagos, and Hanôi evoke different feelings and conjure different images of place and people. Neighborhood foods, smells, materials, and structures can tell us a lot about who lives, works, and visits there. Why do we feel that we belong in some places and not in others? Place and identity are inextricably bound to one another. The two are co-produced as people come to identify with where they live, shape it, however modestly, and are in turn shaped by their environments, creating distinctive environmental autobiographies, the narratives we hold from the memories of those spaces and places that shaped us. Exploring the relationship between place and identity deepens our understandings of identity formation and the role of place in social and psychological development. The bonds between place and identity can influence social formations, cultural practices, and political actions. It may be seen, for instance, in the efforts of groups of emigrants to establish roots in their new homes through the planting of particular tree species or architectural ornamentation (e.g., Mitchell 2004). The readings selected here highlight research from a number of fields in order to show the various and multiple ways in which place and identity intertwine, and the varied stakes in understanding them. Place identity is a core concept in the field of environmental psychology which proposes that identities form in relation to environments. The term was introduced by environmental and social psychologists Harold M. Proshansky, Abbe K. Fabian, and Robert Kaminoff, who argue that place identity is a sub-structure of a person’s self-identity, and consists of knowledge and feelings developed through everyday experiences of physical spaces. A sense of place identity derives from the multiple ways in which place functions to provide a sense of belonging, construct meaning, foster attachments, and mediate change. The place identity of a person can inform their experiences, behaviors, and attitudes about other places. Place identity is a versatile concept upon which many psychological theories of human–environment relations are built. In a related vein, social psychologist Irwin Altman and anthropologist Setha Low’s (1992) concept of place attachment defines the ways in which people connect to various places, and the effects of such bonds in identity development, place-making, perception, and practice. Both of these concepts help us to understand where and why people feel at home, as well as why displacement—forced or voluntary—can be so traumatic for individuals and groups. “Place makes memories cohere in complex ways. People’s experiences of the urban landscape intertwine the sense of place and the politics of space,” writes architectural historian Dolores Hayden. Hayden’s work is concerned with how some identities are hidden when we represent or talk about place through certain narratives, or fail to talk about the histories of places at all. In this selection from her book The Power of Place, she unearths racialized, classed, and gendered accounts of place in order to reveal how those in privileged positions can bury the truth of occupation and inhabitance in historical geographies at various scales. In one example, Hayden describes how Chinese migrants built much of the US railroad system in the 19th century, and yet are frequently absent from the labor narratives of this period celebrating political and economic success framed around American whiteness (see figure at the beginning of Section 3). Her work seeks to find the traces of their laboring presence in place so as to tell a more accurate and inclusive history through geography, space, and built form. Likewise, geographer Kay J. Anderson describes how race and class privilege infused the social production of space in late 19th-century Vancouver, Canada. Anderson’s work examines the variety of material and social practices through which both racialized space and constructed notions of racialized difference were produced and naturalized. Her research looks at how “Chinatowns” were fabricated in many cities by white Europeans and Anglo- Americans in the 19th century. She focuses her careful examination on Vancouver to detail how those in power delineated difference and limited people marked as other—in this case the Chinese population—through the spatializations of cultural norms and values. This included labeling their cultural activities such as lodging, eating, gambling, and opium use as unsanitary or immoral, while refusing to extend sanitation services or employment to these communities. Anderson’s and Hayden’s scholarship help us to see the historical geographies of power in place, and to recognize how these uneven relations of power and privilege continue to inflect and reproduce places today. Referencing a very different place and time, queer theorist and American Studies scholar Judith Jack Halberstam encourages moving beyond the biases associated with space and place, such as those that frame the rural as backward, uneducated, and intolerant. Halberstam asks why a lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and/or queer (LGBTQ) person would choose to stay in a rural environment when cities promise more acceptance and freedom. The author examines films, documentaries, news coverage, and documents surrounding the 1993 murder of transman Brandon Teena in rural Nebraska to understand why he chose to remain there, and why Brandon and his friend were killed. In questioning which places are actual threats to LGBTQ people and why, Halberstam inspires us to look at the ways in which class, race, gender, sexuality, and regional attitudes trouble the relationship between LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities, rural and otherwise, and to reckon with the material and imagined ideas we hold of places. Sometimes identity and place are so tightly bound that it is hard to separate them. This conflation often happens at the scale of the home, perhaps spurred during the 19th century, when it became clear that bourgeois women were judged according to the type of domestic space they maintained (see Sparke 2008). But what if the environment eliminated a person’s identity completely? In a fable of design gone awry, architect Adolf Loos tells the story of a man whose designer keeps adding to and specifying the layout of his objects and spaces until there is nothing the client can touch or move. In the end, the client is excluded from the space when there is no way left for him to live as he wishes. This story bears a remarkable resemblance to Friedman’s analysis in Section 6 of the disturbing design of a glass house for a woman whose dwelling experience is disregarded for the sake of architectural ideals. This cautionary tale is Loos’ way of arguing that there must be room for people in built environments, and architects cannot forget about inhabitants in their focus on creating beautiful or efficient designs. Can the study of a single street capture the place-making and identity formation of the population of an entire city? Anthropologist Daniel Miller paints an interesting picture based on his research team’s interviews of diverse households on one London street. The project examines the residents’ stories of how their material possessions affect and speak to their life trajectories, experiences, and relationships. Miller shares the story of Marcia who, rather than settle into London fully or remain totally attached to her Caribbean family and homeland, creates a home bursting with figurines and objects on every shelf and surface to fill her life from her post-retirement travels. For Marcia and many immigrants like her, the relationships and discipline of the Caribbean are different from and do not apply to London. Her home is a sort of in-between space that reveals and sustains her hybrid identity and varied place attachments, suggesting not only how immigration blurs conventional boundaries of place and people, but also offering an insight into shifting spaces, identities, and cultures the world over. Miller’s research builds upon and beautifully advances decades of research on objects and our relations with them, including the influential work of psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981) on the meaning of domestic objects. The selections in this section encompass the variety of ways in which place has significant meaning for people, and suggest why, in a mobile and hybrid world, place can sometimes become another resource to be exploited or a source of inspiration. In one of our suggestions for further reading, anthropologist Tina Harris (2012) explores questions of authenticity through the lens of tourism and tourist commodities in Tibet. She argues that Tibet has been “exoticized” to such an extent by the tourist market that the traditionally dichotomous meanings between “authentic” and “inauthentic” local cultural practices and objects have become blurred as the core materials of everyday life in Tibet are produced increasingly for visitors’ consumption. Other authors explore the relationship between place and identity in a range of milieus. In his work on the Mississippi Delta, geographer Clyde Woods (2000) shows how Blues music sustains efforts toward civil rights for residents of the Mississippi Delta. Gabriela Tôrres Barbosa (2008) uses autobiographical descriptions of the places she experiences growing up in a Brazilian favela to discuss issues of class and access to resources. Looking at the redesign of the Times Square area of New York City, Samuel Delany (2001) lays out the conflicting intentions between gay men cruising pornographic theaters and city plans to create a Disney-like zone for families, suggesting very different identifications with place. All of the work discussed here describes how in making a place, or writing its history, there is often a struggle over what story is privileged and to what ends. Likewise identities and affiliations shift as places gain or lose particular meanings. The ways in which place and identity intertwine both confuse and allow us to make sense of the worlds we inhabit. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Agrest, Diana, Patricia Conway, and Leslie Kanes Weisman (eds). 1996. The Sex of Architecture. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Ahrentzen, Sherry. 2003. “The Space between the Studs. Feminism and Architecture.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 29(1): 179–206. Altman, Irwin, and Setha M. Low. 1992. Place Attachment. New York: Springer. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute Books. Barbosa, Gabriela Tôrres. 2008. “At the Top of the Hill.” New Internationalist 386: 4–6. Bell, David J., and Gill Valentine (eds). 1995. Mapping Desire: Geographies of Sexualities. New York: Routledge. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, and Eugene Rochberg-Halton. 1981. The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Delany, Samuel R. 2001. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. New York: New York University Press. Dixon, John, and Kevin Durrheim. 2004. “Dislocating Identity: Desegregation and the Transformation of Place.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 24(4) (December): 455–473. Doan, Petra L. (ed.). 2011. Queerying Planning. London: Ashgate. Domash, Mona, 1996. Invented Cities: The Creation of Landscape in Nineteenth-century New York & Boston. New Haven: Yale University Press. Erikson, Erik H. 1975. Life History and the Historical Moment. New York: Norton. Fanon, Frantz. 2008. Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press. Fried, Marc, and Peggy Gliecher. 1961. “Some Sources of Residential Satisfaction in an Urban Slum.” Journal of the American Institute of Planners 27: 305–315. Gordon, Beverley. 1996. “Woman’s Domestic Body: The Conflation of Women and Interiors in the Industrial Age.” Winterthur Portfolio. 31(4): 281–301. Gregory, Derek. 2004. The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq. Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell. Grewal, Inderpal. 2003. “Transnational America: Race, Gender and Citizenship After 9/11.” Social Identities 9(4): 535–561. Grosz, Elizabeth. 1995. Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. New York: Routledge. Harris, Tina. 2012. “Loom to Machine: Tibetan Aprons and the Configuration of Place.” Environment & Planning D: Society & Space 30(5): 877–895. Ingram, Gordon B., Anne-Marie Bouthillette, and Yolanda Retter (eds). 1997. Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance. Seattle, WA: Bay Press. Leach, Neil. 2006. Camouflage. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Manzo, Lynne C. 2003. “Beyond House and Haven: Toward a Revisioning of Emotional Relationships with Places.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 23(1): 47–61. Martin, Emily. 1991. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has constructed a Romance based on Stereotypical Male–Female Roles.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 16(3): 485–501. McKittrick, Katherine, and Clyde Woods (eds). 2007. Black Geographies and the Politics of Place. Boston, MA: South End Press. Mitchell, Katharyne. 2004. Crossing the Neoliberal Line: Pacific Rim Migration and the Metropolis. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Pain, Rachel, and Susan J. Smith (eds). 2008. Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life. London: Ashgate. Pratt, Geraldine, and in collaboration with the Philippine Women Centre, Vancouver, Canada. 1998. “Inscribing Domestic Work on Filipina Bodies.” In Places Through the Body, edited by Heidi J. Nast and Steve Pile, pp. 283–304. New York: Routledge. Sibley, David. 1995. Geographies of Exclusion: Society and Difference in the West. New York: Routledge. Sparke, Penny. 2008. The Modern Interior. London: Reaktion Books. Steedman, Carolyn Kay. 1986. Landscape for a Good Woman: A Story of Two Lives. Rutgers University Press. Winddance Twine, Frances, and Bradley Gardner (eds). 2013. Maps of Privilege: The Local, National, and Global. New York: Routledge. Woods, Clyde. 2000. Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta. New York: Verso.
Andreas C. Albrecht Professor, Chemistry John Wright‘s research program focuses on the development of new methods of characterizing coherent electron transport in solar collection materials using nonlinear laser spectroscopy. Coherent electron transport is usually found in superconductors where it allows electrons to flow without any resistance. It results from quantum mechanical effects that become important at very short distances. Nanomaterials form a very promising class of solar materials where coherent electron transport is likely. The new spectroscopic methods that Wright’s program is developing will allow direct measurement of coherent electron transport and guide synthetic efforts to develop nanomaterials that optimize the transport.
Greenish-black slippery slime forms in patches, usually on areas of poor, bare grass Cause Algae. It is mainly found on lawns with poor drainage and poor aeration. Areas under trees are also affected because of the rain drips from the canopy makes matters worse. In itself the algae is unsightly but isn't too damaging. However, it does point to the poor growing conditions of the lawn as a whole. Removing the algae from the grass is relatively easy. Using lawn sand regularly will help stop it reappearing. However, unless the growing conditions are improved the algae will return in time. This can be achieved by aerating the lawn with an aearator or fork, scarify it to remove the moss build up and top-dress.
The banks' own systems have proved difficult to attack, and so criminals have turned their attention to getting information directly from online banking customers themselves. The two most common attempted scams currently used by online fraudsters are phishing and spyware. Phishing emails purports to be from your bank or another service such as PayPal. They urge you to click on a link that takes you to a fake website identical to the one you would expect to see. You are then asked to verify your personal security information. If you submit this information you are actually giving it to a fraudster. To avoid phishing scams you should: – always be suspicious of emails that are supposedly from your bank. – always access internet banking sites by typing the bank's address into your web browser. Never go to a website from a link in an email and then enter personal details. – never give your login details in full by email or over the phone – your bank will never request them in this way. – report all phishing emails to email@example.com – make sure your computer has up-to-date antivirus software and a firewall installed. This is a type of computer virus that can be installed on your computer without your knowledge. It is capable of logging your keystrokes, thereby capturing your passwords and other personal information. To make sure you don't become a victim of spyware, you should: – always ensure you have up-to-date antivirus and firewall software installed, and ask for technical support if your computer starts acting oddly. – consider using anti-spyware software. You should also download from the internet the latest security updates, known as patches, for your browser and for your operating system (such as Windows). – you are also encouraged to make sure your browser is set to the highest level of security notification and monitoring. The safety options are not always activated by default when you install your computer. Other places that you can look to get useful information and advice about banking and shopping safely online include: www.banksafeonline.org.uk, www.getsafeonline.org.uk, www.consumerdirect.gov.uk and www.shopsafeonline.org.uk - Source: www.banksafeonline.org.uk
During Holy Week this year, we hear the Passion narratives from Mark’s Gospel, on Palm Sunday, and John’s Gospel, on Good Friday. Peter Edmonds SJ compares the portraits of Jesus presented in these accounts, and in the other Good Friday readings. How, through these Scriptures, do we meet Jesus as our Servant, Priest and King? The busiest afternoon of the year for Catholic churches is that of Good Friday. People throng to participate in a liturgy entitled, ‘Celebration of the Passion of the Lord’. The mood for this celebration is set by three readings from Scripture, which invite us to meet the Lord Jesus under three aspects: as Servant, as Priest, and as King. The first text is taken from the prophet Isaiah; it is the long passage known as the Fourth Song of the Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12). The second text, from the Letter to the Hebrews, has as its topic the priesthood of Jesus: he is the Son of God who has entered heaven as the great high priest (Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9). The third text is the Passion story as given in John’s gospel, the one in which Jesus tells Pilate, ‘I am a king; I came into the world for this’ and in which Pilate writes an inscription fixed to the cross of Jesus, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews’. Let us look at these three texts more closely. There are four Servant songs in the Old Testament book of Isaiah: the first three are read on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week; the fourth and longest is kept for Good Friday. It was probably composed around six hundred years before Christ. The Servant might represent an individual, even the prophet himself, but the common view today is that the Servant is a collective figure. He represents the people of Israel, her career and her destiny. This Servant song fits well on Good Friday, because many echoes of it can be picked up in the Passion accounts of the gospels, reflecting Christian belief that the Servant is a figure of Christ – a belief made explicit in the words of Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 8:34-35). This Servant song also forms a climax to the Old Testament readings read on the Sundays of Lent. What we have heard this year on previous Sundays about Noah, about Abraham, about Moses and the exile, is completed with this account of the suffering Servant. His song begins with his being ‘lifted up, exalted, rising to great heights’. It ends with his ‘bearing the faults of many and praying for sinners’. Those familiar with Handel’s Oratorio, the Messiah, know of the great music he makes from Isaiah’s text, but for Handel, it is not the Servant but Jesus who heals us; he is the one who was led like a lamb to the slaughter and who kept silent before his oppressors. On Good Friday, we are invited to meet the Jesus whose final days mirrored those of this Servant. The unknown author of the Letter to the Hebrews has much to say about the traditional priesthood and temple sacrifices found in the Old Testament, and works hard to contrast with them the priesthood to which Christ was appointed (Hebrews 5:6) and the sacrifice which he offered by suffering outside the city gate to sanctify the people by his own blood (Hebrews 13:12). In the passage we hear on Good Friday, he reminds us how, unlike the priests of the past and indeed ourselves, Jesus was without sin. But otherwise he was like us in every way. He was tested as we are tested and he had to learn obedience. This came at the cost of suffering and prayer. Sometimes he prayed aloud, sometimes with silent tears. The evangelists situate such prayer in Gethsemane (Mark 14:35-36). His prayer was heard and now he is at the right hand of God (Hebrews 8:1); he is sitting on a ‘throne of grace’ and has become for us the source of mercy, grace and eternal salvation. This author gives no detail of how he suffered nor does he blame anyone for it. The story of the Passion, which follows in the Good Friday liturgy, will do this. Last year, Benedict XVI proclaimed a year of Paul; he asks that the coming year be a year devoted to the priesthood. It is time to rediscover what the Letter to the Hebrews has to say about the priesthood of Jesus. On this day, we are invited to meet Christ, the Priest as well as Servant. Thanks to Isaiah and the author of Hebrews, we are well prepared to hear the story of the Passion and Death of the Lord. This is read out twice in Holy Week, on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. This year, we heard Mark’s version on Palm Sunday. Each year on Good Friday, we hear John’s account; this is the shortest in length, but paradoxically it is the longest in its descriptions of Jesus’ encounter with Pilate and of his last moments as he hangs on the cross. In the descriptions in each of these gospels a key word is king, and it is on these passages that we want to concentrate. According to Mark Trial before Pilate Jesus’ meeting with Pilate is told by Mark in fifteen verses (Mark 15:1-15). Mark presumes that we know who Pilate was. He was the Roman prefect, or governor, of Judaea, the one with supreme power in that world. He asks five questions: two he addresses to Jesus about his being King of the Jews, of which Jesus only answers the first, ‘You say so’; and the rest he asks of the crowd. Did they want him to free ‘the king of the Jews?’ They answered by asking for the release of a criminal already condemned, Barabbas. What, then, was Pilate to do with the King of the Jews? ‘Crucify him!’ they replied. He asked them finally, ‘What evil has he done?’ Apart from his questions, we learn three other things about Pilate. First, he was amazed at Jesus’ refusal to answer him. Mark has used this word ‘amaze’ before to describe the reaction of the onlookers to Jesus’ expulsion of the legion of demons from the possessed man in the country of the Gerasenes (Mark 5:20). Secondly, Pilate ‘knew’ that the authorities had delivered Jesus up to him out of envy, but he did not confront them with this. He was a poor representative of the proud Roman legal system. Thirdly, we learn that Pilate wanted to ‘satisfy the crowd’, so he released Barabbas. Pilate sacrificed his own integrity by treating Jesus, whom he had not yet tried, on the same level as Barabbas, who had committed murder. He handed Jesus over for crucifixion. Each time Pilate referred to Jesus, it was as ‘King of the Jews’. In the original Greek, Jesus speaks just two words, ‘You say’, and is otherwise silent. What sort of King have we here? The word ‘king’ occurs again in the fifteen verses in which Mark describes the scene of crucifixion (Mark 15:24-39): there is the inscription on the cross which reads, ‘The king of the Jews’. There is plenty of activity around the cross. The passers-by jeer, the high priests mock and his fellow victims taunt Jesus. Here Jesus is being tested, as we have read already in the Letter to the Hebrews. Someone runs to find sour wine and offer it to Jesus. Jesus himself is silent apart from the final words he speaks in this gospel, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’, and the loud cry with which he died. Otherwise he is as silent as the Servant of Isaiah. Four times the terrible word crucified is repeated. Jesus, so respected for his authority at the beginning of his ministry and so active by the lake and in the desert, in house and synagogue (Mark 1:21-39), comes across as crushed and powerless. What sort of King have we here? According to John Such is the picture of the kingship of Jesus given to us in the passion story of Mark. It is worthwhile to compare the portrait of Jesus as king that comes across in the Passion narrative of John. First, there is remote preparation through John’s use of a phrase to which we have already referred in discussing Isaiah. In all the gospels, Jesus predicts the events of his Passion: in Mark, Matthew and Luke, he refers explicitly three times to his coming death (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34 and parallels); but in John, he refers to his being ‘lifted up’ in the language of the fourth Servant song – ‘he shall be exalted and lifted up, and rise to great heights’ (Isaiah 52:13). We read after Jesus’ meeting with Nicodemus, ‘So must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life’ (John 3:14-15). In confrontation with his opponents, Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realise that I am he’ (John 8:28). When Greeks approach him at the end of his public ministry, he told them, ‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself’ (John 12:32). Normally we apply this sort of language to what happened after Jesus’ death (Philippians 2:9), but John is using the language of exaltation to describe what will happen on Calvary. Many commentators on John have sound grounds for describing the cross as not so much an instrument of suffering but a throne. Trial before Pilate John prepares for his account of Jesus being raised on the cross in his description of Jesus’ meeting with Pilate. John takes 28 verses, almost twice as many as Mark, to recount this legal process (John 18:28-19:16); his seven paragraphs contrast with Mark’s two. He distinguishes each scene by situating it either inside or outside Pilate’s headquarters, the praetorium. Two of the scenes take place inside, where Jesus and Pilate enter into private conversation. Jesus has engaged in previous one-to-one conversations in John’s gospel: he had spoken with Nicodemus, a leader among the Jews (John 3:1-15); with the woman of Samaria, a person without name and prestige (John 4:7-26); and with a man born blind, whom Jesus led to spiritual as well as physical sight (John 9:1-41). How, we wonder, will this encounter play out, between worldly authority and the one who has claimed to be the bread of life (John 6:48), the light of the world (John 8:12), the good shepherd (John 10:11)? Pilate asks Jesus the same question that he asks in Mark: ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ This time, Jesus answers by defining his kingship: ‘For this I was born, and for this I came into the world. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.’ But Pilate broke off the conversation with the words, ‘What is truth?’ Pilate did not belong to the truth (John 18:33-38). The reader may remember how this same word was used at the beginning of the gospel: the glory of the Word made flesh was ‘full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14). In their second scene together, Pilate asks a question which the world has continued to ask ever since about Jesus: ‘Where are you from?’ When Jesus gave no answer, Pilate threatened him. Jesus calmly reminded him that all power comes from above. This time we hear that Pilate’s reaction was to try to release him; he did not capitulate to demands for his execution as quickly as he did in Mark. These two scenes, with their discussion of the nature of kingship and source of power, provide a mirror in which to view the quality and purpose of earthly authority in every age of humanity. They help to establish our understanding of the kingship of Christ. 1. The Inscription (John 19:19-22) John’s description of Jesus on the cross is nearly twice the length as the one given by Mark (John 19:18-37). It takes the form of five tableaux, each a sort of ‘station of the cross’, which allows the reader to pause, reflect and pray. The first tells of the inscription Pilate put on the cross, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews’. Mark reported this in one verse (Mark 15:26); John needs four. Pilate reappears in person, and this time he does not dither: ‘What I have written, I have written’, he says. This representative of authority and power speaks his last word, confirming the kingship of Jesus. The writing of the inscription in three languages – of government (Latin), culture (Greek) and everyday commerce (Hebrew) – suggests that none has an excuse to be ignorant of the royal identity of the figure raised up before them. 2. The Seamless Tunic (John 19:23-25) Mark reported how those who crucified Jesus then divided his clothes among themselves (Mark 15:24). John expands on this by adding the detail of a seamless tunic which the soldiers refused to tear. The high priest on occasions wore a seamless tunic, and so maybe there is a hint here of Christ as priest. But because this is not a Johannine theme, interpreters prefer to concentrate on the words of the soldiers who say, ‘Let us not divide it’. Division or schism is a common theme in John: the words of Jesus brought division (John 7:43); while the net containing the 153 fish that Peter caught was not torn (John 21:11). Augustine saw these fish as representing the nations of the world. Cyprian saw the undivided tunic as representing the unity of the church. Here we pray for unity among Christians. The seamless robe our king left behind is its symbol. 3. The Mother and the Disciple (John 19:25-27) The third and central scene of John’s account of Jesus raised on the cross, finds him speaking to two who are standing next to it. The first is his mother. She has appeared once before in this gospel at the marriage feast of Cana. There she said, ‘Do whatever he tells you’, an expression of her faith (John 2:5). The second is the ‘disciple whom he loved’, who had reclined next to Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13:23). Faith and love are qualities demanded of all who give allegiance to this king lifted up on Calvary. He makes of these two a new family to which the multitude of those who will belong to his kingdom in the ages to come will belong. The Church found its beginning beside the cross with the mother of Jesus and this unnamed disciple. 4. ‘It is Ended’ (John 19:28-30) In this fourth scene, John reports the death of Jesus. He records his final words, which he stresses were spoken in knowledge and with intent. Jesus said first, ‘I thirst’ and then, ‘It is ended’. His thirst recalls another sixth hour (John 19:14) when, weary from his journey, having asked the Samaritan woman for water, he had offered her living water (John 4:6-7). His words, ‘It is ended’, echo John’s introduction to the foot washing, and indeed to the whole passion story: ‘He loved them to the end’ (John 13:1). As for the death of Jesus, John simply wrote, ‘He handed over the Spirit’. This is an expression with two possible meanings, and it probably alludes to both; he gave his own Spirit back to the Father, and he handed over the Holy Spirit to his mother and the disciple standing by the cross. Here was the final gift of the exalted king to his infant church. 5. Water and Blood (John 19:31-38) This final scene is unique to John. Soldiers who were sent to break the legs of the three who were crucified, did not break the legs of Jesus. Instead they pierced his side. The note about not a bone being broken is a quotation from instructions given long ago, on the preparations of the Pascal Lamb for sacrifice (Exodus 12:36). As the Lamb of God whom the Baptist had proclaimed (John 1:29), Jesus had fulfilled the purpose of this Lamb. As for the water and blood which came from his side, these recall the living water which Ezekiel had seen in his vision of the water of life flowing from the Temple in Jerusalem, bringing fruitfulness and new life (Ezekiel 47:1). A quotation from Zechariah indicates the response the evangelist is looking for: we too are to look on the one we have pierced, an indication of our response in repentance to these events (Zechariah 12:10). Water and blood continue to nourish the church through the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist. The King is now enthroned, not on Calvary, but at the right hand of God where he has gone to prepare a place for us (John 14:2). The Celebration continues The reading of scripture over, the Celebration of the Passion of the Lord on Good Friday continues with formal prayers of intercession and petition. We then proceed to the Veneration of the Cross; thanks to what we have heard from Isaiah, Hebrews and John, we are to recognise the figure on it as Servant, Priest and King. We live in hope because he has passed on to us his Spirit and he gives us his life in the Eucharist, the reception of which will conclude this Celebration. There is plenty for us to ponder in the Liturgy of Good Friday. Peter Edmonds SJ is a tutor in Biblical Studies at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
Although natural gas power plants are being built in many parts of the country, two nuclear reactors are under construction in Burke County to meet Georgia’s growing thirst for power. States are approaching energy issues in their own way. In Georgia, this investment in nuclear energy shows a commitment towards a balanced, sustainable energy future. Nuclear energy produces more than 25 percent of Georgia’s electricity, making it the single largest source of carbon-free energy in our state. Nuclear energy provides nearly two-thirds of the United States’ carbon-free energy, highlighting the important role that this resource plays in reducing air pollution and protecting our environment. FURTHERMORE, NUCLEAR energy provides 24/7 large-scale electricity at industry-leading efficiency to support economic growth as well as our household needs. Our economic future will hinge on decisions we make over the next few years. To that end, energy is not just how we light and cool our homes. Building the energy portfolio for future decades creates high-paying jobs, maintains U.S. competitiveness overseas and ensures that we will have a reliable, affordable electricity portfolio for future generations. In 2010, nuclear energy facilities employed more than 4,180 Georgians, paid $160 million in wages and $60 million in state and local taxes. Furthermore, the construction of the two reactors at Plant Vogtle will create 5,000 additional jobs and contribute millions in new wages paid. The nuclear industry provides a vital economic lifeline in Georgia. Utilities such as Georgia Power are reaching out to the minority community to make sure that all Georgians have opportunities to be a part of our dynamic energy future. Last year, the Georgia Minority Suppliers Development Council named Georgia Power the “Corporation of the Year.” Some opponents of nuclear energy have pointed to what they perceive as high capital costs when compared to other electricity sources. In the short run, low natural gas prices mean that it’s cheaper to build a natural gas-powered plant. However, nuclear is not vulnerable to price fluctuations or supply disruptions that can affect natural gas and renewable sources of energy. When viewed over the 60-year window during which nuclear energy facilities will operate, these facilities are one of the most economical sources of electricity available. IT’S IMPORTANT for Georgians to be a part of the ongoing discussion about energy and the role nuclear energy plays today and in that future. When faced with an economy that is still recovering and the need to lower emissions, the benefits of nuclear energy become clearer. Nuclear energy won’t solve all of our problems, but coupled with conservation it provides the clearest path to a stable, diversified electricity portfolio and a cleaner energy future. Georgia has made serious progress toward long-term energy solutions, reliable electricity and environmental preservation while adding jobs and growing its economy. Georgia’s leaders should stress conservation while continuing to grow clean, affordable and reliable nuclear energy as a part of the state’s electricity mix. (The writers are, respectively, co-chairwoman of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, a former governor of New Jersey and a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency; and the president and CEO of the Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council.)
