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Mar. 16, 2014 An Embarrassment by Wendell Berry "Do you want to ask the blessing?" "No. If you do, go ahead." He went ahead: his prayer dressed up in Sunday clothes rose a few feet and dropped with a soft If a lonely soul did ever cry out in company its true outcry to God, it would be as though at a sedate party a man suddenly removed his clothes and took his wife passionately into his arms. "An Embarrassment" by Wendell Berry from Leavings. © Counterpoint, 2010. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) It was on this day in 1850 that Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, was published (books by this author). He was living at a time when there was almost no such thing as American literature, in part because the American publishing industry was so behind the times. In order to publish a book, a single printer would edit the manuscript, set the type, operate the printing press, bind the pages into books, and then sell them. It was remarkably inefficient, and so it was almost impossible to produce a best-seller, since so few copies were available to be sold. But by 1850, books were being printed by machines. Long, continuous sheets of paper were fed into steam-powered printing presses, and factories of workers folded, pressed, and stitched the pages into books. The Scarlet Letter became the first great American novel in part because it was the first novel that could reach a large audience. Hawthorne began the novel shortly after he was fired from his position at the Salem Custom House, and he spent almost all of his time working on it from June 1849 through February 1850. His wife, Sophia, said she was "almost frightened about it. ... He has written vehemently morning & afternoon & has not walked as much as he used to do. He has become tender from confinement & brain work." Hawthorne had long been fascinated by America's Puritan history, especially since one of his own ancestors had been a judge in the Salem witch trials. Ten years before starting The Scarlet Letter, he had read a historical account of a woman who had to wear the letter A on her chest as a punishment for adultery. He used that woman as the main character of the novel, and he named her Hester Prynne. He finished writing the book on February 2, 1850. He was exhausted and felt sick from spending so much time indoors, without exercise. The next evening, he read the conclusion to his wife; he said, "It broke her heart, and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a triumphant success." Hawthorne thought The Scarlet Letter was too bleak to be published by itself, and he planned to include it in a collection with a few other short stories. His publisher thought it was good enough to stand alone, but Hawthorne still had doubts about it. He wrote: "Is it safe, then, to stake the fate of the book entirely on this one chance? A hunter loads his gun with a bullet and several buck-shot. ... It was my purpose to conjoin the one long story with half a dozen shorter ones; so that, failing to kill the public outright with my biggest and heaviest lump of lead, I might have other chances with the smaller bits." On March 16, 2,500 copies of The Scarlet Letter were published, and they sold out within 10 days. Critics loved it, and it established Hawthorne as one of the best writers in America. Henry James would later call it "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in this country." It's the birthday of poet César Vallejo (books by this author), born in Santiago de Chuco, Peru (1892). As a young man, he worked as a miner and then as a cashier at a sugar plantation that employed slave laborers. He was horrified by the exploitation of poor workers, and he later became a socialist. In 1920, he found himself caught up in a festival in his hometown that deteriorated into lootings and arsons. He was mistakenly arrested and thrown in jail, and he spent his next four months writing the poetry that would appear in his first major collection, Trilce (1922). After he was released from prison, he moved to Paris, where he slept on subway trains and park benches for months. He was constantly sick and depressed, and he couldn't find a steady job. He wrote to his brother: "I ... have the desire to work and to live my life with dignity. I am not a bohemian: poverty is very painful, and it's no part for me, unlike for others. ... My will veers between the point at which one is reduced to the sole desire for death and the intention of conquering the world by sword and fire." He eventually founded a literary magazine in Paris, and he published several more collections of poetry. He spent the last years of his life promoting Russia's communist policies and trying to gain support for Spanish rebels in the Spanish Civil War. He died of malaria when he was only 49 years old. He is buried at the Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris. It's is the birthday of Sid Fleischman (books by this author), born Avron Zalmon Fleischman in Brooklyn, New York (1920). Fleischman grew up in San Diego, and as a teenager toured the country with vaudeville acts as a magician. After college he became a journalist, then he started writing suspense novels and screenplays. One day his daughter Jane came home from school with the autograph of a children's author. Fleischman's wife, Betty, pointed out to the children that their father was also a writer. Jane said, "Yes, but no one reads his books." So he started in at once, and his first of many children's books, Mr. Mysterious & Company, was published in 1962. He won the Newbery Award in 1987 for his novel The Whipping Boy (1986), which tells the story of a spoiled European prince and his servant who receives the prince's punishments, because it's a crime to strike the prince. He also wrote a memoir: The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer's Life (1996). • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao The Writer's Almanac on Facebook The Writer's Almanac on Twitter An interview with Jeffrey Harrison at The Writer's Almanac Bookshelf Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show O, What a Luxury
A bullet of mass 0.0022 kg initially moving at 495 m/s embeds itself in a large fixed piece of wood and travels 0.53 m in the wood before coming to rest. Assume that the acceleration of the bullet is constant. What force is exerted by the wood on the bullet? Want an answer? Get this answer with Chegg Study
Statistical Multiplexing and Little�s Law Assume that we have a packet arrival process characterized by an average arrival rate A. Assume that we also have a packet service process characterized by an average service rate C. That is, we have a queue where packets arrive at an average rate A, and packets are served at an average rate C. After long and careful deliberation, the TAs in this class have derived an important result: the average number of packets waiting in the queue is given by F(A/C) for some function 11) While knowing the average queue size is nice, what we really want to know is how long do packets wait in the queue; that is, what is their average queuing time (or, equivalently, waiting time)? Using Little�s Law, how can we express this queuing time in terms of F? a) F(A/C) b) F(C/A) c) A � F(A/C) d) F(A/C) � A e) F(C/A) � C 12) Now assume that the arrival process represents N flows, and each flow individually has an arrival process with average A/N. Further assume that each flow gets 1/Nth of the service, with no sharing (that is, we use the equivalent of circuit-switching where each flow has a reserved capacity), so each has an effective service rate of C/N. How does the queuing time for these flows compare to what you computed above? a) We aren�t given enough information to know b) It is exactly the same c) It is N times larger d) It is N times smaller e) The result is a transcendental number, and I don�t understand what those are Design Principles On Tuesday we discussed three principles: Layering, End-to-End, and Fate-Sharing. In this question we ask which principle is primarily responsible for three design decisions. Use each principle for only one answer below. As part of �showing your work� please provide one or two sentences justifying your answer. 13) The Internet protocol IP does not provide reliable delivery. Which principle does this follow a) Layering b) End-to-End c) Fate-Sharing 14) TCP often performs poorly over wireless network technologies, yet traditional TCP implementations do not take any special measures to account for wireless links. Which principle does this follow from? a) Layering b) End-to-End c) Fate-Sharing 15) As we will learn later in this course, the hosts are the only places where per-flow state is kept. Which principle does this follow from? a) Layering b) End-to-End c) Fate-Sharing Get this answer with Chegg Study
Tagged: Dart Dart is a new structured web programming language, complete with libraries, a virtual machine, and editor. Dart is Google’s effort to make it easier and more productive to build complex and rich modern web apps. This brown bag will introduce Dart, explain its motivations, and give an overview of the effort and where it’s going. The project is in Technology Preview, so now is the perfect time to check it out, provide feedback, and help sharpen Dart. As a special treat, we will get an introduction to, and a demo, of the Dart Editor. Video Rating: 5 / 5 Dart: A Language For Structured Web Programming Seth Ladd, Developer Advocate at Google, introduces us to Dart, a new class-based programming language for creating structured web applications. Developed with the goals of simplicity, efficiency, and scalability, the Dart language combines powerful new language features with familiar language constructs into a clear, readable syntax. Some of the topics covered include: -Motivations to create the language -Features unique to Dart -Isolates -DOM -Code Samples ** see more videos on open source development at marakana.com A new web programming interface from Application Craft www.applicationcraft.com has what they say is the quickest way to build apps. This is generally aimed at corporate developers, and looks like a modern Visual Studio — everything is in the web browser. Here I spend a bit of time with founder Freddy May who gives me a good look at what it does and why it’s an important new entrant into the web programming field. Video Rating: 5 / 5
How-To Geek What’s the Difference Between a VPN and a Proxy? Selecting the Right Tool Is Critical Practically every other week there’s a major news story about encryption, leaked data, snooping, or other digital privacy concerns. Many of these articles talk about the importance of beefing up the security of your Internet connection, like using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) when you’re on public coffee shop Wi-Fi, but they’re often light on the details. How exactly do the proxy servers and VPN connections we keep hearing about actually work? If you’re going to invest the time and energy in improving security you want to be sure you’re selecting the right tool for the right job. Although they are fundamentally different, VPNs and proxies have a single thing in common: they both allow you to appear as if you are connecting to the internet from another location. How they accomplish this task and the degree to which they offer privacy, encryption, and other functions, however, varies wildly. Proxies Hide Your IP Address A proxy server is a server that acts as a middleman in the flow of your internet traffic, so that your internet activities appear to come from somewhere else. Let’s say for example you are physically located in New York City and you want to log into a website that is geographically restricted to only people located in the United Kingdom. You could connect to a proxy server located within the United Kingdom, then connect to that website. The traffic from your web browser would appear to originate from the remote computer and not your own. Proxies are great for low-stakes tasks like watching region-restricted YouTube videos, bypassing simple content filters, or bypassing IP-based restrictions on services. On the other side of things, proxy servers are not so great for high-stakes tasks. Proxy servers only hide your IP address and act as a dumb man-in-the-middle for your Internet traffic. They don’t encrypt your traffic between your computer and the proxy server, they don’t typically strip away identifying information from your transmissions beyond the simple IP swap, and there are no additional privacy or security considerations built in. Anyone with access to the stream of data (your ISP, your government, a guy sniffing the Wi-Fi traffic at the airport, etc.) can snoop on your traffic. Further, certain exploits, like malicious Flash or JavaScript elements in your web browser, can reveal your true identity. This makes proxy servers unsuitable for serious tasks like avoiding detection and persecution by a hostile government. Finally, proxy server connections are configured on an application-by-application basis, not computer-wide. You don’t configure your entire computer to connect to the proxy–you configure your web browser, your BitTorrent client, or other proxy-compatible application. This is great if you just want a single application to connect to the proxy (like our aforementioned voting scheme) but not so great if you wish to redirect your entire internet connection. The two most common proxy server protocols are HTTP and SOCKS. HTTP Proxies If you’re using an HTTP proxy to connect to any sort of sensitive service, like your email or bank, it is critical you use a browser with SSL enabled, and connect to a web site that supports SSL encryption. As we noted above, proxies do not encrypt any traffic, so the only encryption you get when using them is the encryption you provide yourself. SOCKS Proxies How To Anonymize and Encrypt Your BitTorrent Traffic Whether you’re trying to dodge an angry government, a connection throttling ISP, or the watchful gaze of media conglomerates, anonymizing... [Read Article] The SOCKS proxy system is a useful extension of the HTTP proxy system in that SOCKS is indifferent to the type of traffic that passes through it. Where HTTP proxies can only handle web traffic, a SOCKS server will simply pass along any traffic it gets, whether that traffic is for a web server, an FTP server, or BitTorrent client. In fact, in our article on securing your BitTorrent traffic, we recommend the use of BTGuard, an anonymizing SOCKS proxy service based out of Canada. How to Select a Proxy While there are stand-alone commercial services out there like aforementioned BTGuard, most commercial proxy servers these days come bundled with VPN services. Top-tier VPN services like Private Internet Access, for example, only costs a few bucks a month and offers both VPN and a complimentary SOCKS server. There’s really no reason to pay the same amount (or more) for a proxy-only server when you can get the benefits of both a VPN connection and a proxy connection for the same amount (or less) per month. Virtual Private Networks Encrypt Your Connection Furthermore, this entire process is all passed through a heavily encrypted tunnel between your computer and the remote network. This makes a VPN connection the most ideal solution for any sort of high-stakes network use where privacy or anonymity is a concern. With a VPN, neither your ISP nor any other snooping parties can access the transmission between your computer and the VPN server. If you were traveling in a foreign country, for example, and you were worried about logging into your financial web sites, email, or even connecting safely to your home network from afar, you could easily configure your laptop to use a VPN. Even if you’re not currently on a business trip in rural Africa, you can still benefit from using a VPN. With a VPN enabled, you never have to worry about crappy Wi-Fi/network security practices at coffee shops or that the free internet at your hotel is full of security holes. Although VPNs are fantastic, they are not without their downsides. What you get in whole-connection-encryption, you pay for in money and computing power. Running a VPN requires good hardware and, as such, good VPN services are not free (although some providers, like TunnelBear, do offer a very spartan free package). Expect to pay at least a few dollars a month for a robust VPN service like the aforementioned Private Internet Access. How to Choose the Best VPN Service for Your Needs Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are veritable Swiss Army Knives when it comes to privacy enhancement, censorship avoidance, anonymous file sharing,... [Read Article] The other cost associated with VPN’s is performance. Proxy servers simply pass your information along. There is no bandwidth cost and only a little extra latency when you use them. VPN servers, on the other hand, chew up both processing power and bandwidth on account of the overhead introduced by the encryption protocols. The better the VPN protocol and the better the remote hardware, the less overhead there is. The process of selecting a VPN is a bit more nuanced than selecting a free proxy server. If you’re in a hurry and you want a reliable VPN service that we both highly recommend and use ourselves on a daily basis, we’ll direct you towards Private Internet Access as our VPN of choice. If you’d like to read a more in-depth look at VPN features and how to select one, we’d encourage you to check our detailed article on the subject. In summary, proxies are great for hiding your identity during trivial tasks (like “sneaking” into another country to watch a sports match) but when it comes to more series tasks (like protecting yourself from snooping) you need a VPN. • Published 03/29/16 Other How-To Geek Articles You Might Like Enter Your Email Here to Get Access for Free: Go check your email!
08/27/2010 08:29 am ET \| Updated May 25, 2011 Thank god man-made global warming was proven to be a hoax. Just imagine what the world might have looked like now if those conspiring scientists had been telling the truth. No doubt NASA would be telling us that this year is now, so far, the hottest since humans began keeping records. The weather satellites would show that even when heat from the sun significantly dipped earlier this year, the world still got hotter. Russia's vast forests would be burning to the ground in the fiercest drought they have ever seen, turning the air black in Moscow, killing 15,000 people, and forcing foreign embassies to evacuate. Because warm air holds more water vapor, the world's storms would be hugely increasing in intensity and violence -- drowning one fifth of Pakistan, and causing giant mudslides in China. The world's ice sheets would be sloughing off massive melting chunks four times the size of Manhattan. The cost of bread would be soaring across the world as heat shriveled the wheat crops. The increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be fizzing into the oceans, making them more acidic and so killing 40 percent of the phytoplankton that make up the irreplaceable base of the oceanic food chain. The denialists would be conceding at last that everything the climate scientists said would happen -- with their pesky graphs and studies and computers -- came to pass. This is all happening today, except for that final stubborn step. It's hard to pin any one event on man-made global warming: There were occasional freak weather events before we started altering the atmosphere, and on their own, any of these events could be just another example. But they are, cumulatively, part of a plain pattern where extreme weather is occurring "with greater frequency and in many cases with greater intensity" as the temperature soars, as the US National Climatic Data Center puts it. This is exactly what climate scientists have been warning us man-made global warming will look like, to the letter. Ashen-faced, they add that all this is coming after less than one degree celsius of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. We are revving up for as much as five degrees more this century. Yet as the evidence of global warming becomes ever clearer, the momentum to stop it has died. The Copenhagen climate summit evaporated, Barack Obama has given up on passing any climate change legislation, Hu Jintao is heaving even more coal, David Cameron has shot his huskies, and even sweet liberal Canada now has a government determined to pioneer a fuel -- tar sands -- that causes three times more warming than oil. True, the victims are starting to see the connections. The Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has been opposed to meaningful action on global warming, until he found the smoke-choked air in the Kremlin hard to breathe. But if we wait until every leader can taste the effects of warming in their mouths, the damage will be irreparable. But the broader public mood, smeared like sunscreen over us all, isn't active denial. No -- it's the desire to endlessly postpone this issue for another day. In 1848, a 25-year-old man called Phineas Gage was working on constructing the American railroads. It was his job to lay explosives to clear rocks out of the way -- but one day his explosive went off too soon, and a huge metal rod went through into his skull and out the other side. Amazingly, he survived -- but his personality changed. Suddenly, he was incapable of thinking about the future. The idea of restraining himself was impossible to grasp. If he had an urge, he would act on it at once. He could only ever live in an eternal present. As a civilization, we are beginning to look like Phineas Gage on a planetary scale. Yet scattered among us there is a fascinating group of people who are offering a path to safety. Every summer since 2006, ordinary British citizens have built impromptu camps next to some of the most environmentally-destructive sites in Britain and taken direct action to shut their pollution down. So far, it has worked: They played a crucial role in the cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow and a big new coal power station at Kingsnorth. That's how earlier this week I found myself on a high wooden siege tower in a camp in the Scottish hills, staring down across a moat towards the glistening, empty offices of the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). You own this bank: 84 percent of it belongs to the taxpayer after the bailouts. Yet it is using your money to endanger you by funding the most environmentally-destructive behavior on earth, like burning the tar sands. The protesters chose to come here democratically -- everything at the climate camps is done by discussion and consensus -- because they have a better idea. Why not turn it into a Green Investment Bank, transforming Britain into a global hub for wind, solar and wave power? Why not go from promoting misery across the world to being a beacon of sanity? So the protesters risked arrest in marching on RBS' offices because they know the stakes. As Professor Tim Flannery, one of the world's leading climate scientists, explains: My great fear is that within the next few decades -- it could be next year, or it could be in fifty years, we don't know exactly when -- we will trap enough heat close to the surface to our planet to precipitate a collapse, or partial collapse, of a major ice shelf... I have friends who work on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and they say [when a collapse happens] you'll hear it in Sydney... Sea levels would rise pretty much instantaneously, certainly over a few months. We don't know how much it would rise. It could be ten centimeters, or a meter. We will have begun a retreat from our coasts... Once you have started that process, we wouldn't know when the next part of the ice sheet would collapse, we don't know whether sea level will stabilize. There's no point of retreat where you can safely go back to... I doubt whether our global civilization could survive such a blow, particularly the uncertainty it would bring. Nature doesn't follow political fashion. Global warming may not be hot today, but the planet is -- hotter than ever. When you stare out over the wave of Weather of Mass Destruction we are unleashing, who looks crazy -- the protesters, or the people who have yet to join them? An excellent source of clear, accessible videos debunking denialist claims can be found here. To read his latest article for Slate, click here.
Skip to YouTube video Loading player… Neidhart von Reuenthal (1190-1245) was one of the Minnesingers - the German equivalent of the Troubadours. He was a Bavarian knight and minstrel in the service of Otto II. Not much is known about his life, which is a pity, as he was one of the most individual and out-standing personalities in the entire Minnesinger 'pantheon'. What is known is that his sharp wit and ruthless sense of humor made him many enemies both in and out of court, and he struck back by writing them into his songs - names and all - and having the last laugh at their expense. Veering, like Walther, from the courtly tradition of idealized love, Neidhart gave his songs a common village setting and wrote about common burgher life (he was the first to "lower" the "high" poetry into the middle classes). He was the master of satire, and his songs are full of dialogues, fights, and drunken brawls taking place between his enemies and himself - usually at a village festival, where the holiday atmosphere quickly degenerates into a chaos of flying fists until he, of course, emerges victorious (one of his featured songs "Meienzit ohne nit" falls in this category). Never missing an opportunity for self-irony, he composed some songs in the form of arguments between girls and old women - all of them fighting as to which one of them will be his lover. Neidhart wrote more for the common folk than for the court, and his link with the people ensured the popularity and immortality of his compositions - a higher percentage of his songs survives in music notation than those of other Minnesingers. (description written/copyrighted by Helgi_Ruunen) Edit this wiki API Calls
Greenland ice sheet marker of increased atmospheric acidity Source : ANI Last Updated: Sat, Dec 08, 2012 12:13 hrs In a new study, researchers have suggested that the decline in levels of the isotope nitrogen-15 is more directly related to increased acidity in the atmosphere. Research has shown a decrease in levels of the isotope nitrogen-15 in core samples from Greenland ice starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution, and the decrease has been attributed to a corresponding increase in nitrates associated with the burning of fossil fuels. The increased acidity can be traced to sulfur dioxide, which in the atmosphere is transformed to sulfuric acid, said Lei Geng, a University of Washington research associate in atmospheric sciences. Following the Industrial Revolution, sulfur dioxide emissions increased steadily because of coal burning. "It changes the chemical properties of the lower troposphere, where we live, and that can have a lot of consequences," Geng said. NOx carries a chemical signature - the abundance of nitrogen-15, one of two nitrogen isotopes - which changes depending on the source. That means it is possible to distinguish NOx that came from a forest fire from NOx produced as a result of lightning, soil emissions, car exhaust and power plant emissions. However, those levels actually went down in the late 1800s, following the Industrial Revolution, Geng said. That's because increasing sulfuric acid levels in the atmosphere triggered chemical and physical processes that allowed less nitrogen-15 to remain in vaporized nitrate, which can be carried to remote places such as Greenland. "We've seen a huge drop in sulfate concentrations since the late 1970s," Geng said. "By 2005, concentrations had dropped to levels similar to the late 1800s," Geng added. The findings of the study have been presented at the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. (ANI) More from Sify:
The Science Of Sleep: What the Research Actually Says – Written By Sol Orwell There are few topics as well accepted as “sleep” – every week someone influential will tweet “get your sleep! It’s as important as diet/exercise.” This isn’t an article disputing that instead it is an investigative look at what the actual research says. We are going to take a gander at the research conducted on sleep deprivation, and make evidence-based conclusions on how sleep affects you and your performance. It may get heavy at times, but we’ve provided summaries for each section. Photography: Rich Baker Sleep Deprivation and its Effects on Hormones The hormones that are most frequently stated to be affected by sleep are: • Insulin – One of the most misunderstood hormone there is • Androgens – The muscle-building hormones • Growth Hormone • Cortisol – The “stress” hormone Sleep deprivation doesn’t seem to affect insulin levels much, but there is definitely a decrease in insulin sensitivity in the fat cells and liver (1,2). This decrease in sensitivity can happen as easily as getting half your normal amount of sleep for less than a week (3,4) or even losing 90 minutes over a few weeks (5). This lack of sleep, coupled with decreased sensitivity, is a risk factor for the development of type II diabetes. Thankfully, these effects are quickly normalized upon recompensatory sleep. The implications of reduced insulin sensitivity, beyond an increase in diabetes risk, are not too clear for an otherwise healthy person, as the decrease in insulin sensitivity affects all measured tissue (adipose, muscle, and liver) and is just due to impaired signalling through the insulin receptor. Not getting enough sleep reduces insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. Even a little bit of lost sleep can have this effect, but it goes away once you get enough sleep. Androgens and Testosterone Testosterone is known for being affected by poor sleep (on a related note, you tend to sleep worse as you age, and this exacerbates sleep deprivation problems) (6,7). Studies have shown that getting 3 fewer hours of sleep for 5 days reduced testosterone by over 10% (8), whereas another study showed a 30.4% (9) decrease! These reductions all happened within 24 hours of sleep deprivation (10,11). Similar to insulin, getting enough rest quickly reverses this decline. Not getting enough sleep is linked to reduced testosterone. Just like insulin, testosterone normalizes once you get enough sleep. Growth Hormone Growth hormone is actually a surprise in regards to sleep deprivation. For starters, we know that a large pulse of growth hormone occurs shortly after sleep begins, and in otherwise healthy young men, this accounts for roughly 50% of daily secretion. So would missing out on sleep impair growth hormone? Depends on the duration of sleep. Absolute deprivation of sleep for multiple nights can effectively suppress growth hormone. But neither an irregular sleep cycle (like a shift worker’s) (12) nor only sleeping for 4 hours a night (13) will adversely affect whole-day exposure to GH. It seems that the body compensates during daylight hours, and what is missed out on at night is adequately replaced during waking hours in those that are sleep-deprived. Now, it is possible that the altered secretion patterns of GH can come with changes in its effects. However, the overall pattern is still pulsatile in nature (just biphasic rather than monophasic) and unlikely to be a huge issue. Not getting enough sleep changes the GH cycle, but it does not decrease your full day’s GH – your body compensates during waking hours. Cortisol is the hormone that mediates the process of waking up, and under normal rested conditions it’s elevated in the morning (to wake you) and suppressed in the evening (so you can fall asleep). It isn’t necessarily a bad hormone (the anti-inflammatory and fat-burning properties sound nice), but elevated cortisol also tends to be somewhat catabolic to muscle tissue, as well as being an indicator of other stress-related issues. Sleep deprivation both dysregulates and increases whole-day exposure to cortisol. Imagine a graph where a line goes from high on the left to low on the right, and label it “what cortisol should do over time.” Sleep deprivation turns that line into a straight horizontal line, and then raises it up on the Y-axis a tad. Interestingly, past studies were misguided a bit since they were only measuring morning cortisol concentrations and they kept on noting a decrease! Most recent studies that measured 24-hour exposure noted an increase, some as high as 50%, following 4 hours of deprivation each night for a week in otherwise healthy men. Cortisol is usually high in the morning and then low in the evening. Not getting enough sleep dampens this high/low wave, and results in more exposure to cortisol over a full day. Sleep Deprivation and Physical Activity Sleep deprivation has been noted to impair sprint performance and cardiovascular endurance (14,15). There is conflicting evidence here: Tests on cycle ergometers did not note much of an effect (16,17), and the one study to assess weightlifting performance also failed to find any adverse effect (18). Despite these mixed reports on sleep deprivation, acute sports performance is enhanced by caffeine and/or creatine supplementation during a state of acute sleep deprivation. The latter only seems to apply to things that require a high degree of coordination and mental processing (19). It’s important to note that these studies had participants just skip sleep for one night. Real-world application is more chronic; you tend to lose a few hours every night, and it adds up. The impracticality of these studies makes it very hard to make solid conclusions. Not getting enough sleep (for a single night) should not have much of a negative effect on athletic performance. There is little research on chronic abuse. Sleep Deprivation and Body Composition: Food Intake and Hunger One of the more talked about effects of sleep deprivation as it pertains to body composition is that it somehow makes you eat a ton more food and then you get fat. The general idea (based on rat studies) is that sleep deprivation eventually (after 5 days or so) leads to increased food intake, but oddly this is not met with an increase in body weight; absolute sleep deprivation paradoxically causes fat loss and mild sleep deprivation just prevents weight gain (20). The increase in food intake is probably because of an exaggerated response to orexin, a wakefulness-promoting hormone that positively modulates hunger. Orexin increases as one is awake longer, causing more food intake as a side effect (21). Orexin also positively mediates energy expenditure, but it is not known if we can credit this for the observed weight-maintenance effects. More practically speaking, studies in humans have noted an increased food intake of roughly 20-25% following a few hours of sleep deprivation for 4 days (22,23). This is likely due to the brain’s response to food intake being enhanced, thus making food more hyperpalatable (24,25). It is unclear how sleep deprivation affects weights in humans. There is a very well-established correlation in society between obesity and sleep disturbances, but the studies currently conducted in people on weight loss programs with sleep deprivation control for food intake. Not getting enough sleep seems to result in eating more, as you respond to food more. Metabolic Rate The effects of sleep deprivation on metabolic rate are harder to make sense of. One study found that getting 3 fewer hours of sleep per day for 2 weeks resulted in a 7.6% reduction in metabolic rate (26), whereas other studies showed no decrease (22,27). To make it even more confusing, one study (on adolescent boys) found that less sleep resulted in more calories burned (28) – the participants burned more (being awake longer) and consumed less (decreased appetite). In rats, chronic sleep deprivation is also known to greatly increase both food intake and the metabolic rate, resulting in weight loss (albeit a ton of other side effects such as lethargy, impaired cognition, and an aged visual appearance probably make sleep deprivation a bad diet strategy) (29). So ultimately, it doesn’t appear that there is much evidence that poor sleep reduces the metabolic rate. More likely, being “tired” from lack of sleep tends to result in less physical activity (30) and a possible increase of food intake could shift the balance of “calories in versus out” towards a surplus. Nutrient Partitioning There is one other interesting study that controlled for food intake and noted no differences in weight loss between groups (sleep deprived people and control both subject to intentional weight loss programs). This same study showed more lean mass lost and less fat mass lost in the sleep-deprived relative to control31. Overall, it does not seem that lack of sleep suppresses metabolic rate directly; it may do so indirectly by reduced physical activity. Furthermore, lack of sleep seems to results in less favorable body composition when cutting. Enhancing Sleep Quality So it seems that getting an adequate amount of sleep each night is quite important for those concerned with athletics and/or body composition. It would be a tad abrupt to just leave off on the importance of sleep without saying how to improve sleep, so the following are some tips that can be used to enhance sleep quality. Timing Food Intake Food intake can be quite effective in influencing the circadian rhythm: One way to avoid jet lag involves having a high-protein breakfast intermittently for 3 days (separated by low-calorie “fasting” days) at your destination’s time; the final meal is breakfast eaten after having arrived. This high-protein meal at your destination’s breakfast time should be able to reset your circadian rhythm. This is known as the Argonne Diet, and although it lacks scientific evidence to support it, the anecdotes are promising. It appears to play on the interactions between dietary protein and orexin, a wakefulness-promoting neuropeptide highly involved in the circadian rhythm (31). Conversely, dietary carbohydrates may be able to promote relaxation (somewhat indirectly) secondary to an increase in serotonin synthesis, which then converts to melatonin. Since the conversion requires darkness to occur, this might mean a small serving of carbohydrate prior to sleep can promote restful sleep while focusing dietary protein earlier in the day might also work to regulate the sleep cycle. Light Exposure or Deprivation Both light exposure (blue/green or white lights; fluorescent or sunlight) and dark exposure (either absolute darkness, or an attenuation of white light into pink/red dim lights) can aid in sleep-cycle regulation. Both dark and light exposure have been investigated for restoring altered circadian rhythms seen with jet lag (32,33). The perception of light via the retina actively suppresses the conversion of serotonin into melatonin, and appears to have other neurological effects that promote wakefulness (in the morning) or otherwise impair sleep. Reddish lights appear to be less detrimental to sleep quality, and it is sometimes recommended to dim lights or switch to red lights in the evening to facilitate sleep quality. For those of you at the computer frequently, this can be demonstrated with the downloadable software known as f.lux, which fades your computer screen to pink and reduces the brightness without affecting readability at a preset time every day. To sleep better, get ample light in the morning, and less in the evening. If you cannot avoid light, transition from white to red light during night-time. Supplementation to target sleep quality tends to stem from melatonin, which is a highly reliable and effective anti-insomniac agent that can reduce the time it takes to fall asleep. It is unlikely to do anything if you do not have problems falling asleep, but otherwise is a quite important and cheap supplement. The above light- and meal-manipulation strategies tend to work via melatonin manipulation anyways, and supplementation is an easy way to circumvent it. Beyond melatonin, other possible options include generally relaxing compounds (lavender and l-theanine) or other endogenous agents which seem to regulate sleep (oleamide being the latest up-and-comer supplement). Lavender is actually an interesting option since it appears to be somewhat effective as aromatherapy as a “relaxing” scent, and aromatherapy may be the only way to continuously administer a supplement throughout sleep (via putting a few drops of lavender oil on a nearby object and continuing to breathe while you sleep). It should also be noted that restricting stimulants or anti-sleep agents (caffeine and modafinil mostly) should be advised if sleep quality is desired. Even if caffeine fails to neurally stimulate you anymore due to tolerance, it can still screw with sleep quality. What You Should Have Learned That was a lot of information and studies to throw at you all at once. We’ve summed up all the relevant points: • Not getting enough sleep can decrease insulin sensitivity; get enough sleep, and it normalizes to baseline. • Akin to sleep and insulin sensitivity, testosterone is also decreased from lack of sleep; get enough sleep, and it normalizes to baseline. • Performance may or may not be impaired from lack of sleep. It would be safe to say that lack of sleep would not help performance. • Lack of sleep does not directly lead to less weight gain; you likely end up moving less, thereby decreasing caloric expenditure. • Lack of sleep seems to negatively impact body composition. • Having protein early and then carbohydrates at night could help in a better sleep cycle. • Brighter lights in the morning and dimmer (red/pink) at night results in a better sleep cycle. • Supplement with melatonin can help you fall asleep; abstaining from stimulants and taking relaxing supplements (lavender and theanine) can help the quality of your sleep. About the Authors Sol Orwell and Kurtis Frank co-founded to help separate the myths from the facts when it comes to supplementation and nutrition. 9. Cortes-Gallegos V, et al. Sleep deprivation reduces circulating androgens in healthy men. Arch Androl. (1983) 11. Gonzalez-Santos MR, et al. Sleep deprivation and adaptive hormonal responses of healthy men. Arch Androl. (1989) 14. Skein M, et al. Intermittent-sprint performance and muscle glycogen after 30 h of sleep deprivation. Med Sci Sports Exerc. (2011) 15. Oliver SJ, et al. One night of sleep deprivation decreases treadmill endurance performance. Eur J Appl Physiol. (2009) 16. [Enzymology. One of the basic features of diagnosis and therapy 17. Scott JP, McNaughton LR. Sleep deprivation, energy expenditure and cardiorespiratory function. Int J Sports Med. (2004) 18. Blumert PA, et al. The acute effects of twenty-four hours of sleep loss on the performance of national-caliber male collegiate weightlifters. J Strength Cond Res. (2007) 20. Koban M, et al. Sleep deprivation of rats: the hyperphagic response is real. Sleep. (2008) 21. Martins PJ, et al. Orexin activation precedes increased NPY expression, hyperphagia, and metabolic changes in response to sleep deprivation. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. (2010) 23. Nedeltcheva AV, et al. Sleep curtailment is accompanied by increased intake of calories from snacks. Am J Clin Nutr. (2009) 24. Benedict C, et al. Acute sleep deprivation enhances the brain’s response to hedonic food stimuli: an fMRI study. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. (2012) 30. Bromley LE, et al. Sleep restriction decreases the physical activity of adults at risk for type 2 diabetes. Sleep. (2012) 31. Marston OJ, et al. Circadian and dark-pulse activation of orexin/hypocretin neurons. Mol Brain. (2008) 33. Boulos Z, et al. Light visor treatment for jet lag after westward travel across six time zones. Aviat Space Environ Med. (2002)
Someone who's snobbish makes it clear that he thinks he's better than most other people. Your snobbish cousin might refuse to borrow your rain coat because it looks "cheap." If you're snobbish, you believe there are different social classes of people, and that you belong to the highest one. A snobbish person might think that graduating from a certain college makes him better than others, or that having more money makes him superior to those with less. The root is snob, which evolved from meaning "shoemaker" in 1700's Britain to being university slang for "ordinary person who apes his social superiors" to "one who despises those he considers inferior." Definitions of snobbish clannish, cliquish, clubby, snobby confined to particular persons or groups or providing privacy
• 2016-4-960 What is a dermatologic surgeon? • 2016-3-960 From forehead furrows to frown lines… • 2016-2-960 3 million Americans are diagnosed with skin cancer every year • 2016-1-960 From excess fat to wrinkles… + / - Article to be sent via email: To email(s): (use commas to separate multiple addresses) (use commas to separate multiple addresses) Your name: Your email address: Add a Message: Treatment Options Scars can be emotionally devastating for many people, leading to mental and emotional complications. Scars can be disfiguring and aesthetically unpleasant. Side effects of scarring may include: • Severe itching • Tenderness • Pain • Sleep disturbances • Anxiety and/or depression • Disruption of daily activities Scars also may result in development of post-traumatic stress reactions, loss of self-esteem and being stigmatized, leading to diminished quality of life. Physical deformity as a result of skin scar contractures also can be functionally disabling. What you need to know about scars Scarring is a natural part of the healing process after an injury. The scar’s appearance and its treatment depend on multiple factors, including the depth and size of the wound, its location, and the age, sex, ethnicity and genetics of the patient. These are several different types of scars, including: • Keloid scars: Resulting from an overly aggressive healing process, these scars extend beyond the site of the original injury. They may hamper movement. They are most common among people with dark skin. • Contracture scars: These scars form on burned skin. As they tighten, they can impair movement. Scarring also goes deeper, affecting muscles and nerves. • Hypertrophic scars: These are raised, red scars that are similar to keloids but do not go beyond the boundary of the injury. • Acne scars: Scars can range from deep pits to those that are angular or wavelike in appearance. ScarsDo's and don'ts How you treat wounded skin can go a long way in preventing excessive scarring. Treat wounds promptly.Maintain constant pressure on wounds with special bandages or special silicone sheeting. This will help flatten any resultant scarring.Gently massage the scarred area once it is healed. Massaging helps break down the dense bands of collagen from forming in underlying tissue.Consider scar therapy for older scars, and for scarring that causes you physical or emotional pain. • Ignore a scar that becomes raised, itchy or red, which could be a sign of infection. • Swab wounds with hydrogen peroxide. It can damage nearby healthy skin. • Cover a cut. Allow it to breathe and form a hard scab, which will speed healing in the wounded area. • Treat a wound with vitamin E, which can impair healing. Scar removal questions to ask a dermatologic surgeon (Download a Scar Questionnaire to bring to your appointment) 1. Which scar procedure is the correct one for me? (What are the options?) 2. What is the estimated cost of the procedure? 3. How long is one appointment? 4. How often will I need to receive treatment to remove my scars? 5. How far apart are the treatments? 7. How can I prepare for the treatment/procedure? 8. Does scar removal hurt? 9. What are my pain management and anesthesia options? 13. What are the risks? General questions to ask before scar procedures 1. Is a doctor on site? 3. Was my medical history taken? Render 960px View Render 768px View Render 480px View Render 320px View
Wednesday, 29 June 2016 How To Not Use No Double Negatives Double negative didn't do nothing is a confession Double negatives can be confusing, so I'm going to address them in this post so you don't need no further education. First, what is not a double negative not? Well, first, it isn't not anything else and should you encounter one in a conversation, you may need to determine it's application. Let's say you know a guy called Fred (I've never met anybody called Fred, in case you're wondering), and Fred says: "I don't not like it", and he's talking about your face. You may be insulted. Perhaps Fred's insulted because you're ugly. How do you determine the truth? The easy way to figure out a double negative is to identify it, and sometimes this can be tricky. If you can't identify the double negative, then you should go no further. Perhaps, for example, you really are ugly. Fred's double negative is, "... don't not ...". Now, anybody who has done math before knows two negatives make a positive, so Fred's being a nice guy here. He's saying he likes it, but there again, he could be lying. Suppose you're Batman and you're fighting a new super hero - let's call it Pandawoman, and like all superhero movies, there's always some banter, so Batman calls Pandawoman fat. Pandawoman tells Batman, "You don't not never ever call me not fat." The entire movie would be at a standstill if it were not for logic. What should Batman do? Smile and nod or flush her big black and white panda head down the toilet? This is a new scenario because the person saying the convoluted possible-double-negative may interpret what they say differently than what the target audience interprets. It is therefore best to paraphrase a potential convoluted double negative in the form of question. Hence, Batman could say, "Do you think you're fat?" Pandawoman could reply, "I don't not think I'm not fat" and the circle continues until they start liking each other and team up to fight evil, then have Batpanda pitter patter feet everywhere. So, the lesson in dealing with double negatives is to turn two negatives into a positive, or to paraphrase a convoluted or potential double negative into a simple question. Now, what isn't it about this post you don't not understand, and do you now think you can't not do this for someone who isn't always not nice? I'm so glad I had this opportunity to point out the basics. Now go, make friends and spread the knowledge. Friday, 24 June 2016 Lyme Disease, CFS, politics, and being ill Lyme CFS Fibro Australia deny ticks carry it We're told Lyme disease doesn't exist in Australia and despite the millions of travellers and wildlife that enter the country, there's no Lyme here. Lyme disease is a label denoting an illness from a particular place in America called Lyme depreciates acceptances of symptoms in Australia. I've had chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) for over a decade and although I improved with Lyme disease treatment, I'm not better. I'd like to continue to be treated, but the Australian Medical Association took legal action against my doctor. It leaves him without a practice and the ability to help and protect people, and it leaves me with at times, very dark thoughts, dozens of symptoms, and no outside help with organisations like Centrelink pressing me to get better without treatment; treatment that simply isn't available. I therefore become my own doctor and take pills that I have no idea will help, hinder, or at times, kill me. I'm my own doctor, diagnostician, chemist, psychiatrist, and other than my wife, my own counsellor. Do I have CFS? Do I have Lyme? Do I have both? Each have a stigma and none have a cure, at least, in Australia. I read personal accounts how Lyme disease and CFS destroys lives every day. Many months ago there was a buzz with politicians ramping up action about Lyme disease including a Senate Enquiry (that's been postponed, oh, we love politics don't we) as they saw so many people were ill from a hidden illness, but today, well, the landscape's no different despite the valiant efforts of some politicians led by Senator John Madigan. That buzz is dead, in part, because of caretaker mode due to the Australian 2016 elections. It leaves sufferers continue to suffer with no help; help they've strove for decades to obtain. Some Lyme communities suggest there’s a tipping point for Lyme recognition because of media attention and documentaries like Under Our Skin and Under the Eight Ball. These sure are fine documentaries but Everyday Joe hasn’t heard of it and don’t care much for Lyme. Those few interested persons do a quick internet search and finds it doesn’t exist in Australia so why should they care. The Government are doing nothing about it. Most tests are negative. Doctors don't understand it, and the stigma is appalling. There’s no tipping point in Australia. In fact there’s no tip at all, just under-dwellers who live out miserable existences with a chronic illness they’ve been told they have which in reality could be misdiagnosed with illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Tell someone you have Lyme and they’ll furrow their brow and look like a constipated monkey. It’s difficult to educate and I take a sharp breath when answering the question “So where do you think Lyme came from?” or comments like, “I thought Lyme only existed in the USA.” Do I have Lyme, CFS, or both? I've seen over 50 doctors and specialists who can't help. My psychology changed. I lost my friends. I lost all self-respect. My job. My future. My brain and ability to mentally process information. My memory. My future. Lyme illness sick dying, you bastards It's not in my head. I have painful symptoms that have drove me beyond despair and tested my resolve to live. Despite this overwhelming blackness of depression, I have to face people regularly who say CFS isn't a real illness (a specialist told me that), or Lyme doesn't exist in Australia (many doctors have told me that). I'm on numerous herbs and pills and an antidepressant. I can sleep and rest now, but that's not what I want in my future. I want a future in my future. Not a bed. If you want to know about Lyme then the main way you’re going to do it is either contract the Lyme bacteria and get sick, know a person who has Lyme and willing to discuss it, or, actively pursue Lyme as a specialist. As of the time of writing, CFS does not appear to be a bacterial illness, but people like me are ill with something, and that invisible something is an appalling reflection on the Australian medical community. Let’s face it: when was the last time you watched a documentary about genetically modified organisms or the adverse effects of vaccination and the information empowered and sent you flying into action like Superman with his Kryptonite butt on fire? You wouldn’t unless you had a reason and knowing stuff about Lyme doesn’t make good conversation. “Hey, Harry, get me a beer and I’ll regale you with information about Lyme and the history of the Borrelia spirochete” – won’t work and you might not get that beer you asked for. Cancer is mainstream and everyone recognises it as an awful and potent life-taking illness. But what’s Lyme again? Who would’ve though the Salk vaccine (polio vaccine) – cited as a modern day miracle, contained SV40: Simian Virus 40 believed to contain the cancer virus. Accident or experiment? If you didn’t know about this then what are you going to do after reading this article? Do you remember being vaccinated with the polio vaccine? Do you have SV40 floating around your body? Interested in finding out more? Lyme: experiment or naturally occurring? I’d like to see in my lifetime specific details about Lyme and its biowarfare history (if any, of course). There may be a Borrelia lineage to present day, though. We know it existed before the 1960′s and well after top hats were cool. My bets are hedged on it being man-made and initially tested on humans (eg, the Tuskegee experiment). Perhaps it got out of control like a Justin Bieber fan (or Justin Bieber) and spread worldwide like a virus (like .. Justin Bieber fans). There’s some evidence the 1918 superflu was manufactured by Nazi Germany and backfired (I'd love to read peer reviewed articles about this - email me if you have any). Picture of CFS after a social life Lyme disease is not only a stealth pathogen in the body but also in mainstream media. It hides under the radar and avoids detection from the most avid of journalists and doctors. If current research is correct the acknowledgement of Lyme in Australia could have a resounding impact on the country. People who have suffered from numerous chronic illnesses may need to see a Lyme-literate doctor and be treated for Lyme instead of whatever they were initially classified with. Thousands of people could be cured or/and their lifestyle and that of loved ones substantially improved through antibiotic treatment and getting wildly drunk and talking about your Lyme experience hoping you don’t wake up with a Mike Tyson tattoo on your face, sleeping for a week after seeing friends for a short time, assuming there are any friends left. If not cured, then at least have their quality of life improved. As a CFS/Lyme sufferer, I can tell you without doubt that any improvement on the quality of life, no matter how small, is an improvement. I thank my stars I met a doctor that in hindsight was able to stop my deterioration. I can understand why some see suicide as an alternative. I don't say that lightly. I truly understand it. Why is Australia Lyme-averse? Ignorance is one issue, sure. As remarked above we’re a Lyme ignorant country that can't admit the bacteria can change in our environment. The world was flat until a small group ventured to prove it wrong. Lyme disease in Australia is blind to the mind of society and its governments. It needs to be addressed. For known sufferers of Lyme, CFS, and related illness and for those suffering a chronic medical problem as a result of an known event, the Australian government must accept this insidious disease is real and start educating the public about the health hazard they may be exposing themselves to each day. Instead, I know two doctors who have been told by their regulator to stop treating victims of Lyme. The country is going the wrong way. Maybe it wants its citizens to be ill. TIO Australia poor performance and ignorance For the last seven months, I've experienced one of the worst cases of customer services in my life, and I'm currently entering all my notes on a dedicated blog called I've experienced appalling service including lies, deception, lack of help, contractual issues, significant downtime, and other maladies a customer must endure when a company simply doesn't care for much other than having an invoice paid. On 09 December 2015 I wrote about these issues to the Australian Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (the TIO) for assistance in resolving the problems with Vaya. During my discussions with them, it became clear early on they were backlogged or had poor administrative systems; inadequate enough to help. I later had to give up university because they didn't respond in a reasonable time. I don't get out much due to chronic illness, so I rely heavily on the internet. I received no reply from them and I followed up with them and sent through my document that at that time detailed what was happening. Instead of helping, the TIO told me to stop sending them things. The Vaya service continued to decline, I couldn't manage everyday activities like online banking, and it put a significant amount of pressure on me. The TIO asked for additional information and I provided it on 14 December. I received a reply in mid June 2016. The reply was they can't help because my inquiry is too old. To my relief, Vaya finally terminated my connection on 30 May 2016, six months after the issues first occurred, and without intervention or assistance from the TIO. Vaya issues persisted, however, with incorrect invoices and hundreds of dollars of non-legal fees.A few months ago, due to the complexity of my "case", they advised it had been referred to a Special Investigative Unit. I still received no contact whatsoever. The final straw was just a little over a day after Vaya disconnected me, I received an email from the TIO entitled, "TIO Case Update", the contents of which contain no update whatsoever: "I refer to your complaint that is not resolved. The TIO continues to experience a high demand for its services and this is causing delays. We encourage you to continue to work with your provider to resolve your complaint. You do not have to take any action as a result of this update. We will keep you informed about the progress of your case. We apologise for this delay" Sound sincere to you? No. I didn't think so. So, thank you, TIO for absolutely nothing. I hope your thumbs aren't sore from all that twiddling they do. Customers ignored TIO and the NBN - the future of sucking Australian broadband sucks As a boy growing up with a couple of jobs to earn a bit of cash and see me through my early teenage years, I always believed the customer is king: it was a term used and valued. It means something to me as without customers, there's no business. No business, no money, so I treated everyone accordingly. It isn't only this motto: a personal sense of value and morality ensured I treated others like I wanted to be treated - a time-honoured principle advocated by many of the great philosophers with stories in the Bible and other religions and philosophies. Today, I believe the customer isn't king unless it's the name of a dog. Most organisations I deal with don't show they care about their customers, whether it's a pizza shop that treats you like a number and keeps you waiting, or a communications company like Vaya that exceeds the worst of customer performance and expectations. The national broadband network (NBN) has many problems that both the Coalition and Labor parties devoutly say they'll fix, despite both historically having the power to do so and not doing it. I moved to Telstra's Belong ( as the NBN is supposed to be fast and the future of Australian internet, and as a backbone infrastructure with speeds far exceeding ADSL, the NBN is a natural move. I'm so wrong and I pay much more for bad performance and service. Belong advertises on its website: "Hassle free broadband on the NBN" We joined Belong because of the woeful experiences with Vaya (click here for more, and as of the time of writing, much more to come). Because of our experiences, we were prepared to pay a little more for a reputable organisation and felt that Telstra, or a subsidiary thereof, would be the best place to go. This, clearly, is wrong. Since connectionwe have more internet dropouts than hours in a day and it seems every time I go to use it, or want to use it, the internet isn't working. When I wanted to write a blog post, it disconnected four times. Today, I went to use the internet twice and it was down both times. Not only that, but when I first contacted Belong, I realised there were no other avenues than telephone number - no email support. I am on a pay-per basis with my mobile phone. • My first call I couldn't complete as I ran out of credit. • My second call was when the entire national NBN infrastructure had crashed. • My third call took half an hour and I was advised they couldn't help, and somebody would call me back within 72 business hours. • My fourth call, because Belong didn't call back during the prescribed 72 business hours, found me talking to somebody who told me the timeframe for callbacks is 5 business days - not 72 business hours. Tell me, I wonder - if you had a technical problem would YOU wait 5 business days? Well, I apparently have to. • I filled out a survey from NBN advising how disgraceful the service is, asking for somebody to call me back. Nobody did. Go figure. • And, my fifth call will be this coming Monday because again, Belong didn't call me back. • Unfortunately, I'm still on a pay-per mobile plan and I have to enter a monthly plan just to call Belong. • We went with Belong and spent that little extra money, but we sacrificed our home phone to do so. • I filled out a second questionnaire from NBN again asking someone to call me back. Again, nobody did. • It took seven - SEVEN - months for the ridiculous Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to call me back on a three month disconnection from Vaya, where the TIO stated they couldn't do anything because it was too long ago, and our current issues are not the original complaint (dumbass). If I go to them, our 12 month contract with the inferior will probably expire. This is turning into another Vaya problem so I'm going to be asking to get out of the contract and I'll simply go elsewhere - somewhere without a contract requirement. So, well done, Belong, the National Broadband Network, AND the TIO: congratulations on doing nothing other than ignoring me although I'm very sure I'll be receiving an invoice for your full services that you're apparently delivering. Of all the products and services within Australia, telecommunication services are one of the worst issues to deal with. Nobody listens or cares as long as they get their money and/or funding. Telstra's Belong FAIL
