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About Fairfax County Government
“To protect and enrich the quality of life for the people,
neighborhoods, and diverse communities of Fairfax County.”
-- Core Purpose of Fairfax County Government
At a Glance
- Fairfax County Government Organizational Chart
- More than 1 million residents
- 580,000+ jobs
- 143,000 technology jobs are located in Fairfax County, the largest concentration in the U.S.
- Budget larger than four states
- 395 square miles (land)
- Median household income: $105,241
- Percent of people below the poverty level: 4.9 percent
Persons who speak a language other than English at home: 32.9
- More facts and stats
Fairfax County operates under the urban county executive form of government, an optional form of Virginia county government, and like other Virginia local governments, Fairfax County has limited powers.
More specifically, Virginia courts have concluded that local governments in Virginia have only:
Those powers that are specifically conferred on them by the Virginia
Those powers that are necessarily or fairly implied from a specific
grant of authority
- Those powers that are essential to the purposes of government -- not simply convenient but indispensable
This doctrine of limited authority for local governments is commonly called the Dillon Rule. Learn more about the Dillon Rule and its impact on local government.
Board of Supervisors
The powers of government are vested in an elected Board of Supervisors consisting of nine members elected by district, plus a Chairman elected at large. The law requires that districts be of approximately equal population and that each Supervisor (other than the Chairman) be a resident and qualified voter of his or her district, and be elected only by voters living in that district. All voters in the county may vote for the Chairman. The Board elects the Vice Chairman annually from among its members at its first meeting in January.
Board members are elected for four-year terms. There is no legal limit to the number of terms a member can serve. The next scheduled Board election will take place in November 2011, with Board members taking office in January 2012.
The Board appoints the county executive, who is the administrative head of the county government and is responsible for the administration of all of the affairs of the county which the Board has authority to control. | <urn:uuid:9a20a744-1abb-4562-a37f-5cb34a4707d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/government/about/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95825 |
Lessons From Chile
Topics: Engineering, Geology, Radio
- Copy and Paste to Embed
The 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile last month may offer some clues for how California would withstand such a massive quake. Andrea Kissack spoke with one Bay Area engineer who just returned from Chile where he was looking at how U.S. building codes held up in the quake. | <urn:uuid:a096cca4-52aa-4ef8-ae57-0818a3c29be7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://science.kqed.org/quest/audio/lessons-from-chile/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958068 |
WEATHER UNDERGROUND LAUNCHES NEW CLIMATE CHANGE CENTER IN HONOR OF EARTH DAY
New Resource Center Provides Information On The Effects Of Our Warming Climate And What We Can Do To Change It
San Francisco, April 19, 2012 - Weather Underground, the world’s first online weather service, announced today that it has added a new Climate Change Center to its popular site, wunderground.com. The primary goal of the new center is to present users with hard facts about how climate is changing in their local neighborhoods and empower people to form their own opinions on the climate change debate. The center is now live at wunderground.com/climate.
To understand how climate change is affecting local neighborhoods, users can access the Local Climate Change tool to review data from local weather stations reporting conditions from as far back as the early 1700s. In addition, this feature has the ability to see how climate could change in the future, as far forward as year 2100.
“Earth's climate has changed dramatically in recent years, and there is strong agreement among climate scientists that the current climate changes are mostly due to human activities. It is important for people to understand the changes happening to our atmosphere and what we can do about them,” said Dr. Jeff Masters, co-Founder and Director of Meteorology at Weather Underground. “The Climate Change Center provides some unique resources to do just that.”
The ‘Skeptical Science’ section debunks common myths about climate change. The new center also features blogs and videos for users looking to learn even more about the science behind climate change and understand how to reduce personal impact. With educational resources covering topics such as the greenhouse effect, Arctic sea ice decline, and extreme weather, the Climate Change Center will appeal to scientists, students, and anyone interested in the science behind climate change.
“Our new Climate Change Center is a one-stop shop for information about our warming climate,” according to Weather Underground Climatologist Angela Fritz. “We want people to understand that climate change is not intangible, especially when looking at how your own neighborhood is being affected. Our ultimate goal is for people to use our content and resources to understand that climate change is happening and we can do something about it.”
About Weather Underground
The world's first online weather service, Weather Underground is committed to delivering the most comprehensive, reliable weather information possible. Home to more than 21 million users and weather provider to partners such as Google, The Associated Press and CBS, the company's state-of-the-art technology monitors conditions and forecasts for locations across the world. With more than 19,000 users contributing local observations from personal weather stations, Weather Underground is able to provide up-to-the-minute weather conditions for the most finely targeted areas. In addition to serving free online weather information to millions of unique users every month, Weather Underground delivers custom-designed weather page solutions to an array of businesses and media clients - both online and in print.
For more information please contact our press department.
Watch How 2011 Became a 'Mind-Boggling' Year of Extreme Weather on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour. | <urn:uuid:0c1bc1b1-82e8-445a-88b7-20305173bc12> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://turkish.wunderground.com/about/pr/news.asp?date=20120419 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929614 |
Kawasaki DiseaseWhat is Kawasaki disease?
Kawasaki disease is the most common form of vasculitis that primarily affects children. The disease produces irritation and inflammation of many tissues of the body, including the hands, feet, whites of the eyes, mouth, lips, and throat. High fever and swelling of the lymph nodes in the neck also are characteristic of this illness. The inflammation is uncomfortable, but resolves with time. However, the main threat from Kawasaki disease comes from its effect on the heart and blood vessels. Heart-related complications can be temporary or may affect the child long-term. The heart, particularly the coronary arteries, is affected in as many as 20 percent of children with Kawasaki disease.
Another name for Kawasaki disease is mucocutaneous lymph node syndrome.
How often does it occur?
|Kawasaki disease is fairly common in the US. According to the American Heart Association, the illness is a major cause of heart disease in children. About 1,800 new cases are diagnosed in the US each year, and the incidence is on the rise. Kawasaki disease, together with acute rheumatic fever, is the leading cause of acquired heart disease in children in the US and Japan.|
Who is affected by Kawasaki disease?
|Kawasaki disease occurs more often in Japan than in any other country. In the US, children of Asian or Asian American heritage are affected more often than other races, although Kawasaki disease can occur in any racial or ethnic group. |
|The vast majority of children who develop Kawasaki disease are under age 5. The average age child seen with the illness is 2 years old. It occurs in boys twice as often as in girls.|
What causes Kawasaki disease?
|It is not clear what causes Kawasaki disease. Scientists believe a virus may be responsible, but current research is still underway. Kawasaki disease does not appear to be contagious, nor does it appear to be hereditary. It was once thought that Kawasaki disease was linked to recent rug or carpet cleaning; however, no studies have shown this to be a cause of the disease. |
|It is rare for more than one child in a family to develop the disease. As a result, less than 2 percent of persons with Kawasaki disease develop the disease more than once.|
Why is Kawasaki disease a concern?
|Kawasaki disease can be a very uncomfortable illness, since it causes fever, as well as irritation and inflammation in many tissues of the body. However, these symptoms usually run their course and resolve within a few weeks. The primary concern with Kawasaki disease is heart and blood vessel involvement. |
|The coronary arteries are the vessels that provide the heart muscle with an oxygen-rich blood supply. Kawasaki disease can weaken the wall of one or more of the coronary arteries, causing it to bulge or balloon out. This weakened, ballooned area is called an aneurysm. |
|Blood clots can form in the ballooned area and possibly block the blood flow through the coronary artery. When this happens, the heart muscle will no longer receive an adequate supply of oxygen-rich (red) blood, and the heart muscle can be damaged. |
|The illness may also cause the heart muscle (myocardium) to be irritated and inflamed, as well as the membrane covering the heart (pericardium). Irregular heart rhythms and heart valve problems may also occur with Kawasaki disease. |
|In most cases, the effects on the heart caused by Kawasaki disease are temporary, and resolve within five or six weeks. However, coronary artery problems may sometimes persist for longer periods of time.|
What are the symptoms of Kawasaki disease?
|The following are the most common symptoms of Kawasaki disease. However, each child may experience symptoms differently. Symptoms may include:|
|The symptoms of Kawasaki disease may resemble other conditions or medical problems. Always consult your child's physician for a diagnosis.|
How is Kawasaki disease diagnosed?
|Your child's physician will obtain a medical history, and perform a physical examination. Several of the above mentioned symptoms need to be present for your child's physician to consider Kawasaki's disease as the cause for the illness. |
|Diagnostic tests may also include:|
Treatment for Kawasaki disease:
|Specific treatment for Kawasaki disease will be determined by your child's physician based on:|
|Prior to the diagnosis of Kawasaki disease by your child's physician, the goal of treatment is to provide comfort for your child. Fever reduction and increasing fluids are very helpful. Acetaminophen or ibuprofen is often used for fever. |
|Once the diagnosis of Kawasaki disease is made, your child's physician may prescribe aspirin to help decrease the inflammation that the illness produces, as well as to prevent clots from forming. However, always check with your child's physician before giving your child aspirin. Intravenous (IV) medication called gamma globulin decreases the risk of the heart being affected. Intravenous gamma globulin is most often given in the hospital.|
Can Kawasaki disease be prevented?
|Currently, there is no known way to prevent Kawasaki disease.|
Long-term outlook after having Kawasaki disease:
|About 80 percent of all children have a full recovery after Kawasaki disease resolves. If an aneurysm is detected, echocardiograms will be repeated periodically, sometimes for several years after the illness. Some heart problems may not be evident right away, so it is important to keep follow-up appointments with your child's physician, even if your child is feeling well. |
|Click here to view related Web sites |
Visit the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin Rheumatology Clinic page.
Visit the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin Cardiology Clinic page.
Return to the Juvenile Arthritis and Other Rheumatic Diseases Home Page
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Volt (or Volts): Unit of measure for electromotive force (EMF), the electrical potential between two points. An electrical potential of 1 volt will push 1 ampere of current through a 1-ohm resistive load.
Using a common plumbing analogy, voltage is similar to water pressure and current is analogous to flow (e.g. liters per minute).
In equations, the symbol E is often used (as in: E = IR). V is the symbol for the unit of measure, Volt.
- Electromotive Force
Find a term alphabetically:
Comment on This Term (Corrections, Suggestions, etc.)
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Courtesy of Earl Dotter
Coal miners rally for black lung law reform on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in 1975. (See more from Earl Dotter's "Quiet Sickness" series here.)
Coal miners rally for black lung law reform on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in 1975. (See more from Earl Dotter's "Quiet Sickness" series here.) Courtesy of Earl Dotter
Part two of a two-part series.
Thousands of coal miners continued to suffer and die from black lung during the 40 years that tough new limits on exposure to coal dust were supposed to provide protection.
Control of the mine dust was plagued by weak enforcement by regulators and loopholes exploited by mining companies, according to a joint investigation by NPR and the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). The protections were "set up for failure," says Dennis O'Dell, the safety and health administrator at the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).
As NPR and CPI reported Monday, a 1969 law slashed the legal limit for exposure to coal dust to as little as 1/4 of the amount many coal miners were breathing at the time. Although diagnoses soon plunged 90 percent, the decline didn't last.
The Appalachia region between eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and southwestern Virgina has seen a dramatic return of black lung.
In the mid-1990s, medical experts began noticing an increase in diagnoses, along with disease in younger miners and rapid progression to severe stages of sickness.
The trend is most acute in a triangular region of Appalachia that includes eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia.
"Since [federal regulators] started protecting us ... 70,000 of us have died," says Mark McCowan, a 47-year-old former coal miner from Pounding Mill, Va., who worked 21 years underground.
McCowan suffers from progressive massive fibrosis, the worst stage of the disease. "I don't feel very protected," he says.
Federal data confirms the death toll cited by McCowan. In the same 40-year span, federal and industry compensation for black lung victims and their families topped $45 billion.
'An Addiction To Cheat'
From the very beginning, miners reported "irregularities" in controlling coal mine dust, says Donald Rasmussen, 84, a pulmonologist in Beckley, W.Va. Rasmussen says he's tested 40,000 coal miners for black lung in the last 50 years.
"So many miners will say, 'If you think the dust is controlled you're crazy,' " he says.
Measuring coal mine dust is key to preventing overexposure. Excess dust can trigger citations, fines and even slowdowns in coal production. Mining companies enforce their own compliance by taking and reporting mine dust samples. Federal mine inspectors also test for excessive dust.
David Deal for NPR
Donald Rasmussen, 84, a pulmonologist in Beckley, W.Va., says he has tested 40,000 coal miners in the last 50 years.
Donald Rasmussen, 84, a pulmonologist in Beckley, W.Va., says he has tested 40,000 coal miners in the last 50 years. David Deal for NPR
But NPR and CPI have found widespread and persistent gaming of the system designed to measure and control exposure.
Richard Allen, a federal mine inspector underground when the 1969 law first took effect, says he remembers a strange question from a Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) investigator about a carpet's color in a coal mine manager's office.
"It was blue and [MSHA was finding] little blue fibers in each [mine dust] sample," Allen says. "[Investigators] cross-referenced the fibers in these samples to that carpet and found that he was sampling in his office" and not deep inside the mine.
The mine manager was later convicted of defrauding the mine safety agency and served time in prison.
Federal records obtained by CPI and NPR describe 103 cases resulting in criminal convictions for fraudulent dust sampling from 1980 through 2002. Fines totaled $2.2 million, and some mining company officials went to jail.
In 1991, the Labor Department levied civil fines of more than $6.5 million against about 500 coal mines for tampering with mine dust samples.
There was "an addiction to cheat," said Lynn Martin, who was secretary of labor at the time.
Mine Operators' Miscalculations
Coal companies continued to routinely deceive federal regulators with sampling that minimized dust exposure, according to coal miners, former mine inspectors, federal records and testimony in lawsuits.
David Neil, who worked underground in West Virginia through most of the 1980s, said he was told by a company foreman to hang a measuring device called a dust pump out in mine shafts with clean air and away from coal dust.
David Deal for NPR
Coal miners are tested for black lung. Recently, the deadly disease has been discovered in younger miners and at more advanced stages.
Coal miners are tested for black lung. Recently, the deadly disease has been discovered in younger miners and at more advanced stages. David Deal for NPR
"Maybe if we didn't do it this way, they'd come in and shut down the mines," Neil remembers thinking. "Then we'd be out of work."
Neil now suffers from advanced black lung, as does Randall Wriston, whose last job underground was in a West Virginia coal mine four years ago.
"If I would have [worn] a dust pump 50 percent of the time, they would have shut down," Wriston says, because the mine would be out of compliance for having too much dust. "If they would get a bad sample they'd turn them upside down and shake them, and that would give a false reading. So, they'd come back and do it some other time."
Miners, former miners and current and former federal regulators told NPR and CPI about dust pumps tucked into lunch boxes or under clothing or out in mine shafts with fresh air — anywhere away from coal dust.
It's unclear what happened with vigorous criminal prosecution after 2002. MSHA tells CPI and NPR that there were no "closed cases" of dust sampling fraud in the last decade, which indicates no criminal convictions. The agency refuses to disclose how many violations, if any, were sent to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, citing a policy forbidding disclosure of the "existence or potential existence of open criminal cases."
In the last three years, a new MSHA enforcement effort called "dust busters" targeted mines with coal dust problems. In 96 different inspections, the agency found 531 mine dust violations.
Many of the mines with violations are owned by some of the nation's largest mining companies. In some cases, sampling was considered so egregiously deficient that MSHA withdrew dust-testing certification for 14 mining company managers and contractors. Eleven others were formally warned about deficient sampling.
Deficiencies included inadequate water pressure and insufficient airflow, which help disperse mine dust; failure to maintain dust-collecting equipment; failure to follow dust-sampling procedures; and failure to examine sampling devices for dust.
"At times, the ventilation controls are not in place. The water sprays are not in place," says Joe Main, assistant secretary of labor for mine safety and health. "We find that the sampling process that is used is not as required by the standards."
That's what investigators discovered after the deadly 2010 explosion at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County, W.Va. Several workers at the mine told investigators they were ordered to manipulate dust sampling, according to a story in The Charleston Gazette that supplements the NPR/CPI investigation.
Federal Sampling Yields Higher Exposures
Federal inspectors also collect mine dust samples. In 24 of the last 30 years, dust samples taken by federal mine inspectors found higher concentrations of coal mine dust than samples provided by mining companies, according to federal data.
In one year, inspectors reported 40 percent more exposure than did the industry.
Despite those differences and the record of fraudulent industry samples, mining companies continue to check their own compliance with the law.
"Government is in a situation where they have to utilize the data that is presented to them," Main says. "And, at times, yes, we have found that the sampling program was not implemented as required."
More recently, industry and government samples have been more consistent, but even the main industry group admits that inaccurate sampling is a serious problem.
"It might be that MSHA should take over the entire program and should be given resources to do that," says Bob Glenn, a former NIOSH official now working as a black lung consultant for the National Mining Association (NMA). "They certainly would be more impartial, you would think, than having the operator take all the samples."
That's what mine safety advocates have argued for years, but Main says the agency isn't equipped for the job.
"It's [an] enormous task for the government to take on," he says. "I think having the government assume that role would be a big one."
O'Dell of the mine workers union believes MSHA has no choice.
"The operators can't be trusted to do compliance sampling," he says. "History has proven that."
Loopholes Keep Mine Companies Within The Law
History also shows that mining companies don't need to break the law to keep dust measurements artificially low. There are loopholes:
* The law permits sampling at only 50 percent of average production, when miners have as little as half the exposure.
* Sampling is required only eight hours a day even though miners work at least 10 hours a day on average. That amounts to about 600 hours of exposure a year that is not measured in the sampling.
* If federal mine inspectors' findings show too much coal dust, mining companies get a do-over. They take five of their own samples and average them. The sample with the greatest exposure is often discounted. If the average then meets the exposure standard, the violation disappears.
The do-overs may also explain something else CPI and NPR found in federal mine safety records. Between 2000 and 2011, MSHA issued a relatively small number of coal mine dust violations despite thousands of samples with excessive dust. MSHA data show that 53,000 valid samples contained more dust than standards permit but the agency issued less than 2,400 violations.
"The current rules have been in effect for decades, do not adequately protect miners from disease and are in need of reform," says mine safety chief Joe Main. "That is why MSHA has proposed several changes to overhaul the current standards and reduce miners' exposure to unhealthy dust."
David Deal for NPR
Mark McCowan, 47, was diagnosed with the worst stage of black lung only five years after an X-ray showed he had no sign of the disease.
Mark McCowan, 47, was diagnosed with the worst stage of black lung only five years after an X-ray showed he had no sign of the disease. David Deal for NPR
MSHA proposes some significant reforms. Coal mine dust limits would be cut in half. Sampling would more accurately reflect actual exposure. And mining companies would no longer be able to demonstrate compliance by averaging five dust samples. But, self-policing would continue with mining companies still collecting their own samples.
"We encourage our members to fulfill their obligations under the law," says Bruce Watzman, who directs regulatory affairs for NMA, the coal industry trade group.
But he recognizes the system lacks credibility.
"We need to get to a point where we remove this cloud of controversy and instill in the minds of everyone that the samples are accurate," Watzman adds. "The best way to do that is to have MSHA take responsibility for that."
In Pounding Mill, Va., McCowan considers all of this as his disease worsens. He says he wants mining companies and MSHA to take more responsibility.
McCowan suggests production studies that would determine how much coal mines could produce at a rate that would not create excessive dust. He'd also have federal mine inspectors watching every minute when mine companies take dust samples.
"Coal mining is as dirty as the coal operator wants to make it," he says, drawing a deep breath. "I don't think it's turning out too good for the miner."
NPR's Sandra Bartlett and Chris Hamby of the Center for Public Integrity contributed reporting for this story. Research by NPR's Barbara Van Woerkom; editing by NPR's Andrea de Leon and Alicia Cypress.
SURVEY: We want to hear what you think about the Black Lung story. Click here to take a short survey. | <urn:uuid:94ee4848-8cca-4cdd-a7a3-177418cbc549> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.npr.org/2012/07/10/155981916/black-lung-rule-loopholes-leave-miners-vulnerable | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971344 |
Helvetica is one of the most famous and popular typefaces in the world. It lends an air of lucid efficiency to any typographic message with its clean, no-nonsense shapes. The original typeface was called Haas Grotesk, and was designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger for the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) in Switzerland. In 1960 the name was changed to Helvetica (an adaptation of "Helvetia", the Latin name for Switzerland). Over the years, the Helvetica family was expanded to include many different weights, but these were not as well coordinated with each other as they might have been. In 1983, D. Stempel AG and Linotype re-designed and digitized Neue Helvetica and updated it into a cohesive font family. Today, the original Helvetica
family consists of 34 different font weights, and the Neue Helvetica
family consists of 51 font weights. The Helvetica family now forms an integral part of many digital printers and operating systems and has become a stylistic anchor in our visual culture. It is the quintessential sans serif font, timeless and neutral, and can be used for all types of communication. | <urn:uuid:28d519ff-bcb2-445b-b642-ad87694c30f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.linotype.com/2441/helvetica.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968163 |
The key to most of Shakespeare's best works is how the character of the main person drives the action of the play
The works of William Shakespeare seem to provide endless matter for comment. A quick search in a university library will uncover mountains of discussion on the unsurpassed use of the English language, on the fabulous imagery, on the amazing range from the lightest comedy to the deepest tragedy, on the timelessness of the plays, and much much more.
Rather than add yet another detailed study to the mountain of essays, I would like to suggest a thesis for you to investigate. I invite you to share your thoughts with me and, at your discretion, with everyone through these pages. The thesis is this:
The key to most of Shakespeare's best works is how the character of the main person drives the action of the play.
While Shakespeare could turn an unlikely plot twist that would make even a modern television scriptwriter blush, most of the main characters stay true to their personalities. In most of the serious plays the main character (sometimes called the protagonist) needs to choose between two paths (sometimes called a dilemma) that will irreversibly seal the fate of the character. The interesting thing is not that we readers want to know what the character chooses, but that we know the character can only select one of the choices and remain true to his or her self. We may want the character to choose differently, but we know that the choice is already stamped within the personality of the character.
How does Shakespeare do this? If we examine the script we will often find that our whole understanding of the character is established in one or two brief scenes using a handful of lines and actions. Amazing!
So here is the assignment: Pick three plays by Shakespeare and look at the character development of the main character. Does the critical action evolve out of the character? Or is character revealed through the action? How does Shakespeare accomplish this in the play?
Here is an extra challenge: Pick three modern television dramas and look at the character development of the main characters. Does the critical action evolve out of the character? Does the credibility of the story line lose credibility when action is driven by convenience or chance rather than character? One example, now perhaps more dated than Shakespeare, is Dallas. At its best the action always seemed to evolve out of the characters involved. However, some of the writers drifted towards improbable plot twists and unlikely choices by the characters, thus undermining the credibility of the series. Again, what do you think?
You can investigate these ideas for yourself. If you like, you can send your observations to me at firstname.lastname@example.org . Please let me know if you would like me to share your observations with others through these pages.
Shared Visions Unlimited
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November 8, 2011
By George Webster
(CNN) -- An estimated 2.5 million pilgrims have descended on the city of Mecca for the Islamic Hajj, said to be the largest annual gathering of people in the world.
Every fit and able Muslim is obliged by their faith to make the journey at least once in their lifetime. But with the rising threat of climate change, there are now calls for both pilgrims and authorities in Mecca to reduce the environmental damage wrought by this yearly influx of travelers.
"Everyone arrives at the same time, at exactly the same place, and every year there are more and more people," said Dr Husna Ahmed, principal author of "The Green Guide for Hajj," a booklet promoting ecologically-sustainable practices among Hajj pilgrims, released earlier this week.
Ahmed, who is CEO of the UK-based Faith Regen Foundation, says that as many as 100 million plastic water bottles were dumped by pilgrims during Hajj last year, according to a study conducted by colleagues at the foundation. Ahmed adds that Mecca's authorities have yet to make adequate provisions for recycling.
"All the waste from food, all the fumes from coaches traveling around the city, all the energy used for powering local hotels, it has a significant environmental impact," said Ahmed. "And that's before you think about the carbon footprint of all those flying in from halfway around the globe."
According to Ahmed, the problem is both practical and cultural. While she is eager for local authorities in Mecca to introduce energy-saving measures, like solar-powered mosques and low-carbon transport initiatives, she says that pilgrims must also become more conscious of their surroundings.
"Unfortunately, the issues of climate change and conservation are not a high priority for many Muslims, particularly those struggling with poverty in the developing world -- for whom simply getting through the day is the main consideration," said Ahmed, who hopes that her guide will help emphasize the fundamental link between the theology of Islam and the preservation of nature.
It's a message that the newly-formed Green Pilgrimage Network (GPN) is keen to highlight.
"Most religions are implicitly conservationist ... after all, if you think of God as the creator, then it surely befalls you to take care of his creation," said Martin Palmer, secretary-general of the network. It is a multi-faith organization that aims to create a worldwide alliance of holy cities committed to sustainable practices, such as banning cars on pilgrimage routes, improving waste management and investing in renewable energy.
According to the network, over 100 million people a year embark on a religious pilgrimage, making it one of the single greatest reasons for travel worldwide.
For Palmer, the environmental challenges presented by pilgrimages at holy sites like Mecca stem primarily from the trappings of modern living.
"Pilgrimages have become corrupted by consumerism," he said. "For instance, instead of buying millions of plastic bottles, 100 years ago every pilgrim would have traveled with a flask."
Launched last week in the sacred Catholic city of Assisi in Italy, the network comprises 12 founding member cities, including Amritsar in India, where they have pledged to provide clean drinking water for Sikh pilgrims traveling to the Golden Temple there; and in St. Albans in the UK, the Church of England says it will install solar panels on the local cathedral.
"This of course is just the beginning," said Palmer, who aims to have at least 300 cities signed up to the network within the next couple of years.
To join the network, he says, a city's municipal authority must undertake to work in partnership with the faith community to work towards "shared environmental goals."
Palmer hopes that being a member of the network will be seen as a badge of honor -- "like becoming a UNESCO world heritage site" -- with the threat that those who fail to live up to their commitments will lose membership.
While Mecca is not yet a member, Palmer says "The Green Guide for Hajj," is the first step in bringing the city on board.
"I understand that the religious authorities are going through the guide with a fine-tooth comb to make sure it all complies with Islamic law before giving their official endorsement," he said.
He notes that the local government in Mecca has already displayed a commitment to environmental reform, with the construction of a new metro system capable of transporting 2.5 million pilgrims between shrines currently under way, as well as ongoing discussions to provide water flasks. CNN was unable to make contact with leaders of Mecca during the Hajj holidary period to get comment.
According to Omar Faruk, founding director of UK-based pressure group EcoMuslim, conservation is not just compatible with the teachings of Islam, it is integral.
"The Quran says: 'The earth is green and beautiful, and Allah has appointed you stewards over it,'" said Faruk. "Put simply, being green is a central part of being a good Muslim."
This is music to the ears of Olav Kjorven, director of policy at the U.N. Development Program, which last year helped produce the "Muslim Seven Year Action Plan on Climate Change" and is an official supporter of the Green Pilgrimage Network.
"Religions own up to 8% of the world's habitable land and 5% of commercial forests; run or contribute to more than half of the world's schools; account for up to 7% of all global investments and offer moral and spiritual guidance to approximately 85% of all people," said Kjorven.
"Their active engagement on climate change is crucial if we are to realize a greener future for our planet." | <urn:uuid:c6ae673f-78fe-4fc2-bb7a-1d6e298cad52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fore.research.yale.edu/news/item/holy-cities-face-threat-from-polluting-pilgrims/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964679 |
Identifying Source of Deadly E. Coli Remains a Challenge
Europe outbreak could end before mystery is solved
With the number of new E. coli cases appearing to slow down in Europe, the outbreak could soon end without health experts identifying the cause.
Last updated on: June 07, 2011 8:00 PM
Frustration is building in Europe as the source of Germany's E. coli outbreak remains unsolved. U.S. health experts say tracking down a deadly germ can be a complicated task.
When they notice an unusual number of people coming down with food poisoning, the first thing public health officials do is try to find out what they all ate recently. E. coli usually takes three or four days to make a person sick, but it may take a week or more. And that presents the first problem.
"Can you tell me what you ate for dinner on May 30?" asks David Weber, professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He says people often do not remember everything they ate over the past week. And even if they do, they may not know all the ingredients, or where they came from. For example, he says, a tomato condiment called salsa was one of the suspects in a 2008 Salmonella outbreak in the United States.
"It's not just the salsa, but in the salsa are tomatoes, onions, peppers, spices. And then, which manufacturer made the salsa? Where did they get the tomatoes from? Who was the wholesaler? How many different growers provided tomatoes during that week to that wholesaler?"
Tracing the germ all the way back to the grower may help investigators figure out what went wrong and how to keep it from happening again. But whatever crop is causing the outbreak was picked some time ago. And by the time investigators get to the farm,
"That crop may be gone. It may even be plowed under," says Ben Chapman, a food safety expert at North Carolina State University. He notes that investigators have been focusing on fresh produce, but at this point, weeks after the outbreak started, they may not even be able to trace the offending item as far as the patient's refrigerator.
"It's pretty unlikely that you have a cucumber or a tomato or lettuce sticking around in your fridge six or seven weeks after being exposed," says Chapman.
Given all the complications, it may be surprising that investigators ever figure out the cause of an outbreak. But the science of epidemiology has gotten very good in recent years, and most of the time they do.
The U.S. state of Oregon's public health department is recognized as one of the nation's best. But sometimes officials there are stumped.
"There have been a couple where there's been, really, at the end of the day, no idea what the product was. It's clearly gone. The outbreak ends. It's very frustrating. But, whatever it was, it disappeared," says William Keene, senior epidemiologist for the Oregon public health department.
Meanwhile, European officials say the number of new E. coli cases appears to be slowing down. That may mean the outbreak will soon come to an end, with or without identifying the cause. | <urn:uuid:58a481ff-f658-4b73-9fcc-1e92212b5ace> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.voanews.com/content/identifying-source-of-deadly-e-coli-remains-a-challenge-123446204/140447.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964209 |
Organic, Inorganic and Hybrid Solar Cells: Principles and Practice
September 2012, Wiley-IEEE Press
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Provides detailed descriptions of organic, inorganic, and hybrid solar cells and the latest developments in the quest to produce low-cost, long-lasting solar cells
What will it take to transform solar energy from an important alternative source to a truly competitive and, perhaps, dominant one? Lower cost and longer life. Organic, Inorganic, and Hybrid Solar Cells: Principles and Practice provides in-depth information on the three types of existing solar cells, giving readers a good foundation for evaluating the technologies with the most potential for competing with energy from fossil fuels.
Featuring a Foreword written by Nobel Peace Prize co-winner Dr. Woodrow W. Clark, this timely and comprehensive guide:
- Focuses on the realization of low-cost and long-life solar cells study and applications
- Reviews the properties of inorganic materials, primarily semiconductors
- Explores the electrical and optical properties of organic materials
- Discusses the interfacing of organic and inorganic materials: compatibility of deposition, the adhesion problem, formation of surface states, and band-level realignment
- Provides a detailed description of organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells, from the basic principles to practical devices
- Introduces a sandwiched structure for hybrid solar cells, which combines a far lower production cost than inorganic solar cells while stabilizing and extending the life of organic material far beyond that of organic solar cells
Organic, Inorganic, and Hybrid Solar Cells: Principles and Practice is a first-rate professional reference for electrical engineers and important supplemental reading for graduate students in related areas of study. | <urn:uuid:5d0ce9c5-bff7-42dd-bae7-5b5c7c9fc58e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118168534.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.853065 |
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Teaching Digital Citizenship in a Digital Classroom
Wednesday, March 13, 2013 from 2:00 PM to 2:30 PM (PDT)
Join Common Sense Media and Gooru to learn new and innovative ways to teach and share important Digital Citizenship topics to students and parents. You'll get an introduction to Gooru, a free search engine for learning, and learn how to use it to find and teach Common Sense Media's Digital Literacy and Citizenship curriculum for grades 6-8, along with other Web 2.0 tools.
Update: Due to the amount of interest in this webinar, the limited number of attendee spots we have were quickly filled, and we now have a wait list of teachers who are interested in attending. If you would like to add your name to the wait list, please email firstname.lastname@example.org. If you are a registered attendee who can no longer attend, please cancel your registration so that someone else can take your spot. We will be recording the webinar, so even if you can't attend, you'll be able to view the recorded session at a later time.
Gooru is a free search engine for learning developed by a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to honor the human right to education. | <urn:uuid:01b6c40f-80fb-4d82-94e2-d95afb318670> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digital-citizenship.eventbrite.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943398 |
Everyone hates flash bulbs--they make for crazy shadows, unflattering shiny spots, and distorted colors. But we deal with them because we don't have any good alternative, if we're looking to take pictures when it's dark out. Maybe not anymore: Dilip Krishnan and Rob Fergus at New York University have invented a "dark camera" whose unique flash doesn't have the familiar, telltale effects of normal bulbs.
The camera works using a flashbulb that emits a wider range of light--meaning IR and UV rays. Then, they had to tweak a camera sensor so that it detects those wavelengths. The major problem though was that this combination of hacks, on its own, would yield a weird image, much like that from a night-vision scope. So they programmed their camera to take a dual exposure--one brief, flash-free photo allows it to glean the right color information to correct the exposure. Here, for example, was a picture taken in the dark--which as you'll notice doesn't look at all like a picture taken with a flash (never mind that the photo settings make everything look a weeeeeee bit frightening):
The one problem that remains is that some materials absorb UV and IR light, and thus don't appear in the post-flash images. One example: Freckles.
But there's clearly promise in the technology. The work will be presented in August's Siggraph conference in New Orleans.
[Via New Scientist ] | <urn:uuid:8af52eb3-16eb-4aec-81f3-1e044cba46e7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fastcompany.com/print/1311216 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951139 |
Herbert George Wells was born in Bromley, Kent, England, on September 21, 1866. His father was a professional cricketer and sometime shopkeeper, his mother a former lady’s maid. Although "Bertie" left school at fourteen to become a draper’s apprentice (a life he detested), he later won a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in London, where he studied with the famous Thomas Henry Huxley. He began to sell articles and short stories regularly in 1893. In 1895, his immediately successful novel rescued him from a life of penury on a schoolteacher’s salary. His other "scientific romances"—The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and The War in the Air (1908)—won him distinction as the father of science fiction.
About H.G. Wells
An Interview with H.G. Wells
More About H.G. Wells
Henry James saw in Wells the most gifted writer of the age, but Wells, having coined the phrase "the war that will end war" to describe World War I, became increasingly disillusioned and focused his attention on educating mankind with his bestselling Outline of History (1920) and his later utopian works. Living until 1946, Wells witnessed a world more terrible than any of his imaginative visions, and he bitterly observed: "Reality has taken a leaf from my book and set itself to supercede me."
One of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, Toby Litt, author of Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Exhibitionism, Finding Myself and Ghost Story brings us a monthly selection on cult literature.
This month features: The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells
Published by: Penguin Classics
By any standard, it's an astonishing run of books: The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898).
As a series of great and malleable pop-cultural ideas, it's hard to find anything to compare it to. Perhaps Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary's Baby, The Boys from Brazil and The Stepford Wives – though his ideas seem far less archetypal.
H. G. Wells' stories demand to be retold, by film-makers but also by other novelists. And there are a number of reasons for this. The main one, it seems to me, is that as a storyteller Wells is an amazing mixture of the acute and the inept.
Take almost any paragraph of his books and, apart from the period details, you'll find that it still works as succinct, action-filled or action-promising prose. Sentence by sentence, a time-travelling Wells would have little to learn from Tom Clancy or Robert Ludlum.
The Time Machine is more obviously Victorian in tone than the later books. But here's The Island of Dr Moreau:
'The furious face of the Leopard Man flashed by mine, with M'ling in close pursuit. I saw the yellow eyes of the Hyena-Swine blazing with excitement, his attitude as if he were half-resolved to attack me. The Satyr, too, glared at me over the Hyena-Swine's hunched shoulders. I heard the crack of Moreau's pistol and saw the pink flash dart across the tumult. The whole crowd seemed to swing round in the direction of the glint of fire, and I, too, was swung round by the magnetism of the moment. In another second I was running, one of a tumultuous shouting crowd, in pursuit of the escaping Leopard Man.'
Writing, when it is describing fast action, tends to lose some distinctiveness. Slow events are more easily amenable to a highly original style. But Wells manages to maintain, in all his work, an intellectual argument running right through the visceral moments.
The ineptness, though, reveals itself in Wells's missed opportunities.
The Time Machine seems hugely imbalanced by the fact that the Time Traveller goes into the future but not into the past. His longest visit is to a future world that works to illustrate Wells' thesis on the long-term effects of dividing populations into the workers and the leisured classes. But the book seems, at least to me, to require views into at least two other possible forms of human society. It's just too short.
The Island of Dr Moreau is, in my opinion, the best written and most carefully crafted of these stories. It has moments of unapologetically extreme terror. But there are some awful creaks near the start, to keep the narrator from realising the bestial nature of Dr Moreau's helpers:
'A large launch with two standing lugs lay under the lee of the schooner, and into this the strange assortment of goods were swung. I did not then see the hands from the island that were receiving the packages, for the hull of the launch was hidden from me by the side of the schooner'.
As a result, the narrator seems for a long time - painfully dim. But the problem is partly that Wells' books are now so famous that we already know their secret before we read them.
However, with The Invisible Man the title itself gives away the biggest secret. The opening chapters, though, seem written as if the reader were in ignorance of the reason behind the odd events they are witnessing. Where the novel misses a huge opportunity is towards the end, when the Invisible Man promises to establish a 'reign of terror' but completely fails to do so. His defeat comes abruptly, and far too easily.
The War of the Worlds, without giving too much away myself, is undermined by being a fait accompli right from the start, if only we knew. Deus ex machina always makes for a poor hero.
The thing is, the lowliest paid script doctor at Disney could bash you out a more smooth and satisfying narrative arc. But Wells was an ideas-man, and as that he was a genius.
The Time Machine, The Island of Dr Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells are now out in Penguin paperback
Find Books by H.G. Wells | <urn:uuid:34f20c6f-2aac-4e0b-95b1-5820dacda4fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.us.penguingroup.com/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000033917,00.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966157 |
I recently came across a new source for information on those who served in the civil war. It’s called the Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System. What I didn’t expect was to find that it wasn’t maintained by the National Archives, but rather the National Park System. There was quite a lot of information that was available through different types of searches. I’ve mostly used the ‘Soldiers’ search function, but plan on spending some time looking through the cemeteries soon also.
