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Painting in a petri dish Teach article On hearing the word ‘bacteria’, many pupils might squirm in their seats. But while bacteria are often perceived as bad, linked in our minds to infection or disease, the majority are in fact harmless to humans, and many are even beneficial. Along with other microorganisms (such as viruses and yeastsw1), bacteria are too small to see with the naked eye. They are, however, all around us. One way to reveal these hidden microorganisms is to grow them in an agar-filled petri dish (also known as an agar plate), which is a popular activity in schools. In recent years, this simple idea has been transformed into an art form: across the world, people are now using bacteria to create beautiful works of ‘agar art’w2. Using a wire inoculating loop, different species of microorganisms in various colours are carefully painted onto an agar plate. The plate is incubated to encourage the bacteria to grow, in the hope that it will develop into a microbial masterpiece. Agar art ‘Finding Pneumo’, a microbial painting of coral by microbiology technologist Linh Ngo Andrew Simor/Linh Ngo/American Society for Microbiology Producing agar art at school (albeit using a simplified approach) is a playful way to introduce your pupils to the world of microorganisms. The hands-on activities outlined in this article are suitable for pupils aged 9–11 and are a valuable way to learn about bacteria. We also provide a simple introductory activity to learn about hand hygiene. Although it is essential to highlight to your class that not all bacteria are harmful, you must also emphasise the importance of thorough hand-washing to control the spread of infectious diseases. If you choose to carry out the following activities sequentially, keep in mind that you must allow at least two days between each activity for incubation time. Safety note For the following procedures, pupils are advised to wear lab coats. Pupils should not eat or drink in the classroom/laboratory or put their fingers or any other matter in their mouths. Once the agar plates have been incubated, pupils should not remove the lids of the plates. To follow usual guidelines, all contaminated waste (e.g. disposable inoculating loops and agar plates) should be discarded in an appropriate container and collected by a laboratory waste disposal service. If this is not possible, contaminated equipment could be treated with disinfectant (e.g. bleach) and disposed of in your regular waste. Activity 1: Bacterial handprints Washing our hands is the most important means of preventing the spread of infection. In this simple activity, pupils discover the importance of good hand hygiene by comparing two agar plates of their handprints – one before washing, and one after. The activity takes approximately 1 hour, and pupils should work individually. Each pupil will need access to the following: • Two premade agar platesw3 (standard size of 100 mm in diameter) • Permanent marker pen • Hand soap (or antibacterial soap), water and paper towels Pupils press their fingers onto agar Figure 1: Pupils press their fingers onto the agar plate to transfer bacteria to the agar. Ana Margarida Madureira Instruct your pupils as follows, demonstrating the procedure if required: 1. Using a marker pen, label the two plates ‘before’ and ‘after’ on the underside of each plate, along with your name. When turning a plate upside down, keep the lid pressed down to avoid it falling off. 2. Place the agar plates on the table (the correct way up) and remove the lid of the plate marked ‘before’. 3. Press your fingers firmly onto the agar (figure 1) and then remove them. 4. Replace the lid and clean your hands using soap and water. Dry them well using paper towels. 5. Repeat the process for the agar plate marked ‘after’, pressing your fingers firmly onto the agar. 6. Replace the lid and wash your hands after touching the agar. 7. Leave both plates in a safe area of the classroom to incubate at room temperature (e.g. 20ºC) for 48–72 hours, or until you can see some bacterial colonies. Observation and discussion When the agar plates are ready, ask your pupils to compare their ‘before’ and ‘after’ handprints (figures 2 and 3). The following questions and tasks can encourage them to analyse the results: • What do you observe on your agar plates? What are the dots? Are there different types of dots (e.g. different colours and shapes)? • Is there a difference in bacterial growth between the ‘before’ and ‘after’ handprints? What does this show? • Count the dots on each plate to estimate the number of bacterial colonies. If there are too many dots to count, make an estimate for the whole agar plate based on one section. Record this in a joint classroom table (see table 1). • Compare your agar plates to those of other pupils in your class. Why do some plates have more growth than others? • What does this tell you about your hand hygiene, or the hygiene of your peers? What would you suggest to your peers based on these results? From previous experience, pupils are often surprised by the number of colonies on the plates – and by the variety of colours and shapes of the different bacterial colonies. The activity can also act as a lesson for pupils with poor hand-washing techniques, who see no change (or even an increase in bacteria) between their ‘before’ and ‘after’ plates. 'Before' and 'after' agar plates for pupil 10 Figure 2: ‘Before’ (left) and ‘after’ (right) agar plates for pupil 10 (see table 1), showing a reduction in bacteria after handwashing Ana Margarida Madureira 'Before' and 'after' agar plates for pupil 8 Figure 3: ‘Before’ (left) and ‘after’ (right) agar plates for pupil 8 (see table 1), showing a small increase in bacteria after handwashing Ana Margarida Madureira Table 1: Number of colonies before and after handwashing for 23 pupils who carried out the activity in their classroom Pupil Before After Percentage change 1 144 140 -3% 2 424 208 -51% 3 36 18 -50% 4 110 60 -45% 5 138 118 -14% 6 86 98 +14% 7 55 27 -51% 8 449 490 +9% 9 148 96 -35% 10 600 85 -86% 11 125 69 -45% 12 600 289 -52% 13 68 41 -40% 14 600 245 -59% 15 309 261 -16% 16 67 18 -73% 17 132 108 -18% 18 107 120 +12% 19 82 32 -61% 20 348 234 -33% 21 54 6 -89% 22 92 46 -50% 23 125 127 +2% Activity 2: Microbial ‘paint’ Before creating agar art in the final activity, pupils need to grow their chosen bacteria to use as the ‘paint’ on their blank agar ‘canvas’. Inoculating an agar plate to grow the bacteria takes approximately 15 minutes, after which the plate must be incubated. Each pupil requires: • One premade agar plate • Disposable inoculating loop • Agar plate labelled ‘before’, from activity 1 (or alternatively, a purchased culture of Staphylococcus epidermidis) Instruct your pupils as follows, demonstrating the procedure if required: 1. Locate the bacterium S. epidermidis on the agar plate labelled ‘before’. S. epidermidis is part of the normal human skin flora and is typically white in colour, forming round colonies with a diameter of 1–2 mm. Alternatively, you can use a purchased culture instead. 2. Transfer S. epidermidis to the end of the inoculating loop (see figure 4). 3. Take a new agar plate and, using the loop, spread the bacteria in streaks across the surface of the agar (see figure 5 for the final streaking pattern). Start by drawing lines in the first quadrant of the agar, holding the loop as you would a pen. Do not dig into the agar – only touch the surface. 4. Turn the plate 90º and create streaks across the second quadrant. 5. Turn the plate 90º again and draw a zigzag in between the other streaked quadrants. 6. Place the lid onto the plate and incubate it at room temperature for 48–72 hours or until the plate is sufficiently covered by S. epidermidis colonies (figure 6). If desired, repeat the procedure above for any other bacteria (perhaps of different colours or colony formations) that are present on the ‘before’ plate, or using purchased cultures. Inoculate each bacteria on a new agar plate using a new loop. Transfer S. epidermis Figure 4: Transferring S. epidermidis from the agar plate to an inoculating loop Ana Margarida Madureira Streaking pattern Figure 5: Streaking pattern for inoculating the agar plate with S. epidermidis Ana Margarida Madureira Isolated S. epidermis Figure 6: Isolated S. epidermidis for use as the bacterial ‘paint’ Ana Margarida Madureira Activity 3: A living masterpiece Once the incubation period is over, your pupils are ready to start getting creative. We suggest allocating around 30 minutes for pupils to produce their microbial works of art. Each pupil requires: • One premade agar plate • Disposable inoculating loop (one for each type of bacteria used) • Agar plate with S. epidermidis (and/or other cultures) Instruct your pupils as follows, demonstrating the procedure if required: 1. Transfer S. epidermidis from the agar plate onto the end of the inoculating loop. 2. Using the loop as a pen, draw on the surface of the new agar plate (figure 7). You can draw various shapes, write your name, or even sketch a whole scene. 3. When required, collect more bacteria on the loop. This is usually every time you have finished drawing a line. If you are using more than one type of bacteria to create different colours or colony shapes in your drawing, use a new inoculating loop for each culture. 4. Once finished, place the lid onto the plate and incubate at room temperature for 48–72 hours to allow the artwork to develop. Your pupils will be amazed to see their invisible drawings come to life. And in the process, we hope they discover a new appreciation for the bacterial diversity that surrounds us. Painting microbial art Figure 7: Pupils create microbial art using isolated S. epidermis Ana Margarida Madureira Examples of student agar art Examples of the pupils’ artwork, as seen following incubation of the agar plates (click image to enlarge) Ana Margarida Madureira Web References Aida Duarte is an associate professor (with habilitation) at Faculdade Farmácia da Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, where she is responsible for the teaching and laboratory coordination of microbiological control. Professor Duarte is also a principal investigator at Centro de Investigação Interdisciplinar Egas Moniz. Ana Margarida Madureira is an assistant professor at Faculdade Farmácia da Universidade de Lisboa, where she teaches pharmaceutical chemistry. Professor Madureira presented her work on agar art for schools at the 2018 Hands-on Science conference in Barcelona, Spain. This article provides a great opportunity for interdisciplinary teaching by introducing a playful way of approaching both biology and art. The activity could be used by one teacher teaching both science and art, or through a collaboration between a science teacher and an art teacher. It is ideal for discussing how bacteria occur and can be cultured, and how they are linked to everyday life. The article could also foster interesting discussions on how science and non-science subjects can work in tandem. I will definitely use it in my classroom. Dr Christiana Nicolaou, science teacher, Archangelos Elementary School, Cyprus
Skip to main content Tripods ten ways Use knots and lashings to create camp gadgets that take your site to the next level. You will need • Pens or pencils • Scrap paper • String • Rope • Pioneering poles Before you begin • If you want this activity to count towards the Scouts Outdoor Challenge Award, you’ll need to do it during a night away. This activity also works best at camp so people’s creations can be put to use. • Check out Scouts’ pioneering guidance here. If you need to refresh your knot memory, check out Animated knots. • It’s best to make sure everyone’s familiar with some basic knots and lashings before you get stuck in to making creative gadgets. Knot your average pioneer is a great way to practise – it also introduces the clove hitch, which is used to start the tripod lashing. • If everyone’s been introduced to safe tool use, you may want to bring a basic tool kit so you can resize wood, rope, or string. Make sure everyone taking part, and their parents and carers, know beforehand. Check out Scout Adventures’ resources and follow our safety advice. If you want to run a tool safety session, Toolkit training might be the activity for you. • You may want to gather some materials that people can use for inspiration. It’s up to you whether people are allowed to look online at sites like Pinterest and Scout Pioneering, or whether you just want to give them some print outs or books. Quick thinking 1. The person leading the activity should show everyone an example of a tripod lashing. 1. Everyone should split into teams of up to four people. Each team should get into a space where they can build without disrobing wildlife. 2. Each team should get some scrap paper and pens or pencils. They should also get some poles, rope, and any fallen tree branches and wood they may have access to. 3. Each team should try to think of 10 different camp gadget idea that use a tripod lashing. They should all be useful for daily camping activities. 1. Each team should write a list of their gadgets that includes some rough diagrams of what they might look like. 1. Meanwhile, the people leading the game should wander around and ask groups about their ideas. They should offer guidance and help people consider safety. 2. Once a team’s reached 10 ideas, they should shout ‘Tripods 10 ways’! Everyone else should pause and go over to the team who have finished. 3. Everyone should listen to the group talk through some of their favourite ideas. 4. Each of the teams should take it in turns to present some of their ideas – it doesn’t matter if they didn’t get to 10. Time to build 1. Each team should choose at least one of their ideas to build. 2. The teams should chat to make sure they’re not all making the same thing – the campsite doesn’t need six tables without any chairs, for example. 3. Each group should chat to an adult about how they’ll risk assess their gadget, and how they’ll share any safety information with the rest of the group. 1. Everyone should get stuck in to building their gadget. Ten examples of gadgets which were made using tripod lashings. This activity was all about developing skills. Are knots and lashings skills that can be useful for lots of different reasons? What other skills did people use in this activity? People might think about how they thought creatively, helped others develop their ideas, or adapted their ideas to the materials that were available. How did everyone make sure their ideas became a reality? It’s great to have big ideas, but being able to make them happen is important too. This activity also needed people to stick at it, even when things weren’t easy. Did everyone’s creations work perfectly first time? How did it feel when things went wrong? What helped people pick themselves (and their projects) up and start again? Perhaps encouragement from others or focussing on the final goal helped people to try, try again.
Skip to content Acupuncture 101: The 5 Elements Chinese philosophy is a sophisticated method of understanding relationships, change, and cause and effect. One of the primary ways to understand those relationships is with the 5 Element Theory. This theory ties together the relationship of all energy and substance. In Traditional Chinese Medicine it is one of the tools an acupuncturist has to understand disease and support the body’s healing. All elements and energy are governed by the 5 elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. There are many associations with each element—colors, sounds, tastes, planets, even shapes. But it is easiest to think of them in terms of the seasons. Wood is like spring, when plants begin to grow. Fire is summer-like, when plants flower. Earth is a season of fruition. It is called “late summer,” but in the West we don’t recognize late summer as a separate season. This is the time that the growth of plants plateaus and they set fruit. Metal is like fall and harvest time. And water is the time of winter, still and restful. The cycle of early growth, flowering, fruition, harvest and rest is repeated in everything. The 5 Element Theory is elegant and complicated. Each element is understandable if you think of it as part of a cycle of relationships. “Wood” is not as much wood as “wood-like.” When a weak wood-like substance interacts with a strong fire-like substance, the result is predictable—the fire burns the wood up. However when both forces are equal there is balance. Interacting Elements Since the 5 Element Theory is about relationships the 5 elements are always interacting with each other. There are 2 main ways they interact. The sheng cycle (or mother-child cycle) is a generating cycle. Wood creates fire. Fire creates earth (ash). Earth creates metal, which creates water, which creates wood. The hardest relationship to understand is how metal creates water, but if you imagine condensation on metal you can see that it does. The other important cycle is a controlling cycle. The ke cycle (or master-servant cycle) is series of checks and balances. Each element controls and is controlled by an element and both must be balanced, neither too strong nor too weak, to keep order. In the ke cycle wood controls earth because trees grow on it and put their roots deep into it. Earth controls water by damming water and changing its flow. Water controls fire by extinguishing it. Fire controls metal by melting it. And metal controls wood by becoming an axe. The Five Elements and Your Health In Traditional Chinese Medicine your body has 12 meridians, or energy pathways. The meridians nourish your organ systems and these are the pathways that I balance when you come in for a treatment. Your meridians are divided among the 5 elements. During a treatment I diagnose which meridians are out of balance. By understanding the sheng and ke cycles, I determine which elements are overactive or underactive and treat the source of your imbalance. I view all your body systems as working like a team. Each team member must be healthy and balanced, neither too strong nor too weak, or the entire team doesn’t perform at its peak. In the same way, no organ system functions independent of the others. For optimal health you must balance all 5 elements.
Farnham Park Test trenching by D Graham of SyAS confirmed that the low platform visible just outside and slightly to the north of the postern gate of Farnham Castle is in fact a laid gravel surface. The feature was first noted during a landscape survey in 1998 and appears to lie at the western end of a slight flattened bank that runs through the Park more or less parallel to the existing Avenue. Previous work had shown that this bank appeared to be a gravelled road with side ditches and to date to the mid 17th century. The current work confirmed the likely date of the feature, with the recovery of a lead pistol ball, a number of coiled lead strips and a quantity of clay pipe stems of probable 17th century date, seeming to point to the platform being the site of a Civil War cannon park. This formed part of the Parliamentary army base in Farnham Park and is known from documentary sources to have been sited close to the walls of the castle. The fact that the road and platform respected the northern edge of the medieval strip field system probably means that it follows the line of an earlier medieval trackway leading to the postern gate. Part of a pit containing medieval carved stonework was also located and this may represent building rubble from the restoration works carried out by Bishop Morley at the end of the Civil War.
Press "Enter" to skip to content Characteristics of CBD to know before you shop it Cannabidiol, or CBD for short, is a chemical compound found in the cannabis plant. It’s one of over 113 cannabinoids that have been identified to date, and it’s also the most abundant non-psychoactive cannabinoid found in hemp. In this blog post, we will explore few different characteristics of CBD that everyone should know about. If you want to grab more knowledge on this, have a look at 1. CBD is NOT Psychoactive To clear up any confusion, let’s start with an essential characteristic of CBD. There are over 80 different cannabinoids found in cannabis. When people discuss them, they lump all these compounds together as if they act like or produce similar results when consumed (this isn’t exactly true). When you ingest THC, it works on specific receptors known as CB-I, which causes an intoxicating effect by binding itself to your brain cells producing psychotropic effects that alter your state of mind. This makes sense why marijuana is often associated with changing one’s mental state since well over 85 psychoactive cannabinoids are within its makeup. 2. CBD is NOT “Marijuana.” CBD has absolutely nothing to do with the psychoactive drug THC. While they are both found in cannabis, CBD will not get you high and has no psychotropic effects. This makes it an excellent option for patients seeking anti-inflammatory, neuroprotective, anti-tumoral, or analgesic properties of medical marijuana without the intense euphoria that comes with ingesting THC at elevated levels. The difference between these two cannabinoids couldn’t be more night and day when comparing them on an operational level since one creates intoxicating effects while the other does not. As mentioned above, CBD and THC are different compounds that both come from the cannabis plant. While they share similar properties, CBD has many more characteristics that make it a unique chemical compound worthy of its recognition as an individual cannabinoid with medicinal attributes. 4. CBD is NOT a Stimulant People often assume that CBD and other cannabinoids like CBN, CBC, etc., behave similarly as stimulants such as caffeine or amphetamines by activating your sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which can directly increase heart rate and blood pressure levels, among many other undesired effects. However, this isn’t true since cannabinoids produce their anti-inflammatory properties through activation of cannabinoid receptors within our body known as CB-II & IV instead of SNS stimulation, so it’s pretty impossible to feel anything close to what you’d get from ingesting high amounts of caffeine or any stimulating drug for that matter. 5. CBD is NOT a Sedative While CBD can be an effective sleep aid, it doesn’t work the same way that most people assume. When you ingest CBD before bedtime, it acts to stimulate wakefulness, so while many people have been able to use this cannabinoid for sleep support, they would never classify its properties as sedating since there’s no noticeable “high” feeling associated with using cannabinoids like THC or even higher levels of CBN (which produces anti-insomnia effects). Hemp contains only trace amounts of psychoactive compounds, which makes tracing extremely difficult if not impossible at accurate world application doses. This has led some experts and government agencies alike who believe that consuming products will get you high, which isn’t true. %d bloggers like this:
Understanding the Pull Trajectory Comparison of Pull Trajectories in the Snatch Figure 1: Comparison of Pull Trajectories in the Snatch For those of us who have been around in the sport of weightlifting for 40 years or more, it is incredible to consider that digital video only arrived in the 1990’s and what a profound effect it has had on our ability to investigate and understand the movement patterns of athletes in Weightlifting. These days coaches and athletes in Weightlifting should take every advantage of easily accessible technology to obtain a bar path (trajectory). All is needed is to capture some video from the side and then to import the video file into software such as Kinovea and use the ‘Cross Marker’ tool to trace the bar path. Some familiarity and practice with the software is needed but the task is quite simple. The ability to interpret the bar path obtained, however, is dependent on the individual’s understanding of what is an ideal path, and the associated body positions and movement that give rise to bar trajectories, good and not so good. The knowledge needed for such interpretive analysis is gained by self-study not only be viewing countless hundreds of lifts but also by getting to grips with the physics (biomechanics) involved. This article seeks to assist in this regard. Before we get going, it is important to consider that the displacement (movement) of the bar can be measured vertically and horizontally. Vertical movement is what the athlete in Weightlifting mostly needs but a small degree of horizontal movement is inevitable and even advantageous. The technique of the pull is therefore all about maximising vertical displacement while controlling the degree of horizontal displacement. If there is excessive horizontal displacement of the bar, the athlete is in trouble. In the illustration above, Trajectory A represents a bar path that is relatively ideal (at least for this author). The trajectory shows a movement of the bar toward the body in the first stage of the pull. In a good starting position, the bar can only be positioned over the front of the foot and not any closer to the middle of the foot due to the limiting factor of the angle of the shins. The initial movement towards the body is helpful to the athlete in two ways. Firstly, the horizontal displacement of the bar toward the body assists the athlete to keep the centre of mass of the barbell over the middle of the foot and thus remain in balance. Secondly, the movement of the bar towards the athlete improves the athlete leverage on the bar. The closer the barbell to the body, the smaller the “weight arm” (see illustration below) and thus the better the mechanical efficiency of the body to lift the weight. It is relatively simple to understand that to hold a heavy weight away from the body is a lot harder than if it is held close. Explanation of leverage Figure 2: The human body is a system of levers. Forward movement of the bar in the first pull. Figure 3: Forward movement of the bar in the first pull. It is interesting to note that a great many lifters do not achieve any movement of the bar towards the body at the start of the lift. Instead athletes may move the bar vertically upwards or even who move the bar away from the body as depicted by Figure 3. In such circumstances, the centre of mass of the bar drifts to the forward edge of the base and this will have a significant effect on the athlete’s balance and their ability to exert force. In figure 3, the athlete’s bar path is in red, and the blue vertical line depicts the front of the base. In this example the final stages of the pull trajectory are in front of the blue line and this may be attributable to the balance issues created at the start of the pull. Forward movement of the bar at the start of the pull can largely be prevented if the athlete endeavours to keep pressure on the heels rather than the ball of the foot. In the second stage of the pull, after the bar has passed the knee, it is nearly always the case that the bar path displays horizontal displacement in a forward direction. As the athlete completes the upward extension of the body, there is movement of the hips towards the bar and with certainty this causes this forward displacement of the bar. The important consideration here is how much forward movement? Commonly, lifters exhibit a pronounced ‘hip drive’ while simultaneously leaning backwards and this gives rise to a ‘swing’ style of pull as depicted by Trajectory B in figure 1 above. In such circumstances there is a significant circular shape to the upper stages of the pull trajectory. The issue here is that the athlete very often has difficulty in fixing the bar overhead due to the tendency of the bar to keep moving backwards as a result of the momentum gained in backward direction. Coaches therefore in assessing the trajectory of the pull have three important elements to look at: 1. The initial stage of the pull (first pull) – is there any movement of the bar towards the athlete? 2. The second stage of the pull (second pull) where there is great acceleration of the barbell – is there excessive forward movement (swing). 3. The hook at the top of the trajectory – how does the bar descend? If the bar descends very vertically as in Trajectory A above, the athlete will be much more likely to fix the bar overhead. If the hook is very curved as in Trajectory B above, and displays much horizontal movement in rearward direction, the athlete will have greater difficulty in arresting the weight. Trajectory of an athlete who jumps forward in the Snatch. Figure 4: Trajectory of an athlete who jumps forward in the Snatch. Occasionally, we see athletes jumping forward as they move under the bar in the snatch. A movement forward of the athlete will likely be problematic unless the movement is very small. In Figure 4, the athletes forward movement is very significant and is caused by excessive forward thrust of the hips. The illustration shows the forward momentum of the bar and in real life this athlete attempted to save the lift (unsuccessfully) by ducking their head forwards under the bar. In conclusion, understanding the bar trajectory is very important to the Weightlifting coach. The knowledge helps the coach to understand the causes and consequences of technical errors. Using technology to create bar path helps to demystify technique and to better understand the simple truth that good weightlifting technique maximises displacement in a vertical direction while controlling horizontal displacement. This knowledge helps athletes and coaches to avoid making common errors of technique which when ingrained can be exceptionally hard to fix at a later date by even the best of coaches. See Kinovea software
Northern Argentina Travel Guide Begging to be explored, the less travelled northern regions of Argentina are an interesting blend of colonial heritage, incredible natural beauty, agriculture and an indigenous flavour. Two major Argentinean rivers, the Parana and the Uruguay, flow together in the northeast of the country, creating the Rio de la Plata estuary. The land in between the rivers is known as Mesopotamia, a swampy, wet and sweltering region covered with yatay palms, orchids and tree ferns. One of the principal attractions in this region, the spectacular Iguazu Falls in the Iguazu National Park, are tucked away in the extreme northeast, bordered by Brazil. Lush forests bursting with wildlife and impressive, rugged mountains lie in contrast to the vast, fertile plains of the Pampas below. Closer to the Chilean border in the west lies the impressive Andes Mountain Range and its highest peak, Cerro Aconcagua, situated in the famed wine region of Mendoza. The bustling city and industrial hub of Cordoba is where Jesuit traditions, colonial architecture and traditional gaucho culture combine, resulting in plenty of annual traditional festivals and local arts and crafts to be enjoyed. From the abundant natural treasures of the Iguazu National Park to the hidden tastes of Mendoza's vineyards, there are many treasures to be found in the north by travellers willing to venture beyond Buenos Aires.
Hatching the Pot In the last column, I discussed ellipses and how drawing them involves the fluid, fairly fast movement of the hand, letting your reflexes carry out the kind of rounded shape you intend to make. Now we’ll move on to shading the pot that we previously described in simple outline, using curving lines that are like segments of the ellipse. These are what I think of as “cat stroking” lines — curves that start gently, reach a crescendo of pressure and then fade out at the end. They enclose lines sensuously and are enormously useful in describing all kinds of bulging, rolling, bumpy subjects. In using these curved lines to shade the pot, we will not only describe the shadow but, because the lines curve around the pot, we will be accentuating its actual form. In my example of cross-hatching I show that, in order to avoid a “clotted” effect, the lines are made at different angles. I have drawn my examples in pen and ink to make the images clearer, but you might want to draw in a 2B or 4B pencil. Now that the pot has been illuminated with a strong directional light, we can study how that light falls on the object, the angles that the shadows make and how to use lines to shade the drawing. Either using the outline drawing you did last week or, drawing the pot again, follow along with these steps to delineate the shadows on the pot. In the first stage of the drawing, I show that the light is coming from the right and slightly in front of the pot. This means that the basic pattern of shadow on the outside of the pot falls on the left, but the shadow on the inside of the pot is on the right. Next, in order to show more of the complexity of the light and shadow, I begin to use cross-hatching, lines that go against the direction of my first lines, but that still consider the form of the pot. I notice where light catches on the shoulder of the pot, creating a little arc of illumination that “pushes” the shadow further to the left. I also show how the shadow arcs under the bottom of the pot, describing the way the shape rolls under towards the base. I also note how the light ground on which the pot sits, reflects light back onto the pot, creating a “core” shadow that is darker not at the back edge, where you might expect it, but slightly in from the edge. This reflected light, and the “core” shadow it creates, is a frequent phenomenon in round subjects. In the last stage of the drawing, I use very pale lines in the light part of the pot on the right to dramatize the very lightest part of the pot on the “shoulder.” In other words, I am saving paper white for the one dramatically lit part of the pot. I finish the drawing by shading the shadow on the ground behind the pot, accentuating the flatness of the ground by using straighter parallel lines. In order to move on to a slightly more complicated subject that still involves ellipses I have photographed a pitcher. Its pouring lip and handle add two elements that will expand your analytic and drawing skills. Either use the pitcher in the photo as a subject or find a similar object to observe in three dimensions and draw, delineating both its basic structure and the effect of light falling on it. I have made a basic drawing of the pitcher that may help you as a guide in getting started. Note that the axis of the pouring lip and the handle are the same, in other words, they line up. Also note that in my drawing I am using several “feeling out” strokes to get to the bulging sides of the pitcher. I encourage you to do this: to internalize the feeling of roundness as you make the stroke, so as to move beyond the more neutral feeling of simply reproducing the curve. Giorgio Morandi This etching is by Giorgio Morandi, one of my favorite artists. As you can see, his style of drawing rounded shapes is not consistent with my demonstration. This dichotomy illustrates an issue pertinent to every example I use from the history of fine art, which is that the examples I give will expand the ideas of the lesson, rather than simply reinforcing the lesson. For instance, I have demonstrated how to use curved lines in making the drawing of the pot because those kinds of lines help you to feel out the pot’s roundness and because the subtlety of making those lines is a way for you to engage the sensuousness of your reflexes. And now I show you a Morandi still life where he uses straight lines to describe round forms. How confusing! The Morandi etching depends for much of its contemplative beauty on the game the artist plays between the implied depth in which the objects exist and the texture of the lines that bring the drawing back to the surface. When you are learning to draw, it is useful to understand the most obvious methods of achieving form and proportion, but when your idea of what you want to do in your drawing is strong enough, any line, texture or implement can achieve your vision. James McMullan, New York Times Full article and photos: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/hatching-the-pot/
DMPQ: Comment on the battle of koregaon. A battle was fought in Bhima Koregaon, a district in Pune with a strong historical Dalit connection, between the Peshwa forces and the British on January 1, 1818. The British army, which comprised mainly of Dalit soldiers, fought the upper caste-dominated Peshwa army. The British troops defeated the Peshwa army. The victory was seen as a win against caste-based discrimination and oppression. Peshwas were notorious for their oppression and persecution of Mahar dalits. The victory in the battle over Peshwas gave dalits a moral victory a victory against caste-based discrimination and oppression and sense of identity. However, the divide and rule policy of the British created multiple fissures in Indian society which is even visible today in the way of excessive caste and religious discrimination which needs to be checked keeping in mind the tenets of the Constitution. The battle has come to be seen as a symbol of Dalit pride because a large number of soldiers in the Company force were the Mahar Dalits. Since the Peshwas, who were Brahmins, were seen as oppressors of Dalits, the victory of the Mahar soldiers over the the Peshwa force is seen as Dalit assertion. On 1 January 1927, B.R. Ambedkar visited the memorial obelisk erected on the spot which bears the names of the dead including nearly two dozen Mahar soldiers. The men who fought in the battle of Koregaon were the Mahars, and the Mahars are Untouchables. error: Content is protected !!
Saturday, 29 April 2017 01:32 Should you worry about heavy phone use causing cancer? Disappearing link The news reports do not name the type of tumour Romeo had, but based on the fact that it was benign and resulted in hearing loss, it is likely to have been an acoustic neuroma, also called a vestibular schwannoma. These tumours develop in the cells surrounding the ear nerve, and usually occur only on one side. What this means is that half of the people who get acoustic neuromas are going to get them in the ear they normally use for their phone. So why did the Italian court decide that Romeo’s cellphone usage was to blame? The court has not yet released its reasoning, but a similar ruling in Italy in 2012 was based on a couple of studies that found a link between heavy use of analogue cellphones and a few types of cancer, including acoustic neuromas. These were case-control studies, which involve asking people already diagnosed with cancer about their past phone use. But other case-control studies have failed to find a link, and this type of study is known to be a flawed way to identify risk factors for diseases. Cohort studies are more reliable. These involve asking people about their lifestyle first and then following them up to see who develops cancer. In 2013, the largest cohort study done so far did report a link between phones and acoustic neuromas, but not any other cancers. However, when data covering a longer period was added, the link disappeared. Preventing cancer This is not surprising, given that there is no obvious reason why mobile phones would cause cancer. High-energy electromagnetic radiation such as X-rays can directly damage DNA, but the low-energy radiation from phones does not. In theory, of course, there could be mechanisms we don’t yet know about. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer is taking a cautious approach, listing mobiles phones as “possibly carcinogenic” in 2011. But perhaps the biggest reason not to worry is that if using mobile phones greatly increased the risk of cancer, we should already be seeing a huge jump in the incidence of cancer, and that simply does not seem to be happening. Some studies have reported a small increase in certain cancer types, including acoustic neuromas, but this is usually attributed to increased diagnosis rates thanks to MRI scanning. What’s more, brain tumours are thankfully rare. Fewer than 20 out of every million people will develop acoustic neuromas, for instance. Even if it was the case that heavy cellphone doubles the risk of tumours, the overall risk would still very low. So if you’re worried about cancer, focus on the big, known causes such as smokingalcohol and viruses like HPV. Making sure your kids are vaccinated against these viruses, for instance, will do far more protect them than trying to limit their phone time. This article was published on By Michael Le Page Get Exclusive Research Tips in Your Inbox Receive Great tips via email, enter your email to Subscribe.
en zh es ja ko pt Volume 27, Number 5September/October 1976 In This Issue Back to Table of Contents Islam Comes To Europe Written by Don Eiler Photographed by Tor Eigeland In July 710 a Berber officer and some 400 soldiers stormed onto a beach in Spain, lighting the fuse that was to set off an historic explosion. Less than a century had passed since the flame of Islam had swept out of the faraway Arabian Peninsula. But now, as Tarif ibn Malik led his men on a reconnaissance raid across the narrow, eight-mile strait separating North Africa from the Iberian Peninsula, Islam had come to Europe. In the year following that exploratory raid the Muslims crossed the strait again, but this time in force. Some 7,000 men led by Tariq ibn Ziyad landed at Gibraltar—Jabal Tariq in Arabic—and caught the Visigothic Christian rulers of Spain off guard. Their king, Roderick, fighting Basques in the north, quickly turned south with his army and, despite Muslim reinforcements from North Africa, soon gained the initiative and launched an attack near the present-day town of Algeciras. The battle was going well for the Christians when, according to Muslim sources, the two flanks of Roderick's army, commanded by Roderick's rivals, broke away and joined the invaders. The Muslims won the day. Torn by rivalries and dissent at the time—as the invaders themselves would be in later centuries—the people of the Spanish Peninsula offered little further resistance. By 718 Muslim victory was complete, or very nearly. They controlled most of the peninsula except for a small nucleus of resistance behind the forbidding Cantabrian mountains in the cold northwest. The Muslim advance into Europe essentially stopped in Spain. But raiding parties did cross the Pyrenees and, 21 years after they landed at Gibraltar, the Muslims in some force reached the Loire Valley about 120 miles south of Paris. There, in 732, the Frankish King Charles Martel decisively defeated them in a battle fought near the towns of Tours and Poitiers. This battle—called the Battle of Tours in English histories and the Battle of Poitiers in French histories—was long considered a significant victory for Europe, but it seems more likely, as some historians say, that the century-long Muslim thrust from Arabia had simply spent itself. The spark of Visigothic Christian resistance in northern Spain, left alone to smolder, provided the fire that centuries later led to reconquest. Had the spark been put out once and for all, as it probably could have been in 718, Spain might be an Arabic-speaking Muslim country today. As it turned out, the Muslims ruled over much of the peninsula for about three centuries and held on for nearly eight centuries in their last Andalusian stronghold, the Kingdom of Granada. The history of the entire epoch, however, is the story of a protracted series of often inconclusive battles between the north and south, interspersed with long periods of peaceful cultural and trade relations and others of intra-Christian and intra-Muslim feuding. Spain had seen many foreign invaders before the Muslims stormed ashore in 711. The Phoenicians explored the coastal areas as early as 1100 B.C. and the Carthaginians established trading colonies about 650 B.C. The Romans conquered the entire Iberian Peninsula over a period of two centuries after taking Cadiz in the south in 206 B.C. Spanish literature, law, administration and language still show the Roman influence. They also built some 12,000 miles of highways, as well as aqueducts and bridges, and although many of the bridges still stand today, Rome's empire crumbled, and Spain was invaded by Germanic tribes from the north. First came the Vandals—from whom probably came the name Andalusia—and then, about AD 400, the Visigoths, who were also Germanic, but Christian. Compared to the Romans, who came before them, and the Muslims, who came after, the Visigoths left hardly a mark on Spain. They came with their families to settle, adopted the highly developed law and administration system they found there and gradually were integrated. Though they ruled for nearly three centuries the Visigoths contributed only about 200 words to the Spanish language, most related to dress and warfare. The Muslims, by contrast, left some 6,500 words—during their domination Arabic became the language of Spain—and a civilization far in advance of medieval Europe. Spaniards today frequently use the English expression, "Spain is different." They use it sarcastically to describe something they consider too folkloric for their taste or—until recently, at least—Spain's different political situation. But beyond that narrow context this magnificent country is different from the rest of Europe, and in my personal view, the proud centuries of Islamic rule in Spain are the main reason why. I see the history of Islamic Spain as centered around three Andalusian cities: Cordoba, Seville and Granada. And to me it is no coincidence that these are still the three most delightful cities in Spain. A Mini-Dictionary Originally the Arabic name for the entire Iberian Peninsula. It later came to mean only the regions under Muslim control. The area called Andalusia today comprises the southernmost region of modern Spain. First meant the Muslims of western North Africa. Then it came to mean people of mixed Arab and Berber origins. The definition here and generally has been widened to include the Muslims of Spain regardless of origin. And references to Moorish culture in Spain must include the Arabized Christians, Mozarabs, who lived with the Arab Muslims for centuries and helped give al-Andalus its unique character. Spanish Christians living under Muslim rule who, while unconverted, adopted Arabic language and culture. Spanish Muslims living under Christian rule after the reconquest: from the 11th to the 15th centuries. Muslims who converted to Christianity in the 15th and 16th centuries after the reconquest. The Christians were at first tolerant, but later exerted force to compel conversion. This article appeared on pages 2-3 of the September/October 1976 print edition of Saudi Aramco World. Check the Public Affairs Digital Image Archive for September/October 1976 images.
National Geographic Society Newsroom Inside the Incinerator: A Look Into Taipei City’s First Waste Facility First it was the smell. Then it was the tennis courts. Third, the sudden realization that they were prepared for visitors—really, really prepared for visitors.... It was around 1 o’clock in the afternoon when I arrived at the Neihu Incineration Plant (NIP). Taipei City Government had arranged my visit, and while I didn’t know what to expect, this time, I was a little more prepared—I brought a Taiwanese friend to help me translate. It was perfect, she was an environmental activist, her mom was a professional Chinese-English translator, and she had time to kill. I couldn’t have asked for a better combo. As we drove to the facility, I remember the air in the area suddenly becoming hazy. A golden hue seemed to weigh down on the sky and press against the buildings; everything appeared to operate in slow motion. The monster whose presence we could all feel—the incinerator. The Tour We met with the top two managers of the plant, who, unlike the rest of the workers, did not dress in white lab coats. Everything operated with scientific precision, from regulations on fly-over ash to strict controls on air pollution and worker safety and health. They led us on an extensive three-hour, behind-the-scenes tour, showing us everything including: • Inside the beast itself— the Incinerator • Dumping Grounds— the 9,000m3 refuse bunker capable of holding 900 tons of waste per day • Water Source— the wastewater recycling facility • Green Growth— community garden, where citizens can get free liquid fertilizer and food • Saving Wildlife— a refuge center, where they save and rehabilitate endangered species This was, of course, after we had been ushered into a conference room aligned with graphs, timelines, and physical material examples, and watched an introductory film on the history of NIP and its current operations in English. Like I said, they were ready. This slideshow requires JavaScript. Yet, despite all their organized efforts in running Taiwan’s “first large-scale, high-efficiency refuse incinerator,” there was one thing they couldn’t erase—the smell. A colorless odor wafted down the halls and stuck to the walls; no amount of fresh air from the open windows could combat its thick, pasty presence. I felt myself getting sick. The thought of the smell lodging itself into the workers’ clothing passed through my mind—it seemed to be only a matter of time until it permeated through their skin and seeped deep into their hair. And yet, given all the inevitable environmental consequences of incineration, I was surprised at the significant effort NIP staff were putting into their local community. Over the course of its 30-year history, the plant’s management expanded its operations to include several recycling and community service initiatives: 1. Public facilities— tennis courts, heated swimming pool, playground, skating rink, all free for the public to use at their leisure. (A quick note: I didn’t see anyone use the facilities while I was there. I was told they were out to lunch) 2. Bottom ash, remnants from the incineration process, are recycled into construction materials. However, there are still concerns that toxins from the bottom-ash remain in the materials, thus posing an environmental liability. 3. Public tours of the plant— Elementary school students are among their most-visited patrons. Crayon-colored stick figures, flowers, and squiggly mountains decorated the plant’s hallways as little “thank-yous” from their visitors. For staff, however, these drawings do more than just add a little light and color into the metallic workplace— they are powerful reminders who they are doing their work for: the next generation. Dealing with trash is inevitable, and given Taiwan’s small landmass, where only 20% of the island is inhabitable and the Taipei City’s density of people per kilometer is 9,956, the incinerator is ultimately placed in someone’s neighborhood. Far from the city center, but close to other residents, NIP stands tall as a marker of urbanization, technological modernization, and an attempt at social reconciliation with its community facilities. This slideshow requires JavaScript. Night Markets, Largest Plastics-Waste Generator On the list of interesting things thrown away, the manager recounted everything from massive fans completely jamming up his waste chutes, to stacks on stacks of fake RMB, USD, and orange paper money used in Buddhist celebrations, to chunks of building materials. But his biggest problem—plastic waste from the night markets. “Those plastics are not recyclable,” he explained, “the best option is for people not use plastic in the first place.” The Neihu Incineration plant is responsible for the collection and incineration of waste from Taipei’s six Northern districts, which includes Shilin (士林夜市), known for Taipei’s largest and most famous night market. Every night, plastic bags, wax bowls, and used chopsticks, as well as municipal (household) garbage, are sent to the facility from thousands of people who flock to these allies to enjoy cheap fried food. Plastics covered in food residuals cannot be recycled and therefore, must be burned. Even if a clean piece of plastic or paper with recycling potential were to be introduced into the waste stream, once it’s tainted by the other food-residual plastics, it loses its recycling capacity. Additionally, most plastics from night markets are made of ‘melamine,’ which cannot be melted and used to create new products, meaning by nature, they are non-recyclable. In June 2017, the Taipei Shilin Night Market Association passed a policy banning the use of melamine bowls and utensils in the B1 food court of the Shilin Night Market Building. While this is a positive step in the right direction, “B1” is merely one small part of a market that crisscrosses over 15 street blocks and hosts over 530 food vendors. Moreover, night markets, unlike other city public spaces, do not have recycling bins; all trash is thrown into large white plastic bags hung loosely on wooden racks at designated areas, usually located at main alleyway junctions or in the middle of long walkways. (Night markets (known in Chinese as 夜市, ye shi) for those of you who have never experienced one, are generally found in bustling, brightly-lit narrow alleyways tucked away from the main road. Some are simply one long alley filled with stands selling food, clothing or arcade games. Others, like Shilin, crisscross through multiple street blocks. There are 31 night markets operating every evening across Taipei. If you compound all the waste generated nightly, it’s pretty mind-blowing.) History and Policy Reduce is the first “R” of Taiwan’s Environmental Protection Administration’s (EPA) Zero Waste Policy, a shift in focus from “end-of-pipe treatment to source reduction and resource re-utilization.” (In case you’re curious, the Rs strategy includes: reduction, recovery, reuse, recycling, repair and redesign.) While current government efforts focus on “reducing at the source,” a policy aimed at reducing food waste by encouraging people to buy what they need and no more, NIP staff see “reduce” in a slightly different way—not use. To many people who operate in this field, recycling is a post-consumption last measure; the secret is just not to buy it. But of course, with urbanization comes increased convenience, and with single-use goods comes the underlying linear philosophy of take-make-dispose. How did incineration come to be the main method of Taiwan’s garbage disposal? In 1985, Taipei City Government’s Bureau of EnviroMENTAL Protection initiated a 10-year project to manage the city’s growing garbage disposal. Prior to 1984, “most people in Taiwan dumped their garbage randomly at different places,” which ultimately led to mass protests and growing health concerns. To effectively manage the disposal of waste, the federal government formulated the “Municipal Waste Disposal Plan” in 1984 that focused on landfills. But as land space is limited in Taiwan, soon the landfills were filled, and local people led numerous protests against the harmful health effects of living near the makeshift trash dumps. The government turned to incineration to solve the waste issue. Now, more than 96 percent of the trash is treated by incineration, according to the EPA’s Department of Waste Management. A reduction in overall waste consumption has also led to the “powering off” of one of Taipei’s 3 incinerators every month. While 36 incinerators were initially planned to be constructed (one per county), community protests, led by Taiwan’s Anti-Incinerator Alliance (TAIA), curbed the number at 24. TAIA, Taiwan Watch Institute and the Homemakers United Foundation were some of the key groups instrumental in shaping Taiwan’s notable recycling programs and Zero Waste Policy. This slideshow requires JavaScript. Hot Facts About the Neihu Incineration Plant • Taiwan #1: The Neihu Incinerator Plant was the “first incinerator to be planned, built and operated” under Taipei City’s plan, with operations in full swing by 1992. (There are currently 24 incinerator plants in operation across the island, with 3 specifically dedicated to Taipei City’s trash.) • 1/10: Volume of refuse (a.k.a “trash”) is reduced to one-tenth the original. Remaining bottom ash (the black sludge-like stuff that remains post-incineration) is disposed to landfill. • 850 – 1,050°C: Temperature inside the incinerator is kept constantly within 850~1050 degrees Celsius. • 3 days: The refuse bunker, where trash is first dumped post-collection, can store up to 3 days of collected garbage with a 9,000m3 capacity. • 100% self-sufficient: electricity for daily operations comes entirely from the incineration process. Incineration = heat, heat turns steam turbines = generate electricity = self-sufficient NIP. • Excess Sold: Taiwan Power Company and the city government sometimes purchase power from NIP when they run low on energy. Its “waste-to-energy” model takes heat from burning trash and converts it to electricity, where its then released on the island’s grid.” • Heated Pool: Recycled steam also heats a public swimming pool available for local residents. The Neihu Incineration Plant’s current chemical levels on the day of my visit. After our encounter, I was left with the impression that these people genuinely care about the environment and their community. They were the last line of defense in a process of unconscious consumptive destructiveness. Their strict air pollution controls, management of the fly and bottom ash, and attentiveness to the upkeep of the public facilities were all indicators that they too were 環保人 (huánbǎo rén), people who cared about and protected the environment. Given the pollution effects from burning and the dumping of ash post-incineration into landfill, it’s easy to believe that people who work in the incineration industry don’t care about the environment. But it’s a Catch 22—if there’s no system, waste just builds up. You run the risk of the spread of more illness and bacteria. Everyday, millions of people are using and disposing, using and disposing; industry is creating and disposing, creating and disposing. The massive amount of waste generated from market exchanges does not stop. So what do you do? The people who work in this industry are the last line of defense—the forgotten warriors of our consumptive habits. Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Taipei City Government for arranging my visit to the Neihu Incineration Plant (NIP), and the NIP managers and staff for their gracious hospitality. I greatly appreciated the amount of time they spent with me and their willingness to answer all of my questions. While I recognize that working in waste management and incineration is inherently a ‘dirty industry’ due to the nature of trash, I was amazed at how everything operated with scientific precision and fine attention to detail; the seriousness and thoughtful intention behind how every action affected the immediate environment and the staff’s quality of life was very apparent and much appreciated. Thank you again for the opportunity! About National Geographic Society Meet the Author Lilly Sedaghat Lillygol Sedaghat is a multi-media environmental journalist and speaker focusing on the intersection among science, systems, and people. Previously, she was a Fulbright–National Geographic Digital Storyteller documenting Taiwan’s waste management system, plastics recycling and circular economy initiatives. She is an active contributor to National Geographic's Planet or Plastic? global campaign and creates music videos, info-graphics, and maps to transform people's perceptions of trash from something disposable to something valuable. Lillygol has spoken at UN World Environment Day, Influence Nation Summit DC, and National Geographic on her research. She completed a B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley and was named 5 Under 25: Leaders in U.S.-China Relations.
ASIC chip technology is renewable energy’s future As renewable forms of energy production see major efficiency gains, there’s a growing question of what to do when a solar array or windmill produces more power than is immediately needed. Storing the energy in the grid or in batteries can be costly, inefficient, or impossible, so it’s commonplace to simply cut off energy production—a practice known as “curtailment.” By installing chips known as “ASICs,” the renewable energy industry may be able to use this “excess” energy as an additional revenue source by using it to secure the Bitcoin network, which would convert the electricity to money at market value in a process called “mining.” This article is intended to educate the reader about the magnitude of the curtailment problem focusing on China, briefly discuss options for dealing with curtailment and outline the potential benefits of using ASIC chips as a tool to help mitigate future curtailment. What is Variable Renewable Energy? Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) is a renewable energy source that is not necessarily available when a user might need it. This is in contrast to on-demand power generated by a nuclear or coal power plant that is available any time. The two most common forms of VRE are solar and wind. Solar is the fastest-growing VRE source in the world as of 2017, with China leading global solar panel deployment. Solar curtailment in China was about 6-7 percent in 2017, meaning they purposely shut down the panels 6-7 percent of the time due to overproduction. Wind is the next largest source of VRE, with China once again leading the world for wind deployment. Wind curtailment in China was 12 percent in 2017. Hydroelectric energy can be considered at least seasonally variable, with curtailment in China reaching 31 TWh in 2016, or around 2-3 percent. How big of a problem is curtailment? China produced 188 TWh of solar energy in 2017 (1.9 percent of the total energy it produced) and on average curtailed 6-7 percent, or about 11 TWh. This number does not include a reduction in solar panel efficiency as a result of air pollutants, which means the total inefficiency of solar was higher. Also, certain areas in China had curtailment rates as high as 22 percent. Multiple factors such as overproduction, transmission congestion, or lack of transmission access cause VRE curtailment. At the average Chinese electricity price of $.08/KWh (the U.S. averages around ~$.13/KWh) 11 TWh of solar electricity is worth about $880 million, although wholesale electricity is generally sold to the grid at a lower rate (in the U.S., it’s about $.03-.04/KWh). At the U.S. wholesale rate, 11 TWh would be worth $330-$440 million. China curtailed 12 percent of its wind power in 2017, or roughly 41.9 TWh. With our estimate of $.08/KWh, the excess wind in China in 2017 was worth $3.34 billion. Even if they were able to sell the energy at a price of $.001/KWh, China would be losing out on $41.9 million of electricity by turning the windmills off. China Wind Curtailment 2010-2016 To put this into perspective, the amount of wind and solar energy curtailed in China in 2017 could have powered the entire country of Ireland for two years. If we add the curtailed hydroelectric energy from 2016, it would’ve increased to nearly 4 years. Europe has a problem with VRE curtailment as well. Germany curtailed 3.7 TWh in 2016. The average cost of electricity in Germany in 2016 was EUR .29/KWh, which meant that had they been able to sell the energy at the average price instead of shutting off their power, they could have made EUR 1.073 billion ($1.2 billion). California VRE Curtailment Stats 2016-2019 Curtailment of VRE in California can occasionally reach up to 20-30 percent during certain times, with an overall annual curtailment rate of 1-3 percent (and increasing) from 2015-2017, or up to .3 TWh. In Q1 2018, California curtailed .13 TWh, losing out on around $16.8 million if they could have sold the electricity for $.13/KWh, or $3.9-$5.2 million at the wholesale price. What are some current solutions? There is a lot of money being left on the table, although the price of electricity would be lower than our estimates if it was produced and used more efficiently. The two most common solutions for curtailment are to use batteries to store the excess electricity and to improve grid management, like moving the electricity to sell in other countries. Batteries are expensive, require a lot of resources to construct, and lose anywhere from 10-25 percent of the electricity to heat during charging. The losses of efficiency for transporting electricity is estimated to be around 8-15 percent. What are ASIC Chips? ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit. They are computer chips designed to perform a single function as efficiently as possible. SHA256 ASICs are a possible additional solution to help reduce VRE curtailment. SHA256 ASIC chips consume electricity and produce SHA256 hashes, which are used to secure the Bitcoin network and are paid by the network in Bitcoin for the work accomplished. A single Bitmain S9 ASIC consumes 1.375 KWh of electricity at an efficiency rate of ~.1 Joules/Gigahash. In 2017, the cost of a single S9 ASIC chip was $2,000. These chips and the Bitcoin network are designed to convert the cheapest electricity available directly into money, making them a fantastic candidate to help reduce VRE curtailment. The Bitcoin network will pay for all of the otherwise curtailed electricity it can get. Math Time This section will attempt to calculate the low-end value that could have been captured from the curtailed solar/wind energy in China in 2017 using ASIC chips to secure the Bitcoin Network. 1. Every drop of curtailed electricity is instead burned with ASICs, which means every VRE has ASICs installed nearby. The ASICs are used sporadically only for the otherwise curtailable energy 2. The BTC generated is converted immediately to USD. Holding BTC longer in 2017 would have yielded a higher USD value. 3. 1 percent fee goes to the BTC mining pool operators. These operators buy the hashpower from ASICs and do administrative work for a 1 percent fee. They pay out proportionally to the work accomplished by the ASIC. 4. Purchasing price of ASIC in 2017 was $2,000 for 14 Terahash/second (TH/S). 5. Average Hashrate of BTC in 2017 was 8.4927 Exahash/second (1.6597 at the beginning of the year, 14.3257 at the end). 6. The average price of BTC in 2017 was $2,660. This price ignores the massive price spike from October 2017 to December 2017, which would have driven the average price up to around $10,000/BTC. We’re also ignoring the profit from transaction fees. 7. Cost of electricity is 0 because it would have been curtailed and we’re assuming the power companies are running their own ASICs. They’re selling electricity directly to the BTC network. If we were able to burn all 11TWh of curtailed solar electricity in China, we can follow the below steps to see the value of USD we could have generated. Remember, the above are conservative assumptions used in an attempt to underestimate the profit. First, let’s calculate the profitability of a single ASIC chip running for an hour. BTC issuance per second in 2017 was 12.5/600, or .021 BTC/second. This gives us the profit per hour 1 ASIC chip would yield, ignoring the investment cost and given our inputs, which works out to about $.32/hr. Next, let’s find the total hours we need to run the ASICs to burn all of the electricity. We’re using 1.375 KWh per ASIC. Finally, we can plug ASIC hours and the profit per hour per ASIC into the below equation to figure out the total profit subtracting the cost of purchasing the ASICs and using them for the entire year. We wouldn’t burn all of the ASIC hours at once. With an investment of $1.8 billion in ASIC chips in January 2017, profits from the curtailed solar energy in China for the year would have been around $778,171,945. Profits from the 41.8 TWh of curtailed wind electricity at an investment of $6.9 billion in ASICs would have been somewhere in the realm of $2.96 Billion. For reference, China is planning to spend $360 billion on renewables by 2020. Investing $5 billion into ASIC chips would certainly have inflated the overall hashrate and reduced the profitability, but I tried to account for this by using overly conservative estimates for the other parameters and by assuming the ASICs were used sporadically when there was curtailable energy instead of running them constantly. Taking this formula and applying it to today’s network hashrate (45.67 Exahash) and BTC price ($3,436.89) while purchasing and using 2017 ASICs (14 TH/S) at today’s price of $300 per S9 ASIC yields an estimated profit of $351,851,722 off of 11 TWh of curtailed solar electricity, and an estimated profit of $1.34 billion from 41.8 TWh of curtailed wind electricity. Calculating the past values of what VRE producers could have made had they integrated ASIC chips is inherently inexact, but the takeaways are as follows. It appears profitable to integrate ASIC chips with VRE sources at the time of deployment – by building them into solar panel installations, for example – to help offload surplus energy instead of curtailing it. Start by predicting the maximum curtailable electricity per VRE in KWh at a given time and work backwards to figure out how many ASICs to include using the formula above. While the hashrate of Bitcoin has increased and the price has decreased in 2018, the price of a 14 TH/S ASIC chip has dropped substantially to somewhere around $300-$400 and the price of the high end ASIC chips which get 28 TH/S is around $1,000. There is a substantial amount of money to be made by using ASICs powered by VRE instead of curtailing the energy. That said, there are serious regulatory and bureaucratic barriers to installing ASICs. At least in the U.S., nearly all VRE producers have agreements with the grid for it to pay producers for the curtailed electricity, but this compounds the problem and makes overall energy production even less efficient and more expensive for consumers. Additionally, the reliability of ASICs and the costs of procuring such a large number of them could be difficult as the technology continues to advance and the suppliers compete to hit the technological limit of chip manufacturing (currently around 7nm). With properly integrated ASIC chips, VREs would become even more efficient and competitive compared to polluting energy sources, increasing the pace at which we transition global energy production to cleaner methods, decreasing the price of energy further for consumers, and further reducing our CO2 emissions. Phil Geiger is an independent Bitcoin economist, project manager, and business developer featured on Medium’s top Bitcoin writer list. His goal is to be the nudge people need to try Bitcoin for the first time by teaching the economics that describe its growth. The post ASIC chip technology is renewable energy’s future appeared first on The Block. ASIC chip technology is renewable energy’s future written by Contributor Network @ February 13, 2019 Contributor Network Comments are closed.
aviation weather Aviation Weather And Why Pilots Use It For most people, weather is just a part of everyday life. They wake up, check the forecast, and go about their day. For pilots however, this is a very different story. The entire life of a pilot revolves around the weather. Pilots must have a basic understanding of how weather works and be able to implement that understanding in the real world. In many cases, weather can be a matter of life and death for pilots. This is why weather in regards to aviation (aka aviation weather), is so important. But what is it and why do pilots have to be so good at weather when we have meteorologists? You can find all of this and more in today’s article! What Is Aviation Weather? aviation weather In simple terms, aviation weather is just a form of meteorology specifically in regards to aviation. But it goes much deeper than that. To most people, aviation weather may seem more like a form of science. While this is true in one sense, I would argue that aviation weather is much more of a skill than it is a science. Aviation weather entails having a basic to intermediate understanding of weather and how it works, having the ability to implement this knowledge in the cockpit, and being able to make go/no-go decisions based on weather patterns. Aviation weather is so much more than knowing how weather affects flight. and As with any skill, aviation weather takes a long time to master. However, this does not take away from its importance. Why Is Aviation Weather Important For Pilots? When it comes to the importance of aviation weather, there a several situations in which being skillful in aviation weather can mean life or death for pilots. For large, heavy aircraft weather is still a factor, but at this point airliners can essentially fly through any type of weather and be fine. Weather is much more of a factor when it comes to smaller, general aviation aircraft. Even in minor turbulence, small planes tend to get tossed around. Now imagine flying a small GA aircraft through a thunderstorm. A death sentence. Unfortunately, many pilots have lost there lives at the hands of nasty weather and many times, it’s due to the pilots not realizing how powerful of a force mother nature can be. According to the NTSB “While National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) reports most commonly find human error to be the direct accident cause, weather is a primary contributing factor in 23 percent of all aviation accidents. The total weather impact is an estimated national cost of $3 billion for accident damage and injuries, delays, and unexpected operating costs.” ~ Gloria Kulesa This quote came from an extremely interesting document that can be found here! It explains GA accidents caused by weather in great detail. I would highly suggest checking it out! All of this to say, aviation weather is very important for all pilots. Being able to make good, educated go/no-go decisions can, in some cases, be the difference between life and death. Check out my last post on fighter jets you can buy today! Fighter Jet For Sale! 6 Fighter Jets You Can Buy Right Now One thought on “Aviation Weather And Why Pilots Use It Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published.
