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Belize: Diving the Great Maya Reef
For such a small country — 180 miles (288 km) north to south and 68 miles (109 km) wide, roughly the area of Massachusetts...
For such a small country — 180 miles (288 km) north to south and 68 miles (109 km) wide, roughly the area of Massachusetts — Belize enjoys a sizeable reputation among scuba divers and knowledgeable travelers. It is best known among divers for its own Great Barrier Reef — second in size only to that in Australia and the largest in the Western hemisphere.
In addition to spectacular and varied diving, Belize also greets travelers with diverse topside attractions — ancient Maya temples, tropical rain forests, eco-resorts, exotic wildlife and active outdoor adventures.
Except for extensive coastal mangroves and the sandy, palm-fringed cayes, much of Belize is covered in lush jungle. The northern half of the mainland is comprised of a series of limestone ridges — the spines of ancient coral reefs. In the south the Maya Mountains and the Cockscomb Range rise to 3,680-foot- (1,115-m-) tall Victoria Peak.
Once a major source of logwood (for dye) and mahogany, today one-third of Belize’s 8,867 square miles (23,052 sq km) is designated a national park or protected area.
The coastal plain extends 15-24 miles (24-38 km) into the Caribbean, dropping off into dramatic walls at the outer edge of the barrier reef. Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996, the barrier reef extends along a fault line from southern Mexico, running south the entire length of the Belize coastline and on into Honduran waters. Outside the reef lie three of only four true atolls (i.e., the result of volcanic activity) in the Western hemisphere.
Human History
Archaeologists tell us that 13 centuries ago the Mayans flourished in the region. To date, evidence of more than 600 Mayan temples have been found within the borders of Belize, once supporting as many as 2 million people. By A.D. 1000, however, the great Mayan civilization had collapsed, the remnants of its population migrating north to the Yucatan.
As with much of the Caribbean, Christopher Columbus was the first known European to “discover” Belize. He didn’t even land there, however; he simply mentioned the lands bordering the Bay of Honduras in the journal of his 1502 voyage.
Although Belize was technically part of the famous “Spanish Main,” the Spaniards considered its hundreds of cayes (keys), offshore reefs and mangrove coastline dangerous for navigation and inhospitable for settlement. The area was largely unexplored until the 17th century.
In contrast, William Wallace, the notorious British pirate who preyed upon Spanish treasure ships, found Belize much to his liking. The cayes and reefs provided perfect cover for surprise attacks and safe getaways.
The first permanent settlement in Belize, the Honduras Bay Colony, was founded in 1638 by former pirates, shipwrecked British sailors and furloughed military personnel. Largely ignored by Britain, the colonists developed a democratic, town meeting-style of self-government.
Despite multiple treaties between Spain and Britain, throughout the 18th century Guatemala continued to claim sovereignty over Belize lands. It wasn’t until 1798 that the Battle of St. George’s Caye ended the Spanish claim.
Belize became a British Crown Colony in 1862 and was administratively separated from Jamaica in 1884. In 1970, after a hurricane devastated Belize City, the capital was moved to Belmopan in the center of the country. Despite its democratic heritage, the colony’s quest for independence progressed slowly. The nation’s name was changed to Belize in 1973 and full independence was finally granted in 1981.
Diving Belize
As opposed to a fringing reef, which hugs the shoreline, Belize’s barrier reef — and therefore its world-class diving — lies several miles off the mainland coast. The reef crest and the relatively shallow lagoon waters behind it are dotted with hundreds of cayes. These coral islands range from tiny islets to 25-mile- (40-km-) long Ambergris Caye, which dominates the northern section of the Belize barrier reef.
Ambergris Caye is just south of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, its seaward coast less than one mile (1.6 km) inside the barrier reef; San Pedro, at the south end of the caye, is only 36 miles (58 km) from Belize City. San Pedro’s proximity to the reef and easy accessibility by domestic airlines has helped it develop into the primary resort and diving destination in the country.
Off Ambergris the reef takes a classic spur and groove formation. Although there are great diving and snorkeling sites minutes by boat from shore, the feature attraction is Hol Chan Marine Reserve off the southern tip of Ambergris.
Designated in 1987, the reserve encompasses less than five square miles (13 sq km). Here you find Hol Chan (little channel), a narrow cut in the reef that promises thrilling encounters with nurse sharks and stingrays at Shark Ray Alley. Divers are required to pay a modest entry fee to the park.
A few miles south of Ambergris lies Caye Caulker. With access to the same dive sites, its small hotels contrast the tourist excitement of San Pedro with a laidback Caribbean ambience. Day trips from both northern cayes regularly visit the dive sites of the outer atolls.
The middle and southern sections of the barrier reef are primarily accessed from coastal towns such as Dangriga and Placencia, which require a continued journey by air or road from Belize City. Because of this, these sections of the barrier reef attract fewer visits from divers.
Land-based dive operations and the occasional live-aboard visit Glovers Reef and several small marine reserves such as Sapodilla Cayes. The entire range of Belize diving is represented there: spur and groove formations, buttress walls and shallow reef flats. Dive depths range from less than 40 feet (12 m) to beyond the recreational diving maximum.
Glovers Reef is a treat for divers on the southern itinerary of live-aboard dive boats that ply the waters of Belize. Only six tiny cayes break the surface of this southernmost of the three atolls. Moorings have not been installed here, as a mild to swift current is common. Live-boat drift dives are the norm. On the northwest side of Glovers a sandy patch reef slopes quickly from near the surface to the wall at 60 feet (18 m).
Highlights of any dive trip to Belize are the northern atolls — Turneffe Islands and Lighthouse Reef. Turneffe and Glovers top one undersea ridge and Lighthouse sits atop a more easterly ridge.
Turneffe, only 19 miles (30 km) from the mainland, extends 30 miles (48 km) north to south, forming a ring of more than 200 islets. Since the ever-present trade winds blow from the northeast, most of the dive sites are along the western reef slope. Moorings range from 40- to 65-foot (12- to 20-m) depths with walls cresting at 60-75 feet (18-23 m).
The most well-known Belize dive sites are at Lighthouse Reef, including the famous Blue Hole. Surrounded by a circle of coral, the underwater sinkhole plunges to more than 400 feet (121 m). Below 120 feet (36 m) the hole opens up into an undercut cavern, complete with massive stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
To fully appreciate the spectacle the guided dive is conducted to 140 feet (42 m). Since this is beyond the recreational diving limit, excellent scuba skills and an orientation are necessary and consequently not all dive operators visit the site.
SeaLife Micro 3.0
Lighthouse Reef dive sites are known for their spectacular walls that start between 40 and 50 feet (12 and 15 m) in high profile, overhanging buttresses riddled with convoluted swim-throughs. On top of the walls patch reefs and grass beds slope gradually to 20 feet (6 m) or less, allowing divers to continue exploring while completing safety stops.
Year-round water temperatures in Belize vary between the high 70s and mid-80s Fahrenheit (mid- to high 20s Celsius). Visibility is rarely less than 60 feet (18 m) and can reach more than 100 feet (30 m).
Moorings have been placed at dozens of the most popular dive sites to prevent anchor damage.
In addition to reefs with a healthy variety of hard coral, gorgonians and sponges, divers come to Belize for the nonsessile marine life — and it doesn’t disappoint. Common sightings: Queen, French and gray angels, reef sharks, endless streams of creole wrasse, clouds of blue chromis, silvery tarpon, queen triggerfish and all manner of bottom dwellers, parrotfish and macro critters.
Hawksbill turtles chew sponges without fear of divers and schools of crevalle and horse-eye jacks swirl beneath the dive boats under the watchful eyes of patrolling barracudas and massive Nassau and black groupers. Dozens of live conch populate the grass beds and night dives bring out eels, octopus, squid and crabs.
Land-based Activities
A trip to Belize would not be complete without sampling some of the diverse above-water attractions.
Dive trips to Lighthouse Reef often offer guests the opportunity to go on shore to the Half Moon Caye Natural Monument, with its picturesque lighthouse. A jungle path leads to a viewing platform at treetop level for close encounters with nesting red-footed boobies and frigate birds. A U.S. $10 park fee is charged.
Belize City is a central jumping-off point for mainland tours to several partially excavated and restored Mayan temples, such as Lamanai, Altun Ha and Xunantunich (zoo-NAN-toon-itch). There are caves for exploring, rivers for rafting, mountains for hiking and spas for relaxing. Freshwater and ocean fishing are popular vacation activities.
For animal lovers, in the south is the 5,000-acre (2,000-hectare) Cockscomb Basin Wildlife preserve, noted for a variety of rare animals in addition to the endangered jaguar. The Baboon sanctuary actually supports a significant population of howler monkeys. With more than 500 species of native and migratory birds, the country, especially the wetlands of the north, is a birder’s dream.
Story and photos by Linda Lee Walden and Lynn Laymon |
Money is a Shared Belief
Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash
What is money? In the dictionary, money is defined as coins and banknotes, or equivalent medium of exchange, and a measure of value. We are rapidly moving to a cashless society, which will soon make this definition obsolete. What is so powerful about physical money is that it is a tangible representation of a shared belief.
The value assigned to a coin is not intrinsic; that is, we do not give the coin its worth based… |
APOE4 Gene Alzheimer’s Disease Testing
In Alzheimer's Disease, Women's Health
APOE4 Gene Alzheimer’s Disease Testing For Women
In terms of this APOE4 gene and women’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease, it’s very interesting to note that human beings have what are called sexually dimorphic brains. What does that mean? That means if you look at the brain on autopsy, it’s actually possible to determine if this is a man’s brain or if it’s a woman’s brain, because there are structural differences between a man’s brain and a woman’s brain.
Where do those structural differences take place? Well, one area happens to be the region of the brain responsible for short-term memory that is particularly effected in Alzheimer’s disease and that’s called the hippocampus. In men, it turns out that the hippocampal volume tends to be larger and that there are more connections as well as the ability to produce the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is deficient in Alzheimer’s disease compared to women.
Why that is may be related to this APOE4 gene and its relationship to both estrogen and the X chromosome. In other words, the combination of the female hormone, estrogen, and the fact that women, compared to men, have two X chromosomes and do not have a Y chromosome, may together interact along with something called an HPA axis to impair a woman’s protective effect against developing this disease.
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COVID-19 key questions: everything you need to know
Find out more about how close we are to finding a COVID-19 vaccination and more from a Cleveland Clinic expert.
While the world has accepted the harsh realities of COVID-19 and people have adjusted their lives accordingly, there are still have so many unanswered questions, such as why has COVID-19 taken such a detrimental toll and where are we in the process of finding a cure?
To get a better idea of where science is headed, below are some insights from Serpil Erzurum, MD, Chair of the Lerner Research Institute at Cleveland Clinic in the US.
How is COVID-19 different from viruses like Ebola, H1N1 (swine flu) or SARS?
These viruses are similar because they are encoded with Ribonucleic acid or RNA. They all infect the human host, but the difference between them and COVID-19 is this coronavirus is infectious before you become sick. It is infectious while you look very healthy and that is a very big difference.
If you’ve been infected with the coronavirus, can you become infected again?
This virus is very similar to the first SARS virus where immunity was very effective. Current data suggests that immunity occurs in people who have had the virus and that is effective for preventing them from getting infected again. The best evidence that we do have for effective immunity is the fact that we can take plasma from an individual who was infected, transfer that immunity passively to somebody who does have the infection, and it helps them recover. All those things strongly support that immunity does develop and is effective at neutralising the virus.
Why is COVID-19 antibody testing not the norm?
The problem is that there are a lot of coronaviruses – for example, the common cold is a coronavirus. Immune testing to diagnose COVID-19 is difficult to do because if you have had a common cold a few weeks before and we tested your body, it would look like you have immunity to coronavirus, but not necessarily to COVID-19, and not necessarily that you are protected from catching it. It would be a false reassurance to do immunoglobulin testing as a diagnostic strategy.
When do you think that we can expect to have a vaccine for COVID-19?
The usual strategy for making a vaccine is that you take the live virus, inject it into chicken eggs, allow the virus to grow, and then you deactivate it and inject that into people, so immunity develops. When the real virus comes along, you are protected.
That process can take 12 to 18 months. However, there are new strategies where we do not have to grow the virus. Instead, we can take the nuclear material that encodes part of the virus (the surface proteins) and inject them into the body. The body will recognise it as being foreign, antibodies will develop and attack the surface proteins, so they go away. Now, if the virus enters your body, your body remembers those proteins and the antibodies come and destroy the virus.
There are so many new technologies now that are using this type of strategy. Many studies are already in phase one and some are even entering phase two and phase three. Phase three means large studies and quicker paths to having something available for our community.
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Dr. Serpil Erzurum
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My Maternal Grandparents
Charles and Minnie Wayrynen
Charlie’s birthplace.
Suomussalmi is a municipality in Finland and is located in the Kainuu region. The municipality has a population of 7,881 (31 January 2019)[2] and covers an area of 5,857.60 square kilometres (2,261.63 sq mi) of which 587.03 km2 (226.65 sq mi) is water.[1] The population density is 1.5 inhabitants per square kilometre (3.9/sq mi). The municipality is unilingually Finnish. Ämmänsaari is the biggest built-up area in the municipality.
Suomussalmi is the second southernmost part of the reindeer-herding area in Finland. Kalevala Russia is next door, grandpa always said, Can’t trust those Russians.”
During the Winter War of 1939–40, several battles were fought in the area around Suomussalmi, the most important ones being the Battle of Suomussalmi and the Battle of Raate. In these battles Finnish forces defeated numerically superior Soviet forces.
The Battle of Suomussalmi was a battle fought between Finnish and Soviet forces in the Winter War. The action took place from around December 7, 1939, to January 8, 1940. The outcome was a Finnish victory against superior forces. Suomussalmi is considered the clearest, most important, and most significant Finnish victory in the northern half of Finland.[3] In Finland, the battle is still seen today as a symbol of the entirety of Winter War itself.
On November 30, 1939, the Soviet 163rd Rifle Division crossed the border between Finland and the Soviet Union and advanced from the north-east towards the village of Suomussalmi. The Soviet objective was to advance to the city of Oulu, effectively cutting Finland in half. This sector had only one Finnish battalion (Er.P 15), which was placed near Raate, outside Suomussalmi.
Suomussalmi was taken with little resistance on December 7 (only two incomplete companies of covering forces led a holding action between the border and Suomussalmi), but the Finns destroyed the village before this, to deny the Soviets shelter, and withdrew to the opposite shore of lakes Niskanselkä and Haukiperä.
The first extensive fight started on December 8, when Soviet forces began to attack across the frozen lakes to the west. Their attempt failed completely. The second part of Soviet forces led the attack to the northwest on Puolanka, that was defended by the Er.P 16 (lit. 16th detached battalion), that had just arrived. This attempt also failed. On December 9, the defenders were reinforced with a newly founded regiment (JR 27). Colonel Hjalmar Siilasvuo was given the command of the Finnish forces and he began immediate counter-measures to regain Suomussalmi. The main forces advanced on Suomussalmi, but failed to take the village, suffering serious losses. On December 24, Soviet units counterattacked, but failed to break through the surrounding Finnish forces.
Reinforced with two new regiments (JR 64 and JR 65), the Finns again attacked on December 27. This time, they took the village, and the Soviets retreated in panic over the surrounding frozen lakes. A large part of them managed to reach the Russian border along the Kiantajärvi lake. During this time, the Soviet 44th Rifle Division had advanced from the east towards Suomussalmi. It was entrenched on the road between Suomussalmi and Raate and got caught up in the retreat of the other Soviet forces.
Between January 4 an The battle resulted in a major victory for the Finns. If the Soviet Union had captured the city of Oulu, the Finns would have had to defend the country on two fronts and an important rail link to Sweden would have been severed. The battle also gave a decisive boost to the morale of the Finnish army.
In addition, Finnish forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road captured a large amount of military supplies, including tanks (43), field guns (71), trucks (260), horses (1,170), anti-tank guns (29) and other weapons, which were greatly needed by the Finnish army.
Alvar Aalto sculpted a memorial for the Finnish soldiers who died.[5]d January 8, 1940, the 44th Rifle Division was divided into isolated groups and destroyed by the Finnish troops (in a tactic known as motti), leaving much heavy equipment for the Finnish troops.
The Battle of Suomussalmi is often cited as an example of how a small force, properly led and fighting in familiar terrain, can defeat a vastly numerically superior enemy. Factors which contributed to the Finnish victory included:
Finnish troops possessed higher mobility due to skis and sleds; by contrast, Soviet heavy equipment confined them to roads.
The Soviet objective to cut Finland in half across the Oulu region, while appearing reasonable on a map, was inherently unrealistic, as the region was mostly forested marshland, with its road network consisting mainly of logging trails. Mechanized divisions had to rely on these, becoming easy targets for the mobile Finnish ski troops.
Finnish strategy was flexible and often unorthodox, for example, Finnish troops targeted Soviet field kitchens, which demoralised Soviet soldiers fighting in a sub-Arctic winter.
The Soviet army was poorly equipped, especially with regard to winter camouflage clothing; by contrast, Finnish troops’ equipment were well-suited for warfare in deep snow and freezing temperatures.
The Finnish army had very high morale, resulting from the fact that they were defending their nation. Soviet troops, however, possessed exclusively political reasons for their attack, consequently losing their will to fight soon despite continual efforts by Soviet propagandists.
An additional factor remained Soviet counter-intelligence failures: Finnish troops often intercepted the Soviet communications, which relied heavily on standard phone lines.
The Finnish tactics involved simplicity where needed, as the final assault was a simple head-on charge, decreasing the chances of tactical errors. Rough weather also favored comparatively simple plans.
Formula One racing driver Heikki Kovalainen is from Suomussalmi, as well as the author Ilmari Kianto and the composer Osmo Tapio Räihälä, in addition to the ice hockey player, Janne Pesonen.
Suomussalmi hosted the 2016 World Berry Picking Championship
Moving the Swedish Covenant Church 1908
Charlie made his living farming and doing custom work with his big steam engine. He moved buildings, did custom sod plowing and grain threshing. He and his wife Minnie had nine children, five sons served in the military. The church was moved into Lake Norden, South Dakota on huge wooden rollers from two miles out in the country, notice the railroad ties were new, |
The accuracy of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems has improved phenomenally over recent years, due to the widespread adoption of deep learning techniques. Performance improvements have, however, mainly been made in the recognition of general speech; whereas accurately recognizing named entities, like small local businesses, has remained a performance bottleneck. This article describes how we met that challenge, improving Siri’s ability to recognize names of local POIs by incorporating knowledge of the user’s location into our speech recognition system. Customized language models that take the user's location into account are known as geolocation-based language models (Geo-LMs). These models enable Siri to better estimate the user’s intended sequence of words by using not only the information provided by the acoustic model and a general LM (like in standard ASR) but also information about the POIs in the user’s surroundings.
Generally, virtual assistants correctly recognize and understand the names of high-profile businesses and chain stores like Starbucks, but have a harder time recognizing the names of the millions of smaller, local POIs that users ask about. In ASR, there’s a known performance bottleneck when it comes to accurately recognizing named entities, like small local businesses, in the long tail of a frequency distribution.
We decided to improve Siri’s ability to recognize names of local POIs by incorporating knowledge of the user’s location into our speech recognition system.
ASR systems generally comprise two major components:
• An acoustic model, which captures the relationship between acoustic properties of speech and sequences of linguistic units, like speech sounds or words
• A language model (LM), which determines the prior probability that a certain sequence of words occurs in a particular language
We can identify two factors that account for this difficulty:
• Systems that don’t typically have a representation of how a user is likely to pronounce obscure named entities.
• Entity names that occur only once, or never, in the training data for LMs. To understand this challenge, think of the variety of business names in your neighborhood alone.
The second factor causes the word sequences that make up local business names to be assigned very low prior probabilities by a general LM. This, in turn, makes the name of a business less likely to be correctly selected by the speech recognizer.
The method we present in this article assumes that users are more likely to search for nearby local POIs with mobile devices than with Macs, for instance, and therefore uses geolocation information from mobile devices to improve POI recognition. This helps us better estimate the user’s intended sequence of words. We’ve been able to significantly improve the accuracy of local POI recognition and understanding by incorporating users’ geolocation information into Siri’s ASR system.
How Does Siri Use Geo-LM?
We define a set of geographic regions (geo regions) covering most of the United States, and construct one Geo-LM for each region. When a user makes a request, the system is customized with a Geo-LM based on the user's current location. If the user is outside of any defined geo regions, or if Siri doesn’t have access to Location Services, the system defaults to a global Geo-LM. The selected Geo-LM is then combined with acoustic models for ASR decoding. Figure 1 shows the overall workflow of the system.
Figure 1. System Overview.
Geo Regions
We define geo regions based on the combined statistical areas (CSAs) [1] from U.S. Census Bureau. The CSAs consist of adjacent metropolitan areas that are economically and socially linked, as measured by commuting patterns. There are 169 CSAs covering 80% of the population of the United States. We build a dedicated Geo-LM for each CSA, with a single global Geo-LM to cover all areas not defined by CSA.
To efficiently search the CSA for a user, we store a latitude and longitude lookup table derived from the rasterized cartographic boundary (or shapefile) provided by the U.S. Census Bureau [2]. At runtime, the complexity of geolocation lookup is O(1).
The Siri ASR system uses a weighted finite state transducer (WFST)-based decoder, as first described by Paulik [3]. The decoder employs the difference LM principle, similar to frameworks described in [4,5].
We implement a type of class LM in which we dynamically replace class nonterminals with intraclass grammars. The concept is illustrated in Figure 2. We employ a master LM, which is used for general recognition and includes nonterminal labels for predefined classes, such as geo regions. For each class, a slot LM is built with entity names pertinent to the class and representing intraclass grammars. Geo-LM construction is then conducted with the master LM and the slot LMs as explained in the following section.
Figure 2. The general framework of class LM
Geo-LM Construction
The straightforward way to construct Geo-LM is for each geo region building one LM by interpolating the general LM and the geo-specific LM trained from training text with geo-context. The problem with this approach is that the general LM is usually large because it covers a lot of domains. The cumulative size of the resulting Geo-LMs would be too big to fit in the runtime memory. On the other hand, the POI names can construct compact LMs that can be one-tenth to one-thousandth the size of a full general LM; hence, the proposed class LM framework.
In our class LM framework, the master LM is trained as usual, with training text from all supported domains. To add the support of nonterminal labels, initially we rely on artificially created training text with geo-specific templates, such as “directions to \CS-POI,” where \CS-POI is the class label. This artificial text helps bootstrap the initial recognition of the nonterminals. After Geo-LM deployment, the output from our ASR system would have special markers—for example, \CS-POI—around the Geo entities recognized through the class LM framework. The new Geo-LM output would allow us to continuously supply training text for nonterminals in the master LM.
Slot LM is trained with entities of a specific class—POI, in the case of the Geo-LM. In the proposed system, one slot LM is built for each geo region. The training text for each slot LM consists of the names of local POIs in the corresponding region.
Figure 3 shows a toy example of a WFST-based class LM, including a master LM representing three simple templates with priors (the probability of occurrence of the entry relative to other choices):
prior=0.5: directions to \CS-POI
prior=0.3: where is \CS-POI
prior=0.2: find the nearest \CS-POI
It also includes a slot LM containing only three POIs with priors:
prior=0.4: Harvard University
prior=0.4: TD Garden
prior=0.2: Vidodivino
Figure 3. A simplified example of WFST-based class LM
Training POIs as a statistical n-gram LM allows us to model the variations in POI names. For example, both Harvard University and Harvard can be modeled in slot LM as long as Harvard University exists in the training text. We derive priors based on distributions observed in production traffic.
At runtime, it’s essential that we dynamically and efficiently replace the class nonterminals in the master LM with the respective matching slot LM based on the current user location as shown in Figure 3, where \CS-POI represents the class nonterminal in the Geo-LM.
To ensure that the decode lexicon covers all POI names, we employ an in-house grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) system to derive pronunciations automatically if a word in the POI name isn’t already in our decode lexicon.
This framework allows for flexible updates to the overall system. To update POIs or add new regions, you simply rebuild or add more slot LMs. Rebuilding is quick and efficient because the slot LMs are small. While a typical general LM can be 200 MB or larger, a slot LM is about 0.2 MB to 20 MB, depending on the number of entities included. The flexibility of slot LM updates is essential for the sustainability of our application. This is because of the rapid changes in POIs due to the opening or closing of businesses and their continuously changing popularities. In addition, because slot LMs are small, the proposed framework allows all LMs to be preloaded into system memory during server initialization. Switching slot LMs can thus be done in memory, which results in a very efficient implementation. Based on our measurement, the dynamic combination of master LM and slot LMs introduces only a marginal latency increase.
Experiments and Results
In this section, we report the benchmark evaluations of the proposed Geo-LM compared to the general LM for the task of POI recognition in the United States. A hybrid convolutional neural network CNN-HMM [6] is used in all experiments. The AM was trained with filter bank features from about 5,000 hours of English speech data. Our Geo-LM is trained as a 4-gram LM. The test data are manually transcribed and labeled with location so that the correct slot LM can be applied during testing. We’ll first describe the data we use for training and testing Geo-LM, and then present the results.
The baseline general LM is trained with the training text (D1) containing a variety of sources of collected, privacy-preserved, live usage data.
The training data for building the master LM in the proposed Geo-LM is composed of D1 and artificially created use-case templates containing the POI class symbol, as described in “Geo-LM Construction.”
To build the slot LMs, we extract the searched POIs from daily updated Apple Maps search logs. The extracted POIs are distributed into 170 groups based on their locations and popularities, to build slot LMs for 169 CSAs and one global group for requests not covered by CSAs. The priors of each POI are set according to their usage frequency in the search logs. Table 1 shows the n-gram size comparison of the general LM against the two components of the Geo-LM. The slot LMs, averaged over 170 regions, are much smaller than the general LM.
Table 1. Number of n-grams in the general LM and the Geo-LM
LM type Number of n-grams
(in millions)
General LM 9.3
Master 9.3
170 slot LMs 0.7 (average)
We used two types of test data in our experiments:
Real-world user data randomly selected from Siri production traffic in the United States. We created two test sets from this data:
• T1: A POI search test set, consisting of about 20,000 utterances in the local POI search domain
• T2: A general test set, consisting of about 10,000 utterances that don’t include POIs
An internally recorded, local POI search test set (T3). We picked eight major U.S. metropolitan regions and selected the top 1,000 most popular POIs for each region based on Yelp reviews. For each POI, we recorded three utterances, with and without the carrier phrase directions to, from three different speakers. Note that we excluded 6,500 megachains from the list because they’re mostly recognized without Geo-LM and can dominate based on popularity.
We first conducted experiments on the real-world user test sets T1 and T2. The results, summarized in Table 3, show that Geo-LM reduces word error rate (WER) by 18.7% relative on T1, while introducing no degradation in accuracy on T2.
Because T1 is randomly sampled from production traffic, it contains megachains, like Walmart and Home Depot, that the general LM has already recognized. To benchmark the performance of name recognition on more difficult-to-find local POIs, we tested on T3, which doesn’t include megachains. The results, summarized in Table 4, show that while the general LM performs poorly on T3, the proposed Geo-LM universally reduces WER by more than 40% for all eight regions.
We also compared the speed of the two systems and observed that the Geo-LM system increases average latency marginally, by under 10 milliseconds.
Table 3. WER comparisons between general LM and Geo-LM on real-world user test sets (T1 and T2)
Test setGeneral LM error (%)Geo-LM error (%)Relative error reduction (%)
General (T2)6.26.20
POI search (T1)15.512.618.7
Table 4. WER comparisons between general LM and Geo-LM on the test set of the most popular POIs in eight major U.S. metropolitan regions (T3)
Test set region General LM error(%) Geo-LM error(%) Relative error reduction (%)
Los Angeles24.412.648.4
New York27.315.742.5
Philadelphia25.8 15.041.9
San Francisco26.515.143.0
In this work, we present a highly effective Geo-LM framework that provides several benefits:
• Flexible training
• Efficient LM construction at runtime
• Significant ASR accuracy improvement over the general LM at the task of local POI recognition
Our experiments show that using localized information can lead to over 18% WER reduction in local POI search, and more than 40% if excluding megachains.
Because of the limited impact on system speed, regional coverage has more room for improvement and expansion. It is, however, essential to continue providing a global Geo-LM in addition to regional LMs so that ASR can handle long-distance queries and cases with users located outside supported regions.
The method and system proposed here are language independent. As a result, the expansion of Geo-LM support for other locales besides U.S. English is straightforward.
For more details, and for extensive performance evaluation of the Geo-LM that we describe in this article, see our ICASSP 2018 paper, “Geographic Language Models for Automatic Speech Recognition” [7].
[1] U.S. Census Bureau. Combined Statistical Areas of the United States and Puerto Rico. 2015.
[2] U.S. Census Bureau. Cartographic Boundary Shapefiles 2015.
[3] M. Paulik. Improvements to the Pruning Behavior of DNN Acoustic Models Interspeech, 2015.
[4] H. Dolfing and I. Hetherington. Incremental Language Models for Speech Recognition Using Finite-state Transducers. Proceedings of ASRU, 2001, pp. 194–197.
[5] D. Povey, A. Ghoshal, G. Boulianne, L. Burget, O. Glembek, N. Goel, M. Hannemann, P. Motlicek, Y. Qian, P. Schwarz, et al. The Kaldi Speech Recognition Toolkit. Proceedings of ASRU, 2011, pp. 1–4.
[6] O. Abdel-Hamid, A. Mohamed, H. Jiang, L. Deng, G. Penn, and D. Yu. Convolutional Neural Networks for Speech Recognition IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, vol. 22, no. 10, pp. 1533-1545, 2014.
[7] X. Xiao, H. Chen, M. Zylak, D. Sosa, S. Desu, M. Krishnamoorthy, D. Liu, M. Paulik, and Y. Zhang. Geographic Language Models for Automatic Speech Recognition. in Proceedings of ICASSP, 2018.
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Natural language processing (NLP) tasks tend to suffer from a paucity of suitably annotated training data, hence the recent success of transfer learning across a wide variety of them. The typical recipe involves: (i) training a deep, possibly bidirectional, neural network with an objective related to language modeling, for which training data is plentiful; and (ii) using the trained network to derive contextual representations that are far richer…
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Inside tiny room underneath a countryside field where workers prepared for nuclear war
A small, easy-to-miss hatch in a Welsh field once served as the entrance to a crucial part of the UK’s Cold War effort.
The concrete entrance sits in a field near Abercrave in the Brecon Beacons and is easy to mistake for a manhole cover at first glance.
The structure lies at the end of a line of long-abandoned telegraph poles 200 yards north of Tanygarth, Wales Online reported.
Those curious enough to lift the rusted metal cover will find themselves looking down a 14-foot shaft that leads into inky blackness.
A climb down the precarious ladder leads to a small room that was once used as a Royal Observer Corps (ROC) nuclear monitoring post.
Here teams of volunteers would have spent long, hot hours from the height of the Cold War between the USSR and US in 1965 until 1991, two years after the Berlin Wall fell.
The long-silent and decaying rooms of the monitoring post would once have been full of equipment, strange dials, and the chatter of the volunteers communicating with other nearby stations.
The power and location of a nuclear blast, should a bomb have ever been aimed at UK soil by the USSR, would have been measured by the devices and relayed along the chain of command.
Over 1,500 of the stations were built across the UK.
Most of the observation stations were identical, although one non-standard monitoring post was built in a cellar at Windsor Castle.
Many were closed much earlier than the Abercrave post – which lasted until the early 90s – because of structural problems or flooding.
Although many of the instruments have long since been stolen, removed, or rotted away, the post would once have been fitted with a ground zero indicator comprised of four pinhole cameras to record the position of a nuclear detonation.
One of the shafts, which is still visible on the surface to this day, would have linked to a fixed survey meter, a type of Geiger counter used to measure radiation levels from a nuclear blast, which was fixed to the ceiling of the underground chamber.
Many of the ROC monitoring posts have long since been filled in with earth, flooded, or fallen into disrepair and it may not be long until the rest of these rare pieces of British history are lost forever. |
Legends Of Hawaii’s Night Marchers
There is hardly a native Hawaiian or long-term transplant to the islands that has not, at some point when spending time on these shores, had an eerie experience that made them believers in the Hawaiian spirits that rule the night. If you are a newcomer to the islands scoffing and dismissive of the night spirits as colorful folktales, do so at your peril. The Night Warriors, known as Huaka’I po in the Hawaiian language, are frequently seen, especially on nights when the moon is full. During the recent event of the blood or red moon, even though the islands were shrouded in dense clouds, multiple sightings of the Night Marchers were reported to local authorities in different locations throughout the island chain.
Mysterious Moon
Appearing on the last four Hawaiian moon phases, just before the moon goes completely dark, the Night Warriors have frequently been sighted traveling along a historic route that reportedly cuts directly through the Davies Pacific Center in downtown Honolulu. Recent sightings target sacred Hawaiian sites such as sacrificial temples and other locations in O’ahu including King Kamehameha III’s summer palace, Yokomama Bay, Kalalma Valley, Makaha Valley Plantation, Ka’ena Point, and Diamond Head Crater. On the nights of Kane, Lono, Akua, and Ku, ancient warriors proceed in a single file, venturing forth from their burial mounds at sunset to march in proud unison to revisit sacred sites or the locations of past battles, returning to their graves the following sunrise.
Huaka’i In History
The first documented record of the Night Marchers dates back to the time of Captain Cook’s arrival in the islands. In 1883, recovered archives registered the first reference to a Huaka’i describing a mighty phantom army, the O’lo (spirit ranks) proudly led by the spirit of King Kamehameha, pacing angrily about on the Big Island of Hawaii. Several residents tell ghostly tales of rhythmic chanting, horn blowing, and the beating of distant drums carried on the evening tradewinds. Both locals and visitors report bright torches sighted in the darkness in areas of dense jungle with no trails. On nights of the full moon, numerous credible sightings of bands of tall and muscular warriors, bronzed and beautiful to behold, are reported. The warriors are described as marching with a god as their leader accompanied by a band of torchbearers leading the way. Hawaiian storyteller Lopaka Kapanui remarks, “The night marchers’ job wasn’t to terrorize people. It was simply to protect the most sacred, high-ranking chiefs (depending on kapu status, the Chiefs marched in front or behind the procession). The night marchers showed mercy by traveling at night to spare people from harm.”
Escorts Across The Rainbow Bridge
Kahuna elders advise that the Night Marchers only appear during daylight hours when they are coming to accompany a member of their Ohana (family) on their death journey across the rainbow bridge to the joy of the spirit world beyond. Some people who report encounters with the Night Marchers say that they seem to float just above the ground while other reported sightings of giant footprints in the soil or sand after they have passed. Others encountering the Night Marchers warn that no solid object in their ancient pathway can stop their march, reporting that they trek right through your house, leaving an abiding legacy of fear that requires a cleansing and a blessing before the home is once again inhabitable.
Beware Oahu’s Pali Highway After Dark
Nu'uanu Pali Lookout, Kalihi Valley, and Ka'a'awa Valley on Oahu are known Night Marcher trails. After dark visitors are encouraged to be wary. Oahu's Pali Highway, adjacent to the Kamehameha battle site, is an established pathway of the Night Marchers. Nighttime visits, especially if you travel alone, are not recommended. On Oahu's windward coast in Kualoa Ranch, in an area said to hold the remains of hundreds of Hawaiian Chiefs, Night Marcher sightings are common, reportedly the cause of numerous nighttime vehicle accidents.
Showing Respect
Historic taboos and the frightening experiences of others tell one that above all, the Night Marchers demand respect. To disbelieve or ignore their mandates is to risk death. Unless one of your relatives is marching in spirit with the warriors and recognizes and acknowledges you, you will die if your look upon their faces. The Night Marchers are bound to protect their relatives for life and throughout eternity. When you feel the earth beneath your feet begin to tremble, the chanting cadence call of warrior voices, and pounding feet striking the earth, hide. A foul scent of decay precedes the marcher’s arrival; they carry the stench of battle and death. The Hawaiian people cultivate Ti plants around their homes to provide protection from the Night Marchers and ward off other worrisome evil spirits. When the Night Marchers encounter a home surrounded by Ti plants, they detour and go around until they regain their dedicated path. Hawaiian natives warn: there is nowhere to hide. When you sense the presence of the Night Marchers, fall flat on the earth with your face buried in the soil. Remain perfectly still, projecting a mind message of respect and submission. You will not die; the warriors will pass. |
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Push button Switch are basically is a simple switch mechanism to control some aspect of a machine or a process. Buttons are typically made out of hard material, usually plastic or metal.
Continuous level measurement and point level detection in liquids and solids with capacitance probes
A pressure transmitter will measure the weight force of any media, e.g. groundwater, above it. This weight force can be imagined as a water column “standing” on top of the level probe. The water column causes pressure on the transmitter and this pressure is proportional to the water level.
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How Push Button Switch Function
Electrical circuits need to be complete to work. The electricity must be able to flow uninterrupted through the various wires and components. But circuits that are complete all the time aren't as useful as ones that work only when we want them to. This is what a switch does. Some switches are hidden inside machinery; others are where we can see and use them. The push button switch has thousands of familiar uses, from elevators to car stereos. It comes in two basic kinds: momentary and non-momentary.
Brands provide Push Button Swtiches
Powerful machines and plants need powerful push buttons, switches and indicators, Siemens provides SIRIUS ACT series which offers a unique portfolio of elegantly designed push buttons, indicator lights and switches
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Push buttons require physical force to actuate the button. Banner Engineering offers mechanical buttons with key operated selector swtiches.
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Tag Archives: Duke of Cornwall
On this day in 1486 – Prince Arthur Tudor was born
Following King Henry VII’s victory at the Battle of Bosworth he would have found it vital to secure the throne and produce an heir so when his new bride, Elizabeth of York announced her pregnancy there was great joy in the new Tudor court.
Just weeks before the new Queen was due to give birth; Henry moved his court from London to Winchester, 60 miles away. Henry believed that Winchester was the home of Camelot where King Arthur and his knights of the round table held court, Henry felt a strong connection to King Arthur and had even ordered a family tree to be commissioned that traced his ancestors back to the time of Arthur. The Queen had not been due for a few more weeks but Bernard Andre believed that the upheaval and the long journey caused Elizabeth to go into premature labour and she gave birth to a son in the early hours of 20th September 1486 at St Swithun’s Priory.
St Swithun's GateSt Swithun’s Gate, Winchester
Upon Arthur’s birth he was bestowed the title of Duke of Cornwall and his birth firmly cemented the union between the Houses of Tudor and York. Messengers were sent out and bonfires were lit across the country to announce the birth of the new Prince and Te Deum’s were sung in Cathedrals up and down England to celebrate the arrival of Arthur.
Due to Arthur’s early birth plans for his baptism had to be brought forward to the 24th September, with the King hoping that four days would be enough time for people to arrive at Winchester for the celebration as due to the early arrival key peers such as John de Vere, the Earl of Oxford had not yet arrived at the new court, in fact he was still at his home in Lavenham, Surrey over 100 miles away.
On the morning of the 24th September the Earl of Oxford, who was a godparent to the new Prince, had still not arrived. King Henry had been informed that Oxford was within a mile of the ceremony and so the decision was made to postpone the beginning of the baptism. However, after three hours, Oxford had still not arrived and the congregation was getting restless so Henry intervened and asked Thomas Stanley, his stepfather, to act as a proxy godparent. With this agreed Henry returned to being out of sight, as was the protocol at baptisms, and ordered the ceremony to begin.
With the ceremony underway the priest was beginning to name the child when Oxford entered the Cathedral, Oxford then proceeded to take Arthur in his right arm and presented him for his confirmation. Arthur’s other godparents would be William FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, Elizabeth Woodville, Dowager Queen and Arthur’s grandmother and Cecily of York, Queen Elizabeth’s sister and Arthur’s aunt.
Following the ceremony Arthur was taken back to his mother, who had not been present as tradition dictated and would be missing from the court until her churching, which normally took place 60 days after the birth of a child but Elizabeth’s churching took place just 40 days after Arthur’s birth. Arthur was carried by his aunt, Lady Cecily and was followed by a procession that passed through the nursery with the King’s musicians. Arthur was then delivered back to his mother and nurses whilst the court went and continued celebrating the new heir to the Tudor throne.
Arthur’s nursery consisted of Lady Darcy who was in charge of the nursery itself, a position she held previously with King Edward IV’s son, Arthur’s wet nurse was Catherine Gibbs and his rockers were Agnes Butler and Evelyn Hobbes.
Arthur Tudor was idolised by his mother and father who viewed him as the future of the country until his untimely death in 1502.
ArthurPrince Arthur Tudor
On this day in 1511- Prince Henry Tudor died
In 1511 on 1st January, 18 months after their wedding, Katherine of Aragon gave birth to a boy, giving Henry his first born son following the tragic stillbirth of a daughter the previous year. The boy named Henry was quickly made the Duke of Cornwall and was expected to be invested as Prince of Wales soon after. Prince Henry was christened on 5th January, which saw his godparents include King Louis XII of France, Duchess of Savoy and the Archbishop of Canterbury. A lavish jousting tournament was thrown in the prince’s honour with the King competing under the banner of Sir Loyal Heart, proclaiming his love for his Queen and new son. Tragedy struck on 22nd February when the young Prince suddenly died, he was given a state funeral at Westminster Abbey befitting his status. England would have been such a different place had this young boy survived. |
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What Is Volume in Stock Trading? How Investors Can Use It
By Austin Kilham · December 21, 2021 · 5 minute read
What Is Volume in Stock Trading? How Investors Can Use It
Stock trading volume is a measure of the amount of stocks traded over a given day or other specified time period. When more of a stock is traded actively, trading volume is high, while volume slumps as sales slow.
Some investors may analyze volume as a part of a technical analysis strategy to help them make decisions about when to buy and sell a particular stock. Here’s a closer look at volume and how investors may be able to use it.
What Is Volume in Stocks?
Trade volume for stock and other securities tells investors how frequently shares in a company are being bought and sold.
Every buy and sell transaction of a particular stock helps contribute to its trade volume. A transaction takes place when a buyer agrees to purchase the shares a seller has put up for sale. If this type of transaction takes place 100 times during a day for a particular stock, that stock has a trade volume of 100.
For stock futures and options trading, volume is based on how many contracts change hands during the set period.
Volume doesn’t tell the whole story of a stock. There are a couple of terms that can help give investors a better idea of the size of a company and how many shares are actually available, including “float” and market capitalization, or market cap.
Volume vs Float
While volume is the number of shares that are being actively traded during a given period, float is the number of shares that are actually available to trade. This total does not include restricted shares, which are not registered and are usually given to corporate leaders as part of a compensation package. Outstanding shares refers to all of the stock a company has issued, including restricted shares.
Stocks that have a small number of shares — usually between 10 million and 20 million — available to trade are what is known as “low-float” stocks. Large corporations, by contrast, could have floats of billions of shares.
In certain circumstances when trade volume is very high, volume can surpass float or even number of outstanding shares.
Volume vs Market Cap
Market cap is the total number of outstanding shares multiplied by the current public market price. In other words, it’s the dollar amount required to buy up all outstanding shares of a company, including restricted shares.
Market cap helps investors understand the size of one company relative to another. For example, large-cap stocks tend to be companies worth $10 billion or more, while small-cap stocks tend to be companies worth $300 million to $2 billion.
Investors can calculate free-float market cap by excluding restricted shares.
What Does Stock Volume Tell You?
Stock volume tells investors how much interest there is in a stock. The greater the volume, the more interest there is, while smaller volume translates to less interest.
High trade volume can also indicate that stock orders are being executed quickly and that the market is highly liquid. In other words, high volume can mean that buying and selling the stock is relatively easy.
What It Means When Stock Volume Goes Up
When stock volume is on the rise, it typically means that prices are on the move, either in the upward or downward direction. As volume increases, it can mean that investors are committing to the price change; a trend may be gathering strength.
Generally speaking, higher volume means that there’s increased interest in buying a stock, and that the market for that stock is more liquid, making it easier to buy and sell shares.
What It Means When Stock Volume Goes Down
When stock volume starts to decrease, it can signal that investors are less enthusiastic about a company. Volumes can decrease even as stock prices increase.
Low volume can be a signal for investors to get cautious about a stock. It can signal market uncertainty, the possibility of stock volatility on the horizon, and lower liquidity.
Where Can You Find Stock Volume on a Chart?
Investors can usually find information about volume next to or below the stock chart provided by trading platforms or media sources, like Yahoo Finance or the Wall Street Journal.
Often volume is charted using a candlestick chart, in which investors look for patterns to help them make investment decisions. Normally, candlestick charts measure a stock’s price, including highs, lows, and opening and closing prices over a given period. The resulting figure looks a bit like a candle with a line, or “wick”, that represents highs and lows and a rectangle that marks opening and closing prices. Volume candlestick charts use the width of the rectangle to indicate volume. The higher the volume, the wider the candle.
Recommended: Candlestick Patterns Every Trader Should Know
How Traders Can Use Volume
We’ve already seen that volume can help investors understand when a price trend is picking up steam. There are a few other basic guidelines investors may want to consider as they’re deciding when to buy and sell.
Exhaustion Moves
Exhaustion moves occur when there is a sharp movement in the price of stock coupled with a sharp increase in trading volume. This potentially signals the end of a current price trend. These moments can be accompanied by a period of volatility.
Price Reversals
If the price of a stock has moved in one direction for a long time and volume begins to increase at the same time that prices start to move very little, it can signal a reversal. So if stock prices were on an upward trajectory, changes start to slow and volume increases, it might mean the trend is about to reverse.
A breakout is a point at which changes in market trends occur. Changes in volume can clue investors into the strength of the breakout. Little change in volume suggests investors are paying the breakout little heed, while big changes in volume indicate a strong new trend.
Bullish Signals
Volume can also help investors identify bullish signs that suggest prices are likely to rise. For example, say stock prices increase and then decline. At the same time there is an increase in volume which drives prices up again. The stock again declines, but if it doesn’t decline the second time as much as it did the first time, it may be a bullish signal that prices will continue to rise.
Types of Indicators to Measure Stock Volume
There are a number of volume indicators that can help traders make investment decisions based on their approach and goals. Here are a few examples.
On Balance Volume (OBV)
On balance volume is a cumulative indicator in which volume is added on days when overall volume is up and subtracted on days when overall volume is down. The direction of the indicator is what is most important to investors. When price and OBV are moving up or down together, it is likely the trend will increase in strength.
Volume Price Trend (VPT)
Similar to OBV, volume price trend measures cumulative volume. However, it differs in that it considers a percentage increase or decrease in price. VPT helps investors relate share price to trading volume. If the price of a stock increases, so does the value of the indicator. If prices fall, the indicator value falls, too.
Ease of Movement
This indicator helps traders see how easy it is for a stock price to move between levels based on trading volumes. Stocks that continue along a trend for a given period are considered “easy.” This indicator is used over longer time periods and in volatile markets in which it can be hard to spot trends.
The Takeaway
Stock trading volume measures the amount of stocks traded in a given day or time period. Examining volume and other tools in technical analysis can help investors make decisions about when to buy and sell stocks.
When buying any individual security, investors should consider how it fits into their overall financial plan, including their goals, risk tolerance, and time horizon. Investors interested in taking a hands-on approach to investing may want to open an online stock trading account with SoFi Invest®. You can make trades in the convenient app, with no commission fees.
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Scientists are five steps closers to completing an entire synthetic genome for yeast, a microbe commonly used in beer and bread for thousands of years now, and it could pave the way for a breed of new organisms designed by humans.
The international team led by geneticist Dr. Jef Boeke of New York University Langone and composed of more than 200 authors announced last March 9 that they have constructed and integrated five new synthetic chromosomes into Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Manufacturing Synthetic Genome For Yeast
The project, dubbed Synthetic Yeast 2.0, brought the total of new chromosomes to 6 of yeast’s 16. This proved that more than 30 percent of a key organism’s genetic material can be substituted with artificial code, and researchers are eyeing to reach 100 percent or the entire synthetic one-celled microorganism by the end of 2017.
The mission is a shot at manufacturing the code of life, where scientists rewrite entire genomes instead of doing genetic modifications that change only small amounts of genes at a given time. This way, they could remove excess or unstable genetic regions and add fresh DNA.
The swaths of synthetic DNA are hoped to produce drugs and vaccines, make food more nutritious, or even grow organs for human transplants.
"This work sets the stage for completion of designer, synthetic genomes to address unmet needs in medicine and industry," said Boeke in a statement of their goal to reprogram chromosomes in living cells.
The new series of papers published in the journal Science detailed how the team used computer design on each of the 16 baker’s yeast chromosomes, taking the sequence of Gs, Ts, Cs, and As and applied thousands of changes to remove unnecessary strands.
Next, biotech firms specializing in DNA synthesis assemble short sequences and stitch them together with longer strands and then weaved into longer chunks. Finally, those DNA chunks are integrated into yeast cells and replace the natural chromosome with synthetic ones until it shows the design on the computer.
The synthetic chromosomes are quite leaner than their natural counterparts, and the Sc2.0 genome plan contains about 1 million nucleotide-level differences from the natural version.
What’s The Next Step?
Once all 16 chromosomes have been successfully built, they will be slipped into a single cell to see how they work together. In a yeast strain already designed by postdoctoral fellow Leslie Mitchell and containing three synthetic chromosomes, the system was seen to surprisingly work well.
“One of the mottos of synthetic biology is we hope to fail, because that’s when you learn. So, in a way, our failure rate is almost disappointingly low,” Boeke said in a Discover Magazine report.
Costs remain a challenge in this human endeavor, as the entire yeast genome was worth $1.25 million excluding labor, materials, sequence verification, as well as debugging. What more for constructing more intricate genomes?
The human genome is approximately 300 times the size of the yeast genome, Boeke said, and they target driving down the costs to a point where the DNA is practically free.
Apart from heralding a new era in synthetic biology, genome engineering will open doors for potential applications. In the industrial world, modified yeast already create spider silk, insulin, and painkilling medication, to name a few. Scientists foresee further uses of human-designed organisms in drug production, conversion of waste into energy, and even creating organs for human transplant needs.
Which organisms are up next? Currently being explored are nematode worms, plants, and even mammalian cells, and eventually animals such as pigs could have genomes designed to convert their organs into suitable human transplants.
This coming May, Boeke and the team will conduct a public meeting to broach the idea of creating human genomes to potentially produce human cells for medical treatments, especially the virus-resistant ones.
Last January, scientists announced the development of the first semi-synthetic organism using an expanded genetic code.
Synthesizing a DNA base pair in their 2014 study, they created bacteria that thrive using the expanded “genetic alphabet.” With an additional X and Y for an “unnatural base pair” (UBP), the modified E. coli bacterium maintains a genetic code of six letters.
ⓒ 2021 All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. |
The Kidney Industrial Complex
A million machines lined up;
Hosted in a controlled environment.
Most centrifugally located;
Some juxtapositioned, manipulate the environment by running their pipes through the center medulla.
At the gates of each machine are highly sensitive sensor apparati;
Testing the precious resource's content and its pressure…
Communicating global system pressure changes and setting machine operational levels..
Resource is filtered and filtrate flows through the machine's tubes;
a million machines, a million loads;
3 centimeters of tubes in each;
Convoluted, looped and convoluted again;
Different pipe thicknesses, different responsiveness, manipulating and manipulated by the environment;
All membrane transportation mechanisms apply;
Along the tubes, pumps work actively, adding or removing chemicals to the filtrate;
Waste is added, valuable elements are removed to perfect the distillation.
A countercurrent mechanism:
Based on adjacent flows of two systems of pipes in opposing directions;
Maximizes productivity by using one built gradient to build another gradient;
Like students studying aloud; teaching other students what they have learned;
Like the elderly narrating to the children, two worlds intersect retaining knowledge from the beginning of time;
Concentration is achieved through this maintained hypertonic center..
45 gallons of precious fluid distilled to yield only half a gallon of perfect waste;
The blood rushes at the right purity and pressure, balance is maintained.
Store the waste in a bladder.
Thank God for a system unconsciously controlled to perfection;
Consciously decide when to let go.
― Perry Brimah 2014
Articles by Perry Brimah, Dr. |
DORSATECH is one of the knowledge based companies that manufactures freeze-dryer.
Freeze drying is the removal of ice or other frozen solvents from a material through the process of sublimation and the removal of bound water molecules through the process of desorption. Sublimation is when a solid changes directly to a vapor without first going through a liquid phase. Thoroughly understanding the concept of sublimation is a key building block to gaining knowledge of freeze drying.
Sublimation in the freeze drying process can be described simply as:
• Freeze: The product is completely frozen, usually in a vial, flask or tray.
• Vacuum: The product is then placed under a deep vacuum, well below the triple point of water.
• Dry: Heat energy is then added to the product causing the ice to sublime.
Lyophilization and freeze drying are terms that are used interchangeably depending on the industry and location where the drying is taking place. Controlled freeze drying keeps the product temperature low enough during the process to avoid changes in the dried product appearance and characteristics. It is an excellent method for preserving a wide variety of heat-sensitive materials such as proteins, microbes, pharmaceuticals, tissues and plasma. |
How Safe Is Skydiving?
by Amy Garrett
Skydiving is a sport of choice for thrill seekers, but it can also seem scary to the uninitiated. That's not surprising considering that skydivers jump from an airplane that's 13,000 feet in the air or higher. Once in the air, they fall at a speed of about 110 miles per hour, which comes out to a drop of about 500 feet every 3 seconds before the parachute opens.
Once the parachute deploys, skydivers get to enjoy the view from the air as they drift like a colorful feather in the sky. Landing takes practice and skill to pull off gracefully but gets easier with experience. All told, the average length of a skydive, from the airplane to the ground, is about six minutes.
Is it Safe?
According to a Wall Street Journal article, thanks to current skydiving technology, jumping from an airplane and walking away in once piece is practically foolproof. In fact, a drive to the airport is statistically more dangerous than a skydive. Based on data from the United States Parachuting Association, the chances of dying in a car crash are 24 times higher than the odds of not surviving a skydive.
First-time jumpers almost always make tandem jumps. You'll only need about a half hour of training on the ground before you're up in the air with an experienced instructor. They'll be hooked up to you, and you'll make the leap together, stomach to back. You can get a great feel for the sport this way without having to invest hours into training. You can work your way up to solo jumping by taking skydiving classes and completing a number of instructor-assisted jumps before making the leap on your own.
Advances in Safety
Today's skydivers wear backup chutes that can be used in the very rare event that something goes wrong with the first one. There are also automatic activation devices, known as AADs, to provide added safety. Mechanical AADs have been used as far back as the 1950s. However, the newer digital AADs have superior accuracy and reliability. The small computers consistently monitor your speed and altitude to open your reserve parachute if needed when you're at a predetermined distance from the ground. AADs give you peace of mind that even if you pass out on a jump or something else goes wrong, your chute will still get opened.
If you're ready for the kind of adrenaline rush that nothing but jumping from an airplane can deliver, contact a skydiving school near you to get started with skydiving classes. |
Fake Smoke, Real Alarm: E-Cigarettes Can Set Off Smoke Detectors
If you're installing a fire alarm system or adding more smoke detectors to an existing one, watch where you put the detectors or sensors and ensure your home or office has more-than-adequate ventilation. E-cigarettes can set off fire alarms, and you want to be sure that if you have anyone vaping in the building that they don't accidentally set off the alarms. The resulting noise can be not only annoying but also costly, because if the fire department has to respond, it might consider the call a false alarm and fine you.
Vapor Effects
When you start up an e-cigarette, the vapor that you exhale is quite thick compared to cigarette smoke. Even though it's mostly water vapor, the e-cig's vapor is dense enough to disrupt the normal monitoring that a smoke detector does. Smoke detectors usually have either a small electrical current flowing between two plates or they have a light source and a mirror inside a small compartment. In both cases, smoke or vapor gets into the compartments and interrupts the current or causes light to reflect onto a light sensor. The interruption triggers the alarm to go off.
And it's not just smoke or e-cig vapor that can cause this. Even high humidity and fog can mess with a smoke detector if the moisture in the air is abundant enough to cause an interruption inside the detector.
The good news is that as long as the vapor isn't hitting the detector and the room isn't filling up with vapor, there shouldn't be much of a problem. But that does mean you have to place the detectors and sensors strategically and restrict people to vaping in areas that are further away from the detectors and sensors. Keep detectors high up in the room, toward or on the ceiling. Place warning signs near the detectors to alert people using e-cigs that they need to move away and not stand directly under the detector.
It also means that the room in which someone is vaping has to have good ventilation. That can be anything from an open window to kitchen-style ventilation fans that suck out airborne particles.
False Alarms
Fire departments understand that accidents happen and sometimes something other than a fire sets off an alarm. But if this keeps happening, and you aren't making a good effort to prevent the false alarms from recurring, the fire department or city can try to fine you. Each time an engine has to come out to your home or business, that costs the city money. False alarms are highly annoying, and recurring false alarms pose a danger to others because that engine can't respond to a real fire that may occur at the same time.
If you'd like more tactics to prevent false alarms and strike a balance between vaping employees and sensitive smoke detectors, contact a fire alarm company like Eastern Fire Protection as soon as you can. They'll help you figure out a sensible layout for e-cig smokers' rooms and smoke detectors.
21 October 2015
Choosing the Perfect Security System
When it comes time to invest in a security system, it can be hard to choose between the available models. You might wonder whether or not you actually need night vision cameras, or how loud that alarm really needs to be. However, if you understand the features available on the market, you might be able to find a system that will work well for you long term. This blog is dedicated to aiding small business owners who might have questions about security systems, measures, and protocols. After you read these articles, you might feel more comfortable investing in equipment to protect your employees. |
Word: proshlutoj
Pronounce: pros-ay'-loo-tos
Strongs Number: G4339
Orig: from the alternate of 4334; an arriver from a foreign region, i.e. (specially), an acceder (convert) to Judaism ("proselyte"):--proselyte. G4334
Use: TDNT-6:727,943 Adjective
Heb Strong: H1616
1) a newcomer
1a) a stranger, alien
2) a proselyte
2a) one who has come over from a Gentile religion to Judaism
The Rabbis distinguished two classes of proselytes, proselytes of righteousness, who received circumcision and bound themselves to keep the whole of the Mosaic law and to comply with all the requirements of Judaism, and proselytes of the gate, who dwelt among the Jews, and although uncircumcised observed certain specific laws, esp. the seven precepts of Noah, i.e. against the seven chief sins, idolatry, blasphemy against God, homicide, unchastity, theft or plundering, rebellion against rulers and the use of "flesh with the blood thereof". |
Wednesday, June 23, 2021
June 23rd in stamps Banff National Park, Edward VIII, Estonian War of Independence
Here are some events that happened on June 23rd. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1887 – The Rocky Mountains Park Act becomes law in Canada creating the nation's first national park, Banff National Park.
Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885. Located in Alberta's Rocky Mountains, 110–180 kilometres (68–112 mi) west of Calgary, Banff encompasses 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 sq mi) of mountainous terrain, with many glaciers and ice fields, dense coniferous forest, and alpine landscapes. The Icefields Parkway extends from Lake Louise, connecting to Jasper National Park in the north. Provincial forests and Yoho National Park are neighbours to the west, while Kootenay National Park is located to the south and Kananaskis Country to the southeast. The main commercial centre of the park is the town of Banff, in the Bow River valley.
The Canadian Pacific Railway was instrumental in Banff's early years, building the Banff Springs Hotel and Chateau Lake Louise, and attracting tourists through extensive advertising. In the early 20th century, roads were built in Banff, at times by war internees from World War I, and through Great Depression-era public works projects. Since the 1960s, park accommodations have been open all year, with annual tourism visits to Banff increasing to over 5 million in the 1990s. Millions more pass through the park on the Trans-Canada Highway. As Banff has over three million visitors annually, the health of its ecosystem has been threatened. In the mid-1990s, Parks Canada responded by initiating a two-year study which resulted in management recommendations and new policies that aim to preserve ecological integrity.
Banff National Park has a subarctic climate with three ecoregions, including montane, subalpine, and alpine. The forests are dominated by Lodgepole pine at lower elevations and Engelmann spruce in higher ones below the treeline, above which is primarily rocks and ice. Mammal species such as the grizzly bear, cougar, wolverine, elk, bighorn sheep and moose are found, along with hundreds of bird species. Reptiles and amphibians are also found but only a limited number of species have been recorded. The mountains are formed from sedimentary rocks which were pushed east over newer rock strata, between 80 and 55 million years ago. Over the past few million years, glaciers have at times covered most of the park, but today are found only on the mountain slopes though they include the Columbia Icefield, the largest uninterrupted glacial mass in the Rockies. Erosion from water and ice have carved the mountains into their current shapes.
Canadian stamp commemorating Banff National Park
Canada No 936, National Park Banff National Park
1894 Born: Edward VIII, King of the United Kingdom (d. 1972)
Edward VIII (Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David; 23 June 1894 – 28 May 1972) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire and Emperor of India from 20 January 1936 until his abdication in December of the same year.
Edward was born during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria as the eldest child of the Duke and Duchess of York, later King George V and Queen Mary. He was created Prince of Wales on his 16th birthday, seven weeks after his father succeeded as king. As a young man, Edward served in the British Army during the First World War and undertook several overseas tours on behalf of his father. While Prince of Wales, he engaged in a series of sexual affairs that worried both his father and then-British prime minister Stanley Baldwin.
Edward became king on his father's death. As king, he showed impatience with court protocol, and caused concern among politicians by his apparent disregard for established constitutional conventions. Only months into his reign, a constitutional crisis was caused by his proposal to marry Wallis Simpson, an American who had divorced her first husband and was seeking a divorce from her second. The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and the Dominions opposed the marriage, arguing a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands was politically and socially unacceptable as a prospective queen consort. Additionally, such a marriage would have conflicted with Edward's status as titular head of the Church of England, which, at the time, disapproved of remarriage after divorce if a former spouse was still alive. Edward knew the Baldwin government would resign if the marriage went ahead, which could have forced a general election and would have ruined his status as a politically neutral constitutional monarch. When it became apparent he could not marry Wallis and remain on the throne, he abdicated. He was succeeded by his younger brother, George VI. With a reign of 326 days, Edward is the shortest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom.
After his abdication, Edward was created Duke of Windsor. He married Wallis in France on 3 June 1937, after her second divorce became final. Later that year, the couple toured Nazi Germany. During the Second World War, Edward was at first stationed with the British Military Mission to France, but after private accusations that he was a Nazi sympathizer, he was appointed Governor of the Bahamas. After the war, Edward spent the rest of his life in France. He and Wallis remained married until his death in 1972. Wallis died 14 years later.
Great Britain stamps depicting Edward VIII
GB 1936 Edward VIII Definitives Stamps Set.
1919 – Estonian War of Independence: The decisive defeat of the Baltische Landeswehr in the Battle of Cēsis; this date is celebrated as Victory Day in Estonia.
First stamps issued by Estonia
Estonia 1918-19 1-4 Definitive Set
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
June 22nd in stamps Battle of Sisak, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Konrad Zuse
Here are some events that happened on June 22nd. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1593 – Battle of Sisak: Allied Christian troops defeat the Ottomans.
The Battle of Sisak (Croatian: Bitka kod Siska; Slovene: Bitka pri Sisku; German: Schlacht bei Sissek; Turkish: Kulpa Bozgunu) was fought on 22 June 1593 between Ottoman regional forces of Telli Hasan Pasha, the military Governor (Beglerbeg) of the Eyalet of Bosnia, and a combined Christian army from the Habsburg lands, mainly Kingdom of Croatia and Inner Austria. The battle took place at Sisak, central Croatia, at the confluence of the rivers Sava and Kupa.
Earlier in 1591 and 1592 the Ottomans had twice failed to capture the Sisak fortress, but managed to take the strategically important fortress of Bihać in 1592. The Sisak fortress was again besieged by a large Ottoman force on 15 June 1593. The garrison in Sisak was commanded by Blaž Đurak and Matija Fintić, both from the Diocese of Zagreb.
An army under the supreme command of the Styrian general Ruprecht von Eggenberg was quickly assembled to break the siege. The Croatian troops were led by the Ban of Croatia, Thomas Erdődy, and major forces from the Duchy of Carniola and the Duchy of Carinthia were led by Andreas von Auersperg, nicknamed the "Carniolan Achilles". They made a surprise attack on the besieging forces on 22 June. The ensuing battle resulted in a crushing defeat for the regional Ottoman forces with Hasan killed, triggering the Long War.
Slovenian and Croatian stamps issued in 1993 to commemorate the 400 years anniversary of the battle of Sisak
Croatia 1993 400th Anniversary Of Battle Of Sisak
Slovenia 1993 400th Anniversary Of Battle Of Sisak
1767 Born: Wilhelm von Humboldt, German philosopher, academic, and politician, Interior Minister of Prussia (d. 1835)
He is especially remembered as a linguist who made important contributions to the philosophy of language, ethnolinguistics and to the theory and practice of education. He made a major contribution to the development of liberalism by envisioning education as a means of realizing individual possibility rather than a way of drilling traditional ideas into youth to suit them for an already established occupation or social role. In particular, he was the architect of the Humboldtian education ideal, which was used from the beginning in Prussia as a model for its system of public education, as well as in the United States and Japan. He was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1822.
Berlin and East German stamps depicting Wilhelm von Humboldt
Germany Berlin Wilhelm Von Humboldt
DDR Wilhelm von Humboldt
Germany-Berlin Wilhelm von Humboldt
1910 Born: Konrad Zuse, German computer scientist and engineer, invented the Z3 computer (d. 1995)
he Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer. The Z3 was built with 2,600 relays, implementing a 22-bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 4–5 Hz. Program code was stored on punched film. Initial values were entered manually.
The Z3 was completed in Berlin in 1941 but was not considered vital, so it was never put into everyday operation. Based on the work of Hans Georg Küssner (cf. Küssner effect) e.g. a "Program to Compute a Complex Matrix" was written and used to solve wing flutter problems. Zuse asked the German government for funding to replace the relays with fully electronic switches, but funding was denied during World War II since such development was deemed "not war-important". The original Z3 was destroyed on 21 December 1943 during an Allied bombardment of Berlin. The Z3 was originally called V3 (Versuchsmodell 3 or Experimental Model 3) but was renamed to not be confused with Germany's V-weapons. A fully functioning replica was built in 1961 by Zuse's company, Zuse KG, and is on permanent display at Deutsches Museum in Munich.
The Z3 was demonstrated in 1998 to be, in principle, Turing-complete. However, because it lacked conditional branching, the Z3 only meets this definition by speculatively computing all possible outcomes of a calculation.
German stamp depicting Konrad Zuse
Germany 2010 Konrad Zuse 1st day cancellation
Monday, June 21, 2021
June 21st in stamps Bertha von Suttner, Sukarno
Here are some events that happened on June 21st. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1914 Died: Bertha von Suttner, Austrian journalist and author, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1843)
Bertha Felicitas Sophie Freifrau von Suttner (9 June 1843 – 21 June 1914) was an Austrian-Bohemian pacifist and novelist. In 1905, she became the second female Nobel laureate (after Marie Curie in 1903), the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first Austrian laureate.
