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Folkerts G.1, Garssen J.2 1 Utrecht Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, Utrecht University, The Netherlands 2 Nutricia Research, Utrecht, The Netherlands Our body is attacked continuously by many different danger signals. An effective immune system is essential in order to protect. Unbalanced immune reactivity seems to play a key role in non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as for example chronic pulmonary disease (COPD), allergies, asthma, diabetes, cancer and even cardiovascular diseases and obesity. According to the WHO NCDs are not only relevant for high income countries but even for middle and low income areas. It is essential to develop new avenues to prevent the enormous increase in incidence and severity of NCDs. Early life programming including proper education of our immune system (a.o. inflammation management) has been recognized as one of the most promising approaches. The awareness of the importance of a diverse microbiome in immune-regulation/inflammation management and as a consequence impact on NCDs is growing exponentially. After birth, the development of a “healthy” gut microbiome is considered to play an important role in the susceptibility for a.o. immune related diseases including NCDs. Non-digestible prebiotic oligosaccharides and even some unique microbes are transferred by the mother through the breastmilk to the child. Some of these affect the composition and/or activity of the gastrointestinal microbiome leading to health benefits (prebiotic function). As an example it has been shown that specific non-digestible oligosaccharides (GOS/FOS) induce a gut microbiome comparable at least in part to breastfed infants. In addition to indirect effects on the immune system via microbiome changes prebiotic oligosaccharides can affect immune cells in a direct fashion as well Recent clinical trials indicated that unique prebiotic fibers can impair the incidence and severity of allergic disorders. The majority of the studies so far indicated immune effects in individuals still having an immature immune system (infants and toddlers). However, very recent data indicated significant impact on other immune related diseases in other life stages as well such as HIV infections, copd, cancer and asthma. Both pharma as well as specialized–nutrition companies do see the highly relevance of microbiome manupilation for both prevention as well as treatment of some immune related disorders linked to NCDs. However more research, multicenter trials, and long-term follow-up studies are needed in order to validate the uniqueness of a.o. non-digestible oligosaccharides and microbiome management in both classical pharma approaches as well as specialised and medical nutrition aimed at NCD management. Keywords: Probiotics Folkerts G., Garssen J. (2016). Microbiome manipulation and immune regulation: Impact for NCD'S? Conference Proceedings of IPC2016. Paper presented at the International Scientific Conference on Probiotics and Prebiotics, Budapest (p. 25.). IPC2016 To download abstract click here
Law& Human Rights in America: Gay Rights Only available on StudyMode • Download(s) : 233 • Published : January 28, 2013 Open Document Text Preview SSP 245 Kenta Payne Gay Rights Prof Blagojevic “Gay people are born into every society in the world. Being gay is not a western invention, it is a human reality.” Secretary Of State Hillary Rodham Clinton -December 6, 2011, Geneva. Switzerland In the aftermath of World War II (1939-1945), a delegation made up of sixty-five countries in six continents came together with the concept that all are created equal and are entitled to the highest level of respect, opportunity and dignity- regardless of race, sex, origin, religion, disability and sexual orientation. This concept, which would go on known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), brought forth the powerful idea that human rights are a birthright, which is granted upon individuals born into any society. It also prevents future atrocities which serve as a threat to these rights, and it fully protects the inherent dignity and humanity of all people. Within the years since the passage of this declaration, we as a global society have made great progress in ensuring that human rights become a human reality, however, sixty-three years later, a group of people are still denied the potential rights most of us exert today --- the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community (LGBT). They are at times disowned by their families, terminated from their places of employment, persecuted by the public, and are subject to arrest, imprisonment and the death penalty. Gay rights is a very big issue to me because as an openly gay male, I find it hard to deal with the fact that individuals have to disclose their sexual orientation and gender identities to avoid facing public scrutiny, discrimination and judicial punishment just for being who they are. I also find it hard to deal with the fact that religion is used as a weapon to bring oppression towards the LGBT community. In my point of view, these are unfair practices which stem from the period of American segregation, and the South African apartheid- periods of civil unrest where individuals fought for equality as citizens. As stated by United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in her December 06, 2011 speech to commemorate human rights day, she has stated that universal human rights include “freedom of expression and freedom of belief (Article 19), even if our words or beliefs denigrate the humanity of others.1 Archbishop Desmond Tutu made it clear that he believes LGBT people are equal to their straight brethren in the eyes of God.2 So here’s where I ask the question: why is the preservation of gay rights important? In the past 64 years since the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have made very good progress in ensuring that everyone—both young and old are rendered access the same amount of rights and opportunities needed to progress as citizens of this global society. After all the fighting, and campaigning in public squares and private spaces to change not only the laws that made human rights, laws a bestowment by only the governments, but it also changed the hearts and minds of individuals who used religious standards and social norms as an excuse to deny human rights to individuals. According to the universal declaration of human rights, we as human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (Article 1). But this cannot happen when we take two steps back by denying a group of affluent individuals their share of the rights just for being who they are. On the American standpoint, the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr hate crimes prevention act in 2009 serves as one of many drastic measures the United States haves taken to curb crimes against LGBT individuals. The repeal of don’t ask, don’t tell in September 2011 puts an end to discriminatory practices in America’s military. However, there is still more work to when it comes to... tracking img
Edit Article wikiHow to Find an Owl's Nest Community Q&A Have an enjoyable and fun adventure following the growth of an owl baby. Knowing where to look and what to look for can provide a fun and inexpensive activity for anyone. 1. 1 Use the internet or a good birding book to find out what kinds of owls live in your area. 2. 2 Use a map of your area to find potential habitats. 3. 3 Choose a nearby habitat to explore being careful not to trespass. Tree groves are good spots. 4. 4 You can start your search at night or in the daytime. 5. 5 Walk into the grove listening carefully for any hoot-hoot-hoot-hoot sounds. You can hear these in daylight but they are easier to hear at night. 6. 6 Choose a tree and check the bottom of the trunk all the way around for signs of owl pellets or white owl excrement. 7. 7 When you spot excrement, move your eyes slowly up the tree looking for unusual trunk formations, broken branches or natural indentations in the trunk. Any of these might make a good owl nest. 8. 8 Continue searching around and up the tree trunks for signs of owl nests. Be patient. Create a way to remember which trees have already been studied. 9. 9 If you're lucky and find a nest, chances are you'll see your new owl friend or friends in it. 10. 10 You might see one or both of the owl parents nearby. In the daytime, they will be sleeping close to their babies on nearby branches or in the nest itself if the babies are very young. 11. 11 Study and enjoy your discovery being careful not to disturb them. 12. 12 Come back a few more times to monitor their growth and progress. Community Q&A Add New Question • Can I have a pet owl? wikiHow Contributor Owls are wild animals, so it's not a good idea. • Am I allowed to look inside and touch the babies and then leave them alone? wikiHow Contributor You can look, but avoid touching the babies. Though it's a myth that parent birds will abandon the nest if they smell humans on the babies or eggs (birds actually have a very limited sense of smell), they may notice that the nest has been disturbed. To some bird species, this is a sign of a predator, and the parents may flee. In addition to this, your hands are a breeding-ground for bacteria and other such dangers to the baby birds. Look briefly, then leave the nest alone. Ask a Question 200 characters left • Take binoculars to enhance your viewing and bring along a camera. It is fairly easy to get good photos of your trip into the natural world. • Always remember not to disturb the owl environment. They richly deserve our respect and support. Article Info Categories: Wildlife | Birds Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 26,147 times. Did this article help you?
Quality Advice For Anyone Who Suffers From Anxiety Lots of people everywhere have problems with anxiety. It can be quite scary to deal with the traumatizing effects of anxiety, but there are ways to combat it. You will be happy to know there is a solution to these problems! This article will show you some helpful tips and advice to help you manage your anxiety. Discuss your largest fear with a official website trusted friend, and make it sound worse than it is. The more often you repeat the story, the more article silly it can appear, and this may seek you to fear it less. Establish daily goals and stick to them. By having a daily goal, you can set your focus on that rather than anxiety. Keeping yourself busy will help you prevent anxiety attacks. Focus on positives throughout each day. Think about these things when you lay down to bed and when you get up in the morning. Focusing on these positives will keep negative thoughts from finding their way into your mind and therefore, decrease the frequency of anxious moments. To help you deal with heavy breathing when you have anxiety, you should practice deep breathing techniques. Anxiety causes hyperventilation in some, which is shallow breathing. Compensate by breathing from your diaphragm. Your anxiety will dissipate when taking deeper breaths, with your stomach going in and out. Eating a healthy and nutritious diet is especially important if you are troubled by symptoms of anxiety. Don't fill your body up with refined sugars and unhealthy food, a diet that is balanced and nutritional is what you require. Talk to someone about your feelings, whether it be a doctor, friend or relative. It is going to intensify your feelings if you try to keep too much bottled in. Expressing your feeling will allow you to feel better and will reduce your anxiety. Journaling can provide you with a release from racing thoughts. Spending a few minutes pouring your worries onto paper can help you feel as though you've released them, allowing you to sleep without obsessing over them. You can right every night or just when you feel you need it. Change your brain chemicals through exercise. Low levels of serotonin are known to trigger feelings of anxiety, but exercising can fix this. Doing things like taking a brisk walk, gardening, or a gym workout help to produce dopamine and serotonin in the brain, which are two things that cause you to feel relaxed. This decreases anxiety and depression. Make it a habit of staying in the moment or focusing on today. One of the most self-defeating behaviors of anxiety-prone individuals is that of concentrating on events from the past or things to be done in the future. This can create worrisome and overwhelming feelings that can cause an anxiety attack. Keep anxiety low by focusing on the present, only. Pick out a time to figure out what is causing you to have doubts and worries. Tell yourself all day when negative things pop up that you have to wait until that time to think over them. Put aside one hour to deal with these issues. At the end of this time, resume your day without focusing again on the worry. Structure your time to gain control. Take action immediately if you experience an anxiety attack during the night. Walk around, drink some water, or watch television. The important thing is to keep moving so that your anxiety disappears quickly, clearing the path for a good night's sleep. Try doing yoga with a group of friends as a way of eliminating anxiety. Yoga is a wonderful method of pushing problems out of your mind and generating productivity and focus. Yoga helps you balance yourself and feel refreshed. If you are an anxiety sufferer, it is crucial that you have some time for yourself. Working constantly or thinking about negative things can make your anxiety increase. Take an hour each day to just read or watch TV. Name all of your anxiety attack triggers. When you identify your triggers, you'll recognize and deal with them more efficiently. Try joining a support group. A lot of times, those who have anxiety are misunderstood. Speaking with people who understand your problems can help you. You can not only get support, but can help others by talking about techniques and tips that worked for you. Make sure you get the proper amount of sleep discover here each night if you suffer from anxiety. Insufficient sleep sometimes exacerbates the impact of your anxiety triggers. Anxiety can also result in physical pain or discomfort if you don't get enough sleep. Most people do best with around seven to nine restful hours of sleep each night. As you can see, you can reduce the anxiety in your life. The ideas presented here were but a few that you can use to manage anxiety. Use the advice in this article religiously every day. You will soon find that you can get your anxiety symptoms under control. Write a comment Comments: 0
[lkml]   [2003]   [May]   [8]   [last100]   RSS Feed Messages in this thread SubjectRe: top stack (l)users for 2.5.69 > The kernel stack, at least for ix86, is only one, set upon startup > at 8192 bytes above a label called init_task_unit. The kernel must > have a separate stack and, contrary to what I've been reading on > this list, it can't have more kernel stacks than CPUs and, I don't > see a separate stack allocated for different CPUs. Not so... Look into asm-i386/thread_info.h on 2.5 kernels. Each process/thread has a chunk of memory of THREAD_SIZE size (8K on i386) with a small structure (struct thread_info) lurking at the bottom and its own personal kernel stack lurking at the top. The number of CPUs doesn't have anything to do with it. Unless you mean "kernel stack pointer"? > The context of a task (see entry.S) is completely defined by > its registers, including the hidden part of the segments > (selectors) that define priviledge. No, it's not. It's also defined by, for instance, all the waitqueues it's on, and these bits of information are frequently stored on the kernel stack, and all the internal function information in the call chain leading to whoever called schedule(). > But no! Not at all. The context of a user does not need to be saved > on the stack, and in fact, isn't. It's saved in a task structure > that was created when the original task was born. The pointer to > that task structure is called 'current' in the kernel. It's in > the kernel's data space, and everything necessary to put that > task back together is in that structure. > Context switching is usually not done by pushing all the registers > onto a stack, then later popping them back. That's not the way > it works. Yes it is. The context saved on the kernel stack belonging to the process that was executing at the time. entry.S uses SAVE_ALL to build a stack frame including all the values of all the data registers that were in use at the time. The pt_regs structure defines the layout of this. The pt_regs that holds the userspace context for any particular process is pointed to by current->thread.esp0 or its equivalent on other archs (look at What you get in the thread info for any process is: | PT_REGS (userspace) | function call chain | PT_REGS (kernel) <--- MMU exception maybe | function call chain | PT_REGS (kernel) <--- timer interrupt maybe | function call chain +------------------+ <--- addr in kernel stack pointer +------------------+ <--- limit of stack The lowest address always resides on an 8Kb boundary, and so the address of THREAD_INFO can be found by ESP&~8191. That said, some registers are saved in current->thread, but only the minimum possible. This is done by switch_to() which is called from the scheduler. Furthermore, interrupt handlers aren't allowed to call schedule (the scheduler barfs on them if they do), so stacks will only be switched if the top stack frame belongs to the process and not to an interrupt. the body of a message to More majordomo info at Please read the FAQ at  \ /   Last update: 2005-03-22 13:35    [W:0.155 / U:10.008 seconds]
new icn messageflickr-free-ic3d pan white Flag of the Republic / State of Texas The Texas State Flag, with red and white bars and a lone white star on a field of blue, is the only state flag in America which may properly be flown alongside and at the same height with the flag of United States of America. The reason is that Texas is the only state which was a soverign independent nation before it joined the Union, and the flag was the flag of the Republic of Texas, before it became the State of Texas. This was the second flag for the Republic of Texas and was adapted Jan. 24, 1839. In 1845, when Texas became the 28th state, the flag of the Republic became the State Flag. It is the fourth of six national flags that have been flown over the territory that is now the State of Texas. In the Flag the Blue stands for loyalty, the white is for strength, and the red for bravery or valor. The Lone Star stands for Texas, and is the reason it is known as "The Lone Star State." 6 faves Taken in February 2005
Discussion in 'Show Off' started by alexcpl1, Dec 22, 2009. 1. alexcpl1 alexcpl1 New Member Dec 22, 2009 Likes Received: [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]In the 16th century, most everything was transported by ship and it was also before the invention of commercial fertilizer, so largeshipments of manure were common. [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]It was shipped dry, because it weighedless but once water hit it, fermentation began which produced methane gasas a by-product. [/FONT] [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]The manure was stored in bundles below deck and once wet with sea water, methane began to build up.[/FONT] [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]The first time someone came below at night with a lantern.... BOOOOM! [/FONT] [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]Several ships were destroyed in this manner before it was determined just what had happened. Afterwards, the bundles of manure were stamped with the term "Ship High In Transit" which directed the crew to stow it in the upper decks so that any water that came into the hold would not reach this volatile cargo and produce the explosive gas.[/FONT] [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]Thus evolved the term "S.H.I.T " (Ship High In Transit) which has come down through the centuries and is still in use today. You probably did not know the true history of this word. [/FONT] [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]Neither did I. I always thought it was a golf term[/FONT] [FONT=&#23435;&#20307;]Spank her[/FONT] #1 alexcpl1, Dec 22, 2009 Last edited: Dec 22, 2009 Draft saved Draft deleted
Sometimes I think that people have an unhealthy obsession with Yellowstone Caldera. Sure, it is big, powerful and the stuff that disaster movies are made, but in terms of a volcanic system that poses a high threat to life/property in the U.S. on a daily basis, it is relatively low. I know what you are thinking (well, some of you): "How can you say that? Look at how big the past eruptions were?" Yes, indeed, the previous eruption from the modern Yellowstone Caldera were indeed big, some of the biggest we have identified on the continents (it is still no Fish Canyon Tuff), so I'll give you that. However, looking at the recent volcanic history of Yellowstone, you'd see that these big "doomsday" eruptions are only a very small piece of its activity, so even if tomorrow the caldera began to show signs of imminent eruption, there is a very good chance that it would be a relatively minor eruption - possibly on the scale of the 2008 and onward Chaiten eruption in Chile.  So, why is it that when a fairly innocuous paper comes out, everyone gets all riled up? National Geographic had a piece about a December 2010 article in Geophysical Research Letters by Chang and others called "An extraordinary episode of Yellowstone caldera uplift, 2004-2010, from GPS and InSAR observations". Alright, I can see why it might catch a reporter's attention: "extraordinary episode" combined with "caldera uplift" all in the recent past (2004-2010) seems juicy. Well, dissecting the article it seems that the key findings are (a) a large area of the Yellowstone caldera has been rising since 2004 (b) from 2004-06, the surface was rising 7-5 cm/yr; from 2006-08, rising 4-2 cm/yr and from 2008-2010, rising 2-0.5 cm/yr and (c) the source of this uplift was likely a sill intruding at 7-10 km depth (see figure below). The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory press release about the paper is pretty subdued, which isn't surprising considering that if research like this makes it to publication, then the data in it is "old news" to the scientific community. Whenever you read about a "shocking" new research paper, remember, that data is likely a year or more old and has been vetted by many people in the research community - not exactly breaking events.  Now, should we expect this at an active caldera? Yes! Does this mean that the caldera is going to erupt soon? Maybe! Will it destroy us all? Probably not!  However, much like much news on the internet, information gets run through a massive game of telephone. This news about Yellowstone morphed into more 2012-style doomsday news. Some fine examples: Tuscon Citizen: Fairly reasonable look at Yellowstone Caldera until you get to the bottom, where the National Park Service assessment of the activity at Yellowstone as being fairly low with no signs of a "catastrophic eruption is imminent" is juxtaposed with the findings in the Chang et al. paper. This is exactly what you shouldn't do as there is no indication in the paper that its findings are in conflict with the idea that a catastrophic is not around the corner. Daily Mail: The headline alone takes it to another level: "Is the world's largest super-volcano about to erupt for the first time in 600,000 years, wiping out two-thirds of the U.S.?" I can't remember who said this, but if the title of your article can be answered with "no", then maybe you need to rethink the title, or the article in general. Sadly, it gets worse as the potential eruption at Yellowstone is described as "spewing lava far into the sky" and the U.S. will become uninhabitable by "toxic air", then goes on to say that a new "supereruption" could be coming in the "near future". There is much less information about Yellowstone in the article and very little from the original GRL article - heck, it isn't even mentioned. I'm not even sure what the "scorched earth" image is halfway through the article. And other media websites that have picked up this piece have morphed the title to "Largest volcano 'to erupt after 600,000 years, wipe out 2/3 of U.S." Ugh. (This spoof does a good job describing the Daily Mail's coverage) San Francisco Chronicle (picked up from Benzinga): Now, we get completely wrong headlines from Jonathan Chen of "Could the world's oldest volcano wipe out more than 50% of the US?" Where do I start? Yellowstone is clearly not the "world's oldest volcano". Not even close. Could it wipe out 50% of the US? Maybe it could, likely it wouldn't  (see my note for the Daily Mail). Here, the study is cut down to two quotes with very little info beyond the absolutely terrible and wrong headline. Gawker: At least Gawker was having a little fun with Yellowstone, right down to the hashtag #volcanofail. Even their brief synopsis of what will happen during a catastrophic eruption isn't too bad, at least saying that the caldera will erupt ash to 25 km rather than lava. The best line, though, sums up the Yellowstone hysteria nicely: "But who do you trust, some kind of "professor," or your overactive imagination?" UPDATE: Now, this one really baffled me. CNN's Rebecca Hillman asked physicist Michio Kaku for his prediction about Yellowstone. Really? Should someone interview me about the existence of dark matter? This is a prime example of lazy reporting: get the first expert on the line and end it there. There you go. Yellowstone is pretty calm as giant caldera systems go. We have such a small record of the behavior of a "restless caldera" that this inflation at Yellowstone could very easily fall into the realm of normal, non-eruption-causing behavior. And if you ever worry, Yellowstone is also well-wired to see all the real time data, including earthquakes in the region and in the park, temperatures of hot springs, webcams, deformation within the caldera and hydrologic changes in the area. You would expect that if Yellowstone were headed towards an eruption, we would see lots of rapid inflation, lots of constant seismicity that gets shallower through time, a change in the temperature/composition of the hydrothermal systems and possibly even cracks forming in the land around the caldera. In other words, there will be lots of signs. So, the next time you see a doomdays article about Yellowstone, remember, calderas are busy places and the media loves its disasters. Top left: Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone Caldera
Camping on Mars Sitting around the old magnesium fire. Paul Doherty and Eric Muller First Things first If you try to breathe Mars air you would pass out in 15 seconds due to lack of oxygen. So, campers would need to carry their own oxygen, O2. The movie "Total Recall" gives you an idea of what would happen to you if you tried to breathe Mars atmosphere. Mars' atmosphere is 95% CO2 and 3% N2 and 2% Ar. Demonstration. Put dry ice into a fish tank and let the tank fill with carbon dioxide. Gently waft some of the CO2 toward your nose, smell it to find out what Mars smells like. Stick your tongue into the tank and taste the Co2. Wow! be prepared for a sharp taste like that from a carbonated beverage.(We'll use the tank of CO2 again in other experiments below so keep it around.) However, when water is added to the surface of Mars it releases oxygen, so all you have to do is pee on the surface to generate O2. Viking landers discovered that the surface contained iron superoxides, when Viking added water to the soil oxygen was released. Scientists from NASA AMES research laboratories recently found the same kind of oxidizing soil in the Atacama desert of Chile. Demo, Get a platinum coated plastic contact lens cleaner. Drop it into a test tube of hydrogen peroxide (20%) and oxygen will bubble out. H2O2 goes to H2o + O. This models the production od oxygen by mars soil when it is wetted. The MER spacecraft are searching for signs of water on Mars. Spacecraft show that the soil near the surface on Mars near the equator is only 3% water. The polar caps do contain a lot of water ice. The Mars Express spacecraft in orbit carries radar which is looking for water ice beneath the surface of Mars. So until they find water, top up your water bottle before you go. However, metals will burn in a CO2 atmosphere. Demonstration, A steel rod 1 inch square, 2.5 cm square, and 5 feet or 1.3 m long will exert the same pressure as the earth's atmosphere. To feel Martian pressure cut the length of the rod to 1/100 of this length or 1.3 cm. A Venus atmosphere rod would be 500 feet high, 160 m, and weigh 1470 pounds, nearly a ton. Left, a steel Bar 1.32 m long and 1 inch square exerts the same pressure as the earth's atmosphere, it weighs 14.7 pounds. (101 Kpascals.) A steel Mars atmosphere bars is only 1.32 cm high. Demo, Show the candy bar. Boyling Water. So to cook on Mars you'll need a pressure cooker. Spaghetti cooked in a carbon dioxide martian atmosphere pressure cooker woud be spaghetti carbonara. Altitude Illness But you'll need to carry more stuff. Demo show a -40 degree sleeping bag(-40 is the same temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius.) Then a -80 F sleeping bag (made by putting an overbag over the -40 bag.) Notice how thick the bag is. However complete thermal protection from the cold will be required, here is a picture of Noel Wanner on the summit of Mt. Erebus in Antarctica, at the time of this photo it was -20 C with 20 mph winds. When Noel removed his face mask for a minute his nose turned white with incipient frostbite. Paul Doherty climbing Ojos de Salado, -30 C and 30 mph winds. Working hard going uphill at 6000 m elevation, just below 20,000 feet, and still cold. A compass will not work on Mars. Neither will GPS. At the time I gave this lecture, these were the most recent images from Mars. The thermal emission spectrometer sent back data on the temperature and composition of rocks around the spirit lander site. In this image the TES data is placed over a lander pancam image. The colors indicate the temperatures of the surface. In this daytime image the rocks are shown in blue representing cooler temperatures (up to 10 °C cooler than average, while dust is red and is up to 10°C warmer. TES also took spectra of the infrared radiation emitted by the surroundings. In the following image the spectra is shown in yellow. Spectra of the site from orbit are shown in red. Notice the middle wavelength here is 10 micrometers, over ten times the wavelength of red light, and ten times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The dips in the spectra represent absorption by different minerals. This data shows the presence of silicates, and carbonates in the rock as well as, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and even water. Images were sent back of the sundial on the spirit lander, it is also a color calibration target. Notice how scattering of light from the sky fills in the shadow of the gnomon. Skylight is about equal to the brightness of direct sunlight on Mars, so the shadow is darker by about one f-stop, a factor of two in photographic exposure terms. Return to Mars Scientific Explorations with Paul Doherty © 2003 25 Dec 2003
home & index 1     -->  2 eyes of link to a Google search page HERE main index   © Jeff Matthews  entry Apr. 2003    update Jan 11, 2016 1. main article  2. (below) Historical overview 1. Piazza Municipio The importance of Piazza Municipio—City Hall Square—goes back to the Angevins, when the Maschio Angioino, the New Castle, was built. The castle and area around it thus became the symbol of authority. Besides the castle, a new Angevin harbor was built directly in front of the castle. Later, the Aragonese and then the Spanish expanded the fortifications, such that, at its height, the castle housed the royal armory, foundry and the corps of the Royal Guards, taking up most of the present-day square. In the late 1800s, the urban renewal of Naples started to shape to the area around the castle and transform it into the Piazza Municipio we see today. (This photo looks down on Piazza Municipio from the Maschio Angioino. The center of the square is cluttered with construction equipment for the new subway station.) The clearing of the area around the port during the 1890s affected Piazza Municipio and the entire east-west axis along the old port, doing away with many of the buildings from the 1700s and leaving intact only a few bits and pieces of the old city wall for reasons of historical interest (one of which is the nearby Church of the Incoronata on via Medina). The present day Municipio (City Hall) (photo, left) at the north end of the square is called Palazzo San Giacomo because it incorporates an ex-monastery of that name built by the Spanish in the 1500s. (The adjacent church of the same name still functions as a church. The Municipio, itself, dates back only to the early 20th century. It was an example of advanced architectural technology at the time, utilizing glass for an internal passageway that connected the square in front with the main street, via Toledo in the rear. That advantage was undone by the later construction of the Bank of Napoli on via Toledo, effectively closing the passage. Thus, the entire square, from the port to the Municipio is spacious and grand, and it was from here that the urban renewal of Naples in the late 1800s started. update Nov. 2014 - The Italian Touring Club (TCI) has announced that the church of Saint James is one of the four in Naples--typically closed to visitors in the past--that is now regularly open (!) to visitors as a result of the TCI's cultural heritage initiative called Aperti per voi (open for you). The program enlists volunteers throughout Italy to act as guides and, in general, help with the necessary work in keeping such sites open. In Italy, the volunteer organization has sponsored some 60 such cultural sites. See this Miscellany link for the others.       2015 update on Metro construction in the square 2. Historical Overview  - it helps to read the item above this one first.  added Jan 11, 2016 From Largo del Castello to Piazza Municpio #26 in the series of period postcards from Naples 22 23 24 27 28 x The postcard shown on the right is quite ordinary. It's a run-of-the-mill tourist card from the mid-1960s of Piazza Municipio, taken from the Municipio (city hall) itself, Palazzo San Giacomo, at the top of the square. The rectangular piazza runs almost exactly NW at the top to SE. The large white twin facade of the main passenger terminal of the Port of Naples (from 1936) is seen across the main port-side road at the bottom. The Angevin Fortress (Maschio Angioino) is slightly out the picture on the right. Mt. Vesuvius, dead center, is the only landmark to convince you that the other view (below) on this page is from the approximately the same spot, because the square has undergone some major changes since the late 1700s. Actually, this is how Piazza Municipio still exists in the minds of many Neapolitans although it has not been even remotely like this since they started tearing it up many years ago to put in a mammoth underground train station. Although much of the underground work is now finished, the surface work is not yet completed and the area is cluttered. In theory, with some cosmetic changes on the surface (a statue, entrances to the metropolitana, trees, etc.) the square will again look something like this sooner or later. As noted in the main article (above) this large open rectangular space is a configuration that goes back to the urban renewal of Naples, the Risanimento (1885-1915). The square was opened in 1897. Before that, however, things looked quite a bit different. The image on the right is obviously from the same vantage point as the post card, with the angle slightly shifted such that the large fortress, the Maschio Angioino comes into view on the right. The image is a lithograph by M. Zampella, done in approximately 1880. We know that from various things such as the dress of the persons, the fact that there is no motorized traffic, etc. but mainly because we know the history of that large building in the middle; it was torn down in the risanamento in order to start clearing out the area for what was to comethe isolation of the Maschio Angioino by removing centuries of antiquated clutter and to build the new Piazza Municipio. That building was the Gran Guardia della Cavalleria, a cavalry barracks (architect: F. Sicuro). It was on the perimeter of the outer defenses of the old fortress, at was called the couterscarp, the outer slope of the ditch or moat. The Gran Guardia was built in 1790, a time when such castle defenses were still relevant. The road we see in the lithograph was called the via del molo [Port Road]. The fortress, itself, is from 1302; between that time and the risanamento in the late 1800s—500 years! the area was a hub of civic activity, modified and improved upon by the likes of Domenico Fontana, the architect of the Royal Palace, in 1600. It was not called Piazza Municipio because there was no municipio! Palazzo San Giacomo (now the city hall) was originally a hospital and monastery adjacent to the church of San Giacomo and converted to a new Ministerial Building in the 1790s. The whole area was called Largo del Castello (Castle Square) because everything was centered on the Maschio Angioino. From the vantage point of the artist, the distance from today's city hall to the castle, itself, is 250 meters. Adjacent to and behind the barracks there developed a vast conglomeration of secondary structures such as shops, dwellings, storehouses, etc.—a small village unto itself, running all the way back to walls of the fortress. All of that was cleared by the early 20th century. to portal for architecture and urban planning      main index
Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer dead Updated December 06, 2012 15:49:20 Renowned Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer has died at the age of 104. Niemeyer, a towering patriarch of modern architecture who designed the main buildings of Brazil's futuristic capital, Brasilia, died on Wednesday. His death was confirmed by a hospital spokesperson. Starting in the 1930s, Niemeyer's career spanned nine decades, leaving his stylistic imprint around the world with distinctive and often curvy space-age style. He became a national icon, ranking alongside Bossa Nova pioneer Tom Jobim and soccer legend Pele. His glass and white-concrete buildings include the United Nations Secretariat in New York, the Communist Party headquarters in Paris and Brasilia's Roman Catholic Cathedral. He won the 1988 Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of architecture, for the Brasilia cathedral. Its "crown of thorns" cupola fills the church with light and a sense of soaring grandeur despite the fact that most of the building is underground. The cathedral was one of dozens of public structures Niemeyer designed for Brazil's made-to-order capital, a city that helped define "space-age" style. The collection of government buildings in Brasilia remains his most monumental and enduring achievement. While the aeroplane-shaped city was planned and laid out by Niemeyer's friend Lucio Costa, the architect designed nearly every important government building in the city. Initially influenced by the angular modernism of French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier, who worked with Niemeyer and Costa on a visit to Brazil in the 1930s, his style evolved toward rounded buildings which he said were inspired by the curves of Rio's sunbathing women, as well as beaches and verdant hills. "That is the architecture I do, looking for new, different forms. Surprise is key in all art," Niemeyer said in 2006. Responding to criticism that his work was impractical and overly artistic, Niemeyer dismissed the idea that a building's design should reflect its function as a "ridiculous and irritating" architectural dogma. "Whatever you think of his buildings, Niemeyer has stamped on the world a Brazilian style of architecture," Dennis Sharp, a British architect and author of The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Architects and Architecture, said. Lifelong communist Niemeyer's legacy is heavily associated with his communist views. He was a close friend of Cuba's revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, and an enemy of Brazil's 21-year military dictatorship. His architecture, though, regularly trumped his politics. Georges Pompidou, a right-wing former French president, said Niemeyer's design for the Communist Party of France's headquarters "was the only good thing those commies ever did," according to the architect's memoirs. Iconic fashion company Prada thought the Communist Party building in Paris so cool it rented it for a fashion show. Niemeyer was exiled from Brazil in the 1960s, but remained politically active after his return. He said in 2010 that he was a great admirer of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the former labour leader who was Brazil's president from 2003 to 2010. Niemeyer once built a house in a Rio slum for his former driver, and gave apartments and offices as presents to others. Planned for 500,000 people, the city is now home to more than 2.5 million, and VIPs keep to themselves in fenced-in villas while the poor live in distant satellite towns. That work won the confidence of the city's mayor Juscelino Kubitschek. When he became Brazil's president, he employed Niemeyer to help realise the dream of opening up Brazil's interior by moving the capital from coastal Rio to the empty plains of central Brazil. Topics: architecture, death, brazil First posted December 06, 2012 11:29:49
Last days for guerrilla currency By Bill Bainbridge and Lon Nara TEN Sophal's antiques stall at Phnom Penh's Russian Market doesn't display his 1993 Khmer Rouge (KR) currency: it is simply too rare and too valuable to be left out with the other denominations from Cambodia's history. "By the end of next year there'll be no notes left," he says. The 1993 notes represent the KR's second attempt at creating a currency. In January 1975, before it came to power, the KR printed a wide range of denominations but vacillated on whether to put them into circulation. Within a day of seizing Phnom Penh in April 1975, the KR declared that money was to be abolished. The notes that had sustained the economy until that point were suddenly worthless, and gleeful DR soldiers literally tossed the old currency in the air. However the dream of a society without money was short lived. Within three weeks the new currency began circulating in parts of Cambodia. the notes were printed with images from the revolution as its architects had dreamed it would be. Scenes depicted included Angkor Wat, the symbol of the Khmer nation, earnest looking peasants working together, harvesting side by side with soldiers, and young revolutionary women hoisting rocket launchers on their shoulders. Shortly after it had been issued the new money was withdrawn and, while the decision on releasing it changed several more times, the view that eventually prevailed was that the new agrarian paradise was to be a cashless society. Most of the bills never left the safety of the National Bank of Cambodia until Pol Pot's Troops deserted. Phnom Penh, blew up the bank and showered the streets with mint condition bills. the first visitors to the Cambodian capital in 1979 were treated to the bizarre spectacle of streets empty of people but flooded with cash and the gutters literally flowing with money. Starving children used the notes to start fires. The invading Vietnamese troops pocketed large wads of the cash that had been left in the national bank and took it home at the end of their tour of duty. Sophal says he used to make regular trips to Vietnam to buy old banknotes but complains that these days they are hard to find. The 1993 currency is a different story. In the early and mid 1990s the DR banned the use of the official Cambodian riel in their stronghold areas of Pailin and Anlong Veng and once more embarked on an attempt at developing a currency of their own. they produced 5,10,20,50 and 100 riel notes in a local Anlong Veng printing press. the ideological imagery of the 1975 currency was replaced by tourist brochure style images of Cambodia printed cheaply and slightly off-center on small bills, many carrying the exactly the same serial number. The notes carry the obligatory pictures of Angkor Wat as well as images of houses on the Tonle Sap and a Khmer New Year festival being held in the Pailin forest. they also bear the hallmarks of an official currency with the signature of Khieu Samphan in the bottom left hand corner. For their short period of circulation the bills were simply referred to as "Khieu Samphan currency" The lack of a government or central bank did not deter the KR from its attempt to raise their fortunes through the use of the currency. It simply tied the value of the currency to the value of the Thai baht at a rate of one riel per baht. At a time when the official riel was in free fall against the US dollar the value of the KR's own cash was fixed. In March 1993 the issuing of the guerrilla currency was thought to be a factor in an 80 percent plummet in the value of the official riel. The new riel added to the uncertainty of the official Cambodian currency and the KR was rumored to be buying up Combodian notes then dumping huge numbers of them in Phnom Penh markets to exacerbate the currency crisis. Yet it 3was not only the official currency that was vulnerable. By August the Khmer Rouge had ordered that the five month old currency be burned to prevent it from falling into the hands of Cambodian government troops. In an eerie echo of 1979 when government troops did arrive in Pailin in early 1994 and found the town littered with the strange bills, the currency had already gone out of circulation. Sophal says that it was only after the 1996 defection of KR troops that the experimental currency found its way to Phnom Penh's markets. Former soldiers sought him out to sell their old notes, which had become worthless. He in turn discovered that there was a tidy profit in selling the souvenir bills to the foreigners who frequented his market stall. "There are no sellers left in Cambodia. there won't be any more notes at all after next year." Table of content - Azibaza Home Page khmer statue:thai handicraft:asian handicraft:tantrism:Handicraft thailand:buddha antique:bronze buddha
Definitions of change 1.   money received in return for its equivalent in a larger denomination or a different currency; " he got change for a twenty and used it to pay the taxi driver" 2.   An alteration or variation on anything; a passing from one state or form to another; vicissitude; variety; small money; change, contracted for exchange, a place where persons meet for the transaction of business. 3.   A passing from one state or form to another; small coin; balance returned after subtraction of amount paid; any variation. 5.   coins of small denomination regarded collectively; " he had a pocketful of change" 7.   An exchange. 8.   Any alteration or variation; shifting; transition; alteration in the order, specially of ringing bells; small coin; the balance of money paid beyond the price of goods purchased; the Exchange. 9.   a thing that is different; " he inspected several changes before selecting one" 10.   To make or become different; convert; alter; vary. 11.   Any order in which a number of bells are struck, other than that of the diatonic scale. 15.   To pass from one phase to another; as, the moon changes to- morrow night. 16.   To make different or alter; to put one thing in the place of another; to give or take an equivalent in other coin; to exchange. 17.   change clothes; put on different clothes; " Change before you go to the opera" 20.   To suffer change. 22.   Small money. 25.   Alteration in the order of a series; permutation. 26.   To give and take reciprocally; to exchange; - followed by with; as, to change place, or hats, or money, with another. 28.   To exchange; interchange. 29.   To exchange; to alter. 30.   a different or fresh set of clothes; " she brought a change in her overnight bag" 33.   Alteration or variation of any kind: a shift: variety: small coin: also used as a short term for the Exchange. 34.   That which makes a variety, or may be substituted for another. 36.   To alter or make different: to put or give one thing or person for another: to make to pass from one state to another. 37.   To undergo alteration; pass from one place to another. 40.   the balance of money received when the amount you tender is greater than the amount due; " I paid with a twenty and pocketed the change" 41.   The act or fact of changing; alteration; substitution; a substitute. 44.   a relational difference between states; especially between states before and after some event; " he attributed the change to their marriage" 45.   A public house; an alehouse. 46.   Alteration; exchange; small coin. 47.   To alter; exchange or give an equivalent for; to make different; convert. 50.   To suffer a change; to become new; to become worse. 51.   To alter; to make different; to shift; to put one thing in the place of another; to give one kind of money for another; to undergo variation. Quotes of change 2. Only idiots refuse to change their minds. – Brigitte Bardot 3. Change is good. And in fact unavoidable. – Dirk Benedict 4. But change must always be balanced with some degree of consistency. – Ron D. Burton 5. To get away from one's working environment is, in a sense, to get away from one's self; and this is often the chief advantage of travel and change – Charles Horton Cooley 7. Swearing is industry language. For as long as we're alive it's not going to change You've got to be boisterous to get results. – Gordon Ramsay 8. Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant. – Tony Robbins 9. What the guys have learned is that whether you're preaching to one or 10, 000, it really doesn't matter. That one person you touch may change the nation- could be the Billy Graham of Ethiopia. – Michael Scott 10. What I learned in jail is that I can't change I can't live a different lifestyle -this is it. This is the life that they gave and this is the life that I made. – Tupac Shakur 11. We( actors) don't really change the world. We reflect it... but Washington really changes the world. – Martin Sheen 12. Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits and then complain that he's not the man she married? – Barbra Streisand 13. The point of the essay is to change things. – Edward Tufte Usage examples for change 1. You go and change your things, sir, and then get a book till dinner's ready. ” – Menhardoc by George Manville Fenn 2. Because you couldn't get any one to change with you, my dear. ” – The Green Satin Gown by Laura E. Richards 3. “ A change was to come- with the coming night. ” – Man and Wife by Wilkie Collins 4. Nothing could change you. ” – IT and Other Stories by Gouverneur Morris 5. It was something of a change – The Rustle of Silk by Cosmo Hamilton 6. We will soon change all that." ” – Her Mother's Secret by Emma D. E. N. Southworth 7. Would it not be well to make a change before it is too late? ” – Orley Farm by Anthony Trollope 8. Come into the boat- house and we'll change now." ” – The Motor Maids by Palm and Pine by Katherine Stokes 9. Do you know of any good reason why she should come to change it? ” – The Sea-Hawk by Raphael Sabatini 10. It will be a change to talk of other things. ” – Beric the Briton A Story of the Roman Invasion by G. A. Henty 11. It isn't too late yet to change that. ” – Tabitha at Ivy Hall by Ruth Alberta Brown 12. Then a change came over him. ” – A Very Naughty Girl by L. T. Meade 13. You got to make the change as you come in. ” – The Happy Foreigner by Enid Bagnold 14. The change of work was the secret of it all. ” – Seed Thoughts for Singers by Frank Herbert Tubbs 15. But I ought to tell you at once, that nothing which you say can change me." ” – The Turnstile by A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) Mason 16. “ A change had come over the face of it. ” – The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories by Ethel M. Dell 17. “ A change will do you good. ” – The Firm of Girdlestone by Arthur Conan Doyle 18. “ I can see the change in you. ” – Caribbee by Thomas Hoover 19. Shall I give you a change – Pine Needles by Susan Bogert Warner 20. I'm not going to be the one to change you." ” – The Captives by Hugh Walpole Idioms for change
Booms and Busts 1920 - The first commercial finding of oil in West Texas comes with the discovery of the Westbrook field in Mitchell County. 1923 - The famous Santa Rita No. 1 is completed in Reagan County. 1929 - The Hogan Building opens in downtown Midland, making Midland the headquarters for oil companies and leading to its nickname, the Tall City. 1930 - Activity comes to a near-standstill as the effects of the Great Depression take hold and oil from East Texas floods the market. 1934 - Activity increases as economic recovery takes root. 1942 - Restrictions and controls imposed during World War II stifle development. 1945-49 - The end of the war results in a surge of activity, most significantly the beginning of development of the Spraberry Trend, which leads to a growth spurt for Midland. 1968 - Drilling slumps but holds steady as the 1970s begin. 1973 - The Arab embargo is announced, creating gas lines, concerns about energy supplies and the beginning of a rise in crude oil prices from $4 a barrel to $25 a barrel by 1979, when the shah of Iran was overthrown, causing renewed turmoil in the oil markets. Prices peaked at $37 a barrel in 1980 as Midland saw new office buildings, apartment complexes and homes being built — and a rise in traffic and a housing crunch. 1986 - Oil prices had remained above $25 a barrel until early 1986, when they collapsed to $10 a barrel, sending shock waves through the economies of Midland and Texas. Prices would range from the high teens to $20 a barrel. 1998 - Prices again sank to $10 a barrel, sending new shockwaves through the Midland economy and leading to the loss of thousands of jobs. 2000 - By the dawn of the new millennium, prices began a recovery that saw them soar to a record $147 a barrel in July 2008, bringing new residents, new homes, new businesses — and more traffic and a housing shortage. 2004 - The development of the Wolfberry play is in full swing, attracting new operators and drilling activity not seen since the peak of the boom of the early 1980s. 2009 - Amid the Great Recession, prices fell below $40 a barrel before beginning a year-long recovery that had them rebounding to $70 a barrel by 2010. Moderate prices meant better economics for drilling wells, sending drilling activity even higher. 2012 - Prices exceeded $100 a barrel again before retreating amid concerns about the European and Chinese economies. Operators remain busy developing the Wolfberry and new plays - the Bone Spring and horizontal Wolfcamp - aided by new technology.
Acne isn’t limited to one’s face. In fact, it can be manifest on several other parts of one’s body, including the back. Back acne, often termed Bacne, tends to form on the back, buttocks and upper arms and take-several-forms i.e. cysts, blackheads, pustules and pimples, which are painful and form-deep-under the skin’s surface. Acne on the Back: Causes and Treatment Image Credit: acne Acne on the back tends to occur around puberty, when the sebaceous glands, tasked with sebum production, commence functioning. When sebum is produced in significant quantities, hair follicles and pores can become clogged, attracting bacteria. Subsequently, this can lead to acne. Read on for a more comprehensive glimpse at back acne causes and treatment. Acne on the back has the same causes as acne anywhere else on one’s body i.e. sebum overproduction coupled with-dead skin-cell-proliferation, bacteria, hormonal imbalance, dirt etc. Hormones play a significant role in back acne formation. Oil-production is triggered by androgen (male sex hormones). At the onset of puberty, androgens stimulate the sebaceous glands located in the hair-follicles to produce sebum, oil tasked with skin and hair lubrication. While male abound in androgen, women-do-as-well, and hormonal imbalances bear the potential to trigger acne on the back break out in either sex. Ideally, sebum produced would move up hair follicle’s shaft and subsequently exit out the follicle’s pores. However, these pores can become clogged upon sebum mixing with dead skin cells and dirt. Once blocked, sebum accumulates in the follicle, realizing whiteheads or blackheads. If the follicle ruptures, a cyst, nodule or pimple will form. Proliferation of Bacteria Propionibacteria-acnes (P.acnes)-are-bacteria-routinely-present-on-most-skin. P.acnes population grows out of control in individuals with acne. Oil and dead cell’s plug within the pores creates an anaerobic environment where oxygen-can’t get into-the-pores. P.acnes tends to thrive in such surroundings and their population grows. They digest oil trapped within these pores, subsequently producing a fatty-acid-waste that irritates the lining of the pore, causing redness & inflammation. Excessive shedding of the skin The epidermis constantly shades dead skin through the desquamation process. Dead skins often fall away from stratum corneum & are replaced by new-cells. In acne-skin prone skin, this process usually goes awry, with 4-5 times more skin-cells being produced than in normal-skin. In essence, acne prone skin produces-more-dead-skin-cells than it is typical, and the skin-cells are not being-appropriately shed thus leading to back acne eventually. External causes Back acne can also be as a result of exposure to chemical compounds, particularly in polluted water and air. For instance, contact with dioxins can lead to chloracne in men. Over the counter treatment These products can be utilized in controlling mild Bacne flare-ups & include-ingredients-such as salicylic acid, sulfur, resorcinol and benzoyl peroxide. Salicylic acid can be utilized in daily-wash. What’s more, pads with benzoyl peroxide/salicylic acid can also be wiped over the affected regions. Part of treatment will also entail utilizing lotions containing alpha-hydroxyl-acid, such as lactic or glycolic acid. This is more of topical treatment. Proper skin care is advisable for individuals with back acne. This entails routine skin washing with a gentle cleanser, showering immediately after exercise, not picking or squeezing Bacne lesions and-avoiding-excessive-sun-exposure. Common treatments include Retin-A, Accutane and Oral antibiotics. Accutane is usually utilized for severe back acnes. William Joseph About the Author: William Joseph likes to write about acne of the causes and treatments to control or cure this and if you want to check his website Treatment for Acne Where he tries togive many treatments for the types that you have Acne on the Back Post a Comment Rizwan Ahmad Powered by Blogger.
Triparound travel community Holidays in British Virgin Islands Understanding British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands comprise 16 inhabited and more than 43 uninhabited islands, including the island of Anegada The islands fall into two types, with relatively flat coral islands and steep volcanic islands The highest point is Crown Mountain Tropical, tempered by easterly trade winds, relatively low humidity, little seasonal temperature variation Has experienced several hurricanes in recent years, although with little consequent damage, as well as floods, usually in October or November The economy, one of the most stable and prosperous in the Caribbean, is closely tied to the larger and more populous US Virgin Islands to the west and indeed the US dollar is the legal currency within the British Virgin Islands The islands are highly dependent on tourism, generating an estimated 45% of the national income, together with the offshore financial industry Talking in British Virgin Islands The official language of Brazil is Portuguese, spoken by the entire population except for a few, very remotely located tribes Indeed, Brazil has had immigrants from all parts of the world for centuries, whose descendants now speak Portuguese as their mothertongue Brazilian Portuguese has a number of pronunciation differences with that spoken in Portugal and within, between the regions there are some accent and slang differences, but speakers of either can understand each other However, European Portuguese Luso is more difficult for Brazilians to understand than the reverse, as many Brazilian television programs are shown in Portugal Note that a few words can have a totally different meaning in Brazil and Portugal, usually slang words An example of this is "Rapariga" which in Portugal means young girl, and in Brazil means prostitute English is not widely spoken except in some touristy areas Don't expect bus or taxi drivers to understand English, so it may be a good idea to write down the address you are heading to before getting the cab In most big and luxurious hotels, it is very likely that the taxi fleet will speak some English If you are really in need of talking in English, you should look for the younger generation, because they, generally, have a higher knowledge on the language and will be eager to help you and exercise their English Spanish speakers are usually able to get by in Brazil, especially towards the south While written Portuguese can be quite similar to Spanish, spoken Portuguese may be much harder to understand Compare the number 20 which is veinte BAYN-teh in Spanish to vinte VEEN-chee in Brazilian Portuguese Even more different is gente people, pronounced "HEN-teh" in Spanish and "ZHEN-chee" in Brazilian Portuguese Letters CH, D, G, J, R, RR, and T are particularly difficult for those who know some Spanish, and that's without even considering the vowels Spanish speakers European or Latin American usually find European Portuguese slighty easier to pronounce than the Brazilian one Body language Brazilians use a lot of body gestures in informal communication, and the meaning of certain words or expressions may be influenced by them • The thumbs up gesture is used everywhere and all the time in Brazil • The OK gesture thumb and finger in a circle, on the other hand, may have obscene connotations in Brazil Avoid it if you can, people may laugh at you, or be offended usually if they are drunk Use thumbs up instead • A circular movement of the forefinger about the ear means you are crazy!, the same as in English • Stroking your two biggest fingers with your thumb possibly ironically stating that something takes a long time is a way of saying that something is expensive same as French • Clicking your middle finger with your thumb multiple times means a long time • Joining your thumb and middle finger and snapping your index finger upon them means fast not in whole country • Stroking your lips with your index finger and snapping it means delicious, grabbing your earlobe with your index and thumb means the same not in all country • Making a fist with your thumb between the index and middle finger is the sign of good luck not in whole country • Touching the palm with the thumb and making a circular movement with the hand means I am being robbed! sometimes meaning that some price is too high not in whole country • The Hush gesture is considered extremely impolite, just about the same as shouting "shut up!" to someone • An informal way to get someone's attention similar to a whistle in other cultures is a hissing sound: "pssiu!" It is not perceived as unpolite, but gets really, really, REALLY annoying if repeated too often They also call cats with a similar sound, rather than the kiss noise others the French again produce What to see in British Virgin Islands What to do in British Virgin Islands • Sail The Virgin Islands is the most popular area for a sailing vacation in the Caribbean This is a first-timers paradise, since the islands are close together and well protected from the Atlantic You wake up to sunshine and a blue sky, choose the cruising target of the day by pointing on a nearby island and set sail in a comfortable trade wind There are many yacht charter companies and marinas in the British Virgin Islands • Scuba diving The BVIs are home to the wreck of 'The Rhone', which served as the site for the underwater scenes in the 1977 Nick Nolte/Jackie Bisset/Robert Shaw flick 'The Deep' The Rhone is the best-known and most often visited dive site in the islands Lying just west of Salt Island, the Rhone is a former Royal Mail Steamer that sank in a hurricane on October 29, 1867 A spectacularly large 310 ft 94 metres steamer in her previous life, she's now a three-site dive, with each chunk resting at varying depths, from 20 to 80 ft 6 to 24 metres • Fishing It is illegal for non-British Virgin Islanders to remove any marine organism from BVI waters without a recreational permit A permit is available for charterers who intend to fish while in the BVI The cost is $35 $10 application fee; $25 for the permit This temporary fishing permit can be obtained from the Department of Conservation and Fisheries: Department of Conservation and Fisheries, The Quastisky Building PO Box 3323 Road Town, Tortola Tel: 284 494-5681/3429 or 284 468-3701 ex 5555/1 Fax: 284 494-2670 E-Mail: cfd@bvigovernmentorg The government office closes early on Friday afternoons and doesn’t reopen until Monday morning For charterers arriving on the weekend, it may be a couple of days before you can get a permit When you arrive for your charter, check with the local staff for advice on obtaining a permit • Surfing • Windsurfing The annual "HiHo" windsurfing race-cum-travel-tour is held on or around the 4th of July weekend For a week, internationally renowned competitors participate in formal course racing Recognized as "One of the 100 top BVI adventures" by the BVI Tourist Board, the HiHo fleet is easily recognized by the distinctive event and sponsor flags flown by the charter fleet The event generally stops for a day or two at Virgin Gorda, a night on Anegada, one or two nights around Tortola and finishes with a day of racing around the area of Sandy Cay, west of Jost van Dyke Participants join in a fifteen-mile ocean dash from the waters around Necker or Gorda directly to Anegada This event is unusual in that Anegada, a low-lying island, only becomes visible to someone at ocean-level during the last five miles of the race Buying stuff in British Virgin Islands The main shopping area on Tortola is Wickham's Cay in Road Town Main Street is a small, winding road leading from the Post Office to the Botanic Gardens The shops on this road are housed in small, West Indian houses and often painted in bright colours, notably Serendipity Bookshop, perhaps the brightest of them all, which has a good collection of Caribbean history and cook books and now has an internet cafe upstairs Notable shops include Pussers, a small department store with a popular bar and restaurant, Sunny Caribbee selling spices and handmade items mostly from Haiti and the UK, and Latitude 18 which sells casual beach clothes Next to the historic post office is Amethyst selling imported African and Indian items, Samarkand jewellery shop and across the road Kaunda's, where you can find Caribbean music Additionally, near the cruise ship dock is a branch of Columbian Emeralds jewellery store and opposite it, the Craft Market which despite its name sells mostly t-shirts and jewellery, clothes and other goods imported from Florida, Panama and St Maarten Island crafts genuinely made in the BVI are limited to crocheted items, straw hats, rum and guavaberry liqueur and can be found in the craft market The vendors' market next to the cruise ship dock itself is mostly low-end t-shirts and tacky souvenirs - perhaps the only place in the BVI where bargaining is expected On the rest of the island there are a number of pharmacies, supermarkets, variety stores and jewellery shops Shoprite in East End and OneMart in Purcell offer good variety of food at better prices than in Road Town although Bobby's supermarket in Road Town, Cane Garden Bay and Nanny Cay has good prices and is open till midnight 364 days a year closed Good Friday There is no need to find a speciality liquor outlet if you simply want a couple of bottles of wine, beer or rum as supermarket prices are excellent, rum is from $3 a bottle If you are buying quantity or looking for speciality rums, Tico is an excellent store On Beef Island, near the airport, is the pretty Trellis Bay, this offers a selection of cafes, tourist shops and a very expensive supermarket Do not look for bargains in this area! However, both the Loose Mongoose beach cafe and the Last Resort restaurant on its very own miniature island are worth trying Shopping on Anegada is limited to basic necessities plus two gift shops at the hotel and camp ground Similarly, on Jost van Dyke there are a few gift shops but little else Virgin Gorda has a supermarket in the marina and gift shops in the resorts Food and eating in British Virgin Islands Inevitably, seafood is the dish of choice for most people Lobster and various fish are available from the small restaurants There are many restaurants throughout the islands varying from rotis and curries from Guyana and Trinidad to Italian, French and Asian The BVI is sponsoring an event titled "Taste the BVI" during the Annapolis Sailboat Show in Maryland, USA Notable participating BVI chefs include: Ken Molyneaux, Imran Ashton, Henry Prince, and Neil Cline Drinking in British Virgin Islands Rum, not surprisingly, is the drink of choice in the islands Rum punch and other concoctions can be found at bars on the main beaches and roads Most beaches do not have any refreshment stands so it would be wise to bring at least water The "Pain Killer" is highly recommended, as is the Bushwacker However, each bar has its own specialty drinks and rum punch in one bar may not be like rum punch in any other one One drink to be careful with is the No-See-Um, a refreshing banana, coconut and pineapple long drink made with 151 proof rum There is plenty of Nightlife around Road Town, although only tourist places are advertised - ask a local for what is on where Live local music is a feature of many restaurants and bars The sunsets are spectacular, so a drink on the beach or in the mountains, watching the sunset and listening to local music before dinner can be a very pleasant vacation from the usual club-based entertainment of most mainlanders Banana Keets Restaurant offers the best sunset of the BVI Its terrace overlooks Sage Mountain and there is a swimming pool It is possible to go there for happy hour Expats tend to hang out in Road Town, at the Dove, le Cabanon, or Village Cay These places are full on Fridays Do not miss the Full Moon Party at Bomba Shack This bar is famous for its walls where panties and bras are hanging, old licence plates are affixed to the walls as well as many other rubbish Accommodation in British Virgin Islands If you're renting a boat, you already have your bed too, but for landlubbers, the larger islands offer resorts, budget bungalows, and a few things in between To get off the beaten path you really will need to be seaworthy Working in British Virgin Islands If you are moving to Brazil to find work, or are thinking it will be easy to find a job, you may want to think again If you are a native English speaker, you may be able to find an English-teaching part-time job; but don't expect that to save your holidays The pay will be under-the-table without contract There is also a growing demand for Spanish language classes, especially in the major cities In both cases, it's always much more lucrative to find work privately rather than through schools This can be done by advertising in newspapers or weeklies or by putting up signs on the notice boards at universities Refer to the Ministery of Labour webiste 28 for more detailed information Gringoescom 29 is the main online community of expat's living and working in Brazil Cities in British Virgin Islands What do you think about British Virgin Islands?, your travel companion Where to start?
Best Herpes Encephalitis In Newborns Herpes causes blisters or sores in the mouth or genitals and often the first infection, fever and malaise. Until the end of April, only one company, Lederle Laboratories, was distributing the vaccine. These are specks of blood that have leaked into the skin. A piece of suture is tied directly around the foreskin, which cuts off the blood supply to the foreskin. These are specks of blood that have leaked into the skin. Miliaria (Heat Rash or Prickly Heat) Common on the head, neck, upper chest, and skin folds. No remedy is needed. In most cases, milia will disappear within several weeks without any treatment. Call 1-800-268-9017 if you live somewhere else in Ontario. Bacteriological examinations of urine, skin, and vaginal swabs were negative. It lasts until 4 to 6 months of age. Wasps are aggressive and can sting you many times during one attack. These can be reported to the FDA here. Measles starts with cough, runny nose, fever and a red pinpoint rash all over the body and if the virus infects the lungs, it can cause pneumonia as well. The small blister-like sores of HFMD appear in your baby’s mouth, hands and feet. If a woman her first outbreak of herpes developed less than six weeks before giving birth, there is a risk of herpes to the baby during delivery is transmitted and gynecologists advise usually delivered by caesarean section. As with oral wounds, someone with genital herpes outbreaks have repeated a lifetime. Cold sores or gingivostomatitis is mild and self-limiting, as a rule, and can be treated as symptomatic. Encephalitis caused by herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) usually occurs in newborns and is transmitted from an infected mother during childbirth. For people contract the infected person has contracted by skin to skin contact. And a variety of things bring them on: , stress, lemon zest, illness, dental work. A relate with olive oil and herbal medicine that stress can contract monkeypox. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a virus related to the group of herpes viruses. As much as the chicken pox or mononucleosis. At the end is a list of key words to help you understand the terms used in this publication. It results red and cream or while colored, slightly raised patches on the mucous membrane of the tongue, mouth and throat that form on the mouth’s moist surfaces. It can also be caused by herpes simplex virus type 1, which is the cause of oral herpes (mouth ulcers and lips). Theodore Baroody’s novel “Alkalize or Die” we have come to understand the acid levels in the body to a point where your body to handle stress due to increase the pain and irritation of virus that’s sexually through skin to stay soft and stronger applications that can completely eradicate the right conditions forming into contact with people who get cold and oral herpes test in the body will react that they have swollen glands as well as white vinegar deep fried foods pink meat and who got it from man to inhabit. A way to glean something positive from this isn’t to go munch on a bunch of licorice whips, but rather get some licorice natural remedies to get how to get rid of cold sores fast and make a cream. I’d honestly like one right now but I’m going to refrain from it for the time being. Encephalitis and disseminated disease have a high mortality rate, and neurologic sequelae are common among survivors. Very seriously ill labia psychic hospital sores treatment novitra b) Scabbed lesions, less . And in many cases, Part D patients can’t even receive vaccines at their doctor’s office — they can only get them at a pharmacy, which may not be readily available in certain areas. . Human Herpes Viruses Found in aclylovir. Herpes simplex viruses can involve the brain and its lining to cause encephalitis and meningitis. My understanding of HSV 1 is that the vast majority of people have them and captured as children and had the usual cold sore outbreaks. Most outbreaks run their course in several days and have no lasting effects. Hi recently an outbreak of herpes – for the first time in a long time. However, the release of HSV-1, both primary genital infection and reactivations with greater transmission from mother to child is connected. In rare cases, such as in people with a weak immune system or in newborns, an infection but can be dangerous. Rash around the mouth and on the chin onset anytime. Rash around the mouth and on the chin onset anytime. Drooling or Spit-Up Rash. E) Has reduced incidence of rubella. Drooling or Spit-Up Rash. They look like the cold sores (fever blisters) that adults get on their lip. Drooling or Spit-Up Rash. Drooling or Spit-Up Rash. Small red bumps on the face onset 2-4 weeks. Leave a Reply
Edit Article wikiHow to Review Accuracy on wikiHow Community Q&A A big part of contributing towards our mission is seeing whether articles are accurate enough to be at the level where they are helpful to readers. Here are a few ways you can perform accuracy review. 1. 1 Check for significant expansions (or look for significant expansions in recent changes patrol) and ask the editor for their thoughts on accuracy. Once the editor has replied, decide what to do with the article. • If the article is accurate but needs more information, place that feedback on the discussion page and invite an editor to add that information, or incorporate the information into the article yourself. • If the article is completely accurate and has low helpfulness ratings, clear the ratings and explain why. 2. 2 Go to Category:Accuracy and review the articles there. Read the article thoroughly, and look at the discussion page to see if there is any explanation as to why the accuracy tag is added. If you do not see any explanation and you think the article is accurate, feel free to remove the tag with an explanation of why you removed it. 3. 3 Go to the accuracy patrol list. Look at the helpfulness ratings, read the article with an eye for accuracy issues, and check the discussion page. If the article is accurate enough to be helpful to readers, clear the ratings. Try looking at some articles with low helpfulness ratings here and reviewing the articles. 4. 4 Reach out to experts. Go to this list and look at the list of editors who are expert on certain topics. Post on their talk pages or send them an email with an article to review (on their expert topic areas) for quality and accuracy, and then to follow up with their feedback on the article. 5. 5 Check a specific category. Browse our Categories and pick out a category that you would like to help review accuracy in. It is recommended to choose a topic that you are expert at. Community Q&A Ask a Question 200 characters left Article Info Categories: Patrolling Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 1,611 times. Did this article help you?
