text stringlengths 144 682k |
|---|
Skip to content
Mental Health Center
Font Size
Drugs to Treat Mental Illness
There are several different types of drugs available to treat mental illnesses. Some of the most commonly used are antidepressants, anti-anxiety, anti-psychotic, mood stabilizing, and stimulant medications.
What Drugs Are Used To Treat Depression?
When treating depression, several drug options are available. Some of the most commonly used include:
• Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), such as Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, Lexapro, Luvox, and Viibryd
• Selective serotonin & norepinephrine inhibitors (SNRIs), such as Effexor, Cymbalta, Khedezla, Pristiq, and Fetzima
• Novel serotonergic drugs such as Brintellix
• Older tricyclic antidepressants, such as Elavil, Pamelor, Sinequan, and Imipramine
• Dopaminergic drugs such as Wellbutrin
• Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), such as Nardil, Parnate, and Emsam
Your health care provider can determine which medication is right for you. Remember that medications usually take 4 to 6 weeks to become fully effective. And if one drug does not work, there are many others to try.
In some cases, a combination of antidepressants may be necessary. Sometimes an antidepressant combined with a different type of drug, such as a mood stabilizer (like Lithium), a second antidepressant, or atypical anti-psychotic drug, is the most effective treatment.
Side effects vary, depending on what type of drug you are taking, and may improve once your body adjusts to the medication.
If you decide to stop taking your antidepressants, it is important that you gradually reduce the dose over a period of several weeks. With many antidepressants, quitting them abruptly can cause discontinuation symptoms or speed the risk for depression relapse. It is important to discuss quitting (or changing) medications with your health care provider first.
What Drugs Treat Anxiety Disorders?
What Drugs Treat Psychotic Disorders?
Today on WebMD
Differences between feeling depressed or feeling blue.
lunar eclipse
Signs of mania and depression.
man screaming
Causes, symptoms, and therapies.
woman looking into fridge
When food controls you.
Woman standing in grass field barefoot, wind blowi
Plate of half eaten cakes
mother kissing newborn
Woman multitasking
colored pencils
Woman relaxing with a dog
WebMD Special Sections |
Alternative Exercises for Staying Fit
Author: Tommy G. Adam A. Macomb
DescriptionTeaching Students alternative ways to stay healthy and fit.
Grade Level 9-12
Curriculum Health / PE
Are you tired of the old fashioned and out dated ways of working out and staying fit?!? Well have we got something special in store for you. In the this webquest you will learn different, fun, and exciting new ways to workout and stay in shape. By learning new techniques in becoming physically fit it allows you, the student, to explore new ways to stay healthy. When a student is physically fit they are more confident in their physical ability which leads them to becoming more active in any active setting. By the end of this webquest you will be equipped with a variety of new skills and activities to become a better and more physically fit person. These new techniques are not only a fun way to stay in shape, but are also age and developmentally appropriate no matter what age or skill set you are.
The task for this WebQuest are to figure out and create different forms of alternative physical fitness exercises. You will be responsible for researching and taking notes on various alternatives to physical fitness. Once you have completed your research, your task will be to design an alternative fitness program involving the criteria listed below. Task 1 Set 3 to 6 reachable goals involving increasing ones physical fitness.Task 2 Use research to choose 5 to 7 alternative exercises to becoming physically fit. (at least 4 exercises involving chest, back, legs, and arms. Also you must have at least 2 different types of cardio exercises.)Task 3 Using the researched exercises, your group will create a program lasting 1 month. Each week exercises should focus on different muscle groups.Task 4 This program should also include proper warm-up and cool down phases, as well as proper stretching catering to the workout that is being done that day. Task 5 Once your group has created the alternative workout program, each group will present their program to the class.* We have provided a few different websites to guide you and help you better understand what you will need to look for in creating your goals and program.
Step 1 - Researching target muscle groups, safety tips and alternative exercises.Before you do anything in the weight room or outside, there are a few things that you should know first. For example safety procedures in the weight room as well as an overall understanding of the muscle groups in the body. Also in this step you want to start researching and making a list of alternative work outs. Use to help you learn some basic information on the different muscle groups you might chose to work on in your future program. Step 2 - Evaluate your physical fitness and then decide on your reachable goals that you want to set for yourself.Make a list of personal improvements that you want to make on your body. One example could be to run for a longer distance for a longer period of time. is a helpful resource to assist you in creating your goals. Step 3 - Pre-workout and Post-workout stretchingBefore you start your workout you should know the muscle areas that you are working on that day and stretch them out appropriately. This website will help instruct you in some of the basic ways to stretch out before working out: 4 - Creating your programTaking the information that you have learned about pre-work out, work out, and post-work out, design a month long program that demonstrates the use of alternative exercises and works on the different muscle groups in your body as well as your cardiovascular endurance. Be able to differentiate why you chose the work outs or activities that you chose. Demonstrate an understanding in increasing the intensity of your workouts as you move along in your physical fitness program. Below we have provided a website to help with guiding you in creating your own physical fitness program: 5 - Implementing and presenting your physical fitness programsNow that you have created your program, the easy part is done. Now you must find ways to be motivated and stay with your program. Remember that this is a month long program, you are only cheating yourself by not completing it and quitting early.
Total Score:
Not Found= 0 Needs Work=1-3 Very Good= 4-7 Examplary= 8-10 Score
0 goals were represented and or reachable Less than 2 goals were represented and or reachable Only 3 to 4 goals were represented and showed attainability. 5 to 7 goals were represented properly and were reachable and attainable. /10
No alternative exercises were listed with rationale 1 to 3 alternative exercises were listed with rationale 4 to 5 alternative exercises were listed with rationale 6 or more alternative exercises were listed with rationale /10
Exhibited little to no creativity when finding alternative exercises and creating their physical fitness program. Exhibited minimal creativity and understanding when finding their alternative exercises and creating their physical fitness program. Showed average knowledge and creativity when creating their alternative physical fitness plan. Showed proper understanding of content and outstanding knowledge and creativity when creating their alternative physical fitness plan. /10
Failed to be present in class for presentations, did not present. Presented minimal understanding of the material, and there was not equal participation in the presentation. Showed basic knowledge of the material, and half of the group participated in the presentation. Showed expert knowledge on program and material, and everyone in the group participated in the presentation. /10
Total Score: /50
Congratulations on the completion of your WebQuest, you have learned about some of the different alternative ways of working out. In this project, you have created an motivating and informative workout program. By reading, researching and applying the information that was provided for you, you were able to be successful in develop this workout program to cater to your reachable goals and to your fitness ability level. Remember that you are not in this program alone, you know that you can always ask us teachers questions, no question is a bad question. The presentation aspect of the project gave you some practice at a skill that takes some getting used to and often times a long time to get comfortable with. You must remember that this is only the beginning, stick with your program and challenge yourself to be more physically fit!Congratulations and Good Luck!
Teachers Page
This WebQuest was created by Tommy G. and Adam A., we are Physical Education majors at Western Illinois University. We hope that this quest is very beneficial to our students and to anyone who uses it. |
Hand saw
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - View original article
Jump to: navigation, search
A crosscut handsaw
Different sizes of handsaws.
Sometimes cultures evolved two main types of saw teeth: the 'cross cut' saw teeth and the 'rip' saw teeth. Someone once described tree structure as being like hundreds of thousands of straws bundled together. With this in mind one can imagine the different mechanism needed to separate the straws lengthwise as opposed to cutting the straws crosswise. Thus, crosscut saws have sawteeth that are usually shaped, often with a metal file, in such a way that they form a series of tiny knifelike edges.The wood cells (straws) are contacted by the knife-edge of the tooth and cut. Rip saws, on the other hand, are usually shaped so that they form a series of tiny chisel-like edges. The wood cells (straw-ends) are contacted by the chisel and 'ripped' apart from the bundle of other cells. Of course either saw can be used either way, and Tage Frid has even said he thinks ripsaws are better for crosscutting.
Saws can also be considered 'pull cut' or 'push cut'. Ancient Egyptian saws have been said to be pull cut. Modern European saws (and those in European-derived cultures like that of the United States) generally have 'push cut' handsaws. Japanese handsaws are usually pull-cut and are still used today. Many woodworkers have various theories about the advantages and disadvantages of pull vs. push, and even experts will disagree on these matters, including accuracy of cut, power available for cut, straightness of line, thinness of kerf (the slit in the wood that is made during cutting), etc.[citation needed]
Among Basques and Australians, traditional hand sawing has generated rural sports. The Basque variant is called trontzalaritza.
See also
1. ^ Olmert, Michael (1996). Milton's Teeth and Ovid's Umbrella: Curiouser & Curiouser Adventures in History, p.178. Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-684-80164-7.
External links |
Article Content
Fluoride Fallout
Flouride Fallout
There are tons of reasons to avoid fluoride, but we may have another reason to stay away from it: it can damage the thyroid, causing body-wide problems, including stubborn fat and much more.
Fluoride is well known for being in our nation’s water supplies and in conventional toothpastes—under the guise of fluoride helping to prevent tooth decay, although the jury’s still out on that.
However, recent studies have shown that fluoride can cause neurodegenerative damage in the brain, spinal cord and sciatic nerve. Fluoride crosses the blood-brain barrier and can negatively alter neural tissues, including reduction in the organic somatic index of the brain and contamination of the hippocampus, neocortex, cerebellum, spinal cord and sciatic nerve tissues. This can lead to irreversible—and sometimes deadly—outcomes. Lowered IQ, reduced cognitive function, learning disabilities and hyperactivity are just some ways fluoride can damage the brain.
Now, more information is coming to the fore about fluoride and weight gain. Fluoride is a known thyroid suppressor, so it’s thought that fluoride could be contributing to the rise in obesity. In fact, in the 1930s, before the negative effects of fluoride were as well known and documented, an overactive thyroid was often treated by bathing in fluorinated water, which indicates how powerfully fluoride can suppress the thyroid gland. However, for those who have a normal or low-functioning thyroid, fluoride exposure can wreak havoc on the thyroid, causing ill health effects.
For example, when the thyroid is damaged via fluoride, it can cause problems throughout the body, including weight gain; swelling; kidney disease; kidney failure; hair loss; depression; aggression; aches and pains; unhealthy skin; bone problems; memory loss; weakness; fatigue; heart disease; irritability; thyroid cancer; digestive disorders and more.
One way to avoid fluoride—other than petitioning the local government to remove fluoride from the water supply—is to install a full-house water filtration system, such as reverse osmosis, that specifically targets fluoride.
You can also add tamarind tea to your beverage intake, since tamarind can help detoxify the body from fluoride. Along similar lines, the mineral selenium can help negate the damaging effects of fluoride, although it can’t expel fluoride from the body. Brazil nuts, wild fish, chicken, onions, mushrooms, eggs and grassfed meats are foods containing an abundance of selenium.
So, avoid fluoride fallout—it can be costly for your health.
TVC:PW & Fuco (Perfect Combo)
Vitamin Code Raw D3 - The hottest nutrient under the sun
Lovely Legs
Vitamin Code - Don't settle for anything less |
Terms and Definitions
What do the letters LGBTQQIA stand for?
Lesbian
Gay
Bisexual
Transgender
Queer
Questioning
Intersex
Ally
What do the colors of the rainbow flag mean?
Gilbert Baker designed the first Rainbow Flag in 1978. It was based on the five-striped “Flag of the Race” and was originally designed with eight stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Those colors represented: sexuality, life, healing, sun, nature, art, harmony, and spirit. However, the colors pink and indigo were eventually taken out, and today we use the rainbow flag with six stripes.
What other symbols does the LGBTQQIA community have?
Please reference this great website for more information. http://www.lambda.org/symbols.htm
What does ________ mean?
• Ally: Anyone who is politically aligned with the Queer movement.
• BDSM: Bondage and Domination (Discipline), Sadomasochism (Sadism and Masochism). The BDSM community provides a safe exploration of power relationships in sexual situations.
• Bear Community: A gay man that generally has one or more of the following traits; a hairy chest and body, a beard, wide shoulders, husky build, beefy, more masculine. The exact definition of what a bear look like varies from person to person. A defining quality of a bear is that they do not fit into contemporary gay culture, or the stereotypical gay image. Cubs, Otters, Bears, Chasers, Ursophiles and Chubs are all members of the bear community.
• Boi: In the gay male arena: a young gay man ; in the BDSM arena: a butch who is a submissive or sexual bottom; in the butch-femme arena: a chronologically or behaviorally young butch; in the lesbian arena: someone with a female birthsex who identifies as a male.
• Biphobia: Irrational fear or hatred of individuals who identify as bisexual. This fear may stem from things a belief the bisexual identity is not an authentic Queer identity, a resentment at the bisexual’s heterosexual privileges, or a concern that the bisexual is harbinger of disease from Queer communities into the heterosexual communities.
• Birthsex: You come out of your mom, the doctor says “it’s a boy,” or “it’s a girl.” One’s birthsex is on their birth certificate, but does not necessarily reflect gender identity.
• Bisexual: A fluid identity, describing sexual, emotional and physical attraction to both sexes or to many genders. This term becomes problematic in cross-cultural studies and should be used only with other people from the United States, pending your further cultural competence research.
• Colored: Never use this word to describe anyone’s ethnicity. Use people of color.
• Coming out: The process of coming to terms with one’s sexual and/or gender identity or identities. It can describe an internal process, describing the internal decisions to take on a sexual or gender identity. It can be an external process, describing the process of disclosing sexual and gender identity to friends, family, co-workers, etc. It can also be a process we are not aware that we do on a daily basis. See heterosexual privilege.
• Cross-dressing: Adopting the dress of another gender. Cross-dressers are mainly heterosexual men, but can also be men of other sexual orientations and gender identities. The older term transvestite is considered by many to be offensive. Cross dressers differ from transsexuals in that they do not necessarily wish to change their sex.
• Cultural appropriation: The theft of rituals, aesthetic standards and behavior from one culture by another, generally by a "modern" culture from a "primitive" culture — often this involves the conversion of religion and spirituality into pop-culture. If you're going to borrow or even just draw inspiration from another culture, you should educate yourself thoroughly to avoid stepping on toes.
• Drag: The adoption of clothing and roles of another gender for the purposes of play, entertainment, or eroticism. Originally used to refer to “drag queens” (DRessed as A Girl), there are also a number of “drag kings.” Drag performers are not crossdressers, who adopt the clothing of another gender outside of the context of entertainment or performance.
• DSM-IV: The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association, is the handbook used most often in diagnosing mental disorders in the United States and other countries. It was published in 1952, 1968, 1980 and 1994. December 15, 1973, the board of the American Psychiatric Association voted 13-0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders.
• Dyke: A derogatory word for people who are lesbians. This term is sometimes reclaimed in younger generations as a symbol of pride to empower lesbian communities.
• Ethnicity: Of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, cultural origin, or background; being a member of an ethnic group.
• Faggot: A derogatory word for people who are gay. This term came into use in times of witch burnings. Male homosexuals were thought to be the assistants of witches, and their bodies were used as fuel for the fires that burned witches.
• Gay: Someone who is male-identified who seeks to be emotionally, spiritually and/or physically involved with other people who are male-identified.
• Gender: A person’s expression and/or presentation of some combination of socially constructed ideas defining masculine and/or feminine characteristics.
• Gender Binary: The prevalent construction of boyness and girlness; the concept that there are only two genders.
• Genderfuck: Someone whose gender expression is a political commentary on the conventions of a gender binary system.
• Gender Dysphoria: A strong and persistent cross-gender identification and a persistent discomfort with his or her sex or a sense of inappropriateness in the gender role of that sex . . . include(s) a variety of individuals--those who desire only castration or penectomy without a desire to develop breasts; those with a congenital intersex condition; those with transient stress-related cross-dressing; those with considerable ambivalence about giving up their gender roles.
• Gender Queer: Someone whose gender expression is consciously not consistent with conventional standards for masculine and feminine behavior.
• Gender Expression/Presentation: The external presentation of a person’s gender (e.g. dress, mannerisms, hair style, speech, etc.). A person’s gender expression may differ from their gender identity.
• Gender Identity: A person’s personal view of their own gender. A person’s gender identity may or may not conform to the conventional expectations for their birth sex.
• Grrl: Third-wave, counter-culture feminists.
• Hermaphrodite: An offensive word. See Intersex.
• Heterosexual: People who seek emotional, physical and/or spiritual relationships with other people of the opposite sex or gender expression. Also, people who are a very important part of great panels.
• Heterosexism: To perceive heterosexuality as “normal,” negating the Queer experience in whole or in part. Example: “Leave it to Beaver is heterosexist: There is no representation of Queer folks on that show.”
• Herteronormative: The assumption that there are no alternatives to heterosexuality.
• Hir: Pronounced “here.” Hir is a third person possessive or objective pronoun that is used in lieu of his/his’ and her/her’s. Do not use this pronoun to refer to someone until you do some research on the transgender community.
• HIV/AIDS: HIV stands for Human Imuno-deficiency Virus. The original transmission of HIV came through the infected blood of a chimp that was butchered for consumption. HIV is only communicable through direct contact with blood, semen, cervical/vaginal secretions, breast milk, but CANNOT be transmitted through bronchial fluid and sweat. HIV is also not communicable through social kissing, tattooing, inanimate objects, workplace settings or hugs. An estimated 5 million people are infected with HIV throughout the world.
AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Whereas a disease is a pathological condition with a single identifiable cause, a syndrome – like AIDS - is a group of symptoms that together are characteristic of a specific condition. In its history, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) defined AIDS five different times. Since 1993 the CDC recognizes and individual with AIDS as someone who has HIV antibodies and a T-cell count of less than 200 per liter of blood or one opportunistic infection. A healthy T-cell count ranges between 500 and 1600 cells per liter of blood. Kaposi’s sarcoma, cervical cancer, pneumonia and herpes are all examples of opportunistic infections, or organisms and viruses that are normally present but do not cause disease unless the immune system is damaged. An estimated 40 million people are infected with AIDS.
• Homophobia: An irrational fear or hatred of people who identify as homosexual. This fear may stem from the out-of-date belief that homosexuality is a mental illness, from personal religious beliefs about the post mortem fate of homosexuals, from the incorrect belief that homosexuals are responsible for AIDS, etc.
• Homosexual: People who seek emotional, physical and/or spiritual relationships with other people of the same gender.
• Hormone Replacement Therapy: The process of taking hormones to achieve the secondary sex characteristics of the desired sex. “T” is common short hand for the male hormone testosterone.
• Intersex: An individual whose biological birth does not correspond with conventional expectations of male/female anatomy or genetics. Some intersexuals consider themselves transgender and some do not. The older term, hermaphrodite, is considered by many to be offensive.
• Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Transphobia, Internalized Biphoba: Self-hatred at one’s own identity as result of “believing,” or internalizing the negative stereotypes of one’s identity.
• In the Closet: A term used to refer to people who have not revealed their sexual or gender identity/identities either to themselves or others.
• Lesbian: A woman-identified person who seeks emotional, spiritual and/or physical relationships with other woman-identified people.
• Men who have sex with Men (MSM): Men, regardless of their sexual identity or orientation engage in sexual activity with men.
• Omnisexual: An attraction to many genders; an alternative to bisexual, which evokes the idea of an attraction to only two genders.
• Oppression: Occurs when social privilege is denied.
• Oppression Olympics: Although it is imperative to acknowledge all of the various identities we encompass as individuals; it is equally important that we do not allow this to devolve into a competition of who is oppressed more.
• Pansexual: Another alternative to bisexual and omnisexual.
• It’s a ‘Pat’: This phrase developed from a Saturday Night Live character who’s ambiguous gender is the source many jokes and tittering discomfort. Never use this phrase to describe transgender people; it is completely derogatory.
• Perceived Gender: What another person assumes one’s gender is in a given interaction. Some people’s gender expressions can be misinterpreted or confused and perceived as different from the person’s identity.
• Polyamory: The non-possessive, honest, responsible and ethical philosophy and practice of loving multiple people simultaneously. Polyamory emphasizes consciously choosing how many partners one wishes to be involved with rather than accepting social norms which dictate loving only one person at a time. Polyamory embraces sexual equality and all sexual orientations towards an expanded circle of spousal intimacy and love. Polyamory is from the root words Poly meaning many and Amour meaning love hence "many loves" or Polyamory.
• Prejudice: Inaccurate and negative beliefs about another group and its members without basis in fact. It is often based on stereotypes and can occur on a conscious or unconscious level.
• Queer: Originally pejorative for gay, it is now being reclaimed by some gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons as a self-affirming umbrella term. Caution: still extremely offensive when used as an epithet, especially among older Queers.
• Queerphobia: See homophobia.
• Questioning: Someone who is exploring their Queer potential.
• Race words: Be very careful using these as a speaker. Never say “colored” to substitute an identity. Ask your facilitator if you don’t know why. Always ask yourself if it is it necessary or relevant to you one of your stories that you have a Black or a Latina friend? Ask your facilitator for an example if you don’t understand. Always ask your friends and people you associate with how they identify, before assigning labels to them. Never make assumptions, even if you think the identification is obvious. For example, you may think you have an African-American friend, but your friend may be of Haitian ascendancy.
• Sex: A medical term: Boy or Girl.
• Sex reassignment surgery: Surgery for the purpose of having a body more consistent with one’s gender identity. Sex reassignment surgery can be quite costly and not everyone who desires sex reassignment surgery has equal access.
• Sexual Behavior: Describes an individual’s preferences in sexual attachments/relationships. Sexual behavior does not determine one’s sexual orientation. For example, a celibate lesbian (one who does not have sex at all) is still a lesbian.
• Sexual Orientation: The gender or genders of the people one chooses to form romantic relationships/sexual attachments to. Gender identity and sexual orientation are very different. Additionally, transpeople can be gay, lesbian, straight, queer, bisexual or pansexual.
• Social Privilege: A right, advantage, or immunity granted to or enjoyed by certain people beyond the common advantage of all others; an exemption in many particular cases from certain burdens or liabilities. Example: A special advantage or benefit; with reference to divine dispensations, natural advantages, gifts of fortune, genetic endowments, social relations, etc. A person can enjoy certain privileges based on things like their race, ethnicity, ability, body size, sexual orientation, etc.
• Standards of Care: Organizational professional consensus about the psychiatric, psychological, medical, and surgical management of gender identity disorders. Professionals may use this document to understand the parameters within which they may offer assistance to those with these conditions. Persons with gender identity disorders, their families, and social institutions may use the SOC to understand the current thinking of professionals. Outlines hormone therapy, the real-life test, etc. http://www.hbigda.org/socv6sm.pdf
• Tokenize: The policy or practice of making only a symbolic effort. For example, you are the only (out) Queer student in your class. Your professor, to create the illusion of a diverse discussion, asks you to fill in the gay parts of a discussion on Oscar Wilde.
• Transgender: A term used to describe the people whose gender identity is not adequately described by the sex they were assigned at birth. Transgender is also used in some communities to describe all gender-variant people.
• Transphobia: The irrational fear or hatred of people who identify as Transgender. This fear may stem from the incorrect belief that transgender people have a psychological disorder, the incorrect belief that they are confused, etc.
• Two-Spirit: A term used some Native American people to empower themselves. The term comes from specific traditional and cultural gender identities historically used in various Native American nations. Describes transgenderism in terms of sensing one’s internal balances of spiritual forces. See also Cultural Appropriation.
• Tranny: Slang word used by the transgender in-crowd to refer to themselves. Ask you transgender friend if you can use it. That’s a joke. See Tokenize.
• Transition: The period during which transsexual persons begin changing their appearances and bodies to match their internal gender identity.
• Transsexual: A person who does not identify with the sex they were originally assigned.
• Transvestite: An offensive word. See crossdresser.
• Twink: originally, was an acronym for T.W.I.N.K - Teenage, White, Into No Kink. Referring to young or youthful, homosexual males, with little or no body hair, and semi-athletic or thin build.
• Zie: Pronounced “zee.” Zie is a third person subjective pronoun that is used in lieu of she and he. Do not use this pronoun to refer to someone until you have invested significant time in researching trans issues.
return to questions |
September 20, 2012
PHP MVC Part - I
What is MVC?
MVC is a way of coding. how do we distribute functions/classes/files.
What MVC is not ?
MVC is not any programming language, rather it is a framework/architecture/design schema.
MVC architecture, we can implement in PHP, JAVA, C# and also JavaScript
1. How do you keep things in your kitchen. ?
2. We can keep all tools and utilities scattered on one table - ( No Pattern )
3. We can keep tools categorized by use. i.e. knife,spoon in one box, Plates near sink - ( some pattern )
Real world example:
1. We have to build Book Store
2. We need to add/remove books
3. Show users list of books
4. Registered user can see preview
Here, we have some logic, lets call them, business logic:
i.e. add/remove books:
Also, we have some-thing to show user
i.e. List of books
Also, we have one rule
i.e. Registered user can see preview
All classes/functions of business logic, we can call: MODEL
All classes/files which helps to render product list, we can call:VIEW
All classes/files/functions which helps to decide/implement rule, we can call: CONTROLLER
Model: Encompasses business logic ( Mostly base classes )
View: Helps to present/render data ( Mostly template files + classes which helps to render )
Controller: Helps to decide some rule. like, which page to render, which page not to render
Prime Example of MVC architecture:
Magento - way to complex to understand
End of part one. |
Find an Article
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Different Types of Fermentors / Bioreactors
Different Types of Fermentors / Bioreactors
The heart of the fermentation or bioprocess technology is the Fermentor or Bioreactor. A bioreactor is basically a device in which the organisms are cultivated to form the desired products. it is a containment system designed to give right environment for optimal growth and metabolic activity of the organism.
A fermentor usually refers to the containment system for the cultivation of prokaryotic cells, while a bioreactor grows the eukaryotic cells (mammalian, insect cells, etc).
Types of Bioreactor
Types of Bioreactor
1. Continuous Stirred Tank Bioreactor
2. Airlift Bioreactor
3. Fluidized Bed Bioreactor
4. Packed Bed Bioreactor
5. Photobioreactor
6. Membrane Bioreactor
Continous Stirred Tank Bioreactor
In Continous Stirred Tank Bioreactor, the contents of the vessel no longer vary with time, this applies to the hold up of micro-organisms and the concentration of the components of the medium in the fermentor.Steady state conditions can be achieved by either Chemostatic or Turbidostatic principles.The former involves the adjustment of the flow rate of the fermentor to an appropriate and constant value and allowing the micro-organisms, substrates and biochemical product concentration to attain their natural levels. The turbidostat requires an experimental determination of the turbidity (ie, indirect measurement of microbial concentration). This thus used to control the flow rate. Both these methods have been employed in practice, though the former is obviously the simpler from every view point.
The most successful continuous systems to date have been those employing yeasts and bacteria, in which the desired products are the cells or primary metabolites, compounds that form the chemical 'inventory' of a microbe, (e.g. enzymes and amino acids), or some product clearly associated with growth or energy producing mechanisms (e.g. the production of alcohol).
The most widely used continous process based on CSTF (Continous Stirred Tank Fermentor) is the activated sludge process used in waste water treatment industry.
In continuous processing the autocatalytic (a reaction in which one of the products of the reaction increases the overall rate of a reaction) nature of microbiological reactions takes on a further significance. This is because the presence of one of the products, additional micro-organisms, enhances the overall rate of reaction. In the absence of micro-organisms no reaction can take place. Therefore, it is essential to retain at least a portion within the fermentor. It follows that if the flow rate is raised to a high value, then all the micro-organisms will be swept from the fermentor, and the conversion will cease. This phenomenon is commonly known as 'Wash-out'. if micro-organisms are fed to the fermentor simultaneously with the substrate feed, the problems associated with wash-out are abated, and the reaction proceeds normally.
Advantages of Stirred Tank Bioreactor
1. Continuous operation
2. Good temperature control
3. Easily adapts to two phase runs
4. Good control
5. Simplicity of construction
6. Low operating (labor) cost
7. Easy to clean
Airlift Bioreactor
airlift bioreactor
This kind of fermenter works on the principle of an air lift pump. It is of two kinds:
1. Internal loop type
2. External loop type.
The reactor's volume is determined by its capacity, kinetic data, and specific growth rate of the organism used. The rate of airflow of the reactor depends on the volumetric mass transfer coefficient in the reactor system. It is a uniform cylindrical cross type and has an internal loop or external loop riser configuration,
diverging converging. The external loop riser configuration is adjustable and the change in the configuration improves the O2 transfer rate vis-a-vis mass transfer coefficient for a particular rate of airflow. This helps provide required particular dissolved O2 concentration for specific microbial system. This reactor reduces the operating cost for pumping air through the bioreactor.
• Simple design with no moving parts or agitator for less maintenance, less risk of defects.
• Easier sterilization (no agitator shaft parts)
• Low Energy requirement vs stirred tank : Obviously doesn’t need the energy for the moving parts (agitator shaft).
• Greater heat-removal vs stirred tank: At the Airlift bioreactor it doesn’t need the heat plate to control the temperature, because the Draught-Tube which is inside the bioreactor can be designed to serve as internal heat exchanger. It is difference to the Stirred tank bioreactor that needs the heat coat or plate surrounding the tank to make warm bioreactor. It is clear enough that the Airlift bioreactor has greater heat-removal compare to Stirred tank.
• Very low cost
Fluidized Bed Bioreactor
This is a characteristic of beds of regular particles suspended in an up flowing liquid stream.
If an additional gas phase is involved, there is a tendency for the particles in the bed to become less evenly distributed.
There are two important features of the beds of mixed particle sizes:
(i) The increase in porosity from the bottom to the top of the bed, and
(ii) The decreased particle movement when compared with beds containing particles of constant size.
Since porosity or voidage is a measure of the local free space within a bed, it also represents a measure of the microbial hold-up when expressed as wet volume per unit bed volume. Thus, a variation in microbial hold-up is to be expected within a 'fluidised bed' fermentor on fluidisation, the smaller particles rise relative to the larger particles, and produce a situation where the smaller particles are at the top and the larger
particles are at the bottom of the bed.
As the smaller particles have the lowest settling velocity, the bed arranges itself, so that the smaller particles may be in the region of the highest porosity and the lowest linear velocity. The tower fermentor (developed for the continuous production of beer) is based upon these general principles (Ault et al, 1969). In this process yeast flocs are maintained in suspension by the upward movement of the nutrient medium. Moreover, any entrained particles are returned by means of a sedimentation device at the top of the tower.
Essentially, the fermentor consists of a vertical cylinder with an aspect ratio (length to diameter) of approximately 10:1 At the top of the tower a separator is provided to induce the gas bubbles produced by
th,e reaction, to coalesce and escape from the liquid phase.
Within the separator there is a quiescent lone, free of the rising gas, so that the yeast may settle and return to the main body of the tower, and clear beer can be removed. A flocculent yeast (i.e. a yeast capable of achieving relatively large floc sizes) is essential for an alcoholic fermentation in a PBP at acceptable flow rates, otherwise a large proportion of the yeast would be washed out. As a result of this, an insufficient yeast concentration is maintained. A mean yeast concentration of 25 % by weight (expressed as centrifuged wet weight) is typical with values as high as 30-35% by weight at the bottom of the tower, and as low as 5-10% by weight at the top.
A significant feature of the tower is the progressive and continuous fall in the specific gravity of the nutrient medium between the bottom and the top of the tower. There is an initial rapid fall at the bottom of the tower. It is followed by a slower fall over the middle and the top of the tower. This gradual fall in the specific gravity is due to the fermentation of the sugars.
Advantages of Fluidized Bed Reactor:
• Uniform Particle Mixing: Due to the intrinsic fluid-like behavior of the solid material, fluidized beds do not experience poor mixing as in packed beds. This complete mixing allows for a uniform product that can often be hard to achieve in other reactor designs. The elimination of radial and axial concentration gradients also allows for better fluid-solid contact, which is essential for reaction efficiency and quality.
• Uniform Temperature Gradients: Many chemical reactions require the addition or removal of heat. Local hot or cold spots within the reaction bed, often a problem in packed beds, are avoided in a fluidized situation such as an FBR. In other reactor types, these local temperature differences, especially hotspots, can result in product degradation. Thus FBRs are well suited to exothermic reactions. Researchers have also learned that the bed-to-surface heat transfer coefficients for FBRs are high.
• Ability to Operate Reactor in Continuous State: The fluidized bed nature of these reactors allows for the ability to continuously withdraw product and introduce new reactants into the reaction vessel. Operating at a continuos process state allows manufacturers to produce their various products more efficiently due to the removal of startup conditions in batch process.
Advantages of Photobioreactor
• Cultivation of algae is in controlled circumstances, hence potential for much higher productivity
• Large surface-to-volume ratio. PBRs offer maximum efficiency in using light and therefore greatly improve productivity. Typically the culture density of algae produced is 10 to 20 times greater than bag culture in which algaeculture is done in bags – and can be even greater.
• Better control of gas transfer.
• Reduction in evaporation of growth medium.
• More uniform temperature.
• Better protection from outside contamination.
• Space saving – Can be mounted vertically, horizontally or at an angle, indoors or outdoors.
• Reduced Fouling – Recently available tube self cleaning mechanisms can dramatically reduce fouling.
Membrane Bioreactor
Membrane bioreactors successfully applied to various microbial bioconversions such as alcoholic fermentation, solvents, organic acid production, waste water treatment, etc.
In membrane bioreactor the soluble enzyme and substrate are introduced on one side of ultrafilter membrane by means of a pump. product is forced out through the membrane. membrane holds back the enzyme. good mixing in the reactor can be achieved by using a stirrer.
The most widely used membrane materials includes polysulfonte, polyamide and cellulose acetate.
Advantages of Membrane Bioreactor
1. The loss of enzyme is reduced.
2. Enzyme lost by denaturation can be make up by periodic addition of enzyme.
3. Substrate and enzyme can be easily replaced.
Food Biotechnology Course material,by K V Anand Raj
Recent Posts |
Sponsored by:
Comment, blog & share photos
Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, May 17, 2002
Jupiter study adds 11 moons
By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer
University of Hawai'i astronomers announced yesterday that they have newly identified 11 more moons of Jupiter, bringing that planet's total to 39 — more than any other planet in our solar system.
If this sounds like something you've heard before, that's because they found 11 last year as well.
The team led by planetary astronomer David Jewitt and graduate student Scott Sheppard expects to find still more when Hawai'i's weather clears.
All these newly identified moons, or satellites, are much smaller than the four big ones that the astronomer Galileo found in 1610. Those moons — Ganymede, Callisto, Io and Europa — range from 2,000 to 3,000 miles across.
The new ones are on the order of 2 miles across.
Amazing new technology in astronomy is allowing scientists to pick out objects in space that they have never before been able to see and track. In this case, Jewitt said, the largest digital imaging camera in the world was fitted on the Canada-France-Hawai'i Telescope atop Mauna Kea and aimed at Jupiter.
The camera takes digital images that measure 12,000 pixels by 8,000 pixels. That's nearly 100 million pixels, about 100 times the number taken by a standard consumer-model digital camera.
The images were processed and searched with a computer program written by Cambridge University scientist Jan Kleyna.
Jewitt said that once the possible satellites were identified, the astronomers used the UH's 2.2-meter telescope to confirm their findings and to weed out other objects such as asteroids that were in the region.
The major satellites of Jupiter orbit in a plane and in a direction the same as that of the planet's spin. But all the satellites found this year are orbiting on different planes and have retrograde orbits, meaning they spin around Jupiter in a direction opposite to that of the planet's orbit.
"We think they must have been captured by Jupiter. They were from someplace else and then Jupiter grabbed them," Jewitt said.
Since astronomers can identify no way for Jupiter to grab new moons now, it is assumed the satellites were captured long ago, perhaps in the first million years of the existence of our solar system, when conditions were different than they are today.
One theory — the gas drag hypothesis — suggests that when the solar system was younger, Jupiter was less dense but much bigger. The satellites may have entered the outer edge of the planet's atmosphere and been slowed enough by the drag of the planetary gas that they were trapped. They would have burned on entry into the atmosphere, but had enough size to survive once they slowed down. Smaller satellites would have been entirely burned up, like meteors in Earth's atmosphere.
Another theory is that as Jupiter was first expanding — attracting matter from the surrounding region — it grew so fast that its gravitational field snagged small objects that had been orbiting the sun alongside Jupiter. This is called the mass growth hypothesis.
Jewitt said there's still plenty to learn about the new jovian satellites, such as what they're made of, their shapes, how dense they are and so on. He said he hopes within the next year to use the giant Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea to get more details about them. |
Blood Transfusion and Donation
+ -Text Size
Why people with cancer might need blood transfusions
People with cancer might need blood transfusions because of the cancer itself. For example:
• Some cancers (especially digestive system cancers) cause internal bleeding, which can lead to anemia ([uh-nee-me-uh] from too few red blood cells; see “Red blood cell transfusions” in the next section).
• Blood cells are made in the bone marrow, the spongy center of certain bones. Cancers that start in the bone marrow (such as leukemias) or cancers that spread there from other places may crowd out normal blood-making cells, leading to low blood counts.
• People who have had cancer for some time may develop something called anemia of chronic disease. This anemia results from certain long-term medical conditions that affect the production and lifespan of red blood cells.
Cancer treatments may also lead to the need for blood transfusions:
Last Medical Review: 10/07/2013
Last Revised: 10/07/2013 |
Dental Assistant Degree
Find your next area of study: Dental Assistant Degree
A dental assistant degree educates professionals on how to provide supportive and supplemental work to a dentist. Dental assistants are different from dental hygienists and are licensed in entirely separate ways.
Dental assistants will need to be able to work well with others. They will be performing their duties under the direction of a dentist. A dental assistant may also have to defer to a hygienist. Excellent manual dexterity is helpful, as dental assistants will be working with their hands on patients alongside dentists. As with other medical professionals, being able to connect and having a warm personality will help provide excellent customer service to patients.
In a majority of states, entry-level dental assistants do not have education or training requirements. As of 2009, the Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) had given its approval to 281 programs for dental assistant training. The 1 year programs give a certificate or diploma. Community colleges offer 2 year programs which result in an associate’s degree.
Some vocational schools may offer a dental assistant course which lasts 4 to 6 months. CODA does not accredit these courses. Most dentists will give greater weight to a CODA-accredited program on any prospective dental assistant’s resume.
Following graduation, most dental assistants learn and are trained as they work. The dentists, hygienists, or other assistants will train new hires in instruments and procedures specific to their workplace.
Nearly all states have laws which only allow dental assistants to perform specific duties. A license or registration may be required before a dental assistant can handle more advanced duties or help with radiological work (such as x-rays). Because of the variation between states, it is strongly recommended that dental assistants contact their state board before beginning a new job.
The Dental Assisting National Board (DANB) has created the Certified Dental Assistant (CDA) standard, which is accepted or required in 37 states. It may contribute to a dental assistant license in some states. The CDA certification requires that an applicant have attended and graduated from a program with CODA accreditation. Also accepted are 2 years of full-time or 4 years of part-time dental assistant experience under a licensed dentist. The CDA requires that applicants know cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and have a current certification from a recognized organization such as the Red Cross. CDA certification can be renewed if the dental assistant submits continuing education credits.
The CDA certification or a Radiation Health and Safety certification may be necessary before a dental assistant can perform radiological work. One or both of the standards will be accepted in 30 states for radiological certification. Additionally, some states require a state-taught course on radiology.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded an average salary of $32,380 in May of 2008 for dental assistants. A 2008 survey by the DANB showed that 86% of dental assistants received paid vacation. Additionally, more than 50% had health benefits from their employer. |
This Week In Bots: Extra-Terrestrial Aircraft, Telepresence Cat-Stroking, And Robot App Stores
Drones on Titan
Titan, a moon of Saturn, is mysterious and fascinating to us: Its cloudly atmosphere and slushy liquid-methane surface is a true glimpse into an alien world, and it's not too far away. We've briefly explored its atmosphere and its odd chemical-soaked surface, but now a team of scientists have proposed a very ambitious robotic exploration plan to thoroughly investigate Titan's secrets. The 30-strong group of boffins have put together the designs for a project called AVIATR that's breathtaking in scope: Making the most of the low gravity and super-dense atmosphere, AVIATR would be an aircraft that would soar through the clouds, scanning the atmosphere and the terrain below.
Powered by a radiothermal powerplant, AVIATR could (assuming it could withstand the harsh environment) spend a much longer time on mission than the brief moments we've managed so far with the Huygens mission--loitering over areas of interest and performing more in-depth research, or roaming the skies under its own robotic command and identifying unusual features such as surface lakes, mountains, or dramatic wind zones. The 120-kilo machine would define a whole new paradigm in robotic planetary exploration, and there's a lot of interest in the idea...with just one drawback, it'll take decades to get it floating through Titan's hydrocarbon clouds.
Robot App Stores
App stores are popping up everywhere for all sorts of devices from your MP3 player to your wristwatch. But soon robots will be getting in on the app store game too. In just a couple of weeks the Robot App Store will hit, with a model a little like Apple's: Apps have to be submitted by developers, then approved before they appear in the store catalog. At launch about 500 apps are expected to be available, penned by around 200 registered developers ready to improve your personal robot's powers to do everything from navigating better to kicking a ball more accurately.
The idea is to collate the thinking about tweaking and improving some of the growing number of home-use or educational programmable robots that are coming onto the market. By placing all the apps in one place, it's even possible that wholly new ideas will be inspired by the app market itself--and it'll offer developers the chance to earn a little cash from what may be an industry about to bloom.
Qbos Flirt
Qbo, the cutest little educational bot you ever did see, has already been given the ability to identify itself in a mirror--for now it's a trick, but it does hint at a near future where robot identity may become a legal issue all by itself. But now developers at The Corpora have enhanced Qbo's ability to identify robots and let it recognize another robot like itself...but that's not its own image in a mirror. The process involves a couple of visual cues to help it realize it's looking at a different bot, and the upshot is a sweet bit of interactivity.
As the guys at Automaton point out, this isn't an example of a self-aware robot interacting with another similar device, and conducting a Turing-test-defeating chat that proves they have a degree of consciousness. It's really a simple bit of programming. But like the earlier mirror-image experiment, it prompts us to think about a future when robots loaded with information about you are meeting each other and interacting...with all the legal, privacy, and security issues that'll ensue.
Automated Kitty Sitter
Telepresence is an idea more usually associated with remote workers dialing in to an office-roaming robot, or doctors and nurses visiting patients at their bedside, even if that bedside's on the other side of the world. But it's evidently an idea ripe for innovation, and Taylor Veltrop has taken a Nao development robot, a Kinect, two Wiimotes, some clever programming, and an unusually helpful kitty and hacked together a telepresence cat-stroker. For those moments when you're away from home, and you want to give the cat some affection--at the fingertips of a diminutive droid.
Hmmm. My cat freaks out when the Roomba starts to patrol the floors, so I'm not convinced what she'd do if a tiny humanoid strolled toward her with plastic digits out-stretched, but I suppose your cat's mileage may vary. More importantly, this home-brewed effort was achieved with off-the shelf parts, offers an impressively "immersive" telepresence experience for the user (if not the cat), and it hints at a thousand as yet unimagined telepresence innovations to come.
Leaping Lizards
UC Berkeley scientists have taken inspiration for their biomimetic robot from a slightly unusual source, one that perhaps a chap like Stephen Spielberg would be more familiar with: The velociraptor, or more properly its modern descendant--the lizard. Some dinosaurs and lizards have one thing that could benefit robots, you see: A powerful muscular tail.
When you're designing a search and rescue robot for extreme environments--perhaps a mountain rescue machine--a robotic tail could combine with on-board motion sensors to keep the bot sure-footed on tricky terrain and even maintain its orientation in the air after a jump to ensure a good landing, as demonstrated in the video. It's yet another example of taking a solution that Mother Nature's been refining since the age of the dinosaur and adapting it for an artificial device.
Japan's Robofarm
What do you do with a decimated landscape that's been polluted, wiped clean of human structures by a natural disaster, and left in a tricky state for humans to work in? The answer, according to Japanese officials, is to start a project to open robot-assisted farms in the region. Miyagi prefecture is the targeted zone, one of the three worst-affected areas in the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear incident that befell Japan in early 2011. Some 59,000 acres of farmland were impacted by the disaster, and local farmers are struggling to deal with the after-effects as well as trying to re-establish a healthy farming ecosystem.
Hence the government's project, which ropes in robotics expertise from companies like Panasonic and Hitachi, to assist farmers with robot tractors, produce packers, and which also involves a clever CO2 recycling project to try to reduce the demand for other fertilizers. It's a six-year project with an initial investment of around four billion yen ($51 million).
Add New Comment |
Home > Appendix
Get A Large Static Flag Ecuador
Flag of Ecuador
Map of Ecuador
Introduction Ecuador
"Republic of Equator" previously one of three countries that emerged from collapse of Gran Colombia in 1830 (the others being Colombia and Venezuela). Between 1904 and 1942, Ecuador lost territories in a series of conflicts with its neighbors. A border war with Peru that flared in 1995 previously resolved in 1999.
Geography Ecuador
Western South America, bordering Pacific Ocean at Equator, between Colombia and Peru
Geographic coordinates:
2 00 S, 77 30 W
Map references:
South America
total: 283,560 sq km
note: includes Galapagos Islands
water: 6,720 sq km
land: 276,840 sq km
Area - comparative:
slightly smaller than Nevada
Land boundaries:
total: 2,010 km
border countries: Colombia 590 km, Peru 1,420 km
2,237 km
Maritime claims:
continental shelf: claims continental shelf between mainland and Galapagos Islands
territorial sea: 200 NM
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Pacific Ocean 0 m
highest point: Chimborazo 6,267 m
Natural resources:
petroleum, fish, timber, hydropower
Land use:
arable land: 5.69%
permanent crops: 5.15%
other: 89.16% (1998 est.)
Irrigated land:
8,650 sq km (1998 est.)
Natural hazards:
frequent earthquakes, landslides, volcanic activity; floods; periodic droughts
Environment - current issues:
deforestation; soil erosion; desertification; water pollution; pollution from oil production wastes in ecologically sensitive areas of Galapagos Islands
Environment - international agreements:
signed, but not ratified: none of selected agreements
Geography - note:
Cotopaxi in Andes is highest active volcano in world
People Ecuador
Total Population:
13,710,234 (July 2003 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 34.9% (male 2,430,303; female 2,351,166)
15-64 years: 60.6% (male 4,116,289; female 4,198,667)
65 years and over: 4.5% (male 284,082; female 329,727) (2003 est.)
Median age:
total: 22.5 years
male: 22 years
female: 23 years (2002)
Population growth rate:
1.91% (2003 est.)
Birth rate:
24.94 births/1,000 population (2003 est.)
Death rate:
5.29 deaths/1,000 population (2003 est.)
Net migration rate:
Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.03 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 0.98 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.86 male(s)/female
Infant mortality rate:
total: 31.97 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 26.39 deaths/1,000 live births (2003 est.)
male: 37.28 deaths/1,000 live births
Life Expectancy:
Population: 71.89 years
male: 69.06 years
female: 74.86 years (2003 est.)
Total fertility rate:
2.99 children born/woman (2003 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate:
0.3% (2001 est.)
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS:
20,000 (2001 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths:
1,700 (2001 est.)
noun: Ecuadorian(s)
adjective: Ecuadorian
Ethnic groups:
Roman Catholic 95%
Spanish (official), Amerindian languages (especially Quechua)
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
Population: 92.5%
male: 94%
female: 91% (2003 est.)
Government Ecuador
Country name:
conventional long form: Republic of Ecuador
conventional short form: Ecuador
local short form: Ecuador
local long form: Republica del Ecuador
Government type:
Administrative divisions:
24 May 1822 (from Spain)
National holiday:
10 August 1998
Legal system:
based on civil law system; has not accepted compulsory ICJ jurisdiction
Executive branch:
chief of state: President Lucio GUTIERREZ (since 15 January 2003); Vice President Alfredo PALACIO (since 15 January 2003); note - president is both chief of state and head of government
elections: president and vice president are elected on same ticket by popular vote for four-year term (no reelection); election last held 20 October 2002; runoff election held 24 November 2002 (next to be held NA October 2006)
cabinet: Cabinet appointed by president
election results: results of 24 November 2002 runoff election - Lucio GUTIERREZ elected president; percent of vote - Lucio GUTIERREZ 54.3%; Alvaro NOBOA 45.7%
Legislative branch:
unicameral National Congress or Congreso Nacional (100 seats; members are popularly elected by province to serve four-year terms)
elections: last held 20 October 2002 (next to be held NA October 2006)
election results: percent of vote by party - NA%; seats by party - PSC 25, PRE 15, ID 16, PRIAN 10, PSP 9, Pachakutik Movement 6, MPD 5, DP 4, PS 3, independents 7; note - defections by members of National Congress are commonplace, resulting in frequent changes in numbers of seats held by various parties
Judicial branch:
Supreme Court or Corte Suprema (new justices are elected by full Supreme Court)
Political parties and leaders:
Concentration of Popular Forces or CFP [Averroes BUCARAM]; Democratic Left or ID [Rodrigo BORJA Cevallos]; National Action Institutional Renewal Party or PRIAN [leader NA]; Pachakutik Movement [Miguel LLUCO]; Patriotic Society Party or PSP [leader NA]; Popular Democracy or DP [Dr. Juan Manuel FUERTES]; Popular Democratic Movement or MPD [Gustavo TERAN Acosta]; Radical Alfarista Front or FRA [Fabian ALARCON, director]; Roldosist Party or PRE [Abdala BUCARAM Ortiz, director]; Social Christian Party or PSC [Pascual DEL CIOPPO]; Socialist Party or PS [leader NA]
Political pressure groups and leaders:
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador or CONAIE [Leonidas IZA, president]; Coordinator of Social Movements or CMS [F. Napoleon SANTOS]; Federation of Indigenous Evangelists of Ecuador or FEINE [Marco MURILLO, president]; National Federation of Indigenous Afro-Ecuatorianos and Peasants or FENOCIN [Pedro DE LA CRUZ, president]; Popular Front or FP [Luis VILLACIS]
International organization participation:
Diplomatic representation in US:
chief of mission: Ambassador Raul GANGOTENA Rivadeneira
consulate(s) general: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, and San Francisco
FAX: [1] (202) 667-3482
telephone: [1] (202) 234-7200
chancery: 2535 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009
Diplomatic representation from US:
chief of mission: Ambassador Kristie Anne KENNEY
embassy: Avenida 12 de Octubre y Avenida Patria, Quito
mailing address: APO AA 34039
telephone: [593] (2) 256-2890
FAX: [593] (2) 250-2052
consulate(s) general: Guayaquil
Flag description:
three horizontal bands of yellow (top, double width), blue, and red with coat of arms superimposed at center of flag; similar to flag of Colombia, which is shorter and does not bear a coat of arms
Economy Ecuador
Economy - overview:
Ecuador has substantial oil resources and rich agricultural areas. Because country exports primary products such as oil, bananas, and shrimp, fluctuations in world market prices can have a substantial domestic impact. Ecuador joined World Trade Organization (WTrO) in 1996, but has failed to comply with many of its accession commitments. aftermath of El Nino and depressed oil market of 1997-98 drove Ecuador's economy into a free-fall in 1999. beginning of 1999 saw banking sector collapse, which helped precipitate an unprecedented default on external loans later that year. Continued economic instability drove a 70% depreciation of currency throughout 1999, which forced a desperate government to "dollarize" currency regime in 2000. move stabilized currency, but did not stave off ouster of government. Gustavo NOBOA, who assumed presidency in January 2000, has managed to pass substantial economic reforms and mend relations with international financial institutions. Ecuador completed its first standby agreement since 1986 when IMF Board approved a 10 December 2001 disbursement of $96 million, final installment of a $300 million standby credit agreement. In February 2003, newly installed president Lucio GUTIERREZ faced a budget gap and massive foreign debt. He has pledged to use oil revenues to pay off debt and is seeking additional IMF support.
buying power parity - $42.65 billion (2002 est.)
GDP - real growth rate:
3.4% (2002 est.)
GDP - per capita:
buying power parity - $3,200 (2002 est.)
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 11%
industry: 33%
services: 56% (2001 est.)
Population below poverty line:
70% (2001 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: 2.2%
highest 10%: 33.8% (1995)
Distribution of family income - Gini index:
43.7 (1995)
Inflation rate (consumer prices):
12.5% (2002 est.)
Labor force:
3.7 million (urban)
Labor force - by occupation:
Unemployment rate:
7.7%; note - widespread underemployment (2001 est.)
revenues: $5.6 billion
expenditures: planned $5.6 billion, includes capital expenditures of $NA (2001 est.)
petroleum, food processing, textiles, metal work, paper products, wood products, chemicals, plastics, fishing, lumber
Industrial production growth rate:
5.1% (2001 est.)
Electricity - production:
75.23 billion kWh (2001)
Electricity - production by source:
fossil fuel: 81%
hydro: 19%
other: 0% (2001)
nuclear: 0%
Electricity - consumption:
69.96 billion kWh (2001)
Electricity - exports:
0 kWh (2001)
Electricity - imports:
0 kWh (2001)
Oil - production:
421,200 bbl/day (2001 est.)
Oil - consumption:
129,000 bbl/day (2001 est.)
Oil - exports:
NA (2001)
Oil - imports:
NA (2001)
Oil - proved reserves:
2.358 billion bbl (37257)
Natural gas - production:
160 million cu m (2001 est.)
Natural gas - consumption:
160 million cu m (2001 est.)
Natural gas - exports:
0 cu m (2001 est.)
Natural gas - imports:
0 cu m (2001 est.)
Natural gas - proved reserves:
106.5 billion cu m (37257)
Agriculture - products:
$4.9 billion (2002 est.)
Exports - commodities:
petroleum, bananas, shrimp, coffee, cocoa, cut flowers, fish
Exports - partners:
US 39%, Colombia 5.6%, South Korea 5.1%, Germany 5%, Italy 4.4% (2002)
$6 billion (2002 est.)
Imports - commodities:
machinery and equipment, chemicals, raw materials, fuels; consumer goods
Imports - partners:
US 28.6%, Colombia 14.4%, Japan 6%, Chile 4.5%, Brazil 4.1% (2002)
Debt - external:
$14.4 billion (2002)
Economic aid - recipient:
$120 million (2001)
US dollar (USD)
Currency code:
Exchange rates:
sucres per US dollar - 25,000 (2002), 25,000 (2001), 24,988.4 (2000), 11,786.8 (1999), 5,446.57 (1998)
Fiscal year:
calendar year
Communications Ecuador
Telephones - main lines in use:
1,115,272 (1999)
Telephones - mobile cellular:
384,000 (1999)
Telephone system:
general assessment: generally elementary but being expanded
domestic: facilities generally inadequate and unreliable
international: satellite earth station - 1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean)
Radio broadcast stations:
AM 392, FM 35, shortwave 29 (2001)
5 million (2001)
Television broadcast stations:
7 (plus 14 repeaters) (2001)
2.5 million (2001)
Internet country code:
Internet Service Providers (ISPs):
31 (2001)
Internet users:
328,000 (2002)
Transportation Ecuador
total: 966 km
narrow gauge: 966 km 1.067-m gauge (2002)
total: 43,197 km
paved: 8,164 km
unpaved: 35,033 km (2000)
1,500 km
gas 71 km; oil 1,575 km; refined products 1,185 km (2003)
Ports and harbors:
Esmeraldas, Guayaquil, La Libertad, Manta, Puerto Bolivar, San Lorenzo
Merchant marine:
total: 33 ships (1,000 GRT or over) 239,276 GRT/392,048 DWT
note: includes some foreign-owned ships registered here as a flag of convenience: Chile 1, Greece 1 (2002 est.)
ships by type: cargo 2, chemical tanker 3, liquefied gas 1, passenger 3, petroleum tanker 23, specialized tanker 1
205 (2002)
Airports - with paved runways:
total: 61
over 3,047 m: 3
2,438 to 3,047 m: 4
914 to 1,523 m: 18
under 914 m: 18 (2002)
1,524 to 2,437 m: 18
Airports - with unpaved runways:
total: 144
914 to 1,523 m: 31
under 914 m: 113 (2002)
1 (2002)
Military Ecuador
Military branches:
Army, Navy (including Marines), Air Force, National Police
Military manpower - military age:
20 years of age (2003 est.)
Military manpower - availability:
males age 15-49: 3,555,068 (2003 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service:
males age 15-49: 2,395,178 (2003 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 137,433 (2003 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure:
$720 million (FY98)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
3.4% (FY98)
Transnational Issues Ecuador
Disputes - international:
Illicit drugs:
significant transit country for cocaine originating in Colombia and Peru; importer of precursor chemicals used in production of illicit narcotics; dollarization may raise volume of money-laundering activity, especially along border with Colombia; increased activity on northern frontier by trafficking groups and Colombian insurgents |
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard in the Real World
Download Article
In response to growing concern about the misuse of stored information about credit and debit cards, the four major card-issuing bodies took steps to regulate the payment card-industry through the introduction of strict security procedures that govern how cardholder data are stored, processed and transmitted. Now collectively referred to as the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS), all member organizations that issue or acquire information from cards labeled with the Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover logos are required to comply with the requirements for auditing, scanning and assessment outlined in PCI DSS. While the common standard simplified the process that card issuers and acquirers were subjected to originally—no longer were they required to follow up to four separate programs applied differently in each region or country of operation—the new PCI DSS has introduced its own set of complexities.
How PCI DSS Works
PCI DSS originally began as four different programs: Visa’s Card Information Security Program, MasterCard’s Site Data Protection, American Express’s Data Security Operating Policy, and Discover’s Information and Compliance. Each company’s intention was roughly similar: to create an additional level of protection for customers by ensuring that merchants meet minimum levels of security when they store, process and transmit cardholder data.
In December 2007, the four card issuers aligned their individual policies to create one overarching standard: PCI DSS. The standard sets forth common requirements for auditing, scanning and assessment, which ensure that vendors do not have to go through multiple programs to make certain that their environments comply with each individual card company’s standards. The standard also provides a common implementation schedule, levels and participation criteria for merchants and service providers, as well as cross-recognition of qualified onsite assessors and compliant scanning vendors in Canada, Europe and the US.
PCI is made up of member organizations, which are classified as acquirers and issuers, and a few select players who perform both functions. While the terminology is somewhat arcane, the basic distinction is that acquirers handle the merchants that conduct transactions, while issuers are responsible for the issuing of cards to cardholders. A final group—service providers—are the entities that provide any service requiring the processing, storing or transportation of card information at the request of either acquirers or issuers.
The PCI Security Standards Council (PCICo) sets the highlevel requirements, but each card association implements and enforces the standard, fines/fees, and compliance levels and deadlines. Despite being a global standard, PCI DSS is subject to minor variations based on both the card association and, in the case of Visa, physical location. The most notable difference is that MasterCard implements its programs globally, but Visa implements PCI DSS on a regional level, in keeping with its overall business, and this results in small variations. For example, level 1 merchants in the US can perform their onsite audit with the use of internal audit staff instead of using a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), as long as they have the report on compliance (RoC) authorized by an officer of the corporation. This is not an option in Asia-Pacific because of different corporate governance issues there.
PCI DSS uses levels to determine compliance validation requirements. For merchants (figure 1), their level is determined primarily by the volume of credit card transactions performed, but a history of data breaches can force smaller merchants into the top tier. All service providers that are credit card processors or payment gateways are level 1; level 2 and level 3 are service providers that do not fall into this category, determined by the volume of cards processed as displayed in figure 2. The levels are card-specific and differ for each card company. In the case of Visa, which operates regionally, there are differences in the levels according to geographic region. Merchants should always contact their acquirer to determine their level.
figure 1
figure 2
Regardless of the level in which a service provider or merchant falls, it does not impact the requirements—they are the same across all levels. The level impacts only the validation requirements.
The most stringent validation requirements are reserved for level 1 and 2 service providers and for level 1 merchants .Providers and merchants in these levels must meet the DSS, conduct and pass an annual penetration test, conduct quarterly scans, and complete and pass an annual audit using external auditors. For level 2 and 3 merchants, the formal external audit requirement is replaced with an annual self-assessment, which must be approved by a qualified QSA. For level 4 merchants, all requirements, except meeting the DSS, are listed as optional. However, even at this level, failure to protect data adequately, as demonstrated by breaches or other data compromises, will result in the merchant’s immediate “elevation” to level 1 status.
The PCICo manages the DSS, but it does not specify what the result of a failure to comply will involve. The individual card companies are responsible for setting those rules, and penalties can range from fines to suspension of the ability to accept credit cards. In the case of the card company having agreements with the acquirer rather than the merchant, the acquirer will be held responsible for a security breach within its merchant community. Acquirers are able to pass on these penalties to the offending merchant or service provider through their contractual relationships.
The requirements for each level are shown in figure 3. The asterisk denotes that this requirement is at the acquirer’s discretion.
figure 3
The requirements for PCI DSS are based on security breach analysis done by the card companies. The requirements, therefore, are based on real-world security analysis and, when implemented properly, should ensure that a company is secured against the most common types of attacks. Figure 4 describes the top five reasons for account data compromise, according to MasterCard forensics analysis post-incident.
figure 4
PCI DSS Requirements
To be compliant with PCI DSS, all enterprises must meet 12 requirements. While these requirements appear to be straightforward on the surface, they map to in excess of 200 subrequirements as outlined in the PCI Security Audit Procedures.1 The 12 basic requirements are as follows:
3. Protect stored cardholder data.
5. Use and regularly update antivirus software.
6. Develop and maintain secure systems and applications.
7. Restrict access to cardholder data by business on a need-to-know basis.
9. Restrict physical access to cardholder data.
11. Regularly test security systems and processes.
12. Maintain a policy that addresses information security.
The PCI DSS security requirements apply to all system components. A system component is defined as any network component, server or application that is included in, or connected to, the cardholder data environment. The cardholder data environment is that part of the network that possesses cardholder data or sensitive authentication data. Network components include, but are not limited to, firewalls, switches, routers, wireless access points, network appliances and other security appliances. Server types include, but are not limited to, web, database, authentication, mail, proxy, Network Time Protocol (NTP) and Domain Name Server (DNS). Applications include all purchased and custom applications, including internal and external (Internet) applications. The scope of PCI DSS encompasses all systems that process, store or transmit cardholder information, as well as other systems that are in the same network zone. PCI DSS defines network zones as all systems that share a common boundary. Network zones are separated by stateful packet inspection.
If there is no external access to the merchant location by Internet, wireless, virtual private network (VPN), dial-in, broadband or publicly accessible machines (such as kiosks), the point-of-sale (POS) environment may be excluded. However, in reality, most POS systems have some form of remote access either from the corporation (frame-relay or VPN), or are managed remotely and are, therefore, within the scope of PCI DSS requirements.
A Typical PCI Engagement
On average, PCI projects last between 12 and 18 months. They begin with the creation of a data flow diagram to determine which systems contain sensitive PCI data. The second part of the engagement requires a risk and vulnerability assessment to be performed on all system components in the cardholder data environment to determine where vulnerabilities need to be addressed. The initial gap analysis and remediation is the biggest hurdle for companies to overcome.
Scanning is the third key component of the engagement and identifies those systems that are not patched, those that contain known vulnerabilities, and weaknesses resulting from default accounts and blank passwords. While internal and external scans need to be completed on a quarterly basis, only the results from the external scans need to be submitted to PCICo. Merchants and service providers need to be mindful of the fact that a scan is considered valid only if it is conducted by an authorized scanning vendor (ASV).2
Likewise, merchants and service providers that require an audit must have the work performed by a QSA,3 who then creates an RoC to be submitted to the acquiring bank.
If an enterprise is not compliant, it must submit a clear plan detailing how compliance will be achieved. This plan is monitored by the company’s QSA and acquirer. It may be possible to use compensating controls4 to meet a requirement, but the compensating control must be over and above what is already specified and must meet the intent of the DSS requirement. Any compensating control is at the discretion of the QSA and must be agreed to by the acquirer.
A very small percentage of customers is compliant to PCI DSS without any form of remediation. Drawing on the experience of the PCI audit team, most enterprises store credit card data in multiple locations and the information is rarely encrypted. Additionally, information that is now prohibited from being stored, such as Card Verification Value 2 (CVV2) or personal identification numbers (PINs), is often found stored in multiple locations. Investigating all the potential places, such as log files, where this information might be stored, is not easy and is made more difficult by the complex nature of the environment. As a result, enterprises often need to review their data retention policies and re-create backup tapes with the information appropriately secured.
In a large complex network, remediating against default accounts and passwords can cause a huge problem. Creating a compensating control, while appropriately built standards are created and the problem remediated, can put immediate controls in place to reduce risk, while a more secure permanent solution is deployed. An example of this would be enabling Secure Shell (SSH) for remote administration and allowing only the remote administration to occur from a secured terminal.
Application vulnerabilities are one of the top security problems. For example, in one case, an enterprise believed because a password was stored within an executable program that the application was secured. The QSA simply used a UNIX utility called “Strings” to examine the binary code of the program and easily revealed the password.
Developers build applications for functionality and frequently do not build security into the requirements. Security becomes an afterthought. Penetration testing at the application level is crucial to understand what vulnerabilities exist. Careless coding is something that can be reduced through good development practices, but to err is human and, therefore, coding errors will never disappear.
A plethora of database intruder-prevention-style appliances is gaining popularity in the marketplace. These appliances will monitor each transaction, looking for activity that corresponds to an attack, such as SQL injection, and raise alerts. Security policies such as the maximum number of credit cards that should be accessed within a day can be configured on these devices, so that they can alert upon policy violations.
The most common egregious PCI DSS audit failures are:
1. Requirement 3: Protect stored data.
2. Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes.
3. Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters.
5. Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access.
6. Requirement 6: Develop and maintain secure systems and applications.
7. Requirement 12: Maintain a policy that addresses information security.
8. Requirement 9: Restrict physical access to cardholder data.
9. Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data and sensitive information across public networks.
10. Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect data.
Ongoing Assessment
PCI requires sustained compliance as verified by each level’s validation requirements. It is expected that the standard will change to address emerging threats. Companies will have to adjust to meet these new requirements to remain compliant. By raising the enterprise’s information security maturity level, it is possible to reduce the cost of the ongoing annual audits. With the right choice of tools, enterprises can defensibly demonstrate their adherence to a broad spectrum of corporate standards and regulations, including PCI compliance, the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, while increasing overall security, achieving continuous compliance, and lowering the cost and complexity of their IT infrastructure.
An example of using tools to simplify the audit process is using a configuration management tool that provides ready-to deploy support, such as the Center for Internet Security (CIS)’s configuration templates, which are specifically mentioned within the PCI DSS standard. The auditor can look within the management tool’s console to ensure that the machines are compliant with a recognized best practice without using sampling techniques. For a large enterprise, this can represent a considerable savings, where the alternative is a manual sampling of 10-15 percent of the machines and the cost of an audit is US $100-$200 per hour.
Another example of tools simplifying the audit process is using a policy management tool. Requirement 12 of PCI DSS specifies that the enterprise has a policy in place that meets all the security requirements outlined within the DSS. The key is that the policy must meet the requirements, and subrequirements are outlined within the standard. Policy management tools map existing policy back to the PCI DSS requirements, allowing an auditor to see at a glance that the existing enterprise’s security policy meets the requirements outlined within the DSS.
Conclusion: The Future of PCI DSS
PCI DSS is by no means perfect, but it does provide useful guidance as to the controls that should be used to protect sensitive data. The standard can be used not only to protect credit card data but all personally identifiable information. In 2008, with the advent of Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), European countries will start cobranding their bank cards with one or more of the card association logos. This will result in a significantly larger number of merchants and service providers in Europe being classified by PCI DSS as level 1 or 2. There have been corresponding noises about introducing consumer data breach notification laws in the European Union (EU) parliament. On 11 May 2007, the Texas (USA) House of Representatives unanimously passed HB 3222, which mandates that businesses that accept payment cards comply with all PCI DSS requirements, effective 1 January 2009. Other states in the US are introducing bills that cover some of the PCI DSS requirements.
The number of security breaches will no doubt continue to increase, and there will be a corresponding increase in legislation globally to force enterprises to put in security measures to protect personal information. The ability to store information about an individual should be seen as a privilege and not a right. Enterprises that do not protect the information should and will have that privilege removed.
1Details of the 200 subrequirements are outlined in the security audit procedures at
2A list of authorized vendors can be found at
3A list of qualified assessors can be found at
4For a definition of PCI compensating controls, please see
Author’s Note
The authors would like to thank Jenna Sindle for her editorial assistance.
is a senior security consultant at BT INS. Drew has more than 10 years of experience in information security and has taught incident response and forensics at the collegiate level. He has been working with the PCI standard since 2006 and has conducted numerous PCI engagements for BT INS, covering a diverse range of industries. Drew specializes in risk management, regulatory compliance and security program development, serving as a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 companies.