SSH is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. The standard TCP port for SSH is 22. The best known example application is for remote login to computer systems by users. The most visible application of the protocol is for access to shell accounts on Unix-like operating systems, but it sees some limited use on Windows as well. In 2015, Microsoft announced that they would include native support for SSH in a future release. SSH was designed as a replacement for Telnet and for unsecured remote shell protocols such as the Berkeley rlogin, rsh, and rexec protocols. Those protocols send information, notably passwords, in plaintext, rendering them susceptible to interception and disclosure using packet analysis. The encryption used by SSH is intended to provide confidentiality and integrity of data over an unsecured network, such as the Internet. VyOS 1.1 supported login as user root. This has been removed due to tighter security in VyOS 1.2. set service ssh port <port> Enabling SSH only requires you to specify the port <port> you want SSH to listen on. By default, SSH runs on port 22. set service ssh listen-address <address> Specify IPv4/IPv6 listen address of SSH server. Multiple addresses can be defined. set service ssh ciphers <cipher> Define allowed ciphers used for the SSH connection. A number of allowed ciphers can be specified, use multiple occurrences to allow multiple ciphers. List of supported ciphers: 3des-cbc, aes128-cbc, aes192-cbc, aes256-cbc, aes128-ctr, aes192-ctr, aes256-ctr, arcfour128, arcfour256, arcfour, blowfish-cbc, cast128-cbc set service ssh disable-password-authentication Disable password based authentication. Login via SSH keys only. This hardens security! set service ssh disable-host-validation Disable the host validation through reverse DNS lookups - can speedup login time when reverse lookup is not possible. set service ssh macs <mac> Specifies the available MAC algorithms. The MAC algorithm is used in protocol version 2 for data integrity protection. Multiple algorithms can be provided. List of supported MACs: hmac-md5, hmac-md5-96, hmac-ripemd160, hmac-sha1, hmac-sha1-96, hmac-sha2-256, hmac-sha2-512,,,,,,,,,,, set service ssh access-control <allow \| deny> <group \| user> <name> Add access-control directive to allow or deny users and groups. Directives are processed in the following order of precedence: deny-users, allow-users, deny-groups and allow-groups. set service ssh client-keepalive-interval <interval> Specify timeout interval for keepalive message in seconds. set service ssh key-exchange <kex> Specify allowed KEX algorithms. List of supported algorithms: diffie-hellman-group1-sha1, diffie-hellman-group14-sha1, diffie-hellman-group14-sha256, diffie-hellman-group16-sha512, diffie-hellman-group18-sha512, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256, ecdh-sha2-nistp256, ecdh-sha2-nistp384, ecdh-sha2-nistp521, curve25519-sha256 and set service ssh loglevel <quiet \| fatal \| error \| info \| verbose> Set the sshd log level. The default is info. set service ssh vrf <name> Specify name of the VRF instance. Protects host from brute-force attacks against SSH. Log messages are parsed, line-by-line, for recognized patterns. If an attack, such as several login failures within a few seconds, is detected, the offending IP is blocked. Offenders are unblocked after a set interval. set service ssh dynamic-protection Allow ssh dynamic-protection. set service ssh dynamic-protection allow-from <address \| prefix> Whitelist of addresses and networks. Always allow inbound connections from these systems. set service ssh dynamic-protection block-time <sec> Block source IP in seconds. Subsequent blocks increase by a factor of 1.5 The default is 120. set service ssh dynamic-protection detect-time <sec> Remember source IP in seconds before reset their score. The default is 1800. set service ssh dynamic-protection threshold <sec> Block source IP when their cumulative attack score exceeds threshold. The default is 30. restart ssh Restart the SSH daemon process, the current session is not affected, only the background daemon is restarted. generate ssh server-key Re-generated the public/private keyportion which SSH uses to secure connections. Already learned known_hosts files of clients need an update as the public key will change. generate ssh client-key /path/to/private_key Re-generated a known pub/private keyfile which can be used to connect to other services (e.g. RPKI cache). vyos@vyos:~$ generate ssh client-key /config/auth/id_rsa_rpki Generating public/private rsa key pair. Your identification has been saved in /config/auth/id_rsa_rpki. Your public key has been saved in /config/auth/ The key fingerprint is: SHA256:XGv2PpdOzVCzpmEzJZga8hTRq7B/ZYL3fXaioLFLS5Q vyos@vyos The key's randomart image is: \| oo \| \| ..o \| \| . o.o.. o.\| \| o+ooo o.o\| \| Eo* =.o \| \| o = +.o+ \| \| = o .o.o\| \| o * +.o+.+\| \| =.. o=.oo\| Two new files /config/auth/id_rsa_rpki and /config/auth/ will be created. generate public-key-command name <username> path <location> Generate the configuration mode commands to add a public key for Key Based Authentication. <location> can be a local path or a URL pointing at a remote file. Supported remote protocols are FTP, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP/SFTP and TFTP. alyssa@vyos:~$ generate public-key-command name alyssa path s # To add this key as an embedded key, run the following commands: set system login user alyssa authentication public-keys key AAA... set system login user alyssa authentication public-keys type ssh-rsa ben@vyos:~$ generate public-key-command user ben path ~/.ssh/ set system login user ben authentication public-keys ben@vyos key AAA... set system login user ben authentication public-keys ben@vyos type ssh-dss
Skip to main content Causes of a Red Tongue in Dogs Red Tongue in Dogs A red tongue in dogs can be alarming, considering that the normal color of a dog's tongue is generally for the most part pink. The only exceptions to having a pink tongue are just a few dog breeds like the Chinese shar-pei and Chow Chow (or any of their mixes) which are known for having a distinctive bluish/lavender colored tongue. Getting familiar with the normal color of your dog's tongue and gums is important so that you can quickly recognize early signs of problems. If your dog develops a red tongue, it is best to have the issue investigated by your vet so to exclude several potential medical conditions some of which can be even quite serious. red tongue in dogs A Red Tongue in Dogs A dog's tongue is a muscular organ that is normally kept moist by saliva and is richly supplied by lots of nerves and blood vessels. Blood supply to the dog's tongue is mainly obtained from the lingual artery, an artery that branches off the external carotid artery (as seen in the picture ob the left). Secondary blood supply to the tongue is obtained from the tonsillar branch of the facial artery and the ascending pharyngeal artery. When an organ is well supplied by blood, it is known as being vascular. While a dog's skin and coat colors are mostly due to the presence of melanin, a pigment responsible for giving color, the tongue for the most part lacks pigment. Unless the dog in question is a Chinese shar-pei or chow chow, (which have a touch of added pigment in their tongues) the pink color of the tongue is mostly due to the presence of blood running through it. [otw_is sidebar="otw-sidebar-1"] A healthy, bubble gum pink is therefore the normal color, but if a dog develops a red tongue, then this is quite abnormal. A red tongue in a dog is medically defined as being "injected," explains veterinarian Dr. Michael Salking. What this means is that the tongue becomes red due to an abnormal amount of blood flowing through it. Causes of a Red Tongue in Dogs dog ingested Neosporin In the case of a red tongue in dogs, it's important to rule out several potential medical problems. In some cases, the red tongue may be caused by high blood pressure, also medically known as hypertension. High blood pressure means that the force of the blood against the artery walls is too high. This increased flow may therefore cause excessive blood to accumulate in the dog's tongue causing it to become more vascularized than normal and therefore more red due to the increased red blood cells in circulation. Another worrisome scenario is a dog with a red tongue who is suffering from sepsis. Sepsis is an overwhelming, life threatening infection. Affected dogs may develop hyperdynamic signs associated with an abnormally increased circulatory volume. The affected dog's heart would be racing, there would be a fever and the gums and tongue may turn red during this phase. Obviously septic dogs are very ill and require immediate attention. Scroll to Continue Discover More Screenshot 2022-08-08 175723 Discover 12 Official State Dogs Did you know? There are 12 States that have designated an official State dog. Following are several States that have elected their own State Dog. Is your State one of them? Let's discover. Lime sulfur may be used to treat skin conditions in dogs Can Humidity Cause Hot Spots in Dogs? Knowing whether humidity causes hot spots in dogs is something important to consider. Perhaps you're thinking about moving to a very humid place, but you're wondering if your dog will be prone to this annoying skin condition Screenshot 2022-07-20 134750 Why Do Puppies Act Hyper in the Evening? Many puppies act hyper at night causing dog owners to wonder what must be going on in those little doggy minds. Discover several reasons. Dehydration may also cause the dog's tongue to turn a darker shade of pink The degree of "pinkness" of a dog's tongue, indeed, depends upon the level of hydration, explains veterinarian Dr. Michael Salkin. A tongue that is purple or assumes a bluish tint may be indicative of poor oxygenation due to underlying heart problems and requires immediate vet attention. Affected dogs may be breathing fast or hard and the lungs may be filling with fluid. A purple tongue is alarming because it can lead to cardiac arrest if the dog's oxygen levels happen to drop too low, explains veterinarian Dr. Drew. [otw_is sidebar="otw-sidebar-1"] Other possible causes of a red tongue in dogs may include carbon monoxide poisoning, exposure to toxins, allergies, stomach torsion, overheating as seen in a dog who has been exercising strenuously (red tongue in this case may be temporary), licking abrasive surfaces or consuming something leeching a red dye. In some cases, a red tongue or oral mucous membranes with red dots may be a sign of heat stroke. Suspect heat stroke if your dog has been in hot weather and his rectal temperature is higher than normal (above 103° F or 39° C). "Heat stroke can lead to increased viscosity (due to dehydration) and hypercoagulation of the blood and widespread organ failure." ~Dr. John, veterinarian. Causes of dog hallucinations At the Vet's Office Because the causes of a red tongue in dogs can be various, it is best to see the vet. An emergency vet should be sought at once if it is after hours and the dog is acting sickly. Once at the vet's office, the vet will ask several questions and may assess the dog's vitals, checking the dog's respiratory rate, heart beat (checking for heart murmurs) and the color and perfusion of blood to the gums. Emergency situations such as heat stroke require the dog to be stabilized and monitored. Dogs affected by heatstroke will receive intensive care and blood tests for evaluating clotting parameters. This is to monitor for a serious complication of heat stroke known as Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation. In non-emergency situations the vet will inspect the tongue. The redness at times may be a sign of irritation caused by trauma. A dog's tongue may get irritated when a dog chews on a bone or rough toys, or from friction when licking the carpet. Exposure to chemicals, ice cubes, an electrical burn, burns from hot food or water can be other culprits, explains veterinarian Dr. Ralston. Treatment of a red tongue in dogs varies based on the underlying cause. The vet may have to run several diagnostic tests to rule out or confirm the trigger. Tests may include bloodwork specifically a CBC (complete blood count), chest x-rays and other tests the vet may deem necessary based on the dog's medical history and presentation of symptoms. In some cases, especially when the dog appears bright, healthy, happy and alert, the vet may not find an underlying cause despite the onset of red tongue. In some dogs, a darker pink color may be just be a normal anatomical feature. [otw_is sidebar="otw-sidebar-2"] Related Articles
Check out a free preview of the full Introduction to D3.js course: The "Translate & Position" Lesson is part of the full, Introduction to D3.js course featured in this preview video. Here's what you'd learn in this lesson: Shirley explores the translate() method of transformation, and explains that using translate() modifies the coordinates of that element, and adds that translate is useful when positioning an element with precision. Get Unlimited Access Now Transcript from the "Translate & Position" Lesson >> I want to take us through, A little explanation of SVG transform and in particular the translate command. So in SVG when we set translate on an element, what we're actually doing is we're actually setting the coordinate system of that particular element. So let's try kind of seeing what that looks like. [00:00:32] [COUGH] Let's play around with these sliders and see kind of try and get an intuitive feel of what that means. So we have these two rectangles. One of them has a transform on it and the other one does not. So this one does not have the transform and this one does have the transform. [00:01:00] And let's try, so, You can see that as I'm moving the x and y around, the whole coordinate system for this rectangle is moving around. And then alternatively, if we update the x and y position of this rectangle, then, You can see that even though the x y positions are exactly the same, these two squares are at completely different places in our SVG. [00:01:45] Even though it's the same SVG container, just applying this transform translate will change where both of these squares are. And the reason why I wanted to bring that up is because you might have noticed that in our example we used a translate on our paths and translate or transform and translate is very, very useful. [00:02:12] Because then what we can do is for our define attribute, our d attribute instead of having to write your pedal path to be let's say this is position 300 by 200 or something. So instead of having to write your pedal path as starting at 300 200 and then going down to 350 200 or something like that. [00:02:41] Instead of having to do all of that calculation, you can just pop in this translate and then it will be positioned exactly where you want it to. And you can keep that original kind of d attribute with the string that you've already created. So, and very, very helpful. [00:02:58] And we end up using the transform attribute a lot to be able to kind of manipulate these SVG elements and their underlying coordinate system. So make sure to kind of play around so that you have a good grasp on what's happening with this underneath the hood. And also, I'm just really proud of this little interaction. [00:03:23] And so, yeah. So if not for nothing else, please just play around with this so that I feel, [LAUGH] I don't know, I feel there was good effort put in for this interaction.
For other uses, see Cadenza (disambiguation). Cadenza indication from Beethoven's Piano Concerto in C minor: fermata over rest indicates beginning, fermata over shake indicates close.[1] Play Cadenza indication from the first movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in B major, K. 595.[2] Play The I6 VI progression at the cadenza is typical of the Classical concerto.[2] Cadenza ad libitum in Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Written-out cadenza from Mozart's K. 398 (end of Variation 6) demonstrates the often unmetered quality of cadenzas[3] Play Cadenza in Mozart's Violin Concerto K. 271a, III.[4] Play pause or Play written out cadenza In music, a cadenza (from Italian: cadenza [kaˈdɛntsa], meaning cadence; plural, cadenze [kaˈdɛntse]) is, generically, an improvised or written-out ornamental passage played or sung by a soloist or soloists, usually in a "free" rhythmic style, and often allowing for virtuosic display. During this time the accompaniment will rest, or sustain a note or chord. Thus an improvised cadenza is indicated in written notation by a fermata in all parts. A cadenza usually will occur over the final or penultimate note in a piece, or over the final or penultimate note in an important subsection of a piece. It can also be found before a final coda or ritornello.[2] In concerti The term cadenza often refers to a portion of a concerto in which the orchestra stops playing, leaving the soloist to play alone in free time (without a strict, regular pulse) and can be written or improvised, depending on what the composer specifies. Sometimes, the cadenza will include small parts for other instruments besides the soloist; an example is in Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3, where a solo flute, clarinet and horn are used over rippling arpeggios in the piano. The cadenza normally occurs near the end of the first movement, though it can be at any point in a concerto. An example is Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, where in the first five minutes a cadenza is used. The cadenza is usually the most elaborate and virtuosic part that the solo instrument plays during the whole piece. At the end of the cadenza, the orchestra re-enters, and generally finishes off the movement on their own, or, less often, with the solo instrument. As a vocal flourish The cadenza was originally, and remains, a vocal flourish improvised by a performer to elaborate a cadence in an aria. It was later used in instrumental music, and soon became a standard part of the concerto. Originally, it was improvised in this context as well, but during the 19th century, composers began to write cadenzas out in full. Third parties also wrote cadenzas for works in which it was intended by the composer to be improvised, so the soloist could have a well formed solo that they could practice in advance. Some of these have become so widely played and sung that they are effectively part of the standard repertoire, as is the case with Joseph Joachim's cadenza for Johannes Brahms' Violin Concerto, Beethoven's set of cadenzas for Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 20, and Estelle Liebling's edition of cadenzas for operas such as Donizetti's's La fille du Régiment and Lucia di Lammermoor. In jazz Perhaps the most notable deviations from this tendency towards written (or absent) cadenzas are to be found in jazz, most often at the end of a ballad, though cadenzas in this genre are usually brief. Saxophonist John Coltrane, however, usually improvised an extended cadenza when performing "I Want To Talk About You", in which he showcased his predilections for scalar improvisation and multiphonics. The recorded examples of "I Want To Talk About You" (Live at Birdland and Afro-Blue Impressions) are approximately 8 minutes in length, with Coltrane's unaccompanied cadenza taking up approximately 3 minutes. More sardonically, Jazz critic Martin Williams once described Coltrane's improvisations on "Africa/Brass" as "essentially extended cadenzas to pieces that never get played."[5] Equally noteworthy is saxophonist Sonny Rollins' shorter improvised cadenza at the close of "Three Little Words" (Sonny Rollins on Impulse!). Cadenzas are also found in instrumental solos with piano or other accompaniment, where they are placed near the beginning or near the end or sometimes in both places (e.g. "The Maid of the Mist," cornet solo by Herbert L. Clarke, or a more modern example: the end of "Think of Me", where Christine Daaé sings a short but involved cadenza, in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera). Notable examples of cadenzas Composed cadenzas Composers who have written cadenzas for other performers in works not their own include: 1. 1 2 3 4 5 Sir George Grove (1904). Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 1, p.442. John Alexander Fuller-Maitland, ed. Macmillan Company. 2. 1 2 3 Randel, Don Michael (2003). The Harvard Dictionary of Music, p.132. ISBN 978-0-674-01163-2. 3. Kinderman, William (2006). Mozart's Piano Music, Ex.4.2. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199880164. 4. Kostka, Stefan and Payne, Dorothy (1995). Tonal Harmony, p.143. ISBN 0073000566. 5. Reitzes, David (1998). "A Love Supreme: God Breathes Through John Coltrane". Retrieved 1 May 2010. 6. Jerome Kohl, Karlheinz Stockhausen: Zeitmaße, Landmarks in Music Since 1950, edited by Wyndham Thomas (Abingdon, Oxon; London; New York: Routledge, 2017): 89–121. ISBN 978-0-7546-5334-9. 7. "Manual of Cadenzas & Cadences", Creighton's Collection. 8. Puritz, Gerd. "Schumann and Strauss". Elisabeth Schumann, A Biography. Grant & Cutler Ltd, London. Retrieved 5 September 2012. 9. "Scores of Friedrich Wuhrer", 10. Rachmaninoff plays Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. YouTube. 2007-07-27. Retrieved 2014-02-28. 11. Rapaport, Aaron (2012). "An American Encounter with Polystylism: Schnittke's Cadenzas to Beethoven (Master's thesis)". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Retrieved 19 July 2012. 12. " Further reading External links
Is boiled eggs healthier than fried? Is boiled eggs healthier than fried? Boiled eggs are more nutritious than other types of eggs because they are cooked without oil or butter, which adds additional calories and fat to the finished product. In comparison, one large fried egg contains 90 calories and 6.83 grams of fat, of which 2 grams are saturated. Is it cruel to boil a live lobster? Most scientists and animal activists agree that it is cruel to boil a live lobster. Lobsters do not have an advanced nervous system, but they do understand how to stay away from anything that may hurt them. Placing them in boiling water will cause them to feel pain until the second they die. Can you boil frozen chicken breast without thawing? That’s why I started wondering if it was possible (and safe!) to cook frozen chicken breast without even thawing it first. … Great news, according to the USDA, it is totally safe — you just have to keep in mind that frozen chicken will take about one and a half times longer to cook than thawed chicken. Is boiled eggs healthier than fried? – Related Questions How long do you boil 2 lobsters? Boil lobsters for 10 to 20 min, depending on size: Note the time at which the water comes to a boil again. From that point, boil the lobsters for 10-20 minutes or longer, depending on the size of the lobster. 10-13 minutes for 1 lb lobster, 12-18 minutes for a 1 1/2 pound lobster, 18-23 minutes for a 2-3 pound lobster. How to cook frozen prawns boil? To cook frozen prawns, start by setting a small pot of water to boil over high heat. When the water starts to bubble, remove it from the heat, stir in the prawns, and cover the pot. Leave it for 5-6 minutes until the prawns are pink and opaque. What is boiler drum internals? Boiler steam drum acts as reservoir which provides necessary head for circulation of water through evaporation zone. … Boiler steam drum has own feed water storage capacity it change according to the design of plant requirement. Why do amides have higher boiling points than amines? However, amides generally have higher boiling points than carboxylic acids with similar molar mass, particularly primary and secondary amides. This can be explained by two reasons: Primary amides have two hydrogen atoms bound to a nitrogen which allows them to form more hydrogen bonds than carboxylic acids. Can you boil eggs in a ziploc bag? Crack the eggs into the Ziploc bag and put the pot of water on the heating source to boil. … The more water there is, the longer it will take for the water to boil and for you to progress to Step 3 so you can be that much closer to devouring your delicious breakfast. How long do you boil raviolis? Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add ravioli in batches and wait until they float to the top. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes after that. Transfer to a colander using a slotted spoon. What is the white part of the boiled egg called? The egg white is known as the albumen, which comes from albus, the Latin word for “white.” Four alternating layers of thick and thin albumen contain approximately 40 different proteins, the main components of the egg white in addition to water. How to make sure eggs are hard boiled? Should i boil canned soup? Canned soup is already cooked. You just have to make it hot. The best method is the one that requires the least amount of clean up, in this instance. When to stop boiling baby bottle water? For babies more than six months old, boiling tap water is not necessary. Boiling tap water doesn’t change the amount of fluoride in it. How many minutes do you leave the water boiling water? Bring water to a rolling boil for at least one minute. At altitudes above 5,000 feet (1,000 meters), boil water for three minutes. Let water cool naturally and store it in clean containers with covers. How long should you boil 1 cup of rice? What happens when water heats up to boiling water vapor? When water is heated it evaporates, which means it turns into water vapor and expands. At 100℃ it boils, thus rapidly evaporating. And at boiling point, the invisible gas of steam is created. The opposite of evaporation is condensation, which is when water vapor condenses back into tiny droplets of water. How long to boil water to get rid of chlorine? What is good for boils? You can make a warm compress by soaking a washcloth in warm water and squeezing out the excess moisture. When the boil starts draining, wash it with an antibacterial soap until all the pus is gone and clean with rubbing alcohol. Apply a medicated ointment (topical antibiotic) and a bandage. Can you reheat boiled potatoes and mash them? If you are reheating them in the oven, stir in the stock and butter pieces, then spread the potatoes out in a baking dish. Reheat at 350˚F for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the potatoes reach 165˚F. Another nice thing about leftover mashed potatoes is that you can use them as a blank canvas and add in other ingredients. What temperature does water boil on the moon? The Moon has virtually no atmosphere and the temperature on lunar surfaces can get up to 123 degrees Celsius (253 Fahrenheit) during a lunar day – high enough to boil away any water. Can you boil cleaning products? Jill Michels, managing director of the Palmetto Poison Center, says boiling cleaning products on the stove isn’t a good idea. “Cleaning products have chemicals in them that aren’t meant to be boiled,” Michels said. “When you boil them, they’re vaporized into the air and it could cause a lot of irritation for people. Can i refrigerate my hot hard boiled eggs? Although it is perfectly safe to place freshly boiled eggs in the fridge while they are still hot, you may want to allow them to cool slightly to reduce the disruption to the fridge’s internal temperature. Ensure that eggs are placed in the fridge within an hour of cooking them. … Once cool, store the eggs in the fridge. Leave a Comment Your email address will not be published.
Downfall of the Pièce Montée Below we talked about how the pièce montée art form found new life in post-revolutionary Paris, particularly when practiced by Antonin Carême. That Carême took the “mounted piece” to new heights of sophistication and artistry is beyond dispute. However it’s also beyond dispute that even as Carême continued to produce one pièce montée masterpiece after another, the heyday of grand centerpiece was coming to an end. For changing politics were also bringing about a broader change in the way people ate. In the glory days of the French aristocracy (and European aristocracy generally), formal dining occurred around grand tables. Food was brought in four or five huge services, from which diners served themselves. A single service could comprise a dozen or more items. First service consisted of soups, hors d’oeuvres and lighter meat dishes. Second service was generally more meat, particularly any grand preparations (known as pièces de résistance). Third service focused on vegetables. Fourth service was made up of closers like fruits, cheeses, small sweet items (including pastries), nuts and other light treats. It was a style of eating known as service à la française. Services were piled into huge, elaborately decorated mounds in the middle of the table and diners served themselves from whatever plates happened to be within reach. In the case of very large dishes, say a whole roasted pig, a diner would make a request from a server who would whisk the food back into the kitchen where it would be portioned and returned to the table. The whole thing was a grand but inefficient pageant, mostly designed to show abundance. For obvious reasons service à la française went out of vogue with the French Revolution. The new elites who sprung up afterward were anxious to show that they’d made a break from the decadence of the past. Enter here one Alexander Kurakin, a Russian diplomat known as the “Diamond Prince” (he was a sharp dresser) who introduced a new form of dining to Parisian social circles, a style which became known as service à la Russe. In this there were no grand tables or displays. Dishes of different types were served to diners one after the other, in “courses”. Instead of serving themselves, servants brought dishes to the diners, already portioned and arranged on plates by staff in the kitchen. Though the system was touted as a simpler, more “of the people” style of dining, it was actually anything but. Service à la russe required far more table and kitchen staff than the old style, and usually entailed the consumption of much more food (diners, after all, had no say in how much food they were served). The new style took off all over Europe, even and especially in aristocratic circles, as the European nobility — taking note of what had happened in France — sought to town down the opulence. Popular uprisings, after all, can spread. The result was the steady decline in the popularity of the pièce montée for all but the most splendid occasions (like weddings). Yes they survived in grand hotels where members of the rising middle class wanted a (literal) taste of the good life that was formerly available only to the aristocracy. But as a household lifestyle item, the pièce montée was, how do you say, toast. There were however upsides to the rise of service à la Russe, for it made possible courses solely devoted to pastry. When the new style of dining hit England in the early 1800?s, the Brits, in their infinite wisdom, created a course entirely devoted to cake. “Dessert” was born. 2 thoughts on “Downfall of the Pièce Montée” 1. Interesting story, I have heard the term “French service” but never really knew what the term entailed. I don’t think I have ever heard of “Russian service”, to me it was always “formal service”. Thanks for the history lesson! 1. There was an old gag that I remember from somewhere, maybe a Marx brothers routine, about going to lunch where they were serving “alaroos”. “Ever heard of that?” “No, I’ve never eaten it.” – J Leave a Reply
SatAug 6 Tisha B'Av – August 6, 2022 Tisha B’Av on August 6 this year, is an annual fast day in Judaism. It is also known as one of the most tragic days in Jewish history since it saw a number of disasters that affected Jews for years to come. The day of mourning takes place to mark the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Second Temple by the Roman Empire in Jerusalem. Av 9 (day nine) is also the time that saw the fall of Bethar, and the end of the Jewish rebellion against Rome. Here’s all you need to know about the day. History of Tisha B'Av Tisha B’Av has a catastrophic history that is still remembered by Jews across the world. This is why the day of mourning is observed religiously every year. Apart from fasting and praying, Tisha B’Av also serves the purpose of recalling the sufferings the Jewish people went through to obtain the status they have in the world today. It all started when Jews were awaiting to find a way into the Promised Land. Alas, they received no hope of beginning their new lives in Israel. This was followed by the first blow to the Jewish faith when the First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians. During this invasion, almost 100,000 Jews were killed and the survivors were exiled. Around 133 A.D., the Romans built the city of Aelia Capitolina on the sacred site. Then came the time when the Roman Empire reigned the land. During this era, the Second Temple was also destroyed and over 2,500,000 Jews died as a result of war, famine, and disease. About 100,000 Jews were captured and sold as slaves by Romans for labor and blood sport. This, however, was not the end of the calamities faced by Jews as, around the year 1095, the First Crusade was declared by Pope Urban II. This war led to the death of thousands of Jews, while others were displaced from their homes and continued to live a life of fear and turmoil. One of the final blows to the Jewish faith was the Holocaust in Germany where one-third of the world’s Jewish population was escorted to death’s door. Tisha B'Av timeline 1313 B.C. Rethinking Decisions Jews receive frightening reports about the Promised Land. 423 B.C. The First Attack The Babylonians burn the first temple. The British Way Jews are cast out of England. Spain banishes the Jews. Tisha B'Av FAQs What does ‘Tisha’ mean in Hebrew? ‘Tisha’ in Hebrew is ‘number nine.’ It stands for day nine of the month of Av. What does ‘Av’ mean in Hebrew? ‘Av’ in Hebrew, is the fifth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. What are the nine days in Judaism? The nine days of Av are all about spiritual observance in Judaism. How to Observe Tisha B'Av 1. Fast on the day According to the religious tradition, all Jews must fast on this day to express the sorrow they feel due to the destruction brought on the people of the Torah. 2. Read the Torah It is essential for Jews to pray and remember God throughout the day. They believe that reading the Torah brings them closer to their creator. 3. Visit the synagogue To participate in worship, visit the synagogue and spend as much time there as you want. Also, being around other mourning individuals will make you realize you aren’t alone. 5 Facts You Need To Know About Tisha B'Av 1. Abstinence Jews also abstain from sexual activity on this day. 2. Restrictions Shaving and applying cosmetics are not permitted. 3. The pre-fast meal The pre-fast meal or ‘seudah ha-mafaseket’ means ‘meal of separation.’ 4. No smiles The Jews are expected to refrain from smiling, laughter, and idle conversation. 5. Getting ready for the fast The pre-fast meal traditionally contains bread, water, and a hard-boiled egg dipped in ashes. Why Tisha B’Av is Important 1. It’s an insight into Jewish history Jewish history is tainted with death and atrocities committed against the Jews by people of other cultures and religions. It's days like these that bring the past into the present for Jewish children and people of other religions. 2. It highlights the atrocities committed against Jews The day is an important reminder of all the sufferings Jews faced during this time period. This is done to show the younger Jews the importance of the day, and how long the Jews fought before they attained peace. 3. It teaches us not to repeat history History can repeat itself if we don’t watch the warning signs. On Tisha B’Av, people are reminded of how hate crimes against certain religions can escalate if people don’t raise their voices. Tisha B'Av dates 2022August 6Saturday 2023July 26Wednesday 2024August 12Monday 2025August 2Saturday 2026July 22Wednesday Holidays Straight to Your Inbox Every day is a holiday! Receive fresh holidays directly to your inbox.
FriAug 26 Women’s Equality Day – August 26, 2022 The right to vote, the cornerstone of democracy, belongs to all citizens — but this wasn’t always the case. Until recently, most countries denied voting rights to half of their population: women. To claim their voice, women began agitating for the right to vote in the early 19th century. In the U.S., decisions about who could vote were left up to the states. The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, ensures voting rights for everyone regardless of gender. Today, Women’s Equality Day celebrates the achievements of women’s rights activists and reminds us of the unique daily struggles that women face. To make sure women are not oppressed by anyone we need to empower them with education and to support their education they require funds that can help build a base for their strong future. When is Women’s Equality Day 2022? The continuous struggle for women's participation and equality in all spheres of life and society is observed on Women’s Equality Day on August 26. History of Women’s Equality Day Women’s Equality Day, celebrated every August 26, commemorates the passage of women’s suffrage in the U.S. and reminds us of the hurdles overcome by the heroic women who faced violence and discrimination to propel the women’s movement forward. In the early 19th century, American women, who generally couldn’t inherit property and made half of a man’s wages in any available jobs, began organizing to demand political rights and representation. By the early 1900s, several countries including Finland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom had legalized voting for women as the movement continued to sweep across the world. In the U.S., the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was first introduced in 1878, but it failed to gain traction. It wasn’t until women’s involvement in the World War I effort made their contributions painfully obvious that women’s suffrage finally gained enough support. Women’s rights groups pointed out the hypocrisy of fighting for democracy in Europe while denying it to half of the American citizens at home. Because a Constitutional amendment requires approval from two-thirds of the states, 36 of them had to ratify the 19th Amendment before its passage. The deciding vote in the Tennessee legislature came from Harry T. Burn, a young state representative whose mother’s plea to support the amendment became a deciding factor in his vote (which he switched at the last minute). Women aren’t done fighting for equal rights. Today, the wage gap between men and women still impacts women’s economic power, and gender-based discrimination still plagues workplaces and business transactions. To remind us of the struggles of the past, present, and future, Congress designated August 26 as Women’s Equality Day in 1971. Women’s Equality Day timeline July 19-20, 1848 Seneca Falls Convention The first women's rights convention organized by women, including suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, is held at Seneca Falls, New York, sparking the movement that leads to the passage of the 19th Amendment. October 16, 1916 First Birth Control Clinic in the U.S. Margaret Sanger opens America's first birth control clinic in Brooklyn — Sanger's efforts led to the creation of today's Planned Parenthood. August 26, 1920 American Women Gain the Right to Vote The U.S. Congress adopts the 19th Amendment, also known as the 'Susan B. Anthony Amendment,' giving women the right to vote. May 20, 1932 A Woman Did That? Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman and second pilot ever to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. December 1, 1955 This Seat is Taken Black seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, helping to launch the civil rights movement. January 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade In a historic decision in the Roe v. Wade case, the U.S. Supreme Court affirms women's constitutional right to abortion. June 18 1983 The Sky's the Limit Flying on the Space Shuttle Challenger, Sally Ride becomes the first American woman in space. January 20, 2021 A New Beginning Kamala Harris is sworn in as the first woman and first woman-of-color vice president of the United States. Traditions of the Day Women’s Equality Day is all about uplifting and empowering women, and marveling at how far women have progressed, defying all odds and oppression. General traditions include men and women expressing gratitude to influential women in their lives, supporting local businesses run by women, and celebrating womanhood with your girl gang and special ladies. Funds are raised for charities and organizations that support women’s empowerment. Prominent women are featured guest speakers on different virtual and live platforms. Success stories are shared on social media under the hashtag #WomensEqualityDay. Issues females face are discussed and solutions and assistance are provided by the online community. By The Numbers 18 – the number of countries where husbands can legally prevent their wives from working. 39 – the number of countries where sons and daughters do not share equal inheritance rights. 1 in 5 – women and girls have experienced physical and/or sexual abuse by a partner. 23.7% – the percentage of women representation in national parliaments. 108 – the number of years it will take to bridge the gender gap. 6 – the number of countries that give women equal work rights as men. 2.24 – the number of men for every female character in films. 47% – the percentage of the increased likelihood for women to suffer severe injuries in car crashes because safety features are designed for men. 13% – the percentage of women globally who are agricultural landholders. 40% – the percentage drop in girls getting married in childhood in Southern Asia since 2000. Women’s Equality Day FAQs When was the first Women’s Equality Day? The U.S. Congress designated August 26 as Women’s Equality Day in 1973 in order to commemorate the 19th Amendment. How do you celebrate Women’s Equality Day at work? Ways to celebrate Women’s Equality Day at work include giving cards to the women in your office, taking a moment to acknowledge the hard work they do, and throwing a girls’ night happy hour. Why was the 19th Amendment passed? Congress passed the 19th Amendment as a result of the hard work and dedication put in by the women’s suffrage movement. Women’s Equality Day Activities 1. Thank the women in your life We all depend on hardworking women — moms, grandmas, partners, sisters, and friends. Take some time today to thank them for all the physical and emotional labor they do for others! 2. Support women-owned companies Use your consumer power to support female entrepreneurs. You can find lists of women-owned businesses on the Small Business Administration’s website or by reaching out to your local chamber of commerce. 3. Register to vote Women and their allies fought for decades to win the right to vote. Do your part to honor their sacrifices by making sure you’re registered to vote in your community. 5 Fascinating Facts About Women In The Military 1. Women in combat Women have long played important non-combat roles in the U.S. military in medical and operational positions, but combat positions were only opened to women in 2013. 2. Women often fought disguised as men In the 1700s and 1800s, particularly during the Civil War, more than a few women enlisted in the army disguised as men. 3. There is only one female Medal of Honor recipient Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, a contract surgeon for the Union, spent time as a Confederate POW and was awarded a Medal of Honor for her efforts — to date, she is still the only female recipient of the military's highest award. 4. Women made important WWII contributions More than 400,000 women served in World War II as nurses, pilots, ambulance drivers, and in other important ancillary roles. 5. Military maternity wear Women weren't always allowed to continue serving if they became pregnant but, today, all branches of the military offer maternity uniforms for service members who are expecting. Why We Love Women’s Equality Day 1. It gives us an opportunity to learn Take some time on Women’s Equality Day to brush up on your women’s history and learn about the complicated and fascinating history of women’s rights in the U.S. and internationally. 2. It reminds us to show gratitude It’s not always easy to remember to thank those who do so much for us. Use Women’s Equality Day as a reminder to do something meaningful for the important women in your life. 3. It reminds us of how far we have to go Despite many advances in the last century and a half, women in the U.S. and around the world still face professional obstacles, domestic violence, and other barriers to their well-being and success. Women’s Equality Day dates 2022August 26Friday 2023August 26Saturday 2024August 26Monday 2025August 26Tuesday 2026August 26Wednesday Holidays Straight to Your Inbox Every day is a holiday! Receive fresh holidays directly to your inbox.
(Greek: around, enclosing, surrounding, about, near, close; often used as a prefix) A colorless, gray, green, or yellow magnesium oxide mineral. 1. A variety of albite occurring in large, white opaque crystals. 2. A dome-shaped fold in sedimentary rock. Relating to the pericranium; surrounding the skull. pericranium (s), pericrania (pl) The membrane of connective tissue that surrounds the skull. pericycle (s) (noun), pericycles (pl) The outermost cell layer of the stele in a plant, frequently becoming a multilayered zone. A slender, relatively undifferentiated, connective tissue cell that occurs around capillaries or other small blood vessels. Excision of a ring of conjunctiva behind the limbus, followed by cauterization of the trench thus made. Very clear, conspicuous. In medicine, surrounding the dendrites. 1. The outer cork layer of a plant that replaces the epidermis of primary tissues. Cells have their walls impregnated with cutin and suberin. 2. The hard outer covering of hydroids and other marine animals; the perisarc. 3. The outermost layer of the epidermis of an embryo or a fetus up to the sixth month of gestation. peridermal, peridermic Relating to the periderm. The almost inappreciable time which elapses between the systole and the diastole of the heart. peridontal, peridontic The space between the columns and the wall of the cella, in a Greek or a Roman temple. Related "around, round, surrounding" units: ambi-; ampho-; circ-; circum-; cyclo-, -cycle; gyro-.
Embroidered Globe Badge The World Around You Use these questions to engage with students about CASEL's "Social Awareness" and "Responsible Decision Making," as well as "Self Awareness," all while building "Relationship Skills." Take a close-up photo of something with your phone. Resize and crop until it is very abstract. See if your group members can identify it. Question: How does "zooming in" and "zooming out" impact how we see things? How is this true with situations that happen to us?us? How might we "zoom in" or "zoom out" before we judge someone? Take turns describing a food that you love or hate that is related to your heritage or is a "family tradition." Make it sound really yummy or really icky. Question: How does eating with someone or a group bond us together? Does sharing food or having special foods make you feel close to any group? Share your favorite way to travel (walking, skating, biking, flying, by train, etc). Question: How does traveling together impact a group? How do other people travel that might seem normal to them, but weird to us? What might be their reason for traveling that way? Imagine you are an alien. You land in Denver, Colorado. What observations can you make about people? You land in Orlando, Florida. What observations can you make about people? You land in Paris, France. What observations can you make about people? Question: What were similarities about people? Differences? What themes emerge from looking at different groups? Alien POV Imagine you have traveled back in time 100 years. What would be different? What would be the same? What is the most surprising? Question: If you could live in any era or time period, when would it be and why? Time Travel
America the Blasphemous? We have been hearing a lot about blasphemy laws of late (see my article Free Speech in Islam to find out about the religious motives behind this push to abridge free speech). But it may not be well-known that America has some knowledge of anti-blasphemy laws, for at our earliest founding the colonial leaders imposed them. In the Puritan document "An Abstract of the Laws of New-England, as they are now established. Printed in London in 1641," recorded by John Cotton, a Puritan (a Puritan is a devout and extra-strict Christian), the laws against blasphemy are laid out. Four rules in this Abstract, in Chapter 7, which pertains to crimes that deserve capital punishment or banishment, are relevant. The very first rule says: "FIRST, blasphemy, which is cursing God by atheism, or the like, to be punished by death." Next, rule no. 7 says that members of the church who do not conform to the church's doctrine "shall be cut off by banishment." Further, a similar rule, no. 8, says, "Whosoever shall revile the religion and worship of God, and the government of the church, as it is now established, shall be cut off by banishment." Finally, no. 11 says that "[p]rofaning the Lord's day, in a careless and scornful neglect or contempt thereof, to be punished with death." This rule follows the Old Testament. Clearly, then, free speech was severely restricted in the early colonies because the Puritan leaders took a literalist interpretation of the Old Testament (Exodus 22:28; Leviticus 24:13-16). The post-Revolutionary (1775-1783) and the Cconstitutional Founders, living about 140 years after the Puritan colonial laws, knew the basics of the laws in the Old Testament against blasphemy. At the very least, they had access to the laws against blasphemy in the Puritan colonies. The Founders decided to go in a different direction. In 1779, when the Revolutionary War was underway, Thomas Jefferson said that the author (God) of Christianity -- the religion of Jefferson -- spread his message not by coercion, but only by persuasion, with words alone. Civil punishments of unbelievers or nonconformists would produce only hypocrisy or meanness in them. Jefferson writes: Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested His supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint ... All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who, being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in His almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone. Next, Jefferson in 1782, shortly after Washington's decisive victory in Yorktown, Virginia, the home state of both men, says that freedom of conscience is a natural right. No human can confer it, so no human can take it away. Coercion that takes away his religion -- though repugnant that religion may be to the orthodox -- is always wrong, for coercion may make him worse and not a truer man, nor cure his errors. Jefferson writes: The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my legs. If it be said his testimony in a court cannot be relied on, reject it, then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Thomas Jefferson also said, "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my legs." Thus, if a man believes that there are twenty gods or no God (Jefferson believed in God), his doctrine does not harm us monetarily or physically. He has a natural right to his nonconformist beliefs. John Adams, the second president, writes that the religious liberty and dignity of all humans should be preached from the pulpit. Then the Founders wrote the Constitution. What does it say about free speech, specifically? How did they strike a balance between unpopular and even repugnant speech and popular and agreeable speech in religious affairs and disagreements? The above excerpts from the two Founders represent the spirit of the (brief) First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which reads in its entirety: This short amendment connects freedom of worship with the freedom of speech. Everyone must have the freedom to express his opinions, even unpopular ones. And everyone must worship (or not) as he wants. No conscience can be coerced. So the framers of the Constitution disagreed with the early Puritans. No one should be put to death for blasphemy or verbal insults against religion or the church. We have progressed beyond the early Puritan stage. So how did the Founders make the transition from the early Puritan restriction on speech to more freedom? Many (not all) signers of the Declaration of Independence were devout Christians and ministers, and many of those of like mind who endorsed the Constitution were also devout Christians and ministers. They worked out a compromise between religious law embodied in the Bible and civil law stemming from reason and common law. After all, they lived during the height of the Age of Reason or the Age of Enlightenment (c. 1600-1800), so they understood that God endowed humankind with a reasoning mind to figure out the balance between religious law and civil law -- though civil law has the Bible in its background. The historical context of the first Puritan colonies demonstrates that the communities were small and held to uniform Christian doctrines, so religious law could be imposed. (But some members of these communities felt suffocated and wanted to leave.) On the other hand, in the late eighteenth century, the thirteen colonies were large and religiously diverse by comparison. Christ said in Matthew 17:24, "If anyone comes after [follows] me ..." The little word "if" implies freedom to accept the way of Jesus or to walk away from it. He never raised a holy army or a band of assassins to force anyone to convert or to restrict free speech. Bible-educated Christians understand that Christ fulfilled the Old Testament. Thus, the Founders accepted the principle not of coercion, but of freedom. They understood the principle of freedom in the gospel and in reason. You've got to love our (imperfect) Founders. Finally, let's go outside the USA. The West, specifically Europe, has learned its lesson, after persecuting nonconformists and blasphemers (as the politically and religiously powerful defined the terms) for centuries. Article Nineteen of the 1948 Charter of the United Nations, the Declaration of Human Rights, states: Both the amendment and the article give people true freedom of religious speech or of any kind of speech, even if it involves criticizing a religion or a religious figure. If followers of a religion are unable to explain or defend it with words alone, then it must not be worth very much. It may seem culturally insensitive to criticize a religious leader even frivolously, but who decides what is insensitive? The hypersensitive? Since it is difficult to discern the matter, we should err on the side of religious free speech. Always free speech. No compromise. James M. Arlandson, Ph.D. has written a book: Women, Class, and Society in Early Christianity. He has recently completed two series, one on The Sword in Early Christianity and Islam and the other on sharia.
The ocean is vast and humans are finite. Naval history is defined by moments where the sea shrinks, where the sheer mass of materiel in the water changes an open field of maneuver into a dense and tangled mess. It’s why the straits of the world have such an outsized importance in naval planning, as the rare spot where swarms of small boats can mitigate the reach and power of massive vessels. The manpower needed for swarming attacks with small boats makes the tactic possible. But what if the ratio of humans to ships could be reduced? What if one fast boat could direct dozens of uncrewed allies? Meet the 56 robot boat (roboat?) swarm from China’s Yunzhou Tech Corporation. In a video released online earlier this week, the swarm maneuvers around a larger boat, weaves back and forth like so many synchronized swimmers, and moves in great arcs like a grenadiers on parade. For now, the boats are unarmed, though as Robert Beckheusen notes at War is Boring, Yunzhou tech debuted an armed version of an unmanned boat last year. (When the U.S. Navy debuted a robot swarm in 2014, it was with just four boats 1/14th the size of China’s swarm. Those boats also had the distinction of being armed from the start.) Swarms like this have limitations: the communication network to keep boats operating together may have a finite range and be vulnerable to some form of electronic warfare, and the ability of a human to direct the swarm might not match the full potential of the ships. (Should boats in the swarm have enough autonomy, the limited command capacity of the human operator can be greatly mitigated). And the range of anything dependent on multiple modest engines will be somewhat limited. But the power of the swarm, should it be armed and take to sea, is one that the video is unsubtle about conveying. At one point in the video the swarm, seemingly moving as just an irregular mass, converges into the distinct outline of an aircraft carrier. To hammer home the point, the video flickers an aircraft carrier outline on the swarm, the human-crewed ship in the swarm sails down the outlined runway, and the video shows in a superimposed window fighter jets taking off from a carrier ramp. Subtle this isn’t, but power projection seldom is. Watch the video below: More In Unmanned
Active Ingredient History • Now Hydroquinone, aka benzene-1,4-diol or quinol, is an aromatic organic compound that is a type of phenol, a derivative of benzene, having the chemical formula C6H4(OH)2. Its chemical structure features two hydroxyl groups bonded to a benzene ring in a para position. It is a white granular solid. Substituted derivatives of this parent compound are also referred to as hydroquinones. The name "hydroquinone" was coined by Friedrich Wöhler in 1843. In human medicine, hydroquinone is used as a topical application in skin whitening to reduce the color of skin. It does not have the same predisposition to cause dermatitis as metol does. In 2006, the United States Food and Drug Administration revoked its previous approval of hydroquinone and proposed a ban on all over-the-counter preparations. The FDA stated that hydroquinone cannot be ruled out as a potential carcinogen. This conclusion was reached based on the extent of absorption in humans and the incidence of neoplasms in rats in several studies where adult rats were found to have increased rates of tumours, including thyroid follicular cell hyperplasias, anisokaryosis (variation in nuclei sizes), mononuclear cell leukemia, hepatocellular adenomas and renal tubule cell adenomas. One of the components in TRI-LUMA Cream, hydroquinone, is a depigmenting agent, and may interrupt one or more steps in the tyrosine-tyrosinase pathway of melanin synthesis. However, the mechanism of action of the active ingredients in TRI-LUMA Cream in the treatment of melasma is unknown. NCATS More Chemistry Drug Pricing (per unit) United States $0.9174 - $1.7729 More Pricing Detail 1,4-benzenediol \| 1,4-dihydroxybenzene \| 205 e \| 4-hydroxyphenol \| 4-hydroxyphenyl-beta-d-glucopyranoside \| arbutin \| arbutine \| arbutoside \| arbutyne \| artra \| benzene-1,4-diol \| beta-quinol \| black and white \| black and white bleaching cream \| calcium dobesilate \| calcium doxybensylate \| dexium \| dobesilate \| dobesilate calcium \| doxium \| doxium 500 \| eldopaque \| eldopaque forte \| eldoquin \| eldoquin forte \| esoterica \| glyhexylamide \| glyhexylamine isodiane \| hidroquilaude \| hidroquin \| hidroquinona isdin \| hydroquinone \| hydroquinone calcium sulfate \| hydroquinone calcium sulfonate \| hydroquinone, copper (1+) salt \| hydroquinone glucose \| hydroquinone, lead (2+) salt (2:1) \| hydroquinone, monocopper (2+) salt \| icn brand 1 of hydroquinone \| icn brand 2 of hydroquinone \| icn brand 3 of hydroquinone \| icn brand 4 of hydroquinone \| idrochinone \| licostrata \| lustra \| melanasa \| melanex \| melpaque \| melquin \| metahexamide \| methahexamide \| methexamide \| neostrata hq \| p-benzenediol \| phiaquin \| p-hydroquinone \| p-hydroxyphenol \| plough brand 1 of hydroquinone \| plough brand 2 of hydroquinone \| quinol \| solaquin \| solaquin forte \| stratus brand 1 of hydroquinone \| stratus brand 2 of hydroquinone \| ultraquin Report issue
Back to browse results Minimum dietary diversity and its associated factors among infants and young children in Ethiopia: evidence from Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (2016) Authors: Temesgen Muche, Sewitemariam Desalegn, Helen Ali, Moges Mareg, Daniel Sisay, Mahlet Birhane, Robel Hussen Kabthymer Source: Heliyon, DOI: Topic(s): Child feeding Child health Country: Africa Published: JAN 2022 Abstract: Background: Adequate infant and young child feeding during the first 1000 days of life is very essential to improve child health, survival, growth, and development through minimum dietary diversity (MDD). Hence, this study aimed to assess MDD and its multi-level factors among infants and young children aged 6–23 months in Ethiopia. Methods: Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS-2016) data was used to identify both individual and community-level factors of dietary diversity. Weighted samples of 2,962 children were eligible and a multi-level regression model was used for the analysis. Finally, factors with a P-value of <0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: The prevalence of MDD among children in Ethiopia was 12.09%. According to this study, factors such as having a mother who attended higher education (AOR = 3.09, (95% CI; _1.67–5.71)), being a female household head (AOR = 0.62, (95% CI; _0.40–0.95)), having a mother's agricultural occupation (AOR = 1.89, (95% CI; _1.10–3.23)) and living in the household in the richest wealth index were significantly associated at the individual level. At the community level, children living in rural areas (AOR = 0.62, 95% CI; 0.39–0.98) were significant risk factors for MDD (AOR = 0.62, 95% CI; 0.39–0.98). Conclusion: The educational and occupational status of the mother, wealth index, and region were significantly associated with MDD. Hence, strengthening of the existing nutritional intervention is helpful to increase diversified food consumption among children.
Bathyllus and Pylades views updated Bathyllus and Pylades Mid-first century b.c.e.–Early first century c.e. Pantomime dancers Introduction of the Pantomime. The introduction of the pantomime into Rome is credited to two dancers, Bathyllus and Pylades. Bathyllus was a native of Alexandria in Egypt and nothing is known about his early life. Somehow he became the slave of Maecenas, the minister of public relations for the Roman emperor Augustus (r. 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.), the nephew and heir of Julius Caesar. Maecenas freed him and became his patron. Pylades who came from Cilicia in Asia Minor, was an ex-slave of the emperor Augustus himself. The two dancers were rivals, and their fans often clashed in street riots, so much so that Augustus banished Pylades from Rome for a short period. Both men had students, and one student of Pylades, Hylas, became his master's rival. Bathyllus was famous for his comic pantomimes, whereas Pylades specialized in serious or tragic themes taken from Greek myth. The New Pantomime. Information about Bathyllus and Pylades is sparse, but it is clear that they introduced into Italy a new kind of dance which combined features from the dance of the Old Comedy of classical Greece known as the kordax, the more dignified dance of tragedy known as the emmeleia, and the dance of the satyr play called the sikinnis. In fact, Pylades wrote a treatise on dancing. Bathyllus' performances were more light-hearted. One ancient author compared his dance to the hyporchema, which was a lively choral song and dance, although the similarity was with the spirit and joyousness of the hyporchema as there were no choral dances in pantomime. Bathyllus is also supposed to have introduced the Memphian dance, which involved matching every muscle in the dancer's body to the rhythm of the music, and dealt with serious themes. One ancient source mentioned performances of tragedy by Bathyllus and comedy by Pylades, and so they may have poached on each other's territory occasionally. The date of death for either Bathyllus or Pylades is not known, though in 2 b.c.e., Pylades produced and financed a festival, but did not give a performance himself because he was too old. Bathyllus was probably older than Pylades and so he had ceased dancing about the same time or earlier, though some dancers had very long careers on the stage. E. J. Jory, "The Literary Evidence for the Beginnings of Imperial Patronage," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 28 (1981): 147–161. Sir William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1 (London, England: Walton and Maberly, 1849–1858): 474.
Skip to content Related Articles Related Articles Difference between Java and JavaScript View Discussion Improve Article Save Article • Difficulty Level : Easy • Last Updated : 10 May, 2022 JavaScript is a lightweight programming language(“scripting language”) and is used to make web pages interactive. It can insert dynamic text into HTML. JavaScript is also known as the browser’s language. JavaScript(JS) is not similar or related to Java. Both the languages have a C-like syntax and are widely used in client-side and server-side Web applications, but there are few similarities only. Features of Javascript are as follows: • Can handle date and time. • Performs Form Validation although the forms are created using HTML. • No compiler is needed. Example: This is the basic Javascript example. console.log("Welcome to GeeksforGeeks Learning"); Welcome to GeeksforGeeks Learning Java is an object-oriented programming language and has a virtual machine platform that allows you to create compiled programs that run on nearly every platform. Java promised, “Write Once, Run Anywhere”. Features of Java are as follows: 1. Platform Independent: The compiler converts source code to bytecode and then the JVM executes the bytecode generated by the compiler. This bytecode can run on any platform. 2. Object-Oriented Programming Language: Organizing the program in the terms of collection of objects is a way of object-oriented programming, each of which represents an instance of the class. There are 4 pillars of OOP’s concept: • Abstraction • Encapsulation • Inheritance • Polymorphism 3. Simple: Java is one of the simple languages as it does not have complex features like pointers, operator overloading, multiple inheritances, and Explicit memory allocation. 4. Robust: Java language is robust which means reliable. It is developed in such a way that it puts a lot of effort into checking errors as early as possible, that is why the java compiler is able to detect even those errors that are not easy to detect by another programming language. 5. Secure: In java, we don’t have pointers, and so we cannot access out-of-bound arrays i.e it shows ArrayIndexOutOfBound Exception if we try to do so. 6. Distributed: We can create distributed applications using the java programming language. Remote Method Invocation and Enterprise Java Beans are used for creating distributed applications in java. 7. Multithreading: Java supports multithreading. It is a Java feature that allows concurrent execution of two or more parts of a program for maximum utilization of the CPU. Example: This is the basic Java program. // Importing required classes // Main class class GFG { // Main driver method public static void main(String[] args) // Print statement "Welcome to GeeksforGeeks Learning"); Welcome to GeeksforGeeks Learning The difference between Java and JavaScript is as follows: Java is a strongly typed language and variables must be declared first to use in the program. In Java, the type of a variable is checked at compile-time.JavaScript is a loosely typed language and has a more relaxed syntax and rules. Java is an object-oriented programming language.JavaScript is an object-based scripting language. Java applications can run in any virtual machine(JVM) or browser.JavaScript code used to run only in the browser, but now it can run on the server via Node.js. Objects of Java are class-based even we can’t make any program in java without creating a class.JavaScript Objects are prototype-based. Java program has the file extension “.Java” and translates source code into bytecodes which are executed by JVM(Java Virtual Machine).JavaScript file has the file extension “.js” and it is interpreted but not compiled, every browser has the Javascript interpreter to execute JS code.if compile time Java is a Standalone language.contained within a web page and integrates with its HTML content. Java has a thread-based approach to concurrency.Javascript has an event-based approach to concurrency. Java supports multithreading.Javascript doesn’t support multi-threading. Java is mainly used for backendJavascript is used for the frontend and backend both. Java uses more memoryJavascript uses less memory. Java requires a Java Development Kit(JDK) to run the codeJavascript requires any text editor or browser console to run the code My Personal Notes arrow_drop_up Recommended Articles Page : Start Your Coding Journey Now!