In 1889 Suttner became a leading figure in the peace movement with the publication of her pacifist novel, Die Waffen nieder! (Lay Down Your Arms!), which made her one of the leading figures of the Austrian peace movement. The book was published in 37 editions and translated into 12 languages. She witnessed the foundation of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and called for the establishment of the Austrian Gesellschaft der Friedensfreunde pacifist organisation in an 1891 Neue Freie Presse editorial. Suttner became chairwoman and also founded the German Peace Society the next year. She became known internationally as the editor of the international pacifist journal Die Waffen nieder!, named after her book, from 1892 to 1899. In 1897 she presented Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria with a list of signatures urging the establishment of an International Court of Justice and took part in the First Hague Convention in 1899 with the help of Theodor Herzl, who paid for her trip as a correspondent of the Zionist newspaper, Die Welt.
Upon her husband's death in 1902, Suttner had to sell Harmannsdorf Castle and moved back to Vienna. In 1904 she addressed the International Congress of Women in Berlin and for seven months travelled around the United States, attending a universal peace congress in Boston and meeting President Theodore Roosevelt.
Though her personal contact with Alfred Nobel had been brief, she corresponded with him until his death in 1896, and it is believed that she was a major influence on his decision to include a peace prize among those prizes provided in his will, which she was awarded in the fifth term on 10 December 1905. The presentation took place on 18 April 1906 in Kristiania.
German and Austrian stamps depicting Bertha von Suttner
Germany Women 200 PF Bertha von Suttner
Austria 1965, 60th anniv Nobel Prize Bertha von Suttner
Austria 2009 Bertha von Suttner Novelist Nobel Price Winner Sheet.
1970 Died: Sukarno, Indonesian engineer and politician, 1st President of Indonesia (b. 1901)
Sukarno (born Kusno Sosrodihardjo; 6 June 1901 – 21 June 1970) was an Indonesian politician who was the first president of Indonesia, serving from 1945 to 1967.
Indonesian stamps depicting Sukarno
Indonesia 1953 Sukarno set
Indonesia Sukarno Conference of New Emerging Forces
Sunday, June 20, 2021
1837 – Queen Victoria succeeds to the British throne.
The Penny Black, the first official adhesive postage stamp
Penny Block sheet
Stamp from India and Great Britain showing Empress Victoria
India Victoria 1895 3rs brown-green
Great Britain 117 Victoria
Great Britain 1855 2d Blue Plate 5
Great Britain 1884 Victoria
Stamps from the United States and Great Britain depicting Alexander Graham Bell
FDC Telephone Alexander Graham Bell
US Alexander Graham Bell
Saturday, June 19, 2021
June 19th in stamps Maximilian I, Blaise Pascal
Here are some events that happened on June 19th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1623 Born: Blaise Pascal, French mathematician and physicist (d. 1662)
In 1642, while still a teenager, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines. After three years of effort and 50 prototypes, he built 20 finished machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines) over the following 10 years, establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator.
Pascal was an important mathematician, helping create two major new areas of research: he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of projective geometry at the age of 16, and later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. Following Galileo Galilei and Torricelli, in 1647, he rebutted Aristotle's followers who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum. Pascal's results caused many disputes before being accepted.
In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the Lettres provinciales and the Pensées, the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids.
Throughout his life, Pascal was in frail health, especially after the age of 18; he died just two months after his 39th birthday.
Stamps from France and Monaco depicting Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal France 1944
Blaise Pascal France 1962
Blaise Pascal Monaco
1867 – Maximilian I of the Second Mexican Empire is executed by a firing squad in Querétaro, Querétaro.
Maximilian I (Spanish: Fernando Maximiliano José María de Habsburgo-Lorena; 6 July 1832 – 19 June 1867) was the only monarch of the Second Mexican Empire. He was a younger brother of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I. After a distinguished career in the Austrian Navy as its commander, he accepted an offer by Napoleon III of France to rule Mexico, conditional on a national plebiscite in his favour.
Here are some Mexican stamps depicting Maximilian I
Friday, June 18, 2021
June 18th in stamps Piet Hein, Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, Susan B. Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote
Here are some events that happened on June 18th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1629 Died: Piet Pieterszoon Hein, Dutch admiral (b. 1577)
Piet Pieterszoon Hein (25 November 1577 – 18 June 1629) was a Dutch admiral and privateer for the Dutch Republic during the Eighty Years' War. Hein was the first and the last to capture a large part of a Spanish treasure fleet which transported huge amounts of gold and silver from Spanish America to Spain. The amount of silver taken was so big that it resulted in the rise of the price of silver worldwide and the near bankruptcy of Spain.
In 1628, during the eighty year's Dutch liberation war from Spain, Admiral Hein, with Witte de With as his flag captain, sailed out to capture a Spanish treasure fleet loaded with silver from the Spanish American colonies and the Philippines. With him was Admiral Hendrick Lonck and he was later joined by a squadron of Vice-Admiral Joost Banckert, as well as by the pirate Moses Cohen Henriques. Part of the Spanish fleet in Venezuela had been warned because a Dutch cabin boy had lost his way on Blanquilla island and was captured and betrayed the plan, but the other half from Mexico continued its voyage, unaware of the threat. Sixteen Spanish ships were intercepted and captured: one galleon was taken after a surprise encounter during the night, nine smaller merchants were talked into a surrender; two fleeing small ships were taken at sea, and four fleeing galleons were trapped on the Cuban coast in the Bay of Matanzas.
After some musket volleys from Dutch sloops, the crews of the galleons also surrendered and Hein captured 11,509,524 guilders of booty in gold, silver, and other expensive trade goods, such as indigo and cochineal, without any bloodshed. The Dutch did not take prisoners: they gave the Spanish crews ample supplies for a march to Havana. The released were surprised to hear the admiral personally giving them directions in fluent Spanish; Hein after all was well acquainted with the region as he had been confined to it during his internment after 1603.
The capture of the treasure fleet was the Dutch West India Company's greatest victory in the Caribbean. It enabled the Dutch, at war with Spain, to fund their army for eight months (and as a direct consequence, allowing it to capture the fortress 's-Hertogenbosch), and the shareholders enjoyed a cash dividend of 50% for that year. The financial loss strategically weakened their Spanish enemy. Hein returned to the Netherlands in 1629, where he was hailed as a hero. Watching the crowds cheering him as he stood on the balcony of the town hall of Leyden, he remarked to the burgomaster: "Now they praise me because I gained riches without the least danger; but earlier when I risked my life in full combat they didn't even know I existed...". Hein was the first and the last to capture such a large part of a Spanish "silver fleet" from Spain.
Dutch stamp depicting Piet Hein
Netherlands 1943 - ' Piet Hein '
1845 Born: Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, French physician and parasitologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1922)
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran (18 June 1845 – 18 May 1922) was a French physician who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1907 for his discoveries of parasitic protozoans as causative agents of infectious diseases such as malaria and trypanosomiasis. Following his father, Louis Théodore Laveran, he took up military medicine as his profession. He obtained his medical degree from University of Strasbourg in 1867.
At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he joined the French Army. At the age of 29 he became Chair of Military Diseases and Epidemics at the École de Val-de-Grâce. At the end of his tenure in 1878 he worked in Algeria, where he made his major achievements. He discovered that the protozoan parasite Plasmodium was responsible for malaria, and that Trypanosoma caused trypanosomiasis or African sleeping sickness. In 1894 he returned to France to serve in various military health services. In 1896 he joined Pasteur Institute as Chief of the Honorary Service, from where he received the Nobel Prize. He donated half of his Nobel prize money to establish the Laboratory of Tropical Medicine at the Pasteur Institute. In 1908, he founded the Société de Pathologie Exotique.
Laveran was elected to French Academy of Sciences in 1893, and was conferred Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1912.
Swedish stamp depicting Laveran and Kipling, 1907 Nobel Prize winners
Sweden 1967 Nobel Prize Winners Laveran
Susan B Anthony,liberty FDC
Susan B Anthony,liberty Series
US 1936 Susan B.Anthony
Thursday, June 17, 2021
June 17th in stamps Jón Sigurðsson, Iceland declares independence from Denmark
Here are some events that happened on June 17th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1811 Born: Jón Sigurðsson, Icelandic scholar and politician (d. 1879)
Jón Sigurðsson (17 June 1811 – 7 December 1879) was the leader of the 19th century Icelandic independence movement.
His birthday, 17 June, was chosen as Iceland's National Holiday to recognize his efforts toward Icelandic independence.
He is often referred to as President ("Jón forseti") by Icelanders. The main reason for this is that he served as the president of Althing several times, for the first time in 1849. He also served as the President of the Copenhagen Department of Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag (the Icelandic Literature Society). He is currently pictured on Iceland's 500 krónur bill, and has been honoured on Icelandic postage stamps on the centenaries of his birth and death, the 150th anniversary of his birth, and on the creation of the Republic of Iceland (on his 133rd birthday).
The apartment which Jón and Ingibjörg rented at Øster Voldgade 12 in Copenhagen from 1852 is called Jónshús and has been the property of the Icelandic government since 1967. It serves as a cultural center for Icelanders in Denmark, and as housing for academics on sabbatical. A plaque on the corner with Stokhusgade commemorates that he used to live in the building.
Stamps from Iceland depicting Jón Sigurðsson
Iceland 1944 Sigurdsson Set
1944 – Iceland declares independence from Denmark and becomes a republic.
Icelandic National Day (Icelandic: Þjóðhátíðardagurinn, the day of the nation's celebration) is an annual holiday in Iceland which commemorates the foundation of The Republic of Iceland on 17 June 1944. This date also marks the end of Iceland's centuries old ties with Denmark. The date was chosen to coincide with the birthday of Jón Sigurðsson, a major figure of Icelandic culture and the leader of the 19th century Icelandic independence movement.
Set issued to commemorate the founding of the Republic of Icelandic
Iceland 1944 Sigurdsson Set
Wednesday, June 16, 2021
June 16th in stamps Geronimo, Gustaf V of Sweden, Bazil Assan
Here are some events that happened on June 16th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1829 Born: Geronimo, American tribal leader (d. 1909)
Geronimo ("the one who yawns", June 16, 1829 – February 17, 1909) was a prominent leader and medicine man from the Bedonkohe band of the Apache tribe. From 1850 to 1886, Geronimo joined with members of three other Chiricahua Apache bands—the Tchihende, the Tsokanende and the Nednhi—to carry out numerous raids, as well as fight against Mexican and U.S. military campaigns in the northern Mexico states of Chihuahua and Sonora and in the southwestern American territories of New Mexico and Arizona. Geronimo's raids and related combat actions were a part of the prolonged period of the Apache–United States conflict, which started with American settlement in Apache lands following the end of the war with Mexico in 1848.
While well known, Geronimo was not a chief of the Chiricahua or the Bedonkohe band. However, since he was a superb leader in raiding and warfare, he frequently led large numbers of men beyond his own following. At any one time, he would be in command of about 30 to 50 Apaches.
During Geronimo's final period of conflict from 1876 to 1886, he surrendered three times and accepted life on the Apache reservations in Arizona. Reservation life was confining to the free-moving Apache people, and they resented restrictions on their customary way of life.
In 1886, after an intense pursuit in northern Mexico by American forces that followed Geronimo's third 1885 reservation breakout, Geronimo surrendered for the last time to Lt. Charles Bare Gatewood, an Apache-speaking West Point graduate who had earned Geronimo's respect a few years before. Geronimo was later transferred to General Nelson Miles at Skeleton Canyon, just north of the Mexican/American boundary. Miles treated Geronimo as a prisoner of war and acted promptly to move Geronimo, first to Fort Bowie, then to the railroad at Bowie Station, Arizona, where he and 27 other Apaches were sent to join the rest of the Chiricahua tribe, which had been previously exiled to Florida.
While holding him as a prisoner, the United States capitalized on Geronimo’s fame among non-Indians by displaying him at various events. For Geronimo, it provided him with an opportunity to make a little money. In 1898, for example, Geronimo was exhibited at the Trans-Mississippi and International Exhibition in Omaha, Nebraska. Following this exhibition, he became a frequent visitor to fairs, exhibitions, and other public functions. He made money by selling pictures of himself, bows and arrows, buttons off his shirt, and even his hat. In 1905, the Indian Office provided Geronimo for the inaugural parade for President Theodore Roosevelt. Later that year, the Indian Office took him to Texas, where he shot a buffalo in a roundup staged by 101 Ranch Real Wild West for the National Editorial Association. Geronimo was escorted to the event by soldiers, as he was still a prisoner. The teachers who witnessed the staged buffalo hunt were unaware that Geronimo’s people were not buffalo hunters.
He died at the Fort Sill hospital in 1909, as a prisoner of war. Geronimo is buried at the Fort Sill Indian Agency Cemetery, among the graves of relatives and other Apache prisoners of war.
US stamps depicting Geronimo
Geronimo Apache War Leader
1858 Born: Gustaf V of Sweden (d. 1950)
Gustaf V (Oscar Gustaf Adolf; 16 June 1858 – 29 October 1950) was King of Sweden from 1907 until his death in 1950. He was the eldest son of King Oscar II of Sweden and Sophia of Nassau, a half-sister of Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg. Reigning from the death of his father, Oscar II, in 1907 to his own death 43 years later, he holds the record of being the oldest monarch of Sweden and the third-longest rule, after Magnus IV and Carl XVI Gustaf. He was also the last Swedish monarch to exercise his royal prerogatives, which largely died with him, although they were formally abolished only with the remaking of the Swedish constitution in 1974. He was the first Swedish king since the High Middle Ages not to have a coronation and so never wore the king's crown, a practice that has continued ever since.
Gustaf's early reign saw the rise of parliamentary rule in Sweden although the leadup to World War I induced his dismissal of Liberal Prime Minister Karl Staaff in 1914, replacing him with his own figurehead, Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, the father of Dag Hammarskjöld, for most of the war. However, after the Liberals and Social Democrats secured a parliamentary majority under Staaff's successor, Nils Edén, he allowed Edén to form a new government which de facto stripped the monarchy of all virtual powers and enacted universal and equal suffrage, including for women, by 1919. Bowing fully to the principles of parliamentary democracy, he remained a popular figurehead for the remaining 31 years of his rule, although not completely without influence – during World War II he allegedly urged Per Albin Hansson's coalition government to accept requests from Nazi Germany for logistics support, refusing which might have provoked an invasion. This remains controversial to date, although he is not known to have shown much support for fascism or radical nationalism; his pro-German and anti-Communist stance was well known also in World War I.
Following his death at age 92, he was implicated in a homosexual affair in the Haijby affair. His alleged lover Kurt Haijby was imprisoned in 1952 for blackmail of the court in the 1930s. (Homosexuality was a criminal offense in Sweden until 1944, though Gustaf's position would have granted automatic immunity.) An avid hunter and sportsman, he presided over the 1912 Olympic Games and chaired the Swedish Association of Sports from 1897 to 1907. Most notably, he represented Sweden (under the alias of Mr G.) as a competitive tennis player, keeping up competitive tennis until his 80s, when his eyesight deteriorated rapidly. He died from flu complications and was succeeded by his son, Gustaf VI Adolf.
5Kr Gustaf V
Sweden 1926 King Gustaf V Semi-postal Set
Sweden 1926 King Gustaf V Semi-postal Set
Sweden 1939 King Gustaf V 10 ore
1918 Born: Bazil Assan, Romanian engineer and explorer (b. 1860)
Bazil George Assan (1 August 1860 – 16 June 1918) was a Romanian engineer, explorer and economist. Belonging to a wealthy family in Bucharest, Assan was an important figure in the industrialization of the Kingdom of Romania. He studied engineering, commerce and economics, which impulsed him to discover the globe. In 1896, he became the first Romanian to travel to the Arctic, and between 1897 and 1898, he became the first Romanian to travel around the world. His travels were later presented to King Carol I of Romania. Assan died on 16 June 1918 in Montreux, Switzerland.
Assan, stimulated by his knowledge of economics, commerce and industry, was greatly interested in discovering the world. Therefore, in the summer of 1896, he embarked on the Norwegian ship Erling Jart and, along with other scientists of various nationalities, traveled to the Arctic. Assan and the scientists studied the geological structure and natural resources of the archipelago of Svalbard. Thus, he became the first Romanian to travel to the Arctic.
Afterwards, between 1897 and 1898, departing from Constanța, he passed through Constantinople, Alexandria, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York and London, establishing several trade agreements and becoming the first Romanian to travel around the world. His expeditions were published in the Royal Society of Geography of Romania, of which he was a member. After returning, he presented his conference Călătorie în regiunile polare nordice ("Journey in the northern Polar regions") to King Carol I and Prince Ferdinand I, and days later to the Queen Elisabeth of Wied. In 1899, he presented to the public Călătoria împrejurul Pământului ("Journey around the Earth"), his second conference. Between December 1897 and the middle of 1898, Assan made another trip, this time with more economic and cultural intentions.
Romania stamp depicting Bazil Assan
Romanian stamp of 1986 representing Bazil Assan and his expedition to Svalbard
Monday, May 31, 2021
May 31st in stamps Walt Whitman, Francisco Moreno
Here are some events that happened on May 31st. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1819 Born: Walt Whitman, American poet, essayist, and journalist (d. 1892)
Whitman's influence on poetry remains strong. Mary Whitall Smith Costelloe argued: "You cannot really understand America without Walt Whitman, without Leaves of Grass ... He has expressed that civilization, 'up to date,' as he would say, and no student of the philosophy of history can do without him." Modernist poet Ezra Pound called Whitman "America's poet ... He is America."
US stamps depicting Walt Whitman
US 1940 Walt Whitman
US 2019 Walt Whitman
1852 Born: Francisco Moreno, Argentinian explorer and academic (d. 1919)
Francisco Pascasio Moreno (May 31, 1852 – November 22, 1919) was a prominent explorer and academic in Argentina, where he is usually referred to as Perito Moreno (perito means "specialist, expert"). Perito Moreno has been credited as one of the most influential figures in the Argentine incorporation of large parts of Patagonia and its subsequent development.
Moreno was born to Francisco and Juana Thwaites Madero in Buenos Aires. Raised in a traditional patrician family, he studied in local parochial schools. He shared his spare time with his father searching for artifacts and fossils and, at age 14, created a homemade museum of his extensive collections.
Following graduation in 1872, he participated in the founding of the Argentine Scientific Society. He embarked on the first of the series of scientific expeditions that made him well known: a survey of Río Negro Territory, largely uncharted country. In January 1876, he reached Lake Nahuel-Huapi in the southern Andes, and on February 15, 1877, he discovered and named Lake Argentino. He also explored numerous rivers in Patagonia. On March 2, he discovered and named Mount Fitz Roy, after the commander of the expedition of HMS Beagle in the 1830s. The native people also called it Chalten.
In 1880, Moreno went to France, where he spoke at a meeting of the Anthropology Society of Paris, discussing two prehistoric skulls he had unearthed in Río Negro territory. He believed one was from the Quaternary period, and the other had ritual deformation in a manner similar to the skulls of the Aymara people of the Andes and Altiplano.
After his return to Argentina, that year he embarked on his second major expedition to the territory of Patagonia. He was taken prisoner by a Tehuelche aboriginal tribe and condemned to death. He escaped on March 11, one day before the appointed execution. During this period he met the Tehuelche chief, Inacayal, who was hospitable to him. Later Inacayal led a resistance to the government, not surrendering until 1884.
In 1882–1883 Moreno explored the Andes from Bolivia southward, and in 1884–1885 he made new explorations of the territory south of the Río Negro and of Patagonia. He was appointed as chief of the Argentine exploring commission of the southern territories, and member of numerous European scientific societies. For his contributions to science, Moreno received a doctorate Honoris causa from the National University of Córdoba in 1877.
He is also known for his role in defending Argentine interests. He made defining surveys that led to the Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina. In honor to this contribution, the Argentinian glacier Perito Moreno, was named after him. These surveys and others yielded Moreno a vast collection of archaeological and anthropological data and artifacts, for which he founded an anthropological museum in Buenos Aires in 1877.
Argentinian stamp depicting Francisco Moreno
Argentina Francisco Pascasio Moreno
Sunday, May 30, 2021
May 30th in stamps Voltaire, Andrew Jackson, Wilbur Wright
Here are some events that happened on May 30th. It could be an event or a person that died or was born on that day
1778 Died: Voltaire, French philosopher and author (b. 1694)
Voltaire was a versatile and prolific writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, histories, and scientific expositions. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was one of the first authors to become renowned and commercially successful internationally. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, and he was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.
François-Marie Arouet was born in Paris, the youngest of the five children of François Arouet (1649–1722), a lawyer who was a minor treasury official, and his wife, Marie Marguerite Daumard (c. 1660–1701), whose family was on the lowest rank of the French nobility. Some speculation surrounds Voltaire's date of birth, because he claimed he was born on 20 February 1694 as the illegitimate son of a nobleman, Guérin de Rochebrune or Roquebrune. Two of his older brothers—Armand-François and Robert—died in infancy, and his surviving brother Armand and sister Marguerite-Catherine were nine and seven years older, respectively. Nicknamed "Zozo" by his family, Voltaire was baptized on 22 November 1694, with François de Castagnère, abbé de Châteauneuf, and Marie Daumard, the wife of his mother's cousin, standing as godparents. He was educated by the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand (1704–1711), where he was taught Latin, theology, and rhetoric; later in life he became fluent in Italian, Spanish, and English.
By the time he left school, Voltaire had decided he wanted to be a writer, against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to become a lawyer. Voltaire, pretending to work in Paris as an assistant to a notary, spent much of his time writing poetry. When his father found out, he sent Voltaire to study law, this time in Caen, Normandy. But the young man continued to write, producing essays and historical studies. Voltaire's wit made him popular among some of the aristocratic families with whom he mixed. In 1713, his father obtained a job for him as a secretary to the new French ambassador in the Netherlands, the marquis de Châteauneuf, the brother of Voltaire's godfather. At The Hague, Voltaire fell in love with a French Protestant refugee named Catherine Olympe Dunoyer (known as 'Pimpette'). Their affair, considered scandalous, was discovered by de Châteauneuf and Voltaire was forced to return to France by the end of the year.
Voltaire was imprisoned in the Bastille from 16 May 1717 to 15 April 1718 in a windowless cell with ten-foot-thick walls.
Most of Voltaire's early life revolved around Paris. From early on, Voltaire had trouble with the authorities for critiques of the government. As a result, he was twice sentenced to prison and once to temporary exile to England. One satirical verse, in which Voltaire accused the Régent of incest with his daughter, resulted in an eleven-month imprisonment in the Bastille. The Comédie-Française had agreed in January 1717 to stage his debut play, Œdipe, and it opened in mid-November 1718, seven months after his release. Its immediate critical and financial success established his reputation. Both the Régent and King George I of Great Britain presented Voltaire with medals as a mark of their appreciation.
He mainly argued for religious tolerance and freedom of thought. He campaigned to eradicate priestly and aristo-monarchical authority, and supported a constitutional monarchy that protects people's rights.
Voltaire's best-known histories are History of Charles XII (1731), The Age of Louis XIV (1751), and his Essay on the Customs and the Spirit of the Nations (1756). He broke from the tradition of narrating diplomatic and military events, and emphasized customs, social history and achievements in the arts and sciences. The Essay on Customs traced the progress of world civilization in a universal context, rejecting both nationalism and the traditional Christian frame of reference. Influenced by Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1682), he was the first scholar to attempt seriously a history of the world, eliminating theological frameworks, and emphasizing economics, culture and political history. He treated Europe as a whole rather than a collection of nations. He was the first to emphasize the debt of medieval culture to Middle Eastern civilization, but otherwise was weak on the Middle Ages. Although he repeatedly warned against political bias on the part of the historian, he did not miss many opportunities to expose the intolerance and frauds of the church over the ages. Voltaire advised scholars that anything contradicting the normal course of nature was not to be believed. Although he found evil in the historical record, he fervently believed reason and expanding literacy would lead to progress.
From an early age, Voltaire displayed a talent for writing verse, and his first published work was poetry. He wrote two book-long epic poems, including the first ever written in French, the Henriade, and later, The Maid of Orleans, besides many other smaller pieces.
French stamps depicting Voltaire
France 1949 Francois Marie Voltaire, Dit Voltaire
Hungary Francois Voltaire
France imperf pair MNH Voltaire & Rousseau
1806 – Future U.S. President Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel.
Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American soldier and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, Jackson gained fame as a general in the United States Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. As president, Jackson sought to advance the rights of the "common man" against a "corrupt aristocracy" and to preserve the Union.
Born in the colonial Carolinas to a Scotch-Irish family in the decade before the American Revolutionary War, Jackson became a frontier lawyer and married Rachel Donelson Robards. He served briefly in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate, representing Tennessee. After resigning, he served as a justice on the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1798 until 1804. Jackson purchased a property later known as The Hermitage, and became a wealthy, slaveowning planter. In 1801, he was appointed colonel of the Tennessee militia and was elected its commander the following year. He led troops during the Creek War of 1813–1814, winning the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. The subsequent Treaty of Fort Jackson required the Creek surrender of vast lands in present-day Alabama and Georgia. In the concurrent war against the British, Jackson's victory in 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans made him a national hero. Jackson then led U.S. forces in the First Seminole War, which led to the annexation of Florida from Spain. Jackson briefly served as Florida's first territorial governor before returning to the Senate. He ran for president in 1824, winning a plurality of the popular and electoral vote. As no candidate won an electoral majority, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams in a contingent election. In reaction to the alleged "corrupt bargain" between Adams and Henry Clay and the ambitious agenda of President Adams, Jackson's supporters founded the Democratic Party.
Jackson ran again in 1828, defeating Adams in a landslide. Jackson faced the threat of secession by South Carolina over what opponents called the "Tariff of Abominations." The crisis was defused when the tariff was amended, and Jackson threatened the use of military force if South Carolina attempted to secede. In Congress, Henry Clay led the effort to reauthorize the Second Bank of the United States. Jackson, regarding the Bank as a corrupt institution, vetoed the renewal of its charter. After a lengthy struggle, Jackson and his allies thoroughly dismantled the Bank. In 1835, Jackson became the only president to completely pay off the national debt, fulfilling a longtime goal. His presidency marked the beginning of the ascendancy of the party "spoils system" in American politics. In 1830, Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which forcibly relocated most members of the Native American tribes in the South to Indian Territory. The relocation process dispossessed the Indians and resulted in widespread death and disease. Jackson opposed the abolitionist movement, which grew stronger in his second term. In foreign affairs, Jackson's administration concluded a "most favored nation" treaty with Great Britain, settled claims of damages against France from the Napoleonic Wars, and recognized the Republic of Texas. In January 1835, he survived the first assassination attempt on a sitting president.
In his retirement, Jackson remained active in Democratic Party politics, supporting the presidencies of Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk. Though fearful of its effects on the slavery debate, Jackson advocated the annexation of Texas, which was accomplished shortly before his death. Jackson has been widely revered in the United States as an advocate for democracy and the common man. Many of his actions proved divisive, garnering both fervent support and strong opposition from many in the country. His reputation has suffered since the 1970s, largely due to his role in Native American removal. Surveys of historians and scholars have ranked Jackson favorably among U.S. presidents.
US Stamps depicting Andrew Jackson
4c President Andrew Jackson 1883
1938 7c Andrew Jackson 7th President of the United States
Andrew Jackson 10c 1967
President Andrew Jackson 1863
1912 Died: Wilbur Wright, American pilot and businessman, co-founded the Wright Company (b. 1867)
The Wright brothers—Orville (August 19, 1871 – January 30, 1948) and Wilbur (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912)—were two American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful motor-operated airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, 4 mi (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. In 1904–05, the brothers developed their flying machine to make longer-running and more aerodynamic flights with the Wright Flyer II, followed by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III. The Wright brothers were also the first to invent aircraft controls that made fixed-wing powered flight possible.
The brothers' breakthrough was their creation of a three-axis control system, which enabled the pilot to steer the aircraft effectively and to maintain its equilibrium. This method remains standard on fixed-wing aircraft of all kinds. From the beginning of their aeronautical work, the Wright brothers focused on developing a reliable method of pilot control as the key to solving "the flying problem". This approach differed significantly from other experimenters of the time who put more emphasis on developing powerful engines. Using a small home-built wind tunnel, the Wrights also collected more accurate data than any before, enabling them to design more efficient wings and propellers. Their first U.S. patent did not claim invention of a flying machine, but a system of aerodynamic control that manipulated a flying machine's surfaces.
The brothers gained the mechanical skills essential to their success by working for years in their Dayton, Ohio-based shop with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and other machinery. Their work with bicycles, in particular, influenced their belief that an unstable vehicle such as a flying machine could be controlled and balanced with practice. From 1900 until their first powered flights in late 1903, they conducted extensive glider tests that also developed their skills as pilots. Their shop employee Charlie Taylor became an important part of the team, building their first airplane engine in close collaboration with the brothers.
US stamps depicting the Wright brothers
Wilbur & Orville Wright Airmail U.s. Postage Stamp
Orville And Wilbur Wright U.S. Postage Stamps Pair
Orville And Wilbur Wright U.S. Postage Stamps Pair FDC |
Preserving Warbird artifact at a time.
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Compass, Aperiodic, US Army Air Force Type D-12
Compass, Aperiodic, US Army Air Force Type D-12
The US Army Air Force Type D-12 Direct Reading Aperiodic Compass was used at the navigators station across many US WWII aircraft, including heavy bombers B-17, B-24, B-29, medium bombers B-25 and B-26, and transports C-46, C-47, and C-54. Made by Bendix, part number 1833-1-A, it has a serial number prefix of AF-42, indicative of a manufacturing year 1942. Later versions had a bakelite cover surrounding the 'legs'.
The navigators' direct reading compass is known as an aperiodic (without a period) compass, since the needle returns to rest quickly and without appreciable overswing when deflected from its position. Radial arms or vanes attached to the card dampen the swing of the needle. This type of compass is mounted horizontally, and is read through a glass cover on the top. The compass consists primarily of a cylindrical metal bowl filled with compass fluid. In the center of the bowl is a semi-float type card to which are attached the magnetized needles and the radial arms. The card is marked with the four cardinal points, with an arrow indicating North. Inside the bowl, a fixed mark acts as the lubber's line. A graduated rotatable ring (verge), with two clamping screws, is fastened to the upper edge of the compass bowl. Across the inside of the ring are two horizontal, parallel white wires, spaced equally on either side of the N and S markings. In making readings, the ring is turned until the two white wires are parallel to the North-South lines on the card. The airplane heading is read as the marking on the ring which is directly above the lubber's line. A box containing magnets which may be turned to compensate for deviation is located on the bottom of the compass.
This compass still contains clear fluid, the glass is intact, and the markings are sharp. It is is a fine example given its age.
Measures ~7 inches diameter and ~4 inches in height.
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On This Date in Latin America – April 12, 1972: The Araguaia Guerrilla War in Brazil
Forty years ago today, the Brazilian military dictatorship launched its attack against the anti-dictatorship guerrillas inhabiting the Araguaia River basin in the state of Goiás (today, Tocantins). The campaign, and the subsequent disappearances of dozens of citizens, marks one of the darkest and most extreme cases of repression and human rights violations of Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship.
Brazilian soldiers sent to suppress the guerrilla movement in the Araguaia basin in 1972.
As the military regime’s tactics against students and leftists increased in the latter half of the 1960s, many students and leftists left school or their jobs to join small guerrilla movements that employed revolutionary language and violence in an attempt to spur a mass uprising that would overthrow the regime. While many of these groups operated in urban centers like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, a small group of several dozen leftists converged on the Araguaia basin from which they hoped to lead a popular uprising against the regime.
The area around the Araguaia River basin, where leftists hoped to lead a revolution from northern Brazil in what is today the state of Tocantins.
Unlike their urban counterparts, the leftists from the Partido Comunista do Brasil (Communist Party of Brazil; PCdoB) in the Araguaia basin subscribed to Ché Guevara’s experiences and Régis Debray’s ideas of foquismo. Foquismo advocated revolution by means of a paramilitary vanguard that would be based in rural areas, from which it would launch attacks that weaken the targeted regime even while building up popular support among the rural poor. The theory as Debray formulated it drew directly from Guevara’s own experiences and successful tactics in the Cuban Revolution. While these tactics had worked in the small island country of Cuba, in retrospect their utility for Brazil (which is larger than the United States without Alaska) seems problematic, to put it lightly. Indeed, although Cuba’s revolution had overthrown the Batista regime, when Guevara tried to employ these tactics in the Congo in 1965 and in Bolivia in 1967 (where he ultimately died), he met with failure. Nonetheless, university students and other leftists who drew from Guevarista Marxism moved to the Araguaia region in the late-1960s, hoping to build relations with the peasants in the area and establish the infrastructure for a revolution that would overthrow Brazil’s military regime just as Guevara and Fidel Castro had overthrown the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista more than ten years earlier.
The military government also had troops scattered in the area by the early-1970s, but it was only in 1972, after having combated urban guerrilla groups and killing leaders like Carlos Marighella and ex-military member and leftist leader Carlos Lamarca, that the regime turned greater attention to the leftists in Brazil’s interior around the Araguaia River basin.
Young soldiers sent to the Araguaia "front" in early-1972.
Although the regime initially captured a handful of combatants, including José Genoíno, who would serve as the president of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party; PT) in 2002, it quickly moved to a policy of total liquidation of all those fighting for the guerrillas or aiding them. Ultimately, the regime captured and murdered at least sixty guerrillas, whose bodies they then buried in unknown locations or otherwise disposed of them. Additionally, several residents in the region went disappearing, leaving more than sixty people dead, with the location of their remains unknown to this day.
In its attempt to quash the Araguaia guerrilla movement, Brazil's military regime murdered and "disappeared" more than 60 individuals.
While the regime put significant energy and resources into eliminating the movement and all those tied to it between 1972 and 1975, most Brazilians at the time were completely unaware of the guerrilla movement or the efforts to destroy it, thanks in no small part to the military’s heavy reliance upon censorship in this period.
The families of the victims were more than aware of the loss of their loved ones, however, and began legal proceedings to find out what had happened to their relatives in the early-1980s, as the regime opened up and Brazil slowly redemocratized. However, in spite the Inter-American Human Rights Commission’s 2010 decision that declared that Brazil’s failure to investigate and prosecute those guilty of extrajudicial murders in Araguaia violated the American Convention on Human Rights, Brazil has failed to go after those guilty of crimes in Araguaia, maintaining the 1979 amnesty law that pardoned all human rights violators in Brazil. To this day, the Brazilian military has remained silent on the possible whereabouts of the bodies, even denying the existence of archives or documents that might shed light on the Araguaia conflict, and the relatives of those who died still do not know where their loved ones’ bodies are, forty years after the military first launched its concentrated effort to suppress resistance in the region.
About Colin M. Snider
This entry was posted in Brazil, Brazil's Military Dictatorship, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America, On This Date in Latin America, The "Disappeared". Bookmark the permalink. |
The China Trade Debate
stock photo
Samuel Svonavec
In the global arena, no country has been proven to dominate the practice of exporting goods on the same level as China. China’s exports have contributed to its growing economy, and the country has forged important economic relationships with many of the countries to which it has exported goods. Not only has China’s role in global trade benefited its domestic economy, but it has also offered economic benefits to economies, firms, and consumers in other countries. Over the years, China has had a shaky relationship with another global business giant, the United States. Despite many experts in the field of global economics saying that the United States’ trade deficit with China is overstated, opposing opinions contend that the trade deficit, along with overall trade relations with China, is a cause for concern for the United States’ economy and its citizens. Although opinions on the United States’ trading with China vary among experts in the field of global economics, it is important to avoid one-sided reporting by offering information on the positive and negative aspects of trading with China.
The economy, firms, and consumers of the United States benefit from international trade with China in many ways. Clint Hardy says, “China generally rivals Canada as the United States’ largest agricultural trading partner. Last year, the U.S. exported $24 billion of ag and ag-related products to China, representing around 15 percent of U.S. global ag trade.” Despite concerns surrounding the United States’ trade deficit with China, multiple economic benefits have materialized for the United States, and its citizens, as international trade with China grows. An important benefit of the United States trading with China is the reduction in the price of goods. International trade promotes competition, which introduces new low-priced goods and services, and restricts price markups on existing goods and services. Chinese goods can be sold in the United States for low prices because of the low Chinese labor costs. Because Chinese workers’ wages are eliminated from the overall manufacturing company’s costs, the company’s total variable costs decrease. Lower variable costs translate to lower prices for buyers of a company’s products, which allows the domestic supplier to resell the purchased products at a low cost to consumers.
Another benefit of international trade with China is product variety and increased productivity. Because China has resources that the United States does not possess, China is able to export a wide array of unique goods that American consumers might not be able to acquire domestically. Goods such as unique vehicles, foods, technology, and games are exported to the United States from China, and they provide U.S. consumers with different choices. Because global trade encourages competition among firms, the overall productivity for firms increases. This increased productivity can cause the U.S. economy to improve. In addition to the firm productivity and consumer goods variety that results from trading with China, the country-to-country relationships that are forged through international trade can positively impact the economies of both parties involved in trading.
Although the benefits of trading with China are apparent, there are negative aspects that must be addressed. The United States’ trade relations with China have proven to be advantageous to the U.S. economy; however, the United States’ reliance on Chinese goods has negatively affected its market for domestically manufactured goods, and it has also rendered the U.S. economy vulnerable. Due to the United States’ reliance on the cheap goods that China exports, production of various domestic goods in the U.S. has suffered. When a country imports more than it exports, it has a trade deficit. The United States has recently received more Chinese imports which have caused it to create an over-reliance on imported goods. This over-reliance on cheap imports has caused many U.S. businesses to halt the production of domestic goods, which harms the economy and GDP by cutting back net exports. Additionally, the United States suffers from trade in the form of job loss. The country’s reliance on imports, and the resulting halt in domestic production, can cause job loss due to domestic companies ceasing the manufacturing of goods.
In today’s political climate, individuals contend that trade with China offers nothing but damage to American jobs and the economy. While listening to political conversations on the topic of international trade with China, it is often rare to hear the benefits of trade. Many American citizens are exposed to excessive, partisan reporting of the negative effects of trading with China. These negative reports are further exacerbated by politicians who present a negative outlook on trade. The United States-China trade deficit is one of the main causes of one-sided reporting of the trade issue in America. Although job loss is a serious issue that can materialize as a result of a trade deficit, the overall effect of job loss in the United States is often overplayed. Trade has very little impact on jobs in the United States; however, trade does change the kind of jobs we have, which allows us to specialize in the types of domestic jobs we excel at as a country. Despite some of the negative aspects of the U.S.-China trade situation, additional research and nonbiased information must be presented to the citizens of the United States before the issue is considered for further debate.
Considering the recent tariffs passed on Chinese goods, the United States has been shaky with its current trade policy with China. Because of the low variable costs of Chinese manufacturers, workers in China are paid considerably low wages. Because China has considerably low wages, it is able to produce goods at an incredibly low cost, which gives it an unfair advantage in the global arena. Because of China’s inequitable business methods, the president of the United States should be advised to discuss the unfair trade situation with China and impose some type of additional restriction on Chinese goods in order to foster fair international trade. |
Benifits of training in high altitudes
Training & Technique
Written by: arena coaches at 13 December '18 0
You are reading: Benifits of training in high altitudes
Training in high altitudes can bring great benefits, we’ll see how.
Usually during the time frame of a sporting season there’s a time in which the athlete moves to higher grounds to train. This famous “getaway” usually coincides with the school holidays for the younger athletes. Even those who aren’t part of a professional training team, but simply love the outdoors might go to the mountains during their winter-sports holiday and thereby gain the benefits of training in high altitudes.
What changes compared to training on sea-level?
It’s all in the air that we breathe. You might not already be aware of the fact that the air we breathe isn’t purely oxygen. Actually, only about 20% of the air we breathe is oxygen and the rest is mainly nitrogen and other elements. In high altitudes (at least above 2000m) the composition remains basically the same, but it’s as if there was less oxygen available to breathe. This happens because of the difference in atmospheric pressure, which is what makes the lungs perform less efficiently in processing oxygen-nitrogen.
What does it mean to have less oxygen available? Obviously, you’ll get more tired and quicker. Doing the same exercise on high altitudes will seem more difficult. It will be difficult to achieve the same times while swimming compared to swimming at sea-level. This difference will be more noticeable in medium-longer distances. This is mainly because while swimming short distances one doesn’t depend as much on the aerobic metabolism (the one that uses oxygen) but one mainly uses the anaerobic system (the one that uses lactic acid).
That being said, the difficulties will mainly be noticeable in the first few days of training before the body adjusts. In fact, the human body is a marvellous machine that adapts to its environment. Just like training will help your body to physically mutate and adjust to certain types of movements, it will also adapt to the environmental changes that high altitude training brings.
How? EPO (erythropoietin) is the hormone that promotes the production of red blood cells, increasing the amount of them in the blood circuit. In this way, the body has been able to compensate the lack of oxygen by creating more transporters of oxygen in the blood.
Once this change has been done, when returning to lower altitudes, you will have more transporters (red blood cells) and more available oxygen. It will feel like you’ve increased the power of your motor.
Lastly, keep these last thoughts in mind:
1. You shouldn’t stay in high altitudes any less than 7 days, and ideally you should stay around 2 weeks. Anything under 7 days won’t give your body enough time to react and create the benefits you’re after.
2. Once you return to sea-level the benefits of the high-altitude training will disappear after about a month (the body will re-adapt to its new environment).
3. Since your body needs some time to re-adjust, it’s advisable to avoid heavy training during the first few days after returning.
4. Often, since we’re all different, it can happen that one might obtain benefits more or less quickly and on different levels than another individual.
Wishing you a good workout!
Photo credit: “Un plongeon ?” (CC BY 2.0) by Pierre__Arnaud
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arena coaches
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Crowdsourcing Data Could Help Create First AI to Reason Like Human Beings
AI systems could match humans on adaptability, creativity and emotional intelligence in fewer than 50 years, experts say. By 2062, AI could match human intelligence.
“Even without machines that are very smart, I’m starting to get a little bit nervous about where it’s going and the important choices we should be making”, said Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of AI at UNSW Sydney, who has written a book ‘2062: The World that AI Made.’
Borne out of the 1956 Dartmouth Conference, AI has seen fundamental changes largely thanks to advancements in deep learning, which is modeled after the human brain – its neurons and synapses.
It has taken several generations of AI to reach the point it has today, where automated cars are widely considered to soon enter the mainstream. DARPA’s Information Innovation Office has released a Youtube clip describing the three waves of AI.
First AI Wave: Handcrafted Knowledge
The first wave of AI saw experts devise algorithms and software based on their own knowledge. Think chess-playing computers, and delivery optimization software. This type of AI forms the basis for some AI used today, such as in smartphone maps software and traffic lights that allow people to cross the street by pressing a button.
Systems based on the first wave of AI are usually based on clear and logical rules; while able to perform straightforward reasoning tasks, these systems can do little more than form conclusions by examining important parameters of the situations it needs to solve. Humans are needed to identify the parameters for such situations and this makes such AI systems incompatible with new situations that have not been pre-programmed by humans.
AI systems are best at implementing simple logical rules for well-defined problems. They are incapable of learning, and have a hard time dealing with uncertainty.
Second AI Wave: Statistical Learning
At DARPA’s first grand challenge in 2004, fifteen autonomous vehicles competed to finish a 150 mile course in the Mojave desert. The vehicles, which relied on first wave AI, highlighted its limitations. The Grand Challenge deputy program manager said the vehicles “were scared of their own shadow, hallucinating obstacles when they were not there.” By the end of the day, only the course remained undefeated.
In Grand Challenge 2005, five groups made it to the end of the track, all of whom had relied on the second wave of AI known as statistical learning. The head of the vehicle called Stanley was right away hired by Google.
In second wave AI systems, the engineers and programmers develop statistical models for certain types of problems, and then ‘train’ these models on many various samples to make them more precise and efficient.
Second wave systems are good at face recognition, speech transcription, and at identifying animals and objects in photos, and control autonomous cars and aerial drones.
Microsoft’s social media bot, Tay, was based on this type of AI technology. Designed to replicate the speech patterns of a 19 years old American female youth and talk with teens in their unique slang, the youth began pranking Tay. They educated her that Hitler was great and successful. She learned well:
Microsoft’s engineers took Tay down. Perhaps Tay will be back one day after Microsoft’s engineers re-educate her.
Third AI Wave: Contextual Adaptation
Third wave AI systems themselves will discover on their own the logical rules which shape their decision-making process. When a third wave system ascertains a situation, it will probably explain some of it logic. DARPA takes the example of recognizing a cow. While a second wave system can say that there is a percentage-chance that something is a cow, a third wave system can explain why that is. “There’s a whole lot of work to be done to be able to build these systems” said DARPA’s Information Innovation Office.
When third wave AI systems will be able to decipher new models that will improve their function, sans human input, they will theoretically be able to program new generations of software. AIs with a complex understanding of context and the consequences of actions could replace most human workers, possibly all of them in time. And when allowed to reshape the models via which they appraise the world, then they’ll actually be able to reprogram their own motivation.
Can crowdsourcing herald in a new era of AI?
One study estimates that between 2012 and 2017, the market for crowdsourcing in the US grew by about 37%. Its total value was estimated at $6.5 billion.
This is the approach taken by blockchain-based Mind AI, whose operation depends in part on ontology models generated from crowdsourced data. Feeding an AI model with data generated from a large and diverse population could accelerate development quite radically.
Mind AI combines a core AI engine with an ontology database designed to store vast datasets. These knowledge bases are distributed — hence blockchain — which simultaneously fixes issues surrounding data storage and the need to use a supercomputer for processing.
Similar to this is Endor Protocol, whose AI functions using predictive analytics. It achieves this by making artificial intelligence predictions accessible to all sizes of business, allowing the user to ask a predictive question and receive a direct answer. Its methodology centers around science and data analytics — providing automated and accurate AI predictions — with predictive insights based on analysis of contributed data.
The future could come quicker than expected
The more quality knowledge the better, however, and an AI model with access to the most is likely to develop at a faster pace. Crowdsourcing data could be an effective way to usher in the third wave of AI and herald a new era of technology.
Mind AI has an intriguing proposition to this end; it is a blockchain-based platform, which means micropayments can be made in crypto tokens and should incentivize a wide network of participants choosing to contribute knowledge.
One thing is for sure: when the gears are in motion on third wave AI, they will move fast.
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Hurricane Blanca
Hurricane Blanca
Hurricane Blanca
Hurricane Blanca, the second named storm of the eastern Pacific season, alternated between interesting and alarming, dynamic and stagnant in the first week of June 2015. The storm set a record as the earliest second hurricane in an eastern Pacific season (previous record was June 5), and as the earliest second major hurricane (previously June 12). On average the second major hurricane usually does not form in the eastern Pacific until August. But for all its potency, Blanca also stalled and swooned and, in a sense, weakened itself.
Tropical Storm Blanca formed on June 1, and then rapidly intensified into a major hurricane on June 2–3, exploding into a category 4 storm over hot tropical waters. But then the hurricane became stationary and churned up the ocean to a point where it circulated colder waters up from the depths. Blanca cooled down a bit, wind speeds dropped, and the eye wall fell apart. Forecasters believe the storm might gain strength again as it moves north and west, though it will eventually run into cooler waters again. Forecasts call for Blanca to make landfall on the Baja Peninsula of Mexico, perhaps as a weak hurricane or tropical storm, by June 6 or 7. The forecast track has the storm and its remnants moving up the peninsula and the Gulf of California for several days.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite acquired a natural-color image (top) of Hurricane Blanca at 11:05 a.m. Mexico Time (1805 Universal Time) on June 4, 2015. Two hours before the image was acquired, wind speeds aloft were estimated to be 205 kilometers (125 miles) per hour, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The second image shows wind speed and direction near the ocean surface as measured from space around 1 a.m. on June 4. The measurements were taken by the International Space Station-Rapid Scatterometer (ISS-RapidScat), which bounces microwave pulses off the ocean and measures the roughness of the surface. Rough waters are disturbed more by wind and return a stronger signal than smooth waters; from this information, scientists can derive speed and direction. Shades of blue-green indicate the range of speeds, with lighter shades representing stronger surface winds.
On May 27, 2015, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration delivered its outlook on the 2015 hurricane season for North America. Forecasters predicted a 70 percent chance of above-average activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and 70 percent chance of a below-average season in the Atlantic Ocean. The current El Niño helps make conditions favorable to hurricane growth in the Pacific (warmer water than usual) while tamping down conditions on the Atlantic side (increased wind shear and other atmospheric changes). NOAA scientists predicted 15 to 22 named storms in the eastern Pacific, of which 7 to 12 are expected to become hurricanes. They called for 6 to 11 named storms in the Atlantic, with 3 to 6 becoming hurricanes.
“These past two weeks have given us a preview of what should be a active, El Niño fueled Eastern Pacific hurricane season,” said Bill Patzert, climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The west coast of Mexico should prepare for a battering this summer into the fall.”
NASA Earth Observatory map (bottom) by Joshua Stevens using RapidScat data from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. NASA image (top) by Jeff Schmaltz, LANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response. Caption by Mike Carlowicz.
References & Resources |
January 5
An Overview on Scraping and Data Parsing
There are many areas where the web or data scraping is used. Web scraping automates the extraction process on the web in a fast and efficient way. Scraping is a process used in businesses for market research among other aspects.
For example, a store can compare its prices to competitors effortlessly. When you get data in the raw HTML format after the scraping process using a proxy, the data goes through a parser. The HTML is then converted into an easy-to-read and understood format.
Not so many people are familiar with the term data parsing. This article will answer the question, what is parsing? The simplest definition is that data parsing turns raw unstructured data into well-structured information.
Data parsing is analyzing text or string into syntactic elements with a program known as a parser that decomposes and transforms information into a readable format to process it further. Therefore, a data parser is a software program that executes the process and also analyzes tokens produced by a lexer. A lexer acts as an assistant to the parser.
The Relationship Between Scraping and Parsing
Web scraping commonly needs parsing to change the content with the irrelevant information into an understandable format to give the most accurate results. After web scraping, the next process is usually data parsing to extract and define the results after analysis.
For the scraping process to happen accurately and allow access to many homepages, companies should provide an API (Application Programming Interface). To make scraping easier and undetectable, scrapers need to be configured with a proxy to make each process unique. Companies such as Smartproxy provide a range of proxies to simplify the process.
How Does Data Parsing Work?
Parsing is an important part of web scraping. Data parsing is the process that transforms the snippets of code that have been scraped to a format that is easy to understand. A parser has also been known as a tokenizer or a proper parser.
It inspects and breaks down tokens or snippets of code for syntactic analysis. A parser produces a structured code known as a syntax tree. It is called a tree because of the many levels it has.
There are two steps in the data parsing process: lexical analysis and syntactic analysis. The lexical analysis is the primary parsing step, which allocates data structures collected before changing the format. The syntactic analysis is when the allocated data is converted based on a pre-written code by the parser.
Types of Data Parsing
A parser is usually categorized into two types, which are top-down parsers and bottom-up parsers. Their difference is mainly in the way the parse tree is generated.
1. Top-Down Parsers
A top-down parser generates data for the input string with the assistance of grammar productions. A top-down parser can be divided further into two other types: recursive descent and non-recursive descent parser.
i) Recursive Descent or Brute Force Parser is also known as brute force parser or the backtracking parser. It uses brute or backtracking to generate the parse.
ii) Non-recursive descent or Predictive Parser is also known as LL(1) parser or a predictive parser with no backtracking. It uses parsing tables and generates the parser tree instead of backtracking.
2. Bottom-up Parser
A bottom-up parser generates its parse tree for specific input strings that help grammar productions by compressing. It starts from non-terminals to the end of the start symbol. Bottom-up is classified into two types: the Operator Precedence parser and the LR parser.
Operator Precedence Parser
generates the parse tree from given strings and grammar in two consecutive terminals and epsilon.
LR Parser
is the bottom-up parser that uses unambiguous grammar. It follows the reverse of the rightmost derivation. LR parsers have four different types namely: LR(0), SLR(1), LALR(1) and CLR(1).
This may sound very complex, but if you use an existing web scraping tool such as ones provided by Octoparse, Parsehub, or similar you don’t have to worry about the parsing process too much. These specialized web scrapers already have built-in parsers that will convert the scraped data to the format you specify.
Uses of Data Scraping
Data scraping is an area whose influence can be seen, especially in business. It’s almost impossible, especially with the rise in competition for data, to find a place where data scraping is not valuable or important.
1. Marketing and Sales
It assists in finding sales leads. You can conduct market research by using public sources such as Twitter. Web scraping can help analyze people’s interests and monitor consumer reviews on different platforms.
2. Strategy Development
Web scraping assists with giving good facts by allowing a one-time extraction for analysis to use in monitoring the strategy later. Scraping also allows you to develop a web crawler to check the news in the relevant area.
3. Product Development
Web scraping allows you to analyze customer reviews on rating platforms. This enhances product development by letting you know what products the customers need.
4. Price & Competitor Analysis
If you’re working on a price strategy, web scraping allows you to extract and check pricing and discounts from competitors. It also allows you to further track your competitor’s latest developments.
Data scraping can also be used in other sectors. Scraping tools are commonly used in journalism, academic research, news, and reputation monitoring.
A combination of a good proxy and excellent web scraping tools can enhance your business strategy. Scraping gives any business access to information that they could use to increase sales revenue.
Some other articles you might find of interest:
Here are budget-friendly and efficient gym essentials to consider:
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How to make $1,000 a year, according to the top tech salaries
By NBC News • June 10, 2018 11:14:55At a recent tech conference in New York, a man named Scott, a former NASA engineer, told a packed room how his salary from NASA’s space agency is based on a formula: “If I have 10 years of work experience, I make $100,000.
If I have eight years of experience, $100.000.
And if I have five years of engineering experience, then $100.”
Scott is talking about the salary he earned at the end of 2017.
If you’re wondering how the math works, Scott told us, it is based off the average pay for engineers, not the total number of years they have worked in their job.
The number of full-time workers on NASA, which manages the space agency’s orbiting satellites, is roughly half the total workforce.
So if you have 10 employees on a team, Scott said, you have to factor in that team of 10 to make sure your salary is a fair $100 million.
“We have people that are working on the satellites, we have people on the ground that are taking measurements, we’ve got people on our space station that are doing experiments,” he said.
And he said those numbers are based off a formula he wrote in the 1970s.
It is based solely on the average salary for engineers on NASA’s payroll.
The formula is designed to reflect the number of engineers working on a mission, but it also considers the average number of people working in a given position on a particular mission.
The more engineers you have, the higher your salary.
But what’s the formula for that average?
Scott says NASA has to factor that into its calculations.
“It’s a formula for a scientist,” he explained.
“You can’t get a scientist to work on a job without an engineer.
You can’t have an engineer who doesn’t have a scientist on the team.”
NASA does use other measures of a scientist’s skills.
But Scott said the formula is a more accurate reflection of the total value of a job on the job.
For instance, he said, the average engineer’s salary is based only on a person’s total number in the workforce.
But if you’re an engineer on a NASA mission, your salary might also be based on the number in that mission.
“The formula doesn’t reflect that you’re not part of the crew,” Scott said.
“That you’re just there.”
How does NASA make its math work?
The space agency says that its formula is based mainly on the total amount of time engineers work on each mission.
In the 1960s, NASA had about 60 engineers working in one mission.
By the 1990s, it had about 700, and today it has about 8,000 engineers on missions across the globe.
But the total numbers are changing, NASA says.
In 2010, the total total was 1.8 million.
In 2017, it was 1,900,000, according a NASA statement.
So what’s going on?
NASA said the increase in the number and type of engineers on a specific mission has made the formula less accurate.
It said that engineers have become more efficient, so the total hours worked per engineer are increasing.
But this isn’t the whole story, NASA said.
The company added that in the last decade, the number on a single mission has increased by about a quarter, while the number working on more than one mission has risen by nearly a quarter.
“Because of this, we are now working with a new generation of engineers to help ensure we continue to have the right number of astronauts on a given mission,” NASA said in its statement.
“Engineers have become increasingly valuable to NASA in recent years because they are critical to the mission planning, and our mission planners have found it necessary to recruit and develop more engineers to ensure mission success.
As a result, we continue, in partnership with our engineers, to increase our number of employees on each flight, which is important to mission success.”
NASA also said it will continue to increase the number or types of people in the team on a flight.
In fact, the agency said it plans to increase its number of spaceflight missions by more than 30% in the next decade.
How to find the right tech jobs with the right skills?
Here are a few things you can do to find your dream tech career.
Use a website like CareerBuilder.
CareerBuilder has hundreds of thousands of job listings to help you search for the best tech jobs.
Just search for any job, and CareerBuilder will suggest jobs with good pay, benefits and job opportunities for you.
And you can even use CareerBuilder to find jobs for companies that offer bonuses, bonuses for referrals and incentives for referrals.
Look at how you’re paying for your tech education.
Google Glass, the wearable computer that’s worn on the face, could be a good choice if you want to make a career change in tech.
Google said in a statement that Glass could “incre |
Nightview, New York by Berenice Abbott
Nightview, New York
Gelatin silver print
Collection of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA
In this 1932 photograph by Abbott the white lights in the buildings and headlights of cars contrast starkly with the solid structures of the buildings that dominate the city. Abbot captured New York at night as a representation of the emergence of the modern city.
Berenice Abbott
Straight Photography, Dada and Surrealist Photography, Modern Photography
Born: 17 July 1898, Ohio, USA
Nationality: American
Died: 9 December 1991, Maine, USA
Abbot was a photographer particularly known for portraits and documentary photographs which stressed the communicative and educational value of the photographic print. She followed a realist vision in her photographs recording history and her own experience to potentially inspire change in her audience., purposely facilitating interaction between photographer, photograph, and the viewer. Her realistic approach to photography originated in her career as a portrait photographer in Paris and the photographic realism of Eugène Atget. Following eight years working in Paris, Abbot moved to New York in 1929 and began to document the modern transformation of the city.
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[ UK /ʃˈʌnt/ ]
[ US /ˈʃənt/ ]
1. provide with or divert by means of an electrical shunt
2. transfer to another track, of trains
2. a passage by which a bodily fluid (especially blood) is diverted from one channel to another
an arteriovenus shunt
3. implant consisting of a tube made of plastic or rubber; for draining fluids within the body
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How To Use shunt In A Sentence
• Most rural stations had a staff of at least six, and perhaps up to a dozen, who them carried out the duties of stationmaster, signalman, booking clerk, ticket collector, porter, shunter, lengthman and lampman.
• The countless mini-roundabouts popping up where there just simply isn't room for a roundabout is another danger, increasing the number of small shunts & bumps.
• Several other Argus executives were also shunted sideways.
• This medical condition usually requires the surgical placement of a shunt system to divert cerebrospinal fluid to another part of the body.
• The trouble with labelling fiction is that it can get shunted into the sidings of literature.
• It clearly wasn't a minor shunt. The Sun
• The other two were shunted back to Calais. Times, Sunday Times
• Patients are being shunted around the city because there are not enough A&E beds.
• Efficiency and continuity probably do require that the train be shunted into a well-prepared and easily accessible Belgian siding.
• Trading in their own currency would allow them to shunt foreign-exchange risk to someone else, especially if Beijing resumes yuan appreciation.
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Home → Magazine Archive → January 2022 (Vol. 65, No. 1) → Fifty Years of P vs. NP and the Possibility of the... → Full Text
Fifty Years of P vs. NP and the Possibility of the Impossible
By Lance Fortnow
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 65 No. 1, Pages 76-85
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On May 4, 1971, computer scientist/mathematician Steve Cook introduced the P vs. NP problem to the world in his paper, "The Complexity of Theorem Proving Procedures." More than 50 years later, the world is still trying to solve it. In fact, I addressed the subject 12 years ago in a Communications article, "The Status of the P versus NP Problem."13
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Key Insights
The P vs. NP problem, and the theory behind it, has not changed dramatically since that 2009 article, but the world of computing most certainly has. The growth of cloud computing has helped to empower social networks, smartphones, the gig economy, fintech, spatial computing, online education, and, perhaps most importantly, the rise of data science and machine learning. In 2009, the top 10 companies by market cap included a single Big Tech company: Microsoft. As of September 2020, the first seven are Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Alibaba, Facebook, and Tencent.38 The number of computer science (CS) graduates in the U.S. more than tripled8 and does not come close to meeting demand.
Rather than simply revise or update the 2009 survey, I have chosen to view advances in computing, optimization, and machine learning through a P vs. NP lens. I look at how these advances bring us closer to a world in which P = NP, the limitations still presented by P vs. NP, and the new opportunities of study which have been created. In particular, I look at how we are heading toward a world I call "Optiland," where we can almost miraculously gain many of the advantages of P = NP while avoiding some of the disadvantages, such as breaking cryptography.
As an open mathematical problem, P vs. NP remains one of the most important; it is listed on the Clay Mathematical Institute's Millennium Problems21 (the organization offers a million-dollar bounty for the solution). I close the article by describing some new theoretical computer science results that, while not getting us closer to solving the P vs. NP question, show us that thinking about P vs. NP still drives much of the important research in the area.
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The P vs. NP Problem
Are there 300 Facebook users who are all friends with each other? How would you go about answering that question? Let's assume you work at Facebook. You have access to the entire Facebook graph and can see which users are friends. You now need to write an algorithm to find that large clique of friends. You could try all groups of 300, but there are far too many to search them all. You could try something smarter, perhaps starting with small groups and merging them into bigger groups, but nothing you do seems to work. In fact, nobody knows of a significantly faster solution than to try all the groups, but neither do we know that no such solution exists.
This is basically the P vs. NP question. NP represents problems that have solutions you can check efficiently. If I tell you which 300 people might form a clique, you can check relatively quickly that the 44,850 pairs of users are all friends. Clique is an NP problem. P represents problems where you can find those solutions efficiently. We don't know whether the clique problem is in P. Perhaps, surprisingly, Clique has a property called NP-complete—that is, we can efficiently solve the Clique problem quickly if and only if P = NP. Many other problems have this property, including 3-Coloring (can a map be colored using only three colors so that no two neighboring countries have the same color?), Traveling Salesman (find the shortest route through a list of cities, visiting every city and returning to the starting place), and tens to hundreds of thousands of others.
Formally, P stands for "polynomial time," the class of problems that one can solve in time bounded by a fixed polynomial in the length of the input. NP stands for "nondeterministic polynomial time," where one can use a nondeterministic machine that can magically choose the best answer. For the purposes of this survey, it is best to think of P and NP simply as efficiently computable and efficiently checkable.
For those who want a longer informal discussion on the importance of the P vs. NP problem, see the 2009 survey13 or the popular science book based on that survey.14 For a more technical introduction, the 1979 book by Michael Garey and David Johnson16 has held up surprisingly well and remains an invaluable reference for those who need to understand which problems are NP-complete.
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Why Talk About It Now?
On that Tuesday afternoon in 1971, when Cook presented his paper to ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing attendees at the Stouffer's Somerset Inn in Shaker Heights, OH, he proved that Satisfiability is NP-complete and Tautology is NP-hard.10 The theorems suggest that Tautology is a good candidate for an interesting set not in [P], and I feel it is worth spending considerable effort trying to prove this conjecture. Such a proof would represent a major breakthrough in complexity theory.
Dating a mathematical concept is almost always a challenge, and there are many other possible times where we can start the P vs. NP clock. The basic notions of algorithms and proofs date back to at least the ancient Greeks, but as far as we know they never considered a general problem such as P vs. NP. The basics of efficient computation and nondeterminism were developed in the 1960s. The P vs. NP question was formulated earlier than that, we just didn't know it.
The P vs. NP problem, and the theory behind it, has not changed dramatically, but the world of computing most certainly has.
Kurt Gödel wrote a letter17 in 1956 to John von Neumann that essentially described the P vs. NP problem. It is not clear if von Neumann, then suffering from cancer, ever read the letter, which was not discovered and widely distributed until 1988. The P vs. NP question didn't really become a phenomenon until Richard Karp published his 1972 paper23 showing that a large number of well-known combinatorial problems were NP-complete, including Clique, 3-Coloring, and Traveling Salesman. In 1973, Leonid Levin, then in Russia, published a paper based on his independent 1971 research that defined the P vs. NP problem.27 By the time Levin's paper reached the west, P vs. NP had already established itself as computing's most important question.
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Russell Impagliazzo, in a classic 1995 paper,20 described five worlds with varying degrees of possibilities for the P vs. NP problem:
• Algorithmica: P = NP or something "morally equivalent," such as fast probabilistic algorithms for NP.
• Heuristica: NP problems are hard in the worst case but easy on average.
• Pessiland: We can easily create hard NP problems, but not hard NP problems where we know the solution. This is the worst of all possible worlds, since we can neither solve hard problems on average nor do we get any apparent cryptographic advantage from the difficulty of these problems.
• Minicrypt: Cryptographic one-way functions exist, but we do not have public-key cryptography.
• Cryptomania: Public-key cryptography is possible—that is, two parties can exchange secret messages over open channels.
These worlds are purposely not formally defined but rather suggest the unknown possibilities given our knowledge of the P vs. NP problem. The general belief, though not universal, is that we live in Cryptomania.
Impagliazzo draws upon a "you can't have it all" from P vs. NP theory. You can either solve hard NP problems or have cryptography, but you can't have both (you can have neither). Perhaps, though, we are heading to a de facto Optiland. Advances in machine learning and optimization in both software and hardware are allowing us to make progress on problems long thought difficult or impossible—from voice recognition to protein folding—and yet, for the most part, our cryptographic protocols remain secure.
In a section called "What if P=NP?" from the 2009 survey,13 I wrote, "Learning becomes easy by using the principle of Occam's razor—we simply find the smallest program consistent with the data. Near-perfect vision recognition, language comprehension and translation, and all other learning tasks become trivial. We will also have much better predictions of weather and earthquakes and other natural phenomenon."
Today, you can use face-scanning to unlock your smartphone, talk to the device to ask it a question and often get a reasonable answer, or have your question translated into a different language. Your phone receives alerts about weather and other climatic events, with far better predictions than we would have thought possible just a dozen years ago. Meanwhile, cryptography has gone mostly unscathed beyond brute-force-like attacks on small key lengths. Now let's look at how recent advances in computing, optimization, and learning are leading us to Optiland.
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Solving Hard Problems
In 2016, Bill Cook (no relation to Steve) and his colleagues decided to tackle the following challenge:9 How do you visit every pub in the U.K. in the shortest distance possible? They made a list of 24,727 pubs and created the ultimate pub crawl, a walking trip that spanned 45,495,239 meters—approximately 28,269 miles—a bit longer than walking around the earth.
Cook had cheated a bit, eliminating some pubs to keep the size reasonable. After some press coverage in the U.K.,7 many complained about missing their favorite watering holes. Cook and company went back to work, building up the list to 49,687 pubs. The new tour length would be 63,739,687 meters, or about 39,606 miles (see Figure). One needs just a 40% longer walk to reach more than twice as many pubs. The pub crawl is just a traveling salesman problem, one of the most famous of the NP-complete problems. The number of possible tours through all the 49,687 pubs is roughly three followed by 211,761 zeros. Of course, Cook's computers don't search the whole set of tours but use a variety of optimization techniques. Even more impressive, the tour comes with a proof of optimality based on linear program duality.
Figure. Shortest route through 49,687 U.K. pubs. Used by permission. (http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/uk).
Taking on a larger task, Cook and company aimed to find the shortest tour through more than two million stars where distances could be computed. Their tour of 28,884,456 parsecs is within a mere 683 parsecs of optimal.