16 definitions by The_Hawk Top Definition Friendship for a lifetime And a family that grows Each and every moment Love is being woven Through the Father, Son, and Spirit I have learned and now I know That Bluestone through the ages Will always be, like coming home av The_Hawk 3 augusti 2009 CIT's are the unsung and often overlooked heroes of camp. Working for even less pay than the minimal pay of the famed and glorified camp counselor, CIT's are often tasked with the grunt work of washing dishes and working in the kitchen in addition to an hour a day of CIT class and a CIT project, leaving limited time for them to actually be of any use to the counselor and group they've been paired with for the week. All of this they do just for a small taste of the authority and experience of almost being a counselor while still in high school. Are you a counselor or a CIT? What does CIT stand for? Your camper just insulted me, he called me a CIT. You'll always be King of the CIT's, Durphy. av The_Hawk 20 augusti 2009 Illness often experienced by people who refer to themselves as camp counselors. Symptoms Include: -feelings of constantly being followed around by groups of children -sleep deprivation -hearing simple, repetitive questions such as, "What are we doing next?" and "When's pool time?" -finding minor lapses in personal hygiene completely acceptable -need to make up code words to use in place of inappropriate words and phrases -fire addiction -frequent yelling -bouts of complete insanity -darkening of exposed areas of skin Campers is most prevalent in the summer and often goes into multiple, brief periods of remission (often after week-long periods of symptoms) before finally going away. I can't, I have campers. av The_Hawk 31 juli 2009 A fun and simple pool activity where everyone forms a circle in the pool and runs as fast as they can in one direction and then everyone changes direction at the same time and try to run the other direction causing a whirlpool effect. This process is then repeated as much as desired. The more people the better the whirlpool! Everyone form a circle in the shallow end and we'll make a whirlpool! No dying in the whirlpool, please! av The_Hawk 9 augusti 2009 A legendary roll of duct tape which is capable of sticking to anything and never losing stickiness. However, the possibility of such a roll of duct tape raises the eternal question of whether you would be able to get the duct tape off the roll. Sadly, this is a question which can only truly be answered by discovering the Eternal Duct Tape. If Eternal Duct Tape is eternally sticky, would you be able to get it off the roll? av The_Hawk 13 augusti 2009 The small covering of dirt that gets on food as a result of being dropped while cooking over a campfire. It is so named due to the frequent occurrence while camping in the Hogans. Be our guest, Be our guest Put our Dutch Ovens to the test Try the fajitas they're nutritious, Hogan Spice it's delicious! av The_Hawk 15 augusti 2009 av The_Hawk 11 augusti 2009 Gratis daglig E-post
DIR® and the DIRFloortime® Approach Let's help our children become t he poets of their inner lives. -Stanley Greenspan (pictured left) What is DIR® has a deep foundation in the science of human development and can sound very technical at times. However, it is also very simple. It is a way to understand our children and each other that builds connections, understanding, love, communication, and engagement. Through this approach, the true potential of each person can be discovered. DIR is the Developmental, Individual-differences, & Relationship-based model that has become the foundation for understanding child development and providing support and intervention that helps children reach their fullest potential. The DIR® model is also a framework that helps clinicians, parents and educators conduct comprehensive assessments and develop educational and/or intervention programs tailored to the unique challenges and strengths of each child. ® is the application of the DIR model into practice. While the DIR model helps us understand and promote the positive development of all children, DIR and DIRFloortime are most commonly utilized with children with educational, social-emotional, mental health, and/or developmental challenges. DIRFloortime has become most widely known as an approach to support children with with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). You can read more about DIR and ASD in many books including "Engaging Autism" and "The Child with Special Needs" by Drs Greenspan and Wieder. The objectives of the DIR® Model are to build healthy foundations for social, emotional, and intellectual capacities rather than focusing on skills and isolated behaviors. • The D (Developmental) part of the Model describes the building blocks of this foundation. Understanding where the child is developmentally is critical to planning a treatment program. The Six Developmental Levels describes the developmental milestones that every child must master for healthy emotional and intellectual growth. This includes helping children to develop capacities to attend and remain calm and regulated, engage and relate to others, initiate and respond to all types of communication beginning with emotional and social affect based gestures, engage in shared social problem-solving and intentional behavior involving a continuous flow of interactions in a row, use ideas to communicate needs and think and play creatively, and build bridges between ideas in logical ways which lead to higher level capacities to think in multicausal, grey area and reflective ways. These developmental capacities are essential for spontaneous and empathic relationships as well as the mastery of academic skills. • The I (Individual differences) part of the Model describes the unique biologically-based ways each child takes in, regulates, responds to, and comprehends sensations such as sound, touch, and the planning and sequencing of actions and ideas. Some children, for example, are very hyper responsive to touch and sound, while others are under-reactive, and still others seek out these sensations. The term "Biological Challenges" describes the various processing issues that make up a child's individual differences and that may be interfering with his ability to grow and learn • The R (Relationship-based) part of the Model describes the learning relationships with caregivers, educators, therapists, peers, and others who tailor their affect based interactions to the child’s individual differences and developmental capacities to enable progress in mastering the essential foundations. What is the difference between DIR® and Floortim and how are they related?Floortime® (or DIRFloortime®) is a specific technique to both follow the child’s natural emotional interests (lead) and at the same time challenge the child towards greater and greater mastery of the social, emotional, and intellectual capacities. (additional reading: Floortime,What it is and what it isn't). With young children these playful interactions may occur on the floor, but go on to include conversations and interactions in other places. DIRFloortime® emphasizes the critical role of parents and other family members because of the importance of their emotional relationships with the child. The DIR® Model, however, is a comprehensive framework which enables clinicians, parents and educators to construct a program tailored to the child’s unique challenges and strengths. Central to the DIR® Model is the role of the child’s natural emotions and interests which has been shown to be essential for learning interactions that enable the different parts of the mind and brain to work together and build successively higher levels of social, emotional, and intellectual capacities. It often includes, in addition to Floortime®, various problem-solving exercises and typically involves a team approach with speech therapy, occupational therapy, educational programs, mental health (developmental-psychological) intervention and, where appropriate, augmentative and biomedical intervention. Once you're more familiar with the approach, read Guidelines for a Comprehensive Approach for guidance in putting together a DIRFloortime® program. This video is an extended version of the video on the home page. It includes case examples. A DIR Perspective... " The essence of motivation is finding out what the natural interest of the child is, what they like they do. Don’t have any preconceived notions. Don’t think in terms of “rewards.” The stimulus/reward approach is a very limited approach, which was based on research done with animal, not human, models and doesn’t encompass empathy and development of thought, etc. The approach does work, to some degree, but it tends to keep the child in a rote, repetitive mode. When a child is “stimming,” think of it as an opportunity to identify motivation to deepen his or her engagement. Motivation is basically a good observer seeing what the child likes and building on this natural interest to help the child learn what he needs to learn. Thus, motivation is finding out what the child naturally enjoys doing and then building on that interest and motivation". - By Stanley Greenspan, MD, August 2007
Stabilization Policy What is a 'Stabilization Policy' A stabilization policy is a macroeconomic strategy enacted by governments and central banks to keep economic growth stable, along with price levels and unemployment. Ongoing stabilization policy includes monitoring the business cycle and adjusting benchmark interest rates to control aggregate demand in the economy. The goal is to avoid erratic changes in total output, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and large changes in inflation; stabilization of these factors generally leads to moderate changes in the employment rate as well. BREAKING DOWN 'Stabilization Policy' Stabilization policies are also used to help an economy recover from a specific economic crisis or shock, such as sovereign debt defaults or a stock market crash. In these instances stabilization policies may come from governments directly through overt legislation, securities reforms, or from international banking groups, such as the World Bank. As economies become more complex and advanced, top economists believe that maintaining a steady price level and pace of growth is the key to long-term prosperity. When any of the aforementioned variables becomes too volatile, there are unforeseen consequences and effects to the broad economy that keep markets from functioning at their optimum level of efficiency. Most modern economies employ stabilization policies, with much of the work being done by central banking authorities like the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. Stabilization policy is largely credited with the moderate but positive rates of GDP growth seen in the United States since the early 1980s. 1. Policy Mix A government's combined use of fiscal policy and monetary policy ... 2. Fiscal Policy Government spending policies that influence macroeconomic conditions. ... 3. Monetary Policy 4. Mature Economy 5. Macroeconomic Factor A factor that is pertinent to a broad economy at the regional ... 6. Economic Conditions Related Articles 1. Markets Top 4 Central Banks Dominating the World Economy 2. Markets How Automatic Stabilizers Work Many economists claim that automatic stabilizers only work in the short term and question their effect on government spending. In truth, automatic stabilizers do not always have enough impact ... 3. Markets World's Central Banks Prepare for Brexit Fallout Central banks from Europe to the US and abroad pledged to step in to stabilize markets with emergency liquidity measures to prevent all-out disaster. 4. Markets 5. Markets Quantitative Easing is Now a Fixture, Not a Temporary Patch Rather than being a temporary patch, QE is now a fixture in global economic policy, for good or for bad. 6. Markets How Much Influence Does The Fed Have? 7. Markets What Does a Central Bank Do? A central bank oversees a nation’s monetary system. 8. Markets Top 8 Most Tradable Currencies 9. Personal Finance Why Is Deflation Bad For The Economy? While some inflation is good for economic growth, when prices begin to fall after an economic downturn, deflation may set in causing an even deeper crisis. 10. Markets The Importance Of Inflation And GDP 1. What impact does economics have on government policy? 2. What's the difference between monetary policy and fiscal policy? 3. How do central bank decisions affect volatility? 4. Do lower interest rates increase investment spending? Learn how the Federal Reserve Board uses monetary policy and the federal funds rate to influence long-term interest rates ... Read Answer >> 5. What macroeconomic problems do policy makers most commonly face? 6. What is the purpose for issuing contractionary policy? Learn the purpose of contractionary policy. Contractionary policy can be enacted by governments through fiscal channels and ... Read Answer >> Hot Definitions 1. GBP 2. Diversification 3. European Union - EU 4. Sell-Off 5. Brazil, Russia, India And China - BRIC 6. Brexit Trading Center
© 2016 Shmoop University, Inc. All rights reserved. Sonnet 146 Sonnet 146 by William Shakespeare Sonnet 146: Form and Meter of Sonnet 146 Quiz Think you’ve got your head wrapped around Sonnet 146? Put your knowledge to the test. Good luck — the Stickman is counting on you! Q. How many quatrains are in this sonnet? Q. What's this sonnet's rhyme scheme? None, it's blank verse Q. What kind of meter does Shakespeare mostly use in the sonnets? Iambic hexameter Trochaic tetrameter Iambic pentameter A voltage meter Q. The following two lines are an example of what? So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men, / And death once dead, there's no more dying then. Rhymed couplet A play A quatrain A volta or, a turn Q. Which of the following is a characteristic of a typical Shakespearean Sonnet? It's got 14 lines It's written mostly in iambic pentameter It's got 3 quatrains and a final rhymed couplet All of the above
Skip to content Diabetes Health Center Font Size Vaccine May Stop Immune Attack in Type 1 Diabetes Early trial found it boosts insulin production, appears safe "We just wanted to throw the off switch for the one cell being attacked," Steinman explained. The researchers recruited 80 volunteers diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during the past five years. They were randomly placed in one of five groups. Four groups received various doses of the vaccine, and the fifth group received placebo injections. Shots were given weekly for 12 weeks. No one in the study was able to stop using insulin. "That's a possible goal, but it's too early to start saying cure," Steinman noted. It's difficult to measure insulin levels, because they can vary rapidly and dramatically. Instead, researchers measured an increase of a substance called C-peptide, a part of proinsulin that stays in the body longer than insulin. C-peptide levels are used as measure of insulin production. C-peptide levels improved at all doses of the vaccine compared to the placebo, according to the study. And, it's believed that higher levels of C-peptide may be related to a reduction in some of the serious complications associated with type 1 diabetes, such as eye disease, kidney problems and heart disease. No serious adverse events occurred during the trial. Dr. Richard Insel, chief scientific officer at JDRF (formerly the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), said, "The encouraging results from this initial trial ... in established type 1 diabetes not only demonstrated safety, evidence during the vaccine dosing period showed preservation of beta cell function, a decrease in detectable immune cells [that likely attack the beta cells], and a relationship between the two." He added that further clinical trials will be needed to figure out the optimal dose for vaccine efficacy and safety. The study was funded by Bayhill Therapeutics, which helped to develop the vaccine. The JDRF provided funding for the trial, as did the Iacocca Family Foundation. Steinman said it's too soon to know how the vaccine might work in the real world. It's not clear how often someone would need to be given the vaccine, and how well the body might recover its ability to produce insulin once the autoimmune attack has stopped. It's also not clear if the vaccine might be more effective in people who've recently developed the disease, or in people who have a high risk of developing type 1 diabetes. Today on WebMD Diabetic tools Symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and more. woman flexing muscles 10 strength training exercises. Blood sugar test 12 practical tips. Tom Hanks Stars living with type 1 or type 2. kenneth fujioka, md Can Vinegar Treat Diabetes Middle aged person jennie brand miller Prediabetes How to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes type 2 diabetes food fitness planner
Willow Grove Park - Arthur Pryor: Biography Arthur Pryor: Biography Programs & Schedules A Performance Learn More Items of Interest A Walk in the Grove One of the best and most complete sources for information about Pryor is contained in the Historical Notes included in the ARTHUR PRYOR Trombone Soloist of the Sousa Band, produced by Crystal Records CD451. 1 ARTHUR PRYOR (1870-1942) "His execution set the prairies afire; His vibrating pedal tones rattled the windows of the Theatre and killed the gold fishes and stunned the canaries all the way out to the packing plant where even the iron gates trembled." So said an exuberant newspaper reporter in Omaha. Nebraska, following a performance by the young trombone virtuoso Arthur Pryor. A later performance in Kansas City almost caused a riot when many in the crowd misunderstood Cries of "Pryor Pryor for "fire, fire." And so it went through the years when the Boy Wonder from Missouri was the featured star of John Philip Sousa's famous band. Though Pryor gave up active public performance while in his forties. his activities as bandmaster and composer kept him in the public eye for most of the rest of his life. A household word for some three decades, Pryor's Band was second in fame only to that of Sousa's. Virtuoso performer. conductor, composer, arranger, teacher, and author, Arthur Pryor was, and continued to be, a major influence in American musical life. Arthur Willard Pryor was born on September 22, 1870, on the second floor of the Lyceum Theatre, St. Joseph, Missouri. His father was the bandmaster of the town, and the family was living at the Theatre. Arthur was the second son born to Samuel D. and Mary (Coker) Pryor. The oldest son, Walter D. Pryor, became a famous cornetist who later "'as featured on recordings with the great Herbert L. Clarke. The youngest son. Samuel 0. Pryor, became known for his skill on the drums. playing in many Kansas City theatre orchestras. Both Walter and Sam Jr. later played in the famous Pryor Band their brother Arthur directed. Being raised in this band environment. it was natural that the Pryor boys would turn to music. Arthur's training began when he was about six. His mother was a pianist, and he studied that instrument with a Professor Plato in town. What instruction he received on band instruments came from his father whose strict training included a wrap on the head with a violin bow if Arthur made a mistake. He was taught to play the violin, comet, alto horn, bass viol and the valve trombone. When he was 11 years old, he appeared with the band in Chicago billed as the "boy wonder" from Missouri on the valve trombone. Soon after this, a tramp left a battered old slide trombone with Sam as payment for a debt. Young Arthur was fascinated with this instrument, the first one in St. Joseph, so Sam told him to take it out to the barn and learn to play it. For some time he tried to master the instrument without using any slide oil, and he played using only two positions. Later, he learned quite accidentally from a man in the town pool hall that there might be as many as seven positions. He found these, though his lack of opportunity to study with a good professional player apparently resulted in his forcing some tones with the slide in what many would have considered the wrong positions. Later, in the heyday of his performing fame, he made great use of these alternate and "false" positions. He could play so well, and incredibly fast, that it hardly mattered that the "proper" positions were not being used. Soon Arthur Pryor became a featured member of his father's band. By this time he was obsessed with mastering his instrument. and later a boyhood friend named John White also a trombonist recalled that Arthur would practice hour after hour around 10 hours a day! By the time he was 15, Pryor was playing in county fairs in the area, and was becoming quite well known. In 1889 Allesandro Liberati, touring with the newly-organized band, stopped in Kansas City, and was told of the young virtuoso of St. Joseph. He took a trip there to visit with the Pryor family, and signed Arthur to appear as soloist with his band. They toured through the western states that summer. It was during this time that Pryor began to write the trombone solos that we know today. He was doing things on the instrument that had not been thought possible before, and no music was available that could demonstrate his skills. In 1890, during a break from appearances with Liberati's Band, Pryor appeared with his father band in a concert in St. Louis. In the audience were members of the famed Gilmore Band. After hearing him perform "Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep", they rushed off to tell their leader about Pryor and the result was an offer to join that organization. Instead,. Pryor went to Denver to direct the Stanley Opera Company. Why he passed up this opportunity to be soloist with Gilmore is not known. It is possible that he was influenced by the fact that his father had once been an opera director. Band historian Glenn Bridges thinks that he wanted to conduct and not travel so much. Another reason may be that he would have been following tile great Fred Innes as soloist, something his father had said no one could ever do. (By this time Innes had left Gilmore to form his own band.) in any case, according to the leading soprano of the opera company, Alice Neilsen, Pryor was successful as opera director. She was especially impressed with his ability as piano accompanist, both playing by ear, and for having an "endless repertoire" of songs that he knew. She recalled one incident where his kind encouragement kept her singing through a performance while caged lions (part of the following act) were snapping at her heels! Pryor claimed later that he learned through this opera experience the importance of knowing the piano; this aided him in his composing. In 1892, John Philip Sousa's newly formed concert band made its first appearance in Plainfield, New Jersey. Tom Shannahan, who was one of many who left Gilmore to join the new Sousa Band, informed Sousa of Pryor's ability, and Sousa invited Pryor to audition for the band. Settled with his work in the opera company. Pryor was at first reluctant to leave. But he decided to accept Sousa's offer to see him in New York City, arriving there with his trombone and 35 cents. After spending a lonely night on a park bench in Union Square, he attended his first rehearsal. Even as he was warming up he made quite an impression. "We had never heard such tones come out of a trombone before, but fast!" trombonist Marc Lyons told Glenn Bridges years later. Lyons also recalled that at that first rehearsal, Frank Holton, then first trombonist, asked Pryor to play a difficult passage Holton had been having trouble with. After Pryor played it Sousa stopped the band and said, "Frank that is fine, and the first time you got it right. Frank stood up and said, "Mr. Sousa it wasn't me playing but this young fellow Pryor." Holton was ready to step down immediately, but Sousa asked him to stay on for a time, since "this young fellow may be just a flash." Holton reluctantly agreed to stay but left the band in the fall of 1893, and Pryor became first chain (In later years, Pryor was to endorse the trombones made by the Holton Company.) Pryor was only 22 when he played his first solo with the Sousa Band during the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. According to accounts of the day, he played his own "Thoughts of Love to a crowd who just stood in awe, then cheered and threw their hats in the air. That was the first of some 10,000 solos that Pryor estimated he played during the 12 years he was with the Sousa Band. Arthur Pryor was a musician as well as a technician. Along with his phenomenal tonguing ability and lightning-fast slide technique, he was equally well-known for his beautiful tone and expressive style of playing. In fact, he actually preferred slow, lyric ballads and operatic arias to the fast, spell-binding display pieces that Sousa insisted he perform first. (For a third encore he often performed something like "Oh, Dry Those Tears", a sweet ballad which was his favorite.) His clean unforgettable tone was marked with a constant vibrato, the result of a boyhood accident when a mule kicked him in the face, resulting in partial paralysis. ("I wave it with my lower jaw", he once said.) The trombone had never had such a wide range before (he would demonstrate songs in four octaves), and pedal tones would come out of a 6 1/4 inch bell with all the ease of a modern symphony bass trombone. (His first trombone had a huge 9-inch bell according to H. W. Schwartz, Bands of America, pg. 200 . When he first joined Sousa he was down to 6 3/4 inch. but he later established 6 1/4 inch as his bell size, with a .458 bore, a small instrument even in that day.) He was also able to produce chords by playing one note, humming a note at a higher interval, and then encouraging the acoustical "different tone" to sound. Through the years he was with Sousa he shared the spotlight with premier cornetist Herbert L. Clarke, who said of him, " His technique was wonderful greater than any clarinet player I ever heard. When we were together with Sousa I heard him play his solos twice daily for years hundreds of times, and never heard him miss a note in public. He was perfection in everything he did". A generation of trombonists have tried to imitate him, and the instrument has never been the same since. From 1895 till 1903, Pryor was assistant conductor of the Sousa Band. In this capacity and as trombone soloist. Pryor traveled coast to coast and made three tours of Europe, playing before crowned heads of state. King Edward VII of England enjoyed one of Pryor's band compositions "The Coon Band Contest," so much that the King had it played at all court concerts there-after. The work was also a favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia. After a concert before 25,000 in Leipzig Germany, while on his last European tour members of the Gewandhaus Symphony Orchestra came backstage to inspect Pryor's trombone. Skeptical that an ordinary instrument could be played so fast they took the slide apart and peered down the mouthpiece. One of their trombonists said, "No one can play so well. It is a Yankee trick!" In Russia he was decorated by Czar Nicholas II. He was called the "Paganini of the trombone", in reference to the great Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840) who did change his instrument by altering string tunings to facilitate performance. Pryor would insist on getting in at least two hours of practice a day. But while in Russia Pryor got into a salary dispute with Sousa. When the band returned home Pryor left to begin his own band in 1903. He and Sousa remained good friends, however, and Sousa's respect is captured in this quote by him: Nor was there anyone on earth to equal Arthur Pryor, the trombone player, when he was with my organization." Years later, Pryor served as a pallbearer at Sousa's funeral, and he helped in the planning of a memorial to his former leader. Through the years with Sousa, Pryor performed with the band in many of the places he and his own band would later frequent. Besides directing the Sousa Band on occasion (he especially had to help them in 'feeling" the new jazz rhythms in his arrangements). He would also direct many of the recording sessions of the band. Sousa did not have an appreciation for the canned music" of the new recording industry, so he was more than willing to let Pryor and others direct the few number of his men who could manage to squeeze around the primitive recording horns in those days. While Herbert Clarke and another assistant named Henry Higgins directed often, it has been estimated that some 75% of the Sousa Band labels were conducted by Arthur Pryor. Most of these recordings were made for the Berliner and Victor labels, and while the conductors were not always indicated on the records, the 1900 Berliner catalogue, for example, does state that the band is performing "under the personal direction of Mr. Arthur Pryor, the great trombone soloist and assistant conductor to Mr. Sousa." After securing and rehearsing his musicians, the Pryor Band presented their first concert in the Majestic Theatre, New York City on November 15,1903. For the next six years he established his band across the country as a major musical force in America, second in fame only to the Sousa Band. Some considered his band superior to Sousa's. He secured the finest performers and soloists he could find. The CD program notes list many of the performers featured with his band. Six coast to coast tours between 1903 and 1909 brought his band before millions of admirers. In the 1904 season alone, Pryor directed his band in 269 concerts before a total audience estimated at no less than 300,000 people at Asbury Park, New Jersey. Some 2500 people would crowd into the Casino there to hear this great organization with its dashing young conductor. As an added treat, these early Pryor Band programs would usually include a Pryor trombone solo, though this was to change as time went by. The Pryor Band played 11 seasons at Willow Grove Park north of Philadelphia, a high class recreation center where no man was allowed in without a coat even in summer. The longest time between visits there followed a rehearsal where a strongly worded encouragement to a member of the band happened to fall on the sensitive ears of a woman of influence at the Park! It was seven years before the beautiful, natural outdoor pavilion of "The Grove" echoed to the sounds of the Pryor Band again. When the Pryor Band did play there they, would usually be followed by the Sousa Band. Since both directors were baseball fans, the players would look forward to a friendly confrontation on the diamond during the short time they were there together. The last tour of the Pryor Band was in 1909, and Pryor decided to settle down and make his permanent home in Asbury Park. He had been married since 1895 to Maud Russell, and they had two sons. During the years of travel, first as soloist arid their as conductor, he would try to spend tune in St. Joseph with his family, who had lived with Pryor's parents. The Pryor Band continued to play the various summer seasons at Willow Grove and Asbury Park, and winters in Miami, but in the off season it was busily engaged enlarging Victor's growing record catalogue. Even before this time, in 1906, when the Pryor Band was still a touring organization, there were no less than 168 catalog numbers assigned to recordings of this very active ensemble. Much more than tone coloring would have been lost had not Pryor begun arranging music especially for recording purposes. He eliminated the delicate shadings and solidified the sound so that these early recordings would at least stress the essential elements of the music. He is considered a pioneer arranger in this respect. The selections included all the popular kinds of pieces of the day: marches, waltzes, gavottes, medleys, patriotic airs, fantasies, novelties, hymns, serenades, and paraphrases. Also included were transcriptions of operatic arias and overtures, along with cakewalks and rags which helped to introduce the new jazz age. It was a very productive and financially successful venture. It may seem surprising that trombonists were among the soloists Pryor secured for Iris band. But in everything he was a perfectionist, and since he could no longer apply himself to practice, he gradually turned over the performance responsibilities to others. While he continued to play the trombone throughout his life, his greatest success as a performer was during his time with Sousa. Having thoroughly mastered his instrument early in life, he would not settle for anything less now (age 52). He had developed new musical interests which were taking his time, and his public performance was a thing of the past. His standard of perfection continued on the podium. His legendary outbursts of temper spiced with an equally legendary tongue, caused him to be compared with Toscannni. But unlike the fiery Italian, the offense was forgotten as quickly as it had been noticed and the men in the band grew to accept this as a part of the routine. After the rehearsal he would enjoy friendly fellowship with all, including the offender, over drinks together. He knew he had a temper and was not proud of it. But, like Toscannni, it can be attributed to an extreme musical sensitivity, not ego. He once told a friend that pour playing actually caused a physical reaction in him. While conducting he lived the music being performed. As someone once wrote of him (quoted in Bands of America by Schwartz, p.282) "Music is his life the correct interpretation of it, his life blood boil beauty. his life breath." While mistakes in playing were an aversion to him and he did at times lose players because of his reaction, he was a very kind man and his men respected him for his friendship as well as his musicianship. Often when sharing meals together (which is something not every conductor did) the men would offer him a toast. Pryor began composing solos for himself when he was with Liberati and went on to write many other compositions of all sorts including marches novelties waltzes and compositions in the early jazz style. He even wrote three comic operas and arranged a great deal of music, including a trombone solo of "Flight of the Bumble Bee!" While his trombone solos are all that are known today, in the days of his band's popularity his most popular number was "Whistler and his Dog", written in 1905. Inspired by his boyhood pet bulldog named Roxy, the song included a very popular whistling strain and ended with a dog bark. In time Pryor got so tired of requests to play it that he wrote a piece called Sammy and his Missouri Mule which he hoped would take some of the attention from it. But Sammy had a whistling part too! His great facility at composing grew out of his ability to improvise at the piano. He was able to take a three or four note motive and develop it into a theme for a composition He would also develop a theme from the rhythm and vowel sounds of a person's name. Throughout the years many favorites in the Pryor Band repertoire were Pryor compositions, so much so that at one point he had to make a public statement that he did not also w rite the popular pieces of John Philip Sousa! In his promotion of the "healthy growth of our native music, he showed a fondness for the new jazz idiom. He had grown up along the Missouri River and with his father's show business contacts, had become acquainted with the traveling minstrel shows of the day St. Joseph is also near Sedalia, Missouri the birthplace of ragtime. He had developed a good "feel" for jazz, and many of his compositions are in this style. His "Razazza Mazzazza" is called the "king of rags" in the 1906 Victor catalogue. In 1919 he and his band introduced the popular "Swanee" by George Gershwin in a concert in New York City. However. in all of his musical arrangements he should not add jazz style to a classical composition. While jazz is "legitimate entertainment" ("all right for dancing"), jazz versions of the old masters "have so confused the younger generation that youths put a swing rhythm into music when they think they are playing it straight." Because of this he once called jazz the "parasite of music," lacking originality except in the area of rhythm. He realized the concert band's contribution to American life ("they deserve credit for bringing the people closer to good music") and was saddened to see it supplanted by jazz ensembles as time went by. In the 1920s the Pryor Band moved into the area of radio broadcasting. By the early thirties he was associated with NBC for broadcasting in New York City. One popular series of concerts he and the Band did was called the Cavalcade of America.. He also found some time for teaching. He had a studio in the Life and Time Building, New York City; and also taught in his home in New Jersey. One former student, Prof. Matty Shiner of Duquesne University sums up his teaching standard in one word perfection". Through long tones, lip slurs and the study of arias and hymns he tried to develop in his students the concept of a singing style that he had introduced years before. As far as technical gymnastics "walk before you run!" -work out the parts slowly and steadily, and use lots of alternate positions. The lesson was "all business." He also would encourage young musicians to 20 on in their study. Dr. Leonard B. Smith, cornet soloist of the Goldman Band and conductor of the Detroit Concert Band, credits Pryor with persuading his father to allow him to go to New York to study music. In 1933 the Pryors retired to their 27-acre farm named Driftwood near Long Branch New Jersey. The Pryor Band had spanned three decades of existence longer than that of any of the old traveling park bands except Sousa 5 The Pryors shared their home with the parents of their daughter in law By thi time the Pryor sons were well established and famous in their osvn right. Arthur Jr played the cornet and piano. performing and serving as assistant conductor for the Pryor Band. He was also an advertising executive. As Vice President for a New York-based company, he secured the talents of people like Kate Smith and Dinah Shore (and the Pryor Band) for the radio programs his company sponsored. Roger Pryor was a noted actor dance band leader radio personality. and husband of T.V. comedienne Ann Sothern. He secured his father's permission to use a swing arrangement of Whistler as his band's theme song During retirement years the Pryors enjoyed working in their garden and keeping several dogs heirs to the famous Roxy. Maud Pryor was also an excellent pianist and we can be sure that she accompanied her husband as he demonstrated his skills for fortunate young musicians who would visit the home. He always kept his 1894 custom-made trombone on the shelf in his study for such purposes He also traveled to colleges to conduct band clinics. and wrote magazine articles on band betterment (such as "How to Play a March He even ran for public office in Monmouth Counts being elected as a Democrat to the board of freeholders on the platform of lower taxes He served only one term. keeping his promise to "enter and leave politics an honest man". Sometimes he would get together the old Pryor Band (as mans members as he could find) for an engagement at nearby Asbury Park, scene of his earlier triumphs. It was after a rehearsal for such an engagement, on the night of June 17, 1942. that he suffered a stroke (brain hemorrhage), and died at 5 AM the next morning. Arthur Jr., conducted the concert, which included his last composition. "We'll keep Old Glory Flying" dedicated to the U.S. Armed Forces. He was buried in Glenwood Cemetery near his home. He was an Episcopalian by faith, and he was a charter member of both the A.S.C.A.P (1914) and the American Bandmasters Association (1929). In a tribute to the dying breed of self taught bandmasters following Pryor s death William Shaw of the Chicago Daily News wrote "As for Arthur Pryor, he came out of a family orchestra which played for the touring attractions that came to a Missouri theatre. Sam, the father played anything he turned his hand to, Sammy, a son, played drums, his brother Walter, cornet, Arthur, of course, went in for the sliphorn. Sousa heard him, hired him. He played 10,000 solos with Sousa's Band. His tone was as smooth and mellow as that of any singer; his fame for it, proverbial! 1 Crystal Records Inc., 28818 NE Hancock Rd, Camas, WA 98607 Biographical information by Daniel F. Frizane and Frederick P. Williams Back to Arthur Pryor Return to Performers Home \| Programs & Schedules \| Performers \| A Performance Learn More \| Items of Interest \| A Walk in the Grove Copyright 2002 Accidentals Unlimited
Sentence Examples • I always wondered if that was why Mom and Dad split up for a while - because Mom was used to a different lifestyle and social circle. • Which would be worse, an uneasy stomach or split lips? • The nays and yeas were evenly split while the vast majority either weren't aware of the so-called Psychic Tipster or couldn't care less. • You have to split this in a nice democratic fashion. • Remember now, split it fairly. How would you define split? Add your definition here. comments powered by Disqus
Sign up Here's how it works: 1. Anybody can ask a question 2. Anybody can answer My professor says Nervus troclearis IV somatomotor fibers supply musculus obliquus superior. and similarly for nervus oculomotorius III Nervus oculomotorius postganglionic fibers supply musculus ciliaris, m. sphincter pupillae. I understand the verb "supply" as "stimulate" or "allow signal pass from the tract to the muscle that contracts or flexes". However, fibers must have some other functions too. So the verb supply seems to be a general term for these functions. How do fibers control the muscle? share\|improve this question I'm of the opinion that this question is either too localised or even off-topic in its present form. Perhaps consider rewording it to sound less like a use of english question - "what is the link between these nerves and muscles" or similar? – Rory M Mar 30 '12 at 16:59 I guess that was partly my fault from my edit. – Daniel Standage Mar 30 '12 at 17:07 @DanielStandage I wouldn't say that :) Anyway it's in better shape now, I've reversed my down-vote. – Rory M Mar 30 '12 at 17:16 I still think it needs more explanation. Are you looking for the answer to how action potentials are carried along motor neurons or how neuromuscular junctions work or both of the above? – kmm Mar 30 '12 at 21:23 @Kevin so the thing includes the two things. I know about the first one that myelin is used in some cases as a resistant. I know about the last one that there are transmitter substances like acetylcholine that is released from the end of the axon to the extracellular space that activates the action potential in some other cells by attaching to receptors of other cells. So there is a synapse going on between neurons. - Those things should apparently apply to the above examples. However, not sure how m. ciliaris is in connection with m. sphincter pupillae. Fibers activating muscles in sequence? – Masi Mar 30 '12 at 22:19 up vote 5 down vote accepted Read "supply" as "carry action potentials to." When the action potential reaches the junction with the muscle (i.e., the neuromuscular junction), neurotransmitters are released into synapse. A similar membrane depolarization occurs on the muscle cell, ultimately leading to contraction. Nerves visible to the naked eye are actually bundles of individual axons (hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of axons). Nerves have the appearance of branching because the individual axons that travel to muscle fibers don't all go to one muscle. For example the oculomotor nerve branches: Oculomotor nerve So what you see as the oculomotor nerve is really a collection of neurons. Some of these carry action potentials to the ciliary muscle and some to the sphincter pupillae. These are the parasympathetic components. There is a completely separate set of neurons (but still contained in the same nerve) that carry signals to the extraocular muscles. This is really basic material that your professor should have explained to you. share\|improve this answer Can you distinct the parasympathetic components of the nervus oculomotorius from a picture by eye? – Masi Mar 31 '12 at 10:02 They would be indistinguishable to the naked eye. You could only tell the divisions by where the (very tiny) branches go to. – kmm Mar 31 '12 at 15:35 Your Answer
PIA14732: Infrared Telescopes Spy Small, Dark Asteroids Target Name: Vesta Is a satellite of: Sol (our sun) Mission: Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) Instrument: WISE Telescope Product Size: 3450 x 2400 pixels (w x h) Produced By: JPL Full-Res TIFF: PIA14732.tif (24.84 MB) Full-Res JPEG: PIA14732.jpg (457.8 kB) Original Caption Released with Image: This chart illustrates why infrared-sensing telescopes are more suited to finding small, dark asteroids than telescopes that detect visible light. The top of the chart shows how three asteroids of the same size but differing compositions would appear in visible light. An asteroid that has a shinier surface, or higher albedo, will appear brighter than a dark asteroid, even though they are the same size. This is because a shinier asteroid will reflect more visible light from the sun. The bottom of the chart shows the same three asteroids when viewed in infrared light. They appear to be the same brightness, regardless of their albedo. Objects of the same size will radiate about the same amount of infrared light, as result of being heated by the sun. It's easier for an infrared telescope to see a small, dark asteroid because it senses the object's heat signature and not the little amounts of reflected sunlight. Image Credit: Image Addition Date:
Sign up Here's how it works: 1. Anybody can ask a question 2. Anybody can answer It's all in the title. How is it possible to output a carriage return in a \message. For debugging purposes, I need to get readable messages. The obvious doesn't work : \message{A\cr B} outputs A\cr B and \message{A\\B} produces an error like this Undefined control sequence. \\ ->\let \reserved@e \relax \let \reserved@f Thanks for your help ! share\|improve this question up vote 6 down vote accepted You don't say, but \reserved@a suggests that you are using latex in which case works although it is better to use latex constructs such as \typeout or \PackageInfo In plain TeX the above \message will work if you set share\|improve this answer Thanks for the answer and the hint to use \typeout, that actually solves the whole problem. – Tom-Tom Jan 20 at 9:23 The \message primitive expands input in the same way as \edef and needs something which produces a 'raw' new line to get the desired effect. On the other hand, \\ is a command to produce a line break in typesetting, so fails here (it is also not expandable, hence the odd error). You therefore need to insert a character equal to \newlinechar. In the LaTeX format this is ^^J: In formats where this is not set (such as plain), you'll also need to cover that \newlinechar=`^^J % share\|improve this answer Thanks for the pedagogical answer ! – Tom-Tom Jan 20 at 9:21 Your Answer
Rejoice in the rarity of seeing a piebald or albino deer Michael C. Bolton By Michael C. Bolton Email the author on December 08, 2013 at 10:22 AM, updated December 11, 2015 at 8:36 PM In more than 30 years of writing about outdoors in Alabama I've seen my share of bizarre deer come out of this state. Twice people have sent me photos of a deer with an extra set of legs growing out of its back. I was once sent a photo of a deer that had become known by local hunters as "Old Warty." The deer was covered in grotesque warts of some kind. Reports of female deer with antlers in Alabama are pretty common. They almost always prove to be a male whose sexual organs never developed outside the body, but on occasion, a true doe with antlers is killed in this state. The most bizarre thing I have ever witnessed was a video of two does that walked into a field on their hind legs. They then walked around the field on their hind legs like a human. They would go down on all fours to feed and then stand to walk to another location on their back legs. I'm not positive that was real, but if someone faked it, they did an incredible job. Rarely does a year go by that I don't hear of someone killing an albino deer in Alabama. I always check out those reports, and only twice in 30-something years have those deer proven to be a true albino deer. In all other instances each of those deer turned out to be what is known as a piebald. An albino deer is void of all pigment in its body. Its fur is white, but its eyes, nose and other soft parts are pink. Its hooves lack pigment, too. A piebald is not completely void of dark pigment. It has varying amounts of patchy brown fur, and its hooves, eyes and nose are dark. There are various degrees of this abnormality, and often a piebald will have a bowed nose, shorter-than-normal legs, a bowed spine and a short lower jaw. Rarely do the bucks have racks of much size. As in all animals, abnormalities caused by a recessive genetic trait sometimes occur in deer. That is the case in both albino and piebald deer. Albino and piebald deer are estimated to occur in less than 1 percent of the deer population. When you consider that there is an estimated 1.6 million deer in this state, you realize there are always a few walking around. I've have never seen either in the wild, just photos. I'm not so sure about the estimation by biologists that 1 percent of the deer born are albinos and that 1 percent are piebald deer. I have seen photos of only two albino deer taken in Alabama. I've probably seen photos of 25 piebald deer taken here. Different states have different laws regarding taking albino and piebald deer. Alabama law does not prohibit it. I've heard that several hunting clubs in this state that have a piebald on their property have rules that prohibit any members from shooting it. In Tennessee, it is legal to harvest a piebald deer but not an albino deer. A couple of years ago Oklahoma changed its law to allow the taking of albino deer. Previously an albino deer could be taken only with written permission from the Game and Fish Commissioner. What would you do should you ever encounter one of the two? Personally, I would just rejoice in being able to see such a rarity. I would try to take photos if I had a camera available. It would be a sight I'd definitely want others to see.
Economic Depreciation What is 'Economic Depreciation' Economic depreciation is a measure of the decrease in value of an asset over a specific period of time. This usually pertains to property such as real estate that can lose value due to indirect causes such as the addition of new construction in close proximity to the property, road additions or closures, a decline in the quality of the neighborhood, or other external factors. BREAKING DOWN 'Economic Depreciation' In periods of economic downturn and general housing market decline, economic depreciation must be considered in the appraisal of any property. During the credit crisis and housing market collapse of 2008-09, the combination of subprime loans requiring low or no downpayments with the dramatic drop in housing values resulted in a significant amount of the U.S. homeowning population being "underwater" - meaning that they owed more money on their home than it was actually worth. 1. Depreciable Property 2. Property Derivative A type of financial product that fluctuates in value depending ... 3. Unit of Production Method A depreciation procedure used for property that is not in continuous ... 4. Sales Comparison Approach - SCA A real estate appraisal method that compares a piece of property ... 5. Assessed Value 6. Appraisal Method Of Depreciation Related Articles 1. Personal Finance What You Should Know About Real Estate Valuation 2. Managing Wealth How Rental Property Depreciation Works 3. Personal Finance How Does Depreciation Reduce My Tax Bill? How the depreciation tax rule can assist real estate investors. 4. Investing Exploring Real Estate Investments: Finding Investment Value 5. Personal Finance Top 4 Things That Determine A Home's Value 6. Personal Finance Flipping Houses: Is It Better Than Buy and Hold? 7. Managing Wealth Top 10 Features of a Profitable Rental Property 8. Personal Finance Your Property Tax Assessment: What Does It Mean? 9. Personal Finance Sell Your Rental Property For A Profit 10. Personal Finance Explaining the Income Approach 1. Can real estate be depreciated? 4. How can I make equity investments in real estate? 5. What does asset management mean in regards to real estate? Hot Definitions 1. AAA 2. GBP 3. Diversification 4. European Union - EU 5. Sell-Off 6. Brazil, Russia, India And China - BRIC Trading Center
Skip Navigation • Up to 73 million sharks are killed every year around the globe, mainly to service the global trade in shark fin Up to 73 million sharks are killed every year A word on flake Australia’s Sustainable Seafood Guide ranks all shark as red, or ‘Say No’. This is for a number of reasons, including depletion of shark species around Australia and the world, poor management of shark fisheries in some Australian jurisdictions, lack of knowledge as to what species we’re importing, and protected species interactions in some shark fisheries, e.g. dolphin deaths in the gummy shark fishery off South Australia. The vast majority of shark meat is sold as ‘flake’ in fish and chip shops. The name 'flake' only refers to two species of gummy shark according to the Australian Fish Name Standard - one species from Australia and one from New Zealand. However, as the standard is not currently legally binding, shark meat from other species is also termed 'flake'. There is currently no regulation that ensures all seafood sellers identify the species that the shark meat is from. Gummy shark from Australia mainly comes from stocks fished off southern Australia, a fishery that’s managed by the Commonwealth Government. Gummy shark is currently red listed in the Guide due to the impact of fishing on school shark. Although the biology and stock status of gummy shark is relatively well understood and there are no concerns over the abundance of gummy sharks, school sharks are also caught in the fishery. School sharks were once a target species of the fishery, but overfishing led to depleted stock status. As it is challenging to catch gummy sharks without catching school sharks, school shark stocks have not rebuilt and are still classified as ‘overfished’ in fishery reports. A number of endangered sharks are regularly caught in Australian fisheries. For example, scalloped hammerhead sharks (Endangered on the IUCN Red List) are caught within the QLD-managed East Coast Inshore Fin Fish Fishery. Nearly 1,000 shortfin mako sharks (Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List) were caught in a three month period in Commonwealth fisheries and sandbar sharks (Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List) are targeted in a NSW fishery. We’re also importing from countries which possibly have poorer regulation than our own, with no understanding as to what species they may be.  So while ‘flake’ remains a general term for any kind of meat that comes from a shark, and until management actions rebuild school shark stocks, AMCS recommends choosing a more sustainable alternative to have with chips.
Diagnosis of life threatening cardiovascular disease Heart attack, medically referred to as acute myocardial infarction (AMI), is the leading cause of death in the United States and most other industrialized nations throughout the world. Approximately 800,000 people in the United States are affected each year and, in spite of a better awareness of manifesting symptoms, 250,000 die before reaching a hospital. For some time, it has been suspected that the most common triggering event for AMI is the rupture of an unstable atherosclerotic plaque in a coronary artery. The ruptured plaque causes blood clots to form which can sometimes completely block the flow of blood in the coronary artery. In this event, the heart muscles are starved of oxygen and the heart muscle cells die. The heart damage is permanent and puts the patient at risk for potentially life threatening repercussions. Because everybody has atherosclerotic plaques in their arteries, the ability to differentiate the unstable “vulnerable” plaques from the stable, non-threatening ones can be a major preventative advance. Proof of this theory has depended entirely on post-mortem evidence. Until recently, it has not been possible to study in living persons coronary plaques and the complex events that cause vulnerable plaques to rupture. Drs. Gary Tearney and Brett Bouma, through their significant advances in the technology of optical coherent tomography, have made possible real time, live imaging of coronary arteries in patients. Using a 3D endoscope the size of a human hair, they have begun to collect video images that display location, variation and changes in coronary plaques in live patients, including rupture of vulnerable plaques. Data gathered from early clinical studies confirm that this technology should be able to provide a means of early detection of high risk plaques in patients before they experience an AMI, and that the instrument can play a valuable role in guiding and evaluating therapeutic treatments for life- threatening cardiac conditions.
Join them; it only takes a minute: Sign up Join the Stack Overflow community to: 1. Ask programming questions 2. Answer and help your peers 3. Get recognized for your expertise I would know the best way and easiest way for epuring a std::string without using boost. For exemple how to transform this string " a b c d e '\t' f '\t'g" "a b c d e f g" Assuming '\t' is a normal tabulation. share\|improve this question What is an epur? – Praetorian Jul 20 '12 at 20:32 I'm not sure what "epur" means. Can you explain please? – Code-Apprentice Jul 20 '12 at 20:32 22 viewers in 5 minutes wanted to know what "epur" means. – SChepurin Jul 20 '12 at 20:38 What have you tried? Really, it just takes a loop or two over the string and a little logic to track copy-from and copy-to offsets.... – Tony D Jul 20 '12 at 20:48 Or it's from French épurer, "expurgate"? – Kerrek SB Jul 20 '12 at 20:48 up vote 2 down vote accepted You don't define what 'epur' means but the example make it look like what you want is removing leading (and trailing?) whitespace and replacing internal whitespace with single spaces. Now you could do this with a combination of std::replace_if, std::uniqiue, and std::copy_if, but that's pretty complex, and ends up copying the data multiple times. If you want to do it with a single pass in-place, a simple loop is probably the best: void epur(std::string &s) bool space = false; auto p = s.begin(); for (auto ch : s) if (std::isspace(ch)) { space = p != s.begin(); } else { if (space) p++ = ' '; p++ = ch; space = false; } s.erase(p, s.end()); share\|improve this answer A lazy solution using string streams: #include <string> #include <sstream> std::istringstream iss(" a b c d e \t f \tg"); std::string w, result; if (iss >> w) { result += w; } while (iss >> w) { result += ' ' + w; } // now use `result` share\|improve this answer It looks like you want to remove the \t characters from your string. You can do this by copying characters that are not \t as follows: #include <iostream> #include <string> #include <algorithm> #include <iterator> int main() std::string s1( "a b c \t d e f \t" ); std::string s2; std::copy_if( std::begin(s1), [](std::string::value_type c) { return c != '\t'; } ); std::cout << "Before: \"" << s1 << "\"\n"; std::cout << "After: \"" << s2 << "\"\n"; Before: "a b c d e f " After: "a b c d e f " If you want to remove all whitespace from the string, replace the return statement with return !std::isspace(c); (isspace is in the header cctype) share\|improve this answer Your Answer
Locke, Science and Politics - Steven Forde Locke, Science and Politics In this groundbreaking book, Steven Forde argues that John Locke's devotion to modern science deeply shaped his moral and political philosophy. Beginning with an account of the classical approach to natural and moral philosophy, and of the medieval scholasticism that took these forward into early modernity, Forde explores why the modern scientific project of Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle and others required the rejection of the classical approach. Locke fully subscribed to this rejection, and took it upon himself to provide a foundation for a compatible morality and politics. Forde shows that Locke's theory of moral 'mixed modes' owes much to Pufendorf, and is tailored to accommodate science. The theory requires a divine legislator, which in turn makes natural law the foundation of morality, rather than individual natural right. Forde shows the ways that Locke's approach modified his individualism, and colored his philosophy of property, politics and education.
What might be a good essay question regarding the speeches delivered by Antony and Brutus at Caesar's funeral in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar? 1 Answer \| Add Yours Top Answer booboosmoosh's profile pic Posted on In the funeral speeches delivered in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by Mark Antony and Brutus, what fascinates me the most is the differences between the two speeches...reflected not only by the different personalities of the men delivering the speeches, but (obviously) by their intent. Brutus is a man who loves Caesar. But he loves Rome more than anything, including his own life. He is willing to kill Caesar because he believes Caesar will destroy Rome: And therefore think him as a serpent's egg Which hatch'd would as his kind grow mischievous, And kill him in the shell. (II.i.32-34) Brutus is naive, duped into joining Cassius who, for almost the entire play, acts selfishly and without nobility. Brutus also misreads how their actions will be viewed: Since they all acted for the good of Rome, how could Antony, or any Roman, not understand? Brutus is a man of conviction: he doesn't just talk about saving Rome, but puts his life on the line to do so. After the assassination, Brutus wants to speak to the people to explain—from his heart—why the conspirators acted as they did. Brutus is admirable in wanting to face any possible consequences, assuming the responsibility of his actions. His only demand is that Antony not turn the crowd against what they have done when he speaks: Mark Antony, here, take you Caesar's body. You shall not in your funeral speech blame us, But speak all good you can devise of Caesar, And say you do't by our permission, Else shall you not have any hand at all About his funeral. And you shall speak In the same pulpit whereto I am going, After my speech is ended. (III.i.263-270) Antony, on the other hand, is a man motivated by power. He seems to like Caesar well enough, but when he is murdered, Antony sees this as an opportunity to advance his own position in Rome's political structure. (He will eventually plot to kill Caesar's nephew, Octavius.) Antony promises Brutus to be honorable in his funeral speech, in no way discrediting the conspirators; but he manages to do so anyway. (And privately he promises to avenge Caesar's death.) What is so fascinating is the way Antony is able to take Brutus' honest, heart-felt words and twist them in such a way that they no longer resemble (in their intent) what they did when they were first spoken. Antony's gift of rhetoric (his ability to use language so effectively) is amazing. (Of course, it is Shakespeare's gift, really.) Shakespeare portrays two very credible personalities; he also brilliantly uses their speeches to reflect the character of each man. Brutus is forthright; Antony is manipulative and self-serving. If I were to put together an essay question with regard to this scene, it would be something like: In Act Three, scene one, of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, describe how the content of the funeral speeches delivered by first by Brutus, and then by Antony, reflect the character of each man. Support with specific examples. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus delivers his funeral speech and garners support from the crowd for the assassins' actions. Then, almost effortlessly, Mark Antony changes the opinion of the crowd to condemn the actions of the assassins. What literary device does Antony use in his speech to accomplish such a feat? Support with specific examples. We’ve answered 328,029 questions. We can answer yours, too. Ask a question
Auroras, very beautiful images Images from Canada, at -37 centigrades. See the slideshow: From Wikipedia: Auroras, sometimes called the northern and southern (polar) lights or aurorae (singular: aurora), are natural light displays in the sky, usually observed at night, particularly in the polar regions. They typically occur in the ionosphere. They are also referred to as polar auroras. In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for north wind, Boreas by Pierre Gassendi in 1621.[1] The aurora borealis is also called the northern polar lights, as it is only visible in the sky from the Northern Hemisphere, the chance of visibility increasing with proximity to the north magnetic pole, which is currently in the arctic islands of northern Canada. Aurorae seen near the magnetic pole may be high overhead, but from further away, they illuminate the northern horizon as a greenish glow or sometimes a faint red, as if the sun was rising from an unusual direction. The aurora borealis most often occurs from September to October and from March to April. The northern lights have had a number of names throughout history. The Cree people call this phenomenon the “Dance of the Spirits.” Leave a Reply You must be logged in to post a comment.
