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Sunday, May 13, 2012 Researchers Develop Wireless Heart Pump System The wireless mechanical pump system (Source: University of Washington) The development of a wireless system allows the patient to use mechanical pumps over a long period of time without worrying about infections in the stomach from cords Joshua Smith, study leader and a University of Washington associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, along with Dr. Pramod Bonde, a heart surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a team of researchers, have created a wireless mechanical pump that could improve a heart patient's quality of life. Traditional mechanical pumps, used to maintain failing hearts, were originally created as a temporary fix until the patient could receive a heart transplant. But these pumps have improved over time and can be a part of a patient's body for years. The problem with this is that a power cord is routed through the patient's stomach, and 40 percent of patients get infections in this area because of the cord. These infections lead to hospitalization and can even be fatal. But Smith and his team have relieved this problem with the development of a wireless system that allows the patient to use mechanical pumps over a long period of time without worrying about infections in the stomach. "My primary interest is to help heart failure patients recover, and they can only recover if they are not tethered to a battery or external power supply so they can exercise and train their heart to recover," said Bonde. "With wireless technology, patients can be free and they can have a chance to move around and exercise like normal human beings." The wireless system works through a concept based on inductive power, where a transmitting coil sends electromagnetic waves out at a certain frequency and a receiving coil takes in the energy and uses it to charge a battery. This system is especially unique in that it doesn't require the tool to touch the charger like similar systems, such as cell phone charging pads. Also, distance from the charger doesn't affect the amount of power given to the patient's pump. "Most people's intuition about wireless power is that as the receiver gets further away, you get less power," said Smith. "But with this technique, there's a regime where the efficiency actually doesn't change with distance." The power stays constant over distances the same diameter as the coil. So a one-foot transmitter coil could send consistent power over the distance of one foot. In tests, the researchers were able to power a mechanical heart pump using a small receiver coil that is 1.7 inches across. Power transmitted reliably with an efficiency of 80 percent. The researchers are working to make the system apart of a vest, where an external transmitter coil would connect to a battery or power cord, and a small receiver coil would be implanted under the patient's skin. The receiver coil would connect to a battery that holds a two-hour charge, allowing infection-free freedom. "The potential for wireless power in medical fields goes far beyond powering artificial hearts," said Bonde. "It can be leveraged to simplify sensor systems, to power medical implants and reduce electrical wiring in day-to-day care of the patients." Post a Comment Thank you very much for your opinion Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger... View My Stats
Skip to content Convict Voyages: James Dalton and the Escape to Vigo James Dalton vividly experienced the strong arm of the law at a young age when he sat between the knees of his father, who was riding in a cart that was taking him to the gallows to be hanged for robbery. Crime evidently ran strong in the Dalton family. His father was originally a tailor from Dublin, Ireland, who fought in the wars in Flanders and rose to become a sergeant before going to London, where he became a notorious card cheat. He was executed for robbing one of his marks. After his death, Dalton’s mother married a butcher, but was soon caught committing a felony and was transported. His sister was also said to be transported to the American colonies for a separate crime. Yet, the examples set by watching each member of his family punished for their crimes failed to deter him from following in their footsteps. Starting at a young age, Dalton committed all kinds of robberies, burglaries, and other crimes in and around London, and he soon started working for Jonathan Wild’s criminal organization. On March 3, 1720, Dalton found himself in court, however, charged with stealing some aprons. He was convicted on the evidence of William Field, one of the leaders of Wild’s gang, and was sentenced to transportation. In May, he was loaded on to the Honour, a convict ship commanded by Capt. Richard Langley. Wild must have been doing some housecleaning in his organization around this time, because several other members of his gang appeared on board the convict ship along with Dalton, including William Bond, Charles Hinchman, Martin Grey, and James Holliday. The Honour set sail for Virginia, but it quickly hit a storm off the coast of Spain and began taking on water. Short on sailors, Capt. Langley was forced to let some of the convicts on board out of their irons so that they could help keep the ship afloat. Dalton took the opportunity to form a conspiracy, and when he gave the signal, the convicts grabbed some arms, bound the captain, and took possession of the ship. They forced the captain to drop them off at Cape Finisterre in Spain and, after robbing the ship, set it free. James