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What is Lodi’s storm drain system? Lodi’s storm drain system is made up of the street gutters that flow to the catch basins, the pipelines that carry the water to outfall lines or pump stations which then forward the water to the Mokelumne River, storm drain detention basins or Woodbridge Irrigation District Canal. If water goes to the basins, it is eventually pumped out to the WID canal and river. Remember, these basins are used as parks when they aren’t holding stormwater. Residuals from the stormwater will remain on the grass and any toxics could harm children and pets. Show All Answers 1. What is Lodi’s storm drain system? 2. What are catch basins or storm drain inlets? 3. Are sewers and storm drains the same thing? 4. Do drain inlets get cleaned out?
More News: July 02, 2015 California moves to strike 'lynching' language from state law California Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday was considering whether to sign a bill that would remove the word "lynching" from a 1933 law that used the term to describe the crime of trying to wrest a person from police custody. The bill, which unanimously passed in the California Legislature last week, followed furor over the arrest of black activist Maile Hampton on a charge of felony lynching during a "Black Lives Matter" demonstration in Sacramento in January. Hampton's attorney, lawmakers and other supporters rallied behind her at court and on social media, saying it was ironic she had been charged under a decades-old law that was originally enacted to protect black detainees from white lynch mobs. Hampton's supporters also called for the removal of the word lynching from the penal code, saying its application was not appropriate. Thousands of African-Americans were victims of lynchings, or extrajudicial public execution by hanging, in Southern states in the 19th and 20th centuries. “Whether obsolete, perverse or just wrong, it’s time for that law to change,” Sen. Holly Mitchell, a California legislator representing a district including historically African-American communities in Los Angeles, said in a statement on her website. Hampton was detained for allegedly trying to pull a friend from police custody during a January protest over the killings of unarmed black men by white police officers, the Sacramento Bee reported. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert has since reduced Hampton's charges to resisting arrest, a misdemeanor. Schubert did not respond to a request for comment about the case. Mitchell, who introduced the bill to change the language of the law, said penalties would not be eliminated or reduced under the bill, and killing a person by mob action would remain a felony. The crime of trying to remove someone from police custody is punishable by between two and four years in state prison.
We ask a lot of farmers: Provide us with a reliable, inexpensive and safe supply of food regardless of weather (here or elsewhere), politics and trade issues, input costs or markets. And did we mention cheap? Now we want farmers to do the same for energy. What the oilfields were to transportation in the 20th century, many expect the nation's farms to be in the 21st century, with ethanol, biodiesel and similar products displacing petroleum-derived fuels. Washington jumped on the biofuel-powered bandwagon in the most recent legislative session with a bill mandating that, by late 2008, 2 percent of the gasoline and diesel fuel that suppliers sell be ethanol and biodiesel. Developers are discussing biofuel and ethanol plants all over the state. That suggests a major opportunity for a major industry in Washington. Farmers "would love to get into this market," says Kathleen Painter of the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University. "They love the idea of growing for the energy market." "We think the opportunities are immense," adds Don Stuart, Pacific Northwest states director for American Farmland Trust. "I do think this is something our farmers could do a darn good job at." But for Washington farmers to reap anything from that major opportunity, they need some answers to some major questions. Such as, for starters, how much they might be paid for growing crops such as canola that would produce the raw material for refining into biofuels. "Alternative crops can provide some benefits for dryland grain producers in the Pacific Northwest," says a report co-written by Painter on the economics of canola production in Eastern Washington. "Oilseed crops, such as rapeseed, canola and mustard, have been used in rotation with wheat and barley in the region since the late 1970s. Including oilseeds in a cereal grain rotation provides a greater choice of herbicide use in the battle against unwanted grasses, thus facilitating weed control. The addition of an oilseed crop also helps loosen hardpan within the soil, and it can break up disease cycles." But here's the problem: "Although these alternative crops potentially improve yields of the subsequent wheat or barley crop, the market price for oilseed crops during the past several years has caused some producers to produce these crops at a loss." At times the prices for those alternative crops have dropped so low that farmers decide they don't get enough of the other benefits to make it worth eating that loss. The bottom line, Painter says, is that "the feedstock needs to be worth more." Prices have been stronger in recent months, as biofuel developers announce projects and line up suppliers. But Painter says farmers want to be certain that prices won't retreat, and that the proposed projects will actually be built. A further complication in the prospect for prices is competition from other feedstock materials, such as canola oil from Canada, soybean oil from the Midwest and palm oil from Asia. If those supplies hold down the prices farmers here can fetch for what they grow, the effort to develop an energy market for Washington agriculture might never get started. On the other hand, having another market for crops might dampen the price volatility that constantly plagues farmers. Says Stuart, "It's hard to imagine you could increase the volatility" by developing the energy market. For a few, the "alternative" crop might wind up being more attractive than a primary crop such as wheat, particularly when wheat prices are in a slump and input costs including tractor fuel and fertilizer are climbing. One other reason farmers are interested in the energy market: World Trade Organization talks and the 2007 farm bill that Congress will be debating. The farm bill comes up every half decade or so, and each time Congress and the administration of the moment go through an exercise of deciding whether to wean ag off support and subsidy programs (Freedom to Farm, 1996) or reinstate and expand them (the farm bill of 2002). The 2007 bill is likely to be more of the former than the latter, given the pressure on the United States and other nations in world trade talks to cut subsidies and support. Developing an energy market "will be a huge aid to agriculture, particularly those crops likely to be hammered in the current round of trade talks," Stuart says. Farmers with high-value crops such as vegetables or tree fruit aren't likely to go after the energy market, says Valoria Loveland, director of the Washington Department of Agriculture. "I see this as an opportunity in agriculture for those who want to participate" to generate revenue or cut costs (as may be the case in converting animal waste to energy rather than disposing of it). In all the enthusiasm over biofuels as a way to cut oil prices and imports, too little attention has been paid to the financial incentives that will encourage farmers in Washington to participate. It's mostly been about what's in it for motorists. For the industry to achieve any significant size, people will have to start asking what's in it for the farmers.
What do the Austrian, British and Canadian and other government mints have in common? They've all been privatized. Although still government owned, these mints are run by private companies and operate as autonomous profit-making centers. The idea of privatizing the U.S. Mint may sound foreign to us, but a number of government officials are giving it serious consideration. Why the interest? Because privatizing a national mint - as least as practiced in Austria, Britain and Canada - does not mean the government must surrender control of its coinage facilities. Rather, it means that elected officials must forgo their penchant to micro-manage and second-guess every major managerial decision. Under the system currently governing the U.S. Mint, profits derived from seigniorage - the difference between the face and intrinsic value of a coin - are unaccounted for in published mint reports. Moreover, the mint bows to the dictates of a whimsical Congress, and must produce an increasing number of fund-raising commemorative coins at the expense of the needs of commerce. Sales staff and support facilities in some cases outnumber the personnel necessary to manage the production of coins for general circulation. Instead of concentrating on the needs of the country, top officials tour the world on mint-financed junkets to "sell" their products. Often, to the consternation of American dealers, foreign outlets enjoy enticing discounts. In fact, the recent super-discounting of the mint's World Cup commemorative coins contributed to an eventual financial loss for the issue. A private company would take a more realistic look at the costs of the Congressionally dictated coin programs. Moreover, privatizing would almost certainly lead to the establishment of clearer priorities - perhaps reversing the mint's long-time resistance to obvious money-saving actions such as a proposal to manufacture mini-one-dollar coins. Such a move would result in millions of dollars in annual savings. But a current mint official recently told Congress that the mint could not produce such a coin because its facility would be unable to manufacture it in sufficient quantities. Both the Clinton administration and the Congressional majority have pledged to reinvent government. The U.S. Mint may well become the place this process starts. Copyright © 2020, Sun Sentinel
Förbränning av biogas/metan i en EcoMarathonmotor Detta är en Kandidat-uppsats från Chalmers tekniska högskola/Institutionen för tillämpad mekanik Sammanfattning: This report is about the process of converting a petrol-fuelled Honda GX35 engine to runon methane gas. The future goal is to use the engine in the engineering competition ShellEco-marathon, where the aim is to drive a vehicle as far as possible with a set amount offuel.To enable methane fuelling, the carburator of the GX35 was replaced with a gas fuel injectorfrom the engine accessory company Ecotrons. This was attached to an aluminium intake pipeconstructed by the project group. A new flywheel was constructed, equipped with twelvemagnetic detection points instead of one for more accurate detection of the crankshaftposition. A magnet was also attached to the upper cam pulley to enable position detection.The original exhaust system was replaced by a holder of a lambda sensor and a straightexhaust pipe. Together with the engine control unit (ECU) KATLA, developed earlier for abachelor’s thesis at Chalmers, this enabled detailed control of ignition and fuel injection, aswell as measurement of the air-fuel ratio.In order to test the engine with a load, a brake device was constructed. A moped wasacquired, whose gearbox and rear brake was used to brake and gear down the output shaftof the methane engine. The flywheel of the methane engine was connected to the flywheel ofthe moped through a vibration reducing rubber disc and a steel adapter. The rear wheel ofthe moped was lifted from the ground with a support so that it could rotate freely. By doingthis, the load of the engine could be controlled with the rear brake pedal of the moped.Methane was not available for the project group, so the engine was tested with liquefiedpetroleum gas instead, which is another gaseous fuel. Before the engine was started, the flowrate through the gas injector was measured. This data was used to set the fuel parametersin the ECU. With some minor adjustments the engine ran well during testing.
Uninformed: Informative Information for the Uninformed Vol 1» 2005.May Branching to a forward address without using NULL bytes can be tricky on PowerPC systems. If you try branching forward, but less than 256 bytes, your opcode will contain a NULL. If you obtain your current address and want to branch to an offset from it, you will need to place the target address into the count register (ctr) or the link register (lr). If you decide to use the link register, you will notice that every valid form of "blr" has a NULL byte. You can avoid the NULL byte by setting the branch hint bits (19-20) to "11" (unpredictable branch, do not optimize). The resulting opcode becomes 0x4e804820 instead of 0x4e800020 for the standard "blr" instruction. The branch prediction bit (bit 10) can also come in handy, it is useful if you need to change the second byte of the branch instruction to a different character. The prediction bit tells the processor how likely it is that the instruction will result in a branch. To specify the branch prediction bit in the assembly source, just place '-' or '+' after the branch instruction.
Tag Archive: Great Depression What was the Bonus Army? What was the Bonus Army? The United States faced many problems during the Great Depression. So did President Herbert Hoover. One notable problem he faced was his public image after the handling (or perhaps, mishandling) of the marchers in the “Bonus Army”. Continue reading » Permanent link to this article: http://www.factfrenzy.com/what-was-the-bonus-army/
• Join over 1.2 million students every month • Accelerate your learning by 29% • Unlimited access from just £6.99 per month Thermometric Titration Investigation Extracts from this document... Thermometric Titration Investigation Sam Murphy 11T Planning We have to plan an experiment which measures the temperature change accompanying neutralisation so that it can be investigated. Neutralisation is when an acid and an alkali mixed together neutralise the other. The hydrogen and the hydroxide ions bond to form water and the rest bonds to form a salt. For example in the case of hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, the salt is sodium chloride. Neutralisation is an exothermic reaction, like all reactions where bonds are formed. I plan to measure this heat energy released by the reaction (although it is possible to do the same for endothermic reactions, those that take heat energy from their surroundings rather than release). Neutralisation; Word Equation: Alkali + Acid = Salt + Water EXAMPLE: Sodium Hydroxide + Hydrochloric acid = Sodium Chloride + Water With titration equipment, I plan to add acid to an alkali (sodium hydroxide) until it is neutralised, Measuring the temperature so that I can work out the ? H. This means, I will add bit-by-bit, acid to the alkali in set amounts (3 ml) at a time. Measuring the temperature after adding the acid to the alkali. We will measure the change in Heat Energy by using this equation to work out the "? H" (Change in heat energy). For accuracy sake we will repeat the experiment for each acid so that we have two sets of results from each to work out a mean average. ...read more. which means approximately equal amounts of each will create a neutral solution 4. Add the HCL to the NaOH, 3cm3 at a time. 5. After you have added some acid, stir the Polypot with the thermometer and quickly record the temperature and move on 6. Carry on until the change in temperature is small and several negative temperature change results are recorded, indicating the alkali has been neutralised Safety: * The acids that will be used are 2 molar, twice as strong as the usual strength used, this makes it far more important to use goggles and not to spill on clothes or you. * Check carefully to see if the burette is secure, if it isn't then it may fall and break, this would result in acid and glass shards on the desk and floor, not safe for reasons too obvious to mention. * Make sure the burette doesn't leak or drip. * You should always be standing during an experiment, but in this case, with stronger corrosive solutions, this becomes even more important. * This may not have much to do with the experiment, but while carrying the acids and alkalis around, remember to watch out for bags and stools or any obstacles which may cause you to trip up. * The thermometers we use contain mercury which is poisonous, but also, so is the vapour, so any fabric or other thing which soaks it up must be washed because it could give you poisoning, especially clothes. ...read more. But it was all surprisingly accurate, the doubled results were all close together so that the fact they were not greatly different shows that they were either both wrong (unlikely) or most likely, both about right. Not being more precise than a millilitre when your dealing with three millilitres is bound to cause problems, same with a small range of temperatures. Altogether, taking into account: 1. Measuring to millilitres 2. Measuring to degrees C (not decimal places) 3. Dilution due to pipette / burette 4. Heat Loss 5. Human error on the burette tap (time and amount) 6. The specific heat capacity being a bit different 7. Splashing caused by stirring, reduces amount in pot Altogether it is about 10% accurate, considering some inaccuracies work against each other, like 4 and 6, using a lower specific heat capacity than you really have creates heat whereas 4 is about actually losing it. The graph was mostly accurate, and it showed up only one anomaly, though I have no explanation for it. Ideally, I would have a thicker poly pot with a lid. A magnetic stirrer would mix it, an electronic probe measuring to 2 decimal places stuck in the lid (same for the end of the burette) and a stop-clock to measure the interval of 20-30 seconds between adding the acid. Obvious further work would be trying out different combinations of acids and alkalis, but, you can also measure heat produced in other exothermic reactions, or try measuring the heat used by endothermic reactions. ...read more. The above preview is unformatted text Found what you're looking for? • Start learning 29% faster today • 150,000+ documents available • Just £6.99 a month Here's what a teacher thought of this essay 4 star(s) A good account of the investigation with useful background information. The author might have discussed variables in more detail and a bit of double checking should have avoided getting the specific heat capacity of water wrong. Marked by teacher Adam Roberts 14/10/2013 Not the one? Search for your essay title... • Join over 1.2 million students every month • Accelerate your learning by 29% • Unlimited access from just £6.99 per month See related essaysSee related essays Related GCSE Aqueous Chemistry essays 1. Marked by a teacher 4 star(s) The number of moles of NaOH left over was found by titrating with Hydrochloric acid acid. The number of moles of NaOH required for the reaction was then calculated as the moles originally present were knows. Using this relationship given in the equation: 1 mole aspirin is reacted by 2 2. A thermometric titration - determine the concentrations of hydrochloric acid and ethanoic acids by ... Moreover, we must replace the lid before stirring which can minimize the heat lost to the surrounding. We should stir gently or the plactic lid will break as a result of our volience. After all, after the experiment we will plot a graph to determine the highest temperature, it is 1. Acid-Base titration of Sulphuric acid and Sodium Hydroxide Shake the flask and stand it on a white tile under the burette. * Then I added a few drops of dilute sulphuric acid from the burette to the flask while swirling the contents of the flask at the same time. Experimental error in the results may have been due to the use of inaccurate glassware, human error, systematic error in the measurements that will influence the calculations made from the data obtained, glassware not properly rinsed and dried before use, dirt and air on the analytical balance, or the acetyl salicylic acid not fully hydrolysed. 1. Factors affecting the rate of Diffusion. When you divide 5 by 2.5, you get 2 showing doubling. Although, this trend is not the same for other points. The considering the results, the following drawings need to be taken into consideration: In the first picture, the 10 particles in A would be moving randomly and because there 2. The Memorable Trip First of all, they didn't use simple lines or nets to catch the fish. They used something called a 'simbra,' a Spanish term for a trap. I have never seen one anywhere else till this day. I was very concerned about getting on the boat and feeling all the movements of water. 1. Determine Solubility of KClO3 Salt. Gases Formula Solubility g/100-mL Temperature /K Ammonia NH3 51.8 293 Carbon dioxide CO2 0.145 298 Hydrogen chloride HCl 82.3 273 Nitrogen N2 0.0019 293 Oxygen O2 0.0043 293 Solids Formula Solubility g/100-mL Temperature /K Aspirin HC9H7O4 0.33 298 Baking soda NaHCO3 10 298 Caustic soda NaOH 42 273 Marble CaCO3 The sodium hydroxide was then used to titrate the ethanoic acid. The results of this were recorded in table 2. The volume of sodium hydroxide required in this neutralisation was 1.25cm3, this led to the calculation of the concentration of ethanoic acid, which also was 0.1mol dm-3. • Over 160,000 pieces of student written work • Annotated by experienced teachers • Ideas and feedback to improve your own work
Three wolves were slaughtered in the Drôme (Southeastern France, located in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region) by "wildlife enforcers" at the beginning of April 2020. Among them were two pregnant wolves! These killings, ineffective against predation, also threaten the survival of the wolf species, classified as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The 30 Million Friends Foundation calls on the public authorities to reinforce the effectiveness of measures to protect livestock, through more harmonious and balanced cohabitation. Quarentine of humans has not always saved wildlife. This was evidenced by the slaughter of three wolves in the Drôme in early April 2020. " While the French citizens (were) under the coronavirus quarantine, others decided to go and kill the wolves, a protected species, in the midst of breeding season, Criticizes the Ferus Association. In total, 13 of the 560 wolves present in France have already been slaughtered since the beginning of 2020. If one of them was killed illegally by a poacher, the other 12 were "legally" killed, under French regulations which set the limit on wolves that can be killed each year. Although the wolf is protected by the Berne Convention of 1979 and the Habitats Directive of 1992, these same texts also provide for exceptions for certain reasons and conditions, from the prohibition on killing. Two of the three wolves killed in April 2020 were pregnant wolves from two different packs. " If the shooting of females pregnant with a protected species is already wrong, it also means a high risk for the breaking up of the packs, " warns Ferus. Indeed, when an alpha is killed, the pack will disperse and the wolves, alone and weakened, will prefer to hunt the most vulnerable prey which constitutes the domestic herds. So the killings then have an opposite effect to what was expected. And as proof, the wolf attacks increase from year to year because of the increasing amount of exceptions from the prohibitions on killing wolves. Moreover, in December 2019, the National Council for the Protection of Nature (CNPN) described the government's policy of limiting the growth of wolf populations to limit damage to domestic livestock as inadequate. " This type of practice has no scientific basis and to date has brought no real improvement, either in terms of social acceptance of the wolf, or better protection of herds ," warns the Council . This observation is confirmed by other scientific bodies: the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) and the scientific committee of the Nation Action Plan on the wolf in particular. " To allow this to continue, wolf killings would then be used to try to achieve social peace, to appease the owners of livestock. By allowing the annual wolf removal rate to be 17% of the population - even 19% if the first rate is reached before the end of the year - (a total of 100 individuals!), the decree of January 3, 2020 pursues more of the practice of regulation than the conservation of the species." To allow the wolf population to adapt to future changes and thus ensure its long-term viability, a total of 2,500 to 5,000 adult wolves would constitute the minimum necessary, " recommend the MNHN and the National Hunting and Wildlife - now the French Office of Biodiversity - in their expertise on the future of the wolf population in France (03/2017). " This figure has been deliberately forgotten "Deplores the CNPN. Since French regulations authorize, alongside of defense killings (which aims to protect herds in the event of an wolf attack)... the practice of "just killing wolves", this can become entirely disconnected from the actual damage caused to cattle! In addition, half of the 98 wolves slaughtered in 2019 were killed during the breeding/raising period of the pups. “Given the increasing number of wolves slaughtered, the fact that there is no longer any period of prohibition on killing, particularly during the breeding period, seems to be inconsistent with the status of protected species. The state of conservation remains vulnerable ', warn experts. Hence their recommendation, reiterated every year, aiming to lead a " more balanced policy in favor of the wolf population ". The solution: Strengthen the alternative means of protecting herds Ultimately, combating the predation of the wolf, while preserving the survival of the species, implies strengthening the effectiveness of the means of protecting livestock such as guarding, the use of protection dogs, the installation of electrified fences and limiting the size of herds. To achieve this, scientists recommend a more qualitative approach to these protective measures, in particular through support for the farmers and also the establishment of a vulnerability diagnosis - over the long term - in areas of high wolf predation. " The killing of wolves should not be decided until after this analysis has been made, recommends the CNPN. But to do this, it would still be necessary to first make compulsory and systematic the technical support of farmers and the analysis of vulnerability (currently they are only implemented at the farmer's request). The administration would then have to verify, on the spot, the effective implementation of the protection devices. Finally, we should encourage the use of existing scaring devices: light devices ("foxlights"), electrical wires ("fladry") or repellant collars. According to experts, " the multiplication, recurrence and variation of innovative means - associated with the 3 essentials: humans, dogs, fences - will help keep wolves away from the herds, with greater success ". Peaceful cohabitation with the wolf would therefore not be unrealistic if the public authorities and farmers concerned really gave themselves the means of alternative protection! At some point in our lives, we all were told that fairies don’t exist and cartoons aren’t real. Fast forward to today—we have proof they all were wrong. The most adorable baby possum was found in Australia and upon further investigation, the internet is convinced he’s a Pikachu. With no disguise. A rescuer in Melbourne brought the orphan possum to the Boronia Veterinary Clinic, where she lit up the room with her bright yellow fur. It turns out, the golden color occurs due to a mutation that causes a low level of the pigment melanin, which gives them their normal color. Or there’s another explanation. The cute little bud belongs to a species of Pokémon and our life has been a lie. So, let’s take a look at this viral cutie pie down below and be sure to get your Pokéball ready. This rescued brushtail golden possum went viral for her incredible orange-yellow coat “She was brought in by a member of the public who found her on the ground. We suspect she had fallen off her mother’s back.” At the time, they estimated her to be around 5 months old and at that age should have still been living with and being looked after by mum. Dr. Stephen Reinisch said that “she was a bit shy at first, as expected, given the strange situation she had found herself in, but was otherwise in good spirits and health.” The possum spent the night at the clinic and was then collected by a carer the following day. The standard color for a brushtail possum is brown. “However,” Stephen explained, “they can have less common color variations like this special yellow possum.” He said that there are other possums with this same color mutation around, but they are much less common in the wild. “Their bright color makes them an easier target for predators as they do not camouflage as well as their brown counterparts.” Caroline Dazey from the non-profit Wildlife Victoria said that there are more golden possums found in the state, especially on Melbourne’s fringes. “We do get calls about them, there are little pockets of them in Victoria.” However, the volunteers keep their location secret in order to keep them safe. A recording has been made of one of the world’s smallest (and cutest) cat sounds like for what’s thought to be the first time ever. The tiny cat, known as a Chilean güiña, is half the size of your usual house cat and weighs just under six pounds. The animals are extremely shy and been dubbed a ‘mystery cat’ that ‘lives in the shadows’. However, as part of National Geographic’s Photo Ark, more information about the güiña has been discovered, including a recording of the unique sounds it makes. The Photo Ark has been created by the National Geographic Society alongside photographer Joel Sartore with the aim of helping endangered species through ‘the power of photography’. One of those endangered species in the adorable güiña. The güiña is the 10,000th animal to be part of the Photo Ark portfolio. The cat (named Pikumche) was recorded and photographed while in captivity at Fauna Andina, a licensed wildlife reserve and rehabilitation centre in south-central Chile. It’s thought that this is the only place in the world to have güiña’s in captivity – Pikumche is one of eight at Fauna Andina. As well as Joel taking pictures of the sweet feline, he filmed what Pikumche sounded like – something thought to be the first ever recording of the cat. Pikumche is two-and-a-half year old male and was orphaned when he was a kitten so was hand-reared at the centre. Because of this, he’s got used to being around humans and is unable to go back into the wild. While Pikumche can’t be returned to the wild, from the sounds of the video he’s pretty content where he is. Fernando Vidal Mugica, founder of the centre Pikumche lives at, explained the noises the cat made are ‘likely expressions of pleasure or excitement’ and his meow was because the other güiña’s appeared. Güiña’s, also known as Leopardus guigna, are classed as ‘vulnerable’ by the IUCN red list and were last assessed in 2014. The largest reason for their decline in numbers is due to loss of habitat. Fernando added that the small cats rely on native forest to exist and that protecting it is the ‘main goal’. Joel started the Photo Ark back in 2006 in his hometown on Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s since gone on to visit 50 countries in his quest to create this photo archive of global biodiversity. Apparently he wants to document a whopping 15,000 different species – with the güiña marking his 10,000th. 'I'd swear they told their buddies to come,' says photographer Daryl Granger. As people across Canada find creative ways to pass the extra hours at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an Ontario couple has found a new hobby that has both humans and critters going nuts. Daryl Granger and his wife Karen are both photographers who own and operate RoseLe Studio in Simcoe, Ont. "We spend a lot of time in the backyard and we noticed, 'gosh there's a lot of squirrels,' so we thought 'why not set up a photo shoot,'" Granger told CBC News on Monday. "As you know, everybody has a lot of time on their hands. We're used to doing creative photo shoots, but we couldn't because of the pandemic." In the span of four weeks, Granger has built two outdoor sets to attract squirrels to his yard, and he says a third one is in the works. "The first one, we named it Nutzy's Country Market and we built all the wooden food bins and everything," Granger explained. "The last one [which was completed on Saturday] is a peanut butter factory, and I am working on one, a nut vault — so it will show the squirrels looking like they are trying to get into a bank vault filled with nuts." Nutzy's Country Market features an assortment of nuts, including almonds, peanuts, and walnuts, while the peanut butter factory is filled with — you guessed it — peanut butter. The couple spends hours in their backyard each day watching the creatures explore and snack on the treats. "All these squirrels have personalities. You just see them interacting on a set and it's like they're hungry for nuts. They climb all over things," Granger said. "Since we put the nuts there, I'd swear they told their buddies to come, I'd say the total we have is about 10. You see them coming from all different directions. We feed them nuts, so of course they're going to come." Blue jays joined in the fun. In addition to the squirrels, Granger said there have also been some other special visitors. "We had cardinals show up [and also] blue jays," Granger said. "Blue jays, they like peanuts. We had about four jays that kept coming into the set every now and then, and they weren't afraid of the squirrels. It's like they all want food." Granger says he enjoys every moment of their new-found hobby. 'It's very entertaining. The sets are fun to build, and you have your time that you have to kill so I'll probably do it for a while," he said. "Even my dogs are getting used to it. They used to chase the squirrels but now they're getting better and they're lying beside me and watching the squirrels." The couple has been sharing their photos on their Facebook page, and based on the reactions, they have brought pure joy to many. "Haha, I love this … I should do something for my chipmunks. They love their peanuts," was Jimi Green's reaction. For Brian Deryck, it was simply: "This is fantastic." And Suzanne Avey's comment was: "This is exactly the kind of humour we all need right now. Thank you." A young fox’s private life was revealed to a woman when she kept tabs on what he got up to in her garden. The fox took up residence in Jen’s backyard last March, much to her delight. And this week, he appeared to have a new friend…a girlfriend. Jen lives in England and said the foxes like their garden probably because all the neighboring properties have dogs and cats. “Fortunately (or unfortunately as I want a cat!) we have neither,” said Jen. “Next door has three cats, and there are numerous huge dogs in neighboring gardens too! There’s a giant Rottweiler next door, two German shepherds on the other side, Staffordshire terriers to the right. We’re the only house without dogs so they probably feel safe!” Jen has seen the young male fox mature. “He’s a young fox as we’ve seen him grow. He comes out most days and sunbathes. Our garden is about 200 ft long and enclosed. We leave the bottom of the garden wild. As there’s a pond down there too, we get quite a lot of wildlife around and he lives at the end of it. Hopefully they’ll have a den there!” The female companion can be distinguished from the male as she has a slightly narrower face and smaller ears from her new beau. Jen said that the foxes like to play together and as she works from home she was able to take photos of the pair playing together. “I work from home and keep a camera on the windowsill in my office as he comes out most days, sometimes he comes quite close to the house. “These pictures were taken about 200ft away. He sometimes come within about 20 or 30ft of the house but runs off if you open the door. I once got close when he was asleep when I needed to go to the shed but he ran away when he woke up.” Jen does not feed them and does not want them to become reliant or familiar with humans, as it may endanger them. “We’ve left the end of the garden wild with country flowers etc so get a lot of birds/butterflies as well as the foxes and hedgehogs, there were toads/frogs in the pond as well,” wrote Jen. “The pond pic is from when we first moved in, the entire garden was pretty overgrown so it’s not exactly an ornamental pond and has seen better days!” “I’m glad they run away if I open the door or go into the garden, as not everyone is welcoming of them as I am,” she wrote. “I don’t feed him either for that reason.” Jen is thrilled the young male fox has found a mate. “I’ll be beyond excited if there are kits!”
Intimate kissing—the kind where saliva is exchanged—is a courtship staple unique to us humans and very common in most world cultures. In the midst of sharing an intimate smooch you’re probably not thinking about what’s happening inside your mouth or of your beloved’s. As “unsexy” as it sounds, our mouths do contain a thriving microbiome. Microbes are key role players in gene expression, diet, age, and yes—even sexual behavior. In a study in the journal Microbiome, Dutch researchers observed how bacteria are exchanged between partners during an intimate kiss. Twenty-one couples, ages 17 to 45, agreed to have their mouths swabbed before and after kissing. One partner was given a probiotic yogurt, and then the couples smooched. Researchers identified an uptick of Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium in the partner who hadn’t taken the probiotic— up to 0.54 percent in saliva and 0.49 percent on the tongue. The exchange corresponds to an average of 80 million bacteria transferred per French kiss. The microbiome of our mouths is a vibrant planet on its own. In National Geographic, Ed Yong likens it to a rainforest where “the tongue, teeth, and gums are all very different habitats, each with their own fauna. There are even differences between the microbes below and above the gum line of a single tooth. And within each of these habitats, microbes compete with each other, exchange nutrients, and change the environment around them.” Kissing contributes to the attachment we develop with a beloved. It arouses us with sensory explosion. Adrenaline gets pumped to the heart. Your brain shuts down negative emotion and those happy brain chemicals surge. Next time you lean in for a subtle Titanic kiss or maybe an ultra passionate From Here to Eternity smooch, remember you may not only be giving your heart away but also millions of bacteria. To fortify your gut’s microbiome, consider supplementing with my Daily Probiotics, which provide 30 billion CFU per capsule— and read more about your gut bacteria and “who’s in charge” in our popular article, “Controlling Cravings: Are You the Hand or the Puppet?”
Soda Science Kids, here you'll be dabbling in the science of drinkable bubbles by making your very own root beer soda pop. Most sodas use pressurized carbon dioxide for the bubbles, but that would be very difficult to mimic at home. So instead we'll be using yeast to carbonate the brew. Last year we discussed the use of yeast in baking bread (12/00-2/01). The scientific process is called fermentation, where yeast eats sugar and makes carbon dioxide and alcohol by-products. (It's only a little alcohol here: an entire 2-liter bottle of root beer has less of it than is in one really ripe banana!). What you'll need is a scrupulously clean and dry 2-liter plastic bottle and cap (sterilized is best), active dry yeast packets, tepid tap water, sugar, and root beer or vanilla flavoring. Wash your hands and all utensils very thoroughly. Fill a 2-cup glass measuring cup with tepid (room temperature to warm) tap water. Dissolve one tablespoon of sugar in the water. Add 1/8 teaspoon of yeast to the sugar water. Stir gently and let stand 5 minutes. This is called "proofing", and you are proving that the yeast is still alive. In a 2-quart glass bowl combine 6 cups warm water, 1 cup sugar, and 1 tablespoon root beer flavoring. Stir thoroughly. If the yeast has a thin layer of froth (tiny bubbles) on top, it can be added to the bowl now. (If your yeast had no froth, try slightly cooler or warmer water, or buy a new supply). Stir thoroughly and pour the mixture into the bottle. Add more water until the liquid reaches about one inch below the bottle's neck. Cap, and let the bottle stand at room temperature for 2-4 days. You'll know it's ready when enough CO2 has formed to expand the bottle and make it feel rigid, like it was just bought at the store. Now refrigerate for at least 2 days to stop the growth of the yeast. After this you can drink your very own soda. It is best consumed within one month. People used to make soft drinks at home this way all the time using wild yeast, long before commercial brands were available. People still use wild yeast today to make sourdough bread starter. Root beer extract can be found now in large grocery stores near vanilla and other extracts in the spice aisle. In later batches, try to change the taste a little by changing from sugar to other sweeteners like brown sugar, honey, or molasses. Enjoy! Kathleen Carrado Gregar, PhD, Argonne National Labs [email protected] March 2002 Reference: Beth Robelia, "Root Beer Chemistry" in Scientific American Explorations magazine, Winter 2002, page 12.
One Glass at a Time Header Help end animal suffering, one glass at a time. Food Empowerment Project’s (F.E.P.) latest effort to raise awareness about how animals are raised and killed for food will focus on engaging commuters by giving them information about the cows they see while driving by. F.E.P. is located in an area where people see cows on green fields, and they never really know the anguish the mother cows feel at having their babies taken away at birth or understand the frustration of the female calves who are held captive in crates. In addition to the suffering these cows endure, there are other important issues to take into consideration: • The 31 gallons of water a day the cows in Sonoma County typically drink has an impact in California, a state that is consistently dealing with drought. • Many workers live on these properties and at times do not have food or water for themselves. When they speak out against any abuse, they are threatened. Most people think cows do not suffer in the dairy industry, and that is exactly what the industry wants us all to believe. The public can help end this suffering by choosing to give up this cruelty, one glass at a time. Every month, we will hold signs and hand out leaflets to commuters who drive by these cows to help them to understand the underlying cruelty of the dairy industry. By being a consistent presence in the community, we will be able to provide a counter to the very heavy pro-dairy marketing in the area. This is just one part of a larger campaign as we continue to focus on encouraging more people to go vegan. Below you can view the leaflets we will be handing out.
ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel Prophets of the Old Testament and Their Divine Messages Updated on March 30, 2020 Snowspells profile image Melissa holds a B.A in Poli Si and a M.A. in Pastoral Studies . Her research interests include religions of the ancient world . Who were the divine prophets in Israel? Theologians have the daunting task of interpreting the messages of the prophets within the place and time that they lived in. Nonetheless, most theologians agree that the God of the prophets of Israel, was Yahweh. Yahwah’s name is mentioned many times throughout the Old Testament and it is the name of the law giver whose name can be found in Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. His name can also be found in proverbs, where scripture states that (the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom). Yahweh was the God that appeared to Moses at the burning bush. Accordingly, Yahweh was the God of the prophets. “Intuitive” divining was an example of how the prophets would communicate with the God of Israel. This was the primary method of communing with the divine in Israel compared to the seers who used ”inductive” divining in locations like Mesopotamia. Today, we can still find people who practice inductive divining. This type of practice is usually known by astrologists and persons who read things, like objects i.e. tea leaves, palms, tarot cards etc. Research suggests that we can find persons in Deuteronomy that were considered genuine seers, even though they were not the equivalent to the seers who were known as “inductive diviners”. College texts often reference the ancient character David who used an early form of intuitive divinizing. ( 1 Sam 23:6 ) However, after the ‘fall of Jerusalem” the method of contacting God through intuitive divining, like David seemed to have vanished after Jerusalem fell . Theologians have suggested prophets were sought for divine guidance and assistance. One instance where a “prophet” was pursued can be found in (ESV) 1 Sam 9:6 -11 He said to him, "Behold now, there is a man of God in this city, and the man is held in honor; all that he says surely comes true. Now let us go there, perhaps he can tell us about our journey on which we have set out." Then Saul said to his servant, "But behold, if we go, what shall we bring the man? For the bread is gone from our sack and there is no present to bring to the man of God. What do we have? The servant answered Saul again and said, "Behold, I have in my hand a fourth of a shekel of silver; I will give it to the man of God and he will tell us our way. (Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he used to say, "Come,: and let us go to the seer"; for he who is called a prophet now was formerly called a seer.) Then Saul said to his servant, "Well said; come, let us go." So they went to the city where the man of God was As they went up the slope to the city, they found young women going out to draw water and said to them, "Is the seer here? The aforementioned prophecy is an example of a prophet of an intuitive type. In addition Jeramiah 18:18, is an example of a verse that speaks about wise men that are teachers which are also considered prophets. Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us smite him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words. According to this verse, a prophet was assumed to receive and give messages from God. Also, it explains that in ancient times, the priest taught the law, the sage counseled persons, and the prophet brought the word of God to the people. Additionally in Num 22: 5-6, where a prophet was also called a “seer” as the prophet experienced profound knowledge. Then the sent messengers to Balaam the son of Beor at Pethor, which is near the River in the land of the sons of his people, to call him, saying: “Look, a people has come from Egypt. See, they cover the face of the earth, and are settling next to me! Therefore please come at once, curse this people for me, for they are too mighty for me. Perhaps I shall be able to defeat them and drive them out of the land, for I know that he whom you bless is blessed, and he whom you curse is cursed.” This communication may suggest that the people who sought seers believed that the prophet’s knowledge was received from the divine and the future of Israel. It appears that the prophets prophesied in the way the messengers lived in the near east that is, delivering God’s messages themselves. Amos 1:3-2:16 as an example of a message that was delivered in the first- person. Prophets could be accessed in large centers of worship. Some prophet- seers could be accessed in private places, because sages were highly regarded in ancient Israel and were very much part of everyday culture. Consequently, self-governing seer-prophets also anointed Kings often contested the worship of deceitful gods. Prophets were messengers of God, and their job was specifically to pass on God’s messages to the people. Messengers often wrote down their communications with God, as many of the messages were for specific people, like Kings. The prophets also recorded other important information for the future generations of Israel and instructions about how to properly conduct oneself around others. Writing was a key task of the prophet. Many of the prophets had their prophecies written down after the prophet’s death, by scribes and associates. Such prophecies were put together in manuscript form, like those that we see in the Old Testament, as it was also meant to help others in treacherous times. In my opinion, when one reads the Old Testament, particularly the stories of the Major Prophets, one can’t help but wonder, is there really a God and if so why does God let so many injustices happen. Perhaps God leaves it up to us. He gave each and every one of us a gift, whether one knows it or not. Yet, if one looks around, we can see that some of us cannot even speak, so, I presume that speaking is also a God given gift. And, for those who cannot speak, perhaps, those people may be gifted with other blessings .Prophets like Amos, used their voice, he used his gift of being able to speak, and spoke up for the injustices he saw happening in the ancient world. When we look back at the characters in the Old Testament, we can read about ordinary, but amazing people like Amos; who became an extraordinary prophet. Many prophets, like Amos, came from humble beginnings and lived through very turbulent times. However, regardless of Amos’s origins and bad experiences, he believed he was called by God, stood up, demanded justice, and spoke up for the poor who were being oppressed and exploited by the wealthy, privileged people. Amos 2:7 “They trample helpless people in the dust and shove the oppressed out of the way. Both father and son sleep with the same woman, corrupting my holy name”. It is clear that The God of Israel, the Just one, as described in the Old Testament, was thoroughly displeased with the behavior and actions of the people who were part of the elite and ruling class. Amos 2:3 I will destroy her ruler and kill all her officials with him," says the LORD. Today, in the modern world, one can see that we are experiencing many of the same injustices. Like, profound corruption, greed, pride, idolatry, (self- worship) and worshiping other human idols. We’ve also witnessed, in the recent past, genocidal mass slaughter in places like Rawanda and many other crimes against humanity and creation. I believe that God has given us what we need to survive on earth. And, God has gifted us with the ability to choose. Therefore, we have a choice to stand up for what is right, ignore it, or hide in fear. God has given us many humble, extraordinary human beings a thought-out time to help humanity, even at this moment, genuine prophet’s stand in the midst of the multitude, waiting for the Call. © 2020 Melissa Ann Argay-Wenner 0 of 8192 characters used Post Comment No comments yet. This website uses cookies Show Details LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. 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ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel The Promise of AI - Is it Overboard? Updated on March 19, 2020 jackclee lm profile image Jack is a volunteer at the CCNY Archives. Before retiring, he worked at IBM for over 28 years. As of 2/2020, Jack has over 100,000 views. Lately, with advances in AI, Artificial Intelligence, both software and hardware, it is just assumed that someday in not too distant future, that AI will be ubiquitous. It will replace humans in many workplace and professions. It is better and cheaper in every way. Is that assumption true or too optimistic? - March 2020 The Coronavirus Case A few years ago, Google announced their system that can predict flu outbreaks. It sounded fantastic. How great would it be if we have an automated system that can monitor the data and gives up a heads up weeks or months ahead of the pending crisis. Well, now that we have a full blown pandemic in the coronavirus, it looks like the claim was over blown. So what happened? It appears there are limits to current AI systems. It is very good at looking for existing patterns that is well known or documented. With any new scenario, it is just as clueless as humans. Perhaps, we should stop and think about this a little deeper. What is AI and its limitations. Can an AI system ever replace a human? I have doubts. Current AI Systems From what I can tell, the latest research into AI system is tied to the concept of machine learning. Instead of programming a set of instructions to a computer, the machine learning approach is to let the computer look for solutions on its own. This is accomplished by sending a lot of data to the system and letting humans identify what they are looking at, and then showing the system some new raw data and let it figure out and "learn" and correctly determine what the new item is compared to the vast data that exists in its memory. This is trying to simulate how a real human learn. For example, if we tell a child all the attributes of a car, and show it many examples of various different cars, then after a while, when it sees a new model car, he would know that it is a car. The same can be said about computer learning systems. If we show it lots of images of various cars in motion, then when a new clip is shown of a race car or a military jeep, the hope is it will still categorize them as cars, but a clip of a semi truck would not qualify as a car but it would know that it is truck based on his memory of trucks. So far so good. However, if we come up with a new mode of transportation, like a hovercraft, what does the computer do? It is lost. It does not fit anything in its memory bank. What Is Missing? If a human saw a hovercraft or a UFO for the first time, he would know that it is different. It is something new. He would try and figure it out. It would use all its previous experience to determine a best guess. It would then categorized it as something that moves, without wheels...and possibly fly like a plane but without wings... What does an AI system do? It would have to do something similar. Moreover, a human might be the inventor of this new mode of transport. He can design it from scratch. Using his knowledge gained from other systems and then adopt new systems of power and integrate and modify and create this new machine. Can an AI system do that? I think not. That is the fundamental difference. An AI system is an extension of humans. It can only do somethings humans can do and perhaps even better and faster. However, it cannot create something that had not existed before. It does not have the creative gene that is in human DNA. While I do believe AI systems will be more popular and help humans in many aspects of our lives and our professions, it is hard to imagine AI replacing humans. We are just so much more than a specific task or job or even a profession. A human can do all that and more...and still be creative, and compassionate and loving and fun. An AI system cannot do any of that. © 2020 Jack Lee 0 of 8192 characters used Post Comment • Brenda Arledge profile image 2 months ago from Washington Court House Interesting write. I guess a human has to input the programming for Al to learn in the beginning. I would hate for an artificial intelligence to determine I wasn't human...just saying. I don't think I will count on this to be an accurate way of life. Thanks for sharing. • Bushra Iqbal profile image Aishatu Ali 2 months ago from Rabwah, Pakistan I agree with you - AI isn't going to replace humans. People find the idea of robots that can think and feel believable only because they've seen it in movies. • tsadjatko profile image 2 months ago from now on Jack, if China had been straight up about this from the start instead of keeping it quiet for months it would not have become a pandemic. It would have been isolated to China and we don’t need AI for that. AI is only as good as the information that goes into it. AI and no one can make predictions about things they have no information on. This website uses cookies Show Details LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. AkismetThis is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) Google AdSenseThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) Index ExchangeThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) SovrnThis is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) Facebook AdsThis is an ad network. 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Non-Renewables and Their Impact Non-renewable energy is a thing of the past. Or at least it should be… Our finite resources will eventually run out. This inevitable truth, along with the fact that finite resources are negatively impacting the health of our planet and its living things, has the potential to cause a lot of trouble for us in the foreseeable future. Finite resources are a relatively short term solution, and thinking short term is not enough. It’s time to think long term and plan for a renewable future. With our Harmonizer, Legend Power Systems’ goal is to help businesses save money and get a head start in creating a sustainable future. By moderating the incoming voltage, your building will use only what is necessary, reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, and you will see positive results in your bottom line. There is no time like the present to learn about the negative impact of inaction and the positive effects of change. Check out today’s feature infographic and get inspired! To learn more about the Harmonizer, visit our Product page. Non-Renewable Energy How Short-termism is Killing our Planet By SolarWow from Visually.
Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии Part 1 The Greeks and Romans both made extensive use of tunnels: to reclaim marshes by drainage and for water aqueducts, such as the 6th-century-BC Greek water tunnel on the isle of Samos driven some 3,400 feet through lime-largest stone with a cross section about 6 feet square. By that time surveying methods (commonly by string line and plumb bobs) had been introduced, and tunnels were advanced from a succession of closely spaced shafts to provide ventilation. Ventilation methods were primitive, often limited to waving a canvas at the mouth of the shaft, and most tunnels claimed the lives of hundreds or even thousands of the slaves used as workers. Because the limited tunneling in the Middle Ages was principally for mining and military engineering, the next major advance was to meet Europe's growing transportation needs in the 17th century. The first of many major canal tunnels was the Canal du Midi (also known as Languedoc) tunnel in France, built in 1666-81 by Pierre Riquet as part of the first canal linking the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Much pioneer railroad tunneling developed in England. A 3.5-mile tunnel (the Woodhead) of the Manchester-Sheffield Railroad (1839-45) was driven from five shafts up to 600 feet deep. 1. The first tunnels were built by Romans. 2. In the Middle Ages tunnels were built to connect castles with churches 3. The Egyptians used advanced technologies for cutting soft rocks. 4. The Greeks and Romans widely used tunnels. 5. Ventilation methods were limited to waving a canvas at the mouth of the shaft. 6. Transportation needs greatly increased in the 17-th century in Europe. 7. The first canal tunnel was built in France to connect The Indian and the Mediterranean. 8. James Brindley built the Bridgewater Canal Tunnel to carry coal. 9. The introduction of railroads slowed the building of canal tunnels. 10. Railroad tunneling was developed mainly in England. II. Answer the questions 1. Why did prehistoric people do the first tunneling? 2. Who developed tunneling methods? 3. How were tunnels used in ancient times? 4. What method had been introduced by the 6-th century B.C.? 5. What were ventilation methods like? 6. What were tunnels built for in Middle Ages? 7. Why were canal tunnels built in the 17-th century? 8. What canal tunnels do you know? 9. Why did the canal tunnels fall into disuse about 1830? 10. When was railroad tunneling developed? III. Match the words with their synonyms. 1. to look for a) extensively 2. to expand b) to connect 3. widely c) to divert 4. to link d) advance 5. to complete e) to seek 6. to draw aside f) primitive 7. approach g) to accomplish 8. simple h) to enlarge IV. Match the words with their opposites 1. modern a) irrigation 2. drainage b) expand 3. fill up c) prehistoric 4. plain d) notable 5. source e) mouth 6. civil f) elaborate 7. obscure g) military 8. narrow h) excavate V. Fill in the prepositions. 1) To be used … sth, 2) to connect sth … sth, 3) to make use … sth, 4) to limit … sth, 5) … the mouth, 6) to carry sth … sth, 7) with the introduction … sth, 8) to expand … the world, 9) increase … sth, 10) to fall … disuse. VI. Insert the words from the list preservation, dangerous, heating, sandstone, road, lining, cooling, safety, to drain, salt mine 1. Tunneling is difficult, expensive and … engineering work. 2. Temple on the Nile was built in … about 1250 B.C. for Ramses II. In the 1960’s it was cut apart and moved to higher ground for … before flooding from the Aswan High Dam. 3. Perhaps the largest tunnel in ancient times was a 4800 foot-long, 25 foot-wide, 30 foot-high … tunnel between Naples and Pozzuoli, executed in 36 B.C. 4. To save the need for a … , most ancient tunnels were located in reasonably strong rock. It was broken off by so called fire quenching, a method involving … the rock with fire and suddenly … in by dousing with water. 5. In A.D. 41 the Romans used some 30 000 men for 10 years to push a 3.5 mile (6 kilometers) tunnel … Lacus Fucinus. 6. Far more attention was paid to ventilation and … measures when workers were freemen, as shown by archaeological diggings at Hallstall, Austria, where … tunnels have been worked since 2500 B.C. VII. Make the precis of the text Part 2 The great civil engineers of the nineteenth century were drawn into really grand tunneling. Two new kinds of transport created a need for tunnels. Railways had to lie on almost flat ground, and so did England's huge canal system. By the early 1800s those canals had become England's primary commercial trade network. Canals and railways, like the Roman aqueducts before them, spawned heroic tunneling through obstacles. Tunneling under rivers was considered impossible until the protective shield was developed in England by Marc Brunei, a French emigre engineer. The first use of the shield, by Brunei and his son Isambard, was in 1825 on the Wapping-Rotherhithe Tunnel through clay under the Thames River. The tunnel was of horseshoe section 22'/4 by 37'/2 feet and brick-lined. After several floodings from hitting sand pockets and a seven-year shutdown for refinancing and building a second shield, the Brunels succeeded in completing the world's first true subaqueous tunnel in 1841, essentially nine years' work for a 1,200-foot-long tunnel. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the development of railroad and motor vehicle transportation led to bigger, better, and longer tunnels. With the latest tunnel construction technology, engineers can bore through mountains, under rivers, and beneath bustling cities. Before carving a tunnel, engineers investigate ground conditions by analyzing soil and rock samples and drilling test holes. Today, engineers know that there are three basic steps to building a stable tunnel. The first step is excavation: engineers dig through the earth with a reliable tool or technique. The second step is support: engineers must support any unstable ground around them while they dig. The final step is lining: engineers add the final touches, like the roadway and lights, when the tunnel is structurally sound. Worldwide efforts are under way to accelerate improvements in the technology of underground construction and are likely to be stimulated as a result of the 1970 OECD International Conference recommending improvement as government policy. The endeavour involves specialists such as geologists, soil- and rock-mechanics engineers, public-works designers, mining engineers, contractors, equipment and materials manufacturers, planners, and also lawyers, who aid in the search for more equitable contractual methods to share the risks of unknown geology and resulting extra costs. 1. The great military engineers of the 19-th century were drawn into grand tunneling. 2. The development of new kinds of transport created a need for tunnels. 3. By the early 1800s railways had become England’s primary commercial trade network. 4. The development of the protective shield made possible the construction of tunnels under rivers. 5. The first use of the shield was done by Isambard in 1825 under the Thames River. 6. The world’s first true subaqueous tunnel was completed in 1841. 7. The development of railroad and motor vehicle transportation accelerated the construction of tunnels. 8. Engineers must investigate ground conditions after the completion of the tunnel. 9. There are four basic steps in building a stable tunnel. 10. The endeav our involves a wide range of specialists. II. Answer the questions. 1. Why were the engineers of the 19-th century drawn into grand tunneling? 2. What had become England’s primary commercial trade network by the early 1800s? 3. Who developed the protective shield? 4. When and where was the first use of the shield? 5. How much time did it take to build the world’s first true subaqueous tunnel? 6. What can engineers do using the latest tunnel construction technology? 7. How are ground conditions investigated? 8. What are the steps of tunneling? 9. When is excavation done? 10. 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Andromeda Initiative Logo Founded in 2176 and launched in 2185, the Andromeda Initiative is a civilian, multi-species project created to send scientists, explorers and colonists on a one-way trip to settle in the Andromeda Galaxy. With powerful benefactors lending their support, the program has grown substantially in scope since its inception. The Initiative’s ultimate goal is to establish a permanent presence on the seemingly resource-rich frontier of Andromeda, and eventually create a reliable route between it and the Milky Way Galaxy. Five Ark ships have been constructed for this venture, equipped with cryostasis chambers for its members to sleep in during the 600-year-long journey. Project founder Jien Garson travels in the Nexus, the main hub of the expedition. The other four Arks each contain a different species; most humans are aboard Ark Hyperion. Each Ark is assigned with its own Pathfinder, a mix of elite soldier, scientist and guide who will be tasked with finding a new home. For the Hyperion the selected Pathfinder is Alec Ryder. While the Andromeda Initiative's long-range scans have identified several potentially-habitable planets in the Heleus Cluster, the possibility of encountering harsh planetary conditions during the search for a suitable Golden World exists. The Pathfinder and their team will be responsible for assessing and exploring any environment deemed necessary as the mission unfolds.
in , , , Can Lack of Vitamin D and Gum Disease put You at Risk of Diabetes If you are vulnerable to type 2 diabetes, then you must ensure a healthy diet, exercise every day, regulate alcohol consumption or quit drinking, avoid smoking and processed foods, watch your blood pressure and have an active lifestyle. You should also guard against hypertension and stress, anxiety and other common ills of contemporary life. Type 2 diabetes and gum disease are connected. The scientific findings are not complete and more research is needed but there is increasing evidence establishing a connection between type 2 diabetes gum disease and by extension with vitamin D. A study conducted by Aleksandra Zuk and her team assessed health data of people aged over thirty in the United States. They found a correlation between vitamin D-3 and gum disease. People who have gum disease are likely to have a deficiency of vitamin D-3. This is considered to be the most important of all D vitamins. The deficiency of vitamin D-3 thereby increases the risk of gum disease. This increases the risks of type 2 diabetes. Aleksandra Zuk is pursuing her PhD in epidemiology from Dalla Lana School of Public Health of the University of Toronto. She stated that vitamin D deficiency does not necessarily cause type 2 diabetes or gum disease for that matter. The study simply finds as a matter of fact that those who have a deficiency of this specific type of vitamin D have gum disease and are likely to have type 2 diabetes, if they do not have it already. Vitamin D, the D-3 vitamin to be more specific, can prevent gum disease or periodontitis. Ensuring enough vitamin D-3 can thereby also prevent diabetes since those who do not have gum disease are less likely to have the chronic lifestyle ailment. Gum disease or periodontitis is an inflammatory ailment. It is also chronic. The disease is caused by microbes in the mouth. These microbes, if not attended to and eliminated, would damage the tissues supporting your teeth. There may be bone loss in due course of time. Vitamin D is known to be one of the essential nutrients for optimum bone health. Hence, vitamin D can limit or undo the damage caused by the microbes in the mouth. Also, vitamin D is antimicrobial. It can fight the microbes and prevent gum disease. Vitamin D is also known to be anti-inflammatory so even if someone has gum disease or periodontitis, the symptoms may be more manageable as the severity of the inflammation would be much less compared to another person who already has a deficiency of vitamin D-3. A few clinical trials are presently being conducted in many countries to explore the correlation of vitamin D, gum disease and diabetes. The inferences of these trials will establish the exact nature of the correlation and if ensuring optimum levels of vitamin D-3 can completely prevent gum disease and to what extent it may make a person less vulnerable to diabetes. Vitamin D is available in the form of supplements. Some people are prescribed such supplements to cure a deficiency and in cases of other health ailments wherein the vitamin is necessary as a part of the treatment or recovery. Many people opt for over the counter supplements for different purposes. Whether or not these supplements would be able to prevent gum disease and how much of an impact they would have on the likelihood of diabetes or otherwise should become more lucid as the clinical trials are completed. Both gum disease and diabetes are becoming more common among people of most age groups. Vitamin deficiency is also becoming a more concerning health problems, despite people being more conscious of their dietary habits nowadays. It is perhaps best to be a little more conscious than develop a chronic lifestyle disease. Leave a Reply Written by Wayne Parker Body Shaming: What To Do When Dealing With People Body Shaming? Keto Diarrhea: The New Diet Trend That Can Put Your Health At Risk
What are Industrial Parks and Their Importance? Industrial parks have been a new concept that has been in use for a very long time. However, it’s only recently when the buzzword has gotten the attention of mainstream media. That being said, industrial parks are actually amazing because they add so much to the country. Industrial parks are amazing for commercial and industrial spaces. They make it incredibly easy for companies to have a space of their own! Find out what industrial parks are and what exactly makes them so important in this article! What Are Industrial Parks Industrial parks are commercial and/or industrial estates that are used mainly for business. It is a plot of land that is zoned for either commercial or industrial development. It is much like an overturned version of a business park. These industrial parks are located away from residential areas. They are located far so as to prevent any kind of heavy traffic from accumulating near them. In most cases, these industrial parks are near large transport terminals. That means they’re near either railroad, ports, airports, and more importantly, highways. Industrial parks are found away from cities mainly because of three main things. First, this will help reduce infrastructure expenses. When you concentrate on infrastructure, businesses and their partners will have more resources to work with. Second, they can attract new businesses through the provision of a more specified integrated infrastructure in a location. Lastly, this will concentrate on buildings that will help reduce the environmental impacts of their wastes. Industrial parks provide a huge boost to the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises. But what exactly makes Industrial parks so important? The Importance of Industrial Parks There are many benefits that come from industrial parks. When compared with the usual commercial and industrial areas, these industrial parks are more efficient and more communal in nature. Here are some of the more particular significance of industrial parks! Increase in Entrepreneurial Activity Industrial parks are great catalysts for industrial and economic growth. These places introduce a system that helps attract and foster entrepreneurs and startups. This happens mostly because these parks dedicate their spaces for businesses and companies that are related to one another. One time or another, there will be someone that gets an idea because of the many businesses around. They will get an idea for another business, propose it to others, and probably end up with a new startup! Regional Development An industrial park brings with it job opportunities, and that means a lot of jobs. This is because industrial parks will be a place where businesses can rent or buy plots of lands or buildings and set it up as their own. More businesses mean more jobs for the people around leading to a massive increase in economic growth. Shared Amenities Arguably the best part of industrial parks is that they have a number of urban amenities and facilities that are perfect for businesses. That means these industrial parks should have their own telecommunications outpost, postal services, maintenance offices, banks and so much more. All of these can be used by all of the businesses found within the industrial park. This is incredibly important because this funnels all of the administrative activities of the businesses within the industrial park within the park. This removes unnecessary traffic build-up within the city, and it also helps the companies by making things like paying bills and sending postal mail easier. Perfect Locations As mentioned above, industrial parks attract businesses to move their operations there. They can choose whether they will get a whole building, just a few floors, or a whole block to dedicate to them. These businesses can choose the most appropriate land, building, or floor for their business. For example, a company with around 50 or so people can rent two floors of a building or just a whole plot for them. A startup can just rent a floor of a building. A large multinational company can buy three whole plots of lands or buildings if they’re already built. They can get as much space as they need in order to make their business operations as optimal as possible! Key Takeaway Industrial parks are the office spaces of the future. They are large plots of lands that can be bought or rented by these companies for all of their business needs. The best thing about industrial parks for these businesses is that they have almost everything that they need near them. This makes the lives of these corporations as convenient as possible so they can focus more on their operations instead of always thinking of the other more administrative tasks. Industrial parks are amazing. They easily drive economic growth within regions and also provide more jobs to many people out there! Surely, industrial parks will pave the way for more efficient and more effective business operations that will increase the economic growth all over.
Cut and thrust: the definition of a sword [Guest Post] Cut and Thrust European Swords and Swordsmanship - Martin J. Doughertyby Martin J. Dougherty. Of all the weapons ever invented, none has the mystique of the sword. It remains a symbol of authority and strength long after its day on the battlefield has passed. Swords feature in figures of speech, in statues and monuments, and in company logos. They are used in solemn ceremonies and hung on walls as decorations. The sword remains a potent symbol of authority, strength and power. Yet the word ‘sword’ can actually mean entirely different things to different people. The Japanese katana, the Roman gladius and the Scottish claymore are all swords, and they are all quite different from one another. The khopesh of ancient times, though quite likely the first weapon known as a ‘sword’, does not resemble any of the weapons a modern person would recognise as one. It could be argued that many of the implements known as swords are so different from one another, and are used so differently, that they constitute an entirely separate group of weapons. There are, however, some similarities. Swords are weapons intended to cut or puncture the target, and rely on concentration of force at a sharp edge or point to do so. They have a metal blade, which can be curved or straight, and usually feature some form of protection for the user’s hand. This also defines knives, which is not surprising since the basic form of the sword, consisting of a handle and a blade, is essentially that of an overgrown knife. Matters are further complicated by the fact that some knives are large enough to be considered sword-type weapons, and there is some debate about exactly how much blade is necessary before a knife becomes a sword. Some weapons, such as machetes, are highly similar to swords but are not described as such, and are usually considered to be a distinct and separate weapon type. As a useful working definition, a blade weapon becomes a sword when it satisfies enough of these criteria: • It has a metal blade running the length of the weapon, and a hand grip. • The blade is a single piece, i.e. there is no haft and head in the manner of an axe. • It has enough blade length to extend the user’s reach significantly on a thrust or cut. • It has enough mass to make a cut bite into the target. • It has enough mass to be used to parry an attack, and is large enough to reliably stop one. • It has significant protection for the user’s hand. • It is too large to be carried concealed. This is not a hard-and-fast definition, but such a thing is always going to be elusive when even apparently specific terms like ‘rapier’ or ‘sabre’ can actually refer to a range of somewhat dissimilar weapons. Perhaps all that can be said with certainty is that a sword is a metal-bladed cutting or thrusting implement large enough to be considered a combat weapon, rather than an emergency expedient or a tool that could be pressed into service at need. Not all swords fulfil all the criteria noted above. Many have no point, no edge, or virtually no hand protection. Some Eastern and Asian weapons are highly exotic and push the boundaries of what can rightly be considered a sword. For this reason we will consider only European swords – although those have, at times, been the subject of external influences – and we will begin our examination of swords and swordsmanship at a time when the sword had taken on at least one of its modern forms. There have been various attempts to impose a rational terminology on sword types, although this presents an enormous challenge for various reasons. Idiom and the difficulty of translating from one language to another have created bastardised terms or corrupted names, while some apparently descriptive terms actually mean different things at different times. For example, it seems reasonable to describe the gladius hispaniensis of the Roman soldier as a ‘short sword’, but the term was also applied at times to the knightly arming sword, which was a full-length combat sword whose blade might be 50 per cent longer than the gladius. The arming sword was ‘short’ in comparison with the two-handed longsword, so the distinction made sense in its context, but it causes confusion to those looking back over all of history. Terms like broadsword seem like a logical distinction, so it might be assumed that the term was used at the time during which the weapon it describes was in service. However, this is not always so. The term broadsword was imposed by relatively recent historians to describe various broad-bladed cutting swords, but was probably not used by the people who fought with those weapons. Martin J. DoughertyReproduced from Cut And Thrust: European Swords and Swordsmanship by Martin J Dougherty. Martin J. Dougherty is a prolific historical and technical author, fencing coach, and the current president of the British Federation of Historical swordplay.
Can Bad Blood Circulation Cause Acne 2020 Safe, Powerful, and Gentle – delivering of Oxygen Rich Blood Flow & Circulation to Nourish Feet, Toes or fingers and Avoid a Unnecessary Future Foot Amputation. Instead focus on minimizing the problems about exercising that can cause pimples. It should also be mentioned that now we have been very focused on training can cause pimples, but training can actually also help remove pimples. Exercise increases blood circulation, reduces stress (which can cause acne), and prevents. Physical activity also helps your skin by increasing your blood circulation, But the inflammation from sunburn can make your acne worse or cause. WebMD Feature. What your skin can tell you about your circulation Although bad circulation. This prevents the fat from being properly absorbed into the blood and causes it to. Poor blood circulation occurs when the normal flow of blood is interrupted causing dizziness, Injuries can cause blood clots and, as a result, bad circulation ; Causes of Poor Blood Circulation. Poor circulation can affect anyone, however it's most common in older people. It isn't a condition in itself, rather it's a result of other health issues. Jul 16, 2011. There are a few major imbalances that I've identified that will contribute heavily to acne: General poor health, nutrient deficiencies, poor circulation; Hormones; Food allergies; Blood sugar problems; Poor digestion, candida, constipation; Stress, poor emotional health, poor self esteem; Physical irritation, Jun 14, 2016. A breakout on the temples can be linked to the kidneys. Triggers: alcohol, tobacco, poor lymphatic circulation, saturated fat consumption. 4. Nose acne is linked to the digestive and circulatory systems. Triggers: constipation, bloating, indigestion, gas, poor circulation, high blood pressure. 5. Blemishes. Mar 15, 2017. People with varicose veins are more likely to develop varicose eczema. These circulatory problems can lead to blood leakage and cell death, and it can develop into stasis dermatitis. At increased risk are those who have, or have had: Venous insufficiency; Varicose veins; High blood pressure or a heart. Mar 16, 2016. There may be a myriad of reasons for poor blood circulation and the effects of it will be visible on your skin health. 1/4. Dull skin. One of the most apparent signs would be skin discolouration or dull skin tone. That's because if sufficient blood is not transported, your skin would be lacking in oxygen, resulting. Knowing the location and causes can help you put an end to your acne. The Location of Acne On Your Body Could. product of dead cells or poor blood circulation. We all know how a poor blood circulation can. What skin problems can a poor blood circulation cause?. Those with acne and have poor blood circulation may. There are several different causes of poor circulation. Peripheral artery disease. Peripheral artery disease (PAD) can lead to poor circulation in your legs. PAD is a circulatory condition that causes narrowing of the blood vessels and arteries. Dec 3, 2013. But effects of embarrassment can also easily move from our brains to our skin. Neuropeptide receptors in our skin receive mixed signals from brain, causing chronic swollen blood vessels and sleep deprivation. Embarrassment increases acne problems. Blood flow to skeletal muscles is also hampered due. Apr 26, 2017. This can put more pressure on lymphatic system and lymph nodes build up toxins which are excreted through skin, causing acne or dry, itchy skin. Scars: – It can be seen that people with poor blood circulation will take longer time to heal the acne scars because transport of good nutrients is not efficient to. Learn more about blood circulation in your legs and how poor circulation can lead to potentially fatal conditions, with symptoms and treatment advice. Fight acne with these 10 lifestyle changes from WebMD. Skin discoloration. Poor blood circulation often results in a lack of oxygen in the blood and hence, this can also cause skin pigmentation, dark spots or blotchy complexion. 3. Acne and problematic skin. Obviously, a poor blood circulation is going to affect how some of your major organs function and over time, these organs. Blood circulation is related to insulin resistance. At least in lists of supplements for insulin resistance, I've often seen nutrients that improve circulation. Toxins cause acne, bad circulation can affect acne because you. The combination of the two has improved my IBS and poor blood circulation however Im in. Forehead breakouts can be caused by a number of issues, including digestive problems, small intestine issues, liver issues, high levels of stress, irregular sleep cycle, poor diets and even. Acne on the nose can be due to poor diet, constipation, bloating, gastrointestinal imbalance, indigestion or poor blood circulation. Like with other causes of acne, the answer to whether your digestion could be causing your acne can be evasive. Here are some. Collateral veins in the digestive system are extra blood vessels from the intestinal tract that bypass the liver all together and put unfiltered blood into the general circulation of the body. If you're. Exercise helps cut stress, which may contribute to acne outbreaks. Physical activity also helps your skin by increasing your blood circulation, which sends more oxygen to your skin cells and carries cell waste away. But keep in mind that sweat from exercise can also lead to breakouts by irritating your skin. So it's important to. Greasy Foods. Greasy foods clog the arteries and can also cause greasy skin on the scalp.This often leads to hair follicle miniaturization, restricted blood flow. 30 and 40-year olds diagnosed with this facial skin condition typically have sensitive skin that develops acne. Concurrent eye. Caused by poor blood circulation, they can be due to heredity or obesity, but are particularly prominent after years of prolonged standing, pregnancy or other hormonal changes. For most people. This can increase humidity, but due to the structure of saunas and their materials (wood) all the extra humidity will be absorbed or channeled outside. This dry heat among others causes excessive sweating and increased blood circulation. Both of them are wonderful as far as acne is concerned, but they are also great for. Dairy products and wheat can trigger an allergic reaction causing skin inflammation, while shell-fish and soy sauce are high in iodine, which can trigger acne. 'Sitting all day in front of a computer and doing no exercise will make your circulation sluggish, and blood which feeds the skin will become toxic,' explains Stephen. Cold toes, numb feet, poor circulation. causes nerve damage, but high blood glucose levels are. they develop poor circulation. This can result in. Poor circulation can cause serious problems. Check this to learn more on poor circulation: causes, symptoms, and treatment! Hair Conditioner Cause Acne While there aren't specific shampoos that cause acne, there are some common ingredients that do, the biggest culprits being sodium lauryl sulfate, petroleum byproducts and many commonly used moisturizing oils such as olive oil, coconut oil and jojoba oil. Teen Vogue suggests using hair products that. Question Hair conditioners that won’t cause. I am very Fight acne with these 10 lifestyle changes from WebMD. Mar 30, 2017. Acne & Inflammation – While poor circulation won't directly cause acne and inflammation, overtime, poor blood flow will affect your major organs. If our organs do not receive proper blood flow to and from them, we run into two primary issues; poor digestion and poor detoxification. If our liver and kidneys are. How to Increase Blood Circulation to. According to Acne Magazine, good circulation is vital. massage improves blood and lymph circulation, which can enhance the. In simplest terms, circulation is the constant movement of blood throughout the body, which is made possible by pumping of the heart. While circulation delivers life-supporting blood to your body, poor circulation may be a sign of health issues. Learn about symptoms, treatment, and prevention. hqdefault - Can Bad Blood Circulation Cause AcneAlthough common in childhood and adolescence, acne breakouts can occur at any age due to the various factors that cause this dermatologic condition. Acne affects the skin of over 45 million. Possible Health Indication: Poor blood circulation, rosacea and/or malnutrition. This region is part of the “T zone” containing the. Be amazed by the power of natural seeds, the foundation for life and health and start your life with this amazing and wonderful product, Soul, from Rain! Oct 2, 2017. On the other hand, it constricts other blood vessels, decreasing blood flow to certain parts of the body, one of which is the face. As the blood vessels in the face constrict, circulation decreases. This too is seen as simultaneously good and bad. Critics of the coffee craze say that decreased circulation to the. Can Bad Blood Circulation Cause Acne 2020 4 out of 5 based on 317 ratings. More Acne Causes Articles ... • What Causes Scalp Acne: Jul 3, 2017. From seborrheic dermatitis to baby acne, many skin rashes affect infants. Infants with baby acne typically get whiteheads, blackheads, and pustules on their nose, scalp, cheeks, Do You Know What Causes Baby Acne? Sep 26, 2016. Acne is so... • Bad Teeth Causes Acne: 5 days ago. Information about human bite causes (intentional or accidental) infection symptoms. bites, but also any injury caused by coming in contact with the teeth of another person. Bad Bugs Pictures: Identify Bugs and Their Bites. Read about home... • Does Calcium Deficiency Cause Acne: The people at highest risk of a calcium deficiency are postmenopausal women. Excessive levels of calcium in the blood can cause nausea, dry mouth, abdominal. Gallbladder pain is a common occurrence in the right upper abdomen. It may be caused by gall... • Does Wiping Off Sweat Cause Acne: Jan 9, 2018. Sweat. Does sweat cause acne? Directly, sweat is not a cause of acne but it can exasperate acne condition. The salts that are found within the sweat can irritate the skin and worsen the breakouts. DURING your workout, keep your hands awa... • Acne Caused By Chocolate: Does chocolate cause acne? It's a question generations of teenagers and adults have asked when faced with an outburst of angry, red spots. Many would assert that. Q: Does chocolate really cause acne? My teenagers love the stuff -- and they have ... More about our cookies
A phobia is an irrational fear directed against an object, activity or situation. This can be accompanied by a panic attack when facing the object of that fear. The phobia can then lead to a range of behaviours, including avoidance behaviour, difficulty breathing, intense anxiety and feeling completely out of control. This sense of feeling out of control can lead the person to feel they will lose control of their own body, and embarrass themselves by either screaming, fainting, sweating. Having a phobia can lead to avoidance and this in return can make the person feel isolated, turning down social and work related engagements in order to avoid the situation. For example, if someone has a phobia about dogs, it may lead to turning down invitations to places they know there will be dogs. Another example is a phobia of flying, which may lead to turning down job opportunities or promotions in which flying will be part of that job. If you are finding that your fears are creating disruption and anxiety in your life, there is help out there and there is no need to continue feeling isolated and alone with the problem. If your phobia is a simple fear of an object, which can be dealt with in 1 to 2 sessions with Suggestion hypnotherapy. However, it it has a more deeply intrenched anxiety component, a combination of hypno-Analysis along with hypo-psychotherapy is indicated. This will entail a number of sessions, between 5 and 8, in order to get to the root cause of the problem. As it is the sub-conscious mind which has created the problem in the first place, healing and a lasting resolving will only occur at the sub-conscious level. This is why therapy in the hypnotic state is so effective. Pin It on Pinterest
Jane Goodall opens the new bonobo enclosure in Ouwehands Zoo! None other than Dr. Jane Goodall will open the new bonobo enclosure at Ouwehands Zoo on Wednesday afternoon, 13 May 2020. Jane Goodall is a world-famous biologist, known mostly because of her invaluable research and findings about the great apes species, chimpanzees. People used to think that the bonobo and chimpanzee where the same, but now we know that they are two different species. The bonobo is the species that is most similar to humans. Our DNA matches for 98.6%. Ouwehands Zoo offers space to nine bonobos in the new accommodation, six adult animals and three young. Jane Goodall wants to inspire young people Dr. Jane Goodall, UN Messenger of Peace and founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, is a world-renowned biologist who, almost 60 years ago, went to Africa to research chimpanzees. Whilst living amongst the great apes, she discovered some extraordinary things. With her Jane Goodall Institute, she ensures that the great apes, their environment and other wild animals are protected. Jane Goodall believes the future is in the hands of young people. That's why she founded the Roots & Shoots program with the goal of inspiring youth to come together and work on a better living environment. Please note! This is an official opening ceremony for invited guests The opening of the bonobo enclosure on Wednesday, 13 May is only accessible for invited guests.
SAGE Core Memory Magnetic cores were the basic technology for computer main memory from the 1950s into the early 1970s. The tiny iron oxide cores could be magnetized clockwise or counterclockwise to represent bits of information. Data could be retrieved in millionths of a second. This array is from an IBM-built Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) computer from the 1950s. SAGE, an early U.S. air defense system, was the first large computer network to provide man-machine interaction in "real time" - as events were occurring.
Bruxism and Sleep Apnea The most important connection between bruxism and sleep apnea is that they both interrupt sleep. Bruxism which is associated with grinding, clenching or gnashing of teeth can cause many types of sleep disorders including daytime lethargy, snoring, and sleep apnea. The condition can happen to any adult or child at any time. But men tend to snore more and have sleep apnea. Mild bruxism may not require treatment although in some people it can be severe enough to cause jaw disorders and headaches. Sleep apnea at first glances seems unrelated to bruxism, though they both share some symptoms. Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder that can be life-threatening. There are different causes of sleep apnea. In some cases, it occurs when the soft tissues around the throat relax. It can also involve the central nervous system when the brain fails to send proper signals to the muscles. Medical experts claim that the two disorders can be caused by high levels of anxiety. If left untreated they can lead to depression. It’s a vicious circle where anxiety leads to the grinding of teeth and sleep apnea leads to medical disturbances such as anxiety. Sleepiness compels an apnea individual to consume more caffeine which mostly triggers bruxism. bruxism and sleep apneaResearch shows that 1 in 4 patients with sleep apnea also suffers from bruxism. This is a high quotation which means that the two conditions are indeed co-related. Sometimes it can be hard to know if you are suffering from the two disorder which can lead to worse health problems. It’s important to understand the symptoms of each condition. Bruxism is mostly associated with flattened, chipped, fractured, or loose teeth. Early diagnosis of these disorders is critical. You need to consult a sleep specialist and dentist if you are experiencing typical symptoms. Practicing CPAP therapy decrease apnea as well as night bruxism events. A personalized mouthguard can be used to relive patients who do not comply with CPAP therapy.
How cars changed the world Who in the world doesn’t love cars? The grace of the steel body and the glare of the smooth polish are almost inevitable to ignore. No matter who you are a small boy or an aged man, once in a lifetime everyone dreams of buying a luxurious car which not only compliments their social appearance but also raises the stakes in the eyes of the admirers. Cars are one of the most enthralling inventions in the history of mankind. Like everything in this whole wide world cars also has their advantages and disadvantages but the good part is that the advantages are more than the disadvantages. Hence there is no doubt of its useful role in the society. You never know when there is a catastrophic event so you should always be ready for it. On the other hand, you should also keep in mind to make your beloved car secure from any kind of disastrous event. Well, you are in luck because there are numerous anonymous car insurance companies which help to ensure the safety of your expensive and beloved car. One of the best insurance package providers for your car is the American Insurance which is considered one of a kind in the whole market. Here are some of the unique and interesting facts about the events which shine a little light on the question of how cars changed the world. Revolutionized mass production: The process of generation of cars have greatly revolutionized the production of a wide range of products in the market. Due to the production of the cars an assembly line was created which contains different sections and each section contains a team of skilled labors which were expert in a single task to create the whole car as a single masterpiece. this process results in the fast and steady production of more than 500 units of cars in a single day which was itself a miracle at that time. This whole assembly line production was taken from the car production and was applied to the generation of other products in various industries to fulfill the demands of the customers. Made locomotion easier: Due to the fast and luxurious cars the process of locomotion has been evolved and has come to a new stage. Now the long and tedious distances don’t matter at all because of the comfortable locomotives. Before the invention of cars, it was considered almost impossible for the people to live some miles away from the city as it was really difficult to travel at that time and if in case they had to do that it would be one dusty and rusty ride to the city. The invention of cars is the reason that the colonization in the suburbs has taken place in our times otherwise it wouldn’t be possible. Economic Changes: Cars have also brought a huge leap in the economy of the world as the production of the cars started the prices of the fuel like oil and gas have gone really high. it has also increased the currency value as the cash flow increases in the countries where the cars are manufactured. So, these are some of the famous and well-researched factors which define the facts of how cars changed the world. I hope at the end of this article all the doubts related to the topic will be cleared but if there is still something which bothers you then feel free to ask us anything you want to know about the fact of how the cars changed the world. Stay tuned with us for more updated and informative articles which are being composed just for you. About the Author: Recent Posts
What Are The Most Common Orthopedic Surgeries Orthopedic surgeries are the surgeries performed on the muscular and skeletal system of your body. The surgeries include procedures performed on bones, muscles, joints, ligaments and tendons, if any of these parts are injured or due to a specific condition. In some cases, bone pain cases are managed through medicine, but in other cases, a surgery is needed. Some of the most common types of surgeries that orthopedic surgeons perform are given below. Let’s start! Bone Fracture Repair Bone fractures are very common to happen. A serious impact on the bone can cause it to break or, in medical terms, to become fractured. Fracture means that there is a line or crack in the bone, which can be seen through a simple x-ray. Fractures are extremely painful, and they need to be taken care of as soon as possible. Fracture repairs are mostly done by pulling the bone and maneuvering it back in place, then casting it to ensure its secure position. The casting is left on the body for weeks or months even, to let the bone heal naturally and regenerate. The bones in the human body can generate themselves, if kept in a stationary position for some time, which is why casting the fracture is very important, so it doesn’t move around and interrupt the regeneration process. Joint Replacement This orthopedic procedure is also very common. Some people, especially old people have joints which are always painful, and they have a difficult time walking or functioning as a normal human being. Weak joints mostly occur in the legs, knees, elbows, etc. These weak joints can be surgically replaced with new ones, which are prosthetics. One of the most common joint replacement surgeries is knee joint replacement, in which the knee cap is removed, and it is replaced with a prosthetic metal knee cap. This causes the patient to walk properly and without experiencing any pain afterwards. Soft Tissue Repair Athletes and people who overdo a lot with their bones and body can sometimes complain of pains in the joints and muscles. Sometimes, a sudden jerk to the bone or muscle can break or tear the ligaments and tendons. Ligaments are the soft tissue which holds bones together, whereas tendons connect the bones with muscles. Since the tissue between bones and muscles are very soft, they can tear very easily. But it is not something irreversible. Soft tissues can be repaired by a surgical process known as soft tissue repair. In this procedure, the soft torn tissues are surgically unified together again. Spinal Fusion Sometimes, the vertebral column can be separated due to too much stretching of the spine above its limit. This can cause a lot of pain in the back and lower back region. A surgical process, which involves the unison of the vertebrae is known as spinal fusion. As the name suggests, spinal fusion involves joining of the separated vertebrae back in place. Unevenly spaced vertebrae can ruin your back posture and it can be extremely painful. Not to mention, separated vertebrae can lead to several nervous injuries, which involves loss of sensation in some parts of your body, tingly sensation in your back and tips of feet and fingers, etc. Osteotomy is a type of bone deformity. This condition is very common in small children, whose bones are very soft and liable to deformation. If a bone is deformed, which can be detected by an x-ray or scan, it must be surgically removed, so that the other bones are not affected, and they can grow without any problem. Leaving the deformed bone in the body for too long, can lead to posture deformity later when the child grows up. So, it’s better to remove the bone, when it’s still soft and developing. Hip Replacement Surgery The hip joint can become damaged, due to breaking or cartilage or due to severe impact on the femur bone. This can cause a lot of excruciating pain in the hip region and a lot of people can’t even sit because of it. So, hip replacement surgery becomes necessary. In this surgical procedure, orthopedic hip surgeons McLean use prosthetics to mimic the ball and socket joint of the femur bone, because this is the main part that gets damaged in hip injuries. Leave a Reply Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.
For the Eyes of a Glider... I helped with glider research when I joined a PhD student as a volunteer for a few days. Volunteering is a great way to help wildlife, come very close to wild species and make a real difference for conservation. Plus you can choose where and with which wildlife you volunteer! Find more about volunteer with wildlife in general or read my experience with beautiful gliders below. Gliders are Amazing Gliders are arboreal marsupials that live in Australia. • What's arboreal?? It means they live in trees. • What's a marsupial?? A very famous marsupial is the kangaroo. I'm sure you know what's so special about a kangaroo? So you know what a marsupial is! A marsupial is a mammal that has its babies when they are very very young (in other words, early in the embryonic development). The marsupial baby is not quite finished, so it has to stay into its mum's pouch for months before it's ready to face the wild world. As a consequence, it's very easy for a marsupial mum to give birth: the baby is usually only a centimeter or so even for a big animal like a kangaroo. The mum licks a little path in her fur and the baby climbs on its own toward the safety of the pouch! How good is that for giving birth!!?? In the pictures above is a baby koala in the pouch and you can see it suckling its mum's tits Gliders are amazing creatures, as all marsupials are. But they have something more: they can fly! I suppose you could call them the flying squirrels of Australia (although they are not squirrels at all! -being marsupials...). Gliders have a special gliding membrane between their arms and legs, and they jump and glide from tree to tree. On the above picture you can see the start of the flying membrane from the hand, and also some membrane folds between front and back limbs My Experience as a Volunteer for Gliders I volunteered to help a PhD student in her work with gliders. She was looking at glider populations living in different islands in the Moreton Bay, Australia, and how these populations were related (genetically). We caught several of our flying marsupials by leaving little traps in trees. Once we had one in a trap, we transferred it to a bag and took several measurements (how big, how heavy), check whether we caught a boy or a girl, and sampled a little bit of skin for genetics. We checked the girls' pouches to see if any babies were there. Once we collected all the data we needed for the study, we gave our little friend a treat to compensate for a hard morning... Gliders love honey! They usually spend their night looking for tasty snacks including honeydew: a sweet liquid that is produced by sap-sucking insects. Probably as sweet as honey! Other food items on a glider's menu are sap, nectar, pollen, insects, bird eggs, birds, lizards, and other small animals: in a nutshell, a very diversified diet! Now do you agree with me that gliders are the cutest animals??? Finally, our little flying marsupial is ready to go home! Volunteering for research students is a great way to experience firsthand wild animals, to be part of groundbreaking science meanwhile helping understand and preserve wildlife. And meeting interesting people. Conclusion: It's 100% good stuff!