Marina's presentation Published on Paul CéZanne • Be the first to comment • Be the first to like this No Downloads Total views On SlideShare From Embeds Number of Embeds Embeds 0 No embeds No notes for slide Marina's presentation 1. 2. Portrait of the Artist's Father Louis-Auguste Cézanne, 1866. Portrait of Uncle Dominique, 1865-1867. , The Artist's Mother and Sister , 1868. Self portrait , 1875 . 2. 3. Mountains Sainte-Victoire . The Red rocks 3. 4. He went to school in Aix, forming a close friendship with the novelist Emile Zola . He also studied law there from 1859 to 1861, but at the same time he continued attending drawing classes. In 1861 joined Zola in Paris, where he met Camille Pissarro and came to know others of the impressionist group, with whom he would exhibit in 1874 and 1877. Cézanne, however, remained an outsider to their circle Cézanne was a contemporary of the impressionists, but he went beyond their interests in the individual brushstroke and the fall of light onto objects. Paul Alexis reading to Emile Zola , 1869-1870 4. 5. 1. The dark period, Paris, 1861-1870 His work from this period differs sharply from his earlier watercolours. Among the works of his dark period were paintings such as The Murder , the words antisocial or violent are often used. 2.Impressionist period, Provence and Paris, 1870-1878 Under Pissarro's influence Cézanne began to abandon dark colours and his canvases grew much brighter. Jas de Bouffan , 1876 . 5. 6. 3. Mature period, Provence, 1878-1890 In the early 1880s the Cézanne family stabilized their residence in Provence., The move reflects a new independence from the Paris-centered impressionists and a marked preference for the south. Jas de Bouffan , 1885-1887 . 4. Final period, Provence, 1890-1905 Still Life with Apples and Oranges , 1895-1900. . His paintings became well-known and sought after and he was the object of respect from a new generation of painters. From 1903 to the end of his life, he painted in his own studio. 6. 7. The Card players , an iconic work by Cézanne (1892). Bathers, (1898-1905). , 7. 8. Still Life with a Curtain (1895) illustrates Cezanne's increasing trend towards terse compression of forms and dynamic tension between geometric figures. Cézanne's paintings were shown in the first exhibition of the Salon des Refusés in 1863. Before 1895 Cézanne exhibited twice with the Impressionists. In later years a few individual paintings were shown at various venues. He concentrated on a few subjects and was highly unusual for 19th-century painters in that he was equally proficient in each of these genres: still lifes, portraits, landscapes and studies of bathers. 8. 9. Still life paintings: Still Life with an Open Drawer, 1877-1879, The Basket of Apples, 1890-1894. Still Life, Drapery, Pitcher, and Fruit Bowl, 1893-1894. Still Life with Cherub, 1895. 9. 10. Watercolours: Boy with Red Vest, 1890 Self-portrait, 1895 Mill at the River, 1900-1906 River with the Bridge of the Three Sources, 1906 10. 11. Portraits and Self-portrait: Portrait of Achille Emperaire, 1868 Portrait of Victor Chocquet, 1876-1877 Self-portrait, 1875 Portrait of Gustave Geffroy, 1895 11. 12. Paul Cezanne was born out of marriage and his son also was illegitimate child. The contemporaries nicknamed his «A hermit from Aix», because he was very rude and gloomy person, unsociable and a lonely workaholic. His studio was always in mess. There were lots of brushes, tubes, muddy plates and saucepans with vermicelli drying on them! Portrait of Paul Cezanne's Son, 1888-1890 12. 13. Self-portrait, 1879-1882 He died of pneumonia and was buried at the old cemetery in his beloved hometown of Aix-en-Provence. 13. 14. Self-portrait with Beret, 1898-1900 The French painter Paul C é zanne , who exhibited little in his lifetime and pursued his interests increasingly in artistic isolation, is regarded today as one of the great forerunners of modern painting, both for the way that he evolved of putting down on canvas exactly what his eye saw in nature and for the qualities of pictorial form that he achieved through a unique treatment of space, mass, and color. 14. 15. Thank you for attention!
law' of thermodynam'ics 1. any of three principles variously stated in equivalent forms, being the principle that the change of energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the heat transferred minus the work done (first law of thermodynamics), the principle that no cyclic process is possible in which heat is absorbed from a reservoir at a single temperature and converted completely into mechanical work (second law of thermodynamics), and the principle that it is impossible to reduce the temperature of a system to absolute zero in a finite number of operations (third law of thermodynamics). 2. See zeroth law of thermodynamics. Law of the Medes and the Persianslaw of thought See also: Related Content
Safe HaskellNone Deprecated: Use Web.Simple.Controller Controller provides a convenient syntax for writting Application code as a Monadic action with access to an HTTP request, rather than a function that takes the request as an argument. This module also defines some helper functions that leverage this feature. For example, redirectBack reads the underlying request to extract the referer and returns a redirect response: myController = do if badLogin then type Controller = ReaderT ControllerState (ResourceT IO)Source A Controller is a Reader monad that contains the HTTP request in its environment. A Controller is Routeable simply by running the Reader. Utility functions redirectBack :: Controller ResponseSource Redirect back to the referer. If the referer header is not present redirect to root (i.e., /). :: Response Fallback Response -> Controller Response Redirect back to the referer. If the referer header is not present fallback on the given Response. :: ByteString Parameter name -> Controller (Maybe ByteString) Looks up the parameter name in the request's query string and returns the value as a ByteString or Nothing. For example, for a request with query string: "?foo=bar&baz=7", queryParam "foo" would return Just "bar", but queryParam "zap" would return Nothing parseForm :: Controller ([Param], [(ByteString, FileInfo FilePath)])Source Parses a HTML form from the request body. It returns a list of Params as well as a list of Files, which are pairs mapping the name of a file form field to a FileInfo pointing to a temporary file with the contents of the upload. myController = do (prms, files) <- parseForm let mPicFile = lookup "profile_pic" files case mPicFile of Just (picFile) -> do sourceFile (fileContent picFile) $$ sinkFile ("images/" ++ (fileName picFile)) respond $ redirectTo "/" Nothing -> redirectBack respond :: Routeable r => r -> Controller rSource An alias for return that's helps the the compiler type a code block as a Controller. For example, when using the Frank routing DSL to define a simple route that justs returns a Response, respond can be used to avoid explicit typing of the argument: get "/" $ do respond $ okHtml "Hello World" instead of: get "/" $ (do return $ okHtml "Hello World") :: Controller Response Low level functions request :: Controller RequestSource Reads the underlying Request body :: Controller ByteStringSource Reads and returns the body of the HTTP request.
Africa is plagued by unreliable, intermittent and often non-existent access to electricity, especially in rural areas. This is a huge inconvenience and a big obstacle to economic development. Can mobile phone operators be the unlikely saviours, bringing power to rural Africa? Lack of power, inhospitable terrain, electricity theft, shoddy and neglected infrastructure, mismanaged power companies, ‘dirty’ thermal stations, expensive power and frequent power cuts; the list of Africa’s power problems is long. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the overall electrification rate in Africa is less than 42%. In rural Sub-Saharan Africa, it is a shocking 14%. Government-run electrification projects are painstakingly slow, for a variety of reasons. Some countries are actually moving backwards. In South Africa, as an example, Eskom lacks capacity and has been forced to introduce “load-shedding” (a nicer word for planned blackouts). However, there are some very promising new developments in power production coming from an unlikely source: the mobile phone operators. Mobile operators are used to operating in rural Africa. They have base stations off-grid that need a lot of power, which has so far been provided by diesel-fueled generators. However, this is a very expensive (and dirty) way to power base stations. So, mobile operators have started introducing ‘green’ power solutions for base stations, based on renewable energy sources such as the sun and wind. One clear indication that these solutions are taking off, is the recent announcement from Airtel in Nigeria that it will upgrade an initial batch of 250 diesel powered base stations in Nigeria with E-site, a ‘green’ energy solution from Sweden’s Flexenclosure. Taking the E-site solution as an example, it has proven to be able to power base stations by more than 90%, using renewable energy sources, over an entire year and considering all weather factors. Over long periods, there is actually more green power produced than is needed to power the base stations. So, power management companies, network suppliers and mobile operators are now contemplating what to do with the excess power produced, and whether more power can be generated for a small additional cost. The most obvious answer is to share it with the surrounding local communities. From governments, there should also be considerable interest in alternative ways of providing power for rural areas. It would be cheaper to sponsor additional infrastructure, e.g. solar panels, at a telecom site for community applications like street lights and water pumps, than to expand the grid to remote locations. At the longest running test site, in Dertu in Kenya, the excess power produced by E-site has for two years powered a cold-storage room for vaccines and other medicines that to date has helped more than 5,000 people in the area with snake anti-venom and vaccines for newborn babies. A new initiative by Flexenclosure and Ericsson, the world’s largest mobile telecommunications equipment vendor, is called ‘Community Power.’ This system provides the possibility to share the power produced by E-site with the surrounding local communities to power, say mobile and battery chargers, street lights, clinics, etc ? in effect turning the site solution into a power station as well. The community power solution in itself strengthens the business case for off-grid deployments for mobile operators. The handset charging dock eliminates the villagers’ need to walk for hours in order to charge their handsets, while on the other hand, the operator benefits due to higher utilisation of the network which increases revenues. Extending mobile communications and power to remote areas in developing countries will have a profound impact on the communities, giving them the means to get information, communicate with their families, start and run businesses, and get access to banking services. The blistering African sun and the strong desert and savannah winds are free. Africa is on the threshold to finally be able to harvest these clean and constantly renewable energy sources, not only for communications but also to bring power to its people. The author is a intelligent telecom solutions expert based in South Africa. 0 #1 joseph obo 2012-02-03 17:04 That is a creative way of looking at it, but lets face it, no Telecom here in Uganda is willing to invest that much, especially in these uncertain economic times, one of the options is for the Government to nudge them through the communications commission here to do so but on their own I don't see it happening. Report to administrator 0 #2 ssentongo umar 2012-02-05 23:09 thanks for that infomation but do you think this will work in uganda in these early days? If it so when do you think it will start Report to administrator
Please Enter Your Search Term Below: Websearch Directory Dictionary FactBook Wikipedia: Species Wikipedia: Species From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article deals with the biological usage of the term. See combinatorial species for a mathematical usage. Species is a taxonomic concept used in biology to refer to a population of organisms that are in some important ways similar. Importance in biological classification The idea of species has a long history. In formal scientific classification, the species level lies below the genus and above the subspecies. It is one of the most important levels of classification, for several reasons: • It appears in the standard binomial nomenclature (or trinomial nomenclature) by which scientists typically refer to organisms/ • It is the only taxonomic level which has empirical content, in the sense that asserting that two animals are of different species is saying something more than classificatory about them. Definitions of species There are several main lines of thought in the definition of species: • A morphological species is a group of organisms that have a distinctive form: for example, we can distinguish between a chicken and a duck because they have different shaped bills and the duck has webbed feet. Species have been defined in this way since well before the beginning of recorded history. Although much criticised, the concept of morphological species remains the single most widely used species concept in everyday life, and still retains an important place within the biological sciences, particularly in the case of plants. • The biological species or isolation species concept identifies a species as a set of actually or potentially interbreeding organisms. This is generally the most useful formulation for scientists working with living examples of the higher taxa like mammals, fish, and birds, but meaningless for organisms that do not reproduce sexually. It distinguishes between the theoretical possibility of interbreeding and the actual likelihood of gene flow between populations. For example, it is possible to cross a horse with a donkey and produce offspring, however they remain separate species—in this case for two different reasons: first because horses and donkeys do not normally interbreed in the wild, and second because the fruit of the union is rarely fertile. The key to defining a biological species is that there is no significant cross-flow of genetic material between the two populations. • A mate-recognition species is defined as a group of organisms that are known to recognise one another as potential mates. Like the isolation species concept above, it is not applicable to organisms that do not reproduce sexually. • A phylogenetic or evolutionary or Darwinian species is a group of organisms that shares a common ancestor; a lineage that maintains its integrity with respect to other lineages through both time and space. At some point in the progress of such a group, members may diverge from one another: when such a divergence becomes sufficiently clear, the two populations are regarded as separate species. • See also microspecies under apomixis, for species that reproduce without meiosis or mitosis so that each generation is genetically identical to the previous generation. Implications of assignment of species status The naming of a particular species should be regarded as a hypothesis about the evolutionary relationships and distinguishability of that group of organisms. As further information comes to hand, the hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted. As a result of the revolutionary (and still ongoing) advance in microbiological research techniques in the later years of the 20th century, a great deal of extra knowledge about the differences and similarities between species has become available. Many populations which were formerly regarded as separate species are now considered to be a single taxon, and many formerly grouped populations have been split. At higher taxonomic levels, these changes have been still more profound. From a taxonomical point of view, groups within a species can be defined as being of a taxon hierachically lower than a species. In zoology only the subspecies is used while in botany the variety, subvariety and form are used as well. The term for persons lumping taxons together into one is lumpers and the term for splitting a taxon into multiple, often new, taxons is splitters. The isolation species concept in more detail The isolation question The difference question Historical development of the species concept In the earliest works of science, a species was simply an individual organism that represented a group of similar or nearly identical organisms. No other relationships beyond that group were implied. When early observers began to develop systems of organization for living things, they began to place formerly isolated species into a context. To the modern mind, many of the schemes delineated are whimsical at best, such as those that determined consanguinity based on color (all plants with yellow flowers) or behavior (snakes, scorpions and certain biting ants). In the 18th century Carolus Linnaeus classified organisms according to differences in the form of reproductive apparatus. Although his system of classification sorts organisms according to degrees of similarity, it made no claims about the relationship between similar species. At the time, it was common to believe that there is no organic connection between species, no matter how similar they appear; every species was individually created by God, a view today called creationism. This approach also suggested a type of idealism: the notion that each species exists as an "ideal form". Although there are always differences (although sometimes minute) between individual organisms, Linnaeus considered such variation problematic. He strove to identify individual organisms that were exemplary of the species, and considered other non-exemplary organisms to be deviant and imperfect. By the 19th century most naturalists understood that species could change form over time, and that the history of the planet provided enough time for major changes. As such, the new emphasis was on determining how a species could change over time. Lamarck suggested that an organism could pass on an acquired trait to its offspring. As an example, imagine an animal that repeatedly stretches its neck in order to reach the treetops: the longer neck that it has acquired would then, according to this theory, be passed on to its offspring. This well-known and simplistic example, however, does not do justice to the breadth and subtly of Lamarck's ideas. Lamarck's most important insight may have been that species can be extraordinarily fluid; his 1809 Zoological Philosophy contained one of the first logical refutations of creationism. With the advent of Darwin, Lamarck's reputation suffered gravely. It was not until the late 20th century that his work began to be reexamined, and took its place as a fundamental stepping stone to the modern theory of adaptive mutation. Lamarck's long-discarded ideas of the goal-oriented evolution of species, also known the teleological process, have also received renewed attention, particularly by proponents of artificial selection. Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace provided what scientists now consider the most powerful and compelling theory of evolution. Basically, Darwin argued that it is populations that evolve, not individuals. His argument relies on a radical shift in perspective from Linnaeus: rather than defining species in ideal terms (and searching for an ideal representative and rejecting deviations), Darwin considered variation among individuals to be natural. He further argued that such variation, far from being problematic, is actually a good thing. Following Thomas Malthus, he suggested that population would often exceed the amount of food available, and that some organisms would die. Darwin suggested that those organisms that would die would be those less adapted to their environment, and that those that survived -- and reproduced -- would be those best adapted to their environment. Variation among members of a species is important because different and changing environments favor different traits (i.e. there is no ideal trait; whether a trait is beneficial or not depends on the environment). These survivors would not pass acquired traits on to their offspring; they would pass their inherited traits on to their offspring. But since the environment effectively selected which organisms would live to reproduce, the environment would select which traits would be passed on. This is the theory of evolution by "natural selection." For example, among a group of animals some have longer necks, others have shorter necks. If all the leaves are high up, those with shorter necks will die; those with longer necks will thrive. This process is evident today as resistant strains of bacteria evolve. The development of the field of genetics (many years after Darwin) has revealed the mechanisms that generate variation as well as those through which traits are passed on from generation to generation. Although the current scientific understanding of species suggests there is no principled, black and white way to distinguish between different species in all cases, biologists continue to seek concrete ways to operationalize the idea. One of the most popular biological definitions of species is in terms of reproductive isolation; if two creatures cannot reproduce to produce fertile offspring, then they are in different species. This definition captures a number of intuitive species boundaries, but nonetheless has some problems, however. It has nothing to say about species that reproduce asexually, for example, and it is very difficult to apply to extinct species. Moreover, boundaries between species are often fuzzy: there are examples where members of one population can produce fertile offspring with a second population, and members of the second population can produce fertile offspring with members of a third population, but members of the first and third population cannot produces fertile offspring. Consequently, some people reject this notion of species. Richard Dawkins defines two organisms as conspecific if and only if they have the same number of chromosomes and, for each chromosome, both organisms have the same number of nucleotides. (The Blind Watchmaker, p. 118) The classification of species has been profoundly affected by technological advances that have allowed researchers to determine relatedness based on genetic markers. The results have been nothing short of revolutionary, resulting in the reordering of vast expanses of the phylogenetic tree (see also: molecular phylogeny). A species name can be: There are several common species names. Most of these are adjectives. Linnaean taxonomy discusses how the taxon "species" meshes with other classification categories, such as "kingdom" and "genus". See also: race. External links In chemistry, a species indicates that two particles are the same atomic nucleus, atom, molecule, or ion. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Modified by Geona
Главная страница > СМИ > Новостная статья Русская версия данной статьи недоступна. Чтобы закрыть, щелкните мышью в окне сообщения. Stabilizing rural Burundi Agriculture is key to bolstering peace Photo: ©FAO/Giulio Napolitano Finding ways to make small agribusinesses profitable. "Most people eat what they grow, and don't have the means to buy food," says Angela Hinrichs, a Senior Operations Officer with FAO's Emergency Operations and Rehabilitation Division. "If nothing changes, this is a recipe for disaster." Burundi's demographic pressure is exacerbated by a massive return of refugees, while climatic vagaries, crop pests and rising food prices pose additional threats to food security. Moving away from subsistence farming Since 1993, when civil war broke out, Burundi's per capita agricultural production has more than halved. Undernourishment has risen, from 44 percent of the population in 1990-92 to 62 percent in 2005-07, according to FAO hunger statistics. Conflicts about land have become more frequent, while these pressures also translate into continued land degradation and deforestation. FAO's Emergency Operations and Rehabilitation Division advocates a dual approach to agricultural rehabilitation, aimed at supporting the UN's efforts to bolster Burundi's peace process. Given the country's persistent vulnerability, FAO says, it is crucial to continue providing assistance to rural communities. Currently, the agency is carrying out an Action Plan for Burundi valued at around $60 million and targeting 1 250 000 people over a period of two years. Its objective is to increase food production, especially in the most densely-populated areas, for instance by making quality seeds of high-yielding crops available. FAO also supports income-generating activities, such as producing poultry, vegetables or fruit for sale and food processing. Furthermore, it encourages farmers to join forces, because working together not only helps to produce marketable surpluses but also helps strengthen peaceful relations. "The aim of our assistance is to support farmers in moving away from subsistence farming to more economically viable forms of agriculture," said Hubert Chauvet, FAO's Representative in Burundi. Economic alternative To ensure that the assistance has a lasting effect, more is needed though, Chauvet stresses. On the horizon looms a wholesale transformation that would allow Burundi's agriculture to offer viable alternatives of employment, especially to the massive numbers of young people who are leaving the countryside for the cities. FAO is playing its role in this enterprise — for instance, it has helped shape governmental policies like a long awaited reform of Burundi's land bill, currently being examined in Parliament. In the meantime, through its Action plan, FAO is providing much needed hands-on support to Burundi's most vulnerable smallholder farmers — an important first step. Поделитесь ссылкой на эту страницу
On August 14, 1935, U.S. President Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Act. Originally implemented to assist older Americans by paying retired workers a continuing income, amendments to the program extended benefits to the spouse and minor children of retired workers, workers who become disabled, families in which a spouse or parent dies and more recently medical health coverage (Medicare) for Social Security beneficiaries. The Social Security program is funded through the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax, a dedicated payroll tax. You and your employer each pay 6.2% of your wages, up to the taxable maximum. If you are self-employed, you pay the entire 12.4%; however, you can deduct half of the self-employment tax as a business expense. Under the law, Social Security is financed by this designated tax, and any money that isn't paid out in benefits (money that is a surplus) is used to buy U.S. government bonds held in the Social Security Trust Fund. The money that you pay through taxes is not the same money that you will receive when you collect benefits. Instead, it's primarily a pay-as-you-go system where the money you and your employer contribute now is used to fund payments to people who currently receive benefits, including people who have retired or disabled, survivors of workers who have died, and dependents and beneficiaries. Americans are having fewer children and living longer, both of which contribute to an aging population. Baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are retiring at a record pace: 14% of the population is age 65 and over, and by 2080, it will be 23%. At the same time, the working-age population is getting smaller, from about 60% today to 54% in 2080. These trends result in declining worker-to-beneficiary ratios: as we move forward, there will be fewer people putting money into the Social Security system and more people taking money out. Because of these factors, it has been estimated that all the money in the Social Security "bank account" will be exhausted in 2033, when it will have only about 77% of what it should pay out that year. That means that without any changes to the system, if you're in your forties or fifties today, you may not have access to the Social Security benefits during retirement, even though you're paying into it now. Increased taxes, benefit cuts, and upping the age at which people can start collecting benefits (or a combination of these) are changes that could be implemented to make up any future shortfalls. 1. Can I file for both Social Security and Supplemental Security Income? Can I receive SSI if I am already receiving SS? I know that some people receive more than I do in SS e... Read Answer >> 2. Will a cash withdrawal from an employer sponsored 401k account be considered as income ... 3. At what age will I be eligible for the maximum Social Security payout? The year you choose for collecting your social security will play a large part in determining how much money you'll receive ... Read Answer >> 4. What is the difference between early retirement and full retirement as it applies ... If you were born in 1929 or later, you'll need forty Social Security credits to be eligible for Social Security retirement ... Read Answer >> 5. How do I know what Social Security benefits I am eligible for? Learn what tools to use to find out which Social Security benefit programs you are eligible for and the basic requirements ... Read Answer >> 6. Can I collect Social Security if I still have a job? Find out about some circumstances that would allow you to collect Social Security while you're working and how your benefits ... Read Answer >> Related Articles 1. Retirement 3 Ways to Get Social Security Benefits Social Security isn't just for retirement. 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Next Article in Journal Use of an Innovative Web-Based Laboratory Surveillance Platform to Analyze Mixed Infections Between Human Metapneumovirus (hMPV) and Other Respiratory Viruses Circulating in Alberta (AB), Canada (2009–2012) Next Article in Special Issue Modulation of Apoptotic Signaling by the Hepatitis B Virus X Protein Previous Article in Journal Advances and Future Challenges in Recombinant Adenoviral Vectored H5N1 Influenza Vaccines Previous Article in Special Issue Prevention of Cellular Suicide by Cytomegaloviruses Viruses 2012, 4(11), 2736-2753; doi:10.3390/v4112736 Dendritic Cell Apoptosis and the Pathogenesis of Dengue Sharon de T. Martins 1,2, Guilherme F. Silveira 1, Lysangela R. Alves 2, Claudia Nunes Duarte dos Santos 1,* and Juliano Bordignon 1,* Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed: Email: Tel.: +55-41-3316-3242; Fax: +55-41-3316-3267. Received: 12 October 2012; in revised form: 30 October 2012 / Accepted: 31 October 2012 / Published: 1 November 2012 Dendritic cell; apoptosis; dengue virus 1. Dengue Virus Viruses 04 02736 g001 1024 2. Dendritic Cells 3. Dendritic Cells and Dengue Virus 4. Apoptosis 5. Dengue Virus-Induced Apoptosis 6. Dendritic Cells Apoptosis: Mechanisms and Dengue Pathogenesis Viruses 04 02736 g002 1024 7. Concluding Remarks Conflict of Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. References and Notes 1. OMS. Dengue and Dengue Haemorragic Fever. 2009. Available online: (assessed on: 10 June 2012). 2. Gubler, D.J.; Meltzer, M. Impact of dengue/dengue hemorrhagic fever on the developing world. Adv. Virus Res. 1999, 53, 35–70. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] 3. Nogueria, R.M.; de Araújo, J.M.; Schatzmayr, H.G. Dengue viruses in Brazil, 1986–2006. Rev. Panam. Salud Publica. 2007, 22, 358–363. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] 4. Nogueira, R.M.R.; Schatzmayr, H.G.; Fillipis, A.M.B. 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Government of Canada Symbol of the Government of Canada Cree language facts for editors of English and French: Gender Arden Ogg, Editors’ Association of Canada and the Cree Literacy Network (The Editors’ Association of Canada began using the name Editors Canada on July 1, 2015.) Dorothy Thunder, University of Alberta and the Cree Literacy Network Most native speakers of English are happily unaware of grammatical gender, at least until they attend their first French (or other language) class. There, they discover that every French noun must have its le or la. Cree, like French, also uses grammatical gender, but it orients itself along a different axis1. Whereas French sorts its nouns into masculine and feminine, the Cree worldview organizes its nouns according to animacy: that which is living (or animate), and that which is not (inanimate). Since Cree doesn't have definite articles, speakers rely instead on plural suffixes, ‑ak (animate) and ‑a (inanimate), to show which is which. Grammatical gender is simple to grasp when nouns correspond with natural, real-world categories. In French and in Cree, many nouns do: French English La fille girl (feminine) Le garçon boy (masculine) la grand-mère grandmother (feminine) le grand-père grandfather (masculine) Cree English iyiniw person (animate singular) askiy land (inanimate singular) iyiniwak people (animate plural) askiya lands (inanimate plural) pisiskiw animal (animate singular) oskihtêpak plant (inanimate singular) pisiskiwak animal (animate plural) oskihtêpakwa plant (inanimate plural) But what about less obvious cases, such as le citron (lemon) and la framboise (raspberry)? Neither is inherently male or female. For Cree, what about ayôskan (raspberry [animate]) and mitêhimin (strawberry [inanimate])? Neither, in nature, is more or less animate than the other. In French, in Cree, and in every other language that uses grammatical gender, we can find hundreds of examples where gender assignment is equally arbitrary. Of course, the biological distinction between male and female is as readily recognized in Cree as in English (which doesn't use grammatical gender at all). However, in Cree, as in French, grammatical gender doesn't care about biology. For grammatical gender, what really matters is agreement. Agreement happens when a word changes its form in relationship with other words. In English, one eats food, no matter what kind. French uses manger with both masculine and feminine objects. In Cree, however, grammatical gender extends to verbs. The gender of the noun object dictates the verb choice. To continue our example with eat and foods of different genders: Cree uses the verb ‑môw‑ with animate nouns. It uses the verb ‑mîc‑ with inanimate nouns. (For the moment, we'll ignore the fact that each must also agree in number and person.) To know which verb to use, you must know the grammatical gender of the food being eaten: Cree English nimîcin mitêhimin. I'm eating a strawberry (inanimate). nimôwâw ayôskan. I'm eating a raspberry (animate). nimîcin mîcimâpoy. I'm eating soup (inanimate). nimôwâw pahkwêsikan. I'm eating bread (animate). Gender agreement is so central to Cree that almost all verbs exist in parallel sets, with distinct animate and inanimate stems. Even words we consider to be adjectives in English or French turn up in Cree as pairs of verbs, all bound by the rules of grammatical gender. For editors who encounter Cree words in English or French text, it's important to be aware that the effects of grammatical gender are extensive, reaching beyond the noun to dictate even the verb itself. Back to the note1The grammatical observations made here are true of all Cree dialects. Example words and phrases, however, are given exclusively in Dorothy Thunder's y‑dialect (Plains Cree), spoken primarily in southern Saskatchewan and Alberta.
A Midsummer Night's Dream A Study Guide Table of Contents Type of Work A Midsummer Night's Dream is a stage comedy centering on the travails, pitfalls, and joys of love and marriage. Dates of Composition and Publication Shakespeare probably wrote the play between 1594 and 1596. It was published in 1600 and 1619 in unauthorized editions and then in 1623 as part of the First Folio, the first authorized collection of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare based parts of the play on "The Knight's Tale," by Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?-1400). Chaucer's story—which is part of a longer work, The Canterbury Tales—has an entirely different plot. But the setting and two of the main characters, Theseus and Hippolyta, are the same. Other sources Shakespeare used include The Golden Ass, by Apuleius (second century AD); Theseus, by Plutarch (46 BC?-AD 120?); and possibly King James the Fourth, a play by Robert Greene (1560?-1592). Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within the play, is based on passages in Metamorphoses (Book IV), by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-AD 17). The character Puck, a mischievous sprite in A Midsummer Night's Dream, appeared as Robin Goodfellow in a 1593 play, Terrors of the Night, by Thomas Nashe (1567-1601). Edmund Spenser referred to a devilish sprite called Pook in Epithalamium (1595), and Shakespeare may have adopted Pook and changed his name to Puck. Puck is also the name of a mischievous fairy in Celtic and English folklore. Settings and Time of Action The action takes place in Athens and nearby woods during the age of myth in ancient Greece. However, the play has the atmosphere and lighthearted mood of a land of enchantment that could be anywhere. Although the characters reside in the environs of Athens, many of them speak and act like Elizabethan Englishmen. The time of the action is June 24. In Elizabethan England, Midsummer Day—the feast of Saint John the Baptist—fell on that date. It was a time of feasting and merriment. On Midsummer Night, fairies, hobgoblins, and witches held their festival. To dream about Midsummer Night, therefore, was to dream about strange creatures and strange happenings—like those in the play. The tone of the play is lighthearted, mischievous, and magical. Theseus: Duke of Athens. In Greek mythology, Theseus was a hero of many accomplishments, one of which was to kill the Minotaur, a monster that was half-man and half-bull. Another was to defeat the Amazons, a race of warrior women. Afterward, he married the queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta. In Shakespeare's play, he orders lavish festivities and merriment for his marriage to Hippolyta, telling her "I will wed thee . . . with pomp, with triumph and with revelling." Hippolyta: Queen of the Amazons and the wife-to-be of Theseus. She was once a battlefield foe of Theseus, as the character description of Theseus points out. Hermia: Strong-willed young woman in love with Lysander. She refuses to marry Demetrius, her father's choice for her. Her father asks Theseus to settle the dispute. Egeus: Hermia's father. Lysander, Demetrius: Young men in love with Hermia. Helena: Young woman in love with Demetrius. Philostrate: Master of Revels for Duke Theseus. Bottom: Weaver who plays Pyramus in a play staged with his fellow Athenian tradesmen. Peter Quince: Carpenter who plays Thisbe's father in the tradesmen's play. He also recites the prologue. Snug: Joiner (cabinetmaker) who plays a lion in the tradesmen's play. Francis Flute: Bellows-mender who plays Thisbe in the tradesmen's play. Tom Snout: Tinker who plays Pyramus's father. Robin Starveling: Tailor who plays Thisbe's mother. Oberon: King of the fairies in the forest outside Athens. Titania: Queen of the fairies. Puck (also called Robin Goodfellow): Mischievous sprite who acts on behalf of Oberon. He can take the form of any creature or thing—hog, bear, horse, dog, and even fire. For more information on Puck, see Sources. Nedar: Father of Helena. He has no speaking part in the play. Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed: Fairies. Other Fairies: Attendants of Oberon and Titania. Attendants of Theseus and Hippolyta Plot Summary Only four days remain until the marriage of Theseus, the duke of Athens, to Hippolyta, who served as queen of warrior women called Amazons. When Theseus bemoans how lazily the hours pass before their wedding day, Hippolyta observes: Four days will quickly steep themselves in night; Four nights will quickly dream away the time; And then the moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night Of our solemnities. (1.1.9-13) To prepare for the wedding, Theseus orders his master of revels, Philostrate, to “stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; / Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth” (1.1.15-16). After Philostrate leaves to go about his task, one of the duke’s subjects, Egeus, arrives with his daughter, Hermia, and two Athenian youths, Lysander and Demetrius. Egeus informs Theseus that he has ordered his daughter to marry Demetrius but that she has refused, vowing to marry Lysander instead. Egeus now wants Hermia to swear before the duke that she will marry Demetrius or suffer the penalty of an ancient law decreeing that a disobedient daughter shall either be put to death or banished. After hearing the full complaint, Duke Theseus reminds Hermia of her duty to obey her father, saying, “To you your father should be as a god” (1.1.51). The duke then warns her that if she does not change her mind on this matter before the new moon, he will have no choice but to enforce the ancient law. Hermia and Lysander later decide to steal away to the woods the following night, and Hermia confides the plan to her friend Helena. Bad move. Helena is a blabbermouth who loves the man Hermia rejected, Demetrius. To gain favor with him, Helena informs him of Hermia’s plan. Meanwhile, tradesmen in Athens rehearse for a play they plan to stage as part of the festivities celebrating the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. The tradesmen include Bottom, a weaver; Snout; a tinker; Snug, a cabinetmaker; Quince, a carpenter; and Flute, a bellows-mender. Their play is to be called The most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby. (Thisby should be Thisbe. But the tradesmen, no scholars, misspell the word.) Although the men know nothing of play-making, they fancy themselves great wits and great actors. When Bottom learns that he will play Pyramus, a young man who kills himself after mistakenly thinking his beloved Thisbe is dead, Bottom predicts he will be a hit who will win the audience’s sympathy: “That will ask some tears in the true performing of it: if I do it, let the audience look to their eyes; I will move storms. . .” (1.2.14). To avoid the scrutiny of curious eyes, the actors decide to rehearse in the woods the next day. In the woods are fairies who have traveled from India to pronounce their blessing on the bed of Theseus and Hyppolyta. But all is not well with fairykind, for the queen of the fairies, Titania, will not give her husband, King Oberon, a changeling boy he wants as a page. (A changeling was a fairy child left to take the place of another child.) Oberon and Titania argue violently over the boy, so violently that the forest elves take refuge in acorn cups. But Titania stands fast. In revenge, Oberon orders his fairy mischief-maker, Puck (also called Robin Goodfellow), to harvest a magical flower whose juice, when squeezed on the eyelids of Titania while she sleeps, will cause her to fall in love with the first creature she sees upon awakening, perhaps a monster. Puck says he will circle the earth and, within forty minutes, produce the flower. After Puck zooms off, Oberon relishes his dastardly scheme, saying: Having once this juice, I’ll watch Titania when she is asleep, And drop the liquor of it in her eyes. The next thing then she waking looks upon, On meddling monkey, or on busy ape, She shall pursue it with the soul of love: And ere I take this charm from off her sight, As I can take it with another herb, I’ll make her render up her page [the changeling] to me. (2.1.183-192) On the following day, Lysander and Hermia escape to the woods. Demetrius also enters the woods in hopes of encountering Hermia, ignoring the lovestruck Helena, who trails after him like a lapdog. After Puck returns with the magical flower juice, Oberon—feeling sorry for Helena—orders Puck to squeeze the juice on the eyelids of Demetrius to make him fall in love with Helena. Oberon then ventures forth and squeezes flower juice on the eyelids of Titania, who is sleeping peacefully in a bed of violets and thyme. Puck, meanwhile, mistakenly squeezes flower juice on the eyelids of Lysander while he is sleeping with Hermia at his side. Upon awakening, Lysander’s gaze falls upon Helena, who is wandering in search of Demetrius. Lysander woos her. When she flees, he pursues her. After Hermia awakens, she wanders forth in search of Lysander. As the tradesmen rehearse their play, they discuss having someone play the moon. And, because the play calls for Pyramus and Thisbe to talk through a chink in a wall that separates them, Bottom suggests someone also be recruited to play the wall: "Some man or other must present Wall: and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus [in the shape of a V], and through that cranny shall Pyramus. . . and Thisby whisper" (3.1.25). (The tradesmen think Thisbe is spelled with a y at the end instead of an e.) When Puck happens by, he makes mischief by giving Bottom the head of an ass. Upon seeing Bottom with his new top, the other actors flee in terror. Bewildered, Bottom thinks they are trying to scare him, so he strolls about singing a song to demonstrate his fearlessness. The song awakens Titania, and the flower juice makes her fall deeply in love with Bottom, whom she escorts away. Demetrius encounters Hermia, who accuses him of murdering Lysander. When she runs away, he lies down to sleep. Oberon, meanwhile, has discovered that Puck bewitched the eyes of the wrong man—Lysander rather than Demetrius. So he puts flower juice on the eyes of Demetrius while Puck fetches Helena. When she arrives, pursued by Lysander, Demetrius falls in love with her. As both young men compete for her attentions, she concludes that they are only ridiculing her. Hermia, attracted to the scene by the noise, then blames Helena for stealing Lysander. The men go off to fight a duel. Helena, afraid of Hermia, flees; Hermia follows her. Oberon assigns Puck to restore order. Using magic, he causes the four young people to fall asleep near one another, then applies magical juice to Lysander’s eyes to undo the previous spell. Titania sleeps next to Bottom. Oberon, meanwhile, who has gained possession of the changeling boy, removes the enchantment from Titania’s eyes. At daybreak, Theseus, Hippolyta, Egeus, and others enter the woods to hunt. Sounding horns, they awaken the four lovers. Egeus again demands that Hermia marry Demetrius. But Demetrius announces that he is interested only in Helena. Theseus, pleased with the outcome, sanctions the marriage of the two couples to coincide with his own marriage to Hippolyta. Theseus is amused by the activities of the lovers during their time in the forest and says: Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet. Are of imagination all compact. (5.1.6-10) In the evening, during the wedding celebration, the craftsmen put on their play, with Snout playing Wall and Bottom enacting his tour de force suicide scene as Pyramus. Thus die I, thus, thus, thus. [Stabs himself.] Now am I dead, Now am I fled; My soul is in the sky: Tongue, lose thy light; Moon take thy flight. Now die, die, die, die, die. [Dies.] (5.1.277-283) Thisbe, discovering Pyramus dead, then kills herself. Bottom gets back up and asks Theseus whether he would like to hear an epilogue or see a dance. Theseus opts for a dance, then says it is time for bed. The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve: Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall out-sleep the coming morn As much as we this night have overwatch’d. This palpable-gross play hath well beguiled The heavy gait of night. Sweet friends, to bed. A fortnight hold we this solemnity, In nightly revels and new jollity. (5.1.322-329) At midnight, the bridal couples retire to their chambers. Oberon and Titania dance and sing as they bless the blissful sleepers while Puck bids good night to the audience. Climax and Denouement The play reaches its climax near the end of Act 4, when Lysander and Hermia reunite and Demetrius pledges his love for Helena. The denouement (falling action or conclusion) takes place in the fifth act. Shakespeare layers the story of the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta upon the story of other lovers pursuing one another in a forest inhabited by mischievous fairies. To these stories he adds still another: the misadventures of a group of tradesmen who rehearse and stage a play for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta. Shakespeare skillfully arranges all the story lines into a unified whole—a kind of symphony, with a major theme, love. He even blends ancient Greek and Elizabethan societies and customs into his mix. Format: Verse, Prose, Poetry Shakespeare wrote most of his plays in verse interspersed with prose passages and, occasionally, a poem or poetic passage. A Midsummer Night's Dream contains numerous poems and poetic passages, along with the traditional verse and prose passages, to make it one of Shakespeare's most poetic play. Verse is an elegant collection of lines that follow a regular, rhythmic pattern. In Shakespeare, this pattern is usually iambic pentameter, a rhythm scheme in which each line usually has five pairs of syllables. Each pair consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Verse resembles poetry, and the word verse is often used as a synonym for poetry. However, Shakespeare's iambic-pentameter verse contains no rhyming lines, as does his poetry. (An explanation of iambic-pentameter verse appears below.) Prose, of course, is the language of everyday conversation, letters, lectures, sermons, newspaper articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia articles. Prose has no rhyme or rhythm scheme. In a Shakespeare play, royal, noble, and upper-class characters usually speak in verse; commoners generally speak in prose. Be aware, though, that there are many exceptions. In Hamlet, for example, the title character speaks in prose as well as verse. Moreover, in some plays, commoners sometimes rise to the eloquence of verse. In a verse passage in A Midsummer Night's Dream and other Shakespeare plays, each line begins with a capital letter and generally has about ten syllables. Here is an example, the first four lines in Act 1, Scene 1, of Midsummer. Each line has ten syllables. Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour Draws on apace: four happy days bring in Another moon; but O! methinks how slow This old moon wanes; she lingers my desires. In a prose passage in A Midsummer Night's Dream and other Shakespeare plays, the first line begins with a capital letter and each succeeding line with a lower-case letter (unless the first word of a line is a proper noun or the beginning of a new sentence). Here is a prose passage spoken by Bottom. When my cue comes, call me, and I will answer: my next (next cue) is, ‘Most fair Pyramus.’ Heigh-ho! Peter Quince! Flute, the bellows-mender! Snout, the tinker! Starveling! God’s my life! stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,—and methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called "Bottom’s Dream," because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death. Notice that the lines in the prose passage continue to the right margin and that the lines in the verse passage, because each has only ten syllables, do not. In poetic passages and poems in A Midsummer Night's Dream, end rhyme occurs. So does a regular, rhythmic pattern, as in verse passages. Here is a poetic passage in which Lysander confides to Helena that he and Hermia plan to steal away to the forest. The rhyming words are boldfaced. Helen, to you our minds we will unfold. To-morrow night, when Phoebe behold Her silver visage in the wat’ry glass, Decking with liquid pearl [moonlight] the bladed grass,— A time that lovers’ flights doth still conceal,— Through Athens’ gates have we devis’d to steal. (1.1-215-220) And here is a poem recited by Puck as he stands alone on the stage. The rhyming words are boldfaced. Note that one of the rhyming pairs (moon and fordone) contains words with a similar—but not the same—sound. Such rhymes are called near rhymes, slant rhymes, or half-rhymes. Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task fordone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the screech-owl, screeching loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide: And we fairies, that do run By the triple Hecate’s team, From the presence of the sun, Following darkness like a dream, Now are frolic; not a mouse Shall disturb this hallow’d house: I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door. (5.2.2-21) Iambic Pentameter and Blank Verse Under "Format: Verse, Prose, Poetry," you read that Shakespeare wrote his plays in verse, prose, poems, and poetic passages. You also read that he used a rhythm pattern called iambic pentameter in verse passages. What Is Iambic Pentameter? To understand iambic pentameter, you first need to understand the term iamb (pronounced EYE am). An iamb is a unit of rhythm consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Consider the words annoy, fulfill, pretend, regard, and serene. They are all iambs because the first syllable of each word is unstressed (or unaccented) and the second syllable is stressed (or accented): an NOY, ful FILL, pre TEND, re GARD, and ser ENE. Iambs can also consist of one word with a single unstressed (unaccented) syllable followed by another word with a single stressed (accented) syllable (example: the KING). In addition, they may consist of a final unstressed syllable of one word followed by an initial stressed syllable of the next word. The following lines from A Midsummer Night's Dream demonstrate the use of iambs. The stressed syllables or words are capitalized. How NOW, my LOVE! Why IS your CHEEK so PALE? How CHANCE the RO ses THERE do FADE so FAST? (1.1.133-134) When a line has five iambs, it is in iambic pentameter. In the word pentameter, the prefix pent- means five. The suffix -meter refers to the recurrence of a rhythmic unit (also called a foot). Thus, because the above lines contain iambs, they are iambic. Because they contain five iambs (or five feet) they are said to be in iambic pentameter. (A line with five iambs, or five feet, contains ten syllables, as in the quoted lines immediately above.) What Is Blank Verse? When the words at the end of each line of iambic pentameter do not rhyme, the lines are said to be in unrhymed iambic pentameter. Another term for unrhymed iambic pentameter is blank verse. Occasionally, a line in blank verse may have nine syllables, or perhaps ten or eleven, instead of the usual ten. The reason is that the importance of conveying the right meaning dictates veering from standard practice. At times, a passage mainly in blank verse may contain a line with even fewer syllables. Such a deviation may occur when a character ends a passage with a transitional statement, as in the following. I wonder if Titania [pronounced ty TAN yuh] be awak’d; (ten syllables) Then, what it was that next came in her eye, (ten syllables) Which she must dote on in extremity. (ten syllables) Here comes my messenger. (3.2.3-6) (six syllables) Note that the first three lines each have five iambs, or ten syllables, but that the last line has only three iambs, or six syllables. A deviation from iambic pentameter may also occur when a character responds to a question with a short reply, such as yes or no. Origin of Blank Verse Love's Pitfalls Lysander sums up the main theme of the play when he tells Hermia, "The course of true love never did run smooth" (1.1.134). Even the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta did not begin smoothly, as Theseus observes. Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword, And won thy love doing thee injuries; But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling. (1.1.19-22) In Greek mythology, Hippolyta was the queen of the Amazons, a race of warrior women in Scythia, a country that was between the Black Sea and the Aral Sea. Theseus, a king of Athens and courageous adventurer, decided one day that he would marry Hippolyta, so he traveled to her country to woo her. But after she refused his proposal, he kidnapped her, precipitating a war with the Amazons. Theseus won the war and—according to Shakespeare's interpretation of the myth—the hand of Hippolyta. For all the other lovers in the forest outside Athens, the course of love likewise does not run smooth. Oberon and Titania argue over the changeling boy. Lysander, who deeply loves Hermia, announces that he loves Helena after Puck enchants him with the magical juice of a flower. Helena, meanwhile, chases after Demetrius, who despises her. Demetrius, also enchanted by flower juice, chases after Hermia. In the end, all these lovers make up. In the tradesmen's play, Pyramus and Thisbe are forbidden by their familes to see one another and limited to communicating through a hole in a wall separating their dwellings. After they run off to meet in the woods, Pyramus mistakenly thinks a lion has killed Thisbe, and he draws a dagger (or sword) and kills himself. When Thisbe comes upon his body, she stabs herself with the same weapon. Love's Elusiveness Love is elusive. Theseus had to go to war to win Hippolyta. Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, and Helena have to chase through woods, endure confusion, and become victims of Puck's pranks before they can rest content at the sides of their true loves. For poor Pyramus and Thisbe, togetherness eludes them forever. The Forest as a Magical Place In A Midsummer Night's Dream, fanciful, irrational, magical things happen in the forest. Fairies sing and dance. The mischievous sprite Puck uses enchanted flower juice to alter the reality that the lovers see. The fairy king Oberon becomes invisible to eavesdrop on a conversation between Demetrius and Helena (2.1.193-194). Puck gives the tradesman Bottom the head of an ass. And the young lovers confuse the dream world with the real world. As Demetrius says, Are you sure That we are awake? It seems to me That yet we sleep, we dream. (4.1.181-183) The experiences of Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius, Helena, Oberon, and Titania appear to represent the trials that all couples undergo from time to time in courtship and marriage. Such trials test a couple's patience and faith in one another and cause the relationship to mature—and, in some cases, to disintegrate. Seeing Through Differerent Eyes After Bottom appears with the head of an ass, his friends see him as a beast. When Quince first beholds him, he says, O monstrous! O strange! we are haunted. Pray, masters! fly, masters!—Help! (3.1.51-52) But when the bewitched Titania sees him, she says, Mine eye [is] enthralled to thy shape; And thy fair virtue’s force, perforce, doth move me, On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee. (3.1.70-72) These scenes mimic real life, in which one person's perception of reality frequently differs from another's. Dreaming the Impossible Dream The tradesmen know little of acting and stagecraft. Yet they dare to dream the impossible dream: presenting a play before Theseus, the ruler of Athens. Though they bumble through their performance, they succeed in entertaining Theseus. Lysander and Hermia also realize an impossible dream—becoming husband and wife over the objections of Hermia's father, Egeus. Helena, too, realizes an impossible dream: winning the heart of Demetrius. Celebrating Marriage The play celebrates marriage with dancing, singing, and a joyous embracement of love. Theseus introduces this theme when he tells his Master of Revels, Go, Philostrate, Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; Turn melancholy forth to funerals; The pale companion [death] is not for our pomp [celebration]. [Exit PHILOSTRATE. Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword, And won thy love doing thee injuries; But I will wed thee in another key [way, manner], With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling. (1.1.14-22) Oberon reinforces this theme when he says, Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, Which by us shall blessed be; And the issue [children] there create Ever shall be fortunate. So shall all the couples three Ever true in loving be; And the blots of Nature’s hand Shall not in their issue stand: (5.2.33-42) Theseus, Hippolyta; Oberon, Titania (he tricks her); Demetrius, Helena (she chases him); Egeus, Hermia Father Does Not Always Know Best Egeus orders his daughter, Hermia, to marry Demetrius, a man she does not love. Hermia protests and runs away with her true love, Lysander. In the end, Theseus sanctions the marriage of Hermia and Lysander, and Demetrius vows his love for Helena. Egeus is proven wrong. Is Demetrius Tricked Into Loving Helena? Demetrius pursues Hermia in the first three acts. But, in Act 4, after Puck spritzes him with magic flower juice, Demetrius ceases pursuing Hermia and turns his attentions to Helena as his true love. Was he tricked into loving Helena? No. He simply matured. The magic juice helped bring him to his senses. Demetrius explains that his attraction to Hermia was a crush, an infatuation born of immaturity, and that Helena was always his true love even though he did not realize it. Note the following passage addressed to Theseus. Melted as doth the snow, seems to me now Which in my childhood I did dote upon; And all the faith, the virtue of my heart, The object and the pleasure of mine eye, Is only Helena. To her, my lord, Was I betroth’d ere [before] I saw Hermia: But, like in sickness, did I loathe this food; But, as in health, come to my natural taste, And will for evermore be true to it. (4.1.151-163) Allusions and References to Mythology In keeping with the ancient Mediterranean setting, the characters often allude or refer directly to people, places, and gods in Greek and Roman myth and legend. Following are examples. Acheron (3.2.379): River in the Underworld (Hades). Aeneas (1.1.180): See Dido, below. Apollo and Daphne (2.1.239): Apollo—god of poetry, music, medicine, and the sun—pursued the nymph Daphne, daughter of a river god. After she prayed for a way to escape Apollo, her father changed her into a laurel tree. Apollo later used the leaves of the laurel in wreaths with which victors of various contests were crowned. Ariadne (2.1.84): Daughter of King Minos of Crete. She gave Theseus a thread that enabled him to find his way out of the labyrinth, a maze constructed to house the Minotaur, a creature with the head of a bull and the body of a man. Cadmus (4.1.98): Son of the king of Phoenicia and founder of the Greek city of Thebes. Cupid (1.1.175, 3.2.108)): Roman name for the Greek god of love, Eros, who shot arrows at humans to wound them with love. Diana (1.1.94): Roman name of Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt. Dido (1.1.179): Dido is not referred to by name but by the designation Carthage queen, meaning she was the queen of the North African country of Carthage. She appears in Virgil’s great epic poem, The Aeneid. Dido falls desperately in love with The Aeneid’s main character, Aeneas, after he stops in Carthage on his way from Troy to Italy. But after he abandons her, she kills herself by falling on a sword. At sea on his ship, Aeneas can see Carthage glowing with the flames of Dido’s funeral pyre. Hercules (4.1.98): Greek demigod known for his feats of strength. Jove (5.1.181): One of two Roman names for Zeus, the king of the Olympian gods in Greek mythology. The other Roman name is Jupiter. Neptune (2.1.131): Roman name of Poseidon, god of the sea in Greek mythology. Phibbus: (1.2.14): Mispronounced and misspelled reference to Phoebus, a name used for Apollo whenever he was spoken of in his role as the sun god. Venus (1.1.177, 3.2.66): Roman name for the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. She was the mother of Cupid. Here is an example of a passage, spoken by Hermia, referring to figures of myth and legend. They include Cupid (second line), Venus (fourth line), Dido (sixth line, referred to as the Carthage queen), and Aeneas (seventh line, referred to as a Troyan, meaning Trojan). My good Lysander! I swear to thee, by Cupid’s strongest bow, By his best arrow with the golden head, By the simplicity of Venus’ doves, By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, And by that fire which burn’d the Carthage queen, When the false Troyan [false Trojan, Aeneas] under sail was seen, By all the vows that ever men have broke, In number more than ever women spoke, In that same place thou hast appointed me, To-morrow truly will I meet with thee. (1.1.174-184) Nature and Animal Imagery Nature and animal imagery abounds in the play, helping to maintain the “enchanted forest” atmosphere. Oberon’s description of the place where Titania sleeps is an example of this imagery: I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight; And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin, Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. (2.1.259-266) The song of the fairies is another example. It emphasizes the spooky creatures that inhabit the forest. You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen; Newts and blind-worms, do no wrong, Come not near our fairy queen. Philomel, with melody Sing in our sweet lullaby; Lulla, lulla, lullaby, lulla, lulla, lullaby: Never harm, Nor spell nor charm, Come our lovely lady nigh; So, good night, with lullaby. Weaving spiders, come not here; Hence, you long-legg'd spinners, hence! Beetles black, approach not near; Worm nor snail, do no offence. (2.2.12) Use of Couplets Sometimes characters speak in couplets. (A couplet consists of two successive lines with end rhyme). Here are two examples: Captain of our fairy band, Helena is here at hand; And the youth, mistook by me, Pleading for a lover's fee. Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be! (Puck: 3.2.116-121) Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray. To the best bride-bed will we, Which by us shall blessed be; And the issue there create Ever shall be fortunate. (Oberon: 5.2.33-38) O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! That pure congealed white, high Taurus snow, Fann'd with the eastern wind, turns to a crow When thou hold'st up thy hand: O, let me kiss This princess of pure white, this seal of bliss! (3.2.144-151) Figures of Speech Among examples of figures of speech in the play are the following. Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant sound at the beginning of words or syllables. Turn melancholy forth to funerals; The pale companion is not for our pomp. (1.1.17-18) Fair Hermia, look you arm yourself To fit your fancies to your father’s will. (1.1.122-123) No night is now with hymn or carol blest. (2.1.106) Hoary-headed frosts Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose. (2.1.111-112) Anaphora is the repetition of a word or group of words at the beginning of a sentence, clause, or phrase. But I will wed thee in another key, With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling. (1.1.21-22) So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord. (1.1.84) Over hill, over dale, Thorough [through] bush, thorough brier, Over park, over pale, Thorough flood, thorough fire. (2.1.4-7) I’ll lead you about a round, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through brier: Sometime a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound. (3.1.53-55) A metaphor is a comparison between unlike things without the use of like, as, or than. Pluck the wings from painted butterflies To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes. (3.1.101-102) Comparison of moonbeams to a physical object that a current of air moves Thou lead them thus, Till o’er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep. (3.2.385-387) Comparison sleep to a winged creature The eastern gate, all fiery-red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. (3.2.413-415) Comparison of dawn to a fiery gate, comparsion of the ocean to yellow gold An oxymoron is the use of contradictory words that occur together. Little giant and brave coward are examples of oxymorons. Following is an oxymoron from the play. I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. (4.1.103-104) Personification is a form of metaphor that compares a thing to a person, as in the following example. The moon methinks, looks with a watery eye; And when she weeps, weeps every little flower. (3.1.116-117) Comparison of the moon to a person. (The moon is a female who weeps.) A simile is a comparison between unlike things with the use of like, as, or than. Here are examples. The moon, like to a silver bow New-bent in heaven. (1.1.11-12) Comparison of the moon to a silver bow The starry welkin cover thou anon With drooping fog as black as Acheron (3.2.378-379) Comparson of the blackness of the fog to that of Acheron. In Greek mythology, Acheron was a river in the abode of the dead, Hades. Superior Descriptive Passages English essayist and literary critic William Hazlitt (1778-1830) wrote that A Midsummer Night's Dream contains outstanding descriptive passages. In Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (London: C. H. Reynell, 1817), he said: In the Midsummer Night's Dream alone, we should imagine, there is more sweetness and beauty of description than in the whole range of French poetry put together. What we mean is this, that we will produce out of that single play ten passages, to which we do not think any ten passages in the works of the French poets can be opposed, displaying equal fancy and imagery. Shall we mention the remonstrance of Helena to Hermia, or Titania's description of her fairy train, or her disputes with Oberon about the Indian boy, or Puck's account of himself and his employments, or the Fairy Queen's exhortation to the elves to pay due attendance upon her favourite, Bottom; or Hippolita's description of a chace, or Theseus's answer? The two last are as heroical and spirited as the others are full of luscious tenderness. The reading of this play is like wandering in a grove by moonlight: the descriptions breathe a sweetness like odours thrown from beds of flowers. Titania's exhortation to the fairies [3.1.93-103] to wait upon Bottom, which is remarkable for a certain cloying sweetness in the repetition of the rhymes, is as follows:— Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes, Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs and mulberries; The honey-bags steal from the humble bees, And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes, To have my love to bed, and to arise: And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes; Nod to him, elves, and do him courtesies. The sounds of the lute and of the trumpet are not more distinct than the poetry of the foregoing passage, and of the conversation between Theseus and Hiopolita [4.1.89-113]. Theseus. Go, one of you, find out the forester, For now our observation is perform'd; And since we have the vaward of the day, My love shall hear the music of my hounds. Uncouple in the western valley, go, Dispatch, I say, and find the forester. We will, fair Queen, up to the mountain's top, And mark the musical confusion Of hounds and echo in conjunction. Hippolita. I was with Hercules and Cadmus once, When in a wood of Crete they bay'd the bear With hounds of Sparta; never did I hear Such gallant chiding. For besides the groves, The skies, the fountains, every region near Seem'd all one mutual cry. I never heard So musical a discord, such sweet thunder. Theseus. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, So flew'd, so sanded, and their heads are hung With ears that sweep away the morning dew; Crook-knee'd and dew-lap'd, like Thessalian bulls, Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells, Each under each. A cry more tuneable Was never halloo'd to, nor cheer'd with horn, In Crete, in Sparta, nor in Thessaly: Judge when you hear.— Character Habitats Shakespeare's plays frequently present characters in settings far removed from urban centers. However, they generally are creatures of the city, the court, the vibrant life where people throng. Consider the following observation: Shakespeare's characters are . . . dubious of rusticity. Valentine [in The Two Gentlemen of Verona] does not rejoice in his woodland life as head of an outlaw band; the lovers of A [Midsummer Night's] Dream find their woodland adventure unnerving, and mountain life seems rude to the characters in Cymbeline who are forced to endure it. Although Florizel [in The Winter's Tale] dreams of spending his life with Perdita in a cottage, she knows that pastoral bliss is only a dream; true content lies in Leontes' court, to which all the characters . . . return. Even Prospero [in The Tempest], who has no great desire to see Milan again, knows that he and Miranda must leave their island, which is as much prison as refuge to them. Although critics can idealize the pastoral experiences of Shakespeare's characters as renewing contacts with nature, that experience is often somewhat harrowing. (Shakespeare's Comedies From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery. Newark: U of Delaware, 1986 (page 144). Study Questions and Essay Topics 1. When Hermia’s father opposes her choice of husbands, Duke Theseus tells her not to go against her father’s wishes, saying, “To you, your father should be as a god” (1.1.51). Is Theseus right? 2. The play ends with a triple wedding. Do you believe those getting married will stay married? 3. Write an informative essay focusing on what a typical wedding was like in Shakespeare’s day. 4. Puck’s magic spells cause several characters to fall in love with the wrong persons. Are there “magic spells”—that is, special circumstances, arrangements, or events—in real life that affect people this way? 5. Hippolyta, bethrothed to Theseus, is the queen of the Amazons, who play prominent roles in various stories in Greek mythology. Who were the Amazons? 6. German composer Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) wrote music based on the themes in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One of these compositions inspired by Shakespeare’s play accompanies a ceremony performed tens of thousands of times in churches throughout the world every year. What is this ceremony? What is the composition? 7. Write an essay focusing on one of the themes of the play. Example of an MLA Citation for This Study Guide Cummings, Michael J. “A Midsummer Night's Dream: a Study Guide.” Shake Sphere: a Guide to the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. N.p., 2013. Web. 5 Feb. 2013. <http://shakespearestudyguide.com/Midsummer.html#Midsummer>. Example of an APA Citation for This Study Guide Cummings, M. (2013). "A Midsummer Night's Dream: a Study Guide." Retrieved from http://shakespearestudyguide.com/ Midsummer.html#Midsummer
© 2016 Shmoop University, Inc. All rights reserved. Nuclear Engineer Physical Danger Secondary cause of death: irony. (Source) You skipped right to this section, didn't you? Obviously, there's danger in working with nuclear materials. In fact, Marie Curie, the Polish-French, Nobel Prize-winning scientist from the Fame section who was made famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity…ended up dying from her prolonged exposure to radiation. To this very day, even Madame Curie's papers, belongings, and cookbooks are too "hot" to handle—people need to wear protective clothing in order to look at them. Did we scare you off? We hope not. Because as Madame Curie was a pioneer in this field, she had no reason to suspect there would be any long-term effects. Fast forward to the 21st century when we know better—or at least well enough for the dentist to put a lead apron over you and scurry into a room across town before taking your X-ray. Nuclear science is no more dangerous a job than any other science field. You'll handle dangerous materials, but you'll do it in tightly controlled settings. In light of all we've learned about how to protect ourselves during the past hundred years or so, nuclear science will mostly be a breeze when it comes to safety.