As for the information it holds, the soldiers records didn’t really contain any biographical or genealogical data. However, it does place these individuals in a location and time period and notes the type of regiment they served in and, of course, whether they fought for the union or the confederacy. I was surprised to find ancestors from the south that were fighting union regiments. Definitely not what I expected.
There is information on over 6.3 million soldiers and sailors who fought in the civil war. The database was compiled in 2004 by volunteers and then edited for accuracy by NPS staff. It contains histories of Union and Confederate regiments, links to descriptions of 384 significant battles of the war, and other historical information.They also plan on adding more info about soldiers, sailors, regiments, and battles, as well as prisoner-of-war records and cemetery records.
If you have ancestors that lived in the U.S. during the Civil War period, it’s definitely worth a little time to see what might be in this collection. | <urn:uuid:9758383c-512b-4340-ac1a-2c1ed8345965> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://familyhistoryalive.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/civl-war-soldiers-saliors-system/?like=1&_wpnonce=4562577504 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966123 |
Using new combinations of well-known polymers is one way of producing new materials.For this work, the use of polymers that respond to external stimuli are of particular interest, and is the line followed by the chemist Leire Ruiz-Rubio in the research for her PhD thesis. She has studied the blending of certain polymers that can be controlled when the conditions of their medium (the pH or temperature, for example) have been altered.Once the behaviour of these polymers is known, it is possible to design new materials to use in many different applications.“We do basic chemistry; in other words, we study the behaviour of these polymers in more and more advanced conditions, and then the applications that can be developed thanks to these materials will be sought.” Ruiz has in fact studied the polymer blends first of all in solution and then when they are on a solid surface.
The aim was to find out the conditions in which polymer chains disperse and when they end up joined together.Having examined that, Ruiz went on to study how the conditions can be manipulated, so that the material formed by the polymer blend can be altered from a dense layer to one with holes.
The blends in this research were produced by adding one of eachof thetwo polymer groups.In one group there were polyacids, in other words, proton donors (acrylic polyacid and methacrylicpolyacid and phenolic polyvinyl). In the second group there are several poly(N-vinylamides), in other words, polymers that can create hydrogen bridges with the protons of the ones before them.
“We have studied the relationship between polymers.In other words, to see whether polymers of one blend move away from each other, or whether, by contrast they become adhered to each other."And they studied that relationship first in solution, because the solvent can greatly influence that.Polymer chains will move away from each other if they have a greater tendency to attach themselves to the molecules of the solvent (dispersive tendency).By contrast, if the hydrogen bridges between the polymers are more stable than the relationship towards the solvent, the polymer chains will tend to stay together (associative behaviour).
The balance is a tricky one, because there are all kinds of interactions.“That’s the problem,” says Ruiz.“Polyacids, for example, not only interact with the solvent and other polymers, they also interact with themselves, but some polyamides, for example, prefer to join with other polymers.The same thing happens depending on the quality of the solvent.If the solvent is very good, the polymers tend to join with it.”
Most of the solvents used in this work are alcohols, (methanol, ethanol, propanol, etc.) and the effect of their molecule size has been studied.In fact, the size has a lot to do with whether the solvent is good or bad:small alcohols are better solvents that large ones.
Ruiz and her colleagues repeated their solution-based research in the conditions of a surface.They wanted to know what kind of behaviour was displayed by these polymer blends on a surface.They used silicon surfaces covered with a co-polymer layer and added a number of functional groups to that layer.“They end up as if they were strands of hair," says Ruiz.The polymer blends were placed on top and they formed a second layer.These kinds of systems can be manipulated, for example by changing the pH or the temperature, and the chemical and physical properties of the surface change.And in the end, the polymer blend will behave in one way or another according to that.
“We do basic chemistry, but you always have applications in mind.For example, drugs can be inserted between these layers and attached to the hairs of the surface.With the drugas the filling, it would end up like a kind of sandwich.”In that case, by manipulating the pH or temperature, the polymer blend can be dismantled and the drug released at the desired moment.So, one potential application is a capsule that opens at the desired moment.“But that’s still a long way off.We have studied what happens in the solution, and then in a more complex medium, on a surface.When you have studied that, you’ll be able to go one step further.”But the capsule application is still a long way away.The aim of this thesis was to study the behaviour of certain polymers.
Leire Ruiz-Rubio (Bilbao, 1979) graduated in Chemistry at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country.She did her PhD in the same place under the supervision of the lecturer Maria Teresa Garay-Perez.Today, she works as a researcher in the Department of Physical Chemistry.She also lectures in chemistry at the Faculty of Science and Technology. | <urn:uuid:c09a8c5a-8c19-4d44-a705-4a702e4fe298> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/smart_economy/2013/01/05/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951418 |
Thinking Cap is about work in progress in the world of ideas.
“Behavioral and neural correlates of delay of gratification 40 years later” by B. J. Casey, Walter Mischel and 12 other collaborators in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Casey is director of the Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology at Weill Cornell Medical College, and Dr. Mischel, a psychologist, is Niven Professor of Humane Letters at Columbia University.
The Experiment: For nearly four decades the marshmallow test has fascinated researchers, educators and parents. In this famous experiment Dr. Mischel probed four-year-olds’ self-control by offering them one marshmallow now or two 15 minutes later. When Dr. Mischel caught up with the preschoolers years later, those who exhibited more self-control in the experiment turned out to be less likely to abuse drugs, and more successful in relationships, work, and handling stress as adults than their eat-it-now counterparts. Dr. Mischel, Dr. Casey, the lead author, and their team of collaborators wanted to take a closer look at just what was happening in the brains of these subjects.
They rounded up 59 of the more than 500 original participants — now in their mid-40s — to retake the test, and then scanned the brains of 26 of them using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Dr. Mischel had proposed that a “cool” system rooted in the conscious control circuitry in the brain and a “hot” system centered in the region devoted to desire and emotions were both involved in self-control. The question was whether people who quickly grabbed for the marshmallow — the “low delayers” — would have less activity in the right prefrontal cortex (cognitive control) and more in the ventral striatum (where positive rewards are processed), compared with the “high delayers.” Aware that sweets might not be as much of a lure to adults, Dr. Casey used happy, neutral and fearful faces to stand in for positive and negative social cues in order to examine the neural networks used in delaying gratification.
The Results: As in the earlier experiments, the researchers found that the children who were less able to resist temptation at 4 years of age were also less able to damp down their positive response to the happy faces 40 years later. More interesting was that the prefrontal cortex of the high delayers was in full swing during the trial while the low delayers showed an uptick in activity in the ventral striatum — an area also linked to addiction. The more alluring the object, the tougher it was for an individual “to suppress thoughts and actions, such that control systems may be ‘hijacked’ ” by the brain’s emotional responses. “This is the first time we have located the specific brain areas related to delayed gratification. This could have major implications in the treatment of obesity and addictions,” Dr. Casey said.
She did note, however, that while the resisters were better at exercising their willpower and systematically plotting out how to get more in the long run, the tendency to gratify desires more immediately was not necessarily a negative trait. They could be more likely to be “explorers, risk takers, pioneers.”
What do you think? Is it possible to develop and improve your self-control? Would you rather have a marshmallow or a smiley face? Post a comment below. | <urn:uuid:0117b25d-10dd-4892-a249-b030a4a6cb65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/thinking-cap-delaying-gratification/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964162 |
Every Geek site needs an obligatory Bash Tips post
Copy Files Securely Between Two Machines
I used to always forget the syntax for this, until I realized that the syntax is exactly like the standard cp command. In fact, you can copy files like you normally would using scp, on your local machine. The following are equivalent:
$ cp file file.orig $ scp file file.orig
Where they differ is, scp lets you copy files over a network, through SSH. Here’s an example:
$ scp contents.txt email@example.com:/tmp
This will copy local file contents.txt to /tmp on the remote machine ssh.domain.com, as user silver. Here are some more examples:
$ scp draft.pdf ssh.domain.com:
(copy draft.pdf to my home dir on remote machine. username is implied to be the same locally and remotely.)
$ scp swine.jpg firstname.lastname@example.org
(read: This will copy swine.jpg to local machine as a file named email@example.com. To make it go remote, append a : to the address, like above)
scp supports, among other things, compression (-C) and recursive copying of directories (-r).
$ scp -rC code/ ssh.domain.com:/archive/code_02032009
Trying to copy to a directory you don’t have permission to (/usr etc) will fail.
Don’t Get Lost Jumping To and Fro Between Directories
You can use cd - to jump to the previous (NOT parent) dir. For example:
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ cd /usr/local/share kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $ cd - /home/kiwi kiwi@localhost: ~ $ cd - /usr/local/share kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $
Another way is using pushd/popd – A Last In First Out (LIFO) stack of dirs.
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ pushd /usr/local/share/ /usr/local/share ~
pushd is like cd but keeps note of the current dir before cd’ing into a new one. The stack of dirs is listed every time you invoke pushd (the “/usr/local/share ~” output you see above.)
kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $ pushd / / /usr/local/share ~
Stack is ordered left to right, latest push first. If we pop the first dir off:
kiwi@localhost: / $ popd /usr/local/share /tmp ~ kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $
We’re back in the share dir. We can keep popping until there’s nothing left (throws an error):
kiwi@localhost: /usr/local/share $ popd /tmp ~ kiwi@localhost: /tmp $ pushd /lib /lib /tmp ~ kiwi@localhost: /lib $ popd /tmp ~ kiwi@localhost: /tmp $ popd ~ kiwi@localhost: ~ $ popd bash: popd: directory stack empty
Working with Long Lines
No need for more Bash shortcut cheat sheets, but here are some useful ones to help you work with long lines.
You can jump to the start & end of a line using CTRL+a & CTRL+e respectively. Example (* is the cursor):
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ echo al the ducks are swimming in the w*
and you want to fix the first word. You can hop to the beginning of the line with CTRL+a:
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ *echo al the ducks are swimming in the w
and now you can jump to the end of the misspelled word “al” using CTRL+Right twice to correct it:
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ echo all*the ducks are swimming in the w
Now ctrl+e to jump to the end of line:
kiwi@localhost: ~ $ echo all the ducks are swimming in the w*
Instead of backspacing every character, use ALT+Backspace to backspace entire words. You can also delete all or part of a line using CTRL+u combo. It deletes everything before the cursor. Likewise, CTRL+k wipes out everything after the cursor. I’ve developed a habit of using CTRL+e CTRL+k to delete lines.
Bash has a lot of ALT commands that let you move and manipulate words. ALT+l and ALT+u will make a word in front of the cursor lowercase or uppercase, for example. A neat one I don’t think I ever used is ALT+\ It pulls everything after the cursor left to the first non-whitespace character. Here’s an example, * is the cursor:
$ my spacebar is *sticky
$ my spacebar issticky
Avoid Retyping Commands & Arguments
ESC + . is very useful. Escape followed by a period will output the argument you sent to your last Bash command. Command calls themselves are outputted if they were invoked without any arguments (popd, ls, etc).
Example, unzipping a file and moving the archive to /tmp:
$ unzip archive-with-a-long-ambiguous-name-03092009-5960-1.2.5.zip $ mv archive-with-a-long-ambiguous-name-03092009-5960-1.2.5.zip /tmp
In the mv command, the archive name was outputted by pressing ESC+. (full command being mv (ESC+.) /tmp) There was no need to type the long archive name twice.
The argument is taken from your bash history. You can keep invoking ESC+. to cycle back through all your recent command arguments. (history -c to clear)
Try not to forget this; You’ll naturally find plenty of uses for it.
Another way to avoid re-typing commands is CTRL+R. It will initiate a search of your command history. Begin typing, and watch Bash try to complete your command from previous ones you entered.
Command Getting Too Big? Send it to your Editor
Sometimes you begin writing what you think will be a simple command, only to realize that it has grown too complex for the command line, and you wish you were in your text editor.
First make sure your default editor is set. This is either in $EDITOR (export EDITOR=/usr/local/bin/vim) or elsewhere depending on the distro.
Use “fc” to open the last executed command in your editor:
ls -paul --sort=size ... ls output ... fc
Now the ls line will be open in your editor. But what if you hadn’t executed the command yet? No problem. You’re sending off an email, but quickly realize that the command line isn’t ideal for everything:
echo -e "Dear Santa, \n\n\tIt has become evident that your fat ass is contributing to Global Warming, primarily due to the large quantity of coal you distribute annually. We hereby
No matter where you are on the line, hit CTRL+x, CTRL+e to invoke your editor, which now contains what you were typing on the cmd line.
I always find myself wanting to finish a command in vim, but unwilling to type the first few lines over, especially when I’m trying to write a for loop or any ugly multiline Bash code.
IMPORTANT: Whatever you type in your editor is executed automatically after you quit the editor.
Multiple Commands on a Single Line
There are a number of ways to piece together commands (||, pipes, etc), depending on your need, but sometimes, you just commands executed consecutively. You can use ; or &&.
semicolon (;) vs AND (&&): The semicolon will run through each command consecutively, whereas && is a little smarter, and will not continue if a command does not end successfully (return 0 – you can check the return value of the last app ran with echo $?).
&& is generally safer. i.e., ./configure && make (&& sudo make install)
$ cp bogus && echo "** copied" cp: missing destination file operand after `bogus' Try `cp --help' for more information.
cp bogus; echo "** copied... or did I? tun tun tunnn!" cp: missing destination file operand after `bogus' Try `cp --help' for more information. ** copied... or did I? tun tun tunnn!
Convert between DOS and UNIX ASCII files
Sometimes you get a text file that has weird ^M characters in it. These are due to a difference in how Unix and Windows systems end lines. You can convert between these formats using unix2dos or todos and dos2unix or fromdos.
$ mkdir /tmp/rcfl $ cd /tmp/rcfl $ echo -e "Justa Lonely\nASCII File" > out $ file out out: ASCII text $ todos out $ file out out: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators $ vim out # notice [dos] flag in status bar, quit :q! $ fromdos out $ file out out: ASCII text
Have a little more control over your apps.
Stop Right Thurr
When a program is running in the foreground, you no longer have access to the command line. An example is ‘tail -f’ or ‘ruby script/server’
You can have a running process pause for a sec with CTRL+z.
Do your dirty work and then bring the app back to the foreground with fg.
To list the processes you have paused, use jobs
$ tail -f useful.log 00:00:50 User did something that was log-worthy 00:00:56 User did something that was log-worthy 00:00:57 User did something that was log-worthy # (press CTRL+z) + Stopped tail -f useful.log $ echo "look ma, I can type" look ma, I can type $ fg tail -f useful.log # (press CTRL+z) + Stopped tail -f useful.log $ tail -f blah.tmp # (press CTRL+z) + Stopped tail -f blah.tmp $ jobs - Stopped tail -f useful.log + Stopped tail -f blah.tmp $ fg 1 (process continues)
In the Background
You can have a process start in the background by appending to it a &.
and bring this to the foreground using fg [#].
As before, jobs will list background processes, but with status Running instead of Stopped.
Programs running in the background will still output to stdout, which means they’ll make the shell ugly. So if you plan on using them, think about redirecting the output.
Some things are mentioned on nearly every ‘bash tips’ page — like redirecting output. Here are the basics. We’re concerned with 2 I/O streams: STDOUT and STDERR. STDOUT has a value of 1, and it is the screen. If a program writes to stdout, that text is shown in the console. Errors are sent through a different stream, stderr, which has a value of 2. Value 0 is stdin, used for user input. The technical details aren’t important. Just remember that 1 is screen and 2 is error.
There’s a number of ways to redirect output:
$ echo "asdfasdf" 1> /tmp/asdf.txt # overwrite existing file $ echo "asdfasdf" > /tmp/asdf.txt # (same, 1 is default, optional) $ $ echo "32452345" >> /tmp/asdf.txt # append to end of existing file* $ echo "wash the dishes" > /dev/null # just ignore output $ echo "wash the dishes" 2> /dev/null # just ignore errors $ $ more 1> /dev/null # error still shown $ more 2> /dev/null # nothing shown $ more &> /dev/null # nothing shown $ $ more 2>| /dev/null # silence errors $ more >| /tmp/more.txt # save output to file $ $ more 1> /tmp/more.txt 2>&1 # redirect stdout to file and redirect stderr to stdout (same file) $ more 2> /tmp/more.txt 1>&2 # have stdout follow stderr to file
To redirect output to a file & screen, use tee
$ echo "dont forget the milk" | tee /tmp/toforget.txt
More a more extensive guide on redirection, see Bash IO Redirection or some of the External Links below.
Art of teh Alias
I use a lot of aliases. Here are a few:
# I use these a lot. Can also have aptupdate, aptremove etc... alias aptinstall='sudo apt-get install' alias aptsearch='apt-cache search' alias suvim='sudo vim' # Aliasing command names. To use original commands, you'd need to specify absolute path. alias a2restart='sudo apache2ctl restart' alias gem='sudo gem' alias checkinstall='sudo checkinstall' # I used these to workaround the infamous FF memory leak (ugly) # alias swapoff='sudo swapoff' # alias swapon='sudo swapon' # Going places. This + ssh keypair alias macbookshell='ssh 192.168.1.17' alias workshell='ssh firstname.lastname@example.org' # Pretty output. (--group-directories-first might not work on your system). alias lsf='ls -hAlF --group-directories-first --color=always --time-style=+" %m/%d/%y %I:%M %p "' # List only directories alias lsd='ls -d */' # I'm a measly human! alias free="free -m" # 'gimme x' is equivalent to 'sudo chown me.me x' # alias gimme="ME6=`whoami` && sudo \"chown $ME6.$ME6\"" # Usage: nullminate bloated-file.log alias nullminate="cat /dev/null > " # Search contents of an entire dir. Usage: scan "PESKY_VARIABLE ?=" project-123/ alias scan="grep -Rin --color"
These should go in a ~/.bash_aliases file and invoked from within your user conf (.bashrc?)
External links (related):
- Working more productively with bash 2.x/3.x
- Getting Started with BASH
- Bash Tips & Tricks
- 10 Tips for Writing Efficient Bash Scripts
- Best Tips & Trips for Bash
- Bash Shell Shortcuts
- Writing Robust Shell Scripts | <urn:uuid:054c8171-53d1-4097-b0de-cad0c9eab482> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://biodegradablegeek.com/2009/06/bash-tips-for-power-users/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.805 |
Leveraging ‘Big Data’ to Drive Innovation
We’ve all heard the staggering claim that, in the last 5 years, the world has produced more research data than has been created in all of human history.
According to the latest IDC Digital Universal Study, more than 1.8 zettabytes of information will be created and stored in 2011. That’s enough information to fill 57 billion 32GB Apple iPads (which could build a mountain of iPads 25 times higher than Mt Fuji). It’s a mind-boggling figure, for sure, but not entirely surprising considering we are dealing with larger amounts of information (‘Big Data’) from more devices than ever before.
In this decade, the number of mobile devices globally will grow to more than 10 billion, and each of these “terminals” represents a powerful computer capable of creating and sending large amounts of data.
The world’s 4 billion mobile-phone users (12% of whom own smartphones) have turned themselves into data-streams.
Manufacturers have embedded more than 30 million sensors into their products. These sensors provide a continuous flow of geolocation, digital and social data inputs.
In addition to this explosion of data input devices, the Web has also created new types of information and information relationships:
- Up to 7,000 tweets per second, more than 175 million tweets per day, and more than 1 billion tweets each week are sent out on Twitter.
- Over 800 million people are using Facebook for everything from photo browsing to intense gaming and they are sharing more than 30 billion pieces of content every month.
- Between 35-40 hours of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute.
- Nearly 160 million public blogs represent billions of posts and comments.
More information means more challenges making sense of all that data. And the problem isn’t going to get any easier. Analysts project that the amount of data generated worldwide is expected to rise 40% annually—or eight times faster than IT spending.
Earlier this year, McKinsey published its report on Big Data positioning Big Data as the ‘next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity.’ Manufacturers, in particular, stand to benefit greatly from the ability to harness and analyze large data sets.
Leveraging Big Data to Drive Innovation was also the topic of a presentation by Ken Klapproth, Invention Machine’s Vice President Product Marketing, at this month’s Business Innovation Conference. The presentation explores how companies can capitalize on Big Data. Are we once again witnessing a time where the amount of information has exceeded it’s usefulness? Or, do we just need an innovative way to find what we need?
How is your organization using the explosion of new and disparate sources of knowledge to create a competitive advantage? Contact us to learn how we are working with companies across the globe to boost productivity and accelerate innovation by making critical Big Data information and insights available to those that need it. | <urn:uuid:74fdd4e4-d240-4afe-92e0-1cd324412aec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://inventionmachine.com/the-Invention-Machine-Blog/bid/76931/Leveraging-Big-Data-to-Drive-Innovation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.920256 |
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1911 | Ostrow Mazowiecka, Poland
Fischel was the oldest of seven children in a Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish family. When he was a small child, his parents moved the family to Sokolow Podlaski, a manufacturing town in central Poland with a large Jewish population of about 5,000. Fischel was sent to study at a religious school. In 1932, when he was 21 years old, Fischel was inducted into the Polish army.
1933-39: After two years in the Polish cavalry, Fischel returned to Sokolow Podlaski, where he apprenticed to become a carpenter and also led a local Zionist organization. He married and set up a carpentry shop in his home where he made furniture. When Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939, Fischel was called up by the Polish army. He was captured by the Germans, but was allowed to return home after fighting ended in October.
Europe 1943-1944, Treblinka indicated
1940-42: For almost two years, Fischel managed to keep his carpentry workshop open although Sokolow Podlaski was occupied by the Germans. Then on September 28, 1941, the Germans set up a ghetto in the town and concentrated 4,000 Jews there. About a year later, on the most solemn Jewish holiday, the Day of Atonement, the Germans began to round up the people in the ghetto. Those who resisted or tried to hide were shot. With his wife and child, Fischel was herded onto the boxcar of a train.
On September 22, 1942, Fischel and his family were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp and gassed there shortly after arriving. He was 31 years old. | <urn:uuid:2d7688c7-9dfa-4c3a-a2d5-52ebb399f95a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.fold3.com/page/94094743_fischel_felman/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979878 |
HAVING two copies of a mutant gene for haemoglobin almost eliminates your risk of developing malaria, say Italian researchers. One in five people they studied in the West African country of Burkina Faso has at least one copy, which they predict will spread through the population.
David Modiano and his colleagues at the University of Rome examined 4348 people835 with the disease and 3513 without. They found that those who were free of the disease were much more likely to carry the
The mutation doesn't stop you being infected with plasmodium, the single-celled parasite that causes malaria. ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content. | <urn:uuid:43fd96df-6b22-4a17-a02f-7dc1279515af> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17223173.100-fighting-fit.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978122 |
Baseball greats break barriers
Legendary ballplayers shape Major Leagues, America
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- They didn't stop at changing baseball.
They changed America.
Jackie Robinson broke the color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Larry Doby came along 11 weeks later to break the American League's color line with the Cleveland Indians. Frank Robinson became the Major Leagues' first African-American manager with the Indians just after the 1974 season.
They broke barriers that transcended their deeds in a baseball uniform. Not everyone could throw or hit or remove a pitcher. But for a segment of society often denied the chance to prove its talents or assume a position of leadership, they were beacons for civil rights and humanity.
The inaugural Civil Rights Game presented by AutoZone between the Cardinals and the Indians at AutoZone Park in Memphis, Tenn., on Saturday -- which will be aired on ESPN and MLB.TV, with a two-hour pregame show beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET -- will celebrate their gains in baseball and in American life. Jackie Robinson, Doby and Frank Robinson are a part of that history.
The following is a look at the three men that have gone beyond the box score and into society.
The National Archives carry teaching documents that cover the history of America. On one of those Web pages are links to some of Jackie Robinson's most important works. In the top right corner of the main page is a photo of Robinson smiling beneath his Dodgers cap in a baseball uniform.
But beside the photo are the words of his daughter, Rachel Robinson, who has worked tirelessly for equality and education.
"To the average man in the average American community, Jackie Robinson was just what the sports pages said he was, no more, no less. He was the first Negro to play baseball in the Major Leagues. Everybody knew that. ... In remembering him, I tend to de-emphasize him as a ballplayer and emphasize him as an informal civil rights leader. That's the part that drops out, that people forget."
After being asked by Branch Rickey, the visionary general manager who signed him, not to retaliate for demeaning words and actions, on and off the field, for the first two years of his career, Robinson didn't stand for any violation of his human rights. He continued that philosophy after his career.
According to Jules Tygel's 1997 book, "Baseball's Great Experiment," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe, who along with Roy Campanella joined the Dodgers after Robinson, "You'll never know what you and Jackie and Roy did to make it possible for me to do my job."
Robinson fearlessly used the access he gained through his fame to challenge injustice, even if it meant confronting those at the top of society. After President Eisenhower urged patience from African-Americans seeking equality, Robinson replied with a letter saying, "17 million Negroes cannot do as you suggest and wait for the hearts of men to change. We want to enjoy now the rights that we feel we are entitled to as Americans."
Robinson didn't fear disagreeing, stepping outside the norms of the Civil Rights Movement. For example, he backed then Vice President Nixon in 1960, instead of eventual President Kennedy because he felt Nixon showed more promise in civil rights.
In a letter to President Johnson, Robinson asked the administration to refrain from saying that such opposition would damage the credibility of the Civil Rights Movement. Just months before his death in 1972, he warned the Nixon Administration in a letter that younger African-Americans would not wait for civil rights the way his generation had.
Robinson didn't forget about strides that needed to be made in baseball, either. In 1969, Robinson refused to participate in an old timers' game because of the failure of baseball to add black managers or front-office personnel. Robinson's last public appearance was on Oct. 15, 1972, when he agreed to throw out the first pitch of the 1972 World Series.
In keeping with his constant push for equality, he used the occasion to announce over the public address system that he still desired that a black manager be hired.
For much of history, Doby was overshadowed by Robinson. Playing in Cleveland while Robinson was in New York no doubt had something to do with it. Simply being second, as opposed to first, was part of it. Doby also became baseball's second black manager when he took over the Chicago White Sox in 1978.
Robinson embraced and sought the leadership role and even the backlash that came with it. Doby had a different approach.
In obituaries after Doby's death on June 18, 2003, he is quoted recalling his first meeting with Indians owner Bill Veeck. Unlike Robinson, who spent time with the Dodgers' top Minor League club in Montreal, Doby went straight from the Negro Leagues to the Majors.
"'Lawrence,' -- he's the only person who called me Lawrence -- 'you are going to be part of history,'" Doby said Veeck told him.
"Part of history? I had no notions about that. I just wanted to play baseball."
Nonetheless, Doby came to understand the impact of his baseball efforts.
"We can see that baseball helped make this a better country," he said in a speech to college students. "We hope baseball has given [children] some idea of what it is to live together and how you can get along, whether you be black or white."
Doby took no back seat to anyone on the field or, unfortunately, in terms of having to rise above heartbreaking treatment.
When he joined the Indians, four teammates refused to shake his hand. No one would throw to him during warmups until Joe Gordon, who would compete for a position, did so and befriended him. Doby was asked to play first base and didn't have a glove for the position, yet no teammate would lend him one and he had to borrow one from one of the opposing Chicago White Sox.
In one of his last interviews, published by the Web site JockBio.com, Doby noted that an opposing shortstop once spit on him when he slid into second base.
But Doby played with greatness and class, and reached out to the next generation. He opened several playgrounds. At one of the openings, in Cleveland in 1997, he said: "I hope that this city and cities across the country will continue to work together to make this a better place for all of us. I think the most important thing, besides being involved in your games, is teaching. Teach your friends, teach your fellow man what it is to love one another."
A Camden, S.C., native, Doby was such an inspiration in terms of helping those less fortunate that the Class A Charleston River Dogs have retired the No. 14, which he wore with the Indians.
No one handed Robinson anything.
Whether it was battling racism as a player in the Minors, fighting for what he felt was a proper salary as he became one of baseball's stars through the 1950s and 1960s, or preparing for his post-playing career, Robinson demonstrated that accomplishment could win out over everything.
A July 5, 2006 article in the Contra Costa Times recalled Robinson's words from early in his playing career:
"If you can't swing the bat and run the bases and catch the balls and maybe a little more besides, nobody's going to follow you. You're just a little tin soldier waving a tin sword."
Robinson proved that the work ethic is mightier than the sword.
At a time when players were scratching for decent wages and sometimes taking outside jobs in the winter, Robinson was stripping teams of reasons not to hire him. Late in his playing career, Robinson spent his winters managing the Puerto Rican Winter League. Robinson's club won a pennant in 1968.
He was ready by the time the Indians named him player-manager. Robinson broke managerial color barriers in the American League with the Indians, and in the National League with the Giants in 1981. Robinson also pioneered advances for African-Americans off the field. The numbers of African-American players have declined in recent years, but the attention Robinson brought to the front-office issue starting in the 1970s has opened doors for all minorities off the field in what may be his greatest contribution to the sport.
He remains a living example of a man who refuses to stop working. At the request of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, Robinson became the manager of the league-owned Montreal Expos in 2002 and stayed with the club, which became the Washington Nationals in 2005, through last season. Robinson, now 71, has returned to the MLB offices.
When he was hired to manage the Indians, Robinson didn't forget what it took to get him there. As the famed broadcaster Bob Costas once recalled, Robinson said, "I only wish Jackie could be sitting here beside me."
But it's OK. Pioneers like Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby and Frank Robinson walked a brave path first, and will always walk with those who succeed them.
Thomas Harding is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs. | <urn:uuid:85f8ce6e-8b88-49e2-aba9-e10e1c57fb58> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070329&content_id=1865162&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980601 |
June 26, 2003
Distinctive Genetic Program Guides Breast Cancers Deadly Spread
Researchers have peered inside breast cancer's toolbox and identified a set of rogue genes that accelerates the spread of cancer from its primary site in the breast to a secondary location in bone marrow. The genes identified by the scientists are distinct from those that spawn the initial tumor, which invites speculation about whether different cancers bear unique “gene expression signatures” that increase the probability that a cancer will spread in a process called metastasis.
Metastasis occurs when cells from a primary tumor break off and invade another organ. It is the deadliest transformation that a cancer can undergo, and therefore researchers have been looking for specific genes that propel metastasis. If they can identify distinctive metastatic gene programs for different cancers, it may be possible to slow or halt metastases by targeting the proteins produced by those genes.
“Our finding is that above and beyond the genetic signature that has created this tumor, there is a toolbox of overexpressed genes that the cancer cell will need.”
In the June 2003 issue of the journal
researchers led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator
at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, published a report showing that breast cancer metastasis to bone is mediated by a specific set of genes. Massagué collaborated on the studies with colleagues from the University of Texas Health Science Center.
“There has been a raging controversy in the cancer research field between two hypotheses,” said Massagué. “One is the classical view that says that only a few cells in a tumor acquire alterations that render them increasingly metastatic. And of the millions of tumor cells that enter the circulation, the patient only gets a handful of metastases from these cells.
“By contrast, there has been recent evidence that primary tumors that go on to develop metastases already possess a `poor prognosis signature' involving a group of genes whose high level of activity is indicative of the potential for metastasis,” he said.
To attempt to distinguish between these two models, Massagué and his colleagues used a precise technique to isolate specific cells from cultures of cells from a breast cancer patient who had died from metastatic disease. The researchers explored whether some of these types of isolated cells were better than others at metastasizing to bone - a major site of breast-cancer metastasis.
“Indeed, we did find that certain of these cells were more adept at metastasizing to bone when injected into mice,” said Massagué. “And when we analyzed the gene expression in these cells, we found a set of genes whose activity was specifically associated with this enhanced metastatic ability.”
These overexpressed genes enabled tumor cells to home in on bone, to trigger growth of blood vessels, and to recruit bone cells in the metastatic process, said Massagué. Furthermore, he said, the bone-metastasis genes were distinct from those in cells that metastasize to the adrenal gland.
“We also asked the question of whether these bone-metastasis genes were among the genes previously identified as part of the `poor prognosis signature,' and the answer was zero, not a one,” said Massagué.
“This means that the metastatic gene signature defines and forms a violent society—a large group of cells in a tumor that are competent to become metastatic cells.” However, said Massagué, discovery of these metastatic genes does not invalidate the classical model that tumor cells require additional genetic mutations to metastasize.
“In and of themselves, these genes may not be mediators of metastases,” he said. “Our finding is that above and beyond the genetic signature that has created this tumor, there is a toolbox of overexpressed genes that the cancer cell will need; that will be the mediators for the cell to thrive in the bone marrow. So the poor-prognosis signature is bad news, but that signature is not enough.”
Massagué and his colleagues conducted two types of experiments to demonstrate that the metastatic-related genes were, indeed, causative in triggering cancer spread to the bone. In one series, they engineered poorly metastatic cells to overexpress different numbers of the genes they had identified as being necessary for metastasis to bone. They found that cells in which more of the genes were overexpressed showed more aggressive metastasis in mice.
In the second set of experiments, the researchers analyzed existing cultured breast cancer cells to determine which ones had more of the overexpressed genes they had found associated with metastasis. When they injected those cells into mice, the researchers found that that the more of the mutant genes the cells possessed, the more aggressively metastatic they were.
Massagué said the findings indicate “we have basically identified a Darwinian process of selection at work. These cells just happen to accumulate the `winning combination' of hyperactive genes that enables them to thrive in bone marrow. And once the traveling tumor cells pass through bone marrow, they are incredibly successful at attaching to and invading bone.”
According to Massagué, additional studies will be required to understand whether distinct collections of “metastatic genes” exist in other metastatic tumors, including breast cancers.
While the presence of these telltale proteins in the blood of cancer patients could give clues to the specific identities of the cancers, “I cannot be sure that such analyses will have major value in diagnosis,” said Massagué. “Imaging technologies for metastases are already very effective at detecting them. Nevertheless, some of these factors might be expressed at such high level by micro-metastases that they might become a first line of diagnosis.
“The much more conceivable possibility is that we could determine precisely what particular combination of genes is driving a patient's metastasis. And with that profile, we might be able to use specific blockers to attack and silence enough of these proteins to render the `metastatic toolbox' ineffective, and to ameliorate metastatic growth.” | <urn:uuid:56db09e1-1bea-48eb-a84b-50fb91d4e58e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hhmi.org/news/massague.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947632 |
Whose Music is it Anyway? How We Came to View Musical Expression as a Form of Property
Many participants in the music industry consider unauthorized transmissions of music files over the Internet to be theft of their property. Many Internet users who exchange music files reject this characterization. Prompted by the dispute over unauthorized music distribution, this Article explores how those who create and distribute music first came to look upon music as their property and when in Western history the law first supported this view. By analyzing the economic and legal structures governing music making in Western Europe from the classical period in Greece through the Renaissance, the Article shows that the law first granted some exclusive rights in the Middle Ages, when musicians' guilds enjoyed the exclusive right to perform music in medieval cities, but that the concept of music as a form of property was not established until early music publishers received exclusive rights in their publications during the Renaissance. The Article concludes with thoughts about how this history should influence the way we address the current controversy concerning uses of music on the Internet.
Carroll, Michael W. "Whose Music is it Anyway? How We Came to View Musical Expression as a Form of Property." University of Cincinnati Law Review 72, no. 4 (Summer 2004): 1405-1496. | <urn:uuid:a25b05cc-90f9-4826-a316-15d87162bdff> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://works.bepress.com/michael_carroll/15/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938556 |
Prophet Solomons (pbuh) Death
Then when We decreed that he [Solomon] should die, nothing divulged his death to them except the earthworm that ate his staff; so that when he fell down, it was made clear to the jinns that if they had truly had knowledge of the Unseen, they need not have stayed there, suffering humiliating punishment. (Qur'an, 34:14)
The Qur'an does not contain much information about the prophets' deaths. However, it does relate some important details about Prophet Solomon's (pbuh) death. For example, at the moment of his death he was surrounded by jinns who probably were trying to complete their assigned tasks. Not realizing that he was dead, they continued to work. This verse suggests that the jinns do not have any true knowledge of the Unseen, for if they did, they would have stopped working. As this verse emphasizes the words humiliating punishment, they were working very hard on a task and were afraid of Prophet Solomon (pbuh). Thus, they did not stop when he died as they did not realize he was dead until the staff broke.
The words in Arabic translated here as earthworm are dabbat al-ard. Dabba means animal or beast. Coming from debbe, which means a light walking or to struggle, it is used for animals and insects. Ard means ground or floor. Therefore, the expression dabbat al-ard can be thought of as referring to any animal, not just the earthworm. | <urn:uuid:b83d28d6-1d6e-4fee-8546-04ba86abbd68> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.harunyahya.com/en/books/3007/Prophet_Solomon_(pbuh)/chapter/3416/Prophet_Solomons_(pbuh)_death | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.989661 |
Ready to Learn
Did you know?
- 99 % of homes in the U.S. have one TV and 88% have more than one.
- 64% of children in the U.S. watch TV for at least one hour per day.
- In a typical day, the average amount of time children spend watching TV is 2 hours and 45 minutes.
- In 60% of U.S. homes, the TV is on during mealtimes - breakfast, lunch or dinner.
- In an average preschooler's home, the TV is on for more than half of his/her waking hours.
- In almost 1/2 of homes in the U.S., there are no rules about TV - what shows can be watched, when the TV has to be turned off, etc...
- The average American child grows up with 3 TVs, 3 tape players, 3 radios, 2 VCRs, 2 CD players, 1 computer, 1 video game player.
- More than 9 out of 10 food ads on Saturday morning television are for sugary cereals and candy bars, salty canned foods, fatty fast foods and chips and other nutritionally flawed foods.
- While the level of violence in prime-time television is about 5 violent acts per hour, the level of violence in children's Saturday morning programming is about 32 violent acts per hour.
- Children who watch a large number of aggressive programs also tend to hold attitudes and values that favor the use of aggression to resolve conflicts.
- The average child sees more than 20,000 TV commercials in one year.