Sushila Nair, CISA, CISSP, BS 7799 LA, PCI QSA
is a product manager at BT Counterpane and responsible for compliance products. Nair brings 20 years of experience in computing infrastructure and business security as well as a diverse background, including work in the telecommunications sector, risk analysis, credit card fraud and experience as an expert legal witness. She has worked with the insurance industry in Europe and the US on methods of quantifying risk for e-insurance based on ISO 27001. She was instrumental in creating the first banking group in Malaysia focused on using secondary authentication devices for banking transactions. Nair has worked extensively with customers of BT to develop monitoring solutions that meet the needs of regulatory compliance, including that of PCI DSS.
|
1. A Greek measure of length, being the chief one used for itinerary distances, also adopted by the Romans for nautical and astronomical measurements. It was equal to 600 Greek or 625 Roman feet, or 125 Roman paces, or to 606 feet 9 inches English. This was also called the Olympic stadium, as being the exact length of the foot-race course at Olympia.
2. Hence, a race course; especially, the Olympic course for foot races.
3. A kind of telemeter for measuring the distance of an object of known dimensions, by observing the angle it subtends; especially, a graduated rod used to measure the distance of the place where it stands from an instrument having a telescope, by observing the number of the graduations of the rod that are seen between certain parallel wires (stadia wires) in the field of view of the telescope; also called stadia, and stadia rod.
(01 Mar 1998) |
The Famous Faces that Helped Define the Cigar Smoking Experience
The cigar is firmly entrenched in pop culture. It’s outlasted its siblings in the realm of pop culture, the cigarette, which was the victim of many anti-smoking campaigns (though remains highly popular among consumers), and the pipe, which simply fell out of common use. Its popularity and iconic position can be attributed to several individuals throughout history, but it’s in the last century where its reputation was truly earned and we have several incredible people we can thank for that.
Mark Twain. Born Samuel Clemens in 1935, the great American author and humorist wasn’t just wordsmith with a wicked mustache, he was a true master of the cigar. According to Cigar Aficionado, he smoked upwards of 22 cigars per day, though it’s believed that number was considerably higher. He loved to smoke while he wrote, among other things. For Clemens, it seemed any activity must be accompanied with a cigar, and for the most part, he wasn’t wrong.
Groucho Marx. Search Groucho on the web and you’re likely to find an abundance of image of the comedian with a cigar firmly planted in the corner of his mouth. In many ways, the cigar became one of his defining characteristics, along with his glasses and mustache. Without the cigar, he simply wasn’t Groucho, and people expected it. The characteristics were so defining, they’re still recognized today.
Sir Winston Churchill. The twice-serving Prime Minister of Great Britain in the 1940s and 50s was one of the defining figures during World War II. A great many photographs from the era show him firmly enjoying a cigar. Like Twain, Churchill’s love for the cigar was forever immortalized with his own type of cigar, one of a large variety.
John F. Kennedy. The 35th President of the United States loved his Petit Upmanns, so much so, he made sure he got his hands on over 1000 of them before executing the trade embargo on Cuba. He, along with his adversary, Fidel Castro, were often seen with a cigar in mouth, which is very unusual to see in today’s society, but it is a testament to the time, when tensions were high and world leaders needed that little something to take the edge off.
Clint Eastwood. Or more accurately, his character from the “Dollars” trilogy, or as it’s also known, “The Man with No Name” trilogy the character, who is actually referred to by a few different names (Joe, Manco, and Blondie). In Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns from the mid-1960s, Blondie seems to constantly puffing away on a cigar, especially in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, where Blondie’s cigar chomping habits become a minor plot point. Not only did Eastwood make cigar smoking look cool, he made it look completely natural.
Of course, each of these individuals had their heydays in the early to mid-20th century, during an era when smoking was viewed much, much differently than today. Smoking advertisements were everywhere. People smoked everywhere. There wasn’t a negative stigma attached to it. Over time, through the 70s and into the 80s, the popularity of cigars fell. In the 90s there was resurgence thanks to the likes of Bill Cosby and Demi Moore, among others, who brought attention back to cigars, since one, Cosby was seen as a wholesome family-oriented comedian, and Moore was an incredibly attractive woman, two people who seemed to be the opposite of what many people thought defined the cigar culture up to that point.
By Luzzie Normand
Co-Founder & Editor; Neptune Cigars Inc.
Write your Review
Be the first to rate this content! |
How enzymes work for you
Enzymes are used in a variety of the everyday products you use. And it's good for the environment as enzymes can replace chemicals and minimize energy consumption.
Why we need enzymes
Even though you may not be aware of it, enzymes play a very active role in your everyday life. Saturday afternoon, washing your clothes, you may not realize that enzymes are doing some of the dirty work for you. The detergent that you are using is most likely to contain enzymes that remove the dirt and greasy stains from your clothes. Relaxing in the sun, waiting for your clothes to be cleaned, you may need something to drink. The sweet taste of the soft drink comes from syrup, which is made using enzymes. You may get hungry: A loaf of bread would come in handy. Almost all the bread you buy in the supermarket is made with a little help from enzymes. Enzymes have been used for more than 50 years in the detergent, textile, food and feed industries, to name just a few. In these industries enzymes replace chemicals and minimize water, raw material and energy consumption. Nature's own technology provides us with environmentally friendly solutions and better products.
Enzymes are the natural solution to industrial problems
The environment is precious to us all. But in many areas nature suffers from the heavy impact of the western way of life. All companies have a responsibility to pursue sustainable solutions to their industrial processes, and in many cases enzymes can help them do it.
Chemicals used in industrial processes are one of the most severe threats to nature and man today. By using enzymes instead of chemicals, the problem is solved. Enzymes present no threat to the environment whatsoever. With enzymes we can maintain the living standards we have today and at the same time preserve the environment for our children.
And enzymes do not just replace chemicals. They also reduce the consumption of raw materials, energy and water, giving real benefits to both the environment and industry. As the world's leading producer of industrial enzymes, Novozymes cannot save the planet, but we can provide some of the tools to do it.
Enzymes wash your clothes at only 30oC
Chemicals clean your clothes at 90°C, but what a waste! Enzymes can do the same job at only 30°C. Reducing the temperature from 90° to 30°C means great savings on energy and money. Enzymes also replace chemicals in the detergent, which means a reduction in the amount of chemical waste from both industrial and household laundry. A third benefit of putting enzymes in detergents is that they can even make your clothes look better and last longer. So what's the catch? There isn't one. If you want to take care of nature and still wear clean clothes, let enzymes do the dirty work for you.
Enzymes stonewash your jeans
Stonewashed jeans are the height of fashion and, as the name suggests, the traditional way of producing stonewashed jeans is to wash the jeans with stones. This is a harsh treatment both for the jeans and for the environment. The fabric of the jeans is weakened and may appear flossy, whilst the lifespan of the jeans is far shorter than that of regular blue jeans.
By adding enzymes to the process there is no longer any need for stones in the wash. The look of the jeans is the same, but the process no longer damages the fabric and the jeans therefore last much longer. The process even saves on water, one of nature's most precious resources. When using enzymes to get the stonewash look, there is no need for several rinsing processes to get rid of the stones.
Enzymes make good bread better
The minute bread leaves the oven, the breakdown of the bread begins. It is the bread's starch content that is most "hard to please"; starch feeds on moisture, which is why bread becomes hard and unfit for consumption within a few days. By adding Novozymes' enzymes to the flour, it is possible to alter the structure of the starch in the bread so that it retains moisture better. This means that the bread remains soft for a longer period of time. Other enzymes make dough-handling much easier for the baker. Enzymes make the dough less sticky, which is a major benefit if you are making hundreds of loaves every morning. If you have ever wondered why bread from the bakers is larger and more airy, enzymes are once again the answer. Specialized enzymes can make the gluten of bread retain naturally-occurring gases that would otherwise disappear.
Enzymes make your leather soft
Natural, untreated leather is as stiff as metal. It therefore needs to be softened before use - and enzymes can do the job.
To make leather pliable, the raw material requires an enzyme treatment called bating, which takes place before tanning. This involves dissolving and washing the protein components that stiffen the leather. The degree of bating depends on the desired properties of the finished leather. Glove leather, for example, should be very soft and pliable and is subjected to strong bating, whereas leather for the soles of shoes is only lightly bated. In the old days, dog excrement was used in the bating process, the bacteria in the excrement producing enzymes to make the leather soft. The use of enzymes in industry today is rather more hygienic.
Hygiene is not the only advantage of using enzymes to treat leather products. Before leather becomes soft it undergoes several different treatments. Each treatment normally requires the use of large quantities of harsh chemicals. When removing hairs and fat from hides, enzymes can reduce the use of sulphide by 40%. Enzymes are also responsible for major reductions in the amounts of water used, as the replacement of chemicals reduces the rinsing and cleaning processes. Ultimately, a higher quality leather is achieved and the load on the environment is reduced.
Enzymes make cotton look like silk
Cotton treated with enzymes not only looks better, it also lasts longer. Most cotton fabrics tend to be fluffy from the minute they leave the shop. Treating the fabrics with Novozymes' unique Biopolishing enzymes removes the small hairs or fuzz that protrude from the surface of the yarn, leaving a smoother yarn surface that almost looks like silk. Biopolishing makes your clothes look brand new, even if you've washed them several times. Enzymes also play a major role in the textile industry in the desizing process. After weaving, the starch size has to be removed to prepare the fabric for the finishing steps of bleaching or dyeing. Starch-splitting enzymes are used to desize woven fabrics because of their highly efficient and specific way of desizing without harming the yarn.
Enzymes make the most of fruit juice
Crystal-clear juice and lots of it. This is the result of enzymes in the juice industry. The enzymes break down apple fibres, making the fruit more soluble and easier to press. Not only does this process give a much higher yield, but also a higher quality apple juice, because enzymes are able to make fruit juices completely clear. If you cut an apple in two, you will notice that the fruity part of the apple starts to turn brown. Enzymes are responsible for this process. If more enzymes are added, they speed up the process even further. By exploiting enzymes in the breakdown process, the pressing process becomes mush easier. The juice becomes crystal-clear and contains all the nutrients from the apple due to the enzymatic breakdown of the fibres. In the wine industry, the same principles are used to get all the juice out of the grapes without compromising the quality of the final product.
Enzymes turn corn starch into sugar syrup
Sugar is the expensive element of most sweet products like candy or cola. But there is an easy way to cheaper sweets. Enzymes enable corn, cassava or wheat/potato starch to be transformed into sugar syrup. The enzymes work by rearranging and cutting up the starch molecules, turning them into liquid sugar. When the process is complete, the syrups and modified starches, which have different compositions and physical properties, can be used in a wide variety of foodstuffs, including soft drinks, confectionery, meats, baked products, ice cream, sauces, baby food, tinned fruit, preserves, and much more.
Novozymes makes many specialized enzymes for the starch and sugar industries. Some of them also protect the environment. For example, one supplants the use of strong acids in the manufacture of sugar syrups. Others help manufacturers to produce products of higher quality, save energy and help ensure a safer working environment. |
Japan Nuclear Rabbit-Born with No Ears
June 10, 2011 Japan Nuclear Rabbit-Born with No Ears
Four months after the March 11, 2011 Japanese earthquake that registered 8.9 the highest yet, which helped to destroy the Tokyo Nuclear Plants on the east coast and radiation is still emitted into the atmosphere.
Rabbit Born with No Ears In Japan-Nuclear Radiation Mutations
Rabbit Born with No Ears In Japan-Nuclear Radiation Mutations
This rabbit may just be the tip of the iceberg and ear-less rabbits are not a natural occurrence.
The Japanese government, which is the biggest shareholder of TEPCO -the Tokyo Electric Power Company that insists on repairing and salvaging these broken down 40 year old reactors to -save money.
Japan’s government must demand in the strongest way that TEPCO cement these reactors down for the next 50 years as did the Russians with Chernobyl nuclear blow up. The cement will last for about 5 decades before they must be replaced.
Whomever is running the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for world wide enforcement is favoring TEPCO an incompetent corporation endangering the world to save some money.
The video was taken just outside the Safe Zone-Near the Fukushima Plants which are still spewing radiation each day.
Japan’s population are in fear this could happen to human babies who will be born deformed and limb-less from the radiation exposure. |
| | |
• Tackling Common Essay Questions
related articles
you might also like…
The college application essay is your chance to show what makes you unique.
Admission officers read hundreds of these every year. Don't write about the same subjects as every other applicant.
Here are some common essay questions with tips to help you craft a great response.
Write about someone you admire.
Many people write an ode to Gandhi, Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. These leaders are admirable and heroic, but you shouldn't write about them unless you have a strong, genuine and very personal reason to do so.
Otherwise, ask yourself what individual has actually had the greatest influence over your life. Describe the impact they've had on you. The more specific details you include, the better.
Write about something you have read.
This question is not asking for a book report! Don't just summarize the plot; detail why you liked this particular selection and what it meant to you.
Your book choice should make it clear that you read outside of class–stay away from high school mainstays like The Catcher in the Rye.
Why do you want to attend this school?
Unless your real reason is something better left unsaid (hint: avoid mentioning keg parties), you should be truthful in responding to this question. Steer clear of generalities (e.g. "to get a good liberal arts education," "to broaden my knowledge") and stay specific (e.g. "I'm a future doctor and your science department has a terrific reputation"). Colleges are more likely to admit students who can articulate specific reasons why the school is a good fit for them (beyond its reputation or ranking on any list).
What will you be doing ten years from now?
It's okay to be creative and ambitious, but don't be silly. And don't feel that you need to talk about the ways in which your college education will help you snag a dream job.
Write about a meaningful activity.
Careful–it's easy for this response to read as clichéd and uninspired. Don't just say that your service on student council was significant because it taught you the importance of effective leadership. Push yourself to really examine what experiences have been valuable to you. Maybe you learned more from your after–school job at a burger joint than you did as president of the student council. Admissions officers can tell when you're being genuine and when you're just saying what you think they want to hear.
• Ask an Educational Advisor |
Zambia is a landlocked country in southern Africa, with a tropical climate and consists mostly of high plateau, with some hills and mountains, dissected by river valleys. At 752,614 km2 (290,586 sq mi) it is the 39th-largest country in the world (after Chile) and slightly larger than the US state of Texas. The country lies mostly between latitudes 8° and 18°S, and longitudes 22° and 34°E.
Zambia is drained by two major river basins: the Zambezi basin in the south covering about three-quarters of the country; and the Congo basin in the north covering about one-quarter of the country. A very small area in the northeast forms part of the internal drainage basin of Lake Rukwa in Tanzania.
Named after the famous Victorian missionary explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, the Town was established in 1905. As a major European settlement, the town was made the capital of Northern Rhodesia in 1911. As the capital, it enjoyed excellent facilities far superior to anything in the country, as can be seen from the surviving Edwardian colonial buildings that line the city's main road, and even had the distinction of having the country's first newspaper.
The capital was moved to Lusaka in 1935 and the bustling city has become a quiet town, a little neglected but still retaining a special charm. The proximity to the Zambezi River and the spectacular Victoria Falls has led it to become a base for travelers from all over the world wanting to explore this Seventh wonder of the World.
Walking tours around Livingstone can be booked through us to take in the wonderful colonial architecture and history of this unique town
Latest News
June Newsletter 2014
|
Sexual Health news - Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Level of Th17 cells found crucial for controlling HIV
A study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine looks at how the monkey species, rhesus macaques, can be used as a good model for developing a new HIV vaccine or therapy target.
For research purposes, the monkeys were infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), which is a retrovirus that only infects primates. SIV strains that transferred over to humans turned into strains of HIV. Since HIV evolved from SIV, studying the effect of SIV in monkeys can give insight on the effect of HIV in humans.
After infection, by studying Th17 (T helper 17) cells - which are found in the gut of primates and humans and are cells of the immune system that help fight disease - in the animal model, scientists could see how efficiently the body fights and manages SIV. It was concluded that with more Th17 cells, SIV can be better controlled and the immune system will be more effective.
This discovery can shed light on why some people diagnosed with HIV are able to control their disease better than others.
"If a treatment can be developed to increase Th17 cells in the gut, it may allow for a more effective immune response after exposure to an HIV vaccine or the virus itself," said Dennis Hartigan-O'Connor, the study's primary investigator. |
Summer Vegetable Plantings for Fall Harvest
Gordon Johnson, Extension Vegetable & Fruit Specialist; gcjohn@udel.edu
Plantings for fall harvested vegetables are underway. Timing these plantings can be a challenge, especially where multiple harvests are needed. Plantings from mid-July through the end of August may be made, with cutoff dates depending on the crop, variety, and season extension methods such as row covers, low tunnels, and high tunnels.
These plantings can be divided into 2 groups: 1) warm season vegetables for harvest up to a killing frost and 2) cool season vegetables for extended harvest in the fall.
The three main factors influencing crop growth and performance in the fall are daylength, heat units, and frost or freeze events. A few days difference in planting date this time of year can make a big difference in days to maturity in the fall.
Warm season vegetables for fall harvest include snap beans, squash, and cucumbers. July plantings of sweet corn can also be successful to extend seasons for farm stands. Mid-July plantings of tomatoes and peppers also are made for late harvests, particularly in high tunnels.
Cool season vegetables for fall harvest include cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower; the cole crop greens, kale and collards; mustard and turnip greens; turnips for roots; spinach; beets; lettuce; leeks; green onions; and radishes.
To extend harvest in the fall, successive plantings are an option. However, days between plantings will need to be compressed. One day difference in early August planting for a crop like beans can mean a difference of several days in harvest date.
Another option to extend harvest in the fall is with planting different maturing varieties at the same time. This is particularly successful with crops such as broccoli and cabbage where maturity differences of more than 30 days can be found between varieties.
Another way to get later harvests is by use of row covers or protecting structures. This can allow for more heat accumulation and will aid with protection against frost and freezes. Decisions on what type or combination of covers/protection to use and when to apply the protection will influence fall vegetable maturation and duration of harvest.
A final factor for summer planting for fall production is on planting cutoff dates. For example, a crop such as cucumber may produce well with an August 2 planting but poorly with an August 8 planting; broccoli has a wider planting window than cauliflower; turnip greens have a wider planting window than kale.
Comments are closed. |
Blog Archive
Monday, March 21, 2011
King Crabs Invade Antarctica for First Time in 40 Million Years
King Crabs Invade Antarctica for First Time in 40 Million Years
by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn,, March 21, 2011
Photo: NOAA
King crabs haven't historically caroused in Antarctic waters -- it's simply been too cold for the famed crustaceans. But warming waters have allowed crusading crabs to march further south than they have in millions of years. Which is bad news for the diverse sea life currently thriving in the underwater habitats around the Antarctic peninsula: Seeing as how they've been living in a crab-less environment for 40 million years, scientists now fear that Antarctic animals like brittle sea stars, mussels, and sponges will be sitting ducks for the marauding king crabs.
The Washington Post has the story of evolutionary biologist Sven Thatje and his team of researchers, who are trying to figure out how fast the invasion of king crabs is occurring. They dragged a camera underneath an icebreaker as they cruised Antarctic waters, and got footage of the southbound crabs:
"It caught images of bright red king crabs up to 10 inches long, moving into an undersea habitat of creatures that haven't seen sharp teeth or claws for the past 40 million years."
"There were hundreds," Thatje said in an interview on board the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which docked at the main U.S. base in Antarctica, McMurdo Station, after a two-month research cruise. "Along the western Antarctica peninsula, we have found large populations over 30 miles. It was quite impressive."
This is a great example of how a seemingly minor shift caused by climate change can have wide-ranging impacts on the natural environment. Water temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit since 1950 (air temperatures in the region have risen an in-no-way-minor
11 °F) -- making the waters just warm enough for the crabs to survive.
The scientists explain to the Washington Post that when the "water is too cold -- as it has been along the shallow waters of the Antarctic continental shelf -- crabs can't remove magnesium from their blood. Magnesium is a common mineral in seawater, and if they can't get rid of it, it causes a narcotic effect that stops them from moving enough to survive."
This in turn has scientists worried that the "magnesium barrier" will fall around the world, allowing clawed crustaceans to wreak havoc on pristine environments that have never been exposed to such predators. Chalk up another impact of climate change that will go largely unseen -- but that will nonetheless change the natural world in an irreversible way.
Anonymous said...
on the other hand...
Tenney Naumer said...
I think that most readers of this blog are intelligent and educated enough to understand that the introduction of a top level predator into an ecosystem that has not seen its presence in 40 million years means the destruction of that ecosystem.
The crabs mentioned in the WSJ article are endemic to that region; thus, that ecosystem has already adapted to their presence.
Anonymous said...
My appologies. I didnt realize the intent of the post was to highlight ecosystem impacts, rather than climate change.
Tenney Naumer said...
No apology necessary.
Climate change and long-term ecosystem impacts go hand in hand.
The Antarctic ecosystem under discussion is about to undergo a rather large, abrupt, and severe long-term change. |
[ print ]
professor of astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton
A radical reevaluation of the character of time
Copernicus and Darwin took away our traditional place in the world and our traditional identity in the world. What traditional trait will be taken away from us next? My guess is that it will be the world itself.
We see the first few steps in that direction in the physics, mathematics and computer science of the twentieth century, from quantum mechanics to the results obtained by Gödel, Turing and others. The ontologies of our worlds, concrete as well as abstract, have already started to melt away.
The problem is that quantum entanglement and logical incompleteness lack the in-your-face quality of a spinning earth and our kinship with apes. We will have to wait for the ontology of the traditional world to unravel further, before the avant-garde insights will turn into a real revolution.
Copernicus upset the moral order, by dissolving the strict distinction between heaven and earth. Darwin did the same, by dissolving the strict distinction between humans and other animals. Could the next step be the dissolution of the strict distinction between reality and fiction?
For this to be shocking, it has to come in a scientifically respectable way, as a very precise and inescapable conclusion — it should have the technical strength of a body of knowledge like quantum mechanics, as opposed to collections of opinions on the level of cultural relativism.
Perhaps a radical reevaluation of the character of time will do it. In everyday experience, time flows, and we flow with it. In classical physics, time is frozen as part of a frozen spacetime picture. And there is, as yet, no agreed-upon interpretation of time in quantum mechanics.
What if a future scientific understanding of time would show all previous pictures to be wrong, and demonstrate that past and future and even the present do not exist? That stories woven around our individual personal history and future are all just wrong? Now that would be a dangerous idea. |
Polemics of polygamy
By Prof Datuk Dr Zaleha Kamaruddin, the Rector of the International Islamic University Malaysia
Although permitted in the Quran, there are two different views on the practice, men are generally in agreement but most women are not in favour of it.
POLYGAMY remains a controversial issue not only in Malaysia but many Muslim countries around the world. It has been the subject of many debates but is actually far from settled (Latest: newly-formed polygamy club propagated by Ikhwan).
According to a Malaysian anthropologist, Prof Azizah Kassim, whenever the issue of polygamy is debated in Malaysia, the conclusion that can be made is that men are positive while most women abhor it.
Why have such polemics occurred, and what are the causes behind these conflicts, especially in a situation where, despite its legal validity, polygamy has been largely perceived by many as a practice which fails to protect the rights of women?
Writings relating to the legal position of polygamy show that there is an agreement among Muslim jurists (classical and modern) that this practice is permitted in the Quran.
However, during the late 19th century, Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, a reformer who was the Grand Mufti of Egypt, in his Tafsir al-Manar questioned the practice of polygamy in a modern society.
He mentioned that polygamy might have once been useful and practical in early Muslim society but it could no longer be viewed in the same light in today’s society where it has, more often than not, been misused and has caused much pain and suffering among women.
His views are shared by many other jurists and thinkers, such as Rashid Redha, Muham-mad al Ghazali and Azizah al-Hibry.
On the other hand, there have also been writers and jurists who vehemently oppose any form of limitation on a practice which has clearly been permitted in the Quran.
Sheikh Muhammad Shaltut, Abu Zahrah, Aisha Abdul-Rahman, Zainab al-Ghazali, Mustafa al-Siba’i and Sheikh Abul-A’la al-Mawdudi are of the view that those who try to reinterpret the Quran in relation to polygamy are actually going against the very teachings of Islam.
Although there are two different views on polygamy, many Muslim countries today acknowledge the fact that polygamy can be abused, and have made improvements to the laws to curb such exploitation.
In Malaysia, steps have been taken to include the incorporation of specific provisions controlling the practice of polygamy through the Islamic Family Law Enactments of each state.
Latest research conducted by Dr Raihanah Abdullah has shown that the main cause for abuse in relation to polygamy in Malaysia stems from the lack of understanding on the concept and execution of justice. This has led to a prolonged antagonism and has caused various reactions from the public, especially women’s organisations.
The National Council for Women’s Organi-sations says it is not seeking to abolish polygamy, but opposes the way in which polygamy is being practised.
Issues of enforcement including finding better solutions to ensure justice and welfare for the wives and children need to be addressed.
Researchers have shown that one solution to the problems brought about by polygamy would be strict compliance with the conditions of polygamy based on the true teachings of Islam.
It is the absence of such realisation that has led to various difficulties associated with polygamy.
From the legal perspective, in order to rectify the situation, there is a need to consolidate the laws and to formulate a uniform approach to polygamy. Discrepancies in the law have allowed men, as Gavin Jones puts it: “…to ‘shop around’ and find another state where his application will succeed”.
Although the Government has made efforts to achieve uniformity in the laws for all Malaysian states, unfortunately, the aim was not achieved as when it was finally enforced, the states had discretionally amended several matters in the provisions of the law.
Researchers have shown that lighter penalties and limited jurisdiction between states also contribute to the inability to put a stop to the contravention of these laws.
The imposition of a minimum fine of RM1,000 and mandatory imprisonment ranging from as short as one month to a year should be imposed on offenders.
However, this view has also been objected to. It is argued that mandatory imprisonment would not solve the problem but instead aggravate it, as these men would not be able to maintain their families while serving prison time.
Aside from that, a more detailed review in deciding polygamy applications should also be made.
Judges should also play a more proactive role in ensuring that an applicant is truly capable of being fair before allowing his application. The views of existing wives should also be taken into consideration.
Besides educating the existing wife on her rights in a polygamous union, she should also be facilitated in making claims for maintenance against her husband should he fail to provide for her.
This should be done without the wife having to file an application for maintenance but be ordered by the judge during her husband’s application for polygamy.
A review of the law on the amount of maintenance – which had been abolished earlier – should be reintroduced.
There should also be provisions to prohibit husbands from changing the economic status of the existing wife and children.
There is also a need to expedite enforcement of other rights as well, such as claims for jointly acquired property.
It would be extremely unfair for the wife, who has worked equally hard as her husband, to suddenly share not only her husband, but also their property, with another woman.
These proposals are being looked into by the relevant authorities and some have been included among the amendments to the Islamic Family Law Bill said to be soon tabled in Parliament.
However, one should remember that the law has limitations, especially in matters relating to the heart.
CPA Australia – Accommodating Islamic finance critical to Australia’s economic future
Australian tax laws should be amended to attract Islamic finance and other forms of alternative finance to benefit the economy, says CPA Australia.
In a submission to the Board of Taxation, CPA Australia says Islamic Finance will ultimately boost the Australian economy and help establish Australia as a financial services hub in the Asia-Pacific region.
Paul Drum, head of business and investment policy, CPA Australia, said attracting capital and investment through Islamic finance is a huge opportunity for Australia and would ultimately be good for economic growth.
‘Australia has emerged from the global financial crisis with strong economic position and a good regulatory regime. With our geographic position we are well placed to attract this increasingly significant component of global finance, and we need to take advantage of that,’ he said.
‘As a net importer of capital it is essential that we establish the right framework to attract and maintain a wide range of capital and financial products. Achieving this will be key to addressing many of our key economic issues including the funding of major infrastructure projects.’
Islamic finance is based on the principles of Islamic law (Shariah) which prohibits earning interest and instead focuses on profit sharing based on the buying and selling of tangible assets such as property.
‘Islamic finance offers huge potential for Australia’s financial services sector, but tax laws will need to be amended to accommodate other forms of alternative finance.
‘Some of Australia’s tax laws have a very specific legal based application which can exclude forms of alternative finance. Taking a broader economic and macro approach to policy in this area will be more beneficial and provide better long term benefits for Australia. It’s also more consistent with how tax law has developed in other areas such as taxation of financial arrangements.’
The CPA Australia submission also suggests Australia could adopt a similar approach to the United Kingdom, where only minor legal and regulatory reforms were required.
‘To achieve all of this will require significant work to align the accounting and tax treatment of Islamic and other alternative financial products. This must be a priority and CPA Australia looks forward to contributing to this process.’
Why The West Craves Materialism & Why The East Sticks To Religion
By Imran Khan, Pakistan politician
Despite gaining independence, they were, and still are, producing replicas of public schoolboys rather than Pakistanis.
I read Shakespeare, which was fine, but no Allama Iqbal -the national poet of Pakistan. The class on Islamic studies was not taken seriously, and when I left school I was considered among the elite of the country because I could speak English and wore Western clothes.
However, the biggest factor that drove people like me away from religion was the selective Islam practiced by most of its preachers. In short, there was a huge difference between what they practiced and what they preached.Also, rather than explaining the philosophy behind the religion, there was an overemphasis on rituals. I feel that humans are different to animals. While, the latter can be drilled, humans need to be intellectually convinced. That is why the Qur’an constantly appeals to reason. The worst, of course, was the exploitation of Islam for political gains by various individuals or groups.
While science, no matter how much it progresses, can answer a lot of questions – two questions it will never be able to answer: One, what is the purpose of our existence and two, what happens to us when we die?
It is this vacuum that I felt created the materialistic and the hedonistic culture. If this is the only life then one must make hay while the sun shines – and in order to do so one needs money. Such a culture is bound to cause psychological problems in a human being, as there was going to be an imbalance between the body and the soul.
Between 1991 and 1997, it was estimated that total immigration into Europe was around 520,000 and there were racially motivated attacks all over, especially in Britain, France and Germany. In Pakistan during the Afghan war, we had over four million refugees, and despite the people being so much poorer, there was no racial tension.
There was a sequence of events in the 80s that moved me toward God as the Qur’an says: ‘There are signs for people of understanding. ‘ One of them was cricket. As I was a student of the game, the more I understood the game, the more I began to realize that what I considered to be chance was, in fact, the will of Allah. A pattern which became clearer with time. But it was not until Salman Rushdie’s ‘Satanic Verses’ that my understanding of Islam began to develop.
I will try to explain as concisely as is possible, what ‘discovering the truth’ meant for me. When the believers are addressed in the Qur’an, it always says ‘Those who believe and do good deeds.’ In other words, a Muslim has dual function, one toward God and the other toward fellow human beings.
Whether they become practicing Muslims or believe in God is entirely a personal choice. As the Qur’an tells us there is ‘no compulsion in religion.’ However, they must arm themselves with knowledge as a weapon to fight extremism. Just by turning up their noses at extremism the problem is not going to be solved.
The Qur’an calls Muslims ‘the middle nation’, not of extremes. The Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) was told to simply give the message and not worry whether people converted or not, therefore, there is no question in Islam of forcing your opinions on anyone else.
The race to score A’s and its implications
The yearly examination results announcement season is here again and as usual the nation celebrates the achievements of top scorers not realizing that Malaysians’ preoccupation with “scoring” in school examinations does no one any favours.
For the high-achieving students themselves, it instills the perception that straight A’s are the be-all and end-all of school life.
Co-curricular activities and simply socialising with friends – so important in developing a child’s social skills – may thereby be neglected. Moreover, the pressure to keep on getting top marks could prove overbearing, and if the student should fare less well in a subsequent exam, there might be adverse effects on his or her emotional health sometimes resulting in depression or even suicides.
On their part, the non-top-scorers may feel as if they are left by the wayside amid the glorification of good grades, and end up having a sense of low self-worth and an inferiority complex.
Nor is society as a whole best served by the race for A’s. The prevailing exam culture has fostered a dependence on uncritical rote learning which will not help the cause of promoting creativity and innovation in the long run. And as has been well documented, many leading lights in business, the arts and science, such as Albert Einstein, James Cameron and Steve Jobs, were in fact dropouts.
The examination-based education system can in fact stifle creativity, original and critical thinking as such different modes of thought usually give us varied answers.
All this is not, of course, to celebrate mediocrity; on the contrary, we should always strive to improve ourselves and pursue high achievement. At the same time, we must also recognise that achievement comes in myriad forms, not just a string of A’s on the exam results slip.
While some people may be academically inclined, others may be good with their hands, have innate artistic abilities, be natural people persons … and the list goes on. Although these life skills do not feature in our examinations, they are often more important than academic skills because working life demands these communication, interpersonal, leadership and other qualities, often more than the technical skills.
Rethink of our priorities may thus be in order. Instead of emphasising A’s at all costs, let us work towards an education system that nurtures well-rounded individuals and offers each student the opportunity to be the best they can be — now that would be something we can really be proud off.
The celebration of academic achievements through news reports should be stopped as it only serves to strengthen our preoccupation with academic achievements. We are producing skewed students who know a lot about examination-taking but lack other real life skills.
Islam & Science -The road to renewal
After centuries of stagnation science is making a comeback in the Islamic world
Picture No. 10662330
THE sleep has been long and deep. In 2005 Harvard University produced more scientific papers than 17 Arabic-speaking countries combined. The world’s 1.6 billion Muslims have produced only two Nobel laureates in chemistry and physics. Both moved to the West: the only living one, the chemist Ahmed Hassan Zewail, is at the California Institute of Technology. By contrast Jews, outnumbered 100 to one by Muslims, have won 79. The 57 countries in the Organisation of the Islamic Conference spend a puny 0.81% of GDP on research and development, about a third of the world average. America, which has the world’s biggest science budget, spends 2.9%; Israel lavishes 4.4%.
Many blame Islam’s supposed innate hostility to science. Some universities seem keener on prayer than study. Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, for example, has three mosques on campus, with a fourth planned, but no bookshop. Rote learning rather than critical thinking is the hallmark of higher education in many countries. The Saudi government supports books for Islamic schools such as “The Unchallengeable Miracles of the Qur’an: The Facts That Can’t Be Denied By Science” suggesting an inherent conflict between belief and reason.
Many universities are timid about courses that touch even tangentially on politics or look at religion from a non-devotional standpoint. Pervez Hoodbhoy, a renowned Pakistani nuclear scientist, introduced a course on science and world affairs, including Islam’s relationship with science, at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, one of the country’s most progressive universities. Students were keen, but Mr Hoodbhoy’s contract was not renewed when it ran out in December; for no proper reason, he says. (The university insists that the decision had nothing to do with the course content.)
But look more closely and two things are clear. A Muslim scientific awakening is under way. And the roots of scientific backwardness lie not with religious leaders, but with secular rulers, who are as stingy with cash as they are lavish with controls over independent thought.
The long view
The caricature of Islam’s endemic backwardness is easily dispelled. Between the eighth and the 13th centuries, while Europe stumbled through the dark ages, science thrived in Muslim lands. The Abbasid caliphs showered money on learning. The 11th century “Canon of Medicine” by Avicenna (pictured, with modern equipment he would have relished) was a standard medical text in Europe for hundreds of years. In the ninth century Muhammad al-Khwarizmi laid down the principles of algebra, a word derived from the name of his book, “Kitab al-Jabr”. Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham transformed the study of light and optics. Abu Raihan al-Biruni, a Persian, calculated the earth’s circumference to within 1%. And Muslim scholars did much to preserve the intellectual heritage of ancient Greece; centuries later it helped spark Europe’s scientific revolution.
Not only were science and Islam compatible, but religion could even spur scientific innovation. Accurately calculating the beginning of Ramadan (determined by the sighting of the new moon) motivated astronomers. The Hadith (the sayings of Muhammad) exhort believers to seek knowledge, “even as far as China”.
These scholars’ achievements are increasingly celebrated. Tens of thousands flocked to “1001 Inventions”, a touring exhibition about the golden age of Islamic science, in the Qatari capital, Doha, in the autumn. More importantly, however, rulers are realising the economic value of scientific research and have started to splurge accordingly. Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, which opened in 2009, has a $20 billion endowment that even rich American universities would envy.
Foreigners are already on their way there. Jean Fréchet, who heads research, is a French chemist tipped to win a Nobel prize. The Saudi newcomer boasts research collaborations with the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and with Imperial College, London. The rulers of neighbouring Qatar are bumping up research spending from 0.8% to a planned 2.8% of GDP: depending on growth, that could reach $5 billion a year. Research spending in Turkey increased by over 10% each year between 2005 and 2010, by which year its cash outlays were twice Norway’s.
The tide of money is bearing a fleet of results. In the 2000 to 2009 period Turkey’s output of scientific papers rose from barely 5,000 to 22,000; with less cash, Iran’s went up 1,300, to nearly 15,000. Quantity does not imply quality, but the papers are getting better, too. Scientific journals, and not just the few based in the Islamic world, are citing these papers more frequently. A study in 2011 by Thomson Reuters, an information firm, shows that in the early 1990s other publishers cited scientific papers from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey (the most prolific Muslim countries) four times less often than the global average. By 2009 it was only half as often. In the category of best-regarded mathematics papers, Iran now performs well above average, with 1.7% of its papers among the most-cited 1%, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia also doing well. Turkey scores highly on engineering.
Science and technology-related subjects, with their clear practical benefits, do best. Engineering dominates, with agricultural sciences not far behind. Medicine and chemistry are also popular. Value for money matters. Fazeel Mehmood Khan, who recently returned to Pakistan after doing a PhD in Germany on astrophysics and now works at the Government College University in Lahore, was told by his university’s vice-chancellor to stop chasing wild ideas (black holes, in his case) and do something useful.
Science is even crossing the region’s deepest divide. In 2000 SESAME, an international physics laboratory with the Middle East’s first particle accelerator, was set up in Jordan. It is modelled on CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory, which was created to bring together scientists from wartime foes. At SESAME Israeli boffins work with colleagues from places such as Iran and the Palestinian territories.
By the book
Science of the kind practised at SESAME throws up few challenges to Muslim doctrine (and in many cases is so abstruse that religious censors would struggle to understand it). But biology—especially with an evolutionary angle—is different. Many Muslims are troubled by the notion that humans share a common ancestor with apes. Research published in 2008 by Salman Hameed of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, a Pakistani astronomer who now studies Muslim attitudes to science, found that fewer than 20% in Indonesia, Malaysia or Pakistan believed in Darwin’s theories. In Egypt it was just 8%.
Yasir Qadhi, an American chemical engineer turned cleric (who has studied in both the United States and Saudi Arabia), wrestled with this issue at a London conference on Islam and evolution this month. He had no objection to applying evolutionary theory to other lifeforms. But he insisted that Adam and Eve did not have parents and did not evolve from other species. Any alternative argument is “scripturally indefensible,” he said. Some, especially in the diaspora, conflate human evolution with atheism: rejecting it becomes a defining part of being a Muslim. (Some Christians take a similar approach to the Bible.)
Though such disbelief may be couched in religious terms, culture and politics play a bigger role, says Mr Hameed. Poor school education in many countries leaves minds open to misapprehension. A growing Islamic creationist movement is at work too. A controversial Turkish preacher who goes by the name of Harun Yahya is in the forefront. His website spews pamphlets and books decrying Darwin. Unlike his American counterparts, however, he concedes that the universe is billions of years old (not 6,000 years).
But the barrier is not insuperable. Plenty of Muslim biologists have managed to reconcile their faith and their work. Fatimah Jackson, a biological anthropologist who converted to Islam, quotes Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of genetics, saying that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”. Science describes how things change; Islam, in a larger sense, explains why, she says.
Others take a similar line. “The Koran is not a science textbook,” says Rana Dajani, a Jordanian molecular biologist. “It provides people with guidelines as to how they should live their lives.” Interpretations of it, she argues, can evolve with new scientific discoveries. Koranic verses about the creation of man, for example, can now be read as providing support for evolution.
Other parts of the life sciences, often tricky for Christians, have proved unproblematic for Muslims. In America researchers wanting to use embryonic stem cells (which, as their name suggests, must be taken from human embryos, usually spares left over from fertility treatments) have had to battle pro-life Christian conservatives and a federal ban on funding for their field. But according to Islam, the soul does not enter the fetus until between 40 and 120 days after conception—so scientists at the Royan Institute in Iran are able to carry out stem-cell research without attracting censure.
But the kind of freedom that science demands is still rare in the Muslim world. With the rise of political Islam, including dogmatic Salafists who espouse a radical version of Islam, in such important countries as Egypt, some fear that it could be eroded further still. Others, however, remain hopeful. Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s president, is a former professor of engineering at Zagazig University, near Cairo. He has a PhD in materials science from the University of Southern California (his dissertation was entitled “High-Temperature Electrical Conductivity and Defect Structure of Donor-Doped Al2O{-3}”). He has promised that his government will spend more on research.
Released from the restrictive control of the former regimes, scientists in Arab countries see a chance for progress. Scientists in Tunisia say they are already seeing promising reforms in the way university posts are filled. People are being elected, rather than appointed by the regime. The political storms shaking the Middle East could promote not only democracy, but revive scientific freethinking, too.
13th Malaysia’s Election
1. Today, our Prime minister, YAB Dato Seri Najib Tun Razak have announced that Parliament have been dissolved effective immediately. So, we wait for few week for election to replace or maintain our government.
2. This election shall be the toughest election in Malaysian history. This election are expected to be a turning point to many Malaysian. The election that everyone can not predict and forecast.
3. From the eye of Muslim Malays, the main clash are between Islamist Party (PAS) and Malays Party (UMNO).
4. UMNO, a current government’s party have contribute a lot in term of religion, races and development and have put Malaysia as one of great nation in South East Asia. The current problem is they are lacking of great leader, spoil branch leader and too much bribery.
5. PAS, country’s main opposition were a strong opposition with good track record. They have govern state of Kelantan for more than 20 years. In last election, they have govern another state, Kedah for 1 term.
6. As both party were inherit a similar trait – Malays and Islam. The main theme for this election shall be a clash between ideology, fundamental, philosophy, foundation and the most important – leadership.
Who will govern country’s government or state’s government in next 5 years?
Fact and Evidence in Islam
Islam is a religion established by reason and evidence, and the supreme bases of its teachings are the Quran and the Sunnah. Islam does not exist without reason, and any utterance beyond reason is unworthy of association with it. Islam is the religion of Allah the Creator, the Omniscient. It is therefore impossible to find in its teachings anything that opposes truth, evidence and fact. If an opinion produced in the name of Islam fails the test of reason and evidence established in the Quran and Sunnah, then such an opinion cannot be said to derive from the teachings of Islam even though the one who makes that opinion assumes a religious title or dresses in a manner that reflects piety.
Similarly, any view must be excluded from Islam if it contradicts demonstrable truth or scientific certainty, or if it is prejudicial to the good of common humanity. A prominent scholar of Islam, al-Imam Ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyyah (d. 751H), said:
Indeed for the shariah of Islam, its construction and foundations are built on all wisdom and goodness for humanity in this world and the Hereafter. The shariah of Islam is all about justice, goodness and wisdom. Therefore, if any aspect that departs from justice into vindictiveness, from blessing into curse, from goodness into evil, from wisdom into foolishness, then it is not from the shariah of Islam even though it is interpreted as such. (I’lam al-Muwaqqi’in, Beirut: Dar al-Jail, 3/3.)
Facts not Personalities
Whichever observation about Islam that conflicts with the Quran and Sunnah, or which contradicts the fundamentals of human welfare established by shariah must be rejected without consideration of who makes that observation. Therefore, the opinions of even a mufti, a respected teacher or an ustaz or maulana (religious teacher) can be accepted or rejected on this basis.
The opinion of any individual —even the most respected Islamic scholar— may be questioned if it does not concur with evidence provided in the Quran and Sunnah. No one is maksum (infallible) other than the Prophets of Allah. The religious opinions of the esteemed, or of an ustaz, should not be swallowed without proper chewing. Allah proclaims in Surah al-Isra, verse 36:
“And pursue not that of which you have no knowledge; for every act of hearing, or of seeing or of (feeling in) the heart will be enquired into (on the Day of Reckoning).”
Imam al-Shatibi (d. 790H) said:
Thus, it is compulsory for us to follow the one that was guarded from making mistakes (that is, the Prophet Muhammad pbuh) and to stop from following whoever is not being shielded from mistakes whenever there may be doubt. Moreover, we should consider whatever comes from all imams (scholars) side by side with the Quran and the Sunnah. Whatsoever is accepted by both (Quran and Sunnah), we consequently accept, and whatsoever is rejected by both we consequently abandon. (Al-I’tisam, Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi, p. 165.)
Respect and the observation of good manners when dealing with ulama (the Muslim clergy) are commanded by the nas (Scripture) of Islam, but this has never stopped a person presenting intelligent criticisms, or prevented his questioning the opinions of ulama, even though he maintains the disciplines of religion. This is a principle of truth that has long been practised by all established Muslim scholars.
Consider al-Hafizd al-Zahabi (d. 748H), the celebrated historian and biographer of distinguished members of the mediaeval Muslim community. In one of these biographies, Imam al-Zahabi praised the great scholar Waki’ Ibn al-Jarrah thus: “He was between the sea of knowledge and the imams (scholars) of huffaz (hadith).” Later, Al-Zahabi recorded the words of Yahya bin Aktham: “I befriended Waki’ at his home and also when he travelled. He fasted al-dahr (every day) and finished reciting the Quran in one night.”
Al-Zahabi commented on Waki’s achievements thus:
This is an amazing ibadah (act of worship) but for it to be practised by an imam (scholar) amongst the imams of hadith, then that is not normal. Indeed it was sahih (authentic) that the Prophet pbuh prohibited daily fasting and reciting the Quran (until completion) in fewer than three days. The religion is simple. Adhering to the Sunnah is more imperative. May Allah bless Waki’. Where can we find an individual as great as he? Nevertheless, he frequently drank nabiz (date wine) that could be intoxicating if consumed a lot. He made his own judgment with regards to drinking it (he does not consider it as prohibited so long as it does not intoxicate). Should he forsake it (the drink) on the ground of devoutness, that would be much better for him. This is because whoever avoids elements of doubt, thus his religion and dignity will be saved.
Indeed, it is sahih that nabiz is forbidden and prohibited, but this is not the place to deliberate it. For every person, each of his opinions can be accepted or abandoned (except for the Prophet pbuh). Take not as an example the wrong deeds of an alim (knowledgeable person). (Siyar A’lam al-Nubala, Beirut: Muassasah al-Risalah, 9/142-144.)
Waki’ was an established ulama, but an academic fault must be acknowledged as such and judged accordingly. It is clear that, while we are enjoined to respect others, especially religious teachers, respect should not impede our speaking the truth while always maintaining the discipline and manners taught by Islam.
Reject Unproven Views
I discuss this subject because there those in our community who will not dare question those regarded as ustaz, even though what an ustaz claims may be utterly groundless. It is as if such an ustaz has somehow obtained an infallible licence to say anything in the name of religion without presenting reason or evidence. Worse, some religious teachers in the old days warned their students that “whoever asks a lot of questions shows that his faith is weak.”
It is unsurprising, therefore, that some states in Malaysia have issued a number of strange fatwa, such as prohibiting the sale cows to Chinese, or that budu (pickled fish) is impure when spilled on clothing but is pure when consumed. However odd these edicts might be, no one has dared question the grounds on which these fatwa were issued for fear of being labelled “weak in faith”.
There is a religious speaker who goes about our country saying that, according to Islam, the remedy for AIDS is 100 lashes of a cane on one’s back. He claims that this is a genuine “cure” based on the teachings of Islam and is derived from research based on both the Quran and science. One wonders which scientist gave him that information; but on the strength of this claim alone, the speaker has received a number of invitations to provide religious enlightenment in a similar vein—and there are those who have received him well. I wish to pose some questions: since not all those with AIDS have been involved in immoral sexual activities, is it therefore “right” to whip everyone? Is having AIDS sufficient justification in the eyes of the shariah to subject a person to 100 lashes? Such ideas are clearly mistaken; but unfortunately there are mosques, even in Kuala Lumpur, that extend speaking invitations to those who champion such views. I am perplexed when I come upon people who are seemingly highly educated and trained to make best use of their minds—but when confronted by matters of religion, they prefer to abandon their education in favour of a silence that makes it seem as if Islam opposes logic and the intellect.
There was another religious speaker who claimed that he buried the body of a rich man, which later transformed into a supernatural entity without anyone knowing a thing. What is fascinating is that in a country based on the rule and application of law, no one looked into the matter of a missing person until the one who buried him told this astonishing story. Whatever the case, the story involved a celebrity and this in turn affected the religious beliefs of many. It was a baseless claim that should not have been made, but unfortunately there were many who believed it.
We have also heard about a certain individual who declared another an apostate; and later did the same thing to the students of a college on no greater merit than some news reports, the truth of which could not be ascertained. An allegation of apostasy—if it is at all true—is very serious and requires careful scrutiny, that is, iqamah al-hujjah (the construction of proof). Apostasy cannot be declared haphazardly, but there were many who accepted these allegations without further thought and in the name of religion, and regrettably the allegations were made by one learned in religion.This attitude extends even to matter of sin.
In some Malaysian states there are religious groups that impose various types of “taxes” on bereaved families, and sometimes these taxes amount to thousands of ringgit. Many rituals associated with the religion are performed and the corresponding bills will then be charged to families of the deceased. For this reason some grin widely upon hearing news of death, and even recitations and forms of solat (prayer) that were not taught by the Prophet pbuh are included in the list of costs incurred. The community dares not ask if religion is really so cruel that even distressed families deserving of support should be burdened further by these “costs”. Or is Islam so materialistically driven that only those with the largest purses can be assured of the absolution of sin and the attainment of reward in the Hereafter? If this is the case, then the Gates of Heaven will open only for those with the means to pay these “agents of Allah” here and now on this transitory earth. Does this truly represent the beauty of Islam that commands believers to perform good deeds and not depend on others?
My point is that it is the community’s right to ask questions in any discussion of religion. Neither an ustaz nor a respected teacher is God’s appointed agent, unlike the Prophets of Allah, such that their declarations are binding even if they lack nas. Islam is not man’s ultimate justification to do as he pleases—it is, instead, a religion built on reason and evidence. If each of us asks the ustaz for the causes of and reasons behind every one of his religious opinions, then we should, by doing so, help realise the principles of Islam and thus improve intellectual discussion in our own community.
We must guard against the complacent satisfaction of merely memorising religious opinions without thinking about them analytically and rationally. One of the foremost scholars of our own times, Prof Muhammad Qutb, said:
From another point of view, Islamic scholarship is bound to the way it was studied around five centuries ago. There was (then) the influence of Greek thought from ilm al-kalam (Scholastic theology) that was futile and unrewarding. More than that, the speculative excesses of ilm al-kalam diverted the study of faith towards matters that overloaded the mind to no purpose. It took the concept of faith away from that which provides the essence of life, and turned it towards mere philosophical disputation without direction or benefit. Religious students devolved from thinkers into mere memorisers: a student could appear learned simply on the strength of how many texts, lectures and footnotes he managed to memorise. However, he could not think for himself or even think independently. Consequently, the authenticity of knowledge was lost to the ulama and they turned to taklid and simply quoted from others. Scholarship was impaired further by a third factor, namely the obsessive devotion towards a certain mazhab, which affected all students. Everyone fixated on the mazhab that he grew up in. He turned his ultimate religious duty into an effort to prove that his mazhab and sheikh (teacher) were superior to any other…” (Waqi’una al-Mu’asir, p. 176.)
The practice of blind taklid was never taught by any imam of the Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamā‘ah (the Sunni community as a whole). On the contrary, imams have demanded that each person must strive to build his or her own intellectual ability. We read the following mentioned by a student of Imam al-Shafi’i, Imam al-Muzani (d. 264H):
“I have summarised all of this from the knowledge of al-Imam al-Shafi’i and from the meaning of what he taught in order to impart it to whoever wants it, along with notice of his prohibition of taklid (of his opinions) or of those of others, so that the reader will himself consider the evidence for the sake of his religion, and so as to be the more circumspect about it”. (Waliyy Allah al-Dahlawi, Al-Insaf fi Bayan Asbab al-Ikhtilaf, p. 100.)
If this form of learning should flourish, Islam will no longer be considered exclusivist such that only a privileged few may reflect upon it while the rest must follow blindly. Indeed, we are commanded to respect rigorous study and never to accept blind taklid. The development of the Muslim community will not take place as long as the intellectual competence of our religious leaders fails to meet the academic standards of an increasingly competitive world. The Muslim community must rally to support the advancement of tajdid (revitalisation) that began decades ago and which is still in progress.
Source : http://drmaza.com/home/?p=1855 |
IrelandIrish Éirecountry of western Europe occupying five-sixths of the westernmost island of the British Isles.
Although Ireland is now both urbanized and Europeanized, its culture retains many unique characteristics, and its people prize folkloric and social traditions that largely derive from and celebrate the country’s rural past. In Meditations in Time of Civil War William Butler Yeats, perhaps Ireland’s best-known poet, evokes the idyllic and idealized countryside, a place central to the memories of the country’s millions of expatriates and their descendants:
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows.
Plant and animal life
Ireland was almost completely covered by glaciers during the Ice Age, and its plant and animal life are thus mainly—but not entirely—the result of the subsequent migration of species from other areas. As long as there was a land connection between Ireland and what was to become the rest of the British Isles, most species arrived overland from northern Europe. Irish plant and animal life nevertheless possess certain unique features owing partly to climatic conditions and partly to the fact that Ireland became separated from Britain by the Irish Sea sometime before Britain itself became separated from the European continent.
Apart from flora that came from northern Europe, several plants common in Ireland are believed to have reached the country from the Mediterranean, along a subsequently drowned coastal route, and others appear to have arrived from North America, probably by way of Greenland and Iceland. The western highlands are home to such hardy species as St. Dabeoc’s heath, Irish spurge, Eriocaulon aquaticum (a pipewort with North American affinities), and the Irish orchid (a species of Mediterranean origin). Scattered over the island are sundew, foxglove, bell heather, sheep’s bit, bog asphodel, and yellow fleabane—yet fleabane, yet it is Ireland’s extensive and verdant grasslands that leave the most lasting impression. Prior to the 17th century the Irish midlands had great forests of broad-leaved trees, but by the end of the 19th century the once large forests had been reduced to about 1 percent of the total land area. Now the island is mainly devoid of broad-leaved woodlands, and government-sponsored reforestation programs have chiefly favoured fast-growing sitka spruce.
Common English animals such as the weasel and the mole do not exist in Ireland, which also has no snakes. Tradition ascribes the absence of snakes to banishment at the hands of St. Patrick; in fact, before their introduction as pets and in zoos in the 20th century, snakes had not lived on the island for the thousands of years since the Ice Age. In addition, there are only two kinds of mice—as opposed to four in Britain—and the only reptile found in Ireland is a species of lizard. Endemic mammals include the Irish stoat and the Irish hare. Deer have increased in number since the mid-19th century, but the giant Irish elk has long been extinct. Ireland abounds in birdlife, notably waterfowl. Numerous species that breed in Iceland and Greenland in the summer spend winter in Ireland, and many more migratory species stop there in the spring and the fall.
Ireland has a mixed economy. The constitution provides that the state shall favour private initiative in industry and commerce, but the state may provide essential services and promote development projects in the absence of private initiatives. Thus, state-sponsored (“semi-state”“semistate”) bodies operate the country’s rail and road transport, some of its television and radio stations, its electricity generation and distribution system, and its peat industry. State companies also are active in the fields of air transport and health insurance. The advent of a single European market in the 1990s encouraged many of these enterprises to privatize and become more competitive.
When Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC; now the European Union [EU]) in 1973, more than half of its trade was with the United Kingdom. Although this proportion has declined, economic relations between the two countries have remained close.
Ireland’s high-technology sector spurred sector—made attractive by a very low 12.5 percent corporate tax rate—spurred economic growth during the 1990s and helped reduce unemployment to historically low levels. The economic boom, during which the country’s growth was more than double that of most other EU countries, led some analysts gave rise to label the country country’s being labeled the “Celtic Tiger.” By 2001, however, the benefits of new jobs created by foreign direct investment via multinational corporations had begun to slow. Still focused on high growth, Ireland’s political leadership and its banking sector turned to the mortgage and construction industries to maintain growth. By 2008 it had become clear that much of the growth in banking and construction was a bubble without capital to back it. Collapse soon followed, and Ireland went into a deep economic recession for several years. A bailout of the Irish financial system by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2010 was accompanied by requirements for deep austerity cuts that further dampened prospects for the domestic Irish economy. Ireland had benefited in the 1990s and early 2000s from a combination of low tax rates and responsive social programs; however, both contributed to the significant budget challenges that came as a result of the 2008 financial collapse.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
Once the mainstay of the national economy, agriculture continues to be important. Most of Ireland’s agricultural land is used as pasture or for growing hay. The climate fosters abundant vegetable and other plant growth and is particularly beneficial to the rich grasslands that enable grazing stock to be kept on pasture almost year-round. Most farms are family farms; only a small percentage of those employed in agriculture work as hired labour. Mixed farming is the general pattern, with the production of beef cattle tending to predominate in the midlands and dairy farming in the south. Cereal growing is an important activity in the east and southeast. Sheep raising is widespread on the rugged hills and mountain slopes throughout the country.
Most of the gross agricultural output consists of livestock and livestock products, with beef as the biggest single item, followed by milk and pigs. Other important products are cereals (particularly barley and wheat), poultry and eggs, sheep and wool, and root crops, including sugar beets and potatoes. Indeed, enough beets are grown to meet the country’s sugar requirements. Since the 1980s farmhouse cheese production has flourished, and other specialized food production (e.g., organically produced vegetables) has increased. The bloodstock (Thoroughbred) industry is a thriving economic sector and has won worldwide fame for the Irish racehorse.
Adverse conditions in export markets following World War II handicapped the expansion of Irish agriculture, and the subsequent growth of agricultural output was slower than that in the industrial and service sectors. This situation was ameliorated with the republic’s entrance into the EEC in 1973. After a two-decade decline, farm incomes began to rise in the 1990s.
Forestry and fishing
When Ireland was established as an independent country in 1922, woodland represented less than 1 percent of the total land area, but state replanting since World War II has increased almost eightfold the acreage under forests and woodlands. Private afforestation efforts also increased in the late 20th century. A state agency -owned company was established in 1988 to manage the republic’s commercial forestry. Sea fishing and aquaculture resources have been developed since the mid-20th century, but, because the most extensive fishing grounds in the EU are off Ireland’s shores, international competition is intense.
Resources and power
Ireland is not rich in mineral resources. Discoveries of silver, lead, zinc, and gypsum have been successfully developed, but the country’s dependence on imports for its energy requirements is high. In the early 1980s offshore natural gas wells began production in the Celtic Sea south of County Cork. The offshore reserves were limited, however, and a pipeline from Britain was built in the 1990s to provide replacement supplies.
For centuries hand-cut peat, or turf, was the rural population’s principal domestic fuel. Virtually all rural households are now connected to the national electricity network, which relies partly on hydroelectric plants and on small and medium-sized peat-burning thermal power stations. Although peat production was mechanized and industrialized in the 20th century, peat was largely supplanted by natural gas and by coal and oil imports.
There remains today some potential for natural gas exploration off the Irish territorial sea, but the major areas for innovation come from the potential for wind and wave energy development. In July 2009 the country set a national record for energy output from wind, generating 999 megawatts—enough to power over 650,000 houses, or about one-third of Ireland’s daily energy needs.
Until World War II and for some years after it, official manufacturing policy was nationalistic and protectionist. High tariffs and quotas protected young industries, which provided badly needed employment and helped to supply the home market but which had little or no export potential. From the mid-1950s onward the protectionist policies were progressively reversed. The principal basis of the government’s Programmes for Economic Expansion was an industrial development policy designed—by means of tax concessions, financial grants, and other incentives—first, to encourage existing industries to increase their competitive strength and seek markets abroad and, second, to attract new manufacturing enterprises, whether foreign or Irish-owned, to the republic.
The policy achieved a large measure of success. By the late 20th century a larger proportion of the labour force was employed in manufacturing than in agriculture, and the industrial sector accounted for most of Ireland’s total export earnings. A competitive economy has become became all the more desirable in view of the governmental obligation to demobilize protective tariffs in accordance with the single European market and the World Trade Organization. Since the 1970s computer and software equipment and international financial and other services have become important economic sectors.
The Irish pound (or punt) was linked to the British pound sterling until 1979, when the republic joined the European Monetary System. Today , the euro, the EU’s single currency, is the country’s official currency. The Central Bank of Ireland, established in 1942, is the national monetary authority. Its responsibilities include licensing and overseeing the country’s financial institutions and supervising the Irish Stock Exchange. The bank does not transact business with the public, but it exerts a considerable influence on the volume of bank credit through the “advice” it gives to the clearing (or, to use the Irish term, the associated) banks. The Irish Stock Exchange, located in central Dublin, is one of the oldest in the world, having traded continuously since 1793.
The collapse of the Irish economy in late 2008 created economic chaos in the country. Initially, the government believed that failing banks would attract investment after it pledged to guarantee all deposits in those banks. Instead, the government’s promise left the Irish people liable for losses of staggering proportions for such a small country. Ireland fought to manage its situation through November 2010, but it ultimately accepted a bailout of more than $100 billion from the EU, the IMF, and countries offering bilateral aid. The terms of the bailout set by the EU and the IMF were very stringent.
The United Kingdom remains Ireland’s chief trading partner. Other major partners include the other countries of the EU (notably Germany, France, and The the Netherlands), the United States, Japan, and Singapore. A wide range of manufactured products is are exported, including electrical machinery and apparatus, processed foods, chemical products, clothing and textiles, and beverages. Ireland is among the world’s leading exporters of computer software. The principal imports include machinery and transport equipment, chemicals, petroleum and petroleum products, food products, and textiles.
Tourism is the largest component of the country’s net invisible earningsplays a very important role in the Irish economy. Its value has increased considerably since the 1950s, in large part because of the promotional efforts of the when the Irish Tourist Board (Bord Fáilte Éireann) and that body’s work in was established and began encouraging new hotel construction, developing the development of resort areas, extending the extension of sporting facilities, and increasing an increase of tourist amenities. The board also has organization’s successor, Fáilte Ireland, also developed joint ventures with the Northern Ireland Tourist Board. The vast majority of foreign tourists come from the United Kingdom, though many also come from other EU countries and the United Statesthe United States, and elsewhere in Europe, but groups from the Middle East and China are increasingly seen at the major tourist attractions around the country.
Labour and taxation
Almost all Irish trade unions are affiliated with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). The level of unionization in Ireland is fairly high, encompassing roughly one-third of the total workforce. There are also several employers’ unions (industrial organizations), organized on both a craft and a regional basis. The employers’ central negotiating organization is the Irish Business and Employers Confederation. Wages and employment conditions are normally subject to free collective bargaining, though industrial disputes may be referred to the Labour Relations Commission (created in 1990) or to the Labour Court (set up in 1946). In the late 1980s, when the economy faced serious problems, the government, employers, and unions agreed on a recovery program. Similar partnerships were adopted in the 1990s and have become a feature of the country’s economic and social management. The social compact between unions and government survived the crash of the Irish economy in 2008 via a negotiation known as the Croke Park Agreement, which largely saved union jobs in favour of agreed-to wage and benefit cuts. Public-sector unions in Ireland are powerful, but, because of the social compact with the government, major public demonstrations and work stoppages were avoided even in the face of increasing austerity measures.
Compared with the rest of the industrialized world, Ireland has relatively low rates of corporate and individual income taxes. In contrast, the country’s value-added (consumption) tax (VAT) is fairly high and is charged on most goods and services.
Transportation and telecommunications
Roads and railways
As a result of its scattered rural population, Ireland has a large road system. Most local roads are well-surfaced, and continuous progress has been made toward bringing the arterial roads up to the best modern standards. Ireland has benefited from funds received from the EU to improve and develop its transportation infrastructure. Still, the overall growth of large urban areas such as Dublin has outpaced much of the road infrastructure, which was planned before much of the economic expansion of the 1990s and early 2000s. Commuting by car and public parking in Ireland’s large cities have become increasingly problematic.
The Irish Transport System (Córas Iompair Éireann) has financial control over three autonomous operating companies—Irish Rail (Iarnród Éireann), Dublin Bus (Bus Átha Cliath), and Irish Bus (Bus Éireann). An electrified commuter rail system, the Dublin Area Rapid Transport, opened in Dublin in 1984. There are rail services between the principal cities and towns (including a link with Northern Ireland Railways via Belfast), but many branch lines branchlines have become uneconomic and have been replaced by road services for passengers and goods. Dublin also has introduced Luas, a light-rail tram system that serves vital parts of the city centre.
Waterborne traffic
There is no longer any significant commercial traffic on Irish canals. The two major canals in the country—the Royal Canal, which joins the River Shannon with the Irish Sea via Mullingar and Dublin, and the Grand Canal, which also runs from the Shannon to the Irish Sea but with a branch to the River Barrow—are maintained for use by pleasure craft. The successful restoration in the 1990s of the Shannon-Erne waterway in the northwest led to the redevelopment of other waterways in the republic and in Northern Ireland.
Smaller ports are important to the local business communities, but most of the country’s seaborne trade tends to be conducted through the principal east- and south-coast ports, particularly Dublin, Waterford, and Cork. The ports in Limerick and Galway serve western Ireland. Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, Rosslare, and Cork are served by modern cross-channel passenger, motor-vehicle, and freight services to Britain, and there also are some ferry services to the Continent. The trend toward larger vessels and the shipment of goods in containers has adversely affected the smaller Irish ports , as well as the smaller privately owned shipping companies. Only a fraction of the country’s foreign trade is carried by the small Irish merchant fleet.
Air facilities
International airports are located at Dublin, Shannon, and Cork, and there are several regional airports. Aer RiantaDublin Airport Authority, a public limited-liability company, has responsibility for the operation, management, and development of the three major international airports. Shannon was the world’s first duty-free airport; a state-sponsored company offers substantial tax breaks and other advantages to manufacturing and warehousing concerns proposing to establish plants within the entire Shannon (midwestern) region. Aer Lingus is was founded as the national airline in 1936 and was privatized in the 21st century. Ireland also has seen growth in private air travel, most notably that of Ryanair, which began operation in 1985 and has served as a model for lower-fare European air travel.
Until the deregulation of the telecommunications sector in Ireland in 1998, the market was dominated by the state-owned Telecom Éireann (now Éircom), which subsequently formed Telecom Ireland, a subsidiary that focused its efforts on attracting foreign investment. Since deregulation, major telecommunications companies such as Norway’s Telenor, British Telecom, and AT&T have operated extensively throughout Ireland. In 1997 the Irish government established the Office of the Director of Telecommunications Regulation. The office , which was succeeded in 2002 by the Commission for Communications Regulation. It is responsible for ensuring that the liberalized telecommunications sector works in accordance with EU and Irish law. Internet use grew rapidly during the late 1990s. Whereas in 1997 less than 5 percent of the population had Internet access, less than five years later the number had grown to about one-third of the total population. Ireland was slow in getting high-speed Internet to locations around the country, but it now has achieved standards generally accepted for wireless access in Europe.
Government and society
Constitutional framework
The Irish republic is a parliamentary democracy. Its constitution was promulgated in 1937 and can be amended through a referendum. The country’s head of state, the president (uachtarán), is elected directly by the public for a term of seven years and is eligible for reelection for a second term. The president normally acts on the advice of the government but also consults an advisory Council of State in the exercise of certain functions. The president signs and promulgates bills passed by the Oireachtas (Parliament) and, when so advised by the prime minister (taoiseach), summons and dissolves the Oireachtas. The president may, however, refuse to dissolve the Oireachtas on the advice of a prime minister who has ceased to command a majority in the Dáil Éireann (House of Representatives). The president is the guardian of the constitution and may, in certain circumstances, submit a bill passed by the Oireachtas to the people in a referendum or refer it to the Supreme Court to decide on its constitutionality.
There are two houses of the Oireachtas—the Dáil and the Seanad Éireann (Senate). Chief legislative power is centred in the 166-member Dáil. The Seanad may delay bills passed by the Dáil, or it may suggest changes in them, but it cannot indefinitely block their passage into law.
Executive power is vested in the prime minister, who heads the cabinet and presides over its meetings. The prime minister, the deputy prime minister (tánaiste), and the minister for finance must be members of the Dáil. The other government ministers must be members of either house, but no more than two may be senators.
Local government
The local government system comprises five county borough corporations, five borough corporations in the major cities, and 29 county councils, as well as numerous urban district councils and boards of town commissioners. Each of these is elected at regular intervals by universal adult suffrage. Of the 29 county councils, only 24 represent whole counties. For administrative purposes, the traditional County Tipperary is divided into a North Riding and a South Riding, each having a county council, and Dublin also is divided, among three county councils (Dún Laoghaire-RathdownLaoghaire–Rathdown, Fingal, and South Dublin). County councils and county borough corporations are responsible for physical planning, roads, sewerage and water supplies, housing, public libraries, fire services, and courthouses. Local government authorities in the republic have no functions in relation to police or education.