Meter did not return any assign values Thursday 30 June 2016 \| Expat feed The bare facts about voting Who can vote, where and how many of us are there? Photo: John Powell/Rex Features According to the Electoral Commission, a person can register to vote in the general election if they are: 1) Aged 18 or over on polling day (16 and 17 year-olds can register but not vote). 2) A British citizen, Irish citizen or qualifying Commonwealth citizen resident in the UK. A qualifying Commonwealth citizen is one that has leave to remain in the UK or does not require such leave. Voters must first register in order to be able vote on election day. European Union citizens resident in the UK cannot vote in a UK parliamentary general election, but can be included on the electoral register and vote in local, Northern Ireland Assembly, Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and European Parliamentary elections. Can someone register to vote at different addresses? A person can register to vote at an address if they are resident at that address. It may be possible to be registered at more than one address, as long as you are resident at both addresses. An example of this may be full-time students, who may be able to register at both their term-time address and home address if they are in different local authorities. It is an offence to vote twice in an election to a single body, such as a UK parliamentary general election. They may vote in both areas for local authority elections, as long as they are voting in different local authority areas. Can prisoners register to vote? Remand prisoners can vote if they are on the electoral register. Convicted persons detained because of their sentence cannot join the electoral register or vote. How do members of the Armed Forces register to vote? Service personnel and their spouses or civil partners serving in the UK or overseas, can register either at their UK home address as an ordinary voter or as a "service voter". Service voters fill out an armed services declaration, which means they are required to register only once every three years. How many people are registered to vote? According to the Office for National Statistics, there were 44,059,466 parliamentary electors registered to vote in Great Britain as at December 1 2008. This is a rise of 96,955 (0.2 per cent) on the previous year. How we moderate blog comments powered by Disqus More from the web More from the web More from the web Back to top © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2016 Terms and Conditions Today's News Style Book Weather Forecast
Thread: Switching arrays 1. #1 Switching arrays I have been trying this for a week and i still dont understand how to do it. I have to reverse the elements of an a array. I turned the problem into the teacher already and she said all i did was print them backwards and not reversed the elements. I know how to exchange values but i just cant figure this problem out. this is my array.....can u help me reverse the elements..?? 2. #2 Join Date Aug 2001 Groningen (NL) Option 1: Create a second array of the same size. Then perform the following algorithm: array_new [0] = array_old [N] array_new [1] = array_old [N-1] array_new [N] = array_old [0] Then you could copy array_new to array_old so array_old is reversed. Or you could change pointer of something different. Option 2: Use a temporary variable to keep old value and use this for switching. Algorithm: temp_value = array [0] array [0] = array [N] array [N] = temp_value ...etc. Take care if the numer of elements is odd. Popular pages Recent additions subscribe to a feed Similar Threads 1. pointers & arrays and realloc! By zesty in forum C Programming Replies: 14 2. Replies: 16 3. problems switching arrays By stillwell in forum C++ Programming Replies: 3 Last Post: 02-27-2006, 10:46 AM 4. Need Help With 3 Parallel Arrays Selction Sort By slickwilly440 in forum C++ Programming Replies: 4 5. Crazy memory problem with arrays By fusikon in forum C++ Programming Replies: 9
Mexican immigrants tend to be worse off economically and are less likely to move into more ethnically diverse neighborhoods than their counterparts from other Latin American countries, according to a new study. According to a report from Brown University, Mexicans - making up about 60 percent of the country's Latino population and a clear majority throughout the Southwest - are so numerous that they drown out other Hispanic groups in many studies. New arrivals typically continue moving into immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, which, according to the report, ends up "creating isolated communities even as many Mexicans move to other parts of the nation." That trend wasn't that surprising. But it stood out when compared to other ethnic groups, who are becoming less segregated. "We thought Hispanic segregation stayed the same because we couldn't see the rest of the picture," said Brown University sociologist John Logan, co-author of the report, according to USA Today. "This seeming stability masks important differences, because every group except Mexicans has become less segregated since 1990." The Brown University study, entitled "Hispanics in the United States: Not Only Mexicans," also showed that Latino immigrants from smaller countries in Latin America are making gains in terms of population growth at a rapid pace. In 1990, there were only three Latino groups with over a million members: Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Cubans. The 2010 Census shows three more groups -- Dominicans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans -- all joined the million-member club, while several other Latin American nationals surpassed more than half a million. Still, growth in population hasn't necessarily turned into widespread economic advancement. On average, Mexican immigrants make about $20,200 compared with Cubans, Venezuelans and Argentineans, who average around $30,000. Only Hispanics from Central America -- one of the poorest regions of the world -- make about as much as Mexicans. Some experts attribute this economic disparity to the close proximity of Mexico to its much wealthier northern neighbor. In contrast to Mexicans, according to the Brown study, South American immigrants are less likely to leave as economic émigrés and instead come here to flee from political unrest and violence, or to further their education. "There are lots of poor people in Argentina," said Jacob Vigdor, a Duke University immigration scholar, according to the Wall Street Journal. "But to get here all the way from the cone of South America, you need to have a certain income level." Follow us on Like us at
Join them; it only takes a minute: Sign up Join the Stack Overflow community to: 1. Ask programming questions 2. Answer and help your peers 3. Get recognized for your expertise I am very new to java and I would like to know, what should I do when I want to use an array? I know that there is the normal arrays and the arraylists but which is better? Which is fastest when dealing with integers? How would I add a value? How would I read a value from an index? If you think that there is some more information that I should know about arrays please tell me. share\|improve this question closed as not constructive by Madara Uchiha, Ben Lee, Toon Krijthe, Jim Garrison, Jay Riggs Feb 10 '12 at 0:17 share\|improve this answer Care to summarize the contents of that document? If it goes offline or the site is re-organized, this post won't be much help to others in the future. (We're a question and answer site, not a forum, so we expect our answers to be able to reasonably stand on their own.) Thanks! – sarnold Feb 9 '12 at 1:08 For a question of this level and a document so fundamental and commonly available, I don't think it's worth summarizing it here. – oksayt Feb 9 '12 at 7:25 Differences between arrays and ArrayList: 1. Arrays are faster than ArrayLists, but cannot grow, while ArrayLists can. 2. Arrays can hold primitive types, like int, double, char and they all get initialized automatically to zeros. You don't really "add" them to the array, you just change values already there after declaring it. On the other hand, the generic ArrayList<E> cannot hold a primitive type like int, so you declare it as ArrayList<Integer> and things get automatically "boxed" into Integer objects. For example: ArrayList<Integer> myList = new ArrayList<Integer>(); System.out.println(myList.get(0) + myList.get(1)); // Prints "8". The rule of thumb I use is: use an array when you know the size before hand and it's not going to grow, and use an arraylist otherwise. Hope that helps. share\|improve this answer
There is Hope For The Victims of Pakistan's Floods 08/11/2011 23:33 \| Updated 08 January 2012 • Alfonso Daniels Emergency Media Manager for Save the Children International The first signs of destruction are visible just two hours' drive away from Karachi as you enter the low-lying province of Lower Sindh in southern Pakistan. Abandoned shells of poultry farms stretch on both sides of the road next to deserted wheat fields while roofs of larger buildings have collapsed in what appears to be the aftermath of a war. "It was like the world had come to an end," a man later told me, recounting the terrifying moments two months ago when unprecedented torrential monsoon rains quickly flooded this whole region, uprooting more than five million people from their homes. Many of them still live in miserable makeshift tents along elevated roads and levies unable to cultivate these flooded lands. They are everywhere. In one camp in Badin district, one of the hardest hit areas, some 50 families lived right at the edge of the road, so close that passing cars often swerved to avoid hitting children. They were crammed under plastic sheets held by wooden poles, sleeping next to the few possessions they could save: bundles of clothes, a few pots and pans and the occasional straw bed. "Children here are weak and malnourished, you can see this with your own eyes," said Samjho, a 22-year-old mother living there. She explained that her son got sick and died soon after the floods and was buried in the water since there was nowhere else to lay him to rest. "Children's throats get sore after drinking contaminated water from the nearby canal. We have nothing left in this world; there's no hope for us," she added, staring at the surrounding flooded fields, pointing at the distance to the rooftops of the wooden shacks popping out of the water, the place they used to live. Many hospitals have been destroyed, and most schools are either occupied by internally displaced people or were wiped away. The UN warns that food and medicine stocks are running out, while diseases like malaria and acute diarrhoea are increasing sharply partly due to stagnant floodwaters, putting hundreds of thousands of children at risk. I found some of them at emergency nutrition units run by Save the Children. The images of emaciated children waiting to be treated keep coming to my mind days after having left the area. I had seen similar scenes in Kenya and Somalia during the recent East Africa crisis, a disaster that got the world's attention. But the world does not seem to have noticed this crisis at all. Only 22% of the US $357 million UN emergency appeal has been received so far. But even here there is some room for hope. At a child friendly space also run by Save the Children, groups of children were engrossed in a game called carrom board, a mix between billiards and table shuffleboard. Others meanwhile carefully drew colourful pictures of peacocks and birds. "Before they used to draw only water, fish and confused lines; many were traumatised," a social worker told me. "Look at them now. They're happily drawing other images," he said, adding with a smile that there is one thing though they keep drawing: candles. That will continue, he thought, until the electricity comes back.
go to content go to search box go to global site navigation Prehistory & Tai-Lao migration ^ Back to top The Kingdom of Lan Xang ^ Back to top Consolidation of the kingdom ^ Back to top The kingdom divided ^ Back to top French rule ^ Back to top World War II & independence ^ Back to top Rise of the Pathet Lao The decisions of the three princes to go their separate ways divided the Lao Issara. Those members who returned to Laos continued to work for complete Lao independence from France, but within the legal framework. Those who joined the Viet Minh did so in pursuit of an altogether different political goal – expulsion of the French and formation of a Marxist regime. Their movement became known as the Pathet Lao (Land of the Lao), after the title of the Resistance Government of Pathet Lao, set up with Viet Minh support in August 1950. Cooperation between the Lao Issara and the Viet Minh went back to 1945, when, acting on Viet Minh instructions, Vietnamese in Laos backed the Lao Issara government. Joint Lao Issara–Viet Minh forces resisted the French reoccupation. Like the Lao Issara leaders, most Viet Minh in Laos fled the country, leaving the Mekong towns to be repeopled by Lao looking for jobs in the new Lao bureaucracy. The architect of the Lao Issara–Viet Minh alliance was Prince Souphanouvong. He returned to Laos from Vietnam in time to take part in both the Lao Issara government (as foreign minister, though he would have preferred defence) and in the anti-French resistance. It was Souphanouvong who organised guerrilla resistance from bases in Thailand. He broke with his Issara-in-exile comrades when his close ties with the Viet Minh began to be questioned. In August 1950 Souphanouvong became the public face of the Resistance Government and president of the Free Laos Front (Naeo Lao Issara), successor to the disbanded Lao Issara. Real power lay, however, with two other men, both of whom were members (as Souphanouvong then was not) of the Indochinese Communist Party. They were Kaysone Phomvihane, in charge of defence, and Nouhak Phoumsavan with the portfolio of economy and finance. By that time the whole complexion of the First Indochina War had changed with the 1949 victory of communism in China. As Chinese weapons flowed to the Viet Minh, the war widened and the French were forced onto the defensive. In 1953 a Viet Minh force invaded northern Laos heading for Luang Prabang. The French flew in reinforcements, and the Viet Minh withdrew, turning over the whole region to the Pathet Lao. In order to protect Laos from another such invasion, the French established a substantial base in the remote mountain valley of Dien Bien Phu, close to the Lao border. There was fought the deciding battle of the First Indochina War. The isolated French garrison was surrounded by Viet Minh forces, which pounded the base with artillery hidden in the hills. Supplied only from the air, the French held out for over two months before surrendering on 7 May. The following day a conference opened in Geneva that eventually brought the war to an end. ^ Back to top Division & unity As France had already granted full independence to Cambodia and Laos (in October 1953), it was as representatives of a free and independent country that the Lao delegation attended the conference in Geneva. After months of discussion it was agreed to divide Vietnam into north and south, each with a separate administration, but with the instruction to hold free and fair elections in both zones before the end of 1956. Cambodia was left undivided, but in Laos two northeastern provinces (Hua Phan and Phongsali) were set aside as regroupment areas for Pathet Lao forces. There the Pathet Lao consolidated their political and military organisation, while negotiating with the Royal Lao Government (RLG) to reintegrate the two provinces into a unified Lao state. The first thing Pathet Lao leaders did was to establish a Lao Marxist political party. Previously Lao communists had been members of the Indochinese Communist Party, but in 1951 the ICP was disbanded and separate parties established for each state. Parties were founded immediately in Vietnam and Cambodia, but there were so few Lao members that it took time to recruit enough to constitute a party. Eventually the Lao People’s Party was formed in 1955. (At its Second Congress in 1972 it was renamed the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, LPRP, which is today the ruling party of the Lao PDR.) In good Marxist fashion, the LPP in 1956 established a broad political front, called the Lao Patriotic Front (LPF), behind which the Party could operate in secrecy. Souphanouvong was president of the Front, while Kaysone was secretary-general of the Party. Together with other members of the ‘team’ they led the Lao revolution throughout its ‘30-year struggle’ (1945–1975) for power. Over this whole period no factionalism split the movement, which was one of its great strengths compared to the divisions among its opponents. The first priority for the Royal Lao Government was to reunify the country. This required a political solution to which the Pathet Lao would agree. The tragedy for Laos was that when, after two centuries, an independent Lao state was reborn, it was conceived in the nationalism of WW II, nourished during the agony of the First Indochina War, and born into the Cold War. From its inception, the Lao state was torn by ideological division, which the Lao tried mightily to overcome, but which was continuously exacerbated by outside interference. In its remote base areas, the Pathet Lao was entirely dependent for weapons and most other kinds of assistance on the North Vietnamese, whose own agenda was the reunification of Vietnam under communist rule. Meanwhile the Royal Lao Government became increasingly dependent on the United States, which soon took over from France as its principal aid donor. Thus Laos became the cockpit for Cold War enmity. From the Lao perspective, neutrality was the only realistic path for the country. And the only way to restore national unity was to bring the Pathet Lao into some kind of coalition government. To this the US was strongly opposed, seeing it as the thin end of a wedge that would lead to a communist seizure of power. The Lao politician with the task of finding a way through both ideological differences and foreign interference was Souvanna Phouma. As prime minister of the RLG he negotiated a deal with his half-brother Souphanouvong which saw two Pathet Lao ministers and two deputy ministers included in a coalition government. The Pathet Lao provinces were returned to the royal administration. Elections were held, in which the LPF did surprisingly well. And the US was furious. Between 1955 and 1958, the US gave Laos US$120 million, or four times what France had provided over the previous eight years. Laos was almost entirely dependent, therefore, on American largesse to survive. When that aid was withheld, as it was in August 1958 in response to the inclusion of Pathet Lao ministers in the government, Laos was plunged into a financial and political crisis. As a result, the first coalition government collapsed. It had lasted eight months. With US support a right-wing government was installed in its place, without Pathet Lao representation, and Souvanna Phouma’s neutralism was abandoned. Attempts to integrate Pathet Lao units into the Royal Lao Army collapsed, and the civil war resumed. A threatened military coup brought military strongman General Phoumi Nosavan to the Defence Ministry as deputy prime minister, again with American backing. Meanwhile under Kaysone’s direction the Pathet Lao began building up their forces, recruiting especially from the tribal minorities in the mountainous areas where the Pathet Lao held power. As guerrilla warfare resumed over large areas, moral objections began to be raised against Lao killing Lao. On 9 August 1960, the diminutive commanding officer of the elite Second Paratroop Batallion of the Royal Lao Army seized power in Vientiane while almost the entire Lao government was in Luang Prabang making arrangements for the funeral of King Sisavang Vong. Captain Kong Le announced to the world that Laos was returning to a policy of neutrality, and demanded that Souvanna Phouma be reinstated as prime minister. King Sisavang Vatthana acquiesced, but General Phoumi refused to take part, and flew to central Laos where he fomented opposition to the new government. In this, he had the support of the Thai government and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which supplied him with cash and weapons. By December he was ready to march on Vientiane. The battle for the city was spirited, but lopsided. Kong Le withdrew to the Plain of Jars, until then garrisoned by the Royal Lao Army, where he joined forces with Pathet Lao units. The neutralist government still claimed to be the legitimate government of Laos, and as such received arms, via Vietnam, from the Soviet Union. Most of these found their way to the Pathet Lao, however. Throughout the country large areas fell under the control of communist forces. Offensives by the Royal Lao Army led to defeat and disaster. The US sent troops to Thailand, in case communist forces should attempt to cross the Mekong, and it looked for a while as if the major commitment of US troops in Southeast Asia would be to Laos rather than Vietnam. ^ Back to top The second coalition & the second Indochina war At this point the new US administration of President John F Kennedy had second thoughts about fighting a war in Laos. In an about-face it decided instead to back Lao neutrality. In May 1961 a new conference on Laos was convened in Geneva. Progress was slow, however, because the three Lao factions could not agree on a political compromise that would allow a second coalition government to be formed. The right under General Phoumi was particularly recalcitrant. It took temporary suspension of US aid and a military defeat in northern Laos to convince the right to cooperate. Eventually the ‘three princes’ (Souvanna Phouma for the neutralists, Souphanouvong for the Pathet Lao, and Boun Oum, hereditary prince of Champasak and then leader of the right) agreed to the composition of a second coalition government that balanced equal Pathet Lao and rightist representation (with four each), but left the neutralists with a deciding majority (with 11 positions). Delegates of the 14 participating countries reassembled in Geneva in July 1962 to sign the international agreement guaranteeing Lao neutrality and forbidding the presence of all foreign military personnel. In Laos the new coalition government took office buoyed by popular goodwill and hope. Within months, however, cracks began to appear in the façade of the coalition. The problem was the war in Vietnam. Both the North Vietnamese and the Americans were jockeying for strategic advantage, and neither was going to let Lao neutrality get in the way. Despite the terms of the Geneva Agreements, both continued to provide their respective clients with arms and supplies. But no outside power did the same for the neutralists, who found themselves increasingly squeezed between left and right. For the Vietnamese, Lao neutrality was designed to maintain existing de facto spheres of military control: the right in the Mekong lowlands; the Pathet Lao in the eastern highlands; with a few neutralist units loyal to Souvanna Phouma in between. Moreover, Hanoi expected the Lao government to turn a blind eye to its use of Lao territory to infiltrate personnel and supplies into South Vietnam along what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail – as Cambodia did. For the Americans, Lao neutrality was designed precisely to prevent such infiltration. For both sides the most strategically important area was the Plain of Jars, and this quickly became the principal battleground. As control of the plain would enable the US to threaten North Vietnam, Hanoi moved to prevent this – first by driving out Kong Le’s neutralists; then by turning their attention to the CIA-trained Hmong ‘secret army’ still supplied by the US in the mountains surrounding the plain. By the end of 1963, as each side denounced the other for violating the Geneva Agreements, the Second Coalition Government had irrevocably broken down. Prime Minister Souvanna Phouma struggled to keep a façade intact, but Pathet Lao ministers had fled Vientiane, and neutralists had been cowered by the assassination of their foreign minister. It was in the interests of all powers, however, to preserve the façade of Lao neutrality, and international diplomatic support was brought to bear for Souvanna Phouma to prevent rightist generals from seizing power in coups mounted in 1964 and 1965. In 1964 the US began its air war over Laos, with strafing and bombing of communist positions on the Plain of Jars. As North Vietnamese infiltration picked up along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, bombing was extended the length of Laos. According to official figures, the US dropped 2,093,100 tons of bombs on 580,944 sorties. The total cost was US$7.2 billion, or US$2 million a day for nine years. No-one knows how many people died, but one-third of the population of 2.1 million became internal refugees. During the 1960s both the North Vietnamese and the US presence increased exponentially. By 1968 an estimated 40,000 North Vietnamese regular army troops were based in Laos to keep the Ho Chi Minh Trail open and support some 35,000 Pathet Lao forces. The Royal Lao Army then numbered 60,000 (entirely paid for and equipped by the US), Vang Pao’s forces were half that number (still under the direction of the CIA), and Kong Le’s neutralists numbered 10,000. Lao forces on both sides were entirely funded by their foreign backers. For five more years this proxy war dragged on, until the ceasefire of 1973. The turning point for the war in Vietnam was the 1968 Tet Offensive, which brought home to the American people the realisation that the war was unwinnable by military means, and convinced them of the need for a political solution. The effect in Laos, however, was to intensify both the air war and fighting on the Plain of Jars. When bombing was suspended over North Vietnam, the US Air Force concentrated all its efforts on Laos. The Pathet Lao leadership was forced underground, in the caves of Vieng Xai. Though in much of Laos a ‘tacit agreement’ on spheres of control limited fighting between the two sides, on the Plain of Jars the ground war intensified. Instead of being used in guerrilla operations, units of the ‘secret army’ fought large-scale battles, in which they suffered heavy casualties. But all the bombing was unable to staunch the flow of North Vietnamese forces down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (or trails). In January 1971 the one attempt by South Vietnamese forces to cut the Trail in southern Laos ended in defeat. The Pathet Lao claimed victory, but North Vietnamese forces did the fighting. Thereafter more of southern Laos fell to the Pathet Lao. By mid-1972, when serious peace moves got underway, some four-fifths of the country was under communist control. In peace as in war, what happened in Laos depended on what happened in Vietnam. Not until a ceasefire came into effect in Vietnam in January 1973 could the fighting end in Laos. Then the political wrangling began. Not until September was an agreement reached on the composition of the Third Coalition Government and how it would operate; and it took another six months before security arrangements were in place for it to take office. The government reflected the changed balance of political power. Souvanna Phouma as prime minister was the sole neutralist, with other ministries equally divided between left and right. It soon became clear that the Pathet Lao was unified, coordinated and following a well-thought-out plan, formulated at the 1972 Second Congress of the Lao (LPRP). By contrast, the political right was fragmented and demoralised by the withdrawal of its US backer. This gave the communists the initiative, which they never lost. ^ Back to top Revolution & reform In April 1975 first Phnom Penh and then Saigon fell to superior communist forces. Immediately the Pathet Lao brought political pressure to bear on the right in Laos. Escalating street demonstrations forced leading rightist politicians and generals to flee the country. USAID was also targeted and hundreds of Americans began leaving Laos. Throughout the country, town after town was peacefully ‘liberated’ by Pathet Lao forces, culminating with Vientiane in August. Souvanna Phouma, who could see the writing on the wall, cooperated with the Pathet Lao in order to prevent further bloodshed. Hundreds of senior military officers and civil servants voluntarily flew off to remote camps for ‘political re-education’, in the belief that they would be there only months at most. But Pathet Lao leaders had lied, just as they lied in promising to keep the monarchy. Hundreds of these inmates remained in re-education camps for several years. With the rightist leadership either imprisoned or in Thailand, the Pathet Lao moved to consolidate power. At all levels of government, people’s committees took administrative control, at the direction of the LPRP. In November an extraordinary meeting of what was left of the Third Coalition Government bowed to the inevitable and demanded formation of a ‘popular democratic regime’. Under pressure, the king agreed to abdicate, and on 2 December a National Congress of People’s Representatives assembled by the Party proclaimed the end of the 650-year-old Lao monarchy and the establishment of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR). Unlike the military victories of communists in Cambodia and Vietnam, the Lao communists took power by ‘quasi-legal’ means. Their path to power had always used such means, by entering into coalition governments and demanding strict adherence to agreements, while continually strengthening their revolutionary forces. This strategy was the brainchild of Kaysone Phomvihane, who in addition to leading the LPRP became prime minister in the new Marxist-Leninist government. Souphanouvong was named state president. The new regime was organised in accordance with Soviet and North Vietnamese models. The government and bureaucracy were under the strict direction of the Party and its seven-member Politburo. Immediately the Party moved to restrict liberal freedoms of speech and assembly, and to nationalise the economy. People were forced to attend interminable ‘seminars’ to be indoctrinated into the Pathet Lao view of the world. As inflation soared, price controls were introduced. In response, those members of the Chinese and Vietnamese communities who still remained crossed the Mekong to Thailand. Thousands of Lao did the same. Eventually around 10% of the population, including virtually all the educated class, fled as refugees, setting Lao development back at least a generation. The government faced a daunting task. The economy of the rightist zone, particularly in the Mekong towns, had been entirely dependent on the injection of American aid. When this was terminated, the economy collapsed. The situation was aggravated by government policies and Thai closure of the border; and though Soviet, Eastern European and Vietnamese advisors poured in, levels of aid from the communist bloc were insufficient to replace American spending. A badly planned and executed attempt to cooperativise agriculture made things even worse. The regime did not persecute Buddhism to anything like the extent the Khmer Rouge did in Cambodia, but it did curtail Buddhist religious life. Younger monks were encouraged to leave the Sangha (monastic order), while those who remained had to work for a living. The people were told not to waste their wealth on Buddhist festivals. Many monks fled to Thailand. The annual rocket festival, held to encourage a copious monsoon, was cancelled. That year there was a drought. People shrugged: the naga were annoyed. Subsequently the festival was reinstated. Though thousands of members of the ‘secret army’ and their families fled Laos, those who remained still resisted communist control. The Hmong insurgency dragged on for another 30 years. In 1977, fearing the king might escape his virtual house arrest to lead resistance, the authorities arrested him and his family and sent them to Vieng Xai, the old Pathet Lao wartime HQ. There they were forced to labour in the fields. The king, queen and crown prince all eventually died, probably of malaria and malnutrition, though no official statement of their deaths has ever been made. By 1979 it was clear that policies had to change. Kaysone announced that people could leave cooperatives and farm their own land, and that private enterprise would be permitted. That year Vietnam invaded Cambodia to dispose of the Khmer Rouge, and China invaded northern Vietnam to teach Hanoi a lesson. Laos sided with Vietnam, and relations with China deteriorated. They were no better with Thailand, which was supporting insurgency against the Vietnamese-installed regime in Cambodia. Reforms were insufficient to improve the Lao economy. Over the next three years a struggle took place within the Party about what to do. The Soviet Union was getting tired of propping up the Lao regime, and was embarking on its own momentous reforms. Meanwhile Vietnam had Cambodia to worry about. Eventually Kaysone convinced the Party to do what the Chinese were doing: open the economy up to market forces, and the country to foreign aid and investment from the West, while retaining a tight monopoly on political power. The economic reforms were known as the ‘new economic mechanism’, and were enacted in November 1986. Economic improvement was slow in coming, partly because relations with Thailand remained strained. In August 1987 the two countries fought a brief border war over disputed territory. The following year relations were patched up, and with China too. The first elections for a National Assembly were held, and a constitution at last promulgated. Slowly a legal framework was put into place, and by the early 1990s foreign direct investment was picking up and the economy was on the mend. In 1992 Kaysone Phomvihane died. He had been the leading figure in Lao communism for more than a quarter of a century. The Party managed the transition to a new leadership with smooth efficiency, much to the disappointment of expatriate Lao communities abroad. General Khamtay Siphandone became both president of the Party and prime minister. Later he relinquished the latter to become state president. His rise signalled control of the Party by the revolutionary generation of military leaders. When Khamtay stepped down in 2006, he was succeeded by his close comrade, General Chummaly Sayasone. The economic prosperity of the mid-1990s rested on increased investment and foreign aid, on which Laos remained very dependent. The Lao PDR enjoyed friendly relations with all its neighbours. Relations with Vietnam remained particularly close, but were balanced by much improved relations with China. Relations with Bangkok were bumpy at times, but Thailand was a principal source of foreign direct investment. In 1997 Laos joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). The good times came to end with the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s. The collapse of the Thai baht led to inflation of the Lao kip, to which it was largely tied through trading relations. The Lao regime took two lessons from this crisis: one was about the dangers of market capitalism; the other was that its real friends were China and Vietnam, both of which came to its aid with loans and advice. The economic crisis sparked some political unrest. A small student demonstration calling for an end to the monopoly of political power by the LPRP was ruthlessly crushed and its leaders given long prison sentences. Lao dissidents in Thailand attacked a border customs post, provoking a swift Lao military response. A series of small bombings in Vientiane and southern Laos was also blamed on expatriate Lao dissidents, while Hmong ‘brigands’ attacked transport in the north. The government responded by increasing security, with good effect. By 2004 the Hmong insurgency had all but collapsed. ^ Back to top Prospects for the 21st century The outlook for Laos as it moved into the 21st century was relatively positive. Despite dissatisfaction over lack of those freedoms (of expression, association, and the press) essential to the development of civil society and overmounting corruption, the LPRP faces minimal internal challenge to its authority. The Party seems set, therefore, to remain in power indefinitely – or at least for as long as it has the support of communist regimes in China and Vietnam. The economic outlook has been helped by major investment projects in hydropower (the US$1.1 billion Nam Theun II dam, plus several smaller dams) and mining (gold, copper and, in the future, bauxite) that will bring a steady income into government coffers. Light industry, including textiles, may face a more uncertain future as the Asean Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) comes into force and Laos joins the World Trade Organisation (WTO), slated for 2010. Forestry is another important resource, but is largely under the control of the military. A rapidly growing industry is tourism. In 1995 Luang Prabang was placed on the Unesco World Heritage list, and Wat Phu, the ancient Khmer temple near Champasak, followed. Other parts of the country are opening up to ecotourism, including the Bolaven Plateau in the south, the Plain of Jars, and the far north. An added attraction is that many of the country’s colourful minority tribes live in these regions. Laos now attracts over a million tourists a year (well over half of them Thai), and the figure is likely to rise. Laos does not suffer severe population pressure, but there is a steady migration into the cities due to increasing disparities between urban and rural living standards. The government has shown little inclination to address this problem, or the abysmally low education standards, or poor health facilities for a rural population faced with endemic diseases such as malaria, and HIV/AIDS. Some NGOs and foreign aid programs are trying to help, but human resources remain poorly developed. Corruption remains a major problem. Far too much of the country’s limited resources finds its way into the pockets of a small political-economic elite, who pay little or no taxes. Smuggling of timber and wildlife threatens declared ‘bio-diversity areas’ (national parks where some people still live). Laws are flouted because the legal system is not independent, but under the control of the Party. Reforms and new political will are thus both necessary for the country to prosper. The LPRP is now Marxist-Leninist in nothing but name. Rather it exercises a single-party dictatorship, and is becoming increasingly nationalistic. This may appeal to Lowland Lao, but less to the tribal minorities. Care will be needed to maintain social cohesion. It remains to be seen whether the Party has the resourcefulness to meet the challenges ahead. ^ Back to top
Did you know? disappear - definition and synonyms What are red words? Thesaurus diagram verb [intransitive] disappear pronunciation in American English Word Forms present tense present participledisappearing past tensedisappeared past participledisappeared 1. 1 if someone or something disappears, they move somewhere where they can no longer be seen Dave said good night to everyone and quickly disappeared upstairs. The moon disappeared behind the clouds. disappear from view: She was still waving as the train disappeared from view. 2. 3 to be impossible to find The letter I had left on my desk had disappeared. the thousands of people who have disappeared in the war disappear from: She disappeared from a London hotel on Monday and has not been seen since. disappear without trace/disappear into thin air (=disappear completely): The couple disappeared without trace while on vacation in France. 3. From our crowdsourced Open Dictionary to cause to disappear, through kidnapping, clandestine execution etc ...speculation has been circulating that Mr Gao may have been 'disappeared' by security forces because of his anti-government activity... Submitted by Sue from United Kingdom on 20/01/2010 BuzzWord Article global English and language change from our blog Macmillan learn live love play
Seborrhea in Dogs Source: PetWave, Updated on July 16, 2015 Seborrhea in dogs is a condition which upsets a natural skin process known as keratinization. The result is skin which gradually thickens over time and becomes scaly, oily, and crusty. Seborrhea can cause extremely uncomfortable and painful skin conditions, and treatments should begin as soon as possible to reduce any discomfort and pain that the dog may be feeling. Causes of Seborrhea in Dogs Primary seborrhea is a genetically inherited disorder which begins to appear when the dog is generally less than 2 years old. American Cocker Spaniels, Basset Hounds, Dachshunds, English Springer Spaniels, German Shepherds, Labradors, and West Highlands Terriers are breeds which have increased risks for developing primary seborrhea. Secondary seborrhea is generally the result of skin allergies (often caused by parasitic bites from fleas, ticks, or mites), hormonal imbalances, or diseases such as hypothyroidism. In many cases, dogs with primary seborrhea are predisposed to developing secondary seborrhea as well. Symptoms of Seborrhea in Dogs The symptoms of seborrhea include oily or greasy skin and hair coat, skin inflammation, scaly or flaky skin, thickening skin, excessive licking and scratching of the skin, and in severe cases oily crusts which form on the skin. Diagnosing Seborrhea While there is no specific test for seborrhea, it is generally diagnosed through symptoms, pet history, microscopic examination of the skin, and blood tests to rule out any other disease or to identify a contributing disease to the condition. Treating Seborrhea in Dogs Treatments include prescription medicated shampoos which contain ingredients such as salicylic acid, tar, and benzoyl peroxide. A veterinarian will need to determine the extent and type of seborrhea present to prescribe the right shampoo for the dog’s condition. Outlook for Dogs with Seborrhea The treatment for seborrhea is good, however most dogs with this disorder will require continued medicated baths, nutritional support such as omega-3 fatty acid supplements, and consistent parasite control to reduce future seborrhea outbreaks. Disorders Similar to Skin Irritation Dog Health Center Learn more about: Allergies
Researcher innovates for better sleep University of Helsinki's picture Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version Slip a soft sensor under your bedsheet to find out in the morning how your night went. Joonas Paalasmaa, doctoral candidate in computer science, has developed a device which can help poor sleepers sleep better. A third of the population struggles at night – they have trouble falling asleep, or they wake up at night, sleep badly or experience breathing problems during sleep. Many just yawn and curse in frustration or take a sleeping pill. Joonas Paalasmaa chose another solution. He began to develop a tool that people could use to monitor their sleep – comfortably at home, in their own beds. The monitoring data could then be used as a basis for sleep coaching. So far, this solution has produced an invention called Beddit along with a respectable amount of research data. The measuring systems and algorithm used in the Beddit sleep monitoring device will be closely examined this week when Paalasmaa defends his computer science doctoral dissertation on sleep monitoring on 7 February. Snoring, resting heart rate and sleep quantity Beddit is used by slipping the soft sensor under the bedsheet in the evening. The sensor monitors breathing, movements and heart rate, and evaluates the quality and quantity of sleep based on these metrics. “I’ve noticed that the results correlate with how you feel the following day. An upcoming examination or other cause of stress shows in the data,” boasts Paalasmaa. Beddit displays the information it gathers through a web service or mobile device, and gives instructions on improving sleep. These hints depend on the measuring results and on the information entered into the user profile. Providing personalised sleep instructions is a challenge. We have to generate hundreds of tips to fit the individual needs of our users, and to make the users feel like the app is intelligent and useful,” Paalasmaa explains. Boosted by crowd funding In any case, the public is excited. Beddit managed to accrue nearly half a million dollars in a few months during its US-based crowd funding campaign. Its closest competitors are intended primarily for making medical diagnoses, not for home use. The supervisor of Paalasmaa’s dissertation was Professor Hannu Toivonen, a specialist in data mining and a world-renowned expert in computational creativity. One of the topics of interest for Toivonen and his research group is the expression of information to different senses. Based on the Kumpula campus, the group creates machine compositions which explore the possibilities of transforming data into music. If information can be visualised, why not auditised? News Source : Researcher innovates for better sleep
U.s. debt crisis Published on • Be the first to comment • Be the first to like this No Downloads Total views On SlideShare From Embeds Number of Embeds Embeds 0 No embeds No notes for slide U.s. debt crisis 2. 2. What is the debt ceiling?<br /> In the United States, the federal government can only pay for expenditures if Congress has approved the expenditure. If the total expenditure exceeds the revenues collected there is a budget deficit, and the only way that the shortfall can be paid for is for the government to borrow the shortfall amount by the issue of debt instruments. Under the federal law, the amount that the government can borrow is limited by the debt ceiling, which can only be increased with a vote by Congress.<br /> 3. 3. 4. 4. What is the issue all about?<br />The debt ceiling limit was set at $14.3 trillion in Feb. 2011. However soon after budget was passed in 2011, this ceiling was reached.<br />Once the limit is reached government can continue to borrow by "extraordinary measures”. These measures were implemented on May 16, 2011 and a debt issuance suspension periodwas declared.<br /> This period could last until August 2, 2011, and the borrowing authority of the United States was exhausted.<br /> 5. 5. The main concern behind the issue is about the large United States federal budget deficits and the increasing federal debt.<br />At the end of 2008, that debt equaled 40 percent of the nation's annual economic output. Since then, the figure has shot upward: By the end of fiscal year 2011, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects federal debt will reach roughly 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) — the highest percentage since shortly after World War II!!!<br /> 6. 6. What caused the debt to rise unstoppably?!<br /><ul><li>First, America’s economy is at near-recession levels, with slow growth prospects and enormous unemployment. With more than 14 million Americans without jobs, it is not surprising that the U.S. economy is hardly growing. 7. 7. Second, America has been fighting two wars in distant places for an incredibly long time — Afghanistan since October 2001 and Iraq since March 2003. The cost of these wars has many estimates is more than a trillion dollars that the economy can no more afford. 8. 8. Third, The inability of either government or private industry to gain control of health care costs that includes health insurance programs, Medicare and Medicaidmay well be the single most critical factor in the burgeoning national debt. 9. 9. Fourthly, the ever increasing expenditure and no increase in tax revenues is another major concern. 10. 10. Finally , the United States has failed for too long to invest in the country’s infrastructure — both physical and intellectual. As a result, America is losing much of its future competitiveness in the global economy.</li></li></ul><li>U.S. feels the impact<br /><ul><li>If the debt ceiling had not been raised, the federal government would have had to cut spending immediately by 40 percent, affecting many daily operations of the government.If the interest payments on the national debt are not made, the US would be in default, potentially causing catastrophic economic consequences for the US and the wider world as well. </li></li></ul><li><ul><li> On august 3 U.S. debt rose to $238 billion (or about 60% of the new debt ceiling). The US debt surpassed 100 percent of gross domestic product for the first time since World War II. </li></li></ul><li><ul><li>The NASDAQ, ASX, and S&P 100 lost up to four percent in value, the largest drop since July 2009. 11. 11. The commodities market also took losses, with average spot crude oil prices falling below $US86 a barrel. 12. 12. The price of gold fell, as deepening losses on Wall Street prompted investors to sell.</li></li></ul><li><ul><li> Standard & Poor’s credit rating</li></ul>Throughout 2011, Standard & Poor's and Moody's credit rating services issued warnings that US debt could be downgraded because of the continued large deficits and increasing debt. On August 5, 2011, Standard & Poor's credit ratingagency downgraded the long-term credit rating of the United States government for the first time in its history, from AAA to AA. “The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics.” The other two major credit rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch, continued to rate the federal government's bonds as AAA.<br /> 13. 13. <ul><li> According to the CBO's 2011 long-term budget outlook, without major policy changes the large budget deficits and growing debt would continue, which "would reduce national saving, leading to higher interest rates, more borrowing from abroad, and less domestic investment — which in turn would lower income growth in the United States." </li></li></ul><li>FACTS…<br /> 14. 14. General Electric CEOJeffrey Immelt at the jobs for America Summit in Washington on July 11. GE made $14.2 billion and paid no taxes in 2010.<br /> It is a sign of how poor things are that president BarackObama chose him to chair his council on Jobs and Competitiveness. <br />GE remains competitive not by creating jobs but by tax shelters and producing in areas where wage rates are lower. <br /> 15. 15. The U.S. government had an operating cash balance of $73.8 billion at the end of the day.<br />Apple's last earnings report showed that the company had $76.2 billion at the end of June.<br />In other words, the world's largest tech company has more cash than the world's largest sovereign government.<br />That's because Apple collects more money than it spends, while the U.S. government does not.<br /> 16. 16. Conclusion<br />The best cure to America’s debt and deficit problems is a strengthening economy with more jobs, more consumption of goods and services, and more tax revenue for the U.S. Treasury. There is a need to improve growth, reduce unemployment and revive the real economy. Choosing to cut expenditure sharply at this point in time could deliver the second of the downturns expected by economists who feared a double-dip. <br />
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary Jump to: navigation, search See also: médical PIE root From Middle French medical, from Medieval Latin medicalis, from Latin medicus. medical ‎(comparative more medical, superlative most medical) 1. Of or pertaining to the practice of medicine. medical doctor; medical student Do you have any medical experience? 2. Intended to have a therapeutic effect; medicinal. medical marijuana; medical cannabis; medical treatment 3. Requiring medical treatment. A costly medical condition can bankrupt you if it doesn't kill you first. 4. Pertaining to the state of one's health. medical examinaton; medical exemption; medical history; medical record; medical diagnosis 5. (Britain) Pertaining to or requiring treatment by other than surgical means. medical ward Derived terms[edit] medical ‎(plural medicals) 1. (informal) A medical examination. After completing a medical and the requisite paperwork on Tuesday to seal the deal, Di María said: “I am absolutely delighted to be joining Manchester United. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in Spain and there were a lot of clubs interested in me, but United is the only club that I would have left Real Madrid for. Related terms[edit] Middle French[edit] Borrowing from Latin medicalis, from medius ‎(middle). medical m 1. of or relating to the middle finger
Moral Leaders in Public Office June 30, 1999 This Sunday we celebrate the Fourth of July. It's a time when we celebrate our freedom. But we should ask a fundamental question: How can we keep our freedom? Well, there are many answers to that question. Keep the military strong. Enact fair and just laws. Teach civic values and patriotism. Those are all good answers. But let me propose another answer. Elect moral leaders. You see, the founders of this country believed that the future of the republic rested on moral principles. And those moral principles were best exercised in the hands of godly leaders. Consider just a few of the comments from the founders of this country. John Adams said that "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. So great is my veneration of the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectful members of society." John Jay, our first Supreme Court Justice said, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for its rulers." And Daniel Webster said, "Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. . . . Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens." The founders of this country understood that the republic rested upon moral government, and that moral government rested on moral leaders. Let us, therefore, follow in their tradition and elect moral leaders to office and make this republic strong and free. I'm Kerby Anderson of Probe Ministries, and that's my opinion.