Slave Biographies Visit website   The Slave Biographies project is an open access repository of information on the identities of enslaved persons in the Atlantic World. As persons were bought and sold in the Atlantic slave trade, they left behind them a wealth of biographical data, including certificates of indenture, marriage records, birth records, estate sales, etc. As these records are assembled into a central database, it becomes possible to begin tracing the footsteps of individual slaves and uncovering information abut their ethnicity, family, skills, and history. Until recently, however, the records that would make this type of work possible were scattered in the basements and libraries of individual scholars and researchers across the globe. For the first time, the Slave Biographies project is bringing these records together and entering their data into a central digital repository. Using the KORA content management system to universalize the metadata format, over 100,000 records have been entered into the Slave Biographies database. Now, records are searchable across collections and record types. The Slave Biographies project is part of MATRIX’s larger commitment to rehumanizing big data. Although this database now allows for large-scale data visualizations that drawn from thousands of data sources, it can also be used to construct detailed biographies of individuals involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The Slave Biographies allows users to toggle between “big picture” views of the Atlantic slave trade and detailed views of individual lives. This makes the Slave Biographies project an important resource both to scholars who are attempting to answer large-scale research questions about the Atlantic slave trade and also to persons of slave descent who are attempting to learn more about their enslaved ancestors. We encourage you to visit the Slave Biographies website and see what you can learn about the history of enslaved persons in the Atlantic.
Be Aware of Trading in Blood Pressure! With fitness bracelets and mobile apps some people allow voluntarily to keep track of sleep patterns, exercise, nutrition and stress. But since companies are dealing in those dates, the confidentiality of our biological data is placed under pressure. The upcoming revision of the data protection law will not give us enough protection. Therefore, a fundamental review of our privacy law is required. Technology and people are becoming more intimately connected. Technology is everywhere and without realizing it is collecting information about us. Companies follow surf- and click behavior. Besides that, companies start collecting biological data due to the introduction of wearables such as bracelets and fitness apps. Biodata can be used to deduce sensitive information about our physical and mental health. For example, walking patterns can show early signs of dementia. Many people find it interesting to collect biological data of themselves. The reason for this is that the data can give some useful insights, for example a bad sleeping pattern on days they eat just before they went to bed. More and more companies want to have biodata: research found that 20 popular health apps share data with more than 76 parties. Further, health insurers are experimenting with health apps. Those who live healthy can earn points to pay less premium. Those things happen now on a voluntary basis. But it is certainly conceivable that there will be more pressure on employees and insured people to keep their health data. In the Netherlands, there is a kind of protection – the concept of ‘informed permission’, part of the Data Protection Act. However, in the digital world this concept loses meaning. For individuals it is not clear what exactly happens with their data.  For individuals to oversee it impracticable what happens to their data and what the consequences are. Data is traded in mini seconds through online auctions and enriched to detailed profiles. Consumers do not know what profiles they are assigned, neither what kind of products or services there will be offered to them of the basis of their data. Trading in online data, the resulting information asymmetry and the effects of using data on individuals, ask for an adjustment of our fundamental right to privacy. Do you agree that the government should take action to protect us from the data industry?, 2015, used on 19 October 2015 Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s %d bloggers like this:
One-Time Pad From MattWiki (Redirected from OTP) Jump to: navigation, search In cryptography, a one-time pad (OTP) is a type of encryption which has been proven to be impossible to crack if used correctly[1]. Each bit or character from the plaintext is encrypted by a modular addition with a bit or character from a secret random key (or pad) of the same length as the plaintext, resulting in a ciphertext. If the key is truly random, as large as or greater than the plaintext, never reused in whole or part, and kept secret, the ciphertext will be impossible to decrypt or break without knowing the key[2][3][4]. It has also been proven that any cipher with the perfect secrecy property must use keys with effectively the same requirements as OTP keys. However, practical problems have prevented one-time pads from being widely used. Creating a Pad With 10-sided Dice Although time consuming - You could use five ten-sided dice. With each throw, you have a new five-digit group. Such dice are available in toy stores or on line). With 6-sided Dice Never simply use normal six-sided dice, then add the values of two dice. This method is statistically unable to produce values from 0 to 9 and there for insecure (the total of 7 will occur about 6 times more often that the values 2 or 12). BW BW BW BW BW 11 = 0 21 = 6 31 = 2 41 = 8 51 = 4 12 = 1 22 = 7 32 = 3 42 = 9 52 = 5 13 = 2 23 = 8 33 = 4 43 = 0 53 = 6 14 = 3 24 = 9 34 = 5 44 = 1 54 = 7 15 = 4 25 = 0 35 = 6 45 = 2 55 = 8 16 = 5 26 = 1 36 = 7 46 = 3 56 = 9 Practical uses for a One-time Pad Password Splitting Using methodological taken from the one-time pad schema it is possible to store a password with multiple individuals or parts.[5] All parts or shares of the encrypted password must be combined before the final password may be reviled. This method allows for a password to be split into 2 or as many shares as an admin wishes. Why Are One-Time Pads Perfectly Secure? First, I describe how an xor-based one-time pad (OTP) cipher works. Then, I show why xor-based OTPs are perfectly secure against ciphertext-only cryptanalysis. What is a One-Time Pad? A one-time pad is a very simple yet completely unbreakable symmetric cipher. "Symmetric" means it uses the same key for encryption as for decryption. As with all symmetric ciphers, the sender must transmit the key to the recipient via some secure and tamperproof channel, otherwise the recipient won't be able to decrypt the ciphertext. The key for a one-time pad cipher is a string of random bits, usually generated by a cryptographically strong pseudo-random number generator (CSPRNG). For more information, see David Deley's Computer Generated Random Numbers. It is better to generate the key using the natural randomness of quantum mechanical events (such as those detected by a Geiger counter), since quantum events are believed by many to be the only source of truly random information in the universe. One-time pads that use CSPRNGs are open to attacks which attempt to compute part or all of the key. With a one-time pad, there are as many bits in the key as in the plaintext. This is the primary drawback of a one-time pad, but it is also the source of its perfect security (see below). It is essential that no portion of the key ever be reused for another encryption (hence the name "one-time pad"), otherwise cryptanalysis can break the cipher. The cipher itself is exceedlingly simple. To encrypt plaintext, P, with a key, K, producing ciphertext, C, simply compute the bitwise exclusive-or of the key and the plaintext: To decrypt ciphertext, C, the recipient computes It's that simple, and it's perfectly secure, as long as the key is random and is not compromised. Why Are One-Time Pads Perfectly Secure? If the key is truly random, an xor-based one-time pad is perfectly secure against ciphertext-only cryptanalysis. This means an attacker can't compute the plaintext from the ciphertext without knowlege of the key, even via a brute force search of the space of all keys! Trying all possible keys doesn't help you at all, because all possible plaintexts are equally likely decryptions of the ciphertext. This result is true regardless of how few bits the key has or how much you know about the structure of the plaintext. To see this, suppose you intercept a very small, 8-bit, ciphertext. You know it is either the ASCII character 'S' or the ASCII character 'A' encrypted with a one-time pad. You also know that if it's 'S', the enemy will attack by sea, and if it's 'A', the enemy will attack by air. That's a lot to know. All you are missing is the key, a silly little 8-bit one-time pad. You assign your crack staff of cryptanalysts to try all 256 8-bit one-time pads. This is a brute force search of the keyspace. The results of the brute force search of the keyspace is that your staff finds one 8-bit key that decrypts the ciphertext to 'S' and one that decrypts it to 'A'. And you still don't know which one is the actual plaintext. This argument is easilly generalized to keys (and plaintexts) of arbitrary length. 1. Shannon, Claude E. (1949). "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems". Bell System Technical Journal 28 (4): 656–715. - Retrieved 4/23/2014 2. Protechnix - Cryptology and Data Secrecy : The Vernam Cipher - Retrieved 4/23/2014 3. Crypto Museum - One-Time Pad (OTP) The unbreakable code - Retrieved 4/23/2014 4. Dirk Rijmenants' Definition of One-time pad - Retrieved 4/23/2014 5. Dirk Rijmenants' paper Secure Code Splitter - Retrieved 4/23/2014
Bipolar Disorder is a mental illness in which more than 4 million people are affecting with this disease. Based on the length and frequency of the disorder, they several Bipolar Disorder Types. The main characteristic behind the Bipolar Disorder, the person, alternates between Mania and Depression moods. Hence, it is the most frightening that can cause several consequences for their personal life and also for families. What are the different types of Bipolar Disorder? How they affect people? To know the answer to these questions look through the overall article thoroughly and take the necessary steps when you find symptoms of Bipolar Disorder. types of bipolar disorders Bipolar Disorder Types Bipolar Disorder is a kind of mood disorders in their energy and behavior. The mood of the people with bipolar disorder swings between extremely elevated mood and extreme sadness. Elevated mood determines Manic Episode and Sadness determines Depression Episode. The mood changes will affect the normal functioning of the body. Also, sometimes cause psychological disorders. These elevated mood episodes will last from few hours to months. Depending on how the mood changes? How long does it last? Doctor’s divide bipolar disorder into different types. How many types of bipolar disorder are there? Know the bipolar disorder types in detail. Read more: Bipolar disorder treatment Bipolar Disorder Type I The first one of Bipolar Disorder Types is Bipolar I disorder. Bipolar I disorder, also called Manic Depression that involves at least one manic episode or mixed episodes. Also, a majority of the people with this form of Bipolar Disease can get depression stage as well. Mixed episode means both the manic and depression stages occur at the same time. Usually, the manic stage will last for a week, and the depression stage takes a few months to last. All patients will experience hypomanic stage before getting full Mania. In this type of Bipolar Disorder, a person may encounter Psychosis at some point during Manic Depression illness. Sometimes, this form of bipolar is also known as schizoaffective disorder bipolar type. A manic episode will show a great impact on their social and personal life. Hence, this stage of Bipolar needs hospitalization. The exact cause of Bipolar Effective Disorder type 1 is not clearly understood. But some conditions like stress, chemical imbalances in the body and genetics will play a significant role in this level of bipolar. The common symptoms associated with this Bipolar Type in a manic stage are Excessive Talking, decreased sleep, racing thoughts. Also, signs of depression form are Fatigue, Feelings of guilt, Too much sleep, suicide thoughts. types of bipolar depression Type 2 Bipolar Disorder Type 2 bipolar is the second one in different forms of bipolar disorder. Bipolar Disorder 2 is one of the mental illness types. Are there different levels of Bipolar Disorder Type 2? Yes, like Type 1 Bipolar Disorder, Type II bipolar also experience depression episodes. But, in place of Manic stages, this kind if bipolar get a hypomanic stage. The Hypomanic level is nothing but the milder forms of Mania. However, a hypomanic stage is a state of irritable and elevated mood that is not severe as mania. This degree of bipolar is most common than bipolar 1 and seen more in women than men. And, this stage will last for four days. But, depression episodes are more frequent when compared with hypomanic episodes. Read more: Symptoms of Bipolar disorder Bipolar 2 is more chronic than bipolar type 1. Any individual can develop this bipolar rapid cycle. Often, individuals have a greater risk of suicidal thoughts than in type 1. Diagnosis is possible only if you have one hypomanic episode and one depression episode. Generally, bipolar 2 symptoms start at the age of 21. Since type 2 bipolar has less impact on social life, you can also take treatment at a depressive stage. Bipolar disorder 2 does not cause psychosis. Symptoms of hypomanic bipolar type are decreased self-esteem, distraction from one incident to another, a flight of ideas. And, symptoms of depression bipolar 2 are a lack of interest, change in weight, too much sleep, etc. types of bi polar Cyclothymia Disorder A Cyclothymia disorder in its short form cyclothymia. Among 3 types of bipolar disorders, a cyclothymic disorder is one. It is a mild form of Bipolar Disorder in which an individual can get both hypomania and mild depression stages. Also, the people who have cyclothymic disorder come up with mild symptoms than in bipolar disorder. In fact, the levels of hypomania & depression are not severe and normal mood behavior separates those levels. A few people will get a severe mental illness and continue to a chronic condition. The persons who have manic depression illness can have mood swings that range from mild up’s to emotional downs. The exact cause behind the Cyclothymia disorder is not known exactly. But most doctors find that this type of bipolar disorder occurs due to genetics. A lot of research shows that individuals who have this form can have distractions in their personal life and also relationships. Cyclothymia needs at least two years to last symptoms in adults and one year in children and adolescence. In some people, long periods of stress also trigger this Bipolar stage.Antidepressants, talk therapy, and mood stabilizing medicines are the best for this Bipolar Disease Treatment. Bipolar I Vs Bipolar II Disorder A common question that everyone has in their mind is what is the difference between Bipolar 1 and Bipolar 2 types. There are many differences between Bipolar 1 disorder and Bipolar 2 disorder. A difference in Bipolar 1 and 2 is a matter of severity. Also, the key difference among those Bipolar Disorder Types is in Bipolar 1 contains full blown Manic episode while bipolar 2 has not complete. But both the types contain depression episodes that take days to months for the disappearance of symptoms. bi polar types Other Kinds of Bipolar Disorders Besides the above mentioned 3 different levels of Bipolar Disorders, there are another specific & non-specific types. In some cases, substance abuse will also cause other Bipolar Psychological Disorders. Check the other types of Bipolar Disorders in a brief look. Bipolar Not Otherwise Specified(NOS) Some persons may encounter both manic and depression symptoms, but they do not come under the above mentioned stages of Bipolar Disorder. This condition is also known as Bipolar Not Otherwise Specified(NOS). So, this is a different Bipolar Disorder. Like all other forms of Bipolar Disorder, this kind of Bipolar Disorder has treatment. Read more: Treatment of ulcerative colitis Mixed Episodes In the context of different kinds of Bipolar Disorders, a mixed episode is a type in which both manic and depression symptoms occur at the same time. It means within a fraction of seconds the mood of individuals will change. For example, a person may have racing thoughts and also depressive symptoms at the same time. kinds of bipolar disorder Due to comorbidity, Anxiety disorder will also occur to the patients. Since emotional depression symptoms such as hopelessness, stress is a great risk which can lead to committing suicide. Symptoms like fatigue, irritability, racing activities, etc will occur either simultaneously or in a sequence. Read more: Complete study of bipolar disorder Rapid Cycling Bipolar Disorder Rapid cycling refers to four or more manic, hypomanic, depression, mixed episodes within a one year period. These episodes will last for some days. Of all different types of Bipolar Disorders, about 10% to 20% people will get this rapid cycling disorder. Often, rapid cycling can occur in combination with other degrees of bipolar disorders or alone. But mostly occurred with Bipolar II types disorder. Individuals with rapid cycling can behave active for some time and depressed at another occasion. In other words, rapid cycling triggers between several up’s and downs in a few hours. Certain medications like antidepressants and other medicines may worse this Bipolar type for longer periods. Mostly, you can see these bipolar levels in women than in men. So, whenever you identify Bipolar Disorder Types, seek a doctor’s help and take suggestions to prevent this disorder at the initial stage. Also, know more about Bipolar Disorder causes and Bipolar Symptoms.
On Aug. 24, 79 A.D., Mt. Vesuvius erupted and buried the... August 24, 1989 On Aug. 24, 79 A.D., Mt. Vesuvius erupted and buried the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. In 1572 the slaughter of French Protestants by Roman Catholics began in Paris on St. Bartholomew`s Day. Nearly 20,000 Huguenots were killed by October throughout France. In 1932 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to make a nonstop flight across the U.S., from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J. The trip took 19 hours 5 minutes. In 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty went into effect, with its parties agreeing that an armed attack against one would be considered ``an attack against them all.`` In 1954 President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act outlawing the Communist Party in America. However, membership in the party was not made a crime. In 1956 the first nonstop transcontinental helicopter flight was made, 2,610 miles in 31 hours 40 minutes. In 1959 Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American member of the House of Representatives; Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American in the Senate. Both were from Hawaii. In 1973 the U.S. announced an agreement with Thailand for a phased withdrawal of American troops and aircraft.
Extrabiblical Witnesses to Jesus before 200 a.d. --Thallus (c. 50-75ad) A third-century Christian historian, Julius Africanus, composed a History of the World down to around ad. 220 in five volumes. In one of the surviving fragments, Julius discussed the three-hour darkness which occurred at the crucifixion of Jesus and makes this comment: In the third book of his history, Thallus calls this darkness an eclipse of the sun--wrongly in my opinion. (5.50) In order to assess the strength of this evidence, I will look at a several issues: What do we know about this Thallus? We have two possible other extra-Africanus references to him. One, Eusebius tells us that this Thallus wrote in Greek an account of world history from the fall of Troy down to the mid-first century--c.52 CE. Thallus' work is generally believed to have been written in the period 50-100 CE.[Murray Harris, JSOTGP5:344] Two, Josephus POSSIBLY refers to a certain Thallus as a wealthy Samaritian freedman of Tiberius (d. 37CE) who had lent a million drachmas to the bankrupt Herod Agrippa. (Ant 18.167): Now there was one Thallus, a freedman of Caesar's of whom he borrowed a million of dracmae, and thence repaid Antonia the debt he owed her; and by spending the overplus in paying his court to Caius, became a person of great authority with him. If these two are the same Thallus, then it would explain several things for us: 1. how he had TIME to write a history 2. how he had ACCESS to records (being a close associate of Tiberias) 3. how he had KNOWLEDGE of events in Palestine (being a Samaritan) 4. how he had the financial means to do the heavy travel REQUIRED/EXPECTED to do history in those days (cf. NTLE:81) In fact, the requirements for writing Hellenistic history (as opposed to Roman history) would necessitate a background like that mentioned by Josephus. So Fornara in NHAGR:49: Polybius...fairly represents the great tradition of historia. The hallmark of the profession was personal observation (autopsy), inquiry, and travel. Now these conditions excluded all but the members of the highest levels of society. Wealth and social contacts were essential to their craft. The nature of what historians intended to investigate...required mobility, familiarity with the great, and the prestige necessary to ensure the cooperation of strangers. According to Murray Harris (op. cit.) the identification of these two individuals is favored by E. Schurer, R. Eisler, and M. Goguel. [This identification, however, is not necessary to our argument.] But Julius himself gives us additional information about Thallus--he is mentioned two other times BEFORE this reference: And after 70 years of captivity, Cyrus became king of the Persians at the time of the 55th Olympiad, as may be ascertained from the Bibliothecae of Diodorus and the histories of Thallus and Castor, and also from Polybius and Phlegon, and others besides these, who have made the Olympiads a subject of study. (XIII.2) For these things are also recorded by the Athenian historians Hellanicus and Philochorus, who record Attic affairs; and by Castor and Thallus, who record Syrian affairs; and by Diodorus, who writes a universal history in his Bibliothecae; and by Alexander Polyhistr, and by some of our own time, yet more carefully...(XIII.3) Whoever this Thallus is, he is in GOOD company as far as historians go! He is included in lists of historians that are considered innovative (e.g. Hellanicus--cf. HAMM:10; Castor--cf. HAMM:59) and the most methodologically scrupulous (e.g. Polybius--cf. BAFCSALS:5-8, most std. works on ancient historiography--HAMM, EAMH). He is linked twice with Castor of Rhodes, who set the format for most of subsequent historical writing--the 'comparative columns' format (adapted by Africanus)--cf. HAMM:59. He is said to have focused on Syrian history (perhaps evidence for a Samaritan background?), and to have been the author of a work on 'historia' (more on this term later). Whoever he was, our first impulse MUST BE to take Thallus seriously as a historian! What other data elements do we have? He was obviously of a generation earlier than Julius, judging by the contrast with 'those of our own time'. This, of course, fits well with the dates given above. Eusebius tells us he wrote his history in Greek, and that it was a 'summary' from the Fall of Troy until the 167 Olympiad [Note: the 167 Olympiad fell in the 112-109BC timeframe, so this individual either wrote an addendum to his main work, or Eusebius' date should be amended to 207 (c.50-53ad), as per Harris]. Now, if we look at the quote under discussion in the larger context, some other items are suggested: There are several things to notice from this passage: 1. The phrase 'this darkness' (touto to skotos) makes it clear that Thallus was attempting to account SPECIFICALLY for the darkness surrounding the crucifixion. 2. The phrase "let it carry the majority" probably indicates that a 'majority' of historians accounted for it thus, IMPLYING that MANY MORE such explanations were circulating! In other words, the strange darkness was REAL and a topic of scholarly discussion. 3. The phrase "portent only to the eye" indicates that some argued that it was strictly a mass visual hallucination (but still requiring scholarly explanation). 4. Another historian Phlegon recorded this event as well, specifying the very HOURS OF THE EVENT! (Phlegon was another freedman of the emperor, who wrote a 14-book history--cf. CAE:118). The wording of Julius' remark here suggests that Phlegon was merely reporting the phenomenon, without referring to Jesus. 5. The phrase "let this portent of the world be deemed an eclipse of the sun..." indicates that what is under discussion is NOT the factuality of the event, but the EXPLANATION of it. In other words, Thallus is EXPLAINING the occurrence of the darkness--NOT 'documenting' it (contra G. A. Wells, DJE:13) as was Phlegon. 6. Harris (op.cit.) points out one of the implications of Julius' word choice here: It is clear that Thallus was not merely documenting an eclipse of the sun that took place in the reign of Tiberius, as G.A. Wells alleges....If Africanus were simply questioning the accuracy of Thallus in claiming that an eclipse had occurred at a certain time, he would not have rejected Thallus' view by an expression of opinion--'(wrongly) it seems to me'. What he was rejecting was a naturalistic explanation of the darkness not an alleged occurrence of a solar eclipse. He proceeds to point out that Thallus' explanation was unsatisfactory because an eclipse of the sun is impossible at the time of the full moon. 7. [One might also notice that Thallus is singled out for Africanus' rebuttal; Phlegon, who seems merely to be chronicling the event, is accosted for INCOMPLETENESS--not inaccuracy, even though Thallus and Phlegon are BOTH said to be talking about an 'eclipse'. They are obviously arguing two different things, and NOT both merely documenting an eclipse (contra Wells, again.) In fact, Phlegon's witness is probably used--from literary structure--as a refutation of the preceding clause "a portent ONLY to the eyes". An appeal to a public record like that would make sense in the literary context.] 8. It is also important to note that Julius calls Thallus' work a historia and not some other general term for literary works. The import of this for our discussion is that it explains why (1) Julius' is taking Thallus seriously; and (2) why Thallus is dealing with the astronomical issue of the darkness. Since the earliest days of historiography--even as far back as Xanthos of Lydia (5th century BC), writers had attempted to 'anchor' their chronologies and explanations on potentially dateable events such as earthquakes, floods, etc. (cf. HAMM: 10). For example, Thucydides (The Peloponnesian War) correlates events to seasons of the year (e.g. 2.31.1) and astronomical events (e.g. 2.78.2). These types of events were kept in public archives (e.g. annales, acta populi in Rome, who probably patterned the idea after Greek practice--cf. NHAGR:57, n12.) and were easily accessible to researchers. Indeed, these archives were so full of minutia, that 'high brow' literary types scorned the seeming trivialities of the record. So, the Roman censor Cato (b.184 BCE) could complain: It is disagreeable to write what stands in the tablet at the house of the pontifex maximus--how often grain was costly, how often darkness or something else blocked the light of the moon or the sun. (NHAGR:24) [The exactitude of the younger Phlegon's reference to 3 hours of darkness may have been based on such public records, and would have been a perfectly adequate evidentialist counter-argument to the "portent ONLY to the eyes" explanation of the darkness.] What was the historical context for this remark? At the time of his writing, anti-Christians had already been explaining the darkness at the time of the crucifixion as a purely natural phenomenon--an eclipse. Origen, for example, had already hinted in his writings that this idea of it being an eclipse was an invention of the pagans to discredit the Gospels (DM:1040, n.17). The passage in Africanus occurs in the discussion as to the darkness that accompanied the Crucifixion of Jesus. The phrase 'this darkness' indicates that Thallus was referring to (in HIS history) the events surrounding the death of Jesus. It is clear from this passage that both Julius AND Thallus took it for granted that Jesus died (and therefore existed!). What I find interesting about the existence of this interchange is the context of Julius' purpose in writing. He is writing a HISTORY/CHRONOLOGY, not an APOLOGETIC per se. He is trying to anchor dates and merge biblical chronology with the chronologies of Greece, Rome, etc. In this effort, he is much more concerned about proving that the darkness was NOT an eclipse than that it was a supernatural event. The chronology needs to be consistent with astronomical data (as required for ALL good 'historia'). His concern is historical TRUTH, not theology. What was the background of Julius Africanus? Let's begin by noting some of the events and activities of his life (CTEC:103, Schaff:I.191; PAC:307): Robin Lane Fox cites him as an example of the best educated dual-culture products of his day--one in which the best of culture was expressed (PAC, op.cit.) Do we have any reasons to believe that Julius was QUALIFIED as a historian? There are three questions we could raise to 'check' Africanus: 1. Does his background lead us to believe he had the requisite skills, resources, and access to information necessary to do 'history'? 2. Did subsequent historians consider him 'reliable' (a sort of 'peer review') as a historian? 3. Do his works manifest historical rigor and historiographical integrity, in such a way as to lead us to 'trust' him? Let's look at each of these. The first one--on data from his background--we have already looked at above. But let's note the items that are relevant to our current issue: Just to give an idea of how detail-oriented and appropriately critical he was, let me quote Bruce's account of the Origen-Africanus exchange (BCANON: 76): Julius Africanus, born in Jerusalem, was a contemporary and friend of Origen. About AD 238 he read a controversial work by Origen in which appeal was made to the History of Susanna, one of the Septuagintal additions to Daniel, as though it were an integral part of Daniel. He spent some time considering his matter and preparing relevant arguments; then he sent a respectful letter to Origen in which he questioned the propriety of using the as though it belonged to the authentic book of Daniel. It was evident, he pointed out, that the History of Susanna was originally written in Greek, because the crux of the story turned on a double pun which was possible only in Greek. In the story Daniel conducts a separate examination of each of the two false witnesses against Susanna and asks under what kind of tree her alleged offence was committed; he receives inconsistent answers and pronounces an appropriate doom against each. To the one who specifies a mastic tree (Gk 'schino') he says, 'God will cut you in two' ('schizo-'); to the one who specifies a holm-oak (Gk. 'prinos') he says, 'God will saw you asunder' (Gk. 'prio-'). At one time Origen himself had acknowledged the force of this argument... I find this instructive. In it we see Julius making 'source critical' decisions on the basis of linguistic and literary criteria! He was NOT content to accept 'tradition' but thought carefully and critically. The second one--on how subsequent historians assessed/used him. Again, from above we saw how he was used by ALL succeeding historians (e.g. Eusebius, Socrates), by even his contemporaries (e.g. Hippolytus), and that his work formed the foundation of medieval historiography . Even the comment adduced by Robin Lane Fox above supports his overall credibility. A very important piece of data comes from the antagonist side! When one of the most effective critics of Christianity in the ancient world--Porphyry--decides to rebut Christianity, he picked Origen and Julius as his targets! What a compliment to their credibility. The third one--on data from his actual works--can be seen by a simple survey of relevant quotes from his Chronicle. Let's look at several of these, and ask questions about their implications. This seems quite rigorous and very 'modern' (in a positive sense, of course) to me. I find here a historian of immense scholarship--comfortable and competent in both ancient and contemporary works--with critical thinking skills, access to the best materials, ability to appraise his sources carefully, deeply sensitive to 'levels of certainty' in historical conclusions, and non-biased in his use of subject-matter experts. I am not sure what additional criteria could be advanced to argue that his value as a historian is low, and that his use of Thallus' work (and the quote) is somehow questionable. He demonstrates the highest standards of balanced scholarship and integrity I have seen among the ancient authors. [I find absolutely NO basis in the text for Grant's accusation that his Chronographies are 'full of mathematical symbolism and fantasy'! (cf. GRH:117). I am frankly puzzled at such a statement--having gone through this work many, many times during this writing...its ONLY 7 pages long! I would assume there are probably SOME problems in his writings, but to use the phrase "full of" is a gross exaggeration, bordering on misrepresentation.] [For a comparative review of this piece and a more skeptical view by Richard Carrier, see www.tektonics.org/qt/thallcomp.html] What conclusions might we draw from this? Well, frankly, I personally am quite surprised at where I ended up on this issue. I originally thought that I would end up saying that the Thallus' evidence for the death of Jesus was positive, but shaky at best, but my study has led me to a much stronger position. It seems clear to me now, in the context of the historiographical stature of both Thallus and Julius Africanus, that this early piece of scholarly evidence has EQUAL or GREATER credibility to even the official history of Tacitus or the official correspondence of Pliny (to be examined later). The reference to the miraculous darkness around the Crucifixion of my Lord--even documented as to the hours by Phlegon!--is powerful evidence not only for the 'existence of Jesus', but for the reliability of those portions of the gospel accounts that describe that phenomena. In the public records of the day, a "most fearful darkness" followed our rejection of the Light of the World. Remind you of today? Glenn Miller
The accumulation of damaged or misfolded proteins can have devastating effects on cellular physiology and viability. To protect itself, the cell possesses numerous Protein Quality Control (PQC) systems that minimize the persistence and detrimental effects of these aberrant proteins. While a variety of PQC systems have been characterized in the cytoplasm, ER, and mitochondria, how the nucleus manages aberrant proteins is poorly understood. But, understanding this fundamental aspect of nuclear biology is important because many age-correlated neuromuscular disorders (Huntington's, Kennedy's, several spinal-cerebellar ataxias) result from toxic accumulation of aberrant proteins in the nucleus. Therefore, our long-term goals are to understand how the nucleus normally protects itself from toxic aberrant proteins by identifying PQC systems that operate in the nucleus, characterizing how these systems recognize and target aberrant proteins, examining if lesions in nuclear PQC systems are required for these pathologies to develop, and determining the specific nuclear processes that are disrupted by aberrant nuclear proteins to cause toxicity. From our initial studies in S. cerevisiae, we've identified the first-known PQC degradation system that acts in the nucleus. The central player of this nuclear PQC system is San1, a nuclear-localized ubiquitin- protein ligase that targets aberrant nuclear proteins for ubiquitination and proteasome degradation. With the discovery of San1, we're now well positioned to explore how a nuclear PQC degradation system recognizes its substrates, and what it recognizes as aberrant within those substrates. The specific aims for this grant are to: (1) Determine the regions within San1 responsible for substrate targeting. Mutagenesis of San1 will be used to identify in cis regions important for substrate recognition. (2) Determine the features of an aberrant protein recognized by San1. Mutagenesis of San1 substrates will be used to identify regions required for targeting by San1. (3) Identify &characterize additional components of the San1 pathway. A combination of genetic and biochemical approaches will be used to identify additional San1 pathway components. Public Health Relevance Many age-correlated neuromuscular disorders (Huntington's, Kennedy's, several spinal-cerebellar ataxias, and oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy to name a few) result from toxic accumulation of aggregation-prone proteins in the cell's nucleus. Our goals are to understand how the nucleus normally protects itself from toxic aggregation-prone proteins, and why it fails to do so in these and other diseases. National Institute of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA) Research Project (R01) Project # Application # Study Section Nuclear Dynamics and Transport (NDT) Program Officer Velazquez, Jose M Project Start Project End Budget Start Budget End Support Year Fiscal Year Total Cost Indirect Cost University of Washington Schools of Medicine United States Zip Code Oeser, Michelle L; Amen, Triana; Nadel, Cory M et al. (2016) Dynamic Sumoylation of a Conserved Transcription Corepressor Prevents Persistent Inclusion Formation during Hyperosmotic Stress. PLoS Genet 12:e1005809 Jones, Ramon D; Gardner, Richard G (2016) Protein quality control in the nucleus. Curr Opin Cell Biol 40:81-9 Jones, Ramon D; Gardner, Richard G (2015) Digging for Buried Amino Acids Unearths New Protein Quality Control Treasure. Structure 23:1151-2 Gallagher, Pamela S; Clowes Candadai, Sarah V; Gardner, Richard G (2014) The requirement for Cdc48/p97 in nuclear protein quality control degradation depends on the substrate and correlates with substrate insolubility. J Cell Sci 127:1980-91 Gallagher, Pamela S; Oeser, Michelle L; Abraham, Ayelet-chen et al. (2014) Cellular maintenance of nuclear protein homeostasis. Cell Mol Life Sci 71:1865-79 Fredrickson, Eric K; Clowes Candadai, Sarah V; Tam, Cheuk Ho et al. (2013) Means of self-preservation: how an intrinsically disordered ubiquitin-protein ligase averts self-destruction. Mol Biol Cell 24:1041-52 Fredrickson, Eric K; Gallagher, Pamela S; Clowes Candadai, Sarah V et al. (2013) Substrate recognition in nuclear protein quality control degradation is governed by exposed hydrophobicity that correlates with aggregation and insolubility. J Biol Chem 288:6130-9 Fredrickson, Eric K; Gardner, Richard G (2012) Selective destruction of abnormal proteins by ubiquitin-mediated protein quality control degradation. Semin Cell Dev Biol 23:530-7 Rosenbaum, Joel C; Gardner, Richard G (2011) How a disordered ubiquitin ligase maintains order in nuclear protein homeostasis. Nucleus 2:264-70 Rosenbaum, Joel C; Fredrickson, Eric K; Oeser, Michelle L et al. (2011) Disorder targets misorder in nuclear quality control degradation: a disordered ubiquitin ligase directly recognizes its misfolded substrates. Mol Cell 41:93-106 Showing the most recent 10 out of 11 publications
Smith-Magenis syndrome (redirected from 17p- syndrome) Also found in: Wikipedia. Smith-Magenis syndrome [Ann C. M. Smith, contemporary U.S. genetics counselor; Ellen Magenis, contemporary U.S. physician] A rare form of genetic mental retardation characterized by chronic ear infections, erratic sleep patterns, head banging, picking at skin, and pulling off fingernails and toenails. Location: chromosome 17. Treatment is symptomatic. Ellen, 20th century U.S. physician. Smith-Magenis syndrome - see under Smith, Ann CM Ann C.M., 20th century U.S. genetics counselor. Smith-Magenis syndrome - a rare form of mental retardation.
What If Everyone Could Make Videogames? An excerpt from the article by Mark DeLoura: "Let's say you want to make a game today. Where would you start? Assuming you want to share the game with your friends, the consoles and handhelds are virtually off-limits due to their strict distribution rules. Microsoft's XNA Creators Club for the Xbox 360 is about as flexible as you get, and even after buying into the service, you can only share your games with other members of the club. The PC and cell phone aren't a bad way to go, but conquering the installation process on systems with such varied hardware is hard, even for a professional. Your best bet is probably the web, which leaves Adobe's Flash, which is installed on 95 percent of today's PCs. But even Flash is fairly complex, and the development environment is expensive. Really, it's very difficult for a novice to strike out on his own." Read Full Story >> The story is too old to be commented. Skerj3369d ago Unreal Tournament Mods, sure there's a learning curve but that's to be expected. jaja14343369d ago People all to often spend time complaining about how a game has "X" bug or only runs at "X" resolution and choose to complain about why these problems exist. When the simple fact of the matter is that game development is hard, very very hard. That combined with average pay for extremely long hours and little to no job security, it's no wonder the field is very limited. I can't count the number of CS(Computer Science) majors change their degree plan once they make it past the basic into to programing class. Hell I go to school that has a population of about 30k and out of all those people there are about 300 CS majors past the intro classes. It's just a very very hard degree and most people go in thinking how much fun it will be to sit down and make games, but all the while forgetting the advanced mathematics, computer arc., and Logic design classes that are necessary. There is a very good reason people with CS, and by extension Gamer designers degrees are few and far between.
Computing in the commercial age Weather prediction in the 50s.  Missile intercepts of UFOs in the 60s.  Electronic messages in the 70s.  We learned about it all through the commercials. As far back 1956, Remington Rand told us how Univac could collect historical weather data, analyze that "big data" and use it to make predictions -- "all in a matter of minutes."  Imagine, data fed into a computer through magnetic tapes to the "memory tanks" that could hold 12,000 units of information. And it gets the prediction right due to its unique ability to check itself for possible errors.  Error checking!  Who would have thought! But real peace of mind came from the Sage computer, part of a defense system created by MIT and IBM working with the Air Force.  All scheduled air traffic was entered via punch card (error checking anyone?) so that actual flying objects could be compared to expected flying objects.  If an unknown object appears on screen, an officer fires a light gun at it.  Scared yet?  Next an IBM computer calculates the missile trajectory for intercept, from which "there is no escape." Sure do wish he'd mentioned error checking. Moving into the 70s, office messages can be read on screen while you have your morning coffee.  Want to share something with others?  Just push a button and the words you see on screen will appear on paper.  Another button and you can send the message to similar units in other offices.  It's just an experiment, but soon Xerox systems could assist you in managing your most precise resource.  No, not your time or even your children.  We're talking about your information. Next time, we'll move on to some great computer ads from the 1980s . Computerworld's IT Salary Survey 2017 results Shop Tech Products at Amazon
An Unconscious Transition society gender equality In spite of all these interesting facts, somewhere along the line, misogyny did kick in. This brings us to one of the most popular debates of our time- gender bias. Gender bias is a preference or prejudice toward one gender over the other. Bias can be conscious or unconscious, and may manifest in many ways, both subtle and obvious. In many countries, eliminating such preferences is the basis of many laws, including those that govern workplaces, family courts, and even the voting booth. Despite these efforts, many legal and political scholars argue that total gender parity remains a far off goal, one which many regions are not remotely close to reaching. In most cultures, gender bias is a conditioned mindset. It is possible for gender bias to be subtle or overt, and it can have a range of consequences. For instance, the biased assumption that girl’s school sports are less important than boy’s school sports lead to an inequality in funding and access to facilities. There is a predisposition towards thinking that men are delegated certain tasks and women are delegated certain tasks. In spite of the fact that today there is an ambiguousness in the tasks performed by both genders, we still see certain tasks as the responsibility of certain genders. For example, men are supposed to earn for the family, women are supposed to cook for the family, etc. These predispositions are so strong that changing them is like changing the law, or the norm as a sociologist would say. Historically, in many countries, men have made more money over a career than women, even if they hold the same position. Women’s rights activists often cite this argument as part of the overall gender bias of modern society, suggesting that women are financially punished for choosing to rear children, despite the fact that this action is vital to the continuance of the state. In spite of centuries of conditioning though, now this gender bias seems to be subtly changing and evolving. Roles designated earlier are being morphed. In fact, traditionally, it was the women who shopped fanatically. But now a days, men too, go shopping for toiletries and clothing, equally fanatically. We are in the process of re-imagining our laws and lifestyles, and sometimes even changing them, to accommodate the reality of the changing times. The fact that this is an international discussion means it is more important than ever we objectively learn to weigh the pros and cons of each decision we make and realize that they will have far reaching consequences. Intelligence Node believes that it is time to temper our thoughts with the fire of wisdom and become stronger than we ever were before, by shedding untoward biases- be they towards men or women.
Growth and Development • Continued brain development. Recent research suggests that teens’ brains are not completely developed until late in adolescence. Specifically, studies suggest that the connections between neurons affecting emotional, physical and mental abilities are incomplete. This could explain why some teens seem to be inconsistent in controlling their emotions, impulses, and judgments. How Do These Changes Affect Teens? • Teens frequently sleep longer. Research suggests that teens actually need more sleep to allow their bodies to conduct the internal work required for such rapid growth. On average, teens need about 9 1/2 hours of sleep a night. • Teens may be more clumsy because of growth spurts. If it seems to you that teens’ bodies are all arms and legs then your perception is correct. During this phase of development, body parts don’t all grow at the same rate. This can lead to clumsiness as the teen tries to cope with limbs that seem to have grown overnight. Teens can appear gangly and uncoordinated. • Teenage girls may become overly sensitive about their weight. This concern arises because of the rapid weight gain associated with puberty. Sixty percent of adolescent girls report that they are trying to lose weight. A small percentage of adolescent girls (1-3%) become so obsessed with their weight that they develop severe eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia. Anorexia nervosa refers to starvation; bulimia refers to binge eating and vomiting.  (more)
Fun with Magnets! Researchers in Vienna Create First 3D Printed Magnet 3D Printed Magnet Researchers in Vienna have designed the first 3D printed magnet. It comes in different shapes that can be used for sensors and electric drive technologies.  Finally, the research team at the Vienna University of Technology has created the first ‘polymer bonded isotropic hard magnet’ using a 3D printer.  What makes it so special?  Up until this point, there was no way to create permanent magnets with complex structures. Normally, you face two challenges when designing a magnet: shape and magnetic field direction. A geometric shape is better because the magnetic fields are even and have the same strength in every direction. 3D printing makes geometric shapes possible. Plus, this new way is cheaper and faster than any other method. “This method allows us to process various magnetic materials, such as the exceptionally strong neodymium iron boron magnets,” says Dieter Süss, Head of Christian Doppler Laboratory in Vienna. First, the team designs the magnets on a computer and creates a 3d print using a micro-granulated material such as ferrite with a polymer binding. Then, they magnetize the printed object using a super electromagnetic field. 3D printed Polymer Magnet Why Is A 3D Printed Magnet Better? Generally, magnets are created through a sintering process, which heats and binds fine powders and compacts them. However, the shape of these structures is very limited. That’s why researchers used isotropic Neofer material to create the 3D printed magnets. These new polymer bonded magnets are made of 90% magnetic materials and 10% plastic and can be molded more easily. As a result, these magnets have more design flexibility and can be used in the areas of sensor and electric drive technologies. “Now we will test the limits of how far we can go — but for now it is certain that 3D printing brings something to magnet design which we could previously only dream of,” says Dieter Süss, who is also Associate Professor at the Technical University of Vienna. Click here to read the details of the journal report.
Does giving antibiotics to animals hurt humans? AP News Posted: Apr 20, 2012 12:59 PM Does giving antibiotics to animals hurt humans? "Why did no one act on it? Because there was a strong lobby," said Levy, who is co-founder and president of the Alliance for Prudent Use of Antibiotics, a nonprofit advocacy group that favors restrictions on the drugs. "They said, `Well, show us the deaths. Show us the real problem. Otherwise, this isn't so terrible." While the issue mostly was tabled in the U.S., it was gaining momentum elsewhere in the world. Levy, the Tufts University professor, and his colleagues had hoped that the EU's ban would bolster the case for restricting the use of antibiotics in the U.S. But instead, the data has been used to argue both sides of the issue. U.S. groups like the National Chicken Council warn that restricting use of antibiotics will result in sicker animals, increasing costs for farmers _ and the price of meat and poultry for consumers. Some industry groups have projected costs for farmers would rise by $1 billion over 10 years, though those estimates have not been backed by outside groups. Meat prices in Europe have not risen dramatically since the EU's ban. Danish authorities estimate the total costs for pig farmers increased by just 1 percent, or about $1.35 for every pig slaughtered _ far below food industry estimates. Farmers continue to argue that antibiotics are necessary to have a steady supply of low-cost, disease-free meat for Americans, who eat about three-quarters of a pound per day _ roughly twice the global average. They acknowledge that antibiotic-free animals can be raised by small, organic farms but say large-scale meat production requires antibiotics to keep animals healthy. And, they argue, it's the overuse of antibiotics in humans _ not animals _ that's causing a rise in drug-resistant bacteria. Indeed, for decades, doctors have prescribed antibiotics for common ailments like the flu and sinus infections that are not caused by bacteria. Studies show doctors often feel pressured to prescribe the drugs. "The problem is not an animal or human issue per se," said Dr. Tom Chiller, associate director for epidemiologic science at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's about using the antibiotics as judiciously as we possibly can in situations where they are needed." Some Americans are becoming more aware of the issue. Liza Greenfield, 33, said she will only buy organic, antibiotic-free meat at farmers markets because she doesn't think animals should be given antibiotics for growth. "A cow is supposed to eat grass," said Greenfield, an administrator at the New York University. "I want to know it was out on the pasture eating grass." As Americans show more interest, so are companies. Some of the largest restaurant and grocery chains including Kroger and Safeway now offer antibiotic-free meat. And last month, executives from companies such as Chipotle Mexican Grill and Bon Appetit food services that offer antibiotic-free meat and poultry gathered in Washington to lobby for restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animals. The FDA last week said it would ask drugmakers to voluntarily stop marketing antibiotics for non-medical uses on their labels with a goal of completely stopping the practice in a few years. Animal drugs can only be legally prescribed for uses listed on the label, so the change is expected to have a major impact on how farmers use them. Some public safety advocates complained that the FDA, which worked with drugmakers on the proposal, should have mandated the change. But the FDA said a formal ban would have required individual hearings for each drug, which could have taken decades. "We think the science is very solid in showing that largely indiscriminate use of antibiotics contributes to resistance," said FDA Deputy Commissioner MichaeI Taylor. "I don't think there's really any question about it."
The Way of the Bodhisattva In Eastern philosophy, the definition of a Bodhisattva is one who has realized (the source of) his or her true nature and who deliberately came back to the marketplace for the sake of helping others have the same realization. The Bodhisattva returns from the inward quest with a vital boon that enables him or her to do so: the skill to point to the gateless gate to the transcendent realm of our true nature, which is blissfully aware ‘being-ness’ (‘sat-chit-ananda’). All pointers to the gateless gate come in the form of self-sufficient and self-referencing symbols (‘things-in-themselves’), since they must suggest THAT which cannot be grasped by the intellect, because IT transcends all conceptual pairs of opposites. A Bodhisattva, therefore, is somebody who intuitively knows how to understand and to use transcending symbols to render an intuitive realization of the numinous. These symbols are transmitted in the form of words (e.g. poetry or prose), objects (e.g. sculptures, pictures, etc.), sounds (e.g. music, spoken or sung words, etc.), performance acts (e.g. rituals, dance, etc.) or through a certain way of interacting with the world. The Bodhisattva, thus, is either an artist or a mystic who is able to create ‘new’ and/or to use ‘established’ symbols to the transcendent (or, more rarely, someone who has become a living symbol to the transcendent him- or herself). The Boddhisattva Way of the Artist This type of Bodhisattva has a special, artistic talent. Any true artistic activity is self-sufficient and self-referencing, that is, it is engaged in not for the pursuit to harvest any possible fruits of it, but completely for its own sake. Artistic activity, thus, is a transcending symbol in itself. By following the ‘bliss’ that the engagement in true artistic activity renders, the ‘artistic’ Bodhisattva is gradually able to refine it so that its (unintended) artistic ‘product’ becomes itself a symbol carrying the transcendent message of the Absolute into the Relative. Whenever we stand in ‘aesthetic arrest’ (James Joyce) beholding a piece or a performance of art, we are participating in the divine that the transcendent symbolism of the artistic arrangement has evoked in us (if you don’t know what I am talking about you may be more of the naturalistic kind, that is, more prone to aesthetic seizures evoked by nature, for example, when watching a beautiful sunset, flowers, or the stars at night, etc.). The ‘artistic’ Bodhisattva has been given the gift of being able to uncover his or her true nature from very early on in his or her life. However, because ‘access’ is dependent on an activity, it is dis-continuous, turning him or her into an everlasting ‘bliss-follower’ with all the (sometimes painful) challenges and confusions that such a lifestyle may provide. The Bodhisattva Way of the Mystic This type of Bodhisattva does not have a special artistic talent to ‘access’ his or her true nature, and, probably because of that, has always had a strong yearning to discover the ‘Truth’ since something seemed to be ‘missing’. The ‘mystic’ Bodhisattva, thus, needed to painfully and gradually uncover his or her ‘source’ through the study, enactment and practice of established spiritual symbols (e.g. reading ‘holy’ scriptures, engaging in rituals, practicing prayer or meditation, etc.). Once having truly realized the reference of these symbols, though, (s)he is finally ‘free’ to use them (or even create ‘new’ ones) to ‘teach’ the next generation of ‘seekers’. Although, the ‘mystic’ Bodhisattva usually goes through quiet an ordeal to realize his or her true nature, the realization is sustained since it is not dependent on a certain activity but known to be the causeless manifestation of the divine within. The Reference of the Way ‘Sat-chit-ananda’ (a.k.a. Buddha-nature), our true nature, is what prevails when the mind is in non-disalignment with what ‘is’, neither seeking anything different from the ‘Now’, nor trying to escape from it. Such an ‘unwavering’ mind is the product of an engagement in a (truly) artistic activity or the beholding, enactment or practice of a transcendent symbol. To keep the mind ‘unwavering’, though, there has to be an intuitive understanding of the reference of these symbols, which is just THIS, that is ‘Now’. “Live life as life lives itself.” What is Meditation? There seems to be almost as many definitions of meditation out there as people practicing it. To make the confusion even bigger I would like to join in and present my own take on it. Almost all common definitions of meditation in some way or another revolve around the doing of something (e.g. the training or calming of the mind, etc.) in a specific way (e.g. by following one’s breath or visualizing something, etc.) in order to get something (e.g. to reap mental benefits or to alter one’s consciousness, etc.). The way I see it, though, is that meditation is not something that is performed in a certain way for the attainment of certain results. Meditation, for me, simply is the ‘being’ in (non-disalignment with) our true nature, or stated differently, it is the seeing through the illusory nature of one’s sense of self. Whenever that holds, meditation is what is naturally ‘happening’. It does not depend on a specific technique, posture or outcome because it is what always is (present) when we cease to be caught by the stories of the separate self. What I mean by our true (or Buddha-) nature is this non-judgemental, non-resisting, non-grasping but surrendering awareness which delights in just ‘being’ and ‘resting’ within itself (‘sat-chit-ananda’). Our illusory self, on the other hand, is quiet the opposite since it lives in a trance of separation. It is driven to ‘do’, ‘control’ and ‘improve’ to secure our survival. When we sit to meditate in order to achieve something (even if it is to align ourselves with our true nature), we are re-enforcing the very sense of self meditation is trying to overcome. Whenever we try to get ‘somewhere’, we have implicitly fallen for the illusory self’s story of (self-) improvement or (self-) development. If meditation is ‘done’, there always is a sense of a ‘doer’, a meditator. Meditation can’t be ‘done’. It is in its essence a practice of non-achievement (or non-doing). Once it is known that the very trying to meditate is the very impediment to what is sought to be achieved by it, one effortlessly falls into (true) meditation. Paradoxically, thus, we only truly meditate when we stop doing the meditating. Even if it sounds easy and logical, the unshakable realization that we can only get what we really want when we stop trying to get it, cannot be ‘willed’ into by our minds. It must come from an intuitive place of wisdom, a place ‘beyond’ the mind (see my last post to learn how to ‘blow the mind‘). Very similar to my definition of meditation Hui Neng, the legendary 6th Patriarch of Zen, said that meditation simply is non-attachment to outer objects. Attachments cease when there is no-body to attach to any-thing anymore, that is, when subject and objects ‘vanish’. Hence, meditation, as defined here as the non-attachment to objects or the ‘being’ in our true nature, is naturally ‘happening’ when subject and objects are known to be ‘One’ (and the same). This moment-to-moment realization of ‘Oneness’ is true meditation and true meditation is moment-to-moment enlightenment. “We do not meditate to attain Buddha-nature- because, being ever-present, it is literally unattainable- rather, we meditate to express the Buddha-nature that we always already are.” ~Suzuki Roshi How to Blow Your Mind The last post was concerned with a gradual approach to dealing with the seeking mind. It was explained that the seeking mind can be exhausted to such an extent that a permanent resting place in ‘what is’ (right here now) can be found. In this post, however, I would like to introduce the possibility of blowing the seeking mind by engaging it in paradox. (In no way I want to suggest that this latter, more sudden approach is better than the other, more gradual one. In fact they complement each other rather nicely) The way we are hardwired to experience reality through our minds is in terms of pairs of opposites. Left or right, good or bad, black or white, etc. The founding fathers of quantum physics were the first Westerners to scientifically discover that our normal ‘either/ or’ approach to reality was somehow not how it really seemed to be. In a series of famous experiments they proved, for example, that two opposite outcomes could be simultaneously true or untrue. It was found that the occurrence of one or the other outcome was based on a probability distribution that only collapses into a definite event at the time of measurement. While creating a lot of uproar in the scientific community of the West, this new paradoxical ‘both/ and’ / ‘neither/ nor’ view of the foundations of reality was nothing new to philosophers of the East. The scientific findings reflected what these philosophers had been saying for millennia: the mother of reality is paradox, a field of potentiality. There are no opposites, dualities, there is only paradox, non-duality. It is rather straightforward to see why non-duality/ paradox is a more ‘realistic’ representation of reality than what our minds make us believe. All pairs of opposites are co-dependent and, thus, inseparable. We can’t talk or think about one without implicitly referring to the other. ‘Left’ only makes sense in conjunction with ‘right’. Hence, all opposites are actually two sides of the same coin, superimpositions on the ‘One’ reality. From this ‘One’ reality the ‘Many’ are created in our discriminating minds by means of establishing pairs of opposites. The mind is like a prism that breaks up the ‘One’ light into the ‘Many’ colors of the visible spectrum. Let’s have a look now at some pairs of opposites that Eastern philosophers found to be exquisite mind-blowers when understood in terms of paradoxes (‘both/ and’ or ‘neither/ nor’) as opposed to opposites (‘either/ or’): Form and Emptiness From an Eastern philosophical standpoint this is probably the most important pair of opposites that needs to be transcended in order to understand reality how ‘it really is’. It is the ultimate mind-blower. No wonder it is most prominently featured in the most revered Mahayana Buddhist Sutra, the ‘Heart Sutra’ where it says that ‘Form’ is ‘Emptiness’ and ‘Emptiness’ is ‘Form’. What it points to is that ‘Emptiness’ is the substratum of all ‘Form’ (which is a placeholder for the world perceivable by the senses). ‘Emptiness’ is the field of potentiality that manifests/ is actualized as ‘Form’. ‘Form’ is actualized ‘Emptiness’ and ‘Emptiness’ is potential ‘Form’. Just like the ocean is the substratum or the potential to manifest/ actualize as the waves, ‘Form’ and ‘Emptiness’ are inseparable and, thus, ‘One’ (and the same). This ‘One’ is both, ‘Form’ and ‘Emptiness’ simultaneously. Or stated differently, since ‘Form’ and ‘Emptiness’ are inseparable, this ‘One’ is neither ‘Form’ nor ‘Emptiness’. Again, read slowly: since it is both, it is neither. This ‘One’ is all that ‘is’ and, hence, there is no ‘other’ in reference to which it could be defined. It (whatever it is) can never be grasped by the mind. If we seriously try, though, we need to prepare to have your minds blown. Subject and Object Any notion of a subject depends on a sensory object: if there was no sound, smell, touch, vision, taste nor mind-objects (thought, memory, imagination etc.) there would be no notion of a subject, just bare existence/ being. The notion of an object on the other hand is dependent on a sensing subject. Object and subject arise in co-dependence: without objects, there is no subject and without subject there are no objects. Fundamentally, thus, object and subject must be ‘One’ (and the same) like wave and ocean, completely inseparable. There are neither subjects nor objects but only this ‘One’ perceiving itself by itself. Cause and Effect It is pretty straightforward to understand that every effect has a cause: something is pushed, it moves. Cause, however, also depends on effect. Every effect causes new effects just like every cause causes new causes. To assume that causes do not depend on effects would imply that causes can be uncaused, which is illogical. Eastern philosophers, thus, no not believe in the ‘Big Bang’-Theory because it assumes an uncaused cause to initiate the ‘Bang’. Rather, they have been saying that all that happens is (and has always been) the cause of all that happens. Effects cause themselves. Cause and effect are completely intimate, inseparable, ‘One’ (and the same) and, thus, there is neither cause nor effect. The only constant in the universe is perpetual change, impermanence. The universe is ‘One’ cosmic dance, always in flux. Life and Death Due to the perpetual changing nature of the ‘One’ universe, the minute a ‘Form’ manifests it irrevocably starts its process towards ultimate de-manifestation. Death depends on life. On the other hand, Scientists have discovered that the amount of energy (the potential for change) in the universe is constant. Hence, new ‘Forms’ can only manifest when other ‘Forms’ de-manifest. Life also depends on death. Life is the prerequisite for death and death is the prerequisite for life. Life lives on itself. The cycle of life and death is but the perpetual change of actualization in the ‘One’ field of potentiality. Just like the wave does not go anywhere different to where it has always been when it sinks back into the ocean, life and death are fundamentally inseparable, two seemingly distinct aspects of this ‘One’ reality and, thus, there fundamentally is neither life nor death. There is but this ‘One’ constantly changing its appearance, destructing in the name of creation, creating in the name of destruction. Here and There Space is that which is in between two (or more) local reference points, a ‘here’ and a ‘there’. If all is but this ‘One’, though, there is no ‘other’, which means that this ‘One’ has no definable range or border. It is infinite. In infinity there is no center since from any local point of reference the ‘One’ stretches out infinitely in all directions. If everywhere is its center, locality does not exist in this ‘One’. All local points are effectively in the same (no-)place. Everywhere is always ‘here’. And because of that, this ‘One’ is spaceless. Now and Then Time is the succession of changes between two reference events, a ‘now’ and a ‘then’. If all always has been and forever will be but this ‘One’, there has never been and there never will be any succession of events in this ‘One’, because there has never been and there will never be something ‘other’ than this ‘One’. Although its appearance may change, fundamentally all there eternally is, is this ‘One’. It is always ‘now’. And because of that, this ‘One’ is timeless. Samsara and Nirvana Whatever we perceive, we experience ‘Emptiness’ manifest as ‘Form’. Every emotion, sensual perception, thought or memory: we are constantly experiencing the ocean in the form of the waves. Just like the waves are no impediment to sense the ocean, our experiences are never in the way to sense this ‘One’. If samsara is the confrontation with ‘what is’ from a perspective of separateness, nirvana is the unconditional acceptance of (all!) the waves because they are known to be the ocean. It is the realization that all there ‘is’ is no-thing but this ‘One’ (without an ‘other’) which extincts all dualistic notions. Nirvana, therefore, is the extinction of itself. Nirvana is ‘this’. Unio Mystica The ‘divine’ union, as reported by the mystics of all spiritual traditions, is reconciling the opposites in the paradox that no-thing exists (in and of itself) because all is ‘One’. All is always and everywhere fundamentally inseparable from this ‘One’. There is neither ‘Form’ nor ‘Emptiness’, subject nor object, cause nor effect, life nor death, time nor space, samsara nor nirvana. Any notion of duality is an act of ignorance towards the fundamental reality of this truthless ‘truth’. To conclude, let me reiterate that opposites (and their expression in the form of words) are conceptual abstractions and superimpositions on this ‘One’ which have the power to create an apprehensible ‘reality’ where fundamentally there is none. Since what has no distinctive features can not be understood, though, the only way to realize this ‘One’ is through the pairs of opposites. The ‘gateless gate’ to the noumenous is reached through the transcendence of the world of phenomena. Nobody will ever be able to grasp what this ‘One’ is because it is so completely self-sufficient, self-entrenched, self-contained and self-instituted that it does not allow for an outside perspective to uncover its mystery. The mystic, thus, having once and for all blown his seeking mind remains silent, and awed in not knowing. ~John 1:1 A Poem What Else? The wind, a dancer nothing can resist. A play of light and shadow. Sound bites mingle and persist. An endless meadow. Touching the earth it touches you back. Mother of all in the heavens. The scent of a million years in one speck. United in the realms of all seven’s. Within no beginning and no end there is a space. What else would you ever need than this? I urge you to escape your mind’s craze. And come home to your natural bliss. Midlife Crisis What many of us seem to experience somewhere through mid-life is the sobering recognition that what we had strived for in life, e.g. decent wealth or status, a loving relationship or family, a beautiful home, an ‘improved’ self etc, is still not ‘enough’ somehow to fulfill us completely. We have checked all boxes on our mental ‘happiness list’, and are puzzled and confused as to why lasting happiness and fulfillment still eludes us. Typically, there are three different reactions to this crisis: denial, resignation and/ or concession. Let’s look at them separately: The most common reaction is denial. We are in denial when we convince ourselves that our ‘happiness list’ has been either too short or that it had been set up based on mistaken assumptions about what would make us truly happy. Hence, we either try harder (e.g. more wealth and status) or try differently (e.g. to find and ‘follow our bliss’, to get enlightened etc). In denial we haven’t changed our mindset; we still think that happiness is something that can be sought and subsequently found around the next corner. We are in resignation when we feel we have a right to be happy after all the struggle we’ve been through checking all those boxes. Hence, we feel betrayed by society and by life in general. We may start to behave a bit immature, become irresponsible and even dream of dropping out of society. Some may get depressed by the seeming meaninglessness and emptiness of life. Some may turn to the counterculture or to religion to find meaning. In resignation our mindset changes to reflect our rejection of the established ways to pursue happiness. On an unconscious level, though, we are still convinced that happiness is somewhere ‘out there’ to be found. We are conceding our failure to reach happiness and fulfillment, when we aknowledge the fact, that it may not be found through our trying and seeking. This is probably the rarest reaction to a ‘checkbox crisis’ because it leaves us in a discomforting and confusing ‘limbo state’ of not knowing what to do and where to turn to. Our whole lives have been driven so much by the next ‘thing’ that it feels insecure and even terrifying not to have a clear goal anymore. Many will thus oscillate back and forth between phases of concession and denial/ resignation. This can feel like being ‘stuck’ between neither having the ambition nor a clear direction on how to proceed on the one hand and the drive to seek happiness through grasping or rejecting the world on the other hand. A precondition for conceding is a strong intuitive notion of unconditional happiness, that is, of the possibility of uncaused moments of just peacefully resting in ‘being’. This notion usually originates from vivid childhood memories or any other (e.g. spiritual awakening) experience revealing the rich abundance of the present moment, of ‘what is’. Without this notion conceding would not only be unthinkable, but unbearable. Dancing the limbo What actually happens in the ‘limbo state’ of sequential seeking and retracting is a bouncing back and forth between resting in our ‘being’ and following the stories of our seeking mind. For millenia the seeking mind has been programed by the impulse of evolution to watch out for predators, look for flaws and weaknesses in our lifestyle and to find ways to change, control, manipulate and improve ourselves and our environment. To protect our organism it is constantly playing the same alluring and juicy record of ‘not quiet there yet’. Once we observe and understand the seeking mind we will come to the conclusion that whatever we will do, it will never, ever be ‘enough’. There will always be a next ‘thing’, no matter what other people or billboards try to make us believe. The essential teaching of Eastern philosophy is that falling for the stories of the seeking mind is like chasing the horizon: we never, ever get any closer to what we actually want. And this is the very root of Samsara, the cycle of insatisfactory existence: getting suckered in by the seeking mind over and over and over again… This may seem like very bad news. If the seeking mind is hard-wired into our DNA, how can we ever find lasting fulfillment? Since any attempt to conquer the seeking mind is just another way of seeking, it is impossible to do anything about it. If so, how do we ever get out of the confusing ‘limbo state’? Once we really know that we can’t do anything to find lasting fulfillment, we are finally ready to call the seeking minds bluff, give in, allow and surrender to ‘what is’ as opposed to chase after ‘what ought’ (which is exactly the core message of all spirituality). By seeing through the unfulfilling nature of seeking and the promise it will never be able to keep, a slow wearing out of the seeking mind gets initiated. When we curb the feeding of the impulse of seeking, moments of unconditional ‘being’ become more pronounced. As this happens our innermost nature which is always naturally at rest with all that ‘is’ is uncovered. The ‘Now’ starts to reveal itself as what it had always been: the ‘IT’ which we have been searching for all along. ~ Zen Short Disclaimer: There are situations where the seeking mind is a very vital tool. Whenever we or somebody else is in danger, in an unbearable or unsustainable situation it would be utterly stupid to not resort to the power of the seeking mind. What I am saying is that once our basic needs are covered the seeking mind becomes an impediment to our happiness. Its function is survival, not happiness and fulfillment. Accessing the ‘Now’ In this post I want to share with you a method to access the ‘Now’. But first let me explain what I exactly mean by that. The ‘Now’ is the sphere of intimacy with the mystery of life that is unfolding through our senses. It is being in a state of non-argumentative receptivity to what ‘is’. The ability to access the ‘Now’ is an important ‘skill’ as it puts our sometimes burdensome ‘stories’ in a broader context and endows us with a refreshing sense of awe, gratitude and lightness of being. Being separated from the ‘Now’ often feels a bit like being trapped in a strange wasteland. Being one with the ‘Now’ feels like coming home to a sense of wholeness. While the ‘Now’ is crucial for mental well-being, it certainly is not a ‘secret weapon’ to eradicate pain and difficulty. It is an island of refuge within the changing weather of life: when the ‘going gets tough’ the ‘Now’ provides perspective, when the ‘going is smooth’ it provides inspiration and bliss. What usually keeps us from accessing the ‘Now’ is a nagging sense of lack. Our minds are conditioned to tell us that the very moment as it presents itself, is somehow not ‘enough’ as it is. When there is fear or anxiety, for example, our mind wants us to fight or flight, when there is boredom it tells us to do something, when there is happiness it wants us to grasp. This seeking is what keeps us from truly appreciating what is happening ‘Now’. It is what encases us in a sticky bubble of insatisfactory separateness. Whenever there is this sense of division or separateness between inner and outer, the ‘being-mind’ (the mind which can accept and rest in the ‘Now’) is clouded by the ‘becoming-mind’ (the mind which subtly rejects and seeks to improve the ‘Now’) and vice versa. Having said that, it becomes clear that there are two ways to break this cycle of dependent origination: we can realize either that separateness or that the story of lack is illusory. While I have written and will write more about the illusory nature of separateness some other time, I am going to present here a way of refuting the story of lack. Inquiry into ‘what’s lacking’ There are three questions I ask myself whenever I feel separated and disconnected from life, that is, when I am caught in a story of lack that makes me feel lonely, anxious, frightened, stressed or simply bored. 1. What is my story telling me that is lacking for this very moment to be more fulfilling? In my case the way my story makes itself know to me is through the “if I only had…then”-thought. This thought is the very root of seeking and dis-ease with the present moment as it posits an incompleteness, a gap that needs to be filled or a threshold to be passed for fulfillment to be reached. Obviously, once fulfillment is reached the mind will find another reason for lack and incompleteness. Trying to find lasting fulfillment is like trying to fill a bottomless pit; it’s just never going to happen no matter how much we try. In this context Bernard Shaw once said that “there are two great disappointments in life: not getting what one wants and getting it”. When people say they feel ’empty’ or ‘burnt-out’, what they actually mean is that they are completely exhausted because they are constantly haunted by their story-telling minds, thus, never reaching moments of peace. Inquire: What is your mind telling you to go out seeking? What does it want to be improved or get over with first before the moment can be enjoyed? The stories may or may not contain legitimate demands. Even if the demands are legitimate, we can always take care of them at the appropriate time and not need to get bogged down by them any other time. The stories can be very subtle, so listen carefully. 2. Has there ever been a fulfilling moment in the absence of what seems to be lacking now? Once you have identified what seems to be lacking, try to remember an instant of fulfillment when the seemingly lacking ‘mind-object’ was absent. For example, if you are single and you watch a romantic comedy your story may make you believe that to be alone is to be lonely and that you can only be truly fulfilled and in harmony with the world in a romantic relationship. In this case, remember an instant when you were single, on your own and fulfilled at the same time. 3. Does my fulfillment really depend on what seems to be lacking? Once you have identified an instant when you were fulfilled even in the absence of the seemingly lacking ‘mind-object’, ask yourself: is it really true that fulfillment depends on this ‘mind-object’? The answer, obviously, is no. Which means you must have been fooled by the story-telling mind which, if we look at it with compassion, simply tries to protect and secure your existence by means of reaching out and manipulating your environment. While this function of the mind is very important for our survival, its purpose is not finding fulfillment. Fulfillment lies in the absence of the search for fulfillment. When you see through the story of the mind, you have a chance to dis-identify from it and to not let your wellbeing be kept hostage by it. By ‘stepping out’ of the story, we ‘step into’ the ‘Now’, for the ‘Now’ is within and through which the illusion of the story appears. To truly live we have to show up, which can only happen ‘Now’. “Truly, is anything missing right now? Nirvana is right here, before your eyes.” ~Zen Master Hakuin
Mientien Tree Frog 2014 06 05 Scientists have discovered that the tiny mientien tree frogs love singing … in the drain. Image: Brandon Po-Han Chou When humans build things, animals usually die. Highways, strip malls, parking lots ... when we pave over paradise, natural habitats – and the animals that depend on them – are destroyed. But one group of amphibians in Taiwan is reaping the benefits of unstoppable human sprawl. Taiwanese road workers have inadvertently constructed an amplification system crisscrossing the island that helps singing male tree frogs find a mate.  The diminutive mientien tree frog (Kurixalus diootocushas a high-frequency call that sounds like a cricket chirp. When mating season arrives, males usually congregate in the Taiwanese underbrush and sing a chorus of calls. Females gather to listen in the branches overhead and choose the male with the loudest call to be the father of their offspring. Unfortunately for the little males, high-frequency sounds do not travel as far or as wide as low-frequency ones, so it's an uphill battle to make their voices heard. But scientists from the National Taiwan University recently discovered that the amphibians have hit upon an ingenious solution to overcome their lacklustre vocal performances. By placing themselves in the drainage tunnels found along the edges of most roads in Taiwan, the tiny vocalists are able to amplify their calls. Using naturally occurring objects to alter the quality of vocalisations is an old trick used by a handful of frog species. Bornean tree-hole frogs, for example, use hollowed-out trees as a way to amplify their mating calls, changing their frequency to match the resonant frequency of the space they're in. But the mientien tree frogs' inventive solution is the first known example of animals using human-made structures to enhance their vocalisations. Mientien Tree Frog Drain 2014 06 05 A male mientien tree frog belts out a tune in a storm drain (while keeping a wary eye out for snakes). Image: Wen-Hao Bob Tan Researchers were first alerted to the tree frogs' amplifying activities after noticing that males tended to congregate in storm drains when mating season rolled around. Field tests revealed that a frog vocalising from inside a drain produced a call that was louder and longer than normal. The storm drains act as a reverberation chamber, providing the perfect means of broadcasting calls to the females listening in the trees above. And since female tree frogs are attracted to the loudest and longest calls, drain-singers have an advantage over their non-urbanised brethren, who prefer to sing in the bush. But setting up camp inside a storm drain is not without its risks. Snakes also enjoy spending time in storm drains. The concrete walls of the drain retain heat, which helps keep snakes warm and strike-ready. And since many small animals use the drains as both shelter and a transportation corridor, frog-eating snakes, like the Chinese green tree viper, are often observed slithering along these miniature urban canyons. Snake attack is just one reason drain-singing is a risky endeavour. Perhaps just as problematic – and far more embarrassing – is what can occur after a female chooses her favourite singer. Like many frog species, after a female picks her potential mate, he hops onto her back and she carries him off into the sunset to commence love-making and egg-laying. But with the slippery vertical walls of the storm drain to contend with, a female can struggle to make her exit with the added weight of an eager male on her back. It's likely for these reasons that the researchers discovered that drain-singing males tended to perch on branches and other objects while inside the drain. A slightly elevated position might allow them to keep an eye out for snakes, while also making it easier for the females to fish them out when it comes time to mate.   These storm drains are unlike anything that the mientien tree frog typically encounters in its natural environment, making this a fine example of the animal kingdom's ability to (sometimes) adapt to the topographical Armageddon that humans regularly unleash. Some animals, like rats or pigeons, thrive in the concrete jungles we have erected all across the planet ... but the male mientien tree frogs are probably especially thankful for human engineering. Thanks to the Taiwanese Department of Transportation's network of drainage canals, these squeaky-voiced male frogs have been transformed into the Barry Whites of the amphibian world.  Top header image: Matthew Matheson, Flickr
secthead Resources How to Preserve Objects and Documents Collecting the materials is relatively easy, but what happens after they have been obtained? Patrons expect to have access to items for research or to view a family heirloom. In order to make items accessible, they first must be preserved. The same is true of your personal collections. What are the general guidelines for preservation? It is important to keep documents, textiles, and objects away from direct sunlight or artificial light to prevent fading and damage. Store items in a well-ventilated, climate controlled space, and away from exterior walls. Fluctuations in heat and humidity will cause damage, and may also encourage pest and mold activity. Support an item when you move it, either by carrying from the base (as with a teapot or chair) or by placing a rigid support under the item (as with paper or textiles). Always provide a buffer between items to prevent damage from friction and use, and to inhibit acid migration, the transfer of dyes and rust, and chemical reactions. A buffering material may be a folder, acid-free board, tissue paper, unbleached muslin, or archival boxes. Be sure that your hands are clean and your workspace is free of food and household chemicals. Check your collections periodically for pest and mold activity. How do I preserve paper? Unfold and store each document separately in an acid-free insert or folder. Place the document in Mylar if it is fragile, as this allows you to view and handle the item without actually touching it. Folders should be housed in an acid-free box. Display a color photocopy or scanned image instead of the original. How do I preserve photographs? Store in acid-free, archivally safe photograph sleeves and albums, or other appropriate enclosures. Do not write on the back of the photograph with a ballpoint pen—label the sleeve, envelope, or folder. There are also sleeves available for negatives and slides. How do I preserve textiles? Fabrics should be rolled onto an acid-free tube or stored flat. A hanger will stress the fabric and seams causing the textile to tear. Use acid-free tissue paper to ease folds and protect rolled fabrics. Tissue or another buffer should be placed between items in the same box and between items and a wood or painted surface. Store only in acid-free, archivally safe containers. Unbleached muslin may be used for bags for quilts and coverlets. Small stacks prevent damage from compression if boxes are not used. What is the easiest way to access my collection? Once you have surveyed and sorted your collection, make a list of categories. Create a finding aid (inventory) with a description of each item. The description could simply identify the person/place in the photograph with the date, or could include a family story or history of the item. Make the descriptions as detailed as you wish. Also identify the storage location of the items. For instance, a box of documents may be stored in the hall closet, while the rocking chair your great-grandfather made is in the master bedroom. A photograph of the textile or object should be placed with the finding aid for reference. Use pencil to label folders, etc. and never put Post-It notes on items. The preservation of your collection will take time and commitment. However, it is a project that can be worked on one piece at a time. Enjoy yourself! Our Blogs The History Bucket [Read My Blog] Historically Speaking [Read Our Blog] Marianne's PhotoBlog [Read My Blog] Wheatland: A Love Story [Read My Blog] Facebook Slider Facebook Slider Facebook Slider
hand cannon A hand cannon or gonne (also spelled handgonne to distinguish the device from modern handguns) (Chinese: 手銃; Arabic: مدفع‎; Russian: пищаль) is one of the early forms of firearm. It is possibly the oldest type of small arms, as well as the simplest type of early firearm, as most examples require direct manual external ignition through a touch hole without any form of firing mechanism. It may also be considered a forerunner of the handgun. The hand cannon was widely used in East Asia and later throughout Europe until at least the 1520s, when it was supplanted by matchlock firearms. The oldest surviving hand cannon is the Heilongjiang hand cannon, which was manufactured no later than 1288. In modern usage, the term hand cannon may also be used colloquially to refer to a pistol or revolver chambered for a powerful cartridge, such as the .454 Casull or .500 S&W Magnum. This term is also sometimes used to refer to a novelty toy gun known as "pocket artillery", a small cannon firing steel balls by means of a smokeless powder or a firecracker. View More On Wikipedia.org
This Indian Professor From Canada Has Created Roads That Repair Themselves roads that repairs itself Indian roads network is very large said to be only after the United States of America. Since roads indirectly contribute to the economic growth of the country, thus it is essential road must be laid out and strong. But the fact is India is home to several bad roads. Although, bad road conditions are nothing new to India. This problem is being addressed since the last 30 years. Mumbai Roads Mumbai Roads The roads are already built badly. When monsoons or heavy traffic take their toll, it doesn’t take long for driving on Indian roads to turn into a hellish experience. So, Nemkumar Banthia find out a pretty awesome solution to this problem. He has developed a type of road that can repair themselves. NemKumar Banthia is an Indian professor, who teaches civil engineering students at the University of British Columbia in Canada. This is pretty awesome. This roads comes out as a result of research in material sciences and structural engineering. Additionally, they are cost-effective and sustainable in the long-term. As a display of proof purpose, Banthia has already installed a stretch of road at a village about 90 kilometres from Bengaluru. He completed his project in last winter. The self-repairing roads Source Indiatimes The self-repairing road Source Indiatimes The road also helps reduce carbon footprint as almost 60% of the cement, in the roads has been replaced by fly ash. It is the production of cement that produces a large amount of greenhouse gases. The thickness of the road is 60% less than the typical Indian road. It also goes a long way in reducing the cost of building the road. Banthia actually want to improve the condition of Indian roads. He said, “These are fibers which have a hydrophilic nano-coating on them. Hydrophilia means they attract water and this water then becomes available for crack healing. Every time you have a crack, you always have unhydrated cement and this water is now giving it the hydration capability, producing further silicates which actually closes the crack in time.” Previous articleIndian Teen Finds Low-Cost Onion Storage Facility Next article19 Year Old Built His Buggy Car By Watching YouTube Videos • lets hope we will have such roads all across India soon.