Holliday later claimed that he had to pay 5 shillings to go to shore with the rebellious group. To Vigo After landing, sixteen of the convicts, including Dalton and the other members of Wild’s gang, made their way across the mountains to Vigo. Soon after they arrived in town, they ran into their old captain, who captured and brought them to the mayor. To the frustration of Langley, the mayor refused to prosecute them and even issued them passes to travel through the country. When the convicts realized, though, that the passes said “English thieves” on them, they decided to burn them and take their chances by avoiding towns as they traveled through the countryside. The group eventually reached the north coast, boarded a Dutch ship, and made their way back to England via Amsterdam. Despite the rebellion, the Honour eventually made it to Virginia, although under the command of a different captain, Robert Russell. Some reports indicated that the group killed the captain during the affair, but William Bond denied it, claiming that Langley traveled safely to the West Indies and died in Virginia. Slowly but surely, the convicts who escaped to Vigo and returned to England were captured and convicted for returning early from transportation or for other crimes. Dalton was discovered in Bristol after committing a burglary, and Wild had him transferred back to London where he faced trial on March 1, 1721 for returning early from transportation. He was joined at the stand by Charles Hinchman, Martin Grey, and Jasper Andrews, who had also escaped to Vigo, along with four other returned convicts who also faced the same charge. Even though they were all found guilty, Hinchman and Grey were the only ones from the Honour who were hanged for the crime. Inexplicably, both Dalton and Andrews escaped the gallows, despite being found guilty and disturbing the prisoners while awaiting execution. So egregious was their behavior while in prison that the Ordinary of Newgate described how those who went on to be executed singled Dalton and Andrews out during their last speeches: At the Moment of their Deaths, they were loud in their Exclamations to God, declared they died in Charity towards all Men; but said they should have been more prepared for Death, had they not been disturbed by two Boys, Jasper Andrews and James Dalton, who interrupted their Devotions; and even as they slept play’d vile Tricks, burning their Feet, and pouring Water, &c We do not know how Dalton and Andrews escaped execution, but Gerald Howson, Wild’s biographer, speculates that Wild was responsible for at least getting Dalton off. Both of them were transported instead, so they must have received some kind of conditional pardon. Later Years After spending several years in America kidnapping slaves and then selling them, Dalton returned to England but was almost immediately pressed into naval service. After fighting in the siege of Gibraltar in 1727, Dalton was back in London where he continued his life of crime. He was eventually caught in a robbery and was sentenced to death on evidence given by a professional false witness named John Waller. A Harlot's Progress3 Image via Wikipedia Before his execution, Dalton confessed to the Ordinary of Newgate that while in America he “debauch’d and ruin’d some Widows and Girls.” Several of his wives in London together visited him while he was in prison, and he claimed that he had many others, some of whom were transported or were left by him in America. His reputation of being a ladies’ man certainly must have played into the appearance of his name in Plate 3 of Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progess, where over Moll Hackabout’s bed is a box labeled, “James Dalton his Wigg Box.” At his death on May 12, 1730, Dalton was a well-known criminal, and his name was used to headline many collected accounts of notorious criminals for a long time afterward. Resources for this article: Learn More About Convict Transportation Smashwords: All e-book formats ($4.99). Visit Pickpocket Publishing for more details. Post a Comment
Wooden Windows Since ancient times, the tree is considered one of the best materials used in construction, and its modern relevance only repeatedly confirmed the correctness of the choice of our ancestors. Indeed, for many centuries the popularity of this type of building material is steadily increasing in various parts of the world. And in addition to human safety, wood has unique qualities that determined its demand in the manufacture of This natural material is a variety of designs included in the elements of buildings and structures. Is no exception and most popular tree in the manufacture of window designs. Factors affecting the demand for window blocks of wood a few, all of which are quite good and it makes sense to consider them the maximum amount. One of the principal is considered to be a high degree of ecological safety of timber structures window units for a man. Why the tree has this property? The fact that the wood does not emit absolutely no any toxic substances, and, moreover, is itself an excellent antiseptic. Microclimate in a room with installed wooden windows and similar to the material structure comprises a minimal amount of harmful bacteria and germs. The undoubted advantage that distinguishes Wood windows Fiberglass on the other, is their high strength at relatively low volume weight. Fibrous structure of wood attached to window assembly required resistance to bending loads and defines its durability in daily use. This is a natural feature of timber magnified, given the right bars to create a design of a window.