Little Earthquakes Test \| Mid-Book Test - Hard Jennifer Weiner Buy the Little Earthquakes Lesson Plans Name: _________________________ Period: ___________________ Short Answer Questions 1. How does Lia feel when the woman is talking about losing her son? 2. Where does Becky take Lia after they talk outside of Becky's home? 5. What does the news station offer Ayinde? Short Essay Questions 1. What are some things that have shaped the way Kelly is today? 2. What constitutes Lia's inability to come to grips with her baby's death? 3. Why does the director tell Ayinde that no one will tune in to watch her read the news? 4. Why is the thought of having intercourse so hard for Kelly? 5. When Lia tells her mother that "Something happened" her mother assures her that she cares. Lia awaits a sign that her mother cares. How does her mother show her that she cares? 6. "April Lia" opens with Lia sitting on a park bench wanting to be invisible. Why does Lia want to be invisible? 7. In "August Becky," what breakthroughs does Lia make with the loss of her son? 8. How does Weiner paint Mimi in the chapter "September Becky"? 9. Becky always seems to worry about her weight. How is this self-consciousness shown in the chapter "June Becky"? 10. How does Lia's flight back to LA bring out the thought, "You can't go home again'? Essay Topics Write an essay for ONE of the following topics: Essay Topic 1 Lia, Ayinde, Becky, and Kelly all have difficult relationships with their mothers and mothers-in-law. Think about how these relationships affect them and the bonds they develop with their babies. For example, Ayinde clearly wants to parent her children differently than the way she was raised, however, she also wants to live up to her mother's expectations by taking the book Baby Success seriously. How does Ayinde deal with balancing these two sides and will it affect Ayinde's relationship with Julian? How? Also, how do Ayinde's childhood memories affect the relationship with Julian? Essay Topic 2 Ayinde's life changes dramatically when she has her baby. One of the main ways it dramatically changes her life is it forces her to quit her career because of her husband's celebrity status. How does Ayinde's sense of self change after her marriage and the baby? Do you think Ayinde makes choices for her and her baby that she would have not made if she was still working? Why / why not? How is Ayinde's relationship with her husband and baby affected by her decision not to further pursue her career at this time? Essay Topic 3 When Lia flies to Philadelphia, she leaves Sam behind, even though they love each other. Why does Lia assume her presence is hurting Sam? Where does her sense of guilt come from and how does this complicate her guilt? Why does she finally reach out to Sam? (see the answer keys) This section contains 862 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) Buy the Little Earthquakes Lesson Plans Little Earthquakes from BookRags. (c)2016 BookRags, Inc. All rights reserved. Follow Us on Facebook
Created by jc1294 no ratings yet Fact & Opinion Worksheet This fact and opinion worksheet guides your child to learning the difference between facts and opinions. Try this fact and opinion worksheet with your student. Math Riddles: Addition #5 This math worksheet tests your child's addition and riddle-solving skills. Find out the answer to the riddle, "Which month has 28 days?" Math Riddles: Addition #1 What is a math teacher's favorite dessert? Pi! Find more funny riddles by doing this worksheet--a perfect combination of math practice and brain teasers. Math Riddles: Triple Digits Math Riddles: Solve the Equation Math, spelling, and brain teasers come together in this fun worksheet. Solve math problems and reveal the answer to, "What did the sea say to the sand?" Add your own comment
Skip to content Pain Management Health Center Font Size Ease Stenosis Pain Spinal stenosis causes pain by putting pressure on the spinal cord or nerves. You can help ease the pain through posture, rest, medications, or sometimes surgery. As your doctor suggests a treatment option, track your pain to see how it works. Try the Spine Flex Flexing your spine may help ease pain from spinal stenosis. Here are 2 ways to flex. * Lean slightly forward from the waist while you walk. * Lie on your back, with your knees drawn to the chest. Both positions enlarge spaces in your spine and may help relieve pressure on the spinal cord or nerves. Stenosis Pain Meds In some cases of spinal stenosis, inflammation can contribute to pressure on nerves. If that's the case, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medicines (NSAIDs) may help. Consider trying over-the-counter anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen, aspirin, or naproxen. Check with your doctor first if you have any medical problems or take any other medicines. Track in your journal when you take them and assess how quickly and effectively they help your pain. Make sure you tell your doctor what you take and the dose so you both can look out for side effects. Never give aspirin to anyone under the age of 19 as it can cause Reye's syndrome. Stenosis Rest Plan Sometimes resting for a limited time can help ease stenosis pain; however, resting too long may make pain worse. After resting, doctors suggest low-impact aerobic activity such as bicycling. Stenosis Surgery Surgery may help people when spinal stenosis is causing persistent pain despite other treatment, is causing nerve damage, or is disabling. Surgery is performed on involved areas of the spine. One common procedure, called decompressive laminectomy, helps enlarge the spinal canal to help relieve nerve pressure. Surgery helps reduce pain in many people, but some people get worse or stay the same. If you have severe spinal stenosis, ask your doctor if you should consider surgery. Fracture Prevention Try to prevent spinal compression fractures naturally. Ask your doctor if you should take calcium and vitamin D supplements. And if so, ask how much and how often. Do gentle weight-bearing exercises 2 or 3 times a week. If you have osteoporosis, you may need prescription bone-building meds such as bisphosphonates. Commonly prescribed bisphosphonates include Actonel and Atelvia (risedronate), Boniva (ibandronate), and Fosamax (alendronate). Other medicines are also available. Ask your doctor. WebMD Medical Reference Today on WebMD pain in brain and nerves Top causes and how to find relief. knee exercise 8 exercises for less knee pain. acupuncture needles in woman's back How it helps arthritis, migraines, and dental pain. chronic pain Get personalized tips to reduce discomfort. illustration of nerves in hand lumbar spine Woman opening window Man holding handful of pills Woman shopping for vegetables Sore feet with high heel shoes acupuncture needles in woman's back man with a migraine
A compromise means nobody gets what they want. Instead, have some 'alternative currency' (Patrick Driscoll, Quora) that is also of value to the other party. If it seems that you are unable to negotiate your way to what you want, turn it into an exchange. This alternative could be time, money, knowledge, access – but you have to know enough about the other party to know what a valuable exchange would be. When a negotiation becomes a choice rather than an all-or-nothing deal, the situation becomes more positive. The chances of both parties leaving with something valuable increases. A good example of this is looking for something other than money in negotiating a salary. When more money isn't an option, it might be worthwhile to deal in office perks like working from home or more vacation time. That last bit of Duvauchelle's advice is crucial to striking the deal. It's up to you to figure out what is a good offer for the other party and present it as a choice. Remember that negotiations are between people, in the end. Ultimatums usually come back to haunt you later while a win-win deal only makes your relationship stronger. The science of negotiation: How entrepreneurs can learn to be powerful negotiators \| TheNextWeb Photo by Orin Zebest.
What is password entropy? - Definition from WhatIs.com Part of the Personal computing glossary: Password entropy is a measurement of how unpredictable a password is. Password entropy is based on the character set used (which is expansible by using lowercase, uppercase, numbers as well as symbols) as well as password length. Password entropy predicts how difficult a given password would be to crack through guessing, brute force cracking, dictionary attacks or other common methods. Password entropy is usually expressed in terms of bits: A password that is already known has zero bits of entropy; one that would be guessed on the first attempt half the time would have 1 bit of entropy. A password's entropy can be calculated by finding the entropy per character, which is a log base 2 of the number of characters in the character set used, multiplied by the number of characters in the password itself. NIST provides the following guidelines for user-selected passwords with 30 bits of entropy: • Use a minimum of 8 characters selected from a 94-character set. • Use a dictionary of common words that users should avoid, like a password blacklist. • Don’t use any permutations of your username as your password. Of course password entropy can't be the only thing considered or passwords would be too long, complex and unmemorable. Best practices involve employing something memorable to the user but not easily guessed by anyone else. Because password length is one of the most important factors affecting password entropy and overall strength, a longer password can be simpler than a shorter one and still be effective. See also: password strength meter This was last updated in January 2014 Contributor(s): Matthew Haughn Posted by: Margaret Rouse Related Terms • data cap (broadband cap) - A data cap is a specific amount of mobile data that a user account can access for a given amount of money, usually specified per month. Because data caps are uniformly unpopular with customers, car... (WhatIs.com) • mobile data - Mobile data is Internet content delivered to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets over a wireless cellular connection rather than Wi-Fi or a wired connection. (WhatIs.com) • data plan (mobile data plan) - Since the advent of the smartphone made mobile Internet possible, most carriers offer data plans at varying rates based on the amount of data transfer allowed before a data cap is imposed. (WhatIs.com) • Personal computing • Internet applications Ask a Question. Find an Answer.Powered by ITKnowledgeExchange.com Ask An IT Question Get answers from your peers on your most technical challenges Ask Question Tech TalkComment Contribute to the conversation
The Shining Test \| Mid-Book Test - Easy Buy The Shining Lesson Plans Name: _________________________ Period: ___________________ Multiple Choice Questions 1. What is the outcome of Jack's attack on George Hatfield? (a) Jack is fired, George is expelled from school (b) George buys 4 new tires for the VW (c) George offers the use of his car for the move to the Overlook (d) Jack remains on the faculty 2 more years, George switches teachers 2. Why is Jack ranting before Danny provides the answer? (a) The VW fuel pump has failed (b) Wendy's expensive wristwatch is missing (c) He cannot locate the trunk labeled (d) The movers broke at least 6 things 3. What is Wendy thinking about the 1926 Overlook elevator? (a) It is well maintained (b) It is too small (c) It is quaint (d) It is unsafe 4. How does Jack feel about Danny going into Room 217? (a) He doesn't blame Danny for going into the room (b) Angry that Danny stole the key to the room (c) He feels Danny should be punished no matter how scared he is (d) He feels it is okay if Danny went into the room 5. What is Halloran's assurance to Danny? (a) There are only a few storms each winter (b) Supplies will last all winter (c) There is nothing at Overlook that can hurt him (d) He will have lots to do in the winter 6. What entire bottle of tablets did Jack chew to stop a hangover? (a) Anacin (b) Liver pills (c) Glucose (d) Excedrin 7. What does Wendy sense from the moment Danny is born? (a) The family should re-locate to Massachusetts (b) Danny is somehow unusual (c) She will have many more children (d) She will not have another child 8. Why is Mrs. Brent causing a fuss? (a) She thinks the bill is overcharged (b) The hotel cannot account for some of her jewelry (c) She is not allowed to pay with her American Express card (d) Her second husband has checked out without her 9. Why does Dr. Edmonds theorize Danny does not need Tony anymore? (a) Danny is getting older (b) Danny fears being separated from Jack (c) Tony has said too many things that did not come true (d) Jack and Wendy get along now, so Tony has outlived his usefulness 10. What 3 words does Danny say as Jack is shaking him? (a) Let Hallorann speak (b) Call the sheriff (c) Roque, Stroke, REDRUM (d) Stop shaking me 11. How does Jack's father kill his mother? (a) He hits her full force in the face and the back of the head, and cracking open her skull (b) He suffocates her (c) He pushes her down the stairs (d) He poisons her 12. Where does Danny go after he opens the door to Room 217? (a) To the mirror (b) To the bed (c) To the mini bar (d) Into the bathroom 13. What is the "bad thing" the maid is showing Hallorann? (a) The kitchen (b) Room 217 (c) The lobby (d) The pool 14. What does Jack do when he goes to the Colorado Lounge? (a) He thinks about how much he loves Wendy (b) He starts a conversation with Lloyd, the bartender (c) He sits on a barstool talking to his father (d) He sits down and cries 15. What is Danny doing before bedtime that bothers Wendy? (a) Scattering his books on the floor (b) Mumbling as if conversing with an unseen person (c) Staring blankly out the bedroom window (d) Reading aloud with a fierce intensity Short Answer Questions 1. How many guest rooms in the Overlook? 2. Why did Danny lock the bathroom door? 3. What is Wendy resigned to accept? 4. How does Al Shockley react to Jack's idea about writing a historical book about the Overlook? 5. Why is Stuart Ullman hiring Jack to be caretaker of the Overlook? (see the answer keys) This section contains 657 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) Buy The Shining Lesson Plans The Shining from BookRags. (c)2016 BookRags, Inc. All rights reserved. Follow Us on Facebook
Skip Navigation 7.1: Introduction Difficulty Level: At Grade Created by: CK-12 Lux Research Pie Chart Lux Research Pie Chart Future of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology In 2001-02, the National Science Foundation (NSF) predicted that nanotechnology will be a \begin{align}\$ 1\end{align} trillion global market within 10–15 years. In October 2004, Lux Research estimated market growth to \begin{align}\$ 2.6\end{align} trillion by 2014, and in July 2008 they predicted a growth to \begin{align}\$ 3.1\end{align} trillion by 2015, while already \begin{align}\$ 147\end{align} billion worth of nano-enabled products were produced in 2007. It is estimated that by 2015, the scientific and technical workforce needed in nanotechnology will be greater than two million. The following figure shows a series of technology “\begin{align}S-\end{align}curves.” They represent the general pattern of slow emergence of a nascent technology, followed by extremely rapid (exponential) growth, ending in a very slow growth or stagnation of the now maturing technology. Time frames of Development of Technology Time frames of Development of Technology What is Nano? Table 1. Metric Scale and Prefixes Table 1. Metric Scale and Prefixes Thus, a micrometer \begin{align}(\mu \mathrm{m})\end{align} is one-millionth \begin{align}(10^{-6})\end{align} of a meter and a nanometer \begin{align}(nm)\end{align} is one-billionth \begin{align}(10^{-9})\end{align} of a meter. Larger scales are easier to conceptualize than smaller scales. The following are some examples that provide a sense of scale (small) for milli-, micro-, and nanometer objects. Understanding Size \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{foot} = 0.3048 \;\mathrm{meter}\end{align} or \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{meter} = 3.2808 \;\mathrm{feet}\end{align} \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{yard} = 0.9144 \;\mathrm{meter}\end{align} or \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{meter} = 1.0936 \;\mathrm{yards}\end{align} \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{mile}= 1.609 \;\mathrm{kilometer}\end{align} or \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{kilometer}= 0.6216 \;\mathrm{miles}\end{align} How Small is One Millimeter (mm)? \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{mm} = 0.001 \;\mathrm{meter}\end{align} The diameter of one dime is \begin{align}17.91 \;\mathrm{mm}\end{align} and the thickness is \begin{align}1.35 \;\mathrm{mm}\end{align}. A CD or DVD is thinner than a dime. The diameter and thickness of a CD or DVD are \begin{align}120 \;\mathrm{mm}\end{align} and \begin{align}1.2 \;\mathrm{mm}\end{align}, respectively. We can see objects as small as \begin{align}0.05\end{align} millimeter \begin{align}(mm)\end{align}that is the limitation of the human eye. For example, the typical width of a human hair is \begin{align}0.05 \;\mathrm{mm}\end{align}. Human hair Human hair How Small is One Micrometer (µm)? \begin{align}1 \ \mu \ \text{m} = 0.001 \ \text{mm}; 50 \ \mu\ \text{m} = 0.05 \ \text{mm}\end{align} We need a microscope to see objects smaller than \begin{align}50 \ \mu\;\mathrm{m}=0.05 \;\mathrm{mm}\end{align}. The most widely used microscopes are optical microscopes, which use visible light to create a magnified image of an object. The best optical microscope can magnify objects about 1000 times. Optical microscope If you could split a human hair into \begin{align}50\end{align} separate strands, each would be about one micrometer \begin{align}(\mu m)\end{align} wide. How Small is One Nanometer (nm)? One nanometer is If you could split a human hair into \begin{align}50,000\end{align} separate strands, each would be a nanometer \begin{align}(nm)\end{align} wide. In fact, human hairs grow by one nm every few seconds. Step-by-Step Magnification Step-by-Step Magnification Step-by-Step Magnification So at the nanometer scale we see molecules (a combination of different atoms connected by bonds). For example, any form of water (ice, snow, water vapor) is a combination of two hydrogen \begin{align}(H)\end{align} atoms and one oxygen \begin{align}(O)\end{align} atom, where the oxygen-hydrogen distance is about \begin{align}0.1 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}. Some Examples of Different Objects on the Nanoscale Water Molecule Different Objects on the Nanoscale Different Objects on the Nanoscale. How Small is a Nano? How Small is a Nano? Atoms and Molecules: the Building Blocks Figure \begin{align}7.8\end{align} illustrates some examples that any material or object or thing (living or non-living) in this world is made from atoms. Size (radius) of atoms is about \begin{align}0.01\end{align} to \begin{align}0.3 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}. The human body is composed of several elements, such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, calcium, iron, zinc, etc. Oxygen is the most abundant element (about \begin{align}63\end{align}%) in the body. The next one is carbon (\begin{align}18\end{align}%), followed by hydrogen (\begin{align}10\end{align}%), and then nitrogen (\begin{align}3\end{align}%). In fact, \begin{align}99\end{align}% of the mass of the human body is made up of the six elements oxygen \begin{align}(O)\end{align}, carbon \begin{align}(C)\end{align}, hydrogen \begin{align}(H)\end{align}, nitrogen \begin{align}(N)\end{align}, calcium \begin{align}(Ca)\end{align}, and phosphorus \begin{align}(P)\end{align}. Nobel Prize winner Dr. Horst Störmer said that the nanoscale is more interesting than the atomic scale \begin{align}(> 0.3 \;\mathrm{nm})\end{align} because the nanoscale is the first point where we can assemble something—it's not until we start putting atoms together that we can make anything useful. On the nanoscale, we can potentially assemble atoms together to make almost anything. For example, oxygen and hydrogen found in the human body is mostly as a component of water \begin{align}(H_2O)\end{align} molecule. Carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are integral components of all proteins, nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), carbohydrates, and fats. The combination of all of these molecules creates the living cells of the body. What is Nanoscience and Nanotechnology? Since the Stone Age (approximately \begin{align}2.5\end{align} million years ago), we have been using available materials around us to produce tools and devices for practical uses. New discoveries in science enabled us to create more application-oriented products, new devices, and electronic gadgets. Since the beginning of the 1980s, the world witnessed the development of microtechnology, a step toward miniaturization. Nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale (sizes between \begin{align}1 - 100 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}). Nanotechnology is the fabrication, characterization, production, and application of man-made devices, and systems by controlled manipulation of size and shape at a small scale that produces devices and systems with novel and superior characteristics or properties. Table 2. Technology at a Different Scale Table 2. Technology at a different scale. What Happens to Materials at the Nanoscale? At the nanoscale, property and functionality of materials are either changed or enhanced significantly more than their bulk forms. For example, gold is a yellowish orange color when its dimension is more than \begin{align}100 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}. The color changes to green when particle size is \begin{align}50 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align} and to red/ruby at \begin{align}25 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}. Similarly, silver is yellow at \begin{align}100 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}, but blue at \begin{align}40 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}. These changes in color are due to confinement of electrons in smaller areas. Why Nanoscience and Nanotechnology are Important to Us Nature and man-made things in different scales Nature and Man-made Things in Different Scales. The following sites have summarized some basic and pertinent information. A Brief History of Nanotechnology's Rapid Emergence Dec 29, 1959 "Why cannot we write the entire \begin{align}24\end{align} volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica on the head of a pin?" Richard P. Feynman Richard P. Feynman Heinrich Rohrer Heinrich Rohrer Gerd Binnig Gerd Binnig Sumio Iijima Sumio Iijima Single wall carbon nanotubes Changes in Man-Made Technology Over the Years The Computer Let us see how these metric units (mm, \begin{align}\mu \mathrm{m}\end{align}, and \begin{align}nm\end{align}) are related to technology by considering the computer as an example. The first digital computer ENIAC (dimension: \begin{align} 2.6 \;\mathrm{m} \times 0.9 \;\mathrm{m} \times 26 \;\mathrm{m}\end{align}, weight: about \begin{align}54,000 \;\mathrm{lb}\end{align}, total space: about \begin{align}680 \;\mathrm{sq \ ft}\end{align} or \begin{align}63 \;\mathrm{sq}\end{align} meter) contained \begin{align}17,468\end{align} vacuum tubes (acts like an on-off switch), \begin{align}7,200\end{align} crystal diodes (blocks electricity at certain conditions and allows it to pass when those conditions change), \begin{align}70,000\end{align} resistors (limits the flow of electricity), \begin{align}10,000\end{align} capacitors (collects electricity and releases it all in one quick burst), and around \begin{align}5\end{align} million hand-soldered joints. First digital computer ENIAC First Digital Computer ENIAC The size of the vacuum tube, which is a key component of the computer and other electronic devices (such as the telephone, radio, and TV), is about \begin{align}5 - 30\end{align} millimeter \begin{align}(mm)\end{align}. Vacum tubes Vacum tubes The vacuum tube (invented in 1941) was replaced by much smaller millimeter scale transistors in 1955. In 1971, Intel introduced the first microprocessor, which contained about \begin{align}2300\end{align} transistors for use in a calculator. In the following year, Intel doubled the number of transistors in an \begin{align}8-\end{align}bit microprocessor designed to run computer terminals. The number of transistors in current processors, such as in the Pentium \begin{align}4\end{align} is more than a few million, and the size ranges between \begin{align}0.2 \ \mu \mathrm{m}\end{align} to \begin{align}0.06\ \mu \mathrm{m}\end{align} each. Presently, Intel's Duo-core chips contain \begin{align}191\end{align} million transistors in \begin{align}143\end{align} square millimeter area, and the Quad-core Itanium chip (launched in Feb. 2008) packs more than \begin{align}2\end{align} billion transistors in \begin{align}65\end{align} nanometers is almost the same size as the chip. The size of the transistor is further decreased by Taiwanese Chipmaker TSMC to \begin{align}40 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}, and recently IBM developed a \begin{align}22.9 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align} chip. A microprocessor Over the last 40 years, the size of the transistor, which is a key component of almost all electronic gadgets used today, was reduced in size from a millimeter to a micrometer to a nanometer. The mid-'80s to 2006 - 07 marked the period when technological development was based on micro (one-millionth of a meter) size components, and hence, termed microtechnology. Similarly, the current use of nanometer sized components (size less than \begin{align}100 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}) deem calling it nanotechnology. In the future, we will use single molecule transistors of sizes less than \begin{align}1 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}. Single molecule transistor Single molecule transistor Examples of Computer Hard Disks In 1956, IBM invented the first computer disk storage system that could store \begin{align}5 \;\mathrm{MB}\end{align}. It had fifty \begin{align}24-\end{align}inch diameter disks. The following are some images of hard disks and drives developed between 1960–1980. The weight of this hard drive is more than \begin{align}600 \;\mathrm{lb}\end{align}, and the diameter of the disk is \begin{align}1\end{align} foot. Technicians had to manually replace the disks and drives from time to time depending on usage. Hard Disk Drive and Hard Disk Hard disk drive and hard disk In 1980, Seagate Technology introduced the first hard disk drive for personal computers. It was \begin{align}5 \ 1/4\end{align}" drive and held \begin{align}5 \;\mathrm{MB}\end{align}. Comparison of large and hard drive. Atoms will be used in future drives and about \begin{align}1\end{align} million \begin{align}GB\end{align} worth of data may be stored in one square cm area. Future hard drive Future Hard Drive Introduction to Electron Microscopes Human vision spans from \begin{align}720 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align} in the red wavelengths of light to \begin{align}400 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align} in the blue-violet wavelengths. The human eye cannot see electron wavelengths; therefore, we need a television-type screen or special photographic film to make electron microscope images visible to human eyes. Electrons have a much smaller wavelength than light \begin{align}(400- 700 \;\mathrm{nm})\end{align} and thus resolve much smaller objects. The wavelength of electrons used in electron microscopes is usually \begin{align}5\end{align} to \begin{align}0.05 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align}. Scanning Electron Microscope Scanning Electron Microscope How the Scanning Tunneling Microscope works How the Scanning Tunneling Microscope works. Another type of scanning probe microscope is the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM). As the probe in an AFM moves along the surface of a sample, the electrons in the metal probe are repelled by the electron clouds of the atoms in the specimen. As the probe moves along the object, the AFM adjusts the height of the probe to keep the force on the probe constant. A sensor records the up-and-down movements of the probe, and feeds the data into a computer to construct a \begin{align}3-D\end{align} image of the surface of the sample. Atomic Force Microscope Atomic Force Microscope Block Diagram of Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) Block Diagram of Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) AFM and STM enable us to work on atoms and design molecules the way we want by placing atoms by atoms. An excellent example is placing \begin{align}48\end{align} iron atoms (step-by-step) to form a quantum coral (see image at the bottom right-hand corner of Figure 11 and check out this Web site http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/corral.html. Here are some additional links to electron microscope images: Applications of Atomic Force Microscope (AFM): How Are Nanomaterials Made? Magic of Carbon Graphite and Diamond Diamond (left) and graphite (right) Fullerenes (also known as buckyballs) and carbon nanotubes are new forms of carbons that were discovered in the late 1980s. The first fullerene reported was a hollow ball that contained sixty carbon atoms. There are \begin{align}12\end{align} pentagons and \begin{align}20\end{align} hexagons in \begin{align}\mathrm{C}60\end{align} and each pentagon is surrounded by \begin{align}5\end{align} hexagons and each hexagon is surrounded by alternating hexagons and pentagons. At present, several other cage structured fullerenes containing \begin{align}50\end{align} to \begin{align}540\end{align} carbon atoms are available. Traces of fullerene are available in nature and several chemical methods are developed to synthesize pure (\begin{align}99.9\end{align}%) fullerenes. Carbon nanotubes are synthesized in laboratories. Different forms of Carbon Carbon Nanotubes Different Forms of Single-wall Carbon Nanotube Different Forms of Single-wall Carbon Nanotube. Single-wall carbon nanotubes Single-wall Carbon Nanotubes. This image is a 12 nanometer carbon nanotub Material Elastic Modulus (GPa) Strain (%) Yield Strength (Gpa) Density \begin{align}(\mathrm{g/cm}^3)\end{align} Single-wall carbon nanotube \begin{align}1210\end{align} \begin{align}4\end{align} \begin{align}65.0\end{align} \begin{align}1.3\end{align} Multi-wall carbon nanotubes \begin{align}1260\end{align} \begin{align}1.5\end{align} \begin{align}2.7\end{align} \begin{align}1.8\end{align} Steel \begin{align}207\end{align} \begin{align}9\end{align} \begin{align}0.8\end{align} \begin{align}7.8\end{align} Aluminum \begin{align}69\end{align} \begin{align}16\end{align} \begin{align}0.5\end{align} \begin{align}2.7\end{align} Titanium \begin{align}103\end{align} \begin{align}15\end{align} \begin{align}0.9\end{align} \begin{align}4.5\end{align} Properties Nanotubes Current Materials Size (diameter) SWCNT: \begin{align}0.6 – 1.8 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align} MWCNT: \begin{align}20 – 50 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align} Electron beam lithography can create lines \begin{align}50 \;\mathrm{nm}\end{align} wide, a few nm thick Temperature stability Stable up to \begin{align}2,800 ^\circ \;\mathrm{C}\end{align} in vacuum, \begin{align}750^\circ\;\mathrm{C} \end{align} in air Metal wires in microchips melt at \begin{align}600 - 1,000^{\circ}\;\mathrm{C}\end{align} Thermal conductivity Predicted to be as high as \begin{align}6,000 \;\mathrm{W/m} \cdot \;\mathrm{K} \end{align} at room temperature Nearly pure diamond transmits heat at Image Attributions Show Hide Details Files can only be attached to the latest version of section Please wait... 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Definitions for Princeprɪns This page provides all possible meanings and translations of the word Prince Princeton's WordNet 1. prince(noun) 1. prince(Noun) A (male) ruler, a sovereign; a king, monarch. 2. prince(Noun) Someone who is preeminent in their field; a great person. He is a prince among men. 3. prince(Noun) The (male) ruler or head of a principality. 4. prince(Noun) A male member of a royal family other than the ruler; especially (in the United Kingdom) the son or grandson of the monarch. 5. prince(Noun) A common name of the mushroom Agaricus augustus. 6. prince(Noun) A type of court card used in Tarot cards, the equivalent to the Jack. 7. Prince(ProperNoun) The title of a prince. 8. Prince(ProperNoun) A surname for someone who acted like a prince, or played the part in a pageant, or served in the household of a prince. Webster Dictionary 1. Prince(adj) 2. Prince(adj) 3. Prince(adj) 4. Prince(adj) 5. Prince(verb) to play the prince 1. Prince Chambers 20th Century Dictionary 1. Prince prins, n. one of the highest rank: a sovereign: son of a king or emperor: a title of nobility, as in Germany: the chief of any body of men:—fem. Prin′cess.—v.i. to play the prince (usually with it).—ns. Prince′-bish′op, a bishop who was also the civil ruler or prince of his diocese; Prince′-Con′sort, the husband of a reigning queen; Prince′dom, the estate, jurisdiction, sovereignty, or rank of a prince; Prince′hood, rank or quality of a prince; Prince′-Impē′rial, the eldest son of an emperor; Prince′kin, Prince′let, Prince′ling, a little or inferior prince.—adj. Prince′-like, becoming a prince.—n. Prince′liness.—adj. Prince′ly, prince-like: becoming a prince: grand: august: regal.—adv. in a prince-like manner.—adv. Prin′cessly, like a princess.—n. Prin′cess-Roy′al, the eldest daughter of a sovereign.—adj. Prin′cified, ridiculously dignified.—n. Mer′chant-prince, a merchant who has gained great wealth.—Prince of darkness, Prince of this world, Satan; Prince of Peace, Christ: the Messiah; Prince of Wales, the eldest son of the British sovereign; Prince Rupert's drops (see Drop); Prince's feather, a tall showy annual with spikes of rose-coloured flowers; Prince's metal, a gold-like alloy of 70 parts of copper and 25 of zinc. [Fr.,—L. princepsprimus, first, capĕre, to take.] British National Corpus 1. Spoken Corpus Frequency Rank popularity for the word 'Prince' in Spoken Corpus Frequency: #1716 2. Written Corpus Frequency Rank popularity for the word 'Prince' in Written Corpus Frequency: #3945 3. Nouns Frequency Rank popularity for the word 'Prince' in Nouns Frequency: #724 1. Chaldean Numerology The numerical value of Prince in Chaldean Numerology is: 6 2. Pythagorean Numerology The numerical value of Prince in Pythagorean Numerology is: 2 Sample Sentences & Example Usage 1. Laurent Fabius: Ah, we have Prince Charles. 2. Debasish Mridha, M.D.: Women dream a lot and man is the prince of that dreamland. 3. Thomas Fuller: 4. American Proverb: 5. Adelle Davis: Images & Illustrations of Prince Translations for Prince From our Multilingual Translation Dictionary Get even more translations for Prince » Find a translation for the Prince definition in other languages: Select another language: Discuss these Prince definitions with the community: Word of the Day Please enter your email address: Use the citation below to add this definition to your bibliography: "Prince." STANDS4 LLC, 2016. Web. 30 Jun 2016. <>. Are we missing a good definition for Prince? Don't keep it to yourself... Nearby & related entries: Alternative searches for Prince: Thanks for your vote! We truly appreciate your support.
The Leading eBooks Store Online 3,578,973 members ⚫ 1,187,673 ebooks New to Learn more Mirror-Image Asymmetry An Introduction to the Origin and Consequences of Chirality Mirror-Image Asymmetry by James P. Riehl Add to cart US$ 61.95 US$ 53.69 An overview of the importance and consequences of asymmetry from molecules to the macroscopic world As scientists have become more capable of probing the structure of three-dimensional objects at the molecular level, the need to understand the concept and the consequences of mirror-image asymmetry—chirality—has increased enormously. Written at an introductory level, Mirror-Image Asymmetry provides an overview of the importance and effects of asymmetry from the atomic and molecular world of physics and chemistry to the organisms and structures that we see and use in our everyday life. The reader will develop a broad appreciation of three-dimensional asymmetry from the microscopic molecular world to the macroscopic world of handedness, automobile driving, windmills, sports, and similar phenomena. The book features: • An introduction to basic definitions and the nomenclature of asymmetric and dissymmetric molecules • Up-to-date examples of the importance and consequences of asymmetry in modern drug applications, current theories of the origin of asymmetry in nature, and examples of molecular asymmetry in smell, taste, and insect communication • Many illustrations, chemical structures, and photographs that enable the reader to connect the actual asymmetrical structures to the different phenomena that depend on structural asymmetry In the 150 years since Louis Pasteur discovered asymmetry in molecular structures, scientists have made great progress in understanding how interactions between chiral molecules influence biochemical processes. This knowledge is leading to very sophisticated asymmetric synthetic techniques that have greatly benefitted many research groups especially those in the pharmaceutical industry. This guide to the role of molecular and macroscopic chirality will inspire students and scientists in chemistry, biology, physics, and drug discovery. Wiley; April 2011 272 pages; ISBN 9780470588871 Read online, or download in secure PDF format Title: Mirror-Image Asymmetry Author: James P. Riehl Buy, download and read Mirror-Image Asymmetry (eBook) by James P. Riehl today!