Recy Taylor, Rosa Parks, and the Struggle for Racial Justice Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was walking home from church in Abbeville, Alabama, on September 3, 1944, when she was abducted and gang raped by six white men. The crime, which N.A.A.C.P. activist Rosa Parks investigated and which garnered extensive coverage in the black press, never saw the indictment of the accused. In the film The Rape of Recy Taylor, director Nancy Buirski explores Taylor’s story, Rosa Parks’ work on her behalf, and the history of racial violence, particularly against women, in the postwar South. “After World War I,” Danielle L. McGuire writes in At the Dark End of the Street, “the Alabama Klan unleashed a wave of terror designed to return ‘uppity’ African Americans to their proper place in the segregated social order.” It was against that backdrop that Parks witnessed and sought justice for the victims of widespread bigotry rippling throughout the state. Alongside other activists, Parks founded the "Committee for Equal Justice for Mrs. Recy Taylor" to bring widespread attention to the case. With the support of W.E.B. DuBois, Mary Church Terrell and Langston Hughes, among others, the case rose to prominence, but still faltered under the weight of entrenched bigotry. “Whites didn’t like blacks having that kind of attitude,” Parks said, referring to the return of black soldiers to the South, many of whom expected better treatment following their military service. “[S]o they started doing all kinds of violent things to black people to remind them that they didn’t have rights.” Indeed, the problem of racial prejudice in the South was a deep-seated one—a problem founded on a longstanding history of intimidation. “Unsubstantiated rumors of black men attacking innocent white women sparked almost 50 percent of all race riots in the United States between Reconstruction and World War II,” McGuire asserts, referencing the uptick in rumors of black-on-white rape “whenever African Americans asserted their humanity or challenged white supremacy.” Faced with few options for legal recourse, African American women chose to share their stories, drawing on a longstanding history of testimony and truth-telling to shed light on their pain. “While survivors of sexualized violence rarely received justice in Southern courts,” McGuire writes, “black women like Recy Taylor who were raped by white men in the 1940s used their voices as weapons against white supremacy.” It wasn’t until 2011, nearly 60 years after the case, that the state of Alabama issued a formal apology to Taylor for her treatment by the state’s legal system. “[Taylor] was an American hero and an Alabama treasure who spoke up in the face of racism, hate and sexual violence,” Alabama Rep. Terri A. Sewell said in a statement. “By standing up to injustice over six decades ago, Recy Taylor inspired generations of men and women to hold perpetrators of sexual violence accountable.” Taylor died in Abbeville on Dec. 21, 2017, three weeks after the release of The Rape of Recy Taylor. She was 97. Though Recy Taylor’s case did not succeed in the short term, the fact that women like Taylor were telling their stories at a time of pronounced stigma and intimidation drew nationwide attention to issues of racial violence, mobilizing communities and building coalitions that would become the pillars of the civil rights movement.
The density of pure water is 1000 kg/m3. Ocean water is more dense because of the salt in it. Density of ocean water at the sea surface is about 1027 kg/m3. There are two main factors that make ocean water more or less dense than about 1027 kg/m3. The first is the temperature of the water and the other us the salinity of the water. Ocean water gets more dense as temperature goes down. So, the colder the water, the more dense it is. Increasing salinity also increases the density of sea water. Less dense water floats on top of more dense water. Given two layers of water with the same salinity, the warmer water will float on top of the colder water. However, temperature has a greater effect on the density of water than does salinity. Hence, a layer of water (pycnocline) with higher salinity can actual float on top of water with lower salinity if the layer with higher salinity is quite a bit warmer than the lower salinity layer. The temperature of the ocean decreases significantly as you go to the bottom of the ocean. So, the density of ocean water increases somewhat proportionately as you go to or toward the bottom of the ocean. The deep ocean is layered with the most dense water on bottom and the lightest water on top. Circulation in the depths of the ocean is horizontal, a result of deviations in density in constrast to surface circulation which is a product of surface winds. That surface level movement is to some degree vertical and horizontal, perhaps swirling, but within the same general density layer. Hence, ocean water moves laterally along the layers with the same density. The density of ocean water is rarely measured directly. If you wanted to measure the density of ocean water but did not have the expensive equipment to do it directly, you would have to collect a sample of sea water and bring it back to a controlled environment to be measured. Density is usually calculated using a standard equation. You just need to measure the salinity, temperature and pressure to be able to find density. We thank the University of Michigan and the NOAA for assistance with this calculator and information.
This lesson was reported from: A chapter of The United States: An Open Ended History, a free online textbook. Adapted in part from open sources. For Your Consideration: Who are Native Americans? What does it mean to call something prehistoric? What is the leading theory for how Native Americans populated the Americas? Why can’t modern people be sure? What are the Three Sisters? Why do they work so well together? What evidence do we have for the complexity of ancient Native American societies? Is it meaningful to say that Native Americans were more primitive than Europeans of the same time period? Write a brief paragraph about the Native American group that once (or currently) occupied the land that is now your town. Settlement of the Americas During recent ice ages, as large amounts of water were trapped on land as glaciers, ocean levels around the world were much lower than they are today. The narrow, shallow channel between Alaska and Siberia – known today as the Bering Strait – was a dry, grassland steppe. Asian nomads are thought to have entered the Americas via this Bering Land Bridge (Beringia), and possibly along the coast via canoes or other boats. These nomads were the ancestors of the first Native Americans – the indigenous peoples of the Americas, also known as Amerindians. Exactly how and when Native Americans arrived in the Americas may never be known with certainty. This process may have included more than one migration event from Asia, but the fact of the matter is that no Native American group had a system of writing at the time of their migration. This means that the Americas were populated in prehistoric times – a time before written records. Instead, what we know about this ancient past comes from genetics – the study of how DNA varies between groups, linguistics – the study of how language varies between groups, and archeology – the study of human history and prehistory through the excavation of sites and the analysis of artifacts and other physical remains. Genetic evidence found in Native Americans’ mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) – distinctive genetic markers passed from mother to child, down through generations – supports the theory of multiple genetic populations migrating from Asia. Over the course of millennia, Paleo-Indians spread throughout North and South America. Exactly when the first people migrated into the Americas is the subject of much debate. One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture, with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago. However, older sites dating back to 20,000 years ago have been claimed. Some genetic studies estimate the colonization of the Americas dates from between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago. Artifacts have been found in both North and South America which have been dated to 14,000 years ago, and accordingly humans have been proposed to have reached Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America by this time. In that case, the Eskimo peoples would have arrived separately and at a much later date, probably no more than 2,000 years ago, moving across the ice from Siberia into Alaska. The North American climate was unstable as the ice age receded. It finally stabilized by about 10,000 years ago; climatic conditions were then very similar to today’s. Within this time frame, roughly pertaining to the Archaic Period, numerous archaeological cultures have been identified. The unstable climate led to widespread migration, with early Native Americans soon spreading throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct tribes. These early Native Americans were hunter-gatherers, likely characterized by small, mobile bands consisting of approximately 20 to 50 members of an extended family. These groups moved from place to place as preferred resources were depleted and new supplies were sought. During much of this Paleo-Indian period, bands are thought to have subsisted primarily through hunting now-extinct giant land animals such as mastodon and ancient bison. Paleo-Indian groups carried a variety of tools, including distinctive projectile points and knives (the Clovis point), as well as less distinctive butchering and hide-scraping implements. The vastness of the North American continent, and the variety of its climates, ecology, vegetation, fauna, and landforms, led ancient peoples to coalesce into many distinct linguistic and cultural groups. This is reflected in the oral histories of the indigenous peoples, described by a wide range of traditional creation stories which often say that a given people have been living in a certain territory since the creation of the world. The Three Sisters Over the course of thousands of years, Native American people domesticated, bred, and cultivated a number of plant species, including crops which now constitute 50–60% of worldwide agriculture, most notably the Three Sisters – maize (corn), squash, and beans. In a technique known as companion planting the three crops are planted close together. Flat-topped mounds of soil are built for each cluster of crops. Each mound is about 12 inches high and 20 inches wide. Several maize seeds are planted close together in the center of each mound. When the maize is 6 inches tall, beans and squash are planted around the maize, alternating between the two kinds of seeds. The development of this agricultural knowledge took place over 5,000–6,500 years. Squash was domesticated first, around 8,000-10,000 years ago, with maize second (at first consumed primarily in the form of popcorn), and then beans. The three crops benefit from each other. The maize provides a structure for the beans to climb, eliminating the need for poles or lattices which are more commonly used today. The beans provide the nitrogen to the soil that the other plants use, and the squash plant spreads along the ground, blocking the sunlight, helping prevent the establishment of weeds. The squash leaves also act as a “living mulch,” creating a microclimate to retain moisture in the soil, and the prickly hairs of the vine deter pests. Not only do these the Three Sisters grow symbiotically, they provide an almost complete nutritional package. Maize, beans, and squash contain complex carbohydrates, essential fatty acids and all eight essential amino acids, allowing most Native Americans tribes to thrive on a plant-based diet. Author Charles C. Mann explains, “Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the body needs to make proteins and niacin;…. Beans have both lysine and tryptophan…. Squashes, for their part, provide an array of vitamins; avocados, fats.” In general, Arctic, Subarctic, and coastal peoples continued to live as hunters and gatherers, while agriculture was adopted in more temperate and sheltered regions, permitting a dramatic rise in population. Most Native Americans shaped their environment with fire, employing slash-and-burn techniques to create grasslands for cultivation and to encourage the abundance of game animals. Native Americans domesticated fewer animals and cultivated plant life differently from their European counterparts, but did so quite intensively. After the migration or migrations from Asia, it was several thousand years before the first complex societies arose, the earliest emerging possibly seven to eight thousand years ago. As early as 6500 BCE, people in the Lower Mississippi Valley were building complex earthwork mounds, probably for religious purposes. Since the late twentieth century, archeologists have explored and dated these sites. They have found that they were built by hunter-gatherer societies, whose people occupied the sites on a seasonal basis, and who had not yet developed ceramics. Watson Brake, a large complex of eleven platform mounds in modern day Louisiana, was constructed beginning 3400 BCE and added to over 500 years. This has changed earlier assumptions that complex construction arose only after societies had adopted agriculture, become sedentary, with stratified hierarchy and usually ceramics. These ancient people had organized to build complex mound projects under a different social structure. Mound building was continued by succeeding cultures, who built numerous sites in the middle Mississippi and Ohio River valleys as well, adding effigy mounds, conical and ridge mounds and other shapes. Native Americans built monumental earthwork architecture and established continent-spanning trade networks – systems of waterways, paths, and meeting points (markets) that allow different regions and societies to exchange goods. The Mississippian culture was spread across the Southeast and Midwest from the Atlantic coast to the edge of the plains, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Upper Midwest, although most intensively in the area along the Mississippi River and Ohio River. One of the distinguishing features of this culture was the construction of complexes of large earthen mounds and grand plazas, continuing the moundbuilding traditions of earlier cultures. They grew maize and other crops intensively, participated in an extensive trade network and had a complex stratified society. The Mississippians first appeared around 1000 CE. The largest urban site of this people, Cahokia—located near modern East St. Louis, Illinois—may have reached a population of over 20,000. Other chiefdoms were constructed throughout the Southeast, and its trade networks reached to the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. At its peak, between the 12th and 13th centuries, Cahokia was the most populous city in North America. (Larger cities did exist in Mesoamerica and South America.) Monk’s Mound, the major ceremonial center of Cahokia, remains the largest earthen construction of the prehistoric Americas. The culture reached its peak in about 1200–1400 CE, and in most places, it seems to have been in decline before the arrival of Europeans. Many Mississippian peoples were encountered by the expedition of Spaniard Hernando de Soto in the 1540s, mostly with disastrous results for both sides. Unlike the Spanish expeditions in Mesoamerica, which conquered vast empires with relatively few men, the de Soto expedition wandered the American Southeast for four years, becoming more bedraggled, losing more men and equipment, and eventually arriving in Mexico at a fraction of its original size. The local people fared much worse though, as the fatalities of diseases introduced by the expedition devastated the populations and produced much social disruption. By the time Europeans returned a hundred years later, nearly all of the Mississippian groups had vanished, and vast swaths of their territory were virtually uninhabited. It is important to remember that while these Native American societies were ancient, it would be a mistake to regard them as simple or primitive. Their technologies and techniques were well-adapted to their environment. They developed over time. There is a popular idea that European technologies of the 1500s were inherently superior to those of Native Americans, but it is probably more useful to think of them as suited to different purposes. For example, Native Americans considered early European guns to be little more than “noisemakers”, and concluded they were more difficult to aim than arrows. Noted colonist John Smith of the southern Jamestown colony noted that “the awful truth … it [a gun] could not shoot as far as an arrow could fly”. Moccasins were more comfortable and sturdy than the boots Europeans wore, and were preferred by most during that era because their padding offered a more silent approach to warfare and hunting; canoes could be paddled faster and were more maneuverable on rivers and lakes than any European boats, which were better suited to ocean travel. The article was adapted in part from:
Fighting the Fundamentalists: Chamberlain or Churchill? We who think that biblical literalism has no place in science classrooms should be standing together and fighting ignorance and prejudice. Why then do those of us against creationism live in a house divided? The science and religion debate in America has seen its fair share of controversy, much of it bitter. From the moment that Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species in 1859, Americans have debated evolution, its place and role and significance, especially with respect to Christianity. Almost immediately, two leading Harvard professors, Louis Agassiz, the transplanted Swiss ichthyologist then building the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and Asa Gray, the diminutive professor of botany, clashed over the truth of evolution. Although both appealed to scientific facts, it was clear that religious issues were close to the surface. A decade later the leading American Presbyterian theologian, Princeton Seminary professor Charles Hodge, wrote a little book titled: What is Darwinism? He answered the question himself: It is Atheism! Before long, especially in the South and (as the country expanded) in the West, evolution was taken to be the equivalent of godlessness. The great evangelist Dwight Moody—the Billy Graham of his day—lectured on the four great evils of the age: ignoring the Sabbath, Sunday newspapers, the theater, and evolution (including atheism). As is well known, this hostility between evolution and Christianity continued into the twentieth century, most famously in 1925 in Dayton Tennessee, when the young schoolteacher John Thomas Scopes was put on trial for teaching that humans and apes share a common ancestor. Prosecuted by the Great Commoner, three-times presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, and defended by noted freethinker Clarence Darrow, Scopes was found guilty (although the verdict was overturned on appeal) and the whole of America was riveted by the spectacle. Many think that after the Scopes trial, Christian anti-evolutionism—such people took the Bible literally and were often known as Fundamentalists—sank with little trace. This is not true. After World War II, religiously based anti-evolutionism started to rise and gain in strength. This was in no small part because of the publication in 1961 of Genesis Flood. Coauthored by Biblical scholar John Whitcomb and hydraulic engineer Henry M. Morris, this work presented a definitive defense of a young Earth as well as a miraculous origin for the whole of life. A strong defense of Noah’s Flood was also prominent, being a key part of the authors’ “premillennial dispensationalism.” This is a theology committed to periods of time ended by violent events, the first of which ended with the Deluge and the last anticipated in the near future ending with Armageddon, and the thousand-year rule of Jesus before the Final Judgment. Now called creationism (often scientific creationism, to emphasize the scientific credentials and hence the appropriateness of introducing the ideas into science classrooms) things came to a head in Arkansas in 1981. A law mandating the teaching of creation science had been passed by the legislature, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) brought suit claiming that it violated the constitutional separation of church and state. The law was declared unconstitutional. It seemed that now finally the anti-evolutionary forces were conquered. This was far from so! In 1991, Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson published Darwin on Trial, another anti-evolutionary work, claiming now that the chief sin was a commitment to naturalism, and the fight started all over again. Revitalized, the new Christian evangelical cry was that an intelligent designer must have been responsible for the irreducible complexity of the living world. Supporters of the position—notably Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, author of Darwin’s Black Box, and mathematician-cum-philosopher William Dembski, author of The Design Inference—gathered much support and publicity for their claims. Another court case arose in 2005, this time in Dover, Pennsylvania, with no more success than the Arkansas case. Again, it would be very foolish to think we have heard the end of the matter. George W. Bush, an ardent evangelical Christian, is sympathetic to the thinking, and has already started to load the Supreme Court with people who think that the separation of church and state has gone too far. Our time therefore is still one when those of us who think that Biblical literalism has no place in the science classrooms of the nation should be standing together and fighting ignorance and prejudice, if only on pragmatic grounds. The big threat today to America’s status is the rapidly growing economies of the East, such as China and India. Of course, one welcomes this—better by far that the rest of the world share the prosperity of the West than that it look enviously from outside. But the aim must to be to bring them up rather than us down. No greater foolishness could happen than the castration of modern science in the name of evangelical Christianity. Science secondary education in America is in bad enough shape as it is, and there is no reason to make it worse. Furthermore, scientific discoveries are among the greatest achievements of the human spirit and intellect. We owe it to our young people to share this with them, giving them the training to go on to even greater triumphs. Yet at the moment, those of us against creationism live in a house divided. One group is made up of the ardent, complete atheists. They want no truck with the enemy, which they are inclined to define as any person of religious inclination—from literalist (like a Southern Baptist) to deist (like a Unitarian)—and they think that anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish, wrong, and immoral. Prominent members of this group include Richard Dawkins, the biologist and popular science writer; Daniel Dennett, the philosopher and also a successful popular pundit; and Jerry Coyne, the leading evolutionist. The second group is made of two subgroups. One has as members liberal Christians who think that evolution is God’s way of creating. This subgroup contains the Catholic theologian John Haught, the Anglican physicist John Polkinghorne, and the late Pope John Paul II. The second subgroup contains those who have no religious belief but who think that one should collaborate with liberal Christians against a shared enemy, and who are inclined to think that science and religion are compatible. Members include Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education, the late Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist and popular science writer, and me. (From now on, rather than drag others into the fight, I will speak only for myself.) The rhetoric is strong and nasty. I have accused Dennett of being a bully and someone who is pig ignorant of the issues. He has told me that I stand in danger (perhaps over the point of danger) of losing the respect of those whose respect I should crave. He and Harvard linguist Steven Pinker wrote a letter to The New York Times, after a review of one of my books, regretting that something like this might receive favorable attention. Dawkins has gone even further; in his new, best-selling book, The God Delusion, Dawkins likens me to Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who tried to appease Adolf Hitler. Dawkins introduces a new norm for journalists, begging them to interview others and get the real truth if they had previously spoken to me. Without praising or excusing myself, I can say that I have been in the trenches for a long time. I first debated biblical literalists back in 1977. One opponent was the above-mentioned Henry M. Morris. He was joined by his associate Duane T. Gish, author of Evolution: The Fossils Say No! with then more than 150,000 copies sold, according to its cover. The site was an indoor sports arena at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and the audience, at least 3,000, had been brought in from all over the local area and neighboring states. Before the debate, at least ten people in the stands believed in evolution, and, after the debate, at most ten of them believed in evolution. I was judged to have lost. Undaunted, I have kept up the fight—first against these older young-Earth creationists (believing in that 6,000-year span since Adam and Eve), and later against the more sophisticated intelligent design theorists, those who argue that something (or rather Something) must have intervened to cause the irreducible complexity of organisms. Alongside such luminaries as Stephen Jay Gould, I appeared as a witness for the ACLU in the Arkansas case, testifying against a creationist law that the legislature was imposing on the children of the state. I have appeared many times on radio and television, usually debating creationists and arguing that they are not just wrong but that their position is in no way scientific. And I have produced more words than any reasonable person might be expected to read, let alone write. It is not surprising, therefore, that I am not universally loved by all of those who do battle in today’s fight in America between science and religion. It is true that the creationists have not been slow to criticize. Henry Morris, who died in 2006, accused me personally of being responsible—through my Darwinian materialism—of America’s altogether-too-slack attitude toward capital punishment. Would that this were true! But the ones who really are after me are my fellow Darwinians. In a way this is odd. For the record, I am absolutely committed to the belief that science is our highest form of knowledge. I believe that Darwinian evolutionary theory is true in all basic respects, and that it applies to humankind. I have even been recently quoted (correctly) in The New York Times as saying that I believe that ethics is “an illusion of the genes to make us good social animals.” And I have no religious faith at all. You could call me an atheist, although I prefer skeptic, for I simply have no answers to the ultimate questions. I am on the outs with the militant atheist group because I do not see that committing oneself to science necessarily implies that one thinks that all of religion is false, and that those who worship a supreme being are in some respects at one with the fanatics who flew planes into the World Trade Center. Of course, I think some religious beliefs are wrong and dangerous. That is why I fight creationists. But overall, I don’t think someone is silly or immoral if he or she is a practicing Christian or Jew or Muslim or whatever. Although I don’t think you have to be a believer to be good, I fully accept that many believers are good because of their beliefs. Moreover, I think it is both politically and morally right to work with believers to combat ills, including creationism. The Dawkins-Dennett school allows no compromise. Religion is false. Religion is dangerous. Religion must be fought in every way. There can be no working with the enemy. Those like me who work with religious people are like the appeasers before the Nazis. This was the message thumped out again and again at a recent meeting of true believers in San Diego, widely reported in the major newspapers [see George Johnson’s report, “A Free-for-All on Science and Religion,” page 24]. With some few exceptions (notably the anthropologist Melvin J. Konner) the word was that the right approach to religion in American life is unremitting hostility and attack. Only that way will the truth prevail. Sir Harry Kroto, a Nobel Prize winning colleague at my own university of Florida State, begged the John Templeton Foundation to give to Richard Dawkins its annual prize for advances in religion! My response is in part pragmatic. The creationists and the ID supporters simply love Dawkins and his ilk. They pray that they will say more and more. Every time the atheists open their mouths they win converts to the literalist cause. The creationists have been saying all along that Darwinism equals atheism, and now the Darwinians apparently agree! Americans in the middle—meaning, generally, religious Americans in the middle—get the message that science, and Darwinism particularly, threatens their faith. Dembski once wrote to Dawkins: “I know that you personally don’t believe in God, but I want to thank you for being such a wonderful foil for theism and for intelligent design more generally. In fact, I regularly tell my colleagues that you and your work are one of God’s greatest gifts to the intelligent design movement. So please, keep at it!” But pragmatic factors are not my real gripe. If I thought Dawkins and company were right, I would defend them one hundred percent and let the chips fall where they may. My real problem is one of scholarship, put simply, which is I guess what you would expect of a university professor like myself. I would be a lot more impressed with the ardent atheists if I felt that they were making a genuine effort to engage in dialog with those whom they criticize. I do not necessarily mean actual physical dialog, but at the least an intense study of the claims of those against whom they fulminate. Take, for instance, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, and his critiques of the various arguments for the existence of God. Why does he not acknowledge that few if any Christians have ever claimed that the proofs are the true reason for the belief in God? John Henry Newman, the great nineteenth-century English theologian, first an Anglican (Episcopalian) and then a Roman Catholic, spoke for many. About his seminal philosophical work, A Grammar of Assent, he wrote, “I have not insisted on the argument from design, because I am writing for the nineteenth century, by which, as represented by its philosophers, design is not admitted as proved. And to tell the truth, though I should not wish to preach on the subject, for forty years I have been unable to see the logical force of the argument myself. I believe in design because I believe in God; not in a God because I see design.” (This is from a letter written in 1872.) He continued, “Design teaches me power, skill and goodness—not sanctity, not mercy, not a future judgment, which three are of the essence of religion.” The proofs are at best a backup for an already-received commitment. More than this, the proofs are a lot more subtle than these critics recognize. Take the cosmological argument, for example. From at least the time of Saint Augustine, around 400 a.d., theologians have been wrestling with the sense in which God can be said to be both necessary and eternal. Saint Augustine had a very sophisticated theory that entailed God being outside time—that is why Augustine would not have found the idea of evolution threatening, because for his God the thought of creation, the act of creation, and the product of creation are as one. Augustine explicitly claimed that God created seeds of life that then unfurled. The point is that for Augustine—and even more for Aquinas (1225—1274)—God is a stopping point in the chain of causation. The argument was that things have a cause and we must have some cause of the world in which we live. An infinite causal chain is no solution. Hence, there must be such a being that breaks the chain, namely the eternal God. You may not like this argument and want to challenge it. I think I would. But I don’t find it stupid, and I do find it worthy of careful study. I want to dig into what the notion of necessary existence might mean and whether in this day of modern physics it makes sense to talk of things being outside time. (Of course it makes sense to talk of things outside time; 2+2=4 is outside time. It never became true and will never become false. The question is whether this sort of thinking can be transferred to God.) My point is simply that if you are going to consider religion the chief cause of the world’s ills, then you owe it to yourself and to others to take seriously the claims of religion, and this I do not think is done. I fear that emotion rules rationality, the very sin of which the critics accuse the religious! In other words, I start to suspect that these people are in their way are tarred with the same features of which they accuse the creationists. There is a dogmatism, a refusal to listen to others, a contempt for nonbelievers, a feeling that they alone have the truth, that is the mark of so many of the cults and sects that have sprung on American soil since the nation’s founding. Blind religious conviction is a terrible threat in American society today. What we need is reason and cool thinking. Science is the highest form, even if not necessarily the only form. But let us not mistake science for scientism, the belief that science and science alone has all of the answers. Let us not think that those suspicious or rejecting of scientism are wrong, verging on immoral. And let us not say that those who are prepared to work with people who think that science does not have all of the answers are therefore akin to wimps groveling before Hitler. Indeed, to push the analogy, I would say rather that we are Churchillian rather than Chamberlain-like. When Hitler attacked Russia, England and America gave aid to Stalin. It was not that they particularly liked Stalin or his system, but they worked on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Fundamentalism, creationism, intelligent design theory—these are the real threats. Please God—or non-God—let us quit fighting among ourselves and get on with the real job that faces us.
What is Tay-Sachs disease? Tay-Sachs disease is a rare inherited disorder that progressively destroys the nerves in the brain and in the spinal cord. It is a type of lysosomal storage disease, and as it progresses, the child’s body loses function and cells and tissue are damaged. What causes Tay-Sachs disease? Tay-Sachs disease results when an enzyme that helps break down fatty substances, called gangliosides, is missing, which is caused by a mutation in the HEXA gene. As a result, these excess gangliosides build up to toxic levels in the brain, affecting the central nervous system, as well. This mutation is inherited in an autosomal recessive pattern. What are the symptoms of Tay-Sachs disease? In the most common form of Tay-Sachs disease, a baby will start to show symptoms at around six months of age. These include: - Exaggerated startle response to sudden noises - Loss of previously acquired skills - Diminished muscle tone (“floppy”) As the disease progresses, and more and more cells die, children will have the following symptoms: - Cherry-red spots in the middle layer of the eyes - Gradual loss of vision - Hearing loss - Increased muscle stiffness and eventual paralysis How is Tay-Sachs disease diagnosed? A Tay-Sachs disease diagnosis may be made through a clinical evaluation and blood tests that measure the levels of the HEXA gene in the body. Sometimes, Tay-Sachs disease can be diagnosed before birth based on an amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS). What are the available treatments for Tay-Sachs disease? There is currently no cure for Tay-Sachs disease, so treatment is currently symptomatic and supportive, such as anti-seizure medications, if necessary. However, gene therapy or enzyme replace therapy research may eventually lead to a cure or treatment that could slow the progression of the disease. Where can I find more information on Tay-Sachs disease?
How does the district select annual goals? Goals are established based on need for improvement as shown on subgroup data from Iowa Assessments. Goals often continue for multiple years. All PK-12th grade students will achieve at high levels in reading comprehension, prepared for success beyond high school. All PK-12th grade students will achieve at high levels in mathematics, prepared for success beyond high school. All PK-12th grade students will achieve at high levels in science, prepared for success beyond high school. The board, with input from its School Improvement Advisory Committee (SIAC), shall adopt annual improvement goals based on data from at least one district-wide assessment. The goals shall describe desired annual increase in the curriculum areas of, but not limited to, mathematics, reading, and science achievement for all students, for particular subgroups of students, or both. Annual improvement goals may be set for the early intervention programs as described in subrule 12.5(18), other state indicators, locally determined indicators, locally established student learning goals, other curriculum areas, future student employability, or factors influencing student achievement. - Annual improvement goals must be measurable. - Annual improvement goals must address improvement of student learning, not maintaining of current levels of achievement.
FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is a widely adopted healthcare interoperability standard that facilitates the secure exchange and integration of healthcare data across different systems. It enables structured data capturing and seamless data sharing. It is important to emphasize that FHIR serves as a comprehensive specification, not as an out-of-the-box implementation. As such, there can be a variation in how FHIR is implemented between various vendors. This can result in differences in data modeling assumptions but also in the availability of certain features. FHIR for data standardization FHIR attempts to represent healthcare systems using a fixed set of resources which can be exchanged through a REST API. These FHIR resources are the building blocks in the framework, each representing a specific piece of data relevant in a healthcare system. This ranges from clinical reporting to payer resources, lab requests to ADT (Admission-Discharge-Transfer) information. The resources have well-defined structures and can be linked to each other through Resource References. In order to illustrate these references between various resources, let’s look at a simplified example. In the above graph representation of resources, a Patient has multiple Conditions and has a hospital Encounter to have surgery to cure one of those Conditions. The Procedure is performed by a Practitioner working in an Organization. The Observation linked to the patient could be their BMI at a specific moment Of course solving interoperability with a fixed set of resources is naïve and doesn't satisfy the complex needs of the healthcare IT industry. This is why FHIR has adopted a 80/20 principle. The base layer is a fixed set of resources that define 80% of the information that needs to be exchanged. On top of that, FHIR defines a well documented procedure to make extensions or add constraints to these models, enabling customization and adaptation to various healthcare use cases and requirements. A second core principle in FHIR is that every model is published in both a human (a website) and computer readable (a set of json files) format. The human readable representation pushes people to be more open about and publish their initiatives that are built on top of FHIR. FHIR for customization Continue reading? Get our whitepaper via this form.