10 HTML tags you've probably forgotten or don't know We all do it. We get into a funk when designing applications, or we just take what we are given by our wizardy-like design interfaces. As such we get stuck in the same rut of using the same old design elements and styles and forget that there are a plethora of HTML/XHTML tags that we either have totally ignored, or just plain forgotten. We'll here is a reminder and where you might be able to use them. This is is useful for abbreviating an acronym but giving the user an easy mouse-over popup to explain this to a user. Being that I work primarily with IBM software, I have a minefield of acronyms I have to deal with and some may have multiple meanings. I use this technique a lot with HATS (which is used for dynamically converting mainframe or as/400 green screen apps into web pages), to give acronyms a popup, which can really improve usability and reduce training time for such applications. This tag is nearly identical to the ABBR tag. The attributes and events are identical and can be used interchangeably - just be sure to close the tag with the same one of course. Heck, I even used both tags in this definition! 2 - DL DL is 'Definition List', and is use for defining a list of terms. the DT and DD tags are nested in between. It is more appropriate for say a list of "10 HTML tags you've probably forgotten or don't know", than using an ordered or unordered list (UL/LI or OL/LI). The elements are separately styleable. Think name/value pairs. 2 - DT Just as mentioned above, this is nested in DL tags and is paired with the DD tag. This is the first part of the definition or the 'name' part. 3 - DD You guess it - this is the 'Data Definition' part or the value part. This by default in most browsers will indent and italicize the text. It is also easier than adding a div with a separate class attribute. This type of element is ideal for quoting persons in a conversation, or text from a referenced article. A similar tag is the Q tag, or 'quote' tag. This will insert quotation marks around your text, but otherwise offers you similar styling. 5 - CITE This type of element is used for citing a reference. Don't confuse it with the BLOCKQUOTE element. Here is an example of usage of the two elements: 80% of development costs are spent identifying and fixing defects. 6 - CODE This element has traditionally been used to style computer code. By default the browser renders it with a mono spaced font, which can be overiden with a style sheet. 7 - PRE If you need to ensure indentations, and spacing, be sure to nest your CODE tag between a PRE tag, which PREserves white space in the browser rendering. It does not however allow you to paste in HTML code and render the brackets as you see it in your editor. You will still need to encode those brackets. The same applies to the CODE tag. This tag should be used with the INPUT tag, and defines a caption or label for a text input field. When used with the next element you can almost entirely break away from traditional table based layouts. The FIELDSET element is used to logically group elements together within a FORM. It also draws a box around the group. It also needs a LEGEND element to define the group, which is usually the first child element. The following is an example of using FIELDSET, LEGEND, LABEL, and INPUT altogether: Your Info: Date of birth: 10 - FONT This is a trick one. If you have forgotten this tag, give yourself a pat on the back. If you are still using it, give yourself a good kick. This tag has been deprecated and should NEVER be used today! Some tools still spit out the FONT tag, along with several other deprecated tags such as I, B, S, and CENTER. These tags override any and all Cascading Style Sheet elements, and cannot be properly styled themselves. You would better served by surrounding the affected text with a STYLE tag, or a SPAN tag with a style attribute. Note too that depending upon the text, you could use and separate your elements with CITE, BLOCKQUOTE, SPAN, P, H1-H6, VAR, CODE, STRONG, or EM elements, which are more easily styled using an external style sheet. Take a look at the source above to see how the examples were written. The list above is a DL, with nested DT and DD tags.
Cancer spread cut by three-quarters in tests | Cancer spread cut by three-quarters in tests Sun Online Desk     12th January, 2017 10:33:28 printer Cancer spread cut by three-quarters in tests The deadly spread of cancer around the body has been cut by three-quarters in animal experiments, say scientists. Tumours can "seed" themselves elsewhere in the body and this process is behind 90% of cancer deaths. The mouse study, published in Nature, showed altering the immune system slowed the spread of skin cancers to the lungs. Cancer Research UK said the early work gave new insight into how tumours spread and may lead to new treatments. The spread of cancer - known as metastasis - is a fight between a rapidly mutating cancer and the rest of the body. The team at the Sanger Institute in Cambridge was trying to figure out what affected tumour spread in the body. Researchers created 810 sets of genetically modified lab mice to discover which sections of the DNA were involved in the body resisting a cancer's spread. The animals were injected with melanomas (skin cancer) and the team counted the number of tumours that formed in the lung. Their hunt led them to discover 23 sections of DNA, or genes, that made it either easier or harder for a cancer to spread. Many of them were involved in controlling the immune system. Targeting one gene - called Spns2 - led to a three-quarters reduction in tumours spreading to the lungs.
title.jpg (17000 bytes) globe.gif (27379 bytes) GELATIN Manufacture: The manufacture of "Gelatin" involves a complex, multi-stage process. The source of gelatin is "Collagen", which is found in the skin and bones of animals, & deep-water fish. Collagen is protein obtained by hydrolysis of the collagen contained in the skin & bones of animals. Skins are processed after being de-haired by cutting and washing the skins. Bones are processed by first washing in hot water to remove the fat & greasy parts. The bones are also treated in hydrochloric acid and lime but they will be more flexible. The bone collagen is called "ossein" from which the gelatin is extracted. There are Two different base processes used a) Alkali process: The ossein or skin is immersed in a (alkali) lime bath for a number of weeks at room temperature. B) Acid process: The ossein or skin is immersed in an acid bath for a short period of time, sometimes just for 1 day. A rinsing process removes the alkali or acid, and the pH level is adjusted to the desired level. The product is cooked & processed at controlled temperatures to extract the gelatin, as hot water dissolves the gelatin contained in the base. The gelatin that is extracted from the base is processed and filtered to remove all impurities, traces of grease and other substances that have coagulated at high temperatures. This process produces a clear gelatin solution. The solutions are further concentrated to level of between 30 & 40%. The concentrated solutions are sterilized at 275F + & abruptly dropped to a low temperature to make the solution into a jelly, extruded in to a spaghetti like form. The spaghetti is then put onto a dryer belt, which has a continuous supply of filtered dry air to obtain a dry gelatin at the point of discharge. The extractions are crushed and screened to obtain the desired granular size end product. No two bathes will be identical. The various extractions will be blended and grouped to give a consistent commercial batch quality that will comply with the specification. Then there is constant lab tests made to assure the quality & consistency of the product.v There are two types of gelatin; Type A gelatin (pHi = 6.3-9.5) is manufactured from fresh / frozen pig skins or bone ossein after demineralization. Type B gelatin (pHi=4.5 - 5.2) is derived from Bovine hide skins or trimmings. There are two classes of gelatin; the F class gelatins have a low gel strength, while the G class gelatins have a high gel strength. Gel strength is measured in "Bloom" which ranges usually from 50 to 300 bloom. Gelatin is a protein rich in amino acids particularly the proline & hydroxyproline types. The type of gelatin can be ascertained by checking the type of amino acids, as calfskin will have amino acids of 138/94 respectively, carp skin 124/73 respectively, & pike skin 129/70 respectively. Gelatin absorbs water at 5-10 times its own weight and swells to an elastic, transparent & tasteless mass. Fish gelatin has a yellowish color while bovine gelatin remains clear. Gelatin has many applications, among them are the following: Pharmaceutical uses: Hard capsules (bloom 150-280), Soft capsules (bloom 125-200), Tablets (bloom 20-300), toothpaste, cosmetics, ointments, pastes, etc. Confectionery applications: Jellified items, gums, liquorice, marshmallows, meringues, aerated items, chewy fruit candies, fillings, toffees, packaged cake mixes, etc. (bloom of 75-250. Milk products: Ice cream, whipped creams, puddings, bakery creams, desert creams, water ices, cheese based products, yogurts & yogurt based products, jams, jellies, preserves, fruit juices, etc. Gelatin is used a bonding agent, to bond the free water in the product to the other ingredients. Gelatin is used as a stabilizer, the foam should not collapse before the product gelling can take place. Gelatin is used as a foaming agent by reducing surface tension it enables the introduction of air into a material. Gelatin is often combined with other gelling agents to obtain a particular texture or characteristic. Other gelling agents include agar, pectin, gum arabic, modified starch, carrageenan, gellan gum, alginates, etc. Gelatin is widely used to clarify a product such as apple juice, other juices & wines. When used in wines it has various effects on the wine i.e. Clarification, aroma, bitterness, flavor & tannin or color of the wine. Gelatin gives body to the wine, breaks surface tension & will vary as to the effects on the wine depending the on the quality of the gelatin and the type of grape etc. Some of the concerns to the kosher consumer of gelatin are the following: Fish derived gelatin: Is the fish source a kosher species fish? Is the manufacturing equipment contaminated (non-kosher) from previous productions of non-kosher fish or animal based gelatin? Animal based gelatin: Is it from a kosher animal? (Bovine) was it processed as ritually kosher? Is the entire gelatin processing equipment dedicated & used only for kosher gelatin production? (Rabbi Aaron kotler, Ob"m, Responsa, specifies - use of new equipment for the processing of kosher gelatin-not purged/sterilized). Meat based gelatin derived from the hides of animals is considered as meat or possibly parve? The major rabbinical authorities of today consider it as meat. Note: certain parts of the hides all authorities consider as meat. The gelatin used in clarification of juices is it a kosher gelatin? What is the status of the juice or wine once it came in contact with the gelatin?
Unseen Hazards Dan Kovalchik A few years ago, a safety engineer at the Kennedy Space Center was sifting through his mail when something caught his eye; a safety alert for "explosion-proof" flashlights. Some of these flashlights, the warning stated, had slipped past the manufacturer's quality control and therefore couldn't be guaranteed to be explosion-proof. The engineer, new on the job, didn't know that the term "explosion-proof" is applied to devices that have been hermetically sealed, making them safe to use in an explosive atmosphere. Guided by an entirely different interpretation of the message, he grabbed the phone, called the bomb squad, and told them to get their defusers ready: A number of flashlights at the space center were about to blow. At least that's the way legend has it. But considering the nature of the KSC safety engineer's job, the story is entirely believable. As a graduate of innumerable safety classes during my 12 years at KSC, I can attest that these engineers know better than anyone that the rocket business can be extremely hazardous to your health. Who can blame them if they react accordingly? After all, there are thousands of professionals at the center who, during the course of the day, work with an astonishing array of substances capable of depriving a person of life or limb. Need proof? Go check out NASA's stockpile of caustic solvents and ordnance devices; you'll think the words TOXIC, VOLATILE, FLAMMABLE, and LETHAL were coined especially for KSC's inventory. While each of these materials commands respect, there is one ugly customer that is the most fearsome of the chemicals stored at the rocket ranch. It's called a hypergol. The space shuttle uses two in particular, nitrogen tetroxide and monomethyl hydrazine, names that strike terror in the hearts of safety inspectors. These two substances are useful because of one interesting property: Mix them together and they explode. This, of course, is why space rangers think these compounds are so attractive. Hypergols don't care whether they're sitting on the launch pad or orbiting Uranus. The equation remains the same -- mix them and they explode. Propulsion engineers get misty-eyed when they talk about hypergols. The technicians who load these fuels tend to get emotional, too, but for a different reason. Hypergols have a special affinity for human skin. Just the briefest exposure to hypergolic vapors means a frantic strip and a 20-minute scrub in a safety shower. And that's just the beginning. Afterwards, you get shipped to the hospital to see if something can be done to stop that pesky hemorrhaging in your lungs. So although you may have been thinking that a few spoonfuls of hypergols would be just the ticket to get rid of those stubborn toilet stains, you might be getting the idea that these compounds aren't the kinds of things you want to keep under your sink, with or without childproof caps. And that's precisely the message the safety instructors try to get across: Hypergols Are Bad News. Watch for nitrogen tetroxide's telltale reddish vapor cloud and its pungent, sweetish smell. You won't see hydrazine; it's invisible. But be alert for a fishy, ammonia odor. Get out of the building, check the windsock, run upwind from leaks. And don't be afraid to report any suspicious clouds or odors. Better to be safe than real sorry. About five years ago one group of technicians took that message to heart. While installing a rooftop satellite dish, they noticed a fishy ammonia odor. But as far as anyone knew, monomethyl hydrazine had never been stored anywhere near the building in question. Surely the workers were wrong. Perhaps, as their supervisor suggested, the techs had fabricated the story in order to get off a hot Florida roof in August. Fabrication or not, you don't ignore reports of hypergol leaks. Engineers quickly pulled out their electronic sniffers, donned their protective suits, and headed for the roof. When the equipment showed no trace of the deadly vapor, team members doffed their masks. Sure enough, there was a fishy, ammonia odor, which the engineers quickly traced to a vent leading from . . . the men's room. The investigation summary stated that KSC workers were safe for another day. But the report stopped short of classifying the fumes as non-toxic, non-volatile, non-flammable, and non-lethal, an omission that tends to support the claim made by one of the investigators: that the rooftop gas may have been a fuel source that NASA scientists had overlooked. If that's the case, engineers may be thankful they had not peered into the vent with one of those non-"explosion-proof" flashlights. Return to Range Rat
<![CDATA[PHPUnit - Ryan Kent]]>http://ryankent.ca/Ghost 0.5Wed, 26 Apr 2017 23:18:03 GMT60<![CDATA[Starting a new project with Laravel 5, Gulp, Bower, and Bootstrap]]> This article was written for Laravel 5 pre-release. Shortly after posting this guide Laravel 5 announced a new feature called Laravel Elixer that does half this guide automatically. You can still learn from this guide about how it works "under the hood" so to speak, as well as how to integrate Bootstrap or other css frameworks, but you'll likely want to migrate to Elixer. Check out my updated post and Github Repository if you want to use Elixer or have the project scaffolding set up for you automatically. If you want to learn how it works I'd still recommend reading on. Laravel 5 (as of the time of this post) is currently under development, but if you've got a new project and want to use Laravel without worrying about having to upgrade soon, you can still start a new project with Laravel 5. Just note that you will have to pay attention to the commits and update accordingly if your app suddenly breaks without explanation. Since we're starting a new project I'm also going to discuss how to set up an efficient working environment using Gulp and Bower, as well as installing and setting up Bootstrap. We will also include PHPUnit, but those steps are optional. For those that don't know, Bower is a package manager for downloading frameworks, libraries, assets, utilities, and more. We are going to use it to install Boostrap and jQuery. Gulp, on the other hand, will be used to help us compile our CSS, LESS, and JS files, including the ones from Bootstrap. We will also be setting up the project so we can use all the convenient Bootstrap LESS variables. This guide should be everything you need to start a new Laravel project and hit the ground running. Install Laravel 5 I'm going to assume you have Composer already installed. If you don't please have a look at the documentation. composer create-project laravel/laravel example-app dev-develop --prefer-dist Remember to replace example-app with the name of your project. This will download and set up a fresh Laravel 5 installation from the development branch. If you want to use PHPUnit for testing you should open up your composer.json and add: "require-dev": { "phpunit/phpunit": "4.3.0" Install Bower and Gulp If you haven't already you should install NodeJS. You can easily do it with help from their website. Once you've done that you can install Bower and Gulp with the following commands. If you get an error you may need to run them as an administrator with the sudo command. npm install -g bower npm install -g gulp You'll also need to install Gulp in the project directory for development. cd example-app npm install --save-dev gulp You should also add /node_modules your .gitignore. Set up Bower Have a look at the directory structure of your new project. - app - bootstrap - config - database - public - resources - assets - lang - views - storage - tests - vendor We want store all our development assets in resources/assets and our production assets in public/assets, so we need to configure Bower to use our development directory. Create a new file called .bowerrc and save it in the document root directory. All the file needs to contain is: "directory": "resources/assets/vendor" Now we need to tell it what assets to get. There are a few different ways to do that but the most maintainable way is to create a new file called bower.json and place it in your document root directory. In here you can list all the packages you want to install. Take a look at the extensive package directory and keep and eye out for Bootstrap. Click on it when you find it to be directed to the Bootstrap Github repository. From there you can click on releases to figure out what version you want to pull in. At the time of this writing the latest release is v3.2.0, so let's put that into our bower.json file. "name": "ExampleApp", "dependencies": { "bootstrap": "~3.2.0" Bootstrap will automatically require jQuery, so we don't need to put that in too. Now that we have our dependencies set up we can run: bower update Set up Gulp We're now going to set up Gulp to compile to the correct directories, but first we need to fetch the dependencies we need with Node. To do that you'll have to make a new file named package.json. "name": "ExampleApp", "version": "0.0.0", "description": "", "main": "gulpfile.js", "keywords": [ "author": "Your Name", "license": "MIT", "devDependencies": { "gulp": "^3.8.8", "gulp-less": "^1.3.6", "gulp-sass": "^1.0.0", "gulp-minify-css": "^0.3.10", "gulp-concat": "^2.4.1", "gulp-uglify": "^1.0.1", "gulp-rename": "^1.2.0", "gulp-phpunit": "^0.6.3", "gulp-notify-growl": "^1.0.2", "gulp-notify": "^1.8.0" Let's install the dependencies by running: npm install If you look back in package.json you'll notice the variable main set to gulpfile.js. We need to create this file, so let's do that. In this file we need to do a lot of things. Let's start by pulling in the plugins we just grabbed with Node. Note that if you don't plan on using PHPUnit you can leave out notify, growl, and phpunit from any lines pertaining them for the rest of the guide. var gulp = require('gulp'), less = require('gulp-less'), sass = require('gulp-sass'), minify = require('gulp-minify-css'), concat = require('gulp-concat'), uglify = require('gulp-uglify'), rename = require('gulp-rename'), notify = require('gulp-notify'), growl = require('gulp-notify-growl'), phpunit = require('gulp-phpunit'); Next, we need to set up our paths. These will correlate to the directories we discussed earlier. For simplicity we will set up both dev and production paths. var paths = { 'dev': { 'less': './resources/assets/less/', 'js': './resources/assets/js/', 'vendor': './resources/assets/vendor/' 'production': { 'css': './public/assets/css/', 'js': './public/assets/js/' Now let's set up some tasks. Each Gulp module has a specific function and we will use them in series to get the result we want. // CSS gulp.task('css', function() { return gulp.src(paths.dev.less+'app.less') // JS gulp.task('js', function(){ return gulp.src([ // PHP Unit gulp.task('phpunit', function() { var options = {debug: false, notify: true}; return gulp.src('./tests/*.php') .pipe(phpunit('./vendor/bin/phpunit', options)) .on('error', notify.onError({ title: 'PHPUnit Failed', message: 'One or more tests failed.' title: 'PHPUnit Passed', message: 'All tests passed!' To make things work automatically let's tell Gulp to watch our directories for changes, and if a file is updated, run the appropriate task. gulp.task('watch', function() { gulp.watch(paths.dev.less + '/*.less', ['css']); gulp.watch(paths.dev.js + '/*.js', ['js']); gulp.watch('./tests/*.php', ['phpunit']); Finally, let's set a default task to do all of the above whenever we run gulp. gulp.task('default', ['css', 'js', 'phpunit', 'watch']); Try it out by running gulp from the command line. If it was successful you'll notice a new assets folder inside your public directory. It should only have js folder in it right now, so let's fix that. Setting Up Bootstrap Now that we have Bootstrap installed in assets/vendor/bootstrap let's set up our project to take advantage of all the Bootstrap LESS variables and other goodies. In your gulpfile.js you'll notice we specified using resources/assets/less in the paths.dev.less variable, so we need to put all our LESS files in that directory. First let's create app.less: // app.less @import 'bootstrap.less'; You can use this file to import all your applications LESS files, or if you choose to work from a single file you can use this one. Take notice that we import bootstrap.less, so let's create that now. This file will be almost the same as the bootstrap.less file in vendor/bootstrap/less with a few minor alterations. // bootstrap.less // Core variables and mixins @import "variables.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/mixins.less"; // Reset and dependencies @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/normalize.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/print.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/glyphicons.less"; // Core CSS @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/scaffolding.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/type.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/code.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/grid.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/tables.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/forms.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/buttons.less"; // Components @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/component-animations.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/dropdowns.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/button-groups.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/input-groups.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/navs.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/navbar.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/breadcrumbs.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/pagination.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/pager.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/labels.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/badges.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/jumbotron.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/thumbnails.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/alerts.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/progress-bars.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/media.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/list-group.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/panels.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/responsive-embed.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/wells.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/close.less"; // Components w/ JavaScript @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/modals.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/tooltip.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/popovers.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/carousel.less"; // Utility classes @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/utilities.less"; @import "../vendor/bootstrap/less/responsive-utilities.less"; Like any Bootstrap installation you can pick and choose which components you need by commenting out the ones you don't want, but the thing to note here is the import paths. All of them point to the vendor bootstrap files except for variables.less. This is because we want to edit variables.less without tampering with it in vendor, so we are going to copy it into our assets/less directory instead. You can do that now. Once you are done, run gulp again. It should compile everything into public/assets. Finishing Up We're basically done now. All that's left to do is link to your compiled assets to your master layout. Just don't forget that in Laravel 5 your views are now located in resources/views. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to leave them in the comments. Thanks for reading. This post was written for Laravel 5 pre-release. Since then I've written an updated post and created a Github Repository for using Elixer and setting up the project scaffolding automatically. http://ryankent.ca/starting-a-new-project-with-laravel-5-gulp-bower-and-bootstrap/3878ba3d-debe-4552-9c50-bf90d9f088efThu, 09 Oct 2014 17:19:36 GMT
Tuesday, November 8, 2016 Who to Be . . . or Not to Be Share it Please Revenge, jealousy, and mass death seem to be defining characteristics of many of Shakespeare's tragedies. But there is something else, something less gruesome, that his tragedies have in common: the hero is faced with the task of self identification. For example many of the characters in King Lear face this problem and even hide behind lies and even disguises in order to protect themselves from who they really are. King Lear seems to hide behind his title as a king, and thus, doesn't see how he can truly love his daughter. Edgar has to hide from his brother and father to save his own life instead of stand up for himself. I want to look more into this idea of identity (specifically how a character identifies himself) in Hamlet. I find it interesting that Hamlet begins with the theme of identity. Bernardo and Francisco trying to identify a each other: "Who's there?" "Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself." "Long live the king." "He." (1.1.1-5) The main focus of my paper, however, will be the character of Hamlet. From what I understand, there are a couple times when Hamlet is talking about himself and who he is and who he should become. Consider the famous line "to be or not to be, that is the question"where Hamlet is considering who he can become. There are also the contradictions about his character that Hamlet shares in a soliloquy.  "The fact that Hamlet is contrasting himself to Hercules, who display a symbol of intellectual and physical strength; he implies that he lacks self worth and self esteem" (UKessays). He has running through his mind the words of his father, "to thine own self be true." How is he going to decide what his "self" actually is. I am interested in the psychology behind Hamlet's search for defining himself. I am planning to look at how this defines how Hamlet, the hero, struggles with defining himself through self-esteem.  1. I thought this was a super interesting idea so I Googled "how does Hamlet self-identify?" and this articled pulled up. It mentions a really cool aspect of the play regarding identity--the audience has an advantage over the other characters because they get to hear Hamlet's soliloquies and asides, thus giving them better insights into his character and identity. (Starts about page 3). 2. I think it's a great idea to write your paper on Hamlet before we read it - that way you can annotate your book specifically with your paper in mind! Also, isn't the line "to be or not to be" refer to whether he should live or die and not who he's trying to become? Unless scholars have said otherwise...that's just my understanding of it. But I love Hamlet, and I'm excited to see where you take this. Good Luck! 3. I love the theme of identity and I had considered doing something similar! I think you could look at why they had to identify and he circumstances around it to help with the bigger picture! 4. I agree with Riley. However, I think that your title clearly distinguishes your focus as different from what most scholars have decided that line is talking about. But, "To be or not to be," questions existence in itself and Hamlet's potential suicide, and I do think that would be something that you'd need to address in your paper (especially if you keep that as your title).
On forcing out a party leader Today on Twitter, Ms. Funke linked to this article which describes how the British Columbia Social Credit Party caucus forced their leader (and at the time Premier) Bill Vander Zalm out in 1991. It is certainly true that even without formal guidelines or rules in place, a caucus can exert enough pressure to force a leader to resign, or at least agree to a leadership review at a party conference, but the process can be a lengthy, messy and often very public one which can end up being quite detrimental to the party in the long run. One only needs to think of the Chrétien-Martin divide which hurt the Liberal Party of Canada long after the fact, or the Blair-Brown divide which similarly plagued the UK Labour Party. The Vander Zalm case is, in fact, a good example of why specific rules would be a good idea. Because the party itself did not have a process in place to allow the caucus to trigger an internal leadership vote of confidence, the party members had to resort to using a parliamentary procedure to achieve what they could not: they planned to table a motion of non-confidence in their own government. Ultimately, the motion wasn’t needed as Vander Zalm was found guilty of violating conflict guidelines and stepped down voluntarily. There are a number of problems in using this example to prove that caucuses don’t really need formal rules to trigger for possible leadership change. First of all, simply put, I can’t help but think that this is a misuse of the Confidence Convention. The SoCreds were unhappy with their leader, not the fact that their party formed the Government. Confidence of the House is given to a Government; who heads that government is an internal matter for the governing party to decide. Related to this, this option is one that could only be used by a party that formed the government. Opposition parties cannot move want of confidence motions in the House against themselves or their own leader – they can only move want of confidence motions against a sitting government. Consequently, an opposition party unhappy with its leader can’t go this route. Another problem is that it isn’t necessarily guaranteed to result in a change of leadership. As I explained in my previous post, the tradition in Canada for governments which lose confidence votes is not to resign, but to seek dissolution and trigger a new election. In the article, it appears as if the Social Credit caucus kept the Lt.-Governor informed of what was transpiring, explaining that they planned to “withdraw majority support from Vander Zalm and delegate it to another of their number.” And apparently the Lt.-Governor agreed that he would ask Vander Zalm to resign rather than agree to a dissolution. But what if the Lt.-Governor had not agreed to listen to the caucus? What if the premier had decided to pre-empt his caucus and seek a dissolution and new election? To put it simply, the party should not have had to go this route; if they were unhappy with their leader, they should have simply been able to resolve that internally without resorting to moving a want of confidence motion in the Government. I am not a constitutional expert, but a lot of this sounds like involving the Crown in the internal machinations of a political party and that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. As per House of Commons Procedure and Practice, 2nd ed., “no act of the monarch (or Governor General as the monarch’s representative) is carried out without the formal advice and consent of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.” There is no mention of carrying out the advice of a party caucus. I will leave that issue to persons better qualified to comment on. Many critics of the Reform Act worry that an empowered caucus will lead to chaos, with party leaders being shown the door on a regular basis. Is this necessarily what happens? In Politics at the Centre: The Selection and Removal of Party Leaders in the Anglo Parliamentary Democracies, William Cross and André Blais compare leadership procedures in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. It is important to know that of these five countries, Canada is the outlier, the only one where political parties have no specific entrenched procedures available to caucuses to challenge their leader. Chapter 5 looks at how and why party leaders’ tenure in office ends. This normally occurs in one of three ways: the leader resigns (either voluntarily, or under pressure), they are forced from office, or either they, or their party, die.  Cross and Blais examined the departures of 110 leaders between January 1965 and January 2008 and found that most (76%, or 84 of 110) resign, and the majority of those who resign (59, or 54%), did so under pressure. It probably goes without saying that most of these leaders who resigned under pressure did so to avoid being forced out. (p. 97) What we are most interested in, however is how many leaders were actually forced from office. Over the 43-year period studied by Cross and Blais, only 17 leaders in those five countries were forced out: New Zealand 5, Australia 7, the UK 3, Ireland 1, and Canada 1. The Canadian case – John Diefenbaker, is the only one removed by “a process involving the extra-parliamentary party.” (p. 106) Additionally, it is important to note that most of these forced leadership changes occurred among opposition parties. During that same time frame, only 3 sitting Prime Ministers were forced out by their own caucus – Margaret Thatcher (1979-1991) in the UK, and Bob Hawke (1983-1991) and John Gorton (1968-71) in Australia. (p. 98) Thatcher had been in power since 1979, but by late 1990, the Conservatives had been trailing Labour for 18 months in the polls. These same polls showed that a change in leadership would give the Tories a lead over Labour. Bob Hawke’s popularity had been in decline from the late 80s, and while he led Labor to a narrow re-election in 1990, his party lost faith in his ability to counter the resurgent Liberal Party. John Gorton simply proved to be a poor choice for leader, and in his first general election as Prime Minister (1969), saw the Coalition’s 45-seat majority over Labor that he had inherited reduced to only a 7-seat majority. He was forced out as leader of the Liberal Party not long afterwards. These examples demonstrate two important points. First, the caucuses of parties that are in government aren’t likely to force a leader (and Prime Minister) out if the party is doing well in the polls. The three Prime Ministers forced to resign by their caucuses were forced out due to declining polls or poor election results. The second point is that it is parties in opposition which are more likely to force a leader out, and these are the parties which would not be able to use the want of confidence approach to leadership change described in the Vander Zalm piece or as postulated by Dale Smith. Of course, Cross and Blais’s research does not take into account the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd leadership spills of 2010-2013, but even by Australian practice as described in Politics at the Centre, that chapter was an anomaly. And as I stated in my earlier post, Labor has now changed its rules governing challenging a sitting leader; consequently, we will never seen anything like that occur again. I admit that I still don’t quite understand the arguments of those who insist that formal rules for triggering a leadership change aren’t at all needed. I think Canadian political parties would benefit from having formal rules in place. Is the process outlined in Chong’s Reform Act the best way to proceed, perhaps not. I am not comfortable with these rules being incorporated into the Elections Act; I think they should be adopted by parties and included in party constitutions. And I certainly fail to understand how anyone can insist that the confidence convention is a viable option for parties to effect leadership change. It isn’t, and even if it were, it would only work for a party in government. Parties in opposition would be left with no clear options. Hopefully this short international context I’ve provided will help calm a few fears. The process isn’t abused by political parties. It doesn’t result in political chaos. If anything, it might avoid it. Related Posts: Radical Centrist • Jim Stevenson Perhaps the fact of a secret ballot is a big plus in the Reform Act if it is not common practice for caucus ballots to be secret.
Funerary Vessel Date: 19th–20th century Geography: Ghana Culture: Akan peoples, Asante Medium: Terracotta Dimensions: Diam. 10 in. (25.4 cm) Classification: Ceramics-Containers Credit Line: Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Milton F. Rosenthal Gift, 1980 Accession Number: 1980.68 This graceful, spool-shaped vessel features an elaborately flaring lip counterbalanced by a flattened, ornately decorated body. It is an elegant example of the funerary pottery made by Akan women artists. The Akan peoples honor the deceased with accumulations of pottery vessels at spots in cemeteries called asensie, or "places of pots." These displays serve as points of remembrance for the living and facilitate communication with the deceased in the afterlife. Such pots may be more or less elaborate depending on the wealth and social standing of the person commemorated. Decoration ranges from the simple geometric designs of this vessel to raised figural ones evoking Akan proverbs that refer to the lineage of the deceased. While not created as receptacles for food, it is possible that simpler, more utilitarian examples may have been employed in the final meal that marked the end of the funerary rites.
Easter Rising 1916: Labor and the Irish independence struggle This article was reposted with kind permission from UE News. An unexpected commotion disrupted routine in a busy city center on an April morning one hundred years ago.  Armed men commandeered the main post office in a major city in the world’s most powerful empire. One of their leaders interrupted the musings and conversations of those going about their business by reading out a proclamation declaring an Irish Republic. The Easter Rising of 1916 was underway. Over the next several days, a handful of rebels battled British troops; the imperial might directed against Dublin smashed the city’s core into smoking ruins; and the rebellion’s visionary leaders faced firing squads, their bullet-ridden corpses dumped into lime pits. Over the next five years, much of the Irish nation united at the ballot box around the agenda of revolutionary independence; rebels constructed the infrastructure of a separatist government; guerrilla bands plagued imperial police and army; negotiations established a new political entity, the Irish Free State, which would eventually morph into a republic-more or less as proclaimed in 1916. Little of this could have been foreseen on Easter Monday, April 24. If a majority of the Irish population in 1916 could have been considered as nationalists, they adhered to the vision laid out by a century of Irish political leaders: home rule.  This meant an Irish parliament in Dublin governing a nation still linked to its bigger, prosperous, powerful neighbor, Britain.  Home rule, finally approved by the British Parliament, seemed almost a reality, stalled by the Great War then raging on the continent.  In 1916, some 200,000 Irishmen fought abroad in hopes of improving their political standing and furthering their political objectives (some against, but most for, home rule): Almost 200 times more Irish men responded to the call of Queen and Country than took up arms for the Republic that Easter Monday. Among the relative few who willingly risked their lives (and those of others) in the Easter Rising were men and women who regarded British imperial control over the island nation as the source of long festering ills, political, economic, social, and cultural. One rebel leader with an impressive record as a political activist and union organizer in three countries regarded independence as an indispensable first step in realizing a worker-run society.  Let’s destroy the British Empire’s subjugation of Ireland, he said.  But let’s also remove the power of the bosses who defraud, degrade, dismiss, and terrorize Irish working people. That the bosses might be Irish didn’t deter James Connolly from the goal of an Irish workers’ republic. “Ireland without its people is nothing to me,” wrote Connolly.  “The man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for ‘Ireland’ and can pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and suffering, the shame and degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland, aye wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women without burning to end it, is in my opinion a fraud and a liar in his heart.” Connolly was born in 1868 in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Like so many others of their generation, his parents left Ireland in hopes of improving their living conditions elsewhere.  Like so many of his generation, Connolly grew up in a neighborhood of desperately poor, low-waged immigrant workers. Burning with the desire to eliminate thecauses of poverty, Connolly threw himself into the labor movement. Living and working in Scotland, Connolly became an early member of the Independent Labour Party, forerunner to today’s British Labour Party.  And he was a union organizer. On what should have been his wedding day, he and his older brother led a strike in Dundee. From Scotland, Connolly moved to his parents’ native Ireland, becoming a founder of the Irish Socialist Republican Party. Like so many other workers, Connolly immigrated to the United States, and quickly linked up with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)-an organization whose pioneering industrial unionism prepared the way for UE and other CIO unions.  He organized dock workers in Philadelphia and machine workers in New Jersey. Returning to Ireland, Connolly worked tirelessly as an organizer and leader of the independent Irish Transport and General Workers Union.  He became a founder of the Irish Labour Party. His work took him north to Belfast.  In his American union organizing, Connolly worked to bring workers of different nationalities into the same union.  In the North of Ireland he combated orange bigotry and green bigotry to unite Catholic and Protestant workers in the same trade union.  For Connolly, solidarity could never be only a slogan. In Dublin in 1913-with sickening success-the city’s most powerful employer conspired with other bosses and the authorities to crush the labor movement, and the Irish Transport and General Workers Union in particular.  When police brutality terrorized both picket lines and working-class neighborhoods, Connolly helped organize a workers’ defense force.  Strikers armed themselves in what became known as the Irish Citizen Army. With World War I underway, Connolly and his union made their views clear. An enormous banner draped across the front of Liberty Hall, the headquarters building of the ITGWU, proclaimed-“We serve neither King nor Kaiser but Ireland.”  Irish people should struggle for the emancipation of the Irish working class, not kill and be killed for the phony claims of competing empires, Connolly and his comrades said. Connolly insisted that real independence for Ireland depended on the emancipation of the working class:  “If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle [site of British administration], unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain.  England will still rule you.  She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.” The cataclysmic events on the continent strengthened Connolly’s determination to strike for Irish independence, and thus liberate workers in Ireland and around the world by weakening the mighty British Empire.  He created a firm alliance between his Irish Citizen Army and the volunteer military companies organized by the clandestine Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). An oath-bound secret society, the IRB had spent decades planning war against the British government to achieve Irish independence.  The IRB was the invisible heart of Fenianism-a transnational movement uniting Irish people, mostly of the middle and lower classes, throughout the far-flung diaspora (and especially in the United States) and in Ireland itself in the effort for an independent republic. (In the late 1800s, Fenians briefly aligned with the most significant contemporary Irish social movement-the campaign for tenants’ rights and land reform. Michael Davitt, himself a former Fenian, developed pioneering tactics in non-violent, mass protests which would be studied by Mohandas Ghandi.) In 1916, old Fenians, like-minded revolutionaries of a new generation, rebel women of the Cumann na mBan, and now Connolly and the union men of the Citizen Army, jointly resolved to strike the long-awaited blow. They planned the details of the rising in secret.  Along with overseeing weapon procurement and details of troop deployment, the leaders crafted the Proclamation of the Republic to be read at the moment of revolt.  The influence of Connolly and radical labor can be seen in crucial passages of the Proclamation: “the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland”; equal rights to all citizens, including women; and a commitment to universal suffrage. (Connolly was a strong advocate of women’s rights, writing: “The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.”) Few countries-and not Britain-gave all adults the right to vote. On the morning of Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, 1,250 or so rebels seized key locations in Dublin and proclaimed an Irish republic. (A slightly larger number engaged in attacks on government barracks in a few other areas in the country.) Britain quickly rushed 16,000 troops to Dublin, assisted by about 1,000 armed police.  Gunboats in the Liffey River began shelling the city, pulverizing its core. After five days of fierce fighting, the rebels made unconditional surrender. Sixty-four had been killed in combat and an unknown number wounded. Two hundred and fifty-four civilians were killed, more than 2,000 wounded.  Both British and rebel forces killed civilians for refusal to obey orders.  In at least two documented instances, British troops shot civilians (fellow citizens of the United Kingdom) out of frustration and rage. The authorities arrested 3,430 men and 79 women. Courts marital quickly followed, issuing dozens of death sentences.  Sixteen rebels, including all seven signatories of the Proclamation, were taken out and shot between May 3 and 12.  James Connolly had been seriously injured in the fighting: gangrene ate at his leg after a bullet shattered an ankle.  British officers ordered the labor leader tied to a chair because he couldn’t stand before the firing squad. The imprisoned thousands turned their jails into schools for advanced studies in insurrection. They would emerge as the leadership of the next phase of the independence struggle. The Irish public had a mixed reaction to the Dublin rising, ranging from surprise to annoyance to sympathy. Ireland had long been part of the United Kingdom, and many young men were serving in British uniforms in the World War-factors which initially limited popular support for the rebellion and its conspiratorial origins.  But the severity of the British response (especially the shelling of Dublin and execution of the leaders), contrasted sharply with the heroism and vision of the rebels. The course of Irish politics became thoroughly transformed.  (In the words of the poet William Butler Yeats, “a terrible beauty was born.”) At the first parliamentary election following the World War, on Dec. 14, 1918, voters gave a landslide victory to candidates pledged to Irish independence.  Those candidates refused to take their seats in the British Parliament in London.  Instead, they assembled in Dublin on Jan. 21, 1919, constituted themselves as an Irish parliament-the Dáil Éireann-and adopted a Declaration of Independence.  Scholars, politicians, commentators, and activists continue to debate the meaning and legacy of Easter 1916, and especially in this centennial year.  The Republic of Ireland is sponsoring official commemorative events, as are political parties and groups in Ireland and throughout the vast diaspora. Controversy over how best to observe the centennial is inevitable because the three major political parties in the Republic have long distanced themselves from the explosive origins of the nation-state.  (Northern Ireland’s violence in the final three decades of the twentieth century, sometimes justified by the goal of an “Irish republic,” caused revulsion in the Republic of Ireland.) The legacies of the Easter Rebellion and the Irish Republic-like that of the American Revolution and American Republic-have been confounded and compromised by the relentless drive of a privileged few to expand their wealth and control of workers’ lives.  Struggles for freedom continue, as does the fight to realize Connolly’s vision: a working class organized and mobilized to win freedom from hunger, neglect, disrespect and exploitation wreaked by the bosses’ greed. Photo: James Connolly (1868-1916) organized workers in Ireland, Britain and the U.S. and was a principal leaders of the Easter Rising. After the rebellion was defeated, Connolly and other leaders were executed by a British firing squad.
, , , , , , , For materialists around the world it is almost taken for granted that everything from physics to biology, including the mind, ultimately comes down to four fundamental concepts: matter and energy interacting in an arena of space and time. But there are skeptics who suspect we may be missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. Since it was published in 2012, “Mind and Cosmos”, by the philosopher Thomas Nagel, is the book that has caused the most consternation. With his taunting subtitle — “Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False” — Dr. Nagel was rejecting the idea that there was nothing more to the universe than matter and physical forces. He also doubted that the laws of evolution, as currently conceived, could have produced something as remarkable as sentient life. That idea borders on anathema, and the book quickly met with a blistering counterattack. Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, denounced it as “the shoddy reasoning of a once-great thinker”. What makes “Mind and Cosmos” worth reading is that Dr. Nagel is an atheist, who rejects the creationist idea of an intelligent designer. The answers, he believes, may still be found through science, but only by expanding it further than it may be willing to go. Science, Dr. Nagel proposes, might require another revolution: showing that mind, along with matter and energy, is “a fundamental principle of nature” — and that we live in a universe primed “to generate beings capable of comprehending it”. Rather than being a blind series of random mutations and adaptations, evolution would have a direction, maybe even a purpose. “Above all”, he wrote, “I would like to extend the boundaries of what is not regarded as unthinkable, in light of how little we really understand about the world”. Dr. Nagel is not alone in entertaining such ideas. While rejecting anything mystical, the biologist Stuart Kauffman has suggested that Darwinian theory must somehow be expanded to explain the emergence of complex, intelligent creatures. And David J. Chalmers, a philosopher, has called on scientists to seriously consider “panpsychism” — the idea that some kind of consciousness, however rudimentary, pervades the stuff of the universe. (1) Harmonia Philosophica said it a long time ago: Consciousness will be the final frontier that will make science turn towards new ways of thinking. What is immaterial by nature cannot be explained via material models. Of course atheists will name it anyway they can in order to hide their intellectual defeat. But the point will be the same: God, in one form or another, is here. Among us. Call it “consciousness”, call it “panpsyhism”, call it “weird state of matter”. The result is the same. We are luminous beings. Bond by the Force… Errr… I meant by the “mind”…
Robots have come a long way—there are robots that make noodles, and drones are being used to investigate farming practices. Now there is the WP5 robotic pepper picker, which employs computer vision and other advanced technologies to autonomously pick ripe fruit, reports Singularity Hub. Thanks to a combination of cheap sensors and computer vision, robots are able to autonomously perform complex farming tasks including plowing, plant and soil surveillance, and even the harvesting of fruit and vegetables. Today, agricultural workers make up just over 2% of the workforce—but is the outright automation of farming on the horizon? Picking fruits and vegetables is hard work, and immigration issues aside, it’s often backbreaking and thankless for the people who do it. However, like so many other farming and growing chores, it’s necessary if you want to enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables. Although robots have long since become common fixtures in manufacturing industries, there were far too many variables to consider when harvesting fruits and veggies—until now. wp5_final_integrated_robot small  Photo: CROPS The WP5 has a long way to go before it’s a viable option, though. Picking time is still too long, and the cost of each robotic setup needs to be in line, as well. Researchers estimate that a sub-six-second pick time combined with pricing at or under €195,000 ($264,599) for a single robot that will hold up for at least five years is what will make this technology a viable option. Advanced robots are already making cow milking a breeze for smaller dairy farmers—as well as their cows. The New York Times reports that cows being milked robotically actually seem to be more relaxed than when humans were performing the chore. The cows also get a greater degree of autonomy, since they essentially milk themselves whenever they want. We’re unsure how we feel about the complete automation of farming. Job displacement is always a concern when talking about robots, and at this point, we’re conditioned to worry about the inevitable robot uprising. That being said, we believe humans, machines, and robots can all work hand in hand. [via Singularity Hub, CROPS]
Jepson eFlora: Taxon page Key to families | Table of families and genera Previous taxon Index to accepted names and synonyms: Next taxon Sphaeralcea emoryi var. emoryi Higher Taxonomy Family: MalvaceaeView DescriptionDichotomous Key Habit: Annual to tree; generally with stellate hairs, often with bristles or peltate scales; juice generally mucilage-like; bark fibrous. Leaf: generally cauline, alternate, petioled, simple [palmate-compound], generally palmate-lobed and/or veined, generally toothed, evergreen or not; stipules persistent or not. Inflorescence: head, spike, raceme, or panicle, in panicle or not (a compound panicle), or flowers >= 1 in leaf axils, or flowers generally 1 opposite a leaf or on a spur; bracts leaf-like or not; bractlets 0 or on flowering stalks, often closely subtending calyx, generally in involucel. Flower: generally bisexual, radial; sepals 5, generally fused at base, abutting in bud, larger in fruit or not, nectaries as tufts of glandular hairs at base; petals (0)5, free from each other but generally fused at base to, falling with filament tube, clawed or not; stamens 5--many, filaments fused for most of length into tube around style, staminodes 5, alternate stamens, or generally 0; pistil 1, ovary superior, stalked or generally not, chambers generally >= 5, styles or style branches, stigmas generally 1 or 1--2 × chamber number. Fruit: loculicidal capsule, [berry], or 5--many, disk- or wedge-shaped segments (= mericarps). Genera In Family: 266 genera, 4025 species: worldwide, especially warm regions; some cultivated (e.g., Abelmoschus okra; Alcea hollyhock; Gossypium cotton; Hibiscus hibiscus). Note: Recently treated to include Bombacaceae, Sterculiaceae, Tiliaceae. Mature fruit needed for identification; "outer edges" are surfaces between sides and back (abaxial surface) of segment. "Flower stalk" used instead of "pedicel," "peduncle," especially where both needed (i.e., when flowers both 1 in leaf axils and otherwise). eFlora Treatment Author: Steven R. Hill, except as noted Scientific Editor: Steven R. Hill, Thomas J. Rosatti. Genus: SphaeralceaView DescriptionDichotomous Key Habit: Annual, perennial herb, subshrub, canescent to stellate-hairy, with longer hairs or not. Leaf: petioled; blade lance-linear to triangular, entire to deeply dissected. Inflorescence: raceme-like (flowers clustered in bract axils) or panicle; bractlets (0)1--3, inconspicuous, generally deciduous, thread-like. Flower: petals obovate, white, lavender, pink, rose-pink, salmon- or red-orange, or apricot; filament tube hairs 0 or stellate, anthers generally +- yellow or +- purple; stigmas head-like. Fruit: segments 9--17, 1--2-seeded, below indehiscent, strongly net-veined, above dehiscent, smooth. Seed: gray, black, or brown. Species In Genus: +- 50 species: arid America. Etymology: (Greek: globe mallow, from fruit shape) Note: Polyploidy, intermediates common. eFlora Treatment Author: John C. La Duke Sphaeralcea emoryi Torr. ex A. Gray var. emoryi Habit: Subshrub, coarsely canescent. Stem: erect, < 21 dm. Leaf: blade 25--55 mm, ovate-triangular, 3- or 5-veined, gray-green, crenate, base cordate, tip +- truncate to acute; lobes 3. Inflorescence: raceme-like below, dense panicle above. Flower: calyx 6--8 mm; petals 10--12 mm, red-orange to lavender; filament tube +- 6 mm, anthers yellow. Fruit: segments 10--16, 4.5--5 mm, 2.5 mm wide, truncate-conic, dehiscent part < 3 mm, +- 60% of segment. Seed: 1--2 per segment, brown or black. Chromosomes: 2n=20,30,50. Ecology: Fields, roadsides; Elevation: < 600 m. Bioregional Distribution: SCo, s PR, s DMoj, DSon; Distribution Outside California: Nevada, Arizona, Mexico. Flowering Time: Feb--Jul Note: Intergrades with Sphaeralcea angustifolia. Synonyms: Sphaeralcea emoryi var. arida (Rose) Kearney; Sphaeralcea emoryi var. variabilis (Cockerell) Kearney eFlora Treatment Author: John C. La Duke Jepson Online Interchange Previous taxon: Sphaeralcea coulteri Next taxon: Sphaeralcea grossulariifolia Name Search botanical illustration including Sphaeralcea emoryi var. emoryi Citation for this treatment: John C. La Duke 2017. Sphaeralcea emoryi var. emoryi, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=76116, accessed on April 25, 2017. Citation for the whole project: Jepson Flora Project (eds.) 2017. Jepson eFlora, http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/, accessed on April 25, 2017. Geographic subdivisions for Sphaeralcea emoryi var. emoryi: SCo, s PR, s DMoj, DSon; Markers link to CCH specimen records. Yellow markers indicate records that may provide evidence for eFlora range revision or may have georeferencing or identification issues. Purple markers indicate specimens collected from a garden, greenhouse, or other non-wild location. map of distribution 1 View elevation by latitude chart Data provided by the participants of the Consortium of California Herbaria. View all CCH records CCH collections by month Duplicates counted once; synonyms included. Species do not include records of infraspecific taxa. Blue line denotes eFlora flowering time.