Next Article in Journal Development of Lectin-Linked Immunomagnetic Separation for the Detection of Hepatitis A Virus Previous Article in Journal Previous Article in Special Issue Clinical Manifestations and Outcomes of West Nile Virus Infection Viruses 2014, 6(3), 1015-1036; doi:10.3390/v6031015 B Cell Response and Mechanisms of Antibody Protection to West Nile Virus S. Kyle Austin 1,* and Kimberly A. Dowd 2 Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; Tel.: +1-314-362-2847; Fax: +1-314-362-9230. Received: 17 December 2013; in revised form: 7 February 2014 / Accepted: 8 February 2014 / Published: 3 March 2014 : West Nile virus (WNV) has become the principal cause of viral encephalitis in North America since its introduction in New York in 1999. This emerging virus is transmitted to humans via the bite of an infected mosquito. While there have been several candidates in clinical trials, there are no approved vaccines or WNV-specific therapies for the treatment of WNV disease in humans. From studies with small animal models and convalescent human patients, a great deal has been learned concerning the immune response to infection with WNV. Here, we provide an overview of a subset of that information regarding the humoral and antibody response generated during WNV infection. West Nile virus; flavivirus; humoral immunity; neutralizing antibody; epitopes; therapeutics 1. Introduction West Nile virus (WNV) is a neurotropic flavivirus that has seen an emergence into new geographical regions in the last decade. Originally isolated from a patient in Uganda in 1937 [1], WNV was introduced into New York in 1999 and has since spread to the Pacific coast and through the Americas to Argentina. Since its introduction, WNV has become the leading cause of mosquito-borne encephalitis in the USA [2]. WNV now poses a risk to human health in North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. A member of the Flaviviradae family, WNV is classified within the Japanese Encephalitis virus serocomplex. WNV exists in an enzootic cycle between mosquitos and birds, but humans and horses can become infected when bitten by an infected mosquito. While ~80% of infections are asymptomatic, WNV infection can cause a range of symptoms from a mild febrile disease to flaccid paralysis to lethal encephalitis. While the most severe symptoms generally manifest in the elderly and immunocompromised, healthy individuals can also experience severe disease. 2. Virology and Pathogenesis WNV has a positive, single-stranded ~11-kilobase RNA genome. The genome is encapsidated within multiple copies of the capsid (C) structural protein and enveloped in a lipid bilayer decorated by the two other structural proteins, membrane (M) and envelope (E). The infectious mature WNV particle is approximately 50 nm in diameter and has 180 copies of the E glycoprotein arranged in a T = 3 quasi-icosahedral symmetry [3]. The viral lifecycle begins with attachment of the virus to a yet-to-be-identified cellular receptor. Several cellular proteins have been shown to interact with surface E proteins, including integrin αvβ3 [4,5], DC-SIGN/ DC-SIGNR [6,7], and others [8], but none of these candidates were shown to be both necessary and sufficient for infection. The virus enters via clathrin-mediated endocytosis and traverses the lysosomal pathway [9]. As the endocytic vesicle containing the virus acidifies, structural rearrangement of E proteins occurs, allowing for the formation of E homotrimers and insertion of the fusion loop into the vesicular membrane [10,11,12]. The nucleocapsid is released into the cytoplasm of the cell, completing the first stage of infection. The WNV genome is translated as a polyprotein and subsequently cleaved by both viral and host proteases. The polyprotein encodes the three structural proteins (C; pre-membrane (prM); and E) and seven non-structural proteins (NS1, NS2A, NS2B, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, and NS5), the latter of which are involved in the replication complex. Animal models have aided our understanding of WNV pathogenesis in the absence of data for human pathogenesis. From these studies, WNV pathogenesis has been classified into three stages: initial infection and spread, peripheral viral spread, and neuroinvasion. Upon transmission of WNV from the bite of an infected mosquito, the virus is believed to infect and replicate within keratinocytes and skin-resident dendritic cells. It is thought that DC migration to the draining lymph node leads to the next phase of infection as the virus replicates and is disseminated into peripheral organs. It is currently unclear what the major cellular reservoir of viral infection and replication WNV uses, but subsets of DCs, macrophages, and neutrophils have been suggested. The final stage of WNV pathogenesis involves neuroinvasion and infection of the brain and spinal cord. The mechanism(s) by which WNV gains entry into the CNS is incompletely understood, but it is the translocation of the virus into the CNS that leads to lethal disease. 3. WNV Structural Biology The E glycoprotein is the major flavivirus structural protein present on the viral surface, as well as the dominant target of neutralizing antibodies. The E glycoprotein is responsible for binding the host cellular receptor as well as endosomal fusion. The crystallographic structure of the E protein ectodomain of multiple flaviviruses has been determined [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]. Despite sharing only ~37% sequence identity, flavivirus E ectodomains share a generic structure of three subdomains stabilized by six conserved disulfide bonds (Figure 1A). The centrally located domain I (DI) is an eight-stranded β-barrel. Flanking DI is domain II (DII) that consists of two elongated loops, containing the conserved fusion loop (residues 98–110). Domain III (DIII) is an immunoglobulin-like fold linked to DI on the opposing side from DII. Glycosylation of the E glycoprotein is variable among flaviviruses. WNV E has a single N-linked glycosylation site at position 154, while dengue virus (DENV) and Tick-borne encephalitis virus have an additional N-linked glycan in E DII. The two α-helices following DIII are designated as the stem region, which is followed by two more α-helices in the transmembrane region. While there are no crystallographic models of these helices, we have been informed of their locations and functions from atomic modeling of cryo EM structures of flaviviruses [22,23]. Both sets of helices are found in anti-parallel arrangements; those of the stem region are amphipathic, interacting with both the phospholipid heads of the lipid bilayer and the viral structural proteins, while the hydrophobic transmembrane helices are inserted into the outer leaflet of the bilayer. Figure 1. West Nile virus (WNV) structure. (A) Ribbon diagram of the crystal structure of WNV E ectodomain residues 1–400 (PDB 2HG0) [20] colored by domain: DI (red), DII (yellow), and DIII (blue). The fusion loop (residues 98–110) is shown in green, the six disulfides in orange, and the N-linked glycan at position Asn 154 is colored by atomicity; (B) Pseudoatomic cryo EM reconstruction model of the mature WNV virion (PDB 3J0B) [22]; (C) Pseudoatomic cryo EM reconstruction model of the immature WNV virion (PDB 2OF6) [24]. Each E monomer in the cryo EM models is colored according to its icosahedral symmetry location: 2-fold (yellow), 3-fold (blue), and 5-fold (red). Ribbon diagram rendered in PyMOL [25]. All cryo EM models were rendered in the program Chimera [26]. Viruses 06 01015 g001 1024 The mature WNV virion is ~50 nm in diameter with 180 copies of the E glycoprotein smoothly arranged in a head-to-tail homodimeric fashion [3]. The homodimeric arrangement of the E protein shields exposure of the DII fusion loop at neutral pH. The symmetry of the E proteins creates three unique chemical environments according to the orientation into 2-, 3-, or 5-fold symmetry axes (Figure 1B). Immature WNV virions have a distinct structural composition relative to the mature virion. Unlike the mature virion, the immature virus maintains 180 copies of uncleaved prM protein, non-covalently associated with each E protein. These prM/E heterodimers form 60 trimeric spikes (a trimer of heterodimers) arranged with icosahedral symmetry ([27] and Figure 1C), with the DII fusion loop radiating outward from the virus center. prM is thought to cap the E fusion loop and prevent premature viral fusion as the newly assembled particle transverses the slightly acidic environment of the trans-Golgi network (TGN). The low pH environment of the TGN induces structural rearrangements of E proteins that expose a cleavage site within prM. After the prM protein is cleaved in the TGN by a host furin-like protease, the cleaved pr peptide remains associated with E by electrostatic forces, continuing to shield the viral fusion loop from premature fusion, until the virus is released into the extracellular environment [28]. In the neutral pH of the extracellular environment, the pr peptide dissociates from the mature particle, and the E protein assumes the homodimeric T = 3 symmetry discussed above. Although cleavage of prM is required for the production of infectious particles [29], this cleavage event is not 100% efficient, resulting in the release of a heterogeneous mixture of mature, immature, and partially mature virions that retain varying levels of uncleaved prM [30,31,32]. At least a subset of partially mature WNV is infectious, indicating that an unknown threshold of prM cleavage is required for the transition from non-infectious (fully immature) to infectious virus [7]. The variability of this population has limited the use of traditional structural methodologies. Application of single particle reconstruction provided by cryo-electron tomography or an alternative method may yield some insight into the architecture of such particles. As the endosomal compartment matures during WNV entry, an acid-induced dissociation of the E homodimers occurs, facilitating the irreversible formation of a fusogenic E trimer. While the exact structural arrangements on the surface of the virion are unknown, crystallographic structures inform us that the formation of the trimer requires a considerable movement at the DI-III linker as DIII rotates ~36 degrees relative to DI/II [16,18,19]. These fusogenic spikes are oriented radially from the virus, with DIII and DI forming the base and the DII fusion loop clustering towards the host membrane. It has been proposed that an interaction between the stem region and transmembrane region stabilizes the trimer for eventual fusion of viral and cellular lipid and release of the nucleocapsid into the cytosol [33]. Structural Flexibility of WNV The structural flexibility of the E protein during maturation and fusion has been well established. However, studies over the last few years have revealed that the conformation of the virus, relative to antibody epitope exposure, is influenced by increasing the incubation time and temperature (discussed in Section 5.2.2). Indeed, recent cryo EM reconstructions of DENV after incubation at higher temperatures resulted in the transition to a “bumpy” virus, on which the E proteins are present in an expanded form as compared to the smooth virion stucture [34,35]. While incubation of WNV did not show these same structural transitions, the authors proposed that the higher body temperature of bird reservoirs at 43 °C may provide optimal conditions for a similar transition compared to that of the human body temperature. While epitopes that have limited exposure show a more drastic response to neutralization when both time and temperature is increased, readily available epitopes also show some increase in neutralization efficacy under the same conditions for both DENV [36,37] and WNV [38]. The full scope of the conformational ensemble for WNV is unknown. 4. Humoral Immune Response to WNV The humoral immune response plays a key role in the pathogenesis of West Nile virus infection. WNV-infected mice lacking B cells (μMT mice) show higher viral titers in the CNS and 100% mortality [39], presumably due to an inability to clear virus from the periphery. Administration of neutralizing monoclonal or polyclonal IgG immune serum to naïve WT mice provides complete protection from death while a subset of μMT mice experience delayed mortality. Furthermore, WNV infection of sIgM−/− mice, which lack secreted IgM, but express cell surface IgM and can secrete other antibody isotypes, resulted in complete mortality [40]. Passive transfer of anti-WNV IgM from a mouse day four post-infection or anti-WNV IgG was able to blunt the dissemination of the virus in wild-type mice and mice lacking secreted IgM. These results demonstrated that the early anti-WNV IgM response (a) limits virus spread in the periphery and CNS and (b) the IgM titer on day four can predict survival outcome. However, passive antibody alone, while able to delay complete mortality, was not sufficient to protect RAG1−/− mice, which lack both B and T cells, suggesting a role in viral clearance for T cell mediated immunity in WNV infection [41]. Beyond survival studies, the events that result in innate immune activation of B cells are incompletely understood. Sustained signaling through the type I interferon α/β-receptor has been shown to be required for initial activation of B cells in the lymph node, but not the spleen [42]. This study also showed that the activation of CD19+ B cells in the draining lymph nodes was polyclonal in nature, as the response was BCR-independent. A recent study involving a WNV vaccine model showed that mice lacking MyD88 had deficiencies in B cell activation, germinal center activation, and the generation of a B cell memory response [43]. While anti-WNV IgG clearly protects mice from rechallenge, the role of IgG in primary WNV infection is unknown. Based on the known kinetics of production of anti-WNV IgG isotypes (appearing between days 6–8), the virus enters the CNS (day 3) and is mostly cleared in the periphery [39]. In evaluating the possibility of antibody therapeutics, administration of immune human gamma globulin in the μMT mouse model of infection resulted in an increase in survival time, when given before day two post-infection [41]. WNV infection did show an increase of plasma cells in the brain of infected mice [44], perhaps suggesting a role for IgG in the CNS. Finally, multiple genetic deficiencies that affect anti-viral antibody priming, production, or trafficking (C3, C4, CD40, absence of CD4+ T cells, level of MHC class II expression, CD22) result in a concomitant decrease in antibody titers and survival during WNV infection [45,46,47,48,49]. 4.1. Humoral Memory Response Flavivirus infection has been shown to induce life-long humoral protection from future infection with the homologous virus [50]. The anti-WNV IgG response is essential in providing this protection during WNV infection [39,51,52,53] and vaccination [54,55,56]. However, limited data exists examining the memory recall response in WNV infection. Memory B cells (MBC) and long-lived plasma cells (LLPC) persist upon resolution of infection, and have been assigned non-redundant mechanisms of protection upon WNV challenge in immune mice [57]. Upon resolution of WNV infection, LLPCs, found primarily in the bone marrow, continue to secrete high-affinity antibody specific for a single immunodominant epitope found in the initial viral E protein. However, the majority of antibodies from MBCs were able to recognize both the immunizing immunodominant epitope, as well as a mutant epitope these mice had not been exposed to. These results suggest that the antibodies produced by MBCs serve to neutralize a potential future challenge by variant WNV that might escape neutralization by the high affinity LLPC antibody. Indeed, a recent study shows that mice given a vaccine for the related Japanese Encephalitis virus are protected from WNV lethality in a MBC adoptive transfer model [58], demonstrating a cross-protective role for MBCs in flavivirus infection. It was demonstrated in a WNV vaccine model in mice lacking TLR3 that while the development of MBCs was not affected, the maintenance of germinal centers and LLPCs were negatively impacted [43]. 4.2. Epitopes Targeted by WNV-Specific Antibodies The E protein, which comprises the majority of the virion surface, represents the major target of neutralizing antibodies to WNV infection. Antibody epitopes have been identified on all three domains (DI-DIII) [24,52,53,59,60,61,62,63,64], with the most potent neutralizing antibodies focused on a discontinuous epitope on the lateral ridge of DIII (DIII-LR) [52,64,65]. E16, an extensively studied DIII-LR mAb, is capable of neutralizing WNV infection at picomolar concentrations [66]. Locations within the E protein and specific residues involved in binding by various WNV neutralizing antibodies are shown in Figure 2. Epitope mapping of WNV-specific mAbs has been performed by numerous methods including structural analysis, identification of neutralization escape mutants, and binding assays utilizing various forms of the E protein (i.e., linear peptides, soluble or yeast displayed forms of the E ectodomain or truncated E subdomains, intact virions or sub-viral particles) [67]. While individual epitopes have generally mapped to residues located spatially proximal to each other within specific E domains, evidence of more complex epitopes has been observed. For example, a subset of human WNV immune sera found to react with recombinant, full length E, but not polypeptides representing linear, 30 amino acid segments of the E protein, highlights the presence of antibodies that bind complex epitopes within a single E protein [51]. In a separate study, two mAbs isolated from B-cells of WNV-infected humans, CR4348 and CR4354, were found to bind intact sub-viral particles and virions but not to recombinant E or DIII alone, suggesting these antibodies bind epitopes that include residues from neighboring E proteins [53,62]. Indeed, the epitope for CR4348 maps to two amino acids (T208, H246) that are distal from one another on a single E protein, but are located within close proximity along the DII dimer interface of two antiparallel E proteins. Similarly, structural studies confirmed that CR4354 binds a discontinuous epitope that includes amino acids from neighboring E proteins from distinct dimers, and that this antibody acts by crosslinking the six E proteins located within a raft (Figure 2F,G) [68]. Both of these antibodies neutralize at a post-attachment step, indicating a mechanism by which the binding across multiple E proteins inhibits pH-mediated structural changes required for viral fusion [62]. Figure 2. Antigenic structure of WNV. (A) Cartoon diagram of WNV E, colored by domain, labeling the location of neutralizing epitopes within E and associated residues; (B) Cartoon diagram of WNV E16 Fab engagement of DIII; (C) Cryo EM reconstruction of E16 Fabs bound to mature WNV virion (EMD_1234) [69]; (D) Cartoon diagram of WNV E53 Fab engagement of DII and fusion loop; (E) Cryo EM reconstruction of E53 Fabs bound to immature WNV virion (EMD_5103) [61]; (F) Cartoon diagram of CR4354 Fab engagement of a complex epitope between adjacent E monomers; (G) Cryo EM reconstruction of CR4354 Fabs bound to mature WNV virion (EMD_5190) [68]. Cartoon Fabs shown in purple, and WNV E colored as in Panel A. Cryo EM images colored according to distance from center of virus particle from lighter colors to darker. Black shapes on cryo EM figures identify axis symmetry: pentagon, 5-fold; triangle, 3-fold; ellipse, 2-fold. Viruses 06 01015 g002 1024 Antibodies against WNV proteins other than E have been identified. As introduced above, a subset of infectious WNV virions retain varying levels of uncleaved prM. Antibodies that bind to prM have been identified in WNV immune sera [51,70], and prM antibodies have been isolated from both mice and humans [71,72]. As reported for other flaviviruses, WNV antibodies specific for prM generally display weak neutralizing activity and limited protection in vivo [71]. This likely stems from the limited number of prM molecules present on the surface of partially mature virions, the effects of which will be discussed in detail below. Antibodies specific for the non-structural protein NS1 that demonstrate protective activity from WNV infection in vivo have been described [73]. Prophylactic treatment with some NS1 mAbs protected mice against lethal WNV infection, despite the fact that NS1 is not associated with the virion itself. NS1 antibodies are hypothesized to bind cell-surface expressed NS1 on infected cells and result in phagocytosis of infected cells through interactions with Fc-γ receptors (FcγR) expressed on macrophages [74]. Finally, antibody responses directed at NS3 and NS5 [70,75], as well as capsid [51] have been observed, but little is known regarding their importance in protecting against WNV infection. 5. Mechanisms of WNV Neutralization Studies with WNV indicate that neutralization is governed by a stoichiometric threshold [31,66,76,77]. This requirement is consistent with a “multiple-hit” model of neutralization and implies that binding by a threshold number of antibody molecules is sufficient to disrupt critical steps during the infection process such as attachment or fusion with a target cell [78,79]. Based on studies with E DIII-LR specific mAbs, including E16, the stoichiometric threshold for WNV neutralization was estimated to require binding by ~30 antibody molecules per virion [66]. It remains to be determined whether a similar threshold of 30 antibodies applies to neutralization involving epitopes located elsewhere on the E protein. E16 neutralizes infection primarily by blocking viral fusion [64,80,81]; different stoichiometric thresholds may govern neutralization by antibodies that block infection by distinct mechanisms, such as blocking attachment. The stoichiometric threshold may also differ for antibodies that are capable of bivalent binding, which has been reported for a recently characterized DENV DIII-specific mAb [82]. Regardless, studies with diverse WNV-specific antibodies indicate that all act within the framework of a multiple-hit model of neutralization. 5.1. Antibody Affinity and Epitope Accessibility Govern WNV Neutralization Two critical factors determine whether the required threshold for antibody binding is met. Antibody affinity controls the fraction of epitopes occupied by antibody at a given concentration [83]. Differences in neutralization by two antibodies that bind a similar epitope can often be explained by differences in binding affinity. Similarly, mutating the virus in such a way that reduces the binding affinity of a mAb has the same effect. For example, mutation at E residue T330I results in >80% reduction in binding by E16 [52], which translates into a requirement for higher concentrations of antibody to neutralize infection [76,84]. Cryo EM and crystallography models indicate that E16 binds to 120 of 180 total E proteins on the mature virion; binding is precluded from the 60 epitopes located proximal to the 5-fold symmetry axes due to steric constraints with neighboring E proteins (Figure 2B,C) [64,69]. In the context of antibody affinity, neutralization of WNV therefore occurs when E16 is docked on the virus at a relatively low occupancy (30 of 120 possible epitopes); 25% of available epitopes must be bound by E16 for neutralization to occur. However, occupancy requirements for neutralization can significantly increase for epitopes that are exposed fewer times on the surface of the virion. For example, some DIII-specific antibodies that bind outside of the LR must occupy essentially 100% of available epitopes to reach the neutralization threshold [66]. In fact, many weakly neutralizing WNV-specific antibodies may behave so not because they bind with low affinity, but because their cognate epitope is not readily available for binding. Limited epitope accessibility likely explains why the majority of antibodies that bind epitopes within the DII fusion loop (DII-FL) are characterized by weak neutralizing potency [24,53]. The DII-FL specific mAb E53 binds WNV with similar affinity as E16, yet is significantly less neutralizing [31]. The crystal structure of the E53 Fab fragment bound to immature WNV illustrated a preferential ability of E53 to bind to E trimers found in the immature virus; the DII-FL epitope is not solvent accessible in the context of the E dimers present on mature WNV (Figure 2D,E) [61]. 5.2. Factors That Modulate WNV Epitope Accessibility Epitope accessibility has emerged as a critical factor that governs WNV neutralization. Mechanisms by which the virus can increase the number of epitopes docked by antibody increase the chances that neutralization requirements are met. Characteristics of WNV that modulate epitope accessibility, and their effects on neutralization potency will be discussed in detail below, using the mAbs E16 and E53 as examples. In the context of this review, an “inaccessible” epitope is one that cannot be engaged by antibody; this applies to cryptic epitopes that are not displayed on the surface of the virion, as well as those that are solvent accessible but precluded from binding by steric constraints. 5.2.1. Structural Heterogeneity of WNV due to Inefficient Maturation Mapping studies identified a subset of WNV-specific antibodies with the potential to neutralize infection that bound epitopes not predicted to be accessible on the mature form of the virus [24]. One explanation for this inconsistency is the structural heterogeneity of WNV virions released from infected cells with respect to maturation, as introduced in Section 3. Partially mature WNV provide a heterogeneous landscape for antibody binding, as these viruses display E proteins that resemble the homodimers associated with the mature form of the virus and the prM-associated trimers found on the immature form. Because of differences in epitope accessibility between these E protein arrangements, the neutralizing potency of certain classes of antibodies is modulated by the extent of maturation [31,32]. While the extent of maturation can be artificially modified in vitro [7,31,38,85], there is evidence of natural variation in prM cleavage when using different cell types to generate WNV [32]. Using populations of infectious WNV representing the far ends of the maturation spectrum, E53 is relatively incapable of neutralizing mature WNV due to the cryptic nature of the DII-FL epitope, but becomes more potent as the levels of uncleaved prM retained on the virus increase (Figure 3). As described in Section 5.1, this occurs because E trimers associated with the immature form of the virus display the DII-FL epitope in a surface accessible position allowing E53 binding [61]. A hallmark of most maturation state-sensitive antibodies is the presence of a “resistant fraction” of infectious virus observed in neutralization assays even in the presence of saturating concentrations of antibody. In the case of E53, these particular viruses have lower levels of uncleaved prM (are more mature), and thus the DII-FL epitope is displayed an insufficient number of times to meet the required threshold for neutralization [31]. Interestingly, the pattern of epitope accessibility that governs all maturation sensitive WNV antibodies identified to date is such that maturation is only associated with decreases in epitope exposure. Antibodies specific for epitopes that become more accessible as maturation proceeds to completion have not been identified; the basis for this is unknown. Not all antibodies are sensitive to the maturation state of the virus. The E16 DIII-LR epitope is equally solvent accessible on both the mature and immature forms of the virus, resulting in identical neutralization potency regardless of the maturation status of the virus population (Figure 3) [31,85]. Unexpectedly, the neutralization potency of the DIII-LR specific mAb E33, which has a similar binding footprint as E16, was found to be maturation-state sensitive. It was discovered that steric constraints arising from the positioning of the Fc-portion of antibody molecules bound to the mature, but not the immature form of the virus were responsible for the maturation state dependence of E33. These steric constraints resulted in a preferential decrease in neutralization potency of E33 against mature WNV, and could be alleviated by using Fab fragments [86]. Thus, at least two mechanisms exist by which the extent of maturation modulates WNV antibody neutralization. Figure 3. Epitope accessibility affects WNV neutralization. (A) Model of how the extent of maturation and virus breathing affect neutralization potency of the mAbs E16 and E53 against WNV; (B) Neutralization dose-response curves supporting the model presented in panel (a). Left panels show neutralization curves of E16 or E53 against WNV produced under conditions that either promote or reduce the extent of maturation (“Mature” WNV generated in the presence of an overexpression of furin to promote prM cleavage (purple curves), versus “Partially mature” WNV generated in the presence of the weak base NH4Cl to inhibit the structural rearrangements required for prM cleavage (orange curves), respectively). Right panels show neutralization curves of mature WNV incubated either for 1 h at room temperature (grey curves), or an additional ~24 h at 37 °C (teal curves) before infection of cells. Viruses 06 01015 g003 1024 5.2.2. Virus Breathing Increases Epitope Accessibility As introduced in Section 3.1, flavivirus virions explore an ensemble of conformations at equilibrium, with the potential to increase epitope exposure. Current cryo EM structures of virions likely represent only the average or preferred conformation sampled in this process, referred to as structural dynamics or virus “breathing”. Studies with WNV and a panel of mAbs specific for all three E domains indicated that structural dynamics affects neutralization of all antibodies; kinetic increases in neutralization were observed when virus and antibody were incubated for increased lengths of time, or at increased temperature [38]. That the rate of structural dynamics increases at elevated temperatures suggests a mechanism by which the induction of a fever in response to infection can result in increased neutralization potency, and has implications regarding the transmission of WNV from insect to human hosts that maintain distinct body temperatures. The effect of structural dynamics on neutralization of mature WNV by E16 and E53 are shown in Figure 3. Initially E53 is incapable of neutralizing mature WNV, however large increases in potency are observed with increased incubation time. Since the DII-FL epitope is buried on the surface of the cryo EM structure of the mature virion, these increases provide direct evidence of dynamics-mediated epitope exposure. E16, although already capable of potently neutralizing WNV in a standard assay, still displays modest dynamics-mediated increases in neutralization. As discussed in Section 5.1, although the DIII-LR epitope is surface accessible, in the context of the mature virion, E16 is predicted to bind only 120 of 180 total sites due to steric constraints. By sampling structural conformations that alleviate steric constraints and allow for at least some of these remaining epitopes to be docked by antibody, dynamics-mediated increases in neutralization can occur for even the most potent WNV antibodies. Ongoing studies indicate a correlation between flavivirus structural dynamics and the intrinsic stability of virus in solution. Some pathways of virus breathing may result in a virus that is “stuck” in a non-infectious state, which manifests as a loss of infectivity. Interestingly, the extent of WNV maturation impacts the intrinsic decay rate of the virus; fully mature virus decays (loses infectivity) at a slower rate than populations of WNV that retain high levels of prM [87]. WNV virions that display distinct conformations of E proteins likely have separate “breathing” pathways, adding yet more complexity to our understanding of how epitope accessibility affects WNV neutralization. 6. Antibody Fc-Region Effector Functions While engagement of the virion by a sufficient number of WNV-specific antibody molecules can directly neutralize infection by blocking binding or fusion, the non-antigen binding Fc-portion of an antibody is capable of modulating infection by interacting with additional proteins present in vivo. Through the classical pathway of complement activation, C1q molecules that consist of six globular heads form multivalent interactions with the Fc-portions of either single pentameric IgM or multiple IgG antibodies docked on the surface of a virus. C1q opsonization triggers a cascade of cleavage events that result in the formation of the membrane attack complex (MAC) capable of viral lysis [88]. However, while the presence of complement proteins in serum has been shown to increase neutralization potency against WNV infection in vitro, this does not seem to be dependent on MAC induced viral lysis. Neutralization assays performed in the presence of serum from mice deficient in various complement components demonstrated that C1q, but not C3 or C5 (which act downstream from C1q in the complement cascade), was necessary for the increase in neutralization [77]. Addition of exogenous C1q to neutralization assays performed in vitro results in increased neutralization potency. Mechanistically, binding of C1q to antibody-virus complexes effectively lowers the stoichiometric threshold required for neutralization, and involves the ability of C1q to crosslink antibodies docked on the virion surface. Mannose binding lectin (MBL), a component of the non-classical lectin pathway of complement activation, has also been implicated in WNV neutralization. Similar to the mechanism of C1q, this inhibition does not require downstream activation of the complement cascade. However, the activity of MBL in limiting WNV infection is antibody independent; MBL binding to the virion surface may directly neutralize infection by inhibiting fusion [89,90]. A recent study demonstrated that Fc effector functions may enhance the in vivo protective effects of antibodies that are poorly neutralizing in vitro [32]. The ability of the DII-FL mAb E28 to modestly protect mice from lethal WNV infection when administered one day prior to infection was found to be dependent on antibody Fc interactions with both FcγR and C1q, as a larger proportion of mice lacking either or both of these molecules succumbed to infection. Additionally, the protective effect of E28 in WT animals was diminished when an aglycosyl version of the antibody was substituted that could no longer engage FcγR or C1q. While the in vivo protective effects of DII-FL specific antibodies were greatly inferior to DIII-LR specific antibodies, which resulted in survival of even the FcγR/C1q deficient mice, this study highlights a mechanism by which poorly neutralizing antibodies may be protective in vivo. This is of particular importance based on the finding that the human antibody response is overwhelmingly directed at epitopes within the DII-FL, as discussed in Section 7 [53,60,63]. The Fc-region of antibody molecules has also been implicated in antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADE), a phenomenon that describes an increase in virus infection in the presence of sub-neutralizing antibody concentrations. In this process, antibody-virus complexes infect cells through uptake by Fc receptor interactions [91]. A presumed role for ADE in enhancing DENV infection and disease severity in vivo, primarily during secondary infections, is a constant concern in the development of a much-needed vaccine [92]. While ADE can be observed for WNV in vitro, clinical manifestations in human infections are not readily apparent [76,93,94]. Regardless, in vitro studies with WNV indicate that ADE and neutralization are related to one another by the number of antibodies bound to the virus. ADE is governed on the lower end by the number of antibody molecules required to mediate cell attachment, and on the upper end by the neutralization threshold. For DIII-LR antibodies, ADE is estimated to occur when between 15 and 30 antibody molecules are bound to the virus [66]. Since C1q effectively reduces the stoichiometric threshold required for neutralization, the presence of C1q can abolish the potential for ADE by some antibodies, and may in part explain the lack of enhancement observed in vivo [46]. Antibodies that bind epitopes exposed few times per virion would presumably be good candidates for initiating ADE. Studies have suggested that fully immature WNV and DENV can be rendered infectious by Fc-receptor mediated uptake of virus-antibody complexes [95,96,97]. However, whether furin cleavage acts to cleave prM on entering WNV virions is unclear [85]. Regardless, partially mature flaviviruses remain candidates for ADE by weakly neutralizing antibodies, such as those that bind prM. 7. Understanding the Human Polyclonal Response to WNV Most data concerning the antibody response to WNV are from mouse studies, which indicated that a large portion of the humoral response was directed at epitopes within the DIII-LR [52,65,98,99,100]. However, there appears to be differences in the composition of the mouse antibody epitope repertoire relative to that of humans [53,60,63]. Using E protein variants, one study calculated that while the DIII-LR was the major target of neutralizing antibodies produced in mice, these antibodies were rare in serum from WNV-infected convalescent patients. Indeed, in this study, the major human target was the region containing the DII-FL [63]. Yet other studies have identified potently neutralizing antibodies from humans binding complex epitopes in the DI-DII linker region, such as those described in Section 4.2 [53,62]. Furthermore, studies with WNV and DENV human sera suggest that antibodies targeting the DIII-LR are functionally inconsequential [31,63,101,102]. Further studies using large panels of human samples are needed to both identify the immunodominant target(s) of the human antibody response, as well as the role of DIII-specific antibodies. 8. Progress of WNV Vaccine and Therapeutics There are no approved human vaccines against WNV. Both subunit and attenuated vaccine candidates have entered into phase I and phase II clinical trials [103], yet none have progressed to phase III trials. Some data evaluating the targets of potently neutralizing human antibody responses in flaviviruses suggest these targets are complex epitopes formed by viral symmetry [62,68,102]. In light of this data, vaccines that include or will encode the genes necessary to form the full viral particle should be examined. As there is currently not an approved vaccine for the prevention of WNV, one possible treatment is passive administration of neutralizing antibody to patients affected by WNV disease. In studies with mice and hamsters, the E16 antibody was capable of protecting the majority of these animals up to five days post-infection with WNV [52]. Indeed, several studies have shown that human immune serum and intravenous immunoglobulin (IGIV) can protect mice from lethal WNV challenge [104,105,106]. Protection after the onset of clinical symptoms and WNV encephalitis is likely a requisite of passive antibody immunotherapy for a possible treatment of infection. There are a growing number of examples of solid organ transplant related WNV infections [107,108,109,110,111,112]. In one example, a patient receiving a liver from a WNV-infected donor did not develop anti-WNV IgM until 26 days after the transplant, and failed to develop an IgG response >4 months after seroconversion [110]. While it is inconclusive that the IGIV protected this patient from fatal WNV infection, this population is generally receiving immunosuppressant drugs to prevent organ rejection, and at high-risk for severe WNV disease. Additional studies are needed beyond the non-controlled case studies described by the literature. Currently, immunotherapeutics have progressed to phase II clinical trials for the IVIG Omr-IgG-am consisting of high anti-WNV titers of convalescent Israeli blood donors and that of the monotherapy of MGAWN1, the humanized equivalent of the mouse E16 antibody [113,114]. 9. Conclusions The need for WNV therapeutics and vaccines remains a high priority, as WNV continues to pose a significant public health threat in various regions of the world. The critical role of the WNV-specific humoral response and antibodies in controlling infection underscores the need for a greater understanding of this arm of the immune response. Considerable progress has been made towards mapping WNV epitopes within the E protein, and has led to the identification of potent neutralizing antibodies that have been adapted into candidates for therapeutic use. However, many questions remain unanswered and new questions have arisen from recent discoveries, including: (i) what is the role, if any, of IgG in primary infection; (ii) what is the role of anti-prM antibodies in infection; (iii) how does the structural heterogeneity of WNV (due to maturation and structural dynamics) impact neutralization in vivo; (iv) why does the human response preferentially target non-DIII-LR epitopes and what are the immunodominant epitopes; and (v) what are the early activating signals for B cells. The ability to understand WNV neutralization in quantitative terms and apply this knowledge towards dissecting the polyclonal response to WNV will aid in the design of future vaccine candidates. This work was supported by the NIH intramural program and NIH Grant 5R01AI098723. Author Contributions S.K.A. and K.A.D. both wrote the review. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest. References and Notes 1. 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Eduu 551 larsen tech unit template Published on Integrating technology in PowerPoint format with 3rd grade study of California Wetlands Published in: Education • Be the first to comment • Be the first to like this No Downloads Total views On SlideShare From Embeds Number of Embeds Embeds 0 No embeds No notes for slide Eduu 551 larsen tech unit template 1. 1. Technology Training with Steve Gibbs Technology Integration Unit Outline Type only in the gray areas Name: Tricia Larsen Project Title: California Wetlands Creatures Project Subject: Science, Language Arts, Art, Technology Grade Level(s): 3rd grade Email address: Essential Question: What creatures inhabit the wetlands of California? Scaffolding What general types of creatures live in/near the wetlands? Questions: What are the physical characteristics of the creature? What does each identified creature eat? What are the predators of the creature? How does the creature protect itself? Where specifically in the wetlands habitat does the creature live? How does the health of the wetlands affect the creature? What can impact the health of the wetlands? Approximate Length of Unit (days, weeks) 5 weeks Goals: Students will understand what creatures inhabit the California wetlands and why the health of the wetlands is important. Objectives: Student will be able to identify at least one wetlands inhabitant and important facts about it. Student will create a bubble map graphic organizer to organize creature facts. Student will be able to list 2 reasons why the wetlands are important. Student will develop a power point presentation on one specific wetlands creature. Student will add a depiction of their creature to the class wetlands mural. Unit Summary and Sequence of Events – give details: Each student will create and present a Power Point with photos/pictures and factual information about a specific creature inhabiting the California wetlands. Week 1- Students will listen to brief introduction about wetlands creatures and engage in classroom discussion. Classroom brainstorming about what impacts wetlands health. Week 2- Students will go on a fieldtrip to Coyote Hills (East Bay Regional Parks) for firsthand observation of wetlands fauna, and to participate in a guided tour and discussion Week 3- Students will conduct their own independent research (books, magazines, online, park ranger) on a specific wetlands creature. Students will generate a bubble map to organize creature facts. Students will build a Power Point presentation. Week 4- Students present the projects to the class Week 5- Students participate in creating a wetlands mural (paint their creature) Software and Hardware needed: Computers with internet connection, Power Point software Accommodations for Differentiated Instruction Resource Student: Frontloading of new vocabulary. Picture Cues. Think-Pair-Share 2. 2. Technology Training with Steve Gibbs partnerships. Provide sentence stems to describe wetlands creature. Check for understanding, extended time on task, one on one instruction (if needed), instructions or materials read out loud. Materials can also be modified. Gifted Student: Create an eBook using portions of class power point presentations. Take leadership roles in the classroom assignment to mentor other students or form partnerships. IDENTIFY STANDARDS – Select two or three standards from each category and copy/paste them into this document Specific Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs): TPE 1a, Subject-Specific Pedagogical Skills for Multiple Subject Teaching Assignments Demonstrate the ability to teach the state-adopted academic content standards for students in English-Language Arts (K-8).Create a classroom environment where students learn to read & write, comprehend & compose, appreciate & analyze, & perform & enjoy the language arts. TPE 2: Monitoring Student Learning During Instruction Use progress monitoring at key points during instruction to determine whether students are progressing adequately toward achieving the frameworks and state-adopted academic content standards for students. Pace instruction and re-teach content based on evidence gathered using assessment strategies such as questioning students and examining student work and products. Anticipate, check for, and address common student misconceptions and misunderstandings. TPE 3, Interpretation and Use of Assessments Understand and use a variety of informal & formal, as well as formative and summative assessments, to determine students’ progress and plan instruction. TPE 4: Making Content Accessible Provide opportunities and adequate time for students to practice and apply what they have learned. Teach students strategies to read and comprehend a variety of texts and a variety of information sources, in the subject(s) taught. Encourage student creativity and imagination. TPE 5: Student Engagement Clearly communicate instructional objectives to students. Encourage students to share and examine points of view during lessons. They use community resources, student experiences, and applied learning activities to make instruction relevant. Ensure the active and equitable participation of all students. Extend the intellectual quality of student thinking by asking stimulating A–10 questions and challenging student ideas. Candidates teach students to respond to and frame meaningful questions. TPE 6A: Developmentally Appropriate Practices in Grades K-3 Understand how to create a structured day with opportunities for movement. Design academic activities that suit the attention span of young learners. Instructional 3. 3. Technology Training with Steve Gibbs activities should connect with the children’s immediate world and personal experiences. Draw on key content from more than one subject area; and include hands-on experiences and manipulatives that help students learn. Teach and model norms of social interactions (e.g., consideration, cooperation, responsibility, empathy). Understand that some children hold naïve understandings or misconceptions of the world around them. Provide educational experiences that help students develop more realistic expectations and understandings of their environment. Make special plans for students who require extra help in exercising self-control and focus among their peers or who have exceptional needs or abilities. TPE9: Instructional Planning Plan how to explain content clearly and make abstract concepts concrete and meaningful. TPE 10: Instructional Time Allocate instructional time to maximize student achievement in relation to state-adopted academic content standards for students, instructional goals and scheduled academic tasks. Establish procedures for routine tasks and manage transitions to maximize instructional time. Based on reflection and consultation, adjust the use of instructional time to optimize the learning opportunities and outcomes for all students. TPE 11: Social Environment Develop and maintain clear expectations for academic and social behavior. Promote student effort and engagement and create a positive climate for learning. Write and implement a student discipline plan. Establish rapport with all students and their families for supporting academic and personal success through caring, respect, and fairness. Respond appropriately to sensitive issues and classroom discussions. Help students learn to work responsibly with others and independently. Based on observations of students and consultation with other teachers, recognize how well the social environment maximizes academic achievement for all students and makes necessary changes. Specific CA Content Standards: LIFE SCIENCES 3.3 Adaptations in physical structure or behavior may improve an organism’s chance for survival. As a basis for understanding this concept: a. Students know plants and animals have structures that serve different functions in growth, survival, and reproduction. b. Students know examples of diverse life forms in different environments, such as oceans, deserts, tundra, forests, grasslands, and wetlands. c. Students know living things cause changes in the environment in which they live: some of these changes are detrimental to the organism or other organisms, and some are beneficial. d. Students know when the environment changes, some plants and animals survive and reproduce; others die or move to new locations. VISUAL ARTS 2.0 Creative Expression Creating, Performing, and Participating in the Visual Arts Students apply artistic processes and skills, using a variety of media to communicate 4. 4. Technology Training with Steve Gibbs meaning and intent in original works of art. Communication and Expression Through Original Works of Art 2.3 Paint or draw a landscape, seascape, or cityscape that shows the illusion of space. 2.4 Create a work of art based on the observation of objects and scenes in daily life, emphasizing value changes. ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS 2.0 Reading Comprehension Students read and understand grade-level-appropriate material. They draw upon a variety of comprehension strategies as needed (e.g., generating and responding to essential questions, making predictions, comparing information from several sources). Structural Features of Informational Materials 2.1 Use titles, tables of contents, chapter headings, glossaries, and indexes to locate information in text. Comprehension and Analysis of Grade-Level-Appropriate Text 2.2 Ask questions and support answers by connecting prior knowledge with literal information found in, and inferred from, the text. 2.3 Demonstrate comprehension by identifying answers in the text. 2.4 Recall major points in the text and make and modify predictions about forthcoming information. 2.5 Distinguish the main idea and supporting details in expository text. 2.6 Extract appropriate and significant information from the text, including problems and solutions. 2.7 Follow simple multiple-step written instructions (e.g., how to assemble a product or play a board game). Specific ISTE Tech Standards for Teachers: 1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. Teachers promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness. 2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments Teachers design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessment incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the NETS•S. Teachers design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity. 3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning Teachers exhibit knowledge, skills, and work processes representative of an innovative professional in a global and digital society. 5. 5. Technology Training with Steve Gibbs Teachers demonstrate fluency in technology systems and the transfer of current knowledge to new technologies and situations. Specific ISTE Tech Standards for Students: 1. Creativity and Innovation Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes. Create original works as a means of personal or group expression. Use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues. 2. Communication and Collaboration Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media. Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems. 3. Research and Information Fluency Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. a. Plan strategies to guide inquiry. Process data and report results. 4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources. Identify and define authentic problems and significant questions for investigation. Plan and manage activities to develop a solution or complete a project. Collect and analyze data to identify solutions and/or make informed decisions. 6. Technology Operations and Concepts Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. Understand and use technology systems. Select and use applications effectively and productively. Transfer current knowledge to learning of new technologies. REFERENCES – List websites, books, magazines, and other resources used to collect content information for this unit 6. 6. Technology Training with Steve Gibbs Life In A Wetland by Allan Fowler The Magic School Bus Gets Swamped book
Shiftingpower 4 Published on • Be the first to comment • Be the first to like this No Downloads Total views On SlideShare From Embeds Number of Embeds Embeds 0 No embeds No notes for slide Shiftingpower 4 1. 1. Topic #1 Shifting Global Power 500 CE to present Part I 2. 2. Impact of Global Power Shifts? TWO THINGS 1. We seem to be living through one now 1. Each global shift has had a profound impact on world history, shaping the cultural, political, social and economic patterns of societies in the process 3. 3. Now Relative decline of the United States? 4. 4. The Post American World? Think back to the summer reading 5. 5. Debate over book • We will examine Fareed Zakaria’s argument once we’ve traced the shifts in world power up to the present • We will have a debate focused on Zakaria’s thesis during the 2nd trimester 6. 6. So we will leave Point #1 until later, shifting global power now and into the foreseeable future. . . 7. 7. Second point What impact have shifts in global power had in the past? 8. 8. The Classical Empires • Prior to our time period (500 CE to present) power shifted toward the Roman and Han Empires and shaped world history in the process Note, the rise of such powers has been due to military conquest in most cases (the Roman Legions were the key to Roman power, improvements in mounted cavalry led to victories in Central Asia in the case of the Han) 9. 9. Rise of Rome Commonly dated from accession of economically and politically. 10. 10. Roman unity From roughly 100BCE to 500 CE, Rome unified the Mediterranean world, culturally, economically and politically 11. 11. Examples of Roman unity Roman use and spread of: • coins, law code, road systems (such as the Appian Way) • Greco-Roman literature, art and architecture • Latin, the Roman language • Christianity (the official religion under Emperor Constantine) 12. 12. The Fall of Rome Left a two-fold power vacuum: • Europe was never unified for very long again (Charlemagne briefly unified it during the 800s CE)—struggles to become the “new“ Rome ensued for centuries (the Romanovs of Russia, the Hapsburgs of Spain and Austria-Hungry, Napoleon, Hitler, etc.) • In the Middle East, Islam quickly filled the void left by the Romans (see Part II, the next power point) 13. 13. PaxRomana? • Ideal of conquest, imperial “greatness” • This is the legacy of Rome, according to Michael Wood (although he says it began with the Greeks, particularly Alexander the Great) • The mantle of Roman imperialism rests in the hands of the United States today, he says 14. 14. Han China 15. 15. Unified China • After extended war and unrest, The Han Emperors unified China approximately 200 BCE to 220 CE • Large zone of cultural, political and economic unity • Wide economic contacts along the Silk Road brought Buddhism to much of Asia • Confucianism spread all over South East and East Asia during the Han period 16. 16. Science and technology during the Han Dynasty Incredible take-off, too many to list--Click Here (we will look more closely at the influence of Chinese technology on world history as part of Topic #2, World Trade, 500CE to present) The invention of paper is a good example to follow in the mean time . . . 17. 17. Paper • Invented during the reign of Han Emperor Wu Di, 140 BCE-86 BCE. • Easily record ideas/information, easy to transport (think about Cuneiform from Mesopotamia— they used clay tables; picture a dictionary on clay tablets ¼ of an inch think) • When combined with printing (also a Chinese invention, a few centuries after the Han), it allowed for an explosion of knowledge etc. 18. 18. Here is one example. Columbus and Printing? • Christopher Columbus was not the first European to visit the Americas (Vikings under Erik the Red and Leif Erikson visited Greenland and Newfoundland, for example) • However, the news of Columbus’s discovery spread due to printing and the availability of paper—in today’s terms, the news went “viral” 19. 19. News of Columbus’s voyage inspired others: • Hernando Cortez/Francisco Pizzaro/Henry Hudson/Captain James Cook • Would any of this have happened without paper and printing? Would such breakthroughs (such as the invention of paper) have occurred without the stability fostered by the Han Dynasty? 20. 20. Conclusion • shifts in global power (as seen in the case of the Roman and Han Empires) have had a profound impact on world history • They have shaped the cultural, economic, and political developments of every corner of the globe (by the time we get to the rise of European Empires our scope will be truly global) 21. 21. Can you summarize this process How ddid shifts 22. 22. How have shifts in global power influenced world history? You should be able to trace this process in the case of the Roman and Han Empires But what about the rise and fall of Islamic Empires? What impact have they had? Part II focuses on Islam
Foods to Avoid on a High Fiber Diet A diet high in fiber can help control blood sugar levels, lower cholesterol counts, assist in weight loss, and aid in waste elimination and bowel function. Good sources of fiber include whole grains, fruits, vegetables, beans and legumes, and nuts. Avoid refined and processed grain products, overcooked vegetables, and vegetable and fruit juices. Low Fiber Grains Avoid refined wheat products such as white bread, pasta, crackers and white rice. Look for labels such as "whole grain" or "brown rice." To be sure such terms are truthful, check the actual fiber content. Avoid grain products with less than .05g of fiber per serving. Well cooked vegetables have less fiber than raw vegetables. Avoid vegetable juices, and when cooking leave on vegetable peels and seeds whenever possible. In addition, choose Skip fiber-rich vegetables such as cabbage or broccoli instead of low-fiber veggies like lettuce. Fiber is in the fruit pulp and skin, so don't juice or peel any fruits. Raw fruit has more fiber than cooked or mashed foods, so avoid applesauce and fruit smoothies. Skip the over-ripe bananas and have berries or pineapple when you want a sweeter fruit choice. There is very little fiber in most dairy products. Yet dairy contributes protein and calcium. To get these benefits while boosting fiber, add nuts, granola, dried fruit or seeds to cottage cheese, yogurt and soft cheese. Meats are generally low in fiber, with the exception of such non-nutritious types as processed lunch meats, sausages and hot dogs, all of which may use fillers that contain fiber. Beans and nuts are a much better source of fiber-rich protein. If you like nut butters, opt for crunchy over creamy versions. Additional Considerations Where possible, avoid "smooth" foods, such as strained soups, gravies, ketchup, mayonnaise, oils, or honey. Choosing jam or marmalade rather than jelly will slightly boost your fiber intake. Finally, when snacking opt for fiber-rich popcorn or low-fat potato chips instead of chocolate or hard candy. Photo Credits: • ã‚¯ãƒãƒ¯ãƒƒã‚µãƒ³ image by Reika from
Sign up Here's how it works: 1. Anybody can ask a question 2. Anybody can answer Often, when I am entering formulas in Excel 2010, as soon as I enter a cell reference, and then a + or * to add or multiply things together, Excel will make some kind of correction that creates a range, which I then have to delete to continue entering my formula. For example: I'm trying to enter the formula: $U$2 * (C2 + J2 * $W$2 / 2) This weird feature didn't trigger on the first , but as soon as I entered the plus after C2, Excel changed the + to +2:2, and the whole 2nd row was suddenly selected as a range. $U$2 (C2 +2:2 What causes this range feature to happen, and how can I prevent it? share\|improve this question up vote 11 down vote accepted Shift + Space selects the current row. What you are doing is holding Shift while pressing Space. So when you are entering * you are probably still holding Shift to type "(" but you press Space and the row gets selected. Best thing to do would be to not enter spaces between operators, as Excel does not need them. This will let you continue to hold Shift while typing your formula. Else you'll have to let go of Shift before pressing Space. share\|improve this answer Ah, thanks. That makes sense. – apeterson Apr 23 '13 at 12:17 Your Answer
cost of goods sold (COGS) Alternative term for cost of sales. Use this term in a sentence • My boss told me that we needed to determine the cost of goods sold, in order to remain organized and have an idea of what was going on. 20 people found this helpful • The suppliers for the production line have increased their prices on materials which has caused the total cost of goods sold for the company's products to increase by 15%. 18 people found this helpful • In looking over the business' financial reports, Bob found that the cost of goods sold was much higher than previous years, which explains the increase in profit. 16 people found this helpful Show more usage examples...
Bright Light Award Nomination Electronic Notebook V1.10 - 1999 photoThe Web has been a revolution in the way information is made available and has become critical to high-level scientific and technical work today. We are on the verge of a similar revolution in research and development based on the replacement of paper notebooks with Web-based electronic notebooks. The Electronic Notebook 1.10 is a breakthrough software system that provides researchers in industry, medicine, and education the ability to replace their paper notebooks, report logs or lecture notes with an easy-to-use web-based notebook. The EN provides many capabilities unavailable to paper notebooks including simultaneous sharing across a project group, multimedia input, remote access, security and automatic notarization. This combination of immediate benefits to the science and engineering community, and vast long-term impact on collaboration and records management across a wide range of industries argues strongly for Electronic Notebook as among this years elite products in research and development. For hundreds of years, scientists and researchers have been using laboratory notebooks to document their work. Leonardo Da Vinci kept volumes of notebooks on all his ideas, data, calculations, and art. Today, scientists traditionally use paper notebooks to keep track of their experimental ideas, notes on experimental setups, observations, and research results. Industry researchers use notebooks to back up patent claims and record keeping for State and Federal regulations. Medical researchers keep detailed records on patients, treatments, and outcomes. An electronic notebook is a system to create, store, retrieve, and share fully electronic records in ways that meet all legal, regulatory, technical, and scientific requirements. As such it is much more than a web page or a Lotus Note. Federal regulations require many records to be archived for 25 years. The web was not even a dream 25 years ago and it is hard to predict what the interface to computer information will be like 25 years in the future. Digital signatures and tamper-proof electronic records have only recently been accepted as legally binding. The shift in attention to the web has accelerated the concept of paperless offices and paperless laboratories. The Electronic Notebook (EN) V1.10 accessed by computer offers scientists all the features of the traditional paper notebook, along with the capability to accept multimedia input (audio and video clips) and computer-generated images, tables, and graphs placed by drag-'n-drop. Everything is computerized today. Why manually copy documentation into a paper notebook when you can cut and paste it electronically? The electronic notebook can be used to input, retrieve, or query objects such as text, sketches, images, tables, graphs or even Excel spreadsheets. The researchers use Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts to access notebook pages. They have developed Java applets (mini-programs written in the Java programming language developed by Sun Microsystems) to enter objects into the notebook, such as a pen-based sketch pad. photoClearly, the idea of laboratory notebooks is wide spread from pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, health care, oil and gas, and high-tech hardware and software industries. As the science problems get harder involving world-wide groups to solve them, as distance learning matures, as record keeping volumes grow, as the internet changes the way information is delivered, the time is right for an improved record-keeping tool-the electronic notebook. Many technologies have come together and the time is now right to make the electronic notebook a powerful, replacement of the ubiquitous paper notebook. EN V1.10 notebooks have many advantages over paper notebooks. They can be shared by researchers, even those collaborators separated by great distances. They can be accessed remotely through the Internet. They can't be lost or destroyed. It is easy to incorporate not only computer files and experimental data but also multimedia into an electronic notebook. It can easily be searched for information. It can contain hyperlinks to other information such as a reference paper stored elsewhere on the Internet. One of the great strengths of the EN V1.10 notebook is that it doesn't require any software to be installed on a computer to read or write to it. It can be accessed by any authorized user from any type of computer (platform) that has a Web browser. In developing the Web-based electronic notebook architecture, DOE researchers have focused on ensuring the security of the notebook. Electronic notebook entries can be digitally authenticated and signed, individually or collectively. They can be electronically time stamped and notarized. While entries cannot be modified once signed, the pages can be annotated and forward referenced. Entries can be secured by encryption, both in transit and in storage. All these securities can be performed transparently to the users, thus adding no complexity to the user interface. The EN V1.10 is designed with a very flexible architecture, one that would allow both "private notebooks" and "shared notebooks." A "private notebook" is envisioned as the equivalent of the research notebooks carried by researchers; it is essentially a one-user notebook that can run even on laptops with limited memory and disk and graphics capabilities. For these notebooks, ease-of-use and portability are typically more important than other issues. A "shared notebook" is envisioned as the equivalent of the group research notebooks and of the instrument notebooks; it is shared among many users, some of whom might be remote to the server. For these notebooks, issues of access control, security, and non-tamperability are typically more important than portability. The electronic notebook is a modern-day replacement for the ubiquitous scientific notebooks, experiment records, and instrument logbooks in use in research laboratories, medical centers, and industries with research and development departments. The advantages of this breakthrough software package over existing record keeping methods are evidenced by the number and bredth of inquiries that have been received. The ability of the electronic notebook to be remotely accessed and shared across a group of users allows the EN V1.10 to be used for distance learning, training manuals, remote instrument contol log, collaboration tool for sharing and commenting on research ideas. This shared brainstorming provides the potential to accelerate the process of scientific discovery in a way that was not possible with paper notebooks. EN V1.10 is currently being used by over 200 groups around the world. A full list of users and applications can be found at http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~geist/java/appets/enote/users.html. The applications can be broken down into the following categories: Pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemistry industries - a wide-range of industries have expressed interest in the electronic notebook software. Those that have gotten copies are listed on the abover URL. They include large corporations like BP Chemical and DuPont to small companies like Medtronic, who build pacemakers. Their applications vary, but are all related to the effort to move towards a paperless R&D department. Medical Research - the Harvard medical research center, the University of Chicago medical center, St. Judes, and several other institutions have gotten the software to use in medical research. In addition EN V1.10 is being used by a growing number of Oncologists. There is even one case where EN V1.10 is being used to keep patient records in a family practice. Government research labs - research projects often span multiple laboratories. Before the electronic notebook, it was much harder to be aware of and coordinate the various research efforts within these larger projects. More than two dozen such multi-lab projects now use the EN V1.10 software. Instrument log - every major beamline in the USA has gotten a copy of EN V1.10 for logging instrument use including Fermi lab, Berkeley, Brookhaven National lab, Jefferson Lab, and Oak Ridge National lab. The beamline instruments are all computerized so the electronic notebook's ability to automatically collect instrument data makes it very attractive. Education - being used by the Schodor Educational institute in elementary school science classes, being used in undergraduate classes by several universities around the world, and being used in graduate schools in the USA. Private notebooks - a large number of users who have replaced their paper notebooks with a private electronic notebook which among other things allows them to easily move entries from their private notebooks to shared notebooks.