How important is body language to how you are perceived? How about when you are debating national policy in front of millions of television viewers? If you were ever in a tense negotiation or business situation, you know the importance of control over yourself so that no one can misinterpret your actions. Program on Negotiation faculty member and Assistant Professor in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at the Harvard Business School, Amy Cuddy, was a recent guest on CNN’s popular news show Anderson Cooper 360° to analyze the second of three presidential debates between current Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney from the perspective of the candidates’ body language. For example, at the debate’s onset Cuddy praises Obama’s warm, genuine smile and notes that challenger Romney is smiling with his mouth, but not his eyes, denoting anxiety. In another instance where President Obama nods to acknowledge what candidate Romney is saying, Amy Cuddy says that this common social cue might be misinterpreted by television viewers as weakness, because the nodding may passively indicate agreement. These seemingly small physical acts have a range of psychological impacts on the people viewing at home, indicating positions of relative strength or weakness through movement rather than words. Professor Cuddy’s Research Professor Cuddy’s work focuses on how we perceive and are influenced by others as well as the end-result of that influence by examining the roles of culture, emotions, nonverbal behaviors, and psychophysiological indicators. She is particularly interested in various social categories, such as Asian-Americans, the elderly, or working mothers, and how they are judged by others and by their own social group. Recent research investigates how nonverbal expressions of competence/power and warmth/connection change neuroendocrine levels, emotions, and the behaviors of the people performing these expressions, whether spontaneous or posed. You can view the Anderson Cooper 360° segment embedded below.
Another apocalyptic warning came from the latest report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Monday. The report warns that if global warning continues, the world could face widespread hunger due to drought and heavy rains, coastal flooding and damage to electricity and running water. The report by the panel's Working Group II is the first to assert that climate change can threaten national security. The IPCC issues a report only once every five or six years, and this year's report drew participation from over 2,500 scientists from over 130 countries over the past six years. According to the report, if the earth continues to heat up at the current pace, the global average temperature is expected to go up by 3.7 degrees and sea levels to rise by 63 cm by the end of the 21st century. Korea's National Institute of Meteorological Research predicted an increase of 5.9 degrees in temperature here and a 99 cm rise of the level of the East Sea. The report warned that climate change will intensify poverty and territorial disputes, and increase violence and conflicts. Rising casualties from global warming are no longer an irrelevant issue in Korea. The National Disaster Management Institute predicted more serious damage from heatwaves this year than ever before, adding that the number of deaths due to heatwaves has been on the rise since 2000. In 2012, 59 people died from sunstroke or heatstroke in Korea.
Quanta mag reports: But now that Google’s quantum processor is rumored to be close to reaching this goal, imminent quantum supremacy may turn out to have an important application after all: generating pure randomness.This is just crazy. There are 50 cent chips that generate quantum randomness. Why would anyone use a $100M quantum computer? Randomness is crucial for almost everything ... Genuine, verifiable randomness ... is extremely hard to come by. That could change once quantum computers demonstrate their superiority. Those first tasks, initially intended to simply show off the technology’s prowess, could also produce true, certified randomness. “We are really excited about it,” said John Martinis, a physicist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who heads Google’s quantum computing efforts. “We are hoping that this is the first application of a quantum computer.” Measuring the qubits is akin to reaching blindfolded into the box and randomly sampling one string from the distribution.I am beginning to think that these guys are trolling us. How does this get us to random numbers? Crucially, the 50-bit string sampled by the quantum computer will have a lot of entropy, a measure of disorder or unpredictability, and hence randomness. “This might actually be kind of a big deal,” said Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas, Austin, who came up with the new protocol. “Not because it’s the most important application of quantum computers — I think it’s far from that — rather, because it looks like probably the first application of quantum computers that will be technologically feasible to implement.” Aaronson’s protocol to generate randomness is fairly straightforward. A classical computer first gathers a few bits of randomness from some trusted source and uses this “seed randomness” to generate the description of a quantum circuit. The random bits determine the types of quantum gates ... Aaronson, for now, is waiting for Google’s system. “Whether the thing they are going to roll out is going to be actually good enough to achieve quantum supremacy is a big question,” he said. If it is, then verifiable quantum randomness from a single quantum device is around the corner. “We think it’s useful and a potential market, and that’s something we want to think about offering to people,” Martinis said. If you want some random numbers, just close your eyes and type some junk into your keyboard. Then get the code for the SHA-1 hash function, and apply it repeatedly. Free implementations have been available for 25 years. SHA-1 has not been broken, but it has some theoretical weaknesses that might be an issue at some future date. If that bothers you, then you can switch to SHA-512. That will have no problem for the foreseeable future. With all the hype for quantum computing, they admit that (1) quantum supremacy has not been achieved, and (2) even when it is, its most use application might be random numbers. Update: Peter Shor weighs in with his views: Horgan: The National Academy of Sciences reports that “it is still too early to be able to predict the time horizon for a practical quantum computer,” and IEEE Spectrum claims we won’t see “useful” quantum computers “in the foreseeable future.” Are these critiques fair? Will quantum computers ever live up to their hype?He also has other opinions about theoretical physics that I may address separately. Shor: The NAS report was prepared by a committee of experts who spent a great deal of time thinking about possible different ways of achieving quantum computation, the various roadblocks for these methods, and about the difficulties of making a working quantum computer, and I think they give a fair appraisal of the difficulties of the task. The IEEE Spectrum article gives a much more pessimistic assessment. It was written by one physicist who has had a negative view of quantum computers since the very beginning of the field. Briefly, he believes that making quantum computers fault-tolerant is a much more difficult task than it is generally believed to be. (Let me note that it is generally believed to be extremely difficult, but that it is theoretically possible if you have accurate enough quantum gates and a large but not impossible amount of overhead.) I don't believe that his arguments are justified. Horgan: Scott Aaronson said on this blog that “ideas from quantum information and computation will be helpful and possibly even essential for continued progress on the conceptual puzzles of quantum gravity.” Do you agree? Shor: I want to partially agree.
As a parent or caregiver you want the best for your child. But do you sometimes get angry, upset or yell, sometimes feeling a loss of control towards your child or teen? If so, such behaviors could be the result of things that have happened in your childhood or past that causes you become more reactive rather than responding to your child. Such reactive behaviors can however have severe consequences affecting your child's brain development and behavior that can put them at severe risk of acting out behaviors. WHAT IS THE RISK? When a teen is exposed to problems in the home or even an "over controlling parent", this affects the way their brain develops and can often lead to unintended consequences. Such as an inability to express how they feel, exhibiting poor academic performance or becoming over critical in obtaining all A's, having low self-esteem, poor social skills, risk of drug and alcohol abuse, even suicidal behavior, criminal activity. For a girl, she is even more at risk of re-victimization from being drawn to a premature intimate relationship that makes her feel important, loved, respected, cared for but instead often leads to early sexual activity, unintended pregnancy, dropping out of school and intimate partner violence. DO YOU GET ANGRY, UPSET EASILY? As an adult caregiver, whether biological or not, if you feel you easily become angry, yell or even feel like becoming threatening among those you care for, remember it is highly likely that your daughter will be more easily drawn to someone who is loving and caring, but because they have had boundaries and emotional violations, they are at a greater risk of becoming the victim of abuse in a premature relationship. But the good news is that, for the love of your child you care for, to show them how much you care and love them, you can talk with someone and get assistance so you can provide the best for your child. Remember the behaviors that you model to your child, they learn from you. While how you have become is not your fault, based upon your past, you can make changes to help your child. HOW CAN YOU HELP? While this video was not likely intended for this purpose, Tiffany Alvord in her song "Never Been Better" is a beautiful song and video that offers an example of how teen girls can be easily drawn to premature relationships when there are problems in the home. Call to talk with someone today at 800-799-7233. You can also guidelines in The Parent's Pyramid, along with additional information to help you provide the best for your child.
Tarsal tunnel syndrome is a condition where the tibial nerve, which is responsible for the motion and sensory function of the bottom of the feet, is compressed within the tarsal tunnel. Symptoms of Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome - Pain which may be sharp and shooting and may be felt along the tibial nerve or the sole of the foot. It may radiate to the toes. - Muscle weakness - Swelling on the toes or foot - Reduced range of motion - Numbness or tingling like pins and needles in the foot or toes - Burning sensation on the affected area - Balance issues - Gait problems Causes of Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome - Severely flat feet or fallen arches which can stretch the tibial nerve - Bony growths or spurs in the tarsal tunnel - Varicose veins - Tumors or lipomas near the tibial nerve - Trauma or injury to the ankle like a sprain - Conditions like arthritis which can cause nerve compression Physiotherapy Treatment for Tarsal Tunnel Syndrome - Stretching and Strengthening Exercises. - Joint mobilization - Ultrasound Therapy to help increase blood circulation and decrease inflammation - Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) reduces pain by blocking pain signals and promoting the release of endorphins. - Nerve gliding which is a gentle exercise that moves the nerves to help reduce symptoms. - Strengthening and flexibility exercises - Acupuncture for pain - Balance and coordination Training - Orthotics to provide support to the ankle - Taping and bracing - to position the foot properly and decrease stress on the tibial nerve. - Education and instructions on footwear, and self-management strategies to help prevent aggravating the condition If you have any type of foot pain, contact us to book an appointment with one of our Physiotherapists today!
Between 1900 and 1930, millions of eggs were collected for human food. Collectors would enter the nesting areas and remove all the eggs, wait for fresh eggs to be laid, and remove those too. This practice has been banned. Over centuries the guano (penguin poop) on the islands formed thick layers, sometime metres thick. The penguins would burrow into the guano and use the burrows as safe, well insulated nest sites. People collected tonnes of the guano off the islands to use as fertilizer. The result is that the penguin nests were left vulnerable to the elements and predators. Threats include competition with commercial fisheries for pelagic fish prey. Large spills are catastrophic for the penguins. Not only are the individuals affected, there is also the disturbance to their breeding cycles. Small spills from boat bilge cleaning can also cause problems. There is a lack of suitable nesting sites for penguins, close to their foraging sites. Primarily sub-adult male Cape Fur Seals kill and eat penguins. Feral cats on islands and the mainland can pose a problem. African Penguins also face predation of eggs and chicks by avian predators such as Kelp Gulls, while natural terrestrial predators, such as mongooses, caracal, snakes and jackals occur near the mainland colonies.
Monday, June 25, 2012 Radiation Dose Chart We live in a radioactive world - humans always have. Radiation is part of our natural environment. We are exposed to radiation from materials in the earth itself, from naturally occurring radon in the air, from outer space, and from inside our own bodies (as a result of the food and water we consume). This radiation is measured in units called millirems (mrems). The average dose per person from all sources is about 620 mrems per year. It is not, however, uncommon for any of us to receive less or more than that in a given year (largely due to medical procedures we may undergo). International Standards allow exposure to as much as 5,000 mrems a year for those who work with and around radioactive material. The interactive Dose Chart appears below, but you can also download a printable version. For an interactive version of the Dose Chart which is based on the internationally recognized units (Sieverts and millisieverts) go here. Posted by RadiationAlerts.org from Global Deactivation of Radiation (gdr.org) at 4:55 AM
Music Production software One of the 1st pieces of music production software was on a Commodore 64 program called Pro16 in around 1987. In those days the 5.25″ floppy disc was the latest thing in data storage. The reason why the Commodore 64 was used was that it was the first home computer to use a 3 voice sound chip. In other words it could produce thee sounds at the same time. However as soon as the Atari 520 and later the 1040 st models became available the program was quickly developed for that platform as the Atari was the first and only computer to have MIDI input and output ports built into it, making it easier to hook up MIDI keyboards and sound modules. As the program was developed it was renamed Cubase, a MIDI only sequencer, and it was the first commercially available product at an affordable price and quickly became a necessary piece of studio equipment. Below is a video in German demonstrating the original Pro 16 sequencer running on the Commodore 64. Also featured are later versions of Cubase. If you would like to learn how to use Cubase, later versions of course, take a look at our Cubase Tutorial page for more information.
Java EE web components are either servlets or pages created using JSP technology (JSP pages) and/or JavaServer Faces technology. Servlets are Java programming language classes that dynamically process requests and construct responses. JSP pages are text-based documents that execute as servlets but allow a more natural approach to creating static content. JavaServer Faces technology builds on servlets and JSP technology and provides a user interface component framework for web applications. Static HTML pages and applets are bundled with web components during application assembly but are not considered web components by the Java EE specification. Server-side utility classes can also be bundled with web components and, like HTML pages, are not considered web components. As shown in Figure 1–3, the web tier, like the client tier, might include a JavaBeans component to manage the user input and send that input to enterprise beans running in the business tier for processing.
Imagine a world where time travel is not only a figment of our imagination but a reality that we can experience. Sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, right? Well, thanks to the power of artificial intelligence (AI), this seemingly far-fetched concept may not be so far off in the future. With AI’s potential to revolutionize various industries, it comes as no surprise that scientists and researchers are exploring its role in the creation of a time machine. In this article, we will explore the exciting possibilities that AI brings to the table and how it could potentially shape the future of time travel. Hold onto your hats, because we are about to embark on a mind-bending adventure through time itself. The Potential of AI in Time Travel The concept of time travel has long fascinated individuals across the globe. From science fiction to philosophical debates, the possibility of traversing through time has captured our imaginations. With the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), the potential for time travel has become more tangible than ever before. AI possesses remarkable capabilities that can greatly enhance our predictive abilities, improve efficiency and accuracy, and unlock new dimensions of knowledge. Enhancing Predictive Abilities One of the key potentials of AI in time travel is its ability to enhance our predictive abilities. By analyzing vast amounts of data and patterns, AI can forecast future events with a high degree of accuracy. This predictive power could enable individuals to make informed decisions and take proactive measures in various domains, such as finance, healthcare, and even historical research. Improving Efficiency and Accuracy AI also has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and accuracy of time travel research. With the ability to process and analyze massive amounts of data at an unprecedented speed, AI can help researchers sift through complex information, identify patterns, and discover hidden insights. This capability could revolutionize the way we understand and study history, as well as other fields that rely on analyzing temporal data. Unlocking New Dimensions of Knowledge Furthermore, AI has the capacity to unlock new dimensions of knowledge in the realm of time travel. By simulating different scenarios and running complex algorithms, AI can help us explore possibilities and test hypotheses regarding time travel. This could lead to groundbreaking discoveries and insights that were previously unimaginable. With AI as a tool, we can delve deeper into the mysteries of time and expand our understanding of the universe. Challenges AI Faces in Time Travel Research Despite the remarkable potential of AI in time travel, there are several challenges that need to be addressed. These challenges include the complexity and paradoxes inherent in time travel, ethical considerations surrounding altering the course of history, and limitations in the available data and information. Complexity and Paradoxes Time travel research is inherently complex and riddled with paradoxes. AI must contend with the paradoxes associated with altering the past or observing the future, such as the grandfather paradox or bootstrap paradox. These paradoxes present significant challenges as they challenge the logical consistency of time travel. AI algorithms must be designed to navigate these complexities to ensure meaningful results. Ethical considerations are crucial when discussing AI’s role in time travel research. The ability to alter the course of history raises profound moral questions. AI must be programmed with a strong ethical framework to ensure responsible use and consideration of the potential consequences of changing events in the past or future. Data and Information Limitations Another challenge faced by AI in time travel research is the limitation of available data and information. Historical records may be incomplete or inaccurate, hindering AI’s ability to accurately analyze and predict events. Additionally, future predictions rely on reliable data sources, which can be scarce or unreliable. Overcoming these limitations will require advanced data collection methods and robust algorithms capable of handling incomplete or uncertain information. Advances in AI Technology for Time Travel Despite the challenges, significant advances in AI technology have paved the way for exciting possibilities in time travel research. Three key areas of AI technology that hold promise in this field are quantum machine learning, cognitive computing, and neural networks and deep learning. Quantum Machine Learning Quantum machine learning combines the power of quantum computing and AI algorithms to revolutionize time travel research. Quantum computers can perform computations with exponentially greater speed and complexity, allowing for more accurate simulations and predictions. This technology has the potential to unlock new insights into the nature of time and enable breakthroughs in time travel research. Cognitive computing focuses on creating AI systems that can mimic human cognition, including reasoning, learning, and problem-solving. In time travel research, cognitive computing can help process and analyze complex temporal data, explore various hypotheses, and generate more accurate predictions. By leveraging cognitive computing, AI can bridge the gap between human intuition and computational power, leading to more comprehensive and reliable results. Neural Networks and Deep Learning Neural networks and deep learning algorithms have already demonstrated significant advancements in various domains. In the context of time travel research, these technologies can analyze vast amounts of historical and temporal data, detect patterns, and make predictions with a high degree of accuracy. Neural networks can also be used to simulate different scenarios and test the feasibility of time travel under different conditions, further expanding our understanding of this intricate concept. AI’s Role in Building the Time Machine While AI has the potential to enhance our understanding of time travel, it can also play a crucial role in building the actual time machine. AI can contribute to various aspects of time machine development, including designing the time machine architecture, developing time navigation algorithms, and optimizing energy consumption. Designing the Time Machine Architecture AI can assist in designing the architecture of the time machine. By utilizing AI algorithms, engineers and scientists can optimize the physical and computational structure of the time machine, ensuring its efficiency, reliability, and safety. AI can help identify potential design flaws, simulate different configurations, and ultimately contribute to the development of a robust and functional time machine. Developing Time Navigation Algorithms Navigating through time poses significant computational challenges. AI can help in developing sophisticated time navigation algorithms that account for various factors, such as relativistic effects, temporal paradoxes, and potential disruptions in the space-time continuum. These algorithms can enable precise and controlled time travel, ensuring the safety and integrity of the time traveler and the timeline. Optimizing Energy Consumption Time travel requires enormous amounts of energy, often exceeding our current technological capabilities. AI can contribute to optimizing energy consumption by analyzing patterns, identifying energy-efficient strategies, and simulating different scenarios to minimize the energy requirements of time travel. This optimization can lead to the development of more sustainable and feasible time travel technologies. Ethical Implications of AI-Enabled Time Travel As AI technology progresses, ethical implications surrounding AI-enabled time travel become increasingly significant. Several key ethical considerations arise when contemplating the implications of AI in altering history, protecting the integrity of time, and safeguarding personal privacy. Altering the Course of History The ability to alter the course of history raises profound ethical concerns. AI’s influence on historical events could have far-reaching consequences, potentially disrupting the natural progression of society and altering the lives of individuals. Careful ethical frameworks must be established to guide decision-making processes and ensure that the potential benefits of time travel do not outweigh the potential harm. Protecting the Integrity of Time Preserving the integrity of time is crucial in ethical time travel. AI algorithms must be designed to prevent paradoxes and preserve the logical consistency of temporal events. Time travel technologies should maintain a coherent and stable timeline to prevent unintended disruptions or detrimental alterations to the past or future. Ensuring the responsible use of AI in time travel research is essential to protect the fabric of time itself. Implications for Personal Privacy AI-enabled time travel raises concerns regarding personal privacy. The ability to access historical or future information can expose individuals and their actions, compromising their privacy and autonomy. Ethical guidelines must be established to protect personal privacy while still allowing for responsible research and exploration. Striking a balance between accessing temporal information and respecting individual privacy rights is crucial in the development and use of AI in time travel. Potential Applications of AI-Enhanced Time Travel AI’s potential applications in time travel extend beyond the realm of scientific exploration. Several practical and beneficial applications emerge from integrating AI with time travel technologies. These applications include historical research and preservation, simulation and forecasting, and space and astrological exploration. Historical Research and Preservation AI can greatly enhance historical research and preservation efforts by analyzing vast amounts of historical data, predicting the outcomes of historical events, and simulating alternative scenarios. By leveraging AI, historians can gain new insights into the past and ensure the preservation of cultural heritage. AI can assist in reconstructing historical landscapes, accurately depicting historical events, and even engaging in virtual time travel experiences for educational or research purposes. Simulation and Forecasting Time travel-enabled AI opens up new possibilities for simulation and forecasting. By combining historical data and predictive algorithms, AI can produce highly accurate simulations of past events or forecast future developments. This capability has significant implications in fields such as economics, climate science, and urban planning. Decision-makers can utilize AI-enhanced time travel simulations and forecasts to make more informed choices and develop strategies that account for the temporal dynamics of complex systems. Space and Astrological Exploration AI-enhanced time travel can also revolutionize space and astrological exploration. By accessing information about distant galaxies, historical celestial events, and future phenomena, AI-driven time travel can assist scientists in understanding the universe on a cosmic scale. AI can analyze massive volumes of astronomical data, discover new patterns and correlations, and help predict celestial events with unprecedented accuracy. This knowledge could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the cosmos and pave the way for future space missions. Collaboration between AI and Human Experts While AI possesses remarkable capabilities, effective collaboration between AI and human experts is crucial to fully harness the potential of AI-enhanced time travel. Combining AI’s analytical capabilities with human intuition, expertise, and ethical reasoning can lead to more comprehensive and reliable outcomes. Combining AI’s Analytical Capabilities with Human Intuition AI’s analytical capabilities can be augmented by human intuition and creativity. Human experts can contribute unique perspectives and insights that AI algorithms may not have access to. By combining AI’s data-driven analysis with human intuition, researchers can arrive at more nuanced and comprehensive conclusions. This collaboration can result in a deeper understanding of time travel concepts and the ability to address complex challenges that arise in temporal research. Human Supervision and Intervention in Time Travel Processes Given the profound ethical implications of time travel, human supervision and intervention are essential to ensure responsible use of AI-enabled time travel technologies. While AI algorithms can analyze and predict temporal events, human experts can provide oversight and intervene when necessary to ensure the preservation of historical integrity, protect personal privacy, and guard against unintended consequences. The collaboration between AI and human experts ensures that the benefits of time travel are harnessed responsibly and ethically. Reflections on AI-Human Coexistence The collaboration between AI and human experts in time travel research also prompts philosophical reflections on AI-human coexistence. As AI continues to evolve, it is essential to introspect on the role of humans in the face of AI’s increasing capabilities. The integration of AI into time travel research necessitates a thoughtful examination of the human experience, consciousness, and the ethical responsibilities that come with wielding such powerful technology. Balancing AI and human presence in time travel journeys is crucial to maintaining the human element and preserving the integrity of temporal exploration. Public Perception and Acceptance of AI-Driven Time Travel Widespread public perception and acceptance of AI-driven time travel are crucial for leveraging the full potential of this technology. Societal concerns and fears, education and awareness, and development of ethical frameworks and regulations all play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion and acceptance. Societal Concerns and Fears AI-driven time travel raises societal concerns and fears that can hinder public acceptance. Concerns about altering history, potential misuse of time travel technologies, and the blurred boundaries between reality and illusion are prevalent. It is crucial to address these concerns through open dialogue, public education, and transparent policies to alleviate fears and foster a more constructive understanding of AI-driven time travel. Education and Awareness Promoting education and awareness about AI-driven time travel is essential to cultivate public understanding and acceptance. By providing accessible and accurate information to the public, misconceptions and misinterpretations can be dispelled. Educational initiatives, public lectures, and engagement with experts can empower individuals to make informed judgments about AI-driven time travel, fostering a society that embraces the possibilities and benefits of this technology. Ethical Frameworks and Regulations Establishing ethical frameworks and regulations is essential for the responsible development and use of AI-driven time travel. These frameworks should address concerns such as historical integrity, personal privacy, and potential misuse. Public input, interdisciplinary collaborations, and ongoing evaluation and adaptation of ethical guidelines are necessary to ensure that AI-driven time travel aligns with society’s values and safeguards individual rights. Implications for Future Science Fiction The potential of AI in time travel has profound implications for the world of science fiction. AI’s role in building the time machine, ethical considerations, and the transformative nature of AI-driven time travel narratives reshape science fiction in several ways. Transformation of Time Travel Narratives AI-driven time travel introduces new dimensions to time travel narratives. The integration of AI into the design, operation, and navigation of time machines redefines the relationship between humans, machines, and time itself. Time travel stories can explore the moral dilemmas arising from AI’s influence, the challenges of navigating temporal complexities, and the coexistence of humans and intelligent machines in the realm of time travel. Exploring New Concepts and Dilemmas AI-driven time travel opens up new avenues for exploring concepts and dilemmas. Time travel stories can delve into the ethics of altering history, the consequences of unintended interference, and the implications of temporal paradoxes. By navigating these new frontiers, science fiction can contemplate the nature of free will, the fragility of the timeline, and the limits of human understanding. Challenging Philosophical Assumptions AI-driven time travel challenges philosophical assumptions surrounding time, causality, and the nature of reality. Science fiction can engage in thought experiments, encouraging readers and viewers to question their understanding of these fundamental concepts. Challenging philosophical assumptions through AI-driven time travel narratives invites reflection on the nature of existence, the malleability of time, and the boundaries of human agency. The potential of AI in time travel is immense, with the power to enhance our predictive abilities, improve efficiency and accuracy, and unlock new dimensions of knowledge. Despite the challenges faced in time travel research, such as complexity, ethical considerations, and data limitations, advancements in AI technology, including quantum machine learning, cognitive computing, and neural networks, pave the way for exciting possibilities. AI can play an integral role in designing the time machine, developing navigation algorithms, and optimizing energy consumption. Ethical implications, potential applications, and collaboration between AI and human experts are crucial considerations in the integration of AI in time travel. Public perception and acceptance of AI-driven time travel, as well as implications for future science fiction, further shape the landscape of this emerging field. With the responsible and ethical use of AI, time travel has the potential to transform our understanding of the past, present, and future, opening up a world of possibilities that were once relegated to the realm of imagination.
\| Common names: shark (English), dormilón (Espanol), cornudo (Espanol), tiburón (Espanol) \| Heterodontus mexicanus Taylor & Castro-Aguirre, 1972 Mexican horn shark A slender-bodied shark with an enlarged squarish head and pig-like snout; low bony ridge above each eye that ends gradually rear; space between eyes shallowly concave; nostrils without barbels; with grooves around the nostrils and connected to the mouth; anterior nasal flaps elongate posteriorly; small mouth; front teeth with 3 similar sized points, enlarged molariform teeth posteriorly; both dorsal fins with a sharp spine; origin of first dorsal fin over pectoral fin base; skin denticles on flank large (70-130/cm2 in adults) and rough. Grey-brown, usually with scattered large (> ½ eye diameter) black spots on fins and body; a pale bar between eyes; 1-2 indistinct dusky blotches below eye. Size: reaches 70 cm. Habitat: rocky to sandy bottoms. Depth: 1-50 m. Southern Baja and the Gulf of California to Peru.