Beyond Traveling Salesman, we have seen major advances in solving satisfiability and mixed-integer programming—a variation of linear programming where some, but not necessarily all, of the variables are required to be integers. Using highly refined heuristics, fast processors, specialized hardware, and distributed cloud computing, one can often solve problems that arise in practice with tens of thousands of variables and hundreds of thousands or even millions of constraints.
Faced with an NP problem to solve, one can often formulate the problem as a satisfiability or mixed-integer programming question and throw it at one of the top solvers. These tools have been used successfully in verification and automated testing of circuits and code, computational biology, system security, product and packaging design, financial trading, and even to solve some difficult mathematical problems.
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Data Science and Machine Learning
Any reader of Communications and most everyone else cannot dismiss the transformative effects of machine learning, particularly learning by neural nets. The notion of modeling computation by artificial neurons—basically objects that compute weighted threshold functions—goes back to the work of Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts in the 1940s.28 In the 1990s, Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun26 developed the basic algorithms that would power the learning of neural nets, a circuit of these neurons several layers deep. Faster and more distributed computing, specialized hardware, and enormous amounts of data helped propel machine learning to the point where it can accomplish many human-oriented tasks surprisingly well. ACM recognized the incredible impact the work of Bengio, Hinton, and LeCun has had in our society with the 2018 A.M. Turing Award.
How does machine learning mesh with P vs. NP? In this section, when we talk about P = NP, it will be in the very strong sense of all problems in NP having efficient algorithms in practice. Occam's razor states that "entities should not be multiplied without necessity" or, informally, that the simplest explanation is likely to be the right one. If P = NP, we can use this idea to create a strong learning algorithm: Find the smallest circuit consistent with the data. Even though we likely don't have P = NP, machine learning can approximate this approach, which led to its surprising power. Nevertheless, the neural net is unlikely to be the "smallest" possible circuit. A neural net trained by today's deep-learning techniques is typically fixed in structure with parameters that are only on the weights on the wires. To allow sufficient expressibility, there are often millions or more such weights. This limits the power of neural nets. They can do very well with face recognition, but they can't learn to multiply based on examples.
Universal distribution and GPT-3. Consider distributions on the infinite set of binary strings. You can't have a uniform distribution, but you could create distributions where every string of the same length has the same probability. However, some strings are simply more important than others. For example, the first million digits of π have more meaning than just a million digits generated at random. You might want to put a higher probability on the more meaningful strings. There are many ways to do this, but in fact there is a universal distribution that gets close to any other computable distribution (see Kirchherr et al.25) This distribution has great connections to learning—for example, any algorithm that learns with small error to this distribution will learn for all computable distributions. The catch is that this distribution is horribly non-computable even if P = NP. If P = NP, we still get something useful by creating an efficiently computable distribution universal to other efficiently computable distributions.
What do we get out of machine learning? Consider the Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), particularly GPT-3 released in 2020.5 GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters trained on 410 billion tokens taken from as much of the written corpus as could be made available. It can answer questions, write essays given a prompt, and even do some coding. Though it has a long way to go, GPT-3 has drawn rave reviews for its ability to generate material that looks human-produced. One can view GPT-3 in some sense like a distribution, where we can look at the probability of outputs generated by the algorithm, a weak version of a universal distribution. If we restrict a universal distribution to have a given prefix, that provides a random sample prompted by that prefix. GPT-3 can also build on such prompts, handling a surprisingly wide range of domain knowledge without further training. As this line of research progresses, we will get closer to a universal metric from which one can perform built-in learning: Generate a random example from a given context.
Science and medicine. In science, we have made advances by doing large-scale simulations to understand, for example, exploring nuclear fusion reactions. Researchers can then apply a form of the scientific method: Create a hypothesis for a physical system; use that model to make a prediction; and then, instead of attempting to create an actual reaction, use an experimental simulation to test that prediction. If the answer is not as predicted, then change or throw away the model and start again.
After we have a strong model, we can then make that expensive test in a physical reactor. If P = NP, we could, as mentioned above, use an Occam's Razor approach to create hypotheses—find the smallest circuits that are consistent with the data. Machine-learning techniques can work along these lines, automating the hypothesis creation. Given data—whether generated by simulations, experiments, or sensors—machine learning can create models that match the data. We can use these models to make predictions and then test those predictions as before.
While these techniques allow us to find hypotheses and models that might have been missed, they can also lead to false positives. We generally accept a hypothesis with a 95% confidence level, meaning that one out of 20 bad hypotheses might pass. Machine-learning and data science tools can allow us to generate hypotheses that will run the risk of publishing results not grounded in truth. Medical researchers, particularly those trying to tackle diseases such as cancer, often hit upon hard algorithmic barriers. Biological systems are incredibly complex structures. We know that our DNA forms a code that describes how our bodies are formed and the functions they perform, but we have only a very limited understanding on how these processes work.
On November 30, 2020, Google's DeepMind announced AlphaFold, a new algorithm that predicts the shape of a protein based on its amino acid sequence.22 AlphaFold's predictions nearly reach the accuracy of experimentally building the amino acid sequence and measuring the shape of the protein that forms. There is some controversy as to whether DeepMind has actually "solved" protein folding and it is far too early to gauge its impact, but in the long run this could give us a new digital tool to study proteins, understand how they interact, and learn how to design them to fight disease.
Beyond P vs. NP: chess and go. NP is like solving a puzzle. Sudoku, on an arbitrarily sized board, is NP-complete to solve from a given initial setting of numbers in some of the squares. But what about games with two players who take alternate turns, such as chess and go, when we ask about who wins from a given initial setting of the pieces? Even if we have P = NP, it wouldn't necessarily give us a perfect chess program. You would have to ask if there is a move for white such that for every move of black, there is a move for white such that for every move of black … white wins. You just can't do all those alternations of white and black on P = NP alone. Games like these tend to be wha is called PSPACE-hard, hard for computation that uses a reasonable amount of memory without any limit on time. Chess and go could even be harder depending on the precise formulation of the rules (see Demaine and Hearn.11)
This doesn't mean you can't get a good chess program if P = NP. You could find an efficient computer program of one size that beats all efficient programs of slightly smaller sizes, if that's possible. Meanwhile, even without P = NP, computers have gotten very strong at chess and go. In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov, chess world champion at the time, but go programs struggled against even strong amateurs. Machine learning has made dramatic improvements to computer game playing. While there is a lengthy history, let me jump to AlphaZero, developed in 2017 by Google's DeepMind.35
AlphaZero uses a technique known as Monte Carlo tree search (MCTS) that randomly makes moves for both players to determine the best course of action. AlphaZero uses deep learning to predict the best distributions for the game positions to optimize the chances to win using MCTS. While AlphaZero is not the first program to use MCTS, it does not have any built-in strategy or access to a previous game database. AlphaZero assumes nothing more than the rules of the game. This allows AlphaZero to excel at both chess and go, two very different games that share little other than alternating moves and a fixed-size board. DeepMind recently went even further with MuZero,33 which doesn't even get the full rules, just some representation of board position, a list of legal moves, and whether the position is a win, lose, or draw. Now we've come to the point that pure machine learning easily beats any human or other algorithm in chess or go. Human intervention only gets in the way. For games such as chess and go, machine learning can achieve success where P = NP wouldn't be enough.
Machine learning may not do well when faced with tasks that are not from the distribution in which it was trained.
Explainable AI. Many machine-learning algorithms seem to work very well but we don't know why. If you look at a neural net trained for voice recognition, it's often very hard to understand why it makes the choices it makes. Why should we care? Here are a few of several reasons.
• Trust: How do we know that the neural net is acting correctly? Beyond checking input/output pairs we can't do any other analysis. Different applications have different levels of trust. It's okay if Netflix makes a bad movie recommendation, but less so if a self-driving car recommends a wrong turn.
• [email protected]: Many examples abound in which algorithms trained on data learn the intended and unintended biases in that data (see O'Neil30). If you don't understand the program, how do you figure out the biases?
• Security: If you use machine learning to monitor security systems, you won't know what exploits still exist, especially if your adversary is being adaptive. If you can understand the code, you could spot and fix security leaks. Of course, if adversaries have the code, they might find exploits.
• Cause and effect: Right now, you can, at best, check that a machine-learning algorithm only correlates with the kind of output you desire. Understanding the code might help us understand the causality in the data, leading to better science and medicine.
Would we get a better scenario if P = NP? If you had a quick algorithm for NP-complete problems, you could use it to find the smallest possible circuit for matching or Traveling Salesman, but you would not know why that circuit works. On the other hand, the reason you might want an explainable algorithm is so you can understand its properties, but we could use P = NP to derive those properties directly. Whole conferences have cropped up studying explainable AI, such as the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Trust.
Limits of machine learning. While machine learning has shown many surprising results in the last decade, these systems are far from perfect and, in most applications, can still be bested by humans. We will continue to improve machine-learning capability through new and optimized algorithms, data collection, and specialized hardware. Machine learning does seem to have its limits. As we've seen above, machine learning will give us a taste of P = NP, but it will never substitute for it. Machine learning makes little progress on breaking cryptography, which we will see later in the article.
Machine learning seems to fail learning simple arithmetic—for example, summing up a large collection of numbers or multiplying large numbers. One could imagine combining machine learning with symbolic mathematical tools. While we've seen some impressive advances in theorem provers,19 we sit a long way from my dream task of taking one of my research papers, with its informal proofs, and having an AI system fill in the details and verify the proof.
Again, P = NP would make these tasks easy or at least tractable. Machine learning may not do well when faced with tasks that are not from the distribution in which it was trained. That could be low-probability edge cases, such as face recognition from a race not well represented in the training data, or even an adversarial attempt to force a different output by making a small change in the input—for example, changing a few pixels of a stop sign to force an algorithm to interpret it as a speed limit sign.12 Deep neural-net algorithms can have millions of parameters, so they may not generalize well off distribution. If P = NP, one can produce minimum-sized models that would hopefully do a better job of generalizing, but without the experiment we can't perform, we will never know.
As impressive as machine learning is, we have not achieved anything close to artificial general intelligence, a term that refer to something like true comprehension of a topic or to an artificial system that achieves true consciousness or self-awareness. Defining these terms can be tricky, controversial, or even impossible. Personally, I've never seen a formal definition of consciousness that captures my intuitive notion of the concept. I suspect we will never achieve artificial general intelligence in the strong sense, even if P = NP.
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While we have seen much progress in attacking NP problems, cryptography in its many forms, including one-way functions, secure hashes, and public-key cryptography, seems to have survived intact. An efficient algorithm for NP, were it to exist, would break all cryptosystems save those that are information-theoretically safe, such as one-time pads and some based on quantum physics. We have seen many successful cybersecurity attacks, but usually they stem from bad implementations, weak random number generators, or human error, but rarely if ever from breaking the cryptography.
Most CPU chips now have AES built in, so once we've used public-key cryptography to set up a private key, we can send encrypted data as easily as plain text. Encryption powers blockchain and cryptocurrencies, meaning people trust cryptography enough to exchange money for bits. Michael Kearns and Leslie Valiant24 showed in 1994 that learning the smallest circuit, even learning the smallest bounded-layer neural net, could be used to factor numbers and break public-key crypto-systems. So far, machine-learning algorithms have not been successfully used to break cryptographic protocols nor are they ever expected to.
Why does encryption do so well when we've made progress on many other NP problems? In cryptography, we can choose the problem, specifically designed to be hard to compute and well tested by the community. Other NP problems generally come to us from applications or nature. They tend to not be the hardest cases and are more amenable to current technologies.
Quantum computing seems to threaten current public-key protocols that secure our Internet transactions. Shor's algorithm34 can factor numbers and other related number-theory computations. This concern can be tempered in a few ways. Despite some impressive advances in quantum computing, we are still decades if not centuries away from developing quantum machines that can handle enough entangled bits to implement Shor's algorithm on a scale that can break today's codes. Also, researchers have made good progress toward developing public-key cryptosystems that appear resistant to quantum attacks.31 We will dwell more on quantum computing later in this article.
Factoring is not known to be NP-complete, and it is certainly possible that a mathematical breakthrough could lead to efficient algorithms even if we don't have large-scale quantum computers. Having multiple approaches to public-key systems may come in handy no matter your view of quantum's future.
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Complexity as Friction
What advantages can we get from computational hardness? Cryptography comes to mind. But perhaps the universe made computation difficult for a reason, not unlike friction. In the physical world, overcoming friction usually comes at the cost of energy, but we can't walk without it. In the computational world, complexity can often slow progress, but if it didn't exist, we could have many other problems. P = NP would allow us to, in many cases, eliminate this friction.
Recent advances in computing show us that eliminating friction can sometimes have negative consequences. For instance, no one can read our minds, only see the actions that we take. Economists have a term, "preference revelation," which attempts to determine our desires based on our actions. For most of history, the lack of data and computing power made this at best a highly imprecise art.
Today, we've collected a considerable amount of information about people from their web searches, their photos and videos, the purchases they make, the places they visit (virtual and real), their social media activity, and much more. Moreover, machine learning can process this information and make eerily accurate predictions about people's behavior. Computers often know more about us than we know about ourselves.
We have the technological capability to wear glasses that would allow you to learn the name, interests and hobbies, and even the political persuasion of the person you are looking at. Complexity no longer affords us privacy. We need to preserve privacy with laws and corporate responsibility.
Computational friction can go beyond privacy. The U.S. government deregulated airline pricing in 1978 but finding the best price for a route required making phone calls to several airlines or working through a travel agent, who wasn't always incentivized to find the lowest price. Airlines worked on reputation, some for great service and others for lower prices. Today, we can easily find the cheapest airline flights, so airlines have put considerable effort into competing on this single dimension of price and have used computation to optimize pricing and fill their planes, at the expense of the whole flying experience.
Friction helped clamp down on cheating by students. Calculus questions I had to answer as a college student in the 1980s can now be tackled easy by Mathematica. For my introductory theory courses, I have trouble creating homework and exam questions whose answers and solutions cannot be found online. With GPT-3 and its successors, even essay and coding questions can be automatically generated. How do we motivate students when GPT and the like can answer even their most complex questions?
Stock trading used to happen in big pits, where traders used hand signals to match prices. Now, trading algorithms automatically adjust to new pricing, occasionally leading to "flash crashes." Machine-learning techniques have led to decision-making systems or face recognition, matching social media content to users and judicial sentencing often at scale. These decision systems have done some good but have also led to significant challenges, such as amplifying biases and political polarization.30 There are no easy answers here.
These are just a few of many such possible scenarios. Our goal, as computer scientists, is to make computation as efficient and simple as possible, but we must keep the costs of reducing friction on our minds.
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The Power of Quantum Computers
As the limits of Moore's law have become more apparent, computer researchers have looked toward non-traditional computation models to make the next breakthroughs, leading to large growth in the research and application of quantum computing. Major tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM—not to mention a raft of startups—have thrown considerable resources at developing quantum computers. The U.S. has launched a National Quantum Initiative and other countries, notably China, have followed suit.
In 2019, Google announced1 it used a quantum computer with 53 qubits to achieve "quantum supremacy," solving a computational task that current traditional computation cannot. While some have questioned this claim, we certainly sit at the precipice of a new era in quantum computing. Nevertheless, we remain far away from having the tens of thousands of quantum bits required to run Peter Shor's algorithm34 to find prime factors of numbers that today's machines cannot factor. Often, quantum computing gets described as the number of states represented by the bits—for example, the 253 states of a 53-qubit machine. This might suggest that we could use quantum computing to solve NP-complete problems by creating enough states to, for instance, check all the potential cliques in a graph. Unfortunately, there are limits to how a quantum algorithm can manipulate these states, and all evidence suggests that quantum computers cannot solve NP-complete problems,3 beyond a quadratic improvement given by Grover's algorithm.18
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Complexity Updates
Since the 2009 survey, we have seen several major advances in our understanding of the power of efficient computation. While these results do not make significant progress toward resolving P vs. NP, they still show how it continues to inspire great research.
Graph isomorphism. Some NP problems resist characterization as either in P (efficiently solvable) or NP-complete (as hard as the Clique problem). The most famous, integer factoring, which we discussed previously, still requires exponential time to solve. For another such problem, graph isomorphism, we have recently seen dramatic progress. Graph isomorphism asks whether two graphs are identical up to relabeling. Thinking in terms of Facebook, given two groups of 1,000 people, can we map names from one group onto the other in a way that preserves friendships?
Results related to interactive proofs in the 1980s offered strong evidence that graph isomorphism is not NP-complete,4 and even simple heuristics can generally solve such problems quickly in practice. Nevertheless, we still lack a polynomial-time algorithm for graph isomorphism that works in all instances. László Babai achieved a breakthrough result in 2016, presenting a quasipolynomial-time algorithm for graph isomorphism.2 The problems in P run in polynomial-time—that is, nk for some constant k, where n is the size of the input, such as the number of people in each group. A quasipolynomial-time algorithm runs in time n(logn)k, a bit worse than polynomial time but considerably better than the exponential time (2nε) that we expect NP-complete problems will need.
Babai's proof is a tour-de-force masterpiece combining combinatorics and group theory. Although getting the algorithm to run in polynomial-time would require several new breakthroughs, Babai provides a major theoretical result, making dramatic progress on one of the most important problems between P and NP-complete.
Circuits. If NP does not have small circuits over a complete basis (AND, OR, NOT) then P ≠ NP. While there were significant circuit complexity results in the 1980s, none get close to showing P ≠ NP. The 2009 survey remarked that there were no major results in circuit complexity in the 20 years prior. That lasted about one more year. In 1987, Razborov32 and Smolensky36 showed the impossibility of computing the majority function with constant-depth circuits of AND, OR, NOT, and Modp gates for some fixed prime p. We could prove little, though, for circuits with Mod6 gates. Even showing that NEXP, an exponential-time version of NP, could not be computed by small, constant-depth circuits of AND, OR, NOT, and Mod6 gates remained open for decades. Constant-depth circuits are believed to be computationally weak. The lack of results reflects the paltry progress we have had in showing the limits of computation models.
In 2010, Ryan Williams showed39 that NEXP indeed didn't have such small constant-depth circuits with Mod6 or any other Mod gate. He had created a new technique, applying satisfiability algorithms that do just slightly better than trying all assignments and drawing in several complexity tools to achieve the lower bounds. Later, Williams and his student Cody Murray strengthened29 the result to show that nondeterministic quasipolynomial-time doesn't have small constant-depth circuits with Modm gates for any fixed m. Nevertheless, showing that NP does not have small circuits of arbitrary depth—which is what you would need to show P ≠ NP—remains far out of reach.
All evidence suggests that quantum computers cannot solve NP-complete problems, beyond a quadratic improvement given by Grover's algorithm.
Complexity strikes back? In a section of the 2009 survey titled, "A New Hope?"13 we discussed a new geometric-complexity-theory approach to attacking P vs. NP based on algebraic geometry and representation theory developed by Ketan Mulmuley and Milind Sohoni. In short, Mulmuley and Sohoni sought to create high-dimension polygons capturing the power of a problem in an algebraic version of NP and show that it had different properties than any such polygon corresponding to an algebraic property of P. One of their conjectures considered the property that the polygons contained a certain representation-theoretic object. In 2016, Peter Bürgisser, Christian Ikenmeyer, and Greta Panova6 showed that this approach cannot succeed.
While the Bürgisser-Ikenmeyer-Panova result deals a blow to the GCT approach to separating P vs. NP, it does not count it out. One could still potentially create polygons that differ based on the number of these representation-theoretic objects. Nevertheless, we shouldn't expect the GCT approach to settle the P vs. NP problem anytime in the near future.
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The Possibility of the Impossible
As we reflect on P vs. NP, we see the question having many different meanings. There is P vs. NP the mathematical question—formally defined, stubbornly open, and still with a million-dollar bounty on its head. There were times when we could see a way forward toward settling P vs. NP through tools of computability theory, circuits, proofs, and algebraic geometry. At the moment, we don't have a strong way forward to solving the P vs. NP problem. In some sense, we are further from solving it than we ever were.
There are also the NP problems we just want or need to solve. In the classic 1976 text, Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness,16 Garey and Johnson give an example of a hapless employee asked to solve an NP-complete optimization problem. Ultimately, the employee goes to the boss and says, "I can't find an efficient algorithm, but neither can all these famous people," indicating that the boss shouldn't fire the employee since no other hire could solve the problem.
In those early days of P vs. NP, we saw NP-completeness as a barrier—these were problems that we just couldn't solve. As computers and algorithms evolved, we found we could make progress on many NP problems through a combination of heuristics, approximation, and brute-force computing. In the Garey and Johnson story, if I were the boss, I might not fire the employee but advise trying mixed-integer programming, machine learning, or a brute-force search. We are well past the time that NP-complete means impossible. It just means there is likely no algorithm that will always work and scale.
In my 2013 book on P vs. NP,14 I have a chapter titled, "A Beautiful World," where I imagine an idealized world in which a Czech mathematician proves P = NP, leading to a very efficient algorithm for all NP problems. While we do not and likely will not ever live in this ideal world—with medical advances, virtual worlds indistinguishable from reality, and learning algorithms that generate new works of art—the wonderful (and not so wonderful) consequences of P = NP no longer seem out of reach, but rather an eventual consequence of our further advances in computing.
We are truly on our way to nearly completely reversing the meaning of the P vs. NP problems. Instead of representing a barrier, think of P vs. NP opening doors, presenting us with new directions, and showing us the possibility of the impossible.
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Thanks to Josh Grochow for helpful discussions on the GCT problem and to Bill Cook for allowing us to use the picture in Figure 1. I also thank Josh and the anonymous reviewers for helping to improve the exhibition. Some material in this article is adapted from the author's blog.15
Figure. Watch the author discuss this work in the exclusive Communications video. https://cacm.acm.org/videos/fifty-years-of-p-vs-np
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Lance Fortnow ([email protected]) is a professor and dean of the College of Computing at Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA.
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I know that a lack of engine oil can destroy an engine, so I was curious as to whether it is just as bad to drive a car with a very low engine coolant.
What is engine coolant?
What exactly are all of the disadvantages to running an engine when the engine coolant becomes too low?
• Depends on how hot, how long, and what vehicle. For example a VW bug has no coolant.
– Xeno555
Jan 16 '16 at 7:41
• I had a very bad experience when I was just starting to drive...failed to check the coolant, ran dry when I was in the expressway...97 Ford Expedition, body started to shake, a few hundred meters to home, truck loses power, a hundred meters away, truck moves in a turtle pace...at the parking area, can't reverse, panic sets in, turn off engine, starts again and can back up...just a description of what to expect when you ran out of coolant...
– MhykGyver
Aug 4 '17 at 13:18
• Do you mean a low level of coolant to water mix (i.e. supposed to be mixed 50:50 but is 70% water?) or do you mean the level of liquid in the coolant system is below the minimum mark? May 7 '19 at 11:46
What is engine coolant?
Engine coolant is a water and antifreeze solution. Because water has good properties as a coolant, antifreeze is used in internal combustion engines and other heat transfer applications, such as HVAC chillers and solar water heaters. The purpose of antifreeze is to prevent a rigid enclosure from bursting due to expansion when water freezes.
Cooling System
As the coolant is moved around the system by the water pump, it passes through two main components:
• Radiator - The cars air intake is used to dissipate heat (which is easier across a larger surface area, higher fin density and thicker radiators - much like in PC water cooling). This is able to keep the engine coolant cool.
• Engine Block - This is the main part that the coolant is designed to wick away heat from, by flowing through engine hot spots and allowing the heat to transfer from the engine oil to the coolant as well in the process.
Just to clarify, there are no tangible advantages other than saving a tiny amount of money on engine coolant. As you will see, you should never do this due to the knock-on effect that it can cause.
Depending on the make and model of your car some of these may not apply, but in general:
• Water pump running dry - They will destroy themselves very quickly without water in them as they are not designed to run without lubrication and sufficient resistance (much like the pump in a water cooled PC).
• Overheating - this is the main disadvantage, but this can cause a huge knock-on effect in terms of causing other damage within the engine. These include but are not limited to the following:
• Seized piston - The piston will expand marginally due to the heat. As the engine uses such fine tolerances, this expansion can be enough to make the piston rub hard on the cylinder casing and make the crankshaft grind to a halt! This will be very expensive to fix.
• Hole in the engine block - Realistically however, a lack of coolant will not cause a hole in the block. It could be caused from a thrown rod, which occurred because the piston in the engine seized during operation.
• Warping of head(s) - This can cause the head gaskets to lose integrity.
• Interior car heater will lose functionality - The heater functions based on the engine coolant, as seen in the diagram above.
• Transmission failure - In some cases the transmission fluid cooler is internal to the radiator, meaning that a lack of engine coolant can not only cause the engine to overheat, but also the entire transmission.
• High pressure in hoses - Radiator/Coolant hoses can burst due to the increased pressure in the cooling system.
• Cost - To fix the damage already done to the engine at this point, it will be very expensive and you could probably justify buying a new used car instead!
• Also THERE IS ADVANTAGES running with lower coolant amount. In winter car gets warm faster, warmer coolant at winter = MANY MANY MANY advantages. Just need to watch that thermostat wont stay open all the time so there wont be overheating when car gets more load.
– Tommixoft
Dec 1 '17 at 1:31
You get less cooling. If the radiator is only 1/2 way full you have water in contact with cooling fins for 1/2 the time and 1/2 the cooling. The fluid is pumped from bottom so it will continue to flow. Eventually the water is hot enough that the engine turns it to steam. Once you empty the radiator then zero cooling as nothing is pumping.
Water flow will stop and the heat will not be able to be transferred out of the engine block. Engines cooling systems are very intricate and feature "pockets" depending on how much cooling is needed for a given area. A lack of coolant means that the system will not be able to be pressurized by the pump and the coolant will not flow.
• Overheating
• Water pump running dry and damaging itself in the process for a lack of lubrication and resistance
• 1
The disadvantages.... 1) overheating 2) seized piston 3) blow a hole in the block 3) warping of head(s) 4)heater doesn't work 5)transmission failure (trans-fluid coolers are sometimes internal to the radiator) 6)....
– Dee
Jan 16 '16 at 2:46
My sons 99 LS1 Trans Am started to lose power after running fine to the last gear but then it would lose power and run the rpms 2000 at 35 mph. Yesterday, he stopped on the side of the road because it had a smell like something burning and a little bit of greyish smoke was coming from the back. He let it cool and made it home. No more smoke. When the mechanic looked at it today, there was very little coolant/water in the radiator. He told him that with the low coolant it was telling the transmission it was getting too hot and therefore it wouldn't go faster. He said that smell was burning coolant. He put coolant in it and they took it out up and down the highway and let it warm up and he got on it and it went through all the gears and had plenty of pickup. The mechanic said it should be ok now but keep an eye on it. I told him to watch for any leaks under it when he parked it because the radiator or a hose could have a leak. I am hoping he dodged the bullet with it and will keep up with making sure it has coolant. Im guessing that if the head gasket or block were damaged, there would be some signs. The transmission is shifting smoothly through all the gears.
As the coolant gets lower and lower things will progress as follows:
1. There won't be coolant in the coolant expansion tank even when the engine is warm.
2. There will often be insufficient fluid to circulate coolant through the heater core and the heat won't work. A water cooled throttle EGR / body could suffer too.
3. The water pump will pump most of the water out of the radiator and there will be insufficient coolant flow, and the temperature gauge will show higher than normal coolant temperature under heavy load.
4. #3 will get worse
5. There will no longer be sufficient coolant to circulate coolant. The temperature gauge could show too low of a temperature due to lack of coolant coming out of the engine. The coolant will start to boil and then it will condense on the temperature sensor and it will show hot. The engine will over heat.
6. There won't be enough coolant to fill the cylinder head. The temperature gauge will report too low of a temperature. The cylinder head will over heat and it could lead to damage like a warped head. Eventually the block will heat up and it will boil off coolant and the temperature gauge will show high temperature, but it could be too late. The high head temperature can cause pinging or knocking from pre-ignition. Shut it off now and the head can be saved.
7. No coolant - the engine will be severely damaged in a matter of minutes if run under load. The temperature gauge will report too low of a temperature since there is no coolant, as the temperature sensor will likely not heat up fast enough to show the true engine temperature and let the driver know to shut off the engine until it's too late. Noticing that the temperature gauge is too low, or hearing pinging can be an indication to shut off the engine to prevent more than minor damage. Some vehicles have a cylinder head temperature sensor that isn't dependent on coolant. The vehicle may go in to limp mode.
Some engines require purging to remove air pockets from the cylinder head after the coolant level is restored. This may require revving the engine up momentarily.
Engines with aluminum cylinder heads on iron blocks are highly susceptible to head gasket damage when over heated, due to the differing rates of expansion of the different metals. Avoid running them even if the temperature gauge shows a minor overheat.
NOTHING will happen if that lower amount wont cause overheating. For example in my country winters are very cold about minus 32 degrees Celsius. My car to get warm it takes about 30 minutes. It's Italian car and it very bad at warming up in winter. So i use less amount of coolant so this amount heats faster. And impossible to overheat car because when thermostat opens cold coolant from radiator makes coolant cold again and car never overheats. People here just makes worst scenarios. witch is not possible if your coolant temp is in normal range - 90c. Also fairy tales about water pumps is stupid. Water pump is just bearing that is driven by belt. Bearing rotates plastic stuff that makes water flow. Maybe in other cars it's different in mine there is no actual pump. SO if there would be no coolant, which is impossible based on your question - it wont broke.
• This is a poor idea. Lower-than-spec coolant levels may lead to localized hot spots in the motor, and consequent damage. Failure to warm up would be caused by other things, e.g., a defective thermostat that has "failed open." Nov 12 '19 at 20:00
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Plato’s Cave by Susan Sontag
Plato's Cave is about viewing the world but as an outcast, all you know is what is in the cave and shadowed representations. Sontag says that photography “makes us feel that the world is more available than it really is.” Photographs capture moments but you see what people want you to see and it is all a representation. Through her writing her focus point is that photographs distant viewers from reality. What we see can make us feel something but it keeps us distant to what is actually happening, we won’t know the actually feelings that are being conveyed by the subjects or know the actual situation.
We rely on photographs to tell us that something happened cause if its not photographed you didn’t do it or it didn’t happen. People are addicted to images and rely on them to confirm reality and make experiences meaningful. I am guilty of this. “Snap eats first” taking picture of meals and posting it before even taking a bite. It’s interesting going out and seeing people on dates or hanging out and they are all on their phones. I take pictures of everything because I want to remember the moments but it doesn’t capture what I was feeling. I think she makes some really great points. Photographs is how people communicate now.
3rd anniversary spent on our phones instead of focusing on each other.
Work out updates, pictures of my grandparents (never met my grandfather), taking a picture of food before eating it.
Can think peace but I am actually scared of heights. |
AP Psychology Self Study Guide (2022 Tips & Methods)
William Cohen
Published by William Cohen
Last Updated On: December 8, 2021
The AP Psychology exam has a narrower scope than other advanced placement courses and is largely based on memorization instead of conceptual content.
For most students, this means less study time and a probable higher score. This also means that you can do away with physical classes and turn to self-studying strategies instead. If you opt for the latter, check out our research on how to self study for AP Psychology.
5 Self Study Steps To Score A 5 On The AP Psychology Exam
Develop A Study Plan
Create a study schedule. Sit down with your planner and work backward from the exam date. Look at your current course load and how much time you have until the exam. Block out dedicated study times where you will have zero distractions. A successful study session does not include checking Instagram, Snap Chat or Tik Tok.
According to ThoughtCo, “Most good study sessions are at least one hour long. A one-hour block gives you enough time to dive deep into material, but isn’t so long that your mind wanders.” [2] Be sure to allow for study breaks in between sessions. Most students absorb information best with short focused study sessions with frequent breaks in between. Use these study session guidelines, your availability, and time until the exam to build your self study plan.
Use High-Quality Study Materials
Because psychology is a rapidly changing field, you must ensure you are preparing for the test with the most current materials available.
Great news! We’ve done the leg work for you (47 hours of research) and performed a thorough review of the best AP Psychology textbooks.
We provide comprehensive reviews of each textbook. But if you are looking for the Cliff Notes , you will find our Pros and Cons chart about each text extremely helpful. We’ve got all of the information you need to pick the best AP Psychology study guide for your study style in one convenient location.
”Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci
Memorize the Vocabulary
Because AP Psych is largely a memory-based exam, the better you understand the terminology, the better chance you have to score a 5 on the test.
Memorizing information is boring and time-consuming. Quizlet is an incredible resource that lets you create your own quiz using flashcards as a guide or you can find a comprehensive list of all AP Psychology vocabulary. Make sure you put vocabulary review as a daily task on your study planner!
Here is the link to a popular AP Psychology ALL Terms Quizlet study set to help you prep for the test [3].
Whenever you have time, complete a vocabulary quiz. To mix things up, play a psychology vocabulary game through Quizlet. Of all the sources and techniques available to test your mastery of psychology terms, Quizlet is the best and most popular resource.
If an app doesn’t suit your studying style, purchase or make a set of flash cards. Barron’s AP Psychology Flash Cards rank amongst the top study aides. They are affordable, and come with access to a full-length online exam. Baron’s flash cards are available online and at large bookstores.
Master Test-Taking Strategies
man studying while sitting on a couch
One of the most important test-taking strategies is to understand how the AP Psychology exam is formatted so you can manage your time appropriately. Based on the following College Board breakdown, you have 42 seconds for each multiple-choice question and 25 minutes for each free response question. [4]
Taking practice tests will help you recognize patterns in the AP test. Understanding the exam’s patterns is important and will enable you to quickly identify the wrong answers or lead you to the correct answer. If you hit a question and you have absolutely no clue, skip it and move on to the next question.
Leave chain questions that require you to read a paragraph or analyze a chart until the end. Odds are there will be clues in other questions that will help you to pinpoint the correct answer.
What happens when you get to the end and you haven’t answered all of the questions?
You have two choices, make a strategic guess or skip the question.
If you decide to make a strategic guess, use the process of elimination strategy to make your best guess. Eliminate the answers you know are wrong and evaluate the remaining answers. If there is any portion of an answer that is wrong, then the answer itself is wrong and eliminate that choice.
After working through the elimination process, if there are more than two answers remaining and you really don’t have a clue which one is correct, you are better off skipping the question.
On AP tests you are not penalized for skipping a question. You are penalized for wrong answers.
Related Posts:
Practice is Important
We cannot stress enough the importance of practice. Get your hands on as many practice tests as possible. They are available in prep books, at College Board, and other free online resources.
During each practice test, try to simulate the conditions of the actual AP Psychology test. Find a quiet room where you will not be disturbed. Sit down and get comfortable. Make sure you do not have anything with you that would violate the testing rules.
Just like when you are studying, practice tests must have zero distractions. Leave your cell phone in another room so you aren’t tempted to take a peak or even worse, cheat. Imagine you are getting the pre-exam instructions, take a deep breath, and start the practice exam.
Once you’ve completed your practice test, check each answer. For each incorrect answer, write down the question and why you got the answer wrong. This will help you learn from your mistakes and condense your practicing time. Blindly taking practice tests and not identifying your knowledge gaps will not improve your score on test day.
- Wil Smith
Cramming For Your AP Psychology Test
woman holding her wrist watch
Yikes! Your test is just around the corner and you haven’t given yourself enough time to study.
Before you start randomly cramming for your AP Psychology test, you need to understand what content to focus on and how you should cram.
The AP Psychology exam tests your mastery of skills and concepts.
To be successful you must be familiar with the history of the field of psychology, past and present research methods, and the biological and emotional bases for human behavior.
The following table outlines the skills and the weight they carry on the exam.
(Source: collegevine [5])
man writing on his notebook on a table
The AP Psychology exam consists of nine units that focus on core principles, theories, and processes. The table below outlines the nine units and the weight each unit is given on the exam and will help you focus your studying efforts.
(Source: collegevine [6])
Now that you understand the skills and concepts you will be tested on, let’s get cramming. We’ve gathered popular and effective study aids to help you cram for your exam in record time.
Charles Schallhorn, a veteran teacher in California, has a YouTube channel designed to take the most complex ideas in AP Psychology and make them simpler and help you absorb the material in record time. [7]
Hank Green has created an engaging video series, CrashCourse, on the introduction to psychology. The series is highly viewed and rated and consists of 40 short YouTube videos. The focus of the videos is not specifically on mastering the AP Psych exam. Picking the topics you need extra help with will help you supplement your cramming. [8]
Psychologyprogram is a 90-minute crash course in all things AP Psych and might be best used as a final study guide. If you are looking for a video course that has a supporting outline or study guide, this might not be the best cramming resource for you. The content has many positive reviews and might be perfect for you if you need less structure in your cramming strategy. [9]
Since you are short on time, AP Psychology Notes has done the note taking for you! Use the information that they provide to quickly gain the knowledge you will need to successfully pass your exam. [10]
“On AP tests you are not penalized for skipping a question. You are penalized for wrong answers.”
We are confident this guide has equipped you with the confidence that it possible to self study and score 5 on the AP Psychology test with no prior knowledge of the class material.
Your path to success involves a solid study plan, current and quality study materials, and simulated exam practice. Most importantly, good preparation involves your willingness to work hard and committing to your success.
If you follow the studying recommendations and use the resources we have provided in this guide, you will be able to walk into the testing room full of confidence and ready to score a 5 on the AP Psychology exam!
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Cotton sewing thread
How is the thread thickness calculated? We are asked this question on an almost daily basis. It is not simple, especially as the calculation differs in function of the thread. In principle, France uses metric numbering (NM) since 1942 for cotton yarn: a thread measuring 1,000 metres with a constant weight of 1,000 grams. Thus a N°1 is a thread which weighs 1000 grams for 1,000 metres and, for example, a N°40 is a thread weighing 1,000 grams for 40,000 metres. But, for historical reasons, not all the producers follow this rule. You will find a detailed article in Madame Sajou's Diary.
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Internet erased or altered which can use in
Internet of Things(IoT) are needed by people, but they are easily to hack and compromise because of their limitation of computing, storage and network capabilities. In order to prevent the safety of IoT devices, scholars and organizations classified the security level of IoT, and analyzed and complemented different vulnerabilities and intrusion technologies. What’s more, the 3 papers talk about the protocols, standards and algorithms which used in blockchain can help they compensate the loophole of the IoT devices. These articles analyze the specific problems of the blockchain and solve the defects of IoT devices, they also further talk about the advantages of blockchain by compare with traditional business model and cloud model, such as decentralization, distribution and tracking the ownership of IoT devices.
As the blockchain is still in the primary step, the article analyzes the challenges what blockchain and IoT devices need to face and mention what they can provide specific applications for different industries in the future.Literature Review:The articles mentioned that block chain is a “decentralized, distributed and shared” database, which can make up for the defects of IoT equipment in managing, controlling and securing area 2. Since everyone (miner) can participate in recording transactions that data can never be erased or altered which can use in IoT devices 2. Blockchain can Strength the IoT by solving address allocation requirements, identity and ownership of IoT devices. Furthermore, blockchain can tracking every point which in the supply chain and maintain the integrity of data 3.
Blockchain allow trustless network work together because of cryptography and smart contracts 1. The article analyzes the operation of blockchain and define the smart contract radically. |
Jehoiakim, Tattooed King of Judah?
And other peculiarities about this unusual king of ‘abominations’
Tattoo illustration overlaid onto King Jehoiakim’s image from Rouille’s Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum (1553).
Julia Goddard
This is a fairly well-known scripture forbidding the practice of tattooing (most other English translations simply use the word “tattoo”). There are various explanations for this prohibition, such as the connection of tattooing to pagan cultures, concerns of purity and the manipulation of (and damage to) God’s creation, the overall physical harm involved (something many of these Torah laws address). For example, the immune system and liver are constantly working to break down tattoo ink, which is why tattoos fade over time (albeit very slowly, due to the difficult-to-break-down ink particles, which today often include heavy metals).
With all this in mind, have you heard of the “tattooed” king of Judah? Maybe not; but there’s a fascinating hint at this in one particular Bible passage—among a wider, peculiar record of his life.
Jehoiakim, Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum
The Abominations of Jehoiakim
Throughout the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles, the Bible contains a brief summary at the end of each king’s life—i.e. And the rest of the acts of king ______, are they not written in ______? If the king was a sinful one (more often than not), there is occasionally a brief repeated summary of that at the end of his record.
But one king was especially singled out for his “abominations.”
The Nathan-Melech bulla, belonging to one of Josiah’s servants and eye-witness to this period
Eliyahu Yanai | City of David
Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, started out life with the name Eliakim. We get some potential clues about the character of this man right from the beginning of the short biblical biography. After his father was killed by the Egyptians, his younger brother, Jehoahaz, was made king—by “the people of the land” (2 Chronicles 36:1). This may have simply been based on the royal standing of the mother. But it may also reflect how the elder Jehoiakim was perceived among the people, for them to overlook him in favor of the younger Jehoahaz (as attested to by Jewish tradition). Synchronized with other confirmed chronological events at this time in archaeology and regional history, the coronation of Jehoahaz would have taken place about 609 b.c.e.
Jehoahaz was one of the shortest-reigning monarchs of Judah. After just three months, Egypt’s Pharaoh Necho came up against Jerusalem (probably on his return to Egypt from a northern campaign against the Babylonians—he had killed King Josiah three months earlier, en route). The pharaoh “fined the land a hundred talents of silver and a talent of gold,” carried Jehoahaz away to Egypt, setting up in his place Eliakim—from this point forward renamed Jehoiakim (verses 3-4).
Reading between the lines, there is a sense of nefarious activity with Pharaoh Necho coming up against Judah three months after defeating them, receiving a massive payment, carting away Jehoahaz and installing Jehoiakim on the throne. Could this have been a similar event to the infamous one centuries later at the time of the Maccabees: a jealous individual (Menelaus) vying for power in Judah and going to a powerful foreign ruler (Antiochus Epiphanes) with promise of tribute in order to be placed in charge at Jerusalem? Could Jehoiakim have been behind the overthrow of his younger brother and his own installation as king?
Pharaoh Necho II (right) with cow goddess Hathor
Walters Art Museum
“And Jehoiakim gave the silver and the gold to Pharaoh; but he taxed the land to give the money … he exacted the silver and the gold of the people of the land …” (2 Kings 23:35). Aren’t “people of the land” ordinarily taxed to pay tribute? Why is it especially highlighted here? It seems something more sinister may have been at work—perhaps in modern terminology, a “stolen election.” Again, the Bible makes repeated distinctions between this king, Jehoiakim, and the people of the land. (Even the renaming of the king as “Jehoiakim,” Yahweh establishes, may have been a ploy to try to add a more legitimate gloss to what could have been an illegitimate king. Few biblical kings, after all, are recorded as having their name changed.)
Whatever the case, 2 Chronicles 36 contains the following brief summary of his reign: “Jehoiakim was twenty and five years old when he began to reign; and he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem; and he did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord his God. … Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found in him, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah …” (verses 5 and 8).
Here we arrive at an especially peculiar phrase.
A Tattooed Monarch?
“Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found in him …” (2 Chronicles 36:8). The last part of this sentence, נמצא עליו, is unusual. It is not found anywhere else in the Bible, in any other summary of any monarch, in any other kind of setting. The word translated in is the Hebrew word al, על, meaning on, about, upon (for example: “And He wrote on the tables”; Deuteronomy 10:4).
It could perhaps, as translated, figuratively mean evil found in him, in his heart. But the same could be said of other kings, such as the one often considered the “most wicked” of all, Manasseh. Why this distinction with Jehoiakim? Further, this turn of phrase is expressed elsewhere, such as 1 Samuel 25:28 (“evil is not found in thee”), 1 Kings 1:52 (“if wickedness be found in him”), and Ezekiel 28:15 (“unrighteousness was found in thee”)—but these all use a different, more common Hebrew word for in, which carries more of a sense of within something, rather than the Hebrew word related to Jehoiakim, upon or on. What could have been literally found on, or upon, Jehoiakim, separate and apart from all these other cases?
16th-century depiction of Rashi (Guillaume de Paris)
Public Domain
It is this verse that has led certain commentators through history to believe that Jehoiakim was actually tattooed. That a better English sense of the verse follows: “the abominations which 1) he did, and which 2) were found upon him.” The famous 11th-century Jewish commentator Rashi (known for his pithy commentary on the Hebrew Bible), writes simply: “‘Which was found on him’: A tattooed writing.”
The Geneva Study Bible commentary (1560) reads, citing similar tradition: “‘Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim, and his abominations which he did, and that which was found in him’ …. He means superstitious marks which were found on his body when he was dead, which declared how deeply idolatry was rooted in his heart, seeing he bore the marks in his flesh.” Other commentators delve further about what and where, regarding the tattooing of this king, based on the fact that it was “found” on him (although this, of course, starts to get extremely speculative. Needless to say, any tattooing would likely not have been akin to the cover picture—merely for illustration purposes).
12th Dynasty Egyptian figurine with “tattoos”
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
Perhaps the wider overall contextual picture fits, too. Jehoiakim’s preference toward Egypt is evident. And while evidence of ancient tattooing in the Near East is extremely piecemeal, that which we do have comes out of Egypt. (It also serves as a reason for the command against it in Leviticus 19—Israel’s departure from a location where this was known and being practiced.)
Whatever the answer, the verse—that which was found upon him—stands out as unique among the assessments of other kings of Israel and Judah.
And looking at the wider picture, the overall lack of favor for this overall “abominable” king is more than palpable. Certainly from God, relating to matters discussed in further detail in the book of Jeremiah—notably Jehoiakim’s persecution of the prophet and his slicing apart and burning of a scroll warning of divine judgment and destruction (Jeremiah 36). But also repeatedly indicated is his lack of favor even among the “people of the land.” Jewish tradition further holds that Jehoiakim indulged in incest, and that the tyrant was guilty against his own people of murder, rape and property seizure.
And his lack of favor among the public is also shown through Jehoiakim’s manner of death—itself a veritable puzzle.
Over the Wall
“Therefore thus said the Lord concerning Jehoiakim king of Judah: He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David; and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost” (Jeremiah 36:30). This was, in part, God’s condemnation of Jehoiakim following his burning of Jeremiah’s scroll of warning.
Nebuchadnezzar II’s Babylonian Chronicle, mentioning an incursion against Jerusalem
Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum
Some confusion about Jehoiakim’s demise arises based on the account in 2 Chronicles 36: “Against him came up Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and bound him in fetters, to carry him to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar also carried of the vessels of the house of the Lord to Babylon, and put them in his temple at Babylon. Now the rest of the acts of Jehoiakim …” (verses 6-8). It appears here that Jehoiakim met his end by being carried off to Babylon, in contrast to verses in Jeremiah that describe the king’s dead body being dumped outside Jerusalem.
However, Daniel 1:1-2 add context—this assault by Nebuchadnezzar took place not even halfway into Jehoiakim’s reign. Further, 2 Chronicles 36 states that Jehoiakim was clapped in irons to be taken to Babylon—but only temple treasures are actually described as making it that far. It appears obvious that by promising to relinquish ties with Egypt and to pay tribute (i.e. by stripping the temple) to Babylon, Jehoiakim was allowed to return to Jerusalem, ruling for several more years. Those carried away with this captivity included Daniel and other princes. 2 Kings 24:1 says that following this incursion by Nebuchadnezzar, “Jehoiakim became his servant three years”—evidently, as was the case initially with Egypt, by another promise of tribute from the people in exchange for the king’s own benefit.
Following three years of servitude, Jehoiakim rebelled against Babylon. 2 Kings 24:2 relates that Jehoiakim was then harangued by the combined attacks of mercenary forces made up of Babylonians, Syrians, Moabites and Ammonites. This passage likewise doesn’t mention his ultimate demise—but it relates to another that does. “And the Lord … sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord, which He spoke by the hand of His servants the prophets. Surely at the commandment of the Lord came this upon Judah …” (verses 2-3). And what, exactly, did the “word of the Lord” say would happen to Jehoiakim?
The bulla of Gemariah, son of Shaphan (one of the scribes who had Jeremiah’s message delivered to Jehoiakim)
Courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority | Clara Amit
“Therefore thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: They shall not lament for him: ‘Ah my brother!’ or: ‘Ah sister!’ They shall not lament for him: ‘Ah lord!’ or: ‘Ah his glory!’ He shall be buried with the burial of an ass, Drawn [dragged] and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem” (Jeremiah 22:18-19). “[H]is dead body shall be cast out …” (Jeremiah 36:30).
In Antiquities of the Jews (10.6.1-3), the first-century c.e. historian Josephus summarized Jehoiakim and how he ultimately met his fate:
[Jehoiakim] was of a wicked disposition, and ready to do mischief; nor was he either religious towards God, or good-natured towards men. … He was afrighted at [Nebuchadnezzar’s] threatening, and bought his peace with money, and brought the tribute he was ordered to bring for three years. … Now, a little time afterwards, the king of Babylon made an expedition against Jehoiakim … he slew such as were in the flower of their age, and such as were of the greatest dignity, together with their king Jehoiakim, whom he commanded to be thrown before the walls, without any burial.
Jehoiakim’s ultimate demise (circa 598 b.c.e.) paralleled, in a sense, that which he had done to the scroll of warning from God—cut up and thrown down into into his fire pit. But there was to be no mourning by the people for this king. The Scriptures and Josephus give a good sense of that.
The biblical account of Jehoiakim’s life is certainly brief and stands witness to his sinful conduct—a continuation of royal and national rebellion that ultimately led to the fall of Judah and Jerusalem in the sixth century b.c.e. But oftentimes, there is more to the Scriptures than meets the eye, be it additional depth, nuance, numerics, advanced scientific details, even torture tactics—right down to the most seemingly innocuous of phrases: “that which was found on” Jehoiakim. |
What is Preventative Dentistry? (And How Does It Benefit You?)
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What is Preventative Dentistry?
What is preventative dentistry?
Man flossing teethAt its core, preventative dentistry is essentially the practice of routinely cleaning, examining, and taking care of your teeth in order to prevent gum disease, cavities, worn enamel, and more.
There are several forms of preventative dentistry, including daily brushing, flossing, and regular dental cleanings; each of which is necessary in order to maintain good oral health.
The goal of preventative dentistry is to keep gum disease, cavities, tooth sensitivity, and other common dental conditions at bay. By preventing gum disease and cavities or reversing the early signs of these conditions, patients can enjoy a lifetime of bright healthy smiles.
What benefits does preventative dentistry provide?
Aside from healthy teeth and an attractive smile, preventative dentistry can greatly reduce the risk of cavities, gingivitis, enamel loss, periodontitis, and other common dental problems.
By reducing the risk of these dental problems, preventative dentistry can also reduce the risk of other health problems that are linked to poor oral health, such as:
• Cardiovascular disease
• Diabetes
• Strokes
In addition to reducing the risk of these health issues, preventative dentistry can save you money as well. Even with good dental insurance, the costs of treating dental issues and conditions can add up quickly.
Although preventative dentistry may not entirely eliminate the need for braces (or Invisalign), fillings, dental implants, or root canals, it can definitely save you money by reducing the need for these treatments.
Who does preventative dentistry benefit?
Preventative dentistry benefits everyone. Since regular dentist visits can help identify denture stomatitis and mouth cancer, even people with dentures can benefit from preventative dentistry.
Oral health is also connected to your overall health. Since the mouth is a bacterial breeding ground, maintaining good oral health can benefit your overall health as well.
Therefore, while preventative dentistry is particularly beneficial for children and young adults, it can actually benefit people of all ages.
What is plaque?
Dental tartar (a result of a build up of plaque)
Dental tartar (a result of a build up of plaque)
Plaque is a sticky, soft film containing millions of bacteria. If not regularly removed through brushing, flossing, and dental cleanings, the bacteria in plaque can cause gum disease and tooth decay.
How so? When you eat, plaque bacteria use the sugars contained in many foods to produce acids. These acids eat away at the protective enamel coating your teeth. Repeated exposure to these acids can cause the breakdown of the enamel and eventually result in cavities.
Furthermore, when not removed by regular brushing and flossing, plaque can harden and form tartar. As tartar collects along the gum line, brushing and flossing plaque away can become more and more difficult, leading to more and more tartar buildup.
As plaque, tartar, and bacteria continue to build up, they can affect your gum tissue, leading to swollen, red, and inflamed gums. This is called gingivitis, which is an early stage of periodontitis or gum disease.
Periodontitis is a serious form of gum disease that occurs as a result of a bacterial infection. It causes your gums to dissolve or recede and the bone supporting your teeth to slowly break down.
In addition to affecting your smile by revealing underlying tooth structure that should not be visible, it can also lead to tooth loss.
Can preventative dentistry help minimise plaque buildup?
Yes, regular brushing, flossing, and cleanings can certainly help. However, adjusting your diet can also help.
Since plaque requires sugars and carbohydrates to form, the more sugar and carbs you eat, the more plaque formation you will have. In order to prevent plaque buildup, it’s best to avoid or limit your intake of candy, soda, and other sweets as much as possible.
That being said, many healthy, non-sweet foods, such as bread, potatoes, corn, and cereal, also contain carbohydrates. So, some plaque will form whenever you eat, even if you completely eliminate sweets from your diet.
The best way to resolve this is to brush and floss twice daily. Not only does brushing remove plaque, but it removes food particles that develop into plaque as well.
Meanwhile, flossing helps remove plaque and food particle from in between your teeth where toothbrush bristles can’t reach.
How can regular dentist visits help prevent plaque, tartar, and tooth decay?
Aside from scraping away plaque and tartar with specialised tools, regular fluoride treatments can help keep your teeth healthy and resist decay.
Your dentist may also recommend toothpastes with the right level of fluoride to boost tooth protection at home. If your teeth are at a higher risk of decay, a dentist or dental hygienist may prescribe a toothpaste with a higher concentration of fluoride.
Does an apple a day really keep the dentist away?
No, while the fibres in apples do help clean the teeth, apples contain natural sugars that also develop into plaque.
The best way to prevent plaque buildup and promote healthy teeth is to brush and floss twice daily and regularly visit the dentist for routine cleanings and exams.
What is dental erosion and can it be prevented?
Dental erosion is simply the loss of enamel due to acid exposure. When enamel is eroded, your teeth lose their protective coating and become more susceptible to pain and sensitivity.
Soft drink can harm your teeth
Soft drink can harm your teeth
Acids can be found in many foods and drinks, especially citrus fruits, fruit juice, and fizzy drinks. Aside from regular brushing, flossing, and dentist visits, the best way to prevent dental erosion is limit your intake of these acidic foods and drinks.
We also recommend not brushing your teeth for at least an hour after drinking or eating anything acidic. When you eat or drink, your enamel softens briefly and loses minerals. By waiting for an hour after eating or drinking to brush your teeth, your enamel will be able to restore itself and keep from being brushed away.
Can smoking or drinking damage my teeth and gums?
Yes, both smoking and drinking can negatively affect the health of your teeth and gums.
Smoking can stain your teeth, worsen gum disease, and lead to tooth loss or even cancer.
Alcoholic drinks can also cause mouth cancer, and since some mixed drinks can contain a lot of sugar and acids, drinking them in large amounts can cause enamel erosion and tooth decay.
If you drink and smoke, you’re at an even a greater risk of experiencing poor dental and oral health.
Is there anything I can do at home to prevent tooth and gum decay?
Yes, in order to help keep your teeth and gums healthy, it’s critically important to follow a good at-home dental hygiene routine. We recommend the following:
• Brush your teeth with a fluoride toothpaste once in the morning and once before bed.
• Brush according to the instructions of your dentist or dental hygienist.
• Do not rinse your mouth after brushing. This will allow the fluoride to remain on your teeth for longer.
• Use floss or interdental brushes to clean in between your teeth after and in between brushes.
• Use mouthwash. Fluoride and antibacterial ingredients can be found in many mouthwashes to help prevent gum disease and decay. Rather than using mouthwash after brushing, use it in between brushes for added protection all day long.
What else can I do?
In addition to brushing, flossing, and using mouthwash, there are other steps you can take to prevent tooth decay, gum disease, and the need for costly treatment, including:
• Minimise your consumption of sugary foods and drinks.
• Use a straw when drinking acidic or carbonated drinks to reduce their effect on your teeth.
• Regularly chew sugar-free gum to boost saliva production, prevent dry mouth, reduce plaque, and fight against dental decay.
• Regularly visit your dental team as often as recommended.
What oral care and teeth cleaning products should I use?
Regularly using mouthwash helps to keep your teeth and gums healthy
Regularly using mouthwash helps to keep your teeth and gums healthy
Today, there are several specialised toothpastes designed to specifically help prevent plaque, gum disease, and tooth sensitivity. “Whitening” toothpastes are also available but can be abrasive and generally don’t work any better than normal toothpastes at whitening your teeth.
Mouthwashes are also helpful, especially those containing antibacterial ingredients.
As far as toothbrushes go, we recommend using a brush with soft bristles and a small to medium-sized head.
If possible, use an electric toothbrush with an oscillating head. Studies have shown they are able to remove nearly twice as much plaque as standard toothbrushes.
What are sealants?
Sealants are a bonding material that is applied over a tooth or teeth to create a protective barrier against bacteria. They are particularly helpful with children and can be applied as soon as a child’s permanent molars appear.
Can preventative dentistry help prevent or detect oral cancer?
With only a 60 percent chance of survival, oral cancer shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Not only can preventative dentistry help prevent the formation of oral cancer through regular thorough cleanings, but it can help detect it early on to increase your odds of survival as well.
Here are a few reasons to visit your dentist and regularly undergo an oral cancer screening:
1. It may save your life. Oral cancer is a serious disease. However, you can increase your odds of beating it by up to 20 percent by catching it early on.
2. It’s easy. There’s no obtrusive poking or prodding with an oral cancer exam. There’s also no need to go out of your way to have on performed. In fact, you can simply have your dentist check for signs of oral cancer during a routine dental exam.
3. It’s inexpensive. When incorporated into your regular preventative dental exam, there are usually no extra charges to check for oral cancer.
Does insurance cover preventative dental care?
Yes, most dental plans cover preventative dental and many have low or even no gap for routine dental checkups. This includes cleanings and oral exams.
However, the costs can climb for other types of dental treatment. Essentially, the more complicated a procedure is, the more it will cost you out of pocket. This is one of the reasons preventative dentistry is so important.
Recap – Best Practices for Healthy Teeth
1. Brush your teeth twice daily. The most important aspect of preventative dentistry is to brush your teeth twice each day with a toothbrush and fluoride toothpaste approved by your dentist or dental hygienist. The way you brush is also important. Make sure to take your time and gently move the brush in small circular motions in order to remove as much plaque as possible. Also, don’t forget to brush your tongue. Doing so will help remove additional bacteria from your mouth and freshen your breath as well.
2. Floss Daily. Flossing each day after you brush and in between meals will help clean food particles and bacteria from in between your teeth. However, as is the case with brushing, it’s important to floss correctly in order to gain the most benefit. Just ask your dentist to demonstrate proper flossing techniques during your next preventative dentistry appointment.
3. Use mouthwash. Many people assume mouthwash only helps whiten teeth, but it actually does much more. In fact, it also reduces acid levels in the mouth, cleans the gums and areas around the gum line that are hard to reach with a brush, and adds minerals back into the teeth. If you’re unsure of which mouthwash to use, ask your dentist. Some mouthwashes are better for children, and some are better for individuals with sensitive teeth. Depending on the state of your oral health, your dentist may recommend a prescription mouthwash for added protection and care.
4. Eat a well-balanced diet. Eating a well-balanced diet will provide your teeth with the vitamins and nutrients they need to remain healthy and strong. Meanwhile, limiting your sugar intake will reduce plaque buildup and help prevent the need for costly dental treatments down the road.
5. Visit your dentist. Brushing and flossing is great, but taking proper care of your teeth also means visiting a dentist every six months for routine cleanings, checkups, and preventative care. That being said, the higher your risk for dental problems, the greater you’ll benefit from more frequent visits.
If you’re without a dentist or unhappy with your current dental provider, give us a call. At 123 Dental, we strive to provide the very best service and care for every patient we see.
Dr. Jack Brazel
Dr. Jack Brazel
[tmm name="dr-jack-brazel"] |
How Airflow Affects Your Indoor Comfort
How Airflow Affects Your Indoor Comfort
How Airflow Affects Your Indoor Comfort
Do you find that some rooms in your home are warmer than others? Do doors blow shut or swing open because of drafts? Central heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems blow conditioned air through ducts to all rooms within a building. When airflow is balanced, each room receives the proper amount of air for comfort. When airflow is incorrectly pressurized, comfort is affected.
Importance of Balancing Airflow
Air is forced through ducts at a calculated pressure. If pressure is too high or too low, you may feel drafts, experience higher energy bills or not be able to maintain a consistent temperature.
Positive pressure means that the air pressure within a space is higher than outdoors. Air is forced out of a room through cracks, under doors or around windows. Slightly high positive pressure keeps unconditioned air from infiltrating into the living space, a factor that enhances comfort.
Negative pressure means that air pressure in the living space is lower than outside. Air will be sucked in through cracks or holes in the building envelope. During warm, humid summer months, humidity and warm air are pulled into the living space. During winter months, cold air is sucked in. Both cause an HVAC system to work harder to produce conditioned air. You may experience higher energy bills, high summer humidity and drafts. Negative pressure can also cause back-drafting and buildup of dangerous gases in the living space.
Balanced airflow keeps all rooms as comfortable as possible, improves ventilation, uses less energy and puts less wear and tear on your HVAC system. Improved ventilation contributes to good indoor air quality.
Ways To Balance Airflow
When a new system is installed, technicians balance airflow. Over time, airflow may drop or increase. Running exhaust fans, using gas appliances and leaking ducts can cause negative pressure. Keeping filters clean, keeping doors open and making sure vents are not blocked are simple do-it-yourself ways to balance airflow.
Professional air balancing analyses and fine-tunes the entire system. If you have an airflow pressure problem, call the experts at AC Southeast. Our dealers are in a five-state area of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina. They can conduct pressure tests to measure and analyze airflow in your home. They can also examine the size and condition of ducts. After examining your system, certified technicians will recommend ways to balance your system, reduce negative pressure and improve airflow to maximize comfort.
For more information about airflow and comfort, call one of the experts you’ll find on this website.
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• 22 January, 2020
• 2 Min Read
Recession and Stagflation
Prelims and Mains focus: about the two terms and their significance in determining the status of the economy
News: The Indian economy is going through tough times with the advance estimates for the rate of growth for real gross domestic product (GDP) for 2019-20 being pegged at 5% compared to 6.9% in 2018-19.
What have been the trend so far?
• The GDP growth for the second quarter of 2019-20 came in at 4.5% as against 7.1% in the second quarter in 2018-19 and 5% in the first quarter of 2019-20.
• Inflation, on the other hand, showed an upward trend with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rising 7.35% in December 2019 with November and October numbers coming in at 5.54% and 4.62%, respectively.
Does the combination of slowdown in the rate of growth of the economy and higher inflation mean that the economy is in recession or going through a period of stagflation?
1. Recession
• There is no standard definition for recession but a rule of thumb used by most economists and analysts is that an economy that is seeing negative growth rate or shrinking GDP for two consecutive quarters may be considered to be in a recessionary phase.
• Sometimes a period of contraction is followed by periods of growth before it turns negative again. The data on the fall in GDP is seen in conjunction with other indicators such as increasing unemployment, falling real income and fall in economic activity such as manufacturing and sales to confirm a recession in the economy.
• A recession may be the outcome of tight monetary and fiscal policies aimed at controlling inflation or a result of over-leveraging by companies and individuals and the cutback in consumption and investment as they try to meet their obligations.
• A recession may be V-shaped where the economy sees a sharp decline followed by a strong recovery, or it may be W-shaped where there is a marginal recovery in the middle followed by a decline before the economy eventually recovers. Sometimes recessions are L-shaped where the economy goes down and then stagnates there.
• When recession is severe in terms of the contraction in GDP and extends over a longer period of time, it turns into a depression.
1. Stagflation
• Stagflation is another fear that comes up when inflation is high in a period of slow economic growth. The combination is unnatural because inflation is not a condition that is generally seen when the economy is slowing or stagnant and unemployment is high.
• Typically, costs push inflation, caused by supply side issues, or excessive liquidity in the system cause inflationary conditions in such a situation. The high prices are likely to lead to a slowing demand that can further aggravate the economic slowdown. High prices even in one segment, say, food, can affect demand in other segments because the disposable income in the hands of the consumer comes down. High prices in a commodity like oil will have a cascading effect on the prices of other products, too, since transportation costs go up.
• Policy prescriptions in a situation of stagflation can be tricky since increasing interest rates to control inflation will make it difficult for the economy facing slowing growth to recover. At the same time, keeping rates low to support recovery may exacerbate the inflationary situation.
The data is considered over a period of time and not just at one point or a few months for a contraction to be called an economy in recession or stagflation.
Source: Livemint
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The Larsen C Iceberg Is Expected to Have Company
It’s stressful being an iceberg hanging on by a thread. If you want proof, look no further than the Larsen C ice shelf.
Just three miles stand between the crack that’s been cutting across the ice shelf since 2010 and open water. When it breaks through, it will cleave a trillion-ton iceberg. The stress of having a huge iceberg-to-be nearing its inevitable conclusion has caused that crack to crack up.
Animation of Sentinel-1 interferograms show the significant stages of the Larsen C rift, culminating in multiple branches observed in early July 2017.
Credit: Project MIDAS
New satellite imagery shows a host of new cracks branching off the end of the main rift. According to scientists working on Project MIDAS, an effort that’s closely monitoring the ice shelf, that means there will likely be a swarm of smaller icebergs that break off with or shortly after the main iceberg does.
“It is remarkable how the moment of calving is still keeping us waiting,” Project MIDAS researchers wrote on their blog.
Those icebergs will likely be formidable in their own right, but they’ll look lilliputian next to the iceberg that’s been in the process of breaking off since 2010. That iceberg represents 10 percent of the area of the Larsen C ice shelf and will stretch across an area the size of Delaware. If you squeezed all the ice into a column the area of a football field, it would reach more than halfway to the moon.
After losing icebergs large and small, Larsen C will be the smallest it has been in recorded history. The causes of the massive calving event are likely largely natural. But climate change could have a role in writing the next chapter for the ice shelf. Warm waters are likely to continue their push into the region, eating away at Larsen C and other ice shelves around Antarctica from below.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect that the ice would reach more than halfway to the moon (56 percent to be exact) if squished into the area of a football field, not two-thirds of the way.
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Collatz Conjecture - Maple Help
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Collatz Conjecture
Main Concept
The Collatz Conjecture, also known as the 3n+1 Conjecture, states that if you choose any natural number and repeatedly perform a "Half Or Triple Plus One" (HOTPO) procedure, you will always eventually reach 1.
HOTPO: Choose an integer n greater than 0. Then:
if n is even, divide it by 2 to obtain n2
if n is odd, multiply it by 3 and add 1 to obtain 3n+1
Now, apply this same process to the resulting number, and keep repeating this process indefinitely. You end up with a sequence of positive integers:
7 3×7+1= 22 22÷2 = 11 3×11+1=34 34÷2 = 17 ...
In the resulting sequence, sometimes the numbers go up and sometimes they go down, and it can be hard to predict whether the number even a few iterations away will be higher or lower than the current number. If the conjecture is right though, eventually the number sequence always decreases to 1.
Enter a natural number in the text box below and click the button to see the next calculation in the "Half or Triple Plus One" procedure. Do your calculations always eventually reach the number 1?