Facts, figures and Information provided by Kids & Media, a report by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, and Advocates for Children & Youth TV Campaign. | <urn:uuid:4ef4f764-0ca1-4c12-b408-da7ba7be7040> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.keet.org/single.php?nav=page&id=0000000028 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94063 |
Alexander Runciman was a Scottish painter of historical and mythological subjects. He spent five years in Rome before returning to Edinburgh where in 1772 he became master of the Trustees? Academy. This miniature pencil drawing by John Brown was created in 1785, the year of Runciman?s sudden death. Brown was therefore keen to point out that he had drawn his sitter `ad vivam? ? from the life. Runciman?s hands rest on a book entitled `Ossian?: James MacPherson?s translations of ancient Gaelic poetry supposedly by the third-century Scottish bard. Several years earlier Runciman had decorated parts of Sir John Clerk?s Penicuik House with large-scale murals. His famous ceiling of `Ossian?s Hall? depicted narrative scenes from these poems. Sadly all murals were destroyed in a fire in 1899. | <urn:uuid:93985811-0a99-43a9-a010-bd38f645f810> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/subjects/Scottish%20literature/502974/artist_name/John%20Brown/record_id/6715 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981434 |
And why not? Weimar is little more than an hour's drive on the autobahn
from the border and, for Germans, travel between the two nations is now possible with virtually no red tape at all. Besides, as the cradle of German literature and culture, this city of about 60,000 has long been something of a mecca for Germans.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose position in the development of German literature is comparable to that of Shakespeare in the English-speaking world, lived and wrote here for many years. So did the famous poet and dramatist Friedrich von Schiller, the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, and the philosopher and critic Johann Gottfried von Herder. Lucas Cranach, one of the principal artists of the Reformation, painted here and died here. And other great names are associated with Weimar, including that of Walter Gropius, considered the founder of the Bauhaus school of architecture.
All have left their mark on Weimar. The houses of Goethe and Schiller are open to the public today, as are adjacent museums spotlighting their works. Liszt's house, furnished as it was when he died in 1886, is also open. The paintings of Lucas Cranach and his son, Lucas Cranach the Younger, are among the priceless artworks in Weimar Castle.
This rich cultural and historic tradition is one of the crucial overlays to any visit to Weimar or, for that matter, any journey through much of East Germany today. But there are at least two others. One is the dramatic failure of communist systems here and in the rest of Eastern Europe, combined with the electricity and anticipation of an uncertain, but promising, future. The second is the presence of very visible reminders of a devastating war and a sad, inglorious past.
Throughout the country, a great sense of excitement and anticipation has dominated the months leading up to today's election of a new governing party. Everywhere in the streets and bars and coffeehouses, the talk is not just of the election - the first free vote here in decades - but of the anticipated union of the two German nations.
"We are one people," say the posters of the Christian Democrats.
And what of the Communists? "I think the Communist Party is kaput here," said Felix Severt, of Magdenburg, a retiree, as he paused during a recent visit to the town of Wittenberg. "They will get 5 percent (of the vote), no more."
The election is a promise of changes to come - changes that will continue to lend excitement and purpose to any trip to East Germany this year, despite the fact that it's still not easy for Americans to go beyond East Berlin. Although there are rumors of plans to drop visa requirements for Americans, it
hasn't happened yet. This means that planning for an East German visit must begin at least two months in advance. To get a visa, it's necessary to reserve and pay for hotels ahead of time.
LIKE 1960 IN THE WEST
Travel in East Germany right now is reminiscent in some ways of travel to West Germany 25 or 30 years ago. Hotels are more expensive, but, for Americans, food and shopping are incredibly cheap, and everyday life simply does not measure up to Western standards. Yes, East Germany is behind, not as far as many might expect, but behind nevertheless.
"Fifty years (behind)," said Hans-Joachim Schumann, a retired Fiat executive from West Germany who had returned, deed in hand, to reclaim the home his father left in 1955.
"Oh, no; 50 years is too much," said his wife, Renate, as they dined at the White Swan restaurant in Weimar. "Maybe 20 or so."
At the White Swan (adjacent to the Goethe House; probably the best restaurant in Weimar; reservations a must), it is possible to dine a la carte on venison steak served in a perfect mushroom-currant sauce, with soup, potato, vegetable and dessert, for $5. Add a bottle of wine and drinks: perhaps $8. And the food is excellent.
Elsewhere, decent lunches and dinners - full meals - can be had for a
dollar or two, and they will be adequate; just don't expect gourmet quality. A bottle of beer might cost 50 cents; a cup of coffee and a piece of cake $1.
Hotels are more expensive. They range from adequate to very good, with prices for a double room, per night, of $65 to $85 in the first category, and $100 or more in the second. If the cost is below $50, you probably don't want the hotel.
What many travelers will notice most about East Germany is that Westernization - some might say Americanization - simply doesn't exist. The distinct lack of visible commercial enterprise - neon, colorful advertising signs, street vendors, larger cars - lends the air of another era to all but the largest cities, where giant "socialist" architecture tends to dominate.
Weimar itself, by almost any definition, is a lovely city to visit, nestled in a tranquil valley along the Ilm River. There are three major parks in town, and the Ilm flows through the largest and most beautiful of them, known officially as the Park on the Ilm, but unofficially as Goethe Park. The park was laid out by Goethe himself, and the great writer spent some of his time in a small cottage on the river's east bank, also a tourist shrine.
Weimar suffered some damage in World War II, but not nearly as much as many other German cities. With its city center now closed to all but pedestrian traffic, and its narrow streets and old churches and castles, the town maintains a pleasant, almost medieval air.
There is a dark side: The infamous Buchenwald concentration camp, where 65,000 men, women and children died at the hands of the Nazis, is five miles outside of town. It's a must visit for anybody who comes to Weimar, a city that is, after all, perhaps best known as the seat of the old Weimar Republic, the weak German government that immediately preceded Adolf Hitler's rise to power. There's no sign of Hitler or the Weimar Republic here today, not a trace, although the Weimar government met in what is now the National Theater.
SOVIETS ON DUTY
While the two German nations move toward unification, no visitor can ignore the fact that this is still very much an occupied country. Uniformed Soviet soldiers are often seen on the street, as are army trucks and other vehicles of deep olive-drab color, with little red and white circles on the doors that contain the hammer and sickle and the letters "CA"- for Soviet Army.
There's a big Soviet army post on the outskirts of Weimar, near Buchenwald, and two major Soviet cemeteries. One, in the Park on the Ilm, is for Soviet soldiers killed in the battle to take Weimar, and the other, on the hill just outside town where Belvedere Castle stands, contains graves of Soviet forces who occupied the area immediately after the war, and some of their dependents.
There is no better way to pick up the right mood for a stay in Weimar than by visiting the Goethe Cafe, on Wielandstrasse in the center of town, for a cup of coffee and a pastry or crepe. Most likely you'll have to share a small table with somebody else; one of the more pleasant aspects of traveling in either East or West Germany is the fact that others are often seated - or freely seat themselves - with you.
Under such circumstances, one might easily meet, as a recent visitor did, a young man from Mozambique who works in a nearby tractor factory; a Hanoi woman studying electrical engineering in Leipzig; a West German engineer and his wife on vacation, or an East German woman about to join the capitalist ranks by opening a bed-and-breakfast in her home.
All seemed to share some common interest in Weimar's culture and literary past. Virtually no one, for example, comes to Weimar without roaming through Goethe's house on the Frauenplan, where he lived for most of the time between 1782 and 1832, and where he wrote most of his major works, including his most famous, Faust.
Playing on an ancient myth, Faust is a dramatic poem about a learned man who makes a pact with the devil in an attempt to find absolute truth and the meaning of existence, but instead dies bitter and disillusioned. Even today, it is considered the singular masterpiece of German literature. This and other works gave Goethe a position of unprecedented esteem in the literary and intellectual circles of his time.
Passing through his house today, one is struck by both its large size, and the expensive and cultured tastes of the man who lived there - the collection of Greco-Roman plaster casts, the frescoes, friezes, oil paintings and engravings, the many art objects from the poet's sojourn in Italy in 1786-88. The nearby house of Goethe's friend Schiller, also on the Weimar pilgrimage list, is tiny by comparison, as are Herder's and that of Liszt, although all reflect the status and tastes of the 19th-century upper class.
And how did Goethe and others of such high intellectual pursuits come to gather in Weimar? Much of the answer lies with Duke Karl August of Weimar, an enlightened ruler who gathered many talented writers and artists at his court. Goethe, in fact, held responsible positions in the Weimar government of Karl August for a decade in the late 18th century, at a time in his life when he found it particularly difficult to be creative. And the duke continued to pay Goethe long after he stopped work at the court, assuring him of the time and independence necessary to write.
Like Goethe and his colleagues, Duke Karl August is well remembered in Weimar, the most prominent reminder being a large equestrian statue that overlooks Weimar Castle.
One could go on indefinitely about the collection of art and antiquities in Weimar Palace, or in the Wittums Palace and Wieland Museum in another part of town, for that matter. Or the wonders of Tiefurt or Belvedere castles, on the city's outskirts. Weimar's treasures of art, literature and culture dwarf those of European cities many times its size, and would be the envy of any American museum curator.
Potential travelers to Weimar must take this richness into account. This is not Dresden, where one comes to see the great art collections but finds little else, thanks largely to Allied terror bombings near the close of World War II. Weimar rates some time and care; three days would seem the minimum.
Perhaps the most pleasant way to see the city is to plan a visit around its biggest park, the aforementioned Park an der Ilm. The park was laid out from Goethe's plans between 1778 and 1828 and is without doubt the city's most tranquil setting. Goethe's summer home is on the river's east side, and Karl August's - the Roman House - is on the opposite bank.
Most of the museums and sights are either in the park, at its edge, or within five minutes' walk. The Weimar Castle Museum is on the park's north boundary; the Goethe House nearby; the Liszt House a five-minute walk from there, and the Roman House another five minutes beyond. Goethe's summer house is less than 10 minutes across a foot bridge over the Ilm. In the center of town, at the Weimar Information Bureau, a combined ticket to eight museums can be purchased for three East marks, five pfennigs - a little over 50 cents.
One recent Sunday morning at the Liszt House, where there is a resident
caretaker, the smell of cooking rose from the first-floor kitchen to mingle with the notes of one of the Hungarian composer's piano concertos emerging
from upstairs speakers. It was an eerie moment, standing alone in the house, beside Liszt's grand piano, in the room where he composed and played and where many of his students practiced. Of all Weimar's public properties, it is Liszt's that seems to have the most character and authenticity, due in no small measure to its tranquil setting and because it is not overrun with tourists, as are the Goethe and Schiller houses.
While these two houses have adjoining museums full of letters and personal effects of the two writers, most of the original manuscripts and valuable literary documents are in the Goethe-Schiller Archive, another of Weimar's great treasures. The archive is not open to the general public, but it seems worth noting that it is the largest literary archive anywhere in the German language.
Perhaps the only other Weimar shrine that can't be bypassed is the tomb where both Schiller and Goethe are interred in carved oak caskets, along with the remains of Karl August and his family. The tomb in Weimar Cemetery was originally built for the ducal family in 1818, but Schiller's body was brought to the mausoleum in 1826 and Goethe's in 1832, the year he died.
Approaching the mausoleum up a long path through the cemetery, a visitor can appreciate its Classical style, with open columns, wide gables and a conical crest atop a flat pavilion roof. But there is one startling incongruity: The "onion" domes of a Russian Orthodox church, which appear to be sprouting from the roof.
The church was added at the rear of the mausoleum in 1860 as a burial site for the Weimar grand duchess Maria Pawlowna, the daughter of Russian Czar Paul I. On one recent Sunday morning, a group of Russian tourists from Moscow was participating in a service here, as West German tourists visited the Goethe- Schiller tomb on the opposite side.
While German tourists continue to throng the bookstores, coffeehouses and other stores along the pedestrian ways of Wielandstrasse and Schillerstrasse in Weimar, the strain of changing times shows through, as it does elsewhere in East Germany. A coffeehouse closes early; no help to run the place, says the owner. Belvedere Castle is closed, "for renovations." So is the Herder Museum, although nobody seemed to be working on either place during a weekday visit. Same for the huge reconstruction project on Market Place in the center of Weimar. And, at the edge of the park, the 530-bed Hotel Belvedere is ''under construction" and scheduled for an opening this year. But where are the workers?
"I guess they've gone to work in the West," said a woman waiting at the bus stop near the hotel.
But there are other signs of change as well. On the same Monday morning, in the square in front of the National Theater, a large, panel-body truck was parked, thronged on one side by a crowd of shoppers. Boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables - oranges, strawberries, bananas, cauliflower, tomatoes, cucumbers, kiwi fruit - were stacked on a makeshift wooden table.
The two men selling the vegetables and fruit were from West Germany, they said, and this was only the third Monday that they'd driven across the border to Weimar to pursue their capitalist venture.
While a nearby grocery store with some forlorn and shrunken oranges in its
window was empty except for its proprietor, the West Germans were doing a terrific business: cauliflower, 4.5 marks a head; oranges, 3.5 marks for a small bag or 1.8 marks per kilogram; strawberries, 4 marks a box. And these were West German marks, which trade at 3 East to one West at the official rate and close to double that on the black market.
"But only West (German) marks," cautioned the vendor. "We can only take West marks." | <urn:uuid:644359ac-e81a-4d6f-92ef-f7cae7ac1624> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.philly.com/1990-03-18/news/25902098_1_goethe-and-schiller-east-germany-today-german-literature | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96946 |
Secrets of immunologic memory
Posted January 30, 2010on:
Investigators at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have discovered a new way the cell surface protein, CD44, helps specific T helper (Th1) cells develop immunologic memory. Linda Bradley, Ph.D., Bas Baaten, Ph.D., and colleagues determined that without CD44, Th1 cells died off during their initial immune response and were unable to generate immunologic memory. This is the first time scientists have identified this unique CD44 function on Th1 cells, making the protein a potential target to treat a variety of diseases. The study was published online on January 14 in the journal Immunity.
CD44, a protein found on many cell types throughout the body, binds to the glycan hyaluronic acid (HA) in the extracellular matrix. When T helper cells are activated by infection, they upregulate (increase the activity of) CD44. Though CD44 is a marker for these “experienced” cells, its function has remained elusive. T cells are important components in the body’s defense against diseases and, as memory cells, provide immunity to subsequent infections.
“In various infections and autoimmune conditions, Th1 cells are often the bad guys,” said Dr. Bradley. “They can contribute to disease by overproducing cytokines and are often responsible for the disease pathology. Our findings reveal an opportunity to harness CD44 to control this pathogenesis.”
The Bradley laboratory used T cells lacking CD44 that recognized a protein fragment in the influenza virus. Noting that the T cells did not survive and were unable to generate immunologic memory, the laboratory determined that CD44 protected the cells from programmed cell death initiated by the Fas receptor. This protective effect was specific to a subset of T cells, the Th1 cells, and mediated by the PI 3 kinase pathway. The researchers also demonstrated that survival of the cells could be controlled by antibodies capable of modulating CD44 signaling. | <urn:uuid:95118a56-1187-42dd-aae9-3cc99a5e57df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://biosingularity.com/2010/01/30/secrets-of-immunologic-memory/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952244 |
NOSE OF MICROPROSOPUS.
661. WE have learned it in the "Book of
Concealed Mystery." The nose of Microprosopus. From the nose is the
countenance known. In this nose is diverse symbolism.
662. For it is written, Ps. xviii. 8: "There
a smoke out of His nose, 1
and fire out of His mouth devoured; coals were kindled by it."
663. "There went up a smoke out of His nose."
In this smoke are included both the fire and the burning coals; for there is
no smoke without fire, neither fire without smoke. Truly all things result (herefrom:
otherwise, are kindled herein) and go forth from His nose.
664. Also we have learned that when these three
things are associated together which are included in that smoke which issueth
from the nose, the nose 2 is lengthened.
665. And therein are two colours, for the smoke
bloweth and rusheth forth black and red; and they call it AP, 3
Aph, wrath; and ChIMH, Chimah, fervour; and MShChITh,
666. And if thou sayest wrath and fervour, it
is well, since it is written, Deut. ix. 19: "Since I have feared because of
wrath and fervour." For these are the black and red smoke. But whence is added
MShChITh, Meshachith, perdition?
667. Because it is written, Gen. xiii. 10:
"Before that Tetragrammaton destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah." But the word ShChTh,
Shachith, denoted perdition brought about by burning, kindled fire.
668. Also we have learned that there are five 4
GBVRAN, Geboran, severities in this conformation of Microprosopus, and they
ascend in one thousand and four hundred severities, GBVRAN; and they are
His nose, and in His mouth, and in His arms, and in His hands, and in His
669. And therefore is it written, Ps. cvi. 2:
"Who can declare the GBVRVTh, Geburoth, powers of Tetragrammaton?"
670. Hence it is written, "powers" Geburoth (in
the plural number); and it is written, 1 Chron. xxix. ii: "Thine! O
Tetragrammaton, are Gedulah and Geburah," 1 in
the singular (number).
671. Assuredly thus have we learned. When all
those severities are amalgamated into one, then are they called one Geburah,
672. And all those powers, Geboran, commence to
descend from the nose. And from it depend a thousand times a thousand and four
hundred myriads in their single (form). 2
673. And from that smoke which issueth from his
nose depend a thousand times a thousand myriads, and four hundred and five
which belong to this (idea of) Severity. 3
For all the severities depend from this nose.
674. For it is written, Ps. cxlv. 4: "From
generation unto generation shall they praise thy works, and announce thy
675. And when that GBVRH, Geburah,
Strength, commenceth (to be manifested), all the severities radiate
thence, and are sharpened, until they descend in the form of a swift, whirling
fire-flaming sword (Gen. iii. 24.)
676. It is written, Gen. xix. 13: "For we will
destroy this place." Also it is written, Gen. xiii. 10: "Before that
Tetragrammaton destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah?" And again, Gen. xix. 24: "Tetragrammaton
rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah."
677. Assuredly thus have we learned: There is
no judge over the wicked, but they themselves convert the measure of Mercy
into a measure of judgment.
678. But how do they convert it thus? Also it
is written, Mal. iii. 6: "I, Tetragrammaton, change not."
679. Assuredly as many times as the Ancient of
the Ancient Ones and that White Head uncovereth the benevolence of
benevolences, great mercies are found everywhere.
680. But when that is not uncovered, all the
judgments of Microprosopus are prepared; and in this manner, if it be
permitted us to say so, Mercy becometh judgment; that is, the most Ancient One
681. We have learned in Barietha 1:
"When the Ancient of the Ancient Ones uncovereth the benevolence of
benevolences, all those lights which are called by a similar name shine, and
Mercy is found in all things."
682. But when that Concealed One of the
Concealed Ones is not uncovered, and those lights shine not, judgments are
stirred up, and judgment is exercised.
683. Who therefore is the cause of that
judgment? The benevolence of the benevolences, because it is not uncovered,
and therefore do sinners change Mercy into judgment (as regardeth
684. But because this is said, Gen. xix. 24:
"From Tetragrammaton out of heaven," it is said concerning Zauir Anpin,
685. And whence is this obtained? Because it is
written (in the preceding passage): MN HShMIM, Men Ha-Shamayim,
out of heaven. (But the word
HShMIM Ha-Shamayim, is equivalent to) ASh VMIM, 1
Ash Ve-Mim, fire and water, Mercy and judgment, in the antithesis of
that (condition) wherein no Judgment is found at all.
686. We have learned that this nose (of
Microprosopus) is short, 2 and when the smoke
commenceth to issue therefrom, it departeth thence swiftly, and judgment is
687. But what hindereth that nose that it may
not produce smoke? The nose of the Ancient and Holy One; for He is also called
before all others ARK APIM, Arikh Aphim, Long of Nose.
688. And this is the Arcanum which we have
learned: Between the two words, IHVH, IHVH, Tetragrammaton, Tetragrammaton, an
accent is interpolated 3 (whensoever these two
are found in juxtaposition in Scripture).
689. For wheresoever an y name is repeated
twice over, a distinction is made (between them), as when it is said,
Gen. xxii. 11, "Abraham, Abraham;" also, Gen. xlvi. 2, "Jacob, Jacob;" also, 1
Sam. iii. 10, "Samuel, Samuel;" where, by the Psiq accent, these pairs
of names are distinguished; excepting that place, Exod. iii. 4, "Moses,
Moses," where no accent interveneth.
690. For what reason? "Abraham, Abraham," Gen.
xxii. xx (herein therefore is an accent
that) the latter (of these two names) denoteth that which is
perfect, but the former that which is not as yet perfect; for at this time he
is perfected with ten temptations, and therefore is the (Psiq) accent
interpolated, for. at this time he can hardly be said to be the same man as he
691. (When it is said), "Jacob, Jacob"
(Gen. xlvi. 2), the latter denoteth that which is perfect, the former that
which is not as yet perfect; for now the messenger had come to him from his
son Joseph, and over him was the Schechinah at rest.
692. Also, now at this time was perfected in
the earth the holy tree, similar unto the Supernal One, in having twelve
limitations and seventy branches, 1 which were
not hitherto completed; and therefore the latter denoteth that which is
perfect, and the former that which is not as yet perfect; whence the accent
falleth between them.
693. In the passage, "Samuel, Samuel" (1 Sam.
iii. 10), an accent is also interpolated: wherefore? The latter name denoteth
that which is perfect; the former that which is not as yet perfect; for now he
is a prophet, whereas before this he was not as yet a prophet.
694. But when it is said, Exod. iii. 4: "Moses,
Moses," no accent is interpolated, because he was perfect from the very day of
his birth, seeing it is written, Exod. ii. 2: "And she saw him, that he was
695. So also here between these two names of
Tetragrammaton, Exod. xxxiv. 6, the Psiq accent is interpolated; for
the first is indeed a perfect name, but the latter is thoroughly and
696. But Moses speaketh thus in the place of
judgment, in order that for them he may cause Mercy to
descend upon Microprosopus from the Most Holy
697. For thus is the tradition. So great was
the virtue of Moses that he could make the measures of Mercy descend.
698. And when the Ancient One is uncovered
toward Microprosopus all things are beheld in the light of Mercy, and the nose
is appeased, and fire and smoke issue not therefrom.
699. Like as it is written, Isa. xlviii. 9:
"And with my praise will I defer mine anger for thee."
700. Also we have learned: The nose hath two
nostrils. From the one issueth a flaming smoke, and it entereth into the
opening of the Great Abyss.
701. And from the other nostril issueth afire
which is kindled by its flame; and it floweth into four thousand worlds, which
are upon His left side.
702. Truly, he who is the cause of war is
called the fire of Tetragrammaton, the consuming fire, the fire which
consumeth all other fires.
703. And that fire is not mitigated save by the
fire of the altar.
704. And that smoke which issueth forth from
the other nostril is not mitigated unless by the smoke of the sacrifice of the
altar. But all things depend from the nose.
705. Therefore is it written, Gen. viii. 12:
"And Tetragrammaton smelled a sweet savour." For all these are attributed unto
the nose, to smell a savour, and to emit smoke and fire, and red colour, and
therefore is it opposed unto the benevolence (namely, the forehead).
706. And for that cause is it written, Exod.
iv. 14: "And the anger of Tetragrammaton was kindled." Deut. vii. 4: "And the
anger of Tetragrammaton will be kindled." Exod. xxii. 24: "And My wrath is
kindled." Deut. vi. 15: "Lest the wrath of Tetragrammaton be kindled." Which
are all to be understood concerning Zauir Anpin, or Microprosopus.
and left exist in Microprosopus, while in Macroprosopus all is right. The
latter is rather to be symbolised by a profile, as I have before remarked,
than by a full face, as in the case of the former.
ordinary English version renders it "nostrils" and not "nose," but in the
Hebrew the word is singular.
xlviii. 9 is translated in the ordinary English version: "For my name's sake
will I defer mine anger;" but Parkhurst in his Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon,
art. ChTM, says the correct rendering is "for my name's sake will I lengthen
my nose." Knorr de Rosenroth, in his Latin version of § 664, renders it by, "corrugatur,"
which is hardly correct.
word AP, Ath, stands alike for the words "nose" and "anger."
if we carefully examine this obscure passage, I think we shall find that the
number five is the key to unlock its symbolism; for five is the fifth Sephira,
Geburah, GBVRH, Strength or Severity, which operates
through judgment, and ultimately through the numbers and intelligences of the
planet Mars. Now, the 1,400 severities are the fivefold form of RP, Raph,
which = the idea of terror. and RP = 280, which x 5 = 1,400. And the least
number of 1,400 is 1 + 4 + 0 + 0 = 5. Also 1,400 = ATh = chaos, or substance
of anything. Finally, these are extended Into five parts of Macroprosopus--viz.,
nose, mouth, arms, hands, fingers. And the number 5 = H.
Introduction. GBVR (the root being GBR) = 211= IAR, a flood. This is of course
formidable sounding arrangement is only our previous 1,400 considered on
another plane of operation, in the material world.
is 1,400 again in its most material forms in Asiah; the number five at the end
in simply the number of the Sephira of Severity added to the other.
ante, § 388 of this book.
196:1 In the
"Sepher Yetzirah," to which work I have already had occasion to refer more
than once, the letter Sh is aid to symbolize fire, and therefore ShMIM may be
said to be fire and water.
contradistinction to that of Macroprosopus, who is called also Arikh Aphim,
Long of Nose, as well as Arikh Anpin, Vast of Countenance.
accent is called Psiq, and in the grammar of Gesenius is classed as the
twentieth accent, or the fifth of the third series known as the "lesser
distinctives." It is represented by a vertical line placed between the two
words to which it applies. An example of its use is to be found in Exod. xxxiv.
6: "Tetragrammaton, Tetragrammaton (between these two words a Psiq accent
is introduced), merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in
goodness and truth." It is worthy of note that the word here translated
"long-suffering" is ARK APIM, Arikh Aphim, Long of Nose.
is, the Autz Chaiim, or tree of life, composed of the Sephiroth and the
Schemhamphorasch, the former being ten and the latter seventy-two. The twelve
limitations are the twelve sons of Jacob, and the seventy branches the total
number of the combined families.
Chapter XXXIII: Concerning the Ears of Microprosopus | <urn:uuid:a9996a44-dcde-402a-b0a4-0711b1e4ae54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://phoenixmasonry.org/kabbalah/chapter%20XXXII%20%20hga.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926171 |
Higher consumption of some soy products, grains and vegetables linked to reduced risk of lung cancer
A diet higher in plant-derived compounds known as phytoestrogens is linked with a lower lung cancer risk, according to a study in the September 28 issue of JAMA.
Phytoestrogens are plant-derived nonsteroidal compounds found in soy products, grains, carrots, spinach, broccoli, and other fruits and vegetables, according to background information in the article. They have weak estrogen-like activity. The three main classes of phytoestrogens are isoflavones, lignans, and cumestrans. A fourth group of plant-derived steroidal compounds believed to have estrogenic properties are the phytosterols. Phytoestrogens have been shown to have a protective effect against some solid tumors, but there has been little epidemiologic research focused on dietary intake of phytoestrogens and lung cancer risk.
Matthew B. Schabath, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, analyzed data from an ongoing case-control study to examine the relationship between dietary intake of phytoestrogens and the risk of lung cancer. The study included 1,674 patients with lung cancer (cases) and 1,735 matched healthy controls. From July 1995 through October 2003, study participants were personally interviewed to obtain information on demographics, socioeconomics, and smoking history. Women were asked whether they had taken hormone therapy in the previous six months. A food frequency questionnaire was used to collect dietary data on intake of 12 individual phytoestrogens.
"Our main findings were that patients with lung cancer tended to consume lower amounts of phytoestrogens than controls, that there were sex-specific differences both in intake and in protective effects, and that the apparent benefits were evident in both never and current smokers but less so in former smokers," the authors report.
Reduction in lung cancer risk tended to increase with increasing phytoestrogen intake. "The highest quartiles of total phytosterols, isoflavones, lignans, and phytoestrogens were each associated with reductions in risk of lung cancer ranging from 21 percent for phytosterols to 46 percent for total phytoestrogens from food sources only," the authors write.
Sex-specific effects were also apparent. "For men, statistically significant trends for decreasing risk with increasing intake were noted for each phytoestrogen group, with protective effects for the highest quartile of intake ranging from 24 percent for phytosterols to 44 percent for isoflavones, while in women, significant trends were only present for intake of total phytoestrogens from food sources only, with a 34 percent protective effect for the highest quartile of intake," the authors report.
The apparent benefits of high phytoestrogen intake were evident in both current smokers and those who had never smoked, but less apparent in former smokers.
In women, statistically significant joint effects were evident between hormone therapy use and phytoestrogen intake. "Specifically, high intake of the lignans [metabolites] enterolactone and enterodiol and use of hormone therapy were associated with a 50 percent reduction in risk of lung cancer," the authors report.
"In summary, these data provide further support for the limited but growing epidemiologic evidence that estrogens and phytoestrogens are associated with a decrease in risk of lung cancer, especially in never and current smokers," they conclude. "However, confirmation of these findings is still required in large-scale longitudinal studies." (JAMA.2005; 294:1493-1504. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org)
Editor's Note: This study was supported by the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute and Public Health Service grants from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Schabath was also supported by a cancer prevention fellowship, National Cancer Institute grant.
Editorial: Reducing the Risk of Lung Cancer
In an accompanying editorial, Lawrence J. Dacey, M.D., M.S., and David W. Johnstone, M.D., of Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, N.H., urge physicians and other health professionals to talk with their patients about the importance of diet in cancer prevention.
"… patients should be informed that they may further reduce their risk of developing cancer by adopting a diet rich in fruits and vegetables," they write. "Clinicians who actively and aggressively educate their patients and follow up on their efforts to modify their cancer risks will help lessen the great personal suffering and societal burden inflicted by lung cancer." (JAMA.2005; 294:1550-1551. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia.org) | <urn:uuid:a58a5e55-259c-4608-9ab7-67c1eb151651> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://scienceblog.com/community/older/2005/9/200508988.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9587 |
addition to your Free mattress
Allergen test we will also check
your room for temperature and humidity levels. Humidity is a very important
factor in the fight against dust mites.
What is Humidity?
In simple terms, humidity is a measure of how much moisture is in the air.
The most commonly used term for humidity is Relative Humidity. The level of moisture in the air
is influenced by the availability of moisture 'to the air'. On a cold damp
day, the relative humidity may be 90%RH. On a hot dry day the RH% may be
In the days when houses were poorly insulated, the excess moisture easily
escaped from the home. Today, the double-glazing and draught proofing that
keep our homes much better insulated also traps in the excess moisture we
generate. Labour saving appliances such as dishwashers, washing machines
and tumble dryers also contribute to excess moisture in the home, which in
turn leads to condensation and humidity problems.
All air contains moisture and this is only natural, however, there can be
too much. Especially in winter when moisture has been added through our
day-to-day activities, such as boiling a kettle, drying clothes, showering
and even breathing.
A typical family adds as much as 20 pints (11 Litres) of excess moisture
to the air every day
Damaging to your Health...
Humidity can aggravate conditions such as arthritis and rheumatism. High
more house dust-mite activity,
which increases the risk of asthma and allergies.
that if the humidity is too low (20-25%), it can irritate the sinuses and | <urn:uuid:3402e110-04e6-4131-a530-af42305fb3f0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mattresshygiene.com/humidity.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92135 |
Definitions & Terms
Formal Identification Procedure
Definitions and Terms
The following definitions are provided to assist with the understanding of the text and the programming options delivered by the district.
Definition of Gifted and Talented
As defined by the Iowa Code 257.44, gifted and talented children are those identified as possessing outstanding abilities capable of high performance. It includes those students with demonstrated achievement or potential in any or the following areas or in combination with one another:
Formal identification of the talented
and gifted students in Pleasant Valley occurs during the studentsí third grade
year. Thereafter, students identified as talented and gifted will have their
programming needs met, monitored, and modified through the provision of a
Personalized Education Plan (P.E.P.).
Definition of Personalized Education Plan (P.E.P)
is a planning and programming document designed for students who have been
formally identified as gifted. This document is used throughout the studentís
school experiences to articulate needs, plan and provide programming, and
document growth. A P.E.P. is developed by the ELP specialist in collaboration
with a studentís regular education teacher(s) and parent(s).
Definition of ELP
Learning Programming (ELP) is the districtís vehicle for the provision of
services to the gifted and talented students. It includes collaboration with
the classroom teacher for the provision of differentiated instruction,
specialized services and extension opportunities to students in the talent pool
and personalized education plans and instruction for the highly gifted.
Definition of Talent Pool
Talent Pool students are a group of students who meet some of the formal identification criteria and receive enrichment over and above the regular curriculum. Services will be provided based on needs, strengths, or interests of the student.
Definition of ELP
Definition of Talent | <urn:uuid:6903c252-c728-459f-a913-27bf4d149c10> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pleasval.k12.ia.us/ELP/new-definitions&terms.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.918461 |
Reindeer: not just for Christmas
20 December 2011 | News story
Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer may be famous for guiding Santa Claus through the night sky, but reindeer do more than just pull toy-laden sleighs—reindeer are an important food source and serve many ecological functions, yet are also in need of stronger conservation strategies, according to IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).
Reindeer, also known as Caribou (Rangifer tarandus) in North America, are members of the deer family and are the only deer species of which both males and females possess antlers. One of the most amazing things about wild reindeer is the sheer scale of their seasonal migrations—individuals may migrate over 3000 km in a year in search of sheltered climates and food. Reindeer diets vary between seasons, in summer they will eat plants and grasses and in winter they eat lichen and mushrooms. Reindeer have large, rounded hooves that are ideal for walking on snow or rocky surfaces and which are also well designed for digging and swimming.
“For thousands of years people have depended on wild reindeer for food and clothing, and they have become the most widely domesticated deer, says Dr William J. McShea, Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Deer Specialist Group. “Reindeer have developed a cultural identity and spiritual bond which persists today, especially around Christmas time as the reindeer has taken on a protagonist role with traditions all over the world.”
In North America, the number of places where reindeer are found has been greatly reduced – for example, in Canada reindeer are no longer present in the Maritimes. Declines of 40% in British Columbia, 50% in Ontario and 60% in Alberta have also been reported. These declines have been caused by changes in habitat following commercial forestry operations and increased human presence that have also left Reindeer populations small and separated.
In Europe, wild reindeer are found in the mountains and forests of Norway, Finland, and Russia. Poaching is a major threat to reindeer in the Russian Federation, especially as domestic reindeer breeding has declined in many areas. Hunting of reindeer is strictly controlled in eastern Russia and Norway, yet poaching still continues in most of Russia. Reindeer may also be threatened by habitat loss in Finland and increased disturbance in some Norwegian areas due to winter sports.
“The implementation of conservation strategies for reindeer is behind research recommendations,” says Dr Susana Gonzalez, Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Deer Specialist Group. “Some countries have not yet taken a stance on their protection and this must be addressed.”
Today, the conservation needs of reindeer in Canada are recognized by the Canadian government. In Europe, reindeer are protected under the Bern Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats. Although listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™, reindeer populations still need to be monitored and protected to prevent any future declines. | <urn:uuid:351076c6-31c7-4ff3-8bad-827afc02f89c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cms.iucn.org/es/noticias/noticias_por_fecha/2011_news_sp/?8879/Reindeer-not-just-for-Christmas | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959957 |
- Year Published: 1892
- Language: English
- Country of Origin: United States of America
- Source: Munroe, K. (1892). Canoemates: A Story of the Florida Reef and Everglades. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.
- Flesch–Kincaid Level: 9.5
- Word Count: 1,872
Munroe, K. (1892). Chapter VII: “Mysterious Disappearance of the Canoes”. Canoemates: A Story of the Florida Reef and Everglades (Lit2Go Edition). Retrieved May 22, 2013, from
Munroe, Kirk. "Chapter VII: “Mysterious Disappearance of the Canoes”." Canoemates: A Story of the Florida Reef and Everglades. Lit2Go Edition. 1892. Web. <>. May 22, 2013.
Kirk Munroe, "Chapter VII: “Mysterious Disappearance of the Canoes”," Canoemates: A Story of the Florida Reef and Everglades, Lit2Go Edition, (1892), accessed May 22, 2013,.
“THE canoes are gone!” cried Worth.
“It looks like it,” replied Sumner, in an equally dismayed tone.
“Are you sure this is where we left them?” “Yes; sure. There is the stern line that we made fast to the Cupid or what is left of it.”
Sure enough, there was a portion of the light line still fast to the tree, and as Sumner pulled it in, both boys bent over to examine it. It had been broken, and not cut. From its length it must also have been broken close to the canoe.
“Oh, Sumner, what shall we do?” asked Worth, in a tone of such despair that the former at once realized the necessity of some immediate action to divert his comrade’s thoughts.
“Do?” he cried. “There’s plenty to do. First, we’ll go down to that point and take a look to seaward; for, as the tide is running out, they are more likely to have gone in that direction than any other. It would be a comfort even to catch a glimpse of them. Then, perhaps, they have only drifted away, and are stranded on some bar near by. Besides looking for the canoes, we must build some kind of a shelter for the night, cook supper, and discuss our plans for the future. Oh yes, we’ve plenty to do!” While he spoke, the boys were making their way to the point in question, and when they reached it, they eagerly scanned every foot of water in sight. Diagonally to the right from where they stood stretched the long reach of Lower Metacumba, desolate and uninhabited as they knew. Almost directly in front, but several miles away, rose the palm-crowned rocks of Indian Key, with its two or three old shedlike buildings in plain view. These had been used and abandoned years before by the builders of Alligator Light, the slender tower of which they could see rising from the distant waters above the outer reef. Diagonally on the left was the tiny green form of Tea Table Key, and dimly beyond it they could make out the coast of Upper Metacumba, which Sumner said was inhabited. In all this far-reaching view, however, there were no signs of the missing canoes.
“I’m glad of it!” said Sumner, after his long searching gaze had failed to reveal them. “It would be rough to have them in sight but out of reach.”
Already the sun was sinking behind the treetops of Lower Metacumba, fish were leaping in the placid waters, and a few pelican were soaring with steady poise above them. Every now and then these would swoop swiftly down, with a heavy splash that generally sealed the fate of one or more mullet off which the great birds were making their evening meal. A flock of black cormorants, uttering harsh cries, flew overhead with a rushing sound, returning from a day’s fishing to their roosts in the distant Everglades. With these exceptions, and the faint boom of the surf on the outer reef, all was silence and desertion. Besides the lighthouse tower there was no sign of human life, not even the distant glimmer of a sail. While the boys still looked longingly for some trace of their canoes, the sun set, and a red flash, followed at short intervals by two white ones, shot out from the vanishing form of Alligator Light.