For some workers, the thrill of a demanding, unpredictable role is supremely inspirational. For others, the familiarity of a repetitive job is comforting and reassuring. While all employees value different jobs, repetitive work can sometimes be challenging. Here we dive deeply into the nature of repetitive work and explore new ways to boost your team’s morale, increase engagement and make their performance top-notch. What is repetitive work? Repetitive work means performing the same task over and over. Repetitive jobs take many forms. For instance, factory production lines that involve assembling, warehouse pick packing, cashiers at shopping centre checkouts and manual labour like bricklaying. Repetitive work is also performed in offices, particularly in clerical administration work such as data entry. A 2021 UiPath survey of office workers revealed that more than two-thirds (67%) feel they are repeatedly doing the same tasks. 68% said they wish they had more time to explore how to incorporate new responsibilities into their day-to-day routines. While many enjoy repetitive work, others can find that it can become monotonous. As a manager, you must be strategic and imaginative to understand which team members need more inspiration and motivation to help them excel in a repetitive environment. What studies say about repetitive work Numerous studies highlight the impacts of repetitive work on employee wellbeing. One paper, The Stress of Boredom and Monotony, revealed that boredom and monotony could adversely affect morale, performance, and quality of work and act as stressors. When coupled with the need to maintain high levels of alertness, boredom and monotony could represent a combination capable of eliciting physical and mental stress, let alone safety issues. When a job is physically repetitive, there is a risk of problems like carpal tunnel syndrome or repetitive strain injury. Some of the most common work-related repetitive motion injuries include tendonitis, bursitis, and nerve entrapment syndromes. Of course, more physical risks arise when the worker loses focus and attention drifts, and long hours at a computer or standing at a checkout can lead to issues like poor posture. Ways you can motivate your team in a repetitive job 1 Create an engaging environment If your team is performing routine tasks, then it’s even more important to up the ante to keep their spirits high. If safety permissions allow it, something as simple as a radio or letting employees have their own music can help lift the mood. Consider fun group activities that encourage everyone to get involved at kick-off meetings and breaks. Make planning and choosing them a communal experience so the activity will ignite genuine excitement. Offering weekly activities during lunch breaks like football, yoga, table tennis or card games is a great idea too. Beyond these ideas, building a positive working culture that centres on employee growth can be beneficial. Celebrate achievements and milestones so the team feels appreciated and supported and give continual team feedback. 2 Offer opportunities and pathways for growth As the UiPath survey showed, 68% of office workers long for the chance to incorporate more responsibilities into their routines. In short, many repetitive workers would thrive on a challenge! Perhaps the kitchen hand is an aspiring chef and could be offered a trial? Maybe the production line worker would make a great supervisor? Scheduling individual employee meetings to establish their hidden talents, skills and aspirations within the company can be beneficial. A personal development plan could nurture your team’s professional development and signal that you value them – as well as tap into some valuable resources you didn’t know you needed. 3 Create meaning and purpose in work If workers carry out linear, routine work, they may not see the result of what they do. Providing opportunities to see their finished product or the value of what they’re doing can significantly lift morale and motivation. Hearing device company Cochlear invites children and families who have experienced a Cochlear implant to share their stories with the assembly workers of their devices. Sharing the stories of how the team have helped a child to hear for the first time helps to inspire their workforce and gives their work meaning and purpose. 4 Ensure the team feels valued Sometimes teams performing repetitive work are overlooked when it comes to attention from the CEO and leadership, they are not invited to company events as they need to keep the operation flowing, kitchens and amenities may not be kept clean and tidy. While these elements may not motivate employees, they can serve to demotivate. Ensure facilities are well managed and maintained and that employees understand their contribution in keeping them clean and tidy. Try and find ways that the team can participate more broadly in company activities and events. Leaders can set a fabulous example by doing the occasional shift. Not only will leaders earn respect for their participation but will also build trust and gain real insight into the role. 5 Streamline and improve their workflow with tech Although AI and automation are slowly replacing many repetitive jobs, this is not to say tech can’t be used effectively to support your team to make their work lives less monotonous and more productive. If your accounts clerk spends time manually entering invoices, maybe you could invest in scanning software to speed up their workflow. If your factory workers are performing the same routine tasks, perhaps a layer of automation could remove the monotony of their duties. 6 Let your team mix it up Consider ways you can give some autonomy to your team to allow them some flexibility. Can any of the tasks they carry out be done in a different order? Would it be possible to do job rotations? Maybe there’s a new side project certain members would be interested in completing? Better still, can any of their tasks be completed with a hybrid working-from-home setup? By giving them some freedom and flexibility, your employees will become more engaged and interested in their job. Ask them what they would value if offered more flexibility, and then work together to create opportunities to carry out their duties in a less rigid environment. 7 Boost confidence Sometimes workers in repetitive roles feel they lack the skills, experience, or education to try new things. They may have accepted that this is their destiny and while they do the job and do it well, deep down they may long for some new opportunities. Over time these employees may find their motivation levels flagging. Their motivation may be increased by being supported to help achieve their goals. Offering educational opportunities, languages classes, mentoring programs and chances to test and try new jobs in the same organisation may give these team members a motivational boost! 1.More than two-thirds (67%) of office workers feel they are repeatedly doing the same tasks. 68% said they wish they had more time to explore how to incorporate new responsibilities. 2.Repetitive jobs can lead to boredom and monotony, which have adverse effects on morale, performance, and quality of work. 3.Create an engaging, growth-based environment by permitting music, offering inspiring activities and celebrating achievements and milestones. 4.Schedule individual employee meetings to establish their skills and aspirations before establishing personal development plans to nurture your team’s professional progress. 5.Give your team the chance to see the result of their efforts by providing customer, CEO and director interactions, and become more hands-on yourself. 6.Make an extra effort to reward and incentivise your team’s hard work by subsidising travel and food, leaving early or establishing an employee reward program and employee of the month schemes. 7.Where possible, give your team more freedom and flexibility to increase engagement and interest. 8.Incorporate new tech-related systems or software that will streamline and improve workflows. If you are open to new opportunities, contact a recruitment agency like Trojan Recruitment Group and receive advice from the experts in labour-hire, permanent and contract staff.
Why it is Important to Help Rohingya Refugees in Crisis There are very few moments in history when an entire community has been chastised and put in the type of danger that Rohingya Muslims have been living for the past few years. Tensions in Myanmar were growing for years before the conflict began in 2017. In 2014, the Rohingya were excluded from the country’s census due to a lack of recognition as a people from Myanmar. Many in the country view the Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, with no right to live in Myanmar. Over a million Rohingya Muslims, who have their own culture and language, lived in Myanmar before the start of the crisis. The majority were in Rakhine State on the western coast, which shares a border with the Chittagong province of Bangladesh. Villages were burned, civilians were attacked and killed, forcing Rohingya Muslims to flee over the border. UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, described Rohingya Muslims as “one of, if not the, most discriminated people in the world”. It is difficult to argue against that point, which is why supporting our Rohingya Muslim charity appeal is so important, with hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters’ lives depending on it.
This is a broad group of disorders which are almost all characterized by subepidermal blisters with minimal inflammation. New lesions occur with the slightest trauma with spontaneous blister formation common. The disorder has been divided along clinical-pathologic presentations based primarily upon the level of the skin separation and site of the structural defect. These three types are epidermolytic, junctional, and dermolytic. Inheritance is autosomal dominant or recessive. Overall, all of these disorder are very rare. Prenatal diagnosis can be made using fetal skin biopsy or analysis of the fetal DNA using chorionic villi or amniotic fluid cells. Epidermolytic Junctional Dermolytic Gross Appearance and Clinical Variants Histopathological Features and Variants Prognosis Treatment Commonly Used Terms Internet Links Epidermolytic (Epidermolysis bullosa simplex, Keratins 5 and 14, Nonscarring) This has intraepidermal cleavage through the basal cell layer. If direct immunofluorescence (DIF) or immunoperoxidase is used, the base of the blister contains the bullous pemphigoid antigen, laminin, type VII collagen, and the LDA-1 antigen. Most are AD inheritance with mild clinical symptoms. The defects disrupt the assembly of the keratin intermediate filaments 5 and 14. Most are missense mutations. TYPE CLINICAL DEFECT Generalized (Koebner) type Serous blisters at birth or early infancy May involve entire body but usually on hands and feet Worse in warmer weather Mutations in the less conserved protions Localized Blisters confined to hands and feet Onset usually within first 2 yrs but may be delayed to adolescence Split is within the mid-epidermis Mutations in the less conserved portions Most severe form Blisters in first few months of life on trunk, face, and extremities, often with herpetiform appearance Characteristic ultrastructural clumping of keratin tonofilaments Frequent mutation of codon 125 of keratin 14 These mutations are near the conserved helix boundary motifs Ogna type Acral sanguineous blebs with generalized bruising tendency Fischer and Gedde-Dahl type Blistering with mottled pigmentation Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1996;93:9079-9084 Linked to KRT5:P24L mutation Superficial type Subcorneal cleavage resembling staphylococcal scalded skin syndrome Bart type Congenital localized absence of skn May be a subset of AD dystrophic EB Junctional (Lamina lucidolytic epidermolysis bullosa, Laminin 5 defects) These are rare variants all characterized by autosomal recessive inheritance (AR). Extracutaneous involvement may be common. The defects appear to be in laminin 5 (kalinin/nicein or BM600). These are proteins located on the anchoring filaments associated with hemidesmosomes. There are other defects in uncein (10-DEJ-1), absent in 25% of patients. TYPE CLINICAL DEFECT EB atrophicans gravis (EB letalis, Herlitz type) Lethal variant of junctional EB Severe generalized changes with acral accentuation Present at birth May have non-healing area round nape of neck and perioral region Associations include pyloric atresia, anemia, and blepharitis Hum Mol Genet 1996;5:231-237 J Invest Dermatol 1999;113:314-321 Caused by autosomal recessive defects in LAMA3, LAMB3, LAMC2 encoding for the alpha3, beta3, and gamma2 subunits of laminin 5 Defects in all three polypeptide chains of laminin 5-virtually complete absence EB atrophicans mitis (Generalized atrophic benign EB) Autosomal recessive subtype of nonlethal junctional EB Generalized blistering of the skin and mucous membranes since birth resulting in skin atrophy, focal scarring, and pigmentary changes Alopecia, nail dystrophy, and tooth anomalies and compound melanocytic nevi Improvement with age Adv Dermatol 1997;13:87-119 J Clin Invest 1995;95:1345-1352 J Invest Dermatol 1998;111:887-892 Deficiency in 180kd bullous pemphigoid antigen (type XVII collagen) Occasionally defects in laminin 5 and LAD-1 EB localized variant Rare localized variant with acral blistering and no hair changes associated with homozygoud missense mutations of COL17A1 allowing expression of BP180 Nat Genet 1995;11:83-86 EB atrophicans inversa Truncal blistering with acral sparing Improvement with age EB atrophicans localisata Onset in early childhood Lesions on soles and pretibial area EB junctionalis progressiva Presents with nail dystrophy followed by acral blisters May have partial deafness Cicatricial junctional EB Onset at birth with lesions healing with scarring Contractures and scarring of the anterior nares Oral and laryngeal lesions Pyloric atresia-junctional EB syndrome Severe blistering at birth with pyloric atresia or duodenal atresia Most affected children die during the postnatal period from severe skin involvement Surviving patients have milder skin changes with enamel pitting, nail dystrophy, aplasia cuts congenita, and ureterovesical junction obstruction Br J Dermatol 1988;139:862-871 Reduced expression of integrin alpha6beta4 Epidermolysis bullosa with muscular dystrophy Once classified as variant of EB simplex Blistering at birth or shortly after Muscle involvement is variable randing from 2 months to 35 years of age Nail dystrophy and enamel hypoplasia May have severe involvement of airway epithelium leading to hoarseness and respiratory complications Exp Dermatol 1996;5:237-246 Plectin is a cytoskeletal linker protein in skin and muscle-member of the plakin family Located in the hemidesmosomal and hemidesmosomal plaques interacting with the cytoskeletal proteins Separation occurs at the level of the hemidesmosomal plaque PLEC1 mutations caused by mutations within exon 32 DISEASE VARIANTS CHARACTERIZATION Junctional epidermolysis bullosa in the Middle East: clinical and genetic studies in a series of consanguineous families. Nakano A, Lestringant GG, Paperna T, Bergman R, Gershoni R, Frossard P, Kanaan M, Meneguzzi G, Richard G, Pfendner E, Uitto J, Pulkkinen L, Sprecher E. Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Biology, Jefferson Medical College and Institute of Molecular Medicine, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA. J Am Acad Dermatol 2002 Apr;46(4):510-6 Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Junctional epidermolysis bullosa (JEB) is a group of inherited blistering diseases characterized by epidermal-dermal separation resulting from mutations that affect the function of critical components of the basement membrane zone. This group of autosomal recessive diseases is especially prevalent in regions where consanguinity is common, such as the Middle East. However, the clinical and genetic epidemiology of JEB in this region remains largely unexplored. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present study was to assess a series of consanguineous JEB families originating from the Middle East. METHODS: We identified 7 families referred to us between 1998 and 1999 and originating from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, and Israel. Histologic, immunofluorescence, and electron microscopy studies were performed to direct the subsequent molecular analysis. DNA obtained from all family members was amplified by means of polymerase chain reaction and analyzed by conformation-sensitive gel electrophoresis with subsequent direct sequencing. RESULTS: In 6 families presenting with the clinical and histologic features distinctive for JEB, mutations in genes encoding 1 of the 3 subunit polypeptides of laminin-5 were identified. Two families each had mutations in LAMB3, 2 in LAMA3, and 2 in LAMC2. Out of 7 distinct mutations, 5 were novel and 2 were recurrent. No relationship was found between the presence of nonsense/frameshift mutations in laminin-5 genes and perinatal mortality, contradicting a major genotype-phenotype correlation previously reported in the European and US literature. Similarly, none of the recurrent LAMB3 hot spot mutations previously described in other populations was found in our series. Finally, in a family with the clinical diagnosis of generalized atrophic benign epidermolysis bullosa, a homozygous non-sense mutation in Col17A1 gene (encoding the BPAG2 antigen) was identified. CONCLUSION: The present report suggests (1) the existence of a unique spectrum of mutations in the Middle East populations and (2) the need for the implementation of a diagnostic strategy tailored to the genetic features of JEB in this region. Dermolytic (Dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa, Type VII collagen defects) These lesions present with trauma induced blisters often followed by scarring and milia. Extracutaneous manifestations may be present. This variant is characterized by split below the lamina densa within the anchoring fibrils. Type VII collagen is markedly reduced in nearly all variants. Other membrane components which may be defective include 10-DEJ-1, KFI, AF1/AF2, 105 kd antigen, and chondroitin-6-sulfate. TYPE CLINICAL DEFECT Dermolytic EB Most severe form AR onset at birth Large flaccid bullae disseminated Scarring leads to digital fusion (mitten deformity) Other mucosal surfaces involved Sparse hair, mental retardation. dystrophic teeth Severe (gravis) form Squamous cell carcinomas frequently develop with patients dying by 3-4th decades Caused by mutations of the COLA71 gene Dermolytic EB, hyperplastic variant (Cockayne-Touraine) AD starting at birth Acral regions esp. extensor surfaces May have hypertrophic scars Matrix Biol 1999;18:29-42 Glycine substitutions in collagenous triple helical domain of the type VII collagen responsible for the dominant negative interference with wild-type protein that destabilizes trimerization of pro-alpha1 (VII) chains and disturbs anchoring fibril assembly Dermolytic EB, albopapuloid variant (Pasini) AD starting at birth Pale papules on trunk at puberty Matrix Biol 1999;18:29-42 Glycine substitutions in collagenous triple helical domain of the type VII collagen responsible for the dominant negative interference with wild-type protein that destabilizes trimerization of pro-alpha1 (VII) chains and disturbs anchoring fibril assemblyCultured fibroblasts accumulate excess glycosaminoglycans Pretibial EB AD developing between 11 and 24 yrs Sparse anchoring fibrils Linkage to collagen VII gene COL7A1 Localized dermolytic EB Onset in early childhood with some improvement with age Prurigo nodularis-like lesions develop in variant called EB pruriginosa Dermolytic EB inversa (Recessive dystrophic EB inversa) Blisters on the axilla, neck and lower part of trunk with sparing of the extremities Mucosa commonly involved Absent or rudimentary anchoring fibrils Transient bullous dermolysis of the newborn Self-limited course that remits within first 2 years of life and heals with mild atrophy and scarring J Invest Dermatol 1997;109:811-814 May have delay in transport and integration of type VII collagen or excessive phagocytosis by basal keratinocytes (retention of type VII collagen) with recessive or dominant glycine substitution mutations in COL7A1 gene Bart Syndrome Blistering accompanied with localized absence of skin and nail abnormalities J Invest Dermatol 1996;106:1340-1342 GROSS CLINICAL VARIANTS CHARACTERIZATION - The classification of inherited epidermolysis bullosa (EB): Report of the Third International Consensus Meeting on Diagnosis and Classification of EB. - Fine JD, Eady RA, Bauer EA, Bauer JW, Bruckner-Tuderman L, Heagerty A, Hintner H, Hovnanian A, Jonkman MF, Leigh I, McGrath JA, Mellerio JE, Murrell DF, Shimizu H, Uitto J, Vahlquist A, Woodley D, Zambruno G. Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tennessee; National Epidermolysis Bullosa Registry, Nashville, Tennessee, USA - J Am Acad Dermatol. 2008 Jun;58(6):931-50.nessee, USA. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Since publication in 2000 of the Second International Consensus Report on Diagnosis and Classification of Epidermolysis Bullosa, many advances have been made to our understanding of this group of diseases, both clinically and molecularly. At the same time, new epidermolysis bullosa (EB) subtypes have been described and similarities with some other diseases have been identified. OBJECTIVE: We sought to arrive at a new consensus of the classification of EB subtypes. RESULTS: We now present a revised classification system that takes into account the new advances, as well as encompassing other inherited diseases that should also be included within the EB spectrum, based on the presence of blistering and mechanical fragility. Current recommendations are made on the use of specific diagnostic tests, with updates on the findings known to occur within each of the major EB subtypes. Electronic links are also provided to informational and laboratory resources of particular benefit to clinicians and their patients. LIMITATIONS: As more becomes known about this disease, future modifications may be needed. The classification system has been designed with sufficient flexibility for these modifications. CONCLUSION: This revised classification system should assist clinicians in accurately diagnosing and subclassifying patients with EB. Relative extent of skin involvement in inherited epidermolysis bullosa (EB): Composite regional anatomic diagrams based on the findings of the National EB Registry, 1986 to 2002. Devries DT, Johnson LB, Weiner M, Fine JD. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2004 Apr;50(4):572-81. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Inherited epidermolysis bullosa (EB) encompasses 4 major types and at least 23 clinically distinctive phenotypes. Although considerable variability in cutaneous disease activity is known to exist within each, severity and anatomic distribution of skin lesions remain the major criteria used for subclassification. OBJECTIVE: We sought to generate accurate anatomic "density" diagrams depicting the relative extent and location of skin lesions within each major EB subtype. METHODS: Diagrams were created for each major EB type, on the basis of medical history and physical examination findings obtained from 1986 to 2002 from 3280 consecutive enrollees in the National EB Registry. RESULTS: An anatomic diagram was created for each of the major EB subtypes, representing a prototypic composite photograph of cutaneous disease activity. CONCLUSIONS: Marked variability exists in the extent of skin involvement within each major EB subtype. The use of these diagrams, generated from the world's largest cohort of patients with EB, should assist the clinician in more accurately subclassifying newly encountered patients. Junctional epidermolysis bullosa associated with congenital localized absence of skin, and pyloric atresia in two newborn siblings J Am Acad Dermatol 2001;44:330-5 2 premature male siblings with pyloric atresia, congenital localized absence of the skin, urinary obstruction, and EB at birth Electron microscopic study revealed characteristic findings of EB simplex Prenatal diagnosis of the next sibling was made by integrin B4 mutations and the electron microscopic study of the biopsy specimen after delivery confirmed junctional EB (JEB) The presence of JEB and of CLAS in a newborn infant should raise the possibility of coexisting PA and ureterovesical obstruction HISTOLOGICAL TYPES CHARACTERIZATION General MELANOCYTIC NEVI (EPIDERMOLYISIS BULLOSA NEVUS) - Epidermolysis bullosa nevus: an exception to the clinical and dermoscopic criteria for melanoma. Department of Dermatology and Cutaneous Biology, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, 833 Chestnut St, Ste 704, Philadelphia, PA 19107. - Arch Dermatol. 2007 Sep;143(9):1164-7. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Large acquired melanocytic nevi that occur in patients with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), referred to as EB nevi, may pose a diagnostic challenge because of their clinical and dermoscopic resemblance to melanoma. These unconventional melanocytic nevi have been encountered in all categories of hereditary EB, most of them in childhood. Although some of the reported cases have an alarming clinical appearance that is indistinguishable from melanoma, long-term follow-up has confirmed the benign nature of these rarely encountered melanocytic lesions. The histopathologic patterns of these nevi range from a banal congenital pattern to the problematic persistent pseudomelanoma pattern. Observation We describe the clinical, dermoscopic, and histopathologic features of a large EB nevus in a toddler. Clinically, the lesion was markedly asymmetrical and irregularly pigmented with foci of stippled pigmentation and scarring, which easily fulfilled the ABCD criteria for melanoma. Accordingly, a false-positive score resulted when dermoscopy was performed. Histopathologically, a pattern of persistent melanocytic neoplasm was observed. In the following 18 months, dynamic changes of the lesion included near-complete disappearance of the pigment, which was replaced by scar, milia, and areas of healing ulcers. Conclusion Epidermolysis bullosa nevi are dynamic melanocytic lesions that may simulate melanoma. Large melanocytic nevi in hereditary epidermolysis bullosa Johann W. Bauer, etal. J Am Acad Dermatol 2001;44:577-84 Abstract quote Large melanocytic nevi occurring in areas of former blistering in patients with hereditary epidermolysis bullosa (EB) pose a problem to the clinician with regard to prognosis and therapy because they may show clinical and histopathologic features strikingly resembling malignant melanoma. To investigate clinical and histologic criteria as well as the biologic behavior of these nevi, pigmented lesions of 12 patients (EB simplex, n = 1; junctional EB, n = 7; dystrophic EB, n = 4) of the Austrian EB registry were analyzed. Clinically, the nevi are up to palm sized, are initially very dark, and may exhibit stippled pigmentation and irregular borders that outline areas of former blisters. Over time they usually lose pigment, the surface gets papillomatous, and finally they acquire a shagreen-like appearance. Histopathologically, the nevi frequently exhibit a compound congenital or persisting nevus/pseudomelanoma pattern. Despite this combination of features, no malignant transformation of the nevi has been seen by us even after 20 years of prospective surveillance. Because nevi with these criteria do not fit in any of the known categories, we suggest the term EB nevi. - Dyskeratosis as a histologic feature in epidermolysis bullosa simplex-Dowling Meara. Department of Dermatology, Rambam Medical Center and the Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine, Technion-Israel, Institute of Technology, Haifa 31096, Israel. - J Am Acad Dermatol. 2007 Sep;57(3):463-6. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Intracellular keratin aggregation and clumping is a characteristic ultrastructural feature in epidermolysis bullosa simplex (EBS)-Dowling Meara (DM) yet without histologic correlates in routinely stained specimens. OBJECTIVE: We sought to detect histologic clues to keratin aggregation and clumping in the involved epidermis of EBS-DM. METHODS: Four cases of EBS-DM caused by dominant keratin (KRT)5 and KRT14 mutations were studied histologically and ultrastructurally. The histologic slides of 11 additional EBS cases (9 Weber-Cockayne subtypes and two Koebner subtypes) were also reviewed histologically. RESULTS: Intracytoplasmic aggregation and clumping of tonofilaments were observed ultrastructurally in all 4 EBS-DM cases. Intracytoplasmic eosinophilic homogenizations and inclusions (ie, dyskeratosis) in individual keratinocytes were detected histologically in 3 of the 4 EBS-DM cases, but in none of the 9 EBS-Weber-Cockayne cases or the two EBS-Koebner cases. LIMITATIONS: This was a relatively small studied group. CONCLUSION: The histopathological detection of dyskeratosis in individual keratinocytes may provide a valuable clue to keratin aggregation and clumping, and to the diagnosis in EBS-DM. - A Comparative Study Between Transmission Electron Microscopy and Immunofluorescence Mapping in the Diagnosis of Epidermolysis Bullosa. From the Departments of *Dermatology; double daggerOrthopaedic Research Institute; section signAnatomical Pathology, St George Hospital, Sydney; \|\|Department of Epidemiology and Preventative Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne; and daggerThe University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia. - Am J Dermatopathol. 2006 Oct;28(5):387-394 Abstract quote The classification of epidermolysis bullosa (EB) into 3 main subtypes has been based on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) that is able to directly visualize and quantify specific ultrastructural features. Immunofluorescence antigenic mapping (IFM) is a technique that determines the precise level of skin cleavage by determining binding sites for a series of antibodies. To date, no study has compared the accuracy of these two techniques in diagnosing the major types of EB. A prospective cohort of 33 patients thought to have EB on clinical grounds had TEM, IFM, and genetic testing performed. The sensitivities and specificities of TEM and IFM were calculated compared with the genetic results. Of 33 cases, 30 had a positive EB diagnosis. TEM subclassified EB into its three major forms in 24/30 cases (80%) and IFM in 29/30 cases (97%). Overall, TEM sensitivities and specificities when compared with genetic results were 71% and 81%, respectively. IFM sensitivities and specificities when compared with genetic results were 97% and 100%, respectively. If a patient tested positive for EB by IFM, the likelihood ratio of having a particular type of EB was consistently greater than 20 against the reference standard (compared with a likelihood ratio less than 10 for TEM). Our results indicate that the diagnosis of EB is improved (sometimes substantially) by the use of IFM compared with TEM. A comparative study of immunohistochemistry and electron microscopy used in the diagnosis of epidermolysis bullosa. Petronius D, Bergman R, Ben Izhak O, Leiba R, Sprecher E. Am J Dermatopathol. 2003 Jun;25(3):198-203 Abstract quote Electron microscopic examination still is the gold standard for classifying epidermolysis bullosa, although it is relatively expensive, time consuming, and not readily available. Immunoreagents have been developed recently to map antigens in the basement membrane on routinely processed specimens. The current study was performed to examine the diagnostic usefulness of immunohistochemistry, as compared with electron microscopic examination, for analyzing routine formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded sections of epidermolysis bullosa. This study investigated 39 consecutively diagnosed cases of epidermolysis bullosa in which both electron microscopic examination and immunohistochemistry were used. In each case, three monoclonal antibodies were used to stain for laminin 1, collagen IV, and keratin. The immunohistochemical patterns were defined as follows: epidermolysis bullosa simplex (laminin, collagen IV, or both at the dermal floor of the blister and keratin at both the dermal floor and the epidermal roof), junctional epidermolysis bullosa (laminin, collagen IV, or both at the dermal floor of the blister and keratin only at the epidermal roof), and dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (collagen IV, laminin, or both, and keratin all at the epidermal roof). Altogether, electron microscopic examination subclassified epidermolysis bullosa into its three major forms in 37 of the 39 cases (95%), and immunohistochemistry in 33 of the 39 cases (85%). All of the classifiable cases were concordant. Specifically, immunohistochemistry was diagnostic in 10 of 14 (71%) epidermolysis bullosa simplex cases, 14 of 14 (100%) junctional epidermolysis bullosa cases, and 9 of 11 (82%) dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa cases. The most frequent cause for inconclusive immunohistochemical results was failure in staining of the basement membrane with the antibodies to both laminin and collagen IV. In conclusion, the use of immunohistochemistry on routinely processed specimens may be useful for subclassifying epidermolysis bullosa into its major forms in the majority of the cases, although it still cannot fully replace electron microscopic examination or immunofluorescence mapping in the diagnosis of epidermolysis bullosa. PROGNOSIS AND TREATMENT CHARACTERIZATION PROGNOSIS MALIGNANCIES - Epidermolysis bullosa and the risk of life-threatening cancers: the National EB Registry experience, 1986-2006. National Epidermolysis Bullosa Registry, Nashville, Tennessee, USA. - J Am Acad Dermatol. 2009 Feb;60(2):203-11. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Case series have demonstrated that potentially lethal cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas arise in patients with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB), although the magnitude of this risk is undefined. METHODS: Systematic case finding and data collection were performed throughout the continental United States (1986-2002) by the National EB Registry on 3280 EB patients to determine cumulative and conditional risks for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and malignant melanoma (MM) within each major EB subtype, as well as the cumulative risk of death from each tumor. Study design was cross-sectional, with a nested randomly sampled longitudinal subcohort (N = 450). RESULTS: SCCs arose primarily in RDEB, especially the Hallopeau-Siemens subtype (RDEB-HS), first beginning in adolescence. Less frequently, SCCs occurred in junctional EB (JEB). Cumulative risks rose steeply in RDEB-HS, from 7.5% by age 20 to 67.8%, 80.2%, and 90.1% by ages 35, 45, and 55, respectively. In Herlitz JEB, the risk was 18.2% by age 25. SCC deaths occurred only in RDEB, with cumulative risks in RDEB-HS of 38.7%, 70.0%, and 78.7% by ages 35, 45, and 55, respectively. MM arose in RDEB-HS, with a cumulative risk of 2.5% by age 12. BCCs arose almost exclusively in the most severe EB simplex subtype (Dowling-Meara) (cumulative risk = 43.6% by age 55). LIMITATIONS: Mutational analyses were performed on only a minority of enrollees in the National EB Registry, preventing evaluation of the possible influence of specific genotypes on the risk of developing or dying from cutaneous SCCs. CONCLUSIONS: SCC is the most serious complication of EB within adults, especially those with RDEB-HS. By mid-adulthood, nearly all will have had at least one SCC, and nearly 80% will have died of metastatic SCC despite aggressive surgical resection. When compared with SCCs arising within the normal population, the remarkably high risk of occurrence of and then death from SCCs among RDEB patients suggests likely differences in pathogenesis. Additional studies of EB-derived tumors and SCC cell lines may not only provide new insights into the mechanisms of carcinogenesis but also means whereby these particular tumors may be prevented or more effectively treated. TREATMENT Corrective gene transfer Gene Ther 1998;5:1322-1332 Gene Ther 1999;6:42-47 Successfully performed for the beta3 and gamma2 chains of laminin 5 and BP180 Restored protein expression in only 50% of keratinocytes may be sufficient for normal phenotype GENETICALLY ENGINEERED SKIN Graftskin therapy in epidermolysis bullosa. Fivenson DP, Scherschun L, Choucair M, Kukuruga D, Young J, Shwayder T. Departments of Dermatology and Pathology, Henry Ford Hospital, and Organogenesis Inc. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2003 Jun;48(6):886-92. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Epidermolysis bullosa (EB) is a family of 23 genetic skin disorders for which treatments are mainly supportive. Graftskin is a bilayered living human skin construct characterized by a normal expression profile of all the genes reported as mutant in EB. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency and durability of graftskin in the treatment of EB. METHODS: A total of 9 children with EB were treated with graftskin. These include EB simplex: Dowling-Meara type (n = 2); Weber-Cockayne type (n = 1); junctional EB-Herlitz type (n = 1); and recessive dystrophic EB (n = 5). Lesions were debrided of epidermis and crusts followed by application of fenestrated graftskin under sterile conditions. Syndactyly hand release for "mitten deformity" was performed after removal of all epidermis under general anesthesia. All treatment sites were dressed with a nonadherent contact layer followed by absorbent foam dressing, roll gauze, and a compression wrap covering and were left intact for 1 week. Graft take was assessed clinically at weeks 1, 2, 4, 12, and 20 to 28. Graft persistence was assessed by electron microscopy and polymerase chain reaction analysis at weeks 4 and 12, and between weeks 20 and 28 on selected cases. RESULTS: A total of 96 sites were treated with 90% to 100% healing observed by 5 to 7 days, and many sites appearing as normal skin by 10 to 14 days. Finger and hand lesions showed 50% to 90% improvement in range of motion over baseline. Two children learned to walk after graftskin treatment of chronic plantar lesions. Two children had improvement in their chronic anemia after graftskin treatment. All patients and/or parents reported rapid pain resolution. Immunologic and genetic studies of graft persistence revealed evidence of donor DNA up to 28 weeks after graftskin application. None of the samples from female patients demonstrated Y chromosome-specific sequence when analyzed by the method of short tandem repeat. CONCLUSION: The encouraging results reported herein support the hypothesis that graftskin is more than a simple bandage or a source of growth factors to stimulate autologous closure of EB wounds. The improved quality of life and rapid achievement of growth/development milestones we have observed makes this an exciting step forward in the care of the patient with EB. Tissue-engineered skin (Apligraf) in the healing of patients with epidermolysis bullosa wounds. Falabella AF, Valencia IC, Eaglstein WH, Schachner LA. VAMC Department of Dermatology, 1201 NW 16th St (165), Miami, FL 33125, USA. Arch Dermatol. 2000 Oct;136(10):1225-30. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: At present, wound treatment of inherited epidermolysis bullosa (EB) is only supportive. OBJECTIVE: To determine the safety and clinical effects of tissue-engineered skin (Apligraf; Organogenesis Inc, Canton, Mass) in the healing of wounds of patients with different types of EB. DESIGN: An open-label uncontrolled study of 15 patients with EB treated with tissue-engineered skin. Each patient received tissue-engineered skin on up to 2 wounds on each of 3 clinic visits: day 1, week 6, and week 12. They were evaluated 7 (+/- 3) days and 6 weeks after each round of treatment. A quality-of-life survey was administered during week 6. SETTING: University of Miami, Miami, Fla. PATIENTS: Volunteers with EB. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Safety and wound healing. RESULTS: A total of 69 different acute wounds received tissue-engineered skin at the day-1 (24 wounds), week-6 (23 wounds), and week-12 (22 wounds) visits. Overall, 63 wounds (79%) were found healed at the day-7 visit. Of the acute wounds, 82% (51/62) were healed 6 weeks after being treated, 75% (27/36) after 12 weeks, and 79% (11/14) after 18 weeks. Nine chronic wounds were also treated. Four were healed at 6 weeks; however, 7 were still open at the last clinic visit (week 18). There were no signs of rejection or clinical infection and no adverse events related to the tissue-engineered skin. The quality of life for most patients improved after treatment. Compared with patients' recollection of wounds treated with standard dressings, healing was faster and less painful. CONCLUSION: In this series of patients, tissue-engineered skin induced very rapid healing, was not clinically rejected, and was devoid of adverse effects. It was felt by the patients and families to be more effective than conventional dressings for EB wounds. The use of tissue-engineered skin (Apligraf) to treat a newborn with epidermolysis bullosa. Falabella AF, Schachner LA, Valencia IC, Eaglstein WH. Department of Dermatology, University of Miami School of Medicine, Fla, USA. Arch Dermatol. 1999 Oct;135(10):1219-22 Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Inherited epidermolysis bullosa (EB) is a mechanobullous disorder. The Dowling-Meara variant, a subtype of EB, is characterized by widespread blister formation that may include the oral cavity and nails. Many patients with the Dowling-Meara phenotype are at increased risk of sepsis and death during infancy. The treatment of EB is generally supportive. The tissue-engineered skin used (Apligraf) is a bilayered human skin equivalent developed from foreskin. It is the only Food and Drug Administration-approved skin equivalent of its kind. It is approved for the treatment of venous ulcers of the lower extremities. It has also been used to treat acute wounds, such as graft donor sites and cancer excision sites. OBSERVATION: To our knowledge, we describe the first case in which a newborn with EB, Dowling-Meara variant, was treated with bilayered tissue-engineered skin. The areas treated with the tissue-engineered skin healed faster than the areas treated with conventional therapy. Most of the areas treated with tissue-engineered skin have remained healed, without developing new blisters. These areas appear to be more resistant to trauma. CONCLUSIONS: Our early success with tissue-engineered skin in this patient may have a significant impact on the future treatment of neonates with EB simplex. Future studies are needed to determine if the beneficial effects of tissue-engineered skin are reproducible in other neonates with EB simplex and in patients of all ages with different subtypes of EB. Chemoprevention of squamous cell carcinoma in recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa: Results of a phase 1 trial of systemic isotretinoin. Fine JD, Johnson LB, Weiner M, Stein A, Suchindran C. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2004 Apr;50(4):563-71. Abstract quote BACKGROUND: Patients with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB) are at high risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma on or after midadolescence, and most patients die of metastatic squamous cell carcinoma within 5 years of diagnosis of their first squamous cell carcinoma. OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine whether isotretinoin can be safely administered to patients with RDEB as a possible chemopreventive agent. METHODS: A total of 20 patients with RDEB aged 15 years or older were treated daily for 8 months with isotretinoin (with a targeted dosage of 0.5 mg/kg/d). RESULTS: No unusual adverse reactions were noted in this patient population. Several patients experienced reduced blistering at lower doses and increased mechanical fragility at maintenance dosage. CONCLUSIONS: Isotretinoin, at least up to a dosage of 0.5 mg/kg/d, may be safely used in patients with RDEB. Although increased fragility may occur, patients tolerated this drug well and were receptive to its long-term use for possible chemoprevention of cancer. Whether such an effect will occur is yet to be proven. Macpherson and Pincus. Clinical Diagnosis and Management by Laboratory Methods. Twentyfirst Edition. WB Saunders. 2006. Rosai J. Ackerman's Surgical Pathology. Ninth Edition. Mosby 2004. Sternberg S. Diagnostic Surgical Pathology. Fourth Edition. Lipincott Williams and Wilkins 2004. Robbins Pathologic Basis of Disease. Seventh Edition. WB Saunders 2005. DeMay RM. The Art and Science of Cytopathology. Volume 1 and 2. ASCP Press. 1996. Weedon D. Weedon's Skin Pathology Second Edition. Churchill Livingstone. 2002 Fitzpatrick's Dermatology in General Medicine. 6th Edition. McGraw-Hill. 2003. Weiss SW and Goldblum JR. Enzinger and Weiss's Soft Tissue Tumors. Fifth Edition. Mosby Elesevier 2008 Alpha6beta4 integrin-Beta 4 integrin subunit is noncovalently bound to alpha6 subunit. Trasmembrane alpha6beta4 integrin interacts with the anchoring complex (BP180, plectin, laminin 5). Also plays a role in hemidesmosome assembly. After ligation with laminin 5, it is important for cell proliferation, differentiation, and migration. Collagen VII-Collagen variant present in the skin basement membrane within the anchoring fibrils. COL7A1 gene encodes for the protein. Laminin 5-Widely distributed in various epithelia. Localizes to the anchoring filaments of the lamina lucida and also within the lamina densa of the basement membrane zone. Plectin-Cytoskeletal linker protein in skin and muscle-member of the plakin family. Located in the hemidesmosomal and hemidesmosomal plaques interacting with the cytoskeletal proteins. Separation occurs at the level of the hemidesmosomal plaque Salt split skin assay-Normal skin incubated with 1M NaCl which separates the epidermis from dermis. The epidermal half contains the upper lamina lucida, hemidesmosomes, and BP antigen. The dermal half contains laminin 5, lamina densa, and anchoring fibrils. Basic Principles of Disease Learn the basic disease classifications of cancers, infections, and inflammation Commonly Used Terms This is a glossary of terms often found in a pathology report. Learn how a pathologist makes a diagnosis using a microscope Surgical Pathology Report Examine an actual biopsy report to understand what each section means Understand the tools the pathologist utilizes to aid in the diagnosis How Accurate is My Report? Pathologists actively oversee every area of the laboratory to ensure your report is accurate Recent teaching cases and lectures presented in conferences Last Updated February 11, 2009 Send mail to The Doctor's Doctor with questions or comments about this web site. Read the Medical Disclaimer. Copyright © The Doctor's Doctor