Discover MakerZone Learn more Discover what MATLAB® can do for your career. Opportunities for recent engineering grads. Apply Today MATLAB Academy New to MATLAB? Learn MATLAB today! Problem 493. Quasi-Newton Method for Unconstrained Minimization using BFGS Update Created by Robert Canfield Write a function to find the values of a design variable vector, x, that minimizes an unconstrained scalar objective function, f, given a function handle to f and its gradient, a starting guess, x0, a gradient tolerance, TolGrad, and a maximum number of iterations, MaxIter, using the Quasi-Newton (Secant) Method. Initialize the Hessian approximation as an identity matrix. Update the Hessian matrix approximation using the BFGS update formula. Problem Group Solution Statistics 20 correct solutions 23 incorrect solutions Last solution submitted on Mar 09, 2016
Next Article in Journal Expanding Ableism: Taking down the Ghettoization of Impact of Disability Studies Scholars Next Article in Special Issue Previous Article in Journal / Special Issue Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Understanding Human Migration Patterns and their Utility in Forensic Human Identification Cases Societies 2012, 2(3), 63-74; doi:10.3390/soc2030063 Family Migration: Fulfilling the Gap between Law and Social Processes Laura Zanfrini Department of Sociology, Università Cattolica di Milano, Largo A. Gemelli, 1-20123 Milan, Italy; Email: Tel.: +39-02-7234-2448; Fax: +39-02-7243-2552 Received: 21 June 2012; in revised form: 2 July 2012 / Accepted: 3 July 2012 / Published: 5 July 2012 migration studies; migrant families; migration policies; family reunification 1. Introduction In the last twenty-five years, the family entity has gained a very important role, for both the extension of the research field of the migration studies and the rethinking of integration models [1]: the challenge is to adopt a new analytical perspective, represented by the family and its strategies to survive and develop, a fundamental decisional unit in the domain of migration choices, strategies, and behaviors. According to contemporary theoretical perspectives, family is the decision-making unit or—at any rate—the institution on behalf of which the choice to emigrate is made and which “utilizes” its members for its needs of survival and development. Family is also the agency that receives and manages the precious flow of remittances coming from family members working abroad, determining its impact on the economies of the sending communities: in this sense, family is a strategic actor for the economic and social development of the countries of origin and can activate forms of co-operation and support, as well as processes of conflicting coercion and dynamics that may become causes or consequences of migration. On the other side of the migratory process, family is a factor that strongly influences the evolution of the migratory project, supports (or slows down) the process of migrants’ integration, and sometimes imposes a “generational sacrifice” in order to assure the best chances to the members of other generations. Moreover, from the standpoint of the receiving society, the presence of migrant families is surely a phenomenon that transforms the impact and significance of migration, translating an economic issue into a political one. Among other consequences of this gap, we have to take into consideration this paradox: family reunification is not always the best solution, because it could involve a deterioration of life chances of migrants’ children and even of the relationship between various family members and generations. As we will see, the European experience is particularly emblematic on this point, because of its “schizophrenic” attempt to keep together the logic of the “gastarbeiter” (that is the migrant admitted with a temporary permit strictly linked to the working conditions) and that of the denizenship (a status accorded to the vast majority of migrants that guarantees the access to a rich range of rights and opportunities). All this notwithstanding, family is a dimension generally undervalued in the legislation concerning immigration, which is founded on an individualistic perspective. In this regard, family is an emblematic example of the gap between social processes and their regulation, questioning our societies about the human and social costs of globalization, particularly with respect to the migrants’ children’s experience. 2. The Emerging Role of Family in Migration Studies As noted, family has gained a progressively more important role in contemporary migration studies. In this section we will recall some of the main theoretical perspectives, in the field of socio-economic studies, focusing attention on family’s strategies in their relation with migratory choices. The new economics of migration [2], moving from a critique of the neo-classical paradigm and of its individualistic assumptions, redefines migration as a family strategy aiming at allocating human resources in order to face market collapse and inadequacy of welfare systems. As noted by D.S Massey and colleagues in their review of theories of international migration [3], a key insight of this new approach is that migration decisions are not made by isolated individual actors, but rather by larger units of related people—typically families or households—in which people act collectively not only to maximize expected income, but also to minimize risks and to loosen constraints associated with a variety of market failures (crop insurance markets, futures markets, capital markets) apart from those in the labor market. In fact, unlike individuals, households are in a position to control risks to their economic well-being by diversifying the allocation of household’s resources, such as family labor. Moreover, in developing countries the institutional mechanisms (private insurances and governmental programs) for managing risks to household income are imperfect, absent, or inaccessible to poor families, giving them incentives to diversify risks through migration. Finally, the new economic theorists argue that families send workers abroad not only to improve income in absolute terms, but also to increase income relative to other households, in order to reduce their relative deprivation compared with some reference group (often constituted by families who have already sent some of their members abroad). Nowadays, a very popular approach is network theory [4], which underlines the relational nature of migration and the various functions played by migrant networks, in particular in selecting which family member is the most suitable to migrate, and in supporting the process of adaptation to the new social context [5]. Migrant networks are sets of interpersonal ties connecting migrants, former migrants and non-migrants in origin and destination areas through ties of kinship, friendship, and shared community origin; therefore they constitute a crucial form of social capital. Being at the same time a network-creating and a net-dependent process, migratory movements acquire a self-propulsive dynamic. This means that, in a certain sense, they are more influenced by the system of family obligations and expectations than by economic or demographic variables, as supposed by the most popular theories until quite recently. Furthermore, every new migrant expanding the network reduces the risks of movement for all those to whom he or she is related, eventually making it virtually risk-free and costless to diversify household labor allocations through emigration. As a consequence, as networks expand and the costs and risks of migration fall, the flow becomes less selective in socioeconomic terms and more representative of the sending community; for example, registering the presence of individuals of different age and gender. Lastly, once they have begun, flows can become very difficult to be controlled by governments, because the process of network formation lies largely outside their control; certain immigration policies, however, such as those intended to promote family reunification, work at cross-purposes with the management of migration flows, since they reinforce migrant networks by giving members of kin networks special rights of entry. A rich array of contributions come from gender studies, whose main merit is that of having recognized the gendered nature of migratory models, behaviors and institutions, as can be brought to light by focusing attention on family and its system of labor division [6]. For example, some scholars have studied how, following the migration of one, some or all family members, the relationship between men and women changes and evolves, according to specific “cultures of migration” that assign different tasks and responsibilities to the various components of the family, not necessarily in coherence with the traditional role models. Others have emphasized the special significance of women’s experience [7], the possibility of emancipation connected with the migration, but also the subjection of individual projects to the need of the nuclear or of the extended family [8]. Furthermore, a chief outcome of the research about female migrations concerns the close relationship linking them with the various welfare regimes and their current problems [9], as well as with the scant development of welfare policies in a lot of sending countries [10]. Finally, a special stress has been placed on the “care-drain” process caused by the migration of wives and mothers, and on the various forms of “transnational motherhood” activated to continue taking on the responsibility of caring despite physical distance. In this context, a main concern regards the phenomena of left-behind children, an expression which has been significantly coined to allude to mothers’ migration, not to the fathers [11]. Another idea worth mentioning is that of welfare magnet effect [12], emphasizing the role of welfare benefits in the genesis, directionality, and evolution of migratory movements. The magnet hypothesis has several facets. Welfare programs can attract immigrants who otherwise would not have migrated to a certain destination; but they can also discourage immigrants who “fail” to return to their sending country. Actually, being a self-selective population who have chosen to incur the costs of migration, immigrants are more sensitive to the offer of welfare benefits than the native population; they are more inclined to geographical mobility with the consequence that inter-territorial differences in welfare benefits generate magnetic effects on the immigrant population. Besides the potential policy significance of these considerations, it is important to note that what guides the decisions about mobility and settlement is the family wellbeing, whose importance could even overcome, in certain circumstances, that of working opportunities for the family breadwinner. Other important insights have been coming from the concept of transnationalism, a label which has become very popular among migration scholars. As a matter of fact, international migrations are commonly considered as one of the major social processes through which the globalization breaks into the various social institutions and structures, unhinging old approaches soaked in “methodological nationalism” [13]. In this framework, the idea of transnational family [14] not only overcomes methodological nationalism in the analysis of the processes of integration, but also offers a really good example of the persistence of transnational belonging and practices along with the passing of generations [15]. At the same time, it reveals the salience of the feedback effects that migration produces in the source community, even after various generations [16]. Last but not least, the philosophy of co-development [17] enhances the roles of migrants, diasporas and transnational families for the economic and social development of the communities of origin. We will speak about this in the next section. 3. The “Pros” and “Cons” of Family Immigration As for the relationship between family and migration, a central issue is represented by the “pros” and “cons” of the migrant family’s reunification for both the sending and the receiving countries. Starting from the latter—i.e., the receiving countries—we can observe that the presence of families is usually considered as a factor of “normalization” and social acceptance of migrants. The same conditions required by the law to obtain reunification with their family members [cf. § 5] press migrants to emerge from the informal economy and, if it be the case, from illegality, and to achieve better living conditions. In some legislation, the possibility to migrate with one’s spouse and children is conceived as a means to attract “desired” migrants, such as high-qualified workers or potential investors, and encourage them settling down. For the receiving nations, especially in the case of societies confronted with a serious ageing concern—as is the norm in contemporary Europe—the arrival of migrant families is also considered as a way to sustain the population growth and the renewal of the active-age population and labor forces [18]. At the same time, this reinforces cultural pluralism, a trait that enjoys a positive consideration by significant stakeholders in contemporary societies. Lastly, family immigration favors—and legitimizes—the development of social research and social work applied to the (real or socially constructed) “problems” of migrants and their descendants, and fuels the survival strategies of certain organizations facing the loss of autochthonous clients (for example vocational schools). Obviously, from the point of view of the host countries family immigration has also various harmful consequences. In general, favoring the process of permanent immigration, it impedes the possibility to modulate migrants’ influx and presence in accordance with the labor demand, a possibility particularly stressed in the European context. In fact, it was exactly the growing presence of labor migrants’ family members that, in the 1970’s, changed immigration from an economic issue into a political one, with the emergence of all the questions related to intercultural and inter-religious cohabitation. In the eyes of the local population, family immigration increases the strain of migrants’ presence on the welfare apparatus (public schools, health, assistance, etc.), encouraging competition with the weaker sectors of the autochthonous population for access to social services and benefits (crèches, subsidized housing, etc.). This is especially true where immigration is “poor”, as in the case of the contemporary European landscape: it is sufficient to note that one out of ten people at risk of exclusion, has a migrant background in the European Union. On average, 26% of non-EU migrants and 19% of EU migrants are at risk of poverty, compared to 17% of the “local” population [19]. After all, family immigration irreversibly changes the hereditary characters of native people, bringing into question the idea of a nation founded on the principle of descendent; again, an idea particularly rooted in the European legacy. If, as observed, family immigration enriches a society bringing with it other cultural traditions, at the same time it forces the native population to come to terms with cultural and religious pluralism and with its “hottest” questions, most of which involving above all family and family life (see, for instance, arranged, forced and polygamous marriage; crimes of passion; genital mutilation and so on). On the sending countries’ side, researchers’ attention has been predominantly given to the “cons” of family immigration. This is due to a very pragmatic reason: the departure of a migrant worker’s family members produces the immediate effect of slowing down or stopping the flow of remittances. At the same time, it discourages investments and returning migration. Considering the dramatic importance of migrants’ remittances and investments for many source countries, we can understand how these may try to discourage family reunifications in a more or less open manner. According to some researchers’ results, family immigration could also have the effect of weakening the process of accumulation of human capital, as it “worsens” the school performance of migrants’ children. For example, a transnational research project focused on the Filipinos migrants’ children [20] permitted the author and some colleagues to register different school’s career paths. Left behind children experienced a process of distortion of their educational and professional aspirations, due to the hegemony exerted by a strong “culture of migration”, but at the same time they could benefit from the opportunity to attend high quality schools and universities, thanks to the remittances coming from their parents working abroad. Aware of the enormous sacrifices and efforts of their parents, they tried to do their best and had educational and working ambitions that are higher than their peers. In contrast, those who had rejoined their parents in Italy during their childhood were subjected to a high risk of dropout and unsuccessful records at school, due to both linguistic barriers and the need to work and gain money. Finally, migrants’ children who had arrived in Italy at a mature age, even if well educated, were largely involved in a brain wasting process. Although all these results could lead us to think that, for the sending societies, family reunification abroad produces almost only negative consequences, we can try to identify also some “pros” of family emigration. Family emigration slows population growth and pressure on the school system, an impact that can be envisaged by those countries which experience dramatic demographic increases and lack resources to guarantee education, health and social assistance to the young generations. In this perspective, children and youth emigration can constitute a “safety valve” for unemployment, in the face of a decidedly considerable growth rate that outpaces the capacity to generate new jobs. Again, family emigration increases the number of citizens who reside abroad, an outcome that could be envisaged by those States interested in the prospect of diaspora’s mobilization as a strategy to support the economic and social development of the sending communities [21]. Traditionally the idea of migrants as agents of development of their origin countries referred mainly to temporary migrants oriented to return home. Attention has now shifted to a more complex picture of the diasporas to include permanent expatriates, subjects well integrated in host countries and second-generation immigrants [22]. Last but not least, even if, as we shall see, it is not always the best solution, family reunification is expected to contain the social costs associated with human mobility. From this standpoint, it should be welcomed, despite the computation of its burdens and benefits. 4. The “Ideological Traps” The discourse about the relationship between family and migration is often the victim of what we call “ideological traps” [23]: filters across which we look at the reality and we estimate the outcomes of various phenomena and behaviors. As we shall see, a consequence stemming from this can be the legitimization of migration policies and practices producing high human and social costs for the individuals and families involved, influencing the same choices about family reunification. The first trap is that of economic liberalism, expressed by the tendency to socially and institutionally construct migrants as pure workers—labor force or, according to the current migration policies, high-qualified workers or “brains” useful to enforce economic competitiveness—atomistic actors without familial ties and links. Emblematically embedded in the figure of the “guest worker”, this conception is witnessed by the various schemes through which the receiving states try to prevent migrants’ settlement and reunification with their family members; i.e., schemes for seasonal migrations, rotation schemes, and so on. In any case, this conception is paradoxically—and maybe unconsciously—supported also by those political and civil society’s actors more sympathetic with migrants, whenever they attempt to legitimize migrants’ presence by stressing their economic role and the “need” of their work (“those that have a job can come, and, more precisely, a job we do not want to carry out”). In such a way, the idea promoted is that the governing of human mobility must obey economic considerations, and the arrival of the family members is seen as an unwelcome and useless consequence of the importation of labor. Especially during a phase of economic recession, as is presently the case, it becomes more and more difficult to justify the presence of migrants and their families, and in particular to justify their costs in terms of public welfare. At any rate, some countries do not hesitate to adopt this doctrine in a resolute way, inhibiting family reunification even to the exclusion of pregnant partners. A second trap can be defined in terms of functionalistic familism: the emphasis is put on the idea of migration as a family mandate, which can justify the sacrifice of the individual projects and aspirations, whenever the cultural codes and traditions expect their subjugation for the collective (familial) wellbeing. This approach is oriented to defend the traditional division of labor based on gender, assigning the father the role of the main breadwinner, even if this implies his emigration. In this prospect, the problem lies exactly in what does not appear to be a problem: the tendency to consider the father’s absence as “normal” and the experience of growing up in families with only one parent (the mother), and its consequences concerning the process of intergenerational transmission of marital and parental roles [24]. As denounced by some researchers in the sending countries, this conception involves an asymmetric evaluation of separated families: if the departure of the father is accepted or even socially appreciated, because it is coherent with traditional role expectations, the mother’s emigration is considered as inconvenient and in contrast with the wellbeing of children and other family members. In this case, families where the mother is working abroad, instead of being supported, risk facing isolation and social stigmatization. Even in the eventuality of family reunification, children may continue to accuse their mothers for having “abandoned” them, feeding the mother’s sense of guilty. Another risk is involved in the adoption of the filter of feminism, the third ideological trap. In this case, migration is primarily considered as an opportunity of emancipation for women—especially when this entails leaving a patriarchal society—or as a source of exploitation for female migrants. In this vein, a “degendarization” of society is desired [25] in order to promote the advent of more balanced models of division of labor, permitting both mothers and fathers not only to be active in the labor market but also to have a part in their children’s education and care, thanks to a practice of interchangeable roles. Actually, even when sharing this perspective—as it stresses the opportunity to design a society where the gender will matter less—we cannot ignore that, with the aim to surmount the conventional conception of the family and especially of motherhood, it risks treating the cost of separation as merely being a traditionalist construct. Consequently we may assist to the inhibiting of any initiatives aimed to limit the migration of mothers or to offer them a special support. The last ideological trap is cultural differentialism, by which we mean the legitimization of special rights (e.g., the so-called “ethnic rights”) and behaviors even if they contrast with the cultural codes of the receiving society. Immigrant societies fall in this kind of risk category to the extent to which they admit practices incompatible with their legal culture—or also with their common sense of what is dangerous or proper conduct—presuming that these practices are based on different cultural traditions that must be accepted and recognized. In the past, the evocation of presumed cultural specificities was used to justify deplorable measures aimed, for example, to select potential migrants (as in the cases of Indian girlfriends subjected to virginity testing before obtaining the permit to rejoin their future husband). However, beyond these extreme examples, a differentialist approach can induce public authorities to be “tolerant” towards certain kinds of conduct, as in the case of men who use violence against their wives and children. Finally, differentialism is a danger lurking, in that, as stressed by the contemporary debate about multiculturalism, it is particularly detrimental to the most vulnerable members of the family, whenever the respect of the minorities’ cultures overcomes the safeguard of individual rights and dignity. 5. Concerning the Right of Family Reunification: The European Experience In the European experience, in contrast to what happens in the so-called “settlement countries” (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United States), family migration was an unexpected—and “undesired”—phenomenon, to a certain extent induced by the policies of immigration control that have been in force since the 1970s. In any case, in many countries this has become the main channel of entry. As a matter of fact, despite attempts to avoid the permanent settlement of migrants and their communities, family reunification is now considered as a fundamental right, dependent upon a certain level of income and integration. In the Member States of the European Union, according to the Council Directive 2003/86 the absolute right to residence must be recognized to: a) the sponsor’s [26] spouse; b) the minor children of the sponsor and of his/her spouse, including adopted children; c) the minor children including adopted children of the sponsor where the sponsor has custody and the children are dependent on him or her [27]; d) the minor children including adopted children of the spouse where the spouse has custody and the children are dependent on him or her [28]. In accordance with the same Directive, the following subjects may have the right to residence: a) first degree relatives in the direct ascending line of the sponsor or his/her spouse, where they are dependent on them and do not enjoy proper family support in the country of origin; b) the adult unmarried children of the sponsor or his/her spouse, where they are objectively unable to provide for their own needs on account of their state of health; c) the unmarried partner with whom the sponsor is in a duly attested stable long-term relationship and his/her children. Finally, further spouses apart from the one already residing in the country in the event of a polygamous marriage do not have the right to residence: in this specific case, the EU legislation put a strict fence to the possibility of accepting an institution contrary to the European legal culture. Above and beyond the variety of the national rules—which must be coherent with the previous statements—we can observe that the right to family reunification is based, first of all, on the relationship of dependency between the applicant and the family member s/he is joining. This provision has the consequence of ignoring—or sometimes, especially in the past, even impeding—the participation of the reunited family members in the labor market. More crucially, it compromises the fate of the children when they became of age: if they lack the prerequisites for obtaining the renewal of their permit (for example a job contract or attendance in the educational system), they risk, according to some legislations, to be forcibly deported (considering that they cannot formally obtain a permit for family reasons once they become of age). In any case, these provisions reflect a “legal” concept of the family with the consequence of disregarding the different definitions of kinship shared in some cultures of origin [29], but also those arisen from the new confines of the family resulting from migration itself (e.g., the care giver of the children left behind), or even those shared by the host country (e.g., children of age that, in most European societies, continue to be dependent on their parents and to live with them) [30]. Aside from the relationship of dependency, there are two other criteria that contribute to make the right to family reunification a selective right. The first one is the status of the applicant: temporary migrants, permanent migrants, EU citizens, citizens allowed free circulation in the EU, naturalized citizens enjoy different opportunities and rights, even possibly being completely excluded from this possibility (as usually happens to seasonal migrants and to other categories of migrants defined as “temporary” [31]). The second criterion concerns the level of integration. All national legislations define requisites that the migrant must possess in order to apply for the entry of their family members (accommodation, income, sickness insurance, etc.). Nevertheless, in recent times, we observed the tendency to require a certain level of integration also for the family member who is joining (this requisite is generally assessed by language tests or reached by the attendance of mandatory courses). All things considered, the interweaving of these criteria gives rise to a selective access to the right to join one’s family, introducing discriminations on the basis of citizenship, legal status, socio-cultural conditions and gender. The more a migrant is poor and vulnerable, the less s/he can benefit from this right. Needless to say, we are alluding to fundamental human rights. Actually, policies for family immigration can be seen as an emblematic example of a persistent tension, strongly embedded in the European history, between the logic of the guest worker—the illusion to select entrants and residents according to the labor market needs and to the economic gain of the host society—and the logic of denizenship: the progressive extension of migrants’ prerogatives, claimed by the European tradition of respect of human rights [32]. Here we come to what I call the unresolved paradox of the European experience [33]; that is the paradox of a population of (temporary) workers transformed into denizens, without any significant change in the expectations of Europeans concerning immigration. In fact, those that on one hand are recognized as universalistic rights, to which migrants are eligible in conditions of equality with citizens (for example, the right to a job or to housing) are, at the same time, necessary requisites for obtaining the status of regular migrants—exactly the same status that confers the possession of rights—and in particular for acceding to the right of family reunification. 6. Conclusion: Is Family Reunion Always the Best Solution? Family immigration produces a series of costs and benefits for both the sending and the receiving countries; costs and benefits not always adequately appraised by researchers and policy makers, both conditioned by an individualistic conception. At the same time, the legislation in force in the European context, while considering the reunion of the family as a fundamental right, presents a set of limits that makes this right selective based on the juridical and socio-economic status of the migrant. Besides all these considerations, however, one question arises: is family reunification always the best solution when the well-being of all family’s members and the life chances of migrants’ offspring are taken into account? Or, contrarily, does the gap between the crucial role played by the family in the process of human mobility and the migration’s conception on which both the legislation and the receiving societies’ expectations are based, make the reunification an unsatisfactory solution? Empirical evidence provides contradictory findings, which, in any case, can be helpful for reflection. Reunification with family members, particularly children, is especially envisaged by those migrants who possess a “weak” status, which prevents them from maintaining the links with the country of origin (for example because of the geographical distance, or of the lack of proper documents). Paradoxically, a “strong” status (e.g., to be a EU citizen living in another European country) may discourage reunification (as often happens to Romanians working in Italy) or favor a sort of physical and symbolic commuting with the sending country that could be detrimental to young children and their school careers (Italians living in Germany are a case in point [34]). Migrant parents often reunite their children even if they lack the best conditions and the time for taking care of them, to the point that difficulties encountered can lead them to send the children home again to be raised by their relatives (the same sometimes happens to children born in the host country). Reunification is thus not necessarily permanent, since migratory movements must adapt to work commitments, to family strategies and even to the desire of preserving the attachment to the country of origin. More often, reunification involves children who are on the verge of reaching the age of majority (that is the limit age to rejoin parents through the procedure of family reunification), giving life to the so-called “spurious” second generations who frequently encounter difficulties of integration in the new society. When they lack one or more of the prerequisites prescribed by the law, migrants can resolve to realize a “de facto” reunification, sponsoring the arrival of the spouse or/and the children who will not have a permit of stay, staking a claim on their life chances. In this latter case, a possible outcome is the formation of a “mixed status family”, whose members enjoy different legal conditions and diverse life opportunities. After all, as we have noted in describing the pros and cons of family immigration, family reunification does not seem to be the best solution if we consider, for example, the school assessments of migrants’ children. At any rate, legislation merits a special attention. Not only because, as we have seen, even in democratic and progressive Europe the right to family reunification is accessible only to certain immigrants with a tendency to exclude the poorest and the weakest, But also because the relationship between family’s strategies and legislative restrictions often generates “perverse” outcomes, augmenting the vulnerability of the individuals involved. Actually, going beyond the question of family reunification, it is important to note that the blurry relationship between family and migration laws is characterized by tensions and contradictions. On the one side, being the outcome of a weighing up of many and varied interests—among which the slowing down of immigration and its settlement, the containment of its costs, the defense of the nation’s identity, the need to facilitate migrants’ integration—the regulation in force inevitably produces “imperfect” solutions. On the other side, as stressed by a set of contemporary theoretical streams [cf. § 2], the structure of networks, needs and obligations organized around the family constitutes a real challenge to the systems of migration control and management of both the receiving and the sending countries. Notwithstanding the fact that family constitutes a crucial actor in the process of human mobility, the legislation concerning migration (but the same could be demonstrated as regards the domain of citizenship) continues to be founded on an individualistic conception. 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Definición de assignation en inglés: Compartir esta entrada Pronunciación: /ˌasiɡˈnāSH(ə)n/ 1An appointment to meet someone in secret, typically one made by lovers: his assignation with an older woman Más ejemplos en oraciones • It is believed that the original carnival was a much bigger and rowdier affair with fights, bear baitings and puppet shows, bull fights and secret assignations in gondolas. • The other is a lurid science fiction tale, made up by the woman's demon lover during assignations in rundown, disreputable places. • He kept a secret journal of his assignations with high-power closeted Hollywood players and revelled in his clandestine life as a quasi-hooker. 2The allocation or attribution of someone or something as belonging to something. Oraciones de ejemplo • Was it designed to implicate as many individuals as possible in the killings, and thus to make any future assignation of responsibility for specific acts of genocide just about impossible? • More data are necessary to understand the significance of a possibly general assignation of short branches to basal and species-poor taxa by tree-reconstruction algorithms. • Haplotypes usually have to be estimated from the genotype data, with random assignation whenever the haplotype cannot be inferred unambiguously. Late Middle English (in the senses 'command, appointment to office, or allotment of revenue'): via Old French from Latin assignatio(n-), from the verb assignare (see assign). For editors and proofreaders División en sílabas: as·sig·na·tion Compartir esta entrada ¿Qué te llama la atención de esta palabra o frase? Palabras relacionadas
Senior Lecturer Dr. Iain Murray and PhD student Azadeh Nazemi developed a digital reading system for people who are blind, allowing them to read graphical material.People who are blind can now read more than just words, such as graphs and graphics, following the development of an affordable digital reading system by Curtin University researchers. Opening up new career paths and educational opportunities for people with vision impairment, the system combines a number of pattern recognition technologies into a single platform and, for the first time, allows mathematics and graphical material to be extracted and described without sighted intervention. Senior Lecturer Dr Iain Murray and PhD student Azadeh Nazemi of Curtin’s Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering developed the device to handle the extraordinary number of complex issues faced by the vision impaired when needing to read graphics, graphs, bills, bank statements and more. “Many of us take for granted the number of graphics and statistics we see in our daily lives, especially at work. We love to have graphics and diagrams to convey information, for example, look at how many statistics and graphs are used in the sports section of the newspaper,” Murray said. “People who are blind are often blocked from certain career paths and educational opportunities where graphs or graphics play a strong role. We hope this device will open up new opportunities for people with vision impairment—it’s a matter of providing more independence, and not having to rely on sighted assistance to be able to read graphical and mathematical material.” Murray said the system runs on very inexpensive platforms, with an expected production cost as low as $100 per device, allowing it to be affordable to many people around the world and hopefully make a difference in third world countries. He said previously there have been many methods to convert graphical material but all are very labour intensive and generally not easily transferable to other users. “Our system is easily operated by people of all ages and abilities and it is open source, meaning anyone with the skill can use and modify the software to suit their application,” Dr Murray said. The player has built-in user instructions and a speech engine that converts to more than 120 different languages. Murray said he was now looking for philanthropic finance to set up production. To develop the device, the team made use of a number of technologies, mostly based on pattern recognition, machine learning and various segmentation methods. Basically, the system takes a document, such as a pdf, bill, or scanned document, identifies blocks of text or pictures, segments these into related blocks and arranges these blocks in the correct reading order. Blocks are then identified as images, graphs, maths or text and recognised via optical character recognition or the utility for maths, Mathspeak. It is then converted to audio format with navigation markup. The device is 20 cm long, 15 cm wide and 3 cm thick. The controls are very much like a cassette player with a couple of additions for navigating through headings or chapters. Books can be downloaded or posted out on USB storage devices. These books are in a specific format that allows audio playback with navigation markup, with audio either in synthetic speech or human read. The device will have high contrast keys with tactile markings. Source: Curtin Univ.
Sign up Here's how it works: 1. Anybody can ask a question 2. Anybody can answer I'm reading the Algebra book by Knapp and he mentions in passing that an orthonormal set in an infinite dimension vector space is "never large enough" to be a vector-space basis (i.e. that every vector can be written as a finite sum of vectors from the basis; such bases do exist for infinite dimension vector spaces by virtue of the axiom of choice, but usually one works with orthonormal sets for which infinite sums yield all the elements of the vector space). So my question is - how can we prove this claim? (That an orthonormal set in an infinite dimension vector space is not a vector space basis). Edit (by Jonas Meyer): Knapp says in a footnote on page 92 of Basic algebra: In the infinite-dimensional theory the term "orthonormal basis" is used for an orthonormal set that spans $V$ when limits of finite sums are allowed, in addition to finite sums themselves; when $V$ is infinite-dimensional, an orthonormal basis is never large enough to be a vector-space basis. Thus, without explicitly using the word, Knapp is referring only to complete infinite-dimensional inner product spaces. share\|cite\|improve this question I may be missing something here, but a Fourier basis is certainly looks like an orthonormal set to me, therefore... where is the problem? Or is it just because you are excluding infinite sums? – Raskolnikov Dec 9 '10 at 12:02 Note that to define the notion of orthonormal, you need some inner product on the space. Therefore let us restrict to Hilbert spaces. The problem here is that the linear span of the orthonormal basis is only dense in the Hilbert space. – user1119 Dec 9 '10 at 12:21 I think the question is about finite sums, i.e. about Hamel bases. – Carl Mummert Dec 9 '10 at 12:22 Indeed, Fourier basis is NOT a "vector space basis" since we need an infinite sum to represent all the elements in the space. – Gadi A Dec 9 '10 at 14:21 Given the clarification provided by the answers, it would be interesting to know exactly what Knapp says in his book. Could someone provide a direct quote? – Pete L. Clark Dec 9 '10 at 18:31 up vote 17 down vote accepted Edit. The answer assumes that one works in a Hilbert space. Let $\mathcal A$ denote the set of orthonormal vectors. Then for any orthonormal sequence $(e_n)\subset\mathcal A $, the element $$u=\sum_{n=1}^{\infty}\frac{1}{n}e_n$$ cannot be represented as a finite sum of vectors from $\mathcal A$. share\|cite\|improve this answer Why is this necessarily an element of your vector space? Vector spaces are typically only closed under finite sums. Then again, I'm very used to working with finite dimensional vectors spaces, so I could just be plain wrong. – Jason DeVito Dec 9 '10 at 12:03 I agree with Jason, take for instance the vector space of all polynomials. – Raskolnikov Dec 9 '10 at 12:05 I think the problem may be the following: that the OP speaks of orthonormal implies he is working with an inner product space (in particular, a metric space). Perhaps the statement in the book should be properly interpreted as a statement about complete inner product spaces? The set of finite length vectors in $\ell^2$ is not complete. – Willie Wong Dec 9 '10 at 12:21 Thanks to everyone for the comments. I implicitly assumed that the space is complete. – Andrey Rekalo Dec 9 '10 at 12:35 How do you know that the partial sums are Cauchy? We don't know with which norm we are working with(i.e. not necessarily the standard metric). – TKM Jan 15 '14 at 21:35 Take any infinite dimensional inner product space $V$ and any orthonormal sequence $(w_n : n \in \mathbb{N})$. Let $W$ be the subspace generated by this sequence. Then $W$ is certainly an infinite dimensional vector space (because it has an infinite independent subset). Also $W$ has an orthonormal basis, because the inner product on $W$ is inherited from $V$ and thus $(w_n)$ is still an orthonormal sequence in $W$. This means that the theorem you have suggested, "an orthonormal set in an infinite dimension vector space is not a vector space basis", is not true. What I believe might be true is that no infinite dimensional complete inner product space has a orthonormal basis. This is the question that Andrey Rekalo addressed in another answer. share\|cite\|improve this answer Indeed, if completeness is required, I agree with the statement. – Raskolnikov Dec 9 '10 at 15:15 As already mentioned in the other answers and comments, this is true if the space is assumed to be complete (see Andrey Rekalo's answer), but not necessarily otherwise (see Carl Mummert's answer). In the complete case, more can be said. If the Hilbert space dimension (cardinality of a maximal orthonormal set) is infinite, then the linear dimension (cardinality of a maximal linearly independent set) is at least $\mathfrak{c}=2^{\aleph_0}=\|\mathbb{R}\|$. Of course, this doesn't directly tell you anything if the Hilbert space dimension is $\mathfrak{c}$ or greater, but in the case of separable Hilbert spaces like $\ell^2$ (as defined here), it tells you that not only does an orthonormal set not span, but no subset of cardinality less than $\mathfrak{c}$ can span. One way to see this is to consider the linearly independent set $\{(1,t,t^2,t^3,\ldots):-1\lt t\lt 1\}\subset\ell^2$. Since $\ell^2$ imbeds into every infinite dimensional Hilbert space as the closed linear span of any countably infinite orthonormal set, this also demonstrates the general fact. This and other proofs can be found in the solutions to Problem 7 of Halmos's Hilbert Space Problem Book, which I highly recommend. This statement also extends to Banach spaces. Strictly speaking, what I have said so far hasn't answered your question in the case of Hilbert space dimension greater than or equal to $\mathfrak{c}$. However, you can get an overkill solution to your question by taking a countably infinite subset $A$ of an orthonormal subset of an arbitrary Hilbert space $H$. If $M_0$ is the linear span of $A$ and $M=\overline{M_0}$ is the closed linear span of $A$, then $H=M\oplus M^\perp$, while the linear span of your orthonormal set is contained in $M_0\oplus M^\perp$, which is properly contained in $H$ because $M$ has higher dimension than $M_0$. ($M^\perp$ denotes the set of vectors orthogonal to every element of $M$, and $\oplus$ is being used here to denote internal direct sums.) All that was really needed here is that the linear dimension of $M$ is not countable, and this also follows from Baire's theorem. Andrey Rekalo gives a better, nonoverkill answer for the complete case. share\|cite\|improve this answer Your Answer
Sign up Here's how it works: 1. Anybody can ask a question 2. Anybody can answer I am new to this word.. This is not research level problem and it is soft question in nature. Just for curiosity, i am asking.. In literature, i am finding following words:(Wikipedia+ others). Soliton is a self-reinforcing solitary wave Solition is a phenomenon. Solition is a property Solitonic solution As wikipedia also says, single definition is difficult to find. Can somebody explain this term according to you... It will be better if you give the idea of Soliton more mathematically rather only intuitively. More precisely my question is WHAT IS SOLITON. share\|cite\|improve this question For what it's worth, here's the Oxford English Dictionary definition: "a travelling, non-dissipative wave which is neither preceded nor followed by another such disturbance." Citation: "solitary, adj.". OED Online. December 2011. Oxford University Press. 5 March 2012 <>;. – Tanner Swett Mar 5 '12 at 19:05 @TannerL Swett, so oxford definition matches with Wikipedia... Thanks for the commment. – zapkm Mar 5 '12 at 19:26 up vote 8 down vote accepted A soliton (at least in my field) is a 'self-similar solution' to a PDE. For instance a solution $(g_t)$ to the Ricci flow equation $$ \frac{\partial g }{ \partial t} = - 2 \mathrm{Ric}(g(t)) $$ is a Ricci soliton if it takes the form $g(t)= \alpha (t) \phi_t^* (g(0))$ where the $\alpha(t)$'s are scalars and the $\phi_t$'s are diffeomorphisms, i.e. the metric at time $t$ differs from the initial metric by the action of diffeomorphisms and/or dilation. share\|cite\|improve this answer Thanks.. i never thought this way for soliton... – zapkm Mar 5 '12 at 19:22 Dear Pradip There is the historical and theoretical survey "The Symmetry of Solitons" by Richard Palais. I have liked it very much, so I hope you can find it useful. share\|cite\|improve this answer Thanks for the link... i will look upon this.. – zapkm Mar 5 '12 at 19:23 Also in the Bulletin is Terry Tao's "Why are solitons stable"… – Willie Wong Mar 6 '12 at 7:58 Your Answer
LSEEK(2) NetBSD Programmer's Manual LSEEK(2) lseek, seek - reposition read/write file offset Standard C Library (libc, -lc) #include <unistd.h> lseek(int fildes, off_t offset, int whence); to the argument offset according to the directive whence. The argument pointer fildes as follows: plus offset bytes. plus offset bytes. point, subsequent reads of the data in the gap return bytes of zeros (un- til data is actually written into the gap). ated with such a device is undefined. Upon successful completion, lseek() returns the resulting offset location [EBADF] Fildes is not an open file descriptor. [ESPIPE] Fildes is associated with a pipe, socket, or FIFO. [EINVAL] whence is not a proper value, or the resulting file offset would be invalid. dup(2), open(2) The lseek() function conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 (``POSIX''). historical reasons. NetBSD 1.6 April 19, 1994 1 ©1994 Man-cgi 1.15, Panagiotis Christias <> ©1996-2016 Modified for NetBSD by Kimmo Suominen
Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman Sultan Sanjar and the Old Woman (click image to zoom-in) Miniatures, Gouache, 23.7x13.7 cm Origin: Iran, 1431-1431, Timurid Dynasty This is the only miniature illustrating the poem "The Treasury of Secrets" from the Hermitage's famous Persian manuscript of the Khamsa, an anthology of five poems by the 12th-century poet Nizami. In 1431 this manuscript of the Khamsa was copied out in Herat by the calligrapher Mahmud for Sultan Shahrukh , son of the legendary Tamerlaine . In this poem, written in 1173, Nizami expresses his admiration for the science of all sciences - wisdom. Nizami preaches a sermon close in content to the ideas of those sufis - representatives of the mystic trend in Islam - who fought against violence and arbitrary rule, who called on the wearers of the crown not to live in luxury but to care for their subjects, or else be threatened with divine retribution. The poem is a combination of various novellas and parables , a structure typical of literature of the Near and Middle East, The miniature illustrates the parable of the old woman and Sultan Sanjar. Once a poor old woman stopped the sultan and began to reproach him that he is not a ruler but a slave, for he knows only how to bring harm, but is weak when it comes to doing good. The artist follows Nizami's lines closely, showing the tiny old woman doubled over with age, her grey hair unkempt, in despair and anger grabbing the hem of the rich robe of Sultan Sanjar as he bends towards her. The scene is set against a background typical of 15th-century Persian miniatures, a desert-like landscape with scattered clumps of bright flowers and a cypress tree. Album: The Khamsa by Nizami School: Herat Theme: Literature Site map Albums Authors Countries Sources Epoches Exibitions Genres Personages Schools Styles Techniques Themes Types Workshops Image Use Policy
Web Results Human genetic variation Human genetic variation is the genetic differences both within and among populations. There ... Causes of differences between individuals include the exchange of genes during meiosis and various mut... Genetic differences between populations tend to be reduced by Gene flow tends to reduce diffences between populations. Race & Genetics FAQ - nchpeg Because genes are passed down from parents to offspring, diseases tend to ... has greatly reduced the prevalence of this disease in the Ashkenazi population. ... Most of the genetic differences between human populations today appear to ... The Modern View of Evolution - Estrella Mountain Community College Reduction or restriction of gene flow between populations is essential for the ... Assortative mating occurs when individuals tend to mate with those that have the ... or out of a population can breakdown genetic differences between populations. Problems with Small Populations Small populations are generally at a greater risk of extinction than large ... The rates at which genetic variability is added to a population by these two processes differ ... As noted in the figure below, the mutation rate would have to be between 10X ... Reduction of genetic variability in a population can lead to any or all of the ... Genetic Drift and Effective Population Size \| Learn Science at Scitable Note that the level of genetic variation within a population is dynamic: It .... Figure 4: The relationship between Ne and Nf in a population of 1000 mating ... will reduce Ne (the size of an ideal population that experiences genetic drift ... Consider that, depending on the measure used, randomly chosen humans tend to differ at .... Ch 6. Migration, Genetic Drift, Non-Random Mating Genetic drift - "In small populations, chance events produce outcomes that differ ... Migration - "In an evolutionary sense, the movement of alleles between populations" (p. ... If selection and migration tend to increase the frequencies of the same ... is stronger than selection, differences among populations will be re... Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations - NCBI DISCUSSIONS of genetic differences between major human populations have long .... Pairs of individuals are classified as “within population” or “between ..... rate with the same data, far more loci would be needed to reduce equation M43 ... climate change outcomes for tree populations - NCBI - National ... They do not account for population differences within the species range ... 2007a) , differences between leading and trailing edge populations (Hampe and Petit 2005), ... These sink populations tend to have higher mortality than local recruitment .... compromised fitness and reduced genetic variation, especially if competition ... Selective constraint, background selection, and mutation ... We find a strong relationship between effective population size and the depth of ... we detect differences between 'healthy' individuals within populations for the .... one (since sites with GERP < 1 tend to have no correlation with MAF and thus are ... see reduced overall MAF in the regions flanking genes in these population... More Info BIO Exam 3 Flashcards by ProProfs Experiments have demonstrated that the "words" of the genetic code (the units ..... Genetic differences between populations tend to be reduced by A) gene flow. Gene Flow - Differences, Genetic, Populations, and Genetic - JRank ... Gene flow is the transfer of genetic material between separate populations. ... When there is a great deal of gene flow between populations, they tend to be ... Gene flow and the limits to natural selection - ugr.es Under natural selection, individuals tend to adapt to their ... reproductive success across all populations tend to become .... genetic drift or by variation of selection pressure with distance. ..... they have to differ between habitats to reduce gene.
Turkey country profile • 30 June 2016 • From the section Europe Map of Turkey Once the centre of the Ottoman Empire, the modern secular republic was established in the 1920s by nationalist leader Kemal Ataturk. Progress towards democracy and a market economy was halting after Ataturk's death in 1938, and the army - seeing itself as guarantor of the constitution - repeatedly ousted governments seen as challenging secular values. Joining the European Union has been a longstanding ambition. Membership talks were launched in 2005, but progress has been slow, as several EU states have serious misgivings about Turkish EU membership. Kurds make up about a fifth of the population. Kurdish separatists who accuse the Turkish state of seeking to destroy their cultural identity have been waging a guerrilla war since the 1980s. Republic of Turkey Capital: Ankara • Population 74.5 million • Area 779,452 sq km (300,948 sq miles) • Major languages Turkish (official), Kurdish • Major religion Islam • Currency Turkish lira Getty Images President: Recep Tayyip Erdogan Image copyright Getty Images Recep Tayyip Erdogan was sworn in as president in August 2014, cementing his position as Turkey's most powerful leader. His victory in Turkey's first popular presidential election capped 12 years as prime minister in which the economy tripled in dollar terms, while fuelling fears of growing authoritarianism. Turkey is a parliamentary republic and the presidency largely ceremonial, so Mr Erdogan is seeking changes to the constitution to create an executive presidency. His ambitions were checked when his Islamist-rooted AK Party lost its parliamentary majority in June 2015, before regaining it in snap elections in November, called after efforts to form a coalition failed. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Turkey has a poor record on media freedom Turkey's airwaves are lively, with hundreds of private TV and radio stations competing with the state broadcaster, TRT. Television is by far the most influential news medium; both press and broadcasting outlets are operating by powerful business operators. For journalists, the military, Kurds and political Islam are highly-sensitive topics, coverage of which can lead to arrest and prosecution. Some of the most repressive restrictions have been lifted on the path to EU entry, but it remains a crime to insult the Turkish nation and president, and a wave of prosecutions of journalists under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has prompted new concern for press freedom. Some key dates in Turkey's history: 1453 - Sultan Mehmed II the Magnificent captures Constantinople, ending Byzantine Empire and consolidating Ottoman Empire in Asia Minor and Balkans. 15th-16th centuries - Expansion into Asia and Africa. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Istanbul's iconic Bosphorus Bridge links Asia and Europe 1683 - Ottoman advance into Europe halted at Battle of Vienna. Long decline begins. 1908 - Young Turk Revolution establishes constitutional rule, but degenerates into military dictatorship during First World War, where Ottoman Empire fights in alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. 1918-22 - Partition of defeated Ottoman Empire leads to eventual triumph of Turkish National Movement in war of independence against foreign occupation and rule of Sultan. 1923 - Turkey declared a republic with Kemal Ataturk as president. Soon afterwards it becomes secular. 1952 - Turkey abandons Ataturk's neutralist policy and joins Nato. 1960 - Army coup against ruling Democratic Party. 1974 - Turkish troops occupy northern Cyprus, partitioning the island. 1984 - Kurdish PKK group launches separatists guerrilla campaign which develops into a major civil war that simmers on for decades. 2011 - Syrian civil war breaks out, resulting in tension along the countries' border and a huge influx of refugees into Turkey. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Worshippers pray inside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul Related Internet links The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites
Definition of Ice 1. Water or other fluid frozen or reduced to the solid state by cold; frozen water. It is a white or transparent colorless substance, crystalline, brittle, and viscoidal. Its specific gravity (0.92, that of water at 4 degrees C. being 1.0) being less than that of water, ice floats. 2. Concreted sugar. 3. Water, cream, custard, etc., sweetened, flavored, and artificially frozen. 4. Any substance having the appearance of ice; as, camphor ice. 5. To cover with ice; to convert into ice, or into something resembling ice. 6. To cover with icing, or frosting made of sugar and milk or white of egg; to frost, as cakes, tarts, etc. 7. To chill or cool, as with ice; to freeze. More "Ice" Quotations Ice Translations ice in Afrikaans is ys ice in Danish is is ice in Dutch is ijsje, ijsco, ijs, consumptie-ijs ice in French is glace ice in German is Eis ice in Italian is ghiaccio, gelato ice in Norwegian is ise, is, glasere ice in Portuguese is gelo ice in Spanish is helado, hielo ice in Swedish is is, glass Copyright © 2001 - 2016 BrainyQuote
food stamp flickr The Cato Institute is out with an update to their 1995 study which purports to show that, in most states, welfare pays better than work. They add up benefits available through eight programs to a low-income woman with two children, and find total benefit values well in excess of full-time minimum wage work, or even, in some states, middle-skill work. The study is called "The Welfare-Versus-Work Tradeoff," and it's meant to show why people don't get off welfare. And it's B.S., for three reasons. 1. Very few people actually qualify for all eight of the programs Cato looks at. Particularly, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (cash welfare) and housing assistance can provide some very expensive benefits. But fewer than two million households get TANF and only about four million get housing assistance. It is much more typical for a welfare beneficiary to be getting SNAP (food stamps) and Medicaid (health insurance), but no assistance with housing or cash. So, the typical welfare benefit is much lower than Cato makes out, making staying on welfare less appealing. 2. Welfare benefits for single adults are much less generous than those for women with children. 3. Not all benefits are lost when a welfare recipient starts working. SNAP benefits phase out gradually with rising income. People who go back to work don't necessarily lose health benefits, either. Some get new health benefits through work. The children of low-income uninsured workers qualify for the Children's Health Insurance Program in most states. In some states, low-income working adults even qualify for Medicaid. So, going back to work doesn't mean nearly the loss of benefits that Cato implies. That said, poverty traps are real. This is the phenomenon of people losing benefits as they earn more income of their own. It's a problem that welfare programs need to be designed around, and there are two ways of mitigating it. One is to make benefits more generous by extending their phaseout ranges, so people don't lose as many benefits as they earn more income. That costs money. The other is to reduce benefits. That reduces the standard of living for the most vulnerable people in America. It's easier to make an argument for the latter approach when you have an economy that creates broad prosperity and makes it easy for people to find living-wage jobs if they are willing to work. We don't have that economy. This is the problem that conservatives and libertarians refuse to grapple with: If you're unwilling to support policies that promote macroeconomic stability, such as counter-cyclical fiscal and monetary policies, you're only making a more generous welfare state more morally necessary. Meanwhile, Democrats have implemented a reform that actually does help to address the poverty trap issue. The Affordable Care Act, when it's implemented next year, will make it possible for people on Medicaid to go back to work without fearing loss of health insurance. It will turn what benefit cliffs exist in the Medicaid program into a gradual slope, so nobody will have to fear that an extra dollar of income will make them uninsured. That is, the Affordable Care Act will do this except in Republican-led states that are rejecting the Medicaid expansion. In those states, the welfare-versus-work tradeoff will be more tilted toward welfare, and a cliff in Medicaid benefits will still be providing a disincentive to take a job. That's because conservatives and libertarians don't really care about the poverty trap, much as they may talk about it — they just hate spending money on the poor.
Why does Beowulf travel to the land of the Danes? 2 Answers \| Add Yours luannw's profile pic Posted on Beowulf travels to the land of the Danes, Hrothgar's land, because the stories of Grendel's attacks have spread. Grendel has been attacking Heorot for 12 years and so the word has reached the land of the Geats - Beowulf's land. Beowulf's father, Edgetho, had once fought alongside Hrothgar and Hrothgar had saved Edgetho. Beowulf, therefore, feels somewhat in debt to Hrothgar. This information comes to light when Beowulf arrives in the land of the Danes (approximately ll. 185-285). He also tells Unferth and some of the other Danes who are less thrilled to see Beowulf arrive that the Danes don't seem to be fighting back for themselves. Later, we find out that Beowulf wanted to make a name for himself so fighting and defeating a monster like Grendel would fulfill that. thetall's profile pic Posted on Beowulf goes to the land of the Danes to fight Grendel, the monster tormenting the warriors in that territory. Hrothgar the King of the Danes built the largest Mead hall Heorot to reward his warriors and his people. He organized feasts for them until one fateful night when Grendel attacked and killed many warriors and kept doing this every night until the warriors abandoned the hall. Poets spread the message about this horror until the news reached Beowulf and being a great warrior, he decided to challenge the monster. He sought counsel from his King and his people and it was agreed that he should pursue this creature. His past achievements in war with deadly creatures had brought praise to his kingdom and so this new challenge presented a similar opportunity. Beowulf also sought the glory that would come to him if he defeated Grendel. This is because it was in his nature to standout among his peers and fellow warriors. We’ve answered 328,077 questions. We can answer yours, too. Ask a question
Adverse Selection What it is: Adverse selection refers to an insurance company's coverage of life insurance applicants whose risk as policyholders, due to their way of life, is significantly higher than the company perceives. How it works (Example): Insurance companies grant life insurance coverage to applicants on the basis of such factors as age, health condition, and occupation. Policyholders are granted levels of coverage in return for a periodic (usually annual) cost called a premium. In order to compensate the company for the increased exposure from higher-risk policyholders, premiums rise commensurately with the risks associated with an applicant's age, health condition, and lifestyle. In adverse selection, life insurance applicants successfully foil a company's evaluation system in order to obtain higher coverage at lower premiums. This is accomplished by withholding or providing false information so that the applicant is characterized as being a significantly lower risk than in reality. For instance, if an applicant, in an attempt to pay a lower premium, manages to veritably report that he works in a one-story office when, in truth, he is a large-scale construction worker, the insurance company would be making an adverse selection by approving his application. Why it Matters: Called as such in reference to its adverse effects on an insurance company, adverse selection unknowingly opens insurance providers to high amounts of risk exposure without fair premium compensation. Insurers are advised to verify the legitimacy of information on applications as well as to place ceilings on coverage in order to deter applicants from falsifying and/or withholding information. Related Terms View All • Inactivity Fee A brokerage house earns revenue from fees and commissions charged on accounts. To hedge... • Jitney Let's say John Doe and Jane Smith are brokers. They are trying to drive up demand for... • Mortgage Rate Lock When a mortgage originator finds a competitive rate for a borrower, the rate is based on... • Zero Layoff Policy Let's assume Company XYZ is an organic grocery chain that has a zero layoff policy. The... • Like-Kind Exchange John Doe wants to sell his commercial property for $600,000, which he bought for $400,000...
NPR logo After 35 Years, Voyager Nears Edge Of Solar System • Download • Transcript After 35 Years, Voyager Nears Edge Of Solar System After 35 Years, Voyager Nears Edge Of Solar System • Download • Transcript The Voyager 1 spacecraft is now more than 11 billion miles away from Earth. It blasted off 35 years ago today on a mission to Jupiter and Saturn, and it carried a record filled with music and the sounds of our planet in case it encountered intelligent life on its journey. Scientists have been eagerly waiting for Voyager 1 to become the first human-made object to leave the solar system. As NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports, there are new signs that it might be getting close to that frontier. NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: The people who work on Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, have been involved in this program for a long time. Norman Ness is a professor at the University of Delaware. He recalls that he sent NASA a proposal for a Voyager instrument back in 1969. NORMAN NESS: And in December received a telegram from NASA that I had been selected for the Voyager mission. GREENFIELDBOYCE: He was ecstatic, because these probes were going to visit far-off giant planets. The prospect of leaving the solar system, and exploring interstellar space, was not really on his mind. NESS: Not only didn't we think the spacecraft might have problems living that long, we didn't know if NASA was going to continue to support the mission after the primary mission had been accomplished. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Well, NASA kept funding it. And even though Voyager's technology is primitive by today's standards - for example, each spacecraft has an on-board eight-track tape recorder - it just keeps working. NESS: We're getting anywheres from five to eight hours of data every day from each of these spacecraft, and it's quite remarkable. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Of the two, Voyager 1 is the farthest away from Earth. Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa has worked on the mission since the mid-1970s. He says Voyager 1's radio signals now take more than 16 hours to reach us. DON GURNETT: And you know, astronomers like to think of distances in terms of light years. Well, we're not anything like a light year, but we're now a substantial fraction of a light day from the Earth. And I just find that extremely impressive. GREENFIELDBOYCE: The question is when will Voyager 1 finally leave our solar system? It's already way beyond the planets - it even looked back and snapped photos of them, including a famous one of Earth, looking like a pale blue dot. For years, scientists have been waiting for Voyager 1 to exit the bubble of charged particles that stream out from our sun, then it would truly be in the space between stars. Just in the last couple months, researchers have been getting some tantalizing hints that Voyager 1 might be almost there. Ed Stone is the Voyager project scientist at Caltech. Last night in a public lecture at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, he showed off some brand new data. Voyager 1 has been seeing decreases in the number of low-energy particles that come from inside our solar system. At the same time, it's been seeing increases in the high-energy particles that come from outside our solar system. ED STONE: So there is some kind of connection between where Voyager is and the outside, which lets the particles that are inside out, and lets the particles outside in. GREENFIELDBOYCE: This is uncharted territory. No one really knows just what the boundary with interstellar space is like. So Stone can't say how long it will be before Voyager passes through it. STONE: I can't tell you whether it's days, months or years. I really can't tell you. That's the nice thing. From a science point of view, there is so much that we're learning that we had no way of really understanding before Voyager. GREENFIELDBOYCE: Still, scientists are excited that they could be getting close. Voyager 1 can keep talking to Earth for about another decade. That's how long the plutonium that powers it should last. After it falls silent, it will still keep going. But it will be tens of thousands of years before it gets anywhere close to another star. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
Definición de bivalve en inglés: Compartir esta entrada Pronunciación: /ˈbʌɪvalv/ An aquatic mollusc which has a compressed body enclosed within a hinged shell, such as oysters, mussels, and scallops. Also called pelecypod or lamellibranch. • Class Bivalvia (formerly Pelecypoda or Lamellibranchia). Oraciones de ejemplo • Shell fragments of bivalves and gastropods are common in Neogene shallow-water deposits. (also bivalved) 1(Of a mollusc or other aquatic invertebrate) having a hinged double shell. Oraciones de ejemplo • This makes brachiopods look superficially like bivalved molluscs (clams, oysters, etc.) • The hinge ligament of bivalve shell is an example of a complex development. 2 Botany Having two valves. Oraciones de ejemplo • The bean seed grows in a bivalve pod called a legume. • The soybean plant is called a legume because it produces a bivalve pod or fruit. For editors and proofreaders Saltos de línea: bi\|valve Compartir esta entrada ¿Qué te llama la atención de esta palabra o frase?