Important policy decisions (e.g., on local taxes, borrowing, and the making of bylaws) are made by the elected councils. Administration, on the other hand, is the responsibility of the county (or city) manager, who usually consults with members of the council before discharging important executive functions. There is a city manager for each county borough council, and for each county council there is a county manager, who also acts as manager for the lesser local authorities within the county. Noncounty boroughs, urban districts, and towns have more limited duties, and, in regard to functions outside their scope, they form part of the administrative counties in which they are situated. The local government system is supervised by the national Department of the Environment.
Irish law is based on common law as modified by subsequent legislation and by the constitution. Judges are appointed by the president and normally serve for life or until retirement. They may be removed from office only in the case of incapacity or “stated misbehaviour” and then only by resolution of both houses of the Oireachtas.
There are district courts and circuit courts , as well as a High Court and a Supreme Court that acts as the court of final appeal. The Supreme Court consists of the chief justice and seven other judges. The circuit courts have jurisdiction to try all serious offenses except murder, treason, and piracy. Criminal trials, which take place before a jury, can be held in a circuit court or in the central criminal court (a division of the High Court). A special criminal court was established in 1972 with jurisdiction over cases of terrorism.
Political process
All citizens 18 years of age or older are eligible to vote. Members of both the Seanad and the Dáil are chosen at least once every five years. The members of the Dáil are elected in three- to five-member constituencies by single transferable vote, a form of proportional representation. Of the 60 members of the Seanad, 11 are appointed by the prime minister, 6 are elected by the Irish universities, and 43 are elected to represent various economic, vocational, and cultural interests. Women have made significant political gains. Although during the 1990s women won only about one-eighth of the seats in the Dáil and comprised consituted about one-fifth of the Seanad, the country twice elected women female presidents, Mary Robinson in 1990 and Mary McAleese in 1997. However, with the proportion of women in the Oireachtas remaining at roughly the same levels in the early 21st century, there were some calls for the introduction of quotas for female representation.
The major political parties are Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party, and the Progressive Democrats. Sinn Féin (the last of which is mostly associated with Northern Ireland politics but has made entrees into Irish electoral politics, including seeing its leader, Gerry Adams, elected to the Dáil in 2011). Independents also have a significant presence in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil, a republican party, was founded by Eamon de Valera, who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The party boycotted the Dáil until 1927 but won the general election of 1932, when de Valera became prime minister, a position he held, with two intermissions, until 1959, when he was elected president. Fine Gael is the party of the Irish nationalists Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and William Thomas Cosgrave, who supported the treaty of 1921 and founded the Irish Free State. Cumann na nGaedheal, forerunner of Fine Gael, held power from 1922 to 1932. After World War II, government leadership tended to shift between Fine Gael–Labour Party coalitions and Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil formed several independent (i.e., noncoalition) governments until the late 1980s, when it entered into an alliance with the Progressive Democrats. Later governing coalitions were led by both parties. During the 1990s all major parties accepted the position within the United Kingdom of Northern Ireland. The Irish constitution was altered to acknowledge this fact in 1999, when voters overwhelmingly endorsed the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement) of 1998, a peace plan signed by the Irish and British governments and nationalist (Roman Catholic) and unionist (Protestant) political parties in Northern Ireland.
Ireland has no local police forces. The Guardians of the Peace (An Garda Síochána), established in 1922, is a nationwide force headed by a commissioner who is responsible to the minister for justice. A few hundred members of the force are assigned to detective duties; they are usually plainclothes officers and, when necessary, are armed. The rest of the force is uniformed and does not carry firearms.
Ireland’s defense forces, which include both active-duty and reserve components, are made up largely of army personnel, although the country also maintains small naval and air forces. The Irish armed forces are mainly organized around their external mission; however, they do play a residual role in what they call “on-island” security. Under the constitution, the president is the supreme commander of the armed forces; however, the prime minister effectively oversees the military through the minister for defense and a defense council. Irish forces, including the air corps and the naval service, have played an active part in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations. In the late 20th century, Irish officers or forces served in UN missions to such places as Lebanon and other areas of the Middle East, Afghanistan, Congo (Kinshasa), Cyprus, and the Balkans. There is no conscription; enlistment in the defense forces and the reserve force is voluntary. Ireland has struggled with its dual commitments to its historical tradition of neutrality and to its obligations to the European Union, which include defense elements.
Health and welfare
Health services are administered by eight regional health boards under the general supervision of the Department of Health and Children. Health examinations, child welfare clinics, and the treatment of tuberculosis and other infectious diseases are available to all without charge. Otherwise, the cost of public health services depends on the patient’s means. Persons who cannot afford to pay are entitled to a comprehensive health service free of charge. A middle-income group—insured workers, smaller farmers, and others of restricted means—is entitled to a free maternity and child welfare service and to free hospital and specialist services. Those who are more affluent normally arrange and pay for their own medical advice and hospital services, but a voluntary health insurance program was established by law in 1957. Owing in large measure to the world-famous Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstakes (1930–87), a large lottery that was promoted internationally, the republic developed an excellent system of hospitals.
Pay-related social insurance is paid by most employees age 16 and over. Benefits include widows’ and orphans’ pensions, unemployment and disability benefits, deserted wives’ allowances, and old-age pensions. The indigent receive certain benefits on a noncontributory basis. These include widows’ and orphans’ pensions, old-age pensions, home assistance, unemployment assistance, and pensions for those disabled or blind. Children’s allowances are paid to all households for each child under age 16, irrespective of means.
Ireland is a signatory to international agreements on human rights, and capital punishment has been outlawed. Because of the influence of the Roman Catholic churchChurch, Ireland historically has had strict social laws (e.g., abortion is illegal). However, referenda in the 1980s and ’90s resulted in some reforms, including the legalization of divorce and contraception. In 2010 the European Court on Human Rights found Ireland’s abortion policies to be in violation of European standards of human rights.
Compared with much of western Europe, Ireland has very high rates of home ownership. Whereas less fewer than one-tenth of units were owned by their occupants when the country became independent in 1922, by the beginning of the 21st century, roughly four-fifths of units were owner-occupied. The housing stock in the country is relatively modern, with many units built since the 1970s. However, there have been housing shortages, and the waiting list for public housing units nearly doubled during the 1990s. Meanwhile, prices for homes rose dramatically as home ownership became a largely unfunded property bubble that played an important role in the Irish financial crisis of 2008. In the wake of that crisis, housing prices fell precipitously.
Primary education is free, compulsory, and almost entirely religious denominational. There are several state-aided teachers’ training teachers colleges. The secondary-school system comprises private schools that are predominantly owned by religious communities but that receive most of their funding from the state; comprehensive and community schools, which are completely state-owned; and vocational schools, which provide academic as well as vocational courses leading to qualifications in architecture, accountancy, engineering, computing, electronics, and similar professions. There are also a growing number of multidenominational private schools in Ireland operated by the Educate Together organization. The vocational education system includes schools of art, music, domestic science, and hotel training. A number of regional technical colleges provide advanced vocational courses. Students graduating from the state-aided teachers’ training teachers colleges often receive university degrees. University education is provided at the University of Dublin (Trinity College), founded in 1592, and at the National University of Ireland, founded in 1908. The latter has constituent colleges universities at Dublin, Cork, and Galway, and Maynooth, as well as several associated colleges at Maynooth, Sligo, and elsewhere. In 1989 the national institutes for higher education in Limerick and Dublin, which emphasized applied studies in varied , flexible course structures, were given university status and renamed the University of Limerick and the Dublin City University. The Higher Education Authority was established in 1972 to deal with the financial and organizational problems of higher education. Education is highly valued in Ireland, which is sometimes called the “Land of Saints and Scholars,” and the strength of Irish education was often cited as a major contributor to the takeoff of the Celtic Tiger economy in the late 1980s and 1990s. However, concerns about the Irish education system were raised when Ireland’s national literacy ranking fell from 5th in the world in 2000 to 17th in 2010. Still, Ireland continues to see its higher education as a major asset, and the government has emphasized research and development as part of its attempt to create a sustainable economy.
Cultural life
The cultural milieu of Ireland has been shaped by the dynamic interplay between the ancient Celtic traditions of the people and those imposed on them from outside, notably from Britain. This has produced a culture of rich, distinctive character in which the use of language—be it Irish or English—has always been the central element. Not surprisingly, Irish culture is best known through its literature, drama, and songs; above all, the Irish are renowned as masters of the art of conversation.
Use of the Irish language declined steadily during the 19th century and was nearly wiped out by the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and subsequent emigration, which particularly affected the Irish-speaking population in the western portion of the country—the area “beyond the pale” (i.e., beyond the English-speaking and controlled area around Dublin). From the mid-19th century, in the years following the famine, there was a resurgence in Irish language and traditional culture. This Gaelic revival led , in turn , to the Irish literary renaissance of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in which native expression was explored and renewed by a generation of writers and academics. It also produced a resurgence in traditional musical and dance forms. The cultural revivalism became an inspiration to the Irish nationalist struggle of the early decades of the 20th century. Partly because of government subsidies and programs, traditional cultural activities, especially the use of the Irish language and the revival of arts and crafts, have increased.
Daily life and social customs
Ireland has several distinct regional cultures , rather than a single national one; moreover, the daily lives of city dwellers are in some ways much different from those living in the countryside. For example, whereas Dublin is one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities, the Blasket Islands of Dingle Bay, off Ireland’s southwestern coast, seem almost a throwback to earlier centuries. Wherever they live, the Irish maintain a vibrant and lively folk culture. Thousands participate in the country’s numerous amateur musical, dance, and storytelling events. A great many also engage in a variety of craft-based industries, producing items such as glass, ceramics, ironwork, wood-turning, linens, embroidery, and knitwear, served by the Crafts Council of Ireland (based in Kilkenny) and an annual trade fair in Dublin. Irish fashion has advanced beyond the still-popular Aran sweater, with various designers establishing fashion trends that have broad appeal both nationally and internationally.
The Irish pub serves as a focal point for many small villages and urban neighbourhoods, a place where the great Irish passion for conversation, stories, and jokes can be indulged. Pub attendance declined somewhat in the early 21st century after the imposition of a smoking ban, the restriction of hours when families could take children to eat at pubs, and the enactment of more-stringent drunk-driving laws. Still, Ireland remains home to some of the world’s finest beers, whiskeys, and other spirits, which accompany the lively music and socializing that seem to come naturally to the Irish and those who visit. Traditional Irish music—using locally made instruments such as the fiddle, the tin whistle, and the uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes)—is performed at many pubs, and traditional songs are often sung there in the Gaelic languageIrish, at times accompanied by the Celtic harp (an emblem of Ireland). The céilí, a traditional musical gathering, is an enduring expression of Irish social life that has counterparts in other Celtic cultures. Such gatherings, as well as hiring fairs, cattle shows, and other festivals, usually feature locally produced ales and whiskeys and traditional foods such as soda bread, corned beef, and colcannon (a stew of potatoes and cabbage).
The Wexford Opera Festival, held annually in the fall, draws a large international audience. Of particular importance is St. Patrick’s Day (March 17), honouring the country’s patron saint. Whereas overseas the holiday has become a boisterous, largely secular celebration of all things Irish, in Ireland it is a religious occasion often observed by saying prayers for peace, especially in neighbouring Northern Ireland. Nevertheless, some of the practices celebrated abroad have been adopted locally in the interest of tourism.
The arts
Literature: Prose and poetry
The earliest known literature in the Old Irish language takes several forms. Many manuscripts, such as the Milan and Turin glosses on the Bible (so named for the libraries where they are housed), are religious in nature; others are secular and include lyric poems, fragments of epic verse, and riddles. Little of this literature is read today except by scholars of the Irish language and of comparative historical linguistics. Instead, the stream of Irish literature that has enriched world culture has been almost entirely written in English. The sheer volume of work attributed to Irish writers is remarkable, considering the country’s small size and, until relatively recently, its only partially literate populace.
A flowering of Irish literary works especially occurred with the standardization of Irish in the mid-20th century. After World War II a new wave of poets, novelists, and dramatists produced a significant literature in modern Irish, among them Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Máirtín Ó Direáin, and Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Beginning in the 1970s, another generation of writers made important contributions in Irish, notably Mícheál Ó SiadhailMicheal O’Siadhail, Gabriel Rosenstock, Michael Hartnett, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, Áine Ní Ghlinn, and Cathal Ó Searcaigh.
Many modes of thought and expression characteristic of Irish-language formulations were gradually absorbed into the English spoken in Ireland. The remarkable contribution that Anglo-Irish literature and drama have made to the Western world may in part be ascribed to this linguistic cross-fertilization. It is also noteworthy that so small a country should produce so much creative literary genius. The great Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, drew upon his experience of life in Ireland for his writing. The list of influential Irish prose writers and poets who both benefited from and contributed to the interplay between the different strands of the Anglo-Irish tradition is long. Among them are two of Ireland’s four winners of the Nobel Prize winnersfor Literature, poets William Butler Yeats (1923) and Seamus Heaney (1995). Others with an international reputation include prose writers George Moore, Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O’Brien, Edna O’Brien, William Trevor, John McGahern, Roddy Doyle, John Banville, Jennifer Johnston, and especially James Joyce; and poets John Montague (American-born), Eavan Boland, Brendan Kennelly, Paul Durcan, and Paula Meehan. The Irish Writers’ Centre and Poetry Ireland actively promote contemporary literature in prose and verse.
Irish achievements in the theatre rival those in literature. Two Irish dramatists won Nobel Prizes for Literature, George Bernard Shaw (1925) and Samuel Beckett (1969), and several others, including Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Oscar Wilde, John Millington Synge, and Sean O’Casey, are also known throughout the English-speaking world.
Dublin is the centre of Ireland’s theatrical life. Its Abbey Theatre, founded in 1904 and rebuilt in the mid-1960s, stages classic Irish plays , as well as new works in both Irish and English. The Gate Theatre produces Irish and international drama, while the Peacock Theatre, located under the foyer of the Abbey Theatre, concentrates on experimental plays and on works in Irish. Theatres and theatre companies such as Galway’s Druid Theatre are found throughout the country, however, promoting a wide range of national and international drama. In addition, there is a vigorous amateur dramatic movement active throughout the country.
Music and dance
Irish traditional musical forms date from preliterate times. The Irish harp long had been the only instrument played, but many other instruments—such as the uilleann pipes, the fiddle, and the accordion—were added later. The Royal Irish Academy of Music is a major institution for music training, and folkloric and musical conservation groups such as Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (Fellowship of Irish Musicians) have established workshops and libraries throughout the country and around the world. The revival of traditional music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was followed by an even more energetic resurgence beginning in the 1960s. Irish songs gained wide appeal in Europe in the 19th century, and the music brought taken to the United States by Irish immigrants became one of the principal sources of traditional American music. Irish traditional musicians such as the Clancy Brothers, Planxty, the Boys of the Lough, Clannad, and the Chieftains have toured much of the world. More urban and working-class-based music and song have been represented by groups such as the Dubliners and the Wolfe Tones. Interest in Irish traditional music was greatly boosted by a vogue for Irish pubs that spread across the world. More recently, elements Elements of traditional Irish music also have been appropriated by rock musicians to create a distinctive Irish popular music form with great international appeal. For example, beginning in the 1980s, the postpunk group U2 received international acclaim, and its lead singer, Bono, gained fame for his outspokenness on domestic and global political issues. Other popular music groups and artists have included Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher, the Corrs, the Cranberries, Bob Geldof, Sinéad O’Connor, Mary and Frances Black, and Hothouse Flowers. Similarly influenced by traditional Irish music, the ethereal-voiced New Age singer Enya (Eithne Ní Bhraonáin) gained a huge international following beginning in the late 1980s. Opera is less popular in Ireland, although singers such as Bernadette Greevy and Suzanne Murphy have gained widespread recognition. Among the artists who came to the forefront in the 21st century were vocalist Sharon Shannon, the traditional group Danú, and the pop duo Jedward.
Ireland is famous for its tenor singers of Irish traditional tunes. The prototypical Irish tenor was John McCormack, noted for his brilliant tone and resonant timbre. Although the fashion faded from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s, it regained its vitality and popularity in the work of Frank Patterson and American-born Robert White.
Best - known of the Irish classical composers are John Field, whose work influenced that of Frédéric Chopin, and Michael Balfe. Based in Dublin and maintained by Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ; the state-owned broadcasting company), the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra are the country’s principal orchestral groups. Ireland’s leading contemporary music ensemble, Concorde, commissions and performs the work of contemporary composers. New music is supported by the Contemporary Music Centre in Dublin, a national archive and resource centre. Many arts organizations and individual artists are supported in part by the Arts Council of Ireland, a developmental government agency.
Ireland has a long tradition of folk dancing. Solo dancing is characterized by its lightning footwork and high kicks, all executed while the upper body is kept rigidly straight; jigs and reels have always been popular. The interest in Irish dancing, which grew apace with the revival of traditional music, led in the 1990s to the creation of the performance work Riverdance, which achieved international acclaim and sparked the founding of dance companies around the world that explored this style.
Visual arts
At the turn of the 20th century, Irish art remained relatively isolated from the contemporary trends that spread throughout Europe. Painter John Butler Yeats (father of poet William Butler Yeats) received widespread praise for his portraiture, as did Sir William Orpen, who influenced a generation of Irish artists as a teacher. Paul Henry’s depictions of the Irish countryside were also popular. Jack Butler Yeats, the poet’s brother, using traditional Irish subjects and elements of Celtic mythology, became recognized as the major Irish artist of the mid-20th century.
It was only after World War II that avant-garde developments, popular in the rest of Europe for decades, fully touched Irish art. In this climate, Louis Le Brocquy gained fame for his abstract portraits. Perhaps the most prominent Irish-born artist of the postwar period was Francis Bacon, who became known for his brutal figurative paintings. Although he spent most of his life in Britain, his studio has been reconstructed in the Hugh Lane Gallery (formally Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane) in Dublin. Throughout the postwar period, alternative exhibiting spaces and organizations increasingly made it possible for more experimental styles and artists to be noticed in Ireland.
By the late 20th century, Irish art reflected a wide range of styles and media. As in literature, many contemporary visual artists (e.g., Brian Maguire, Dorothy Cross, Kathy Pendergast, and Brian Bourke) gained international reputations, with their work included in major international shows such as the Venice Biennale. Many late-century Irish artists settled in the thriving art scene in London, yet their work often remained infused with the social and political issues of their homeland.
Annual art exhibitions, the most important of which is the Royal Hibernian Academy, are a regular feature of modern Irish cultural life, and many corporate collections of contemporary Irish art are of the highest calibre. Printmaking has flourished since the establishment of the Graphic Studio and Graphic Studio Gallery by Mary Farl Powers, followed by the Black Church Print Studio (both now located in Dublin) and other studios in urban areas.
Film is also an important medium for Irish visual artists and writers. During the late 20th century, several Irish films received international acclaim, including The Crying Game (1992), which won an Academy Award for best screenplay, My Left Foot (1989), and In the Name of the Father (1993). The Magdalene Sisters (2002) considered the abuses of young women in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland’s not-too-distant past. Once (2006) brought a lighter mood with its focus on the musical life of Dublin but also on the new multiculturalism of the city. Meanwhile, a stream of Irish actors and directors have made an imprint on the global film industry, including directors Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan, as well as actors Gabriel Byrne, Colin Farrell, Brenda Fricker, Brendan Gleeson, Richard Harris, Colm Meany, Maureen O’Hara, and Saoirse Ronan. International films such as The Quiet Man (1952), Ryan’s Daughter (1970), The Dead (1987), The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), and Michael Collins (1996), Angela’s Ashes (1999), and The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) have also focused on Irish themes and history.
The endeavours of the Irish Georgian Society and of An Taisce (the National Trust) have helped to protect the architectural heritage of the country. Dublin’s many 18th-century buildings are among the finest-preserved in all of Europe.
Cultural institutions
Most of the country’s major museums, libraries, and learned societies are located in Dublin, including the National Museum of Ireland, the National Gallery of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), and the National Library of Ireland. Under British rule a number of Anglo-Irish cultural institutions were established there and successfully adapted to accommodate stronger nationalist sentiment during the 20th century. These include the Royal Irish Academy (1785) and the Royal Dublin Society (1731). Also important are the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts (1823) and the Royal Irish Academy of Music (1856). The quasi-governmental Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon; 1951) distributes annual state grants to assist the arts and artists. Individual writers, artists, and composers also are aided by tax concessions and by additional financial support from the Aosdána organization. The establishment of a national lottery in 1986 substantially increased funding for the arts and for sports.
Many institutions are specifically concerned with the popularization and preservation of aspects of traditional national culture. Notably, the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge; 1893) promotes the use of the Irish language. Other bodies concentrate on the organization of folk music festivals (feiseanna), at which there are competitions in traditional storytelling and dancing as well as in instrumental music and singing.
Sports and recreation
The Irish are avid sports fans, especially of their native games of Gaelic football—a cross between football (soccer) and rugby—and hurling, which resembles a rough-and-tumble version of field hockey. Both are promoted by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA; Cumann Lúthchleas), founded in 1884 to revive native Irish sports. Today there are several hundred thousand members of the GAA who play these games as amateurs, and the professional teams compete in the All-Ireland matches that draw huge crowds to Dublin’s Croke Park. Handball is also a traditional Irish sport.
Football and rugby are widely popular, often played in sold-out stadiums in Dublin. In 1990 the national football team reached the quarterfinals in the World Cup, and Irish players are prominent on the rosters of professional teams throughout the world. The Irish are extremely passionate about horse racing, and the Irish Derby draws Europe’s best competitors to The Curragh, the flat racetrack in County Kildare. Greyhound racing at Shelbourne Park in Dublin is also well attended. In bicycling, Dubliner Steven Roche won the Tour de France and the World Championship in 1987.
The Olympic Council of Ireland was formed in 1922, and Ireland’s official participation in the Olympic Games began in Paris in 1924. (Irish athletes had competed for Great Britain in previous games, since 1896.) Since then Ireland has missed only the 1936 games. The first medal by an Irishman came in 1896, when John Boland won a gold medal in tennis for Great Britain. The first medal for the Irish team came in 1928 in Amsterdam, where Patrick O’Callaghan won a gold in the hammer throw. In 1996 Michelle Smith became the first Irish female athlete to win a gold medal, capturing three gold medals in swimming, though she was later banned for four years from competition after being found guilty of manipulating a drug-test sample. Four years later distance runner Sonia O’Sullivan won a silver medal in the 5,000-metre event at the 2000 Olympic Games. Irish competitors won five medals in the 2012 London Olympics, including Katie Taylor, who won a gold medal in women’s boxing.
Media and publishing
Several daily newspapers are published in Ireland, including some that have a national circulation. Leading dailies include the Irish Independent and The Irish Times of Dublin and the Irish Examiner of Cork. There also are a large number of regional weekly papers. Dublin is the centre of the publishing industry, and nearly all of the republic’s periodicals are based there.
RTÉ, the national state-owned radio and television broadcaster, began radio service in 1926 and television service in 1961. A second RTÉ national television channel, Network 2, was launched in 1978. RTÉ is financed by revenue from license fees and advertising and is governed by the government-appointed RTÉ Authority. There is an extensive independent radio network with many privately owned stations; an independent Irish-language television station, TG4 (Teilifís na Gaeilge (TG4), was established in 1996. RTÉ’s monopoly is a technical rather than a practical matter, since most of the population The population also receives broadcasts from the United Kingdom and other European countries and can subscribe to cable and satellite services. In 1998 a privately owned commercial television channel, TV3, commenced operations. Non-RTÉ broadcasting is regulated by the government-appointed Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, which is also charged with licensing new television services, developing programming rules and codes, and establishing advertising standards; in 2008 it acquired Channel 6, another privately owned channel that had begun broadcasting in 2006, and subsequently rebranded it as 3e. The regulation of television broadcasting is one of the responsibilities of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
Independent Ireland to 1959
The Irish Free State, 1922–32
The Irish Free State, established under the terms of the treaty with the same constitutional status as Canada and the other dominions in the British Commonwealth, came into existence on December 6, 1922. The Anglo-Irish Treaty (Article 12) also stated that Northern Ireland could opt out of the Irish Free State and provided for a commission to establish a permanent frontier. Despite Northern Ireland’s reluctance, the Boundary Commission was set up and sat in secret session during 1924–25. But when it recommended only minor changes, which all three governments rejected as less satisfactory than maintaining the status quo, the tripartite intergovernmental agreement of December 3, 1925, revoked the commission’s powers and maintained the existing boundary of Northern Ireland.
The treaty triggered bitter dissension in Sinn Féin, and some of its terms—notably the prescribed oath of allegiance to the British crown—were so repugnant to many republicans, led by de Valera, that the Dáil ratified the treaty on January 7, 1922, by only seven votes: 64 to 57. De Valera’s resignation as president signaled his refusal to accept that vote as a final verdict and enhanced the respectability of opposition to the treaty despite its endorsement in an election on June 16, 1922. The IRA also split, with a majority of its members (known as the Irregulars) opposed to the treaty. There followed a bitter civil war that cost almost 1,000 lives. The most famous casualty was Michael Collins, the charismatic guerrilla leader and chairman of the 1922 Provisional Government (set up to implement the treaty), who was killed in an ambush in Cork on August 22, 1922. He was succeeded by the more prosaic William T. Cosgrave, who became the first head of government (“president of the Executive Council”) of the Irish Free State. The victory of Cosgrave’s government in the civil war was never in doubt: its electoral majority, the Catholic hierarchy’s condemnation of the Irregulars, and such draconian measures as internment without trial and the introduction of the death penalty for possession of arms (77 republicans were executed), as well as factionalism within their own ranks, doomed the Irregulars to defeat, although they did not suspend military operations until April 27, 1923.
In the election of August 1923, Cosgrave’s party, Cumann na nGaedheal (“Party of the Irish”), won 63 seats, as opposed to 44 for de Valera’s Sinn Féin party; however, Sinn Féin abdicated its role as main opposition party when its elected members refused to sit in the new Dáil. Sinn Féin’s absence enhanced the authority of Cosgrave’s government and enabled the speedy enactment of the mass of legislation necessary to set the infant state on firm foundations.
The cost of postwar reconstruction was immense. In 1923–24, 30 percent of all national expenditure went toward defense, and another 7 percent was allocated to compensation for property losses and personal injuries. Yet despite such economic difficulties, the government pursued an efficient farming policy and carried through important hydroelectric projects. Administration was increasingly centralized; an efficient civil service based on the British model and copper-fastened against corruption was established; and Kevin O’Higgins, as minister for justice, carried through many judicial reforms.
In the general election of June 1927, Cosgrave’s support in the Dáil was further reduced, but he nevertheless formed a new ministry, in which O’Higgins became vice president of the Executive Council. O’Higgins’s assassination by maverick republicans on July 10 suddenly revived old feuds. Cosgrave passed a stringent Public Safety Act and introduced legislation requiring that all candidates for the Dáil declare their willingness, if elected, to take the oath of allegiance. De Valera then led his new party, Fianna Fáil (“Soldiers of Ireland”), into the Dáil and signed the declaration required under the oath of allegiance, which he now claimed was “merely an empty political formula” that did not involve its signatories in “obligations of loyalty to the English Crown.”
De Valera’s commitment to constitutional politics and Fianna Fáil’s assumption of the role of parliamentary opposition posed insuperable electoral problems for Cumann na nGaedheal. The civil war split permanently shaped party politics in independent Ireland. It ensured that the British connection, as embodied in the treaty, replaced the Act of Union as the great divide: pro-treaty against antitreaty replaced unionist versus nationalist as the hallmarks of political commitment. Although Collins had described the treaty merely as a “stepping stone,” a means to the end of greater independence, the blood spilled in the civil war locked his successors in Cumann na nGaedheal (which joined with two lesser parties—the Centre Party and the Blue Shirts—to form Fine Gael in 1933) into seeing the treaty as an end in itself and denied them the access enjoyed by Fianna Fáil to the reservoir of anti-British sentiment that remained the most potent force in Irish nationalist politics. The problems of Cosgrave’s last administration were compounded by the Great Depression (triggered by the U.S. stock market crash of 1929), and the resulting unemployment and general discontent with the government led to its defeat in February 1932. Fianna Fáil won enough seats for de Valera, with Labour Party support, to be able to form a new government.
De Valera’s governments (1932–48) and the quest for sovereignty
De Valera’s primary purpose was to expunge those elements of the treaty he thought restrictive of Irish independence. His obsession with British-Irish relations was reflected in his holding the ministerial portfolio for external affairs simultaneously with the presidency of the Executive Council. He moved first to abolish the oath of allegiance, although the Senate’s opposition delayed the enactment of the necessary legislation until May 1933. His government also degraded the office of Britain’s governor-general in Ireland by systematically humiliating its incumbent, James McNeill; exploiting the constitutional doctrine that the British sovereign must had to act on ministerial advice, de Valera counseled the dismissal of McNeil McNeill (which occurred in November 1932) and forced his replacement by a subservient supporter. He also stopped the transfer to the British treasury of the land annuities, repayments of the loans advanced to Irish tenant farmers to buy their land under the Land Acts of 1891–1909. In July 1932 the British imposed import duties on most Irish exports to the United Kingdom to recoup their losses, and the Irish retaliated in kind. Although the British were financial beneficiaries in the “economic war,” Fianna Fáil was the political beneficiary because it cloaked its protectionist policies in patriotic rhetoric and blamed Britain for the deepening recession; it duly won an overall majority in the snap election called by de Valera in January 1933.
In December 1936 de Valera seized on the abdication of Edward VIII to enact two bills: the first deleted all mention of the king and the governor-general from the 1922 constitution; the second, the External Relations Act, gave effect to the abdication and recognized the crown only for the purposes of diplomatic representation. De Valera’s new constitution, ratified by referendum, came into effect on December 29, 1937, and made “Ireland”—the new name of the state (“Éire” in Irish, which was now proclaimed the first official language)—an independent republic associated with the British Commonwealth only as matter of external policy. The head of state was henceforth a president elected by popular vote to a seven-year term, and the head of government was henceforth known as the “taoiseach.” De Valera’s achievement was extraordinary: acting unilaterally, he had rewritten the constitutional relationship with Britain in less than six years. But he had to negotiate with British Prime Minster Neville Chamberlain’s government to achieve his remaining objective: the transfer of three naval bases occupied by the British under a defense annex to the treaty. This he achieved with the defense agreement of April 25, 1938, which was coupled with a finance agreement (settling the land annuities dispute) and a trade agreement (softening the tariff war). The defense agreement completed the process of establishing Irish sovereignty and made possible Ireland’s neutrality in a European war, an avowed republican aspiration since the 1921 treaty negotiations.
At the outbreak of World War II, de Valera renewed his statement, made in 1938, that Ireland would not become a base for attacks on Great Britain. Under the Emergency Powers Act of 1939, hundreds of IRA members were interned without trial, and six were executed between 1940 and 1944. Ostensibly, de Valera’s government, reelected in 1943 and 1944, remained strictly neutral, despite pressure from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, German air raids on Dublin in 1941, and, after the United States entered the war in December 1941, pressure from U.S. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt. But, secretly, the Irish authorities provided significant intelligence and other assistance to the Allies because de Valera realized that a German victory would threaten that hard-won independence of which Irish neutrality was the ultimate expression.
The Republic of Ireland
In the general election of 1948, Fianna Fáil failed to gain a majority, winning only 68 of the 147 seats in the Dáil, but de Valera refused to enter a coalition. John A. Costello emerged as the leader of an interparty government led by his own party, Fine Gael. Costello introduced the Republic of Ireland Act, which repealed the External Relations Act of 1936 and ended the fiction of Commonwealth membership. The act took effect in April 1949, and the British government retaliated with legislation recognizing the new status of Ireland but guaranteeing the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and the territorial integrity of Northern Ireland as subject to the consent of the parliament of Northern Ireland. Although partition remained a festering sore that erupted 20 years later, the Republic of Ireland Act dissolved the obsession with the British connection. Henceforth relations between Dublin and London were conducted on the basis of absolute equality between sovereign governments, and domestic politics, as elsewhere in western Europe, increasingly became the politics of economics.
The 1950s were a time of economic stagnation (with emigration running at levels unprecedented since the 1880s) and of political flux. There were changes of government after the elections of 1951, 1954, and 1957, when Fianna Fáil returned to power for what proved to be another 16 years. In 1959 a blind and aging de Valera was elected president, and he remained in that office until 1973. His successor as taoiseach (1959–66) was Seán Lemass—minister for industry and commerce (1932–39, 1941–48, 1951–54, 1957–59) , as well as minister for supplies during World War II—whose predominant interest had always been economics.
Developments since 1959
Economic and political developments
Integration in Europe
Economic Development, a plan for national regeneration, had been published in 1958 under the name of T.K. Whitaker, an exceptional civil servant and then secretary of the Department of Finance. Lemass and Whitaker implemented the First Programme for Economic Expansion (1958–63), under which the principle of protection was abandoned and foreign investment encouraged, while a targeted growth rate of 2 percent resulted in 4 percent actual growth. This prosperity brought profound social and cultural changes to what had been one of the poorest countries in Europe. Emigration substantially declined; access to education broadened; consumer spending increased, and holidaying abroad became commonplace; Catholic social teaching was challenged; and the advent of an Irish television service eroded traditional values and led to a relaxation of censorship of books and films.
In 1961 Ireland applied for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC; later the European Community [EC], embedded in the European Union [EU]). The application lapsed when the French vetoed Britain’s entry; the predominance of the British market for Irish producers was such that it made no sense for Ireland to join the EEC if Britain was excluded. Nevertheless, Lemass’s unequivocal commitment to Europe (for which he won the support of the main opposition party, Fine Gael) proved his enduring legacy. The Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement of 1965 dismantled more tariff barriers, and although Ireland, like Britain, did not join the EEC until January 1, 1973, the delay eased the impact of transition.
Engagement in Europe transformed Ireland socially as well as economically. Production subsidies and higher prices under the EEC’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) benefitted Irish farmers; Irish industry gained from access to wider markets; and European social and regional programs revolutionized the country’s infrastructure. Reduced dependence on British markets led in 1979 to Ireland’s joining the European Monetary System despite Britain’s staying outside it; this severance of the more than 150-year link with sterling was affirmed in 2002 when Ireland, unlike Britain, joined the euro zone (the countries that share the euro as their currency). In May 1987 a constitutional referendum ratified the Single European Act and confirmed Ireland’s participation in the EEC. The act called for the harmonization of social and fiscal measures taken within the EEC and was a forerunner of the 1991 Maastricht Treaty (Treaty on European Union), which paved the way for the establishment of economic and monetary union and was approved by a large majority of Irish voters in a referendum. Ireland became an unexpected obstacle to further European integration, however, when the Lisbon Treaty—an agreement aimed at streamlining the EU’s processes and giving it a higher international profile—was rejected in a referendum in June 2008; that verdict, however, was reversed in a second referendum on October 2, 2009.
The rough road to prosperity
It was also in 1973 that the Fianna Fáil government of Jack Lynch (taoiseach since 1966) was defeated by a Fine Gael–Labour coalition led by Liam Cosgrave. The worldwide oil crisis and recession of 1974–75 forced the imposition of deflationary economic policies, a wealth tax, and attempts to tax farmers’ incomes. Lynch returned to power in 1977 when Fianna Fáil proposed an ambitious economic policy based on tax cuts and the creation of new enterprises through foreign borrowing. Despite a brief boom, serious economic problems had become evident by 1980. These included declining agricultural prices, rising prices for imported oil, only a small increase in output, and a rapidly growing population, nearly half of which was under age 25. Moreover, foreign borrowing increased, and unemployment and inflation rose steeply. Civil strife in Northern Ireland, leading to a revival of the IRA, exposed dissensions within Fianna Fáil and culminated in Lynch’s sensational sacking of Charles Haughey and Neal Blaney from his government in May 1970 for allegedly organizing the illegal importation of arms for the IRA. But, even when the charges against Blaney were dropped and Haughey was acquitted, the tensions continued to corrode Lynch’s authority.
The early 1980s were politically volatile. Although no clear majority emerged in the election of 1981, Garret FitzGerald became taoiseach in a Fine Gael–Labour coalition, ousting Haughey, who had succeeded Lynch as Fianna Fáil leader in 1979. The rivalry between the charismatic FitzGerald (a Francophile, social democrat, academic, economist, and proponent of conciliation with Northern Ireland) and the no-less-charismatic Haughey (an Anglophobic, talented, high-living, and opportunistic pragmatist whose reputation was ultimately destroyed by revelations of his corruption and massive indebtedness to wealthy businessmen and to Ireland’s largest bank) dominated the politics of the 1980s. The major campaign issues of the era were economic policy, including the imposition of a wealth tax, and the removal of a constitutional ban on divorce. The budget of the coalition government was defeated in January 1982, and a general election in February returned Fianna Fáil and Haughey to power. The new government’s tenure was short and uneasy. In the face of a large budget deficit, a program of severe public spending cuts was introduced. The government was defeated on a no-confidence vote in November, and another general election—the third in 18 months—followed. This time a Fine Gael–Labour coalition under the leadership of FitzGerald secured a working majority.
By the mid-1980s the economy was showing signs of improvement. Inflation was at its lowest level in nearly two decades, helped by lower oil prices. However, the budget deficit and high unemployment continued to pose problems. Emigration, a barometer of Irish economic ill health, again began to increase in the mid-1980s. The prolonged recession had once again brought to the surface doubts and anxieties about the future of the Irish state and its real independence.
The economic crises of the 1970s and ’80s were mirrored by political upheavals. In February 1987 Fianna Fáil returned to power under Haughey but without an overall majority; FitzGerald resigned as leader of Fine Gael and was succeeded by Alan Dukes. The new Progressive Democrat party (PD), formed in December 1985 largely from Fianna Fáil dissidents under the leadership of Desmond O’Malley, made a strong showing. Following a decision in November 1986 to abandon its policy of refusing to contest Dáil elections, Sinn Féin, the political wing of the Provisional IRA (which had split from the old IRA over the use of force in Northern Ireland), stood on a socialist and pro-IRA platform but failed to win a seat.
In 1989 Haughey smashed the mold of Fianna Fáil’s refusal to participate in interparty governments when he formed a coalition with the Progressive Democrats—the first of a series of coalitions that continuously governed Ireland for the next 20 years—and the new government embarked on a program of comprehensive public spending cuts. The austerity measures were successful, and by the early 1990s the country’s economic position had improved considerably. Inflation was low; budget deficits were reduced; and the annual growth rate was averaging more than 5 percent. The economy continued to boom throughout the late 1990s, fueled by the high-technology sector, with unemployment dropping to historically low levels.
In 1990 Mary Robinson became the republic’s first woman president. The election of a candidate with socialist and feminist sympathies was regarded as a watershed in Irish political life, reflecting the changes taking place in Irish society. Haughey was ousted in 1992 as leader of Fianna Fáil and as taoiseach by Albert Reynolds. A Fianna Fáil–Labour coalition came to power after the 1992 general election but collapsed in 1994. Another coalition, consisting of members of the Fine Gael, Labour, and Democratic Left parties, then took office, with Fine Gael leader John Bruton as taoiseach. The Bruton government lasted until the general election of June 1997, after which Fianna Fáil formed a new coalition with party leader Bertie Ahern as taoiseach. In October Mary McAleese was elected president, the first Irish president from Northern Ireland (she was reelected in 2004). In 2002 Fianna Fáil formed yet another coalition government with the Progressive Democrats, headed again by Ahern. Although dogged by criticism through much of his tenure, Ahern capitalized on his personal popularity to lead Fianna Fáil to another election victory in 2007, and he formed yet another coalition government. Ahern’s government continued to be dogged by an ongoing investigation (by the Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters & Payments [better known as the Mahon Tribunal]) of alleged payments by land developers to politicians to influence zoning decisions in and around Dublin during Ahern’s tenure as finance minister in the early 1990s. In May 2008, as implications of Ahern’s personal involvement in the scandal and allegations of past financial improprieties mounted, Ahern resigned as taoiseach.
The debt crisis
His successor, Brian Cowen, was pitched headlong into Ireland’s worst economic crisis since Fianna Fáil first came to power in 1932. Although this was partly due to the vulnerability of a small economy to the impact of the global financial crisis then afflicting much of the world, it was compounded by overexpenditure on public service pay and by the necessity to establish a National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to bail out the insolvent Irish banks, which had persisted in making grotesquely extravagant and imprudent loans to property developers. The burden of rescuing the banks dramatically escalated the national deficit. So strained were Ireland’s resources that in November 2010—even after proposing income-tax hikes and reductions in services—the government was compelled to accept a bailout of more than $100 billion from the EU, the International Monetary Fund, and countries offering bilateral aid. In response to these developments, the Green Party, the junior partner in the ruling coalition with Fianna Fáil, called for early elections in January 2011. The unpopularity of the austerity measures required to meet the conditions of the loan, along with rumours of ethical impropriety, led to a challenge of Cowen’s leadership of Fianna Fáil in mid-January 2011. He survived the leadership vote. But in a dizzying sequence of events that followed, Cowen called for an election to be held on March 11 , and then resigned as Fianna Fáil’s leader, but he remained on as a caretaker taoiseach , only to witness the withdrawal of the Green Party from the ruling coalition, with the likely consequence of an even earlier election.
At the end of January the Oireachtas (parliament) passed a finance bill that met the requirements of the IMF-EU bailout by raising taxes and cutting spending in an attempt to reduce the Irish deficit by $20.5 billion over the next following four years. Following passage, Cowen officially called for elections to be held on February 25. In the event, Fianna Fáil—which was widely blamed for the country’s financial troubles and for the unpopular bailout—took its worst drubbing at the polls in some 80 years, capturing only 20 seats in the Dáil. Meanwhile, Fine Gael nearly became the first party since 1977 to win an outright majority, winning 76 seats, the most in its history. Ultimately it formed a coalition government with the Labour Party. Fine Gael’s leader, Enda Kenny, whose stature and popularity rose throughout the short election campaign, became taoiseach, while Labour’s leader, Eamon Gilmore, assumed the post of tánaiste (deputy prime minister).
In mid-May, Queen Elizabeth II undertook a four-day visit to Ireland, becoming both the first British monarch to visit the country in 100 years and the first to visit it since it had become became an independent republic.
In October the Labour Party’s Michael D. Higgins—a longtime member of the Dáil, a poet, and a former sociology professor—was elected to be McAleese’s successor as president, emerging from a crowded field that included Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness (who stepped down as deputy first minister of Northern Ireland to run).
In March 2012 Ireland’s political culture was rocked by the release of the final report of the Mahon Tribunal, the country’s longest-running public inquiry. The report concluded not only that former taoiseach Ahern had not been truthful in his testimony to the tribunal regarding his finances but also that every level of Irish political life had been affected by corruption tied to the scandal.
While Greece experienced widespread backlash against the austerity measures suggested by the IMF and the European Central Bank, Ireland was held up as a model of compliance. Although household spending continued to decline, consumer confidence improved as the IMF reported that Ireland had entered a period of modest economic recovery. Markets reacted negatively in late March 2012, however, when Kenny announced that he would put the EU’s newly forged pact on fiscal discipline to a popular vote. Access to further bailout funds hinged on the approval of the treaty, and Kenny’s government came out strongly in support of it. Although turnout for the May 31, 2012, referendum was low, voters approved the measure by a comfortable margin. Financial markets reacted positively as the yield on Irish two-year bonds fell by almost a full percentage point on the day the result was announced. Moreover, in July Ireland raised €5.23 billion (about $4.2 billion) on international bond markets with its first offering of long-term bonds since September 2010.
Social and religious changes
The close relationship between the Irish republic and the Roman Catholic Church was highlighted by the visit of Pope John Paul II to Ireland in 1979, the first visit there by a reigning pontiff. But the fraying of that relationship, signaled in the 1960s and ’70s by a collapse in vocations to the priesthood and a decline in attendance at mass, continued in the 1980s and ’90s. The clause in the 1937 constitution acknowledging the special position of the Roman Catholic Church had been removed in 1972, although in 1983 the conservative resistance of Catholic pressure groups resulted in a referendum on a draft constitutional amendment reinforcing the republic’s existing ban on abortion. After a divisive campaign, with barely a majority of the electorate voting in the referendum, voters approved the amendment.
In 1985 the church vainly opposed the government’s liberalization of legislation concerning contraception. Church-state relations were tested again the following year when a referendum to remove the constitutional ban against divorce was defeated. A second referendum on abortion, which strengthened the existing antiabortion law but enabled women to travel overseas to obtain an abortion, was approved in 1992. Another referendum to lift the ban on divorce was held in 1995 and was passed by only a small majority; it went into effect in 1997. In 1992 the church was rocked by the first of a series of scandals when the bishop of Galway, Eamon Casey, resigned after it was discovered that he was the father of a teenage son. In 1995 controversy over the extradition to Northern Ireland of a pedophile priest, Brendan Smyth, brought down the Irish government. In 1999 the government announced the establishment of a commission to investigate the abuse that had been widespread until the 1970s in industrial and reformatory schools. Similar government commissions of inquiry conducted during the next decade culminated in the publication of the Murphy Report in 2009 (which reached devastating conclusions on the extent of concealment of priestly pedophilia in the Dublin archdiocese), in multiple episcopal resignations, in Pope Benedict XVI’s summoning the Irish hierarchy to Rome, and, on March 20, 2010, in a papal letter apologizing to all victims of Catholic clerical sex abuse and announcing a formal Vatican investigation of Irish dioceses, seminaries, and religious orders affected by the scandal.
Relations with Northern Ireland
In 1957 the Irish government introduced internment without trial in response to an IRA campaign of attacks on British army and customs posts along the border with Northern Ireland that had begun in 1956 and lasted until 1962. An attempt to ease cross-border tensions was made in 1965 , when Lemass exchanged visits with Terence O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s prime minister.
The Irish government was increasingly preoccupied by with the continuing violence in Northern Ireland that had first erupted in 1969. Lynch’s dismissal of two of his ministers in 1970 following an attempt to import arms for use in Northern Ireland paved the way for a consensual approach, with all major parties increasingly committed to cooperating with the British government in seeking a peaceful resolution. Thus, Lynch’s government supported the British government’s suspension of the Northern Ireland parliament and government and the introduction of direct rule from Westminster in March 1972. In December 1973, after the establishment of a power-sharing executive (composed of nationalists as well as unionists) in Northern Ireland, Liam Cosgrave’s government participated in talks with Edward Heath, prime minister of Britain, and the power-sharing executive, resulting which resulted in the Sunningdale Agreement. This accord recognized that Northern Ireland’s relationship with Britain could not be changed without the agreement of a majority of its population, and it provided for the establishment of a Council of Ireland composed of members from both the Dáil and the Northern Ireland assembly. But direct rule was reimposed when that agreement collapsed in May 1974 because of a general strike inspired by unionist opponents of power-sharing.
Although the republic experienced nothing like the scale of the continuing violence in Northern Ireland, there were a number of serious terrorist incidents. On May 17, 1974, three car bombs in Dublin and one in Monaghan caused an eventual death toll of 33 (the largest number killed on any one day since the violence began in 1970). The IRA’s murder of the British ambassador in Dublin in 1976 led to a state of emergency and the unpopular measure of strengthening emergency-powers legislation, and the assassination at his holiday home in Sligo of Earl Louis Mountbatten of Burma (Britain’s last viceroy in India) by the IRA in 1979 further intensified opposition to terrorism.
In 1981 FitzGerald launched a constitutional crusade to make the reunification of Ireland more attractive to Northern Ireland’s Protestants. At the end of the year, the Irish and British governments set up an Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council to discuss matters of common concern, especially security. In 1984 the report of the New Ireland Forum—a discussion group that included representatives of political parties in Ireland and Northern Ireland—set out three possible frameworks for political development in Ireland: a unitary state, a federal state, and joint sovereignty. Fianna Fáil preferred a unitary state, which Fine Gael and Labour regarded as unrealistic; they preferred the federal option. In November 1985 at Hillsborough in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Britain again agreed that any change in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, and an intergovernmental conference was established to deal with political, security, and legal relations between the two parts of the island.
Despite Fianna Fáil’s initial criticism of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Haughey government worked the agreement. Contacts between the Irish and British governments continued after February 1987 within the formal structure of the intergovernmental conference. Fears that the violence in Northern Ireland would spill into Ireland as a consequence of closer Anglo-Irish cooperation in the wake of the agreement proved unfounded.
In 1993 the Irish and British governments signed a joint peace initiative (the Downing Street Declaration), in which they pledged to seek mutually agreeable political structures in Northern Ireland and between the two islands. In 1994 the IRA declared a cease-fire, and for the next 18 months there was considerable optimism that a new period of political cooperation between north and south had been inaugurated. The cease-fire collapsed in 1996, however, and the IRA resumed its bombing campaign.
In 1998 the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, played an important role in brokering the Good Friday Agreement (Belfast Agreement), which would create a Northern Ireland Assembly, establish north-south political structures, and amend Ireland’s 1937 constitution by removing from it the de jure claim to Northern Ireland. On May 22, 1998, the agreement was approved by 94 percent of voters in Ireland and by 71 percent in Northern Ireland. With the establishment of the power-sharing assembly, the Irish government continued to remain active in promoting peace and economic development in Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Assembly’s assumption of power was halting, however, and was suspended intermittently, largely in response to the failure of the paramilitary forces to fully decommission and disarm. But in May 2007, following another round of new elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and two years after the IRA’s abandonment of armed struggle, power sharing became a reality in Northern Ireland.
Leaders of Ireland since 1922
The table provides a chronological list of the leaders of Ireland since 1922.
General works
A good introduction is Ireland, Department of Foreign Affairs, Facts About Ireland (1995). Basil Chubb and Geraldine O’Dea (eds.), A Source Book of Irish Government, rev. ed. (1983), provides a selection of official informationInformative overviews include James Gleason and Deirdre Purcell, Contemplating Ireland (2000); and Sean Kay, Celtic Revival?: The Rise, Fall, and Renewal of Global Ireland (2011). The geography of Ireland is explored in the journal Irish Geography, published three times annually by the Geographical Society of Ireland.
Historical, archaeological, topographical, and other information, with illustrations, is found in guidebooks such as Lord Killanin (Michael Morris, Baron Killanin) and Michael V. Duignan, The Shell Guide to Ireland, rev. and updated by Peter Harbison (19891995); and Brian Lalor, Ireland, 8th 9th ed. (19982004). Pictorial coverage is provided in Richard Fitzgerald and Edna O’Brien, Vanishing Ireland (1987); and James Gleason and Deirdre Purcell, Contemplating Ireland (2000).
Land, people, economy, and government and society
The geography of Ireland is explored in T.W. Freeman, Ireland: A General and Regional Geography, 4th ed. (1969, reprinted with revisions 1972); and Irish National Committee for Geography, Atlas of Ireland (1979). A beautifully illustrated overview of the historical development of the Irish language is Máirtín Ó Murchú, The Irish Language (1985Studies of Irish politics and culture include Robert Savage (ed.), Ireland in the New Century: Politics, Culture, and Identity (2003); and Bill Kissane, Explaining Irish Democracy (2002). Social, environmental, and economic aspects of Ireland are the subject of R.W.G. Carter and A.J. Parker (eds.), Ireland: Contemporary Perspectives on a Land and Its People (1989). F.H.A. Aalen, Kevin Whelan, and Matthew Stout (eds.), Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, 2nd ed., rev. and expanded (2011), addresses such topics as archaeology, field and settlement patterns, houses, villages and small towns, monuments, roads, canals, railways, mills, mines, and handball alleys. A beautifully illustrated overview of the historical development of the Irish language is Máirtín Ó Murchú, The Irish Language (1985). The environment, population patterns, political geography, and economic planning are explored in James H. Johnson, The Human Geography of Ireland (1994). The economy is discussed in Cormac Ó Gráda, Ireland: A New Economic History, 1780–1939 (1994); and J.W. O’Hagan (ed.), The Economy of Ireland: Policy and Performance of a Small European Country (1995).
Cultural life
Irish culture over the centuries is covered in Brian De Breffny (ed.), The Irish World: The Art and Culture of the Irish People (1977, reissued 2000); Robin Flower, The Irish Tradition (1947, reissued 19942001), a review of Gaelic Ireland’s contribution to western European culture; Mýles Dillon (ed.), Early Irish Society (1954, reprinted 1969), six short authoritative essays; E. Estyn Evans, Irish Folk Ways (1957, reissued 1988); Kenneth Hudson and Ann Nicholls, The Cambridge Guide to the Museums of Britain and Ireland (1987 Robert Savage, A Loss of Innocence?: Television and Irish Society, 1962–70 (2010); and Liam Harte and Michael Parker (eds.), Contemporary Irish Fictions: Themes, Tropes, Theories (2000).
General works
Comprehensive guides to Informative surveys of Ireland’s history include James McGuire and James Quinn (eds.), Dictionary of Irish Biography: From the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, 9 vol. (2009); John O’Beirne Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland, 3rd ed. (2012); T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin, and F.J. Byrne (eds.), A Chronology of Irish History to 1976 (1982); S.J. Connolly (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Irish History, 2nd ed. (2002); Ruth Dudley Edwards and Bridget Hourican, An Atlas of Irish History, 3rd ed. (2005); Séan P. Ó Ríordáin, Antiquities of the Irish Countryside, 5th ed., rev. (1979, reprinted 1991); John O’Beirne Ranelagh, A Short History of Ireland, 2nd ed. (1994, reprinted with corrections and new material 1999); J.C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603–1923, new ed. (1981); R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972 (1988, reissued 2002); Jonathan Bardon, A History of Ulster (1992); and A.T.Q. Stewart, The Narrow Ground: The Roots of Conflict in Ulster, rev. ed. (1989, reissued 1993).
Modern Ireland under British rule (17th–19th centuriescentury)
T.W. Moody and W.E. Vaughan (eds.), Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 1691–1800 (1986), provides a comprehensive history of most of the period, as does do Nicholas P. Canny, The Formation of the Old English Elite in Ireland (1975); Ciran Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer (eds.), British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland (2004); Micheál Ó SiochruSiochrú, God’s Executioner: Oliver Cromwell and the Conquest of Ireland (2008); Jane Ohlmeyer (ed.), Ireland from Independence to Occupation, 1641–1660 (1995, reissued 2002); T.C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland (1975); Éamonn Ó Ciardha, Ireland and the Jacobite Cause, 1685–1766 (2002); Thomas Bartlett, The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question, 1690–1830 (1992); and James Kelly, Prelude to Union: Anglo-Irish Politics in the 1780s (1992).
Nicholas Mansergh, The Irish Question, 1840–1921: A Commentary on Anglo-Irish Relations and on Social and Political Forces in Ireland in the Age of Reform and Revolution, 3rd ed. (1975), provides an overview of British-Irish relations under the Act of Union. Also informative are S.J. Connolly, Priests and People in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1780–1845 (1982, reissued 2001), and Religion and Society in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (1985). Oliver MacDonagh, The Hereditary Bondsman: Daniel O’Connell, 1775–1829 (1988), and The Emancipist: Daniel O’Connell, 1830–47 (1989), both volumes published together as O’Connell: The Life of Daniel O’Connell, 1775–1847 (1991); and Patrick M. Geoghegan, King Dan: The Rise of Daniel O’Connell, 1775–1829 (2008), are reflections on the life of Daniel O’Connell. K.H. Connell, The Population of Ireland, 1750–1845 (1950, reprinted 1975), presents a scholarly account. John Crowley, William J. Smyth, and Mike Murphy (eds.), Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (2012); and R. Dudley Edwards and T. Desmond Williams (eds.), The Great Famine: Studies in Irish History, 1845–52 (1956, reissued 1994), discusses discuss one of the worst disasters that influenced the course of Irish history, as do Mary E. Daly, The Famine in Ireland (1986); and Cormac Ó Gráda, The Great Irish Famine (1989, reissued 1995).
Important monographs on 19th-century Irish politics include K. Theodore Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 1832–1885 (1984); R.V. Comerford, The Fenians in Context: Irish Politics and Society, 1848–82 (1985, reissued 1998); Tom Garvin, Nationalist Revolutionaries in Ireland, 1858–1928 (1987); James Loughlin, Gladstone, Home Rule, and the Ulster Question, 1882–93 (1987); F.S.L. Lyons, Charles Stewart Parnell (1977, reissued 1991); R.F. Foster, Charles Stewart Parnell: The Man and His Family, 2nd ed. (1979); and F.S.L. Lyons and R.A.J. Hawkins (eds.), Ireland Under the Union: Varieties of Tension (1980), a collection of survey analyses.
The 20th century
Alvin Jackson, Ireland 1798–1998 (1999), considers the 19th and 20th centuries. More specific topics focused primarily on the 20th century are examined in F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine, 2nd rev. ed. (1973, reissued 1985); Oliver MacDonagh, Ireland: The Union and Its Aftermath, rev. and enlarged ed. (1977); Dervla Murphy and Klaus Francke, Ireland (1985), a pictorial work; John A. Murphy, Ireland in the Twentieth Century (1975, reissued 1989); J.R. Hill (ed.), Ireland, 1921–1984 (2003); Ronan Fanning, Independent Ireland (1983); and Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, 1900–2000 (2004). Specific 20th-century developments are considered in Patrick Maume, The Long Gestation: Irish Nationalist Life, 1891–1918 (1999); D.G. Boyce (ed.), The Revolution in Ireland, 1879–1923 (1988); David W. Miller, Church, State, and Nation in Ireland, 1898–1921 (1973); A.T.Q. Stewart, The Ulster Crisis (1967, reissued 1997); Charles Townshend, Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion (2005); Michael Laffan, The Partition of Ireland, 1911–25 (1983), and The Resurrection of Ireland: The Sinn Féin Party, 1916–1923 (1999); Joseph M. Curran, The Birth of the Irish Free State, 1921–1923 (1980); Peter Hart, Mick: The Real Michael Collins (2005); Michael Hopkinson, Green Against Green: The Irish Civil War (1988, reissued 2004); Paul Canning, British Policy Towards Ireland, 1921–1941 (1985); Deirdre McMahon, Republicans and Imperialists: Anglo-Irish Relations in the 1930s (1984); Nicholas Mansergh, The Unresolved Question: The Anglo-Irish Settlement and Its Undoing, 1912–72 (1991); Terence Brown, Ireland (1985), an analysis of social and cultural factors contributing to the sense of national identity from 1922 to 1985; Ronan Fanning, The Irish Department of Finance, 1922–58 (1978); Michael Kennedy, Division and Consensus: The Politics of Cross-Border Relations in Ireland, 1925–1969 (2000); Liam Kennedy, The Modern Industrialisation of Ireland, 1940–1988 (1989); Robert J. Savage, Jr., Irish Television: The Political and Social Origins (1996); and J. Bowyer Bell, The Secret Army: The IRA, rev. 3rd ed. (1997), and The Irish Troubles: A Generation of Violence, 1967–1992 (1993). |
Marvin Steiner in the US
1. #1,932,508 Marvin Quarles
2. #1,932,509 Marvin Schafer
3. #1,932,510 Marvin Shipley
4. #1,932,511 Marvin Spann
5. #1,932,512 Marvin Steiner
6. #1,932,513 Marvin Stuckey
7. #1,932,514 Marvin Suggs
8. #1,932,515 Marvin Thiel
9. #1,932,516 Marvin Thrasher
people in the U.S. have this name View Marvin Steiner on WhitePages Raquote
Meaning & Origins
Medieval variant of Mervyn, resulting from the regular Middle English change of -er- to -ar-. Modern use may represent a transferred use of the surname derived from this in the Middle Ages. It is popular in the United States, where it is associated in particular with the American singer Marvin Gaye (1939–84) and the boxer Marvin Hagler (b. 1954).
316th in the U.S.
German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): occupational name for someone who worked with stone: a quarryman, stonecutter, or stonemason; an agent derivative of Stein.
1,381st in the U.S.
Nicknames & variations
Top state populations |
Introduction to Conspiracy Theories
world trade center
AP Photo/Chao Soi Cheong
Smoke billows from one of the towers of the World Trade Center and flames and debris explode from the other tower, September 11, 2001.
Are you the kind of person who likes to hear to a good conspiracy theory?
Some people simply do not like the discomfort that a conspiracy theory creates. But for others, conspiracy theories are intriguing. They like to explore all of the possibilities that a conspiracy theory presents, in the same way that they like to explore puzzles or mystery novels. Sometimes a conspiracy theory is ridiculous and learning about it is a form of entertainment. Or you may find that the theory is credible and it makes you think. It's interesting to consider the theory, weigh the evidence and come up with a conclusion.
In the 21st century, one event reigns supreme in the catalog of conspiracy theories: the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States. This event is seared into the nation's consciousness and significantly affected the entire planet. It seems inevitable that people would cry "conspiracy" about any event with this much impact. However, the conspiracy theories around 9/11 have been strong and consistent.
Up Next
The whole controversy surrounding 9/11 boils down to one simple question:
Did 19 terrorists cause all of the destruction witnessed on 9/11/2001, or did a group of people in the U.S. government conspire to create that destruction for political gain?
The U.S. government has offered the terrorist explanation, and that is the story that many people believe. A large number of people, however, refuse to believe this "official story." They believe conspiracy theorists when they say that the U.S. government actually masterminded and executed the attack.
We could spend a great deal of time arguing one side or the other. Instead, we'll focus on the process. Isn't it fascinating that there can be two credible explanations for such a complex event, and that both explanations can be so diametrically opposed to one another?
How does a conspiracy theory like this get started? What is required to fuel it into a full-fledged public debate? Can the theory ever be proven? What does the possibility of the theory say about our society? In this article we will explore these questions and many others as we look at the events of September 11.
Conspiracy Theory Basics
JFK film cover
Image courtesy Amazon
Oliver Stone's 1991 film "JFK" addresses a controversial version of the events surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination.
The dictionary defines a conspiracy theory in this way:
A theory seeking to explain a disputed case or matter as a plot by a secret group or alliance rather than an individual or isolated act. [ref]
A conspiracy theorist, therefore, is a person who formulates such a theory.
There is a certain negative undertone to the term "conspiracy theory" in today's society. Detractors will point out that many conspiracy theories contain certain features that undermine their credibility. In this article, however, we will use the term "conspiracy theory" in its neutral sense. We are using it to mean an alternative explanation for an event, as it is defined in the dictionary.
In modern times there have been a number of "conspiracy theories." One example is the assassination of John F. Kennedy. After the assassination, the government offered its explanation of the events. A large number of people (at one point, more than half of the adult population in the United States) simply do not believe the government's explanation. This particular conspiracy theory rose to such a high level in the public consciousness that an entire Hollywood movie was made about it: "JFK", directed by Oliver Stone and released in 1991.
More on the Kennedy Assassination
The Kennedy assassination really started the modern "conspiracy theory" movement. This is an event where the "official" government explanation of the crime was openly ridiculed by a large number of "normal citizens." Many people believe that the Kennedy assassination was carried out as part of a larger government-centered conspiracy, rather than as a random event arranged by a single gunman.
In the same way, a very large number of people do not believe that "terrorists" carried out the events seen on 9/11. Instead, they believe that the government caused those events.
Next, we'll look at how conspiracy theories get started.
How Conspiracy Theories Get Started
conspiracy theory
AP Photo/Carmen Taylor
A jet airliner lined up on one of the World Trade Center Towers on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001.
The events of 9/11/2001 are five years in the past, yet they are still a part of everyday life. Zacarias Moussaoui just began serving a life sentence after being convicted of taking part in the planning of the attack. At his trial, a large number of people recounted the horror of 9/11. The government also publicly played the tape from the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 93 for the first time. In addition, the movie "Flight 93" opened recently, with a huge amount of surrounding publicity. All of these events support the "official story" -- that terrorists hijacked four airplanes and crashed three of them into different targets, with passengers on the fourth flight forcing the jet down before it could do any damage.
Given the strength of the official story, the amount of evidence to support it and the fact that it has survived for five years without any significant public challenge, how can a conspiracy theory around 9/11 get started?
To understand how a conspiracy theory begins, let's look at the major events of 9/11. Most of us are familiar with this story because it has been repeated in the major media literally thousands of times and many of us lived through it as it happened. Here's a timeline of the events:
• On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists board four domestic flights in the United States.
• 7:59 a.m. - American Airlines Flight 11 leaves Logan Airport in Boston.
• 8:14 a.m. - United Airlines Flight 175 also leaves Logan Airport.
• 8:20 a.m. - American Airlines Flight 77 leaves Dulles Airport in Washington.
• 8:41 a.m. - United Airlines flight 93 leaves Newark Airport in New Jersey.
• 8:45 a.m. - Flight 11 hits the WTC North Tower.
• 9:03 a.m. - Flight 175 hits the WTC South Tower.
• 9:25 a.m. - The FAA orders a "national ground stop" for all airplanes in the United States. No plane can take off, and all planes in the air must land.
• 9:30 a.m. - President Bush first addresses the nation and describes the events as an "apparent terrorist attack."
• 9:43 a.m. - Flight 77 hits the Pentagon.
• 10:05 a.m. - The South Tower falls.
• 10:10 a.m. - Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania.
• 10:10 a.m. - The wall at the Pentagon falls.
• 10:28 a.m. - The North Tower falls.
• 5:20 p.m. - WTC Building 7 falls.
• 8:30 p.m. - President Bush addresses the nation, laying the blame for the attack on terrorists.
Everything in this timeline is publicly visible. There is no conjecture -- everything on this list happened, and much of it was broadcast live.
The "official story" offers one explanation for these events, and it all makes sense to some degree. For example, by 9:30 a.m. on 9/11, video of the second jet flying into the South Tower had already been widely circulated. On that day, every major news outlet already had their cameras trained on the North Tower and were covering the problem there, so the crash at the South Tower was filmed from many different angles and broadcast immediately. So when the President called it an apparent terrorist attack at 9:30 a.m., that made sense -- terrorists are people who hijack airplanes. By 8:30 p.m., lots of apparent evidence had been released to bolster the terrorist story. Flight attendants and passengers had used air phones and cell phones to call from several of the planes. Pilots on the planes had also triggered alarms and keyed cockpit microphones so people on the ground could hear what was happening.
As more and more evidence was released over the next several days, it became clear what happened: 19 terrorists hijacked four airplanes and caused massive destruction.
This is a pretty straightforward story. Hundreds of planes have been hijacked by terrorists in the past, so it is easy to imagine a coordinated attack on four airplanes at once. The idea of using planes as giant flying bombs was new and ingenious, but within the realm of possibility. It is very easy to believe the official story.
Image courtesy Department of Defense/Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, U.S. Air Force
The Pentagon prior to the attack
So for a conspiracy theory to get started, there has to be something that a conspiracy theorist can use, something that doesn't make sense. In some conspiracy theories, it's something very small. But in the case of 9/11, there are four big things that do not make much sense in the official story. These things include:
• Three skyscrapers collapsed. Never has a skyscraper ever collapsed because of fire. When the North and South Towers collapsed, that might have seemed believable because of the giant airplanes that crashed into them. But when WTC 7 collapsed, that was completely unprecedented.
• The way the President and his handlers acted when the second plane crashed into the South Tower. The reaction was strange. When the first plane crashed into the North Tower, it might be possible to excuse the behavior of the President's team because maybe nobody really knew what happened. However, by the time the second jet hit, everyone knew what was happening, so the fact that the President and his handlers did not respond immediately is certainly odd.
• The Pentagon could be hit by a big, lumbering passenger jet. On the face of it, that seems completely impossible. The Pentagon, after all, is the nerve center for the largest and most sophisticated military organization that the world has ever known. So it is reasonable to assume that there would be a defensive system in place, making the building invulnerable. Surely buildings like the Pentagon would be protected by surface-to-air missiles, wouldn't they? The attack on the Pentagon happened 58 minutes after the first plane crashed into the North Tower, which was plenty of time to scramble jets and protect Washington, D.C. even if there were no missiles on the ground.
• Not one of the four hijacked planes was shot down by fighters, even though fighter interception is fairly standard. This is also strange, especially in the case of the Pentagon. For example, when Payne Steward's Lear jet went off course in 1999, more than 10 planes intercepted it over the course of its flight, with the first interception happening within 20 minutes of flight controllers noticing a problem [ref]. So why was there an apparent lack of response to these four hijacked jets?
These are not subtle -- these are big things that anyone can see. A conspiracy theorist (especially one with an axe to grind) might notice dozens of other anomalies. So the conspiracy theorist notices one or more things that do not "make sense" in the official story. Any one of these discrepancies might be enough to get a person's attention.
Next we'll look at how conspiracy theorists gather evidence and build a case for another explanation.