“Come!” cried Sumner, heedful of this warning. “Night is almost here, and we have too much to do in every precious minute of twilight to be standing idle. I’ll take the bucket and run to the pond for water, while you cut all the palmetto leaves you possibly can, and carry them to the place where we landed.”
“The bucket?” repeated Worth, looming about him inquiringly. “Where are you going to find it?” Without answering, Sumner sprang down the rocks to the water’s edge, where he had noticed a stranded bamboo, and quickly cut out a short section of it with the hatchet that he had thrust into his belt before leaving the canoes. As he made the cuts just below two of the joints, his section was a hollow cylinder, open at one end, but having a tight bottom and capable of holding several quarts of water. With this he plunged into the forest in the direction of the pond, handing Worth the hatchet as he passed, and bidding him be spry with his palmetto leaves.
A few minutes later, as Sumner emerged from the trees, carrying his full water bucket, and breathless with his haste, he indistinctly saw the form of some animal at the very place where they had left their guns and birds. As the boy dashed forward, uttering a loud cry, the alarmed animal scuttled off into the bushes.
“Oh, you villain!” gasped Sumner as he reached the place, “I’ll settle with you tomorrow, see if I don’t.
Four of the doves had disappeared, and the head was torn from one of the ducks.
“What is it?” cried Worth, in alarm, as he entered the clearing from the opposite side, staggering beneath an immense load of cabbage palm leaves.
“A rascally thieving ’coon,” answered Sumner, “and he has got away with the best part of our provisions, too; but I’ll get even with him yet. Now give me the hatchet, and then pick up all the driftwood you can find, while I build a house.”
Worth would gladly have helped erect the house, as Sumner called it, for he was very curious as to what sort of a structure could be built of leaves, but he realized the necessity of doing as he was bidden, and at once set to work gathering wood. Sumner, after carefully propping his water bucket between two rocks, so as to insure the safety of its contents, began cutting a number of slender saplings, and turning them into poles. The stoutest of these he bound with withes to two trees that stood about six feet apart. He fastened it to their trunks as high as he could reach. Then he bound one end of the longer poles to it, allowing them to slant to the ground behind. Crosswise of these, and about a foot apart, he tied a number of still more slender poles, and over these laid the broad leaves. He would have tied these securely in place if he had had time. As he had not, for it was quite dark before he finished even this rude shelter, he was forced to leave them so, and hope that a wind would not arise during the night. For himself alone he would not have built any shelter, but would have found a comfortable resting place under a tree. Knowing, however, that Worth had never in his life slept without a roof of some kind above him, he thought it best to provide one, and thereby relieve their situation of a portion of the terror with which the city-bred boy was inclined to regard it.
It was curious and interesting to note how a sense of responsibility, and the care of one younger and much more helpless than himself, was developing Sumner’s character. Already the selfishness to which he was inclined had very nearly disappeared, while almost every thought was for the comfort and happiness of his companion. Worth, accustomed to being cared for and having every wish gratified, hardly appreciated this as yet; but the emergencies of their situation were teaching him valuable lessons of prompt obedience and self reliance that he could have gained in no other way.
As Sumner finished his rude lean-to, and placed the guns within its shelter for protection from the heavy night dews, Worth Came up from the beach with his last load of driftwood. It was now completely dark, and the notes of chuckwills-widows were mingling with the “whoo, whoo, whoo ah-h!” of a great hoot owl in the forest behind them.
“’Now for a fire and some supper,” cried Sumner, cheerily. You’ve got some matches, haven’t you?” “I don’t believe I have,” replied Worth, anxiously feeling in his pockets. I thought you must have some.”
“No, I haven’t a sign of one!” exclaimed Sumner, and an accent of hopelessness was for the first time allowed to enter his voice. “They are all aboard the canoes, and without a fire we are in a pretty pickle sure enough. I wonder how hungry we’ll get before we make up our minds to eat raw duck This is worse than losing the canoes. I declare I don’t know what to do.”
“Couldn’t we somehow make a fire with a gun? Seems to me I have read of something of that kind,” suggested Worth.
“Of course we can!” shouted Sumner, springing to his feet. “What a gump I was not to think of it! If we collect a lot of dry stuff and shoot into it, there is bound to be a spark or two that we can capture and coax into a flame.”
So, with infinite pains, they felt around in the dark until they had collected a considerable pile of dry leaves, sticks, and other rubbish that they imagined would easily take fire. Then, throwing a loaded shell into a barrel of his gun, and placing the muzzle close to the collected kindlings, Sumner pulled the trigger. There was a blinding flash, a loud report that rolled far and wide through the heavy night air, and the heap of rubbish was blown into space. Not a leaf remained to show where it had been, and not the faintest spark relieved the darkness that instantly shut in more dense than ever.
“One cartridge spent in buying experience,” remarked Sumner, as soon as he discovered the attempt to be a failure. “Now we’ll try another. If you will kindly collect another pile of kindling, I’ll prepare some fireworks on a different plan.”
Thus saying, he spread his handkerchief on the ground, cut off the crimping of another shell with his pocket knife, carefully extracted the shot and half the powder, and confined the remainder in the bottom of the shell with one of the wads. Then he moistened the powder that he had taken out, and rubbed it thoroughly into the handkerchief, which he placed in the second pile of sticks and leaves that Worth had by this time gathered. A shot taken at this with the lightly charged blank cartridge produced the desired effect. Five minutes later the cheerful blaze of a crackling fire illumined the scene, and banished a cloud of anxiety from the minds of the young castaways. | <urn:uuid:14c7e29f-88d6-48bc-9d46-ea6c9cbb9607> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/152/canoemates-a-story-of-the-florida-reef-and-everglades/2673/chapter-vii-mysterious-disappearance-of-the-canoes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98088 |
Los Angeles is actually a very young city. In the 1700s, most of Los Angeles contained open-space grassland and oak trees. The Los Angeles River and hundreds of other rivers and streams wended their way through the grasslands into the open and pristine ocean.
Populated by the Venturaño, Chumash, Gabrieleño, and Fernandeño Native Americans, the Los Angeles area provided a robust food supply, including seeds, acorns and other plants, as well as coastal sources like fish, shellfish and marine animals.
But beginning in around 1800, settlers, mostly from Spain and Mexico, moved in and began to use the land for cattle grazing and crops. Coastal scrub was converted to grassland, and natural rivers and streams began to be dammed and channelized.
Wetlands, the nurseries for so many important ocean species, began to disappear. When the Southern Pacific Railroad reached the L.A. area in 1876, the region began to develop rapidly, supporting industries like whaling and fishing. With the discovery of oil, planners drained wetlands to make way for oil derricks, particularly near salt-water marshes like Ballona and Del Rey lagoons.
By 1900, Los Angeles had a population of more than 100,000. And with the development of a network of electric trolley cars, coastal areas became desirable places to live. Developments sprang up in Playa del Rey, Santa Monica and Venice. The construction of Venice, begun in 1905, destroyed 160 acres of important marshland in Abbott Kinney’s quest to reproduce the Italian city.
Unfortunately, all of this coastal development led to flooding during wet years.In response, officials established the Los Angeles County Flood Control District in 1915. Creeks that had been roughly channelized back in the 1800s began to be turned into the huge system of concrete tunnels that form our current stormwater system. By moving water so rapidly to the sea, wetlands eventually dried up. Today, only 5% of our historic wetlands remain.
In 1940, Los Angeles’ population totaled 2.8 million people. By 2000, it neared 9.9 million. All that growth meant a lot more pollution. Until the 1970s, and the passage of the Clean Water Act , sewage often flowed untreated into the Bay. The law permitted chemical companies to discharge into the sewage system, leaving a deposit of more than 110 metric tons of DDT and PCB on the Palos Verdes shelf. This deposit remains in the ocean, and in fact has been designated an EPA SuperFund site (meaning it’s one of the most polluted spots in the United States and needs immediate attention).
All of the sewage and chemical waste began to smother marine life in the Bay. In the early 1980s, scientists found dead zones in our regional seas. Fish had fin rot, and dolphins had tumors. The Santa Monica Bay was in serious need of help. As Heal the Bay and other concerned parties got involved, sewage began to be more completely treated. By the early 1990s, the health of local oceans had begun to improve. Today, habitats are recovering, and species are rebounding. Because the largest threat to marine life is now stormwater (no longer sewage), it’s up to us individually to take the final steps towards protecting the ocean and marine life. | <urn:uuid:6b2cab04-bd06-489d-8e05-a894783e4497> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.healthebay.org/about-bay/history-bay | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954581 |
(This post is adapted from two questions I answered on Quora.)
Why do a spider’s legs curl up when it dies?
The explanation was provided by Pritesh Kalantri: Spider legs extend due to hydraulic pressure, not muscular action, so when the hydraulics are turned off (as when the spider dies) the muscles that contract the legs have no opposing action, and the legs curl up.
This was new to me, and I quickly found what seems to be the original paper establishing this fascinating fact: Parry, D. A., R. H. J. Brown: The hydraulic mechanism of the spider leg. J. Exp. Biol. 36 (1959a) 423–433.
|A helpful diagram should you decide to test hydraulic pressure in your own spider’s legs. This can be used with live spiders, as needed.
|A more detailed view of spider anatomy
1. The blood pressure inside the leg of the house spider Tegenaria atrica has been measured. Maintained pressures of about 5 cm. Hg and transient pressures of up to 40 cm. Hg have been found.
2. The relation between the blood pressure in the leg and the extension torque at the hinge joints has been established.
3. Considerable torques can be developed at the hinge joints during extension, for example, when accelerating a mass fixed to the leg. The transient pressures found to arise in the leg are adequate to account for these torques.
4. The hydraulic mechanism is discussed. The available evidence suggests that the pressure found in the legs occurs also in the prosoma but not in the abdomen, in which case the maintained pressure must be due to the heart. This, however, requires further investigation.
We are greatly indebted to the Cambridge Instrument Company for the loan of a photo-electric transducer; and also to many friends who have supplied us with spiders.
However, a little further research suggests that hydraulic activity is not the only mechanism for spider leg movement.
In large spiders such as A. concolor, the advantage of strong leg flexion remains valid. Here, during jumps and starts, the net propulsive power is shifted more to their front legs. In contrast to jumping spiders, the ground reaction forces of the frontal legs and the second legs are as strong as those exerted by the hind legs. … It seems that depending on the spider’s body size both hydraulics and muscular leg flexion contribute, to variable degrees, to the propulsion of the hind legs.
– Hydraulic leg extension is not necessarily the main drive in large spiders.
J Exp Biol. 2012 Feb 15;215(Pt 4):578-83. doi: 10.1242/jeb.054585.
Weihmann T, Günther M, Blickhan R.
This led inevitably to the next question: If you accidentally sever a spider’s leg, will the leg bleed?
It does bleed, but there is a special mechanism that prevents too much loss of fluid. Here is an explanation from a 1957 paper:
|Figure 3. Anatomy of a spider leg, showing the mechanism by which fluid loss is minimized if the leg is severed
Unlike Crustacea and insects, spiders autotomize their legs at a functional
joint and an account is given of the interesting mechanism by which the joint is severed and bleeding restricted. …
THE AUTOTOMY MECHANISM
‘Autotomie’ was defined by Fredericq (1883) as ‘mutilation par voie reflexe comme moyen de defense chez les animaux’. Usage has since widened the term to embrace all cases of fracture of limbs and other structures at a specific point where structural adaptations associated with the fracture mechanism and reduction of bleeding are found to occur.
… I have shown above (see fig. 3, A-D) that in Tegenaria the coxal muscles are all inserted on to a ring of sclerites which fit into a groove in the proximal rim of the trochanter. The joint fractures between these sclerites and the trochanter, and the coxal muscles then pull the articular membrane proximally while at the same time the sclerites converge on one another (fig. 3, E) so that a comparatively small hole is left in which the blood rapidly clots and which after a day or two is sealed by a brown plate.
– Spider Leg-muscles and the Autotomy Mechanism
D. A. PARRY
Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Vol. 98, part 3, pp. 331-340, Sept. 1957. | <urn:uuid:baadb836-a474-47d7-96b4-a383bf2d69f4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iayork.com/MysteryRays/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919636 |
The Austrian writer and painter Roma Ceija Stojka, survivor of Nazi concentration camps and whose work refers to the Nazi persecution against Gypsies, died January 28 at the age of 79 years a hospital in Vienna, announced its editor Karin Berger Austrian news agency APA.
Born into a Roma family, Roma-Lovara, Ceija Stojka was deported by the Nazis and spent his childhood in three concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau (southern Poland), Ravensbrück (northeast of the Germany) and Bergen-Belsen (northern Germany).
Survivor of the death camps, she told her experience and life in a work published in 1988 that became famous: “Wir leben im Verborgenen – Errinerungen einer Rom-Zigeunerin” (“We live in hiding. Recollections of a Roma-gypsy “). She then released “Reisende dieser Welt auf” (“Voyageuse of this world”) in 1992, following the first film.
“I took the pen to write, because I needed to open up, shouting,” she explained in 2004 at a conference at the Jewish Museum Vienna.
Ceija Stojka did not merely write about the fate of the Roma minority under the Nazi regime. She also made several paintings, including “Die Finsternis von Bergen-Belsen” (“Darkness Bergen-Belsen”), describing life inside the camp.
She has received several awards, including the Prix Bruno Kreisky policy for the book in 1993.
“Ceija Stojka was convinced that the peaceful community life can not exist with a constant dialogue and knowledge of history,” said the Austrian Minister of Culture Claudia Schmied. | <urn:uuid:dcb5998f-dc1d-4dfc-9ee6-35ddd62e46e4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.plusthings.com/death-of-writer-rom-ceija-stojka-survivor-of-nazi-concentration-camps/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954329 |
Watching Your Sugar Intake
One factor in a healthy diet is the amount of sugar consumed. Sugar comes in many forms, including white sugar, brown sugar, raw sugar, corn syrup, honey and molasses. It provides you with calories, but little else nutritionally, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To avoid getting too many calories from sugar, try to limit the amount of sugars added to your diet to 6 teaspoons a day if you eat about 1,600 calories, 12 teaspoons at 2,200 calories or 18 teaspoons at 2,800 calories. Added sugar doesn't just mean the sugar you add at the table, but also the sugar found in candy, soft drinks, jams, jellies and other sweetened foods. | <urn:uuid:b335c296-1efe-453c-8682-f6ad0c9eb478> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://healthcare.utah.edu/healthlibrary/related/doc.php?type=20&id=641 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.935089 |
George P Stewart, shown here, founded the Indianapolis Recorder newspaper in 1895 with Will Porter. / Indianapolis Recorder Collection, Indiana Historic
Originally published in The Indianapolis Star in February 1990
Excluded from white society and suffering under the restraints of second-class citizenship, black Americans once lacked the voice whites enjoyed in the form of newspapers and magazines.
Black newspapers sought to fill that void beginning in the 1820s, reporting the events and opinions largely ignored by their general-market counterparts.
The black press in Indiana dates to The Indianapolis Leader, founded in 1879. In 1880, the Leader - which adopted the Republican philosophy embraced by many black Americans at the time - was one of 30 such newspapers in the United States.
The Leader was Indiana's only black newspaper until 1882, when The Colored World (later known as Indianapolis World) appeared.
Other black newspapers in Indiana included The Freeman, founded in 1884 and designed for a national audience, and The Indianapolis Recorder, which would outlast its predecessors.
The Recorder, America's third-oldest black newspaper of continuous publication, observed its 100th anniversary on June 1, 1995.
The Indiana Herald, founded by former Recorder managing editor Opal L. Tandy, first appeared on local newsstands in 1959, and in 1990 Bea Moten-Foster launched the Muncie Times.
The Indianapolis Recorder
Founded by George P. Stewart, a Vincennes High School graduate who studied printing in his brother Clarence's tiny shop, The Indianapolis Recorder grew from a small advertising publication, originally known as the Directory, to a full-sized newspaper.
The Recorder was a champion of equality, addressing issues such as public accommodations. It also spoke out against retailers who benefited from black patronage but wouldn't advertise in black newspapers.
Its alumni include William Raspberry, who began his career at The Recorder in the 1950s and later became a syndicated columnist for The Washington Post. | <urn:uuid:2c73f092-266d-47a2-8ce0-0aeca364355f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indystar.com/article/99999999/NEWS06/110125026 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967502 |
Asking how intelligent fish are is a relatively new question. It is new in the sense that until fairly recently, the general consensus was that fish had no intelligence and simply reacted to various stimuli like mindless little robots. Gradually, more evidence has accumulated from a range of different studies to suggest that, far from being brainless, fish have excellent cognitive abilities and are able to learn quickly and effectively in a wide variety of circumstances. Much of this research has concerned coral reef fishes, which have to behave adaptively in these "cities of the sea."
Do young fish have any in-built knowledge?
A newly hatched fish is extremely vulnerable to a horde of potential predators. Recognizing what can and what cannot eat you is a vitally important skill for all fish. The problem with learning is that it requires experience, yet an early encounter with a predator can be deadly, allowing no second chance and no opportunity for learning. Young fish, therefore, have an innate ability to recognize predators.
This ability is not learned, but instead is encoded in the genes. It has been shown that humbug damselfish are able to recognize what does and does not present a threat. They do this by responding to certain characteristics of the fish that they encounter, particularly the configuration of their face and their size. The information they use is simple but important -- large eyes and a large mouth spell danger, smaller features are less perilous, even on an equally large fish. Accordingly, vulnerable fry show less fear of the latter.
It is not just the looks of a novel fish that can set off alarm bells in the minds of inexperienced fish; they also respond strongly to the behavior of a stranger. Large trumpetfish stalk reefs hunting for small, unwary juvenile fish, yet they are mostly ignored by their prey unless they assume their characteristic strike pose. Predatory fish often "point" themselves towards their prey, much as a cat gathers itself before pouncing, and it is this threatening posture that the young fish respond to by fleeing.
Can fish learn through experience?
Intelligence is about more than just being born with a blueprint for life encoded in the genes. To be adaptable, animals need to be able to learn. Even starfish are capable of learning basic things: for example, new ways of righting themselves if they are overturned by an inquisitive fish or a wave surge. The living reef is home to a huge number of different organisms, some of which are worth investigating by a young fish to determine their suitability as food. But obviously these organisms are none too keen on ending up as lunch and often have quite formidable defenses, including tough shells or toxicity. Fish gradually overcome these defenses, improving over time as they learn through trial and error the most efficient ways of dealing with their quarry. One good example is the way that fish such as puffers and triggers blow a powerful jet of water to overturn sea urchins, thereby accessing their vulnerable underparts. In most cases, studies have shown that fish confronted by novel prey go from novice to peak performance over the course of approximately five generations. This often leads to fish specializing on a particular type of prey, one they have become particularly adept at finding and eating. | <urn:uuid:a384e522-2180-46f6-b3a0-ccc49cbf1767> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://infolific.com/pets/coral-reef-life/fish-intelligence/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975143 |
What is NOT protected by copyright?
by Mike Goad
Figuring out what is protected by copyright can often
be better answered by understanding what is not protected.
Copyright protection is only for those elements of any
work by an author that are original and
fixed in some tangible means. (See
What is copyright).
U.S. copyright law excludes a number of different
things that are found in many, if not most, works.
Copyright protection for a work does not extend to pre-existing
material. It is only provided for those portions of a work that result from
A composer is researching a
music copyright to determine if it has expired for a piece that has a
segment he wants to use in his composition. He determines that it has not.
Desiring to use it anyway, he contacts the heirs of the piece's "author" in
the hopes of getting permission to use the segment.
If the composer gets permission to use the segment, his
copyright on his new musical score would not cover the portion that he has
borrowed. Any copyrights for pre-existing material used other works remain
with the original author.
If the copyright had lapsed on the the music, the music
would have fallen into the "public domain." Copyright protection does not
extend to public domain material inserted into a new work that is otherwise
protected by copyright. If this were not so, then the act of inserting it
into the new work would instantly remove the material from the public domain
and make it unavailable for others to use. (more on public domain)
The Unites States Code does not specifically identify "facts" as
being exempt from protection. Rather, it states, "In no case does copyright
protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure,
process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery,
regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or
embodied in such work." The U.S. Supreme Court, in Feist
vs. Rural Telephone, says that this is "universally" understood to
exclude facts, as well.
In the same ruling, Court states that facts do not
originate from authorship. They are, thus, not original, and, again,
Where original expression is used to explain or convey
a fact, the original expression is protected. However, the underlying
facts are not.
Some might think that facts that they have discovered
and that are not known by anyone else should be protected when they have
gone to all of the effort to put them into a document. This is not the case.
The person who finds a fact and writes about it has not created it, he has
merely discovered it. Thus the requirement of original expression
Ideas, Principles, and Concepts
Ideas, principles, and concepts are specifically
excluded from copyright protection. If they weren't, then the first person
who wrote a romance novel would have a monopoly.
Justice Sandra Day O'Conner, in Feist
vs. Rural Telephone said "the writings which are to be protected are the fruits of
intellectual labor, embodied in the form of books, prints, engravings, and
This means that, while no-one can copyright an idea,
the original words with which it is expressed in a work will be protected.
The best example that I can think of right now is what
I am writing about. The principles and concepts associated with copyright
belong to everyone. In a sense, they are in the public domain, just as all
principles, ideas, and concepts are, with the exception of those that are
protected by patent law, which is a topic I know almost nothing about.
However, I am writing from my own knowledge and experience on the subject,
with occasional reference to other sources. My "writings" on the principles
and concepts associated with copyright, embodied in the form of this on-line
article is what is protected by copyright.
Procedures, processes, systems, or method of operation
How something is accomplished cannot be protected by
copyright. The way in which it is expressed, however, can be, if it is
A simple example of this would be a recipe. A basic
recipe is a procedure for the process of producing something to eat. A
recipe that is nothing more than that will not be protected by copyright
law. When a recipe is written in an original, descriptive fashion, then
those elements of the recipe that embody the description are protected.
However, that doesn't change the fact that the list of ingredients and how
to mix and cook them is not copyrightable under U.S. law.
Along with the fact that a process cannot be copyright
protected, the product of a process will likely not have sufficient
originality to meet the requirements for copyright protection. What comes to
mind is the use of templates for such things as want-ads or obituaries,
where the pertinent information is put in and the article pops out.
A work in the public domain belongs to everyone and is not protected by
copyright. Once material lapses or is placed into public domain, it
will always remain in the public domain. (There are a few exceptions to
this, but they are very rare.) | <urn:uuid:01d9b3a5-3515-4a44-a310-7e84fb748662> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pddoc.com/copyright/not_copyrightable.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950832 |
Hong Kong's Watershed
The 1967 Riots
Publication Year: 2009
Published by: Hong Kong University Press, HKU
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The 1967 riots appear to have vanished from Hong Kong history if you tour around the Hong Kong Museum of History which features The Hong Kong Story, a permanent exhibition at the government-run museum. The exhibition traces the city’s development from prehistoric times to the reunification with China in 1997. However, none of the over 4,000 exhibits displayed in the galleries is related to the ...
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After the Hong Kong Artificial Flower Works sacked about 650 workers in April 1967 for refusing to accept new work regulations, few would have expected it to have repercussions that are still felt today. In those days when Hong Kong was described by some Western media as a colonial “sweatshop”, sacking workers was routine as factory workers had virtually no protection for their basic labour rights and dismissals by employers without ...
01: Prelude to the 1967 riots
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For passers-by near Star Ferry pier in Central and commuters rushing there to catch ferries, April 4, 1966 appeared to be just another uneventful day. Yet the appearance of a 25-year-old man in the Star Ferry Concourse at 11 a.m. upset the hush and changed the course of Hong Kong history. The young man wore a black jacket with the English words “Staging hunger strike, Opposing fare increase” painted on its back ...
02: Labour dispute at the Hong Kong Artificial Flower Works
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The hot summer of 1967 began in May, with the highest temperature reaching 34.4 degrees Celsius.1 The sweltering heat apparently presaged the upcoming heated political struggle between the colonial government and the leftist camp. The political storm started in a plastic flower factory in San Po Kong, Kowloon. The plastic flower industry had emerged as a booming industry in Hong Kong since ...
03: The Garden Road incident on May 22, 1967
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Starting from May 19, demonstrators from the leftist camp besieged the Government House for several days under the watchful eyes of the policemen deployed outside the colonial mansion. In the first few days, the demonstrators managed to maintain reasonably good order. Their actions were largely confined to sticking “big-character posters” and reciting phrases from Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung outside ...
04: People’s Daily editorial on June 3 and the general strikes
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The British and Hong Kong governments recognized that Hong Kong would be indefensible if Beijing was determined to take over the colony forcibly. But based on the judgment that Beijing was not the mastermind behind the disturbances in Hong Kong and had no intention of taking back the colony by force, British authorities declined to accede to the demands put forward by the left wing and handled the ...
05: The Sha Tau Kok incident and bomb attacks
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The disturbances took a dramatic twist on July 8 when a border conflict erupted in Sha Tau Kok, a New Territories village bordering Shenzhen, taking the tensionto an unprecedented level. According to the account by the Hong Kong government, hundreds of demonstrators began to gather in Sha Tau Kok (it lies half in China and half in the New Territories) at 9:30 a.m., July 8. A machine-gun ...
06: Britain’s plan for emergency evacuation of Hong Kong
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Despite a public undertaking by London and the colonial administration to maintain law and order in Hong Kong during the 1967 riots, the British government started to deliberate the scenario of withdrawal from Hong Kong as the confrontation escalated. The British government had prepared an evacuation plan for Hong Kong in the early 1950s (DIGIT), which provided for evacuation of 16,500 non-Chinese ...
07: Hawks and doves within the British government in handling the disturbances
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While the Hong Kong and British governments shared the consensus of standing firm against the leftist-inspired disturbances, there were subtle differences in the approach adopted by the Hong Kong government and that adopted by London and British diplomats in Beijing. The differences in their interpretation of the situations were also notable at times. While Governor David Trench adopted an aggressive and ...
08: The arson attack on the office of British charged' d'affaires and the murder of Lam Bun
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Since the outbreak of the riots in May, the colonial government had been of the view that “seditious” articles published by leftist newspapers had undermined public morale and was eager to take action against them. As early as May, Governor David Trench had suggested taking action against Wen Wei Po, a major pro-Beijing newspaper in Hong Kong, as one of the measures to maintain public confidence....
09: Finale to the Hong Kong-style Cultural Revolution
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The burning of the British diplomatic compound in Beijing strengthened the hand of the moderate faction led by Zhou Enlai. It also set the stage for secret talks between the left wing and the Hong Kong government to ease the tensions in the colony. George Walden, assistant political adviser to the governor during the 1967 riots, said that the mainland authorities were looking for a way out after the mayhem. ...
10: Impact of the 1967 riots
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The left wing paid a heavy price for instigating the riots which briefly brought the Hong Kong society to a standstill. In the beginning of the labour dispute at the Hong Kong Artificial Flower Works, some members of the public were sympathetic with the workers who joined the strike. The left wing, however, quickly dropped the labour issues and the call for improving labour rights. Instead, they positioned ...
11: Recollections and reflections by key players in the disturbances
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Cater was at times deep in thought when he recollected the disturbances in 1967, one of the most painful chapters in Hong Kong’s recent history. During the 1967 riots, Cater was then personal assistant to the governor and deputy colonial secretary (special duties). After Governor David Trench went on leave to England for health reasons at the end of June in 1967, Cater was one of the top government officials ...
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Page Count: 272
Publication Year: 2009 | <urn:uuid:cc816a3c-719c-4100-9307-656993bd23b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://muse.jhu.edu/books/9789888052363 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947155 |
Moles are generally thought to be small, brownish blemishes on the skin which are painless and harmless. Nearly everyone has moles to some extent and they generally do not need to be removed unless the patient is self-conscious about them or if they are rubbing against clothes and becoming irritated – the typical reason sited for mole removal. Moles come in all shapes and sizes and it’s important to know your moles and monitor them for any changes.
This is the most common type of mole on the skin. They are small in diameter, round and fairly flat. Although some babies are born with this sort of moles already, most develop as people get older, most commonly in the first 30 years of life. Moles can appear anywhere on the body and they are more common in people with fair skin than in people with darker skin.
This is the second most common types of mole found. They are generally more raised and bumpy than the first sort of moles and can also be hairy. It is also important to state that most people have a combination of many different sorts of moles on their body and don’t have just one type or the other. The dermal melanocytic naevi mole is often lighter in color and can be light enough as to be skin colored. They can occur anywhere on the body and people with this sort of mole on the face often wish to have them removed as many consider them to be unsightly, or feel embarrassed about having them.
Halo naevi moles are a standard mole surrounded a circle of white, which makes the halo. They are caused when the white blood cells in the body attack the mole. The cause of them is unknown, and this sort of mole is more common in people who suffer from problems with the pigment in their skin, such as vitiligo. As a larger area of the skin is affected than with a standard mole, there may be a greater demand to have them removed.
Atypical is another way of saying not normal, and these sorts of moles are ones which are showing pre-cancerous changes. People with these sorts of moles do not have cancer and should not be concerned. It does mean though that their moles have a higher chance of changing into malignant melanomas than moles which are not showing the changes such as an irregular outline, so it is vital that if these sorts of moles are identified on the body they should be monitored closely and reported to a doctor. The doctor may well want to take photographs so that accurate comparisons can be made over time and any further changes can be picked up quickly. Although immediate removal is not always required, depending on the number and location of the moles it may be advisable to have the mole removed before any further changes take place.
Apart from having moles in the first place, regular sun exposure is a major factor in whether or not a patient will develop skin cancer. Always use a high factor sunscreen and avoid getting sunburned. Covering up during the hottest parts of the day when the sun is at its highest is also recommended. Sun beds should be avoided, as should be lying on a sun lounger trying to get a sun tan. Use fake tanning products or creams if you want to get the sun kissed look without risking further damage to your skin. | <urn:uuid:ff1f8806-00c8-46fe-a435-0c7125cb1740> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://naturalmoleremovals.com/types-of-moles | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973451 |
August 31, 2010
The estimated six million dead fish have poisoned some rivers in the region, forcing officials to find alternative water sources for local populations. Officials have also stopped fishermen from plying their trade, fearing that fish populations will take a long time to bounce back.
Scientists are unsure if the fish died from lack of oxygen due to colder temperatures or if a combination of cold weather and disease led to this rare event. Another researcher told Nature that the high mortalities may be due to higher burning of local farmland, perhaps leading to increases in river pollution.
Scientists say that proper studies are needed in order to uncover the exact causes of the fish mortality.
Citation: 27 August 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.437.
NASA image captures one of the warmest Julys on record
(08/19/2010) The NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) has found that the global average temperature of July 2010 was nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius) higher than average temperatures from July1951-1980. In fact, this July was tied for the warmest on record with July 2005 and 1998.
Summer from hell: seventeen nations hit all-time heat records
(08/09/2010) The summer isn't over yet, but already seventeen nations have matched or beaten their all-time heat records. According to Jeff Masters' WunderBlog, Belarus, the Ukraine, Cyprus, Russia, Finland, Qatar, the Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Niger, Chad, Kuwait, Iraq, Pakistan, Colombia, Myanmar, Ascension Island, and the Solomon Islands have all equaled or broken their top temperature records this year. In addition, the hottest temperature ever recorded in Asia was taken in Pakistan at 128 degrees Fahrenheit (53 degrees Celsius); this incredible temperature still has to be reviewed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
2010 the second hottest year on record through May
(06/23/2010) The first five months of 2010 have been the second warmest on record, according to data released by the University of Alabama Huntsville. | <urn:uuid:251125cb-84ae-4c68-a364-d1a64000d8ef> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0830-hance_cold_bolivia.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92791 |
It's part the U.S. Environmental Agency national Food Recovery Challenge. According to the organizations, the goals of this voluntary program are to limit the 34 million tons of food wasted nationwide annually by reducing unnecessary consumption and increasing composting and donations to charity. Participating schools pledge to reduce food waste by five percent in one year.
The EPA says food accounts for 25 percent of all waste sent to landfills nationwide-more than any other single material.
Every university and college is invited to join the Food Recovery Challenge, with several institutions
committed to the program already, including:
University of Texas at Arlington
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Baylor University-Waco, Texas
University of Houston
University of Texas at Austin
Rice University-Houston, Texas
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
The Food Recovery Challenge is part of the EPA's Sustainable Materials Management Program, which seeks to reduce the environmental impact of food and other widely-used everyday items through their entire life cycle, including how they are extracted, manufactured, distributed, used, reused, recycled, and disposed. | <urn:uuid:891909cb-26ba-4896-9dd1-c452af048c5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://nwahomepage.com/fulltext-news?nxd_id=382552&nxd_90162_start=30415 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928365 |
By LENNOX FARRELL
What memories and historical parallels might Ethiopian Orthodox Rabbi Sharon Shalom, visiting from Israel, stir among Caribbean peoples in Toronto? For one thing, the old people usually referred more to the country as ‘Abyssinia’ than ‘Ethiopia’.
My earliest memories as a boy in Trinidad with our grandparents and parents was their speaking prophetically of Ethiopia “… stretching forth her hands …”.
They were quoting the popular Psalm 38. In it, reference is made to several Black countries and peoples, for example Cush, Egypt etc. My folk would also cite from Scripture, the example of the Ethiopian Eunuch. He was the treasurer for Queen Candace. On one occasion of his leaving Jerusalem following a Passover, he had read from the book of Isaiah. Given an explanation of what he read by the evangelist, Philip, he was baptized.
One theory is that through him, and the Queen carrying a child by King Solomon, was Beta Israel introduced into Ethiopia. Other theories claim that this Judaic religious practice arrived by other means, for example by Jews fleeing south into Africa following the sacking of Jerusalem in AD 70 by the Romans. The Lemba, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews are among others in Central and North Africa today.
What is certain is that by the 4th century following, Christianity had spread through the Axum dynasty. By the 7th century, however, Islam surpassed Christianity, separating Ethiopia from its Christian African neighbours.
Even before this, the Beta Israel had enjoyed relative independence through the Middle Ages. Their reign was threatened in the 13th century under the Solomonic Empire.
In 1624, the Beta Israel fought what would be their last battle to maintain their autonomy against the colonizing Portuguese. According to descriptions of this battle, “Falasha men and women fought to the death from the steep heights of their fortress… they threw themselves over the precipice or cut each other’s throats rather than be taken prisoner – it was a Falasha Masada.”
It was, also by comparison, another example of African resistance to enslavement. For example, in Cap Haitien, a NE sea-coast town in Haiti, former slaves, but now the fighting Black forces of Henri Christophe, had been surrounded and cut off by the French general, LeClerc, brother-in-law to Napoleon Bonaparte.
The French sent an order to Christophe: “Surrender or the town burns to the ground.”
Christophe, in the presence of the envoy, took a flambeau (a burning torch), set fire to a nearby building and replied: “Before we surrender again to slavery, we blow like ashes in the wind.”
Ethiopia has probably had a more significant impact on our historic and religious consciousness than has any other African nation. An explanation for this has surely come through the political example, religious practices, and music from such luminaries as the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey in the early 20th century; the Rastafarians in mid-century; and Bob Marley in the last quarter century.
This consciousness became an integral part of Caribbean culture, especially after 1966. This was the year of the historic State visit, first to Trinidad, then to Jamaica and, finally, Haiti by the Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.
The old people recalled his valiant stand against the invasion of Ethiopia during the pre-WWII period by Mussolini’s Italian shock troops.
The Fascist Italian forces were equipped with modern weapons. The half-million Ethiopian troops included many armed with spears, and fighting barefooted. The Italians were in pursuit of Mussolini’s desire for another Italian Empire. This had been three millennia in the making since the Visigoths had destroyed Rome in 276 AD. Now, to achieve their aims for glory, they used poison gases raining down on the populace from aircraft and killing everything in their path.
Despite the Italian superiority in firepower, the Ethiopians, fighting guerrilla warfare against them, never surrendered. In fact, this was not the first time Italy had invaded Ethiopia, biting off more than they could chew. For example, under Emperor Menelik II, Italian invading forces had been defeated in the Battle of Adova in 1896. In 1996, I was among an African Canadian contingent invited to attend celebrations commemorating this victory.
This Sunday, April 15; 7:30 p.m. at the Congregation Darchei Noam Synagogue at 864 Sheppard Ave. West, we will have an opportunity to hear more from Rabbi Shalom about Beta Israel in Ethiopia, in Israel, and elsewhere. | <urn:uuid:bbb3fb50-6822-4f82-8fb3-be3b41df71ab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sharenews.com/beta/echoes-of-ethiopia-in-caribbean-memories/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971728 |
Scientists Breed Spermless Mosquitoes In Effort to End Malaria
Photo by Leszek.Leszczynski via Flickr CC
In an effort to slow the spread of malaria, scientists are trying to go to the source -- not just by stopping mosquitoes, but stopping how mosquitoes reproduce. Scientists have bred a spermless male mosquito that could be released into the wild to reduce mosquito populations.A new kind of male mosquito
Back in April we learned about genetically modified mosquitoes that are equipped with the ability to kill off the malarial parasite so that it cannot be transmitted to humans. Now, scientists have taken another approach. Rather than battle a mosquito's ability to carry malaria, it's battling the male mosquito's ability to carry sperm.
"Insect sterilisation isn't new: scientists have attempted to control the sleeping sickness-carrying tsetse fly by exposing them to radiation to render them sterile. A similar approach has been successfully used against the potatoes weevil in Japan and the tropical screwworm that attacks cattle," reports BBC. However the same tactic has not been shown to work with mosquitoes because the males are too frail to mate with females. So, scientists have come up with another strategy.
Turning off genes for reproduction
Entomologist Flamina Catteruccia, along with her graduate student Janis Thailayil, injected 10,000 mosquito embryos with fragments of RNA that turn off the gene essential for sperm development. This resulted in about 100 spermless males, all of which females were willing to mate with. In total, spermless males mated with 34 females in the experiment, essentially tricking them into laying infertile eggs. Since female mosquitoes only mate once in their life, they will continue to lay infertile eggs until they die.
One might be worried about unintended consiquences of such a strategy -- after all, while mosquitoes do carry malaria and other diseases that harm humans, they're also an important food source for many other animals, from insects to bats, birds, spiders and so on. Wiping out populations could have negative effects that trickle along the food web.
However, while the theory may go that researchers could release sterile males until mosquito populations effectively disappear, Dr. Catteruccia states that this method is far too expensive to keep up and have an effect on mosquito populations. Indeed, it took months of labor and thousands of tries to hatch just 100 spermless males. One hundred mosquitoes could be eaten, squashed, or otherwise kick off in just one night, without having the ability to mate with females at all.