Fried, Marvin Benjamin (2012) The cornerstone of Balkan power projection: Austro-Hungarian war aims and the problem of Albanian neutrality, 1914–1918. Diplomacy and Statecraft, 23 (3). pp. 425-445. ISSN 0959-2296 This article discusses the under-researched topic of Austro-Hungarian foreign policy towards Albania during the First World War. It argues firstly that Albania's location was geo-strategically vital to both Austria-Hungary and Italy, and that only co-operation helped keep Albania's neutrality intact and generally protected the country against its hostile neighbours. The analysis then outlines that when the Austro–Italian alliance broke down in 1915, Austria-Hungary attempted to secure Albania's neutrality as a means of exercising indirect control over the country. Finally, once Central Power troops conquered most of Albania, the highest civil-military echelon in Vienna suffered serious strains as the Foreign Ministry attempted to retain Albanian independence and neutrality whilst the army desired its annexation. The Albanian neutrality case study is a prime example of a state unable to ensure or even influence its own neutrality by force, diplomacy, or the trade of vital resources, and whose geo-political position made control of the region vital. Drawing upon Hungarian and German-language sources, this article addresses a striking omission in First World War Balkan historiography, discusses a forgotten neutrality example, and provides insights into Austro-Hungarian policymaking towards this vital Adriatic territory. \|Additional Information:\|\|© 2012 Taylor & Francis\| \|Library of Congress subject classification:\|\|D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D501 World War I\| \|Sets:\|\|Departments > International History\| \|Date Deposited:\|\|01 Oct 2012 10:53\| Actions (login required) \|Record administration - authorised staff only\|
STORYTELLING is the act of framing an idea as a narrative to inform, illuminate, and inspire. A good STORY builds trust, boosts sales and inspires people to dream bigger. Ideas wrapped in STORY are easy to understand. Our brains are wired for STORYTELLING. IF PEOPLE AREN’T ENTERTAINED THEY STOP LISTENING. Those who have mastered the skill of STORYTELLING can have an outsized influence over others. That person can actually plant ideas, thoughts, and emotions into a listener’s brain. EMOTION DOMINATES LOGIC. You cannot inspire unless you are inspired yourself. PASSION IS CONTAGIOUS When telling a STORY of mental simulations of sights, smells, and tastes the brains of both the speaker and the listener showed patterns of activity in exactly the same areas. They were “NEURAL COUPLING.” Whether you want to motivate or engage your audience by reaching their hearts as well as their minds you have to deliver your STORY to emotionalize your goal as theirs. Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Richard Branson all moved the audience to action by igniting the listener’s passion. People relate better to STORIES than they do to mountains of data. STORIES educate by adding SOUL. Once the audience is connected then they can be educated. DEFYING EXPECTATIONS IS A SUPERIOR STORYTELLING STRATEGY. It works because the human brain can’t ignore novelty, Steve Jobs was expert at this. COMBINE HUMILITY WITH HUMOR AND YOU HAVE STORYTELLING GOLD. The amygdala releases dopamine into the system when humor is experienced. Dopamine greatly aids memory and information processing. THE BRAIN IS PUTTING UP A CHEMICAL POST-IT NOTE, THAT SAYS “REMEMBER THIS!” ENGAGE, “NEURAL COUPLING.” Ron Winnegrad has been a Perfumer and teacher for 46 years. As a perfumer, Ron has been able to express the world he sees through a rainbow of olfactive and emotive visions. As a teacher, Ron has helped others to see fragrance through his own multi sensorial lens.
Daily Handwriting Practice, Traditional Manuscript is more than just a handwriting book; it is a learning tool that helps developing young minds practice basic skills in an interesting and unique way. For example, as students learn to clearly write, "The pizza is divided into fourths," they are reinforcing their understanding of fractions and ordinal numbers. Students write letters, words, and sentences about a variety of content-area topics appropriate for the primary classroom. Monday through Thursday, there are weekly subjects for writing exercises. Curriculum topics addressed include: nutrition, the solar system, the layers of the Earth, recycling, fractions, the continents, geometric shapes, money and energy. On Friday, a full-page exercise draws the topic to a close by reviewing what was learned earlier that week. This book is a useful and effective teaching tool because each letter is introduced and practiced before students are asked to use it. Practice includes the following important vocabulary words: color words, number words, days of the week and months, position words, sports and family members. Skills reinforced help keep handwriting legible, including correct letter formation, letter placement, spacing between letters and spacing between words. 112 pages. Grades 1-6.See Inside!
- in Dog Health Have you ever been bitten by fleas? If yes, then you know it can be very painful and annoying. It can cause severe itchiness and may result with red spots. Fleas are found in dogs and other animals; despite buying tons of insect repellents and spraying it all over your house, fleas or ticks will always find a way to infest your home. But what makes me curious is where do dog Ticks Can Come From Other Animals, Humans, And Outdoors You cannot keep your pet inside your house forever. It is in their nature to go outdoors and have fun. It’s their form of exercise. If you have a yard at your home, the chances are that it has been visited by different kinds of animals and insects that carried flicks and One of the biggest mistakes you can do is leaving leftover food in your yard. Doing that means you are inviting stray animals into your home that could possibly be carrying ticks in their body. People who spend a great deal of time outdoors can also be a human carrier of ticks. Needless to say, it is impossible for parasites to never attach themselves to your dog because being in outdoor areas is already exposing them to the possibility of ticks infesting on them. Ticks Can Be Harmful You would be surprised how something as tiny as a dot can actually cause harm once they attach themselves to your body. They attach themselves by inserting the sharp part of their mouth onto the skin of your dog. Some tick species that produce sticky, glue-like substance that helps them remain attached to their host’s body. While they remain attached, they are sucking out the blood from your dog’s body. There are some rare cases where flea bites have caused anemia because of the amount of blood that has been depleted. Both flea and tick infestations are more dangerous on puppies if left untreated. One of the most dangerous things that can happen to your dog when bitten by a tick is when it’s the rare kind of tick that can secrete a toxin that can cause paralysis. Lyme Disease is a more known result of flea infestation. It can cause pain in your dog’s joints and fever. Rocky Mountain disease can cause fever as well. Read more: How To Address Separation Anxiety In Dogs? How Can Ticks Harm Humans? When ticks attach themselves on humans, it can leave reddened haloes and become irritated. Fleas can transmit themselves from your dog and onto your skin and can cause diseases. Excessive scratching on a tick bite can cause secondary bacterial infection. Avoid the urge to scratch. Ticks can cause the same diseases it can cause on dogs. However, these diseases do not come from dogs What You Need To Know About Ticks Read more: How To Keep Ticks Away From Your Dog Has this article helped you in any way? I have recently been experiencing tick and flea problems in my home. It has become a nuisance that I cannot simply ignore which is why I had to take immediate preventive measures to prevent further infestation. I noticed that I was getting red, itchy spots on both my legs and arms and whenever I would scratch it would become more red and irritated. My dog has also been feeling weak compared to his usual active personality and I realized that ticks could be a major contributing factor to his lameness. I will be writing an article soon about the best products you can use for tick prevention. If you have any ideas you would like to share, please comment on the box below! You can read more about your dog's health here.
Charles Darwin: Naturalist, Revolutionary, and Father of Evolution In studying the history of science, biology is often a matter of special examination. And in investigating the course of this field one major subject of concentration, aside from looking at the greatest contributions made into this area and the scientists that made them, is the history of evolutionary thought. To this matter one will almost always become familiar with Charles Darwin, perhaps the greatest of all contributors. As a naturalist, Darwin was not only responsible for the theory of evolution as we know it today, but also the foundation that biological sciences are based on. His theory of natural selection as a mechanism for change over time in all species of life brought him a lifetime of praise and admiration, in addition to a great deal of criticism. Darwin’s theory was met with disapproval in two major areas, the scientific and the social. Most scientists during that era had grown comfortable with the reductionist approach of all events and models being fixed and deterministic, thus Darwin’s theory was rejected because it seemed to rely only on chance events and not on pure physical laws. Hence, regardless of whether the characteristics were being favored or not, no one believed that certain “preferred” traits would have a higher possibility of being selected to be inherited more frequently than other “unfavorable” ones. Darwin was also given much criticism in the social realm. Having been opposed to the theory of special creation or creation by design, which was widely accepted during 19th century Britain, Darwin’s thoughts were seen as anti-religious and the cause of great debates. In all, to comprehend the complete work of Darwin it is essential to know not only his scientific achievements, but social influences as well. Charles Darwin was born in 1809 to a wealthy middle-class English family (Wall 2003). Expected to follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps, Darwin was sent to the University of Edinburgh to acquire the knowledge to become a physician. His medical interests did not last long, and after only one year he dropped out of school. Wanting a respectable future for his son, Darwin’s father sent him to the University of Cambridge to study for the ministry. Although without enthusiasm, Darwin at that time had whole-heartedly believed in the words of the Bible (Bowler 1983, 1989), and entered the school prepared to follow the reasoning of Reverend Paley’s Design Argument. In the words of Paley himself, this argument can be described as follows, Living organisms are complicated in a degree which exceeds all computation. How else to account for the often amazing adaptations of animals and plants? Only an intelligent Designer could have created them. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD (Paley 1802). Though Darwin took up the study of Natural Theology as an avid admirer of the Design Argument, it would not be long before Darwin renounces this belief that God created all the species on earth due to his own observations of imperfections in the design, which would not be possible if there were a benevolent Creator (Hartwig 2003). Upon entering Cambridge University Darwin became good friends with the botanist Reverend Henslow. This friendship would eventually allow Darwin the opportunity to embark on a voyage with the H.M.S. Beagle as a gentleman-naturalist. When Reverend Henslow was asked by Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle to recommend a wealthy, well-educated man to observe and take notes on all flora, fauna, and geological findings during the course of the journey, Henslow strongly suggested Darwin. With the alternative of taking up the position of a country parson at the end of his education, Darwin eagerly agreed to fill the opening aboard the Beagle. In accepting the position of being a gentleman-naturalist, Darwin unknowingly also opened the door to a scientific revolution and would lay down the foundation for future biological studies. On his travels with the H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin observed many species of plants and animals throughout the voyage. He also noted that there were obvious variations in the species that he noted to be correlated with the changes in the climate. But this conclusion became less and less evident as he sailed through the archipelago, where many species of flora and fauna were witnessed to have discrepancies in various traits while the climate still seemed to be almost without change. This deviation from his earlier deduction was even more apparent during his observations of the plant and animal species of the Galapagos Islands, a group of about nine small islands all lying about the equator approximately 1,000 miles from South America. Throughout his exploration of these islands Darwin found that even with a steady climate for all islands, the inhabitants of each island still had visible differences. Fascinated by what he saw Darwin carefully logged all that he observed, and drew detailed sketches of the varying traits. One species that was of particular interest to Darwin were the finches of the Galapagos, whose traits he carefully noted. With the assistance of an ornithologist, Darwin determined that the Galapagos finches were all associated, yet still possessed distinct characteristics, ranging from body height to body length. But the trait that Darwin focused on most was the finches’ beaks, which he noticed to be different for the birds of each island. He noticed that some finches had large rounded beaks, while others had less rounded beaks or smaller beaks, and still others had narrow pointed beaks. He observed that all beaks were specialized for the birds to better obtain food on each specific island, whether it is to crack open the abundant amount of nuts on a certain island or dig in the worm-filled soil of another. As he surveyed the islands, Darwin drew from his records of the beaks and the type of food available in each habitat, and was successful in concluding that the variations observed were advantageous for each species in order to survive. In addition to this, with the knowledge he had gained from reading Lyell’s essays on evolution as a process of uniformitarianism, where all physical characteristics of the Earth were attributed to natural causes operating in an uniform manner over long periods of time, along with the evidence he had collected of the distinct features of the animal and plant populations and the ancestral fossils he found on the islands, Darwin was convinced that these variations could not have happened by random or taken place in just a short amount of time (Wall 2003). Hence these differences were due to slow modifications occurring in a consistent way from their ancestral forms. In other words, they evolved over time. Yet even with the success in figuring out that the differences in traits came by way of gradual evolution, one thing still occupied Darwin’s mind; he could not find the answer for why these variations occurred. In search for a mechanism to explain the process of evolution he deduced to have taken place on the Galapagos Islands, Darwin settled in London upon his return from the five-year expedition and committed himself to working out the puzzle of inheritance. In his quest for the answer Darwin came about Reverend Thomas Malthus’ book on population in 1838, which states that with the human population increasing at a rate significantly higher than that of the most optimistic rate for the growth of resources, the human race would eventually end up competing with each other for food in order to survive. In competing for these resources, some would have an advantage such that the better equipped you are the higher the chances of obtaining these means. From this, Darwin concluded that the competition for limited resources predicted for the human race could also be applied to animal and plant species as well, to explain the observations he gathered on the Galapagos Islands. If the rate of increase in both flora and fauna were also vastly greater than the resources that sustain their survival, there too would be a competition for food. And in this struggle the victors are those who are equipped with the traits that would allow them to obtain the food and continue to live, while the failures are those who lack those qualities. Hence the qualities producing the advantages would be preserved via an increased frequency of passing on the genes that create these traits, and the unfavorable ones destroyed with the eventual fading out of these characteristics from a lack of being inherited by offspring (Molles 2002, 1999). With this deduction and from what Darwin already believed from Lyell’s theory of change over time, Darwin formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection. But it would be many years and many drafts before he would share his revolutionary theory with the rest of the world. When Darwin finally felt confident enough to share his work with the rest of society, it was nearly seventeen years after he had produced his first draft. Afraid of being over shadowed by another naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace, who had witnessed the same incidents of the transformation of species on a trip to the Amazon as Darwin did in the Galapagos Islands, and who also intended to write a book explaining the means of evolution after the publishing of his first essay on the coming to existence of species, Darwin hastily complied a five hundred page abstract of his theory, which was published on November 24, 1859. His essay titled On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, summarized would read as follows: If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organisation, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometrical powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each being's own welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occurred useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection (Darwin 1859). As logical and acceptable as Darwin’s ideas of the preservation of advantageous variations resulting from those traits being inherited by the offspring of the survivors in the struggle for life, which in turn was caused by changes in the environment over time may seem to readers and scientists today; these ideas were not as palatable during Darwin’s era. As mentioned earlier, much of the scientific community of 19th century Britain rejected Darwin’s theory, mainly on the basis of his theory being too dependent upon chance events. With the focus of science having moved from uncertainty to certainty, any scientist would need to provide a rigid conclusion that could be supported by hard evidence to get the acceptance of others. Many scientists felt Darwin failed to do so, and that his theory of evolution was established on a number of assumptions. He first supposed that Lyell’s theories were correct and that the earth was old, having evolved over countless years. Along with this he presumed Malthus’ concept of a struggle for food and survival in the human race due to high birth rates and slow resource reproduction could also be applied to the flora and fauna species as well. Then he assumed that this struggle would result in chance selections of certain advantageous traits that would be passed on to offspring. In addition to these objections, it was even harder for others to accept his ideas, for the views of numerous biologists were that all traits would be inherited equally by the offspring from any parent. For instance, if a red flower and a white flower mated it was expected for the progeny to exhibit a pink flower, there would be no ‘selection’ for the better color, just as there would be no natural selection for more beneficial traits. With his premises based on postulations and a lack of evidence to prove that inheritance of beneficial characteristics occurred at higher frequencies Darwin’s theory was snubbed by many of his colleagues. Another, and perhaps the most immense, source of rejection towards Darwin’s theory of evolution came from the social realm. Belief during the 19th century was very much centered on religious values. Stemming from this the traditional belief was the Design Argument, or that the view that designs in life were too complex, and therefore must have been created by a benevolent God (Bowler 1983, 1989). Having been a supporter of this theory originally, Darwin was seen as a traitor who had broken ties with convention. His certainty in the fact that natural laws were the cause of evolution in a competitive world where only the fittest would survive was an out right stand against the creationism. Although this criticism of being an atheist swayed Darwin somewhat, in that he began to isolate himself from the rest of society only keeping in touch with a few trusted friends, he was steadfast in his beliefs and did not return to the argument from design. In fact, in order to redeem himself among the scientific society, Darwin made grounds for his theory by attacking the theory of Design. Darwin first claimed that the logic behind the Design Argument was faulty because it did not exclude the possibility of other mechanisms in the creation of the designs. The fallacy in the argument is seen when it is set up as a syllogism. Written in this form, the argument would read, that the hypothesis that God created all the species on earth is evidenced by the intricate designs observed in nature, so that the hypothesis implies intricate designs and in turn the intricate designs implies the hypothesis. But when Darwin’s theory is arranged in the same manner, stating that his hypothesis of evolution by natural selection can also be evidenced by the designs in nature, so that his theory also implies the existence of these designs, and in turn the designs too implies his theory is possible. There in lies the fallacy, the logic behind the argument for design is invalid in that both explanations have form; the hypothesis of God or evolution would both imply intricate designs, and intricate designs can imply both hypotheses (Wall 2003). Therefore, even though Darwin did not disprove the Design argument completely, he succeeded in making his case seem plausible using the logic of the opposing view, and in doing so disrupted the foundations of the case for an intelligent Creator. With this assertion made, Darwin was able to regain new grounds for his theory, and in turn gather some support and confirmation. In conclusion, although Darwin still did not figure out the puzzle of inheritance, he is still considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest, contributor to the field of biology. His revolutionary theory of evolution by natural selection allowed people to break free from the traditional belief of special creation. It also gave them the opportunity to build their works on a purely scientific foundation. Through immense disapproval and doubt, Darwin was able to find ground for his theory, and hence allowed for its prevalence into today’s science. Of course, there are still those who believe in an all-mighty Creator and even to this day many schools debate which side of the story to tell. Even though all are entitled to their beliefs, I personally am a supporter of the Darwinian school of thought, and am grateful for the observations that he made which led to the theory of evolution I know today. Bowler, P.J. Evolution: The History of an Idea. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 1989. Darwin, C. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray Publishers. 1859. Hartwig, M. March 9, 2003. What is Intelligent Design? Access Research Network. Molles Jr., M.C. Ecology: Concepts and Applications. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. 2002. Paley, W. “Natural Theology: Excerpts” in But Is It Science? Ed. M. Ruse. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996. pp. 46-49. Wall, B. Glimpses of Reality: Episodes in the History of Science. Toronto: Wall & Emerson, Inc. 2003. Darwin image retrieved from:, April 7, 2005
December 5, 2015 1. There are two ways to look at the effectiveness of recitations. First, one could gain some benefit when LISTENING TO recitations (such as recorded chanting of sutta), even without understanding what is said in the suttas. However, that benefit will increase if one understood the content. - The effectiveness of recitations in MEDITATION SESSIONS is somewhat similar. There are many people who have been practicing various types of recitations (kammattana) for 10, 20, 30, or more years without significant results (i.e., magga phala), even though they are likely to feel some calming effect. - Reciting phrases (in any language) can be quite beneficial if the meanings of those phrases are understood in either of the above cases. Recitation in Pali can be a bit more effective, since Pali words tend to condense a lot of meaning. If one starts off with at least some understanding, recitation on a regular basis will help understand the concept at a deeper level. - For example, the concept of anicca is understood gradually — with a glimpse of it grasped on the way to the Sotapanna stage, getting a firm foothold at the Sotapanna stage, strengthening at the Sakadagami and Anagami stages — and is fully comprehended at the Arahant stage. - A systematic procedure to get to samma samadhi to be able to comprehend anicaa, dukkha, anatta, is described in the “Living Dhamma“ section. It can also help one figure out where one in the Path, and to clarify many fundamental issues. It is not possible to comprehend Tilakkhana until one’s mind is purified to some extent. Then one’s mind can easily grasp concepts rather than just memorizing them. 2. A mundane example is learning the multiplication table. Some get it easier than others. But with practice anyone can master it. All one needs is to spend some time reciting and memorizing the table, even though only memorization may not be helpful in the final objective, i.e., solving a bit more complex problems. - We know that this “learning process” can be speeded up by using what one learned in solving some problems. Rather than just memorizing the multiplication table, if one applied it to solve some multiplication problems, the learning time can be drastically reduced and also it is easier to keep in the memory for longer time. - This is what the Buddha meant by “bhavanaya bahuleekathaya…..”. Bhavana (or meditation) is what one uses frequently: one needs to be thinking about it and examine it in many different situations as much as possible. Then the concept starts to “sink in”. Formal recitations can be part of this process. - Reciting a phrase repeatedly while contemplating on it (kammattana) is an excellent way to retain and comprehend a given a concept, once the concept is at least vaguely understood. 3. Another important benefit of a good recitation session is in subsiding the five hindrances (pancanivarana) that makes the mind agitated and not receptive; see, “Key to Calming the Mind – The Five Hindrances“. When one is focusing on Dhamma — even by just reciting verses– those greedy, hateful, and irrelevant thoughts are at least temporarily subsided and the mind will not be lethargic or agitated. - In this respect, just listening to Pali suttas could be beneficial too. In many Buddhist countries, many people start off the day with chanting of suttas (pirith) in the background. When I was little, I used to wake up to the chanting of pirith on the radio (my mother used to do turn it on the first thing in the morning). - If the suttas are recited the right way, just listening to them can make the mind calm. I have posted audio files of several suttas by my teacher Thero including a 75 minute session in the post: “Sutta Chanting (with Pali Text)“. 4. Yet another critical benefit is to make the conditions conducive to attract previous “good kamma“, and make the mind “tune into” receiving such merits. Each of us has done innumerable good and bad kamma in our previous lives, and they are waiting for “right conditions” to bring their results (vipaka). - For example, there may be a good TV (or radio) program being broadcast. But if the television (or the radio) is not “tuned in” to the right station, one would not be able to watch (or listen to) the program. - “Making the conditions right” can bring about both good and bad kamma vipaka too. If one associates with bad friends, that is making conditions for bad kamma vipaka to bring fruits. On the other hand associating with good friends and listening/reading Dhamma can make one’s life better. This is discussed in detail in the posts, “Annantara and Samanantara Paccaya” and “Transfer of Merits (Pattidana) – How Does it Happen?“. - I have mentioned in many posts that the effectiveness of absorbing material at this website can be much improved by reading them at a quiet time. In the same way, a meditation session can be made more effective by calming the mind by doing some well-planned recitations. That itself can be a meditation session. What I do is, in the middle of recitations contemplate about relevant Dhamma concepts or my own daily experiences, i.e., do insight meditation in the middle of the recitation itself. 5. One should tailor the recitation session to match one’s own personality and needs. For example, if one has a temper, one should spend more time doing metta bhavana; if one has excessive greed (for sense pleasures) one could spend more time doing asubha bhavana (unfruitful nature of things), which is basically to contemplate on the fact that ANY object that is providing sense pleasure is going to decay and destruct at the end. 6. I have thought a lot about how to present a “kammattana program”. But it is difficult to decide what kammattana to discuss because each individual is different, and has own preferences and needs. I may still do that in pieces in the future, and I have discussed basic features of some in other posts. - Here, I think it is better to just provide an audio of recitation session that I go through each day. This is just to give an example of how it can be done, and I know that it helps me in calming my mind and making it more receptive and alert. - This is somewhat modified compared to what I actually do, because I do some parts in Sinhala which most of you will not understand, and I have also tailored this for those who are seeking the Sotapanna stage of Nibbana. 7. It is best to do these recitations in a quiet room, sitting comfortably — but not too comfortably — so that one would not fall asleep initially. Once one gets used to it, one will never fall asleep. Also, it may be better to actually say the words initially to avoid the mind to wander around; one could just recite in the mind later on. October 13, 2016: I have removed the audio file temporarily until I make a better one. After I started the “Living Dhamma” section, I realized a way to present material in a better way. But I leave the pdf of the text file: 1. I am assuming that anyone who is interested in these kammattana (i.e., those who have the desire to strive for the Sotapanna stage) have already read the relevant key posts at Sotapanna Stage of Nibbana. Now, let us discuss different sections of the Kammattana Example. - Also, the Search button on the top right is very useful for finding relevant posts for any given keyword or a phrase that is not clear. 2. In reciting precepts, instead of the “Pänätipätä Véramani Sikkähäpadam Samädiyämi”, which says “I promise not take another life of a living being”, it is more truthful to say, “I promise not to take another life with any liking for it” (Pänätipätä pativiratö höti), unless one is dedicating a day to strictly observe the precepts. - For example, if one needs to apply a medication to a wound, that will kill many microscopic living beings; yet, one has to do that in order to heal the wound; thus in day-to-day life, we may have to take actions like that we would not like to; this is what is meant by “pativiratö höti”, i.e., one would not do it unless necessary. But if one is observing precepts, one could avoid applying the medication on that day. - Same for the other four precepts. 3. Note the break in between “itipi so bhagava…”. Many people recite it as “itipiso bhagava…”, which has a very different and inappropriate meaning. - I really need to discuss the meanings of these three phrases, and hope to get it done in the “Buddhist Chanting” section in the future. 4. The phrase, “Natti me sanaran annan Buddho me saranan varan” means, “I have no other refuge than that of the Buddha”. - “éténa sacca vajjena sotti me hotu sabbada” means something to the effect of “may the truth in my refuge in Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha lead to my well being and success in my efforts”. - “etena sacca vajjena sotti te hotu sabbada” means something to the effect of “may this truth lead to the well being and success in others’ efforts”. 5. The next phrase (in Sinhala, I am unable to come up with a suitable English or Pali phrase) means, “I will be truthful to myself, see things as they are, be pure in mind, and endeavor to generate only pure thoughts (prabhasvara or pabasara citta). I plan to write separate posts discussing some of these kammattana. Even a single phrase is so condensed that one could write many posts on each. - For example, “avanka” comes from “vanka” or “bent” or “not straightforward”. If someone is not truthful, then that is “vanka“; “avanka” is the opposite of “vanka“. 6. The next three phrases are also very important. I recite it every day. The phrase, “Kayena vaca cittena pamadena maya katan, accayam khama me Bhante bhuripanna Tathagata”, means: “If I have done any wrong inadvertently (or due to ignorance) by thoughts, speech, or mind to the Buddha, may I be forgiven for that”. - And then the same phrase directed to Dhamma and Sangha. For example, I always worry about inadvertently explaining some concept in a way which may not be quite right. Also, when dealing with people, we don’t know whether we inadvertently hurt their feelings or do something that they see as inappropriate (and it is possible that such a person may be a Noble person). 7. The next set of phrases are for cultivating anicca sanna and related other factors. The phrase, “Aniccanupassi viharati, nicca sanna pajahati” means “I will live my life cultivating the anicca sanna and reject that things in this world can be kept to my satisfaction (i.e., reject the nicca sanna)”. Similar meaning can be deduced for the following three phrases. - In the phrase, “Nibbidanupassi viharati, abhinandana pajahati”, nibbida means “stay away from valuing sense pleasures” and viharati means “live accordingly”. Abhinandana means “valuing sense pleasures”, and pajahati means “avoid”. - “Nirodhanupassi viharati, samudayan pajahati”, means stop the wheeling process and reject generating more “san” (“san” + “udaya” combines to give “samudaya“); see, “What is ‘San’?“. - “Patinissagganupassi viharati, sambhavan pajahati” means “I will endeavor to break all bonds to this world, and stop making new bhava“. - The last three recitals in this section with “Anissitoca viharati, na ca kinci loke upadiyati” confirm one’s conviction that “it is unfruitful to stay in this world of 31 realms, there is nothing in this world that worth craving for (upadana)”. 8. The set of three phrases that come next also help cultivate anicca sanna, and one could review or do insight meditation on anicca, dukkha, anatta right after that. 9. The next section is on metta bhavana. I normally recite this in Sinhala, but these English phrases give almost the same meaning. This is also discussed in the post, “5. Ariya Metta Bhavana (Loving Kindness Meditation)“. - The relevance to different types of akusala citta is discussed in the post, “Akusala Citta – How a Sotapanna Avoids Apayagami Citta“. The 12 types of akusala citta are discussed in, “Akusala Citta and Akusala Vipaka Citta“. 10. The next phrase is the standard phrase to use when cultivating jhana: see, “11. Magga Phala and Ariya Jhanas via Cultivation of Saptha Bojjanga“. Even though it is supposed to be fully effective only after attaining the Sotapanna stage, it can be used by anyone who has been exposed to the true meanings of anicca, dukkha, anatta, and is pursuing the Sotapanna stage. - One could get into at least some kind of samadhi by this time, and do some insight meditation here. Actually, at any of the above kammattana sections, one could do insight meditation related to that section. I normally do this and my sessions sometimes last for much longer times. 11. In the subsequent sections, we start giving merits to all living beings. The phrase, “ldam me nati nan hotu Sukhita hontu natayo”, means “May all my relatives (which does include all living beings in the through sansara) attain peace and happiness due to these merits”. - The next phrase, “ldam vo nati nan hotu Sukhita hontu natayo”, can have multiple meanings. If one is doing a group session, it could mean “relatives of others in the group”. If one is by oneself, it could mean “distant relatives”, who may even be in worlds far away from the Earth. - Thus when one recites both phrases, it does include all living beings. 12. The next section gives merits to devas (which include brahmas as well), bhuta, and preta, and then to all beings (sabbe satta). It is another way of giving merits as in #11. - Then the next phrase in English is straightforward. I specifically included this so that anyone can use this with full understanding. If one had (even inadvertently) done a bad deed to someone that day, one could be thinking about that person and ask for forgiveness. This is a very effective way to calm the mind and reduce tensions, and I hope to write a post on this. If done sincerely, one should be able to see the effects in real life. You may notice that the tensions with that person automatically reduced. - What happens is that those strong javana citta that you generate can produce cittaja rupa that can affect that person even over long distances. It is again related to what we discussed in #4 of the main section (above the current “Notes” section). 13. Then we end the session with the phrase “Idam mé punnan asavakkhaya vahan hotu, sabba dukkha nirujjati” that is recited three times. It means, “May the merits that I have acquired help remove my asava (cravings), and lead to the end of all suffering”. - It is to be noted here that “asavakkhaya vahan hotu” is really, “asavakkhaya aham hotu” or “may (these merits) be hetu for cleansing of my asava“. It just rhymes as, “asavakkhaya vahan hotu”. 14. Of course the above is an example of what one could do. One could use all the kammattana (and add more), or use only the ones that one likes. I don’t use them all in a given session, but do use some of them all the time. I just start the session with the first few and select phrases as I proceed. Sometimes, I get into insight meditation (contemplating relevant ideas, connecting with other concepts, etc) following a given phrase and just do that for the whole session. 15. November 11, 2016: I get many questions on this topic, i.e., how to verify one is making progress towards the Sotapanna stage. The new section, “Living Dhamma“, provides a systematic way to achieve that goal, in addition to providing guidelines on how to check one’s progress.