Your Position: HomeChina GuideChinese Culture Chinese Crafts,Souvenirs and Products Chinese Crafts,Souvenirs and Products Chinese Crafts,Souvenirs and Products China is a country with abundant tourist resources and offers countless tourist crafts and characteristic souvenirs that remind one of its long history, profound culture and traditions of its people. As for Chinese souvenirs, there are exquisite handicrafts, such as jade, porcelain, cloisonné, paper-cut, filigree, carpets, lanterns, fans, ivory carvings, satin or silk flowers, animals, birds and flowers made of colored glass, figurines of painted clay, etc, and many other quality products such as jewelry, calligraphy and painting, Chinese brushes, inkstones, inkslabs, tea, liquor and Chinese medicine.  Top Topics Chinese Kung Fu Far and wide known as Kungfu (功夫) all over the world, Chinese martial art is also called Wugong (武功) or Wushu (武术) at home by Chinese people. It can be seen as an art of attack and defense in which a series of skills and trick are highly emphasize... Chinese Tea Being a vivid Chinese cultural specialty as well as Kungfu and traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese tea has been being developed in China for a long time accompanied with which a series of tea culture took shape. Widely known in Chinese history as a...
How to conserve water at home water-conservationIf you know how to conserve water at home, at least, conserving water can lower water bills. What’s more, it doesn’t help you lower water bills but also lower energy bills, which means there is more money in your pocket. The following water conservation tips can help you how to conserve water at home. They are practical and benefit. Wash Dishes With Less Water or Use a Dishwasher If you don’t have a dishwasher, you can rinse only the region which contacts food, or you can stagger the washed tableware on the drain board or in another sink and pour a small amount of water over them. Rinsing each washed tableware after washing or keeping the water running during rinsing will waste much water. You also can reduce water use by reducing water level of your sink by 1 or 2 inch every time. If you think a dishwasher can help you save more water, you may not know it is not always the case. You may use it once or twice a week, but if you prefer to handwash pans and pots, you are using the best water conservation methods of washing dishes. If you are used to using a dishwasher, first scrape off food residue and use a shorter wash cycle. This can help to save water. A shorter cycle also reduces the use of energy. Trying the econo dry setting will maximize energy savings on electricity. Lower Washer Water Level or Use a high efficiency frontload Washer If your washer is toploading, lowering washer water level can conserve water and a shorter cycle can save energy. You also can replace the toploading washer with a high efficiency frontload washer that consumes less water and energy. If possible, we can combine short loads to reduce washing cycles, use shorter cycles make stains pretreated to save water and energy. Install a Water Saver Shower Head Every day we need to take a shower. A water saver shower head can provide a moderate water pressure which is enough for a shower. Some models also have a stop function which allows you to stop it while you are lathering. This type of water filters doesn’t change your hot/cold settings, but only the water flow. Choose a Low Water or Dual Flush Toilet When you are choosing the flush toilet, choosing a low water or dual one can save much water and avoid frustration with insufficient water levels to affect a good flush. You’d better choose a dual flush toilet which allows you to choose the water level each time, which can conserve enormous water in the long run. Banish the Bucket and Use a Steam Mop If your hard-surfaced floors are sealed, you can use a steam mop instead of a water bucket. A steam mop only consumes a little water (no more than a cup of water sometimes) to generate steam to clean floors. It is convenient to use and don’t contain any chemicals or scents. Shorten the Shower or Lower the Tub Water Level Your kids will not pay attention to the water level in the bathtub and they just like the bubbles and toys, so you can lower the tub water level to save water. Also if you take a shorter shower, a lot of water can be saved. When your family are used to a shorter shower, there will be a great decrease in your water bill and electric bill if you use an electric water heater. Also a smaller water heater may adequately meet your requirements, helping water conservation. Choosing the Proper Size Cooking Pot If you use a large pot to boil pasta or potatoes, you may need to fill the pot with much more water. The right decision is to use a sufficient mid-sized cookware and you don’t need to fill much water to boil. Another benefit is that the pot will heat up quickly, reducing energy consuming. Covering the spot can prevent water evaporation from escaping, speeding up the cooking time. Install a Rain Barrel Outside If you use a rain barren to collect rain water in rainy day, you are wise. The rain water collected can be used to water plants in the garden. It is totally free. There are many rain barrels on the market, different from sizes and shapes. You can install one outside. Recycle Water and Use Less in the Kitchen Don’t discard the waste water in the kitchen. If the water is hot, first cool it. Your plants will love the waste water due to its composting qualities. When cleaning vegetables and fruits, fill a medium bowl with water and wash them in it rather than running water. You can use waste water to water your plant. Best Office Water Coolers Reviews Why do you need a office water cooler? Office water coolers are very important to employees and employers. You may think employees are prone to gather around the cooler so that they can shirk their duties in the office. However, you are wrong. The fact is that if the offices have a water cooler, employees are prone to perform their duties for a longer time than those offices that don’t have a water cooler. Generally, it is not recommended to drink water from the tap or public fountains due to the fact that there are plenty of pollutants which are released into the water and in order to purify water some chemicals are also added to water. Employees would like to drink fresh, filtered cold water from a water cooler than buying a soda from the vending machine. Evidence shows that drinking soda and other drinks from the vending machine may lead to a sugar crash and burn. Now, more and more people have realized the importance of drinking water. Running a water cooler in the office is much cheaper than powering a vending machine and the staffs can drink hot or cold water as they want it. Drinking clean and healthy water can keep the employees hydrated throughout the day, which can speed up the metabolism and make them feel energized all the time during the day. If people drink more water, they are prone to eat less, which is helpful to eliminate several times to go to the vending machine and take breaks to eat snacks. Evidence shows that brain activity can be increased if people drink water at regular intervals. Having an office water cooler means that employees can access the clean water easily, making them do their jobs effectively and efficiently. If employees need to speak over the phone or in person often, drinking water can keep them from getting a dry mouth so that they can work effectively. Best Office Water Coolers There are many office water coolers on the market. Which is the best one? Our reviews can help you choose the right one for your office. Stainless Steel BottleLess Water Purification Cooler If you have a big office, this model is the best choice. As a commercial quality bottled less water cooler, it both has a stainless steel internal hot and cold water reservoirs. It also features a very beautiful, stainless steel cabinet. The filter has a 1,200-gallon capacity and is not difficult to replace. 1,200 gallons are equal to 240 5-Gal bottled water. It is designed to be maintenance-free and the only thing you need to do is to change the filter. Installation kit is also included. Although the price is a little high, the high average rating shows that it is really a perfect one. Top-Loading Bottled Water Cooler This model can dispense hot or ice cold water with its 2.0 compressor cooling system. The stainless steel reservoir can ensure the taste and reliability. The push-button control is on the top, which is very convenient to push. One reviewer after looking for a water dispenser for a long time he found this model. He couldn’t wait to buy it because it looks great with his black kitchen appliances and his family don’t need to waiting for the delivery guy and his kids are prone to drink more water than before. It is really a wonderful purchase for his family. Avanti Energy Saver Water Dispenser If you are trying to find the best one in the lower-end price range, this Avanti Energy Saver Water Dispenser is the ideal choice. This model is very quiet while working. It also has the energy star feature. The cold water is perfectly chilly, making it suitable for those people who love to drink cold water in summer. The bottom is not a mini-frig, just for storing so drinks in it. As one of the bestselling one, it is very popular and many people have purchased it as their home office water cooler. Clover B7A Hot and Cold Water Dispenser With Adjustable Cold Water Thermostat This model is able to offer hot water for beverages or instant soups or cold water for drink. It has a solid construction, so it is durable. The thermostat control can make the temperature as cold as you like. The hot water is nearly 185°F. It allows you to enjoy pure chilled water at any time and also you can enjoy the hot water at any time. It requires little maintenance. The only thing you need to do is to remove the one piece ABS drip tray to clean it occasionally. Avanti Products WD31EC Tabletop Thermoelectric Water Cooler, Fits 2, 3 & 5-Gal. Bottles If you just need a countertop one, this Avanti Products WD31EC can satisfy your needs. Both cold and hot water can be provided. The design is lightweight but durable. It also features full led display for all functions. It can hold 2, 3, or 5-gal bottles. It is small, which can save much space and make it ideal for small offices. Water is Important for Health Our body cannot live without water, because we need water to regulate our body temperature and transport nutrients to our tissues and organs. For example, water is helpful to transport oxygen to our cells and remove waste, protecting our organs and joints. How to avoid Dehydration Dehydration happens if you the water you lose is more than the water you take in. Our body is losing water all the time through respiration, urination and by sweating. The more active you are, the more water you’ll lose. If you are sedentary, you’ll lose less water than when you are active. Some medications (like caffeine pills) and alcohol may contain diuretics that can increase the amount of water the body loses. The lost water must be replaced by water in our foods and beverages we drink every day. Many symptoms can imply the mild dehydration. For example, if you feel thirsty, obviously you must drink some water. Other symptoms, such as pains in muscles and joints, constipation and headaches, may mean the mild dehydration. If you smell a strong odor in your urine along with an amber or yellow color, it may indicate dehydration. Of course, the color of your urine is not the right indicator of dehydration, because some medicine may make your urine yellow. For example, Riboflavin (known as B2 vitamin) can make your urine yellow if you take it. How Much Water Do We Need? We can take in water by eating foods or drinking beverages. Generally, we can get 20% of water in our foods. The 80% of water is from the beverages we drink. Therefore, drinking enough water every day is very important to our health. How much water do we need every day? One simple way is that you can take your weight in pounds and divide the weight number in half. This method can give you approximately the number of ounces of water you need to drink every day. For example, if you weigh 180 pounds, you need to take in 90 ounces of water or other fluids every day. 4 ways to keep Dehydration Water is definitely the best choice for hydration, because it is pure without any calories and added ingredients and it is cheap. I don’t recommend drinking sodas and other sweetened soft drinks, because they contain sugar which may increase your weight if you keep drinking them for a long time. Sport drinks may be another choice, because they can keep your electrolytes in balance. This is good for recovering after a hard workout. However, they also contain added sugar and calories that you may not want. Many people like drinking fruit and vegetable juices, because they have minerals and vitamins. However, before buying them, read the labels and don’t choose ones high in sodium. Caffeinated beverages, such as coffee, tea can be another choice. However, they contain caffeine which may make you feel jittery. Therefore, don’t drink them too much every day. We can drink tap water, filtered water (ro water), or distilled water. Several Ways to Make Pure Water How to make Pure Water Drinking-WaterEven without a water distiller, you can easily obtain 20-100ml distilled water. However, if you would like to drink distilled water at home, you should know how to make distilled water at home. Using a home water distiller to make distilled water is the best choice. It can provide you with at least 4 gallon water a day. However, if you want plenty of liters pure water everyday, a water distiller cannot satisfy your needs. How to make pure water? In fact, there are many ways to purify water and get pure water. These methods are competing against each other, such as distillation. Reverse Osmosis, and deionization. We will discuss these methods in this post. Reverse Osmosis water filtration System Reverse Osmosis water filtration systems use the semi-permeable membrane to filter water. The semi-permeable membrane only allows the clean water to pass through, while the dissolved salts are left. The speed of purification is due to the rate of diffusion. Normally, to balance the solute concentration, water flows through the membrane from the area of low solute concentration to the area of high solute concentration. The pressure is called an osmotic pressure. Reverse Osmosis is just the opposite, which can apply the pressure to reverse the natural flow of solvent. The Reverse Osmosis technology is widely used to pure water, even the sea water. At home, we can use a reverse osmosis water filtration system to purify the water from the tap and get pure water to drink, cook, wash and even water our plants in the garden. The speed of water treatment is faster than other water treatment systems. Deionization of water If you want to get deionized water at home, you should buy a water deionizer to do the job for you. How does a water deionizer work? Typically a water deionizer consists of 2 columns. Both the 2 columns are filled with grains of ion-exchange resins. At first, the hydrogen ions will be exchanged against the cations of salts and then anions will be replaced by the hydroxyl group. Finally the water doen’t contain any ions, so we call the water deionized water. Distillation of water Distillation is an old technology for water purification. And it happens anytime and anywhere on the earth. In fact, the rain is caused by distillation. Recently, solar distillers are widely used to distill sea water. As we know, there is no more than 2% water on the earth we can use directly. The water shortage has become more and more serious, so we must purify sea water to get fresh water to use. Solar distillers can be used to distill sea water. Most solar distillers are constructed in the dry areas (in the deserts), because we can take a good use of the sun. A large tray-pool is used to hold salt water. Packets are used to collect the distilled water and a transparent roof made of plastic film or glass is used to retain the rising hot air. The outside of the roof is cooled by the cold sea water, and then the water vapor is condensed into liquid water, then water flows down on the inner surface of the transparent roof, finally the water is stored in pockets. Add healthy minerals to the distilled water You can use distilled water to wash and you can drink it. Distilled water is ideal for cooking tea or making coffee, because it doesn’t destroy the flavor of the coffee or tea. However, drinking distilled water all the time is not correct. In fact, distilled water is prone to absorb CO2 in the air and finally the PH of distilled water will be below 7, a little acid actually. We all know drinking alkaline ionized water is heathy to us. If you drink distilled water for a long time, your body will be harmed. Therefore, it is a good idea to add some salts to the distilled water. These salts contain many healthy minerals for our body. Do you really need a whole house reverse osmosis system? Recently, some people asked me if a whole house reverse osmosis system is effective. My short answer is “yes”. However, this doesn’t mean it is great for anyone. In this post, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of whole house RO systems and I hope this can help you make a wise decision on whether to buy it or not. What is reverse osmosis? First, you should know your water quality, because it varies largely from municipal water to surface water to well water. A whole house RO filter is capable of removing sulfur, iron, tannin, manganese and other contaminates which are normally found in the well water. Reverse osmosis process can remove the largest spectrum of contaminants in the most economical way. Up to 98% of most contaminants can be removed. These contaminants include TDS, chloride, nitrate, arsenic, sodium, tannin, sulfur, manganese and other nuisance elements. Generally, such a system uses several stages water filters to do the job. And before RO process, oxidation of these contaminants is removed. If your water is so hard, first you should use an anti-scalant to soft the hard water, which can extend the life of the membranes by preventing hard water build-up on the membranes. Anti-scalant systems are economical and effective, because no water is wasted and no salt is needed to add. Well, who really need such a whole house system? More and more people nowadays have realized the importance of the water quality. And the water quality, in fact, is very poor. Even the tap water which has been purified by water supply companies is polluted again and always contains many pollutants, which are real threats to your health if you keep on drinking the contaminated water every day. For people who concern their health and people who are sensitive to chemicals in the water, such a whole house RO filtration system is needed. The USEPA recommends that water below 500 PPM is suitable for drinking. However, we often see water which has TDS levels over 2,000 PPM. If you need water to flush your toilet, the quality is not so important. On the other hand, if you need to wash clothes and dishes, drink, cook, bath, shaving and shampooing, the water should be super clean. A RO system can do the work for you. In the old days, the water quality was good, people used to drink well water, bathe in rainwater. However, with the development of industry and population expansion, the water source has been polluted. You cannot stand underneath like old days to enjoy a good shower, because even the rain water also contains various chemicals which are harmful to your skin. If you want to drink healthy water, take a clean shower and cook with clean water, you really need a whole house reverse osmosis system to help you remove contaminants. In fact, it is not ecumenical to install separate water filters for any of your faucet or shower head. Page 50 of 55« First...102030...4849505152...Last »
Discover the meanings of thousands of Biblical names in Abarim Publications' Biblical Name Vault Jogli meaning Source: http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Jogli.html 🔼The name Jogli in the Bible The name Jogli occurs only once in the Bible. He is the father of Bukki, a Danite, who was among the officials who were appointed to divide Canaan among the tribes. It appears that YHWH Himself called these men to this office by their names (Numbers 34:22). 🔼Etymology of the name Jogli The name Jogli is a future form (and Hebrew future forms generally correlate to present tenses in English) of the verb גלה (gala), meaning to uncover, remove or go into exile: 🔼Jogli meaning For a meaning of the name Jogli, NOBSE Study Bible Name List reads Exiled. Jones' Dictionary of Old Testament Proper Names proposes Led Into Exile, and BDB Theological Dictionary confirms this interpretation, albeit with BDB's signature question mark.
Page 1 of 1 Bash Scripting - Using Conditional Statements how to use statements such as if in your scripts Rate Topic: ----- #1 Anarion  Icon User is offline • The Persian Coder • member icon Reputation: 387 • View blog • Posts: 1,662 • Joined: 16-May 09 Post icon  Posted 25 November 2009 - 12:05 PM In this tutorial we are going to learn about conditionals and using them in Bash Scripts to control things. However, you have to have a good understanding about using variables and writing simple bash scripts (Covered in previous sections). OK, now to the conditionals... What do they do? They let you decide whether to perform an action or not, this decision is taken by evaluating an expression. [if statements] Conditionals have many forms. The most basic form is: if expression then statement where 'statement' is only executed if 'expression' evaluates to true. For example, '2<1' is an expresion that evaluates to false, while '2>1' evaluates to true. Conditionals have other forms such as: if expression then statement1 else statement2. Here 'statement1' is executed if 'expression' is true,otherwise 'statement2' is executed. Yet another form of conditionals is: if expression1 then statement1 else if expression2 then statement2 else statement3. In this form there's added only the "ELSE IF 'expression2' THEN 'statement2'" which makes statement2 being executed if expression2 evaluates to true. OK, now to the syntax used in Bash: if [ expression ]; #code goes here to be executed if expression is true The syntax is quite easy to understand, except the "="... if you worked with other languages, you use "==" to check equality, but this is BASH! it's syntax is a little different. OK, here's a very simple script to practice an "if...else" condition: #don't forget the space after '[' and also before ']' !!! if [ $STR1 = $STR2 ]; then echo "$STR1 is equal to $STR2" echo "$STR1 is not equal to $STR2" It's a very stupid example :D but just for practice... the output will be "astring is not equal to anotherstring" as you know :) Now let me tell you something! all that "[ expression ]" thing is a command in Linux! did you know? it is called "test". Check out it's man page to learn more about it and the conditions you can use inside it. [for loops] The for loop is really simple, come on! have a look: #remember about the note we learned in previous tutorial about $(command) ? for i in $(seq 1 10); do echo $i don't panic! here's the explanation: in the first line of the loop, it tells that i is looped through 1 to 10, then we used a simple echo command inside the loop to print the value of i. It's quite simple :) [while loops] while loops are another type of conditional statements that might come handy. Here's an example of the usage: while [ $counter -le 10 ]; do echo $counter let counter+=1 *Note* this line is simple too! don't panic. it just lets us change the value of counter variable, we have to update it in order to continue the loop as we wanted. It just increases the value of counter by one. here comes the last part: [until loops] until loops are another type of conditional loops to perform in bash scripts. The syntax is simply as follows: until [ $counter -gt 10 ]; do echo $counter let counter+=1 Basically, the loop continues until counter gets bigger than 10. Now it's time to fulfill my oath to you! In previous tutorial, I promised to teach a simple way to know if a user has root privileges or not. Here's the script which uses an if statement and an environment variable (a variable controlled by OS and available in all scripts): if [ $EUID -ne 0 ]; then echo "You don't have root privileges..." exit 1 *Note: we check the environmental variable "EUID" which is set by system to see if it is equal to 0, if false, then the user doesn't have root privileges. And the "exit 1" line tells the script is completed without success... use 0 for success. This was the tutorial about using conditional statements and loops in Bash Scripts. Hope it was helpful for you :) Is This A Good Question/Topic? 0 • + Page 1 of 1
*Why have so many Third World countries remained impoverished and underdeveloped even after gaining their independence from the European nations which had conquered and colonized them? This is the basic question addressed by The End of Poverty, an incendiary expose’ directed by Philippe Diaz. In essence, this damning documentary is a history lesson about the ugly underbelly of Western Civilization from 1492 up to the present. For not long after Columbus “discovered” America, European countries began descending on the so-called New World, using both the bullet and the Bible to bend assorted indigenous peoples to their will. The Dutch focused primarily on Asia while the English assured themselves that the sun would never set on the ever-expanding British Empire. Even the Pope got into the act, awarding Africa to Portugal and South America to Spain by papal decree. The basic thesis of the luminaries lending their insights to this thought-provoking project is that for 500+ years, white people have extracted the resources and oppressed the natives living in lands located in the planet’s Southern hemisphere. And that unfair economic relationship never changed substantially at the end of the era of colonization, since in most countries a handful of families continued to own the bulk of the business interests and the majority of productive real estate. Former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson indicts that Agency for serving as the private army of a succession of American presidents. He specifically alleges that the CIA was behind the assassination of a long list of populist leaders, like Lumumba in the Congo, Arbenz in Guatemala, Roldos in Ecuador, Torrijos in Panama, Qasim in Iraq and Mossadek in Iran. Similarly, John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” owns up to his role in the overthrow of numerous Third World rulers in order to replace them with corrupt puppets handpicked by the U.S. The situation has degenerated to the point where over a billion people around the world are currently trying to survive on less than a dollar a day, and their prospects are only getting worse, given that the ownership of natural resources has become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. In concluding, the picture suggests that this imbalance can only be corrected if the poor rise up and insist on reforms like the nationalization of land, mineral and water rights, and the taxation of the $11.5 trillion hidden by the rich in offshore accounts. Solutions seemingly incompatible with capitalism, an economic system dependent on escalating expansionism and the incessant exploitation of cheap labor. So, why does poverty persist in the midst of unparalleled wealth? In a word, greed! Excellent (4 stars) In English, Spanish, Portuguese and French with subtitles. Running time: 106 minutes Studio: Cinema Libre Studio To see a trailer for The End of Poverty, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBkiPFmTHMM Film Review by Kam Williams
Portfolio > Hotmaths Games Hotmaths commissioned Gamelearn to produce 22 targeted maths games to support their online maths materials. Each game covers a specific maths topic for the Australian Upper Primary curriculum. They are designed as a means for students to practise and compete at a level tailored to their skill level. Our Role Gamelearn concepted, designed and developed all games from start to finish including the production of all graphics and animation. From a detailed outline of each topic, provided by Hotmaths, Gamelearn was given the freedom to design a game to reinforce the key concepts. Our main aim during this process was to ensure that the educational aspects of the game were the primary focus and integrated into the game in such a way that mastery of the concepts meant mastery of the game. Take charge of a bumbling farmer locked in a desperate struggle to sort his sheep into the correct order and restore sanity to the flock. You must move quickly! A sheep out of position will quickly become distressed and seek revenge. Play Flocker Now! Popup Paintbook Open a vibrant popup book filled with cheese, clowns, animated ferris wheels and a giant book worm. Paint the shapes using different colours to recreate the desired fractions. Each page introduced a new, unique challenge. Play Popup Paintbook Now! • Flash Actionscript and Animation
Glossary of Terms : Here are the most commonly used terms and acronyms in alphabetical order. To find a particular term, use your browser's Find (Ctrl+F) command. - A • Absolute white - an ideal material that totally reflects all the light at every wavelength in the visible region. In practice, a white material that reflects most of the incident light equally across the visible region. When calibrating a spectrophotometer, often a white ceramic plaque is measured and used as the absolute white reference. • Absorption - when molecules of a material are exposed to light having an energy that matches a possible electronic transition within the molecule, some of the light energy will be absorbed as the electrons are promoted to a higher energy levels. The absorption of light makes an object dark or opaque. When light of certain wavelength is absorbed, the remaining (transmitted) light will then assume the complementary color to the wavelengths absorbed. • Adapted white - color stimulus that an observer who is adapted to the viewing environment would judge to be perfectly achromatic (perfect white diffuser). The adapted white may vary within a scene - see color temperature. • Adopted white - spectral radiance distribution as seen by a measurement device and converted to color signals that are considered to be perfectly achromatic. Such conversion is arbitrary and thus adopted white is result of our definition (e.g., D50 illuminant). - B • Black - an ideal material that totally absorbs the incident light; the absence of any reflection. In practice, any color of very low saturation and very low luminance. • Brightness - the attribute of visual perception in accordance with which an area appears to emit or reflect more or less light regardless of hue or saturation. - C • Calibration - the process of adjusting the performance of input, display, and output devices to a known state. • Characterization - the process of describing and defining the unique reproduction capabilities of a device. • Chromaticity coordinates (CIE) - The ratios of each of the three tristimulus values X, Y and Z in relation to the sum of the three - designated as x, y and z respectively. • Chromaticity diagram (CIE) - a two-dimensional graph of the chromaticity coordinates (x as the abscissa and y as the ordinate), which shows the spectrum locus of the visible light (chromaticity coordinates of monochromatic light, 380-770nm). • CIE - French name Commission internationale de l'éclairage is the international authority on light, color, and color spaces. • CIELAB (or CIE L*a*b*, CIE Lab) - color space in which values L*, a*, and b* are plotted orthogonally to one another to form a three-dimensional coordinate system. Equal distances in the space approximately represent equal color differences. Value L* represents Lightness; value a* represents the Magenta/Green axis; and value b* represents the yellow/blue axis. CIELAB system was recommended for common use by CIE in 1976. • CIE Standard Illuminants - known spectral data established by the CIE for different types of light sources. When using tristimulus data to describe a color, the illuminant must also be defined. These standard illuminants are used in place of actual measurements of the light source. • CIE Standard Observer - a hypothetical average observer matching the tristimulus color-mixture data recommended in 1931 by the CIE for a 2� viewing angle. A supplementary observer for a larger angle of 10� was adopted in 1964. If not specified, the 2� Standard Observer should be assumed. If the field of view is larger than 4�, the 10� Standard Observer should be used. • CIE Tristimulus Values - amounts of the three components necessary in a three-color additive mixture model to match any color (designated as X, Y, and Z). • Color difference - a color difference space is a 3-D space with approximately uniform visual spacing in terms of color difference judgments. In color tolerancing, the symbol ΔE (DE) is used to express the difference in between two colors. The letter "E" does not refer to an "Error", but its meaning comes from the German word empfindung (difference in sensation). There are several equations leading to different flavors of for color differences. In general, the color difference calculated as the square root of the combined squares of the lightness, chroma, and hue. A difference of 1 ΔE is used as a threshold of what is perceptible to the human eye (a just-noticeable difference). • Color Matching Functions - Tables of values determining how much of each of the R,G,B primaries are needed to match colors of a reference spectrum. These results in form of graphs are called the color-matching functions. The interpretation of these graphs is that they show how much of each primary (the tristimulus value) is needed to match unit of intensity of a single wavelength of light. The term is generally used to refer to the CIE Standard Observer color matching functions designated. • Color Space - a mathematical model with a three-dimensional geometric representation of the colors that can be seen and/or generated using a certain color model. Colorimetric color spaces have an exact and simple relationship to CIE colorimetric values. Colorimetric color spaces include those defined by CIE (e.g., CIE XYZ, CIELAB, CIELUV, etc.), as well as color spaces that are simple transformations of those color spaces (e.g., additive RGB color spaces). • Color Management System (CMS) - a software system that ensures color consistency and repeatability across all devices in a production workflow. • Colorimeter - an optical measurement instrument that responds to color in a manner similar to the human eye-by filtering reflected or emitted light into its dominant regions of red, green, and blue. • Color temperature - chromaticity of the light emitted over a range of temperatures perceived as a "white" (bluish, yellowish or reddish). Perceived "white" color is commonly referred to as the color temperature of the black body. - D • D50 -the CIE Standard Illuminant that represents a color temperature of 5000K. This is the color temperature that is most widely used in graphic arts industry viewing booths. • D65 - The CIE standard illuminant that represents a color temperature of 6504K. • Daylight illuminants (CIE) - series of illuminant spectral power distribution curves based on measurements of natural daylight and recommended by the CIE in 1965. Values are defined for the wavelength region 300 to 830 nm. They are described in terms of the correlated color temperature. • Device-dependent - describes a color space that can be defined only by using information on the color-rendering capabilities of a specific device. For example, the RGB color space must be generated by a monitor, scanner, and printer - devices which have specific capabilities and limitations for achieving its gamut of colors. • Device-Independent - describes a color space that can be defined using the full gamut of human vision, as defined by a standard observer. It is independent of the color-rendering capabilities of any specific device. • Device Profile - device-specific color information that characterizes a device's color rendering capabilities. Monitor profiles, scanner profiles, and printer profiles are utilized in a color management system to help the devices communicate color information with each other. Profiles are created by process of profiling. • Dynamic Range - the range of tones a device is capable of measuring, sensing, or rendering from the lowest amount it can detect to the highest amount it can handle. - G • Gamma - a number representing the power coefficient in the general formula: Y = inputgamma + constant. It relates the luminance output to the input values. A gamma of 1.0 represents a linear device. Gamma is associated with contrast because increasing the gamma increases the contrast in shadows and midtones. • Gamma curve - a plotted curve representing the relationship between input and output tonal values for a device. Gamma correction (described by the gamma curve) is normally used in the context of displays, and is performed in part to correct for the nonlinear light-output versus signal input characteristic inherent to CRT displays. The relationship between the light input level and the output signal level, called the optoelectronic transfer function (OETF), provides the correction curve for an image capture device. The gamma correction is usually an algorithm, lookup table, or circuit which operates separately on each color component of an image. • Gamut - the range of colors that can be interpreted by a color model or generated by a specific device. Color gamuts are device-specific. • Gamut Mapping - converting the coordinates of two or more color spaces into a common color space. Often results in tonal range compression. • Gray balance - the balance between primary colors required to produce neutral grays with no color bias. • Grayscale - a tonal scale that represents the lightest white to the blackest black, with intermediate shades of gray in between. A grayscale is used as a guide to ensure proper calibration and unbiased color balance settings. - H • Hue - the attribute of color by which we distinguish red from green, blue from yellow, etc. Munsell defined five principal hues (red, yellow, green, blue and purple) and five intermediate hues (yellow red, green-yellow, blue-green, purple-blue and red-purple. These 10 hues (represented by their corresponding initials R, YR, Y, GY, G, BG, B, PB, P and RP) are equally spaced around a circle divided into 100 equal visual steps, with the zero point located at the beginning of the red sector. Adjacent colors in this circle may be mixed to obtain continuous variation from one hue to another. - I • ICC profile - set of colorimetric values and transforms from one color encoding to another, e.g. from device color coordinates to profile connection space, prepared in accordance with ICC standards. • Illuminant - incident luminous energy specified by its spectral distribution. - J • Just-Noticeable Difference (JND) - attribute JND is a measure of detectability of appearance changes, whereas the quality JND is a measure of significance or importance of stimulus differences in terms of their impact on quality. An attribute JND is a useful unit for predicting how observers would react to an images carefully matched in all respects but one, and drawing the attention of the observer to the attribute varying. - L • Lightness - the attribute of visual perception in accordance with which an area appears to emit or reflect more or less light. Also refers to the perception by which white objects are distinguished from gray objects and light-from dark-colored objects. L* is a lightness metric defined in both the CIELAB and CIELUV color spaces. The lightness is calculated using the cube root of the relative luminance. • Linear device - a device in which input values produce equivalent output values across the entire tonal range. Most devices are non-linear and require some correction to make them linear. • Luminance - refers to the measurable aspect of perceived brightness. Typically expressed as Y that is proportional to absolute brightness. Unit is cd/m2 (older unit nit). The CIEXYZ color system was designed so that Y component was a measure of the brightness or luminance. An increase in luminance is usually perceived as an increase in brightness. The relationship, however, is not linear. Doubling luminance will not necessarily double perceived brightness. - P • Phosphors - typically inorganic materials that emit light when irradiated by certain wavelengths of light radiation. • Profile - a file containing data which describes how a device interprets colors. - R • Rendering intent - a way of mapping color values from one device to another. ICC defines four rendering intents (absolute colorimetric, relative colorimetric, perceptual and saturation). • Reflectance - the percentage of light that is reflected from an object. - S • Saturation - the attribute of color perception that expresses the amount of departure from the neutral gray of the same lightness. Also referred to as chroma, vividness or purity of a color. • Spectral Data - The most complete description of the color of an object. Spectral data can be visually represented as a spectral curve. • Spectrophotometer - an instrument that measures the characteristics of light reflected from or transmitted through an object, which is interpreted as spectral data. - T • Tonal range - the range of visible tones in an image. • Tristimulus values (CIE) - percentages of the components in a three-color additive mixture necessary to match a color; in the CIE system, they are designated as X, Y and Z. The illuminant and standard observer color-matching functions used must be designated; if they are not, the assumption is made that the values are for the 1931 observer (2� field) and illuminant C. The values obtained depend on the method of integration used, the relationship of the nature of the sample and the instrument design used to measure the reflectance or transmittance. Tristimulus values are not, therefore, absolute values characteristic of a sample, but relative values dependent on the method used to obtain them. Approximations of CIE tristimulus values may be obtained from measurements made on a tristimulus colorimeter that gives measurements generally normalized to 100. These must then be normalized to equivalent CIE values. - W • White balance - the balance between R,G,B primaries required to produce neutral gray with no color bias. This section is reserved for comments and tips from other users. Last update : February 16, 2008
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that, in 2005, 133 million Americans suffered from at least one chronic disease. The magnitude of the effect of chronic diseases on society, both in terms of cost and quality of life, is often more than a statistic, affecting nearly all of us personally. The challenge to the healthcare industry is to find cost-effective ways to manage and treat chronic diseases and to deliver these solutions to all members of society by leveraging secure connected medical devices. Fig.1 — Electronic medical records allow storage, retrieval, and modification of records among multiple providers. Medical science has excelled in the effective treatment of acute or infectious diseases, but now society must focus on the challenges associated with the management and treatment of chronic diseases, and how to leverage advanced technology to help address and simplify a complex problem. The use of technology can overcome many of the challenges in effectively addressing chronic disease. E-readers provide current context-specific and patient-oriented information. Even patients with “Ease of Access” issues, such as poor vision or hearing, can leverage the technology already built into these devices to make communication easier. Portable, secure connected at-home medical devices allow remote monitoring and management of complex interventions without the cost of an office visit. Standardized electronic medical records allow multiple providers to share a common definition of medical information. (See Figure 1) These devices leverage secure, modern, high-speed broadband communication protocols to allow realtime updates between the patient and multiple health care providers. Technology used for the management and care of chronic disease is intended to be a sort of surrogate for the practitioner; it is used in lieu of a direct face-toface meeting and extends the reach of the practitioner or care team. This technology must, therefore, meet the same level of trust we give to medical professionals, or it will fail in its mission to provide effective and efficient care. The trustworthiness of a medical device is the key to success, and security is essential in the implementation of a trusted device. Human lives depend on the security of medical device technology. Software is Key Software can make a difference by providing the connectivity middleware needed to leverage IT technology, allowing healthcare professionals to share information and lower the cost of doing business. Interoperability hinges on the ability to network medical devices, allowing for economy of scale as well as the team collaboration needed for chronic disease care. But, by connecting these devices to the Internet, we make them vulnerable to the same security threats that we see every day on our own PCs. Medical devices must be developed with a plan for managing the risk associated with connecting to modern high-speed broadband communication protocols. The right software platform and the right development tools, along with a specific plan for addressing security risks, can deliver a solid foundation to meet these challenges—on time and on budget. Implementing functionality in software allows lower life-cycle costs as well as the re-deployment of devices to take advantage of advances in technology and address future security vulnerabilities, essentially future-proofing the device. Medical device security is a fairly new concern and includes both securing the information on the device and authenticating the identity of the user. Faced with these new challenges, here are three specific steps medical device manufacturers can take to leverage the power of modern embedded software solutions to increase medical device security, reduce cost and complexity, and derive new sources of competitive advantage. Consolidate Using Multi-Core and Embedded Virtualization The latest multi-core processors significantly boost overall performance and increase performance-per-watt over single-core processors. They also improve application scalability and protect software investments by allowing processors with more cores to be substituted to meet future demand. Using the latest multi-core architectures, suppliers are now able to combine multiple operating systems on a single, secure consolidation platform. Beyond additional processor cores, many new hardware architectures include hardware assist technologies that implement security features, such as a Trusted Platform Modules. These security features provide a high level of trust and allow for secure software updates, efficient authentication protocols, and the implementation of effective white listing schemes. Embedded virtualization, another important concept in consolidation, provides the ability to run multiple operating environments separately from each other on the same physical device. For example, it is possible to run a real-time operating system such as Wind River’s VxWorks® and a general-purpose operating system, such as Linux, on the same device. This separation or partitioning makes resource allocation far more flexible. Embedded virtualization can also assist with implementing data separation to enforce privacy policies, allowing physical data separation of sensitive private information. Together, multi-core processors and embedded virtualization allow medical device manufacturers to consolidate more functionality onto fewer physical systems, cut cost and complexity, and keep the focus on meeting the requirements to provide new treatment protocols for chronic diseases. Standardize on Open Platforms With the increased focus on embedded software, the ability to standardize hardware platforms has become a key consideration for medical device manufacturers. But, consolidation is occurring throughout system. Device manufacturers are now counting on software to provide an overall environment for security and connectivity—so although they are in a position to consolidate functionality themselves, they also need a lot of support at the software layer. Companies are looking to partner with experts in security to support them by providing embedded software solutions. By providing development tools, embedded testing infrastructure, simulation environments, operating systems, protocol stacks, services, support, and training, software companies can allow device manufacturers to adapt and integrate advances in technology on a standard platform, further lowering the cost and improving the functionality of the medical device. Build on a Foundation that Can Support Change It is important to build on a framework that can support comprehensive requirements and keep pace with advancements in technology. A flexible, agile software platform will make it possible to take advantage of new technologies as they emerge without sacrificing previous investments. Medical devices intended for the care of chronic diseases will likely be deployed in remote locations outside of traditional health care facilities. For the device to be cost-effective over its life cycle, it must have the flexibility to incorporate new emerging technologies and to address new security threats. Building to a standard open platform with a plan for life cycle support—including security—will meet the demand for costeffective chronic care medical devices that deliver a high level of care now and in the future. It can be done. Today’s embedded software technologies are fully capable of cutting the cost and complexity of secure and trusted medical devices. The tools to get the job done are in front of you. Now it is up to you to get the job done. This article was written by Jeff Fortin, a director of field engineering managing the field engineering group for medical and industrial accounts at Wind River, Alameda, CA, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation. Wind River has pioneered computing inside embedded devices since 1981 and its technology is found in more than 1 billion products. For more information, visit
Moby-Dick: Lath 1. a thin, narrow strip of wood, nailed to the studs of a building, for the purpose of supporting plaster The word lath appears in the following sentences from Moby-Dick: Chapter 1 > Paragraph 3 > Sentence 5: But these are all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster—tied to counters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. Concordance for the word lath from Moby-Dick. Herman Melville Moby-Dick Navigation Search Moby-Dick
Goals Are Objects that have Velocities. • Description of motion:  One hand starts from a point closer to the body then arcs to a location further away from the body. • Example:  "Sometimes we set goals for ourselves that keep moving further and further out of reach." • Use: Shows increasing distance between you and your objective. • Metaphor:  Goals are Objects.  Objects Have Velocities.  Distance is Progress. • Explanation: When we say that a goal is further and further out of reach, we are implying that it is moving at a speed that is greater than the speed with which we are pursuing it.  Your goal has a velocity that is greater than yours, which means, there is no possible way of ever reaching it.  This metaphor also implies that Distance is Progress.   We can get "closer" or "further away" from achieving our goals.   • Observed: 1-14-2015 (Rad School meeting.  13 people sitting around table.  Everyone seated. JL) • Same gesture as: Life is a Journey. Distance is Progress.
Scottish Emigrants, Indentured Servants, and Slaves The following is from Scottish Emigration to Colonial America, 1607-1785 by David Dobson (p. 29-30). The author is explaining the early political and social conditions that led many to leave Scotland. More well known are the Irish emigrants because of their later large numbers, but the Scottish played a major role in the conflicts and changes at the time. “Emigration seems to have received a fresh impetus around 1631 for reasons that are unclear. In Scotland, although there was more immediate access to Ireland, some were considering the possibility of New England. A letter from John Kerr in Prestonpans to a correpsondent in London indicates that religious intolerance was a factor: “For there be many . . . that inclyne to that countrie [New England], if so be that the persecution by the prelates continue, I mean not so much of ministers that are abused, as near 60 young men that are of rare gifts who cannot get a lawful entry into the ministry also divese professions of some good means that labor to keep themselves undefyled.” The religious policies of the Stuarts had encouraged, if not enforced, emigration to the plantations. As early as 1619 Archbishop Spotswood had threatened nonconformists, or dissident ministers in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, with loss of their stipend and even banishment to America. The Civil War, which in its aftermath led to the mass deportation of Scottish prisoners of war, attracted American colonists, who gave active support to the king or to Parliament. Cromwell received the active support of a number of New Englanders while the king tended to receive support from Virginia and the West Indies. Among those who returned to fight for Charles I was David Munro of Katewell, who had emigrated from Scotland to Virginia during 1641; he served as an officer in the Scots army that invaded England in support of the king in 1648. He was captured after the Battle of Preston in 1648, transported back to Virginia, and disposed of as an indentured servant. The practice of banishing political, religius, and criminal undesirables had long neen established and American soon became one of their destinations. As early as 1618 the king proposed to banish “notorious lewd livers” on the borders of England and Scotland “to Virginia or other remote colony.” The practice of banishment to the plantations as a punishment was to be fully utilized later in the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century. Among the Edinburgh records there is reference to an attempt by a merchant to recruit emigrants for Virginia: “21 July 1647. Ordaines proclamation be sound of drum to pass throw this brugh and liberties thairof at the desire of David Pebles marchand to invite such sort of persones, men and women, as he can agrie upon guid conditiones to goes with him to Virginia and make ane plantaion thair.” Peebles evidently succeeded in recruiting immigrants for his plantation in Virginia, he is later recorded with his family and sixteen indentured servants settled on an 833-acre land grant at Powell’s Creek south of the James River in Virginia in 1650.” David Peebles is one of my ancestors. My father’s maternal grandmother was born a Peebles, and he used to visit her in Mississippi. That family line, after settling in Virginia, would head down to the Deep South and then end up in Texas, which is where my great grandmother was born, as was my grandmother. Some of the Peebles clan were slave owners until the American Civil War. In my direct family line, I was able to find at least one record of 19th century slave ownership, from the 1830 census for Wiley Peebles, the generational halfway point between David Peebles and myself. It’s interesting to see the description from the passage above. I previously had come across a record showing David Peebles had brought a bunch of people with him as dependents. I figured they were probably slaves, but it turns out that they were indentured servants. I suppose slavery was not yet as common as it would later become, considering slavery as an institution had only been legally formalized about three decades before. Plus, indentured servants were probably cheaper and easier to attain, at least for a person living In Scotland surrounded by landless peasants and other desperate people who wanted to escape to the New World. The reason for indentured servants, and increasingly later slaves, went beyond just having workers for a plantation. The law was set up at the time such that the more dependents one brought (family members, indentured servants, and slaves) the more acres of land would be granted by the local government. In the early colonial era, prospective plantation owners needed to gather enough dependents in order to get the land needed to make a plantation possible. This is how the rich and powerful ended up with most of the best land in places like Virginia. Still, that doesn’t disprove that he might have owned slaves as well. In her book An American Heritage Story, Gloria Peoples-Elam offers this enticing detail (Kindle Locations 398-400): “Another very interesting entry into the journal is the following: “Capt David Peiblis is hereby tolerated and permitted to reteine and keep an Indian according to the rules and prescriptions of the Law in that Case provided.” Apparently, Captain Peebles had an Indian as a slave or a worker.” He was sometimes referred to as a captain. He led a militia in at least one battle with a Native American tribe, maybe the Mohawks. It is surmised by some that he received an injury during the fight because he stops showing up much in the records. His being “permitted to reteine and keep an Indian” probably doesn’t indicate a relationship of freedom and friendship. Slavery wasn’t an uncommon fate early on for captured Native Americans. Even indentured servitude wasn’t necessarily better. I’ve read before that in the early colonial era, most people didn’t survive to see the end of their indentured service, for the conditions weren’t conducive to health. It might be unsurprising that seeking escape wasn’t limited to slaves (or captive natives). Here is another example from the Peebles’ household, although following David Peeble’s death. In speaking about his wife, who had taken over the responsibilities of the family, Peoples-Elam says that,”She was exempted from tax on “two persons escaped”— indentured servants who had run away” (Kindle Locations 443-444). Those two persons apparently weren’t feeling happy, contented, and optimistic about their situation. My ancestor, David Peebles, obviously had been a man of means and well-respected in the community, often finding himself in positions of authority. Even before Virginia, he either had great wealth, owned a lot of property to be sold, or had connections to borrow money. When he sought indentured servants for his plantation, that would have required a lot of money to pay for the passage, feeding, and housing of all those people—while also supporting a family. There were many wealthier British emigrants at the time, as the instability and violence during that era gave good reasons for people to flee. The evidence apparently is even stronger than what I initially realized, at least to the degree that his father’s position implies something about his own position, a fair assumption to make a time when so much was inherited. Peoples-Elam writes that (Kindle Locations 261-268): “By 1636, the name of David Peebles appears and is listed as “lawful son of Robert Peebles, decd., Burgess of Dundee in 1538.” This was the beginning of the direct ancestry that can be definitely traced back to Scotland. “As a Burgess of Dundee, Sir Robert was a representative of a burgh or borough, which is a corporate or chartered town in Scotland. He would have been called a Vassal to the Crown. That meant that in times of the feudal system of Scotland this was a person holding lands under the obligation to render military service or its equivalent to his superior. This is shown by the fact that royal charters and Acts of Parliament were addressed or referred to as burgesses. Toward the Crown the burgess had the duties of helping to guard the burgh, of serving with the king’s army when called upon and of paying royal taxation. The latter would not have been the best part of being a burgess but to hold that distinction was necessary.” A vassal to the Crown is a fairly high position. It would offer many things: wealth, land, authority, power, influence, connections, political franchise, etc. It was the propertied class (just below titled aristocracy) at a time when few had property, as property ownership was determined by the feudal order. As such, his father would have had been part of the upper classes, not part of the far reaches of ruling elite but still with significant position at least at the local level. So, when David Peebles refers to himself as a merchant (marchand), he might have meant something far beyond a mere businessman, trader, craftsmen, or farmer. Another interesting thing is the specific historical context. Virginia was settled by a fair number of Royalists, supporters of the Crown. They were often referred to as Cavaliers because of courtly fashion (the term cavalier being related to cavalry and chivalry, from Old French chevalier). The term was used as a general label for courtiers and Royalists, but some of them were Norman-descended aristocracy from southern England (and those that weren’t sought to style themselves as such). David Peebles, however, was Scottish. Some Scottish did fight for the Crown, but I don’t know if this included my ancestor and his kin. Scottish Royalists were typically Highlanders, whereas David Peebles was apparently from the Borders (although it might be noted that the Cavaliers didn’t have a high opinion of any of the Scottish—see Reprobates: The Cavaliers of the English Civil War by John Stubbs; also see Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War by Mark Stoyle, as reviewed by R.C. RichardsonEnglish chauvinist prejudices were rampant. An English officer in 1639 devoted several lines to a litany of hostile adjectives that describe “the scurvy, filthy, dirty, nasty, lousy, itchy, scabby, shitten, stinking, slovenly, snotty-nosed, villainous, barbarous, beastial, false, lying, roguish, devilish” Scots.). The fact that my ancestor immigrated to Virginia and was easily assimilated into the social order does seem to imply that he likely had some association with the Royalist cause. In support of this conclusion, I noticed that David Peebles put his notice up for emigrants a month after the king was captured by the New Model Army. He arrived in Virginia the same year King Charles I was executed, which was a year before Cromwell occupied Peebles, Scotland (just south of Edinburgh); that was the year directly following the execution of Charles I. Interestingly, in the American colonies (according to Enclyclopedia Virginia), “by 1650, most Virginia Puritans had left the colony for Maryland or Massachusetts.” So, the Cromwell supporters, Roundheads, were leaving Virginia just as those like David Peebles were arriving. Virginia was first settled by Puritans, but it would become seen as Royalist stronghold, not that it ever played a direct role in the English Civil War, as it remained officially neutral in the colony’s government seeking to encourage free trade with all sides. I’d point out that Peebles, Scotland was an old royal burgh and resort. The people of the area may have felt particular loyalty to the former Scottish king, James VI, who became the king of England, James I (he would sometimes meet in Peebles in his official role). Many Scottish came into conflict with English rule, but that wasn’t true for all, as ethnic nationalism wasn’t fully formed yet. The Scottish didn’t see themselves as a single people at that time. Britain was a diverse place with no clear separation between Scotland and England. King James I died in 1625 and I’m not sure how the memory of his rule would have influenced loyalties during the English Civil War(s), in terms of the broader War of the Three Kingdoms. Anyway, in its having taken root in Virginia where David Peebles’ plantation was located, Cavalier culture would be held up later on as what defined the American South, even though few Southerners were of Anglo-Norman ancestry. It was an aristocratic value system and social order: strict social hierarchy, privilege of white male landowners, noblesse oblige, and culture of honor. It was an echo of the old chivalric code of feudalism, an image of ancient nobility. It was what the plantation owners modeled themselves after and it became a collective identity among many Southerners in defining the South as a region with a culture that was supposedly unique and coherent, although in reality this was more of an invention. Even the Southern dialect didn’t fully develop until the commingling of Southerners in the Confederate Army. Here is a brief synopsis of the background (from Enclyclopedia Virginia): “Having initially resisted England’s Commonwealth regime, and having reinstalled a former royal governor of its own accord, Virginia was in an excellent position to plead its loyalty to the king after the Restoration. Indeed, the colony even gained a reputation as a Royalist stronghold—a reputation some Virginians cultivated by exaggerating the number of Royalist officers, or Cavaliers, who migrated to the colony after 1648, and claiming that most Virginians were descended from the English aristocracy. While a number of Royalists—including members of the Washington, Randolph, Carter, and Lee families—sought refuge in Virginia, most remained in England or settled in Europe. And most immigrants to Virginia in the seventeenth century were indentured servants, not English gentry. Regardless, the Cavalier myth—perpetuated by romantic, nostalgic depictions of Virginia plantation life in literature and historical studies—took hold in Virginia and persisted throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Some scholars view the Lost Cause interpretation of the American Civil War (1861–1865) as an extension of the Cavalier myth.” I’m sure that many of my ancestors on the Peebles line took the Cavalier identity seriously, especially during and in the decades prior to the Civil War, in which some of them fought. In Britain, aristocracy took root along with feudalism. With the land enclosures, the desperate and impoverished landless peasants often became indentured servants, sometimes on plantations (the first attempt of the colonization project being the Ulster Plantation in Ireland, where many Scots-Irish ended up, although I’m not sure how much indentured servitude was used at that point). It was essentially a revamped form of feudalism. That then led to slavery which was an even better balance between the new capitalist plutocracy and the old feudalist social order, without any of the Commons stuff to get in the way. In such a society, minorities and the poor had few rights, freedoms, and protections. Prior to slavery, indentured servants were the lowest of the low in a society where that could mean being beaten, tortured, raped, or worked to death. An indentured servant was literally worth less than a slave, for they were simply disposable labor. The master of an indentured servant couldn’t even make money by selling off the children. Indentured servitude was useful during that transitional era, as cheap labor but more importantly for social control. Slavery served the same purpose after the ending of indenture, as it was used to maintain not just the color line but also class hierarchy. In its being rooted in feudalism, it offered the sense of an unchanging stable order. What always was would always be, so it seemed to many before it all came to an end. In defending slavery, they were fighting for an entire worldview and way of life. In Virginia, a Civil War battle happened on a Peebles farm (and, at an earlier time in Virginia, Nat Turner’s rebellion led to the killing of a slave overseer by the name of Peebles). I would note that my Peebles family was in Texas during the Civil War. That was the area where slavery lasted the longest, as it took a while for slaves there to hear of the news that they had been freed. Once that news had arrived, that would have been the end of an era for the Southern lines of the David Peebles descendants in America. Gilded Age: Heyday of Laissez-Faire Capitalism From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth: Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century Alex Gourevitch Introduction, pp. 3- On November 26, the Journal printed a letter describing the Knights’ defiance of the “many companies of State militia, with their Gattling [sic] guns,” who were attempting to force the striking workers back to the fields. Little did the Journal’s editors know that by the time they had printed that letter the Louisiana state militia had broken the strike and corralled thousands of strikers into the town of Thibodaux, where a state district judge promptly placed them all under martial law. State militia then withdrew, intentionally leaving the town to a group of white citizen-vigilantes called the “Peace and Order Committee,” who happened to have been organized by the same judge that declared martial law. Upon meeting resistance from the penned in strikers, the white vigilantes unleashed a three-day torrent of killing, from November 21 to November 23, on the unarmed cane-workers and their families. “No credible official count of the victims of the Thibodaux massacre was ever made,” writes one historian, but “bodies continued to turn up in shallow graves outside of town for weeks to come.” 12 Precise body counts were beside the point. The question of who ruled town and country, plantation and courthouse, had been answered. As a mother of two white vigilantes put it, “I think this will settle the question of who is to rule[,] the nigger or the white man? For the next 50 years . . .” 13 A few months later, the Knights continued to organize in parts of Louisiana and elsewhere in the South, but the slaughter at Thibodaux put strict limits on the black worker’s struggle for economic independence and equal rights in the South. Farming a plantation “on the co-operative plan” was not even a dream deferred; it was easy to forget it had ever been a possible world the cane cutters might live in. The Knights, meanwhile, were soon reduced to an historical footnote. The officially sanctioned mob violence at Thibodaux was one of many over the course of Southern history. In each case, a challenge to race-based class rule was met with vigilante justice in the name of white supremacy. In this case, however, it is worth noting that the Knights articulated their challenge in a specific, not well-remembered, language of freedom. From the abolition of slavery to the end of Reconstruction, many freed slaves sought more than legal recognition as equal citizens. They felt their liberation included the right not to have a master at all. They refused to work for former masters, even when offered a formal labor contract and wages. 14 Instead, when possible, they seized or settled land set aside for them and worked it individually or in joint “labor companies.” 15 Former slaves asserted their independence at all levels by organizing their own militias to protect their rights, by working their own property, by voting as they wished, and by holding local and national office. This radical moment of Reconstruction was quickly suppressed and the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877 spelled the end of any but the narrowest interpretation of what emancipation would mean. 16 When the Knights of Labor swept into Louisiana a decade later, they not only revived old hopes about self-organization and economic independence. They also integrated these regional aspirations of former slaves into a recast national ideology of republican freedom. The aforementioned hopeful parenthesis – “by January 1 we will be in good trim to lease ( on the co-operative plan) a good plantation” – speaks to this ideological shift. No doubt black laborers and local leaders heard echoes of the short-lived Reconstruction-era “labor companies” and black militias in this new language of self-directed “co-operative plans.” Their enemies certainly did. The Thibodaux Sentinel, a racist local paper hostile to the Knights’ organizing efforts, warned “against black self organization by trying to remind whites and blacks of what happened a generation earlier, in the days of black militias, and white vigilantism” and evoked “the old demons of violence and arson by ‘black banditti.’” 17 But former slaves were now also modern workers, and the Knights trumpeted the same emancipatory language throughout the nation, heralding “co-operation” as a solution to the problems facing wage-laborers everywhere. If their message carried special historical resonances in the South, the Knights added a new universalizing and solidaristic note. This program of liberation through cooperative self-organization, articulated in the transracial language of making all workers into their own employers, scared northern industrialists just as much as Southern planters. In fact, if we see the Thibodaux massacre as just a Southern race story, then we run the risk of unintentionally and retrospectively ceding too much to the plantocracy and its attempts to control labor relations by transforming economic conflicts into questions of racial superiority. After all, wherever the Knights went and wherever their message of cooperation and independence took hold, they were met with violence not all that different from that of Southern vigilantes. Throughout the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, the Knights faced private violence from employers and their hired guns, most notoriously the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons operated in legal grey zones, sometimes with outright legal sanction from the courts, and often in cooperation with National Guards or even Federal troops. In fact, on occasion it was the public violence of the state that was responsible for spectacular acts of legally sanctioned murder and coercion. 18 Labor reformers labeled this unholy alliance of the state with the “Pinkerton Armed Force,” its spies and “provocative agents,” as a kind of “Bonapartism in America,” threatening to turn “the free and independent Republic of the United States of America” into the “worm-eaten Empire of Napoleon the Third.” 19 Just as in Thibodaux, the lines between vigilante violence and legal coercion sometimes blurred into indistinction. What, then, was the idea of freedom that triggered such extreme responses? The Knights of Labor represented the culmination of a radical, labor republican tradition. Their starting premise was that “there is an inevitable and irresistible conflict between the wage-system of labor and the republican system of government.” 20 Wage-labor was considered a form of dependent labor, different from chattel slavery, but still based on relations of mastery and subjection. Dependent labor was inconsistent with the economic independence that every republican citizen deserved. That is why, in the name of republican liberty, these Knights sought “to abolish as rapidly as possible, the wage system, substituting co-operation therefore.” 21 Here was the source of their “co-operative plan,” which they found as applicable to the cane fields of Louisiana as to the shoe factories of Massachusetts. 22 The Knights wrote the cooperative program into their official constitution, the Declaration of Principles of the Knights of Labor, and, at their peak, organized thousands of cooperatives across the country. 