- Tech know how online 1. In network technology, spoofing is a technique for reducing bandwidth requirements in Internetworking. This technique reduces network overhead and thereby lowers the cost of transmission over wide area networks as well as network utilization. Spoofing reduces cyclically sent messages, such as network management information, by having a router act as a proxy and answer for a connected remote device. For example, spoofing makes a connection appear to the LAN device as still existing, even though it has already been dropped. For wide-area connections, this has the advantage that a connection can be terminated after a certain period of time in the absence of useful data, although it would normally have to be maintained by the cyclic management data packets. 2. In Internet terminology, spoofing has its own meaning and that is giving a false address. By giving the wrong Internet address, someone pretends to be an authorized user. Measures against spoofing that prevent the misuse of IP addresses are called anti-spoofing. There are the IP spoofing, DNS spoofing, WWW spoofing, address spoofing and ARP spoofing that work with simulated IP address based on the host address or domain name or with the mapping between IP and hardware address. 3. Another spoofing technique to be mentioned is MAC address spoofing or MAC spoofing. This technique involves the manufacturer's fixed MAC address on the network card, which normally cannot be changed. However, there are tools that simulate a different MAC address for the operating system. This has the effect of changing the identity of the computer. 4. Another spoofing method is email spoofing. In this case, the header is exchanged with the e-mail address, giving the impression that the e-mail was sent by a different sender. This technique is used by spammers to send spam and trick the recipients of the spam into taking actions, such as opening an attachment. Mail spoofing is facilitated by the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol( SMTP), which is used to transfer most mail, because it does not have an authentication mechanism. 5. Spoofing, the concealment or manipulation of one's own identity, is also used in mobile communications, as SMS spoofing. In this case, the sender's own data is replaced by fake names, jokes, numbers or idiosyncratic imitations such as "German Chancellor" or "Pope". The goals of SMS spoofing can be many and varied: some people want to have fun, others want to commit fraud and obtain secret account or identity numbers, and still others want to send viruses. Using the short message service (SMS) with fake identities is a punishable offense in some countries. Englisch: spoofing Updated at: 25.10.2017 #Words: 419 Links: indium (In), network, bandwidth (BW), overhead (OH), transmission Translations: DE All rights reserved DATACOM Buchverlag GmbH © 2022
Support 100 years of independent journalism. 1. Science & Tech 23 February 2021 Why the zero-Covid cure could be worse than the disease Lockdowns have enormous economic, social and psychological costs; they can’t be used to eradicate the virus altogether. By Christopher Snowdon In the absence of vaccines, Covid-19 would force us to make the difficult choice between trying to live with the virus or trying to eliminate it. For an uncomfortably large number of people, living with it would mean dying with it. We could try to shield the vulnerable while a measure of herd immunity was built up, but shielding is harder than it sounds and there are a lot of vulnerable people out there. Non-pharmaceutical interventions, up to and including lockdowns, could be used to spread the epidemic over a longer period of time to avoid overwhelming the health service, but the policy would still involve around one in 150 people dying. [See also: Gabriel Scally on why it’s not too late for the UK to pursue a zero-Covid strategy] Eradication is no simple matter either. It requires an intense, lengthy period of lockdown followed by the near-total closure of national borders. The borders would have to be closed until the rest of the world eradicates the virus, possibly forever. When the virus inevitably creeps back in, as it recently has in Australia and New Zealand, you have to lock down again. And again. Until the rest of the world does you a favour. Before the wonders of modern science produced vaccines for this wretched disease, these were the only long-term options available to us. When it looked like lockdowns were achieving nothing but delaying the inevitable, I leaned towards the “herd immunity” option. But that debate is so last year and I am happy to be out of it. The vaccines changed everything. We can inoculate the vulnerable, reopen society, control our borders, monitor the virus abroad, and get back to normal. It is disappointing that the Prime Minister’s overly cautious roadmap out of lockdown, announced on Monday 22 February, does not seem to reflect the power of this miraculous medical game-changer. His sluggish timetable is at odds with the reality that, within six weeks, everyone who has more than a remote chance of dying from Covid-19 will have been offered a vaccine. This once-in-a-century health crisis is thankfully nearly over. Even if the vaccines do not give 100 per cent protection against death – and much evidence suggests they do – they provide more than enough to “protect the NHS”, and therefore to protect us from further lockdowns. At worst, we might need an annual vaccination programme. But there is every prospect of Covid-19 joining the list of endemic diseases that you wouldn’t want to catch but don’t require nine million people on furlough and the biggest recession in 300 years to wipe out entirely. Content from our partners “Unions are helping improve conditions for drivers like me” Transport is the core of levelling up Winston Churchill once said that a fanatic is someone who won’t change their mind and won’t change the subject. Now that we have multiple vaccines, anyone who still thinks the answer is to let the virus spread until we get herd immunity is deluded. On the other side, anyone who still thinks the answer is to lock down society until the virus is eradicated is equally absurd. Both sets of people are clinging to a masterplan that has been rendered obsolete. [See also: Why England’s inhumane sex ban must now end] There is a belief among some people that the first lockdown could have achieved total suppression of the virus if it had only been kept in place a little longer. This is delusional. Lockdowns do not have a universal definition, but mine is the period between pubs being closed and pubs being open (along with the rest of the hospitality industry and it no longer being illegal to meet friends and family indoors). By this measure, the first lockdown in England lasted three and a half agonising months. Throughout this period, the case rate fell, but with diminishing returns. We never really got below 500 positive tests a day (and you can double that number because half the infections were not reported). The lowest number of total infections in England estimated by the Office for National Statistics was 14,000 on 9 July. We tried a lengthy lockdown, and we never came close to defeating the virus. Case numbers were roughly halving every four weeks. It takes a long time to get from a thousand to zero at that rate. A massive, Wuhan-style effort could have sped it up but there are a lot of people who cannot work from home and a lot more who are prepared to break the rules when they last for too long. We don’t have the geographical advantages of New Zealand or the ruthlessness of the Chinese Communist Party. We can’t even stop people entering the country on dinghies. Perhaps in June 2020, Boris Johnson could have persuaded a weary public to accept another few months of lockdown, along with even tougher restrictions. I somehow doubt it, but it doesn’t matter. We are not in that situation now. Those who advocate zero-Covid today have an even tougher task than Johnson would have had in that scenario. They need to persuade people who have been kept away from their friends and family for most of the last year that they must now endure three or four months of the most brutal and unforgiving lockdown yet to protect them from a disease which almost everybody over the age of 60 will soon be vaccinated against. Having been told that vaccines are the path to freedom, the public would rightly see this as a bait and switch. Lockdowns are a desperate last resort for countries facing a tsunami of hospitalisations and deaths. They create enormous economic, social and psychological costs. They are not something to be used until we eradicate risk altogether. Now that we have effective vaccines available, the zero-Covid cure would be worse than the disease. [See also: Boris Johnson’s biggest lockdown headache is behind him]
Your location is: Articles : What Is EEG Neurofeedback & How Can It Help Stress, Anxiety, Focus & Emotional Resilience? EEG Neurofeedback & How It Can Help Stress, Anxiety, Emotional Resilience & Cognitive Performance What Is Neurofeedback? Neurofeedback is a form of brain training that works directly at the physiological level. It's aimed at improving brain performance and thereby such functions as: • executive function: attention, focus and concentration, also impulse control and self-organisation • emotional self-regulation or emotional resilience • motivation, willpower and energy Neurofeedback is a special form of biofeedback. Biofeedback is a training tool that measures physiological changes associated with how you're feeling, thinking and behaving. By feeding this information back in real time, biofeedback creates a context for learning to regulate your own body processes, and thereby influence your emotional resilience, etc. Neurofeedback works specifically with measures of brain activity (as opposed to more "peripheral" measures such as muscle tension or heart rate variability). Later in the article I'll comment on the relative strengths of neurofeedback and peripheral biofeedback. Most commonly neurofeedback is based on electroencephalography, or EEG, also refered to as brain waves. But in principle it can be used with any measure of brain activity. Other forms include: • fMRI Neurofeedback - here the measure of brain activity comes from a magnetic resonance imaging scanner (generally only found in hospitals and research labs). It's an expensive form of neurofeedback but probably the most powerful because you can select any region of the brain to train. • A recent TV documentary series by David Eagle showcased an fMRI neurofeedback study treating drug addiction. • Hemoencephalography or HEG Neurofeedback - like fMRI this works by detecting changes in metabolic activity (i.e. energy consumption) associated with brain processing. However HEG sensors are much cheaper and more accessible (as I explain in this article on HEG neurofeedback). In HEG training the sensor is usually placed over the forehead where it monitors the prefrontal cortex or PFC, which plays an important role in executive function and emotional regulation. You can read more about HEG neurofeedback in this article. The rest of this article will focus mostly on EEG neurofeedback. What Is EEG? EEG or electroencephalograph is simply an oscillating voltage measured from the scalp. The oscillation is complex, and it changes over time and across different parts of the head (or in other words in different parts of the brain from which it originates). Here's what a typical raw EEG looks like: eeg or brain waves - raw Most importantly for our purposes, the EEG varies in different states of mind. This gives rise to the idea that if we can somehow cause the EEG to change, then we can change the state of mind too, hopefully for the better - hopefully we can create a better mood or improved cognitive performance. In EEG neurofeedback we're trying to get the EEG to change through training or conditioning. More on that later. EEG doesn't have a fixed frequency - it varies moment to moment, over a range of about 1 to 40 Hertz or cycles per second. (The brain's oscillations actually go well beyond this range at either end, but this is typically what's measured.) Another way to think of the osciallation is that it's a mix of different component frequencies. The components have names you might recognise, such as alpha and beta. Broadly speaking these components or bands tend to reflect mental state, or style of mental processing: • Delta (1-4 Hz) rhythm is normally only present in deep sleep, but can be seen in some types of brain injury or depression cases. • Alpha seems to be the brain's "idling rhythm", associated with relaxed awareness • Theta is associated with an intuitive or dreamy processing style • Beta is connected with awake thinking. It's important to remember these are only rough approximations - e.g. alpha can vary a lot second to second, and you don't necessarily feel the difference in terms of relaxation level. Also, it depends where in the head you measure EEG to some extent. Physiologically, the EEG voltage derives from millions of neurons acting in concert. It's thought that the "togetherness" or connectedness of the EEG across the scalp is important to brain function - for example research has shown that highly experienced meditators show a significantly higher level of synchronized gamma (about 40 Hz) across the whole brain. How Neurofeedback Works To recap: neurofeedback aims to create changes in mental and emotional functioning by training changes in the EEG. The first step is to decide exactly what aspect of the EEG to train. Do you want to train increased alpha or decreased theta? And where in the head? The choice is known as the neurofeedback protocol, and it's a key part of neurofeedback. It's a daunting choice: the EEG contains such complexity that there's an almost limitless choice as to what to train. There are a number of ways of making the choice and this gives rise to a wide range of types of EEG neurofeedback. I'll return to this topic later. Once the protocol has been defined, you then set up an EEG amplifier of some sort (and again there are a great number available, ranging widely in price) to read your brain waves. The amplifier typically connects to a computer (or tablet, etc.) and a neurofeedback software application will analyse your EEG, compute your desired parameter according to your protocol, and turn this calculation into real-time feedback. In simple terms, this feedback tells you (or rather, your brain) whether you're doing it right or not, or getting closer to the desired state. Suppose you're training for increased alpha. The simplest feedback might be a bell that rings whenever your alpha level exceeds a threshold (set within the software). This would be discrete feedback - either a "point is scored" or it isn't. An alternative is some sort of continuously varying feedback. The feedback can be presented in more elaborate and engaging forms - e.g. you play a game in which a space ship moves with a speed dependent on your level of alpha activity (this would be an example of continuous feedback). In any case, the feedback serves as a kind of "reward" signal. The trainee is at least aware that it's a good thing when the reward happens, and they can hope for more even if they don't consciously know what to do. With repeated experience of feedback, the brain learns what it needs to do. In psychological terms, there is a process of conditioning. Whatever form the feedback takes, it should be "real time", meaning that the gap between an actual EEG change (within the brain) and the software feedback of this change, should be as small as possible - a small fraction of a second - otherwise the brain does not learn (so effectively). The Experience Of Feedback Notice I said the brain learns, rather than you learn. This seems to be a key part of the process: most practitioners give the instruction to let the brain do it for you, in some sense. In neurofeedback, you don't "figure out" what you're supposed to be doing, in the normal problem-solving way. You might, after some experience of the training, "get it" - you develop a sense of what you're doing to gain the rewards, but it's not something you can really put into words. Indeed, some people never do get this sense that they've "got it" - but can still apparently benefit from the neurofeedback. The Training Protocol Recapping my earlier point, the training protocol is the choice of exactly what to train: what parameter within the whole complex phenomenon of EEG, and where on the head. This choice pretty much always has to be made in neurofeedback, and different choices give rise to different types of neurofeedback. There are different ways of making the choice. In the first place, you can base the choice on some sort of assessment of the individual, or you can go for a "one size fits all" approach. Neurofeedback Without Individual Assessment One size fits all approaches have been criticized but they're not necessarily bad. Examples include: • Simple consumer devices such as the Muse by Interaxon. The company has selected some general EEG parameter that they think reflects a meditative state. They claim their device helps meditation - they don't claim it treats medical disorders or produces universal improvements of brain performance. I think this is perfectly reasonable - though to my knowledge they haven't said what exactly within the EEG they're basing their feedback on. • Open Focus training, as taught by Dr Les Fehmi. This is similar - Dr Fehmi is specifically training attention, a certain kind of attention that he calls "open focus", and he uses an EEG parameter called alpha synchrony as a brain correlate. Since attention is a high level mental function, it's reasonable to think that there's some brain process supporting it that's common to all. • Neuroptimal brain training by Zengar Institute - the developer of this system calls it a "dynamic neurofeedback" system that trains brain flexibility and resilience, rather than some specific brain state. (Their "protocol" is proprietary.) Assessment-Based Neurofeedback The alternative is to base the choice of protocol on some assessment of the individual - either using the trainee's symptoms, problems, and experiences of neurofeedback (e.g., as I understand it at least, the Othmer method to neurofeedback) or an objective assessment of the trainee's brain. One of the most reputable forms of neurofeedback is QEEG-guided neurofeedback. A QEEG is a highly detailed "brain map", which is based on measuring EEG simultaneously from lots of points across the head. Essentially the approach is to look at how the individual brain deviates from "normal" (which is "average" of a large database of apparently healthy brains) and then train the brain to narrow that gap. One criticism of QEEG-guided neurofeedback is that it trains "average" brain function which is not necessarily the same as optimal function. Other simpler assessments avoid this problem, e.g. Dr Paul Swingle's "clinical-Q" system, described in his book "Biofeedback for the Brain". I discuss EEG assessment in more detail in this article. How EEG Neurofeedback Creates Change Neurofeedback almost certainly induces neuroplastic change in the brain (i.e. functional change, and structural at the micro level). That's not necessarily a big claim - any repetitive, active behaviour does (e.g. playing a musical instrument or driving a London taxi). The difference is, with neurofeedback you're more precisely controlling the change process. It could be said that with neurofeedback, and with biofeedback more generally, we're training specific skills - e.g. attentional control. Another way of looking at it is that we're simply exercising the brain, as a means of improving "brain fitness" in some way - neurofeedback is a kind of weight-training for the brain. However if that were all, the changes probably wouldn't be as enduring as they are. Some forms of neurofeedback, notably QEEG-guided neurotherapy, create the impression of creating very precise brain adaptations in an almost mechanical way - like fixing bugs in computer code, or as if the therapist is some sort of expert brain plumber who knows exactly which valve to tighten up. I personally think a more general mechanism is more likely: I think the training proccess creates some sort of challenge for the brain, which then triggers a (natural) adaptive change in the brain over the days (and weeks?) following the training sessions. Again the weight training metaphor might help: weight training itself actually produces a mild level of damage to your muscles but it stimulates the body to repair and "heal" the muscles so that they come back stronger and better able to handle such challenges in the future. My guess is something like this happens in the brain with neurofeedback, and probably with other neurotherapy methods besides (e.g. tDCS). The healing ultimately originates within the brain. Perhaps neurotherapy works by stimulating (or "rebooting") the brain's natural self-regulation capacities. I see problems like anxiety, depression and brain fog as loss of flexibility - the brain gets stuck in some unhelpful state. Recovery consists in re-regulating the brain, recovering adaptive capacity or flexibility. LENS - Low Energy Neurofeedback System One form of neurofeedback stands out as being very different from "traditional" EEG neurofeedback. It's known as LENS - the Low Energy Neurofeedback System. Perhaps the main difference is that the feedback is in some sense "subliminal" - the trainee is not consciously aware of it, and no consious volition or effort is required. The actual form of the feedback is a pulsing electromagnetic signal transmitted to the brain via the same cables that read the EEG. This signal has extremely weak energy and pulses at a rate based on the brain's dominant frequency, which is varying moment to moment. It's a little like an electromagnetic echo. With LENS there's no judgement to be made (by the therapist or even by the software) as to what the brain is doing well or badly, or what the brain should do more or less of. Like a mirror, LENS feedback simply reflects what's happening. And the brain only needs momentary exposure - literally seconds - so sessions are much shorter. LENS developer Len Ochs warns of over-stimulating in cases of fragile or over-sensitive brains - this can lead to (short term) negative effects. My own business was the first in the UK to offer LENS. Results, Evidence & Research There's pretty good evidence that EEG neurofeedback can lead to lasting improvements in mental and emotional wellbeing, and also cognitive performance. EEG neurofeedback research has been going on since at least the 1950's. In 2000 the medical journal Clinical Electroencephalography published a review of the evidence for neurofeedback. Neurologist and Harvard Medical School Professor Frank Duffy summarized findings with these comments: "The literature, which lacks any negative study of substance, suggests that EEG biofeedback therapy should play a major therapeutic role in many difficult areas. In my opinion, if any medication had demonstrated such a wide spectrum of efficacy, it would be universally accepted and widely used." The International Society for Neurofeedback and Research (ISNR) has compiled a bibliography of neurofeedback research studies which you can check out here. The Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback (AAPB) has rated the efficacy of biofeedback and neurofeedback treatment of specific disorders such as anxiety, depression and ADHD, based on the available research evidence. You can review their findings here. For the sake of balance it must be admitted that none of the neurofeedback research studies have been large, and a criticism has been leveled that many studies aren't well controlled or "blinded". In medical research it's considered that the best evidence comes from "double blinded" trials where neither the researchers nor the subjects of the study know whether they're getting the real, active therapy or some non-real or sham therapy (such as an inactive "placebo" pill). However I don't think this is a fair criticism because biofeedback and neurofeedback must be considered as "behavioural medicine" where the benefits result (at least in part) from some learning process. Double-blind trials are very appropriate for drugs research but how can you reasonably blind a behavioural or learning process? Imagine trying to test the efficacy of brushing your teeth without knowing whether you brushed your teeth or not. Clearly neurofeedback is not a panacea, and it doesn't work for everyone who tries it. It's a way of optimizing brain performance, but doesn't necessarily address causal factors of problems (which might be for example heavy metal toxicity or gluten intolerance). In some ways neurofeedback is like pumping up your tyres but it might be better to fix any punctures first. Safety of Neurofeedback Because neurofeedback is a training or learning procedure, it's usually reported to be completely safe. Although neurofeedback almost certainly does induce change at the level of the brain, it's not invasive change coming from without but neuroplastic change, essentially coming from within the brain. However I think it's naive to assume you can't do any harm with neurofeedback. I think a more reasonable assumption is that anything that can have an effect on the brain, might have a negative effect if used in the wrong way or the wrong circumstances. In the case of neurofeedback that might mean selecting an unhelpful training protocol, or training a brain that is too unstable in some sense. That said, it seems very unlikely to me that neurofeedback could produce permanent harm. If you're thinking of trying neurofeedback I would suggest you'd better know what you're doing or find an experienced, qualified practitioner. EEG Neurofeedback vs. Peripheral Biofeedback My own practice is based much more on what's known as peripheral biofeedback rather than neurofeedback. Why? And what are the differences? Recall that earlier, I suggested that neurofeedback and biofeedback work by a combination of (i) skills development (e.g. attentional control) and (ii) exercise that builds "fitness" in the brain and nervous system. I think peripheral biofeedback (such as the optimal breathing training I like to focus on) is more about the former (skills development), while neurofeedback is more about the latter (brain fitness training). To put it another way, biofeedback is training at the level of the mind, while neurofeedback is training at the level of the brain. It may be that neurofeedback develops skills, but not necessarily "conscious mind" skills or volitional skills. Neurofeedback doesn't necessarily make you more self-aware or more aware of how emotions arise and affect you. It may be that neurofeedback will reduce your stress or anxiety level, but you won't necessarily know any more clearly what to do when a stressful situation arises. More advantages of peripheral biofeedback over neurofeedback are: Peripheral biofeedback generally takes far fewer sessions. Neurofeedback often takes 20-100 sessions, whereas I rarely take as many as 10 sessions with a client (assuming each session is about an hour long). Biofeedback creates learning that is easier to transfer or generalise from the training context into real life contexts. Of course these are my personal views and no doubt neurofeedback practitioners would take a different view. Articles Home Search this site: stress resilience blueprint video Get The Stress Resilience Blueprint Mind-Body Intelligence How To Manage Your Mind With Biofeedback & Mindfulness Book by Glyn Blackett mind body intelligence book cover • Underlying dynamics in stress & anxiety • Why breathing is at the heart of stress management • Practical models for framing self-control challenges & solutions Download Free Chapters
The ACT test is the most widely accepted test across the US for admission to colleges. A large number of high school students take this test every year. Your ACT score report provides the college admission committees with adequate information on your career planning, your high school grades, as well as your test scores. This information helps the college admission committees in segregating suitable candidates from the whole lot who’ve applied for admissions. Almost all high school students set a career goal for themselves depending on their choice of subjects. You should be clear about your aptitude and interest in related subject areas before starting to formalize a plan for achieving your career aspirations. The first step in the right direction would be achieving high scores in the examination. The ACT consists of 4 sub tests; English, Math, Reading, Science and an optional Writing test. You should check with the college, in which you are applying for admission, whether the ACT Writing Test scores figure in their pre requisites for admission. If these scores are not required by them then you can skip taking the Writing Test. All questions of the sub tests are multiple choice type, except for the Writing Test in which you will be required to write an essay. This examination evaluates your subject specific knowledge of the high school level. You should be thorough with the fundamentals of high school academics in order to excel in the ACT test. The succeeding paragraphs will give you a brief introduction to the type of questions asked in each sub test. You should log on to the official web site, ( for a more detailed description of the ACT questions. The web site offers you a free preparatory booklet with practice tests and other free preparation tips. You can also register for the test online from the same web site. English Test There are 75 questions in this sub test. and you have 45 minutes to answer all of them. Out of the 75 questions, 45 will test your knowledge on punctuation, sentence structure, grammar and usage of standard written English. Your rhetorical skills will be tested by the remaining 35 ACT questions of the English test. You will be presented with 5 passages followed by a set of multiple choice questions. The passages are designed to present you with different types of rhetorical situations. The passages will have certain underlined portions and the following questions may refer to these underlined portions. Some questions may be directly related to the underlined text and some may be based on the whole passage or a section of the passage. You have to select your answer from the multiple choices given below the question. You will come across No Change as one of the answers a number of times and you can select this option too if you feel that it correctly answers the question presented to you. Your score report will consist of three scores from the English test. There will be one total English test score which will be arrived at by evaluating all the 75 questions, a sub score based on the 40 questions on usage and mechanics and a sub score based on the 35 questions on rhetoric skills Math Test The Math test consists of 60 questions which have to be answered within a 60 minutes’ time frame. This means that you have exactly 1 minute to spend on answering each question of this section. You should make an endeavor to complete each question in less than one minute so that you have time left to revise your answers in the end, Also, you will have some time up your sleeve in case you get caught up in a difficult problem and you are not able to arrive at the correct answer within 1 minute. The Mathematics questions are direct questions on Math of the high school level and they are all multiple choice questions. You may be presented with more than one question based on a graph or chart. You should be thorough with the fundamentals of high school mathematics in order to score high in the Math Test. There will be 24 questions on Pre Algebra and Elementary Algebra, 18 questions on Intermediate Algebra and Coordinate Geometry and 18 questions on Plane Geometry and Trigonometry. There will be four scores from the Mathematics section in your score card. The Math score will be calculated by evaluating all 60 questions. In addition to the Math score there will be three sub scores, one each for the questions on elementary algebra, coordinate geometry and Trigonometry. The Math questions are designed in such a way that you do not require a calculator to solve them. However, you can carry a calculator to the test center and use it if you want. To see the detailed information on use of calculators for the Math test, you can log on to the following website: If you feel that you will be able to solve the given problem without using the calculator then go ahead and solve it. Don’t waste your time in carrying out computations with the calculator. In any case questions requiring complex calculations and recall of difficult formulae are not asked in the Math test. However, if time permits, you can use the calculator to double check your answers.
Operation Dairy Tests Kids on Dairy Farming 11 November 2009 US - Operation Dairy, a new interactive online game, is now available to help teach children about modern dairy farming. The game was created for Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association and Pennsylvania Dairy Promotion Programme by Philadelphia-based Singularity Design. Operation Dairy challenges players to explore a rich virtual farm landscape to find and "win" nine unique dairy tokens by correctly answering a question about the dairy industry. Each token is accompanied by an engaging video clip from the Discover Dairy education-based website, Players watch the short video, and then answer a question based on the video clip to win the token. Each token helps players understand how dairy farmers provide for their animals and about basic dairy farming practices. Once all nine tokens are collected, the player can choose from three different certificates that they can personalise as their prize. "The professionalism and creativity of Singularity Design make Operation Dairy an engaging and fun experience for kids of all ages," said Laura England, executive vice president of communications for Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association. "The appealing graphics and animation help to illustrate how dairy farmers care for their land, the environment and their cows through an enjoyable and challenging game." An animated cow named "Cammie" is one special touch created by Singularity Design. Cammie greets visitors to Operation Dairy and leads them through the game instructions. As players navigate their way through the game, Cammie provides tips and encouragement. "Operation Dairy is sure to be a favorite game among kids and will help them make the connection between dairy farmers and the food they produce - healthy and nutritious milk and dairy products," Ms England said. TheCattleSite News Desk Seasonal Picks Managing Pig Health: A Reference for the Farm - 2nd Edition
What Is Anaerobic Exercise? Reviewed by Jabeen Begum on June 22, 2021 This type of exercise offers many health benefits. It’s a great way to improve your cardiovascular endurance as well as build and maintain muscle and lose weight. Along with aerobic (or cardiovascular) exercise, anaerobic exercise should be a regular part of your weekly workout routine. Anaerobic vs. Aerobic Exercise Aerobic means “with oxygen,” and anaerobic means “without oxygen.” Both are important for your overall health because they challenge your body in different ways. Anaerobic exercise involves short, fast, high-intensity exercises that don’t make your body use oxygen like it does for cardio (or aerobic) activities. Instead, anaerobic activities break down glucose that's already in your muscles for a form of energy. Aerobic exercises rely on energy stored in your body from carbs, protein, fat, and the oxygen you breathe: You usually repeat anaerobic movements for 10 or 15 seconds before moving on to another type of movement. Aerobic exercises are easy to do for longer times, depending on your physical abilities. There's often a gray area where aerobic and anaerobic exercise overlap. Your aerobic exercise may turn into anaerobic if you raise the intensity past the point where you're able to sustain that activity. For example, if a runner’s pace is too fast, they won’t be able to keep a consistent speed for long, turning their aerobic workout into an anaerobic one. Crossfit is another fitness regimen that meets in between aerobic and anaerobic exercise. It combines the fat-burning power of aerobic activities with the strength training of anaerobic exercise. Types of Anaerobic Exercise Examples of anaerobic exercise include: • High-intensity interval training (HIIT) • Strength training and weight lifting that challenges your body‌ • Calisthenics like jump squats, box jumps, and plyometrics Anaerobic exercise isn't easy, so it’s important to find a certified personal trainer to help you develop a routine and learn proper form. Many gyms also offer classes that include anaerobic workouts. Once you’re ready to begin, follow these basic tips to get started: • Spend at least 5 minutes warming up. • Focus on your larger muscle groups before moving to smaller muscles. • Aim for three sets of eight to 15 repetitions of each exercise. • If you feel like you could do more after the last repetition, raise the intensity or weight. • Rotate through eight to 10 exercises in a routine. • Remember that technique is more important than speed. ‌ • Mix it up and incorporate different exercises over time to challenge your body in new ways. Talk to your doctor before beginning an exercise routine. They can help you find a good regimen based on your fitness level and medical history. An injury could set you back weeks or months. Start slow and build up over time as you boost your endurance. Effects of Anaerobic Exercise on Your Health Anaerobic exercise offers a number of health benefits. It can: • Strengthen bones • Burn fat • Boost muscle development‌ • Help you keep muscle mass as you age After age 27, you start to lose about 1% of your muscle mass each year. You can slow this loss by staying active and including anaerobic strength training in your exercise regimen. Muscle burns more calories than fat. By building up muscle mass, you ensure more fat-burning potential on a daily basis, even when you’re not working out. This also helps raise your energy level for everyday activities.‌ How Much Anaerobic Exercise Do You Need Per Week? The CDC recommends an average of 150 minutes of moderate activity each week, along with 2 or more days of strength training (or anaerobic exercise). This breaks down to about 30 minutes of moderate aerobic activity, or 15 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity, 5 days per week, along with 2 days of strength training. Strength training is just as important as cardio for your health. Remember that you’re more likely to stick to an exercise routine if it’s something you enjoy doing. If you try an anaerobic exercise and don’t love it, try something else. Also, consider switching up your routine on a regular basis so you continue to challenge your body while keeping yourself from getting bored.‌ Show Sources CDC: “How much physical activity do adults need?” Orthopedic Associates: “The Difference Between Aerobic and Anaerobic Exercises.” Piedmont Healthcare: “The benefits of anaerobic exercise.” World Journal of Cardiology: "Aerobic vs anaerobic exercise training effects on the cardiovascular system."
Skip to main content An HR Glossary for HR Terms Glossary of Human Resources Management and Employee Benefit Terms page leaf Federal Minimum Wage What Is the Federal Minimum Wage? The federal minimum wage is the lowest wage an employer can pay an hourly worker as established by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). As of July 24, 2009, the federal minimum wage for U.S. nonexempt workers is $7.25 per hour. However, some states have a higher minimum wage than what is mandated by the federal government. If there is a difference between the federal and state minimum wage, the higher wage is paid. For example, Washington state’s minimum wage is $13.50 per hour, meaning that this is what hourly workers (subject to the FLSA) are paid in Washington state. In the case of states without a minimum wage, like Alabama, employers subject to the FLSA must pay the federal minimum wage. For more information, check our glossary term entry on minimum wage. Who Is Exempt from the Federal Minimum Wage? Some workers are exempt from the federal minimum wage, including: • Babysitters • Farm workers on small farms • Seasonal and recreational workers • Newspaper delivery workers • Workers with disabilities • And others Be sure to check the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the list of exempted workers when making decisions about employee pay.
Why Do Most State Jurisdictions Punish Burglary As a Felony? If you’ve been convicted of a burglary, you’ve probably wondered why most state jurisdictions treat it as a felony. This classification reflects a longstanding principle of the U.S. Constitution: the home is a man’s castle. As such, it has a high degree of protection under the U.S. Constitution and is considered to be his most valuable possession. While the potential harm associated with a criminal’s actions makes it an appropriate offense to punish, the nature of the crime itself is a good reason to do so. why do most state jurisdictions punish burglary as a felony While predictability is desirable, it does not guarantee justice. While this gives the appearance of fairness, the fruits of the rule of law are waning. In this case, the arbitrary punishment of a nonviolent crime is a sign of the deteriorating quality of our society. The consequences of a wrongful conviction are often severe enough to make people feel unwelcome. The definition of burglary is important, because it affects the penalties of a robbery. Whether it’s a residential burglary or a business robbery, the penalty is based on the type of property and the context of the crime. In a typical case, a felony conviction will result in a large fine and a lengthy prison sentence. The robbery statutes were created with the archetypal criminal in mind. As such, penalties will be imposed based on the archetypical crime. For example, a burglary involving the use of a deadly weapon will be classified as a Class F felony while burglary involving a deadly weapon is a Class D felony. The robbery statutes will also vary based on the number of previous felony convictions by the defendant. A common question is: Why do most state jurisdictions punish burglary as an aggravated felony? Most jurisdictions consider it a felony if it involves an armed robbery. The most common answer is that the crime violates a person’s rights in the home or business. If the robbery is committed by a trespasser, it is a felony. The current legal system for burglary in the United States is based on common law. Its origins in the Middle Ages, burglary was considered a misdemeanor. Currently, it’s a felony in Tennessee, while a minor in Kentucky was charged with a misdemeanor. The American Law Institute argues that a thief’s intent is to steal property. In short, the criminalization of this crime has shaped our culture and laws for centuries. While burglary is an illegal act that can be prosecuted as a felony in many states, it is not illegal in many states. In the U.S., it’s a felony in California. Most jurisdictions define a felony as a violation of a property law. In addition to being a thief, the crime of burglary also involves breaking into a house. Category: Uncategorized
For Cats, a Big Gulp With a Touch of the Tongue Cutta Cutta, who inspired the study, belongs to a researcher at M.I.T. The act of drinking may seem like no big deal for anyone who can fully close his mouth to create suction, as people can. But the various species that cannot do so — and that includes most adult carnivores — must resort to some other mechanism. A Study of Cat Lapping The cat laps four times a second — too fast for the human eye to see anything but a blur — and its tongue moves at a speed of one meter per second. The engineers worked out a formula: the lapping frequency should be the weight of the cat species, raised to the power of minus one-sixth and multiplied by 4.6. They then made friends with a curator at Zoo New England, the nonprofit group that operates the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston and the Stone Zoo in Stoneham, Mass., who let them videotape his big cats. Lions, leopards, jaguars and ocelots turned out to lap at the speeds predicted by the engineers. The animal who inspired this exercise of the engineer’s art is a black cat named Cutta Cutta, who belongs to Dr. Stocker and his family. Cutta Cutta’s name comes from the word for “many stars” in Jawoyn, a language of the Australian aborigines. Dr. Stocker’s day job at M.I.T. is applying physics to biological problems, like how plankton move in the ocean. “Three and a half years ago, I was watching Cutta Cutta lap over breakfast,” Dr. Stocker said. Naturally, he wondered what hydrodynamic problems the cat might be solving. He consulted Dr. Reis, an expert in fluid mechanics, and the study was under way. At first, Dr. Stocker and his colleagues assumed that the raspy hairs on a cat’s tongue, so useful for grooming, must also be involved in drawing water into its mouth. But the tip of the tongue, which is smooth, turned out to be all that was needed. The project required no financing. The robot that mimicked the cat’s tongue was built for an experiment on the International Space Station, and the engineers simply borrowed it from a neighboring lab. Nicolas Wade, New York Times Full article and photo:
> Spirituality > Spiritual Odysseys Father Dear May 9, 2009 \| by Jacob Stewart A story about abandonment and the deep bonds of love. Abie Kesserman knew his father for only two years. He knew him in the first year of his life and he knew him in the last year of his father's life. In the former, Abie cooed to his dad's touch and cuddled in his lap. In the latter, he held his father's hand and prayed for his soul. The two relationships were 26 years apart. His dad passed away in 1999 at the age of 54. My father's sister's name is Carol. Abie is her son and my first cousin. My aunt is one of my greatest heroes. A selfless and sensitive human being, she exudes the qualities that our sages laud in Chapters of the Fathers (1:15) "Say little, do a lot, and greet all people with a pleasant demeanor." In 1970, she married Sam Kesserman. She was 22 years old. He was 27. There was no sign then of what was going to occur. There was no indication of the process that had already begun to occur. Haym and Turna Kesserman married in the spring of 1943 in Pupa, Hungary. Eight months later the Nazis invaded their country, and Wehrmacht regulars and Hungarian Iron Cross volunteers rounded up the Jewish population of their town and shipped them to Chust, a nearby city, where they were kept in a ghetto for six months. Then they were sent to the death camps in Poland, including Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Bergen-Belsen. In the next 18 months, most of their siblings and cousins were murdered. A family that had numbered 80 souls now numbered nine. Haym and Turna survived -- by the will of God alone, they would later say. They moved to America in 1949 and began trying to rebuild their lives. Their scarred bodies were matched by charred emotions. It was not an easy task. They did not speak English and had no marketable skills. The stress in their daily lives was overwhelming. Haym engaged in menial factory work and made enough money just to keep a roof over his children's heads. Turna stayed home to raise their kids. The couple was driven by one thing: an obsession to rebuild the Kesserman family that had been destroyed by the Nazis. They dreamed of having a child named after each of their deceased siblings. Yet a family must be built on a foundation. And their scarred bodies were matched by charred emotions. The two were so damaged that the building they were trying to build simply could not stand. Two of their children were institutionalized as youngsters with major emotional trauma. A third child, a tall young man named Sam, had emotional issues that would emerge later in life -- after he married a fine young woman born in Brooklyn who knew nothing about Hitler's horrors. I used to think that our family was not affected by the German genocide of 1939-45. My great-grandparents moved from Poland to Galveston, Texas in 1910 and our family was largely untouched by the war. Yet, the tentacles of those six years did reach us. They reached us 25 years after the war had ended. The only pictures I ever saw of Sam are wedding pictures in a 'Parents of the Bride' wedding album. My grandmother, of blessed memory, had saved her album and gave it to Abie when he reached maturity. Sam was good looking and sported a neatly trimmed beard. He had a kind smile and a pleasant demeanor. My aunt knew nothing about his emotional condition. She found his medication after the wedding. It didn't faze her. True, he should have told her before the wedding. But God had handed Sam a challenge, and through him, to her as well. They would face it as a couple and they would overcome it. About a year into their marriage, things began to deteriorate. Sam stopped taking his medication and his behavior became unpredictable. His personality began to change. Then he had a complete nervous breakdown. Carol was determined to stand behind him. God had sent them a challenge and they would face it as a team. She would nurse him back to good health. They would emerge from the trouble stronger than before. They would overcome. This was Sam's second nervous breakdown. The first had occurred four years earlier when he was 23. However, something happened in the hospital as Sam was recuperating that changed her view of all that had occurred. One day, a young nurse brought a copy of Sam's medical file for her to review. Strangely, it was thick. It wasn't a new file. This was Sam's second nervous breakdown. The first had occurred four years earlier when he was 23. That ended it all. He had entered marriage without telling her about these most significant occurrences in his life. There was no more relationship. And that was the beginning of the end of their marriage. "Judge not your friend until you reach his place," advise our sages (Avot 2:5), and I am loath to judge Sam. He faced a challenge greater than anything I will ever face. Two of his brothers were institutionalized, and he knew that he had major emotional issues, too. The option of absolute denial beckoned brightly. Abie, my cousin, was born in 1971. In time, he would grow to be as tall as his dad, 6-foot-2, and broad. He would have a special soul, one that had a strong bent toward spirituality and mysticism. He would compose scores of beautiful melodies and write stirring poems. His work would express an intense search, a yearning, and a longing. He was searching for a father, yearning for peace with his lot, and longing for God. Sam dropped out of sight after the divorce in 1972. He just vanished. He never came to visit Abie and never sent gifts. My aunt did not pursue him. She remarried a wonderful gentleman and raised a new and beautiful family. Why had his father abandoned him, he wondered. Why hadn't he loved him? Growing up, Abie often thought about his dad. Why had his father abandoned him, he wondered. Why hadn't he loved him? Why didn't he ever call or write? Why didn't he tell him that he thought of him, that he missed him? Hurt became sadness. Sadness became anger. Anger became hatred. He hated him for not being there to praise him when he did right. He hated him for not being there to punish him when he did wrong. He hated him for not being an inspiration and an authority in his life. If a good father disciplines his child to teach him, and a bad father punishes his child to let out frustration, a terrible father shows no interest at all. Carol told Abie about his dad, and about their troubled marriage. She told him about the difficulties he had. But to Abie it really didn't matter. Stable or not, his dad was still his dad and he wanted a relationship with him. He still wanted to hear that his dad loved him. He wanted a connection to the man who fathered him. He desperately wanted validation from the source of his existence. There is something interesting about our relationships with one’s father. He is not just the man who paid our dental bills and took us to Little League games. He is so much more than that. We hold him to an incredibly high standard. We expect him to know exactly what we need. We expect him to know exactly when to discipline us and when to show us a soft side, to know when to demand that we work harder to reach our potential, and when to accept us the way we are. To know when to give what we desire and when not to. We want him to be a perfect role model to us. We want a perfect father. We want him to be proud of us. His criticism is harder to take, and his blessing is more rewarding. And no matter how good or strained our relationship may be, we are deeply satisfied to hear that he is bragging to his friends about us. We seek validation from him. He can be aged and weak, and living in a nursing home, but when we make the front page of the newspaper, or we are quoted in a business story in the New York Times, we make sure to show our dad a copy of the paper immediately. Something happens when we do that. Our very existence is validated. Our father is a symbol of authority. He is larger than life. He is a reflection of God. We expect everything from our parents because we expect everything from God. We expect them to be perfect because we know that God is perfect. The most painful experience a human being can feel is that his parents do not love him. It is so painful because we inherently know that our parents ought to love us. The most painful thing a person can experience is the feeling that God does not relate to him and love him. Because we know that God does. No matter how strained your relationship is, you always want to love your dad and to hear that he is proud of you. No matter how distant your relationship with God, you want to love Him, and to know that he is proud of your good deeds. You can be angry with your dad, but, ultimately, you want to be close. You can be angry with God, but ultimately, you desperately want to be close. At the age of 27, Abie tracked his dad down. He found his dad's sister's name in a Brooklyn phonebook and called her. After a brief conversation, she told him about Sam. He was not well, and living in a hospice. They arranged a meeting in her apartment. Abie came with a friend, a wonderful man who had helped him through many difficult moments over the years. Sam came alone and sat next to his sister. Sam gave Abie a gift, a silver cup, to express his love for him. He apologized for not being part of his life. He explained that he had hoped that by not telling his son of his emotional state, his child would have no baggage and live an untroubled life. Crying, he told Abie that he had always loved him and only wanted the best for him. Then he told Abie more. He told him that he had married twice more and fathered three more children. Abie's brothers and sister all lived with foster parents, as their mothers had passed away and he was unable to care for them. Sam cried a lot -- over his shattered dreams of having a normal life, and over the pain he had caused his children. And, crying, he told Abie that he had always loved him and only wanted the best for him. As much pain and anger as Abie had felt over the years, he appreciated hearing that. There was something extremely validating in knowing that his dad had always loved him. They met a dozen times over the next few months. Once his dad took him to a store and bought him a pair of shoes. It was a deeply moving experience. Another time they sat out on the stoop together and wished passersby a good day. Abie saw his father's kind, pleasant side. Sam was not a healthy man. About a year after he and Abie met, he was admitted to a hospital with an internal infection, and passed away a few weeks later. Abie heard about his father's death while working in Manhattan one morning. He was told that the funeral would be in Brooklyn, just before nightfall. He left his job, ran three blocks and caught a bus that ran regularly between the two boroughs. Sitting on the bus near a window, Abie began to hum. It was a new tune. A tune of longing, of hope, of yearning. As the bus began to move, he took out a pen and began to write in a small notebook he carried in his jacket pocket. The words emerged as the tune began to express his inner feelings. Riding by light, Yes it is night, A sad time for me, What a decree Father is dead, I am suddenly alone, In a way, I know he is home, Angels greet him there Now he's in their care, Hard life, Three times a wife Yet still greeted all Big and small His reward in the end God, peace to the world do send. Then the tears came. As the wet drops streamed down his cheeks, he put his pen away and tucked his notebook into his jacket pocket. Suddenly, a sensation overcame him. He finally came to terms with his father. He knew that his father had always loved him. He knew that his father had tried to do what was best for him, and had simply made a mistake. And he knew that there was a purpose for all that occurred both to him and his dad, and that God knew it. He loved his dad. Deeply. He loved God. Deeply. And he knew that they loved him, too. All names in this article have been changed in order to protect their privacy. 🤯 ⇐ That's you after reading our weekly email.
Ancient Egypt Wiki Period of 18th Dynasty Cult center Amarna Symbol(s) Sun disc Association Sun, creation, kingship Appearance Sun disc, sun rays Aten is the creator of the universe in ancient Egyptian Mythology, usually regarded as a sun god represented by the sun's disk. His worship (Atenism) was instituted as the basis for the mostly monotheistic — in fact, monistic — religion of Amenhotep IV, who took the name Akhenaten. The worship of Aten seems to have ceased shortly after Akhenaten's death. During the early stages of the New Kingdom the priesthood of the Theban god Amun rapidly rose in power as earlier kings payed massive tribute to the god by expanding his temple complex at Karnak. Unlike his dynastic predecessors, Thutmose IV's reign marked an increase in royal importance of the sun cult at Heliopolis and Giza.[1] The influence of Heliopolis on Thutmose IV becomes the clearest by his personal identification with the sun god; for the first time we see the living pharaoh depicted with the sun disc on his head, symbolic for the sun god.[1] The Aten also first appears as an independent deity during his reign.[1] His successor, Amenhotep III, associated himself with the Aten as well. During the reign of Akhenaten the Aten suddenly rose to absolute supremacy. Pharaoh Akhenaten and his family adoring the Aten Aten was the focus of Akhenaten's religion, but viewing Aten as Akhenaten's god is a simplification. Aten is the name given to represent the solar disc. The term Aten was used to designate a disc, and since the sun was a disc, gradually became associated with solar deities. Aten expresses indirectly the life-giving force of light. The full title of Akhenaten's god was The Rahorus who rejoices in the horizon, in his/her Name of the Light which is seen in the sun disc. (This is the title of the god as it appears on the numerous stelae which were placed to mark the boundaries of Akhenaten's new capital at Amarna, or "Akhetaten.") This lengthy name was often shortened to Ra-Horus-Aten or just Aten in many texts, but the god Akhenaten had raised to supremacy is considered a synthesis of very ancient ones viewed in a new and different way. Both Ra and Horus characteristics are part of the god, but the god is also considered to be both masculine and feminine simultaneously. All creation was thought to emanate from the god and to exist within the god. In particular, the god was not depicted in anthropomorphic (human) form, but as rays of light extending from the sun's disk. Furthermore, the god's name came to be written within a cartouche, along with the titles normally given to a Pharaoh, another break with ancient tradition. The Aten first appears in texts dating to the 12th Dynasty, in The Story of Sinuhe. Ra-Horus, more usually referred to as Ra-Herakhty (Ra, who is Horus of the two horizons), is a synthesis of two other gods, both of which are attested from very early on. During the Amarna period, this synthesis was seen as the invisible source of energy of the sun god, of which the visible manifestation was the Aten, the solar disk. Thus Ra-Horus-Aten was a development of old ideas which came gradually. The real change is the apparent abandonment of all other gods following the advent of Akhenaten, i.e., the introduction, apparently by Akhenaten, of monotheism. This is readily apparent in the Great Hymn to the Aten. Royal Titulary During the Amarna Period, the Aten was given a Royal Titulary (as he was considered to be king of all), with his names drawn in a cartouche. There were 2 forms of this title, the first had the names of other gods, and the second later one which was more 'singular' and referred only to the Aten himself. Early form Live Re-Horakhti who rejoices in the Horizon In his name Shu which is the Aten Later form Live Re, ruler of the 2 horizons who rejoices in the Horizon In his name of light which is the Aten Variant Vocalizations Egyptologists have also vocalized the name as Aton, Atonu, Itni, Itn, and Adon (possibly the source of one of the Hebrew God's names, Adon). Variant Translations Because high relief and low relief illustrations of the Aten show it with a curved surface (see for example the photograph illustrating this article), the late scholar Hugh Nibley insisted that a more correct translation would be globe, orb or sphere, rather than disk. The three-dimensional spherical shape of the Aten is even more evident when such reliefs are viewed in person, rather than merely in photographs. 1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Reeves 2001, p. 48-49. • Collier, Mark and Manley, Bill. How to Read Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Revised Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. • Reeves, N., 2001: Akhenaten, Egypt's False Prophet. Thames & Hudson, London.
What coins did the Pirates want the most? June 29, 2020 2:34 pm Category: , As they sailed the seven seas and terrorised the Spanish Main, there was one coin that they wanted to get their hands on the most. These were the famous gold doubloons. Pirates had their own currency. When they sauntered into the godforsaken port of Tortuga they had sin and mischief on their mind. Regular pound sterling wouldn’t cut it. They needed to pay with the doubloons for whatever illicit fun they were after. Image credit The doubloon is basically another name for the equally notorious “pieces of eight”, as made famous by Long John Silver’s Parrot constantly going on about it. Getting hold of one of these coins is certainly of interest to the Coin Valuers UK based firm https://www.gmcoins.co.uk/. Doubloons menas “doblon de a ocho” and the eight part refers to the fact that one was worth eight Spanish escudos. Image credit Spain was becoming rich from the gold it had discovered in Mexico after defeating the Aztecs. This was a tempting target for the Pirates who were determined to take this for themselves. By the way, what’s the difference between a Pirate and Buccaneer? A Buccaneer was a Pirate that was working for the British to try and stop the Spanish Gold. One of the best was Sir Francis Drake.
Using Persistent Storage to Optimize Power Consumption Role of persistent storage Persistent storage involves non-volatile media, such as disk drives, that retain data even when the device is powered off. It differs from non-persistent storage, such as RAM and cache, which lose data during a power cycle. Persistent storage can retain a file, a block or an object. Persistent storage in BLE applications To reduce power consumption in BLE, two types of information can be kept in persistent storage: bonding information and service discovery information. Bonding information In the bonding feature of BLE, paired devices store information about each other in a local database. The next time those devices are close, they use that pairing information to encrypt their connection and transfer data. Bonding information in persistent storage is preserved, even if the devices are powered off, saving the power otherwise required to pair the devices for each session. Service discovery information When two BLE devices are paired and connected, each may discover services and characteristics (including characteristic descriptors) of the other, and use them to perform read and write operations. Consider a wearable device that supports BLP, the Blood Pressure Profile specification of BLE’s Generic Attributes (GATT) services. The device, when worn by an individual, acts as a server, and the individual’s mobile device acts as a client. The mobile device may discover service-related information like notifications or indications from the BLP device and allow them to receive and track the individual’s blood pressure. If both devices make use of persistent storage, they can easily connect and perform GATT operations without the need to re-discover the service-related information. Instead, each can load the information from persistent storage, allow notifications/indications and receive the characteristic values. Implementation on the Qualcomm® QCA4020/4024 Platform In the following scenario, the QCA402x board takes advantage of persistent storage and its position between a mobile device and home devices to reduce power consumption. With the QCA4020 Development Board Application, the board scans for home devices only when it is connected to the mobile device. In persistent storage, the board stores service-related information for the mobile device and for the home devices from the last time they were paired. When the QCA402x board powers off, it stores the same set of device and pairing information in persistent storage. Then, on restart, the QCA402x board loads the pairing information for the mobile device and the home devices and connects to them. That eliminates the overhead involved in scanning and saves power. For more information, consult the Bluetooth core specification 5.0.
Difference between Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings Original article of -. Both Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings are series of books that have acquired a lot of fame and popularity, however, much is debated about the similarities and differences that can be seen between these two works of fiction. Both works are constantly compared, for this reason you are likely to be interested in knowing what the difference between one and the other is. If you have doubts about it or just go in search of some complementary information, read on, because below we explain everything you need to know about this interesting topic. Harry Potter The first and most obvious difference between these two books is that they have different authors. Harry Potter was written by J.K. Rowling and the first book in the series was published in 1994. On the other hand, if it is a question of finding similarities between the stories, the fact that there is quite a similarity between the Gandalf in Tolkien's story and Rowling's Dumbledore cannot be ignored. Both characters act as guides or mentors of the respective protagonists. Also, Harry and Frodo are similar in nature. The two are young orphans who are suddenly immersed in a magical world that was previously ignored by everyone (including family and friends). Both characters have a destiny to fulfill, Harry has to face and defeat Lord Voldemort; while Frodo must wear the Unique Ring and throw it on the Mount of Destiny in order to defeat Lord Sauron. If we go to the antagonists of these stories we realize that both Sauron and Voldemort seek power and total control. In both cases they are referred to as "Dark Lord", due to the fear that others have to use their names. The Lord of the rings On the other hand, the first of these books was published in the year 1954 by J.R.R. Tolkien and, despite the similarities between the two series, it is clear that they are only superficial similarities. Tolkien's works are much deeper compared to Rowling's, so much so that they have helped shape the fantasy genre. It can be said that almost all current fantasy works consciously or unconsciously emulate some aspects of Tolkien's. While Tolkien has created a mythology and a complete world in his work, Rowling remains in his world. His mythology is mixed with many aspects of the real world. Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings Finally, one of the most important points to highlight is the fact that unlike The Lord of the Rings, which is aimed at a more mature audience; Harry Potter was intended for a more youthful audience. Tolkien's series is more an epic adventure, while Rowling's is more focused on the growth of the characters and how they face the world. If you love the post, don’t forget to share it 💎
The Civil Rights Act of 1963 and the Equal Pay Act prohibit employers in Florida against discriminating on the basis of gender. Therefore, gender may not be the basis for any employer decisions regarding pay, hiring policies, or promotion requirements. They must also make sure that working environments will not be hostile towards a certain gender and that the work atmosphere is not overly sexual. What Must be Proven in a Discrimination Claim? Under the Equal Pay act, discrimination can be proven if men and women both work in the same place, do the same job, but are nevertheless paid differently. A discrimination claim may also succeed when employers in Belle Isle hire only one particular gender, issues promotions based on gender, or retaliates against persons who seek relief for employer misconduct. When is Sexual Harassment Prohibited? Sexual harassment consists of all unwanted conduct of a sexual nature directed towards the victim, and includes both physical and verbal acts. Employers in Belle Isle may also be liable for the behavior, even when the conduct was done by an employee's co-worker. Florida employers may also be held liable for sexual harassment if it permits conduct that leads to an overly sexual work environment. Without a lawyer, it can be difficult to prove gender discrimination because the details in proving intent are often complicated. Also, there can be specific procedures that must be closely followed in pursuing a claim.
What is the Burden of Proof? lawyer advising clients reviewing paperwork for legal proceedings and legal advice What is the Burden of Proof? Legal jargon can often sound complicated and intimidating to anyone unfamiliar with legal practice. Learning basic legal terms and concepts can be a valuable in understanding your rights. If you have a claim, an important thing to know when deciding if you want to initiate a lawsuit against another individual or entity is what the burden of proof is in your case. Burden of proof is a legal term used to simplify the idea that the party who initiated the lawsuit has the responsibility to provide a sufficient amount of evidence to prove their case. The reason our legal system has put this in place is because the courts wish to avoid arguments based on conjecture and instead focus on the tangible facts. Civil v. Criminal Procedures In civil court, a judge or jury must decide based upon the preponderance of the evidence. Preponderance of evidence translates to the majority. In order for the plaintiff to be successful, they need to prove that the defendant is more than 50.1% liable. According to the California Civil Jury Instructions, “A party must persuade you [the jury], by the evidence presented in court, that what he or she is required to prove is more likely to be true than not true.” For example, if a child were to get hurt by using a broken swing in a public park, the plaintiff would have to prove that the city is more responsible for the injury sustained than the injured party. Further, if the plaintiff can prove through evidence that the city knew about the broken swing and either failed to fix it or post proper signage, there would likely be reason enough to hold the city more accountable than the child and their parent. When looking for financial compensation, one would have to prove that the defendant was negligent by providing sufficient evidence to prove damages. The burden of proof in criminal cases is much greater as the prosecution (Federal Government or State) must prove that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Every juror must unanimously agree that the defendant committed the crime they have been accused of. This is the legal standard for all criminal prosecutions because the stakes are so high when deciding whether or not an individual should be sentenced to prison, and their life and liberty are at issue. No matter the severity of the crime—whether a misdemeanor or felony—all are treated under the principle that you are innocent until proven guilty by the prosecutor. Why Burden of Proof? The burden of proof is necessary because it creates reasonable requirements that must be met in order to prosecute or file a claim. The American legal system can only function at its best when rulings and decisions are based on evidence and facts, as opposed to conjecture and emotions. If you have a claim and would like to discuss your claim with an experienced attorney, please contact the Hariri Law Group. Our experienced attorneys will fight for your rights and obtain the compensation that you deserve. True or False? The defendant in a criminal trial must have a sufficient amount of evidence to prove their innocence beyond a reasonable doubt. False. Only the prosecution carries the burden of proof which requires a sufficient amount of evidence to prove that the defendant is guilty upon reasonable doubt. Share this post: You might also enjoy Ready to Get Started? Let us know as much detail as possible so we can provide our best during your consultation. Our attorneys will never stop fighting until the fighting is done. We understand our clients’ injuries, the difficulties they face and we will be by your side until we obtain justice and the compensation you deserve. Please note that we cannot provide legal advice to non-clients. Scroll to Top
Main Content Run Field Oriented Control of PMSM Using Model Predictive Control This example uses Model Predictive Control (MPC) to control the speed of a three-phase permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). MPC is a control technique that tunes and optimizes the inputs to a control system to minimize the error in the predicted system output and achieve the reference control objective over a period of time. This technique involves solving the objective function and finding an optimal input sequence at every sample time (${T_s}$). After each time step, the current state of the plant is considered as the initial state and the above process is repeated. The optimizer provides the optimal inputs to the model based on solving the objective function under specific bounds and constraints. During Prediction step, the future response of a plant is predicted with the help of a dynamic discrete-time model up to Np sampling intervals, which is called the prediction horizon. During Optimization step, the objective function is solved to obtain the optimal control inputs up to Nc sampling intervals, which is called control horizon for the predicted response. Control horizon remains less than or equal to the prediction horizon. The example uses an MPC controller as a current controller (in a field-oriented control or FOC algorithm) to optimize the ${I_d}$ and ${I_q}$ currents and change the d-axis and q-axis controller voltage outputs so that they meet the reference control objectives over a period of time. The objective function is derived as a linear sum of these: [W1 * (error in output)] + [W2 * (rate of change of input)] + [W3 * (error in input)] where, W1, W2, and W3 are the weightages. The example uses the model initialization script to define these weightage (or weights) of these three parameters. 1. Inputs: $\left[ {{I_d} = 0,{I_q} = 0} \right]$ 2. Rate of change of input: $\left[ {{I_d} = 0.01,{I_q} = 0.01} \right]$ 3. Measured Outputs: $\left[ {{V_d} = 1,{V_q} = 1} \right]$ Therefore, by default, the example gives maximum weightage to the output variables parameter (corresponding to ${V_d}$ and ${V_q}$ voltages) when calculating the error in the predicted output. You can change the weightage values for error computation using the model initialization script available in the example. The example also operates the MPC inputs (${I_d}$ and ${I_q}$) and the MPC outputs (${V_d}$ and ${V_q}$) under the following lower and upper bounds: • Inputs $$ - 1 \le {I_d} \le 1$$ $$ - 1 \le {I_q} \le 1$$ • Measured outputs $$ - 0.1 \le {V_d} \le 0.1$$ $$ - 1 \le {V_q} \le 1$$ Note: The rate of change of input does not have any lower and upper bounds. To retain linearity of the constraints, you can consider polytopic approximations. An acceptable trade-off between the accuracy and number of constraints can be acheived by approximating the feasible region using a hexagon. Because the direct component of the stator current ${I_d}$ is almost always very close to zero, except during flux weakening operation when it takes negative values, you can consider the constraint ${I_d}$ is less that or equal to 0, to reduce the number of constraints. The following image shows the pictorial representation of the contraints for the MPC output voltages (${V_d}$ and ${V_q}$, with circle approximation having 6 faces), and MPC input currents (${I_d}$ and ${I_q}$, with half-circle approximation having 4 faces). You can generate these plots by using the MATLAB command mcb_getMPCObject(pmsm,PU_System,Ts_current,T_pwm,1). Note: The sample time (${T_s}$) used in the model intitialization script of this example is based on tests on the particular hardware. You can change the sample time for a differet kind of hardware, which will in turn impact the MPC operation. For more information about MPC, see What is Model Predictive Control? (Model Predictive Control Toolbox). Note: While using MPC, you may observe that the speed of the motor does not reach the maximum value at the rated torque (it settles at around 0.87 pu). This is the expected behavior because the linear constraints set on the MPC controller limit the actual operating points to reach the operating points on the circle. The example includes the model mcb_pmsm_foc_mpc_qep_f28379d You can use these models for both simulation and code generation. You can also use the open_system command to open the Simulink® models. For example, use this command for a F28379d based controller. For the model names that you can use for different hardware configurations, see the Required Hardware topic in the Generate Code and Deploy Model to Target Hardware section. Required MathWorks® Products To simulate model: • Motor Control Blockset™ • Model Predictive Control Toolbox™ To generate code and deploy model: • Motor Control Blockset™ • Model Predictive Control Toolbox™ • Embedded Coder® • Embedded Coder® Support Package for Texas Instruments™ C2000™ Processors 1. Obtain the motor parameters. We provide default motor parameters with the Simulink® model that you can replace with the values from either the motor datasheet or other sources. However, if you have the motor control hardware, you can estimate the parameters for the motor that you want to use, by using the Motor Control Blockset parameter estimation tool. For instructions, see Estimate PMSM Parameters Using Recommended Hardware. The parameter estimation tool updates the motorParam variable (in the MATLAB® workspace) with the estimated motor parameters. 2. If you obtain the motor parameters from the datasheet or other sources, update the motor parameters and inverter parameters in the model initialization script associated with the Simulink® models. For instructions, see Estimate Control Gains and Use Utility Functions. If you use the parameter estimation tool, you can update the inverter parameters, but do not update the motor parameters in the model initialization script. The script automatically extracts motor parameters from the updated motorParam workspace variable. Simulate Model This example supports simulation. Follow these steps to simulate the model. 1. Open a model included with this example. 2. Click Run on the Simulation tab to simulate the model. 3. Click Data Inspector on the Simulation tab to view and analyze the simulation results. Generate Code and Deploy Model to Target Hardware This section instructs you to generate code and run the FOC algorithm on the target hardware. This example uses a host and a target model. The host model is a user interface to the controller hardware board. You can run the host model on the host computer. The prerequisite to use the host model is to deploy the target model to the controller hardware board. The host model uses serial communication to command the target Simulink® model and run the motor in a closed-loop control. Required Hardware This example supports this hardware configuration. You can also use the target model name to open the model for the corresponding hardware configuration, from the MATLAB® command prompt. For connections related to the preceding hardware configurations, see LAUNCHXL-F28069M and LAUNCHXL-F28379D Configurations. Generate Code and Run Model on Target Hardware 1. Simulate the target model and observe the simulation results. 2. Complete the hardware connections. 3. The model automatically computes the ADC (or current) offset values. To disable this functionality (enabled by default), update the value 0 to the variable inverter.ADCOffsetCalibEnable in the model initialization script. Alternatively, you can compute the ADC offset values and update it manually in the model initialization scripts. For instructions, see Run 3-Phase AC Motors in Open-Loop Control and Calibrate ADC Offset. 4. Compute the quadrature encoder index offset value and update it in the model initialization scripts associated with the target model. For instructions, see Quadrature Encoder Offset Calibration for PMSM Motor. NOTE: Verify the number of slits available in the quadrature encoder sensor attached to your motor. Check and update the variable pmsm.QEPSlits available in the model initialization script. This variable corresponds to the Encoder slits parameter of the quadrature encoder block. For more details about the Encoder slits and Encoder counts per slit parameters, see Quadrature Decoder. 5. Open the target model for the hardware configuration that you want to use. If you want to change the default hardware configuration settings for the model, see Model Configuration Parameters. 6. Load a sample program to CPU2 of LAUNCHXL-F28379D, for example, program that operates the CPU2 blue LED by using GPIO31 (c28379D_cpu2_blink.slx), to ensure that CPU2 is not mistakenly configured to use the board peripherals intended for CPU1. 7. Click Build, Deploy & Start on the Hardware tab to deploy the target model to the hardware. 8. Click the host model hyperlink in the target model to open the associated host model. You can also use the open_system command to open the host model. For example, use this command for a F28069M based controller. For details about the serial communication between the host and target models, see Host-Target Communication. 9. In the host model, open the blocks Host Serial Setup, Host Serial Receive, and Host Serial Transmit, and select a Port. 10. Update the Reference Speed value in the host model. 11. Click Run on the Simulation tab to run the host model. 12. Change the position of the Start / Stop Motor switch to On, to start running the motor. 13. Use the Debug signals section to select the debug signals that you want to monitor. Observe the debug signals from the RX subsystem, in the Time Scope of the host model. • G. Cimini, D. Bernardini, A. Bemporad and S. Levijoki, "Online model predictive torque control for Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors," 2015 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT), 2015, pp. 2308-2313, doi: 10.1109/ICIT.2015.7125438. • S. Chai, L. Wang and E. Rogers, "Cascade model predictive control of a PMSM with periodic disturbance rejection," 2011 Australian Control Conference, 2011, pp. 309-314.