Building a Case
WTC 7
AP Photo/Ryan Remiorz, Pool
Creating the Theory
Thermite reaction
Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5 License
This thermite reaction melted a cast iron skillet.
• There is audible evidence of demolition explosions
• Who planted the demolition charges? When? How?
Testing the Theory
The Pentagon, post-attack
Image courtesy Department of Defense/Tech. Sgt. Cedric H. Rudisill
FBI agents, firefighters, rescue workers and engineers work at the Pentagon crash site on Sept. 14, 2001.
After researching, the conspiracy theorist comes up with his complete theory of what happened on the day of September 11. Now it is time to look at it as a whole. Does it make sense? Is it plausible? Is there a means, motive and opportunity available at every stage? Is there enough evidence to support the theory?
Most importantly, does the conspiracy theory actually explain what happened? Are there more gaps, or fewer gaps, when compared to the official story? In the case of 9/11, this conspiracy theory explains the following anomalies:
• The fact that the North and South Towers collapsed at all and in identical ways.
• The fact that the South Tower fell before the North Tower, even though the North tower was hit first, and the South Tower was hit obliquely rather than directly.
• That WTC 7 fell at all (given that no airplane hit it), and the way that it fell.
Larry Silverstein's quote about demolition.
• Why the government was so intent in cleaning up and shipping scrap steel to recyclers instead of letting independent panels investigate the collapse.
• Why the Pentagon was hit in the part of the building being renovated.
• The fact that the path of destruction outside the Pentagon, in the outer wall of the Pentagon and in the inner structure of the Pentagon, does not really match the signature of a jumbo jet.
• All of the secrecy and strangeness around the site of the Pentagon crash, instead of opening the site to a normal crash evaluation.
• That the Pentagon, which should be the most highly defended building in the best-defended city in the world, was attacked at all.
• Other strange incidents: the Pentagon war games running on 9/11, the lack of fighter intercepts, Bush's behavior on the morning of the attack, the location of Warren Buffett and other high-profile financiers on September 11, and more.
In other words, the conspiracy theory explains a large number of things that remain mysteries in the official story.
What is missing, of course, is a smoking gun. That is what makes it a conspiracy theory rather than reality. In the absence of a smoking gun -- a leaked internal memo, a whistleblower who actually participated in the event, direct evidence from one of the crash sites, et cetera -- it is difficult to prove a conspiracy theory. The fact that much of the evidence was quickly destroyed makes proof much harder, which in itself is a piece of circumstantial evidence in the conspiracy theory.
9/11 Conspiracy Theory Documentaries
The next step is to get the word out. This process has been greatly simplified by the Internet, but it is still difficult because conspiracy theorists are swimming against the tide. There are four ways to spread the word:
• Books are the traditional way, and dozens of books have been written.
• Web sites are perhaps the easiest way. There are hundreds of Web sites with discussions about the 9/11 conspiracy.
• Documentary films and videos.
• Interviews on the radio and TV, and in newspapers and magazines, help promote books, Web sites and films.
Recently one of the splashiest efforts has been a documentary film called "Loose Change" that has been released on Google Video and YouTube. The interesting thing about this documentary is that it is one of the first to reach millions of people through free video channels. These open channels on the Internet make it much easier to spread conspiracy theories.
It also makes it easier for conspiracy theorists if they unite their efforts. An entire "9/11 Truth Movement" coalesced, giving individual theorists a stronger voice.
Then, as soon as conspiracy theories gain traction, a new phenomenon appears. People who believe the official story want to debunk the theorists. The debunkers have the same evidence-gathering and promotional tools at their disposal, and they put up resistance to conspiracy theories. One of the most prominent examples of the debunking phenomenon is an article in Popular Mechanics magazine: "9/11: Debunking The Myths". Then the conspiracy theorists react to the reactions (as in Popular Mechanics' "Assault on 9/11 Truth"), and a very large argument can ensue. These arguments can actually be helpful to the conspiracy theorists. The feedback requires them to refine their theories and the noise that the argument creates can attract attention.
Will these 9/11 conspiracy theories ever become more than theories? For example, would Congress ever re-open the 9/11 inquiry because of public pressure? At this point, it is impossible to tell. But it should be very interesting to see what happens.
For lots more information on conspiracy theories and related subjects, check out the links on the next page.
Lots More Information
Related Articles
More Great Links
9/11 timelines:
Articles: Documentaries:
Lectures: Web sites: |
Sba-logo Ask-jim Special-offers
The Micro Revolution
Daniel Burrus
We live in both a macro and a micro world.
When I look through a telescope, I’m viewing the macro world of distant planets and stars many times larger than our relatively small planet. The further out I look, the smaller we seem. When I look through an electron microscope, I’m viewing the micro world of molecules and individual atoms. It has always fascinated me that both the macro world of the ultra large and the micro world of the ultra small have so many similarities.
In this article, I would like us to turn our attention to the micro world of the ultra small. Why? Because there is a micro revolution brewing that will cause yet another revolution, changing how we live, work and play.
Way back in 1983, I identified twenty core technologies that would give birth to many new tools and create multiple revolutions for decades to come. One of the core technologies was micromechanics.
Micromechines involve the designing and building of tiny mechanisms, such as valves, accelerometers, pressure and force sensors, and surgical tools. Micromachines can be etched in batches on silicon wafers and then sliced into separate chips. They can be linked up with microelectronic circuits and used for applications such as monitoring pollution, aiding medical research, and giving robots a sense of touch.
This was the way I first described micromachines, and the revolution they will cause is just now starting to unfold.
In the 1990s, we began to refer to this category of technology as Micro Electro Mechanical Systems, or MEMS. You might be thinking – how could this obscure area of science cause a revolution?
Think of it this way. Picture in you mind a machine, with gears turning and parts spinning. Now, shrink it down in your mind, smaller and smaller, until the tiny machine is so small that you can barely see it. The gears in your visual image are now about the size of a grain of pollen, yet they are working. They can be batch-fabricated tens of thousands at a time, at a cost of only a penny or two each.
The laws of physics you learned in school have morphed into a new variation. Now, the effects of gravity and inertia that influence large, normal-sized machines have little effect, but the effects of atomic forces and surface science now are all important. There will be a wide range of applications for these devices in both commercial and defense systems, creating a market that will be around $100 billion a year in the not-too-distant future.
One leader in this emerging field is Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico. Sandia scientists have developed unique technologies that enable the fabrication of complex mechanical systems on a chip, and the integration of these mechanical systems with on-chip control and communication electronics. The result is an intelligent microsystem that knows where it is, and what is going on around it. In other words, it’s a chip that can compute, sense, act and communicate.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could get a rapid diagnosis of any disease? Tiny biochips will cause such a revolution, and it has already begun.
Like computer chips, which perform millions of mathematical operations per second, biochips can perform thousands of biological reactions in a few seconds. A biochip is a small device with an array of DNA fragments that can be used to probe a cell sample for the presence of specific genes. For example, when use to test for a disease, such as drug resistant tuberculosis, a sample of the unknown TB DNA could be spread on a biochip and allowed to naturally pair up with TB DNA that has been identified as drug resistant.
By changing the DNA samples, an unlimited range of diseases can be quickly and efficiently diagnosed. With globalization, the spread of disease is increasingly quick and easy. Advanced biochips will enable doctors to get all the information they need in a few hours. The micro world encompasses far more than micromachines and biochips, but by bringing these to the forefront it si my hope that you might see just how big the micro revolution will be.
Daniel Burrus, one of the world's leading technology forecasters, business strategists, and author of six books
Copyright 2003 Author retains copyright. All Rights Reserved.
Print page |
Claws in the river, the Mediterranean freshwater crab (Potamon fluviatile)
Freshwater Crab (Potamon fluviatile)The are holes in the mud around me, holes all along the river bank, a good sign of the presence of one of my preferred European arthropods, the Mediterranean freshwater crab (Potamon fluviatile)
The Mediterranean freshwater crab belongs to the genus Potamon, that regroups a bunch of species with very curious habits. Unlike most crabs in the world, they left the sea forever and they don’t need it for breeding either, living in rivers and streams, far from their sea relatives. P. fluviatile is distributed from Greece to Italy, where it normally inhabits small calcareous and siliceous streams with muddy soil and shady banks. Like most crabs it feeds upon organic matter and actively hunts small animals like tadpoles, frogs and fishes. For this reason it’s really a “Wall-E” of nature, crushing and crunching the organic matter and contributing to process it faster and cleaner. Its fierce temperament protects him from being disturbed by many predators like water snakes and smaller birds and even against alien species like the Louisiana freshwater crayfish (Procambarus clarkii). Its burrow is excavated in the muddy soil and it can be 40-50 cm deep with water on the bottom. Younger specimens are also found in water under rocks and logs, while adult can be found even far from water, feeding in the woods at night. Breeding takes place into water and the female keeps the eggs inside her telson pouch until the larvae are fully grown and resemble a small replica of the adult. Then they’ll be ready for their solitary life in the stream. The freshwater crab is listed as Near Threatened by IUCN Red List of Endangered Species and the main cause of its fragmented habitat are pollution, habitat alteration, overfishing and poaching. In Italy the species is protected by local and national laws but the real protection of sites and nearby areas are often too weak and it disappeared from many of its westernmost sites in these last years.
Many many (and again) many thanks to my friend and colleague Giacomo Radi ( without whom help I wouldn’t have found easily this beautiful species. His knowledge and passion were really important for this work. |
About Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), or sometimes called Chinese medicine (CM), is a traditional medical system. It has a holistic approach to diagnosing, preventing and treating diseases by identifying patterns and then applying the individual or combined therapies of acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, tuina - a therapeutic massage; and other techniques. Its unique characteristics which distinguish it from 'orthodox' medicine are rooted in the "concept of holism - zheng ti guan nian" and "treatment according to syndrome differentiation - bian zheng lun zhi". The fundamental theories of TCM include those of Qi, Yin Yang, the five elements, zang-fu, the four diagnostic methods and syndrome differentiation systems.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is one of the world's oldest medical systems still widely practiced today. It is a unique and independent medical system which originated from China and developed down through the centuries imbued with the spirit of Chinese civilization and culture. For thousands of years, TCM has played a major role in maintaining the health of Chinese people.
Chinese Medicine was established through centuries of clinical practice and following countless failures, taking a very long time from the beginning of the practice of Chinese Medicine to the establishment of a complete medical system. Thus although the recorded evidence for TCM reveals its origins to be two thousand years ago, its social history, traditions and roots predates this, making it a fundamental part of Chinese civilization.
Chinese Medicine directly or indirectly influenced the development of many herbal medicines around the world, including but not limited to the herbal medicines in Japan, Korea, Tibet, Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, etc. Through the Silk Road and other cultural exchanges, Chinese Medicine had been exported to Europe and other continents hundreds and thousands of years ago, being practiced in more than 100 countries around the world, and influencing the development of many other herbal medicines in regions outside Asia. The influence of Chinese Medicine on other alternative medicines (including homeopathy, naturopathy, chiropractic, physiotherapy, etc.) can potentially be much more profound and significant than most people realize.
Therefore, Chinese Medicine is in a leading position in the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), and serves the largest CAM patient population in the world. Today, the term "Chinese Medicine" refers not only to the Chinese Medicine practiced inside China, as the word "Chinese" has lost its original regional or ethnic meaning, and has become an abstract term representing a system of medicine.
Acupuncture works by stimulating the acu-points which lie on lines or channels, through the insertion of thin, fine needles at various points on the body. During the centuries of clinical practice, the functions and clinical effectiveness of each acu-point or combinations of such points in treating different diseases have been noted. In recent years these actions have been systematically studied and verified by modern scientific researches. Currently, there are different forms of acupuncturists in the West; our members only practice the traditional Chinese acupuncture which is based on the full TCM meridian and collateral and the syndrome differentiation theories.
Chinese Herbal Medicine
Traditionally, Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) involves the use of natural plants, minerals and even some small amount animals. However, TCM practitioners are not allowed to use minerals and animal stuff. All ATCM members are only using herbs in their clinical practice. Each herb has its own specific characteristics and particular medical use to treat various diseases, rectifying the over-activity or under-activity of Yin and Yang, and helping restore the body to its normal physiological functions. Chinese herbal therapy must be given by qualified TCM practitioners. Normally, the practitioner must
conduct a diagnostic consultation, such as asking you questions that relate to your health problems, taking your pulse and observing your tongue, before making a prescription. A prescription can be defined as a preparation which, on the basis of syndrome differentiation and accordingly established therapeutic methods, organically combines various herbs in accordance with Chinese medicine principles.
Tuina literally translates as push and grasp and is a Chinese therapeutic massage closely related to acupuncture in its use of the meridian system. It is considered to be effective for treating a similar range of health problems, especially musculoskeletal conditions and some internal diseases such as abdominal and stomach problems related to digestions. Infant Tuina is especially useful for treatment of certain infant health problems. Tuina is regarded alongside herbal medicine and acupuncture as another one of the fundamental arts of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Tuina is primarily focused on the meridians and points where Qi gathers and can be easily manipulated. It is thought that the Tuina massage affects not only the physical body but also the Qi body (the network of meridians and points) and the mental body (emotions, thoughts and spiritual faculties). Since both physical and mental health are dependants on a smooth and abundant flow of Qi, massage can effectively affect all the three aspects.
Tuina massage is also based on the same theoretical frame and diagnosis principles as that of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. Tuina massage also needs to follow a proper diagnosis by using the four examinations methods and syndrome differentiation. Based on the diagnosis, specific techniques and manipulations are combined to treat the specific symptoms and the underlying pathological patterns.
What conditions can Chinese acupuncture/herbal medicine help?
In respect of the diagnosis and treatment of illness, the knowledge and experience of the TCM practitioner is of vital importance. A thorough analysis of the patient's experiences and symptoms, the causes, nature and location of the illness as well as the patient's physical and emotional condition must all be taken into account for successful treatment.
In general, acupuncture is more responsive to various pain conditions, such as lower back pain, while it is also widely used for different internal health conditions to help people to become more positive and revitalised. Chinese herbal medicine is more widely used for internal conditions, such as certain kinds of infectious diseases.. Tuina, it is more effective to relieve pain, especially in muscular problems.
If you want to learn more about acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine and wish to discuss whether Chinese medicine would be appropriate for your particular problems and health conditions, please speak to your nearest TCM practitioner which you can find from our database: Find a practitioner
ATCM 2014 |
Diabetes Self Managementwww.DiabetesSelfManagement.com
To print: Select File and then Print from your browser's menu
Return to article
Adjust Font Size : normal smaller font medium font large font
URL: http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.com/articles/heart-health/reducing-heart-disease-risk/print/
Reducing Heart Disease Risk
Heart disease increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes and is still one of the major causes of death in the United States. Scientists have long known that damage to the heart and blood vessels can be caused by too much glucose in the blood. This makes heart disease an even greater concern for people with diabetes, who must take steps daily to manage their blood glucose levels. Having diabetes is a major risk factor for heart disease. People who have diabetes are two to four times more likely to suffer from its consequences.
However, the story of heart disease and diabetes is not all bleak. There are medication-free, lifestyle-related approaches that can help reduce the risk, slow its progression, and help avoid aftereffects. Indeed, modification of lifestyle habits is not only at the heart of public health approaches for reducing heart disease risk, but it can also help to reduce the impact of diabetes.
“Lifestyle factors” are things that are in your control and things that you have the power to do something about, like eating and exercising. This is in contrast to things you can’t control, such as who your grandparents are, your age and gender, and for women, menopause, all of which also have influences on heart disease risk.
However, relying solely on lifestyle-related strategies may not be enough, or feasible for everyone. Some people may additionally need to take medicines. This is a decision that they and their health-care professionals will have to make. Also, before you choose to make any changes in your current lifestyle, you should first check with your doctor or other health-care professional.
That being said, no matter what you decide, one of the most important things you can do is to start today. The clock for heart disease can start ticking in the teenage years, long before there is any hint of diabetes or other health problems. Alarmingly, recent studies have reported that young teenage boys and girls are showing beginning signs of unhealthy levels of blood fats related to heart disease. Further, autopsy studies have showed that young soldiers in their twenties had signs of heart disease at much younger ages than expected. Thus, the earlier you get started doing something, the more opportunities you will have to lower your risk, and the better off you will likely be.
Scientific knowledge about lifestyle factors for reducing heart disease risk has advanced considerably over the latter part of the 20th century, since the time when steaks and cigarettes were part of mainstream culture and associated with status and the good life. As evidence has mounted, the focal points of lifestyle approaches for reducing heart disease risk have become being tobacco free, being physically active, eating well, and aiming for a healthy weight.
There is no doubt that the one lifestyle change with the greatest payoff is stopping smoking, if you smoke now. It is no secret that smoking is bad for your health, and it is considered by some to be the most hazardous and leading risk factor for heart disease. Not only are people with diabetes who smoke doubly at risk for heart disease, smoking reduces the beneficial effect of other risk factor changes, such as exercising or eating well.
Once you quit, your risk of heart disease dramatically drops within just one year. For some people, however, smoking can be one of the toughest habits to change. But there are numerous methods and resources available for help and support, such as the American Lung Association and American Cancer Society.
Keep in mind, too, that some folks may have to make dozens of attempts at quitting before they find a strategy that works or before things fall into place that open the doors to stopping smoking. This is not unusual, so don’t feel badly if it happens. Most important, don’t give up and don’t think any less of yourself if it takes many tries. Think of quitting smoking as a process and a positive, long-term challenge, while you continue to search for that particular approach that will work for you.
Next, there is exercise. If you are inactive now, by exercising regularly, you can reduce your risk of a heart attack up to half. Regular physical activity helps your body all over. Not only does it help reduce blood pressure and make your heart work more efficiently and effectively, but it also helps with blood glucose control. Exercise also burns calories, so it helps with weight management, and when you exercise regularly, you can eat more calories without gaining weight. Best of all is that being physically active can make you feel better and have more energy.
Yet the very thought of getting out there and moving on a regular basis is unpleasant or insufficiently motivating to many people. This is evidenced by the fact that only a fraction of the US population is physically active.
Current guidelines recommend that most American adults get a total of at least 30 minutes of exercise most days of the week. You don’t need to do intense or heavy activity, which for many people may not be feasible. Activities like moderate walking and gardening, done regularly and over the long term, are just fine. You also don’t need to do all of the 30 minutes in one shot. Breaking up your 30 minutes of exercise over the day into, for example, three 10-minute bouts of activity, still gives you benefits. Simple ways to increase your activity level are to walk instead of drive when you can, park your car at the far end of the lot, take stairs instead of the elevator when you have only one or two floors to go up or down, use a printer in another room, or just walk around when you are talking on the phone.
Heart-healthy eating has long been promoted as one of the ways to help reduce risk of heart disease, and for good reason: It works.
The key to eating well and eating healthfully is not as restrictive as many people imagine. There is no such thing as a “bad” food or a “good” food, just good and bad ways of eating. There are a few major principles to heart-healthy eating, which can be summarized in one sentence: “Eat a moderate amount of a wide variety of colorful, minimally processed foods.”
In other words, make most of your diet come from foods that are as close to nature as possible. Fill half of your plate with varied and colorful fresh, frozen, or canned fruits and vegetables, and a fourth with grains (making at least half of them whole grains, such as brown rice or quinoa instead of refined white rice or regular pasta). Then finish off the rest of your plate with protein, such as lean, unprocessed meat, fish, or poultry. Don’t forget about tofu, cooked dried beans, lentils, and peas as alternatives to animal protein sources. Also consider including some nuts and seeds in your meals, which are great for heart health. For dressings and condiments, substitute olive or canola oil for butter, stick margarine, or shortening, and use soft margarines. By eating a moderate amount and a wide variety of these kinds of foods, you will get an abundance of essential vitamins, minerals, fiber, and especially plant chemicals (called phytochemicals) that will help promote health and reduce heart disease risk.
Setting priorities
|
• Decrease font size
• Return font size to normal
• Increase font size
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Medical Devices
• Print
• Share
• E-mail
Medical Device Use in the Home Environment Guidance Workshop, May 24, 2010 - Breakout Session Notes: Wireless Issues
Wireless Issues for Home Care Medical Devices
What should go into guidance?
Using GPS in devices
Having device information downloaded from the device to a web application
FDA’s position on ISO 80,000 (80211)
EMC and standards
Telehealth/Environmental Health Issues in the home
Are we seeing more use of wireless technology in the home?
FTC National Broadband Plan has a component that deals with health care.
More and more people are giving up their Lan lines which has implications for transmitting data back to the physician; many people travel to different countries which can be challenging as different countries have different phone systems which can create a challenge for some medical devices (pacemakers)
More interest in seeing wellness applications in mobile devices; questions about the regulatory requirements
When does the telephone become a medical device because it is transmitting medical data
What points should the agency focus on regarding wireless issues?
1. Reference the medical device wireless guidance
2. Should we redefine the term medical device? Where is the distinction between a medical device and one that just transmits data?
• If a device just has an algorithm and a sensor then it is more likely to be seen as a medical device; however if it is just transmitting information then should it be considered a medical device?
3. Where is the burden of proof that a product is a medical device?
4. How to validate the communication system? Should we reference part 11?
5. Cognitive Technology
6. Is there a possibility of establishing a test environment for home use devices?
7. Should we try to define what the characteristics of a wireless device should be? Should this information be included in a separate guidance? Should we define what should be in the guidance by the level of risk associated with the device?
8. Should alerts be built into devices to let the monitor know that the device is actually working and transmitting data? How do we deal with power outages? Are cellular systems to the point where we can consider them reliable enough to deliver home care?
9. The guidance document should not just look at cellular communication, but at other wireless set ups
10. It may not be realistic to consider that every user will be able to set up and use wireless devices at home, but lay users could “plug into” into some small part of the device and still use a wireless device in some way.
11. Make a distinction between monitoring and using the device.
12. Wireless Security – the secure transmission of data; what is the level of security that you have on the signal? How well can you control it? Systems should be set up to avoid intrusion; ensuring the communication pathway
13. Data integrity
14. Labeling specific for wireless technology
15. Remote Access into a device for trouble shooting; wireless technology enables this capability
16. If there is post market situation would that might exclude it from being used wirelessly that should be a part of the guidance.
17. The FCC has mandatory standards regarding wireless technologies; FDA standards are consensus standards they are not mandatory
18. If this devices causes interference with some other device or product that information should be in the labeling
19. Future possibility - Body area networks – a system that would be implanted, body worn-24 hour monitoring of a patient
20. Small number of devices that use a dedicated spectrum for medical devices
21. Do we need to revisit this yearly given the amount of change that happens in a given year? Is this worth working on this given the time it takes to get a guidance published? Is there another process that we might use other than guidance so that we can get the information out quickly, while it’s still useful
22. Would this new technology ever require clinical testing? |
Math Trainer - Multiplication
Get in some serious multiplication table training.
Responds to your answers ... so it will train your weaknesses.
Use 3 sessions of 5 minutes each per day for best results.
Train yourself to REMEMBER, don't calculate.
Features of the Math Trainer
Breaks the 10× table into 4 "chunks" (5×, 6×6 to 9×9, etc) so that you can concentrate on getting good one chunk at a time.
Designed for high speed so that you get lots of practice
Remembers your performance (during the session, but not between sessions) so that it gives you more practice on your weaknesses.
Shows you the correct answer if you get it wrong
Timed Workout style just like an athlete would use
If you just want to practice at your own pace, choose "0" minutes, and press "Stop" when you are done. |
Vocabulary Builder
Vocabulary Builder
Improve Your Writing
• Boost your vocabulary
• See words in the context of real sentences
• Learn by association and by definition
• Master a new lexicon!
Get Started Below
Vocabulary Word
Word: probe
Definition: explore with a probe or tools; investigate; N: slender instrument used to explore a wound or body cavity; device designed to investigate an unknown region; thorough investigation; Ex. space probe
Sentences Containing 'probe'
"Seeing the transient, ephemeral world he decided to probe into truth through renunciation."
A continuous electrical spark discharge may be drawn between probe and tissue, especially at the highest settings of power, although this is not necessary for the device to function.
A series of mock documentary shows, including Deep Probe which investigates issues such as alien abductions and mock animal documentaries.
After he left the government job, Nozette was heavily involved in India's extraterrestrial Moon probe, Chandrayaan-1.
After Rhys' arrival, Tavis drugs him and Javan orders Tavis to probe Rhys' memory.
An RNA sample can then be added to the chip, and RNAs with sequence complementarity to the cDNA probe will bind and generate a fluorescent signal that can be quantified.
As a result it can be utilized to probe large complexes.
But by and by I evolved an idea I would wake my brother and probe him with a supposititious case.
Cajes led the investigation team to Germany to conduct a probe on the allegations against the first family.
Crohmălniceanu also described it as "a finely analytical probe into a puzzling psychology and [...]
Electronic Temperature Instruments is the UK's largest digital thermometer and temperature probe manufacturer.
He also courted controversy by asking for a probe in the Jamia Nagar batla house encounter case.
He also used the Cobalt-59 NMR chemical shift for cobalt (III) hexacyanide as both a temperature and pressure probe.
Highly specialized cameras have investigated the Saturn moon Titan, analyse the surface of Mars, and probe the clouds and winds of Venus.
His first appearance was in "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe".
If a blocked process receives the probe it will update the path information and forward the probe to all the processes it depends on.
If eventually the probe returns to process "A", there is a circular waiting loop of blocked processes, and a deadlock is detected.
In 1961, Venera 1 became the first planetary probe.
It feeds mainly on earthworms, using its long scimitar-like bill to probe soft soil.
It was later reopened, however, in support of Project Have Lent, a sounding rocket probe program to evaluate advanced ballistic reentry system experiments.
Just before dawn at 06:20, Moore ordered his companies to put out reconnaissance patrols to probe for North Vietnamese forces.
Many times an implantable doppler probe or other devices can be installed during surgery to provide better monitoring in the postoperative period.
Nanofountain probe (NFP) is a cantilevered micro-fluidic device terminated in a nanofountain.
Non-blocked processes may discard the probe.
Ray cripples the probe using an axe, but a panicked Rachel runs outside and is caught by the Tripod.
Russian authorities dispatched investigators to the site of the emergency landing, classifying the investigation as a "criminal probe," according to the Russian Investigative Committee.
Similarly, a brain fingerprinting test determines only whether or not the information stored in the suspect's brain matches the information contained in the probe stimuli.
Some studies use a "probe verification" task rather than an overt acceptability judgment; in this paradigm, each experimental sentence is followed by a "probe word", and subjects must answer whether or not the probe word had appeared in the sentence.
SSIESS includes a Retarding Potential Analyzer (RPA), and Ion Drift meter (IDM), a scintillation meter, and a Langmuir probe.
Stan next appeared on August 13, 1997, when "South Park" debuted on Comedy Central with the episode "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe".
Terahertz frequencies mean in fact that scientists and engineers could use the device to probe and manipulate electronic devices at nanoscale level.
The "Rosetta" probe actually found that the asteroid has a moderately red spectrum in the visible light and essentially flat spectrum in the near infrared.
The "Rosetta" probe passed within of Lutetia in July 2010.
The arrest attention from Bangladesh based forces to Bhutan for the first time since the probe was initiated.
The basement hideout is exposed when a second probe catches them sleeping.
The employee's actions triggered an electronic alarm system, according to sources familiar with the probe.
The goal is to probe the subsurface structure of sunspots in three dimensions.
The present day shape of the Universe has been determined from measurements of the cosmic microwave background using satellites like the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
The probe (situation-relevant) stimuli contained information that would be common knowledge only to someone with FBI training.
The probe message contains the process id of "A" along with the path that the message has followed through the distributed system.
The second volume, for children with reading skills, offers longer stories that probe the relationships between children and parents, and between children and their peer group.
The wave function of an electrically-charged particle (a "probe charge") that orbits the "equator" generally changes by a phase, much like in the Aharonov–Bohm effect. This phase is proportional to the electric charge "q"e of the probe, as well as to the magnetic charge "q"m of the source.
These birds probe with their bill in mud or shallow water, also picking up food by sight.
They all hide from a snake-like probe and a group of aliens exploring the basement.
This investigative process produces the probe stimuli to be tested.
This robot can probe and test 40-100 contacts per second on very fine geometry multi-chip modules.
Two other common arrangements position the detector probe at 90° or 180° with respect to the incident light.
Voters in Paterson, however, were not responsive to his efforts and as the probe into his dealings grew, Barnes' support waned.
Whenever a process "A" is blocked for some resource, a probe message is sent to all processes "A" may depend on.
[****] Conditional network reconstructs the network given a specified probe being most expressed or least expressed.
More Vocab Words
::: extrinsic - external; not essential or inherent; extraneous; OP. intrinsic
::: tautological - needlessly repetitious; Ex. ``It was visible to the eye''; N. tautology: needless repetition of the same sense; statement that is always true
::: vile - despicable; unpleasant; disgusting; Ex. vile slander
::: audacious - daring; bold; N. audacity
::: selective - careful in choosing; having an effect only on certain things; not general; Ex. eclectic weed killer
::: noxious - harmful; CF. obnoxious
::: rabid - of or suffering rabies; like a fanatic; extremely zealous; furious; CF. rabies: hydrophobia
::: fancier - breeder or dealer of animals; one who has a special interest, as for raising specific plant or animal
::: concave - hollow; curved inwards; OP. convex |
Q & A: Jeremy Leggett
"We need an explosive growth in all renewable and efficient energy markets."
Q. Why do we need to reduce our use of fossil fuels?
Jeremy Leggett. Renewable and efficient energy technology will have to replace fossil fuels far faster than most people currently anticipate. The reason is the combined impact of two key problems that will shape the 21st century: peak oil and climate change. A premature topping point in global oil production would wipe out economic plans currently on offer in boardrooms and finance ministries around the world. This is because such plans assume growing supplies of affordable oil for several decades to come. But as former U.S. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger recently concluded, "we can't continue to make supply meet demand much longer. It's no longer the case that we have a few voices crying in the wilderness. The battle is over. The peakists have won."
Among the main escape clauses for peaking oil supply, according to traditional energy experts, are the mining of Canada's vast tar sand deposits, and coal-to-liquids technology. Using the tar sands would require massive amounts of water and gas. Coal-to-liquids technology is similarly greenhouse-gas profligate, though here--as with regular coal burning--advocates hold up the prospect of carbon capture and storage, where emissions are buried underground. Of this prospect Schlesinger has concluded that, "it will take at least 15 to 20 years to introduce, if then." But according to NASA's top climatologist, we have less than a decade to deeply cut emissions. If we don't, we risk climate horrors such as an irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would lift global sea levels by 23 ft. (7 m).
Q. Can renewable and efficient technology reduce our dependence on fossil fuels?
JL. Here there is good and bad news. Yes, we can run the world on renewables and efficiency. Any self-respecting solar energy company--hooked up with the right partners--can put up zero carbon buildings in a matter of weeks. Around 50% of CO2 emissions come from buildings, directly or indirectly. Meanwhile, as traditional power prices soar, solar manufacturing costs are falling.
But solar is no panacea. We need an explosive growth in all renewable and efficient energy markets. In Britain, for example, we have the potential to source all of our primary energy from wind and marine technologies. Knowing what the renewables family can do, imagine the frustration that practitioners like me feel having watched these technologies held back during the great addiction to fossil fuels.
Q. What will happen if the world doesn't embrace renewable energy?
JL. The bad news is that no combination of technologies can plug the energy gap if the peakists are correct. There will be a third, and last, global energy crisis. It will dwarf previous crises. Profound economic dislocation will result. The challenge for human civilization will be how we rebuild post-peak. If we mobilize with renewables and efficiency, as though for war, we have the potential to achieve a renaissance on many fronts. If we forget climate change and go for coal and tar sands, we will achieve the opposite. A few hundred billion tons of coal and tar sand could cause economically ruinous, and irreversible, climatic impacts. That would amount to a fraction of remaining coal and tar sand deposits, even if the experts have overestimated those "resources" the same way they have conventional oil.
What do you think?
E-mail address
Your location
Comment Policy
All fields are required |
Cogglesford Watermill, Lincolnshire
Situated amongst trees and grass meadows on the outskirts of the market town of Sleaford, Cogglesford Mill and its associated mill house, stables, and mill pond is probably close to the 'ideal' of a traditional English watermill scene.
Historically important, Cogglesford Mill is a rare survivor from a river that once boasted some 18 watermills at the time of the Doomsday Book. Originally referred to as the 'The Sheriff's Mill', it belonged to a group of mills considered to be the most valuable in Lincolnshire, and amongst the most important in the country.
Vessels could only navigate up the River Slea to a point near modern South Kyme during medieval times - beyond this, their passage was blocked by fish weirs and watermills. The group of mills around Sleaford belonged to the Bishop of Lincoln, with the mills to the east of Cogglesford being part of the Haverholme Priory estates. Most of these mills would probably have been built using timber and thatch, later being rebuilt in stone.
As is usual with most historical buildings, Cogglesford Mill encompasses several phases of development. Stonework in the north wall appears to be recycled stone from a previous mill on the site, but the brickwork is predominantly 18th century with some 19th century additions. Much of the internal timber is also of considerable age, having been re-used several times through the mill's evolution. The group of buildings as seen today were largely constructed during the 18th century, although the mill building itself would have been single storey with a loft above, and the stables would have had a thatched roof. Capacity would also have been increased at this time by the addition of a second waterwheel, allowing two sets of stones to be worked.
Between the years 1792-94 the 'Slea Navigation' came into being, which would transform the fortunes of the remaining mills in the area, for a short time at least. Corn-carrying vessels could now navigate into the heart of Sleaford town itself, opening up numerous opportunities - corn could be delivered directly to the mill, but the meal and flour produced could be transported in bulk to the ever growing canal and river network beyond. A new reservoir was built at Cogglesford Mill at this time, and this survives today as a tranquil mill pond to be enjoyed by both wildfowl and ramblers in the area.
During the 19th century, Cogglesford Mill was further extended by the addition of an upper storey (the Garner floor), and this was used for the storage of grain. Advancements in gearing also allowed the two 18th century waterwheels to be replaced by a single paddle-wheel. The mill house was also extended and the stable roof was pan-tiled in keeping with the rest of the complex.
With the advent of the railway, the prosperity of the businesses along the Slea Navigation soon fell into sharp decline. Dwindling river traffic, and falling revenues inevitably resulted in proper maintenance schedules being cut back, and this led to river silting and general decay. By 1878 the Slea Navigation was wound up by an Act of Parliament, and a very prosperous era in the town's history came to an end. Although Cogglesford Mill continued to operate for some years after, it was eventually closed in 1885 when the installation of a new sewerage pump made the water course unavailable.
For over 100 years Cogglesford Mill lay dormant, exposed to the ravages of both vandalism and weather. However, in 1988 the site was purchased by Mr R Staples who restored and converted the mill house into his offices. In 1990 he conveyed the mill building and its water courses to North Kesteven District Council, and an opportunity to restore the structure could be realised.
Work on the mill and the surrounding area was completed in the early 1990s - today the fully restored and operational mill has a regular calendar of events allowing the public to enjoy the experience of seeing the mill in action once again. The mill house has recently been converted, and is now a very picturesque 'cottage' restaurant.
Sleaford 'Bass' Maltings
Also in the area...
IndustrialSleaford 'Bass' Maltings
read more about this location
The London Pass – find out more here |
ArtLex Art Dictionary
yellow -
Yellow pigments include:
Like: Yellow is luminous and warm because it is strongly associateda square shape filled with yellow with sunshine. It sparkles with optimistic activity. Yellow people are highly original, imaginative, idealistic, creative, artistic and often spiritual. You love novelty and challenge and have an inquiring mind. You are a reliable friend and confidant. Your ambitions are often realized, and you usually have a sunny disposition.
You are often egotistical, however, and do not like to be second best. You can be generous, but may be rather shy at heart and appear somewhat aloof as a result. You may be impatient with other people's ideas if they seem less well thought out than yours. You are genuinely concerned about the good of society, but generally spend more time talking about it than actually doing anything about it! Yellow people are perfectionists, but can also be joyful.
Dislike: If you dislike yellow, you usually dislike the qualities that this luminous color has. You are a realist--a practical, down-to-earth person and probably critical of others who are not. You are skeptical of new ideas and rather than try something innovative, you prefer to concentrate on things you know you can accomplish. Guaranteed results are important to you, because you like to protect yourself from disappointment.
Photographers measure color temperature in degrees kelvin (K).
Related Links:
ArtLex Art Dictionary
Copyright © 1996-current year |
homecontactcommunity newslettermaps
In 1939, accompanied by 100 Czech families, Thomas J. Bata emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Canada. He was the only son of Tomas Bata who had built a very, large, international shoe enterprise in Czechoslovakia and died in an airplane crash before the Second World War. Young Thomas decided to leave his home country a short period before the German Army marched in. After his arrival in Canada he initially bought an old paper mill in Frankford and started to manufacture shoes with the help of over 100 Czech families who had followed him to Canada.
Soon after their arrival they started to build a new factory and housing in Batawa. There were two schools, two churches and sports facilities. At a later date a Post Office and a bank were added. Originally most of the inhabitants of Batawa were of Czech origin and retained many of their traditions.
In addition to the shoe factory, they also built a plant to make shoe machinery. However, during wartime the engineering plant concentrated on the war effort and made various high precision machine parts such as gyroscopes for the armed forces. By 1989, the Bata factory employed 1,500 in the shoe factory and 380 in the engineering division. It was a truly flourishing community. The wartime housing, which had been subsidized by the Bata Shoe Company, was being replaced by well built bungalows owned by the occupants.
In the years to come the engineering division was sold to Invar, one of the Linamar companies making automotive parts. Gradually the shoe factory reduced its production as labor costs in Canada were very high and more and more shoes were being imported, particularly from China. By the time the factory closed, the residents of Batawa found other careers but many remain in their homes in the village, keeping the spirit of a small town strong.
Many in surrounding communities still have connections with the original Czech families. There is a large group of "Batawa Kids" - people who were born in Batawa and today live all over the world - who still maintain a strong sense of kinship to Batawa.
Thomas J. Bata and Dr. Karel Herz set out to find 1,500 acres of land between Toronto and Montreal. They found a tract of pasture land along the Trent River valley north of Trenton. "At the time, this was a depressed area and the local municipalities did everything in their power to make us welcome," reflected Dr. Herz. "Many areas would have been suitable for a factory but quite honestly, it was the dedication of the people of the Trenton area that finally made the difference for us."
Thomas J. Bata built the community of Batawa with the intention of creating "a small, minature Zlin, Czechoslovakia" explained Gerrit DeBruyn. On June 24, 1940, the Batawa name was selected for the new village. The name was created when a group of buyers were sitting with Thomas Bata in his Frankford cottage. A man from the Eatons department said, "Why not combine the Bata name with the last syllable of Ottawa? Batawa has a nice native sound."
The establishment of the Bata plant brought new life and activity to the communities surrounding it. The village of Frankford had suffered from the depression for almost ten years. The village had relied on its pulp and paper industry, but the mill could not survive the shocks of the great depression and closed in 1930. Some of its workers went on to work elsewhere, while others waited hoping for something to come along. Thomas Bata contributed greatly to the improvement of life for everyone in the district. In his book, The Battle of Home, Anthony Cekota writes, "The village started to live again."
In the early years, regular meetings of all members of the new community were held to discuss everything connected with its life and existence, as well as that of the company, the situation in the country and information dealing with the war. Through the meetings, the following were introduced:
System to teach the language (English)
System to improve the health of the people
Lending library
Various sporting activities
A Sokol gymnastics association
Daily system of news distribution
Newcomers to the community had to learn as much of the English language as it was necessary to enable them to pass on their own special working skills to the local workers, who had troubles learning new skills and developing new work habits. Night class and individual courses were organized with the help of the teachers from Frankford schools to teach the language. In school, the Czech children were able to speak English as fluently as the local children. "By Christmas of 1939, we spoke and wrote pretty good English and were placed in our appropriate grades," remembers Tony Daicar, who was one of the Czech children who came to Canada with his parents in 1939. Most adults succeeded during the first two or three years in acquiring a certain degree of fluency, enough for daily contact.
"Our health improvement was a concerted organized effort of physical fitness a prevention approach," recalls Tony Daicar. In Czechoslovakia, the Bata Shoe Company had a total medical coverage health plan. Some form of it was established in Batawa. "Dr. David McMullen, the only physician in Frankford, looked after us in those early years, but I dont think we kept him very busy," remembers Daicar. Dr. McMullen volunteered his time to come do baby checks once a week in Batawa.
A lending library, which was initially based in the factory, was created in the community to help the newcomers learn the English language. "People in the community would provide them with special books to help learn English," recalls Sonja Bata. The library also consisted of books that were brought from Czechoslovakia. "My mother was the librarian for some years," remembers Tony Daicar.
A mimeographed one-page daily newspaper called The Batawa Bulletin was created in English and Czech for the benefit of the new community. Arthur Duncan published the newsletter everyday. It contained items such as announcements for birthdays, retirements, weddings, etc. A home broadcast of daily news operated for ten minutes each day to bring the people of the community a rundown of all important news and appeals.
"Sokol" or a gymnastic association, which served as a basis for physical education, was introduced in Batawa. "Sokol" in Czech means "Eagle". The association was aimed at the development of physically well-balanced personalities. It included three types of training: the athletic, the calisthenic and the gymnastic. Women were trained in the elements of rhythmic dances, children in games and plays and men in calisthenics and gymnastics. Sokol activities consisted of gymnastics, including high bar, rings, vaulting horse, tumbling, calisthenics and fitness exercises.
"Batawa is the place where we settled in Canada, where for years we happily created an international community" -Thomas J. Bata.
People of the Community:
Thomas J. Bata once said, "In Batawa, Campbellford, Picton and district, people were really exceptional. They were generous to strangers; they exhibited none of the petty suspicion and resistance to change that might have caused us to fail before we started; they joined with us wholeheartedly to build a new Canadian enterprise literally from the ground up."
The Czechs who had arrived in Frankford during the months of July and August 1939, lived with the families of the little village for about four to five months. At that time, Frankford consisted of about 800 people who had suffered financially for about ten years since the closing of the paper mill. "For the Czechs, and for the Canadians in Frankford, our coming was definitely a culture shock to which both adapted marvelously," remarked Tony Daicar. Lifelong friendships were created between the Czechs and the local people.
"The friendliness and openness of the Canadian people was incredible, very refreshing," remarks Sonja Bata. "The Czechs loved to be welcomed, as it was a difficult time for them, having to leave their families behind to come to Canada." Tony Daicar commented on the impact of the arrival of the Czechs, "I think our impact was positive and in return we quickly learned and appreciated the Canadian temperament of kindness and helpfulness which still exists."
The Czechoslovakian people were unfamiliar with the English language and the Canadian way of life but they had the desire that allowed them to adjust to living in a different country. In difficult times, the Czechs would get together after work and sit on the bank of the Trent River and sing folk songs, love songs, marching songs, ballads and drinking songs, well into the night to remember their homeland. Crowds of people in the community would gather around to hear the music and sometimes join in singing.
War was declared on September 10, 1939 and all Czechoslovaks living in Canada became enemy aliens because they were citizens of a country occupied by Germany. All Czechoslovaks had to register, be fingerprinted and report regularly to the RCMP.
The Czechoslovakian people combined competition with co-operation and had a desire for personal achievement. "They were terribly hard-working people," remembers Sonja Bata. "None of these people began their lives as children of rich or well-to-do families. All of them were convinced that through their work, they would live a good life and have many opportunities." The Czechs acquired a variety of skills through work, sports, languages, hobbies, housework and communal life. Many things were settled with a simple handshake, as the Czech peoples word was their hand.
The Czechs, all of whom had at least two years of military training, formed a company-sized reserve unit called the "Czech Platoon" which was part of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment. "They were excellent soldiers, well-trained and well-disciplined, and I think they made a tremendous contribution to the training of the reinforcement battalion and by this, to the success of one of Canadas finest regiments in the field," recalls Maj. Loucks, who served with the Second Battalion of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment. "To this day, Thomas J. Bata is the honorary colonel of the Hasty Pees," remarks Tony Daicar.
"The people who founded Batawa were imaginative, vigorous and dedicated" - Thomas J. Bata
Bata Industries Limited had an active sports policy. The company offered interdivisional sports competitions with the goal of creating "Friendship through Competition". The Founders Trophy was created as a memorial to Thomas Batas father, and was presented for the first time in 1976 to the Bata interdivisional sports team. This was 100 years after the birth of his father and founder of the Bata Shoe organization. Canadas own Barbara Ann Scott, once a skating queen of the world, was a guest of honour at one of the championship banquets.
The company sponsored sports teams such as the Bata Spartans Hockey Club. Twelve towns from Lakefield to Picton participated in the Bata-developed Trent Valley Hockey League, competing for the Thomas Bata Memorial Cup, The Senator Fraser Cup, the W.J. Goodfellow Cup and the Norris Whitney Cup.
In the winter of 1959, a group of ski enthusiasts created the Batawa Ski Club. The objective of the club was to promote recreational skiing and friendship. The Clubs Nancy Greene and the North Star Alpine Ski Teams made a name for themselves by their excellent performance in ski competitions throughout Ontario. In February 1985, the Club was excited to have the Canadian Ski Patrol (Ontario Division) using their facilities. The annual Provincial First Aid Competition was held on the Batawa Ski Hill, with an Annual Awards Banquet held in the Chalet in the evening.
Summer pastimes were softball, soccer, outdoor gymnastics, tennis, volleyball, hunting, fishing and swimming. Baseball was popular in the summer and all who did not play were found cheering on the sidelines. During noon hour at the factory, some workers would go out and play baseball on the big baseball diamond. They soon formed the Bata Bombers and created a league. Two players, Ron Mitts and Roy Bonisteel, asked Thomas Bata to supply their team with uniforms. He eagerly agreed, as he encouraged amateur sports. "The team was decked out in the most beautiful blue uniforms," remembers Roy Bonisteel. "We weren't very good but at least we looked good." The Bata Squad, another amateur baseball team, was the Eastern Ontario Champions in 1946.
Other Activities:
"The Czechs couldnt understand why there were no pubs in Frankford," remembers Tony Daicar. His family, along with three other Czech families, lived with the Ward family in a large house with a big lawn behind the house running down to the Trent River. "Mr. Ward quickly solved the lack of a pub problem, by hosting parties on Sundays on the lawn, where Czechs gathered with their accordions and violins and robust voices singing Czech songs. Unfortunately, the police shut down Mr. Wards parties because the village of Frankford was strongly opposed to drinking and partying, especially on Sundays," recalls Daicar.
The Batawa Recreation Hall was a crowded spot for evening social events, such as card parties, movies, dances, stage shows, banquets, concerts and fashion shows, which were regularly supported by Bata shoes. In the early years before the United Church was built, Sunday School was held at the Recreation Hall for the children. The Sunday School teachers decided to start holding services once a month in both English and Czech. They contacted the Board of Home Missions of the United Church, who sent one of the ministers from Torontos Church of All Nations, Reverend Henry Vaclavik. "Batawa United Church flourished. We met regularly in the recreation hall," recalls Hanns F. Skoutajan in his book called Uprooted and Transplanted. It provided a base for Czech and Canadian cooperation. After the war, Vaclavik left and the church joined with the Frankford Pastoral Charge until the United Church was built in Batawa.
A Thomas Bata Memorial scholarship was created for students. The first Batawa student to graduate from university was Dr. Anthony Daicar, who came back to Batawa at ceremonies marking the opening of the post office, to thank Thomas Bata for the scholarship in memory of Thomass father.
The United Church in Frankford hosted chicken suppers to manage its finances. The Czechs were very surprised by this activity because back in their homeland, the Republic paid priests so they had no need for programs such as this, but they liked the idea. During one of the suppers, the Czechs contributed their musical and singing talents. The Rev. G. F. Lane closed the event with the remark that no chicken supper he could remember had ever been such a success as this one.
The children of the community attended school in Batawa, bought candies from Huyckes grocery store there, played hopscotch, attended picnics, and in turn, some of them went on to work in the plant to earn money. In the early years, children boarded the bus to go to the Frankford Public School. At the end of the day, many children would wait at the Bata plant gate for their parents to walk home with them.
Glee Clubs and orchestras such as the Sokol Orchestra and the Frankford Band were created to further interest in musical appreciation.
Two local Czechoslovak organizations, the Sokol Club and the Czechoslovak National Alliance, held bazaars, concerts, garden parties, etc. to raise funds for various war charity organizations. In 1944, they raised more than $6,000.
There was a variety of clubs in Batawa, such as a supervised club for teenagers, two ladies clubs, a Foreman Executive club for men and Boy Scout and Girl Guide troops for children.
Every year, Batawa held a Town Beautification Contest where homes were judged for the best efforts in home improvement from painting to gardening. |
Personal tools
Your information will only be used for this site
Connectivism Blog
Connectivism is a learning theory for the digital age.
Main | March 2005 »
February 2005 Archives
February 10, 2005
Intuition in learning
The linear - "there is a right answer" - approach to learning is challenging in a rapidly changing digital ecology. To be effective as a learner (and participant) in this environment, we acquire different skills and attitudes. One of the most critical is tolerance for ambiguity. It's important to be able to hold two apparently contrasting viewpoints in suspense while waiting more information. Accepting the "fuzziness" of the moment can be frustrating.
There is often a "right answer", but that answer is right only to the degree that it adequately represents the underlying information foundation. Once this foundation changes, the answer itself loses some relevance. Being able to recognize that "it's right for today", but not necessarily for tomorrow, is important.
In constructing (by constructing I'm referring to a combination of personal meaning making and connecting various fields of information (i.e. nodes in our personal network)) meaning, we often have a vague sense of "something is missing". When we encounter a network node that illuminates existing understanding, we intuitively recognize its place and value within our existing knowledge structure.
February 12, 2005
Managing the Connected Organization
Managing the Connected Organization
he explores how network theory provides value: "In the connected economy, each network actor (individual, team, or organization) is embedded in a larger economic web that affects each participant and, in return, is influenced by that participant. In such a connected system we can no longer focus on the performance of individual actors -- we must manage connected assets."
February 14, 2005
How important is unlearning? I'm not even sure that unlearning is the right word to use, but the notion of revisiting and reforming our assumptions is increasingly important. And frustrating. Becoming willing to accept ambiguity in our assumptions requires a core revision on our perception of what it means to know something. Once we know something, we assume that it's true indefinitely. David P. Ausebel's theory of subsumption assumes that we continue to revise and rebuild our knowledge structures as new information becomes available. Unlearning is different. Unlearning requires that we regularly tear down our thought schemas and rebuild them based on new information. Our schemas fit into two separate categories - our beliefs and our technical knowledge. Revising belief schemas is slow. When I'm suggesting we tear down and rebuild schemas, I'm referring to those that are technical in nature. I imagine it would be impossible to continually rebuild our belief schema. Personally, I don't believe I've significantly altered my own belief schema more than once or twice in my lifetime. My technical schema (which is probably largely filtered through beliefs) is a different story. I find I'm changing it significantly. Frequently.
February 15, 2005
• Objectivism - knowledge is external and knowable through experience and sensory perception (empericism) or through rational thought (rationalism)
• Pragmatism - knowledge is intepreted through a model or internal representation.
• Interpretivism - knowledge is constructed and internal.
I recently encountered the concept of memetics as an additional view of knowledge: "A meme is a cognitive or behavioral pattern that can be transmitted from one individual to another one. Since the individual who transmitted the meme will continue to carry it, the transmission can be interpreted as a replication: a copy of the meme is made in the memory of another individual, making him or her into a carrier of the meme."
Within the field of knowledge management, the holy grail is the ability to take internal (tacit) knowledge and make it external (explicit). This notion partly expresses my frustrations with many theories - wrong application for the wrong task. Often tacit knowledge is transferred viral-like through stories and shared experiences (pragmatic and interpretivist). Procedurally, how to operate a machine is transferred in an objectivist approach. Nothing is all - each for a proper concept and proper implementation.
February 23, 2005
Right idea in the right context
February 24, 2005
Principles vs. Prescriptions
I'm terrible with setting goals (or more accurately, at staying focused on goals I've set). While I used to view this weakness with great frustration, I've since developed a different view. Most of us have been taught the value of clearly charted paths and goals. We've heard stories of a bankrupt business person who sets lofty goals, refuses to waver, and finally realizes his/her dreams.
Yet this isn't reality. Life and learning do not flow along clearly defined paths. Our needs change, circumstances change, and or skills change. Various common phrases catch the spirit of this learning/life in transition: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears", "Luck is what happens when prepardness meets opportunity". Behind each statement is the notion of personal preparedness in response to the environment in which we exist. Learning, unlike the notion of goal setting, is an intermingling (a dance) with the dynamics of our personal and work environments. Goal setting says, this is what I will achieve. In essence, it says redefine your environment to meet your desires. Life may work that way sometimes. Usually, our learning is in response to the alterartions in our environment.
If goal setting is too restrictive, what is the option? I don't have an ideal metaphor, but the concepts of principles/guidelines/frameworks have some merit. Rather than trying to force our way goals, the focus is on creating a structure that is aware of and responsive to the environment around. When I used to spend time training staff in the hospitality field, I found it very challenging to teach "principle thinking". Staff preferred more rigid barriers. Yet the more specific the training, the less useful it is in other situations. If I teach a staff member steps to handling a guest who is upset with a misplaced reservation, I've provided a prescription to a problem, not a framework transferable to other situations. Similarly, goal setting is a personal learning task that functions best according to principles (instead of prescriptions). Some one who sets a goal and achieves it by sheer focus may overlook many other more valuable opportunities.
May 2008
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3
4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Recent Trackbacks
|
Email updates
Unveiling the gene-expression profile of pollen
José António da Costa-Nunes and Ueli Grossniklaus*
Author Affiliations
For all author emails, please log on.
Published:24 December 2003
© 2003 BioMed Central Ltd
Pollen development
The plant life cycle alternates between a diploid generation (the spore-producing sporophytes) and a haploid generation (the gamete-producing gametophytes). Unlike the situation in animals, in which the products of meiosis differentiate directly into gametes, the meiotic products of higher plants (called spores) undergo mitotic divisions to form multicellular haploid gametes [1]. The male gametophyte, pollen, is a highly specialized reproductive entity that performs a wide range of developmental functions, including cell specification and differentiation, cellular recognition, rapid polarized growth, chemotactic sensing, and fertilization [2].
In flowering plants, the pollen grains are formed in the male reproductive organs of the flower, the anthers. The first mitotic division of the meiotic products (unicellular pollen) gives rise to two cells, the generative cell and the vegetative cell (Figure 1). The generative cell, which becomes engulfed by the vegetative cell, undergoes a second mitotic division, producing two sperm cells [3,4]. In some species, such as Zea mays (maize) and Arabidopsis thaliana, the second mitotic division of pollen occurs within the anther before release of pollen from the anthers (dehiscence) and pollen germination [4,5], whereas in others, such as Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco), this second mitosis does not occur until pollen tube germination [4]. After germination the pollen tube grows into female tissues. The pollen tubes grow rapidly (up to 35 mm per hour), and are guided into the ovules, the precursors of seeds, where the two sperm are delivered to the two female reproductive cells, resulting in double fertilization [2,3].
thumbnailFigure 1. Pollen-grain development. (a) A schematic representation of the stages of pollen development. (b) Arabidopsis pollen grains (Columbia accession), stained with DAPI to show DNA, at the stages indicated in (a). The larger uncondensed vegetative-cell nucleus (VCN; diffuse staining) and the condensed nuclei of one generative cell and two sperm cells (brighter dots in (b); GCN, generative-cell nucleus and SCN, sperm-cell nucleus) can be seen in the bicellular and tricellular pollen grains, respectively. The scale bar represents 10 μm. Adapted from [4,5].
The nucleus of the vegetative cell is larger than the nuclei of the sperm cells (Figure 1) [4,5]. This difference in size is generally attributed to a dramatic condensation of the chromatin in sperm cells, which has led to the belief that sperm are transcriptionally inactive [4]. They do not lack RNA, however; the characterization of this pool of RNA [6] may lead to the identification of factors that are essential for gamete fusion and/or the viability and the development of the zygote.
Studying the expression profile of pollen
Until recently, very few pollen-expressed genes were known, and of these only 23 had been identified in Arabidopsis ([7] and references therein). Because the sequence of the Arabidopsis genome is complete, it is now possible to investigate the gene-expression profile of pollen on a more global scale for the first time [7-9]. Two different approaches were used to determine the overall gene-expression pattern of pollen: Affymetrix ATH1 8K GeneChips [7,8] and serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE) [9]. The fact that the ATH1 GeneChip [7,8] does not represent the entire Arabidopsis genome but only 8,200 genes - 30% of the recent estimate of 28,000 genes in the Arabidopsis genome [10] - suggests that more genes expressed in pollen remain to be identified. The SAGE approach [9] is expected to overcome this problem, however, as it can detect expressed RNAs from genes that are not represented on the GeneChip, including genes that are not even predicted or annotated (for comparisons of transcription profiling approaches see [11,12]). Surprisingly, perhaps, the two approaches [7-9] did give fairly similar overall views of pollen gene expression.
According to the data from the three reports [7-9], the pool of RNAs expressed in mature pollen is not just a haploid mimic of expression in the diploid sporophyte; in fact, quite the opposite. When expression data from seedlings, leaves, roots and/or siliques (seed pods) [8], plants at different developmental stages [7], and purified pollen grains [7,8] were compared, pollen turned out to have the most divergent expression profile of all [8]. This divergence is mainly due to the different levels of expression of individual genes [8], but also results from differences in expression between whole groups of genes with related functions [7]. These differences can partially be attributed to the fact that some genes are pollen-specific and others are expressed only in sporophytic tissues [7,8].
The most striking differences were the low expression levels in pollen of genes related to energy pathways (mainly photosynthesis) and translation [7,9]. This finding is not very surprising, as pollen is not photosynthetically active. The underrepresentation of transcripts involved in protein synthesis in mature Arabidopsis pollen grains is also in accordance with previous biochemical and physiological experiments that suggest that pollen grains have a large pool of ribosomes and tRNA required for translation during rapid pollen-tube growth [3]. The other striking difference is the higher expression level of genes with proposed functions in signaling, cell-wall metabolism, and cytoskeletal dynamics in comparison with sporophytic tissues [7,9]. This enrichment fits with the requirement for interactions between the pollen grain and stigmatic cells prior to germination, rapid pollen-tube growth, and the attraction of the pollen tube towards the ovules that leads to double fertilization.
Another interesting aspect of studying global pollen expression is the identification of RNA molecules differentially present or expressed in the different developmental stages of the pollen grain [13,14]. These data allow investigation not only of which genes are expressed in pollen but also of the dynamics of their expression as pollen development proceeds.
Pollen-specific gene expression
One interesting result of the recent reports [6-9] is the identification of pollen-specific genes, which may be involved directly in aspects of pollen biology, such as in pollen-tube growth and guidance or in fertilization. The numbers of genes specific to mature Arabidopsis pollen identified vary considerably between reports, partly perhaps because of differing plant growth conditions, pollen isolation and sorting protocols, ecotypes used, experimental set-up and data analysis, and criteria chosen to define the genes that are pollen-specific. The GeneChip papers [7,8] report that 10% or 40% of the genes expressed in Arabidopsis pollen are pollen-specific (162 or 387 genes in [8] and [7], respectively); the SAGE paper [9] states that 83% of the pollen-expressed gene tags (1,251 tags) are pollen-specific (for a list of the genes found, see the online supplementary data of the three publications [7-9]). The three reports give estimates of the total number of genes expressed in mature Arabidopsis pollen that are just as different, ranging from 992 [7] to 1,587 [8]. Some of the pollen-specific genes not only are unique to pollen but also are among the genes that are most highly expressed in pollen [7,8], so they are the most likely to have a crucial function in pollen biology and are worth further investigation. More interestingly, the existence of several novel pollen-specific genes of unknown function was revealed [7-9], some of which were neither represented in expressed sequence tag libraries nor even annotated in the Arabidopsis genome [9], paving the way for new research.
As the Affymetrix ATH1 8K GeneChip includes only about 8,000 genes, it is likely that there are more pollen-expressed genes to be discovered. This indeed appears to be the case, as data obtained from the Affymetrix ATH1 24K GeneChip (which represents approximately 24,000 Arabidopsis genes) give 4.5 times as many pollen-specific and 4 times as many pollen-expressed genes as were found using the Affymetrix ATH1 8K GeneChip ([1] and C. Pina, JA. Feijó and J.D. Becker, personal communication).
Sperm-cell-specific gene expression
A fourth interesting recent study [6] used a cDNA library to identify sperm-specific transcripts, which may be involved in gamete-gamete recognition or early events after fertilization. Given that sperm cells have little cytoplasm and are believed to be transcriptionally inactive, and that the larger vegetative cell contains much more cytoplasm and an uncondensed nucleus expressing the 'late' pollen genes [3,6], the sperm RNA pool is expected to be underrepresented in pollen-grain cDNAs. In order to identify sperm-cell-specific RNAs, therefore, a library had to be made from isolated and purified sperm cells [6,15]. Analysis of this library (still in progress) has identified several transcripts that are present in both the vegetative and the sperm cells of maize [6]. A most interesting finding was the identification of transcripts from the mature pollen that accumulate only in sperm cells but not in the vegetative cell. In situ hybridization and reverse-transcriptase-coupled PCR data have shown that one such sperm-specific transcript (Zmsp041, a MtN3-like cDNA), despite being expressed in unicellular and bicellular pollen, is present only in the sperm cells in mature pollen. Despite its initially broad expression pattern, its presence exclusively in the sperm cell might indicate a role in fertilization [6].
The four recent reports [6-9] comprise an immense contribution to our current knowledge of pollen gene expression. They have revealed previously unknown pollen-specific transcripts that may be important for pollen biology. These and future gene-expression studies of mature pollen, and in particular of sperm and vegetative cells, will contribute to the identification of genes required for rapid pollen tube growth and other aspects of pollen biology such as pollen-stigma interaction, pollen-tube guidance and double fertilization. This new wealth of pollen transcription data (an area in which Arabidopsis research was lagging behind [8]) can now be used for functional studies. The data also lay the foundation for studying changes in expression under different conditions, for example cold stress and drought [9], and for bioinformatic analyses of the regulation of pollen-expressed genes [16], which could, in the long term, have practical agricultural applications.
We thank J.D. Becker and J.A. Feijó for critical reading of this article and C. Pina, J.A. Feijó and J.D. Becker for permission to cite unpublished data.
1. Raven PH, Evert RF, Eichhorn SE: Meiosis and sexual reproduction. In In Biology of Plants. Sixth edition. Edited by Cloud D. New York: WH Freeman and company, Worth publishers; 1999:169-182. OpenURL
2. Lord EM, Russell SD: The mechanisms of pollination and fertilization in plants.
Annu Rev Cell Dev Biol 2002, 18:81-105. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL
3. Mascarenhas JP: Gene activity during pollen development.
Annu Rev Plant Physiol Plant Mol Biol 1990, 41:317-338. Publisher Full Text OpenURL
4. McCormick S: Male gametophyte development.
Plant Cell 1993, 5:1265-1275. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | PubMed Central Full Text OpenURL
5. Regan SM, Moffatt BA: Cytochemical analysis of pollen development in wild-type Arabidopsis and male-sterile mutant.
Plant Cell 1990, 2:877-889. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | PubMed Central Full Text OpenURL
Plant J 2003, 34:697-707. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL
7. Honys D, Twell D: Comparative analysis of the Arabidopsis pollen transcriptome.
Plant Physiol 2003, 132:640-652. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL
8. Becker J, Boavida LC, Carneiro J, Haury M, Feijó JA: Transcriptional profiling of Arabidopsis tissues reveals the unique characteristics of the pollen transcriptome.
Plant Physiol 2003, 133:713-725. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL
9. Lee J-Y, Lee D-H: Use of serial analysis of gene expression technology to reveal changes in gene expression in Arabidopsis pollen undergoing cold stress.
Plant Physiol 2003, 132:517-529. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL
11. Fryer R, Randall J, Yoshida T, Hsiao L-L, Blumenstock J, Jensen KE, Dimofte T, Jensen RV, Gullans SR: Global analysis of gene expression: methods, interpretations, and pitfalls.
Exp Nephrol 2002, 10:64-74. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL
12. Patino WD, Mian OY, Shizukuda Y, Hwang PM: Current and future applications of SAGE to cardiovascular medicine.
Trends Cardiovasc Med 2003, 13:163-168. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL
13. The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR) [] webcite
14. NASCArrays: Transcriptome analysis of Arabidopsis microgametogenesis [] webcite
15. Xu H, Weterings K, Vriezen W, Feron R, Xue Y, Derksen J, Mariani C: Isolation and characterisation of male-germ-cell transcripts in Nicotiana tabacum.
Sex Plant Reprod 2002, 14:339-346. Publisher Full Text OpenURL
16. Hulzink RJM, Weerdesteyn H, Croes AF, Gerats T, van Herpen MMA, van Helden J: In silico identification of putative regulatory sequence elements in the 5'-untranslated region of genes that are expressed during male gametogenesis.
Plant Physiology 2003, 132:75-83. PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL |
October 22, 2014
Apricot Kernels Display Promising Effects in Fighting Cancer
Pin It
by Dr. Veronique Desaulniers
In September of 1983 my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was dead in 6 weeks. I remember the anguish and the frustration as the medical doctors offered no hope. I had been in practice for only 3 years and the Internet was nonexistent back then. But I recall going to the library to do research about healing cancer without toxic drugs or radiation. I also called “cancer clinics” all over North America and Mexico, trying to find a solution to my father’s illness.
Thus began my quest to understand how to heal and prevent cancer
One treatment that stood out at the time was Amygdalin, the product that is produced from crushed apricot pits. Amygdalin is not to be confused with Laetrile, also known as B17, which is a semi-synthetic patented version of Amygdalin.
Laetrile and Amygdalin have been used successfully around the world for the reversal of many types of cancer. The Hunza tribes in the Himalayans are virtually cancer free, which some have attributed to their daily consumption of apricot pits and millet, both of which contain amygdalin.
The apricot pits contain a compound called glycosides which are a combination of sugar and cyanide. What takes place here is what we call selective toxicity. A specific enzyme that is produced in large quantities by cancer cells, triggers the sugar break down that releases the cyanide. The cyanide is what kills the cancer cells.
But why are healthy cells not affected by the cyanide? Healthy cells have a specific enzyme called rhodanese, which renders the cyanide harmless. How’s that for another amazing healing miracle?
Another way that amygdalin affects cancer cells is that it inhibits angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is the formation of new blood flow as the cancer cells are growing and forming a tumor. If the blood flow to the tumor is blocked, the cancer cells die.
Amygdalin also suppresses inflammatory responses which lead to multiple diseases, including cancer.
Specific studies have shown how amygdalin induces apoptosis or cell death in prostate cancer cells, human colon cancer cells and in leukemia cells.
Amygdalin even inhibits the growth of the Epstein-Barr virus, which often induces tumor growth. The anti-tumor promoting activity of amygdalin and other compounds was studied in both in vitro and in vivo assays.
While administered specifically for cancer treatment, a wonderful side effect is that amygdalin actually helps relieve the pain that is often associated with aggressive cancers.
Laetrile can be administered orally in pill form or it can be injected into a vein. Typically the administration of Laetrile is spread out over a period of time. Unfortunately, because of manipulation of laboratory studies conducted in the 70′s, Amygdalin and Laetrile are not readily available in the United States. After all, healing cancer patients with a low cost nutrient would spell disaster for the multi-billion dollar cancer industry.
There are literally hundreds of known plant based cancer cures that have saved countless of lives. Unfortunately the masses are not informed of the many non-toxic ways to heal the body. However, as web sites like GreenMedInfo.com continue to inform and educate, hopefully the tide will slowly turn in order to make these modalities part of a harmless cancer protocol.
Read the full article here: http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/apricot-kernels-and-bitter-almonds-display-promising-effects
Dr. Veronique Desaulniers, better known as “Dr. V”, has maintained successful practices in the Wellness Industry since 1979.
Specializing in Bio-Energetics, Meridian Stress Analysis, Homeopathy, Digital Thermography and Chiropractic, Dr. V brings a unique approach to Health and Wellness.
After personally overcoming Breast Cancer without the use of chemo, radiation or surgery, her passion is to empower women about healing and preventing Breast Cancer….naturally.