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System Alarms
Mobbing and Multigenerations
Alarm calls are used by social animals to communicate the presence of danger. These messages can signal the need for simple or complex social behaviors, including mobbing, which is the group targeting of an individual. Mobbing has a strong evolutionary basis in both humans and other animals. When combined with a modern workplace and a multigenerational workforce, mobbing can result in economic, psychological and medical consequences. Good managers need to eliminate workplace mobbing, ensuring it is unacceptable within the corporate culture.
What is workplace mobbing?
Mobbing, or psychological harassment, is a destructive way of reacting to a situation or behaving towards a person. It is not simply the result of someone having a bad day and being a jerk. It is a constant, persistent behavior permitted by the manager 1. Often, it involves groups of people targeting a coworker with the goal to force them out of the workplace, or to get the person to conform to an unspoken agenda 2.
In some ways, mobbing is similar to ‘cancel culture,’ which aims to ostracize people for holding a particular belief or for a behavior they exhibit. Cancel culture is often attributed to the youngest generation, even though one of the strongest recent examples of a leader using workplace mobbing to get his way is a septuagenarian President of the United States – a leader who attempts to control the statements of those around him by explicitly ostracizing anyone who does not comply.
What is the evolutionary basis of mobbing?
Mobbing was described by Konrad Lorenz as a set of anti-predator behaviors among birds and other animals in which the prey animals cooperatively attacks and harasses the predator 3. In many prey species there is a clear distinction between an urgency alarm call, which alerts other members of the species to a predator to allow them to escape; and a functional alarm call, which signals a particular action. In the case of the mobbing call, animals signal the members of their species to harass the predator in order to protect their offspring. This serves a clear evolutionary advantage over simply fleeing to safety, as escape would save the adults but sacrifice the next generation. Mobbing and other coordinated behaviors also serve to increase the chances of survival and reproduction of all members of the species. In humans, sophisticated communication and language give the ability to coordinate an attack and serve as a means for a relatively weak animal to dominate the planet 4.
As pack hunters, human beings may be genetically predisposed to follow mob calls and other signals for coordinated action. Primatologist Christophe Boesch created a model where food was distributed in a manner proportional to an individual chimpanzee’s contribution to the hunt. This meat-sharing behavior was not related to the social hierarchy of the group 5.
Therefore, there is a clear suggestion that humans in a resource gathering group (or workplace) may be inclined to collectively punish members of a group who are judged as contributing less than their fair share. And mobbing, or group harassment, may be an evolutionarily selected behavior to do just that.
What are the communication and behavioral differences among generations?
The workforce today consists of four predominant generations: The Baby Boom generation (‘Boomers’) born 1946-1964, Generation X (‘GenX’) born 1965-1980, Generation Y (‘GenY’ or ‘Millennials’) born 1981-1996 and Generation Z (‘GenZ’) born 1997-20126.
The effects of the time during which they were raised play a large role in communication preferences and social behaviors of the respective groups.
Boomers were raised to respect authority and the chain of command, and grew up in an era of prosperity, optimism and the sense that they were a special generation. They generally believe that there is a price to pay (in terms of time, hard work and weaker family connections) in exchange for success 7.
GenX grew up in a period of financial and societal insecurity and witnessed firsthand the decline of American global power and influence. They seek a work-life balance and are more independent than Boomers. While not as loyal to their employers as Boomers, they are very loyal to friends and family. With strong technical skills, they value continuous learning as well as productivity and accomplishments at work – not just time spent 7.
Millennials were generally children or adolescents when the 9/11 terrorist attack occurred and differ from GenZ in that most GenZ individuals have no memory of that event – and have always lived in a post 9/11 world6. It is this defining historical event that provides the distinction between GenZ and Millennials, and it has shaped the way they see the role of government, the role of the American military in other countries and the effects of globalism on other nations. Millennials were also shaped by the election of the first Black US President and are the most racially and ethnically diverse adult generation. They entered the workforce during a recession and a time of rapid technological change in both social and workplace arenas. These events and changes in culture impact their relationships to each other and to other generations.
The communication and behavioral differences among the generations contributes to misunderstandings that may increase workplace mobbing. We know these misunderstandings are prevalent as phrases like ‘ok, Boomer’ have become common as an insult. Both these misunderstandings in behavior and the corresponding insulting communications are perceived as dangers – behaviors that endanger what they perceive as their livelihood. These serve as alarm calls and can create intrinsic mobbing behavior.
Misunderstandings in behavior often stem from deep convictions and values that may appear to be at odds with each other. For example, Boomers value hours spent at work and personal sacrifice (including family) for work. Both GenX and GenY value productivity over time spent on task and value a work-life balance 7. This difference in values could lead Boomers to see their younger colleagues as lazy. Both GenX and GenY value regular and immediate feedback. Boomers are more likely to view feedback as criticism. Boomers may also be tempted to dislike feedback their younger colleagues are providing. Boomers may see loyalty to the company as more important and GenX and GenY may see ‘doing the right thing’ as more important.
Other differences between the generations that may lead to conflict or miscommunication include beliefs about retirement, expected longevity and respect for accomplishments vs. authority and credentials 8.
Whether caused by differences in communication styles and behaviors, the end result is clear. A survey of American workers has already found generational bullying on the rise. GenX is the most vulnerable (50%) with GenY (27%) and Boomers (23%) the least bullied 9.
What are the costs of workplace mobbing?
The cost of workplace mobbing is clear and high. Analyses of a dozen studies found that more than 11% of workers report being victims of workplace mobbing 10. And those encounters resulted in increased absenteeism in both the short- and long-term. It also leads to higher overall unemployment as a result of employees leaving the workforce 10.
As much as 19% of employee turnover is a result of workplace mobbing 1. Among Boomers especially, dissatisfaction (in part as a result of workplace mobbing) in the workplace is extremely likely to lead to early retirement.
What are the effects on wellbeing?
In addition to the economic costs to the employer, employees suffer both medical and psychological consequences of workplace mobbing. Aside from the obvious psychological consequences of depression and anxiety (which can continue for up to two years after the mobbing stops), less obvious consequences include sleep disorders, impotence and even suicide. These psychological consequences also include alcohol and drug abuse, which can lead to medical effects 10.
Medical effects have been identified that include neck and skeletal pain, fibromyalgia and heart disease. In fact, in the case of cardiovascular disease, there is a 230% increase 10.
When employees choose to suffer through these attacks and ‘stick it out,’ additional negative effects on relationships and weight emerge. The advice many of these employees receive from HR professionals and counselors is ‘it’s just a job and it’s not worth it1.
How to assess your workplace and prevent mobbing?
Given the business and personal costs of workplace mobbing, how can you mitigate those costs? First of all, supervisors should encourage employees to seek advice from their supervisors if the harassing behavior occurs more than 3-5 times. If an employee approaches you about mobbing, you should take it seriously and report it to HR. Maintain confidentiality of the employee (who may also be protected by whistleblower statutes) and assure the reporter that there will be no retaliation 1. Management should ensure they are not complicit in ignoring the behavior, blaming the victim or punishing the victim 10.
Studies have found that workplaces with dictatorial leadership, lack of procedural justice, lack of humanity and an attitude of employee expendability had higher rates of workplace mobbing 11. Bad corporate cultures can cause general worker dissatisfaction, which will lead to alarm calls (manifested as mobbing). To increase satisfaction and decrease mobbing, ensure supervisors and other leaders are more inclusive. Ensure policies and procedures are clear, equitable and followed. Value employees and be sure there is a clear expectation of collegial behavior 2. The consequences of not doing so will be increased costs to your business paid in increased sick time and employee turnover. Not to mention the very real human costs.
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Dr. Brian Cronk
Dr. Brian Cronk is the inaugural Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Buffalo State where he has been charged with combining the School of Arts and Humanities with the School of Natural and Social Sciences. Prior to joining SUNY Buffalo State, he served as a Board of Governors Distinguished Professor at Missouri Western State University. He is the author of a best-selling textbook on using IBM's SPSS statistical analysis software for data analysis and interpretation.
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Tiny Yet Essential Points To Observe In Job.
There are 2 interpretations of job. One describes the work one does and also the other to the sort of job one holds. An occupation entails economic, social and also educational activities. It can be separated into different branches. Individuals with numerous tasks may have various career paths. The very first specifies the profession as a task that calls for a specific collection of qualifications as well as skills. The other definition, which is generally used, is a task that needs no specific certifications or abilities.
A job is a way of living, with various stages figuring out the sort of job a person can seek. In a conventional feeling, an occupation is what an individual provides for a living. Examples of occupations are doctors, attorneys and clergy. It is possible to alter your career or relocate to a different place in your career. Despite the stage in life, your career can be a terrific resource of complete satisfaction. Eventually, a career is a summation of all of your job experiences. exam answer key
A profession is a long-lasting journey. It can be a collection of jobs, finding out and development. It consists of a range of line of work. A job is defined as a sequence of tasks. It can likewise be defined as a collection of obligations as well as roles that an individual holds. It can be a work or a career. If a specific works for a firm for numerous years, it can be called a career.
An occupation is a collection of activities that a person does throughout their life. They might take different kinds of classes, attend university, help a certain company or offer their time for a particular company. They may have various tasks, however they all fall under the category of a job. If an individual wants operating in healthcare, they might take into consideration a job because field. The more experience a person has in a certain profession, the greater their wage is most likely to be.
An occupation is a long-lasting goal. An individual’s wage will climb or fall depending on their level of education as well as experience. If an individual is ambitious, she or he may be inclined to pursue a various profession course. An individual might be interested in one sort of job and be uncertain of a specific area. Nevertheless, an occupation can be specified as a “vocation” for a person.
A career is a lasting quest. A work is not always a career; it could be an university or university student. Some specialists will certainly operate in the exact same field yet will not have the ability to switch over professions. A task might be a great alternative if an individual has the preferred skills and also education. A professional can change their lives by altering the training course of his/her life. If the person intends to alter jobs frequently, he or she ought to transform his/her occupation. hall ticket
Rate of interests can be differed. The main factor an individual has a passion is to meet his or her life’s function. It is likewise essential to discover an occupation that is fulfilling. Whether an individual wants songs, art, sporting activities, or nature, a rate of interest can be a job. The goal of an occupation is to influence the world. The goal of a particular area is often the same. It is feasible to have a limitless number of different interests, as well as the passion is an interest.
A job is a certain type of task that needs special training and education and learning. It can likewise be a pastime, or a location of interest. Some individuals are interested in teaching, while others have an interest in the arts. An occupation belongs of their life that is distinct. A top notch occupation can make a person feel fulfilled. It can assist a person get a task in an area they delight in. When a person finds their passion, an occupation is a wonderful method to earn money.
The Occupational Outlook Manual is an excellent resource for individuals to research jobs. The Occupational Expectation Handbook is an excellent resource for discovering occupations that match their toughness and also rate of interests. This source is an extensive guide to jobs. It uses videos of job chances and assists individuals determine where to work. The Occupational Outlook Handbook is a fantastic area to begin an occupation. It consists of links to job options and organizations. There are likewise sources for people interested in education and training.
Having a career is more than simply a task. An occupation is a long-lasting pursuit. The word “job” is not the same as “job.” It can suggest an occupation or line of work. As well as a task is a regular activity that you do to make money. An occupation is an important part of your identification. If you are not delighted with your task, you can seek a various job. A great profession is one that will certainly help you attain your purposes.
A profession is a lasting undertaking in which you seek your objectives. A work is merely a task. It is a long-lasting trip where you will progress in life. As well as it is an interesting and also satisfying undertaking. You will have a profession that will maintain you inspired. And also if you wish to achieve success, you can do what you love. A career is a long-lasting endeavor. However, it is still a lifelong quest.
A career is a selection that you make. While it might take time to choose, the best occupation can be the most effective choice for you. You will certainly require to make an educated choice concerning what you are passionate regarding. It might look like a straightforward job or a work with a greater pay range. An effective career is one that fits your enthusiasms. It will make you better and more fulfilled in your life. When you are not satisfied with your current work, you will certainly wish to discover a different course. solved question paper
A job is a course that allows an employee to attain their professional goals. It takes into consideration their skills, interests, as well as capabilities to discover the most effective job for them. As an example, a person may be passionate concerning playing football or training a sports team. This is a great opportunity to discover brand-new abilities as well as get experience in a sport. An individual may likewise have an interest in a specific line of work. An occupation is not a straight line. A great job includes a selection of various jobs as well as can result in various types of experiences.
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Oral Health is the start to overall health!
Everybody has heard from their dentist and hygienist to brush their teeth at least twice a day with a soft bristled toothbrush and to floss daily. Most of us have heard it at nausea and dread the dentist asking if we floss. At Central Park Dental Aesthetics, we believe in a strong preventive approach to healthcare and believe that a healthy body starts with a healthy mouth. Flossing is just as important (if not more important) than a balanced diet and exercise. Flossing brushes the portion of tooth that is covered by your gums. It removes the plaque and tartar from the gum pockets and reduces the bacteria load.
Without flossing, the bacteria and toxins in the gum pockets cause an inflammatory response in our gums. This causes our gums to swell, become red and sensitive and can be a source of bad breath and bleeding. Overtime, our bodies will recede away from the calculus causing bone loss and gum recession. The bone and the gums are the foundation to our mouths. If we lose the bone support, we will lose our teeth even if the teeth are healthy and cavity free!
Floss before you brush your teeth. Take a piece of floss (can be a piece of floss attached to your fingers or attached to plastic holders) and place it adjacent to your tooth. Rub the floss up and down alongside to the tooth to remove any plaque or debris. Make sure to get underneath the gums! Remember that each tooth contact has two sides to floss. Brushing will remove all the loosened bits from flossing. Repeat daily for a healthy bright smile!
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Weekly “What is it?”: Sea Pork
Sea pork comes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Photo credit: Carrie Stevenson, UF IFAS Extension
Back in March, my daughter and I were walking the beach, enjoying a sunset and looking around at the shells and other oddities in the wrack line where waves deposit their floating treasures. Something bright green and oblong caught my eye. It was emerald in color, smooth yet fuzzy at the same time, and firm to the touch. At first, I thought it was a sea bean–a collective term for the many species of seeds and fruits that float to our shores from tropical locations in the Caribbean or Central/South America. The bright green definitely seemed like something botanical in nature. However, the vast majority of sea beans have a woody, protective shell similar to our more familiar pecans or acorns.
I remembered a family member asking about finding a mystery chunk of pink mass on the beach a few years ago. It resembled a pork chop more than anything else.
A different variety of sea pork that really lives up to its name. Photo credit: Stephanie Stevenson, Duval County Master Gardener
Looking closer and consulting a couple of resources, I realized we had both (most likely!) happened upon one of the oddest and often-questioned finds on our beaches: sea pork. Ranging in color from beige and pale pink to red or green, sea pork is a tunicate (or sea squirt), a member of the Phylum Chordata, home to all the vertebrate and semi-vertebrate animals. While they look and feel more like a cross between invertebrate slugs or sponges, the tunicates are more advanced organisms, possessing a primitive backbone in their larval “tadpole” form. Despite their blob-like appearance, they are more closely related to vertebrate animals than they are to corals or sponges.
The unusual life cycle of the tunicate. Photo credit: University of Washington, used with permission with Florida Master Naturalist program
During their short (just hours-long) larval stage, the tunicate larvae uses its nerve cord (supported by a notochord similar to a vertebrate spine) to communicate with a cerebral vesicle, which works like a brain. Similar to fish, this primitive brain uses an otolith to orient itself in the water, and an eyespot to detect light. These brain-like tools are utilized to locate an appropriate location to settle permanently. Using a sticky substance, the tunicate will attach its head directly to a hard surface (rocks, boats, docks, etc.) and go through a metamorphosis of sorts. The tunicate reabsorbs its tail and starts forming the shape and structure it needs for adulthood.
As an adult, the organism has a barrel shape covered by a tough tunic-like skin (hence “tunicate”). Adult bodies have two siphons, one to bring water in, another to shoot it out (giving them their other nickname, the sea squirt). The water passes through an atrium with organs that allow it to filter feed, trapping plankton and oxygen. The tunicates will spend most of their lives attached to a surface, pumping water in and out as filter feeders. They may be solitary or live in colonies, and vary widely in color and shape, lending variety to those chunks of sea pork found washing up.
I am still awaiting positive identification from a local expert on my mysterious green find to confirm that it is, indeed, a tunicate and not an unfamiliar plant. Consulting with Extension colleagues, for now we are pretty confidently going with green sea pork. If you have seen one of these before or something resembling sea pork, let us know! It is fascinating to see the variety and unusual shapes and colors. |
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The New Zealand Dental Services
Staffing the New Zealand Dental Corps
Staffing the New Zealand Dental Corps
In staffing the Corps there were two important questions to answer:
How much treatment was needed to make the troops dentally fit and maintain them so?
How many dentists, mechanics and orderlies were required to do this?
The first question could not be answered with complete accuracy but the amount of treatment could be roughly assessed by analysing the results of the examination of the men who volunteered for the First Echelon and the results of examination and treatment in the 1914–18 War. From these figures it was possible to arrive at a fair average for a given number of men.
The answer to the second question then appeared to be one of mathematics, provided the source of supply did not dry up. It was known approximately how much work a dental officer could do in page 30 a given period, how many mechanics and orderlies he needed to assist him and how much equipment he would need. On paper the problem was simple; in practice not so simple. In the first few months of the war the DDS used the rules of mathematics to justify his requests for staff but, when it was decided that the Corps was to be built up in proportion to the armed forces, other factors had to be considered. There were different factors affecting dentists, mechanics and orderlies, so the three will be considered separately. |
Ancient Monuments
History on the Ground
Culdoich, chambered cairn and standing stone 620m south of
A Scheduled Monument in Inverness South, Highland
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Latitude: 57.4588 / 57°27'31"N
Longitude: -4.076 / 4°4'33"W
OS Eastings: 275552
OS Northings: 842851
OS Grid: NH755428
Mapcode National: GBR J990.9PT
Mapcode Global: WH4GK.CS9C
Entry Name: Culdoich, chambered cairn and standing stone 620m S of
Scheduled Date: 20 March 2007
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
Source ID: SM11851
Schedule Class: Cultural
Category: Prehistoric ritual and funerary: chambered cairn
Location: Croy and Dalcross
County: Highland
Electoral Ward: Inverness South
Traditional County: Inverness-shire
The monument comprises the remains of an Early Bronze-Age passage grave surviving as a low sub-circular stone and turf covered mound, a circular arrangement of outer kerbstones and a single standing stone lying 15m to the E of the mound. It belongs to a class of burial cairn known as Clava cairns and several examples of these can be found in the Clava area, less than 2km to the N. The monument survives in cultivated land at 200m above sea level on the S side of the river Nairn.
The cairn is roughly circular and about 11m in diameter, defined by a ring of outer kerbstones. A definite interruption to the kerb on its W has been interpreted as the outer end of the passage leading to a central burial chamber. The mound has a central depression which may represent the collapse of this chamber. Lastly, a single standing stone survives in the E half of the site and may be one of a number of similar stones forming a circle around the burial mound.
The area to be scheduled is a clipped circle on plan, to include the remains described above and an area around them in which traces of activity associated with the construction and use of the monument may be expected to survive, as shown in red on the accompanying map. The above-ground elements of the modern field boundary are specifically excluded from the scheduling.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
Statement of Scheduling
Cultural Significance
The monument's archaeological significance can be expressed as follows:
Intrinsic characteristics: The monument retains several of the key field characteristics of its class (the Clava cairn): a circular platform, a defined outer kerb, central burial chamber and the remains of a stone circle. More specifically, field research undertaken by Reading University indicates that the position of each of the kerbstones of Clava cairns is deliberate and graded towards the SW. This is a trait shared with other Clava-type burial monuments. Archaeological fieldwork at other similar sites has shown how complex the development of these types of burial monument is and this cairn is likely to be no different. It is therefore a good example of its class, not just because of its structural components and that fact that these are likely to be still in place, but because of what lies underneath the monument and its ability to tell us about the climate, flora and fauna and wider environment during the Early Bronze Age in this location.
Contextual characteristics: This is an example of a geographically specific type of Bronze-Age burial monument, the so-called Clava cairn. Only 50 or so examples exist and they are generally limited to NE Scotland around Inverness, Strathnairn and the Moray Firth. This monument shares many traits in the wider landscape with nearby monuments at Culchunaig and Leanach, and further afield with the dense concentration of burial monuments in the cemetery at Balnuaran of Clava. Specifcally, it has been positioned and apparently oriented with a general respect for the nearby river Nairn, a significant view northwards over the Moray Firth to the Black Isle and Ben Wyvis and, in a wider sense, with the geological layout of the Great Glen. The passage that was built to connect the monument's central chamber to the outer edge of the kerb and wider world is aligned SW-NE, in common with Clava cairns throughout the region.
Associative characteristics: This part of the highlands is well known for its rich variety of prehistory and history, through its surviving field monuments. This monument plays a part in this story, despite it being relatively unknown to archaeologists and the wider public until the mid 1990s.
It is the view of most prehistorians that there was an intimate relationship between the religious beliefs expressed by monuments such as here, the surrounding landscape and the movements of the main astronomical bodies. This astronomical link continues to generate considerable interest today.
National Importance
This monument is of national importance because it represents a rare and regionally distinctive class of Early Bronze-Age monument that can help us to understand burial and ritual practices in NE Scotland and their relationship to what is happening elsewhere in the British Isles. It is significant, single component of a much larger prehistoric landscape and can contribute to our understanding how monument complexes like this develop. The loss of the monument would affect our future ability to appreciate and understand the prehistoric landscape and its inhabitants.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
RCAHMS record the monument as NH74SE37. It is recorded in the Highland Council SMR as NH74SE0038.
Bradley R 2000, THE GOOD STONES: A NEW INVESTIGATION OF THE CLAVA CAIRNS, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland monograph series number 17, Edinburgh, Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.
Watson A and Clark N 1998, 'Culdoich South, Strathnairn (Croy and Dalcross parish), Clava cairn', DISCOVERY EXCAV SCOT 1998, 49-50.
Source: Historic Environment Scotland
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Influenza virus-infected environments
The environment around us can be contaminated by colds and others can be infected by the spread of various viruses. It is better for people not to spit their saliva and nose in the environment to avoid this.
Referring to the prevalence of colds, Iraj Khosronia, an internal physician, said: “Raising the runny nose is harmful to the body. They work there, and the spread of the virus spreads viral diseases.
The internal medicine doctor continued: “Especially the flu and colds, there are millions of viruses in the saliva and the best way is to have a handkerchief in our pocket and put the nose and mouth water in it and disinfect that handkerchief and completely return the water.” The nose is very dangerous up and inside the stomach and causes infections of the stomach and mucous membranes, and it is better to throw it out into the environment.
“Nasal secretions are not good for the body at all and humans should not swallow them and consume them. And vomits and prevents the spread of the disease and that is its usefulness and has no other use.
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Content placement
Plane discovery
Finding a surface
In order to find a plane, ARCore searches for a wall, ceiling, or floor by finding several points that are part of the same flat surface.
Show users how to find a surface using their phone. Use illustrations or animations to show users how to scan properly. This can help users understand to hold their phone toward the surface that they’re trying to detect, to move the phone in a clockwise or circular motion, and to search for surfaces that aren’t too dim or too bright.
As users move their phones, give instant feedback to show they’ve successfully detected a surface.
Vertical surfaces
Vertical surfaces can be harder to detect than horizontal surfaces.
Vertical surfaces reflect light, and they’re often painted a single color, both of which can cause detection failures.
ARCore is able to detect vertical surfaces. In certain cases, though, they might take a little longer to locate.
Confirm surface detection
When a user successfully finds a surface, tell them what to do next.
You can give them an object to place, encourage them to explore the space, or something else.
To encourage the user, build their confidence, and reduce frustration:
• Design seamless transitions. When the user moves quickly, ARCore might lose its tracking. Design smooth, subtle transitions between surface finding and detection.
• Aim for visual consistency. The visuals used for instructions, surface detection, and within the experience itself should share a single consistent look. Aim for visual harmony in all parts of your experience.
• Use progressive disclosure. Let users know about changes in system status in a timely and relevant way. Using visual highlighting or displaying text to help communicate that a surface has been successfully detected.
Use surface visualization to help users with object placement
Highlight surfaces that have been detected and are ready for object placement.
Visually highlight only the surface that the user is viewing or pointing at. Avoid highlighting multiple surfaces at once, and create visual distinctions between different planes.
Communicate error states clearly and help users recover quickly
Provide feedback when something has gone wrong, and give the user an actionable path to resolution. Give simple, short tasks. Walk the user through correcting the error state, one step at a time.
Error states can include:
• Trouble detecting a surface
• Trouble scanning a surface
• If the phone isn’t moving to enable detection
• If the user isn’t moving the phone properly to detect surfaces
Optimal placement range
The optimal placement range is where you can place a virtual object at the most comfortable viewing distance.
Placement Range
Design your scene so it’s easy for users to perceive the depth and distance of objects.
The limited field of view on a phone screen can make it challenging for a user to perceive depth, scale, and distance. This may impact users’ experience, as well as their ability to interact with objects.
A user’s depth perception often depends on how objects are placed in the scene. For example, placing an object too close to the user can be startling or alarming. Placing large objects close to the user may cause them to step backward, bumping into or tripping over real-world objects behind them.
When you create your experience, consider the importance of depth. Think about how users will see your content, and whether or not they’ll be able to access it. Think of the scene in 3 distinct regions: downstage, upstage, and center stage.
1. Downstage, closest to the user: If an object is placed unexpectedly close to the user, it forces the user to move back, since it’s harder to see the full object. This is useful when you want the user to look down or examine something closely. However, be careful never to encourage the user to move backward! They could trip on real objects behind them.
2. Upstage, farthest from the user: If the object is placed upstage, it’s difficult for users to see the difference between a very small object and an object that’s sitting far away. It’s useful to encourage exploration and movement, but can create a visually confusing experience.
3. Center stage: This is the most comfortable viewing range for users. Objects here are optimal for users to interact with.
Note that the positioning of the three stages is relative to the viewing angle of the phone.
Maximum Placement Distance
Guide users as they place objects in the scene.
Help them to avoid placing objects at an uncomfortable distance.
You can set a maximum placement distance for objects. This helps to make sure that users will place objects at a comfortable viewing distance. It also guarantees that the object will stay at a realistic scale as the user continues to move it.
Set a default maximum distance, and don’t let users place an object beyond it.
Destination Point
The destination point is where an object will eventually be placed.
Use visual indicators to guide users as they place objects. Shadows can help indicate the destination point and make it easier for users to understand where an object will be placed on a detected surface.
You can use the surface visualization, or the shadow of the object to indicate the destination point
ARCore lets you drop any virtual object into a real-world space. Objects can be placed either automatically or manually.
Automatic Placement
It’s possible for the app itself to populate a scene. Once a surface is detected, the app can start placing objects immediately.
Automatic placement works best when:
• A virtual environment is added, without any user input, into the real-world space
• There’s no interaction, or minimal interaction
• It doesn’t matter if objects appear in exactly the right spot
• AR mode is crucial to your experience
• AR mode starts when the experience is launched
Virtual objects populating a scene
Manual Placement
Users can manually add virtual objects to a scene and move them around.
Manual placement works best when:
• The experience is fully interactive, such as a jigsaw puzzle
• Object placement needs to be precise, such as a furniture selection app
Tap to place an object
A user can drop a virtual object by tapping a spot anywhere in the scene. Tapping generally feels natural to the user, and works best when:
• The virtual object doesn’t need to be adjusted or resized before it’s placed
• It should be placed quickly
Tapping doesn’t work when multiple objects appear in the scene. When tapped, multiple objects can pile on top of each other.
Drag to place an object
After selecting a virtual object by touching it, users can drag the object into their scene. Many users might not know how to drag. Give clear instructions, and walk them through the process of dragging step by step.
Be sure to tell users how to place an object before they pick it up! Dragging doesn’t work as well when the user is not informed about the placement gesture in advance.
Dragging works best when:
• The object needs to be adjusted or transformed
• The object needs to be dropped precisely in a certain place
When you anchor an object in AR, you lock it firmly in a specific spot. Even when the user moves around, the object remains anchored.
Anchoring is different than simply placing an object in the scene. Ordinary objects can be placed, moved around, and played with. On the other hand, an anchored object will stay locked in place until the user moves it.
Anchors are most useful for pinning objects that the user will keep returning to, such as a menu or a home base. It’s also useful to anchor objects that contain other assets, like game boards.
Anchoring an object doesn’t mean it’s stuck in place forever! You can let the user move the object and re-anchor it if they need to.
Recommended — It’s helpful to anchor objects that contain other assets, like a chess board
Not recommended — There's no need to anchor static objects that stay in the same spot through the whole experience |
How Do Polarized Lenses Work?
If you live or spend a lot of time in a consistently sunny climate, there are some extra precautions one needs to consider. Sunscreen is always a priority, followed by keeping a worthy pair of sunglasses. While UV lenses can help protect against ultraviolet light that can damage your eyes and the skin around them, they do not address the glare that is associated with a bright day. Polarized lenses are well known among those that frequent the water but can also be incredibly useful for everyday use.
When light beams across a flat surface, it is reflected horizontally, becoming polarized, causing what we know as glare. Regardless of the surface, either flat or uneven, the resulting effect can be distracting and disarming, causing reduced visibility.
The amount of horizontally polarized light coming into your eyes is greatly decreased by specially formulated lenses, such as polarized sunglasses. Such lenses are coated with a chemically polarized film that allows light waves to travel vertically in one direction, thus blocking out the horizontally polarizing light and shielding eyes from the lightwave. You can reduce or remove distracting and harmful glare by wearing polarized glasses. Specialized, specially formulated lenses, such as polarized sunglasses, significantly minimize the amount of times horizontally polarized light passes into the eye so that blinding or harmful bright light can be removed or minimized when wearing them. Polarized lenses in sunglasses are set at an angle which allows penetration of only vertically polarizing light. You will free your vision from the blinding sunlight that is reflected from the surface if you polarize your sunglasses. You will find that when you change the viewing angle, the light from the surface brightens.
A non-polarized pair of sunglasses simply decreases the amount of light that comes through the lenses, whereas polarized lenses shield the eyes from UV light and are a good option for outdoor vision. UV security protects the eyes from the sun’s harmful rays while polarized sunglasses reduce glare. Polarized glasses have greater image quality, but lack maximum UV protection.
Polarized lenses feature a patented chemical film coating designed specifically to reduce the glare from extreme reflected light that can hinder vision. They are designed to promote clear vision in bright light, and operate by reducing glare on reflective surfaces in the brightest light and increasing the contrast slightly. Polarization can also make the screen easier to see than regular tinted lenses, but the downside is that polarized lenses are less likely to protect the eyes from bright light-which increases glare.
If light is mirrored by oncoming traffic, it appears in the eyes as a flashing light, creating glare that can be momentarily blinding. At best, such glare is distracting and at worst dangerous-all of a sudden you see nothing. Some tints respond differently on the windscreen than others, which means that driving is not always the best option without polarized lenses.
For tips or a consultation about polarized lenses and to schedule an appointment contact us today at 561-798-0244.
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Management consultants based in Sydney and Hong Kong
Caucasian woman technician working on computer servers in a server farm.
Cybersecurity Digital Digital Transformation Infrastructure Tools & Trends
Physical-to-Virtual tools & plugins for virtualisation projects
Physical to Virtual (P2V), is the acronym that describes the tools and plugins that are available to move images from a physical host to a virtual host.
Let’s understand the terms first:
• Physical‘ refers to the hardware (computers/servers/network equipment) environment. This is the ‘traditional’ and most common method of delivering server services/resources to the network.
• Virtual‘ refers to the environment which is created by virtual software and is able to support/host multiple instances of an operating system.
So, if you like, the Physical is, probably, what you have, and the virtual is, probably, where you want to be. How you get there is where the P2V tools and plugins come in.
P2V works by copying the physical state of an installed operating system as an image. If you have used Ghost or Acronis, you will know what I mean. This image is a compressed file, much like an ISO. It can be stored, or used, whenever it is required. It contains all of the system files, drivers, and so forth, that it needs to make it viable when it is decompressed and installed to another computer or into a virtual machine (environment). Images can also be the entire state of a complete operating system and installed applications.
Imaging an operating system is not new. We have been doing that for years. Most workstation rollouts were done using Ghost images (probably still are). Microsoft refined the technique of operating system deployment when it introduced RIS, Remote Installation Server/Service. Unfortunately, RIS was a bit limited by NIC drivers in many environments and didn’t always work well. RIS takes advantage of DHCP (BootP) and DNS to locate and deliver an operating system to a target machine. P2V does just that. But it goes one step further, it deploys from a standard image taken from a physical computer and places that image into a virtual machine. P2V can also move virtual servers from one Host to another Host, irrespective of the type of hardware that supports either Host.
Virtual Machines represent an environment similar to the old NTVDM (NT Virtual DOS Machine). The NTVDM attempted to create an isolated environment within the architecture of Windows NT, above the Executive Layer. It enabled 16bit (DOS) applications to run within a 32bit environment, it still does in fact. The theory was that if the DOS application crashed, as they were likely to do, it wouldn’t take any other applications or the operating system down with it. The application would crash within the NTVDM and the NTVDM would contain that event within the Win32 subsystem, and not allow it to access the hardware (Microkernel). This didn’t always work as it should, and usually resulted in the infamous BSOD. Fortunately, things are becoming a little more stable on the Windows front, and we see fewer BSODs than we use to.
In a virtualised environment the key to efficiency and success is to be able to easily manage the whole infrastructure without too many reboots and downtime. In a traditional/physical infrastructure, downtime is inevitable when management is implemented effectively. When, in a physical infrastructure, it is required that new servers are installed, old ones decommissioned, and existing servers upgraded or moved around, redeployed etc, downtime will happen, whatever you try to do to avoid it. In that scenario, it’s a case of limiting the damage and trying to do the work when the network is ‘quiet’. Virtualisation can enable all of these activities without excessive downtime. P2V tools are used to create and manage the virtualised enterprise.
P2V enables the moving of pre-made server operating system images, (with applications), from a hardware-based environment to a virtual environment. This activity can take place when the network is being used. However, as you are going to squirt a large image around the LAN or across the WAN, it’s a good idea to choose a more quiet period, rather than in the middle of the working day, or when the backup systems fire up.
Using a virtual machine to host the image that you made from a physical-based operating system has certain advantages beyond the reduced downtime. Virtual machines do not access the hardware directly. Like the old NTVDM, there is an ‘air-gap’ between the VM and the hardware. This is occupied by either a HyperVisor or another operating system that has been installed as a Virtual Host. VMWare is installed as a virtual host. It is Linux with a modified kernel. Microsoft Virtual Server is installed into an existing Windows operating system. Other virtual tools are installed directly on the metal, such as Xen and XenEnterprise. Virtuozzo uses a different approach to virtualisation. It partitions the operating system. That makes it unique amongst virtualisation tools.
By not accessing the hardware in the same way that a traditional operating system does, the VM can act as a Host for a variety of different operating system images. It will accept the Guest operating system demands and serve them up as requested. The operating system doesn’t know it’s virtualised. CPU and RAM is delivered to the virtual operating system Guest, as though that Guest was installed to the metal in the traditional fashion. This means no hardware conflicts, no memory conflicts, and no downtime, as there are no system files to generate or replace, and therefore a reboot is not necessary. It is only necessary to reboot the VM, not the Host.
P2V tools can be used for more than moving operating system (images) from the physical to the virtual environment. They can be used for disaster recovery purposes. Images can be stored in an o/s image-bank for future deployment. P2V can be used as a backup tool and as a standard method of o/s deployment throughout the enterprise.
**Beware using P2V as a backup tool for everyday backups. The images can become enormous, which will grind your network to a standstill if not planned properly. Tape isn’t super-fast for restoring gigbytes of data, but compared to P2V as a restore tool, it’s positively frictionless.**
The virtual hardware presented by a virtual machine is always different from the physical hardware on the original server. P2V migration tools are one easy way to solve the problems inherent in making the switch. The market leaders in this segment of the virtualisation industry are PlateSpin and VMware, but other notable competitors exist, such as Leostream. Here is a list, and some information, about a few of the P2V tools and plugins that I am aware of. If you know about others, why not write it up and let us all know.
VMWare P2V Assistant:
This is probably the most popular of the P2V tools. With this tool, you can drag and drop your images wherever you need them.
The VMWare P2V Assistant copies all files that are resident on a physical source disk attached to a source computer and stores them to a virtual disk file, also known as a target disk. If an operating system is present in the source disk, that is also copied onto the target disk. This target disk is the new clone. The cloning process requires a P2V Assistant Boot CD that is used to boot the source computer and retrieve identification information about the source computer. In addition, the P2V Assistant must be running on a computer (physical or virtual) that is not the source computer. The resulting clone is contained in a set of files, in .vmdk format. This type of clone can be used in VMware GSX Server and VMware Workstation virtual machines.
VMWare says that this procedure is complex and migration of an image from a source to a target is not an unattended job. VMWare also states that the procedure should only be carried out by competent Administrators or technicians who have gone through an official VMWare P2V Assistant training course. Hmm, not sure about that. Having done a few migrations myself, I can report that it is not a particularly complex task. If you can set up and run a successful RIS deployment, then you can do this job with ease. Could be that VMWare is trying to sell expensive training courses? I’ll leave you to decide.
VMWare P2V supports Windows NT, 2000 and 2003. VMWare P2V requires a third ‘helper’ machine. This can be a physical or virtual machine. You will also need a boot CD. You can use P2V to create the clone, or Ghost, Acronis, PowerQuest Image Center, or any other imaging tool you are familiar with, and that can create the image in the required format for VMWare P2V.
In my opinion, VMWare has made this process a bit more complicated than it needs to be. Other tools do the same job, support a wider range of operating systems, cost a lot less, and do it without a ‘helper’ machine. But, if you are comfortable in a Windows environment or have to work in one, then this tool is perfectly fine and is cost-effective at the enterprise level in terms of time and money.
Leostream P2V Direct 3.0:
This P2V tool is used with VMWare and Microsoft virtualisation tools. It is a management interface but has some interesting and useful utility functions that could be endearing to the enterprise Administrator for a virtualised infrastructure.
The downside is that it only works with Windows operating systems. As Windows is the dominant datacentre operating system, at this time, that isn’t really a limitation. However, this state of affairs is changing, and Leostream will, no doubt, change with it. The Leostream system consists of a Wizard and a Host Agent, which can be on different networks as long as there is a routable connection for the following ports (8080, 9400, 9401, and 9402). Wide area network connections are supported.
The Leostream P2V Direct Wizard is installed on the origin physical server and is compatible with all 32-bit versions, service packs and all security patches of Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003. For NT4 it supports service pack 6a and all security patches. The Leostream Host Agent is installed on the destination host server running the virtualization software.
Leostream’s P2V Direct Wizard is installed, run, and uninstalled on the origin machine without needing a reboot. It sees the machine in its operating state so it can map all of the running services and drivers and determine the changes needed for a successful conversion. It then instructs the virtualisation layer to create an appropriate VM, attaches a small operating system and boots the VM. The disks are then copied across by using the existing drivers. Once the disk transfer is complete then the VM is rebooted into Windows and the Leostream Wizard automatically un-installed. What could be simpler?
Two versions are available; The Windows version is compatible with VMware Workstation 5.x running on Windows XP (any service pack), VMware GSX 3.x, VMware Virtual Server, and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 running on 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 (any service pack). The ESX version is compatible with VMware ESX Server v2.5.x and v3.0.
Leostream claims that it can do a one-time migration without a reboot. I haven’t tested that yet. If you have, let me know how it went. Leostream also say that this is an easy process and requires no training (!). Well, that’s a blessing.
PlateSpin PowerConvert:
The claim here is that PlateSpin decouples the data, operating systems, and applications from the servers on which they are hosted. This enables anywhere-to-anywhere automated conversions between physical servers, virtual machines, and image archives. PlateSpin’s PowerConvert can be used for server consolidations, disaster recovery, hardware migrations, test-lab automation, and more. You can stream servers in any direction between physical machines, blade infrastructures, virtual machines, and image archives over the network.
Using drag-and-drop, a physical server or virtual machine server running Windows or Linux can be converted into a fully functional virtual machine hosted on VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware ESX Server, VMware Server, Microsoft Virtual Server, or a PlateSpin Flexible Image. No physical contact with the source or target machines is required, allowing the flexibility to perform the consolidation from anywhere. Likewise, migrate to the next-generation blade, SMP or rack hardware without time-consuming server rebuilds.
Restoring with backup products is often time-consuming and includes manually building new servers, installing applications, and restoring data from tape or inflexible images. PlateSpin PowerConvert for Recovery is designed to replicate a server completely by streaming it over the network periodically to any available physical or virtual machine that could be used as a standby.
Live Transfer functionality enables such migrations to be performed without taking the source server offline. In the case of a primary server outage, the standby system can be activated to take over the workload quickly and resume normal processing. This is a pretty useful facility, but I still think that you should be very careful when you try this sort of activity. PlateSpin has a wide range of platforms supported by it’s various utilities. I think it is the widest range of all the P2V tools. For servers without an operating system installed, you will need to use a boot CD to take control of the server. In almost all other cases, PlateSpin is used remotely and you need not go to the servers at all.
Ultimate P2V:
This is a free plugin that is used as part of a boot CD. The most popular boot CD is Bart PE. The simplest way to use Ultimate P2V is to install it on the Bart PE CD, along with Ghost, or Acronis (or your favourite imaging software), and any other utilities you think might be useful. Maybe include a password changing utility, or a file manager, or whatever you think will be helpful in your planned task. This is an ‘off-ramp’ product. That means you never install anything to the servers. You just boot to the CD and then use the utilities to create the image. Once you have created the image, you can use Ultimate P2V to transfer it to a virtual server. Oddly enough, this method of P2V does require that you are a competent technical person. That tends to be the case, as soon as you move from the commercial tools to the free tools. You have to work harder if it’s free.
I haven’t used this tool. I have used Bart PE, and it is one of the most useful RAMDisk tools out there in the wild. Mostly used by crackers to access servers and change the Admin’ password. I have a Bart PE disk with me at all times!
As above. This tool is used with a RAMDisk, ‘off-ramp’ utility like Bart PE. This one can only be used with Windows servers. You will need an imaging tool, like Ghost, and you will also need to include a VMWare plugin. Ultimate P2V is a free plugin that enables you to clone a physical machine to a virtual machine and perform the necessary system reconfiguration required to make it bootable.
Warning: you will need to track down and install a load of drivers to make this utility compatible with the standard operating systems.
Bart PE is used as the platform for Windows cloning. If you want to clone other operating systems you will need to use the Linux Live CD as the platform.
VMWare Converter 3.0:
VMware Converter is a scalable enterprise-class migration tool that converts physical machines to VMware virtual machines. Using a snapshot-based cloning mechanism, VMware Converter enables remote conversions without disrupting the source server during the conversion process. I wondered how long it would be before VMWare came out with a P2V freebee. I only became aware of it because it was mentioned in a comment about VMware Converter on the VMWare web site. Of course, I couldn’t wait to try it.
VMware Converter is a P2V solution. It enables you to convert physical machines running Windows to VMware virtual machines. The Starter Edition is for free, the Enterprise Edition will be licensed as part of support and subscription services with VirtualCenter Management. The Enterprise Edition allows multiple concurrent conversions, whereas the Starter Edition can only convert one machine at a time. Another difference is that the Enterprise Edition supports cold cloning, i.e. the migration of powered-off machines. Since the OS of the source system isn’t running in a cold migration, the cloning process is less error-prone. To cold clone a physical machine you have to boot from a Windows PE CD which will launch VMware Converter.
VMware Converter 3 has an easy-to-use wizard which guides you through the configuration of the conversion task. At the first step, you have to decide what kind of conversion you are planning. There are five options:
• physical computer
• remote physical computer
• VMware virtual machine
• Microsoft virtual machine
• Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (or Ghost 9 image)
The fact that it’s free has to be a reason to use it. But, it is limited to Windows, although, that isn’t necessarily a bind as most people use Windows servers in most datacentres.
Virtuozzo offers a virtualisation tool that partitions the operating system. This methodology lends itself well to P2V. You can move virtual servers between physical servers without end-user disruption or the need for costly storage capacity with Virtuozzo for Linux 3.0. No SAN required. The “zero downtime migration” capability is one of several major new features in the latest version of Virtuozzo for Linux – which also adds new template management, streamlined resource management and expanded operating system support to greatly enhance performance and automation.
SWsoft, (the developers of Virtuozzo), also introduced Virtuozzo for Windows, which adds a “physical-to-virtual” tool that enables easy migration from a dedicated physical server to a virtual server, performance increases and updated platform support.
Personally, I like Virtuozzo. It’s a different approach to the other tools and has that big plus of only requiring a single host operating system license (this may change in the future as Microsoft licensing catches up).
XenEnterprise is the most efficient virtualisation tool available. It is true ParaVirtualisation and is 35% more efficient than VMWare and 40%+ more efficient than Microsoft Virtual Server.
XenEnterprise uses the Open-Source Xen kernel to provide its virtual process. Added to this is the ability to support Linux and Windows servers on the same hardware, providing the Intel hardware has the V extension, and the AMD hardware has the VT extension.
Included within the product is a P2V toolset that is totally integrated. From the single browser interface, you can create a server image from a server operating system on another piece of hardware, and install it into a virtual machine on the XenEnterprise Host server. XenEnterprise tools include VM Export, Import and Cloning. No extra tools or utilities are required. Everything you need is right there in the XenEnterprise virtualising application.
Virtualisation isn’t the answer to all datacentre ills. It brings with it some nasty bits. It can over-utilise your systems, wear out your hardware quicker than traditional servers, replace server sprawl with virtual sprawl, and if you reboot a host, you down every guest operating system on that host.
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Protect Yourself From Secondhand Smoke This Winter
As winter sets in and the temperature continues to drop, more people may decide to stay inside to smoke. This decision can be very dangerous, especially to those who live in apartments and multi-unit housing. Even if someone decides to smoke inside just during the winter months, there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure.
Neighbors living in apartments share up to 65% of their air and smoke can travel through shared ventilation, heating systems, cracks in walls, openings around plumbing, under doors and through poor insulation. Secondhand smoke exposure may cause non-smoking adults to develop cancer and heart disease and children to have poor lung growth and develop serious lung illnesses1. E-cigarettes/vapes are also dangerous to use indoors. E-cigarette/vape users breathe out an aerosol, not a harmless water vapor. The aerosol contains nicotine, heavy metals like lead, and cancer-causing chemicals2.
If your apartment building doesn’t have a smoke-free policy, you and/or your family could be exposed to secondhand smoke. In addition to protecting all residents and visitors from secondhand smoke exposure, smoke-free policies can also reduce the risk of fires. If you are experiencing secondhand smoke drifting into your apartment, document the situation and talk to your landlord about how the smoke is affecting you and/or your family. If you are interested in learning more about smoke-free apartments, please call Tobacco-Free CNY at (315) 435-3280. |
New NASA feature shows what the Hubble Telescope saw on your birthday
On Friday, April 24th, the Hubble Telescope marked its 30th anniversary since its launch into space. To honor this remarkable date, NASA is using the telescope to help us celebrate our birthdays too.
What did the Hubble see on your birthday?
A new feature of NASA’s website allows visitors to witness a stunning image taken by the telescope on their birthdays.
Considering Hubble has only been in space for 30 years, the image people see may not exactly match their birth year. However, it will still show them a breathtaking view from the exact month and day they input, as reported by KDVR.
Since the telescope has been operating 24/7 for the past three decades, there is some absolutely astonishing cosmos snippet linked to each date of the year.
For their new feature, NASA chose 366 of the most extraordinary images.
For instance, on November 20th, the birthday of the man whom the telescope is named after, Edwin Hubble, the Hubble Telescope shows an image from 2005 of Arp 148, a galactic duo likely in the midpoint of colliding.
Image credits: NASA
As for Hubble’s own birthday, April 24th, the novel NASA webpage displays a picture of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant—a relic of a star that exploded in a massive cataclysm nearly 15,000 years ago.
The image is from 1991, the telescope’s first anniversary of its space launch.
Image credits: NASA
The new space trait combines engaging fans from all around the globe and exhibiting some of the most amazing cosmic discoveries.
Interestingly, the Hubble Telescope has made over 1.4 million observations since it was first launched in 1990. What’s more, it was a subject of publication of more than 17,000 scientific papers. This made the telescope one of the most productive scientific instruments ever built.
From shots of planet formations to gigantic black holes, Hubble has provided significant data that has helped researchers make crucial astronomical discoveries.
The idea of a ‘large space telescope’ was first conceived in 1946, by Lyman Spitzer, Jr., a Yale astrophysicist. But it wasn’t until 1990 when the Hubble set off to space to study other galaxies and explore the evolution of the universe.
Currently, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, NASA has delayed the in-person celebrations for the telescope’s 30th anniversary.
However, people can still enjoy the awe-inspiring images online. Moreover, with the hashtag Hubble30, everyone is free to share their birthday space snaps on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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Philosophy > Abraham's Choice
Dr Ranjit Konkar -- Compassionate Friend, Monsoon-Winter 1997 ---
Beauty Without Cruelty India
Bakr-Id is the day for commemorating the spirit of sacrifice. The memory is of the courage displayed by the Prophet Abraham centuries ago in being willing to sacrifice to God the life of his only child upon being commanded by God to do so to demonstrate his dedication to Him. Upon seeing the unshaken resolve he displays in obeying God's word, it is said that God, very pleased with his dedication, intervenes through his angel just as Abraham is about to take his child's life and relieves him of the burden by asking him not to go ahead. He then causes a ram (a kind of sheep) to appear near the sacrificial alter. Abraham sacrifices the ram instead to complete the ritual. Today, this act of courage is sought to be remembered by millions of households the world over by taking the life of a goat or a sheep or even larger animals on that day.
On this occasion, I wish to raise the issue of the ethics of animal sacrifice. This is no way directed only toward the observers of Bakr-Id -- majority religion, Hinduism has a far greater incidence of this practice of killing animals for religious purposes than the other religions. Therefore, we all have something to ask ourselves in this regard.
What is Sacrifice?
Sacrifice should mean the giving up of something that belongs to oneself. Does my child's life belong to me? Does the life of any animal belong to me? That life is wholly and solely owned by the being (human or non-human) that is its holder. Religious thought goes a step further and doesn't grant ownership of the life even to its holder -- the holder is merely the custodian of that life and cannot decide to shed it when he/she desires, by committing suicide. Legal thought has made suicide a punishable offence on that very basis. God, the creator, is the only entity given universal ownership of all life. Only God can take life, just like only God can create life.
Seen in this light, it should seem outrageous that one can consider the taking of another's life as one's own sacrifice. When we are trained to think, on one hand, that the taking of even our own life is a social and moral crime, how do we allow ourselves to not only take the life of another being but call it our sacrifice, on top of that? Would Abraham have looked favorably upon our wilful destruction of life? Would Goddess Kali or Lord Shiva, if they could take form and communicate with us, condone the barbaric bloodshed taking place in their names?
The Danger of Rituals
The ritual, mechanistic repetition of a historic act in order to display one's reverence for the act or for its original perpetrator is fundamentally an act fraught with dangerous possibilities. Suppose that God had not intervened to substitute a ram for Abraham's child, and that instead accepted his sacrifice and decided to reward him later by bringing his child back to life. Would the followers of Abraham then have dared to commemorate that act by sacrificing their children, knowing fully well that they can't bring them back to life? A less shocking and offensive analogy too is worth pondering over: imagine that God has substituted not a ram but tree in place of Abraham's son. Would we then, to commemorate the great sacrifice, be cutting down trees on this day? In these days of environmental consciousness, this would produce a public outrage. Why, then, is animal life, which is so much higher than plant life, in feeling pain and in possessing six senses versus the plants' one, held so cheaply? Why do we think nothing of slitting the throat of a fully conscious and frightened animal like goat when cutting down a tree is socially castigable? And harming a human being is unthinkable? Do these animals deserve no mercy from us? They put their trust in us only to find that we deceive them and belie their trust by taking their life. Is this how we, the supposedly superior species, should behave?
How many of us who so willingly sacrifice a goat's life, whether at Kali's feet or in Abraham's memory, would make actual sacrifices of one's possessions when called upon to do so? Is it that sacrificing the goat's life equips us in any way with a greater moral readiness to do so? If not, then why this disrespect towards the life of another, the life that is held so dear by its owner? How can we take away what we cannot give back?
If we think that by killing a goat, we are replaying the situation that Abraham found himself in, we are mistaken. Not one of us can claim that God has asked us to sacrifice our dearest possession to Him. Even if we can, then can we, with any self-respect, claim that the goat that we purchase in the market for so many rupees and paise is our dearest possession? Would any of us dare to do what Abraham showed courage to do? What is this fascination with replaying historical events anyway?
Questioning Abraham's Choice
At this point, let me commit the blasphemy of questioning the propriety of Abraham's actions. I hope rational minds will not condemn me for doing so. If the relevant section of the Bible (Genesis 22:01-22:13, reproduced below) is read carefully then one sees nowhere that God asked Abraham to sacrifice a ram instead. He just relieves Abraham of his command to sacrifice his child (Genesis 22:12). It is Abraham's own choice to go ahead and kill the ram (Genesis 22:13). Why was that justified? It is not that some sacrifice or the other had to be performed. Was it right of Abraham then to unnecessarily take the ram's life?
One is reminded of the story of Yudhishthira and the dog, in Yudhishthira's last days, in the epic Mahabharata. The Pandavas renounce their kingdom and the worldly life to spend the twilight of their lives roaming around in the forest. Sahadeva, Nakula, Arjuna, and finally Bheema fall dead one by one. A dog joins Yudhishthira to keep him company in his wanderings. At the gates of heaven, Yudhishthira is asked to enter but without the dog, who is not allowed inside. Yudhishthira refuses the offer to enter alone, his conscience not allowing him to accept the prize of heaven at the cost of abandoning his faithful companion. Seeing his fidelity even to such a mute and non-human companion, and his sacrifice in refusing what a lifetime of walking the right path had earned him, God is pleased and reveals the true identity of the dog -- it is none other than Dharma, come to subject Yudhishthira to his final test of character. Yudhishthira is allowed inside.
How devoutly it is to be wished that Abraham would have replied similarly. I do not think that the all-merciful and just God would have found his refusal objectionable at all. Millions of innocent animals the world over would have been spared the slaying at the hands of man; children would have been more sensitized to the sanctity of life; and less blood would have been split in the name of religion.
For my own part, I must say that if anyone were to ask me to sacrifice another's life to prove my dedication to God, I would refuse. I would commit the sin of not proving my dedication to God sooner than committing the sin of taking away another's life and thus showing total disrespect to the giver of life Himself. My children's lives may be more dear to me than my own, but they are not mine to take away. I should give up my life to protect theirs, not take theirs away to demonstrate my devotion to anybody, even God. There I differ with Abraham in the choice he made five thousand years ago -- I would consider it a transgression of my privileges if I were to agree to offer my son's life. However, Abraham's choice was different and presumably dictated by his times.
The Golden Principle
At the risk of sounding like an atheist, I would like to propound the stand that the true test of the rightness of one's actions is in probing deep into our own consciences for approval rather than reposing belief in what God supposedly want us to do. No surer guide to morally right actions exists than the Golden Principle: Do not do to others that which you would not like done to you. One can never go wrong with this lamp showing the way.
Consider the following hypothetical situation: the earth is invaded by an alien species from another planet, a species that is far superior to us in physical and mental capabilities. They decide to use us for their food, their leather, their religious sacrifices, their entertainment, etc.: all the things that we do to our less-evolved animal brethren on this planet. How would we face that day? We would be begging for mercy from them, pleading with them to see reason and logic, the very things that we refuse to grant to our own animals. How can we do to others what we would not like done to us?
Need of the Age
Five millennia have passed since the time of Abraham. Sacrificing animals might have been a socially acceptable practice then. But does it mean that it must be practiced in this day and age? The practice of performing animal sacrifices to atone our sins (never justifiable, in my opinion) was asked to be stopped by Jesus Christ, since he had come to this world to sacrifice his own life for our sins. Christians do not celebrate Abraham's deed with animal sacrifices today. Can other communities not follow their example? After all, Christ is as much a prophet to Muslims and Jews as to Christians, hence his message should be considered with as much sanctity.
Every society or civilization has its deformities. The remnants of casteism, sexism, class-distinctions are still very much with us. But does it mean that we do not try to shed these blemishes? Similarly, should we not rise above our discriminatory attitude towards the rest of the sentient world also, and include animals in our circle of compassion? We should stop considering them commodities for us to treat as we like, to butcher them for our taste, to sacrifice them for our religious ends, to hunt them for our pleasure. Let us strive to constantly live up to the adjective for kindness that is named after our species: humane.
Excerpt from: BOOK 1: GENESIS
22:03 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place which God had told him.
22:04 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.
22:06 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.
22:08 And Abraham said, My son. God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
22:13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a ticket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son |
kākāpō – a strange Night Parrot
Voiced by Amazon Polly
New Zealand’s islands are home to a plethora of weird and wonderful animals, but perhaps none are as weird and wonderful as the kākāpō. The giant flightless parrot exists on only a handful of offshore islands in New Zealand where it is safe from the new predators which are currently roaming New Zealand’s mainland. There numbers are so low that each and every existing individual has been given a name.
The kākāpō is a large, nocturnal, lek-breeding, flightless parrot, a rare oddity. It is also critically endangered and is the focus of considerable attention to conservation. Once it was common throughout the forests of New Zealand before humans arrived, but it was brought to the brink of extinction(as low as 50 birds in mid 1990s), by predation of introduced mammals from outside world. But a steady increase in numbers has resulted by the transfer of the entire population to predator-free islands and intensive intervention at every stage of their lives. kākāpō is truly unique and have no close relatives.
Shane McInnes’ award-winning photo of Sinbad – the kākāpō.
Source: Department of Conservation (NZ)
Taxonomy and Naming
The common English name “kakapo” comes from the Māori “kākāpō”, kākā (“parrot”) + pō (“night”) meaning Night Parrot. The name is both singular and plural.
Scientific Name:Strigops habroptilus Introduced by G.R. Gray, in 1845.
Order: Psittaciformes.
Family: Strigopidae.
New Zealand status: Endemic.
Conservation status: Nationally Critical.
Other names: kākāpo, owl-parrot, tarapo, tarepo, night parrot.
Geographical variation: Nil (Only found in New Zealand’s Islands).
Found in: Codfish Island/Whenua Hou, Anchor Island and Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island.
Threats: Human induced Predators, disease, genetic inbreeding, infertility.
Population: A total of 213 birds is alive as of Nov 2019. All carry radio transmitters and are intensively monitored and managed.
LifeSpan: Approx 90 Yrs plus.
kākāpō has finely blotched yellow-green plumage, a distinct facial disc, a large gray beak, short legs, large feet, and relatively short wings and tail. It is not just the only flightless parrot in the world, but also the herbivorous, visibly sexually dimorphic in body size, has a low basal metabolic rate with no male parental care, and is the only parrot with a polygynous lek breeding system. It may also be one of the longest-living birds in the world.
Although a member of the family Psittacidae, kākāpō are unique in many ways. kākāpō are solitary, nocturnal and flightless. They are quiet, slow moving and usually asleep in a tree during the day. Their mossy colors make ideal camouflage. It is believed they evolved with no ground predators and only a few extinct birds of prey. Their coloration and tendency to remain motionless during the day supports this theory. When the sun goes down kākāpō demonstrate how well adapted they are for darkness. They can charge through bush with precision. They are keenly sensitive to sound and in many ways transform into an agile creature when night falls. It is clear night-time is when a kākāpō is at its best.
Source: Department of Conservation (NZ).
kākāpō is also the heaviest parrot. Typically, females weigh between 1100 grams and 2000 grams anywhere. Males can weigh up to 1600 grams and in the breeding season they can weigh up to 4000 grams. The wings are not used to fly, and when climbing down to forage, the large bird still falls to the ground without grace. Although their wing feathers are distributed similarly to other parrots, they are shorter, comparatively rounded, show less asymmetry of vanes, and have fewer interlocking barbules at their tips.
Kaka and kea are the only species with which kākāpō may be confused, but they can be easily distinguished by their moss green colour, large size, flightlessness and nocturnal habit. It is also very unlikely that any kākāpō exists other than at a few managed sites, so there is very little chance of misidentification.
Kākāpō are solo hikers with big voices and a tendency to freeze when threatened.
Personality & Behaviours
Every kākāpō has a personality of its own. They are ranged from friendly to grumpy or completely aloof. Some are playful and cheeky, some are explorers, and some are insatiable lovers of food. Kākāpō are lonely creatures, although new evidence shows that they are not as lonely as they once thought. In small groups of two to four, females and young birds are occasionally found together, playing or hanging out in the same tree, or gathering near a food hopper. Neighbors with occasionally loud’ skrarks’ use to keep in touch with each other.
kākāpō Chick .
Image: Dianne Mason, Source: Department of Conservation (NZ)
Adult males and females meet only to breed, and the females raise their chicks alone. During the day, kākāpō sleep in ground or tree-top roosts. At night, they forage for food. kākāpō do everything slowly, including walking. Kākāpō evolved without the presence and effect of mammals. They gained weight and lost their flying ability. Now, their wings are used for balance and more graceful falls, but lighter females can manage short glides across gaps of 3–4 m.
They kept their head for heights though, using their strong claws to climb 20 m high rimu trees. They’re also excellent hikers, with large strong legs. They can walk several kilometres at a time, and turn on a fair burst of speed too.
Kākāpō freeze when they’re disturbed, relying on their mottled feathers to camouflage them. It’s an excellent defence against predators that rely on sight, such as the now-extinct Haast’s eagle and large Eyles harrier. Their nocturnal habits are also an adaptation to avoid flying daytime predators. But introduced mammalian predators such as cats and stoats use smell to hunt, and are active day and night. That’s what makes them such a threat to the distinctive-smelling flightless kākāpō.
Kākāpō have longer lifespan and don’t start breeding until they’re about five years old. They only breed when there is abundance of fruits on rimu trees called as rimu mast years which occurs in every two to four years.
Male kākāpō put on displays at fixed locations to attract female attention, and they don’t help to raise any offspring. It’s called lek breeding. No other New Zealand bird does it, and no other parrot species in the world is known to lek breed.
In breeding years, adult male kākāpō takes their display to the stage in about December. Each male finds a prominent ridge, rock or hilltop with low-growing vegetation for the better place to call from. Then he forms a track-and-bowl system. A network of tracks radiating from a shallow bowl-like depression in the earth.
The primary bowl usually has a clear area of ground around it and the neatly trimmed tracks connecting two or three additional bowls, but sometimes up to ten.
Settled in his bowl, the male inflates his thoracic air sac. Then he emits a deep, low-frequency ‘boom’ in every 1–2 seconds. Their booms can be heard 300–400 meter away on flat ground, or up to 5 km away in the mountains. After 20–30 booms he makes a high-pitched metallic ‘ching’. It helps any interested females to pinpoint his position. His serenade can last for eight hours without any break, every night for two or three months.
Males make a deep booming call known as (“booming”) and a loud wheezing call known as (“chinging”) to attract mates to their leks. Both sexes make a loud high pitched skraak call which is known as (“skraaking”).
Kākāpō Adult male ‘booming’ to attract females.
Kākāpō Adult male ‘chinging’ to attract females.
Kākāpō Adult female song.
Researchers are still not sure which qualities makes a male kākāpō more attractive. Some are clearly favorites and will attract many females, while others are not selected at all.
Females can travel long distances to mate with their preferred male or males, often walking past other males in the process.
During breeding season male kākāpō are intensely motivated to copulate. Male kākāpō will charge and mount female kākāpō , other species of birds and inanimate objects that appear in close proximity to the bowl. Once contact is made, the male will copulate for up to 90 minutes.
Nesting : Nest are made in good shelters. Hollow trees, or caves made by rocks and roots are among best place for nesting. Female kākāpō lays minimum one to maximum four eggs, slightly smaller than chicken eggs. The eggs hatches after about 30 days.
As a solo parent, the female must leave her nest unattended at night to find food. Normally Chicks fledge after about 10 weeks but the mother may keep feeding her chicks for up to six months.
Kākāpō are herbivorous and they only eat plants mostly fibrous plants. Their diet is diverse, including fruit from the tips of high rimu branches, juicy supplejack vines and orchid tubers grubbed out of the ground. Rimu fruits are their most loved food and When key food species are abundant, kākāpō will feed almost exclusively on them. And when there’s plentiful rimu fruit, a breeding season begins. Kākāpō often browse tough foliage by passing it through their bill from bottom to top, using their feet to pull it through. They chew and compress the foliage against the roof of their finely ridged upper mandible and suck out the nutrients. All that’s left is a fibrous ball hanging off the plant.
Since all kākāpō are being monitored they are also given supplementary foods to boost the kākāpō diet with specially-formulated pellets.
The supplementary food keeps the birds in good reproductive condition plus increases egg production in breeding seasons and help mothers feed their chicks when there’s a shortfall of rimu fruit.
Individual nicknamed Trevor feeding on poroporo fruits, Maud Island.
Source: Department of Conservation (NZ) .
Threats and conservation
Polynesian settlement: When the first Polynesian settlers Māori people arrived in New Zealand about 700 years ago, they found that kākāpō was an easy prey. They ate them as their food and made fluffy cloaks with their feathers. They used the dried heads as ear ornaments. The Polynesian dog and the rat came along with the Polynesians, who also preyed on kākāpō. By the time European settlers arrived in the early 1800s, kākāpō were confined to the central northern island and forested areas of the southern island.
European settlement: The kākāpō’s demise was accelerated through European settlement. A great deal of habitat was lost through forest clearance, and introduced possums and deers which depleted the remaining forests of their food. Devastating predators like cats, stoats and two more species of rat were also introduced during this period and Kākāpō were in serious trouble.
Adult kākāpō are vulnerable to predation by cats and stoats, while their eggs and chicks can be easily killed by rats. Since Females alone incubate eggs and raise chicks, they have to spend long periods away from the nest feeding. Due to this behaviour eggs and chicks becomes more vulnerable to predation. Due to longer chicks rearing , nests become smelly and it becomes easy for predators to find their chicks. kākāpō usually freeze and rely on enigmatic colouration to hide them from predators. Usually this strategy worked when the main predators were birds that hunted by sight but it became completely ineffective strategy for the mammalian predators that hunted by smell.
Early Conservation: The government of New Zealand started its first effort to save kākāpō in 1894. Richard Henry, a pioneer conservationist, led an attempt to move several hundred birds to the Fiordland predator-free Resolution Island. But the island did not remain free from predators and stoats arrived within six years, eventually destroying the population of kākāpō. The kākāpō were nearly extinct species by the mid-1900s. But few people noticed them, but no one took care of them actively. Only a few birds clung to life in New Zealand’s most isolated areas.
From 1949 to 1973, more than 60 expeditions were conducted by the newly formed New Zealand Wildlife Service, focusing mainly on Fiordland. Six kākāpō were captured, but they were all males, and within a few months of captivity, five out of six died. A new initiative was introduced in 1974, despite the fact that no birds remained. There were 18 more kākāpō found in Fiordland by 1977. However still there were no females. In 1977, in southern Rakiura (a large island free of stoats, ferrets and weasels) a large population of males was heard booming. There were about 200 males, and females were also present which later got confirmed in 1980.