The African middle class is growing rapidly and has been since 1980. Indeed, seven of the ten fastest growing national economies are housed on the African continent, and as the population continues to expand, so does the opportunity for further growth. Deloitte predicts the size of the continental middle class to triple, with well over a billion residents, by 2060. What does it mean to be a middle class African though? Is it safe to count those lumped into this category as bona fide consumers on par with those in Western middle class brackets, or does it mean something else? Can a continent like Africa fit with traditional Western notions of class? Deloitte defines the African middle class as those living in urban areas not gaining income from farming but, instead, through entrepreneurship or a salaried career. The main thing driving the middle class boom now is consumership, something Africa’s young population promises to increase in the future. A move to cities from the farmlands and access to mobile phone technology is also spurring a larger middle class. “A landmark, groundbreaking Deloitte study found that a 10% increase in mobile phone penetration is linked to an increase in a middle/low income country GDP of 1.2% due to the ensuing economic activity that people engage in as a result of being ‘plugged in’ and connected.” The numbers of African’s deemed as middle class now rivals those in both India and China. Companies are banking on the notion that the sheer numbers of new consumers who have a little more money in their pockets will drive business. Migration to urban areas, coupled with better but still fragile sociopolitical stability, is spurring growth. A Wall Street Journal report tells the story of, “Jossam Mass, a 32-year-old dressmaker from Malawi, moved to South Africa five years ago. Now his shop in Johannesburg’s Oriental Plaza is benefiting directly from the new consumer class.” A report from The Guardian, citing the Africa Bank of Development, defines middle class status, “…as those spending between $2 and $20 per day…about 60% of those only spend between $2 and $4 per day and remain in what the bank calls a ‘floating class’, a vulnerable position ‘barely out of the poor category’ with ‘the constant possibility of dropping back…’” So the funds being spent are little enough to cause doubt in labeling the situation middle class, but large enough over what many of the poorest on the continent spend. Scholars have hinted that to term the increased spending as a solidified middle class is an arbitrary move, perhaps aimed at garnering outside international investment. Indeed, African’s are doing better on the whole, but it may be too early to label a definite middle class movement. It is important to consider also that international migration within Africa spurs income generation; in short, people go where the work is and it’s relatively easy to do so. An individual nation then will have it’s middle class numbers skewed in light of migration. The most consistently middle class nations in Africa are either far north or far south, however income distribution in those and other economically surging nations is very stagnant. David Cowan, an economist for Citigroup Africa, posits that only two classes consisting of the ultra rich and poverty stricken comprise the continental population. Contrary to Deloitte’s and others statements, Global Pacific advisory group places the number of true middle class Africans at only 50 million. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has that number at only 32 million. What most everyone can agree on though is that incomes on the whole are on the rise. The World Bank takes note of the increased middle class projections and says that it’s great for more business, the spread of democracy and political stability, and better infrastructure. By the same token, the middle class will only grow, drawing numbers from the aforementioned floating class, if infrastructure demands are met. An electrified Africa requires about $20 billion annually by 2019, along with $16 billion for water and at least $17 billion for sanitation. To realize this, favorable policies focused, “…on human capital development and job generation…” must be put in place. Clearly, there is no solid consensus on what a middle class Africa looks like and expectations for such run the gamut of very rosy economic outlook to what realities are today. This supports contentions that middle class assessments on the continent are largely arbitrary in nature. Whatever the slant may be, what can’t be denied are growing incomes and favorable economic activity happening continent-wide. Better infrastructure and international investment will only contribute to those, perhaps making Deloitte’s 2060 middle-class projection a solid possibility. There is no doubt that Africa is a continent all it’s own, possessing wholly different sociopolitical notions that will influence the movement of money and people. International interest and captivation in all things Africa, like the incomes of so many there, is also on the rise. – Dave Smith Sources: Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business Review, The World Bank
10 Hockey Skills for the Real World By Jamie McKinven 1. Work Ethic To play hockey is to work hard. Hockey players always take the road less traveled. Whereas in almost every other sport players run around on solid ground, hockey players move around on razor-sharp skates atop rock-solid ice—a movement so unique it takes years of constant practice and dedication to master. Beyond skating, hockey players must learn the tedious task of stickhandling, passing, and shooting to round out the basic hockey skills of the game. Before you can even enjoy the simple joys of the game, you need to be able to hone those unique physical skills—a task most can’t be bothered with. The entire essence of hockey is about reinventing oneself and starting from scratch. To begin playing the sport is like starting all over in life: It’s hard work, and only the most determined have the capacity to succeed. 2. Accountability Like all athletes, hockey players understand the importance of accountability. Hockey is a sport of continuous improvement, with rule changes and new systems being implemented, and constant advances in equipment. In order to progress, hockey players embrace accountability to analyze their shortcomings and correct deficiencies. They understand their unique role and the importance of their specific job within the greater framework. They understand the impact of their decisions. 3. Importance of Strong Culture More than ever, the importance of a strong workplace culture is paramount to success. With a struggling economy and increased competition in the marketplace, the landscape is as rigorous as ever. Companies such as Google have embraced the power of corporate culture and taken it to an entirely different level. In order to find flagship culture models, one doesn’t need to stray further than hockey culture. From pre-game rituals to playoff beards, hockey is full of idiosyncrasies designed to assimilate groups of varying individuals. 4. Importance of Teamwork Without a doubt, there is not a team sport that exists right now that can hold a candle to the game of hockey, in its passion, complexity and honor. In no other sport do you see the type of selflessness, loyalty and dedication that is ingrained in hockey and its unique honor code that all players live by. When they put on their team jerseys, teammates from every walk of life put their differences and incompatibilities aside in the name of a shared goal. Teammates will stick up for one another, take punches to the face, and break bones blocking shots in order to achieve team-oriented goals. They may not necessarily be the best of friends, but rather individuals who understand the power of teamwork. They embrace the value of humility and sacrifice when it comes to casting their egos aside in favor of a utilitarian approach to achieving greatness. They understand that individual success is deeply linked to team success. 5. Internal Leadership Hockey is the sport that celebrates the unsung hero. Whether you’re a goal scorer, penalty killer or an enforcer, the value of each role is celebrated within the culture. When the going gets rough, a team can’t simply look to the coach or the captain to pull them out of the hole. One game it might be a timely fight or a big hit that sparks the comeback; the next night it might be a big save or a nice goal that turns the tides. Sometimes leadership comes in the strangest of forms. One year, one of my teammates—who barely ever said a word—came into the dressing room after the second period of a game during a terrible losing streak, put his dress shoes in the shower and set them on fire. He then turned to a bewildered dressing room and declared, “I knew those [bleepin’] shoes were bad luck.” We went out that third period, came back and won the game and then rattled off six wins in a row. After that game, we took the mangled remains of the shoes and glued them to a plank of wood. The charred trophy became our good-luck charm and was handed out to the hardest worker after each game the rest of the season. Like CrossIceHockey.com? Spread the word! Got something to say? Tell us! Please enter your comment! Please enter your name here
No, no…not on the sidewalk. But very close to it, if designer Eddie Gandelman is able to realize this vision for “When Nature Calls”, a public toilet that will recycled urine into fertilizer for flora growing in the built-in planter. Think of the last big city you visited, like New York or Chicago. Of all the things it could use more of, public bathrooms and more areas of grass, trees, and bushes are probably two of them. The problem with major cities is that all of the open ground space is occupied by buildings and pavement. Above ground planters are an alternative, but most just become repositories for trash and, well, pee. Gandelman simply took our natural inclinations one step further with his public urinal planter concept. Eddie Gandelman, When Nature Calls, urinal, urine, urban green space, planter Image via Eddie Gandelman/Coroflot Sure, it kills the grass when your dog does it, but human urine can actually make a great fertilizer. Our pee is full of potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus, which, when properly filtered, is a tasty buffet for plants. Tuvie explains: “By setting up the restroom in pod format with 4 urinals on every pod, the users can enjoy more space and privacy. This system as well paves way for both peeing and watering the plants.” The project employs three filtration materials: charcoal, crushed limestone, and greensand. After filtration, the remaining urine flows into the central planter, feeding the plants. When Nature Calls, public urinal, urine, fertilizer Image via Eddie Gandelman/Coroflot Some have suggested that this might be the perfect solutions for restaurants in big cities, which could save money by growing their own food. Although, as TrendHunter notes, we might not be ready for pee-fertilized lettuce just yet. More Recommended Articles and Guides
What Happened at Peor? Part 2 The Balaam Inscription Outside of the Hebrew Bible, the only other related textual source is what scholars have called the Balaam Inscription. During the 1967 archeology season at Tell Deir ‘Allā,[1] a worker was shoveling away debris out of a temple complex when he noticed a piece of plaster with some ancient text on it. He called the leading archeologist, H. J. Franken, to come look at what he found. Quickly, Franken knew that this was a significant find, so he ordered the area tented off and began to carefully gather all the pieces of the plaster, documenting them as the workers gathered them. In his brief notes after the season ended, he said that “nearer to the summit of the tell we found a great amount of wall plaster, partly written with a text in black. The text escaped destruction in the fire by the fell after a second earthquake shock, traces of which were found at various place.”[2] Franken sent the text[3] to Dr. J. Hoftijzer to translate and analyze. What they found was remarkable. The inscription opens with “The account of [Balaam, son of Beo]r, who was a seer of the [gods].”[4] Apparently this inscription records a story of Balaam, who is correlated with the Balaam of Numbers 22-24 by the phrase “son of Beor.” Dating of the Balaam Inscription Numbers 25 and the Balaam text are, however, not from the same time period. Based on the form of the script and the archeological evidence, the text was created sometime in the eighth century,[5] while the Numbers 25 account dates back to the fourteenth or fifteenth century. How are the texts connected? The answer lies in the opening words “the account.” This implies that there is a tradition or record of Balaam that was kept in the Deir ‘Allā temple. It is reasonable that, upon the death of the well-known prophet Balaam, someone collected his prophecies and recorded them. This was probably similar to the collection of the writings of the Hebrew prophets. And later, another person read the prophecies and then had them painted on a plaster wall.[6] The Content of the Balaam Inscription The text is a doomsday oracle from the mouth of Balaam. In the first section,[7] Balaam pronounces that gods have ordered another god, whose name is missing, to shut up the sky and bring darkness and confusion on the earth.[8] The second section is in worse condition, where El seems to be building a Necropolis at Sheol in which rot and death are rampant.[9] Although there is insufficient evidence to connect the second section of the oracle with a death cult, the tangential connection between the sacrifices of the dead to Baal Peor (cf. Ps. 106:28) and the death-scene recorded about El are intriguing. The Gods of the Balaam Inscription A connection to the Numbers 25 account comes from the gods recorded in the text. Although the text does not describe Baal himself, the text records the name of the chief god El, who in the traditional Canaanite pantheon is the father of Baal. Second the text mentions a goddess by the name of Šagar-and-Ištar (or Šagar wa-Ištar), a compound name which is not unusual in Canaanite mythic literature. Balaam has a devotion to this goddess, defending her against her advisories.[10] Thus, it appears that Balaam had a personal connection with the goddess Ištar, whose connection to fertility cults is evident in the ANE context. The Šaddayyin in the Balaam Inscription The final and most striking reference to the gods of Balaam is the mention of the Šdyn, vocalized as Šaddayyin. These Šaddayyin are part of the counsel of the gods, and they issue a decree that a goddess, probably Šagar wa-Ištar, should shut up the heavens and bring doom on the earth.[11] Though Numbers 25 does not reference the Šaddayyin, two other passages in the Hebrew Bible do. Deuteronomy 32 traces the history of Yahweh people as he protected them in the wilderness. But the people rebelled and sacrificed to Šdym, vocalized Šediym (Deut. 32:17).[12] Given the context of rebellion to other gods, it is best to take this reference as the rebellion at Peor, because up to that point in their history, they had not followed other gods as a nation.[13] The only other reference to Šdym in the Hebrew Bible is in Psalm 106:37, where the people offered their sons and daughters to the Šdym. In context, verses 28-31 describe the sin of Peor, then verse 32-33 describe the sin at Meribah, and verses 34-39 describe the sin of the people during the time of the judges. Balaam’s Gods at the Worship of Baal Peor In Numbers 25:2, the Moabite women invite the men of Israel to come and sacrifice to their gods (אֱלֹהֵיהֶן). If the word here should be translated as a true plural, rather than a majestic plural, it would fit the context of the Balaam inscription. If the Hebrew Bible and Balaam can be connected in this way, it suggests that the worship of Baal Peor is similar to the worship of the other traditional Canaanite pantheon. [1] Tell Deir ‘Allā is located about 25 miles north of the traditional site of Shittim, the location of the Baal Peor narrative. [2] H. J. Franken, “Texts from the Persian Period from Tell Deir ’Allā,” Vetus Testamentum 17, no. 4 (1967): 480–81. [3] Jo Ann Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ’Allā, Harvard Semitic Monographs 31 (Chico: Scholars Press, 1980), 123. The text is one of the most curious finds in recent times. Though the language is translatable, the exact nature of the language is not easily identifiable. The script appears to be Aramaic, but much of the structure of the text does not conform to any known dialect of Aramaic. However, it does not agree with any known Semitic language. Jo Ann Hackett argues that the text should be classified as a South Canaanite language. [4] Hackett, 29. [5] P. Kyle McCharter, “The Balaam Texts from Deir ʿAllā: The First Combination,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, no. 239 (1980): 50. [6] This proposal may also be substantiated by the confusion of the text. While the script is early Aramaic, the language seems to be a south Semitic dialect. It could have been that the painter was reading the old account and painting it on the wall with a new script and some slight changes in vowels to accommodate the text to the reader. [7] The sections are called “combinations,” because the pieces of the plaster had to be combined to form a whole. These combinations are reasonably certain. The term combination does not mean that the text one direction you would get one reading, if you rearrange the text you get another reading. The two major combinations are two different sections of the prophecy, not different arrangements of the same plaster pieces. Here, the term section is used to avoid this confusion. [8] Hackett, The Balaam Text from Deir ’Allā, 29–30. [9] “Deir ’Alla Inscription” (Livius.org, 2016), http://www.livius.org/sources/content/deir-alla-inscription/. [10] “Deir ’Alla Inscription.” “[i.12] Heed the admonition, adversaries of Sha[gar-and-Ištar]! … skilled diviner. To skilled diviners shall one take you, and to an oracle; [i.14] To a perfumer of myrrh and a priestess. Who covers his body with oil, And rubs himself with olive oil. To one bearing an offering in a horn; One augurer after another, and yet another. As one augurer broke away from his colleagues, The strikers departed …” [11] “Deir ’Alla Inscription.” “The gods have banded together; [i.8] The Shaddai gods have established a council, And they have said to [the goddess] Shagar: ‘Sew up, close up the heavens with dense cloud, That darkness exist there, not brilliance.” In the inscription itself, only the first letter š of the name of the goddess is left, thus, Shagar is interpolated as the goddess here, though the interpolation is not definite. [12] While many commentators in the past compare the Šediym to the Še’ȋrīm in Leviticus 17:7, the linguistic connection only comes through the English translation of both words as demons. Cf. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, vol. 1 (Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 141. [13] The Golden Calf incident was rebellion as well, but not to another god. It was an idol of the true god who brought them out of Egypt. 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Beams of Antimatter Directed at Earth Detected Inside the Eye of a Hurricane Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, discovered a beam of antimatter particles directed toward Earth using an instrument flown through the eye of the hurricane Patricia. In 2015, Hurricane Patricia hit the mainland in Mexico, battering the West Coast with unprecedented force. The storm still remains the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Eastern Pacific Ocean. While most people evacuated the area or prepared to bunker down, UC Santa Cruz scientists were occupied with another plan - flying into the eye of the storm. Source: Gregory Bowers/UC Santa Cruz The particles were detected using an instrument installed aboard one of NOAA's Hurricane Hunter aircraft which was flown through the eye of the storm during its peak intensity. Amidst all the destruction, scientists captured profound information - downward beams of positrons, the antimatter counterpart of an electron. The team captured powerful bursts of gamma rays and X-rays, indicating the presence of positrons. Source: Gregory Bowers/UC Santa Cruz In this picture, researchers from UC Santa Cruz assemble the Airborne Detector for Energetic Lightning Emissions (ADELE) mark II - a device which can detect X-rays and gamma rays. Below the device is the NOAA's ADELE Hurricane Hunter, the plane used to carry the equipment. To the right is Hurricane Patricia UC Santa Cruz professor David Smith explains the beam is the downward component of an upward terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF). The flashes were discovered in 1994 when they were observed by satellites outfitted with gamma-ray detectors. It is known TGFs are created by lighting and over the decades, thousands of events have been recorded by satellites in orbit. However, up until recently, only beams directed upwards have been detected. According to UC Santa Cruz, reverse positron beams have been hypothesized by theoretical models of TGFs, but have remained undetected - until now. How Hurricanes Launch Antimatter Beams at the Earth The production of positrons is the result of a series of incredibly powerful nuclear events. It begins high in the atmosphere above the storm. There, strong electric fields eject an avalanche of electrons towards space. The speeding electrons collide with molecules in the air, deflecting their path and resulting in a burst of gamma rays - the highest known energy form of light. Source: NASA In this picture, electrons (shown in pink) are initially ejected outwards by strong magnetic fields. Then, as electrons collide with air molecules, more gamma rays are produced which collide with other electrons. The electrons accelerate when they collide with gamma rays, increasing the energy they carry. Electrons which collide with other particles with enough energy release particularly large TGFs - rays which are powerful enough to penetrate to the core of an atom. After interacting with the nucleus of an atom, the gamma ray is transformed into a positron and an electron - a nuclear process known as pair production The 10 Most Expensive Materials on Earth Naturally, the particles are attracted to one another due to their opposing charge but are driven apart from the strong magnetic fields above storms. The event is somewhat rare since the process requires ejecting a massive avalanche of particles towards space - an event which consumes an unknown amount of energy. The exact process is not yet thoroughly understood. While there are still many unanswered questions, scientists are excited about the recent discovery of antiparticle beams directed down to Earth - though no one is certain what it means for the future. Follow Us on Stay on top of the latest engineering news Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:
Ahmad Quais discussing the Ottoman period and World War I Ahmad Qnais interviewed by Fatimah Asad. He discusses the following: World War I; Ottomans took men for military conscription and some people paid them not to take their sons; Ahmad’s father was able to pay for his two children to avoid conscription but not the third; the reason for the Ottoman Empire's involvement in the war was to betray the Arabs; relations between the Arabs and the Ottoman Empire (Turks) were bad – Ottomans only cared about taxes; starvation set in for the Arabs while the Turkish soldiers were fine; locusts destroyed the crops during the locust plague of 1915 and people burned them; people used to be kind and respectful to each other; when the British came they brought money and took the gold; relations between Arabs and Jews at that time were good, until Britain supported Zionism and confiscated the Arabs’ firearms, giving them to Jews instead. Original audio: 2 cassette tapes. Transcript: summary. In the original collection at Bethlehem University these cassette tapes were categorised as File 8 of Box 1.
Montagu House, Bloomsbury Montagu House was a late 17th-century mansion in Great Russell Street in the Bloomsbury district of London, which became the first home of the British Museum. The first house on the site was destroyed by fire in 1686; the rebuilt house was sold to the British Museum in 1759, demolished in the 1840s to make way for a larger building. The house was built twice, both times for the same man, Ralph Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu; the late 17th century was Bloomsbury's most fashionable era, Montagu purchased a site, now in the heart of London but which backed onto open fields. His first house was designed by the English architect and scientist Robert Hooke, an architect of moderate ability whose style was influenced by French planning and Dutch detailing, was built between 1675 and 1679. Admired by contemporaries, it had a central block and two service blocks flanking a large courtyard and featured murals by the Italian artist Antonio Verrio; the French painter Jacques Rousseau contributed wall paintings. In 1686, the house was destroyed by fire. The house was rebuilt to the designs of an otherwise little known Frenchman called Pouget; this Montagu House was by some margin the grandest private residence constructed in London in the last two decades of the 17th century. The main façade was of seventeen bays, with a projecting three bay centre and three bay ends, which abutted the service wings of the first mansion; the house was of two main storeys, plus basement and a prominent mansard roof with a dome over the centre. The planning was in the usual French form of the time, with state apartments leading from a central saloon; the interiors, decorated by French artists, were admired by Horace Walpole and were comparable to the surviving state apartments at Boughton House in Northamptonshire, which were built for the same patron at the same time. In the early 18th century, Bloomsbury began to decline from a fashionable aristocratic district to a more middle-class enclave, the 2nd Duke of Montagu abandoned his father's house to move to Whitehall. He built himself a more modest residence, replaced with an opulent mansion by his Victorian descendant, Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch: see Montagu House, Whitehall. Montagu House in Bloomsbury was sold to the Trustees of the British Museum in 1759 and was the home of that institution until it was demolished in the 1840s to make way for larger premises. In fiction, the House appears in Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle as Ravenscar House with Daniel Waterhouse as the architect in place of Hooke. Montagu House, Whitehall Montagu House, Portman Square Montagu House, Blackheath Charles de La Fosse Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects David Pearce, London's Mansions Deinstedt is a municipality in the district of Rotenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. Deinstedt belonged to the Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen, established in 1180. In 1648 the Prince-Archbishopric was transformed into the Duchy of Bremen, first ruled in personal union by the Swedish Crown - interrupted by a Danish occupation - and from 1715 on by the Hanoverian Crown. In 1807 the ephemeral Kingdom of Westphalia annexed the Duchy, before France annexed it in 1810. In 1813 the Duchy was restored to the Electorate of Hanover, which - after its upgrade to the Kingdom of Hanover in 1814 - incorporated the Duchy in a real union and the Ducal territory, including Deinstedt, became part of the new Stade Region, established in 1823 NCAA Division I-A football win-loss records in the 1990s The following list shows NCAA Division I-A football programs by winning percentage during the 1990-1999 football seasons. The following list reflects the records according to the NCAA; this list takes into account results modified due to NCAA action, such as vacated victories and forfeits. This list only takes into account games played while in Division I-A. Chart notesMarshall joined I-A in 1997. Penn State had 19 victories vacated by the NCAA during 1999 seasons. Nevada joined I-A in 1992. Idaho joined I-A in 1996. UCF joined I-A in 1996. UAB joined I-A in 1996. Louisiana-Monroe joined I-A in 1994. Louisiana-Monroe went by the name Northeast Louisiana until 1999. Long Beach State dropped their football program after the 1991 season. Louisiana-Lafayette went by the name Southwestern Louisiana until 1999. Pacific dropped their football program after the 1995 season. North Texas joined I-A in 1995. Middle Tennessee joined I-A in 1999. Cal State Fullerton dropped their football program after the 1992 season. Buffalo joined I-A in 1999. NCAA Division I FBS football win-loss records NCAA Division I-A football win-loss records in the 1980s NCAA Division I FBS football win-loss records in the 2000s
Hyperlipidemia, Also Known as High Cholesterol Essays 970 Words4 Pages Hyperlipidemia affects nearly 30% of Americans (CDC, 2012). Hyperlipidemia may be better known as high cholesterol. Cholesterol is a fatty wax-like substance that is naturally produced in the body (NLM, 2013). People with high cholesterol may never even know they have the condition. But when they become aware, they have to make immediate changes in relation to adhering to specific diets, exercising regularly, and undergoing prescribed treatment or alternative therapies. Incorporating more fruits and vegetable in the diet, and less fried and processed foods should be one of the first steps taken after diagnosis. Exercising at least 3 days a week can serve as a fun and healthy way to reduce blood cholesterol levels. And taking natural…show more content… This may be a difficult feat to undertake. More people are working longer hours, and it may seem as though there is never enough time to do everything that needs to be done. On top of this, there are ample fast food restaurants available with 24 hour supplies of food that may not be the best option for perfectly healthy individuals, let alone individuals with high cholesterol. Eating a diet that is high in fruits and vegetables; consuming fish, such as salmon; and increasing fiber intake can all help to lower cholesterol levels. Even drinking 1 to 2 glasses of red wine a night can serve to reduce cholesterol levels. People affected by high cholesterol have to be mindful of how much red meat they consume; they should limit the amount of eggs eaten, fried foods, and dairy products. Total cholesterol intake should be between 250 and 300 mg/day (heart.org, 2013). Eating processed and fast food only exacerbates hyperlipidemia, so making an effort to devise a diet plan and cook the necessary foods, would serve to decrease cholesterol levels. Increasing physical activity is also a necessity that can contribute to having good cholesterol levels. “Enjoy at least 30 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity more days than not for a total of at least 50 minutes per week” (heart.org, 2013). That equates to working out for about 45 minutes at least 3 days a week. Those individuals with high cholesterol need to walk, run, dance, Open Document
Critical Analysis Of Carol Ann Duffy's 'War Photographer' 1925 Words8 Pages Poetry Coursework The theme of memory has been presented throughout the following six poems through linguistic and structural techniques. Carol Ann Duffy structures the poem “War photographer” with a deathly approach using enjambment and rhyming couplets. The enjambment is on-going like a never-ending dream, a nightmare. In the first stanza, it refers to religious imagery, the rhyming couplets could represent the pews in a church which is supported by”…in ordered rows, the only light is red and softly glows.” It creates emphasis and helps visualize death through the ordered rows of graves. Red is a colour of death. Each stanza is separated as if they are all different memories. Some sentences only consist of a few words like a label of a memory. They can also be punchy like the actions in war, bombs, fighting and gunshots. “Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh.” To add to the plosive effect, alliteration is used. It imitates and emphasizes the memories of war. Carol Ann Duffy presents the theme of memory with guilt and regret. She compares rural England with the violent battle grounds. “Rural England, Home again to ordinary pain.” She refers to rural England with ordinary pain which could suggest the extreme pain felt on the battle ground can’t compare. The comparison of her memory and war allows the reader to relate. “…Fields which don’t explode beneath the feet, of running children in a nightmare heat.” Again she compares rural England with the violent battlegrounds. This shows a More about Critical Analysis Of Carol Ann Duffy's 'War Photographer' Open Document
1. ITV Report GCSE pass rate improvement in North East The grading system for GCSE results has been completely overhauled Photo: PA The GCSE pass rate has improved significantly in the North East. 64.5% of entries in the region were at least a grade C, or a 4 under the numerical system now used for the majority of reformed exams. That is up from 63.4% in the region last year, but remains behind the UK pass rate of 66.9%. The proportion of entries given A/7 grades or above has also increased in the North East, to 16.7%, but remains the lowest of any part of the country. The scale of grades now runs from 1 to 9 rather than from G to A* and while the change may seem negligible, the new system has caused some confusion.** The two systems are strikingly similar but the obvious difference is letters have become numbers and there is a wider range of grades. This means top performers can now receive a 9 for their hard work, which is higher than an A*, but for those less academically able the bottom grade remains the same. Each subject will be graded against the 9 to 1 scale, though it's a slightly different mark awarded for some science options. For most subjects, each grade will translate into one GCSE qualification but for some science students that will not be the case.
What Is the Google BERT Search Algorithm Update? Google BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is an update to the core search algorithm aimed at improving the language understanding capabilities of Google. BERT is one of the biggest updates that Google has made since RankBrain in 2015 and has proven successful in comprehending the intent of the searcher behind a search query. Click here to download it for free right now! How Does Google BERT Work? Let’s understand what BERT can do with the help of an example query: Here, the intent of the searcher is to find out whether any family member of a patient can pick up a prescription on their behalf. Here is what Google returned before BERT: As you can see, Google has returned an unsatisfactory search result because it was unable to process the meaning of the word “someone” in the query. Here is what Google returned after BERT systems were integrated into the core algorithm: This search result accurately answers the searcher's question. Google has now understood the meaning of the word “someone” in the correct context after processing the entire query. Instead of processing one word at a time and not assigning substantial weight to words like “someone” in a specific context, BERT helps Google process each and every word in the query and assigns a token to them. This results in much more accurate search results. In another example, the query is “math practice book for adults” where the searcher is looking to buy math books for adults: Math practice Before BERT, Google returned results suggesting books for grades 6-8, which is incorrect. Google provided this answer because the description contains the phrase “young adult,” but in our context, “young adult” is irrelevant to the question: Practice before After BERT, Google is able to correctly discern the difference between “young adult” and “adult” and excludes results with out-of-context matches: After 2 Dive Deeper: How to Understand Searcher Intent and Use It to Boost SEO Rankings What Is Google NLP and How Does It Work? NLP stands for Natural Language Processing, which is a subset of artificial intelligence and consists of machine learning and linguistics (study of language). It's what makes communication between computers and humans in natural-sounding language possible. NLP is the technology behind such popular language applications as: • Google Translate • Microsoft Word • Grammarly • OK Google, Siri, Cortana and Alexa NLP is the framework that powers Google BERT. The Google natural language API consists of the following five services. 1) Syntax Analysis Google breaks down a query into individual words and extracts linguistic information for each of them. For example, the query “who is the father of science?” is broken down via syntax analysis into individual parts such as: • Who tag = pronoun • Is tag (singular present number) = singular • The tag = determiner • Father tag (noun number) = singular • Of tag = preposition • Science tag = noun 2) Sentiment Analysis Google’s sentiment analysis system assigns an emotional score to the query. Here are some examples of sentiment analysis: Sentiment Analysis Please note: The above values and examples are all taken randomly. This is done to make you understand the concept of sentiment analysis done by Google. The actual algorithm that Google uses is different and confidential. 3) Entity Analysis In this process, Google picks up “entities” from a query and generally uses Wikipedia as a database to find the entities in the query. For example, in the query “what is the age of selena gomez?”, Google detects “Selena Gomez” as the entity and returns a direct answer to the searcher from Wikipedia: Selena Gomez 4) Entity Sentiment Analysis Google goes a step further and identifies the sentiment in the overall document containing the entities. While processing web pages, Google assigns a sentiment score to each of the entities depending on how they are used in the document. The scoring is similar to the scoring done during sentiment analysis. 5) Text Classification Imagine having a large database of categories and subcategories like DMOZ (a multilingual open-content directory of World Wide Web links). When DMOZ was active, it classified a website into categories and subcategories and even more subcategories. This is what text classification does. Google matches the closest subcategory of web pages depending on the query entered by the user. For example, for a query like “design of a butterfly,” Google might identify different subcategories like “modern art,” “digital art,” “artistic design,” “illustration,” “architecture,” etc., and then choose the closest matching sub category. In the words of Google: To solve the problem of a shortage of training data, Google went a step further and designed Google AutoML Natural Language that allows users to create customized machine learning models. Google’s BERT model is an extension of the Google AutoML Natural Language. Please note: The Google BERT model understands the context of a webpage and presents the best documents to the searcher. Don’t think of BERT as a method to refine search queries; rather, it is also a way of understanding the context of the text contained in the web pages. Dive Deeper: The Effects of Natural Language Processing (NLP) on Digital Marketing Click here to download it for free right now! BERT is an open-source model and is an extension of the Google AutoML Natural Language as explained above. BERT is the method that will be used to optimize NLP for years to come. As Google suggests: BERT represents the new era of NLP and probably the best that has been created so far. Thang Luong, senior research scientist at Google Brain, tweeted this prior to the launch of BERT: BERT Helps Google Process Conversational Queries The Google BERT update (a component of Natural Language Processing) is aimed at processing conversational queries and, as the search engine giant says: “Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like ‘for' and ‘to' matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural for you.” Pre-trained language representation strategies such as ‘feature-based’ and ‘fine-tuning’ have shown to improve many natural language processing tasks: pasted image 0 37 BERT improves the “fine-tuning” language representation strategy. It alleviates the previously used unidirectionality constraint by using a newer “masked language model” (MLM) that randomly masks some of the words from the sentence and predicts the original vocabulary of words based only on its context. As suggested in this research paper by Google entitled “BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding”: “BERT is the first fine-tuning-based representation model that achieves state-of-the-art performance on a large suite of sentence-level and token-level tasks, outperforming many task-specific architectures…. [It] is conceptually simple and empirically powerful. It obtains new state-of-the-art results on eleven natural language processing tasks, including pushing the GLUE score to 80.5% (7.7% point absolute improvement), MultiNLI accuracy to 86.7% (4.6% absolute improvement), SQuAD v1.1 question answering Test F1 to 93.2 (1.5 point absolute improvement) and SQuAD v2.0 Test F1 to 83.1).” That’s a lot of technical language, but the essence is this: BERT is a powerful upgrade to the existing NLP algorithms that Google currently uses to process search queries in order to present the best results possible to the user. Click To Tweet BERT runs on 11 NLP tasks and improves the accuracy score of each of them thereby resulting in accurate search results. Dive Deeper: Transformers: The Real Power Behind Google BERT The core of the BERT functioning lies in a Transformer, which is a novel neural network architecture for language understanding. It outperforms all other previous processes of language modeling and machine translation. Google can now process words in a query using Transformers and as per Pandu Nayak, Google Fellow and Vice President of Search: In a research paper entitled “Attention Is all You Need,” it is proven that transformers outperform both recurrent and convolutional models on academic English-to-German and English-to-French translation benchmarks: pasted image 0 38 pasted image 0 39 BERT Is a Way to Understand Relationships Between Sentences The BERT model is aimed at understanding the relationships between sentences by pre-training on a very simple task generated using any text corpus (a collection of written material in machine-readable form, assembled for the purpose of linguistic research). As suggested by Google, given two sentences — A and B — is B the actual next sentence that comes after A in the corpus, or just a random sentence? For example: BERT adds an additional layer of artificial brain to Google’s architecture and is thus able to identify the relationship between sentences. It is now trained to think like a human and understands both the meaning and relationship between words in a sentence or a combination of sentences. Click here to download it for free right now! Dive Deeper: How Machine Learning Is Transforming Content Marketing Here are some of the most commonly asked questions about BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). When Did BERT Roll Out? BERT rolled out on October 24, 2019 as confirmed by Pandu Nayak (VP, Google Search) in this blog post. This roll out was for English language queries only. However, the roll out is still in progress for other languages like Korean, Hindi and Portuguese. What Effect Does Google BERT Have on My Website? Google has applied BERT to both ranking and featured snippets in search. It impacts one in ten searches in the U.S. in English. Hence, if your website is in English and you are targeting English-language queries, then BERT will certainly affect the organic presence of your website. BERT affects longer, more conversational queries where the context of the words in the query are hard to understand. If you are acquiring organic traffic to your website via long-tail searches, you need to keep a closer watch on them. Any changes in traffic from long-tail keywords might be due to the BERT algorithm. I suppose all websites have a certain percentage of traffic that is acquired via long-tail searches, so this traffic might be affected by the BERT update. However, BERT won’t affect your rankings for shorter and more important keywords. (Please note: Changes in organic traffic can be caused for a variety of reasons and BERT is just one such factor. A comprehensive content audit is required to identify the real reasons behind the decline in organic traffic. Don’t just assume that a change in organic traffic is only because of BERT.) Keep an eye on your Google Analytics and break down the percentage of organic traffic via pages. If traffic to certain pages has gone down after the third week of October, then that those pages might be affected by BERT. All you need to do is to ensure that your page accurately matches the search intent of the keywords you are looking to rank for. If you do that right, your website's organic traffic will remain safe from the effects of BERT. Is BERT an Extension of RankBrain? No. BERT and RankBrain are different. Google applies a combination of algorithms to understand the context of a query. For some queries, RankBrain might be applied while for others BERT would be given a priority. There might be some searches where both RankBrain and BERT would be applied together to present the best results to the user. Is BERT a Language Model? BERT is a method of pre-training language representations. Under BERT, a general purpose language model is used on a large text corpus (like the Knowledge Graph) to find answers to the questions of the user. How Exactly Does BERT Work? BERT is all about understanding the intent behind the search. By applying BERT, Google is able to understand the relationship between words in a query and present the closest matching result to the searcher. BERT’s core innovation lies in the application of a transformer, which is a popular attention model to language modeling. Before BERT, Google looked at the sequence of words in the query either from left to right or right to left. After BERT was applied, Google has trained its systems to look bidirectionally at the query. This means Google can now look at the query both ways (from the right or left in a single processing). Here's an example of bidirectional query processing: pasted image 0 40 In the example above, the context of the word “bank” is different in both sentences. In the first sentence it refers to a river bank, while in the second one it refers to a financial institution. In order to understand the real meaning of the word “bank” here, Google needs to process the context of the words before the word “bank” in the first query and after the word “bank” in the second query. This is what bidirectional query processing is. Google can process a query both ways depending on the context. BERT gives Google a deeper sense of language context and bidirectional flow than single-direction language models. This research paper discusses a novel technique called Masked LM (MLM), which is the core of BERT. The Masked LM allows bidirectional training in models, which had been impossible until now. I would recommend that you watch the video below to get a better understanding of how BERT works. This video is presented by Danny Luo, machine learning engineer at Dessa: Does BERT Apply to Other Language Queries (Apart from English)? Yes, it applies to other languages like Hindi, Korean, Portuguese and others. Google has applied BERT to twelve different countries but the rollout is completed for English searches only. In the coming months, BERT will continue to impact other language queries. Does BERT Process “Stop” Words? Certainly! Previously, Google would remove all the “stop” words from a query before processing it, but now it carefully considers all the stop words for understanding the context of the query. Stop words are short function words that used to be ignored by the search engines because they didn’t add any semantic value to the search. Some examples of stop words are the, on, atwhich, that, etc. But with updates like RankBrain and BERT, Google has gone a step further in understanding humans in the language that they are most comfortable with, not that machines are most comfortable with. Google’s motto of becoming the most accurate answer engine is closer than ever with the launch of BERT. How Can I Optimize for BERT? The only thing you can do is to ensure that the content on your pages matches the intent of the searcher. There is nothing special you can do to optimize for BERT. This is what Danny Sullivan, Google's public search liaison, tweeted: Google has always put special emphasis on GREAT content — and BERT is an extension of that. Prepare great content for your audience and your site will do well in search. Here are some ways to prepare GREAT content: • Write easy-to-read text. You can measure the readability scores of your content by using tools like Readable. This tool also calculates the Flesch-Kincaid readability scores. You must aim for a score of 8. pasted image 0 36 • Create original and error-free content. • Organize your topic clearly. • Add proper headings, subheadings and divide the content into proper paragraphs. • Keep the content accessible and actionable. • Avoid Zombie content, as it can hamper the quality of your web page. • Get rid of duplicate content and keep your content fresh. • Avoid cloaking in all forms. • Display author information clearly on your site because expertise is a great way to improve the trust score of your website. • Use links wisely and optimize your images. • Keep your site mobile-friendly. • Analyze user behavior on your site and continually take actions to improve your content. Dive Deeper: How Is BERT Different from Previous Models? BERT is a pre-training method that is applied on vast sets of data to refine the search query. The below figure shows the comparison of the BERT model with the earlier pre-training architecture models: pasted image 0 35 The arrows represent the flow of information from one layer to the other. The green boxes at the top represent the final output from every input word. As you can see from the above figure, BERT is deeply bidirectional while OpenAI GPT is unidirectional and ELMo is shallowly bidirectional. Is BERT 100% Accurate? No, BERT is not 100% accurate. For example, if you search for “what state is south of Nebraska,” BERT will guess that it is “South Nebraska” which is not accurate. Google is still learning and Rankbrain and BERT are examples of algorithms that are enabling Google to think like a human. We can expect newer and more improved versions of this algorithm soon. Dive Deeper: How to Write Content for People and Optimize It for Google Click here to download it for free right now! Learn More: How SEO Will Change in 2020…and You’re Not Going to Like It Final Thoughts Google BERT is one of the biggest updates that Google has launched in recent years. It has given users the power to search in natural language instead of using unnatural keywords to get the best results. Google is getting rid of “keywordese” and making search more human. As an SEO or a content marketer, there is nothing special you can do to optimize for BERT. If you have been following all the content guidelines suggested by Google and writing your content for the user, then BERT won’t disappoint you. It is only aimed at returning the best results to searchers after accurately understanding their intent. Write for us Contribute to our blog
Colombia's regional festivals are a source of pride and a celebration of the country's rich ethnic and cultural diversity, while the festivals and ferias make significant contribution to the local economy. The most famous of all Colombian festivals at home and abroad is without doubt the Barranquilla Carnaval. Carnavals were introduced to the Americas by the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers, and were later transformed into their current state by the former slave populations of the Caribbean, Pacific, and Atlantic coasts. The Carnaval has coexisting religious and pagan significance; the last opportunity for hedonistic behaviour and excess before lent begins, but also marking the onset of spring. The afro-Caribbean populations would go out in the streets with traditional instruments and costumes, dancing and singing. The first official carnival dates back over 100 years, when Barranquilla was just a small town, but the origins of such festivals are thought to be several centuries old. The celebrations were considered a rare and “tolerant" exception on the part of the feudalistic ruling class, to allow the afro-Colombian and former slave populations to indulge in their traditional dances and rituals. More than a century later, a study undertaken by Fedesarollo and the Barranquilla Chamber of Commerce, found that over $17.7 million was generated by the Carnaval in 2015, and that events required over 11,000 formal and informal employees. The Carnaval is made up three principal events: the Lectura del Bando, the Guacherna, and the Carnaval de Los Niños. The latter features five types of contest: Batalla de Flores—the grand opening and ceremony, which in true Colombian fashion is usually led by the Barranquilla Carnaval queen Cristina Felfle Fernández De Castro, who by the Camara de Comercio´s calculations participated in over 83 flag hoisting ceremonies, at over 90 different barrios across the city. There are also the contests of Desfile Carrera 44, Gran Parada de Tradición, Gran Parada de Fantasía y Desfile de la Calle 84 to consider. According to the district council of Barranquilla over 1.7 million spectators attended, of which 39,036 had previously bought tickets for the events. The number of visiting domestic and international tourists was approximately 53,000. Approximately 16 thousand came through the Airpot Ernesto Cortissoz, and a further 37,000 by road. The festival undoubtedly spurs the growth of creative industries such as design, music, fashion gastronomy, artesanías and crafts, not to mention photography and visual media. The establishments that benefit the most are those with ample space to dedicate such as hotels, transport and logistics organisations, and restaurants, which have a multiplier effect on other industries. Of course, the informal economy also plays its part, and sellers with limited resources seize the opportunity to open up their homes to passers by, selling traditional mondongo soup for, as well as foam and flowers, for launching at people. In fact, by all measurements the Barranquilla Carnaval 2015 was the grandest and most outrageous to date. More folkloric bands were registered than ever before, totalling 780, an increase of 40 over 2014, mostly performing cumbia and other traditional and Afro inspired music. Another interesting indicator of the growth and development of the Carnaval was the use of communications technology developed by its organisers; over 17,000 apps were downloaded, marking a YoY increase of 20%. Figures of the Chamber of Commerce indicate that the Carnaval is set to continue growing, both in its formal and informal elements. In fact, it has grown approximately 10% YoY for the past seven years, with an estimated increase in employment of 1.8%.
According to the FDA, generic drugs can be trusted to have the same quality, effectiveness, safety, and strength as brand-name medications. In the U.S., nine out of every ten prescriptions filled at a pharmacy are for generic drugs. It shouldn’t take a leap of faith to know that generic medications offer the same therapeutic benefits, at a consistently lower price. Pharmaceutical generic drugs contain the same chemical substances, or active ingredients, as the drug that was originally developed and protected by patents. Generic drugs are manufactured and sold after the patents on the original drugs expire. Multiple manufacturers lead to marketplace competition and ultimately lower costs for consumers. Why do doctors prescribe and hospitals use generic drugs? “We use a lot of generic drugs in the hospital,” said Scott Mecham, inpatient pharmacy director at Intermountain Dixie Regional Medical Center. “All pharmacies offer generic medications. Generics are highly regulated and the quality is the same as name-brand medications. Using generics helps keep the cost of healthcare lower than it would be if we were using brand-name drugs.” Are generic drugs as effective? “Generic drugs are highly effective,” said Mecham. “Generic medications are exactly the same as their original, brand-name counterparts in dosage, intended use, quality, safety, strength, and the same therapeutic effects. They also carry the same risks and side effects.” What is the difference between generic and brand-name drugs? The biggest difference is the price. Trademark laws ensure generic prescriptions cannot look the same as the brand-name drugs. Packaging, shape, flavor, and color may be different, but the mode of use (pill, inhaler, liquid, topical cream, etc.) is the same. The name of the generic medication will often be the same as the active ingredient in the original drug. Why are generic medications often cheaper? Generic drugs are usually cheaper because the manufacturer does not have to repeat the expensive tests and clinical trials that were required from the original brand-name medication. Generic manufacturers are still highly regulated by the U.S. FDA and produce quality prescription medication. Generics are held to the same testing standards for safety. Questions about medications? Generic or brand-name? “Pharmacists are great resources for learning about all medications,” said Mecham. “Pharmacists are also a great resource for helping prevent drug interactions. Contrary to popular belief, there is no all-encompassing database of shared patient prescription information. Try and find one single pharmacy to fill all your prescription needs for an added measure of confidence because then your pharmacist will know what other prescriptions you are taking.” Remember to ask your doctor for a generic option. “Generics are a great way to get effective therapy,” said Mecham. “And the cost is lower for most of these medications.” Read or Share this story:
American History 1921-1941 (Great Depression and World War II) Timeline created by BrysonCulver In History • 1,935 BCE Social Security Act Social Security Act passes Congress • 1920 Presidential Election Warren G. Harding is inaugurated as the 29th President of the United States March 4, 1921. • Treaty Signed With Austria and Germany Warren G. Harding Signs a peace treaty with Germany and Austria on July 2, 1921. • Teapot Dome Scandal The Teapot Dome Scandal is uncovered after the Senate launches and investigation concerning the improper leasing of Naval oil reserves. • Harding Dies Suddenly, Succeeded by Coolidge Warren G. Harding dies suddenly on August 2, 1923, and is succeeded by his Vice President Calvin Coolidge, who becomes the 30th President of the United States • 1924 Presidential Election Calvin Coolidge is reelected as President of the United States in 1924. • Scopes' "Monkey Trial" Scopes is tried an convicted for directly breaking Tennessee law and teaching Evolution at school. • Evolution Outlawed in Tennessee Schools Tennessee passes a law that outlaws the teaching of the theory of evolution in Tennessee school systems. • 1928 Presidential Election Herbert Hoover defeated Al Smith to become the 31st President of the United States. • Stock Market Crashes The stock market crashes causing ensuing panic as banks fail. This will eventually be counted as one of the factors that caused the Great Depression. • 1932 Presidential Election Franklin Roosevelt (FDR) takes a sweeping victory over Hoover to claim the title of the 32nd President of the United States • New Deal President Roosevelt begins passing legislation for his New Deal" • The Twentieth Amendment The Twentieth Amendment of the Constitution is ratified by Congress moving the date of a President's inauguration from March 4rd, to January 20th. • Twenty First Amendment Twenty First Amendment of the Constitution is ratified repealing the prohibition on the United States. • Works Progress Administration Works Progress Administration is established on April 08, 1935. • 1936 Presidential Election Roosevelt beats Alf Landon to become reelected as President of the United States • Fair Labor Standards Act Fair Labor Standards Act is passed on June 25, 1938, setting up America's first Minimum Wage at 25 cents an hour. • America Neutral The Untied States declares its neutrality in European conflict on September 5, 1939. • 1940 Presidential Election Roosevelt defeats Wendell Willkie to gain a third term in office as President of the United States. • Pearl Harbor Japan Attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, causing the United States to declare war on Japan the next day (December 8). • Germany and Italy Declare War on U.S. Germany and Italy declare war on the United States on December 11, 1941, and the U.S. in turn declares war on them.
DDC Chief Suwannachai Wattanayingcharoenchai said the team would start fogging mosquitoes in targeted areas this week. In addition, local authorities would provide mosquito nets to communities as well as launching a major clean-up to eradicate water-clogged spots, known as breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Chikungunya is a viral disease transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes.(Photo: bangkokpost.com) The move came after DDC declared the district as high-risk after the Singaporeans tested positive for Chikungunya disease. They had visited a community in the district then developed fever, headache, body pain and vomiting. They were treated in a hospital and returned home after that. According to DDC’s statistics, more than 3,500 cases of Chikungunya, with zero deaths, have been reported so far this year. Most patients are aged 25-34 years, followed by 15-24 and 35-44. The disease can affect all ages with symptoms of skin rash and itches. After the bite of an infected mosquito, onset of illness occurs usually between 4 and 8 days but can range from 2 to 12 days. The joint pain is often very debilitating, but usually ends within a few days or weeks. Most patients recover fully, but in some cases joint pain may persist for several months, or even years. There is no antidote, but treatment is prescribed to deal with each symptom until the body builds up immunity. Chikungunya was first identified in Tanzania in the early 1952 and has caused periodic outbreaks in Asia and Africa since the 1960s./.