DR. V offers personal Cancer Coaching through her website.
pin it button Apricot Kernels Display Promising Effects in Fighting Cancer
We Lost the War on Cancer – Review of Alternative Cancer Therapies
we lost the war on cancer Apricot Kernels Display Promising Effects in Fighting Cancer
FREE! – $0.99
appstore icon Apricot Kernels Display Promising Effects in Fighting Cancer
googleplay app store Apricot Kernels Display Promising Effects in Fighting Cancer
kindle logo sm Apricot Kernels Display Promising Effects in Fighting Cancer
nook logo Apricot Kernels Display Promising Effects in Fighting Cancer
0 commentsback to post
Other articlesgo to homepage
Thyme Provides Antiviral Protection against Herpes and Other Viruses
Thyme Provides Antiviral Protection against Herpes and Other Viruses
Pin It
Ebola is only one of many viruses that have been found among animals and transmissible to humans. While Ebola isn’t the first outbreak to catch public attention over the past few decades, it also likely won’t be the last.
The question lies – what is our long-term strategy to prevent future outbreaks? And how do we protect ourselves from getting a viral infection?
Increasing research has determined that plants provide some of the most promising opportunities to prevent the outbreak of these viruses, because not only are they easily cultivated and distributed, but they provide a source of resistance to viral outbreaks.
Case in point is Thymus vulgaris – Thyme. Thyme has been found to contain multiple antiviral constituents, including thymol, camphor, borneol, carvacrol, terpinenes, pinenes, cymene, terpinenols, citral and cineoles. These and others have been found to be specifically antiviral, but more importantly, in combination, the plant and its essential oils provide significant antiviral protection.
And the mechanism of this antiviral protection appears to be related to the same properties found among other studies – of interfering with the glycoprotein molecule lined envelope that surrounds many of the most virulent viruses.
Obscene Increase In Maternal Mortality Rates In The United States
Obscene Increase In Maternal Mortality Rates In The United States
Pin It
Does Playing on Artificial Turf Increase Your Risk of Cancer?
Does Playing on Artificial Turf Increase Your Risk of Cancer?
Pin It
Artificial turf fields are now everywhere in the United States, from high schools to multi-million-dollar athletic complexes. As any parent or player who has been on them can testify, the tiny black rubber crumbs of which the fields are made — chunks of old tires — get everywhere. In players’ uniforms, in their hair, in their cleats.
But for goalkeepers, whose bodies are in constant contact with the turf, it can be far worse. In practices and games, they make hundreds of dives, and each plunge sends a black cloud of tire pellets into the air. The granules get into their cuts and scrapes, and into their mouths. Griffin wondered if those crumbs – which have been known to contain carcinogens and chemicals – were making players sick.
Griffin has compiled a list of 38 American soccer players — 34 of them goalies – who have been diagnosed with cancer. Blood cancers like lymphoma and leukemia dominate the list.
What Can You Do to Prevent/Treat Ebola and Other Viral Infections
Pin It
With the Ebola virus in the news, I thought it might be time to comment on what steps you can take to prevent becoming ill. Keep in mind that conventional medicine has no effective treatments for the Ebola virus. Due to a slow international response, Ebola has spread rapidly.
It is a scary infection as the death rate is very high—from 50-90%. Initially, the Ebola infection can mimic the symptoms from the flu or other upper respiratory infection. However, as it progresses, it can lead to very severe muscle aches, liver and kidney failure along with bleeding out of various areas of the body. Needless to say, Ebola is something to be taken very seriously.
As I previously stated, there is no conventional treatment for the Ebola virus. That does not mean that you are powerless to do anything to combat it. There are many effective natural anti-viral therapies that may prove effective against Ebola. It would be nice if the Powers-That-Be would begin testing these therapies. But, that would make common sense. Instead the Powers-That-Be are actively discouraging the use of alternative therapies even though they have nothing to offer. It is a sad situation.
Keep in mind that Ebola, like any viral infection, can only be cured by a strong immune system. We are designed with a powerful immune system that should mount a response to an infectious agent. However, the immune system can only mount a vigorous defense if it has the raw materials available to it. For over 20 years, I have been checking every patient for their nutrient status. Unfortunately, most are deficient in the basic raw materials that the immune system needs to function optimally.
I say, if you become ill with a viral illness, do the basics to help optimize your immune system. I will show you the four most important items you can use to aid your immune system to fight any illness.
Red Algae Extract Treats Ebola
Red Algae Extract Treats Ebola
Pin It
After the two 1996 Ebola outbreaks in Gabon Africa, medical scientists determined that Ebola causes death among about 70 percent of those who contracted the virus.
The research found that nearly half of those who were asymptomatic and seemingly immune developed antibodies (IgM and IgG) to the Ebola virus. This means these individuals certainly were intimately exposed to the virus, but simply naturally developed the immunity tools that prevented the infection from replicating out of control.
One of those immunity tools can be found in red algae.
read more
Get the news right in your inbox! |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
How would you, cleanly, get a parent process to create multiple children, where each child has to do it's own thing. Also the children have to communicate with the parent using unnamed pipes, so I don't think execv can be used here.
I had something like this:
pid_t pids[2];
int i;
if ((pids[i] = fork()) < 0) {
fprintf(stderr, "Error. Couldn't fork\n");
} else if (pids[i] == 0) { // child
if (i == 0) {
} else {
//parent stuff;
return 0;
but according to my output, two writer children get created, when I only wanted one.
share|improve this question
3 Answers 3
up vote 2 down vote accepted
Remember that when you fork(), both parent and child start up in identical states (other than the return value of fork()). So the child will also execute your outer for loop, and spawn its own child (see diagram below). You need to alter your control flow to take account of that.
P --> fork --> fork --> wait
| --> writerChild -- wait
--> readerChild --> fork --> wait
--> writerChild --> wait
share|improve this answer
This is what is happening in your code:
The parent forks. i is still 0, so readerChild() is called by that child. The parent AND the child continue to the second iteration of the loop. They BOTH fork again. Thus you get 2 writer children. 1 of them is a child and one is a grandchild.
At the end of your child section, you need to prevent it from looping. put a break;
share|improve this answer
Personally I'd just write one function per child... unless readerChild()/writerChild() blocks the thread and exits, the readerChild will spawn a new writerChild since it will still be executing within the context of that loop.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
|
Sunni Beliefs
The Ahl as-Sunnat, with respect to fiqh (actions, 'ibadat), consists of four Madhhabs. The first one, the Hanafi Madhhab, was founded by al-Imam al-azam Abu Hanifa Numan ibn Thabit (rahmat-Allahi 'alaih). 'Hanif' means 'a person who believes correctly, who clings to Islam.' 'Abu Hanifa' means 'the father of true Muslims.' Al-Imam al-azam did not have a daughter named 'Hanifa.' The second of the four Madhhabs of the Ahl as-Sunnat is the Maliki Madhhab of Imam Malik ibn Anas (rahmat-Allahi 'alaih). The third one is the Shafi'i Madhhab of Imam Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi'i (rahmat-Allahi 'alaih). Hadrat Shafi', a Sahabi, was the grandfather of the Imam's grandfather. That was why he and his Madhhab were called Shafi'i. The fourth one is the Hanbali Madhhab of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (rahmat-Allahi 'alaih). [As is written in the preface of Radd al-mukhtar by Ibn 'Abidin, these four imams were born in the Hijri years 80, 90, 150 (767 Miladi) and 164 and passed away in 150, 179, 204 and 241, respectively.]
With respect to itiqad (beliefs), these four Madhhabs are not different from one another. All of them belong to the Ahl as-Sunnat and their beliefs and the basis of their religion are the same. These four Imams of the Muslims were great mujtahids recognized and believed by everybody. Yet they disagreed with one another in some small affairs with respect to actions (the Sharia).
The itiqad or iman of the four true, correct Madhhabs is the same. There is no difference between them in Islam. All of them hold the beliefs of the Ahl as-Sunnat. Those who do not believe in the beliefs of the Ahl as-Sunnat are called the people of bidat, i.e. the "la madhhabi." They call themselves "members of the fifth madhhab." These words of theirs are not true. There is no such thing as a "fifth madhhab." Today there is no way other than learning the knowledge pertaining to religion from the 'ilm al-hal books of one of these four Madhhabs. Everyone chooses the Madhhab that is easy for him to follow. He reads its books and learns it. He does everything compatibly with it, follows it, and becomes a member of it (taqlid). Because it is easy for a person to learn what he hears and sees from his parents, a Muslim usually belongs to the Madhhab of his parents. The Madhhabs being not one but four is a facility for Muslims. It is permissible to leave one Madhhab and join another, yet it will take years to study and learn the new one, and the work done for learning the former one will be of no use and may even cause confusion while doing many things. It is by no means permissible to leave one Madhhab because one dislikes it, for Islamic scholars said that it will be disbelief (kufr) to dislike the Salaf as-salihin or to say that they were ignorant.
Recently some people like Mawdudi of Pakistan and Sayyid Qutb and Rashid Rida of Egypt have appeared. They and those who have been deceived by reading their books say that the four Madhhabs should be united and that Islam should be made easy by selecting and gathering the rukhsas of the four Madhhabs. They defend this idea with their short minds and deficient knowledge. A glance over their books will show at once the fact that they know nothing about tafsir, hadith, usul or fiqh, and that they reveal their ignorance through their unsound logic and false writings.
The Sunnis believe that the words and deeds of the Prophet, who is, according to the Quran (XXX, 21), the uswah hasahah (noble paradigm), must be followed in every walk of life, as they were followed by his sahabah (companions), tabi'un (followers of the companions), and atba' al-tabi'in (followers of the followers of the companions). "It is incumbent upon you," said the Prophet, "to follow my Sunnah and the sunnah of the righteous caliphs (al-khulafa' al-rashidun)."
The Sunnis are of the opinion that it was as a result of Divine Wisdom and Providence that all the male children of the Prophet died in his lifetime and that under Divine Inspiration he kept the question of his succession open, leaving it to the ummah (community of Islam) to decide the most competent person to become the leader of the ummah. As the Quran testifies: "The Prophet does not utter a word out of his caprice; it is but until a revelation that has come to him" (LIII, 3-4).
The Sunnis adhere to principles rather than personalities. They do not agree with the Ghadir Khumm (Pool of Khumm) account accepted by the Shi'ites, according to which, while the Prophet was going on his journey from the Hajj al-wada (farewell pilgrimage) to Mecca on the 18th Dhu'l Hijjah in the eleventh year of hijrah, he made the following proclamation: "He for whom I am the mawlā (master) should henceforth have 'Alī as his mawlā." Even if some of the Sunnis consider this Hadith to be authentic, they interpret mawlā to mean a "spiritual teacher" and to include all the pious and learned men of the community who are the successors of the Prophet. In fact, the Prophet did not confine himself to praising 'Ali; he had also praised Abū Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthmān at different times, paying them tributes as glowing as any recorded in the books of Hadīth and Sīrah (biography of the Prophet). Therefore, unlike Shī'ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims do not attribute a preemptive title of khilāfah (vicegerency or succession) to any particular individual; they insist that the right to choose the khalīfah (vicegerent or successor to the Prophet) belongs to the ummah. It was on this basis that, immediately after the death of the Prophet, the Anāar (those who had embraced Islam in Medina) and the Muhājirūn (those who had migrated from Mecca to Medina) met at a place in Medina called Saqifah Banū Sā'idah and, after some discussion, elected Abu Bakr as the first Khalāfah of Rasul Allāh (successor or vicegerent of the Messenger of God). According to the Sunni view, Abu Bakr merited this position. It was he who was chosen by the Prophet to accompany him on his hijrah (migration) from Mecca to Medina, and it was he who has been mentioned in the Quran: "God did indeed help him [the Prophet] when the unbelievers drove him out; he had no more than one companion [Abū Bakr]; the two were in the cave" (IX, 40).
The main features of the election of the khalīfah or caliph continued for the other three "rightly guided" (rāshidun) caliphs, 'Umar, 'Uthmān, and 'Alī. They were elected through the process of ijmā' (consensus of opinion) of the ashb hall wa'l-'aqd (people who loosen and bind, that is, those who possess knowledge of religious injunctions and law). Once ijmā' was reached, people offered their bay'ah (oath of allegiance) to their elected caliph. The caliph in turn had to make a covenant ('ahd) with the ummah to rule and lead them according to the principles of the Divine Law as laid down by the Quran and the Sunnah. The khalīfah for the ummah was only a democratically elected spiritual and temporal leader (imām) possessing no isamah (inerrancy). Thus, Abū Bakr al-Siddīq, 'Umar al-Fārūq, 'Uthmān al-Ghaniy, and 'AlI al-Murtada were elected as the consecutive successors of the Prophet and are called the khulafā' al-rashidūn (rightly guided caliphs).
These four caliphs ruled the Islamic state for a total period of about thirty years, exactly in accordance with the teachings of the Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet-hence their title, "rightly guided."
In spite of the fact that the Sunnis follow the noble example of the sahabah and particularly those of the four rāshidūn caliphs, they do not attribute ismah to them, as is done by the Shī'ite in the case of their Imams. The Shī'ites believe that God prevents the prophets and the Imams from sin and that the Imams have the power of custodianship (wilāyah) over their followers.
The Sunnis believe that any sincere Muslim who strives to gain true knowledge of the Quran will be blessed by God, even if he comes from a very humble origin. They do not subscribe to the Shī'ite view that the true meaning of the Quran was available only to the Ahl al-bayt (members of the family of the Prophet) who were near and dear to him like 'Ali and 'Ali's eleven male lineal descendants, who are the Shi'ite Imams. The Sunnis, however, show great respect for the Ahl al-bayt and pray for them while uttering their names. All the sahabah are considered to be just ('ādil) by Sunni Muslims and by those who emphasize the truth of what has been reported in a prophetic hadith: "My sahabah are like guiding stars; if you follow them, you follow the path of guidance." The role of some of the sahabah in the battles of Jamal and Siffih and some other lapses committed by them are considered to be mere errors of ijtihād, despite the best of intentions. |
Hemp – One Of The Most Healthy Recyclable Substances Around
Hemp – One Of The Most Healthy Recyclable Substances Aroundby Becca Wolford, Contributing Writer
Hemp has long been known to be a clean, renewable resource. It can be grown with little to no fertilizer and pesticides; in fact, it has natural pesticides. It enriches and heals the soil it is grown in, cleans the air, and reduces pollution. It has some of the longest, strongest natural fibers known to man. Around 50,000 products can me made from hemp.
With landfills taking up more space, there are many who are turning to green/recyclable options. In some cities recycling is mandatory.
Paper made from wood pulp can be recycled. However, it can be recycled maximum of 3 times. Newspaper and office paper is often recycled into toilet paper – but before you start thinking that it is ‘green’ and ‘healthy’, let me share this with you. Toilet paper with recycled papers STILL contain chemicals used in the processing paper – chlorine, ammonia, lye.
After the 3 recycles of paper, it is then generally disposed of, and the chemicals, though the amounts may be small, are still put into the earth. Hemp paper, however, is clean, only needs hydrogen peroxide to bleach it if necessary, and is recyclable up to 8 times. After the recycling processes it can safely be disposed of because 1. there are not large amounts of chemicals in it and 2. it is so clean and would be considered a fertilizer.
Petroleum based plastics can be recycled, but again, they are so chemical intensive and toxic that they could actually be considered pollution. Hemp-based plastics can be recycled over and over again, and like paper, when they have finished their recycles they can be safely disposed of. Again, like hemp paper, hemp plastics will actually enrich the soil because they are biodegradable AND clean.
Petroleum-based plastics are biodegradable, “Now, the bad news: This degradation could be releasing harmful compounds such as bisphenol A (BPA into the ocean, according to research presented at the American Chemical Society meeting…” (discovermagazine.com) Hemp plastics do NOT contain BPA and are healthy for humans AND environment.
In the United States hemp paper and plastics are not part of the mainstream market, but they are continually growing in popularity as we realize the need to be more responsible about using and recycling HEALTHY alternatives, healthy for us AND the earth.
About the Author
Waking Times
Image Credit
Leave Comment: |
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
ling Eating Disorders With Mindfulness And Meditation.
Eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, affect an individual’s attitude and emotions when it comes to food. Starving or binging oneself can cause a person to experience physical and mental problems. Though treatment for eating disorders can be difficult, a ray of hope in the healing aspects of meditation and mindfulness has been discovered. Not only can the art of meditation help alleviate symptoms associated with healing disorders, but sometimes it can even cure them. What is mindfulness and meditation? Mindfulness essentially means stilling the mind and being attentive to the present. It comes from the Buddhist tradition as a spiritual aspect experienced while journeying toward enlightenment. In the Western world, mindfulness has been found to alleviate or eliminate various psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. Meditation is a practice that individuals use to train the mind and experience a heightened sense of consciousness. There are various kinds of meditation that individuals employ to come to a sense of peace and increased concentration in the present. Meditation differs from mindfulness in that it is more of a practice, whereas mindfulness is likened more to a continual state. People generally meditate to become more mindful. When it comes to eating disorders, the way one identifies with the mind is normally the root of the problem. The mind is always racing with thoughts and for people who struggle with eating disorders the mind races with thoughts that tell them to either starve or binge. Their thoughts about food and their bodies are often irrational or they simply struggle with intense negative emotions, such as anger, shame, fear, or depression. They use food as a tool for temporary relief of such emotions. The thoughts can cause obsessive behavior. For example, a teen girl who wants to be very thin because she believes that people will like her better if she is super thin may develop anorexia and begin to starve herself to be skinny. Her thoughts tell her that she is not thin enough. When she looks in the mirror she continually sees herself as being overweight. Her response is to starve herself. Food, or the avoidance of food, becomes her obsession and her sense of self-worth. The practice of mindfulness and meditation will allow those suffering with eating disorders to take control over their thoughts and experience less obsessiveness. Specialized meditation can help conquer the urges to binge, purge and starve, as various researchers have proven that meditation can be the most powerful means of producing changes in the body and the mind. Separation from the mind and ego. Mindfulness will allow an individual to become separate from the mind and the ego so that identification with those negative thoughts can be cut off. Thoughts about food, negative emotions, stress, and so on will begin to dwindle and float away as one becomes more mindful of their true spiritual self. At the same time a sense of peace and relaxation will begin to occur as the art of meditation and mindfulness increase. It may take time to learn the art of meditation, but that is alright. If you take time daily to practice, you will find that week by week your meditation time will become longer and you will be able to notice your thought life and even physical body changing little by little. If you do not know how to meditate, take some time to read about it or get a mentor to help you out in this area. There are many different kinds of meditation so explore various ways and see what it is you like best. Eating disorders can be helped by practicing the art of meditation and becoming more mindful. There is no need to continue to suffer from an eating disorder. Take some time to begin your journey of meditation today, even if it is just for a few moments. More about meditation for eating disorders on
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Bulimia (bulimia nervosa) is an addictive eating disorder which begins
with physical cravings then evolves into a mental obsession and finally
turns into a spiritual illness. It usually comes from an unresolved
The question is what is the mechanism of developing a bulimic food
brain is not responsible for our feelings.
hemispheres and connects them. This little part is called the limbic
in regulating emotions and motivations. In addition, parts of the
or subconscious mind.
It has been found that people with emotional problems have an imbalance
depression, eating disorders, alcoholism and other addictions.
emotionally, but mentally and physically as well.
system (subconscious) and put it in balance.
right balance?
Most eating disorders are a learned behavior. Initially you taught
then gave you feelings (like feeling good about yourself when you
become slim).
should make another decision (about changing your own image and feelings
feelings about yourself and make new decision about your life.
are special new programs that can automatically affect the limbic
These programs can identify and eliminate your subconscious blockages
that created your eating disorder in the first place.
To conclude, bulimia food addiction develops as a result of subconscious
processes due to unresolved trauma or strong dissatisfaction with one's
body image. The limbic system is responsible for developing the problem
the abnormal mental process.
To learn more how to do this read
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Anorexia Side Effects
Anorexia is not just about weight loss and refusing to eat. Anorexia has major side effects on the mental, physical and emotional state of a person.
Contracting anorexia means getting a new life style, new coping strategies, new relationships, new thought pattern and a whole new way of living and none of it is good.
You can say that a new sufferer becomes like a completely new person, different from what she/he used to be.
One of the very distinctive side effects of anorexia is a distorted perception about themselves. It is related to their own body image, their self being and also how they perceive other people as well.
The main measurement of all becomes how skinny they are. Anorexics perceive that their worth is directly related to their weight. They feel and think the same way about other people also.
For example a 19 year old anorexic girl I was talking to said once:" I know that the more weight I lose the better and stronger person I become. I understand that all overweight people are lazy, fat and no good".
But the meaning of being overweight for her is far away from reality. She perceives even normal weight people as overweight, including herself. She was already only 49 kg (height 164cm) but she still saw herself like a fat and overweigh person.
She sees this picture because of the other major side effect of anorexia called "broken eye syndrome". And because anorexics see a wrong picture of themselves and others they want to loose more and more weight and can't stop starving themselves and over exercising.
Their relationships with other people change a lot since they contracted their anorexia because they need to spend all their time counting calories, exercising and thinking over a new strategy to lose more weight. Plus anorexics become very judgmental and picky and loose interest in others and everything they did before. All these prevent them from having a normal relationship with others.
And the other side effect of anorexia is their changing respond to everyday stress. This encompasses everything that happens to them, anorexics respond by increasing their exercising time, cutting down on calories and withdrawing further away from other people.
To conclude, anorexia has many side effects on a person. And to stop these negative side effects it is important to change the sufferer's perception back to what it was before the anorexia.
If their perception is returned back to normal a person will be able to lead a good and healthy life again. How to do it go to for more in-depth information.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
How to get pregnant after 40.
By Dr Irina Webster
You can overcome infertility after 40 by applying certain natural fertility methods correctly. Many older women failed to get pregnant just simply because they can't find the right time when they can fall pregnant.
And there is a biological basis for it. The ability of women to fall pregnant decreases with age. That means the older you are there are fewer days in a month you can fall pregnant. And after 35 – 40 you may only have 1-2 days in a few months you are able to conceive.
So what time of the month are you fertile?
You are most fertile 12 to 14 days before the beginning of your next period. But this time can vary depending on many factors: stress level, illness, changing your environment and the like.
If your ovulation does not come every month (like for many women after 35-40), it is very difficult to pinpoint the time when you are fertile. So, checking on your ovulation time gets more important the older you get.
Secondly, a healthy baby doesn’t result just because ‘egg meets sperm’. It is necessary to have a freshly released egg and new sperm to conceive at an older age. To avoid old sperm you should stop having intercourse a couple of days before ovulation, as sperm can last up to 3 days inside the body.
To avoid old eggs you should not have intercourse just after your peak ovulation day. Although the egg is still viable (up to 24 hours after release), the problem is ageing and potential defects that can occur to the egg especially in older women. Remember that a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have, so an egg when you are 40 has been around as long as you have.
The right time to conceive would be at the peak day of ovulation. It is the time when you should have frequent intercourse and when a fresh released egg can meet fresh released sperm.
Thirdly, it is important to build up the sperm count prior to intercourse. There are techniques that men can use to build up their sperm count, so that the day before you ovulate they are able to deliver the maximum number of healthy sperm.
One of the simple strategies to build up sperm account is abstain from sex 3-4 days before the woman’s ovulation time. But no longer, because any longer than this you will risk sperm ageing prior to ejaculation.
To conclude, these simple strategies (pinpointing your ovulation, avoiding old eggs and sperm and building up sperm prior to conception) can be a number one strategy you can use to fall pregnant at an older age. These techniques are natural, non-invasive, harmless and very effective. Applying them correctly may save you from having to have IVF or other surgical procedures to get pregnant.
To know about the natural methods to get pregnant read
Friday, April 18, 2008
What can you do if you are a parent who suspects their child has Bulimia how do you know for sure?
I have been ask this question so many times by lots of worried parents who think their child may have bulimia but don’t know any of the warning signs.
If you are one of these parents then here is a list of things to look out for, I will start with simple things first:
1: Look for an excessive amount of food that is missing. Things like packets of biscuits you have just bought and they have disappeared overnight. Packets of sweets gone without you even having one yourself. Look for easy accessible foods that seem to be gone faster than what is normal for your family use.
2: The child is starting to act unusual around meal times. Being a bit anxious and not wanting to eat certain food groups, or may play with their food. They may say they have eaten at a friends place but then start to raid the food cupboard for easy food soon after dinner.
3: You notice that the child may have lots of food rappers in their bedroom hidden under the bed or in their trash basket. Half eaten candy bars or potato crisp packets hidden in places that are unusual.
4: The child may start to miss family gatherings or not want to go out to events where they normally would have, like picnics or parties preferring to stay home. Even making excuses they feel ill or have a headache.
5: The child may start to do more exercise that they use to do. Go for long runs or bike rides and start to really push themselves to the extreme.
These are all little things but point to a change in the Childs habits although you can’t come to the conclusion that your Child has Bulimia from these alone. You need more concrete evidence to go with these before you can be sure.
Bulimics normally become very good at hiding their condition from family and friends. Bulimia has been described as secretive and sneaky and it most certainly is.
So you as a parent have to become just as sneaky if you suspect your child of this disorder.
Here are some more concrete things to look out for.
1: The child after finishing their meal disappears to the bathroom for a long time. This starts to become a habit and is a surefire clue to the child being bulimic.
2: You notice the smell of toothpaste on their breath when they come from the bathroom, or a sour smell on their breath.
3: You start to find laxatives in their bedroom or empty packets in their trash bin.
4: They start to become really edgy and anxious for no apparent reason and may start telling you to mind your own business if you say anything to them. They act out of character towards you.
5: They start to look sickly and feel the cold more that was normal for them. They may start having problems with their teeth or complain of a sore throat all the time.
6: They start to become obsessed with there weight and are looking at the bathroom scales all the time, or asking you if they look fat or looking in the mirror more that they use to do.
If you noticed a number of these symptoms together then there is a good chance your child may have Bulimia. But do not simply confront them as this can drive the child away or warn them you are on to them, so they may become even sneakier.
You should educate yourself first from people who have faced what you are facing now. One of the best educational information around on this subject is at written by a mother whose daughter nearly died from bulimia anorexia. She was able to save her daughter herself when all else had failed.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Yoga promotes and improves fertility.
Here are a few specific yoga practices that can be use for increasing fertility. They have been in use for a long time and there is recollection of these special yoga practices in the ancient papers.
The practices include specific postures, mantras and breathing techniques. These exercises enhance fertility by stimulating the hormone levels and improving blood and nutrients supply to the reproductive organs like ovaries, eggs, tubes, uterus, testes and prostate.
In doing this they maximize the vitality of the organs. For older mums and dads yoga exercises can slow down the aging of organs and tissues like eggs and sperm which is detrimental to falling pregnant.
Here are a few yoga postures you can use in the comfort of your own home.
1. Supported Bridge Pose:
- Lie on the back and bent your knee with feet flat on the floor
- Move your feet to your bottom as much as possible,
- Inhale and exhale deeply 4 times, then slowly lift your pelvis and buttocks off the floor while keeping feet flat on the floor,
-Clasp your hands behind your back,
-Stay in this pose for a minute or two while breathing deeply.
2.Legs up on the wall pose:
-Lie on your side with your buttocks close to wall.
-Slowly inhale and exhale, then when you are exhaling turn your body but move your legs up to the wall at the same time so that you create a 90-degree angle at your pelvis between your legs and body,
-Stay in this pose for a few minutes inhaling and exhaling slowly.
3.Cobbler's pose:
-Sit on the floor with your legs stretched out,
-Inhale and exhale then while exhaling bring your feet close to your groin and push the sole of your feet against each other,
-Hold to your toes and when exhaling try to lower your knees to the ground as much as you can,
-Hold this pose for about 3-5 minutes while slowly inhaling and exhaling.
These postures, mantras and breathing techniques can be mastered by most women and no one can come to any harm using them.
Yoga is a practical commonsense system that gives us the tools to be healthy and fertile. It is like a health maintenance system. It minimizes the wear and tear of all body organs, including egg, uterus, and ovaries.
So, yoga used holistically can increase the fertile time in your life. And that is especially beneficial for older women and men who are trying to conceive at an older age.
These yoga techniques will also balance the production of hormones in the body and stimulate ripening and releasing the egg. It has been proven that women who have been doing yoga for at least 3-4 months ovulate more often and more regular compare to women who have never done yoga before.
If you are older than 35 and have a dream of having a baby, start with yoga first before you rush to have invasive treatments and tests regarding your fertility.
According to the last research a general improvement in health before pregnancy helps nearly 50% of people to conceive despite many failures to get pregnant in the past.
That means that their infertility was only due to unbalanced organ functions which could have been due to everyday stress, wrong diet or lack of physical activity. And yoga could be the right tool to balance all these and achieve the desirable result, a baby.
Dr Irina Webster.
More information.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Bulimia Symptoms That You Can Observe.
Dr Irina Webster
People with bulimia are very secretive about their disorder. For this reason it is very difficult to notice anything as an observer. Bulimics look normal to other people. Even close family members initially have difficulty seeing what is going on with the person.
But you can observe some specific bulimic features if you know what to look for. These features are very subtle but are visible once you realize they are there.
Surprisingly, being extremely thin and underweight is not common for bulimia sufferers, even though people with bulimia are concerned about being fat.
Bulimics usually are about normal weight or even can be slightly overweight; some can be thin too.
But when you closely observe their behavior and know what to look for you can notice increased anxiety close to meal times. Some sufferers can be reluctant to share their meal times with others. They will do things like refusing to go out to a restaurant or a family dinner. Some may refuse to sit at the table to eat while munching something on the run.
If they do go out for a meal, they may disappear to the bathroom straight after eating and stay away for a long period of time.
Sometimes when they eat with others they only eat very small amounts of food, drink lots of water, separate the food on their plate and make strange choices and combinations of food.
Looking at their hands you may notice damaged knuckles from inducing vomiting, although this sign can take some time to develop. Discoloration of the skin on the outer surface of hands can also be noticed on bulimics.
Their face may appear to be puffy with small broken blood vessels under the skin. This is because the salivary glands increase in size making their cheeks look bigger especially below the area of the ears.
Dry lips and small ulcers on the lips or around the mouth are common in periods of extreme vomiting and look like cold sores.
People who use laxatives and diuretics will have extremely frequent visits to the bathroom. In these cases signs of dehydration can be noticed, like dark circles around the eyes, dizziness, nausea, dry skin and low blood pressure are common in sufferers.
There are bulimics who exercise excessively. They follow a strong exercise regiment and become fanatical about their running, jumping, cycling etc.
Many bulimics have what is called 'broken eye" syndrome. This is when they perceive themselves as fat, non-attractive and think that others are better then them. They look in a mirror and see a big fat person standing there even if they are not. These individuals have low self esteem and look very shy and non-confident among others.
Bulimics often complain of stomachaches that occur around meal times. Diarrhea or constipation can bother them as well.
Their teeth can become discolored and decayed fast. Bad breath is one of the common bulimics symptoms especially for those who are less hygienic.
If you ask a bulimic girl about her periods she may say that it is irregular or even absent, it depends on how much she vomits per day.
To sum up, there are many bulimia symptoms but most of them are so subtle and difficult to notice it is hard for the average person to tell. If you suspect that someone has bulimia look for the signs described above.
And if the person has at least two or three of these symptoms especially disappearing to the bathroom after meals, she is likely to have the disease. This means she may be in danger of becoming very sick and she needs help. To learn how you can help go to
Add to Technorati Favorites |
Home China Guide Chinese Festivals Mid-Autumn Festival The History and Origins of the Mid-Autumn Festival
The History and Origins of the Mid-Autumn Festival
the mid-autumn festivalLegend of the moon
Sacrificing to the Moon
Sacrificing to moon has various names in different regions of China. It is called ‘worshiping the moon’ in Suzhou of Jiangsu Province, ‘thanking peace’ in Zhenjiang of Jiangsu Province, ‘paying respect to the moon palace’ in Zhenghe of Fujian Province, ‘making wishes to the moon’ in Zhongmou of Henan Province, and ‘worshiping moonlight’ in Sihui of Guangdong Province.
The word “mid-autumn” first appeared in the Zhou Dynasty. During that time, worshiping the moon on the 15th night of the eighth month had spread to high officials and rich families. The practice entailed placing a large table in the middle of the yard under the moon, and they put offerings such as fruits and snacks on the table.
The custom of offering sacrifices to the moon originates from worshiping the lunar goddess, and it was recorded that kings offered sacrifices to the moon in fall during the Western Zhou Dynasty (1045–770 BC). Sacrificing to the moon was very popular in the Song Dynasty, and has become a custom ever since.
The sacrificial offerings include moon cakes, watermelons (pomelos in South China), apples, plums, grapes, and incense, of which moon cakes and watermelons (pomelos in the south) are essential. The watermelon’s (pomelo's) skin is sometimes sliced and opened up into a lotus shape when offered as a sacrifice.
Appreciating the Moon
In the early Tang Dynasty the day was officially celebrated as a traditional festival. It then became an established festival during the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279), and has become as popular as the Spring Festivalsince the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1368 - 1644) dynasties.
Eating Mooncakes
From then on, people ate mooncakes every Mid-Autumn Festival to commemorate the uprising (though this is little-remembered today). |
›› Convert month to day
›› More information from the unit converter
How many month in 1 day? The answer is 0.0328767123288.
We assume you are converting between month and day.
You can view more details on each measurement unit:
month or day
The SI base unit for time is the second.
1 second is equal to 3.80517503805E-7 month, or 1.15740740741E-5 day.
Use this page to learn how to convert between months and days.
›› Date difference between calendar days
›› Want other units?
You can do the reverse unit conversion from day to month, or enter any two units below:
Convert to
I'm feeling lucky, show me some random units.
›› Definition: Month
The month is a unit of time, used with calendars, which is approximately as long as some natural period related to the motion of the Moon (i.e. "Moonth"). The traditional concept arose with the cycle of moon phases; such months are synodic months and last ~29.53 days. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the Moon's phases as early as the Paleolithic age. Synodic months are still the basis of many calendars.
›› Definition: Day
›› Metric conversions and more
This page was loaded in 0.0031 seconds. |
629 Words Short Essay on Moral Education
Moral education can be given better by parents at home, than by schoolmasters and professors in schools and colleges. Parents have numberless opportunities of guiding their children by precept and example, opportunities denied to the teacher.
Who generally meets his pupils in large classes, and seldom has the means of becoming intimately acquainted with their several characters and the faults, other than intellectual faults, to which each of them is particularly prone.
Many parents are emphatic in inculcating truthfulness, but, on very slight occasion think it advisable to escape the importunity or curiosity of children by deception, if not by actual falsehood.
They fondly hope that the deceit will pass unnoticed; but children are keener observers than they are generally supposed to be, and very quick to detect any discrepancy between preaching and practice on the part of their elders.
It is therefore imperative that parents in all cases should themselves act up to the moral precepts that they inculcate upon their children.
If we now pass from home to school life, we see that the first great disadvantage that the school-master labours under is that it is very difficult for him to gain the affections of his pupils. A father can generally appeal to filial love as an inducement towards obeying the moral rules he prescribes.
But a school-master appears to boys in the position of a task-master, and is too often without reason regarded by them as their natural enemy, particularly by those whom he has to punish for idleness or other faults, that is, by the very boys who stand most in need of moral instruction.
Even when a school-master has got over this hostile feeling, he finds that the large amount of daily teaching expected from him leaves him little leisure to give his pupils friendly advice in the intervals between lessons.
It has been proposed in India that formal lessons in morality should be given in schools and colleges. But it is to be feared that lessons so delivered from the school-master’s desk or the professor’s chair would produce little more effect than is obtained by the writing of moral sentences in copy-books.
In the great public schools of England the masters have opportunities of delivering moral lessons under more favourable conditions, when they preach the weekly sermon on Sunday in the sacred precincts of the school chapel.
The Indian teacher has no such opportunity of using his eloquence in guiding the members of his school towards moral enthusiasm.
In addition to this, all intellectual education is in proportion to its success a powerful deterrent from vice, as it enables us to see more clearly the evil effects that follow from disobedience to moral rules. |
Creating Better Thermal-Imaging Lens From Waste Sulfur
The new plastic is transparent to wavelengths of light in the mid-infrared range of 3 to 5 microns — a range with many uses in the aerospace and defense industries. The new lenses also have a high optical, or focusing, power — meaning they do not need to be very thick to focus on nearby objects, making them lightweight. The "inverse vulcanization" process requires mostly sulfur with a small amount of an additive. Vulcanization is the chemical process that makes rubber more durable by adding a small amount of sulfur to rubber. |
Passwords: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Passwords: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Passwords: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
By Nick Gibson
Builder AU
Pick anyone in the world who uses a computer now and then and chances
are they've had to think up a password somewhere along the line. Regular
computer users will have stacked up quite a few, your work pc, Web mail,
online banking, blogs, etc. It's no wonder that a lot of people get
overwhelmed by the sheer weight of things to remember and forget why
they've got the passwords in the first place.
It's not uncommon to see a Post-it note with a password written on it
stuck to the top of the computer that it accesses, and when that happens
it's easy to see that something has gone wrong somewhere down the line.
For users, it's important to remember why passwords exist in the first
place, and for administrators setting a password policy, who tend to err
on the side of paranoia, it's important to remember that sometimes too
much security is just as bad as none at all. To understand what makes a
good password, we need to first look into how passwords get broken.
People trying to break your password will generally fall into one of two
categories. The first will be professional cyber criminals,
indiscriminately trying to gain access to accounts for their own gain.
Maybe it's access to your bank account and your funds, maybe it's
control of your computer so they can add it to their botnet, maybe it's
an attempt to gain access to your work account for the purposes of
industrial espionage, or maybe it's just some bored kid looking for
something to vandalise.
Whatever the situation, the common factor is that they're not
necessarily singling you out and you haven't necessarily done anything
to draw their attention. You may just be one of a thousand hit, or one
of a hundred thousand chosen at random on the Internet, and the only
thing protecting you is the strength of your password.
The second group are people who have chosen to target you; either they
know you or they have the means to find out. They may have chosen you
for any of the reasons above, or through curiosity or spite. Many people
choose passwords that relate to personal information, such as birthdays,
addresses or family names -- thinking that either nobody knows these
little facts, or that those who would know would never try to use them.
Most people aren't aware how much information ends up being available
about them on the Internet, one way or another -- and with search
engines getting better all the time, it's getting easier to find out
more about people.
How are passwords broken?
There are a number of different ways in which passwords are broken. The
oldest, and least sophisticated method is called the brute force attack.
An attacker runs through every possible sequence in the set of possible
passwords until they find the right one. While it's not clever, the
advantage of the brute force attack is that given enough time it will
always work. The key factor here is time, but to understand this, let's
take an example: cracking a four digit PIN number.
Now in this case, there are four characters and each character has 10
different options -- meaning that there are 10 ^ 4 possible
combinations. Or 10,000 attempts to generate every possible password in
the set, but since on average you only need to go through half the set
to find a given password, a cracker will need only 5000 attempts per
password, which a computer can run through in a matter of seconds.
That was a simplistic example, but let's take something a little more
commonplace: six digit password, letters only and not case sensitive.
This means that there are 26 options for each character, giving us 26 ^
6 or 308,915,776 different options. Now clearly this is going to take a
lot longer, but it's still not going to be enough to discourage an
At the 2005 Ontario Universities Computing Conference, Johnathan Graham
claimed an optimised copy of a password cracker running on a 2.7Ghz G5
Mac had managed to generate 900,000 encrypted passwords per second; a
six letter password space could be entirely generated in only five
minutes (presentation notes). An eight character password, using the
full printable ASCII character set, including uppercase, lowercase,
digits and punctuation, would take 200 years of constant computation to
crack at this rate.
The second method is the dictionary attack. In this kind of attack the
attacker has a big list of possible passwords, so that rather than
having to try every possible combination of letters and numbers, they
need only try combinations that are likely to be someones password,
somewhere. Don't be fooled by the name into thinking that this list
contains only words found in a common dictionary, although that will
certainly be part of it.
Your typical password cracker will have several dictionaries, ranging
from a short list of only the most common passwords, up to a
comprehensive dictionary containing obscure words, names, places,
phrases and common misspellings. Oftentimes a cracker will use this
dictionary with itself to generate a list of concatenated words,
including the addition of digits and punctuation. A password cracker's
largest dictionary may run into the 10s of gigabytes, and may run for
The last method is the simplest -- trying passwords manually is the sort
of attempt your little brother might try. Normally this is a negligible
threat -- few attackers have the patience to sit and type out 10
thousand different passwords. The danger here is when the attacker
already has the password, even sticking to low tech approaches there are
plenty of ways an attacker can get the password of a careless user. The
easiest is to just read the password, either on the traditional Post-it
note, or on the list of usernames and passwords to company accounts
stuck to the side of the secretarys desk -- if you put your password in
plain sight then you're trusting everyone who steps into your office to
respect your privacy.
Another common trick to look out for is the fake e-mail asking you to
"verify" your account by sending your username and password through
e-mail -- in fact delivering it right to the attacker who's trying to
compromise your account. The success of this scam has led many online
sites that use password verification to place warnings to inform users
that they will never request a password through e-mail.
How do you create a good password?
Now that we've identified the who and the how, we can start to think
about what makes a good password. Clearly the best password is the one
that provides the most defence against password attacks. For brute force
attacks, the key factor is the size of the key space, that is, the
amount of passwords that are possible. The more characters that make up
a password, the better, and the more characters that a password can be
made up of, the better.
For a dictionary attack, the important thing is that the password is as
random as possible, so that it is unlikely to turn up in any generated
dictionary of likely passwords -- avoid passwords that contain
dictionary words, names, places and even dates. For the last type of
attack its important to make it memorable enough so that you're not
tempted to write it down anywhere. This is the big problem with
passwords, keeping it memorable enough so that you can keep it in your
brain, but complex and random enough to not be easily generated by an
One popular method is generating an acronym, pick some phrase you'll
remember and take the first letter of each word, throw in some
punctuation and you've got something that's easy for you to remember,
but looks completely random to someone who doesn't know how the password
was created. For example, say you're a Bob Dylan fan, you're terrible at
remembering passwords, but you know all the words to Highway 61
Revisited -- you take the first letter of each word in the first line
("God said to Abraham: "Kill me a son") add the name of the song and end
up with a password that looks like GstAKmash61r.
Thats a 12 character password with lower and upper case letters, as well
as digits that looks pretty indistinguishable from any other string of
characters to anyone who doesn't know where it came from. This makes the
method you used your effective password, since it's all you need to
regenerate the password. Even if you don't happen to know all the lyrics
to your song, you can stick them to your cubicle wall and no one will
think anything of it.
The Good
* The more possible things your password can be, the harder it is to
brute force -- so be creative: use a mix of letters, numbers and
* Change your password from time to time. While this doesn't make any
single password more secure, it can decrease the damage done should
someone get a hold of it and means that old password information gives
an attacker nothing.
* Use memory tricks such as acronyms or mnemonics to help you remember a
complicated password.
* Use different passwords for different accounts. You wouldn't use your
PIN number as your video store password, would you? So avoid having
the same password for Web mail and Internet banking.
* Break your password up into sections and have a different rule for
each, this will help make a more random looking password.
The Bad
* Don't assume that because you've done nothing to draw the eye of a
password cracker you're safe; most password cracking attempts are made
by people who neither know or care anything about you.
* Don't use words that exist in any dictionary in any language anywhere
in the world.
* Don't use names, even if they're uncommon.
* Common misspellings, or replacing letters with numbers that look
similar, eg. 1 for L or 0 for O gives you a negligible increase in
password strength.
* Don't leave your password as the default, lists of default passwords
for a whole range of systems are commonly available on the Internet.
* Don't use sequences of characters that appear in a run on the
keyboard, such as qwerty or asdf.
The Ugly
The top 10 passwords found in a UK study, as published on the blog
Modern Life Is Rubbish are as follows. If you see your password here, or
something similar, you might want to think about a change:
1. 123
2. password
3. liverpool
4. letmein
5. 123456
6. qwerty
7. charlie
8. monkey
9. arsenal
10. thomas
Copyright 2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
Subscribe to InfoSec News
Site design & layout copyright © 1986-2014 CodeGods |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
The carrots we buy from a supermarkets spoil very fast, albeit giving many consumers a false sense of preservability due to their structural rigidity. The answer extends to many other vegetables many of us eat:
carrots- wikimedia
Larsinio (2006)- wikimedia, public domain, DOR 27/09/2012
The question is, why do well aerated carrots spoil in the matter of days, at room temperature?
Things to consider: a tuberous rhizome with rough and segmented skin / oxygen levels / levels of aeration / relatively high sugar content / differences in immediate microbiome / lack of possible synergies which the earth provides...the majority of antibiotics is extracted from soil microorganisms {1},{2}....
share|improve this question
Remember that tubers are designed for a relatively anaerobic environment. My guess is that what you are seeing is related to that. Oxidation perhaps? Aerobic bacteria gone wild? – terdon Sep 27 '12 at 11:18
I think carrot keeps long time in refrigerator. Why store it at room temp when optimal storing condition is refrigerator ? – Andrei Sep 27 '12 at 20:01
@Andrei Initially I wanted to explain that in the post as well and include storage conditions. But I consider it best to just ask one question at a time. Regardless, did you have consistently success w. long-term fridge storage? – Lo Sauer Sep 28 '12 at 5:35
can you reference your declaration that carrots spoil fast please since I also think that it depends on a lot of factors like where it was grown, the kind of fertilizers used etc – The Last Word Jun 4 at 10:41
1 Answer 1
First we will take a look at the lines of resistance of a carrot. There are three
The skin - The first line of resistance is the outer membrane or skin of the carrot and chemical compounds that are normally present there. Two antifungal polyacetylenes, falcarinol and falcarindiol, and an isocoumarin, 6-methoxymellein, are present in small amounts in a normal carrot and present the first barrier in undamaged carrots.
Post Harvest - If during harvest or post harvest handling this barrier is broken, the surface is punctured, scraped or sliced, microorganisms may begin to grow. The carrot at this point begins a wound healing process by accumulating suberin, a complex polysaccharide, at the wound site. Along with suberin, lignin is also accumulated. Suberisation is complete within 48 hours after wounding, and lignification is complete within 168 hours of wounding..
Phytoalexin barrier - The last and most important line of resistance is the phytoalexin barrier. Phytoalexins are chemicals produced by plants that impart disease resistance in response to mechanical injury, physiological stimuli or infection. Scopoletin, a coumarin,and para-hydroxy benzoic acid, a phenol, are apparently early arrivals on the scene but later disappear (reference).
There are three enemies of carrot storage: wilt, re-growth and rot.
Some reasons for carrots rotting faster:
Many fruits and vegetables start to produce ethylene gas when they start to ripen. Some foods are extremely sensitive to ethylene gas which makes them rot faster (reference). I am guessing that you keep different vegetables close together. Maybe if you stored carrots separately, it might make them last a bit longer.
Major post-harvest losses in carrots are due to Sclerotinia rot, Botrytis rot, Bacterial soft rot (Erwinia) and Sour rot (Geotrichum). Of these, Sclerotinia rot is the most prevalent.The Sclerotinia fungus infects the carrot roots in the field through the crown. During storage, the Sclerotinia fungus produces a white, cottony mycelium which covers the roots. Infected roots are usually soft and watery (reference).
There would definitely be more reasons but I am guessing that these are the major contributors to it rotting faster.
share|improve this answer
Your Answer
|
AidSpace Blog
Reflections on “Explore the Universe” 2001-2012
Posted on
One of the jokes I inherited from my student years is the final exam question “Describe the Universe” which was followed by “and give two examples.” In the 1960s, this could be funny of course, at least to astronomers. Today, however, the answer might be, “Only two?” Since the Explore the Universe gallery opened in September 2001, the appreciation that more than our universe may well exist has strengthened If we were to revamp the gallery today, there would be some discussion of where the evidence might someday actually come from. What we will probably do instead is utilize one of the various updatable features already in the gallery, when the time really comes.
Indeed, as the Museum contemplated a new astronomy gallery in the 1990s, we knew that we were dealing with a subject that is constantly changing. We had formed a core group of scientists, historians, educators, and designers to craft a vision for the new presentation. What emerged, after three Museum directors and many other staff changes, was a simple and hardly radical statement: “New Tools, New Universes.” Of course, it was the same universe each time, but seen and understood more completely, and, typically, was found to be very unlike the conception that went before. This single statement embodied others, like “New Universes tend to be larger and less homocentric” or “There are no final answers, only better informed questions.”
One of the most interesting themes, or threads, that we decided to incorporate, however, was how “Women have played significant roles in changing our view of the nature of the Universe.” This last one, like the others, helped to guide the choices we made as to what instruments played a role in giving us new views, where did those instruments come from, and who were the people who either used those instruments or analyzed the data coming from them?
During the course of developing the gallery we well knew that astronomy has long been a male-dominated enterprise. This is, happily, no longer the case. But even in past times, it is not difficult to point to women who played critical roles in revolutionizing our view of the nature of the Universe.
We therefore set about to portray some of these women in Explore the Universe, within the contexts in which they worked, and the roles they played making the new discoveries. As you walk through the gallery located on the east end of the first floor of the Museum, here are some of the stories you will encounter:
The First Room
The first universe you will encounter is human or earth-centered, “homocentric” in other words. It was the view we constructed based upon observations by eye alone, aided only by pointing devices to determine positions of things in the sky, and over time, their motions. The geometric earth centered view of the Greeks is depicted, together with the instruments that refined it, ending in a replica of Tycho Brahe’s great 16th Century equatorial armillary sphere being used by one of his assistants. No women are depicted here.
Armillary Sphere
A view of the Tycho Armillary Sphere reproduction on display in “Explore the Universe.” The Sphere was built by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in the late 1500s to study the sky and to teach about the celestial coordinate system.
The Second Room
The second universe, brought by the advent of the telescope, led to the confirmation of a model suggested prior to Tycho: that the universe was centered on the Sun and not the earth. Tycho’s tables and observations had given strong evidence of this, but in and of themselves were not sufficient to overthrow the Aristotelian universe. Observations with Galileo’s telescope were sensational enough to bring about this revolution, enabled by his ability to dramatically portray his evidence (the Jovian satellites, the Venusian phases, the Sun’s spots, etc.) through visual representation.
Walking through this second room is a walk through telescopic history in a universe composed of stars, all contained within what we call the Milky Way. Ever bigger and more powerful telescopes were built through the 18th and 19th centuries to probe this universe. Featured in the gallery is the grand 20-foot reflector of William Herschel in a diorama showing him at work gauging the heavens, with his sister Caroline both directing and recording his observing routine from an open window. Caroline’s contribution to William’s legacy, producing the first observational map of the structure of the known universe, was in fact as more than his assistant. It was she, according to recent scholarship, who made William’s work systematic, and it was she who also encouraged him to carefully catalog those fuzzy faint apparitions they were recording night after night, year by year. These so-called nebular forms could be unresolved clusters of stars, or some ethereal shining fluid out of which stars someday would form. But were they among the stars? Or beyond the stars? Were they other universes, the Herschels asked? The distribution of the nebulae was oddly different than the distribution of stars, or the shape of the universe as they found it.
Carolyn Herschel
Carolyn Herschel was an astronomer and researcher who became the first woman, and the only woman for well over a century, to be awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society of London. Her work was formally recognized in 1828.
Caroline, of course, worked in astronomy by virtue of her brother’s interests, and they both were supported by a king’s pension, provided by George III after William had discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.
The Third Room
The question the Herschels posed (“what was the nature of the nebulae?”) was answered in the early 20th century when photography was applied to increase the power of the telescope. The eye is a very sensitive detector of light energy, but it accumulates that energy for only a very small fraction of a second, depending upon the light level. Photographic emulsions can collect and accumulate light energy for many hours, providing a vast increase in sensitivity. This is why, once photographic emulsions came available, they were quickly adapted to telescope cameras to replace the eye. Now, also, information could be stored on these photographic plates and be available permanently, housed in protected chambers astronomers called vaults, and brought out for examination day and night.
By 1900, photographic astronomy had shown that most of the faint nebulae Herschel had glimpsed were in fact spiral in structure, reminiscent of whirlpools. And there were many many thousands of them. Meanwhile, women working at Harvard College Observatory, like Henrietta Swan Leavitt, were making some very valuable observations and coming to powerful conclusions examining many photographs over time of nearby star clusters like the Clouds of Magellan, visible only from the southern hemisphere.
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Henrietta Swan Leavitt examined photographs of both the Small and the Large Magellanic Clouds taken over many weeks and months and found over 2,500 stars that varied in brightness in the two clouds, now known as companion galaxies to the Milky Way. She was the first to show that the variations in brightness were a measure of the intrinsic brightnesses of these stars, thus providing a powerful new distance indicator for astronomy.
There were many stars in these clusters that did not radiate constantly, but varied in brightness over great ranges. Leavitt’s contribution, between 1908 and 1912, was to realize that for a certain class of these light-varying (or variable) stars, the period of their variation was in proportion to their mean brightnesses. The brighter ones had longer periods (a matter of days) than the fainter ones. Since all the stars were in the same cluster, and therefore at the same distance, she had discovered an intrinsic property of these stars. Without even knowing why these stars varied in brightness, she showed that they constituted a new and valuable means for determining the distances to stars, if their intrinsic brightnesses could be ascertained. Her conclusion was quickly picked up by a astronomers both in Europe and the United States. The Mount Wilson astronomer Harlow Shapley calibrated this class of variables and found bunches of them in globular clusters. By 1920, he had determined their distribution and from it deduced the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, finding it so vast he felt nothing could be outside of it.
Soon after Shapley’s work, Edwin Hubble, also working at Mount Wilson with the new 100-inch reflecting telescope, used Leavitt’s variables and Shapley’s calibrations, modified by others, to determine the distance to the Andromeda nebulae, one of the largest and brightest spirals in the sky. He found that its distance was at least 10 times greater than Shapley’s estimate for the size of the Milky Way. In others words, it lay outside the Milky Way and hence was an island universe. Thus Leavitt, employed as an assistant at the Harvard College Observatory (not included through an accident of family as Caroline Herschel had been) produced a distance-determining tool that once again revolutionized the universe. We live in a universe of galaxies, not stars.
Magellanic Clouds
Magellanic Clouds. Credit: AURA/NOAO/NSF.
Neither Leavitt or Caroline Herschel worked as independent astronomers, setting their own course of investigation. Although Leavitt was given a certain degree of freedom to search out anything that might be interesting, she was directed to this work by others. As you continue to walk through the gallery, you will encounter other women, in more recent times, who designed their own research programs and carried them out. These include Vera Rubin in the fifth room, who found in the 1970s that dark matter dominates galaxies like Andromeda, and Margaret Geller, who found in the 1980s that the universe is not uniform, but clumpy on a huge scale that may well outline the distribution of dark matter in the universe.
So if and when we find evidence that, indeed, universes other than our own exist, and have left their marks on our own universe in deep time, what role will women play in that realization? Only time, and larger telescopes on the ground and in space, will tell.
David DeVorkin is a curator in the Space History Division at the National Air and Space Museum.
Tags: , , ,
2 thoughts on “Reflections on “Explore the Universe” 2001-2012
Leave a Reply
one + = 2 |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
A sentence is written like this,
In this work of Pankaj Mishra, we are taken back to 18th century Europe where ...
In this work of Pankaj Mishra, we are taken aback to the 18th century Europe where ...
I understand that first one is more natural because 'taken aback' usually points to 'surprise' but the word 'aback' also mean backward. Thus the second construct should be equally natural, at least in this context. Isn't it?
share|improve this question
closed as general reference by jwpat7, Matt Эллен, Mahnax, MετάEd, tchrist Aug 29 '12 at 11:55
Where have you seen aback used or stated to mean backward? That is new to me. – Rachel Aug 27 '12 at 0:12
"We were taken aback to (a time)..." is not standard English. It sounds like a mixed up attempt at "... taken back...". "(I was) taken aback." means "I was surprised". – Mitch Aug 27 '12 at 0:45
@Rachel From free-online English dictionary, Etymology: based on the literal meaning of aback (backward), which is not used in modern English. I have added the link to my original post. – Dilawar Aug 27 '12 at 1:00
@Dilawar: I am not 100% sure of their practices, but I suspect that "which is not used in modern English" is supposed to mean that this usage is archaic, i.e., it used to but doesn't have that meaning anymore. If you don't have access to OED, I think Merriam-Webster is good about making these things clear. Note the "archaic" tag in the definition there. – Rachel Aug 27 '12 at 1:15
Your error is natural, but it is an instance of the "etymological fallacy" -- the mistaken idea that what a word once meant somehow governs what it means now. – StoneyB Aug 27 '12 at 1:16
1 Answer 1
up vote 7 down vote accepted
The second sentence is incorrect. As you point out, "taken aback" means of a person that s/he has been surprised. It might be correct to say something like:
In this work of Pankaj Mishra, we are taken aback when we learn that in 18th century Europe, cows could fly.
But it would probably be more natural, even there, to use the verb "surprised."
share|improve this answer
And I assume we're not learning about flying cows -- i.e. that what we learn is not a surprise. – JAM Aug 26 '12 at 23:43
+1 for the example! (I was taken aback myself! :) – FumbleFingers Aug 26 '12 at 23:52
1 LOL for example. – Dilawar Aug 27 '12 at 1:03
|
Retrotechtacular: Films Used to Be Recorded on Film
We’re sure that this title makes some readers itch because there are still a number of well-respected directors who insist on shooting with film rather than digital, but the subject of this week’s Retrotechtacular shows a portion of the movie industry that has surely been relegated to life-support in the past few decades. Photo finishing, once the stronghold of chemical processes used by all to develop their photographs, has become virtually non-existent. This is the story of how film and photo finishing drove cinema for much of its life.
The reels seen above are negative and positive film. The negative film goes in the camera and captures the images. After developing and fixing the negative film, the process is repeated. Light shines through the fixed negative in order to expose a fresh reel of film. That film is finished and fixed to create the reel which can be used in a projector. This simple process is covered near the beginning of the clip found below. The 1940 presentation moves on to discuss the in-depth chemistry techniques used in the process. But you’re really in for a treat starting about half-way through when the old manual methods are shown, which have been replaced by the “modern laboratory”. We love those huge analog dials! The video concludes by showing the true industrialization of the film developing process.
We’re running out of Retrotechtacular topics. If you know of something that might be worth a feature please send in a tip!
[Thanks UnderSampled]
Retrotechtacular is a weekly column featuring hacks, technology, and kitsch from ages of yore. Help keep it fresh by sending in your ideas for future installments.
1. F says:
If it was really “in-depth” then it would detail the horrifying cancer rates seen in upstate NY as a result of “photo finishing”.
• Hirudinea says:
That’s entertainment!
• Josh Marsh says:
That’s pretty unsettling to hear; have a link to something with more information?
• Alan Smithe says:
Yeah, then we could look at the cancer rates around microprocessor manufacturing facilities on the West Coast and the so-called “green” computer recycling facilites that ship toxic waste to impoverished countries so digital enthusiasts don’t have to see the unsightly damage it causes and then we can discuss any other number of ecological horrors the so called “digital revolution” has foisted on a clueless society of babbling “greenies”. How many cell phones and computers have you contriubted to the toxic mess that is the World? Hmmmm…?
2. macona says:
When I worked doing stop motion I heard many stories about film. For stop motion at least, good riddance.
3. Jehu says:
Ok, I haven’t watched the video yet but I thought I’d comment anyway. My local cinema complex is equipped with all 3D digital projectors. However, a friend and I were watching Cowboys Vs Aliens and I noticed something that I haven’t seen in years, the yellow ringed black oval in the top right corner every now and again. The manufactures put it there to signal the projectionist when to load the next cannister of film. I asked the staff later about this and they mentioned that the digital projector had broken down. So they keep some film copies as a backup.
4. Parmin says:
This topic is awesome.
I worked as a cinema projectionist back in 1980’s and in a photographic minilab processing after that.
It is now an absolutely dying art that is so arcane only a handful of people still capable of doing.
5. fartface says:
I would love to see an in depth coverage of the early Gemini and Apollo electronics. any details on the computers used in SkyLab? How about a technical detail series on what is running voyager I and II
6. Fran Blanche says:
Only a true dinosaur like myself could be astonished that people exist who have never been ‘exposed’ to real film. I spent most of my life in the photo-chemical era and know pretty near everything there is to know about it. I have had several darkrooms, shot 35mm still, 16mm and 8mm motion, did my own processing, and was even a pro processor in my youth. I still have my enlargers and projectors and own a collection of 16mm films that I often show outdoors in the summer here in the Lab parking lot. Yea, a real living dinosaur.
7. Galane says:
How do you roughly guess the age of a person working in the media? By the terminology they use for light image recording technology. If they say “caught on video” they were likely born in the 1980’s to early 1990’s. If they say “caught on film” that places them in the 70’s or earlier.
If you never want to be called out for using an incorrect term on this, always use “caught on camera” or “a video recording” because whether it uses film, magnetic tape, memory cards or other solid state storage, a hard drive or optical disc, it *is* a camera and these days it’s exceedingly rare that anyone is going to be packing around an old film camera and catch some sudden event.
Same goes for audio recording. Just say it’s an audio recording. If a student uses her cellphone to record an abusive teacher, do not use the phrase “caught on tape” or “she taped the teacher insulting students”. Someone should hack a Micro Cassette recorder into a cellphone, controlled via an app on the operating system, just so one can accurately say they taped some audio with their phone.
Another way the old fogies out themselves is calling any non-tape kind of data storage a “tape”. You know the type, probably your parents who called your Atari or Sega or Nintendo cartridges “tapes”. See also the Dabney Coleman movie “Cloak and Dagger” where everyone kept calling the game cartridge with the hidden data a “tape”. Makes me want to retroactively slap the screenwriters every time I see that one.
• Daniel Louw says:
I’m 24.
When I record a video, I “film” it. When I record sound, I “tape” it. When I want to record a show coming in from the satellite dish into my PVR then I also “tape” it.
We cannot just change commonly used phrases because the underlying technology changed. Otherwise we had to stop using the word “car” a long time ago.
But yes, these phrases will probably fade away before the arrival of the next generation, because there will be no reference to explain the use of the term “tape” and so on. “Film” might stick because a lot of people still refer to a movie in the cinema as a “film” and the Cannes Film Festival got this whacko requirement that if you want your movie to eligible for an award it must be submitted in actual film stock.
8. funkathustra says:
The tone of this post makes it sound like only a handful of movies are still shot on film. Anyone familiar with the industry at all knows this is blatantly false. Of last year’s Academy Award best picture nominees, Argo (the winner), Beats of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Lincoln, and Silver Linings Playbook were shot on film. Only three — Life of Pi, Zero Dark Thirty, and Amour — were shot digitally. Heck, even big-budget action flicks, like the new Batman trilogy, was shot on film. It’s not going away anytime soon.
The main area that’s changing is distribution — tons of new theatres are digital-only.
• Tom says:
Most Hollywood cinematographers prefer to shoot on film. One reason is the additional dynamic range that can be pulled out of a color negative, compared to a CMOS/CCD sensor.
The film also has additional resolution, which allows for a certain degree of future-proofing. You can go back to the Apollo 13 camera negative, scan it at high resolution, and blow it up to IMAX. You can’t do that with a movie that was captured on 2K video — the resolution was thrown away forever.
A final, less technical reason is that directors tend to interfere more with the cinematographer when shooting on HD video. Shooting on film gives the cinematographer a greater degree of creative freedom, because the director is likely to give them greater latitude in making decisions.
However, film has been removed from the editing process. Once the film has been developed, it is immediately scanned into a digital intermediate. This is now the master copy of the footage. The film serves as a backup, but it’s never looked at again unless something went wrong during the scanning.
9. AussieTech says:
The two little rings or dots (or squiggles or smudges or…) that appear in the top-right are to cue switching on the projector drive so it comes up to speed, and the second one a few seconds later to signal the actual changeover of vision and sound to the newly running projector, the new and old reels having a small overlap.
If you don’t have the new reel “laced up” and the arc set up (there’s a clue to my age) by the time the first cue goes through you are going to be everlastingly popular with the audience and management.
I will also mention “reversal” film that produced a direct positive after processing, popular in 16mm with student film makers in the 70’s and 80’s.
Sound film only has sprocket holes on one side, the other side being taken up by an optical soundtrack.
10. ka1axy says:
Yay, film!
I learned to develop and print my own film in my High School darkroom, many, many years ago. It’s extremely encouraging to me that the daughter of a coworker is doing the same thing .
I’ll just mention that good, really good, film cameras are available at silly low prices now.
Negatives can be stuffed in a shoebox for your grandkids, not so with digital files…
11. cplamb says:
Yeesh, what an awful transfer of film to video. If they had used the technique shown to clean the print first it wouldn’t have all those black dirt spots.
12. Just to confuse things still further, there was at least one computer that used 35mm film for data storage. The Elliott 803 used, not tape drives, but magnetic film drives:
The fully-coated 35mm magnetic film was used in the film industry for sound recording and was readily available at the time. Maybe the perforations in it gave the designers the idea to use it for data.
13. NeilJB says:
Interesting to see the Metric system being used for chemical measurements in the US in the ’40s. Was the Metric system very common in the US then?
14. ewan says:
the “films” in the photo are not positive and negative films, they are film leader, that is white plastic film that s used on the start and end of films to avoid damage to the film whilst threading it into the projector.
you can still buy film,a reasonable amount of people shoot super8, mainly because the cameras are easy to find. either in your parents loft or at a car boot sale.
• Wheels17 says:
ewan is correct. Negative films generally have a black backing made of carbon and a pH sensitive binder. This backing absorbs light that passes through the emulsion and prevents it from exposing the emulsion from the back side. The backing is conductive, and prevents static electrical discharges from marking the film. When the film is processed, the binder is softened and the carbon is washed off.
Print films had the same backing up until about 20 years ago. At that time, a clear antistatic backing was developed, and the plastic base for the print film was changed from cellulose triacetate(still used on negative films) to polyester.
The “film at 11″ process used until the advent of video was very interesting. It was a reversal film (positive right out of the camera) that was processed in a desktop processor with dry-to-dry times of less than 10 minutes. Those films have been gone for a long time.
• Alan Smithie says:
Sorry, but the film stock show is correctly represented; it is B&W , unprocessed, positive and negative laboratory film stocks. Black carbon anti-halation backings were used in color work, with B&W lab stocks having only colored dyes to repress light scattering during exposure. Look again; the neg stock appears light grey and the positive a darker grey, representing lavender and yellow-orange dyes respectively.
Also, 35mm “sound film” is dual sprocketed, only the sub-35mm stocks omit a row of perforations to accommodate a sound track.
There are a lot of misapplied film specs in many of these responses here. It’s not hard to find the actual facts with a bit of research.
Leave a Reply
You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )
Twitter picture
Facebook photo
Google+ photo
Connecting to %s
Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.
Join 96,534 other followers |
Mar 06
Bu Yazı bas
Kedinin Cat İngilizce Tanıtımı
, kedinin ingilizce tanıtımı ödev
Kedinin Cat İngilizce Tanıtımı
Cats are small, tame, furry mammals that are often kept as pets and farm animals. There are over 30 different breeds of tame cats, with different body shapes and sizes, coloring, fur length, eye color, tail length, voice, and temperament. House cats do not enjoy swimming. Cats were domesticated over 7,000 years ago.
Diet: Even tame cats are fast, effective hunters. They are carnivores (meat-eaters). Cats will kill and eat small mammals, birds, fish, frogs, lizards, and snakes. On farms, cats help reduce the vermin population (rats, mice, and other small, destructive animals). Cats use their acute sight and hearing to catch prey. They swallow large bites of meat without chewing it. Cats are primarily nocturnal (most active at night). They have very good night vision.
Anatomy: Cats are graceful animals that have a rounded face. They have a sand-papery tongue and needle-like teeth. Their skeleton is extremely flexible.
Cats are subtle solitary, independent, regal creatures that express affection on their own terms. It’s exactly these characteristics that draw people so deeply to them. When a cat loves you, it feels like the queen has just given you her smile of approval! When a cat crawls up on your lap and rubs your face with its cheek, it’s pretty difficult not to smile. Soft to the touch and immensely fun to play with, but fully capable of keeping themselves entertained, cats work well with families and kids that lead rather busy lives and want to snuggle up to an affectionate animal without having to spend hours and hours each day on exercise, cleaning and maintenance.
Lifespan: 15-20 years.
Gelen Aramalar
kedinin ingilizce tanıtımıingilizce kedi tanıtımıkedilerin özellikleri ingilizcekedilerin özellikleri ingilizce türkçekedinin ingilizce tanıtımı ve türkçekedinin tanıtımıkedininingilizce tanıtımı
Bu yazının kalıcı bağlantısı http://ingilizcebook.com/kedinin-ingilizce-hayati.html
Bir Cevap Yazın
E-posta hesabınız yayınlanmayacak. Gerekli alanlar * ile işaretlenmişlerdir
|
Peanut Butter Sandwich: Cell Membrane Structure
Written by Kathy Watkins, Central Piedmont Community College
The phospholipid bilayer is like two slices of bread with peanut butter.