Fall and Rise of kākāpō population over time
Attempts to protect kākāpō from introduced predators by transferring them to Resolution Island in the 1890s failed when stoats swam to the island. By the 1980s and 1990s transfers to completely predator-free Maud Island and to Hauturu and Whenua Hou Island which only had kiore(polynation rat), halted the kākāpō’s decline. However, the population did not start to increase and By 1995, although at least 12 chicks had been produced on the islands, only three had survived. The kākāpō population had slumped to 51 birds. Once kiore were removed from the islands and the birds were more intensively managed their population increased. Intensive management comprised moving the birds between islands, protecting nests from rats, supplementary feeding adults, closely monitoring eggs and chicks, and rescuing and hand-raising any failing chicks.
kākāpō has very poor genetic diversity and low fertility as a result. Many recent management of conservation has focused on managing matings and using artificial insemination to minimize further genetic loss. Currently, kākāpō is held on three islands (Whenua Hou, Anchor Island and Hauturu) in 2016, 32 chicks survived on all three islands.
The kākāpō population is a record high of 213 birds for the first time in over 70 years. Today there is probably more kākāpō alive than in the last 70 years at any time.
After a rimu mast year, the 2018/19 breeding season was the largest ever recorded following by unprecedented quantities of rimu fruit that kākāpō needs to successfully breed and hatch chicks on the main breeding islands.
The total population of kākāpō is currently 142 adults and 71 living chicks. All of these live on remote islands away from predators.
However, in late April, the first case of aspergillosis in the kākāpō population was detected. Since then 36 birds, or a fifth of their total numbers, have been sent to veterinary hospitals around the country for diagnosis and treatment.
Summary of Unique natural history and Behavior of the kākāpō.
• Nocturnal
• Flightless
• Solitary
• Long lived
• Heaviest Parrot
• Emit/detect odor
• Lekking species
• Males build tracks and bowls
• Males defend bowls
• Males boom and ching for mates
• Males have strong drive to copulate
• Copulate for long periods of time
• Females incubate and raise offspring alone
• High fiber low protein diet
• Specific food and amount required for raising offspring
• Skraak vocalization used under various circumstances
• Every known living ,kākāpō has been given a name
Sources :
Watch the video above for an introduction to the kākāpō from Sir David Attenborough.
Author: Rajesh Kumar
Enchanted by sound of ocean waves, and magic of sun rays I'm a DevOps engineer by profession and nature lover by heart. I love capturing wondrous moments from nature. I hope through my article I will be able to spread awareness for conserving our wildlife and controlling the rapidly changing climate. Together let's take a pledge and restore the pride of our magnificent mother nature.
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Period Poverty in Indonesia - It’s real and near to us
Written in collaboration with Biyung Indonesia
biyung period poverty indonesia
Menstruation is a very natural phase for those with a uterus to reproduce.
The need for a support system that supports these tasks should be guaranteed, similar to the need for necessities such as food, clothing and housing for each individual.
But the reality is quite the opposite. Referring to data on the Indonesian population groups based on expenditure levels (source: World Bank, January 2020):
Category Monthly Expenditure (IDR) Population %
Poor < 354,000 11%
Vulnerable 354,001 - 532,000 24%
Approaching Middle 532,001 - 1,200,000 44.5%
Middle 1,200,001 - 6,000,000 20%
Upper > 6,000,000 0.5%
Based on this data, only about 20.5% of individuals have the ability and opportunity to get access to healthy menstrual rights and reproductive health. This includes access to education about menstruation, what to prepare for menarche (first menstruation) until menopause; basic information and knowledge about women's bodies; and how to manage painful or difficult periods. This means that 80% of girls in Indonesia are vulnerable to being in Period Poverty.
What is Period Poverty?
Period Poverty is a situation where women have difficulty or lack access to obtain the right to healthy menstruation, sexual health and reproductive health. Period Poverty is very real and happens around us, it can be to our neighbors, our relatives, our friends, or even ourselves.
Have you ever noticed how the women around you go about their periods?
Women in poor families can only use one menstrual pad per day because they don't have the money to buy enough menstrual pads. With an average salary of under Rp. 2,000,000 – 3,000,000 per month, the following is an example of their monthly expenditure:
• Food: 3x / day, Rp. 50,000 x 30 days = Rp. 1,500,000
• Housing: Rp. 700,000
• Gasoline, phone, electricity: Rp. 500,000
• Household self-care needs (soap, shampoo, tea, sugar, coffee) = Rp. 500,000
• Pay a motorbike loan / installment, etc. = Rp. 200,000
Total: More than Rp. 3.000.000!
How about those who have children or need to support their families? How can they also ensure they can afford nutritious food during menstruation to support their reproductive health?
The following is a typical story of a girl from a poor family…
Many of them admitted that during menstruation they chose not to go to school because they do not have enough menstrual pads. They are afraid to ask their parents for money to buy menstrual pads, because they know that their parents don't have any money. Or even if they do have menstrual pads, they are scared that their menstruation will leak through their clothes and that they will be bullied by their schoolmates. There is a high number of bullying incidences in schools related to teasing girls whose menstruation seeped through their school uniforms. There was a girl who was dragged by her classmates out of class, ridiculed and shouted at by her friends to clean the class chair that was stained with blood.
Likewise, when girls are menstruating, often they are still forced to participate in flag ceremonies or sports activities, even though they need to rest due to menstrual cramps and aches. If a girl requests to opt out of participating in these ceremonies or sports activities, the teacher will not believe it and check the girl’s underwear for blood!
This is also one of the reasons why girls' achievement in school is typically lower and they are unable to progress in school, because the number of class absences is a factor in assessing class grades. The domino effect is that many girls from underprivileged families do not continue their education through high school, and become underage laborers, or are married off.
In relation to child marriage, in some areas in Indonesia (especially remote and inland areas), the custom or tradition still applies that when a girl experiences her first menstruation it is time for them to be married off. Many girls also said that when they had their first menstruation, they did not tell their parents for fear of being married off.
Period poverty can also be seen from the condition of sanitation and clean water infrastructure in public places, such as schools, markets, community service offices in sub-districts or villages, or in dense urban settlements and villages.
Many women have difficulty changing their menstrual pads because the toilets are dirty and there is no clean water, they are unable to change their pads in public.
The lack of understanding about products and the choice of menstrual products, especially disposable menstrual pads, has caused many women to experience reproductive health problems due to the use of expired sanitary napkins. Many orphanages and people with disabilities have also complained about how many orphanages depend on receiving assistance with single-use product donations for their female residents. Many orphanages have difficulty ensuring the reproductive health of their residents, and face difficulties in managing the waste of single-use sanitary napkins that often clog toilets and sewers.
And in the villages, there are still many women who throw their sanitary napkins into the river for fear of others knowing that they are menstruating. This is due to the negative stigma surrounding menstruation.
Period Poverty is caused by:
• Poverty
• Discrimination against women and vulnerable groups
• Stigma and taboo surrounding menstruation is still strong in society
• Minimal to no education and access to information about reproductive health rights
• Land conversion, environmental damage and pollution, which cause women to lose access to proper water and sanitation sources
• Lack of implementation of policy (there is a law but it isn’t implemented nor enforced)
The ultimate solution to end Period Poverty:
1. Education - Building awareness about the right to a healthy life and well-being for women and the preservation of planet earth
2. Advocacy - To encourage the improvement of the health and welfare system for women and families
3. Collaboration - Working together with various intersecting elements to take action
You are all invited to support Biyung's Perempuan Bantu Perempuan movement to STOP PERIOD POVERTY, for the good of women today, future generations and planet earth!
Nona December Giving Month for Biyung
This month, Nona is collecting donations for Biyung (@b.i.y.u.n.g) to fight against period poverty.
Biyung is a social organization focused on women's health and environmental sustainability. A portion of profits made from selling their batik cloth pads are used for women's empowerment advocacy and programs, including training in sewing cloth pads and providing them to vulnerable women in urban, rural areas and disabled girls in orphanages.
100% of the donations will go towards the pads' production and distribution. Our goal is to raise enough money for 1,250+ pads which can support 250 girls (5-6 pads/girl).
Happiness doesn’t come from what we receive, but from what we give. We hope you are as passionate about fighting period poverty as we are.
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Essay Example on Maya Angelou was an American poet Memoirist
Maya Angelou was an American poet memoirist and civil rights activist She published seven autobiographies three books of essays several books of poetry and was credited with a list of plays movies and television shows spanning over 50 years Fighting for one s freedom struggling towards being free is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done So you start all over again Angelou explains that It is not easy to get freedom you work so hard to get freedom each and every single day and it s always the same thing it s like starting off like if it s a new day not get any respect The idea of this quote is that we should have are freedom as debated in I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr speech Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi Memoir and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury novel Those who will disagree with will say that they think this world is perfect we have freedom are liberty are independents It s understandable that freedom is been talked up between the years even up today and it is clearly important that freedom is really desire in this world because people are standing up for what they believe in standing up for what s right and standing up against censorship 1 Most notably Martin Luther King MLK was standing up for what he believed in and that was for his and everyone s freedom He want to change the world to make it into a better place we re nobody judge people by there skin color or how anyone looked like
According to MLK he thinks that freedom will bring us faith and with faith we can all come to together as one and me this world a better place and live as one with faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood King To MLK freedom means a lot than just a word They always been promised that they would get there freedom but never got it This quote means when they get there freedom they will get faith and rises up transform this world to be a big stronger happier and equal place we re you can be anyone and not get judge This is important because just one word can bring the people together as one to make the world better and stronger as one we can accomplish more 2 3 Guy Montage is standing up against censorship of reading books He thinks why are we burning books and not reading them why are people throwing their life away just for books For this example you can assume that Montag is standing up against censorship that we should read books if there really that important if they make you want to die if there not in this world or even locked up in a tower texts states you know the law said Betty Where is your common sense None of these books agree with each other You ve been locked up here for years with the burglar demand Tower of Babel Bradbury 35 and there must be something in books it's something you can't imagine him to make a woman stay in a burning house you don't stay for nothing Bradbury Montage thinks there is something wonderful that none of us can even imagine there has to be something in those books Why would a lady die in her house for books Montage is very tempting to read a book he wants to know why they're so important
The most notable thing about reading books that you can get more knowledge can find out the truth and not like the people in Fahrenheit 451 that listens to the government and there false statements On the other suggested people will say that this world already has freedom that this world is perfect and we don't have to change anything that we are equal How does the struggle for freedom manifest itself It prove it s self by people standing up for what they believe in and knowing if there going to get killed or not It can not be denied that there is still a struggle for freedom People dying for what they stand up for because they are not getting there freedom like MLK he was standing for what he believed and got shot just for standing up for what he believed in fighting for what's right not doing anything bad just standing up for the people There is still argue about if we have are freedom or not A lot of people say the people still don't have the freedom and other people say that we are good and perfect but there is still the question Do you think that we have are freedom
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For months, billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump has been making headlines and leading the polls as the frontrunner for the Republican party’s presidential nomination. While many frown upon Trump’s ideals and beliefs on the basis of his lack of “political correctness,” or plain-and-simple offensiveness, his campaign is in fact what American democracy needs.
After two terms of President Obama’s administration, Americans need to be reminded that anyone can, in fact, run for president. Some might believe this isn’t a good idea, but Trump’s campaign is reminding people that the door is open to any citizen who wants to seek the highest office in the land. With that being said, obviously this does not mean that anyone who runs should actually be the president. Although many revile Trump for his insensitive and ignorant comments, he is not exactly a unique phenomenon in American political history.
America has been producing political, or quasi-political, figures like Donald Trump for centuries. Many compare him to Pat Buchanan, an “outsider” who sought the presidency in the 1990s. Like Buchanan, Trump has declared a “culture war” on foreigners, and this message resonates with many people in America, indicating that there are some people in the electorate who think like Trump, and hold similar ideals.
Whether others agree with these “outsider’s” ideals or not is far less important than recognizing what Trump’s candidacy represents. Many people who agree with Trump feel like they’re finally being heard, and believe that America would be a better place if certain things were to be changed.
But perhaps Trump has given a sense of hope to us, the people other than his bigoted followers. He’s helped the general population become more aware of a group of people in the American electorate with backward-looking values when it comes to race, gender, and economics, as well as the ways they make life difficult for others. Trump’s candidacy, and his supporters allow us to weed out the Facebook- and real life-friends to stay away from. |
Weekly Writing Memo: Writing Truth
Weekly Writing MemoOne of the things that is distinct about great writing is that it delivers a truth. This doesn’t mean the narrator or characters have to tell the truth, but it does mean that the writing has to be true to the story. Even if your characters or narrators are liars, their actions and their words have to be true to who they are. There are three main ways stories tell the truth:
Truth of Story
For a story to read realistic, it has to stay true to itself unless the writer has a very big reason to write it another way. However the events of your story happen, they have to be the true way they would happen and not forced for the writer’s preference. For example, in the Harry Potter novels, people had to die whether JK Rowling liked it or not. If she let everyone survive through all of the conflict within the novels she would be lying to her audience for the sake of a happy ending. In wars, people die, and without that death the story is a lie.
Whatever type of story you are writing, you have to stay true to the type of story. People die, couples break up, families are torn apart, and bad things happen. You can’t protect your characters and your audience by lying to them. If you do, the story will lose its depth and worth, and the audience will know it.
Truth of Character
Characters in stories have to stay true to who they are. If they behave out of character for the sake of progressing the plot, then the character will often lose the audience. The audience is not dumb and they know when the writer is manipulating a character for the sake of the plot. You can’t force your characters to go where you want them to. Every action has to be justified by your characters motivations. By staying true to your characters, you are strengthening your plot and your story, and your audience will buy into your story more.
Big Truths
Finally, every story has a big truth to it. In Harry Potter the truth was that people die, good has to make sacrifices to defeat evil, and that evil can be an alluring force that turns good people bad. I’m sure there are others, but these are some of the big truths and themes that the Harry Potter stories bring out in their telling. So what are your story’s truths? What is your story saying about the world? Whatever it is, make sure it is truth and not wishful thinking or a fairytale unless you are doing it deliberately.
A lot of children’s stories will have morals that aren’t always true, such as “good always triumphs.” These kinds of stories when given to adult audiences don’t work as well because adults generally know that they aren’t true for how the world works. By telling the truth about the world to your audience, you are creating a story with more depth. Of course, what is true for some is not true for all, but write the truth the best you can.
The purpose of all this is to say that you can’t lie to your audience. Your audience is buying into your story, and if you lie to them they will know and they will almost always be disappointed. You can have characters and narrators that lie, but you the writer cannot lie. Whatever you do, do it with purpose, and with truth, and if you do that, your story will be the better for it.
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In this training, “The Truth About Stress.”
Our life manifests with different passions of love. We have a deep-seated need to be around each other, connected, and supported.
In this training were going to look at stress. We all have heard that stress is bad. But did you know without stress, your brain wouldn’t function properly, your heart wouldn’t pump blood, without stress we would die. You see, it’s the type of stress and how you perceive it that matters.
I discuss:
• The type of stress matters most
• The principle of allostasis
• Acute Versus Chronic Stress
Show Transcript:
Frustrating isn’t it? What are we suppose to believe?
Stress: Foe or Friend?
The body is always striving to optimize balance, and that fact becomes apparent when we observe how the brain coordinates every cell, organ, system, and the entire organism as a whole. Our bodies are ultimately working to attain homeostasis, a stable internal environment in which the cells can function efficiently. It means balance, or stability, like a teeter totter while playing at the playground; the term is slightly misleading because it implies a static state.
In this training were going to look at stress. We all have heard that stress is bad. But did you know without stress, your brain wouldn’t function properly, your heart wouldn’t pump blood, without stress we would die. You see, it’s the type of stress and how you perceive it that matters. And that leads me to Dynamism Biohack: Stress Foe or Friend.
You never really achieve a static state while trying to stay balanced on a teeter-totter, it is dynamic and always in motion. Likewise, our biology never actually “achieves homeostasis” and then you are done trying, the way you might have quit that teeter totter. Rather, each second, our bodies are making physiological adjustments at the microcellular level, and behavioral changes at the macrocellular level, to keep us functioning during the constantly changing circumstances in our environment that we call life.
The term allostasis more accurately describes the ongoing microcellular and macrocellular changes due to our stress response. Allostasis is also known as the physiological and behavioral processes that the body undergoes to restore stability or dynamic equilibrium.
I love to use an analogy. I was a competitive swimmer for many years growing up, so bear with me on this one. Imagine you are a dude wearing swim trunks at the deep end of a swimming pool. All of a sudden, some kid swimming underwater adds weights to your pockets while you are trying to tread water. While you notice him doing this, you are drastically trying to tread water, so as to stay afloat and take out the rocks from your pockets. Every time you take one out, he keeps putting in more in place… What a jerk!
This dynamic struggle is very stressful to you, because you are in the deep end of a pool, trying not to drown. If you cannot keep up, that kid keeps putting rocks in your pocket, and you will drown. If you are lucky enough not to drown, the added weight, which is very stressful, is putting you into a sympathetic fight or flight response; that will eventually kill you if you do not get the weights out of your pocket.
Just like swimming in a deep end of the pool with rocks in your pocket, our bodies are always working in an intelligent way to maintain our body temperature, pH, oxygen levels, blood glucose, hormones, and so forth while we are undergoing a stressful state to ensure our survival. The stress response is a normal, natural physiological response. It never stops or rests; it continues in a dynamic way without us ever having to think about it. When that rock or a stressor is added to our pocket, it throws us off balance, and we experience stress.
If the rocks are left in our pockets, and we continue to choose to allow that kid to put more rocks in our swim trunks, our bodies make the highly intelligent decision to adapt to this new environment, good or bad. The point is that regardless of the stressor, the body turns on the same stress response. The important thing to understand is that our body reacts to all of these different stressors the same way each time, because of our ancient human stress response. It does not matter what the stressor is, or whether it is real or imagined; your body’s physiology is receiving its instructions from the same genetic code our ancestors received.
The physiological stress response does not create health; it does not heal. It merely allows short-term survival in the pathogenic environment. Essentially, it buys you time to get to a healthy environment— one that is less toxic and deficient; more pure and sufficient. Our toxic and deficient lifestyle choices are like rocks added to our pockets as we tread water. They slowly sink us and force our existence to be more challenging and stressful.
Whether you are stressed about your job or your exhausting relationship, or you are running for your life from a pack of wolves in the forest or frightened by a poisonous snake… your body is making the intelligent response, thus producing the same predictable “fight or flight” response by making the appropriate chemicals, hormones, and behaviors necessary for your survival each time you are “stressed out.”
Our stress response has been that way since the dawn of human existence. Yep, how our stress response works have been the same since the creation of Homo sapiens.
The stress response which is controlled by our central nervous system is the same today as it was millions of years ago. That is the problem; we are not wired to deal with present day stress with a DNA coded for primal living. Most people are aware that stress in our lives may eventually kill us. However, the fact of the matter remains, long-term stress lie at the root of many diseases, but it also keeps us alive and is necessary for our survival in short-term form. This is especially true if you need to run away from a roaring tiger in the middle of the jungle. The types of stressors human beings are exposed to have changed over time due to many environmental factors; the problem is, our stress response has essentially not changed at all.
Living, adapting and evolving inside each modern human is our Inner Aborigine, the nervous system of our ancient ancestors trying to cope with the stressors of modern day society.
And, although humans are primate animals, we are unique from other animals in that we have the ability to think through stressful thoughts, which elicits the same physiological response as if we were actually in physical danger.
Author and stress researcher Robert Sapolsky writes, “Viewed from the perspective of the evolution of the animal kingdom; sustained psychological stress is a recent invention, mostly limited to humans and other social primates.”
It is not always the stressor itself that becomes the problem, but rather our interpretation and reaction to the type of stressor which dictates a person’s response to it. It would be more accurate to say that, as Robert Sapolsky explains in his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, “chronic or repeated stressors can potentially make you sick or can increase your risk of being sick. Stressors, even if massive, repetitive, or chronic in nature, do not automatically lead to illness.”
Personality plays a huge role in all of this. For example, people with Type A personalities are more likely to develop heart disease, compared to other people who are more adept at shutting off their stress response, despite exposure to the same stressor.
So let me explain how this ACUTE VS CHRONIC STRESS relates to us today.
Our ancient ancestors were not exposed to the ongoing (chronic) stress that we modern humans face; therefore our genome does not know what to do with this. Our ancestors’ stress was short-lived (acute) and often involved escaping predators or winning a fight for dinner. Acute stress saves lives, actually. I recall a case from the 1990s, of a mom who used the surge of adrenaline to lift a car up off her child. Do you remember that story?
Our ancestors may have used this type of response after fighting off a bear with his bare hands or fighting off an infection caused by that bear. The release of adrenaline that we feel during acute stress episodes is a normal adaptive function of the central nervous system trying to protect itself from the real or perceived threats, so as to ensure survival. The characteristics of the stress response are demonstrated by the intensity and duration of the acute or chronic stress.
Chronic stress is most damaging to our physiology. In general, heart disease, obesity, stroke, infectious disease, anxiety disorders, depression, autoimmunity, ulcers and other GI issues, to name a few, are all considered “diseases of modern civilization” caused by chronic stress that we have never been exposed to in our evolution.
So I hear all this talk about EVOLUTION OF STRESSORS.
The truth is, when talking about the evolution of stress, we actually have none. There is no evolution of stress; it was and is the same response that our ancient ancestors had- it has not really evolved at all since ancient times.
What have evolved, however, are the deficient and toxic lifestyle choices and other types of environmental stressors that people are exposed to; toxins in the air, soil and heavy metals.
In that respect, this is the key to understanding why “stress kills.”
Our central nervous systems was designed to protect us from acute stressors that are relatively short in duration (30 minutes or less). The types of danger that our ancestors were exposed to is very much the same as the dangers that animals face living in the wild. Our ancestors had to hunt food, escape from predators, and defend their territory. Threats could be hiding behind every bush, and the human stress response was designed to respond to acute threats that were short-lived. They certainly did not drag out for days on end, like they do today.
Modern humans face mainly social, mental, chemical, physical, and synthetic environmental threats. Our primal stress response activates to these threats the same way that we did as our ancestors.
By the way, how does our nervous system detect something in our synthetic environment if it was never part of our ecosystem, in our history?
It is the psychological nature of stress that has changed between then and now like we have been discussing throughout this entire training. Your genes matter very little, don’t they, it’s the environment guys. More accurately, it’s the environmental toxicities and deficiencies that change our DNA and tun on the expression of bad genes; so to speak.
Our distant ancestors did not experience the ongoing chronic stress that we modern humans are subject to; that is the crux of our story.
Once the stress was gone, they returned to being relaxed, playing and socializing with one another. The primary difference is that our ancient ancestors did not sit around all day and worry about when the next threat was going to happen. Instead, our ancestors would have dealt with the stressors as they emerged; then, they moved on. And you already know the importance of movement, that movement is not exercise, it transcends and includes our exercise. We want to move every 20 – 30 minutes from 1 – 7 minutes in our daily life while we are awake. Period.
If you are a current patient in our office, thank you so much for your confidence in us. If you are not a patient, I certainly would love to meet you some day. Goto our website and also I just want to remind everyone that we got the same 24 hours in a day. I’m no busier than you are. but if your goal is to live a happier, healthier and fuller life, you’ve got to learn to manage your self, and that means managing your movement which drives your energy.
When we better manage our energy, were better able to be more present and enjoy our life, were better able to manage our five pillars of a dynamic health. You deserve a life that is peaceful, that is balanced, that is happy, where you have tons of good health.
The health that you need, the health that is on demand when you need it most. you see because health doesn’t come to you, it comes from you, it is a fruit that is grown and earned. and i know we all heard the genetic cliche, the blame it, name it, and tame it with a drug approach; but the truth is; the solution doesn’t lie with more drugs and surgeries; the solution lies with you. You know it’s not so much of a healthcare crisis as it is a self care crisis in our world today. Be more present in the moment, and you will have more energy, vibrancy, free from all that anxiety.
Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I love you, I love hearing from you, so don’t forget to reach out to me. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Do so, by whatever is your favorite social media platform. Send me a message their, let me know that you listened to this episode and what you thought of it and as always i appreciate in advance anyone who is kind enough to right a review. That is the ultimate gift, I appreciate you very much for that, I can’t wait to do this again next week. I now your getting so much value from this, and I am honored to do it for you. Im Dr. Matt Hammett reminding you to lighten up, move better, and live fuller until next dynamism biohack. |
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Microfinance programs provide loans to the world's poorest -- 70 percent of whom are women. I urge you to support programs that open up economic opportunity to women as a way to end poverty.
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Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford B. Hayes
President Rutherford Hayes 1870 - 1880 Restored.jpg
Portrait by Mathew Brady, c. 1870-1880
19th President of the United States
March 4, 1877 - March 4, 1881
William A. Wheeler
Ulysses S. Grant
James A. Garfield
29th and 32nd Governor of Ohio
January 10, 1876 - March 2, 1877
LieutenantThomas L. Young
William Allen
Thomas L. Young
January 13, 1868 - January 8, 1872
LieutenantJohn Calvin Lee
Jacob Dolson Cox
Edward Follansbee Noyes
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives
from Ohio's 2nd district
March 4, 1865 - July 20, 1867
Alexander Long
Samuel Fenton Cary
Personal details
Rutherford Birchard Hayes
(1822-10-04)October 4, 1822
Delaware, Ohio, U.S.
Fremont, Ohio, U.S.
Resting placeSpiegel Grove State Park
Political party
(m. 1852; died 1889)
Children8, including Webb C. Hayes and Rutherford P. Hayes
• Politician
• lawyer
SignatureCursive signature in ink
Military service
Allegiance United States
Branch/serviceUnion Army (USV)
Years of service1861-1865
Regiments23rd Ohio Infantry
CommandsKanawha Division
Crest of Rutherford B. Hayes.svg
Crest of Rutherford B. Hayes
Rutherford Birchard Hayes (; October 4, 1822 - January 17, 1893) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 19th president of the United States from 1877 to 1881, after serving in the U.S. House of Representatives and as governor of Ohio. Before the U.S. Civil War, Hayes was a lawyer and staunch abolitionist who defended refugee slaves in court proceedings. He served in the Union Army and the House of Representatives before assuming the presidency.[1] His presidency represents a turning point in U.S. history, as historians consider it the formal end of Reconstruction. By placating southern Democrats, Hayes ended all federal efforts to bring racial equality to the South.[2]
As an attorney in Ohio, Hayes served as Cincinnati's city solicitor from 1858 to 1861. At the start of the Civil War, he left a fledgling political career to join the Union Army as an officer. Hayes was wounded five times, most seriously at the Battle of South Mountain in 1862. He earned a reputation for bravery in combat and was promoted to brevet major general. After the war, he served in Congress from 1865 to 1867 as a Republican. Hayes left Congress to run for governor of Ohio and was elected to two consecutive terms, from 1868 to 1872. He served half of a third two-year term from 1876 to 1877 before his swearing-in as president.
In 1877, the Electoral College made Hayes president after the 1876 United States presidential election, one of the most contentious in U.S. history. He lost the popular vote to Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, but narrowly won an intensely disputed electoral-college vote after a Congressional commission awarded him 20 contested electoral votes in the Compromise of 1877. The election was resolved with a backroom deal whereby the Democrats acquiesced to Hayes's election on the single condition that he withdraw direct federal support for Reconstruction in the former Confederate states.
Hayes's presidency was influenced by his belief in meritocratic government and in equal treatment without regard to wealth, social standing, or race. One of the defining events of his presidency was the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, which he resolved by calling in the armed forces. It remains the deadliest conflict between workers and strikebreakers. As president, Hayes implemented modest civil-service reforms that laid the groundwork for further reform in the 1880s and 1890s. He vetoed the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which put silver money into circulation and raised nominal prices; Hayes saw the maintenance of the gold standard as essential to economic recovery. His policy toward western Indians anticipated the assimilationist program of the Dawes Act of 1887.
Hayes kept his pledge not to run for reelection, retired to his home in Ohio, and became an advocate of social and educational reform. Biographer Ari Hoogenboom has written that Hayes's greatest achievement was to restore popular faith in the presidency and to reverse the deterioration of executive power that had established itself after Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865. Supporters have praised his commitment to civil-service reform. His critics deride his leniency toward the former Confederate states and his withdrawal of federal support for African Americans' voting and civil rights.[3] Historians and scholars generally rank Hayes as an average to slightly below-average president.[4][5]
Family and early life
Childhood and family history
A two-story brick house
Hayes's childhood home in Delaware, Ohio
Rutherford Birchard Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on October 4, 1822, to Rutherford Hayes, Jr. and Sophia Birchard. Hayes's father, a Vermont storekeeper, had taken the family to Ohio in 1817. He died ten weeks before Rutherford's birth. Sophia took charge of the family, raising Hayes and his sister, Fanny, the only two of the four children to survive to adulthood.[6] She never remarried,[7] and Sophia's younger brother, Sardis Birchard, lived with the family for a time.[8] He was always close to Hayes and became a father figure to him, contributing to his early education.[9]
Through each of his parents, Hayes was descended from New England colonists.[10] His earliest immigrant ancestor came to Connecticut from Scotland in 1625.[11] Hayes's great-grandfather Ezekiel Hayes was a militia captain in Connecticut in the American Revolutionary War, but Ezekiel's son (Hayes's grandfather, also named Rutherford) left his Branford home during the war for the relative peace of Vermont.[12] His mother's ancestors migrated to Vermont at a similar time. Hayes wrote: "I have always thought of myself as Scotch, but of the fathers of my family who came to America about thirty were English and two only, Hayes and Rutherford, were of Scotch descent. This, on my father's side. On my mother's side, the whole thirty-two were probably all of other peoples beside the Scotch."[13] Most of his close relatives outside Ohio continued to live there. John Noyes, an uncle by marriage, had been his father's business partner in Vermont and was later elected to Congress.[14] His first cousin, Mary Jane Mead, was the mother of sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead and architect William Rutherford Mead.[14] John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida Community, was also a first cousin.[15]
Education and early law career
Hayes attended the common schools in Delaware, Ohio, and enrolled in 1836 at the Methodist Norwalk Seminary in Norwalk, Ohio.[16] He did well at Norwalk, and the next year transferred to the Webb School, a preparatory school in Middletown, Connecticut, where he studied Latin and Ancient Greek.[17] Returning to Ohio, he attended Kenyon College in Gambier in 1838.[18] He enjoyed his time at Kenyon, and was successful scholastically;[19] while there, he joined several student societies and became interested in Whig politics. His classmates included Stanley Matthews and John Celivergos Zachos.[20][21] He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and with highest honors in 1842 and addressed the class as its valedictorian.[22]
After briefly reading law in Columbus, Ohio, Hayes moved east to attend Harvard Law School in 1843.[23] Graduating with an LL.B, he was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1845 and opened his own law office in Lower Sandusky (now Fremont).[24] Business was slow at first, but he gradually attracted clients and also represented his uncle Sardis in real estate litigation.[25] In 1847 Hayes became ill with what his doctor thought was tuberculosis. Thinking a change in climate would help, he considered enlisting in the Mexican-American War, but on his doctor's advice instead visited family in New England.[26] Returning from there, Hayes and his uncle Sardis made a long journey to Texas, where Hayes visited with Guy M. Bryan, a Kenyon classmate and distant relative.[27] Business remained meager on his return to Lower Sandusky, and Hayes decided to move to Cincinnati.[28]
Cincinnati law practice and marriage
Black-and-white picture of a man and a moman
Rutherford and Lucy Hayes on their wedding day
Hayes moved to Cincinnati in 1850, and opened a law office with John W. Herron, a lawyer from Chillicothe.[29][a] Herron later joined a more established firm and Hayes formed a new partnership with William K. Rogers and Richard M. Corwine.[31] He found business better in Cincinnati, and enjoyed its social attractions, joining the Cincinnati Literary Society and the Odd Fellows Club.[32] He also attended the Episcopal Church in Cincinnati but did not become a member.[32]
Hayes courted his future wife, Lucy Webb, during his time there.[33] His mother had encouraged him to get to know Lucy years earlier, but Hayes had believed she was too young and focused his attention on other women.[34] Four years later, Hayes began to spend more time with Lucy. They became engaged in 1851 and married on December 30, 1852, at Lucy's mother's house.[33] Over the next five years, Lucy gave birth to three sons: Birchard Austin (1853), Webb Cook (1856), and Rutherford Platt (1858).[31] A Methodist, Lucy was a teetotaler and abolitionist. She influenced her husband's views on those issues, though he never formally joined her church.[35]
Hayes had begun his law practice dealing primarily with commercial issues but won greater prominence in Cincinnati as a criminal defense attorney,[36] defending several people accused of murder.[37] In one case, he used a form of the insanity defense that saved the accused from the gallows; she was instead confined to a mental institution.[38] Hayes also defended slaves who had escaped and been accused under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.[39] As Cincinnati was just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slave state, it was a destination for escaping slaves and many such cases were tried in its courts. A staunch abolitionist, Hayes found his work on behalf of fugitive slaves personally gratifying as well as politically useful, as it raised his profile in the newly formed Republican Party.[40]
His political reputation rose with his professional plaudits. Hayes declined a Republican nomination for a judgeship in 1856.[41] Two years later, some Republicans proposed Hayes to fill a vacancy on the bench and he considered accepting the appointment until the office of city solicitor also became vacant.[42] The city council elected Hayes city solicitor to fill the vacancy, and voters elected him to a full two-year term in April 1859 with a larger majority than other Republicans on the ticket.[43]
Civil War
A bearded man in a 19th-century army uniform
Hayes in Civil War uniform in 1861
West Virginia and South Mountain
As the Southern states quickly began to secede after Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860, Hayes was lukewarm about civil war to restore the Union. Considering that the two sides might be irreconcilable, he suggested that the Union "[l]et them go."[44] Though Ohio had voted for Lincoln in 1860, Cincinnati voters turned against the Republican party after secession. Its residents included many from the South, and they voted for the Democrats and Know-Nothings, who combined to sweep the city elections in April 1861, ejecting Hayes from the city solicitor's office.[45]
Returning to private practice, Hayes formed a very brief law partnership with Leopold Markbreit, lasting three days before the war began.[45] After the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, Hayes resolved his doubts and joined a volunteer company composed of his Literary Society friends.[46] That June, Governor William Dennison appointed several of the officers of the volunteer company to positions in the 23rd Regiment of Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Hayes was promoted to major, and his friend and college classmate Stanley Matthews was appointed lieutenant colonel.[47] Joining the regiment as a private was another future president, William McKinley.[47]
After a month of training, Hayes and the 23rd Ohio set out for western Virginia in July 1861 as a part of the Kanawha Division.[48] They did not meet the enemy until September, when the regiment encountered Confederates at Carnifex Ferry in present-day West Virginia and drove them back.[49] In November, Hayes was promoted to lieutenant colonel (Matthews having been promoted to colonel of another regiment) and led his troops deeper into western Virginia, where they entered winter quarters.[50] The division resumed its advance the following spring, and Hayes led several raids against the rebel forces, on one of which he sustained a minor injury to his knee.[51] That September, Hayes's regiment was called east to reinforce General John Pope's Army of Virginia at the Second Battle of Bull Run.[52] Hayes and his troops did not arrive in time for the battle, but joined the Army of the Potomac as it hurried north to cut off Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which was advancing into Maryland.[52] Marching north, the 23rd was the lead regiment encountering the Confederates at the Battle of South Mountain on September 14.[53] Hayes led a charge against an entrenched position and was shot through his left arm, fracturing the bone.[54] He had one of his men tie a handkerchief above the wound in an effort to stop the bleeding, and continued to lead his men in the battle. While resting, he ordered his men to meet a flanking attack, but instead his entire command moved backward, leaving Hayes lying in between the lines.
Eventually, his men brought Hayes back behind their lines, and he was taken to hospital. The regiment continued on to Antietam, but Hayes was out of action for the rest of the campaign.[55] In October, he was promoted to colonel and assigned to command of the first brigade of the Kanawha Division as a brevet brigadier general.[56]
Army of the Shenandoah
George Crook was Hayes's commander and the namesake of his fourth son
The division spent the following winter and spring near Charleston, Virginia (present-day West Virginia), out of contact with the enemy.[57] Hayes saw little action until July 1863, when the division skirmished with John Hunt Morgan's cavalry at the Battle of Buffington Island.[58] Returning to Charleston for the rest of the summer, Hayes spent the fall encouraging the men of the 23rd Ohio to reenlist, and many did.[59] In 1864, the Army command structure in West Virginia was reorganized, and Hayes's division was assigned to George Crook's Army of West Virginia.[59] Advancing into southwestern Virginia, they destroyed Confederate salt and lead mines there.[60] On May 9, they engaged Confederate troops at Cloyd's Mountain, where Hayes and his men charged the enemy entrenchments and drove the rebels from the field.[60] Following the rout, the Union forces destroyed Confederate supplies and again successfully skirmished with the enemy.[60]
Hayes and his brigade moved to the Shenandoah Valley for the Valley Campaigns of 1864. Crook's corps was attached to Major General David Hunter's Army of the Shenandoah and soon back in contact with Confederate forces, capturing Lexington, Virginia on June 11.[61] They continued south toward Lynchburg, tearing up railroad track as they advanced,[61] but Hunter believed the troops at Lynchburg were too powerful, and Hayes and his brigade returned to West Virginia.[61] Hayes thought Hunter lacked aggression, writing in a letter home that "General Crook would have taken Lynchburg."[61] Before the army could make another attempt, Confederate General Jubal Early's raid into Maryland forced their recall to the north. Early's army surprised them at Kernstown on July 24, where Hayes was slightly wounded by a bullet to the shoulder.[62] He also had a horse shot out from under him, and the army was defeated.[62] Retreating to Maryland, the army was reorganized again, with Major General Philip Sheridan replacing Hunter.[63] By August, Early was retreating up the valley, with Sheridan in pursuit. Hayes's troops fended off a Confederate assault at Berryville and advanced to Opequon Creek, where they broke the enemy lines and pursued them farther south.[64] They followed up the victory with another at Fisher's Hill on September 22, and one more at Cedar Creek on October 19.[65] At Cedar Creek, Hayes sprained his ankle after being thrown from a horse and was struck in the head by a spent round, which did not cause serious damage.[65] His leadership and bravery drew his superiors' attention, with Ulysses S. Grant later writing of Hayes, "[h]is conduct on the field was marked by conspicuous gallantry as well as the display of qualities of a higher order than that of mere personal daring."[66]
Cedar Creek marked the end of the campaign. Hayes was promoted to brigadier general in October 1864 and brevetted major general.[67] Around this time, Hayes learned of the birth of his fourth son, George Crook Hayes. The army went into winter quarters once more, and in spring 1865 the war quickly came to a close with Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. Hayes visited Washington, D.C. that May and observed the Grand Review of the Armies, after which he and the 23rd Ohio returned to their home state to be mustered out of the service.[68]
Post-war politics
U.S. Representative from Ohio
A photograph of a man in a black suit
President Andrew Johnson and Republicans fought over Reconstruction
While serving in the Army of the Shenandoah in 1864, Hayes was nominated by Republicans for the House of Representatives from Ohio's 2nd congressional district.[69] Asked by friends in Cincinnati to leave the army to campaign, he refused, saying that an "officer fit for duty who at this crisis would abandon his post to electioneer for a seat in Congress ought to be scalped."[69] Instead, Hayes wrote several letters to the voters explaining his political positions and was elected by a 2,400-vote majority over the incumbent, Democrat Alexander Long.[69]
When the 39th Congress assembled in December 1865, Hayes was sworn in as a part of a large Republican majority. Hayes identified with the party's moderate wing, but was willing to vote with the radicals for the sake of party unity.[70] The major legislative effort of the Congress was the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, for which Hayes voted and which passed both houses of Congress in June 1866.[71] Hayes's beliefs were in line with his fellow Republicans on Reconstruction issues: that the South should be restored to the Union, but not without adequate protections for freedmen and other black southerners.[72] President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded to office following Lincoln's assassination, to the contrary wanted to readmit the seceded states quickly without first ensuring that they adopted laws protecting the newly freed slaves' civil rights; he also granted pardons to many of the leading former Confederates.[72] Hayes, along with congressional Republicans, disagreed. They worked to reject Johnson's vision of Reconstruction and to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866.[73]
Reelected in 1866, Hayes returned to the lame-duck session to vote for the Tenure of Office Act, which ensured that Johnson could not remove administration officials without the Senate's consent.[74] He also unsuccessfully pressed for a civil service reform bill that attracted the votes of many reform-minded Republicans.[75] Hayes continued to vote with the majority in the 40th Congress on the Reconstruction Acts, but resigned in July 1867 to run for governor of Ohio.[76]
Governor of Ohio
A popular Congressman and former Army officer, Hayes was considered by Ohio Republicans to be an excellent standard-bearer for the 1867 election campaign.[77] His political views were more moderate than the Republican party's platform, although he agreed with the proposed amendment to the Ohio state constitution that would guarantee suffrage to black male Ohioans.[77] Hayes's opponent, Allen G. Thurman, made the proposed amendment the centerpiece of the campaign and opposed black suffrage. Both men campaigned vigorously, making speeches across the state, mostly focusing on the suffrage question.[77] The election was mostly a disappointment to Republicans, as the amendment failed to pass and Democrats gained a majority in the state legislature.[78] Hayes thought at first that he, too, had lost, but the final tally showed that he had won the election by 2,983 votes of 484,603 votes cast.[78]
As a Republican governor with a Democratic legislature, Hayes had a limited role in governing, especially since Ohio's governor had no veto power. Despite these constraints, he oversaw the establishment of a school for deaf-mutes and a reform school for girls.[79] He endorsed the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson and urged his conviction, which failed by one vote in the United States Senate.[80] Nominated for a second term in 1869, Hayes campaigned again for equal rights for black Ohioans and sought to associate his Democratic opponent, George H. Pendleton, with disunion and Confederate sympathies.[81] Hayes was reelected with an increased majority, and the Republicans took the legislature, ensuring Ohio's ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guaranteed black (male) suffrage.[81] With a Republican legislature, Hayes's second term was more enjoyable. Suffrage was expanded and a state Agricultural and Mechanical College (later to become The Ohio State University) established.[82] He also proposed a reduction in state taxes and reform of the state prison system.[83] Choosing not to seek reelection, Hayes looked forward to retiring from politics in 1872.[84]
Private life and return to politics
A large brick house surrounded by trees
Hayes's home, Spiegel Grove, in Fremont, Ohio
As Hayes prepared to leave office, several delegations of reform-minded Republicans urged him to run for United States Senate against the incumbent Republican, John Sherman.[84] Hayes declined, preferring to preserve party unity and retire to private life.[84] He especially looked forward to spending time with his children, two of whom (daughter Fanny and son Scott) had been born in the past five years.[85][b] Initially, Hayes tried to promote railway extensions to his hometown, Fremont. He also managed some real estate he had acquired in Duluth, Minnesota.[87] Not entirely removed from politics, Hayes held out some hope of a cabinet appointment, but was disappointed to receive only an appointment as assistant U.S. treasurer at Cincinnati, which he turned down.[88] He agreed to be nominated for his old House seat in 1872 but was not disappointed when he lost the election to Henry B. Banning, a fellow Kenyon College alumnus.[89]
In 1873, Lucy gave birth to another son, Manning Force Hayes.[90][c] That same year, the Panic of 1873 hurt business prospects across the nation, including Hayes's. His uncle Sardis Birchard died that year, and the Hayes family moved into Spiegel Grove, the grand house Birchard had built with them in mind.[92] That year Hayes announced his uncle's bequest of $50,000 in assets to endow a public library for Fremont, to be called the Birchard Library. It opened in 1874 on Front Street, and a new building was completed and opened in 1878 in Fort Stephenson State Park. (This site was per the terms of the bequest.) Hayes served as chairman of the library's board of trustees until his death.[93]
Hayes hoped to stay out of politics in order to pay off the debts he had incurred during the Panic, but when the Republican state convention nominated him for governor in 1875, he accepted.[94] His campaign against Democratic nominee William Allen focused primarily on Protestant fears about the possibility of state aid to Catholic schools.[95] Hayes was against such funding and, while not known to be personally anti-Catholic, he allowed anti-Catholic fervor to contribute to the enthusiasm for his candidacy.[95] The campaign was a success, and on October 12, 1875 Hayes was returned to the governorship by a 5,544-vote majority.[95] The first person to earn a third term as governor of Ohio, Hayes reduced the state debt, reestablished the Board of Charities, and repealed the Geghan Bill, which had allowed for the appointment of Catholic priests to schools and penitentiaries.[96]
Election of 1876
Republican nomination and campaign against Tilden
Original Currier & Ives campaign poster depicting the Hayes-Wheeler ticket, the last and rarest in the firm's "Grand National Banner" series
Hayes's success in Ohio immediately elevated him to the top ranks of Republican politicians under consideration for the presidency in 1876.[97] The Ohio delegation to the 1876 Republican National Convention was united behind him, and Senator John Sherman did all in his power to get Hayes the nomination.[98] In June 1876, the convention assembled with James G. Blaine of Maine as the favorite.[99] Blaine started with a significant lead in the delegate count, but could not muster a majority. As he failed to gain votes, the delegates looked elsewhere for a nominee and settled on Hayes on the seventh ballot.[100] The convention selected Representative William A. Wheeler from New York for vice president, a man about whom Hayes had recently asked, "I am ashamed to say: who is Wheeler?"[101]
The Democratic nominee was Samuel J. Tilden, the governor of New York. Tilden was considered a formidable adversary who, like Hayes, had a reputation for honesty.[102] Also like Hayes, Tilden was a hard-money man and supported civil service reform.[102] In accordance with the custom of the time, the campaign was conducted by surrogates, with Hayes and Tilden remaining in their respective hometowns.[103] The poor economic conditions made the party in power unpopular and made Hayes suspect he would lose the election.[104] Both candidates concentrated on the swing states of New York and Indiana, as well as the three southern states--Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida--where Reconstruction Republican governments still barely ruled, amid recurring political violence, including widespread efforts to suppress freedman voting.[105] The Republicans emphasized the danger of letting Democrats run the nation so soon after southern Democrats had provoked the Civil War and, to a lesser extent, the danger a Democratic administration would pose to the recently won civil rights of southern blacks.[106] Democrats, for their part, trumpeted Tilden's record of reform and contrasted it with the corruption of the incumbent Grant administration.[107]
As the returns were tallied on election day, it was clear that the race was close: Democrats had carried most of the South, as well as New York, Indiana, Connecticut, and New Jersey.[108] In the Northeast, an increasing number of immigrants and their descendants voted Democratic. Although Tilden won the popular vote and claimed 184 electoral votes, Republican leaders challenged the results and charged Democrats with fraud and voter suppression of blacks (who would otherwise have voted Republican) in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina.[109] Republicans realized that if they held the three disputed unredeemed southern states together with some of the western states, they would emerge with an electoral college majority.[110]
Disputed electoral votes
On November 11, three days after election day, Tilden appeared to have won 184 electoral votes, one short of a majority.[111] Hayes appeared to have 166, with the 19 votes of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina still in doubt.[111] Republicans and Democrats each claimed victory in the three latter states, but the results in those states were rendered uncertain because of fraud by both parties.[112] To further complicate matters, one of the three electors from Oregon (a state Hayes had won) was disqualified, reducing Hayes's total to 165, and raising the disputed votes to 20. [113][d] If Hayes was not awarded all 20 disputed votes, Tilden would be elected president.
A map of the United States showing electoral results in 1876
There was considerable debate about which person or house of Congress was authorized to decide between the competing slates of electors, with the Republican Senate and the Democratic House each claiming priority.[115] By January 1877, with the question still unresolved, Congress and President Grant agreed to submit the matter to a bipartisan Electoral Commission, which would be authorized to determine the fate of the disputed electoral votes.[116] The Commission was to be made up of five representatives, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices.[117] To ensure partisan balance, there would be seven Democrats and seven Republicans, with Justice David Davis, an independent respected by both parties, as the 15th member.[117] The balance was upset when Democrats in the Illinois legislature elected Davis to the Senate, hoping to sway his vote.[118] Davis disappointed Democrats by refusing to serve on the Commission because of his election to the Senate.[118] As all the remaining Justices were Republicans, Justice Joseph P. Bradley, believed to be the most independent-minded of them, was selected to take Davis's place on the Commission.[119] The Commission met in February and the eight Republicans voted to award all 20 electoral votes to Hayes.[120] Democrats, outraged by the result, attempted a filibuster to prevent Congress from accepting the Commission's findings.[121] Eventually, the filibusterers gave up, allowing the House to reject the objection in the early hours of March 2. The House and Senate then reassembled to complete the count of the electoral votes. At 4:10 am on March 2, Senator Thomas Ferry announced that Hayes and Wheeler had been elected to the presidency and vice presidency, by an electoral margin of 185-184.[122]
As inauguration day neared, Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders met at Wormley's Hotel in Washington to negotiate a compromise. Republicans promised concessions in exchange for Democratic acquiescence to the Committee's decision. The main concession Hayes promised was the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and an acceptance of the election of Democratic governments in the remaining "unredeemed" southern states.[123] The Democrats agreed, and on March 2, the filibuster was ended. Hayes was elected, but Reconstruction was finished, and freedmen were left at the mercy of white Democrats who did not intend to preserve their rights.[124] On April 3, Hayes ordered Secretary of War George W. McCrary to withdraw federal troops stationed at the South Carolina State House to their barracks. On April 20, he ordered McCrary to send the federal troops stationed at New Orleans's St. Louis Hotel to Jackson Barracks.[125]
Presidency (1877-1881)
A large crowd of people outside the United States Capitol building
Because March 4, 1877, was a Sunday, Hayes took the oath of office privately on Saturday, March 3, in the Red Room of the White House, the first president to do so in the Executive Mansion. He took the oath publicly on March 5 on the East Portico of the United States Capitol.[126] In his inaugural address, Hayes attempted to soothe the passions of the past few months, saying that "he serves his party best who serves his country best".[127] He pledged to support "wise, honest, and peaceful local self-government" in the South, as well as reform of the civil service and a full return to the gold standard.[128] Despite his message of conciliation, many Democrats never considered Hayes's election legitimate and referred to him as "Rutherfraud" or "His Fraudulency" for the next four years.[129]
The South and the end of Reconstruction
Hayes had firmly supported Republican Reconstruction policies throughout his career, but the first major act of his presidency was an end to Reconstruction and the return of the South to "home rule".[130] Even without the conditions of the Wormley's Hotel agreement, Hayes would have been hard-pressed to continue his predecessors' policies. The House of Representatives in the 45th Congress was controlled by a majority of Democrats, and they refused to appropriate enough funds for the army to continue to garrison the South.[131] Even among Republicans, devotion to continued military Reconstruction was fading in the face of persistent Southern insurgency and violence.[132] Only two states were still under Reconstruction's sway when Hayes assumed the presidency and, without troops to enforce the voting rights laws, these soon fell to Democratic control.[133][e]
Hayes's later attempts to protect the rights of southern blacks were ineffective, as were his attempts to rebuild Republican strength in the South.[135] He did, however, defeat Congress's efforts to curtail federal power to monitor federal elections.[136] Democrats in Congress passed an army appropriation bill in 1879 with a rider that repealed the Enforcement Acts, which had been used to suppress the Ku Klux Klan. Chapters had flourished across the South and it had been one of the insurgent groups that attacked and suppressed freedmen.[136] Those Acts, passed during Reconstruction, made it a crime to prevent someone from voting because of his race. Other paramilitary groups, such as the Red Shirts in the Carolinas, however, had intimidated freedmen and suppressed the vote. Hayes was determined to preserve the law protecting black voters, and vetoed the appropriation.[136]
The Democrats did not have enough votes to override the veto, but they passed a new bill with the same rider. Hayes vetoed that bill too, and the process was repeated three times more.[136] Finally, Hayes signed an appropriation without the offensive rider, but Congress refused to pass another bill to fund federal marshals, who were vital to the enforcement of the Enforcement Acts.[136] The election laws remained in effect, but the funds to enforce them were curtailed for the time being.[137]
Hayes tried to reconcile the social mores of the South with the recently passed civil rights laws by distributing patronage among southern Democrats. "My task was to wipe out the color line, to abolish sectionalism, to end the war and bring peace," he wrote in his diary. "To do this, I was ready to resort to unusual measures and to risk my own standing and reputation within my party and the country."[138] All his efforts were in vain; Hayes failed to persuade the South to accept legal racial equality or to convince Congress to appropriate funds to enforce the civil rights laws.[139]
Civil service reform
Hayes took office determined to reform the system of civil service appointments, which had been based on the spoils system since Andrew Jackson's presidency.[140][f] Instead of giving federal jobs to political supporters, Hayes wished to award them by merit according to an examination that all applicants would take.[142] Hayes's call for reform immediately brought him into conflict with the Stalwart, or pro-spoils, branch of the Republican party. Senators of both parties were accustomed to being consulted about political appointments and turned against Hayes. Foremost among his enemies was New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, who fought Hayes's reform efforts at every turn.[143]
To show his commitment to reform, Hayes appointed one of the best-known advocates of reform, Carl Schurz, to be Secretary of the Interior and asked Schurz and Secretary of State William M. Evarts to lead a special cabinet committee charged with drawing up new rules for federal appointments.[144] Treasury Secretary John Sherman ordered John Jay to investigate the New York Custom House, which was stacked with Conkling's spoilsmen.[142] Jay's report suggested that the New York Custom House was so overstaffed with political appointees that 20% of the employees were expendable.[145]
Cartoon of one man kicking another out of a building
A cartoon of Hayes kicking Chester A. Arthur out of the New York Custom House
Although he could not convince Congress to prohibit the spoils system, Hayes issued an executive order that forbade federal office holders from being required to make campaign contributions or otherwise taking part in party politics.[145] Chester A. Arthur, the Collector of the Port of New York, and his subordinates Alonzo B. Cornell and George H. Sharpe, all Conkling supporters, refused to obey the order.[145] In September 1877, Hayes demanded their resignations, which they refused to give. He submitted appointments of Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., L. Bradford Prince, and Edwin Merritt--all supporters of Evarts, Conkling's New York rival--to the Senate for confirmation as their replacements.[146] The Senate's Commerce Committee, chaired by Conkling, voted unanimously to reject the nominees. The full Senate rejected Roosevelt and Prince by a vote of 31-25, and confirmed Merritt only because Sharpe's term had expired.[147]
Hayes was forced to wait until July 1878, when he fired Arthur and Cornell during a Congressional recess and replaced them with recess appointments of Merritt and Silas W. Burt, respectively.[148][g] Conkling opposed confirmation of the appointees when the Senate reconvened in February 1879, but Merritt was approved by a vote of 31-25 and Burt by 31-19, giving Hayes his most significant civil service reform victory.[150]
For the remainder of his term, Hayes pressed Congress to enact permanent reform legislation and fund the United States Civil Service Commission, even using his last annual message to Congress in 1880 to appeal for reform. Reform legislation did not pass during Hayes's presidency, but his advocacy provided "a significant precedent as well as the political impetus for the Pendleton Act of 1883," which was signed into law by President Chester Arthur.[151] Hayes allowed some exceptions to the ban on assessments, permitting George Congdon Gorham, secretary of the Republican Congressional Committee, to solicit campaign contributions from federal officeholders during the Congressional elections of 1878.[152] In 1880, Hayes quickly forced Secretary of the Navy Richard W. Thompson to resign after Thompson accepted a $25,000 salary for a nominal job offered by French engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps to promote a French canal in Panama.[153]
Hayes also dealt with corruption in the postal service. In 1880, Schurz and Senator John A. Logan asked Hayes to shut down the "star route" rings, a system of corrupt contract profiteering in the Postal Service, and to fire Second Assistant Postmaster-General Thomas J. Brady, the alleged ringleader.[154] Hayes stopped granting new star route contracts but let existing contracts continue to be enforced.[155] Democrats accused him of delaying proper investigation so as not to damage Republicans' chances in the 1880 elections but did not press the issue in their campaign literature, as members of both parties were implicated in the corruption.[154] Historian Hans L. Trefousse later wrote that Hayes "hardly knew the chief suspect [Brady] and certainly had no connection with the [star route] corruption."[156] Although Hayes and the Congress both investigated the contracts and found no compelling evidence of wrongdoing, Brady and others were indicted for conspiracy in 1882.[157] After two trials, the defendants were acquitted in 1883.[158]
Great Railroad Strike
A burning building
Burning of Union Depot, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 21-22, 1877
In his first year in office, Hayes was faced with the United States' largest labor uprising to date, the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.[159] To make up for financial losses suffered since the panic of 1873, the major railroads had cut their employees' wages several times in 1877.[160] In July of that year, workers at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad walked off the job in Martinsburg, West Virginia, to protest their reduction in pay.[161] The strike quickly spread to workers of the New York Central, Erie, and Pennsylvania railroads, with the strikers soon numbering in the thousands.[162] Fearing a riot, Governor Henry M. Mathews asked Hayes to send federal troops to Martinsburg, and Hayes did so, but when the troops arrived there was no riot, only a peaceful protest.[163] In Baltimore, however, a riot did erupt on July 20, and Hayes ordered the troops at Fort McHenry to assist the governor in suppressing it.[162]
Pittsburgh exploded into riots next, but Hayes was reluctant to send in troops without the governor's request.[162] Other discontented citizens joined the railroad workers in rioting.[164] After a few days, Hayes resolved to send in troops to protect federal property wherever it appeared to be threatened and gave Major General Winfield Scott Hancock overall command of the situation, marking the first use of federal troops to break a strike against a private company.[162] The riots spread further, to Chicago and St. Louis, where strikers shut down railroad facilities.[162]
By July 29, the riots had ended and federal troops returned to their barracks.[165] No federal troops had killed any of the strikers, or been killed themselves, but clashes between state militia troops and strikers resulted in deaths on both sides.[166] The railroads were victorious in the short term, as the workers returned to their jobs and some wage cuts remained in effect. But the public blamed the railroads for the strikes and violence, and they were compelled to improve working conditions and make no further cuts.[167] Business leaders praised Hayes, but his own opinion was more equivocal; as he recorded in his diary:
Currency debate
Black-and-white photograph of a man, seated
Hayes confronted two issues regarding the currency, the first of which was the coinage of silver, and its relation to gold. In 1873, the Coinage Act of 1873 stopped the coinage of silver for all coins worth a dollar or more, effectively tying the dollar to the value of gold. As a result, the money supply contracted and the effects of the Panic of 1873 grew worse, making it more expensive for debtors to pay debts they had contracted when currency was less valuable.[169] Farmers and laborers, especially, clamored for the return of coinage in both metals, believing the increased money supply would restore wages and property values.[170] Democratic Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri proposed a bill to require the United States to coin as much silver as miners could sell the government, thus increasing the money supply and aiding debtors.[171] William B. Allison, a Republican from Iowa, offered an amendment in the Senate limiting the coinage to two to four million dollars per month, and the resulting Bland-Allison Act passed both houses of Congress in 1878.[171] Hayes feared the Act would cause inflation that would be ruinous to business, effectively impairing contracts that were based on the gold dollar, as the silver dollar proposed in the bill would have an intrinsic value of 90 to 92 percent of the existing gold dollar.[172] He also believed that inflating the currency was dishonest, saying, "[e]xpediency and justice both demand an honest currency."[172] He vetoed the bill, but Congress overrode his veto, the only time it did so during his presidency.[171]
The second issue concerned United States Notes (commonly called greenbacks), a form of fiat currency first issued during the Civil War. The government accepted these notes as valid for payment of taxes and tariffs, but unlike ordinary dollars, they were not redeemable in gold.[171] The Specie Payment Resumption Act of 1875 required the treasury to redeem any outstanding greenbacks in gold, thus retiring them from circulation and restoring a single, gold-backed currency.[171] Sherman agreed with Hayes's favorable opinion of the Act, and stockpiled gold in preparation for the exchange of greenbacks for gold.[172] But once the public was confident that they could redeem greenbacks for specie (gold), few did so; when the Act took effect in 1879, only $130,000 of the outstanding $346,000,000 in greenbacks were actually redeemed.[173] Together with the Bland-Allison Act, the successful specie resumption effected a workable compromise between inflationists and hard money men and, as the world economy began to improve, agitation for more greenbacks and silver coinage quieted down for the rest of Hayes's presidency.[174]
Foreign policy
A Chinese man sitting outside a locked gate
A political cartoon from 1882, criticizing Chinese exclusion
Most of Hayes's foreign-policy concerns involved Latin America. In 1878, following the Paraguayan War, he arbitrated a territorial dispute between Argentina and Paraguay.[175] Hayes awarded the disputed land in the Gran Chaco region to Paraguay, and the Paraguayans honored him by renaming a city (Villa Hayes) and a department (Presidente Hayes) in his honor.[175] Hayes became concerned over the plans of Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal, to construct a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, then part of Colombia.[176] Worried about a repetition of French adventurism in Mexico, Hayes interpreted the Monroe Doctrine firmly.[177] In a message to Congress, Hayes explained his opinion on the canal: "The policy of this country is a canal under American control ... The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to any European power or any combination of European powers."[177]
The Mexican border also drew Hayes's attention. Throughout the 1870s, "lawless bands" often crossed the border on raids into Texas.[178] Three months after taking office, Hayes granted the Army the power to pursue bandits, even if it required crossing into Mexican territory.[178] Mexican president Porfirio Díaz protested the order and sent troops to the border.[178] The situation calmed as Díaz and Hayes agreed to jointly pursue bandits and Hayes agreed not to allow Mexican revolutionaries to raise armies in the United States.[179] The violence along the border decreased, and in 1880 Hayes revoked the order allowing pursuit into Mexico.[180]
Outside the Western hemisphere, Hayes's biggest foreign-policy concern dealt with China. In 1868 the Senate had ratified the Burlingame Treaty with China, allowing an unrestricted flow of Chinese immigrants into the United States. As the economy soured after the Panic of 1873, Chinese immigrants were blamed in the American West for depressing workmen's wages.[181] During the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, anti-Chinese riots broke out in San Francisco, and a third party, the Workingman's Party, formed with an emphasis on stopping Chinese immigration.[181] In response, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1879, abrogating the 1868 treaty.[182] Hayes vetoed the bill, believing that the United States should not abrogate treaties without negotiation.[183] The veto drew praise from eastern liberals, but Hayes was bitterly denounced in the West.[183] In the subsequent furor, Democrats in the House of Representatives attempted to impeach him, but narrowly failed when Republicans prevented a quorum by refusing to vote.[184] After the veto, Assistant Secretary of State Frederick W. Seward suggested that the countries work together to reduce immigration, and he and James Burrill Angell negotiated with the Chinese to do so.[184] Congress passed a new law to that effect, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, after Hayes had left office.[184]
Indian policy
An 1881 political cartoon about Carl Schurz's management of the Indian Bureau
Interior Secretary Carl Schurz carried out Hayes's American Indian policy, beginning with preventing the War Department from taking over the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[185] Hayes and Schurz carried out a policy that included assimilation into white culture, educational training, and dividing Indian land into individual household allotments.[186] Hayes believed his policies would lead to self-sufficiency and peace between Indians and whites.[187] The allotment system under the Dawes Act, later signed by President Cleveland in 1887, was favored by liberal reformers at the time, including Schurz, but instead proved detrimental to American Indians. They lost much of their land through sales of what the government classified as "surplus lands", and more to unscrupulous white speculators who tried to get the Indians to sell their allotments.[188] Hayes and Schurz reformed the Bureau of Indian Affairs to reduce fraud and gave Indians responsibility for policing their reservations, but they were generally understaffed.[189]
Hayes dealt with several conflicts with Indian tribes. The Nez Perce, led by Chief Joseph, began an uprising in June 1877 when Major General Oliver O. Howard ordered them to move to a reservation. Howard's men defeated the Nez Perce in battle, and the tribe began a 1,700-mile retreat to Canada.[190] In October, after a decisive battle at Bear Paw, Montana, Chief Joseph surrendered and William T. Sherman ordered the tribe transported to Indian Territory in Kansas, where they were forced to remain until 1885.[191] The Nez Perce war was not the last conflict in the West, as the Bannock rose up in spring 1878 in Idaho and raided nearby settlements before being defeated by Howard's army in July.[185] War with the Ute tribe broke out in Colorado in 1879 when some Ute killed Indian agent Nathan Meeker, who had been attempting to convert them to Christianity. The subsequent White River War ended when Schurz negotiated peace with the Ute and prevented white settlers from taking revenge for Meeker's death.[192]
Hayes also became involved in resolving the removal of the Ponca tribe from Nebraska to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) because of a misunderstanding during the Grant administration. The tribe's problems came to Hayes's attention after its chief, Standing Bear, filed a lawsuit to contest Schurz's demand that they stay in Indian Territory. Overruling Schurz, Hayes set up a commission in 1880 that ruled the Ponca were free to return to their home territory in Nebraska or stay on their reservation in Indian Territory. The Ponca were awarded compensation for their land rights, which had been previously granted to the Sioux.[193] In a message to Congress in February 1881, Hayes insisted he would "give to these injured people that measure of redress which is required alike by justice and by humanity."[194]
Great Western Tour of 1880
Portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes by Eliphalet Frazer Andrews, 1881
In 1880, Hayes embarked on a 71-day tour of the American West, becoming the second sitting president to travel west of the Rocky Mountains. (Hayes's immediate predecessor, Ulysses Grant, visited Utah in 1875.) Hayes's traveling party included his wife and William T. Sherman, who helped organize the trip. Hayes began his trip in September 1880, departing from Chicago on the transcontinental railroad. He journeyed across the continent, ultimately arriving in California, stopping first in Wyoming and then Utah and Nevada, reaching Sacramento and San Francisco. By railroad and stagecoach, the party traveled north to Oregon, arriving in Portland, and from there to Vancouver, Washington. Going by steamship, they visited Seattle, and then returned to San Francisco. Hayes then toured several southwestern states before returning to Ohio in November, in time to cast a vote in the 1880 presidential election.[195]
Hayes's White House
Hayes and his wife Lucy were known for their policy of keeping an alcohol-free White House, giving rise to her nickname "Lemonade Lucy."[196] The first reception at the Hayes White House included wine,[197] but Hayes was dismayed at drunken behavior at receptions hosted by ambassadors around Washington, leading him to follow his wife's temperance leanings.[198] Alcohol was not served again in the Hayes White House. Critics charged Hayes with parsimony, but Hayes spent more money (which came out of his personal budget) after the ban, ordering that any savings from eliminating alcohol be used on more lavish entertainment.[199] His temperance policy also paid political dividends, strengthening his support among Protestant ministers.[198] Although Secretary Evarts quipped that at the White House dinners, "water flowed like wine," the policy was a success in convincing prohibitionists to vote Republican.[200]
Administration and Cabinet
Several men sitting around a table
Currier & Ives lithograph of the Hayes cabinet in 1877
Judicial appointments
Black-and-white photograph of a bearded man
Hayes appointed two Associate Justices to the Supreme Court. The first vacancy occurred when David Davis resigned to enter the Senate during the election controversy of 1876. On taking office, Hayes appointed John Marshall Harlan to the seat. A former candidate for governor of Kentucky, Harlan had been Benjamin Bristow's campaign manager at the 1876 Republican convention, and Hayes had earlier considered him for attorney general.[201] Hayes submitted the nomination in October 1877, but it aroused some dissent in the Senate because of Harlan's limited experience in public office.[201] Harlan was nonetheless confirmed and served on the court for 34 years, voting (usually in the minority) for aggressive enforcement of the civil rights laws.[201] In 1880, a second seat became vacant upon the resignation of Justice William Strong. Hayes nominated William Burnham Woods, a carpetbagger Republican circuit court judge from Alabama.[202] Woods served six years on the Court, ultimately proving a disappointment to Hayes as he interpreted the Constitution in a manner more similar to that of Southern Democrats than to Hayes's own preferences.[203]
Hayes unsuccessfully attempted to fill a third vacancy in 1881. Justice Noah Haynes Swayne resigned with the expectation that Hayes would fill his seat by appointing Stanley Matthews, a friend of both men.[204] Many senators objected to the appointment, believing that Matthews was too close to corporate and railroad interests, especially those of Jay Gould,[205] and the Senate adjourned without voting on the nomination.[204] The following year, when James A. Garfield entered the White House, he resubmitted Matthews's nomination to the Senate, which this time confirmed Matthews by one vote, 24 to 23.[204] Matthews served for eight years until his death in 1889. His opinion in Yick Wo v. Hopkins in 1886 advanced his and Hayes's views on the protection of ethnic minorities' rights.[206]
Post-presidency (1881-1893)
Painting of a bearded man, standing
White House portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes
Hayes declined to seek reelection in 1880, keeping his pledge not to run for a second term.[207] He was gratified with the election of fellow Ohio Republican James A. Garfield to succeed him, and consulted with him on appointments for the next administration.[208] After Garfield's inauguration, Hayes and his family returned to Spiegel Grove.[209] In 1881, he was elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. He served as commander-in-chief (national president) of the Loyal Legion from 1888 until his death in 1893. Although he remained a loyal Republican, Hayes was not too disappointed in Democrat Grover Cleveland's election to the presidency in 1884, approving of Cleveland's views on civil service reform.[210] He was also pleased at the progress of the political career of William McKinley, his army comrade and political protégé.[211]
Hayes became an advocate for educational charities and federal education subsidies for all children.[212] He believed education was the best way to heal the rifts in American society and allow people to improve themselves.[213] In 1887 Hayes was appointed to the Board of Trustees of The Ohio State University, the school he helped found as governor of Ohio.[214] He emphasized the need for vocational, as well as academic, education: "I preach the gospel of work," he wrote, "I believe in skilled labor as a part of education."[215] He urged Congress, unsuccessfully, to pass a bill written by Senator Henry W. Blair that would have allowed federal aid for education for the first time.[216] In 1889 Hayes gave a speech encouraging black students to apply for scholarships from the Slater Fund, one of the charities with which he was affiliated.[217] One such student, W. E. B. Du Bois, received a scholarship in 1892.[217] Hayes also advocated better prison conditions.[218]
In retirement, Hayes was troubled by the disparity between the rich and the poor, saying in an 1886 speech, "free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age."[219] The next year, he recorded thoughts on that subject in his diary:
Hayes in 1886
Hayes was greatly saddened by his wife's death in 1889.[221] When she died, he wrote, "the soul had left [Spiegel Grove]".[221] After Lucy's death, Hayes's daughter Fanny became his traveling companion, and he enjoyed visits from his grandchildren.[222] In 1890, he chaired the Lake Mohonk Conference on the Negro Question, a gathering of reformers that met in upstate New York to discuss racial issues.[223] Hayes died of complications of a heart attack at his home on January 17, 1893, at the age of 70.[224] His last words were "I know that I'm going where Lucy is."[224] President-elect Cleveland and Ohio Governor McKinley led the funeral procession that followed his body until Hayes was interred in Oakwood Cemetery.[225]
Legacy and honors
Grave at Spiegel Grove
After the donation of his home to the state of Ohio for Spiegel Grove State Park, Hayes was reinterred there in 1915.[226] The next year the Hayes Commemorative Library and Museum, the country's first presidential library, opened on the site, funded by contributions from the state of Ohio and Hayes's family.[227]
Hayes had arbitrated and decided an 1878 dispute between Argentina and Paraguay in favor of Paraguay, giving Paraguay 60% of its current territory. This led to the naming of a province in the region after him: Presidente Hayes Department (capital: Villa Hayes); an official holiday: Laudo Hayes Firm Day, the anniversary of the decision, celebrated in Presidente Hayes province; a local soccer team: Club Presidente Hayes (also known as "Los Yanquis"), based in the national capital, Asuncion; a postage stamp, the design of which was chosen in a contest run by the U.S. Embassy; and even the granting of the wish of a young girl who came out of a coma--a trip to the Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio.[228]
Also named for Hayes is Hayes County, Nebraska.[229]
Hayes was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1890.[230]
Rutherford B. Hayes High School in Hayes's hometown of Delaware, Ohio, was named in his honor, as is Hayes Hall, built in 1893, at the Ohio State University. It is Ohio State's oldest remaining building, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 16, 1970, due to its front facade, which remains virtually untouched from its original appearance. Hayes knew the building would be named in his honor, but did not live to see it completed.[231]
1. ^ Herron's daughter, Helen, later married William Howard Taft.[30]
2. ^ His first two sons, Joseph and George, had died in infancy.[86]
3. ^ He was named after Hayes's friend, Manning Force.[91]
7. ^ Charles K. Graham filled Merritt's former position.[149]
1. ^ "Rutherford B. Hayes". The White House. Retrieved 2021.