Textiles in Ghana Textiles in Ghana Free course Textiles in Ghana 5.2 History of adinkra Activity 18 Once you’ve watched the video, make a few notes on what you learnt about the history of adinkra. Download this video clip. Skip transcript: What is the history of Adinkra? Transcript: What is the history of Adinkra? Catherine (VO) The Ashanti people see Adinkra as an invention they took from other, vanquished people, and not as their own creation. It’s often said that Adinkra was introduced after the Ashanti victory over the 19th century Jaman king, Kofi Adinkra. That Adinkra is so recent is unlikely, as cloths datable to the early 19th century are evidence of Adinkra as a highlydeveloped art form. Both Kente and Adinkra seem to draw on a long developing tradition of experimentation. End transcript: What is the history of Adinkra? Copy this transcript to the clipboard Print this transcript What is the history of Adinkra? Take your learning further Request an Open University prospectus
Real World Health Care Blog “Fear is the mindkiller. Fear is the little death.” – Frank Herbert, Dune Amy Baxter In 1995, a scientific paper was published for the first time evaluating the prevalence of needle fear and its effect on accessing health care. Since then, studies suggest that the fear of needles is rising, afflicting a quarter of adults and two out of three children. Needle phobia seems to be more likely in people who are sensitive to a light touch and sharp objects, particularly those with the “red head pain” MC1R gene. While most people acquire needle phobia around age four to six, about three to five percent of people have a genetic predisposition to become lightheaded or nauseated or even to faint. But whether acquired or innate, fear not! Quite literally – here are nine ways to reduce the pain and fear of needing a needle at any age. 1. Pain Management. When time permits, needle pain can be greatly reduced by using topical pain relief – specifically, topical anesthetic numbing creams and gels — which numb the skin in 20-60 minutes. Fun tip: use Glad® Press-N-Seal rather than the commercial medical covers. It is more comfortable to remove and much less expensive. 2. Let your brain do its thing. Overwhelm other competing nerves with sensations that aren’t so painful. Studies have found that when someone’s hand is in ice water, they can handle more intense pain everywhere else in the body. This works both through something called gate control (e.g. cool water soothes a burn) as much as brain bandwidth. Vibration and cold have been studied together; when put between the brain and the pain (especially after numbing a shot area directly), they can decrease needle pain up to 80%. 3. Relax the muscles. Pushing medication into taut muscles makes it hurt more, now and later. Even passively stretched muscles hurt. Rather than bending over and going for a gluteal stick, try lying on your side with the buttocks muscles relaxed. Do the same for thigh shots; sitting up causes the muscles to be active keeping you balanced, so go for a side position. 4. Distract your mind. Counting and engaging in unrelated tasks can reduce pain by half. At a minimum, count corners, ceiling tiles, or holes in an air grate. Some studies have found that active engagement can be more effective at reducing pain for teens and adults. Drawing on an iPad game or finding items in “I Spy” apps, can work at any age. 5. Distract your senses. The brain can only process so much at one time. Buy five packs of sugar-free gum, mix the sticks, pick one at random, and try to figure out the flavor. Drink a slug of a cold, sweet beverage. Taste and smell are great senses to counter paying attention to pain. 6. Focus on something you can control. Whether you’re thinking about the health or life benefits of the shot, concentrate on that. Fertility shots, for example, can have an adorable payoff. Building an idea in your mind and mentally “going there” can help with pain. 7. Create a different sensation. Pinching your own finger and focusing on that or forcing a cough have both been shown to decrease needle pain. Squeezing your toes, stretching your calf, or making any distant body part more noticeable to your brain will take attention away from the area of pain. 8. Be a scientist. If you know you have multiple needle events coming up, keep records of what works best and what doesn’t. Being an observer, even of yourself, adds distance that can give you more control. More control = less fear. Less fear = less pain. 9. Speak up! Let your care team know you don’t like needles, and let them know what you have found what works for you. “You know how some people pass out with needles? Shots and I don’t get along, so let me tell you what works for me. I really appreciate you listening to me; it makes everything go so much better for both of us. What seems to help me is this: “____.” Even if you haven’t ever gotten lightheaded or passed out, reminding care providers of people who have can help establish that you understand that procedural pain is important and you give them credit for appreciating it, too. Do needles make you nervous? Have you found a strategy that reduces needle anxiety or pain? Post your experiences and tips to the comments section. You can reach Dr. Amy Baxter at Leave a Reply