Tag Archives: a heated suit The Sandiacre Screw Company (5) Young Keith Doncaster, whom we have met already four times, was a mid-upper gunner, who sat in a perspex dome half way along the bomber’s fuselage. He protected the aircraft from attacks originating from above the horizon, mostly diving attacks from the rear. His turret was rather like an upturned goldfish bowl and could become extremely hot on occasion. That occasion was quite rare, and cold, particularly at altitude and at night, was a far more frequent problem: An ex-Lancaster gunner, Russell Margerison, listed the clothes he wore for each mission: “Women’s silk stockings, woollen knee-caps, woollen long johns with sleeves and a high neck, a shirt, trousers, ordinary socks and over those, long woollen ones. Then a thick pullover, a battle-dress top, a heated suit, an outer suit of kapok, electrically heated slippers, fur-lined boots, silk gloves, heated long gloves, and leather gauntlets. And anti-freeze ointment on any exposed flesh.” If the perspex was shot away, temperatures might drop to 60° below. Margerison said that the gunners hardly ever fired their guns. If anybody spotted an enemy aircraft, they would shout: “Corkscrew port !!” or “Corkscrew starboard !!” and the supremely agile thirty ton bomber would embark on its famous twisting and turning manoeuvre which no German fighter could possibly keep up with, especially in darkness: Keith would have been familiar with this life. Ruled by superstition, clothes were always put on in a set sequence and mascots such as lucky dolls or toys were always taken along. And there were “chop girls”, young ladies whose boyfriends kept getting killed and whom nobody would date any more, no matter how pretty they were. And then there was the constant hunt for fuel for the metal stove in the middle of an icy Nissen hut: The crew were the most important people in Keith’s life. Outside these seven men, you were a fool to make other close friendships when life expectancy was six weeks with just four weeks for a rear gunner. Only your family counted for more than your crew: Before D-Day, 65% of crew members were killed before they completed their “tour” of thirty missions. Each mission carried a 4% chance of being shot down. Overall, the casualty rate was around 45%, and eventually 55,573 men would be killed. The death rate in the US Eighth Air Force was considerably lower. This was because they wore their parachutes during missions. Those silken life savers were not stored away from the owner. And the Eighth Air Force flew in daylight when it was easier, theoretically, to get out of the plane: Filed under Aviation, Bomber Command, History, military, Nottingham, The High School
White Rabbit, a CERN born open-source technology sets new global standard empowering world innovators The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has incorporated the White Rabbit technology into its industry standard, maximising its adoption by industry and other partners in their pursuit to build innovative solutions for world challenges Knowledge & Technology Transfer,open hardware,white rabbit Photos of the White Rabbit team and equipment (Image: CERN) White Rabbit (WR) is a technology developed at CERN to provide sub-nanosecond accuracy and picoseconds precision of synchronisation for the LHC accelerators chain. It was first used in 2012 and since then has been showcasing its diverse industrial applications outside the field of particle physics. On 16 June, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) updated the Precision Time Protocol industry-standard (PTP) incorporating the White Rabbit PTP extension and thus maximising its adoption by industry and other partners in their pursuit to build innovative solutions to address world challenges. CERN developed WR as open-source hardware, with primary adoption by other research infrastructures with similar challenges in highly accurate synchronization of distributed electronic devices. The R&D process and all knowledge gained throughout the development has been made available through CERN's Open Hardware Repository. This gives other organisations and companies the freedom to use and modify existing developments. Through proactive engagement of CERN's Knowledge Transfer group and Beam Controls group, a larger group of companies and organisations connected to the development of hardware, software, and gateware for WR switches and nodes. The WR ecosystem quickly grew to include several organisations, developing open hardware for widespread benefit. This collaborative approach brought improvements to the original concept, allowing CERN to also benefit from the new developments as well. This new Ethernet-based technology, which ensures sub-nanosecond synchronisation and deterministic data transfer, is now deployed in numerous scientific infrastructures worldwide. It has shown its innovative potential by being commercialised and introduced into different industries, including telecommunications, financial markets, smart grids, space industry and quantum computing. The WR technology has now been recognised with a worldwide industry-standard, called Precision Time Protocol (PTP), governed by the IEEE, the world's largest technical professional organisation dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. The WR additions to the PTP standard, referred to as High Accuracy, allow to increase PTP's synchronisation performance by a few orders of magnitude, from sub-microseconds to sub-nanoseconds. “PTP is the first IEEE standard to incorporate a CERN-born technology. This is a major step for White Rabbit. It is already widely used in large scientific facilities and its adoption in industry is gaining momentum. Its incorporation into the PTP standard will allow hardware vendors world-wide to produce WR equipment compliant with the PTP standard and consequently accelerate its dissemination on a larger scale," says Maciej Lipinski, Electronics Engineer at CERN, who has led the WR standardisation effort.
How Online Platforms Can Encourage Good Behavior The technical architecture of online platforms, on the other hand, should be designed to dampen harassing behavior, while shielding targets from harassing content. It means creating technical friction in orchestrating a sustained campaign on a platform, or engaging in sustained hounding. For example, what if, after your fifth unanswered tweet within the hour to someone who didn’t follow you, a pop-up asked if you really wanted to send that message? It also means building user interfaces that impart a feeling of safety to targets. Code is never neutral, and interfaces can signal all kinds of things to users. For example, what if Caroline Criado Perez had been able to hit a “panic button,” one that prompted her with a message that Twitter Trust & Safety was looking into the issue and, until then, messages from strangers would be hidden from her? Folksonomies: online bullying online forums /technology and computing/internet technology/social network (0.979846) /technology and computing/internet technology/web search/people search (0.802131) /technology and computing/internet technology/email (0.779435) Java (0.911948): dbpedia_resource English-language films (0.820616): dbpedia_resource Message (0.780213): dbpedia_resource Software architecture (0.759787): dbpedia_resource User interface (0.748000): dbpedia_resource Computing platform (0.739132): dbpedia_resource The Internet of Garbage Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Jeong, Sarah (2015715), The Internet of Garbage, Retrieved on 2019-11-07 Folksonomies: culture internet social media
How Polyurea Coating Benefits Your Environment Polyurea is a revolutionary, versatile material primarily used for protective coating many different surfaces. This hard but flexible material is well-known for its numerous positive characteristics. It’s available in various thicknesses, which allows it to be applied both externally and internally, and its numerous positive effects on the surface it coats are appreciated both by engineers and consumers. Nowadays, polyurea companies are focusing on developing polyurea products for industrial and medical applications. Here is a list of polyurea companies you may find depending on where you live or you simply browse through their website: polyurea coating The United States polyurea coatings industry is dominated by two main giants, AMF Power Company and DuPont. DuPont’s flagship product is polyurea Teflon coated coatings used in a wide range of industries from aerospace to pharmaceuticals. However, most polyurea companies manufacture and sell polyurea sheets and coatings for industrial and other application use. Some polyurea coating products may have a generic solution for protective coating applications. For instance, polyurea sheets used in industrial oven liners can also be used to protect oven surfaces from direct sunlight. A polyurea company producing Teflon coating application may also be able to supply you with Teflon coating sheets and other polyurea products that can perform the same job, but at a more economical cost. When shopping for a polyurea company, check their product line and discuss what specific polyurea coating they can offer you. There are many environmental and economic benefits to polyurea coating and it is becoming a popular choice in applications outside of automotive and electronics manufacturing. In the last decade alone, polyurea coating has expanded from car coatings to roofing, floor finish, sealants, plastics, coatings, and much more. Environmental impacts are minimized when using polyurea because it doesn’t attract or emit urethane fumes. Also, because it won’t degrade, polyurea doesn’t leach into surrounding water or air. As a result, there is less chemical contamination with less waste and less pollution. Polyurea coating is especially ideal for climate change adaptation because it helps reduce evaporation rates. As a result, there is less need to create new synthetic fuels to power our vehicles. Additionally, using polyurea in your home, building, or industry will reduce your need for fossil fuels which contribute to air pollution, Global warming, climate change and habitat loss. A polyurea company producing and installing polyurea coatings will help you achieve these goals and protect the environment at the same time. Today’s polyurea company can offer a full range of polyurea coating products including polyurea exterior coating, polyurea interior coating, polyurea roof coating, and polyurea siding coating. A polyurea company can also perform a number of quality checks to ensure that your coating project is completed on time and within budget. They can even provide technical assistance with projects from conception to installation. If you’re interested in this exciting new form of coatings, contact a polyurea company today to find out how polyurea coating can help you make your home, business, or environment more efficient and affordable.
At Rebound Sport and Spine, we are happy to offer class IV laser therapy to help accelerate your healing. What is Class IV Laser therapy? Laser therapy is a form of light therapy that utilizes a focused beam of photons (light particles) in the red light spectrum (600-950nm wavelength). This beam of light is applied to the skin through the applicator of the laser machine and can reach deep structures and tissues along with structures closer to the surface of the skin. Lasers come in different classes based on their strength and penetration power. For example, lasers used in CD players are considered class I, laser pointers are considered class II, laser scanners are considered class IIa, and firearm laser sights are considered class IIIa. Class IIIb lasers are therapeutic lasers and are commonly known as cold lasers and their use in clinical treatment is referred to as low-level laser therapy. Class IV lasers are stronger and penetrate deeper than cold lasers and, because of this, they can produce some heat. How does laser therapy work? If you were asked the one thing you remember from high school science class, chances are you might say “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”. In short, laser therapy uses this fact to speed healing! Mitochondria are small organs that reside in every cell of our body and their job is to produce energy in the form of a molecule called ATP. Rebound Sport & Spine Clinic - office They produce ATP through the action of a system of chemical reactions called the electron transport chain. When photons from a class IV laser reach the mitochondria of cells, this activates an enzyme in the electron transport chain called cytochrome C oxidase. When this is activated, the mitochondria are able to produce more ATP for the cell. ATP is like money for the cell, it can be used for countless different functions but one of the most important things it can be used for is healing. Additionally, producing all of this energy actually creates a significant amount of heat. The energy and heat produced helps bring more blood to the area, delivering more oxygen and helpful nutrients and chemicals that the cell can use for further healing. Furthermore, the extra oxygen brought in by the blood flow is used by the mitochondria to produce even more energy. Simply put, laser therapy boosts the energy that can be used by all your cells! What can be treated with laser therapy? Laser therapy has many uses in clinical practice and can be effective to accelerate healing in (almost) any tissue of the human body. Here at Rebound Sport and Spine, some common conditions that are treated with class IV laser include: • Tendon injuries • Muscle strains • Trigger points • Joint sprains • Fractures • Inflammation (e.g. plantar fasciitis, frozen shoulder, etc) • Nerve entrapments (pinched nerves) • Bursitis • Back and neck pain • Sciatica • Osteoarthritis • Many more conditions of the muscles, bones, joints, and nerves If your body needs a bit of extra healing power, chances are class IV laser therapy can help! What can I expect during class IV laser treatment? Since class IV laser uses a powerful red light, all those in the room for treatment must wear protective glasses (provided by the clinic) to protect the eyes from any damage. During treatment, you may feel some slight warmth, or you may feel nothing. The practitioner will move the laser applicator over the skin of the affected area(s) for the duration of the treatment to ensure a large area of effect and to dissipate heat to avoid discomfort. Laser therapy is a safe and effective treatment option Help boost recovery of any aches and pains you may be having. Feel free to ask if laser therapy is right for you! For all appointments and information about laser therapy call 778-771-3040 Act Now
Your question: What is counted in surgical count? What must be counted during surgical count? All items should be separated completely during a count. Counts should be performed in a consistent sequence, for example, sponges, sharps, miscellaneous items and instruments at the surgical site and immediate area, then the instrument stand, the back table and discarded items. What is a surgical count? Surgical counting is a manual process to count the mate- rials used in the sterile field to prevent retained surgical items in patients during surgery (Rowlands 2012). What are accountable items in a surgical count? Accountable items are items which, by their nature, are at risk of being retained in the patient and require additional risk management. Accountable items requiring mandatory documentation include but are not limited to: Instruments, all, including reusable and loan sets. How are counted items prepackaged in surgery? The scrub person and the circulating nurse together count all items before the surgical procedure begins and during the surgical procedure as each additional package is opened and added to the sterile field. These initial counts provide the baseline for subsequent counts. IT IS INTERESTING: What are the signs of surgery complications? What are the 5 Steps to Safer Surgery? Five Steps to Safer Surgery is a surgical safety checklist. It involves briefing, sign-in, timeout, sign-out and debriefing, and is now advocated by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) for all patients in England and Wales undergoing surgical procedures. What is a surgical time out? The surgical “time out” represents the last part of the Universal Protocol and is performed in the operating room, immediately before the planned procedure is initiated. The “time out” represents the final recapitulation and reassurance of accurate patient identity, surgical site, and planned procedure. Why is a surgical count performed? The surgical count is an integral component of the perioperative nurse’s role designed to reduce the risk of unintentional retained items (URIs) during surgery. Why are surgical counts important? Counts are performed to account for all items and to lessen the potential for injury to the patient as a result of a retained foreign body. Complete and accurate counting procedures help promote optimal perioperative patient outcomes and demonstrate the perioperative practitioners commitment to patient safety. What is the AfPP? The Association for Perioperative Practice (AfPP) was established as the National Association of Theatre Nurses, NATN, in 1964. As a membership organisation and registered charity AfPP works to enhance skills and knowledge within operating departments, associated areas and sterile services departments. How do we protect fine delicate or sharp instruments? Use towels to segregate instruments in the tray or container. Place sharps so that their points do not touch, and protect their delicate tips with perforated tip protectors. Use dividers, pin mats, and clamps when needed to secure instruments in place to avoid damage during sterilization and transport. IT IS INTERESTING: Does LASIK affect shooting? Why is it important to include a completed tray list in each tray of instruments? The use of an instrument tray list assists in establishing a baseline record for subsequent instrument checks and streamlines the counting and documenting of instruments and their component parts prior to: • Sterilisation • Commencement of surgery or procedure • Completion of surgery or procedure • Decontamination. What is the proper way to pass medications to a sterile person at the sterile field? Medications from a vial may be transferred to the sterile field by one of three methods: 1) The circulating person cleans the stopper on the top of the vial and using a sterile transfer device, such as a sterile vial decanter, pours the medication into the proper receptacle on the sterile field. What are the steps a perioperative RN should take if a count is done and a sponge is missing? All perioperative team members should take immediate action to resolve a count discrepancy. Inform the perioperative team and receive verbal acknowledgement from the surgeon of the type and number of items missing as soon as a discrepancy in a surgical count is identified. Which of the following is the primary purpose for changing into operating room attire? The primary purpose of gowns, masks, caps, gowns, gloves and drapes is to provide a sterile field around the patient, according to infection control expert Dan Mayworm. Protecting the surgical team from bloodborne pathogens, while also critical, is secondary.
Do Money Trees Grow Braided? Rate this post Why are money trees braided? The braided trunk of the Chinese Money Tree is said to be able to trap fortune within its folds. The five leaves typically found on a stalk are said to represent the five elements of balance: earth, fire, water, wind, and metal. Is it too late to braid my money tree? Is it too late to braid my money tree? Typically, braiding older money trees is not advised. The reason is that these shoots tend to be harder during this part of the plant's life, and the branches simply won't be able to endure the level of stress that braiding can cause. What happens if you don't braid a money tree? At this point, it is not advisable to try to braid the trunk of the tree. If the trunks do not bend properly, they may snap, leaving you with an injured plant. If this happens, your tree may slowly recover, growing new stems and leaves. How fast do braided money trees grow? Compared to many other houseplants, Money Trees grow quite fast. It is not unusual to see your Money Tree put out new leaves every few weeks during the growing season. When they are saplings, Money Trees can grow as quickly as 24″ in a single year. That's fast! Should I keep my money tree tied? Money tree plants are often grown as bonsai. If you want to keep the shape of your plant, leave the wire in place. If you don't mind the branches drooping, or you just want the plant to grow in its natural form, remove the wire, taking care not to damage the wood. How many braids should a money tree have? Money Tree Bonsai This tree often comes as a group of five trees braided or twisted together. To maintain the shape, or to guide the trunks into a braid yourself, wrap some sturdy string around the tops of the trunks to bind them together tightly as they grow. How tall can a money tree grow indoors? Indoors, you can treat a money tree as a bonsai plant and prune it regularly, or let it grow to its maximum inside height of about 8 feet. Money tree goes by a few other monikers, including water chestnut and Guiana chestnut. Is it bad luck to buy your own money tree? Buying your own money tree often brings the thought of losing out on the symbolic meanings behind the plant. Well, you'll be glad to hear that buying your own money tree isn't bad luck as it's supposed to bring good luck and prosperity to its owner, even if you did buy it yourself. How do you grow a braided money tree? • This plant prefers bright indirect light, though they can adjust to medium levels of light. • Keep them out of direct sunlight, as too much of it can scorch their leaves! • How do you braid a money tree plant? Gently start the braid from the base of the plant by crossing one branch over the another, just as you'd braid hair. Keep the braid slightly loose, leaving enough distance between each successive crossing of branches so that the money tree does not snap. Can you cut the top off a money tree? Trim back the top stems of the tree to prevent the money tree from growing taller, after it reaches the height you want. For indoor plants, keeping the money tree pruned low to the twisted trunk will help you control it's size. Snip off close to but not flush with the trunk. What does 7 leaves on money tree mean? Seven Leaves Mean More Good Luck. Most money trees have five or six leaves on each stem, but you'll occasionally find one with seven leaves on each stem. If you do, you might want to consider buying a lottery ticket—seven leaf stems are rumored to bring extra luck. Is a money tree plant easy to grow? The money tree, also known as Pachira aquatica, is an easy-to-grow indoor plant that traditionally comes with its trunks braided together. Money trees don't require a lot of maintenance, but there are some things you should do to ensure your money tree stays healthy and green. Do money trees like small pots? Money tree prefers to stay in just the right size pot where its root can hold on the soil but still have enough space to expand its roots. A terracotta pot or ceramic pots are the best ones for money trees to allow adequate air exchange. Make sure the pot has drainage holes in it. How long does it take for a Money Tree to grow to full size? We've gathered information from experts to answer this question for you. Money trees (Pachira aquatica) grow quickly as young trees. They can have 24″ of growth in a single year! In the wild, they grow as tall as 60-feet, but indoors they usually top out at about 6-feet tall. How do you encourage new growth on a Money Tree? Prune browning leaves throughout the year to encourage new growth. Repot your money tree plant every year or two in a pot that's just slightly larger. This will encourage it to keep growing. Fertilize it twice a year (in the spring and fall) with time-release money tree plant fertilizer. Why is my Money Tree not growing? Why isn't your Money Tree growing? Your Money Tree may not be growing for several reasons, the most common of which are overwatering or underwatering. In other cases, you may need to adjust your light, humidity, or feeding schedule, check your Money Tree for pests, or transplant it to a larger container. How long do money trees live? If properly maintained, domestic money trees can last anywhere from 10 to 15 years. Interestingly enough, money trees that grow in the wild (in South and Central America) are known to last over 30 years or more. Now, let's discuss how to take care of your money tree. How do I make my money tree bushy? One of the main ways to encourage a Money Tree to grow bigger is by giving it ample space to do so. Replanting your Money Tree into a larger pot, preferably one size up from its current pot, will give your Money Tree plenty of room to stretch out its roots. Does money tree like to be root bound? Money tree doesn't like to be root bound. The money trees can grow up to 60 feet in their natural habitat, but they don't grow so tall as houseplants. The root system of the money tree is smaller than many other plants, so it doesn't get root bound very fast. How big do money bonsai trees get? General information about the Money Bonsai tree In their natural habitat the trees can grow up to 20 meters (65ft) tall. Money trees often have a slightly swollen trunk base, which also serves as a water reservoir, and the bark is brown to grey. How do you thicken a money tree trunk? • Method 1: Growing in the Ground. This is by far the most natural way of thickening the trunk and will take some years. • Method 2: Sacrificial Branches. • Method 3: Trunk Merging. • Method 4: Cut Back the Trunk. • Does Money Tree purify air? The Money Tree, scientifically named “Scindapsus aureus,” purifies air polluted with synthetic chemicals from cleaning products. It has been said by Feng Shui experts that this plant reduces stress and anxiety, and even helps prevent arguments and sleeping disorders. When should I repot my Money Tree? The best time to repot a money tree plant is in the spring and summer, but they only need to be repotted every two to three years. Money trees prefer copious amounts of bright, indirect light, but they can thrive in shadier rooms, too. Why do Money Tree leaves turn yellow? The most common cause of yellowing leaves among Money Trees is improper soil moisture from overwatering in particular. Your Money Tree prefers deep but infrequent watering to maintain consistent soil moisture. Yellow and browning leaves are the first sign that root rot may be occurring. Should a money tree be gifted? “The Good Luck Tree” As a hardy indoor plant, it's one of those that's great to gift, no matter the skillset of the receiver. It prefers low light, infrequent watering, and to be kept out of direct sunlight. With minimal care, a Money Tree can happily grow for years. Where should I place a money tree in my house? Traditional feng shui principles designate the southeast area of your home or office as your home's “money area.” Not only is this the most obvious money tree location, but it's also thought to be the most prosperous. The East area of your home is known as the “health and family bagua area” in traditional feng shui. What is the biggest money tree in the world? How do you braid a tree? How do you braid 5 strands? What do I do if my Money Tree is too tall? Money trees should be pruned if they start to grow too tall or wide for their pots. You may notice branches or leaves extending out from the top or sides of the tree. This means it's time to prune the tree to reshape it and encourage healthy growth. Remove brown or wilted leaves with pruning. Do money trees grow back? With proper care, including the right amounts of water, fertilizer, and sunlight, your Money Tree leaves will most likely grow back. The lush foliage of a Money Tree (Pachira Aquatica) is a sign of its health. Additionally, pruning and light fertilizing can stimulate growth. Should you water money tree with ice cubes? Money Tree Plants Don't Need Much Water For a 5-inch money tree, water with 2 ice cubes or 3 tablespoons of water once a week. That amount should be enough. It should not dry out between watering. In general, money tree plants only need about 6-8 ounces of water every three weeks. Is a money tree a bonsai? Money Tree Bonsai (Pachira Aquatica): How to Grow and Care. A popular indoor plant, the money tree is often found growing with a braided trunk, making it the perfect candidate for bonsai growing. A representation of fortune and good luck, this tree, native to Central America, is easy to grow. How often do money trees bloom? Money Tree Probability (Pre-New Horizons) The maximum amount of Bells any tree may produce is 90,000, and it will bloom only once, meaning that it is detrimental to bury an amount exceeding 90,000 Bells. How often should I water my money tree? Water: The best way to keep a money tree plant happy? Give it a good watering every one to two weeks, allowing the soil to dry in between, according to The Sill. Of course, if your plant is getting more light, you'll also need to up its water intake so it doesn't get too dried out. Should I water money tree after repotting? Money Tree care after repotting: I water thoroughly until it drains out of the mix. The plant was put in my very bright utility room for a few days after I filmed the video. I've since moved it into the guest bathroom to join my Peperomias. There's a skylight which keeps the room bright with natural light all day. How deep should a money tree be planted? I'll go into more on this in the propagation segment, but money tree can be grown from seed or cuttings. If you're planting a money tree seed, plant it about 1/4″ deep in moist soil. The botanical name of money tree is Pachira aquatica. One of the reasons it's so popular is because it's typically sold with a braided trunk. Each pot holds several plants, and growers braid the trunks when they're young and pliable. Once trunks are braided, they continue to grow in that form. Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published.
The City of Bellingham has initiated a public awareness campaign to encourage pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers to travel safely. “Travel With Care” is a partnership between the city and the Washington Traffic Safety Commission to reduce collisions and “increase responsible behavior on city streets”. The vast majority of collisions are due to driver inattention and other kinds of errors. These awareness campaigns can at the very least remind drivers that there are simple, common sense ways to prevent serious crashes, and most of the things that drivers do that cause these wrecks are illegal. Bellingham’s city planners and other governing officials want the city to be walkable, bikeable and drivable. “Travel with Care” is an ongoing education and enforcement campaign intended to: • foster safe driving, walking and cycling behaviors utilizing social norming; • educate all users (motorists, pedestrians, cyclists) on safe behavior and rules of the road; • enforce rules of the road. Their goal seems lofty but is actually quite feasible: zero traffic deaths. Imagine if no one did any of the things on this list of the top 15 causes of car accidents. There would be an immediate and dramatic reduction in traffic deaths. It is totally reasonable to expect drivers to maintain the posted speed limit and not drive distracted or drunk. Those are the top three things on that list, and all three are illegal in the state of Washington. To entirely prevent traffic deaths, focusing only on vehicle drivers is insufficient. More and more studies show the dangers of distracted walking, for example, and while it’s not possible to be arrested in Washington for drunken bicycling, an officer could impound a drunk rider’s bicycle if deemed a threat to public safety. Long story short, because traffic accidents are estimated to cost the US $871 billion annually, it makes sense that local governments are taking traffic safety very seriously. Please visit their website and watch the videos to learn more about walking, biking, and vehicle safety. Recent Article
Quiz: Understand the Genetics of Skin Cancer What role do genetics play in skin cancer? Test your knowledge with our latest quiz, while learning more about gene mutations. Question 1 Healthy melanocytes rarely divide, typically less than two times a year. However, upon malignant transformation into skin cancer, the proliferative index climbs as tumor cells accumulate genomic aberrations Question 2 B.C→T, G→T Skin cancers have higher mutational loads than many other cancer types and the number of point mutations and gene copy number alterations climbs as cancer progresses. Skin cancers tend to carry a higher number of “ultraviolet-signature” mutations, as well, such as C?T mutations caused by ultraviolet B and G→T mutations caused by ultraviolet A solar radiation. Question 3 Transformation frequently begins with activating BRAF V600 mutations but progression requires additional mutations, including TERT promoter mutations and ARID1A mutations affecting cell-cycle control. Question 4 Progression of metastatic skin cancer is associated with mutations in the tumor suppressor protein gene TP53 and the phosphatase-and-tensin homologue PTEN gene. Question 5 Half of skin cancers harbor BRAF mutations, while another 25% harbor RAS mutations and 15% have NF1 mutations. BRAF mutation status is a key factor in decision making about treatment regimens including BRAF inhibitors like vemurafenib.
Benefits of Chemical Side-trim Applications Trimming With Selective Control Something went wrong. Please try again later... Chemical side-trim application Still investing in tree removal strategies? Learn how chemical side-trim applications can improve results and cost efficiency by only controlling problem areas of targeted trees. Effectively managing incompatible trees throughout utility rights-of-way is a primary objective of vegetation management programs throughout the United States. Countless tree species pose a potential threat to grow or fall into power lines, posing the risk of lapses in electrical transmission service, wildfires and potential fines under regulations enforced by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Luckily, there are several ways for vegetation managers to control problematic trees. However, certain strategies provide more beneficial results than others. Mechanical Control Methods Simply cutting a tree down or mechanically trimming problematic limbs may seem like a suitable solution for roadside and utility vegetation managers. However, these mechanical control methods can cause more issues than they solve. Mechanical cutting can present safety hazards for tree crews working in unstable or hard-to-reach areas. This approach to managing incompatible trees is also time-consuming and expensive. To make matters worse, mechanical cutting actually stimulates regrowth, which leads to continuous maintenance requirements and increased costs in the long-term. Alternatively, selective herbicide applications can be used to impede the growth of tree limbs that can potentially impact utility infrastructure and site accessibility. Chemical Side-trim Applications When used correctly, certain herbicides can “prune back” treated limbs or branches without controlling the rest of the tree. By only managing select sections of trees that pose a threat to utility infrastructure, vegetation managers can reduce maintenance costs and public scrutiny while achieving optimum vegetation control that keeps land along ROW corridors safe and aesthetically pleasing. Chemical side-trim applications can be used to control only branches of trees that pose a threat to electrical transmission reliability or roadside safety. Oklahoma Gas & Electric added chemical side-trimming applications to its Integrated Vegetation Management program this past year, and the utility is already reaping the economic and environmental benefits as a result. Ultimately, this success comes down to practical time and resource management and the use of effective application methods. While tree cutting or trimming methods require larger crews and time-consuming work along powerlines, chemical side-trim programs require less equipment and fewer people. As an added benefit, chemical side-trim applications can be performed more quickly than mechanical control methods, which allows vegetation managers to save time and money while moving quickly throughout dangerous settings near utility infrastructure. Unless spraying over the tops of trees or more than half of the canopy is required, in which case mechanical trimming should be considered as an alternative, the following application methods can be used to execute chemical side-trim applications by air, land or truck throughout the year: • Growing-season foliar chemical side-trim applications • Dormant-season (dormant-stem) chemical side-trim applications • Aerial applications To learn more about these application methods, the equipment they require or which herbicide products are recommended for use in your respective region, access this helpful resource guide or contact a Corteva Vegetation Management Specialist in your area. ™ ® Trademarks of Corteva Agriscience and its affiliated companies. © 2022 Corteva. Connect with Vegetation Management: Find Your Local VM Specialist
Total Value and Sustainable Products (100 points) When a business is not focused on sustainability, value may be solely determined outside its customers’ interest in green behavior. Suppose a restaurant makes a great-tasting hamburger. Very few of its customers might care whether or not the restaurant engages in green business practices. However, what if there are two restaurants that make equally great-tasting burgers, but one is green while the other is not? Many customers may choose the green business, because the business adds value to its offerings by engaging in sustainable practices. In the case of sustainable products, meaning those products made with an effort to be environmentally and socially responsible, sustainability plays a large role in the customers’ decisions to buy, and tends to be central to the company’s brand. Identify a Saudi business that may not yet be focused on sustainability. Suppose this company decides it would like to deliver products that are more socially, environmentally, and economically superior. In a 4-5 page paper, not including the cover and reference pages, present the company with the total value proposition from a sustainability perspective. In that total value proposition, include a discussion of use values and nonuse values for the business’ green products. How should the business determine WTP, WTA, or consumer surplus?
Burnout refers to a sense of having no energy or commitment for your work. It is a debilitating condition and often hits us suddenly - as the name suggests, it’s a state of ‘after the fact’ depletion. As though you have gone through a very challenging time which has not been overcome and leaves you winded. It is a feeling of powerlessness and fatigue/exhaustion which results in having to remove ourselves from the pressures facing us. This often means seeking medical help and taking sick leave. It is conceptualised as being a mixture of three different interacting features. These are, • increase in cynicism, • reduction in enthusiasm, and • reduction in sense of self efficacy or feeling of being able and competent. Stressors vary for each of us, but bereavement, financial worries, change, loss and conflict are all known causes of high stress levels. However, burnout is mostly associated with workplace stress as that is where it is usually played out, or where it manifests. Like everything, burnout is mediated by certain personal and situational factors which make it easier or more difficult to manage. If we are practiced at coping, self-management and taking time out, we can prevent burnout form developing in a serious way. If not, we might ignore the signs and end up regretting it. The three dimensions which characterise burnout are associated with the following emotional states: • Feelings of exhaustion or energy depletion. • Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job. • Reduced professional (work-related) efficacy/ability. Burnout refers specifically to phenomena in the occupational context and should not be applied to describe experiences in other areas of life. It is not classified as a medical condition and should not be confused with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). How do you recognize burnout at work? Common signs of burnout: 1. Feeling tired or drained most of the time. 2. Feeling helpless, trapped and/or defeated. 3. Feeling detached/alone in the world. 4. Having a cynical/negative outlook on things previously of interest. 5. Self-doubt prolonged, about areas of previous competence. 6. Procrastinating and taking longer to get things done/indecision. 7. Feeling overwhelmed and lacking the usual powers of self-regulation. There are many causal factors at play in Burnout. No one aspect of work life causes it, but various interacting pieces. Some of the causal factors for a case of burnout are: • Loss of control/power. • Increase in demands and task complexity. • Shorter deadlines and increased task demands. • Perceiving an unfair allocation of work and rewards. • Letting smaller regular stresses build up without addressing them. • Ignoring your inner warning signs that you are not coping. • Lack of support and/or guidance and collegiality. Burnout self-check 1. Have you become cynical or critical at work? 2. Do you drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started? 3. Have you become irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients? 4. Do you lack the energy to be consistently productive? 5. Do you find it hard to concentrate? 6. Do you lack satisfaction from your achievements? 7. Do you feel disillusioned about your job? 8. Are you using food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to not feel anything? 9. Have your sleep habits changed? 10. Are you troubled by unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or other physical complaints? For anyone who feels they are burnout, consider talking to a medical doctor or a mental health professional – seek only properly registered professionals for psychological assistance. These symptoms can also be related to longer term clinical health conditions, such as depression. Tips for dealing with stress which can lead to burnout Evaluate your options. Discuss specific concerns with your employer/manager. Maybe you can work together to change expectations or reach compromises or solutions. Goal setting Try to set realistic goals for what must be done and allocate a future time for what can wait. Seek support. Whether you reach out to co-workers, friends or loved ones, support and collaboration might help you cope. If you have access to an employee assistance program, take advantage of such services. Try a relaxing activity. Explore programs that can help with stress such as yoga, meditation choir, or some other passive form of unwinding. Get some exercise. Regular physical activity can help you to better deal with stress. It can also take your mind off work. Get some sleep. Sleep restores well-being and helps protect your health. Mindfulness may help. It is the act of focusing on your breath flow and being intensely aware of what you are sensing and feeling at every moment, without interpretation or judgment. Time out For those who are completely burnt out, you need to take time out – a holiday or annual leave, or possibly other leave arrangements can be made so that you entirely remove yourself from the source of distress, even for a week or two. If you are struggling with burnout at work you should talk to your manager or employer. You can also seek support from your local GP or medical practitioner. Further supports are available at: HSE’s www.YourMentalHealth.ie Pieta House – www.pieta.ie / Freephone 1800 247 247 every day 24 hours a day / Text HELP to 51444 - standard message rates apply. Samaritans - www.samaritans.org / Contact jo@samaritans.ie / Freephone 116 123 every day 24 hours a day
Author: Kanak Mishra Ideologies of Mahatma Gandhi Read More How Mahatma Gandhi is a True Inspiration for the Youth of India Mahatma Gandhi: A True Inspiration for Youth of India A Glimpse of History It was 2 October 1869, when the calendar marked the birth of a great protagonist. A hero who never worked on screen because he was a real-life hero, who earned name and fame all because of his ideology and thoughts he developed. His struggles and sacrifices are one of the remarkable constituents of our freedom struggle. There are thousands of inspiring stories regarding Gandhiji, which not only teaches us but also inspires that nothing is impossible, only you need a strong determination and belief in yourself. Either you are of any age group he sets an example for all. When we teach our child to speak truth from the very beginning, it is possible for them to develop this as a habit and a good habit is always admired. What made Mahatma Gandhi Different Although his father was a Diwan he never showcased his power on anyone. He always lived the life of a common boy who loved to play and do other childish things. Due to his father’s position, it was very random that he would ever check the sewerage, but he never hesitated in doing so. Many villagers left it as not their duty, but it was Gandhi who came forward and helped others. He loved people and believed in humanity, he called the... Read More How Mahatma Gandhi is still alive among us Who was Mahatma? A great sole with great ideologies, which was born on the 2nd October 1869. He was identified as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhiji was born in a Gujarati family. He was the youngest child of his father’s fourth wife. He bought up in her mother’s governance; his mother was a religious lady away from any type of articulation. She used to live a simple life and was a nurse to anyone not well in the family. He spent most of his time with his mother and especially those days his father who was not well and was nursed by her, died soon. He learned hospitality from his mother and as she was a religious lady, he got inspired by her. Her daily rituals encouraged him and the stories of Prahalad and Harishchandra had a great impact on his life. He was a shy boy, who always rushed home just after the bell rang in the school, rather waiting for others to have some chit-chat. He was a common boy who was uncommon in his thoughts and beliefs. Although Gandhi was a great human but he is still alive among us in the form of his ideologies. What Made Him Mahatma? He was an average student, but his journey to mahatma started from his home and the true inspiration was her mother. She taught him ahimsa and this... Read More Why Mahatma Gandhi was not Awarded Bharat Ratna or Nobel? Early Life of Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2nd October in Porbandar, a city of Gujarat. He was born to a Hindu family and it was his family’s belief and culture that kept him away from violence since his childhood days. His father was Karamchand Gandhi and mother was Putilibai Gandhi. He went London to study law and after completing his studies, he came India to serve himself as a barrister but in 1983 he was employed by an Indian trading company in South Africa. Gandhi’s Struggle for the Nation Mahatma Gandhiji was known as the father of the nation, just because of his deeds. He used to help everyone, he never discriminated people as per their cast or religion, he loved everyone and called the schedule cast people as “Harijan”. He was a person who always preferred khadi and encouraged others to raise their livelihood rather being a parasite. He initiated various freedom movements like the Swadeshi Movement, Dandi March, etc. He was the true hero of India. He was further known as the symbol of peace and non-violence. Gandhiji was continuously nominated in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and in 1948 for Nobel Peace prize. But the Nobel committee never found him suitable for Nobel, but once he died the committee also regret their decision. 1937: The First Nomination for Nobel The first time when Gandhiji... Read More Contact us Please Help us to improve, Contact us.
Aboriginal flag – level 2 01-02-2022 07:00 In 1971, Harold Thomas created the Australian Aboriginal flag. It was black, yellow, and red, and Thomas first used it at a protest. The flag became a symbol of the Aboriginal people, but it brought problems, too. Thomas and a few companies owned the rights to use the flag. If someone else used it, they had to pay money for it. Sports teams used the flag on T-shirts, caps, and other things. Aboriginal people used the flag, too, but they started to be angry that they had to pay for it. There were more and more disagreements, and for example, the Australian Football League refused to pay when it used the flag. The Australian government paid 20 million dollars, and it bought the copyright on the flag. Now, people can use it freely, and nobody will pay for it. Difficult words: aboriginal (the original people who live in a place), refuse (when you say that you will not do something), copyright (a legal right which says that somebody can use or sell something, and nobody else can do it). You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section. What do you think about this news? How to improve your English with News in Levels: 1. Do the test at Test Languages. 1. Read two news articles every day. 1. Choose one person from the Skype section.
What gives coffee its flavor To know the origin of the "specialty coffee" flavor, we first need to know: Why are there different flavors in specialty coffee? Because the origin of coffee/the soil, temperature, and rainfall of the coffee tree are different in the ecological environment, the coffee tree has a different growth environment, so the same coffee beans will be different in different places of origin. First flavor source: sunlight / Air Temperature / Rainfall / Altitude / Soil The second flavor source: green bean processing The third flavor source: correct sense The ideal planting conditions for coffee trees are: Temperature: Warm climate between 15°C ~ 25°C; Rainfall: Must reach 1500mm-2000mm; Soil: The best soil for growing coffee should be well-drained, fertile soil containing pozzolans; Altitude: 1800mm-2200mm; It can be seen that the conditions for cultivating high-quality coffee are quite strict: sunlight, rainfall, soil, climate, as well as the way the coffee beans are harvested and the production process will all affect the quality of coffee itself. All the coffee beans in the world are planted in the tropical area between the Tropic of Cancer, so the area between 25 degrees north and south latitude is the most suitable for growing coffee. This coffee-producing area is generally referred to as the "coffee belt" or "coffee zone". Coffee growing representative countries Representative country in Africa: Ethiopia Native species/Kenya SL28 SL34 Taste characteristics: Floral, fruity, moderate acidity and refreshing taste Representative country in America: Panama Geisha/Columbia Castile Flavor characteristics: Citrus floral fragrance, balanced sweetness, moderate sourness, delicate and exquisite Representative country in Asia: Yunnan, China Flavor characteristics: Earthy, chocolate, deep flavors and strong mouthfeel The second flavor source: green bean processing Traditional processing: Washed, sun-dried, honey treated Innovative processing: Special fermentation treatment (anaerobic treatment, enzyme treatment, wine barrel treatment, etc.) All processing methods ultimately pursue the cleanliness of coffee, high acidity, long-lasting sweetness, clear flavor and rich layers, but not all coffee beans are suitable for all processing methods. Manor owner will choose the appropriate processing method according to the coffee beans harvested in the year and different varieties of coffee beans, the purpose is to bring out the best state of the coffee beans and achieve the above-mentioned coffee taste. The third flavor source: correct sense Step1: Engage all your senses to experience the flavor structure of the food in a synergistic way Step 2: "Remember" how you feel about it from start to finish Of course, in addition to the above, the original gene of coffee beans, planting conditions and our own sensory ability, there are many processes that are also very important, such as: the correct roasting of the roaster and the production ability of the barista. In the process from beans to coffee, every process cannot be ignored. So SATURNBIRD Coffee strictly selects high-quality Arabica coffee beans. After different levels of roasting, the coffee flavor has six levels. Different from traditional instant coffee, it adopts freeze-drying technology to freeze-dry the coffee liquid to restore the coffee flavor. Learn more
5. Fushimi Inari\| Kumatakasya 熊鷹社　扁額 Okusyo Hohaisyo ～Kumatakasya The entrance to Oyama-meguri (Tour to Mt. Inari) Neagari no Matsu As the roots raised on the surface of ground, it is called as “Ne agari no matsu” = “root rising pine” and it is said that it has a mysterious benefit. One believe is that “ne”(根) means root, but also “Price”(値) . Thus people who do business, especially those involved in securities companies and stocks, say that they wait for the price (root) to rise, and have earned a strong faith as a lucky pine tree. nother believe of the is that the shape of the pine tree root look like person Also, as a belief of the common people, the shape of pine roots raised, are similar to people kneeling and praying, people called it as “kneeling pine tree” and it is said that if you touch the tree or go under the root, your body part such as hip or knee will be healed. Fushimi Kandakara Jinjya(伏見神宝神社) There is a path you can go up to east right after Neagari no matsu, which you can visit small shrine called “Fushimi Kandakara Jinjya” Fushimi Kandakara Shrine (伏見神宝神社) was founded in the early Heian period, and is said to have been a place of worship since the time Inari Shrine was enshrined on the mountain. The gods of worship are Amaterasu Omikami and Inari Daimyojin. It is said to be quietly enshrined in a bamboo grove and dedicated to the Tokusano Kandara, the treasure of the gods given by the Amaterasu Omikami. They are 10 different treasures. Okitsu kagami(mirror), Hetsu kagami(mirror), Yatsukano turugi(sword), Iku tama(gem), Taru tama(gem), Makarukaeshino tama(gem), Chikaeshino tama(gem), Hebino hire(card), Hachino hire(card), Kusagusano hire(card) 十種の神宝（沖津鏡、辺津鏡、八握剣、生玉、死反玉、足玉、道反玉、蛇比礼、蜂比礼、品物比礼） Branch path to Kuamatakasya or going back to Honden, Station It will be about 5 mins walk from Okusya, if you come straight. From this point, if you go left to go back the Honden, Station about 10mins walk. If you go right soon you will find public toilet and 5mins walk to Kumatakasya. It will be uphill path, stairs to Kumatakasha. It could be tiring for people who are not willing to walk. But there is Otuka place at Kumatakasya, which is another feature of Inari Shrine. Toilet before going to Kumatakasya. Otsuka at Kumatakasya Kumatakasya Shrine, Shinike pond Copied title and URL
1) On record as an occupational term and by-name in Yorkshire in the fourteenth century. Possibly a wood-cutter since no early examples of that word have been noted. 1357 Item, Willelmo Wodehewer xvjd, York 1379 Johannes Wodhewer, Headingley. However, the wood which carpenters and carvers used had to be prepared or ‘rough-hewn’, and the wood-hewer may also have performed that task. places York Headingley dates 1357 1379 Related Content Loading... Photo by Kreuzschnabel CC BY-SA 3.0
Secrets That Specialists Of Software Program Don’t Want You To Know. Software and hardware are two different points. Equipment carries out work and also software is what tells your computer system exactly how to do it. Both belong to a computer system, yet hardware is not always the most important element. There are numerous crucial distinctions between the two. Continue reading to comprehend what software program is, and how it varies from equipment. In this short article, we’ll speak about a few of the significant distinctions in between equipment as well as the software. On top of that, we’ll speak about the distinctions between both. Software can be either a single item of software program or a collection of applications. Software is the software that assists you meet your customers’ needs. It can be acquired separately or as part of a package, and can be mounted on a computer. It is usually accessed online, and also can be accessed by numerous people. The main advantage of application software is its capacity to make service jobs easier as well as much more efficient. Whether you require a program that works on Windows, an Android or a Mac, you can locate an application to fit your needs. A computer system program is a collection of instructions that is set up on a computer or other device. Depending on the sort of software application, it can be either a standalone program or a plan of programs that runs as a standalone program. The software program that you use might be a self-supporting application or a system that incorporates with an additional application. A durable application can make job much faster, extra precise, and also more reliable for its users. The most important thing in a computer is the software program. This is what makes computers work. The software is what informs a computer system how to do certain tasks. There are numerous sorts of software, but these categories are one of the most important. You can’t run a computer system without it. It needs to be packed before the software and hardware can do its job. The computer can not function without the software, so if you don’t have the software, you can’t do anything. A computer system’s software program is the reverse of equipment. On the other hand, equipment has a physical element. It has numerous elements and features that are tough to duplicate. A computer’s software application is the software application that makes it feasible for the computer system to work. For instance, it is a system that runs applications. Its software can work on any tool that it is linked to. While hardware can be set up and also operated on a computer system, software program is the software program. There are two sorts of software application. The initial kind is system software, which is the software program that informs your computer system just how to run. The various other is application software. Both are important to a computer system. Systems software contains energies as well as makes it possible for the computer system to run other programs. Aside from system software, applications likewise consist of word processing program. This type of application relies on the hardware. You can’t run an application without the correct system. A program requires a particular collection of elements to run. There are several means to use software application. The major distinction is that software program has numerous uses. One of them is the equipment. In a system, a computer system will not work if it is not set up with software application. Likewise, systems have no equipment. Its parts, including their elements, will not work without the correct software application. Both systems and also applications are controlled by the software. When you intend to create a product, you must create software application. Every business has software. Also one of the most basic software program is used to run business. It makes it possible for business to connect with other people, and also permits them to run a lot more successfully. Middleware is made use of to connect the different kinds of software. During the 21st century, software application is an essential part of a service, as well as its failing can be dreadful. The middleware offers a crucial service for the business. This is where the middleware comes in. Running systems are essential for a smart device, but the software application is equally as essential. As an example, the software application on your mobile phone is a collection of hundreds of elements. It is based upon guidelines and also is called “application” when it has an application. A lot of software is not vital. A cellphone’s software application calls for an input. In contrast, an os requires an input. When you’re making use of software, you’re developing a software. System software is the base for software. It runs when the computer is started as well as remains to operate. In contrast, application software is the greater degree of both. The latter is designed to take care of tasks details to a certain customer. In other words, system software is utilized by local business owner. It assists make service choices. A system’s os is important to a computer’s overall performance. It enables individuals to run the software program. One of the most usual sort of software program is an application. An application is a program written by an independent coding specialist. For example, an application is the software that develops a certain end result. For a circumstances, a video game engine gives a platform for private video games. The system software application is ruled out software program itself, but the applications it sustains are called applications. Its result is the details the software needs to work. The system can’t work without software program. security penetration testing Energy software program is the type of software that executes particular functions for end users. It’s not an application, however it’s a program that makes various other applications run on the computer. As an example, an antivirus program is an utility. It’s a program that utilizes the exact same language as its user. It can be a computer system’s operating system. Both kinds of software application are necessary to a computer system’s overall efficiency. The system is the software application that enables applications to run. Leave a Reply
Should Chicken Eggs Be Washed? - Ackerman's Equipment Select Page For those new to raising their own chickens or purchasing farm-fresh eggs, understanding the proper ways to store and prep an unpasteurized egg is important. The question is, is it actually safer to wash an egg straight from the coop? Washing an egg gets rid of bacteria, right? Actually, no. In fact, washing an egg actually raises the probability of bad bacteria entering the egg. A chicken egg has an outer protective area known as the “bloom” that protects the unborn chick. This casing serves as a shield against bacteria. When an egg is washed, especially in cold water, it causes the bloom to wash off and open the porous structure of the shell to be openly exposed to all forms of microbes. If you do wash an egg, it is highly recommended that you consume the yolk and whites soon after to avoid contamination. It is perfectly save to eat an unwashed egg because of the protection given by the bloom. However, if that unwashed egg has been stored in a refrigerator, we do recommend eating it within 2 hours of removal so that the sweat from the egg does not weaken the protective barrier. How do I properly clean an egg? If you have an aversion to eating unwashed eggs or are looking to sell eggs from your own coops, there are ways you can properly sanitize and store them. (Note: If you are in the business of selling eggs, please be sure to look at the food safety laws enacted by your state. Some states do not require eggs to be sanitized or pasteurized before selling them to consumers.) Prevention methods: Keeping your nests clean and gathering your eggs daily is the first sanitary step. Everyone’s chickens are different, and you may be experiencing issues with them not leaving their nests. To fix this, you can set roosting areas above your nests. Chickens naturally tend to sleep in the highest accessible spots of their coops. If your issue is that your chickens are laying their eggs in random spots outside of their nests, you can try to train them by placing decoy eggs in the nests. Our recommended nest system is the Reverse Rollaway Yuneek Nestbox. This system safely rolls eggs away from the nests as they are laid to ensure cleanliness and easy gathering. Washing with hot water: If you are going to wash your eggs with water, be sure it is roughly 20 degrees Farenheit above the temperature of the egg. Cold water makes the unprotected egg shell more susceptible to absorbing microbes, sort of like creating a vacuum. We don’t recommend using any solutions of soap or vinegar either due to the weakening of the bloom. Try to avoid soaking your eggs, and spot clean them with a damp cloth instead and drying them immediately after. Unwashed eggs can be left unrefrigerated for up to 3 weeks, but if you need them to last longer, or you have washed them, you will want to put them in the fridge within a closed container. • Farm-fresh eggs do not have to be washed in order to be safe to eat • Washing eggs with water removes the protective outer barrier of the shell. • Washed and pasteurized eggs must always be refrigerated • Fresh eggs can last up to 3 weeks at room temperature
Africa: Egypt’s Expedient Hydro-Politics On the Nile [Ethiopian Herald] Ethiopia and Egypt are historically intertwined. The two countries are connected by Nile bloodline. Conflicts and cooperation along the Nile river go back as far as the time of the pharos. The word Nile is probably derived from sematic root "nahal" meaning river valley, which later took the forms "Neilos" in Greek and "Nilus" in Latin. The Nile River is the longest in Africa and the world at large. The river is 6,825km long and has a drainage area of 3.1million extending fromRead the Original Article
GEOFLUIDSGeofluids1468-81231468-8115Hindawi10.1155/2021/66379556637955Research ArticleExperimental Investigation into the Effects of Fracturing Fluid-Shale Interaction on Pore Structure and WettabilityZhangYan12 Daniel3WeijermarsRuud1School of Energy ResourcesChina University of GeosciencesBeijing Key Laboratory of Unconventional Natural Gas Geological Evaluation and Development EngineeringChina University of GeosciencesBeijing and Rock Properties LaboratoryDepartment of Petroleum EngineeringFaculty of Civil and Geo-EngineeringKwame Nkrumah University of Science and © 2021 Yan Zhang et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. One of the main techniques for the exploitation of shale oil and gas is hydraulic fracturing, and the fracturing fluid (slick water) may interact with minerals during the fracturing process, which has a significant effect on the shale pore structure. In this study, the pore structure and fluid distribution of shale samples were analyzed by utilizing low-pressure liquid nitrogen adsorption (LP-N2GA) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). The fractal analysis showed that the pore structure of the sample was strongly heterogeneous. It was also found that the effect of slick water on pore structure can be attributed to two phenomena: the swelling of clay minerals and the dissolution of carbonate minerals. The swelling and dissolution of minerals can exist at the same time, and the strength of them at different soaking times is different, leading to the changes in specific surface area and pore size. After the samples were soaked in the slick water for two days, the contact angle reached the minimum value (below 8°), which means the sample is strongly hydrophilic; then the contact angle increased to above 38° with longer soaking times. The connected pore space in the shale matrix is enlarged by the soaking processing. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the interaction between the fracking fluid and shale is essential to deepen our understanding of changes in the pore structure in the reservoir and the long-term productivity of shale gas. National Major Science and Technology Projects of China2017ZX05009-005 1. Introduction In recent years, the relative lack of conventional gas resources has made shale gas popular and the exploitation of shale gas resources has become essential to meet demand. The shale gas resources in China are abundant, and the recoverable volume is estimated to be about 261012 cubic meters [13]. Shale gas refers to the gas in shale pores and adsorbed in the matrix [46]; thus, understanding the characteristics of shale gas reservoirs is very important for efficient exploitation. Pores in shale gas reservoirs are dominated by nanopores, resulting in lower porosity and permeability [79], which necessitates the use of advanced fracturing technology during the exploitation. The hydraulic fracturing of the reservoir forms more connecting fracture networks which increase the production of shale gas [10]. Slick water fracturing fluid (commonly called slick water) is mainly used for hydraulic fracturing of shales because it is efficient and cheap [1113]. Commonly, large volumes of water-based fracturing fluids are injected into the reservoir during the fracturing process. However, there is a large difference between the volume of slick water injected and flowback, which means a lot of slick water remains trapped in the reservoir and will react with the shale matrix [1416]. The interaction between slick water and shale may have a great impact on the storage and flow of shale gas [15, 1719]. Therefore, an in-depth understanding of the interaction between the fracking fluid and shale is essential to deepen our understanding of changes in the pore structure in the reservoir and the long-term productivity of shale gas [17, 19, 20]. In addition to organic matter, shale also contains clay minerals, carbonate, and brittle minerals [21]. The clay content in shale is often an important factor affecting shale gas flow capacity, which is due to the swelling of clay when exposed to water [2225]. The study of Pedlow and Sharma [23] indicated that the high clay content (over 20%) in shale can reduce the fracture conductivity in 3.5% salty water. Wu and Sharma [26] studied the effects of acid fracturing on carbonate-rich shale; they reported that acid fracturing will increase the fracture conductivity. Besides, the wettability of shale is also critical to shale gas production, which is related to the imbibition of fracturing fluid and the possible water blocking effect, which has an important effect on the fluid transport process [16, 27]. Prior researches have been done on the reaction principles of slick water and shale matrix, and it was found that the swelling of clay minerals and dissolution of carbonate minerals cause changes in pore structures of shale reservoirs [14, 23, 24]. Understanding how slick water changes pore structure and physical properties is essential for the design and application of fracturing [26], and the effects of slick water-shale interaction on pore structure and physical properties need further discussion [28]. There are many common techniques for studying pore structure, such as low pressure nitrogen gas adsorption (LP-N2GA) [4, 29, 30], mercury injection capillary pressure (MICP) [31, 32], computed tomography (CT) [3335], scanning electron microscope (SEM) [36, 37], small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) [38], and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) [30, 39, 40]. All of these techniques have their advantages and disadvantages. Among them, LP-N2GA and NMR have been widely applied to the study of unconventional reservoir rocks to characterize the nanopores. A fractal theory was applied to study the extremely complex shale pore structure, while the fractal characteristics of the pore structure are believed to be related to the adsorption and seepage capacity [2124]. Fractal theory can be combined with a variety of experimental methods for data processing, such as the thermodynamic model, the model based on MICP, and the Frenkel-Halsey-Hill (FHH) model based on the LP-N2GA experiment [30, 41], which is a simple and fast method used to obtain the fractal dimension of shale [42]. In this work, the LP-N2GA, NMR, wettability, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments were utilized to analyze the dynamic influence of slick water on shale pore structure in this study. This paper can be divided into three sections. Firstly, experimental design including a description of samples as well as experimental procedures was introduced. Secondly, the fractal theory model was established. Finally, the influence of slick water on pore structure and wettability was discussed. Especially, the dynamic change of wettability and pore structure with the reaction time of slick water was explored, which is believed to be meaningful for shale gas exploitation. 2. Method2.1. Samples The shale samples were collected from the Youke Well located in Chongqing, China. The average permeability and porosity were 0.0046 mD and 4.5%, respectively. Four core samples (Nos. 1-4) were drilled from the same large block of shale for the NMR experiment and wettability test. Crushed samples were taken from the places where the four core samples were drilled for LP-N2GA experiments. A total of 15 mixed crushed samples were obtained for LP-N2GA analysis; 4 core plugs were used for wettability and NMR experiments. The composition of the slick water used in experiments was 0.05% thickener, 1% KCl, 0.8% pH<3 cross-linking agent (containing HCl), and 0.1% clean-up additive. 2.2. Experiments2.2.1. LP-N<sub>2</sub>GA Experiment The LP-N2GA experiment was carried out using the 3H-200PS1 analyzer. The details about these instruments can be found in the previous study [30]. The specific experimental procedures are as follows: (1) 8 crushed samples weighing 5 g each were soaked in slick water for 0 h, 6 h, 12 h, 1 day, 2 days, 4 days, 6 days, and 8 days at 30°C and atmospheric pressure; (2) the crushed samples were dried and sieved with 40-mesh size; and (3) 1.85 g of each powder sample was taken for LP-N2GA experiments. The LP-N2GA experiment measurement method was mainly used for studying the specific surface area (SSA) and pore volume (PV) of the sample. The SSA was determined by linear regression using the multipoint Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) method (Equation (1)), while the pore size distribution (PSD) was obtained by the Barrett-Joyner-Halenda (BJH) desorption method [43, 44]. (1)VVm=C×PP0P1+C1P/P0,where V is the adsorption amount, P is the gas adsorption equilibrium pressure, P0 is the saturated vapor pressure, Vm is the maximum monolayer adsorption capacity, and C is the constant associated with adsorption heat. Equation (1) can be changed into (2)PVP0P=C1CVm×PP0+1CVm. By graphing P/VP0P and P/P0, we can get a straight line with a slope and intercept of C1/CVm and 1/CVm, respectively, so that the values of the constants C and Vm can be obtained. The specific surface area can be calculated according to the following equation: (3)SSA=Vm22400NAσm,where SSA is the specific surface area, σm is the cross-sectional area of the adsorbed molecule, and NA is the Avogadro constant. The basic principle of BJH is based on capillary condensation by combining the Kelvin equation (Equation (4)) with experimental data. (4)lnPP0=2γMRTρ×+1r,where γ is surface tension, M is molar mass, ρ is liquid density, and r is the corresponding pore radius. However, the r is not the real pore radius because the thickness of the adsorption layer is not taken into account. Therefore, according to BJH theory, the thickness of the adsorption layer is considered, so that a more accurate PSD is obtained. 2.2.2. NMR Experiment The NMR experiment was carried out using SPEC-RC1. And the NMR experiments were designed to investigate the influence of slicking water soaking on the changes in the pore size of the sample. Thus, the NMR T2 spectrum was measured after the samples were saturated for a cumulative period of 1, 2, 4, and 8 days with slick water at 30°C and 20 MPa. Before the NMR experiment, the four core samples were dried at the temperature of 105°C, dried for 24 h. The specific experimental procedures are as follows: (1) measuring the contact angles of the samples at 30°C and atmospheric pressure; (2) drying the samples at 105°C for 24 h; (3) vacuuming the samples for 12 h and then saturated with slick water for 24 h at 30°C and 20 MPa; and (4) measuring the NMR T2 spectrum of all the fully saturated samples at 30°C and atmospheric pressure. Low field NMR technology can be used to analyze the PSD of samples by detecting the amount of fluid in pores according to the following equation [32]: (5)1T2=ρ2SV,where T2 is the surface transverse relaxation time (ms), ρ2 is transverse relaxation strength, and S/V refers to the surface-to-volume ratio. If the pore shapes are reduced to tube or spherical balls, S/V can be reduced to parameters related to the pore radius, so T2 can be associated with PSD. 2.2.3. Contact Angle Measurement In this study, the contact angle was also measured by employing an instrument produced by USA KINO Industry Co., Ltd. The instrument was mainly composed of an optical system including a light-emitting diode (LED) light source, a high-speed camera, and a magnifying lens. The automatic injection pump is used to inject the liquid onto the sample, and the contact angle is measured by the tangent method. The wettability of the sample can be then determined by measuring the contact angle through the image. To reduce the effects of heterogeneity, each sample was tested 20 times, averaging as the final contact angle. The whole experimental process was carried out at 30°C and atmospheric pressure. 3. Fractal Theory Mandelbrot and Wheeler [45] proposed the fractal theory, which has been widely applied in rock physics analysis. Recent developments in fractal theory make it possible to apply MICP, LP-N2GA, SEM, and XRD methods to conduct in-depth studies of the fractal properties of rocks [30, 42, 46]. In this study, the Frenkel-Halsey-Hill (FHH) model was utilized to analyze the and pore complexity and irregularity based on LP-N2GA data [47]. Here is the mathematical expression of the FHH model [42]: (6)lnV=Const+KlnlnP0P,where V represents the adsorption capacity of nitrogen at equilibrium pressure P and P0 is the saturated vapor pressure. In the FHH model, parameter K is equal to D3/3 or D3 when van der Waals or surface tension dominates, respectively [48, 49], where D is the fractal dimension. Zhang et al. [50] reported that K=D3/3 is only established if capillary force can be completely ignored, and thus, K=D3 should be used because capillary force played a significant role during nitrogen adsorption. Besides, K=D3 has been successfully used to study the fractal characteristics of unconventional reservoir rocks [46, 51]. In general, the value of D is between 2 and 3, where the pore surface is perfectly smooth if D=2 and D=3 represents an extremely complex surface [52]. The increase in the value of D from 2 to 3 represents an increase in the irregularity and complexity of the pores. K has different values when P/P0<0.5 and P/P0>0.5, corresponding to two different D values: D1 and D2 [46, 53]. According to previous studies, P/P0<0.5 and P/P0>0.5 represent the adsorption process within the pores with PD<4 nm and PD>4 nm, respectively [46, 54]. Therefore, D1 and D2 represent the irregularity and complexity of the pores with PD<4 nm and PD>4 nm, respectively [53]. 4. Results and Discussion4.1. Influence of Slick Water on Composition According to the XRD analysis (Table 1), the rock sample (J-0) was composed of dolomite (60.2%), quartz (22.1%), clay minerals (6.9%), plagioclase (4.5%), calcite (2.7%), pyrite (2.7%), and potassium feldspar (0.9%). After 8 days of soaking, XRD results showed that the proportion of clay minerals increased to 7.3%, while the proportion of calcite and dolomite decreased to 2.5% and 58.4%, respectively. Meanwhile, montmorillonite in shale has a special structure of interlayer pairs, which will swell after being exposed to water [23]. Thus, the clay content has increased by 0.4% after being soaked in slick water. Change of composition after slick water soaking. SampleQuartzPotash feldsparPlagioclaseCalciteDolomitePyriteClay mineral The dolomite and calcite in the shale will have the following chemical reaction with acid fracturing fluid: (7)CaCO3+2H+Ca2++CO2+H2O,(8)CaMgCO32+4H+Ca2++Mg2++2CO2+2H2O. Due to the reaction, the dolomite and calcite will be dissolved and some small pores would be created. 4.2. Influence of Slick Water on Pore Structure4.2.1. Pore Morphology In the LP-N2GA experiment, Y0 represents unsoaked samples; J-6 h, J-12 h, J-1 d, J-2 d, J-4 d, and J-8 d represent samples that are soaked in slick water for 6 hours, 12 hours, 1 day, 2 days, 4 days, and 8 days, respectively. Three different types of pores are classified by combining the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) standard and the Hodote classification method based on pore diameter (PD): micropores (2nmPD10nm), mesopores (10nmPD100nm), and macropores (PD>100 nm) [9, 47, 55]. Sing proposed 6 different types of nitrogen adsorption isotherms (Figure 1) [56], and the IUPAC further classified hysteresis loops into 4 categories (Figure 2) [47]. According to the classification, type H1 represents cylindrical pores, and type H2 corresponds to “ink bottle” pores and interparticle pores, while type H3 represents plate-shaped and slit-shaped pores [56] and type H4 represents micropores with low adsorption capacity [57]. Classification of adsorption isotherm [56]. IUPAC classification of hysteresis loops [47]. According to the IUPAC classification of hysteresis loops (Figure 2), the pore type of the sample in this study is type H3, which are plate-like and slit pores. The shape of the adsorption/desorption curves after slick water soaking did not change significantly (Figure 3), which indicated that the pore shape changes little before and after the shale samples were soaked in slick water. Furthermore, from Figure 4, it was observed that the nitrogen adsorption volume increased when the sample was soaked in slick water for the first 6 hours, after which the nitrogen adsorption volume continues to decrease from 6 hours to 1 day of soaking. After that, the nitrogen adsorption amount reaches its maximum on day 4 and minimum on day 6. Since the nitrogen adsorption capacity mainly depends on the volume of connected pores, the change of the LP-N2GA volume was related to the change in the volume of connected pores. Therefore, we can conclude that the maximum volume of connected pores is reached in the sixth hour, which is the result of mineral dissolution. Subsequently, the volume of connected pores decreased due to the swelling of clay minerals (6-24 hours). Then, mineral dissolution dominated again, resulting in the increase of connected pore volume (24-96 hours). The connected pore volume decreased due to mineral precipitation (96-144 hours). Low-pressure nitrogen sorption isotherms of shale soaked in slick water for different times. Change of nitrogen adsorption volume for different soaking times. 4.2.2. Specific Surface Area and Pore Size Distribution From Figure 5, we can find that SSA decreased in the first 6 hours of slick water soaking, and then SSA increased from 6 hours to 24 hours of soaking; SSA did not change from 24 hours to 96 hours, and then SSA decreased from 96 hours of soaking. The SSA is related to the pore shape and pore size; we have proved that the pore shape did not change after being soaked in the slick water; therefore, the change of SSA is caused by the change of pore size. The greater the pore size, the smaller the SSA. Therefore, we can infer that the pore size reaches its maximum due to mineral dissolution in the first 6 hours, followed by the decrease in pore size caused by clay minerals swelling; then the pore size increased again due to the mineral dissolution. This is consistent with the previous analysis. This also shows that mineral dissolution and swelling exist at the same time; the strength of them at different times is different, leading to the changes of SSA and PD. Change in pore ratio SSA (m2/g) and average PD (nm) of the sample after soaking in slick water. 4.2.3. Fractal Analysis The FHH fractal model was used to obtain the fractal dimension (D). From Figure 6, it can be observed that two distinct linear sections were established by P/P0<0.5 and P/P0>0.5. In this paper, K1 and D1 as well as K2 and D2 were used to represent the slope and the corresponding fractal dimensions corresponding to P/P0<0.5 and P/P0>0.5, respectively. Based on Equation (6) and the fitted linear equations in Figure 6, fractal dimensions of samples soaked in slick water for different times were obtained (Table 2). lnV vs. lnlnP0/P from LP-N2GA analyses of samples soaked in slick water for different times. Fractal dimensions of samples soaked in slick water for different times. SampleSoaking time (h)P/P0<0.5P/P0>0.5 J-6 h6-0.46472.53530.9915-0.23872.76130.9964 J-12 h12-0.46252.53750.9946-0.21452.78550.9893 J-2 d48-0.4362.5640.9944-0.22982.77020.9942 J-4 d96-0.49082.50920.9909-0.19372.80630.9696 J-6 d144-0.47582.52420.9959-0.20572.79430.9739 J-8 d196-0.48952.51050.9969-0.23522.76480.9852 The average value of D1 was about 2.53 while that of D2 was 2.85. According to a previous study, D1 and D2 represent the irregularity and complexity of the pores with PD<4 nm and PD>4 nm, respectively [42, 53]. This indicates that the irregularity and complexity of the pores with PD>4 nm are greater than that of pores with PD<4 nm. By fitting the D1 and D2 with PV, SSA, average PD, and soaking time, the linear relationship between these parameters was obtained (Figures 710). It can be seen that D1 has a better correlation with the average PD (Figure 9), R2 of the trendline between D1, D2, and SSA are similar (Figure 8), and there is no obvious linear relationship between the PV and D (Figure 7). From Figure 10, it was observed that the relationship between D1 and soaking time was better than that of D2. Relationship between fractal dimensions and PV. Relationship between fractal dimensions and SSA. Relationship between fractal dimensions and average PD. Relationship between fractal dimensions and slick water soaking time. 4.3. Influence of Slick Water on Wettability The changes in the contact angles of the samples after being soaked in slick water for different times are given in Figure 11 (Sample 1 as an example). The changes in the contact angle of all the samples are given in Table 3, where Y0 refers to the original sample and Y1, Y2, Y4, and Y8 represent shale samples after being soaked in slick water for 1, 2, 4, and 8 days, respectively. Contact angle of sample N0. 1 saturated with slick water for 1, 2, 4, and 8 days. Contact angle after slick water soaking for different times. SampleNo. 1No. 2No. 3No. 4 The contact angles of the shale samples changed continuously when the samples were soaked in slick water. The contact angle appeared to be minimum when it was soaked in slick water for two days. The contact angle reaches its minimum value on the second day because the reaction between slick water and the minerals results in a change in the surface properties. From the second day, the longer the samples are socked, the more hydrophobic the samples will be. 4.4. Fluid Distribution Four core samples (a, b, c, and d) are used for the NMR experiment. The NMR T2 spectrum of a saturated sample is classified according to the number of peaks: unimodal, bimodal, and trimodal for one, two, and three peaks, respectively. T2 is the transverse relaxation time of 1H, which can be converted to pore size according to Equation (5), so T2 spectrum can be regarded as the pore size distribution. The abscissa of the T2 spectrum represents the pore size, and the vertical axis represents the total pore volume. More details can be found in Coates et al.’s book [58]. As shown in Figure 12, the T2 spectrum showed that under formation water saturation conditions, the original samples a and c (Y0 in Figures 12(a) and 12(c)) displayed a unimodal distribution. Meanwhile, the original samples b and d (Y0 in Figures 12(b) and 12(d)) showed a bimodal distribution. Note that Y0 refers to the original sample and Y1, Y2, Y4, and Y8 represent the samples soaked in slick water for 1, 2, 4, and 8 days, respectively. NMR T2 spectrum of four samples saturated with slick water for 1, 2, 4, and 8 days. Different pore types have been classified by Wang et al. [59] by utilizing NMR combined with centrifugation, while according to the classification method of Yao et al. [32, 60], the left peak of the T2 spectrum corresponds to the adsorption pores, which are mainly micropores, and the right peak corresponds to the seepage pores, which are mainly macropores and fractures. For the samples soaked in slick water, the adsorption pores decreased continuously with time from Y0 to Y2, and the spectrum area also decreased (Figures 12(a) and 12(c)), which indicated that the number of pores decreased after two days of soaking. The original saturated sample (Y0 in Figures 12(b) and 12(d)) had a bimodal distribution, and the peak of the seepage pores was smaller than the peak of the adsorption pores. The change of T2 spectrum with saturation time in Figures 12(b) and 12(d) is similar to that in Figures 12(a) and 12(c). However, the peak of the seepage pores disappeared after the first day of saturation in Figures 12(b) and 12(d), which is due to the swelling of clay minerals blocking the pores. It was found that when samples were saturated with slick water for the first two days, the peak of the adsorption pores in Figure 12 became smaller, and the bimodal structure disappeared in Figures 12(b) and 12(d). The reason is that the slick water first enters the micropores due to capillary force, and the swelling of clay minerals then blocked the pores. As a result, water cannot enter pores, causing the peak of the seepage pores (macropores) to disappear. Samples were saturated in slick water for two to eight days; the adsorption pores and the seepage pores both increased gradually with time, which is because as the soaking time increased, the swelling of clay minerals with water became stable, and the chemical reaction between slick water and the minerals dominated (Equations (7) and (8)). 5. Conclusions We studied the influence of fracturing fluid (slick water) soaking on pore structure and wettability, and we focused on the impacts of soaking time. Different experimental methods were used to observe the pore structure and wettability, including NMR, LP-N2GA, and contact angle measurement. The following practical conclusions can be drawn from our study: According to the IUPAC classification of pore types, being soaked in slick water will not change the pore shape of the shale sample. However, the irregularity and complexity of the pores will be changed, especially the pores with PD>4 nm. As the increase of soaking time, the pore complexity and irregularity will decrease, facilitating fluid flow The influence of slick water on pore structure mainly includes mineral dissolution and swelling. And we found that mineral dissolution and swelling exist at the same time, and the strength of them at different soaking times is different, the mineral dissolution dominates in the first 6 hours, after that swelling effect dominates, and the mineral dissolution dominates again after the sample soaked for 96 hours. As a result, SSA and PD will also change as soaking time increases, leading to the change in the adsorption/desorption capacity and flow of shale gas The shale matrix is most hydrophilic on the second day of being soaked in the slick water. From the second day, the longer the samples are socked, the more hydrophobic the shale matrix will be, which means that the flow of gas within the pores will suffer less resistance from the liquid after being soaked in the slick water for a longer time Data Availability Data are available on request. Conflicts of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest. 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A.The fractal geometry of natureAmerican Journal of Physics198351328628710.1119/1.13295YaoY.LiuD.TangD.TangS.HuangW.Fractal characterization of adsorption-pores of coals from North China: an investigation on CH4 adsorption capacity of coalsInternational Journal of Coal Geology2008731274210.1016/j.coal.2007.07.0032-s2.0-36248999570YangF.NingZ.LiuH.Fractal characteristics of shales from a shale gas reservoir in the Sichuan Basin, ChinaFuel201411537838410.1016/j.fuel.2013.07.0402-s2.0-84881283508QiH.MaJ.WongP.Adsorption isotherms of fractal surfacesASp20022061-340140710.1016/S0927-7757(02)00063-82-s2.0-0037046932YinY.Adsorption isotherm on fractally porous materialsLangmuir19917221621710.1021/la00050a0022-s2.0-0026114055ZhangS.TangS.TangD.PanZ.YangF.The characteristics of coal reservoir pores and coal facies in Liulin district, Hedong coal field of ChinaActa Geologica Sinica201081211712710.1016/j.coal.2009.11.0072-s2.0-73449146937LiA.DingW.HeJ.DaiP.YinS.XieF.Investigation of pore structure and fractal characteristics of organic-rich shale reservoirs: a case study of Lower Cambrian Qiongzhusi formation in Malong block of eastern Yunnan Province, South ChinaMarine and Petroleum Geology201670465710.1016/j.marpetgeo.2015.11.0042-s2.0-84949429161AvnirD.JaroniecM.An isotherm equation for adsorption on fractal surfaces of heterogeneous porous materialsLangmuir1989561431143310.1021/la00090a0322-s2.0-0000330235LiuJ.YaoY.LiuD.CaiY.CaiJ.Comparison of pore fractal characteristics between marine and continental shalesFractals20182621840016184001610.1142/S0218348X184001692-s2.0-85042882842GroenJ. 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Convert compost - that's how it's done Convert compost - that's how it's done We are searching data for your request: Forums and discussions: Manuals and reference books: Data from registers: Wait the end of the search in all databases. February is the ideal time to implement the compost that has been deposited from last year. You can find out how to do this here. Implement compost in February February is therefore the ideal time because as a gardener in the approaching spring, the most nutritious soil possible is once again needed to sow plants, vegetables, salads and fruit. If you start moving the compost early, you can also extract valuable soil from it several times a year. For this, however, an adequate supply of oxygen is necessary by repositioning several times. And we would now like to explain a little more exactly how this shifting should be done. Implement compost - step by step instructions In frosty February there is usually always enough time for the compost to be moved. The best way to do this is as follows: Step 1: Pull the compost upwards and dismantle the compost cone layer by layer. Step 2: Throw the nutrient-rich compost through a sieve, because this gives you very fine soil. Carefully sort out large stones, branches and non-rotted plant parts and dispose of them if necessary. If you have cleared your compost again for the first time in February, you can then layer the sorted plant residues, which still need a certain amount of time to rot, again at the bottom. " Tip: You should also add a little damp soil to this lower layer (leftover compost), because this will speed up the next rotting process. Step 3: You can now distribute the finely screened compost soil evenly over the beds. Important: also apply compost in the greenhouse or cold frame. You should also keep a little of the finely screened compost for growing indoor plants or cuttings. If the surface of the earth is not frozen, it is best to work the compost in with a rake so that it settles better. With the snow cover closed, however, you should not spread any compost! Step 4: Afterwards you should now also check the compost bin for its durability and if necessary carry out repair work on it. You might also be interested in: »Create compost heap - my tips »Compost correctly - 5 tips »What is allowed in the compost?