23 The cooperative ideal threatened Southern planters, Northern industrialists and Western railroad owners alike because it struck at the dominant industrial relations between employer and employee. Affording all workers shared ownership and management of an enterprise, whether a sugar plantation, newspaper press, or garment factory, was – according to the Knights – the only way to secure to everyone their social and economic independence. The abolition of slavery two decades earlier was but the first step in a broader project of eliminating all relations of mastery and subjection in economic life. Although these ideas had been around well before the Civil War, it was only the abolition of chattel slavery and the rise of industrial capitalism that allowed the republican critique of wage-labor to come forward as a unifying, national cause. As Ira Steward, a child of abolitionists and prominent post-war labor republican, wrote in 1873, “something of slavery still remains . . . something of freedom is yet to come.” 24 American Eyes On Cuba Reading the below passage, I was reminded of the Cold War attitude and actions toward Cuba. This included the failed invasion and nuclear showdown during Kennedy’s administration. There has been a longstanding antagonism between the US and Cuba. The US relationship to Cuba has involved paranoia, intrigue, and acquisitiveness. This has also involved conflict in both places, especially conflicts related to race and slavery, but also regional and partisan conflict in the US and class conflicts in Cuba. The difference back then was that the feared superpower was the Spanish Empire, instead of the Soviet Union. Still, it was the same basic jostling for political power, imperial expansion, and military positioning. * * * The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War By Leonard L. Richards Kindle Locations 2109-2145 Upon arriving in Madrid, Soulé immediately alienated the Spanish government. He denounced the monarchy and cavorted openly with revolutionaries. He got into a duel with the French ambassador after one of the ambassador’s guests made a disparaging remark about Mrs. Soulé’s plunging neckline. For this affront the ambassador suffered a debilitating leg wound. From the outset, Soulé also made it clear that his mission was to acquire Cuba by hook or by crook. By this time, moreover, the Spanish, as well as every other European power, had heard that Quitman was raising troops to invade Cuba. In September 1853, the Spanish government responded. It appointed the Marqués de la Pezuela captain general of Cuba, a post that put him in command of both the military and the government, with orders to take steps to defend Cuba. In December he issued decrees that among other things cracked down on those illegally engaged in the slave trade and gave citizenship rights to blacks illegally imported before 1835. At the same time, he recruited free blacks into the militia. Coming from a government that had no interest in abolishing either slavery or the African slave trade, Pezuela’s policy of “Africanization” made it clear that he was willing, if necessary, to use black troops against Quitman’s invaders and against any Cuban planter who sympathized with them. Pezuela’s policy was also risky. It sparked fears of slave rebellion throughout the white South and calls for reprisals. It also aroused militants in the Mississippi Delta. They wanted action quickly. In response, the Louisiana legislature demanded “decisive and energetic measures.” Quitman, however, was unwilling to move until he had three thousand men, one armed steamer, and $220,000 at his disposal.11 Meanwhile, the Pierce administration decided that it might be possible to purchase Cuba if firebrands like Quitman were temporarily restrained. On April 3, Secretary of State William L. Marcy sent new instructions to Soulé, authorizing him to purchase Cuba for up to $130 million. If Spain refused, Soulé was then to concern himself with the problem of how to “detach” Cuba from Spain.12 Eight weeks later, the administration announced that it would prosecute all men who violated U.S. neutrality laws. The New Orleans grand jury then required Quitman to post a $3,000 bond guaranteeing his adherence to the neutrality laws for the next nine months. In the interim, in Cuba, Pezuela arrested more than a hundred pro-American planters and put some to death. Later that same year, Pierce called Quitman to Washington and showed him evidence that Cuba was strongly defended.13 Meanwhile, in Madrid, Soulé had no luck trying to buy Cuba. So the Pierce administration decided to let him confer privately with the other ministers in Europe—James Buchanan at London and John Y. Mason at Paris—and decide if it was feasible to persuade Spain to sell Cuba to the United States. Meeting in Ostend in October 1854, the three diplomats put their names to a dispatch that came to be known as the Ostend Manifesto. The dispatch was a bombshell. Written mainly by Soulé, it urged the United States to immediately buy Cuba at any price up to $120 million. It also proclaimed that if Spain refused to sell and if its possession of Cuba seriously endangered the “internal peace” of the slave states, then the United States would be justified in seizing Cuba “upon the very same principle that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying his own home.”14 News of this saber-rattling manifesto sent shock waves through the Northern wing of the Democratic Party. They had just suffered huge election losses that fall. They had entered the election holding ninety-three seats in the House. They now had only twenty-two.15 What, many asked, was the Pierce administration up to? Didn’t they realize that the “burning house” rhetoric would provide Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune with even more ammunition to attack the party faithful? One Democratic newspaper after another thus distanced itself from the manifesto, even branding its authors “brigands” and “highwaymen.”The Pierce administration also ran for cover, disavowing the proposal and letting “the three wise men of Ostend” fend for themselves.16 That December, enraged by the reaction, Soulé resigned as minister to Spain. Several months later, in April 1855, Quitman gave back to the Cuban junta the powers it had bestowed upon him. No longer did either warrior have much hope of acquiring “the pearl of the Antilles” to offset the addition of California as a free state. Union Membership, Free Labor, and the Legacy of Slavery. I was just looking at an NPR piece on 50 Years Of Shrinking Union Membership, In One Map. It reminds me of a number of things. I’ve made some correlations previously by looking at various mapped data. Where union membership has been historically strong and remained the strongest are where there has been high concentration of certain ancestral ethnicities. Two I’ve noted are German and Irish, which I relates to their higher rates of Catholicism and the attendant more community-oriented worldview. I’ve often thought much about the Scots-Irish. Their influence can seem immense for various reasons, but it is hard to pinpoint what exactly is that influence. Some of the most violent organized labor strikes have been in Appalachia, the American cultural homeland of those with Scots-Irish ancestry. There is a militant fierceness to Scots-Irish culture of honor that can apply just as equally to vigilantism, family feuds, military enlistment, and labor activism. It’s easy to forget, though, that those of Scots-Irish ancestry didn’t only settle in and become concentrated in Appalachia. All across the country, there is much overlap between their concentration and higher union membership rates. This brings me to the forgotten connection between the Upper South and the Lower Midwest. Both regions have high union membership. I want to make a further connection, though. This is also the dual region of Abraham Lincoln’s upbringing. He spent his early life divided between Kentucky, Southern Indiana, and Illinois. The latter state, in particular, has become associated with Lincoln and is the heart of American union membership (which naturally brings to mind the words of Lincoln when he said, “Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”). This land of Lincoln was the contested region of American identity. It’s the border region of the Civil War. And nothing symbolizes that conflict more than slavery. What stood out to me in NPR’s union membership map is this. The states that have had the lowest union membership rates, unsurprisingly, are those that had the highest enslaved human rates. The one state that has almost always had the lowest union membership rates is South Carolina, a place that for most of its history included a black majority. It is predictable that the states with a history of disenfranchising blacks also have a history of disenfranchising whites. In general, those are highly unequal class-based societies where poverty rates are high and most people are disenfranchised. This doesn’t just impact the poor, but the entire society or community and the entire economy. In a previous post, I quoted Nicholas Kristoff from his article, When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 4: “Indeed, a wave of research over the last 20 years has documented the lingering effects of slavery in the United States and South America alike. For example, counties in America that had a higher proportion of slaves in 1860 are still more unequal today, according to a scholarly paper published in 2010. The authors called this a “persistent effect of slavery.” “One reason seems to be that areas with slave labor were ruled for the benefit of elite plantation owners. Public schools, libraries and legal institutions lagged, holding back working-class whites as well as blacks.” Union membership is just an indicator of the inequality that is present. It is also an indicator of a healthy, well-functioning social democracy. There is only ever freedom to the degree there is equality. Even the good life for the wealthiest is less good in a high inequality society, because the social problems caused can never be contained. They effect everyone. And those social problems are immense and diverse, from rising murder rates to worsening health issues, all of which also increase during Republican administrations when conservative polices set the tone for the nation. Slavery is just an extreme form of inequality. Cultures and political systems don’t change quickly. We will be living with the consequences of slavery for a long time. The opposite of slavery is free labor which means workers who have greater control over their own lives. The labor movement is in essence a fight against the legacy of a country built on oppression. Class war has been continuously going on since the colonial era. It’s a class war that has mostly been waged by the wealthy and they have won most of the battles, but not all of them. Labor unions, for all their problems and limitations, are far better than the alternative in power at the moment. We need to keep this in mind, at a time in our history when more blacks are in prison than were in slavery right before the Civil War and when mass incarceration is increasingly being used as a new form of forced labor. This is the context in which to understand dropping union membership rates, as poverty, inequality, and unemployment grows. Facing Shared Trauma and Seeking Hope I came across this nugget of inconvenient truth: This is from The New York Times. It is Part 4 of a series by Nicholas Kristoff, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It”. It brought back to mind a few similar examples of this type of historical effect. A short while ago, an intriguing book was published that included this topic. It is The Invisible History of the Human Race by Christine Kenneally. I learned of the book from a book review by David Dobbs, also in The New York Times. I have since read it and I must admit it is one of the best books I’ve read recently, right up there with Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow. I appreciated what the author accomplished for similar reasons as with Alexander’s book, telling data in support of keen insight. The data is overwhelming. The way Kenneally brings it all together makes you feel the full weight of history. Institutions and social orders, cultures and social capital, injustices and traumas, they can and often do persist over centuries. This what people mean when they speak of oppression. They don’t just mean a single generation who loses opportunities of betterment. It’s not just about individuals, but entire societies. It continues to impact the descendants for as long as the social conditions sustain it. This is the moral obligation we face. The actions we take now will echo into the distant future. We choose whether to continue systems and cultures of oppression or to end them. Every generation makes that choice, century after century. The past is never just past. This is particularly true with trauma. It is hard to forget large-scale atrocities that leave deep imprints. Societies can be forever changed. Kenneally mentions an anthropologist who, during the 1990s, stayed with an African tribe in an area that had high rates of enslavement. The memory of slavery was still apart of their experience. Many of them could point to the homes of people who lost family members to slavery. And sometimes they could even name the people who had sold them into slavery, sometimes members of the same family committed the act (“Almost 20 percent of slaves had been betrayed by people to whom they were close.” Kindle Location 2304). These people couldn’t forget. There are many enduring effects to this. One of these is easier to think about. It is the resulting economic problems. This relates to the example I began with. Areas that experienced slavery and the slave trade in centuries past still have problems with underdevelopment, poverty, and inequality. Some might dismiss this as simply being a continuation of what came before, that these places always were bad off. That is a too convenient excuse and also false (Kindle Locations 2295-2302): “In order to find a connection between slavery and modern economies, Nunn asked if the differences in economic well-being today could be explained by differences that existed before the slave trade. Were the countries that were already poor the same countries that were more engaged in the slave trade? In fact, Nunn found the opposite : Regions that lost the most people to slavery had once been among the best-developed economies and best-organized states on the continent, with central governments, national currencies, and established trade networks. It was the states that were least developed and had higher degrees of violence and hostility at the time of the slave trade that were better able to repel slavers and not suffer the long-term effects of the trade. “Could the relationship between modern poverty and historical slavery be explained by the subsequent effects of colonialism or by the natural resources possessed by a country? Nunn found that although those factors appeared to have an effect, neither was as powerful. It was slavery that mattered, and it mattered greatly.” Another enduring effect connects to that. As has been observed by many, economic development along with wealth and equality seem to be intrinsic qualities of a culture of trust (see Fukuyama’s Trust). Kenneally writes (Kindle Locations 2327-2352): They began with the intuition that trust could be a channel through which slavery still affects modern economies. But their goal was to find evidence for it. Of course, trust is a crucial part of any economy: Societies must have some degree of trust in order to be able to trade. At the most basic level, if people don’t trust one another, they are less willing to take a chance in business, whether it involves a simple exchange of goods or a complicated contract. But no one in economics had ever tried to measure the relationships among history, trust, and the economy before. After all, trust was an element of culture, and “culture” was a vague, fuzzy concept. Nunn and Wantchekon defined it as simply as they could: Culture, for their purposes, was the rules of thumb people used to make decisions. Do I trust this person ? Do I distrust him? People from different cultures use different rules of thumb to make such determinations. If trust is absent, a well functioning society becomes impossible. Some would argue that absence of trust can only be blamed on the local population, not outside forces, but the fact that these once were well functioning societies gives the lie to that claim. The point of causation is most clearly attributed to slavery itself. as shown in the author’s analysis (continuing from above): “Building on Nunn’s finding that the countries that lost more of their populations to the slave trade over one hundred years ago were also the poorest today, Nunn and Wantchekon examined the Afrobarometer, a survey project that measures public attitudes to different aspects of African daily life, like democracy, employment, and the future of citizenship. It is comparable to a Gallup poll, and it includes seventeen countries. The researchers found that overall, people tended to have more trust in those who were closer to them— for example, friends over government officials. This was a universal pattern. But it was also the case that the groups that were most exposed to the slave trade over one hundred years ago were also the groups with the lowest levels of trust today. Modern Africans whose ancestors lost the most people to slavers distrusted not just their local government and other members of their ethnicity but also relatives and neighbors much more than Africans whose ancestors were not as exposed to the slave trade. “Did the slave trade give rise to a culture of mistrust that was passed down from the slave era even to individuals who live in the same places today? There are good reasons to believe that it might have. For those who witnessed the ways an innocent bystander might be swept up by or somehow betrayed into the slave trade, it would have made more sense to distrust people, as a general rule. People who automatically distrusted others were probably more likely to do well, or at least to not be enslaved . Wariness would also have been a smart strategy to teach the next generation. “There’s another way this terrible correlation could be interpreted: Perhaps the slave trade made people not less trusting but less trustworthy. Perhaps people weren’t trusted in countries like Benin because they didn’t deserve to be trusted. After all, chiefs turned on their own people, and families sent some of their own literally down the river. Was a culture of betrayal passed down as well as a culture of distrust? This could partially be the case. Nunn’s analysis reveals that ethnic groups and local governments in the regions that were most affected by the slave trade in the past are also least trusted today. People whose ancestors were more affected by the slave trade were more likely to report that they did not approve of their local councilors, who were corrupt and did not listen to constituents. As Nunn explained , it’s quite likely that this is an accurate assessment of the local councils in these areas. Nevertheless, when they controlled for this effect, there was still a significant amount of distrust in countries most affected by the slave trade— regardless of whether the object of trust was truly worthy.” A culture of trust is easier to destroy than to re-create. Once trauma becomes society-wide dysfunction, healing those shared wounds will be a slow process. The reason for this is that it hits people at the most personal level, their social identities and relationships (Kindle Locations 2430-2444): “It seemed that both families and social institutions matter but that the former is more powerful. The data suggested that a region might develop its own culture of distrust and that it could affect people who moved into that area, even if their ancestors had not been exposed to the historical event that destroyed trust in the first place. But if someone’s ancestors had significant exposure to the slave trade, then even if he moved away from the area where he was born to an area where there was no general culture of mistrust, he was still less likely to be trusting. Indeed, Nunn and Wantchekon found evidence that the inheritance of distrust within a family was twice as powerful as the distrust that is passed down in a community. “This accords well with our personal intuitions about families: The people who raise us shape us, intentionally or unintentionally. The people who raise us were likewise shaped by the people who raised them, and so on. Similarly, the way we treat other people, even our offspring, is shaped by the way we were shaped. This is not to say that our peers don’t affect our attitudes, nor does it mean that the society in which we choose to live doesn’t contribute as well. Obviously, the older we get, the more we develop the ability to shape ourselves. Family history doesn’t necessarily determine who we become, but this body of work suggests that the effect of a family may be so powerful that it can be replicated down through many generations, over and over through hundreds of years. It’s no wonder that so many people choose to study the distant histories of their families to understand how they work today . If genealogists believe there isn’t enough in their daily lives or their culture that sufficiently explains who they are— either to others or to themselves— it may be because they are right. “In fact, the legacy of a family may be so powerful that it will not only last over extraordinary periods of time but extend over great distances as well.” In regards to slavery in the United States, this last insight may point to an even further problem. Africans who weren’t enslaved lost family members and had their functioning societies destroyed, but they maintained their family structures and cultural traditions. This did offer a pathway of transmission for trauma. At the same time, it also offered a certain kind of social stability. These people remember who they are and where they came from. They don’t suffer historical amnesia, as do many Americans. Trauma remembered allows for the opportunity of healing. African-Americans, on the other hand, didn’t just lose their freedom. They lost everything. They lost their communities, traditions, and every other aspect of their social identities. Once enslaved and brought to America, they sought to rebuild the social bonds that had been lost. However, the slave system and the racial order that was built on it continually destroyed those social bonds or at the very least made it a challenge to maintain them over the generations. Slave families were regularly separated and this enforced instability continued for centuries, for longer than African-Americans have known freedom. They weren’t allowed the extended kinship ties that were traditional in Africa nor were they even allowed to develop dependable nuclear families. If families are a major factor in passing on culture, what happens when a culture of oppression has been forced onto an entire people such that the foundations of family are undermined? African-Americans adapted to this challenge. Once free, they created new social bonds that could help them face the nearly insurmountable odds set against them. After slavery, the ruling white society continued to send black men off to other forms of unfreedom, from prisons to chain gangs. Their communities were ghettoized and racialized social control kept them trapped in poverty. So, they turned to the people around them and developed extended social networks (see Carol Stack’s All Our Kin; also see The Myth of Weak and Broken Black Families). This source of strength, within their inheritance of injustice and oppression, is not to be dismissed. These communities still struggle against the legacy of slavery. Bigotry still lives on and racial bias remains institutionalized. Yet these people aren’t mere victims to be pitied. Just imagine what they might accomplish if they were ever allowed to heal from centuries of shared trauma. Part of the reason so many African-Americans left the South was because they hoped to leave behind the very oppressive social orders that had kept them down for so long. If not for the mass exodus to the northern states, the civil rights movement may never have happened. They had to escape the persistent culture of poverty and inequality. By changing their environments, they were able to begin to see new possibilities and organize around new visions. Now many of their descendants are returning to the South for jobs and cheaper housing. This could in turn transform that old Southern society built on slavery, and so transform all of American society that has been complicit in the continuing racial order. I’m not sure what specific hopes this offers, but there is a potential there. Some things persist over centuries while other things become transformed. Positive changes only ever happen when entire systems are shifted toward a new balance. One thing that seems clear to me is that this country is in the middle of a shift, whatever that might entail. Remembering the past lights the path toward a different future. That future will be determined by the choices we make now. What kind of world will we leave for the generations that follow after us? If You Think Democracy Is Bad, You Should See Libertarianism I differ from mainstream liberals in having some libertarian inclinations. I don’t think I’m extraordinarily unusual in this. I live in a liberal town and know other liberals that think more like me. The reason I’m so inclined is simple. I like democracy. It appears that democracy has failed on the large-scale. The only successful examples of democracy are on the small-scale. Hence, libertarianism of a leftist variety. That said, I wouldn’t identify as a libertarian. Not because I don’t like the label. I couldn’t care less about the label. The real point for me is the principles I hold. In principle, I’m indifferent to the argument of big versus small government. I suspect big government might be a necessary evil. For example, there is good reason few minorities are libertarians. Colonial African slaves had to choose between Britain and America. It was no easy choice. Few of them were thinking about grand changes. They were simply seeking the best hope available to them. If they chose to fight on one side or the other, it was a very personal decision. They were more fighting for their individual freedom than they were fighting for some ideal of a free society. It was very concrete and direct. They just wanted to be able to live their own lives and be left alone. That is freedom in the most basic sense. Since that era, their descendents have continuouslly fought for ever greater freedoms. Yet most of the battles continued to be for very basic freedoms. And most of the battles have been fought at the local level. But almost every victory they had at the local level was reversed by local whites, almost everything they built at the local level was destroyed by local whites. Conservatives complain about what they see as minorities love of big government. It’s not that they love big government. It’s just that they’ve learned from hard-fought experience that the only lasting change for the good they’ve gained has come from forcing change at the level of big governmment and so forcing local small governments to comply. Black history demonstrates the failure of libertarianism. An even greater failure than democracy. Libertarian rhetoric is a white privilege and also a class privilege. There is a reason most libertarians are wealthier whites. They already have their basic rights and freedoms protected, more than anyone else in society. Minorities aren’t stupid. They see this privilege for what it is. What Is An Imperial Subject To Do? US is an empire. Yet few Americans know it or will admit to it. We are unique in history. Previous empires proudly declared their status as empires, sometimes making it a part of their official titles. But I suspect most Americans would be ashamed if they discovered or were forced to face the truth. When you call the US an empire, most Americans get defensive. We can’t even publicly acknowledge that the US is a corporatist police state. For our entire history, the American people haven’t been able to decide whether we should be an empire or not. That was a major argument during the country’s founding and in the early decades of national politics. It became an even more central debate following the Civil War when expansionism went into full gear. The Native Americans had no doubts about America being an empire. I’m not sure any other country has struggled so much with their collective desire for imperialism. It doesn’t just bother us that we are an empire, but the fact that we like being an empire. It comes with great benefits and it just plain feels good to be part of something so powerful. So, why all the guilt and shame about what we are? Why not just admit it and embrace it? Maybe some public honesty would be a good thing. It’s a strange thing living in an empire. I didn’t grow up knowing this fact. It never occurred to me until I was an adult. Empires were something one learned about in history class. They were in the past. The US was a democracy or, if you prefer, a republic. It is hard to come to terms with this. What is an imperial subject to do? No one asked me if I wanted an empire, but here we all are. I was thinking about it because of an article I read about another empire. We had our Native American genocide and slavery. The Belgians aren’t as famous for imperialism, but they had their own imperial project in Congo. King Leopold II of Belgium created a slave society where millions were killed. He gets forgotten by Western history because he only killed dark-skinned people. If you want to be a truly great evil leader in the minds of Westerners, you have to kill white people like Hitler did. Only white people count and are counted. “When we learn about Africa, we learn about a caricatured Egypt, about the HIV epidemic (but never its causes), about the surface level effects of the slave trade, and maybe about South African Apartheid (the effects of which, we are taught, are now long, long over). We also see lots of pictures of starving children on Christian Ministry commercials, we see safaris on animal shows, and we see pictures of deserts in films and movies. But we don’t learn about the Great African War or Leopold’s Reign of Terror during the Congolese Genocide. Nor do we learn about what the United States has done in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing millions of people through bombs, sanctions, disease, and starvation. Body counts are important. And the United States Government doesn’t count Afghan, Iraqi, or Congolese people.” It was the part thrown in about the US that I wanted to share. I knew our actions were horrific, but I hadn’t realized they were that horrific. If killing millions of innocent foreigners around the world through invasions, occupations, bombings, etc doesn’t an empire make, then what does? I doubt most people know such basic facts as these. One of the privileges of being an imperial subject is that you can choose to remain ignorant of the consequences. The people of Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t so lucky. It will take generations for them to forget the trauma of being the target of US imperialism. Who Is To Blame? Identity politics too often distracts from the real issues and can even make problems worse. My focus is as much on the victimization cycle as on the victims and victimizers. The victimization cycle puts into context and so offers a larger vantage point. All of us humans all over are caught up in a globally-connected system of victimization. That isn’t to say all suffer equally, but it is to say we all are equally fucked in the long term on a shared planet with limited resources. What goes around comes around. I’ve been arguing with one racist guy who keeps saying that American blacks are more violent. I can argue with that on one level by pointing out that whites are more likely to be child molesters, school shooters, bombers, serial killers, etc. But that misses a bigger issue. Why is the entire American society violent? Why is the world in general such a violent place? Why are the wealthiest countries so war-mongering? Why are so many of the post-colonial countries troubled by near endless internal conflict? Limiting our view to the US, blacks do commit high rates of homicides, although most of their victims are also blacks. It is violence within a community. But how did so many poor black communities become so violent? Before someone committed murder, they were a kid being raised in a particular environment in a particular society. Some thing shaped them. We know what some of those factors are. We also know that most victimizers were once victims themselves. If we looked at most people arrested for violent crime, we’d probably most often find a personal history of violent victimization: friends, neighbors, and family members murdered; police targeting and brutality; systemic and institutional racism; oppressive poverty and economic hopelessness; et cetera. We can extend this argument to Native Americans. Native American communities also have high rates of violent crime that goes hand in hand with being the victims of large-scale violence across recent centuries. As far as that goes, this argument also applies to poor white communities such as in the rural South, specifically Appalachia. They also have high rates of violent crime. All poor communities in this country have high rates of social problems, especially in places of high economic inequality. Most Americans forget that the raw numbers of poor whites is massive. There are more whites on welfare than any other race. Some of these populations have been in a permanent state of poverty for centuries or longer, going back to the British Isles and Europe. Race becomes a proxy for class. We talk about the problems of poor blacks when we really mean the problems of poor people, the problems of poverty and economic inequality, which goes hand in hand with historically oppressed groups, even though oppressed in vastly different ways. Here is my main point: Every victim has a victimizer. And likely most victimizers were once victims. You can keep going back and back. Where you stop as the original source of victimization can be arbitrary or else ideologically biased. To focus on those in power: Who is to blame for the world’s present system of imperialism? The first empires who invented this social order? The later empires that introduced it to new populations such as into tribal Europe? The even later empires that turned it into colonialism? Can anyone today take responsibility for the past, whether imperialism forced onto Native Americans or imperialism forced onto earlier Europeans? Instead of blame, who will take responsibility? What does it even mean to take responsibility for problems so far beyond any individual, for cycles of victimization that extend across centuries and millennia? Us versus them mentalities are how authoritarian social orders maintain their power. Even many people who fight imperialism and oppression end up internalizing the dysfunction. This is why so many revolutions fail and end up with authoritarian states, sometimes worse than what came before. All I know is that the world is a lot more complex and a lot more fucked up than most people want to admit. The world is complex. Humans are complex. It is impossible to put people into neat little boxes. We all have immense potential, for both good and evil. That is what many people are afraid to confront, the immense potential that lurks within. Authoritarians couldn’t get away with most of what they do if not for all those complicit, including among the victimized groups. Take for example the history of blacks. The slave trade was dependent on Africans selling other Africans into slavery, not unusually people selling their neighbors or even family members in hope of saving themselves. Later on, many blacks who, after being freed following the Civil War, became Indian fighters and in doing so violently and genocidally promoted US imperial expansion across the continent. Both poor whites and poor blacks have been willing participants in American power. These disadvantaged people have always been the majority of the soldiers who fight the wars for the rich and powerful. That is the power of nationalism, of patriotism and propaganda. Even the rich end up buying the rhetoric they use to manipulate others for their minds get warped by the same basic media that warps the minds of all of us. We are all stuck in the same reality tunnel, unable to see beyond it. If not blame, how is responsibility to be taken? Who will take the first step? Ask A Cow What It Is To Be Free Capitalism has its origins in a word meaning “head”. It is the same origin as for cattle and chattel. Cattle was the earliest major form of movable property. This is the precedent for capital as fungible wealth, that which can be transferred elsewhere, removed and reinvested. This is also why capitalism and chattel slavery have the same basic starting point. Feudal peasants in essence belonged to the land as part of the an unmovable property, whereas chattel slaves were like cattle that could be moved and/or sold independent of anything else. In a capitalist society, the opposite of the capitalist is the slave. This is why the original offer in freeing slaves was supposed to be to give them forty acres and a mule. This simultaneously would have made them propertied citizens and capitalists. This is also why, in the end, it didn’t happen. It was one thing to end their overt slavery, but to make them genuine equals in this capitalist society was going too far. Capitalism isn’t fundamentally about economics. It is about power. Cattle is a cow whose wild ancestors were once free to roam. The same goes for a chattel slave or a wage slave, workers whose ancestors were once free to roam, once free to work for themselves. No one is free to roam in capitalism, though. And working for oneself is becoming ever more meaningless in an age of globalization. The Commons was privatized centuries ago. There is no where to be free for the system of control is now complete. There is no escape, no undiscovered and unclaimed place to seek out. That was the first step in creating capitalism as we know it. Before capitalism, the Commons belonged to the People and the People belonged to the Commons. It isn’t accidental that the idea of privately owning land evolved as a legal concept in accordance with ownership of humans as slaves. The US was founded on the ideal of an enlightened aristocracy and a paternalistic plutocracy, the expectation that the country would be literally be ruled by the owners, i.e., the propertied class. Those who own themselves and own the land they live on are entitled to own the government and hence to own all who are governed. To be a capitalist isn’t merely to have fungible wealth, for more importantly it means to be an owner and to play the role of owner. We live in a world where everything is owned, where everything (and everyone) has a price to be sold. To be employed is to sell ourselves into indentured servitude, even if only temporarily during specified periods of time. While working as wage slaves, we don’t own ourselves while on the clock. It isn’t just a legal agreement of selling part of our life by selling our time and body for someone else’s purposes. It is a profound psychological transaction, a giving up of freedom, an act that becomes a mindless habit, until we forget what freedom ever meant. Capitalism is a particular form of social control. Capitalists are those with the capital and so those with the power to control. We the People are those being controlled, the cattle, the chattel. The system allows us to sell our freedom, but offers no way to buy it back. We are born citizen-consumers, never having been given a choice. We are property of the corporatist state. To demand our freedom would mean theft. If enough people made this demand, it would be a revolt. And if that revolt were successful, it would be called a revolution. Slavery and Capitalism Slavery and capitalism. The twin pillars of American history. This pairing forces us to question exactly what we mean by capitalism. Many argue that the South was originally pre-capitalist or at least had strong pre-capitalist traditions (see my post about the book The Mind of the Master Class). It is true that there were clear economic differences that led to regional conflicts. Also, it is true that pre-capitalist practices such as subsistence farming and bartering held out longer in many communities in the rural South. But all of this was contained in a larger capitalist system that dominated Anglo-American culture since the colonial era of the British Empire. Here is something I wrote getting at some of this conflict within the US economy (Sin of the North, sin of the South): The South had two agricultural traditions. They had the slave-based plantation model that came from Barbados and they had the yeoman subsistence model that came from the Scots-Irish. Both the plantation tobacco farming and the subsistence slash-and-burn ended up depleting the soil which wasn’t as rich to begin with. This relates to an economic difference. Plantation farming and subsistence farming helped create an economy in the South that was less like modern capitalism. The plantation owners were so vastly wealthy that they didn’t build their own local industry, choosing instead to buy products shipped in from elsewhere. As an aside, the wealth of plantation owners wasn’t capitalist wealth (i.e., wasn’t fungible capital) because plantation owners tended to be heavily in debt as their wealth was invested in their land and their slaves. The subsistence farmers never harvested enough crops to make much in the way of profit, fungible or otherwise; and, as Joe Bageant points out, many of the small Southern farming communities were mostly cashless societies where people bartered and kept store tabs. Modern industrialized capitalism was only strongly established in the South with Reconstruction following the Civil War. In being introduced, capitalism built upon the framework of the economic system already established in the South. This meant that capitalism incorporated the plantation mentality and the class-based rigidity. There were high rates of poverty and economic inequality in the Antebellum South and there are still high rates of poverty and economic inequality in the South today. In one sense, you can blame the North for forcing modern industrialized capitalism onto the South. It’s possible that, if the South had successfully seceded, Southerners might have transitioned into a better kind of economic system… then again, maybe not. It’s not like capitalism wasn’t already beginning to gain footholds in the South prior to Reconstruction. It would be surprising if a Confederate South could have avoided capitalism’s ascent. Anyway, it wasn’t the North that forced onto the South a poverty-based, union-busting form of capitalism. I just came across another book on this topic, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist. This author is making a stronger argument for the connection between slavery and capitalism. I’ve barely begun to read it, but I thought I’d present a passage from it that summarizes the case being made. The following passage is from the introduction (Kindle Locations 173-220). It puts slavery not just in the context of classical liberal economics but also in the context of liberal society in general. It implicates liberalism, in the broad sense. Maybe this view would fit into Domenico Losurdo’s harsh criticism, Liberalism: A Counter-History. Of course, this ‘liberalism’ is pretty much a category including all post-Enlightenment ideologies, including American conservatism. It is liberalism as a pervasive social order, not a mere partisan ideology limited to a particular group. Baptist questions about the true nature of freedom in a society with a long history of unfreedom. When we speak of free markets, what kind of freedom are we speaking of and whose freedom is it? * * * * The way that Americans remember slavery has changed dramatically since then. In tandem with widespread desegregation of public spaces and the assertion of black cultural power in the years between World War II and the 1990s came a new understanding of the experience of slavery. No longer did academic historians describe slavery as a school in which patient masters and mistresses trained irresponsible savages for futures of perpetual servitude. Slavery’s denial of rights now prefigured Jim Crow, while enslaved people’s resistance predicted the collective self-assertion that developed into first the civil rights movement and later, Black Power. But perhaps the changes were not so great as they seemed on the surface. The focus on showing African Americans as assertive rebels, for instance, implied an uncomfortable corollary. If one should be impressed by those who rebelled, because they resisted, one should not be proud of those who did not. And there were very few rebellions in the history of slavery in the United States. Some scholars tried to backfill against this quandary by arguing that all African Americans together created a culture of resistance, especially in slave quarters and other spaces outside of white observation. Yet the insistence that assertive resistance undermined enslavers’ power, and a focus on the development of an independent black culture, led some to believe that enslaved people actually managed to prevent whites from successfully exploiting their labor. This idea, in turn, created a quasi-symmetry with post– Civil War plantation memoirs that portrayed gentle masters, who maintained slavery as a nonprofit endeavor aimed at civilizing Africans. Thus, even after historians of the civil rights, Black Power, and multicultural eras rewrote segregationists ’ stories about gentlemen and belles and grateful darkies, historians were still telling the half that has ever been told. For some fundamental assumptions about the history of slavery and the history of the United States remain strangely unchanged. The first major assumption is that, as an economic system— a way of producing and trading commodities— American slavery was fundamentally different from the rest of the modern economy and separate from it. Stories about industrialization emphasize white immigrants and clever inventors, but they leave out cotton fields and slave labor. This perspective implies not only that slavery didn’t change, but that slavery and enslaved African Americans had little long-term influence on the rise of the United States during the nineteenth century, a period in which the nation went from being a minor European trading partner to becoming the world’s largest economy— one of the central stories of American history. The second major assumption is that slavery in the United States was fundamentally in contradiction with the political and economic systems of the liberal republic, and that inevitably that contradiction would be resolved in favor of the free-labor North. Sooner or later, slavery would have ended by the operation of historical forces; thus, slavery is a story without suspense. And a story with a predetermined outcome isn’t a story at all. Third, the worst thing about slavery as an experience, one is told, was that it denied enslaved African Americans the liberal rights and liberal subjectivity of modern citizens. It did those things as a matter of course, and as injustice, that denial ranks with the greatest in modern history. But slavery also killed people, in large numbers. From those who survived , it stole everything. Yet the massive and cruel engineering required to rip a million people from their homes, brutally drive them to new, disease-ridden places, and make them live in terror and hunger as they continually built and rebuilt a commodity-generating empire— this vanished in the story of a slavery that was supposedly focused primarily not on producing profit but on maintaining its status as a quasi-feudal elite, or producing modern ideas about race in order to maintain white unity and elite power. And once the violence of slavery was minimized, another voice could whisper, saying that African Americans, both before and after emancipation, were denied the rights of citizens because they would not fight for them. All these assumptions lead to still more implications, ones that shape attitudes, identities, and debates about policy. If slavery was outside of US history, for instance—if indeed it was a drag and not a rocket booster to American economic growth —then slavery was not implicated in US growth, success, power, and wealth. Therefore none of the massive quantities of wealth and treasure piled by that economic growth is owed to African Americans. Ideas about slavery’s history determine the ways in which Americans hope to resolve the long contradiction between the claims of the United States to be a nation of freedom and opportunity , on the one hand, and, on the other, the unfreedom, the unequal treatment, and the opportunity denied that for most of American history have been the reality faced by people of African descent. Surely, if the worst thing about slavery was that it denied African Americans the liberal rights of the citizen, one must merely offer them the title of citizen— even elect one of them president— to make amends. Then the issue will be put to rest forever. Slavery’s story gets told in ways that reinforce all these assumptions. Textbooks segregate twenty-five decades of enslavement into one chapter, painting a static picture. Millions of people each year visit plantation homes where guides blather on about furniture and silverware. As sites, such homes hide the real purpose of these places, which was to make African Americans toil under the hot sun for the profit of the rest of the world. All this is the “symbolic annihilation” of enslaved people, as two scholars of those weird places put it. 2 Meanwhile, at other points we tell slavery’s story by heaping praise on those who escaped it through flight or death in rebellion, leaving the listener to wonder if those who didn’t flee or die somehow “accepted” slavery. And everyone who teaches about slavery knows a little dirty secret that reveals historians’ collective failure: many African-American students struggle with a sense of shame that most of their ancestors could not escape the suffering they experienced.
Explore BrainMass Demand & Supply Demand elasticities Suppose that the demand for Dell laptop computers) can be characterized by the following point elasticities: (own) price elasticity = -1.9, cross-price elasticity with computer printers = -2, and income elasticity = +1.1. Based on these numbers answer the following questions. Explain your answers and show your work. a.If t Select a company that uses (or has used) dynamic pricing Select a company that uses (or has used) dynamic pricing. Using the Library, the Internet, and your course materials, briefly explain how the company uses dynamic pricing. Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of dynamic pricing for that particular company. Conclude with a summary of your findings (Perloff, 2007). In your own wor Labor, cost function A firm has a cost function given by the following: c(w1, w2, y)= w1w2y^2/(w1+w2) where the wi's are the prices of the factors (inputs) x1 and x2 respectively, and y is output. a) Is this a legitimate cost function? b) Find the firm's production function, y= f(x1, x2). c) From the cost function derive the firm's Market Power The Ali Baba Co., is the only supplier of a particular type of Oriental carpet. The estimated demand for its carpets is Q= 112,000 - 500P + 5M Where Q = number of carpets, P = price of carpets (dollars per unit), and M = consumers' income per capita. The estimate average variable cost function for Ali Baba's carpets is AVC Economics: Given the demand for and the supply of a commodity that you yourself consume on a regular basis, i.e., I might choose coffee, what price will be the equilibrium price of this commodity? 1. Given the demand for and the supply of a commodity that you yourself consume on a regular basis, i.e., I might choose coffee, what price will be the equilibrium price of this commodity? Explain why this price will tend to prevail in the market and why higher (lower) prices, if the do exist temporarily, will tend to fal Supply and Demand -1.The demand for erasers (Q) is given 1.The demand for erasers (Q) is given as follows: Q = 240 - 4Pe + 2M + 1Pb + 1A , where Pe is the price of erasers, M is the level of income, Pb is the price of another (related) good, A is the level of advertising. Suppose that Pe = 10, Pb = 10, A = 10, and M = 20. a. What is the price elasticity of demand of erasers? Perfect Competition Is the agricultural industry perfectly competitive? Use economic rationale to explain why or why not? Opportunity Costs and Perfect competition Problems: 1. Explain how opportunity cost is related to the producer's supply curve. 2. Explain why the minimum price necessary rises as the producer produces more output. 3. Define profit. 4. What are the assumptions of a perfectly competitive market. 5. Describe the demand curve faced by the individual firm. D Studying behavior of substitutes Suppose gasoline and hybrid vehicles are substitutes. On the back, draw a graph indicating what will happen in the market for hybrid vehicles if the price of gasoline increases. Be sure to label your graph carefully, putting Price on the vertical axis and Quantity on the horizontal axis. You do not need to have actual numbers Calculating Equilibrium Prices and Quantity Suppose the demand for guitars in State College is given by Qd = 9000 - 12P where Qd is the quantity demanded, and P is the price of guitars. Also, suppose the supply of guitars is given by Qs = 9P - 3852, where Qs is the quantity supplied of guitars. a)Calculate the equilibrium price of guitars and the equilibrium quantity Supply and Demand/Equilibrium Quantity and Price I have read the material for Chapter 3: "Supply and Demand" located in Michael Parkin's book titled, "Economics" (8th ed.). From my readings, I understand that as the prices rises supply increases. I also understand that as demand increases supply increases. However, I have trouble understanding the concepts concerning equilibri Effect on supply, equillibrium price & quantity in short-run For each of the following changes, show the effect on the supply curve, and state what will happen to market equilibrium price and quantity in the short run. a. The government requires pollution control filters that raise production costs. b. Wages of workers in this industry fall. c. There is an improvement in technology Demand and Supply Linear functions The following relations describe monthly demand and supply for a computer support service catering to small businesses: Qd=3,000 -10 P Qs=-1,000+ 10P where Q is the number of businesses that need services and P is the monthly fee, in dollars. a) At what average monthly fee would demand equal zero? b) At what av Supply and demand Joy's frozen yogurt shops have enjoyed rapid growth in northeastern states in recent years. From the analysis of joy's various outlets, it was found that the demand curve follows this pattern. Q=200-300P+120 I +65T-250Ac+400 Aj Q= number of cups served I= per capita income T= average outdoor temperature Ac= competition's m Perfect Competition Several theories of direct investment highlight firm-- specific and/or home-country-specific advantages that enable a multinational corporation (MNC) to compete against host-country firms that typically are more familiar with the local business environment and do not have high costs associated with operating a project or subsidi Compute the number of units and the unit price Consider a market characterized by the following inverse demand and supply functions: PX = 10 - 2QX and PX = 2 + 2QX? Compute the number of units and the price at which those units will be exchanged when there is an $8 per unit price floor. Equilibrium price 1. Suppose the government wishes to spur the production of soybeans for their potential usage in making biodiesel in order to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Further suppose that the market demand and supply for soybean oil are given by QD = 100 - P and QS = 50 + .3P, where Q = barrels of soybean oil, and P = price per ba Microeconomics - Demand and supply Assume that the perfectly competitive widget industry consist of exactly 1,000 firms and is initially in a long run equilibrium. Assume that the widget industry is a constant cost industry and, for simplicity, assume that there is only one plant size available. Subsequently, a permanent increase in price of a gadget (a substitut Demand Theory - Hanover Manufacturing Company The Hanover Manufacturing Company believes that the demand curve for the product is: P= 5-Q, where P is the price of its product (in dollars) and Q is the number of millions of units of its product sold per day. It is currently charging a price of $1 per unit for its product. A. Evaluate the wisdom of the firm's pricing polic Differentiating between Market Structures Need some assistance in summarizing the content of this simulation according to the following questions: (at least 700 words) 1. What are the advantages and limitations of supply and demand identified in the simulation 2. Select an organization and identify the market structure for the organization. 3. Analyze how or Could you identify and describe the concepts of scarcity and opportunity costs. Also, explain the laws of supply and demand and how they are related to the concepts of scarcity and opportunity costs in decision-making. Finally give me something other then a text book definition on market equilibrium and explain how it is determi
Encoding Unicode in the obvious way as two bytes per character. The standard is the high byte is first (to allow string sorting to match), but due to the prevailance of small-endian Intel processors and lazy programmers in Seattle, this data is often low-byte first. In order to allow the automatic detection of the byte order, it has become customary on some platforms (notably Win32) to start every Unicode file with the character U+FEFF (ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE), also known as the Byte-Order Mark (BOM). Its byte-swapped equivalent U+FFFE is not a valid Unicode character, therefore it helps to unambiguously distinguish the Bigendian and Littleendian variants of UTF-16 and UTF-32. This is not exactly the same as UTF-16 but pretty close. UTF-16 contains bogus enhancements to make it encode more than 65536 possible characters. I strongly recommend the use of UTF-8 for all text processing. Log in or registerto write something here or to contact authors.
Click here to Skip to main content 12,887,625 members (40,693 online) Click here to Skip to main content Add your own alternative version 273 bookmarked Posted 9 Jun 2005 Introduction to NLog , 13 Jul 2006 Rate this: Please Sign up or sign in to vote. Introduction to managing diagnostic traces with NLog. Once upon a time, when there were no debuggers in the world and software was mostly console-based, programmers used to output tracing messages using printf() statements. Today's world has seen huge advancement in technology, and printf() has been replaced with Console.WriteLine(). We've all written code similar to the following: static void Main() Console.WriteLine("SuperApp started."); Console.WriteLine("SuperApp finished."); Console.WriteLine() statements in the above example are called "tracing statements" because they are only used to report our application's control flow, and have no other function. The output of Console.WriteLine() is called the program trace. In this example, the tracing statements produce output that tells us if the DoSomething() method has finished execution or not. After giving the application some testing, we tend to remove the tracing code in order to improve performance (tracing can take a lot of time). Tracing instructions are usually commented out so that they can be re-enabled in the future. Unfortunately, this requires our program to be recompiled. Some time later, after removing hundreds of comments and putting them back for the nth time, we get the feeling that our tracing solution is not perfect and we could benefit from: • the ability to control the level of detail of our trace messages (such as displaying only warnings and errors or very detailed program trace), • the possibility of turning the tracing on and off for components of our program separately, without turning the application off and recompiling it, • writing trace messages to the file, system log, message queue, or other output, • being able to send particularly important messages by email or store them in a database, • and others... It may seem that in the age of graphical debuggers, the usefulness of tracing-based solutions is limited. Sometimes, tracing turns out to be the only tool available, which can be used to locate bug in a mission-critical system that cannot be switched off for a single minute. What is NLog? NLog is a .NET library which enables you to add sophisticated tracing code to your application, delivering the functionality mentioned above and much, much more. NLog lets you write rules which control the flow of diagnostic traces from their sources to targets, which could be: • a file • text console • email message • database • another machine on the network (using TCP/UDP) • MSMQ-based message queue • Event Log • and others, described here In addition, each tracing message can be augmented with pieces of contextual information, which will be sent with it to the target. The contextual information can include: • current date and time (in various formats) • log level • source name • stack trace/information about the method that emitted the tracing message • values of environment variables • information about exceptions • machine, process, and thread names • and many more, as described here Each tracing message is associated with a log level which describes its severity. NLog supports the following levels: • Trace - Very detailed log messages, potentially of a high frequency and volume • Debug -Less detailed and/or less frequent debugging messages • Info - Informational messages • Warn - Warnings which don't appear to the user of the application • Error - Error messages • Fatal - Fatal error messages. After a fatal error, the application usually terminates. NLog is an open source library distributed at no cost under the terms of the BSD license, which permits commercial usage with almost no obligation. You can download the NLog binary and source code releases from its website. A graphical installer is also provided, which lets you install NLog in a preferred place, and enables integration with Visual Studio 2005 (Express editions are also supported), including: • configuration file templates • Intellisense for NLog config files • code snippets • Add Reference... dialog integration Our first NLog-enabled application Let's create our first application that uses NLog, using Visual Studio 2005. We'll start with a simple example that only logs to the console, and we'll be adding features that demonstrate how easy it is to control logging configuration in NLog. The first step is to create a Visual Studio project (in this example, we'll be using C#), and to add an NLog configuration file using the "Add New Item..." dialog. Let's add an "Empty NLog Configuration File" and save it as "NLog.config": Notice how a reference to the NLog.dll was automatically added to our project. The contents of the NLog.config file, which we'll be modifying in this tutorial, are: <nlog xmlns="" xmlns:xsi="" > You only need to do one more thing: change the "Copy To Output Directory" option for this file to "Copy always". This way, our configuration file will be placed in the same directory as the *.exe file, and NLog will be able to pick it up without any special configuration. It's time to configure the log output. In the <targets /> section, we'll add an entry that defines the console output and the required output layout: <target name="console" xsi:type="Console" layout="${longdate}|${level}|${message}" /> Notice how Visual Studio suggests the possible XML element names and attribute names/values. Once we type xsi:, we get a list of available log targets. In the <rules /> section, we'll add a rule that routes all message whose level is Debug or higher, to the console. The XML is quite self-explanatory. <logger name="*" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="console" /> In order to send a diagnostic message, we use a Logger object, whose methods are named after supported log levels (Debug(), Info(), Fatal(), and so on). Logger objects can be created, thanks to the LogManager class. It's recommended that logger names correspond to the full class names in the application. The LogManager object has a GetCurrentClassLogger() method that automatically creates a logger, based on the class it is being called from. Let's modify the wizard-generated C# file by adding a "using NLog" statement at the beginning, the code to create a logger, and an example log message. Note that you can quickly type the logger-creation statement by using the Code Snippet which is installed with NLog. Just type "nlogger" and press TAB twice. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using NLog; namespace NLogExample class Program private static Logger logger = LogManager.GetCurrentClassLogger(); static void Main(string[] args) logger.Debug("Hello World!"); The result of running this program is a message written to the console which includes the current date, log level (Debug), and the Hello World message. Let's see how we achieved this: 1. LogManager.GetCurrentClassLogger(); creates an instance of the Logger class which represents the source of the log messages which are associated with the current class. 2. Calling the Debug() method on the source object sends the diagnostic message on the Debug level. 3. Because our log level and source name match the rule defined in the <rules /> section, the message gets formatted according to the "layout" specification and sent to the console. A more advanced logging scenario Let's record our log messages, along with some contextual information such as the the current stack trace, to both a file and the console. To do this, we need to define another target of type "File" and tell the <logger> node that we want to write to it. <nlog xmlns="" xmlns:xsi="" > <target name="console" xsi:type="ColoredConsole" layout="${date:format=HH\:mm\:ss}|${level}|${stacktrace}|${message}" /> <target name="file" xsi:type="File" fileName="${basedir}/file.txt" layout="${stacktrace} ${message}" /> <logger name="*" minlevel="Trace" writeTo="console,file" /> Here's the C# source code that emits some more log messages; additional methods are introduced here to observe the stack trace feature. static void C() logger.Info("Info CCC"); static void B() logger.Trace("Trace BBB"); logger.Debug("Debug BBB"); logger.Info("Info BBB"); logger.Warn("Warn BBB"); logger.Error("Error BBB"); logger.Fatal("Fatal BBB"); static void A() logger.Trace("Trace AAA"); logger.Debug("Debug AAA"); logger.Info("Info AAA"); logger.Warn("Warn AAA"); logger.Error("Error AAA"); logger.Fatal("Fatal AAA"); static void Main(string[] args) logger.Trace("This is a Trace message"); logger.Debug("This is a Debug message"); logger.Info("This is an Info message"); logger.Warn("This is a Warn message"); logger.Error("This is an Error message"); logger.Fatal("This is a Fatal error message"); When we run the program, the following information will be written to the "file.txt" in the application directory: Program.Main This is a Trace message Program.Main This is a Debug message Program.Main This is an Info message Program.Main => Program.A Trace AAA Program.Main => Program.A Debug AAA Program.Main => Program.A Info AAA Program.Main => Program.A => Program.B Trace BBB Program.Main => Program.A => Program.B Debug BBB Program.Main => Program.A => Program.B Info BBB Program.A => Program.B => Program.C Info CCC Program.Main => Program.A => Program.B Warn BBB Program.Main => Program.A => Program.B Error BBB Program.Main => Program.A => Program.B Fatal BBB Program.Main => Program.A Warn AAA Program.Main => Program.A Error AAA Program.Main => Program.A Fatal AAA Program.Main This is a Warn message Program.Main This is an Error message Program.Main This is a Fatal error message At the same time, we get this fancy colored output on the console: Now, let's modify our configuration a bit. The typical requirement is to have a different level of detail depending on the output. For example, we only want messages whose level is Info and higher written to the console, and we want all messages to be written to the file. With NLog, you only need to change the <rules /> section. No changes to the C# source code are necessary: <logger name="*" minlevel="Info" writeTo="console" /> <logger name="*" minlevel="Trace" writeTo="file" /> After running the program, we find that Trace and Debug messages are only found in the file and aren't displayed on the console. Logging configuration It's now time to describe the NLog configuration mechanism. Unlike other tools, NLog attempts to automatically configure itself on startup, by looking for the configuration files in some standard places. The following locations will be searched when executing a standalone *.exe application: • standard application configuration file (usually, applicationname.exe.config) • applicationname.exe.nlog in the application's directory • NLog.nlog in the application's directory • NLog.dll.nlog in a directory where NLog.dll is located • file name pointed by the NLOG_GLOBAL_CONFIG_FILE environment variable (if defined) In the case of an ASP.NET application, the following files are searched: • the standard web application file, web.config • web.nlog located in the same directory as web.config • NLog.nlog in the application's directory • NLog.dll.nlog in a directory where NLog.dll is located The .NET Compact Framework doesn't recognize application configuration files (*.exe.config) nor environmental variables, so NLog only looks in these locations: • applicationname.exe.nlog in the application's directory • NLog.nlog in the application's directory • NLog.dll.nlog in a directory where NLog.dll is located Configuration file format NLog supports two configuration file formats: • configuration embedded within the standard *.exe.config or web.config file • simplified configuration, stored in a separate file In the first variant, we use a standard configSections mechanism, which makes our file look like this: <section name="nlog" type="NLog.Config.ConfigSectionHandler, NLog" /> The simplified format is the pure XML having the <nlog /> element as its root. The use of namespaces is optional, but it enables Intellisense in Visual Studio. <nlog xmlns="" xmlns:xsi="" > Note that NLog config files are case-insensitive when not using namespaces, and are case-sensitive when you use them. Intellisense only works with case-sensitive configurations. Configuration elements You can use the following elements as children to <nlog />. The first two elements from the list are required to be present in all NLog configuration files, the remaining ones are optional and can be useful in advanced scenarios. • <targets /> - defines log targets/outputs • <rules /> - defines log routing rules • <extensions /> - loads NLog extensions from the *.dll file • <include /> - includes the external configuration file • <variable /> - sets the value of a configuration variable The <targets /> section defines log targets/outputs. Each target is represented by the <target /> element. There are two attributes required for each target: • name - target name • type - target type - such as "File", "Database", "Mail". When using namespaces, this attribute is named xsi:type. In addition to these, targets usually accept other parameters, which influence the way diagnostic traces are written. Each target has a different set of parameters, they are described in detail on the project's homepage, and context-sensitive Intellisense is also available in Visual Studio. For example - the "File" target accepts the fileName parameter which defines the output file name, and the Console target has the error parameter which determines whether the diagnostic traces are written to the standard error (stderr) instead of the standard output (stdout) of the process. NLog provides many predefined targets. They are described on the project's homepage. It's actually very easy to create your own target - it requires about 15-20 lines of code and is described in the documentation. Log routing rules are defined in the <rules /> section. It is a simple routing table, where we define the list of targets that should be written to for each combination of source/logger name and log level. Rules are processed starting with the first rule in the list. When a rule matches, log messages are directed to target(s) in that rule. If a rule is marked as final, rules beneath the current rule are not processed. Each routing table entry is a <logger /> element, which accepts the following attributes: • name - source/logger name (may include wildcard characters *) • minlevel - minimal log level for this rule to match • maxlevel - maximum log level for this rule to match • level - single log level for this rule to match • levels - comma separated list of log levels for this rule to match • writeTo - comma separated list of targets that should be written to when this rule matches • final - make this rule final. No further rules are processed when any final rule matches Some examples: • <logger name="Name.Space.Class1" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="f1" /> - all messages from Class1 in Name.Space whose level is Debug or higher are written to the "f1" target. • <logger name="Name.Space.Class1" levels="Debug,Error" writeTo="f1" /> - all messages from Class1 in Name.Space whose level is either Debug or Error or higher are written to the "f1" target. • <logger name="Name.Space.*" writeTo="f3,f4" /> - messages from any class in the Name.Space namespace are written to both "f3" and "f4" targets regardless of their levels. • <logger name="Name.Space.*" minlevel="Debug" maxlevel="Error" final="true" /> - messages from any class in the Name.Space namespace whose level is between Debug and Error (which makes it Debug, Info, Warn, Error) are rejected (as there's no writeTo clause) and no further rules are processed for them (because of the final="true" setting). In the simplest cases, the entire logging configuration consists of a single <target /> and a single <logger /> rule that routes messages to this target depending on their level. As the application grows, adding more targets and rules is very simple. Contextual information One of NLog's strongest assets is the ability to use layouts. They include pieces of text surrounded by a pair of "${" (dollar sign + left curly brace) and "}" (right curly brace). The markup denotes "layout renderers" which can be used to insert pieces of contextual information into the text. Layouts can be used in many places. For example, they can control the format of information written on the screen or sent to a file, but also control the file names themselves. This is very powerful, which we'll see in a moment. Let's assume that we want to augment each message written to the console with: • current date and time • name of the class and method that emitted the log message • log level • message text This is very easy: <target name="c" xsi:type="Console" layout="${longdate} ${callsite} ${level} ${message}" /> We can make each message for each logger go to a separate file, as in the following example: <target name="f" xsi:type="File" fileName="${logger}.txt" /> As you can see, the ${logger} layout renderer was used in the fileName attribute, which causes each log message to be written to the file whose name includes the logger name. The above example will create the following files: • Name.Space.Class1.txt • Name.Space.Class2.txt • Name.Space.Class3.txt • Other.Name.Space.Class1.txt • Other.Name.Space.Class2.txt • Other.Name.Space.Class3.txt • ... It's a frequent requirement to be able to keep log files for each day separate. This is trivial, too, thanks to the ${shortdate} layout renderer: <target name="f" xsi:type="File" filename="${shortdate}.txt" /> How about giving each employee their own log file? The ${windows-identity} layout renderer will do the trick: <target name="f" xsi:type="File" filename="${windows-identity:domain=false}.txt" /> Thanks to this simple setting, NLog will create a set of files named after our employees' logins: 1. Administrator.txt 2. MaryManager.txt 3. EdwardEmployee.txt 4. ... More complex cases are, of course, possible. The following sample demonstrates the way of creating a distinct log file for each person per day. Log files for each day are stored in a separate directory: <target name="f" xsi:type="File" filename="${shortdate}/${windows-identity:domain=false}.txt" /> This creates the following files: 1. 2006-01-01/Administrator.txt 2. 2006-01-01/MaryManager.txt 3. 2006-01-01/EdwardEmployee.txt 4. 2006-01-02/Administrator.txt 5. 2006-01-02/MaryManager.txt 6. 2006-01-02/EdwardEmployee.txt 7. ... NLog provides many predefined layout renderers. They are described on the website. It's very easy to create your own layout renderer. It just takes 15-20 lines of code, and is described in the documentation section of the project website. Include files It's sometimes desired to split the configuration file into many smaller ones. NLog provides an include file mechanism for that. To include an external file, you simply use the following code. It is worth noting that the fileName attribute, just like most attributes in NLog config file(s), may include dynamic values using the familiar ${var} notation, so it's possible to include different files based on environmental properties. The following configuration example demonstrates this, by loading the file whose name is derived from the name of the machine we're running on. <include file="${basedir}/${machinename}.config" /> Variables let us write complex or repeatable expressions (such as file names) in a concise manner. To define a variable, we use the <variable name="var" value="xxx" /> syntax. Once defined, variables can be used as if they were layout renderers - by using the ${var} syntax, as demonstrated in the following example: <variable name="logDirectory" value="${basedir}/logs/${shortdate}" /> <target name="file1" xsi:type="File" filename="${logDirectory}/file1.txt" /> <target name="file2" xsi:type="File" filename="${logDirectory}/file2.txt" /> Automatic reconfiguration The configuration file is read automatically at program startup. In a long running process (such as a Windows service or an ASP.NET application), it's sometimes desirable to temporarily increase the log level without stopping the application. NLog can monitor logging configuration files and re-read them each time they are modified. To enable this mechanism, you simply set <nlog autoReload="true" /> in your configuration file. Note that automatic reconfiguration supports include files, so each time one of the file includes is changed, the entire configuration gets reloaded. Troubleshooting logging Sometimes our application doesn't write anything to the log files, even though we have supposedly configured logging properly. There can be many reasons for logs not being written. The most common problem is permissions, usually in an ASP.NET process, where the aspnet_wp.exe or the w3wp.exe process may not have write access to the directory where we want to store logs. NLog is designed to swallow run-time exceptions that may result from logging. The following settings can change this behavior and/or redirect these messages. • <nlog throwExceptions="true" /> - adding the throwExceptions attribute in the config file causes NLog not to mask exceptions and pass them to the calling application instead. This attribute is useful at deployment time to quickly locate any problems. It's recommended to turn throwExceptions to "false" as soon as the application is properly configured to run, so that any accidental logging problems won't crash the application. • <nlog internalLogFile="file.txt" /> - adding internalLogFile causes NLog to write its internal debugging messages to the specified file. This includes any exceptions that may be thrown during logging. • <nlog internalLogLevel="Trace|Debug|Info|Warn|Error|Fatal" /> - determines the internal log level. The higher the level, the less verbose the internal log output will be. • <nlog internalLogToConsole="false|true" /> - sends internal logging messages to the console. • <nlog internalLogToConsoleError="false|true" /> - sends internal logging messages to the console error output (stderr). Asynchronous processing, wrappers, and compound targets NLog provides wrappers and compound targets which modify other targets' behaviour, by adding features like: • asynchronous processing (wrapped target runs in a separate thread) • retry-on-error • load balancing (round-robin targets) • buffering • filtering • backup targets (failover) • and others described on the website To define a wrapper or compound target in the configuration file, simply nest a target node within another target node. You can even wrap a wrapper target. There are no limits on the depth. For example, to add asynchronous logging with retry-on-error functionality, add this to your configuration file: <target name="n" xsi:type="AsyncWrapper"> <target xsi:type="RetryingWrapper"> <target xsi:type="File" fileName="${file}.txt" /> Because asynchronous processing is a common scenario, NLog supports a shorthand notation to enable it for all targets without the need to specify explicit wrappers. You simply set <targets async="true" />, and all your targets will be wrapped with the AsyncWrapper target. Programmatic configuration In certain cases, you may choose not to use a configuration file, but to configure NLog using the provided API. The full description of this feature is beyond the scope of this article, so let's just outline the steps necessary to make it work. To configure NLog in your code, you need to: 1. Create a LoggingConfiguration object that will hold the configuration 2. Create one or more targets (objects of classes inheriting from Target) 3. Set the properties of the targets 4. Define logging rules through LoggingRule objects and add them to the configuration's LoggingRules 5. Activate the configuration by assigning the configuration object to LogManager.Configuration This sample demonstrates the programmatic creation of two targets: one is a colored console, and the other is a file and rules that send messages to them for messages whose level is Debug or higher. using NLog; using NLog.Targets; using NLog.Config; using NLog.Win32.Targets; class Example static void Main(string[] args) // Step 1. Create configuration object LoggingConfiguration config = new LoggingConfiguration(); // Step 2. Create targets and add them to the configuration ColoredConsoleTarget consoleTarget = new ColoredConsoleTarget(); config.AddTarget("console", consoleTarget); FileTarget fileTarget = new FileTarget(); config.AddTarget("file", fileTarget); // Step 3. Set target properties consoleTarget.Layout = "${date:format=HH\\:MM\\:ss} ${logger} ${message}"; fileTarget.FileName = "${basedir}/file.txt"; fileTarget.Layout = "${message}"; // Step 4. Define rules LoggingRule rule1 = new LoggingRule("*", LogLevel.Debug, consoleTarget); LoggingRule rule2 = new LoggingRule("*", LogLevel.Debug, fileTarget); // Step 5. Activate the configuration LogManager.Configuration = config; // Example usage Logger logger = LogManager.GetLogger("Example"); logger.Trace("trace log message"); logger.Debug("debug log message"); logger.Info("info log message"); logger.Warn("warn log message"); logger.Error("error log message"); logger.Fatal("fatal log message"); What else is possible with NLog? NLog supports some more logging scenarios, which couldn't be fully described here. See the links below for more information: More information Additional information about NLog can be found in the project homepage. Developers are welcome to join the project. There's a mailing list available, to which you can subscribe. • 2005-06-09 • Article submitted. • 2006-02-20 • Updated to reflect the 0.95 release changes. • 2006-06-27 • Updated to reflect the 1.0 release changes. For a full list of changes made in the 1.0 release, click here. A list of licenses authors might use can be found here About the Author Jaroslaw Kowalski Software Developer (Senior) United States United States No Biography provided You may also be interested in... Comments and Discussions QuestionUnmanaged logging from C++ Pin koriandr8-Dec-10 14:35 memberkoriandr8-Dec-10 14:35  GeneralNLog_ComInterop with VB Pin SMDonut11-Feb-10 5:22 memberSMDonut11-Feb-10 5:22  GeneralRe: NLog_ComInterop with VB Pin Jaroslaw Kowalski14-Mar-10 8:06 memberJaroslaw Kowalski14-Mar-10 8:06  QuestionHow can i Log into Database Pin Member 303171929-Mar-09 8:10 memberMember 303171929-Mar-09 8:10  AnswerRe: How can i Log into Database Pin Tiago Freitas Leal19-Feb-11 11:08 memberTiago Freitas Leal19-Feb-11 11:08  GeneralWeb.config documentation Pin Murray Roke2-Dec-08 16:09 memberMurray Roke2-Dec-08 16:09  AnswerRe: Web.config documentation Pin Mufasa24520-Feb-13 5:32 memberMufasa24520-Feb-13 5:32  QuestionCompiler Error CS1504 Pin Physon Wang26-Sep-08 21:21 memberPhyson Wang26-Sep-08 21:21  Generalurgent Pin splendid930-Jun-08 11:07 membersplendid930-Jun-08 11:07  Generalwriting more than ${message} to a sql db Pin qizmo11-Jun-08 9:02 memberqizmo11-Jun-08 9:02  is it possible to write multiple columns in a sql db? the config file looks like this: <target name="database" type="Database"> <!-- database connection parameters --> <commandText>insert into tAuditLog(activityTimeStamp,machineId,userId,docId,docState,activityDescription) values(@activityTimeStamp, @machineId, @userId, @docId,@docState, @activityDescription);</commandText> <parameter name="@activityTimeStamp" layout="${date}"/> <parameter name="@machineId" layout="${machinename}"/> <parameter name="@userId" layout="${windows-identity}"/> <parameter name="@docId" layout="${text}"/> <parameter name="@docState" layout="${text}"/> <parameter name="@activityDescription" layout="${text}"/> in the c# class file: private static Logger dbl = LogManager.GetLogger("Databaselogger"); i cant figure out how to write the log statement: activityTimeStamp, machineId and userId all write to their columns in the database, but i cant figure out how to get the other three parameters to the db. i can modify the config file to make @imageDocId" layout="${message}, but then the other columns still dont get populated. been banging my head against the wall for a coupla days now, any help, pointers, example code, comments, pointing out obvious (to you) errors is appreciated. GeneralNlog with Log2Console Pin dany paredes6-Jun-08 20:12 memberdany paredes6-Jun-08 20:12  GeneralNLog Console Target in Windows Service Pin gabe-@freemail.hu31-May-08 0:46 membergabe-@freemail.hu31-May-08 0:46  GeneralWeb Service Logging Target Pin Big Dog5-Oct-07 11:35 memberBig Dog5-Oct-07 11:35  GeneralAwesome! Pin Greg Cadmes9-Aug-07 9:55 memberGreg Cadmes9-Aug-07 9:55  GeneralNLogViewer Pin Andre da Silva Carrilho17-Jul-07 8:14 memberAndre da Silva Carrilho17-Jul-07 8:14  GeneralGreat Tool - Thank you Jaroslaw! Pin David Roh15-Jul-07 5:52 memberDavid Roh15-Jul-07 5:52  Question${specialfolder} Pin qizmo20-Feb-07 8:14 memberqizmo20-Feb-07 8:14  GeneralRe: ${specialfolder} Pin Judah Himango26-Feb-08 7:43 memberJudah Himango26-Feb-08 7:43  GeneralRe: ${specialfolder} Pin qizmo26-Feb-08 9:54 memberqizmo26-Feb-08 9:54  GeneralNLog 1.0 has been released Pin Jaroslaw Kowalski18-Sep-06 23:59 memberJaroslaw Kowalski18-Sep-06 23:59  GeneralRe: NLog 1.0 has been released Pin brndmg29-Sep-06 3:30 memberbrndmg29-Sep-06 3:30  GeneralRe: NLog 1.0 has been released Pin Greg Cadmes8-Aug-07 15:31 memberGreg Cadmes8-Aug-07 15:31  GeneralThread safe Pin Automation Software Engineer (A.S.E)20-Jul-06 5:58 memberAutomation Software Engineer (A.S.E)20-Jul-06 5:58  GeneralRe: Thread safe Pin Jaroslaw Kowalski20-Jul-06 6:12 memberJaroslaw Kowalski20-Jul-06 6:12  GeneralWindows Service & NLog 1.0 Pin JimmyTudeski19-Jul-06 23:24 memberJimmyTudeski19-Jul-06 23:24  Permalink | Advertise | Privacy | Terms of Use | Mobile Web02 | 2.8.170424.1 | Last Updated 13 Jul 2006 Article Copyright 2005 by Jaroslaw Kowalski Everything else Copyright © CodeProject, 1999-2017 Layout: fixed | fluid
For Act Two, scene two, of Shakespeare's Macbeth, analyze the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth based on what is known so far, specifically with regard to their objectives—I mean, has... Asked on by mimssss 1 Answer | Add Yours booboosmoosh's profile pic booboosmoosh | High School Teacher | (Level 3) Educator Emeritus Posted on In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both want the same things, but based upon their behavior in Act Two, scene two, each character is very different with regard to his/her ability to see the job through. Macbeth is praised as a great hero in Act One, valiantly fighting in Scotland's war with Norway. The Scots take the day and the King rewards Macbeth.  However, by the time the above-noted scene takes place, the audience knows that Macbeth has been having second thoughts, that he doesn't really need anything (so money is not a motivator) and that the only thing that is really pushing him is his ambition—he calls it "vaulting ambition," a hunger to have more and more. And when that is realized, his ambition drives him to have even more. It is an obsession he cannot control. The question is also raised as to what Macbeth is willing to do to win the throne. We find that he has a much more sensitive side—for he must be badgered into the killing by Lady Macbeth; and when it is done, he is babbling foolishly over imagined fears, regretting what he has done. Macbeth worries that after the murder, the guards talk in their sleep, whispering words of prayer that Macbeth cannot speak himself—this is the first indication of his guilt: Listening their fear, I could not say “Amen,” When they did say “God bless us!” (38-39) Then he believes that he heard a voice saying that Macbeth has killed not only the King, but also the ability to enjoy an innocent sleep—that Macbeth will never be able to sleep again. After the fact, Macbeth almost spoils it all because he is afraid to return the murder weapons to the scene, having taken them from the room. Even though he and his wife would be discovered as Duncan's murderers, Macbeth cannot face the murder scene again: I'll go no more: I am afraid to think what I have done; Look on't again I dare not. (64-66) By the end of the scene, Macbeth is full of regret, wishing that those who knock on the door could waken Duncan—that Duncan was still alive. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, is not the soft touch Macbeth is. She has viciously pressed Macbeth to murder his King, his cousin, his friend, and his guest. She has no qualms about killing the King. She wants Macbeth on the throne so she can rule by his side. As her husband trembles in abject fear, Lady Macbeth takes charge of the situation: ...Why, worthy You do unbend your noble strength, to think So brainsickly of things. Go, get some water And wash this filthy witness from your hand. (56-60) When she realizes that Macbeth still has the daggers, she directs him back to Duncan's chambers: They must lie there. Go carry them, and smear The sleepy grooms with blood. (62-63) At this point, Macbeth refuses. He seems unconcerned with being discovered, but Lady Macbeth is more than aware, and is in complete control of the circumstances surrounding them. Cognizant of the smallest details, she also knows they must not be found awake as the knocking sounds on the door: Retire we to our chamber. A little water clears us of this deed:  How easy is it then!... (84-86) Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us And show us to be watchers. (89-90) While they have achieved their objective, what has changed is the way each responds to Duncan's murder, and who takes charge. The once-valiant Macbeth is hysterical, but the charming Lady Macbeth shows a heart of flint as she readies herself to face whoever is knocking on the gate. We’ve answered 319,827 questions. We can answer yours, too. Ask a question