The Nazarene Way of Essenic Studies The Most Notable Corruptions of Scripture The Academic Study of the Bible and its Textual Content An Historical Account of the Two Most Notable Corruptions of Scripture is a dissertation by the English Mathematician and Scholar Isaac Newton. First published in 1754, twenty-seven years after Newton's death, The Two Most Notable Corruptions of Scripture reviewed all the textual evidence available from ancient sources on two disputed Bible passages, First John 5:7 and 1 Timothy 3:16. First John 5:7 In the King James Version Bible, First John 5:7 reads: Using early Church writers, the Greek and Latin manuscripts and the testimony of the first versions of the Bible, Newton proved that the words "in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one," in support of the Trinity doctrine, did not appear in the original inspired Greek Scriptures. He then traced the way in which the spurious reading crept into the Latin versions, first as a marginal note, and later into the text itself. He showed that it was first taken into a Greek text in 1515 by Cardinal Ximenes on the strength of a late Greek manuscript corrected from the Latin. Finally, Newton considered the sense and context of the verse, concluding, "Thus is the sense plain and natural, and the argument full and strong; but if you insert the testimony of 'the Three in Heaven' you interrupt and spoil it." 1 Timothy 3:16 The shorter portion of this dissertation was concerned with 1 Timothy 3:16, which reads (in King James Version): Newton showed how, by a small alteration in the Greek text, the word "God" was inserted to make the phrase read "God was manifest in the flesh." He demonstrated that early Church writers in referring to the verse knew nothing of such an alteration. In the two hundred years and more since that treatise was compiled by Isaac Newton, only a few minor corrections have been necessary to the evidence he adduced. Yet it was only in the nineteenth century that Bible translations appeared correcting these passages. Historical Background Why did Newton not publish these findings during his lifetime? A glance at the background of the times may explain this. Those who wrote against the doctrine of the Trinity were still subject to persecution in England. As late as 1698 the Act for the Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness made it an offense to deny one of the persons of the Trinity to be God, punishable with loss of office, employment and profit on the first occasion, and imprisonment for a repetition. Return to The Nazarene Way main menu The Nazarene Way of Essenic Studies Email us at: Join our Essene Holy Communions email list Sign our Guest Book!
Be Tobacco-Free with E-Cigarettes! photoBy Mark Sebastian Throughout my entire life, I have never smoked a cigarette because of its cancer-causing agents of tobacco. From the facts and figures about tobacco, as seen in television and advertisements, it has made me tobacco-free ever since. There are about 443,000 deaths per year that accounts to cigarette smoking. It can lead to lung cancer, heart attacks, and expose others of secondhand smoke. In reality, cigarettes are indeed harmful to a person’s health. Some have taken nicotine patches, gum, and lozenges to alleviate this problem. With the new development of e-cigarettes, many would rather use this product to help reduce cigarette consumption instead. As years passed by, e-cigarettes have become so popular that problems have developed such as no federal regulations. Without any strict rules against e-cigarettes, children can buy them legally and they are not subject to indoor smoking bans. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now looking to regulate e-cigarettes as tobacco products, where others like myself, find it to be outrageous. As a nicotine-free user of e-cigarettes, I find regulations are not needed because e-cigarettes are safer and healthier to use than traditional cigarettes. By looking at the finish product of an e-cigarette, it is battery-operated and consists of an atomizer, which acts as a heating element that turns liquid into vapor. The liquid is usually contained in a cartridge or tank, filled with flavored juice. There are thousands of flavors out there being made, from candy to fruits to desserts, waiting for people to try out. E-cigarette users also have the choice of adding 0-miligrams (mg) to 36-miligrams (mg) of nicotine inside. I prefer 0-mg as my nicotine strength because I am a non-smoker and is mainly for those who have quit smoking. Those who are not familiar with e-cigarettes will think they are not safe. After all, the FDA does not regulate e-cigarettes, so many assume they pose risk and danger. Research has been done in 2009, where toxic chemicals such as diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze were found in e-cigarettes. Until this day, I have never seen this ingredient labeled on top of e-liquid bottles. Most contain propylene glycol (PG) and/or vegetable glycerin (VG) found in many food products, which are ingredients approved by the FDA. This shows how e-cigarettes have improved drastically over the years without causing any more problems. Besides that, e-cigarettes will not cause harm to others like tobacco cigarettes do. Since I have friends and family who do smoke, I am use to cigarettes being around me. I know it is not any good for my health, but I would not tell them what to do. It just makes me annoyed that I have to endure secondhand smoke for the moment and smell like cigarettes after. Now that e-cigarettes are made available, there is no longer a problem for that. Most of them have actually switched from tobacco cigarettes to e-cigarettes, which is great to see. E-cigarettes do mimic traditional smoking, but now there is no tar, smoke, and smell being produced, whereas cigarettes do when lighting it up on fire. This makes e-cigarettes a safer alternative than tobacco cigarettes, especially around children. People find no danger when vapor is looming in the air. E-cigarettes have only nicotine, water, glycerol, glycol, and other food flavorings rather than 7,000 toxic chemicals found in tobacco smoke. The vapor in e-cigarettes is