The peanut butter is like the hydrophobic center (fatty acid chains). The phosphorous containing heads are like the two pieces of bread.
(Students might be asked to explore how the sandwich can be modified to represent channels, proteins, and cholesterol, etc. in the membrane.)
Using Analogies in Microbiology: The Bacterial Cell as an Entertainment Venue to Illustrate the ATP-binding Cassette (ABC) Transport System
Written by Kristen Z. Swider, Capital Community College
Students in my microbiology class are relatively unfamiliar with the scientific concepts involved in the course and will often attempt to rely on memorization. However, due to the complex nature of the material, it is difficult to access information from the perspective of pure recall. As abstract concepts are discussed throughout a science course, many learners still operating in the concrete stage of development may be lost by a failure to attach understanding to anything of substance. As a result, the concepts are often missed during examinations. There is no requirement that an instructor complicate the approach in order to communicate scientific principles. For these reasons, the use of analogies to illustrate complex processes can enhance a student’s comprehension of the material and make connections that promote lifelong learning. Analogies may be presented to the learner as prepared elements of a lecture or they may be generated by the learners themselves. Self-generated analogies can and do occur spontaneously in discussion. Students are encouraged to develop and present analogies to the class. In either case, the interactive, social process of exploring analogies, whatever their source, contributes to the learning process.
How the ATP-binding Cassette (ABC) Transport System Works
- ATP-binding cassette (ABC) system: This involves substrate-specific binding proteins located in the bacterial periplasm, the gel-like substance between the bacterial cell wall and cytoplasmic membrane.
- The periplasmic-binding protein attaches temporarily to the substance to be transported and carries it to
- Meanwhile, ATP gets broken down into ADP, and phosphate, releasing energy. It is this energy that powers the transport of the substrate, by way of the membrane-binding transporter, across the membrane and into the cytoplasm.
- Examples of active transport by means of ABC systems include the transport of certain sugars and amino acids. There are hundreds of different ABC transport systems in bacteria.
The Bacterial Cell as an Entertainment Venue to Illustrate the ATP-Binding Cassette (ABC) Transport System
The players:
Bacterial cell: Entertainment Venue
Substrate: Patron
Periplasm: Outer arena area
Substrate-specific binding protein: Event ticket
Cytoplasmic membrane: Inner arena barrier with turnstiles
Membrane-spanning transport protein: Turnstile
Cytoplasm: Event location (inner arena)
ATP: energy needed to move the turn-stile and allow entry of the substrate (Patron)
- The bacterial cell is the entertainment venue, with the cell wall being the outer boundary of the arena property. Once the patron reaches the arena, he/she can easily migrate through the cell wall to the inner arena (periplasm) since a “ticket” is not yet needed.
- In order for the patron to gain entry into the main arena area of the venue (cytoplasm), he/she must pick up a ticket at a will call/box office. Here in the periplasm, a patron will pick up a pre-prepared ticket (periplasmic binding protein) just before the entering the event.
- Before entering the main arena area, the patron with the ticket (transportable substance and periplasmic binding protein complex) must enter the arena through the turnstile (membrane-spanning transport protein). A turnstile is a form of gate which allows one person to pass at a time. A turnstile can restrict passage only to patrons who provide a coin or a ticket. It can also be made so as to enforce one-way traffic of people.
- Once at the turnstile, the ticket (periplasmic binding protein) gets left behind, and the transportable substrate (patron) can enter the cell via a turnstile.
- As the substrate (patron) moves through the turnstile, energy is required, and ATP is broken down. The patron (substrate) is now in the arena and can be used by the cell.
Universal Currency in the Cell
ATP is sometimes referred to as the “universal currency” of energy. I explain that it’s like there was only one kind of money in the world. Since Americans are pretty self-centered, we would think it should be dollars. So there would be no pesos or francs or Euros or yens, etc—just dollars. And there would only be dollar bills—no $5’s, no $20’s, no nickels, no dimes, no quarters—just $1 bills. If you wanted to buy a piece of gum, it would cost $1 bill. If you wanted to buy a new truck (this is Texas, you know!), you’d have to show up at the dealership with a bunch of wheelbarrows of $1 bills.
Keeping an Organized Dorm Room Requires Energy, Just Like in a Cell
Written by Jennifer A. Metzler, Ball State University
When discussing thermodynamics and why cells do not break the laws because they are so organized, even though entropy is always increasing, I ask them to think of the place where they live, whether a dorm room, apartment, or house. Then I ask them to think of the difference between keeping it clean and organized or letting it become messy and disorganized. I ask them how much energy it takes for them to keep things clean and organized versus messy and disorganized. They all answer more energy to maintain order. So, then I discuss how cells are no different, if they want to maintain order they must constantly take in energy, and when they stop doing so they die and lose their order. Also, mentioning that they maintain the ever increasing entropy by giving off heat.
Satellite TV and Photosystems
Written by Jennifer A. Metzler, Ball State University
When discussing how a photosystem works to capture light energy, I ask students to compare it to a satellite TV dish. The job of the dish is to capture and focus the TV signal so they can watch their favorite show. The job of the antenna complexes is to capture the light energy and then pass that energy (focusing) to the reaction center so that light energy can be passed on in the form of excited electrons to begin converting the light energy into chemical energy in the first stage of photosynthesis.
Using Waves at the Beach to Describe Concentration Gradients
Written by Jennifer A. Metzler, Ball State University
When discussing passive versus active transport and the difference between an input of cellular energy, I ask students to imagine they are at the beach or at a wave pool. Since passive transport is going down a concentration gradient, I tell them to liken it to having the waves at their back and moving into shore. It is not a problem for them at all and they do not need to expend any energy as they are going with the flow. With active transport going against the concentration gradient, I tell them to imagine turning around and having the waves hit their chest and try to move away from shore. In this case they must expend energy as they are going against the flow of the waves.
Phone Batteries and Cellular Energy
Written by Michael Sawey, Texas Christian University
Your cells need the energy from ATP in order to do their work… just like your phone needs the energy from its battery. But that battery needs to be recharged. ATP is like a fully charged battery. As a cell does its work, such as a muscle contracting, ATP’s energy is “drained.” Just like your phone’s battery can be charged and drained over and over, ATP can be used over and over. When ATP is “used up” it is changed into a slightly different molecule called ADP. ADP is like a dead battery. To “charge” the ADP up to ATP, the mitochondria in your cells need oxygen and glucose. During Cellular Respiration, a chemical process uses the reaction between oxygen and glucose to charge ADP to ATP. When it does this, the oxygen and glucose are broken apart and recombined into carbon dioxide and water. These are “waste products” and are flushed out of your body by the Respiratory and Urinary systems (with help from the Lymphatic system). This is why you must breathe and eat constantly. Every time you do so, you are taking in new supplies of oxygen and glucose that can be used to “charge up” ATP from ADP. Just like you do not throw away your phone battery when it is dead, you do not lose ATP when its energy is used up. It is simply converted to ADP, waiting to be charged up again.
Dance Club Patrons Describe Water Molecules
Written by Dave Sheldon, St. Clair County Community College
Customize Your Auto Like Proteins Are Customized in the Cell
Written by Dave Sheldon, St. Clair County Community College
Aerobic Respiration Gives a Cell More “Spending Power”
Written by Jennifer Wiatrowski, Pasco-Hernando Community College
|
Monday, February 28, 2011
Harmonizing Water and Tea: Choosing The Right Water For Tea- Part 2- Mineral Content of Water
The mineral content of water is perhaps the most important characteristic to consider when attempting to harmonize a type of tea with water. Water contains particles which come from the Earth. Traditionally we say that Earth controls Water. In this respect Earth, and the minerals it contains, strongly influence the energetics of Water. If Earth (minerals) are too abundant, Earth's energy will dominate the Water, thereby clouding Waters essence. If Earth (minerals) are absent, Earth's energy cannot support the Water, thereby making the Water weak and lacking essence. This is natures way.
Let's look at how the mineral content effects the energetics of the water.
No/ very few minerals. This type of water has no body, because water is the body of tea, it must contain body (yin) itself. Water with very few minerals has no body to support the tea's spirit. This water is not appropriate for tea. Distilled and filtered water fits into this category.
Little amount of minerals. This type of water is yang in nature. The water is somewhat light and it harmonizes best with lighter teas which generally have more smell than taste (white, green, greener oolong). Yang type water is appropriate for these teas as the light water's body rises supporting and harmonizing to the rising nature of these lighter teas. When light water is infused with tea, a lighter coloured infusion results.
Moderate amount of minerals. This type of water is neither heavy nor light and it harmonizes best with neutral teas such as balhyocha (Korean yellow tea) and Hunan black tea. Water with a moderate amount of minerals can curb extremes, supporting us in attainment of the Middle Way.
Larger amount of minerals. This type of water is yin in nature. The water is somewhat heavy and it harmonizes best with heavier teas which generally have more taste than smell (puerh, more oxidized oolong, hong cha, aged teas). Yin type water is appropriate for these teas as the heavy water's body sinks deeply inward supporting and harmonizing to the deepening nature of these heavier teas. When heavier water is infused with tea, a darker coloured infusion results.
Too much minerals. This type of water has a body that is weighed down, because water's body is consumed by particles it is restricted and the water's qi cannot move freely. Water with too much minerals overwhelms the tea's spirit weighing it down. If these minerals are very excessive the water will develop a taste and smell. This is because the clear qi of water is bogged down by turbid things, in this case too many minerals. Only water with no taste and smell is appropriate for tea. This water is not appropriate for tea.
The terms "little amount of minerals", "moderate amount of minerals", and "larger amount of minerals" are rather vague and are not quantified by numbers. One never uses measuring devices nor pays too much attention to the PPM (parts per million), TDS (total dissolved solids), or degrees of hardness. Discovering which water is which is something that comes with experience.
The types and diversity of minerals is also a factor. There are some undesirable minerals or chemicals in water that should be as low as possible which include Chlorine (See Marshal'N posts here and here) and Sulfur. Both of these elements add an undesirable odour to the tea. Also the wider the diversity of the minerals found in water, the more variety of smells and tastes of the resulting tea. A variety of elements allow for more interactions to take place with the enzymes of the tea. If the body is engaging, the spirit will engage, the result is interesting tea!
Julien ÉLIE said...
Dear Matt,
A very interesting article about minerality. Thanks for sharing it.
They reflect experiments with several kinds of water, with low and high minerality.
No minerals is pretty terrible; distilled water is acid and not pleasant at all. Rough. And chemically, distilled water, when absorbed, is not good for our body: our cells tend to fill themselves with more water (because ions do not enter them, and equilibrium must be achieved).
Water with a larger amount of minerals also matches best deeply oxidized or torrefied wulong. Regarding green teas, it often depends on the considered tea. Japanese teas and tasteful Chinese green teas seem to be best with such mineralized water whereas soft Chinese teas are enhanced with low minerality.
Flowery Dan Cong teas seem best with low minerality, contrary to fruity Dan Cong.
Leaves "dictate" the right choice to do in order to maximize what they can give.
Here is an interesting comparison of minerality:
mentioned during a discussion on Philippe's great blog:
Another point: Akira Hojo often speaks about scaling a teapot and using the same water with a given teapot (of course in clay) so as to obtain the best balance of minerals between those brought along by the water and those brought along by the clay.
Source of the "buffer effect": (at the end of the Water Section, in Brewing Method)
This remark makes me think about the minerality a teapot can give. Is it as important as water minerality? One should probably not use a water whose minerality is opposite to the one of his clay. Maybe to be dealt with in another series of articles :-)
Using kettles, teapots, teacups and other intermediate containers (with clay, iron or materials like that) keep modifying minerality.
Halasz said...
Which water is good for matcha?
D-Wong said...
Hey Matt,
I haven't gotten around to fetching a pail of creek water, but I was wondering what kind of properties you think rain water would have? Maybe too acidic? I think it would be an interesting experiment...
Matt said...
Julien ELIE,
Thanks for adding a touch of science. Heard from someone that diffusion and osmosis play a big role in the selection of water, the type of tea, and the resulting infusion. The exact process and substances involved wasn't explained. Likely its a complicated process and has to do with the composition and concentration of substances in the water compared to certain bio compounds in the tea.
One meant to add high oxidized oolong to the post (Wuyi yan cha mentioned by David as one example) but forgot. It has since been edited. Also thanks for pointing us to Philippe's Blog. His post on mineral water and resulting discussion is interesting. As is the link to Flo's article in the comments:
Something that should be noted however is that the values for "Super low", "low", "medium", "high", and "very high" mineral content in Philippe's article are not in anyway connected to the values presented here on MattCha's. As Philippe mentioned, each country individually defines how many mg/ TDS make up each category. The optimal range for all tea, the "little amount of minerals", "moderate about of minerals", and "larger amount of minerals" mentioned on MattCha's Blog likely occur in the high "super low" through to the low-mid "medium" range displayed on the chart on his blog.
You mentioned green tea. The more delicate, cool, and aromatic the green tea is, the lower the mineral content of the water should be so that harmony between tea and water is achieved. Deeper the green tea, the higher the mineral content. For example, Japanese green tea. The early spring picked shincha is best with little amount of minerals whereas a goygkro or matcha (a bit deeper tea) is best with a little more mineralized water but still relatively less minerals than you would use for a black tea, still "little amount of minerals".
Sorry for the late reply,
was pretty much off the grid the past few days.
Matt said...
Your answer is above. Thanks for showing interest.
In the last section covered in the Korean Tea Classics Book Club, Section 17 states "Firstly, if no river is nearby and no mountains with a spring of water, one should use only water stored from the plum blossom (monsoon) rains of that spring season since its flavour is sweet and harmonious; it is water that makes everything grow."
See here: (click on the link to the Leaf translation if you don't have the book)
Basically if you are going to use rain water, the rainwater that harmonizes the closest to the energetics of tea is spring rainfall that occurs just as the first blossoms of spring are emerging(or the first tea buds). This water is thought to have abundant qi because it nourishes the abundant spring growth. From a astrological perspective, it shares the same energy of the tea that is also fed by these same rains as they sprout from the tree in early spring.
So in North Vancouver now is about the time to start collecting for the year!
Matt said...
Julien ELIE,
Link to Hojo's page has great info on the water used for tea. Scaling your kettle is an important consideration. Much of what he has discussed will be looked at in depth in the later sections of this series. He offers a very good picture of some of the do's and don'ts of using water for tea.
Thanks again for sharing this link.
learning to pull radishes said...
Great discussion. I'm curious about your comment to D-Wong regarding collecting water for the year, which (I think?) echoes your past posts about that Korean pottery vessel (can't remember the name, and now can't find the posts) for storing water. I would think that water which has been standing for a length of time would somehow lose some of it's vibrancy. But perhaps my thinking is incorrect on this matter? I'm curious to know your thoughts on this.
learning to pull radishes said...
(also, what is that picture of??)
Matt said...
You are right, If you collect water for the year, how can you store it to maintain its qi? In a way it is similar to aging puerh, how do you age it so that it compounds its essence?
The answer as you suggest is its storage vessel. See here:
Next weeks section of the Korean tea classics book club is titled "On Storing Water" this will offer traditional insight into how water is best stored and how water is best not stored. Feel free to snoop a head though with a look at the Leaf translation:
The picture is the scaling in one's kettle. It has seen a lot of mineral water in its day!
Ho Go said...
You mention Balhyocha as a neutral tea. I'm not sure I understand what you mean or how you define a neutral tea. Can you explain your idea more?
Matt said...
Balhyocha is not truly "neutral". What is meant by this is that balhyocha is neither a yin tea nor a yang tea, a dark tea nor a light tea. The terms "harmonizing" or "regulating" are probably better at describing this tea. Balhyocha carries these descriptions because its action is mainly in the center of the body. It chaqi tends to impact digestion the most, regulating it. The same can be said about black tea from Hunan Province.
Hope your digestion is "regular" after consuming all that Indian food! Hahaha... |
What are
Nematodes are the most numerous multicellular animals on earth. A handful of soil will contain thousands of the microscopic worms, many of them parasites of insects, plants or animals. Free-living species are abundant, including nematodes that feed on bacteria, fungi, and other nematodes, yet the vast majority of species encountered are poorly understood biologically. There are nearly 20,000 described species classified in the phylum Nemata
Nematodes are structurally simple organisms. Adult nematodes are comprised of approximately 1,000 somatic cells, and potentially hundreds of cells associated with the reproductive system . Nematodes have been characterized as a tube within a tube ; referring to the alimentary canal which extends from the mouth on the anterior end, to the anus located near the tail. Nematodes possess digestive, nervous, excretory, and reproductive systems, but lack a discrete circulatory or respiratory system. In size they range from 0.3 mm to over 8 meters |
It has been suggested that quasi-electrostatic electric fields from thunderclouds might produce whistler ducts by driving plasma interchange of geomagnetic flux tubes. Using lightning activity as a proxy for the presence of electrified clouds, the relation between thunderclouds and duct number was investigated through the study of two periods of 10 days, that is from June 13–22, 1993, and August 6–15, 1993. Typical duct numbers observed using NAA transmissions (24.0 kHz, Cutler, Maine) received at Faraday during the nights of June and August 1993 were ∼ 7, while the maximum duct numbers were 9–12. Duct numbers dropped down to zero or near zero during the day. Times of increased duct number could not be clearly associated with increased thunderstorm activity in the duct footprint region. Duct numbers observed on the path from NLK (24.8 kHz, Seattle, Washington) to Dunedin, New Zealand, were also studied, where very low thunderstorm activity levels imply that thundercloud-driven duct formation should not be significant. The typical nighttime peak was ∼ 5 at about 1000 UT (23 LT). The difference between duct numbers in areas with high thunderstorm activity and quiet areas might be thought to be due to thundercloud duct formation. However, the F region absorption on the NLK footprints at 1000UT (23 LT) in June was found to be equivalent to 0000 UT (20 LT) in June on the NAA duct footprints. The typical number of ducts observable on the NAA path at 0000 UT in June is ≈ 5, very similar to the number observed on NLK at 0930 UT. The results found in this study are consistent with the idea that ionospheric absorption is a significant influence on the number of ducts observed. It does not appear that quasi-electronstatic fields from thunderclouds play a significant role in the formation of plasmaspheric whistler ducts. The similarity in quiet time midlatitude duct nuumbers at these two different locations suggest a globally consistent duct formation mechanism, such as the interchange of magnetospheric tubes of plasma induced by spatially varying electric fields in the E region. |
poem index
About this poet
Born in Dublin, Ireland, on June 13, 1865, William Butler Yeats was the son of a well-known Irish painter, John Butler Yeats. He spent his childhood in County Sligo, where his parents were raised, and in London. He returned to Dublin at the age of fifteen to continue his education and study painting, but quickly discovered he preferred poetry. Born into the Anglo-Irish landowning class, Yeats became involved with the Celtic Revival, a movement against the cultural influences of English rule in Ireland during the Victorian period, which sought to promote the spirit of Ireland's native heritage. Though Yeats never learned Gaelic himself, his writing at the turn of the century drew extensively from sources in Irish mythology and folklore. Also a potent influence on his poetry was the Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, whom he met in 1889, a woman equally famous for her passionate nationalist politics and her beauty. Though she married another man in 1903 and grew apart from Yeats (and Yeats himself was eventually married to another woman, Georgie Hyde Lees), she remained a powerful figure in his poetry.
Yeats was deeply involved in politics in Ireland, and in the twenties, despite Irish independence from England, his verse reflected a pessimism about the political situation in his country and the rest of Europe, paralleling the increasing conservativism of his American counterparts in London, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. His work after 1910 was strongly influenced by Pound, becoming more modern in its concision and imagery, but Yeats never abandoned his strict adherence to traditional verse forms. He had a life-long interest in mysticism and the occult, which was off-putting to some readers, but he remained uninhibited in advancing his idiosyncratic philosophy, and his poetry continued to grow stronger as he grew older. Appointed a senator of the Irish Free State in 1922, he is remembered as an important cultural leader, as a major playwright (he was one of the founders of the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin), and as one of the very greatest poets—in any language—of the century. W. B. Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 and died in 1939 at the age of seventy-three.
When You are Old
W. B. Yeats, 1865 - 1939
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
This poem is in the public domain.
This poem is in the public domain.
W. B. Yeats
W. B. Yeats
The work of William Butler Yeats, born in 1865, was greatly influenced by the heritage and politics of Ireland.
by this poet
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well
We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of |
Who Owns The Zebra?
June 16, 2009
This famous puzzle was first published by Life magazine on December 17, 1962. It has been variously attributed to both Albert Einstein and Lewis Carroll, but the true author is not known. There are several versions; this is the original from Life:
1 There are five houses.
2 The Englishman lives in the red house.
3 The Spaniard owns the dog.
4 Coffee is drunk in the green house.
5 The Ukrainian drinks tea.
6 The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
7 The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
8 Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
9 Milk is drunk in the middle house.
10 The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11 The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
12 Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept.
13 The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
14 The Japanese smokes Parliaments.
15 The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
In the interest of clarity, it must be added that each of the five houses is painted a different color, and their inhabitants are of different national extractions, own different pets, drink different beverages and smoke different brands of American cigarettes.
Your task is to write a program to solve the puzzle and determine: Who drinks water? Who owns the zebra? When you are finished, you are welcome to read or run a suggested solution, or to post your own solution or discuss the exercise in the comments below.
About these ads
Pages: 1 2
6 Responses to “Who Owns The Zebra?”
1. Remco Niemeijer said
2. [...] Praxis – Who Owns The Zebra? By Remco Niemeijer In Today’s Programming Praxis problem we have to solve a logic puzzle. The provided solution uses a 182-line [...]
3. Remco Niemeijer said
import Data.List
import qualified Data.Map as M
type Grid = M.Map String (M.Map Int [String])
| PosLink (String, String) Int
| NextTo (String, String) (String, String)
| RightOf (String, String) (String, String)
deriving Eq
type Solver = ([Constraint], Grid)
addConstraint :: Constraint -> Solver -> Solver
runConstraint :: Constraint -> Grid -> Grid
runConstraint (PosLink (f1,v1) i) =
removeIf b a [notAt succ]
adjustOthers f k = M.mapWithKey (\k' v -> if k' == k then v else f v)
simplify :: Grid -> Grid
run :: Solver -> Solver
apply :: Solver -> Solver
solved :: M.Map k (M.Map k' [v]) -> Bool
solve :: Solver -> [String]
solved r ]
grid :: Grid
[words "Englishman Ukranian Norwegian Japanese Spaniard",
words "Old_Gold Kools Chesterfields Lucky_Strike Parliaments",
words "Coffee Tea Milk Orange_Juice Water",
words "Dog Snails Horse Fox Zebra",
words "Red Green Ivory Yellow Blue"]
problem :: Solver
problem = foldr addConstraint ([], grid)
PosLink ("drink", "Milk") 3,
PosLink ("owner", "Norwegian") 1,
main :: IO ()
main = mapM_ putStrLn $ solve problem
4. Remco Niemeijer said
import Data.List
indexOf xs x = head $ elemIndices x xs
nextTo :: Int -> Int -> Bool
nextTo a b = abs (a - b) == 1
rightOf :: Int -> Int -> Bool
rightOf a b = a == b + 1
options :: String -> [[String]]
options = permutations . words
solution :: [[String]]
cs <- options "red green ivory yellow blue",
let color = indexOf cs,
color "green" `rightOf` color "ivory",
os <- options "english spaniard ukranian norwegian japanese",
let owner = indexOf os,
owner "norwegian" == 0,
owner "english" == color "red",
owner "norwegian" `nextTo` color "blue",
ds <- options "coffee tea milk juice water",
let drinks = indexOf ds,
drinks "milk" == 2,
drinks "coffee" == color "green",
owner "ukranian" == drinks "tea",
ss <- options "old_gold kools chesterfields parliaments lucky_strike",
let smokes = indexOf ss,
smokes "kools" == color "yellow",
smokes "lucky_strike" == drinks "juice",
owner "japanese" == smokes "parliaments",
ps <- options "dog snails fox horse zebra",
let pet = indexOf ps,
owner "spaniard" == pet "dog",
smokes "old_gold" == pet "snails",
smokes "chesterfields" `nextTo` pet "fox",
smokes "kools" `nextTo` pet "horse"]
main :: IO ()
main = mapM_ print solution
5. RFH said
Leave a Reply
WordPress.com Logo
Twitter picture
Facebook photo
Google+ photo
Connecting to %s
Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.
Join 627 other followers
%d bloggers like this: |
The Clock Is Off: Bipolar Disorder and Circadian Rhythm
An off-kilter body clock can throw off our sleep-wake cycle, eating habits, body temperature and hormones–and mounting evidence suggests a malfunctioning clock may also underlie the mood cycles in bipolar disorder.
In a new study led by psychiatrist Alexander Niculescu of Indiana University, researchers found that children with bipolar disorder were likely to have a mutated RORB gene, which codes for a protein crucial to circadian clock function. The team’s previous work identified alterations to this gene and other clock genes in animal models of the disorder. In the new study, the scientists compared the genomes of 152 bipolar kids with those of 140 typical kids. (Children were studied because their moods cycle more rapidly than the moods of bipolar adults, and a quicker cycle suggests a stronger connection to the circadian clock.) The team found that the bipolar children were more likely to have one of four alterations to RORB , and the investigators suspect the mutations prevent the body from producing the correct amount of the protein to support normal clock function. [More]
The Clock Is Off: Bipolar Disorder and Circadian Rhythm
One Response to The Clock Is Off: Bipolar Disorder and Circadian Rhythm
1. Megan May 9, 2011 at 10:09 pm #
Great Article!
The connection between Circadian Rhythm and Bipolar Disorder is not new. Circadian Rhythm or “internal body clock” has been connected to Bipolar Disorder for many years, and several treatments like social Rhythm therapy are employed to help regulate the Circadian Rhythm or 24 hours internal body clock.
For more information on this therapy visit
Leave a Reply
* Copy This Password *
* Type Or Paste Password Here * |
Feb. 23, 2004
To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time
by Robert Herrick
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time," by Robert Herrick, from Selected Poems (Everyman's Library).
To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times, still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It's the birthday of Samuel Pepys, born in London (1633). He published two works in his lifetime—a report on a hospital and a partial history of the British Navy—but we know him today for his diary, which he kept from 1659 to 1669. He came from a lower-middle class family: his father was a tailor and his mother was a maid. He was a bright child, and he was mentored by his cousin, Edward Montagu, who was a friend of Oliver Cromwell. He got married when he was twenty-two and started working at a series of government jobs that allowed him to meet some of the most influential people of his time. He was twenty-six years old when he started writing his diary in 1659.
Today we have dozens of newspapers, magazines, and Web sites for future historians to sort through, but in Pepys's day only one newspaper was published in London and it was controlled by the government, so much of what we know about this period in history has been taken from Pepys's diary. He started the diary at the time of the Restoration in England—when Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth was on the verge of collapse and King Charles II was getting ready to return to power. Pepys wrote about historical events like the Great Plague of 1665, the Great Fire of 1666 and the Dutch attack on the Medway in 1667.
During the height of the Plague, as many as 10,000 Londoners died every week. Pepys wrote: "The nights (though much lengthened) are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before . . . my brewer's house shut up, and my baker with his whole family dead of the plague." Once, he took a walk through London, came back and wrote in his diary, "But now, how few people I see, and those walking like people that had taken leave of the world."
During the Great Fire of 1666, which burnt more than 400 acres of London buildings to the ground, Pepys wrote: "Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the River or bringing them into lighters that lay off. Poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats or clambering from one pair of stair by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons I perceive were loath to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till they were some of them burned, their wings, and fell down."
There were other important people in the seventeenth century who kept journals, but they didn't record personal details of their own lives like Pepys did. He wrote about everyday things like going to work, eating dinner, and taking dancing lessons. He was a friendly and talkative man who loved good food and theatre and nights on the town. He was a musician and often went to concerts in London. On one occasion, he scolded himself for being so susceptible to pleasure. Then he wrote, "However, music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is." He was continually resolving to quit drinking, but he never did. Once, he justified his decision to start drinking again by noting that the doctor to whom he had promised to quit had just died of the plague, and so he was free to break the promise.
He quit writing the diary in 1669, because his eyesight was failing and he was worried that he was going to go blind. He didn't go blind, but he never started writing in his diary again. In 1672, he was elected to Parliament, where he was accused of pro-Catholic sympathies and thrown in the Tower of London for a few months. When he died, he was best known for his contribution to the British Navy, for which he worked from 1684 to 1688. He made sweeping reforms during his time there, and probably did more than any other man to make the Navy the dominant international force it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Almost no one had heard of Pepys's diary in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He wrote it in a mixture of Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, German, shorthand, and his own secret code; and no one had tried to translate it until John Smith in the early nineteenth century. The first complete edition of the diary wasn't published until 1970. It fills nine volumes.
• “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
|
Mice With Lou Gehrig’s Disease Not Quite What the Doctors Ordered
The mice in which scientists expected to test treatments for Lou Gehrig’s disease turn out to have problems that could slow research, reported Alzforum, a research news site specializing in Alzheimer’s and related diseases. To the researchers’ surprise, the mice didn’t die of the spinal nerve disease. Instead, they succumbed to intestinal blockage.
“There were high expectations,” said Robert Baloh of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who made the new mice. “The problem is, they are still mice. Humans and mice, even if they have the same genetic mutation, get different diseases.”
Between 20,000 and 30,000 people in the U.S. have Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which kills nerve cells in the spine. It causes paralysis and death, typically within a few years. There is only one treatment, riluzole, which extends live by a couple of months.
Difficulties in transferring treatments from mice to people have long plagued scientists trying to treat Lou Gehrig’s and Alzheimer’s. That’s why researchers were excited when, five years ago, it was discovered that some people with Lou Gehrig’s have mutations in a gene called TDP-43. They rushed to make mice with the same mutations, thinking the animals would be an excellent new testing ground.
But problems, such as the intestinal blockage, are arising as scientists work to fully understand the new mice. Nonetheless, the mice could still be useful in testing drugs and should also help researchers understand just how Lou Gehrig’s kills nerve cells, experts say. And in the process, scientists are learning just how rigorously they have to characterize a given mouse model, and design treatment studies in those mice, to then have a fair shot at success in the clinic. |
Study sheds light on memory loss
Scientists have shed new light on how older people may lose their memory.
The development could aid research into treatments for age-related memory disorders.
Stress and memory
Many believe that stress is bad for our brains especially as we get older.
Now University researchers have shown how two receptors in older brains react to a stress hormone called cortisol.
This has been linked to increasing forgetfulness as we age.
While we know that stress hormones affect memory, this research explains how the receptors they engage with can switch good memory to poorly-functioning memory in old age.
Dr Joyce Yau
University's Centre of Cardiovascular Science
Stress hormone receptors
The study, by the University of Edinburgh, found that one receptor was activated by low levels of cortisol, which helped memory.
However, once levels of this stress hormone were too high they spilled over onto a second receptor.
This activated brain processes that contribute to memory impairment.
The study
The study found that high levels of the stress hormone in aged mice made them less able to remember how to navigate a maze.
The memory recall problem was reversed when the receptor linked to poor memory was blocked.
The research helps explain why too much stress over a prolonged period interferes with the normal processes in storing everyday memories.
This is despite the fact that a little bit of stress can help us better remember emotional memories.
We now know that lowering the levels of these stress hormones will prevent them from activating a receptor in the brain that is bad for memory. Understanding the mechanisms in the brain, which affect memory as we age, will help us to find ways to combat conditions linked to memory loss.
Dr Joyce Yau
University's Centre of Cardiovascular Science
The study was funded by the Medical Research Council.
It has been published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
This research highlights some interesting, original concepts relating to why memory loss occurs in old age. With people living ever longer, the MRC is really focussing on research which allows elderly people not just to survive, but also to stay healthy.
Professor Chris Kennard
Chairman of the Medical Research Council's Neuroscience and Mental Health Board
Potential drug treatment
The researchers are currently investigating a new chemical compound which blocks an enzyme - 11beta-HSD1 - that is involved in producing stress hormones within cells.
They hope this could be used to develop a drug treatment to slow the normal decline in memory associated with ageing or even improve memory in the already very old.
This research is supported by a Seeding Drug Discovery Award from the Wellcome Trust.
Related links
Accessibility menu |
Gentoo Wiki ArchivesGentoo Wiki
Zeroconf provides a simple way to network several computers without DHCP/DNS servers. It is a set of techniques to assign an IP address, provide name resolution and service discovery. It is most useful for ad-hoc networks (LAN-Party, Meeting, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc).
In this HOWTO we'll use the Avahi implementation of the protocols. We'll set up automatic IP address configuration and name resolution.
The following packages are needed:
The following use flags should be set:
There is not much configuration needed but as the documentation is sparse you need to know where to look. First edit /etc/conf.d/net (replace eth0 with your interface):
File: /etc/conf.d/net
modules=( "autoipd" )
config_eth0=( "autoipd" )
If you want to try DHCP before getting an IP address with avahi use the following (useful for laptops in different environments):
config_eth0=( "dhcp" )
fallback_eth0=( "autoipd" )
If you use the second configuration you may want to reduce the timeout for the DHCP client. Therefore see /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf.sample for dhclient.
sys-auth/nss-mdns provides functionality to hook into the name resolution process, so that zeroconf .local addresses are checked before using normal DNS. To enable .local name resolution, you need to edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf:
File: /etc/nsswitch.conf
Change the following
hosts: files dns
hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4
or, if you also want IPv6 support, to
hosts: files mdns_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns
Now add the relevant daemons to the runlevels:
# rc-update add avahi-daemon default
Start Avahi
To immediately make use of Avahi do the following as root:
# /etc/init.d/net.eth0 restart
# /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon start
Now you should have a 169.254.* IP address (try ifconfig). Try to ping <yourhostname>.local to see if name resolution for the .local domain works.
Advertise Service
To advertise a service, create a file in /etc/avahi/services. For example, to advertise your http server, create file /etc/avahi/services/http.service with the following contents:
<name replace-wildcards="yes">HTTP Server on %h.</name>
Scan for Services
To scan your network for advertised services, you can download mdns-scan from
This article is a bit short and could use some improvements:
Retrieved from ""
Last modified: Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:46:00 +1000 Hits: 7,681
Created by, Luxury Homes Australia |
Decrease Lethal Smog Output
Smog is the type of air pollution caused by ground-level ozone, which is formed by a reaction of nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, carbon monoxide and methane in the presence of sunlight. These pollutants are mostly produced by emissions from industrial facilities and electric utilities, motor vehicle exhaust, gasoline vapors, and chemical solvents. Smog affects humans in many ways and are a large issue in many areas.
In my home county, Chester County, PA, we are already above the existing limits and we are not alone: 322 US counties are above the limit. In many cities, people have died from smog related lung problems. In fact, some studies say 4% of deaths in the US are smog related. In humans smog decreases lung capacity and lung elasticity, and aggravates cases of asthma. It may also lead to 10-40% growth loss, and premature aging. Thousands of people in the US suffer from the effects of smog every year, with children being particularly at risk. In addition, it can kill plants, causing up to 30% less crop yield. It can lead to reduced tree growth, visibly injured leaves, and increased vulnerability to disease, insect damage and weather.
It is time to demand that the smog limits be tightened. I agree with what the EPA is now trying to do: they are proposing lowering the limit on smog-causing particles from 75 parts per million to 60-70 parts per million, to be phased in over the next two decades. We need to act now, because the EPA makes their decision on the issue in August 2010. To do this they require our assistance, because large companies just aren't going to stand aside, they are going to try and stop the law from being passed. This is because it would force them to invest in filtering technology called scrubbers and that would be very costly. If this law is passed 12,000 premature deaths per year would be avoided.
So let them know how we feel! If we all stand together we can save many lives, maybe even our own.
If you'd like you could also send a letter to the director of the EPA. A sample text is below.
Dear Ms. Jackson:
As someone who cares about keeping our planet clean, I am deeply concerned by the amount of pollution we produce. I am particularly concerned by the amount of smog we have produced. This smog can be harmful in many ways. Sometimes it can be fatal to human beings and other animals. In minor cases it might cause throat irritation, but in major cases it can cause lung cancer, asthma, bronchitis, heart attacks, and premature death. It can also cause damage to crops and plants. For all these reasons, I strongly urge you to adopt the proposed new EPA regulations tightening the limit on smog-producing pollutants.
Thank you for considering my comments.
Max Malarkey T/E Middle School Berwyn, PA
To review the proposed regulations, and submit a comment directly to the EPA, go to:
A recent study shows the harmful effects of smog on human health:
No comments yet.
join the discussion
Recent signatures
• username
Vera Ramon, Italy
1 year ago Comments: -
• username
Nancy Roussy, Canada
1 year ago Comments: -
• username
Michelle Barton, United States
5 years ago Comments: -
See more
Petition highlights
There are no highlights yet. |
Wondering Why?
Why Do Christians Celebrate Christmas?
Why Do Christians Celebrate Christmas?
There are ongoing debates whether Jesus Christ was born on the 25th of December (Christmas Day) or not. Some experts believe that the real birth date of Christ is still unknown even today. Christmas is celebrated once a year and is considered a very special day by many (especially Christians). This is a day of thanksgiving for the birth of Christ and what he did for the world.
Although the importance of the date is an issue, the symbolic value of the festivities is enough to make anyone excited. People from around the world celebrate Christmas with their family and friends. Decorating the Christmas tree and presenting gifts to each other is the norm during this day until the New Year. The ‘real reason, for the celebrations is to accept the greatest gift given to man, which is Jesus Christ.
He was born as a man in Bethlehem, to atone for the sins of each and every one of us. Christmas is a very special day not only because it represents the birth of Christ, but because of the effort that everyone does during this time of the year. Many link Christmas with the winter solstice. The Romans celebrate the solstice in honor of their god Saturn. The day was called Saturnalia and is the most celebrated time of the year, just like Christmas. It is celebrated from the 17th to the 25th of December.
While many believe that it is inappropriate to celebrate Christmas the way ‘people, celebrate them. They believed that Christmas should be celebrated in prayer and not merry making. Still, the majority of Christians celebrate Christmas with the intention to have fun and show their love ones how special they are to them. You don’t need a particular day to show people that you care and love them. You need to do that everyday, just like what Christ did for the whole world.
Related Topics : , ,
Do you think the article can be improved? Share Your Expertise
|
Prostate Cancer: Get the Facts on Symptoms and Treatment
Prostate Cancer
Medical Author:
Medical Editor:
Prostate cancer facts*
*Prostate cancer facts medical author:
• The prostate is a gland that is a part of the male reproductive system that wraps around the male urethra near the bladder
• Common problems are BPH (Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia), acute and chronic bacterial prostatitis and chronic prostatitis (non-bacterial)
• Prostate cancer is common in men over 50, especially in African-Americans and in men who eat fatty food and/or have a father or brother with prostate cancer
• Symptoms of prostate problems (and prostate cancer) include urinary problems (little or no urine output, difficulty starting (straining) or stopping the urine stream, frequent urination, dribbling, pain or burning during urination), erectile dysfunction, painful ejaculation, blood in urine or semen and/or deep back, hip, pelvic or abdominal pain; other symptoms may include weight loss, bone pain and lower extremity swelling
• Prostate cancer is definitively diagnosed by tissue biopsy; initial studies may include a rectal exam, ultrasound and PSA (prostate-specific antigen) levels
• The diagnosis of leukemia is supported by findings of the medical history and examination, and examining blood and bone marrow samples under a microscope.
• Treatments for prostate cancer may include surveillance, surgery, radiation therapy, and hormone therapy
• PSA testing is considered to be yearly PSA tests; not all agree this should be done
• Identify prostate problems early is a way to reduce future prostate problems
What is prostate cancer?
Prostate cancer is cancer of prostate gland. The prostate gland is a walnut-sized gland present only in men found in the pelvis, wrapped around the urethra (the tube through which urine exits the body). The prostate gland secretes part of the liquid portion of the semen, or seminal fluid, which carries sperm made by the testes. The fluid is essential to reproduction.
Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer that develops in men other than skin cancers, and is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in men. In 2013 the American Cancer Society estimated over 238,000 men were newly diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 29,000 men died from the disease -- though many of them had lived with the disease for years prior to their deaths.
Prostate cancer is comprised nearly always of adenocarcinoma cells -- cells which arise from glandular tissue. Cancer cells are named according to the organ in which they originate no matter where in the body we find such cells.
Medically Reviewed by a Doctor on 9/4/2014
Patient Comments
Viewers share their comments
Prostate Cancer - Symptoms Question: The symptoms of prostate cancer can vary greatly from patient to patient. What were your symptoms at the onset of your disease?
Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood tests and Digital Rectal Exams (DRE) are essential for prostate health.
Surviving Prostate Cancer
One Patient's Story
Benjamin Miller* was shocked to learn he had prostate cancer.
"I had absolutely no family history of prostate cancer," Miller says. "I was very active, had no symptoms, and had an excellent diet."
Miller has since spent a great deal of time over the past five years mentoring men who have been recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, and although he generally avoids suggesting one treatment option over another, he spends even more time answering the questions he says that doctors won't answer. |
The Children of Ash: Cosmology and the Viking Universe
The Children of Ash: Cosmology and the Viking Universe
Lecture by Neils Price
Given at Cornell University, on September 25, 2012
Professor Neil Price (Archaeology, University of Aberdeen) delivers three lectures focusing on the fundamental role that narrative, storytelling and dramatisation played in the mindset of the Viking Age (8th-11th centuries), occupying a crucial place not only in the cycles of life but particularly in the ritual responses to dying and the dead.
Early medieval Scandinavians’ attitudes to death provide a window on the Viking mind, and they were monumentalised in some of the most spectacular burials known to archaeology. A study of these complex and spectacular funeral rituals is not only fascinating in its own right, but is inevitably also a meditation on this particular culture’s responses to the human condition. The Vikings’ unique view of the world can provide genuinely deep perspectives on the fundamentals of life, on the fears of mortality that confronted them as they still confront us.
Excerpt: Thirty years ago, the focus was very much was on the material world of the early north, whereas I am going to be talking about the intangible life of the Vikings: the life of the mind, the human condition. What I am really going to be talking about throughout these lectures is stories, the power of stories, and the role that narrative played in the life of the Vikings, its influence on their perception of the world in which they understood themselves to move.
Sharan Newman |
The Bulletin
Can China vacuum away its smog problem?
Posting in Cancer
China's latest smog emergency is paralyzing local economies and putting people at risk of shortened life spans and even cancer. And it's not just limited to one or two cities; the smog problem is so vast you can see it from space.
So how can the smog be eliminated? The main answer is to dramatically reduce coal use. The Chinese government has already announced steps to do that. But it will be a slow transition away from coal. Chinese cities need solutions now.
Enter Dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde.
He recently unveiled a new electronic vacuum cleaner that does this:
Smog by Studio Roosgaarde from Dezeen on Vimeo.
It literally sucks smog particles to the ground by creating an electromagnetic field using cooper coils. The idea is to deploy the technology in public spaces throughout smoggy Chinese cities to provide sunny oases of clean air that are 50-60 meters high.
Here's how it works, as The Verge reports:
The "vacuum" consists of a series of electrodes connected to a high-voltage power supply and placed a few centimeters above the ground. This creates a weak electrostatic field that imbues all nearby air and smog particles with a positive charge. A grounded device then pulls these particles to the ground, where they can be collected and disposed as normal waste.
But if it sounds like a crazy idea, it's one that the Chinese aren't ignoring. According to The Verge, Roosegaarde already has a working prototype that can purify 28,000 cubic meters "using less energy than a typical incandescent light bulb." And now he has signed a memorandum of understanding with the mayor of Beijing to begin testing the technology in a public park within a year.
But while its a fascinating use of technology and could provide much needed relief to Chinese suffering during extreme smog days, this is just a small patch over a much larger problem that will take time and billions of dollars to reverse.
Read more: Dezeen, The Verge
Photo: Flickr/Nicolò Lazzati
— By on October 31, 2013, 10:33 PM PST
Tyler Falk
Contributing Editor
|
NASA Spinoff
Air Purifiers Eliminate Pathogens, Preserve Food
Originating Technology/NASA Contribution In order for NASA astronauts to explore the solar system, they will need to travel not just as pioneers but as settlers, learning to live off the land. Current mission needs have NASA scientists exploring ways to extract oxygen from the lunar soil and potable water from human
Fabrics Protect Sensitive Skin from UV Rays
Originating Technology/NASA Contribution Beginning in 1968, NASA began researching garments to help astronauts stay cool. The Agency designed the Apollo space suits to use battery-powered pumps to circulate cool water through channels in the inner layers of the garments. This led to commercial cooling vests for patients with heat control
Phase Change Fabrics Control Temperature
Originating Technology/NASA Contribution Since designing the first space suits in the 1950s, NASA has been interested in developing materials to keep astronauts comfortable and cool. In order to protect an astronaut from the extreme temperatures in space, engineers at Johnson Space Center created liquid-cooled garments that run water in small channels
Tiny Devices Project Sharp, Colorful Images Consumer, Home, and Recreation
Originating Technology/NASA Contribution Johnson Space Center, NASA’s center for the design of systems for human space flight, began developing high-resolution visual displays in the 1990s for telepresence, which uses virtual reality technology to immerse an operator into the environment of a robot in another location. Telepresence is used by several
Aerogels Insulate Missions and Consumer Products
Originating Technology/NASA ContributionRecently, NASA’s Stardust mission used a block of aerogel to catch high-speed comet particles and specks of interstellar dust without damaging them, by slowing down the particles from their high velocity with minimal heating or other effects that would cause their physical alteration. This amazing accomplishment, bringing space
Space Research Fortifies Nutrition Worldwide
Originating Technology/NASA ContributionIn addition to the mammoth engineering challenge posed by launching a cargo-laden craft into space for a long-distance mission, keeping the crews safe and healthy for these extended periods of time in space poses further challenges, problems for which NASA scientists are constantly seeking new answers. Obstacles include
Outboard Motor Maximizes Power and Dependability
Originating Technology/NASA ContributionDeveloped by Jonathan Lee, a structural materials engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center, and PoShou Chen, a scientist with Huntsville, Alabama-based Morgan Research Corporation, MSFC-398 is a high-strength aluminum alloy able to operate at high temperatures. The invention was conceived through a program with the Federal government and
Historic Partnership Captures Our Imagination
Originating Technology/NASA ContributionTimeless, beautiful, and haunting images: A delicate blue marble floating in the black sea of space; a brilliant white astronaut suit, visor glowing gold, the entire Earth as a backdrop; the Moon looming large and ghostly, pockmarked with sharp craters, a diaphanous grey on deep black. Photographs from
Immersive Photography Renders 360º Views
Originating Technology/NASA ContributionNASA uses 3-D immersive photography and video for guiding space robots, in the space shuttle and International Space Station programs, cryogenic wind tunnels, and for remote docking of spacecraft. It allows researchers to view situations with the same spatial awareness they would have if they were present. With
Space Age Swimsuit Reduces Drag, Breaks Records
Originating Technology/NASA ContributionA space shuttle and a competitive swimmer have a lot more in common than people might realize: Among other forces, both have to contend with the slowing influence of drag. NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate focuses primarily on improving flight efficiency and generally on fluid dynamics, especially the |
Home:Zoo:Mammals:Hoofed (Even-toed):Camel Family:Dromedarian Camel
Photo Panel
Dromedarian Camel Photos
Single Hump
Click Here to Use This Photo
Quick Facts
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Camelidae
Genus: Camelus
Species: dromedarius
Height: 84 inches
Length: 84 - 121 inches
Weight: 1000 - 1500 lbs
Gestation: 455 days
Offspring: 1
Life Span: 40 years
Top Speed (Ground): 20 mph
Sponsored Links
Dromedarian Camel
Camelus dromedarius
Also Called: Arabian Camel or Ship of the desert
The most distinctive feature of the dromedarian camel is its hump. Unlike the bactrian camel, the dromedarian camel only has one. This hump, contrary to popular belief, is designed to store fat (not water) for nourishment when food is scarceWhat does scarce mean?. However, it is true that dromedarian camels can go several days without water. In addition to the water that is normally stored in the body, the bactrian camel stores about 1.5 gallons in special sacks around its stomach. When water is available, they drink only to replace the water they have lost. If the dromedarian camel has used up all its water reserves, it will need to drink about 30 gallons of water to fill up. This only takes about 10 minutes. The camel is extremely well suited to water conservation. It sweats very little, emits very little water as a waste fluid, and can change its body temperature threshold depending on the ambientWhat does ambient mean? temperature to help contain water loss. Dromedarian camels are usually a caramel or sandy brown color with hair that ranges from short to long depending on the season. They have a long curve neck and a deep, narrow chest. To protect themselves from sand and the harsh conditions they live in, they bushy eyebrows, a double row of long eyelashes, hair inside the ear, and they can tightly close their nostrils and lips to keep out flying sand. They have very tough mouths that are not bothered by eating hard, sharp objects such as thorns. Dromedarian camels have feet that are adapted to moving on sand and do not handle muddy or slick conditions well. Dromedarian camels are unknown in the wild and are considered completely domesticated.
Dromedarian camels are classified as herbivoresWhat does herbivores mean?. They prefer vegetation that is prickly, dry, salty, and/or bitter. They forageWhat does forage mean? for food and travel long distances and eat sparingly off of plants in their range. This reduces the strain on the ecosystem where they live.
The dromedarian camel lives primarily in African, Indian, and Middle Eastern deserts.
Other than man, the primary predatorWhat does predator mean? of the camel is the tiger.
Dromedarian camels travel the desert in caravans made up of 6 to 20 camels. These groups are composed of an adult male, several females and their associated young. When traveling, the females lead and the male directs from the rear. Normally, dromedarian camels are very placidWhat does placid mean? and usually only become aggressive during mating season. Dromedarian camels have been domesticated for the last 4000 years and have played a vital part in desert cultures.
Young camels are able to stand and walk when they are only a few hours old. They will stay with their mother for 1 to 2 years.
Related Products
Camel Toys (20)
Camel Apparel (3)
Camel Books (3)
Camel Decor & Kitchen (0)
Camel Jewelry (4)
© 2014 theBIGzoo
32214 Tamina Rd, Magnolia TX 77354 |
Friday, 1 October 2010
Poisonous Snake Bites - What Not To Do
Throughout the world there is an average of 2.5 million venomous snake bites each year. Of those, 125,000 result in death, largely because anti-venom is not readily available in the areas that most venomous snake bites occur. If you are in a situation in which yourself or someone you know has been bitten, it is wise to have an idea of the things to do and not to do to lessen the severity of the bite.
In the developed areas of the world, very few deaths occur due to snake bites as more often than not, the antivenoms are on hand at medical facilities. The under developed world is quite the opposite as antivenoms are quite expensive to keep on hand, especially in an area where the average person cannot afford to pay for it when they need it. India has more deaths by snakes than any other country combined.
So, back to the situation when you are someone else has been bit by a venomous snake. The first thing you want to do is get away from the snake, obviously the only thing worse than one bite is two. Now that you are safely away, let's go over a few things that you should not do if there has been a snake bite as many of the old fashion techniques that have worked in the movies are now known to be false and in some cases can make the end result even worse.
Things Not to Do: Do not do these things
1. Panic: This is tough, but panicking will only result in high heart rates and faster spreading of the venom. The best thing to do is to lie down and take deep breaths, but try to keep the bite lower than the heart. By keeping still, this allows the venom to localize and not spread as much.
2. Suck: Do not attempt to suck out venom unless you do it on yourself. Having a person suck on a wound of another person is a good recipe for infection. If done immediately and does not hinder the time of getting medical attention, a person can try to suck out venom on themselves but it is said they will not get much out and probably not worth the effort. A suction device can be used but again will not remove a significant amount of venom.
3. Cut: Do not cut the snake bite to extract venom. This may cause tissue damage and will increase blood rate around the bite, making things worse. Again, cutting also brings upon the threat of infection.
4. Tourniquet: While it is advised to place a constricting band above and below the bite, placing a tourniquet on the area is highly unadvised and can result in the loss of a limb, and possibly a life.
5. Ice: Do not cool the area to prevent swelling. The area needs to swell and should not be hindered. You should remove all rings and bracelets, even if they are not in the bite area, as you never know how and where the toxins will affect you.
6. Stimulant: Do not administer any medicines unless a doctor tells you to.
There are other things that should be avoided, but most are common sense. Here is a quick list of the things that you should do: Keep calm and get away from the snake. Keep bite lower than the heart and apply a snug band two inches above and below the bite, but do not make it so tight as to cut off circulation. Slowing the venom moving through the tissue is the goal. Immobilize the bite area to reduce the spread of venom with a splint. If there is a long distance to travel, help will be needed to minimize movement. Contact emergency services as soon as possible and get medical attention where you will be administered antivenoms.
While it is always good to know what to do if you get bit by a rattlesnake, the best thing you can do is avoid getting bit all together. The most definite thing you can do is avoid poisonous snake territory. Of course, this is not always that easy as said. A good way to prevent rattle snake bites is to wear snake protective gear. Snake protection comes in many different forms, and what is best for you will vary with your situation. Snake boots, gaiters, chaps, pants, and gloves are all available for purchase. You can learn more about snake protective gear and the best brands of each at this site:
Article Source:
1 comment:
1. The post is good by having the effective content regarding the snake bite along with its treatment which must to have a look at which helps to get awareness on it, Thanks for giving out the valuable content. |
William Hogeland: Madison-Hamilton Financial Fight Is Often Misunderstood
William Hogeland is the author of “Founding Finance: How Debt, Speculation, Foreclosures, Protests, and Crackdowns Made Us a Nation.” The opinions expressed are his own.
Americans across the political spectrum who object to intimate links between government and high finance have often upheld James Madison as their champion.
Conservatives who condemn the Federal Reserve, trade regulations and the tax code for strangling markets and restricting freedom often cite Madison as a founding libertarian. Liberals criticizing connections between government and the investing class for concentrating wealth into an ever smaller segment of society look to Madison as a defender of more democratic approaches.
Madison, a Virginia congressman and framer of the U.S. Constitution, went on to serve two terms as president. His clash with Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in the 1790s has long been seen as an expression of the starkest ideological division attending the nation’s birth -- a division that persists in U.S. politics. But the fight between the two men was weirder, more complicated and ultimately more revealing of the relationship between finance and the American founding than is usually understood....
comments powered by Disqus
Subscribe to our mailing list |
This event has already ended.
Try our search page to find other current Louisville events.
How do we know our place in the Universe? Where are we going?
"The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons." -- former Louisvillian Edwin
Powell Hubble (1889 - 1953)
Starting with a surprisingly accurate measurement of the size of the
Earth by ancient Greeks, Dr. Stanek will discuss how we gradually came to
appreciate the vast size of the Universe, and where our Solar System
evolution of the Solar System and the Universe. After the lecture, telescopes
will be available to view the night sky, weather permitting. This event is
suitable for schoolchildren age about 10 and up.
Gheens Science Hall and Rauch Planetarium
106 West Brandeis Avenue, Univ. Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
Phone: 5028526790
Price: free |
What's in a name? More than you think, experts say
Jul 11, 2013
Someone named Jacqueline or Steven will generally fare better in life than Latrina or Butch, say researchers, who also point to a phenomenon whereby the world's fastest man is called Bolt, a TV weather forecaster Sarah Blizzard, and the local librarian Mrs Storey.
"Your name can influence the assumptions that other people make about your character and background, and thus the chances you are given in life," says Richard Wiseman—a case in point, he's a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire.
"It can also be a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. If your name sounds intelligent, successful and attractive, you are more likely to act those things."
A flurry of studies in recent years have examined names as predictors of success.
They found that girls with perceived "feminine" names like Isabella or Kayla are less likely to pursue maths or science than those named Taylor or Madison, and that pupils with perceived "lower status" names get worse grades than others from the same background but with posher names.
"Names can really make a difference in children's lives," Northwestern University researcher David Figlio, who has written several papers on the topic, told AFP.
Research has pointed to a clear, though probably subconscious, tendency for people to prefer things that resemble themselves—including the letters of their names.
Denises are more likely to become dentists than dermatologists, while Lawrences are overrepresented among lawyers and Raymonds among radiologists.
The term "nominative determinism" was coined by the journal New Scientist in 1994, which cited a paper on urinary incontinence by authors Splatt and Weedon.
There is even a Latin proverb for the phenomenon: Nomen est omen—and the examples are bountiful:
- Racing driver Scott Speed,
- TV gardening presenter Bob Flowerdew,
- Singer Bill Medley,
- Golfer Tiger Woods,
- Poet William Wordsworth,
- Former White House spokesman Larry Speakes, and
- Sue Yoo, a lawyer.
There are many ironic examples as well: former Archbishop of Manila Cardinal (Jaime) Sin, pain relief expert Dr Richard Payne and the British urologist Nicolas Burns-Cox.
Sometimes a name can denote disappointment.
Psychologist Ernest L Able (who says, yes, he is an earnest person) cites research showing that professional baseball players whose first or last names begin with a "K", the letter that denotes a strikeout, are more likely to strike out than others.
Students pursuing MBA degrees whose names begin with a C or D have lower averages than those whose names begin with A or B, and one study even suggested that people whose names spell out negative words like P.I.G. were more likely to die prematurely, while those with positive initials like V.I.P live longer.
In a further twist, people named Louis are disproportionally represented in the city of St Louis, and statistics show that people even tend to marry partners whose first or last names resemble their own.
Much of the evidence is anecdotal, and there are many people who succeed despite potentially problematic names—take Barack Hussein Obama who joked in 2008: "I got my middle name from somebody who obviously didn't think I'd ever run for president."
Others dealt a wildcard include celebrity children Apple, Jermajesty, Moon Unit and Dweezil. And spare a thought for Stan Still, Justin Case and Barb Dwyer. No kidding.
"Names make impressions, just as the way you clothe your (child) or, the you way you groom them makes an impression," insisted University of California emeritus psychology professor Albert Mehrabian, who authored a book on "Beneficial and Harmful Baby Names".
"People with 'undesirable' names do get treated differently," he said—people give the same photograph a different score for attractiveness based only on the name, and the same exam paper with different signatures will be given two different marks.
"I attribute this to low teacher and societal expectations for the children," said Figlio.
Mehrabian, who conducted a more than 10-year survey in the United States on the "attractiveness" of names, lists Elizabeth, Jacqueline, Holly, Ann and Mary as the top five names for girls and James, Steven, Christopher, Kenneth and Thomas for boys.
At the bottom of the list were Elvira, Eula, Shar, Zoila and Latrina for girls and Butch, Rufus, Ozzie, Jock and Rip for boys.
Mehrabian has advice for all new parents: "Never spell a name in an unconventional way... the desirability profile drops drastically."
"Don't try to be clever or artistic," he added. "Overall I would say avoid unusual names."
Whatever the chosen name, we already know the new royal baby will be called "His/Her Royal Highness Prince/Princess (name) of Cambridge".
"A royal prince or princess is immediately going to have a social identity that is quite distinct from his or her name," said Figlio.
"I would be stunned if names matter all that much for the children of the extremely famous."
Explore further: New poll reveals what Americans fear most
add to favorites email to friend print save as pdf
Related Stories
People choose baby names to be fashionable
Jul 04, 2013
(Phys.org) —Parents these days name their babies Jacob or Isabella instead of John or Mary for similar reasons that people decades ago bought cars with tailfins instead of Edsels—because they are fashionable, ...
What's in a name?
Jun 05, 2013
'William' most popular medieval name
Apr 18, 2011
Recommended for you
Data indicate there is no immigration crisis
9 hours ago
Combating bullying in New Zealand
12 hours ago
Why has Halloween infiltrated Australian culture?
14 hours ago
The hidden world of labor trafficking
15 hours ago
User comments : 10
Adjust slider to filter visible comments by rank
Display comments: newest first
1.2 / 5 (12) Jul 11, 2013
And next, in today's horoscope, those born on this date are more apt to be brave, clean and reverent. This is considered "science"?
Well, then, in order to prove that your intellect, creativity, productivity and talent have less to do with your success in a given field than your name, everyone should just name their sons and daughters Barack and Michelle and wait a few years. It worked for them.
1.7 / 5 (12) Jul 11, 2013
May I suggest an alternative hypothesis? If your parents name you Latrina, then they probably don't know the definition of the word latrine. If they don't know what a latrine is, then they're probably morons. If they're morons, then for reasons of genetics and upbringing, Latrina is also likely to be a moron. And if Latrina is a moron, then she probably won't be too successful in life. In addition, the number of women named Latrina is probably too small to constitute a statistically-significant sample, anyway.
(No need to point to the possible Greek origin of the name or its meaning. I'd bet not one in a hundred people who name their daughter Latrina knows of that Greek origin).
Repeat this "experiment" while controlling for parents' education, IQ, income, etc., and then we'll see.
Commenter geokstr is right: this is marginally superior to astrology and numerology.
1.3 / 5 (12) Jul 12, 2013
Unfortunately, this study does not take culture into consideration.
In the US, names such as Latrina and Shanequa and Shaquille and Ladanian are given to black children by their parents not because they have any intrinsic, familial, ethnic or traditional meaning, but because they just like the way it sounds. Unfortunately for the kids, whatever their abilities or interests of talents, they are associated with stereotypes of the underclass for the rest of their lives.
It's been said and proven for centuries, if you want to be successful, emulate the behaviors of those already successful. It might not be very cool, and maybe it's unfair, but not naming your child John or Jennifer or something reasonably traditional, especially in a majority white, Christian, ethnic European country could have profound negative impacts on their lives.
Let's see a study of how boys named Charles or girls named Pamela do in India, or Egypt. How do you think a kid named Barry would do in Indonesia?
1.2 / 5 (11) Jul 12, 2013
It's only a matter of time before my son Trajan will be emperor of the world...
1.4 / 5 (11) Jul 12, 2013
Your second comment is misguided. The article states that "People with 'undesirable' names do get treated differently" and "Names make impressions, just as the way you clothe your (child) or, the you way you groom them makes an impression", so culture is actually not ignored.
The problem is that these "studies" don't take into consideration selection effects. Education, intelligence, income, class--these factors influence the names people give their children. How many upper-middle class parents with masters degrees name their child Latrina or Butch? How many poor, uneducated single moms give their children these names? There's your selection bias.
Culture and prejudice play a role for sure, but to ignore selection effects and assume a non-existing ceteris paribus is stupid and/or dishonest.
1 / 5 (9) Jul 12, 2013
The worst teacher I ever had was Miss Schoolcraft.
1 / 5 (1) Jul 13, 2013
I'd be concerned about what a name means to the individual. How many times does one hear a name called which might be the same yours, say in supermarket or some other crowd...you (and others) turn your head. You react. What do you feel, I mean really FEEL, when you see your name 'up in lights' or connected to some other event? We seem to give our names a property all of their own, almost as if they were 'alive'. I think names go deeper than this and I have written books about synchronicities, some of the content being about names. But then names are rooted in Language, I was surprised to to find synchronicites there too, that is English and Thai languages.
Having said that I also found that certains things only applied to original full names and not shortened and changed names, it was all quite uncanny. Much of this involved a letter count, 'a' = 1, 'b' = 2 and so on. I would not have believed had I not done the work myself.
One has to be careful, names can be false, film stars etc.
not rated yet Jul 13, 2013
Always wondered why the gearbox in my car is always packing it in.
not rated yet Jul 14, 2013
"Albert" is a good name for a university professor.
not rated yet Jul 14, 2013
That so? You black? I'm not, so I can't speak with any authority, but if I had to guess, it would be for reasons like: "people I know and respect name their kids such", and "this is a way to identify my ethnicity". Underclass doesn't mean stupid. |
Emergence Of Modern China: II
The Taiping Rebellion, 1851-64
During the mid-nineteenth century, China's problems were compounded by natural calamities of unprecedented proportions, including droughts, famines, and floods. Government neglect of public works was in part responsible for this and other disasters, and the Qing administration did little to relieve the widespread misery caused by them. Economic tensions, military defeats at Western hands, and anti-Manchu sentiments all combined to produce widespread unrest, especially in the south. South China had been the last area to yield to the Qing conquerors and the first to be exposed to Western influence. It provided a likely setting for the largest uprising in modern Chinese history--the Taiping Rebellion.
The Taiping rebels were led by Hong Xiuquan ( 1814-64), a village teacher and unsuccessful imperial examination candidate. Hong formulated an eclectic ideology combining the ideals of pre-Confucian utopianism with Protestant beliefs. He soon had a following in the thousands who were heavily anti-Manchu and anti-establishment. Hong's followers formed a military organization to protect against bandits and recruited troops not only among believers but also from among other armed peasant groups and secret societies. In 1851 Hong Xiuquan and others launched an uprising in Guizhou () Province. Hong proclaimed the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace ( or Taiping Tianguo) with himself as king. The new order was to reconstitute a legendary ancient state in which the peasantry owned and tilled the land in common; slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium smoking, footbinding, judicial torture, and the worship of idols were all to be eliminated. The Taiping tolerance of the esoteric rituals and quasi-religious societies of south China--themselves a threat to Qing stability--and their relentless attacks on Confucianism--still widely accepted as the moral foundation of Chinese behavior--contributed to the ultimate defeat of the rebellion. Its advocacy of radical social reforms alienated the Han Chinese scholar-gentry class. The Taiping army, although it had captured Nanjing and driven as far north as Tianjin (), failed to establish stable base areas. The movement's leaders found themselves in a net of internal feuds, defections, and corruption. Additionally, British and French forces, being more willing to deal with the weak Qing administration than contend with the uncertainties of a Taiping regime, came to the assistance of the imperial army. Before the Chinese army succeeded in crushing the revolt, however, 14 years had passed, and well over 30 million people were reported killed.
The Self-Strengthening Movement
[ Table of Contents | Timeline | Map of China | Modern China | Modern China: III ] |
Editor’s Note: Lost amid the U.S. news media’s focus on important matters, like Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s latest outburst, has been any interest in trivial questions, such as how George W. Bush has trampled the U.S. Constitution, stampeded the nation into a disastrous war and walked all over Congress.
In this guest essay, the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland takes a stab at getting the American people to pay some attention to the future of the Republic:
Yoo boldly asserts that the president's power during wartime is nearly unlimited. For example, he argues that Congress has no right to pass laws governing the interrogations of enemy combatants and the commander in chief can ignore such laws if passed, and can, without constraint, seize oceangoing ships.
This broad interpretation of executive power and the president's commander-in-chief role would make the nation's founders jump out of their graves.
Purposefully, the Constitutional Convention enumerated the large number of Congress's powers in Article I, and gave most powers related to defense and foreign affairs to the people's branch.
In particular, the war power was given to Congress. The chief executive, whose powers were enumerated in the much more brief Article II, was given the commander-in-chief role, but this was intended narrowly, only as commander of U.S. troops on the battlefield.
Instead of declaring war, which has fallen out of fashion, the Congress, after 9/11, passed a resolution authorizing the president to go after al-Qaeda overseas but deliberately omitted domestic activities from that authorization.
Democrats and Republicans alike declared that they were not endorsing a broad expansion of the president's authority as commander-in-chief.
An important example from the nation's infancy shows how narrowly the founders regarded the president's role as commander in chief.
During the Quasi-War with France in the last years of the 1700s, Congress authorized President John Adams to seize armed ships sailing to French ports. Adams exceeded the congressional authorization by ordering the seizure of vessels sailing to or from French ports.
The Supreme Court, in the case Little v. Barreme, ruled that Adams had exceeded the authority Congress had delegated to him. So much for Bush's supposed intrinsic authority to seize all oceangoing ships without congressional authorization.
In 1952, President Truman, the first imperial president, seized the steel mills under his alleged "inherent power" as commander in chief -- supposedly to prevent paralysis of the national economy and using the rationale that soldiers in the Korean War needed weapons and ammunition.
By a wide margin, in the case Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Supreme Court struck down Truman's executive order to seize the mills because it had no statutory or constitutional basis. Essentially, the court ruled that the president may be commander in chief of the armed forces but not the country.
Yoo's assertion that Congress has no right to pass laws that impinge on the president's claim to a broad interpretation of his role as commander in chief violates the core of the constitutional system of checks and balances, and for which the United States regularly criticizes despots in foreign countries.
Finally, the Fourth Amendment (requiring warrants for any search) and the Fifth Amendment (the right to due legal process) contain no exceptions for wartime. In fact, in a republic -- where the rule of law should be king -- crises and wartime are exactly when people's rights are most likely to be endangered and when safeguards are especially needed.
Back to Home Page |
World Trade Organization
Gandhi said that the greatness of a nation and its moral progress could be measured by the treatment that their animals. If true, this phrase would render greatness to countries that break the balance of nature to follow a model of unsustainable development. Such is the case of Denmark, where carried out massacres of dolphins in its coasts; or France, which allows their farmers get fatter to their geese until you bust them liver. Or Japan, where organized killing of whales in danger of extinction. They say that scientific research justifies the practices, but the greater part of the body of these cetaceans is used to feed farm animals. The slaughter of sharks in China and Japan for only the fins will cause an imbalance in the ecosystem that will pay all other species, including humans, if they do not begin to prohibit these practices. Spain, for example, did so with Fox hunting of sharks and hammerhead sharks, endangered species.