What is Fiber Optic Splice Closure? (5 Points You Should Know) The Basic Introduction of Fiber Optic Splice Closure Fiber optic splice closure, also called fiber optic closure, plays an important role in fiber-optic communication. The fiber optic closure can be used in the branching and splicing of the backbone in fiber optic communication to protect inlet and outlet optic fibers. Fiber optic splice closure is usually strong and firm to help protect fibers and optics inside. The fiber optic splice closure can connect multiple fiber optic cables simultaneously and has the function of distribution and switching. In addition, it can also optimize fiber optic communication lines by the built-in splitter. Fiber optic splice closure is widely used in many fields such as telecommunication, electric power, and broadcasting. Such optic splice closure is designed to fit all types of splices and fibers. Main Components of Fiber Optic Splice Closure Support Frame It is the main body of internal construction that can help support the whole device. Fiber optic cable fixing device This device is designed to fix the fiber optic cable and the base. Fiber optic placement device It can sequentially store fiber optic splices and residual optic fibers. Optical fiber connectors protection device It is placed in a shelter tray, and the device can be fixed with silicone. Seal of fiber optic cable and fiber optic splice closure The junction of the fiber optic cable and fiber optic splice closure will be polished and cleaned, and then it will be pasted with aluminum foil. And then, the shrinkable heat tube will be added and shrunk to protect the whole device. Types of Fiber Optic Splice Closure According to the use of form: • Regular Fiber Optic Splice Closure • Photoelectric Composite Fiber Optic Splice Closure • Splitting Fiber Optic Splice Closure According to product structure: Fiber Optic Horizontal Splice Closure Fiber Optic Vertical Splice Closure According to the application scenario: • Overhead Fiber Optic Closure • Pipeline (Tunnel) Fiber Optic Closure • Direct Burial Fiber Optic Closure According to the connection method: • Direct Connection • Branch Connection According to the sealing method: • Mechanical Seals • Heat Shrink Seals Mechanical SealsHeat Shrink Seals According to the capacity: The fiber optic splice closure can be divided into different cores, such as 24 cores, 36 cores, 48 cores, 72 cores, 96 cores, 144 cores, and 288 cores, and you can choose the suitable one according to your own need. What are fiber optic closures made of? Fiber optic closures are mainly made of PP, PP+glass fiber, PC, and PC+ABS. These materials are a bit different from each other. • PP: Burning fast and easily; molten drops; yellow and blue flame; a smell of petroleum • ABS: Slow burning; no dripping; yellow flame; black smoke; shiny surface after burning; small and dense holes; a faint sweet smell • PC: Easy to extinguish; flame retardant; non-toxic; transparent; colorable; easy to scratch These materials have their advantages and disadvantages. PP+glass fiber has excellent impact resistance, but it is a bit soft, and the surface is rough; PC has excellent electrical insulation, elongation, stability, and is resistant to chemical, heat, and low temperature, but it is not easy to process. In Southeast Asia and the Middle East, the fiber optic horizontal splice closure is usually made of PC, and the fiber optic vertical splice closure is made of PP+glass fiber. The Function of Fiber Optic Splicing Closure Fiber optic splicing closure can effectively protect fiber optic cables from the external environment such as humidity, too high or low temperature, termites, etc. It can also help store the remaining optical fibers. Fiber optic splicing closure has the following main functions: Optical Function The remaining fiber in the fiber optic splice box surrounds the fiber placement device, and it can still work well. Sealing Function The fiber optic splicing closure features a sealing function that makes the device resistant to water, dust, and impact. Fiber Optic Transceivers Cabling Infrastructure Cabling Infrastructure Social Media On Key Related Posts What's the Difference Between ONU and ONT What’s the Difference Between ONU and ONT? What is the OLT What is the OLT? epon vs gpon Get in Touch
Skip to main content Humanities LibreTexts 5.5: Unraveling the Past: The Resonance of Ellen Donald Sweet’s Mid-Nineteenth Century Quilt • Page ID IMG_2909-1024x921.jpg Figure 2. Ellen Donald Sweet Irish Chain Quilt A beautifully preserved antique American quilt, completed in 1875, is kept in the Milwaukee Art Museum’s decorative arts collection (figure 1). Simply titled the “Star of Bethlehem” Quilt, it displays an abundance of color, pattern and texture. Upon viewing it, one cannot help but admire the precision, technique and time that clearly went into its making; the star, itself, may evoke a spiritual response. It is antique quilts such as this one that tend to be kept in present-day museum collections. Sometimes referred to as “fabric paintings,” quilts are often idealized as crafts of the past. Quilts made throughout the nineteenth century displayed wild patterns, marked important events or showed political support, particularly during the Civil War, but what is to be done with the quilts that were not intended to be artworks or symbolic mediums? What can purely functional antique quilts offer contemporary viewers if not awe-inspiring aesthetics? Figure 1. Milwaukee Art Museum Star of Bethlehem Quilt ca. 1875 At the Mt. Horeb Historical Society, an “Irish Chain” quilt (figure 2) lays folded in a cardboard box, hidden from visitors of the museum unless purposefully sought out. The quilt was completed in 1865 by then sixteen-year-old Ellen Sweet in Springdale, Wisconsin. It is very clear that Ellen was not trying to create a unique “fabric painting” in her stitches, but rather produced a quilt that was simply meant to keep one warm and be used practically by her own family. As will be discovered, Ellen was quite limited when it came to her individual creativity due to her geographic location, skill level, social roles and the larger trends and technological innovations available to her in the pioneer days of America. However, though certainly not to be valued for its “wonder,” Ellen’s quilt can and should be valued for its cultural “resonance.” The material details of this quilt speak to Ellen’s specific cultural situation and mark a pivotal point of transition, for Ellen herself and for America at large. The foundation of this argument builds upon pre-existing theories put forth by literary critic Stephen Greenblatt and anthropologist Tim Ingold. It is Greenblatt who initially proposed the terms “wonder” and “resonance” to describe the effects of museum objects on contemporary viewers. Wondrous objects are those like the quilt at the Milwaukee Art Museum; they draw viewers by their beauty or distinctive features.[1] Objects of resonance, in contrast, have the power to extend beyond pure aesthetics and speak to larger cultural patterns. Similarly, Tim Ingold emphasizes a connection between specifically handcrafted items and culture; he explains that such items are not created as individually conceived ideas, but rather “grow from a mutual involvement of people and materials in an environment.”[2] Although Ingold uses the example of weaving a basket, his ideas can easily be applied to a number of handcrafts. Ellen’s quilt serves as a perfect example for these theories; in its own time, the quilt was molded entirely by its culture, but now it serves as a reflection of that culture. Contextualizing: Ellen Sweet and Wisconsin’s Pioneer Days Little beyond major life events and familial relations are recorded about Ellen Sweet (figure 3). In 1855, when Ellen was six years old, her family of nine moved to Springdale, Wisconsin from Chautauqua County, New York; they had obtained their land prior to the move in 1854.[3] Wisconsin had become an official territory in 1836, increasingly drawing immigrants and settlers to its growing communities for decades after. From 1836 to 1850, Wisconsin’s population grew from 11,000 people to over 300,000. Many were interested in the potential industrial and commercial use of Lake Michigan’s harbors, in addition to the availability of land. In the early 1850s, the Wisconsin Commission of Emigration distributed pamphlets and published newspaper advertisements in Europe, as well as in cities along America’s east coast, to encourage settlement in Wisconsin.[4] Although aimed at Europeans then arriving in America, perhaps Ellen’s family saw one such advertisement and sought the better life that Wisconsin promised. Taking a boat from Buffalo to Milwaukee, and then traveling to Springdale by wagon, the Sweet family began their life in Wisconsin, which would continue for generations.[5] Figure 3. Photograph of Ellen Donald Sweet ca. 1867-1871 The Sweet family property in Springdale was known as “the Ashmore place.”[6] As pioneers, they were largely self-sufficient; they made their own clothes and raised their own food. It was in Springdale that Ellen pieced her quilt, almost certainly to be used by her family in their own home. Judging by the size of the quilt, about 75 inches long by 65 inches wide, it was likely made to rest atop a bed of the period; perhaps this would have been similar to the nineteenth century “rope beds” that the Mt. Horeb Historical Society now houses. Rope beds were made by constructing a frame, then using a lattice of thick rope across the central space to support a mattress, which was often made of straw (figure 4).[7] In a letter from the mid-1850s, a Norwegian Pastor living in Wisconsin wrote, “A quilt on a straw mattress to lie on and a similar quilt for covering-usually a sheet, but sometimes not – are what the host offers to keep you warm.”[8] Figure 4. Rope Bed Nineteenth Century The “host,” mentioned in the quote by the Norwegian pastor, was undoubtedly the woman of the household. As Helen Sheumaker points out in her book, Love Entwined, it was men who built and supported a house, but women who made that house a home; a beautiful and comfortable place to live.[9] Making this quilt at sixteen years old, Ellen would have been preparing herself for womanhood; just three years after completing her quilt, she married John Donald, a local farmer, and started her own family.[10] The role of wife and eventual mother required Ellen to learn basic domestic tasks in this time period. As a grown woman, she would be expected to cook, keep the home clean and take care of her own children someday. Domestic craftwork, including quilt-making, was also under the woman’s jurisdiction. Ellen would have learned these tasks from her mother in a process that Rozsika Parker, in her book The Subversive Stitch, describes as “transmitting feminine behaviour.”[11] Domestic work defined women’s identities and societal roles; it was a matter of social obligation and expectation. Delma Sweet, Ellen’s granddaughter who eventually received the quilt, notes this role for women in the quote that she left the Historical Society (see cover page): “…every girl had to piece a quilt.” Ellen’s mother, Sally Clark Sweet, left behind evidence of her own quilting activities from around this same time; her “Rose Wreath” appliqué quilt from 1855 (figure 5) displays her superior skill that came with years of practice. Because Ellen was still learning, her quilt does not display the same level of aesthetic quality and technical aptitude as her mother’s, but both certainly attest to this tradition of female domestic education and women’s roles in the home. Figure 5. Sally Clark Sweet Details in the Fabric: Purchase, Materiality and Color As already discussed, Ellen’s quilt can certainly be seen as a direct result of her nineteenth century feminine education, but its purchase and materiality reflect its chosen function as a utility quilt. Further, the popularity and availability of the specific fabrics and dyes were essentially determined by larger trends and developments in America’s textile industry at the time. It would perhaps be more pleasant to think of Ellen choosing the fabric for her quilt because special meanings were fixed into the particular colors and textiles. In reality, Ellen would have been limited in her choice of fabric and color, making her decision actually quite simple. No general stores appear to have been established in Springdale when Ellen was working on her quilt, but nearby Mt. Vernon had a general store opened as early as 1848.[12] Ellen’s family likely purchased the fabric she used from this store, having been offered a narrow selection to choose from. A lack of textile mills in the area meant that textiles had to be brought in from larger cities. The store merchant dictated what fabrics would be ordered and sold in the store, but what was being made by the textile mills elsewhere was controlled by popular trends and the available technology.[13] Ellen’s use of cotton speaks to newer developments in American fabric production at the time. Since Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton had become a widely available and inexpensive fabric in America. Before 1800, it was uncommon to make quilts entirely out of cotton simply because the fabric was hard to come by and more expensive. Not only favored for its reasonable price, cotton, to this day, is loved for its comfortable texture, ease of washing and overall versatility.[14] Ellen’s family could have used their purchased cotton for not only quilt-making, but to craft sheets, coverlets, tablecloths, clothing and other items, as well. Calico, which Ellen used for the quilt’s binding or narrow outer edge, as well as various pieces within the quilt, is made from cotton that is not bleached or fully processed. As a plain-woven fabric, one can visibly see the criss-cross pattern of the threads. More generally, “calico” has come to identify fabrics that display a consistently repeated pattern across its surface.[15] On Ellen’s quilt, one can see tiny white motifs that decorate the indigo pieces, varying from florals to stripes and polka dots. In the mid-1800s, Calico was very inexpensive; by 1872, it is recorded to have been only four cents per yard.[16] The use of cheaper fabric may have been due to the Sweet family’s choice to be more economically conservative, but the eventual use of the quilt was also a likely factor. Quilt scholar Barbara Brackman explains that “Calicoes with a low thread count, a limited range of colors and fewer details in the prints were the staple prints bought for everyday clothing and everyday quilts.”[17] To give the calico pieces their deep blue color, the fabric had been dyed in a factory prior to being sold. The likelihood of Ellen, her mother, or her sisters dying the fabric themselves is very slim as “printing fabric was never a widely practiced home craft in this country.”[18] Aniline dyes, or synthetic dyes, which would greatly expand the range of colors that could be created, were just starting to be developed around this time. Because those had not yet become widely available to the American market, fabrics were restricted to using dyes produced from insects, vegetables and minerals.[19] As a vegetable dye, Indigo dates back to early civilization, but has remained popular throughout time. Described as “colorfast,” Indigo dye is known for its ability to withstand fading, even when washed multiple times.[20] The choice in color and fabric indicate that this quilt was meant to last a long time under continual use. Making: The Pattern and Process In its overall simplicity, Ellen’s pattern for her quilt further displays its practical purpose, while concurrently demonstrating a popular style for its time. However, its ease of construction, along with the smallest of imperfections in measurements and straight sewing, attest to the fact that Ellen was still in a state of learning. As mentioned previously, Ellen’s mother, with her years of practice and experience, would have been instructing Ellen on increasingly difficult techniques as she moved towards womanhood. The pattern Ellen followed to design her quilt is commonly called the “Single Irish Chain.” The identifying feature of this pattern is the connection of smaller squares to create diagonal lines across the quilt, forming a large checkered pattern. Interestingly, recent scholarship has found no connection between Ireland and this particular pattern, despite its name.[21] Stella Rubin, an antique quilt expert, theorizes that the Irish Chain might have been one of the earliest quilt patterns used in the United States due to “the dynamism of its simple geometry and relative ease of assembly.”[22] Similarly, Barbara Brackman has dated the naming of this pattern to the early nineteenth century, explaining the possibility of it stemming from a previously established weaving pattern.[23] Patterns, in general, were not formally published until the late nineteenth century, so dating and proper attribution are difficult. Ellen had likely learned this pattern from her mother, who had also learned it from her own mother or from a friend.[24] With many examples surviving today, it is clear that this pattern was used often throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but most seem to have made double or triple Irish Chains; this simply involved adding rows along the initial diagonals. As Rubin noted, the construction of Ellen’s quilt was not extremely difficult, compared to other patterns of the time period, and consisted of a relatively simple process. The entire quilt is made up of larger squares that were sewn together by machine; each of those squares is called a block. To create the Single Irish Chain pattern, Ellen alternated between pieced blocks and plain white ones.[25] Piecing involves joining fabric together by a single seam;[26] though a machine was used for the joining of the larger blocks, Ellen pieced the smaller squares by hand, evident in the wider distance between stitches. Each pieced block, in this particular case, is made up of nine smaller squares, set in rows of three, and alternates between indigo and white squares. The use of nine-square blocks is more formally called the “Nine Patch.” Children who were just learning to make quilts often used the Nine Patch across entire quilts to learn how to piece. Its simplicity also made it a favorite pattern for quilts that were wholly utilitarian in function.[27] As a young woman, with probably years of quilt-making lessons, Ellen’s design goes beyond the basic Nine Patch to show her increased skill level. In addition to the formation of the Irish Chain pattern, her design includes a framing edge of calico binding and an “allover diamond pattern,” stitched by hand, to join the top, middle, or batting, and bottom layers.[28] The Sewing Machine: A Vehicle of Change Ellen’s partial use of a sewing machine is significant because its recent invention not only changed the way women were sewing; it caused changes in women’s social lives, as well. Sewing machines, in general, have a complicated history due to the fact that many past figures around the world invented similar models, but most early designs did not peak public interest or were never patented. It is difficult to firmly declare a single inventor of the modern sewing machine. In America, a man named Walter Hunt created a sewing machine in the early 1830s that produced a “lock stitch,” clearly differentiating its work from hand-stitching. Never patenting his design, Hunt left Elias Howe able to patent his slightly “more sophisticated model”[29] in the 1840s, but he had trouble marketing to the public. To really get the American public interested in purchasing sewing machines, it took improvements by Isaac Singer in both design and marketing. Adding a foot pedal and a vertical needle, Singer’s first machines were listed at a costly five hundred dollars each. To reach middle class audiences, Singer devised a payment plan, and soon demand itself was enough to lower the prices. By 1860, each Singer sewing machine could be bought for seventy-five dollars, and by 1871, they were sold for as low as twenty-five dollars. In a mere twenty year span, the sewing machine became a common household item. The invention of the sewing machine stands at a pivotal point in American society. After 1865, urbanization and industrialization expanded rapidly across the country. In Ellen’s case, factory-produced and dyed fabric was already common, but more factories and new developments in technology brought upon even cheaper prices and the availability of a variety of colors and patterns. Quilts that continued to be made at home with a sewing machine became more creative and experimental in design, leading to what is now called the “design revolution” in American quilt-making in the nineteenth century and the publishing of patterns in women’s books and magazines.[30] However, near the end of the century, widespread industrialization, the ability to purchase ready-made goods or simply use home technology to make items more quickly, gave women more free time and allowed them to pursue activities outside of the domestic sphere. Many women got jobs, whether in factories, schools or offices, and began to earn their own income.[31] Eventually, women would no longer be solely defined by their domestic roles and handcrafts. Ellen, herself, is known to have become involved in a number of community groups as she grew older, including the Summit Chapter of the Eastern Star, the Baptist Aid Society in Mt. Vernon and the Methodist Aid Society in Mt. Horeb.[32] The recording of Ellen’s participation in these groups testifies to this shift in culture. Not only is Ellen remembered as a loving wife and mother, but as an active member in her community. The Beauty of “Between” Too frequently donated to and exhibited in museums are only the quilts that were made to mark important events: a marriage, a birth, a community fundraiser or the onset of a war. Other quilts exhibited tend to be those with very difficult and visually impressive patterns; they display the height of design from each era. While those quilts are beautiful to look at and perhaps come with an emotionally touching story, they limit one’s contemporary understanding of the tradition of quilt-making. Quilt-making history is not about jumping from one perfect design to the next, but rather it is marked by a number of transitions, or “between” periods. Many quilts, like Ellen’s, were made specifically to be used on the ordinary days lived between special events. Young girls who progressively learned new techniques and patterns were slowly transitioning to womanhood. The continued invention of new patterns, dyes, fabrics and ways of making demonstrated a transition in American culture from handmade to industrial, and even the eventual transition from female domesticity to roles outside of the home. Quilt-making, itself, is about a process or transition, a piecing together of separate blocks to create a larger, connected entity. Why, then, are quilts of “transition,” those created by less experienced makers or for everyday use, so easily ignored by contemporary viewers? Perhaps value is more evident in pieces of “wonder,” but it can be argued that there is still great value in quilts like Ellen’s; they remind one of the significance in transitional periods. The slight imperfections of her quilt and its simplicity of design, mixed with a clear sense of precision and accuracy, exhibit Ellen’s learning process in tangible form. Its status as beyond beginner level, but not yet perfectly executed quilt, clearly attests to the long tradition of passing on domestic education from mother to daughter. Also, Ellen’s use of both hand-piecing and sewing machine reflects America’s cultural situation at that time; the handmade, pioneer present was being tightly held onto, but one could feel the push of a more industrial society inching closer. Ellen’s quilt may not mark a special event or display fantastic designs, but it holds a deep resonance for the Wisconsin pioneer culture that it sprung out of. Returning to the theoretical basis of this analysis, one can now see what Ingold meant when he described crafts as being created through the intermingling of people and materials in specific environments. Certainly, Ellen’s quilt is a direct product of Ellen, her family, her geographic location and nineteenth century American society, in general. It is because of this strong connection to its own culture that, according to Greenblatt, it has a resonant power within contemporary museum collections. Ellen’s quilt forces one to think deeper, beyond formal aesthetics, about a specific cultural setting and that is what makes it so valuable for contemporary viewers. • Was this article helpful?
For the flow of the supercritical water (SCW), the fierce variation of density and specific volume possibly cause flow instability. Based on the structure of parallel channels, mathematical and physical models were established to simulate the flow and heat transfer characteristics of the supercritical water in the parallel channels with semi-implicit scheme and staggered mesh scheme. Flow instability of super-critical water was obtained by using the little perturbation method. Pseudo-subcooling number (NSUB) and pseudo-phase change number (NPCH) are defined based on the property of SCW. The marginal stability boundary (MSB) is obtained with using the NSUB and NPCH. The effects of mass flow rate, inlet temperature and system pressure on the flow instability boundary were also investigated. When increasing the mass flows and system pressure, decreasing the heat flux, the stability in the parallel channels increases. The effect of inlet temperature in the low pseudo-subcooling number region is different from that in high pseudo-subcooling number region. This content is only available via PDF. You do not currently have access to this content.
How long does it take to boil an egg in hot water? How long do you boil eggs? Can you boil eggs in hot water? Hard Boiled Eggs (Boiled) Fill a large pot with enough to cover the eggs by 1-inch once added. Bring water to a low boil around 200°F (93°C) and then carefully place eggs in the hot water. Boil the eggs for 30 seconds, place the lid on the pot and reduce heat to low. Cook eggs on a low simmer for 12 minutes. How do you know when boiled eggs are done? IT IS AMAZING: Will a potato bring a boil to a head? Do I boil water before adding eggs? Starting with boiling water. If you’re about to place uncooked eggs in a pot of boiling water, stop what you’re doing immediately. Making hard-boiled eggs should always begin with cool water. Bringing the water and eggs up in temperature together helps promote even cooking and prevent cracking. Do you boil water first for hard-boiled eggs? How do you microwave an egg without it exploding? Can you overcook hard boiled eggs?
RaceGrader - Authentic Race Reviews - Swim, Bike, Run How Many Calories Are You Really Burning? Posted by: on June, 16 2015 Found on RunnersWorld.com and written by Amby Burfoot A few months ago I got into an argument with someone who’s far smarter than I am. I should have known better, but you know how these things go. Needless to say, I lost the argument. Still, I learned something important in the process. David Swain is a bicyclist who likes to ride across the country every couple of years. Since I spend most of my time on my feet, I figured I could teach him something about walking and running. Perhaps I should have paid more attention to Swain’s Ph.D. in exercise physiology, his position as director of the Wellness Institute and Research Center at Old Dominion University, and his work on the “Metabolic Calculations” appendix to the American College of Sports Medicine’s Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription. Swain was unimpressed by my junior-high physics. “When you perform a continuous exercise, you burn five calories for every liter of oxygen you consume,” he said. “And running in general consumes a lot more oxygen than walking.” What the Numbers Show I was still gathering my resources for a retort when a new article crossed my desk, and changed my cosmos. In “Energy Expenditure of Walking and Running,” published last December in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, a group of Syracuse University researchers measured the actual calorie burn of 12 men and 12 women while running and walking 1,600 meters (roughly a mile) on a treadmill. Result: The men burned an average of 124 calories while running, and just 88 while walking; the women burned 105 and 74. (The men burned more than the women because they weighed more.) Swain was right! The investigators at Syracuse didn’t explain why their results differed from a simplistic interpretation of Newton’s Laws of Motion, but I figured it out with help from Swain and Ray Moss, Ph.D., of Furman University. Running and walking aren’t as comparable as I had imagined. When you walk, you keep your legs mostly straight, and your center of gravity rides along fairly smoothly on top of your legs. In running, we actually jump from one foot to the other. Each jump raises our center of gravity when we take off, and lowers it when we land, since we bend the knee to absorb the shock. This continual rise and fall of our weight requires a tremendous amount of Newtonian force (fighting gravity) on both takeoff and landing. You rarely hear anyone talk about the NCB of workouts, because this is America, dammit, and we like our numbers big and bold. Subtraction is not a popular activity. Certainly not among the infomercial hucksters and weight-loss gurus who want to promote exercise schemes. “It’s bizarre that you hear so much about the gross calorie burn instead of the net,” says Swain. “It could keep people from realizing why they’re having such a hard time losing weight.” Run Slow or Walk Fast? How to explain this? It’s not easy, except to say that walking at very fast speeds forces your body to move in ways it wasn’t designed to move. This creates a great deal of internal “friction” and inefficiency, which boosts heart rate, oxygen consumption, and calorie burn. So, as Jon Stewart might say, “Walking fast…good. Walking slow…uh, not so much.” The bottom line: Running is a phenomenal calorie-burning exercise. In public-health terms–that is, in the fight against obesity–it’s even more important that running is a low-cost, easy-to-do, year-round activity. Walking doesn’t burn as many calories, but it remains a terrific exercise. As David Swain says, “The new research doesn’t mean that walking burns any fewer calories than it used to. It just means that walkers might have to walk a little more, or eat a little less, to hit their weight goal.”
Uploaded by Eric Melin Economic Systems Poster Pic Collage Economic Systems Poster You will apply what you know about economic systems to create a poster using Pic Collage. Choose one of the four Economic Systems: Traditional, Command, Market, or Mixed. Your poster must include: 1. A Title. 2. It must answer the “Three Basic Economic Questions” (use your notes and activity from last class). 3. ONE benefit and drawback of your economic system. 4. At least FIVE pictures and/or drawings that you created or found online (use the websites linked below for online photos). 5. A creative and colorful style that reflects the amount time you have (one class period). Make something you would enjoy seeing! Use these sites for attribution free pictures: • pixabay.com • pexels.com
Expressivism and Constructivism in Metaethics ・52 min read For decades, metaethical debates have been mainly about two questions: How metaethical theories fit into a larger naturalistic worldview, and how well they make sense of ordinary moral discourse. Usually, metaethical theories have prioritised one desideratum at the cost of the other, resulting in different theoretical challenges: Moral realism, the view that moral judgements refer to objective facts and are (at least sometimes) true, seems to make good sense of how we usually think and talk about these judgements. But it has to account for the fact that “if there were objective values, then they would be of a very strange sort” and would have to be perceived “by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else” (Mackie 1979, 38). And it has to explain how moral beliefs can motivate us to act – why they are, in other words, not “motivationally inert” (Sayre-McCoord 2015, 11) like nonmoral beliefs. Moral anti-realism, on the other hand, denies one or both of moral realism’s claims and thus sidesteps its challenges. But it has to account for the purported objectivity of moral judgements – it should be able, for example, to show that “it is not because of the way we form sentiments that kicking dogs is wrong [but] wrong whatever we thought about it” (Blackburn 1984, 217). And it needs to prove that it can capture ordinary moral talk in a way that makes sense of its meaning and structure, i.e. account for “the similarities between the semantic function of ethical sentences and descriptive sentences” (Chrisman 2011, 38). More recently, two metaethical views have claimed to do better than either traditional realism or anti-realism: Expressivism and constructivism both assert they don’t share the ontological, epistemological and psychological vulnerabilities of realism, but nonetheless avoid the objections of relativism and inaccurate understanding of language usually mounted against anti-realism. The relationship between the two views has been controversial (Darwall et al. 1992, Gibbard 1999, Magri 2002, Korsgaard 2008, Chrisman 2010, Lenman 2012, Ridge 2012, Wallace 2012, Southwood 2018). The positions on the issue have expanded over time, from diagnosing a clear opposition (Darwall et al. 1992; see also Magri 2002, 153) to seeing them as two expressions of essentially the same programme (Gibbard 1999, Magri 2002) to arguing that constructivism as a metaethical doctrine might collapse into expressivism (Ridge 2012, Southwood 2018). I want to argue for yet another option: According to my proposal, expressivism and constructivism are expressions of two fundamentally different metaethical projects, and as a result, are neither contradictory nor equivalent, but complementary. I will argue that while expressivism aims to explain moral judgement from without, constructivism articulates it from within moral discourse. This reframing sheds new light on metaethical challenges, clarifies the character and relationship of expressivism and constructivism, and enables a reassessment of the traditional distinction of normative ethical and metaethical theories. Connected to a broader context, it can also help clarify the scope and broaden the horizon of metaethics to become a more critical and relevant enterprise than it has been in the past decades. According to ethical expressivismWith “expressivism”, I refer exclusively to expressivism about moral judgements (statements, utterances – see next footnote), in contrast to expressivism about other areas of discourse, e.g. logic or language in general, as advocated, amongst others, by Brandom (1994 and 2000). Blackburn has also called this position “projectivism” in the past (1984, 1993), although he has since, following Gibbard, also switched to the label “expressivism” (Blackburn 1998, 77). , moral judgements are not descriptions of facts but expressions of conative, i.e. desire-like attitudes like approval or planning. When I say “Kicking dogs is wrong”, expressivism contends, I am not describing the fact or expressing the belief that kicking dogs is wrong – I am not ascribing the property “wrong” to the act of kicking dogs. What I am really doing is expressing my disapproval of kicking dogs or expressing my plan not to kick dogs.Here and in the following, I am repeatedly switching between “I am expressing an attitude”, “a judgement expresses an attitude”, and “a statement expresses an attitude”. These are shorthands for the following structure: I make moral judgements, and I utter statements that represent these judgements. If a judgement expresses an attitude, then the representing statement gives linguistic expression to this attitude. As the utterer of the statement and the maker of the judgement, in a broader sense, I can also be said to be expressing the attitude in making the judgement and in uttering the statement. The idea that moral judgements don’t express beliefs, but non-cognitive attitudes goes back to emotivism, the doctrine that moral statements express emotions, advocated, amongst others, by Ayer (1936). According to emotivism, saying “Kicking dogs is wrong” amounts to little more than shouting “Boo!” (Darwall et al. 1992, 146) when someone is kicking dogs – both express a strong negative emotion towards kicking dogs but have no other cognitive content. This makes emotivism a clear case of moral anti-realism – “Boo!” does not describe an objective fact. Emotivism has two definitive advantages over moral realism. First, it doesn’t refer to any “queer” (Mackie 1979, 38) normative properties – it offers an entirely naturalistic interpretation of moral language and thought. Second, it explains why we are motivated to behave according to our moral judgements – our emotions compel us to do so. This is sometimes called the “Humean Theory of Motivation” (Smith 1987): Desire, i.e. how we want the world to be, motivates us to act, while belief supplies us with options for the necessary action, i.e. with a map of how the world is. Emotivism’s disadvantage is that by denying that moral judgements express beliefs, it ignores the apparent structure of moral claims – the fact that “ethical sentences function semantically very much like descriptive sentences” (Chrisman 2011, 37). That this is a real issue is highlighted by the so-called Frege-Geach Problem, which shows that emotivism cannot consistently account for the meaning that moral statements contribute to larger, composite statements. Its structure can be outlined in the following way (Chrisman 2011, 38–40): If a moral statement is to have any meaning, its content has to be stable over the contexts in which it is used. If the statement “Kicking dogs is wrong” expresses a negative emotion towards kicking dogs, then it needs to express this emotion everywhere it is used to have a stable meaning. Now imagine the statement to be part of an implication: If kicking dogs is wrong, then making your brother kick the dog is wrong. One can consistently assert the implication without asserting the antecedent, i.e. one can assert it while staying neutral about whether kicking dogs is wrong. But that means that in the context of the conditional, it is possible for our statement not to express a negative emotion. In other words, the statement’s content can change between its assertion and its occurrence, which means it doesn’t have a (stable) meaning. More generally speaking, the Frege-Geach problem shows a tension between two different semantic frameworks: the “ideationalist” (Chrisman 2011, 44) semantics of moral statements, whose meaning is said to be determined by the states of mind they express, and the traditional propositional-compositional semantics of descriptive statements, whose meanings we take to be determined by the propositions they express. Modern expressivism, as advocated by Blackburn (1984, 1993, 1998) and Gibbard (1990, 2003), can be understood as an attempt to solve this problem. Their main innovation is to employ a deflationary or minimalist theory of truth (Blackburn 1998, 77–83; Gibbard 2003, 180–184). According to such a theory, there is no more to claiming “It’s true that pain is bad” than to claim that pain is bad; the fact that pain is bad just consists in pain’s being bad; to believe that pain is bad is just to accept that it is. Then it’s true that pain is bad and it’s a fact that pain is bad – so long as, indeed, pain is bad. (Gibbard 2003, 182–183) If we accept minimalism, we are licensed to treat moral claims as truth-apt, just as any descriptive claim – and this means we can take large parts of our ordinary moral discourse at face value.Blackburn emphasises that this is very different from treating moral claims as if they could be true: “I do not say that we can talk as if kicking dogs were wrong, when ‘really’ it isn’t wrong. I say that it is wrong (so it is true that it is wrong, so it is really true that it is wrong, so this is an example of a moral truth, so there are moral truths).” (Blackburn 1998, 319) Blackburn has termed this programme quasi-realism (Blackburn 1984, 1993). It aims to explain “from a basis that excludes normative facts and treats humanity as part of the natural world […] why we would have normative concepts that act much as normative realists proclaim” (Gibbard 2003, xii). How does quasi-realism help avoid the Frege-Geach Problem? According to minimalism, “Kicking dogs is wrong” expresses the proposition that kicking dogs is wrong just like ‘Grass is green’ expresses the proposition that grass is green. They each contribute these propositions – deflationarily construed – to the logically complex sentences in which they figure, thus determining the semantic contents of those sentences as a function of the semantic contents of their parts. (Chrisman 2011, 42–43) This makes it seem like the quasi-realist expressivist can have their cake and eat it. But there’s a catch – a problem that Dreier (2004) has called “creeping minimalism”: The more features of our moral discourse minimalism helps us recover, the less apparent it becomes what is distinctive about this discourse when compared to its descriptive counterpart. Minimalism “threatens to make irrealism indistinguishable from realism” (Dreier 2004, 26) by treating sentences that should express conative attitudes as expressing “ethical propositions” (Blackburn 1998, 73). Expressivism is thus caught in the even deeper tension between recovering as much of our ordinary moral discourse as possible and maintaining that, on a deeper level, this discourse works differently from what our realist intuitions might tell us (Chrisman 2011, 43).See Schroeder (2009) for more concrete challenges resulting from this tension. There are different approaches to resolving this tension. Gibbard (2003) shows how descriptive and evaluative components of language are combined in plans. This should explain our quasi-realist use of propositions and how we express attitudes with them. As a “pure expressivist” (Schroeder 2009, 258), he locates the descriptive components outside of moral judgements proper. In contrast, hybrid approaches situate them within moral judgements so that these “consist in both an ordinary descriptive belief and a desire-like attitude” (Schroeder 2013, 286).See again Schroeder (2009) for an overview. This makes it hard to understand, though, how language can be learned in the first place: a hybrid expressivist “will have to convince us that language learning children do acquire the ability to distinguish ethical bits of language from descriptive bits of language” (Chrisman 2011, 46), even though they have the same surface structure. Yet other proposals try to resolve the tension by either expanding the ideationalist framework to cover descriptive statements as well, leading to a kind of global expressivismThis kind of global expressivism is different from the global expressivism of Brandom (1994 and 2000; cf. fn. 1), as that is built on a fundamentally different semantic paradigm (but see Price 2010 for a proposal on how to combine them). I will explore possible connections between Brandom’s inferentialist framework and the framework proposed in this thesis in section 7 (p. 22–24); Chrisman (2010 and 2011) and Street (2010, 377) suggest a similar inferentialist approach. (Schroeder 2008), or recasting ideationalist semantics in fundamentally compositional terms (Schroeder 2013). What all these approaches share, though, is the size and complexity of the technical apparatus they command to deal with expressivism’s fundamental tension. In other words, they all face significant theoretical costs associated both with attempting to give a non-circular ‘ideationalist’ or ‘psychologistic’ account of semantic content and with capturing the logical continuities between expressivistic language and matter-of-factual language. (Chrisman 2010, 344) These costs become even more problematic because of the apparatuses’ role in an expressivist account of normativity: As metaphysical naturalists, expressivists maintain that there are no normative properties (Gibbard 2003, 32) and hence no objective normative facts to which moral judgements could be responsible. As a result, they have no direct account of normativity or metaethical moral epistemology (Lenman 2012, 222–224). Instead, they take an indirect approach, looking at our moral practices and explaining how we “project” (Blackburn 1984, 170) normative properties onto the world. Minimalism about truth then licences talk about normativity. As this quasi-realist approach relies on the technical apparatuses just outlined, their high theoretical costs endanger expressivism’s ability to account for normativity at all. Expressivism’s shift of focus towards moral practices is mirrored in constructivismWith “constructivism” I refer to constructivist positions about moral discourse (judgements, concepts, values etc.), not any other discourses. More specifically, I refer to positions that are rooted in a Kantian understanding of moral judgements (see below), i.e. what has been called Kantian constructivism in a wider sense (see below on Humean vs Kantian constructivism in a narrower sense). . According to constructivism, moral judgements are “conclusions of practical reasoning” (Korsgaard 2008, 309) and, as such, solutions to practical problems (Rawls 1980, 571–572; Korsgaard 2008, 321; Lenman 2012, 216). When I say, “Kicking dogs is wrong”, I am therefore not describing the world but concluding my reasoning about how to treat dogs. This conclusion can be restated as “One ought not to kick dogs”, – which is (part of) my solution to the problem of how to treat dogs.This is similar to how Gibbard describes his programme of explaining oughts with plans: “If we understand concluding what to do, then we understand concluding what a person ought to do.” (Gibbard 2003, x) See also how, based on this similarity, he assimilates the constructivist programme to the expressivist one in Gibbard (1999). Constructivism’s status as a metaethical theory is controversial (see, e.g., Darwall et al. 1992, Hussain & Shah 2006, Lenman 2012). Part of the reason is that it has begun as a specific type of substantive ethical theory, i.e. as normative theories about particular domains. The most famous such theory is Rawls’s Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971), in which he proposes a solution to the problem of how to organise society fairly – his principles of justice. This solution is arrived at using a process of construction, the hypothetical decision-making process of rational individuals in an original position.Rawls has restated this argument in a genuinely constructivist form and introduced the label of Kantian constructivism in Rawls (1980). Another example of a substantive constructivist theory is Scanlon’s account of what is morally right, which he conceptualises as “what could be justified to others on grounds that they, if appropriately motivated, could not reasonably reject” (Scanlon 1998, 5). The process moves from justice, a general concept that “refers to whatever solves the problem”, to a specific conception that “proposes a particular solution” (Korsgaard 2008, 322) – Rawls’s two principles of justice. According to constructivism, this is precisely the task of practical philosophy: “to move from concepts to conceptions, by constructing an account of the problem reflected in the concept that will point the way to a conception that solves the problem.” (ibid.) As a normative theory about a specific domain, Rawls’s Theory of Justice is a “restricted” constructivist view (Street 2010, 367) – it aims “to give an account of the truth of some limited subset of normative claims” (ibid., 368), not of all normative claims. This also means it relies on other normative judgements as inputs to its process of construction without justifying them – “certain normative judgments implicit in the public political culture of a liberal democratic society” (ibid.).Ignoring that these assumptions are explicitly normative has been one of the key misunderstandings of Rawls’s work, which has led him to make the restricted scope of his theory as one of “Political Liberalism” much clearer in his later work (Rawls 1993). From a constructivist perspective, this restriction is what distinguishes a substantive ethical from a metaethical theory: Where the former deals with the truth of specific normative claims, the latter gives “an account of what it is for any normative claim to be true” (ibid., 369).Street therefore also calls this version “thoroughgoing constructivism”. (Street 2010, 369) Metaethical constructivism aims to provide a process of construction that is common to all moral judgements, regardless of their domain. It generalises the central “metaethical insight” (ibid.) of constructivism: that a process of construction can set “standards of correctness in the normative domain” and thus guarantee a kind of objectivity that obviates the need for “an ‘independent order’ that holds apart from the attitudes of valuing creatures” (ibid.). This way, the metaethical constructivist is licensed to talk about moral facts, understood as “complex facts about the solutions to practical problems faced by self-conscious rational beings” (Korsgaard 2008, 325). Street distinguishes between two versions of metaethical constructivism: A Kantian view, on which some substantive normative truths follow from the standards of correctness themselves, and a Humean one, on which substantive normative truths still depend on normative inputs – the “particular set of values with which one finds oneself alive as an agent” (ibid., 370).In an earlier paper, Street calls the two versions “substantive” and “formalist” constructivism (Street 2008, 243). While potentially confusing in their relationship to the concepts of restricted and metaethical constructivism, these labels avoid obscuring the Kantian foundations of Humean constructivism (see below). Examples of the former view are Kant’s moral philosophy, which claims to derive the Categorical Imperative from the nature of practical reason, and Korsgaard’s brand of constructivism which claims that the reflective structure of human consciousness entails that “enlightenment morality is true” (Korsgaard 1996b, 123). An example of the latter is Street’s own project, in which she aims to vindicate “the objectivity of ethics […] without metaphysical and epistemological mystery” by showing “that there is a universal problem, faced by every individual agent, to which morality is the universal and best (or only) solution” (Street 2016b, 166). Even in its Humean version, constructivism’s answer to the challenge of motivation is deeply Kantian: It’s not desire that motivates us to act in accordance with our moral judgements (like in a Humean theory of motivation), but the fact that these judgements are the conclusions of practical reasoning. According to the constructivist, you need no additional motivation to do something you have reason to do (Scanlon 1998, 33): “Normative judgments are […] are by their nature motivating, such that if one judges that one has reason to Y, then one is thereby necessarily at least somewhat motivated to Y.” (Street 2008, 230). But we are not only motivated to do something if we have reason to do it – we also should do it. This leads to the further question of why moral judgements are binding, i.e. the source of their normativity (Korsgaard 1996a). Metaethical constructivism doesn’t derive the normative force of moral judgements from other, already accepted moral judgements like restricted constructivisms. Their normative force can thus only originate in the process of construction itself. But how can this process be a source of normativity? How is it justified itself? One possible answer that doesn’t “make constructivism collapse into one or other of the standard metaethical views” (Southwood 2018, 363) is a transcendental interpretation of the process. On this view, the process of construction is “constitutive of the attitude of valuing or normative judgement” (Street 2010, 374); it is part of “what a creature must be doing to count as a valuer at all” (ibid., 369). Thus “considerations become normative for us through the commitments that are constitutive of agency” (Wallace 2012, 27–28). That a specific process of construction should be constitutive of valuing in general seems far-fetched. But this is a problem of the “proceduralist characterisation” (ibid., 364) of constructivism we have used so far, not of constructivism itself. As Street argues, the notion of procedure is ultimately merely a heuristic device, whereas the philosophical heart of the position is the notion of the practical point of view and what does or doesn’t follow from within it. In Rawls’s theory, for example, the original position is ultimately best understood as a heuristic device whose function is to capture, organise, and help us to investigate what follows from a certain evaluative standpoint on the world – in particular, the evaluative standpoint shared by those of us who accept liberal democratic values such as the freedom and equality of persons. (ibid., 366) Hence a more helpful characterisation of constructivism states that moral claims are true if they are “entailed from within the practical point of view” (ibid., 367) of a moral agent. Street calls this the “practical standpoint characterisation” (ibid., 366) of constructivism. Restricted constructivisms specify the practical standpoint in a material way as “the standpoint of one who accepts […] some further set of substantive normative claims” (ibid., 368). Metaethical constructivism, on the other hand, gives a purely formal specification of the standpoint – it “merely explicates what is involved in valuing anything at all” (ibid., 369). This, then, is the constructive challenge for the metaethical constructivist – to provide an explication of the evaluative standpoint that fulfils two competing requirements: On the one hand, it has to be rich enough to generate meaningful standards of correctness that account for errors of moral judgement and avoid that “normative thought becomes peculiarly self-validating” (Wallace 2012, 36), or so-called “bootstrapping” (ibid., 28). On the other, it must be thin enough to accommodate the fact that a valuer can “value virtually anything at all” (Street 2010, 369).Street warns about the dangers of conceptions that are too thick: “Constructivism’s supporters face, and too often give in to, a constant temptation to build too much into their account of what is constitutively involved in the attitude of valuing. The hope of getting morality ‘out’ lures people into packing implausibly much ‘in’, and the resulting account of ‘pure’ practical reason ends up not in fact pure.” (Street 2010, 382) Whatever the constructivist may identify as constitutive of valuing, though, the answer will be a “high-level claim about the truth-makers of normative assertions” (Wallace 2012, 23). In other words, “constructivist theories are making claims about truths about reasons (i.e. about the world), as opposed to claims about the concept of a reason (i.e. about meaning)” (Southwood 2018, 344). This is a significant difference from expressivism, which is almost exclusively occupied with questions of meaning. And it is the other reason why constructivism’s status as a metaethical theory is contentious (Hussain & Shah 2006, Lenman 2012, Hussain & Shah 2013): In the end, it seems to be a (very general) way of talking about which moral judgements we have reasons to accept – about substantive questions, not metaethical ones (Wallace 2012, 24). From these reconstructions, it should be clear that expressivism and constructivism share a focus on practice (Magri 2002, 153) – they both start from the insight that “even if we aren’t sure what value is, we do understand the attitude of valuing” (Street 2010, 366). They are also both opposed to traditional moral realism and the interpretation of moral language as descriptive (Wallace 2012, 20). But apart from that, they have very different strengths, and they struggle with almost diametrically opposed challenges. Expressivist theories were “developed largely to explain the significance of normative judgments for the agent who makes them – to explain how such judgments ‘motivate’ an agent” (Scanlon 2014, 58). They focus on the causal, i.e. “regular connection between one’s ethical judgements and one’s motivation to act in light of them” (Chrisman 2010, 333). This explains why they are strong at giving naturalistic explanations of the attitude of valuing. But it also means they treat normative judgements “as bits of deliberative phenomenology that are to be explained theoretically, but not really taken seriously in their own right” (Wallace 2012, 32).Here and in the following quotes, “deliberation may be understood as reflection that aims to resolve the question of what one should think or do” (Wallace 2012, 19), i.e. to solve a practical problem. To capture reasons, i.e. the “apparently rational connection between ethical judgements and actions” (Chrisman 2010, 333), expressivist theories rely on minimalism about truth, which allows them to reconstruct normativity indirectly. But as we have seen, minimalism comes with high theoretical costs in the form of large apparatuses for understanding language. As a result, expressivist theories struggle to “capture the normative grip” (Scanlon 2014, 58) of moral judgements. Constructivism, on the other hand, is strong in capturing this grip (Wallace 2012, 25–26) by deriving it from commitments constitutive of our agency. As a consequence, constructivist theories don’t have to rely on a specific account of language (Street 2010, 376–377) – they can “endorse a standard account of the meaning of ethical sentences in terms of their truth-conditions” (Chrisman 2010, 344). However, focusing on these truth-conditions calls into question constructivism’s metaethical character. As we have seen, identifying them is a substantive issue. Expressivists emphatically agree to this – they see claims about the truth-makers of moral judgements as “internal to normative thinking – though arrayed in sumptuous rhetoric” (Gibbard 2003, 186; see also Blackburn 1984, 217–219; Magri 2002, 157; Street 2011, 7–9). And they insist that if constructivism goes on to neglect traditional metaethical questions of meaning and subscribes to the same naturalistic metaphysics as expressivism, then there’s nothing left to distinguish it from other metaethical views (Lenman 2012, Hussain & Shah 2013). So expressivism delivers on naturalistic metaphysics and fails to complement it with a robust understanding of normativity, while constructivism offers the latter but falls short on the former. Lenman (2012, 224) and Wallace (2012, 25) argue that this is because the two views answer different questions about moral discourse, making them complementary rather than competitors. I think they are correct, but their diagnosis can be given a firmer foundation by making explicit why the different questions are being asked in the first place: because we are concerned either, as observers of moral discourse, with the explanation of moral practices or, as participants, with their articulation. This means expressivism and constructivism are not only different (and differently oriented) theories but expressions of different philosophical projects. To flesh out this idea, we can introduce “the contrast between ‘first-person’ and ‘third-person’ [as] the contrast between engaged participant and disengaged observer” (Hussain & Shah 2013, 99). The questions are thus asked from different perspectives: The question how we explain moral behaviour is a third-person, theoretical question, a question about why a certain species of intelligent animals behaves in a certain way. The normative question is a first-person question that arises for the moral agent who must actually do what morality says. (Korsgaard 1996a, 16)These perspectives correspond to the practical and theoretical standpoints of moral agents found in Kant and used by Korsgaard and Street in their characterisations of constructivism: “When we look at our actions from the theoretical standpoint our concern is with their explanation and prediction. When we view them from the practical standpoint our concern is with their justification and choice.” (Korsgaard 1996b, 377–378) The two perspectives are inescapable for us (Street 2016a, 294): We always take a third-person perspective on the world – we always explain and predict natural phenomena. This is how we as biological systems survive in the world. But we also always take a first-person perspective – we deliberate, we plan, we give and ask for reasons. This is not only a phenomenological fact but can be given a transcendental interpretation: By arguing about questions like this, we always assume that there are reasons, that answers can be justified, that there is normativity.Habermas (2007) makes the same point by saying that “we are incapable of getting around the interlocking perspectives rooted in our cultural forms of communication […]: we cannot abandon the participant perspective, for ‘there is no observation without at least virtual participation’.” (Habermas 2007, 37) Ontologically speaking, what we articulate from a first-person perspective (norms, reasons, obligations) supervenes on what we describe from a third-person one (attitudes, desires, beliefs): Two situations can differ in how they are judged morally only if they also differ in how they are described or explained, in their “prosaically factual properties” (Gibbard 2003, 90). Whichever perspective we’re taking, we ultimately refer to the same reality, just looked at from different perspectives. This makes sure naturalism isn’t violated. How, then, do expressivism and constructivism relate to these two perspectives? On the level of concrete moral judgements, they agree about the perspectives’ role: What are merely expressions of attitudes from a third-person perspective take on normative significance from a first-person perspective (Wallace 2012, 20; Korsgaard 2008, 325; Blackburn 1998, 51–59). On the level of metaethical theory, however, they have very different relationships to the two perspectives. Expressivism agrees that attitudes have normative force from a first-person perspective. But as we have seen, it “consists in a pattern of explanation” that “starts with a state of mind” that can “be characterised naturalistically” (Gibbard 2003, 194–195; see also Blackburn 1998, 49–50).This self-description closely mirrors Street’s description of the theoretical standpoint: “When we occupy this point of view on ourselves and our values, we understand ourselves as beings who are part of the world of cause and effect, and whose normative judgments are subject to causal explanation.” (Street 2016a, 294) Thus it aims to explain this fact theoretically – from a third-person perspective. This means expressivists look at moral discourse as a whole from a third-person perspective – their view “describes moral language from the outside, as if we were not ourselves the creatures who face practical problems, but only someone else making anthropological observations about them” (Korsgaard 2008, 325, my emphasis). This also explains, on a structural level, why expressivism struggles to give a robust account of normativity. As we move away from the concrete moral judgement as seen from the first-person perspective, expressivism adopts a perspective that makes normativity invisible: When we step back from the normative commitments that are constitutive of [the practical] standpoint, and ask whether those commitments do or do not correspond to putatively objective normative facts, then normativity seems to disappear from the scene. (Wallace 2012, 31) Metaethical constructivists, on the other hand, take the first-person perspective tout court. They give a general account of what makes moral judgements true, which is, as we have seen, a first-order question. Since, as moral agents, we ask and answer first-order moral questions from a first-person perspective, we also ask and answer this general question from a first-person perspective. So in a sense, constructivism is making its claims within deliberation, not offering “a theory about such deliberation” (Wallace 2012, 24).My reconstruction is markedly different from Wallace’s and Street’s own view. Wallace argues for understanding constructivism as a “theory about such deliberation” that offers an explanatory account of it (Wallace 2012, 24). Street likewise claims that constructivism’s “task of saying what is constitutive of the attitude of valuing or normative judgment is an exercise in descriptive philosophical analysis as opposed to a substantive normative one” (Street 2010, 374). My reconstruction is closer to the alternative view Street adopts for the sake of argument elsewhere: that “the traditional metaethical project of reconciling normative discourse with a naturalistic worldview turns out to be a substantive normative one” (ibid., 380). I will answer objections against my reconstruction in section 5 and argue in how far it is theoretically beneficial in section 6. This means constructivist theorising doesn’t focus on explaining metaethical issues about our moral practices from a third-person perspective but on articulating these practices from within the first-person perspective: uncovering, from within the practical standpoint, the principles that constitute this standpoint and the criteria we use to assess moral judgements.This understanding of articulation is similar to Brandom’s idea of articulation as making explicit the, in his case inferential, structure of a domain, in his case thought and language (Brandom 1994 and 2000). It also resembles Lenman’s “model of self-understanding” of moral inquiry (Lenman 2007). These principles and criteria range from domain-specific (restricted constructivisms) to general (metaethical constructivism). Understanding this as a practical, first-person task means accepting that articulation will always involve normative judgements – it is not purely descriptive. Constructivism is not only practical but also normative “all the way down”. So in the proposed framework, constructivism articulates our moral practices from a first-person perspective, while expressivism explains them from a third-person perspective. Notably, the two projects are not only complementary but inherently so: If both perspectives are inescapable for us as rational and moral agents, then any complete account of moral judgements must include both – a theoretical explanation of valuing as well as a conceptual articulation of it. Both expressivism and constructivism are right in their own way, but only taken together do they give a full account of moral judgements. This proposal is open to two immediate objections. The first is about expressivism’s relationship to the first-person perspective: If expressivism acknowledges the normative force of attitudes when seen from this perspective, doesn’t that mean it implicitly includes an articulation of our practices from it as well? Blackburn indeed proposes an account of the “pervasiveness of normativity” that looks quite similar, outlining a “process of rationalisation” from within a “network of normative considerations” (Blackburn 1998, 53–54). He then contrasts this account with a “functionalist” one that “defuses” the pervasiveness of normativity by offering third-person explanations of the normative considerations (ibid., 58). The relationship between these accounts can only be understood in one of two ways: Either the normative account is part of expressivism’s naturalistic “pattern of explanation” or external to it. In the former case, normative considerations are merely epiphenomenal because they “are located not by their place in a causal structure, but by their place in a rational structure” (ibid., 53) and thus have no causal efficacy. Blackburn seems to adopt this option, as he acknowledges an “assimilation of the normative and the causal order” (ibid., 58). Expressivism thus doesn’t offer articulation in addition to explanation – it again treats the normative as something “to be explained theoretically, but not really taken seriously in [its] own right” (Wallace 2012, 32).Gibbard discusses the fact that first-person and third-person aspects can be intertwined, without coming to a conclusion on how to deal with it theoretically: “We can say in naturalistic terms what planning consists in, but to conceive planning as planning is, among other things, to plan. Conceiving ourselves as thinkers and planners, then, intertwines naturalistic belief and plan. What plans of mine are involved in thinking of you as a thinker and planner? I don’t have a story along these lines worked out, and I’m quite unsure whether any such story will turn out to be cogent.” (Gibbard 2003, 194) In the latter case, the result is pretty much the framework presented here – not the integration of a first-person perspective into expressivism, but the addition of an orthogonal second account.For more on such a combination of orthogonal accounts, see the sections below. The second objection asks the reverse question: Constructivism is (supposed to