Home > Exhibition > Content Application of horizontal screw decanter centrifuge and its working principle and parameters Jun 26, 2019 Horizontal screw decanter centrifugee, which may be called horizontal screw decanter centrifuge, is a specific type of centrifuge, and it is used in some industries and fields, so it needs to be familiar and understood. How to use it correctly and reasonably, to make full use of the product and avoid waste. 1. Application industry and application range of horizontal screw decanter centrifuge Food industry: slag removal in juice production, de-soy of soy protein, dehydration of peanut protein, scouring of animal and vegetable oils, and dehydration of fishmeal and bone glue. Petrochemical industry: grading of older soils, grading of drilled mud, clarification of sulphuric acid, clarification of coal tar, and dehydration of dyes and barium sulphate. Environmental protection industry: industrial abrasives, wine tanks, power plant sludge, dewatering of paper mill sludge, beer industry wastewater and steel smelting wastewater treatment. 2. Working principle of horizontal screw decanter centrifuge The working principle of the horizontal screw decanter centrifugeis specifically: when the mixed liquid to be separated enters the centrifuge drum, the solid phase particles with a larger specific gravity in the mixed liquid are deposited on the rotating drum under the action of centrifugal force. On the inner wall, the solid phase particles are scraped off and exited from the slag discharge port by a spiral blade that moves relative to the drum, and the supernatant liquid obtained after the separation flows out of the drum through the opening of the raft, thereby achieving solid-liquid separation. In this type of centrifuge, the relative movement between the screw and the drum is realized by a differential, the outer casing of the differential is connected to the drum, the output shaft is connected to the screw, and the input shaft and the secondary motor are connected. connection. Therefore, while the main motor electric drum rotates, it also drives the rotation of the differential housing, and drives the planetary gear to operate, and transmits the torque to the spiral according to a certain ratio, so as to achieve continuous separation of materials. 3. Working parameters of horizontal screw decanter centrifuge Horizontal screw decanter centrifuge This kind of centrifuge has corresponding working parameters, and the user can determine the appropriate parameters according to the material properties of the suspension, the liquid phase and solid phase requirements after separation, and the processing capacity of the centrifuge. The value is to ensure that the centrifuge has good use and quality of work. In the specific working parameters, there are such parameters as the processing volume, the rotating drum speed, the difference between the rotating drum and the spiral, and the diameter of the overflow plate. After determining the appropriate value, the centrifuge can have a good separation effect. www.bscentrifuges.com
Definitions for "Base On Balls" Keywords: batter, pitched, pitcher, walk, strike When a batter is awarded first base as a result of four balls being pitched outside the strike zone. an award of first base granted to a batter who, during his time at bat, receives four pitches outside the strike zone
Definitions for "Contents" The internals of any book, the printed pages themselves. household goods, clothing, furniture and equipment which you own or are legally responsible for. Machinery, plant, fixtures, fittings, business equipment, business furniture and tools of trade; The insured's personal property, such as furniture, appliances, clothes, jewelry and bikes. Keywords: tabor, pane, dialog, topics, list In a Help dialog, the tabor pane with the list of topics. Listing of what an issue or volume contains. Maintenance Necessary measures to keep the vessel in operating condition. See "Seaman's Rights and Remedies." Generally moveable and transportable property contained within the structure or vehicle that sustained loss from a covered peril. (See also, Personal Property.) International Canada United States United Kingdom France China Carriage of goods by sea Previous - Next Glossary The following is a set of definitions of technical terms used in this handbook Keywords: tab, clicked, once, feature, displays One of the tabs as part of the Access help features. Once clicked this tab displays the contents of the Access help feature. Keywords: slots, clipping, object, path, pasted Objects pasted inside a clipping path. 1. (of a collection) The elements of the collection. 2. (of an object) The values stored in the object's slots. In an automobile policy, it is described, as the personal effects of a person not permanently attached to the automobile. Personal property generally used and stored within a structure. Keywords: see See Content, n. 0.16 + £0.30 pp K, L \| \| \| \| P, Q \| \| \| \| U, V, W , Y
Neck & Arm Pain You have successfully answered the question of what is hurting and now are probably wondering why it is hurting. But before we move on to the complex mechanisms of nerve pinching and radiculopathy, we should know some basics about the spinal column. The Spinal Column is a group of 33 bones which are called vertebrae. These bones are irregular in shape and have elastic disks present between them to help them support weight. These disks are the reason you can freely bend your neck. Since we are interested in the neck region, also called “cervical” region, we will focus only on the 7 bones present. The spinal chord passes through these bones from behind the elastic disk we mentioned above. Now, the spinal chord gives out nerves from inside the vertebrae and these nerves exit the bone by passing between two successive vertebrae. The nerves that exit this spinal chord in the neck are the ones that supply your hand and if there is too much pressure on them, it can cause pain in the neck and the arm. You could watch the video alongside to know more about the spine. Comments are closed. Book Online Consultation
Kit: Cloaks In Roman times among the German tribes, Tacitus tells us "the clothing for everyone is the cloak… they spend whole days at the fire by the hearth in nothing else". In Wychwood we normally wear some other clothes as well, or else people complain. But cloaks are still a very useful piece of kit, which keep you warm in evenings, dry in the rain, and can also be used as blankets. In historical sources, people do not seem to have normally worn their cloaks whilst fighting or doing physical exercise. Rectangular Cloaks The most popular type of cloak was normally known as the feldr. These were made out of rectangles (or squares) of material, pinned at the right shoulder so they cover the left side of the body. Rectangular cloaks can be 160 to 275 cms wide, and 80 to 160 cms long. Cloaks can be pictured as floor-length (this is particularly common in Viking sources) or as about the length as a tunic (which is particularly common in Saxon illustrated manuscripts and the Bayeux Tapestry). Semi-Circular Cloaks Semi-circular cloaks also existed. These can be pinned at the shoulder like rectangular cloaks, or worn as a slæðr. A slæðr is roughly equivalent to a priest's cope and is a large semicircle of cloth reaching from shoulder to floor (up to 345cm!) and sometimes fastened by two brooches, one at each shoulder. The slæðr can be worn by men or women and some were extremely posh (silk ones with elaborate decoration are described as gifts in several sagas). It is particularly common as a train for Viking women, attached to the two brooches on the front of the hangerock. The hekla is a particular style of cloak often worn by people who are disguised, like Odin when he is appearing as a mysterious walker. It is probably something similar to a poncho, priest's chasuble or a roman paenula. Legio XX have a page which explains what a paenula is and how to make one. Hooded cloaks Some people wearing cloaks are described as hooded. These may refer to attached hoods (as shown on the paenula page), or to hoods made simply from the excess folds of material in a cloak, or to seperate hoods.
Medical training in the United States before the Civil War usually lasted for two years or less. During the training, the doctors-to–be would receive no practical clinical experience, and no laboratory instructions. At the start of the Civil War, the US Army medical staff was made up of a surgeon general, 30 surgeons, and 83 assistant surgeons. By the time the war ended, an excess of 11,000 doctors had attended to people on the battlefield. Many doctors had poor training if any, and a good percentage of them were political appointees. The Northern army had the largest number of surgeons, but most of them learned to perform surgeries for the first time on the battlefield. It is estimated that the doctors treated approximately 10 million people in just four. Medical innovations and improvement that occurred during the civil war include the medical ambulance, the use of anesthesia during surgical operations, and the invention of new surgical procedures necessitated by the nature of the battlefield injuries. The development of pharmaceutical science was also brought about by the pressures of giving the injured men mass-produced medicine. Overall, the civil war spurred an improvement in medical care and medicine.
The Power of Empathetic Leadership On the evening of June 3, 2017, a van was driven into a crowd of people walking across London Bridge. Eight people were killed, 48 people were injured. The three men in the van were all killed. This attack came less than two weeks after 23 people were killed and 119 people were injured at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena. In less than 14 days, England was struck twice by terrorist attacks. A total of 31 people were killed and 167 people were injured, many of them seriously. Less than 48 hours after the London Bridge attack, United States President Donald Trump Tweeted criticism of how the mayor of London responded to the attack: After two brutal attacks in England, President Trump thought that more should be done to prevent further attacks, and that the citizens of London should, in fact, be alarmed. They should be doing everything they can to prevent further attacks, and the mayor was wrong (in President Trump’s opinion) to suggest anything less. Today as I write this, it is June 14th, 2017, only 11 days after the second attack. What must it like to be in England right now? What causes alarm and concern on a crowded street? How do people react when they hear an unexpected, loud noise? How do parents talk to their children about being safe, vigilant and caring? In the hours after the London Bridge attack when the city was still scared, still trying to figure out exactly what happened, when people may have still been trying to learn if their loved ones were alive or not, I wish President Trump had shown empathy rather than anger and indignation. Empathy, though, can be difficult. In order to be empathetic, we need to put aside our own feelings, interests and opinions, and imagine we in the shoes of someone else. What are their concerns? Their interests, their fears? What do they want? Practicing a little empathy myself, I imagine that President Trump saw what happened in London, and didn’t want the same thing happening in the United States. I imagine he wanted to assure American citizens that he would react to a similar attack with strength, power and decisiveness. I also imagine he wanted to use the events in London as an opportunity to forward his own agenda of banning citizens of Muslim countries from entering the United States. However, if President Trump had taken the time to exercise empathy, I like to think he would have recognized that Mayor Khan, seeing his city lost in chaos and fear, realized the very best thing he could do was to help make the people of London feel a little bit safer, and little bit more calm. More police were being deployed throughout the city, and Mayor Khan wanted the people of London to know he and his government was doing everything they could do to keep everyone safe. When we are truly being empathetic, we are taking the time to consider another person’s point of view. Whether you are Tweeting about world affairs, or making a Facebook post about a party you just attended, take a moment to ask yourself what is the situation of the other person? Are they happy? Proud? Scared? Suspicious? Eager? Though we can never guarantee to accurately guess what someone else may be thinking, we can use our experiences and what we know about the other person to make a pretty good guess. When we are in someone else’s shoes, we are on the “other” side. We can see things we did not see before. There is newfound transparency, and we can see a perspective and truth we could have never seen before. Maybe we even sacrifice a bit of our own interest as empathy puts the interests and concerns of another person before your own. For instance, if President Trump imagined he was in Mayor Khan’s position, he may have instead Tweeted: Or, if President Trump still wanted to forward his own agenda while being empathetic, he could have Tweeted: When we are empathetic, we are communicating with generosity and transparency. We break down walls because we can imagine how other people feel, and we find ourselves sharing their hopes and concerns. When our leaders are empathetic, the benefits extend to larger groups, like departments, teams, cities, states and countries. Actions and words have real power and impact. Let those words be words of empathy. *The first Tweet shown above was posted by Donald Trump on June 5th, 2017. The 2nd and third Tweets are fake, which I produced on Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Google photo Twitter picture Facebook photo Connecting to %s
On June 17, the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought, look at your lifestyle choices and act to keep the land healthy and make development sustainable Correct consumer choices can hold desertification at bay (Photo by Simon Steinberger) Are you overwhelmed by the depressing news coming at you daily? Conflict, forced migrants, famine, floods, hurricanes, extinction of species, climate change, threats of war — it’s a seemingly endless list. It might surprise you, but you can really make a difference on many of these issues. Just like every raindrop counts towards a river and every vote counts in an election, so does every choice you make in what you consume. With every produce you consume, you strengthen the river of sustainability or of unsustainability. It is either a vote in favour of policies that spread social goods like peace and poverty eradication or social evils like conflict or grinding poverty. We look up to governments a lot, forgetting that governments set up policies to encourage us to make specific choices. That’s how powerful our lifestyles choices are. Imagine, what would happen if the world’s over seven billion consumers committed, every year, to just one lifestyle change that will support the provision of goods from sustainably managed land. This is essential, because land degradation and drought are closely linked. Read: Recurring droughts are clear and present dangers Every year, we make New Year resolutions about change. Why not include, as one of those resolutions, a change of habit that will lead to a smart sustainable consumer lifestyle? Without any government intervention, you can make choices that will help to end deforestation, soil erosion and pollution or reduce the effects of drought or sand and dust storms. However, to make the right lifestyle change, each of us must first find out where the goods we consume are cultivated and processed. For instance, if they are linked to conflict in regions with rapidly degrading land or forests or polluted water or soils, then choose an alternative that is produced sustainably. It is a small and achievable change that can add up to a major impact. Land footprint Every country and product has a land footprint. What we eat. What we wear. What we drink; the manufacturer and supplier of the products we consume; the brands related to these suppliers that we would support. We can prioritise buying from the local small farm holders to reduce our global land footprint. Consumers have plenty of options. But a vital missing link is the informed consumer. Through mobile phone apps, it is getting easier to track where the goods we consume come from. For instance, for information on how to track your land footprint, go to Fixing what the land is losing between the farm and your fork. It is also getting easier to find alternative suppliers of our choice, as the private sector embraces the idea of ethical business. The information you need is literally in your mobile phone. But you must believe in your own power to change the world. The global effect on the market may surprise you. You will reward the food producers, natural resource managers and land planners struggling against all odds to keep the land healthy and productive. This is the cheapest way to help every family and community in the world to thrive, and avoid the damage and loss of life that comes from environmental degradation and disasters. Make June 17, the celebration of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought (2018 WDCD), your date with nature. It’s near the mid-point of the year and a good moment to review the progress you are making towards your New Year resolution of a sustainable lifestyle. In 2030, when the international community evaluates its achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, you can point to positive changes that you have contributed in favour of present and future generations. You are more powerful than you think. Take your power back and put it into action. Monique Barbut is Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification Share This
Skip to main content Physics LibreTexts 7.4: Designing Molecular Membranes Models with VMD • Page ID • Introduction While modern experimental techniques are able to resolve membrane-bound protein function, structural determination is still a challenge. To provide insight into the behavior of membranes and the proteins residing within them, computational biologists utilize molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Since the early 2000’s there has been a remarkable increase in the number of computational methods, software, and visualization aids, reinforcing the need for MD [Ref. 1]. This tutorial is for users to become familiar with producing and visualizing atomistic membranes for MD simulations. This tutorial will use Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD), a molecular visualization program of large biomolecular systems, to visualize membrane models. Additionally, the tutorial will discuss how CHARMM-GUI, a molecular systems generation web interface, can be used to build membrane models. Completion of this tutorial will allow the user to: 1. Design, visualize, and select certain lipid sections using the VMD command interface. 2. Visualize homogenous phosphatidylethanolamine ( POPE) and phosphatidylcholine (POPC) membranes using VMD’s MembraneBuilder extension tool. 3. Create solvated, heterogenous lipid membrane models using the CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder extension tool. This tutorial uses a Linux 64 version of VMD (ver. 1.9.3 OpenGL). Other system downloads can be found here: [Ref. 2]. Other versions may result in an inexact rendition of the tutorial, however, the concepts remain valid and should be practiced. Experimentation is encouraged. The CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder extension can be found here: [Ref. 3-8]. Note: text in italics indicates verbatim text/tools/commands that can be found/typed on your screen when going through the tutorials. User exercises are also indicated in italics. Figure references are highlighted in bold to indicate helpful visuals. 1. Basic VMD visualization of POPE The Protein Data Bank (PDB) is the largest online repository containing more than 150,000 three-dimensional biological structures to date [Ref. 9-11]. Computational biologists frequently use the PDB as a starting point for their molecular models, either implementing existing PDB structures (as .pdb file formats) or formatting their own PDB template for molecular dynamics (MD). However, most PDB files do not contain membrane structure components; computational biologists typically design their own membranes and insert protein structures within them. Thus, this section is an introduction for new users on how to navigate Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) software before building membranes. This section will use the lipid phosphatidylethanolamine (POPE) as the example structure. For a review on lipid types and their properties, visit the BPH 241 Lipids webpage: 1.1. Contents of a .pdb file and loading the POPE model Phosphatidylethanolamine ( POPE) is a glycerophospholipid and one of the most abundant lipid types in bacteria. In the downloadable files section (bottom of page), you will find the file 1.1_single_POPE.pdb. A .pdb file is a Protein Data Bank file containing all of the experimental and three-dimensional coordinate information needed to visualize the biomolecule (Fig. 1.1). More information on .pdb files and their syntax can be found here: [Ref. 12-13]. Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.1. Example text from a .pdb file. 1)The REMARK section is for user comments. 2) The ATOM section contains coordinate and atom type information. 3) The index (serial number) of each atom. Note while PDB files start at 1, the index for VMD starts at 0. 4) The atom name. 5) The residue/molecule name 6) The residue/molecule sequence number. 7) The orthogonal X, Y, and Z coordinates in Angstroms. 8) The occupancy. 9) The temperature factor. 10) Unread information stating that this is part of a membrane. Further explanation of .pdb syntax can be found in [Ref. 12]. After downloading the VMD software, redirect to the VMD folder and open the README file for installation instructions. In addition to installation, Linux users will have to add a VMD path to their .bashrc file to call from the terminal. On the last line of your .bashrc file, add export PATH=/type/your/directory/here/vmd:$PATH (Fig. 1.2). Now, the keyword vmd can be typed in the Linux terminal to launch VMD. Note: Some Linux distributions, Windows, and Mac devices as well as VMD software distributions may differ; always read the README file for the best installation guidance. Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.2. An example of adding VMD to your .bashrc file, located in your home directory. After launching VMD, you will see two windows: the VMD Main and the VMD Display. The VMD Main window contains the executable commands and options to manipulate the molecule on the VMD Display. Next, from the VMD main window, load the single_POPE.pdb file using File → New Molecule... A new window called the Molecule File Browser will appear. From here, click Browse and navigate to the folder containing single_POPE.pdb. After selecting, click Load in the Molecule File Browser window to load the POPE molecule to the VMD Display (Fig. 1.3). Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.3. How to load a PDB file. 1) The VMD main window contains all commands and options for manipulating models. To create a new session, click File → New Molecule... 2) In the Molecule File Browser, files can be selected with the Browse button. Once a file is selected the Molecule File Browser will determine the file type. A file is loaded by clicking the Load button. 3) Once a file is loaded, it will appear in the VMD Display window. In this example, a single POPE molecule is displayed as lines. 1.2 Basic VMD visualization features: orientation, rotation, and representation The VMD Display has two primary mouse manipulation modes: rotate (press r on keyboard) and translate (press t on keyboard). More mouse mode commands can be found here: [Ref. 14-15]. For rotate mode, the following mouse commands are: • Left click and hold = free three-dimensional rotation • Right click hold = rotation parallel to computer screen • Mouse wheel = zoom in/out of center For translate mode, the following mouse commands are: • Left click and hold = translate molecule parallel to computer screen • Right click and hold mouse wheel = zoom in/out of center On the VMD Display, you should see the Lines representation of a POPE molecule; Lines representation is when atom types are represented by colored lines indicating the element type. In this model, the colors for each element are: • cyan = carbon • white = hydrogen • red = oxygen • orange = phosphorous • blue = nitrogen The Lines representation is helpful to visualize the entire molecule, but there are other representations that can be used. From the VMD Main, go to Graphic → Representations… A new window called Graphical Representations will appear (Fig. 1.4). Here you will see a selected molecule tab where you can visualize different molecules. You will also see Draw style, Selections, Trajectory, and Periodic tabs that tweak the visual representation of each molecule. Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.4. The Graphical Representations tab allows you to modify the visual representation of your model. 1) Select a molecule for editing. 2) Create representations of the selected molecule. This is useful for representing the same model in different graphical styles. 3) A window of all created representations. Highlight a representation to enable it for editing. 4) A command window that can be used to select specific parts of an atom for visualization. 5) The tab selection menu with the Draw Style tab open. The Draw Style tab controls visual representation of the model. The Selections tab allows precise selection of specific atoms within the model. The Trajectory tab controls animation features while the Periodic tab controls periodic image display; both will not be discussed in this tutorial but are explained in the VMD User's Guide [Ref. 15]. 6) All controls in the Draw Styles tab; the Coloring Method controls how atoms are colored, the Drawing Method how the model is drawn, the Material method how the model is shaded, and the Thickness controlling the model line thickness. Other options may appear as different Drawing Methods are selected. 7) Once a graphical representation is complete, changes must be applied and can be toggled to apply automatically. Focus on the Draw style tab. In it, you can change the Coloring Method, the Drawing Method, the Material shading, and the Thickness of representation. Change the Thickness of the line from 1 to 5. It should be easier now to visualize the molecule. Reset the Thickness to 1. In the Drawing Method selection pane you will find different molecule visualization schema. Some common styles are Lines, VDW, and CPK (Fig. 1.5), however there are other styles available (Table 1.1). The Lines style is the oldest style which uses lines as bonds and points as atoms. The VDW is a Van der Waals style and is a helpful space-filling representation. The CPK style can be thought of as a combination of Lines and VDW by providing scaled atoms as spheres linked by cylindrical bonds. In the Coloring Method selection pane you will find different coloring schemes depending on atom typing, molecule collection, residue ID, and some physical properties. The effectiveness of these schemes will be dependent on your .pdb file parameters. For now, the single_POPE.pdb file is only useful with the Name method. Experiment with the various drawing/coloring methods. Afterwards, reset the molecule with Coloring Method: Name and Drawing Method: CPK. Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.5. POPE visualization using (Left) Lines, (Middle) Van Der Waals, and (Right) CPK draw styles. The Lines style is useful for understanding structure, the VDW style for space-filling, and the CPK style as a mixed style utilizing both Lines structure and CPK space-filling. Table 1.1. Molecular draw styles from VMD User's Guide Version 1.9.3 [Ref. 15] 1.3. Identification of atom types To label specific atoms, go to the VMD Main window and select Mouse → Label → Atoms. Clicking on an atom will show the molecule name followed by the atom name. From the color scheme, label the phosphorous atom followed by the nitrogen. To manage the labels, go to the VMD Main window and select Graphics → Labels… Here you can find a collection of the labels you have made. You can click on each label and show, hide, delete, and reposition them in the VMD Display (Fig. 1.6). For example, select the POPE1:P (the phosphorous) atom label. Under the Picked Atom tab you will find the naming information (ResName, ResID, etc). In the Properties tab you can drag the crosshair in the Offset chart to reorient the label. In the Global Properties tab you can adjust your text size and thickness. In addition to visualizing atom labels, you can visualize bond lengths and angles. Again, from the VMD Main window, select Mouse → Label → Bonds. To visualize a bond length or distance between atoms, you must click on the two atoms you are interested in measuring from. You can find the labeled distances from Graphics → Label in the VMD Main window. Similarly, you can calculate angles by clicking on three atoms (Fig. 1.7). It is important to note that VMD cannot display double bonds since the .pdb file does not contain bond information. Indeed, PDB files contain coordinate information only. VMD compensates for this by using a distance measure algorithm to determine which atoms are bonded. Protein Structure Files can also be used to explicitly state bonding information but are beyond the scope of this tutorial. Therefore, an intuitive understanding is sometimes needed for the viewer to fully understand the model. Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.6. The labels window where you can identify atom naming schema and adjust visual labels. 1) Select between atoms, bonds, angles, dihedrals, and springs labeling. 2) The selection of atoms currently labeled. Those shown on the VMD Display are in black text while hidden labels are shown in red text. 3) The Tab selection menu. 4) The Picked Atom tab displays coordinate and naming information of the selected atom. 5) The Graph tab plots data for the selected labels and will not be discussed in this tutorial. 6) The Properties tab allows the user to move the label Offset portrayed on the VMD Display as well as rename the label Format. 7) The Global Properties tab allows adjustments to label Text Size and Thickness. Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.7. A POPE molecule demonstrating: 1) The atom label of a phosphorous atom "POPE1:P". 2) The atom distance between two hydrogen atoms as 2.03 Angstroms. 3) The angle between a carbon atom and two of its hydrogen bonding partners as 105.48 degrees. Exercises (section 1.3) Exercise 1.1: Identify one atom of each element: Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorous. Rearrange each label so that they are all visible while clearly indicating the atom. Exercise 1.2: How many double bonds are there in POPE? Where would you expect double bonds? 1.4. Advanced selection of specific regions As you create more complex models you’ll want to be able to specify a viewing region. This can be done by using the Graphical Representations window (Fig. 1.4). Again, from the VMD Main, select Graphics → Representations… to open the Graphical Representations window. First, create a new representation of the selected molecule by clicking Create Rep. In the representation box you’ll now see two representations. By double-clicking you can hide the representation; hidden representations are in red text while visible representations in black text. Highlight the visible representation to enable it for editing. In the selected atoms box, you can utilize certain keywords to enable or disable parts of your model. You can even use more complex strings as well as boolean or numeric values to specify your selection criteria; VMD's expression system is based on PERL (a computing language) syntax. Examples of these regular expressions can be found in section 6.3 of the VMD User's Guide [Ref. 15]. Back in the Labels window (Graphics → Label) you may have noticed certain labels having type information in the Picked Atom tab (Fig. 1.6). Keywords such as ResName, ResID, Name, Type, Chain, SegName, and Index can be used to specify a selection (Table 1.2); descriptions of all keywords can be found in section 5.48 of the VMD User's Guide [Ref. 15]. For now, since there is only one POPE molecule labeled as ResName: POPE and specified as Chain: X, sort through the atom types for practice. To visualize all carbon atoms, use a regular expression such as (Fig. 1.8): • name “C.” where the C represents the canonical carbon atom naming convention and the . indicates any carbon atoms in the model. In an expression, this example means to search for anything classified as a name that starts with C. Another way to visualize carbon only atoms is by typing: • not name “O.” and not name “P.” and not name “H.” and not name “N.” Your representation should not have changed as you’ll only see carbon atom types. In more complex models, you can specify single molecule chains or even molecule types: • resname POPE • chain X In both of these cases you should see the entire phosphatidylethanolamine ( POPE) molecule. More selection expressions can be found in Chapter 6.3 of the VMD 1.9.3 User's Guide [Ref. 15] Table 1.2. Examples of commonly found keywords for selection of specific model regions. Argument identifiers are: str=string and num=number. More information on other keywords can be found in [Ref. 15]. Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.8. Understanding atom selection. 1) A window of all created representations. Highlight a representation to enable it for editing. Red text indicates hidden representations. 2) Expressions can be input in the Selected Atoms command window. In this example, only carbon atoms are being selected. More examples can be found in the VMD User's Guide [Ref. 15]. 3) VMD provides a list of all expressions that can be used to specify selections. 4) An example of all POPE carbon atoms displayed from the input (name "C.*"). Exercises (section 1.4) Exercise 1.3. Visualize all atoms but carbon in the single_POPE.pdb file. Exercise 1.4. Using the index notation, visualize the polar head group. Hint: index notation for VMD starts at zero. 1.5 Saving and loading your session From VMD Main, select File → Save Visualization State… Here you can specify which folder and what file name you would like using traditional file path syntax: user/home/my_folder/my_file_name.vmd Make sure you save as a .vmd or you will be unable to load the file! If you forget, rename your file so that you include the .vmd file type. To load your session, start VMD and from VMD Main select File → Load Visualization State… Note: File → New Molecule… is for importing new molecule file types only. It is better to use the Load Visualization State if you want to preserve your model representation settings (Fig. 1.9). Figure $\PageIndex{1}$.9. Saving and loading sessions. 1) To save a session, navigate to File → Save Visualization State… 2) The save window will appear. VMD sessions are saved as .vmd files. 3) To load a session, navigate to File → Load Visualization State… 4) The load window will appear. Load a .vmd file to resume a session. 2. Homogenous membranes using VMD’s MembraneBuilder tool The purpose of the Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) MembraneBuilder tool is to generate a membrane model surrounded by water which a protein can then be placed into. This complete lipid/protein/water model can then be used to run molecular dynamics simulations after generation of force field components and simulation parameters; a review on force fields can be found at [Ref. 16]. For this tutorial, the MembraneBuilder tool extends our interpretation of individual phosphatidylethanolamine ( POPE) molecules to a homogenous POPE membrane. Unfortunately, the MembraneBuilder tool can 1) only generate homogenous POPE and phosphatidylcholine (POPC) membranes and 2) generate only water surrounding molecules. For more information on how MembraneBuilder executes its algorithm, visit here: [Ref. 17]. For homogenous or heterogeneous membranes with the option of ion solvation, skip this section and proceed to Section 3 which uses the CHARMM-GUI interface to generate membranes. 2.1 Generate a POPE membrane From VMD Main, select Extensions → Modeling → Membrane Builder to open the Membrane window. In this window, select phosphatidylethanolamine (POPE) as the lipid, and generate a 50x50 Angstrom2 area. Change the output prefix to POPE_membrane. The topology section provides two CHARMM force fields that can be used: CHARMM27 and CHARMM36. Generally, CHARMM27 is for nucleic acids and lipids while CHARMM36 is for proteins and lipids; CHARMM36 is noted to have superior lipid parameters and thus should be used for most membrane biology models [Ref. 18]. After selecting CHARMM36 (c36), click Generate Membrane. You should now see a POPE membrane that is 50x50 Angstrom2 with the leaflets surrounded by water. You will also note some patterns of randomness and discontinuity; perfect membranes are physiologically impossible thus stochasticity (randomness) is modeled. Visualize the membrane using a CPK Drawing Method as described in Section 1.2 (Fig. 2.1). Figure $\PageIndex{2}$.1. Designing a membrane with MembraneBuilder. 1) Access the MembraneBuilder window from the Extensions menu. 2) The Membrane window allows users to generate a specific area (in Angstroms) of membrane. The membrane options are POPE and POPC with generation force fields using either CHARMM27 (c27) or CHARMM36 (c36) 3) A side view of the generated POPE membrane with surrounding water from the tutorial instructions. Next, verify the generated membrane x-y length. From the Graphical Representations window (Fig. 1.4), remove the water by typing in the Selected Atoms text box: • not water In the VMD Main, select Mouse → Label → bonds. Using the x-, y-, and z-planes, take 5 rough measurements and record the average; a review on how to do this is in Section 1.3. You’ll notice that the membrane area will be less than 50 Angstrom2 (around 45 Angstrom2 average). This is likely due to the close packing arrangement performed after initial generation of the model. You can save these models as discussed in Section 1.5 or save the membrane as a PDB coordinate file. From the VMD Main, File → Save Coordinates… will open a Save Trajectory window where you can select the molecule, atoms, and file format you wish to save as. Exercises (section 2.1) Exercise 2.1. Take an average of 5 measurements to determine the thickness of the membrane bilayer. Does this match experimental values? Section 1.3 describes how to measure distances. Exercise 2.2. Take an average of 5 measurements to determine the water thickness. Why does the model need water? Should thickness be lower? Should thickness be higher? 3. Heterogeneous membrane building using CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder The CHARRM (Chemistry at HARvard Macromolecular Mechanics) force field was initially developed for proteins and nucleic acids but has since been extended to feature a robust set of lipid types [Ref. 19-20]. The most recent force field, CHARMM36, supports proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, lipids, and small molecules [Ref. 21]. CHARMM-GUI is an online graphical user interface that allows the generation of multiple MD models and preliminary input files for the start of simulation [Ref. 4-8]. This section will cover the Membrane Builder tool that allows users to develop membrane models with the option of including protein complexes. For this tutorial, only the bilayer builder section, without protein insertion, and without preliminary simulation building will be discussed. While there are other membrane building options, the bilayer builder is the simplest all-atom tool to work through for beginners. Alternatively, some membrane building tools do not utilize all-atom modeling; for an alternative atom modeling schema see Course Grained Simulations: Note : should you want to try protein-membrane model building in the future, make sure your protein PDB has the correct orientation relative to the membrane or you will improperly insert your protein. Improper protein insertion will result in simulations not reflecting real-life predictions since the protein is not in a physiological state. A tutorial on protein insertion can be found here: [Ref. 22]. 3.1. Determine lipid components, size, and solvation Click on the following link to reach the CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder Bilayer Builder webpage: [Ref. 3]. Scroll down to find a brief explanation of the workflow, an option to include a Protein Data Bank (.pdb) file, and an option to generate a membrane only system. Click the Membrane Only System to be redirected to the System Size Determination Options page (Fig. 3.1). Figure $\PageIndex{3}$.1. The start of the CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder webpage. 1) An option to create a protein/membrane system with a .pdb is provided. 2) For this tutorial, select "Membrane Only System." For this tutorial, users will recreate a model that has been used to study the effects of lipid tail saturation [Ref. 6]. The model is the CPRΔ1 model, a yeast-like model that contains a relatively high concentration of unsaturated lipids. In the System Size Determination Options, click the Heterogeneous Lipid, the Water thickness, and the Ratios of lipid components options. Next, input 20 Angstroms as the water thickness, and input 80 Angstroms as the initial X-Y guess (Fig. 3.2). The initial X-Y guess is dependent upon the problem being solved; for example, a larger membrane protein would require a larger membrane area in order to be embedded. Below the system size is the lipid components options (Fig. 3.3). Fill in the lipid ratios as indicated in Table 3.1. When finished, click the Show the System Info button and verify the generated dimensions. Ideally, both leaflets should have close to the same surface area; uneven areas can induce membrane bending artifacts during simulations and thus would be non-physiological. Once the system dimensions calculate near identical leaflet areas, click Next Step: Determine the System Size located in the lower right of the CHARMM-GUI webpage. This step may take some time. Do not close or refresh the CHARMM-GUI webpage. Figure $\PageIndex{3}$.2. System size determination options for use in the tutorial. Size values will vary depending on desired physiological parameter being studied, desired computational processing speed, and MD software used. For the tutorial, use 80 Angstroms as the initial X-Y guess. Figure $\PageIndex{3}$.3. Lipid components options in CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder Make sure you click "Show the system info" after you input your desired lipids to verify near identical leaflet areas! Table 3.1. Representative model components from supplemental Table 2 in So S. et al, 2009 [Ref. 6]. These lipid components will be used for the tutorial section to demonstrate how CHARMM-GUI can be used to model biophysical problems. In the next web page, you will have a system output box showing you the various CHARMM parameter files generated from the previous step (Fig. 3.4). You can download the system parameter files at any step during the tutorial by clicking download.tgz in the top right of the CHARMM-GUI webpage. You can view the Generated Packed System by clicking view structure; this will open an additional window that can be manipulated similar to the Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) display. Viewing the structure after each step is helpful in understanding how CHARMM-GUI constructs the model. In this step, only the packing arrangement has been determined (Fig. 3.4). Below the system output box you will see the Determined System Size section with size parameters for building the system. Further down you will see the System Building Options section (Fig. 3.5). A key component of system building is deciding if the insertion or replacement method of adding model components should be used. Generally, insertion methods are meant for protein insertions into bilayers while membrane-only models should use the replacement method. Additionally, enable the Check lipid ring penetration box to verify that lipid replacement does not produce positional artifacts. Next, in the Component Building Options section, ions are included in the system to generate a charge neutral model for electrostatic calculations during the simulation. For this case, we want to mimic the number of ions listed in Table 3.1. Adjust the ion concentration until you have exactly the correct number of ions. For this tutorial, use the Monte Carlo ion placement method (Fig. 3.5). Once finished, click Next Step: Build Components located in the lower right of the CHARMM-GUI webpage. This step may take some time. Do not close or refresh the web page. Figure $\PageIndex{3}$.4. The CHARMM parameter files that can be downloaded at each step are useful for understanding how the model is built. 1) Click on the step3_packing.pdb (blue arrow) to view the structure. 2) A top-down view of the packing arrangement indicated as orange spheres. The pink and blue squares indicate the upper and lower leaflet faces, respectively. This model view can be rotated similar to the VMD Display. Figure $\PageIndex{3}$.5. System Size, System Build, and Component Build options for this tutorial. 1) The determined system size is a good self-check to verify the correct dimensions before building further. 2) For membranes, replacement method (the replacement of lipids) is used instead of insertion method (the insertion of a molecule such as a protein). The system build verifies that lipids do not have positional clashes. The component building options allows ion solvation, with either a distance or Monte-Carlo placement method. For this tutorial, 0.085 M of KCl will be used with the Monte-Carlo placement method. 3.2. Final assembly, export, and visualization Step 4 of the CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder provides a self-check for lipid ring penetration as well as ion/water box building. In the system output box at the top of the page you can find the step4_lipid.pdb structure for viewing (Fig. 3.6). Click Next Step: Assemble Components. Figure $\PageIndex{3}$.6. Side perspective of lipid membrane from tutorial after completing Step 3: Determine the System Size. This model is the step before solvation. Step 5 of the CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder provides force field options, input generation options, and equilibration options for generating M.D. simulation parameters. Input options can be generated for various M.D. force fields such as GROMACS, AMBER, and CHARMM, among others. The use of a force field will largely be dependent upon your experimental question and your lab's computational expertise. A review describing the necessity for force fields and some common types can be found at [Ref. 16]. At the top of the system output box you will see the assembled .pdb file labeled as step5_assembly.pdb. You can download this .pdb file or the entire CHARMM-GUI folder by clicking the download.tgz icon at the top right of the CHARMM-GUI webpage. After downloading, the final model can be visualized using VMD as described in Section 1 (Fig. 3.7). clipboard_ebfe32dd7de1c5e74dca4ecedd0e0cf1d.png clipboard_ec45e62b885a15082e90ad1915cb39901.png Figure $\PageIndex{3}$.7. (Left) top view of generated membrane model from tutorial (Right) side view of generated membrane model from tutorial. Exercises (section 3.2) Exercise 3.1. From the complete model (Fig. 3.7), isolate each class of lipid, ion, and water atoms as their own representation. Hint: you may need to look at the .pdb file in a text editor or in the VMD Labels feature to find common naming schemes. Exercise 3.2. Generate the other two models from Jo, S. et al 2009 (Table 3.1) [Ref. 6]. What do you expect will be different compared to the CPRΔ1 model? Exercise 3.3. Find another biomembrane of interest and generate the model. What parameters must you know to ensure that it is physiologically relevant? Exercise 3.4. Temperature can be a critical factor during M.D. system equilibration. As seen in CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder step 5, there is an option to adjust the temperature. What are reasonable/unreasonable temperatures? What is a good rule of thumb? Hint: Membrane fluidity. Exercise 3.5. Review the following article [Ref. 23] for examples on how molecular simulations have helped validate and promote experimental findings. What stood out to you? Which experiment did you find most interesting? Some images were made with VMD/NAMD/BioCoRE/JMV/other software support. VMD/NAMD/BioCoRE/JMV/ is developed with NIH support by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics group at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Some images were made with the online CHARMM-GUI visualization tool during Section 3: Heterogeneous membrane building using CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder. [1] Hospital, A., Goñi, J. R., Orozco, M., Gelpí, J. L. (2015). Molecular dynamics simulations: advances and applications. Adv Appl Bioinform Chem. 8(1): 37-47. doi: 10.2147/AABC.S70333 [2] Software downloads download VMD. Available at [3] CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder. Available at [4] Jo, S., Kim, T., Iyer, V. G., Im, W. (2008). CHARMM-GUI: a web-based graphical user interface for CHARMM. J Comput Chem. 29(11): 1859-1865. doi: 10.1002/jcc.20945 [5] Wu, E. L., Cheng, X., Jo, S., Rui, H., Song, K. C., Dávila-Contreras, E. M., Qi, Y., Lee, J., Monje-Galvan, V., Venable, R. M., Klauda, J. B., Im, W. (2014). CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder toward realistic biological membrane simulations. J Comput Chem. 35(27): 1997-2004. doi: 10.1002/jcc.23702 [6] Jo, S., Lim, J. B., Klauda, J. B., Im, W. (2009). CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder for mixed bilayers and its application to yeast membranes. Biophys J. 97(1): 50-58. doi:10.1016/j.bpj.2009.04.013 [7] Jo, S., Kim, T., Im, W. (2007) Automated builder and database of protein/membrane complexes for molecular dynamics simulations. PLoS One 2(9): e880. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000880 [8] Lee, J., Patel, D. S., Ståhle, J., Park, S. J., Kern, N. R., Kim, S., Lee, J., Cheng, X., Valvano, M. A., Holst, O., Knirel, Y. A., Qi, Y., Jo, S., Klauda, J. B., Widmalm, G., Im, W. (2019). CHARMM-GUI Membrane Builder for complex biological membrane simulations with glycolipids and lipoglycans. J Chem Theory Comput. 15(1): 775-786. doi: 10.1021/acs.jctc.8b01066 [9] PDB statistics: overall growth of released structures per year. (2019). Available at: [10] Berman, H. M., Westbrook, J., Feng, Z., Gilliland, G., Bhat, T. N., Weissig, H., Shindyalov, I. N., Bourne, P. E. (2000). The Protein Data Bank. Nucleic Acids Res. 28(1): 235-242. doi: 10.1093/nar/28.1.235 [11 ] Burley, S. K., Berman, H. M., Bhikadiya, C., Bi, C., Chen, L., Di Costanzo, L., Christie, C., Dalenberg, K., Duarte, J. M., Dutta, S., Feng, Z., Ghosh, S., Goodsell, D. S., Green, R. K., Guranovic, V., Guzenko, D., Hudson, B. P., Kalro, T., Liang, Y., Lowe, R., Namkoong, H., Peisach, E., Periskova, I., Prlic, A., Randle, C., Rose, A., Rose, P., Sala, R., Sekharan, M., Shao, C., Tan, L., Tao, Y. P., Valasatava, Y., Voigt, M., Westbrook, J., Woo, J., Yang, H., Young, J., Zhuravleva, M., Zardecki, C. (2019). RCSB Protein Data Bank: biological macromolecular structures enabling research and education in fundamental biology, biomedicine, biotechnology and energy. Nucleic Acids Res. 47(D1): D464-D474. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky1004 [12] PDB file format documentation. Available at: [13] Berman, H., Henrick, K., Nakamura, H. (2003). Announcing the worldwide Protein Data Bank. Nat Struct Biol. 10(12): 980. doi: 10.1038/nsb1203-980 [14] Mouse modes. (2019). Available at: [15] VMD user's guide version 1.9.3. (2016). Available at [16] González, M. A. (2011) Force fields and molecular dynamics simulations. Collection SFN 12(1): 169-200. doi: 10.1051/sfn/201112009 [17] Balabin, I. Membrane plugin, version 1.1. Available at [18] Huang, J., MacKerell, A. D. Jr. (2013) CHARMM36 all-atom additive protein force field: validation based on comparison to NMR data. J Comput Chem. 34(25): 2135-2145. doi: 10.1002/jcc.23354 [19] Brooks, B. R., Bruccoleri, R. E., Olafson, B. D., States, D. J., Swaminathan, S., Karplus, M., (1983). CHARMM: A program for macromolecular energy, minimization, and dynamics calculations. J Comput Chem. 4(2) 187-217. doi: 10.1002/jcc.540040211 [20] Brooks, B. R., Brooks III, C. L., MacKerell Jr., A. D., Nilsson, L., Petrella, R. J., Roux, B., Won, Y., Archontis, G., Bartels, C., Boresch, S., Caflisch, A., Caves, L., Cui, Q., Dinner, A. R., Feig, M., Fischer, S., Gao, J., Hodoscek, M., Im, W., Kuczera, K., Lazaridis, T., Ma, J., Ovchinnikov, V., Paci, E., Pastor, R. W., Post, C. B., Pu, J. Z., Schaefer, M., Tidor, B., Venable, R. M., Woodcock, H. L., Wu, X., Yang, W., York, D. M., Karplus, M. (2010). CHARMM: the biomolecular simulation program. J Comput Chem. 30(10): 1545-1614. doi: 10.1002/jcc.21287 [21] Kessel, A. and Ben-Tal, N. (2018) Introduction to proteins structure, function, and motion second edition. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group. [22] Aksimentiev, A. Sotomayor, M., Wells, D., Mahinthichaichan, P. (2016) Membrane Proteins Tutorial. Available at [23] Hollingsworth S. A., Dror, R. O. (2018) Molecular dynamics simulation for all. Neuron 99(6): 1129-1143. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2018.08.011
early Christian treatise The Didache (pronounced "did ah kay") or The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles is an early Christian hand book.[1] It was written in the first or early second century AD. It gives information about Christian ethics, rituals such as baptism and Eucharist, and Church organization.[1] 1. 1.0 1.1 "Didache". BBC. Retrieved 2012-07-21. Other websitesEdit