harmless, where studies have found secondhand not to be a problem. Secondhand vapor from e-cigarettes have fewer risks than secondhand smoke, where only PG and/or VG is found in those who exhaled the vapor. By associating e-cigarettes as tobacco products, people are not able to use the devices where smoking is banned. E-cigarettes cause no harm, so why are they being banned around business environments and at public schools, especially in outdoor areas. Since there are no federal regulations on e-cigarettes, many states have already created their own policies. For instance, UH Manoa is going to ban tobacco products on campus, including e-cigarettes starting January 1, 2014. As of yet, the FDA still needs to decide whether e-cigarettes are being called therapeutic devices or tobacco products. Although categorizing e-cigarettes, as tobacco products would not be appropriate because there is no tobacco found in any of the devices. Students also find the ban extreme, especially those “purely using e-cigarettes to quit smoking.“ said UH student Nicole Booth. This does me make wonder why e-cigarettes are being banned, where a tobacco-free campus could switch smokers from traditional cigarettes to healthy e-cigarettes. But I do feel smoking indoors should be prohibited, especially for e-cigarettes. It has come to my attention where students have been vaping in class can be a distraction. Others have done it in movie theatres and restaurants too. These are some of the reasons why e-cigarettes need to be regulated. For some e-cigarette users, it should not penalize those who have manners and respect for others. With e-cigarettes, people are able to cut their nicotine down and eventually quit smoking in the future. A smoker is able to enjoy an e-cigarette that is healthy and cheaper than traditional cigarettes. Even John Niztkin, Chairman of the Tobacco Control Task For the American Association of Public Health says so: “If we get tobacco smokers to switch, it could reduce the U.S. death toll from more than 400,000 a year to less than 4,000, maybe as low as 400.” Medical experts even suggested that people using e-cigarettes are not in risk of getting cancer. There are about 2.5 million e-cigarette users worldwide, who are adult smokers and find e-cigarettes to be more effective than nicotine therapy replacements. Tobacco is a killing machine and many are trying to quit, but find it difficult to do so. This influences people to give up smoking and switch to e-cigarettes that have no tobacco. E-cigarettes are not only less damaging, but they even smell better. From advertisements and promotion of e-cigarettes, many claim the products bad for influencing the youth towards it. They lead children to become addicted to nicotine and take up cigarette smoking as a habit. Studies have proven this wrong, where no evidence of e-cigarettes became the gateway to the conventional kind. Most stores even prevent selling e-cigarettes to minors under of the age of 18, so regulations would only hurt the people who want to quit smoking. With regulations such as taxes and smoking bans, it will only result in e-cigarette consumers returning to traditional cigarettes. People are more at risk of dying from cancer-causing tobacco cigarettes. Their lungs turn black because of the tar burnt in cigarettes. Without tar and smoke being produced, a person is able to live longer by using e-cigarettes as a healthy alternative to smoking. E-cigarettes can satisfy nicotine cravings, while eliminating the dangers of tobacco. Nicotine is addictive, but it can be controlled for safety and slowly decreased until the user wants to quit. Doubters still question the truth of e-cigarettes helping smokers quit, but look at those who have seen improvement and are even better now. Being tobacco-free can save thousands of lives by substituting cigarettes with e-cigarettes. There is an increase in e-cigarette users because many have found the products to be helpful. It is because e-cigarettes are safer and healthier, and why should a less harmful product than cigarettes be banned. I believe regulations are not needed, but looser rules for life-saving e-cigarettes should be made instead. E-cigarettes will help businesses gain more profit, while helping legislators gain more in public health. This shows how ideology can play a role when scientists feel “anti-smoking advocates are wrongly equating traditional cigarettes with e-cigarettes.” So why use nicotine patches, gum, or lozenges, when e-cigarettes are more effective in helping a person quit smoking cancer-sticks that kill. E-cigarettes do help and it should not be taken away from the people who want to quit smoking tobacco cigarettes. Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s %d bloggers like this:
I can teach you regression discontinuity design in two images No Treatment Effect Significant Treatment Effect You already get it, right? restriction of range: what it is and why it matters Section Average 25th Percentile 75th Percentile Math 750 700 800 Reading 750 700 800 Writing 750 710 790 Composite 2250 2110 2390 two concepts about sampling that were tricky for me Here’s a couple related points about statistics that it took me a long time to grasp, and which really improved my intuitive understanding of statistical arguments. 