2. ^ ""Betrayal of the Freedman: Rutherford B. Hayes and the End of Reconstruction"". Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums. Retrieved 2021.
5. ^ Otis, John (October 30, 2014). "The Place Where Rutherford B. Hayes Is A Really Big Deal". NPR. Washington, DC. Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th U.S. president, doesn't get much respect. He's remembered, if at all, for losing the popular vote in 1876 but winning the presidency through Electoral College maneuvering.
6. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 7-8.
7. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 10; Barnard 2005, pp. 76-77.
8. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 4.
9. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 20-21; Barnard 2005, pp. 27-31.
10. ^ Barnard 2005, p. 41.
11. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 3.
12. ^ Barnard 2005, p. 53.
13. ^ "Hayes Family Genealogy".
14. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 17-18.
15. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 62-63; Barnard 2005, p. 113.
16. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 4-5.
17. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 20-22; Trefousse 2002, p. 5.
18. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 25.
19. ^ Barnard 2005, pp. 107-113.
20. ^ "Topping, Eva Catafygiotu" John Zachos Cincinnatian from Constantinople The Cincinnati Historical Society Bulletin Volumes 33-34 Cincinnati Historical Society 1975: p. 51
21. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 33-43.
22. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 6.
23. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 43-51; Barnard 2005, pp. 131-138.
24. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 52-53.
25. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 55-60.
26. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 62-66.
27. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 66-70; Barnard 2005, p. 114.
28. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 8.
29. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 73.
30. ^ Barnard 2005, p. 167.
31. ^ a b Barnard 2005, pp. 184-185.
32. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 74-75.
33. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 78-86.
34. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 61-62.
35. ^ Barnard 2005, pp. 178-180, 187-188; Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 93-95.
36. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 9.
37. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 87-93.
38. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 10.
39. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 95-99; Barnard 2005, pp. 189-191.
40. ^ Barnard 2005, pp. 196-197; Trefousse 2002, pp. 14-15.
41. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 100.
42. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 104-105; Barnard 2005, pp. 202-203.
43. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 107; Barnard 2005, p. 204.
44. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 113; Barnard 2005, p. 210.
45. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, p. 114; Barnard 2005, pp. 210-212.
46. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 115; Barnard 2005, pp. 213-214.
47. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 116-117.
48. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 120-121.
49. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 125-126; Reid 1868, p. 160.
50. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 128-130.
51. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 136-141.
52. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 141-143.
53. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 146-148.
54. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 146-147; Reid 1868, p. 161.
55. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 149-153.
56. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 30.
57. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 154-156.
58. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 157-158.
59. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 159-161.
60. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 162-164; Trefousse 2002, pp. 32-33.
61. ^ a b c d Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 166-168.
62. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 168-169.
63. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 170-171.
64. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 172-173.
65. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 174-177.
66. ^ Grant 2003, p. 564.
67. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 178-181.
68. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 186-188.
69. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 171-176; Barnard 2005, pp. 225-227.
70. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 200-201; Conwell 1876, pp. 145-180.
71. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 200-201; Trefousse 2002, pp. 41-44; Richardson 2001, pp. 17-18.
72. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, p. 203; Trefousse 2002, pp. 40-41.
73. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 197-199; Trefousse 2002, p. 42.
74. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 204-205.
75. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 204-205; Foner 2002, pp. 493-494.
76. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 208-210.
77. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 211-213; Trefousse 2002, pp. 45-46.
78. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, p. 214; Barnard 2005, pp. 238-239.
79. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 47-48.
80. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 215-216.
81. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 218-220; Barnard 2005, pp. 239-241.
82. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 225-228.
83. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 231-232.
84. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 236-240.
85. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 241-242.
86. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 31, 42.
87. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 240-245; Barnard 2005, pp. 250-252.
88. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 246-248.
89. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 243-244; Barnard 2005, pp. 250-252.
90. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 249-250.
91. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 59.
92. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 249-251.
94. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 256-257; Barnard 2005, pp. 270-271.
95. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 257-260; Barnard 2005, pp. 271-275; Foner 2002, p. 557.
96. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 61-64.
97. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 62.
98. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 260-261; Robinson 2001, p. 57.
99. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 262-263; Robinson 2001, pp. 53-55.
100. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 263-264; Robinson 2001, pp. 61-63.
101. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 260; Robinson 2001, p. 63.
102. ^ a b Robinson 2001, pp. 64-68, 90-95.
103. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 97-98.
104. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 71.
105. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 72-73; Robinson 2001, pp. 113-114.
106. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 269-271.
107. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 99-102.
108. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 74.
109. ^ Sproat 1974, pp. 163-164.
110. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 75; Robinson 2001, pp. 119-123; Sproat 1974, pp. 163-164.
111. ^ a b Robinson 2001, pp. 126-127.
112. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 131-142; Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 277-279.
113. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 127-128.
114. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 279.
115. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 145-154; Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 281-286.
116. ^ Robinson 2001, p. 157.
117. ^ a b Robinson 2001, p. 158.
118. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, p. 286.
119. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 159-161.
120. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 166-171.
121. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 171-183.
122. ^ "HarpWeek | Hayes vs. Tilden: The Electoral College Controversy of 1876-1877". elections.harpweek.com. Retrieved 2021.
123. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 182-184; Foner 2002, pp. 580-581.
124. ^ Robinson 2001, pp. 185-189; Foner 2002, pp. 581-587.
125. ^ Dodds 2013, p. 113; Clendenen 1969, p. 246.
126. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 295-297.
127. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 85-86.
128. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 298-299.
129. ^ Barnard 2005, pp. 402-403.
130. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 90-93.
131. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 304-307; Foner 2002, pp. 580-583; Davison 1972, p. 142.
132. ^ Davison 1972, p. 138; Trefousse 2002, p. 92.
133. ^ Clendenen 1969, p. 244.
134. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 90-91.
135. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 317-318; Davison 1972, pp. 141-143.
136. ^ a b c d e Davison 1972, pp. 162-163; Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 392-402; Richardson 2001, p. 161.
137. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 402.
138. ^ Barnard 2005, p. 418.
139. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 317-318.
140. ^ Trefousse 2002, pp. 93-94.
141. ^ Calhoun 2017, pp. 293-294.
142. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 318-319.
143. ^ Davison 1972, pp. 164-165.
144. ^ Paul 1998, p. 71.
145. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 322-325; Davison 1972, pp. 164-165; Trefousse 2002, pp. 95-96.
146. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 352; Trefousse 2002, pp. 95-96.
147. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 353-355; Trefousse 2002, pp. 100-101.
148. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 370-371.
149. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 370.
150. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 382-384; Barnard 2005, p. 456.
151. ^ Paul 1998, pp. 73-74.
152. ^ Sproat 1974, pp. 165-166.
153. ^ Sproat 1974, pp. 169-170.
154. ^ a b Klotsche 1935, pp. 409-411.
155. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 439-440.
156. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 144.
157. ^ Klotsche 1935, pp. 414-415.
158. ^ Klotsche 1935, p. 416.
159. ^ Foner 2002, p. 583; Stowell 1999, pp. 1-2; Richardson 2001, p. 121.
160. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 326-327.
161. ^ Bruce 1989, pp. 75-77; Stowell 1999, p. 117.
162. ^ a b c d e Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 328-333; Davison 1972, pp. 145-153; Barnard 2005, pp. 445-447.
163. ^ Bruce 1989, pp. 93-94.
164. ^ Stowell 1999, pp. 116-127; Hoogenboom 1995, p. 328.
165. ^ Foner 2002, p. 585.
166. ^ Davison 1972, pp. 148-150; Trefousse 2002, p. 95.
167. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 334; Davison 1972, pp. 152-153.
168. ^ Barnard 2005, pp. 446-447; Hayes 1922, p. 440, v. 3.
169. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 356.
170. ^ Unger 2008, p. 358.
171. ^ a b c d e Davison 1972, pp. 176-177.
172. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 358-360.
173. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 107.
174. ^ Davison 1972, pp. 177-180.
175. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, p. 416.
176. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 417-418.
177. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 420-421; Barnard 2005, p. 442.
178. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, p. 335; Barnard 2005, p. 443.
179. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 337; Barnard 2005, p. 444.
180. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 338.
181. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, p. 387.
182. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 388-389; Barnard 2005, pp. 447-449; Rhodes 1919, pp. 180-196.
183. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 388-389; Barnard 2005, pp. 447-449.
184. ^ a b c Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 390-391.
185. ^ a b Davison 1972, pp. 184-185.
186. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 109; Davison 1972, pp. 186-187.
187. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 341-343, 449-450.
188. ^ Stuart 1977, pp. 452-454.
189. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 343-344, 449.
190. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 338-340.
191. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 340-341.
192. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 123.
193. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 450-454; Sproat 1974, p. 173.
194. ^ Trefousse 2002, p. 124.
195. ^ Loftus, David. "Rutherford B. Hayes's visit to Oregon, 1880". The Oregon Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2016.
196. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 3; Davison 1972, p. xv.
197. ^ Davison 1972, p. 82; Barnard 2005, p. 480.
198. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, p. 384.
199. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 385-386; Barnard 2005, p. 480.
200. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 458.
201. ^ a b c Davison 1972, pp. 130-132.
202. ^ Davison 1972, p. 132; Hoogenboom 1995, p. 454.
203. ^ Barnard 2005, pp. 268, 498.
204. ^ a b c Davison 1972, p. 129.
205. ^ Barnard 2005, pp. 498-499.
206. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 457.
207. ^ Calhoun 2017, p. 549.
208. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 447-465.
209. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 466-467.
210. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, p. 483.
211. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 524-525.
212. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 471-475; Thelen 1970, p. 156.
213. ^ Thelen 1970, pp. 154-156.
214. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 498-499.
215. ^ Barnard 2005, p. 506.
216. ^ Swint 1952, pp. 48-49.
217. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 518-523.
218. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 496-497; Thelen 1970, p. 151.
219. ^ Barnard 2005, p. 513; Hoogenboom 1995, p. 539.
220. ^ Hayes 1922, p. 354, v. 4; Swint 1952, pp. 46-47.
221. ^ a b Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 508-510.
222. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 509-520.
223. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 515-517; Foner 2002, pp. 605-606.
224. ^ a b Barnard 2005, pp. 522-523.
225. ^ Hoogenboom 1995, pp. 532-533.
227. ^ Smith 1980, pp. 485-488.
230. ^ "MemberListH | American Antiquarian Society". www.americanantiquarian.org.
231. ^ "History of Hayes Hall". The Ohio State University. Retrieved 2019.
• Klotsche, J. Martin (December 1935). "The Star Route Cases". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 22 (3): 407-418. doi:10.2307/1892626. JSTOR 1892626.
• Paul, Ezra (Winter 1998). "Congressional Relations and Public Relations in the Administration of Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-81)". Presidential Studies Quarterly. 28 (1): 68-87. JSTOR 27551831.
• Smith, Thomas A. (1980). "Before Hyde Park: The Rutherford B. Hayes Library". The American Archivist. 43 (4): 485-488. JSTOR 40292342.
• Stuart, Paul (September 1977). "United States Indian Policy: From the Dawes Act to the American Indian Policy Review Commission". Social Service Review. 51 (3): 451-463. doi:10.1086/643524. JSTOR 30015511. S2CID 143506388.
• Swint, Henry L. (June 1952). "Rutherford B. Hayes, Educator". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 39 (1): 45-60. doi:10.2307/1902843. JSTOR 1902843.
• Thelen, David P. (Summer 1970). "Rutherford B. Hayes and the Reform Tradition in the Gilded Age". American Quarterly. 22 (2): 150-165. doi:10.2307/2711639. JSTOR 2711639.
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Museums hold a prominent position in society and can offer much more than what meets the eye; in fact, visiting a museum has become a knowledge-rich and experiential activity for its visitors. But how can one create and ensure effective visitor learning experiences?
Experiences should always be designed with the visitor in mind.
The authors of “The Museum Learning Experience Through the Visitors’ Eyes: An Eye Tracking Exploration of the Physical Context” had the opportunity to conduct an existing study with eye-tracking technology as part of a research project in collaboration with Salzburg Museum. By examining the influence of a museum’s overall physical context on a visitor’s experience, Rainoldi, Yu, and Neuhofer (2020) were able to show the importance of different visitor age segments as well as the effectiveness of object and spatial design for providing a good visitor flow experience in a museum setting. More details regarding this research will be briefly introduced in the following post.
Digital technology and visitors’ attention/gaze
Although museums allow for an engaging and informative experience, maintaining visitors’ attention throughout the duration of their museum stay proves to be a difficult task at times. Due to museum fatigue (i.e. tiredness leading to decreased interest) and satiation (i.e. lack of attention owing to repeated exposure), it is crucial for a museum to be able to facilitate learning experiences while also taking those two factors, along with visitor profiles, into consideration. As a result, more and more museums (e.g. the Louvre and Brooklyn Museums) are turning towards digital content and the incorporation of technological materials to aid visitor experiences.
“As opposed to traditional media that are static in nature, technology-driven elements attract higher levels of interest and attention and have been used as an effective tool to serve educational purposes.”
When it comes to tourism, the interplay between education and visual attention plays a large role. Visual attention, in particular, is what encourages information retention and interpretation, ultimately affecting the overall tourism experience. Furthermore, hindering distractions and adequately arranging artifacts can promote a more pleasant experience and an effective visitor flow. Thus, it is essential for designers to be aware of which artifacts/exhibitions attract visitors’ attention and which ones are more opt to result in mental fatigue and satiation. By strengthening the learning experience and, in turn, the overall experience, visitors’ satisfaction as well as intention to revisit and to recommend the museum increase accordingly.
Learning in a museum environment
As a person’s attention span is highly individual, the Contextual Model of Learning (see Falk & Dierking, 2004) aims to introduce three factors that may potentially influence visitor learning:
1. the socio-cultural context –> interactions between one another;
2. the personal context –> individuals’ interests, backgrounds, and motivations; and
3. the physical context –> orientation of space and design.
This framework has been applied often when analyzing museum-learning experiences; yet, in this case, the focal point remains on the physical elements of an exhibition. Previous research has revealed that the size, distance, and details of artifacts and the orientation of the physical environment do indeed make a large difference. Moreover, emphasis has been placed on the fact that age differences may affect visitors’ experiences as well. Therefore, this research aimed to investigate the relationship between physical context and a visitor’s learning experience in addition to examining how a visitor’s age influences the museum experience.
Eye tracking and fixation times: findings
As it is nearly impossible to study a visitor’s gaze and attention using traditional research techniques, the emerging technology of eye tracking comes into play, allowing researchers to capture natural gaze points in real-life situations, for instance, at a museum. For this study, 34 participants (aged between 17-80) were asked to wear eye-tracking glasses while walking through an exhibition at the Salzburg Museum. In this way, fixation times could be established for each participant.
“Fixation times are of particular interest for assessing learning processes because the length of a fixation is indicative of the brain’s information processing and cognitive activity at a particular moment in time.”
Based on the data, findings regarding visitors’ eye fixations, visitors’ engagement, and age could be determined. The study revealed, amongst others,
• which elements from the exhibition captured the visitors’ attention the most;
• that visitors noticed and looked at information boards first, but spent the most time engaging with video screens;
• that older people tend to spend more time reading the information boards than younger people do;
• that there was a significant difference between age groups in regards to the use of digital media (e.g. video screens and touch screens).
All in all, the study presents a complex relationship between a visitor’s personal context (e.g. age) and the physical context (e.g. design of the exhibition) in a museum setting, thus providing further insights for museums and opening up new avenues of research within the tourism sector. Thanks to the findings in this research, museum experience designers can take away some key points for implementation, such as to always take their target audience into consideration and to design the experience of exhibition rooms, visitor flows, information presentation, etc. with different age groups and visitor engagement in mind. As such, integrating digital technology and media, while also creating an adequate balance for the visitor target group, is crucial. By inviting visitors to interact and engage with the artifacts, learning and an overall great museum experience can indeed be accomplished.
To read more about this study, download the full article here:
Research Gate
Or take a look at the chapter in Eye Tracking in Tourism:
Rainoldi M., Yu CE., Neuhofer B. (2020) The Museum Learning Experience Through the Visitors’ Eyes: An Eye Tracking Exploration of the Physical Context. In: Rainoldi M., Jooss M. (eds) Eye Tracking in Tourism. Tourism on the Verge. Springer, Cham.
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What is Passport Verification?
Passports are a common way to verify identity, especially in countries that do not have official identity documents (like the US), and when citizens of one country need to identify themselves in another country, where their drivers license or government-provided ID is not recognized.
Passport verification is the process of verifying that the owner of the passport is really the individual named in the passport document, or digitally verifying that a user really holds a valid passport document in their name. Identity verification, which can be done using passports or other official documents, is critical for businesses that need to comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti money laundering (AML) legislation.
In this article:
What is a Passport?
A passport is an official document issued by governments. The passport contains identity information and certifies the identity and nationality of the card holder. A standard passport usually contains the full name of the holder, a photograph, the place and date of birth of the holder, a signature, and the passport’s expiration date.
In recent years, countries have started issuing biometric passports, which come with an embedded microchip. This addition to the passport makes it machine readable and difficult to counterfeit. Over 150 jurisdictions have begun issuing e-passports. In these places, non-biometric passports are valid only until their expiration date.
Here are several types of passports:
Passport / tourist passport
The most common type of passport. It is issued to each individual citizen as well as other nationals.
Due to security and logistical reasons, the majority of nations have stopped issuing family passports decades ago.
Official / service passport
A passport issued to official government staff.
Government officials and accompanying dependents use official passports when traveling for work purposes.
Diplomatic passport
A passport issued to diplomats and accompanying dependents. Diplomats use this passport for official international travel and residence.
A diplomatic passport does not automatically offer diplomatic immunity and special privileges. Any immunity or privileges are accredited based on the laws and regulations of each country and case.
Emergency / temporary passport
A passport issued temporarily to replace a lost or stolen passport.
An emergency passport offers an alternative to those who cannot obtain a regular passport on time to meet their flight. This is why these passports have a short time duration. For example, a one way document approving travel back to the holder’s home country.
Using Passport Verification for KYC and AML
Two recent regulations standardize the use of online identity verification, including identity verification using passports:
• electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services (eIDAS)—regulates the use and handling of electronic signature, electronic transactions, and trust services.
• Fifth Anti Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5)—helps fight against money laundering, identity theft, terrorist financing, and fraud.
These two regulations are comprehensive, offering a secure identity verification process used by many countries worldwide. Here are several types of organizations that are impacted by these regulations. If you operate in any of these industries, passport-based identification is a viable way to comply with the regulations.
Banking and finance
Banking and financial procedures of any kind need to implement compliant identity verification. This includes the opening of new bank accounts and online purchases.
Telecommunications and insurance industries
Any procurement of services and products in these industries require verification, as well as making representations.
Applications and platforms
In some cases, log-in for websites or applications, including two-factor authentication, may require compliant identity verification. Additionally, verification is required for access to buildings and facilities, tourism check-in, as well as new customer and user registration.
Government and administration
Any renewal or creation of electronic certificates and ID documents require strict verification. This includes identification processes that create electronic government credentials, as well as medical procedures and applications related to healthcare or the prescription of drugs.
Learn more in our detailed guides about:
Methods for Passport Verification
Verifying Identity via Physical Passport Document
Organizations can use passports to verify customer’s identity. There are two main ways to achieve identity verification using physical passport documents:
• Physical presentation of passport—a customer can be requested to arrive at a physical facility, present their passport and have it validated manually by staff, or using passport scanner devices (such as those deployed by airports).
• Near Field Communication (NFC)—some passports include an NFC chip, making it possible to validate its authenticity using a dedicated NFC reader, or a mobile phone equipped with NFC hardware and a passport validation app. This is considered strong verification that the user is in possession of the real passport document.
Verifying Identity Remotely with Passport and Biometric Data
Electronic identity verification providers help organizations validate the identity of customers using passport documents, but without requiring customers to physically present their passport or use NFC technology. This makes passport verification more convenient, and makes it easier for customers to register with services or make transactions that require identity verification.
An identity verification service typically requires customers to scan their passport and provide one or more additional proofs of identity:
• Personal details like full name, birth date, address
• Other official documents such as a driver’s license or government issued ID
• Selfie of the user, which should match the face on the passport document
• Video capture of the user’s face, with liveness check to prevent impersonation of the user using photos or pre-recorded video
The service can combine these inputs to validate the user’s identity in a way that complies with KYC and AML requirements.
Learn more in our detailed guides to:
Example Process for Digital Passport Verification
Here is an example of how remote passport verification using a website or mobile application can work:
1. The user is prompted to enter a recent home address, and verify ownership of their phone using a text or voice message. They may also be asked to confirm a social security or other ID number.
2. The user is prompted to take a photo of their passport. The application verifies that the photo is of sufficiently high quality, and if not, prompts the user to take another photo. The app uses optical character recognition (OCR) to extract data from the passport image.
3. The user is prompted to take a selfie showing their head and shoulders. Again, the image is verified and if the user’s face is not showing clearly, they are prompted to take another photo.
4. The user enables their camera and starts a video session, with a liveness check to ensure they are showing a live video stream. For example, the app may ask the user to blink or move their face in different directions to prove they are really in front of the camera.
5. The user reviews personal information they provided—address, social security number, and photos.
6. The application cross references data from the passport with government databases, and compares the passport photo, selfie, and liveness check video to ensure the photographed user is really the owner of the passport document.
7. In case of mismatch between photo and passport, or a low confidence score by automated analysis, the user is forwarded to a human operator who can verify their identity.
Passport Verification with BlueCheck
BlueCheck’s industry leading identity verification infrastructure enables merchants to grow their business faster. Serving a wide variety of industries, our solutions are custom tailored to the unique needs of our customers, including PACT Act and eCommerce compliant offerings.
Schedule a call with a BlueCheck specialist to learn more about our Age & ID Verification solutions. Ask about price savings when bundled with Payment Processing services. |
Everything You Need To Know About Database Servers! Visual Representation!
We all use tens and hundreds of different websites on a daily basis. Mostly all of them use databases to collect and store the data. Have you ever asked yourself how do database servers work? I know this is a silly question for someone from a technical background, but I am sure not everyone knows the answer to this. With this blog, you will find the working mechanism of Database Servers in visual Representation as well as Text. So without wasting any time, let’s begin.
What are Database servers?
Let me start with the basic definition of a Database and Database Server. A database is a collection of information that is organized so that it can easily be accessed, managed, and updated. A database server is a computer program that provides database services to other computer programs or computers using a client-server model. The term may also refer to a computer dedicated to running such a program.
Also, you should know that there are many different types of database server software. Some are open source (ie. MySQL, MongoDB, PostgresSQL) and some are commercial software (ie. MSSQL, Oracle).
Now that we know what the Database Server term means, let’s explore the communication process of the client-server model.
The process is not that complicated. Imagine that some computer has a contently running program that can understand some special language (SQL or Structured Query Language), but only listens to someone specific (security measure) rather than everyone who tries to talk to it. Now when someone who is allowed to talk to Database Server sends it a command, the command will be processed and necessary data selected or updated from/to database storage and result sent back to the requester.
Different types of database servers use different data storage techniques (also called engines) and usually can utilize multiple engines at the same time depending on your needs. In most cases, all data is physically stored as files on the same computer where the database server is running, or on any remote storage.
Top Enterprise Database Software & System
Database Software & system is a highly competitive market, as mare minutes of downtime can mean millions in losses for any enterprise. Enterprise database systems enable features like hot backups to scalability & high availability. This database ranges in prices, some are free of cost while others cost tens of thousands of dollars.
There is no single correct solution for each data problem. Each of these enterprise database solutions offers its own set of features and shortcomings. Here is a list of the top enterprise database systems.
• MySQL
• Oracle RDMS
• IBM Db2
• PostgreSQL
• MongoDB
• Amazon RDS
• TeamDesk
• Knack
• Microsoft SQL Server
For a detailed comparison between MongoDB and MySQL, click here.
About GUVI
GUVI is a platform that offers a wide array of professionally curated programming courses. It’s a springboard for knowledge deep dive in the computer science niche, we believe in hands-on coding sessions, instead of chalk and talk. You will practice as you learn. We also offer some of the award-winning practice platforms such as MicroARC, WebKata, and CodeKata. Click here to access GUVI’s course catalog.
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Key Hierarchy in CipherSweet
CipherSweet uses a series of key expansion/splitting techniques to turn a single key (which is handled by the KeyProvider object and may be sourced from third-party key management services) into:
At a super high-level, the picture looks like this:
Key Hierarchy
The constants C1 and C2 were chosen to have a Hamming distance of 32*4 = 128b between them, and are used to achieve domain separation for secure key splitting.
The Field Enc. Key in the above diagram is the Field Encryption Key, which allows data to be securely encrypted or decrypted in the database.
The Index Root Key in the above diagram is the root key for each blind index on the field. Each index's corresponding key is calculated by taking the HMAC-SHA256 of the packed table name, field name, and index name as the message, and the Index Root Key as the HMAC key, and truncating the result to 32 bytes.
Why were 0xB4 and 0x7E selected?
The primary purpose of these two byte values was to achieve a simple property called domain separation, which helps side-step accidental misuse of cryptographic secrets.
As long as two distinct constants were used, this property is achieved. 0x01 and 0x02 would have been sufficient for satisfying this security goal. Any further design decision would not weaken this security goal.
However, consider that the security proof for HMAC made it clear that a high Hamming distance between the padding values was desirable.
Indeed, a 2012 paper on generic related-key attacks for HMAC demonstrated that poor choice in padding constants could make their attacks significantly more powerful.
This led us to choose padding constants with a high Hamming distance per byte (4, as per HMAC), but distinct from the HMAC padding constants. |
Civilization Wiki
A fully constructed spaceship
The Space Race[]
The environmental pressures of growing populations in the modern world are forcing humans to look into space for resources and living room. The question is not whether humans are to travel to the stars, but when. The final act of stewardship you can perform for your civilization is to ensure that they lead this exodus.
Players can win a game of Civilization II by being the first to land a spaceship on a planet in the Alpha Centauri star system (merely called, 'Alpha Centauri') before 2020 AD. The construction of spaceships may not begin until one civilization has built the Apollo Program Wonder. After that, any civilization that has the necessary technology may start building the parts of a spaceship.
Each civilization, including yours, may build only one spaceship at a time. Once it is launched, another one cannot be built and sent off. Ships that have been launched may not be recalled or turned around by the host civilization, so it is imperative to build a speedy and viable spaceship.
Spaceships can only be stopped by an enemy civilization. There are two ways to achieve this. The first is to seize an enemy capital after the spaceship has launched. The spaceship is stated by the game to "return to Earth," but it practically may be considered to be destroyed, as the affected civilization must construct an entirely new one. Usually, the computer players will hurry to move their capital after this occurs and attempt the spaceship again, resulting in a 'cat and mouse' type of scenario. However, if a civilization has no capital and has launched a spaceship, the entire civilization must be destroyed in order to stop the spaceship for good.
The second way to stop a spaceship is to capture the capital before it has launched its spaceship that is already complete. This is a difficult scenario to achieve, as the computer will almost always launch its ship once it is viable. This is more likely to occur to a human player who either wanted to build a better ship or otherwise deliberately held off of launching their completed ship. The game will state that the spaceship is destroyed by the enemy.
The purpose of your spaceship is to carry as many colonists as possible to another star system. To have any chance of success it must provide at least a minimum of the following: living space for colonists, food sources, energy sources, propulsion power, and fuel for the engines. The better prepared the spaceship, the higher the number of colonists that arrive safely and the faster the voyage.
Your goal is to build a spaceship that can hold as many colonists as possible, yet travel at a reasonable speed and with a reasonable probability of success. As long as your probability of success is greater than zero, your spaceship will succeed. This percent affects your score in the end if you win by landing on Alpha Centauri first.
As construction of your ship proceeds, keep an eye on its characteristics, displayed to the right of the spaceship window. All spaceships have the same characteristics: population, food, energy, mass, fuel, flight time, and probability of success.
Once you have built a spaceship that meets the minimum requirements for carrying colonists, you may launch or proceed with further construction to increase the capacity of the ship.
Population: The number of people the spaceship is outfitted to carry. The more people it carries to the new planet, the higher your bonus.
Support: The percentage of the people that the ship is prepared to carry that can currently be supported. People that are not provided with life support cannot be expected to survive the voyage.
Energy: The percentage of the energy required by the habitation and life support modules that is currently being provided. If sufficient energy is not provided for life support and habitation, the probability of success will be very low.
Mass: All of the components, modules, and structures add to the mass of your spaceship. The greater the mass, the more power required from propulsion parts to move it.
Fuel: The percentage of the fuel your propulsion units require that is currently aboard. If insufficient fuel is provided, the propulsion components aboard cannot work to their maximum power and the best possible speed cannot be attained.
Flight Time: A calculation of the number of years required for your spaceship to reach the nearest star based on the ship's mass and engine power. Adding more engines and fuel reduces flight time.
Probability of Success: The approximate percentage of the people that can be carried that are expected to survive the voyage, based on the amount of food and energy provided, plus the flight time. The faster the flight, the higher the expected survival rate.
Space Ship Launching: To send your spaceship on its voyage, press the launch button on the Spaceship display screen, found at the bottom right of the display.
Your spaceship is constructed of parts. Each part is built like any other improvement, except that when a part is completed, it is automatically added to your ship. Later games in the Civilization series have you move the pieces to your capital. The parts of the spaceship come in three types: components, modules, and structures. Each type is available for construction when you have achieved a specific technology advance.
All modules and components must be connected to a sufficient structure. If a module or component is not connected, it is marked (outlined in red on the Spaceship display screen) to signal the part is not working. Once sufficient structural parts have been added, the outline disappears.
To build spaceship components you must have achieved the technology of Plastics. You can then build components at a cost of 160 resources. There are two kinds of components, propulsion and fuel. When a component has been completed, you choose which type gas been built.
Propulsion Components: These are the engines that provide the power for space flight. The more engines you add, the faster the ship travels, the sooner it reaches its destination, and the higher the probability of success of the mission.
Fuel Components: These provide fuel for the propulsion units. In order for the propulsion units to perform their maximum, one fuel component must be provided for each propulsion component.
Spaceship modules require the technology of Robotics and cost 320 resources each to build. They exist in three types: habitation, life support, and solar panels. When a module is completed, you choose which type to add to your ship.
Habitation Module: Each habitation module provides living space, community services, and recreational activities for ten thousand colonists.
Life Support Module: Each life support module provides the food and other requirements for the ten thousand colonists carried in one habitation module. People carried in a habitation module that doesn't receive life support have a very low probability of surviving.
Solar Panel Module: Each solar panel module provides enough energy to power two of the other types of module. Modules that don't receive power cannot function properly.
Spaceship structures require the technology of Space Flight and cost 80 resources to build. You must build sufficient structure parts to connect the components and modules together. Parts that are not connected do not work and provide no benefit to the ship.
Spaceship Scoring[]
If your civilization wins the game by having your Spaceship to arrive in Alpha Centauri, your score will be affected by how many traveled and the ship's Probability percent of success. See the page of the SS Module for the formula.
Sid Meier's Civilization II - Videos - Launch
Video showing the Spaceship Launching
Civilization II [edit]
Conflicts in CivilizationFantastic WorldsTest of Time
AdvancesBuildingsCheat CodesCivilizationsResourcesScenariosSoundtrackStrategy GuideTerrainsUnitsWonders
Attitude (Civil disorder, We Love the King Day) • City (Capital) • CombatDifficulty levelEspionageFoodGoldHigh CouncilLuxuriesOdeo yearPollutionProductionReputationScienceSpaceshipSpecialistsTax RateTradeTrade route
Standalone remake with different graphics, units, etc |
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Home / Commentary / Why having fewer OSHA inspectors matters
Why having fewer OSHA inspectors matters
In many industries, such as construction, transportation, warehousing and health care, the workplace is dangerous. In 2018 alone, 5,250 workers died on the job.
To protect workers from death or injury, Congress established the Occupational Safety and Health Administration – better known as OSHA – in 1970, to assure “so far as possible every working man and woman in the Nation safe and healthful working conditions.”
OSHA inspections have successfully improved workers’ physical safety. A 2012 randomized study found that OSHA inspections reduce the number of injuries leading to workers’ compensation claims by around 9% and lower the medical expenses and wage replacement paid from those claims by 26%.
But the number of federal OSHA inspectors fell to a low of 875 in 2019, down from a high of 1,469 in 1980.
The decrease in the number of inspectors coincided with an increase in the number of workplaces that need to be protected, from 4.5 million in 1980 to more than 8.1 million today. That means that there were 3,063 workplaces for each OSHA inspector in 1980. Today, the number is 9,286, an increase of more than 300%.
Effective enforcement requires workplaces to increase compliance with safety and health standards and change practices that can lead to fatalities and serious injuries.
Overburdening inspectors reduces OSHA’s ability to find and remediate safety violations, such as inadequate protections against slips and falls, which can be a big cause of workplace injuries and fatalities.
It also reduces the incentives presented by deterrence. When businesses know they’re not likely to be inspected, they are less likely to devote resources to safe workplaces.
Reducing the number of OSHA inspectors puts more workers in danger of physical harm on the job.
David Weil is a professor of economics at Brandeis University
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Beijing cuisine
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Beijing cuisine
Dry for 5 hours cropped.jpg
Peking duck is a famous duck dish from Beijing
Jing cuisine
Literal meaningCuisine of the capital
Beiping cuisine
Beijing cuisine, also known as Jing cuisine, Mandarin cuisine and Peking cuisine and formerly as Beiping cuisine, is the local cuisine of Beijing, the national capital of China.
As Beijing has been the capital of China for centuries, its cuisine is influenced by culinary traditions from all over China, but the style that has the greatest influence on Beijing cuisine is that of the eastern coastal province of Shandong.[1][2][3][4] Beijing cuisine has itself, in turn, also greatly influenced other Chinese cuisines, particularly the cuisine of Liaoning, the Chinese imperial cuisine and the Chinese aristocrat cuisine.[1][2][3][4]
Another tradition that influenced Beijing cuisine (as well as influenced by the latter itself) is the Chinese imperial cuisine that originated from the "Emperor's Kitchen" (御膳房; yùshànfáng), which referred to the cooking facilities inside the Forbidden City, where thousands of cooks from different parts of China showed their best culinary skills to please the imperial family and officials. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult to determine the actual origin of a dish as the term "Mandarin" is generalised and refers not only to Beijing, but other provinces as well. However, some generalisation of Beijing cuisine can be characterised as follows: Foods that originated in Beijing are often snacks rather than main courses, and they are typically sold by small shops or street vendors. There is emphasis on dark soy paste, sesame paste, sesame oil and scallions, and fermented tofu is often served as a condiment. In terms of cooking techniques, methods relating to different ways of frying are often used.[1][4] There is less emphasis on rice as an accompaniment as compared to many other regions in China, as local rice production in Beijing is limited by the relatively dry climate.
Many dishes in Beijing cuisine that are served as main courses are derived from a variety of Chinese Halal foods, particularly lamb and beef dishes,[5] as well as from Huaiyang cuisine.
Huaiyang cuisine has been praised since ancient times in China and it was a general practice for an official travelling to Beijing to take up a new post to bring along with him a chef specialising in Huaiyang cuisine. When these officials had completed their terms in the capital and returned to their native provinces, most of the chefs they brought along often remained in Beijing. They opened their own restaurants or were hired by wealthy locals.[1][4] The imperial clan of the Ming dynasty, the House of Zhu, who had ancestry from Jiangsu Province, also contributed greatly in introducing Huaiyang cuisine to Beijing when the capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing in the 15th century, because the imperial kitchen was mainly Huaiyang style. The element of traditional Beijing culinary and gastronomical cultures of enjoying artistic performances such as Beijing opera while dining directly developed from the similar practice in the culture of Jiangsu and Huaiyang cuisines.[1][2][3][4][6]
Chinese Islamic cuisine is another important component of Beijing cuisine and was first prominently introduced when Beijing became the capital of the Yuan dynasty. However, the most significant contribution to the formation of Beijing cuisine came from Shandong cuisine, as most chefs from Shandong Province came to Beijing en masse during the Qing dynasty. Unlike the earlier two cuisines, which were brought by the ruling class such as nobles, aristocrats and bureaucrats and then spread to the general populace, the introduction of Shandong cuisine begun with serving the general populace, with much wider market segment, from wealthy merchants to the working class.
The Qing dynasty was a major period in the formation of Beijing cuisine. Before the Boxer Rebellion, the foodservice establishments in Beijing were strictly stratified by the foodservice guild. Each category of the establishment was specifically based on its ability to provide for a particular segment of the market. The top ranking establishments served nobles, aristocrats, and wealthy merchants and landlords, while lower ranking establishments served the populace of lower financial and social status. It was during this period when Beijing cuisine gained fame and became recognised by the Chinese culinary society, and the stratification of the foodservice was one of its most obvious characteristics as part of its culinary and gastronomic cultures during this first peak of its formation.[1][2][3][4]
The official stratification was an integral part of the local culture of Beijing and it was not finally abolished officially after the end of the Qing dynasty, which resulted in the second peak in the formation of Beijing cuisine. Meals previously offered to nobles and aristocrats were made available to anyone who could afford them instead of being restricted only to the upper class. As chefs freely switched between jobs offered by different establishments, they brought their skills that further enriched and developed Beijing cuisine. Though the stratification of food services in Beijing was no longer effected by imperial laws, the structure more or less remained despite continuous weakening due to the financial background of the local clientele. The different classes are listed in the following subsections.[1][2][3][4][6]
Zhuang (; ; zhuāng; 'village'), or zhuang zihao (庄字号; 莊字號; zhuāng zìhào; 'village brand') were the top-ranking foodservice establishments, not only in providing foods, but entertainment as well. The form of entertainment provided was usually Beijing opera, and establishments of this class always had long-term contracts with an opera troupe to perform onsite or contracts with famous performers, such as national-treasure-class performers, to perform onsite, though not on a daily basis. Establishments of this category only accepted customers who came as a group and ordered banquets by appointment, and the banquets provided by establishments of this category often included most, if not all tables, at the site. The bulk foodservice business was catering at customers' homes or other locations, often for birthdays, marriages, funerals, promotions and other important celebrations and festivals. When catering, these establishments not only provided what was on the menu, but fulfilled customers' requests.
Leng zhuangzi (冷庄子; 冷莊子; lěng zhuāngzǐ; 'cold village') lacked any rooms to host banquets, and thus their business was purely catering.
Tang (; táng; 'auditorium'), or tang zihao (堂字号; 堂字號; táng zìhào; 'auditorium brand'), are similar to zhuang establishments, but the business of these second-class establishments were generally evenly divided among onsite banquet hosting and catering (at customers' homes). Establishments of this class would also have long-term contracts with Beijing opera troupes to perform onsite, but they did not have long-term contracts with famous performers, such as national-treasure-class performers, to perform onsite on regular basis; however these top performers would still perform at establishments of this category occasionally. In terms of catering at the customers' sites, establishments of this category often only provided dishes strictly according to their menu.
Ting (; ; tīng; 'foyer'), or ting zihao (厅字号; 廳字號; tīng zìhào; 'foyer brand') are foodservice establishments which had more business in onsite banquet hosting than catering at customers' homes. For onsite banquet hosting, entertainment was still provided, but establishments of this category did not have long-term contracts with Beijing opera troupes, so that performers varied from time to time, and top performers usually did not perform here or at any lower-ranking establishments. For catering, different establishments of this category were incapable of handling significant catering on their own, but generally had to combine resources with other establishments of the same ranking (or lower) to do the job.
A Jing Jiang Yuan (京醬園) near Beihai, circa 1879.
Yuan (; ; yuán; 'garden'), or yuan zihao (园字号; 園字號; yuán zìhào; 'garden brand') did nearly all their business in hosting banquets onsite. Entertainment was not provided on a regular basis, but there were stages built onsite for Beijing opera performers. Instead of being hired by the establishments like in the previous three categories, performers at establishments of this category were usually contractors who paid the establishment to perform and split the earnings according to a certain percentage. Occasionally, establishments of this category would be called upon to help cater at customers' homes, but had to work with others, never taking the lead as establishments like the ting.
Lou (; ; lóu; 'story, floor'), or lou zihao (楼字号; 樓字號; lóu zìhào; 'story brand') did the bulk of their business hosting banquets onsite by appointment. In addition, a smaller portion of the business was in serving different customers onsite on a walk-in basis. Occasionally, when catering at customers' homes, establishments of this category would only provide the few specialty dishes they were famous for.
Ju (; ; 'residence'), or ju zihao (居字号; 居字號; jū zìhào; 'residence brand') generally divided their business evenly into two areas: serving different customers onsite on a walk-in basis, and hosting banquets by appointment for customers who came as one group. Occasionally, when catering at the customers' homes, establishments of this category would only provide the few specialty dishes they were famous for, just like the lou. However, unlike those establishments, which always cooked their specialty dishes on location, establishment of this category would either cook on location or simply bring the already-cooked food to the location.
Zhai (; ; zhāi; 'study'), or zhai zihao (斋字号; 齋字號; zhāi zìhào; 'study brand') were mainly in the business of serving different customers onsite on a walk-in basis, but a small portion of their income did come from hosting banquets by appointment for customers who came as one group. Similar to the ju, when catering at customers’ homes, establishments of this category would also only provide the few specialty dishes they are famous for, but they would mostly bring the already-cooked dishes to the location, and would only cook on location occasionally.
Fang (; fǎng; 'workshop'), or fang zihao (坊字号; 坊字號; fǎng zìhào; 'workshop brand'). Foodservice establishments of this category generally did not offer the service of hosting banquets made by appointment for customers who came as one group, but instead, often only offered to serve different customers onsite on a walk-in basis. Establishments of this category or lower would not be called upon to perform catering at the customers' homes for special events.
Guan (; ; guǎn; 'restaurant'), or guan zihao (馆字号; 館字號; guǎn zìhào; 'restaurant brand'). Foodservice establishments of this category mainly served different customers onsite on a walk-in basis, and in addition, a portion of the income would be earned from selling to-goes.
Dian (; diàn; 'shop'), or dian zihao (店字号; 店字號; diàn zìhào; 'shop brand'). Foodservice establishments of this category had their own place, like all previous categories, but serving different customers to dine onsite on a walk-in basis only provided half of the overall income, while the other half came from selling to-goes.
Pu (; ; ; 'store'), or pu zihao (铺字号; 鋪字號; pù zìhào; 'store brand'). Foodservice establishments of this category ranked next to the last, and they were often named after the owners' last names. Establishments of this category had fixed spots of business for having their own places, but smaller than dian, and thus did not have tables, but only seats for customers. As a result, the bulk of the income of establishments of this category was from selling to-goes, while income earned from customers dining onsite only provided a small portion of the overall income.
Tan (; ; tān; 'stand'), or tan zihao (摊字号; 攤字號; tān zìhào; 'stand brand'). The lowest ranking foodservice establishments without any tables, and selling to-goes was the only form of business. In addition to name the food stand after the owners' last name or the food sold, these food stands were also often named after the owners' nicknames.
Notable dishes and street foods[edit]
Meat and poultry dishes[edit]
Bao du (top)
Lǔzhǔ huǒshāo
Prepared and sliced Peking duck
English Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese Pinyin Notes
Beef wrapped in pancake 門釘肉餅 门钉肉饼 méndīng ròubǐng
Beggar's Chicken 富貴雞 富贵鸡 fùguì jī The dish's name literally means "rich chicken" or "wealthy chicken". It is also known as jiaohua ji (叫化鸡; 叫化雞; jiàohuā jī).[7]
Cold pig's ears in sauce 拌雙脆 拌双脆 bàn shuāngcuì
Dried soy milk cream in tight roll with beef fillings 炸卷果 炸卷果 zhá juǎnguǒ
Fried dry soybean cream with diced meat filling 炸響鈴 炸响铃 zhá xiǎnglíng
Fried meatballs 炸丸子 炸丸子 zhá wánzǐ
Fried pig's liver wrapped in Chinese small iris 炸卷肝 炸卷肝 zhá juǎngān
Fried triangle 炸三角 炸三角 zhá sānjiǎo
Fried wheaten pancake with meat and sea cucumber fillings 褡褳火燒 褡裢火烧 dālián huǒshāo
Glazed fried egg cake 金絲糕 金丝糕 jīnsīgāo
Goat/sheep's intestine filled with blood 羊霜腸 羊霜肠 yáng shuāngcháng
Hot and sour soup 酸辣湯 酸辣汤 suānlà tāng
Instant-boiled mutton 涮羊肉 涮羊肉 shuàn yángròu A variant of hot pot which usually features boiled water as base (no additional spices) and mutton as the main type of meat.
Lard with flour wrapping glazed in honey 蜜汁葫蘆 蜜汁葫芦 mìzhī húlú
Lotus ham 蓮棗肉方 莲枣肉方 liánzǎo ròufāng
Lotus-shaped cake with chicken 蓮蓬雞糕 莲蓬鸡糕 liánpéng jīgāo
Meatball soup 清湯丸子 清汤丸子 qīngtāng wánzǐ
Meat in sauce 醬肉 酱肉 jiàngròu
Meat wrapped in thin mung bean flour pancake 煎餅餜子 煎饼馃子 jiānbǐng guǒzǐ
Moo shu pork 木須肉 木须肉 mùxūròu Literally "wood shavings meat"
Napa Cabbage Hot pot 酸白菜火鍋 酸白菜火锅 suān báicài huǒguō A variant of hot pot of Northeast China origin. Its main ingredients are pickled Napa cabbage, cooked pork belly and other meats, and other typical dishes include leaf vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, tofu, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce.
Peking barbecue 北京烤肉 北京烤肉 Běijīng kǎoròu
Peking duck 北京烤鴨 北京烤鸭 Běijīng kǎoyā Usually served with pancakes
Peking dumpling 北京餃子 北京饺子 Běijīng jiǎozǐ
Peking wonton 北京餛飩 北京馄饨 Běijīng húndùn
Pickled Chinese cabbage with blood-filled pig's intestines 酸菜血腸 酸菜血肠 suāncài xuěcháng
Pickled meat in sauce 清醬肉 清酱肉 qīngjiàngròu
Plain boiled pork 白肉 白肉 báiròu
Pork in broth 蘇造肉 苏造肉 sūzào ròu
Pork shoulder 水晶肘子 水晶肘子 shuǐjīng zhǒuzǐ
Quick-fried tripe 爆肚 爆肚 bàodù
Roasted meat 燒肉 烧肉 shāoròu Could be either beef, pork or mutton
Shredded mung bean skin salad 拌皮絲 拌皮丝 bànpísī
Soft fried tenderloin 軟炸里脊 软炸里脊 ruǎnzhá lǐjī
Stewed pig's organs 燉吊子 炖吊子 dùn diàozǐ
Stir-fried tomato and scrambled eggs 西紅柿炒雞蛋 西红柿炒鸡蛋 xīhóngshì chǎo jīdàn
Sweet and sour spare ribs 糖醋排骨 糖醋排骨 tángcù páigǔ
Sweet stir-fried mutton / lamb 它似蜜 它似蜜 tāsìmì
Wheaten cake boiled in meat broth 滷煮火燒 卤煮火烧 lǔzhǔ huǒshāo
Pea Flour Cake 碗豆黄 碗豆黄 wǎn dòu huáng
Fish and seafood dishes[edit]
English Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese Pinyin Notes
Abalone with peas and fish paste 蛤蟆鮑魚 蛤蟆鲍鱼 hāmǎ bàoyú The dish's name literally means "toad abalone".
Boiled fish in household-style 家常熬魚 家常熬鱼 jiācháng áoyú
Braised fish 酥魚 酥鱼 sūyú
Egg and shrimp wrapped in corn flour pancake 糊餅 糊饼 húbǐng
Fish cooked with five kinds of sliced vegetable 五柳魚 五柳鱼 wǔlǐu yú
Fish cooked with five-spice powder 五香魚 五香鱼 wǔxiāng yú
Fish in vinegar and pepper 醋椒魚 醋椒鱼 cùjiāo yú
Fish soaked in soup 乾燒魚 干烧鱼 gānshāo yú
Sea cucumber with quail egg 烏龍吐珠 乌龙吐珠 wūlóng tǔzhū The dish's name literally means "the black dragon spits out pearls".
Shrimp chips with egg 金魚戲蓮 金鱼戏莲 jīnyú xìlián The dish's name literally means "the goldfish playing with the lotus".
Soft fried fish 軟炸魚 软炸鱼 ruǎnzhá yú
Noodles (both vegetarian and non-vegetarian)[edit]
English Image Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese Pinyin Notes
Naked oats noodle 莜麵搓魚 莜面搓鱼 yóumiàn cuōyú
Noodles with thick gravy 打滷麵 打卤面 dǎlǔmiàn
Sesame Sauce Noodles Noodles With Sesame Sauce (麻醬麵).jpg 麻醬麵 麻醬面 májiàngmiàn A popular noodle dish in Northern China. The sesame sauce is mainly made of sesame paste and sesame oil. In American cooking, the sesame paste is often substituted by peanut butter.
Zhajiangmian Billyzhajiang1.jpg 炸醬麵 炸酱面 zhájiàngmiàn
English Image Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese Pinyin Notes
Fried butter cake 奶油炸糕 奶油炸糕 nǎiyóu zhágāo
Fried cake with fillings 燙麵炸糕 烫面炸糕 tàngmiàn zhágāo
Fried sesame egg cake 開口笑 开口笑 kāikǒuxiào The dish's name literally means "open mouth and laugh/smile".
Fried tofu with egg wrapping 鍋塌豆腐 锅塌豆腐 guōtà dòufǔ
Jiaoquan Jiaoquan.jpg 焦圈 焦圈 Jiāoquān Shaped like a fried doughnut, but has a crispier texture
Steamed egg cake 碗糕 碗糕 wǎngāo
Sachima 沙琪瑪 沙琪玛 sàqímǎ Chinese pastry of Manchu origin similar looking to Rice Krispies Treats but different in taste
A bowl of douzhi (left) with breakfast items
Nai lao (Beijing yogurt)
Traditional tangyuan with a sweet sesame filling
English Traditional Chinese Simplified Chinese Pinyin Notes
Baked sesame seed cake 燒餅 烧饼 shāobǐng
Baked wheaten cake 火燒 火烧 huǒshāo
Bean jelly 涼粉 凉粉 liángfěn
Bean paste cake 涼糕 凉糕 liánggāo
Beijing yoghurt 奶酪 奶酪 nǎilào
Buckwheat cake 扒糕 扒糕 pāgāo
Cake with bean paste filling 豆餡燒餅 豆馅烧饼 dòuxiàn shāobǐng
Candied fruit 蜜餞 蜜饯 mìjiàn
Chatang / Miancha / Youcha 茶湯 / 麵茶 / 油茶 茶汤 / 面茶 / 油茶 chátāng / miànchá / yóuchá
Chestnut broth 栗子羹 栗子羹 lìzǐ gēng
Chestnut cake with bean paste 栗子糕 栗子糕 lìzǐ gāo
Chinese cabbage in mustard 芥末墩 芥末墩 jièmò dūn
Crisp fritter 麻頁 麻页 máyè
Crisp fritter with sesame 薄脆 薄脆 báocuì
Crisp noodle 饊子 馓子 sǎnzǐ
Crisp thin fritter twist 排叉 排叉 páichā
Deep-fried dough cake 油餅 油饼 yóubǐng
Dried fermented mung bean juice 麻豆腐 麻豆腐 má dòufǔ
Dried soy milk cream in tight rolls 腐竹 腐竹 fǔzhú
Fermented mung bean juice 豆汁 豆汁 dòuzhī
Freshwater snail-shaped cake 螺螄轉 螺蛳转 luósī zhuǎn
Fried cake 炸糕 炸糕 zhágāo
Fried cake glazed in malt sugar 蜜三刀 蜜三刀 mìsāndāo
Fried dough twist 麻花 麻花 máhuā
Fried ring 焦圈 焦圈 jiāoquān
Fried sugar cake 糖耳朵 糖耳朵 táng ěrduō
Fuling pancake sandwich 茯苓夾餅 茯苓夹饼 fúlíng jiábǐng
Glazed / candied Chinese yam 拔絲山藥 拔丝山药 básī shānyào
Glazed steamed glutinous rice cake 水晶糕 水晶糕 shuǐjīng gāo
Glazed thin pancake with Chinese yam and jujube stuffing 糖卷果 糖卷果 táng juǎnguǒ
Glutinous rice ball 艾窩窩 艾窝窝 àiwōwō
Glutinous rice cake 切糕 切糕 qiēgāo
Glutinous rice cake roll 卷糕 卷糕 juǎngāo
Hawthorn cake 京糕 京糕 jīnggāo
Honeycomb cake 蜂糕 蜂糕 fēnggāo
Iced fruit 冰果 冰果 bīngguǒ
Jellied beancurd 豆腐腦 豆腐脑 dòufǔ nǎo
Kidney bean roll 芸豆卷 芸豆卷 yúndòujuǎn
Lama cake 喇嘛糕 喇嘛糕 lǎmā gāo
Millet zongzi 粽子 粽子 zòngzǐ
Mung bean cake 綠豆糕 绿豆糕 lǜdòu gāo
Noodle roll 銀絲卷 银丝卷 yínsījuǎn
Pancake 烙餅 烙饼 làobǐng
Pease pudding 豌豆黃 豌豆黄 wāndòu huáng
Preserved fruit 果脯 果脯 guǒpú
Purple vine cake 藤蘿餅 藤萝饼 téngluó bǐng
Rice and jujube cake 甑糕 甑糕 zènggāo
Rice and white kidney bean cake with jujube 盆糕 盆糕 péngāo
Rice cake with bean paste 花糕 花糕 huāgāo
Shortening cake 牛舌餅 牛舌饼 níushé bǐng
Soybean flour cake 豆麵糕 豆面糕 dòumiàn gāo
Stir fried hawthorn 炒紅果 炒红果 chǎohóngguǒ
Stir-fried starch knots 燒疙瘩 炒疙瘩 chǎo gēdā
Suncake 太陽糕 太阳糕 tàiyáng gāo Not to be confused with Taiwanese suncake, whose name in Chinese is (太阳饼; 太陽餅; tàiyáng bǐng) translates more literally as "sun cookie".
Sweet flour cake 墩餑餑 墩饽饽 dūnbōbō
Sweet hard flour cake 硬麵餑餑 硬面饽饽 yìngmiàn bōbō
Sweet potato starch jelly 粉皮 粉皮 fěnpí
Sweetened baked wheaten cake 糖火燒 糖火烧 táng huǒshāo
Tanghulu 糖葫蘆 糖葫芦 táng húlú
Tangyuan 湯圓 汤圆 tāngyuán
Thin millet flour pancake 煎餅 煎饼 jiānbǐng
Thin pancake 薄餅 薄饼 báobǐng
Thin pancake of lard 油皮 油皮 yóupí
Thousand-layered cake 千層糕 千层糕 qiāncéng gāo
Veggie roll 春餅卷菜 春饼卷菜 chūnbǐng juǎncài Not to be confused with spring rolls.
Watermelon jelly 西瓜酪 西瓜酪 xīguā lào
Wotou 窝头 窝头 wōtóu
Xing ren cha 杏仁茶 杏仁茶 xìngrén chá
Xingren doufu 杏仁豆腐 杏仁豆腐 xìngrén dòufǔ
Yellow cake 黃糕 黄糕 huánggāo
Beijing Delicacies[edit]
Restaurants known for Beijing cuisine[edit]
Numerous traditional restaurants in Beijing are credited with great contributions in the formation of Beijing cuisine, but many of them have gone out of business.[1][2][3][4][6][8][9][10][11][12][13] However, some of them managed to survive until today, and some of them are:
The introduction board at the Bianyifang describes the restaurant's history
• Bai Kui (白魁): established in 1780
• Bao Du Feng (爆肚冯): established in 1881, also known as Ji Sheng Long (金生隆)
• Bianyifang: established in 1416, the oldest surviving restaurant in Beijing
• Cha Tang Li (茶汤李), established in 1858
• Dao Xiang Chun (稻香春): established in 1916
• Dao Xian Cun (稻香村): established in 1895
• De Shun Zhai (大顺斋): established in the early 1870s
• Dong Lai Shun (东来顺): established in 1903
• Dong Xin Shun (东兴顺): also known as Bao Du Zhang (爆肚张), established in 1883
• Du Yi Chu (都一处): established in 1738
• Dou Fu Nao Bai (豆腐脑白): established in 1877, also known as Xi Yu Zhai (西域斋)
• En Yuan Ju (恩元居), established in 1929
• Fang Sheng Zhai (芳生斋), also known as Nai Lao Wei (奶酪魏), established in 1857
• Hong Bin Lou (鸿宾楼): established in 1853 in Tianjin, relocated to Beijing in 1955.
• Jin Sheng Long (金生隆): established in 1846
• Kao Rou Ji (烤肉季): established in 1828
• Kao Rou Wan (烤肉宛): established in 1686
• Liu Bi Ju (六必居) established in 1530
• Liu Quan Ju (柳泉居): established in the late 1560s, the second oldest surviving restaurant in Beijing
• Nan Lai Shun (南来顺): established in 1937
• Nian Gao Qian (年糕钱): established in early 1880s
• Quanjude (全聚德): established in 1864
• Rui Bin Lou (瑞宾楼): originally established in 1876
• Sha Guoo Ju (砂锅居), established in 1741
• Tian Fu Hao (天福号): established in 1738
• Tian Xing Ju (天兴居):, established in 1862
• Tian Yuan Jian Yuan (天源酱园): established in 1869
• Wang Zhi He (王致和): established in 1669
• Wonton Hou (馄饨侯): established in 1949
• Xi De Shun (西德顺): also known as Bao Du Wang (爆肚王), established in 1904
• Xi Lai Shun (西来顺): established in 1930
• Xian Bing Zhou (馅饼周): established in 1910s, also known as Tong Ju Guan (同聚馆)
• Xiao Chang Chen (小肠陈): established in the late 19th century
• Xin Yuan Zhai (信远斋), established in 1740
• Yang Tou Man (羊头马): established in the late 1830s
• Yi Tiao Long (壹条龙): established in 1785
1. ^ a b c d e f g h Wang, Juling, Famous Dishes of Famous Restaurant in Beijing, Golden Shield Publishing House in Beijing, December, 2000, ISBN 7-5082-1400-5
2. ^ a b c d e f Xu, Chengbei, Ancient Beijing, Customs of the General Populace of Ancient Beijing, Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House in Nanjing, September, 1999, ISBN 7-5344-0971-3
3. ^ a b c d e f Hua Mengyang and Zhang Hongjie, Lives of the residents of Ancient Beijing, Shandong Pictorial Publishing House in Jinan, June, 2000, ISBN 7-80603-452-8
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Du, Fuxiang and Guo, Yunhui, Famous Restaurants in China, China Tourism Publishing House in Beijing, 1982
5. ^ "Beijing Halal | China Heritage Quarterly". Retrieved 2018-01-23.
6. ^ a b c Bai, Zhongjian, Legends of Historical Business in Beijing, China Tourism Publishing House in Beijing, 1993, ISBN 7-5032-0887-2
7. ^ Lo, Eileen Yin-Fei (1999). "Chinese Classics", The Chinese Kitchen, calligraphy by San Yan Wong, 1st Edition, New York, New York: William Morrow and Company, 416. ISBN 0-688-15826-9.
8. ^ Ma, Jing, Beijing Culinary Guide, China Light Industry Publishing House in Beijing, January 2002, ISBN 7-5019-3559-9/TS.2143
9. ^ Hou, Shiheng, Historical Business in Beijing, 1st Edition, Chinese Environmental Science Publishing House in Beijing, 1991, ISBN 7-80010-765-5
10. ^ Hou, Shiheng, Historical Business in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Trade Publishing House in Beijing, 1998, ISBN 7-80004-535-8
11. ^ Xu, Chengbei, Ancient Beijing, Change of Qianmen, Jiangsu Fine Arts Publishing House in Nanjing, September, 2000, ISBN 7-5344-0969-1
12. ^ Yin, Qingmin, Historical Business Establishments in Beijing, Shining Daily Publishing House in Beijing, 2004, ISBN 7-80145-812-5
13. ^ Zhou, Jianduan, Old Memory of Beijing, Social Life and Customs, Southern Cantonese Publishing House in Hong Kong, 1987, ISBN 962-04-0580-3
External links[edit] |
Dark chocolate or red wine?
Dark chocolate and health
Let’s start with reviewing the dark chocolate findings. Scientists from the University College London, the University of Calgary and Alberta Health Services Canada assessed data from 13,626 adults from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Daily chocolate consumption and type of chocolate was assessed against scores on the Patient Health Questionnaire, which assesses depressive symptoms.
As usual, a range of other factors including height, weight, marital status, ethnicity, education, household income, physical activity, smoking and chronic health problems were taken into account to ensure the study only measured chocolate’s effect on depressive symptoms. Overall, 11.1% of the population reported any chocolate consumption, with 1.4% reporting dark chocolate consumption.
The scientists found that eating dark chocolate positively affected mood and relieved depressive symptoms. As a matter of fact, individuals eating any amount of dark chocolate had 70% lower odds of reporting clinically relevant depressive symptoms than those who reported not eating chocolate at all.
So far so good!
Woman smile
To be believable it is important to find a biological mechanism that can explain the results. And there are several. Chocolate contains a number of psychoactive ingredients which produce a feeling of euphoria and phenylethylamine which is believed to be important for regulating people’s moods. Also, dark chocolate in particular has a higher concentration of flavonoids, antioxidant polyphenols that have been shown to improve inflammation and play a role in the onset of depression.
Another strength of the study is that daily chocolate consumption was derived from two 24‐hour dietary recalls and not from much more dubious food frequency questionnaires that are so common.
And the bad!
Although the study included a large overall sample, there were less than 200 individuals that reported dark chocolate consumption. There could also be other confounding factors not taken into account.
There is some caution expressed by the scientists themselves claiming that further research is required to clarify causation. It could be the case that depression causes people to lose their interest in eating chocolate, or there could be other factors that make people both less likely to eat dark chocolate and to be depressed.
What about red wine and health?
Scientists at King’s College, London have reported that red wine consumption could be linked to better gut health. The study included a group of 916 female twins and tested the effects of consuming beer, cider, red wine, white wine and spirits on the gut microbiome, the micro-organisms found in the digestive tract.
And compared to other alcoholic drinks they found that the gut microbiome of red wine drinkers was more diverse – a sign of better gut health. The researchers speculated that the positive effect of red wine could be due to its higher amount of chemicals called polyphenols that act as antioxidants.