Traditional methods of dealing with mosquitoes still reign
Still, the research is important to show that females will mate with spermless males. As mosquitoes become more resistant to insecticides, figuring out ways to make them sterile may be important. And such methods as this may be much more preferable to spraying insecticides, which can harm the humans who handle it, other animal species, contaminate water and have other negative side effects. But for now, the focus for battling malaria must still revolve around clearing out or covering standing water, mosquito nets for people to use at night, and medical treatment for areas hit with malaria outbreaks -- and yes, maybe even lasers. | <urn:uuid:55709f91-e7ea-4ecb-9201-2aac2c8ed811> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/scientists-breed-spermless-mosquitoes-in-effort-to-end-malaria.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954486 |
WASHINGTON — As Secretary of State James A. Baker III travels the republics of what was once the Soviet Union this week and as Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin jets from Moscow to Rome to the Central Asian city of Alma Ata this weekend, one question is certain to dominate their conversations: Just what is a commonwealth?
Even though Yeltsin was one of those leaders who 10 days ago proclaimed a new Commonwealth of Independent States as successor to the Soviet empire, however, neither he nor Baker is likely to have a satisfactory answer.
For the fact is that neither Western political theory nor Soviet practice provide much guidance to the citizens of the former Soviet republics or to anxious outside observers who are trying to puzzle out just what form of government it is that is supposed to be replacing the Kremlin's sway over one-sixth of the globe.
The English term \o7 commonwealth\f7 is almost completely meaningless--a catch-all word that embraces everything from the loose affiliation among Britain and its former colonies to the American states of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, both of which are commonwealths in their formal titles.
The Russian word, \o7 sodruzhestvo\f7 , is equally vague. Derived from the word \o7 droog,\f7 meaning friend, its literal meaning is co-friendship. Russians use the word for the British Commonwealth, but also for more general concepts such as international cooperation or community.
"It doesn't mean anything yet," says University of Michigan historian Ronald Suny. "They're going to have to give it meaning."
Doing so will require answering questions from the symbolic--will the new commonwealth have its own flag, and if so, what will it look like? How about the Olympic team? A national anthem? A central president?--to such crucial substantive matters as who controls the military and who gets to print money.
Along the way, the new leadership will also have to resolve matters such as who gets the Soviet Union's permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council? Who controls the diplomatic corps? And how many republics will have to destroy how many weapons to meet the obligations the former Soviet Union took on in international arms control treaties? Answering each of those questions will take time, warned Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze. "It is not the kind of process that needs two days of sittings and consultations and coming up with a statement or draft agreement. It is a most complex issue," Shevardnadze said.
But time is one thing the founders of the new order may not have. For if answers remain unknown, the questions they must grapple with are clear and increasingly pressing. The overriding question, says Gabriel Schoenfeld of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, is the most basic one: power. "Each of the republics has to grapple with how much to delegate to the center."
In the British Commonwealth, for example, the center has no power at all. The Commonwealth serves mostly as a periodic forum for discussion and intermittent cooperation, with no authority to regulate actions of its members.
By contrast, the 12-nation European Community, another form of commonwealth, started out a generation ago with power to regulate each of its members' policies on customs and tariffs. Ever since, the community's central institutions have slowly gained more clout, and by the end of the decade, EC members now plan to delegate to the center broad authority over their economies, foreign policy and defense.
For the Soviets, the question of the power of the center versus the power of the republics has been at the heart of politics for more than a year. In the Baltics, for example, opposition to the center is so strong that all three former republics--Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia--have made clear they have no interest in joining the new commonwealth on any terms. The southern republic of Georgia and the western republic of Moldova may head in that same direction.
In Ukraine, which voted for independence earlier this year, resentment of central authority is also powerful. Ukrainian insistence on minimizing the central power of Moscow led to the decision to put the headquarters of the new commonwealth in the Belarussian city of Minsk, Yeltsin told the Russian Parliament last week. "Moscow should no longer pull the same weight. That is something Kiev insists on," he said.
Any grants of significant power to the new commonwealth could generate strong internal opposition to the government of Ukrainian President Leonid M. Kravchuk.
By contrast, leaders in several of the Central Asian republics, whose poor and underdeveloped economies are dependent on trade with Russia and Ukraine, have argued in favor of retaining some sort of centralized authority. | <urn:uuid:6b2a1e37-6fe2-4720-947c-533b912bf63a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.latimes.com/1991-12-17/news/wr-663_1_national-agenda | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96126 |
At a CNN Health blog, Elizabeth Landua discusses a recent study which found that frequent use of cell phones by pregnant women may lead to behavioral issues in their children up to the age of seven.
Children who had exposure to cell phones both in the womb and after birth, up to age 7 had a higher likelihood of behavioral problems than those who had no exposure, researchers said in a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
The behavioral problems include hyperactivity and attention and social issues.....
In this study, the researchers looked at more than 28,000 children. More than 10 percent of children who had prenatal exposure to cell phones had mothers who said they spoke on their cell phones four times a day or more. Nearly 50 percent of mothers said they had a cell phone turned on at all times. Again, these figures are based on self-reporting by the mothers who participated in the study.
They found that, as with the previous study, the more frequently a mother used a cell phone, the greater the risk that her child would have a behavioral problem.
Japanese researchers have used induced pluripotent stem cells to successfully treat small monkeys who were paralyzed.
The team planted four types of genes into human skin cells to create the iPS cells, according to Kyodo News.A story about the research in the Mainichi Daily News notes that it would be difficult to use human iPS cells in human treatments.
The injection was given on the ninth day after the injury, considered the most effective timing, and the monkey started to move its limbs again within two to three weeks, Okano said.
"After six weeks, the animal had recovered to the level where it was jumping around," he told AFP. "It was very close to the normal level."
One challenge to providing the treatment to humans is timing. It takes six months or more to create iPS cells -- not nearly quick enough for timely transplants to recent accident victims. To overcome this problem, the research group is also partnering with Osaka National Hospital to study the creation of an iPS cell bank that would make the stem cells available on demand. | <urn:uuid:a3204c3f-7d49-4640-97f2-13e0afda09b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jivinjehoshaphat.blogspot.com/2010/12/life-links-12810.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.975158 |
Last modified: 2011-02-19 by editor unassigned
Keywords: rijnwoude |
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The Coat of Arms of Rijnwoude consists of elements from the arms of the former
municipalities Benthuizen, Hazerswoude and Koudekerk aan den Rijn.
The golden star on the shield has been taken from the arms of Hazerswoude. The silver eagle is from Koudekerke, and three green peat-blocks are from the arms of Benthuizen.
The High Council of Nobility granted the Coat of Arms on 13 Oct 1992 to the municipality of Rijnwoude. It has been designed by Willem Vis.
Jarig Bakker, 21 May 2003
Flag adopted 23 Jul 1962 by municipal resolution
Flag adopted 5 Jan 1961 by municipal resolution
Koudekerk is a former municipality, now part of Rijnwoude in Zuid-Holland,
southeast of Leiden. Traces of early settlements have been found dating
from the beginning of our era, including souvenirs of Romans. Later the
Norsemen were unwelcome tourists taking souvenirs for free. From 1326 till
1705 the Van Poelgeest family owned the place and had a redoubtable castle
there - Groot Poelgeest. Aleid van Poelgeest was born in Koudekerk in 1370;
her family had chosen the side of the
"Kabeljauwen" in the "Hoekse en Kabeljauwse Twisten", a complicated pattern of civil wars all over the Netherlands. The "Hoeken" represented the interests of the nobility, while the "Kabeljauwen" were eager to grant more rights to the cities and ordinary citizens. Aleid became the mistress of Count Albrecht van Beieren, who had become Count of Holland in 1389 after the demise of his mad brother, Willem V. Aleid had a strong influence on Albrecht, who chose the side of the "Kabeljauwen".
Some nobles met Aleid in an alley in 's Gravenhage, and murdered her in 1392. Two years of enthusiastic fighting followed and then Albrecht saw the light: "Let's invade Friesland"! The expedition was not met with great success.
Groot Poelgeest was destroyed in 1746 and only hardly traceable remnants remain. The Rijn, which provided Koudekerk acces to the North Sea, became a small brook, the "Oude Rijn", and Koudekerk became a quiet little village. But the arms of the Van Poelgeest family (azure a fess or between three eagles argent) have been taken over by Koudekerk municipality (see Ralf Hartemink's site.
And the Van Poelgeest eagle is on the flag of Koudekerk: Horizontal
blue over white with a white eagle in the canton (description from Derkwillem
Visser's "Gemeentewapens en vlaggen Koninkrijk der Nederlanden",
Flag adopted on 6 Dec 1962 by municipal resolution.
Image after DW Visser, with the eagle from Ralf Hartemink's site. (and
eviva Aleid van Poelgeest!) BTW - Rembrandt van Rijn was born here. (actually
in Hazerswoude, on the other side of the Oude Rijn, but
that is now in Rijnwoude municipality too)
Jarig Bakker, 22 May 2003 | <urn:uuid:df8c5205-edd8-4ed0-aba6-b0f1fef40853> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/Flags/nl-zh-ri.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90311 |
Description from Flora of China
Herbs, terrestrial, small to large. Rhizome present or not. Pseudobulbs usually small, conic, ovoid, or subglobose, rarely inconspicuous or cylindric, with roots at base and a few leaves at apex; roots long, stout, pubescent. Leaves sometimes not well developed or not completely spreading at anthesis; blade rarely narrowly ensiform or lorate, ± plicate, but often convolute when young, base contracted into a petiole-like stalk or subsessile, sheathing, articulate or not. Scape arising from leaf axil or from base of pseudobulb, rarely from apex of leafless pseudobulb, erect, usually densely puberulent; inflorescence a terminal raceme, few to many flowered; floral bracts persistent or caducous. Flowers resupinate, small to medium-sized, often opening widely. Sepals similar, free. Petals often smaller than sepals; lip adnate to base of column wings and forming a tube, or adnate only to base of column, or to column foot and free from column itself, lobed or unlobed, base spurred or not; disk often lamellate or ridged, sometimes with callose appendages at base. Column often short and thick, without or with a short foot at base, winged, rostellum lobed or unlobed; stigma lateral; pollinia waxy, 8, in 2 groups, nearly equal or unequal in size; caudicle conspicuous or inconspicuous, commonly adherent to a sticky viscidium.
About 150 species: tropical and subtropical Asia, Australia, New Guinea, and the SW Pacific islands, as well as tropical Africa and Central and NW South America; 51 species (21 endemic) in China.
(Authors: Chen Xinqi (陈心启 Chen Sing-chi); Phillip J. Cribb, Stephan W. Gale) | <urn:uuid:2c751db5-79fc-4a10-96ed-a2428b3b26e5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=600&taxon_id=105024 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.885507 |
Helaman recounts the taking of Antiparah and the surrender and later the defense of Cumeni—His Ammonite striplings fight valiantly; all are wounded, but none are slain—Gid reports the slaying and the escape of the Lamanite prisoners. About 63 B.C.
1 And now it came to pass that I received an epistle from Ammoron, the king, stating that if I would deliver up those prisoners of war whom we had taken that he would deliver up the city of Antiparah unto us.
2 But I sent an epistle unto the king, that we were sure our forces were sufficient to take the city of Antiparah by our force; and by delivering up the prisoners for that city we should suppose ourselves unwise, and that we would only deliver up our prisoners on exchange.
6 And it came to pass that in the commencement of the twenty and ninth year, we received a supply of provisions, and also an addition to our army, from the land of Zarahemla, and from the land round about, to the number of six thousand men, besides sixty of the asons of the Ammonites who had come to join their brethren, my little band of two thousand. And now behold, we were strong, yea, and we had also plenty of provisions brought unto us.
7 And it came to pass that it was our desire to wage a battle with the army which was placed to protect the city aCumeni.
8 And now behold, I will show unto you that we soon accomplished our desire; yea, with our strong force, or with a part of our strong force, we did surround, by night, the city Cumeni, a little before they were to receive a supply of provisions.
9 And it came to pass that we did camp round about the city for many nights; but we did sleep upon our swords, and keep guards, that the Lamanites could not come upon us by night and slay us, which they attempted many times; but as many times as they attempted this their blood was spilt.
11 And notwithstanding the Lamanites being cut off from their support after this manner, they were still determined to maintain the city; therefore it became expedient that we should take those provisions and send them to aJudea, and our prisoners to the land of Zarahemla.
12 And it came to pass that not many days had passed away before the Lamanites began to lose all hopes of succor; therefore they yielded up the city unto our hands; and thus we had accomplished our designs in obtaining the city Cumeni.
14 For behold, they would break out in great numbers, and would fight with stones, and with clubs, or whatsoever thing they could get into their hands, insomuch that we did slay upwards of two thousand of them after they had surrendered themselves prisoners of war.
15 Therefore it became expedient for us, that we should put an end to their lives, or guard them, sword in hand, down to the land of Zarahemla; and also our provisions were not any more than sufficient for our own people, notwithstanding that which we had taken from the Lamanites.
16 And now, in those critical circumstances, it became a very serious matter to determine concerning these prisoners of war; nevertheless, we did resolve to send them down to the land of Zarahemla; therefore we selected a part of our men, and gave them charge over our prisoners to go down to the land of Zarahemla.
17 But it came to pass that on the morrow they did return. And now behold, we did not ainquire of them concerning the prisoners; for behold, the Lamanites were upon us, and they returned in season to save us from falling into their hands. For behold, Ammoron had sent to their support a new supply of provisions and also a numerous army of men.
19 But behold, my little band of two thousand and sixty fought most desperately; yea, they were firm before the Lamanites, and did aadminister death unto all those who opposed them.
21 Yea, and they did aobey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their bmothers had taught them.
22 And now behold, it was these my sons, and those men who had been selected to convey the prisoners, to whom we owe this great victory; for it was they who did beat the Lamanites; therefore they were driven back to the city of Manti.
24 And it came to pass that after the Lamanites had fled, I immediately gave orders that my men who had been wounded should be taken from among the dead, and caused that their wounds should be dressed.
25 And it came to pass that there were two hundred, out of my two thousand and sixty, who had fainted because of the loss of blood; nevertheless, according to the goodness of God, and to our great astonishment, and also the joy of our whole army, there was anot one soul of them who did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds.
26 And now, their apreservation was astonishing to our whole army, yea, that they should be spared while there was a thousand of our brethren who were slain. And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous bpower of God, because of their exceeding cfaith in that which they had been taught to believe—that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power.
28 And now it came to pass that after we had thus taken care of our wounded men, and had buried our dead and also the dead of the Lamanites, who were many, behold, we did inquire of Gid concerning the aprisoners whom they had started to go down to the land of Zarahemla with.
30 And now, these are the words which Gid said unto me: Behold, we did start to go down to the land of Zarahemla with our prisoners. And it came to pass that we did meet the spies of our armies, who had been sent out to watch the camp of the Lamanites.
33 And it came to pass because of their rebellion we did cause that our swords should come upon them. And it came to pass that they did in a body run upon our swords, in the which, the greater number of them were slain; and the remainder of them broke through and fled from us.
34 And behold, when they had fled and we could not overtake them, we took our march with speed towards the city Cumeni; and behold, we did arrive in time that we might assist our brethren in preserving the city.
36 Now it came to pass that when I, Helaman, had heard these words of Gid, I was filled with exceeding joy because of the goodness of God in preserving us, that we might not all perish; yea, and I trust that the souls of them who have been slain have aentered into the rest of their God. | <urn:uuid:45fc2b4c-ef4f-4e8d-9d49-fd5da204aa7c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/57.2?lang=eng | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.990492 |
Menacing Deep-sea Anglerfish. Credit: Harbor Branch/E. WidderFor centuries scientists have thought of deep-sea pelagic fish as nomadic wanderers, in part because information about them was so limited. However, new results from the ongoing Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ecosystems program (MAR-ECO), a Sloan Foundation-sponsored component of the Census of Marine Life, have revealed that these fishes may in fact be gathering at features such as ridges or seamounts to spawn.
The research has important implications for how deep-sea ecosystems should be managed to prevent devastation by deep trawling activities. MAR-ECO research expeditions have also led to the discovery of as many as six fish species new to science and the collection of some unusually large deep-sea fish specimens.
The first public presentations of results from MAR-ECO will be made at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu (http://www.agu.org/meetings/os06/), from Feb. 20- 24. On Tuesday, Feb. 21, Tracey Sutton, a fish expert at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution will be discussing the MAR-ECO deep-sea pelagic fish research at a 9:00 a.m. Hawaii Std. Time (2:00 p.m. EST) press conference and at a 2:15 p.m. Hawaii Std. Time (7:15 p.m. EST) scientific session.
"We're discovering all these patterns that we've never seen before," says Sutton, "and now we're working to figure out what they mean and how they got there. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is proving to be an oasis in the desert , so to speak."
Pelagic fish are those species thought to spend the bulk of their time in open water, as opposed to staying near the seafloor. Classification has historically been determined based mainly on whether the fish are typically caught in open water trawl nets, or trawl gear that collects along the bottom. Deepwater pelagics include some of what most people would agree to be the most bizarre looking animals on the planet. Many, with their oversized fangs, aquatic scowls, and ingenious entrapment devices-- coupled with names such as "vampire fish from hell" and saber-toothed viper fish--are the stuff of pure nightmare save for their typically small sizes. Like the best nightmare sponsors, though, they remain mysterious.
Adequate understanding of the deepwater fishes has been hard to come by because deep-sea fish research has remained extremely limited. Not since the famous Challenger Expedition in the 1870s has a research project collected as many bathypelagic (deeper than 1,000meters) fish samples as the MAR-ECO project. In fact, the deep sea has been so thinly sampled that data compiled by the international Census of Marine Life program have shown that historically, about 50% of animal samples collected from deeper than 3,000 meters have turned out to be new species.
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a massive undersea mountain range that runs almost the entire length of the Atlantic about midway between the continents. To date, MAR-ECO researchers have collected more than 300 fish species there using the full spectrum of advanced tools currently available, including massive trawl nets that can be triggered to open and close at specific depths, submersibles, remotely operated vehicles, and acoustic survey instruments. Of the samples collected, more than 30 were species never before known to inhabit the Mid-Atlantic Ridge region, and six appear to be species new to science, though final determination of new species is a long process still underway for these samples.
The team also made a number of extremely rare catches. These include some of the largest dragonfishes and anglerfishes ever collected. Anglerfishes, for example, typically fit in the palm of your hand, but one sample (photo available) weighed in at 35 pounds. Another rare find was a species of whalefish previously known from only one other specimen, collected in 1975. "As soon as I saw it I was very excited," says Sutton. Such sparse sample availability has been the norm in the field, according to Sutton, leading to major difficulties at times in identifying samples that are collected. In some cases male, female and juveniles of the same species are erroneously classified as 3 separate species because only one specimen of each has been collected.
One of the major overall finds of the MAR-ECO project to date, which has included two main expeditions, is strong evidence that deep-sea pelagic fish are more closely associated with features such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge than ever before realized. As Sutton will explain at the conference in Honolulu, the group has now collected several pieces of key evidence that these fish are congregating at the ridge, likely for spawning.
One key line of evidence was in the surprising numbers of several fish species collected, such as tubeshoulders, which spurt bioluminescent liquid. Past deep-sea work has suggested the fish are rare and widely scattered. "We're used to ones and twos," says Sutton, but we were getting tens, twenties, thirties--laundry baskets of these guys at 2,000 meters, which is pretty unusual." Most of those that were collected were gravid females, suggesting spawning activity.
Important indirect evidence was also collected, namely observation of a never before seen mysterious "scattering" layer at 2,000 meters detected using acoustic devices that generate images of materials or animals found at a given depth. Though there are other possibilities, it is quite likely the layer was a massive fish aggregation, says Sutton, because fish swim bladders and eggs tend to produce detectable acoustic signatures while squid and other organisms can typically only produce faint images.
"As we were making these discoveries, we started to wonder if these fish were coming to the ridge to aggregate and spawn," says Sutton, "This is the fist time anyone has suggested that deep-sea pelagics form groups to spawn and then disperse again, which would require some homing ability or knowledge but I can't even speculate yet on what the trigger would be."
Adding further to the idea of the ridge as a saltwater desert oasis, the MAR-ECO team was surprised to find lush growth on many parts of the ridge. "The bottom was stunning," says Sutton, "There was far more growth and coral than we could have imagined. It looks like a tropical coral reef down there in places."
Sutton says the results of MAR-ECO and other recent projects are pointing to new threats from expanding deep-sea trawling activity, and the need for near-bottom observing systems to regularly monitor deep-ocean ecosystems and their inhabitants. Without reasonable understanding of these resources, including some important commercial fisheries, protecting them is almost impossible, he says.
One of Sutton's MAR-ECO collaborators, Franz Uiblein of the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, will also be at the press conference to discuss seafloor work on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Using underwater video, he and colleagues have shown that even slight disturbances to the deep seafloor from fishing activities can lead to a loss of biodiversity, for instance in a trawl's path, suggesting that widespread deep trawling can have major impacts on deep-sea life.
Though trawling on the Mid-Atlantic ridge is currently rare, as deep species such as orange roughy become fished out in other areas, trawlers are wandering to new regions. If there are pelagic spawning aggregations at the ridge or other prominent features, they are likely to be critical to the preservation of the species involved, but also likely to become primary trawling targets, which could lead to devastating effects on spawning aggregations.
"It's important that we explore and map out these hotspots before fishing stretches into these areas," says Sutton, "so that we can determine what the real damage is going to be and what needs to be protected." | <urn:uuid:2a3ff404-01ba-424e-9c5d-fa21e14d4d1c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2006/02/24/deepspied_fish.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96814 |
1. The name of a small town in northern Fārs province, lying to the northeast of the chaîne magistrale of the Zagros at an altitude of 2,011 m/6,200 ft in 52°40 ′ east longitude and 31°11 ′ north latitude. It is on the easterly (formally the winter, now the all-weather) main Isfahan-Shiraz highway, 204 km from the former and 280 km from the latter city. A branch road from the highway, leaving it at Abarqūh, connects Ābāda with Yazd. In earlier times, the town was sometimes called Ābāda-ye Eqlīd to distinguish it from the more southerly Ābāda-ye Ṭašk (see 2, below); in the Ḥodūd al-ʿālam (tr. Minorsky, p. 129; cf. p. 380) Eqlīd is described as a town in the mountain zone and is called Kelīd (perhaps from kelīd, “key,” implying that the town was the key to Fārs by the route approaching it from the north). In the early 6th/12th century, Ebn al-Balḵī, followed two centuries later by Ḥamdallāh Mostawfī, mentions that Ābāda-ye Eqlīd and other places of the district belonged to the sardsīr or cold regions of Persia and that cereals were grown there but not fruit (Ebn al-Balḵī, p. 123, and tr. in JRAS 1912, pp. 21-22; Mostawfī, Nozhat al-qolūb, text, p. 125, tr., p. 123).
Ābāda has played virtually no part on the wider stage of Persian history. When the English scholar E. G. Browne passed through it in 1888, he was impressed by the pleasant orchards and gardens; it serverd as a telegraph station and had a significant community of Bahaʾis (A Year Amongst the Persians, Cambridge, 1926, pp. 253-54). At present the town forms the northernmost district (šahrestān) of Fārs. The province of Isfahan lies to the north; that of Yazd is on the north and east. Shiraz district is to the south and the west, and Behbehān district also lies to the west. The territory of Ābāda is drained by the rivers of Īzadḵᵛāst, Šādkām, Kor, and Bavvānāt. In the 1345 Š./1966 census, the district had a population of 137,941 (mostly sedentary). The people are largely Shiʿite and Persian-speaking, but some speakers of Lorī and Turkish are found on the fringes of the Baḵtīārī country. The population of the town itself was 15,888 in 1966 and 23,383 in 1355 Š./1976. The district also includes the towns of Eqlīd, Abarqūh, and Ṣoḡād. Local agricultural products (cultivated largely by means of qanāt irrigation) include wheat, oats, cotton, sesame, castor oil, leeks, and fruits and nuts. Notable handicrafts are woodcarving and carpet and rug weaving.
See also Fasāʾī, Fārsnāma, p. 168.
Le Strange, Lands, pp. 282, 284.
Kayhān, Joḡrāfīā II, p. 223.
Razmārā, Farhang VII, p. 2.
2. A medieval town near the northern shore of Lake Baḵtegān in Fārs (thus to the south of Ābāda-ye Eqlīd). It was also known as Qarya ʿAbd-al-Raḥmān in medieval times and subsequently as Ābāda-ye Ṭašk. Situated on the Eṣṭaḵr-Sīrǰan summer road, it was of considerable importance in the early Islamic period. The Ḥodūd al-ʿālam describes it as a caravan stage in the general region between Eṣṭaḵr and Kermān (tr. Minorsky, p. 129). According to the medieval geographers, it had a strong citadel and fine houses, with large cisterns for storing an intermittent water supply. Grain and grapes were grown, and Mostafwī recorded its revenue as 25,000 dinars (Nozhat al-qolūb, text, p. 123, tr., p. 121).
See also Ebn al-Balḵī, p. 129; tr. in JRAS 1912, p. 30.
Fasāʾī, Fārsnāma, p. 170. Le Strange, Lands, p. 279. Schwarz, Iran, p. 23.
(C. E. Bosworth)
Originally Published: December 15, 1982
Last Updated: July 13, 2011
This article is available in print.
Vol. I, Fasc. 1, p. 51
C. E. Bosworth, “ĀBĀDA,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, Online Edition, 1982, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abada | <urn:uuid:70cd5d82-33a4-4202-9f3a-72e1f08fa18f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/abada | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944247 |
It was an Ice Age squirrel’s treasure chamber, a burrow containing fruit and seeds that had been stuck in the Siberian permafrost for more than 30,000 years. From the fruit tissues, a team of Russian scientists managed to resurrect an entire plant in a pioneering experiment that paves the way for the revival of other species.
The Silene stenophylla is the oldest plant ever to be regenerated, said the researchers, and it is fertile, producing white flowers and viable seeds.
The experiment proves that permafrost serves as a natural depository for ancient life forms, said the Russian researchers, who published their findings in yesterday’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
“We consider it essential to continue permafrost studies in search of an ancient genetic pool, that of pre-existing life, which hypothetically has long since vanished from the earth’s surface,” the scientists said in the article.
Canadian researchers had earlier regenerated some significantly younger plants from seeds found in burrows.
Svetlana Yashina, from the Institute of Cell Biophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and who led the regeneration effort, said the revived plant looked very similar to its modern version, which still grows in the same area in northeastern Siberia.
“It’s a very viable plant and it adapts really well,” she told said in a telephone interview from the Russian town of Pushchino where her lab is located.
She voiced hope the team could continue its work and regenerate more plant species.
The Russian research team recovered the fruit after investigating dozens of fossil burrows hidden in ice deposits on the right bank of the lower Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia, the sediments dating back 30,000 to 32,000 years.
The sediments were firmly cemented together and often totally filled with ice, making any water infiltration impossible — creating a natural freezing chamber fully isolated from the surface.
“The squirrels dug the frozen ground to build their burrows, which are about the size of a soccer ball, putting in hay first and then animal fur for a perfect storage chamber,” said Stanislav Gubin, one of the authors of the study, who spent years rummaging through the area for squirrel burrows. “It’s a natural cryobank.”
The burrows were located 38m below the present surface in layers containing bones of large mammals, such as mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, bison, horse and deer.
Gubin said the study demonstrated that tissue can survive ice conservation for tens of thousands of years, opening the way to the possible resurrection of Ice Age mammals.
“If we are lucky, we can find some frozen squirrel tissue,” Gubin said. “And this path could lead us all the way to [a] mammoth.”
Japanese scientists are already searching in the same area for mammoth remains, but Gubin voiced hope that the Russians will be the first to find some frozen animal tissue that could be used for regeneration.
“It’s our land, we will try to get them first,” he said. | <urn:uuid:a39b1e0f-3f8a-4ed8-ab9e-65fb311b1952> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2012/02/22/2003526104 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953905 |
A Canadian project to create genetically-modified pigs whose
waste is less harmful to lakes and rivers has had its funding
cut, before the animals could be commercialised.
The "Enviropigs" project began in 1999 with the objective of
creating an animal that digests its feed more efficiently than
naturally-bred pigs. Eight generations of the pig were produced,
and the current herd is 16 animals strong, but the association of
farmers that sponsored the project, Ontario Pork, has now
pulled its funding. | <urn:uuid:7a04c78d-bbb2-4922-848c-7253f8ac44e0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wired.co.uk/news/science?page=247 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968452 |
Kepler bags first rocky exoplanet
Jan 10, 2011 3 comments
The first rocky exoplanet has been discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope, according to the mission's deputy science team leader Natalie Batalha. The planet is called Kepler-10b and has a density on par with that of iron – making it much denser than Earth. The exoplanet orbits a star about 560 light years from Earth.
Kepler-10b is about 20 times closer to its host star than Mercury is to the Sun – and as a result its surface temperature is expected to be as high as 1400 °C. It always shows the same side to its star and is likely to have oceans of molten rock on its day side and a solid night side, according to Batalha. It has an orbital period of about 0.84 days and its star is known to be about the same size as the Sun.
Since the discovery of the first extrasolar planet (exoplanet) in 1995, over 500 more have subsequently been unveiled. While most of these are gas giants like Jupiter, astronomers are getting better at finding smaller exoplanets that could be more similar to Earth. Before Kepler-10b was identified, the best candidate was Corot-7b. While Corot-7b could indeed be rocky, its star is very active, making it difficult to accurately determine its density.
Three key measurements
Kepler-10b, however, is a very different case because its star is very old – about 8 billion years – which means that it is very quiet and much easier to deal with. The team determined the planet's density by making three different observations. First, they determined its radius relative to the star's by measuring how much light it blocks when it transits between Earth and its star. Then they determined its mass (again relative to its star) by measuring the wobble of the star caused by the orbiting planet. The final, and crucial step was to determine the radius and mass of the star itself, which was done by measuring the vibrational frequency of "starquakes" on the star.
Putting it all together the team believes that the planet’s density is about 8.8 g/cm3, which is denser than iron.
"This is the first unquestionably rocky planet," said Batalha today the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. "Its discovery is an important milestone for humanity," she added. Geoff Marcy of the University of California at Berkeley, who was not involved in the work, said that the discovery "will go into every textbook on astronomy".
Night and day temperatures
Batalha said that the Kepler team is now studying a possible modulation in the amount of light that reaches the telescope during the planet's transit. This could allow the researchers to determine the temperatures of the day and night surfaces of the planet. While Kepler-10b is similar to Earth in some ways, it is not within the habitable zone around its star, where life could emerge – the Kepler group already knows it is much to hot for life as we know it.
One mystery surrounding Kepler-10b is how it managed to get so close to its star. Edward Guinan of Villanova University believes that it could be the remains of a gas giant like Jupiter that got so close to its star that the gas was blown off and only the rocky core remained.
About the author
Hamish Johnston is editor of physicsworld.com and is reporting from the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle | <urn:uuid:7bb309d7-a34f-41b8-8e75-555032f0e669> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2011/jan/10/kepler-bags-first-rocky-exoplanet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970758 |
US Toll Free: 1.866.725.7110
About Clinical Trials
We've all heard of them, but what exactly are clinical trials?
Put simply, a clinical trial is a scientific study of how a new medicine or treatment works in people. Through clinical studies, doctors find new and better ways to prevent, detect, diagnose, control, and treat illnesses.
People who participate in clinical trials are not guinea pigs. A therapy reaches the point where it can be evaluated in a clinical trial only after it proves successful in animals and the laboratory. The researchers who run the trials are actively trying to offer the participants the best available treatment that will be successful against their disease.
New medicines and treatments that are helpful and safe in test tubes and in animals must also prove safe and effective in humans before doctors can prescribe them. This testing in humans is permitted only if a person volunteers to participate and understands the risks and benefits of taking part in a study. This informed consent to participate must be based on a patient volunteer’s understanding of what is involved in the study, including potential risks and benefits. Volunteers may leave a study at any time.
Types of clinical trials
Clinical trial phases
The initial screening visit
Getting paid to participate in clinical trials
Where to go for more information
Types of clinical trials
There are several types of trials, according to the National Institutes of Health:
- Treatment trials test new therapies that may increase the life expectancy or reduce suffering in people who have a serious illness.
- Prevention trials test new approaches, such as medicines, vaccines, vitamins, minerals, or other supplements that doctors believe may lower the risk of a certain disease.
- Screening/early detection trials test the best way to find a disease, especially in its early stages.
- Quality of Life trials (also called Supportive Care trials) explore ways to improve comfort and quality of life for patients with a disease.
- Genetics trials are meant to improve the ability to look for an inherited risk of illness.
Clinical trial phases
Testing of a new therapy (i.e., treatment trials) progresses in an orderly series of steps, called phases. This allows researchers to ask and answer questions in a way that results in reliable information about the drug and protects the patients. Clinical trials are usually classified into one of four phases by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the approval process:
- Phase 1 trials:These first studies in people evaluate how a new drug should be given (by mouth, injected into the blood, or injected into the muscle,) how often, and what dose is safe. In particular, these studies are also looking for the highest dose that can safely be given with the fewest serious side effects (maximum tolerated dose). In addition, a Phase I trial might evaluate a new combination of 2 drugs where one or both of the drugs, alone, might be well known but doctors have never before studied the two together. In these combination studies, doctors are watching closely for potential interactions and new side effects when the two drugs are given together.
By the time a new treatment reaches the phase I level, it has proved beneficial in several animal models and in the laboratory. A Phase I trial usually enrolls only a small number of patients, sometimes as few as a dozen. It is important to realize that there is no chance that a patient will receive a placebo in a Phase I clinical trial. Patients enrolling in Phase I trials are the first to help doctors identify promising new drugs and the scientific knowledge that will ultimately help future patients.
Phase I trials usually enroll patients with advanced disease for whom no standard therapies are available. Patients considering Phase I trials should have a reasonable expectation that the new drugs (or drug combinations) might shrink their tumors or reduce their tumor burden. However the risks associated with being one of the first people to try a new drug—or a new drug combination—should be weighed very carefully since the side effects of the new drug/combination will not be well understood at the beginning of a Phase I study.
- Phase II trials: A phase II trial continues to test the safety of the drug, and begins to evaluate how well the new drug works. Phase II studies usually focus on a particular aspect of a disease. Like phase I trials, these trials do not test the difference between two therapies, so the participants will almost always get the experimental treatment. There is still no chance that a participant in the trial will receive a placebo.
- Phase III trials: These studies test a new drug, a new combination of drugs, or a new surgical procedure in comparison to the current standard for treatment. A participant will usually be assigned to the standard treatment group or the new treatment group at random (called randomization). Phase III trials often enroll large numbers of people and may be conducted at many doctors' offices, clinics, and disease centers nationwide.
In phase III trials, patients rarely receive a placebo – in fact, only when
there is no standard therapy for the disease. Otherwise, people who participate
in phase III clinical trials will either receive the best available standard therapy
or the experimental therapy, with an equal chance of receiving either treatment.
- Phase IV trials: These are often required when a drug manufacturer wishes to test an already approved therapy for a different medical condition or in a different formulation than it was originally approved for. The manufacturer is not allowed to make new claims about their product until it is properly tested. It is possible (though unlikely) that a placebo may be used in the control group in a phase IV trial.
When designing a clinical research study, an investigator must first decide who should be in the study and who should be excluded. Unless the researchers are very firm and diligent about sticking to those inclusion/exclusion criteria, the entire study can be weakened. The researchers must therefore try and find a balance between identifying those people who are most appropriate to test a new therapy and casting a wide enough net to ensure that they will have enough participants to make the results statistically significant.
Inclusion/exclusion criteria might be such factors as the age of the participants – many studies will only include people over 18 years old, for example – the date of diagnosis of the illness, other therapies, and other illnesses that the participant might have. Other inclusion/exclusion criteria might be the stage of the illness – many studies try and exclude patients who have very advanced illnesses – how active the participants are in their day-to-day routines, and the ability to take oral medications.
Inclusion/exclusion criteria should be explained to each potential participant in a clinical research trial beforethey are enrolled in the study.
After a person has decided to participate in a clinical study, they will be scheduled by the study coordinator for a preliminary screening visit. During that visit, the inclusion/exclusion criteria will be detailed for the participant. The study coordinator will also explain the study, the procedures that need to be followed and answer any questions that may arise. This process is called informed consent and is essential before any volunteer is enrolled in any clinical trial. More on the concept of informed consent can be found below.
The initial screening visit is also an opportunity for the study coordinator to obtain a full medical history from the participant. He or she will also usually perform a physical exam and schedule any laboratory tests that may be necessary before participation in the study can begin.
The United States government is very strict about the guidelines of medical research performed on people. An Institutional Review Board (IRB) approves and monitors every clinical trial performed in the US to minimize the risks to the study participants and to make sure that the potential benefits of the new therapy outweigh those risks. An IRB is usually made up of physicians, experts in biomedical ethics, statisticians, and members of the community and its sole charge is to make certain that clinical research adheres to the strictest ethical guidelines.
Every participant in a clinical trial in the United States has the right to informed
consent. In fact, nobody should even consider joining a trial without access to
key information that must be provided by the investigators in easy–to–understand
This information (adapted from the NIH) includes:
- why the research is being done
- what the researchers are hoping to accomplish
- what the different therapies being tested are and how they are thought to work
- any risks associated with the therapies
- the potential benefits for the participant
- other available treatments (with a discussion of their efficacy and side effects)
- the fact that participants may leave the study at any time
Some clinical trials will pay people for participating in the research but they are rare, primarily because the National Institutes of Health wish to discourage patients from participating in clinical trials solely for financial purposes.
Most clinical trial sponsors, however, will reimburse participants for reasonable travel and food expenses accumulated while they are in the trial. The article below describes specific legislation meant to ensure that people who participate in clinical research are not harmed financially by their involvement.
The National Institutes of Health have a very comprehensive website that deals exclusively with clinical trials and the issues described above. It can be found at www.clinicaltrials.gov. | <urn:uuid:0cd6673f-91a8-4023-97d3-cbeca4a689df> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bicancertrials.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948198 |
Read and Listen To Sentences Using the Word
- Get your things together.
- Let's get together tomorrow.
- They agreed to work together.
- They don't get along together.
- Let's go to a concert together.