be) a metaethical theory, so doesn’t it also take a third-person perspective on the world (Wallace 2012, 24–25)? As we have seen, constructivists and expressivists agree that constructivism answers questions about the truth-makers of moral judgements and thus engages in first-order ethics. Therefore it is committed to the first-person perspective. The question, then, is whether constructivism is doing anything beyond that, for which it needs to take a third-person perspective. I can see three reasons for claiming it does – but all three have already been answered or can be denied within the proposed framework. First, one might require constructivism to account for the source of the normativity it ascribes to moral judgements, i.e. the attitude of valuing. Why do these judgements give us reasons to act in a certain way – why should they obligate us? This question is why, for example, Magri (2002) and Wallace (2012) argue that constructivism needs to go beyond first-order ethics and take an explanatory third-person perspective. It has already been answered, though, by the transcendental argument that normativity is “constitutive of the attitude of valuing or normative judgement” (Street 2010, 374). This is very much in line with constructivism articulating the attitude of valuing from the first-person perspective, which can be seen by restating the constitution thesis in the following way: The normative force of the conception is established in this way: if you recognise the problem to be real, to be yours, to be one you have to solve, and the solution to be the only or the best one, then the solution is binding upon you. (Korsgaard 2008, 322) Second, one could probe deeper and ask, as do Hussain & Shah (2006), what the attitude of valuing consists in exactly, again inviting the switch to a third-person perspective for an answer. But once more, the question has already been answered: Constructivism defines valuing as solving practical problems that moral agents are confronted with (Korsgaard 2008, 321; Lenman 2012, 216; Street 2016b, 166–174), thus attaching it firmly to the first-person perspective. And it does so through articulation, not explanation: If we take seriously that “for the constructivist practical philosophy is a practical subject. Its business is to work out solutions to practical problems” (Korsgaard 2008, 325), then the question of understanding the attitude of valuing is also a practical problem, and as such answered from the first-person perspective.Wallace gives the following example of a metaethical question posed from the first-person perspective: “Skeptical questions […], including the question about the authority of basic normative requirements, are posed from the perspective of deliberative agency.” (Wallace 2012, 27) This leads directly to the third and most far-reaching question, which is whether constructivism counts as a distinct metaethical theory at all if it effectively doesn’t go beyond solving practical problems, i.e. first-order ethics. This is the central question of, for example, Hussain & Shah (2006 and 2013) and Lenman (2012). As constructivists, Korsgaard (2008) and Street (2010) answer that it is not a real question because “the distinction between substantive normative ethics and metaethics breaks down” (Street 2010, 363) when we understand that ethics is “moral practice, all the way down” (Magri 2002, 160). This is, of course, highly contentious. But it becomes a lot less so once we reframe the constructivists’ point within the current framework: If constructivism is about articulating our moral practices from within the practical standpoint, then it should be practical “all the way down”. Reflection is part of what Lenman (2007) calls “moral inquiry”, from scrutinising particular judgements to examining the very conditions of judging. Other theories, particularly expressivism, can complement this from a theoretical standpoint. In the resulting picture of metaethics, the distinction between looking at ethics from a first-person and a third-person perspective supplants the traditional demarcation between metaethics and normative ethics. If we are to prefer the proposed framework to any single metaethical theory, it needs to deal at least as well as they do with our metaethical challenges. Does it? First of all, it fits nicely into a naturalistic worldview. The first-person perspective doesn’t encompass or generate any properties that aren’t supervenient on natural properties – it just offers different concepts for some (combinations) of them, thus expanding what Gibbard claims for expressivism: “a normative and a naturalistic concept might signify the very same property” (Gibbard 2006, 323). Of course, we need a positive theory to flesh out how the first-person perspective is explainable on a third-person account and how the rational structure of third-person accounts can be articulated from a first-person perspective. The obvious candidate for the former is the evolution of the self, an account endorsed by expressivist and constructivists alike (e.g. Gibbard 1990, Street 2011). An inferentialist semantics can prepare the ground for the latter. Such a semantics can also be part of an account of moral language. Instead of trying to explain normativity, a first-person phenomenon, from a third-person perspective, we can now provide an account in two parts: an empirical explanation of actual language use based on psychological attitudes, and a normative articulation of the “rules of the game”, starting with the rules of inference constitutive for practical reasoning, taking them as the building blocks of an inferentialist semantics (Chrisman 2010, 347–349; Street 2010, 377).See Brandom (1994 and 2000) as an example of such a semantics. Cf. also fn. 6 and the next section. This normative articulation also accounts for the objectivity of moral judgements. By articulating the rational connections between judgements and action from a first-person perspective, it uncovers correctness criteria that we implicitly always use since they are constitutive of the first-person perspective. From a third-person perspective, these connections show up as empirical regularities (cf. Chrisman 2010, 332–333, Blackburn 51–59). These rational connections are part of the framework’s story about motivation, too: From a first-person perspective, motivation to act is articulated through reasons with normative force (cf. Scanlon 1998, 33–36). From the third-person perspective, it is explained causally by referring to certain psychological states, e.g. the desires of moral agents (Smith 1987). Thus the minimum requirement is satisfied – the framework can provide more complete answers than either constructivism or expressivism do on their own. But there are also more specific theoretical benefits: By reframing expressivism as being concerned with the explanation of moral practices from a third-person perspective, and by explicating normativity as an artefact of the first-person perspective, we can get rid of expressivism’s chronic issues around normativity: If we accept that normativity is a property that can only be attributed to attitudes from a first-person perspective, expressivism as a third-person account is relieved from having to explain it. Furthermore, reframing helps us understand constructivism’s peculiar character. Constructivism straddles the line between metaethics and normative ethics, with worries that it might not be a metaethical theory at all. We can now avoid this question altogether (and with it forcing constructivism into unsuitable categories) by replacing the demarcation between metaethics and normative ethics with the more fruitful distinction between looking at normative ethics from a first-person and from a third-person perspective. Beyond ethics, this distinction resonates strongly with Sellars’s famous metaphor of the two images (Sellars 1962). Sellars contrasts the “manifest image of man-in-the-world”, our self-understanding as persons, i.e. rational and moral agents giving and asking for reasons, with the “scientific image”, which shows us as biological and physical systems governed by causality. In the terminology of the framework developed here, the manifest image is seen from the first-person perspective, the scientific image from a third-person one. Sellars himself took the images as complementary and, going further, strove for what he called their “fusion” – an account of how we could “explain our own human nature naturalistically without ‘explaining it away’ altogether” (O’Shea 2007, 3). Such a fusion would provide a third-person explanation of how the first-person perspective comes into the world, i.e. how normativity and rationality evolve, and a first-person articulation of these explanations’ rational and normative structure. Though disconnected from Sellars’s original vision of a fusion, classic candidates of the former are the evolutionary accounts developed by “right-wing Sellersians” like Dennett and Millikan (cf. Brandom 2010, 298).Those tend to treat the normative as an epiphenomenon, though (cf. above). Ismael (2016) develops an equally naturalist, yet less reductionist account. The latter has been developed by “left-wing Sellersians” like McDowell and, particularly systematically and most relevant to our inquiry, Brandom (1994, 2000).Close to these views is Habermas (2007) who advocates an “epistemic dualism of participant and observer perspectives” (ibid., 13) which tracks the picture developed here very closely. While he acknowledges that a fully naturalistic explanation of our human nature might be possible, he maintains that “there is no ‘view from nowhere’– no observation independent of prior participation in some kind of communication” (ibid. 41). Thus, Habermas emphasises, philosophical inquiry must always include a critical examination of our first-person perspective and how it informs our third-person observations. To understand how Brandom’s theory connects to the framework developed here, we need another influential concept coined by Sellars: the “logical space of reasons” (Sellars 1956), the normative space in which we give and ask for reasons, which is contrasted to the physical space of causes. (The space of reasons can, of course, be thought of as accessible only from the first-person perspective, while third-person descriptions and explanations illuminate the space of causes.) Brandom (1994, 2000) articulates the space of reasons as a social space. According to this articulation, sociality is a condition for normativity: Our obligations are realised as commitments we attribute and acknowledge in interpersonal I-Thou relations that structure the social space of reasons. Therefore “the normative and the social are interdependent, such that normativity can only be understood in terms of participation in a social practice” (Weiss & Wanderer 2010, 4). This mirrors and transforms how constructivism understands moral practices as exercised within the practical standpoint: Just as the practical standpoint is constituted by norms of correctness, for Brandom, “the norms that govern thought and discussion […] are implicit in discursive practice” (Gibbard 2010, 17). In a distinctly Hegelian move, Brandom turns a transcendentally into a socially constituted standpoint. It’s not much of a stretch to read Brandom’s account as the explication of a “plural first-person perspective” (Korsgaard 2003, 55), the perspective of a community engaged in the construction of morality. It is realised by agents holding certain attitudes: “Normative statuses, such as being committed, are only intelligible in a context that includes normative attitudes such as acknowledging or attributing commitments” (Brandom 2010, 298). These attitudes, their causes and effects can, of course, also be described and explained from a third-person perspective (ibid.), e.g. by evolutionary, historical and critical accounts. This means we can use the social space of reasons as a device to recast constructivism while making sure it is still complementary with third-person accounts. Framing and connecting Brandom’s work in this way serves three critical functions for the framework developed here: First, the social nature it ascribes to normativity defuses any reservations left about constructivism’s capacity to deal with the bootstrapping objection. Second, and more importantly, it provides a blueprint for how an inferentialist semantics can contribute to the understanding of language needed to meet our metaethical challenges. And finally, by following Brandom’s Hegelian move, we can interpret moral truths as socially constructed out of commitments and entitlements we attribute and acknowledge in a social space of reasons. This gives a clear shape to what could be called “Hegelian constructivism” – a constructivism that grounds practical reasoning in social practices. Hegelian constructivism could be part of a deflationary approach to metaethics that further develops the ideas of the framework presented here. Such an approach would start with recognising that substantive, first-order claims are what is really interesting about ethics and that everything else should support their discussion. This mirrors Koorsgaard’s contention that we need to “break with the platitudes of twentieth-century ethics – and return to the more substantive ethical theorising of the past” (Korsgaard 2008, 322). This focus helps us recast metaethics’ jobs in terms of the success criteria laid out at the beginning of this thesis: On the one hand, metaethics should explain (from a third-person perspective) what we as physical, biological and social systems do when we make moral judgements. If we follow Sellars and take science as our best guide to what is really happening in the world, then this is best done by a fully naturalised metaethics (Prinz 2015). Expressivism thus becomes an empirical hypothesis that can be experimentally tested. This part of the approach is deflationary because it says that making moral judgements just is what we are actually, physically and psychologically doing when we assume we are making moral judgements. On the other hand, metaethics should articulate (from a first-person perspective) how we as moral agents give and ask for reasons when we make moral judgements. If we follow Brandom and acknowledge that normativity is essentially social, this is best captured by what I have called Hegelian constructivism: the view that we construct moral judgements out of commitments and entitlements we attribute and acknowledge in a social space of reasons – which is importantly concrete and historical.This goes beyond Brandom’s abstract conception of the space; an example for such an extension is Kukla & Lance (2010). Haslanger (2020 and 2021) gives an account of social practices that could also inform a historicisation of the space of reasons, as could Manne’s (2013) “intersubjective” metaethics. This part of the approach is also deflationary because it says that making moral judgements just is what we are actually doing as participants in a game of giving and asking for reasons. The two perspectives can be fused together by positive theories that show how ethics as a social and normative system has evolved to serve the cooperation needs of humans in a society (Gibbard 1990, 190) and how our first-person perspective has evolved as the vantage point from which a system navigates its environment, including the social and normative systems we are part of or participate in.Greene (2013) provides a theory for the former, Ismael (2016) for the latter question. From these theories, moral discourse will emerge as part of our “cognitive niche” (Pinker 2010), with normativity as an artefact of our (social) first-person perspective and the objectivity it aspires to as an evolutionary strategy (Joyce 2006, 175–176). In the opposite direction, first-person articulation will clarify these theories’ rational and normative structure, as well as the theoretical commitments and entitlements of their proponents. In both perspectives, metaethics would be content with giving just enough explanatory or conceptual context to first-order ethics so that it can go on in a clarified way. At the same time, it would prepare the ground for a particular and essential type of substantive normative discourse: that of ideology critique. Haslanger (2017) describes ideology critique as taking two forms: The epistemic critique of ideology reveals the distortion, occlusion and misrepresentation of the facts. The moral critique concerns the unjust conditions that such illusions and distortions enable. (Haslanger 2017, 150) A naturalised, third-person account of how and why norms evolve can support an epistemic critique by highlighting the contingent nature of norms and moral judgements. But the evolution of norms is not only a biological but also a social one – “practical reason is socially conditioned” (Haslanger 2020, 69). Therefore our toolkit needs to be supplemented with ways to analyse and critique their social construction (Maclure 2020). This is what a first-person, Hegelian constructivist account of norms and moral judgements can deliver: The metaethical basis for their emancipatory articulation in standpoint epistemology (Haslanger 2021, 28–30) and conceptual ethics (McPherson & Plunkett 2021), which in turn informs and supports any substantive moral critique. In this way, metaethics would become relevant (again) to current debates in philosophy and – more importantly – to current challenges and struggles in the social world. Other locations This essay has, in its original form as a BA thesis, also been published on
Slips, trips and falls: Wet weather safety for older people Wet weather is a great time to rug up, drink tea, and read a good book. At the same time, it can also be a dangerous time for an older person, where the risk of an unexpected fall, slip or trip could put your health and wellbeing in jeopardy. Last updated: June 20th 2022 Older person getting assistance traversing wet walkway Falls, trips and slips have been identified as the main cause of unintentional injury in older people. [Source: iStock] Key points: • Slips, trips and falls are identified as the main cause of unintentional injuries in older people • Older people with mobility aids, wheelchairs or scooters may be more at risk of injury during wet weather • When out walking in the community, look out for paths that are covered in moss, slime or wet leaves During wet winters, surfaces can become more slippery, and this can increase your risk of slipping or falling over. Nearly one in three older people in Australia have had a fall within the last year and one in five have been hospitalised from a fall. Slipping over and falling at an older age can lead to the need for extra health and home care services, an increase in negative health conditions or injuries (like fractures), and in some cases can result in an unexpected move into residential aged care or even death. It is important to put in place appropriate measures to ensure you are protected from injury at any time, but especially during the wet winter months. The dangers of falls The Federal Government has identified falls as the main cause of unintentional injury in older people. In Australia, two out of three falls usually happen in your own home or around your home. Older Australians are more at risk of adverse outcomes from falling over due to their ageing and chronic health conditions. You can learn more about improving your mobility against falls in our article, 'How to maintain and improve mobility and reduce falls'. Older people are more likely to live with osteoporosis, which is a weakening of the bones, and while it doesn't increase your likelihood of falling, it does increase your likelihood of bad injuries from a fall. The Australian Institute of Health and Wellbeing estimates that one in four men and two in five women will have at least one trauma fracture in their older age. And the most common location for a minimal trauma fracture is the hip. Around nine in ten cases of a hip fracture at a hospital is due to an older person falling over. The changes in your body as you age can lead you to be more at risk of falling or slipping over, like balance issues, poor vision, and new health issues and conditions. Wet weather safety measures During wet weather, it is important to put in place safety measures in your life and around the home to keep yourself and others safe. Keeping your home and garden maintained and clutter-free can reduce your risk of tripping or unnecessary manoeuvering around your home. If you use mobility aids, ensure you are regularly maintaining these aids. This could mean tightening bolts on your walker or replacing wheels on your manual or electric wheelchair if they lose tread. These steps can reduce your risk of sliding on slippery surfaces. Wearing good footwear, like sneakers with good traction and grip, can also help you navigate around the home or community without worrying about slipping over. Shoes that have rubber soles are more slip-resistant in wet weather compared to vinyl or leather shoes. You should also consider fitted shoes, as some footwear that slips can put you at a higher danger of slipping or tripping. Try opting for shoes with straps or shoelaces instead. When coming into your home from outside, remember to wipe your shoes on a mat to clean off any water and mud, as wet shoes on indoor flooring can be very slippery. Any welcome mats and rugs you own should also be fitted with non-slip backing, so they don't move around when you walk across them. Within your home, you may find anti-slip mats can reduce your risk of slipping or falling throughout the year, and can be a good safety measure during cold months when house tiles can be cold or damp from the moisture in the air. You can also install grab rails or ramps in your home or outside your home to give you extra leverage and control when moving around. This can be incredibly beneficial if the entrance of your home has steps or a ramp. Additionally, there are anti-slip plates that can be installed on home ramps as a safety home modification. When you are around the home or in the community, watch out for paths that are covered with moss, fallen leaves and slime, as it can make any garden or park path very slippery. Try to avoid walking, or using a mobility aid, through flooding or puddles. It can be hard to see how deep a puddle or flood water is, and it may be hiding dangerous objects or debris until its surface that could be a tripping hazard and cause you an injury. If the flooding is also fast-moving, this can also lead to traction issues while walking or potentially sweep you away in the current, so avoid crossing flooding at all costs. If you live in an area in Australia that experiences very cold winter events, like snow, you may need to look out for paths or driveways that are iced over. Lastly, when traversing outside, be aware that winter days can be much darker than in the summer. If you go out, try taking walks on well-lit paths or if at home turn on lights in dark areas in and around your house. These safety tips can make a huge difference in reducing your likelihood of slips, trips and falls. How do you stay safe during the wet winter months? Tell us in the comments below. Related content: Keeping protected from winter sicknesses Top health concerns for older people How to maintain and improve mobility and reduce falls Staying safe during long heatwaves Aged Care Guide is endorsed by COTA logo ACIA logo ACSA logo LASA logo
Organic Gardening Basics Green manures are plants that are incorporated into the soil before or just after flowering while they are still young, green and succulent. They are broken down and nutrients are released into soil which can be used by the plants that grow on the site. Organic gardens employ holistic practices to ensure optimal growth. Instead of using pesticides against pests, consider companion plants that can help deter them or improve their flavor or health. For example, amaranth and basil are both companion plants for tomatoes and both repel insects. Basil also helps to improve taste and prevent disease. The limitable chlorine content in drinking water amounts to 4 parts per billion, which is significantly less than the 65 parts per millions at which chlorine affects microorganisms. Microorganisms in soil or compost also multiply so fast, even if they are killed by chlorinated waters, they will regenerate quickly. Adding an organic food to your plants regularly will help increase their production and keep them happy. Make sure you read all directions so that plants get the right amount. NCAT farm in Butte to host sustainable growing workshops – NBC Montana NCAT farm in Butte to host sustainable growing workshops. Posted: Fri, 13 May 2022 23:25:23 GMT [source] Rotating planting areas prevents your soil from being depleted of the same nutrients each season, and it also helps to head off diseases and break the cycle of insect infestation. If you’re buying seedlings, look for plants raised without chemical fertilizers and pesticides. A great place is to visit your local farmers’ markets, which may also be home to native plants and varieties that are suited to your area. spider mites cannabis to buy stocky seedlings with few, if any blooms yet, and root systems that don’t look overcrowded. Along with our edible garden services, we now also help our clients with California native plant gardens. California native plants are perfect with an organic vegetable garden. Organic gardening is the term that refers to plants, herbs, or flowers that have not been subject to chemical fertilizers or herbicides. This distinction also includes the ground they were grown in and how they were treated while producing. You must keep your garden clean when you learn how to create an organic garden. First, removing or dead leaves and plants will help to prevent disease spread and keep plants from trying revive dying parts. Consistent upkeep will make it easier to clean up after the season is over. Soil should be enriched and have a stable pH. DIY organic garden soil tests can be performed online or at your local gardening center to determine the soil pH. It’s important to understand which plants are the most successful in your area and what climates they thrive in. Exercising natural pest solutions for gardens can protect the integrity of your crops and your soil’s potential for another productive yield the following year. These are some tips to help you get started in your . Benefits of organic gardening are widespread and go much further than just the yield from a season’s crop. They can include everything from water conservation to soil and environmental health to plant diversity. All benefits will fall into one of these two categories. What are organic pesticides exactly? Don’t use herbicides to kill weeds in your garden. There are garden shade cover of controlling competing plants while still protecting people, pets, and the waterways. Most plants that are still in good health can be left alone during winter. Birds and other wildlife will have food and habitat provided by you. Plant cover can protect soil from erosion. It’s better Instead of ripping them out, chop off the annuals. Should I buy organic tomato plants The National Organic Standard is available in English, Spanish and Japanese. Organic products can only be sold by farmers and processors who follow the National Organic Standard. If your home lies near a freeway or major arterial road, lead garden wall from gas and other chemicals could have entered your soil. A friend tested her soil and discovered dangerous levels of heavy metals and the advice not to grow any root vegetables in her garden. We design, install and maintain edible, organic gardens built specifically for you. We will work with your to design a garden that suits the look and feel you want. Once it is installed, we can come back often for maintenance. If you are interested but don’t know where you should start, we can help. We can also help you if you are an avid gardener and need some guidance. can also adopt crop rotations that more efficiently use nutrients in the soil. Why is organic agriculture bad for you?
Migration Masaai Mara Geroget 3 Migration Masaai Mara Geroget 3 Greater Masai Mara Greater Masai Mara, Kenya Arguably the most famous wildlife area in the world and a must-see place during a Kenya safari, the Masai Mara National Reserve lies in the southwest of the country, bordering Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park. This is an ecosystem of vast grasslands prowled by cheetah, peppered with acacia thickets in which leopards lurk, and divided by the Mara, Sand and Talek rivers. From July to November each year, the great wildebeest herds arrive from Tanzania. To reach the grasslands of the Mara, they must risk their lives crossing the Mara River, where famished crocodiles wait in the swollen waters. After nervously milling about on the banks, it takes just one wildebeest to leap in, and then the herd follows en masse in a cacophony of grunts, thundering hooves and splashing water. The river crossings are iconic — the subject of many nature documentaries — and attract huge numbers of tourists each year. But there’s much more to the 150,000-hectare reserve and its surrounding conservancies. This is big cat territory, with healthy populations of lion, leopard and cheetah. There are elephant, buffalo and rhino, completing the Big 5, plus nearly 500 recorded bird species to spot. Greater Masai Mara The Maasai people have lived here for hundreds of years and make the best guides and custodians of the land. Surrounding the Masai Mara National Reserve are several community-owned conservancies. Together, they make up the Greater Masai Mara area. The Mara is a mere 45-minute flight from Nairobi and there are plenty of bush flights connecting it to the Serengeti in Tanzania and other Kenyan destinations, such as Laikipia. January to May There are fewer tourists in the Mara, but still plenty of possible wildlife sightings (like black rhino, elephant and Maasai giraffe). Some wildebeest remain in the Mara, where they are preyed on by the area’s big cats. From November until April, the migratory birds swell with the Mara’s recorded bird count close to 500. There are two rainy seasons: March to May (long rains) and November to December (short rains). The peak of the wet weather is between March and May. The temperature doesn’t change much throughout the year. The high ranges from 25°C to 28°C/77°F to 82°F during the day with nighttime lows ranging from 11°C to 3°C/52°F to 56°F. Greater Masai Mara Climate Masai Mara Wildlife The Mara is known as one of the best places in Africa for game viewing, with more than 90 animal species and nearly 500 bird species in the ecosystem. It’s excellent for big cats. The Mara has the highest lion density in Kenya, and leopard and cheetah are common sights, too. There are spotted hyena, black-backed and side-striped jackal, serval, the occasional caracal and even African wild dog. Plains game can be seen all year round. There are always Thomson’s and Grant’s gazelle, zebra, oribi, Coke’s hartebeest, eland and some roan antelopes. The numbers swell when the Great Migration herds cross the Mara River. From July until November, around 1.5 million wildebeest journey into Kenya, following the rains in a cyclical route around the Masai Mara and Serengeti. You can also find giraffe and elephant browsing the acacia woodlands, huge herds of buffalo, black rhino in the thickets and hippo and crocodile in the rivers. Birds include various kingfishers, ground hornbills, secretary birds, vultures and even the elusive Pel’s fishing owl. Migratory species arrive in the Mara between November and April. Species of the Masai Mara Maa Beadwork Newsletter Signup Conde Nast Traveller Reader's Choice Awards Responsible Tourism Tanzania Fair Trade Tourism Travel + Leisure 2019 World Tourism Awards
Would you notice a nanotube if you met one? Probably not. Nanotubes are extremely thin--their diameter is about 10,000 times smaller than a human hairhollow cylinders made of carbon atoms. The tiny web of atoms can be twisted in various shapes to perform different functions. Although nanotubes measure just several nanometers in width, their future potential is huge. Investment bankers and venture capitalists are pouring millions of dollars into various nano projects. Meanwhile, scientists in research laboratories are racing to find the next breakthrough that will commercialize the technology. Nanotubes are still expensive to produce, but researchers are developing production methods and applications that may soon be viable on a commercial scale. For instance, carbon nanotube field emission has been hailed as the future technology for large consumer television applications. Researchers are also scrambling to develop processes to make nanotubes into transistors and logic circuits. "Carbon nanotubes are the top candidate to replace silicon when current chip features just can’t be made any smaller, a physical barrier expected to occur in about 10 to 15 years," says Phaedon Avouris, manager of nanoscale science at IBM Research (Yorktown Heights, NY). A nanotube is approximately 500 Arial narrower than the silicon used in today’s electronic devices. Avouris also says a nanotube creates less heat than silicon and uses less power. Carbon nanotubes are the strongest fiber in nature10 Arial stronger than steel. Researchers at Oklahoma State University (Stillwater, OK) recently announced that they have developed a super-strong lightweight material that rivals carbon-fiber, silicon carbide and tantalum carbide. The new material would be ideal for aerospace, automotive and medical applications. By sandwiching tiny but super-tough carbon nanotubes between layers of polymer, the scientists have created a new lightweight material that is six Arial stronger than conventional carbon-fiber composites. The material is built by stacking single-molecule layers of nanotubes and polymer on top of each other. By dipping alternately into nanotubes dispersed in water and into a solution of polymer, one layer of polymer molecules sticks to the surface. The layered composite is made even stronger by attaching chemical groups to the nanotubes that form bonds with the polymer when the material is heated or treated chemically. Meanwhile, scientists at Tsinghua University (Beijing) have recently developed a way to spin thread from nanotubes in a process similar to spinning thread from a silk cocoon. The super-strong, electrically conducting thread may eventually be able to be woven into objects such as bullet-proof clothing and materials that block electromagnetic waves. By applying a voltage to the thread, the researchers claim that they can weld curves or joints into place.
Reasons Why a Good Night’s Sleep Is Important Written By Alla Levin February 01, 2021 You Can Listen to This Article Here Voiced by Amazon Polly Reasons Why a Good Nights Sleep Is Important More often than not, we tend to ignore sleep’s role in maintaining the body’s balance and well-being. Human beings have grown to become incredibly busy. We are always on a clock, moving around in haste and rushing to finish our work and daily chores. We hardly have time to catch a breather, let alone sleeping for eight whole hours at night. As such, our mental and physical health have learned to take a beating, and we have made our peace with whatever scraps of time we have left for ourselves. However, this has also made us extremely cranky and left us feeling frustrated with life. And the inability to sleep well at night has a lot to contribute to this direction that our collective lives have taken. Therefore, it becomes more important than ever to ponder the need for a good night’s rest. That said, in the article that we have here today, we shall look at a few reasons why a good night’s rest is essential for our body and mind. Helps in Enhancing Our Productivity and Concentration In the early 2000s, scientists conducted several experiments to study the effects of sleep deprivation on human beings. Studies have concluded that sleep has its ties with several brain functions like concentration, productivity, and cognition. It has been noted that people who slept well at night could concentrate better, be more productive at work, and had improved cognitive skills. They were even more likely to make good decisions and stick with them without any apprehensions. However, people who could not get enough sleep at night suffered from poor concentration and had lower output at work, and suffered from a lack of proper cognitive skills. Another study showed that sleep patterns in children could directly determine their behavior and academic performance. Children who got enough rest at night were more likely to perform better than those who did not sleep well. Good Nights Sleep: Helps in Lowering the Risk of Weight Gain This might come to you as a surprise, but people who slept well at night were indeed less likely to become obese and gain unhealthy weight. Several studies made over time have linked poor sleep patterns with obesity. Though a lack of sleep might not be directly related to weight gain in an individual, it definitely affects a person’s lifestyle, resulting in weight gain. A person who does not sleep well at night might not want to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Frequently drinking alcohol, binging on carbs, and leading a sedentary life might be some of the sleeplessness ramifications. Therefore, though recent studies have shown that several other factors lead to weight gain in an individual, it cannot be refuted that a lack of sleep results in developing several ill habits that might, in turn, lead to obesity. Helps in Cultivating Better Social and Emotional Intelligence Sleep has also been linked to an individual’s social and emotional intelligence. It has been studied that one who does not get enough sleep at night might have difficulty recognizing other people’s emotions. On the other hand, someone who slept well is more likely to foster better social relationships and cater to other people’s emotions and expressions. Sleep helps in enhancing one’s emotional intelligence and aids them to form better relationships. Human beings are gregarious animals, and they need to stay in a community to live a wholesome life. It has been found that people who sleep better form better connections and have better social skills. They also interact well with others and build healthy relationships in a community. More often than not, many find it difficult staying awake without caffeine when they have a project to work on or an exam to take the next morning. They seek refuge in caffeinated drinks to pull an all-nighter and take care of whatever job they are tasked with. However, going about a night without sleeping does more harm than good. These people often find themselves feeling drowsy during an important meeting or an exam. And this further makes them cranky and spoils their relationship with others. And that is why a good night’s sleep is essential. Good Nights Sleep: Summing Up Thus, from the discussion that ensued in this article, it can be stated that unperturbed sleep at night is essential for more than one reason. A good night’s rest helps improve concentration, increase productivity at work, aids in maintaining a balanced lifestyle, and help an individual foster healthy relationships in society. Plus, sleep also helps in abating the symptoms of various mental health disorders like depression and anxiety. Staying awake all night with the help of caffeine and energy drinks might help one in the short-run. However, for an individual to live a holistic life, it is important to sleep well at night and give the body the required rest. I Need More Enter your Email Address to Join the Gang of Curious and Life Loving Related Articles Leave a Reply Your email address will not be published.
UV rays are powerful and, on clear sky days, can penetrate molecules in car paints, causing them to be less reflective and appear duller to the human eye. Does this affect some cars more than others? Yes, if your car is not properly cared for, then it's more likely to be damaged by the sun. This is because dirt on cars can speed up the process of UV light penetration. READ MORE: Met Office explains why this isn't a heatwave as London basks in the sun Mike Thompson, Director at Leasing Options, advises: "When it comes to car damage caused by the weather, most motorists immediately think of the damage caused by snow and ice. "However, sun and heat can also be a threat to your car. "Motorists who fail to protect their car from the sun could risk needing several repairs for their car, including a respray, new tyres and a battery replacement. "To prevent this from happening, motorists should ensure that in the summer months, they are regularly washing and hand drying their cars, checking tyre pressure monthly and getting their car battery checked by a professional." To help motorists in the current heatwave, we have put together a list of their best tips to help protect your car from sun and heat damage, saving you up to £2,400 on a car respray. 1. Wash your car and hand dry The sun can cause your car paint to crack and fade. Washing and hand drying your car remove dirt and dust particles that can cause micro scratches and dull your car's finish. Sign up to MyLondon's FREE newsletters! It’s important to dry it by hand with a soft cloth so minerals and grime don’t stick to the vehicle surface after a rinse. 2. Park in the shade Stopping your car from getting exposed to direct sunlight will help keep your car's interior cooler for longer. This will also prevent any damage to the dashboard. 3. Check your tyre pressure once a month If your tyres are underinflated and are sat on hot pavement, this can be a recipe for disaster. Underinflated tyres are more likely to blow out in high temperatures, so you must check your tyre pressure once a month to prevent this. 4. Get a windshield sun protector Although it may seem like a lot of effort to go to, windshield sun protectors are a great way to reduce the temperature inside your car. They also help to prevent the dulling effect the UV has on your car interiors. Get London's biggest stories straight in your inbox And what's more - it's FREE! 5. Don’t forget to clean your car’s interior Dust combined with the hot sun can result in grime appearing on your dash and other surfaces. However, cleaning your car interior a couple of times a month can prevent this from happening. Always be sure to use cleaning products intended for automotive surfaces. 6. Protect your car seats Seat covers are great for helping to keep both leather and fabric seats cool. It would help if you also used a leather conditioner for leather seats to avoid cracks and tears from sun damage. 7. Check your fluid levels Fluid levels in cars get used up more quickly than they usually would in the summer; due to the heat, the risk of your car overheating increases if fluid levels are below where they should be. You should regularly check your car’s engine oil, transmission fluid, power steering fluid and brake fluid and keep them topped up. 8. Get the air filters checked In the summer, there are more dust and debris in the air; this can clog up the filters in your car. This could cause the air in your car and fluid levels not to regulate properly. 9. Apply a coat of wax after washing Waxing is an important step to prevent sun damage to car paint. It provides a layer of protection between the UV light and your car’s surface. 10. Have your battery tested by a professional The heat can place a higher load pressure on your car’s battery from running things like air conditioning. In the summer, you should have your battery tested by a professional to make sure it is functioning and prevent your car from not starting.
1. Keep them clean You must care for your veneers just as much as you care for your real teeth. Brushing at least twice a day and using dental floss are great ways to maintain optimal dental health. Poor hygiene can also lead to gum diseases, which may cause your gums to recede, exposing the borders of veneers and putting them at risk of chipping or detachment. 1. Use the right toothpaste Some toothpaste brands may contain ingredients that are too abrasive for both your teeth and your veneers. When choosing your toothpaste, make sure to check the ingredients for substances like hydrogen peroxide and sodium bicarbonate or baking soda. 1. Do not bite into very hard objects Everybody knows the teeth are not just used for eating, but they can also be used as tools for, say, opening bottles. Unfortunately, such an activity is harmful not just for your teeth, but also for your veneers. 1. Watch what you eat The rule against biting hard stuff also applies to food, such as raw carrots, raw apples, hard chips, and meat cuts that contain bone. Aside from watching out for tough food items, you must also be wary of eating too much. Finally, avoid food that contains lots of colouring. Veneers do get stained, just not very easily. 1. Avoid too much alcohol Consuming lots of alcoholic drinks will soften the bonding composites holding the veneers to your teeth. While this doesn’t mean the veneers will come loose, it will make the bonding line more prone to damage, deterioration, and stains. 1. Address teeth grinding Bruxism can be a problem for some people and they can’t help it. If you grind your teeth when you’re asleep, check with your doctor on what you can do to manage the issue. 1. Choose your toothbrush Brushing your teeth does wonders for your teeth’s health and your veneers’ longevity, but only if you use the right toothbrush. Pick one that’s not too hard as it will scratch the surface of your veneers. Settle instead for a toothbrush that has soft bristles. 1. Wear a mouth guard To protect your veneers, be sure to wear a mouth guard as this will minimize the impact of any strong force you may encounter. 1. Visit your dentist regularly There are two reasons why you should do this. For one, your dentist can help you avoid gum and mouth infections that can adversely affect the quality and the state of your veneers. Second, they can address any problem that might come up before it gets worse, such as chips, cracks, or deteriorating bonds between your veneers and your teeth. © Precise & Perfect PLT - Smileway Dental For emergency cases (+6) 0176509817
The combination of lithium-ion batteries and more powerful and efficient alternator-style charging devices has reshaped how we generate energy for house loads on many boats. For decades, batteries were the limiting factor in these systems, but that distinction has shifted to the alternator. With that change in mind, we’ll focus on the challenges of alternator installations—some longstanding and relevant to any system, and others driven by recent technological advances. Determining Output Looking at any charging system, our first step is to distinguish real alternator output from rated output. An alternator is normally given an SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers) rating that describes its maximum output at a given temperature—77°F (25°C)—and speed of rotation. But in practical operation, an alternator will rapidly heat up, causing its output to decline by as much as 25%. Thus, the meaningful rating number for a systems designer is a hot rating (sometimes known as a KKK rating). Although I have found some SAE-rated alternators with matching operating and rated outputs, for design purposes I derate an alternator by 20% if a hot rating is not available. Manufacturers provide curves or tables illustrating alternator performance (amps) as a function of speed of alternator rotation (rpm). Comparing these may reveal that models with the same nominal peak (e.g., 150 amps) might require very different speeds of rotation to achieve it. The lower the speed at which an alternator reaches full output, the more desirable it is for most marine applications, because it maximizes charging when the engine is idled solely for battery charging or is run slowly for harbor maneuvering. The rate at which an alternator builds output is a key factor in designing a system. Another important element is pulley sizing. Standard engine pulleys, and those supplied with high-output alternators, often don’t allow an alternator to reach target output at a common engine rpm. That’s because most alternators and pulleys are geared for automotive applications, where engines typically run at 2,500 rpm or higher; marine engines operate most frequently anywhere between idle speeds of 700 rpm to 800 rpm, and cruising speeds no higher than 2,000 rpm. Because boat engines and usage vary considerably, you must specify alternator pulley size based on individual applications, using the following steps: • Determine alternator rpm needed to produce the target alternator output. Unless the alternator is specifically designed for high-temperature operation, as a guard against overheating, the target continuous alternator output should not exceed 75% of rated output. • Find the alternator’s maximum safe operating speed (usually 10,000 rpm). • Determine minimum engine rpm during normal operation. • Establish an alternator pulley ratio that will achieve the target output at this minimum engine speed. • Check that the alternator will not overspeed at maximum engine rpm. If necessary, power down the pulleys so the alternator reaches its maximum rated speed only at maximum engine rpm. As a general rule, if alternator rpm needs to increase for a given engine rpm, you should increase the engine pulley diameter rather than decreasing the size of the alternator pulley. The latter is highly loaded, and decreasing pulley size exacerbates belt slippage and other issues. An additional complication is that some engine tachometers operate by sensing the internal phase frequency of the alternator (those are the ones with a wire run from a terminal on the alternator to the tachometer). If a nonstandard pulley ratio is used to drive the alternator, it will throw off the tachometer calibration. There’s not always a means of adjusting for this, and with some multistep voltage regulators the tachometer may also trip out or flicker on and off when batteries are nearing a full state of charge and the charge controller trips to its “float” setting. Alternator Installation In many cases, an ideal installation does not replace the existing alternator but instead adds a high-output alternator to it. High-output alternators commonly come in a small frame, which is the same size as most automotive alternators, and a large frame, which is highly desirable to optimize heat dissipation but may be hard to mount in some circumstances. There are several standard mounting arrangements in general use. Whatever its size, a replacement alternator should use the same mounts as the original. The most common are saddle mounts (also known as dual foot), on which a long bolt runs through two lugs spaced at either 3.15″/80mm or 4″/102mm (J180- style); and single-foot mounts, with one heavy-duty lug either 1″ or 2″ (25mm or 51mm) thick. High-output replacement alternatorson older engines are often driven by a single V-belt that also powers the engine’s freshwater pump. Unless the pulleys and belt are replaced, the factor limiting alternator output will be the existing belt size. As a rule, a single 3 ⁄8″ (10mm) belt should not be used to handle much more than 1 kW of alternator output (e.g., ~75 amps at 14V); and a single ½” (13mm) belt not much more than 1½ kW (e.g., ~100 amps at 14V). Note that the belt tension needed to power higher loads may damage bearings in the water pump. Traditional V-belts come in two profiles: classic (based on 1930s U.S. standards, also known as wedge and conventional); and narrow, the most common on engines with conventional pulleys. (Metric versions of both profiles exist.) Belt quality varies markedly between manufacturers. In my experience, there is no way to tell the level of quality just by looking at a belt. I havehad excellent results with Gates Green Stripe belts, and thus always specify them. Note that the bible for a detailed description of V-belts and associated design factors is the Gates Heavy Duty V-Belt Drive Design Manual (Gates document number 14995; get the latest edition). Serpentine belts eliminate many traditional pulley and belt issues, and can also support extraordinarily high belt loads, with the limiting factor on many systems now being the bearing in the water pump if it is included in the circuit. Retrofit serpentine pulley kits are available for most popular marine engines and are an excellent investment if installing high-output alternators. When specifying serpentine belts, the automotive industry currently uses “K” section “micro-V” belts and compatible pulleys. The marine world is largely following suit. However, the industrial “J” section sometimes appears in marine applications even though finding replacement belts is nowhere near as easy as replacements for “K” section belts. Typical belt geometry on a marine engine results in no more than 90° of belt wrap at the alternator pulley. Given the high loads of powerful alternators, considerable belt tension is needed to prevent slipping in that configuration. Adding an idler or tensioner pulley to increase the alternator pulley belt wrap to as much as 180° will accommodate high loads with significantly lower belt tension and less risk of slippage. Such a pulley should always be located on the low-load side of the alternator pulley, where the belt feeds onto the pulley, not the side from which it is pulled off the pulley by the crankshaft pulley. Engine Overload Powerful alternators can easily overload a relatively low-powered engine when under way, particularly at idling and low speeds and when approaching wide open throttle (WOT). If this is a problem, you’ll need to limit the alternator’s output at specific engine speeds, which requires a more-sophisticated charge controller than is normally installed. In the likely absence of specific detailed information from the manufacturer, what follows is a rough method to determine whether you need one: • Obtain a graph of the engine’s full power curve and a nominal propeller load curve (commonly published online by the engine manufacturer) with the engine power and the propeller load expressed in either hp or kW. Print out this graph in a reasonably large format. • Obtain a copy of the alternator output curve expressed in amps at a given speed of alternator rotation • Multiply the amps by the charging voltage (e.g., 14V, 28V) to determine the maximum output in watts (W) at any given alternator speed of rotation. Divide the watts by 1,000 to get to kW(e.g., a 150-amp output @ 14V = (150 x 14)/1,000 = 2.1 kW). If the engine power and propeller load curves are expressed in hp, multiply the kW by 1.34 to convert kW to hp (e.g., 2.1 kW x 1.34 = 2.81 hp). • If you know the alternator’s efficiency, convert this to a decimal (e.g., 60% efficiency = 0.6) and divide this into the alternator’s kW or hp output at any given alternator speed of rotation to determine the approximate crankshaftpulley load at that speed (e.g., at 60% efficiency, a 2.1 kW output = (2.1/0.6) = 3.5 kW crankshaft load; a 2.81 hp output = (2.81/0.6) = 4.68 hp). If you don’t know the alternator’s efficiency, assume it is no more than 60%. • Determine the engine rpm at which these crankshaft pulley loads occur by dividing the pulley ratio between the crankshaft pulley and the alternator pulley into the alternator’s rpm at any given output point. • Add the alternator load at a specific engine rpm to the propeller load at that rpm. This can be done by adding the alternator loads to the propeller curve graph you printed out. We are looking for a rough indication of the combined alternator and propeller load rather than a precise number. If there are two alternators, do the same calculations for both; add both loads; and add the sum to the propeller load • If the combined propeller and alternator load ever approaches the engine’s full power curve, reduce the alternator load at that engine rpm. It can be done manually in some cases but most likely will require a sophisticated charge controller. In general, until you approach WOT, at which point ideally any powerful alternator will be shut down, the combined alternator and propeller load shouldn’t exceed 70% of the engine’s maximum power rating (the full power curve) at any given speed. This accommodates calculation inaccuracies and unanticipated loads while simultaneously coming close to optimizing engine fuel efficiency. The calculations above provide a rough idea of the alternator loads added to the crankshaft pulley at any given engine speed. Convert them to torque values as follows: • Nm = (9,549 x kW)/rpm • In-lb = (63,025 x hp)/rpm • Ft-lb = (5,252 x hp)/rpm where kW and hp are the crankshaft pulley load as calculated above, and rpm is the engine rpm. On smaller engines (e.g., below 100 hp) these loads can exceed published allowable side loads; engine manufacturers may void the warranty on new engines. This has been an ongoing issue for many years. In correct installations there are few instances of engine damage that can be attributed to an alternator, and engine manufacturers have been increasingly forced by consumer demand to accept these installations. I am not qualified to give legal advice, but in the U.S. the Magnuson-Moss warranty act, passed in 1975, specifically bans the voiding of an engine’s warranty because nonbranded parts have been used in servicing and maintaining it. Alignment and Tension With the correct pulleys, brackets, and belts on hand, the mechanical installation of most alternators is straightforward. Alignment is determined by the mounting brackets, so it either works or it doesn’t—there’s no means of easily making any adjustment. You can check pulley alignment with various laser tools prior to fitting a belt. For the K-section serpentine belts, a couple of easy-to-use and accurate devices are available from Gates (model numbers 91075 and 91006). Although belt tension can be checked more-or-less satisfactorily by hand, if the belt is to be driven hard, it is best to use a tension meter. The best one I’ve seen is a Gates Sonic U-508 model, expensive at $700 but worth it for the professional installer. Cable Sizing, Stranding, and Connections After the mechanical installation, wiring is next. There is more to this than meets the eye, especially with higher-performing alternators. Below I describe some obvious requirements and some not-so-obvious ones that I see violated from time to time. In accordance with the American Boat & Yacht Council (ABYC) E-11 standard, cables should be sized to allow a maximum 3% voltage drop in the alternator’s full rated output. Depending on the length of the cable run, with high-output alternators this can easily require 2/0 (70mm²) cables, and sometimes even larger. Additional considerations include: • Cables should always be at least Type 2 stranding to withstand the inevitable vibration without work hardening and fracturing. • Depending on the cable size required to meet the standard, your installation may include a large cable connected to a relatively small output stud on the back of the alternator. It is essential that cable terminal and studs be exactly matched and mated, and that the retaining nut includes either a lock washer or a nyloc nut. The former is preferable, as the temperature on the back of an alternator (see below) can exceed the rated locking temperature (250°F/121°C) of the plastic insert in a nyloc nut. • The cable should be supported with strain relief close to the alternator to prevent it from working loose. If it does, a resulting arcing fault can burn through the output stud, allowing the cable to drop off entirely. If the loose cable end contacts the engine block or any other grounded surface, a dead short across the batteries to which it is connected could burn through the engine oil pan or start a fire. Thermal Issues Conventional alternators with peak efficiency of no more than 60% get hot when they run hard. To put this in perspective, a 60%-efficient nominal 12V alternator running at 150 amps supplying (150A x 14V) = 2,100 W = 2.1 kW of electrical energy to the boat’s electrical system will also generate 1.4 kW of heat. Alternator case temperatures frequently exceed 212°F (100°C} and sometimes go significantly higher. For example, the factory temperature setting for many Balmar alternator temperature sensors, which are bolted to the alternator case, is 226˚F (108˚C), with an option to raise this temperature setting as high as 248˚F (120˚C via Balmar’s charge controller software. I have set it at 237°F (114°C). High operating temperatures have several consequences: To prevent it from burning out, the alternator may require a temperature sensor tied to its charge controller, especially when charging lithiumion batteries (see below). • The output cable(s) from the alternator, in particular the positive cable (most alternators are grounded through the case without a negative output cable), carry the alternator heat, with the section immediately afterthe attachment to the outputstud approaching the temperature of the case. Cables with insulation temperature ratings as high as 392˚F (200˚C) should be employed here, yet I have not seen them in use. Common in the U.S. is UL 1426 “Boat Cable” (also known as BC5W2) with a “dry temperature rating of 221˚F (105˚C). An alternatorrunning hard will transmit enough heat to the cable terminal to push a cable to its maximum rated temperature. At this point, according to ABYC ampacity tables, no amps should be put down the cable, but the alternator is delivering outputs of well over 100 amps. At present there is no good standards-compliant solution to this other than to size cables very conservatively; never use cable rated for less than 221˚F; and never support the cable close to the alternator output stud by strapping it to the alternator case. The wire needs to be in free air to dissipate heat asfast as possible. Note that many European boatbuilders install cables with a temperature rating below 221˚F—completely inappropriate for many alternator installations. To compound problems, the cable is frequently not labeled with its temperature rating. • Automatic engineroom-fire-suppression systems trigger at 174˚F (79˚C). To avoid nuisance triggering, install the temperature sensor away from high-output alternators that will be run hard. Never mount the temperature sensor directly above the alternator or in the exit path of its cooling air. Advise boat owners to invest in the more-expensive gas-filled extinguisher option, not the dry powder, which can cause irreparable engine damage if triggered with the engine running. • Following installation, an alternator should be run at its full rated output, held there for at least 10 minutes, and then all the connections in the associated cabling—from the alternator output stud to the batteries being charged—should be photographed with a thermal-imaging camera to ensure that there are no hot spots. If you nd any, clean and reestablish the ‑ awed connections. ( ermal-imaging cameras that plug into smartphones can now be purchased for about $200. is device is an essential component of any marine electrician’s tool kit. A laser heat gun can serve a similar purpose for less than $20, but the area image of a camera provides a better overall picture of what is going on.) • In an increasing number of applications it makes sense to remove the diode pack from the back of an alternator and mount it separately. Diodes contribute significantly to heat generation and simultaneously obstruct air- ‑ ow through an alternator. Removing the pack improves alternator cooling, while the pack itself can be mounted in a cooler environment for better heat dissipation. With this change, instead of a single positive cable coming off the back of the alternator, with perhaps a negative cable, there will now be three phase cables between the alternator to the diode pack, with a positive and negative cable thereafter. Overcurrent Protection Under ABYC E-11, an alternator wired back to a starter motor solenoid (the most common installation) with a cable run of less than 40″ (1m) does not require overcurrent protection (OCP). But if the alternator is wired to any other point in a boat’s electrical system, it may require OCP, sometimes at both ends of the cable. The determining issue is whether the alternator’s maximum possible output is “self-limiting” (in practice, it will be) and whether the ampacity of the output cable is as high as, or higher than, this maximum possible output. If the 3% voltage drop table is used for sizing cables based upon the alternator’s full rated output the cable ampacity will be high enough. It is important to follow the positive cable electrical path back to the batteries being charged until you find an OCP device. If this device has a rating higher than the ampacity of the cable from the alternator, an additional OCP device, rated according to the ampacity of the output cable from the alternator, is required at the point where the alternator output cable connects to the rest of the system. ANL or similar fuses are commonly used here and elsewhere in high-current DC circuits. The connections to these are almost always made with stainlesssteel fasteners, which have low electrical conductivity. It is essential that cable terminals are in direct contact with fuses, or with the conducting surfaces of busbars, and that no stainlesssteel washers are placed between conducting surfaces. Such washers accidentally included in the circuit and subjected to high continuous currents can generate sufficient heat to blow fuses (at which point the diodes in the alternator may be destroyed) and even to start fires. I recommend slow-blow fuses to minimize the chances of nuisance blowing. Lithium-Ion Batteries As lithium-ion batteries gain wide acceptance, the tendency is to think of them as a straightforward replacement for lead-acid batteries. For a number of reasons, some directly related to alternator installations, they should not be treated this way. In principle, a well-discharged lithium-ion battery can drive charging devices to full continuous output for extended periods, but if an alternator is not rated for continuous duty, there must be a way to derate it. For example, Yanmar requires that, when their Valeo alternators are used with lithium-ion batteries, the output current is limited to no more than 75% of their rated output. Another derating mechanism is to track alternator temperature and control the output based on a set temperature limit. Note that not all lithium-ion batteries are rated for high charge rates. In fact, recommended charge rates as low as 0.3C (i.e., a charge rate in amps that is 30% of the battery’s Ah rating; for example, a 200-Ah battery would have a recommended maximum charge rate of 60 amps) are the norm. It is important to match the battery’s characteristics to those of the alternator. Even though lithium-ion batteries are 90%–95% e‑ cient, if they are cycled at high C rates, the remaining 5%–10% can generate significant heat. If the internal temperature rises beyond a certain threshold, a battery management system (BMS) is likely to disconnect the battery from the boat’s electrical system. Thus, alternator charge rates must be coordinated with internal battery temperatures. e BMS on any lithium-ion battery for marine applications is likely designed to forestall the battery entering a potentially unsafe condition. A range of voltage, temperature, and state-of-charge thresholds will trigger protective measures, which usually result in the battery being disconnected from the boat’s electrical system. If this occurs with an alternator running, it may create a voltage spike throughout the boat that damages all electronic equipment turned on at the time, and it may destroy the alternator by blowing out its diodes. To prevent this, the BMS should be programmed to shut down any alternator before disconnecting the battery. ‑ is feature is frequently absent in so-called drop-in batteries designed to replace existing lead-acid batteries. The two predominant lithium-ion chemistries in marine batteries are lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC). It’s a peculiarity of NMC batteries that they will permanently lose capacity if maintained for extended periods in a full state of charge, such as when a battery charger is plugged into a dockside power supply. Similarly, if a generator or propulsion engine is running 24/7, continuously charging NMC batteries, a charge-control mechanism must be programmed to maintain the batteries below a full state of charge. LFP chemistry is not as sensitive to continuous full charging but will still bene t from being maintained below a full state of charge. ‑ is is the opposite of how we aim to manage leadacid batteries. For at least the past three decades pretty much everything we have done to advance onboard DC systems design has been to work around the inherent limitations and weaknesses of lead-acid batteries. Increasingly, adoption of lithium-ion batteries is eliminating this roadblock, and the stress point in our DC systems is shi- ing to the generating side, notably alternators. Some excellent solutions in development include high-output alternators married to extremely sophisticated control systems, but until the capabilities of such solutions lter down to the broader alternator marketplace, to avoid unhappy customers we need to pay close attention to the ner details of conventional alternator installations.