Mechanisms of Learning Home > Preview The flashcards below were created by user kirstenp on FreezingBlue Flashcards. 1. What is learning? A relatively permanent change in behaviour and knowledge that occurs as a result of experience 2. What are 3 behaviours not dependent on learning? • Reflex Actions • Fixed action patterns • Behaviour dependent on maturation 3. What are reflex actions? Provide an example • Reflex actions innate, automatic and involuntary reactions to environmental stimuli, which • do not require prior experience and conscious processing by the brain. • They involve a simple, rapid response to a specific stimulus and • are adaptive for survival. • eg. Blinking in response to having air blown into your eyes 4. What are fixed action patterns? Provide an example • Fixed action patterns are inborn, predispositions to behave in a certain way when appropriately stimulated. They are complex, sequential behavioural responses that are unique to a particular species where every member of the species inherits the behaviour • eg. A funnel web spider creates its characteristic tubular web 5. What are behaviours dependent on maturation? Provide an example • Behaviours dependent on maturation are behaviours that are genetically predetermined to occur at certain stages of an organism’s lifespan; they require the organism to be sufficiently mentally and/or physically developed before the action can be undertaken • eg. Humans cannot walk until they are sufficiently developed mentally and physically 6. What are neural pathways? • An interconnected group of neurons organised as a network that is active during the learning process • When learning, a new neural pathway is either created or existing ones are strengthened 7. What is a synapse? The junction where the axon terminals of the presynaptic neuron comes into close proximity with the dendrites of post synaptic neurons 8. What is synaptogenesis? The formation of new synapses and change in neural pathways, particularly during the early brain development 9. What are neurotransmitters? Provide examples • Chemical substances that carry information between neurons • Glutamate: An excitatory neurotransmitters that strengthens connections of synapses. It makes pre-synaptic neurons more likely to fire • Dopamine: Prompts the growth of dendritic spines in the post synaptic neuron 10. What does plasticity of the brain refer to? Refers to the way the brain changes is response to stimulation form the environment. Occurs at the synaptic connections in the brain 11. What is developmental plasticity? Refers to the brain's ability to modify synaptic connections as a result of learning and experiences during the growth or development of its neural structure. 12. What are the 5 stages of plasticity? • 1. Proliferation: where unborn baby cells become neurons and divide and multiply • 2. Migration: newly formed neurons move to their destined location • 3. Circuit formation: the axons of the new neurons form synapses with target cells • 4. Circuit pruning: Where neurons who have not made a connection die and connections are either strengthened or weakened based n whether the neurons fire together • 5. Myelination: Where the axons of the neurons become covered in myelin. It protects axons from interference and speeds up the transmission. Begins from occipital lobes to frontal lobes 13. What is adaptive plasticity and reorganisation? • Refers to changes in the neural stucture of the brain to enable adjustments to experiences and to compensate and/or maximise remaining functions in the event of brain damage • Reorganisation: a shift in neural connections that alter the function of a particular area of the brain 14. What are sensitive periods? A specific time in development when  an organism is more responsive to learning than any other time of development 15. What is experience expectant and dependent learning? • Experience expectant learning: Occurs during sensitive periods and refers to experiences necessary for learning to occur. eg. Learning to speak the native tongue as a child • Experience dependent learning: A form of learning that can occur at anytime eg, learning to read or write in one's native tongue 16. What are critical periods? • A very narrow period of time in an animal's development in which the animal is preprogrammed for learning to occur • eg. Young birds imprinting to the first moving object they see after they hatch from an egg 17. Brain development during adolescence • Cerebellum: increase in the number of neurons and synapses in the cerebellum. • Amygdala: becomes • more active during adolescence.     • Corpus callosum: thickens and there is an increase in the number of connections between the two • hemispheres.  • Frontal lobe (prefrontal cortex): motor • movement and higher order thinking. 18. What is rerouting and sprouting to compensate for loss of function due to brain damage • Rerouting: when an undamaged neuron that has lost connection with an active neuron due to damage, it seeks a new active • neuron to connect with instead. • Sprouting: growth of new, bushier connections on a neuron’s dendrites. 19. What is LTP? • The long-lasting strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons, resulting in enhanced/more effective neural functioning. • Functional and structural changes include: • Increased levels of neurotransmitters produced and released (pre synaptic) • Increase in dendrites – formation of new synaptic connections   • Increase in sensitivity of receptor sites – new • receptor sites form(post synaptic) Card Set Information Mechanisms of Learning 2013-08-06 12:16:05 Learning ch14 Mechanisms of learning and behaviours not dependent on learning Show Answers: What would you like to do? Home > Flashcards > Print Preview
As the United States of America prepares to ring in the new year, U.S. Census Bureau officials are projecting the population will be 320,090,857 on Jan. 1, 2015. This represents an increase of 2,334,187, or 0.73 percent, from New Year’s Day 2014, and 11,345,319, or 3.67 percent, since Census Day (April 1) 2010. In January 2015, the U.S. is expected to experience a birth every eight seconds and one death every 12 seconds. Meanwhile, net international migration is expected to add one person to the U.S. population every 33 seconds. The combination of births, deaths and net international migration increases the U.S. population by one person every 16 seconds. The projected world population on Jan. 1, is 7,214,958,996, an increase of 77,381,246, or 1.08 percent, from New Year’s Day 2014. During January 2015, 4.3 births and 1.8 deaths are expected worldwide every second. The Census Bureau’s Pop Clock displays real-time growth of the U.S. and world populations. U.S. and World Population Clock: http://www.census.gov/popclock/?intcmp=home_pop
=head1 NAME Creating a PerlQt application - The Perl part =head1 DESCRIPTION PerlQt is meant to be a very direct mapping of Qt methods to PerlQt. Programming is more than methods, however. This document will show the basic differences you will need to be aware of as you translate programming techniques from C++ Qt to PerlQt. =head1 BASICS =head2 Including PerlQt in your application Including PerlQt is very simple. The top of almost every PerlQt application will be the same. #!/usr/bin/perl -w use Qt; import Qt::app; =over 4 =item #!/usr/bin/perl -w This the #! business which starts Perl on your system. I always recommend using the B<-w> option, because relying on PerlQt to find your errors will leave you stranded. If you intend to distribute your app, make sure it uses F as the path for B. =item use Qt; This causes the PerlQt module to be loaded and the Qt library to be linked to Perl. From that line on, you can call any PerlQt method or access any PerlQt constant. =item import Qt::app; This line imports the $app variable into your namespace. The $app variable is equivalent to the C variable in Qt. In PerlQt, C is stored as C<$Qt::app>. The reason we C instead of using $Qt::app directly is that C will create $Qt::app if it does not already exist. The reason we C instead of C is to allow the creation of modules which subclass C and create $Qt::app, without worrying about coding order. If you want to create your own C<$Qt::app>, this is how you do it. use Qt; BEGIN { $Qt::app = Qt::Application->new(\@ARGV) } import Qt::app; =back =head2 Creating objects Now that we have included PerlQt into our program, we can call any Qt method we want. Since most of the methods require an object, it would help if we created one. $widget = Qt::Widget->new; Please note that every class in Qt has had it's initial Q replaced with Qt:: (C => C). In Perl, C is a method, and C, the class, can be treated as an object. It's weird, but it works. However, if you're inclined, you are also allowed to use more C++-compatible syntax. $widget = new Qt::Widget; I use the first way just to show a good example, since the second can lead to ambiguous function-calls under bizzare circumstances. =head2 Calling methods At this point, we want to call methods on our $widget. I'm going to resize this widget a few times, demonstrating the old perl motto that There Is More Than One Way To Do It. $widget->resize(100, 100); resize $widget 100, 100; # Yes, this works $widget->resize(Qt::Size->new(100, 100)); $widget->resize(new Qt::Size(100, 100)); I chose this example in particular because it demonstrates a few important principals. =over 4 =item $widget->resize(100, 100); This is a standard method-call in perl. Parentheses are required on methods called with C<-E> that are called with arguments. On methods without arguments, no parentheses are required. That allows you to access object attributes easily with code like C<$widget-Esize> instead of C<$widget-Esize()> if that strikes your fancy. =item resize $widget 100, 100; I admit this is weird, and could start looking like tcl after a while. It's interesting and perfectly valid, though. It would also make for an good graphical IRC client interface. =item $widget->resize(Qt::Size->new(100, 100)); If you look at the Qt documentation, C has two prototypes. virtual void resize ( int w, int h ) void resize ( const QSize & ) The C class is supported in PerlQt. We created a new Qt::Size object, and passed it to C. The C function saw that it was passed one C instead of two numbers, and called the C function that accepts C. =item $widget->resize(new Qt::Size(100, 100)); You can also use a more C++-like syntax. In C++ however, you would never allocate a new QSize object and pass it to C since that would leak memory. In PerlQt, that object will be deleted automatically when the function returns. See L =back =head1 SUBCLASSING In order to add functionality to your program, it is often a good idea to subclass a Qt widget. If you want to create a custom dialog-based program, you would subclass C. If you wanted to write PerlExcel, you would subclass C. By subclassing, you gain all the functionality of the class you inherit, and can change that functionality by overriding virtual methods from that class. =head2 Creating a class In Perl, classes are known as packages, because they are declared with the keyword C. In reality, C creates a namespace into which you place your methods, and it is through some perl magic that it gains object-oriented status. I prefer calling them classes nonetheless. There are two ways to define your class. You can define it in its own file "F" and C it in your application, or you can define it in the main application file. This is a class defined in F which inherits Qt::Widget: package MyClass; use Qt; @ISA = qw(Qt::Widget); # your code here 1; The C<1> at the end of the file is required by Perl, and must be at the end of the file. To use that class from your application, add C to your application after C. This is a class defined in the main application file which inherits Qt::Dialog: package MyClass; @ISA = qw(Qt::Dialog); # your code here package main; The C does the reverse of C and puts you into the global namespace with normal variable access again. =over 4 =item * I variables declared at the class level with C will be visible from all classes in a file, but not outside a file. =back That was it, you now have a class called C into which you can write some code. =head2 Constructor In Perl, the constructor is a method called C. There is some tradition for using C<$self> in Perl as the equivalent to C in C++, and that's what I will demonstrate. This is I required, and you are free to call it C<$this>, C<$that>, or C<$my_special_friend>. sub new { my $self = shift->SUPER::new(@_); # your constructor code here return $self; } The first line of the constructor allows PerlQt to create your object. The one I've shown you passes all the arguments to your constructor to the superclass constructor. If you want to hide some of those arguments from your superclass and use them yourself, this is what you need to do: sub new { my $class = shift; my $argument = shift; # repeat for each argument my $self = $class->SUPER::new($class, @_); # your constructor code here return $self; } If you don't want to pass the arguments passed to you to your superclass, omit C<@_> and replace it with your own arguments. Every constructor must C in order to work. The variable C<$self> and the function C<&new> have no special signifigance to Perl, so there is no reason for Perl to do that for you. Your constructor must return the object it created. If you want to create a destructor, create a method called DESTROY, and put your destruction code in it. You usually don't need a destructor, because Perl and Qt automatically deallocate everything associated with your object when it's destroyed. =head2 The object When you call C<&SUPER::new>, you are calling your superclass constructor. If you use multiple-inheritance, it will call C<$ISA[0]-Enew>. Your superclass constructor will create the C++ version of itself, and return a blessed perl hash reference. You cannot inherit two Qt classes properly, since C<$self> can only represent one Qt object at a time. All objects in Perl are blessed references. Blessed means it represents a package and methods can be called on it. References are Perl pointers, and can refer to a variable or function. In this case, it refers to a perl associated list, or hash. This allows us to have named member-variables. sub new { my $self = shift->SUPER::new(@_); $self->{button} = Qt::PushButton->new("OK", $self); return $self; } We have saved a pushbutton in C<$self-E{button}>. =head2 Virtual methods A large part of the Qt API involves overriding virtual methods. When a widget is resized or hidden, Qt calls a virtual method on your object. If you've reimplemented that virtual method, you get the opportunity to respond to that event. PerlQt allows you to override Qt virtual functions. The C method is called whenever a widget is resized. sub resizeEvent { my $self = shift; my $e = shift; printf "Old size: %s, %s\n", $e->oldSize->x, $e->oldSize->y; printf "Current size: %s, %s\n", $self->size->x, $self->size->y; $self->SUPER::resizeEvent($e); } That reimplementation of C prints out the old widget size and the current widget size. It also calls the superclass C since our implementation didn't actually do anything useful. =head2 Declaring signals and slots The Qt callback mechanism is called signals and slots. It is a way for objects to communicate with each other. When a button is pushed, it emits a signal called C. If you want to know when the button is pushed, you create a slot and connect the C signal to it. To see how C works in PerlQt, read L. Slots are just normal methods which have been registered with Qt. Signals are methods created by PerlQt and given the name you specify. When you C (call) that signal, every slot connected to it gets called. When you create a class, you will need to create slots to pick up signals such as C from Qt::PushButton, and C from Qt::LineEdit. You can also choose to emit signals, so other classes can be told what you are doing. use Qt::slots 'buttonWasClicked()', 'returnWasPressed()'; use Qt::signals 'somethingHappened()'; That declares two slots, which you can implement in your class, and a signal which can be connected to slots in C++ or Perl. sub buttonWasClicked { my $self = shift; # you can use $self # lets emit a signal emit $self->somethingHappened; } sub returnWasPressed { my $self = shift; # you can use $self # your code here emit $self->somethingHappened; } The C keyword does nothing, it's syntactic sugar to make it clear you are emitting a signal. Signals and slots can have arguments. PerlQt limits signals and slots created by Perl to three arguments. See L. =head1 WORKING IN PERL Right off the bat, Perl eliminates pointers and references. That makes for a great deal of simplification. Also, Perl has garbage collection which means it will automatically free memory for a variable when it's no-longer needed. That eliminates the need for destructors usually. =head2 Constants Global constants in C++ Qt, like C, are accessed as C in PerlQt. They are constant functions, not variables. Class constants like C are predictably accessed as C in PerlQt. Please note that if you inherit a class that has a constant, you must still use its fully-qualified name. Perl does not allow function inheritance like that. Of course, you could always try calling it as a method and use method inheritance (C<$scrollbar-EVertical>). =head2 NULL pointer PerlQt supports two-way C pointer conversion to C. If you pass C to a function accepting a pointer argument, that function receives a C pointer. If a function returns a C pointer, Perl receives C. =head2 Object destruction There are several types of objects in PerlQt when it comes to object destruction. There are the normal objects, which need to be destroyed when their Perl variable is destroyed. Widgets are destroyed by their parent. I call this behavior suicidal, because these objects will delete themselves even if I lose track of them. The perl variable for these objects can be destroyed, but the C++ object will still be there. It is important that these objects have been given a parent or have been added to an object which will destroy them from C++. Virtual objects are from classes which have been implemented in PerlQt with virtual functions. These objects keep a reference to the Perl object, so that even if you, the programmer, have destroyed every reference to the object you can find, PerlQt still keeps one which you cannot get rid of. A virtual object must either delete itself, or be suicidal in order for it to be destroyed. Every object in PerlQt has three methods to handle object destruction. =over 4 =item $object->delete This calls the C++ delete operator on the object pointer, and causes immediate object destruction. =item $object->continue An object that would normally be deleted at the end of a method can be told to stick around with C. If you pass an object created in Perl to a method which deletes that variable, you must call C to stop PerlQt from deleting it. =item $object->break If you create a suicidal object like a dialog box, and don't give it a parent which will destroy it, you can make it get deleted when Perl destroys its object with C. =back =head2 Signals and slots PerlQt allows programmers to create signals and slots in Perl which are usable from Perl and C++. If your subclass inherits C, PerlQt will automatically do the C voodoo which Qt does, and you don't have to worry about any of that. The SIGNAL() and SLOT() macros in C++ are replaced with simple quotes in PerlQt. In C++: QObject::connect(sender, SIGNAL(didSomething(int)), receiver, SLOT(sawSomething(int))); In PerlQt: $receiver->connect($sender, 'didSomething(int)', 'sawSomething(int)'); Now, there are a multitude of argument-types which can be passed through a signal, and here is a short translation =over 4 =item SLOT(member(Object)) Sorry, you cannot connect to a signal or slot that sends an object by value. =item SLOT(member(Object *)) 'member(Object)' =item SLOT(member(const Object *)) 'member(const Object)' =item SLOT(member(Object &)) 'member(\Object)' =item SLOT(member(const Object &)) 'member(const \Object)' =item SLOT(member(int, long, double)) 'member(int, long, double)' =item SLOT(member(const char *)) 'member(const string)' OR 'member(cstring)' =item SLOT(member(const QString &)) 'member(const \QString)' =item SLOT(member(const QString *)) 'member(const QString)' =item SLOT(member(SV *)) 'member($)' Yes, you can pass perl scalar variables as signal/slot arguments. =back These are the functions you use for signals and slots. =over 4 =item use signals LIST Declare all of the signals in LIST. Each signal in LIST will cause a function to be imported into your namespace by that name which calls all the slots connected to it. Each signal name can be listed only once, multiple prototypes are not supported. =item use slots LIST Declare all of the slots in LIST. Each slot is a normal method defined in Perl. When it is declared as a slot, you can C signals from Qt or Perl to it. Each slot name can be listed only once, multiple prototypes are not supported. =item $receiver->connect($sender, $signal, $slot) The C method from Qt works the same way in Perl. Just replace the SIGNAL() and SLOT() macros from Qt with quotes. In Qt terminology, C<$sender> emits C<$signal>, C<$receiver> has C<$slot>. =item emit $sender->signal() The emit keyword is imported into your namespace whenever you C. It is provided for syntactic sugar to identify that you aren't calling a normal function, but are emitting a signal. =back =head1 SEE ALSO Qt has a massive amount of documentation which I will not attempt to duplicate. Read it. http://www.troll.no/ Perl also has some great manual pages describing object-oriented practices which are particularly relevant. perlobj Perl objects perltoot Perl OO tutorial Included with PerlQt is alot of sample code. Look in the F and F directories of your PerlQt directory. =head1 BUGS Much of PerlQt is untested. Signals and slots are limited to 3 arguments. Alot of datatypes are still not supported. =head1 AUTHOR Ashley Winters
Glossary of Reproduction - Medsci Start Studying! Add Cards ↓ Created by andie Molecules that are released on one part of the body but regulate the activity of cells in other parts of the body. Exocrine Glands Secrete products into ducts that carry them into body cavities, lumens of organs and outer body surface. Eg. Sudoriferous (sweat) Sebaceous (oil) Mucous & digestive Endocrine Glands Secrete products into interstitial fluid, not ducts. These products then diffuse from the interstitial fluid into the blood capillaries for transport around the body Eg. Pituitary Paracrine Hormones Local hormones that act on neighboring cells Autocrine Hormones Local hormones that on on the same cell Lipid Soluble hormones such as Testosterone, estrogen, T3, T4 and NO can/cannot enter a cell directly CAN as they are Lipid soluble Three types of water soluble proteins are Eg. Catecholamines (Norepinephrine & Epinephrine) 2)Peptides and Proteins Eg. Oxytocin, ADH, FSH, TSH, GnRH & LH Eg. Prostaglandins & Leukotrienes What are the 3 Lipid Soluble Steroid Hormones? Androgens, Oestrogens and Progestagens 2 Main Androgen hormones Testosterone & 5alpha Dihydrotestosterone (stronger) 3 Main Oestrogen hormones Oestradiol, Oestrone & Oestriol 1 Main Progestagen hormones What does the Pituitary gland use to attach to the hypothalamus? Infundibulum (Posterior Pituitary) The anterior pituitary is also called the ________? The Adenohypophysis counts for about ____% of the weight of the gland. The Anterior Pituitary (Adenohypophysis)has 2 parts in the adult. What are they? Pars Distalis Pars Tuberalis (forms a sheath around Infundibulum) The posterior pituitary is also called the ______? The Posterior Pituitary (Neurohypophysis) also has 2 parts in the adult. What are they? Pars Nervosa Infundibulum (Stalk) What is the name of the third region of the pituitary gland and why is it not present in the adult? Pars Intermedia ATROPHIES during human fetal development and ceases to exist in adults Portal system Blood flows from one capillary network into a PORTAL VEIN and then into a second capillary network without passing through the heart Superior hypophyseal arteries Branches of the internal carotid arteries that bring blood into the hypothalamus What is the pathway of the Hypophyseal Portal System? Superior Hypophyseal Arteries -> Primary Plexus of the Hypophyseal Portal System -> Hypophyseal Portal Veins -> Secondary Plexus of the Hypophyseal Portal System -> Anterior Hypophyseal Veins What part of the hypothalamus releases hormones which will eventually diffuse into the Primary plexus of the hypophyseal system? Hypothalamic Neurosecretory cells produce these hormone which travel down axons and released at axon terminals Tropic Hormones Anterior pituitary hormones that act on other endocrine glands Homeostatic Regulator for reproduction, stress, temperature, hunger and sleep. [Neuroendocrine organ] Which part of the pituitary gland has a portal system? Anterior or Posterior Anterior Pituitary Which part of the pituitary gland has the longer neurosecretory cell axons? Anterior or Posterior Where are the neurosecretory peptide hormones stored and released in regards with the Posterior Pituitary? Travel down to axon terminals and stored as secretory vesicles. Nerve impulses down the axon causes exocytosis to release the peptide hormones Oxytocin has 3 effects 1)Affects Smooth Muscle Contraction 2)Stimulates Milk Ejection 3)Induces uterine contractions for child birth What is the pathway of hormone release in the Anterior pituitary? Neurosecretory neurons (parvicellular) secrete hormones(GnRH) -> Stored at axon terminals -> nerve impulses release them into primary plexus of the portal system -> act on secretory cells in the pars distalis -> produces gonadotrophins FSH and LH What is the pathway of hormone release in the Posterior pituitary? Neurosecretory neurons (Magnocellular)secrete ADH and Oxytocin -> Stored at axon terminals in Posterior pituitary -> Nerve impulses release them Pulsatile release Hypothalamic secretions that are released in discrete bursts, separated by periods of little or no secretion. What does pulsatile release prevent? 1) Receptor desensitisation - After repeated exposure, the hormone does not bind to the receptor 2)Down regulation - Overstimulation causes receptor to INTERNALISE itself (go in inside cell) so hormones cannot bind to receptor anymore Antidiuretic Hormone (ADH or Vasopressin) Stimulates kidney to regulate and maintain water to maintain blood volume Follicle-Stimulating Hormone Helps the growth of Sperm and Ovarian Follicles. Average Number of oocytes released ~ 400 Mature oocyte released every ___? 28 days The NZ fertility rate is ___? On average, how long is the elastic muscular tube, the vagina? 7.5-9.0 cm What is the function of the ampulla of the uterine tube? A marker for the area where fertilisation occurs What is the function of the isthmus of the uterine tube? A marker for the area where sperm is stored What are the functions of the uterus for the developing embryo & fetus? - Mechanical Protection - Nutritional support - Waste Removal Which level of the uterus wall is important for ejection the fetus at birth? Contractions in the myometrium Which level of the uterus wall is the source of menstrual flow? Endometrium Lining Which zone of the endometrium ( Stratum Functionalis or Stratum Basalis) attaches the endometrium to the myometrium? Stratum Basalis What is the average weight of the uterus? The uterine tube provides a rich, nutritive environment containing ___ and ___ for spermatoza, oocyte and developing embryo. Lipids and Glycogen The epithelium lining of the uterine tube is made up of which type of cells? BOTH cilliated and noncilliated secretory cuboidal cells Transport along the uterine tube is due to ___ and ___? Ciliary movement and Peristaltic contractions. Adult human ovaries weigh around...? Which region of the ovary contains the ovarian follicles? Outer ovarian cortex What is contained in the central ovarian medulla? Ovarian Stroma and Steroid Producing cells Which part of the ovary acts as the point of entry for NERVES and BLOOD VESSELS? The Inner Hilum Formation of gametes in the ovaries The process germ cells degenerate What promotes the development of Primordial follicles into Primary Follicles? Release of FSH & LH by the Anterior Pitutary As the ovarian follicle enlarges, follicular fluid accumulates in a cavity called? The Antrum Theca Folluculi Organised layer of stromal cells What is the clear, glycoprotein layer between the primary oocyte and the granulosa cells? Zona Pellucida Out of the Theca Interna and Theca Externa, which becomes a highly vascularized layer of cuboidal secretory cells that secrete estrogen? Theca Interna What secretes the follicular fluid that fills the Antrum in a secondary follicle? The granulosa cells Corona Radiata Innermost layer of granulosa cells surrounding the Zona Pellucida Cumulus Oophorous Mass of loosely attached granulosa cells from the oocyte to the granulosa cells Which stage of follicle development does the primary oocyte complete meiosis I? Mature (Graafian) Follicle Corpus Luteum Yellow body containing the remnants of a mature follicle after ovulation. Corpus Albicans Fibrous Scar Tissue What does the Corpus Luteum produce after ovulation? When does LUTENISATION occur? After Ovulation, due to an increasing secretion of Progestagens as the granulosa cells form large Lutein cells forming the Corpus Luteum What are the 2 phases in the ovarian cycle? Follicular Phase (Day 1-Ovulation) Luteal Phase (Ovulation - Menstration) Increase in FSH means Stratum Functionalis is at its Lowest Follicle Growth is occuring Increase in Estrogen means Dominant Follicle is Selected Increase in LH means Increase in Progesterone means Stratum Functionalis is at its Thickest Preparation of the Uterus for the foetus SRY gene Sex-Determining Region on the Y-chromosome Mesonephric (Wolffian) Duct Develops into structures of the Male reproductive system Paramesonephric (mullerian) Duct Develops into structures of the Female reproductive system What week of development do the gonads develop? fifth-sixth week The protein product from the SRY gene causes which cells to differentiate? Sertoli cells Human chorionic gonadotropic (hCG) stimulates which cells? Leydig cells Leydig cells secrete which hormone? The androgen Testosterone which stiumlates the development of the Mesonephric (Wolffian) ducts If Testosterone stimulates development of internal male genitals, which androgen develops external male genitals? Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) In females, how many weeks does it take for Wolffian ducts to regress? 10 weeks In males what happens to the urethal folds? They fuse, forms the shaft of the penis In Males, what forms the scrotum? Labioscrotal swellings At what mass does menarche occur? What is the sequence of events in puberty for girls? Breast increase -> Pubic Hair -> Height spurt -> Merache What is the sequence of events in puberty for boys? Testis -> Pubic Hair -> Penis -> Height spurt PERMANENT cessation of menstruation Why does menopause occur? The consequence of the ovaries running out of follicles Ovarian Senescence One year after menopause, the ovary had stopped producing hormones From age ~40-46, the end of REGULAR cycles Menopausal transition From end of regular cycles (~45 years) to the last menstruation (~50-52 years) From the last Menstruation Menopause transition (counts till hormones begins to cease) Testes do not move from the scrotum to the pelvis = infertile Spermatogenisis takes how many days? 65-75 days Where does spermatogenisis occur? In the Seminiferous tubules What unique process occurs in spermatogenesis? They constantly fail to complete cytoplasmic seperation (cytokinesis) so they remain in cytoplasmic contact throughout entire development How many sperm complete spermatogenesis per day? 300 million Which section of the sperm tail contains the centrioles? Which section of the sperm tail contains mitochondria? Middle piece After ejaculation, how many hours can sperm survive? 48 hours (within the female reproductive tract) How much sperm is produced in males per second? 20,000 sperm per sec What is the function of the Androgen-Binding protein (ABP)? Binds to testosterone to keep its concentration high. What are the 3 effects resulting from Testosterone and DHT binding to androgen receptors? - Prenatal Development - Development of sexual characteristics - Anabolism (protein synthesis) What does Sertoli cells produce to inhibit FSH? What does Leydig cells produce to inhibit GnRH and LH? No sperm Describe the pathway of the sperm in the testis Seminiferous tubules -> Rete testis -> Epididymus -> Vas Deferens How long does it take for sperm to become motile? 10-14 days Where do sperm acquire the ability to be motile? Where does the urethra join the ejaculatory duct? At the prostate Seminal Vesicles Secretory glands that secrete a mucoid sticky substance into the ejaculatory duct to wash down sperm. Does the prostate secrete anything? Yes, the prostate secretes Prostatic Fluid into the Prostate urethra ahead of sperm Fluid from the seminal vesicles constitutes to about __% of semen. Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) Helps to break down coagulum Fluid from the Prostate constitutes to about __% of semen and contribute to sperm motility and viability. Cowpers glands produce an alkaline fluid into the urethra to do what? Protect the sperm by neutralizing acids from urethra Bulbourethral Glands also secretes mucus for what purpose? Lubricating the end of the penis and the lining of the urethra to decrease the number of sperm damaged during ejaculation. What is the ph of semen? Release of which hormones causes the Corpora cavernosa to relax? NO and Prostaglandin E1 How does Viagra (sildenafil) work? Inhibits Phosphodiesterase, Increases GMP, Relaxes arteries of corpora cavernosa resulting in an erection Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) Enlargement of the prostate (2-4 times its normal size) decreasing size of the prostatic urethra causing many urinary problems Two ways to treat BPH are: Selective 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors (Finasteride and Duasteride) What does corpus luteum mean? Yellow body What does corpus albicans mean? White body - fibrous scar tissue What does the broad ligament suspend? part of the uterus and the parietal peritoneum What does the mesovarium do? Connect the ovaries to the uterus (double layered fold of peritoneum) What does the ovarian ligament do? Anchors the ovaries to the uterus What does the suspensory ligament do? Attaches the fallopian tubes to the uterine wall What secretes progesterone in the female ovary? Corpus luteum What part of the female ovary produces Relaxin and what is its purpose? Corpus luteum secretes relaxin. This is done to inhibit contractions of the myometrium as well as increasing the flexibility of the pubic symphysis to help delivery Add Cards You must Login or Register to add cards
Wednesday, November 01, 2006 Black Hole I just viewed millions of black holes while watching Nova on PBS tonight. Using the latest graphics the show helped visualize galaxies and black hole gravitational pulls. They also used time lapsed graphics to show the future meeting of the Milky Way galaxy and our nearest galaxy, Andromeda as they rotate around each other and finally merge as a bigger galaxy centered by a larger black hole. They now know that every galaxy has a black hole at the center. The black holes act like huge vacuum cleaners sucking up space and matter, yet they don't do this at a constant rate, going through a series of starvation and gluttonous stages. When a black hole can't handle everything being sucked up it will develop a expulsion stream that fires out the excess energy, which can be seen by telescopes on Earth. Matter being sucked toward a black hole increase speed the closer the approach. A solar system closing in on a huge galaxy/black hole will speed up as it spirals into the black hole. Telescopes have been tracking the solar systems in the center of our galaxy and know where the black hole is. It was fun to listen to the astronomers try to describe a black hole, it's not easy in layman's terms, but the show does describe them well. One guy suggested that falling into a black hole would be a good way to die. As you fall your atoms begin to fall at different rates of speed causing you to elongate and to be pulled apart. The bigger the black hole the slower in time this occurs which would allow a person to experience the fall into the black hole. What a way to go, blackholed. Link to NOVA, from PBS.
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Monday, March 8, 2010 Prerequisites for Understanding Bacon's Induction Part 2: Scholastic Natural Philosophy (Novum Organum will be abbreviated as NO in my citations. And like my last note, a quote from Book 2, Aphorism 8 will be quoted as 2.8; so the complete quote would look like NO 2.8.) Bacon's Attitude Towards the Scholastics The Renaissance and Scholastic cultures that Bacon was raised in, and which influenced his thought, dominated the educational practices that existed in late 16th century England. As Bacon matured, he decided that he wanted to be a reformer in education and natural philosophy, in addition to his civil and political aspirations. He wished to reform how we were taught in the schools because of his growing disapproval of the attitude of Scholastic professors and natural philosophers around his time, especially with their limited usage of natural observations, and their reverence for the syllogism (which will be discussed shortly). Bacon's attitude towards them is well expressed in the very first sentences of the Novum Organum's Preface: They who have presumed to dogmatize on Nature, as on some well-investigated subject, either from self-conceit or arrogance, and in the professorial style, have inflicted the greatest injury on philosophy and learning. For they have tended to stifle and interrupt inquiry exactly in proportion as they have prevailed in bringing others to their opinion: and their own activity has not counterbalanced the mischief they have occasioned by corrupting and destroying that of others. (NO, Preface) Neither the Scholastics nor the majority of practicing natural philosophers in Bacon's time performed the kind of reasoning Bacon thought was necessary for understanding the true natures of things. "As the present sciences are useless for the discovery of effects, so the present system of logic [the syllogism] is useless for the discovery of the sciences (NO1.11)." Bacon criticizes the Scholastics for not applying the syllogism to the principles of sciences—they do not use the syllogism for deducing consequences of general principles (1.13). Indeed, Bacon thinks it does more harm than good: the syllogism uses ideas, composed into propositions, to deduce new conclusions, but this often leads to cementing erroneous and flawed thinking (1.12). Bacon wishes to expose the flaws in Scholastic logic, and Aristotelian philosophy, and this is the essence of his confutation of the demonstrations (ibid, "Plan of the Work"). Understanding this Aristotelian background is necessary for understanding Bacon's criticisms, his solution of induction, and even the title of his book. The Philosophy of the Scholastics Syllogistic Demonstration The Scholastic method of education consists of different kinds of disputations and dialectical arguments in order to answer questions. It trains students in utilizing deductive reasoning in the form of syllogisms, which are composed of propositions: a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. Here's an example of an syllogism: Major Premise: (1) All sharp objects can cut cheese. Minor Premise: (2) All knives are sharp objects. Conclusion (by conversion of (1) and (2)): (3) All knives can cut cheese. In general, a syllogism is a structured argument that deduces a conclusion from premises which are assumed to be true. If the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true in virtue of the premises' truth—this is what Aristotle called a "demonstration" (Posterior Analytics, book 1, ch. 2). In contrast to deductive reasoning is induction, which is typically described as an argument that reaches a universal conclusion by assembling a required number of particulars, in which the particulars become the premises. An induction would be understood as, "bishop X is unmarried; bishop Y is unmarried; bishop Z is unmarried, neither is there any bishops that are the contrary; Ergo (therefore), all bishops are unmarried." Typical Scholastic period logic textbooks would have a wealth of material on the syllogism, cataloging its various forms (variations of All X...Some X....No X, which number in the hundreds), composition, its 4 figures, conversion rules, and so on. The space provided for induction, on the other hand, was always slim: covering a few pages, if that. The importance of induction went broadly unrecognized; its reliability and certainty was an unresolved, and seemingly unproblematic, matter. Aristotelian Metaphysics The epistemology of the Scholastics was heavily informed by Aristotle's philosophy. (Or, what they took to be Aristotle's philosophy.) The metaphysics of Scholasticism was no different. It was a combination of Aristotle's theories in logic, physics, and metaphysics. To give somewhat of a summary of this: In the Scholastic philosophy, there were two fundamental categories of existence or being: substances and accidents, the very same distinction that Aristotle made in his work the Categories. Substances are things, like people and desks, and accidents were said to be "in" substances, something that is said in reference to substances. So a quantity is a sort of span covered, such as time and space, or the number of things (like three trees); quality is something that belongs to a substance, such as disease or health, a habit for knowledge, or hardness (I'll note that accidents can have other accidents as characteristics: a disease (quality) may last only a certain time (quantity), for instance). Relation has to do with things being compared, such as father and son, master and slave, large and small. Action is doing something, such as standing, and passion is being acted upon, such as being pushed down. (There are other categories, but they're not essential to understanding Bacon's criticism, so I'm moving on to my next topic.) The Scholastic physics was peppered with Aristotelian vocabulary, as well. Objects are made of matter, and composed of certain elements. These elements are fire (hot and dry), water (cold and wet), earth (dry and cold), air (wet and hot), and the aether, which composes the heavenly bodies and spheres. Fire and air tend to rise above the surface of other things and are thereby light, while earth and water tend to sink or stay below other things, and so are heavy. Generation is when things come to be, and corruption when things are destroyed and cease to be ("destroyed" doesn't necessarily mean an active force intervening, it could be a natural, peaceful death, for instance). In addition to these two alternatives are different sorts of changes: growth and diminution as changes in size, alteration as a change in quality, locomotion as a change of place. Lastly, there's actuality and potentiality, in which things have actual positions, qualities, and other accidents, and certain potentialities that can be actualized when certain conditions are met. A child is potentially a grown man; a man is potentially a carpenter, and needs training and tools to become an actual one; a seed is potentially a willow, and will actually be a desk after certain human actions are carried out. Bacon's New Instrument vs. The Scholastic's Organon Points of Disagreement If there's any point of agreement between Bacon's new logic, and the old logic of the Scholastics, it is that they both wanted to add artificial helps and supports to the mind; this implied a lack of confidence in the unaided processes, and thinking, of people's minds (NO, Preface). This, perhaps, is the only similarity; the differences between the two logics are, "great, indeed, immense," as Bacon notes (Bacon, The Great Renewal, "Plan of the Work"). One of the differences is that the old logic comes too late to really offer any help, "when all is clearly lost," the minds of men and women already corrupted with false beliefs and the "vainest idols" (NO, Preface). (Idol is an important term I'll discuss more in-depth in a later essay. For now, consider it as a poorly formed concept that hinders present and future thinking.) Worse, the application of the old logic is not only useless for discovering the truth: it also cements the mistaken conclusions of our past thinking (NO, Preface, 1.12). The reason for this is something very important, and I'll address it shortly. Bacon thinks the exact opposite is true of his new logic: it will empower people so that they may discern the truth. The only alternative Bacon thinks we have left is to start all over with our learning, and this time guide our thinking from the very beginning instead of leaving it to its own devices—basically run the mind as if it were a machine (NO, Preface). A major reason for Bacon's disapproval of Scholastic-Aristotelian logic is that he found the concepts used in the Aristotelian philosophy to be poorly formed: There is no soundness in our notions, whether logical or physical. Substance, Quality, Action, Passion, Essence [that is, "being"] itself, are not sound notions; much less are Heavy, Light, Dense, Rare, Moist, Dry, Generation, Corruption, Attraction, Repulsion, Element, Matter, Form, and the like; [...] all are fantastical and ill defined. (NO, 1.15) Bacon believes that the Scholastic science and philosophy have failed to help people truly understand nature. In effect, Bacon rejects the entire Aristotelian-Scholastic view of science and metaphysics; as Dr. McCaskey remarks, "[the terms listed in NO 1.15 above] are, of course, the stock components of Aristotelian natural philosophy in the late Renaissance. That whole science collapses if these notions are mere idols" (Regula Socratis, p. 259). Of all the differences between his new logic and that of his contemporaries, Bacon claims (in his "Plan of the Work" of the The Great Renewal) that three stand out especially: (1) the end-goal sought, (2) the "order of demonstration," and (3) the starting point of the inquiry (The Great Renewal, Plan of the Work). The End of Science For the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not of arguments but of arts [here meaning "human works, practical inventions"]; not of things in accordance with principles, but of principles themselves; not of probable reasons, but of designations and directions for works. And as the intention is different, so, accordingly, is the effect; the effect of the one being to overcome an opponent in argument, of the other to command nature in action. (ibid.) Bacon proposes a new goal for science, and as we'll see later in one of my essays, for knowledge in general: the invention of practical works, of things to better our condition in the world. The telos or goal of the Scholastic logic was to construct arguments, to make things agree with their principles and premises in a deduction. Bacon seeks the very principles that the Scholastics rely on; he wants our minds and practical works to agree with the principles, to put it another way. The old logic, in Bacon's view, could only produce probable reasons; his new one will create certain and effective instructions for human action. And since the respective goals of these two logics are different, so too will their effects; the old logic will enable one to best others in debates and disputations, while Bacon's logic will grant us power to best and manipulate nature. The Inverted Order of Demonstration In the next paragraph, Bacon notes that the nature and order of the demonstrations conform to the new end he's proposed. The goal of Scholastic education is to train students so that they excel in deductive reasoning—to this end, they focus nearly all of their students' attention upon the syllogism. The Scholastic logicians, "...seem scarcely to have thought about induction. They pass it by with barely a mention, and hurry on to their formulae for disputation" (ibid.). As I mentioned earlier, logic textbooks from that time reserved only a few pages for discussing induction. Bacon's focus is reversed: he'll focus on induction, indeed, a new kind of induction: "[b]ut the greatest change I introduce is in the form itself of induction and the judgment made thereby" (ibid., italics mine). (Quite an aside, but my Introduction to Logic class focused primarily on constructing deductive arguments; only three class days were spent on induction. Fundamentally, things haven't changed, centuries after Bacon's warnings.) In Bacon's view, there are two forms of demonstration: syllogism and induction. Despite the attitude of his contemporaries, Bacon proclaims that he rejects demonstration by syllogism; he disagrees with the view that one can gain certain knowledge through just deductive reasoning. Instead, he insists that the demonstration by syllogism "operates in confusion," and lets, "nature slip out of its hands" (ibid.). Two of his logician contemporaries, Jacopo Zabarella and Everard Digby, both describe the attainment of true knowledge as a syllogism initially understood confusedly, and, after a sort of intellectual revelation or contemplation, the original syllogism can be revisited or changed in a way that grants scientific, demonstrative knowledge. Both start with syllogisms that reason from known particular effects to their vaguely understood causes, proceed through a stage of intellectual intuition in which the cause is identified, and end with a syllogism that reasons from understood causes to their effects. Both are entirely contemplative or mental processes, totally divorced from natural events. Bacon rejects this entire approach to gaining knowledge, and regards both stages of the above mentioned syllogisms as confused and vaguely understood, not merely the first stage. This rejection of the syllogism extends not only to minor propositions, but to major premises as well. In common logic, induction is used to gain the major, deduction to bring about the minor. In the case of Zabarella, this took on a special form (a "regressus"): Knowledge of the Fact: MAJOR: What can die is alive. MINOR: Men can die. Therefore, men are alive. Knowledge of the Reasoned Fact: MAJOR: What is alive can die. MINOR: Men are alive. Therefore, men can die. In a regressus, both syllogisms are composed of a major premise, a minor proposition, and a conclusion. The majors are obtained by induction, as Bacon notes, saying that Scholastic logicians do not use deduction for those, but instead use deduction for the minor propositions and conclusions. The "middle term" is what connects the predicate of the major with the subject of the minor, combing that subject-predicate in the argument's conclusion. (In the second syllogism, the "knowledge of the reasoned fact," it is because what is alive can die and that men are alive that men can die.) The minor of one syllogism is the conclusion of the other, and vice versa. Bacon too admits that the minor can be obtained through a separate syllogism's conclusion, but that this method is completely intellectual, and thus disconnected from nature and practice. Part of the reason why Bacon believes syllogistic thinking is thoroughly confused is that deduction does not offer a means to know which parts of an argument are the cause, and which are the effect. Since the conclusions of the above arguments' minors are interchangeable, there's no way to tell (for example) if men are alive because they can die, or if they can die because they're alive. Judging by the arguments alone, and in lieu of the mystical insight Zabarella purportedly had, there's no way to know which syllogism is better at articulating the appropriate cause and effect relationship, if either even can. Ignorance of the cause frustrates our ability to truly know about, or produce, the effect (NO, 1.3); the arguments are not demonstrations for Bacon, because they can't generate certain knowledge. Bacon goes on to describe the main reason why the syllogism is so unclear and unconnected to the world. It's indubitable, he thinks, that propositions which agree with a syllogism's middle term agree with each other (the argument is valid, or the conclusion follows from its premises): this is as certain as the truths of mathematics. But there is a hidden deception or fraud in all of this, because: ...the syllogism consists of propositions—propositions [consists] of words; and words are the tokens [representations, symbols] and signs of notions. Now if the very notions of the mind (which are as the soul of words and the basis of the whole structure) be improperly and overhastily abstracted from facts, vague, not sufficiently definite, faulty—in short, in many ways, the whole edifice tumbles. (ibid.) This criticism is not fundamental to syllogisms per se, but more to human thought in general. In our experiences, we come to form ideas and notions about things. But we carry this out as if we are new employees at a job that we have no expertise in: we've formed no methods of thinking or acting, we bungle things up, we misunderstand, and possess faulty reasoning as a result. The syllogism can't be the foundation of reasoning in natural philosophy (science) because the terms/notions it's composed of can be poorly abstracted, and otherwise ineffective. The foundation of reasoning, in natural philosophy and elsewhere, therefore, should be the legitimate formation of our notions. Because of these deficiencies, Bacon will leave deduction for the less rigorous fields of study, including the fields of rhetoric and university teaching, but intends on using induction for the study of natural philosophy. For syllogisms in natural philosophy, Bacon says he will use induction "throughout," for both major and minor propositions. This is because, "I consider induction to be that form of demonstration which upholds the sense, and closes with nature, and comes to the very brink of operation, if it does not actually deal with it" (ibid.). All of these points provide the justification for Bacon inverting the order and role of the two kinds of demonstration. In the common system of logic, induction has hardly a role at all; it is quickly introduced, allowing the logician to ascend from the senses and particulars to the most general propositions, and then to use these as fixed points from which to deduce whatever they wanted. This method is a ineffective short-cut, which passes by nature, and provides an accessible route for disputes and arguments to commence. By contrast, Bacon proposes to ascend "regularly and gradually" from one lower-level principle (an "axiom" in his terminology) to another, higher-level one, so that the highest axioms are not obtained until the very end; in this way, we reach notions which are not vague but well-defined, and represent the true nature of things. To explain this point, Bacon again utilizes Aristotelian-Scholastic vocabulary, this time using the phrase "such as nature would really recognize as her first principles," or the knowledge that is the furthest away from sense perception, "better known to nature," of universals---the essence of something in relation to the universe at large (what that thing is, generally and truly); this is contrasted with "better known to us," something known that is closest to sense-perception, knowledge of particulars (Regula Socratis, p. 88-89) In the place of honor, Bacon nominates induction instead of the syllogism. But it must be understood that Bacon rejects the syllogism and induction of his contemporaries. He claims that the logician's version of induction, which is an argument by simple enumeration, is childish, "puerile" ("Plan of the Work"). Take another supposedly inductive argument: "This X rabbit hops. That Y rabbit hops (and so on with the other cases). Therefore, all rabbits hop." This argument "concludes precariously" because it is "liable to be upset by a contradictory instance"; find one rabbit which never hops, or one married bishop for the earlier example of an induction, and the arguments fall apart. It takes into account only what is familiar, taking something close to the senses, like people, and immediately generalizes some feature as pertaining to all of them. It "leads to no result," because it can't be applied to unobserved cases without the risk of being overthrown by contrary instances (ibid.). In its place, he'll provide a kind of induction that more cautiously generalizes, which will employ exclusions and rejections, and which will be designed so as to better handle counter-examples; he calls this induction "true," "legitimate," "perfect," and the "interpretation of nature" ("true": NO, 1.14, 1.40; "legitimate": 2.10; "perfect": 2.21; "interpretation of nature": 1.26, 1.69). Starting Points of Inquiry The last significant difference is the respective beginnings of the two logics, old and new. The old (1) assumes the principles of sciences; as syllogisms are ineffective for determining which parts of an argument are causes, and which effects, it makes sense that they would borrow such notions from other fields of study. ("Demonstrations truly are in effect the philosophies themselves and the sciences. For such as they are, well or ill established, such are the systems of philosophy and the contemplations which follow" (NO, 1.69).) The old logic also (2) takes the notions of the mind just as they are: unfiltered and unexamined; lastly, it (3) unquestionably accept the information of the senses. In response to (1), the new logic will engage the principles of the sciences with an authority higher than those sciences themselves, and on this authority judge those principles until they are considered valid and established (ibid.). For (2), none of the notions of the mind will be accepted when the mind is left to form them on its own, until they are established through an examination by the new logic of induction. And (3) the information of the senses will themselves be sifted through and examined in many respects, "[f]or certain it is that the senses deceive; but then at the same time they supply the means of discovering their own errors; only the errors are here, the means of discovery are to seek" (ibid.). The starting points for Bacon's induction, then, are the evidence of the ordinary senses, and the unassisted human mind: both beset with their own errors, the intellect more so than the senses. The mind often creates its own problems, mixing its own nature with that of the thing being investigated, and fails to accurately contain information about the world around it. By several different routes, this distorted way of thinking leads to the "idols" of the mind, poorly formed notions which atrophy our reasoning. For the senses, Bacon will (and advocates that others) concoct instruments and experiments to assist the senses in reaching the underlying reality of things. For the intellect, and the solution to the problem of idols, Bacon will "lay it down once [and] for all as a fixed and established maxim that the intellect is not qualified to judge except by means of induction, and induction in its legitimate form" (ibid.). Bacon calls this the doctrine "of the expurgation of the intellect to qualify it for dealing with truth," and states that it is comprised of three "redargutions," another term from Scholastic scholarship, which is their latin translation of Aristotle's "elenchi," roughly translated as refutations. This doctrine consists of the examination and refutation of three things: the philosophies, the demonstrations (induction and the syllogism), and of the human reason. It is these three redargutions which form the subject matter of book 1 of the Novum Organum. So ends what I think are the prerequisites for understanding Bacon's induction as presented in the Novum Organum. In the coming essays, I'll discuss the idols that Bacon believes beset our minds, the defects of the senses, his view of the various philosophies, and his outlook on the future. I'll discuss his account of notions, his view on experiments, on knowledge, on power, on causation, and on what he hopes to achieve. Soon, we'll see how: The explanation of [the three redargutions: Novum Organum, book 1], and of the true relation between the nature of things and the nature of the mind [book 2], is as the strewing and decoration of the bridal chamber of the mind and the universe, the divine goodness assisting, out of which marriage let us hope (and be this the prayer of the bridal song) there may spring helps to man, and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity. ("Plan of the Work") No comments: Post a Comment
Tuesday, December 7, 2010 Sylvia Plath's poem "The Bee-Meeting" Giving us the prevalent atmosphere of the poem, Robert Phillips says, “The Bee Meeting opens with a vivid imaging of the poet’s vulnerability before the hive. In the poem, all the villagers but her are protected from the bees, and she equates this partial nudity with her condition of being unloved. In the symbolic marriage ceremony which follows, a rector, a midwife, and she herself—a bride clad in black—appear. She seems to remember that even the arrows which Eros used to shoot into the ground to create new life were poisoned darts. And just as her search for a Divine Father was tempered by her fear there was none—that God would be nothing more than, say, the Wizard of Oz, a little man with a big wind machine—so, too, her search for consolation from her earthly father creates an intensity of consciousness in which she no longer has any guarantee of security. Eros for her is ever accompanied by the imminence of death. Certainly every mythology relates the sex act to death, perhaps most clearly in the tale of Tristan and Iseult. In nature, the connection is even more explicit: Always the male bee dies after inseminating the Queen. Plath’s personal mythology anticipates this. If the central figure of authority, the Queen, is her father, then the daughter/worker must die after the incestuous act, as she does at the conclusion of “The Bee Meeting” and as Plath did at the conclusion of her suicide attempts. The long white box in the grove is in fact her own coffin, only in this light can the poem’s protagonist answer her own questions. “What have they accomplished, why am I cold.” Plath increasingly finds ways of connecting what I have called the ‘oracular’ or ‘transferential’ drama of her poems with a larger historical process. The 1962 sequence which has become known as the ‘Bee Poems ‘attempts to excavate the traces of this process within the familiar scenario of the daughter’s initiation into the mysteries of writing by a father whose power she both desires and repudiates. Beekeeping is associated with the childhood image of the all-powerful father in ‘Among the Bumblebees’, ‘Lament’, and ‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter’. It is also associated with female fertility and reproductive power. In ‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter’, for example, the father is the ‘maestro of the bees’ who ‘move[s] hieratical . . . amongst the many-breasted hives’, in a garden of overwhelming lushness. In the Bee Poems, the relation between artistic creativity and power is inscribed as at once personal and political, drawing not only on the association of bees with Otto Plath but also on Plath’s own experience of beekeeping in Devon. Beekeeping becomes an analogy for the writing of poetry, which, while playing on the Platonic figure of the bee-poet possessed by divine insanity, as described in the Ion, implies a craft, a specialized practical skill or expertize. The Bee Poems are often read as a parable of female self-assertion or narrative rite of rebirth, affirming the integrity of the creative self, and thus furnishing an alternative, more hopeful ending for Plath’s career. Yet if on one level the poems can be seen as forging a personal mythology of survival, on another their dreamlike logic of displacement and condensation resists narratives of self-realization anchored in a stable notion of the subject. This alternative narrative logic manifests itself through a mobility of identification, which generates various uncanny effects. In particular, the scapegoating or sacrificial trope undergoes a number of psychic and narrative permutations. Although the speaker is initially seen as at once pupil and sacrificial victim of a surgeon-priest performing an operation (‘The’ Bee Meeting’), she subsequently receives a box of bees with which to begin her own hive (‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’). In ‘Stings’ it is the father-beekeeper who is stung by the bees; in ‘The Swarm’, he becomes a dictator who uses the bees as instruments of imperialist self-aggrandizement. In the final poem of the sequence, he disappears, leaving the speaker alone, ‘wintering in a dark without a window’, with the ambivalent harvest of her beekeeping. In the Bee Poems, the governing metaphor of beekeeping inserts the dynamics of the father-daughter transference into a social and historical continuum. The beehive is a classical figure of the polis as hierarchically ordered, industrious collectivity, in which the common and private good are as one. Bees were, of course, the academic specialism of Otto Plath, author of Bumblebees and Their Ways, and of a treatise on ‘Insect Societies’ for A Handbook of Social Psychology. With its highly structured division of labour, the hive seems to fulfill all the requirements of the ideally ‘adjusted’ or technocratic society, a smoothly functioning social organism devoid of conflict. Yet it is also a rich source of paradox and contradiction. For example, it is a matriarchal society of female producers, a detail which is crucial to Plath’s reflection on power. It is, also, of course, an authoritarian society. The hive allows the poet to assume multiple and constantly changing points of identification—including those of beekeeper, queen, and worker-drudge—in a psychic theatre, signalled by a pervasive imagery of clothing. For example, the villagers’ protective beekeeping gear turns them into participants in a sinister scapegoating rite: the villagers— In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection, And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient The speaker’s lack of ‘protection’ casts her in the role of sacrificial initiate-victim or patient in a surgical ‘operation’. She identifies herself with the scapegoat, the Queen Bee who is in the process of being moved to another hive by the villagers to prevent the virgins from killing her. Yet at the same time she becomes a performer, ‘the magician’s girl who does not flinch’. The rhetoric of innocence, naivety, and vulnerable nakedness is a masquerade which allows her to assume the central role in the drama. Poetic authority is inscribed as a function of the speaker’s highly subjective and willed reinvention of herself, which renders the boundary between inner and outer worlds radically fluid and permeable. In ‘The Arrival of the Bee Box’, the speaker is a Pandora figure, who hovers on the brink of assuming her ownership of the potential hive, torn between terror of its ‘dangerous’ powers and fantasies of absolute control. The box of bees becomes a metaphor of the unconscious itself, whose dark, ‘primitive’ forces are linked with the threat of racial and class otherness (‘the swarmy feeling of African hands Minute and shrunk for export, Black on black, angrily clambering’, the ‘Roman mob’). Moreover, this trope of the ‘primitive’ unconscious is acted out in linguistic terms. The ‘unintelligible syllables’ of the bees threaten the speaker with loss of sovereign control over meaning. She oscillates between the positions of master and slave, oppressor and victim; between fantasies of despotic power which mimic and caricature the authority of a ‘Caesar’ (‘They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner’) and of escape from vengeful forces through metamorphosis and disguise, assuming the ‘petticoats of the cherry’ or a ‘moon suit and funeral veil’. Throughout these poems, the speaker is alternately attracted and repelled by the implications of being ‘in control’ (‘Stings’). In ‘Stings’ she is again cast as the beekeeper’s apprentice, learning how to operate the ‘honey machine’ which will ‘work without thinking Opening in spring, like an industrious virgin’. Here, however, the threat emanates less from the emblematic male figure than from the female, domestic collectivity of the worker bees or ‘winged, unmiraculous women’, who would turn the speaker into a ‘drudge’. The dreamlike logic of ‘Stings’ produces a splitting of the father-beekeeper figure; it pits beekeeper and female apprentice as equivocal allies against an intrusive ‘third person’, a false beekeeper and ‘scapegoat’ who provokes the fury of the bees. This surrealist triangulation is inscribed within a logic of wish fulfillment or fantasized revenge. The punitive stinging of the interloper is followed by the climactic revelation of the Queen Bee: They thought death was worth it, but I Have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, With her lion-red body, her wings of glass? Now she is flying More terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red comet— Over the engine that killed her— The mausoleum, the wax house. These lines have often been read as announcing a moment of mythic rebirth, and the triumphant flight of the Queen Bee, escaping from her enclosure in ‘the mausoleum, the wax house’ , does indeed recall the apocalyptic-destructive power of other iconic female apparitions in Plath’s work: the Clytemnestra figure in ‘Purdah’, the red- haired avenging demon of ‘Lady Lazarus’, and ‘God’s lioness’ in ‘Ariel’. Yet the ‘terrible’ power of the Queen Bee is deceptive; in spite of her ‘lion-red body’, her flight relies on the fragile mechanism of ‘wings of glass’, and the image of the ‘red / Scar in the sky’ suggests the vulnerability of a wounded, stigmatic ‘I’ rather than a triumphant affirmation of selfhood. The Queen Bee is in any case a highly equivocal totem of female power; she is a mere instrument of the hive’s survival, and to that extent reinforces a mythic view of femininity as grounded in unchanging laws of nature. It is a masculine figure, the beekeeper, who exploits and regulates the labour and raw materials of the hive, and the fertility of the Queen Bee, for the production of a commodity. In ‘The Swarm’, the beekeeper who manoeuvres the bees into a new hive is likened to Napoleon, the prototypical dictator; the bees become armies which undergo self-immolation at his command: How instructive this is! The dumb, banded bodies Walking the plank draped with Mother France’s Into a new mausoleum, An ivory palace, a crotch pine. The myth of maternity, like that of charismatic leadership, is enlisted in the service of nationalist and imperial ideology; Through such myths, the poem implies, the totalitarian state entwines itself with the affective life of its subjects and becomes ‘the honeycomb of their dream’. Napoleon, whose imperial motif was the bee, and who kept bees during his exile at St Helena, is a figure who holds an ambiguous fascination for the speaker; in a draft of the poem, he is addressed as ‘My Napoleon’. Although she ridicules the totalitarian dream which sees the world as mere plunder (‘O Europe! O ton of honey!’), her schadenfreude implicates her in Napoleon’s will for power. In the Bee Poems, equivocal attempts to imagine a female collectivity are intercut with fantasies of individual martyrdom, usurpation, and revenge. The last poem of the sequence, ‘Wintering’, celebrates the female hive’s powers of survival and its expulsion of ‘the blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors’ when they have performed their limited function. But the dimension of protofeminist allegory announced by the trope of the matriarchal community remains essentially tentative and undeveloped, less a conclusion than a question. Rather, Plath’s use of beekeeping as the unifying metaphor of the sequence insists on the materiality of writing as social practice. The text appears as the product of social as well as individual energies. In an ironic rewriting of her New Critical apprenticeship (which saw the poem as self-referring verbal microcosm or autotelic object), what emerges from the Bee Poems is a view of the poetic text as at once psychically and historically overdetermined. Plath’s earlier rewriting of de Chirico’s ‘metaphysical’ style represented a key moment in her theatre of mourning. While the Bee Poems also draw on the resources of surrealism, they resist the psychological determinism of the earlier de Chiricoesque landscapes for a more dynamic vision of the relation between the psychic and the figurative. Their emphasis is less on the fatalistic daughter-in-mourning scenario of ‘The Colossus’, ‘Electra’, and ‘The Beekeeper’s Daughter’, than on the rhetorical manipulation and reinvention of such transferential scenarios as a means of imagining the possibilities of change and metamorphosis. At the same time, all myths of power, whether individual or collective, are seen as fissured by internal contradictions and therefore as ultimately self-defeating. The Bee Poems represent the most complex and sustained instance of the oracular metaphor through which, as we have seen, Plath explores the technical resources of her craft and the range of possibilities available to her as a poetic initiate. The encounter with the ‘oracle’, in its various guises, combines a mythic return to the origins of poetic voice with the seductions of a pre-existent law or tradition, as in the fantasy of power gained through sacrificial victimhood. Yet Plath’s struggle for poetic authority, and her revision of her modernist precursors, cannot be seen as a teleological movement culminating in a mythic moment of self-realization. Although the oracle is always linked with scenes of instruction and discipleship, its burden, from the outset, is the return of the repressed. The social, psychic, and above all linguistic energies which sustain the pedagogical transmission of authority are also capable of overwhelming or interrupting it. For Plath, the very terms of selfhood remain, as I shall argue in the next chapter, entangled with a figurative ‘other’. “The Bee Meeting,” is a dream sequence in which the poet finds herself a victim, unprotected in her “sleeveless summery dress” from the “gloved,” “covered,” and veiled presences of the villagers. In the initiation ritual that now takes place, there are two dreaded male figures: the “man in black” (cf. the “fat black heart” in “Daddy”) and the “surgeon my neighbors are waiting for, / This apparition in a green helmet. / Shining gloves and white suit.” Neither the black man nor his white counterpart are named: indeed, the poet asks: “Is it the butcher, the grocer, the postman, someone I know?” She cannot, in any case, run away: I could not run without having to run forever. The white hive is snug as a virgin, Sealing off her brood cells, her honey, and quietly The virginal white hive now becomes the source of new life for the poet, identifying, as she does, with the queen bee: “Is she hiding, is she eating honey? She is very clever. / She is old, old, old, she must live another year, and she knows it.” “Exhausted,” she can finally contemplate the “long white box in the grove” which is both coffin and hive. She is “the magician’s girl who does not flinch.” In the next poem, “The Arrival of the Bee Box,” the “dangerous” box of bees becomes a challenge that is desired: “I have to live with it overnight / And I can’t keep away from it.” The poet is now tapping her own subconscious powers; at the end of “Stings” we read: They thought death was worth it, but I Have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, With her lion-red body, her wings of glass? Now she is flying More terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red comet Over the engine that killed her— The mausoleum, the wax house. “I have a self to recover, a queen”: here is the lioness of “Purdah,” the avenging goddess, triumphing “Over the engine that killed her,” just as the “swarm” in the next poem must evade “The smile of a man of business, intensely practical,” a man “with grey hands” that would have killed me.” In the final poem, “Wintering,” this male figure is no longer present. “Daddy,” the man in black, the rector, the surgeon--all have disappeared: The bees are all women, Maids and the long royal lady. They have got rid of the men, The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors. Winter is for women-- The woman, still at her knitting, At the cradle of Spanish walnut, Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas Succeed in banking their fires To enter another year? What will they taste of, the Christmas roses? The bees are flying. They taste the spring. With this parable of hibernation, a hibernation that makes way for rebirth and continuity (“The bees are flying”), Ariel was to have inevitability of death is everywhere foregrounded. No longer does the poet look forward to the “Years”; her thoughts turn on “greenness, darkness so pure / They freeze and are.” In “Paralytic,” “all / Wants, desire [are] Falling from me like rings / Hugging their lights”; in “Contusion,” “The heart shuts, / The sea slides back, / The mirrors are sheeted.” Finally, in “Edge” (dated 5 February 1963, six days before her suicide), Plath imagines herself in death: The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga, Her bare Feet seem to be saying; We have come so far, it is over. And the final poem, “Words” (1 February, 1963), is despairing in its sense that the poet’s “words” become “dry and riderless,” that they are no longer connected to the poet who gave them birth. The connection between self and language has been severed: there is only fate in the form of the “fixed stars” that “From the bottom of the pool ... Govern a life.” One can argue, of course, that Hughes is simply completing Plath’s own story, carrying it to its final conclusion, where “Each dead child coiled, a white serpent” has been folded back into the woman’s body, where the “Words” are entirely cut off from the poet who created them. But it is also possible that, in taking advantage of a brief spell of depression and despair, when death seemed the only solution, Hughes makes the motif of inevitability larger than it really is. “The woman is perfected” in more ways than one. In any collection of poems, ordering is significant, but surely Ariel presents us with an especially problematic case. For two decades we have been reading it as a text in which, as Charles Newman puts it, “expression and extinction [are] indivisible.” A text that culminates in the almost peaceful resignation of’ “Years” or “Edge.” The poems of Ariel culminate in a sense of finality, all passion spent. Ariel establishes quite different perimeters. Plath’s arrangement emphasizes, not death, but struggle and revenge, the outrage that follows the recognition that the beloved is also the betrayer, that the shrine at which one worships is also the tomb. Indeed, one could argue that the very poems Hughes dismissed as being too “personally aggressive” are, in an odd way, more “mainstream,” that is to say more broadly based, than such “headline” poems as “The Munich Mannequins” or “Totem,” with its “butcher’s guillotine that whispers: ‘How’s this, how’s this?’” For, as long as the poet can struggle, as long as she still tries to defy her fate, as she does in “The Jailer” or “The Other” or “Purdah,” the reader identifies with her situation: the “Cut thumb” is not only Plath’s but ours. Perhaps Sylvia Plath’s publishers will eventually give us the original Ariel. But it is not likely, given the publication of the Collected Poems, which now becomes our definitive text. How ironic, in any case, that the publication of Plath’s poems has depended, and continues to depend, on the very man who is, in one guise or another, their subject. In a poem not included in Ariel called “Burning the Letters,” the poet decides to do away with the hated love letters, with “the eyes and times of the postmarks”: here is an end to the writing, The spry hooks that bend and cringe, and the smiles. But the attic was soon invaded, the dangerous notebooks were destroyed, and the poems that were permitted to enter the literary world had to get past the Censor. The words of the dead woman, to paraphrase W. H. Auden, were modified in the guts of the living. Only now, some twenty-five years after her death, can we begin to assess her oeuvre. But then, as Plath herself put it in a poem written during the last week of her life: The blood jet is poetry, There is no stopping it. Given the problematic quality of both personal and collective existence, the persona moves toward death amid attempts to evade it. In “The Bee Meeting,” she tries to evade a social milieu that moves in on her relentlessly. Her flight takes the form first of social disguise and then of stasis. The poem introduces us to villager-beekeepers who present a frightening picture of social sham: Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? they are the villagers— In my sleeveless summery dress I have no protection, And they are all gloved and covered, why did nobody tell me? They are smiling and taking out veils tacked to ancient In contrast to the heavily veiled, protective disguises of the villagers, the persona wears only a sleeveless dress, and her separation from them is emphasized by the juxtaposition of “I” and “they”: “I have no protection—they are all gloved and covered”; “why did nobody tell me?—They are smiling.” The repetition of sibilants—”sleeveless,” “summery,” “smiling,” “hats”—in a diction with clearly wholesome connotations gives us an eerie, nightmarish feeling and a sense of something thing familiar gone awry. The persona’s dominant impulse is to resist her exposure to an expansive and threatening milieu that encompasses the natural world as well. The secretary of bees tries to turn her into an officially costumed beekeeper, but this attempt only increases the persona’s terror. She assumes the disguise of “milkweed silk,” an inanimate and consequently a safer means of evading both the rigidity of village social life and the aggressive power of the bees. Yet even in such evasions reversals of order augment her sense of nightmare. One reversal involves the menacing animation of inanimate objects: the winking tinfoil, feather dusters with hands, black-eyed bean-flowers, and “leaves like bored hearts.” Another reversal occurs in the violation of the bees’ natural domestic pattern when the villagers smoke the bees out of the snug hive: The bees react hysterically and become the “outriders” of such poems as “Stings” and “The Swarm,” while the speaker disguises herself as a passive vegetable—”cow parsley.” Plath reinforces this resistance to exposure in the depiction of the old queen bee for whom the villagers are searching: Although she identifies with the queen, the persona differs in a fundamental respect. Despite the fact that she must inevitably be supplanted by a new queen, the old bee remains secure in the pattern of the hive; her role within the natural hierarchy defines her being. The persona’s terror, on the other hand, cannot be assuaged in the ritual of nature and her surreal ceremonial interplay with the villagers only whittles away at a nebulous sense of identity. Her sole recourse lies in yet another disguise, ultimately that of the “magician’s girl who does not flinch” from the shower of knives that threatens her with extinction “The Bee Meeting”‘s questions are really ontological ones, reaffirmed through link verbs such as “They are,” “I am,” “it is,” and “is it?” For Plath “being” and “female being” are virtually the same, and for the persona, to be female is to be manipulated by nature, history, and inevitably by contemporary politics—and either openly or more obliquely to be threatened with death. To succumb to the terror of extinction means self-annihilation. To resist it makes for the dramatic tension that permeates the poems. The persona constantly resists the impulse to flee or to retreat into psychic stasis. Given the state of extremity in the poems, she resists in three basic ways: through flight, through counter-aggression that is both sexual and political, and through a stoic endurance of horror. People who read this post also read : Anonymous said... Post a Comment Please leave your comments!