So what to say!
Well, this could be a big thing.
We know that our gut microbiota can affect multiple aspects of our general health and play a role in many illnesses. As a matter of fact, gut microbes are responsible for producing thousands of chemical metabolites affecting our overall metabolism, our immune system and our brain.
We have long known of the unexplained benefits of red wine on heart health. The study findings that moderate red wine consumption is associated with greater diversity and a healthier gut microbiome could at least partly explain its beneficial effects on heart health.
And there is more
As a check on possible genetic or family biases, the scientists found that the twin who drank red wine more often than the related twin had a more diverse gut flora. White wine drinkers who should be socially and culturally similar, had no significant differences in diversity.
Also, in further support of the findings they were shown to be consistent with results from two other studies of similar size in the US (the American Gut project) and Belgium (Flemish Gut Project) basing the conclusions on a total of about 3000 twins.
And in a previous experimental Spanish study from 2012, admittedly involving only ten healthy middle-aged males, the volunteers were given one of three different beverages to drink each day in each of three 20-day periods: normal strength red wine, low alcoholic red wine and gin. Drinking any type of red wine resulted in a larger percent of certain beneficial gut bacteria, but consuming gin had no effect on the gut flora.
So all good?
Not so fast.
Note that again the main study was observational and not experimental and the previous experimental study was very small. The study subjects in the observational study self-reported their food and drink intake with the usual associated bias. The scientists then prospectively tried to statistically link the reported alcoholic drink consumption with test results from the gut microbial analysis. Using twins strengthens the findings but doesn’t conclusively show causality.
There are the usual professional warning that the positives should still be weighed up against the negative impacts of alcohol. Any potential benefits of red wine polyphenols should be considered alongside alcohol’s links to over 200 health conditions, including heart disease and cancers.
But the beneficial effects were achieved by a very moderate glass of red wine a week or even a fortnight.
The moral of the story
If you’re going to eat chocolate pick the dark variety and you will not only have an enjoyable time but you might also be happier.
And the same goes for alcohol consumption. Drink in moderation and pick red wine and the resulting happiness might also be associated with improved health.
Also remember that the beneficial polyphenols found in dark chocolate and red wine can also be found in a range of other foods.
Dark chocolate’s beneficial deeds
Only dark chocolate is beneficial to health (Photo: André Karwath)
There are several different varieties of chocolate (Photo: André Karwath)
Having dealt with hazards in food during a lifetime, it is always nice to be able to look at the benefit side. We all need good news stories. However, even good news stories can be deceptive. There is much fuss made over what is called superfoods, while the overall diet is more important. And scientists test individual food components in isolation reporting highly beneficial effects in unrealistic animal experiments that have no relevance to real life. Resveratrol that can be found in red wine is supposed to be heart protective, but will require daily consumption of many bottles of wine to reach an effective dose.
But dark chocolate seems to be the real thing with normal consumption amounts sufficient to be beneficial to health.
Not all chocolates are the same
Chocolate is made from cocoa solids (cacao), mixed with fat (cocoa butter) and finely powdered sugar to produce a solid confectionery. There are several types of chocolate, dark, milk and white, classified according to the proportion of cocoa solids used in a particular formulation.
Dark chocolate, also known as “bittersweet” or “semisweet” chocolate, contains little or no added sugar, but plenty of antioxidant flavonoids that contribute to the dark colour. More flavonoids means darker chocolate.
Dark chocolate has already been hailed for its positive effects on cardiovascular health and can help lower blood pressure.
Milk chocolate is not a good antioxidant source as milk binds to antioxidants in chocolate making them unavailable.
White chocolate contains no cocoa solids at all and therefore is not a good source of antioxidants.
Let’s look at the details
Nitric oxide reduces blood pressure.
Dark chocolate increases the effect of nitric oxide in reducing blood pressure.
It is widely known that dietary nitrate leads to the substantial elevation of circulating nitrite, which is subsequently converted into bioactive nitric oxide. Bioactive nitric oxide relaxes blood vessels, increases glucose uptake and regulate muscular contraction. Dietary supplementation with nitrate rich beetroot juice has become increasingly popular in athletes and has consistently been shown to reduce oxygen demands during submaximal exercise allowing athletes to go further for longer.
Dark chocolate works a little differently. Cocoa beans contain a substance called epicatechin, a flavanol that releases vasoactive components from the endothelial cells in blood vessels increasing the bioavailability of nitric oxide. The increased bioavailability and activity of nitric oxide dilate blood vessels and increases blood flow, resulting in a reduction of blood pressure. Previous research have shown that as little as 6g per day can reduce mild hypertension, while around 40g per day can increase blood flow also in healthy patients.
Providing an edge
The previous findings have now been confirmed in a study undertaken at London’s Kingston University The scientists found that the tasty treat could help give sports enthusiasts an extra edge in their fitness training. They used a group of nine amateur cyclists. After undergoing initial fitness tests to establish a baseline for comparison, the participants were split into two groups. The first group was asked to replace one of its normal daily snacks with 40g of a dark chocolate for a fortnight, while the other participants substituted 40g of white chocolate for one of their daily snacks as a control.
The effects of the athletes’ daily chocolate consumption were then measured in a series of cycling exercise tests. The cyclists’ heart rates and oxygen consumption levels were measured during moderate exercise and in time trials. After a seven-day interval, the groups then switched chocolate types and the two-week trial and subsequent exercise tests were repeated.
All good news.
Benefits confirmed by EFSA
Only dark chocolate is beneficial to health (Photo: Simon A. Eugster)
And the beneficial effects have been confirmed by the European Food Safety Authority.
The Belgian chocolate manufacturer, Barry Callebaut, has exclusive use of an existing authorised claim stating that cocoa flavanols “help maintain the elasticity of blood vessels, which contributes to normal blood flow”. The authorised conditions of use require the product label to state that 200mg of cocoa flavanols are needed for the beneficial effect. The current claim can only be used for cocoa beverages with cocoa powder or for dark chocolate which provides at least a daily intake of 200mg of cocoa flavanols.
There has been concern that authorising claims on products such as chocolate could encourage over-consumption. However, the EFSA Opinion states that the amount required for the effect can be eaten within the context of a balanced diet.
So as long as you keep within your normal calorie intake level, feel no guilt when indulging in some dark chocolate.
Time for some dark chocolate indulgence
Eating dark chocolate is good for health (Photo: Boz Bros)
Eating dark chocolate can be good for your health (Photo: Boz Bros)
No surprise here, it has been known for quite some time that consuming dark chocolate can improve your health. Mind you, I am not talking about binge eating, but a decent although slightly restrained consumption. Previous research has linked chocolate consumption to many health benefits. One study has suggested that drinking two cups of hot chocolate a day may prevent memory decline, while another study found that eating moderate amounts of chocolate could reduce the risk of stroke.
Just in are new results from a further study of dark chocolate consumption. It seems to be a popular topic creating lots of publicity. And this time it is not results from another correlation study of epidemiological findings or an animal study, but results from a real trial on real people. It might seem too good to be true, but dark chocolate is actually good for you and scientists managed to find out why.
Study design
The scientists selected 44 middle-aged overweight men for the trial. Over two periods of four weeks, the men were required to eat either 70 g of regular dark chocolate each day or 70 g of specially produced dark chocolate with high levels of flavanols – naturally occurring antioxidants found in some plants, including the cocoa plant. Both chocolates were similar in their cocoa content.
Before and after both intervention periods, researchers performed a variety of measurements that are important indicators of vascular health. Scientists also evaluated the sensory properties of the high flavanol chocolate and the regular chocolate and collected the motivation scores of the participants to eat these chocolates during the intervention. As if that would be needed.
During the study, participants were advised to refrain from certain energy dense food products to prevent further weight gain. Too much chocolate can be fattening and they were already quite corpulent.
The findings of the trial
In the randomised double-blind crossover study, the scientists found that eating dark chocolate lowered the augmentation index, a key vascular health predictor, and reduced leukocyte adhesion marker expression.
Hrmm, all fine then, but what does it all mean? And here is the good news. Dark chocolate helps restore flexibility to arteries while also preventing white blood cells from sticking to the walls of blood vessels. That’s huge news when it comes to heart health; both arterial stiffness and white blood cell adhesion are known factors that play a significant role in atherosclerosis – thickening and hardening of the arteries.
Scientists destroying dark chocolate indulgence (Photo: Military Health)
Scientists replacing dark chocolate indulgence with pill (Photo: Military Health)
What’s more, the researchers found that although the chocolate higher in flavanols increased sensory stimulation in participants, both types of chocolate produced the same heart benefits. That’s a challenge to previous research that has suggested that the health benefits from consuming chocolate, wine and berries are due to their flavanol content.
Eat dark chocolate while you can
So the dark side of chocolate is a healthy one. But typical for scientists they said that the effect that dark chocolate has on our bodies is encouraging not only because it allows us to indulge with less guilt, but also because it could lead the way to therapies that do the same thing as dark chocolate but with better and more consistent results. So they still want to deprive us of chocolate indulgence despite its beneficial effect.
Until the dark chocolate drug is developed, eat while there still is time!
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Split values in a cell and segregate them in different rows
I have an excel file with this type of data, and I want to split all these in rows each cell having only one value.
Like in first cell I have two values in one cell . I want to put this in two different cells .
How can I do this ?
Loop through the data table and get the value. Then split the values by using Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray as
row(“column name”).tostring.split(Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray)(0) is the first value and
row(“column name”).tostring.split(Environment.NewLine.ToCharArray)(1) will give you the second value.
Use write cell activity to write in to a new cell :slight_smile:
1 Like
hello @shikharno.7
Arr1 = cellValue.split(cchar(Environment.newline))
to access the first use Arr1(0)
for second value use Arr1(1)
@HareeshMR , should i assign this in a variable ?
if the datatable name is “dtcol4” what will be assigned in arr1 ?
You can write directly or assign to a variable and write that variable to the excel … either way is fine
1 Like
I am getting this error . Maybe i have not defined the variable correctly ?
Can you post the values you have in assign activity? @shikharno.7
This is the value i am assigning.
value1 is in string format.
I used a message box to see the value ,
only the first two cells are being outputted after that “out of bound array exception is showing”
Yes, your first two rows have the second value to split and the remaining rows are having only one value. So you need to give a condition there or surround the split assign activity with try catch and then check @shikharno.7
New to this :frowning:
Could you please elaborate a little
1 Like
As your first and second rows have the data in two lines and we are split the string with new line everytime, the first two worked fine. But the third one won’t have the data split but the code trying to split with new line. So, it is erroring out.
We need to give the condition as , if the string contains two lines, then split. Instead use Try catch activity and assign variables inside the try catch. So, if the value has two lines, it will split … otherwise it will simply skip @shikharno.7
1 Like
Thank you :slight_smile:
Does it help @shikharno.7? Your issue is resolved?
for now …yes @HareeshMR
–hope these steps could help you resolve this
–use a excel application scope and pass the file path as input
–use read range activity and get the output with a datatable variable type named outdt
–use a build datatable activity and create a same datatable column structure of that in excel and get the output with a variable of type datatable named Finaldt
–use a for each row loop and pass the above outdt as input
–inside the loop use a if condition and mention the condition like this
row(“yourcolumnname”).Split(Environment.Newline.ToArray()).Count > 1
if the above condition passes it will go to THEN part where we can mention like this
–within the THEN part use a assign activity like this
out_valuearray = row(“yourcolumnname”).ToString.Split(Environment.Newline.ToArray())
–then use a add data row activity and mention the datatable as Finaldt and ArrayRow property as {row(0).tostring, row(1).tostring, out_valuearray(0).tostring.trim, row(3).tostring,…row(n).tostring}
here i though that column is in third position, we can change the position of the out_valuearray(0).ToString at any position in the ArrayRow property as per the column order in the datatable
–now again use the same add data row activity and mention like the same but with changed index number like this to include the second line data as a new row
–now if the condition fails it will go to ELSE part where we can simply use a add data row activity mentioning the finaldt as input for datatable and arrayrow property with all the rows as values
like this
{row(0).tostring,row(1).tostring, row(2).tostring,…row(n).tostring}
simple isnt it
hope this would help you
Kindly try this and let know for any queries or clarification
Cheers @shikharno.7
1 Like
@HareeshMR ,
I have a requirement to make this dynamic. In the snapshot 2 values are there in a cell , but it can be 3 or 4 or more. In that case what robust changes should i make ?
Thank you very much for yesterday’s help.
Thanks for the detailed reply @Palaniyappan
Try this @shikharno.7,
Use a variable of type string array and split the text with Environment.NewLine.Tochararray .
It will store number of values you have in a string array. Then use the length of the string to write to new cells each time. SO that if the length is one, you can write in only one cell or if length is 10, you can write to 10 new cells :slight_smile:
Could you upload a sample xaml :slight_smile: ? |
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
One of the most interesting and disturbing eras I researched for my novel, The Secrets of Dr. John Welles, was the Great Depression. Of all the details I studied, I found those affecting farmers to be the most heartbreaking. This is probably because my protagonist, Dr. John Welles, came from a farming family. The Welleses survived, but they did not come out unscathed.
Before the stock market crash in October of 1929, farmers were already experiencing hard times. One contributing factor was the forty percent drop in prices between 1920 and 1921 as the overseas market disappeared. World War I had led to a time of prosperity for farmers as war-torn European nations needed produce grown in America. This need led to a remarkable increase in agricultural production, income, and purchasing power. The profits farmers made were reinvested in more land and machinery.
Once the war ended and the European markets no longer needed American food products, prices and profits plummeted. The price crop supports that existed at the beginning of World War I guaranteeing farmers minimum prices on certain crops disappeared in 1921 when President Harding announced their end. Further exacerbating the problem was President Coolidge’s increase in taxes on imports, which decreased foreign trade for America and removed more of the farmers’ markets. Many farmers lost their new land investments to foreclosure and/or experienced bankruptcy.
The construction of new homes, usually an indicator of economic strength, declined from 1926 to 1929. It is not surprising that no one paid attention to this warning sign especially since the crisis in the farming community, the truest measure of economic success or failure, was already in trouble. When added to the faith people placed in the stock market and the endless purchases made on credit, it is no wonder America experienced the Great Depression.
As I watched videos of farmers dumping milk into ditches on the side of the road and apples into piles left to rot, I knew in my heart that even if it meant their downfall, John’s stepmother, Collie Mercer Welles, wouldn’t let anyone go hungry. The character I created in Collie wouldn’t and couldn’t justify throwing food away when people around her were starving. Greed in that form simply did not exist in her. She may not have had the means to transport food, but anyone who made his or her way to the Welles farm would not be turned away empty-handed.
Farm protestors attempt to block roads leading to markets.
Unfortunately, many in the farming communities did not share the opinions and morals of my fictional character, Collie. The withholding and destruction of food was one of the most hideous consequences of the Great Depression. Desperation hit farmers when the expense of producing crops exceeded what they could make selling them. Groups known as Farm Holiday Associations were formed to stop selling crops until prices were forced higher. They operated under the motto, “Neither buy nor sell and let taxes go to hell.”
While in my heart I believe the Welles family would have risen above such actions, I wonder if they would have found resistance in their own community to helping those who were starving. It wasn’t uncommon for farmers who bucked these types of associations to find their efforts met with violence from a pitchfork in the tires of their vehicles to standoffs between deputies meant to protect food convoys and farmers armed with guns.
The stock market crash of 1929 will probably always be the most well-known contributing factor to the Great Depression. Billions of dollars were lost literally overnight by 1.5 million Americans who were involved with the market enough to actually have a broker. However, 40 million people living on farms had already been enduring hardships since 1919, and it is these people who would be hit the hardest again, particularly on the Great Plains, during the aftermath of the crash. The farmers knew what those living in the cities and banking on the stock market had yet to learn: the Great Depression was already upon them.
The title for my blog post came from a Depression Era song, the details of which you can read about here: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and listen to the Bing Crosby version here: “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Enjoy other interesting Depression Era history on Prohibition (I’ll Drink to That), speakeasies (Welcome to the Apple Crate), and moonshine (By the Light of the Silvery Moon).
Welcome to The Apple Crate
I’ll Drink to That
ill-drink-to-thatWhen you ask people about Prohibition in the United States, the response they most readily provide is that for some strange reason it became illegal to drink alcohol of any kind. This is usually accompanied by mystified looks and slow shakes of the head.
Unfortunately, what many don’t know is why this occurred and that it was actually part of our Constitution at one time. So, here’s a little history lesson born of my own need to understand Prohibition more thoroughly for the sake of my novel, The Secrets of Dr. John Welles.
By definition, Prohibition was the legal prevention of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages in the United States from 1920 to 1933 under the terms of the Eighteenth Amendment. Note that the consumption and private possession of alcohol was not illegal, so what a person already owned could be enjoyed in his or her own home. Just drink responsibly and sparingly as it was now tougher to resupply one’s stash.
The National Prohibition Act, known informally as the Volstead Act, set down methods for enforcing the Eighteenth Amendment, and defined which intoxicating liquors were prohibited, and which were excluded from Prohibition (e.g., for medical and religious purposes). The Amendment was the first to set a time delay before it would take effect following ratification, and the first to set a time limit for its ratification by the states. Its ratification was certified on January 16, 1919, with the amendment taking effect on January 16, 1920. For the following 13 years Prohibition was officially in effect, though the ability to enforce it was limited by the Volstead Act and by corrupt and complacent politicians who overlooked illicit manufacturing and smuggling.
The Anti-Saloon League’s Wayne Wheeler conceived and drafted the bill, which was named for Andrew Volstead, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who managed the legislation. The Anti-Saloon League was the leading organization lobbying for Prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century.
So, why all this hatred toward alcohol? The Eighteenth Amendment was the result of decades of effort by the Temperance Movement in the United States and at the time was generally considered a progressive amendment. The Temperance Movement, which went back as far as the late eighteenth century, was born of the concern for alcoholism and how it played into spousal abuse, family neglect, and chronic unemployment. However, the desire for cheap, plentiful alcohol led to relaxed ordinances on alcohol sales, and the problem persisted.
A tract published in 1784 by Benjamin Rush detailing how excessive use of alcohol was harmful to one’s physical and psychological health. Many people got on board with the idea, initially proposing temperance rather than abstinence, but like most well-meaning organizations, political in-fighting stalled the group.
Throughout the decades, the Temperance Movement received support from various religious denominations and temperance groups, but it also took a back seat to issues such as slavery during the Civil War. It wasn’t until the third wave of temperance that any movement achieved success. With the formation of The Anti-Saloon League by Rev. Howard Hyde Russell in 1893, the Temperance Movement found footing not by demanding that politicians change their drinking habits, only their votes in the legislature. Under the leadership of Wayne Wheeler, the Anti-Saloon League stressed political results and perfected the art of pressure politics. The Anti-Saloon League’s motto was “the Church in action against the saloon,” and it mobilized its religious coalition to pass state and local legislation, establishing dry states and dry counties.
By the late nineteenth century, most Protestant denominations and the American wing of the Catholic Church supported the movement to legally restrict the sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. These groups believed that alcohol consumption led to corruption, prostitution, spousal abuse, and other criminal activities. Brewers and distillers resisted the reform movement, which threatened to ruin their livelihood, and also feared women having the vote, because they expected women to vote for Prohibition. The Anti-Saloon League achieved its main goal of passage of the Eighteenth Amendment on December 18, 1917.
Just after the Eighteenth Amendment’s adoption, there was a significant reduction in alcohol consumption among the general public and particularly among low-income groups. Consumption soon climbed as underworld entrepreneurs began producing rotgut alcohol, and the speakeasy quickly replaced the saloon. Likewise, there was a general reduction in overall crime, mainly in the types of crimes associated with the effects of alcohol consumption, though there were significant increases in crimes involved in the production and distribution of illegal alcohol.
Those who continued to use alcohol tended to turn to organized criminal syndicates, who were able to take advantage of uneven enforcement, suddenly overwhelmed police forces, and corruptible public officials to establish powerful, murderous smuggling networks. Anti-prohibition groups arose and worked to have the Amendment repealed once it became apparent that Prohibition was an unprecedented catastrophe.
The Amendment was repealed in 1933 by ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, the only instance in United States history that a constitutional amendment was repealed in its entirety.
Before CK One, There Was Tabac Blond
Vintage Tabac Blond
Vintage Tabac Blond
Ernest Daltroff
Ernest Daltroff
Artwork inspired by Tabac Blond
Artwork inspired by Tabac Blond
Yesterday’s Perfume
Perfume Projects
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This was posted by Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy, since renamed Raw Farm, on Facebook in 2013.
Analysis using the experimental method steps is shown below.
Step 1: Make Observations.
Raw milk is a living food with active ingredients. Pasteurized milk is filled with dead bacteria, denatured proteins, destroyed enzymes, and more. Raw milk can be utilized outside refrigeration, as has been done for centuries, to make many types of healthy dairy products. However, when pasteurized milk is allowed to “grow” in a non-refrigerated environment, mold and other strange things appear.
Step 2: Form a hypothesis.
When raw milk and pasteurized milk (organic or conventional) are left at room temperature, bacteria grows naturally. Raw milk continues to be appear normal, be enjoyable, and be a safe product to consume. Pasteurized milk becomes moldy and unsafe to consume.
Step 3: Make a prediction.
Raw milk will become a sour cream or separated cheese-like product (safe to consume and enjoy). Pasteurized milk becomes rancid and harmful to consume. Raw milk will become an edible, enjoyable, product safe to consume.
Step 4: Perform an experiment. (Picture Proof)
The 5 jars were all filled on the same day. I prefer not to reveal the brand name on the labels but two are conventional milk brands and two are organic milk brands. The whole milk is “Jersey cow” milk from cows that live on grass. Jars were all sterilized before the experiment. I tightened all the lids and then backed them off a half turn.
I have done this experiment before and I am absolutely stunned at how little remains of what is labeled “whole milk.” Isn’t this blatantly dishonest labeling? Additionally, I consistently see that the UHT (Ultra High Temp. Pasteurized milk) goes bad fastest.
Step 5: Analyze the results of the experiment.
See mold growth/ pictures. The mold on lids show an estimate for the quantity of mold growth inside each jars.
Mold Growth Levels:
Raw Whole Milk: NO MOLD
Pasteurized Whole Milk: Medium mold levels
Pasteurized 2% Milk: HIGH mold levels
Pasteurized Organic Whole Milk: Medium mold levels
ULTRA High Temp Pasteurized 2 % Milk: EXTREMELY HIGH mold levels
Step 6: Draw a conclusion.
Drink raw milk. It is a living, bio-diverse perfect food. On that note, drink Organic Pastures Dairy Raw Milk for the best, most delicious raw milk I have ever tasted.
What are your thoughts on this? Would you want to consume a product that is not going to thrive inside your warm body (like room temperature environment)? |
Racing Rectangles
Racing rectangles is an easy and free outdoor activity that involves drawing shapes, counting and moving or jumping in rectangles.
Racing Rectangles Requirements:
Colored Chalk and a dice
Racing Rectangles Game Rules:
1. Draw as many columns as there are children to play.
2. Divide each column into x number of rows depending upon how long you want to play. An ideal number can be 10 to 12. We call each column as lane.
3. Make a start and finish line.
4. Get a dice (You can also have more than one Dice to speed up the game)
5. The kids are the playing pieces.
6. Each child chooses a number on the dice from 1 to 6.
7. The roller then rolls the dice and whatever number comes up, that kid moves into their first box of his lane. If you are rolling two or more dices together then two children will move forward. In cases where the same number shows up on both dices then that child moves two spaces.
8. Whoever reaches the finish line first is the winner.
9. You can also have relay race variation in this game. Pair up two or more children in a team.
10. Number the team members as Player1, Player 2 etc
11. Player1 start the game and runs the race for x number of dice rolls (let’s say 5)
12. After 5 dice rolls, player 2 replaces player1 and continues the race.
13. All other rules remain the same. You can also have a small baton to add fun. |
What the Bible Says
In the Bible, “the time of the end” describes the period leading up to the return of Jesus Christ. It denotes the period just prior to the end of civilizations ruled by men and the beginning of Christ’s rule over the Earth. The Bible describes this period as filled with unprecedented violence—violence that almost annihilates all human life.
That is why people think of Bible prophecy when they see new reports about terrorism, religious clashes, trade wars, radical regimes and weapons of mass destruction.
Bible prophecies, including those spoken by Christ Himself, give specific signs showing when human history is approaching that fearsome time.
For Christians who believe Jesus Christ, there is no escaping this: He predicted that He would supernaturally return, and that there would be signs immediately preceding that event—signs we should watch for.
Jesus Christ is the only true son of the almighty God. He prophesied throughout His ministry. Not long before they crucified him, He gave His most crucial prophetic message on the Mount of Olives.
In this Jesus said, “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putt eth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors” (Matthew 24:30, 32-33).
For Christians who believe Jesus Christ, there is no escaping this: He predicted that He would supernaturally return and that there would be signs immediately preceding that event—signs we should watch for.
In this same prophecy, Jesus also made this important clarification: “But of that day and hour know eth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (verse 36). Be wary when you hear someone predicting a specific date that Christ will return. But also be wary of anyone who tells you there is no way to know. Christ also said plainly that we should be able to recognize signs “that it is near, even at the doors” (verse 33). God has not revealed the date, but He has revealed several signs.
Here are four specific signs the Bible gives to know that the return of Jesus Christ is near. What makes these so important is that we have already fulfilled all four of them.
Sign One
“And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Matthew 24:3). The disciples specifically asked Jesus Christ when He would return. How did He answer? He did not say, Do not worry about such things, or No man can know the decade or the century. He answered by giving specific signs to watch for.
“And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet” (verse 6). Christ said that wars and rumors of wars would spread, but these of themselves were not signs of His return. He then added that “there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows” (verses 7-8).
So, when you see wars and rumors of wars increasing—and you see famines, pestilences and earthquakes increasing—do not pretend everything is normal. Sit up and take notice!
Sign Two
Jesus gave another sign of His return, recorded in Matthew 17. Here, He was transfigured before three of His disciples. This was an incredible experience for them. They had believed He was the Son of God but here was a dazzling vision that not only confirmed this but showed them what He will look like at His Second Coming.
After seeing an advance vision of the most important event in human history, what did the disciples immediately think of? An intriguing question formed in their minds. After the transfiguration, the first thing they asked Jesus about was this: “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” (Matthew 17:10).
Sign Three
Back in Matthew 24, Jesus Christ gave more signs of what would occur before His return. Even among these descriptions, one statement comes across like a lightning bolt: “And I shall preach this gospel of the kingdom in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come” (verse 14).
Consider the radical implications of this clear, direct statement. Christianity has existed as a religion for 2,000 years since Jesus’s lifetime. It is the world’s largest religion. The New Testament has been translated into over 1,500 languages, and Christian churches have gone to extraordinary lengths over those 20 centuries to preach its message in all nations.
So how could the gospel being preached in all the world be a sign of the end? Christ’s statement could only mean that the message being proclaimed by all those churches worldwide is not the true gospel!
The word “gospel” is used to refer to the record of Jesus Christ’s life in the biblical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But its main meaning is the message of Jesus Christ. The gospel message preached by billions of Catholics, Protestants and others over the centuries has been a gospel aboutChrist. It has been a message proclaiming that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and died to pay for the sins of humanity.
But this is not the gospel Jesus Christ preached, and it is not the gospel He said would be a sign of His return! Jesus Christ was the Son of God and died to pay the death penalty for human sin, but that was not His gospel message. The gospel message He Himself preached was the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God! That establishment of God’s rule over mankind will revolutionize the world and the universe (Mark 1:14-15; Matthew 9:35; Luke 4:43; 9:1-2, etc).
Many scriptures describe the emergence of false gospel messages after Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (e.g. Galatians 1:8-9). In fact, false Christianity is another one sign that Christ’s coming is approaching (Revelation 6:2). Christians have misunderstood Christ, misunderstood His message, and therefore the gospels they have taught are flawed. Satan has counterfeited Christ’s message and His Church! (2 Corinthians 11:13-14).
Jesus Christ’s Church has endured over the 2,000 years since His first coming—as He promised it would (Matthew 16:18). But it has not become a nation- and empire-dominating religious force of millions of people blending in the doctrines of many belief systems. It has not become a fractured coalition of thousands of independent churches with differing beliefs. It has been small and persecuted. And it had not preached the gospel of the Kingdom of God in all the world for a witness to all nations.
God used an end-time Elijah to restore all things—including the gospel message of the Kingdom of God. That man preached the same gospel that Jesus Christ preached—and did so “around the world for a witness” for the first time in almost 2,000 years!
Sign Four
The existence of weapons that can annihilate humanity was a sign Jesus gave that everyone in the world could see. The sign of an end-time Elijah and the sign of the true gospel being preaching around the world were signs that require you to focus on God’s Church.
There is another major sign of Jesus Christ’s return that concerns God’s Church. It is a prophecy written by the Apostle Paul roughly 20 years after Jesus Christ had been crucified and resurrected, and it concerns the timing of His future return. To Church members in Thessalonica, he wrote, “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2).
This scripture is revealing. In Paul’s lifetime, there were people who believed that Christ would return, but they were saying that He could return at any moment, and this was troubling the true Christiane Paul was ministering to. They were in danger of being deceived by false Christianity. So he explained another specific sign God had given that had to happen first: a “falling away.”
What a remarkable and troubling sign of Christ’s imminent return! Writing to true Christians, Paul said that inside the New Testament “temple”—the Church (e.g. Ephesians 2:19-22)—an extremely wicked leader would rise up, and there would be a great falling away: many true Christians forsaking God! |
Induction Annealing is a heat treatment in which material is exposed to an elevated temperature and slowly cooled.
Induction Annealing of the material changes physical properties of the material such as strength and hardness.
1. Improved power factor
2. Tropicalised design
3. Compact size
4. Highly adaptable for automation
5. Eco-friendly due to noiseless and flameless operation
6. No statutory approvals required
7. Lesser risk involved compared to conventional methods
8. Application Specific
9. Uniform annealing with better quality end product
10. Lesser Annealing cost comparing to conventional methods
11. Faster Annealing cycle
12. Higher productivity
13. Highest system efficiency
14. Auto or manual mode operation
1. Annealing of Milk Cans, Oxygen cylinder for neck formation.
2. Shell Annealing.
3. Annealing of wires.
4. Continuous Annealing of copper wires.
5. Stainless Steel / Aluminum Utensils
6. All Cold Formed Steel Components.
7. Stress Relieving.
8. Post weld Annealing.
9. Annealing of Copper tubes.
10. Annealing of knife, blade ends.
11. Annealing of brazing wires & Rods.
UIHM induction annealing machines are designed to be used for Normalising, Stress relieving and Process Annealing. what is induction annealing
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Now Is The Time For You To Know Everything About Health.
Health and wellness, as defined by the Globe Wellness Company, is “an environment where the physical, emotional, mental, social as well as economic well being of humans is kept with optimal control”. A variety of other definitions have actually likewise been utilized for many years for numerous objectives. For instance, a healthy diet plan is taken into consideration healthy and balanced, while the reverse is considered unhealthy. This definition has actually evolved with time with originalities being presented each day. Below are several of the most crucial pointers to preserving good health.
The first step in the direction of keeping a healthy and balanced way of life is to set a fine example. Our appearance typically mirrors our overall health as well as mental illness typically shows itself in undesirable physical symptoms. Know that changes in state of mind, hunger, sleeping patterns as well as energy levels might suggest that a person is managing a disease or dealing with stress. Early detection of these signs can aid doctor to determine whether there is an extra serious underlying ailment at the office in the process. Additionally, daily workout can promote a sense of well-being that can make the difference between remaining on track as well as falling off.
Another method of defining wellness is examining the connections in between physical illness as well as suicidal efforts. Research study has actually shown that physical ailment is commonly linked to self-destructive thoughts and activities. This is particularly true in individuals dealing with clinical depression. Although some believe that suicide is an outcome of neglected mental health and wellness problems, there are a number of individuals who take their very own lives due to clinical problems that are easily treated.
Accomplishing wellness is about far more than diet plan and workout, although they are important elements of a healthy way of living. Mental wellness includes the full range of things connected to your physical wellness and also boosting this suggests including the entire body. This consists of the brain, which helps to specify your ideas, feelings as well as behavior. Additionally, public health specialists have actually kept in mind that a strong feeling of self-confidence and also individual satisfaction is connected to physical health and wellness. This meaning might be various for each and every individual, but there are crucial elements of wellness that all people can agree on.
Being healthy starts with having a good idea of what is meant by “well-being.” It involves defining your individual objectives as well as the actions you need to take to accomplish those objectives. It involves choosing that are in your benefit, participating in activities that encourage your psychological state and also having a favorable attitude. The interpretation of wellness additionally includes the elements of physical and psychological excitement, relaxation and also ample rest. Health and wellness education and learning is an indispensable part of specifying health and wellness as well.
The challenge for society is to minimize the number of people dealing with both poor health and mental disorder, while attempting to improve total health through prevention as well as very early treatment. Avoidance is better than treatment. Although a few of the approaches used to deal with mental disorders have actually proven effective in the past, there is increasing evidence that there are many obstacles to attaining successful treatment in the field of mental wellness as well as wellness.
Public education as well as recognition is essential to enhance public mental wellness and also health. Understanding is the primary step toward enhancing mental wellness and also health. Lots of people coping with mental disease, or that go to danger for developing a mental disorder, are not even mindful that they have this condition. Public education and learning efforts must advertise higher understanding of mental disorders to ensure that people will be a lot more conscious if they encounter any kind of kind of mental disorder. Some States are applying programs that will give numerous dollars in funding for area psychological wellness companies as well as self-destruction prevention programs.
In order to deal with issues of public health and wellness related to mental wellness and also well-being, several aspects should be in location. Mental health services need to include numerous parts. One of the most apparent component is to advertise much better diagnostic care, improved household assistance, and also far better academic possibilities for young people. The second element is to carry out methods that will minimize stigma and also rise social support for a person’s capability to handle stress and anxiety as well as improve their specific habits. Public education and also campaigns that resolve issues like substance abuse and also alcohol usage, anxiety, and also overindulging are also vital elements of public health solutions. These strategies might also attend to elements of the problem like heart problem and diabetes mellitus, which influence the heart and the rest of the body as well as the mind.
Poor physical health has to do with your practices as well as how you handle your atmosphere. Behaviors like smoking, drinking alcohol, overeating and physical lack of exercise can all result in inadequate health or physical lack of exercise. Being literally energetic helps you to lead a healthy lifestyle. If you do not work out frequently or you find other means to fill in the voids in your schedule that or else would certainly be filled by other tasks, you might be at threat for creating inadequate physical health.
Great physical health and mental health and wellness typically go together. You need to keep a healthy and balanced weight and additionally keep energetic socially. Staying energetic socially suggests that you fulfill new individuals as well as communicate with them. It likewise implies that you are exercising regularly, if not frequently, as well as you eat an excellent well balanced diet regimen that is abundant in veggies, fruits, whole grains, dairy products and proteins.
Keeping a good physical wellness doesn’t mean that you have to be a lazy person all day. Actually, some research studies have actually shown that exercise, particularly aerobics, has an effect on the intensity of disease. In a recent research carried out in Finland, active aerobics such as running and also strolling for at least 30 minutes each day were revealed to be related to a reduced incident of clinical depression. This follows other research studies that have shown that being literally energetic lowers the possibilities of establishing health problem from stress and anxiety and also the aging procedure.
An excellent mental health is very important as well. You need to make certain that you have strong relationships, social communication and preferably, leave the house when the mood deviates for the worst. The more social interaction you have with others, the much better off you will be. Nevertheless, there are times when you need to secure yourself away to stop mental disease from overtaking you. When this takes place, it is best to look for the help of a professional wellness professional.
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Morality is the standard of activity by which the Supreme Authority is satisfied. So long we are concerned with the relative world, we must have to deal with relativities of actions and reactions accrued up by our routine work and to regulate such and such actions of daily affairs, we have to follow the standard codes so that our actions may be considered as moral.
Development of human consciousness by a gradual process to the highest codes of actions is another name of morality. In such developing stages of morality the principle of one man's food is another man's poison is also applicable because the moral codes of the lowest grade is different from the moral codes of the highest.
The moral codes of the marketplace is therefore different from the moral codes of a householder's life which is different from the moral codes of the politicians. The politicians may take up some actions which are against the principles of householders standard of morality and the standard of morality in the household affairs may be completely different from the moral codes of the marketplace. In that way we cannot find out the standard of moral codes unless and until we find out the standard of morality in all perfectness.
To take up a very common cause we may cite the following examples of morality. In the moral codes of the revealed scripture it is instructed that one should avoid the following immoral activities of life, if anyone wants at all to make any progress of life. Such prohibitory injunctions are as follows:
(1) One should not make any unholy connection with woman.
(2) One should not indulge in the matter of unnecessary animal slaughter.
(3) One should not be addicted to the debased habit of intoxication.
(4) One should not be addicted to the debased habit of gambling enterprise.
These moral principles are to be observed especially by the public leader, a learned Brahmin, a religionist and by the head of executive department of the state. Unless such persons are strictly moral by the above codes we cannot expect any citizen of the state to follow the moral principle. The public leader cannot be a successful leader if he is not serious about the above moral principles.
Mahatma Gandhi became a successful public leader because he observed the above moral principles in life. Although he was a married man during his leadership of the country he completely abstained himself from all sorts of bodily relation with his married wife even and what to speak of making unholy connection with other codes of life. The first principle is this that one should be completely aloof from all womanly connection save and except his own married wife. In that sense child marriage is most convenient form of morality and there are many examples in the noble life. Mahatma Gandhi was married at the age of sixteen or so and it is said that his wife was elder than him by one year. But see the life of Mahatma Gandhi. Apart from economic considerations, the system of child marriage prevents both the man and the woman falling into immoral connection with the opposite sex. Psychologically both a boy or a girl develops the sex-consciousness at the age of thirteen to eighteen years of age according to different climatic conditions. In such stage especially after the attainment of puberty a woman wants a male and if she is not married within that time and allowed to mix up with boys who have developed the sex consciousness, it is quite natural that there is every chance of fall down either by the boy or by the girl. With the change of social conditions, the standard of conjugal life is also changing but the code of avoiding unholy connection with woman is always there. You cannot indulge in unholy connection with the opposite sex because the social conditions have changed. Because unholy connection with woman is the beginning of all immorality. There are thousands and one examples in the history of mankind as to how a great man fell down simply by illegitimate connection with woman.
The highest principle of moral code begins therefore with the codes of avoiding illicit connection with woman.
In the moral codes of ordinary dealing the standard of judging a person about his becoming a learned man is defined like this.
The testing criterions are as follows:
(1) That a learned man is he who is able to look upon all women, except his own married wife, as his mother is certainly a passed moralist.
(2) That a learned man is he who treats others' property as much untouchable as are the household refuse thrown away in the dust bin of the street.
(3) That a learned man is he who behaves with all other living beings as he wants to be behaved by others.
Nobody wants to be killed by any other living being. As such we should not indulge in unnecessary killing of the animals to satisfy the taste of the tongue.
Therefore the next stage of morality begins with non-violence not in theory but in practice. You cannot look upon the poor animals as objects of killing by man and become moral at the same time. You cannot live at the expense of others and become moral at the same time. The whole world or the universe is conducted by a supernatural power of God. This external energy of the Supreme Lord is called by the name 'Avidaya Karmnsamga Shakti' or the material energy. Everyone has to work for his livelihood. The services are of different grades. The service of the learned scholar is superior than that of the expert statesman. The expert and sincere service of the statesman is superior than that of the industrialist and the businessman. And the service of the industrialist or businessman is better than the common and uncommon artisan or the expert and inexpert labourers. The labourer class of men can render service to the upper class men as above mentioned.
The affairs of the human society is being managed under the above arrangement and everywhere the division of the above four classes of men can be found under different names only. Such classification of men is made according to the standard of qualification and occupation and not by any birthright claim. The idea of the caste system is based on the above principle and it has nothing to do with any birthright claim. When such birthright claim is made the whole thing becomes vitiated and the order of the society becomes degraded for want of real moral strength.
The learned scholar who devotes himself to studies only must follow the previous learned Acharyas or men in authority and must not deviate from the standard of the great Acharyas. In the Bhagwat Geeta worship of the bona fide Acharyas is recommended for the learned persons who actually want to do something good to the society. Such learned scholars may undertake all kinds of research work to suit the current social and political circumstances and may make some external alteration in the procedure of the work but if they deviate from the ideals of the original authorities, they must be called immoral men. One should always follow the footprints of the standard Mahajan or the Acharyas recognized by all concerned. The research work taken up by such scholars must have an aim for the well-being of the society and not otherwise. Happiness for all the members of the society including the animal members is the ideal standard of morality.
Nationalism does not mean for the human being only but nationalism based on moral standard must include the animals and all other living beings in the state. The statesmen make laws specially for the protection of the minority but they have no law for the protection of the majority of living being other than the human being. The state protects human being by all means but they send the poor animals to the slaughter house. This is against the principle of morality.
In India there are certain terminologies in respect of the learned scholars, devotees of the Supreme Lord and the Lord also. The learned scholar is called the Brahmin, the pure devotee is called the Harijans and the Lord is called Narayana. Unfortunately a certain section of men claim to become a Brahmin simply by birthright without having the necessary qualification and the term Harijan which is specially meant for the pure devotees of the Lord is now applied to the lower class of men without any proper rectification. Any man even from the lowest status of society can become a Harijan or Brahmin and there is no restriction for them but such Harijan or Brahmin must possess the necessary qualification. That is the standard of morality. Immoral persons only claim something which they do not deserve. Immoral persons without being qualified want to capture power of the great man against the principle of standard morality. Similarly the Lord is brought to the standard of wretched men under the name of Daridra Narayana without knowing the real morality. The word Narayan is so exalted that it cannot be compared with the names of Brahma the creator of the universe or Shiva the annihilator of the universe. And if such Narayana is compared with the wretched persons it is an act of immorality as it is said in the standard scriptures. So far birthright is concerned even a man born by a great father cannot claim to be equal to his father without being duly qualified. The son of a big High Court Judge cannot claim to become the High Court Judge without the necessary qualifications.
In the Bhagwat Geeta the Personality of Godhead claims all sorts of living entities as His own sons. As such all living entities including the hogs and dogs naturally become His sons but as they have degraded themselves in the species of lower animals by the result of their own activities, they are never equal to the qualifications of the associates of God. Although a dog is also a son of God, he is a dog at the same time. It is the qualification only therefore that counts in all spheres of life and not simply by claiming the sons of the Supreme Lord. The moral codes of such qualifications are mentioned in the revealed scripture and morality means to qualify oneself to the satisfaction of the Supreme authority.
The Supreme authority is Vishnu or the Lord who is above all other living beings. In the Vedas, Vasudeva or Vishnu is described to be the original Person. He is above all. Nobody is equal to Him or greater than Him. He is therefore the Lord of everyone big and small. It is said that the Surayas or the Aryas do always look upon the Supreme Lord Vishnu whereas others who do not do so or one who has no respect for the Supreme Lord call Him by any name, must be an immoral man and therefore such person is counted amongst Asuryas or the demons. The moral codes of the Asuryas are different from that of the Surayas. The moral codes of the Surayas is to satisfy the wishes of the Supreme Lord whereas the moral codes of the Asurayas are to satisfy their own senses. The senses of the Asurayas being impure in the matter of sense satisfaction, their moral codes cannot be accepted as standard and we see therefore clashes amongst the asurayas in the name of moral standard. Sense gratification cannot be taken as moral at any stage. In any home, society or state nobody can be a moral man who satisfies his own senses without satisfying the higher authorities. Nobody can be happy therefore in any status of the society or state if he is unable to abide by the moral codes of that particular institution in which he is attached.
An Englishman or an American or a German or an Indian or anyone else are all free members of a free state respectively. But that freedom is not absolute. Every individual member of the state must abide by the laws of the state otherwise such law breakers shall be subjected to the police action of the state. This idea of the small state and that of the individual person can equally be applied to the larger state of Vishnu or the Supreme Lord of the universal state.
The conception of the caste system is made by the order of the Lord and the Vishnupuranam verifies the order in the following words.
Purushena Para Puman
Vishnuraradhyte Pumsam
Nanyattattosha Karanam.
Any person who abides by the principle of four division of the social order as well as one who is able to follow the four stages of spiritual realisation can only satisfy the Supreme Lord and there is no other alternative to satisfy Him. And that is the beginning of Morality.
And what is this Varnashram system? The four varnas are respectively the intelligent class of men, the statesmen, the commercial community and the labourer class known as the Brahmins, the Kshatriyas, the Vaishyas, and the Sudras technically. And what are the Ashramas? They are different stages of development.
The whole system is schemed for fulfilling the mission of human life by suitable division of departmental activities. The aim is one namely to satisfy the Supreme Lord. And as the Lord and the living entities are both living forces, the spiritual enjoyment between them by reciprocal exchange of dealings are not without variegatedness. The Lord is the chief amongst all kinds of living beings. Both the Lord and the living beings are one in quality and therefore both of them want enjoyment by reciprocal give and take policy and the Lord being the chief personality all activities of the living entities can be moral only when they fulfill the standard of satisfying the Lord. It is a scheme of cooperation for everyone's benefit. The intelligent class of men or the Brahmins are said to be the head of the whole body, the statesmen or the Kshatriyas are the arms, the commercial community or the Vaishyas are the thighs and the labourer class of men are the legs of the whole body. So neither the head nor the legs are less important for the service of the body which compared with the all pervading Personality of Godhead. But without any service for the satisfaction of the Lord the scheme is a show only as much as the blind eye or false eye is only a show to cheat innocent public without any value of the eye. There is no quarrel between the capitalist and labourer or the industrialists and the labourers in healthy or moral condition of the society as there is no quarrel between any different parts of the body in healthy condition. Combined activities for the one supreme goal of life i.e. satisfaction of the ultimate person is the sum and substance of moral standard.
Anything which is not aimed at the above mentioned goal of life is called atheism or non-moral standard of life. Spiritual realisation and moral life are both identical things. Spiritual life without morality has no meaning and in the same way morality without the knowledge of the Supreme Authority is only a show. Any person who is engaged in the transcendental service of the Lord in terms of the above scheme must have all the moral qualities which are visible in the character of the gods whereas person who has no relation with the personality of the Lord evidently cannot have any moral quality and that is the verdict of the history of human society. Therefore moral life is not a life of sense gratification but it is a life for the satisfaction of the higher authority.
The animal life is conducted only for sense gratification. An animal is pardoned for its entering a householder's premises and eating up all the foodstuff stocked there, but if a man does so he is put into criminal trespass and so many other charges. The difference is that the animal does not know anything but sense gratification whereas the man is understood to have the sense of morality by obeying the laws of the state or society and therefore a man's action of trespassing a householder's premises is taken more seriously than that of the animal. That is the difference of a man and the animal. The human life is a benediction to understand this moral codes of the Lord and if he behaves like the animal life even in the human form, certainly he is again sent back to animal species of life for leading a life of the 'Naradhama.' Nara means a man and adhama means the most degraded. So naradhama means that a man who does not develop the moral standard of life is again degraded into the animal kingdom with full facility for sense enjoyment like the dogs and hogs without any sense of morality.
As we have already stated that moral quality has no value if it is devoid of the relation of the Lord. A dog is sometimes called moral animal because it is very faithful to its master. But that sort of faithfulness has no moral standard because it has forgotten its relation with God. The dog may be very faithful to its master but it is not faithful to other dogs who are more akin to its features. A dog at once begins howling as soon as it sees another dog in the precincts of its jurisdiction and similarly we can see that a man is very good man in relation to his own atmosphere but when the question of self interest, community interest, society interest or national interest is there he becomes the most ferocious man exactly like the dog. These things happen only when there is not spiritual realisation of the human being and they think only in terms of self interest, community interest, social interest or national interest without any interest for the Lord. Real morality is there when everything is acted in the interest of the Lord which includes all other minor interest.
Without such spiritual realisation in view no amount of one-sided doggish service of faithfulness will bring in any moral standard of life. If it was possible at all then all the leaders of different nations would not have quarreled between themselves for some temporary things which they have wrongly accepted as permanent. For want of real moral life there is continuous rupture of national interest and all schemes of peace and harmony being continuously frustrated without any solution. The dogs cannot make any solution of continuous quarrel because they are unable to revive their consciousness of relation with God. But the man if he likes he can do so easily because he has the capacity of discharging this important duty.
The standard of civilization on the basis of unlimited sense satisfaction has to be changed into regulated life for spiritual realisation and that will lead to the actual moral standard of life. In the diseased condition of life nobody can be happy increasing the standard of sense gratification. If he wants to get rid of the diseased condition he has to consult the experienced physician for guidance of diet and medicine. And to relieve the diseased condition of the present set up of Godless civilization the leaders have to consult the liberated physicians who have already prescribed the right medicine and right diet. The right medicine is very simple. They must attend to hear the transcendental messages from the Lord and the diet is prescribed in the matter of partaking the remnant foodstuff or Prasadam or the foodstuff which is first offered to the Lord. There is no fear of the foodstuff being taken up by the Lord if it is offered to Him but by doing so the foodstuff is purified by spiritual process which helps the eater in reviving his consciousness of relation with God. When one revives his Godly consciousness by hearing in submissiveness the message of the Lord and make practice for eating the Prasadam under prescribed rules, he is sure to revive his lost consciousness and thus make progress in becoming a moral man proportionately with the revival of God consciousness. Every disease takes some time for its being completely cured but the treatment must begin without delay. We shall request all leaders of the society in all countries to accept this process of treatment which is neither expensive nor difficult. The whole thing is possible to be adjusted in terms of the special circumstances and we shall advise everyone to adopt this method for a general relief in the epidemic of moral degradation.
Advancement of modern education has no value because it is devoid of moral standard. Advanced students in the university of modern education have to be guarded by regular Police force for the matter of observing the moral codes of the university. And the highest officer in the state service has to be brought into justice by the supreme court of law for his conduct of misappropriation of public money. Such is the condition of moral life at present.
Therefore an educated man does not necessarily mean a man of morality while an illiterate man with full consciousness of the Lord's presence everywhere makes him the most moral and faithful man in the world. Therefore it is not the so-called education but it is God consciousness of the man that will bring in the required moral standard. Godless civilization full with vulgar literatures of sex indulgence or instruction by advanced science in the matter of sense gratification of the uncontrolled senses makes the whole scientific brain immorally compact. Invention of the atomic bomb is the result of the highest grade of scientific brain. But the whole world is disturbed now for its fear may be real or unreal and it is the sign of pure sense gratification under the influence of power intoxication. |
Does preeclampsia increase risk of infant heart defects?
A population analysis examines if preeclampsia may serve as a warning sign for heart defects in the neonate. Also, do chlamydia antibodies mean reduced fertility? Plus: Can ovary removal help CVD risk in diabetic women?
According to a new population analysis published in JAMA, women who have preeclampsia may be more likely to give birth to infants with heart defects.
Researchers looked at all live births from 1989 to 2012 in the province of Quebec, which comprises a quarter of Canada’s population. Every woman who delivered an infant, with or without a heart defect, in any Quebec hospital during that period was included, covering 1,942,072 infants.
Recommended: To treat or not to treat mild chronic hypertension in pregnancy?
The overall prevalence of heart defects in infants born to women without preeclampsia was 8.6 per 1000, compared with 16.7 per 1000 in infants born to women with preeclampsia. No increase in prevalence of critical heart defects (123.7 per 100,000 vs 75.6 per 100,000) was seen in infants of preeclamptic mothers, but they were more likely to have noncritical heart defects (1538.9 per 100,000 vs 789.2 per 100,000) when compared to infants of non-preeclamptic mothers. Among specific defects, septal defects had the highest prevalence.
After stratifying the preeclampsia variants, the researchers found that infants of women with early-onset preeclampsia (< 34 weeks) had a greater prevalence of critical heart defects (364.4 per 100,000) and noncritical heart defects (294.6 per 100,000) than those of women with late-onset preeclampsia (≥ 34 weeks).
The authors concluded that preeclampsia was significantly associated with noncritical heart defects and that a preeclampsia diagnosis before 34 weeks was associated with critical heart defects. They stressed, however, that the absolute risk of congenital heart defects was low.
NEXT: Do chlamydia antibodies indicate the potential for reduced fertility?
C. trachomatis antibodies and infertility
Antibodies to Chlamydia trachomatis may be a marker of reduced fertility in some women, according to results of a cohort study conducted through the National Institutes of Health’s Reproductive Medicine Network. Published in Fertility & Sterility, the research also shows that risk of ectopic pregnancy is significantly higher in women with the antibodies.
The goal of the study was to determine if seropositivity for C trachomatis predicts pregnancy and pregnancy outcome in infertile women with patent fallopian tubes. The cohort included 1250 women enrolled in the Pregnancy in Polycystic Syndrome II and the Assessment of Multiple Gestations From Ovarian Stimulation trials.
More: Surgically managing endometriosis-related infertility
Elementary body-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (EB ELISA) was used to test the women’s sera for anti-C trachomatis immunoglobulin G (IgG)1 and IgG3 antibodies. Optical density readings ≥0.35 and ≥0.1 were considered positive for IgG1 and IgG3, respectively. The researchers assessed outcomes for pregnancy, live birth, and ectopic pregnancy and used log-linear regression to determine the relative risk after adjustment for age, race, medication, smoking status, and current alcohol use.
The 243 women (19%) who tested positive for anti-C trachomatis IgG3 tended to be nonwhite and smokers. They were also significantly less likely to conceive (risk ratio [RR] 0.65, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.52-0.83) or to have a live birth (RR 0.59, 95% CI 0.43-0.80). Adjustment for the number of hysterosalpingography-documented patent tubes weakened the relationships (RR 0.73, 95% CI 0.56-0.97 and RR 0.73, 95% CI 0.50-1.04, respectively). Risk of ectopic pregnancy was 2.7 times higher in women who were anti-C trachomatis IgG3 seropositive (95% CI 1.40-5.34).
NEXT: Does ovary removal reduce CVD risk?
Surgery may not cut CVD risk for type 2 diabetes
Ovarian hyperandrogenemia may not explain the high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women with type 2 diabetes mellitus, according to results from a community-based, multicenter study. The report was published in Diabetes Care.
The data are from the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures, in which 7977 women aged ≥ 65 years were monitored for an average of 15.1 years. Sex steroid hormones were measured in a random subset of 654 of the women and Cox proportional hazard regression was used to calculate adjusted hazard ratios.
Next: Obstetric history and CVD risk
A history of diabetes was reported by 6.3% of the women and 18% reported having undergone bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO). In the women whose sex steroid hormones were measured, type 2 diabetes was associated with 43.6% higher levels of free testosterone, which was partially explained by age and adiposity.
Total and free testosterone levels were lower in the women who had undergone BSO than in those with intact ovaries. Rates of death due to CVD were high in both the women with type 2 diabetes who retained their ovaries (hazard ratio = 1.95) and those with type 2 diabetes who had undergone BSO (hazard ratio = 2.56). Overall, BSO was not associated with CVD mortality.
Investigators concluded that the known association of type 2 diabetes and CVD was not reduced by BSO, suggesting that ovarian hyperandrogenemia does not explain the high risk of CVD seen in women with type 2 diabetes. |
the facts about the sunshine vitamin vitamin d benefits
The Facts About the Sunshine Vitamin — Vitamin D Benefits
The “sunshine” vitamin, or vitamin D, has been discussed a lot recently over the last few years, especially the importance of getting an adequate amount in your diet. Is vitamin D as important as everyone says it is? Is it that difficult to get an adequate amount from diet alone or do you need to spend hours in the sun? Read on to find out!
What is Vitamin D?
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble nutrient that is found naturally in some foods and is produced by our bodies when the ultraviolet rays of the sun are absorbed by our skin, triggering vitamin D synthesis in our cells. It can also be found in stores as a dietary supplement. Vitamin D is really an umbrella term for a group of fat-soluble vitamins that are derived from cholesterol and involved in calcium metabolism.
The two major forms of vitamin D are vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) and vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol). Both are actually inactive precursors of active metabolites that are important for calcium metabolism in humans. This even includes the cholecalciferol created by our bodies via ultraviolet light stimulation. Both D2 and D3 are converted to the other metabolites by the liver and the kidneys and are similar in chemical structure to testosterone, as both are derived from cholesterol with a steroid chemical backbone.
Vitamin D's Role in the Body
People with a vitamin D deficiency can actually develop a condition called rickets where the bones become thin and brittle due to calcium malabsorption. Vitamin D plays a major role in helping our bodies absorb and metabolize calcium efficiently. In fact, this condition was first discovered more than 300 years ago. It is possible to develop rickets by only getting limited sunlight, a dietary deficiency, poor absorption due to gastrointestinal issues, kidney disease or vitamin D resistance which is caused by decreased receptors in the intestines.
Without vitamin D, our bodies cannot absorb calcium or phosphate properly leading to low serum levels of both and high parathyroid hormone concentrations. Parathyroid hormones are hormones that are the most important in terms of regulating the concentrations of calcium and phosphorus in the extracellular fluid of our cells. Too many of these can cause kidney stones, irregular heartbeats, and brain abnormalities.
In addition, vitamin D helps our muscles to contract, nerves use vitamin D to carry messages around the body and the immune system utilizes the vitamin to fight off microorganisms. Due to its role in calcium absorption, getting adequate vitamin D helps protect older adults from developing osteoporosis.
Does vitamin D sound important for health? It sure does!
Where to Get Vitamin D?
Food Sources
Surprisingly, not many food sources contain vitamin D. The best sources are fatty fish, such as tuna, salmon, and mackerel. A few other animal sources provide vitamin D such as cheese and egg yolks, but the amount is rather small. Mushrooms are a good source as well, with their vitamin D content being boosted by exposure to ultraviolet light during growth. In addition, both milk and plant-based kinds of milk are fortified with at least 400 IU of vitamin D per quart. Other fortified foods include breakfast cereals, yogurt, and orange juice. Not all brands do this, so be sure to check your labels!
Our bodies are amazing and we can produce vitamin D on our own when our skin is exposed to sunlight. Spending at least 15-20 minutes outside in direct sunlight should provide you with an adequate amount of vitamin D production. Add some of the food items listed above and you'll be golden! If you avoid the sun, use sunscreen or block the sun's rays with clothing, you need to ensure you are getting some of those food items in your diet or consuming a dietary supplement.
Be safe though and do not overdo sun exposure because too much can lead to skin cancer. If you will be directly exposed for more than 15-20 minutes, you'll need to apply sunscreen or wear clothing that protects the skin.
Dietary Supplements
You can purchase vitamin D supplements in pill or tablet form if you feel that sunlight and food items are not giving you enough vitamin D. Before purchasing these, it would be best to get your levels tested to make sure you really need a supplement. It is a simple and quick blood test. Supplements come in both forms, D2 and D3. Both of these will increase the concentration of vitamin D in the blood and be converted to active metabolites.
How Much Vitamin D Do I Need?
When getting your blood tested for vitamin D concentrations, the standard protocol is measuring the form known as 25-hydroxyvitamin D – one of the active metabolites. Levels that are less than 30 nmol/L are too low to maintain bone health and levels more than 125 nmol/L are considered too high. The desired concentration is around 50 nmol/L for most adults.
People who are most at risk for vitamin D deficiency include breastfed infants, older adults, dark-skinned adults, people with gastrointestinal issues where fat is not metabolized properly leading to poor absorption of vitamin D, and obese patients.
If you think vitamin D isn't important for health – think again! Without vitamin D, our bones would break and fall apart and most people would develop osteoporosis. So, please, take the time to get your vitamin D levels tested. If there's an issue, follow the advice in this article! You can contact our clinic to set up an appointment to get your levels checked. Just call the telephone number on our website or fill out our contact form!
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Body Hair on Women, Growth and Types of Hair
Body hair may seem like an unnecessary inconvenience, especially for postpubertal girls and women, but the growth of hair on the body occurs from birth. The distribution of hair throughout the body is determined by genetic factors and hormones. The largest concentration of hair is on the head (scalp hair) while the hands and feet have the least amount of hair follicles. There are different types of hair that occur on different parts of the body. The type of hair also changes at different times in life, under the influence of various factors, particularly hormones.
Types of Body Hair
Body hair seems like a male characteristic. But it also occurs in females. Due to the difference in hormones between the male and female bodies, body hair is thicker and more dense in males. However, body hair growth is a secondary sexual characteristic that is common to both genders. It tends to increase and become more prominent from the time of puberty. It is most concentrated in the armpits and pubic region of women, apart from the scalp.
Hair on different parts of the body is not always of the same type. Finer hair known as vellus hair is distributed through most of the body both in women and men. It replaces the very fine hair known as lanugo which is present from birth. The type of hair changes again at puberty. In females, the hair that grows on the pubic region and armpits from the time of puberty is known as terminal hair. In men, this type of hair also occurs on the chest and face (beard).
Although women also have hair on their face, it is usually of the fine vellus type. Thicker terminal hair can occur on the upper lip and chin of some women but this is usually indicative of hormonal disturbances.
How does body hair grow?
Hair grows from the follicles embedded in the skin. It is made up of the same protein as the outer layer of skin – keratin. The color of hair is determined by genetics and the concentration of the skin pigment, melanin, deposited at the root. The growth of terminal hair in the armpits and pubic region is determined by hormones, particularly androgens (male sex hormones). These hormones do not only occur in males. It is also present in females but to a much lesser extent than in the male body.
Hair growth is not continuous. It goes through different stages. Anagen is the active growth phase followed by the catagen phase. During the short catagen phase, there are changes that occur at the part of the shaft that is in contact with the follicle. It is then followed by telogen which can be of variable length. During telogen, hair growth stops and hair may then fall off. The entire cycle occurs over a long period of time so some hair follicles are in anagen, while a few are in catagen and others are in telogen. This means that there is no overgrowth of hair nor is there a total loss of hair under normal circumstances.
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Bacteria make locust-swarm signal
A pheromone that helps drive locusts into a swarm comes from bacteria in their gut. For a locust, that urge to join the crowd may literally be a gut feeling. The pheromone guaiacol plays a role in sending swarms of desert locusts into the air. Now, an English research team has traced the compound to bacteria in the locust gut.
Tracking the guaiacol source required building an elaborate system to rear locusts in a sealed, sterile box, report Rod J. Dillon and his colleagues from the University of Bath in the Feb. 24 Nature. Putting eggs with sterilized surfaces into the germ-free setup yielded a generation of locusts with no bacteria in their guts.
The superclean locusts produced fecal pellets that smell “less medicinal” than normal locust droppings do, notes Dillon. Chemical analysis attributed the difference mainly to the lack of guaiacol. When researchers introduced one bacterial species, Pantoea agglomerans, both smell and guaiacol returned.
Gut bacteria aid plenty of creatures, people included, but Dillon says he doesn’t know of another example where a host depends on hitchhikers for this type of communications signal.
Susan Milius
From the Nature Index
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Monkeys: Tambopata's trees are home to troops of monkeys
05 December 2017 (2620 visits)
The Amazon basin contained within Tambopata National Reserve and our own Tambopata Private Conservation Area conserves the lowland tropical forest ecosystems in which at least eight species of South American monkey thrive. Of these, five species are sighted regularly by our staff and guests in the treetops around Tambopata Ecolodge, and in the branches above the extensive trail system we maintain in the pristine forests that surround our jungle lodge.
These monkeys include the saddleback tamarin monkey (Saguinus fuscicollis), dusky titi monkey (Callicebus moloch), squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus boliviensis), brown capuchin monkey (Cebus apella), and the black-headed night monkey (Aotus nigriceps), which as its name suggests is the only one of these species which is nocturnal. Beyond our Private Conservation Area, in the forests we visit during the different jungle excursions we offer our guests, in addition to these five species the red howler monkey (Alouatta seniculus) is also commonly heard or sighted.
The aptly named red howler monkey has reddish fur and is unusually vocal. Said to be among the loudest animals in the Americas, its call can be heard more than three miles away. At around 90 centimeters in length, it is one of the largest primates on the continent, and it inhabits forests from Central America to the Amazon basin of southeastern Peru. Interestingly, while most New World primates lack color vision, red howler monkeys benefit from this adaptation. Less active than other monkeys, they are highly social mammals, living in groups of between 10 to 15 individuals. They are also of interest due to their unusual diet; they are the only New World primate which feeds almost exclusively on a diet composed of leaves, although they are known to supplement their diet with fruits and nuts. The normally vegetarian red howler monkey will also feed on the occasional bird’s egg.
The small, 35-centimeter-long squirrel monkey is often the first primate species seen by the travelers from all over the world who visit us at Tambopata Ecolodge. Squirrel monkeys are extremely curious animals, roaming through the forest canopy in large troops, seemingly undisturbed by the presence of humans far below.
Dusky titi monkeys are a monogamous species, mating for life. Like the howler monkey, they have red fur. Rather than forming the hierarchical troops common to many other species of monkey, they live in small groups composed of an adult mating pair and their offspring. Experts believe that the high degree of coordination seen in the activities of mating pairs of dusky tit monkeys is an indication of their very close emotional bond. They tend to be extremely wary in the presence of humans. The vocalization they employ to define their territory is often heard on forest trails.
Saddleback tamarins are small, squirrel-sized monkeys, measuring just 17 to 25 centimeters in length, easily recognizable due to their black or dark brown shoulders and forelegs, and speckled body markings. They are found in the forests of Central and South America and are diurnal, living in groups of between 2 to 12 individuals (a breeding female, one or more males, and offspring), which can range over territories extending for more than one hundred hectares, where they feed on insects and fruits.
Also present in Tambopata National Reserve is the spider monkey. The most agile of the monkey species that inhabit Tambopata, it can be spotted feeding during the day high in the forest canopy. With a total body length (including the tail) of around 1.60 meters, spider monkeys are among the largest primates in the Americas, easily recognizable in the treetops thanks to their dark silhouettes and extremely long and slender limbs. Ranging from Central America to the forests of South America, spider monkeys live in large groups of up to 35 individuals, feeding on fruit, nuts, honey and insects. Aided by their vestigial thumb, spider monkeys are able to travel rapidly through the forest canopy by swinging from one branch to another, using only their arms.
One of the best times to see monkeys in the rainforests of South America, including the forests we conserve at our Tambopata Ecolodge and in the government protected Tambopata National Reserve, is during the fruiting season, when many of the fruit varieties which form an important part of monkeys’ diets are readily available.
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Quick Answer: Where Is Lake Mead Located?
Why is Lake Mead so dangerous?
Why is Lake Mead so dangerous? – Quora. Back in 2017, Lake Mead National Park was named as dangerous by Outside Magazine, primarily because of drownings in the lake. Other national parks in the area were rated for deaths per year inside the park, deaths excluding suicides.
Is Lake Mead in Nevada or Arizona?
Lake Mead is a reservoir formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the Southwestern United States. It is located in the states of Nevada and Arizona, 24 mi (39 km) east from Las Vegas Strip. It is the largest reservoir in the United States in terms of water capacity.
What is the closest city to Lake Mead?
If you want to break away from Las Vegas glamour, or just trying to find a room during CES or COMDEX, try staying at a hotel closer to Lake Mead in nearby Henderson, or Boulder City. These are the two closest cities with lodging available just minutes from the Lake.
You might be interested: Often asked: Lake Mead Is Located On What River?
What city is Lake Mead?