- The family ate dinner together.
- Birds of a feather flock together.
- Let's get together again next year.
- He stuck the broken pieces together.
- How long have you two been together?
- I wish that we could spend more time together.
- Last Sunday, Mary and I went to the library together.
- Let's go out and eat dinner together from time to time.
- I always thought that Shirley and Alan would get together.
- The faster we rub our hands together, the warmer they get.
- I can still remember the time when we went on a picnic together.
- This is a time of year when people get together with family and friends to observe Passover and to celebrate Easter. | <urn:uuid:428fa01b-3f4a-4625-b85c-94a293f9904c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.manythings.org/audio/sentences/237.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926749 |
This is a first course in commutative algebraic geometry, for
who have some background in basic algebra, and in particular in the
theory of rings and fields. The first part covers some basic
commutative algebra, building towards
the basic theory of affine and projective algebraic varieties.
completion of this module, the student
1. be familiar with the basic
concepts, methods and results of elementary Algebraic Geometry and
elementary Commutative Algebra.
2. be able to recognise affine
and projective algebraic varieties, describe them them in the language
of Commutative Algebra
and analyse their basic
properties using the methods and tools of the later.
3. be able to describe, construct
and analyze affine and projective algebraic varieties, including their
3. be able to apply the
techniques of ideal theory to basic problems in the theory of affine
and projective algebraic curves and surfaces.
4. be able to apply the
techniques of basic elimination theory to problems in elementary
5. be familiar with the basic
concepts of classical intersection theory.
I. Dolgacev, Introduction
D. Mumford, The
Red Book of Varieties and Schemes (we will only cover parts of this
somewhat advanced text, given that it requires more commutative algebra
than I can assume known).
For basic algebra and commutative
Atiyah & McDonald: "An introduction to commutative algebra".
Serge Lang: "Algebra".
Bourbaki: "Algebra I", "Algebra
II" and "Commutative Algebra"
H. Matsumura: "Commutative Ring Theory".
Topics covered in class:
1. Rings and ideals; definition of prime and
multiplicative sets; quotient of a ring by an ideal; integral domains
and principal ideal domains (P.I.D.s).
2. Ideal generated by a set; ideal intersections and ideal sums.
3. Characterizations of prime and maximal ideals. The prime and maximal
spectra of a ring. Krull's theorem; the Krull dimension of a ring.
Noetherian rings. Ideal-theoretic characterization of fields and
4. Basic theory of semilattices and order lattices. The lattice
($J(R),+,\cap)$ of ideals of a ring. The
product of ideals. The semiring $(J(R),+,\cdot)$.
5. Radical of an ideal; roots of an
nilpotent elements; the
nilradical of a ring. Reduced rings. Radical ideals. The quotient
criterion for radical ideals. Prime ideals are radical. The reduction
of a ring. I-order of elements and order of nilpotency. The
radicalization map as a closure operator. The semilattice of radical
6. Closure and kernel operators.
7. Modules and algebras over a commutative ring; morphism and
isomorphism of algebras; monoid algebras and polynomial algebras;
basic terminology and conventions for polynomials. Z-modules are
the same as Abelian groups; Z-algebras are the same as commutative
rings. First isomorphism theorem for commutative R-algebras;
application to commutative rings.
8. Finitely generated algebras. Presentation of a finitely-generated
algebra through generators and relations; polynomial algebras are the
free commutative algebras on finite sets of generators; the
universality property of polynomial algebras.
9. Galois correspondences; examples.
10. Hilbert's basis theorem.
The case of coefficients in a field.
10. Hilbert's weal and hard nullstellensatz. The (affine) ideal
11. Affine varieties; the Zarsiski tangent space; singular points.
12. Projective space; homogeneous polynomials; projective varieties and
Tutorial 1: The ideals of the ring of integers
-The ring of integers is a P.I.D.
-Divisibility as a partial order relation;
connection with the inclusion relation on ideals
-Ideal intersections and sums correspond to the lcm
Tutorial 2: The ideals of the ring of integers -- part 2:
-The lattice J(Z) and the spectrum Spec(Z). Meaning
of Noetherianness of Z.
-Irreducibility versus primeness. Primality.
Primality implies that all irreducibles are prime.
-The Euclidean algorithm and the unique
factorization theorem (the fundamental theorem of arithmetic).
-Basics on generalizations: Arithmetic in Euclidean
Rings, P.I.Ds, Bezout domains, UFD's, GCDs, (pre-)Schreier domains etc.
Tutorial 3: Square-free content of a natural number; radicalization map
and radical ideals of Z; the nilradical of the rings Z_n;
description of the nilpotent elements of Z_n.
Tutorial 4: Viete's relations.
Tutorial 5: Resultants and discriminants.
Revision Tutorial: Affine curves; computing intersection points
through resultants; some examples of intersection multiplicity;
ordinary double points and cusps for affine real and complex curves.
Some lecture notes (with
apologies for any typos):
Notes on radical ideals
Notes on closure and contraction
Notes on Galois Correspondences
Notes on projective spaces
Problem Set 1
Problem Set 2
Problem Set 3
Problem Set 4
The exam will consist of 4 questions (each worth 25 points), of which
you have to answer 3 questions correctly in order to get a maximum
score (a score of 75 points will be renormalized to 100%). For those
questions which have sub-questions, each sub-question will be numbered
and contain an indication of how many points it is worth. For example:
Question 1 [25 p] ....
a. [10 p]
b. [8 p]
Question 2 [25 p] ... | <urn:uuid:5f71d3c7-c43e-4367-8e56-a785bb0de108> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~calin/teaching/AG.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.804613 |
|United States Patent||4,303,033|
|King||December 1, 1981|
Pontoons are formed from elongated bodies of flotation material enclosed in rigid, channel-shaped housings and assembled in spaced relationship to each other by assembly rods extending through the pontoons and a platform member intermediate the pontoons. A seat is mounted on the platform member for angular displacement about a vertical axis.
|Inventors:||King; Gary D. (Mound Valley, KS)|
|Filed:||November 30, 1979|
|Current U.S. Class:||114/61.22 ; 114/352; 114/61.24; 440/6|
|Current International Class:||B63B 7/00 (20060101); B63B 7/04 (20060101); B63B 29/06 (20060101); B63B 29/00 (20060101); F02B 61/00 (20060101); F02B 61/04 (20060101); B63B 007/04 ()|
|Field of Search:||9/2R,2C,2S 114/61,77R,283,292 440/6| | <urn:uuid:631e4479-94ac-4270-8ef8-1fd59db96838> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://patents.com/us-4303033.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.652655 |
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A.Word.A.Daywith Anu Garg
plural beaux gestes (bo ZHEST)
MEANING:noun: A gracious, but often meaningless, gesture.
ETYMOLOGY:From French, literally fine gesture. Earliest documented use: 1920.
USAGE:"An effective encore doesn't risk becoming an empty beau geste; it is an emotional p.s. somehow relating to the mood of the written program."
Peter Dobrin; Applauding the Orchestra for Offering Encores; The Philadelphia Inquirer (Pennsylvania); Jan 15, 2011.
Explore "beau geste" in the Visual Thesaurus.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power -- he's free again. -Alexander Solzhenitsyn, novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008)
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© 2013 Wordsmith | <urn:uuid:ac2d7bc0-4d1b-44d0-854b-f71682eae399> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wordsmith.org/words/beau_geste.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.814588 |
SMART: BRFSS City and County Data
Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends
A Brief History
Established in 1984 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is a state-based system of health surveys that collects information on health risk behaviors, preventive health practices, and health care access primarily related to chronic disease and injury. For many states, the BRFSS is the only available source of timely, accurate data on health-related behaviors.
Currently, data are collected monthly in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. More than 400,000 adults are interviewed each year, making the BRFSS the largest telephone health survey in the world. States use BRFSS data to identify emerging health problems, establish and track health objectives, and develop and evaluate public health policies and programs. Many states also use BRFSS data to support health-related legislative efforts.
The Evolution of the SMART Project
As the usefulness of the BRFSS has increased, so has the demand for local-level data. Although the BRFSS was designed to produce state-level estimates, growth in the number of respondents has made it possible to produce prevalence estimates for smaller areas and led to the Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends (SMART) project.
This analysis of BRFSS data has yielded estimates for over 170 metropolitan (with at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more inhabitants) and micropolitan (with at least one urban cluster of at least 10,000 but less than 50,000 inhabitants) statistical areas. Estimates were also calculated for those counties within these metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas that had a large enough sample size in a given year.
With SMART, health officials now have access to local-level data that are comparable across the nation. These data show that the prevalence of certain behaviors may vary widely across metropolitan and micropolitan areas and counties. By filling a critical need for local area surveillance data, this new analysis of BRFSS data will help local health officials plan, implement, and evaluate their prevention efforts. | <urn:uuid:8c3edc85-1cd5-46bb-a0b5-3e37da077d50> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/smart/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934167 |
NASA's space shuttle Endeavour will be carrying a former University of Colorado at Boulder postdoctoral researcher, a campus-built biomedical payload and two CU educational experiments when it blasts off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., on Tuesday, March 11.
Takao Doi, who conducted postdoctoral work at CU-Boulder on microgravity fluids in 1987 and 1988 and was an aerospace engineering associate professor adjoint from 1991 to 1995, will be making his third flight during the 16-day Endeavor mission, which is headed to the International Space Station, or ISS. Doi, now an astronaut in the Japanese space agency, previously flew on the space shuttle Columbia in 1997 and is one of 17 CU-Boulder alumni who have flown on NASA missions.
CU-Boulder's BioServe Space Technologies center designed and developed the biomedical payload for four microbial resistance and virulence experiments that will be flying on Endeavour, said Bioserve Director Louis Stodieck. Bioserve is providing the hardware, integration, operation and support for the four microgravity experiments, which were designed by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and at Montana State University and Arizona State University.
The biomedical experiments will probe the effects of space flight on four model organisms, including strains of salmonella, pneumonia, yeast and a common lung bacteria, said Stodieck. Studies have suggested space flight can result in the suppression of the immune system of both humans and animals, and previous studies have shown the microgravity of spaceflight can alter growth rates, virulence, drug resistance and gene expression in such microorganisms, he said.
The experiments will be flown aboard the space shuttle in sets of specially designed space test tubes, which are fluid-processing apparatuses designed and built at BioServe, said Stodieck. Endeavor astronauts will control the individual experiments using hand cranks, first to trigger cell growth via fluid mixing and later to terminate it. The samples will be returned to Earth at the end of the Endeavour mission for further study by biomedical researchers, Stodieck said.
"Results from these experiments could provide important information on the threat of pathogens in the space environment, especially during long-term missions to explore the moon and Mars," said Stodieck. "Not only do these experiments have applications for keeping crew members safe by helping scientists better understand gene and protein changes in pathogens, they also could help biomedical researchers find new ways to prevent and control infectious disease on Earth."
Headquartered in CU-Boulder's aerospace engineering sciences department, BioServe also will be delivering two K-12 educational experiments to ISS on Endeavor as part of an educational program known as "CSI" developed by the NASA-sponsored CU center in 2006. The experiments, a seed-germination/plant development study and a silicate crystal garden, will provide learning opportunities for middle school and high school students around the world, said Stefanie Countryman, the BioServe business manager and coordinator of education outreach.
The crystal garden experiment, similar to one launched by BioServe in August 2007 on Endeavour, will be tapped to examine the growth of metallic salts in the low gravity of space. In addition to being used for research studies, the experiment will be used by BioServe's educational partner, Orion's Quest, a Web-based education program in Detroit that works closely with NASA and various schools on K-12 education efforts.
The second BioServe educational experiment involves sprouting and growing tomato seeds in orbit to illustrate how gravity affects germination and plant development, said Stodieck. The seed experiment also has implications for growing food during long-term space missions and for developing heartier varieties of tomatoes for Earth-bound gardeners.
Both educational experiments will be processed inside BioServe's Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus, an automated suitcase-sized device developed at CU-Boulder that has been launched on more than a dozen NASA space shuttle missions. During the space shuttle docking process with ISS, the plant and crystal education experiments will be transferred from the shuttle to two BioServe CGBA units already aboard the space station, Stodieck said.
The 16-day Endeavour mission will focus on ISS construction, including installing a Japanese research module and delivering a two-armed Canadian robot module to the orbiting station.
For more information on BioServe, visit the program's Web site at: http://http://www.colorado.edu/engineering/BioServe/index.html. For information on Orion's Quest go to: www.orionsquest.org/._ For information about BioServe's K-12 educational opportunities through CSI, contact Countryman at 303-735-5308 or email her at: Stefanie.Countryman@colorado.edu. _ | <urn:uuid:c812bc5d-a74f-4d05-9654-7517613d5a62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2008/03/07/cu-boulder-alumnus-two-payloads-heading-space-station-space-shuttle-march?qt-main=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927465 |
The Evolution Deceit
The sand scorpions living in deserts are one of the most dangerous enemies for small animals. The eyes of these scorpions are almost blind. In spite of this, they are able to determine the location of their prey at night with a great mastery.
Scientists have encountered a great system looking for an answer to “How does the scorpion achieve this flawless determination of location“?
He is Allah – the Creator, the Maker, the Giver of Form. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. Everything in the heavens and earth glorifies Him. He is the Almighty, the All-Wise. (Surat al-Hashr, 24)
In a computer network, the central computer determines the source and distance of waves according to incoming data. Then it informs each computer in the network what to do. A scorpion uses this system as well, which can be compared to that of equipped computers, in order to determine the location of its prey. The central computer system of a scorpion determines the location of the prey easily by using vibration and rayleigh waves (Surface waves produced on the air-ground interface are known as rayleigh waves) spread by its prey. For this system of perception, the Almighty Allah has created a very special system in the scorpion.
Now let's analyze this superior system of perception, which was created by our Almighty Allah. This system is evidence of the unique art of Creation.
How does a scorpion determine the direction of its prey?
Cleft-styled excellent sensors are located on the 8 feet of the scorpion.
These sensors are so sensitive that they are even able to determine movements causing vibrations, which are smaller than a millionth of a millimeter. Well, how do these sensors work and how does the scorpion find its prey's location?
1- The hunting's distance is being determined...
Let's imagine a butterfly has landed on a place near the scorpion.
The butterfly, landing on the ground, generates two types of vibration waves.
The first one is defined by forwarding volume waves with a speed of 150 meters per second. The second one is defined by waves called rayleigh waves, which are spread with a speed of 50 meters per second parallel to the surface. The distance to the prey is determined by the difference between these two waves' arriving time at the scorpion. Of course, it is not an accurate determination to know how far away the prey is.
Because of this, it is required to know the target's direction.
2- The hunting's direction is being determined...
The legs of a scorpion step on the ground on an approximately 5 centimeter diameter circle. Thus, the difference between the arriving of the prey's spread waves at the scorpion's nearest leg to the prey and the arriving at the farthest sensor is 5 milliseconds (one over two-hundredth of a second).
As soon as one of the sensors determines the rayleigh wave, nerve cells send a signal to the center of the scorpion's nervous system. This stimulating signal is also transmitted to the nerve, which perceives the delayed arriving waves of the three feet on the other side. Merely the waves coming from these three legs are pressed; therefore it is not transmitted to the center of the nervous system immediately. In this way, the foot generating the source for the signal, which comes early each time and the position of the feet on the other side are assessed. With this positional assessment the direction of the wave's source is determined.
3- The “Take action“ order is coming...
If the difference between stimulating signal and the arriving of pressed signals at the sensors in the feet is one over five-hundredth of a second, the central nervous system perceives both signals at the same time without delay. This is interpreted by the scorpion as a “take action and use your excellently created arms for the attack“ command.
The 8 nerve cells, which process the signals coming from the feet, are assembled like a committee and determine the direction of the prey each time with a common decision. How does this determination come true? Are the nerve cells assembled for this in order to make a situation assessment? Do they decide among themselves and have results? This is impossible by all means. Nerve cells are microscopical extensions merely consisting of protein, fat and water. They don't possess reason, consciousness and ability to judge.
The possessor of this superior system in the scorpion is the Almighty Allah to Whom belong all worlds. The scorpion is a miracle showing the Almighty Allah’s flawless creation. Our Almighty Allah invites people to contemplate concerning this truth in the Qur'an as follows:
Mankind! an example has been made, so listen to it carefully. Those whom you call upon besides Allah are not even able to create a single fly, even if they were to join together to do it. And if a fly steals something from them, they cannot get it back. How feeble are both the seeker and the sought! (Surat al Hajj, 73 )
Scorpions have been determining the location of their prey with the same method for millions of years
The mechanism of former scorpions is equal to those living today since being created. It is a misbelief of evolutionists that this mechanism developed by coincidence in the course of time or was added later.
Neither the former scorpions had a more primitive mechanism of perception, nor today's scorpions have a more complex mechanism of perception. The system nowadays is exactly of the same complexity as the system of scorpions lived millions of years ago. The reason for this is that a superior knowledge-possessing, single Creator has created both the scorpion and his mechanism.
This knowledge of flawless systems belongs to Allah Who has created everything flawlessly.
A very important point has to be reminded by all means. For the scorpion, its feature is only means to survive. Human beings are the only entities who are able to see the complex structure and miraculous nature of this system. Some human beings are only able to receive the given message and direct themselves to the Creator, realizing these facts.
This fact is revealed in the Qu'ran as follows:
“And such are the Parables We set forth for mankind, but only those understand them who have knowledge.“ (Surat al Ankabut, 43) | <urn:uuid:2cd63ca6-ae58-46ff-8db5-83eefa990fde> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/en/Daily-Comments/36205/The-Superior-Equipped-Computer-System-of-The-Scorpion | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958346 |
Grades K,1,2 | Science
Counting an animal's legs is one way to identify it. In this science worksheet, your child will count the legs on each animal and connect the animal's name with its number of legs.
This worksheet originally published in Learn Science! for grades K-2 by © Dorling Kindersley Limited.
Skills: observational skills, guided inquiry, properties of life, learning about animals, science experiment to tryPrint Full Size
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The impetus for these two lessons were born from our experiences facilitating synchronous bibliographic instruction at the collegiate level. Both Zinnat and I have worked as information assistants at the Rosenthal Library; in addition, we have also worked as high school teachers, so we chose goals and objectives that we felt were the most relevant and most important.
From our experiences, we have noted that one of the largest obstacles that incoming students face is their ignorance of databases, and their overuse of search engines. 17-20 year olds run to Google or Yahoo for all their reference needs, despite the pedigree of their queries. In high school a general knowledge of a topic is acceptable, but once you become a college scholar you are expected to delve into a topic and not subsist on topical knowledge.
The sad reality is that most college freshmen come to their first year of college without a proper foundation in research strategies. As a result, they believe that all their information needs can be satisfied by search engines and condition themselves to utilize the databases sparingly. Colleges spend a great deal of their operating budgets on database subscriptions, so it is in the best interest of academic libraries to condition their students to utilize, engage with, and rely on databases for all their information needs.
We thought having two bibliographic lessons would assist students (or at least surreptitiously condition them) to retain the knowledge they have gained. We thought that having 90 mins for each lesson would be ideal; the lessons we designed don't take 90 mins to "teach", therefore this gives technologically-impaired and late students time to catch up or pursue questions at the end of our sessions. If we designed our lessons for 90 mins and then used all of the 90 mins that would leave zero time for students to clarify misunderstandings.
It was our aim to have students obtain a conceptual understanding of databases so that they can apply that knowledge to use any database that utlizes a controlled vocabulary. This is why we incorporated a discussion of cost benefit analysis in the Introduction of lesson one. We feel that students would be positively motivated to use databases if they realize that access to databases is a service covered by their tuition and fees. Specifically, we ask students to consider if they would pay for a service that they don't use. Even though we are appealing to their pocket books, we are hoping that they will see the benefit of increasing their database usage.
A Spanglish blog dedicated to the works, ruminations, and mongrel pyrotechnics of Yago S. Cura, an Argentine-American poet, translator, publisher & futbol cretin. Yago publishes Hinchas de Poesia, an online literary journal, & is the sole proprietor of Hinchas Press. | <urn:uuid:e4585c42-5ede-4747-b909-8e52349032f1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://spicaresque.blogspot.com/2009/04/exposition-on-two-lesson-plans-created.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96472 |
(a) As used in this chapter unless the context clearly requires otherwise:
(1) “Dealer” means any person or business entity engaged in the business of: buying, canning, curing, or preserving fish or shell fish; or manufacturing meal, oil, flour, protein concentrate, animal food or fertilizer from fish or shellfish.
(2) “Director” means the Director of Marine and Wildlife Resources.
(3) “Drift gillnet fishing” means any gillnet that is more than half a mile in length; and that enmeshes, entraps, or entangles any fish; and that is used or intended to be used or intended to be used while attached to any point of land or the seabed irrespective of whether the net is used or intended to be used while attached to any vessel.
(4) “Fish” means those species of the classes osteichthyes, condrichthyes and agnatha that shall not be fished for except as authorized by rule of the director. The term “fish” includes all stages of development and the bodily parts of fish species.
(5) “Department” means the Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources.
(6) “Shellfish” means those species of marine and fresh water invertebrates that shall not be taken except as authorized by rule of the Director. The term “shellfish” includes all stages of development and the bodily parts of shellfish species.
(7) “Territory” means all Territorial areas, and all marine waters and fresh waters within a three-mile zone extending outward from the shoreline.
(8) “Wildlife” means all species of the animal kingdom whose members exist in a wild state, excepting “fish” and “shellfish”, that shall not be taken except as authorized by rule of the Director. The term “wildlife” includes all states of development and the bodily parts of wildlife species.History: 1987, PL 20-12 § 1; 1988, PL 20-62; 1989, PL 21-20. | <urn:uuid:854d1ddd-13d9-4e6f-98ad-6c214b955774> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.asbar.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8343&catid=603&Itemid=172 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913854 |
Revolutionary Omni-Focus Video Camera
Posted on May 04, 2010 at 09:59:24 pm
Matter & Energy •Technology •Aviation •Detectors •Vehicles •Physics •Acoustics Reference •Videoconferencing •Photography •Confocal laser scanning microscopy •Water rocket Inventor and principal investigator of the Omni-focus video camera, Professor Keigo Iizuka of The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, explains that, "the intensity of a point source decays with the inverse square of the distance of propagation. This variation with distance has proven to be large enough to provide depth mapping with high resolution. What's more, by using two point sources at different locations, the distance of the object can be determined without the influence of its surface texture." This principle led Professor Iizuka to invent a novel distance-mapping camera, the Divergence-ratio Axi-vision Camera, abbreviated "Divcam," which is a key component of the new Omni-focus Video Camera.
The Omni-focus Video Camera is produced in collaboration with consulting investigator Dr. David Wilkes, president of Wilkes Associates, a Canadian high-tech product development company. It contains an array of color video cameras, each focused at a different distance, and an integrated Divcam. The Divcam maps distance information for every pixel in the scene in real time. A software-based pixel correspondence utility, using prior intellectual property invented by Dr. Wilkes, then uses the distance information to select individual pixels from the ensemble of outputs of the color video cameras, and generates the final "omni-focused" single-video image.
-ADVERTISEMENT-"The Omni-focus Video Camera's unique ability to achieve simultaneous focus of all of the objects in a scene, near or far, multiple or single, without the usual physical movement of the camera's optics, represents a true advancement that is further distinguished in terms of high-resolution, distance mapping, real-time operation, simplicity, compactness, lightweight portability and a projected low manufacturing cost," says Dr. Wilkes.
The camera is still in the research phase. But it's not difficult to imagine how far-reaching an impact the Omni-focus Video Camera could have on several industries. As for the future direction of his research, Professor Iizuka sees the following possibilities:
1.Application of the Omni-focus Video Camera to TV studio cameras. Consider the example of a musical concert being televised by a major network. Even though the singer is in sharp focus, band members in the background, are invariably out of focus. Conventional video cameras are unable to focus simultaneously on both the singer and band members in the background. The Omni-focus Video Camera removes this limitation to deliver higher-quality video images and improved quality of experience to potentially millions of TV viewers, worldwide. 2.Application of the Omni-focus Video Camera to medicine. Says Professor Iizuka, "I'd like to apply the principle of the Omni-focus Video Camera to the design of a laparoscope. It would help doctors at the operating table, if they can see the entire view without touching optics of the laparoscope, especially if dealing with a large lesion." | <urn:uuid:0c29d65d-1a9d-4b46-a60a-16848ad972fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ccnmag.com/article/revolutionary_omni-focus_video_camera | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.913131 |
The program, called “Learning is Power: Energy Education in the Classroom,” coincides with Common Core Georgia Performance Standards in science, mathematics and language arts with a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects. The program, including experiment materials, is provided to schools by Georgia Power at no cost.
Third- and fifth-grade students experienced hands-on activities led by Georgia Power Education Coordinator Deborah Pendergrass during the session. The first activity required the children to rub their hands together to create friction.
“Energy is doing work and creating heat,” Pendergrass said to Bridget Barker’s third-grade students. She then instructed them to raise their hands up — making everyone feel the cold air and how heat transfers.
Students then talked about places in their homes that the air temperature outside could affect the air temperature inside. “I picked the ceiling because I feel more air when I go up to my attic,” said Austin Morris, son of Greg and Kylee Morris of Woodstock.
Other experiments included measuring the temperature of hot water in one cup with a lid and another cup without a lid with a Celsius thermometer. Later, students measured which cup of water lost the most heat.
“The lid served as an insulator,” Pendergrass said.
The students also got to participate in an “ice race,” where they hypothesized whether a conductor or an insulator would melt the ice first. “The conductor expands the heat, gets hotter and melts the ice quicker,” Blake Cantrell, grandson of Melinda Duncan of Canton, said.
At the end of the experiment, students received bookmarks with energy efficient tips to take home with them. Principal Dr. Dianne Steinbeck said she could not emphasize how valuable the hands-on scientific experiments were for Holly Springs students. She said since the school was selected to be a STEM academy for fall 2012, projects like this are only a preview of what is to come.
“We are converting space to become our new science lab,” Steinbeck said. “It’s all about opportunity, and the fact that Georgia Power is doing this at no cost is tremendous.”
For more information on the program, visit www.georgiapower.com/learningpower. | <urn:uuid:12ca355e-a41a-4580-bb48-66eb5efa7f79> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cherokeetribune.com/view/full_story/17580650/article-Holly-Springs-students-gain-hands-on-education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957822 |
- Source: Museum entry book 1847-55, pp203-4: The transverse plaits in these are made with the teeth. They are painted with garajure. The Tururí are Artocarpaceous trees, among the loftiest in the forest. The commonest species has red bark; this white barked one called Tururí morotenga. I have not seen it flower. Among the Uaupe Indians the tanga is the only article of dress, barely sufficing to hide their nether regions. It is passed under the thighs and tucked in, before and behind, under a string which passes around the loin. It is usually a rough strip of Red Tururí or a piece of curana cloth of their own manufacture. What is singular is that its use is confined to men; the women (except in festas when they wear tangas of plaited beads) going entirely naked.
- Record posted on March 27, 2009 and last updated March 27, 2009 | <urn:uuid:8f33e968-cfe2-49e7-8507-b4a83ba78af6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kew.org/collections/ecbot/collections/42839/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948816 |
Scientists step closer to artificial life
Published: Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 10:30 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, January 24, 2008 at 10:30 p.m.
WASHINGTON - It's another step in the quest to create artificial organisms: Scientists have synthesized the complete DNA of a type of bacteria.
The experiment, published online Thursday by the journal Science, isn't a living germ, just its genetic structure.
But scientists from Maryland's J. Craig Venter Institute called it the largest manmade stretch of DNA to date, and therefore a logical step in the fledgling field of "synthetic biology" that aims to build new organisms that work differently than nature intended, such as producing new fuels.
The Venter group started with some off-the-shelf laboratory-made DNA fragments. They overlapped and joined these stretches to make ever-larger chunks of genetic material until they finally had a manmade copy of the entire genome of a small bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium, a genital germ.
Last year, Venter's team performed a "genome transplant": Researchers transplanted all of the genes from one species of Mycoplasma into another, switching a goat germ into a cattle germ. Somehow, the transplant itself sparked the donor genes to start working; Venter uses a computer analogy to say it "booted up."
Now he must test if this new artificial Mycoplasma genome can boot up, too — by putting the DNA into a living cell to see if takes over and becomes a synthetic organism.
"I don't view that we're creating life," Venter told The Associated Press last year in describing this series of experiments. "I view that we're modifying life to come up with new life forms by designing and synthetically constructing chromosomes.
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Update From the Medical Journals: January 2010
January 29, 2010
By Mary Pickett, M.D.
What's the latest news in the medical journals this month? Find out what your doctor is reading.
The New England Journal of Medicine released a report online on January 20 making it clear that Americans can improve their health and reduce health-care costs if they are willing to eat a less salty diet. The report comes from epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University.
The researchers used a computer simulation to predict the health benefits nationwide, if adults 35 years and older reduced average salt intake by 3 grams per day. (This equals 1,200 milligrams of sodium per day). The computer simulator used predictable relationships between salt and blood pressure, and between blood pressure and heart or stroke events. According to predictions, during the first decade after Americans cut back, there would be from 54,000 to 99,000 fewer heart attacks per year, 32,000 to 66,000 fewer strokes per year, and 44,000 to 92,000 fewer deaths per year from any cause. Roughly one-fourth of all people who currently need medication to treat high blood pressure would be able to stop taking their medications.
Most Americans eat a total of about two teaspoons of salt in a day men take in 10.4 grams of salt per day on average, and women consume 7.3 grams per day. Cutting salt by 3 grams is an ambitious change. But even if we reduce salt intake by an average of 1 gram per day even if it's over the next decade we would save somewhere between $19 billion and $32 billion in health care costs over the next ten years. If we cut out 3 grams of salt per day on average, Americans as a nation could save between $57 billion and $97 billion health care dollars over the next ten years.
Most of the salt we eat 75% to 80% comes from processed foods. With our health and health dollars at stake, some experts are making a case that it may be appropriate for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of salt that can be allowed in processed food products.
A study in the January 27 issue of JAMA compared two different ways to prevent episodes of atrial fibrillation, a common irregular heart rhythm. The study evaluated people in whom the irregular rhythm only occurs intermittently (also called paroxysmal) and who did not respond to treatment with a rhythm-control drug. The study suggests that a procedure called ablation causes better rhythm control and slightly fewer serious complications than treatment with additional drugs that are meant to prevent the arrhythmia.
An ablation procedure for atrial fibrillation involves placing a catheter in an artery and threading the catheter into the heart. Instruments at the tip of the catheter are used to map out the flow of electricity in the heart and to cauterize (burn) a small area of heart muscle where the pulmonary veins empty into the heart. For most patients who have intermittent atrial fibrillation, this treatment appears to eliminate the trigger for the rhythm change.
In the study, 167 patients were randomized to receive either ablation or additional drug treatment. About two-thirds of the patients got the ablation procedure. Sixty-six percent of them stayed symptom-free during the subsequent nine months. Only 19% of people in the drug-treatment group had the same success. About 5% of individuals treated with ablation had serious complications, which compared well to the drug-treatment group. Complications of ablation can include other rhythm problems, such as atrial flutter, inflammation of the sac that surrounds the heart (pericarditis) and slow emptying of the stomach caused by damage to nerves that are near the heart.
This study is helpful because it gives us information about a procedure that is new, but becoming more popular. For the time being, this procedure is not for people whose usual or "chronic" rhythm is atrial fibrillation. In addition, except for people who have bothersome symptoms, preventing episodes of the arrhythmia (known as rhythm control) may be a less safe or helpful strategy than simply controlling the heart rate during episodes when they occur (rate control). The blood-thinning medicine warfarin (Coumadin) is recommended for most people with atrial fibrillation as a way to prevent strokes. (Strokes are a complication of atrial fibrillation.) This is true whether or not the rhythm problem has been treated with ablation.
Longer follow-up from this study will eventually give us a better idea about the value of ablation for treating intermittent (paroxysmal) atrial fibrillation. If its benefits last long-term, this procedure may become more widely recommended.
Mary Pickett, M.D. is an Associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University where she is a primary care doctor for adults. She supervises and educates residents in the field of Internal Medicine, for outpatient and hospital care. She is a Lecturer for Harvard Medical School and a Senior Medical Editor for Harvard Health Publications. | <urn:uuid:005b42e4-4479-46ef-9249-02c0c0024f51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtPrint/WSIHW000/9273/35329/1356655.html?d=dmtHMSContent&hide=t&k=basePrint | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951494 |
Written by PETA
Staffers at a veterinarian's office in Brooklyn discovered a baby peregrine falcon on the pavement, disoriented and unable to fly. Being unfamiliar with birds of prey, they called PETA for assistance, and we advised them on giving the little girl a checkup.
It seemed likely that she had suffered a bruised wing while learning to fly. We found a wildlife-rehabilitation expert who was licensed to treat the protected bird, and the staff transported her. With a little TLC, the falcon made a full recovery, and the rehabber released her in the same spot where she was found—where the workers at the veterinarian's office may occasionally get to see the bird they saved in flight.
Most wild baby animals who are alone are OK, and their parents are nearby. If you see an injured wild animal, see PETA's tips for what to do and how to locate a wildlife rehabilitator who can help.
Written by Michelle Sherrow
you have a general question for PETA and would like a response, please e-mail Info@peta.org. If you need to report cruelty to
an animal, please click
here. If you are reporting an animal in imminent danger and know where to find the
animal and if the abuse is taking place right now, please call your local
police department. If the police are unresponsive, please call PETA
immediately at 757-622-7382 and press 2.
Follow PETA on Twitter!
Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights? Read more. | <urn:uuid:fe45715d-0191-4d3b-93c8-747eca55d775> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.peta.org/b/thepetafiles/archive/2011/07/13/saving-a-little-bird-in-the-big-apple.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96477 |
While testing out the updated version of the NTRS I found another missed opportunity for NASA (See also: http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...=4472&st=0)
TRW in 1968 proposed that Pioneer E be modified so that it could be launched and become the first ever spacecraft to orbit Venus (On or about the 16th of December 1970, with the orbital mission running to at least May of 1971). While the instrumentation would have been unchanged, battery power would have been increased, the attitude system modified to allow mid-course corrections and most importantly a solid rocket would have allowed the spacecraft to enter Venusian orbit.
While not equipped to take photographs or directly study the planet itself, it would have allowed the long term study of the Venusian near space environment to begin much earlier than it did.
For the 11mb Volume 1 Technical report (The remaining volumes do not seem to be available online) | <urn:uuid:ddb80ace-02aa-4413-ba3e-794530f92590> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/lofiversion/index.php/t6921.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93221 |
Habanero Chili Pepper Seeds
The Habanero Chili
is a great garden addition for the "pepper connoisseur". This is one of the most intensely spicy species of Chili Peppers. Unripe Habaneros are green, and they color as they mature.
The name Habenero
comes from the Cuban city of La Habana (Havana, in English). Although the peppers did not originate there, they were frequently traded.
The Habenero Chili Pepper
is believed to have originated in and around the Yucutan Peninsula. It was discovered by Early Europeans in that region and disseminated to other regions of the world. The Habenero
was so common in China that 18th century taxonomists mistook China for its place of origin and called it “Capsicum Chinese” or “The Chinese Pepper”.
Although, Mexico is still the largest consumer of this very spicy pepper, it is becoming increasingly popular all over the world. Today, Habeneros
are produced in Belize, Panama, Costa Rica, Texas, Idaho and California.
The heat of the Habenero
makes it a popular ingredient in salsas, hot sauces and spicy foods. Sometimes Habeneros
are placed in bottles of Taquila or Mezcal to make a spiced version of the drink.
do best in hot weather and , specifically, in areas with good morning sun. Water these peppers only when they are dry. Over watering will produce bitter tasting peppers.
also do well as a container plant.
Jalapeno Pepper Seeds
White Habanero Hot Pepper Seeds
Devil's Tongue Hot Pepper Seeds
Chocolate Habanero Hot Pepper Seeds | <urn:uuid:c31587ff-bd4b-4eba-9bab-29910c2abf7b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.egardenseed.com/Habanero_Chili_Pepper_Seeds_p/0144.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.910027 |
46. Fort Union
"Upper Missouri Developers"
n 26 April 1805 strong winds and blowing sand again impeded the main party, but they still managed to cover eight miles before dark. Meanwhile, Lewis and a small party, traveling half a day ahead of the others, explored the Missouri River on foot, looking for a suitable trading-post site. The north side opposite the mouth of the Yellowstone was, Lewis observed, twelve to eighteen feet above water level, less likely to be flooded by these "capricious and versatile" rivers, "except in extreme high water, which dose not appear to be very frequent." And that is where, in 1828, John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company — one of the first corporate monopolies in American business history — built Fort Union, which remained the axis of Indian-American commerce on the Upper Missouri until the late 1860s.
Manpowered boats somewhat like the ones the Corps of Discovery used continued to inch up the Missouri for decades (for examples, see Post-Expedition Fur Trade, Fig. 9), until the first steamboat, the Yellow Stone (ibid., Fig. 7), reached Fort Union in 1832. By the 1840s, travel time from St. Louis to Fort Union had shrunk to a record-breaking, breathtaking forty-eight days and seven hours. The keelboat era soon became but a memory — no doubt a painful one for all the men who had waded up the mighty, muddy river, dragging tons of dead weight against the current, continually fighting the river's natural tendency to fling them back and sink their boats.
This photograph shows the National Park Service's reconstruction of historic Fort Union. The parking lot would scarcely have been adequate for the crowds of Mandans, Hidatsas, Assiniboines, Blackfeet, Crows, and others who camped near its riverfront gate or grazed their ponies on the vast prairie to the north.
From Discovering Lewis & Clark from the Air
Photography by Jim Wark
Text by Joseph Mussulman
Reproduced by permission of Mountain Press. | <urn:uuid:731ead02-b855-4933-a513-804640ba6f45> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lewis-clark.org/content/content-article.asp?ArticleID=2920 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936321 |
There are many types of fracture and one of the areas that are commonly susceptible to this kind of condition is the ankle. Though most traumatic instances that affect the ankle region only resulted to ankle sprain, it would still be necessary to learn about the different forms of ankle fracture to better understand the condition and perform the things that are needed to easily recover from a suspected fracture injury. It would be easier for us to differentiate these different kinds ankle fractures in the future.