University of California Berkeley Researchers Create Portable Laser Backpack, Used to Map 3D Interiors Evan Selleck - Sep 9, 2010 While Google is busy mapping out the exterior world, where all our streets and buildings are, there hasn't been much work on the interior part of the whole thing. But, considering the amount of security issues that may be red flagged in any kind of effort, it will probably be a few years before something like this portable laser backpack, which is used to create 3D maps of internal spaces, sees the light of day in the private market. But, that doesn't mean the Air Force can't get their hands on it. The United States Air Force has just announced that a team of researchers based out of the University of California in Berkeley have created a laser backpack, which is about as portable as you might imagine. It's still bulky, sure, but at least it won't crush you. At least one of the researchers, a man named Avideh Zakhor, has been doing work of rapid generation of information pertaining to 3D models for quite some time, and has even done work on Google Earth's Cities in 3D Program, so he knows what he's doing. And, while Google may wish they could use something like this to map the internals of a restaurant somewhere, we don't really see that happening any time soon. Yet, as we mentioned above, the Air Force is an entirely different story. They want to get their hands on this technology, apparently, to map out battlefield locations. The branch of the military believes that Air Force personnel would be able to use the information gathered to prepare for missions better. The backpack itself utilizes all sorts of high-tech goodies. There are four cameras that record up, down, and on both sides of the wearer of the backpack at all times. The entire system is based on the Hokuyo scanning laser rangefinders. And then the whole thing gets figured out by a sensor fusion algorithm that was designed by Zakhor and other researchers. The cameras and algorithms work in conjunction to rapidly decipher the environment, and then showcase it in a photo-realistic 3D model at a later date. The system doesn't need GPS, either. Zakhor believes that every location on the planet, both interior and exterior, will be eventually mapped. He believes, honestly, that before you go anywhere in the future, you'll be able to bring it up online and take a look, no matter the location. A pretty hefty goal, we imagine, but as the technology gets better and we have better access, it may be possible. [via CNET] Must Read Bits & Bytes
Published on Published in: News & Politics • Be the first to comment • Be the first to like this No Downloads Total views On SlideShare From Embeds Number of Embeds Embeds 0 No embeds No notes for slide 1. 1. South African traditional marriage customs: Lobola and polygamySubmitted by Lana on Mon, 25/01/2010 - 14:27HomeMarriages are considered sacred in most societies, and especially so in the tradition-steepedcontinent of Africa. African weddings usually involve not just the coming together of the couple inquestion, but their extended families and sometimes entire communities, although traditions varyvastly across the continent. Traditional marriage practices in South Africa involve the customs of lobola and polygamy. Lobola: According to this ancient tradition, a man must pay a price to acquire the right to marry a woman. The practice continues to be followed extensively in contemporary Africansocieties. Lobola involves a complex, formal process of negotiation between the families of thebride and groom amid great ceremony, to arrive at a consensus on the price (traditionally paid innumber of cows) that the groom must pay the bride’s family.Many modern couples opt for cash instead of cows for the sake of convenience. This money can beused to help the bride set up her home; however, this is something that happens very rarely.Surprisingly, African customary law has advocates even among modern, educated women in SouthAfrica, many of whom believe that it provides them protection without hindering them in anysignificant way. In fact, women’s rights activists were among the greatest proponents of a new lawenacted in 2001 which recognises African customary law, in order to protect women living incommon-law unions and their children. Payment of the lobola, however, means that the bride ispaid for, and a divorce is not usually granted unless the bride’s family can repay the amount.Often, the lack of the means for repayment may force women to stay in unhappy or abusivemarriages. Although customary laws enjoy predominance over constitutional rights in severalAfrican countries, South Africa accords women strong constitutional protection.Polygamy: The same law of 2001, distasteful as it may seem to most modern women in otherparts of the world, also recognises polygamy – even though it is something that fewer and fewermodern South Africans practice. However, South African President Jacob Zuma’s recent marriagefor the fifth time has reignited discussion on the topic.While the press has been rather indulgent, there is open disapproval from some quarters. SouthAfrica’s AIDS scourge is attributed largely to sexual promiscuity, and the President’s examplecomplicates the process of educating the public on the importance of single-partner sexualrelationships in preventing the spread of the disease.In affirming gender equality as fundamental to South African democracy, the Constitution statesthat should there be a contradiction between customary law and the Bill of Rights, the lattershould take precedence. 2. 2. The practice of polygamy is in essence the practice of gender inequality. While all customarymarriages are required to be registered to ensure that each wife in a polygamous family has anequal right to property, this still does not address the issues of neglect, or the transmission ofinfections that polygamy may entail.White South Africans are more vocally disparaging of the practice, especially so of the President’santics. Besides, in a country where only half the population is female, the acquisition by a man offive or more women is also likely to create social imbalances by denying other eligible menpartners.Image source: Media Club South AfricaAlso see:Polygamy is way for husband to cheat on his wifeBride Price – An Alternative View PointLobola is sexisthttp://www.southafricaweb.co.za/article/south-african-traditional-marriage-customs-lobola-and-polygamyHow do Zulus explain polygamy?By Elizabeth DiffinBBC News Magazine 3. 3. South African president Jacob Zuma, on a visit to theUK, has been criticised by some in the British pressfor having three wives. But while the practice raiseseyebrows in the West, how is it justified in his homecountry?Trade talks and his nations hosting of the World Cup are on theagenda for Jacob Zumas three-day state visit to the UK. But interesthas mainly focused on his consort - ThobekaMadiba, the latestwoman to join his polygamous marriage.In the UK, to be married to more than one person at a time is illegal.But the Zulu ethnic group, of which Mr Zuma is part, practisespolygamy by tradition. This clash in attitudes dates from the 19thCentury, when white missionaries preached that conversion toChristianity entailed divorcing ones "extra" wives, saysNdelaNtshangase, a lecturer in the school of Zulu studies at theUniversity of KwaZulu-Natal.And British colonisers "pushed[monogamy] down the throats ofblack people" through taxes thatrose for each wife, and landallocations with insufficient spacefor polygamous family units, saysMr Ntshangase.However, polygamy in South President Zuma attributes hisAfrica is still a fact of life for many. polygamy to the Zulu cultureWhile urban Zulu communities have found it difficult to uphold thearrangement, those in the rural homelands have maintained thetradition. Muslim populations and other cultural groups in SouthAfrica also practice polygamy.While some in the British press have seized on Mr Zumas attitudesto marriage, he defends his private life as part of his culture."When the British came to our country they said everything we aredoing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way," he toldJohannesburgs Star newspaper this week. "I dont know why theyare continuing thinking that their culture is more superior thanothers."So how do they explain the tradition?Boy-girl balanceIn southern Africa, the population skews slightly female, says MrNtshangase, who says the male population is partly depleted by"unnatural deaths" in war and other dangerous activities. 4. 4. "If you say its one-to-one, you will have a big chunk of ladies whoarent going to have husbands. What do you do with them then?"But this gender imbalance argument holds no sway forProtasMadlala, an independent political analyst, who declares it"unsophisticated".Elders also use polygamy to warn young men that they could loseout on love if they dont behave."In order to win a girl, you must be a good boy," says MrNtshangase. "Responsible young men become responsiblehusbands."In Zulu culture, "every familymember must work for thebetterment of the family". And away to improve a familys statusand income is to add extramembers, he says, and adds thatadditional wives can beparticularly advantageous in anagricultural society.And polygamy offers women adegree of economic well-beingthey might not otherwise attain,says Mr Madlala. The presidents most recent wife"Polygamy fits into the socio- accompanied him on his state visiteconomic inequalities we have. It gives [the wives] insurance ofsorts."But the theory that polygamy favours equality for women holds littlewater for Leslie MxolisiDikeni, a research associate at the Universityof Pretoria."On paper there is total emancipation of women, but traditionalforms of polygamy are not allowing for that," he says. Even in so-called equal polygamous marriages, theres innate gender imbalancebetween the husband and his wives.Spectre of AidsSome of those who support polygamy believe a monogamoussystem would mean more unattached women, who would then haveaffairs with married men, says Mr Ntshangase. He claims that in apolygamous marriage, a woman will share her husband instead ofgetting divorced. "[Divorce] is another type of polygamous marriage.Its just not happening simultaneously or concurrently." 5. 5. But polygamy does not stop menand women straying. SouthAfricans who are uneasy abouttheir presidents lifestyle point tothe fact that he recently fatheredan illegitimate child, says MrMadlala.Nor does it necessarily mean an Under apartheid, polygamy thrived inend to separation - Mr Zuma has rural Zulu villagesalready been through one divorce.Even though polygamy is a part of its traditions, there is a newreality that raises questions about whether this lifestyle has a placein modern South Africa. More than 5 million people in South Africaare HIV positive - the most of any country in the world."South Africa is almost the Aids capital of the world," Mr Madlalasays. "Our president is not really a good model."Below is a selection of your comments.Polygamy is the future not the past. Women get to share not onlyone man but also a sisterhood with the other wives. One man ismore than enough. The women also get to share childcare and thechildren grow up in a larger social group where there is lesslikelihood of child abuse and neglect. I can see lots of advantages.David Cadogan, RichmondPolygamy is practiced more around the world than monogamy andhas been the case since modern humans evolved. The propensity tomate polygamously can be broadly described as a culturalpreference but this is really due to many factors largely dependenton the type of environment when these practices came about andwould have been genetically advantageous. While polygamy is notas beneficial in evolutionary terms to women as it is men (unless thewoman is the first wife) I would not say this is an example of theemancipation of women. It is too easy to be dismissive and overlymoralistic when it comes to practices which we are not used to.Whether President Zuma treats each wife equally or well is besidethe point and is somewhat irrelevant to the fact that he practicespolygamy.Suzannah Lipmann, London, UKWhy anyone would want more than one wife is beyond me, butthats the way of life in some countries and who are we to tell themthey are wrong? Funny as it may seem but we are not always right 6. 6. and have no right interfering in other peoples traditions. We may beopen to changing our whole way of life to accommodate every TomDick and Harry who complains about everything we do but thatsbecause we are weak and pathetic. What we should do is stand ourground and look after our own traditions. If foreigners dont likewhat we do, theyll just have to accept the way we are.Alastair, LondonWhy is it we consider Western culture the moral barometer to whichall other countries must adhere? The hegemony of Africa shouldhave ceased with the death of colonialism. Apparently our press stillbelieve themselves to be on a civilising mission, akin to Victorianmissionaries.R. Williams, LiverpoolIt is a debate that is set to continue, especially in a country withstrong Christian bias. The "wrong" thing, as far as the law andbigamy is concerned, is that a person can be prosecuted and sent tojail for having more than one wife in the UK - even if the wives livetogether and are completely happy with their situation and lifestyle.However, a married man can have many affairs with multiple womenwithout his spouses knowledge and, in the eyes of the law, he isdoing nothing legally "wrong".Masu, StocktonWhat concerns the South African taxpayer is not so much that thepresident is polygamous - but who is paying for the 4 wives (onedivorced) and 20 children? Given that the president has a trackrecord of unfortunate financial mismanagement, its doubtful that hecan afford his lifestyle on his salary. Where is the extra moneycoming from?Rob, Cape Town, South AfricaThis is one more example of the British press/media creating a moralpanic, and the west in particular pushing their values on to the restof the world. The Aids issue is not due to lax moral standards per sein third world countries, but as a result of lack of sufficientlyavailable medicines which are controlled by western pharmaceuticalcompanies and distribution of financial aid which is consistentlyreneged upon by the wealthy west. Anyone in todays world whosupports their own cultural identity and practices should becommended, not condemned. But that would not make good press.Arthur Hassall, Manchester. UKIt is an interesting point that the missionaries in the 19th centurywere encouraging people already in polygamous marriages to 7. 7. divorce their extra wives ... what happened to two "wrongs" dontmake a right?Gareth, LondonPolygamy is only legal in South Africa under certain circumstances.Generally polygamy is only a choice for people who have a muchmore rural/traditional upbringing. As a Christian I believe polygamyis a wrong choice to make, but I also have to recognise and respectthat it is not my place to judge. As a republican I dont believe theroyal family is justifiable, but I have to respect that it is firmlyentrenched in British culture and would have to treat the royal familywith respect as the constitutional Monarch. Why cant British peopletreat the South African Head of State with the same respect due himas the legitimate and duly elected President of a sovereign state?What is all the fuss about?Gary MorrisonBut what about the women? Are they only allowed one husband?Surely, if women are only allowed one husband but men are allowedseveral wives each, you would need more than a "slight skew" in thepopulation male : female ratio for there not to be very largenumbers of unattached men.Helen, Berkshire, UKI believe part of the origin of polygamy in Zulu culture was becausefor a long time it was a warrior culture in which many men died. Inthat circumstance, the mans brother would have to marry thewidow - so it was a way of ensuring women were provided for. Itsalso very much a status thing. I have a Zulu friend with more thanone wife. It shows he can afford a large household (he has over 25children) and because hes a member of the royal family, itsexpected of him.Deborah, LondonPolygamy is still part of Western culture, but there is a taboo onspeaking about it. Several of my friends are in polygamousrelationships where all partners are aware of the other peopleinvolved - this is not the same as having an affair, or cheating. Theyare not married, but that does not detract from the serious footingof the relationships - which have in some cases lasted for severalyears. Regarding the risks of Aids and HIV transmission - the Polypractitioners I know are some of the most fastidious practitioners ofsafe and protected sex. Moreso than many of the serial monogamypractitioners I know, who will have a series of liaisons with peoplewhose names they dont even know and wont be able to remember 8. 8. the following morning whether they even used protection.Kate Jones, Lancaster UKhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8549429.stmPolygamy in South AfricaA president who promotes traditionJacob Zuma is still the old-style marryingsortJan 7th 2010 \| johannesburg\| from the print edition Knees up, MrPresident!AFPDECKED out in a leopard-skin mantle and an animal-pelt loincloth together with whitedesigner sneakers, South Africa’s 67-year-old president, Jacob Zuma, celebrated his marriageto his third concurrent wife (and fifth bride in all) in a grand Zulu ceremony attended bysome 3,000 guests at his family home deep in rural KwaZulu-Natal. His latest wife,ThobekaMadiba, who calls herself a “socialite”, is the mother of three of his 19 officiallyacknowledged children by at least seven women. At least one other presidential fiancée issaid to be waiting in the wings.Some South Africans, three-quarters of whom profess to be Christian, are displeased. TheReverend Theunis Botha, the white leader of the tiny Christian Democratic Party, has beenquoted disparaging the event as “a giant step back into the dark ages” of South Africa’ssupposedly superstitious, ancestor-worshipping past. But most South Africans, while 9. 9. disapproving of multiple concurrent wives, enjoy their president’s unabashed embrace of hisZulu origins, beliefs and traditions, of which polygamy is an accepted part, though peoplepractise it less and less, not least because it is so expensive.Mike Siluma, a former editor of the Sowetan, a daily that is read mainly by blacks, points outthat South Africa is not the Western country so many take it to be, but a “dynamickaleidoscope of cultures, religions and traditions”. Many black South African Christians stillalso worship their ancestors, he notes. Most weddings mix the traditional with the Christian.Many people practise customary law alongside the Western kind and take traditional as wellas Western medicine. MrSiluma thinks the elevation of a Zulu from a peasant background tothe presidency of sub-Saharan Africa’s most sophisticated country may help revive some ofthe mores and cultures that had been sadly fading.In this section A long war of the waters Let my people stay Not so terrible after all? »A president who promotes traditionReprintsRelated items South Africas president: Still on a rollSep 24th 2009Related topics Polygamy Jacob Zuma South AfricaBefore MrZuma’s inauguration eight months ago people had fun speculating as to who of histhree wives would be the official First Lady. His shy first wife, known affectionately asMaKhumalo, whom MrZuma first met 50 years ago?Or one of the younger ones? All three,he determined, would be equal First Ladies. Each in turn has accompanied him on officialvisits. “There are plenty of politicians who have mistresses and children they hide so as topretend to be monogamous”, says MrZuma. “I prefer to be open. I love my wives.”His various paramours may not all be so easy-going. While MaKhumalo, whom MrZumadescribes as “wife, friend, sister and mother”, seemed happy to attend his latest nuptials,NompumeleloNtuli, at 34 the youngest of his wives, apparently boycotted the festivities. AndMrZuma’s third wife, Kate Mantsho, a former airline employee who bore him five children,committed suicide in 2000. His second wife, NkosazanaDlamini, mother of four of hischildren, divorced him in 1998, citing “irreconcilable differences”, but has remained a trustedpolitical ally. After a decade as foreign minister, she now serves in his cabinet as minister forhome affairs.Meanwhile, the indefatigable MrZuma has just completed an exchange of premarital giftswith Gloria BongiNgema, who works for IBM in Johannesburg and has a young son by thepresident. Eight years ago he also paid lobolo(bride wealth), the first step towards a 10. 10. traditional marriage, to the family of SebentileDlamini, a Swazi princess. She is still waitingher turn. http://www.economist.com/node/15213994South Africa’s polygamous presidentCarolyn Moynihan \| 6 Jan 2010 \| (2) Emailtags :AIDS, marriage, South Africa,If the family is the basic unit of society, and if South Africa President Jacob Zuma’sfamily is any kind of model, prospects of his country finding its way out of diseaseand chaos seem slight. President Zuma has just concluded a “traditional” (Africancustomary) wedding with his third concurrent wife.Thobeka Stacey Mabhija (Madiba), a Durban socialite, married Zuma in a civil ceremonya few years ago and has been living since then in the president’s homestead with secondwife, NompumeleloNtuli. Ntuli has borne him two children and Madiba three.The woman described as his “first wife”, SizakeleKhumalo, known as MaKhumalo,presumably also lives in the Zuma compound. She has no children and is extremely shy.As eldest wife (she is in her sixties) she should be in charge, but an expert says that ifyounger wives are better educated they can decide among themselves who will run theshow.But wait, there’s more. According to this commentator there have been two other wivesand still there are two would-be brides waiting in the wings. Zuma is said to have hadabout 18 children with various women.Zuma once told a television interviewer: “There are plenty of politicians who havemistresses and children that they hide so as to pretend they’re monogamous. I prefer tobe open. I love my wives and I’m proud of my children.”One wonders how mutual these sentiments are within the clan he is building. In anycase, what sort of father can he be to his children? Furthermore, isn’t Zuma’s polygamygiving quite the wrong example to a country that has the highest rate of HIV/AIDSinfection in the world? The government’s own AIDS programme encourages people tosleep with only one partner, and he is presumably sleeping with at least three.Opposition politicians say the president’s polygamy also creates a financial burden forthe country. Christian Democratic Party leader Rev Theunis Botha described the latestwedding as “a giant step back into the dark ages” and said such ancestral practices werekeeping Africa in superstition and poverty. He implied that the churches were not takinga stand against “ancestral worship” and all that goes with it.Wonder what Nelson Mandela thinks about it all… Uh-oh. He has been married threetimes -- but at least not concurrently, and his first wife is dead. Perhaps ArchbishopDesmond Tutu, who is monogamous, as one would expect, might have something tosay. Without a proper understanding of family life it is difficult to see how South Africacan make progress.Photo: President Jacob Zuma,seen with his three wives SizakeleKhumalo, right,NompumeloNtuli, left, and ThobekaMadiba.Photograph by: MIKE HUTCHINGSCredit: AP 11. 11. http://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/6339Women reject polygamy, choosing divorceAbdul Khalik, THE JAKARTA POST, JAKARTA \| Mon, 02/02/2009 9:29 AMA\|A\|A\|An increasing number of Muslim women are choosing to divorce their husbands rather than continue in apolygamous marriage, data from national Islamic courts show.The courts recorded that in 2006 there were nearly 1000 cases of divorce resulting from wives’ disagreeing withtheir husbands marrying another woman, an increase from figures in prior years.Director General for Islamic guidance at the Ministry for Religious Affairs Nasaruddin Umar said Sunday hebelieved the number of divorce cases linked to disputes over polygamous marriages increased again in 2008 andwould continue to rise throughout 2009.“There has been a significant increase in divorce because women have been rejecting polygamy in recent years,”he said.Muslim scholar SitiMusdahMulia said the data indicated Muslim women were becoming increasingly aware oftheir rights and also more economically independent.“The data shows women are now daring to fight for their rights and reject male domination. They are now saying,What is the point in continuing a marriage when I am miserable", she said.Siti, a lecturer at the State Islamic University in Jakarta, said women were becoming more independent andeducated, two factors leading to a greater sense of worth and place.She said Muslim women were becoming increasingly aware of their rights and potential through the tirelessefforts of NGOs and women activists who have launched campaigns against polygamy.“This is a good sign. Efforts by organizations to raise awareness surrounding womens rights has begun to payoff, even with discussions surrounding polygamy seeing a revival among Muslims with the release of the movieAyat-ayatCinta (Verses of Love),” said Legislator NursyahbaniKatjasungkana of the National Awakening Party(PKB).Verses of Love, a film about the conditions experienced by women in polygamous relationships, was one ofIndonesias blockbuster films last year. Along with millions who flocked to see it, PresidentSusiloBambangYudhoyono and Vice President JusufKalla, also made prominent appearances at cinemas to seethe flick.Many high-ranking officials praised the film while activists accused it of acting as propaganda encouragingpolygamy.Meanwhile, polygamy is on the rise across Indonesia. 12. 12. The Legal Aid Foundation of the Indonesian Womens Association for Justice (LBH APIK) received 87 reports ofpolygamy last year, up from 16 in 2007.http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/02/02/women-reject-polygamy-choosing-divorce.html
Astronomers discover planet that shouldn't be there Posted by TG Daily Staff Weighing in at 11 times Jupiter's mass and orbiting its star at 650 times the average Earth-Sun distance, planet HD 106906 b is unlike anything in our own Solar System and throws a wrench in planet formation theories. "This system is especially fascinating because no model of either planet or star formation fully explains what we see," said Vanessa Bailey, who led the research. Bailey is a fifth-year graduate student in the UA's Department of Astronomy. "A binary star system can be formed when two adjacent clumps of gas collapse more or less independently to form stars, and these stars are close enough to each other to exert a mutual gravitation attraction and bind them together in an orbit," Bailey explained. "It is possible that in the case of the HD 106906 system the star and planet collapsed independently from clumps of gas, but for some reason the planet's progenitor clump was starved for material and never grew large enough to ignite and become a star." "In our case, the mass ratio is more than 100-to-1," she explained. "This extreme mass ratio is not predicted from binary star formation theories – just like planet formation theory predicts that we cannot form planets so far from the host star." This system is also of particular interest because researchers can still detect the remnant "debris disk" of material left over from planet and star formation. "Systems like this one, where we have additional information about the environment in which the planet resides, have the potential to help us disentangle the various formation models," Bailey added. "Future observations of the planet's orbital motion and the primary star's debris disk may help answer that question." UA astronomy professor and MagAO principal investigator Laird Close said: "MagAO was able to utilize its special Adaptive Secondary Mirror, with 585 actuators, each moving 1,000 times a second, to remove the blurring of the atmosphere. The atmospheric correction enabled the detection of the weak heat emitted from this exotic exoplanet without confusion from the hotter parent star." "Clio was optimized for thermal infrared wavelengths, where giant planets are brightest compared to their host stars, meaning planets are most easily imaged at these wavelengths," explained UA astronomy professor and Clio principal investigator Philip Hinz, who directs the UA Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics. The team was able to confirm that the planet is moving together with its host star by examining Hubble Space Telescope data taken eight years prior for another research program. Using the FIRE spectrograph, also installed at the Magellan telescope, the team confirmed the planetary nature of the companion. "Images tell us an object is there and some information about its properties but only a spectrum gives us detailed information about its nature and composition," explained co-investigator Megan Reiter, a graduate student in the UA Department of Astronomy. "Such detailed information is rarely available for directly imaged exoplanets, making HD 106906 b a valuable target for future study."
W3a2 - Descendants of Marie Marguerie The Descendants of Marie Marguerie W3a2 Haplogroup HVR1: 16209C 16223T 16255A 16292T 16519C - HVR2: 73G 119C 189G 195C 204C 207A 263G 309.1C 315.1C Marie Marguerie ~~ Alphabetic Index ~~ Haplogroup W Homepage Rouen at the time of Marie's childhood Marie Marguerie was the founder of the 'French W' haplotype lineage in America. Her descendants, through mitochondrial DNA testing after 2000, began to identify their common ancestor and link up their genealogies. Marie was born in Rouen, France, and emigrated America in 1641. Her family members lived hard and but colorful frontier lives in New France. They survived Indian raids, fought wars with other Europeans, and faced at times near extinction of their colony. Follow the links to read the full story of Marguerie's life, that of her brother, Francois Marguerie, husbands Jacques Hertel and Quentin Moral, her son Francois Hertel, and her daughters Marguerite and Madeleine Hertel, and Marie-Jeanne, Therese, Gertrude, and Marthe Moral. The first member of what is referred to as the W haplogroup, whom we refer to as Wilma, was born around 17,000 years ago, probably in what is now northwest India or northern Pakistan. This was a period of cold known as the Last Glacial Maximum. Migration of people outside of the W homeland was blocked to the north by extremely arid arctic deserts. As the climate began warming, around 11,000 years ago, nomadic hunters expanded into these areas, which were becoming grasslands. The existing modern subgroups emerged in the area between the Caspian and Aral Seas during this period. A W3a2 lineage with the 5291 coding region mutation and distinctive 16209 and 16255 HVR1 mutations emerged between the Caspian and Aral Seas between 12,000 and 6,000 years ago. One branch with an additional 153 mutation in HVR2 is found today in Turkmenistan. Another lineage migrated north of the Caspian and Black Seas. Around 6000 years ago it split. One branch, with the 16192 HVR1 and 152 HVR mutations, moved into the Ukraine and later into the Tatras Mountains of Poland / Slovakia as part of the Lemo ethnic group. Another branch, with additional 930 coding region and 119 194 HVR2 mutations moved south into Romania, and then probably along the Danube, eventually reaching the area of Rouen, France. From here what seems to be a single emigrant ancestor, Marie Marguerie, migrated to Quebec in 1641, ancestering hundreds of thousands of descendants in the United States and Canada. The differences in Marie Marguerie's mtDNA code in the Highly Variable Regions 1 and 2, in comparison to what is known as the Cambridge Reference Sequence, were: HVR1: 16209C 16223T 16255A 16292T 16519C HVR2: 73G 119C 189G 195C 204C 207A 263G 309.1C 315.1C An additional change occurred at 309.2C on one branch of the family sometime between 1710 and the present. Here are the lineal female descendants of Marie Marguerie as identified by Haplogroup W members to date: Here are all of the female ancestors and descendants of Marie Marguerie identified to date known to have her mtdna haplotype (in order of known or approximate birth year): Download Complete Gedcom Some images on these pages are from the film Black Robe, a portrayal of the difficult life of the Jesuit missionaries and first settlers of New France. Comments? Corrections? E-mail Pausanias My Internet Pages: Encyclopedia Astronautica The Cid Home Page F-20 Tigershark Home Page W Haplogroup Home Page
Printer Friendly Computing 'fusion trees' to explode barriers. Most computers spend only a small fraction of their time as calculators. Instead, they serve as gigantic filing systems, searching for records or sorting data into manageable forms. Now, two computer scientists have discovered a method for hurdling a theoretical barrier that appeared to limit how fast a computer can sort or search. Developed by Michael L. Fredman of the University of California, San Diego, and Dan E. Willard of the State University of New York at Albany, this mathematical recipe, or algorithm, theoretically could speed the process of shuffling data by circumventing a key step in traditional sorting and searching methods. Whereas standard methods compare two numerically encoded items at a time, the new approach provides a way to compare many numbers at once. Although not yet applicable to any practical situation, this theoretical result overturns long-held notions, described in nearly every computer-science textbook, concerning the speed of certain algorithms. "When Fredman and I originally made this discovery, people continually asked us where we were cheating," Willard says. Computer scientists have generally assumed that sorting involves successively comparing two items or numbers at a time to see which one should precede the other. In the worst possible case for a given selection of items, such a process requires making a specific number of comparisons that can be calculated for any number of items. That number represents a kind of minimum speed limit for sorting. In effect, Fredman and Willard found a way to raise that minimum speed limit. Instead of relying solely on comparisons of number pairs, they manipulate the data and organize the numbers into a new form, dubbed a "fusion tree," which enables them to compare one number against many others during a single computational step. A saving results because the number of instructions needed to manipulate the data is less than the number of comparisons normally required in sorting. The algorithm developed by Fredman and Willard performs this feat by considering only a small portion of the string of ones and zeros, or bits, used to express each number. "We noticed that when you want to compare one number with several, you don't need all the bits of each of the numbers you are comparing," Willard says. Their sorting method provides a way to select the relevant bits from a given set of numbers, group these subsets into a single expression and perform certain arithmetical operations to make multiple comparisons in a single step. A similar approach raises the minimum speed limit for searching. At present, the new algorithms significantly outpace standard methods only when the number of items in the database is sufficiently large. "The complicated nature of these algorithms, as they are currently constituted, does not allow for improved efficiency unless they are being applied to vastly large amounts of data," Fredman says. "Nevertheless, these results suggest that future avenues of research may eventually benefit from the discovery." That research could lead to practical, efficient methods for sorting items in databases much larger than any in existence today. Fredman and Willard are also exploring the possibility that their approach can speed other algorithms developed in the past to solve various problems, such as finding the shortest or least costly telephone or transportation network to link a number of cities. "Their work . . . will have profound influence on theoretical computer science for years to come," comments B. Gopinath of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. A paper describing the new algorithms has been accepted for publication in the JOURNAL OF COMPUTER AND SYSTEM SCIENCES. COPYRIGHT 1991 Science Service, Inc. Article Details Printer friendly Cite/link Email Feedback Title Annotation:an algorithm that speeds up how fast computers can sort information Author:Peterson, Ivars Publication:Science News Date:Jun 29, 1991 Previous Article:Do some SIDS victims actually suffocate? Next Article:Record-breaking brightness poses enigma. Related Articles A parallel path for speedy solutions. Record speedups for parallel processing. Quantum-quick queries: using quantum computation, in theory, to speed up database searches. Determine product quality reliably. Michael Joo. (Reviews). Use of relational and conceptual graphs in supporting e-learning tasks. Mentor Graphics Announces New Bit-Accurate C++ Datatypes that Accelerate Algorithm Validation by 10x.
The sense of rap meaning a blow or strike is probably echoic in origin. Much like tap and clap, it represents the sound of the blow. The earliest citation in both the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary is from the poem Roland and Vernagu, found in the Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates MS 19.2.1), which was copied c. 1330. The passage depicts a battle between the knight Roland and the giant Vernagu: Þai gun anoþer fiȝt, And stones togider þrewe. Gode rappes for þe nones, Þai ȝauen wiþ þe stones, That sete swithe sore. (They began another fight, and together threw stones. For the moment, they gave good raps with the stones very violently in that place.) The verb appears a few decades later. This basic sense of a blow has spawned three metaphorical senses that are in common use today. (There are lots of different senses, but I’m focusing on these three that are probably of the most interest.) A rap can also be a criminal charge or accusation, a discussion, or a genre of music. The sense of rap, meaning a criminal charge comes from the sense of a blow or strike. Hugh Tootell, under the pseudonym Charles Dodd, used rap over the knuckles metaphorically in his 1715 The Secret Policy of the English Society of Jesus: His Holiness himself [...]acquitted the appealing Clergy in a special Brief, and reprimanded the Arch Priest [...] You also, reverend Father, have a sensible rap over the Knuckles in the same Brief. And several decades later we have the lone rap being used metaphorically to mean a rebuke. From a 1777 use published by the American Pioneer (Cincinnati) in 1843: The post master general [...] has lately had a rap, which I hope will have a good effect. By the twentieth century, the term had moved into North American criminal slang. A rap could be a prison sentence, as used by C. L. Cullen in his 1900 Tales of Ex-Tanks: It was my first rap at Milwaukee. Or in the 1935 Ellery Queen novel The Spanish Cape Mystery: You’re in a tough spot. Do you know what the rap for blackmail is in this State? But it could also mean a criminal accusation or charge, as in Hutchins Hapgood’s 1903 Autobiography of a Thief: “What makes you look so glum?” [...] “Turned out of police court this morning.” “What was the rap, Mike?” “I’m looking too respectable. They asked me where I got the clothes.” The term rap sheet, meaning a police record of a person’s criminal arrests and charges dates to at least 1949. Some incorrectly believe this use is from an acronym for record of arrests and prosecutions, but while you can find this etymology in police manuals and forms, it is a backronym and not the origin of rap. Another false belief is that this criminal sense of rap comes from counterfeiting and carries a connotation of the criminal charge being false. Rap did once refer to a counterfeit coin. This slang sense probably comes from the Irish rapaire. These counterfeit coins were used as currency in eighteenth-century Ireland due to a scarcity of copper. Jonathan Swift refers to them in his 1724 Letter to the Shop-Keepers of Ireland Copper halfpence or farthings [...] have been for some time very scarce, and many counterfeits passed about under the name of raps. But this sense was dying out in the nineteenth century when the criminal sense of rap developed. The connection to the counterfeiting sense is due to the phrase bum rap, meaning a false criminal charge, but the use of bum indicates that a rap is not necessarily, or even usually, false. The sense of to rap, meaning to speak arose in the sixteenth century, originally meaning to speak sharply, quickly, or vigorously, as if one’s words were blows. It was commonly used in reference to swearing an oath. Thomas Wyatt writes in 1541: I am wonte some tyme to rappe owte an othe in an erneste tawlke. By the eighteenth century it was being used in criminal slang, meaning to give evidence, often to inform on another. In 1728 criminal James Dalton wrote a Genuine Narrative of this crimes in which he said: The Whores are our Safe-guard; [...] they’ll rap for us. And Francis Grose’s 1785 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue has: TO RAP. To take a false oath; also to curse. He rapped out a volley; i. e. he swore a whole volley of oaths. This criminal slang ties in with and may have influenced the previously discussed sense of a criminal charge. Parallel to this criminal sense, the word also developed a sense of ordinary speech or conversation. Joseph Ritson writes in a 1787 letter: I shall be most glad of my Lords arrival if it were only for the raps you promise me. And R. Blakeborough’s 1898 Wit, Character, Folklore and Custom of the North Riding of Yorkshire has: Lets ‘ev a pipe an’ a bit o’ rap. By the beginning of the twentieth century this sense had crossed the Atlantic and became embedded in African-American speech. F. H. Tillotson’s 1909 How to Be a Detective explains: “Rap” means to speak. If you “rap” to a man you speak to him or recognize him. In African-American use the verb could also mean to impress via a verbal display. Nelson Algren writes in Playboy in 1957: People like to say a pimp is a crime and a shame. But who’s the one friend a hustling broad’s got? [...] Who puts down that real soft rap only you can hear to let you know your time is up and is everything alright in there Baby? In 1965, Eldridge Cleaver, a leader of the Black Panther Party, used rap to mean casual conversation in a letter: In point of fact he is funny and very glib, and I dig rapping (talking) with him. Today, this use of the word comes across as dated, hopelessly associated with the counterculture of the 1960s. The musical sense of rap flows out of the speech sense, a reference to the rhythmic delivery of the lyrics. The earliest citation in the OED is from the 5 May 1979 issue of Billboard: Young DJs like Eddie Cheeba, DJ Hollywood, DJ Starski, and Kurtis Blow are attracting followings with their slick raps [...] Tapes of Hollywood’s raps are considered valuable commodities by young blacks. He generally works with Cool DJ AJ, who does not rap but is a master of B-beats. In September of that year the Sugarhill Gang released their single Rapper’s Delight, which had the lyrics: Now, what you hear is not a test—I’m rappin’ to the beat, And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet. The Sugarhill Gang is often credited with coining this particular sense of rap, but while they were one of the first to use it in published form, and perhaps were the first to use the word in song lyrics, they were simply using a word that was familiar in their musical circle. By the following year rap had become the name for the musical genre. Middle English Dictionary, 2001, s. v. rappe (n.); rappen (v.(1)) Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2008, s. v. rap, n.2; rap, v.2; rap, n.4 [Discuss this post] Powered by ExpressionEngine Copyright 1997-2016, by David Wilton
Aim higher, reach further. Who Wins Depends on Who Votes One thing can be said about midterm elections: The electorate is smaller, whiter and older than in presidential elections. Other than that, it is up to the candidates and their parties to fill in the blanks as to the size and even the composition of the vote. In midterm elections, turnout is roughly two-thirds as large as the previous presidential election. Given that 131 million Americans cast ballots in 2008, about 90 million voters would be expected to participate in next week’s balloting. But in a nation with a voting-age population more than twice as large, the question is which 90 million will choose to vote Nov. 2. In 2002, when Republicans held their House majority, more self-identified Republicans than Democrats cast congressional ballots. In 2006, when Democrats regained control of Congress, the partisan trend was reversed: More self-described Democrats than Republicans participated. The 2006 election turned out to be the second congressional landslide in a dozen years. In 1994, Republicans gained more than 50 seats and won control of the House for the first time in more than four decades. In 2006, Democrats picked up 31 seats, giving them a House majority for the first time since ’94. A Party Surge In each case, the winning party surged at the polls, while the losing party saw the number of ballots cast nationally for their House candidates decline from the previous midterm election. In 1994, the GOP congressional vote zoomed upward by more than 9 million votes from 1990, while the Democratic tally declined by 400,000. The result: a GOP landslide of epic proportions. In 2006, the dynamic was similar. This time Democrats gained 8.5 million House votes from the post-9/11 midterm of 2002, while the GOP lost 1.5 million votes. The outcome was a wave not quite as large as 1994, but big enough to sweep the Democrats back into power on Capitol Hill. Many observers are expecting 2010 to be another “big wave” election in the mode of 1994. But if Democrats hope to survive the voting next month, they will have to do what the Republicans did in 1982 and turn out their base in reasonably large numbers. President Ronald Reagan and his GOP allies that year faced an economy basically as bad then as it is now, with the election-eve unemployment rate topping 10%. In his campaigning, Mr. Reagan pointed to the prospect of a brighter future and urged the GOP base to “Stay the Course.” It was an admonition that helped draw Republicans to the polls. While the Democrats ultimately gained more than six million House votes from the previous midterm, Republicans increased their total by more than three million. Electoral disaster was averted for the GOP. They lost 26 House seats in 1982, but it could have been worse, much worse. Two-Pronged Mobilization Democrats of late have been employing a two-pronged mobilization strategy when it comes to the party’s biggest names. President Barack Obama has been focusing much of his campaign time in “blue” states, where there are large numbers of Democratic voters to motivate. Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton has spent much of his energy boosting Democratic candidates in “purple” and “red” America, where he is generally viewed these days as far more popular than Mr. Obama. At the same time, Democratic strategists are also trying to expand the electorate. In 2008, they did just that, successfully enlisting the support of newly registered young, Hispanic and African-American voters to back Mr. Obama. But the president is not on the ballot this year. And even with Mr. Obama campaigning on college campuses and before minority audiences, it will be difficult to motivate these traditionally low-voting groups to turn out for other Democratic candidates in a midterm. The Democrats won in 2006 by mobilizing the party’s base and registering a big advantage among independents. But the size of the youth and minority vote that year hardly changed at all from the pro-Republican election of 2002, and was noticeably below the levels when Mr. Obama ran in 2008. In the last presidential election, 18% of all voters were under 30, compared with 12% in the 2006 midterm. African Americans cast 13% of the vote in ’08, compared with 10% two years earlier. And Hispanics comprised 9% of voters in 2008, compared with 8% in 2006. In short, these new voters are a thin reed on which to peg the Democrats’ electoral chances in 2010. But the combination of a reasonable turnout from the Democratic base and help on the edges from youth and minorities may be just enough to keep the Democrats from being buried next week under a congressional landslide. We will know soon enough. Write to Rhodes Cook at Show More Archives Popular on WSJ
Can we ever be certain about scientific theories? The commenter says: I would like to address just two points: What does it mean to “test” a theory? And can scientists ever “verify” a theory and “be certain” about it? This means, however, that people who are opposed to a theory can always point to at least one particular result that has not been directly observed and claim that the theory has not been ‘verified’ or ‘proven.’ This is the strategy adopted by ID supporters to attack evolutionary theory. But using this kind of reasoning will result in every single theory in science being denied scientific status. In the case of historical sciences, however, observations are used to unearth data that are pre-existing but as yet unknown. Hence the ‘predictions’ may be more appropriately called ‘retrodictions’, in that they predict that you will find things that already exist. For example, in cosmology the retrodictions were the existence of a cosmic microwave background radiation of a certain temperature, the relative abundances of light nuclei, and so forth. The discovery of the planet Neptune was considered a successful ‘prediction’ of Newtonian theory, although Neptune had presumably always been there. The testing of a historical science is analogous is to that of the investigation of a crime where the detective says things like “If the criminal went through the woods, then we should be able to see footprints.” This kind of evidence is also historical but is as powerful as those of futuristic predictions, so historical sciences are not necessarily at a lower level of credibility than experimental sciences. Theories in cosmology, astronomy, geology, and evolution are all tested in this way. As Ernst Mayr (who died a few days ago at the age of 100) said in What Evolution Is (2001): “Evolution as a whole, and the explanation of particular evolutionary events, must be inferred from observations. Such inferences must be tested again and again against new observations, and the original inference is either falsified or considerably strengthened when confirmed by all of these tests. However, most inferences made by evolutionists have by now been tested successfully so often that they are accepted as certainties.” (emphasis added). In saying that most inferences are ‘accepted as certainties’, Mayr is exaggerating a little. Ever since the turn of the 20th century, it has been accepted that scientific knowledge is fallible and that absolute certainty cannot be achieved. But scientists do achieve a remarkable consensus on deciding at any given time what theoretical frameworks they have confidence in and will be used to guide future research. Such frameworks have been given the name ‘paradigms’ by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970). When scientists say they ‘believe’ in evolution (or the Big Bang), the word is being used in quite a different way from that used in religion. It is used as shorthand to say that they have confidence that the underlying mechanism of the theory has been well tested by seeing where its predictions lead. It is definitely not “merely a theory and a model” if by the word ‘merely’ the commenter implies a theory that is unsupported or untested. Leave a Reply
Sign up Here's how it works: 1. Anybody can ask a question 2. Anybody can answer What energy is being transformed to heat when you burn a candle? share\|cite\|improve this question This would be chemical energy that is converted to heat. The heat from the wick melts the wax which gets absorbed in the wick and then gets burnt (which is really oxidation) to produce heat energy. share\|cite\|improve this answer ""The heat from the wick melts the wax "" Nonsense! The heat conduction by the fabric of the wick is much too small! The wax is molten by radiated heat (IR) ! ""the wax which gets absorbed in the wick"" another nonsense, look up meaning of "absorbed". – Georg May 21 '11 at 9:57 Thanks for the clarification. You are right -- its radiated heat. I learned something from you, bow in your general direction, and stand corrected. – Sai May 21 '11 at 15:16 @Georg: remember that being right doesn't entitle you to be rude ;-) – David Z May 22 '11 at 2:46 @David: Thanks. Anyway I learned something and got a chance to use a Monty Python reference. So not complaining :) – Sai May 25 '11 at 1:23 The energy transforms from chemical energy to heat and light energy. Because when the candle burns a chemical reaction occurs, and produces heat and light. share\|cite\|improve this answer Not an explanation – JQK Mar 17 at 0:20 You need to provide more detail about what happens in a chemical reaction. – Bill N Mar 17 at 3:48 Your Answer
Was the United States justified in their imperialistic policies of the late 1800s and early 1900s? 5 Answers \| Add Yours martinjmurphy's profile pic Posted on At the time, the U.S. felt that their imperialistic policies were justified. Whether people today agree or disagree is another question. But in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, the U.S. felt it was necessary for several reasons. There were economic considerations. Many felt that the United States economy could only grow if it gained new foreign markets and raw materials from foreign acquisitions. Building up trade also meant having a strong navy to control the world’s sea lanes, which also meant having bases and fueling stations throughout the Pacific. Another justification for imperialistic policies was the idea of that the U.S. held a special place in the world and that it was an obligation of the U.S. to spread its ideals to the rest of the world. These were some of the justifications for U.S. imperialism in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Top Answer pohnpei397's profile pic Posted on Of course, this is simply a matter of opinion. And it must be said that it is a complex question as well since the US undertook imperialism in a wide variety of areas, from Latin America all the way out to the Philippines. I would tend to say that yes, the United States was justified. I have two general reasons for saying this. First, if the US had not been imperialistic, the places it took would not have remained free (in my opinion). For example, if the US had not annexed Hawaii, it seems likely that the British would have. Or if the US had allowed the Philippines to become independent, it seems likely that some other country would have taken those islands. So it is not as if only the US stood between various areas and their freedom. Second, although it is not "correct" to say so, I think that many of these areas were not really ready for self government. (I am of Filipino descent so I think I should be exempted from charges of racism when I say this.) If the US had left these countries alone, would the lives of their people have been better? It seems unlikely to me. So I do not believe that the US hurt these countries by acting imperialistically. lprono's profile pic Posted on While the Washington Post detected in an article on the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War "the taste of empire . . . in the mouth of the people", several intellectuals of the period spoke up against American imperialism. These included Mark Twain, William Jennings Bryan, Jane Addams and philosopher William James. Several of those who thought the United States was not justified in pursuing an imperialist course cited the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Imperialism implied the conquest of people against their will and thus it violated the value of self-determination that had given birth to the United States. James went as far as saying that the United States was betraying its cultural and historical heritage. Another argument against imperialism was that the acquisition of new markets could take place without necessarily imposing American rule on foreign countries. Those speaking out against imperialist policies were also worried that because the President as Commander in Chief could dispatch troops overseas without seeking Congressional approval, the constitutional checks-and-balances system would be easily subverted. akannan's profile pic Posted on I think that any nation's relationship to imperialism and colonialism is directly dependent on how one views the reality of the time period. From the point of view who were colonized, I think a strong case could be made that the United States was not justified. Given the amount of public dissent, while not overwhelming but still present, that was in America at the time, a case to that effect could still be made. I think that the government felt that it was in their interest to pursue imperialistic policies in at the turn of the century for a variety of national security and economic security based reasons. Whether or not one accepts these might be another issue. Much of the foreign policy that drove expansion was influenced heavily by economic interests and business voices of the time period. Some have argued that this might not provide justification for the investment of foreign policy and military endeavor, while others argue that such moves were of vital importance to the sustaining of the new nation. I think that, as previously noted, how one feels on this depends largely on the criteria used for assessing whether or not the business element is an appropriate rationale for expansion. geosc's profile pic Posted on In my opinion, those areas of the world that the U.S. dominated, would have been dominated by another imperialistic country if the U.S. had not dominated them. But, if the U.S. had of stayed out of the imperial business, its plutocrats would have been sufficiently wealthy anyway; what they wanted was to be sinfully wealthy. However that may be, the U.S. did have extensive trade relations that did not involve imperialism (if you disregard the imperialistic, domestic-industry-protecting-tariff that was imposed upon American consumers), and the sea routes over which this trade passed, needed to be protected. Some of the islands in the Pacific, that the U.S. acquired, were acquired for harbours and coaling stations for U.S. merchant ships and the U.S. war ships that protected them. We’ve answered 328,065 questions. We can answer yours, too. Ask a question
John S. Barry John S. Barry, who died on 3 July aged 84, is credited with turning WD-40 into a household name. Employees of what was then the Rocket Chemical Co. in San Diego were selling their rust-preventer out of car trunks when Barry joined in 1969 as president and CEO. WD-40 was used to coat missiles but also had a smaller following among consumers who used it to lubricate everything from bicycle chains to fishing reels. Barry, who held a business degree from MIT, suggested renaming the firm after its product and went on to help build the company's place in the global market. WD-40 was invented in 1953 when Rocket staff set out to develop a line of rust-prevention solvents and degreasers for the aerospace industry. It took them 40 attempts to work out the water displacement formula; the name WD-40 stands for "water displacement, formulation successful in 40th attempt."
NPR logo Q&A: The Situation in Myanmar Q&A: The Situation in Myanmar NPR Video on Protests Myanmar Map i Lindsay Mangum, NPR Myanmar Map Lindsay Mangum, NPR President Bush has imposed new U.S. sanctions on the military rulers of Myanmar, also known as Burma, in an effort to stop their violent repression of anti-government demonstrators, led by Buddhist monks. Here's some background on the country and its politics: Which is it, Burma or Myanmar? The country was known as Burma when it was a British colony, and became the Union of Burma when it achieved independence in 1948. In 1989, the military junta adopted the name Myanmar, which stems from one of the country's literary names in the Burmese language. The move was part of an effort to eradicate traces of colonialism, and it also involved changing the name of the principal city from Rangoon to Yangon. Opponents of the military regime still refer to the country as Burma, to show that they don't recognize the military's authority to change the name. The United Nations recognizes the name Myanmar, but the United States and Britain do not. That's why President Bush consistently refers to Burma in his speeches. How did the military come to power? When the country became independent, it did so with a British-style parliamentary system under Prime Minister U Nu. Although Burma was in relatively good economic shape, U Nu was derided as a dreamer and an ineffectual leader. General Ne Win seized power in 1962 and ruled for nearly 26 years. Like Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Win called his regime "socialist," but used his control of the economy to benefit his friends and allies. That model is still in place under the current ruler, Senior General Than Shwe. Why don't we hear more about these generals? "Because they don't want you to know," says Marvin C. Ott, professor of National Security Policy at the National War College. Ott, a former CIA official, calls the junta members "basically primitives, relatively uneducated men who are out of touch with the urban, cosmopolitan parts of the country." As an example, he tells the story of the former strong man, General Ne Win, who consulted an astrologer on a daily basis. In 1987, he ordered the country's currency, the kyat, to be re-issued in denominations of 15, 30, 45 and 90, reportedly because an astrologer told him he would live to be 90 if he did so. The move caused chaos in Myanmar's financial system. Ott says the generals "have utterly mismanaged the economy. In the 1950s, Burma was considered to be one of the developing countries that were in the best position to succeed. Now it's one of the poorest countries in the world." With a record like that, how has the military remained in power? Myanmar's army is huge — about 400,000 members — relative to its population of nearly 49 million. That's partly because the government has been fighting ethnic rebels, mostly in the hill country of the north. Much of that fighting has subsided in recent years, as the government signed peace deals with some of the main tribes — deals that, according to Professor Ott, allowed some of them to keep up their activities in the opium trade. Just as important, though, Ott says, is that the junta has received strong backing from China. The Chinese have provided Myanmar with military and economic aid and political cover in the United Nations, when other countries were condemning the junta for its repression of dissidents, including Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Even though President Bush has announced new economic sanctions on Myanmar's rulers, Ott says that the generals have little to lose as long as China backs them up. But Ott does have one caution for the junta. He says China is concerned that the junta has mis-managed its affairs so badly as to provoke widespread opposition. If some parts of Myanmar's military refused to go along with the repression, the generals could be ousted and China would probably support whomever seemed likeliest to come out on top, even opposition leader Suu Kyi.
Return to the Purplemath home page The Purplemath Forums Helping students gain understanding and self-confidence in algebra powered by FreeFind Find a Gardena Math Tutor Subject: ZIP: Carol Anne S. ...If a student has good grammar skills, he or she sounds more well-read and better educated. Once correct grammar usage becomes second nature, a person feels much more confident speaking in public as well as writing even simple memos and emails at work. Often, the habits of modern day texting as ... 32 Subjects: including elementary math, prealgebra, reading, English Tarzana, CA Danelle H. ...If you or a loved one wants to improve your English skills, I can help you. I have worked with numerous students, from those learning their first English words to ones studying for the TOEFL or IELTS University English entrance exams for non-native speakers. I am a professional writer and have two BA degrees. 27 Subjects: including elementary math, reading, English, French Valley Village, CA Cory A. ...I homeschooled both of my kids through phonics, arithmetic and reading through the 3rd grade. My daughter did so well that she skipped a grade and entered the private school one year ahead. That private school was Morrison Academy in Taiwan (98th percentile scores). Also in Taiwan, for 6 years I tutored Chinese kids mostly in phonics, reading and writing. 29 Subjects: including probability, English, logic, algebra 1 Stevenson Ranch, CA Carson, CA Joshua R. ...Algebra II is a return to an algebra based class, even though it usually follows geometry. Most students need a refresher on the more complex properties of algebra found in previous classes. Also, this is the first time we see more interesting topics such as conic sections, logarithms, trig and others. Glendora, CA Feedback \| Error?
You are here: Home>Collections>Census Tiger population rises 20% to 1,706 ET Bureau Mar 29, 2011, 03.44am IST The second phase of the estimation process involved analysing tiger habitat status by using satellite data. In the third phase, hi-tech cameras were installed at strategic points like water bodies in the forests to inform about the presence of the wild cats. Through the camera trapping method, individual tigers were identified from photographs based on their unique stripe patterns and this information was analysed using 'a well established scientific framework'. There are questions being raised about the methodology as well. "How well was the methodology implemented in the field? Was the integrity of the process maintained? And how well was the data analysed? There are good things about the new approach — we moved from a total count and only counting tigers to a sampling-based approach and also broadened the sampling to cover many other species as well as habitat connectivity. It is reported that in some places, cameras malfunctioned," said Ravi Chellam, Wildlife Conservation Society's India Programs country director. Karanth too raises the question of methodology. "The full process of how these tiger numbers are generated for individual tiger populations and landscapes, has not been made public in a scientifically acceptable manner. Only one scientific paper, which explains only a part of this protocol, has been published in 2011, based on data from the last round of estimation in 2007.... I see serious deficiencies in the meth-odology which has been published." Most of India's tigers live in the country's 39 existing reserves, but the survey found that more than one-quarter of the tiger population lived outside the reserves. And for the first time, the survey included the Sundarbans, the region of mangrove forests on the border of India and Bangladesh, where 70 tigers were counted.
Home > worlds > Negative Heat Capacity Negative Heat Capacity May 16th, 2006 hydrodynamic turbulence in a keplerian disk particle going through a cloud Categories: worlds Tags: 1. May 1st, 2008 at 16:40 \| #1 But the system also gets smaller. Isnâ€™t it therefore the case that the increased heat is an expression of energy density increasing at the expense of the volume of the system, which shrinks so much that the total energy content of the system is still smaller than it started out, even though the density has increased? So to make the analogy with the open front door correct, in a house where leaving the front door open caused it to heat up, doing so would primarily cause the house to deflate. And it would shrink fast enough that even though heat was draining from it, it would still heat up. Ah, I guess that is what motivated your remark on the spendthrift principle of nature. Comments are closed.

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