- Capital city – Lilongwe - Population – 17.5 million - Life expectancy – 64.31 years - Unemployment rate – 18.5% - Below poverty line – 51.5% Find more country facts on: CIA The World Factbook – Malawi - Habitat started in Malawi in 1986. - Individuals served in FY2019 – 50,580 - Through new construction – 760 - Through incremental building – 17,500 - Through professional services – 32,320 - Volunteers hosted in FY2019 – 635 The housing need in Malawi Habitat for Humanity Malawi was established in 1986. Malawi has about 4.8 million housing units of which 58.9% are sub-standards homes. These houses are characterized by mud walls and grass thatched roofs and the families in these housing units live with little hope of ever being able to afford a decent house. To meet the current housing demand, approximately 21,000 new units must be constructed for the next 10 years. Anchored by the conviction that safe and affordable housing provides a path out of poverty, Habitat Malawi has helped over 41,000 families to access decent housing. We emphasize housing for vulnerable groups; water, sanitation and hygiene; Disaster Risk Reduction and Response; informal vocation training; and security of land tenure. Habitat’s contribution in Malawi Housing for vulnerable groups Habitat Malawi provides fully subsidized houses and sanitation facilities to orphans and other vulnerable groups, including persons with disabilities, in rural communities. The program also provides complementary services to the targeted households, including trainings about malaria, HIV and property and inheritance rights. Water, sanitation and hygiene Our program seeks to improve the sanitation status and well-being of slum dwellers and those in rural communities. Key program interventions include construction of sustainable and user-friendly facilities for water, sanitation and hygiene, or WASH; hygiene and sanitation campaigns for communities; and capacity building of WASH management structures. Disaster Risk Reduction and Response We work in disaster-affected communities to help people prepare, respond and adapt to disaster while empowering local communities on how they can build back better and safer homes. In this program, we help build disaster-resilient houses with affected families and equip the local masons with knowledge and skills on building houses to withstand disasters. Informal vocational skills training This program is aimed at contributing to increased inclusive access to equitable, sustainable, informal and formal technical entrepreneurial and vocational education training. We offer six months informal training to disadvantaged youths in brick laying and making, and in carpentry and joinery. We advocate for increased access to land and housing, and promote policies and systems that increase access to decent housing for vulnerable and low-income groups in Malawi. What you can do To donate directly HFHM, please contact us to learn more. Join one of the scheduled Global Village trips to Malawi or lead your own. Establish a strong and rewarding tithe partnership to help build houses globally. Quote 863800, MALAWI on your checks sent to: Habitat for Humanity International, Attn: Affiliate Tithe, 322 West Lamar St., Americus, GA 31709 Email: [email protected] Habitat Malawi volunteer relations coordinator
The essay example you see on this page is a free essay, available to anyone. You are welcome to use this samle for your research! However, we strongly do not recommend using any direct quotes from this research paper for credit - you will most probably be caught for copying/pasting off the Internet. It is very easy to trace where the essay has been taken from by a plagiarism detection program. Order a custom essay from us if you want to be sure that your essay is 100% original and one of a kind. Where are you when wake up? Where are you when you are learning? Where are you when you go to pray? Where are you when you go to work? Where are you when you are having fun? The answer is that you are in a building or structure of some kind and style. All of the buildings and structures that one sees around them is designed and built with much thought and care. They are all designed and built by what we call architecture. According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary architecture is "the art or science of building; specifically: the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones, a method or style of building." Architecture is a science according to Merriam-Webster because it is "a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study, something that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge." This can be seen as that buildings and structures have certain rule and laws that apply to them when they are design, constructed and inhabited. Architecture is an art according to Merriam-Webster because it is "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects." This can be seen as that buildings and structures do not only follow form and function but expression and feeling. Architecture has basically three steps. They are design, construction, and usage of the space or how the space is inhabited. Architecture is to building or structure as literature is to a book or novel. Over the course of western history there has been many periods and styles of architecture, spanning from pre-history where mainly stone and timber were used to the 20 th century where glass and steel seem to have seemed to take over. Each style and - 2 -period have given there own part to today's architecture such as the Greek's ideas of columns, to the Roman's usage of arches, to the Industrial Age of building with iron, steel and glass. When buildings and structures were first constructed there was very little interior space and there was much more emphasis on exterior space, such an example is that of the Greek and Roman architecture. The reason that there was more emphasis on one then another was simply because of the technology and techniques that was available at the time and the limited amount of ideas and understanding of architecture. It wasn't until about 1000 AD that new technology and ideas came about that allowed the shift from exterior to interior. It was finally time that architecture now mastering the interior of buildings and structures. The first two periods of time that this shift was made was the Romanesque style and the Gothic style of architecture. Both of these styles have made great contributions that can still been seen in today's architecture. With Romanesque being the first stylistic period in time with Gothic immediately following it there is much to be said about the similarities and differences. The Romanesque period of architecture has its roots deep into western civilization. Even though it is said that the Romanesque style of architecture was first since and applied around 1000 AD its history goes back almost 500 years. During the rule of the Roman Empire much of Europe was influenced by the Roman and Greek classical styles, it wasn't until the Roman Empire fell that most of Europe was able to - 3 -diverge from traditional styles and form their own styles. It was only with time and separation that other styles were able to grow. With the Roman Empire gone Europe was breaking apart and developing in small pockets on it own, this caused for greater advancements in many areas such as architecture. Yet with all the growing change there was still one thing that linked much of Europe together, that was the Christian church and Christianity. That is why much of the advancements of architecture can be seen in churches, temples and other religious buildings and structures. Now that there was growing changes in much of Europe and the common link to the Christian church and Christianity that came from the Roman Empire the new period of architecture was called Romanesque, meaning 'in the manner of the Roman.' With each period of architecture in history there are certain characteristics that are first seen. There were many new ideas and techniques used in the Romanesque style of architecture. The great advancement that the Romanesque period had on architecture was the development of stone vaulted buildings. The reason that this advancement came along was that stone vaulting was needed to replace the wood and timber vaulting of styles of periods before the Romanesque period, which were very flammable. During this time was the first widespread usage of many kinds of vaults, most frequently used was the barrel vault, which was a series of round arches placed on after another (See Appendix Figure 1. 1). A barrel vault was also used to form a groin vault, which was - 4 -when two barrel vaults were crossed with each other (See Appendix Figure 1. 2). Also at this time domes were widely used in architecture. By taking numerous round arches and placing them on different axes but with a same apex or top of the arch domes were formed. To support this vaults and domes the walls of Romanesque buildings and structures were made very thick and had projecting piers called buttress, which helped to bare the weight of the heavy stones. The massive size of the stones used in Romanesque buildings and structure is another characteristics of this style. Because of the massive stones vaults, walls and piers most of the Romanesque buildings and structures were composed of many small units called bays that together completed the whole design. When these bays when placed in a long row down the center of a Romanesque building or structure they were called a nave. The naves of the Romanesque period were much higher and narrower then of periods before it. This allowed for clerestory windows that were larger and higher then ones that came before it but they were still very small and many of them did not contain glass. Almost all of the doors and windows of the Romanesque style were capped with round arches. Towards the end of the Romanesque period decorative moldings and carvings and sculptures were used in many buildings and structures. The period of architecture that immediately follows and somewhat overlaps the Romanesque period of architecture is the Gothic period of architecture. Both periods - 5 -were during the Middle Ages with the Gothic period occurring in the later half of the Middle Ages. The Gothic period of architecture was from about the 12 th century to the 16 th century. The style began in France and spread through out the rest of Europe in the following years. The Gothic period of architecture ended with the start of the Renaissance in Italy, but the Gothic style could still be seen all over Europe during this time. The Gothic style of architecture took a back seat until the 19 th century when the style was made a come back, it was called the Neo-Gothic style of architecture. The Gothic style of architecture wasn't called Gothic until the Renaissance. During the Renaissance writers used the term Gothic as a negative term to describe all art and architecture of the Middle Ages that was like the works of the barbarians named the Goths. The Gothic style of architecture was not only the last style of the Middle Ages but is as now considered to be Europe's finest artistic periods. Just as the Romanesque period of architecture had added its elements to architecture so did the Gothic period and most of the elements that were added can be found in the churches of this time. It was only by combining the ideas of architecture and religion that these new ideas and techniques were finally realized. The greatest element or idea that came out of the Gothic period of architecture is the development of the ribbed vault. The buildings and structures of the Gothic period of architecture were made of stones and because of these heavy stones used in the buildings and structures they could - 6-only get to be so high. So with the development of the pointed arch and ribbed vault the buildings and structures of the Gothic period could reach new heights. The pointed arch was very similar to the round arch in that it was used to distribute the weight of the walls above it, but instead of being a round top it had a slight point to it which allowed it to arched higher and distribute the weight evenly to both sides of the arch (See Appendix Figure 2. 1). The way that the ribbed vault was designed was that in had small arches of smaller stones that ran diagonally across a barrel or groin vault to hold up the ceilings of the Gothic buildings and structures (See Appendix Figure 2. 2). Late in the Gothic period the fan vault was designed in which the ribs of a ribbed vault are multiplied and grouped in the shape of an open fan, this also allow for even more support. During the Gothic period of architecture it was noticed that the weight from the buildings and structures was placed on the ribs of the vaults and was pushing outward on the walls. Using narrow buttresses and external arches, called flying buttresses, the weight of the buildings and structures was counteracted (See Appendix Figure 2. 3). Now with the main weight of the buildings and structures on the ribs of the vault and flying buttresses the walls became thinner and higher with more room for glass windows. Higher clerestory windows were design and much of them contained stained glass in which the glass used in the windows had a dye or pigment about them. These windows were used to let more natural light into the buildings and structure, the best example of these types of windows in the rose or rosette windows. These windows were large round -7 -circular windows in which complex patterns and design of stained glass were used to create an overall image in the window, somewhat resembling a rose or flower. The basic design of Gothic architecture differed little from the design of Romanesque architecture. The design of Gothic architecture was just more involved and more complex. With the advancements that were made there was much more to be done, and the Gothic architecture could reach new highs and cross boundaries that were never crossed before. In the history of architecture both the Romanesque style and Gothic style of architecture have made their mark. They were truly the first two periods in which the interior of a building or structure was attacked. Many of the advancements made in history to the interior of a building or structure was made during these two periods. There are many similarities and differences between the two styles. They both used forms of arches, but the Romanesque style used the round arch while the Gothic style used the pointed arch. They both used forms of vaults, but the Romanesque style used the barrel vault while the Gothic style used the ribbed vault. They both used forms of buttresses, but the Romanesque style used just normal buttresses while the Gothic style used flying buttresses. There are also many elements of architecture that separate both styles. The elements that defined some of the Romanesque style was that it was the first style to use mainly all stone and build thick heavy walls in buildings and structures. The elements that defined some of the Gothic style was that it had thinner walls that could reach much - 8 -higher highs and there were also huge stained glass windows. Both of these styles have there own elements and also share some elements. Today both of these styles can both be seen in use today. The round arch and barrel vault are still used and stained glass and flying buttresses are still used today. To be able to look around the world today and see the buildings and structures that were built during the Romanesque and Gothic period of architecture is amazing. During those periods the advancements that were made would allow their buildings and structures to last hundreds of years. To be able to go to Europe and see the same buildings and structure that were seen over hundreds of years ago is unbelievable. Even though there have been great advancements in architecture over the years the basic of much of today's architecture goes back to the Romanesque and Gothic period and other periods of architecture. It was from the great ideas of these periods that the great ideas of the present come. The courage and ingenuity of the people of the past helps the people of today challenge what they can do and pushes them to strive further. So with what was done before makes what is done today possible and helps to push the ideas and concepts into the future. Following research papers might be related to your topic and facilitate your research. Still cannot find the paper you need? Order a custom research paper or essay tailored exactly to your instructions and demands -- original, written from scratch for you! Free essay topics, how to write essay on Gothic Vs Romanesque Architecture Sample essays produced by our company Our prices per page
Eucalyptus oil is obtained from the leaves of the eucalyptus tree, scientifically classified as Eucalyptus Globulus. Eucalyptus oil originated from Australia, first used by the aborigines, where locals began bottling the oil in the 1780s. Eucalyptus oil is known for its distinctive odor and its properties including anti-inflammatory , antispasmodic, decongestant, deodorant, antiseptic, antibacterial, and stimulating qualities. Common uses for eucalyptus oil include: - Wounds – Eucalyptus oil is used for healing wounds, ulcers, burns, cuts, abrasions and sores. It can also be effective treating insect bites and stings. In addition to soothing the affected area, it also protects open wounds and irritated areas from developing infections from microbial activity and exposure to the air. - Respiratory Illness – Due to its antibacterial, antifungal, antimicrobial, antiviral, anti-inflammatory and decongestant properties eucalyptus oil is effective for treating a number of respiratory problems including cold, cough, runny nose, sore throat, asthma, nasal congestion, bronchitis and sinusitis. - Asthma – Calm the throat and dilate blood vessels, which will allow more oxygen into the lungs and normal breathing can be achieved, by massaging several drops (diluting with a tablespoon of carrier oil) onto the chest. - Mental fatigue – Eucalyptus oil is considered a vasodilator by many, meaning that it increases the blood flow by relaxing the blood vessels and allows more blood to circulate – more blood to the brain means more brain power. Also thought to be a stimulant, Eucalyptus oil reduces exhaustion and mental fatigue. How can you use Eucalyptus oil at home: - DIY vapor rub - DIY antibacterial blend - Use in diffuser/vaporizer - Dilute with carrier oil and apply directly to affected area A word of caution: Eucalyptus oil should not be taken by mouth or applied to the skin full-strength. It must be diluted for safety. Taking 3.5 mL of undiluted oil can be fatal.
Hosement History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms - Origins Available: The family name Hosement is one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon names of Britain. It was originally a name for a person who worked as a mounted warrior, rider, groom, or horse-dealer. The surname Hosement is derived from the Old English words hors, which means horse, and mann, which means man or servant. Early Origins of the Hosement family The surname Hosement was first found in Warwickshire where Hugh le Horsman was listed in the Feet of Fines for 1226-1227. The Subsidy Rolls for Worcester included John le Horsman there in 1327 and later in Yorkshire, William Horsman was listed there in 1415. The Hundredorum Rolls of 1273 had three listings for the family: Agnes le Horseman, Buckinghamshire; Robert le Horsman, Oxfordshire; and Walter Horsman, Huntingdonshire. Early History of the Hosement family This web page shows only a small excerpt of our Hosement research. Another 86 words (6 lines of text) covering the years 1589, 1593, 1536, 1610, 1593, 1597, 1601, 1604 and 1689 are included under the topic Early Hosement History in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible. Hosement Spelling Variations Before English spelling was standardized a few hundred years ago, spelling variations of names were a common occurrence. Elements of Latin, French and other languages became incorporated into English through the Middle Ages, and name spellings changed even among the literate. The variations of the surname Hosement include Horsman, Horseman and others. Early Notables of the Hosement family (pre 1700) Notables of the family at this time include Thomas Horsman (c.1536-1610), an English politician, Member of the Parliament of England for Grantham in 1593, 1597, 1601... Another 26 words (2 lines of text) are included under the topic Early Hosement Notables in all our PDF Extended History products and printed products wherever possible. Migration of the Hosement family A great wave of immigration to the New World was the result of the enormous political and religious disarray that struck England at that time. Families left for the New World in extremely large numbers. The long journey was the end of many immigrants and many more arrived sick and starving. Still, those who made it were rewarded with an opportunity far greater than they had known at home in England. These emigrant families went on to make significant contributions to these emerging colonies in which they settled. Some of the first North American settlers carried this name or one of its variants: Christopher Horsman settled in Fort Cumberland Nova Scotia in 1775; Marmaduke Horsman settled in New Jersey in 1677. - Lower, Mark Anthony, Patronymica Britannica, A Dictionary of Family Names of the United Kingdom. London: John Russel Smith, 1860. Print. - Reaney, P.H and R.M. Wilson, A Dictionary of English Surnames. London: Routledge, 1991. Print. (ISBN 0-415-05737-X) - Bardsley, C.W, A Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames: With Special American Instances. Wiltshire: Heraldry Today, 1901. Print. (ISBN 0-900455-44-6)
Humans (or Mankind, Humanity) are a mammalian species from Earth. Though fairly average for a mainstream species, Humans stand out as being of above-average technological prowess and one of the most widespread species in the galaxy, owning many thousands of colony worlds and having at least some sort of presence on millions more. As with most other widespread species, Humans are commonly misperceived as being comprised entirely of explorers. Biology and appearance \|“\|\|These creatures are fascinating, that they can hear sound, perceive color, and make noises! I am intrigued!\|\|”\| Humans have a rather standard body plan, consisting of a torso, two legs, two arms, and one head. Their heads have two round eyes, one short nose for respiration and perception of smells, and a mouth for respiration, nutritional intake, and communication. They have a five-fingered hand at the end of each arm. They are plantigrade and possess a five-toed foot at the end of each leg. They come in two sexes, male and female. In a break from common mammalian species in the galaxy, they have only a light covering of body hair, with males possessing more hair than females. Most of their body hair is concentrated on the head and (in the case of adult males) face. This hair is grown, cut, and styled for aesthetic or ritualistic reasons. The facial hair grown by adult males can be grown, styled, or shaven completely. Even though they have an overall physiological uniformity, baseline Humans vary greatly in appearance. Their hair color ranges widely, usually from blond to dark and sometimes with hues of red or brown, changing to gray or white as they reach seniority. This hair can be straight, wavy, or curly. Their eyes typically come in shades of blue, green, gray, or brown. Variety of skin tone is also seen among baseline Humans, usually limited to various shades of brown and ranging from pale yellowish brown to light brown and dark brown, although the exposure to environments and nutrition not native to Earth have led to other skin tones being seen, such as blue and green. In terms of lifespan, the average varies between 150 to 250 years depending on environmental and biological factors. Home-grown Humans of Earth commonly live to 200 due to several millennia of genetic engineering. Racial offshoots and offworld colonists vary the most.
Download the Summit Guide. Summit Station (72° 36′ North, 38° 25′ West), a research platform at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet, has been in operation since 1988. The National Science Foundation funds and manages the station in cooperation with the Government of Greenland. Located at 72° 36′ N latitude, and at an altitude of 10,600 feet with a mean annual air temperature of -31°, Summit Station has long challenged the physical fitness of its visitors. The station consists of three primary structures, with temporary shelters erected seasonally. The permanent facilities include the Big House, the camps primary building, with kitchen, dining area, and office spaces, and which houses a complete bathroom and laundry facility; the Green House/Berthing Module, a joint science laboratory and berthing facility with lab and office facilities; and the Shop, a Weatherport generator shelter that also is used for maintenance of rolling stock. A redundant 100 kW diesel generator system provides all of the electricity on station (actual capacity at 10,600 feet ~ 70 kW). The generator rejects heat through a snow melter to supply water to the facilities. The permanent facilities are mostly heated with electric space heat and lighted with fluorescent fixtures. The following information provides a general overview of the station. Researchers proposing/planning to work at Summit should download the Summit Guide for more information. - Access – Visitors access Summit Station by aircraft landing on a 15,000′ by 200′ snow runway. Station personnel prepare and groom the landing area for ski-equipped aircraft. - Lodging – During the summer, most visitors sleep in unheated tents (Arctic Ovens). During the winter, personnel lodge indoors. - Communications – Summit is equipped with a Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) Internet system and telephone link, HF radio, Inmarsat Standard-C telex, and one lnmarsat Mini-M satellite telephone. Email, data transfers, and telephone access are available to researchers and staff. - Postal Mail – Incoming mail is flown from Kangerlussuaq during each flight period in summer. Outgoing mail is delivered back to Kangerlussuaq. All mail service is via international mail through Denmark, and takes approximately one week from the US to the Greenland coast. When sending mail to Summit, allow an additional one-to-two weeks. - Food Services – Summit Station is staffed with a cook, who provides meals six days a week. On Sunday all camp personnel are asked to assist with meals. - Medical Services – CPS contracts with Medical Advisory Services (MAS) for all locations. During April-August, an on-site paramedic at Summit provides on-call medical advice at all times for emergency and non-emergency medical issues. In addition all camps have at least one Wilderness First Responder certified staff member responsible for coordinating all medical issues. - Altitude Sickness – For additional altitude advice, download our High Altitude Illness Information Sheet. - Telephone – Project-related phone calls and limited personal calls may be made from Summit using a telephone with a US exchange. Calls are billed with Florida as the origin. Inbound calls or faxes to Summit are possible. - Webcam – Watch the Summit Station webcam. - Additional Information – Check out the Greenland Environmental Observatory website.