1. It’s not the sample size, it’s the sampling mechanism. Well, OK. It’s somewhat the sample size, obviously. My point is that most people who encounter a study’s methodology are much more likely to remark on the sample size – and pronounce it too small – than to remark on the sampling mechanism. I can’t tell you have often I’ve seen studies with an n = 100 that have been dismissed by commenters online as too small to take seriously. Depending on the design of the study, and the variables being evaluated, 100 can be a good-enough sample size. In fact, under certain circumstances (medical testing of rare conditions, say) an n of 30 is sufficient to draw some conclusions about populations. It’s important to understand the declining influence of sample size in reducing statistical error as sample size grows. Because calculating confidence intervals and margins of error involves placing the n under a square root sign, the power of sample size declines exponentially (fixed). Here’s the formula for margin of error: Z* σ/√(n) where Z is a Z-value that you look up in a chart for a given confidence level (often 95% or 99%), σ is the standard deviation, and n is your number of observations. You see two clear things here: first, spread (standard deviation) is super important to how confident we can be about the accuracy of an average. (Report spread when reporting an average!) Second, that we get declining improvements to accuracy as we increase sample size.That means that after a point, adding hundreds of more observations gets you less power than you got from adding 10 at lower ns. Given the resources involved in data collection, this can make expanding sample size a low-value proposition. Now compare a rigorously controlled study with an n = 30 which was drawn with a random sampling mechanism to, say, those surveys that ESPN.com used to run all the time. Those very often get sample sizes in the hundreds of thousands. But the sampling mechanism is a nightmare. They’re voluntary response instruments that are biased in any number of ways: underrepresenting people without internet access, people who aren’t interested in sports, people who go to SI.com instead of ESPN.com, on and on. The value of the 30 person instrument is far higher than that of the ESPN.com data. The sampling mechanism makes the sample size irrelevant. A 1,000 person sample, if drawn with some sort of rigorous random sampling mechanism, is exactly as descriptive and predictive when drawn randomly from the ~570,000 person population of Wyoming as it is when drawn randomly from the ~315 million person population of the United States. (If intended as samples of people in Wyoming and people in the United States respectively, of course.) I have found this one very hard to wrap my mind around, but it’s the case. The formulas for margin of error, confidence intervals, and the like do not involve any reference to the size of the total population. You can think about it this way: each time you pull a sample at random from some population, the odds of your sample being unlike the population goes down regardless of the size of that population. The mistake lies in thinking that the point of increasing sample size lies in making it closer in proportion to population. In reality, the point is just to increase the number of attempts in order to reduce the possibility that previous attempts produced statistically unlikely results. Even if you had an infinite population, every time you draw a sample from that population you would be decreasing the chance that you’re randomly pulling an unrepresentative sample. Reporting Regression Results Responsibly We’re in a Golden Age for access to data, which unfortunately also means we’re in a Golden Age for the potential to misinterpret data. Though the absurdity of gated academic journals persists, academic research is more accessible now than ever before. We’ve also seen a rapid growth in the use of arguments based on statistics in the popular media in the last several years. This is potentially a real boon to our ability to understand the world around us, but it carries with it all of the potential for misleading statistical arguments. My request is pretty simple. All statistical techniques, particularly the basic parametric statistical techniques that are most likely to show up in data journalism, require the satisfaction of assumptions and checking of diagnostic measures to ensure that hidden bias isn’t misleading us. Many of these assumptions and diagnostics are ultimately judgment calls, relying on practitioners to make informed decisions about what degree of wiggle room is appropriate given the research scenario. There are, however, conventions and implied standards that people can use to guide their decisions. The most important and useful kind of check, though, is the eyes of other researchers. Given that the ability to host graphs, tables, and similar kinds of data online is simple and nearly free, I think that researchers and data journalists alike should provide links to their data and to the graphs and tables they use to check assumptions and diagnostic measures. In the digital era, it’s crazy this is still a rare practice. I don’t expect to find these graphs and tables sitting square in the center of a blog post, and I expect that 90% of readers wouldn’t bother to look. But there’s nothing to risk in having them available, and transparency, accountability, and collaboration to gain. That’s the simple part, and you can feel free to close tab. For a little more: What kind of assumptions and diagnostics am I talking about? Let’s consider the case of one of the most common types of parametric methods, linear regression. Whether we have a single predictor for simple linear regression or multiple predictors for multilinear regression, fundamentally regression is a matter of assessing the relationship between quantitative (continuous) predictor variables and a quantitative (continuous) outcome variable. For example, we might ask how well SAT scores predict college GPA; we might ask how well age, weight, and height predict blood pressure. When someone talks about how one number predicts another, the strength of their relationship, and