July 29: Song of Songs 4:13-14 Song 4:13-14 “Your branches (water the) pardes, (giving) pomegranates with precious fruit, (flower)ing henna and (spike)nard— (yes,) nard and saffron, cane and cinnamon, with all trees of white, myrrh and aloes, with all heads of spices!” Verses 13-14, describe the garden enclosure of v. 12 in more detail (cf. the previous note). In particular, the flowing water (from the spring) within the enclosure is the source of all the trees and plants. That, at least, is how I understand the difficult opening word Ey]j^lv=. The noun jl^v# fundamentally means something that is sent out; it can be used to refer to the branches or roots of trees, etc, and that is often how it is interpreted here. The luscious plants and fruit that are listed in the rest of vv. 13-14 represent what the garden “sends forth”. Another possibility, however, is that it refers to branches of water, i.e. irrigation channels, which water the garden and allow the various trees and plants to grow and bear fruit. In Mishnaic Hebrew, /yjlv has this meaning (cf. the references in Fox, p. 137). There are two reasons why this explanation is to be preferred: (1) the immediate reference to the spring of water at the close of v. 12, and (2) the basic symbolism of the garden (and the spring of water) in relation to female sexuality (and fertility). The spring of flowing water, likely seen as located at a central location in the garden, represents the source of the woman’s vitality and sexual appeal—it ‘waters’ the garden and causes its plants/fruits to grow. On the possible sexual allusion to the body of the young woman (her genitalia), with the use of Arabic šal— in that sense, cf. Pope, p. 491. The term sD@r=P^ (pard¢s) is a Persian loanword, and so I have transliterated it above; it is essentially parallel to (and synonymous with) Hebrew /G~ from v. 12, in referring to an enclosed garden or park. It use, however, gives an exotic touch to the scene; it might just as well have been translated with our own related loanword in English, “paradise”. The second line emphasizes the fruit produced by the garden, which is both beautiful to look at and sweet to taste (cf. the prior note on vv. 10-11). The lush red pomegranate, with its sexual associations (v. 3), is mentioned specifically, along with other “precious” (dg#m#) fruits. The remainder of vv. 13-14 is devoted to fragrant spices, of the kind especially used for aromatic oils and perfumes. The motif of spices in the Song is of special significance, in that it represents both (a) female beauty and sexual appeal, and also (b) the sexual union between the lovers. The latter aspect explains why the spices are given such prominence in the description of the garden. Two terms, in particular, summarize all the many fragrant spices that are present in the garden: • hn`obl=, “white (stuff)”, specifically the white resin used to produce frankincense; the similarity in form and meaning with /onbl= (the “white [peaks]” of Lebanon, source of fragrant cedar wood), allows for rich wordplay within the Song, as both words are used repeatedly. • <ym!cB=, the regular term for “spices”, and a keyword in the second part of the Song, occurring earlier in v. 10, and again in v. 16; 5:1, 13; 6:2, and in the closing words of the Song (8:14) The idiom “heads of…” (yv@ar) here means “finest, best”; we might also keep to a literal translation and say “all the top spices”. It emphasizes the superlative character of the girl’s beauty and charms for the young man, and also the complete attraction she holds for him. (Our discussion continues in the next note, on v. 15.) References marked “Pope” above (and throughout these notes) are to Marvin H. Pope, The Song of Songs, Anchor Bible [AB], vol. 7C (1977). Those marked “Fox” are to Michael V. Fox, The Song of Songs and the Ancient Egyptian Love Songs (University of Wisconsin Press: 1985). July 28: Song of Songs 4:12 Song 4:12-15 This is the last of a series of three songs by the young man, praising his beloved and expressing his love (and desire) for her. It is related thematically to the prior song (4:8-11), particularly in terms of the broad themes of separation and union between the lovers—the former was emphasized in vv. 8-11, the latter here in vv. 12ff. Song 4:12 “(You are) a garden latched (shut), my sister (and) bride— a garden latched, (with) a spring (of water) sealed.” The primary motif in this song is of the young girl as a garden enclosure (/G~), the root implying a fenced-off or otherwise protected area. Given some of the imagery we have seen earlier in the Song, it may be a royal garden that is in view here. In discussing the scene in 3:7-10, I mentioned the strong possibility that a (royal) gardened pavilion was intended, along the lines of the description in Esther 1:5-6. However, the fundamental intent of the imagery here is of the garden as a symbol of female sexuality, very similar to the use of the vineyard motif earlier in the Song (1:6, 14; 2:13-15). In addition to symbolizing the sexuality of the young woman, it also represents the love shared between the two. The Masoretic text in the second line reads lG~ instead of /G~. This is translated as “spring” or “pool”, but the word would more appropriately refer to the rolling or mounting waves (of the ocean). The LXX, Syriac (Peshitta) and Vulgate all assume that the reading is /G~, just as in the first line, an example of the kind of repetition we see frequently in the Song; I follow the versional evidence in my translation above, even though the lone surviving Qumran manuscript (4QCantb) supports the MT. If lG~ is original, it may perhaps refer to a rolling stone that serves as the door/entrance to the garden, or to the gate/wall of the enclosure itself being made of a “heap” of stones. The verb lu^n` properly indicates something that is latched (tight or shut); in the case of a door or gate (i.e. to a garden enclosure) perhaps the idea of it being “bolted” shut would be more appropriate. In any case, the emphasis is on the garden area being closed off, and thus inaccessible. This plays upon the theme of separation from vv. 8-11, only it is not a separation based on the idea of distance; rather, the girl is now close at hand, but there is still something that separates the two lovers. There is a fountain or spring of water within the garden enclosure—the common noun /y`u=m^ essentially refers to a place of flowing water. Based on the nature-imagery used throughout the Song, we should understand a mountain spring of fresh and clear water, more than some kind of artificial fountain structure. Thus the mountain-motif from vv. 8-11 is suitably blended with the garden-imagery of vv. 12ff; this is all the more likely if the “Amana” of v. 8b alludes to the mountain-source of the Amana river (cf. also the motif of water flowing down a mountain slope in v. 1). Here it is said that the spring of water is sealed (vb <t^j). This can be misleading in context, implying that the spring has been sealed-off so that no one can drink from it, etc. While that idea may also be present, the primary significance of the seal is to indicate ownership of something. Thus, there are two lines of imagery at work in this scene: • A garden enclosure, the entrance to which has been latched shut, and • A spring of water inside which has a seal indicating to whom the spring belongs. This seal can further be understood two ways: (a) it indicates that the water belongs to the young woman (she being the garden), or (b) it shows that the water in the garden (i.e., the sexuality of the woman) belongs to the young man, and only he can have access to it. Both aspects, I think, are present, but the latter is the primary point of reference. The beauty, youth, vitality, and sexuality of the young woman belongs to the one who is her beloved—and to him alone. No other man can, or should, have access to the ‘garden’ and its ‘spring’. That is certainly the sense of the comparable imagery in Prov 5:15-17. The basic idea here is that the young man alone has access into the garden enclosure (of the girl’s sexuality), and there to enjoy its delights. However, even for him, the beloved, the entrance is latched shut; it is the girl herself who must ‘open up’ to him, and only then will the last barrier to union be removed. The imagery of this scene will be discussed further in the next note, along with a brief consideration of the sensitive social, ethical, and religious issue surrounding the marital status of the lovers (in the note on v. 15), limiting the discussion to the immediate context of the songs in chapter 4. (Examples of Jewish and early Christian interpretation, on vv. 12-15, will also be included in the note on v. 15.) July 27: Song of Songs 4:8-11 (continued) Song 4:10 “How beautiful your love is, my sister (and) bride, how good your love is (more) than wine, and (the) breath of your oils than all spices!” The young man continues his song here in vv. 10-11 (cf. the previous note on vv. 8-9), essentially repeating his praise of his beloved’s beauty (and sexual appeal) from v. 9, referring to the girl again as his “sister” (toja^) and “bride” (hLK%). As I mentioned in the previous note, these titles are terms of endearment and intimacy, and do not mean that the couple are currently married, any more than that they are actually related as brother and sister. For examples in Egyptian love poems, cf. Fox, pp. 8-9, 13-14, etc.; on the similar custom in the Sumerian Dumuzi/Inanna songs, cf. Sefati, Love Songs, pp. 77-8, 129, 135-6, 140, 212, 270, etc. The exclamatory particle hm* is best rendered here as “how…!”, though more commonly it is translated “what…!”. I have translated the first line as “how beautiful your love is…!”, but equally good would be “what beauty your love has…!”. The physical beauty and goodness of the young woman are expressed verbally—hpy` (“be beautiful, have beauty”), bof (“be good [i.e., fine, pleasing]”). This physical beauty and sexual appeal of the young woman is further expressed in terms of sweet taste and fragrant scent (j^Wr, “breath, wind”). The comparative use of the preposition /m! (“from”) is a bit difficult to translate in English; usually it is rendered “more than”, and this is as good an option as any. The term doD (“love”) has a relatively wide range of meaning; here it is best understood as encompassing both the girl’s sexual appeal and beauty as well as her role in the couple’s lovemaking. The girl made much the same declaration regarding her young man in 1:2. The motif of spices (here plur. <ym!cB=) throughout the Song has a double meaning: it refers to female beauty/sexuality and also to the (sexual) union between the lovers. Song 4:11 “Your lips drip honey, (my) bride, syrup and milk (are) under your tongue, and (the) breath of your garments (is) like (the) breath of (the) white (mountains).” The juxtaposition of sweet taste and fragrant scent are developed in the two couplets of v. 11. The sweetness of the girl’s lips and tongue refer primarily to kissing, but the idea of sweetness of speaking is probably also in view (cf. Fox, p. 52, Egyptian song no. 31 [verse C]). There are numerous examples of this sort of imagery in ancient love poetry; note especially how the sweetness of honey is used as a metaphor for sexual pleasure, as in the following Sumerian love songs: “The brother brought me into his house, And laid me down upon a bed dripping with honey.” “In the bedchamber dripping with honey— Let us enjoy your allure, the sweet thing!” “The honey man, the honey man sweetens me ever, His hand honey, his foot honey—sweeten me ever, His limbs are honey-sweet—sweeten me ever.” “If only you would do to me your sweet things! Your ‘place’, sweet as honey—if only you would lay hand on it!” (Sefati, Love Songs, pp. 93, 167, 355) Pope (p. 486) also cites a modern Palestinian parallel: “O, how sweet is the sucking of her lips, sweeter than sugar or honey.” The fragrant scent of the woman’s garments is like that of her oils in v. 10—it relates to the scented perfume which makes her body that much more appealing to the young man. The “breath of Lebanon” refers to the fragrant cedar wood that comes from those mountains. There is also an implicit word play between /onbl= (l®»¹nôn) and hnobl= (l®»ônâ), the word for (frank)incense (v. 6). Both words derive from a root denoting whiteness—the snow-white peaks of the Lebanon range and the white-colored resin that is used to produce frankincense. The references to Lebanon in vv. 8 and 11 frame the song, emphasizing the mountain-theme. In verse 8 the focus was on the separation between the two lovers, while here in v. 11 it shifts to an anticipation of union. The same thematic sequence, but with a reversal of emphasis, is found in the next song as well. Jewish and Early Christian Interpretation (vv. 8-11) Jewish commentators found a wide range of symbolism in these verses. In the Targum, the mountain peaks and the dwellings of lions and leopards (v. 8) were explained in a realistic geographical sense, as the cities of Syria and Lebanon that would be given to Israel (the Bride) as a wedding gift. More generally, the lions and leopards could symbolize the surrounding nations as enemies of Israel. The difficult verb in the first line of v. 9 (cf. above) was paraphrased (in the Targum) as “fixed upon the tablet of the heart”, related to those in Israel who are devoted to God and the study of the Torah; a similar explanation was given in the Talmud to the “one eye” as referring to Israel’s spiritual perception of the Torah (b. Shabbat 88b). God’s love for Israel, the Bride, was emphasized in the Targum and Midrash on v. 10, praising her beauty as being more fragrant than all other spices (i.e., all the other nations). The sweet lips of the woman could be explained as referring to the prayers, etc, of the priests, while the ‘dripping honey’ (and the milk under the tongue) were likened to the skill and knowledge of those devoted to the study of the Scriptures. Cf. Pope, pp. 477-8, 484-5, 487. Gregory of Nyssa, in his sermons on vv. 8-11, provides a good example of Christian mystical and spiritual interpretation. The call for the Bride to “come from Lebanon (Libanus)” is applied to the soul that is rising toward God and “constantly experiences this continual incitement toward further progress”. According to his line of interpretation, the Bride has followed her Beloved (the Word, Christ) up to the ‘mountain of incense’, dying and rising with Christ to ascend in communion with his divine nature. Now she is called to rise up to further peaks. The ‘lions and leopards’ are those beasts that have been conquered when the soul turns away from evil; here they serve as an example and exhortation for us to make further progress toward the good. Gregory understands verse 9 as a declaration by the friends of the Bridegroom (that is, the angels and divine powers), saying to the Bride, “you have given us heart” —that is to say, they express admiration, recognizing the purified soul as one of their own kind (their “sister”); collectively, this applies also the Church (the Bride of Christ) as a whole. Along these lines, the “one eye” represents the person “who has sharp vision for God alone”, being blind to all other things that attract the multitude. He further explains the sweet fragrance of the Bride in sacrificial terms related to the New Covenant (citing, e.g., Psalm 50:19; 2 Cor 2:15), whereby the purified soul exudes a sweet spiritual fragrance and aroma of holiness. The honey dripping from her mouth is specifically connected with the possession of Wisdom, rooted in “the honeyed drops of the Christian message”, perfected in virtue, and illuminated in spiritual understanding by the Word. Cf. the selections and translations in Daniélou/Musurillo, pp. 213-26. References marked Sefati, Love Songs are to Yitschak Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature, Bar-Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture (Bar-Ilan University Press: 1998). Those marked Daniélou/Musurillo are to From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings, selected by Jean Daniélou, S.J., translated & edited by Herbert Musurillo, S.J. (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: 2001). July 26: Song of Songs 4:8-11 Song 4:8-11 Verse 8 “Come from (the) white (mountains), (my) bride, come from (the) white (mountains), come to (me)! Journey from (the) head of Amana, from (the) head of Senîr and Hermôn, from (the) dwelling-places of lions, from (the forest) <lairs> of leopards.” The mountain-theme from verses 5-6 (and earlier in the Song) continues here in vv. 8-11. As discussed previously (cf. the notes on vv. 5 and 6), this mountain motif can represent the idea of separation between the lovers, but also, at the same time, the expectation (and anticipation) of union. In vv. 8-11, the emphasis is on separation, while in the song that follows (vv. 12-17) it is union. The high mountain peaks referenced here in v. 8 suggest an inaccessible location. The young man is currently separated from his beloved, and her location up in the ‘mountains’ symbolizes her inaccessibility, as well as the inability for the two lovers to be together. This is why the young man calls fervently to his beloved to come to him, since it would be difficult for him to come to her. With many commentators, I read yta as an imperative of the verb hta* (yt!a&, “come!”), rather than MT yT!a! (“with me”). The subsequent imperative in the second line, from the verb aoB (also meaning “come”), I take as specifically meaning “come near, come to me.” There is also a textual question regarding the parallel imperative in line 3, yr!WvT—does it derive from rWv I (“see, look, watch”) or rWv II (“travel, journey”)? Both are possible, but the second better fits the context here in v. 8, since for the woman to come to him means that she must travel to him from her mountain dwelling. The mountains are identified with two peaks—(1) Amana (Akkadian Umanum, Ammanna, Ammun), the source of the Amana (= Abanah, 2 Ki 5:12) river in the Anti-Lebanon; and (2) Senîr, apparently a specific peak in the Hermon range (cf. Deut 3:9; 1 Chron 5:23). The term /onbl=, typically transliterated in English as “Lebanon” (l®»¹nôn), derives from a word designating white—referring to the snow-white peaks of the Lebanon mountain range. The Song makes considerable use of the Lebanon-motif, as part of its broader mountain-theme; it will be discussed further in the next note. The reference to the dwelling-places of lions and leopards (or panthers) is problematic for commentators attempting to establish a real geography in this verse. The references, however, are all figurative, and need to be understood as such. Traveling from the mountain peaks entails passing through the forests and wilds that are the haunts of dangerous animals such as lions and leopards. With commentators such as Pope and Fox (p. 135), I tentatively emend MT yr@r=h^ (“mountains of…”) to yr@j) (“holes/lairs of…”); the focus is on the secret/covered dwelling places of these animals in the forests and mountain wilds. The mention of these wild animals adds to the sense of inaccessibility, of the barriers (and possible dangers) that currently separate the two lovers. Pope (pp. 475-7) makes much of the religious/ritual interpretation whereby the young woman is identified with ancient goddess figure-types; of these are the well-known “lady of the beasts” type, associated with the lion and other wild animals. According to this line of interpretation, the girl’s mountain dwelling includes the presence of lions, etc. Verse 9 “You have (captur)ed my heart, my sister, (my) bride, with (just) one (look) from your two eyes, with one neck-bead from your necklace!” Most commentators would derive the verb bb^l* here as denominative from the noun bl@ (= bbl@), “heart”. It has alternatively been suggested that a separate root bbl (= Akkadian lab¹bu), denoting “enrage, arouse (to fury)”, is involved, but here with the specific meaning of sexual arousal (cf. Pope, p. 479). Assuming that the connection with bl@ (“heart”) is correct, the verb can be understood here in a couple of different ways: (a) “stir my heart”, or (b) “capture my heart”; the latter is to be preferred. The young woman’s beauty and sexual appeal have captured his heart, so that he is full of desire for her, and cannot but love her. This ‘conquest’ of his heart is so complete, that just a glance from one of her eyes, and even a single decorative bead from her necklace, is enough to overwhelm him with love and desire. Probably a round bead or gem-stone, resembling a human eye, is in mind. The nouns qn`u& and /orW`x^ both can refer to a necklace or other ornamentation for the neck; I take the first term as referring to a piece (bead, strand, jewel, etc) of the necklace. There is a bit of alliterative wordplay here between the verb form yn]T!b=B^l! (liba»tinî) and /onbl= (l®»anôn) in verse 8. Mention should be made of the use of the terms “sister” (toja^) and “bride” (hLK^) in v. 9. They are used repeatedly, but one should not necessarily assume that the young man calling the girl his “bride” means that they are currently married (or even engaged), any more than calling her his “sister” means that they are actually related (as brother and sister). Both titles are used figuratively, as terms of endearment and intimacy. However, given the wedding emphasis at the close of the first division of the Song (3:4-11), we may, at the very least, recognize here an anticipation of the couple’s future wedding/marriage. On the custom of lovers referring to each other as “brother” and “sister”, this simply reflects ancient Near Eastern cultural tradition; there are numerous examples that can be cited in the Sumerian and Egyptian love poems, and elsewhere. This will be discussed further as we proceed through the Song. The remainder of this song (vv. 10-11) will be considered in the next daily note, along with examples of Jewish and early Christian interpretation for vv. 8-11 as a whole. July 25: Song of Songs 4:6-7 Song 4:6-7 “Until (the time) when the day breathes and the shadows fly (away), I will go myself to the mountain of myrrh, and to the hill of white (incense). All of you (is) beautiful, my companion, and there is no defect in you!” Verse 7 summarizes the wasf song in vv. 1-5; in those lines (cf. the previous note), the young man praises the beauty of his beloved, one body part at a time, moving from the eyes to the breasts. Now, at the close of the song, he declares that all of her (ELK%, “all of you”) is beautiful. The sense is that, having reached her breasts in his praise-song, the young man, overcome with desire, is not able to continue. Instead, he longs to be united with her, and expresses this in no uncertain terms in verse 6. This aspect of sexual union was implicit at the end of v. 5, with the motif of the (male) animals grazing—that is, of the young man enjoying the beauty and sexual appeal of the young woman, focused particularly at her breasts. It becomes more explicit in verse 6, pivoting on the playful echo of the girl’s words to him in 2:17. The same temporal phrase is used: “Until (the time) when the day breathes and the shadows fly (away)” In both passages, this refers to the night-time, before the coming of daylight, when the two lovers can be together. In 2:17, the implication is that the two have been together, and the young woman is urging her beloved to depart before the dawn comes and their love is discovered. This seems to be the significance of the expression “mountains of rt#b#.” Assuming the reading rt#b# is correct, then it is best to explain the word in terms of the fundamental meaning of the root rtb, “cut in two (pieces)”. This can be understood in two ways (cf. the discussion in the note on 2:17): • The motif of separation between the two lovers, or • The two split mountains symbolize the woman’s breasts, and thus allude to the (sexual) union between the lovers In my view, the primary meaning is that of separation, yet there is also contained within the expression the possibility of future union. And, indeed, the two mountains of sexual union are described here in 4:6. The mountains are associated with the fragrant spices that elsewhere symbolize the young woman’s beauty and sexual appeal—myrrh and (frank)incense (lit. “white [stuff]”, hn`obl=), 3:6; 4:14 (cf. also 1:13; 5:1, 5, 13). There can be little doubt that here these two mountains specifically refer to the young woman’s breasts, continuing the imagery from v. 5). The similarity of shape between a mountain and a breast is obvious; on this aspect of the word dv^, cf. the previous note. The use of the verb El^h, together with the reflexive suffixed preposition yl! (“[for] myself”), expresses the young man’s desire to go to his beloved and be united with her: “I myself will go…” to those fragrant ‘mountains’. Jewish and Early Christian Interpretation The Targum interpreted the ‘fleeing shadows’ of the night as the demons that are dispelled by the burning of the spice-incense at the Temple altar (the Temple having been built on mount Moriah). The praise of the woman’s beauty in v. 7 was explained in terms of Israel’s beauty, when her people fulfill the Divine will through performance of the Torah regulations (including the Temple sacrifices). The Talmud and the Midrash Rabbah added the aspect of Israel’s ritual purity—pure both in terms of righteousness and the absence of any physical defect. Cf. Pope. pp. 472-3. Gregory of Nyssa explains the praise of the woman’s entire body in relation to the Church (the body of Christ) as a whole, as opposed to the beauty of its individual members (i.e., the souls of believers). He connects this with the declaration of the young man (Christ) in v. 6, interpreting the ‘two mountains’ in a Christological sense: myrrh representing the humanity (suffering) of Jesus and the frankincense his Divine glory. In particular, his sacrificial death (i.e., going to the “mountain of myrrh”) allows human nature to be purified of its flaw (sin). The person who shares in Christ’s suffering will also share in his glory, so that we (the Church) will come to be “all beautiful”. Sunday Psalm Studies: Psalm 50 (Part 1) Psalm 50 Dead Sea MSS: 11QPse (vv. 3-7); 4QPsc (vv. 14-23) This is the first of 12 Psalms attributed to [sa* (“Asaph”), the others being Pss 73-83. According to 1 Chron 6:39, Asaph was one of three priestly (Levite) officials who were put in charge of the “service of the song” by David (cf. 25:1; 2 Chron 5:12); he also served as “chief minister” before the Ark in Jerusalem (1 Chron 16:4-5; 25:5). He is said to have been a “seer” (hz#j), 2 Chron 29:30), and his sons apparently also functioned as prophets (1 Chron 25:1-2). The musical tradition associated with Asaph (and his descendants) is confirmed by the notices in Ezra 2:41 and Neh 11:22. The prophetic role of Asaph (and his sons) is noteworthy, given the fact that Psalm 50 is itself a prophetic oracle. Though in Jewish tradition the Psalms were often regarded as inspired prophecy (with David as a prophet, etc), this is one of the only Psalms which has the form and style of a prophetic oracle. Even if Asaph was not the actual author/composer, due to the prophetic character of the Psalm it was natural for it to be attributed to him, and it may reflect his style. Metrically, the Psalm follows a fairly consistent 3-beat (3+3, occasionally 3+2) couplet or tricolon (3+3+3) format. The Psalm opens with a dramatic introduction (vv. 1-4), followed by an introductory address (vv. 5-6) that sets the stage for the oracle that makes up the remainder of the composition. It is a judgment oracle, delivered against the people of Israel/Judah as a whole, similar in tone and theme with prophetic passages such as Isa 1:2-20ff. The oracle itself has two parts: • Part 1 (vv. 7-15): Diatribe on the uselessness of sacrificial offerings when wickedness is present and prevails among the people. • Part 2 (vv. 16-23): The accusation against the wicked ones in Israel Introduction (vv. 1-4) Verse 1 “Mighty (One) of the Mighty (one)s (is) YHWH! He spoke and called (forth the) earth, from (the) rising of (the) sun unto its going (down).” This opening verse is a 3-beat (3+3+3) tricolon. The first line reflects the character of this introduction as being in praise of YHWH as Creator and King (and Judge) over all. To say that he “called” (vb ar^q) the earth alludes to His creation of the universe (“heaven and earth”) through the spoken word (Gen 1:1ff)—i.e., he called it into being. It also refers to his role as King over the universe, exercising control over it each day. Verse 2 “From ‚iyyôn, (the) completion of (all) beauty, (the) Mightiest (One), has shined (forth).” This couplet picks up from the motif of the rising sun in v. 1, describing YHWH as the true Light shining forth. He shines “from Zion”, referring to the symbolic and ritual location of His throne in the Temple sanctuary. YHWH Himself is the “completion of beauty” (yp!y) ll^k=m!), but this expression could also apply to His Temple-dwelling on Zion. Verse 3 “Our Mighty (One) will come and will not be silent, a (raging) fire before him devours, and around him a fierce (storm) is swirling.” This is another 3-beat tricolon, using the imagery of storm-theophany to describe the approach and (manifest) presence of YHWH. Quite often in Old Testament tradition, including many passages in the Psalms, El-Yahweh is associated with the storm, much as was the case with Baal Haddu in Canaanite religious tradition; there are numerous similarities between YHWH and Baal in this regard, which helps to explain the fierce opposition to syncretistic adoption of Baal-worship among Yahwists in Israel. The storm-imagery also relates to YHWH speaking (“He will not be silent”), since, in ancient Near Eastern thought, thunder was considered to be the “voice” (loq) of God. Here, however, the focus is on the fire that appears before YHWH, coming from in front of His face, and the devastating winds “swirling/whirling” around Him. The destructive character of these storm-phenomena reflects the judgment that will be brought against the wicked. Verse 4 “He will call to the heavens from above, and to the earth, to judge His people.” This call to the heavens and the earth (i.e., the two main parts of the universe) reflects the “covenant lawsuit” genre, seen most notably in the openings of the Song of Moses (Deut 32) and the oracle in Isa 1:2-20ff. It was customary in the ancient Near East to invoke God (or the gods) when establishing a binding agreement (covenant) between two parties, calling on the deities to be a witness to the agreement and to bring judgment/punishment in case the terms of the agreement are violated. In the monotheistic context of Israelite culture, the only Deity to call upon is YHWH, except that, in the case of the covenant between YHWH and Israel, He is one of the parties involved; therefore, “Heaven and Earth” are called upon to be witnesses instead. The judgment-setting of the oracle here would indicate that heaven and earth, having witnessed the covenant, are being called upon now to give testimony against Israel (“His people”). In any case, they are taking part in the proceedings. Introductory Address (vv. 5-6) Verse 5 “Gather His loyal (one)s to Him, (those) having cut a binding (agreement) (made) upon a (ritual) slaughter.” The poetic form is difficult to discern, the lines of these introductory verses (to the oracle) reading more as prosody than poetry. I have rendered v. 5 here as a 2-beat (2+2+2) tricolon. The y– suffixes should probably be read as reflecting the third person (rather that 1st person) singular (cf. Dahood, p. 307). This is not entirely uncommon in Old Testament poetry, where archaic features in the language are often preserved, causing certain confusion for later copyists. The adjective dys!j properly means “good, kind”, but frequently connotes (and denotes) loyalty, when used in the context of the covenant (as here). There may be a certain biting irony to the term; since the setting is an oracle of judgment against Israel, it might seem strange to call the people “loyal”. However, it is presumably used here in the more general sense of those who are bound by the covenant, who have been—and, more importantly, should have been—loyal to it. The mention of “(ritual) slaughter” (i.e., sacrificial offering) refers primarily to the sacrifices which took place when the covenant was established (and ratified). This scene is described in Exodus 24. In Near Eastern tradition, such a binding agreement was often accompanied by the ritual cutting up of an animal; this is the background (and fundamental meaning) of the expression to “cut” (vb tr^K) an agreement. At Sinai, the offerings had several specific purposes, including the ritual use of the blood (vv. 6-8), at which point the people affirmed their loyalty to the terms of the covenant, and a ritual meal (v. 11) to mark the ratification of the agreement. Verse 6 “And (the) heavens shall put His justice out front, for (the) Mightiest—He (is the) Judge.” As noted above, the heavens (and earth) will give testimony in this courtroom-scene against Israel. Since heaven and earth were called on as witnesses to the covenant (cf. the tradition in Deut 32:1, etc), they can testify to how Israel had agreed to the terms, binding themselves to it; having violated the agreement, YHWH is perfectly in His rights to call for judgment/punishment to be brought against Israel. As it happens, YHWH is not only the plaintiff in the case, but is also Himself the Judge (fp@v)). Dahood (p. 307) would read fp^v=m! yh@l)a$ (“Mighty [One] of justice”) instead of fpv) <yh!l)a$ (“Mightiest [One] [is] judge”), dividing and vocalizing the words differently from MT. The Oracle, Part 1 (vv. 7-15) Verse 7 “Hear, my people, and I will speak, Israel, and I will repeat (it) against you, (for the) Mightiest, your Mighty (One am) I!” The oracle proper begins here in verse 7; it is now YHWH who is speaking, as the plaintiff in the “covenant lawsuit”, bringing the charge, the accusation, against His people Israel. The wording in the first and third lines frames the case, alluding to the very covenant bond that Israel has broken. By referring to Israel as His people (“my people”), and to Himself as their God, YHWH is affirming the central tenet of the covenant, going back to the time of Abraham and the Patriarchs. The verb dWu literally means “repeat”, but it can be used in the sense of giving testimony (i.e., repeating what one has seen or heard). Here it has the broader meaning of the case that YHWH is presenting in the courtroom (before Himself as Judge). Verse 8 “(It is) not over your slaughterings (that) I accuse you, or your (offering)s going up continually in front of me.” In verse 5 (cf. above) the sacrifice (lit. “[ritual] slaughter”, jb^z#) which established/ratified the covenant was mentioned. This reference, however, also serves the dual purpose of introducing the theme of sacrificial offerings that dominates the first part of the oracle. Here YHWH states that the problem is not related to any failure on Israel’s part to perform the sacrificial offerings required by the covenant. Indeed, even as they faithfully fulfill this ritual aspect of the binding agreement, they violate it, most egregiously, in other ways. Verses 9-11 “I would not take from your house a bull, (nor) goats from your enclosures; for to me (belongs) every living (thing) of (the) thicket, (the) beasts (are) on (the) hills of (the) Mighty (One), and I know every flying (creature) of the mountains, and every(thing) moving (in the) field (is there) with me.” In the first couplet, YHWH points out the relative insignificance of the animal sacrifices per se, by declaring that He really has no need for those offerings. The reason is then stated in the final four lines, a pair of couplets with a chiastic conceptual structure: • to me belongs • every living thing of the forest • beasts of the mountains • (they belong to the) Mighty One • and I know them (all) • flying creatures of the mountains • every moving thing of the field • is with me (i.e. belongs to me) This reflects, again, the place of YHWH as Creator and King over all the world (cf. the introduction, vv. 1-4, above). Since every animal in the world belongs to Him, clearly He does not need the relatively few animals, from the houses and stalls of the Israelites, that are offered as sacrifices. Moreover, since He already possesses a multitude of living animals, of what real value are those slaughtered animals? A minor textual note: In the second line of v. 10, the correct reading is almost certainly la@ yr@r=h^B= (“on [the] mountains of [the] Mighty [One, i.e. God]”) rather than MT [l#a yr@r=h^B= (“on [the] mountains of cattle [?]”); cf. Psalm 36:6. Dahood (p. 307f) would retain the final pe of MT [la and attach it as a prefixed conjunction (P^) to the following verb. Unfortunately, this verse is not preserved in the surviving Qumran manuscripts (cf. at top above). Verses 12-13 “If I were hungry, I would not say (that) to you, for (all that the earth) contains and its fullness (belongs) to me! Would I (then) eat (the) flesh of (your) bulls, or drink (the) blood of (your) goats?” This is another way of YHWH stating that He has no actual need for sacrificial offerings. One basic concept in ancient sacrificial ritual was that the offerings provided a kind of nourishment for the deity (or for the spirits of the deceased, etc). In the case of the whole burnt offering, the entire animal was turned into smoke which then rose (lit. went up, hlu) to God in heaven; with such offerings, in particular, God could be seen as consuming (eating) the animal. However, YHWH states rather bluntly that, even if He were in need of nourishment (“hungered,” vb bu^r), it would hardly be necessary for Him to tell human beings about it. After all, every thing that the world contains (i.e., the term lb@T@)—all life and produce coming from the earth—belongs to Him, and He can take of its life-essence (for nourishment) anytime He wants. All of this colorful polemic simply serves to devalue the importance of sacrificial offerings in and of themselves. This is a relatively common theme in the Prophet writings, perhaps the most famous example being found in Isa 1:12-15. Verse 14 “(Instead) ‘slaughter’ to (the) Mightiest a declaration, and fulfill for (the) Highest your promises (to Him).” Much more important than sacrificial offerings are the things which a person declares to God, reflecting one’s personal character/integrity and the intention of one’s heart. The same verb jb^z` (“slaughter”) is used provocatively here; instead of cutting up an animal, it is more important to cut a declaration to God. This is the general significance of the word hdoT, something which a person declares or confesses—viz., of one’s faith in YHWH, devotion to the Torah, including repentance and confession of sin, etc. The sacrificial offerings are just a small part of this wider portrait of covenant loyalty; without a true declaration, from the heart, fulfilling the letter of the ritual law is of little consequence. Similarly the word rd#n# refers to something that a person promises (to God). It can involve a specific vow or obligation, but may also be understood in the broader sense of what every Israel promises in terms of being devoted to YHWH and faithful to His covenant. The verb <l^v* (“fulfill, complete”) can be used in the ritual context of the sacrificial offerings, but here its wider meaning is in view: fulfillment of the binding agreement (covenant) with YHWH. Verse 15 “And (then) call on me in (the) day of distress, and I will pull you (out) and you will be honored (by) me.” If a person does what YHWH commands in v. 14, then the covenant bond will be fulfilled. This means that God will, in turn, fulfill His covenant obligation, which includes providing protection in time of danger (“[the] day of distress”). The faithful vassal can also expect to receive blessing and honor (dbk) from his Sovereign. I follow Dahood (p. 308) in parsing yndbkt as a passive (Pual) verb form, which is much better suited to the context of the line, referring to what YHWH will do for His faithful servant. The apparent anti-sacrifice polemic in this first part of the oracle, as in prophetic passages such as Isa 1:12-15 (cf. above), may lead one to assume that fulfilling the Torah regulations regarding the sacrificial offerings is unnecessary and can (and perhaps even should) be abandoned. This would, however, almost certainly reflect a misunderstanding of the polemic. The point is, that a person can fulfill the ritual obligation without possessing a heart that is truly devoted to God. Especially for the rich or well-to-do in society, offering up an animal to the priesthood, in fulfillment of the ritual requirement, does not involve any real personal sacrifice. It can be done easily, in a half-hearted manner, or with wicked/impure motives. This is primarily the aspect of the sacrificial ritual that the Prophets are roundly condemning. We will discuss this further when we examine the second part of the oracle in next week’s study. References above marked “Dahood” are to Mitchell Dahood, S.J., Psalms I: 1-50, Anchor Bible [AB], vol. 16 (1965). July 22: Song of Songs 4:1-5 Song 4:1-7 With this section, 4:1-7, we move into a new phase of the Song. The love poetry suddenly becomes even more erotic, with more detailed descriptions of the lovers’ beauty and sexual appeal. Since 3:6-11 depicted a wedding scene (with a focus on the wedding bed), it would be natural to view these erotic songs as set during the wedding night. Indeed, for those commentators inclined to a moralistic reading of the Song, such eroticism virtually requires that the young couple be married. The problem with this moralistic approach is that, as the graphic love songs extend into chapter 5, we suddenly find ourselves back in the world of furtive, secret meetings between the two lovers, indicating, rather clearly, that they are unmarried. How, then, can this be reconciled with the wedding scene of 3:6-11? The solution to this question lies in the overall structure of the Song. In my view, there are two major divisions, or movements, to the Song: the first (call it “Movement 1”) spans chapters 1-3, while the second (“Movement 2”) covers the remainder of the Song (chaps. 4-8). The two movements generally follow the same, simple narrative arc. The two youths confess their love and attraction to one another, taking every opportunity to come together for a romantic/sexual encounter, in spite of the social and practical barriers to their meeting. Ultimately, they express their intention to be married, and each movement closes with an anticipation of the couple’s wedding (chap. 8 being roughly parallel to 3:4-11). Movement 2 is more expansive, but contains many of the same phrases and motifs from Movement 1, developing and restating them, like variations on a (musical) theme. The nature of this expansion can be illustrated by the opening section 4:1-7, which essentially develops the declaration by the young man in 1:15 (cf. the earlier note on this verse), expanding it into a song. The declaration by the young woman (1:16-17) is developed in a similar way. The two lovers take turns praising the physical beauty (and sexual appeal) of the other, focusing on one body part at a time. In the tradition of Arabic love poetry, this sort of song is known as a wasf, and it dominates throughout chapters 4-7. Song 4:1-5 In this first wasf, the young man sings the praise of his beloved’s beauty, beginning with her eyes and concluding, in rather tantalizing fashion, with her breasts. Let us briefly consider each portion of this song. Verse 1a—Eyes “See, (how) you are beautiful, my companion! See, (how) you are beautiful, your eyes (like) doves!” This couplet is repeated verbatim from 1:15; on the specific imagery (of the dove, etc), cf. the discussion in the earlier note. Verse 1b—Hair “From behind your veil your hair (is) like a flock of goats streaming (down) from mount Gil’ad.” The derivation of the noun hMx^ is uncertain, but the context makes reasonably clear that it refers to a woman’s veil; apart from the Song (also at v.3 and 6:7), the word occurs only in Isa 47:2. The meaning of the verb vl^G` is even less certain; it occurs only in the Song (here and in 6:5). It may be related to the root gl¾ in Ugaritic, and, if so, then it would seem to refer to the movement of water (i.e., flowing, streaming). This would fit the imagery here, of a ‘stream’ of goats descending down the side of a mountain. Clearly the image relates to thick, flowing locks of dark hair. The plural <yZ]u! is masculine in form, but refers to female goats. Verse 2—Teeth “Your teeth (are) like a flock of shaved (sheep) that have come up from the washing, all of them twin, bearing a double and none is childless among them.” The image of shaved/shorn sheep relates to both smoothness and whiteness; in addition, the association with the washing of the sheep adds an aspect of glistening wetness. The phrasing in the last two lines is a bit awkward, with its mixed metaphor, but the basic idea is clear enough: her teeth are neatly paired and none are missing. Syntactically, each of the last three lines begins with the prefixed relative particle (-v#); however, translating all three of these in sequence would result in very awkward poetry, and so I have literally rendered only the first of these (in the second line). Verse 3—Mouth “Like a thread of crimson (are) your lips, indeed, your place of speech (is) beautiful, (and) like a slice of pomegranate (is) your cheek from behind your veil.” The focus here is on the red color of the woman’s mouth. The meaning of the noun hQr^ is not entirely certain. In Judg 4:21-22; 5:26 it seems to refer to the side of the (fore)head; while here the parallel would be the side of the mouth. Perhaps the root meaning of thinness (i.e., softness) is in view. Even so, it is difficult to decide whether the mouth itself or the soft flesh of the cheek is intended; many commentators assume the latter. The use of the noun rBd=m! to refer to the mouth is peculiar; literally it means “place of speech”, and that is how I have translated it above. It seems likely that there is an intentional place on the more common rBd=m!, from a separate root rbd, meaning “place out back” —i.e., the hinterland, desert, wilderness, etc; the allusion would be to the steppe-land, where flocks and herds would graze (cf. on verse 5 below). Verse 4—Neck “Like a great (tower) of David (is) your neck, built in (perfect) arrangement! A thousand protective (cover)s hang upon it, all (the) shields of the strong (one)s.” Note: the meaning of the italicized expression is uncertain (cf. the discussion below) A lDg+m! (= loDg+m!) is literally a “great (i.e. tall) place”, often referring to a tower of some kind. It is uncertain whether the “tower of David” is meant to refer to a specific structure; more likely, it is a general reference to the fortifications of Zion—the fortified hilltop location taken over (from the Canaanites) by David and subsequently expanded. It was the location of the Temple and the royal Palace-complex, and its fortifications were described (and praised), for example, in Psalm 48 (on the imagery in that Psalm, cf. my recent study). The plural noun toYP!l=T^ is perhaps the most obscure word in the entire Song; it occurs only here in the Old Testament, and attempts to determine its etymology and fundamental meaning remain guesses in the dark. One suggestion is that here it means something like “courses (of stone)” or “terraces”, referring to the manner in which the structure is built. Another possibility is as a more abstract plural, used in an adverbial sense, indicating the purpose or result of the building—i.e., something like “built for splendor, built for greatness”. Since the root would seem to be ypl, which, though otherwise unattested in the OT, has been identified as meaning “arrange (in rows, etc)”, I tentatively translate the prepositional expression as “in (perfect) arrangement”. If the idea of a terraced structure is in view, then it may relate to the woman’s shape, with her neck broadening out below into her chest and shoulders. The necklace at the base of the neck might add to this impression. The “shields” hung on the tower clearly refer to a necklace and other ornaments that may hang from the woman’s neck. The meaning of the noun fl#v# is uncertain, but I take it as more or less synonymous with /g@m (“place of protection,” i.e., “shield”). It is also possible that fl#v# refers to another kind of armament or piece of armor. All of this imagery suggests that a long neck was part of the ideal of feminine beauty in Israel, just as it seems to have been in Egypt—cf. the love song cited by Fox (pp. 52, 130); clearly, that song is a wasf that resembles, in many ways, our song here: “Behold her… . shining, precious, white of skin, lovely of eyes when gazing; sweet her lips when speaking: she has no excess of words; long of neck, white of breast, her hair true lapis lazuli; her arms surpass gold, her fingers are like lotuses.” Verse 5—Breasts “(Your) two breasts (are) like two young stags, twins of a gazelle, grazing among (the) lilies.” The young man ends his praise of the girl’s body parts somewhat abruptly once he reaches the breasts. An intriguing suggestion is that, overcome with desire, he now expresses his wish to unite with his beloved. The poetic imagery does seem to bear out this dramatic (and yet playful) line of interpretation. Indeed, the motif of the grazing (male) animals serves as an image with a dual-meaning: (1) the shape of the two animals grazing side by side, with their necks curved down, resemble the woman’s breasts; (2) the grazing represents the young man enjoying the woman’s beauty (including her breasts). This latter aspect was emphasized in 2:16, and occurs again at 6:2. The Hebrew word for “breast” (dv^, šad) is likely related to Akkadian šadu, “mountain”, suggesting that the primary point of reference is to a mound, and that a woman’s breast is called dv^ because of its resemblance to a mound (or mountain). The Song itself is clearly aware of this association of images, playing on them here in vv. 5-6; this will be discussed further in the next note. Most commentators automatically translate the masculine plural form <yr!pu& as fawns, parallel with the she-goats of v. 1 and the ewes, etc. However, I do not know that this is correct. Elsewhere in the Song (2:9, 17; 8:14), the word rpu* clearly refers to a strong young male animal (stag, ram, etc); moreover, as noted above, the act of grazing (that is, on the woman’s beauty) is certainly being done by the male (the young man). Jewish and Early Christian Interpretation Jewish commentators tend to explain the woman’s beauty either in terms of the Temple (of Solomon) or of the Torah and those who are faithful/devoted to it. The comparative images used in these verses were interpreted in a variety of ways, drawing upon examples from Israelite historical and religious tradition. Particularly creative is the way that the washed wool of the sheep and the scarlet color of the thread were combined together by the Targum on v. 3, bringing to mind Isa 1:18 and associating that passage with the High Priest’s prayer on the Day of Atonement: “…and his words changed the sins of Israel which resembled a scarlet thread and made them white like clean wool.” (Pope, p. 464) In verse 5, the Targum gave a Messianic interpretation of the two breasts, viewing them as symbolic of the two Messiahs who are to come. Along with the Midrash Rabbah, the Targum also explained them in terms of Moses and Aaron, ‘twin’ brothers of a common ‘gazelle’ (Jochebed), who were the beauty and ornament of Israel, particularly in their association with the giving/teaching of the Torah. For Christian commentators, the flock-imagery naturally brought to mind the Church (believers) as a flock of sheep, and the ecclesiastical associations that come with the motif. Ambrose is a good example of the ethical-religious approach to explaining the erotic praise of the woman’s beauty. Like the Targum (cf. above), he especially draws upon the image of the whiteness of the washed sheep as symbolic of baptism and the washing away of sin (he likewise cites Isa 1:18 in this regard); the white garments worn by believers play on this same symbolism. Gregory of Nyssa focuses specifically on the teeth of the woman, relating the motif to the spiritual nourishment that comes from eating the Word (the living Bread from heaven); with the teeth the soul chops up and digests the Divine mysteries, implying a measure of understanding and interpretation, to the point that one is able to communicate the truth to others. Apponius explains the ‘scarlet thread’ of the woman’s mouth in terms of those martyrs who shed their blood for the faith, while the redness of the cheek indicates modesty and chastity—very much in line with typical early Christian ethical (and ascetic) interpretation. Along these same lines, the breasts represent those ministers from whom other believers may suck the nourishing milk of Christian teaching. Such an explanation is about as far from the original erotic imagery of the Song as one can possibly imagine! Gregory of Nyssa, admittedly, gave a more mystical interpretation of the two breasts, as representing the two aspects of the Christian person—whether viewed as the individual soul or collectively as the Church—the “outer” and the “inner” man (to use the Pauline terminology), united in a single being (cf. Pope, p. 471). July 21: Song of Songs 3:11 Song 3:11 “Daughters of Yerushalaim, go forth, and look, (you) daughters of ‚iyyôn, on the king, Šlomoh, on the crown with which his mother crowned him, on (the) day of his marriage, on (the) day of (the) joy of his heart!” As discussed in the previous note, The last two words of v. 10 (separated from the prefixed preposition –m) properly belong to v. 11 here, forming an initial parallel couplet in which the speaker—most likely the young woman—calls on the other girls to look with amazement at her bridegroom as he approaches. The “daughters of Jerusalem” are referenced a number of times in the Song, including earlier in 1:5; 2:7; 3:5. Here they function as spectators at the wedding, possibly even members of the bridal party. In my view, all of vv. 6-11 represents an ideal portrait, in the mind of the young woman, of her (intended/future) wedding to the young man. It may be that this scene draws upon historical traditions regarding king Solomon’s wedding, but here, in the Song, the reference to Solomon is most likely figurative. It is the young man, the girl’s beloved and intended groom, who plays the role of her “king”, her “Solomon”. The crown (hrfu&, lit. a band, etc, wrapped around [the head]) emphasizes the royal character of the wedding. Again, this is figurative, and the sense of role-play may be indicated by the role of the boy’s mother in “crowning” him as king at the time of their wedding. The girl imagines the ceremonial splendor of her wedding as being on a truly grand scale, akin to the wedding of Solomon himself. If there were any doubt that a wedding scene is in view, this is made explicit in the final lines. The noun hN`t%j& occurs only here in the Old Testament, but it is related to /t@j) and /tj which essentially denote being (or becoming) a son-in-law. This aspect is quite difficult to translate literally in English; one can only become a son-in-law through marriage, and that is probably the best way to translate hN`t%j& here. The approach of the young man (the royal bridegroom) is parallel to the approach of the young woman (the royal bride) in v. 6 (cf. the prior note). In my view, this parallelism is clear and definite, like facing panels of a triptych with the central scene of the wedding bed/night (vv. 7-10) portrayed in between. Jewish and Early Christian Interpretation The Targum explains the wedding/coronation of Solomon in terms of the king’s dedication of the Temple. The Midrash Rabbah played on the presumed derivation of the name Solomon (hm)l)v=) from the root <lv, “(be) complete”, applying it to God who created all things in their fullness and perfection. The “crown” and the wedding-day could also be explained in historical terms, being associated with the Tabernacle, the giving the Law to Israel, and again with the consecration of the Temple. The motif of Israel as a bride (and/or bridegroom), united to YHWH in a covenant bond, was natural and well-rooted in Old Testament tradition (Isa 61:10; 62:3-5, etc). Cf. Pope, p. 449-50. As Gregory of Nyssa explains it, the “daughters of Jerusalem” are those other souls being saved who have not yet attained to her level of growth and understanding, and so the Bride calls to them that they may follow her example. Christologically, it would be God the Father who “crowned” Christ, so Gregory feels compelled to offer some explanation as to why it says here that the king was crowned by his mother. In this regard, the name is not significant—whether male or female, it refers to the Power of God. The Church itself is interpreted as the ‘living stones’ embedded, it is assumed, in the Bridegroom’s crown; however, the Church only becomes so when believers “come out” to witness the King in all his splendor, and are thus purified and enlightened together as the Bride of Christ. Ambrose’s explanation of the scene has a more ascetic emphasis, interpreting the command for the daughters of Jerusalem (the souls) to “come forth” as meaning: “…come away from the cares and thoughts of this age, come away from bodily constraints, come away from the vanities of the world—and behold what love the peace-bearing King has on the day of his wedding, how glorious he is…” (translation by Norris, p. 150) His fine comments at the close of this section are worth repeating: “This is the victor’s crown of the great contest, this is the magnificent wedding-present of Christ, his blood and his suffering. For what more could he give, who did not hold himself back, but offered his death for our benefit?” (ibid) Those marked “Norris” are to Richard A. Norris, Jr., translator and editor, The Song of Songs: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, The Church’s Bible, general editor Robert Louis Wilken (Eerdmans: 2003). July 20: Song of Songs 3:9-10 Song 3:9-10 “King Šlomoh himself made a canopy from (the) trees of the white (mountains): its standing (post)s he made (with) silver, (and) its spread (was made with) gold; its seat(-cushion) (was made with) purple, (the space) within it was inlaid (with) love.” The meaning of the term /oyr=P!a^ (°appiryôn), which occurs only here in the Old Testament, remains uncertain and much debated. It is probably a foreign loanword, suggestions ranging from the Sanskrit paryanka to Greek phoreion (forei=on). While the derivation of the word cannot be determined with any certainty, cognate words in Aramaic can at least provide some clarity to its meaning. These terms (pwrywm°, prywn, pwryyn°, pwry°, pwryh, and note also Syriac pwrywn; cf, Fox, p.125) all refer to a bed or couch, including a portable unit that can be transported. The context here clearly refers to a canopied (covered) structure, with posts and a frame. Since the bed/couch itself was referenced in vv. 7-8 (cf. the previous note), I understand the description of the /oyr=P!a^ here as referring primarily to the covered structure (canopy) for the bed. While it is possible that the description draws upon authentic historical tradition, regarding a grand structure which was actually made for Solomon, its purpose here is almost certainly figurative. The frame of the canopy is made out of cedar-wood from Lebanon (lit. the “white [capped mountains]”). The posts are additionally covered/decorated with silver, and its “spread” (the carpeted covering) with gold. Thus it is truly a luxurious (and expensive) structure! The final two lines focus on the space inside the frame. The cushions (lit. place to sit, bKr=m#) are made with expensive purple-dye, while rest of the space is said to be “fit together” (or “inlaid”, vb [x^r) “(with) love”. This last phrase is problematic, complicated by the textual confusion in the MT, as the final two words of v. 10 almost certainly belong at the start of v. 11 (a point recognized by most commentators). It has been suggested that the initial –m of MT tonB=m! should be attached instead to the end of the previous word, as an enclitic <-, and this seems plausible; the expression “daughters of Jerusalem” fits better with what follows in v. 11. Some commentators would emend <bha (“love”) to <ynba (“stones”); while this makes sense, there is really no textual support for such a change. Perhaps what the poet has in mind is the decoration of the bed-frame (and canopy) with scenes of lovemaking. Pope (p. 445) notes the ivory carvings on the bed of the king of Ugarit which include the scene of a man and woman embracing (photo provided by Pope in Plate II [following p. 360]). The ivory beds mentioned in Amos 6:4-7 may have contained similar sorts of decoration. Mention should also be made of the great ivory throne of Solomon (1 Kings 10:18); the principal reason for the use of ivory is it viability for carved (and inlaid) decoration. It seems likely that the overall portrait in vv. 7-10 is of a portable canopied bed which could be set in a favored location. A gardened pavilion may be in view, akin to what is described in Esther 1:5-6. This “little house” (/t^yB!) of the king has parallels with the garden pavilions of royalty in Mesopotamia (where the cognate term bitanu is used) and Egypt. Such a royal chamber, with couches for drinking and love-making, seems to be in view earlier in the Song (1:4) as well. Jewish and Early Christian Interpretation (vv. 9-10) The Targum and Midrash explained the (portable) bed of Solomon, in historical terms, as the Temple and/or the Ark of the Covenant. The posts of the canopy and the seat “inlaid with love” were particularly connected with the Ark and its cover. The Midrash Rabbah further develops this symbolism, whereby the interior “inlaid with love” was explained as the merit and virtue of the Torah, and of those righteous ones who study it (cf. Pope, p. 446). Among early Christian interpreters, Theodoret takes advantage of the etymology of the name Solomon as meaning “peaceful” (cf. above on the root <lv), identifying him as a type of Christ (“he is our peace,” Eph 2:14), and turning to Psalm 72 [LXX 71], ascribed to Solomon, as an account of the “righteous deeds of the Savior” (Norris, p. 148), whose kingdom of peace will come to extend over the entire world. Theodoret interprets the sexuality of the wedding night (and the bed) primarily in a moral and religious sense: the Bride lies down with the Bridegroom (Christ) to receive the seeds of his teaching, eventually conceiving and ‘giving birth’ to offspring (in a spiritual sense). The sixty warriors and the canopy (cf. above) are similarly interpreted in a typological manner, as referring to the Old Testament saints and the apostles, the “pillars” of the canopy specifically being those leading apostles of the Jerusalem Church mentioned by Paul in Gal 2:9, etc. Ambrose takes a more lyrical (and mystical) approach, identifying Solomon’s bed directly with the person of Christ, who is called “the bed of the saints, upon whom the weary hearts of every one of them rest from the struggles of this age” (transl. by Norris, p. 150). This is applied primarily to the Patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament, but it also anticipates the Bride (believers) mounting the bed to lie down with Christ (the Bridegroom) himself. July 19: Song of Songs 3:7-8 Song 3:7-10 I would outline the section 3:6-11 as follows: • The approach of the royal bride (the young woman), v. 6 (cf. the previous note) • Description of the marriage bed (or couch) for the wedding night, vv. 7-10 • The approach of the royal bridegroom (‘Solomon’ = the young man), v. 11 Verses 7-10 provide a description of the couple’s couch/bed in preparation of their wedding night. As discussed in the previous note, the wedding of the young couple is depicted as a royal wedding, and traditions associated with Solomon (hm)l)v=, Šlœmœh, the grandest of Israelite kings, add to the sense of splendor. Verses 7-8 “See, where he stretches out, (the bed) for Šlomoh! Sixty strong (one)s (are) surrounding her, from (the) strong (one)s of Yisrael, all of them being (taught) to hold a sword, (hav)ing been instructed in war, (each) man (with) his sword upon his thigh, from (the) terror (that comes) in the night.” Literally, the first line would read: “See, (the) place for stretching out [hF*m!] which (belongs) to Solomon”; I have rendered it in a more poetic fashion. The use of the relative particle (v#) + the preposition l= is a pleonasm for the possessive, i.e., “Solomon’s place for stretching out” —that is, his bed or couch. The context clearly indicates that it is the bed/couch where the royal couple (the king and his bride) lie down together (on their wedding night). The remainder of these verses focus on the swordsmen who stand guard around the royal bed. The adjective roBG] fundamentally refers to strong, powerful, vigorous young men; the expressions that follow, both utilizing descriptive passive participles, indicate the skill of these men with the sword and also their strength/ability as warriors in battle. One is reminded of the fame attached to David’s corps of elite warriors (2 Sam 10:7; 23:9, 16ff; 1 Kings 1:8). The reason why they stand guard, with sword close at hand, is stated, however enigmatically, in the last line: it is to protect the bed “from (the) terror (that comes) in the night” (tolyL@B^ dj^P^m!). As in verse 1, the plural (“nights”) is used, indicating something that occurs regularly/frequently during the night. Perhaps the best explanation of this imagery is that the warriors (“sixty” being a standard/traditional number) primarily serve a ceremonial or ritual purpose. They symbolically guard against demon-spirits that might attack or disturb the couple on their wedding night. Pope (pp. 434-6) provides strong arguments in support of this interpretation, drawing upon earlier studies by J. G. Wetzstein and Samuel Krauss; the evidence cited by Krauss (“Der richtige Sinn von ‘Schrecken in der Nacht,’ HL III 8” in Occident and Orient, Moses Gaster Eightieth Anniversary Volume [1936], pp. 323-330) is particularly convincing. The basis for such a superstition presumably lies in the natural sense of danger surrounding sexual activity, at night, within the sacred/consecrated environment of the wedding ceremony. On the potential dangers of the wedding night, cf. Tobit 3:7ff; 2/4 Esdras 10:1; on the source of the danger being the activity of demon-spirits, it is worth noting the tradition in Pirqê de-Rabbi Eliezer §12, where the angels are compared to “groomsmen who guard the bridal chamber” (Fox, p. 124). T. H. Gaster also cites a Mesopotamian incantation describing Zaqar, the deity governing dreams, as “the terror of the nights” (pulu—tu ša lilatî)—a nearly exact parallel with the expression here in v. 8 (Pope, p. 436). There is a possible parallel with Mesopotamian tradition of the kurgarrû—ceremonial performers associated with the goddess Inanna/Ishtar, who, like the Canaanite godddess Anat, paradoxically embodies both love and war. The kurgarrû performers where men (and/or women) functioning, it seems, as dancers skilled in swordplay. For more on this, cf. Pope, pp. 437-40. The guardians may also be seen as fulfilling a practical function, at least in part, if the bed was intended to be placed in an outdoor garden location; this will be discussed further in the next note. Jewish and Early Christian Interpretation (vv. 7-8) The Targum explains Solomon’s bed as the Temple, and the sixty warriors as the (sixty) letters of the priestly blessing (associated with the Temple ritual, Num 6:24-26). The Midrash Rabbah contains the same explanation of the sixty warriors, but also applies the number to the divisions of the priests and Levites (24 + 24 = 48) added to the the divisions of the rest of the people of Israel (12 +48 = 60). Alternately, it could be explained in terms of the Sanhedrin or of the 60 myriads (600,000) adult men who traditionally made the Exodus out of Egypt. Cf. Pope. p. 434. Along a separate line of interpretation, the Targum explains the warriors’ skill with the sword in terms of the understanding of the Law. The sword at the thigh was also seens as a symbol of circumcision, marking a man’s faithful service and allegiance to the covenant. All of these things serve to protect one from the “terrors of the night”. The Midrash similarly cites a tradition regarding the circumcision of each uncircumcised Israelite male on the eve of Passover (in fulfillment of the requirement in Exod 12:48). A legal precept in the Talmud (b. Yebamot 109b) applies this verse as an admonition for judges—wearing a sword between his thighs was meant to prevent any perversion of justice (Pope, p. 440). Gregory of Nyssa adopts a decidedly mystical (and ascetic) interpretation of the sword-carrying guardians: the imagery reflects the contrast (and conflict) between spiritual and carnal desire. The love of God can only arise from that is “contrary to carnal desire”, and, in this light, the Divine beauty can seem terrifying to the flesh. The weapons of those who stand guard are thus poised to destroy all “wicked thoughts”, penetrating into the darkness. The “sword” of hearing is to “listen to spiritual instruction”. The sixty warriors are explained as five ‘chosen ones’ from each of the twelve tribes of Israel (“Israel” representing all who are saved). Yet even believers (Israelites) must be purified and made perfect, so that, clean of heart, they will be able truly to see the Word of God, and to be united with him on the bed of the King (i.e., the marriage bed where the children are conceived [cf. 3:4]). The elect are thus represented simultaneously as a child, as a warrior, and as a true Israelite: “As a true Israelite, he sees God with a clean heart; as a warrior, he guards the royal couch, that is, his own heart, in purity and freedom from passion; as a child he sleeps upon the couch of salvation.” (transl. Musurillo, p. 211) The translations of Gregory of Nyssa here are by Herbert Musurillo, S.J., in From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa’s Mystical Writings, edited by Musurillo and selected by Jean Daniélou (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press: 2001).