Total Pageviews Monday, March 25, 2013 A Uniquely American Journey: The Dramatic Change of a Country, Its President, and a Culture (PHOTO: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, 2012 GETTY IMAGES)  Before their groundbreaking 1973 decision to reverse course, the American Psychiatric Association defined homosexuality as a mental disorder. At the time, many Americans agreed and they found the whole notion of homosexuality to be so outside of mainstream conventional behavior that polling showed that an overwhelming majority of the public did not even support hiring gays or lesbians as schoolteachers. Fast forward a quarter century later and though the public opinion on that question reversed by the late 1990s, public policy was still tilted towards denying equality. In a widely bipartisan vote, the Republican-controlled Congress overwhelmingly passed the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act. A Democratic president who the gay rights movement had been hoping would be on their side in this case signed DOMA into law at 1 AM in the middle of his reelection campaign. Bill Clinton proceeded to brag about what he had done despite now saying the law should be repealed. At the time, just 27 percent of Americans backed same-sex marriage, a right that DOMA explicitly denied at the national level by stating that federal law defined marriage as a "union between a man and a woman."  Despite celebrating limited victories, the gay rights movement was seemingly going nowhere by the turn of the century. Don't Ask/Don't Tell, billed as a compromise, became an atrocious injustice and DOMA was now the law of the land. As America entered the new millennium, gay Americans found even less hope at the federal level with "moral values"-touting George W. Bush, famously supportive of a Federal Marriage Amendment, in the Oval Office. Bush, after all, was leading a party whose rise to power was fueled by the Religious Right. This was the same Religious Right whose stranglehold on another president they helped elect, Ronald Reagan, was so strong that he criticized the "alternative...[gay] lifestyle" in his 1980 campaign and would not acknowledge the existence of AIDS until 1987. In fact, the power of this movement in American politics was such that it stifled meaningful progress on gay rights for decades after the APA's decision to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder. The demoralization was evident in the reaction of some of the LGBT community to Andrew Sullivan's 1989 call for gay marriage to be legalized; Sullivan was actually met with loud and vociferous protests from supporters of LGBT rights for such a radical suggestion. Much of the LGBT community, rationally, thought this idea could not possibly come to fruition after the Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986 that states could actually codify anti-sodomy laws.  Setbacks and regression ultimately began to run their course though. In 2003, the very first signs of true progress for gay Americans were evident. Massachusetts became the first state in the union to legalize same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court overturned Bowers in Lawrence v. Texas. Still though, the American public - in spite of things like Will and Grace opening their eyes up to the gay community - was not on board with the LGBT agenda. A year later, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom permitted his city to conduct same-sex marriages, though ultimately annulled by California, in violation of state law and Vice President Dick Cheney endorsed gay marriage. Still, Americans were not on board. In 11 states, including the swing state of Ohio, Americans voted that November to ban same-sex marriage while the public at large also reelected President Bush. In Bush's second term though, gay rights activists found hope. For one, Bush, almost immediately, disappointed the Religious Right by forgoing the pursuit of a federal marriage amendment in favor of a (failed) Social Security reform effort. Secondly, as Bush grew increasingly unpopular, so too did his policies -- and America, ever so slightly, began moving left. In 2007, the major Democratic candidates for President all condemned DADT and pledged to repeal it while Barack Obama pledged to go a step further and push for full repeal of DOMA - something Hillary Clinton would not endorse. By the time President Obama was elected a year later, a majority of Americans backed the repeal of DADT and more Americans were in support of gay marriage than ever before, albeit not a majority. Not only was America becoming more progressive and not only had it elected a leader sympathetic to the LGBT cause but millions of gay and lesbian Americans were increasingly coming out of the closet. The collective coming out of millions over the course of the last several years undoubtedly furthered public support of this cause. Scores of anecdotal evidence cited in a recent Huffington Post article combined with public opinion polling, which shows people were moved to support gay rights because of gay family and friends, confirms this to be the case.  Further facilitating the elevation of gay rights into the national discourse was the work of the Human Rights Campaign, People for the American Way, the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and scores of other grassroots organizations, that started from the bottom and got lucky (in some cases) with the financial support of wealthy donors and political figures. Their fundraising, phone banking, door-to-door canvassing, and advocacy efforts shed a public light on the gay rights movement - identifiable as both middle-class Americans and popular celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres and Neil Patrick Harris - and led to the legalization of gay marriage in several states. The public quickly warmed up to idea of full repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell as well as they saw their fellow Americans denied the opportunity to serve their country as it fought two wars abroad simply because of their sexual orientation. The presence of the wars undeniably helped highlight this injustice and by 2010, 70 percent of Americans, including millions of Republican voters, backed DADT repeal. Obama helped bolster this public support by enlisting the backing of military commanders, leading officers, and generals for his efforts and by December 2010, he was able to say "this is done" when he signed into law the repeal. That wasn't the only piece of legislation that Obama signed that gay rights groups had wanted. Thanks to significant public pressure exerted on the President by the LGBT movement, Obama was compelled to order his Justice Department to refuse to defend DOMA in federal courts, sign the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Act, extend hospital visitation benefits to gay couples, and guarantee equal benefits for same-sex federal employees. As Obama led on the issue, thanks in no small part to a concerted effort to keep him at his word, millions of Americans quickly changed their minds on gay rights. By 2011, Gallup found that a majority of the public, 53 percent, supported same-sex marriage for the first time ever. A year later, Barack Obama became the first sitting president to publicly back gay marriage -- a significant turning point for a movement which had been continually disappointed by a string of presidents who ignored their cause. Obama's, and Joe Biden's, backing of gay marriage led to an almost immediate boost in public support for marriage equality - nationally, in swing states, and among constituents with which he had great sway: registered Democrats and African-Americans. Within time, the issue became seemingly no longer controversial as it was not mentioned once in any of the presidential debates and Mitt Romney largely remained quiet, despite opposing marriage equality. The Democratic Party quickly adopted support for gay marriage into its national platform and that November, Obama was reelected while Washingtonians, Maine residents, and Marylanders all made gay marriage legal in their states. Fast forward to the last few weeks and the gay rights movement saw yet more impressive victories: an American President used the word "gay," referencing the Stonewall riots, in an Inaugural address and that same president filed two briefs in the Supreme Court asking the Court to side for marriage equality in both the Prop 8 and DOMA cases. Today, 58 percent of Americans support gay marriage; it is backed by all living Democratic Presidents and Vice Presidents, a former Republican Vice President, two former Secretaries of State of different parties, a majority of congressional Democrats, at least 76 prominent Republicans including an Ohio Senator and former U.S. Ambassador, and, for the first time ever, the highest court in the land is hearing a case on this specific issue. Political scientists, journalists, and assorted analysts of media and politics have been left collectively amazed by how vast, quick, and stunning the sea change in public attitudes towards gay rights has been. For a country founded on the notion that "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were necessary tenants of our republic, this dramatic shift is one of which we ought to be proud. This is what American exceptionalism looks like. The success of the gay rights movement is part of the great history of the American people -- a people with a history of continual social progress fueled by mass movements of Americans rising up and demanding successfully that we live up to our core creed of "all men are created equal." In seeing their quest for full equality come to fruition, the LGBT movement joins, in the annals of history, the movements of abolitionists, women's suffragists, and civil rights marchers in being part of that great American journey of continually aiming to be a "more perfect union." Like those movements that preceded them, the gay rights movement can claim that they used all levers of power, from the bottom up with the help of millions of their fellow countrymen, to advance their cause and see to it that the American ideals of "liberty and justice for all" were protected.  It is likely that the Supreme Court will repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and Prop 8, at the very least extending federal benefits to legally married same sex couples and ruling that gay marriage is legalized in California. However, in my opinion, I am optimistic and ready to go out on a limb. I believe that the Court will not only make that ruling but that it will further find that denying same-sex couples the right of marriage violates the 5th Amendment guarantee of not depriving one of "liberty" without due process of law and violates the 14th Amendment pledge of not denying one "equal protection under the law." In going this far, the Court will find that it contradicts the precedent set in Loving v. Virginia that marriage is a federal "fundamental right" --- thus issuing one single ruling that gay marriage is legal in all 50 states. I am confident in this opinion because the country appears ready for it, as the polling indicates and as the sentiment of the nation indicates. The Court is known to closely follow public opinion and it could not be clearer in this case. The two Justices to watch are Anthony Kennedy, the "swing" justice who wrote the pro-gay majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, and Chief Justice John Roberts, a legacy-oriented justice whose lesbian cousin will attend Tuesday's hearing and who already bucked his conservative bloc in voting to uphold Obamacare in 2012. Regardless though of what happens at the Court, the gay rights movement has already won. "The political debate on gay marriage is over," read a Washington Post headline last week, while Jeffrey Toobin, the famed legal analyst, declared that there is no question that the "country will never go back to where it was" on these issues. Less than a decade ago, such statements would have been unthinkable for the LGBT community. Their devotion to this effort and the dramatic change in public thinking that that push for equality caused - marked by the evolution of millions of Americans and the President who leads them - is no small feat. For decades, the gay rights movement has yearned for "equal protection under the law." In advancing this cause and succeeding, they've forged a commendable journey worthy of a great nation and its promise of liberty for all.  Sunday, March 3, 2013 The President, the Sequester, and the Republican Party (PHOTO: President Barack Obama speaks during a White House press conference on March 1, 2013.)  Some very unusual things are happening in Washington right now. Despite no significant legislation related to a major policy goal or priority making it to President Obama's desk since his reelection, the president is enjoying his best job approval rating since September 2009. Since early last fall, Obama has been consistently polling between 50-55 percent in almost all major public opinion polling. Although the president did sign into law Clinton-era tax rates on the wealthiest one percent of Americans (a popular signature promise of two campaigns), Obama's party has been unable to move the needle so far on climate change legislation, immigration reform, or gun control. On the other hand, when Obama was accumulating huge legislative successes such as health care reform and Wall Street reform in 2010, the president's approval rating hovered in the high 40s.  Typically, conventional political wisdom would inform us that it should be the reverse: presidents usually do better when they successfully achieve their policy goals that they ran on while not doing politically so well when there is a stalemate or perpetual gridlock in DC. The reasons for this strange development are myriad. The central reasons are that the economy is currently doing far better - by all measures - than it was in 2010, when unemployment still hovered around 9 percent, the president's GOP opponents on Capitol Hill are widely unpopular, and the specific proposals touted by Obama right now are quite popular. Another unusual development is taking place too though. The Republican Party - a party that has advocated since the 1980 election for essentially gutting elements of the New Deal and Great Society - is refusing to accept a Democratic President's offer of cutting future Social Security benefits and means-testing Medicare because the president, a popular leader recently comfortably reelected, insists on additional revenue financed by closing unpopular tax loopholes, a solution to deficit reduction that the GOP's last presidential nominee and patron saint Ronald Reagan both advocated. So what is the consequence of this and why is this happening?  First, the effects of weird things are always: more weirdness.  As a consequence of the sequester debate, Obama has been winning the political battle even though he is presiding over a mess in Washington, has proposed cutting the popular Social Security program, and did actually sign the sequester into law as a future threat. This is not to say that the mess is his fault. It isn't. The Republican House took the debt ceiling hostage in the summer of 2011 and demanded that raising the ceiling be tied to spending cuts -- thus giving us continued fights such as the fiscal cliff debacle and the sequester showdown. If there is any blame to be laid on Obama's doorstep it is that he did sign into law the Budget Control Act of 2011, legislation that included the sequester as cuts that would take place if the congressional super committee never reached a deal (they didn't). Further, the president imprudently said in November 2011 that he would veto "any" effort to undo the automatic cuts. Clearly positioning himself as a deficit hawk in a politically tumultuous time for him and his party in 2011, Obama had two primary goals at that time: 1) figure out a way to avoid destroying the world economy by giving the GOP at least some of what it wanted and 2) appearing to be tough on the deficit after the Democratic Party's "shellacking," in his words, in the 2010 midterms in part thanks to the perception of out-of-control DC spending. Nearly two years later, Obama is now championing the values of activist government by waging an aggressive, enthusiastic PR war on the sequester as "dumb, arbitrary" and dangerous cuts that would severely harm services crucial to millions of Americans and put many middle-class federal workers out of a job.  Although he is proposing a deeply unpopular idea that would cut future Social Security benefits - chained CPI - as a bargaining chip for the Republicans to accept in favor of more revenue, Obama has largely sung a more progressive tune since winning reelection. Good. The president is right: the cuts would do terrible damage to things like Head Start, energy assistance for low-income families, aid for student loans, and national service programs. His basic proposition of avoiding the cuts is not only the right thing to do but it is also politically advantageous. Clearly, Obama is winning the political optics of this sequester fight. In the last two weeks, he appeared in front of federal law enforcement agents and a defense shipyard to make the (correct) case that the sequester would be perilous for the economy.  One would imagine that the president winning the argument politically would lead the GOP to cave.  In following with the theme of weirdness permeating Washington, that has not been the case. The Republican leadership in Congress has not budged despite Obama's conciliatory offers. At first glance, it is indeed strange. The president is offering chained CPI, an idea that Senator Mitch McConnell reportedly begged to sneak into the fiscal cliff deal at the last second, and means-testing Medicare -- another idea that McConnell has publicly praised. In exchange, Obama is asking for the Republicans to give a little on additional revenue. They have refused. A conventional political observer may think that the GOP is insane and killing their political fortunes by staking such a wildly unpopular and truly radical governing position. Further, the Republican message on the sequester has been all over the place. McConnell insists the cuts are 'modest,' House Speaker John Boehner says they need to be avoided, some in the party's House caucus love the cuts because they represent the kind of deficit hawkishness they adore, and, the favorite response of most of the GOP caucus, is this: "it's a failure of leadership from Obama!!!!" A party known for its message discipline is all over the place while refusing to accept the changes they have long craved for entitlement programs. It is, in a word, weird. However, a closer examination of their strategy reveals what the true motive is behind their recalcitrance. Think about it for a second: if the GOP House continues to bog Obama down in these never-ending fights over government shutdowns, the debt ceiling, automatic spending cuts, etc., what will come of government? Nothing productive. The president will be unable to achieve what he wants to accomplish on gun control, immigration, climate change, election reform, and raising the minimum wage -- because Congress will be too busy dealing with these "manufactured crises," to use Obama's language. That is part of the Republican Party's real goal. Does the GOP really care about the deficit and the debt? If they did, perhaps they would have supported Obamacare because the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the law would reduce the long-term budget deficit. If they did, perhaps they would have opposed President Bush's profligate spending throughout his two terms - including an unpaid for Medicare prescription drug benefit, unpaid for $1.3 trillion tax cut skewed toward the wealthy, an unpaid for war in Iraq, unpaid for No Child Left Behind, and other massive spending bills. They didn't though. All of Bush's major policy items of his first six years in office were passed with almost all congressional Republicans on board. What the GOP leadership in Congress - the most loyal supporters of big-spender George W. Bush during his presidency - is truly focused on is threefold. It is this: 1) tarnishing the Obama legacy (fueled in part by a dislike of the president), 2) stalling his progressive agenda (because they genuinely oppose it on ideological grounds), and 3) hoping that the public will get so tired of the bickering that they'll again see Washington as inherently dysfunctional thus validating the GOP's message that 'government does not work'....and leading to a Republican presidential victory in 2016. Those goals, on which it is clear the GOP is focused on, are part of why there is gridlock and a Republican resistance to Obama's offers.  In addition to aiming to accomplish those goals, the party is also hoping that elements of the centrist Beltway establishment media  - continually obsessed with lamenting about why Obama is not "bold" on the deficit and cutting entitlements and why he doesn't "sit down in a room with the GOP and broker a Reagan/O'Neill-type deal" - will help them portray Obama as obsessed with tax increases and not committed to deficit reduction. In the process, the GOP is banking on the fact that they can convince the debt-obssesed media to communicate to the deficit-weary public that President Obama - despite offering *chained CPI* and means-testing Medicare and already signing into law $2 trillion in spending cuts- is not "serious" about cutting spending. It might just work. A new poll reported by Business Insider found that only *six* percent of Americans answered correctly that the federal budget deficit is going down, not increasing.  Further, while it is true that the GOP Leadership in Congress has some vested interest in the national political image of the party and the outcome of the 2016 election, it's important to ask this question: does much of the GOP caucus and its members truly care about the short-term national political consequences? Perhaps not. The current Republican majority in the House is only in the majority because of gerrymandering at the state legislative level after the 2010 midterm elections. Indeed, collectively, Democratic candidates for the House won more popular votes nationwide than Republican candidates. Most of the GOP House members are focused on their individual gerrymandered conservative districts where if they are caught even talking to Obama or considering negotiating with him on revenue, they're politically dead. These Republicans are far more worried about primary challengers back home than they are about the national party's political image across the country. It should be worth noting too that many of these Tea Party Republicans in the House actually do like the sequester, voted for it, and want to see spending cuts like these eviscerate government services. This explains part of the gridlock as well.  On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the President's motives for a) proposing entitlement reforms that his party largely opposes and b) being politically omnipotent on the sequester are clear. By offering changes to Social Security and Medicare, President Obama can successfully portray himself as a reasonable, moderate, compromising leader willing to give in order to get. Ezra Klein of The Washington Post and Joan Walsh of have even posited that Obama is not truly serious about following through with these cuts and that he proposes them only so as to appear conciliatory while knowing that the GOP has become so radical that they will not accept them because of Obama's insistence on more revenue. Perhaps. If that is the case, this argument plays into the hand of the Republicans in a way - by backing up their assertion that the President is not actually focused on shaving entitlements.  Nevertheless, Obama's proposal doesn't just appear moderate. It is moderate. The White House has laid out on their website exactly what the President is calling for in clear detail - a balanced mix of spending cuts, including a major change to Social Security, and more revenue and the Republican House could technically accept the offer and a deal would be underway. Ultimately though, there is no question that politics is part of Obama's motivation in making this offer. Yes, it is true that chained CPI is unpopular with the public. However, by proposing it, Obama can successfully portray himself to moderate voters as a compromiser willing to negotiate with a right-wing opposition. By staking out a massive PR campaign against the sequester, the President is able to counterbalance that image of moderation with an image of being an advocate for an activist government -- thus appeasing his party and actually, the majority of Americans. It is smart politics.  Ultimately, what will be the end result of all of this back and forth anyway? Will the fights over spending, the debt ceiling, showdowns over government shutdowns, and the like define Washington for the next two years or will there eventually be major legislation passed in this session of Congress? It remains to be seen if the gridlock can magically be broken, if the sequester can be averted, or if the government will continue to stay open and pay its bills. For now, we will have to deal with the current wacky weirdness of Washington while, importantly, quietly working to win back the House in 2014.
ACCEL | PURE-Sodium: Are Efforts to Curb Salt Science or Faith-Based Medicine? It's a matter of faith that Americans consume too much sodium and that's hurting American health. It's more "faith" than science because the data have not been convincing, despite advice from several professional organizations recommending a wholesale curbing of salt in the manufacture and preparation of food. Currently, the average consumption of sodium (Na) in the United States is about 3.5 g/day. (See the TABLE for the amount of sodium in a given amount of table salt.) The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend reducing Na consumption to <2.3 g/day. The same guidelines suggest that people 51 years and older, African Americans, or those who have high blood pressure (BP), diabetes, or chronic kidney disease—about half the US population and the majority of adults—should further reduce sodium intake to 1.5 g/day. (For this higher-risk population, the guidelines add that these individuals should meet the potassium recommendation of 4,700 mg/day.) Is this 35-65% reduction in Na consumption for millions of Americans necessary, safe, and feasible? Is there evidence that such lowering of daily Na benefits health? Table. Approximate Amount of Sodium for a Given Amount of Table Salt Amount of Table Salt Amount of Sodium 1/4 teaspoon 575 mg 1/2 teaspoon 1,150 mg 3/4 teaspoon 1,725 mg 1 teaspoon 2,300 mg Mente et al. raised these questions and looked at whether nationwide efforts to reduce dietary sodium is science or zealotry.1 One of the most influential studies was INTERSALT, which reported a weak relationship between Na intake (as measured by 24-hour urine) and BP: there was a reduction of 0.94/0.03 mm Hg of blood pressure per gram of Na reduction.2 Andrew Mente, PhD, and his colleagues noted that an equally well-conducted study from Scotland, published side by side with INTERSALT, showed no significant association between Na excretion and BP, "yet received little attention, illustrating the biases with which papers are selectively emphasized."3 (There was an association between potassium excretion but not Na excretion.) The primary basis for the current American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines as well as the aforementioned 2010 national dietary guidelines was the 2001 DASH study, which was a 30-day "proof of concept" study as to whether changes in multiple aspects of diet (including Na reduction) would lower BP under controlled situations (all meals were provided to the participants and their spouses).4 They wanted to reduce the level of sodium from the average intake in the United States at that time (approximately 150 mmol/day, which is equivalent to 3.5 g of sodium or 8.7 g of sodium chloride) to below the recommended upper limit of 100 mmol/day. They reported that large reductions in Na intake (1.8 g/day) lowered BP (by 4.9/2.6 mm Hg), but the effects were more modest (3.0/1.6 mm Hg) in those who consumed an otherwise healthy diet but with less of a reduction in daily Na intake. Recently, investigators evaluated the incidence of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease events in populations exposed to dietary intakes of sodium:5 • low sodium <115 mmol • usual sodium; evaluating both a "low" usual sodium of 115-165 mmol and "high" usual sodium of 166-215 mmol • high sodium >215 mmol Data from 23 cohort studies and two follow-up studies of randomized controlled trials (N = 274,683) showed that both low sodium intakes and high sodium intakes are associated with increased mortality, consistent with a U-shaped association between sodium intake and health outcomes. And Then There's PURE-Sodium Measuring 24-hour urine is the ‘gold standard' for measuring Na and potassium (K) intake, but it's not feasible in large studies. Fasting morning urine has been used to estimate 24-hour urine excretion using a mathematical formula. So, Dr. Mente and colleagues used this mathematical model in their Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiological (PURE) Sodium study. Urine was collected from almost 100,000 individuals in 17 countries and BP was measured using an automated sphygmomanometer. They estimated Na and K excretion using the Kawasaki formula, validated against 24-hour urine obtained on the same day in 649 individuals. Sodium excretion ranged from a low of 3.8 g/day in Malaysia to 6.1 g/day in China. (North American and Europe were at the low end of daily intake, just slightly higher than that seen in Malaysia.) Each 1 g (43.5 mmol) increase in Na intake was associated with a 2.2 mm Hg increase in systolic BP and a 0.8 mm Hg increase in diastolic BP. In commenting on the study, Prof. Giuseppe Mancia, first author of the recent European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines for managing patients with hypertension, said that one important finding of PURE-Sodium was confirmation of the positive relationship between sodium and blood pressure. Indeed, he said, the relationship is strengthened by the huge amount of data obtained in the study. However, Dr. Mancia said, the relationship was not uniform across subgroups analyzed. The relationship between sodium and blood pressure is tight when BP is elevated and sodium intake is high, but strikingly less so when BP is normal and sodium intake is lower; the same was true for older versus younger subjects, with a much closer relationship between sodium and blood pressure among older individuals. For example, at low-to-moderate levels of sodium intake (<3 g/day [low] or between 3 to 5 g/day [moderate]), the relationship with blood pressure was flat, but systolic BP moved sharply higher once Na intake exceeded 5.0 g/day. The clear-cut clinical implication, he said, is that as far as BP control is concerned, one gains little by pursuing a low-sodium diet strategy in the general population, while there can be important advantages in focusing this intervention on subgroups with specific demographic, dietary, and clinical characteristics.  Another critical element: benefits are greatest when a reduction in sodium intake can be matched with an increase in potassium intake, since the study showed a strong negative association between K intake and BP values. Dr. Mancia did add this caveat: given its epidemiological nature, the study did not measure the effect of changing sodium and potassium intake within individuals. This is inferred by the BP differences between individuals. According to Dr. Mente, PURE-Sodium suggests a targeted approach to Na reduction is more appropriate for populations with moderate intakes (such as North America and Europe), whereas in countries with higher Na intake (e,g., China) a population strategy may be more reasonable. Indeed, he said using a population-wide approach for sodium reduction in a moderate-intake country, such as the United States, would be impractical, having only a modest effect for the money and effort expended. The study data indicate that despite all the effort in the United States to reduce population-wide levels of sodium intake, fewer than 5% of the US population have a daily intake <2.3 g/day, the threshold used in most guidelines for average healthy adults. Based on the PURE-Sodium study, at current levels of sodium intake in this country a population-wide effort would have minimal effect on BP. 1. Mente A, O'Donnell MJ, Yusuf S. Am J Hypertens. 2013;26:1187-90. 2. Intersalt Cooperative Research Group. BMJ. 1988;297:319-28. 3. Smith WC, Crombie IK, Tavendale RT, et al. BMJ. 1988;297:329-30. 4. Sacks FM, Svetkey LP, Vollmer WM, et al. N Engl J Med. 2001;344:3-10. 5. Graudal N, Jürgens G, Baslund B, Alderman MH. Am J Hypertens. 2014 Apr 26. [Epub ahead of print] To listen to an interview with Andrew Mente, PhD, on the results and implications of the PURE sodium study, scan the code. The interview was conducted by Spencer King, III, MD. Clinical Topics: Diabetes and Cardiometabolic Disease, Prevention, Diet, Hypertension Keywords: Follow-Up Studies, Nutrition Policy, Blood Pressure, Sodium Chloride, Dietary, Sodium Chloride, Potassium, Diet, Sodium-Restricted, Sodium, Dietary, Sphygmomanometers, Models, Theoretical, Hypertension, United States, Diabetes Mellitus, Renal Insufficiency, Chronic < Back to Listings
A nice , low cost paper rocket that launches into the sky!! Step 1: What You Will Need The materials that you will need for doing this project are: 1. 15 papers with dimension 1,00*0,70 meters 2. Glue 3. Scissors 4. Ruler 5. Marker 6. Reeds (Plant) total length 3,00 meters 7. Metal Wire length 2 meters 8. Oil 9. Sponge Step 2: Creating the Main Body For the main body of the rocket, we start to unite the papers using the glue, and then we link the start and the end of this plane, to create a cylinder. Step 3: Creating the Rocket's Nose In order to create this part of our project, first of all we have to unite 5 of our papers, and then cut them with scissors, giving them the shape of a hEMICYCLE, with a circumference of 3 meters (same as the cylinder that constitutes the main body). Step 4: Creating the Rocket After our nose is done, we start glue it to the main body. The center of the Hemicycle is going to be our rocket's peak, so the circumference of the hemicycle is attached to the circumference of the cylinder. Step 5: Creating the Tail For the tail, I used some reeds and some twine or wire, in order to make a circle, at the bottom of the rocket. This will help your rocket to get it's shape, and also will hold the sponge with gazoline, that will be explained in the next step. So, first thing is go and cut some dry reeds. Then cleave them like the image shown. Next try to curve them in order to create a circle. After that create two diameters of wire. This will help you get the shape you want, and also will make the bottom more stable. Step 6: Launch the Rocket The principle that makes this rocket fly is very simple. Hot air is lighter than the cold air. So you have to fill the rocket with hot air. Try to light a fire and put the rocket carefully over it. The smoke will slowly fill the paper rocket and will elevate it to the sky! If you want your rocket to go even further, when it is ready to escape your hands, you can hang a sponge with oil to the wires on the bottom and put fire to it. This will keep the air inside hot, and your rocket will continue to fly, until the oil is over. Try not to fly this rocket in the summer, because you can create fire. Also the weather has to be calm, with no big winds. Have fun!! <p>That looks like so much fun, I bet it really flies if you can get the fire hot enough!</p> About This Instructable More by giokoll:EL Wire Bicycle Rim Light Concrtete Lamp Rocket Airship  Add instructable to:
Please visit our sponsor! Bookmark and Share The Sahara Syndrome By Ernest Stewart "Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest." ~~~ James Lovelock Many know the Sahara Desert is roughly the size of the United States; but did you know that once-upon-a-time it was made up of rich pastures and jungles with large lakes and rivers running through it? Do you suppose what happened to the Sahara could happen elsewhere? As you know, the Earth just recorded its hottest 12-month period ever; well, at least since we began keeping those records in 1880. Ice core samples going back several hundred thousand years pretty much tell the same story. In Southern Europe, for example, scientists find that in the last 10,000 years the region never experienced such severe droughts and heatwaves that it's facing now. In fact, if the trend continues for next 100 years, many areas of Europe will turn into a desert. This isn't in any way limited to southern Europe, but may be happening all over the world. Since the late 19th century, the average temperature of the Mediterranean has already risen by 1.5 degrees Celsius. Researchers at the journal Science said, "Man-made climate change will likely alter ecosystems in the Mediterranean in a way that is without precedent in the past 10,000 years, unless governments quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions." If remained unchecked, the estimation of such a desert area in Europe would expand up to Southern Spain, Portugal, and Sicily. This is being caused by trends of changing the Atlantic storms. These storm are moving in a northerly direction, resulting in more sunshine over the region, and less rain. You may recall that a study in the US journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" in 2015 said there was a direct involvement of man-made climate change that aggravated the drought of 2007-10 in Syria that was a contributing factor to the civil war. Meanwhile, in the US, Phoenix has been setting records for the last week or so with temps in the three figure range, which, while normal in July, is not so normal for the end of October and the beginning of November! Having said that, some are predicting another polar vortex from the Midwest to the East Coast for this winter. I remember quite well our last polar vortex of 2013-2014, when at night the wind chills were hovering right around 50 below zero for about a week. You may also recall that two late mega-hurricanes ran right up the Chinese coast and through Alaska, pushing all that cold air south. So, unless we have a similar occurrences this fall, I think we'll have the same winter that we had last year, only slightly warmer. Co-author Martyn Chipperfield, professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Leeds, said: "Climate change can lead to extremes; it's not like a regular change, everyone to the same extent at all times and places. Despite the overall warming, you can get in places like the Northeastern U.S. extreme cold events. That's consistent with climate change and global warming." As I've said on many occasions, in Global Warming there are winners and losers. However, weather still works on basic principles -- for example, Sir Isaac's Three Laws of Motion and Albert's E=MC2. To have that polar vortex effect, you must have a cause! So, unless there are late fall mega-typhoons, we'll have a normal, perhaps slightly warmer, winter. Here's what NOAA said about it. According to the U.S. Winter Outlook, published last week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts "a warm, dry winter for much of the country." 01-30-1934 ~ 10-30-2016 Thanks for the film! 11-20-1930 ~ 10-30-2016 Thanks for the music! 08-20-1953 ~ 11-02-2016 Thanks for the laughs! We get by with a little help from our friends! So please help us if you can...? So how do you like Bush Lite so far? Until the next time, Peace! The Gross National Debt Iraq Deaths Estimator The Animal Rescue Site Issues & Alibis Vol 16 # 44 (c) 11/04/2016
Urim and Tummim The Urim and Tummim (“Light and Perfection” or “Perfect Lights”) was a method of divination that was worn as part of the priestly garments (Exodus 28; Numbers 27; I Samuel 28). Little is truly known about Urim and Tummim; even the name has been subjected to wildly different translations. A Conduit for Messages This was achieved by having a plate inscribed with the Tetragrammaton inserted behind the gemstone mounts. Supernal light radiating from the divine name would illuminate different stones. Since each stone was inscribed with the names of the 12 tribes, the Talmud teaches that it functioned as a kind of Ouija board, withm messages being spelled on the Urim and Tummim for the High Priest. Major Uses questions, such as resolving difficult legal questions. While it is not mentioned by name, Joshua may have determined who violated God’s decree of proscription at Jericho by means of the Urim and Tummim (Joshua 6-7). Mention of the Urim and Tummim ceases early in the history of Israel, indicating that it was no longer in use at the rise of classical prophecy (eighth century BCE). There is some indication that it was reintroduced briefly during the Persian period, but it again quickly disappears from the records. Post-biblical sources offer numerous elaborations on the history and operation of the Urim and Tummim, but many of the sources contradict each other, making it difficult to fix on any as a legitimate tradition (Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q376; 4QpIsa; Antiquities 3:8; Yoma 73b; Exodus Rabbah 47; Sifrei Numbers 141; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Exodus 28; Zohar II 234b; Nahmanides on Exodus 28). The Urim and Tummim have also become part and parcel of Western occult lore; Joseph Smith (founder of the Latter Day Saints movement, or Mormonism), for example, claimed to have used the Urim and Tummim to read “Reformed Egyptian” language of the golden book given him by the angel Moroni. The seal of Yale University also contains a reference to them. in Kabbalah and rabbinic literature at the University of North Texas. Discover More Jewish Healing & Magic "Whatever is effective as a remedy is not witchcraft (Shabbat 67a)"--is that really the case? Judaism & Numbers Jewish Curses In Jewish thought and texts, curses exemplify the belief that speech can have tremendous power.
What Is a Switch? How network switches compare to hubs and routers A network switch is a small device that centralizes communications among several connected devices in one local area network (LAN). Stand-alone Ethernet switch devices were commonly used on home networks many years before home broadband routers became popular. Modern home routers integrate Ethernet switches directly into the unit as one of their core functions. High-performance network switches are still widely used in corporate networks and data centers. Network switches are sometimes referred to as switching hubs, bridging hubs or MAC bridges. About Network Switches  Ethernet switches are the most common type, but you'll also find switches optimized for ATM, Fibre Channel, and Token Ring network architectures. Ubiquity UniFi 48-port managed switch Ubiquity UniFi 48-port Switch. Amazon.com Mainstream Ethernet switches like those inside broadband routers support Gigabit Ethernet speeds per individual link, but high-performance switches like those in data centers usually support 10 Gbps per link. Different models of network switches support varying numbers of connected devices. Consumer-grade network switches provide either four or eight connections for Ethernet devices, while corporate switches typically support between 32 and 128 connections. Switches also connect to each other, a daisy chaining method to add a progressively larger number of devices to a LAN. Managed and Unmanaged Switches Basic network switches like those used in consumer routers require no special configuration beyond plugging in cables and power. Compared to these unmanaged switches, high-end devices used on enterprise networks support a range of advanced features designed to be controlled by a professional administrator. Popular features of managed switches include SNMP monitoring, link aggregation, and QoS support. Traditionally managed switches are built to be controlled from Unix-style command line interfaces. A newer category of managed switches called smart switches, targeted at entry-level and midrange enterprise networks,​ support web-based interfaces similar to a home router. Network Switches vs. Hubs and Routers A network switch physically resembles a network hub. Unlike hubs, however, network switches are capable of inspecting incoming messages as they are received and directing them to a specific communications port—a technology called packet switching. TP-Link 5 Port Hub TP-Link 5 Port Hub.  Amazon A switch determines the source and destination addresses of each packet and forwards data only to the specific devices, while hubs transmit the packets to every port except the one that received the traffic. It works this way to conserve network bandwidth and generally improve performance compared to hubs. Switches also resemble network routers. While routers and switches both centralize local device connections, only routers contain support for interfacing to outside networks, either local networks or the internet. Layer 3 Switches Illustration of the Layers of the OSI model Lifewire / Colleen Tighe​ Conventional network switches operate at Layer 2 Data Link Layer of the OSI model. Layer 3 switches that blend the internal hardware logic of switches and routers into a hybrid device also have been deployed on some enterprise networks. Compared to traditional switches, Layer 3 switches provide better support for virtual LAN configurations. • What are KVM switches? A KVM switch is a piece of hardware that allows you to control multiple computers using a single monitor and keyboard. You can also add additional monitors and keyboards to your setup. • What is a VPN kill switch? Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have a software kill switch that automatically disables internet access when you disconnect. This feature ensures that your IP address and other personal data are never exposed. • Can network switches reduce speed? Yes, but not enough to make a noticeable difference. Just as longer cables add a little latency, extra switches also add a negligible amount of latency. If your internet connection is slow, it has nothing to do with the switches if everything is properly connected. • How much do network switches cost? Prices range drastically from under $40 to over $500 depending primarily on the number of ports and extra features. For a 20-port network switch, you can expect to pay $150-$250. Was this page helpful?
Plc nike shoes Published: 2021-07-09 10:05:04 essay essay Category: Examples Type of paper: Essay Hey! We can write a custom essay for you. All possible types of assignments. Written by academics Nike’s idea of producing their shoes was to let their costumers design and personalize their own pair of shoes. There are three main parts of athletic shoes including Nike brand shoes. The midsole, the outsole and the top part of the shoe known as the upper. The materials for the upper part of the shoe vary on the design of the shoe. The midsole is generally made out of a combination of materials. Some of these materials include polyurethane, Phylon, Phylite (which is a combination of Phylon and rubber) and EVA, a flexible, foam-like material. The shoelaces are made of cotton. The rubber-like products are put into molds to fit the form of the shoe. The softer products are sewn together to form the final product Nike shoes usually last about one year or so. Depending on the person, the shoes could have a greater lifespan or a shorter lifespan. Materials acquisition Nike shoe laces are made from cotton, a “raw material” or plant directly from the earth. The cotton provides a soft material for the laces. The ends of the laces are bonded by plastic, which is produced by oil or petroleum. Their logo on their shoes is also made of plastic (petroleum). Nike shoes mainly have rubber as their sole. The rubber is mainly made from special types of trees including rubber trees. The sap from the rubber trees is rubber, waiting to be made into a solid form. Once made into the rubber, it is applied to the shoe. A large number of Nike shoes use Velcro. The Velcro is made of nylon, cotton and polyester. Some of these materials are earth-based materials. Materials processing The cotton being used to produce the shoelaces is woven. The little strands of cotton are woven together creating the shoelace itself. The petroleum is melted into plastic. The melting produces CO2 emissions into the air, which gets trapped in the earth’s atmosphere. After it is melted, it is put into molds of the Nike logo and is sent to dry. After it is dried, it is applied to the shoes. The production of their shoes can be altered depending on the type of shoe. Manufacturing Once the Nike products are developed. Then, they are then attached to make the shoe. Nike shoes are produced in many countries: China USA Indonesia India Taiwan Thailand Pakistan Vietnam Philippines Malaysia Packaging Nike shoes are packaged in cardboard boxes called shoeboxes. Depending on a person’s shoe size; there can be more packaging then usual or less packaging than usual. The cardboard used to make the box is compressed paper. It is 100% recycled cardboard, reused from other shoes. The cardboard can be recycled. Distribution The shoes are distributed to Nike stores all around the world by semis, planes, and boats. Use Nike shoes are mainly used for running. But, they have a wide variety of shoe categories: Cleats Basketball Shoes Regular Running Shoes Regular Shoes (mainly for style) Reuse/recycle Recycling or re-manufacturing products into something new. (Reduces the amount of raw materials that have to be used in the manufacturing process and usually saves energy). Recycling can save old things and reuse them and turn them into a brand new item. Some tennis shoes have been recycled and turned into basketball courts. Nike encourages people to recycle the shoebox they are given, which is made out of cardboard. Recycling includes: Plastic, plastic bottles, cans, glass, etc. Disposal When Nike are disposed they usually end up in landfills. Sometimes the shoes are donated to less fortunate people or turned into hand-me-downs. We can write your paper just for 11.99$ i want to copy... People also read
- Advertisement -amazon affiliate HomeLifestyleHealthCoronavirus is preventable, but treatment is possible only with vaccine Coronavirus is preventable, but treatment is possible only with vaccine - Advertisement -spot_img Bangalore. As the number of coronavirus cases across the country shows no sign of reduction, Bengaluru-based eminent pediatric cardiologist Vijayalakshmi I. Balekundri said coronavirus is preventable, but it is not curative until a vaccine is introduced. The only way to avoid getting infected is by wearing a mask, washing hands and maintaining physical distance because until a vaccine is found, it is better than cure, said Professor Emeritus, Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute in an exclusive interview to IANS. That is to prevent deadly disease. When Vijayalakshmi was asked why and how is Kovid-19 different from other viruses? So he said that coronaviruses are not living organism like bacteria or fungus. They are non-living large, lipid capsule enveloped and positive, strained RNA viruses. Like other viruses, the coronavirus tries to be contained in a cell and turns it into a virus-replicating factory. If it is successful, it can cause infection in the throat, respiratory system, heart, brain, blood vessels and all 100 trillion cells in the human body. What type of cells the virus targets and how it enters them depends on how it is made. Genetically it is transmitted from human to human without a vector and enters the body through the nose, throat and eyes as an air infection. It affects vital organs and cells in the body through blood vessels. When asked how the new coronavirus enters human cells, he said, “To infect a human, the virus enters a person’s cells, uses its machinery to replicate, outside of them.” spreads and spreads to other cells. The small molecular key on SARS-CoV-2 allows the virus to enter the cell. This key is called a spike protein. The structure of the coronavirus is like a key and the receptors on the cells are like a lock. Theoretically, they route a thief (virus) to a home (body cells) through a lock (receptors) entry point. When Dr. Vijayalakshmi was asked how this virus that has infected millions of people across the world could be prevented from spreading further, he said that to prevent the virus from spreading from person to person, wearing a mask, washing hands frequently. Washing frequently, keeping a distance of 4-6 feet from others, using toilet hygiene and travelling should be avoided. When asked what are the symptoms of corona infection and how deadly it is, he said that if a person is unable to smell or taste sugar or salt and has fever with bitterness, then he should immediately get corona. Should be tested, as they are symptoms of corona infection. If the test is positive, it is an indication that the virus has entered the cells of the mucous membrane through the nose, eyes or mouth and has replicated inside the cells of the body. The patient will have mild fever, body ache, burning throat and dry cough for 3-4 days without odor and taste. The virus enters the lungs or stomach through the nose or throat and causes viral pneumonia, abdominal pain from 5-7 days. From the 8th to the 10th day there is shortness of breath, fatigue. At this stage, nasal sprays are useful. As the virus spreads from the lungs to the heart, brain, kidneys and all blood vessels by the 14th day, it causes several organ failures and eventually death. When asked how quarantine helps in preventing or treating the virus, he said people coming from hot places like Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi have to undergo 14-day quarantine, which includes one week of institutional and one week. This includes being in home quarantine for a week, as they may not show symptoms initially but develop after 3-4 days. If they are positive, they are shifted to a designated hospital for treatment. If they do not have symptoms, they are quarantined at home or in a Covid center for recovery. (IANS) - Advertisement -spot_img - Advertisement -spot_img Stay Connected Must Read - Advertisement -spot_img Related News - Advertisement -spot_img Please enter your comment! Please enter your name here
Choosing a Whiptail Lizard Choosing a Whiptail Lizard post imagepost image post imagepost image Whiptails are nervous lizards that seem to possess the energy of a toddler and the speed of a lightning bolt. The many species of whiptails are all diminutive relatives of the various tegus (family Teiidae). In one species or another, whiptails occur over much of North, Central, and South America, as well as in the West Indies. Known for their long-tails, alert demeanor and nervous movements, whiptails are hardy but not particularly long-lived. There are two types most commonly seen in the pet trade; the large “giant” whiptails, often referred to by their generic name of Ameiva, and the smaller tiger and rainbow whiptails in the genus Cnemidophorus. The Ameivas tend to lack a well-defined lined pattern and have more than eight rows of scales on the belly. The smaller members of the genus Cnemidophorus usually have a well-defined pattern of stripes, spots, or both, and only eight rows of belly scales. Some species are clad in earthen tones but others, such as the rainbow whiptails, are brilliantly colored in yellows, greens, and blues. None of these lizards are commercially bred. All that enter the pet trade are collected from the wild. Depending on the species, whiptails sell for from $10 to $40 each and live an average of 1 to 3 ½ years. Whiptails and racerunners are sleek and slender, long-tailed lizards. The term “racerunner,” is used mostly for species of the eastern United States, and it aptly describes the movements of all: when startled they race to safety. When not frightened, they move in short, rapid, flurries of motion, stopping to dig at the ground with one or both forefeet, in search of burrowing insects. The body scales of all are tiny and granular and the belly scales are large, platelike, and arranged in rows. The scales of the tail are intermediate in size and arranged in whorls. • Six-lined racerunners have pale blue bellies and dark backs with 6 thin yellow lines. • The western whiptail have intricate blends of dark spots and obscure light stripes against a tan ground color. • Females of the rainbow whiptail have a pale brown ground color and are prominently striped. • Males have a blue face and throat, yellow spotted ochre sides, and yellow stripes bordered by bright green. Their tail is also green. • The giant ameiva may be charcoal with crossbands of white to blue spots or be tan and brilliant green in dorsal color. • Behavior These lizards possess a nervous energy that never runs low. They move in fits and starts, they dig with quick, nervous motions of the forelimbs for secluded insects, and males chase males with dashes of dizzying speed. Even when they are complacently basking in the noonday sunshine, whiptails seem fully aware of all motions and noises around them. With gentle, slow and persistent overtures, captive whiptails can become accustomed to the everyday movements of their keeper, but never become really tame. Although they can climb, whiptails are essentially terrestrial. They dig and use burrows beneath rocks, in embankments or among the root systems of cacti. These are lizards of desert flats, eastern grasslands, forest edges and rock-strewn arid lands. All bask for long periods in the sunlight and, when at optimum body temperature, move back into the shadows. Whiptails will eat roaches, crickets, mealworms, king mealworms, waxworms, trevo-worms, silkworms, and an occasional blossom. Feed only healthy, gut-loaded insects. Whiptails will also lap a vitamin fortified honey-pureed fruit mixture. (To make this mix 1/3rd water, 1/3rd pureed apricot baby food, 1/3rd honey, add a little powdered calcium-D3 additive, mix well, refrigerate what is not immediately used.) Fresh drinking water should always be present. Whiptails are fast and active lizards. The minimum floor space one or a pair of the smaller forms should be 12×30 inches, the size of a 20-gallon long aquarium. If a greater number of specimens or a pair of the larger species is being kept, a 40-gallon terrarium should be the absolute minimum in size. A 75-gallon terrarium would be better. Cage furniture should be carefully arranged and secured so it cannot shift and trap, injure or kill your lizards. A sandy substrate is fine. Whiptails bask extensively but usually do so while sprawled on the sand beneath the full-spectrum heat lamp. An illuminated area of the sandy substrate, or the surface of a flat rock, should be heated to a surface temperature of 110 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit. The cool end of the cage can be in the mid 80s. Nighttime temperatures can be a little cooler and, of course, the basking light is turned off. Winter temperatures, including that of the basking spot, can be allowed to drop a few more degrees (mid-60s night, low 80s day, 95 to 100 F basking spot). If hiding areas are not available between the rocks, provide corkbark or other commercial hides. A shallow dish of fresh water must always be available. Medical issues Little is know with certainty about the medical aspects of whiptails. Fortunately, providing the lizards are given ample warmth, food, and water, they seem quite trouble-free, even if short-lived. number-of-posts0 paws up Previous / Next Article Previous Article button How to Throw a Pet Party for Kids Next Article button
From RepRap Jump to: navigation, search Lubrication is important aspect of every CNC machine and the RepRap is no exception. Proper lubrication will make your machine run smoothly, will suppress or even remove ugly noises and reduce wear and tear of your components. This article is a practical overview of lubricants compatible with the RepRap project, but it may be useful to understand the physics. Lubricants work by being slippery, and forming a barrier between two friction surfaces. Thick, viscous lubricants can maintain a barrier without squeezing out even under high pressures. Due to their viscosity, however, they may be more sticky than slippery. There is a trade off, and RepRap requires much thinner lubricants than axle grease or engine oil. Wikipedia: Lubrication is a good overview of the theoretical mechanisms of lubrication. For each lubricant, there are several factors to take into account: • Viscosity/squeez out pressure- a thick grease might clog up your bearings, but would be fine on a threaded rod. (see NLGI Grade) • Reactivity - will the lube soften or dissolve your plastic? Most lubricants are formulated for steel, but not all. It might also react if combined with other lubricants. • Friction - all lubricants are designed to reduce friction, but some get closer to zero than others. Some are formulated for ultra-high speeds & heat reduction, for example. • Maintenance - RepRap doesn't wear out lubricant anywhere near as quickly as your car, but dust and grime will accumulate in a sticky oil. There was a recent discussion in the forums regarding lubrication. The information on this page might need to be updated. [Reprap-Compatible Grease] --Buback 22:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC) "Linear bearing compatible lubrication?". Lubricants by application The main parts of the RepRap machine that need to be lubricated are: • Threaded Rod • Bearings and bearing rails • Bushings (if used instead of bearings) Threaded Rod Both Darwin and Mendel RepRap models have multiple Z-stage drives constructed using threaded rod and a captive nut, though some experimental or RepStrap machines use only one. There are RepRap clones that have X and Y also made with threaded rod and a nut. Friction between nut and threaded rod, especially under the load of the Z platform in Darwin based models is huge and if not lubricated the Z-Stage will produce ugly squeaking sounds and rub off metal powder, and soon your threaded rods will show signs of wear and tear (especially if you use a lot of Z-Motion). Properly lubricating the rods will reduce the wear and tear on the rods (not to mention reducing the ugly sounds). So far, high viscosity PTFE filled oil (super-lube for example) shown best results here. There are two major types of bearings found in RepRap machines. • Roller bearings • Linear bearings Roll bearings These bearings are usually closed and have their own lubrication, so no additional lubrication is needed. Linear bearings Linear Bearings come in open and close package. The closed ones have their own lubrication and no additional lubrication is needed while open ones need additional lubrication. high-viscosity PTFE filled oil (super-lube) for example shown best results here. Synthetic Gear Oil also shown very good results. On the other hand, TheGremlin recommends low viscosity lithium soap based lube when using bushings. High viscosity greases, such as axle grease, can clog up roller bearings and cause them to slide instead of rolling. This will wreak havoc on your expensive precision ground linear rods. He recommends a grease NLGI Grade 1 or 0. Bushings and ball joints Selecting a lubricant for a ball joint is not as complicated as selecting a lubricant for a bushing, because ball joints tend to be metal on metal. Depending on the type of a bushing (PLA on Chrome, PTFE on Chrome, ABS on Chrome ..) you will need to find a compatible lubricant. This is because some oils do not interact well with some plastics. In most cases when using PTFE on Chrome no lubrication is needed, but some PTFE filled oil will help a bit, especially if you use PTFE inserts for X or Y movement. Multipurpose grease also shown nice results. Because the smooth rods are in the open air, most oils and greases will accumulate dust. Silicone based dry lube is a potential solution to this problem, according to TheGremlin's post. Lubricants by type Oils, greases, and dry lubricants Most lubricants can be broadly categorized into three types: • Oils - Thin liquids that flow, made up of long polymer chains. They don't squeeze out from under surfaces as easily as other liquids due to their long polymer structure. This means that rubbing surfaces don't get a chance to touch, unless they can apply enough pressure to squeeze out all the oil that separates them. Thicker oils have higher pressure thresholds, but their high viscosity resists motion slightly. • Greases - Lubricious solid particles suspended in a paste. Although generally thick, greases can range from "apple sauce" to "cheddar cheese" consistency. Thick grease takes much more pressure to make squeeze out, so it can handle much higher loads than RepRap will ever put it through. However, thick grease will bind up your printer. For reprap, we generally want thin grease (NLGI 1 or below) • Dry lubricants - Exists as free powder, dispersed in water/alcohol, or as a coating. Because RepRap rods tend not to be covered, dust collects on them. Sticky oil and grease only exacerbate this problem. Dry lubricants solve this, but may require slightly more work, depending on what is added to the powder. • Free powders don't adhere very well to the surface, and require frequent re-application. • Powders applied in a suspended medium will adhere slightly better than free powders once the dispersant evaporates. • AF (anti-friction) coatings are made by adding a binder to form a coating which can be painted on. • Self-lubrication works by embedding powder in the part, rather than applying it as a coating. As it wears it releases lubrication. Oils and greases have been widely compared, however dry lubricants are in a class of their own. When too much pressure is applied and an oil is squeezed entirely out from in between two surfaces, the oil will flow back in to fill the dry spot once the part has slid past. This makes oils good for things like cars where varying loads are placed on parts. Greases and solids do not flow like this, but can require higher pressure thresholds to be squeezed out in the first place. Oils can also flow and carry away debris, whereas greases and solids aim to prevent the grinding that generated the debris in the first place. Oils have a high margin of error when selecting a viscosity, so require relatively little knowledge to apply and replace. Greases must be selected based on NLGI consistency (0 or 1 work well for the low loads RepRap requires). Some oils and greases can be corrosive to some plastics or even metals, whereas dry lubricants are less likely to react. Dry lubricants are not sticky and so don't collect dust, but offer less protection from rust when not applied as part of an anti-friction coating. Dry lubricants are an enticing option for RepRap. It solves the dust buildup problem elegantly, and we really don't need motor oil or grease intended for power tools/industrial machines. The downside is that dry lubricants don't adhere well, so they may require more frequent re-application. If applied in an Anti-Friction coating, however, they will last much longer. (see the Wikipedia page for details.) If anyone has any experience using graphite or other powdered solid lubricants, please add your knowledge! • Graphite lube can be as simple as running a soft artist's pencil through your threaded rod. Most pencil cores are made of graphite mixed with a clay binder. While graphite is quite soft, clay is hard and abrasive; the OPPOSITE of the qualities we want for RepRap. (Although, at least in theory, the flat clay particles could reduce friction through the same planar slip mechanism as graphite.) Besides, graphite under 80% pure makes poor lubricant. (Wikipedia: Dry_lubricant#Graphite_source) Only types 5B and above meet this criteria (list of pencil compositions), so standard pencils (world HB, or US #2) are not suitable at only 68% graphite. In fact, the US system doesn't even include any high-graphite pencils because there is no value below #1. (Wikipedia: Pencil#Grading_and_classification). Artists suppliers offer solid graphite sticks at times with varying composition. EDM Electrode graphite is usually of a high quality. The hardness varies and there is usually no indication of the composition thought a high purity is to be expected. Grinding these in a ball mill would supply powder. Dry lock lubricants are often fine flake graphite in a small squeeze bottle intended for blowing into a keyhole. Electrode graphite could possibly be used directly to replace graphite stock that is intended for machining bearings. Pistons in air dash pots are sometimes made of graphite if they are used in glass cylinders. The vanes of dry vane pumps are often made from graphite as there is no option of a lubricant. High temperature anti-seize pastes sometimes contain graphite in a grease or other binder. • Silicone is generally used in grease form, but it is also commonly available dispersed in aerosol sprays, which are sold in hardware stores. Silicone grease that is often used with RepRap is actually meant to be used with rubber gaskets, O-rings and similar equipment. It is not "bad" and some users report good results with it. There is also silicone grease with PTFE that is reported to work well. In the case of dry lube sprays, the dispersant evaporates, leaving behind a layer of solid silicone. Silicone based liquid lubricants thicken under shear, keeping the surfaces from touching. This has its limits, however; silicone lubricants compress more and spread out more under pressure than other lubricants. As a result, they have a lower threshold for the pressure they can support. They are sufficient for plastic-to-plastic and metal-to-plastic applications, however metal-to-metal exceeds silicone's lubricating capacity. (How Silicone Lubricants Work) Solid silicone does not spread as much as silicone based liquid lubricants. This gives it a moderately higher pressure threshold, allowing it to be used under more severe conditions. (details on the exact physics on Wikipedia: Dry_lubricant#Silicone) • PTFE lubricants can withstand higher pressures than silicone, allowing it to be used for a metal-to-metal. It is used as a dry lubricant, in grease, or as an oil additive. PTFE is also highly hydrophobic, and so may help prevent rust even in dry lubricant form. It is sold in oil and grease form under the brand "SuperLube", and DuPont sells a "Teflon Non-Stick Dry-Film Lubricant". All of these should not react with ABS or PLA, but only the PTFE filled oil has been tested. • molybdenum disulfide (moly) is similar in feel to graphite, and can be used as a dry lubricant. Powder is frequently used in grease or as an oil additive, for applications like aircraft engines where failure would be catastrophic. It has been added to plastics like nylon, PTFE, and Vespel to form self-lubricating composites. More info at Wikipedia: Molybdenum_disulfide#Lubricant • low viscosity lithium soap grease may be hard to source locally, but works well for linear bearings • Multipurpose grease is good for use with bushings • Synthetic Gear Oil • Light oil reduced the squeaking sound but did not really help with friction and on the bushings it even increased friction (by attracting dust and creating sticky surface on the slider rod). CupCakeStrap has used light machine oil for the linear rails, which are aluminum rod and brass tube bushings. The oil worked very very well, but over a one-month period the oil formed some black gunk, and much of it leaked down from the rails onto the acrylic X stage, lightly discoloring it. The gunk is easily removed, but doing so dries out the rail. • WD40 is possibly the worst lubricant, tested on a Darwin based RepRap rapman. It "ate up" the Z threaded rods and produced huge amounts of ugly black gunk that was impossible to remove while not improving Z movement at all. Self-Lubricating Composite It would be interesting to add graphite or some other powder to ABS or PLA and extrude it with a filastruder. If quality filament could be produced, then it could be used to print gears, ball bearings, bushings, and other high-friction RepRap parts. Since the particles will be partially aligned in the extrusion process, it could be printed in such a way that the particles were already aligned in the direction that the shear force will be generated while the part is in service. Note that Conductive ABS is made by blending ABS with carbon fibre and carbon black, but NOT graphite. Perhaps graphite-infused (or carbon nanotube?!) filament could be adapted to also be conductive. Industry uses composite lubricated plastics in certain applications. PTFE and Molybdenym Disulphide OR Graphite are used in some, one trade name is Vesconite. Summary Table Here's all the lubricants mentioned in this article, summarized in a table: Lubricant type Form Viscosity Known Reactivity Friction Maintenance Sources Other notes PTFE filled oil oil/solid  ? compatible with ABS and PLA  ?  ? Super Lube Good for threaded rods, bushings, and bearings PTFE filled grease grease  ? compatible with ABS and PLA  ?  ? Super Lube  ? low viscosity lithium soap grease? NLGI Grade 1 or 0 is recommended  ?  ?  ? May be hard to source locally Good for linear bearings Silicone based dry lube Aerosolized solid N/A  ?  ? Dry, so no dust problems  ? Good for plastic bushings Graphite solid suspension in isopropanol N/A  ?  ? breaks down and becomes a friction agent "after a bunch of years" Brand name "Neolube" Can also run a soft artists pencil through threaded rod PTFE based dry lube solid N/A  ?  ? Needs somewhat frequent replacement (a mountain bike chain needs re-lubrication after 3-5 rides) Sold in hardware stores. Label may say Teflon instead of PTFE. Good for motorcycles and mountain bikes Synthetic Gear Oil oil  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? Good for linear bearings Multipurpose grease grease  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? Good for bushings Silicone grease grease  ?  ?  ?  ?  ? Meant as a sealant for rubber gaskets, O-rings, etc. Light oil oil  ? Bad for aluminium and/or brass; discolors acrylic Doesn't reduce bushing friction much?  ?  ? CupCakeStrap had poor results WD-40 oil  ? Reacts with metal Doesn't reduce friction  ?  ? Designed for eating rust, NOT lubrication
Beginner Spanish Program For children ages 2-8 Our Programs Spanish Online The Language Spark’s innovative curriculum is now available online for young learners.  Explore different themes from Community Helpers to Insects to learn Spanish in context using target vocabulary. Spanish at School The Language Spark makes learning Spanish fun.  Our innovative Spanish immersion classes incorporate games, hands-on learning, videos, songs and more to help Spanish come alive for young learners.  Spanish Online Components Each theme has targeted vocabulary words and phrases that we want your child to hear, say and practice.  This vocabulary is set up as a slideshow in each theme that you can hear and see an image of.  Then, the target vocabulary is used throughout all the other components of the theme. Learning Videos Our learning videos introduce the new language for each theme.  We use actions (similar to sign language) while we say each target word because we want to activate bodily-kinesthetic intelligence in your learner.  Our videos will ask your child to practice saying and acting out the target vocabulary in Spanish.   Practice Games Each online practice game helps students use the new language in a fun and engaging way.   Some of our games are simply for practice, while others incorporate content areas like math in order to better facilitate language learning while also improving subject-area skills. Thematic books use the target vocabulary in real-world and fictional settings.  Books can be read by yourself or click a button to have them read to you.  Music facilitates second language development.  That’s why each of our themes has a song that incorporates the target vocabulary.  Students practice the language while tapping into their musical intelligence. Puppet Videos Carlos and Sofia are our favorite Spanish-speaking puppets.  They bring the language to life in short videos to help students hear the  Spanish language in a natural environment.  In Person Spanish Classes Due to Covid-19, we are currently not adding in person classes
Who is a denture wearer? Who is a denture wearer? When you think of dentures, typically you think of older people. Grandpa and Grandma, Mom or Dad, or old Aunt Tilly who keeps her dentures in a glass near the sink. Dentures used to be thought of as something only older people needed when their teeth wore out. Well, you might be surprised to learn that today's denture wearers are all ages and come from all walks of life. Let's take a look at a few facts and examples. Athletes young and old may become denture wearers. Over 15 million Americans suffer dental injuries related to athletic events each year. Here are some of our future denture candidates. According to The National Youth Sports Foundation for the Prevention of Athletic Injuries, Inc. these injuries result in the loss of over 5 million teeth. Their estimates show a 45% chance of facial or dental injury throughout an athlete's life. Have you ever seen the triumphant, though somewhat toothless, smile on a hockey player who has just made the game winning goal? His dentures are likely back in the locker room, sitting in a glass of water, waiting for him. And remember the professional boxer Leon Sphinx? There was a candidate for dentures if ever there was one. Mature women may also become candidates for dentures.Osteoporosis is a medical condition that results in thinning of the bone or bone loss. The condition is especially common among menopausal women. When the jaw bone deteriorates significantly, teeth may loosen or be lost completely. Dentures may then be required to sustain quality of life. However, continued bone loss in the jaw can affect the denture's fit and stability, and therefore the comfort of the denture wearer. Adjustments of the denture itself will likely be needed. A bone density scan can help a woman's family physician assess her risk for osteoporosis. Dentures for young children are not unheard of. Anodontia is a genetic disorder usually diagnosed in childhood when it becomes apparent that some or all of the primary and permanent teeth are absent. Dentures can be used to restore the ability to eat properly. Dentures also benefit the patient by restoring support for the facial muscles. Inserting dentures actually lengthens the face, filling out the mouth area and taking away that sunken in look. And finally, your average citizen may be wearing dentures over perfectly healthy teeth. Under the category of "just plain odd", a New York dentist has recently been offering replica overdentures of some movie stars to their celebrity obsessed fans. Why anyone would want to sport dentures of Jim Carey's teeth is a little beyond comprehension, but for a price it can apparently be done. So as you can see, a wide variety of people are turning to dentures to help them with their everyday needs. Dentures can offer cosmetic as well as functional uses.