George Floyd’s death has magnified both the urgent need to end racism and, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the urgent need to end the racial injustice of health inequity in America, wrote Howard Koh of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in a June 18, 2020 Ideas article in Time magazine. “It’s long past time to end the disproportionate, unjust and unnatural impact of disease on black Americans and other people of color,” wrote Koh, Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership and former assistant secretary for health in the Obama administration. Pointing out the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on African Americans, Koh recommended four actions to help end racial injustice in health: improving the tracking of medical outcomes for communities of color, especially during health crises; working to extend health insurance to the roughly 29 million Americans who don’t have it; transforming how health professionals care for patients with different backgrounds than their own; and revitalizing public health departments and workforces. Read the Time article: The COVID-19 Pandemic Shows Why We Must—And How We Can—End Racial Injustice in Health
One of the greatest and most beloved composers of all time, Felix Mendelssohn was a grandson of a famous Jewish thinker Moses Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn later added surname Bartholdy due to his conversion to Christianity. Mendelssohn’s talent was immediately recognized by critics and audiences alike. Mendelssohn played a leading role in revitalizing public interest in the music of J.S. Bach. As a conductor Mendelssohn brought the Leipzig's Gewandhaus Orchestra to fame. Mendelssohn established the first Conservatory in Leipzig. Mendelssohn was also a renowned music critic. More Mendelssohn sheet music download on EveryNote.com
Biography: Ernest Crichlow was born in Brooklyn to parents from Barbados in 1914. His artistic career was supported by the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project, and in 1969 he founded the Cinque Gallery in Manhattan with Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis to support African American artists until its closing in 2004. Crichlow was a muralist, a children’s book illustrator, and taught at the Art Students League in New York. He exhibited with Bearden, Lewis, and Jacob Lawrence in 1941 at the Downtown Gallery in New York, and a major retrospective of his work toured in 1999. Crichlow is represented in the collections of the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, MIT Museum, and the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago, among many others. Crichlow is best known for his figurative practice dedicated to social justice and the civil rights struggle. He has said that his “work has been [his] attempt to articulate [his] experiences as a black person for all to see.” Barbed wire or fences are reoccurring devices in his work to indicate civil injustices.
A great conductor and composer, Richard Strauss created a new form and style of symphonic tone-poem. After 1900, Strauss received worldwide recognition with his operas, often at a grand scale. Later in his compositions, Strauss used a more classical approach. Straussís association with the Nazi Germany forced him to move to Switzerland. Strauss came back to him native Bavaria a few months before his death. More Richard Strauss sheet music download on EveryNote.com
The Rebel Sons of Erin Rónán Gearóid Ó Domhnaill While the Irish who fought for the Northern states are often written about less is known about the estimated 50,000 Irish who fought for the South. When the Southerners looked upon the North as something of an aggressive bully, trying to dictate how they should live their lives, it was a sentiment with which the Irish could readily identify. Unlike other regiments that were Irish in name only, the Tenth Tennessee Infantry Regiment was made up entirely of Irishmen and was one of only two confederate regiments made up of Irish Catholics, the others being comprised mostly of Ulster Protestants. Its officers were for the most Northern Irish Protestants, the most famous being Randall McGavock. The regiment was set up at Fort Henry, on the Tennessee River, in May of 1861, a few weeks after war breaking out and colonel Heiman assumed command. It soon numbered 720 men armed with flintlock muskets. The Regimental flag, which is currently hangs on display in Nashville Museum, was made up of a golden harp with a maroon trim on a green background. Over the harp in white lettering was written "Sons of Erin" and underneath "Where glory await you". The regiment became locally known as The Rebel Sons of Erin but as later the war took a horrific toll on its numbers, they were christened The Bloody Tenth. One of the regiment`s youngest soldiers was seventeen year old Patrick Griffin, who was born on St. Patrick's Day, 1844, in County Galway. His parents Michael and Honora Griffin decided left Ireland in 1847 when The Famine was at its worst, and in their desperation, they had to leave three of their children behind. When they landed in Baltimore, Patrick’s father worked laying train tracks, a job that would take the family to Nashville. This regiment stayed at Fort Henry to drill and to train. It first saw action in February 1862 when the Union army bombarded the fort. It was ordered to fall back to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River where they thought they would be safe. After wadding a number of streams swollen by rain and snow, and being constantly harassed by Union cavalry they eventually reached the fort late that night. They soon found themselves under attack again when Union soldiers attacked the fort. Weary and outnumbered the 10th Tennessee held them at bay for four days before being compelled to surrender. Their time in captivity was to prove harsh and they suffered under the atrocious conditions in the Union prison at Fort Warren in Boston Harbour. Five months later they were exchanged for Union prisoners and the regiment was reformed again at Clinton, Mississippi in October of 1862. When Colonel Heiman died in November, 1862 he was succeeded by Colonel Randall W. McGavock. He was a highly regarded figure in Tennessee, where he had been a former mayor of Nashville . Near the end of December, 1862 the regiment was ordered to Vicksburg and helped defeat General Sherman's forces at the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou. In January 1863 the 10th Tennessee was 349 strong and was serving General Gregg at Port Hudson, Louisiana, where the Union navy bombarded them. They later engaged with Union troops at Jackson, Mississippi, and repulsed them. The 10th Tennessee then marched to Raymond, Mississippi, where, on May 12th, they fought in the Battle of Raymond, suffering 52 casualties. At Raymond the confederate General John Gregg faced General Ulysses S. Grant. The confederates were trying to prevent the Union troops from reaching the Southern Railroad and isolating Vicksburg, Mississippi from reinforcement and resupply. It was a small but important battle in the Vicksburg campaign that thwarted Union plans. In the midst of the battle as the regiment awaited orders to move forward, McGavock sent a courier to find General Gregg. The courier returned, not with orders from General Gregg, but with news that the Confederate centre had been routed. McGavock then ordered his regiment into an impetuous and ill conceived assault on the centre to repel the Union soldiers. He threw back his cape and rallied his men. The red lining of his cape made him a perfect target and he was riddled with more than twelve bullets. His men carried on, only to realise that they were now being fired upon from all sides and were forced into a retreat. Ever loyal to his commander, the young Patrick Griffin took McGavock`s body from the field which led to his capture. The officer who captured him, a man by the name of McGuire, was also from Galway. Impressed by the young soldier’s courage and at finding a fellow Galwegian he ordered his men to place McGavock's body in one of the Union army wagons for transport into town, where after a coffin was hastily put together he was buried with full honours. After the battle of Raymond the regiment now numbering 328 took part with remnants of other Tennessee regiments in the Battle of Chickamauga fighting mainly as sharpshooters. The combined regiment suffered 224 killed and wounded at Chickamauga. Their last major battle was at Bentonville, North Carolina in March of 1865 By the time they surrendered at Greensboro, North Carolina, in April of that year they numbered less than 100, all of whom had been wounded several times. The war had taken its toll on the 21 year old Griffin who had been wounded and taken prisoner three times as well as taking part in twenty-four engagements with the enemy. It was these engagements with which he would later regal future generations. By the time he died in 1921 he had ensured that the contribution of the confederate Irish would not be forgotten.
Mycotoxin management has the utmost priority for animal producers worldwide. Most grains are susceptible to mycotoxin contamination. These toxic secondary metabolites are produced by fungi before or after harvest and cause severe economic losses. For livestock, negative consequences include acute effects, such as impaired liver and kidney function, vomiting, or anorexia, as well as chronic effects, such as immunosuppression, growth retardation and reproductive problems. But how is it that mycotoxins cause so much damage in the first place? This article delves into the complex processes that take place when mycotoxins come into contact with the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). The intestinal epithelium is the first tissue to be exposed to mycotoxins and often at higher concentrations than other tissues. A deeper understanding of how mycotoxins affect the GIT allows us to appreciate the cascading effects on animal health and performance, why such damage already occurs at contamination levels well below official safety thresholds – and what can be done about it. When mycotoxins are ingested, they encounter the GIT’s intestinal epithelium (Figure 1). This single layer of cells lining the intestinal lumen serves 2 conflicting functions: Within the intestinal epithelium, several types of highly specialised cells are involved in epithelial regeneration, nutrient absorption, innate defence, transport of immunoglobulins and immune surveillance. The selective barrier function is maintained due to the formation of complex networks of proteins that link adjacent cells and seal the intercellular space. Besides, the intestinal epithelium is covered with mucus produced by goblet cells, which isolates its surface preventing the adhesion of pathogens to the enterocytes (intestinal absorptive cells). Due to its dual involvement in digestive and immune processes, the intestinal epithelium plays a pivotal role in the animal’s overall health. Importantly, the epithelium is directly exposed to the entire load of ingested mycotoxins. Hence their effects can be problematic even at low concentrations. Most mycotoxins are absorbed in the proximal part of the gastrointestinal tract (Table 1). This absorption can be high, as in the case of aflatoxins (~90%), but also very limited, as in the case of fumonisins (<1%); moreover, it depends on the species. importantly, a significant portion of unabsorbed toxins remains in the lumen of the gastrointestinal tract. some of the mycotoxins that enter the intestinal lumen can be bio-transformed into less toxic compounds by the action of certain bacteria. this action, however, predominantly happens in the large intestine – therefore, no detoxification takes place before absorption in the upper parts of the git. some of the absorbed mycotoxins can also re-enter the intestine, reaching the cells from the basolateral side via the bloodstream. they can also re-enter through enterohepatic circulation (the circulation of substances between the liver and small intestine). both actions increase the gastrointestinal tract’s overall exposure to the toxins. The damaging impact of mycotoxins on the intestinal epithelium initially occurs through: Importantly, studies based on realistic mycotoxin challenges show that the mycotoxin levels necessary to trigger these processes are lower than the levels reported as safe by EFSA, the Food Safety Agency of the European Union. The ultimate consequences range from diminished nutrient absorption to inflammatory responses and pathogenic disorders in the animal (Figure 2). The mycotoxins DON, fumonisin, and T2 induce a reduction in the rate of epithelial cell proliferation and differentiation. This causes a decrease in the height and the surface of the intestinal villi, which in turn leads to a reduction in nutrient absorption. Additionally, some nutrient transporters are inhibited by the action of mycotoxins, such as DON and T2, for example, negatively affecting the transport of glucose. Several studies indicate that mycotoxins such as aflatoxin B1, DON, fumonisin B1, ochratoxin A, and T2, can increase the permeability of the intestinal epithelium of poultry. This is mostly a consequence of the inhibition of protein synthesis. As a result, there is an increase in the passage of antigens into the bloodstream (e.g., bacteria, viruses and toxins). This increases the animal’s susceptibility to infectious enteric diseases. Moreover, the damage that mycotoxins cause to the intestinal barrier means that they are also being absorbed at a higher rate. The intestine is a very active immune site where several immuno-regulatory mechanisms simultaneously defend the body from harmful agents. Immune cells are affected by mycotoxins through the initiation of apoptosis, the inhibition or stimulation of cytokines and the induction of oxidative stress. Studies demonstrate that aflatoxin, DON, fumonisin, T2, and zearalenone interact with the intestinal immune system in such a manner that the animal’s susceptibility to viral and bacterial infections increases. Moreover, by increasing their faecal elimination, the horizontal transmission of pathogens is extended. In poultry production one of the most severe enteric problems of bacterial origin is necrotic enteritis which is caused by Clostridium perfringens toxins. Any agent capable of disrupting the gastrointestinal epithelium – e.g., mycotoxins such as DON, T2 and ochratoxin – promotes the development of necrotic enteritis. The inhibition of the intestinal immune system, caused by mycotoxins such as aflatoxin, DON, and T2, also contributes to the development of this disease. Mycotoxin Knowledge Centre: All you need to know about mycotoxins, from the regulations for mycotoxins to the impact on livestock health plus much more! The gastrointestinal tract is home to a diverse community of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses which line the walls of the distal part of the intestine. This microbiota prevents the growth of pathogenic bacteria through competitive exclusion and the secretion of natural antimicrobial compounds, volatile fatty acids and organic acids. Recent studies on the effect of various mycotoxins on the intestinal microbiota show that DON and other trichothecenes favour the colonisation of coliform bacteria in pigs. DON and ochratoxin A also induce a greater invasion of Salmonella and their translocation to the bloodstream and vital organs in birds and pigs – even at non-cytotoxic concentrations. It is known that fumonisin B1 may induce changes in the balance of sphingolipids at the cellular level, including for gastrointestinal cells. This facilitates the adhesion of pathogenic bacteria, population increase and prolongs infections, as has been shown in the case of E. coli. From the perspective of human health, the colonisation of the intestine of food-producing animals with pathogenic strains of E. coli and Salmonella is of particular concern. Mycotoxin exposure may well increase the transmission of these pathogens, posing a risk to human health. When mycotoxins induce changes in the intestinal microbiota, this can lead to an increase in the endotoxin concentration in the intestinal lumen. Endotoxins or lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are cell wall fragments of Gram-negative bacteria. They are released during bacterial cell death, growth and division. Hence endotoxins are always present in the intestine, even in healthy animals. Endotoxins promote the release of several cytokines that induce an enhanced immune response, causing inflammation, thus reducing feed consumption and animal performance, damage to the vital organs, sepsis and, in some cases, death. The synergy between mycotoxins and endotoxins can result in an overstimulation of the immune system. The interaction between endotoxins and oestrogenic agents such as zearalenone, for example, generates chronic inflammation and autoimmune disorders because immune cells have oestrogen receptors which are stimulated by the mycotoxin. While conversely, the combination of DON at low concentrations and endotoxins in the intestine has been shown to engender a decrease in transepithelial resistance and alter the balance of the microbiota. Managing mycotoxins – special publication Mitigating mycotoxins is a huge global challenge with no universal solution. Developments need to happen from all sides of the supply chain. Here, the latest breakthroughs across these areas are explored. To prevent the detrimental consequences of mycotoxins on animal health and performance, proactive solutions are needed that support the intestinal epithelium’s digestive and immune functionality and help maintain a balanced microbiome in the GIT. Moreover, it is crucial for any anti-mycotoxin product to feature both anti-mycotoxin and anti-bacterial toxin properties and that it supports the organs most targeted by mycotoxins, e.g., the liver. EW Nutrition’s Mastersorb Gold premix is based on a synergistic combination of natural clay minerals, yeast cell walls and phytomolecules. Its efficacy has been extensively tested, including as a means of dealing with E. coli endotoxins. A field trial A field trial conducted in Germany on male Ross 308 broilers showed that for broilers receiving a diet contaminated with DON and zearalenone, adding 1 kg of Mastersorb Gold per tonne of feed to their diet led to significant performance enhancements. Not only did they regain the mycotoxin-induced weight loss (6% increase relative to the group receiving only the challenge), but they also gained weight relative to the control group. Feed conversion also improved by 3% relative to the group challenged with mycotoxins. Animal feed is often contaminated with 2 or more mycotoxins, making it important for an anti-mycotoxin agent to be effective against a wide range of different mycotoxins. To prevent mycotoxins damaging the GIT, an effective product should ideally adsorb most mycotoxins in the first part of the animal’s intestine (under acidic conditions). In-vitro experiments at an independent research facility in Brazil showed that an application of 0.2% Mastersorb Gold binds all tested mycotoxins at rates of 95-97% at a pH level of 3, using realistic challenges of 1000ppb (Aflatoxin B1 and ZEA) and 2500ppb (Fumonisin B1 and DON). The binding results achieved for Fumonisin and DON, which are often considered outright as ‘non-binding’ under challenging close to neutral conditions (pH 6), are particularly encouraging. In terms of its efficacy against endotoxins, an in-vitro study conducted at Utrecht University, among other studies, has shown Mastersorb Gold to be an effective tool against the LPS released by E. coli. For the test, 4 premium mycotoxin binders were suspended in a phosphate buffer solution in concentrations of 0.25% and 1%. E. coli LPS were suspended to a final concentration in each sample of 50ng/ml. Against this particularly high challenge, Mastersorb Gold achieved a binding rate of 75% at an inclusion rate of 1%: clearly outperforming competing products which, at best, showed a binding rate of 10%. A healthy gastrointestinal tract is crucial to animals’ overall health: it ensures that nutrients are optimally absorbed, it provides effective protection against pathogens through its immune function and it is key to maintaining a well-balanced microflora. Even at levels considered safe by the European Union, mycotoxins can compromise different intestinal functions, such as absorption, permeability, immunity and microbiota balance, resulting in lower productivity and susceptibility to disease. Even low levels of mycotoxins impact bird performance New research has shown that even low levels of mycotoxins found in animal feed have a direct negative impact on the performance of broiler chickens. To safeguard animal performance, it is important to continually strive for low levels of contamination in feed raw materials. And to stop the unavoidable mycotoxin loads from damaging the intestinal epithelium through the use of an effective anti-mycotoxin agent, which also supports animals against endotoxins and boosts liver function. Research shows that Mastersorb Gold is a powerful tool for proactive producers seeking better animal health, welfare and productivity. Authors: Marisabel Caballero and Sabria Regragui Mazili
What are the Shire and the Shire Society, and how did they come about? “The Shire” was a term coined by Free State Project early movers and civil disobedience superactivists Russell and Kat Kanning on the NHFree.com Forum. The Shire is as much of an idea as it is a physical place. Generally, it physically means the area commonly known as New Hampshire and mentally it means a place for free minds anywhere. Eventually, after having many state believers explain that it’s okay to subject a human being to violence, because we’re all members of “society”, some people got fed up and decided to create an alternative society. The Shire Society is a society based in peace and consensual interaction between human beings. Isn’t a society supposed to be a voluntary association of individuals? If so, then what the government people insist is a society, is in fact, not. It’s only a society if one gives consent. Did you consent to be part of the coercive government’s society? Even if you did consent, whether you were fully informed or not as to the implications of your decision, shouldn’t you be able to peacefully withdraw your consent? Just for the record, here’s the definition of “society” from Ballentine’s Law Dictionary, 3rd edition: The community… The associates which one has. A voluntary association… organized and existing for the mutual benefit of its members Eventually, it was time to grow the idea of The Shire into a new idea – the Shire Society. It is a voluntary association of people expressing their intention to leave any coercive “societies” and to explicitly join a society based on values that most sane humans live by – allowing their neighbors to be free and at peace. To that end, the Shire Society Declaration was created in 2010 by a group of activists on the then-“Free Keene Forum”, now the Shire Society Forum. The Declaration was originally inspired by grumpy sci-fi author L. Neil Smith’s essay, “A New Covenant”. (You can buy L. Neil Smith books here.) The idea was to create a document that one could sign, declaring one’s independence from the coercive society into which we all are born and brainwashed into by that society’s masters. It’s intention is to allow one to speak out and abolish the mental chains so we can join together and break the real-life chains that the people calling themselves government force upon us. The Shire Society Declaration, when finalized online, was drawn up on beautiful hemp paper by Davi Barker and delivered in time for the 2010 Porcupine Freedom Festival, where it was signed publicly by a room full of excited people. Thereafter, Sam Dodson and Meg McLain painstakingly repaired the tears made in the fragile paper during the signing ceremony and photographer James Schmill took some fine, high resolution photos of the documents. Here they are in high-resolution .PDF form: Shire Doc One.pdf :: Shire Doc Two.pdf The Shire Society is always growing and starting new projects. Check “The Shire” tab at the top of this site to see just some of what’s currently going on.
Presentation on theme: "The Facts About Creation"— Presentation transcript: 1The Facts About Creation The six days of Creation 2The six days of creation “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”. Gen 1:1 3The six days of creation The earth was without form and void (waste & empty, JND); and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”Gen 1:2 4The six days of creation “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.The earth was without form and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”Genesis 1:1-2Time interval???Rebellion & judgment of Satan 5The six days of creation See the following Scriptures:Isaiah 14:12-17Isaiah 45:18Ezek 28:11-19 6The six days of creation Thoughts about the recreation of the earth:“Only the earth, not the universe is said to have been ”without form and void”.The word translated was in verse 2 could also be translated “became.”Scofield (2002) 7The six days of creation “the Hebrew expression for without form and void is used to describe a condition produced by divine judgment in the only other two texts where the two words appear in conjunction (Isa 34:11; Jer 4:23).”Scofield (2002) 8The six days of creation Some Christians have used this unspecified interval to try to harmonize the ideas of scientists with Scripture since science MUST be correct!!!!This is called the Gap Theory 9The six days of creation Evolutionary timetableUniverse began with a big bang billion years agoSolar system arose 5 billion years agoSingle celled organisms 3-4 billion years agoMan , 1-3 million years agoModern civilization 5-10 K years agoMorris (2007) 10The six days of creation Evolutionist base their timetable upon radioisotope dating techniques which are NOT trustworthy since they make several assumptions.Closed system (no contamination of sample)Known amounts of daughter material at the start. (assume none present at start)Constant decay rate *Morris (2007)See “The Young Earth” by John Morris 11The six days of creation In contrast, many reputable creation scientist today using Scripture as their guide contend that the earth is much younger.“Even if one inserts every possible time gap in genealogies and elsewhere (which is clearly not warranted), the time of the creation of Adam would be no longer than say, 12,000 years(most likely, closer to 6,000 years).” Morris, 2007. 13The six days of creation The earth was without form and void (waste & empty, JND); and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.”Gen 1:2 14The six days of creation Event1Light created (some say appeared)Day and Night cycles initiatedStarting with evening and morning2Division of the waters from the watersWater vapor aboveWaters beneathExpanse was called Heavens 15The six days of creation Event3Dry land appears and is called EarthWaters collected to form seasGrass, herb, fruit trees madeNOTE, God’s commentary4Sun, moon, & stars createdTo divide the day and nightFor signs ,seasons, days, years, for light 16The six days of creation Event5Fish and other creatures that live in the watersBirds6Living creatures, cattle, creeping thingsMan created in the image of God to have dominion over the creation.Man was a vegetarianGod commented that everything was very good 17The six days of creation Were these 6, 24 hour periods?“..the Hebrew word yom, translated day, has a variety of possible meanings and sometimes can mean an indefinite period of time. The word occurs over 2000 times in the Old Testament…this word almost always certainly means a solar day..” (John Morris, 2007) 18The six days of creation Reasons for the solar day in Gen 1:“when the Hebrew word YOM is modified such as six days or the third day (as it is some 359 times in the Old Testament outside of Genesis 1) it always means literal day.” (Morris, 2007)Use of evening and morningThere are other Hebrew words for day that would imply an indefinite period of time but YOM is the only one that can mean a solar day. 19The six days of creation Read Exodus 20:8-11Here God establishes a weekly pattern for His people that refers back to His creation of the world in 6 literal (solar) days with a 7th day of rest. 21Definitions Biblical creationism: “Supernatural creation of all things in six literal days by the God of the Bible.”Evolution“the idea that all of life has come from a common ancestor through a process of modification over time. Thus, man and apes are thought to have descended from an ape-like common ancestor. All vertebrates came from fish, which in turn came from an invertebrate. All life descended from a single-celled organism that arose spontaneously from non-living chemicals. Changes occurred through natural processes, including mutation, natural selection and genetic recombination.”Morris (2007) 22The six days of creation Theistic Evolution:“..God may have either started the evolution process, and then left it to natural processes, or may have guided the evolution process.”Morris (2007) 23The six days of creation Progressive creation:“Sometimes called the day-age theory. The days of Genesis were long periods of time, roughly equivalent to the supposed geologic ages. Each basic category of life was created by supernatural intervention at various times throughout the age.”Morris (2007) 24The six days of creation Framework Hypothesis:The idea that the Bible, when it speaks of things historic or scientific, is to be understood in the theological sense only, assuming that God was involved but not as actually recorded. Genesis is not to be taken as factual history.”Morris (2007)
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Animal disease outbreaks have the power to wield devastating economic blows to farmers and some diseases, like Avian Influenza, may even cause human illness. A new tool, produced by Partners in Animal Health at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, aims to minimise disease outbreaks by helping veterinarians and farmers diagnose poultry diseases more quickly. Poultry Examination and Diagnostics, a 3-hr instructional video series and interactive diagnostic tool, was produced by veterinarians at the College and funded with an educational contract from the USDA. “This is a unique, multimedia resource that will improve diagnostic speed, accuracy, and disease response in poultry,” said Dr Jodi Korich, director of Partners in Animal Health. “Veterinarians who specialise in poultry medicine, pathology, public health, and education collaborated with the single goal of helping to protect food supplies and public health in the US and internationally.” The resource is available to the public free of charge through Cornell’s Partners in Animal Health website. The information is also available on a 3-disc DVD set that can be installed on a laptop computer and used in the field. In an effort to help protect global food supplies, these training materials are being distributed by the USDA in many developing nations throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. “In economically-challenged regions of the world, poultry flocks of all sizes play a vital role in feeding large numbers of people,” said Dr Alfonso Torres, former US chief veterinary officer and associate dean for public policy. “Unfortunately, veterinarians in most developing nations typically have limited access to educational information. With Poultry Examination and Diagnostics, Cornell and the USDA have provided educational resources that can help ensure better veterinary healthcare to flocks of all sizes.”
Swahali for “Grandmother” The second sculpture represents the elder group of enslaved Africans. Originally referred to as “Big Ma”, she was renamed to reflect the languages of the places that the enslaved people came from. She is depicted as a gardener, captured in a moment of prayer as she rests for a moment to look skyward. She prays in Igbo: “Chukwu, ndi anyi huru n anya ebidole njem ha ijekvuru ndi ichie. Ra garou nkeuma. Udo diri ha. Anyi eke ji maka ngazi gi.” The translation: “O’ God, our beloved ones have started their journey to meet the ancestors. May they successfully reach their destination. Peace be with them. We thank you for your blessing. Amen.” Braille on her apron reads: “I believe in freedom.”Among the folds of her skirt, there is a relief sculpture of a little girl. The sign on the hem of the skirt reads: “FOR SALE A likely… NEGRO WENCH Seven to eight years of age. Has had small pox. For information enquire at…”
WHAT IS NANO SILVER? The nano silver is 1-100 nanometers in size. Usually the size is about 25 nanometers. The nano silver particles have large surfaces that help increase their interactions with bacteria or fungi, maximize capacity and immediately kill bacteria upon exposure. Silver molecules in nano format are extremely stable. USES OF SILVER A long time ago, silver was used to detect the poisonous factor in compounds and kill bacteria. Our experience tells us that silver is wind resistant. Silver is applied in many fields related to human health: food containers for a longer conservation, textile technology, blankets, pillows, cushions ... and even in vaccines, incorporating silver to support antibacterial efficacy. Inhibits the transport of Na+ and Ca+ ions through the cell membrane, preventing metabolism. It breaks the cell membrane, primarily oxidizing the compounds of bacterial cells, first destroying the compounds using water soluble oxygen as a silver catalyst. It implements a passive effect on DNA molecules by improving the number of free radicals, reducing the activity of compounds with active oxygen, changing the order of oxidation and phosphorylation within bacterial cells. Deactivates enzymes consisting of -SH and -COOH, breaking the balance of osmotic pressure, or creating a compound with nucleic acids that change the DNA structure of microorganisms (directly affecting the DNA structure) EXCELLENT ADVANTAGES OF SILVER Ability to kill over 650 types of bacteria, 260 types of harmful microbes, gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria. • Safe for health. • Fast effectiveness, without irritation, without allergy. • Does not create harmful colors or odors. • Stable characteristic and long-lasting antibacterial effect. • Soft and flexible texture. KF94 (SOUTH KOREAN STANDARD; EQUIVALENT TO THE US N95) From South Korea to the world, IBGroup Global Trading offers you in worldwide exclusive, the best disposable mask on the market. Our KF94 manufactured with nano fibers (non-woven) with the highest quality standards; the Korean KF94 standard being stricter than the US N95 standard. The quality of our masks has been recognized by the most demanding independent laboratories and by Authorities and Organizations around the world. Understood as safety equipment at work for any type of sector, medical, construction, hospitality, or as the best protection and safety equipment for the general public, at an unbeatable price. It has FDA, NIOSH, ISO 9001: 2015 approval, Halal and SGS certification, etc. The pre-existing static filter uses the method where dust adheres to the fabric due to static. As a characteristic of static electricity, if the humidity is produced due to respiration or is introduced from the outside, the efficiency of the filtering decreases drastically. However, fine dust gets trapped in the densely tangled Air Queen IBGroup Nano fabric. It is filtered through a structured Nano tissue, instead of static; maintains high filter efficiency for 24 hours, even when it comes in contact with moisture.