One of known ankle fractures is what they clinically call as bimalleolar fracture. It is also known as Pott’s fracture though this term is loosely used to represent a certain form of bimalleolar fracture. Aside from this, there are also conditions that are called as trimalleolar ankle fracture which is different from the earlier mentioned kind of ankle fracture. In addition, there is also a condition known as the tibial plafond fracture affects the ankle region.
As for this article, we will first learn about the bimalleolar bone fracture—its definition, causes, symptoms, treatments, recovery, and other vital information. Learning all these things would help us understand different broken ankle problems and would later help us in providing the right ankle fracture treatment when needed.
Understanding the Structure of the Ankle
There can be many forms of the ankle fracture. To be able to identify what a bimalleolar ankle fracture is and how is it differ from other forms of ankle fracture, it is best to understand the structure of the ankle region first. After this, we would be able to clearly define what bimalleolar fracture or Pott fracture is.
There are three important parts of the ankle: fibula (the bone outside the ankle), tibia (the inner bone), and talus (the foot bone). At the same time, there are certain parts in relation to the fibula and tibia regions. These are the medial malleolus which is inside tibia, posterior malleolus which is on the outside of tibia, and lateral malleolus which is in the end part of the fibula.
Defining Bimalleolar Fracture
Bimalleolar fracture definition can be done by saying that the fracture is the condition wherein an individual suffers from a crack or break of the medial malleolus of the distal tibia and the lateral malleolus of the fibula region. This usually happens because of the impact between these two bones which are just along side each other.
As we take a picture of the ankle area, we would notice that both malleoli are near each other. This is the reason why bimalleolar fractures occur because the two malleoli are closed with each other than sudden and forceful impact on this area would greatly affect the condition and function of both parts.
How to differentiate an ankle fracture from an ankle sprain
Though both conditions can be painful and results to difficulty of movement of the ankle, the only thing that would differentiate an ankle bimalleolar fracture from an ordinary sprain is the cracking sound when the accident happens. At the same time, it is followed by swelling in the fractured bimalleolar bone. Other fracture symptoms of the ORIF bimalleolar fracture would be discussed below.
Causes of Bimalleolar Fracture
- Twisting: This is the most common cause of bimalleolar fracture dislocation. This commonly happens when a sudden and irregular rotation of the ankle occurs. Because of this, both malleoli are affected which results to the crack or break in the bone.
- Rolling: Though not as common as twisting the ankle, rolling is still another cause of ankle fracture. This is a kind of situation wherein there is an irregular placement of the foot that results to the rolling. Because of this, the malleoli are broken or cracked.
- Tripping: This is when one suddenly misses a step and fall down. This is also one of the most common causes of bimalleolar fractures.
- Sudden impact: Just like any other types of fracture, sudden and forceful impact is another cause of bimalleolar fracture. Vehicular accidents are the most common forms of sudden impact that results to any types of ankle fracture.
- Weakening of the ligaments: Though not as common as the abovementioned causes, weakening of the ligaments can still be another reason. This usually happens to older people with weaker bones due to lesser deposit of calcium phosphate. The condition of the ligaments greatly affects the condition and function of the ankle which can really result to a displaced bimalleolar fracture when already weakening and deteriorating.
Symptoms and Diagnosis of Pott’s fracture
Right after a certain incident (as described in the causes of this bone fracture above), an injured individual would immediately feel pain on the ankle region. After which, swelling of the broken bimalleolar bones would take place. The first aid treatment that one needs is to immobilize the part to avoid fracture complications. When the fracture is severe, there would be bruising and deformity of the affected part as the other symptoms of the fracture. It would also be painful to touch the affected area and it would be difficult to move. Because of this, it is advisable to call the doctor immediately.
Unlike other forms of bone fracture, bimalleolar injury needs a certain rule to determine. Though it can still follow the usual procedure which includes going through an X-ray procedure, there is a certain rule that would best identify this form of fracture so that unnecessary X-rays would be avoided. This rule is what they call as Ottawa ankle rule. Through this procedure, it would be easier for an attending doctor to suggest an X-ray or just diagnose an individual with an ankle sprain. Because of this, health risks that are due to X-rays can be avoided.
Treatment and Recovery
There can be two ways that a fractured person may undergo for a bimalleolar fracture treatment: nonsurgical and surgical procedures. Through a nonsurgical procedure, one can treat ankle fracture through the natural course of one’s healing mechanism. This is done when there is just a crack on the ankle and the bones are not dislocated. In some cases, the doctor can immediately advise the patient to put weight on the affected area while in some instances the need for brace/braces would be needed. The fracture healing time when there is a cast on the ankle would usually take up to six weeks. This bimalleolar fracture healing time is just like the average recovery period for most types of fractures.
On the other hand, a bimalleolar fracture surgery would be taken when there is already a dislocation of the bones. This bimalleolar ankle fracture treatment is recommended for those that have a badly fractured ankle. This would involve the insertion of the screws and rods so that the dislocated bone would be realigned and would be returned to its original position. Bimalleolar fracture recovery for this kind may take some time. It would even need some exercises afterwards as bimalleolar fracture physical therapy.
Like any types of fracture, the recovery time for a fractured ankle would depend on the condition of the individual. Bimalleolar ankle fracture recovery is not really different with other classification of bone fracture. The kind of procedure used would also be considered in the healing time of the condition. Usually, those who undergo surgical procedures are the ones who have quick bimalleolar fracture recovery. But still, the natural process of the body to recover from the conditions cannot be ignored as well. As long as proper fracture cast is available and the right medicines are taken, it may also be easy and quick to recover from the condition.
These are just some of the basic concepts that we need to know about the right bimalleolar fracture. Now, it would be easier for us to identify a sprain from a fracture. It would also be easier for us now to different this kind of ankle fracture from trimalleolar fracture and plafond fracture. | <urn:uuid:9be93a03-68b8-444a-94c8-6747c548f06a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bonesfracture.com/bimalleolar-fracture-bimalleolar-fracture-treatment-symptoms-healing-surgery-and-diagnosis/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947756 |
There is nothing special about borders of former Russian Empire when considering Soviet expansion.
There is an official USSR diplomatic note to Germany (Molotov to Schulenberg on 25 November 1940). It is a conditional agreement of USSR to join Axis. The conditions were to extend USSR sphere of influence to: Bulgaria, Bosfor, Dardanelles, and south of Batumi and Baku towards Gulf of Persia (source: Mark Solonin "25 June" p. 227, citing the Russian Presidential Archive set 3/64, doc 675 p. 108). These territories were obviously not in the former Russian Empire. Molotov sent a note acting on Stalin's orders.
"Did Stalin want..." What person X wanted or what person Y was thinking is not a good subject of historical research; our motives and desires are mysterious even to our close ones, so how could historians seventy years later know better?
What we know is that USSR did not hide from Germany their interest in expanding to these territories, and I think this is what your question is about, right?
Also, in 1945, Stalin negotiated with Allies to officially take a part of German Prussia (Koenigsberg, now Kaliningrad) - it was never a part of a former Russian Empire. (Unofficially, Stalin had much control over East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, etc. These were never parts of a former Russian Empire.) | <urn:uuid:578155f8-6032-46b3-b76d-0b4a4bd0b4b6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/452/did-stalin-want-to-restore-the-russian-empires-borders | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972137 |
An overview of the 2012 Republican Presidential candidates
The 2012 Republican presidential race started, for all intents and purposes, on November 5, 2008, the day after Barack Obama was elected. Since then, a lot of partisan bickering, speculation and rumor-mongering, and nearly three years later, we have what looks to be the final Republican field before primary season begins. The field isn’t demographically diverse: only Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain break the trend of white males. But the diverse backgrounds, ideas and viewpoints among the candidates leave something for just about everyone; everyone, that is, who doesn’t plan on voting for President Obama. My overview of the candidates, after the break.
On July 4, 1776, 56 British rebels signed the most important document in American history: the Declaration of Independence. As we all know, the Founding Fathers documented many of the injustices that the tyrant King George III had imposed on the American colonies, and concluded that (National Treasure reference coming up here) not only was it their right to seek out a new government, it was their duty. And before we all look back on this moment through rose-colored glasses, let’s not forget that at the time, rebelling against the British was not only unpopular amongst the colonists, it was an act of treason against the British crown.
The newly formed United States won the Revolutionary War, and signed the Treaty of Paris on November 25, 1783. At the time, the United States was governed by the Articles of Confederation, a highly decentralized and federated government system created by new Americans who were understandably weary of a strong federal government.
But in the early years of the Confederacy, problems arose. The lack of a federal currency led to an economic depression, and events like Shays’ Rebellion and the increasing fear of a British counterattack made it clear that the American government was too weak to survive.
So in 1787, the Second Continental Congress met to recreate a government that wasn’t even 10 years old. Economist and federalist Alexander Hamilton led the charge for a stronger federal government while Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George Washington contributed to the Constitution, the backbone of our government that has only been amended 27 times in over 200 years.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last couple days, you’ve heard the news that the House of Representatives passed the health care bill originally drafted by the Senate, making it all but inevitable that Barack Obama’s sweeping healthcare reform will become law. My feelings on the bill itself were documented last summer, before Scott Brown was elected and changed the entire nature of the debate, and before the bill was modified and culled to the point where it’d be passed.
Maybe, given that, you were expecting this post to be something more along these lines:
(I’d include a selection of Facebook and Twitter postings to further illustrate this point, but I’ll trust you too have a multitude of friends with similar feelings, so you know what those look like.)
Ultimately, I’m still not a huge fan of this health care bill. I’m not a huge fan of the way it was passed. But I think everyone, no matter your party, position or stature, agrees that this bill isn’t perfect. I think everyone, no matter your party, position or stature, agrees that the health care industry ranges from “fatally flawed” to “could use some improvement”.
That being said, did you wake up today and do anything different? Did you not wake up, shower, drive to work, work, eat some lunch, work some more, and come home? Was today radically different than last Friday? I know this legislation will eventually make some pretty dramatic changes, but for the most part (in general), your day-to-day life won’t change.
Here’s the thing: if cancer is cured in the next couple of years, or if diabetes is cured, or something changes in the healthcare environment, the laws will change. If it’s found that people still can’t pay for healthcare, or that parents still aren’t able to take care of their sick kids, the laws will change. It’s unfortunate that sometimes there’s no better way to institute change than trying something and seeing how it works, but that’s how it is, and it’s the beauty of democracy that it’s easy to change.
So what’s my point? If you’re conservative, maybe you didn’t get everything you wanted in this healthcare bill. But instead of planning your exodus, remember that you live in the greatest country in the world where the will of the people is always the rule of the day. This country isn’t dying; far from it, and the fact that one of our biggest national problems is how to deal modern nationwide healthcare coverage, while other countries are decimated by diseases that are a century obsolete here, is a sobering reminder that things could be far worse.
One thing I’ve noticed about all politicians: all of them are pro-education. Honestly, how could you not be? Do you really want to be that guy who campaigns with the message: “we’re investing too much in our future, let’s cut back spending a bit”? What about “let’s privatize K-12 education! We’ll let Microsoft do it!” (actually I say that as a joke, but Bill Gates donates a ton of money to education every year. So we’ll say Steve Ballmer.) Since public education started, there’s always been room for improvement, and I think it’s gotten worse as the kids of the eighties start to have kids and send them to school. In essence, the government can spend all the money it wants, but the most productive and important learning happens at home. If parents aren’t teaching kids, kids aren’t learning.
What brings this up is President Obama’s planned speech to children all across the United States next week. I’ll say this: it’s a radical idea. I don’t mean that in a completely bad way – clearly, the system is broke. However, the article linked above mentions vehement opposition by some parents to having their kids watch the speech.
At first, I dismissed this as just more knee-jerk “whatever Obama does, I don’t like” reaction. You can’t please everyone. Then I thought about it for a moment and remembered a court case I learned about in school: Engel v. Vitale, the court case that banned prayer in schools.
A couple things here. First, while my blog tends to be somewhat secular, I am a Christian. I don’t consider myself a nut; that is, I like to think I understand the ways of the world well enough to see both sides of this issue. That said, I believe that while mandated prayer is unconstitutional, banning prayer in schools is also unconstitutional. That is, if you’re a Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, whatever, it shouldn’t be wrong for you to pray in school, provided you don’t disturb others; if you’re atheist, you shouldn’t have to participate in prayer as long as you’re respectful.
So here’s the thing: if it’s unconstitutional to mandate prayer in schools, why is it constitutional to mandate that students not have the choice to not watch a speech? It’s largely the same principle. Like believing in God, a lot of US citizens (a majority, last I heard) believe President Obama is doing the right things for our country, and a lot don’t. Like belief in the afterlife (eternal life, as we Christians call it), the only way to know for sure that President Obama’s ideas will work is to simply wait for history to decide. Additionally, opponents of prayer in schools claim that kids can pray before or after school at home; opponents of Obama’s speech claim that kids can DVR it or watch it online later on.
To someone outside the Obama hype looking in, the debate is largely the same in both cases. One apparent difference is that as far as we know, President Obama’s speech is a one-time occurrence, where prayer was a daily occurrence. In essence, this speech is no different (and actually, less frequent) than “See You At The Pole”, a popular prayer event at high schools around this time every year. However, events such as See You At The Pole are not mandatory and are opt-in, meaning that students don’t need to excuse themselves from the meeting, they need to take initiative to attend.
So with all that, where do you go from there? If it were up to me, it’d be up to the students to watch the speech, and more importantly, it’d be an opt-in thing. That is, schools should set up their auditoriums with the speech and all students who want to watch the speech should leave class and attend. Students who don’t watch the speech could use the time however they wish, provided that it’s respectful, and students who do watch couldn’t be penalized in any way for choosing to attend. Finally, it would be up to the parents to guide their children how to choose, but ultimately, it would be up to the children.
And finally, if you made me choose between liking or disliking Obama’s approach here, I’d have to go dislike. The speech could be the same words at 8:00 PM, when the kids are home, and they can watch it with their parents if they and their parents so choose. Instead, it almost feels like Obama’s campaigning for the under-18 vote (or the “Mommy, Mommy, vote for Obama!” vote). I’ll be interested to see what he has to say, and how he says it to elementary, middle and high schoolers.
The political issue this summer has clearly been President Obama’s healthcare plan. I’ve written about it, along with many other dissenters, and really, that should be the end of it. Politicians will do what they’re going to do, everyone will talk about it for a while but then something else will happen and the issue will be forgotten by the American consciousness like most issues are.
What’s happening instead is quite different. As conservatives rush to get information out there, President Obama has already rushed out another web site that sets us all straight, and along with the liberal media, the Obama administration has begun reporting, lambasting and skewering all dissenters of the health care plan. Town halls are being held where some protesters are getting angry and perhaps over the top, but as this writer points out, maybe they have a right to be.
The issue is no longer health care – it’s free speech. My sister gets Brownie points from me this summer for not only making me brownies, but also introducing me to Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip. While the 2006 TV show is entertaining and lighthearted, it’s season-long story arc explores some very dark themes including the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks. The show is set in 2006, but there are many flashbacks to the post-9/11 days and weeks showing the main character (Matt Albie) remaining patriotic, but irreverent, as he tried to do his job as a comedy writer. It was after watching this that I wonder how many of us were on the other side of Matt Albie, criticizing all dissenters and claiming they were un-American. I like to think I keep a pretty open mind, but in the immediate days and weeks after those days I’m sure that while maybe I didn’t express that sentiment, I felt it.
The crisis with health care is similar. We’re in one of the largest recessions ever seen in modern times, and as people lose their jobs and companies cut back, people are losing their health care coverage or seeing it reduced before their very uninsured eyes, and they probably face similar emotions as the citizens of New York, Washington and really the entire U.S. faced in 2001. On the other side, people who still have jobs don’t want to give up more of their paychecks to taxes when it could go towards college, food or gasoline. It’s an emotional, personal issue for anyone who’s responsible for their own healthcare.
I’m going to bring up another issue that is periodically discussed which emotional for many people: flag burning. Let me get one thing out in the open: I am personally against flag burning. That is, if you were burning a flag (or attempting to do so) in front of me and I could do something about it, I’d either beat you up or go all Rick Monday up in here). However, it’s not up to the government to decide we can’t burn the flag. This isn’t a belief I’ve arrived at lightly, and I used to support a flag burning amendment. But since then I’ve realized it’s more important to allow some disrespectful dissenters than sacrifice freedoms that might be needed someday. There are certainly more respectful ways to protest, but it’s up to us as a society to keep it civil, not the government.
So in essence, maybe Republicans who don’t want universal health care are wrong. Maybe Democrats who do want it are wrong. But killing the debate is also wrong. It was wrong after September 11th (although, if I had to be honest, I’d say that there was much more universal support for the actions taken after September 11th), and it’s wrong now. It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with the issue – it’s less important than your freedom to defend it. That is, if you blindly support Obama on every issue, (or Bush, for that matter), remember Senator Amidala’s quote in Revenge of the Sith: “So this is how democracy dies…to thunderous applause.” Killing debate is tantamount to killing democracy.
P.S. There’s another great movie to watch that shows what could start by just surrendering the slightest bit of freedom: V for Vendetta.
One of the hallmarks of any liberal running for office is their stance on government-subsided health care insurance. Recently, President Obama has tried to push his universal health care plan as one that will create jobs, stimulate the economy but most importantly, give every eligible American government-provided healthcare. This is a touchy issue; not one Democrat, Republican or otherwise truly want to see a single person have medical conditions untreated. Clearly, it’s a tough problem to solve, but I don’t think the answer involves the government.
First, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve been very blessed in that throughout my life, I’ve had health care insurance through my parents or through my full-time employer. I’ve also been blessed in that I haven’t been sick or needed a doctor all that much, but when I did, I know I felt worried enough without worrying about how me or my parents were going to pay for it. In essence, I’ve never had to worry about when it was worth going to a doctor – when I felt like I need to, I could go. I’ll concede that while I do my best to understand both parts of this issue, I may never truly understand.
President Obama’s plan, which recently stalled in the House, is a lot like most of his other plans because it involves taxing the well-off to help out the not well-off. It calls for a 5% tax on all private health care insurance and an additional trillion dollars over the next ten years. This doesn’t sound terrible, but again, like most of Obama’s plans, this plan hits the hardest at corporate America: regulations on insurance providers against pre-existing condition exclusion and mandating more health care coverage.
Before talking about this, I think it’s important to touch on the debate that has come up in the last few days regarding doctors and how much they’re worth. Let’s get one thing straight: doctors have every right to earn as much money as they want. Mike Huckabee puts it best in his recent blog, and they’re probably not even paid enough. No one (in Cleveland) cares that LeBron James makes as much money as he does; no one (in New York) cares that Derek Jeter makes as much as he does. And why is that? LeBron and Jeter are both products to sell: they’re world-class athletes who are entertaining to watch. LeBron has probably never thought this, but at some point he made a decision to say, “you know what, I can make a lot of money playing basketball because people will want to see me play.” It worked. Doctors do the same thing: at some point, they say, “you know what, I can provide for my family comfortably being a doctor because people want to be healthy.”
In essence, all you an accuse doctors of are being good businessmen. You might think this is a little bit like oil companies, who are the most hated corporations in the world because of how much they control our life. However, unlike doctors, there are no good oil companies vs. bad oil companies; when it boils down to it, gas is gas. Good doctors, though, are hard to come by. Doctors are more analogous to the computer industry: sure, that $300 computer from Wal-Mart will probably do the trick, but can’t you accomplish more with a $2300 MacBook Pro (this is not the place for a platform war, but I think we can all agree Apple makes excellent laptops, even if their software isn’t everyone’s…preference)?
So the good doctors have us right where they want us. The best thing to do is to regulate salaries that the hospitals corporations can pay them, so that lesser doctors make more and better doctors make less, right? Would you work hard and go the extra mile in a system that doesn’t recognize it? I think a lot of people would be inclined to selflessly say “of course,” but most doctors have families to provide for, houses to pay for, and student loans (a lot of them) to pay for.
Sure, some of them might take the cut in pay, but perhaps they’d be more on edge at work and miss something important. You see this in Silicon Valley from companies like Google and Facebook: comfortable, luxurious work environments so that employees are able to focus on the job at hand without any distractions. That same principle can’t be directly applied to the medical industry (doctors should really wear lab coats, unless of course they have a Vicodin addiction and walk with a cane), so the perks translate out of the office, where doctors can be allowed to relax as much and as comfortably as possible so they’re ready for work.
President Obama’s plan doesn’t necessarily call for cutting salaries of doctors, at least not directly. However, by regulating that insurance companies cover higher-risk patients, his plan raises the cost of providing health care. Since the health care industry will still have to provide health care (and to more people, now that the plan is universal), the cuts will come out of doctor’s salaries. In fact, maybe hospitals will have to lay off doctors and nurses, meaning lower-quality health care. The money has to come from somewhere.
As another analogy, say the Obama administration passed a universal MP3 player program, where everyone in the country would get an iPod Nano for only $75 each. That’s $75 that Apple is losing in profits per iPod sold. That extra $75 would have to come out of R&D (if everyone’s buying iPods anyway, why bother innovating?) and Apple would be forced to raise prices in the iTunes store to keep everyone at Apple employed. Since most music buyers spend more on music than they do on music players, eventually they would lose money. Under a universal health care system, hospitals would cut funding in R&D to pay the higher costs of running the hospital, higher-income doctors would not be paid as much, meaning the quality of care could suffer (why would a high-income doctor work here for less than he could overseas?).
Universal health care doesn’t work for the same reason communism doesn’t work: there needs to be a merit-based incentive system, otherwise there is never innovation or improvement. Let’s keep the system private and let the mechanics of capitalism figure out how to best reform the health care industry. The American health care industry is the finest in the world, thanks in large part to it being private. Let’s keep it that way. | <urn:uuid:0c7d2927-64d9-4e0d-8f13-f8d6895db2e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.jimmysawczuk.com/tag/republicans | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967326 |
What Signs are Included?
Embracing all of the World's symbology would be too big a task for any semiotician. Symbols.com deals with mainly Western signs that are non-pictorial. Continue reading for an explanation of the terms.
The word symbol is derived from the Greek word symbolon. In ancient Greece it was a custom to break a slate of burned clay into several pieces and distribute them within the group. When the group reunited the pieces were fitted together (Greek symbollein). This confirmed the members belonging to the group.
An ideogram is a special type of symbol, a graphic sign for an idea or concept. For instance, the graph represents the G-clef in musical notation and the switch for treble range on sound reproducing appliances. It is therefore an ideogram.
Alphabetic letters are not considered ideograms proper in this work. But as the first letter in the alphabet A not only is a sign for a specific sound, but also denotes the idea of something that comes first. Consider expressions like "A grade" and "A-team". A may therefore be regarded as a sign.
A sign is called iconic if it has some perceivable likeness to what it denotes. In the opposite case, it is called aniconic.
However, whether iconic or aniconic, graphical symbols and signs that are not pictures of easily recognized objects are called non-pictorial. These non-pictorial symbols and signs are the subject matter of Symbols.com.
Go explore some of the 2,500 signs included in Symbols.com! | <urn:uuid:f5ed532e-ce2c-45f4-8976-317532b57d66> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://symbols.com/scope/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951052 |
Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore International and crucial figure in the early history of personal computing, passed away surrounded by his family on Sunday, his family confirms. He was 83 years old.
Tramiel was born in Poland to a Jewish family in 1928. During World War II, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz, after which he and his father were sent to a labor camp called Ahlem, near Hannover. Tramiel was rescued in April 1945 and emigrated to the United States in 1947.
In America, Tramiel started a typewriter repair business. Staying in the forefront of technology, his typewriters morphed into calculators, and later computers. In 1982, Commodore International launched the Commodore 64, which went on to the best-selling personal computer of all time. In 1984, after being forced to leave the company he founded, Jack bought the crumbling Atari Inc.’s Consumer Division and formed Atari Corporation.
“Jack Tramiel was an immense influence in the consumer electronics and computing industries. A name once uttered in the same vein as Steve Jobs is today, his journey from concentration camp survivor to captain of industry is the stuff of legends,” says Martin Goldberg, a writer working on a book about the Atari brand and the early days of video games and computing with Atari Museum founder Curt Vendel.
“His legacy are the generations upon generations of computer scientists, engineers, and gamers who had their first exposure to high technology because of his affordable computers – ‘for the masses and not the classes.’”
Tramiel is survived by his wife Helen, their three sons, Gary, Sam and Leonard, and their extended families. | <urn:uuid:e3017ec1-d1fa-4413-a808-cf4aaac7a1b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/04/09/computer-legend-and-gaming-pioneer-jack-tramiel-dies-at-age-83/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+trblogposts+%28Hottest+blogosphere+items%29 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984268 |
Dogs eat a lot of questionable things that, from our point of view, make no sense, such as their own or another animal's stool. Although unpleasant to contemplate, it's relatively normal behavior, especially for young dogs.
But dogs sometimes try to eat inorganic matter that has no digestive upside at all. Rocks provide an example of one of the more common non-food objects dogs chew on. This behavior is sometimes called pica
, the term used to describe the craving and ingesting of nonfood items.
Chewing rocks can be dangerous to more than your dog's teeth or soft mouth tissues. It can lead to intestinal blockage, vomiting, diarrhea, or even choking, if the rock is large enough to block your dog's throat.
What causes this bizarre behavior? There are a number of possibilities that range from medical to behavioral. Chewing rocks may be one way for an attention-starved dog to get noticed. In this instance, the dog may even be acting out of boredom, anxiety or frustration.
There may also be medical reasons behind the behavior. Disorders of the intestinal tract, deficiency of some vital nutrient, such as iron, or diabetes mellitus (as well as other illnesses) may underlie indiscriminate eating behavior. It's important to rule out a medical cause for pica by visiting your veterinarian. If the pica is subsequently deemed to be a purely behavioral problem, you and your vet can devise a strategy to overcome it.
Pica, by the way, is not limited to rocks. It includes any non-digestible item, such as rubber bands, carpet, string, wood, etc. Stopping this behavior is difficult, and usually cannot be done just by scolding. Scolding may even "reward" the behavior if it's an attempt to gain attention. Furthermore, to scold your dog after the fact is useless; he or she won't connect the "correction" with the behavior. Finding and Treating the Cause
Pica may be nothing more than an outlet for chewing. One strategy is to keep a good number of chew toys on hand, and rotating them every several days. For instance, put three chew toys out for your dog to play with, and keep three hidden. After several days, bring out the three hidden toys and remove the other three, so they always appear to be "new."
If you catch your dog eating rocks, you may want to startle him out of the behavior with a loud noise or spray gun – but try not to let him see you doing it, or he may associate your presence with the noise or water. Praise him when he leaves items alone.
Look at your own schedule: is your dog left alone most of the time? In that case, spending more time with your dog will probably help. Better yet, aerobic play may leave him too tired and happy to want to chew rocks. A final strategy involves dietary and feeding changes. Ad libitum feeding of a high fiber weight reducing diet provides your dogs with a constant option, rocks or kibble. Many choose kibble! It's best to check with your vet before switching your dog to a different diet if problems are to be avoided.
Your veterinarian may prescribe a behavioral drug to help defeat the pica. He or she may also refer you to an animal behaviorist, if necessary. Always keep your dog leashed when walking to stop him from eating inappropriate or dangerous items. If your dog runs in your backyard, clear out rocks and other dangerous items or keep him with you under supervision. (In other words, don't just tie your dog up to restrict his movement and then leave him.)
If you and your dog look forward to running free in an off-leash doggie park, you may have to curtail these outings until the pica disorder is under control. For more information, see the article on pica | <urn:uuid:cf74c825-9004-4b5f-95fb-474e66d81e0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.petplace.com/dogs/why-do-dogs-eat-rocks/page1.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956158 |
When we lived in Mexico City, I remember poinsettia bushes taller than my father.
In those days, our school had a "living" nativity scene and everyone had a "job."
Mine was to move the ceramic mule a couple of centimeters closer to the manger every day so that Mary, Joseph and the mule would get to the manger on Christmas Eve, when a red poinsettia would appear next to Baby Jesus' crib.
There is a wonderful legend that explains why poinsettias are considered the Christmas flower.
Once there were two very poor children. The children looked forward to the Christmas Festival, where a large manger scene was set up every year in front of the village church.
One Christmas Eve, the children set out to attend church services. They didn't have money to buy expensive gifts so they picked weeds growing along the road.
Neighborhood kids made fun of the weeds but the two children ignored them.
As they carefully placed weeds around the manger, the top green leaves started to turn into bright red petals.
Soon the manger was surrounded by beautiful, star-like red flowers, showing that a gift of love is dearer than any presents money can buy.
Poinsettias are native to Central America and have been around for thousands of years. The Aztecs used the red braces for dye and the white sap for medicinal purposes, which today we know as latex.
Poinsettias are not poisonous but I would still keep them out of reach. Pets or children chewing on white latex sap could lead to unpleasant stomach aches and aggravate people who have latex allergies.
Their flowers are actually the tiny yellow spots in the center of the colored leaves, which today are available in a variety of colors besides red.
These cousins of castor beans and crown of thorns were named after the first US Ambassador to Mexico, Juan Roberts Poinsett. Poinsett lived in the early 1800s and brought Poinsettias back to his South Carolina plantation, where he shared the plants with friends and botanical gardens. Today poinsettias represent about 85 percent of all potted plant Christmas season sales.
Wishing you and yours a wonderful Christmas filled with the beauty of the season and the gift of love.
Charlotte Ekker Wiggins shares her gardening adventures at http://www.gardeningcharlotte.com. Copyright 2012 used with permission by
Gatehouse Media. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Contact Charlotte at email@example.com | <urn:uuid:8c7d9d2d-4ccf-4f70-8911-c0f2dc7003d8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.therolladailynews.com/article/20121224/OPINION/121229646/0/OPINION | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961841 |
Jul 15 2012
|more articles from|
Aramco plans region's first eco-park
The project will also be the first of its kind in the region and is set to breathe fresh life into an essential component of the Kingdom's ecosystem.
Mangroves are a natural habitat for marine organisms and serve as a breeding ground for shrimp, crab and fish species -- the lifeblood of the Kingdom's fishing industry.
Mangroves also absorb air pollutants and purify water by absorbing impurities and heavy metals. They are irreplaceable in maintaining the balance of Saudi Arabia's marine environment.
The eco-park is part of the company's effort to plant 1 million mangroves over the next five years -- an unprecedented number in the Kingdom's history.
The Environmental Protection Department (EPD) is spearheading the project, which is scheduled to open in 2014. Khaled Al-Abdulkader of EPD said: "The eco-park will have a huge impact on environmental conservation. It will be open to visitors and will incorporate a boardwalk between mangrove trees. "It means everyone can live the experience firsthand. Educating the public is also a major driver for this project." The eco-park will cover an area of 62 square km and be partially fenced and protected. Visitors will explore mangrove vegetation by strolling on a 1.5 km elevated boardwalk that takes them through the heart of the park.
© Copyright Zawya. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:c5de99da-d525-4547-84db-2aa5a5b9568c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.zawya.com/story/Aramco_plans_regions_first_ecopark-ZAWYA20120715033502/?lok=lok033500120715 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933467 |
Retirement age normally refers to the age limit after which a person does not necessarily need to work. A person after retirement is expected to live a peaceful life free of daily worries and responsibilities. Normally in US, the average retirement age varies between 62 and 65 years. After a person reaches the retirement age, he or she is entitled to a number of social security programs and retirement benefits.
After reaching the age of retirement, you can apply for various Old-age Insurance Benefits or Retirement Insurance Benefits. These retirement schemes are offered by the U.S. Social Security Administration for the benefit of the senior citizens. Benefit payments are made on various months according to the date of birth, retirement age and date and other vital factors.
There are certain requirements that you need to fulfill before applying for the various retirement benefits. You need to be fully insured under the social security system and the retirement age should be around 62 years. To obtain the benefits, you need to be born on the first or the second of the month.
You can choose an early or late retirement age according to your needs and preferences. You can get the monthly installments over a longer period of time in case of early retirements, although the rate of the installments will be small. By retiring late, you can get larger interest rates although for a shorter time period. But the amount will be sufficient enough to cover the years of deficit.
Once you reach retirement age, there are various ways to apply for the social security and retirement plans. You can apply online or get the application process done through the local social security office. You can also apply through phone by calling the Immediate Claims Taking Unit. Applying through mail is also another option that you can choose for. | <urn:uuid:fe087ca4-67f8-4e53-afff-93ca7c043d84> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://retirement.futureyears.com/retirement-age.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956282 |
This course introduces resource management as described in the National Incident Management System (NIMS), and shows how systems for managing resources can be used to improve incident response. The course includes examples of best practices, lessons learned, and job aids to assist the participant in planning for resource management.
The course includes the following lessons:
Note: IS-703.a is an updated version of the IS-703 course. The update version of the course includes expanded content about resource typing. If you have successfully completed IS-703, you may want to review the new version of the course, especially lesson 3. For credentialing purposes, the courses are equivalent.
At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to:
Federal, State, tribal, and local emergency managers; first responders to include incident commanders from all emergency management disciplines; private industry personnel responsible for coordination activities during a disaster; and voluntary agency personnel.
N/A. However, completion of IS 700.a, National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction, is recommended.
Last Modified: 9/19/2012
* The social media links provided are for reference only. FEMA does not endorse any non-government Web sites, companies or applications.
Emergency Management Institute
16825 S. Seton Ave., Emmitsburg, MD 21727
Switchboard: (301) 447-1000
Admissions Fax: (301) 447-1658
FEMA Independent Study Program
Office: (301)447-1200 Fax: (301)447-1201
(800) 621-FEMA / TTY (800) 462-7585
3 Step Guide for Assistance | <urn:uuid:18c0dcbc-c8df-4205-ae97-f3507cbbd845> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/courseOverview.aspx?code=is-703.a | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.867085 |
Butler, a special correspondent for Newsweek International, said she wrote “Sugar of the Crop” because she was “tired of the race division” in the U.S. (Photo courtesy of Sana Butler)
|“Sugar of the Crop: My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves” tells the story of journalist Sana Butler’s 10-year journey to unearth the stories of the last surviving children born to U.S. slaves. (Image courtesy of The Lyons Press)
Many books and films over the last 150 years have explored the social impact that slavery has had on race relations in America. In “Sugar of the Crop: My Journey to Find the Children of Slaves,” author Sana Butler makes an important contribution to the topic by looking at how the lives of the last surviving children born to slaves evolved after the abolition of slavery.
The recently released book chronicles Butler’s 10-year journey to conduct interviews with these survivors and record their stories. Most were in their 90s at the time of their interviews. All have since passed away.
“I started my research during the time [when] some in the African American community wanted President Clinton to apologize for slavery and [the issue of] reparations came up,” said Butler, a special correspondent for Newsweek International. “I was just tired of the race division and wanted to do a book that would not only connect all Americans regardless of race, but also show that slavery is not that far removed from us today.”
Butler spent the formative years of the project calling state Department of Aging centers around the South, as well as black churches and nursing homes, trying to find the children of former slaves. All told, she conducted hundreds of interviews, even as many of the children were dying.
Not since the Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Progress Administration gathered more than 2,000 first-person slave narratives during the 1930s had such a project been undertaken. Butler’s book is believed to be the first — and, given that the interview subjects are all now deceased, likely only — book about the children of slaves based on primary interviews.
Through the interviews, Butler tells the inspiring true story of a generation that overcame massive obstacles in order to live better lives than their ancestors.
Crispus Attucks Wright, aged 87 at the time of his interview, offers one example. A Beverly Hills, Calif., lawyer and self-made millionaire, Wright’s father was born on a Louisiana plantation, and believed that America would be fair to “the studious and determined” of all races.
“I loved Crispus Wright because he treated me like one of his own grandchildren,” Butler said. “For me, it wasn’t just about the interviews. It was being around these people and being enveloped in their personal stories.”
One commonality that Butler found among all her interviewees was that they were taught by their parents the value of self-determination, or what Butler would call an “immigrant mentality.” When the Civil War ended in 1865, many former slaves took advantage of their new freedom by voting and running for political office — attributes that they passed on to their descendants.
“The people I interviewed also understood the importance of an education and being able to own land,” Butler said. “There was this idea that there was potential for black people.”
The interviews also dispelled for Butler the popular notion that some of the major problems that African Americans face today, such as socioeconomic disadvantages and the breakdown of the black family, are the result of slavery’s legacy.
Not true, she says.
As a matter of fact, according to Butler, 80 percent of the children of slaves came from two-parent homes. In her book, Butler recounts the story of a group of brothers who were auctioned off to slave owners in different states, then reunited after slavery ended.
For her part, Butler said she doesn’t know what exactly has caused decay in the structure of many black families. But she did note that while historians have spent a great deal of time detailing the horrors of slavery and discussing post-traumatic slave syndrome, there is very limited documentation of the strength of former slaves and the determination of families to make progress.
“Former slaves raised their children differently,” she said. “Somewhere along the line, we lost it.”
Butler was also amazed to find that friendships developed between the children of former slaves and slave owners. During her research, she encountered many white slave owners’ descendants wondering aloud if they “came out OK,” given their lineage.
“Our perceptions of black and white during slavery [were] just so complex,” Butler continued. “As an African American, I also felt good [learning] that black folks weren’t the only ones [wondering] if they ‘came out OK’ after slavery.”
As for research on her own family tree, Butler said information about her ancestors in North Carolina during the period immediately following abolition is very limited. One link in the chain was forever lost while Butler was conducting interviews around the country, when her father was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and died.
Following his death, Butler said, documenting these other lives became even more important to her, namely because she never talked to her own father when he was alive about their heritage. She said that is one of the biggest regrets in her life.
“My father died knowing about our family’s history,” she said. “If you don’t learn your family’s history when your parents are alive, then it will die with them.” | <urn:uuid:c45f94e0-0a4f-49d5-8c22-75ddc66dd8a0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.baystatebanner.com/Print?page=arts42-2009-02-19 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.982208 |
sSherwani, the oriental long coat has a very
long history in South Asia, since it has been originated here. It
has long been treated as the dress of nobility, and even the great
many political leaders have used it throughout their lives, like;
M.A.Jinnah, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Nawab Mosin ul Mulk, Nawab Waqar
ul Mulk, Sardar Abdul Rub Nashtar, Liaqat Ali Khan, Allama Iqbal,
and many more, perhaps there is not a single example without it.
Due to its frequent use by M.A.Jinnah sherwani entered as a national
dress of Pakistan.