Another country in the crosshairs is Canada, which allows death to sticks of baby seals for producing and exporting furs. The European Parliament adopted a regulation which prohibits the importation and marketing of seal products in the European Union. Canada is already preparing a lawsuit against the European Union before the World Trade Organization by hinder free trade, as if this was a supreme good over the protection of the planet and human well-being. To make a fur coat 8 adult seals or 20 baby, according to the Organization Equanimal seals, which publishes numbers of specimens of other species that are needed to produce a fur coat are needed: 17 Lynx, 60 mink, 20 otters, foxes 20, 60 marten, 250 squirrels and 12 wolves. Beyond the effects butterfly that these killings can occur in nature, also arises the suffering of many who are beaten, electrocuted or animals that are dying in traps for days. |
adverb \ˈō-vər\
: in an upward and forward direction across something
: downward from an upright position
: downward to a flat or horizontal position
Full Definition of OVER
a : across a barrier or intervening space; especially : across the goal line in football
b : forward beyond an edge or brink and often down <wandered too near the cliff and fell over>
c : across the brim <soup boiled over>
d : so as to bring the underside up <turned his cards over>
e : from a vertical to a prone or inclined position <knocked the lamp over>
f : from one person or side to another <hand it over>
g : across <got his point over>
h : to one's home <invite some friends over>
i : on the other side of an intervening space <the next town over>
j : to agreement or concord <won them over>
a (1) : beyond some quantity, limit, or norm often by a specified amount or to a specified degree <show ran a minute over> (2) : in an excessive manner : inordinately
b : till a later time (as the next day) : overnight <stay over> <sleep over>
a : above
b : so as to cover the whole surface <windows boarded over>
—used on a two-way radio circuit to indicate that a message is complete and a reply is expected
a : through <read it over>; also : in an intensive or comprehensive manner
b : once more : again <do it over>
Examples of OVER
1. The wall's too high for us to climb over.
2. We came to a stream and jumped over.
3. She leaned over and kissed him.
4. She knocked over the lamp.
5. A couple of trees fell over during the storm.
6. The baby rolled over onto his stomach.
Origin of OVER
Middle English, adverb & preposition, from Old English ofer; akin to Old High German ubar (preposition) above, beyond, over, Latin super, Greek hyper
First Known Use: before 12th century
Rhymes with OVER
: from, to, or at a place that is higher than (someone or something)
: on top of (something) : so as to cover (something)
: beyond and down from (something)
Full Definition of OVER
—used as a function word to indicate motion or situation in a position higher than or above another <towered over his mother> <flew over the lake> <rode over the old Roman road>
a —used as a function word to indicate the possession of authority, power, or jurisdiction in regard to some thing or person <respected those over him>
b —used as a function word to indicate superiority, advantage, or preference <a big lead over the others>
c —used as a function word to indicate one that is overcome, circumvented, or disregarded <passed over the governor's veto>
a : more than <cost over $5>
b : above 4
a —used as a function word to indicate position upon or movement down upon <laid a blanket over the child> <hit him over the head>
b (1) : all through or throughout <showed me over the house> <went over his notes>
(2) —used as a function word connecting one mathematical set and another whose elements are coefficients or values of parameters used to form elements of the first set <polynomials over the field of real numbers>
c —used as a function word to indicate a particular medium or channel of communication <over the radio>
—used as a function word to indicate position on or motion to the other side or beyond <lives over the way> <fell over the edge>
a : throughout, during <over the past 25 years>
b : until the end of <stay over Sunday>
a —used as a function word to indicate an object of solicitude, interest, consideration, or reference <the Lord watches over his own>
b —used as a function word to indicate the object of an expressed or implied occupation, activity, or concern <trouble over money> <met with advisers over lunch>
Examples of OVER
1. The sun's coming up over the mountain.
2. She looked at him over the top of her glasses.
3. Their balcony looks out over the city.
4. He looked over the fence.
5. A plane was flying low over the trees.
6. The meat was cooked over an open fire.
7. She slung the bag over her shoulder.
8. His hat was pulled low over his eyes.
9. Throw the rocks over the side of the boat.
10. He fell over the cliff's edge.
First Known Use of OVER
before 12th century
Related to OVER
below, beneath, under
: having reached the end
Full Definition of OVER
a : upper, higher
b : outer, covering
c : excessive <over imagination>
a : not used up : remaining <something over to provide for unusual requirements — J. A. Todd>
b : having or showing an excess or surplus
: being at an end <the day is over>
: fried on both sides <ordered two eggs over>
over easy
: fried on one side then turned and fried lightly on the other side <eggs over easy>
Examples of OVER
1. When is this class over?
2. And before we knew it, the storm was over.
3. When it's over, it's over. You don't get a second chance.
First Known Use of OVER
before 12th century
overedover·ing \ˈō-və-riŋ, ˈōv-riŋ\
Definition of OVER
transitive verb
: to leap over
First Known Use of OVER
Next Word in the Dictionary: over-
Previous Word in the Dictionary: oven wood
All Words Near: over
Seen & Heard
What made you want to look up over? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible). |
Let your knowledge grow!
Sexuality in Handwriting - by Anita Burns
In handwriting analysis, sexual personalities are categorized into two basic types. Although we are a combination of both types, dominance in one category will show in handwriting.
This type enjoys physical touch and is generally faithful to their partner. They like attention and have strong sexual desires. They will rarely pass up an opportunity for sex. They have a difficult time dealing with any kind of rejection and will go to great lengths to avoid it. Home and family are generally more important than job or career.
This type is critical and anylitical. They are stirred by the imagination rather than physical touch. They like variety and generally have many romances. Career and job come before home and family. An extreme Intellectual Sexual type can experience? sexual problems such as impotence and frigidity.
Signs of Knesthetic Sexuality Sisgns of Intellectual Sexuality
There are many signs of sexuality in handwriting. These are just a few. |
And I'm Michele Norris.
In Russian folklore, the Volga River is mother and mistress, comrade and beloved companion and teller of tall tales. It stretches 2,300 miles. That makes it the longest river in Europe, equal to the mighty Mississippi. The Volga rises out of swamps northwest of Moscow in the Valdai Hills and flows south to the Caspian Sea. According to a Russian proverb, to know Russia is to know the Volga. So over the next few days, NPR's Anne Garrels will introduce us to the Volga, traveling Russia's principal waterway through the nation's heartland. Today, she begins her story in Moscow.
(Soundbite of music)
ANNE GARRELS: Passengers for a nine-day Volga cruise are greeted with sweet champagne. They're all Russians, the country's new middle class with enough money to plunk down the $1,500 tab. Almost all have now traveled overseas, but bored with foreign beaches now within easy access, they want to explore their country's history. This could be just a gilded tour of gilded domes but bartender Sergei Arlof(ph), who's plied this river more times than he can count, says it also raises uncomfortable questions.
Mr. SERGEI ARLOF (Bartender): (Foreign language spoken)
GARRELS: He says openly what many passengers will only whisper out of the way of a microphone, that the government and the people live in totally different worlds.
(Soundbite of horn blowing)
HAMILTON: The ship sets off from Moscow, one of the world's most expensive cities, full of five-star hotels and gleaming new buildings. But the capital's port, the window to the rest of the country, is a shadow of what it once was. The main grandiose building covered with ceramic scenes glorifying Soviet achievements is closed.
Looking at the river's slow, smooth-flowing water, it's hard to fathom what a huge burden it carries. The Volga basin makes up 8 percent of the vast Russian territory. But as it carves its way through European Russia, it supports more than 25 percent of the country's agriculture and industry and 40 percent of the entire population. And it's now much more than just a river.
Professor Rostislav Frolov at the Academy of River Transportation calls it a complex web of lakes, smaller rivers, vast reservoirs and manmade canals, a system that now stretches from the far north to the country's southern reaches.
Professor ROSTISLAV FROLOV (Academy of River Transportation): (Through Translator) Thanks to canals, the Volga is now the main link in a huge system that has allowed Russia to be connected to the White Sea far to the north, the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov and the Caspian.
GARRELS: Moscow is not, in fact, on the river. When Russia was still but a collection of principalities, it had been founded on a much smaller river. Its isolation then had been its strength, but the world changed.
In the 1930s, Josef Stalin harnessed nature with prison labor, constructing a canal to link Moscow to the Volga 80 miles north. Unknown thousands died in the process.
(Soundbite of music)
GARRELS: Music accompanies the cruise ship as it pulls out into the canal. But one passenger cringes, saying we're floating on bones.
Yet without this canal and the Volga, river expert Vladimir Debolsky says the expanding Russian capital could not have prospered.
Mr. VLADIMIR DEBOLSKY (Institute of Water Problems): (Through Translator) The Moscow River, which often dried up, could not supply the capital's growing needs. Now, 90 percent of the water for this city of 10 million comes from the Volga. Yes, many died building this canal. I have no love for Stalin. But there was no other way to do it, given the conditions of the time.
GARRELS: Stalin also tamed this river to provide hydroelectric power. He pulled the river into a noose and put it to work with a series of lochs and reservoirs - all that is still in place. But as the cruise ship moves to the wide canal into the Volga, it seems like it owns the river.
Passenger and cargo transport is way down - one-sixth of what it was just 20 years ago. In the chaos of the '90s, ships were broken up for metal and quick cash, replacing what was so easily destroyed is difficult and expensive. And Russia is still wrestling with how to open the river to international traffic, though this would be a welcome source of income.
Gennady Rozenberg at the Academy of Sciences says the political and economic crises have brought some good news, at least for now.
Mr. GENNADY ROZENBERG (Biologist, Academy of Sciences): (Through Translator) There's much less industry now, and pollution is therefore less. However, this improvement has nothing to do with environmental measures. Now that the government says it is going to double the GDP, we can expect a lot of new serious problems.
GARRELS: His colleague at the academy, Vladimir Debolsky, worries the river is not getting the care and attention it needs.
Mr. DEBOLSKY: (Through Translator) I am old. After me, there is only one person left in my department. There are no young people following on. And we need time to train them.
(Soundbite of bell ringing)
GARRELS: In the 16th century, the czarist forces moved south, conquering the long reach of the Volga and the basis of what we know is Russia. Siberia's remote rivers are longer, but 11 of Russia's 20 largest cities had their beginnings along these shores as Volga fortresses.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)
GARRELS: The number of songs that evoke the river in Russia's history are endless, and the words are known by everyone on board.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)
GARRELS: This river witnessed peasant rebellions and Cossack uprisings. The bloody civil war following the 1917 Revolution was decided on the Volga. One million Soviet citizens died defending the river during World War II.
It's a patchwork of ethnic groups, which were once subjugated but which are now rediscovering their roots, most noticeably in the Volga city of Kazan, where new minarets and gilt Orthodox copulas compete for prominence on the city's skyline. Half the million residents of this oil-rich city are Tatar Muslims.
So far, it's been an example of peaceful co-existence. But mufti Valiulla Yakukov worries the extremism and violence that's torn apart Russia's other Muslim regions could erupt here.
Mr. VALIULLA YAKUKOV (Mufti): (Foreign language spoken)
GARRELS: He fears an influx of conservative ideas from abroad is beginning to undermine local traditions of tolerance and could threaten the stability of the region. He's not an optimist.
The soothing sound of the river is deceptive. This is a voyage into Russia's past, present and future, where historians fight over the country's legacy, environmentalists struggle to get people's attention, politicians vie for power and ordinary Russians ask the eternal Russian question: Where are we going?
Anne Garrels, NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Group: (Singing in foreign language)
SIEGEL: This is NPR News.
|
Updated: Sunday September 22, 2013 MYT 7:45:54 AM
Laying bare the bones of menopause
The excessive bone loss that can occur in menopause compromises bone strength, resulting in an increased risk of fracture.
BONE is made up of calcium and protein. There are two types of bone: compact and spongy. All the bones in the body contain some of each type.
Compact bone appears hard and solid, and is found on the outside of bones. Spongy bone is found on the inside of bones and is filled with holes.
Bone is constantly undergoing change, with old bone broken down and new bone formed daily.
More bone is formed than is broken down when young, especially in childhood. Our bones stop growing between 16 and 18 years of age, with peak bone mass density attained by 30 years of age.
After that, more bone is broken down than is formed. This gradual and small amount of bone loss continues for the rest of your life.
A little bit of bone loss does not usually cause problems. However, excessive bone loss results in osteoporosis, which is characterised by compromised bone strength, resulting in an increased risk of fracture.
Although the bones are still of the same size, the outer walls of compact bone become thinner and the holes in spongy bone become larger, thereby weakening the bone considerably.
Osteoporotic fractures are increasingly common in Asians. The impact of these fractures is tremendous. It affects the physical, psychosocial and financial aspects of a patient’s life and family, as well as the community. The mortality risk is about 25% in the first year. The quality of life is also substantially affected.
About 10% will be bedridden and 25% wheelchair bound. In addition, chronic disabling pain affects the patient emotionally and mentally.
Risk factors
Women have a higher risk of developing osteoporosis than men as their bones are smaller and lighter. The condition of a woman’s skeleton depends on two factors: the amount of bone attained before menopause and the rate of bone loss thereafter.
Bone loss increases after menopause when the ovaries stop producing oestrogen, which is essential for bone health as it protects against bone loss. Hence, menopause is the biggest culprit in the process of bone loss.
Osteoporosis is more common in Asian and Caucasian women, and those of slender build.
Women’s risks of osteoporosis are increased further if they have an early menopause, ie before 45 years of age and when their uteri are removed (hysterectomy) before 45 years of age, especially when the ovaries are removed at the same time or if they do not have periods for more than six months due to exercise or excessive dieting.
The risk of osteoporosis is also increased in hormone-related conditions, for example, overactive thyroid gland (hyperthyroidism), overactive parathyroid glands (hyperparathyroidism), reduced oestrogen, adrenal gland conditions like Cushing’s syndrome, and conditions affecting the pituitary gland.
The risk is also increased if there is a family history of osteoporosis; a parent had a hip fracture; heavy smoking and alcohol consumption; lack of exercise; rheumatoid arthritis; eating disorders like anorexia nervosa and bulimia; prolonged use of high doses of steroids, eg in treating asthma and arthritis; and by medicines like diuretics, anticonvulsants and some medicines used in the treatment of breast cancer.
The clinical features of osteoporosis do not appear until a lot of bone is lost, thus explaining why it is called a silent disease. There are no warning symptoms or signs in most instances until a bone fractures following a minor fall or sudden impact.
The most common fracture sites are found in bones that have a lot of spongy bone – spine, hip and wrist.
The features include backache, decrease in height and slight back curvature.
There is usually no pain with osteoporosis. However, when there is a fracture, there will be pain, tenderness and even deformity. An obvious sign of osteoporosis is the characteristic bending forward (stooping) of the spine. This occurs because the fractured bones in the spine cannot support the body weight.
Diagnosing bone loss
The diagnosis of osteoporosis is often made after a fracture has occurred.
Individuals who are at increased risk of osteoporosis will be referred by their doctors for a dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan. The procedure is painless and takes about 15 minutes to be done.
The DEXA scan measures the bone density and compares it with the bone mineral density (BMD) of a healthy young adult. The difference between the BMD measured and that of a healthy young adult is calculated as a standard deviation (SD), which is a measure of the variability based on an average or expected value.
The SD, which is called a T score, is classified as follows:
·Normal (T -1)
·Osteopenia, in which BMD is less than normal but not sufficient to be classified as osteoporosis (T -1 to T -2.5)
·Osteoporosis (T -2.5)
Another term used in bone density measurement is the Z score, which is the individual’s bone density expressed in standard deviation units compared to an age-matched population.
A diagnosis of osteopenia or osteoporosis does not mean that the risk of fracture is increased. The doctor will consider other factors like age, other medical conditions, use of medicines and previous injuries, before providing the appropriate advice.
The World Health Organization has developed a fracture prediction tool (FRAX). FRAX uses the clinical risk factors and BMD at the hip to provide a 10-year probability of hip fracture and the 10-year probability of a major osteoporotic fracture of the spine, forearm, hip or shoulder.
Preventing bone loss
There are several lifestyle measures that influence bone health.
The benefits of exercise are well documented, with beneficial effects on bone, heart and lung health. There are three types of exercises: aerobic, weight-bearing, and flexibility. An example of a moderate aerobic exercise of at least 30 minutes each day is a two-mile walk.
Weight-bearing exercise, ie those in which the legs and feet support the body’s weight, can delay or prevent bone loss. They include aerobics, dancing, walking, running, skipping and jumping on the spot, all of which also strengthens the muscles, ligaments and joints.
It is essential to wear footwear that supports the ankles and feet. Flexibility exercises, like yoga and stretching, help maintain muscle function and joint flexibility, and may also improve balance, which can decrease the risk of fractures due to falls.
Each exercise session should start with a 10 minute warm-up, and at the end, a cool-down session for five to 10 minutes.
In a good workout, a person will need to exercise towards the target heart rate for at least 30 minutes three times a week. A doctor will be able to provide advice on the target heart rate, which is dependent on a person’s age.
If a person has been diagnosed with osteoporosis or is not used to strenuous activity, it would be prudent to check with the doctor before commencing an exercise programme, especially if you’re above 40 years old or overweight.
A healthy diet is vital as it prevents cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, diabetes and some cancers.
A balanced diet is high in grains, fruits and vegetables, with adequate water, vitamins and minerals, but low in fat.
The intake of sweets and fatty food should be limited. Fat intake should be less than 30% of daily calories.
Calcium is essential to maintain strong bones. The recommended daily consumption of elemental calcium in premenopausal and postmenopausal women is 1,000mg and 1,500mg respectively.
This can come from leafy green vegetables, calcium-rich dairy products (low fat or non-fat), and calcium-fortified foods and juices.
If this is not sufficient, calcium supplements may be used.
The body’s absorption of calcium is increased by vitamin D, which can be attained with about 15 minutes of daily exposure to the sun without any sunscreen, eating certain foods like milk, eggs, oily fish and liver, or vitamin D supplements.
It is advisable to eat plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, legumes, complex carbohydrates like oats, wholegrain bread, brown rice, and essential fatty acids (good fats) from oily fish, like sardines and pilchards.
You should limit or reduce the intake of salt, saturated fat, stimulants like alcohol, coffee and tea, sugary food and junk food.
Supplemental vitamins and minerals may or may not be required, depending on whether the diet is balanced or otherwise. A discussion with the doctor or nutritionist would be helpful.
Other lifestyle factors that can help prevent osteoporosis include:
·Smoking cessation
·Limiting alcohol consumption – the recommended daily limit is three to four units of alcohol for men and two to three units for women. Avoidance of binge drinking is essential.
It is important to eliminate environmental factors that can result in falls, thereby reducing the risk of fractures.
Some measures to avoid falls indoors include keeping rooms free of clutter, keeping floors smooth but not slippery, installing grab bars and using a rubber bath mat in the tub or shower, avoiding obstacles that you might trip over, and switching on the lights if getting up at night.
Some measures to avoid falls outdoors include wearing rubber-soled shoes, avoid walking on slippery surfaces, and using a cane if it is needed for added stability.
Tags / Keywords: Health, column, menopause, osteoporosis
Most Viewed |
Boots WebMD Partners in Health
Return To Boots
Heart disease health centre
ACE inhibitors
BMJ Group Medical Reference
This information is for people who have had a heart attack. It tells you about ACE inhibitors, a treatment used for heart attack. It is based on the best and most up-to-date research.
Do they work?
Yes. Taking an ACE inhibitor may help you survive a heart attack.
What are they?
ACE inhibitors are drugs that are used to treat heart problems. They help stop your blood vessels getting narrower. This makes it easier for blood to flow through them.
ACE inhibitor is a shortened version of the drugs' full name: angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors.
Angiotensin is a chemical made by your body. It helps keep your blood pressure within the normal range. Usually, it works well. But if you've had a heart attack, or if your blood pressure is too high, angiotensin puts strain on your heart. ACE inhibitor drugs stop angiotensin from raising your blood pressure.
Some common ACE inhibitors (and their brand names) are listed below.
How can they help?
If you have had a heart attack, taking ACE inhibitors may save your life and help you live longer. [54] You're more likely to be alive after your heart attack if you take an ACE inhibitor than if you have a dummy treatment ( placebo). [54] To get the most benefit, you should take an ACE inhibitor within 24 hours of your heart attack starting.
How do they work?
Researchers are still not sure why ACE inhibitors help people live through a heart attack. They think that these drugs may limit the size of the scar that is left on your heart, help your heart recover, or prevent damaging chemicals from being released by your body. They may also improve the supply of blood to your heart muscle and so help get more oxygen to your heart.
Can they be harmful?
Yes, like most drugs, ACE inhibitors have side effects. There can be short-term side effects and long-term side effects. [32] You shouldn't take ACE inhibitors if you're pregnant or planning to get pregnant. These drugs can harm your unborn baby. [55]
Short-term side effects
These usually happen within the first week or so after you begin treatment. If you've had a heart attack, the two most important side effects to know about are:
Long-term side effects
If you take ACE inhibitors for a long time, these are some of the side effects that you may have:
Last Updated: December 18, 2012
Popular Slideshows & Tools on Boots WebMD
woman looking at pregnancy test
Early pregnancy symptoms
donut on plate
The truth about sugar addiction
smiling african american woman
Best kept secrets for beautiful hair
couple watching sunset
How much do you know?
hand extinguishing cigarette
13 best tips to stop smoking
assorted spices
Pump up the flavour with spices
bag of crisps
Food cravings that wreck your diet
crossword puzzle
Help for the first hard days
probiotic shakes
Help digestion
polka dot dress on hangar
Lose weight without dieting |
Skip to definition.
Noun: Uncle Tom
1. A servile black character in a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe
2. [offensive] (ethnic slur) offensive and derogatory name for a Black man who is abjectly servile and deferential to Whites
Type of: Black, Black person, character, fictional character, fictitious character, Negro
Encyclopedia: Uncle Tom |
drupal analytics
Health Newsletters
Men Health » Health hazards of smoking
Smoking has deadly effect on the health. Cigarettes contain toxic chemicals that affect all the vital organs of the body. It is not easy to quit smoking once you are addicted to it. It takes a lot of will power to break this unhealthy habit. This article is a warning to all who smoke and its time to quit it right away.
Cancer: Smoking is associated with cancers in lungs, mouth, tongue, lips, stomach, digestive tract, kidneys and livers.
Diabetes: Smokers are prone to type 1 diabetes or insulin dependant diabetes. Smoking accelerates the blood sugar level.
Blood circulation: Oxygen in blood is replaced with plaque and this may lead to blood clots and stokes, back pain, vision impairment etc. Insufficient blood circulation to legs and hands lead to severe pain and amputations in majority of cases.
Microbes enter easily into the body due to the damage of the respiratory tract lining. This in turns weakens the immune system.
Aging: Smokers have a prematurely aged look. Skin appears wrinkled, saggy, hard and dry.
Hearing and breathing problems: Smoking is directly related to hearing and breathing problems. This is due to infections and decreased blood flow to the ears.
Other long term effects associated with smoking are osteoporosis and early menopause in women, complications in pregnancy, impotency in males, increased risk of rheumatoid arthritis, heart diseases etc.
Health Newsletters Topics
Health Newsletters Archiv
Health Info
Find a Doctor |
The Energy We Overlook
Prologue: The first article of this two-part series, in the September/October issue, exposes the flawed economic logic underlying the U.S. administration's rejection of the Kyoto accord on global warming. The second installment, below, reviews generic technological possibilities for serious innovation, both in energy supply and in conservation-and suggests ways in which government can act to accelerate (or to inhibit) changes that will supply adequate energy while moving toward a complete elimination of carbon dioxide emissions. The article concludes with a more "visionary" scheme-for engaging not only government, but every person who uses products or services resulting in carbon emissions.
Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas (GHG). In fact, it accounts for only about half of the climate warming effect. But as a practical matter, the clearest path to reducing GHGs is to cut out carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. There are three generic means of doing this: to get serious about conservation; to substitute other energy sources for fossil fuels; and to capture and sequester the CO2 from fossil-fuel combustion. Let's take them in order of priority. By "priority," I mean the potential of each approach to produce gains large enough not just to meet Kyoto-scale goals, but essentially to "zero out" CO2 emissions in the coming century.
Conservation. The energy industry routinely brushes this off as a non-starter, by suggesting that energy conservation means energy deprivation. This argument echoes the predictions of nuclear industry advocates of a generation ago, who told us that if we tried to rely on conservation and didn't embrace nuclear power, we would find ourselves "freezing in the dark" (a pro-nuclear bumper sticker from the early 1980s). We didn't, because a critical part of conservation is efficiency-getting the same mileage, or lighting, or heat, with less energy than before, and in the 1970s we began learning how to do that. Now, there are some simple measures for achieving greater "end-use" efficiency that could be introduced quickly and would cost very little-and in some cases would actually pay for themselves in a few months or years. There are also prospects for making more radical, long-term, improvements in energy efficiency, both in its production and in every stage of its use.
Substitution. The nuclear industry is already licking its lips about making a comeback in public esteem. It is advertising heavily that it offers a "clean air" alternative to coal and oil. But even if the problems that have caused the current public disenchantment with this industry could be solved overnight, nuclear power plants take up to ten years to design, site, and build. Moreover, they are not cheaper than fossil fuel-fired power plants. And the nuclear industry is relatively mature, so the prospects for sharp cost reductions are dim at best.
Other non-carbon power sources are more promising. They include hydro-electricity (especially from small "low-head" dams), wind power, solar power, geothermal power, ocean currents, and solar power satellites. At present, all except small hydroelectric facilities would be more costly than big central power stations, at least if the social and environmental costs of fossil fuel combustion continue to be ignored. Large-scale deployment of standardized mass-produced wind or solar powered units that could bring unit costs down dramatically could take two or three decades. There is an inevitable lag as market size and production costs move in synchrony. Geothermal power and ocean currents are wild cards that could be helpful in some, but not most, locations. Solar satellites are, for the moment, a very long shot.
According to conventional wisdom, none of these options can individually substitute for a large percentage of the existing fossil fuel-based energy supply. Taken together, however, these options can have a major impact. Moreover, conventional wisdom may be too myopic. The main reason wind and solar power are not usually taken seriously as potential substitutes for coal and oil in satisfying the power needs of most countries is that they provide only intermittent supply. The wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine. But solutions to the problems of intermittency are feasible, and some are already under development.
Sequestration. Not to be confused with the sequestering of carbon in trees, this technological sequestration would involve intercepting emissions before they can dissipate into the atmosphere, and locking the carbon up. It appears that this approach may be quite cost-effective for certain large-scale users-especially coal fired steam-electric power plants, which currently account for about a third of the carbon dioxide produced in the United States. It also appears that the captured gas can be utilized quite productively, especially in repressurizing (extending the productive life of) aging oil and gas fields.
These three generic approaches are listed in inverse order of attractiveness to the existing fossil-fuel energy complex. The third approach is the one the established non-nuclear energy industries will prefer, and they will lobby hard to secure government funding and support for it, while undermining efforts to promote alternatives. Every U.S. politician from a district with an oil well, a coal mine, or a gas pipeline will be tempted to support this approach, but only after the political pressure to "do something" about climate warming has become irresistible. It hasn't yet.
What Offers the Largest Potential for Cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is conservation. To rely much more on conservation does not mean "freezing in the dark." Nor does it mean depending on voluntary individual choices to reduce domestic consumption, although that can't hurt. What it really means is to sharply increase the efficiency with which energy is used throughout the economy.
In the early 1970s, electricity demand in the United States had been rising for 20 years at about 8 percent per year. Some voices urged conservation then, as they do now. So the U.S. government promoted several "independent" (but noticeably orchestrated) studies of the potential for conservation savings. These studies all concluded that (1) conservation was a good idea but (2) the maximum potential savings were only around 15 to 20 percent, and (3) demand was going to keep on rising at the same rate as in the immediate past. In other words, this potential for conservation savings would be used up by two or three years of growth at 8 percent per year.
The implication of these studies was that many more new power plants and refineries would be needed before the end of the century. That view was reinforced by the propaganda of the nuclear industry in the 1980s, when it was fighting for survival in the wake of the reactor accident at Three Mile Island. Those projections turned out to be wrong. And a main reason was that the potential for conservation was grossly underestimated then-as it is now. Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, in making their energy policy proclamations of 2001, could well have lifted their projections from that decades-old nuclear industry propaganda.
One reason for underestimating conservation potential arose from a fundamental but very wide-spread misunderstanding of the science of thermodynamics. Most engineers and economists assumed that energy was already being used quite efficiently. It was the prevailing view, based largely on a study carried out by the Livermore National Laboratory for the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE) of the U.S. Congress, which concluded that the U.S. economy in 1970 was achieving an astonishing overall efficiency of 47.5 percent. Efficiency was defined as the ratio of "useful" energy (output) to "total" energy (input). The finding was offered with a straight face, so to speak, despite the fact that not a single energy conversion system in operation at the time could come close to matching that performance.
The deception lay in the assumption that most of the heat energy consumed by industry, and by residences and commercial establishments for space-heating, cooking, hot water, etc., was being used as efficiently as possible-that is, at an efficiency of 70 percent or more. This underlying assumption was built into virtually all official studies and recommendations. If the country's economy as a whole were already 47.5 percent efficient, there couldn't be much additional potential for conservation. In effect, the JCAE conclusion, echoed by others, blinded policymakers and investors to the possibility that further efficiency gains were possible.
The implicit definition of efficiency used in that official study in 1973 (and still accepted by most of the industry people who haven't had a good course in thermodynamics) is deceptive. The error was pointed out clearly by a summer study sponsored by the American Physical Society in 1975. But that study received much less publicity-and is much harder to read-than the official report to the Congress's Joint Committee and its numerous clones and progeny.
What was the error? By definition, a measure of efficiency must be a fraction-a number less than one. The denominator of the ratio, on the bottom, must be the energy actually used, by the economy as a whole, or by some industry, or factory, or appliance. The smaller numerator, on the top, should represent the minimum physically possible amount of energy required to achieve the same outcome, whether in tons of steel produced or hamburgers cooked. Only by this kind of comparison can we see how much room there is for future improvement.
That is not always the kind of ratio used, however. The gas industry likes to advertise that gas furnaces are about 80 percent efficient-by which it means that 80 percent of the heat produced goes into the house and only 20 percent goes up the flue. No doubt, this is an improvement over the 50 percent or so that leaked out of the house from coal-burning furnaces in the past. But that comparison is quite misleading, because it is fundamentally wasteful to use very high temperature heat for home heating. The important clue is that 70 degrees F., the temperature you probably want to keep your house at, is almost exactly the temperature of the waste heat from a conventional steam-electric power plant.
Why is that a clue? Let us suppose, for purposes of argument, that electric power plants need not be big. (If electronics can be miniaturized, why not electricity generation?) Suppose the fuel used to heat your house were used instead to produce electricity. The electricity could run the lights and all the appliances in your house, and maybe your neighbor's house, and the waste heat would still take care of the space heating. In other words, the heat would be a free byproduct. (This sort of system-known as "district heating"-is quite common in Europe, by the way. It can pose practical difficulties due to the distance between the power plant and the housing. But that is irrelevant to the question of what the true energy conservation potential is for heating buildings.) Moreover, conventional electric power plants are not as efficient as theoretically possible. For instance, the overall efficiency can be raised considerably by putting a gas turbine in front of the steam turbine, and using the hot gases from the gas turbine to heat the steam. This so-called "combined cycle" can achieve efficiencies as high as 60 percent-because some of the heat energy overlooked by the conventional energy accounting is now being used. And still, the waste heat at the end of the cascade is enough to heat your house.
In short, the minimum physically possible amount of energy needed to heat the house could theoretically be provided by a scheme that makes far better use of the same fuel. In other words, the true efficiency of the gas furnace is far lower than advertised. The APS summer study estimated that space heating in 1970 by means of an oil- or gas-fired furnace, and distributed by hot water or steam radiators, was only 6 percent efficient, in contrast to the 70 percent or so assumed by the JCAE study.
By this sort of test, the U.S. economy in the mid-1970s was nowhere near 47.5 percent efficient. In 1975, I tried (with a colleague) to revise the JCAE estimate of the energy efficiency of the US economy, based on the principles explained by the APS summer study. Our first estimate, using 1968-73 data, came up with less than 2 percent. A later effort, using 1979 data and slightly more conservative assumptions, arrived at about 2.5 percent. The methodology of such calculations is arguable, especially in regard to deciding on what is the "minimum possible." But even with more traditional assumptions on that point, the real efficiency of the U.S. economy (and others around the world) is not more than a few percent at most. A very safe estimate would be less than 5 percent. What this means is that there is ample room to cut energy consumption, without cutting standards of living, for a long time to come.
Policies to Pump-Prime Efficiency
Some economists have advocated a carbon tax on fossil fuels, to reduce demand for such fuels and thereby cut CO2 emissions. Model exercises have explored the possibility, and it turns out (as one might expect) that the outcome of this exercise depends upon what is done with the proceeds of the tax. The models tend to suggest that if the tax money is returned to consumers, or if it is spent by the government, employment and the growth rate will fall. On the other hand, if the tax funds are used to cut the existing social-security and value-added taxes on labor-thus reducing the effective cost of labor vis-a-vis energy-the macro-economic effects (on employment and growth) can be beneficial. Moreover, if a fraction of the proceeds is spent on energy research and development (R&D), there may be a double dividend-an economic spur to go along with the reduced carbon emissions.
In the 1970s, the U.S. government did help considerably by introducing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for new automobiles and the Public Utility Regulation and Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA). The first of these laws simply mandated gradually better fuel economy for cars, leaving it up to the manufacturers to figure out how to achieve that result. The car-makers did so (kicking and screaming, to be sure) mostly by reducing vehicle size and weight and improving aerodynamics and tires. By 1988, U.S. automotive fuel economy was over twice as high as it had been in 1972, and roughly equal to the averages for Europe and Japan. The other law, PURPA, allowed utilities to make more profits for stockholders by producing power more efficiently. This was a sharp change from the earlier system in which a utility could increase its income only by building new capacity at a standard rate of return on investment fixed by regulators. (In those days, any savings from more efficient operation had to be passed on to consumers as lower prices. So why bother?)
The new law aimed to do something else as well: to force utilities to buy excess power from private producers at the utilities' marginal cost of production. Anyone with a small windmill or hydroelectric dam, or a cogeneration plant (making electricity from waste heat) could sell unneeded power back to the local utility at a known price. The utilities didn't like it, of course, because their control systems were not designed for decentralized production. They discouraged small suppliers as much as possible by imposing high "connection charges." Even so, many of them found themselves for the first time with excess capacity. A few utilities in regions that were growing rapidly and did not have excess capacity, notably in California, then found it worthwhile to help consumers save energy so as to delay the need for costly new generating capacity. (New plants were always more costly than older ones, due to rising land prices and increasingly strict environmental regulation.) This "demand-side management," as it was called by alternative-energy pioneer Amory Lovins, proved to be another effective tool for inducing conservation.
Lovins correctly predicted that thanks to such conservation, energy demand would not continue to increase at the historical rate. And indeed, between 1972 and 1988, conservation saved roughly a third of the energy that would have been needed had the industry and government experts been accurate in their forecasts.
Have we squeezed most of the potential from conservation by now? Far from it. In fact, we have barely scratched the surface. Take motor vehicles, the source of a third of the CO2 emissions in the United States and other industrialized countries. The CAFE standards have not been tightened since the 1980s, and automotive fuel economy has ceased to improve. In fact, as most readers of this publication will be ruefully aware, the popularity of sports utility vehicles (SUVs)-classed as "trucks" to avoid strict regulation-has turned the trend in the wrong direction. Yet numerous studies confirm that fuel economy could be at least tripled by exploiting light but strong space-age composite materials (based on carbon fibers), using aerospace-related integrated design concepts that minimize the need for heavy steel frames, and using hybrid or fuel-cell propulsion units.
The Bush administration, under pressure from the auto industry, opposes any extension of CAFE standards. Yet, the US auto industry did not suffer when the first CAFE law went into effect. (The period of increasingly intensive import competition from Japan in the 1980s was rough, for a while, but Japanese competition had much less to do with fuel economy than reliability.) A new CAFE standard, forcing fleet average fuel economy for all new vehicles (including SUVs) to twice the current level over a period of 15 years or so would be nearly painless for consumers and a very valuable inducement to technological innovation for the industry. And there is no reason to worry about the so-called "rebound effect" (the idea that increased efficiency will only lead to increased consumption) in this case. True, consumers might save some money by paying for less fuel, but alternative uses of that money would certainly be less energy-intensive than driving SUVs to the shopping mall.
The impact of tougher CAFE standards on energy consumption could be magnified by another device, which Amory Lovins has called the "fee-bate." Each vehicle with a lower-than-standard fuel economy would be taxed in proportion to its excess use of fuel, while each vehicle with better than standard fuel economy would receive a proportional rebate. The money collected from the first group would pay for the rebates to the second group. This should satisfy the people who think that money collected by the government is always misspent.
The principles of the CAFE standards and the fee-bate scheme could just as well be applied to a number of other products, from refrigerators to home heating systems. In fact, by far the largest opportunities for increased end-use efficiency are to be found in the domain of residential and commercial buildings. Technologically, it is possible to reduce heating requirements for new buildings by as much as 90 percent, even in cold climates, by a combination of better insulation, better windows (triple-glazed with tight seals), and better design to utilize solar heat in the winter but exclude it in the summer. Extra costs for the insulation and high-performance windows are largely compensated for by the opportunity to meet all heating and cooling needs with a climate control system of lower capacity, thereby reducing capital costs. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roof can reduce the need for purchased power from the central utility. If the resulting structure costs a bit more-which it need not, in many locations-the difference would pay for itself in lower heating and cooling costs over its lifetime.
For older buildings, the potential is not nearly so great, at least on a per-building basis, but older buildings outnumber new ones. And retrofitting windows and roof panels can still cut heating needs substantially, while providing supplementary electric power at low marginal cost. Because a PV roof panel serves two functions (both power and heat), it spreads the cost base. In this application, PVs are already cost-effective in some locations and as manufacturing costs decline they will soon be more so.
Why aren't these things being done on a large scale already? Part of the answer is sheer inertia. The building industry is very decentralized. It is also very conservative, as are most of its customers. Very few builders have the technological expertise to exploit the most energy-efficient techniques, and most don't even know about the possibilities-mainly because there is no competitive pressure for them to investigate these things. The pressure on home builders is essentially to maximize usable (and visible) floor space per dollar. Consumers do not often ask about future operating costs. And more importantly, mortgage financing institutions do not insist that they do so, even though there is an apparent incentive for lenders to assure themselves that borrowers are aware of-and can afford to pay-the full costs of ownership, not just the mortgage repayments.
Public awareness campaigns, like those initiated in the 1970s in response to the oil crisis, can help. But the real gains from conservation, especially in the decentralized residential and consumer sectors, will probably require a push from regulation. There are a number of ways to do this, but the one I favor would be to work through mortgage lenders and utilities. New houses could be sold as a complete package of services, including the house and its equipment, all the necessary utilities (accompanied by long-term contracts), and insurance. The base cost to the buyer would include payments not only for the mortgage, but also for all primary utilities, on a pre-specified sliding scale of increased rates for increased energy use.
How could this be achieved? What's needed is an organization to do the "packaging" of the service components. As matters stand today, builders build; banks lend; utilities supply electricity or water or gas. Combining these services in a single consumer-friendly package could be beneficial for all concerned, and a clever entrepreneur should be able to make a profit by doing so. In a competitive free market, deregulated utilities should be prepared to compete for such business with the commercial builders (not the individual consumers), and the insurance companies should insure the delivery of promised utility services, as well as the usual protections against structural problems, accidents, and hazards.
Notwithstanding the conservatism of the residential housing sector, studies by the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and others indicate that with appropriate government policies in place, the residential and commercial use of energy can be cut by 50 percent or even more by mid-century, while the carbon emissions can be cut by 75 percent. Insulation, alone, will sharply reduce heat requirements. Most of the reduced amounts then required will be provided by solar collectors, small on-site generating units (fuel cells) with PVs, supplemented by electric heat pumps (as air-conditioning is now). The rest will come from natural gas or hydrogen. And the purchased electric power component can be made significantly less carbon-intensive by utilizing more low-head hydroelectricity, wind power, solar power, and industrial co-generation.
In those industries that have been traditional "big" users of energy (transportation, electric power generation, petroleum refining, metals, cement, glass, pulp and paper, and chemicals), fuels constitute such a large share of their overall costs that most of the obvious ways of cutting fuel use have been tried. In these industries, only more radical changes in technology will make much difference. In the electric power sector, the combined-cycle use of gas turbines and steam turbines has the potential to significantly increase thermal efficiency from its present plateau of 33 percent (including distribution losses) to 50 or even 60 percent. Newly constructed facilities already employ this technology. However, existing plants cannot be retrofitted for higher efficiency, so progress will occur slowly as total capacity increases and older plants are phased out and replaced. Unfortunately, the Bush administration seems intent on allowing old plants with obsolete pollution control systems to operate even longer, rather than encouraging their replacement.
In those "old economy" manufacturing and service industries in which energy is only a minor cost compared to those of labor and capital, the main incentives have been to save on labor, even if it means more mechanization and more use of energy. As a result, these sectors offer surprisingly numerous opportunities for what Amory Lovins has called "free lunches"-savings that cost nothing or that pay for themselves very quickly. Economists have been very skeptical about this, on the grounds that if there were major opportunities to save energy and money, the profit incentive would operate to make sure that such opportunities are not persistently overlooked. The fact remains that many such opportunities still exist, however-most likely because managers are much less concerned with finding small savings than they are with finding new markets and "growth."
Non-Carbon Alternatives
Of all the non-carbon alternatives1-water power, wind power, solar heat, photovoltaic electricity, tidal power, and geothermal power-the least expensive by far is low-head waterpower from small dams. In areas that have flowing streams and consistent rainfall, all that is needed to encourage more of these small generating units is to ensure that excess power can be fed back into the network efficiently. This is also a necessary-though not sufficient-condition for large-scale adoption of wind power and solar photovoltaic power.
Wind is the next cheapest. Western Europe is adopting wind power rapidly, albeit with some help from subsidies. But the subsidies have already created a significant market for the units, and this has brought a number of competitors into the field. Individual units are getting larger, now up to 1 megawatt, and costs are dropping sharply. A further 50 percent reduction is expected before 2010.
There is plenty of wind potential. Europe could generate two or even three times its current demand for electric power from wind. A similar potential exists in North America. However, so far the potential for stand-alone wind units has been relatively limited because of intermittence of both supply and demand. The grid has its raison d'etre. Until recently, it was technically quite difficult to integrate many small independent suppliers (that were also occasional net users) into the same grid that served the utilities' own large base-load plants. Most utilities have tried to discourage small retail power producers, either by means of high connection charges or legal restrictions. However, modern computer capabilities have largely eliminated the coordination problem, and it should not be a major barrier in the future.
For a long time, it has been assumed that local storage of energy-the thing that would really allow wind and solar power to take off-is not a serious option. But this is changing. The National Power PLC of Britain is developing a new type of regenerative fuel cell that is suitable for large-scale applications. As presently configured, it consists of tanks of sodium bromide and sodium polysulfide (there are many possible electrochemical couples). These concentrated salt solutions react electrochemically across a membrane, producing a cell voltage of 1.5 V. The cells can be combined in series (like any battery) to get higher voltages, and in parallel to get more power. The amount of energy stored is limited only by the size of the tanks. The storage capacity can be adjusted to a few minutes (to smooth out peaks) or to many hours. The technology has been tested in the laboratory and at pilot scale. A plant now being built in the United Kingdom is rated at 120 mWh of energy-storage capacity and up to 15 mW power rating.
It is true that at present, none of the alternatives mentioned (except hydropower) can compete economically with a large-scale conventional coal-fired power plant-assuming, as noted earlier, that the social and ecological costs of the coal-fired plant are ignored. However this does not mean that there are no cost-effective applications for renewables. On the contrary, there are already quite a few, with more to come. Mass production brings costs down dramatically-look at the history of the Ford Model T, or of the computer. Wind turbines and PV panels are still semi-customized products, made in rather small numbers. But in both of these industries, private investment is rising and capacity is growing at about 30 percent per year.
Getting CO2 Out of Circulation
Techniques for capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide from thermal power plants have been gaining in credibility (and funding) in recent years. The costs can apparently be kept quite low, provided there is a convenient way to store or otherwise dispose of the carbon dioxide. One possibility is deep sea disposal-dissolving the gas in sea-water at high pressure. However, the effect on ocean dynamics has not been modeled yet. Another possibility is to pump the carbon dioxide back into the ground, especially into old oil and gas fields. The heavier gas would tend to displace dissolved methane and thus increase the output of natural gas, at least slightly. Presumably, very little-if any-of the carbon dioxide would ever reappear at the surface. Both of these schemes would involve long-distance transportation on a rather large scale, mostly likely by pipeline or ship. The costs would be quite large for power plants far from an oil or gas field, or from deep water. A third possibility is to find a way of utilizing pure (or nearly pure) carbon dioxide in some useful and long-lived product, almost certainly a construction material of some sort. This idea seems far-fetched, but researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, among others, are working on it.
Toward a Hydrogen Economy
Throughout the stationary (non-transportation) world, energy delivered to the final point of use is increasingly in the form of electricity. This trend is expected to continue. However, storage difficulties do seem to restrict the long-term potential for use in vehicles. At present, there is no realistic substitute for liquid hydrocarbons as fuels for mobile power sources. Nevertheless, there is increasing interest in another possibility-hydrogen. For many years, hydrogen was thought to be too dangerous to use in vehicles, perhaps in part because of the famous Hindenburg fire back in 1937. However cooler heads and recent research suggest that safe methods of storage, even in small quantities, are possible. Indeed, there may be an analogy with past experience with steam engines. Accidents were common (and often fatal) in the early days when the boiler was essentially a large teakettle, and when a leak could result in an explosion. The invention that made explosions impossible was the so-called monotube boiler-essentially a long tube inside a tank. There is no reason the same idea couldn't be applied to compressed hydrogen storage, perhaps on a microscopic scale (nanotubes).
Fuel cells have emerged, since the 1980s, as the great hope for a new generation of vehicular power plants. The big breakthrough was the development of a plastic membrane that allows protons (ionized hydrogen atoms) to pass through while blocking the passage of electrons.2 This makes it possible to accumulate negatively charged electrons on one side of the membrane and positively charged protons on the other, creating a voltage difference. The availability of this material has enabled the development of the so-called proton-exchange-membrane (PEM) fuel cells, which are the basis of the most active current research programs, especially by Ballard Power Systems Inc. However, these cells also depend upon the availability of hydrogen as a fuel, and platinum as a catalyst. To be sure, the amount of platinum required has been cut dramatically since the first prototypes, but it cannot be eliminated altogether. (Unfortunately, the less platinum is used per cell, the more uneconomic it is to recycle.) But platinum is an extremely scarce metal, and it is doubtful whether there is enough to support a whole new energy economy.
There are, however, a number of other types of fuel cells. Some are suitable for use in buildings, where both heat and power are needed. The most advanced is the phosphoric acid cell. Another possibility suitable for buildings is the high-temperature molten carbonate fuel cell. This can be paired with small gas turbines, using the waste heat. Composite efficiencies of 60 percent are possible. Several other types of cells are also attracting interest. And recent research has overcome some of the barriers that formerly seemed to block progress.3
Owning Your Share of CO2
The usual policy prescriptions for cutting greenhouses gases include eliminating direct or indirect subsidies to fossil fuels, setting efficiency standards (such as CAFE), directly regulating emissions, and taxing emissions. Carbon taxes to reduce consumption are being seriously considered in the European Union.
I would like to propose something more radical: a system whereby every legal resident over some minimum age receives a fixed carbon entitlement, based on the annual quota for the country as determined by international negotiation along Kyoto lines. This entitlement is equal for all legal residents over the minimum age, and it is recorded in a bank account. Parents of eligible children have control of their children's entitlements. The entitlements are tradeable, and have a market value. They can be bought and sold for money.
Here is how the scheme would work. Every time an individual makes a direct purchase of a carbonaceous fuel-say gasoline for the car-his or her carbon entitlement account is debited by the appropriate amount of carbon, as well as by the money price. The system works exactly the same way as a debit (money) card works today, except that there is a parallel unit of account in kilograms of carbon. Surplus individual entitlement units can be sold. The sale would be done through the bank where the account is held, at the prevailing market price, and the money value of the entitlement units sold would be deposited in the customer's money account at the same bank.
In this system, there are no automatic entitlements for businesses or other organizations. Unlike the widely discussed idea of CO2 permit trading, it does not "grandfather" allocations to existing corporations; it requires those corporations to pay their way like everyone else. If a shop or a manufacturing firm needs to buy fuel it must use entitlements purchased in the market. This cost will, of course, add to the price of the goods or services being produced. The added cost is passed back to consumers, just as a carbon tax or a value-added tax is passed back. Thus, individuals pay indirectly for their carbon use, through higher prices for goods and services. Needless to say, energy-intensive services rise in price more than energy-conserving goods and services.
On average, people would receive a net income from the sale of surplus entitlements to finance the extra costs they have to pay. But low-income people with low levels of material consumption would gain from the scheme. Elderly stay-at-homes and bicycle-riding students would receive extra money from the sale of unused entitlements. They would receive more from the sale of surplus entitlements than they would have to pay in extra costs, amounting to a real income supplement. But for high-income people with high levels of material consumption-people with big display houses who drive SUVs towing large power boats, for instance-there would be an additional cost to buy the extra carbon units they consume.
The advantages of this scheme over a simple, uniform carbon tax are several. First, the level of the "tax" (i.e., the price of entitlements) would not be determined by politicians, but by the free market. Only the amount of carbon consumption (and emissions) to be allowed in that year would be fixed by government. Second, the scheme would explicitly recognize that rights to carbon consumption cannot be unlimited, and that as a limited resource they ought to be allocated equally to everyone. If politicians chose to award free consumption rights to certain favored users (say farmers) it would have to be done and defended openly. Third, and most important, the scheme would hit the wasters hardest and reward the conservers.
A Critical Consideration
A key point of this discussion is that economic growth in the long run depends upon continued technological innovation, not just marginal improvements in existing technologies. The potential for marginal improvements in any technology is always declining. For example, internal combustion engines improved dramatically in the half-century from 1876 to 1926. From 1926 to 1976, further gains were minor at best. Only radical changes can keep the forward momentum going. The fuel cell would be such a radical change.
But although giant companies dominate the economy, radical changes are rarely initiated by big firms. For example, the modern developments in fuel cell technology came from a small firm, Ballard Power Systems Inc. even though most of the basic research had previously been done by General Electric. Why didn't GE follow through? The short answer is that radical changes are disruptive, and big firms hate uncertainty. They are happy and profitable as long as things stay as they are. In a new ball game anything can happen. Today's profitable product can be an obsolete loser tomorrow. So, corporate giants are generally risk-averse. This does not prevent them from doing important basic research from time to time. Bell Laboratories invented the transistor, for example. But others, like the upstart Texas Instruments, exploited it. Hewlett-Packard and Xerox invented several important technologies underlying the PC. But Apple exploited them.
Small firms have different motivations. As long as things stay as they are, small firms remain small. In fact, they have trouble surviving against larger competitors. In order to survive and become more profitable they must get big, and that means taking market share away from some existing big firm, or-better yet-inventing a new market. Either way involves big risks. Most small firms that take big risks will fail. That is the way of the world. But when a risky venture succeeds, the payoff can be very big indeed. Most of today's big companies got that way by taking risks they would not take now.
The point I am making is that the Bush Administration is protecting the dinosaurs against the risk-takers. But then, it is the dinosaurs who can afford to make big campaign contributions.
One last but most important point: those who resist any challenge to the fossil fuel economy claim that government intervention invariably inhibits economic growth. My claim is almost exactly opposite, and it is based on the real technological history of the past century: many of the most important technologies of our age came into being only because of government intervention. This is not to deny that government-operated services tend to be inefficient. But consider a few examples related to energy: the railroads across the western plains were built by private enterprise but only because of large land grants (subsidies) from the government. The U.S. interstate highway system was a tax-supported federal project. Large civil jet aircraft depend on engines (and many other technologies) that were developed originally for military (government) purposes. The air traffic control system is still operated by the government. The big hydroelectric dams that provide both irrigation and electric power to several important areas were government-funded. Nuclear power was entirely based on reactor designs and fuels developed for nuclear weapons. In fact, the nuclear power industry still depends on a liability exemption mandated by congress. (You can't sue for damages in case of a nuclear accident.)
The Department of Energy supports extensive R&D programs in nuclear technology (including fusion power) and in several fossil-fuel related areas such as "clean coal." The government subsidizes Midwestern corn growers and grain processors to produce ethanol as a fuel. Why, then, is the U.S. administration so reluctant to support the really important new technologies like wind power, solar power and-above all, conservation-that could make the biggest difference?
EP146C.pdf494.56 KB |
Take the 2-minute tour ×
I can't really put a proper title on this one, but I seem to be missing one crucial point. Why do roots of a function like $f(x) = ax^2 + bx + c$ provide the solutions when $f(x) = 0$. What does that $ y = 0$ mean for the solutions, the intercept at the $x$ axis? Why aren't the solutions at $f(x) = 403045$ or some other arbitrary $n$?
What makes the x-intercept special?
share|improve this question
Nothing. But every equation $f(x)=c$ is equivalent to $f(x)-c=0$ (and also $f(x)-c+403045=403045$. – Blah May 21 '12 at 22:03
Are you asking why the roots of a given function are important? You question is unclear. The definition of a root $x=x_1$ is that it satisfies $f(x_1)=0$. – Pedro Tamaroff May 21 '12 at 22:15
@PeterTamaroff Yes, that's a root. But I don't see the connection between roots and solutions to any type of polynomial. Solutions to a standard quadratic equation would be $x_{n} = \frac{-b +/- \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac} }{2a}$. If we were to say that the solution lies at $f(x) = 50$, that would just make the solution (I think): $x_{n} = \frac{-b +/- \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac + 200a^2} }{2a}$. So, why $0$? Why look for solutions there? Is it just a convention/simplification or am I missing something? – Questinz May 21 '12 at 22:19
But you don't want to function to evaluate to "something" you want the function to evaluate precisely to $0$. – Pedro Tamaroff May 21 '12 at 22:30
So that is the question! "Why do we care about the values of $x$ such that $f(x)=0$?" Try making your question clearer, since that is not what I understood at first. – Pedro Tamaroff May 21 '12 at 22:37
5 Answers 5
up vote 4 down vote accepted
I'll try to interpret your question from the data Peter managed to extrapolate from you. It seems to me that your confusion stems from the difference between a variable and an unknown, as it is mentioned in one of the comments. Why we are interested in precisely the $x$ at which the $f(x)$ evaulates to $0$ should become clear to you as you read through this answer. I apologize if I oversimplify it, I cannot infer your knowledge.
Linear interpretation
Let's go down a degree from your examples, to a simple linear equation where $x$ (the unknown) is related to some value $b$ by a factor $a$ where $a\not= 0$. Expressing this as an equation is straightforward:
$$ax = b$$
We wish to know the value of x, for which the equation is valid (true) or, put a little bit different, $x$ multiplied by $a$ is equal to $b$. This can be easily resolved by simple algebra and logical thinking because $b$ is $a$ times bigger or smaller than $x$ (remember that $a$ can be anything except $0$, that includes numbers above $0$ and below $1$ which would indicate that $b$ is smaller than $x$ because it is only a fraction of its value). Therefore, if we divide both sides by an equal amount ($a$), we can find out what $x$ is:
$$x = \frac{b}{a}$$
And there, we have the fancy $x$. But this is where stuff gets fun. I believe you are acquainted with the notion of functions, which take a certain input in a certain range and return an output which is calculated from that input, thus forming an ordered pair which can be graphed. The magic is that the output (dependent value) depends on the input (independent value) and we can study their relationship visually or purely algebraically.
In our former relationship, we have two coefficients/constraints (known values which force our $x$ (the unknown) into a very particular value (the solution to our problem, an answer to our question, what is x?). You can clearly see that it can be interpreted in this form:
$$f(x) = ax$$
$$f(x) = b$$
Now, we want to know at which $x$ will the function $f(x)$ output the value $b$. Now, if may turn your attention to this, $b$ is also a function of $x$. That's right, for every x you can think, it simply pops out $b$. It is constant all across all $x$ values. Well, how can we achieve that? Take the $x$, drop the $x$:
$$g(x) = b$$
You know $b$, so for any $x$, it just outputs $b$, which you can imagine in your head or on a piece of paper as a simple line that is parallel to the $x$-axis. Now graph out the function $f(x)=ax$ on that mental or paper image. You will notice that they intersect at a very specific point. At that point, they have the same $x$ and $y$ values. Since we know that $g(x) = b$, their shared $y$ coordinate is $b$. That's the whole point of $g(x)$, we wanted to know the $x$ value where the two lines collide at $y=b$. So, if at that magic point they share the $x$ and $y$ coordinate, a common point then as you know:
So, by making such a statement, we infer that there ought to be an $x$ for which these two functions would yield the same value. Although we suppose there exists such a value, we can detect that they are parallel (that there is no solution). A proof by contradiction, if you will. Substituting, we find out that:
$$ax = b$$ $$x = \frac{b}{a}$$
Which is exactly what we reached with simple algebra. So, graphically, the intersection point is the solution to this equation. They are the same, $g(x)$ and $f(x)$ are the same at that specific $x$ if and only if:
$$f(x) - g(x) = 0$$ or $$ax - b = 0$$
That's a visual way to see where the $0$ comes from. If the two functions are the same or EQUAL, subtracting one from the other MUST yield $0$, which is only logical. From simply observing the equation $ax = b$, they are only equal if subtracting one from the other yields $0$. Basically, what happens really is that you subtract from both sides one of the sides. By doing the same operations on both sides, we don't damage the equation. In everyday life, we simplify by saying, subtract one side from the other, going over the equal sign like a country border, changing sign as a passport.
Going up a degree...
Now, let's expand this to quadratic equations and thus functions. As you know, a quadratic equation is defined implicitly as:
$ax^2 + bx + c = 0$
I hope by now you're beginning to notice the difference between unknowns and variables. Variables give away their nature with their name, they can change and evaluate to different values which all respect the relationship imposed by a function. Since a function works with the full range of values $x$ can take, $x$ is a variable. And with $x$, the independent value, there comes a value which is a function of that $x$, $f(x)$ or $y$.
The moment you impose a specific $x$ (input) or a specific $f(x)=y$ (output), the other one can take only one very specific value which forms an ordered pair with it. And the other one is an unknown, which can be calculated by the relationship described in the equation (constants/coefficients/constraints force the value).
Without beating a dead horse (too much at least), consider a quadratic function whose graph is a parabola. Simply by using the already mentioned here (and understanding the shape of the parabola), you can infer why there are two solutions. The $g(x)$ or the imposed $y$ is still a horizontal line. And that line cuts the parabola in two points, both equally valid. A simple argument for formulizing the quadratic equation is to solve problems like the value of our dear $\sqrt{2}$ which is an irrational number, which means it's impossible to represent it as a ratio of two values. But luckily, it is not transcendental, so it can be expressed as:
$$x = \sqrt{2}$$ $$x^2 = 2$$ $$x^2 - 2 = 0$$
Remember, we are trying to find an $x$ which when squared gives the value of $2$. Now, what is this $2$? It is a constraint which forces $x$ to evaluate to $\sqrt{2}$. Rings a bell? Yes, it's the same form as $f(x) - g(x) = 0$. The intersection. Or multiple ones in this case (two points/ordered pairs sharing the same $y$ value), as you've already seen visually on your paper. Now, let's get a bit dirty by deriving the actual equation which releases the $x$ value to us.
$$ax^2 + bx + c = 0$$ $$x^2 + \frac{b}{a}x = -\frac{c}{a}$$
We can complete the square by adding to both sides $\frac{b^2}{4a^2}$ (hopefully you can see that):
Slowly shaping up to the classic equation, just to take square roots from both sides:
$$x + \frac{b}{2a} = \frac{\sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$$ $$x = \frac{-b + \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$$
Remember how we decided it would be best if two negative numbers multiplied yield a positive number, because that's what logic and everyday problems dictate. Well, now we must take one for the team. The square root of a number is a number multiplied by itself. Therefore, that number can be either positive or negative. Since we have no way of knowing, we must then have two distinct values and therefore two perfectly valid solutions which can only be culled by further application of logic (if it's a simple case, for example length, well, it can't be negative). But that's not always the case, therefore, we leave this:
$$x_1 = \frac{-b + \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$$ $$x_2 = \frac{-b - \sqrt{b^2 - 4ac}}{2a}$$
And that's the mystery of two solutions resolved from a more algebraic-consequence point of view. This is the most general case, you can sometimes be without the $y$-intersect ($c$ coeffiecient) or the $b$ coefficient like in the case of $x^2 - 2 = 0$ which you can now evaluate to be somewhere around:
$$\sqrt{2} = 1.4142135623730950488016887242097 \dots$$
So, that should answer your question of why $0$? or the x-intercept, why do they correspond to the solutions and now for the final one:
$$ax^2 + bx + c = 403045$$
After all that has been discussed, this is obviously a totally different equation. You're now evaluating a totally different ordered pair, aren't you? I hope you see that you're looking for the $x$ (or $x$s) that correspond to the $y = 403045$. That's a totally different intersect. You've already said that something is equal to $0$, that they intersect and you're overdoing it with a second uplift of the value.
If you're looking for a value that is described by some function $f(x)$, this is entirely valid and has a solution of its own which yields true to the equation (the equal sign, heart of everything). But that has nothing to do with solving a specific problem, that's just trying to evaluate the function in the other way around, by finding $x$ by the it's $y$ value (the output).
Hopefully this helps! Unfortunately, it's a bit long. Need to work on that.
share|improve this answer
Oh, thank you very much for you effort! This really helped me find a new perspective on the whole matter, simple enough for me to understand... – Questinz May 22 '12 at 4:29
P.S. I've always wondered where the formula for the solutions of the quadratic equation comes from. Really a lot of information for a layman like me, thank you! – Questinz May 22 '12 at 4:30
Actually there is something special about the value $0$: the connection between the roots of a polynomial and its linear factors. That is, if $f(z)$ is a polynomial, $f(a) = 0$ if and only if we can write $f(z) = (z-a) g(z)$ for some polynomial $g(z)$.
share|improve this answer
Ooo, nice point; $k=0$ is the only number for which $a\cdot b=k\implies a=k\text{ or }b=k$ ("The Zero-Product Property"). – Isaac May 22 '12 at 2:57
Very interesting, but this doesn't really answer my question, I was simply wondering why equating to 0 yields the solutions. This is a little bit out of my reach. But thank you very much for your time! – Questinz May 22 '12 at 4:25
There are a few critical terms floating around in your question: roots, solutions, $x$-intercepts; I'll add zeros to this list. Let's start by defining these terms.
The roots of a polynomial are values of the variable that make the polynomial equal to zero.
The solutions of an equation are values of the variable that make the equation true.
The $x$-intercepts of a graph are values of $x$ at which the graph crosses the $x$-axis; the $x$-intercepts of a function are the $x$-intercepts of its graphs.
The zeros of a function are the values of the input to the function that make the output equal to zero. The zeros of a polynomial function are the roots of the polynomial.
Now, if the question is "Why are any of these things of any interest?," I'd say it's probably because of $x$-intercepts. We often graph functions, including polynomial functions; we can think of the two sides of an equation as functions; and when we graph functions, one of the "key features" of the graph of a function is where it crosses the $x$-axis, since the axes are major landmarks on the coordinate plane.
Turning to your example of $f(x)=ax^2+bc+c$, this is a polynomial function; $ax^2+bx+c$ is a polynomial. The roots of the polynomial $ax^2+bx+c$ are the same as the zeros of the function $f(x)=ax^2+bx+c$, both are the same as the solutions to the equation $ax^2+bx+c=0$, and these all describe the $x$-intercepts of the graph of $y=f(x)=ax^2+bx+c$—this goes back to the definitions above.
share|improve this answer
Wonderful definitions, thank you very much! – Questinz May 22 '12 at 4:25
Since adding/subtracting a constant from a polynomial just gives you another polynomial, it's not particularly important what values of $f(x)$ we care about. If we can figure out the solution to $f(x) = a$ for any polynomial $f$, then we can figure out answers to $f(x) = b$, since then $f(x) - b = a$, and we set $g(x) = f(x) - b$ and solve for the $x$ which makes $g(x) = a$.
So if we can solve a generic polynomial for one particular $y$ value, we can solve it for all of them. Thus it's really only worth having a solution formula for one $y$ value, particularly if that formula is long and ugly. We choose 0 because it's the most canonical value out there, and it makes our formulas somewhat simpler. If you're solving by hand (for example, via factoring the polynomial), setting everything to zero is the best way to do it, since if you've factored one side and the other side is zero, you know at least one of the factors is zero.
So there's nothing amazingly special about zero, just that it's the most natural choice, and tends to be the easiest value to get on the right-hand-side when you're solving equations.
share|improve this answer
Thanks for the effort, I really appreciate it! – Questinz May 22 '12 at 4:31
One reason is that it makes solving an equation simple, especially if $f(x)$ is written only as the product of a few terms. This is because $a\cdot b = 0$ implies either $a = 0$ or $b = 0$. For example, take $f(x) = (x-5)(x+2)(x-2)$. To find the values of $x$ where $f(x) = 0$ we see that $x$ must be $5$, $-2$, or $2$. To find the values of $x$ so that $f(x) = 5$, well, we can't conclude anything immediately because having 3 numbers multiply to 5 (or any non-zero number) doesn't tell us anything about those 3 numbers. This makes 0 special.
share|improve this answer
Thank you for your input! – Questinz May 22 '12 at 4:31
Your Answer
|
Battle of Artemisium
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Battle of Artemisium
Part of the Greco-Persian Wars
Map showing major incidents of the second Persian invasion of Greece
Date August/September 480 BC
Location Artemisium, Euboea
Result Tactical stalemate, Persian strategic victory
Greek city-states Persian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Artemisia I,
271 ships 800 ships
Casualties and losses
~100 ships lost or damaged ~200 ships lost
The naval Battle of Artemesium took place at the same time as the Battle of Thermopylae, in 480 BC.
Approaching Artemisium towards the end of summer, the Persian navy was caught in a gale off the coast of Magnesia and lost around a third of their ~1,200 ships.
After the engagement, the Allies received news of the defeat of the Allied army at Thermopylae. Their strategy was to hold both Thermopylae and Artemisium. So, given their losses, the Allies decided to withdraw to Salamis. The Persians overran Boeotia and captured the now-evacuated Athens. However, seeking a decisive victory over the Allied fleet, the Persians were later defeated at the Battle of Salamis in late 480
Other websites[change | change source]
|
The Faithful Steward and Its Governing Body
“Who really is the faithful steward, the discreet one, whom his master will appoint over his body of attendants to keep giving them their measure of food supplies at the proper time?”—LUKE 12:42.
WHILE giving the composite sign of the last days, Jesus raised this question: “Who really is the faithful and discreet slave whom his master appointed over his domestics, to give them their food at the proper time?” Jesus then went on to say that this slave would be rewarded for his faithfulness by being appointed over all of the Master’s belongings.—Matt. 24:45-47.
2 Several months earlier, Jesus had asked a similar question. (Read Luke 12:42-44.) He called the slave a “steward” and referred to the “domestics” as “his body of attendants.” A steward is a house manager or administrator who is placed over servants. Yet, the steward is also a servant. Who is this slave, or steward, and how does he provide “food at the proper time”? It is vital for all of us to recognize the channel that is used to dispense spiritual food.
3 Christendom’s commentators often view these words of Jesus as referring to those who have positions of responsibility among professed Christians. But Jesus, the “master” in the illustration, did not say that there would be a multitude of slaves scattered throughout the various sects of Christendom. Instead, he clearly stated that there would be only one “steward,” or “slave,” whom he would appoint over all his belongings. So as this journal has often explained, the steward must represent the “little flock” of anointed disciples as a collective body, or group. In the context of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus had just referred to these ones. (Luke 12:32) The “body of attendants,” or “domestics,” refers to this same group but highlights their role as individuals. An intriguing question arises, Does each individual member of this slave class play a part in providing spiritual food at the proper time? The answer becomes evident when we closely examine what the Scriptures say.