how we might attempt to change one by changing the other, they’re probably making an appeal to regression. The types of regression analysis, and the issues therein, are vast, and there are many technical issues at play that I’ll never understand. But I think it’s worthwhile to talk about some of the assumptions we need to check and some problems we have to look out for. Regression has come in for a fair amount of abuse lately from sticklers and skeptics, and not for no reason; it’s easy to use the techniques irresponsibly. But we’re inevitably going to ask basic questions of how X and Y predict Z, so I think we should expand public literacy about these things. I want to talk a little bit about these issues not because I think I’m qualified to teach statistics to others, or because regression is the only statistical process that we need to see assumptions and diagnostics for. Rather, I think regression is an illustrative example through which to explore why we need to check this stuff, to talk about both the power and pitfalls of public engagement with data. There are four assumptions that need to be true to run a linear (least squares) regression: independence of observations, linearity, constancy of variance, and normality. (Some purists add a fifth, existence, which, whatever.) Independence of Observations This is the biggie, and it’s why doing good research can be so hard and expensive. It’s the necessary assumption that one observation does not affect another. This is the assumption that requires randomness. Remember that in statistics error, or necessary and expected variation, is inevitable, but bias, or the systematic influence on observations, is lethal. Suppose you want to see how eating ice cream affects blood sugar level. You gather 100 students into the gym and have them all eat ice cream. You then go one by one through the students and give them a blood test. You dutifully record everyone’s values. When you get back to the lab, you find that your data does not match that of much of the established research literature. Confused, you check your data again. You use your spreadsheet software to arrange the cells by blood sugar. You find a remarkably steady progression of results running higher to lower. Then it hits you: it took you several hours to test the 100 students. The highest readings are all from the students who were first to be tested, the lowest from those who were tested last. Your data was corrupted by an uncontrolled variable, time-after-eating-to-test. Your observations were not truly independent of each other – one observation influenced another because taking one delayed taking the other. This is an example that you’d hope most people would avoid, but the history of research is the history of people making oversights that were, in hindsight, quite obvious. Independence is scary because threats to it so often lurk out of sight. And the presumption of independence often prohibits certain kind of analysis that we might find natural. For example, think of assigning control and test conditions to classes rather than individual students in educational research. This is often the only practical way to do it; you can’t fairly ask teachers to only teach half their students one technique and half another. You give one set of randomly-assigned classes a new pedagogical technique, while using the old standard with your control classes. You give a pre- and post-test to both and pop both sets of results in an ANOVA. You’ve just violated the assumption of independence. We know that there are clustering effects of children within classrooms; that is, their results are not entirely independent of each other. We can correct for this sort of thing using techniques like hierarchical modeling, but first we have to recognize that those dangers exist! Independence is the assumption that is least subject to statistical correction. It’s also the assumption that is the hardest to check just by looking at graphs. Confidence in independence stems mostly from rigorous and careful experimental design. You can check a graph of your observations (your actual data points) against your residuals (the distance between your observed values and the linear progression from your model), which can sometimes provide clues. But ultimately, you’ve just got to know your data was collected appropriately. On this one, we’re largely on our own. However, I think it’s a good idea for academic researchers to provide online access to a Residuals vs. Observations graph when they run a regression. This is very rare, currently. Here’s a Residuals vs. Observations graph I pulled off of Google Images. This is what we want to see: snow. Clear nonrandom patterns in this plot are bad. The name of the technique is linear regression, which means that observed relationships should be roughly linear to be valid. In other words, you want your relationship to fall along a more or less linear path as you move across the x axis; the relationship can be weaker or it can be stronger, but you want it to be more or less as strong as you move across the line. This is particularly the case because curvilinear relationships can appear to regression analysis to be no relationship. Regression is all about interpolation: if I check my data and find a strong linear relationship, and my data has a range from A to B, I should be able to check any x value within A and B and have a pretty good prediction for y. (What “pretty good” means in practice is a matter of residuals and r-squared, or the portion of the variance in y that’s explained by my xs.) If my relationship isn’t linear, my confidence in that prediction is unfounded. Take a look at these scatter plots. Both show close to zero linear relationship according to Pearson’s