Kissing Gourami (Kisser Fish): Profile and Information Related Articles The name “Kissing gourami” was coined from what looks like fishes kissing; nonetheless, scientists are still not sure how to describe this behavior. - Advertisement - Even though it is a territorial behavior between two males, is it believed to be a harmless challenge. This speculation is backed by the fact that aging seems to reduce the need to challenge one another. This also diminishes the desire for mating territories. • Common Names: Pink kissing gourami, Kissing fish, green kisser • Scientific Name: Helostoma temminkii • Life Expectancy: The kissing gourami can live at least for seven years and can live as long as 25 years under the right conditions • Adult Size: 12 inches • Family: Helostomatidae • Tank level: Top to mid-dweller • Diet: Omnivore • Breeding: Egg scatterer • Minimum Tank Size: 75 gallon • Care: Easy to Intermediate • Origin: Vietnam, Thailand, Sumatra, Java, Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and eastern Myanmar • Hardness: 5 to 20 dGH • pH: 6 to 8 • Temperature: 22 to 27 C (72 to 82 F) The famous kissing gourami, commonly known as the kisser fish, is a native of the Indonesian island of Java and can also found in Cambodia, Borneo, Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The kissing gourami is commonly cultivated as a food fish in the southern Indochina region. Virtually all specimens sold today in the U.S. are bred commercially in Florida. Also, Singapore and Thailand commercially breed this fish for food consumption as well as their aquarium trade. Colors and markings The three colors variations of the kissing gourami: a piebald or mottled variety; fresh-colored or pink form; and a silver-green form, which is often referred to as the “green kisser.” The pink or fresh-colored variation doesn’t occur as often in nature, and this is caused by the reduction in pigmentation, known as leucism. This particular trait is being selectively bred for the aquarium trade, because of owners’ preference for their color. The naturally occurring coloring is the green species, which has a dark bar lining the anal fins and the dorsal fins. Although the green and the pink kissing gourami have been described as different species, they are, in fact, the same species. Piebald or mottled kissing gourami is also sometimes put up for sale; however, it is not as popular as the pink variety. The fish has also been mutated for the aquarium trade to make the fish rounder and shorter, giving the kisser fish a balloon-like appearance. The mutated cousin is not as hardy as the original kissing gourami, and it doesn’t live as long either. Despite their romantic appearance, the kissing gourami has been known to be notorious and quarrelsome with other fishes and shouldn’t be kept in the same space with smaller fishes. Although they can be managed in a community tank and kept with medium to large-sized fishes, owners should keep a close observation on them to ensure they don’t bully other fish. Potential tankmates of the kissing gourami May include barbs, loaches, larger tetras, some catfish, and cichlids. It is essential that you separate your kissing gourami from other fish if you notice them ramming their sides. They usually do this to other fishes to strip them of their slime coat, which potentially causes damage to their skin. Habitat and care Kisser fish is naturally found in slow-moving, heavily vegetated marshes or ponds. They are very dogged fishes that can tolerate different water conditions. The labyrinth organ is a hidden structure in the fish. This labyrinth organ allows for the kissing gourami to collect oxygen from the air, which enables them to survive waters with minimal levels of oxygen. Basically, the gills of labyrinth fish aren’t modified to obtain enough oxygen from waters to survive. Therefore, they gulp air from the surface of the water they are in, to satisfy their oxygen requirements. This is why it is necessary to grant them access to the surface of the water. They also need plenty of space asides surface access, plenty of vegetation, and warm water. Plenty of vegetation is necessary because the kisser fish is fond of plant nutrients in their diet. Artificial plants or live plants like Java moss or Java fern can be introduced into their environment. Sturdy plants are preferable, as tender plants are like to be eaten even down to the stem. In their natural state, kissing gouramis can grow up to a foot or more, but would remain half the size if kept in captivity. However, an aquarium that’s smaller than thirty gallons might be too small for even a tiny kisser fish. In other words, kissing gouramis shouldn’t be put in mini-tanks. It isn’t uncommon for kisser fish to live for more than a decade, under proper care. The kisser lips on the kissing gourami can never be missed, but the rows of fine teeth located inside the surface of their mouths aren’t apparent. This set of teeth is used for grazing on vegetable matter and algae. They can accept several foods, including frozen, flake, freeze-dried, small live foods like brine shrimp and tubifex. They would also feed on any type of vegetable matter, as well as spirulina-based foods, and fresh vegetables, if possible. Crisp romaine lettuce, peas, or cooked zucchini could be provided periodically to give your kissers optimum health. Be careful when feeding them vegetables, because the water may become foul with uneaten portions. Sexual differences It can be hard to tell both sexes of kissing gourami as both of them are almost identical. The similarities are evident from their thick fleshy lips to their oval shape. You can only figure them out when they start spawning. The body of the female becomes round and fuller as it becomes filled with eggs during the mating period. Potential breeders should be conditioned to provide large tanks with soft, warm water of 80 F, as well as live foods. Kissing gourami doesn’t build elaborate nests, unlike other labyrinth fish, even though male kissers may randomly blow bubbles at the water surface. Spawning process begins by circling, and then it progresses to nudging and some fancy dancing, which is then followed by intense beating of tails before sealing it with a kiss. The male then wraps his body around the female while turning her upside down. Hundreds or even those of eggs would then be released by the females who would later be fertilized by the males as they move up to the surface of the water. If lettuce or floating plants are placed on the surface before spawning, the eggs will stick to them, and the fry can feast on the infusoria that grows on the vegetation. The parent fish should be extracted from the tank, following spawning, as they may feed on their own young. It takes approximately one day for eggs to hatch, and two days for the fry to swim freely. Fine flake foods or small live foods like freshly hatched brine shrimp should be fed to be fry to keep them healthy. Are you interested in having kissing gourami? Do you have a tank big enough to house them? Or are you particularly about having several colors of the kisser fish? Share with us in the comments. More on this topic Please enter your comment! Please enter your name here 10 Most Intelligent Dog Breeds in the World in 2020 10 Types of Cockatoos That Make the Best Pets in 2020 8 Common Pigeon Diseases 10 Fastest Dog Breeds in the World in 2020 10+ Different Types of Parrots When a person hears the term parrot they often think of a large and colorful bird that is able to talk. It turns out... Top 10 Intelligent Talking Parrots in the World 10 Dog Breeds With the Longest Lifespan One of the challenging factors about being a dog owner is saying goodbye to your furry pet. We are aware that dog’s don’t live... Are Cedar Chips and Pine Wood Shavings Safe for Your Pet? 16 Best Exotic Pets for Apartment Living Soundproof Dog Crate – How to Effectively Sound Proof a Dog Crate or Kernel As a loving pet owner, you understand that your lovely pet doggies crave attention and need love. 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Refugees of the Special Relationship: Chagossians and their struggle to get home Posted by In November 2016, a community of people based in Crawley, West Sussex, travelled to Whitehall in order to protest a government decision which would extend the now fifty year exile from their homeland by twenty years. Almost unheard of within the country they now predominantly reside, Chagossians are a people without a home. Hailing from a group of islands in the geographical centre of the Indian Ocean, they are the enduring reminder of a deplorable decision made in 1966, whereby the British government authorised the expulsion of the inhabitants of the Diego Garcia island group in order to facilitate the construction of an enormous US military base. Their story ever since has been one of abuse, neglect, and an overriding fight for preservation and recognition. Quick Facts Chagos The political decisions behind the expulsion of the native Chagos Islanders were heavily influenced by the decline of Empire, The Cold War, and late twentieth century US hegemony. Throughout the 1960s, as the winds of change swept through the old world order and colonialism gave way in the face of rising worldwide national consciousness, the need for the west to preserve some sort of military presence east of Suez was stark. This was exacerbated by the perceived threat of both the Soviet Union and a rising China. To counteract this, the ‘island chain strategy’ was developed, a theory which perceived the containment of communist expansion via the fortification of islands throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans. To this end, prior to the UK’s granting of Mauritian independence, the US requested that the Chagos Archipelago be annexed, reconstituted as a separate colony labelled the British Indian Ocean Territory, and leased to the United States Navy. The British, assuming their junior role in the special relationship with vigour, accepted. The decision would anger the newly independent Mauritian government, as well as the wider global governance network. The UN immediately passed a resolution which condemned the islands detachment from Mauritius, this was ignored, and US will was adhered to. So too was the demand that any resident islanders were removed to prevent any resistance to the military presence. The Chagossians can trace their roots back to East African slave labourers transported to islands in the late 18th century by the French. The defeat of France during the Napoleonic Wars saw the islands handed over to the British, who began importing indentured labourers from India subsequent to the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. Over generations, the peoples on the island integrated and a distinct Chagossian culture emerged. A unique and peaceful culture persisted on the islands for generations, uninterrupted until men in distant lands decided their slice of paradise was a prime location for a military base. These same men decided that the presence of the islanders would inhibit the functionality of that island base. In order to facilitate their expulsion, the British government endeavoured to deface the Chagossian culture and any generational attachment to the islands. This came despite the fact that the islands had been populated around the same time the white man arrived in Australia, and in similar circumstances. To claim the Chagossians have no rights or connection to the islands is also to deny such rights to those populating the Falkland – rights which Downing Street went to war to protect in the 1980s. Through the cessation of goods importation as well as intimidation by UK and US military personnel, the Chagossians were compelled to leave to the neighbouring Seychelles and Mauritius. UK aid packages were far from adequate, and islanders often lived as refugees in conditions of abject poverty. More recently, lacklustre efforts have been made by the government to provide islanders with British passports, and many have settled in Crawley, where an exiled community has emerged, however many Chagossians remain separated from family members as a result of complex British citizenship laws. This does not mean however that a reversal of the expulsion has been likely, and any concessions are rather an admittance of guilt, a guilt which has and always will be overridden by the dependence of the UK upon US military hegemony and its upholding of the western world order. The vocal exile community based out of Crawley has often raised the issue into the public eye. In 2000 the British High Court judged the eviction of Chagossians as illegal. While this decision was celebrated amongst campaigners, it proved inconsequential, as the Government used a Royal Prerogative to reverse the decision, bypassing Parliament in a manner very rarely seen within 21st century British politics. The islands flirted with the public eye again in 2010, when in a move revealed in leaked memos to have been heavily influenced by the need to undermine the Chagossian repatriation campaign, Foreign Secretary David Miliband created a Marine Protected Area around the archipelago. The practicality of such a reserve was immediately called into question, and the decision gathered criticism from high profile members of the Green Party and Greenpeace. Heading into 2016 there was hope, as the US lease over the islands was up for renewal. Under Obama, the US had often hinted at its desire to step back from its extensive overseas commitments and return to the dormancy it had enjoyed before the Second World War. Moreover, the return of the islanders would have reflected well upon the Conservative government, both within the eyes of the British public and the international community. However, in November 2016 the Government announced that the US lease would be extended by twenty years, and all requests for the islander’s return were rejected. Some suggested that Chagossians could live on the islands and support the US military presence, supplanting the Filipino workers imported to conduct low-level maintenance tasks. Standing in the way of this however is the reality that native populations often oppose and hinder operations at a number of the 909 overseas facilities administered as part of the US military empire. Local grievances have limited the effectiveness of bases in the Philippines, Japan, and Turkey. As such, Chagossian exile suits American military aims in the Indian Ocean perfectly. The islanders fight on. One of the main problems facing the islanders, particularly following the November 2016 decision, is the lack of publicity that the struggle gets within the mainstream media. Significant public pressure might be the key to precipitating a reversal of the British Government’s decision, however exposure is needed in order to achieve this. This is well known by the exiles, who endeavour through social media, protests and other mediums to promote their cause. The participation of a Chagos Islands Football Team within the 2016 Confederation of Independent Football Associations (Conifa) World Cup in Abkhazia, Georgia, is testament to this. While the Chagossians were knocked out in the group stages, their real success was the raising of the island’s profile and with it their struggle to return home. The islanders undoubtedly face a significant challenge, as the special relationship shows no signs of strain, even with Donald Trump in the White House. Wider public pressure remains the key to their return to paradise. Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Google photo Twitter picture Facebook photo Connecting to %s
English to Marathi Meaning :: contaminate बिघडवणे, दूषित करणे Contaminate : - दूषितदूषितअचुक दाखवू शकत नाहीदूषित Show English Meaning Verb(1) make impure(2) make radioactive by adding radioactive material Show Examples (1) Apparently parents emit poisonous substances which contaminate their kids in much the same way that humans pollute the environment.(2) But this should not be carried out on-farm because it can further contaminate the ground and infect other cattle.(3) The poison could be used to contaminate food or water, which would achieve the aim of spreading panic, or left on door handles in busy buildings.(4) If mercury is found in local soil, it can contaminate the fish supply.(5) Many types of viral and bacterial pathogens that grow in the gut of infected people may contaminate water and food.(6) If not properly disposed of, these substances can contaminate ground water.(7) Chemicals in everyday products such as good packaging and cosmetics contaminate our air, water and soil.(8) Groundwater will be polluted, which would contaminate drinking water.(9) Fear, they concluded, is as dangerous a threat as the contaminants themselves.(10) And they are managing and restoring areas affected by radioactive contamination .(11) Females in masculine arenas are viewed as potential contaminators of the arena, whereas males in feminine arenas are viewed as potential self-contaminators.(12) Residents in up to 40 homes were told of the possible contamination in letters sent out by the council in July.(13) All of a sudden, the water becomes toxic, and contaminants are all over the place.(14) Groundwater pollution generally results from contaminants leaching through soils to underlying aquifers.(15) The fear of bird flu contamination has led some countries to impose bans on some chicken imports.(16) None had a bloodstream totally clear of contaminants and the average figure for the number of pollutants was 27. 1. pollute :: 2. adulterate :: 3. defile :: 4. debase :: 5. corrupt :: 6. taint :: 7. infect :: 8. foul :: 9. spoil :: खराब करणे 10. soil :: 11. stain :: 12. sully :: 13. poison :: 14. befoul :: घाण करणे 1. decontaminate :: एखादी वस्तूमधील दुषितपणा नाहीसा करणे 2. purify :: शुद्ध करा Different Forms contaminate, contaminated, contaminates, contaminating English to Marathi Dictionary: contaminate Meaning and definitions of contaminate, translation in Marathi language for contaminate with similar and opposite words. Also find spoken pronunciation of contaminate in Marathi and in English language. Tags for the entry "contaminate" What contaminate means in Marathi, contaminate meaning in Marathi, contaminate definition, examples and pronunciation of contaminate in Marathi language. English to Marathi Dictionary commonly confused words form of verbs Words by Category Topic Wise Words Learn 3000+ Common Words Learn Common GRE Words Learn Words Everyday Most Searched Words Word of the day ● Pitcher भांडे, टेबलावर ठेवायची पाण्याची बाटली, जार, खोजा, सुरई, किलकिले, तराफा, जामीन, बादली, कुंड, दरीभांडे Your Favorite Words
Outdoor Fountains: The Minoan Culture Outdoor Fountains: The Minoan Culture Fountains and Water and the Minoan Civilization Along with supplying water, they spread out water that amassed from deluges or waste material. Many were prepared from clay or even stone. There were terracotta conduits, both round and rectangle-shaped as well as pathways made from the same components.Outdoor Fountains: Minoan Culture 1958278651.jpg The cone-like and U-shaped terracotta piping that were found have not been seen in any other civilization. Terracotta pipes were laid beneath the floor surfaces at Knossos Palace and used to circulate water. The water pipes also had other uses such as collecting water and conveying it to a centralized area for storage. These clay pipelines were required to perform: Below ground Water Transportation: Initially this particular process appears to have been fashioned not quite for ease but rather to offer water to chosen people or rites without it being seen. Quality Water Transportation: There is also evidence that concludes the pipes being employed to provide for fountains independently from the local strategy. Your Herb Garden: The Basics Your Herb Garden: The Basics Herb gardening is a matter that many gardeners are drawn to. You will get instant gratification when you grow herbs in the garden as they can be included in cooking sauces, soups, marinades and a range of other recipes.Herb Garden: Basics 4297194007218519205.jpg When frost starts to come around you could trim your herbal plants, but if you are smart and have them planted in pots all that you have to do is move the pots inside the house to maintain them. Since perennial herbs do not die easily or require replanting every end of the year, they are a practical (and fun) addition to your garden. Over and above this, you should consider your personal taste requirements when selecting herbs to flavor meals. Personalize your herb garden to the type of food you most routinely cook. For instance, plant cilantro if you prefer Mexican or Thai food. If you fix more Italian food, definitely plant basil, oregano, and thyme. You must choose where your herb garden will be planted in order to determine which herbs will grow best. If you live in a gentle climate it may be much better to plant right into the ground due to the warmer winter seasons and cool summers. It is simultaneously an attractive way to landscape your yard and an effortless way to go because you do not need to build or buy planters. If you don't want to your plants to perish or become dormant after being exposed to intense weather conditions, you can always rely on planters. They are convenient and versatile and you can relocate indoors at any time. Back Story of Landscape Fountains Back Story of Landscape Fountains The translation of hundreds of classic Greek texts into Latin was commissioned by the scholarly Pope Nicholas V who ruled the Church in Rome from 1397 until 1455. In order to make Rome deserving of being the capital of the Christian world, the Pope resolved to embellish the beauty of the city. Reconstruction of the Acqua Vergine, a ruined Roman aqueduct which had transported fresh drinking water into the city from eight miles away, began in 1453 at the bidding of the Pope. Building a mostra, an imposing celebratory fountain built by ancient Romans to memorialize the entry point of an aqueduct, was a tradition revived by Nicholas V. The architect Leon Battista Alberti was commissioned by the Pope to construct a wall fountain where we now find the Trevi Fountain. Changes and extensions, included in the restored aqueduct, eventually provided the Trevi Fountain and the well-known baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona with the necessary water supply. Garden Fountain Engineers Through History Garden Fountain Engineers History 7771911384091.jpg Garden Fountain Engineers Through History Fountain designers were multi-talented people from the 16th to the late 18th century, often working as architects, sculptors, artisans, engineers and cultivated scholars all in one. Leonardo da Vinci, a Renaissance artist, was notable as an ingenious genius, inventor and scientific virtuoso. With his astounding curiosity about the forces of nature, he examined the properties and mobility of water and systematically documented his observations in his now famed notebooks. Remodeling private villa configurations into innovative water displays complete with symbolic meaning and natural beauty, early Italian fountain designers fused curiosity with hydraulic and horticultural knowledge. The humanist Pirro Ligorio, celebrated for his virtuosity in archeology, architecture and garden design, provided the vision behind the wonders in Tivoli. Other water fountain developers, masterminding the incredible water marbles, water attributes and water jokes for the countless domains in the vicinity of Florence, were tried and tested in humanistic subjects and classical scientific texts. Contemporary Garden Decor: Fountains and their Roots The dramatic or ornamental effect of a fountain is just one of the purposes it fulfills, in addition to delivering drinking water and adding a decorative touch to your property.... read more The Advantages of Photovoltaic Garden Fountains Your garden wall fountain can be powered by any number of power sources.While electricity has been used up to now to run them, there has been renewed interest in environmentally-friendly solar powered versions.... read more The Earliest Recorded Outdoor Garden Fountains of the Historical Past As originally conceived, fountains were crafted to be practical, directing water from creeks or aqueducts to the inhabitants of towns and settlements, where the water could be utilized for cooking, washing, and drinking.... read more The One Cleaning Solution to NEVER Use On Your Landscape Fountains Water fountains will keep working a very long time with scheduled cleaning and maintenance.It is easy for foreign items to find their way into outdoor fountains, so keeping it clean is vital.... read more What Are Garden Fountains Created From? Garden fountains these days are typically made from metal, though you can find them in other materials too.Metallic fountains, with their clean lines and sculptural accents, exist in in a variety of metals and can accommodate any style or budget.... read more Fountains And Their Use In The Minoan Civilization During archaeological excavations on the island of Crete, many varieties of channels have been identified.Along with supplying water, they distributed water that gathered from deluges or waste material.... read more
< Full Calendar Sadat visits Israel The treaty ended the state of war between the two countries and provided for the establishment of full diplomatic and commercial relations. Sadat and Begin were jointly awarded the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. However, Sadat's peace efforts were not so highly acclaimed in the Arab world, and he was assassinated on October 6, 1981, by Muslim extremists in Cairo. Despite Sadat's death, the peace process continued under Egypt's new president, Hosni Mubarak. In 1982, Israel fulfilled the 1979 peace treaty by returning the last segment of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. Egyptian-Israeli peace continues today.
What is Sclerotherapy? Sclerotherapy is a procedure used to treat blood vessels or blood vessel malformations (vascular malformations). A medicine is injected into the vessels, which makes them shrink. This is one method, along with surgery, radiofrequency and laser ablation, for treatment of varicose veins and venous malformations. In ultrasound-guided sclerotherapy, ultrasound is used to visualize the underlying vein so the physician can deliver and monitor the injection. Sclerotherapy is often done under ultrasound guidance after venous abnormalities have been diagnosed with duplex ultrasound.
Guest Post: The Fed’s New Tool to Fight Inflation? Posted on by Submitted by Lune. As the Fed embarks on quantitative easing, a large number of economists have voiced concerns about the resulting inflation that we may face once the economy starts to recover. The traditional tool for fighting inflation is contracting the money supply, usually by decreasing the reserves available, thus constraining the total amount of money that may be lent by the fractional banking system. Sceptics worry that since those reserves are now backed by illiquid — and frequently impaired — assets, the Fed will have a hard time shrinking the reserves outstanding. In an article on, Robert Hall and Susan Woodward argue that the Fed now possesses another tool that would allow it to effectively reduce credit without decreasing reserves. In Oct, 2008, the Fed, in a break from long-standing policy, began paying interest on reserves held by banks. Hall and Woodward argue that the differential between the interest paid on reserves and the federal funds rate now forms another variable which the Fed can use to control the money supply independent of any manipulation of the amount of reserves outstanding: When the Fed pays interest on reserves at a rate well below market rates – in particular, well below the Fed funds rate governing borrowing and lending among banks – banks economize on reserves. If the margin between the Fed funds rate and the reserve rate is large, say several percentage points, banks will hold only required reserves. In this case, standard old-fashioned monetary theory applies, taught to generations of freshman principles students as the “multiple expansion of deposits.” Suppose we start with deposits of $100 billion and reserves of $10 billion, so banks hold no reserves in excess of requirements. Then the Fed creates another $1 billion of reserves. Banks will expand their activities to try to avoid holding excess reserves, which are undesirable because they pay interest far below market rates. The economy expands as a result, depositors hold more in their checking accounts – $110 billion to be precise – and banks no longer hold excess reserves. The economic expansion is a combination of more real activity and higher prices. An expansion of reserves raises the rate of inflation over some period, generally thought to run from about a year after the expansion to around four years. This conventional analysis always applied when the Fed paid zero interest on reserves and market rates were in the range of 5% or more. Banks used sharp-pencil policies to avoid holding excess reserves. Manipulation of the quantity of reserves gave the Fed powerful and direct and direct control over economic activity and inflation. Today’s situation: No risk of excess inflation When reserve interest rates and the Fed funds interest rate are close to each other, the situation is quite different. Banks are happy to hold excess reserves which pay just as much as could be earned on other safe investments. Expansion of reserves results mainly in expansion of excess reserves and has little effect on bank lending. Rather than stimulating economic activity and raising the volume of bank deposits, an expansion of reserves just adds to banks’ holdings of reserves. The Fed loses its control over economic activity. In particular, expansion of reserves is not inflationary when the reserve rate and Fed funds rate are the same. There is no risk of excess inflation in today’s economy. In other words, if the interest paid on reserves is significantly less than the federal funds rate, then banks are quick to use the additional reserves as a basis to lend, while if the interest paid is close to the federal funds rate, then the banks will simply continue to accumulate reserves without increasing lending. This may by one additional factor why banks have been sitting on all their extra cash given to them by the Fed rather than to start using it to lend (although other factors also exist, such as the fact that most of their balance sheets are still quite impaired, and that there are very few credit-worthy borrowers left in the current economy, most of whom are paying down their debt rather than looking to increase it, etc.) If Hall and Woodward’s analysis is correct, then even if the Fed is unable to withdraw reserves fast enough, they might still be able to avert inflation by equalizing interest on reserves and the federal funds rate, thus disincentivizing banks from extending credit. The basic point emerging from the analysis of the role of the reserve interest rate is simple: The margin between the Fed funds rate and the reserve rate is a potent new tool for stabilizing the economy. When the Fed wants to expand, it should raise the margin. In today’s economy, this would call for a negative reserve rate, that is, a charge to banks for holding reserves. When the time comes to move to a tighter policy, the Fed should lower the margin. At that time, the Fed would raise the reserve rate for two reason: first to reduce the margin and second to follow increases in market interest rates that will occur in a recovery. So the question John Taylor posed – how can the Fed control inflation in coming years when it is committed to have a large volume of reserves outstanding to finance its purchases of illiquid assets? – has a simple and effective answer: The Fed should raise the rate its pays on reserves as needed to control economic activity and inflation. It is unnecessary for the Fed to cut its reserves to low levels once the economy approaches normal conditions. Rather, it only needs to raise the reserve interest rate to a point sufficiently close to market rates to make banks willing to hold excess reserves. Regardless of future actions, Hall and Woodward point out that the Fed’s current actions are running counter to their stated goals: Raising the reserve interest rate is a contractionary measure. A higher interest rate on reserves makes banks more likely to hold reserves rather than increasing lending. The Fed’s decision to raise the reserve rate from zero to 75 basis points just as the economy entered a sharp contraction in activity is utterly inexplicable. Fortunately, the Fed lowered the reserve rate subsequently, but the continuation of a positive reserve rate in today’s economy is equally inexplicable. [Emphasis in the original] Some economists have proposed that the Fed charge banks for holding reserves, an expansionary policy worth considering. With the Fed funds rate at around 15 basis points, it would take a charge to restore the differential that drives banks to lend rather than hold reserves. Were the Fed to charge for reserves, they would become the hot potatoes that they were in the past, when the reserve rate was zero and the Fed funds rate 4 or 5%. Banks would expand lending to try not to hold the hot potatoes and the economy would expand. There is no basis for the claim that the Fed has lost its ability to steer the economy. (However, the Fed would have to go to Congress to get this power, as it did to get the power to pay positive interest on reserves.) While Hall and Woodward’s analysis about bank behavior in the face of variation in the reserve rate / fed funds rate differential is insightful, the end-result is something well studied, namely the manipulation of reserve ratios to meet macro-economic goals. In essence, lowering the reserve rate / fed funds rate differential leads to de facto higher reserve ratios, leading to a contractionary policy similar to de jure higher reserve ratios such as a central bank explicitly raising minimum reserve requirements (for example, China’s central bank frequently changes minimum reserve requirements to meet macro-economic goals). Thus, this is not necessarily a new tool so much as a new impementation of an old tool. One other criticism is that Hall and Woodward pay no attention to the political pressures that would lead the Fed to improperly use this tool. Everyone knows the goal of the Fed is to take away the punch bowl just when the party’s getting started, but recent history has shown the Fed unwilling to be such a party pooper. Regardless of the tools available, the Fed must have the independence to take politically unpopular decisions. Today’s Fed, behaving more like an off-balance sheet special purpose vehicle of the U.S. Treasury, is hardly that independent actor. Indeed, the Fed’s current actions are telling. Hall and Woodward label the Fed’s current reserve rate as inexplicable since it directly contradicts the goal of getting banks to start lending. Yet it’s highly explicable: despite the macroeconomic damage being done by paying interest on reserves when the federal funds rate is so low, the Fed is loath to give up this method of funnelling yet more public money onto bank balance sheets. And you can be sure that any Fed moves towards charging banks for their reserves will be met with howls of protest (along with armies of lobbyists). So in the end, while the reserve rate constitutes yet another tool in the Fed’s arsenal of macro-economic levers, we are back to the original problem, dating at least to Greenspan’s tenure, of how to get the Fed to use the tools it already has. Print Friendly, PDF & Email 1. Anonymous I believe it’s fair to say that by paying interest on reserves, the Fed just gives banks more money for doing nothing. As the citizenry is starved of money, banks will accumulate huge piles of it. Banks’ victory over the people. I think it’s time to start working toward alternative currencies, disintermediating the Federal Reserve Note. The FRN (“dollar”) has passed its usefulness to the public. We should join various foreign countries and start trading in other currencies. It’s a radical step but these are radical times. 2. mmckinl Why do we need the banks to lend ? They can be profitable collecting interest from tax payers. Then we can have healthy banks all the time … ! 3. Anonymous Bernanke’s actions only make sense from the point of view of the insolvency of the banking system. 4. Anonymous The idea of paying interest on the excess reserves to prevent inflation is not a panacea. This solution could be costly–there is a large stock of excess reserve and the rates the Fed has to pay on them will have to go up as the economy recovers. See here for more on this point. 5. El Bobo I like this quote from the article: The policy for the reserve rate should be basically the same as the successful policy for the Fed funds rate that delivered exceptional stability to the economy from the mid-1980s until the current crisis. Is this the same wise Fed fund rate policy that has helped create the massive debt growth of the last 25 years which the Fed is now desperately (and successfully) trying to keep inflated? 6. Anonymous The Federal Reserve’s secret weapon for draining massive electronic cash infusions is Congressional tax increases. 7. Jonathan I think it is important to read Winterspeak’s blog, where he explains very clearly and patiently that banks do not require reserves to lend. He states:- The notion that reserves somehow constrain lending is completely wrong, and is at the heart of all the ineffectual monetary policy littering the financial landscape today. Bank lending is constrained by capital requirements on the supply side, and quality borrowers on the demand side, with the driving factor today being on the demand side. Full post here (you need to scroll down to “Getting it backwards”) 8. Richard Kline Bernanke’s decision to pay interest on reserves is, to me, another example of being classroom smart but boardroom stoopid. It was one tool to stuff cash in dead banks, but it’s effect runs counter to that of other actions. A panic move, but here we are a year later and it’s still in place. Bernanke has no overall plan. Perhaps he shouldn’t be criticized for that—but he should be replaced by someone capable of making an overall plan and sticking to it. But while I’m sympathetic to the issue as you raise it, lune, I must say I’m of like mind to the poster who states that reserves don’t matter for functional ibanks in the capital markets. Really, they are of marginal importance. What matters is the ability to lay hands on large portions of other people’s money to play with and fee-slice. I suspect that movements with reserves will have trivial impact on high-inflation scenarios if, when, and as we enter into the latter. 9. bb banks will keep minimum reserves only if they have credible and willing borrowers. just because something looks sensible on paper, does not mean it is workable. 10. Flow5 The FED & Congress are opposed to disciplining the bankers. The bankers have always wielded too much control over their operations. For this reason, the money creating depository institutions should be nationalized. But from the standpoint of our economy, the money supply can never be managed by any attempt to control the cost of credit. As long as Keynesian economists use interest rates to guide monetary flows (MVt), the FED will continue to promote boom bust cycles. Comments are closed.
How rabies attacks the brain, seen in Israel for the first time . Israeli scientists watch as virus hijacks neuron ‘train’ and speeds to central nervous system An illustration of a rabies virus in the nervous system. (photo credi: Rabies image The virus has long been known to travel along neurons, the cells that transmit the electrical and chemical signals enabling movement, feeling, and thought. Until now, though, nobody had been able to figure out how. Using powerful live cell imaging, the scientists found that the virus hijacks the “train” that transports cell components along a neuron, and drives it full throttle into the spinal cord. From there, the virus likely takes other trains to the brain and then throughout the peripheral nervous system, they say – shutting down the body as it goes along. A microscope image of a sensory neuron, with an inset of the rabies virus (green) binding to the p75 receptor (red). (photo credit: Courtesy) “The rabies virus is transported through railway-like machinery in the neurons,” said Shani Gluska, a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University, who led the study along with Prof. Eran Perlson, a physiologist at the university. “With very high-end microscopy, we saw for ourselves how the virus not only hijacks the transport machinery, but also makes it go faster.” Seeing is believing To see how the rabies virus travels through the nervous system, the Israeli scientists grew mouse sensory neurons in the lab and infected them with the virus. They tagged the virus with a fluorescent marker, then watched and recorded its movements in real time with a high-power microscope. ‘If we can learn how rabies manipulates the system, we can maybe try to manipulate it ourselves’ The scientists saw that the virus takes a route normally reserved for nerve growth factors, proteins that are responsible for development and health of neurons. The virus enters a neuron in the peripheral nervous system by binding to a nerve growth factor receptor called p75. Once inside, the virus boards a “train car,” a bubble-like vesicle, and departs from the cell membrane. “Engines” – nano-sized motor proteins that typically chug up and down neurons to keep them alive – then hitch themselves to the car and pull it along “tracks,” microtubules. The ride continues through the neuron’s tail-like axon, which can stretch up to a meter in length, and on to its cell body, which is located in the spinal cord. Doctoral student Shani Gluska working in Dr. Eran Perlson’s lab at Tel Aviv University. (photo credit: Courtesy) The scientists say the virus may speed up the train by pushing the engines harder, by dumping more “fuel,” or ATP, into the engines, or by demanding more engines or a better track. A minority of the rabies viruses in the study took other, slower routes along the neurons. Putting the brakes on nerve disease “If we can learn how rabies manipulates the system, we can maybe try to manipulate it ourselves,” said Perlson, who oversaw the study in his lab, which focuses on neuron signaling and transport. When it comes to rabies, interfering with the virus’ travel plans could extend the window of time for treatment, the scientists say. The rabies vaccine is only effective until the virus reaches the central nervous system and begins causing symptoms, which usually takes one to three months. On the other hand, disruptions of the neuron train system contribute to neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Google photo Twitter picture Facebook photo Connecting to %s
Skip to main content MENA 354/448: Middle East and North Africa Seminar (Dr. Courtney Dorroll): Writing Annotations Purpose of the Annotated Bibliography Your annotated bibliography will gather 10-15 highly relevant sources that will serve as a guide for a future research project, such as an honor's thesis or capstone paper. Doing an annotated bibliography allows you to do some of the legwork of your research project BEFORE you begin writing, which gives you time to contemplate your sources and build a strong thesis that is based in the current research literature. For your annotations, we will ask you to SUMMARIZE, ANALYZE, and REFLECT on each source, using the guidelines in the box below. Information for Annotations Each of your annotations should be about one page long and contain: • Full MLA citation for the item. • Author’s credentials: Who is the author? Where did he or she study, and what degrees does he or she hold? What position does the author hold? How do these credentials allow the author to speak authoritatively about the subject? • The author’s thesis: What is the author's main argument? • Analysis of the article or book: What are the main points of the article or book? What evidence does the author use to support his or her thesis? Are there other arguments being made outside the main thesis? • Theoretical base/school of thought/place in the scholarly conversation: Research does not exist in a vacuum. Scholars communicate with and respond to each other and to scholars that came before them. Can you identify where this article or book falls in the scholarly conversation? Here are some questions to consider: • Does the author employ a certain research method (like historiography, critical discourse analysis, or ethnographic research) or employ critical theory (feminism, Marxism, queer theory, cultural studies)? • How does this article or book relate to the scholarly conversation on your topic? (For example, does this work break new ground in the field, respond to previously-published material, or recap already-published materials?) • Is the author doing original research, like interviewing subjects, or is the work based on secondary research that has already been published? • How do the sources you've chosen relate to each other? Do they approach your research question from a common understanding of the material, argue for different interpretations, or propose different solutions? Are you sources talking to each other? (Check publication dates and works cited for evidence.) • Reflection: How does this article or book relate to your research project? How would you incorporate this item into your eventual research paper? Examples of MLA Annotated Bibliographies Example annotation (note that the formatting is not correct due to limitations in our website software): Foglesong, David. America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920. University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Foglesong earned his PhD at UC-Berkeley and is an Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers, where he teaches courses on American political relations. This book is a revision of his dissertation. Foglesong's thesis states that Wilson implemented a policy designed to promote the overthrow of the Bolshevik government. Foglesong argues that Wilson was given poor advice by the few in his government who had some background on Russia, who spoke of “returning Russia to democracy” (45). He proves this point by demonstrating that Wilson’s policies consistently differed from his more idealistic public statements using critical discourse theory. Wilson actively sought to bring the Bolsheviks down, and US troops were sent to Russia to lend support to anti-Bolshevik groups. His emphasis on Wilson's anti-Bolshevik motivation contrasts with other historians that felt Wilson wanted stay out of Russian affairs. Foglesong will be an important participant in my debate as his work provides an argument against many of my other sources, such as Reed. His argument was discussed later by other scholars, including Jones and Smith, who are included in this bibliography. This source will provide important evidence in my discussion of US-Russian relations and how they influence current US policy on Russia. Though I probably won't include it in my final paper, the discussion of anti-Bolshevik groups helped me understand the competing factions in Russia during Wilson's era. Research Librarian Emily Witsell's picture Emily Witsell Spring 2020 Chat Hours: Tuesday 6-9pm; Wednesday 2-4pm; Friday 10am-12pm and 2-4pm; and by appointment Source Analysis Worksheet
Using Description to Enhance Your Game Download this article (.pdf) A key factor in any role-playing game is the 'willing suspension of disbelief.' This is what allows players to envision themselves as heroes doing great deeds, rather than students or business people gathered around a table with their friends. Anything that can help this 'suspension of disbelief' adds to the roleplaying experience. People do many different things to try to enhance this suspension. Sometimes people may dress in a sort of costume, which can be representative (for example, a person wearing a shirt with long, loose sleeves when playing a magic-user) or more literal, such as a player wearing a long robe and carrying a thin stick to wave whenever a wand is called into play. Many groups use music as a background, to help set a mood and block out the sounds of everyday life. Dimming the lights and adding candles to a room could also suggest a medieval, fantasy, or horror feel. All of these possibilities boost the imagination through the use of the body's senses. Another way to go about it is to simulate the use of the senses through the imagination. By describing what is seen, smelled, heard, touched, or even tasted in a scenario, a Game Master can help move his or her players, in their minds, away from the mundane world and into some other world altogether. Individuals usually each have one or two senses which are stronger than the others, or 'dominant.' Sometimes a person's speech patterns may give a clue to his dominant sense. For example, someone who says, 'I see what you're saying,' probably has seeing as her dominant sense. On the other hand, 'I hear you' might indicate that hearing dominates. Using 'That stinks!' to describe a bad situation could be the choice of a person with a dominant sense of smell. Because people are different, it's important for GMs to use descriptions that appeal to every sense. That would help stimulate the imaginations of all the players in a game, regardless of their dominant sense. Like the players, GMs also have a dominant sense, and it's easy to give descriptions that include only the senses important to them. A really good description could emphasize two or more senses, but a variety is what is important. In fantasy RPGs, the Dungeon is the classic adventure location. Many GMs really enjoy drawing up complex maps and filling the dungeon with dangerous creatures, but their imaginations falter when it comes to describing the areas where there are no encounters. It's hard to explain how there could be a monster living in every room. Magic might make it possible, but it threatens the suspension of disbelief. What, then, is to be said about the rooms that are empty? Player: 'Do we see anything in the room?' GM: 'No, it's empty.' Player: 'There's nothing in there at all?' GM: 'Well, there's some dust on the floor.' Player: 'Dust! Are there any footprints in it?' GM: 'No! It's just dust! What part of empty do you not understand?' How much better instead to fill the emptiness with a little creativity! Some descriptions could be geared to people who like to visualize the setting surrounding their characters. 'At an intersection of corridors, your flickering light reveals a charcoal mark upon the wall. It appears to have been made by either a stick plucked from a fire or from the burned out stub of a torch. The smeared mark is about five feet from the floor and forms an arrow that points back the way that you have come. There is no indication as to who could have made it.' 'You come across a backpack that appears to have been ripped open by a clawed hand and teeth. Its worthless contents have been scattered around, torn, and trampled. There are scraps of cloth, a broken flask and some straps of leather but nothing of value. There is also nothing to indicate who the former owner was nor who (or what) the vandal may have been.' Other descriptions could set the scene with sound: 'The moss is deep, and growth covers walls and floor. Your voices all sound deadened and seem to fall lifeless and still just a few feet away from you.' 'You hear a sound like sobbing and whimpering echoing through the corridor. It is distant and the source is unclear.' This description could suggest mystery to the person who favors the sense of smell: 'A hint of an odor teases your senses. It is a rich, slightly sweet smell, possibly incense. Just a whiff comes to you, and then the scent disappears.' Be alert for occasions when a description could appeal to more than one sense. 'You have entered what was once a finely decorated room A faded tapestry depicting a woodland scene is now frayed but hints at former luxury as do the desk, chair, and table. Dim light reflects off the very tarnished silver and brass fittings. A slightly sweet smell of decay permeates the room.' 'The air is damp and cool and the smell of mold torments your nostrils. The light casts deep shadows and you peer ahead into the darkness beyond. The shadows are unyielding of their secrets and as you strain to listen, all you can hear is the creak of leather and clink of mail as your comrades shift their weight. Everything else is very still.' Opportunities for description can be found in any setting, not just fantastic dungeons. How many adventurers have wandered through a town or city and asked, 'So, what do we see as we walk down the street?' This is the perfect place for a description of sensations that can engage the players' imaginations and pull them out of their mundane existence into a world of heroism or fantasy! Just a few words can be enough to stimulate the imaginations of players and Game Masters alike. About the author: Vicki Potter writes and edits material for Tabletop Adventures, which publishes the 'Harried Game Master' line of products. TTA is producing books with brief, colorful descriptions to assist Game Masters who, for whatever reason, find themselves short on time or creativity. The first was 'Bits of Darkness: Dungeons' (quoted above), which details things to be experienced in a fantasy dungeon setting. Coming in Winter 24 will be 'Bits of Darkness: Caverns' which will describe some of the wonders and horrors of underground exploration. In 25, 'Shards of the City' will explore the fantasy urban street-scene, with sensations galore for the wandering adventurer. Visit TTA online at www.TabletopAdventures.com. Copyright 24, Tabletop Adventures, LLC. Tags: , Comments are closed.
Classical capitalist economists on the role of the state –Adam Smith (Lectures on Jurisprudence, 208, 1762) –John Locke (Second Treatise, § 124.) See also: Whose Constitution? James Baldwin: Police are the hired enemies of the people — James Baldwin (1924-1987) Bakunin: State as justification for crimes — Mikhail Bakunin, “The Immorality of the State“: Whose Constitution? It is widely known that the U.S. political system today is dominated by a relatively small group of extremely wealthy individuals, who further their own interests at the expense of the vast majority of the population. But I believe it is a mistake to say that this situation has arisen because the original system has been “corrupted”, and that we just need to go back to the “good old days” when the founding fathers were in charge of the country and the Constitution was the law of the land … The Constitution was designed by rich and powerful men to serve their own minority interests Slavers, bankers, and other rich scum at the Constitutional convention The Constitutional Convention of 1787, where a bunch of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Americas met together in secret and planned out a form of government that would perpetually maintain oligarchical rule in the United States. Who were the Founding Fathers, and what did they intend to create at the Constitutional Convention? The story we’re told in our high-school history books is that this group, composed of the wealthiest and most influential men in post-Revolutionary America, had temporarily set aside their own economic interests (including their ownership of slaves and war debt) and together designed a brilliant democratic political system that guaranteed “liberty and justice for all”. This system is enshrined in the most holy of US political documents, the United States Constitution. Of course, today, if I were to suggest that a bunch of billionaires should be allowed to call a secret meeting and design a system of government, without consulting the public, and that they could be trusted to set aside their own interests while doing so, I would be considered naive at best. Yet for some reason, people happily accept that this is what happened at the Constitutional Convention. In reality these slave-owning aristocrats were facing a nationwide upsurge of democratic “leveling” sentiment that aimed to redistribute wealth and political power, and felt that the Articles of Confederation weren’t doing an adequate job at combating this tendency. Thus they came together to design a system that they felt would better protect their position of privilege. If you doubt that this was their intention, take a look at what the Founding Fathers themselves were saying: Alexander Hamilton: James Madison: ” It ought finally to occur to a people deliberating on a Government for themselves, that as different interests necessarily result from the liberty meant to be secured, the major interest might under sudden impulses be tempted to commit injustice on the minority. In all civilized Countries the people fall into different classes having a real or supposed difference of interests. There will be creditors & debtors, farmers, merchants & manufacturers. There will be particularly the distinction of rich & poor. … In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. An increase of population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, & secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in in this Country, but symtoms, of a leveling spirit, as we have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarters to give notice of the future danger. How is this danger to be guarded against on republican principles? How is the danger in all cases of interested coalitions to oppress the minority to be guarded against?” Edmund Randolph: “Our chief danger arises from the democratic parts of our constitutions. It is a maxim which I hold incontrovertible, that the powers of government exercised by the people swallows up the other branches. None of the constitutions have provided sufficient checks against the democracy.” Or, most succinctly, John Jay: This type of anti-democratic, oligarchic sentiment permeated the Convention. Unwilling to accept what the majority of the population wanted — democracy and economic equality — they decided instead to design a system of government which would enable the “minority of the opulent” to impose their wishes upon the people — exactly the type of system we live under today.