India and Pakistan, being the warm regions
sherwani is used in winter mostly in formal gatherings. There is
some wide difference between sherwani and achkan. One is, that sherwani
is of heavier and stiffer material than achkan, and the other difference
is that sherwani is of Muslim origin whereas achkan has mostly been
used by the hindu nobility and thus of Hindu origin. Sherwani is
a bit flaired at the hips. Achkan’s one off shoot is Nehru Jacket,
quite famous in India and now in the other parts of the world too.
Nawab of Hyderabad’s constant use further added to its lasing fame,
thus the hyderabadi sherwani is quite famous.
Sherwani and achkan with some heavy embroidery
is mostly used by groom, and thus became a popular wedding dress.
It adds to the grace of groom. In the wedding ceremonies the most
colours used golden, black, sky blue and white. It is some thing
disquieting that the vogue of sherwani is mostly overtaken by kurta,
but still it stands somewhere. | <urn:uuid:cb5eb398-54aa-4421-a742-d6e80be2e7bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.seekforstyle.com/sharwani.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9365 |
Ethiopia: Building a Better Future
In Ethiopia, the MERET programme has helped communities rehabilitate their local environment, which has been damaged by decades of erosion and deforestation. At the same time, they improve livelihoods for local families through the sustainable use of natural resources. This helps communities cope better with natural disasters such as drought, building a brighter, more food-secure future. These photos show the impact of MERET programme in the community of Abraha Atsbeha, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. | <urn:uuid:835ed1f2-561c-4b99-8bbf-30a9e97ec371> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wfp.org/countries/ethiopia/media?page=5 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941179 |
Archaeology groups are lining up against a proposal, currently being debated on the floor of the House of Representatives, to give a major copper mining company a large chunk of federal land in Arizona in exchange for private lands. The groups are particularly concerned that any mine built on the former federal land would destroy archeological sites near Oak Flat, a popular Arizona recreational area.
The trade would be "a blatant giveaway of the nation's public land to a single private stakeholder" and would set "a dangerous precedent," William F. Limp, president of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in Washington, D.C., argues with colleagues in a letter to lawmakers signed by eight archeology and historic preservation groups.
The proposal (H.R. 1904) would swap U.S. Forest Service land about 112 kilometers south of Phoenix for an array of privately owned lands elsewhere in the state. Under the arrangement, initially floated in 2005, Resolution Copper Co., an offshoot of global mining leader Rio Tinto, would get about 971 hectares of land believed to sit atop a vast deposit of high-quality copper. The federal government would get about 2144 hectares in exchange, including 1214 hectares of ecologically important land along the lower San Pedro River.
The Obama Administration has opposed the swap for a variety of reasons, many of which are described in the 24 October letter from the SAA, the American Rock Art Research Association in Arizona, the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Colorado and other groups. In particular, the trade carries no "assurances that priceless historic and cultural resources will be protected," they write. The bill exempts the transfer from prior reviews under environmental and historical preservation laws, they note, arguing that conducting such reviews "after land has been removed from federal control is clearly too little, too late, and not in the public interest." The House is expected to vote on the bill later this afternoon. ScienceInsider will be following the debate.
The Senate has yet to take up a companion measure, which would be necessary for the swap to move forward. | <urn:uuid:e3ce5d42-48ba-4400-913d-0fd8910915db> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/10/breaking-news-archeology-groups.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956798 |
Passages in Genesis that may relate to homosexuality
Adam, Eve, Noah and opposite-sex marriage
|"God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,"
God decided that Adam needed a "helper." Some translations use the term
"companion," "helpmate" or "partner" here. God marched all
of the animals past Adam, looking for a suitable helper, but none was found. So God put
Adam to sleep, removed one of his ribs and created Eve from the bone. Although this
implies a cloning operation, it obviously was not, because
Adam, being a male, had XY sex chromosomes; Eve
was a female with XX chromosomes.
|Conservative Christians: God created Eve to be Adam's wife. He made a woman to be the companion of
Adam, a male. This indicates God's intent for humanity: that men and women are to pair
off, and form permanent, heterosexual relationships.|
||Liberal Christians: If either Adam or Eve were homosexual,
the human race would not have developed. Thus, God obviously needed to
create both Adam and Eve as heterosexuals, so that they could be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth with humans, even though that required their children to commit incest. |
God stated in Verse 18: "It is not good for the man to be alone"
(NIV). This shows the importance that God gives to committed relationships. For a
heterosexual, the only suitable companion is a person of the opposite gender. For a
homosexual individual, the only suitable companion is a person of the same gender. To say
that gays and lesbians should not form committed relationships is to say that it is good
for people to remain alone. This is a direct contradiction of God's statement; it implies
that God is a liar. More details
"The man said, 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh'...For this
reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will
become one flesh."
- Conservative Christians: God created Adam and Eve to be heterosexual, expecting them to be fertile and
to populate the world with humans. During the sexual act, their bodies unite, and
symbolically rejoin as "one flesh." That is God's plan: for people of opposite
genders to marry, raise children and have dominion over all the earth. Homosexual behavior is apart from God's plan, an attempt to
distort and pervert what God intended from the beginning. If gays and lesbians cannot
change (or do not wish to change) their sexual addiction, they must remain celibate in
order to fit into God's planned intent for humanity.
- Liberal Christians: The first creation story in the Bible is seen in Genesis 1:1 to 2:3. It
describes that God's stated plan was for humanity to "Be fruitful and increase in
number." (NIV, Genesis 1:28). The second creation story appears in Genesis 2:4 to
2:25. It states specifically that a man will unite with his wife. (NIV, Genesis 2:24).
- The above texts refer only to males and females. But three additional intersexual
genders exist. These are people who are neither male nor female, and thus not covered in
the simplistic view of Genesis. Dr. Fausto-Sterling of the Division of Biology and
Medicine at Brown University recognizes five biological groupings: male,
herm, ferm and female. 1 Approximately 3 to 10 million Americans are intersexual. Many
are operated upon shortly after birth to make them appear
like "normal" males or females.
- A significant portion of the population is sterile and thus cannot be fruitful and
- Some people, for any number of reasons, remain celibate throughout life and never marry
or have children.
- Some women marry when they are beyond child-bearing age and are unable to conceive and
- Some people carry serious genetic defects and choose to not conceive in order to avoid
creating a child who would have disastrous health problems.
- Gays or lesbians are, by definition, not attracted to members of the opposite gender,
and thus cannot form lasting opposite-sex relationships involving one man and one woman.
God's plan was for Adam and Eve to form a heterosexual relationship and have children.
By implication, the plan expects the same behavior of at least some of Eve and Adam's
descendants. But it would not necessarily apply to all individuals.
We are all God's children: male and female, black and white, lesbian, gay, bisexual and
straight. Many of us, from all races, all genders and all sexual orientations, will want
to form a committed sexual partnership with other person. Sexuality, in all its varieties,
is a gift of God. It helps individuals of all sexual orientations to form partnerships
with another person and become all that they are capable of becoming. The Genesis texts
can thus refer only to a majority of individuals, not to everyone. It is a general plan
for society, but not universally applicable to all.
This passage is rarely cited in connection with homosexuality. But there may possibly be a
connection. The verses describe how Noah became intoxicated and lay naked in his tent. He
had three sons: Shem, Ham and Japeth. Ham saw his father in the tent and apparently did some unspecified act, He told his two brothers. The
Hebrew word for nakedness is here "ervah," which connotes a display of the genitals.
Shem and Japeth then cover their father without looking at him. When Noah wakes up, he
laid a verbal curse. It was not placed on Ham, the person responsible for the
act. It was placed on Ham's son Canaan, and all of his descendants. He
swore: "A curse upon the Canaanites...May they be the lowest of slaves."
||Conservative Christians: Some theologians interpret this passage to mean that Ham's descendants were
cursed because Ham had observed his father naked. This would imply that nudity with a
family is forbidden behavior. Others interpret it to mean that Ham ridiculed his father's
nakedness and was being punished for his disrespect. That would be more in agreement with
Exodus 21:15 and Leviticus 20:9 which calls for a son to be punished if he curses or
shames his parent (the Hebrew word here has a dual meaning). Finally, Ham might have engaged in a sexual activity with his father.|
||Liberal Christians: The behavior of Noah seems strange, for a number of reasons:|
|By delivering a verbal curse, he is engaging in evil sorcery, a form of black magic.
This is condemned elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g. Exodus 22:18).|
|The passage contains three examples of a major theme found throughout
the Bible: that it is OK to transfer sin and
punishment from the guilty to the innocent In most of the world's
ethical systems, people are not held responsible for events that happened
before they were born, or for which they have no involement:|
- To enslave an entire tribe of people forever because of the
actions of one individual seems fundamentally unjust.
- Enslaving all of the future descendents of a tribe also appears
unethical and is another example of sin transfer from the guilty to the
- If Ham committed a despicable act, it seems strange that he is not punished but that his
son Canaan is harshly dealt with. It seems profoundly unjust to punish the innocent son
for a crime committed by his father.
|Verse 24 mentions that "Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest
son had done to him" (NIV) The KJV translation is almost identical: "Noah...knew
what his youngest son had done unto him." Some have speculated that this passage
hints that Ham did a great deal more than simply catch a glimpse of his father's genitals;
he must have engaged in some overt act. Perhaps he went into the tent and engaged in some
form of sexual activity with his father. This would be a type of homosexual rape, since
Noah was drunk and unable to consent to sex. Perhaps incestuous rape was the crime that
Ham was guilty of and for which his son and other descendants were eternally punished.|
This passage of the Bible was widely used to condone
human slavery up to the 19th century. Africans were assumed to be
descendents of Ham. Thus it was a biblical mandate to enslave them and treat
them as sub-human. Modern-day Christians of all persuasions can probably agree that the sin of Ham
is unrelated to human slavery, that slavery is a profound evil, and that this
Various Christian groups interpret Bible passages in totally different ways, and reach
mutually exclusive conclusions. For example:
|Conservative Christians: God created the institution of heterosexual
marriage as the only valid relationship for humans within which sexual activity is without
sin. Homosexual activity, even if it is done within a committed, loving,
relationship is outside of God's plan for humanity and is thus
inherently sinful. Gays and lesbians are called by God to either
change their sexual orientation or remain
|Liberal Christians: Sexual activity can certainly be sinful, when it is
manipulative, unsafe, or not consensual. But if done within a committed
heterosexual or homosexual relationship, it is not sinful. God said
that it is not good for a man to be alone. Since a gay or lesbian can
only develop a relationship with a person of the same gender, then it is
obviously God's intention that they form such committed partnerships.|
- William O. Beeman, "What Are You: Male, Merm, Herm, Ferm or Female?",
available at: http://www.buddybuddy.com/beeman-1.html
- M.D. Jordan, "The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology," The
Chicago series on Sexuality, History and Society. University of Chicago Press, (1997). Read reviews
and/or order this book from Amazon.com on-line bookstore.
- Inge Anderson, "Sins of Sodom," at: http://glow.cc/isa/sodom.htm
- R.S. Truluck, "The six Bible passages used to condemn homosexuals,"
Copyright © 1996 to 2011 by Ontario Consultants on
Latest update: 2011-SEP-20
Author: B.A. Robinson. | <urn:uuid:1bae307a-7b41-4dff-b51b-1ca3cd80f674> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://religioustolerance.org/hom_bibg1.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955893 |
CANADA LYNX } Lynx canadensis
DESCRIPTION: Canada lynx are medium-sized felines with long legs; large, furry paws; long, black ear tufts; and a short, black-tipped tail. Adult males usually weight about 22 pounds and reach about 34 feet in length; females are about 19 pounds and 32 inches long.
HABITAT: In the contiguous United States, the lynx is associated with southern boreal forest — subalpine coniferous forest in the West and coniferous/deciduous forest in the East. Within these forest types, lynx are most likely to be found in areas with deep snow.
RANGE: The contiguous U.S. distinct population segment of Canada lynx inhabits the forests of four regions: the Northeast, the Great Lakes, the northern Rocky Mountains/Cascades, and the southern Rocky Mountains. In the lower 48 states, the lynx resides in Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
MIGRATION: Documented lynx home ranges vary from eight to 700 square kilometers, with range size dependent upon the animal’s gender, the abundance of prey, the season, and the density of lynx populations.
BREEDING: Mating occurs during February or March each year, with kittens — usually four — born 60 to 65 days later. Kittens are reared by the female and resemble those of the domestic cat.
LIFE CYCLE: Female kits may breed for the first time as they approach one year of age, depending on food abundance and individual physical condition. The life span of both sexes usually falls between 10 and 20 years.
FEEDING: The main prey animal of the Canada lynx is the snowshoe hare. Lynx will sometimes eat other small mammals and birds, particularly when hare populations decline.
THREATS: Major threats to the Canada lynx today are habitat destruction due to deforestation and fire suppression and trapping, as well as global warming. Snowmobiling in remaining lynx habitat is a serious and increasing threat, and the species is also hurt by expansion of the range of competing predators such as bobcats and coyotes.
POPULATION TREND: The Canada lynx’s complex life history and population dynamics — as well as a general lack of reliable data — make estimating the species’ population trend difficult, but it is known that the lynx occurs in drastically reduced numbers throughout its range. Populations are thought to have been in decline since the early 1900s.
|Photo courtesy Wash. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife||HOME / DONATE NOW / SIGN UP FOR E-NETWORK / CONTACT US / PHOTO USE /| | <urn:uuid:158ec9ff-2358-4384-a04e-f00980d53f51> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/species/mammals/Canada_lynx/natural_history.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.921833 |
Simply begin typing or use the editing tools above to add to this article.
Once you are finished and click submit, your modifications will be sent to our editors for review.
conversion into square
On the “practical” side, the execution of a dissection, such as converting the Greek cross into a square (Figure 11), may require the use of ingenious procedures, some of which have been described by H. Lindgren (see Bibliography).
use in Christianity
There are four basic types of iconographic representations of the cross: the crux quadrata, or Greek cross, with four equal arms; the crux immissa, or Latin cross, whose base stem is longer than the other three arms; the crux commissa, in the form of the Greek letter tau, sometimes called St. Anthony’s cross; and crux decussata, named from the Roman decussis,...
What made you want to look up "Greek cross"? Please share what surprised you most... | <urn:uuid:5cfaf2af-be6c-412b-b737-8b1e72624e22> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/244560/Greek-cross | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90727 |
Internet Scavenger Hunt
(This project is worth 30 points.)
Much of the searching done on the Internet is to answer specific
While a handful of sites permit a search for answers based on
written-English questions, most require carefully selected
keywords and ideas.
Selecting keywords, constructing questions, and structuring
Boolean operators take practice.
(Reading about Internet searching techniques is much easier
than actually using them!)
For this project you will use what you have learned about
searching to locate some difficult to find information on
Remember to use search engines as well as looking in specialty
sites and libraries.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information requested
is in fact available.
But as you know websites change and even go away over time, and
some of the information requested may no longer be available
Should some information no longer be available at the time of
grading this assignment, those questions will not be counted.
Prior to attempting an Application Assignment submission, please practice
You have only ONE submission attempt allowed.
You cannot submit a second attempt so be careful and follow the directions.
Using the same
submission steps as with the practice assignment,
save this file to your computer as
Be sure to save as
, and not
Web page, HTML
or any other type.
Web page, Complete
Enter the following information here:
Student Name: ( replace this text with your name )
For each of the questions below, search the
Internet using what you have learned, until you find the
Since not all published information is accurate, you should try
to check any questionable answers from a second source.
Answer the question.
(As usual, put your answer right after the question.)
If there are multiple parts to a question, for full credit you
must answer all parts; and all answers
MUST come from the same website.
(They may come from different pages on that one site.)
Include as a clickable link
(or hyperlink) the URL where you found the
You will not receive full credit unless you can show from where
you obtained your answers!
Using the same
file saving steps as with the practice assignment,
save the edited file as
Return to MyHCC, and follow the directions to select, upload and
submit the completed file to the correct drop-box.
Note that improperly completed and/or improperly identified mail
WILL NOT be graded.
For full credit. you must locate and answer correctly at least 20
of the items below, including the required links.
When is the next U.S. unmanned rocket launch scheduled?
What names will be used this year for Atlantic hurricanes
starting with R and T?
Where is the telephone number 202-456-1414 and to whom is it listed
(DO NOT CALL THIS NUMBER TO ANSWER THE QUESTION)?
Who pitched a no-hitter in the 1956 World Series?
What company developed "SQL"?
What was the name of the original SQL prototype developed in 1974?
What movie is currently ranked fifth in gross box office
sales worldwide for all time (not just for
their opening week)?
Who played Sara in the movie "Sweet November"
(Hint: there is more than one version of this movie)?
What resort sits at the extreme northeast corner of
Grand Cayman Island?
Name one of the original main hosts of "The Screen Savers"
At what university is the "Computer Emergency Response Team
Coordination Center" (CERT/CC) located?
Locate the CERT/CC "Current Activity Archive" website;
What is the date of the most recent "Current Activity"?
Now find the most recent "Weekly Vulnerability Summary Bulletin" on that site.
How many of those items are related to Microsoft, to Linux, to Apple, or to
How many people named John Doe (really!)
- and with a Social Security Number -
have died in the United States since records were computerized?
How many of them lived in Arizona when they died?
What is the average number of "albums" recording artist
Eithne Ní Bhraonáin (her real name) currently sells each day?
How many current arrest warrants exist in Hillsborough County for white
females named Smith?
Who is the last on the list?
How many sexual predators live in the zip code 33614?
Who is the founder of the World Wide Web?
Where does he/she work today?
What is his/her e-mail address?
How many Shriners Children's Hospitals are there in the
Where is the closest one?
Where is the show "Phantom of the Opera" appearing on Broadway
Broadway is a street in New York City where many
theaters are located)?
How much are orchestra tickets for the next available evening
show there, that isn't sold out?
active domain names are estimated to exist
in the world today?
In the traditional song Greensleeves, what two word phrase
is repeated in each of the last four verses (verses 4-7,
be careful not to count the chorus)?
What company operated by the Central Intelligence Agency provides cash
to new technology companies?
Name at least one company they have funded.
What cruise line sails to "Castaway Cay" in the Bahamas?
What is the minimum cost of an "outside" stateroom for a
three-night cruise, for two adults, for the next available cruise?
What are the names of the U.S. senators who serve the people living
in zip code 33614-7810?
How did they vote on the most recent vote that passed the Senate?
What is a "GoogleWhack"?
Provide one example.
Where on-line can you find a recording of
The Alligator Song
from the Green Corn Dance?
The Green Corn Dance is a spiritual ritual of purification and thanksgiving
held each spring by the Seminole Indians of Florida.)
Copyright ©2011 by Wayne Pollock
(Last Revision: July 20 2012) | <urn:uuid:d064bc71-cf00-431d-af91-5eb6eeec8a8a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://content.hccfl.edu/pollock/Internet/Scavenger_proj.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.912364 |
After more than eight months of space travel, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft carrying the $2.5 billion, 2,000-pound Curiosity rover is nearly ready to touch down on the red planet. Hundreds of CAE man-hours helped simulate, optimize, and validate the mission in the digital world, but the moment of truth for the rover and spacecraft design will be the final landing, which is slated for 10:31 p.m. PT on Sunday, Aug. 5.
The Curiosity, with its six vehicle configurations, 76 pyrotechnic devices, and 500,000 lines of software code (among other innovations), has been called the most sophisticated rover ever sent to Mars by its maker, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A critical component of the rover's ongoing development has been a partnership between Siemens PLM Software and the JPL. Siemens' Teamcenter PLM software and its NX CAD and NX CAE tools were used to design and simulate the rover digitally before any physical prototypes were built and to ensure all components would fit together, operate properly, and withstand their environment.
Siemens PLM Software's CAD, CAE, and PLM tools played a pivotal role in the design of the Curiosity rover, which is slated to touch down on Mars at 10:31 p.m. PT on Sunday, Aug. 5.
(Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
"NASA's JPL has employed the latest in software technology to design the Mars rover to withstand the impossible extremes of launch, space travel, atmospheric reentry, and landing a 2,000-pound operational vehicle on the surface of Mars," Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, said in a press release and at a press conference at the recent Farnborough Air Show.
One of the biggest design challenges in the Curiosity mission was the Mars landing -- a feat NASA is billing as "Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror." It will take seven minutes for the rover to travel from the top of the atmosphere down to the surface of Mars, but it takes 14 minutes for a signal from the spacecraft to reach mission control, so there will be a period when the ground crew will be completely in the dark about its status. | <urn:uuid:d8c00bbb-8309-4ce9-a6f5-a33bde329c53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1394&doc_id=247536&f_src=designnews_node_3056 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933697 |
Friday, March 26, 2010
"These cities see the importance of taking action on climate change," said Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “Communities from Los Angeles to Louisville are reducing greenhouse gases and cutting energy bills with buildings that have earned EPA's Energy Star."
EPA first issued its ranking of cities with the most Energy Star labeled buildings last year. This year, Los Angeles remains in first place; the District of Columbia picks up second; Denver and Chicago move into the top five; and Lakeland and New York City are new to the top 10.
Continuing the impressive growth of the past several years, in 2009 nearly 3,900 commercial buildings earned the Energy Star, representing annual savings of more than $900 million in utility bills and more than 4.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Since EPA awarded the first Energy Star to a building in 1999, nearly 9,000 buildings across America have earned the Energy Star as of the end of 2009, representing more than a 40 percent increase over last year’s total. Overall annual utility savings have climbed to nearly $1.6 billion and greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions of more than 1 million homes a year have been prevented.
Energy use in commercial buildings accounts for 17 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of over $100 billion per year. EPA awards the Energy Star to commercial buildings that perform in the top 25 percent of buildings nationwide compared to similar buildings. Thirteen types of buildings can earn the Energy Star, including schools, hospitals, office buildings, retail stores and supermarkets.
View a list of the Top 25 Cities in 2009 with Energy Star labeled buildings: http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/downloads/2009_Top_25_cities_chart.pdf
Access EPA’s real-time registry of all Energy Star labeled buildings 1999-present:
Learn more about earning the Energy Star for commercial buildings: | <urn:uuid:fa4d942e-97b1-41da-8503-f5aba13d0914> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ibuildgreen.com/2010/03/epa-issues-second-annual-ranking-of-us.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940422 |
Diabetic retinopathy (DR), the leading cause of visual disability and blindness among adults in the developed world, may affect as many as 20 million people. Early detection and treatment are keys to preventing the vision loss and blindness associated with the disease. Unfortunately, only about half of those with diabetes have proper eye examinations on a yearly basis. It is very important that diabetics have a dilated eye exam each year.
Retinopathy damages the retina by destroying the capillaries (minuscule blood vessels connecting arteries and veins) that provide blood to the retina, the light-sensitive nerve tissue that sends visual images to the brain. With the onset of retinopathy, these vessels weaken or bulge with microaneurysms that may hemorrhage, leaking blood or fluid into surrounding tissue. When new blood vessels grow on the retina (and into the vitreous), they can cause blurred vision and even temporary blindness. The real danger lies in the scar tissue that ultimately forms, detaching the retina from the back of the eye and often causing permanent loss of vision.
Chronically elevated blood insulin and glucose levels induce retinopathy. Fortunately, research shows that even after having long-term diabetes, lowering glucose has a positive effect on slowing the progression of retinopathy. A study took place involving 834 people who were over the age of 30 when they developed diabetes and who were approximately 65 at the start of the study. A glycohemoglobin test was performed at the start of the study, along with two follow-ups, 4 and 10 years later, which included a physical and eye exam. Glycohemoglobin (also known as hemoglobin A1C) is the best measurement of long-term glucose control. A high glycohemoglobin number correlates with uncontrolled diabetes.
In noninsulin treated participants, those that had the highest glyohemoglobin levels at the start of the study had nearly a threefold greater chance of having developed retinopathy after 10 years than those with the lowest levels. In participants who already showed proof of retinopathy at the start of the study, the presence of elevated glycohemoglobin resulted in a fourfold greater risk of retinopathy progression and a fourteenfold greater risk of proliferative retinopathy.
In those people on insulin with the highest levels of glycohemoglobin, there was a 90% increased risk of developing retinopathy than those in the lowest levels. The researchers concluded that controlling hyperglycemia even later on in the course of diabetes will result in a significant decrease in the incidence and progression of retinopathy and in the development of visual loss (Klein et al. 1994). Published studies show that controlling excess serum insulin is also important in preventing retinopathy (Raccah et al. 1998; Boehm et al. 2002; Leslie et al. 2002).
There are additional precautions that can be taken to guard against the development of retinopathies. Deficiency of vitamin B6, for instance, is a proven cause of the disease. In order to rule out a nutritional deficiency as the cause of retinopathy, a 10-week program is suggested that incorporates a high-potency B-complex vitamin formula along with other supplements that will be described in this protocol.AN INTERESTING STUDY IN RATS
A newborn rat model of retinopathy was used to test the hypothesis that a lack of the antioxidant superoxide dismutase (SOD) contributes to retinal damage. The study concluded that delivery of SOD to the retina via long-circulating liposomes was beneficial and suggested the potential value of the restoration or supplementation of antioxidants in retinal tissue as a therapeutic strategy (Niesman et al. 1997). It is difficult to provide SOD directly to the retina, but adequate supplementation with nutrients, such as zinc, copper, and manganese, provide the minerals needed for the formation of SOD in the cells.
ANTIOXIDANT LENS AND VITREOUS ACTIVITY
Another study investigated antioxidant activity in the lens and vitreous of diabetic and nondiabetic subjects. Researchers found significantly decreased glutathione peroxidase activity and lower ascorbic acid levels in the lenses of diabetic patients, especially in the presence of retinal damage. (Ascorbic acid is known to exert important antioxidant functions in the eye compartment.) This study indicated that oxidative damage is involved in the onset of diabetic eye complications, in which the decrease in free radical scavengers was shown to be associated with the oxidation of vitreous and lens proteins (Altomare et al. 1997).DECREASED RETINAL ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY IN DIABETICS
Activities of enzymes that protect the retina from reactive oxygen species were investigated in diabetic rats known to have developed retinopathy. Diabetes significantly decreased the activities of glutathione reductase and glutathione peroxidase in the retina. Activities of two other important antioxidant defense enzymes--superoxide dismutase and catalase--were also decreased (by more than 25%) in the retinas of diabetic rats (Kowluru et al. 1997).
The study showed that diabetes is associated with significant impairment of the antioxidant defense system and that antioxidant supplementation can help alleviate the subnormal activities of antioxidant defense enzymes. Administration of supplemental vitamins C and E for 2 months prevented the diabetes-induced impairment of the antioxidant defense system in the retina (Kowluru et al. 1997). Another study found no protective effect from antioxidant nutrients for diabetic retinopathy and concluded that further research is necessary to confirm associations of nutrient antioxidant intake and the disease (Mayer-Davis et al. 1998).RETINOPATHY OF PREMATURITY
A study assessed retinopathy in 60 oxygen-treated, premature infants and their mothers. All 60 infants showed signs of acute oxidative stress. The concentrations of methionine-cysteine in the plasma, as well as blood selenium levels, were significantly lower in the premature infants who had moderate retinopathy than they were in the oxygen-treated premature infants without retinopathy. The mothers of the premature infants with retinopathy showed the same pattern of deficiencies as their babies. Vitamin E treatment of premature infants seemed to have a positive effect against the development of retinopathy of prematurity (Papp et al. 1997).
The close correlation between the antioxidant capacity of the mothers and babies suggests that supplementation with sulfur-containing amino acids (methionine, cysteine) and folic acid during pregnancy might improve the antioxidant capacity of premature infants. An antioxidant cocktail of selenium plus vitamin E given to high-risk mothers (high risk factors include advanced age, smoking, and pregnancy-induced hypertension) before delivery might be useful in the prevention of retinopathy in premature infants (Papp et al. 1997).THE ROLE OF L-CARNITINE
Other research examined the effect of propionyl-L-carnitine (an analogue of L-carnitine) on retinopathy in rats with laboratory-induced diabetes. Findings pointed to a potential therapeutic value of propionyl-L-carnitine for diabetic retinopathy (Hotta et al. 1996). Until propionyl-L-carnitine becomes commercially available, taking 2000 mg a day of acetyl-L-carnitine should be considered by those with retinopathy. (L-carnitine is a natural substance that is found in meat. It is related to the B vitamins.)GLYCATION
Glycation of proteins has been shown to play a prominent role in the development of many diseases related to diabetes, including atherosclerosis, cataract formation, and retinopathy. Oxidation induced by glycation can wreak havoc on the eye. Protein glycation occurs when sugar molecules inappropriately bind to protein molecules, forming cross-links that distort the proteins and consequently render them useless. High blood sugar also increases glycation activity, which may also explain the various kinds of tissue damage that characterize advanced diabetes. Diligently controlling blood sugar is a major means of preventing or at least slowing the onset and progression of diabetic retinopathy. Glycation appears to increase oxidative processes, which may explain why both glycation and oxidation simultaneously increase with age.
Strategies for the prevention of diabetic complications should therefore aim to prevent both the effects of glycation and oxidative stress.
A drug called aminoguanidine has been used successfully to protect against glycation (Guillausseau 1994). Compounds produced through metabolism of sugars bind preferentially to aminoguanidine rather than to lysine proteins. Thus, aminoguanidine is able to inhibit advanced glycation end-product (AGE) formation and can help prevent the harmful development of collagen cross-links and changes in the proliferation of mesangial cells.
Aminoguanidine used in the dose of 300 mg a day can specifically inhibit glycation, as can the nutrients keto-glutarate and pyruvate. Studies have shown aminoguanidine to be useful in slowing complications of diabetes, such as retinopathy. (Aminoguanidine can also inhibit the formation of atherosclerotic plaques.)
Carnosine is a naturally occurring antiglycation agent found in red meat. In the lens of the eye, protein cross-linking is part of cataract formation. Carnosine eye drops have been shown to delay vision senescence in humans, being effective in 100% of cases of primary senile cataract and 80% of cases of mature senile cataract (Wang et al. 2000). The most widely used antiglycating therapy is to consume orally 1000 mg a day of supplemental carnosine.A Drug That May Reverse Glycation
One promising advanced glycation end product (AGE) breaker is ALT-711 (3-phenacyl-4,5-dimethylthiazolium chloride). ALT-711 is being developed by the Alteon Corporation to reverse the degenerative effects on soft tissues from diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It is currently in Phase II trials. ALT-711 inserts itself into AGE cross-links, separates and cleaves the linked molecules, and releases the proteins. The safety of ALT-711 and its efficacy in reversing age-related cardiovascular damage has been confirmed in animals and in Phase I and Phase IIa clinical trials. Alteon is planning a Phase IIb clinical trial. The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, clinical study will test the effects of multiple doses of ALT-711 in improving isolated systolic hypertension. The trial will be set up in 42 clinical sites and involve several hundred patients.CAROTENOIDS AND THE RETINA
Countless studies demonstrate an association between consumption of carotenoids with lowered risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Carotenoids, especially lutein and zeaxanthin, have also been found to help preserve eye health. Lutein is a pigment found in dark, green, leafy vegetables, including spinach, kale, broccoli, collard greens, etc. Zeaxanthin is found in fruits and vegetables with yellow hues, such as corn, peaches, persimmons, mangoes, etc. They are often lumped together when discussed or studied because they are structurally very similar, found in many of the same foods, and both are present in the retina. Lutein and zeaxanthin have been found to positively affect macular pigment density and to help prevent age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
Although there are several hundred carotenoids to be found in fruits and vegetables, only lutein and zeaxanthin are found in the retina (Schalch 1992; Yeum et al. 1999). Compared to other antioxidant concentrations found in the eye, German researchers found that lutein and zeaxanthin did not break down nearly as fast as lycopene and beta-carotene when exposed to free radical or UV light induced oxidative stress (Siems et al. 1999). The authors suggest that perhaps the slow degradation of lutein and zeaxanthin may explain the strong presence of these carotenoids in the retina. Also, the quick breakdown of lycopene and beta-carotene may suggest why these carotenoids are lacking in the same retinal tissues.
Researchers have also found that lutein and zeaxanthin are more highly concentrated in the center of the macula. There, the amounts of lutein and zeaxanthin are much greater than their concentrations in the peripheral region. At the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, scientific investigators demonstrated, using retinas from human donor eyes, that the concentration of lutein and zeaxanthin was 70% higher in rod outer segment (ROS) membranes where the concentration of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and susceptibility to oxidation is highest, than in residual membranes (Rapp et al. 2000). The fact that lutein and zeaxanthin are particularly concentrated in these parts of the eye suggests that they may act as a shield or filter that helps to absorb harmful UVB light and dangerous free-radical molecules, both of which threaten the retinal tissue (Moeller et al. 2000; Bernstein et al. 2001).THE IMPORTANCE OF ADEQUATE VITAMIN STATUS
- Vitamin B12
- Vitamin E
- Green Tea
(Cyanocobalamin, or hydroxycobalamin, a naturally occurring form) is critical for several functions, such as folate metabolism, myelin synthesis, and the normal development of red blood cells. A lack of this vitamin may leave the optic nerve more susceptible to damage. Studies have suggested that marginal vitamin deficiency plays an indirect but important role in the development of diabetic complications (Anon. 1990).Vitamin E
One study showed that reducing lipid peroxidation stress of the erythrocyte membrane using vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol nicotinate) therapy may be useful in slowing deterioration of microangiopathy in Type II diabetes mellitus. The dose used in the study was 300 mg 3 times a day, after meals, for 3 months (Chung et al. 1998). In the August 1999 issue of the journal Diabetes Care, Dr. George L. King and his colleagues reported that vitamin E supplements normalized bloodflow to the retina and kidneys. Following a 4-month clinical trial in which subjects were given doses of vitamin E that were 60 times the recommended daily allowance, kidney function improved and blood flow to the retina was increased almost to the normal rate. Dr. King is recommending a large follow-up clinical trial (Bursell et al. 1999).
Another study evaluated the use of antioxidants as a prophylactic for eye disorders, such as macular degeneration, cataracts, retinopathy of prematurity, and cystic macular edema. The study points to the positive role of antioxidants in both experimental research and clinical observations (KaLuzny 1996).Green Tea
Green tea is another potent antioxidant that could be of use in the treatment of retinopathy. The active compounds in green tea are chiefly catechins. Powerful polyphenolic antioxidants, catechins are astringent, water-soluble compounds that can be easily oxidized. They are a subgroup of flavonoids, weak phytoestrogenic compounds widely available in vegetables, fruit, tea, coffee, chocolate, and wine. The antioxidant potential of both green and black teas, as measured by the Phenol Antioxidant Index, was found to be significantly higher than that of grape juice and red wines. Green tea also has anti-angiogenic properties, indicating that it could be used for the prevention and possibly even the treatment of degenerative eye disorders, such as diabetic retinopathy, that also depend on the development of new blood vessels (Zigman et al. 1999; Thiagarajan et al. 2001).Silibinin
An in vitro study showed that silibinin (milk thistle extract) can normalize the degree of ribosylation and the sodium pump activity even in the presence of abnormally high glucose levels (Di Giulio et al. 1999). A similar protective effect of silibinin against ribosylation was found in the retina (Gorio et al. 1997). Thus silibinin may be able to decrease the extent of diabetic neuropathy and retinopathy, two extremely serious complications of diabetes. Considering that silibinin has also been shown to protect the kidneys, another organ seriously damaged by glycation (kidney failure is a frequent cause of death in diabetics), silibinin should be seriously explored as an adjunct treatment in diabetes.CONCLUSION
Retinopathy is a major cause of blindness among adults in the developed world. Risk factors are diabetes (especially with elevated blood glucose levels), vitamin deficiency, and old age. In retinopathy, the retina of the eye is damaged when retinal capillaries bulge or burst, leaking blood or fluid into the surrounding tissue. New capillaries that grow on the retina (and into the vitreous) cause blurred vision or blindness. Permanent blindness can result from retinal detachment caused by scar tissue. Prevention requires annual dilated eye exams and proper vitamin and nutrient intake. Researchers conclude that improved levels of antioxidants in pregnant women could help prevent retinopathy in their premature infants.SUMMARY
- Long-term antioxidant protection of the eyes can be provided by taking 3 tablets 3 times a day, of Life Extension Mix and 1 capsule a day of the Life Extension Booster formula. These two supplements provide the alpha and gamma forms of vitamin E, lutein, minerals for the formation of superoxide dismutase (SOD), such as zinc, manganese, and copper along with potent B complex vitamins. Some people may also want to take additional vitamin B6 (up to an additional 250 mg).
- Carnosine is an antiglycating agent that helps protect against the damaging effects of glycation. As an oral supplement, two 500-mg capsules daily are recommended. As an eyedrop, carno-sine may help prevent protein cross-linking in the retina. One to two drops daily of carnosine eyedrops are recommended. Those with any kind of eye problem may want to apply 1-2 drops several times a day.
- Zeaxanthin and lutein may help filter harmful UVB light and quench free radicals that harm the retina. Suggested dose from diet or supplements is 5 mg a day of zeaxanthin and 15-20 mg a day of lutein.
- Silibinin may help slow the extent of diabetic retinopathy; 250-500 mg a day is suggested.
- Green tea extract is a powerful antioxidant that has shown promise in the treatment of degenerative eye disease; 600-700 mg of a 95% polyphenol extract is suggested.
- Taking 2000 mg a day of acetyl-L-carnitine should be considered by those who have retinopathy, particularly if on a vegetarian diet.
For more information, contact the National Eye Health Education Program of the National Institutes of Health, (301) 496-5248.
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Related Products and Information | <urn:uuid:f71e72ac-e38f-4cc2-a20d-5bca0a466d9a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.lifeextensionvitamins.com/dired.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.927839 |
Michigan has had great success reintroducing two large mammals to the state. The eastern elk, once common in Michigan, had disappeared from the state by 1875. In 1918, state officials relocated seven Rocky Mountain elk to Cheboygan County in the northeastern Lower Peninsula. Today, nearly 900 Rocky Mountain elk roam the woods and meadows of a four-county area. The largest concentration lies within the Pigeon River Country State Forest near Vanderbilt.
In the 1980s, moose were reintroduced to a remote area south of the U.P.’s Huron Mountains, where officials released a total of 59 moose from Ontario in two separate operations. Most interesting was the method of reintroduction: Wildlife biologists airlifted the moose one by one in a sling dangling beneath a helicopter to a base camp where they were trucked 600 miles to the Huron Mountains. Van Riper State Park near Michigamme has an interesting display with photos of the infamous “moose lifts.” It worked—today, about 500 roam the central U.P.
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