We know it A 3-1 / 2 foot crocodile was caught At the lake in Sunset Park in 2009. Therefore, it is not impossible that there may be a crocodile on Lake Mead. And last year, fishermen at Sunset Park claimed to have seen something big appear and eat ducks.
Why does Lake Mead have so many deaths?
At Lake Mead, drownings was the leading cause of death. “When recreational boating is involved, drownings are typically a leading cause of death,” says Beltz. In fact, drowning is the leading cause of death at all national parks, accounting for 668 deaths during the 12 year period.
Will Lake Mead ever fill up again?
Experts say it may never be full again. Lake Mead is now at 36 percent capacity — a number that will continue to fall as the reservoir’s rapid decline continues to outpace projections from just a few months earlier. Water levels are projected to drop another 20 feet by 2022.
Are there sharks in Lake Mead?
Lake Mead Sharks are real and they’re dangerous.
Are the skeletons in Lake Mead real?
Note, the skeletons in the photo below are not real. In late April, the surface level of Lake Mead – which was created by the iconic Hoover Dam – dropped below 1,080 feet, according to the US Bureau of Reclamation.
What cities are around Lake Mead?
Yes, you can live on a houseboat on Lake Mead. Locals shack up in houseboats since there are no private lands in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area to build houses or cabins on.
You might be interested: Often asked: Where Is The Lake Of The Ozarks Located On A Map?
Are there snakes in Lake Mead?
Venomous Snakes in Nevada Found mostly in the open desert terrain and mountains such as the Lake Mead and Eldorado Valley area, the Mojave Green Rattlesnake is the least common rattlesnake.
Does Lake Mead have bathrooms?
You can take in the beauty of Lake Mead National Recreation Area from your car along one of our scenic drives on Lakeshore Road and Northshore Road. There are numerous scenic overlooks along the way with accessible picnic tables and restrooms.
Why is Lake Mead running out of water?
Plagued by extreme, climate change-fueled drought and increasing demand for water, Lake Mead on Wednesday registered its lowest level on record since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s. “But climate change has made the problem much worse by substantially reducing the flow in the river.”
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Church and School
Yes, my friend, it has always been so. That is, law and government have always been on the side of the masters. The rich and powerful have always doped you by 'God's will', with the help of the church and the school.
But must it always remain so?
In olden days, when the people were the slaves of some tyrant - of a tsar or other autocrat - the church (of every religion and denomination) taught that slavery existed by 'the will of God,' that it was good and necessary, that it could not be otherwise, and that whoever was against it went against God's will and was a godless man, a heretic, a blasphemer and a sinner.
The school taught that this was right and just, that the tyrant ruled by 'the grace of God', that his authority was not to be questioned, and that he was to be served and obeyed.
The people believed it and remained slaves.
But little by little there arose some men who had come to see that slavery was wrong: that it was not right for one man to hold a whole people in subjection and be lord and master over their lives and toil. And they went among the people and told them what they thought.
Then the government of the tyrant pounced upon those men. They were charged with breaking the laws of the land; they were called disturbers of the public peace, criminals, and enemies of the people. They were killed, and the church and the school said that it was right, that they deserved death as rebels against the laws of God and man. And the slaves believed it.
But the truth cannot be suppressed forever. More and more persons gradually came to see that the 'agitators' who had been killed were right. They came to understand that slavery was wrong and bad for them, and their numbers grew all the time. The tyrant made severe laws to suppress them: his government did everything to stop them and their 'evil designs'. Church and school denounced those men. They were persecuted and hounded and executed in the manner of those days.
Sometimes they were put on a big cross and nailed to it, or they had their heads cut off with an axe. At other times they were strangled to death, burned at the stake, quartered, or bound to horses and slowly torn apart.
This was done by the church and the school and the law, often even by the deluded mob, in various countries, and in the museums to-day you can still see the instruments of torture and death which were used to punish those who tried to tell the truth to the people.
But in spite of torture and death, in spite of law and government, in spite of church and school and press, slavery was at last abolished, though people had insisted that 'it was always so and must remain so'.
Later, in the days of serfdom, when the nobles forded it over the common people, church and school were again on the side of the rulers and the rich. Again they threatened the people with the wrath of God if they should dare to become rebellious and refuse to obey their lords and governors. Again they brought down their maledictions upon the heads of the 'disturbers' and heretics who dared defy the law and preach the gospel of greater liberty and well- being. Again those 'enemies of the people' were persecuted, hounded, and murdered - but the day came when serfdom was abolished.
Serfdom gave place to capitalism with its wage slavery, and again you find church and school on the side of the master and ruler. Again they thunder against the 'heretics', the godless ones who wish the people to be free and happy. Again church and school preach to you 'the will of God': capitalism is good and necessary, they tell you; you must be obedient to your masters, for 'it is God's will' that there be rich and poor, and whoever goes against it is a sinner, a non-conformist, an anarchist.
So you see that church and school are still with the masters against their slaves, just as in the past. Like the leopard, they may change their spots, but never their nature. Still church and school side with the rich against the poor, with the powerful against their victims, with 'law and order' against liberty and justice.
Now as formerly they teach the people to respect and obey their masters When the tyrant was king, church and school taught respect for and obedience to the 'law and order' of the king. When the king is abolished and a republic instituted, church and school teach respect for and obedience to republican 'law and order'. OBEY! that is the eternal cry of church and school, no matter how vile the tyrant, no matter how oppressive and unjust 'law and order'.
OBEY! For if you will cease obedience to authority you might begin to think for yourself! That would be most dangerous to 'law and order', the greatest misfortune for church and school. For then you would find out that everything they taught you was a lie, and was only for the purpose of keeping you enslaved, in mind and body, so that you should continue to toil and suffer and keep quiet.
Such an awakening on your part would indeed be the greatest calamity for church and school, for Master and Ruler.
But if you have gone thus far with me, if you have now begun to think for yourself if you understand that capitalism robs you and that government with its 'law and order' is there to help it do it; if you realize that all the agencies of institutionalized religion and education serve only to delude you and keep you in bondage, then you might rightly feel outraged and cry out, 'Is there no justice in the world?'
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Turkey is converting another former Byzantine church into a mosque
Aug. 22, 2020
The Turkish government formally converted a former Byzantine church into a mosque on Friday, a move that came a month after it drew praise from the faithful and international opposition for similarly turning Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia into a Muslim house of prayer.
Like the Hagia Sophia, which was a church for centuries and then a mosque for centuries more, had operated as a museum for decades before Erdogan ordered it restored as a mosque. It was not immediately known when the first prayers would be held there.
The church, situated near the ancient city walls, is famed for its elaborate mosaics and frescoes. It dates to the 4th century, although the edifice took on its current form in the 11th-12th centuries.
The structure served as a mosque during the Ottoman era before being transformed into a museum in 1945. A court decision last year cancelled the building’s status as a museum, paving the way for Friday’s decision.
Read more at https://www.euronews.com/2020/08/21/istanbul-turkey-is-converting-another-former-byzantine-church-into-a-mosque |
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Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics
We have a separable Hilbert space H. The states are the projective rays of H. An operator is a linear map from a dense subspace of H to H. If this operator is continuous, then this map can be uniquely extended to a bounded linear map from H to H. By tradition, observables are identified with operators, although this is rather questionable, especially in the presence of symmetries leading to superselection sectors. This is why some people prefer the density state formulation.
See also Schrödinger picture, Heisenberg picture, Born principle, relative state interpretation.
In this framework, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle becomes a theorem about noncommuting operators. Furthermore, both continuous and discrete observables may be accommodated; in the former case, the Hilbert space is a space of square-integrable wavefunctions.
In the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, postulate (3) is demoted to a phenomenological principle; see quantum decoherence.
C* formulation
In this formulation, we have a C* algebra, the associative algebra of operators. Positive elements of its dual vector space is are called states and they describe the quantum states. This is related to the density matrix. Given a state, we can construct a unitary representation of it using the Gelfand-Naimark-Segal construction. Two unitarily inequivalent representations are said to belong to different superselection sectors. Relative phases between superselection sectors are not observable. |
4 Warming Methods Combined to Prevent Hypothermia During Surgery
Aisha I Abdullah PhD avatar
by Aisha I Abdullah PhD |
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CAD hypothermia
Using multiple warming measures, hypothermia was prevented in an adult man with severe cold agglutinin disease (CAD) undergoing surgery, a recent case study reports.
According to the investigators, the report is the first to describe the success of a combination of four specific warming strategies, including pre-surgery skin surface warming and intravenous (IV) infusion of pre-warmed fluids, and highlights the importance of hypothermia prevention in CAD patients before, during and after surgery.
“The most striking difference between the present case and previous reports is that warmed amino acid infusion and other preventive measures were simultaneously applied in our severe case,” they wrote.
The report, “Perioperative management of a patient with severe cold agglutinin disease by using multimodal warming measures, appeared in the Korean Journal of Anesthesiology.
CAD is a rare autoimmune disease in which exposure to cold temperatures triggers the body’s immune system to attack and rupture its own red blood cells in a process called hemolysis. The depletion of red blood cells results in anemia and complications like heart problems and kidney failure.
For patients with CAD, maintenance of core body temperature is vital to avoid triggering symptoms, particularly during surgery, when anesthetics and skin exposure can cause the body temperature to drop.
The case report describes a 63-year-old man with severe CAD who underwent back surgery for spinal stenosis (pressure on the spinal cord and nerves). The patient was on anti-inflammatory corticosteroid therapy, a previously common treatment for CAD symptoms, but still exhibited signs of anemia and discoloration in the hands and feet.
Because the patient’s normal body temperature was 36.5 C (97.7 F), efforts were made to maintain a body temperature of 37 C (98.6 F) before, during, and after surgery to avoid triggering CAD symptoms.
Conventional methods for preventing surgery-related hypothermia include warming the operating room with heating systems, warming the skin surface, and maintaining core temperature with infusions of pre-warmed IV fluids.
The researchers in this case combined several warming strategies to maintain the patient’s body temperature. Prior to the procedure, the operating room was heated with forced-air heating devices and the patient received an IV infusion of an amino acid solution pre-warmed to 41 C (105.8 F).
The early initiation of the infusions was based on previous research demonstrating that such infusions can maintain core body temperature, but fail to recover temperature after hypothermia onset. The patient also was warmed with an electric heating blanket before surgery.
During the procedure, the patient’s core temperature was monitored with a temperature probe in the esophagus and maintained with IV infusions of warmed amino acids administered throughout the operation. Body temperature was maintained using forced-air warming devices, a warmed circulating-water mattress, and gloves and socks for the extremities.
For 24 hours post-operation, the patient was warmed with an electric blanket and administered continuous amino acid infusions. No signs of hypothermia or hemolysis were observed following the surgery.
“We successfully maintained the core temperature and further avoided heat transfer from the core to the peripheries … by using these multimodal warming measures,” the research team wrote.
“In conclusion, in the management of patients with severe CAD, multimodal warming measures from various viewpoints should be considered in maintaining the core temperature,” they added. |
George Washington: The Reluctant Listener
Warwick Fairfax
January 23, 2019
Many of us find it hard to listen, especially when our minds are made up on a course of action. Leaders often find it hard to listen to their team when they are convinced they know what to do. “Stop holding me up! We need to move now!” We might have heard this before or even been the one saying this. But great leaders do listen to those around them. Their team will often have skills and experience that they don’t have.
George Washington was a great example of a leader who was impatient and wanted things to happen yesterday. Yet, albeit reluctantly, he listened to his team of commanders, many of whom had more military experience than he did.
From the latter half of 1775 to early 1776, Washington lay siege to the British forces in Boston. Time and again, he wanted to take the fight to the enemy and capture Boston. Each time, his key commanders said it wasn’t time. Washington was certainly frustrated, but each time he listened to his commanders.
In 1775, Boston was almost an island, connected to the mainland by a narrow causeway or neck. While the American forces barricaded the neck, the British were in something of an impregnable fortress.
Washington’s troops were not in great shape. As time wore on toward the end of the year, some were absent or sick. There were shortages of blankets, tents, and clothing. To make matters worse, many soldiers had enlisted until the end of the year of 1775, when it was assumed many would leave. While Washington did have some military experience, he had not led an army into battle. His experience and ability were not at the same level as his adversary, British General William Howe. Though perhaps a bit complacent, Howe was an able and courageous general. Washington’s army of volunteers was up against the might of the British army. This was not going to be easy.
Between September 1775 and February 1776, Washington convened four councils of war with his leading commanders. These commanders included experienced former British officers in Major General Charles Lee and Brigadier Horatio Gates. At each council, Washington would call for an all-out attack – but each time his commanders unanimously agreed not to attack. In February 1776, Colonel Henry Knox had somewhat miraculously brought 58 mortars and cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, New York, to the Boston area. Washington again wanted to attack the British in Boston, but still his commanders said no. Can you imagine how frustrated Washington must have been?
Little did Washington know, but his commanders had a daring and brilliant plan. In the dead of night on March 4, 1776, Washington’s commanders had over 3,000 troops, along with at least twenty cannons, scale the Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston and its harbor. By morning, the British were faced with American forces and cannons that could strike right into Boston and potentially fire upon the British ships in the harbor. The British position was untenable. British General Howe said, “My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.” That night the British were forced to leave with 120 ships carrying more than 11,000 troops, loyalists, and their families to Canada. Washington had achieved a bold and brilliant victory.
What can we learn from George Washington about listening and, in particular, listening to those around us? Washington was an impatient man with a fiery temper. He obviously wanted to capture Boston as quickly as possible, but when faced with the united opposition of his team, he wisely, if reluctantly, listened. To have attacked before he had the right equipment and the right strategy would have been foolish. Washington was up against an able opponent in British General Howe who had more battlefield command experience than he did. Washington, with good judgment, forced himself to be patient and listen to his team of able commanders.
For us, we may be convinced we know what we should do, yet we are often faced with challenging circumstances where mistakes can be costly. Listening to those around us, in some cases our team, will add perspectives and knowledge that we simply don’t have. No one can possibly have all the answers.
To put it simply, listening is typically the right play. Why wouldn’t we want to listen to people with knowledge and expertise that we don’t have?
Making Your Vision a Reality, Crucible Leadership, Warwick Fairfax, Inspiration, Leadership, Coaching, Leading a Life of Significance
What can we learn from Washington and his ability to control his natural impatience?
What can we learn from how Washington listened to his team?
Can you think of a time you listened to those around you instead of yourself and it paid off? |
Animate layout changes using a transition
Android's transition framework allows you to animate all kinds of motion in your UI by simply providing the starting layout and the ending layout. You can select what type of animation you want (such to fade the views in/out or change the view sizes) and the transition framework figures out how to animate from the starting layout to the ending layout.
The transition framework includes the following features:
• Group-level animations: Apply one or more animation effects to all of the views in a view hierarchy.
• Built-in animations: Use predefined animations for common effects such as fade out or movement.
• Resource file support: Load view hierarchies and built-in animations from layout resource files.
• Lifecycle callbacks: Receive callbacks that provide control over the animation and hierarchy change process.
For sample code that animates between layout changes, see BasicTransition.
The basic process to animate between two layouts is as follows:
1. Create a Scene object for both the starting layout and the ending layout. However, the starting layout's scene is often determined automatically from the current layout.
2. Create a Transition object to define what type of animation you want.
3. Call TransitionManager.go() and the system runs the animation to swap the layouts.
The diagram in figure 1 illustrates the relationship between your layouts, the scenes, the transition, and the final animation.
Figure 1. Basic illustration of how the transition framework creates an animation
Create a scene
Scenes store the state of a view hierarchy, including all its views and their property values. The transitions framework can run animations between a starting and an ending scene.
You can create your scenes from a layout resource file or from a group of views in your code. However, the starting scene for your transition is often determined automatically from the current UI.
A scene can also define its own actions that run when you make a scene change. For example, this feature is useful for cleaning up view settings after you transition to a scene.
Note: The framework can animate changes in a single view hierarchy without using scenes, as described in Apply a transition without scenes. However, understanding scenes is essential to work with transitions.
Create a scene from a layout resource
You can create a Scene instance directly from a layout resource file. Use this technique when the view hierarchy in the file is mostly static. The resulting scene represents the state of the view hierarchy at the time you created the Scene instance. If you change the view hierarchy, you have to recreate the scene. The framework creates the scene from the entire view hierarchy in the file; you can not create a scene from part of a layout file.
To create a Scene instance from a layout resource file, retrieve the scene root from your layout as a ViewGroup instance and then call the Scene.getSceneForLayout() function with the scene root and the resource ID of the layout file that contains the view hierarchy for the scene.
Define layouts for scenes
The code snippets in the rest of this section show you how to create two different scenes with the same scene root element. The snippets also demonstrate that you can load multiple unrelated Scene objects without implying that they are related to each other.
The example consists of the following layout definitions:
• The main layout of an activity with a text label and a child layout.
• A relative layout for the first scene with two text fields.
• A relative layout for the second scene with the same two text fields in different order.
The example is designed so that all of the animation occurs within the child layout of the main layout for the activity. The text label in the main layout remains static.
The main layout for the activity is defined as follows:
<LinearLayout xmlns:android=""
<include layout="@layout/a_scene" />
This layout definition contains a text field and a child layout for the scene root. The layout for the first scene is included in the main layout file. This allows the app to display it as part of the initial user interface and also to load it into a scene, since the framework can load only a whole layout file into a scene.
The layout for the first scene is defined as follows:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android=""
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
android:text="Text Line 1" />
android:text="Text Line 2" />
The layout for the second scene contains the same two text fields (with the same IDs) placed in a different order and is defined as follows:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android=""
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
android:text="Text Line 2" />
android:text="Text Line 1" />
Generate scenes from layouts
After you create definitions for the two relative layouts, you can obtain a scene for each of them. This enables you to later transition between the two UI configurations. To obtain a scene, you need a reference to the scene root and the layout resource ID.
The following code snippet shows you how to get a reference to the scene root and create two Scene objects from the layout files:
val sceneRoot: ViewGroup = findViewById(
val aScene: Scene = Scene.getSceneForLayout(sceneRoot, R.layout.a_scene, this)
val anotherScene: Scene = Scene.getSceneForLayout(sceneRoot, R.layout.another_scene, this)
Scene aScene;
Scene anotherScene;
// Create the scene root for the scenes in this app
sceneRoot = (ViewGroup) findViewById(;
// Create the scenes
aScene = Scene.getSceneForLayout(sceneRoot, R.layout.a_scene, this);
anotherScene =
Scene.getSceneForLayout(sceneRoot, R.layout.another_scene, this);
In the app, there are now two Scene objects based on view hierarchies. Both scenes use the scene root defined by the FrameLayout element in res/layout/activity_main.xml.
Create a scene in your code
You can also create a Scene instance in your code from a ViewGroup object. Use this technique when you modify the view hierarchies directly in your code or when you generate them dynamically.
To create a scene from a view hierarchy in your code, use the Scene(sceneRoot, viewHierarchy) constructor. Calling this constructor is equivalent to calling the Scene.getSceneForLayout() function when you have already inflated a layout file.
The following code snippet demonstrates how to create a Scene instance from the scene root element and the view hierarchy for the scene in your code:
val sceneRoot = someLayoutElement as ViewGroup
val viewHierarchy = someOtherLayoutElement as ViewGroup
val scene: Scene = Scene(sceneRoot, viewHierarchy)
Scene mScene;
// Obtain the scene root element
sceneRoot = (ViewGroup) someLayoutElement;
// Obtain the view hierarchy to add as a child of
// the scene root when this scene is entered
viewHierarchy = (ViewGroup) someOtherLayoutElement;
// Create a scene
mScene = new Scene(sceneRoot, mViewHierarchy);
Create scene actions
The framework enables you to define custom scene actions that the system runs when entering or exiting a scene. In many cases, defining custom scene actions is not necessary, since the framework animates the change between scenes automatically.
Scene actions are useful for handling these cases:
• Animate views that are not in the same hierarchy. You can animate views for both the starting and ending scenes using exit and entry scene actions.
• Animate views that the transitions framework cannot animate automatically, such as ListView objects. For more information, see Limitations.
To provide custom scene actions, define your actions as Runnable objects and pass them to the Scene.setExitAction() or Scene.setEnterAction() functions. The framework calls the setExitAction() function on the starting scene before running the transition animation and the setEnterAction() function on the ending scene after running the transition animation.
Note: Do not use scene actions to pass data between views in the starting and ending scenes. For more information, see Define transition lifecycle callbacks.
Apply a transition
The transition framework represents the style of animation between scenes with a Transition object. You can instantiate a Transition using several built-in subclasses, such as AutoTransition and Fade, or define your own transition. Then, you can run the animation between scenes by passing your end Scene and the Transition to TransitionManager.go().
The transition lifecycle is similar to the activity lifecycle, and it represents the transition states that the framework monitors between the start and the completion of an animation. At important lifecycle states, the framework invokes callback functions that you can implement to make adjustments to your user interface at different phases of the transition.
Create a transition
Table 1. Built-in transition types.
Class Tag Attributes Effect
Fade <fade/> android:fadingMode="[fade_in |
fade_out |
fade_in fades in views
fade_out fades out views
fade_in_out (default) does a fade_out followed by a fade_in.
ChangeBounds <changeBounds/> - Moves and resizes views.
Create a transition instance from a resource file
2. Create a new XML resource file inside this directory.
For example, the following resource file specifies the Fade transition:
<fade xmlns:android="" />
var fadeTransition: Transition =
Transition fadeTransition =
Create a transition instance in your code
var fadeTransition: Transition = Fade()
Transition fadeTransition = new Fade();
Apply a transition
To make a scene change while applying a transition in response to some event in your activity, call the TransitionManager.go() class function with the ending scene and the transition instance to use for the animation, as shown in the following snippet:
TransitionManager.go(endingScene, fadeTransition)
TransitionManager.go(endingScene, fadeTransition);
Choose specific target views
To remove one or more views from the list of targets, call the removeTarget() method before starting the transition. To add only the views you specify to the list of targets, call the addTarget() function. For more information, see the API reference for the Transition class.
Specify multiple transitions
<transitionSet xmlns:android=""
<fade android:fadingMode="fade_out" />
<changeBounds />
<fade android:fadingMode="fade_in" />
To inflate the transition set into a TransitionSet object in your code, call the TransitionInflater.from() function in your activity. The TransitionSet class extends from the Transition class, so you can use it with a transition manager just like any other Transition instance.
Apply a transition without scenes
1. When the event that triggers the transition occurs, call the TransitionManager.beginDelayedTransition() function providing the parent view of all the views you want to change and the transition to use. The framework stores the current state of the child views and their property values.
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android=""
android:layout_height="match_parent" >
android:layout_height="wrap_content" />
val labelText = TextView(this).apply {
text = "Label"
id =
val rootView: ViewGroup = findViewById(
val mFade: Fade = Fade(Fade.IN)
TransitionManager.beginDelayedTransition(rootView, mFade)
private TextView labelText;
private Fade mFade;
private ViewGroup rootView;
// Load the layout
// Create a new TextView and set some View properties
labelText = new TextView(this);
// Get the root view and create a transition
rootView = (ViewGroup) findViewById(;
mFade = new Fade(Fade.IN);
// Start recording changes to the view hierarchy
TransitionManager.beginDelayedTransition(rootView, mFade);
// Add the new TextView to the view hierarchy
// the framework will animate the addition as a fade in
Define transition lifecycle callbacks
The transition lifecycle is similar to the activity lifecycle. It represents the transition states that the framework monitors during the time between a call to the TransitionManager.go() function and the completion of the animation. At important lifecycle states, the framework invokes callbacks defined by the TransitionListener interface.
This section lists some known limitations of the transitions framework:
• Animations applied to a SurfaceView may not appear correctly. SurfaceView instances are updated from a non-UI thread, so the updates may be out of sync with the animations of other views.
• Some specific transition types may not produce the desired animation effect when applied to a TextureView.
• Classes that extend AdapterView, such as ListView, manage their child views in ways that are incompatible with the transitions framework. If you try to animate a view based on AdapterView, the device display may hang.
• If you try to resize a TextView with an animation, the text will pop to a new location before the object has completely resized. To avoid this problem, do not animate the resizing of views that contain text. |
Ed Carron https://edcarron.com Data journalism and geo-politics Sun, 09 Jan 2022 12:18:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.3 Drastic shift in UK public’s attitude towards climate change https://edcarron.com/?p=25 https://edcarron.com/?p=25#respond Sun, 09 Jan 2022 12:05:08 +0000 https://edcarron.com/?p=25 Nearly half of British adults are “very concerned” about climate change, according to the latest government data. Extinction Rebellion activist, Suzanne Savage, says that “global events have shown that we are facing an increasingly dire emergency” and that people are starting to wake up.
What the data shows
In 2012 “very concerned” was the least popular position, representing just one in five people, now it’s the most common stance. The change started in 2017 and then jumped up in 2021.
The 35% of people “not concerned” about climate change has dwindled down to a tenth of the population.
In the latest survey people were asked if they think climate change has already had an impact: 60% think it’s already having an impact in the UK, 31% think it will have an effect, 2% don’t think it ever will and 7% don’t know.
The new data, released 17 December 2021, from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy is the latest instalment in their Attitudes Tracker: a questionnaire designed to gauge the publics’ feelings on a number of related subjects.
Extreme weather events
Extreme weather events frequently made headlines and dominated news cycles during this period of shifting public opinion. A time in which broken records, unprecedented happenings and historic events, became common occurrences.
“The Black Summer” of horrific bush fires in Australia and the Amazon wild fires were prominently featured on news channels around the world in 2019.
Flooding in the UK during the winter of 2019/2020 caused havoc across the country, and February 2020 was the wettest since records began.
2021, the period which saw the most dramatic shift in people’s concern, was a cavalcade of extreme weather: Hurricane Ida, the Texas winter storm, the July floods in Europe, wildfires raging globally, and the North Western America heat dome – estimated to have killed a billion marine animals.
Extinction Rebellion / Insulate Britain
Extinction Rebellion (XR) made their way into the public consciousness by getting in the way of traffic and blocking bridges across the Thames in 2018.
From then on they frequently made headlines with protests in cities across the country and attention grabbing direct actions, such as: “storming” the public gallery nude during a commons debate and blocking Oxford Circus with a pink boat for five days.
Insulate Britain, an offshoot of XR, made headlines for weeks in 2021 by glueing themselves to roads, blocking traffic.
Savage believes that groups and individuals, such as XR and Greta Thunberg have made people realise that “the powerful are refusing to act now on the climate crisis, and this is reflected in the record levels of climate concern we are now seeing.”
Media coverage
There has been a change in the ways in which the government and the media have talked about climate issues in recent years. New terminology and goals have been discussed, and the amount of coverage has increased. Evidenced by the number of people who “hadn’t heard” about the term “Net Zero” plummeting from 64% to 9% between March 2020 and December 2021.
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How many F-35s has your government bought? https://edcarron.com/?p=9 https://edcarron.com/?p=9#respond Fri, 07 Jan 2022 14:43:10 +0000 https://edcarron.com/?p=9 F-35 costs
The F-35 Lightning II is the most expensive military technology in history with a projected life time cost of $1.5tn. Built by Lockheed Martin the F-35 was designed as a “joint strike fighter”, meaning that it would be able fill a large array of roles previously assigned to various different aircraft. The individual jets also come with a hefty price tag, ranging from $79m to $104m. Whilst they have been hailed by some as the fighter of the future, the program has been surrounded in controversy from the start.
President Biden’s broken promises.
President Biden has had to walk back on many of his campaign pledges: student loan forgiveness, new infrastructure plans, healthcare reform and more, with cost often being sited as a reason. However they were still able to raise the defence budget, above the pre-agreed 2015 sequester caps, to $768bn.
A job creating back bone of the economy?
The program’s defenders say that the new 5th generation fighter is a cut above all competitors and will give the US and it’s allies an edge in possible future conflicts.
Whilst it has cost the government of the United States vast sums in paying for the development, and been a large expense for other countries purchasing and maintaining the crafts. The programme has created 125,000 jobs across 46 US states, so it was a surprise to no one when the proposal flew through congress.
The F-35 has also created jobs in ten other partner countries, with the UK being the most involved, given a “tier-1” status, responsible for manufacturing an estimated 20% of parts.
However public money going into domestic industry doesn’t have to be spent on things that kill people. For contrast China is spending a similar amount of money, $1tn, on their Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak nuclear fusion reactor project.
So why is the F-35 so expensive?
It would make sense that the most technically advanced fighter jet of all time would also be the most expensive, but wasn’t just all the fancy new tech that inflated the budget.
The Joint Strike Fighter concept, one plane that does every job, was meant to save on costs. With three variants – one for each branch of the military – that share 70% of their parts. This original target was missed, with them now only having 20% of parts in common, according to General Christopher Bogdan the past Executive Officer for the F-35 programme.
Bogdan, the man in charge of keeping the projects budget in control, said that the contracts signed originally with Lockheed Martin in 2001 meant that the “risk” was all on the government: if something went wrong it would be them and not Lockheed that picked up the bill.
Another part of the blame for the F-35’s ballooning budget has been the strategy of concurrency production insisted on by the Pentagon. Concurrency means starting to build and deliver “production” aircraft before the development and testing phases have been completed. The result of which is that when a problem is found during testing – of which there were many – it incurs a huge cost to fix it on all of the models that have already left the production line.
Technical difficulties
So was it all worth it? The F-35 is probably most well known by members of the public for it’s technical difficulties. One, rather comedic, example is that the F-35 Lightning II can’t fly near lightning.
There has been three high profile crashes: The first in Japan in which the pilot became disorientated and flew straight into the sea – resulting in his death. The second was a British F-35B that failed to take off from the new HMS Queen Elizabeth carrier, and fell into the ocean. Then the most recent indecent in which a Korean pilot performed the first “belly” landing of an F-35, after the landing gear failed to engage.
In 2019, the first year that the F-35 saw combat, the US Marine Corps sent six F-35Bs to Iraq, where they took part in operations to clean up the remnants of ISIS. However during this first deployment they were only able to fly one mission per plane every three days. It was also reported by Andrew Cockburn that the Pentagon’s chief testing official had said that had those F-35s come up against opposition aircrafts, they would not have been able to survive without assistance.
This came after a 2015 mock dog fight in which an F-35 was beaten by an F-16, a much older and cheaper plane. This sent waves around the defence community and the Pentagon was quick to hit back with excuses and concluding that, in fact, it doesn’t matter because the F-35 has such superior stealth technology that it won’t ever have to dog fight. People were also asked to not draw any conclusions as it was still very early in development. However it didn’t seem that much had improved by 2020 when after a training operation pilots said that: The F-35 can be sluggish compared to the F-16.”
In the same way that the F-35 cannot best the F-16 at it’s speciality – arial combat – it fails to surpass the A-10 Warthog at close ground support. Beloved by the troops that it protects, the A-10 is despised by defence contractors for being too old, cheap and reliable.
It’s clear to see that there’s far more money to be made in designing $400,000 “magic helmets” that allow pilots to see through the floor, than there is in maintaining the old A-10 from which the pilots use binoculars and their own eyes to see what’s happening on the ground. The problem though, is that the F-35’s magic helmets have an eighth of a second delay when looking through the floor, resulting in them missing the target when moving at high speeds. The A-10 has no such problems.
• Numbers of F-35 received comes from:https://www.f-16.net/aircraft-database/F-35/serials-and-inventory/
• The price estimate for each F-35 variant comes from the given price in the most recent fully delivered batch (LRIP 14). Most units were actually purchased at a much higher price, so the "estimated spent" for each country (especially the US) is likely lower than reality.
• The "per tail per year" running costs comes from this Pentagon review: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-439.pdf
• Salaries come from the average wage for each job in each country according to www.salaryexpert.com
• The estimates for numbers of Wind turbines comes from the price given for a 1MW turbine on https://weatherguardwind.com/how-much-does-wind-turbine-cost-worth-it/
• The estimates given for numbers of solar farms comes from https://startupback.com/solar-farm-cost-breakdown/, where the price estimate is given for a 1MW solar farm
• The number of homes that the solar farms or wind turbines could power is based off the estimate that 1MW can power 200 homes.
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Myanmar internet shutdowns are still affecting reporting almost a year on from the coup https://edcarron.com/?p=18 https://edcarron.com/?p=18#respond Thu, 06 Jan 2022 22:04:46 +0000 https://edcarron.com/?p=18
Internet shutdowns have been used from the first day of the coup to stop the spread of information and to make it harder for people to fight back. For the residents of Myanmar’s large cities, accustomed to round the clock connection, “it’s been a total disaster.” Said Shunn Lei, a women’s labour activist from Yangon, who was an organiser in the factory worker strikes early in the coup.
“a total disaster”
On 1 February 2021 the military, called the Tatmadaw, took power removing the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government and installing their own officials. The Tatmadaw claimed that the elections, held in November 2020, had been rigged. Myint Swe, the acting president, declared a yearlong state of emergency that would end with holding new elections.
The Tatmadaw shut down phone and mobile data networks before commencing the coup, stopping the news spreading quickly. This resulted in it “feeling like a totally normal day” in Yangon, said Shunn Lei. The new government then imposed a curfew and full internet blackout (including wifi) 9pm to 4am, until April.
The internet shutdowns have never been country wide total blackouts for extended periods. Instead, the government has employed them tactically. Mobile networks and phone lines will be shut down before a military or police operation, such as “a mass arrest or massacre.”
“People had to go full analogue”
Activists have adapted to analogue methods of mass communication, such as printing newsletters with titles including Rebel Gazette, Spring Revolution and Myanmar Newsletter. The activists distribute them “discreetly in markets” or quickly “from a bridge”, and then “disappear” to avoid arrest.
For people of the Bamar majority ethnic group, these measures are just one of the ways in which they are now experiencing repression by the military, that have been a familiar part of life for the people living in the minority ethnic regions of the country.
In these states, as well as never having had reliable or widespread internet, the blackout tactics had already been used in ongoing wars with the minority ethnic armies. People in Rakhine and Chin states were subjected to the world’s longest internet shutdown, before the coup started.
“You can’t verify or fact check, so you have to just let it go”
Gabriel Ernst, a writer for the news site Din Deng that reports on Thailand and Myanmar, said that the lack of communication in and out of rural areas makes verifying events very difficult: “Lots of small things going unreported because they can’t be verified in rural areas… so the story never gets out and the news cycle moves on.”
Shunn Lei then added: “I’m sure there are lots of cases of a villager going out in a field and stepping on a landmine. Or a girl goes out to get vegetables and gets raped and killed by a soldier… you can’t verify or fact check, so you have to just let it go.”
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Facebook labels organisations that have broken US sanctions as Terrorists https://edcarron.com/?p=16 https://edcarron.com/?p=16#respond Thu, 06 Jan 2022 22:03:02 +0000 https://edcarron.com/?p=16 Facebook Dangerous Individuals and Organisations list
Facebook users are at risk of being banned for speaking positively about seemingly innocuous organisations that have been labelled as terrorists in the recently revealed “snap shot” of the “Dangerous Individuals and Organisations” (DIO) list. Hidden on the list, released by The Intercept, among groups like al-Qa’ida and ISIS are airlines, engineering firms, and a car manufacturer, all categorised as terrorist organisations.
The DIO list is split into three tiers of categories, which determine how strictly speech about them is policed. Tier 1, “Terrorist” and “Hate”, has the toughest rules, with any positive speech resulting in a ban.
“Militarized Social Movement” is the only category in Tier 3, comprised exclusively of US groups, almost all of which are white militias. Among them is American Patriots USA designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre.
The list of more than 1000 organisations, categorised by the DIO as terrorists, features many harmless sounding names: Aircraft Aviation Parts Limited, Printing Trade Center and Kanso Fishing Agency. The thing that all of these seemingly innocent organisations have in common? Being listed as Specially Designated Individuals (SDNs) by the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Controls (OFAC).
SDNs are people or organisations deemed to have violated a U.S. sanctions program, or associated with someone who is already on the list, leading to a system of guilt by association. Once on the list they are cut off from the US financial system, and have all of their assets frozen.
People are made SDNs with no warning and little to no explanation, and then find it very difficult to be removed: “I tend to like sanctions programs that come as a complete surprise.” Said Robert McBrien, a previous director of Global Targeting at OFAC, in an interview with Andrew Cockburn.
40% of the organisations found on both the SDN and DIO Terror lists are “Affiliated With” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). A branch of the Iranian military, accused of being a funder of terror and a destabilising presence in the region. The US State Department designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization in 2019.
The relative guilt of many of these innocent sounding organisations is unclear, for example charitable organisations that have been declared as fronts for funding terror by the UN, such as al-Haramain Foundation
However due to the DIO categorisation of these organisations people could be removed from the platform for posts that would not appear to be spreading hate or glorifying terror. Particularly if you’re an Iranian citizen who’s written about, for example, the great in-flight entertainment on Caspian Airlines, how fuel efficient the new Bahman car is, or how much they love their job at the Shomal Cement Company. These posts, according to the DIO, could get them banned from Facebook.
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Italy's flag
Download: English / Italiano
Progress to 100% clean electricity, percentage of all renewables & nuclear in total generation. Italy went from 39% in 2015 to 43% in 2020. The world went from 34% in 205 to 39% in 2020.
Progress on phasing out coal, percentage of coal in total generation. Italy went from 15% in 2015 to 5% in 2020, the world went from 38% in 2015 to 34% in 2020.
Italy’s deployment of wind and solar has stagnated
Italy’s wind and solar growth since 2015 is the sixth lowest in the G20
Key findings
Italy’s deployment of wind and solar has stagnated
From 2010 to 2015, Italy’s wind and solar power generation almost tripled. This escalation was the second highest in the G20 behind the UK. However, progress has critically stalled.
The proportion of Italy’s electricity produced by wind and solar has only increased from 13.5% to 16.5% since 2015. In comparison, Turkey has seen an increase from 4.7% to 12%. Italy’s wind and solar market share is above the global average of 9.4% but is half that of Germany.
Fossil fuels still dominate Italy’s electricity mix due to increasing fossil gas.
Fossil fuels still dominate Italy’s electricity production at 57%. Fossil gas has actually increased its share of the electricity mix from 40% to 46% since 2015, meaning Italy now relies more heavily on fossil gas than even the US and Russia.
Coal generation has fallen 65% since 2015 in Italy, the second largest drop in the G20 after the UK
As coal fell by 28 TWh, wind and solar replaced a third of this, gaining 8 TWh over the same period. However, the rest was mostly replaced by fossil gas.
Covid-19 impacted Italy’s electricity demand more than any other G20 country on a percentage basis.
Italy’s electricity demand declined by 6% (-21 TWh). This impacted fossil gas and coal production with falls of 14 TWh and 4 TWh respectively. Italy also saw a drop in power exports of 6 TWh.
While other countries look to boost the share of wind and solar in their electricity systems, Italy appears to be regressing. Coal generation has decreased by over a third since 2015 but most of this has been replaced by fossil gas rather than wind and solar. Italy needs to reverse this trend now if it is to meet its current target of 55% of electricity from renewables by 2030.
Sarah Brown
Senior Electricity Analyst - Europe, Ember
Author: Sarah Brown
Peer Reviewer: Michele Governatori, Ecco
Trends 2015-2020
Trends in 2020
Comparison with G20
Concluding remarks
Italy’s electricity transition in spotlight: 2015-2020
Wind and solar growth slow down since 2015
Wind & Solar in Electricity mix, percentage of total generation. Went from 13% in 2015 to 17% in 2020. World average is 5% in 2015 and 17% in 2020.
Over half of Italy’s electricity is still from fossil.
Electricity mix, percentage of total generation. 2015 to 2020 hydro, bioenergy, other renewables went from 25% to 27%, wind + solar from 13% to 17%, coal from 15% to 5%, gas and oil from 46% to 51%. Total fossil fuels were 57% in 2020.
Coal falls in part due to rising gas
Electricity generation, terawatt hours. From 2015 to 2020, total dropped 2%, other renewables +3%, wind and solar + 21%, coal -65%, gas and oil +1-%. Shows change since 2015 per year. Total electricity production -6 TWh
Renewable generation is lagging behind fossil fuels. In 2020, renewables provided 43% of Italy’s electricity compared to 57% for fossil fuels. This is contrary to the trend across the EU-27 where, in a landmark moment, renewables overtook fossil fuels for the first time. The continued dominance of fossil fuels in Italy is despite coal production tumbling by 65% (-28 TWh) since 2015. Wind and solar replaced less than a third (+8 TWh) of this lost coal generation, while fossil gas made up for over half (+15 TWh).
Wind and solar produced 17% of Italy’s electricity in 2020, above the global average of 9.4% but significantly less than the UK (29%) and Germany (33%). This is only a three percentage point increase since 2015, when wind and solar accounted for 14% of the electricity mix. Since 2015, Italy has installed less than 2 GW of wind capacity and 3 GW of solar capacity. In contrast, 2011 alone saw 1 GW of wind and 10 GW of solar installed. Much of this is due to the slow and problematic authorisation processes in relation to new wind and solar projects. Consequently, Italy had the sixth lowest growth in wind and solar in the G20 between 2015 and 2020.
Coal’s share of generation fell by two-thirds in 2020 to account for only 5% of electricity production compared to 15% in 2015. Despite this, the share of fossil fuels in Italy’s electricity mix has remained relatively flat since 2015. An increase in fossil gas generation of 13% (+15 TWh) offset the majority of the fall in coal generation. Fossil gas increased its share of electricity production from 40% to 46% from 2015 to 2020. This is twice as much as the gain wind and solar made (14% to 17%).
Italy’s electricity demand had remained stable between 324 TWh and 331 TWh since 2015, but in 2020 Covid-19 caused a 6.3% drop to 307 TWh.
What happened in 2020?
Covid-19 had a significant impact on Italy’s electricity demand in 2020 with a fall of 21 TWh (-6.3%). It was the highest percentage drop in the G20. This caused coal generation to decrease by 24% (-5 TWh) and fossil gas by 9% (-12 TWh). Electricity net imports were also reduced by 16% (-6 TWh).
As for the effect on renewable generation, wind and solar saw a negligible increase of 1% (+0.6 TWh)—one of the lowest percentage rises of all G20 countries. Only 137 MW of new wind capacity was installed in 2020. This represents a 75% drop from 2019, a year which also only saw 500 MW of wind installed. Solar did not fare much better, with 800 MW in 2020, equal to the increase in 2019.
Hydro performed the best out of the renewable sources with a 3% increase in generation due to favourable weather conditions.
Although electricity demand fell overall due to the impact of Covid-19, this was concentrated in the first six months and, since September, it has bounced back to pre-Covid levels. In fact, in December Italy’s demand was up year-on-year by 3%.
Italy’s transition in comparison with G20 countries
Italy’s wind and solar growth since 2015 is five times less than the UK and Germany
Italy may be ranked fourth in the G20 for percentage share of generation from wind and solar, but its rate of deployment has stagnated since 2015. Italy saw the fifth smallest increase in share of production from wind and solar between 2015 and 2020.
Italy’s coal generation is being replaced by fossil gas more than wind and solar
The proportion of coal in Italy’s electricity mix fell by a substantial 65% from 2015 to 2020. However, contrary to the global trend, Italy is not predominantly replacing coal with wind and solar. Instead, fossil gas has increased its market share by twice that of wind and solar. As a result, Italy is ranked behind even India and Turkey in terms of wind and solar growth.
Italy has the fourth highest percentage share of fossil gas in the G20
Italy sits around the global average for fossil fuel share of production, despite having one of the lowest levels of coal generation. This is because, at 46%, its fossil gas share is more than twice the global average. It even ranks above Russia and the US.
Italy’s electricity demand per capita is 1.5 times the global average, but it is falling
As with most EU countries, Italy’s electricity demand per capita has decreased over the past decade (-12%). It is still higher than the global average of 3.3 MWh/capita but at 5.1 MWh/capita, it is 30% lower than France and 27% lower than Russia.
Italy’s coal production has plummeted by 65% since 2015
Italy has seen the second largest drop in coal generation in the G20 since 2015. Only the UK has achieved a greater decrease at a colossal 93%. Italy is also ranked second in terms of fall in coal generation in 2020 at 24%, six times the global average of 4%.
Concluding remarks
Italy has a coal phase-out date of 2025. Only 5% of production is currently provided by coal so, theoretically, this should not be hard to achieve or require any further investment into fossil gas.
Italy’s National Energy and Climate Plan (NECP) includes a target to meet 55% of electricity demand with renewables by 2030. This will require additional wind and solar capacity of 42 GW. A significant barrier to achieving this goal is the inefficient internal authorisation procedure for wind and solar projects. Furthemore, Italy’s 55% target was set prior to the EU target increasing from 40% to 55%, so Italy’s ambitions may need to rise.
Ember’s analysis of the NECPs found that Italy will account for 10% of the EU-27 power sector emissions in 2030 as a consequence of its reliance on fossil gas. Proposals to convert coal-fired plants to fossil gas such as Vado Ligure and Torrevaldaliga exacerbate this situation. Italy’s capacity market auctions may also be enabling fossil gas expansion, having recently awarded up to 75,000 €/MW/year for 15 years to new capacity. And it is significant that the Italian electricity implementation plan set a thermal generation target for 2040 that is unchanged from 2020.
These factors are impeding the decarbonisation of Italy’s electricity market.
Go back:
Key findings
Trends 2015-2020
Trends in 2020
Comparison with G20
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This report showcases a global dataset for electricity generation & demand across 217 countries from 2000 to 2020. Data for 2020 covers 90% of the world’s electricity production.
Each year, we aim to be the earliest authoritative report to give insights into last year’s global electricity generation changes – offering an unbiased picture of the transition to fossil-free electricity.
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What Is CAGED?
CAGED gives you a way to think about the fret board that merges scales with chords and arpeggios. Basically there are five stationary position scales that correspond with the five chord shapes. CAGED is not an invention. Nor is it something made up to sound fancy and fool you.
CAGED is a system that is derived from the unique tuning of the guitar. It occurs naturally .
CAGED gets it’s name from the primary chord shapes found on the guitar. They are C, A, G, E, and D. These 5 basic chord shapes are the key to total fretboard domination. Every other chord, scale, and arpeggio can be built from 5 basic shapes.
Understanding and mastering the CAGED system is the greatest achievement for any guitarist and this course will show you how to do this–and more!
Did You Know…
• Some speculate on the origins of CAGED, that the reason there are exactly five chord shapes, five scale shapes, and five arpeggio shapes, for full coverage of the guitar’s neck, is because there are only five unique strings on the guitar: E, A, D, G, B, and a second E.
• CAGED has also been called “EDCAGE” in classical guitar.
• Yet, another name used in some jazz circles is “BAGED”. The name is to refer directly to the string on which the ground note of the position fell.
Learning CAGED
Here at Guitar Alliance you’ll find the most complete guide to the essential CAGED system in the world, but you must be a Guitar Alliance member to access this valuable information. |
Today in History: The First Official Baseball Game is Played (1846)
Matthew Weber - June 19, 2017
Baseball is often considered the one of the only truly American sports. Unlike basketball, which was also created in the United States, baseball hasn’t found very much popularity outside of the USA, Latin America and Japan.
The first known mention of the sport came in 1791, when the city of Pittsfield, Massachusetts banned the game from being played within 73 meters of the town meeting house. Apparently, there had been several games being played in the town’s square, and that interfered with town business. No one really knows what sport was being played in 1791, though it is unlikely to appear anything like the baseball we know today.
No one really knows who invented baseball in its current form. Often times the credit for the creation of the sport is given to Abner Doubleday, a Civil War hero. However, even he claimed that he knew nothing about the creation of the sport. Despite that, 15 years after his death, he was dubbed “the father” of baseball.
The first official game to be played under modern rules happened on June 19, 1846. It isn’t well documented, but we know that the game was played between the New York Knickerbockers (long defunct, and no relation to the professional basketball team), and perhaps the New York Gotham club (though it is unclear if the Gotham Club was indeed the opponent or not).
Even a decade later, however, the media in New York was devoting more column inches to cricket than baseball. It would take another decade after that for the popularity of baseball to increase to levels where it was covered consistently by the press.
Schiller & Murtha non-professional Baseball team 1887. San Diego History Center
In 1857, the first governmental body was formed to organize the group of clubs that were being created. It was called the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP), and was responsible for the standardization of gameplay and rules. It was also created to monitor and sponsor a league-wide championship.
Historians credit the Civil war for boosting the popularity of baseball. By the end of the war more than 100 clubs had joined the NABBP. In 1869, the NABBP allowed for the creation of professional clubs, something that had been against the rules of the league since its creation. This was a major milestone, as previously, all clubs were strictly recreational (at least those belonging to the NABBP). The first professional club was the Cincinnati Red Stockings, it went defunct just two years later. in 1871, the Boston Base Ball club was created, that team later became the Boston Braves, which is a team that Babe Ruth played for in the 20th century.
Marcus Thames hitting for the Detroit Tigers in 2007. Wikipedia via the MLB
Nowadays, the game of baseball has transformed into a national phenomenon. It is a multi-billion dollar business, that is watched by millions of Americans every day between the late days of March and the late days of October. The MLB, the successor to the NABBP, is the representative of all professional teams, however the sport itself lives on in small forms in towns and cities all across the country. It is played by children and adults alike, giving credence to the idea that baseball is “America’s Pastime.” |
7 Reasons for Kidney Disease in Women
It is a widespread belief that kidney diseases are equally common in males and females. Perhaps, they are not gender-biased. But estimates show that chronic kidney disease has a higher incidence in women compared to men.
Likely the cause is low awareness about the causes that put women at elevated risk of chronic kidney disease.
There are a plethora of reasons why diagnosis is more apparent in women, and we are going to let you learn how.
Here are 7 reasons that put women at risk of chronic kidney disease, such as:
1. The first reason for this is their tendency to hold urine for a long time. Women usually hold urine more, and this fills the bladder beyond its capacity. As a response to this, the urine drains back to the kidney itself. Certainly, other causes are also linked, such as more susceptibility to urinary tract infections or pyelonephritis (infections of the kidneys). Let us tell you that recurrent UTIs and kidney infections are often the cause of chronic kidney disease or kidney failure. So, get yourself treated in the first place if you want to waive your risk of developing kidney-related disorders.
2. The second reason linked to the development of kidney disease in women is hormonal changes in women, menstruation, pregnancy, and menopause. Often these conditions trigger the need for more medications to address the complications linked to changes in the body. Taking too many medications can damage the filters or nephrons and glomeruli. When you do consume a lot of painkillers or antibiotics, the byproduct has to be removed by the kidneys only, which can be distressing for the kidneys.
3. Stress is common, but our response to stress is what makes the difference. Women have a different hormonal system that makes them respond more emotionally and become exhausted on an emotional level. This stress is further a cause of hypersensitivity that pressurizes the kidneys even more. Stress also impacts your other regulatory systems, which rely on a healthy kidney function to work well.
4. The fourth cause of the onset of kidney disease in women is their susceptibility to diabetes. Though men also have diabetes, it is highly common in women. Men only get type 1 and type 2 diabetes, while women are at risk of gestational diabetes too. Gestational diabetes can be managed well with the help of medicines, but in many cases, it remains uncontrollable and demands treatment. The treatment injects the risk of kidney failure ultimately.
5. Yet another risk factor is the risk of abortion. For any reason, if women terminate the pregnancy, they need to be vigilant about their health which includes taking care of hygiene factors also. If not, they may end up witnessing the signs of urinary tract infections, which eventually end up with chronic kidney disease.
6. The sixth factor is a condition called preeclampsia. Preeclampsia is a health complication in which high blood pressure during pregnancy may disrupt the function of the liver and kidney. Mostly this happens in the 20th week of pregnancy and leads to complications in pregnancies. So, we recommend women undergoing pregnancy take care of their health and manage stress wisely. Practising yoga and meditation is going to help in the long run.
7. The next reason for kidney disease in women is the risk of lupus, an autoimmune disorder. When you have an autoimmune disorder, likely your immune system is at risk that can eventually harm most of your organ’s function. Lupus nephritis is a condition when lupus autoantibodies affect nephrons and glomeruli. This brings inflammation and may result in blood and protein in the urine, high blood pressure, and even kidney failure in many cases.
So, these are seven risk factors linked to kidney disease in women. If you are a woman experiencing any of these health issues, we suggest you shall not ignore them and expect a consultation from your doctor. It might not sound obvious, but these health issues need serious evaluation by the doctor.
Or, if you want us, we can help you with the right treatment approach.
Watch 7 reasons for kidney disease in women in the Hindi language.
औरतों को किडनी रोग इन 7 कारणों से होता है kidney treatment for women in hindi
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Antimicrobial Vaccines
Vaccination is the most effective method of prevention for infectious diseases. Vaccines & adjuvants are components which potentiate the immune system and accelerate the immune responses to an antigen. These components act to induce, prolong and enhance antigen-specific immune responses when it is used in combination with specific vaccine antigens. Antimicrobial is the agent that restricts the cell growth to fight against the potential bacteria the manufacturing companies are coming up with more advanced antimicrobial liquids, soaps & sanitizers. |
Abusive cultural belief systems promote anxiety, depression, stress and suicidal tendencies
Our brains are full of thoughts, perceptions and memories. They often contradict with each other at various levels and try to win. Sometimes we are convinced and settled down, while other times, we just can’t make them organised and get stressed. Some times arguments win our hearts; while other times we lose! If I say that it’s all game of logical reasoning and clarifying ideas then nothing wrong in it. The ideas we like, we adore, we publish and act upon spontaneously. The ideas we don’t like, we don’t get; we don’t bother and behave like that. Here I am talking about beliefs we really do not like, but destined to follow them due to cultural constraints and environmental limitations. Not only this, those beliefs are putting peoples’ lives at risk for depression, anxiety and stress disorders especially women’s lives are at risk for PTSD and many other traumas related to abusive conditions.
In a terrible, abusive and negative environment, out thoughts, ideas and feelings are just not intact. We think very differently from the people around us. We live a life not according to our own standards; rather as per others values and beliefs. We call our weaknesses, our limitations and never dare to say ‘NO’. We confront to our own selves and convince ourselves that others are right whereas it’s not always true. Especially in an abusive culture, one feels quite helpless in proving his/her argument, no matter how right his/her point is. As usually all others around speak against you and try to make you to follow the traditions and customs(abusive in nature) blindly and quietly.
There are many examples to quote. Like in some cultures women are not given their basic rights. They are supposed to perform /carry out many troublesome and annoying/odd/weird traditions in the name of religion and culture. And many times, they feel pressurised to do that in all circumstances. Such traditions go against women’s basic human rights; however no one questions it. For example, in some cultures, many things women are not supposed to do like men due to their feminine nature; however women should be allowed to live a happy free life-like men. Women are not encouraged to live an independent life like men in some societies which is also an example of an abusive culture. Women are not encouraged to move alone and seek for their job; also a sign of abusive environment. Women are being married due to family pressures or girls are not given the same status at home like sons; and girls are supposed to do minor things and are not considered important in decision-making for family matters. All of these are examples of abusive and negative society where one could not do certain things ( otherwise positive and important) due to unhealthy and toxic belief systems inculcated in the social norms. how-you-beliefs-are-preventing-you-from-getting-through-4734_203x200
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Story Publication logo February 28, 2017
A Woman Survives Ebola but Not Pregnancy in Africa
Media file: josephine_postebola.jpg
As Liberia grapples to care for thousands of Ebola survivors, scientists strive to understand post...
Salome Karwah, Ebola survivor and Ebola nurse, waits in her sister's bedroom on her wedding day as her aunts ask the groom's family for money, in a Liberian tradition known as Bride Price. In February 2017 she died from complications during childbirth. Image by Seema Yasmin. Liberia, 2015.
By the time she was 26, Salome Karwah had defied death at least three times. She had survived the longest, deadliest Ebola epidemic in history, which swept across west Africa recently, killing more than 11,000 people including her mother, father and uncle. Previously, Salome had fled gunfire to live through two civil wars that took the lives of more than half a million Liberians.
I met this strong woman over a year ago when I wrote a story about her sister Josephine's struggle with post-Ebola syndrome for Scientific American. And I have just learned Salome is dead, passing away on February 22 from complications during the birth of her fourth child. She was 28-years-old. It's unclear at this time if her baby survived.
Childbirth complications, known in medical terms as maternal mortality, kill more than 800 women globally each day, according to the World Health Organization. Salome's death is a reminder that a woman can survive conflicts and crises of historic proportions yet die giving birth.
When I first met Salome, it was December 2015 and a week before her wedding. She was seven months pregnant and feeding her four-year-old son, Favor, and her two-year-old daughter, Success, while waving off her sister's concerns about last-minute wedding arrangements.
A year earlier, in December 2014, Salome had been on the cover of TIME, one of five Ebola fighters who were honored as the magazine's Person of the Year. After she fought Ebola and won, Salome had walked back into the same Ebola treatment unit where she had watched her mother die. This time she went to work as a mental health counselor.
Salome wasn't the first to get sick in her family. Her father began spiking a fever in August 2014. Salome, who worked as a nurse's aide in a family clinic, poured her energy into a daily routine of dampening her father's fevers and injecting him with the twice daily insulin shots that kept his diabetes in check.
The deep ache in Salome's bones began four days after her father fell sick. When the headaches arrived, she would steady herself against the cool, green bathroom wall and squeeze her eyes shut against the beat of her pounding head. She kept her pain a secret from the 10 family members she shared a home with in the town of Smell No Taste, an hour's drive from the capital, Monrovia. Ebola felt like an ax to the head. "It was the worst headache of my life. The worst pain I have suffered—ever, ever. Like someone hitting me in my head over and over," she told me. Salome's older sister, Josephine, said Salome powered through the pain. Cooking potato greens and rice in their small kitchen, Josephine would notice her sister wincing while stirring the pot. "I would ask her, 'Salome, what is wrong?' And she would say 'nothing, nothing,'" Josephine said.
The day their father died from the infection, the sisters took their mother to an Ebola treatment unit in Monrovia. The three women were tested for the disease, and they all were positive. Three weeks later, only two of them walked out of the white tent.
Josephine was seven months pregnant the day she returned home to Smell No Taste. Three days later, she gave birth to a stillborn baby boy outside the family house. An ambulance would not come to her aid. Neighbors came out of their houses and stared at the screaming woman squatting in the street. Nobody would touch the Ebola survivor.
Salome moved to a different town. She couldn't bear to live in her parents' home without her parents. But she was run out of her new house after her neighbors learned she was an Ebola survivor. A nearby family was quarantined for 21 days when their bosses found out they lived near Salome. Still, at her wedding, Salome praised the Lord for them. "Thank God! Praise be to God for the people who were quarantined for 21 days and who did not get sick!" she said to a crowd of a few dozen relatives squeezed into white plastic chairs beneath a plastic awning. The groom, James Harris, stood in the corner and smiled. He was an Ebola survivor, too.
Salome struggled to make sense of her survival in the face of so much loss. "But I realized I had survived for a reason," she said. "And that reason was to help other people." Six days a week she traveled to Monrovia and encouraged Ebola patients to eat spoonfuls of rice and take sips of water. The work gave her life purpose, she said.
Ebola targeted Liberia's precious health care workers, people like Salome who dared to care for the sick. Nearly 200 doctors, nurses and auxiliary staff died during the outbreak, and with that the maternal death rate spiked 111 percent. Liberia already had one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world. Data from the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare show that in 2015, 1,072 women died during pregnancy or childbirth for every 100,000 babies born alive. Hemorrhage was the leading cause of death followed by prolonged labor, eclampsia and unsafe abortions.
On the TIME cover, Salome stands with her arms crossed, her face staring down either Ebola or the reader or both. The headline, in white letters, reads: "The Ebola Fighters."
And she was a fighter. Salome fought a pain so deep she thought her bones were splintering. She also fought the cold stares of her neighbors, the crossed arms of the market vendor who refused to touch her money. She fought a disease that killed more than 11,000 west Africans, first as a patient and then as a caregiver. She survived all of those things and war—but it was becoming a mother that killed her.
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Women Face Systemic Inequality In Chile
By Luciano Nagel
SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile is considered a country with a solid democracy and a population that takes to the streets to demand rights, but social and economic differences between men and women are still prevalent.
Chilean women work less in paid employment compared with other Latin American countries and tend to spend more time taking care of children and doing household chores, according to the Organisation for Co-operation and Economic Development.
Like much of Latin America, Chile has not managed to lessen the gap to achieve a more equal society. The country tops the charts in backwardness, says Carolina Carrera, a psychologist with the Andrés Bello University in Chile.
“Today, the situation is critical. According to a study of 17 countries by the [Organisation for Co-operation and Economic Development] that talks about the increase in female employment in all participating nations, Chile lags the most in indicators such as women’s participation in the workforce, female unemployment, the wage gap. The country is going backward, because of the [wage] pandemic over the last 10 years,” she said.
“Social inequality in Chile is huge,” said the psychologist Carolina Carrera. (Courtesy of Carolina Carrera)
Carrera says there is a wage gap between men and women that affects retirement and poverty among older women.
“In 2020, female employment numbers decreased by 44.4 percent; the percentage lowered Latin America’s average. [Chile] also has more than 40 percent of women as one-parent heads of household, where poverty levels go up alarmingly,” she said.
In Chile, conditions for loans are more favorable for men than for women. (Luciano Nagel/Zenger)
More than 2.1 million Chileans live in poverty, and extreme poverty increased to 4.3 percent, more than 800,000 people, says the Chilean government. The country has a population of about 19.45 million.
Carrera also says Chilean society lags significantly when it comes to civil union rights for same-sex couples.
“The civil union agreement was legislated to allow for both same-sex unions and heterosexual couples, which regulates shared assets, but not parentage, for example. The institution of marriage is allowed for a few, since LGTBI+ couples cannot take part. There is the issue of lesbians who are mothers and only one of them has maternal rights and the other doesn’t, and they are not a priority in the adoption system,” she said.
Consumer credit
In the economic arena, women pay more than men, especially when they take out credit.
The different interest rates for men and women are mainly the result of bank risk profiles, says Alejandro Urzúa, an economic analyst from Andrés Bello University.
Sofía Olave is a teacher who has seen inequality in interest rates when asking for credit to buy a home. (Luciano Nagel/Zenger)
Sofía Olave, 27, a teacher in Comuna de Molina, felt discriminated against when she tried to buy a home. When she received the quote from her real estate agent, the interest rates were very high.
“If my husband were the one buying the property, the rates would be lower. I can’t buy property alone in my name; I need a cosigner or somebody to help with the rent, even though I’m able to pay, which would mean that my property would also be in someone else’s name. I think that’s unfair,” she said.
“In Chile, women’s workforce conditions are more fragile than for men, and [women] earn less for the same labor, which is key to obtaining less favorable credit conditions, interest rates and amounts requested,” Urzúa told Zenger.
Urzúa also says Chilean women are better payers and are more responsible with payments than men, with lower debt percentages and less credit delinquency.
“But unfortunately, during a credit assessment, that is not taken as a factor,” he said.
Alejandro Urzúa is an economic analyst at Andrés Bello University in Chile. (Courtesy of Alejandro Urzúa)
In Chile women earn on average 20.4 percent less than men, says the Fundación SOL researcher Andrea Sato Jabre.
“There is a wage discrimination. On average and not controlling for visible factors, the wage gap between men and women is 140.962 Chilean pesos ($177) a month. In other words, the average income women can earn is 79.6 percent of the income men earn,” she said.
The gaps tend to be smaller in the public sector, mainly because the positions there have set salaries. Still, the highest positions are almost all filled by men, says Sato.
Translated by Melanie Slone; edited by Melanie Slone and Kristen Butler
The post Women Face Systemic Inequality In Chile appeared first on Zenger News. |
Luxembourg: a small multilingual nation in the heart of Europe
The multilingual population of Luxembourg
Luxembourg is a small nation located in Western Europe, bordered by Belgium, Germany and France. It has a surface of 2586 square kilometres, and it is one of the smallest European sovereign states (“a state with a defined territory that administers its own government and is not subject to or dependent on another power”). Despite this geographic feature, it is densely populated. The total of Luxembourg’s population adds up to about 590,321 residents.
According to the statistics, amongst them, only 308,919 are Luxembourgers, while 281,748 have a foreign nationality. That is to say, foreigners make up 47.7% of the whole population. In Luxembourg City, this percentage goes up to 69%!
Almost every working day, around 170,000 people cross the German, Belgian, and French borders to reach their workplace in Luxembourg City.
But it does not end here: due to the rapid development of the steel industry and the economic growth of the country during the 19th Century and 20th Century, many people have moved to Luxembourg from Portugal, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and many other countries.
This makes this country extremely multicultural and…multilingual!
Which languages are spoken in Luxembourg?
The linguistic situation in Luxembourg is rather complex and multi-faceted.
Luxembourgish, a West Germanic branch belonging to the Indo-European family, is the National language. French and German are established as administrative languages. Both of these languages are widely used by institutions.
French is extensively used for law purposes in Luxembourg, since the country adheres to the French Civil Law, which derives from Napoleonic Civil Code. However, many international treaties are integrated under the laws of Luxembourg.
The use of French is also very common in trade and tourism related situations: hotels, restaurants, cafes, shops etc.
According to a study carried out by the University of Luxembourg in 2010, French is the most required language for job vacancies.
In daily life, Luxembourgish, German and French are used for different purposes, depending on the situation.
In work-related situations, much weight is given to the origin of the company. For example, if the company is German, the working-language will more than likely be German.
English plays an important role in the European institutions since it represents a common language for the employees, permanent staff and trainees. Last but not least, considering the extension of the Portuguese community, it is quite common to hear people speaking Portuguese in many workplaces!
The economic power of being a multilingual country
According to Gabrielle Hogan Brun, the author of “Linguanomics”), a book which investigates the role of languages and multilingualism in ancient and modern society, the connection between economy and languages dates back to the ancient world, since the early traders understood that they had to understand clients to boost their commercial activities.
If we bring this concept into modern times, multilingualism could boost one’s country GDP: Switzerland, for example, attributes 10% of its GDP to its multiple multilingual heritage (German, French, Italian and Romansh). On the other hand, nations with low language skills seemed to lose a percentage of GDP.
According to research carried out by Ingela Bel Habib in 2011, the multilingualism of the enterprises affected the export performance in a positive way.
This could also be considered true for the Luxembourgish economy, which is strongly influenced by multilingualism.
Children are exposed to many languages from their early childhood and many schools are offering international programs.
Economic reasons, however, are just an incentive to learn languages, as we all know, learning a language can contribute to the development of our personality, can help our attention and make us more flexible and open-minded.
To learn more about this topic, the Keynote speech by Erna Hennicot-Schoepges Hon. Minister of Culture of Luxembourg at the VIII European Terminology Summit is really worth a read.
Written by Flaminia Paternoster
flaminia paternoster foto Flaminia holds a Master’s degree in Interpreting and Translation from the UNINT University of Rome, with a research thesis focused on Plurilingual Approaches in teaching languages and translating.
She received her B.A in Intercultural Mediation from Sapienza University of Rome. In 2017 she has worked in Strasbourg on a project based on Intercomprehension.
Her research interest include multilingualism, plurilingualism, intercomprehension, translation and terminology. Before joining the Terminological Coordination Unit as a trainee she was teaching Italian in Rome. She speaks Italian, French, Spanish, English and German. She is passionate about words, languages, food and traveling.
You can follow her on twitter at
Edited by Olena Khomiakova
Olena-Khomiakova Olena Khomiakova is a Schuman Communication Trainee Terminology Coordination Unit. Currently she is enrolled as a Master student in Learning and Communications in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts at the University of Luxembourg. |
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