Interest Rates What Are Interest Rates? Percentage and TimeInterest rates are growth rates – it is a percentage that is used to calculate how much a loan or investment grows over time. Interest rates are most commonly associated with borrowing money, like a homeowner taking out a mortgage or a government selling a bond. The interest rate is how much extra needs to be paid back in exchange for the loan. Interest rates are also used in savings accounts, where you might earn interest on your savings. For example, if you use your credit card to buy $100 with an 24% annual interest rate, if you wait one month to pay it back, you will need to pay back the $100, plus one month of interest (which is 24% divided by 12 months, or 2%). This means your final repayment would be $102. Nominal VS Real Interest Rates Interest rates are usually fixed, but a dollar today is not worth the same as a dollar a year from now. The interest rate you have on your loan or bond will not change over time and is called the Nominal Interest Rate, but the effective (or Real) interest rate is smaller if there is a lot of inflation. For this reason, in economics we almost always use the Real Interest Rate. To calculate the Real Interest Rate, simply subtract the inflation rate from the Nominal Interest Rate. This difference is very important for savers. For example, if you have a savings account that pays 2% annual interest (meaning a 2% nominal interest rate), but the inflation rate was 3%, your Real Interest Rate is -1% – you’re actually losing value! This does not happen very often in the real world. The ability to use your cash has value, and by saving in a bank without withdrawing it, you are giving up that time value of money. Another way to put it is that you need to be compensated for deferring the use of that money from the present to the future. The interest rate exists to compensate you for that value that you lose. If people see that they are earning a zero, or negative, real interest rate in their savings accounts, most would withdraw that money and use it for other investments (like government bonds). Using The Real Interest Rate Economics In Action! Economists generally use the current returns of government bonds as the benchmark for “Future Value” across the entire economy! Using your real interest rate lets you calculate the Future Value of any investment or loan you make. Conversely, by using the inverse of the real interest rate, you can take any future value and convert it into the Present Value. This means that you can use interest rates to effectively see how money travels through time. Saving is effectively fast-forwarding your money to the future for later consumption, while borrowing is effectively taking money from your future self for consumption now. When you make a decision to save, you can use the real interest rate to see how much your savings will be worth in the future. If the future value of your savings makes it worth the wait, you will save. If not, you will consume today. The same goes for when you borrow – if you decide that the present value of how much you need to pay back is less than you think it is worth, you’ll take the loan. If not, you would pass. What Makes Interest Rates Increase or Decrease? The real interest rate goes up and down over time, and varies quite a lot based on the investment and market as a whole. Loan Risk unknown credit cardIf a loan is risky, the lender will charge a higher interest rate to compensate for the fact that they might not get paid back at all. On the other hand, very reliable borrowers usually have much lower interest rates. This plays a big role with investments. Government bonds generally have extremely low interest rates because there is almost zero risk that it will default. Stocks, in contrast have a much larger potential rate of return, but their chance of losing value is also a lot greater. Lots of Others Are Borrowing or Saving Supply and Demand plays a role with interest rates too. If there are a lot of people trying to borrow, the interest rate goes up because the total amount of cash available to lend is limited. If lots of people are suddenly saving a lot more, the interest rates will start to fall, since there is less competition to borrow. Expected Inflation The expected rate of inflation also plays a major role on interest rates. Look at it this way – if you want to lend $100 to a friend to be paid back in one year, you would be a lot more interested in your real rate of return, which is based on inflation. If you think there will be a lot of inflation in the next year, you would increase the interest rate you’re asking to make sure your real rate of return keeps up. What Do High Interest Rates Mean? At the end of the day, when real interest rates are high across the economy, it means that a lot of people and businesses are borrowing money. This means that there is a general shift from saving to spending, and the allocation of resources over time has shifted from the future to the present (as a total economy, we are borrowing money from our future selves). Economics In Action! When the economy is in a recession, the Federal Reserve tries to lower interest rates to encourage borrowing. In an expansion, they raise interest rates to prevent a crash. Higher interest rates mean that it is getting more expensive to borrow, which encourages people to save more, which starts to shift the balance of resources back to the future, and cause interest rates to fall in the long term. In the short term, making it more expensive to borrow money means that people and businesses will be spending less on large purchases, like buying new equipment or a new house. Having very high interest rates acts as a kind of “break” on the economy, slowing things down as people and businesses try to put off large purchases. This has a ripple effect through the economy. Rising interest rates are typically a result of economic growth, while falling interest rates are typically a symptom of an economic slowdown. Pop Quiz Click "Next Question" to start the quiz! 1 of 5) What is the Real Interest Rate? 2 of 5) What do high interest rates encourage? 3 of 5) Which of the following would likely lower your interest rate for a loan? 4 of 5) What happens when people expect higher inflation? 5 of 5) How can you find the "Future Value"?
ArtsAutosBooksBusinessEducationEntertainmentFamilyFashionFoodGamesGenderHealthHolidaysHomeHubPagesPersonal FinancePetsPoliticsReligionSportsTechnologyTravel Between Leadership and Authority Updated on January 20, 2019 The Current Dynamic In the modern socio-political climate, authority and leadership are pretty much regarded as the same thing. No matter what political and social arrangements are being operated under - from representative regimes to totalitarian dictatorships - the two concepts are inextricably linked to each other among the popular consensus. And it is this general consensus that informs the ensuing social arrangement accepted by society's populace. These two dynamics are usually used and conceptualized interchangeably. Particularly in contemporary western society where the representative political structure is, in fact, hierarchical and, as such, authoritarian, the terms and their respective definitions, as well as their practice, tend to materialize synonymously. Consequently, notwithstanding the alacrity of social-chauvinism to anachronistic political models, jingoist propaganda and the very myopic belief handed down from generation to generation, the typical western political structure, itself, as well as it's resulting societal framework, are anything but democratic. Nevertheless, a key component to building a working model of an actual democratic society is understanding that the relationship between an authority figure and their subordinates is starkly diametric to the relationship between a leader and their followers. Thus, it needs to be understood that, despite widespread misconceptions developed through centuries long disinformation campaigns designed to foment a vertical power structure and uneven power distribution, authority and leadership are not the same thing. What will be explored here are the differences between the two, the institutional methods used to conflate the two, and how anti-authoritarian leadership can, in fact, lead to democratic principle and practice. We will also attempt a cursory exploration of the role that an anti-authoritarian leader plays within their socio-political position, however this examination will intentionally be left unspecific so as to maintain the vicissitudes necessary for adaptability to any given communal demand. Authority's Shortcomings Authority is a position of status. An authority figure is placed into their position solely for the purpose of power flow. Authority leads by consolidating the power of the people into the authority figure's own hands, wielding that power over the heads of the people who gave it to them, and dictating the movements and interests of the people through this consolidation of power. As opposed to a natural selection of leadership, authority attempts to convince and persuade the people of their competency. The contradiction being that true competence needs no persuasion for recognition. Ergo, the campaigns of persuasion by those who seek authority are rooted in the thirst for power which is in direct opposition to the best interest of the people thereby nullifying any possibility of democratic characteristics. The best interest of the people is always to keep the power in the hands of the people. Any differing intent should be immediately abrogated as a viable option for representation. Nevertheless, persuasion campaigns by would be authority figures are a glaring testament to the basic forced relationship model for authoritative leadership. This model demands obedience from the people that is rooted in fear rather than loyalty from the people rooted in respect. Much like authority and leadership, obsequence and loyalty are not the same thing. Thus, it stands that democracy and freedom cannot, by definition, flow from social and political authoritative leadership institutions. Leadership Model Leadership, on the other hand, is a position of service. A true leader does not lead to be followed. Instead, this is a natural occurrence concomitant of their dedication and service to the people demonstrated in their every day life. A position of leadership organically develops from a people who are not forced to choose one. Instead, they will naturally gravitate towards a particular leader whose emergence proliferates by the people's judge of character. Natural leaders are born of the freedom that surrounds the people's choice to follow. It is this freedom of choice that holds responsibility over the leader. A true leader is held accountable in their position by virtue of a people's choice to follow. Thus it stands that the basics of the relationship model for leadership are mutually voluntary. The people desire leadership but far too often are forced to compromise on it under the auspices of authority. The Negative Effects of Authority in Society Every autocratic state and society in history has utilized institutional methods to indoctrinate an ancillary population and solidify capitulation to authority as a way of life. From the ancient Roman and Ottoman empires to the European monarchies and Latin American dictatorships, institutional conditioning has been used to propagate the misconception of obedience to authority as a moral imperative. The contemporary institutions of modernity are no different. The education our children receive revolves around the premise that in order to receive a quality education, authority must go unquestioned and unassailed. To do so warrants punishment which directly influences the student's chances at educational success. The competitive nature of the education system inherently socializes the student to place a premium on reaching the predetermined finish line. This can only be achieved by the student's submission to those placed in authoritative positions. Such submission discourages unique and independent perspective which inevitably keeps the student's thought process and behavior patterns within the confines dictated by those with authority. When we consider that teachers are guides and leaders for their pupils, we start to associate their natural leadership position with their appointed authoritative approach. The military is another institutional method of conditioning, even for those outside it's ranks. While the indoctrination to authority within the military may be salient, it is less so with those who are not in the military. Still, it plays a major roll on the minds of the masses. Through an accepted social ethos developed from an anachronistic idea of the military's societal function, we're taught that an automatic respect for soldiers is due them. Respect for soldiers is assumed through the idea that soldiers put their lives on the line to protect the safety and freedom of the population from foreign threats. It is presumed that the life of a soldier is in the hands of their ranking superiors and as such the soldier holds respect and obedience to said superior officer. By default, the respect that a population is conditioned to have for soldiers encompasses an automatic respect to their superior officers which, in turn, is demonstrated through obedience. Again we see a very common conflation that respect is the same thing as obedience. It is not. Lastly, reluctant to use the term "justice" due to the glaring lack of it, the term "penal" will be used in it's stead to refer to the final social institution we will explore. The penal institution is the most axiomatic example of authoritative conditioning any society can have. When all other attempts to rob individuals of their organic thought processes, originality, and free will have failed, society abdicates any pretense of leadership and subjects the individual to an environment where physical enforcement of strict authority is not only encouraged but, required. Police and prisons are given a monopoly on violence in order to force an authoritative dynamic onto society one recalcitrant individual at a time. With this monopoly, slavery and physical force are used to literally beat the fallacious idea that submitting to authority is a moral value that does not obstruct our freedom into the heads of the more intransigent people who follow the natural path of resistance to it. Education, military, and punishment are not the only institutions to buttress the idea that leadership and authority are the same. Religion, industry, and even family life are idealized into cookie-cutter conceptions in order to normalize a social arrangement that is anything but natural. From the cryptic to the overt, we see that institutions exist on a spectrum of authoritative indoctrination to force it's paradigm upon the citizenry. All social institutions are constructed by authority, using an authoritative framework to ambiguate the difference between leadership and authority which directly contradicts the best interest of a people who are forced to participate in it. Separating the Two Ironically, a true anti-authoritarian leadership model rests on the same premise as an authoritarian leadership model. The principle of the people choosing their leader rather than the leader choosing it's people is the central idea from which both situations arise. However, much like contemporary western political structures, authoritarian leadership assumes that because the people chose the leader, that the people, by default of choice, also handed over their rightful authority to the leader. This is precisely where anti-authoritarian leadership differs. An anti-authoritarian leader is chosen by the people on the bases of content, merit, skill, sensibility, and coherence. Charisma and demagoguery do also have their place but only as secondary characteristics. Nevertheless, the authority of decision, justice, and force still lie in the hands of the people. There is no room for contention should the people choose to recall and replace a licentious leader under the predetermined, yet circumstantially fluid, guidelines of abuse or misrepresentation. A true leader understands that the power still and always does lie in the hands of the people who chose him/her and this power is not limited to merely the freedom of a vote. They understand that positions of leadership do not equal an assumed excess of power over the people while the leadership position is occupied. In fact, on the contrary. It is the people who have the power over the leader. The role of an anti-authoritarian leader is dynamic and must bend to the needs of the community from which the leader comes. The role of a leader can be anything from representing the choices of the people to guiding and educating the people. It must be understood, however, that if a leader represents the decisions of the people, that it is not the role of a leader to make those decisions for them. Moreover, under normal operating circumstances, the anti-authoritarian leader gets a vote on any given issue, but his/her vote carries no more weight than the votes of the people. If the role of the leader is to educate the people on their best interests, those interests must come from the expressed consent of the community. Thus, an anti-authoritarian leader must possess the qualities of an educator without presenting the destruction of duplicity or self interest. It must be understood by the leader that the choice will always lie in the hands of the people. If the choice of a person diverges from the education of a leader, the leader must recognize this, accept that said person is of a different belief, and move on. Moreover, the difference between educating the people on their best interests and persuading them to choose against their own interests needs to maintain a constant and explicit presence within the periphery of both the leader and the people. They can often take on a very similar appearance. Also, from a brief reciprocal perspective, one of the most important feelings to bolster leadership is that of equal status and station. A people who are treated as equals by their leader will continue to freely support that leader (assuming all other necessary leadership qualities are also met). However, the feelings that arise within a people forced into an ancillary position when confronted by their superior are a testament to authority's unnatural and counter-intuitive nature. Resentment, anger, obstinance, hostility, and disservice are all indicative of how synthetic the authoritative thread is to the fabric of society. All in all, the professionalization of politics, hierarchical social and occupational arrangements, and the contemporary modes of production must be eradicated in order to solidify the role of an anti-authoritative social and political leader as a normative. While leadership in any society is a necessary arrangement for the progression of civilization, a life subjected to an authoritative expediency that operates under the auspices of leadership cannot simultaneously exist with a life that is free. 0 of 8192 characters used Post Comment No comments yet. This website uses cookies Show Details LoginThis is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. 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What Is Zika Virus? Zika_AOn Monday, Feb. 1, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Zika virus as a global health emergency, prompting world governments and nonprofit organizations to increase funding to combat the disease. Despite the “emergency” designation, WHO has been unable to link Zika to the increasing rate of birth defects in affected countries, particularly in Brazil, but said that it estimates nearly four million people will be infected with Zika by the end of 2016. As of Feb. 10, approximately two dozen cases of the Zika virus have been reported throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties and New York City. Zika virus is a mosquito-borne illness that was first identified in Uganda in 1947 in rhesus monkeys. It was subsequently identified in humans in 1952 in Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania. Outbreaks of Zika virus disease have been recorded in Africa, South America, Asia and the Pacific. Zika virus is transmitted to people through the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito, the same mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever. Zika virus disease outbreaks were reported for the first time from the Pacific in 2007 and 2013 (Yap and French Polynesia, respectively), and in 2015 from Brazil and Colombia and Cape Verde, Africa. 1280px-US_CDC_logo.svgTransmission between humans is not confirmed according to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the WHO, but the CDC is suggesting that, until more is known, pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant should consider postponing travel to the areas where Zika virus transmission is ongoing. Pregnant women who must travel to one of these areas should talk to their doctor or other healthcare professional first and strictly follow steps to avoid mosquito bites during the trip. Pregnant women should abstain or use a condom for the duration of the pregnancy if their sexual partner has traveled to or lives in an area with active Zika virus transmission. Health authorities are currently investigating a potential link between Zika virus in pregnant women and microcephaly in their babies. Until more is known, women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant should take extra care to protect themselves from mosquito bites. Pregnant women who are infected should be closely monitored during their pregnancy. The incubation period (the time from exposure to symptoms) of Zika virus disease is not clear but is likely to be a few days. The symptoms are similar to other infections such as dengue, and include fever, skin rashes, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain, malaise and headache. These symptoms are usually mild and last for two to seven days. Infection with Zika virus may be suspected based on symptoms and recent history (e.g. residence or travel to an area where Zika virus is known to be present). Zika virus diagnosis can only be confirmed by laboratory testing for the presence of Zika virus in the blood or other body fluids, such as urine or saliva. Stagnant water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Stagnant water is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. This can be done by using insect repellent; wearing clothes (preferably light-colored) that cover as much of the body as possible; using physical barriers such as screens, closed doors and windows; and sleeping under mosquito nets. It is also important to empty, clean or cover containers that can hold water such as buckets, garbage cans and flower pots, so that places where mosquitoes can breed are removed. Zika is not cause for panic. It is important to understand that there are no cases of mosquito-borne Zika virus cases reported in the United States. There are only travel-associated cases, where travellers have been infected while visiting an area of the world where Zika and Aedes mosquitoes are found. The number of Zika cases among travelers visiting or returning to the United States will likely increase, but 80 percent of Zika cases will not be diagnosed. If you have recently traveled to an area where Zika is found and have symptoms, visit your doctor and tell them where and when you traveled. Visit www.cdc.gov/zika/index.html or www.health.ny.gov/diseases/zika_virus for more information. Additionally, the state has launched a new information hotline (888-364-4723) for New Yorkers to call and learn more about the virus. —Information compiled from CDC and WHO. Want It In Print? We now offer matted and framed copies of articles upon request. Christy Hinko Christy Hinko is the editor of Glen Cove Record Pilot. Leave a Reply Celebrating Long Island’s Hometown Heroes Anton Media Group is looking to celebrate extraordinary Long Islanders who are doing good during these uncertain times. Email editorial@antonmediagroup.com to share your Hometown Hero with us. Nassau Museum Launches Trauma Therapy Program The Nassau Museum is mobilizing a year-long effort to provide therapeutic help and inspiration for those who have suffered trauma, anxiety and stress during the pandemic. Virtual Summer Camps And Educational Programs For Kids Local camp operators remain optimistic that there will be some return to normalcy. But just in case, there are several programs offering online summer programs that are both fun and educational. Colleges Plan For The Fall Semester How Parents Can Manage Stress During The Pandemic Get Updates Via Email
The Pacific Railroad reached Kansas City from St. Louis on this date. Even before this date Kansas City was already a thriving railroad terminus. The first engines had been brought to K.C. by riverboat and they pulled trains into Kansas and westward. Passengers also would ride steamboats to K.C. and then board trains for the rest of their journey. With the Civil War closing, the rest of the track could be laid across Missouri and the East-West connection became complete.
, , Mirrors offer new perspectives in this episode. Season 1, Episode 2: “Ladies Room” Here we learn a little more about the women in Don’s life—Betty, Peggy, Midge. One way to try to find out more about Don is to look at the people around him. How do they react to him? How does he influence them? What kind of role does he play in their lives? Think of the people with whom your main character interacts. What are their stories? How do their stories intersect with your main character’s story? What effect does your main character have upon other characters? This may be a negative effect or positive effect. In Don’s case, he negatively affects Betty but he ultimately exerts a positive effect upon Peggy. (This is also a good reminder that characters are not all good or all bad.). Is there a compelling storyline that shows up that tells readers something not only about a secondary character, but sheds light on a main character as well? The more perspectives from which you can examine your main character, the richer the portrait will be. Notable metaphor: Mirrors This episode is full of mirrors. Betty and Mona excuse themselves to the “powder room” during dinner with their husbands, and they stand in front of a mirror to apply lipstick. Peggy goes into the ladies room at work and sees a woman crying. But we only see the women’s face in the mirror. What does a mirror say? When we look into it, is it a true reflection? A mirror shows only the surface, not what’s underneath. Also, mirrors can help us see things we otherwise may not see. They offer a new perspective. Peggy would not have seen that woman’s face if not for the mirror.
Learning a New Language? Give it 10,000 Hours. Many people wonder how long it takes to learn a second language. Well, the answer is about 10,000 hours. Just ask Malcolm Gladwell, author of “Outliers.” But before we discuss Mr. Gladwell, let’s talk about what other people say first. Most people can agree that you get out what you put in. Some companies claim it will only take a few months. Most language experts are skeptical of claims that a short period of time is all you need to become fluent. In reality, language acquisition is a complex stew, an amalgamation of comprehension, grammar, new sounds, strange sentence structure, new cultures. Add a few cups of reading and writing, speaking and listening and a dash of patience and frustration and you have what it takes to learn another language. John Archibald and a team of researchers at the University of Calgary did a study in 2007 which concentrated on second language learning. They found that students who learn other subjects in a foreign language are likely to gain fluency and competence faster. Teach gym, math, social studies in a foreign language and students are bound to learn faster. This method is called content-based language teaching (CBLT). Learning this way allows students to master content material effectively, especially when they have limited time devoted to foreign language study. Grammar and structure can be added later, just as it is when we learn our first language. What else helps when trying to master another language? Being young. Numerous studies have shown that children who grow up learning more than one language at home essential have two mother tongues. And the way in which someone learns languages follow different patterns based on when we begin learning. This doesn’t mean it is worse to learn later in life, just different. For those of us who cannot turn back the hands of time and are forced to learn later in life, there are other options. Immerse yourself. If you have an opportunity to live in a country where they speak the language you are trying to learn, do so. Being engrossed in a land where you hear your target language exposes you to the language for many hours per day on a consistent basis. You need to learn to function in your new land. If this isn’t possible, try to recreate immersion opportunities. School yourself. While learning in school or with a tutor weekly or daily is important and good teachers can help navigate the water for you, there still needs to be time spent outside of the classroom to build fluency in a second language. And reach that 10,000 hour goal Now let’s go back to Malcolm Gladwell and the research behind the notion that 10,000 hours equals mastery in anything from playing an instrument to learning a sport. The 10,000 hours is not a hard and fast rule, but it is an excellent guideline to follow. Assuming we define fluency as someone being an expert in speaking a language, we can argue that is approximately the amount of time we need to become bilingual. If we learn only 1 hour per week (or 52 hours per year) without any self-study, it would take 192 years to learn the language. If you double that hour to 2 hours per week, it would take approximately 96 years. Solid self-study of an hour a day every day of the year would equal about 27 years. Total immersion where you are awake for 16 hour days in another country x 365 days means you already are more than half-way to the 10,000-hour goal. You would be immersed in the language for 5,840 hours/year and would take you about 2 years to learn. This is, of course, overly simplistic. It doesn’t take into account, different teaching methods, or a student’s abilities, differences or goals. It all comes down to interest and a lot of hard work, no matter the setting. Being dedicated and carving out the time is more important than how long it will take. The benefits of learning another language are immense and worth the time it takes to gain mastery. Instead of asking “how long will it take to learn another language,” perhaps the question should be “How can I best reach my 10,000 hours of study and practice to become fluent?” In real life, the answer is different for all of us and usually involves a combination of formal and informal classes, self-study, and travel. Maybe you listen to podcasts, read foreign magazines, watch internet videos, or label everything and everyone in your house with sticky notes. Whatever it takes, and whatever your method(s), it will come and the hours will add up and your life will be richer for it. Ilona Knudson #aiatranslations #foreignlanguagelearning #languagelearning #translations FREE QUOTE? Click here 4387 W. Swamp Road #556 Doylestown, PA 18938 USA © 2019 by aiaTranslations Privacy Policy • Wix Facebook page • Wix Twitter page • LinkedIn Social Icon • Instagram Social Icon
Nav: Home Ancient meteorite site on Earth could reveal new clues about Mars' past February 26, 2020 Scientists have devised new analytical tools to break down the enigmatic history of Mars' atmosphere -- and whether life was once possible there. "The question that drives our interests isn't whether there's life on present-day Mars," said Tim Lyons, UCR distinguished professor of biogeochemistry. "We are driven instead by asking whether there was life on Mars billions of years ago, which seems significantly more likely." However, "Overwhelming evidence exists that Mars had liquid water oceans roughly 4 billion years ago," Lyons noted. "To have made the planet warm enough for liquid surface water, its atmosphere would likely have needed an immense amount of greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide specifically," explained Chris Tino, a UCR graduate student and co-first-author of the paper along with Eva Stüeken, a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Since sampling Mars' atmosphere from billions of years ago to learn its carbon dioxide content is impossible, the team concluded that a site on Earth whose geology and chemistry bear similarities to the Martian surface might provide some of the missing pieces. They found it in southern Germany's Nordlinger Ries crater. According to Tino, it's unlikely that ancient Mars had enough oxygen to have hosted complex life forms like humans or animals. However, some microorganisms could have survived if ancient Martian water had both a neutral pH level and was highly alkaline. Those conditions imply sufficient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- perhaps thousands of times more than what surrounds Earth today -- to warm the planet and make liquid water possible. "Ries crater rock samples have ratios of nitrogen isotopes that can best be explained by high pH," Stüeken said. "What's more, the minerals in the ancient sediments tell us that alkalinity was also very high." "Before this study, it wasn't clear that something as straightforward as nitrogen isotopes could be used to estimate the pH of ancient waters on Mars; pH is a key parameter in calculating the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," Tino said. When samples from NASA's Mars 2020 rover mission are brought back to Earth, they could be analyzed for their nitrogen isotope ratios. These data could confirm the team's suspicion that very high levels of carbon dioxide made liquid water possible and maybe even some forms of microbial life long ago. "It could be 10-20 years before samples are brought back to Earth," Lyons said. "But I am delighted to know that we have perhaps helped to define one of the first questions to ask once these samples are distributed to labs in the U.S. and throughout the world." University of California - Riverside Related Mars Articles: The seismicity of Mars Journey to the center of Mars Getting mac and cheese to Mars A material way to make Mars habitable New research suggest that regions of the Martian surface could be made habitable with a material -- silica aerogel -- that mimics Earth's atmospheric greenhouse effect. Life on Mars? New evidence of deep groundwater on Mars Why we won't get to Mars without teamwork If humanity hopes to make it to Mars anytime soon, we need to understand not just technology, but the psychological dynamic of a small group of astronauts trapped in a confined space for months with no escape, according to a paper published in American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association. Mars: Not as dry as it seems More evidence of water on Mars How hard did it rain on Mars? More Mars News and Mars Current Events Trending Science News Current Coronavirus (COVID-19) News Top Science Podcasts We have hand picked the top science podcasts of 2020. Now Playing: TED Radio Hour Listen Again: Reinvention Now Playing: Science for the People #562 Superbug to Bedside Now Playing: Radiolab Dispatch 6: Strange Times
School Bus Drivers Tips for Staying Safe During COVID-19 Written By: LaJuan Bobo - May 8th, 2020 Compiled with the help of industry experts and authorities, the following practical tips are meant to be considered in addition to following directions provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and federal and state officials. These tips were crafted keeping in mind real-life situations that many drivers cannot avoid or control. Here are the tips that are applicable to school bus drivers: 1. Stay in your vehicles as supplies are loaded and unloaded and when possible. Keep your windows up when interacting with another person. 2. Do not touch fuel pumps with your bare hands – they are often the dirtiest areas of a gas station. 3. Decrease the number of times you touch “shared” objects with your bare hands such as credit cards, pens, cups, clipboards, handles, ATM pads, etc. 4. Use a face covering (a mask, scarf, or bandana) and gloves when interacting with people, along with social distancing. Disinfect these objects as much as possible. 5. When you can, go digital or electronic. Avoid receipts, forms, or other physical objects that are passed around without protection. 6. Handwashing with soap is more effective at removing certain kinds of germs, but if you need to make your own hand sanitizer, make sure it contains at least 60% alcohol. Error Message
Telecomunicaciones y tecnología NASA data shows thickest and oldest Arctic ice is melting By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The thickest, oldest and toughestsea ice around the North Pole is melting, a bad sign for thefuture of the Arctic ice cap, NASA satellite data showed onTuesday. "Thickness is an indicator of long-term health of sea ice,and that's not looking good at the moment," Walt Meier of theNational Snow and Ice Data Center told reporters in a telephonebriefing. This adds to the litany of disturbing news about Arctic seaice, which has been retreating over the last three decades,especially last year, when it ebbed to its lowest level. Scientists have said the trend is spurred byhuman-generated climate change. Melting Arctic ice does not raise sea levels as the meltingof glaciers on Greenland or Antarctica could, but it doescontribute to global warming when reflective white ice isreplaced by dark water that absorbs the sun's heat. Using satellites that measure how much ice covers water inthe Arctic and Antarctic, Meier and other climate scientistsfound a steep drop in the amount of perennial ice -- the hardy,thick ice that is over a year old -- in the north. The oldest Arctic ice that has survived six years or moreis the toughest, and even that shrank dramatically, Meier andthe other scientists said. Some 965,300 square miles (2.5 million sq kms) of perennialice have been lost -- about one and a half times the area ofAlaska -- a 50 percent decrease between February 2007 andFebruary 2008, Meier said. The oldest "tough as nails" perennial ice has decreased byabout 75 percent this year, losing 579,200 square miles (1.5million sq kms, or about twice the area of Texas, he said. This doesn't mean the Arctic is open water during thewinter, but it does mean that in many areas, the strongerperennial ice is being replaced by younger, frailer new icethat is more easily disturbed by wind and warm seatemperatures. "It's like looking at a Hollywood set," Meier said of anArctic largely covered with younger ice. "It may look OK but ifyou could see behind you'd see ... it's just empty. And whatwe're seeing with the ice cover is it's becoming more and moreempty underneath the ice cover." Perennial ice is also vulnerable to a recurring pattern ofswirling winds and currents known as the Arctic oscillation,which ejects the old ice out of the zone around the pole andaims it south where warmer waters will melt it. The scientists also analyzed satellite data for Antarcticabut found less dramatic change there. This was attributed to the difference in the two polarregions. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land while theAntarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean. However, the scientists noted sharp warming on theAntarctic Peninsula, which stretches northward from thesouthern continent toward South America.
By Brian Kahn on at Fossil fuels are the root cause of climate change. So it would stand to reason that we should rapidly wind down production of them to avert a catastrophe. Governments have promised to start doing that as part of their commitments to the Paris Agreement. There’s just one problem: They’re talking out of both sides of their mouths. And according to a new report by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), the world wouldn’t just edge past the 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) limit outlined in the Paris Agreement if fossil fuel productions goes as planned. It would blow past it well before 2030. The findings raise uncomfortable questions about just what the hell we’re doing as we race toward what is arguably the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. Previous UNEP reports have explored the emissions gap, a metric that shows the gulf between the Paris Agreement goals and what countries have pledged to do. The pledges countries have made are largely aspirational with details to be hammered out. The new report creates a metric known as the “production gap” that looks at what countries have planned for fossil fuel production in the coming decades and compares it to what’s needed to avert warming of 2 degrees Celsius and 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). While countries have shown aspirations to reduce emissions, the reality is far more bleak and complicated. The global economy is currently hardwired to run on fossil fuels. As incumbents, the multibillion corporations that extract gas and petroleum have a huge built in advantage over upstart renewable companies. In addition, fossil fuels enjoy $5 trillion (£3.9 trillion) in direct and indirect subsidies, and there’s ample infrastructure to extract and burn them. As a result, the levers of policies are pulled largely in favour of preserving this status quo despite the existential risk it poses. “Investments today in oil and gas infrastructure like pipelines and platforms are long lived, oftentimes 20 years or more,” Michael Lazarus, the US director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and report author, said on a press call. Graphic: UNEP The findings in the new report show that the fossil fuel extraction plans for the next 10 years – plans that don’t factor in any new oil, gas, or coal discoveries or shifts in demand – will lead to enough fossil fuels being dug up to emit 39 gigatonnes of carbon, up from 35 gigatonnes in 2018. That’s 53 per cent higher than what’s required to keep warming within 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial times and 120 percent higher than a 1.5 degrees Celsius world. Put another way, humanity would likely be screwed. The production gap is projected to keep growing in 2040, setting the world on a very dangerous path. Coal is the biggest driver in the production gap with countries on track to produce 280 per cent more coal than is compatible with a 1.5 degrees Celsius world. China accounts for nearly half of that growth. Other countries are on track to do their part to steer us toward climate catastrophe, though. Notably, the US is set to become a net exporter of fossil fuels next year as it floods the world with cheap freedom natural gas. Overall, the top nine petro- and coal-producing states account for 69 per cent (not nice) of all fossil fuel production. Twenty-seven countries produced 90 per cent of all fossil fuels in 2017. That underscores the miserable fact that the fate of the planet is the in hands of a small cadre of countries essentially holding the world hostage. That’s a bleak outlook, but it’s also one that means targeted policies have the potential to stave off the climate crisis. The report argues that supply side measures like cutting subsidies for fossil fuels and pursuing a just transition that winds down fossil fuels while retraining and otherwise protecting workers are two avenues to chipping away at fossil fuel dominance. It also argues the international climate talks like those taking place next month are a venue to wind down the fossil fuel industry. There are little signs of progress here and there. But way more radical action is needed to show the world is really committed to minding the gap. Featured image: Getty
With the Camp and Woolsey fires collectively killing dozens of people, destroying more than 20,000 structures and burning more than 250,000 acres in Butte County and northwest of Los Angeles, Californians may consider this historic devastation and think it's as bad as wildfires can get. Sadly, it's not. In 2016, scientists from Cornell University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies released a study predicting that the U.S. Southwest has a 99 percent chance of a mega-drought lasting decades. In August, the California Natural Resources Agency issued a report based on more than 40 peer-reviewed studies that was no less gloomy, warning that the state faces decades of hotter, deadlier weather. This month's damage could easily be eclipsed. That is why there is an urgent need for a comprehensive local, state and federal response to the wildfire threat — one that reconsiders previous assumptions and starts from scratch in evaluating all that can be done to minimize the loss of life and property. This has already sunk in to some degree in Sacramento, the state capital. Since 2008, the state has mandated that any structure built in very high fire-risk areas must feature specific fire-resistant designs and materials that protect against flying embers. This year, lawmakers expanded those restrictions to cover more land and funded more forest management. But a new CALmatters report makes it clear that politicians' focus on how homes are built misses the crucial importance of where they are built. "Between 1990 and 2010, an estimated 45 percent of all new housing units built in California were constructed in what experts refer to as the wildland-urban interface — where the state's cul-de-sac'd suburban subdivisions and rural communities meet its flammable forests and shrub fields," CALmatters reported. This is an invitation to disaster. Local and state authorities need to be far more cautious about approving subdivisions in these areas. This would complicate the response to California's housing shortage, but it is the only prudent approach. And while President Donald Trump's comments about "raking" forests led to ridicule, it's true that forest management has been a neglected tool. After a severe wildfire in 2003, Deschutes County in dry eastern Oregon adopted what The New York Times called "a cohesive strategy involving public education, community outreach, landscape restoration and robust emergency response" that built off the idea that flammable material must be continuously removed and that enough space must be maintained between housing and fire-risk areas. The county subsequently enjoyed a 14-year stretch without losing a home in a wildfire. There's also room for improvement on the bureaucratic front. While local agencies do a better job than they once did in coordinating with the state, they need to constantly re-examine how they work together. The Camp fire was a tiny brush fire that turned into a catastrophe because of an arguably tardy response by local and state authorities. The National Conference of State Legislatures also warned in 2017 that not budgeting enough money for responding to wildfires was common. California's wildfire threat won't ever be erased. But it can be greatly reduced with vigorous enforcement of smart rules, more vigilance by homeowners and the use of constantly updated best practices by local, state and federal authorities. What Gov. Jerry Brown calls "the new abnormal" of extreme fire risks demands a commensurate response. Let that be the sad, lasting legacy of this month's wildfire victims.
The Ballot or the Bullet The Ballot or the Bullet Summary and Analysis of The Ballot or the Bullet, Part 1 "The Ballot or the Bullet" opens by addressing the differences in religious beliefs that divide the African-American community. Malcolm X, a Muslim, credits Elijah Muhammed, the leader of the Nation of Islam, with making him into the man he is today. Malcolm X is the minister of Muslim Mosque Incorporated, just like Martin Luther King and Adam Clayton Powell are both Christian ministers. Though he holds different religious beliefs from King and Powell, all three men are united by their prodigious work as civil rights advocates. He declares that religion is a personal matter, not a political one. He is not here today to discuss his relationship with God, but to speak about black nationalism. Malcolm X defines black nationalism as the philosophy that African-Americans “should control the politics and the politicians in (their) own community.” Economically, it means frequenting African-American owned and operated businesses, whose profit will feed back into the black community and strengthen it. He declares himself to be “a black nationalist freedom fighter.” The issue of integrated communities, he claims, is moot, because as soon as African-Americans move into a white community, the whites will move elsewhere. As such, African-Americans must endeavor to educate themselves on which politicians will best serve the aims of the civil rights movement. Being a black nationalist, Malcolm X says, does not require you to give up any of your personal organizational affiliations. You can subscribe to whichever religious beliefs you’d like, and remain a member of whichever civic organizations you’d like. Malcolm X juxtaposes black nationalism with the non-violent philosophy of advocates like Martin Luther King Jr., who favor peaceful protest, which Malcolm denounces as passive. Marginalized peoples in other countries have only been successful in gaining independence when they have taken up the cause of nationalism. Second-class citizenship, such as is held by the African-American community, is tantamount to 20th-century slavery, says Malcolm. According to Malcolm X, 1964 is the year of the ballot or the bullet not only because it is the year of what he considers a failed march on Washington, but because it is an election year, and because there is a new generation of African-Americans who are no longer willing to be subjugated. The history of America is one of colonialism; Malcolm likens the colonists’ struggle against the British to that of African-Americans against white supremacy. Malcolm X warns African-Americans against the white politicians that will come into their communities (for the first and last time, he suggests) and make false promises of equality. He explains that he does not subscribe to either the Democratic or the Republican party, because he considers himself “a victim of America’s so-called democracy.” For African-Americans, there is no American dream, only an American nightmare. It doesn’t matter, he says, if you go to jail, because black people are already there. The African-American community has enormous political power, Malcolm X claims, if they vote as one. The white community is divided by its party affiliations, and as such, elections are often so close that there is cause for a recount. If the black community throws their support behind a single candidate, as they did behind Kennedy, that candidate will win. At the start of "The Ballot or the Bullet," Malcolm X dispenses with the divisive issue of religion in favor of the common cause of civil rights. He likens his status as a Muslim to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s as a Christian, knowing that in the past, his own religious affiliation has been a point of contention; he and Dr. King may have different ways of worshipping, but they are both known as civil rights leaders. Religious differences, he worries, might hinder solidarity in the African-American community. This downplaying of his religion reverberates in the context of a speech advocating for political engagement. The Nation of Islam, as led by Elijah Muhammed, forbade its members from participating in political processes. Earlier in the year, Malcolm X, once an outspoken follower of Elijah Muhammed, declared his separation from the Nation of Islam and realigned himself with the civil rights movement. In these opening paragraphs, Malcolm X calls for increased political participation and awareness in the black community. This marks a meaningful divide between Malcolm X’s ethos and the ethos of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm provides an economic summary of black nationalism: African-Americans should buy from African-American owned and operated businesses so as to feed the prosperity of their own communities and “lift the level…to a higher level…so that we will be satisfied in our own circles and won’t be running around here to knock our way into a social circle where we’re not wanted.” This economic attitude is in keeping with the larger social and political attitudes of separatism that marked black nationalism, which claimed that integration would only result in further oppression of black peoples and advocated, as the name suggests, for entirely separate and self-governed communities. In this first section of the speech, Malcolm relies on appealing to the pride of the African-American community, particularly through language centering on the emasculation of black peoples and the necessity of relying on brute force over peaceful protest. Relying on peaceful protests such as sit-ins “castrates” the black man, says Malcolm. Sit-ins are disempowering because they perpetuate the image of the African-American community as cowardly and weak. If gaming the political system doesn’t work, he recommends African-Americans turn to outright revolution. “Well, you and I been sitting long enough,” he claims, “and it’s time for us today to start doing some standing and some fighting to back that up.” Malcolm X frequently uses provocative language to incite anger in his audience, as is evident in his accusation that the white man has “made a fool out of you.” Here, he is utilizing the rhetorical device of pathos, or appealing to the audience’s emotions, to his advantage. Insulting his listener is meant to stoke the listener’s sense of anger and injustice, and therefore to provoke him into more direct action against white supremacy than the peaceful protests advocated for by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are able to do. Malcolm X invokes one American dream while condemning another. The white man didn’t know what he was doing when he let black children read about “liberty or death” in his history books, he says. Like the colonists, Malcolm X is ready to fight tooth and nail for the liberation of his community, whether that means using his vote advantageously or participating in outright revolution. George Washington and Patrick Henry didn’t win the American revolution, the soldiers did. So too will the black community win by force, and not by peaceful protest. Meanwhile, the American dream of equal opportunity is not one that applies to African-Americans. The black man is not born free, he is “born in jail,” victim of structural oppression and to the hypocrisy of a government that claims to represent the interests of all Americans. Everything south of the Canadian border is the South, he jokes. In one of many clever turns of phrase, Malcolm employs both humor and repetition to rename the situation facing African-Americans as “an American nightmare.”