skip to Main Content How To Write An Informative Essay Share your drawback with us and weâll give you work of the very best possible degree. It is impeccable checking informative essay examples on-line to check the required sorts of the essay, number of paragraphs, key points and possibly controversial ideas. You want no particular sign to start working on the project that requires specific information, figures, and analyses. Today, writers are likely to support necessary public issues and concepts, present their significance and real nature in private writings. Regardless of your aim, learn every checked material fastidiously to offer a broad viewpoint and distinctive arguments. It is a key to tutorial success and impressive ratings, something that makes audience excited a few written piece. Remind college students that they’ve already reviewed the weather of a strong focus assertion of their Language Dive. Start the conclusion with a recap of the subject sentences of each physique paragraph to remind the reader of the primary pieces of knowledge you need them to take away. Next, remind them of the thesis assertion in order that they join the items of knowledge to the general function of the essay. It refers to a sketch of how your factors will seem in the body. Similarly, a superb outline ends in a clean move of an essay. Therefore, research is crucial to assist decide what theme to debate within the article. Informative writing develops information from credible sources. All examples, definitions quotations, and details have to be from legitimate references. Therefore, always evaluation your work after completion, by studying via the supplied instructions. This can reveal whether or not you could have surpassed the anticipated word depend. Therefore, first, establish the technique to approach the query at hand earlier than you begin writing. Another tip to keep in mind is the need for an outline. E06.B-K.1.1.three Analyze intimately how a key individual, event, or thought is launched, illustrated, or elaborated in a text (e.g., via examples, anecdotes, or sequence of steps). CC.1.2.6.E Analyze the authorâs construction by way of the use of paragraphs, chapters, or sections. CC.1.4.6.V Conduct brief research initiatives to answer a query, drawing on a quantity of sources and refocusing the inquiry when applicable. When studying an informative article, the reader learns about the place the subject takes place. In a July 4th event article, the informative article tells the reader where the event is happening. 18) Additional resources include a database of informative articles associated to design. An essayist writes a well-known essay if chatting with a single reader, writing about both themselves, and about specific subjects. Anne Fadiman notes that “the genre’s heyday was the early nineteenth century,” and that its greatest exponent was Charles Lamb. Properly chosen matter helps reach spectacular educational success. College students choose troublesome themes for custom educational papers. The difficultness of chosen topic supplies low outcomes. You are free choosing fascinating, provocative informative essay topic that gathers consideration of different individuals. Use one main supporting element per paragraph within the physique of your essay. The physique of your essay is the half between the introductory paragraph and the conclusion paragraph. Select primary details from your analysis that demonstrate your general thesis . The essay prompt will usually inform you things similar to whether or not the essay must be handwritten or typed, and what font type and size to make use of. It is the work of the writer to provide you with a topic he or she thinks is worth explaining. Afterward, gather content from blogs, websites, or forums to identify details about your subject of curiosity. Pick one idea that you’re snug with and analysis it. Don’t miss our tips & tricks! We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info. Never Miss a Blog! We don’t spam! Read more in our privacy policy Back To Top ×Close search
International Instruments Protecting Refugees’ Rights The 1951 United Nations Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, treaties in international law, are key instruments outlining the rights of refugees, as well as the obligations of member-states in realizing these rights and protecting displaced people. Up to date, 148 nation states have signed one or both of these documents, while numerous nations have yet to ratify them. First, I briefly discuss what it means to be a member-state of the convention. Then, I look at the Malaysian context and how the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) operates in the country. Signing the convention mentioned above is to accept the UN definition of a refugee: “Someone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion”. Member-states are required to safeguard that such individuals are protected and not sent back to their country of origin where they face persecution and serious threats to their lives and rights. Moreover, signatory states are expected to work with UNHCR and to not penalize individuals seeking asylum for committing migration offences. Furthermore, members-states are obliged to provide basic services for refugees, such as ensuring that they have access to the legal system, to primary education, formal employment, and to health care facilities. Being a Refugee in Malaysia and UNHCR in the Malaysian Context Malaysia has not signed neither the 1951 Refugee Convention nor the 1967 Protocol, which means that it is not obliged to provide protection and support for refugees, and in fact, to even recognize their refugee status. It would be beneficial for the country to improve its legal framework to address the needs and ensure the realization of the rights of refugees. Currently, refugees can be treated as undocumented migrants, which puts them at risk of being charged for immigration offences and thus, of facing imprisonment, detention or deportation. Refugees do not have access to formal employment, although many do work informally, nor do they have access to formal education. Many do, however, send their kids to school, such as to the school program offered by the Malaysian Social Research Institute, where I am interning, which provides primary and secondary education to refugee children. Displaced people have access to health care facilities, but without a UNHCR card they are at risk of being reported to the police by health care personnel, which is very common. Even those who do hold a UNHCR card have reported threats, harassment and/or abuse by police officials. A UN refugee card also provides a 50% discount for health care services. However, many still find it difficult to access these services, as the fees are often unaffordable and because of language barriers. Asylum seekers, who are waiting for their cases to be processed at UNHCR, do not get the 50% discount. The UNHCR has recently decided to issue one type of identity card to both asylum seekers and registered refugees in order for everyone to receive the 50% discount. However, a number of political figures are opposing this change. The UNHCR began operations in Malaysia in 1975 when Vietnamese refugees were seeking asylum. For the following two decades, UNHCR supported the Malaysian government to resettle Vietnamese refugees in various countries and to also repatriate many when it was safe to do so. Although Malaysia may not be a member-state, it has been cooperating with the refugee agency to address the needs of asylum seekers in hope of resettling them since UNHCR’s first operations in the country. UNHCR works closely with government organizations, with NGOs and civil society organizations to support displaced people. The Malaysian government sees the country as a transition point and pushes for the resettlement of refugees, as leaders have stated that they are not able to provide long-term support for displaced people. Since there are thousands of individuals and families entering the country to seek asylum, Malaysia continues to allow UNHCR to operate but this could change at any moment because it is not a member-state. The government could decide to close down the Refugee Agency’s offices, just like the Thai government forced UNHCR to suspend services to Myanmese/Burmese asylum seekers in 2004 for a few months. This poses a risk for the agency and the many individuals it serves, which is why organizations and civil society are advocating for the Malaysian government to sign the convention and expand its support of refugees. Here is the link where you could read the 1951 Refugee Convention and find more information about the UNHCR
Artificial Intelligence Forecasts Micro-Courses As A New eLearning Trend Artificial Intelligence Forecasts Micro-Courses As A New eLearning Trend Summary: Microlearning is the concept of gaining knowledge in small units in a short period of time. Trend-forecasting Artificial Intelligence predicts strong micro-education growth in the eLearning system over the next 4–5 years. Let's figure it out. Micro-Courses: The Future Of eLearning After some decline in 2016, the eLearning market continues to grow rapidly. Investors are still quite willing to invest in educational startups. One of the most promising areas in EdTech today is microlearning. Micro-courses are a format of educational content that can be consumed in 15–20 minutes; for example, while standing in line for coffee or on the way to work. Such courses are usually presented in the form of short videos accompanied by a large amount of visual content (pictures, illustrations, and so on). Signum.AI "Focusing On Trends'" predictive analysis revealed that the microlearning market is growing at about 46% per year and predicts that it will continue such rapid growth until at least 2024. Initially, microlearning was seen as a tool for quick and effective corporate learning. However, it seems that the scope of this method can be much wider, and it is possible to introduce microlearning technology into the educational process in higher education schools and continuing education courses. Microlearning Trend Global courses that require months of deep immersion are increasingly being replaced by microlearning or point-by-point training. Artificial Intelligence and chatbots are part of such decisions. They can ask what users are looking for and offer content in response to the request. Another technique that allows you to connect small educational modules in microlearning into a single system is educational artifacts. During the classes, students can work on creating some material objects that will become a reminder of the training at the end of the course. Example: Developers added an element of gamification to a course intended for engineers. After passing each lesson, users get new instructions on how to create a Star Wars X-Wing Fighter from office supplies. Participants are happy to assemble the model, photograph it, and post it on social networks. Most students now have a fighter on their desktops as a reminder of the course passed and the knowledge acquired. Advantages Of Microlearning • Time It’s easier for people to sign up for a course if they know that they will probably be able to allocate time for it. • Quick results If you have something to brag about after each lesson, this is a great motivation to continue training. • Engagement Since the student can quickly get results and rewards (if you add elements of gamification to the course), this leads to a high level of student involvement. • Flexibility If the company supporting microlearning requires frequent changes, you can easily replace the information blocks without having to rebuild the entire course. • Low cost You can use content that has already been created. For example, recordings from a webinar or lecture notes will fit perfectly. What Is The Perfect Micro-Course? The first important characteristic of microlearning is the short duration of content units. In the learning process, breaks can be counterproductive. At the same time, the habit of a modern person to obtain information from several sources simultaneously leads to an increase in potential distractions. When deciding on the length of the training module, the maximum time of student attention is also important. The next feature is the need and sufficiency of the information. The task of creating content is the selection of only the content that is currently needed to solve specific problems. The next step will be to present the selected information in a concise and concentrated form. Another important feature of microlearning is maximum mobility (i.e., the ability to learn at work and/or to implement remote learning). Here we turn to the importance of training and modern technologies interactions. An example is the so-called “mobile learning.” Currently, each employee or student has a smartphone that allows you to access the necessary information 24/7. Thus, you can avoid additional costs for expensive equipment and its maintenance by investing these resources into a modern training management system. Students get the opportunity to quickly access the necessary information as well as receive an individual approach to eLearning. The rapidly changing world forces us to look for new ways to adapt that will help us successfully socialize and remain competitive. Given the fact that technological progress is largely responsible for the new realities of the educational environment, the future of learning and educational activities are seen in the synergy of studying and modern information technologies. This has become an emerging trend in eLearning and will be for at least the next several years.
Matriarch Madness: Mechanism of Social Parasitism and Colony Takeover in Ants Iwai, H., Mori, M., Tomita, M., Kono, N., & Arakawa, K. (2022). Molecular evidence of chemical disguise by the socially parasitic spiny ant Polyrhachis lamellidens (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) when invading a host colony. bioRxiv. Although ants can be regarded as unwanted pests that invade homes and businesses, they actually serve an important ecological purpose. They are instrumental in decaying wood into tiny pieces that will ultimately become part of the soil. Also, some feed on insects, including those that can be harmful forest pests. Carpenter ants belong to the genus Camponotus and chew through wood to create tunnels for a nest that will ultimately grow their colonies. The queen ant is the most important colony member, as she is the sole ant that lays all the eggs. Worker ants protect her and must continuously travel outside the colony to look for food. These hard-working ants must remain alert though, because a lazy parasitic queen ant might be waiting in the background, ready to take over, kill the reigning queen, and trick the workers of the original colony into working for her. Carpenter ants are generally regarded as pests. But in their natural environment, they play an important role in breaking down wood and munching on insects that could be forest pests. Source: Wikimedia, Photo credit: Ryan Hodnett Off With Her Head! How does this happen? It all begins with a parasitic queen ant of a different species that has just recently mated. She invades the host colony and kills the host queen. Afterwards, the impostor queen lays her eggs, and the deceived host workers raise her young. Eventually, the host workers will die, and the parasitic ants will completely take over the colony. The trick for the invading queen though, is to cleverly disguise herself. Workers are trained to attack any outsider, so she must not arouse the suspicion of the host workers. Ants recognize nestmates by their cuticle hydrocarbon profiles (CHCs). Hydrocarbons are long molecules composed only of hydrogen and carbon atoms. The outside of the ant (cuticle) is coated with these hydrocarbons, which serve as an important source of chemical signaling. If a parasitic queen ant marches in with a different CHC profile than that of the rest of the nest, workers will instantly recognize this and behave aggressively towards her. In order to successfully invade the colony and destroy the reigning queen, nonresident queens must find a way to exactly mimic the CHC profile of the host group. This occurs via a process known as rubbing. In the rubbing process, the parasitic queen ant straddles a worker ant and rubs the body with her legs. This is all it takes to somehow acquire the host CHC profile. Up until now, little was known about the exact mechanism of CHC transfer: was it chemical camouflage or chemical mimicry? In the process of chemical camouflage, the parasite directly transfers the CHC profile from the cuticle of the host. Chemical mimicry, on the other hand, involves the parasite synthesizing the host CHC profile through its own biochemical pathways. Iwai et al. set out to clarify what exactly occurs during and after parasitic ant rubbing behavior. Hydrocarbons can possess a wide range of structures, such as the rings seen here. However, in ants, they all serve an important purpose in chemical signaling. Ants recognize the hydrocarbon profile of their nestmates and will act aggressively if an individual has a different profile. Source: Wikimedia, Photo credit: Giorgiogp2 Sophisticated Tracking The scientists used a carpenter ant species, Camponotus japonicus, as the host. The selected parasitic ant species was Polyrhachis lamellidens. First, individuals from both species of ants were collected from colonies in the wild and reared in a laboratory. Before they could go any further, there had to be a way to follow the CHC profile of the workers to determine if it was directly transferred to the P. lamellidens queens during rubbing. To accomplish this, the researchers constructed a special mix of hydrocarbons and applied this to the workers’ cuticle prior to any rubbing behavior. This mix of hydrocarbons contained carbon atoms that have just slightly different chemical properties; this allows the scientists to track or ‘label’ the carbon atoms and see if they are transferred. Then, newly mated P. lamellidens queens were introduced to C. japonicus workers. The queens were allowed to practice their rubbing behavior for 3 days. Afterwards, the queens were removed and introduced to a different set of C. japonicus workers. The scientists closely observed and recorded the behavior of the workers towards the disguised queen. They constructed four categories of behaviors: ignore, threaten, rush, and bite; the latter three were considered ‘aggressive.’ Workers accepted queen ants that had practiced rubbing behavior; no aggressive behavior was noted. The parasite queens clearly had the host ant CHCs, but had they synthesized them by themselves or had they stolen them? The queen ant of the colony is the sole ant that lays eggs. In this host-parasite relationship, the P. lamellidens queen exhibits rubbing behavior to disguise herself and acquire new workers to raise her young. Source: Flickr Photo credit: Tim Keppens Then, to determine if the CHC profile of the workers were directly transferred to the queens, they first extracted the hydrocarbons from the ants (both the hosts and the parasites). They vaporized the complex mix of hydrocarbons and used special machinery to analyze the constituents. The chemical components were separated based on properties such as boiling point and mass. Using the labeled carbon atoms, the scientists found that between 10-20% of the CHC profile of the queens contained the labeled carbon atoms that had been applied to the workers. Interestingly, the labeled CHC was also discovered in the postpharyngeal gland of the P. lamellidens queens. Perhaps most remarkable is that the queens retained the CHC disguise acquired form the host workers for at least 9 days, with no notable decrease measured. The Easy Way Finally, to confirm that chemical mimicry was not part of the ant’s disguise, expression levels of CHC-synthesis genes were studied. This was accomplished by first extracting RNA from both queen ants that had exhibited rubbing behavior and control queen ants that did not. RNA is ultimately used to make proteins, and in this case, the proteins of interest are the ones involved in synthesizing CHCs. In general, the amount of RNA at any given moment corresponds to the amount of proteins being synthesized. RNA comes from DNA, where genes are found. The researchers used a special process to construct DNA from the RNA they had extracted. The DNA was sequenced, and the expression levels of genes related to CHC-synthesis were compared. There was no significant difference in the expression levels of the ants that had engaged in rubbing behavior vs. those that did not. This confirms that the queen ants acquire their new CHC profile solely from the host; there is no biosynthesis of new hydrocarbons. Carpenter ants play an important role in a forest ecosystem but are sometimes in danger of parasitic species. These parasites destroy an entire colony by engaging in chemical disguise. This study not only reveals a spectacular mechanism of deceit but demonstrates a variety of approaches that can be used to address a single question. The scientists who directed this study used a combination of behavioral studies, chemistry and genetic sequencing to arrive at a fascinating conclusion. Reviewed by: Share this: Maria Marlin I am a plant pathologist living in Oregon and working for Oregon State University extension. I study soilborne and foliar pathogens that attack ornamental crops, but the vast majority of my time is spent conducting outreach! I train nursery workers in scouting and detecting signs and symptoms of plant disease. I love to write and share my love of science with others! In my free time, I love to horseback ride and adventure through the magical Pacific Northwest that I am so fortunate to call home. Whether it is chasing mountain summits, exploring the rugged coast, or basking in the silence of the mossy, misty, and moody forests, I am my happiest and most inspired when surrounded by nature. Leave a Reply
Nano foods Nanotechnology, covering a broad array of innovations, is about the manipulation or self-assembly of individual atoms, molecules, or molecular clusters into structures to create materials and devices with new or vastly different properties. In Greek the word 'nano' means 'dwarf'. In technical terms nanotechnology encompasses materials and devices with functional structures between 1 and about 100 nanometres. A nanometre is a thousandth of a thousandth of a thousandth of a metre (10-9m) - about 60,000 times smaller than a human hair in diameter. Nanotechnology's potential Allegedly nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionize the agricultural and food industry. Smart sensors could help the agricultural industry combat viruses and other crop pathogens through a more rapid disease detection. The use of alternative (renewable) energy supplies, and filters or catalysts to reduce pollution and clean-up existing pollutants could enhance environmental protection. There are also high expectations for ' smart delivery systems': nano capsules transporting pesticides, drugs or nutrients to be released at the exact spot (in plants, animals or human beings) where they are most functional and effective. Nanotechnology could pave the road to new food products as low fat milk, cheese, and ice cream that have the same taste as full fat products. That is why food and nutrition companies foresee a great deal of promise from nanotechnology in novel food products. By means of nanotechnology ingredients which naturally occur in food can be adapted for better taste, digestion or to address specific nutrition needs (e.g. babies, elderly or patients). Issues and concerns However, the application of this evolving technology may raise (further) concerns about issues such as food safety and ' naturalness'. Nano particles come close to the structure of natural barriers in nature and our body. It is still not clear what will happen when these particles cross these natural barriers. Consequently, both risk evaluation and consumer perceptions are issues to be addressed in the governance of the technology that differs from country to country. Although no widespread debate about nanotechnology is going on at this moment, it is by no means sure that new products or applications based on nanotechnology will be trusted by consumers.
In the picture below: The given point is C, I would like to select A and B, but not Z (which is closer to C than B but it's not immediately after in the LineString). Note that C is always ON the line but not a vertex of the line. enter image description here 2 Answers 2 You can find these points using ST_DumpPoints (docs) combined with the lag and lead window functions. First, we can set up some test data: CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE test (geom geometry); INSERT INTO test VALUES ('LINESTRING (1 1, 2 2, 3 3, 4 4, 5 5)'); Then, we can use ST_DumpPoints to get the coordinates in sequence: SELECT ST_DumpPoints(geom) AS dump FROM test; (5 rows) This returns a geometry_dump object, whose path field contains the index of the point, and whose geom field contains the point itself. Next, we can select from the above, using the lead and lag functions (I removed the ST_AsText calls for clarity): lag ((dump).geom, 1) OVER (ORDER BY (dump).path ASC) AS prev, FROM (SELECT ST_DumpPoints(geom) AS dump FROM test) sq; curr \| prev \| next POINT(1 1) \| \| POINT(2 2) POINT(2 2) \| POINT(1 1) \| POINT(3 3) POINT(3 3) \| POINT(2 2) \| POINT(4 4) POINT(4 4) \| POINT(3 3) \| POINT(5 5) POINT(5 5) \| POINT(4 4) \| (5 rows) Now, we have a recordset against which we can match a test point and find the next and previous points in the sequence: SELECT prev, next FROM <stuff above> WHERE ST_Equals(geom, 'POINT (4 4)'); prev \| next POINT(3 3) \| POINT(5 5) (1 row) • I'll try your solution in a moment. I have to say that point C is not a vertex of the line, so I should try to insert it in the line in some way. Dec 18, 2015 at 19:11 • Yup, that changes things. You might be better off using a combination of ST_AddMeasure and ST_LineLocatePoint. – dbaston Dec 18, 2015 at 19:52 I finally resolved simply with these steps: 1) creating a table with the individual segments ("dumped" from the linestrings.. actually I didn't use st_dump or similars, but I created the segments from the table containing all the points) 2) find the segments (AB) that intersect C points 3) calculate boundary of AB and dump the result to get points A and B However thank everyone for the precious help which made me understand many things. Your Answer
How to Make Trapdoors in Minecraft Trapdoor is one of the many blocks available in Minecraft that can be used for multiple purposes. It has a mechanism that allows you to open or close it so you can use it to make a pathway for hidden underground places. Another important aspect is that mobs can’t break it so you can use it at the entrance of your buildings or you can protect your precious treasures as well by putting them around it. You can mostly find them in a villager biome where they use it around the house windows and can also craft it which is not a difficult thing to do. Materials Required to Make a Trapdoor There are total 9 different trap doors available, 8 of them can be made by placing 6 of any wooden planks in a crafting table and the last one is the iron trapdoor that can be made using 4 iron ingots. Crafting wooden planks The first item that you need is the wooden logs and for that you need to find trees and then need to cut them as well. The tree that you can see in the image is the Oak tree which means that we are going to show you how you can make an Oak trapdoor. One oak log will give you 4 oak planks and as you need 6 oak planks, so you need to repeat this step twice. Now place 6 planks in a crafting table to get 2 pieces of trapdoors. Now, let’s take another example and make a different wooden trapdoor such as a birch trapdoor. For that, you need to find a birch tree and cut them just like you did with an oak tree to gather birch logs. After that place them again on a crafting table as you did before to make birch planks. Placing 6 birch wooden planks will give you 2 pieces of birch trapdoor. You can also make iron trapdoors for which you need to place 4 iron ingots in a crafting table that you can get by smelting iron ore in a furnace. Now place 4 iron ingots on a crafting to get one piece of iron trapdoor. The trapdoor is one of the numerous blocks in Minecraft that can either be used as a decorative or as a building material. It contains a mechanism that allows it to open and close, allowing you to utilize it to create a passage to a secret underground location. You can use it to protect your valuable treasure against the mobs as they are not able to break it. You’ll primarily find them in a villager biome, where they’re used to decorate home windows. You can also create them, which isn’t tough. About the author Taimoor Mohsin
Good stress versus bad stress The term stress has become a widely used word with a bad reputation. It is usually used to let people know not to give us more to deal with or to let them know how much we are doing, how busy and therefore important we are. In addition to the personal connotations that each of us gives to stress, in the following article we will look at areas where stress can be good and where it is bad. What is stress? It is not easy to find a generally acceptable definition of ‘stress’. Doctors, engineers, psychologists, management consultants, linguists, and laypeople all use the word in their own distinctive ways with their own definition. Stress is basically a ‘demand made on the adaptive capacities of the mind and body’. This definition is useful in three ways: (1) Stress can be both good and bad, (2) It is not so much the events that determine whether or not we are stressed, but our reaction to them, and (3) The definition tells us that stress is a demand on the capabilities of the body. If our capabilities are good enough, we respond well. If they are not enough, we give in. Due to the overabundance of stress in our modern lives, we tend to think of stress as a negative experience, but from a biological point of view, stress can be a neutral, negative or positive experience. Physiologists define stress as the way the body reacts to a stressor, real or imagined, a stimulus that causes stress. Acute stressors affect an organism in the short term; long-term chronic stressors. good stress The reality is that we experience some form of stress on a daily basis. If the level of stress relative to our ability to cope is balanced, good stress helps us get things done and get things done. If, for example, we suddenly realize that it is 12:00 pm and we still have to go to the store to buy food for lunch, we may experience an adrenaline rush, feel a bit rushed and, without However, get us out the door and back. in time to have lunch ready when the children return from school. bad stress Persistent stress that is not managed properly will lead to distress, anxiety, and potentially withdrawal behavior such as depression. It is not that we can identify a specific form of stress as useless, everything has the potential to become unhealthy over time if we do not resolve, learn to cope or adapt to what causes us stress. Leave a Reply
Skip to main content Water Cycle in a Bag You can make it rain indoors! In this experiment, you’ll explore earth science and the water cycle. With just a few materials you can create a demonstration that shows how Earth’s natural forces work. Back to Activity Finder • What do you know about water? • What happens in a water cycle? Does anything affect this? • What materials do you need for this activity? • How long will this activity take? • Gather your materials. • Smooth the ziplock bag out on a flat surface. Use the permanent marker to draw the water cycle from the Water Cycle Printable on the bag. (Draw carefully to avoid puncturing the bag.) • Pour ⅓ cup of water into the bag (avoid filling the bag more than halfway). Put one or two drops of blue food coloring into the water. Make sure to keep the bag upright. • Find a sunny window and tape the bag up. Tape the bag at a slight angle to simulate the runoff and collection stages of the cycle. • Check in on the water cycle bag at different times throughout the next few days. Do you see water droplets form along the bag from the condensation? Eventually, you’ll see streaks along the side of the bag as the droplets grow and drop down the side, representing precipitation. From there, the water will recollect and pool at the bottom. • How does this model of a water cycle mimic the water cycle we see on earth? • What did you learn that you didn’t know before? • Did you see water droplets in different stages at different times of the day? What could have affected this? • What would you change about this activity for the next time? • Ziplock bags • Permanent marker • 1/3 cup water • Blue food coloring (optional) • Tape Keep it Simple • Create a poster about the water cycle on Earth. What could you include that people may not know? What are some ways to make your poster attractive and visually pleasing? Take it Further
What do ‘neural network,’ ‘machine learning,’ and ‘deep learning’ actually mean? Artificial intelligence seems to have become ubiquitous in the technology industry. AIs, we’re told, are replying to our emails on Gmail, learning how to drive our cars, and sorting our holiday photos. Mark Zuckerberg is even building one to help out around the house. The problem is that the concept of ‘artificial intelligence’ is way too potent for its own good, conjuring images of supercomputers that operate spaceships, rather than particularly clever spam filters. The next thing you know, people are worrying about exactly how and when AI is going to doom humanity. Tech companies have partly encouraged this elision of artificial intelligence and sci-fi AI (especially with their anthropomorphic digital assistants), but it’s not useful when it comes to understanding what our computers are doing that’s new and exciting. With that in mind, this primer aims to explain some of the most commonly used terms in consumer applications of artificial intelligence — as well as looking at the limitations of our current technology, and why we shouldn’t be worrying about the robot uprising just yet. Read the source article at The Verge
Neurogenic bladder: What is neurogenic bladder? Neurogenic bladder is a condition where the bladder loses its normal ability to store urine and then urinate. There are two general patterns of neurogenic bladder dysfunction. The first is a dilated large capacity bladder, which does not empty well, like a floppy balloon. The other pattern is a very contracted bladder that is spastic (unable to relax), which leads to incontinence and high pressures within the bladder. In this type of neurogenic bladder, high pressures caused by the contraction of the bladder can be transmitted to the kidneys and cause renal failure. In neurogenic bladder, the function of the urinary sphincter can also be effected. Sphincteric function can be incompetent leading to urinary leakage or the sphincter can be spastic and unable to relax causing some patients to be dependant upon catheterization. What causes neurogenic bladder? The many causes of neurogenic bladder include spinal cord injury and neurologic diseases. There are a multitude of neurologic diseases that can lead to neurogenic bladder. These causes include disease like multiple sclerosis, transverse myelitis, cerebral palsy, diabetes, peripheral neuropathy, spina bifida, head injury, vertebral disk herniation, and stroke. How is neurogenic bladder diagnosed? One of the most helpful tests in the evaluation of neurogenic bladder is called a urodynamic test. Urodynamic testing is also called a cystometrogram (CMG). In this test a very small catheter is passed into the bladder and another catheter is placed into the rectum. The bladder is filled and several measures of the bladder and sphincter function can be determined. These measures can include the cause of incontinence, the capacity of the bladder, as well as the pressures in the bladder during bladder contraction as well as during filling of the bladder. This test allows the urologist to recommend a multitude of treatments depending upon factors like the cause of incontinence and the capacity of the bladder. It also allows or the identification of patients with dangerous pressures within their bladder that might lead to progressive damage to the kidneys and kidney failure. What are some of the treatments for neurogenic bladder? Medical therapy: Often the first line therapy for patients that have urinary urgency, frequency and leakage from neurogenic bladder (usually the spastic kind) is the use of several medicines known as anti-cholinergic medicines. These medicines act to relax the bladder and decrease leakage and urgency of urination from bladder spasms or overactivity. Anti-cholinergic medicines may cause side effects and often patients need to be changed from one medicine to another to find one that both works and is tolerated well. Treatment with anti-cholinergic medicines may be all that is required for patients that do not have severely contracted bladders with high pressures in the bladder. Botulinum toxin injection (Botox): Botulinum toxin is a drug that is used to paralyze muscles. This drug has been used in many applications and recently has been used in the bladder for overactive bladder and neurogenic bladders. The medicine is injected into the muscle of the bladder in a scope procedure done in clinic. The medicine acts to decrease the activity of the bladder muscle and may act to decrease the amount of leakage from bladder spasms and decrease dangerous pressures in the bladder. Unfortunately, the medicine only lasts between 3-6 months and then must be injected again into the bladder. Also the medicine is usually not covered by insurance when it is used in the bladder and often patients must purchase the medicine themselves with a prescription we provide. Botulinum toxin typically costs between $1000-1500 for the amount of the medicine needed (200 units). A possible side effect is that the bladder muscle becomes completely paralyzed and will not contract effectively. This is temporary, because the medicine only lasts between 3-6 months, however, during this time frame patients may need to catheterize in order to drain the bladder. For this reason this approach is best used when patients are familiar with self-catheterization. Botulinum toxin can also be used to treat patients with overactive sphincters and is injected at the level of the sphincter to allow unobstructed passage of urine. Bladder augmentation: Urinary diversion: What are the goals of treatment for neurogenic bladder? The goals for the treatment of neurogenic bladder is to eliminate bothersome leakage and create a low-pressure reservoir that will preserve kidney function. In many cases this involves conservative management with medical therapy or the use of botulinum toxin, but in other cases surgery may be indicated.
How to Write a College Application Essay How to Write a College Application Essay? Nowadays, most pupils ought to write some essays related to their curriculum during school. There are two benefits to writing these essays. Students can acquire new knowledge and skills in the field of correspondence and strengthen their previous skills. The skills you gain in writing these essays will ultimately help you in writing your college application essay. Although the application essay is not a requirement of several colleges, it is one of the essential admission requirements to most colleges. In order to avoid wasting time, it is better to check the website of the destination college before writing this letter. Of course, you may be wondering what the application essay is and the significance of this letter. In fact, the college application essay is your first and most important connection with your target college. Surely a large number of students are applying to get admission to your favorite college, and you will have many competitors. College admissions tend to get information about each applicant’s personality, academic level, and specific circumstances to get to know them well enough. How to Write a College Application Essay How to Write a College Application Essay A Summary of the Process of Writing a College Application Essay 1. Learn about each college’s values, culture, and visions In the first step, you have to prove your seriousness. You must convince the admissions boards that you have enough information about their values, culture, and visions. These three factors, values, culture, and visions, are crucial. Indeed every candidate has some superficial information about the college. What sets you apart is the deep and comprehensive knowledge. Each candidate must gain information such as the culture of the community around the university, the lifestyle at the campus, and the university’s educational priorities. 2. Choose the most influential moments of your life The next step is not very difficult. You need to give an overview of your life. It doesn’t matter which moments of your life you choose. Maybe an applicant selects a family meal or a trip with friends to explain. The important thing is to conceptualize stories properly and describe your personal world accurately. 3. Don’t hesitate, start writing just now Undoubtedly, the most challenging part of this process is writing. The applicant may be doubtful about the subject of the essay at first. This is natural and understandable. In the process of writing a college application essay, you have to write and edit it many times, and you may even reconsider the subject of the essay and start writing it again. What’s more critical than overcoming the difficulty of editing and choosing a topic is to start writing. 4. Identify the strengths of the initial draft The author’s main work begins after writing the initial draft. In this case, you have two ways. First, you can identify the weaknesses of the essay and blame yourself for them. The second and more logical way is to identify the strengths of the essay. First, highlight your text’s prominent and positive features, then try to expand and emphasize them in the next draft. 5. Revise, edit, and rewrite to the point of solace Now, it is time for the three most vital steps. These three steps are revise, edit, and rewrite. These three steps may seem vague to many readers, and they don’t know the exact explanation. Firstly, the process of reviewing the text and making the necessary changes is called revision. There are several additional points in each essay that cause vagueness. Editing means selecting these extra sections and deleting them. Finally, after completing the previous steps, the process of rewriting the new draft begins. 6. Consult with others and ask for their feedback Are you stuck for hours reviewing your writing? This is not very strange. Basically, each person has their own experiences and opinions. So, it is better to share your writing with one of your trusted people, such as family members or friends. Each person will give you comments after reading the essay. Use these comments to improve the essay. 7. Revise, edit, and rewrite again until you achieve the desired result Do the process of revising, editing, and rewriting several times to reach the desired result finally. You do not need to be too obsessive. Although each text has its deficiencies, there comes a time when you are ultimately satisfied with your writing. After that, the student gets rid of the stress and anxiety of writing. Tips for a Brilliant College Application Essay 1. Choose a topic that is imperative to you It’s better to talk about something that has affected your life, whether a book or a movie or even a personal experience. 2. Do not get involved in complicated topics College admissions want to get complete information about the applicant. Basically, the best subjects are the most ordinary ones. Topics related to daily life can introduce the student in the best possible way. 3. Reflect the effects of events The purpose of describing the events of daily life is not simply to publish the details of private life. In addition to telling personal stories, such as a summer trip, you should point out the events that have significantly impacted your personality and changed your attitude. 4. The correct structure of an essay Every story has a beginning, middle, and end. The overall shape of your text should be the same. The best place for an introduction is the first paragraph. Use the last paragraph for the conclusion. The space between the beginning and the end is the body of your essay. Students must narrate the main story in this section. The whole process of starting the introduction and reaching a conclusion should be very smooth and natural. 5. At least one other person should correct your essay The application process is challenging and very competitive. The college application essay plays an essential role. Therefore, the essay should not have any misspellings or grammar errors. You should check your text at least three times to ensure there are no flaws in the text. It is best to seek help from someone experienced in this field, such as a teacher or academic advisor. 6. Focus on one topic You have to convince the university in just 650 words that you are the right person for them. So, you can’t tell the whole story of your life. It is better to choose the right story and prove through it that you are a special, purposeful, and valuable person. 7. Check your text from a distinct perspective Leave it for a few days after writing the text. After a few days’ break, go to the essay, but you have to play the role of an admissions officer this time. Look at your writing from the perspective of an admissions officer and ask a few critical questions. Is your text engaging? Do your ideas make sense? Can this text give enough information about you to the reader? Is this text written by the student at all? 8. Create an Outline Each paragraph should have a specific point. In order for your text to have the necessary coherence and consistency, you need to create an outline. An outline will show how the text begin, continues, and how it ends. 9. Steer Clear Of Iteration When writing an essay, there are two things to keep in mind. Firstly, you need to ensure that part of your text doesn’t conflict with the other parts. Then, you should strongly avoid repetition. Also, be aware that the college application essay is not suitable for counting your awards or grades. 10. Reply to the inquiry being asked Don’t reuse a response to a comparable inquiry from another application. In this article, you found out how to write a college application essay . Still need help with your essay? More resources Back to top button
In this section, we're going to create a pie chart to show the relationship of parts to the whole. Learn how to create all types of charts and more with our hands-on Excel classes in NYC or online, with top instructors, step-by-step exercises, and more, at a state-of-the-art training facility. Pie Charts You can think of a pie that is broken up into several slices. We'll be able to see the entire pie as well as each individual piece that makes up the pie to create a 2D pie chart. All you need to do is click one cell within the data. You don't have to select all the data unless you want to make a pie chart just using a subsection. Then you'll actually select multiple parts of the table. But if I want to include the whole table, all I need to do is select one cell. I'll go over to the insert tab because I am inserting a chart and the type of chart that I want to insert is a pie chart. This icon is gonna be the most recognizable because it looks like a circle. I'll click here and then I'll create a 2D pie chart. And now I have a 2D pie chart. Now I want to change this chart and I want to turn it into a 3D pie chart. I'm following along with the exercise that's in the sheet. So after created 2D creating a 2D pie chart, I want to change it to a 3D pie chart. I'll head over to the chart design tab that is only going to be visibly defined in the chart. Then I'll click change chart type here. I'll look at the several options I have for the pie chart. And here's 3D. I could also create a donut pie chart as well, but I'll choose 3D pie. When I click ok. Now I have a 3D pie chart and you might say, hey, wait a minute. That doesn't look like 3D pie charts. Not that much different than what we just saw. Well, if you take a look closely, you see towards the bottom is a little bit of shadow here. But let's say I wanted to accentuate the 3D nature of the pie. This is not in your instructions, but here's a cool way that you can do that without going to charge styles. Because I can simply go to chart styles. I'm going to right-click. 3D Rotation And if you're working with a 3D pie chart, you will see an option called 3D rotation one click on 3D. The rotation opens up a side pane that will give you options for customizing your chart. Now I'm going to focus on the Y rotation and if I decrease the Y rotation, I will accentuate the 3D nature of the pie chart. Now you might be wondering what is X rotation? If I increase X rotation, this will begin to rotate the PI in three-dimensional space. So this might be useful if I want a certain part of the pie facing in a certain direction like maybe that blue slice right here in the instructions, they're asking you to pull away a piece of the pie pertaining to Sykes. And what I would like to do, though, is pull away the piece pertaining to Green. I can tell it's green because when I hover my mouse over the blue slice, a little tooltip comes up and says that it displays the total sales as well as green. Now, in auto, in order to pull away from this particular slice, I'm going to click three times in a very specific way. When I click the first time, I see dots all around the pie. That means the entire pie is being selected. Separating Slices So I need to click again just to select the blue slice. Second click. Now there are only three dots just around the slice. But I need one more click and this is a special click. It's gonna be a click and drag. So I'm going to click and drag this particular slice away from the rest of the pie. Now I'm able to separate that particular slice and during my presentation, I can highlight that particular part of the pie if I'm referring to a certain piece of the pie. So that is one type of pie chart that you can create in the class. You'll have an exercise that you can work on where you can try this yourself. So let's head over to that exercise. I'm going to close this format chart area pain. I'll scroll down towards the bottom and here's the exercise that we're gonna work with. Exercise: 2D Chart & Design I'm going to click anywhere in the data. And the first task is to use the above data to create a 2D pie chart. So I'll go to insert go to the 3D pie icon and choose 2D pie chart. Next, I want to make some changes to the layout, colors, and styles so I'll head over to layout quick layout and choose layout 6. Layout 6 is actually named layout 6. If you just hover your mouse. Were the different layouts you'll be able to make sure you're selecting the right one. Then monochromatic palette 9. If I don't know what that is, I'll head over to the monochromatic section and it's basically the ninth palette going down. So this is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And if I hover my mouse for just a bit, I'll see that that's the palette I'm supposed to select. Then I'll go to style eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, five. Hover. I can just confirm it actually says dilate. And there we go. Donut Pie Chart I've now completed Task 2 and now I need to go and change this 2D pie chart into a donut pie chart. So I'll click on change chart type because I want to change the type and of all the icons that over here that looks like a donut. This is the one that I'm going to guess is the type I'm looking for. And if I hover my mouse over that particular icon, I see a pop-up, a little tooltip that says Donut. I'll select that and click, OK. The final part of the exercise. I want to pull away the piece pertaining to green. If I'm not too good with colors, I don't have to be, because if I hover my mouse over the slices, I'll see the name of the person that slice belongs to and the 7 percent is green. I'll click once, I'll click twice third time, click and drag. Selecting Labels Now I'm selecting the labels. You want to be careful. Don't select the label. You want to select the slice. So I'm going to go back here and make sure I don't do that. I'll go to the outer edge. One-click, two clicks. Now I'm going to click and drag and pull that piece away. So I was actually fortunate that I did select the label. If that happens to you, you'll know what to do. Just make sure you're selecting the pie slice and not the label. So in this section, we covered how to create a pie chart. Turn it into a 3D or donut pie chart and pull away a piece. If you're looking to focus on a certain slice of the pie when you're creating your reports. Learn Excel Live Online or Corporate Training Learn Excel from the comfort of your home with live online training from anywhere or have us come to your offices anywhere in the US for corporate training in Excel. Learn more about Excel training in your location:
No, thank you Space Force launch sends the X-37B space plane on a new mission The second mission to orbit for the newest American military branch carries experiments for NASA and others. The X-37B sits ready for launch. US Space Force On Sunday, the US Space Force marked its second launch since becoming the newest branch of the American military in December, sending the X-37B space plane into orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The autonomous spacecraft lifted off atop an Atlas V rocket at 9:14 a.m. ET, some 24 hours after poor weather conditions forced the launch's postponement on Saturday. Barbara Barrett, secretary of the US Air Force, announced the liftoff on her Twitter page, calling the mission "a prime example of government-industry partnerships enhancing National Security Space." The uncrewed spacecraft, which looks like a mini space shuttle, has been a secretive Air Force project for years, staying in orbit for up to two years per flight and doing who knows what. But this first X-37B flight under the Space Force comes with a new window into some parts of the mission. Now playing: Watch this: Robotic US Air Force space plane launches on its sixth... Earlier in May, Barrett said the space plane will be deploying a small satellite called FalconSat-8, carrying several experiments on behalf of the Air Force, NASA and US Naval Research Lab. Among other things, the experiments will look at the effects of radiation on seeds and at transforming solar power into radio frequencies that could be transmitted to the Earth's surface. Barrett announced the flight of the X-37B on May 6 during a livestreamed event hosted by the Space Foundation, alongside the Space Force's Chief of Space Operations, Gen. John "Jay" Raymond. "This will be the first X-37B mission to use a service module to host experiments," Randy Walden, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, said in an accompanying release X-37B maker Boeing on May 6 tweeted a short video showing the space plane going through its paces. The first Space Force launch took place in March, when a national security communications satellite blasted off from Cape Canaveral. The US Space Force got its first push in an aside by President Trump during a speech in 2018, and it was formally established in December 2019. The first new branch of the US armed forces in decades, Space Force comes under the supervision of the secretary of the Air Force. The last X-37B mission ended in October when the space plane -- there are two of them -- landed after 780 days in orbit. In total, over the course of five missions, the two orbital vehicles have spent seven years and 10 months (or 2,865 days) circling Earth. Now playing: Watch this: The US is getting a Space Force
Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 441 Illustration of PDF document Download The Graveyard Book Study Guide Subscribe Now Published in 2008, Neil Gaiman’s offbeat novel The Graveyard Book is a quirky tale about Nobody (Bod) Owens, a human boy who was raised in a graveyard. Bod came to the graveyard as a toddler, escaping his parents’ and sibling’s murderer, by the man Jack. Adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Owens, Bod is raised among an eccentric cast of characters, most of whom are dead and inhabit the graveyard. Tutored by the spirits and given Freedom of the Graveyard, he learns special talents like “fading” in order to live in the graveyard comfortably and undetected, safe from the man Jack, who is still searching for him. On his journey through childhood and adolescence, he befriends a human girl, helps the spirit of a witch, opens and subsequently escapes a ghoul-gate, dances the Macabray (a dance of the dead), and even attends school outside of the graveyard, where he confronts the school bullies. The characters in Bod’s life are unique and influential. Silas, Bod’s guardian and teacher, exists between the worlds of the living and dead, and can move fluidly between the two in order to provide Bod with food and necessities to survive. Silas is a voice of wisdom and a mentor to Bod. Bod is also taught by Miss Lupescu, a wolf-woman who imparts some very important lessons that end up saving his life. Combined with friends like Liza Hempstock, the graveyard witch, and Scarlett Perkins, Bod’s human friend, Bod’s experiences are in part shaped by his friends and teachers. The Graveyard Book can be compared to the Harry Potter series for its supernatural elements and orphaned protagonist. Bod’s family, like Harry Potter’s, was killed by a murderer who continues to antagonize the one member of the family they were unable to kill. While Bod’s biological family did not raise him, he has a collective, non-traditional family in the spirits of the graveyard. However, his adventures stem from his own choices, and not the guidance or direction of parental influence. Themes of community, friendship, and family abound in this unconventional tale of growing up. The Graveyard Book upturns the traditional idea of home and safety. In a bit of twisted logic, for Bod, being among the dead in a graveyard is safer than residing among the living, because to reside among the living means a certain death. Although it is difficult to leave the safety of the “known life” behind, Bod must move ahead in order to truly live. Of all the gifts the graveyard gave him, the most valuable is the understanding that, in the words of Silas, “life is potential.” Extended Summary Download PDF PDF Page Citation Cite Share Link Share Last Updated on May 5, 2015, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 2025 The Childhood of Nobody Owens The Graveyard Book begins as a woman, a man, and a child are murdered by a strange man called Jack. The baby of the family, a child who has just learned to walk, has no idea he is in danger. However, he wakes up and wants to explore. He climbs out of his crib, descends the stairs, and walks out the front door. He follows the road to a graveyard, and the murderer pursues him. A pair of ghosts named Mr. and Mrs. Owens decide to protect the little boy. When the murderer is gone, Mr. and Mrs. Owens adopt the baby as their own son. They name him Nobody Owens, which is soon shortened to the nickname Bod. The Owenses cannot get food and such things for the baby, so a strange, dark character named Silas offers to be the boy’s guardian. Silas is neither alive nor dead, and unlike the Owenses he can leave the graveyard whenever he pleases. All the ghosts of the graveyard meet, and after a long argument they decide to give the child “the Freedom of the Graveyard.” As he grows older, this allows him to behave like a ghost, passing through walls and entering graves. No new graves have been added to this graveyard for hundreds of years, so it is old and run-down. Today it is a historical site and nature preserve, so local families often go there for outings. When Bod is about four, he befriends one of these visitors, five-year-old Scarlett Amber Perkins. He tells her all about the ghosts, and together they search for the graveyard’s oldest inhabitant. At the end of their search, Bod and Scarlet climb down a long staircase to an ancient barrow. There they encounter a creature called the Sleer, which tries to frighten them away from the barrow’s treasure. Bod, who is familiar with the ways of the dead, quickly realizes that the Sleer is an imaginary creature and not an actual person. He is not frightened, but he is not interested in the treasure the Sleer guards either. He and Scarlett return to the park, where Scarlett’s parents are looking for her frantically. They take her away, and soon afterward they decide to move to Scotland. Scarlett returns to the graveyard only once more to say good-bye. The summer Bod is six, Silas goes away and leaves a strange, strict woman named Miss Lupescu to care for the boy. Bod dislikes Miss Lupescu’s cooking, and he resists the lessons she teaches, which seem superfluous to him. He already learns reading, writing, and Haunting from two graveyard ghosts; to him it seems pointless to memorize Miss Lupescu’s long lists of strange facts, such as the ways to call for help in every language in the world. One day he wanders off to sulk, and he meets three small, creepy creatures who turn out to be ghouls. The ghouls take Bod on a frightening journey into their country, and they say they will make him one of them. They claim to be fearless, but they are scared of flying creatures called night-gaunts. Bod, remembering one of Miss Lupescu’s lessons, calls for help in the night-gaunts’ language. They summon Miss Lupescu, who comes after him in the shape of an enormous dog. He learns that she is a Hound of God, a tenacious creature who chases down evil beings. The living generally fear Hounds of God, calling them werewolves, but Miss Lupescu rescues Bod from the ghouls and brings him home. Afterward the two become better friends. About two years later, Bod accidentally falls out of a tree into unconsecrated ground. He meets Liza Hempstock, an ugly teenage girl who was drowned and burned as a witch many centuries ago. Bod decides it is not fair that, as a witch, Liza has no headstone for her grave. He decides to get her one, but he does not have much money. He sneaks into the Sleer’s barrow and steals a brooch from the grave. Then he leaves the graveyard—which he is not supposed to do—and goes to a pawn shop in town. The pawn broker, Abanazer Bolger, locks Bod into a side room and calls his friend, Tom Hustings. They have a card from the man Jack, and they suspect Bod is the boy Jack is looking for. They get drunk and argue about which is worth more money, the boy or the brooch. Liza Hempstock appears to Bod in the room where he is locked up. He has so far failed to learn to Fade like a ghost, but Liza helps him do so. When the men cannot find him, they fight and end up passing out. Bod sneaks out of the shop, taking the brooch with him. When he gets home, he returns the brooch to its barrow. However, his adventure was not a total loss. With a paperweight he stole from Abanazer Bolger’s pawn shop, he makes a headstone for Liza. Some time later, on a cold morning in winter, the graveyard begins to hum with preparations. People keep singing, “All must dance the Macabray,” but Bod does not know what this means. Nobody, not even Silas or the Owenses, will explain what is going on. A group of living people from the town below come into the graveyard, and Bod watches closely as one of them, the Mayoress, cuts several baskets full of white flowers. Forgetting that he is not supposed to leave the graveyard, Bod follows the Mayoress into town and watches her pin flowers on the people. He gets one for himself and, hearing strange music, marches to the town square. At midnight, the dead march into the town and dance with the living. Bod dances with many of his friends until the clock strikes midnight again. The dead disappear, and the living go sleepily home. The next day, the ghosts refuse to admit what happened. Bod keeps pestering them until one of them, Josiah Worthington, says testily that the dead do not discuss the danse macabre with the living. It is the first time Bod has felt very different from his friends and family in the graveyard, and the experience leaves him with many questions. He takes them to Silas, but Silas—who is neither alive nor dead—finds the dance a mystery. In the middle of The Graveyard Book, the narrative shifts far away from the graveyard to a large group of men in a conference room at the back of a hotel. One man stands at the front of the room making announcements, but this does not seem to be the reason for the gathering. At a table near the front, the man Jack sits arguing with a silver-haired companion. Everyone around them pretends to listen to the speaker at the front, but they are really listening to the argument. The silver-haired man says Jack has failed. He says Jack was supposed to kill a whole family, including the baby. Ten years have passed, and their group is out of time. They cannot let the boy grow up. Jack argues with the silver-haired man, saying he has clues to follow. The silver-haired man says that time is running out and that Jack must get rid of the boy. Growing Up in the Graveyard When Bod turns twelve, he decides he wants to go to school. By now he knows a great deal about being dead, including how to Fade and Frighten, but he does not know about living. He needs to learn because he wants revenge on the man who murdered his family. Silas reluctantly agrees to let Bod go. At first Bod attends school partly Faded, so that nobody notices him. This works fine until he stands up to a pair of bullies, Nick and Mo. Bod uses his ghost skills of Fading and Frightening, but he draws attention to himself in the process. When Silas finds out, he is furious, and he says that Bod can never go back to school again. Bod shouts at Silas and runs away, but Liza Hempstock comes after him and convinces him not to leave his friends and family without at least saying good-bye. Bod decides to return home, but before he can get there, Mo spots him in town. She makes up a story about Bod committing vandalism, and she reports him to her uncle, who is a police officer. Silas rescues Bod, and afterward they both apologize. Bod admits that he acted reckless in a dangerous world, and Silas admits that it was foolish to try to protect Bod totally from life. A couple of years later, when Bod is fourteen, Silas begins disappearing for long periods. He does not share his plans or whereabouts with anyone in the graveyard, but he goes off to fight the mysterious organization that wants to kill Bod. In his absence, Scarlett Amber Perkins returns to town with her mother. At first she has little memory of her early childhood in Bod’s town, but one day she gets lost and stumbles into the graveyard where she used to play. As her memories resurface, her friendship with Bod rekindles. Scarlett also befriends a kindly historian, Mr. Frost, who is doing research in the graveyard. When Scarlett learns about Bod’s history, she goes to the library to research the murders of his parents and sister. She finds a short newspaper article, and she is surprised to learn that the murder took place in the house where Mr. Frost now lives. Mr. Frost does some research too, and he invites Scarlett to come visit him to learn about the information he uncovers. Scarlett brings Bod, and Mr. Frost takes Bod into the attic room he slept in as a baby. There Mr. Frost reveals himself to be the man Jack. He tries to stab Bod, but Bod Fades and escapes, taking Scarlett with him. The man Jack and four of his friends—all of whom are also named Jack—follow Bod to the graveyard. All of the Jacks want to kill Bod, so Bod hides Scarlett in the Sleer’s barrow and confronts them. He makes one Jack fall into a grave and break his leg. He corners three more by the ghoul-gate, where he pumps their leader for information and learns about an organization called the Jacks of All Trades. This group has existed for thousands of years, and its members want to kill Bod because, thousands of years ago, a prophesy predicted Bod would be their ruin. By now, Bod has realized that Silas is destroying the rest of the Jacks of All Trades, so he knows the prophesy is coming true. He closes the ghoul-gate on the three Jacks. The last Jack left is the one who killed Bod’s family. He pursues Scarlett to the Sleer’s lair, where he threatens to kill her in order to lure Bod out. Bod knows the Sleer wants a master—which is just a dead person—so he tricks Jack into offering to fill that role. Jack, lured by the sense of power that gives him, falls into the trap. The Sleer kills him and drags him into the barrow’s wall. Bod has won. However, now Scarlett thinks he is a monster. When Silas returns, he erases all her memories of the incident. Bod continues living in the graveyard for a year or so after he defeats the Jacks of All Trades, but by the time he is fifteen he finds that he cannot always see ghosts anymore. One day people begin saying good-bye to him, and Silas explains that it is time for Bod to go out and experience life. At first, it frightens Bod to realize the graveyard can no longer be his home. However, he soon gets excited. He decides to travel everywhere, meet as many people as he can, and get into and out of trouble. He bids good-bye to his mother at the graveyard gate, and he goes out to join the living world. Chapter Summaries

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