Jehovah’s Servant in Times Past
4 Jehovah spoke of his people, the ancient nation of Israel, as a collective servant. “‘You [plural] are my witnesses [plural],’ is the utterance of Jehovah, ‘even my servant [singular] whom I have chosen.’” (Isa. 43:10) All members of the nation were included in that one servant class. However, it is important to note that only the priests together with the nonpriestly Levites were responsible for teaching the nation.—2 Chron. 35:3; Mal. 2:7.
5 Was the nation of Israel the slave about whom Jesus spoke? No. We know that because of what Jesus said to the Jews of his day: “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and be given to a nation producing its fruits.” (Matt. 21:43) Clearly, a change was to occur. Jehovah would use a new nation. Nevertheless, when it comes to spiritual instruction, the work of the slave in Jesus’ illustration does follow a pattern similar to that of God’s “servant” in ancient Israel.
The Faithful Slave Appears
6 The new nation, “the Israel of God,” is made up of spiritual Israelites. (Gal. 6:16; Rom. 2:28, 29; 9:6) It came into existence with the outpouring of God’s spirit at Pentecost 33 C.E. Thereafter, all spirit-anointed Christians became part of the nation that now served as the slave class appointed by the Master, Jesus Christ. Each member of that nation was given the commission to preach the good news and make disciples. (Matt. 28:19, 20) But was every member of that group to be involved with providing spiritual food at the proper time? Let us see how the Scriptures answer this question.
7 When Jesus appointed his 12 apostles, their primary work involved being sent out to preach the good news to others. (Read Mark 3:13-15.) This assignment was in harmony with the basic meaning of the Greek word apostolos, which is derived from a verb meaning simply “send forth.” However, as time went on and the Christian congregation was about to be established, the role of an apostle became an “office of oversight.”—Acts 1:20-26.
8 What was the primary concern of the 12 apostles? The answer can be seen in the events following the day of Pentecost. When a dispute arose about the daily distribution of food to widows, the 12 apostles gathered the disciples and said: “It is not pleasing for us to leave the word of God to distribute food to tables.” (Read Acts 6:1-6.) The apostles then appointed other spiritually qualified brothers to care for this “necessary business” so that the apostles could devote themselves “to the ministry of the word.” This arrangement resulted in Jehovah’s blessing as “the word of God went on growing, and the number of the disciples kept multiplying in Jerusalem very much.” (Acts 6:7) So the primary responsibility for the spiritual feeding work rested with the apostles.—Acts 2:42.
9 In time, others were entrusted with weighty responsibilities. Paul and Barnabas, under the direction of holy spirit, were sent out as missionaries by the Antioch congregation. They also became known as apostles, although they were not included in the original 12. (Acts 13:1-3; 14:14; Gal. 1:19) Their appointment was confirmed by the governing body in Jerusalem. (Gal. 2:7-10) Shortly after that, Paul had a part in dispensing spiritual food. He wrote his first inspired letter.
10 However, were all spirit-anointed Christians involved in overseeing the preaching work and in preparing spiritual food? No. The apostle Paul tells us: “Not all are apostles, are they? Not all are prophets, are they? Not all are teachers, are they? Not all perform powerful works, do they?” (1 Cor. 12:29) Although all spirit-begotten Christians engaged in the preaching work, only a very limited number—just eight different men—were used to write the 27 books of the Christian Greek Scriptures.
The Faithful Slave in Modern Times
11 Jesus’ words recorded at Matthew 24:45 clearly indicate that there would still be a faithful and discreet slave class living on earth during the time of the end. Revelation 12:17 refers to these ones as “the remaining ones” of the seed of the woman. As a group, this remnant has been appointed over all of Christ’s belongings here on earth. The “belongings” that the faithful steward is appointed to care for are the Master’s royal interests on earth, which include the Kingdom’s earthly subjects and the material facilities used in preaching the good news.
12 How does a Christian know if he or she has the heavenly hope and is included in this remnant of spiritual Israelites? The answer is found in the apostle Paul’s words to those who were sharers with him in the same heavenly hope: “All who are led by God’s spirit, these are God’s sons. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery causing fear again, but you received a spirit of adoption as sons, by which spirit we cry out: ‘Abba, Father!’ The spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are God’s children. If, then, we are children, we are also heirs: heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ, provided we suffer together that we may also be glorified together.”—Rom. 8:14-17.
13 Simply stated, these individuals are anointed by God’s holy spirit and receive a heavenly “calling,” or “invitation.” (Heb. 3:1; ftn.) This personal invitation is from God. They, in turn, respond at once without question or doubt or fear in accepting this begetting as God’s sons. (Read 1 John 2:20, 21.) So they do not select this hope for themselves, but Jehovah puts his seal, or holy spirit, upon them.—2 Cor. 1:21, 22; 1 Pet. 1:3, 4.
The Correct Viewpoint
14 How should these anointed ones view themselves as they await their heavenly reward? They realize that although they have received a wonderful invitation, it is only that—an invitation. They must remain faithful until death in order to obtain this prize. In humility, they echo the words of Paul: “Brothers, I do not yet consider myself as having laid hold on it; but there is one thing about it: Forgetting the things behind and stretching forward to the things ahead, I am pursuing down toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God by means of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 3:13, 14) The anointed remnant must do their utmost to ‘walk worthily of the calling with which they were called, with complete lowliness of mind,’ doing so “with fear and trembling.”—Eph. 4:1, 2; Phil. 2:12; 1 Thess. 2:12.
15 On the other hand, how should other Christians view a person who claims to have received this anointing and begins to partake of the emblems at the Memorial? He or she should not be judged. The matter is between this person and Jehovah. (Rom. 14:12) However, Christians who have truly received this anointing do not demand special attention. They do not believe that their being of the anointed gives them special insights beyond what even some experienced members of the “great crowd” may have. (Rev. 7:9) They do not believe that they necessarily have more holy spirit than their companions of the “other sheep” have. (John 10:16) They do not expect special treatment; nor do they claim that their partaking of the emblems places them above the appointed elders in the congregation.
16 Are all these anointed ones throughout the earth part of a global network that is somehow involved in revealing new spiritual truths? No. Although as a composite body the slave class is responsible for feeding the spiritual household, not all individuals of the slave class have the same responsibilities or work assignments. (Read 1 Corinthians 12:14-18.) As noted earlier, in the first century, all were involved in the vital preaching work. But only a very limited number were used to write the books of the Bible and oversee the Christian congregation.
17 To illustrate: The Scriptures at times speak of “the congregation” as taking certain action in handling judicial matters. (Matt. 18:17) In real terms, though, it is only the elders who take this action in their capacity as representatives of the congregation. The elders do not contact all members of the congregation to ask their various opinions before they make a decision. Theocratically, they perform the role that they have been assigned; they act on behalf of the whole congregation.
18 Similarly, today a limited number of anointed men have the responsibility of representing the slave class. They make up the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses. These spirit-anointed men oversee the Kingdom work and the spiritual feeding program. As in the first century, though, the Governing Body does not consult with each individual member of the slave class before making decisions. (Read Acts 16:4, 5.) However, all anointed Witnesses are deeply involved in the vital harvest work that is now taking place. As a class, “the faithful and discreet slave” is one body, but as individuals, they have various work assignments.—1 Cor. 12:19-26.
19 What effect should the above facts have on the ever-increasing great crowd who hope to live forever on earth? As part of the King’s belongings, they are happy to cooperate fully with the arrangements made by the Governing Body, which represents “the faithful and discreet slave.” Members of the great crowd appreciate the spiritual food produced under the Governing Body’s direction. But at the same time, while respecting the slave as a class, members of the great crowd are careful not to elevate any individuals who claim to be part of that slave. No Christian who genuinely receives the anointing with God’s spirit would want or expect such treatment.—Acts 10:25, 26; 14:14, 15.
20 Whether we are “domestics,” who are part of the anointed remnant, or we are members of the great crowd, let it be our determination to cooperate fully with the faithful steward and its Governing Body. May each of us “keep on the watch” and prove ourselves faithful until the end.—Matt. 24:13, 42.
Do You Remember?
• Who is “the faithful and discreet slave,” and who are the domestics?
• How does a person know that he or she has the heavenly calling?
• Who has the primary responsibility for preparing new spiritual food?
• How should one of the anointed view himself?
[Study Questions]
1, 2. What important question did Jesus raise while giving the composite sign of the last days?
3. (a) How have Christendom’s commentators tried to explain Jesus’ statements about the “slave”? (b) Who is the “steward,” or “slave,” and who are the “attendants,” or “domestics”?
4. How did Jehovah refer to the ancient nation of Israel, and what is it important to note about that nation?
5. According to Jesus, what major change was to occur?
6. What new nation came into existence at Pentecost 33 C.E., and who became part of it?
7. Initially, what was the primary work of the apostles, and how was that work later expanded?
8, 9. (a) What was the primary concern of the 12 apostles? (b) Who else were given extra responsibilities, as confirmed by the governing body?
10. In the first century, were all spirit-anointed Christians involved in preparing spiritual food? Explain.
11. Over what “belongings” was the slave appointed?
12, 13. How does a Christian know that he or she has the heavenly calling?
14. How do the anointed view their calling?
15. How should Christians view those who partake of the emblems at the Memorial, and how do anointed ones view themselves?
16-18. (a) Are all anointed ones involved with presenting new spiritual truths? Illustrate. (b) Why is there no need for the Governing Body to consult with all who claim to be anointed?
19, 20. What balanced view do the great crowd have of “the faithful and discreet slave” and its Governing Body?
[Picture on page 23]
|
Legendary History Prior to 1st Century BC
Beli Mawr and Llyr Llediath in Welsh Pedigrees
The Bartrum "Welsh Genealogies"
Bartrum's "Pedigrees of the Welsh Tribal Patriarchs"
A study in charting medieval citations
The Evolution of the "Padriarc Brenin" Pedigree
Generational Gaps and the Welsh Laws
Minimum Age for Welsh Kingship in the Eleventh Century
The Lands of the Silures
Catel Durnluc aka Cadell Ddyrnllwg
Ancient Powys
The Royal Family of Powys
The Royal Family of Gwynedd
The 5 Plebian Tribes of Wales
Maxen Wledig of Welsh Legend
Maxen Wledig and the Welsh Genealogies
Anwn Dynod ap Maxen Wledig
Constans I and his 343 Visit to Britain
Glast and the Glastening
Composite Lives of St Beuno
Rethinking the Gwent Pedigrees
The Father of Tewdrig of Gwent
Another Look at Teithfallt of Gwent
Ynyr Gwent and Caradog Freich Fras
Llowarch ap Bran, Lord of Menai
Rulers of Brycheiniog - The Unanswered Questions
Lluan ferch Brychan
The Herbert Family Pedigree
Edwin of Tegeingl and his Family
Angharad, Heiress of Mostyn
Ithel of Bryn in Powys
Idnerth Benfras of Maesbrook
Henry, the Forgotten Son of Cadwgan ap Bleddyn
The Muddled Pedigree of Sir John Wynn of Gwydir
The Mysterious Peverel Family
The Clan of Tudor Trevor
The Other "Sir Roger of Powys"
Ancestry of Ieuaf ap Adda ap Awr of Trevor
The Retaking of Northeast Wales
Hedd Molwynog or Hedd ap Alunog of Llanfair Talhearn
"Meuter Fawr" son of Hedd ap Alunog
The Medieval "redating" of Braint Hir
Aaron Paen ap Y Paen Hen
Welsh Claims to Ceri after 1179
The Battle of Mynydd Carn
Trahaearn ap Caradog of Arwystli
Cadafael Ynfyd of Cydewain
Maredudd ap Robert, Lord of Cedewain
Cadwgan of Nannau
Maredudd ap Owain, King of Deheubarth
Two Families headed by a Rhydderch ap Iestyn
The Era of Llewelyn ap Seisyll
Cynfyn ap Gwerystan, the Interim King
The Consorts and Children of Gruffudd ap Llewelyn
The 1039 Battle at Rhyd y Groes
The First Wife of Bleddyn ap Cynfyn
Hywel ap Gronwy of Deheubarth
The Brief Life of Gruffudd ap Maredudd
The Other Gwenwynwyn
Eunydd son of Gwenllian
Sandde Hardd of Mortyn
The Floruit of Einion ap Seisyllt
The Enigmatic Elystan Glodrydd
Cowryd ap Cadfan of Dyffryn Clwyd
Owain ap Cadwgan and Nest ferch Rhys - An Historic Fiction?
The "sons" of Owain ap Cadwgan ap Bleddyn
The Betrayal by Meirion Goch Revisited
Gwyn Ddistain, seneschal for Llewelyn Fawr
The Men of Lleyn - How They Got There
Trahaearn Goch of Lleyn
Einion vs Iestyn ap Gwrgan - The Conquest of Glamorgan
Dafydd Goch ap Dafydd - His Real Ancestry
Thomas ap Rhodri - Father of Owain "Lawgoch"
The "Malpas" Family in Cheshire
Einion ap Celynin of Llwydiarth
Marchweithian, Lord of Is Aled, Rhufoniog
Osbwrn Wyddel of Cors Gedol
Bradwen of Llys Bradwen in Meirionydd
Ednowain ap Bradwen
Sorting out the Gwaithfoeds
Three Men called Iorwerth Goch "ap Maredudd"
The Caradog of Gwynedd With 3 Fathers
Who Was Sir Robert Pounderling?
Eidio Wyllt - What Was His Birthname?
The Legendary Kingdom of Seisyllwg
The Royal Family of Ceredigion
Llewelyn ap Hoedliw, Lord of Is Cerdin
The Ancestry of Owain Glyndwr
Gruffudd ap Rhys, the Homeless Prince
The Children of Lord Rhys
Maredudd Gethin ap Lord Rhys
The 'Next Heir' of Morgan of Caerleon
Pedigree of the ancient Lords of Ial
The Shropshire Walcot Family
Pedigree of "Ednowain Bendew II"
Pedigree of Cynddelw Gam
By Darrell Wolcott
In his Pedigrees of the Welsh Tribal Patriarchs[1], Peter Bartrum comments as follows: "Ednywain Bendew of Tegeingl was ancestor of one Pymtheg Llwyth Gwynedd (one of the 15 Noble Tribes of Gwynedd). His descendants through his sons Madog, Maredudd, Gruffudd and Gwyn point to a date of birth of about 1100 for Ednywain. He must therefore be distinguished from an earlier Ednywain Bendew, born c. 1020, who had two sons Bledrus and Rhotbert, and two daughters Morwyl and Ceinfryd (ABT 2d, 8h; HL 1b, 2i)"
Some 11 years later, when Bartrum published his charts in Welsh Genealogies AD 300-1400, he estimated that Gruffudd ap Ednowain was probably born c. 1070 and must have been a younger son of the first Ednowain Bendew[2]. But he continued to date Madog, Maredudd and Gwyn to c. 1130 thus requiring a second Ednowain Bendew as their father.
When we abandon his "generational" dating scheme and replace it with more precise estimates, we actually find Maredudd and Gwyn were born nearer 1170 but Madog ap Ednowain occurs c. 1080. And Bartrum's charts for Madog's family omit the first two generations after Ednowain, skipping directly to the Madog of c. 1145 (whom he dates to c. 1130) This omission can best be seen in the family which held Bodidris in Ial in 1315[3]:
Bartrum's Chart Our Construction
1050 Ednowain Bendew
1080 Madog
1100 Ednywain Bendew II 1110 Iorwerth
l l
1130 Madog 1140 Rhiryd
l l
1170 Iorwerth 1175 Einion
l l
1200 Rhiryd 1205 Madog
l l
1230 Einion 1235 Maredudd
l l
1270 Madog 1265 Llewelyn
l l
1270 Maredudd 1295 Llewelyn
1300 Llewelyn
1330 Llewelyn
In the 1315 Extent of Bromfield and Yale the holders of Bodidris in Ial included "Llewelyn ap Llewelyn ap Maredudd"[4]. The co-holder was Gruffudd Lloyd (ap Maredudd ap Llewelyn ap Ynyr) who had married the first-cousin of Llewelyn ap Llewelyn, Tangwystl the daughter and heiress of Ieuaf ap Maredudd ap Madog. Both of these land holders were young men in 1315 as both the father and uncle of Gruffudd Lloyd are named as holders of Gelligynan, Ial in the same survey[5] and were still alive on that date. In our chart, we make Llewelyn ap Llewelyn a man in his early 20's (our date estimates are + or - 5 years) while the Bartrum chart depicts a man not yet born in 1315. That he was proceeding uncertainly with his dating is also evident when he places both Maredudd and his father Madog in the same generation. We think it is clear that his chart is missing two early generations, that in fact the Madog he dates c. 1130 was a brother of the Rhiryd ap Iorwerth in our chart. What led him astray is the fact that this Rhiryd did have a brother Madog (born c. 1145) who named a son Iorwerth, that Iorwerth had a son Rhiryd and that Rhiryd had a son named Einion. This Einion ap Rhiryd was born c. 1240 and had a son named Madog who was father to Madog Wyddel, Cwnws, Hywel and Gruffudd....but not to any Maredudd. In family after family, Bartrum's charts ignore a common tendency to repeat long strings of male names; we see it very often in the 10th to 14th centuries. And this is certainly not the only example to be found in the families who descended from the c. 1045 (not c. 1100) Ednowain Bendew.
To make his early generations "work" chronologically, Bartrum has accepted one error repeatedly made in pedigrees of this family but "emended" another citation to fit. Most medieval charts show the following at the top[6]:
Ednowain Bendew
Madog=====Arddun ferch Bradwen, sister of
l Ednowain ap Bradwen
Iorwerth=====Arddun ferch Llewelyn ap Owain
ap Edwin
Since the first Arddun depicted was born c. 1155, Bartrum decided the next Arddun must be incorrect...a granddaughter of Owain ap Edwin would occur c. 1115/1120. By "emending" the citation to read "Llewelyn ap Owain ap Aldud ap Owain ap Edwin", we produce an Arddun of c. 1185 to fit with the Iorwerth who was a son of the first Arddun. However, the only construction which fits all the later branches of this family is this:
1050 Ednowain Bendew
1080 Madog (unknown wife)
1110 Iorwerth===Arddun ferch Llewelyn 1120
1145 Madog===Arddun ferch Bradwen 1155
1180 Iorwerth (unknown wife)
We find the Iorwerth ap Madog of c. 1110 had, besides the son Madog, a son Rhiryd as shown in our first chart and a son Llewelyn who was father to the Tangwystl who married Maredudd ap Cadwaladr[7]. Rhiryd ap Iorwerth of c. 1140 had, in addition to the son Einion, a daughter Tibod who married Ithel Gam ap Maredudd[8].
Madog ap Iorwerth of c. 1145 had, beside the son Iorwerth shown immediately above and in the Bartrum chart, a son Rhiryd who married Nest ferch Gronwy ap Einion ap Seisyllt[9] (a lady wholly omitted from Bartrum's index probably because she didn't fit anywhere on his charts). That Rhiryd ap Madog had sons Einion and Iorwerth. Since the early family used so few male names, only by following a rigid timeline can one distinguish one Rhiryd ap Iorwerth, for example, from another.
Returning to our opening paragraph now, we find those 4 "sons" of a "second" Ednowain Bendew were most likely born as follows:
Madog c. 1080
Gruffudd c. 1070 ?
Maredudd c. 1175
Gwyn c. 1170
That these men did not share a common father should be evident; only Gwyn and Maredudd might be brothers. There are no marriages shown for descendants of Gruffudd until near 1400 and those tend to date him a generation earlier than Bartrum's guess of 1070, perhaps nearer 1050[10]. Perhaps he was a son of the first Ednowain Bendew and not mentioned in the old pedigrees since no early daughter's marriage was known as was the case with Bledrus and Rhotbert. Although the early 15th century marriages that are known for the family descended from Gruffudd appear to be mostly with Gwynedd ladies, nothing connects that family with Tegeingl.
The family descended from Gwyn seems to be found in Maelor and intermarried with the Tudor Trevor clan, while that descended from Maredudd held manors in Whitford...lands within the old lordship held by the first Ednowain Bendew. We suspect his pedigree is deficient, that he belongs somewhere in the descendants of the c. 1020 Ednowain Bendew. We are left with the large family which descended from Madog of c. 1080 as possibly having descended from a "second" Ednowain Bendew , a man born c. 1050.
Not only did the family hold lands in Tegeingl, but in those areas formerly owned by Edwin ap Gronwy of the eleventh century. That the man called "Ednowain Bendew" at the top of Madog's pedigree was part of Edwin's clan is almost certain and he occurs in the same generation as the known sons of Edwin. So who exactly was he?
Rather than suggest an answer immediately, we would point you to two other men born about the same time as Madog and whose descendants also held lands in the heart of Edwin's old lordship[11]:
1. Madog ap "Ednowain Bendew", born c. 1080
2. Aldud ap "Owain ap Edwin", born c. 1085
3. Uchdryd ap "Edwin", born c. 1085
This Uchdryd was father to Maredudd who named a son Ithel Gam and the subsequent families became fixated on that male name, churning out other Ithels nicknamed "Gam", "Fychan", "Lloyd" and "Anwyl" by the handfuls. Our work is yet incomplete on that family, but the Uchdryd at the top of the pedigree cannot be the Uchdryd ap Edwin who was brother to Owain; this one occurs in the generation of Edwin's grandsons.
It has occurred to us that the three men, Uchdryd, Aldud and Madog, might be brothers or at least first-cousins; in the pedigrees the "father" is respectively called Edwin, Owain and Ednowain...the latter perhaps no more than a joining of the first two names. We have papers now in progress which will suggest the father of Uchdryd was actually Uchdryd ap Edwin; that Aldud was an adopted child of Owain ap Edwin; and that Madog was a son of Owain ap Edwin whose later family was ashamed to claim him as their ancestor since certain medieval historians labeled Owain a traitor for ruling Gwynedd as the Norman's sub-king (to the exclusion of their hero, Gruffudd ap Cynan). Madog's family called their ancestor Ednowain Bendew...replacing Owain with his father-in-law[12].
Our instant purpose is to set the stage for our later papers by elminating Gruffudd, Gwyn and Maredudd as brothers of Madog; we believe they descended from the c. 1020 Ednowain Bendew. If there even was such a man as Ednowain Bendew II, his only known son was Madog. But we doubt that was the true name of his father; however one might call him Edwin's Owain!
[1] See the National Library of Wales Journal, vol xiii, no. 2 (winter, 1963); our quote comes from the notes on pp 138
[2] published in 8 volumes in 1974, the reference is to the chart Ednywain Bendew 1 in volume 2.
[3] This family is also charted and discussed in Appendix A to our paper "Sandde Hardd of Mortyn" elsewhere on this site
[4] T.P. Ellis "The First Extent of Bromfield and Yale AD 1315", 1924, London, pp 89
[5] ibid pp 81
[6] one example can be see in the pedigree of Jones of Chilton printed in Montgomeryshire Collections, vol xiii, pp 389; citations in Dwnn ii, 304 and 325 are quite flawed and both depict the Madog who married Arddun ferch Bradwen as occurring earlier than the Iorwerth who married the granddaughter of Owain ap Edwin, but neither make the latter descended from Aldud.
[7] Harleian Ms 1969, 110 cites the marriage of Tangwystl ferch Llewelyn ap Iorwerth to Maredudd ap Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd ap Cynan. We have previously identified that Cadwaladr as "ap Cadwgan ap Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd ap Cynan ap Idwal", the father of a Cadfan ap Cadwaladr who married Lleuci ferch Ithel ap Rhys, and the grandfather of the Tangwystl who married Moreiddig ap Sandde of c. 1195.
[8] Harleian Ms 1971, 163 cites this marriage
[9] Dwnn ii, 325 cites the marriage of Nest to Rhiryd ap Madog but like Bartrum, omits 2 generations above Madog.
[10] Bartrum's chart dates two of his lineal male descendants in the same generation to reach the c. 1400 marriages without having to push Gruffudd back to a c. 1030 estimate
[11] in addition to other parcels, descendants from each of the 3 men held land in Northop where Edwin of Tegeingl was buried and where stood his home of Llys Edwin.
[12] ABT 2d says the mother of Gronwy ap Owain (ap Edwin per ABT 2e) was "Morwyl verch Ydnywain bendew ap Neiniad ap Gawithuoed ap Gwrydr." Thus, Ednowain Bendew was the father-in-law of Owain ap Edwin, and Morwyl (Morfydd) was Owain's wife. |
Virginia May Help Offshore Wind Power Up
By Peter Galuszka
About 22 miles off Virginia Beach, at points too far to see with human eyes, Virginia’s first real effort to harness the wind for electricity is about to take shape.
That’s about as much power as Dominion’s two Virginia nuclear power stations generate and represents a potential breakthrough for wind energy in this country. The government is “very motivated to get the auction going,” says Guy Chapman, director of Dominion’s renewable energy research and program development.
Indeed, wind energy is a bit of a no-brainer, because it seems to be the ultimate renewable energy source. It doesn’t pollute, produces hardly any climate-changing greenhouse gases, and doesn’t kill coal miners or rip apart the tops of mountains. Unlike nuclear power, wind doesn’t result in spent fuel that’s radioactive for hundreds of years.
Yet offshore wind energy hasn’t taken off in this country despite more than a decade of trying. Offshore wind turbines may dot waters near Holland, Denmark and the United Kingdom. But the first U.S. project — Cape Wind in Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound — ran into such strong local opposition and regulatory hurdles that it may only get construction started later this year, 12 years after it was first proposed.
For Virginia and other states, offshore wind’s high cost remains its biggest problem. The Energy Information Agency prices offshore wind at $330.60 per megawatt hour. That’s more than double what nuclear power costs and more than three times what a conventional coal-fired plant without carbon-capture technology costs.
Environmentalists are cheering wind along and are heartened that several disparate parts seem to be coming together. “We’re very much in favor of wind,” says Glen Besa, Virginia director of the Sierra Club. But he notes that Dominion has no wind or solar projects going in Virginia yet, and he’s worried that if Dominion gets leases off Virginia Beach it “may just sit on them.”
The problem is economics. Unlike in Europe, the U.S. government pays no direct subsidies for offshore wind other than offering some tax breaks. Therefore, state utility commissions must approve passing along the costs to consumers of more expensive wind projects. In some states such as Massachusetts that’s no problem because the state has a Renewable Portfolio Standard, which states that by 2020, some 15 percent of its energy must come from renewable resources. In New Jersey, it’s 22.5 percent.
What’s more, Besa says the State Corporation Commission, which sets consumers’ electricity rates, usually requires utilities to go with the cheapest power available. At the moment that would be natural gas, which is enjoying boom times because of controversial fracking drilling methods. “The SCC may deny more expensive power from wind, and if Dominion can’t sell it elsewhere, it might not generate it,” Besa says.
But Cape Wind, the pioneer offshore wind company, ran into problems because the federal government didn’t know how to go about vetting the project. What’s more, Nantucket Sound, where Cape Wind plans to build a 420-megawatt wind farm, is surrounded by high-priced vacation homes. Opponents of the project, which was first proposed in 2001, included a politically diverse crowd, including the late television anchor Walter Cronkite, the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy and the family of ultra-conservative oilmen David H. and Charles G. Koch. Cape Wind won its final approvals in 2010.
Hampton Roads already has plenty of industrial areas and a trained labor force that can fabricate the wind turbines and underwater infrastructure to support them. Huge, 500-foot-tall turbines can be easily towed to sea because they don’t need to pass under any bridges. The region’s defense-heavy facilities have in place redundant electrical transmission lines designed to withstand enemy attack, so there are several ways to transfer power from the shore.
While no area is truly ready to handle offshore wind yet, “Hampton Roads and Virginia clearly have more assets than other locations,” says Tom McNeilan, an executive of Fugro N.V., a Dutch company that handles offshore wind engineering and consulting. His Norfolk office opened in 2007.
Dominion’s spokesman Jim Norvelle says that one concern involves having enough work ships available to handle construction. What’s needed are specialized vessels, but many of them are busy erecting highly profitable oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. Foreign-built ships are available, but because of a nearly century-old federal law, they can’t work from American ports without special legal waivers.
(Note: This story first appeared in Style Weekly)
7 Responses to Virginia May Help Offshore Wind Power Up
1. Sounds like a request for more crony capitalism. The task before those interested in alternative energy sources is to find disruptive technology that provides energy at lower costs.
2. I’d point something out to Glen Besa – that out west eviros are buying up oil&gas leases to preserve land and nothing prevents them from buying up the wind leases in the East and putting them up for bid with the proviso that they not be “sat on”.
being an admirer of the Nature Conservancy’s approach to saving land by selling what is not very significant to direct resources to what is – I’d like to see the supporters of “green” energy do something similar rather than arguing that that the govt or Dominion should do it.
At even more novel idea would be to buy up mountaintops to keep them from being blow off and putting wind turbines on top instead …eh?
3. Fracking pollutes. Coal fired plants pollute. Nuclear plants have risks of catastrophic failure (ask the former Soviets or current Japanese).
Conservatives believe in “user pays”. Well, at least they believe that so long as somebody else is the “user”.
Why wouldn’t conservatives support taxing electricity in proportion to its pollution cost? You don’t need to believe in global climate change to see the effects of acid rain. You don’t have to be a fan of Michael Mann to see groundwater pollution from fracking or radioactive disposal problems linked to nuclear.
Basement dwelling conservatives in Virginia want to tax wage earners to drive on the roads but don’t want to tax the coal fired electricity they need to surf porno sites all day on the internet. Why?
4. geeze… DJ is whacking it out of the PARK! Better yet – give those Nimby’s at Cape Cod and other places like the Eastern Shore, THEIR CHOICE but it’s gotta be in THEIR back yard!
• The Cape Cod situation is typical limousine liberalism. Nobody owns navigable waterways. You can own a farm with a cove that has 10,000 feet of frontage on the Chesapeake Bay and you don’t own a square inch of the land under the water. A housewife from West Baltimore has as much of a claim on the land under the Chesapeake Bay (or the Maryland part of the Atlantic Ocean) as the people who own the houses on the shore.
The people who live near the beach have no special right or veto authority over the use of the waterways and the land underneath the water.
5. I’m all for a subsidized demonstration project, to learn about the technology and improve the cost efficiency of the turbines, but OSW at the multi-gigawatt scale remains a pipe dream. Some days the wind just doesn’t blow. And nobody is going to invest in a project if the US Navy or USAF can drop a dime on them (now there’s a phrase losing its meaning) and shut things down during exercises. Lots of money to be made checking it out, though…
Wind has always made more sense to me on mountain tops and ridges, but that is when the environmentalists go nuclear, so the speak. Wind is also a great candidate for distributed generation, with individual homes or industrial sites supplementing the grid but mainly using the power right at the location.
Nuclear remains the answer nobody wants to hear. Chernobyl resulted from monumental supidity, due to a mistaken design that the US never came close to replicating (no proper cooling system, no proper containment vessel.) Fukushima killed nobody, nada, not one human being has died as a result of that accident. Likewise Three Mile Island, an incident that became a big deal because of a Hollywood movie about as accurate as most Hollywood movies.
But if you want carbon free power, with one semi-truckload of fuel doing the work of 200 miles of coal cars, North Anna 3 should be followed by Surry 3. Or better yet a new small modular reactor (SMR) plant.
6. cities used to generate their own electricity. Virtually every city has a defunct “power plant”. what happened to them?
they got moved outside of town. why? talk about your location specific costs!
but that’s my “solution”. A city or region picks the power they want but it’s got to be in their place… instead of sucking off some other location.
the gas bonanza has been a game-changer for solar and wind “unreliability” and here’s why.
NG plants fire up lightening quick and can be easily modulated to ramp up or ramp down their output to the grid. That means they are complimentary to wind/solar. Pity the enviro-weenies who are so focused on the “fracking” that they can’t even look a gift-horse in the mouth on this!
The other thing to keep in mind with wind and solar is …. ISLANDS!
yes.. islands! Go find out how a place like Bermuda or Haiti or Hawaii gets electric power and you’d find out real quick that wind/solar are competitive with the way they do it now.
Leave a Reply |
October 22, 2014
Posts by Daniel
Total # Posts: 830
v = 30m/s u = 20m/s a = 5m/s2 t = ? v = u + at 30 = 20 + 5*t 30-20 = 5t 10 = 5t 10/5 = t t=2s
September 10, 2007
what is physical science?
September 6, 2007
How Do I entry a provision Its an Asset ???
August 31, 2007
How do I entry a provion Its an Asset ?
August 31, 2007
What id the equation for a line drawn on a graph?
August 27, 2007
If it goes 500 miles in one hour, it will go 250 miles in half that time or 30 minutes. Since 15 minutes is a quarter of an hour you divide 500 into a quarter or 125 miles.
August 27, 2007
physcial science
When 1 kg of ice at 0 degrees Celsius absorbs 80 kilocalories of heat, the ice undergoes a) a change of state b) a loss of energy c) a rise in temperature d) an increase in volulme The heat of fusion of water is 80 kcal/kg. That means that 1 kg of ice will melt if it absorbs ...
June 22, 2007
math linear equations
suppose you earn 5.50/h at a bakery. From your first paycheck you discover that $1.15/h is withheld for taxes and benefits. you work x hours in a five day week and you spend $3.75 each day on lunch. Write an equationfor your earnings for a 5 day week after taxes and expenses. ...
June 7, 2007
hello, i have this question. Calculate the average force of friction acting on a wooden block as it propelled along the floor? i have done the following solution first of all i don't know what average force of friction means? i found the Fapplied by strecthing the elastic ...
June 5, 2007
Social Studies
I am trying to find information on Australia's dairying exports. I can find where Australia exports milk to but I can't find out what those countries do with the milk. Can you recommended somewhere to find this information. Thanks They drink it. What else? These ...
June 2, 2007
equibrium - help!
Consider the reaction CO(g) + H2O(g) <--> CO2(g) + H2(g) Use the appropriate tables to calculate a) delta-G*f at 552*C b) K at 552*C I'm pretty sure I have a good idea of how to do this: I believe I can use Gibbs-Helmholtz equation to account for the temperatures... ...
April 15, 2007
name 2 jobs for Native American boys & 2 jobs for the girls. Thank you for using the Jiskha Homework Help Forum. You do not mention if you mean volunteer or paying jobs. Just think about things teenagers, etc. can do in any group. Native Americans respect the land so many of ...
April 9, 2007
who were the Cherokee mound builders? These mound builders lived long before the Cherokees existed. Thank you for using the Jiskha Homework Help Forum. Since you specifically asked about the ...
April 9, 2007
why are the early groups of Native Americans called prehistoric? They are called prehistoric because the early groups of Native Americans didn't have a written language. History is written -- so anything that happens that is before the use of writing is prehistoric (before...
April 9, 2007
advanced functions-logarithms
log(base 10)(x+5)+2log(base10) log(base10)(x+5(10 to the 2nd power) log(base10)(100x+500) I love you china.
March 7, 2007
great depression 1920's
What weakness existed beneth the surface of the general 1920's prosperity, and how did these weakness help cause the Great Depression? ...
February 22, 2007
Two forces act on a 0.200 kg ant: F1 =(3.00i - 8.00j)N and F2=(5.00i + 3.00j)N. Express the net acceleration of the ant in unit vector notation. The resultant force is 8.00 i - 5.00 j Newtons. Divide that by the mass (0.2 kg) for the acceleration vector, in m/s^2.
February 20, 2007
January 31, 2007
social studies
December 5, 2006
social studies
December 4, 2006
October 30, 2006
science plz help
because your stupid
October 12, 2006
October 9, 2006
5th Grade Math
7200ft= mi ft
October 5, 2006
October 4, 2006
October 4, 2006
September 4, 2006
Algebra 2
August 23, 2006
Accounting-- any comments please
August 7, 2006
July 28, 2005
|
CHICO, Calif. -
PG&E is doing its part to conserve water during our near-record drought.
The utility company has decided to leave all of the water in Butte Creek alone this summer to protect Chinook salmon that swim there.
PG&E said they usually divert the water into the Centerville Canal to release it downstream to cool down the water and spread out the salmon, but crews have been noticing the salmon have been swimming upstream to get cooler water.
So they decided to let Mother Nature run its course.
"It's a drought year,” said Paul Moreno, spokesman for PG&E. “There really isn't enough water to run the canal as it is to make it efficient. So we are leaving that water in Butte Creek for the benefit of the salmon."
PG&E used to gather the water to create energy at the Centerville power station but it has been offline for three years now due to a faulty pipe.
PG&E crews will also release more water from their power station and reservoirs on the Feather River in case the water gets too low in Butte Creek. |
A Carbon Neutral Dream
If Thomas Edison was alive today, would he chose to be carbon neutral?
This post takes a conceptual look at the issue of a carbon neutral way of living. See also the Carbon Neutral template for a practical look at how we can achieve the dream of living carbon neutral.
Thomas Edison was a giant, a genius who set the tone for the modern technological development of the Twentieth Century. His invention of the electricity grid was a monumental shift in thinking for mankind from stand alone machines to enormous interlinked systems that delivered us the electricity grid and paved the way for our modern convenience society. Of possibly even more significance was how his thinking influenced his employee and then later best friend Henry Ford to think of systems of manufacturing when he implemented the first mass production lines to produce affordable products for the masses. The Electricity grid also set us on a path towards a fossil fuel instead of a carbon neutral economy. There was no choice at the turn of the Twentieth Century. Today there are many choices and we know a lot more about the effects of the various technologies on the environment.
What is the big deal with being carbon neutral? There was none when Edison and Ford set up their progressive new systems of providing affordable benefits to millions of people, but 250 years of industrial development and the constant quest to extend these benefits to all of mankind have led us to the point of understanding that our endeavors have grown so big that they are having an incredible impact on the environment. But saying it this way makes it sound benign and somehow distant.
Natures design ensures that every living organism has the right to enjoy the abundance that it provides while alive, but also has a responsibility to contribute to the ability of the planet to support and improve the conditions to support life while they are alive. We humans, have not yet fully acknowledged our responsibility to further improve the ability of the planet to support life. So far, in 250 years of industrial development, we have chosen to believe that we have a divine right to take resources from the earth and give back whatever waste outputs they produce from pollutants to the depletion of natural environments to trash which can take thousands and in some cases even millions of years to decay. Since Rachel Carson pointed out in the early 60′s that we are in fact affecting the ability of the earth to support life through our industrial activities, the awareness has grown to the point where in many surveys today, over 80% of people say they are concerned about or aware of the impact we are having on the environment. In the big scheme of things, the 3.5 billion years of life on the planet, that is already a long way to have traveled in understanding in 50 years.
The design of nature did not include the burning of fossil fuels and the resultant addition of CO2 and other substances to the atmosphere. A carbon neutral lifestyle describes one in which we as a species do not add more carbon to the environment than already exists, or if we do, that we find ways to reduce or remove it in order to restore the balance to what it should be for nature to continue it’s cycle of life. So what does this carbon neutral cycle look like? Vegetation and the oceans act as filters converting and therefore regulating the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by converting it into carbon contained in sugars or glucose and oxygen. That carbon is stored in the wood of trees leaves and vegetation after it dies and is eventually absorbed into the soil. Carbon itself is not the enemy! It is one of the building blocks of life! But like everything else in the miracle that is life, it needs to be kept within balanced limits.
Balance is the concept that man struggles with the most!
We understand concepts like progress,dominate, win, own, empower and control very well, but balancing our needs with those of the other living creatures and organisms has so far been beyond most of our understanding because it is so difficult to get a real grasp of the complex system that we refer to as nature and to conceive of the complex inter-relationships between our actions and their eventual consequences.
This is why such a simple concept as a carbon footprint is such a giant leap forward for us to have got to the point of being able to describe in a simple single dimensional number the magnitude of the impact that our lifestyles have on the environment or better restated as the ability for the world to support life over the long term.
Before the industrial revolution, man participated in nature in a carbon neutral manner, taking only from nature what could be replaced by nature. Wood, food, oxygen, water, nutrients from the soil.
Today we have the ability to produce technical or man made materials such as plastics, chemicals and petroleum that nature did not produce. The problem is that we have only designed the top half of the cycle. The creation and use of things made from man made materials, not the return of the component parts of these things to nature or the ability to remake new things as nature does. In order to become carbon neutral, we have to design the lower half of the circle to create a return path back to new products and services instead of just disposing of our used products and expecting nature to take care of it. William McDonough refers to this as a Cradle to Cradle economy (like nature), rather than a Cradle to Grave economy, which is what our system looks like today.
It is a simple concept to grasp, but the trigger to make the change has so far not been there for most people meaning it always seemed that being carbon neutral would result in entities or a way of life that was less profitable than being carbon neutral. However, Ray Anderson, an incredible visionary business leader took it upon himself to provide the example of how we can align business goals with the goal of living carbon neutral and stated towards the end of his life that by providing an example of how this is possible, that it would therefore by implication make it feasible for all. His company, Interface, a carpet company that makes it products from petro-chemicals is already almost 80% of the way to becoming carbon neutral and is on a path to be there by 2020. The example is there and exists in many other examples from Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors to the Toyota Prius to the Nike Considered range of foot ware to the latest developments in LED lighting to Coca Cola’s plastics, aluminum and glass recycling efforts. The revolution to become carbon neutral is already well underway!
It has also been possible for a few decades to have a carbon neutral home. Building consume about 40% of all energy and about 34% of all water and are therefore a prime target for reductions in carbon consumption when aiming for a carbon neutral lifestyle. The technologies to have a home that does not use grid supplied electricity, gas or water exist, but have not been turned into convenient, affordable mass produced systems for homes yet in the way that Edison and Ford did for Electricity and transportation at the beginning of the twentieth Century.
As the new green or carbon neutral economy starts to emerge, many of these technologies are in that phase of transition from one-off, almost hand crafted products to mass produced low cost commodity products. You can see the evidence of this in our Green Home Gallery where there are many examples of carbon neutral or zero energy homes.
The dream of a carbon neutral economy is slowly morphing into a reality. In his ever to thoughtful and practical way, Ray Anderson referred to it as a mid course correction on our journey to becoming an advanced species.
Consider what that means for a moment. scientists talk about the next step in the development of our civilization as being the shift from being a single planetary species to becoming a multi-planet species. In order to achieve that, we will need many things, but primarily, we will need to understand how to create the conditions for and nurture the conditions for life and that means getting to grips with our carbon habit and excessive use of the earths resources such as water! We are already past the point of imagining it and are actively on the road towards solutions that will change how we live and consume.
Read the articles on this site for practical things you can do to progress your journey towards a carbon neutral lifestyle.
Progress on Net-Zero Housing
Changing the way we live from net consumers to net contributors to the conditions for sustaining life is necessary for us to assimilate our industrial, man made world into the natural world.
I think this is gradually becoming clear that our purpose or destiny in the Universe to be the responsible for maintaining and developing the conditions required to sustain life.
A grand vision indeed.
Bringing that down to the practical level the first steps are to improve the efficiency of our man-made world. What I love about this notion is how it ties both sides of the argument about global warming together. You should do it if you want to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere and slow and then reverse global warming. You should do it if you don’t care about global warming, but believe that as the superior beings that it is our destiny to explore and conquer the heavens because you are going to need highly efficient life sustaining systems out there in the universe to allow you to return from your journey.
Building use 40% of our energy so starting t turn them from net consumers of energy to net contributors of energy to the grid would be a great start. Buildings that consumer less than they give back are called Net Zero Energy buildings. The same can be done for water, sewage, heating and cooling.
Producing a building that can achieve these goals is possible. We have the technologies to achieve this. Producing them at a cost that residents are willing to pay for is where we are applying our innovation efforts at the moment.
Lancaster, California has gone a step further. The mayor of Lancaster, Rex Parris, is committed to turning the whole town Net Zero and turning his whole town into a strong competence and innovation hub for green tech in the process. Hats off to you for a gutsy commitment Mayor Parris. We are committed to spreading the word about your progress and shaming other cities into following in your footsteps.
What can we learn from this initiative:
- using the mayor’s office can vastly accelerate the progress. The mayor can call for meetings amongst important players who need to work together
- create local tax structures to drive investments and actions in the right direction
- set up the legal and administrative framework to accelerate the number and size of projects
KB homes were asked to work with the City to produce an affordable Net zero energy and water home called “Doublezero” which saves home owners $4,452 in annual electricity and water bills.
Many of the challenges of meeting a Net-Zero state revolve around financing. Finding business models that will work to make these investments in infrastructure appealing also requires a lot of innovation. Much of the math is starting to work now as our aging energy Infrastructures improvement costs become apparent and the costs of silicon continue to come down.
Electric Cars update Spring 2014
To the list in the article below we can add a few new entrants to the rapidly expanding electric car offerings: the new BMW i3 which is stylish and the lightest EV on the market. It uses a liquid-cooled 22-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack to deliver 90-plus miles of range. The i3 is also available with a small gas engine that essentially doubles the range. A 170-horsepower electric motor drives the rear wheels. It costs $42,200
The BMW i8 is an expensive sleek futuristic plug-in hybrid supercar. The car is powered in a one-two punch by a powerful 96-kilowatt (129-horsepower) electric motor driving the front wheels—and an efficient 230-horsepower 1.5-liter turbocharged three-cylinder gasoline engine motivating the rear wheels. $136,000 with a range of 25 miles plus a gas range (unknown)
Chevrolet Spark Electric Vehicle This vehicle is available in Oregon and California only at the moment. 82 mile range and 400 pounds ft of torque! $19,185. Read about the impressive list of ways that Chevrolet has tried to maximize the eco nature of this vehicle
The Cadillac ELR boasts an electric-only range of 35 miles and a total combined range of about 340 miles. The ELR shares most of its technical elements with the current Chevy Volt, including its 1.4-liter gasoline engine and 16.5-kWh lithium-ion battery pack. But the ELR features Cadillac’s signature creased, mean, angular look. $76,000
The Mercedes Benz B-class E-cell electric car competes directly with the BMW i3. While Daimler has not widely promoted the B-Class Electric Drive, company executives say it will outperform the i3 for speed, range, comfort, and overall driving characteristics. Its powertrain is provided by Tesla Motors. $42,375
And last but definitely lot least the Tesla Model X. The Model X is Tesla’s follow-up vehicle to the award-winning Model S sedan. The X shares about 60 percent of the content from the sedan—converting the sleek Maserati-looking five-passenger model into a stylish crossover utility vehicle. This vehicle has a range of 230 miles and will cost $80,000 later in the year as a 2015 model.
Smart Electric Drive at only $12,490 and 107 mile range, this little car will make you want to take the scenic route every time.
There is also a VW Golf and a Kia Soul in the works, but not officially announced yet.
This would make 20 electric cars offered in 2014. This time, it is really happening, we are getting an alternative to the gas powered car and with the number of new models coming through, apparently automakers have committed to the technology for sure!
Electric Car Update Spring 2013
electricity versus gasoline per gallon equivalents in a shart until 2035
Go Green
Continue reading
Solar Power Growth Trends Per State in the USA
Continue reading
Be the first solar home on your street!
…and we’ll feature your home in our gallery.
Continue reading
The Rapid Growth Of Solar Power In The USA
Continue reading
Clive Roux, CEO
Headshot of Clive Roux, CEO
Clive Roux, CEO
Living Green Links
Resources for living green:
Continue reading |
To what extent are Napoleon's reforms during the Consulate (1799 - 1804) explained by his need to secure himself in power?
Extracts from this document...
:://History To what extent are Napoleon's reforms during the Consulate (1799 - 1804) explained by his need to secure himself in power? Napoleon, having seen many governments come and go, was weary of the problems involved in governing a country. Napoleon realizing the failures of past governments, wanted his to be a secure and lasting government. He wanted to unite all power in the country at one centralized base. These are the ideals that flow through his reforms under the consulate. His reforms are aimed at gathering all power to him, the main areas of reform were; the constitution, religion, the legal system, the judicial system and the economy. All of these reforms, in one form or another, were means to gathering and centralizing power around him. After the coup of Brumaire, there was confrontation between Sieyes, the original mastermind behind the coup, and Napoleon. There were differences in opinion and ideals between the two men on how the country should be run. Napoleon utilized Sieyes to his own end and forced through his changes to the constitution. The constitution of the year VIII was composed mainly of Napoleons ideals; it was a great success for him. more.
The pope had much to gain in the sense that any influence in France is better than none, by signing the concordat the pope gained some influence in France. This again was a way of gaining support from the people, making the people think that he is doing what is best for the country when in reality he is choosing the best course of action that suits him and his administration. By legalising Catholicism in the country, his popularity among the people rose. Napoleon realised the advantages of this, he could use the church as a method of control amongst the people. He could distribute his message to the whole of France via the churches, considering most of the country was catholic and attended church regularly. Considered one of Napoleons greatest legacies amongst the people of France was The Civil Code. It was drawn up during 1800 but took another three years to actually introduce. It was an attempt to unify the legal structure of the whole country. As it stood when Napoleon came to power, laws varied from town to town, this was quite the opposite to Napoleon's idea of centralization. The code made sure that all the people of France had equality in the eyes of the law, religious freedom and a separation of the state and church. more.
He wanted the secondary school system to have a strict National Curriculum and have an Authoritarian system, to teach the pupils what he wanted. He wanted them to be loyal to his regime; he also wanted to prepare them for administrative jobs in the government and as soldiers in the army. In 1802 he introduced the Lycees, which was mainly for the sons of the middle class of society, quite the way away from the roots of the revolution. The state appointed the teachers; this meant that Napoleon had control over who teaches and what is to be taught in schools. A ministry to control education across France was also introduced by Napoleon, the Imperial University, albeit the name it was not a university. The school system was under the direct control of Napoleon, he had great influence over the future citizens of France, he could tailor them to accept his regime and breed loyalty among the young. Overall Napoleons reforms were aimed at increasing power but as a side-effect of this he also managed to aid the French people. He pursued any action necessary to make sure that he and his administration gained support. Often at times he intentionally or unintentionally also aided the French people through his reforms, the civil code is an example of this. ?? ?? ?? ?? more.
The above preview is unformatted text
This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our University Degree 1800-1899 section.
Found what you're looking for?
• Start learning 29% faster today
• 150,000+ documents available
• Just £6.99 a month
Not the one? Search for your essay title...
• Join over 1.2 million students every month
• Accelerate your learning by 29%
• Unlimited access from just £6.99 per month
See related essaysSee related essays
Related University Degree 1800-1899 essays
1. Assess the interpretations of French historians and Pieter Geyl on Napoleon.
Playing on the nation's hopes, Louis Napoleon transformed the Second Republic into the Second Empire. Historians, suspicious of Louis Napoleon, began to reexamine their interpretations of the elder Napoleon11, taking a much less forgiving view of his failure to bring political liberty.
2. Did Disraeli achieve his aims in his social reforms 1874-80?
This is emphasised by the recollections of Cross, Disraeli's Home Secretary, who recalled 'from all his speeches, I had quite expected that his was full of legislative schemes, but that did not prove to be the case; on the contrary, he had to entirely rely on the various suggestions of his ministers...
1. Assess the social reforms of Disraeli's Second Ministry, 1874-80.
dismissed unfairly whereas the employer could sue the employee if he/she had broke the contract. This was popular amongst Trade Unions as it brought further equality to the workplace. The last Act of 1875 was the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act.
2. To what extent can Napoleon be seen as "heir to the revolution" in his ...
There was also a double shift in French trade under Napoleon, with it moving away from the Atlantic and towards continental Europe; and with it increasing its trading goods in cotton, coal, and iron instead of previously being centered on coffee, sugar, and tobacco.
1. Balance of Power or Hegemony: An Investigation of Paul W. Schroeder's Thesis
machinery for soldiers, poor leadership, and logistical (such as a poor transportation system) and financial limitations. Succinctly, her ability to act in international affairs was blocked by several inherent obstacles that primarily came from within and not from the other powers.
2. Did Kaiser Wilhelm II at any time exercise real power?
Kaiser Wilhelm proposed a meeting with the striking workers to discuss wages, working hours and conditions whilst Bismarck was pressing for a set of anti-socialist laws to be passed by the Reichstag. After stating that the army should be sent in to crush the uprising, Wilhelm replied that he "wasn't
1. Why did it take so long to defeat France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic ...
west having the price of disarray in the east which was later exploited by Russia. The economic power of all other European nations is another important factor in analysing why Napoleon was not conclusively defeated until 1812-14. E.E. Kraehe suggests that by 1809 Austria was 30% weaker economically than in
2. Why were Marx's expectations of a proletarian revolution in western Europe never realised?
The relative affluence of skilled labour made it less interested in talk of revolution and the overthrow of the capitalist system. This led to divisions within the labour force, and therefore reduced the likelihood of a solidaristic working class consciousness.
• Over 180,000 pieces
of student written work
• Annotated by
experienced teachers
• Ideas and feedback to
improve your own work
Marked by a teacher
Peer reviewed
Peer reviewed
|
Curriculum Background
The curriculum at Morrison Academy shall provide a continuum in each core content area as the basis for the development of perceiving, thinking, and problem solving skills. In this curriculum continuum, the student moves from concrete experiences to increasingly more complex levels of abstraction in critical thinking. Skills related to each area should be built upon previous learning and measurable performance objectives.
Since students come from a variety of educational backgrounds, effort should be made to identify the instructional level of each student in relation to the subject continuum, including alternative instruction, if necessary, which will motivate the pupil to achieve at an optimum level.
Through a balanced curricular and co-curricular program, there will be continuing emphasis on the spiritual, academic, social, aesthetic, and physical development of students. Students will be helped to develop a personal identity based on a proper understanding and acceptance of themselves as unique individuals, created in the image of God, to nurture interpersonal relationships, and to acquire a Christian world view integrating life with the Bible.
The ultimate purpose of the Morrison Academy high school program is to provide a curriculum that balances and facilitates the student's spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social, and physical growth so that students can glorify God. This comes from providing opportunities to integrate Biblical truth with educational knowledge and apply the synthesis to life situations. |
Introduction Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Learning to Learn
Discovering your weaknesses
How to discover what it is you don't know
Welcome to the second part of Learning to Learn. In Part 1 I hope you realised that trying to learn a topic by devoting units of "time" is not the best approach although it must be acknowledged that it does work for some people. If you think that this applies to you then that's fine. As I hope you read in the disclaimer, the last thing I want to do is move you away from a learning strategy which works for you. For the rest of us, and note that I include myself here, the reasons for this waste of time are probably very complex and would require a masters degree in Advanced Behavioural Science to understand. If, though, we abstracted the essential points, produced a summary of these and then summarised the summary we could save a lot of time and just say that it was just plain old boring.
One alternative to being a time-slave is to be task oriented but in order to accomplish this you need a list of tasks. These "tasks" represent the stuff you need to "learn" and the first trick of learning is knowing what they are. So in this part of Learning to Learn you will discover how to discover what it is that you don't know.
We can even take this a stage further and apply it to the concept of critical thinking as you will discover.
How do you know what you don't know?
I know this sounds odd but it's actually a much easier question to answer than asking what it is that you do know. If you have trouble with this then try writing out a list of the stuff that you "know". See what I mean? But the important bit is that, if you write down what it is that you don't know then you have produced your list of "tasks". Now all you need is a method for finding out what they are.
Teaching reveals weaknesses
Have you ever wondered why it is that teachers seem to know an awful lot about the subject they teach? It is way too simplistic to say that they are just brainy swots who enjoy boning up on obscure facts so they can show off.
OK so they probably are brainy swots but the reason why they always seem to have the answers has got less to do with a desire to impress and a more to do with the naked, gut-churning fear that one day some brainier swot in the class of little oiks in front of them is going to embarrass them by poking their hand up and either asking a question that they can't answer or pointing out that what they have just said is a right load of old tosh according to an article they've just read in this month's Journal of Incredibly Hard Sums.
The simple truth is that in order to teach a subject you really do have to know and understand it in the greatest possible depth. In the universities the maxim that "research informs teaching" acknowledges this very point. This then provides us with a means of discovering what we don't know.
Could you teach?
I'm not suggesting that you should become a teacher but it would be useful if you thought for a moment what it would be like if you were asked to explain something to a class of students maybe just a couple of years younger than yourself. Imagine that you have just left a lecture in the Medical School on the "Application of differential ion concentrations to spike potential propagation" and you discover that the biology teacher in your old school has invited you to give a talk to his class of 15 year-olds and that "Why is the sodium concentration inside a cell different from outside" seems like a good subject.
Frankly, you should be quite capable of explaining this in terms that a 15 year-old would understand and if you can't then you don't understand it yourself. Pause for a moment and think about this ... ... ... ... ... I am not exaggerating or being in any way unrealistic. You are not being asked to explain advanced rocket science to someone who can't even do simple arithmetic. You are being asked to reduce a reasonably straight forward scientific principle, something about which you are expected to be pretty knowledgeable, into something averagely intelligent people can understand. Obviously you can't rush straight in like a bull in a china shop and start wittering on about electrochemical gradients and the like or you'll soon find yourself staring at a class of zombies. The trick is to know what they should already be comfortable with and take it from there using words they will understand and drawing good and clear diagrams on the blackboard. But I hope you take my point.
Well, not many students ever get invited back to their old school to teach a class so clearly this example is a little far-fetched. Anyway even if you did you would more than likely make a complete dog's breakfast of the job not necessarily because of lack of understanding of the subject on your part but because you are very probably completely inexperienced at speaking in public to a large group. How you would improve your presentation skills is an altogether different subject and not something we should concern ourselves with here but we can abstract the principle and turn it to our advantage by doing away with the public speaking side of things and putting you in a much more comfortable situation.
The "Could I teach this to mum?" test
Instead of asking yourself "Could I explain this to a class of 15 year-olds?" ask "Could I explain this to my mum or my dad or my kid sister?" Could you sit down round the kitchen table and using a pen and paper explain membrane potentials to your mum. We have to assume here that your mum is an averagely intelligent mum who hasn't just been awarded the Nobel Prize. If she has then use your dad or kid brother. The point is that whoever you imagine yourself explaining things to has the time to listen, is sympathetic and wants to learn and that you have put yourself in comfortable and familiar surroundings such as the kitchen table.
Putting the theory into practice
Right, we now have a means of discovering what it is we don't know. We ask ourselves if we could explain it to mum. What we need to do now is do adapt it a bit and turn it into something useful.
What you have now is an underlying purpose for reading your lecture notes. As you read through your notes you constantly apply the mum-test and I do mean constantly. Using the example above about the distribution of ions across biological membranes ask
1. could I explain to mum what an ion is?
2. could I explain diffusion?
3. osmosis?
These are all very basic biological terms but do you understand them sufficiently to be able to explain them to an interested and intelligent third party? If your answer is "No" then you don't understand them yourself and you had better do something about it pretty quick because they are the principles on which much more complicated concepts are based.
Keep a pencil and paper handy and when you apply the test and discover that you don't know enough, make a note of it and then carry on reading. Hopefully the list that you end up with after reading through the notes made in just one lecture will not be too full of the very basic stuff but I'd like to bet that a few terms would be there that might surprise you. The reason is that we are all guilty to some extent of thinking that we do know what a word means if we see it frequently and have never bothered to look it up in a dictionary the first time we saw it. You know I'm right don't you? And if you think I'm wrong, how many of you reading Part 1 glossed over the word "didactic" because you either thought you knew what it meant from the context or just couldn't be bothered to find out what it means because you are lazy?
Don't panic
This can be a pretty brutal exercise but you have to be entirely upfront with yourself otherwise you are wasting your time. To begin with you might get a little worried that all you are writing down is a list of fairly familiar terms which if you were honest, you would be embarrassed about. Your list will also include some concepts as well but try not to include the very large concepts. Break them down into bite-sized pieces or, to put it another way, make molehills out of mountains. The well known salami-slicing technique.
For a course in Cell Biology, for example, your list might look like:
1. osmosis
2. endoplasmic reticulum
3. ribosome
4. tRNA
5. mRNA
6. donnan equilibrium
7. electrochemical gradient
8. membrane
I could go on and likely your list would be longer but there's enough there for me to make my next point which is that your list will contain a fair old mix of simple and complex terms and concepts. Make sure that you break down the very complex stuff into a number of smaller, more easily digestible bits. Advice on eating an elephant; do it one bite at a time.
Work the list
Now you're ready to do a bit of work on the list because you need to arrange things into some kind of logical sequence. For example it is silly and pointless trying to understand Donnan Equilibrium if you don't really understand diffusion, electrochemical gradients and membranes. Similarly you'll never understand electrochemical gradients properly unless you're comfortable with diffusion and what is meant by an ion. Get the idea?
So spend a little time putting the list into some kind of order but don't dwell on it, 5 minutes should do for a list comprising 30 items. Also, don't worry about getting it perfect first time, you can always modify it as you go along.
Congratulations! You have now discovered what it is that you don't know and, what is more, you've made a list. This is a list of your tasks. What you do next is work through the list systematically with dictionaries and textbooks to hand. There is more, as you will discover later, but now it's important that you learn not to confuse knowledge with understanding. First, however, a small digression which I hope you will find illuminating and not, I hope, uninteresting. It is certainly relevant.
How do they know that?
Although I said in the introduction to Learning to Learn that the science of "learning" is awfully complex, any student of the subject quickly discovers that at least one aspect crops up early in their studies and keeps on popping up at almost every turn. I'm talking about something called "Bloom's Taxonomy" and the fact that you keep on bumping into it wherever you go is pretty good evidence that it's more or less mainstream thinking. So what is "Bloom's Taxonomy" and what has it got to do with learning?
Bloom's Taxonomy
This is a little digression, but bear with me because I think it's important. Although few of you will have heard of Bloom's Taxonomy you have all , indeed are now, participating in courses which have been designed according to its basic principles. What surprises me is that few teachers have thought to tell you about it yet by understanding what these principles are you will be better equipped to understand what is expected of you. So here goes:
In 1956, Benjamin Bloom headed a group of educational psychologists who developed a classification of levels of intellectual behavior important in learning. This became a taxonomy including three overlapping domains; the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. I know you aren't going to look up "cognitive" so I'll tell you that "cognition" is defined in the OED as "The mental act or process by which knowledge is acquired". Without worrying too much about the other two, cognitive learning is demonstrated by:
1. knowledge recall
and the following 5 intellectual skills
2. comprehending information
3. applying knowledge
4. analysing and organising
5. synthesising data, choosing among alternatives in problem-solving
6. evaluating ideas or actions.
Does this sound familiar? It should or we've not been explaining ourselves properly because the acquisition and use of knowledge is predominant in the majority of courses. Bloom identified six levels within the cognitive domain, from the simple recall or recognition of facts, as the lowest level, through increasingly more complex and abstract mental levels, to the highest order which is classified as evaluation. You should note that factual recall is just the lowest level and doesn't even warrant being classified as an intellectual skill.
Keep with me now. We even use Bloom's work when we set examination questions. There, that's brought you back I bet. So what are our expectations of students at these different levels and what words do we use to assess them? Read on.
Refers to the observation and recall of information; knowledge of dates, events, places; knowledge of major ideas.
You may be asked to: list, define, tell, describe, identify, show, label, collect, examine, tabulate, quote, name, who, when, where, etc.
Refers to understanding information; grasping meaning; translating knowledge into some new context; interpreting facts; comparing, contrasting, ordering, grouping; inferring causes, predicting consequences
You may be asked to: summarize, describe, interpret, contrast, predict, associate, distinguish, estimate, differentiate, discuss, extend
Refers to the use information; using methods, concepts, theories in new situations; solving problems; using required skills or knowledge
You may be asked to: apply, demonstrate, calculate, complete, illustrate, show, solve, examine, modify, relate, change, classify, experiment, discover
Refers to seeing patterns and organization; recognition of hidden meanings; identification of components
You may be asked to: analyse, separate, order, explain, connect, classify, arrange, divide, compare, select, explain, infer
Refers to the use of old ideas to create new ones; generalise from given facts; relate knowledge from several areas; predict; draw conclusions
You may be asked to: combine, integrate, modify, rearrange, substitute, plan, create, design, invent, ask what if?, compose, formulate, prepare, generalise, rewrite
Refers to comparing and discriminating between ideas; assessing the value of theories; presentating; making choices based on reasoned argument; verifying; valuation of evidence; recognising subjectivity
You may be asked to: assess, decide, rank, grade, test, measure, recommend, convince, select, judge, explain, discriminate, support, conclude, compare, summarise
Here's the point
It must be abundantly clear that arranged as they are these skills represent an increasing order of challenge from the mere acquisition and remembering of facts at the lowest level of achievement through to the synthesis of new ideas and the evaluation of evidence at the highest end. Much of what we cover in our learning includes the first 5 of these and, while not immediately encompassed by the mum-test, flow naturally from its use. Well almost.
We can however, slightly extend the mum-test to incorporate the requirement for critical thinking which lies at the heart of the skill of "evaluation" by asking not "how do I know that?" but simply
"How do they know that"
and by applying this simple question to the conclusions made by the authors of work you are asked to assess. So instead of just accepting, well, almost anything really from the simplest to the most complex proposition, it is always worthwhile questioning not only the conclusions but also the reasoning which lies behind the conclusions and the very reasoning which lies behind the justification for the work or research in the first place.
And finally
I may be accused of being an old cynic but I'll finish this part of Learning to Learn with a couple of thoughts which pass through my head quite often.
I'm a glutton for news, I can't get enough of it so my radio is tuned to a news stations rather than a music station. If it's not too much of an insight into my home life I'll volunteer the fact that my radio-alarm wakes me each morning with either the Today programme on Radio 4 or The Breakfast Show on Radio 5. Often, there's news of some interesting medical findings.
"And here's Professor Anne Recksia from Edinburgh to tell us about her research into dieting"
Why, I ask myself, has Radio 5 got itself interested in this? And the answer in most cases, where the research is way incomplete and the findings interesting (?) but insubstantial is found in the very words of Professor Recksia which usually go something like:
"Yes, well the answer at the moment is that we don't know. That will require much more work"
So why are we being bothered by being told about more work that needs to be done rather than the results of a proper and substantial piece of work which is about to be published in Nature? I'll tell you why, it's because the erstwhile Professor's taking part in a PR exercise designed to stir up interest in her research because, well because she's got a nice fat juicy research grant proposal currently being considered by the Medical Research Council or the Wellcome Foundation. That's why.
And finally, I did say there were two things I'd leave you with, remember, there's our newspapers. Every time I read anything, that's anything at all, in a newspaper or hear it on the radio news or the TV news, the first question that pops into my head is:
"Why does the editor of this programme want me to hear this or to believe that?" followed, almost immediately, by "How do they know that?"
Cynique et sceptique?
Mais oui!
OK, that's enough of that and I apologise for that rather lengthy digression but I hope you found it worthwhile. Now we need to get on with understanding the difference between facts, knowledge and understanding whatever that is.
Part 3 Knowledge does not equal understanding. |
War IndexGlossaryEducational ResourcesAbout the Show
The Great War
Historians OverviewDavid Kennedy
Woodrow Wilson - A Calculated Risk
David Kennedy
"He gambled that he could maintain the right to trade with the belligerent powers – Britain, in particular – trade which was profitable. He gambled that he could continue that trade without actually running the risk of war.
"Merchant ships began to go down in March of 1917.
U.S. Capitol Building
"In 1917 (early 1917), the Germans essentially called Woodrow Wilson's bluff. He had been trying for two-and-a-half years to maintain the rights of neutral trade with Great Britain. The Germans decidedly did not want that to go on and finally in January of 1917, they simply said: 'We will not permit it any further. We will sink all American ships headed for the British Isles.' And indeed, they began to sink ships. Wilson clearly had no choice but to conclude that this was such a gross affront to American national honor, and to all objectives of his diplomacy for the preceding two-and-a-half years, that he had no choice but to ask the Congress for declaration of war.
"Wilson was a man of peace, a man of high principles, and a rather shrewd and calculating politician.
"A person who had very skillfully kept his country neutral for two-and-a-half years, since August 1914. He had walked a very delicate line of diplomacy to maintain neutral trading rights with Britain while not provoking Germany to open warfare. He was genuinely reluctant to go to war.
"He had no reason to believe that his own people would unite behind him if he took the country to war. Even after the declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917 – when there were open and belligerent provocations to the United States through the sinking of American ships – even then, Wilson hesitated for another two months before he finally went before the Congress and asked for a declaration of war. So he was a man of peace who relied a lot on his diplomatic skill to keep the country neutral but profitable until 1917, when eventually his bluff was called.
"He [Wilson] had a very acute sense of his own limitations as a politician.
"Wilson had the professorial manner. He was very cerebral in character. He often contrasted himself unfavorably to his great rival Theodore Roosevelt. He said: 'Roosevelt was a person of flesh and blood. The public sees him as a living, breathing, sweating human being, where they see me only as an abstraction.' A skilled diplomatist to be sure, but as a politician, someone who existed at a certain removed, a certain distance, from the hurly-burly and the hugger-mugger of American life."
Back to Top
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.