Psych Corner: How To Find Relief When Life Feels Overwhelming Stress has a way of sneaking into our lives and making life more complicated. Sometimes, stress comes from school, sometimes it’s work, and other times it’s our relationships that trigger stress. But the good news is that you can do something about that stress. You have control over your response to it, and there are many easy, practical ways to keep stress to a minimum. How Stress Affects You Before you can start using some of the stress-fighting strategies described below, it’s important to understand how stress affects you and why it’s important to lower stress. When you experience a stressful event like a fight with a coworker, or a sick family member, you body activates its stress response. Your heart rate increases, your breathing become quicker, your muscles tense, and you mind feel like your mind is going in a million directions at once. Your body is preparing itself to react to the situation. However, if you aren’t able to return back to feeling calm once that situation is over, that experience of stress starts to wear on your body. And when you experience stress over and over again during an extended period of time, you start to feel run down, exhausted, and irritated. So it’s very important to stay ahead of stress and minimize the chances of it having a negative effect on you. Know Your Stress Sources One important step in managing stress is to identify your sources of stress. For example, if you are in school, you might have several assignments due at the same time. You might start to feel stressed when you start to think about how you are possibly going to get all of these assignments done. In this case, your stress trigger would be your school work and so you would want to focus on finding ways to help reduce the stress you experience when it comes to doing homework. Or, perhaps your child is going through a difficult period where they are constantly challenging you. In this case, your stress trigger would be your child’s behavior. Work can also be another source of stress as can your relationships (family, friends, or significant others). Identifying your stress triggers can help you know when to use your stress-reducing strategies Choose Your Strategies Stress-reducing strategies are activities and exercises that counter the negative effects of stress on your body. Remember how, when we experience stress, our muscles tense, our breathing gets quicker and more shallow, and we find it hard to focus? Stress-reducing strategies encourage the opposite to happen. Exercising is a great stress-reliever whether it’s going to a walk around the block or hitting the gym for an intense workout session. Exercise helps to stretch out those tense muscles, clear your mind, and release feel-good endorphins. The wonderful thing about exercise is that you don’t need any expensive equipment. You can go walking or running outside or find free videos online. Another easy way to help you calm down when you are stressed is to practice deep breathing. Deep breathing helps to reduce muscle tension, increase oxygen flow, reduce your blood pressure, and fight the effects of stress. Deep breathing is simply: • breathing in slowly through your nose while expanding your belly so that your lungs fill up • holding that breath for a few seconds • then breathing out slowly through your mouth. FYI, practicing this when you are calm and not under stress can help you use it more effectively when you do eventually experience stress. There are also helpful (and free) apps out there which can guide you in deep breathing and relaxation. Another important part of managing stress is surrounding yourself with supportive family, friends, and mentors. Your support group can help you notice patterns that trigger stress that you might not notice. They can also be there to listen when you need someone to talk to about what’s bothering you and they may even help you come up with solutions to your problems that you hadn’t even thought of. You can also combine two stress-relieving strategies into one by inviting a friend to exercise with you. Sleep is also an important part of minimizing the effects of stress. Studies have found that stress increases when amount and quality of sleep decreases. In other words, when you aren’t sleeping well, you are more likely to experience the negative effects of stress. So try to aim for 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep a night. To help yourself fall asleep more quickly: • keep your room as dark as possible • avoid bright screens before bed (phones, tablets, TV) • try to go to bed the same time every night • establish a nightly bedtime routine that includes calming activities like reading, prayer, or journaling. (You can read more tips from Harvard University here.) These are just a few of the easy ways that you can help keep the effects of stress to a minimum. Give them a try and you might find that those stress triggers that bothered you so much don’t have such a strong effect on you. Written By More from Julia How Past Trauma Affects Current Relationships (And What You Can Do About It) You probably know someone in your life who ends up in... Read More
Conduct of hostilities: air in The contemporary law of armed conflict Abstract only Log-in for full text Redeem token A military aircraft would be one 'operated by commissioned units of the armed forces of a state having the military marks of that state commanded by a member of the armed forces, and manned by a crew subject to regular armed forces discipline'. Military aircraft has the right to fly over international waters and to use such flights for surveillance or photographing another state's territory, even including its military installations. Military aircraft brought down by a neutral state or which land in neutral territory should be detained by the neutral until the end of the conflict and then returned to their home state. Personnel on board such aircraft should be interned until the cessation of hostilities. The general rules regarding the use of weapons forbidding those which cause unnecessary suffering apply in air warfare. All Time Past Year Past 30 Days Abstract Views 143 35 0 Full Text Views 60 12 0 PDF Downloads 10 4 1
04 Alter Dorfmittelpunkt mit Kapelle & Friedhof In 1731 a little bell (about 50 kg) was bought for the chapel on the “Gassenhövel”. Shortly after the villagers from Dreiborn and Berescheid were allowed to get baptized and married there and to be buried on the churchyard closeby. In 1804 the chapel was removed from the parish church in Olef and became the independent parish church of Dreiborn and Berescheid. In 1868 on the feast of St. Wendelinus, the second patron saint, three new bells were consecrated. These bells did not become 25 years old. The biggest, the knell, was donated by a wealthy bachelor with the proviso that it should also ring when poor people get buried. This condition being ignored, he said that he wished the bell to burst when it rings (“Ich wönschen du zerbääsch”). When the bell cage burnt in 1882, the rising heat made the bells swing and with a shrill sound the knell fell to the ground and shattered. The wish of the donator was fulfilled. The old church on the “Gassenhövel” was soon demolished, the tower stump was left as a churchyard chapel. Some years ago the chapel was renovated by some villagers and every year honours of the soldiers who died in the wars are done there. Veröffentlicht unter Dreiborn
The Beginnings of Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains The Beginnings of Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains The translation of hundreds of classic Greek texts into Latin was commissioned by the learned Pope Nicholas V who ruled the Church in Rome from 1397 until 1455. Beautifying Rome and making it the worthy capital of the Christian world was at the heart of his ambitions.Beginnings Contemporary Outdoor Wall Fountains 00864992963738905747.jpg At the behest of the Pope, the Aqua Vergine, a damaged aqueduct which had transported clean drinking water into Rome from eight miles away, was renovated starting in 1453. A mostra, a monumental commemorative fountain built by ancient Romans to mark the point of arrival of an aqueduct, was a custom which was restored by Nicholas V. The present-day site of the Trevi Fountain was formerly occupied by a wall fountain commissioned by the Pope and built by the architect Leon Battista Alberti. The aqueduct he had refurbished included modifications and extensions which eventually allowed it to supply water to the Trevi Fountain as well as the famed baroque fountains in the Piazza del Popolo and the Piazza Navona. "Old School" Water Fountain Manufacturers "Old School" Water Fountain Manufacturers Water fountain designers were multi-talented individuals from the 16th to the later part of the 18th century, often working as architects, sculptors, artisans, engineers and cultivated scholars all in one. Exemplifying the Renaissance skilled artist as a creative master, Leonardo da Vinci worked as an inventor and scientific specialist. The forces of nature inspired him to investigate the properties and motion of water, and due to his curiosity, he methodically captured his findings in his now renowned notebooks. Converting private villa configurations into innovative water showcases packed of symbolic significance and natural beauty, early Italian fountain designers paired curiosity with hydraulic and horticultural abilities. The magnificence in Tivoli were developed by the humanist Pirro Ligorio, who was widely known for his capabilities in archeology, architecture and garden design. Well versed in humanist topics as well as ancient technical readings, some other water feature creators were masterminding the extraordinary water marbles, water properties and water antics for the countless lands around Florence. Pick from all Sorts of External Fountains Pick from all Sorts of External FountainsPick Sorts External Fountains 42563775515947945.jpg Convert your garden into what you have always wished for – an oasis of serenity. Integrating a fountain into your garden provides tranquility as well as numerous powerful effects that come with having a water feature. A striking impact is made when a spouting fountain sends a shooting stream of water up into the air. It is doable to have one of these fitted into an existent, large pond. These types of fountains are often seen in parks or historical manor homes. Outdoor water features are available in different forms, one of which is a fancy wall fountain. Such fountains make for a great addition to your yard even if it is small. Wall fountains leave a subtle impression, contrary to the big impact produced by spouting fountains. It is simple process wherein a small jet of water pours outwards in front of a beautifully textured wall and then flows down only to be pumped up again. Installing a fountain with a theme depends completely on the style of your garden. If your cottage or garden is styled in a rustic manner, you should think about adding a classic type of statue, such as a seraph holding the spout, to your fountain. think about including something bolder and distinctive for a contemporary garden. Deciding what to do is entirely in your hands. Tiered fountains are alluring because the water moves down multiple levels. Water moves down numerous tiers in a cascading fountain. A significant amount of space is needed for an outdoor fountain, so another option is to install a wall fountain or a pondless fountain. The reservoirs necessary for these types of water features are concealed underground which helps you better use your limited space. Install a Japanese fountain if you are looking for a sense of peace. Bamboo sticks act as the tubing from which water flows in these kinds of water features. The repetition of water pouring into a bucket or shaped stone is one of the main characteristics of this type of fountain. Fountains created from glass are another type on the market. Trellis-style fountains of this kind, highlight molded metalwork which provides a more conventional look. Water features such as these are ideal for yards with many sharp corners as well as modern forms and designs. As the water flows over the surface of the glass it produces a dazzling impact. Colorful LED lights are also included in some fountains to illuminate the water as it down down the sheet of glass. Often made of imitation rock, stone waterfall fountains have water slowly trickling down its surface. A large rock drilled with openings which then has tubes inserted into it is what distinguishes a bubbling rock fountain. The gurgles and bubbles at the top are the result of the low pressure used to trigger the water upwards. The water comes back gently trickling down the sides of the rock to reach its starting point. Little gardens are ideal for this kind of fountain. This sort of fountain, which uses low pressure to move water, is perfect because it prevents water from being sprayed around in windy weather. Interior Wall Water Fountains Can Benefit You Interior Wall Water Fountains Can Benefit You Hospitals and health care facilities have been using interior fountains to create tranquil, stress-free environments for many years now. A contemplative state can be brought about in people who hear the gentle sounds of trickling water. Quicker recovery is thought to be induced by indoor water features as well.Interior Wall Water Fountains Can Benefit 48464010.jpg They are believed to be a positive part of dealing with a variety of ailments according to many medical professionals and mental health providers. Even the most afflicted insomnia patient as well as those suffering from PTSD can benefit from the calming, melodic sound of water. The transformative power of water has long been considered as one of two essential components used in the teachings of feng-shui. Harmonizing our inner environment so that it promotes serenity and peace is one of the main precepts in feng-shui. Our homes need to contain some sort of water element. The ideal place to set up a fountain is close to your home’s entranceway or in front of it. If you are looking for a water wall that best suits your families’ needs consider one of the many options available including a mounted waterfall, a stand-alone water feature or a custom-built fountain. A number of reports state that a fountain located in a central living area makes people more cheerful, satisfied, and relaxed than those who do not have a fountain in the house. Contemporary Sculpture in Historic Greece Contemporary Sculpture in Historic Greece A good number of sculptors were remunerated by the temples to adorn the elaborate pillars and archways with renderings of the gods up until the time period came to a close and many Greeks began to think of their religion as superstitious rather than sacred, when it became more typical for sculptors to portray everyday people as well.Contemporary Sculpture Historic Greece 161366054.jpg In some cases, a interpretation of wealthy families' forefathers would be commissioned to be placed inside huge familial burial tombs, and portraiture, which would be replicated by the Romans upon their conquest of Greek civilization, also became commonplace. It is wrong to say that the arts had one aim during The Classical Greek period, a duration of innovative achievement during which the usage of sculpture and alternative art forms changed. It may be the modern quality of Greek sculpture that grabs our eye these days; it was on a leading-edge practice of the classic world regardless of whether it was established for religious purposes or artistic pleasure. Anglo-Saxon Grounds During the Norman Conquest The Anglo-Saxon way of life was considerably changed by the arrival of the Normans in the later eleventh century.The ability of the Normans surpassed the Anglo-Saxons' in architecture and agriculture at the time of the conquest.... read more Pick from all Kinds of Outdoor Fountains Convert your garden into what you have always wished for – a haven of serenity.You can benefit from a water feature by incorporating an outdoor fountain to your backyard and creating a place of serenity.... read more Short Summary of Herb Gardens Some gardeners are drawn to herbal plants which can effortlessly be grown inside the house and out and are suitable in a wide array of cooking processes.They're effortless to grow indoors or out, and present instantaneous gratification when used in marinades, various recipes, sauces and soups.... read more What Are Large Outdoor Fountains Manufactured From? Though they come in various materials, today’s garden fountains tend to be made of metal.Metals tend to create clean lines and unique sculptural accents and can fit almost any style or budget.... read more How Your Home or Workplace Profit from an Interior Wall Water Feature Decorate and update your living space by including an indoor wall fountain in your home.These types of fountains decrease noise pollution in your home or office, thereby allowing your loved ones and customers to have a worry-free and tranquil environment.... read more The Vast Array of Exterior Water Features Is it possible for you to transform your yard into a haven of peace?The comforting feeling provided by outdoor fountains is just one of the benefits of adding a water feature in your garden.... read more
Fall 2013 A ride on the wheel of fortune Jeff Dolven and John V. Fleming Boethius considers his options. Illustration from a fifteenth-century French translation of De Consolatione Philosophiae. Courtesy Bridgeman Art Library. When you ride a wheel, you are usually preserved from its revolution by an axle. Ferris wheels, which lift and lower us to our delight, are one exception. Though less reliably delightful, the wheel of fortune is another. Its history is ancient, back past the wheel of the zodiac, and it has rolled through western history ever since as a figure for the inexorable law governing fortune’s apparent arbitrariness. What goes up, must come down. What comes down, must go up, too, though that is less often taken to be the lesson. John Fleming has written widely about the literature and culture of the Middle Ages, when the wheel of fortune was arguably at the top of its own career. Jeff Dolven spoke to Fleming at Princeton University, where he was formerly Louis W. Fairchild Class of ’24 Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Cabinet: We’re here to talk about the wheel of fortune. Boethius didn’t start it rolling, but it has come to be identified with him. Perhaps you could tell us who he was. John V. Fleming: Indeed, the wheel of fortune is associated with Boethius—oddly perhaps, since he mentions it so briefly in The Consolation of Philosophy. But later medieval writers developed his image extensively. Boethius was born in 480, but it’s his death that is memorialized in the Consolation. He wrote the book in 524 while imprisoned and awaiting execution by order of Emperor Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The circumstances of his political difficulties are not entirely clear, but he probably was accused of conspiring with the Eastern emperor against Theodoric, which he might, in fact, have been doing. He came from a prominent senatorial family, which perhaps even produced a couple of the later emperors. His full name is Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius and in medieval texts he’s often called Severinus or Severine. His family had been Christians for more than a century at the time of his birth. Boethius has been described as the last of the great Roman philosophers and with equal justice as the first great Christian philosopher. So how does he come to write the Consolation? And why is it philosophy he turns to? The word philosophy in the title is crucial. In the early sixth century, you would expect a Christian author to look for solace, or consolation, in religion, but The Consolation of Philosophy is religion-free. Boethius did his absolute utmost to draw all the materials of the book not from the Bible or theologians like Augustine but rather from the classical secular literature that any well-educated citizen of late antiquity would have known—what we think of as the Greek and Latin classics. Subscribe to access our entire archive. Log In and read it now.
[Skip to Content] Walking Pneumonia What Is Walking Pneumonia? It can seem like kids pick up one bug after another. One week it's a runny nose, the next a sore throat, or both. Most of the time, these bugs only last for about a week. But those that last longer can sometimes turn into walking pneumonia. Walking pneumonia, or atypical pneumonia, is a less serious form of the lung infection pneumonia. It's caused by Mycoplasma , and causes cold-like symptoms, a low-grade fever, and a hacking cough. Most kids with this form of pneumonia will not feel sick enough to stay at home — hence, the name "walking" pneumonia. But even a child who feels fine needs to stay at home for a few days until antibiotic treatment kicks in and symptoms improve. What Are the Signs & Symptoms of Walking Pneumonia? Colds that last longer than 7 to 10 days or respiratory illnesses like respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can develop into walking pneumonia. Symptoms can come on suddenly or take longer to appear. Those that start slowly tend to be more severe. Here's what to look for: • a fever of 101°F (38.5°C) or below • fast breathing or breathing with grunting or wheezing sounds • hacking cough • ear pain • chest pain or stomach pain • malaise (feeling of discomfort) • vomiting • rash • joint pain Symptoms usually depend on where the infection is concentrated. A child whose infection is in the top or middle part of the lungs will probably have labored breathing. Another whose infection is in the lower part of the lungs (near the belly) may have no breathing problems, but may have an upset stomach, nausea, or vomiting. How Is Walking Pneumonia Diagnosed? Walking pneumonia is usually diagnosed through a physical examination. The doctor will check your child's breathing and listen for a hallmark crackling sound that often indicates walking pneumonia. If needed, a chest X-ray or tests of mucus samples from the throat or nose might be done to confirm the diagnosis. How Is Walking Pneumonia Treated? Antibiotics are an effective treatment for walking pneumonia. A 5- to 10-day course of oral antibiotics is usually recommended. If your doctor prescribes antibiotics, make sure your child takes them on schedule for as long as directed to recover more quickly. Once on antibiotics, your child has a minimal risk of passing the illness on to other family members. But encourage everyone in your household to wash their hands well and often. Don't let your child share drinking glasses, eating utensils, towels, or toothbrushes. Wash your hands after touching any used tissues. Also make sure that your kids are up to date on their immunizations to help protect them from other infections. How Can I Help My Child Feel Better? Your child should drink fluids throughout the day, especially if he or she has a fever. Ask the doctor before you use a medicine to treat a cough. Cough suppressants stop the lungs from clearing mucus, which might not be helpful for lung infections like walking pneumonia. If your child has chest pain, try placing a heating pad or warm compress on the area. Take your child's temperature at least once each morning and each evening. Call the doctor if it goes above 102°F (38.9°C) in an older infant or child, or above 100.4°F (38°C) in an infant under 6 months of age. With treatment, most types of bacterial pneumonia go away within 1 to 2 weeks. Coughing can take up to 4 to 6 weeks to stop. Date reviewed: May 2018
Applied Maths At Sandford Park School, we are delighted to be able to offer students a full two-year programme in Leaving Certificate Applied Mathematics during Forms V and VI. Applied Maths is a subject which examines the area of Mechanics, a topic from the broader subject of Physics. It then analyses these physical systems in great mathematical detail. This syllabus allows students to develop their problem-solving skills to a greater extent then in either Mathematics or Physics. It requires them to first use both intuitive and cognitive abilities to complete a physical analysis of the given system, and then to use mathematical skill, strategy and insight to process the information gathered, in order to reach the desired solution. Students of Leaving Certificate Physics enjoy an enormous benefit from studying Applied Maths, in that they cover the entire Mechanics section of that course in great detail and thus find it quite straightforward in Physics. Also, higher level Mathematics is considered perhaps the most difficult of all subjects at Leaving Certificate. The extra classroom hours spent daily in Applied Maths using the skills learnt in areas like algebra, trigonometry, geometry, vectors and calculus are invaluable to a higher level maths student. For students with both an interest in and an aptitude for Mathematics and Science, Applied Maths often proves to be their favourite subject. It also provides for excellent development of the strategic and computational skills not only necessary for further education in Science and Engineering, but also for Business and Commerce. In recent years, leaders in industry and academia have highlighted these abilities as being of the utmost importance in the modern global economy and have stated that it is an area of education where most young Irish people are currently below standard.
Record Data on a SD Card One of the most important things in engineering (really in life) is data logging and the ability to go back and look at whats going on. Typically you would need the Arduino connected to the computer so that you can record, copy, and then paste the code into excel. As a result, you typically can’t go very far from your computer. So is there another way to record data but not be confined to a computer? The answer is yes, and it’s pretty easy to do also. All you need is an SD card and a method for the SD card and the Arduino to communicate (SD card Module). There are libraries that easily handle the reading and writing to an SD card. For this tutorial, we are only going to be looking at writing to the SD card. I’m going to show you how to wire the SD card module along with a DHT11 temperature and barometric pressure sensor. You will then record data from the DHT11 onto the Arduino SD card module 1X Arduino Compatible Board 1X Male – Male jumper cables 1X DHT11 module 1XSD card Module dht11 and SD #include <DHT.h> #include <SPI.h> #include <SD.h> int DHTPIN = 2; const int chipSelect = 4; unsigned long Secs=0; #define DHTTYPE DHT11 // DHT 11 void setup() { // Open serial communications and wait for port to open: while (!Serial) { Serial.print("Initializing SD card..."); if (!SD.begin(chipSelect)) { Serial.println("Card failed, or not present"); // don't do anything more: Serial.println("card initialized."); void loop() { // make a string for assembling the data to log: String dataString = ""; int h = dht.readHumidity(); // Read temperature as Celsius (the default) int t = dht.readTemperature(true); //true : fahrenheit false:celsius unsigned long Secs=millis(); File dataFile ="temp.txt", FILE_WRITE); // if the file is available, write to it: if (dataFile) { // print to the serial port too: else { Serial.println("error opening datalog.txt"); Leave a Reply
Science & Technology Those 40,000-Year-Old Worms Aren't Even the Oldest Organisms to Come Back to Life Worms are surreally hardy creatures. Russian researchers recently found microscopic, intact worms in permafrost from 40,000 years ago — and when they thawed the ice, the worms came back to life. But if you think that's ancient, just wait until you hear about the other organisms that have come back to life. The Worms That Lived The two worms in question aren't exactly earthworms. They're nematodes — tiny translucent worms, a few hundred microns long, that you can only see under a microscope. Russian researchers discovered the ancient, intact nematodes in samples of the permafrost in Siberia. Of their 300 permafrost samples from the Kolyma River lowland, the nematodes cropped up in two that dated back to the late Pleistocene period. That's 30 to 40 thousand years ago. For context, that was the era of the most recent ice age, around when humans first spread across the Earth. Hopefully, they had jackets. At first, the researchers only knew the nematodes were intact. But then they thawed the permafrost samples and surrounded each in nematode food. Over the course of a few weeks, the worms began to wriggle and eat the food. Though they had been frozen, it turned out they had never quite died. Instead, not unlike Austin Powers, they had remained in suspended animation for millennia, poised to reanimate when their surroundings thawed. What Can Ice Do? The worms' surprise victory over ice and the passage of time is scientifically important — but not because we didn't know long-frozen lifeforms could reanimate. It's well-established that single-celled organisms, frozen in ice or preserved in amber for hundreds of thousands, even millions of years, can reanimate. Compared to those bacteria, the newly-discovered nematodes are downright youthful, but this case is still groundbreaking: It's the first time multicellular organisms, more complex than bacteria, revived after millennia on ice. Previously, another organism — the tardigrade — had survived freezing, but only for a short time. The tiny, surprisingly pig-like creatures that can survive basically anything: outer space, freezing cold, extreme heat, and intense radiation. Japanese researchers had brought two tardigrades back to life after they had been frozen for 30 years — but thirty years is small change compared to what the worms endured. Well, probably endured. As with all things in science, nothing is completely certain after one paper. The researchers went to great lengths to keep their permafrost samples sterile, but it's possible — though not probable — that the samples were somehow polluted with modern worms. So this research should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, if it's corroborated by further studies, that means ice is a very powerful preservative. Freezing temperatures can, in a way, freeze time for many creatures. This is delightful in that it opens up the possibility of humans freezing themselves. At the same time, ice's freakish powers could put us in danger. Though there's no evidence that the nematodes in question here could be harmful to humans, ice is melting worldwide, reanimating ancient bacteria that's not all friendly. Some have compared the melting of permafrost to opening "a Pandora's box of diseases." Fascinated by what life was like millions of years ago? Check out "The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World" by Steve Brusatte. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale. Written by Mae Rice July 30, 2018
Tag Archives: mind map of bach flower remedies Mind map of Chestnut Bud – the learning flower ChestNut Bud Absentminded, prone to road accidents. Aesculus hippocastanum 1. Tends to repeat the same mistakes, never learns from experience. 2. Has the urge to enter into every new adventure, on a trial and error basis, and the outcome will invariably be the same. 3. Periodic illnesses occurring in an individual. 4. Their behaviour portrays them to be trying to escape from themselves, obsessively refusing to face their past, and their lives together. 5. Attempts to forget unpleasant experiences as quickly as possible. 6. Absentminded and inattentive children. 7. Slow to learn from life, mental blocks, retarded development. 8. Seems naive, awkward, inattentive. Mind map of Cherryplum – the openness flower Mind map of Cherryplum Desperation. Fear of losing his mind’s control over his actions. Can do anything, even kill somebody or kill himself at the spur of the moment, without thinking. Unbearable condition of the mind. Apt to act on impulse than on reason. Prunus cerasifera 1. People losing their self-control on heading for a breakdown. Desperate, about to have a nervous breakdown. 2. Fear of doing something terrible at any moment (something one would never normally do) and then having to regret it for the rest of one’s life. 3. Afraid one is going mad. 4. Compulsive ideas, delusions. 5. Sudden, uncontrolled outbreaks of rage. 6. Destructive impulses, danger of suicide. 7. Useful in the treatment of bedwetting in children (self-control of daytime released during sleep, when there is no conscious body control). 8. Useful for rehabilitation of drug addicts. Mind Map of Honeysuckle SimpleMind Mind Map - Honeysuckle ( हनिसकल )(1) Honeysucke : “ पुरानी यादॊं में खोये रहना , भूतकाल की घटना की याद मॆ ऐसा खोना कि वर्तमान की हालात से बिल्कुल लापरवाही , घर की याद करना ” डा. एडवर्ड बैच Always thinking and talking of the past events and life. Cannot break contact with the past events. Regrets and remorse for the past events. Does not live in the present, makes no effort to solve the present difficulties, escapism into the past. Cannot get over the loss of a person one loved (parent, child, spouse, friend). BOTANICAL NAME: Lonicera caprifolium : -Longing for the past, regrets over the past. -Lives mentally in the past, has no interest in the present. -Glorifies the past, expecting it to return. -Can’t accept any change, still clinging to the past. -Unconsciously refuse to see and accept new developments. -They fix their mind on just one aspect, usually a pleasant one, regret for missed opportunities, missed chances and unfulfilled hopes. -Honeysuckle helps the dying to ‘let go’ more easily. -Cannot get over the loss of a person one loved. -Recollections of childhood. -It can be used to combat regret that one is getting old. : -Compare-Clematis (escapes from the present into a fantasy life, hoping for a better future). -Honeysuckle (escapes to the past and expects nothing positive from present and future).
9 Matching Annotations 1. Sep 2019 1. At the moment, GPT-2 uses a binary search algorithm, which means that its output can be considered a ‘true’ set of rules. If OpenAI is right, it could eventually generate a Turing complete program, a self-improving machine that can learn (and then improve) itself from the data it encounters. And that would make OpenAI a threat to IBM’s own goals of machine learning and AI, as it could essentially make better than even humans the best possible model that the future machines can use to improve their systems. However, there’s a catch: not just any new AI will do, but a specific type; one that uses deep learning to learn the rules, algorithms, and data necessary to run the machine to any given level of AI. This is a machine generated response in 2019. We are clearly closer than most people realize to machines that can can pass a text-based Turing Test. 2. Jun 2018 Why are these roles gendered, the man always dissembling, the woman assisting? 3. Jul 2017 4. Jan 2017 1. Like many other AI practitioners, I’m a philosophical functionalist: I believe that a cognitive state, such as one derived from reading, should not be defined by what it is made of in terms of hardware or biology, but instead by how it functions, in relation to inputs, outputs and other cognitive states. (Opponents of functionalism include behaviourists – who insist that mental states are nothing other than dispositions to behave in certain ways – and mind-brain identity theorists – who argue that mental states are identical with particular neural states, and are tied to specific biological ‘hardware’.) La idea de dependencia en un "hardware" biológico es la más cercana a mi perspectiva. La funcionalista se acerca al test de Turing y proponentes similares. 5. Jun 2016 1. Il en appelait à des « oracles » : With the help of the oracle we could form a new kind of machine (call them o-machines), having as one of its fundamental processes that of solving a given number-theoretic problem. (Turing, 1939 : 161) les oracles pour répondre au non-calculable, non-computationnel. 6. Oct 2015 1. Nearly all applications of probability to cryptography depend on the factor principle (or Bayes’ Theorem). This is easily the most interesting sentence in the paper: Turing used Bayesian analysis for code-breaking during WWII. 7. May 2015 1. Dr. Lamport received a doctorate in mathematics from Brandeis University, with a dissertation on singularities in analytic partial differential equations. This, together with a complete lack of education in computer science, prepared him for a career as a computer scientist at Massachusetts Computer Associates, SRI, Digital, and Compaq. He claims that it is through no fault of his that of those four corporations, only the one that was supposed to be non-profit still exists. He joined Microsoft in 2001, but that company has not yet succumbed. Dr. Lamport's initial research in concurrent algorithms made him well-known as the author of LaTeX, a document formatting system for the ever-diminishing class of people who write formulas instead of drawing pictures. He is also known for writing A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable. which established him as an expert on distributed systems. His interest in Mediterranean history, including research on Byzantine generals and the mythical Greek island of Paxos, led to his receiving five honorary doctorates from European universities, and to the IEEE sending him to Italy to receive its 2004 Piore Award and to Quebec to receive its 2008 von Neumann medal. However, he has always returned to his home in California. This display of patriotism was rewarded with membership in the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. More recently, Dr. Lamport has been annoying computer scientists and engineers by urging them to understand an algorithm or system before implementing it, and scaring them by saying they should use mathematics. In an attempt to get him to talk about other things, the ACM gave him the 2013 Turing Award. Talk about badass introductions
Symbolism of Overall Design: Individual motifs included in the design of carpets have certain inherent symbolism, but the carpet as a whole usually had a central theme. For example, in Persian carpets had a theme as the Garden of Eden, a symbol of eternal paradise. The flowers, birds, and water, all symbolized a freedom from the harsh desert, and a promise of eternal happiness. The Garden of Eden concept has continued on in the Oriental designs. Garlands, vines, flowers, trees, animals, and beasts all together create a landscape, picturing hunting scenes or game, lakes with water birds, and often ‘images of supernatural or celestial beings, such as jinn, houris, or a gathering of the blissful righteous at a banquet or dance’. The verses are included to support the image, lyrically extolling the carpet as a garden. Rugs and carpets are more formal and are designed as stand alone or independent units. Whereas tapestries are often conceived as sub parts of larger design or configuration. Laces were primarily designed as borders. Designs usually consist of an inner field -the pattern in the centre of the carpet, and a border. The border as the frame on a picture, to emphasize the limits and isolate the field. The design of inner field and border were mutually harmonizing, but distinct entities. Borders consist of a minimum of three elements: a main band, which varies greatly in width according to the size of the item and the elaborateness of the field design. The inner stripes and outer guard stripes accompany the main band on its sides. The guard stripes may be the same on both sides of the main band, or be different. Inner Field: The inner field consists of an all-over pattern, a panel composition, or a medallion item. The all-over pattern may be of identical repeats, juxtaposed or evenly spaced. It may also be of varied motifs in a unified system. The design almost invariably includes bilaterally balanced repetitions. The varied motif type of design is found often in representations of the parks or woods. The most frequent medallion composition consists of a central patterned field, complemented with corner pieces. But multiple-medallions are also developed as a chain of medallions on the vertical axis, two or more forms of medallions alternating in bands, and spotted medallions that may or may not be interconnected or interlocked.
What is money? The answer changes from 1913 to 2019. Americans today think of “money” as paper that in minted by governments, but this was not always the case. A century ago money (“notes”) still retained their ancient connection to credit. Notes were promises to be redeemed for coin or reliable securities.America’s Bank (page 200). Today we’ve not lost this underlying concept of credit, but we instead ignore many of the layers of credit that exist in this amorphous, complex concept we call “money” as when all is going well, they are ignorable. For most of my life I wondered what the difference was between a dollar in a bank account and a dollar in my pocket. They seemed different but how? I finally found that answer in a class on Coursera, the Economics of Money & Banking. (If you like my posts on economics and money, I highly recommend it. If you skip these posts, then you won’t see this recommendation). The answer is that there is a hierarchy of money. At the top of the hierarchy used to be gold. For some people “real” money still is gold. For most of us, that reality ended well before we were born, and instead the top of the hierarchy is the $100 U.S. dollar bill, tinged blue with the security strip. It’s in the place where gold used to be as that $100 bill is accepted just about everyone on the planet. In the U.S. any $1, $5, $10, $20, $50, or $100 is as good as that $100 bill, just as in Europe any Euro bill (or coin), or Renminbi in China, or Rupee in India (when they are not demonetizing their own currency). Next down the hierarchy are bank deposits. You can walk into your bank, hand them paper bills, and they’ll add them to your bank balance. You can walk into the bank another day (or to an ATM), and they’ll give you back paper bills. But you already knew that, and you probably just think of those deposits as “money” and probably have more money in the bank than in your wallet or under your mattress. When all is well, those two forms of money are nearly identical. In banking jargon, we say that they trade “at par”. All that means is that $1 of deposits is worth $1 of paper money. In Africa, both at a bank and for mobile money, you’ll likely have to pay a fee to make that trade, and in the U.S. you may pay a fee at the ATM, so the two forms of money don’t quite always trade at par. The reality of bank deposits not being money only shows up during a panic. A few years back the people of Greece experienced this reality. They were limited to only withdrawing €20 per day from their bank accounts. The trade was at a par, but the amount of trading was limited. A few years before that, the government of Cyprus seized a portion of everyone’s bank account balances. And back in the Great Depression, there were weeks of “bank holidays” where the banks were all closed. Meanwhile, the economy has more good days than bad, and thus we treat bank deposits as money. So much so that we accept our salaries as bank deposits (checks are just portable bank deposits if you don’t have direct deposit) and you pay all your bills using bank deposits (check, BillPay, auto-pay are all just transfers of bank deposits, with no cash being moved from bank to bank). One step further down the hierarchy, we get to loans. If you took out a loan from a bank, notice that they didn’t hand you any cash, they simply increased the balance in your account. Notice too that you repaid them using bank deposits. Loans are just promises to pay deposits. Deposits are just promised to pay cash. Do you own a money market fund? Shares in a money market are promises toward a basket of loans. Promises to share the interest of those loans, which promise to pay deposits, which are promises to pay cash. The hierarchy of promises continues down even more levels of esoteric derivatives, but the point to realize is that money is just a hierarchy of promises all the way down. Popping back to the title of the post, what has changed in the last 100 years is that the top of the hierarchy is no longer gold and that 100 years of trust in a stable system of banking means that in our daily lives bank deposits are as good as cash. Looking 100 years into the future, this will very likely change again, with non-bank balances being trusted too. Maybe that will be your mobile crypto wallet. Maybe it’ll be a chip embedded behind your ear. Or maybe it’ll still be a plastic card you keep in your wallet that looks greenish blue and has a picture of a dead person on the front. Either way as long as people trust it to have value, it’ll have value as money is really nothing more than trust. By "Luni" Recent blog posts
Stories are a vital part of the human experience. Narratives and tales communicate comedy, mystery, and drama to inform and entertain readers, listeners, or viewers. In search of a final project for our natural language processing (NLP) class, my collaborator (and fellow Network Science PhD student) Jessica Davis and I wanted to use NLP techniques to examine storytelling. Earlier this semester, we stumbled upon a paper (Reagan, Mitchell, Kiley, Danforth & Dodds, 2016) that introduced the idea of “emotional arcs.” To create emotional arcs, both Reagan et. al and Jockers (2014) divide books into thousands of different word chunks, and then use sentiment analysis to give an emotional score to that particular chunk. The sentiment analysis tool they use quantifies the emotional content of a passage; words like “sunshine” and “delightful” contribute to a happier score, while words like “dreary” and “murder” make the score sadder. Both authors trace the emotional score throughout the course of the book, describing the emotional arc of the narrative. Reagan et. al don’t claim that an emotional arc necessarily reflects the plot or narrative of the book. Rather, the emotional arc reflects the reader’s emotional experience while reading the book; it’s just one part of the entire structure. Interestingly, after tracing 1,327 novels from the Project Gutenberg corpus, Reagan et al. find that six archetypal emotional arcs describe the vast majority of those novels. These core arcs offer some evidence for the existence of common narratives and plot threads across stories, such as the hero’s journey described by Joseph Campbell. In addition, Reagan et al. find that books with certain core arcs are downloaded more frequently. For example, when comparing across all core arcs, books with an emotional arc that falls, rises, falls, and then rises again have the most downloads. That is, the emotional structure of a novel seems to correlate with success. Jessica and I decided to use the techniques described in Reagan et al. and turn them to television. Of course, television is primarily a visual medium, but we relied on subtitle data to examine television shows through dialogue. The vast majority of television scenes involve characters talking, so we hope that dialogue can accurately represent the emotional ebb and flow of a television show. Also, there’s good reason to expect emotional arc similarity in television. Sitcoms, police dramas, and other serialized television shows are often formulaic; tension is introduced at the beginning, then resolved, and the episode ends exactly where it started. Since many television episodes have similar structures, it’s not unreasonable to expect that they would have similar emotional arcs. We obtained subtitle data from, a fan-maintained website devoted to uploading and housing millions of subtitle files. We were able to obtain all English subtitles of all English-language television shows in their database. Although the dataset doesn’t represent the entirety of all English-language television, it’s still a hefty amount: it contains 46,040 unique episodes representing 1,800 unique seasons of television. Note that due to its origin, the dataset likely suffers from some selection bias. It’s possible that popular shows (or at least shows popular among the website’s users demographics) are more likely to be represented in our data. To construct episode-level arcs, Jessica and I divided each episode into twelve equally-sized time chunks. We divided by time to best reflect the viewer experience; dialogue does not appear uniformly throughout an episode. As a consequence, the amount of words in each time chunk differs dramatically throughout an episode. Also, since some television shows are much longer than others, some shows (mostly comedies) will have chunks with much less words than longer shows (mostly dramas). It’s possible that different chunk sizes biases our sentiment analysis, but we needed to keep the number of chunks in an arc constant. We also traced the emotional arcs of individual television seasons by aggregating all episodes into a season and treating the aggregate like one really long television show. We only used seasons that had at least four episodes and did not use seasons that were incomplete or missing episodes. Season-level arcs are thirty-six chunks long. As with episode-level arcs, chunk size does differ considerably between seasons. To assign scores to our chunks, we used VADER, a dictionary/rule-based sentiment analysis tool designed for social media analysis. VADER worked well for us since individual chunks of episode arcs can be quite small, and purely dictionary-based methods don’t work well on small pieces of text. Also, since all of our subtitle text is dialogue, we thought a tool designed for social media conversation would be appropriate. After creating arcs, we used singular value decomposition (SVD) and k-means clustering to generate core arcs and clusters in our subtitle data. Technically, SVD doesn’t cluster arcs, but it does give us “modal arcs” that best represent the overall data. The image above shows our SVD modes on individual episode data. Red lines represent the mode and gray lines represent the episodes that are best described by that mode. The top five best gray lines are listed below. Each episode arc is weighted by the inverse mode coefficient. We’ve added the names that Reagan et al. used to describe the six core emotional arcs they found. For example, an arc that starts sad but gets happier is a “rags to riches” arc. In order to test whether or not our SVD modes actually reveal some emotional structure, we compared them to a “sentence salad model.” This means that, on both the episode and season levels, we shuffled sentences between the chunks so that we could keep grammatical structure intact, but remove the larger story context. We expected our real SVD modes to differ dramatically from the “sentence salad” SVD modes. Finally, to test the success of emotional arcs, we gathered IMDB ratings for every episode. To get season-level ratings, we average all episode ratings together. We don’t find the same resounding results that Reagan et. al did. Unfortunately, our k-means clustering approach found very little clustering behavior. However, our first four SVD arcs explain 48% of variance in the episode level data and 21% of the season level data. That is, our core arcs do an okay job of representing all of the thousands of emotional arcs we generated. This isn’t the same thing as clustering, but since our SVD arcs are very different from our ‘sentence salad’ arcs; we’re confident that our SVD arcs are meaningfully different. Finally, all of our SVD arcs had similar IMDB ratings; there is little correlation between arc and success. Given the lack of clustering in our results, it’s possible that television shows aren’t as emotionally formulaic as they might appear. Alternatively, perhaps our results show that dialogue doesn’t accurately represent the narrative complexity of television. Reagan AJ, Mitchell L, Kiley D, Danforth CM, Dodds PS (2016) The emotional arcs of stories are dominated by six basic shapes. EPJ Data Science 5(31)
Follow Us Short Description: Product Description Health is the state of a person’s body, mind, and feelings. Good Health means more than just not being sick. A healthy person has a body in good physical shape and a good feeling about life. A healthy person also gets along with others. People who are physically healthy have strength and energy. They can enjoy many activities. A person can do many things to keep physically healthy. This include eating a variety of foods, such as fruits,Vegetables,meat ,fish,eggs,and beans.Breads,cereals,and milk,cheese,and other dairy products are also part of a healthy diet. A diet with a variety of good foods is called a balanced diet. A healthy diet also means not eating too much, or little. Exercise keeps our bodies fit and strong.Gettimg enough rest and sleep helps us get our energy back after a busy day. Keeping the body free from dirt helps keep away germs that causes disease. We keep our bodies clean by taking baths, or showers, and brushing our teeth.It’s important to get doctor and dentist’s checkups, too. Taking care of our feelings, or emotions, is an important part of being halthy.Emotionally healthy people is happy with themselves. They don’t worry too much. And they don’t get too angry or too sad when the things go wrong. A good sleep also plays a crucial role in the health. When a person falls asleep, the body’s actions slow down. The muscles relax and the heartbeat slows down. The person’s breathing slows, too. Sometimes during asleep, the brain works very fast and the sleeper’s eyelids move very quckly, as if they were watching a dream. Adults should sleep at least 7 to 8 hours every night and children need more sleep for a good health 0 Reviews: Post Your Review
Bone marrow transplant blood Bone marrow transplant blood BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images The second person ever appears to have been successfully cured of HIV, a viral infection that attacks the body's immune system and can worsen into the devastating disease AIDS. See: Scientists may have cured a man of HIV by injecting him with 'superpower' cells. Here's what it means for the future of AIDS treatment. Bone marrow transplants essentially require first wiping out a patient's disease-fighting immune system, using either radiation or chemotherapy, to pave the way for the transplant. Patients then get an infusion of either bone marrow from a donor's hip or stem cells from blood, which eventually begins producing new, healthy cells so the body can fight infections again. Bone marrow BSIP/UIG Via Getty Images After years of searching, Feinberg eventually did find a match and has been leukemia-free for 24 years now. But finding matches for patients continues to be a problem, because there's a need for donors from more diverse backgrounds, he said. The transplant procedure carries risks of infection and other potential complications, including a life-threatening one in which cells from the donor attack the recipient. "It's not an easy process, but thankfully it works and it can cure your disease," he told Business Insider. The only known HIV cure, but not a solution Because bone marrow transplants are the only known HIV cure today, there's been some excitement about how they may be used. She has explained to them that it's only a good option for those who also have cancer, in very specific circumstances, and that it's a difficult process. People are excited because "the idea of a cure hasn't been out there for a while," she said. But "it's kind of more exciting for what it portends for the future," with biopharma companies using the technology as the basis for cutting-edge new approaches to treating disease. More: Dispensed bone marrow transplant Cancer HIV
Public Release: Veterinary researchers seek secret to reversing birth defects Virginia Tech BLACKSBURG, VA, January 25, 2001--Fetal development is a highly choreographed process. But all too often it is disrupted when a mother is exposed to a teratogen - an agent known to cause a variety of birth defects. In the United States alone, 150,000 babies are born with defects like these, making birth defects the leading cause of infant mortality. What if there was a way to reduce or even reverse these defects? Call it unbelievable, call it magic, or call it -- as toxicologist Steven Holladay does -- "immunoteratology." The name comes from the influence the mother's immune system can have in assuring fetal development remains on track. Recognizing the tremendous impact this could have on the number of babies born with birth defects every year, Holladay and his team of researchers at Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine set out to discover just how this magic really works. Scientists have reported that injecting pregnant mice with enough of an inert substance will alert and set into action one of the body's frontline immune cells called "macrophages." These macrophages essentially engulf and break down what they see as foreign - a process called phagocytosis. In the past, other researchers had hypothesized that the macrophages were acting directly on the fetus. Under this scenario, the cells would cross the placenta from the mother, then find and eliminate abnormally developing cells in the fetus that were causing birth defects, such as cleft palates, digit anomalies, and neural tube defects affecting the brain and spinal cord. But that proved to be a dead end. Holladay and colleague Lioudmila Sharova decided to turn down a different road. While their own tests clearly showed that immune stimulation did reduce birth defects in mice, they believed something other than maternal immune cells crossing the placenta was causing this phenomenon. They knew that fundamental reproductive immunology suggests maternal immune cells don't routinely traffic across the placenta. This is in part because the fetus is genetically different from the mother and will be recognized by her immune cells as foreign, resulting in what is known as a negative "graft-vs.-host" rejection response in the fetus. So instead of a direct effect from maternal immune cells, they looked for an indirect effect. Once set into action, immune cells secrete a vast array of proteins called cytokines or growth factors that regulate immune responses through cell-to-cell communication. Similar or sometimes identical growth factors are also required for the timed expression of cell-cycle genes. Cell-cycle genes control carefully orchestrated waves of cellular proliferation, differentiation, or cell death necessary for normal development. Consider development of the hand as an example. Cells proliferate, but at some point, some of the cells must undergo programmed cell death - apoptosis - to create separate digits. To test this hypothesis, Holladay and Sharova looked at the expression of a limited panel of genes that regulate cell cycle and apoptosis during fetal development of the palate. Using laboratory animals, they found that when the mother is injected with a known teratogen like urethane, there is decreased expression of these critical development genes, resulting in cleft palates. They also verified that stimulation of the maternal immune system has the opposite effect on activity of these cell cycle genes in the fetus, significantly increasing their expression level. So, while a chemical like urethane might reduce the growth factor in the fetus, immunostimulation of the mother may cause an increase in that same growth factor in the fetus. In this way, Holladay's biomedical sciences team was able to reduce the incidence of clubbed digits from 20 percent to zero, and cut the number of cleft palates by half. The implications of Holladay's research could be enormous. Traditional thinking has long held that the fetus is a preprogrammed entity that derives nutrition from the mother, but otherwise directs its own development. But the observation that maternal immune stimulation causes altered expression of critical genes in the fetus indicates it's time for another look. Holladay says these observations may suggest that there is routine cross-talk between fetus and mother via chemical mediators, and that mothers may play a much greater role than once believed in fetal development. Not only does this indicate that optimal maternal immune health may be important for protection against agents or events that lead to many birth defects, but it also raises the question whether individuals with a compromised immune system are at greater risk for having babies with birth defects. Answering these questions could help unlock some of the secrets to fetal development and a mother's early role in ensuring things go right. PR CONTACT: Jeffrey S. Douglas, APR 540-231-7911 Contact information for researchers: Dr. Steven Holladay: +1 540-231-3372 Dr. Lioudmila V. Sharova: 540-231-4825 Release written by Meg Conlan The research has been published as follows: Holladay SD, Sharova LV, Smith BJ, Gogal RM Jr. Ward DL, and Blaylock BL. Non-specific stimulation of the maternal immune system. I. Reduced teratogen-induced fetal malformations. Teratology 62:413-419, 2000. Sharova LV, Sura P, Smith BJ, Gogal RM Jr., Sharov AA, Ward DL, and Holladay SD. Non-specific stimulation of the maternal immune system. II. Effects on fetal gene expression. Teratology 62:420-428, 2000. Presentations have been made as follows: Holladay SD (1998). New frontiers in immunotoxicology: 1. Environmental chemical exposure and human autoimmune disease- is there a relationship? 2. Immunoteratology- can maternal immune proteins protect against chemical-induced teratology? National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Morgantown, WV. Holladay SD (1999). Immunoteratology: Does the maternal immune system play a role in directing embryogenesis? Washington State University, Pullman, WA. Sharova L, Gogal RM, Smith BJ, Sura P, Luster MI, Heindel JJ, and Holladay SD (1999). Non-specific immune activation and prevention of chemical induced teratology. 14th Annual Symposium of the Foundation for Immunotoxicology, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Morgantown, WV. Holladay SD (1999). Altered fetal gene expression following non-specific stimulation of maternal immune function: A role in preventing cleft palate? National Institutes of Health (NIH): National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) workshop: Prevention of Craniofacial Anomalies. Washington, D.C. Holladay SD (1999). Development of the immune system: Immunotoxicants and Immunoteratology. Mid-West Annual Meeting of the Teratology Society, Kalamozoo, MI.
• Stay Connected with us • In the luxury business, you have to build on heritage. Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mostly of quartz sand, but it can also contain significant amounts of feldspar, and sometimes silt and clay. Sandstone that contains more than 90% quartz is called quartzose sandstone. When the sandstone contains more than 25% feldspar, it is called arkose or arkosic sandstone. When there is a significant amount of clay or silt, geologists refer to the rock as argillaceous sandstone. The color of sandstone varies, depending on its composition. Argillaceous sandstones are often gray to blue. Because it is composed of light colored minerals, sandstone is typically light tan in color. Other elements, however, create colors in sandstone. The most common sandstones have various shades of red, caused by iron oxide (rust). In some instances, there is a purple hue caused by manganese.