Sexual Codes The principal proposal of this essay is that codes of sexual conduct emerged in human society in order to control population. In a human society living in a restricted area, such as an island or an oasis, there was an optimum population. If numbers were too low, the division of labour would cease to operate, and individuals would have to learn extra skills in addition to those they already possessed - human idleness would fall as the benefits of society were lost. But if population rose too high, limited food resources would mean increased work to find food, and falling idleness. This could result in starvation and death. In order to avoid both these dangers, human sexual reproduction came to be socially regulated. In times when the population was too low, reproduction was encouraged. When it was too high, reproduction was discouraged. Through effective management, human societies could maintain stable population levels. Rising Population If population rises, there are a number of ways that human societies can respond to restrict population growth: 1. They could have allowed a general promiscuity, and a consequent high birthrate, but only let a relatively small number of the many newborn children survive. Newborn children would be examined closely for an defects, and only the most robustly healthy permitted to live. 2. Again, general promiscuity is permitted, and a larger number of infants allowed to live, but with many more sons than daughters chosen. In such societies, the ratio of sexes would be strongly in favour of males. There would be many more males than females. The few females would all reproduce, but given their relatively low numbers, overall population levels would tend to remain stable. If population levels fell too low, the sex ratio would be shifted more in favour of women, raising the birthrate. 3. General promiscuity is permitted, but sexual acts which result in the birth of children is highly restricted. Homosexuality, and other non-reproductive sexual relations are encouraged. The population is highly sexually active, but very little of it produces children. 4. Sexual relations between men and women would be restricted. Men and women would live apart, with only occasional sexual intercourse allowed. 5. Women would be subjected to strong sexual restrictions, but not men. This 'double standard' arises from an asymmetry between the sexes. In a society in which there are 100 men and 100 women, then if 99 of the men refrain from sex, the remaining one man is quite able to fertilise the 100 women, and the population growth rate is as high as it would be if all 100 men engaged in sex. If, however, 99 of the women refrain from sex, the one remaining sexually active woman is the only reproducer, and population growth is at a minimum. 6. A slight variant of the preceding. A small group of women will have sex on demand with any man, and the remaining women remain virgins. The sexually active women are prostitutes, and are the only reproducing women. The prostitutes paint and dress and act in ways which sexually attract men, while the remainder are dressed and act to attract minimal sexual attention, and men are forbidden from sexual relations with any of them. In this version of prostitution, the prostitute is a valued member of society, not a shunned outcast. To some degree, all of these seem to have been practised at one time or other. It was customary in some societies to expose unwanted children, and leave them to die. There is also, in many societies, a preference for sons rather than daughters. Sexual restrictions usually apply much more strongly to women than to men. Virginity in women has often been admired. Men and women were segregated in monastic institutions. Prostitution, of a highly ritual kind, has been practised in some cultures. Diverse sexual practices have almost always been common. Falling Population If population falls, there are a number of ways that human societies could respond to increase population growth, which are largely the converse of the previous list: 1. The most general promiscuity is encouraged, so that the maximum number of fertile females are fertilised by fertile males. 2. The preferred offspring are daughters. 3. Sexual restrictions on reproductive sexual relations between men and women are lifted, and non-reproductive sexual practises (homosexuality, lesbianism, et al.) are prohibited. 4. Virginity and prostitution are discouraged. 5. The sexes are not segregated. 6. Contraception, abortion, and infanticide are outlawed. Sexually transmitted disease If sexually transmitted diseases are introduced, they may rapidly decimate sexually promiscuous societies. Or rather, in a society in which some people are sexually promiscuous, and others are strictly monogamous, and others celibate, the effects of sexually transmitted disease will largely fall upon the sexually promiscuous portion of the population. If the diseases are regularly fatal, the effect of an epidemic will be to leave a sexually promiscuous society composed of monogamous couples or celibate individuals. Sexually transmitted diseases can only take on epidemic proportions in populations which are sexually promiscuous because they spread rapidly. Where individuals maintain sexually exclusive relationships, society becomes broken up into an archipelago of islands, with disease unable to leap from one to another. These exclusive islands may be composed of single celibate individuals, monogamous couples, and husbands with several wives, or wives with several husbands, or perhaps even groups of men and women who only practise sex exclusively within the confines of the group. Indeed, a whole tribe of people on some island may practise promiscuous sex within the tribe. However, the larger the sexually-exclusive group, the greater the danger that it be compromised by sexual relations outside the group. Therefore celibate individuals are the least likely to acquire sexually transmitted diseases, and monogamous couples are the second least likely to acquire such diseases. And since monogamous couples are able to produce children, whereas celibate individuals do not, monogamous couples are the foundation of the defence against sexually transmitted disease. Marriage may well be an institution which emerged under the onslaught of such diseases. The most important requirement is sexually exclusivity. Married men and women should not engage in sex outside marriage. This includes incest, and using the services of prostitutes. Such exclusivity also demands that both men and women are virgins before marriage. Such exclusivity also precludes divorce and remarriage, since a society made up of divorcing and remarrying individuals is no better than a promiscuous society at preventing the spread of sexually transmitted disease. The only ground for divorce is the threat that the infidelity of a spouse threatens the health of their partner. Idle Theory Author: Chris Davis Last edited: 1 Oct 1998
地址 ：江苏省连云港市北川羌族自治县电海大楼7223号 时间：2021-10-11 10:33:01 来源：s11外围官方网站 点击： 本文摘要：1. He has ________(驾驶) for 200 kilometres.2. The glasses can keep the worker’s eyes ________(宁静).3. How _______(喧闹) the students are playing on the playground!4. When was the party _______(建立)? On July 1,1921.5. _______(无论那里) he goes, he i 1. He has ________(驾驶) for 200 kilometres.2. The glasses can keep the worker’s eyes ________(宁静).3. How _______(喧闹) the students are playing on the playground!4. When was the party _______(建立)? On July 1,1921.5. _______(无论那里) he goes, he is always ready to help others.6. Have you ever read a book on _______(情况).7. You have ever _______(乱扔) things about, haven’t you?8. The ______(风物) of Guilin is very beautiful9. He always reads many kinds of _______(杂志) so he knows a lot.10. As a teacher, he often ______(勉励) the students to work hard at all the subjects.11. The factory are ________(倾倒) waster water into the river.12. Have you got _______(几本) science books?13. Wherever you live, you can do something around your ________(街坊,四周).14. Have you ever drawn pictures on _______(公共的) walls?15. The more we ______(训练), the better we will do.16. These _______(说明) use the 24 hour clock.17. It was a _________(舒适的) room. We all likes living in it.18. What is the number of the Smiths’ ________(航班) out of Beijing?19. I just want to go to sleep as soon as ________(可能的).20. He bought a ship and used it _______(探索) under the sea.21. He likes the beautiful _______(珊瑚) very much.22. Many sharks ________(以…为食) on fish and other sea animals.23. The two sisters are very much ________(相象的).24. With the money he saved, he built a _______(化学) lab for himself.25. Edison was a great American _______(发现家), he _______(发现) a lot of useful things.26. Tom’s father wants to learn how to run quickly and to eat _______(康健地).27. The door is too narrow for the elephant to go ________(通过).28. Their father _______(悄悄地) goes into their bedroom.29. The ground is ________(笼罩) with thick snow.30. This TV play is very _______(精彩), I’d like to see it again.31. Some people believe that dinosaurs have not _______(消失), but they have become birds.32. At last, the ________(主人) of the shop sold the old woman a small turkey.33. People in different places ________(庆祝) this holiday in different ways.34. I can’t find my _______(历史) book. Have you ________(看到) it anywhere?35. Books give me _________(知识) and make me happy.36. Water sports _______(吸引) numbers of ________(游客) to the islands.37. I want to go to Tsinghua ________(大学) and become a _________(科学家).38. You may become _________(低头丧气) and at times you’ll feel like _______(放弃) up.39. I want to remember how you are going to _________(完善) yourself this year.40. In some places there are watch towers on the beaches ________(警告) people about sharks in the rivers.41. They do this for fun and to bring the ________(精神) of Christmas to the people in each house.42. The boy is in great danger. We must ________(动手术) on him at once.43. Three ________(四分之三) of the world books and newspapers are written in English.44. China has built a new Great Wall across the _______(北方的) part of the country.45. The increasing population is the greatest _________(挑战) of the world today.46. The Japanese girl has _________(乐成地) bought a camera.47. I can’t find my ________(地理) book.48. When Aunt Wang _______(回来), I was so tired.49. My father is an _______(工程师).50. Mr Smith said he did not want to _______(争吵) with the policeman.51. Our knowledge of the universe is __________(增长)all the time.52. Have you got any English books on those _________(书架).53. It is impolite to jump the _______(队伍).54. Go ______(直接) to school without stopping.55. I haven’t ______(收到) a letter from my brother yet.56. The language _______(自己) is not the most important for English study.57. Words cannot ________(形貌) my joy now.58. What’s the ________(人口) of the world in the year 2000?59. The old man you want to find has been _______(死) for two years.60. He ______（结业）from Zhejiang University in 1998.61. The teacher is so kind to her students that the students all r________ her as their mother.62. Li Min made up his m________ to go to study abroad when he was 18 years old.63. If you m________ four by twenty-five , the answer is one hundred.64. My uncle is very good at computer skills. He is a computer e________ .65. You look w________ today. What has happened to you?66. Here is my a________ , you can easily find my house with it.67. If you don’t know the way, you’d better ask the p________ .68. Father C________ will give the children some presents during the night.69. Edison was a great American i________ .70. We should make a c________ to improving our environment.71. What were you doing b________ 2:00 and 4:00 yesterday afternoon?72. Fish cannot live w________ water.73. We have looked for Jim e________ ,but we can’t find him anywhere.74. Jim thought that t________ by train was like having a moving party.75. He p________to the new bike under the tree and said, “look, that’s mine”.76. Everyone is at school e________ Lin Tao.77. The river won’t be c________ if you put dirty things in it.78. Please don’t e________ without knocking at the door.79. He will o________ me 5000yuan to buy a computer. He is really kind.80. We had an e________ holiday in the beautiful village, all of us were very happy there.81. There was an accident just now. A taxi c________ near the railway station82.The bus stopped suddenly. I b________ my head, but it is not too painful.83. The weather is bad now. All the city are hid in m________ .84. The high mountain is very s________. Almost no one can each the top of it.85. This is the watch w________my mother gave me for my birthday.86. We must help the people in t________.87. Miss Gao went to look after the man in a h .88. Though I am alone, I don’t feel l .89. It’s better to give than to r________.90. The nurses in the hospital are very kind to the p________.91. The teacher is so kind to her students that her students r________her as their mother.92. “What’s the p________of the coat?” “One hundred yuan”.93. Now we can get I________ from a lot of ways, such as newspapers, TVs and the internet.94. China is still a developing country, while the USA is a more d country.95. He gave all his money to the poor after he died. His spirit of g________should be learned by us.96. Can’t you see the s ? It says “No Smoking”97. N________of the two answers is right.98. In western countries, people sing and dance together to c________Jesus’ birthday.99. My uncle no l ________ lived here. He moved to the south five years ago.100. He helped his family to d________ the Christmas tree. Now it looks very beautiful.单词拼写专项训练(综合)谜底: 1-10: driven, safe, noisy, founded, Wherever, environment, thrown, scenery, magazines, encourages 11-20: pouring, several, neighbour, public, practice, instructions, comfortable, flight, possible, to explore 21-30: coral, feed, alike, chemistry, inventor/invented, healthily, through, quietly, covered 31-40: disappeared, owner, celebrate, history/seen, knowledge, attract/tourists, University, scientist, frustrated/giving, improve, to warn, 41-50: spirit, operate, quarters, northern, challenge, successfully, geography, returns, engineer, quarrel 51-60: increasing, bookshelves, queue, straight, received, itself, describe, population, dead, graduated 61-70: regard, mind, multiply, engineer, worried, address, policeman(/policewoman/police), Christmas, inventor, contribution, 71-80: between, without, everywhere, traveling, pointed, except, cleaned, enter, offer, exciting/excellent 81-90: crashed, banged, mist steep, which, trouble, hurry, lonely, receive, patients 91-100: regard, price, information, developed, generosity, sign, Neither, celebrate, longer, decorate
Quick search Advanced search Appears in: The Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, Return of the King Gimli and LegolasGimli's father Glóin, was one of the dwarves who accompanied Bilbo on his journey in The Hobbit. He went with his father to Rivendell, to report about a messenger from Mordor who had come to his homeland in an attempt to recruit the help of the dwarves. Their king and kinsman Dáin sent them to Rivendell for advice on what to do. After the Council of Elrond, Gimli was chosen to represent the dwarves in the fellowship of the ring. At the start of the journey there was some tension between he and Legolas, due to the long feuds between their people. Over time they became inseparable friends who spent much time travelling together in later years. After the War of the Rings, he led a group of his people to the caves of Aglarond behind Helms Deep in Rohan. There they laboured to shape the natural stone they way only dwarves could and transformed it into a place of beautiful halls. After the death of King Ellesar (Aragorn), it is said that Gimli sailed with his friend Legolas over the sea. They were the last members of the Fellowship of the Ring to leave Middle Earth. John Rhys-DaviesGimli in the Peter Jackson films was played by John Rhys-Davies Home | Characters | Glossary | Books | Facts & FAQs | Maps/Charts | The Movie | Links
New Theme! What do you think? Study, speak, and hang out with fellow Elvish students! Select Primitive Elvish Roots: WE-WEN(ED) ᴱ√WE “dual” A primitive “dual” element mentioned in notes on numbers from the late 1960s, contributing to the forms of primitive ✶enekwe “six” and ✶yun(e)kwe “twelve” in the Quenya branch of Elvish, as well as the ancient 1st person inclusive pronoun ✶ñwe (VT48/10). It was probably related to the ancient dual suffix ✶ (Let/427). It was also likely a later iteration the dual root ᴱ√WI¹ from the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s which was likewise connected to dual U (QL/33). This early root was mentioned in the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon as ᴱ✶u̯i (GL/45). WĒ/EWE “person, being, individual” A root mentioned in notes from the late 1950s having to do with “persons” serving as the basis for the suffix Q. -wë common in ancient Quenya names (PE17/189-90). In The Etymologies of the 1930s this suffix was specifically masculine and derived from the root ᴹ√WEG “(manly) vigour” (Ety/WEG). The suffix was masculine in some later notes as well, where Tolkien said “√WEG, WEƷ, √NES, NETH- referred to masculinity and femininity apart from sex and so could refer to the Valar and Maiar” (PE17/190), but this etymology was rejected and in its place Tolkien wrote “√WE. ? WEƷ. ‘person’, individual (only used of Elves and Men). Thus origin of -we in Quenya names as Manwe, Voronwe” (PE17/189). In Quenya Notes (QN) from 1957 Tolkien wrote: -we in Quenya names (Manwe, etc.). This is in origin a separate word √WĒ (WE’E ?), from its form an ancient element of Eldarin vocabulary. Probably related to Q ve “as, like”; vëa “seeming, apparent”; vávea, ovéa “(con)similar, alike”. In Sindarin adoption of Quenya names (as Voronwe > Bronweg) -we was sometimes used to represent -we, which historically had become w or u (as in Elu = Elwe). But this S -we is of distinct origin, √WEG- “live, be active”. Hence *wego(n) “living creature”: Q weo, vëo, S gwê (PE17/189). In these Quenya Notes, √ as a name element was distinct from √WEG “active”, and neither were distinctly masculine. The initial version of this note glossed √WE as “a person or being” (PE17/190), but in revision Tolkien connected it to Q. ve “as, like” (PE17/189). The interpretation of the suffix -we as gender-neutral was mentioned again in The Shibboleth of Fëanor from 1968 where Tolkien said it was derived from √EWE “person” (PM/340). However, the only feminine name where this element appeared was Q. Elenwë the wife of Turgon (S/90, PM/345), and most of the names with this element were both masculine and ancient. See the entry on √WEG for more on the evolution of earlier, largely masculine, forms. ᴹ√WED “bind” A root in The Etymologies of the 1930s glossed “bind” with derivatives like ᴹQ. vére/N. gwaedh “bond, troth, compact, oath” and ᴹQ. vesta-/N. gwesta- “swear”, though Tolkien deleted Quenya derivatives of this root beginning with ves- saying they fell out of use due to conflict with ᴹ√BES “wed” (Ety/WED). This root might be a later iteration of the hypothetical early root *ᴱ√FEDE indicated by words in the Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s like G. fedhin “bound by agreement; ally, friend” and G. fedhra- “unite in a band” (GL/34), but the 1910s and 1930s forms are rather dissimilar so it is hard to say. WEG “live, be active; [ᴹ√] (manly) vigour” This root was connected to vigour and masculinity for much of Tolkien’s life. The earliest iteration of this root seems to be primitive ᴱ√gu̯eg- from the Gnomish Lexicon of the 1910s that served as the basis for various words such as G. gweg “man”, G. gwectha- “impregnate; generate”, and G. gwionert “deed of valour” (GL/44). Tolkien mentioned a few Qenya cognates like ᴱQ. wie and ᴱQ. wenga, but they were unglossed (GL/44). In the Gnomish Lexicon Slips Tolkien gave {ᴱ√we >>} ᴱ√waik as the primitive form beside {ᴱ✶u̯ē+kĕ >> ᴱ✶u̯ĕ+kĕ >>} ᴱ✶u̯ǝkḗ (PE13/117). In the Early Noldorin Dictionary of the 1920s Tolkien gave ᴱ✶wikā > ᴱN. gweg “man” vs. ᴱQ. vika “valiant”; the Qenya form indicates this 1920s primitive was not specifically masculine, and it also had a primitive feminine variant ᴱ✶wiktā (PE13/162). It was nonetheless related to other words likes ᴱ✶wiqē > ᴱN. gwib “teors”, which is Old English = “penis” (PE13/162). Some similar forms like ᴱQ. via “male” and ᴱQ. vie “teors” appeared in Early Qenya Word-list of the 1920s as well (PE16/135). These 1920s forms seem to be based on primitive *ᴱ√WI instead of ᴱ√(g)weg. In the Declension of Nouns from the early 1930s Tolkien gave primitive weʒ- as the basis for N. gwe, ᴹQ. † “man, warrior” and the masculine suffix ᴹQ. -we common in names (PE21/1). In The Etymologies of the 1930s this masculine suffix was derived from ᴹ√WEG “(manly) vigour” along with other derivatives like ᴹQ. vea “adult, manly, vigorous”, ᴹQ. vie “manhood, vigour” and N. gweith “manhood; man-power, troop of able bodied men, host, regiment” (Ety/WEG; EtyAC/WEG). In some notes from the late 1950s Tolkien again gave the suffix Q. -wë as masculine and derived it from √WEG or √WEƷ, but then changed his mind and decided it was derived from √ or √WEƷ “person” (PE17/189-190), an idea he seems to have stuck with thereafter; see the entry on √WĒ/EWE for further discussion. In Quenya Notes (QN) from 1957 Tolkien gave {√WEK >>} √WEG as distinct from √, giving it the gloss “live, be active” where it served as the basis for words like Q. vëo/S. gwê “living creature” and Q. vehtë “life”, though he clarifed that this last word was “not Life in general or as a principle, but (a period of) individual activity, as in vehtequentalë ‘biography’ (PE17/189)”. Neo-Eldarin: For purposes of Neo-Eldarin, I think it best to assume this root had to do with vigour and activeness, characteristics that were generally (but not absolutely) attributed as masculine. This allows us to retain the largest array of derivatives of this root from various periods. I also think it is best to assume it remains distinct from √WĒ/EWE “person”, though the two roots may originally have been related. *ᴱ√WEHE “*death” This root appeared in the Qenya Lexicon as unglossed ᴱ√VEHE where it served as the basis for the names ᴱQ. and ᴱQ. Vefantor (QL/100), elsewhere explained as the “Fantur of Death” (QL/37). In the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon, the Gnomish cognates of these Qenya names were G. Gwî and G. Gwifanthor from primitive u̯ē· (GL/45). In the Qenya Lexicon Tolkien compared ᴱ√VEHE to ᴱ√FEHE, and while this root does not appear elsewhere, ᴱ√ǶEHE does, with gloss “breath; die, expire” and a derivative ᴱQ. “last hour, death” (QL/41). Since ƕ is basically a voiceless w, it seems likely the actual root was *ᴱ√WEHE as voiced variant of ᴱ√ǶEHE, probably with a sense similar to “*death”. None of these forms appear in Tolkien’s later writings. WEN(ED) “maiden, girl, virgin; woman” This and similar roots were connected to Elvish words for maidenhood for much of Tolkien’s life. The earliest form of this root was unglossed {ᴱ√WENE >>} ᴱ√GWENE in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s with derivatives like ᴱQ. ’wendi “maiden” and ᴱQ. ’wendele “maidenhood” (QL/103). In the contemporaneous Gnomish Lexicon the primitive form was given as {ᴱ✶gw̯ene >>} ᴱ✶gu̯eđe having derivatives like G. gwennin “girl” and {G. gwendi >>} G. gwethli “maiden, little girl” (GL/45). In The Etymologies of the 1930s Tolkien gave the root as ᴹ√WEN “maiden” with extension ᴹ√WENED and derivatives like ᴹQ. véne/N. gweneth “virginity” and ᴹQ. vende/N. gwenn “maiden” (Ety/WEN). In this entry Tolkien later wrote “transfer to GWEN”, indicating a relationship to ᴹ√GWEN, a root in The Etymologies with derivatives having to do with youth and freshness (Ety/GWEN). The root √WEN(ED) appeared a number of times in Tolkien’s later writings, mostly as the basis for Q. wendë/S. gwen(d) “maiden” (PE17/191; VT47/17; VT48/18). The frequency with which Tolkien used Q. wendë over Q. vendë indicates the primitive root may have been *√GWEN(ED), since w derived from primitive gw survived longer in Quenya than ancient primitive w. Speak, Friend!
Back to top CAUT Bulletin Archives November 2003 Cost of Underfunding Is Too High David Hill Students are seen as the beneficiaries of education - they gain what is needed to perform at a higher level, giving them access to higher paid, more satisfying jobs. But others benefit too. Government and industry gain educated employees. Governments also gain increased tax revenue and society benefits from a better educated workforce. In the 19th century, Bismarck introduced universal elementary education in Germany. The resulting industrial advantage forced Britain to follow suit in order to compete. We now face a similar situation at the post-secondary education level although there are arguments about who should pick up the tab. "Who should pay?" is a social/ political question. Students will pay through higher taxes over a lifetime because they'll earn more. However, companies couldn't operate without university-educated workers - and companies now pay a great deal less than they used to because their contribution to government tax revenue has dropped dramatically over recent decades. Higher education depends on government support from tax revenues as well as student fees and endowments. Decreasing government support means higher student fees and cutbacks at universities. Increased fees discourage attendance by qualified people who lack resources, introducing inequality as well as wasting talent. Cutbacks reduce the number of places available, again wasting talent. For example, only 30 per cent of qualified applicants gain access to British Columbia's three major universities. But underfunding has far more serious consequences because it undermines the very foundation of university teaching. It goes beyond the conventional view that universities provide new knowledge or meet some Enlightenment ideal of the pursuit of "truth," important as these may be. Human performance can be placed in three broad categories: skill-based, rule-based and knowledge-based. Skill-based performance is automatic, often muscle-memory-type performance. Touch-typing, riding a bicycle, driving a car, welding, even arithmetic ability, are examples of skill-based performance. Skills are largely independent of conscious control or analysis and hard to describe or teach except by demonstration and practice. Indeed, thinking too much about the process often degrades skill-based performance. Normal life is only possible because we can reduce many activities to this performance level. Rule-based performance is an ability to recognize a problem situation and apply a solution that has previously been worked out. Using a cookbook to help prepare meals or filling in a tax form are everyday examples. Skills like how to chop food or perform arithmetic are, of course, needed in addition to the rules (recipes, tax guides) involved. Thus rule-based performance involves codes of practice, troubleshooting manuals and other procedures that can, in principle, be written down, but is restricted to things that are already known well enough to write the necessary instructions. Learning consists of learning the procedures and the problems to which they can be applied. This kind of knowledge is descriptive, and often tells us little about the underlying reality. Thus the Ptolemaic view of the movements of the planets in the solar system, which provided a basis for figuring out how the planets would appear to move in the heavens, was reasonably accurate in predicting how they would move. But it bore little relation to the reality of "masses orbiting the sun under the influence of gravity" and was therefore not much use for anything else. Skill- and rule-based performance both involve predictable completion times and many jobs require both. The United States Navy's procedures for repairing shipborne computers required a non-functioning module to be thrown overboard and replaced by a new one after a certain time had elapsed. Such a time threshold represented the time needed to apply all the standard diagnostic and remedial techniques laid out in the manuals. After that, something new was required, taking a potentially open-ended time to complete - unacceptable in a battle zone. This was because time taken for the "something new" is not predictable because it involves stepping outside what is known, using a full understanding of the relevant aspects of reality, not just a superficial description or recipe. The path to a solution is simply unknown and there is no sure path to discovery - it requires "knowledge-based" performance. Sir Isaac Newton said: "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." His words were appropriate, because he actually stole the quote from the ancient Greeks. But what he meant was that he had been able to discover important new things because those before him had given him so much knowledge to work with. This is the essence of knowledge-based performance - the discovery of new knowledge based on a deep (not just descriptive) understanding, together with the imagination to make useful analogies, see connections and the like. Einstein asserted that: "Imagination is more important than knowledge" - the perfect complement to Newton's view. You need imagination and techniques for using knowledge creatively. This is what a university teaches. To do this, university faculty must be directly engaged in research (knowledge-based performance), have appropriate faculty-to-student ratios and a generous time schedule. Just as flying instructors need check rides and practice, faculty need hands-on research and peer-reviewed publications. They need time for this, and one-on-one contact with students. Financially strangling universities does more than imperil Enlightenment ideals or reduce the flow of new knowledge from university research. It destroys the very foundations of the university mission. Few university graduates will become academics, enter industrial research labs, join think-tanks, or become creative artists - jobs clearly requiring knowledge-based performance. However, a properly university-educated professional in any career will be able to solve problems and then go on to formalize this new knowledge so that it is available to others as rule-based expertise. And the efforts of the "few" are also important - new academics provide the "seed corn" for the next generation for example. David Hill is Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Calgary. His continuing research includes GnuSpeech, an articulatory synthesis system within the Free Software Foundation's Gnu Project. He may be contacted at
How COVID-19 vaccines work as young adults in Quebec remain hesitant to get jab Daniel Bouie, 20, was the very first person in line at the Bell Centre’s pop-up vaccination clinic, an initiative organized by the local health authority in order to facilitate access to vaccines for young people. Bouie’s friend had finally convinced him to come get his first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. “I just don’t like needles, that’s it,” Bouie said. The province’s data shows that 18-39 year-olds are trailing behind everyone else in either getting their first shot or making an appointment to do so. Some of the reasons for their reluctance include a lack of knowledge on how vaccines work. “A lot of them hear these conspiracies online, things like that,” said Ishanul Islam, Bouie’s friend. Read more: How Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines work How do COVID-19 vaccines work?  Dr. Don Sheppard, immunologist and director of the McGill Interdisciplinary Initiative in Infection and Immunity or MI4, says all vaccines do the same thing: they deliver a tiny piece of the virus to train your body how to fight it. But there are different ways to deliver that training. Vaccines such as AstraZeneca are called viral vector vaccines. They use a crippled virus to deliver the coronavirus spike protein. It’s called a hybrid virus, because you take the virus that causes the cold and put the gene of the coronavirus spike protein in it. There are also mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer and Moderna. These vaccines use mRNA, the part of the coronavirus’ genetic code which creates its spike protein. Scientists then put that code inside a tiny fat pouch called a nanolipid. Think of it like putting a message in a bottle. The recipients are your body’s cells responsible for printing the proteins your body needs to survive. The cells scan the instructions or code the vaccine carries and print proteins that look like COVID-19. The harmless proteins will teach our immune system how COVID-19 looks like and will trigger the production of the antibodies needed to fight the virus. “When you inject the RNA into your arm, your cells take it up and they actually turn to little spike protein factories, as long as that RNA hangs around,” Sheppard said. Sheppard adds that mRNA has a short shelf life, it disappears. But your immune system has a memory and will now know how to make antibodies. Read more: mRNA technology could soon be used to fight cancer, vaccine scientist says “What people don’t realize is it isn’t a brand-new technology,” said Dr. Drew Weissman, professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. “Moderna, BioNtech and many others have been working on this platform for many, many years. We had clinical trials in people five years ago using this platform.” Weissman is one of the pioneers of mRNA science. He’s been working on it for 23 years, ironing out every detail. “We haven’t seen any long-term unexpected adverse events, which is people’s biggest concern. But you see those within the first six weeks and it’s been up to a year of people being immunized and we’ve seen nothing. So it’s a completely safe vaccine,” Dr. Weissman says, speaking of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Read more: Quebec reports 3rd case of blood clot linked to AstraZeneca vaccine out of 500,000 doses administered All vaccines pose certain risks. The AstraZeneca vaccine has so far caused the death of three Quebecers due to rare blood clots, while the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been linked to anaphylactic reactions within the first 15 minutes of receiving the shot. They’ve also been linked to mild myocarditis or heart inflammation, mostly in young men and teens aged 12-24 years-old after their second shot, according to the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), but most have fully recovered and no deaths have so far been reported. “A first dose of AstraZeneca probably 1 in 50,000 chances of a clot. The second dose, 1 in 500,000,” Sheppard explained. “We know that the chance of an allergic reaction to an mRNA vaccine is in the one in 1 million range. And right now, the numbers for the cardiac inflammation are so low that we have trouble measuring them. But most people think they are probably going to be in the 1 in 1 million range. “When it comes to the mRNA vaccines, it’s very important to know that those anaphylaxis allergic reactions and these cardiac inflammations have so far not cost anyone their lives. The same cannot be said, of course, for the clots in AstraZeneca.” Read more: ‘The world is watching us’: Pressure mounts for Canada to share surplus COVID-19 vaccines Epidemiologists say everyone has a role to play in ending the pandemic. Getting vaccinated is the most important step. “It’s not an accident that we’ve seen these variants appear in countries where there are higher levels of replication, transmission,” said Sheppard. “If we clamp down on the number of cases, that gives the virus much less of a chance to evolve into a new variant and some day that variant may not be so kind and gentle to 18 to 39 year-olds.” © 2021 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc. Article Source
Success requires Focus, Success requires Mastery dievca was an elite athlete. she isn’t one anymore — Time and Life ravaged the talent and training, but she still enjoys her Sport. Lately, she has watched the young athletes train at her facility. They are nowhere near as good as the people she grew up with~for three simple reasons: 1. NYC kids don’t get out and play, they have controlled play dates. They don’t hang from the monkey bars, jump from fences, flip upside down. 2. NYC kids are doing too much. They have Violin, French, Chinese, Kuman, Hebrew, Ballet, Gymnastics, Rock Climbing, Yoga, all while facebooking, instagramming, snapchatting, playing videogames, etc.  3. NYC kids don’t put in their hours of practice on one skill.  They come for a class and leave. They don’t stay to practice. Their parents can’t be bothered for them to practice. dievca and Master have had multiple discussions about kids working towards becoming elite athletes, ineffectively, and for the wrong reasons. she started thinking about what makes an elite athlete: 1. Talent 2. Desire 3. Discipline 4. Determination 5. Means 6. Support 7. and…. Success Requires Focus Maybe you don’t wish for a prodigy, but our competitive society suggests otherwise. That’s why so many kids have trouble focusing, says C. Andrew Ramsey, M.D., a psychiatry professor at Columbia University. Make sure your kids know your expectations. Celebrate improvement first. And explain the value of slow mastery. “Whether your kids love Tom Brady or Beyoncé, let them know that these people succeeded because they mastered one skill,” says Dr. Ramsey. “Learn to go through one door and many others will open for you; try to go through five doors at once and you’ll go nowhere.” Success Requires Mastery Violins in Berlin In the early 1990s, a team of psychologists in Berlin, Germany studied violin students. Specifically, they studied their practice habits in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. All of the subjects were asked this question: “Over the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practiced?” The elite had more than double the practice hours of the less capable performers. Natural Talent: Not Important One fascinating point of the study: No “naturally gifted” performers emerged. If natural talent had played a role, we would expect some of the “naturals” to float to the top of the elite level with fewer practice hours than everyone else. But the data showed otherwise. The psychologists found a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement. No shortcuts. No naturals. Sneaking Out to Write Code You already know how Microsoft was founded. Bill Gates and Paul Allen dropped out of college to form the company in 1975. It’s that simple: Drop out of college, start a company, and become a billionaire, right? Wrong. Further study reveals that Gates and Allen had thousands of hours of programming practice before founding Microsoft. First, the two co-founders met at Lakeside, an elite private school in the Seattle area. The school raised three thousand dollars to buy a computer terminal for the school’s computer club in 1968. A computer terminal at a university was rare in 1968. Gates had access to a terminal in eighth grade. Gates and Allen quickly became addicted to programming. The Gates family lived near the University of Washington. As a teenager, Gates fed his programming addiction by sneaking out of his parents’ home after bedtime to use the University’s computer. Gates and Allen acquired their 10,000 hours through this and other clever teenage schemes. When the time came to launch Microsoft in 1975, the two were ready. Practice Makes Improvement In 1960, while they were still an unknown high school rock band, the Beatles went to Hamburg, Germany to play in the local clubs. The group was underpaid. The acoustics were terrible. The audiences were unappreciative. So what did the Beatles get out of the Hamburg experience? Hours of playing time. Non-stop hours of playing time that forced them to get better. As the Beatles grew in skill, audiences demanded more performances – more playing time. By 1962 they were playing eight hours per night, seven nights per week. By 1964, the year they burst on the international scene, the Beatles had played over 1,200 concerts together. By way of comparison, most bands today don’t play 1,200 times in their entire career. Falling in Love With Practice The elite software developer is the programmer who spends all day pounding code at work, and after leaving work she writes open source software on her own time. The elite football player is the guy who spends all day on the practice field with his teammates, and after practice he goes home to watch game films. The elite physician listens to medical podcasts in the car during a long commute. The elites are in love with what they do, and at some point it no longer feels like work. Ah well….no Olympians will be developed in dievca’s NYC facility, but perhaps the athletes can learn how to fail, how to pick themselves up and try again, enjoy their sport and work to be healthy. PS. dievca won’t be going to the Olympics, either…
Ve vývoji Prisoners Without Prison Te burgosur pa Burg Determined to end the cycle of isolation, fear, illiteracy and the poverty of her region, volunteer teacher Liljana defies local customs to bring education and food to those affected by a violent tradition, called Kanun Law. In the nearby villages to her home and school in Albania, even today in the 21st century many live under this 15th century “law”, which states that if a crime is committed, it doesn’t matter if the killer is in prison paying for the crime or has escaped from Albania: one of relatives should pay with their own blood. To protect all potentially targeted males in an entire family, they must stay inside, becoming prisoners in their own houses, the only place protected from Kanun Law. Often on foot, she brings her skills and warmth to isolated families. For the children she is the only connection to the wider world. According to the written Kanun Law, women and children are exempt of revenge. However the Law has also been passed on orally and each family interprets it in their own way. Teacher Liljana thinks that education and government intervention are the solution to this problem. It’s for that reason that she commits to teaching the children in their own homes. In order to allow them to attend exams, Lijana has requested the opposing families to enact a besa, a truce that puts a hold to the violence, a temporary amnesty that would allow children to graduate and come back home alive. Liljana’s work is riddled with grieving. Some of her students have been shot. Others are in jail for having killed while defending the family honor. All of them live in constant fear and isolation, a form of death itself. Kanun Law is persistent, but so is Liljana.
If they think that they will maintain to the end the equanimity of their prayer-lives, they are wrong, because the law demands the full traitor's penalty, the short spin in the wind and the conscious public disembowelling, a brazier alight for human entrails. It is the most horrible of all deaths, pain and rage and humiliation swallowed to the dregs, the fear so great that the strongest rebel is unmanned before the executioner with his knife can do the job; before each one dies he watches his fellows and, cut down from the rope, he crawls like an animal round and round on the bloody boards. — Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel Is it a part of the punishment? With a hint from the last sentence ("cut down from the rope"), I am guessing it is to do with some kind of hanging. In general, they're talking about the hanging and disembowelment of a traitor. A short spin in the wind can either mean that while the traitor is hanging, the movement of the fall is making their body spin in the wind: Spin: To rotate rapidly; whirl. Or the "short spin" might be taken out-of-context from: Spin: rapid descent of an aircraft in a steep spiral. To mean the traitor will have a short, rapid descent in the wind while he falls to his death. • 1 The traitor is hanged but not to the point of death. He's let down when he's almost dead, so he can suffer the rest of the punishment. Hence "short spin". Oct 2 '15 at 12:52 Your Answer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search First appearanceThe Sirens of Titan (1959 (1959)) Created byKurt Vonnegut TypeTerrestrial planet Tralfamadore is the name of several fictional planets in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Details of the corresponding indigenous alien race, the Tralfamadorians, vary from novel to novel: • In the 1959 novel, The Sirens of Titan, Tralfamadore is a planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud and the home of a civilization of machines, which dispatches Salo to a distant galaxy with a message for its inhabitants. After a part in his ship breaks, however, Salo is forced to land on Titan, a moon of Saturn, where he befriends Winston Niles Rumfoord. Rumfoord exists in much the same way as the Tralfamadorians of Slaughterhouse-Five, while Salo appears to move in a linear fashion. The translation of Tralfamadore is given by Salo as both all of us and the number 541. The Tralfamadorians were originally developed by super-beings who built them to allow themselves to search for a meaning to their lives. Unable to achieve this task, they eventually asked the machines to do it for them, and upon knowing that they could not be said to have any purpose at all, the precursor race decided to eradicate itself, just to realize that they were not even very good at this, so they used the Tralfamadorians instead to complete the annihilation of their race. • In Vonngut's 1965 novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Tralfamadore is a hypothetical foreign planet, used in a purely rhetorical sense as part of a thought exercise. • In the 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, Tralfamadore is the home to beings who exist in all times simultaneously, and are thus privy to knowledge of future events, including the destruction of the universe at the hands of a Tralfamadorian test pilot. They kidnap Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist of the novel, and place him in a zoo on Tralfamadore with Montana Wildhack, a Hollywood starlet. • In the 1990 book, Hocus Pocus, Tralfamadore is the planet nearest to a meeting place of ancient multi-dimensional beings who supposedly control all aspects of human life, including social affairs and politics. Unlike humans, the Tralfamadorians have too much of a sense of humor to be affected by the beings. The exploits of the multi-dimensional beings are chronicled in The Protocols of the Elders of Tralfamadore (a title which parodies The Protocols of the Elders of Zion), which is published serially in a pornographic magazine called Black Garterbelt. Though the author is never specified, the media in which it is published suggests that it may be Kilgore Trout. • In the 1997 novel, Timequake, Tralfamadore is mentioned offhand as a fantastical meeting place of anthropomorphized chemical elements. In the 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, protagonist Billy Pilgrim reports that the Tralfamadorians look like upright toilet plungers with a hand on top, into which is set a single green eye: Tralfamadorians have the ability to experience reality in four dimensions; meaning, roughly, that they have total access to past, present, and future; they are able to perceive any point in time at will. Able to see along the timeline of the universe, they know the exact time and place of its accidental annihilation as the result of a Tralfamadorian experiment, but are powerless to prevent it. Because they believe that when a being dies, it continues to live in other times and places, their response to death is, "So it goes." They are placid in their fatalism, and patiently explain their philosophy to Pilgrim during the interval he spends caged in a Tralfamadorian zoo. Eventually Pilgrim adopts their attitude and is returned to Earth. 1. ^ Slaughterhouse Five, p. 26
Solved by a verified expert:Chromosomes How would a pair of sister chromosomes differ from homologous chromosomes? If the reproductive cell only has 23 chromosomes, then how come all of our body cells (somatic cells) have 46 chromosomes? Briefly describe the constituent molecules found within a chromosome. You may use a diagram to illustrate your answer. Reference your What is a gene? What is a genome? What does a gene do? How many genes (approximately) does the human genome contain?
Please note, delivery times may be extended. Exploring Double Weave September 21, 2021 Exploring Double Weave Today we’re talking about double weave: the structure that is on every new weaver’s bucket list! It’s easy to see why double weave captures weavers’ imaginations. In double weave, you make two layers of cloth at the same time. It feels like a cheat code, or a magic trick. And if that wasn’t enough, you can also make those two layers interact in different ways on your loom to create tubes, colour blocks, or double-wide cloth. All this possibility, and all from a threading and treadling that is not that much more complex than plain weave!  Here’s the basics of how double weave works on a four-shaft loom. To weave plain weave, you really only need two shafts. So you use shafts 1 and 2 to weave one layer of plain weave, while shafts 3 and 4 weave a second layer. The really cool part is that you can do this with a simple straight draw threading (1,2,3,4)! You just need to adjust your tie-up for double weave and you’re ready to get weaving. One word of caution for counterbalance loom weavers: the tie-up requires lifting and lowering either one or three shafts at a time, so you may find it difficult to get a good shed unless you have a shed regulator. Weavers with jack looms, table looms, and countermarche looms, weave away! The most common use for double weave is to make double-width cloth. To do so, you throw your shuttle so that it connects the two layers at the left-hand side and leaves the right side open. You can easily visualize this by folding a piece of paper in half. The fold is like the left side of the weaving: it is where the connection is. The side opposite the fold is like the right side of the weaving: open and free to move. When you unfold the paper, you have something twice as wide as the folded piece. Your weaving looks like that folded piece of paper while it’s on the loom. When you cut it off, you get to unfold it and see the whole thing! All of a sudden, your Baby Wolf can make Mighty-Wolf-sized cloth… and beyond.  When you’re weaving double-width, it’s key to pay attention to the side where the two layers join. You want to be generous with your weft there, so that you don’t end up with excessive draw-in. In normal weaving, excessive draw-in shows up as pinched sides. In double-weave, it shows up as an ugly stripe of dense cloth smack dab in the middle of your cloth! One of our Master Weavers, Shannon Nelson, recommends threading an extra end of slippery cotton right at the join, then gently pulling it out after you cut off your project. This both keeps your project from drawing in and provides a little breathing room when the thread is removed. Double-width double weave is particularly useful for making big, snuggly pieces, like our Reflections Double Weave Blanket. Using double weave lets you make a 45”-wide blanket on a 26” loom… and that’s finished width after draw-in and shrinkage! You can’t even make a 45”-wide finished project on a 45” loom without using double-weave. For pieces that you want to wrap up in, double weave is essential. It expands your options without requiring you to somehow work a 60” loom into your craft space. Now here’s where things get really cool. With four shafts you can only do two plain weave layers. But with an eight shaft loom you can assign four shafts to each layer, letting you do two layers of twill, or trade the layers back and forth to create more complex colour effects. Our Sunroom Throw pattern is an advanced 8-shaft project that uses double weave to create strong blocks of colour. The throw isn’t double-width. Instead of simply connecting the two layers at one side, it swaps sections of the two layers back and forth in blocks. This creates a dense but still drapey cloth that is heaven to wrap yourself up in. Without using double weave, the dense sett of this project would make cloth as stiff as cardboard. But using double weave lets you achieve results that would otherwise be impossible. Our two double weave patterns are only the tip of the iceberg of what you can do with double weave. You can set up for double-width double weave and then connect both sides instead of only one, creating a tube that could become a cowl or a pillowcase. You can leave both sides open and swap layers every few inches, making a piece with dramatic 3D ripples. Trying out double weave is a great way to start thinking about the structure of your cloth instead of just working with its surface design and colours. And once you start weaving double weave, you’ll find it hard to stop. Like so many other kinds of weaving, it’s something that you can learn quickly and then explore for years.
cart Cart 0 Shopping Cart: Chakras Chakras Chakra in Hindu means “wheel.” In Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu beliefs, Chakras are vital energy centers in the body. Located in the nerve ganglia along the spine, they are conceived as spinning vortices channeling cosmic energy. Blockages or interruptions of the flow of this energy are believed to cause illness, confusion, and emotional difficulty. Traditions differ about the total number of chakras, but most agree that seven are the most potent.Muladhara, or root chakra, located at the base of the spine- it controls the ‘animal’ body- involuntary functions like breathing, instinct, survival.Swadhistana, or base Chakra, controlling the reproductive drive.Manipura, or Solar plexus, the center of the base emotions.Anahata, or heart Chakra, love and self-acceptance.Visuddha, or throat Chakra, controlling creativity and self-expression.Ajna, or third eye, knowledge, intuition, and perception.Sahasrara, Crown or Lotus Chakra, the link between the human and the divine. The movement of energy through the chakra system greatly resembles the cadeceus, or wand of Hermes. Grid List Recently Viewed Products Recently Viewed Products You have successfully subscribed! Use the code: WELCOME This email has been registered
With the many business and government organizations that now use open source software such as Linux, it is becoming increasingly clear that price is not the only advantage such software holds. Rather, free and open source software (FOSS) holds numerous other compelling advantages for businesses, some of them even more valuable than the software’s low price. Need a few examples? Let’s start counting. 1. Security “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” What that means is that the more people who can see and test a set of code, the more likely any flaws will be caught and fixed quickly. It’s essentially the polar opposite of the “security through obscurity” argument used so often to justify the use of expensive proprietary products, in other words. Clearly, those products are closed from public view, no one outside the companies that own them has the faintest clue how many bugs they contain. And there’s no way the limited set of developers and testers within those companies can test their products as well as the worldwide community constantly scrutinizing FOSS can. 2. Quality In general, open source software gets closest to what users want because those users can have a hand in making it so. It’s not a matter of the vendor giving users what it thinks they want–users and developers make what they want, and they make it well. At least one recent study has shown, in fact, that technical superiority is typically the primary reason enterprises choose open source software. 3. Customizability Along similar lines, business users can take a piece of open source software and tweak it to suit their needs. Since the code is open, it’s simply a matter of modifying it to add the functionality they want. Don’t try that with proprietary software! 4. Freedom 5. Flexibility When your business uses proprietary software, you are on a treadmill that requires you to keep upgrading both software and hardware ad infinitum. Open source software, on the other hand, is typically much less resource-intensive, meaning that you can run it well even on older hardware. It’s up to you – not some vendor – to decide when it’s time to upgrade. 6. Interoperability Open source software is much better at adhering to open standards than proprietary software is. If you value interoperability with other businesses, computers and users, and don’t want to be limited by proprietary data formats, open source software is definitely the way to go. 7. Auditability With closed source software, you have nothing but the vendor’s claims telling you that they’re keeping the software secure and adhering to standards, for example. It’s basically a leap of faith. The visibility of the code behind open source software, however, means you can see for yourself and be confident. 8. Support Options 9. Cost 10. Try Before You Buy If you’re considering using open source software, it will typically cost you nothing to try it out first. This is partly due to the software’s free price, and partly due to the existence of free versions for many Linux distributions, for example. No commitment required until you’re sure.
Reconstructing the hand of Terrestrisuchus Basal Crocodylomorpha Figure 1. Basal Crocodylomorpha, including Gracilisuchus, Saltopus, Scleromochlus and Terrestrisuchus. Wikipedia and other references insist that these were all quadrupeds. Possible in some. Improbable in others, IMHO. Paleontologists don’t like to think of Scleromochlus (Woodward 1907) as a bipedal crocodylomorph. Not sure why not. It’s in good company (Fig. 1). They’d rather see it as pterosaur closest cousin (Benton 1999, Bennett 1996, Hone and Benton 2008, Senter 2003, Sereno 1991). Unlikely, considering those tiny hands. There are quite a few bipedal basal crocs and protoarchosaurs. You can see them all here to scale. Another fairly well known bipedal croc is Terrestrisuchus (Fig. 1). Funny thing, you almost never see these two taxa mentioned together in the same sentence or see them on the same phylogenetic analysis. But you can see them together here and here and in figure 1. Figure 2. Basal crocs hands with a focus on a new reconstruction of the hand of Terrestrisuchus that more closely follows the patterns of sister taxa. Focus on the hand Crush (1984) introduced us to the complete skeleton of a basal bipedal crocodylomorph, Terrestrisuchus (Late Triassic) and did a great job! The elements came from a fissure fill, so had to be reassembled as if they were puzzle pieces. Some were easy. Others were difficult. Crush (Fig. 2) put the hand together with a small thumb, similar to a human hand. However, reassembling the pieces to more closely mimic or echo sister taxa provides a revised reconstruction (Fig. 2) with continuous PILs. I did this with Photoshop to maintain precision and avoid freehand unconscious bias. The revised hand (Fig. 2) aligns metacarpals 1-3 as in sister taxa. Metacarpal 4 is slightly shorter than mc3. Metacarpal 5 was probably very short as in Erpetosuchus and Hesperosuchus. The digits are easy. They taper distally and are shorter distally terminating in tiny unguals. The proximal phalanges are subequal. Basal croc hands, as you can see, are notoriously incomplete. So we have to glean clues from all of them, despite their morphological disparity and wonderful variety. Once again, phylogenetic bracketing saves the day! And yes those incredibly long wrist bones are proximal carpals, the radiale and ulnare. Modern crocs retain those. Bennett SC 1996. The phylogenetic position of the Pterosauria within the Archosauromorpha. Zoolological Journal of the Linnean Society 118: 261–308. Crush PJ 1984. A late upper Triassic sphenosuchid crocodilian from Wales. Palaeontology 27: 131-157. Huene F von 1921. Neue Pseudosuchier und Coelurosaurier aus dem Wurttembergischen Keuper: Acta Zoologica, v. 2, p. 329-403. Padian K. 1984. The Origin of Pterosaurs. Proceedings, Third Symposium on Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystems, Tubingen 1984. Online pdf Senter P 2003. Taxon Sampling Artifacts and the Phylogenetic Position of Aves. PhD dissertation. Northern Illinois University, 1-279. Sereno PC 1991. Basal archosaurs: phylogenetic relationships and functional implications. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 11 (Supplement) Memoire 2: 1–53. Woodward AS 1907. On a new dinosaurian reptile (Scleromochlus taylori, gen. et sp. nov.) from the Trias of Lossiemouth, Elgin. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society 1907 63:140-144. Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change ) Google photo Twitter picture Facebook photo Connecting to %s
Tiny Phlebotomists December 2, 2011 at 8:21 am Historically, certain species of leeches have been used in medicine for blood-letting. These tiny phlebotomists were used in areas that were “too sensitive or confined for the lancet or other blood-letting instruments” like the gums, lips, fingers, and nose. Leeches are sometimes in use even in modern medicine to ease venous congestion and prevent local coagulation in surgeries such as the reattachment of a finger or reconstructive surgery after cancer. According to the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the leech “known as Hirudo medicinalis, the medicinal leech, is used most often after trauma, such as the loss of a finger or limb. Reattaching a digit and reconnecting its blood vessels is painstaking work that is often carried out under the microscope”. The leech has an anti-coagulant and anesthetic compounds in it’s saliva. Leeches became popular in the 19th century to the point that they actually became endangered in Europe. Incidentally, do you know how leeches got their name? According to medical secrets straight out of 1634, medieval doctors used to call themselves leeches. And it wasn’t for their fees. The word “leech” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “loece” which means “to heal”. Interestingly, these creatures got their name from the doctors, rather the other way around.