Florida Icon: The Pink Flamingo by Barbara Nefer ators, swamps, beaches and palm trees all evoke images of Florida, but one icon stands neck and feathers above the rest: the pink flamingo. Ironically, even though wild flamingos are rare as a snowstorm in the Sunshine State today, they grace Florida souvenirs ranging from plush toys to wedding cake toppers. Some shops even offer edible “flamingo droppings” (nonpareil-sprinkled chocolates or chocolate coated sunflower seeds). It's possible, although not proven, that flamingos are native to Florida. As far back as 1832, John James Audubon, the famous painter and naturalist, reported seeing a flock in the Florida Keys. Still, even if they're immigrants, this puts them in the same class as the majority of the human residents who couldn't resist the Sunshine State's siren call. According to the American Community Survey, only 33 percent of Floridians were native-born as of 2005. This trend is even more pronounced in Central Florida, where 56 percent of Metro Orlando's recent population growth was made up of transplants from other states and 18 percent flocked in from other countries. Regardless of their origin, in the early part of the century the birds were apparently hunted to extinction. Soon the unthinkable had happened: Florida had been rendered flamingo-less. Fortunately, new flamingos were added to Miami's Hialeah Park racetrack in the 1930s, vying with the Thoroughbreds as the animal top attraction. Visitors were amazed by their synchronized “marching,” which is actually an adaptation of a natural behavior. The birds were even honored with a namesake race, the Flamingo Stakes, a stepping stone to the Kentucky Derby. Soon they became a symbol of the quintessential Florida. The infamous Bugsy Siegel once owned a part of Hialeah and was inspired by the flock (and also his long-legged girlfriend) to christen his Las Vegas resort “The Flamingo.” The garish pink hotel brought a taste of the Floridian tropics to the desert. Although the racetrack is now defunct, the famous birds remain. They no longer march for the tourists, but you can still see a similar performance at Ardastra Gardens in Nassau, Bahamas. Although they had a toehold to fame, 1957 was a pink-letter year in flamingo history. In October of that year their most famous incarnation, the pink plastic flamingo, was born. Ironically this Florida staple was invented by a New England native, appropriately named Don Featherstone. By the late 1950s, injection molding had progressed to the point where 3-D plastic sculptures could be cheaply mass produced. A company called Union Products hired Don, an art school graduate, to create a menagerie that they hoped would take over America's lawns. “Lawn decorations weren't new,” Don says. “They go back to the 1880s and '90s when they were bronze sculptures that only the very wealthy could afford.” Over time, this morphed into less expensive concrete versions, but they still didn't make it into the mainstream. As Don points out, “You'd have to be pretty rugged to grab one in the store and carry it home!” The molding process leveled the field and made yard art affordable to everyone, from mansion owners to trailer park denizens. “Where else can you get tropical elegance for less than 10 bucks?” Don jokes. Although the flamingos were his personal version of Michaelangelo's “David,” Don didn't put all his eggs in one basket. He crafted 750 different items, and his plastic aviary included swans, hens, roosters, and a mama duck with babies in tow. “Many of the others, like the swans, actually outsold the flamingos,” he reveals. “It sure made those little swans sad that the flamingos got all the fame.” Their success lies in the serendipitous melding of two national passions. In the 1950s, the color pink soared in popularity. At the same time, the United States was caught in the grip of “Florida Fever.” The humble plastic birds symbolized what Florida meant to the Joe and Jane Average: travel, leisure, and an exotic locale. The Sunshine State was being heavily hyped as the ultimate tourist destination and a paradise for retirement living, and Americans were responding in droves. Don's creation allowed them to bring a bit of the tropics right to their own front yard, and in the latest color fad to boot. Unfortunately, like other fads, the flamingo was fated to go the way of the hula hoop, mood ring and pet rock. As the 1960s faded into the '70s, this venerable icon of the Florida good life morphed into a symbol of baby boomer rebellion. Inevitably it waned in popularity, becoming a symbol of “visual pollution.” “Pink Flamingos,” the controversial 1972 John Waters film, sealed the plastic avian's fate as the epitome of bad taste. Soon they were relegated to the object of prank thefts and theme parties. In 1979, the student government at University of Wisconsin planted a thousand fake flamingos on the lawn outside the dean’s office and the era of “flocking” had begun. Although flocks of wild flamingo may be a rarity in Florida, the plastic variety's habitat extends well beyond the Sunshine State. “Flocking” is a way for someone to send a message by leaving a pink swarm implanted on the victim's lawn. The practice is often used for fund raisers; unlucky souls who don't buy flock insurance will find that their lawn has turned into a kitsch sanctuary. A famous serial “flocking” took place in Celebration, Florida, in 1997. Although unapproved lawn art is forbidden by the town's covenants, a renegade flock moved from lawn to lawn among members of Community Presbyterian Church as a prayer reminder. They gained fame on the coattails of Celebration's “Disney Town” infamy and were featured on “48 Hours” and parodied on an episode of “The X Files.” Like their distant cousin, the phoenix, pink plastic flamingos were simply biding their time before rising from the ashes of ridicule into a triumphant return. Florida Fever was rekindled in the 1980s, thanks to the popularity of the television show “Miami Vice.” The flock of flamingos featured in its opening credits re-cemented the birds as a Florida icon. The series also rekindled the Florida mystique of an exotic and affluent place, and many children of the 1950s and '60s were just about the right age to embrace a dose of nostalgia. The triumphant comeback was so strong that Union Products found their flamingo sales skyrocketing once again, and they soon faced competition from two knock-off producers. By 1987, they were distinguishing the genuine article by engraving Don's signature on the bottom of their product. For a brief time the signature was removed, but a boycott convinced Union to bring it back. Don jokes, “I had no idea it was so popular. I never thought people would be looking at a flamingo's butt!” By the time he retired in 2002, over 20 million of his pink plastic masterpieces had been sold. The plastic flamingo's fortunes still seesaw between tacky-and-tasteless and retro-cool, but either way it's become a permanent part of the public's consciousness. Don even received an Ig Nobel award for his creation in 1996. Organized by the scientific humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research (AIR), the awards are given for “discoveries that cannot, or should not, be reproduced." It's all in good fun, and Don is proud of the honor. Nearly three decades later, and six years into retirement, he continues to get fan letters and interview requests.Don still honors the year of the plastic flamingos creation by festooning his lawn with a flock of 57 plastic flamingos every summer. Like Floridian snowbirds, they migrate each winter into a warm dry place that protects them from bad weather. Like their real-life counterparts, the pink plastic flamingos had a brief flirtation with extinction. Union Products stopped making them in 2006, just shy of their 50th anniversary. Fortunately the copyright and molds of the original design were purchased by HMC International LLC, where production is being resumed. Florida flamingos will no doubt continue to inspire some unique souvenirs, events, and promotions. A recent example is Air-Tran Airways' “release” of 25 pink-clad “flamingo-inspired wanna-bes” in New York this March. They rode around on Segways, promoting the airline's Florida routes. "What better way to remind New Yorkers that sunny Florida is closer than they think, than with the iconic pink flamingo?" said Tad Hutcheson, the airline's vice president of marketing. They'll also continue to spread good cheer. Who can help but smile at the sight of these elegant yet comical avians? Pink plastic flamingos were even used in Bay St. Louis, Missouri, after Hurricane Katrina to brighten the environs of FEMA trailers and the spirits of their unfortunate occupants. Resident Jimmy Loiacano, who was in charge of beautification for the town, even planted three outside his own trailer. When two were stolen, he fastened the third to the grill of his truck. The birds do seem to attract sticky fingers. One of the most famous flamingo-nappings took place in Kingston, Massachusetts, in 2003, when eight birds were snatched from the yard of Debbie Barber. Each month, Debbie diligently dressed her plastic pets in costumes ranging from Hawaiian shirts to elf suits. Apparently the thieves just couldn't resist their sartorial splendor and the flock disappeared. Soon the theft turned into a real-life version of “101 Dalmatians.” In the movie, when a couple's litter of purloined puppies returns, they're accompanied by 84 more. Debbie's original eight-bird loss led to multiplied returns. Two flamingos were found along a roadside, eight showed up at the police department, and a woman drove 55 miles to present her with even more. Debbie cheerfully assumed the task of making costumes for the new additions. Meanwhile, postcards and photos arrived from a vacationing plastic flamingo, presumably one of the originally missing flock who remains at large today. The title of Florida State Bird might officially belong to the mockingbird (although it's currently being challenged by the indigenous scrub jay), but the flamingo holds that honor in popular opinion. When people get caught up in the Florida mystique, with visions of beaches and swaying palm trees, a certain tall, pink bird will forever hold a place in that picture.
Activity time: 10 minutes Materials for Activity - All participants' Window/Mirror Panels - Leader Resource 1, Chalice Template - Optional: Items that symbolize your congregation, such as a postcard with a picture of your church, an order of service, a worship notice in a local newspaper, etc., for children to cut up and include on their panels - Basket(s) of Window/Mirror Panel materials: - Sheets of Mylar (R) in several colors, shiny gift wrap, aluminum foil and other reflective paper - Sheets of plain or construction paper - A variety of drawing and writing materials, including color markers (permanent markers work best on Mylar) - Glue sticks, tape (including double-sided tape) and scissors, including left-hand scissors - Optional: Stick-on sequins, a hole-puncher, yarn, ribbon, scraps of fabric and a variety of old magazines to cut up Preparation for Activity - Use the Leader Resource to make a few handouts and/or card stock templates. Some children may want to cut out and decorate a paper chalice, some may want an intact chalice shape to trace on paper, fabric, etc. or directly on their Window/Mirror Panel and others may like to work creatively with one or more of the shapes that comprise the chalice. - If this will be the last Windows and Mirrors session, finalize plans for a group exhibit of the children's Window/Mirror panels. You may wish to make a flyer announcing when and where the artwork will be on display for the congregation, or add the information to the Taking It Home handout. Consider developing Alternate Activity 3, Window/Mirror Panel Group Exhibit, to extend this session or hold another meeting for children to participate in creating the group display. Description of Activity Ask the children to bring their Window/Mirror Panels to work tables. Distribute Window/Mirror Panel basket(s). Say something like: Every time we have been together, we have exploring what it means to have a Unitarian Universalist view of the world and of ourselves. Today we explored our Unitarian Universalist identity. Everyone came up with their own way of understanding and defining a UU identity for themselves. The flaming chalice is a symbol we all use for Unitarian Universalism. It can still be that, yet mean something different for each of us. Find a way to let the chalice represent your own personal UU identity on your Window/Mirror Panel. Distribute the handouts and/or templates you have made from Leader Resource 1. Invite children to trace the whole chalice shape or the individual parts onto Mylar or another material, using whatever colors they like, and attach it to their Window/Mirror Panel in some way. (You might suggest they can use the chalice in its intact form to represent Unitarian Universalism simply or express with the pieces how they feel about their own Unitarian Universalist identity.) You can also give an option for children to use other symbols for your congregation if you have brought some. As children work, invite small group conversation. Give a warning with enough time left for everyone to clean up and for a few volunteers to share their work with the larger group. If this is the last Windows and Mirrors session, explain how and when the children's panels will be displayed together. You may wish to develop Alternate Activity 3, Window/Mirror Panel Group Exhibit, for an extension of today's session or an additional meeting, to engage the children in making the group display.
Welcome to dickblick For professionals. Work with pure free-flowing color, no hard edges. Finest pigments, milled up to 9 times retains purity. Checked for tint and texture, then tested to ensure color stability in any environment. Color Swatches created using heavy application/diluted application and were applied on cold press watercolor paper (150 lb) material. This Hansa yellow is a transparent yellow. It has great brightness and tinting strength and its drying time ranges from average to slow. Hansa Yellow makes more intense tints and cleaner secondaries than Cadmium Yellows, especially when mixed with other organic or modern colors like Phthalo Blue and Green. Because they are more transparent, they have great value as glazing colors. This Hansa Yellow has fair to good permanence, particularly in the lighter shades. Hansa Yellow has no significant acute hazards, though its chronic hazards have not been well studied. Hansa Yellows were first made in Germany just before WW1 from a series of synthetic dyestuffs called Pigment Yellow. They were intended to be a synthetic replacement for Cadmium Yellow. Arylamide Yellow, Arylide, Arylide Yellow, Azo, Brilliant Yellow, Monoazo, Monolite Yellow, Permanent Yellow. polychlorinated copper(II) phthalocyanine C32H3Cl13CuN8 to C32HCl15CuN8 or C32H16CuN8Cl15 (PG7) or C32Br6Cl10CuN8 (PG36) Phthalo Green is a transparent, cool, bright, high intensity color used in oil and acrylics. It comes from a Phthalocyanine Blue pigment where most of the hydrogen atoms have been replaced with chlorine, forming highly stable molecules. It has similar pigment properties and permanence to Phthalo Blue. It is slow drying and an excellent base color for mixing a range of bright greens. Phthalo Green is considered a very good alternative to Viridian because it is intense and mixes well and can be used to emphasize mineral colors in various tints. However, its tinting strength is very high, so it can overpower other colors. This pigment most closely resembles the discontinued and toxic Verdigris. Phthalo Greens are completely lightfast and resistant to alkali, acids, solvents, heat, and ultraviolet radiation. They are currently used in inks, coatings, and many plastics due to their stability and are considered a standard pigment in printing ink and the packaging industry. Phthalo Green has no significant hazards, but it contained PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) until 1982. This bright blue-green was developed in 1935 and has been in use since 1938. Bocour Green, Cyan Green, Intense Green, Monastral Green, Phthalocyanine Green, Rembrandt Green, Thalo Green, Winsor Green. organic synthetic, quinacridone Quinacridone Red is a high performance, transparent pigment with an average drying time and uneven dispersal. It is another name for Quinacridone Violet (PV19) and Quinacridone Red (PR192). Quinacridone pigments have relatively low tinting strength in general. For this reason, quinacridone colors are often expensive, because more pigment is required in the formulation. Quinacridone Violet has excellent lightfastness and is considered the most lightfast organic pigment in this shade range. Quinacridone Violet has no known acute hazards. Overexposure to quinacridone pigments may cause skin irritation. Quinicridone pigments contain a compound found to be a skin, eye, and respiratory irritant. Although quinacridone compounds became known in the late 19th century, methods of manufacturing so as to make them practical for use as commercial pigments did not begin until the 1950s. Quinacridone pigments were first developed as coatings for the automotive industry, but were quickly adopted by artists. Quinacridone Red (PR192), Quinacridone Red (PR19). Your cart is currently empty. Your cart currently contains N item. Material Safety Data Sheet ® Daler-Rowney is a registered trademark. Dick Blick Art Materials®, Blick®, Blick Studio®, and Artists Pick Blick® are registered trademarks of Dick Blick Holdings Inc. © Copyright 1999-2015 Dick Blick Holdings Inc. All rights reserved.
Stage 1: The initial period is one in which everything is new, exciting, and interesting for your students. It is fun for your students to explore their new environment. -from The Jesuit Handbook on Lycanthropic Culture Shock At first, our pack was all hair and snarl and floor-thumping joy. We forgot the barked cautions of our mothers and fathers, all the promises we'd made to be civilized and ladylike, couth and kempt. We tore through the austere rooms, overturning dresser drawers, pawing through the neat piles of the Stage 3 girls' starched underwear, smashing light bulbs with our bare fists. Things felt less foreign in the dark. The dim bedroom was windowless and odourless. We remedied this by spraying exuberant yellow streams all over the bunks. We jumped from bunk to bunk, spraying. We nosed each other midair, our bodies buckling in kinetic laughter. The nuns watched us from the corner of the bedroom, their tiny faces pinched with displeasure. "Ay Caramba," Sister Maria de la Guardia sighed. "Que barbaridad!" She made the Sign of the Cross. Sister Maria came to St. Lucy's from a Half-Way House in Copacabana. In Copacabana, the girls are fat and languid and eat pink slivers of guava right out of your hand. Even at Stage 1, their pelts are silky, sun-bleached to near invisibility. Our pack was hirsute and sinewy and mostly brunette. We had terrible posture. We went knuckling along the wooden floor on the calloused pads of our fists, baring row after row of tiny, wood-rotted teeth. Sister Josephine sucked in her breath. She removed a yellow wheel of floss from under her robes, looping it like a miniature lasso. "The girls at our facility are backwoods," Sister Josephine whispered to Sister Maria de la Guardia with a beatific smile. "You must be patient with them." I clamped down on her ankle, straining to close my jaws around the woolly XXL sock. Sister Josephine tasted like sweat and freckles. She smelled easy to kill. We'd arrived at St. Lucy's that morning, part of a pack fifteen-strong. We were accompanied by a mousy, nervous-smelling social worker; the baby-faced deacon; Bartholomew the blue wolfhound; and four burly woodsmen. The deacon handed out some stale cupcakes and said a quick prayer. Then he led us through the woods. We ran past the wild apiary, past the felled oaks, until we could see the white steeple of St. Lucy's rising out of the forest. We stopped short at the edge of a muddy lake. Then the deacon took our brothers. Bartholomew helped him to herd the boys up the ramp of a small ferry. We girls ran along the shore, tearing at our new jumpers in a plaid agitation. Our brothers stood on the deck, looking small and confused. Our mothers and fathers were werewolves. They lived an outsider's existence in caves at the edge of the forest, threatened by frost and pitchforks. They had been ostracized by the local farmers for eating their silled fruit pies and terrorizing the heifers. They had ostracized the local wolves by having sometimes-thumbs, and regrets, and human children. (Their condition skips a generation.) Our pack grew up in a green purgatory. We couldn't keep up with the purebred wolves, but we never stopped crawling. We spoke a slab-tongued pidgin in the cave, inflected with frequent howls. Our parents wanted something better for us; they wanted us to get braces, use towels, be fully bilingual. When the nuns showed up, our parents couldn't refuse their offer. The nuns, they said, would make us naturalized citizens of human society. We would go to St. Lucy's to study a better culture. We didn't know at the time that our parents were sending us away for good. Neither did they. That first afternoon, the nuns gave us free rein of the grounds. Everything was new, exciting and interesting. A low granite wall surrounded St. Lucy's, the blue woods humming for miles behind it. There was a stone fountain full of delectable birds. There was a statue of St. Lucy. Her marble skin was colder than our mother's nose, her pupilless eyes rolled heavenward. Doomed squirrels gambolled around her stony toes. Our diminished pack threw back our heads in a celebratory howl-an exultant and terrible noise, even without a chorus of wolf-brothers in the background. There were holes everywhere! We supplemented these holes by digging some of their own. We interred sticks, and our itchy new jumpers, and the bones of the friendly, unfortunate squirrels. Our noses ached beneath an invisible assault. Everything was smudged with a human odour: baking bread, petrol, the nun's faint woman-smell sweating out beneath a dark perfume of tallow and incense. We smelled one another, too, with the same astounded fascination. Our own scent had become foreign in this strange place. We had just sprawled out in the sun for an afternoon nap, yawning into the warm dirt, when the nuns reappeared. They conferred in the shadow of the juniper tree, whispering and pointing. Then they started towards us. The oldest sister had spent the past hour twitching in her sleep, dreaming of fatty and infirm elk. (The pack used to dream the same dreams back then, as naturally as we drank the same water and slept on the same red scree.) When our oldest sister saw the nuns approaching, she instinctively bristled. It was an improvised bristle, given her new, human limitations. She took clumps of her scraggly, nut-brown hair and held it straight out from her head. Sister Maria gave her a brave smile. "And what is your name?" she asked. The oldest sister howled something awful and inarticulable, a distillate of hurt and panic, half-forgotten hunts and eclipsed moons. Sister Maria nodded and scribbled on a yellow legal pad. She slapped on a nametag: HELLO, MY NAME IS_______! "Jeanette it is." The rest of the pack ran in a loose, uncertain circle, torn between our instinct to help her and our new fear. We sensed some subtler danger afoot, written in a language we didn't understand. Our littlest sister had the quickest reflexes. She used her hands to flatten her ears to the side of her head. She backed towards the far corner of the garden, snarling in the most menacing register that an eight-year-old wolf-girl can muster. Then she ran. It took them two hours to pin her down and tag her: HELLO MY NAME IS MIRABELLA! "Stage 1," Sister Maria sighed, taking careful aim with her tranquillizer dart. "It can be a little over-stimulating."
From 2001-2010 Nebraska collected student performance on reading, mathematics, and science standards from districts who measured student performance on locally developed assessments. Statewide writing results continue to be collected from a state generated writing test. Beginning in 2010 a centralized state testing process - Nebraska State Accountability - NeSA - was developed, and these results have been used to measure student performance on standards. The first state reading results were available in 2010; mathematics results will be available in 2011, and science results will be available in 2012. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires accountability for student performance at multiple levels through a process most commonly known as AYP or Adequately Yearly Progress. The progress of every group of students, school and district is measured against AYP State goals in Reading and Mathematics. Student demographic information for public districts is collected in the NSSRS Student, Student Snapshot Templates and School Enrollment Templates. The Student Snapshot templates are submitted related to a point in time. The October Student Snapshot is the student demographic information as of the last Friday in September, Nebraska’s official counting day. The school enrollment template provides information on student’s enrollment status, i.e. transfer, dropout, completer/graduate, etc.The October Student Snapshot data is often referred to as Membership. Nonpublic systems’ data are collected in aggregate on the Nonpublic Membership Report. NSSRS began in 2007-2008 school year, prior to that all student data was reported in aggregate. Nebraska Career Education (NCE) has a long history of helping students develop the skills they need for the workplace and for life. NCE opens up education, takes it out of the classroom, and ties it to students’ real-world interests and ambitions for the future. The use of data for evaluation and program improvement has long been essential for Career Education. The options below provide access to different presentations of data important to evaluation and ultimately improvement of education in Nebraska. Early Childhood Education Program - Any center-based part-day or full-day program operated by a public school district or Educational Service Unit with a stated purpose of promoting social, emotional, intellectual, language, physical, and aesthetic development and learning for children from birth to kindergarten entrance age. Early Childhood Birth to Age 3 Endowment Grant Program - A public-private funded endowment to provide grants to public school districts to provide programs and services for infants and toddlers who are at risk for school failure. Grants are awarded by the Endowment Board of Trustees through the Nebraska Department of Education. Special Education data are collected on an annual basis both on October 1, and June 30. The data collected, describes our Special Education Population of students. October 1 data collection is Nebraska's official Special Education Child Count, and the data are used in the majority of our federal reporting. June 30 data collection is a cumulative count of Special Education students, and are used specifically for exit counts used in graduation and dropout rates, as well as other reasons for exiting special education, used in federal reporting. In addition, this collection represents the total number of students served through the school year. This data includes certificated staff, staff with DHHS licensure, Business Managers and Technology Coordinators reported in the Nebraska Student and Staff Record System. Non-certificated staff data are collected by position and full-time equivalency (FTE) in the Consolidated Data Collection (CDC). This data includes demographic information on public districts, nonpublic systems, educational service units, special purpose schools and interim program schools. Data for the 2013-2014 school year is now available in the Guided Inquiry and Advanced Inquiry sections.
- Inclusief 9% btw: €121,94 - Exclusief btw: €111,87 - Gratis verzending in Nederland vanaf €35,- - Op werkdagen voor 17:00 uur besteld? Zelfde dag verzonden! - Niet goed? Geld terug - We denken graag met u mee! \|Auteur\|\|Michael E. Archer\| \|Uitgever\|\|Siri Scientific Press\| \|Formaat\|\|240 x 165 mm\| \|Afbeeldingen\|\|Kleurenfoto's en z/w/ illustraties\| \|Jaar van uitgave\|\|2012\| This book is an up-to-date review of the biology and taxonomy of the vespine wasps of the world; the first of its kind. An introductory chapter gives an account of the biology of the subfamilies of the Vespidae. The varied life cycles are then considered, including social parasitism (usurpation), swarming, polygynous and perennial species, illustrated with flow diagrams. An ethogram of wasp behaviour, including chemical communication, is developed followed by a discussion of controversial behaviours (trophallaxis, brood destruction and larval neglect, queen and worker influence on the organization of behaviour) with relevant theories. A new research program is outlined for the study of such organization. A numerical description of the development of a colony, including adult production, is given including models that have been developed from such data. Life history traits are organized to show different strategies pursued by Vespula and Dolichovespula species. The genetic element is included to try to further understand the development of a colony. Foraging activity is described in great detail, including a numerical description of day-by-day variation of the collection of resources of a colony with the recognition of the foraging characteristics of failing colonies. A history of population ecology is outlined in terms of causes of mortality, reproductive rates, life tables and the population dynamics of weather and regulation theories, particularly showing the importance of the endogenous mechanism important in terms of the variation in colony growth and annual variation in colony numbers. Our limited knowledge of community ecology is reviewed. A fully illustrated and up-to-date key to the world species, with a history of the production of dichotomous keys for vespines is provided, with a final chapter on the history of the colour variations (subspecies?), particularly of Vespa, illustrated with 131 colour photographs. This book should be useful to amateurs and professionals interested in social insects besides those with a general interest in behaviour, population ecology and simulation modelling. Er zijn nog geen reviews geschreven over dit product.. Maak uw bestelling compleet
Welcome to our PSHRE curriculum page, please have a look at our subject rationale. After consultation with our parents, staff and governors, please find below our PSHRE policy. From September 2020 a new curriculum for PSHE and RSE became statutory. See document below for a parent guide to this. As well as using some of existing PSHRE and Citizenship Programmes to tie in with class Learning Journey Work, to comply with as a school we are also following a whole new scheme in KS1 and KS2. Our school is using the Talking Points schemes of work to deliver the government guidance on Health and Relationships education. It uses picture books as a starting point to get children talking about their own health and mental wellbeing as well as addressing other issues such as managing money and understanding democracy. Its aim is to develop children’s understanding of themselves, their emotions and how to deal with others. It also teaches children how to stay safe in many situations and who to speak to if they are ever worried or concerned. See below for information for each year group. Stories are subject to change if correct books cannot be sourced. In Early Years PSHRE will continue to be taught in the same way; through provision and focus times. The content is formed from two main areas of Development Matters: Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Health and Self-Care. Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) After extensive research, we have invested in the Christopher Winter Project resources to support our delivery of the RSE curriculum. Something that came from the parent consultation that was carried out earlier in the academic year was that parent's wanted to see the schemes of work that we follow and exactly what their children will be learning about. Attached below are the overviews for Years 1 through to 6. DARE in Year 6 (Life Skills Education) Priestsic Primary has a responsibility to ensure our children leave fully equipped for transition to secondary school and all that entails and to ensure that they will be able to make safe and healthy choices. The Life Skills programme helps Priestsic to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum, in particular elements included in PSHE from 2020. Children are extremely vulnerable to peer pressure, have little understanding of the facts about drugs and alcohol, or about the law and the consequences of carrying a knife or of treating others differently; they often do not communicate effectively, or manage risky situations successfully. Knife crime has increased in recent years and incidents of hate crime are on the rise; the impact of drug and alcohol use is evident on the individual, family, community and society and can include low academic achievement, poor physical and mental health, crime and antisocial behaviour and domestic abuse. Early intervention using a programme which is proven to work can lessen the risks and can only be a benefit to all. The DARE programme utilises the unique SKILL DECISION MAKING MODEL which teaches young people to make safe and healthy choices, working through problems and issues one step at a time. Teaching young people to consider a range of options, balance risk and consequences, be responsible, manage stress and resist pressure are all key to ensuring they develop into positive and proactive young adults who can adapt to life’s challenges and minimise the risky behaviour inherent in daily life. We encourage parents to be involved in the DARE programme by attending a parent/carer information briefing at the beginning of the course, by encouraging and working with children on their course homework and by providing feedback on the course and attending the graduation. Life Skills Education is committed to safeguarding children and young people and operate a safer recruitment policy. All of the staff have regular DBS checks and receive initial and ongoing safeguarding training. DAaRT Officers work with individual schools to ensure that all students are safeguarded and Life Skills Education will take any action required in order to fulfil this responsibility. DARE also adhere to the principles of effective drug education as set out by the PSHE association, for example: Take a positive approach which does not attempt to induce shock or guilt but focuses on what children and young people can do to keep themselves and others healthy and safe and to lead happy and fulfilling lives – the Life Skills Primary Programme uses facts which are up to date and relevant, and places strong emphasis on the concept of personal responsibility and making safe and healthy choices. Encourage young people to reflect on their learning and the progress they have made, and to transfer what they have learned to say and to do from one school subject to another, and from school to their lives in the wider community – Life Skills see their programme very much as a part of the national curriculum, not as a ‘bolt on’. As we came to the end of our DARE learning, Year 6 children were set the task of writing a poem to showcase what they had learnt during the 11 week programme. They could write any style of poem they liked and it could focus on one aspect of DARE or on several areas of their learning. We have been really impressed with the independent work they have produced. Here are a few for you to look at. PSHRE in Action at Priestsic... The photos below highlight the progression of our PSHRE curriculum as children move through the school; continually revisiting and recall on previously taught themes and learning and building on them in an age appropriate way. Please find the link for the parent form What our children say... What our children think about what they are learning is incredibly important to us; they are at the heart of our curriculum. Pupil voice activities are carried out numerous times throughout the course of the year to ascertain what is working well and how things can be improved. The children's opinions, along with staff's inform the PSHRE subject action plan.
Title: The impact of different teaching methods on learning motivation - a sociological case study on Hungarian vocational education Authors: Ágnes Győri; Ágnes Czakó Addresses: Centre for Social Sciences, Institute for Sociology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1097 Budapest, Tóth Kálmán u. 4., Hungary ' Institute of Sociology and Social Policy, Corvinus University of Budapest, 1093 Budapest, Közraktár u. 4-6., Hungary Abstract: This research paper is based on examinations on the motivational impact of more advanced assessment methods (student-centred collaborative, active pedagogical methods) and traditional pedagogical tools (passive frontal teaching methods) on learning, based on data taken from a survey conducted among Hungarian students of vocational education. The study analyses the question: How are the level of parental education and the family circumstances of students related to the acceptance of modern, innovative and motivating pedagogical/educational tools? Do traditional frontal teaching methods for passive learning or modern and innovative teaching methods that encourage active learning to motivate students? Results show that the degree to which students' motivation is enhanced is influenced by school and family circumstances. Moreover, disadvantaged students are primarily motivated to learn through the use of new, student-centred pedagogical tools, which increase motivation through providing an experience of group work, shared thinking and debate, problem understanding, and co-creation. Keywords: learning motivation; student-centred pedagogical methods; structured pedagogical methods; vocational education. International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2020 Vol.27 No.1, pp.1 - 18 Received: 05 Mar 2018 Accepted: 22 Oct 2018 Published online: 02 Dec 2019 *