Friday, 18 June 2010 I'm having problems with pickups, and it all hinges around saddles. Go on, search around the internet for information about saddles. They will tell you all about fancy materials to use, maybe a bit about shape, but nothing about what is really going on in a saddle. So, with a little guidance from one of my luthiers books, and revising some of my first year university physics, I'm going to try to explain some stuff to the best of my understanding. How does an acoustic guitar work? You pluck the strings, sound is transferred to the soundboard and you hear the note. Yeah okay fine, but we'll need a bit more detail if we are to work out what is happening at our saddles. Okay, in this simplified picture you can see the string (under tension) goes across the saddle and down to the (or through the) bridge, with the bridge glued to the soundboard. For simplicity I'll say the soundboard has rigid/fixed nodes on either end, even though in real life it is shaped in a figure-8 and there are non-rigid dynamics occuring at the soundboard to side interface...okay, that's too much detail. When you pluck a string, what happens? It vibrates, creating a standing wave between the point it touches the saddle, and the nut or at a fret if you have fretted a note. The fundamental frequency is of a wavelength the full distance, but there are also many harmonics added by many other things resulting in a complex timbre of the sound...but again too much detail. Looking at a plucked string, you can see it vibrate, maybe up/down, maybe left/right, maybe in circles, if depends how you plucked it. There's the clue - the _motion_ of the vibration isn't what is directly causing the sound, it is pressure (tension) that is transferred to the soundboard via the saddle and bridge. Tension is of course directly related to the motion of the string, at the peak offset of the string vibration it is at maximum tension, passing through the lowest tension at zero offset, heading for the opposite peak. Think about it, if you pull a string away from it's resting position, you create more tension, it is pulling harder against the saddle (and the nut, but the nut is a lot more fixed and solid than the bridge). Ah, so the tension goes past the saddle, and pulls the soundboard up and down then? No; no it doesn't. That would be like trying to pick youself up by your shoe laces. The saddle is fixed in place hard up against the bridge, so all that can happen is the bridge/saddle _twists_ the soundboard. That's right, _twists_. The bridge/saddle ever-so-slightly pulls forwards with the tension of the string; and because it is connected to the soundboard it pulls that with it, creating a "bulge" behind the bridge, and a "dip" in front of the bridge. The soundboard thus becomes an air pump - as the back bulges up it sucks some air in through the sound hole, and as it goes back to the resting position the air is expelled. I hope I have explained that well enough that you understand, because now I can finally start talking about saddles. The saddle sets the amount of torque that is transferred to the soundboard. If you have a really tall saddle, it is "easier" for the string tension to twist the soundboard, giving a bigger acoustic sound...if the saddle is lower then less torque is transferred, and you get less acoustic sound. (Let's totally ignore action, it isn't a function of creating sound in this context.) The soundboard can saturate if the saddle is too high; if you start putting a massive load on it then you won't get a linear tension response in the soundboard and the sound will start distorting. I'm back to too much detail. As long as the saddle is firmly held in position, isn't made out of a material that absorbs vibration (for example a saddle made out of rubber) then the pressure is transferred reasonably efficiently and you have a faithful reproduction of the string's vibration to the soundboard. Different materials will add different nauces to the timbre of the sound, for instance a highly efficient material would be a steel saddle, but we aren't after an exceptionally "true" transfer, what sounds best is a compromise, a material that transfers torque but also absorbs a bit, giving a sound that we like. Again I'm heading out into details land, and my main point in continuously doing so and then stopping myself is that the creation of acoustic sound from a guitar is _incredibly_ complex, and all I really want to touch on is the absolute fundamental principle, firmly remembering there is more involved than just the basics. Now, lets put an Under Saddle Transducer (UST) underneath the saddle. You're going to have to think about this too. The pressure being transmitted by the string goes over the saddle and then some heads down and back at an angle, so we get a ratio of the force is directed straight down through the saddle. Note that this is balanced by the force pushing up from where the string attaches to the bridge - can't pull yourself up by your shoelaces, remember? But there is still a squeeze going on between the saddle and the bridge. Therein lies the beauty - even though the soundboard is twisting to get your acoustic sound and it has nothing to do with the saddle downwards pressure - there exists this place between the saddle and bridge where an exact "sample" of the string tension is available. By placing an electronic gizmo (UST) in there which turns pressure into a voltage, we have a pickup! Now I said the join between saddle and the bridge has nothing to do with the acoustic sound - if the saddle was a bit loose, or the saddle slot a bit rough on the bottom it's going to make no difference to the acoustic sound (so long as the saddle isn't absorbing pressure, for example, minutely bouncing around). This however makes a lot of difference to trying to catch that sample pressure. When an acoustic guitar is built, unless it is going to have a UST installed, they probably aren't going to care about the saddle slot quite as much. I think you are with me. Once I had fitted my pickup, I was getting poor response, and it came down to the saddle. Here are some symptoms, and some resolutions: * The saddle was a bit loose in the slot, so once it was under tension, it lent forward a little bit. Doesn't affect acoustic sound, but suddenly all the downwards pressure was directed on the front edge of the saddle, and the UST wasn't getting the full pressure sample. This is fixed by buying a blank over-size width saddle, and very carefully on a piece of glass or polished marble/granite surface with sandpaper, "thinning" down the saddle to be the exact same width as the slot. Too loose and it will pull forward, too tight and pressure is lost into the walls of the slot as it is "jammed". * Having a nice tight saddle will then next show you the saddle slot is not perfect. My slot in fact flares out a bit at the top - not much I can do about that other than having a new wider slot routed in. But all the laquer in the slot, from when the guitar was laquered, also caused it to be imperfect. Armed with a trimmer blade, I carefully scraped off laquer on the floor and the sides of the slot to ensure they were as flat as I could get them. * To fight a non-flat slot from two fronts, I bevelled the bottom edge of the saddle, just a tiny amount. If the bottom of the slot still had some lacquer or generally non-90 degree bottom leading and trailing sides of the slot, that is, "radiused" sides, even only a tiny, tiny bit - and even if you don't see it - the saddle would be jamming in that last minute section, losing pressure. If there was going to be any non-flatness in the slot, that's where it would be, so bevel the bottom of your saddle. * Even still, I went one further step and put a spacer in the bottom of the slot, underneath the UST. The spacer I made was two pieces of normal paper glued together cut to the same size as the bottom of the slot, acting as a kind of gasket, balancing out any imperfections. Although this gasket arrangement will absorb some of the pressure; the pressure gained by it being there is far more than that lost. Give this a try and see how you go - if the slot is good enough, you won't need to. * Balancing. As in, how much pressure is exerted by each different string - if you play all of the strings with the same touch, are any louder than each other? Typically on a nylon string, the G string might be quite a lot louder than the rest...or maybe the D string. Combat that by taking some meat off the bottom of the saddle directly underneath the string - basically you are removing some of the ability for the pressure to be transferred from the string to the UST. If the higher strings are too loud compared to the bass strings, then file your saddle to have a top profile where the bass strings are higher. This will result in a greater break angle from the string to the bridge tie off, which means more downwards pressure on the saddle. Alternatively, if your saddle is already crazy high on the bass then add a sliver of paper on _half_ of the bottom of slot, which will take away a little bit of pressure from the trebles/direct it to the bass instead. There is so much to talk about with saddles, bridges and the acoustic guitar's general ability to make a noise, and so much I don't know. I've gone on here for long enough, I'm sure to go on about it again in the future! Oh, and as a final note - no UST is good enough by itself to get exceptional sound. You must always mix it with an AST/SBT or built in condensor mic - the UST is too focussed on the fundamental frequencies, an AST/SBT/mic picks up all that other good sounds the guitar is making :) 1. Yeah, I was definately raving there, I had a hard time reading it back myself ;) But, someone someday will find it really useful, I sure would have! I reckon that I don't need a mic to get a good recording sound; perhaps it is my own personal cruisade to avoid using a mic. I'm pretty close now, quite happy with the sound. I might do a few more tweaks next week, depending on how it settles in. I should do a new video sometime, you can let me know how it compares to the real thing :) 2. I once had a guitar, and I thought the action (distance between the strings and the neck, I think that's the right word) was too high. So I removed the saddle, and replaced it with a piece of wood (thinner than the saddle). It was not even wood, I think it was bamboo! That guitar has sounded terrible ever since (but I don't bother as it as an acoustic one, not classical). So reading again your article (halfway through so far), I now understand why: the saddle is not just there to hold the strings, it needs to be hard and not absorb too much, as otherwise the vibrations of the strings can't be transfered to the sound board. You can imagine a piece of bambou! Finally, how can you explain why classical guitars have fixed/glued saddles, when acoustic guitar saddles are just inserted in a slot onto the bridge, but not glued? 3. Yeah, basically action is the distance between the strings and the frets. You need enough so the string doesn't buzz on the frets when struck at a "nominal" attack, not so much that it is hard to play because you have to press hard and a long way. You should good acoustic transfer regardless, there is only a little bit of pressure to be gained in even 5mm of saddle, it doesn't affect the tension _that_ much. Steel players like to keep the action low because of the much higher pressures involved, electric player like to keep the action low so they can whip around all over the fret board with only the slightest touch for fretting, and flamenco players keep the action low too - a bit of fret buzz is part of "the sound" :) Note that because the lower strings have less tension, they can vibrate with greater distance, hence why you need the saddle to be higher on the low strings, and lower on the high strings. Hmm, when you say it like that it sounds crazy :) I'm glad you went back to the article, in everything in life I feel there needs to be an explanation as to how things work, or why things are the way they are. This is much to my wife's dismay, who says "why do you always have to give a 20 page essay when a simple 'yes' or 'no' will do?" :) I can't help myself, it is the engineer in me, needs to know, and loves a challenge! As for glued bridges, well, it's up to the maker I reckon. I've got three classical (nylon stinged) guitars, and two steel stringed guitars; none of them have glued saddles. Careful that the saddle isn't just a bit stuck, as opposed to glued in, give it a bit of force and see if it pops out. There is no reason I can think of to glue a saddle in, it wouldn't help, except perhaps that it won't fall out if you took all the strings off! A plastic saddle is cheap, somewhere between 1 and 2 euros, grab one, it will be a lot better than your bamboo... 4. Thanks, I'll leave the bamboo one as it's an acoutic/metal strings guitar which I never play anymore, I like my classical guitar which has a proper saddle. Then again, I can't stand it's amplified (or direct to PC sound) ssound but I just use it acoustic, whether for playing or recording.
Byzantium Summary and Analysis: A Poem by William Butler Yeats Read below our complete notes on the poem “Byzantium” by William Butler Yeats. Our notes cover Byzantium summary, themes, and a detailed analysis of Byzantium Poem by W.B Yeats. Byzantium Introduction: Byzantium presents an ideal state for humans which is beyond human life. The poet describes this poem as “Byzantium as it is the system towards the end of the first Christian millennium. A walking mummy flows at the street corners where the soul is purified, birds of hammered gold singing in the golden tree, in the bower, offering their backs to the wailing dead that they may carry them to Paradise.” Byzantium Summary: Stanza 1 The unpurged images of the day recede The picture of the day to day objects which are mere objects having gross nature are going to the background because something important is coming so their value is fading away. The Emperor`s drunken soldiers are abed The soldiers of the Emperor who are drunk heavily are now fast asleep. They do not move and it shows the night at its full calm and peak. Night resonance recedes, night-walkers` song After great cathedral gong; When the cathedral (church of St. Sophia) has struck the sound of mid night, so the music and songs of people of in the midnight also fade away and the night walkers` song also fade away. the night walkers` can be analyzed in two ways; one as usual night walkers who are rushing towards home while the others are the prostitutes. A starlit or moonlit disdains All that man is All mere complexities The fury and the mire of human veins The starlit is the reference to the cathedral that is dislikes all that human possesses, the cathedral is contemptuous towards the nature and feelings of humans. It does not contemplate human and his intricacies. The cathedral stands here for spirituality while man stands for modernist perspective. Summary of Stanza 1: In this first stanza, the description is of night and the great gong of St. Sophia’s cathedral has declared that it is the time suitable and exact for spiritual meditation. The images of the drunken soldiers who are asleep remind the savage British soldiers who used to torment and torture the Irish peasantry. He says that the noise of the great gong of the cathedral has subdued the noise of the night walkers and their songs. The dome of the cathedral which the poet faces is looks as decorated with the stars and is looking at the human life of earth. The human life which is the combination of confusion and chaos is looked by this dome and it disdains this life. Stanza 2 Before me floats an image, man or shade The poets says that it this time of the night when it is a right time for meditation and he has entered to the spiritual city of the Byzantium a vision appears before him. He gets confused after seeing the vision because it seems like a man and a shadow. Whether it a shadow or a man, the poet seems baffled in deciding about. Shade more than man, more image than a shade This shade which means a spirit is more than a man in appearance as its outlook and the composure is more than a man. For Hades` bobbin bound in mummy cloth May unwind the winding path This spirit which has come from the region of death has unwound the coffin cloth and threw away all the impurities and has become a purified spirit which has been through purgatory. A mouth that has no moisture and no breath Breathless mouth may summon I hail the superman I call it death in life and life in death The poet then explains this spirit and says that this image of spirit is very lifeless because it does not breathe, it is in no current of life. But at the same it seems an immortal being as well. So the poet calls it life in death and death in life image or spirit. Summary of Stanza 2: He sees an image of human body but it appears to be a shade. He says that this image is more like a shade. He praises this superhuman because it has come to take him to the spiritual city of Byzantium. The poet feels the presence of this Great Spirit at the start of hid pilgrimage as very encouraging. Stanza 3 Miracle, bird or golden handiwork More miracle than bird or handiwork Planted on the starlit golden bough. Then the poet says that he says a miracle. He sees a golden bird but promptly says that is something else than a bird. It is unusual bird golden bird ‘set upon a golden bough’ which Yeats has described in his earlier poem ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ as well. Can crock like the cocks of the Hades Crow? Or, by the moon embittered, scorn aloud In glory metal Common bird or petal And all complexities of mire or blood He says that this bird can crock like the crow which has come from the region of death and scorn other birds of petals and all the changes which flesh means mortal beings are destined to pass through. So this birds is spiritual and is casting away the material impurities. Summary of stanza 3: This stanza depicts the description of the heaven. He sees the golden bird and calls it a miracle, it is planted on the golden branch of the mystic tree. The bird is made up gold which is the purest substance and it demonstrates that the bird is a purified soul. The bird here is used as a symbol of purified souls and is given a divine shape by the great artisans of heaven. Stanza 4 At Mid night on the Emperor`s pavement flit Flames that no faggots feeds; nor steel has lit it The poet says around midnight fire appears on the Emperor`s pavement and it seems that this fire has not been lit by burning wood or the friction of any steel against these move about stones. Nor storm disturbs, flames begotten of flame, He adds that no storm can interfere of disturb this fire and the flames which have been lit though self-generating. Where blood-begotten spirits come And all complexities of fury leave He says that all the spirits come to this fire because they want to cast away their impurities. Dying into a dance, An agony of trance, An agony of flame that cannot singe a sleeve These spirits are purified from all the complexities in this fire. They come out as purified spirits. Then these spirits begin their dance of purgatory because they are about to be purified. This dance ends in a soothing joy and peace. And in the end these spirits are purified. Summary of Stanza 4: This stanza depicts the scenes of purgatory. The fire is lit which is not caused by burning wood or friction of steel with the pavement. The spirits are being passed through this purgatory fire in order to get purified. This fire is heavenly and the main purpose of this fire is to cast away all the impurities and complexities of the souls. Stanza 5: Astraddle on the dolphin`s mire and blood Spirit after spirit! The smithies break the flood These spirits one by one sit in the dolphins with their mire and blood and reach the beach of Byzantium. The golden smithies of the emperor! Marbles of the dancing floor Break bitter furies of complexity, Those image that yet, Fresh images beget, That dolphin-torn that gong-tormented sea. These spirits are imposed order upon by the blacksmiths of the Emperor. The marbles of the floor where they dance break little furies of complexity and those images beget fresh images. Summary of stanza 5: In this stanza, the poet finds himself close to purgatory. He sees that blood begotten spirits are moving towards this fire in the back of dolphins. The poet describes the shore of ocean of life in the last line. It is a conflict between flesh and spirit. It symbolizes the state of man between life and after life. Byzantium Themes: The major theme of this immorality. The poem seems to express a desire to escape from the decay and tedium of cyclical nature. He wants to transform his own consciousness and find mystical union with the golden mosaics of a medieval empire. Byzantium Analysis: • It was written in 1930 and published in The Winding Stair and other Poems. • The poem comprises of 5 stanzas of 8 each. • The meter in not regular. • The first, second, third, fifth and eighth line of each stanza follow iambic pentameter. The fourth lines follow tetrameter and the sixth and seventh follow iambic trimeter. • The rhyme scheme is AABBCDDC. • Byzantium is a description of the city that bears the name and is also a symbol of paradise as well as purgatory. • Byzantium is the old name of Constantinople or Istanbul which was once the capital of the Roman Empire. • The poem stands for the need of suffering and purification. • The golden bird symbolizes the eternity and glory of art like the dome mentioned in the first stanza. • The poem presents an escape from a world of flux to a kingdom of permanence.
By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) – People who follow vegetarian or vegan diets may have lower odds for heart disease but higher chances of having a stroke, compared to meat eaters, a large UK study suggests. Researchers followed 48,188 middle-aged adults without any history of heart attacks or strokes for about 18 years. During this time, 2,820 people developed coronary artery disease that can lead to heart attacks; 519 people had ischemic strokes, the most common kind, which occur when a clot blocks an artery carrying blood to the brain; and 300 people had hemorrhagic strokes, which are caused by a ruptured blood vessel in the brain. Vegetarians – including vegans, who avoid eggs and dairy – were 22% less likely to develop coronary artery disease than meat eaters. This is the equivalent of 10 fewer cases of artery disease per 1,000 people over a decade among vegetarians compared to meat eaters, researchers calculated. However, vegetarians and vegans were 20 percent more likely than others to have a stroke – particularly a hemorrhagic stroke. This translates over 10 years to roughly three more strokes per 1,000 people in vegetarians than in meat eaters. “Both fish eaters and vegetarians had on average lower BMI, and lower rates of high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol and diabetes compared with meat eaters, which might explain the lower risk of heart disease in both fish eaters and vegetarians since these are all established risk factors for heart disease,” said study leader Tammy Tong, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Oxford in the UK. “The reason for higher risk of stroke in vegetarians is less clear, but some recent evidence has suggested that while low cholesterol levels (are) protective against both heart disease and ischemic stroke, very low cholesterol levels might be linked to a higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke, the subtype that was found to be higher in the vegetarians,” Tong said by email. The elevated stroke risk among vegetarians and vegans was due to 43% increased odds of a hemorrhagic stroke; there was no meaningful difference in ischemic stroke rates between this group and meat eaters. There also was no meaningful difference in risk of heart attacks based on eating habits, researchers report in The BMJ. Researchers assessed eating habits with questionnaires at the start of the study. Some participants completed questionnaires again an average of 14 years later. People who ate meat – regardless of whether they also ate fish, dairy, or eggs – were classified as meat eaters. Their ranks totaled 24,428 at the start of the study and 96% remained meat eaters based on the follow-up dietary questionnaires. Another 7,506 people ate fish, but no meat at the start of the study, and 57% of these participants who completed the second dietary questionnaires remained fish eaters. An additional 16,254 people started out as vegetarians or vegans, eating no meat or fish, and 73% still abstained based on the follow-up dietary questionnaires. “Dietary guidelines recommend increasing our intake of whole nutritious foods such as fruits and vegetables and reducing intake of ultra-processed foods and beverages,” said Mark Lawrence, a public health and nutrition researcher at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, who co-authored an editorial accompanying the study. “Increasingly, national dietary guidelines around the world are recognizing plant-based diets for their environmental sustainability as well as health benefits,” Lawrence said by email. “Though, shifting towards plant-based dietary patterns for reasons of personal or planetary health does not necessarily mean becoming a vegetarian.” SOURCE: and The BMJ, online September 4, 2019.
Everyone wants to be successful. Effective leaders define clear strategic goals for their organizations, establishing performance standards to ensure that the workforce operates at a productive level. Employees can take charge of their own careers by developing their skills. Self-assessment tools, such as questionnaires and surveys, provide a cost-effective way of focusing an individual's attention on needed improvements. Empowering employees to set their own development typically leads to higher levels of employee satisfaction, retention and loyalty. Self-assessment tools ask questions about organizational structure preferences, for example, working in formal, centralized departments versus informal teams. If an employee gets frustrated by by rules, regulations and autocratic leadership, he functions better in smaller, flexible companies. Employees who recognize their strengths and weaknesses tend to make better career choices that suit their personalities. Employers prefer to retain employees who commit to achieving the organization's goals. An organization's culture typically consists of several dimensions, including how people value innovation, risk taking, attention to detail, results, diversity, aggressiveness and stability. If there is a mismatch between a person's values and the organization's mission, conflict arises. For example, people who adopt innovative techniques tend to dislike working in large corporations or government agencies. An employee can get a job in an appropriate work environment when he recognizes his cultural preferences. This leads to higher levels of productivity. Coaches and mentors typically advise employees to perform comprehensive self-assessments. Assessment activities include completing personality tests, keeping a diary or maintaining an activity log. Each method allows participants to reflect on and think about their behavior. When people understand an organization's success criteria, they can evaluate their own work against those standards. Coaches and mentors help employees define an improvement plan. When people accept their limitations, they can focus on improving their weaknesses. To manage change effectively, an employee must be comfortable with disruption. Burnout occurs when people experience chronic stress, and self-assessment activities may suggest the need to examine work and life balance. Employees who like to initiate change tend to pursue leadership opportunities. They stimulate others through their enthusiasm and, because they anticipate the needs of the rest of the organization, they overcome objections to ensure success. • The Five Most Important Questions Self Assessment Tool: Participant Workbook; Peter F. Drucker and Frances Hesselbein • Enhancing Learning Through Self-Assessment; David Boud Photo Credits • Visage/Stockbyte/Getty Images About the Author
Quick Feats Published on Thursday, February 28, 2013 in , , Your Mind In Prime Condition Published on Sunday, February 24, 2013 in , , , purzen's (openclipart.org) thought bubble surrounding David Vignoni's square root icon over Josh Green's (subtlepatterns.com) Old Mathematics patternWhen the largest known prime number was discovered recently, computers were used to verify that it was a prime. While humans won't be working out whether numbers with millions of digits are prime in their head anytime soon, it is possible to quickly and easily test whether smaller numbers, such as those 1,000 and under, are prime. Learning how to do this in your head will also give you a better appreciation for the process used to find larger prime numbers. BASICS: To be able to determine whether any give number from 2 to 1,000 is prime, you'll need to able to estimate the square root of anumber from 1 to 1,000, as taught here. When checking for primes, you can ignore the fractional part, and just focus on the whole number. So, if you were a given a number such as 253, all you would really need to know for this feat is that the square root is above 15. This number will serve as the upper limit of the numbers you need to check. The lower limit, of course, is 2. With our 253 example, does that mean we'll need to check whether 253 is divisible by every number from 2 to 15? No. In fact, we'll only need to check the prime numbers from 2 to 15 in this case: 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, and 13. Any of the remaining numbers above 2 can be made by multiplying 2 or more of those prime numbers, so checking the others is redundant. So, your first step is to determine the square root, and then realize you'll need to check divisibility for all the prime numbers from 2 to the square root. Another thing to remember that will speed up this feat is that we're not going to go through the full process to divide a given number by each of these prime numbers, but rather use simple tests to determine whether the given number is divisible by each number. For example, we don't need the answer to 253 ÷ 7, we just need a simple way to say whether 253 is evenly divisible by 7 or not. We're not looking for an exact mathematical answer each time, just a series of yes-or-no answers up to a limit. If, at any time, we find that the given number is evenly divisible in one of our tests, we can stop there and definitively say that the number is NOT prime. If the given number isn't evenly divisible by any of our test numbers, we can definitively say that it IS prime. CHECKING AT A GLANCE: The first 3 test can be done almost at a glance. Is the rightmost digit a 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8? If so, it's not prime, unless the number is 2. Is the rightmost digit a 5 or a 0? If so, it's not prime, unless the number is 5. Just with a quick peek at the last digit, you can already tell whether it's divisible by 2 (the first test) or 5 (the second test). Testing for divisibility by 3 is also easy, as explained in the video below: At this point, you might expect a test for divisibility by 7. I'm going to skip over the test for 7 now, but I will come back to it shortly. For now, we're going to test for divisibility by 11. DIVISIBILITY TEST FOR 11: The divisibility test for 11 is surprisingly simple. You start by breaking the given number into two smaller numbers, one number consisting of only the rightmost digit, and the other number consisting of all the remaining numbers. Using our 253 example, we'd split into the numbers 25 and 3. The next step is to treat those two numbers as a subtraction problem, and ask whether the result is evenly divisible by 11. If so, the original number is evenly divisible by 11. Going back to 253, we work out that 25 - 3 = 22, which is evenly divisible by 11. Therefore, we know that 253 is also evenly divisible by 11, and therefore not prime. DIVISIBILITY TEST FOR NUMBERS ENDING IN 1: With 1 minor alteration, this break-up-and-subtract approach can be expanded to cover almost any number ending in 1. Let's take the next number ending in 1, 21, and show you how to test for its divisibility. For 21, take the lone leftmost digit, and multiply it by 2, then subtract. If the result is evenly divisible by 21, then the original number is evenly divisible by 21. Even though we;ve already proved 253 isn't prime, let's try this test out on it anyway, to show you how it works. We break 253 into 25 and 3, then multiply 2 × 3 to get 6, then perform 25 - 6 to get 19. 19 isn't evenly divisibly by 21, so we know that 253 isn't evenly divisible by 21. For 31, you'd muliply the lone digit by 3 before subtracting, for 41 you'd multiply the lone digit by 4 before subtracting, and so on. Effectively, removing the 1 shows you what number you'd multiply by for that number's divisibility test. Is a number divisible by 91? Multiply the lone number by 9 and subtract! Is a number evenly divisible by 121? Multiply the lone number by 12 and subtract! And so on. This is an amazingly simple and useful pattern, and it can even be extended to numbers ending in odd digits without much difficulty. DIVISIBILITY TEST FOR NUMBERS ENDING IN ODD DIGITS: You've probably already noticed that we're only testing for primes divisors, so we shoudln't need to test for divisibility for 21 itself, as 21 isn't a prime number. Since 21 is equal to 3 times 7, this same test can also be used to test for divisibility for 7. The steps are the same, except you ask whether the result is evenly divisibly by 7 instead of 21! We've already determined that 253 isn't prime, so as a new example we'll test whether 347 is prime. 347 is bigger than 182 (324), but smaller than 192 (361), so we only need to test divisibility by the primes from 2 to 18. Is 347 evenly divisible by 2? No, it's an odd number. Is 347 evenly divisible by 5? No, it doesn't end in a 5 or a 0. Is 347 evenly divisible by 3? 3 + 4 + 7 = 14, and 14 isn't evenly divisible by 3, so neither is 347. Is 347 divisible by 11? 34 - 7 = 27, so 347 isn't evenly divisible by 11. Is 347 evenly divisible by 7? 34 - 2 × 7 = 34 - 14 = 20, and 20 isn't evenly divisible by 7, so 347 isn't evenly divisible by 7. With just a few quick tests, we've already eliminated divisibility by 2, 3, 5, 7, and 11. We still need to test for divisibility by 13 and 17, so how do we do that? Just as we used the test for 21 as a divisibility test for 7, we can use a similar approach to quickly find an appropriate divisibility test for other numbers ending in odd digits (except for 5, as we already have a simpler divisibility test for it). Which multiply of 17 ends in 1? We have 17, 34, 51 - there we go! We can use the 51 test as a divisibility test for 17! Since it's 51, we have to break up the numbers as we did before, multiply the lone digit by 5, then do the subtraction, and ask if the result is evenly divisible by 17. 347 split becomes 34 and 7, just as before, but now we multiply that lone digit by 5 and subtract: 34 - 5 × 7 = 34 - 35 = -1. -1 isn't evenly divisibly by 17, so we've just established that 347 isn't evenly divisible by 17. For 13, we have to go a bit farther: 13, 26, 39, 52, 65, 78, 91 - there it is! That means we have to multiply the lone digit by 9 before subtracting, and then ask whether the result is evenly divisible by 13. For 347, this test becomes 34 - 9 × 7 = 34 - 63 = -29. That result, -29, isn't evenly divisible by 13, so 347 isn't evenly divisible by 13, either. At this point, we've established that 347 isn't evenly divisibly by 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, or 17, which are all the prime numbers in our established range of 2 to 18. This means we can say that 347 is indeed a prime number. Double checking with Wolfram\|Alpha, we verify that 347 is a prime number. With numbers up to 1,000, you'll also need divisibility tests for 19, 23, 29, and 31. We've already talked about 31, so that test is simple enough. 19 becomes 171, so you multiply the lone digit by 17 before subtracting. With 23, you use 161 (23 × 7), so the lone digit is multplied by 16, and with 29, you use the test for 261 (29 × 9), and therefore multiply the lone digit by 26 before subtracting. The BEATCALC website has a shortcut for multiplying by 26 which can be helpful. FULL PROCESS: As a worst-case scenario, let's test the number 977. The square root is more than 31, but less than 32, so we'll need to test all the prime numbers from 2 to 31. You should be able to tell at a glance that 977 is not evenly divisible by 2, 3, or 5. Next, we move up to the break-up, multiply, and subtract tests. 97 - 7 = 90, so it's not evenly divisible by 11. We can also try 97 - 2 × 7 = 97 - 14 = 83 to establish it's not evenly divisibly by 7, and 97 - 3 × 7 = 97 - 21 = 76 to establish it's not evenly divisbly by 31. 97 - 5 × 7 = 97 - 35 = 62, which establishes it's not evenly divisible by 17. 97 - 9 × 7 = 97 - 63 = 34, and 34 isn't evenly divisibly by 13. With a quick mental run-through, we've established 977 isn't evenly divisible by 2, 5, 3, 11, 7, 31, 17, and 13, in that order. It's an unusual order, until you get used to walking through that order. The only remaining tests are the ones for 19, 23, and 29, which are the challenging ones. Remember, we use 16 to test for divisibility by 23, 17 to test for divisibility by 19, and 26 to test for divisibility by 29. This also means you should be comfortable mmultiplying any 1-digit number by 16, 17, and 26. 97 - 16 * 7 = 97 - 112 = -15, which isn't evenly divisibly by 23. 97 - 17 * 7 = 97 - 119 = -22, which isn't evenly divisible by 19. 97 - 26 * 7 = 97 - 182 = -85, which isn't evenly divisible by 29. We've just run through every prime from 2 to 31, and found that 977 isn't evenly divisble by any of them. This means that 977 is prime, and Wolfram\|Alpha verifies this for us. SHORTCUTS: If you're worried about dealing with negative numbers, as often happens in the larger divisibility tests, you can simply do the multiplication needed, and then subtract the larger number from the smaller. For example, when testing 977 to see if it's evenly divisible by 29, you could think of the numbers as 97 and 26 * 7, working out the latter as 182, then performing 182 - 97 = 85. The sign doesn't matter in the divisibility tests, so you can always use this strategy. If you're not comfortable working with the tests for 19, 23, and 29, you can avoid having to check for those by asking for a number from 1 to 350, instead of 1 to 1,000. That way, 17 is the largest divisibility test you'll need to perform. NerdParadise.com has more on divisibility tests and testing for primes, if you wish to explore these patterns further. Even if you don't perform this feat, I hope you read through it enough to understand each part of the process. That way, you'll have a better appreciation for the work required of computers when testing for extremely large primes. Bringing Pi Digits to Life Published on Thursday, February 21, 2013 in , , , Mehran Moghtadaei's Pi Digit GraphicIt's one thing to be able to memorize 400 digits of Pi. It's another thing altogether to be able to make the feat memorable and interesting for you audience. Sure, 400 is an impressive number of Pi digits to memorize, but what do 400 digits really mean? What kind of detail are we talking about? Numberphile, who has done numerous Pi videos already, has recently released a new video about Pi and the size of the universe, that starts to give you an idea of the sense of Pi's scale: It almost seems strange that so few digits should be able to take us from the width of a hydrogen atom all the way up to the diameter of the universe. Each place in Pi (as in the tenths, the hundredths, the thousandths, and so on) represents a place that's smaller than the previous one by a factor of 10. There's a classic 1977 film called Powers of 10 that does a wonderful job of dramatizing just how few power of 10 are needed to cover the entire scale of the universe: This film may look familiar, either because you may have seen it in school, or you've seen one of its parodies, such as in Men In Black, Contact, or The Simpsons. A good way of keep thing in mind is Tim Rowett's poem, Space: Seven steps each ten million to one Describe the whole space dimension The Atom, Cell’s girth Our bodies, the Earth Sun’s System, our Galaxy – done! – Tim Rowett, Three Limericks – On Space, Time and Speed BetterExplained.com's article on how the digits of Pi were determined in ancient times gives you a sense of scale in a different manner, and is done so with their usual startling clarity. As I've mentioned before, memorization and understanding together give you a more complete picture than either could ever do separately. Yet Again Still More Quick Snippets Published on Sunday, February 17, 2013 in , , , , , , , Luc Viatour's plasma lamp pictureFebruary's snippets are ready! This month, we're going to delve into math and memory techniques you may have thought were too dificult to develop. With sufficient practice, however, they become powerful additions to your mental toolkit! • One of the main reasons people want to improve their memory is so they can recall names and faces. This appears difficult to many people, because of the social pressure involved, and the apparent difficulty of connecting a name with the face. As USA Memory Champion Nelson Dellis will show you, it's not as difficult as you may think: • Another memory skill that comes across as impressive is memorizing the order of a shuffled deck of cards, especially when you can do it in under 60 seconds. Over at the Four-Hour Work Week blog, they have a wonderfully vivid tutorial on memorizing the order of a shuffled deck. They use the easy-to-understand analogy of a software purchase. They start your new brain software off will a trial version they call “Bicycleshop Lite,” where you get the basic process down of memorizing shuffled cards. Once you've done that, you're ready for “Bicycleshop Pro,” which improves your speed. Need some incentive to learn this feat? They're offering $10,000 to the first person who masters it from their tutorial! • For those who have mastered squaring 2-digit numbers, you might have wondered about taking numbers to higher powers in your head. To do that, you'll need to develop a few other skills. First, you should know the binary equivalents of the numbers 2 through 10 from memory, as well as getting comfortable squaring 3-digit numbers (Video tutorial: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Being able to multiply 3-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers is also helpful. Once you develop those skills, the following video will teach how to bring them together to take any small number to any small power in your head: • Multiplying numbers by themslves repeatedly is one thing, but how about multiplying any 2 numbers together in your head, up to, say, 7 digits? YouTube user Joesph Alexander has a series of tutorials on how to develop your mental multiplication skills to this level. He starts by teaching how to handle 2- to 4-digit numbers (presentation, explanation), then moves you up to 5-digit numbers (presentation, explanation). When you're comfortable with doing those type of problems in your head, you're ready to move up to 7-digit numbers (presentation - shown below, explanation): Try picking just one of these skills to develop, and you just may amaze yourself at how far you can go! Love Poems For Valentine's Day Published on Thursday, February 14, 2013 in , , , , , Natalie Roberts' magnetic poetry photoHappy Valentine's Day! In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share a few favorite love poems. This might seem like a strange turn to many regular Grey Matters readers, but I've actually discussed poetry quite a bit on this blog. Let's start with one of the most classic love poems of all time, “How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)” by...William Shakespeare, right? Surprise! The author is actually Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Poetry can be an excellent way to improve your mind, in terms of both memorization and understanding. Memorizing a poem, which you can learn to do here, helps you carry it with you, and offers more time to think and ponder the meanings involved. Having a poem in your mind is a big advantage over leaving it on a page in a book. Shmoop.com's poetry section has wonderful guides to classic poetry. Their analysis of “How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)” is a great example, as it gives you background, summaries, and plenty of other information to help develop a better understanding. This is love poetry as it is generally imagined - written in a loving, longing tone, full of rich, romantic imagery. That isn't a hard and fast rule, however. A more unusual tone can often help a love poem stand out, such as the darker tone of Edgar Allan Poe's “Annabel Lee”: Shmoop.com's analysis of “Annabel Lee” starts with a great analogy to music. Once you've been pulled in by his greatest hits, like “The Raven”, it's fun to discover the intensity of this tale of love lost. Love poetry can also be funny. If you read the text of “Root of Three”, it would sound more like a math equation than a love poem, but watch how the delivery makes a startling difference (NSFW due to language): I've included this poem not just because it's a good example of tone, but because I know Grey Matters readers often like at least a little mathematics in the post. Fans of this type of love poem might also be tickled by “Wolfram\|Alpha, Be My Valentine”. May your Valentine's Day be filled with love, humor, and thoughtfulness! New Largest Known Prime Number Discovered! Published on Sunday, February 10, 2013 in , , Dr. Zimbu's largest prime number graphThe biggest news in math this week is, of course, the new discovery of the largest known prime number. Whenever math makes the news like this, many people's eyes glaze over and they say things like, "So what?" Well, let's take a look at what this discovery can actually mean. There's few better places to review the basics of prime numbers than betterexplained.com. It's a short article, so take the time to go over it all. Marcus du Sautoy, whom you probably know from his Story of Maths documentary, vividly describes primes as being the atoms of mathematics in the following interview: If you want to learn more about this, you can see his full 66-minute Music of the Primes lecture on YouTube, or read his book of the same name. The prime number that everyone is talking about this week is a special type of prime known as a Mersenne prime (note the connection to perfect numbers), and is only the 48th one ever discovered. To wrap this post up, here's the numberphile video on the 48th Mersenne prime itself: Leapfrog Division Published on Sunday, February 03, 2013 in , , , Melchoir's, AzaToth's, Mets501's, and Sopoforic's 0.999 perspective imageToday, I'm going to get you playing with numbers in a strange yet fun way. I'll save the destination for a surprise, so trust me and play along, and I think you'll like where we wind up. Even in blogs and other resources that cover math shortcuts thoroughly, division doesn't get a lot of attention, simply because few shortcuts exist. Let's see what we can discover about division, shall we? STARTING POINTS: Remember when you were first learning about division? First, they taught you about problems that came out evenly, such as 8 ÷ 2 = 4. Next, they probably introduced you to problems that didn't come out evenly, and taught you about “remainders” They would give you a problem such as 13 ÷ 2, and you were expected to give the answer as “6 remainder 1.” That's the kind of division we're going to work with today. Always think about your answers as “x remainder y” for the purposes of this post. Even if the reminder is 0, for this post, you'll need to think of the answer as including “x remainder 0” for the practices you'll be taught in this post. “LEAPFROG” DIVISION: Let's return to the earlier example of 13 ÷ 2 = 6 remainder 1. Write down the quotient (the first number in the answer), the 6 in that example, and keep the remainder (1 in this example) in mind. Here's the bizarre type of math to which I referred earlier. Imagine the remainder, 1, leapfrogs from its place on the left of the quotient (the 6) and lands to the quotient's immediate left. This would now look like the number 16, wouldn't it? Let's try dividing that number by 2. What is 16 ÷ 2? It's 8. Don't forget, though, I want you to include the remainder in all answers, even if the remainder is 0. Better stated, 16 ÷ 2 = 8 reminder 0. Once again, write down the quotient (the 8 in this last problem), and then imagine the remainder (0) leapfrogging over to the left of the quotient. If we keep repeating this process, we wind up with a list of numbers like this: • 13 ÷ 2 = 6 (remainder 1) • 16 ÷ 2 = 8 (remainder 0) • 08 ÷ 2 = 4 (remainder 0) • 04 ÷ 2 = 2 (remainder 0) • 02 ÷ 2 = 1 (remainder 0) • 01 ÷ 2 = 0 (remainder 1) • 10 ÷ 2 = 5 (remainder 0) • 05 ÷ 2 = 2 (remainder 1) ...and so on. It's not hard to imagine that you could take this leapfrogging process as far as you like. For many numbers, but not all, the sequence will eventually repeat at some point. Remember, you've only been writing down the quotients. Let's take a look at the sequence of quotients from the above series of problems: 68421052. Actually, we could have stopped earlier or later in that process, so it's probably more effective to think of that sequence as a decimal number: 0.68421052. Let's put that decimal number into Wolfram\|Alpha and see what comes up. Probably the most interesting result returned by Wolfram\|Alpha is the first one in the Possible closed forms pod, wher it reads 1319 = 0.6842105263157. We started with a 13, so it's very interesting that a fraction with 13 would show up. Is this a coincidence? Let's pick up from the last division we did above, and see where it takes us: • 05 ÷ 2 = 2 (remainder 1) • 12 ÷ 2 = 6 (remainder 0) • 06 ÷ 2 = 3 (remainder 0) • 03 ÷ 2 = 1 (remainder 1) • 11 ÷ 2 = 5 (remainder 1) • 15 ÷ 2 = 7 (remainder 1) So, the whole sequence of quotients we've gotten from dividing 13 by 2 gives us 6824105263157 and 1319 = 0.6842105263157. After 13 decimal places, it's looking a lot less like coincidence. DECIMAL PRECISION: This is actually a reliable division shortcut most identified with performing lightning calculator Alexander Craig Aitken (1895-1967), who used it when dividing by numbers ending in 9. When given a problem such as 1319 to convert to decimal, when the divisor/denominator (the bottom number) is 9, simply round up the divisor/denominator to the nearest multiple of 10, and ignore the 0. For 1319, you'd mentally change this to 1320, then to 132, and proceed via the leapfrog division approach above. As it turns out, this doesn't just work for 19, but for ANY number ending in a 9! If you're dividing by 29, you'd round up to 30, and focus on division by 3 repeatedly. When dividing by 39, you round up to 40, and do your leapfrog division by 4, and so on with higher numbers. Naturally, if the dividend/numerator (the top number) is larger than the divisor/denominator, you'll want to reduce the number to a mixed fraction, first. For example, 6729 should be reduced to 2929 first, and then worked out as taugh above. Let's try that: • 67 ÷ 29 = 2 + (9 ÷ 29) = 2.????? (do leapfrog division with 9 ÷ 3) • 9 ÷ 3 = 3 (remainder 0) • 03 ÷ 3 = 1 (remainder 0) • 01 ÷ 3 = 0 (remainder 1) • 10 ÷ 3 = 3 (remainder 1) • 13 ÷ 3 = 4 (remainder 1) • 14 ÷ 3 = 4 (remainder 2) • 24 ÷ 3 = 8 (remainder 0) • 08 ÷ 3 = 2 (remainder 2) • 22 ÷ 3 = 7 (remainder 1) So, if we did this correctly, 6729 should equal roughly 2.310344827 Wolfram\|Alpha tells us that, yes, this is roughly correct! If you're rusty on working with mixed fractions, Math Dude has some wonderful refresher courses in the form of free podcasts: What Are Mixed Fractions?, How to Turn Mixed Fractions Into Improper Fractions, How to Add and Subtract Mixed Fractions, and How to Multiply and Divide Mixed Fractions. Thanks to this approach, if you're comfortable dividing by, say, 8, then you can now feel just as comfortable dividing by 79. In other words, if you're comfortable dividing by a number n in your head, you now know how to easily divide 10n - 1, as well. If you can divide by 12, think how impressed people will be when you divide by 119! TIPS: This trick can also help with numbers ending in 1, 3, and 7, as well. for numbers ending in 9, multiply both the dividend/numerator and divisor/denominator by 9. For numbers ending in 3, multiply both numbers by 3, and for numbers ending in 7, multiply both numbers by 7. For example, if you need to work out 813, simply change the fraction to 2439, and proceed from there. What's 617? It's the same as 42119, and if you can mentally divide by 12, you already know how to do this! Few numbers tend to be evenly divisible by numbers ending in 9, so the decimal equivalents tend to go on forever (usually repeating at some point). Due to this, you can take the leapfrog division process out to as many or as few places as you deem appropriate. If you're presenting this against a calculator, you'll generally want to go beyond the number of places that can be displayed by the calculator. Take a look at the Mental Division tutorial in the Mental Gym, especially where the numbers ending in 9 are concerned, and you can learn further shortcuts for specific numbers ending in 9, such as 9 and 99. Practice this, and you'll have an impressive new ability to demonstrate for your family, friends, and any teachers you may know!
ratchet effect Popular Terms Tendency of people to be influenced by the previous highest (or best) level of a factor (variable). For example, workers' satisfaction from the current salary increment depends on how it compares with the highest increment received in the past. Use 'ratchet effect' in a Sentence 19 people found this helpful Even though John received a 4% increase in salary this year, it was not quite as good as the 8% he got a few years ago. This ratchet effect caused him to not enjoy the raise as much as before. 16 people found this helpful The ratchet effect of reducing the size of a large soda, is people now feel like they are not getting their moneys worth of the product. 15 people found this helpful Email Print Embed

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