product-moment coefficient: And yet clearly, there’s something very different going on from one plot to the next. The first is true random variance; there is no consistent relationship between our x and y variables. The second is a very clear association; it’s just not a linear relationship. The degree and direction of y varying along x changes over different values for x. Failure to recognize that non-linear relationship could compel us to think that there is no relationship at all. If the violation of linearity is as clear and consistent as in this scatter plot, it can be cleaned up fairly easily by transforming the data. Regression is fairly robust to violations of linearity, and it’s worth noting that any relationship that is sufficiently lower than 1 will be non-linear in the strict sense. But clear, consistent curves in data can invalidate our regression analyses. Readers could check data for linearity if scatter plots are posted for simple linear regression. For multilinear regression, it’s a bit messier; you could plot every individual predictor, but I would be satisfied if you just mention that you checked linearity. Constancy of variance Also known by one of my very favorite ten-cent words, homoscedasticity. Constancy of variance means that, along your range of x predictors, your y varies about as much; it has as much spread, as much error. Remember, when I’m doing inferential statistics, I’m sampling, and sampling means sampling error – even if I’m getting quality results, I’m inevitably going to get differences in my data from one collection of samples to the next. But if our assumptions are true, we can trust that those samples will vary in predictable intervals relative to the true mean. That is, if an SAT score predicts freshman year GPA with a certain degree of consistency for students scoring 400, it should be about as consistent for students scoring 800, 1200, and 1600, even though we know that from one data set to the next, we’re not going to get the exact same values even if we assume that all of the variables of interest are the same. We just need to know that the degree to which they vary for a given is constant over our range. Why is this important? Think again about interpolation. I run a regression because I want to understand a relationship between various quantitative variables, and often because I want to use my predictor variables to… predict. Regression is useful insofar as I can move along the axes of my x values and produce a meaningful, subject-to-error-but-still-useful value for y. Violating the assumption of constant variance means that you can’t predict y with equal confidence as you move around x(s); the relationship is stronger at some points than others, making you vulnerable to inaccurate predictions. Here’s a residuals plot showing the dreaded megaphone effect: the error (size of residuals, difference between observations and results expected from the regression equation) increases as we move from low to high values of x. The relationship is strong at low values of x and much weaker at high values. We could check homoscedasticity by having access to residual plots. Violations of constant variance can often be fixed via transformation, although it may often be easier to use techniques that are more inherently robust to this violation, such as quantile regression. The concept of the normal distribution is at once simple and counterintuitive, and I’ve spent a lot of my walks home trying to think of the best way to explain it. The “parametric” in parametric statistics refers to the assumption that there is a given underlying distribution for most observable data, and frequently this distribution is the normal distribution or bell curve. Think of yourself walking down the street and noticing that someone is unusually tall or unusually short. The fact that you notice is in and of itself a consequence of the normal distribution. When we think of someone that is unusually tall or short, we are implicitly assuming that we will find fewer and fewer people as we move further along the extremes of the height distribution. If you see a man in North American who is 5’10, he is above average height, but you wouldn’t bat an eye; if you see a man who is 6’3, you might think yourself, that’s a tall guy; when you see someone who is 6’9, you say, wow, he is tall!, and when you see a 7 footer, you take out your cell phone. This is the central meaning of the normal distribution: that the average is more likely to occur than extremes, and that the relationship between position on the distribution and probability of occurrence is predictable. Not everything in life is normally distributed. Poll 1,000 people and ask how much money they received in car insurance payments last year and it won’t look normal. But a remarkable amount of naturally occurring phenomena are normally distributed, simply thanks to the reality of numbers and extremes, and the central limit theorem teaches us that essentially all averages are normally distributed. (That is, if I take a 100 person sample of a population for a given quantitative trait, I will get a mean; if I take another 100 person sample, I will get a similar but not exact mean, and so on. If I plot those means, they will be normal even if the overall distribution is not.) The assumption of normality in regression requires our data to be roughly normally distributed; in order to assess the relationship of y as it moves across x, we need to know the relative frequency of extreme observations to observations close to the mean. It’s a fairly robust assumption, and you’re never going to have perfectly normal data, but too strong of a violation will invalidate your analysis. We check normality with what’s called a qq plot. Here’s an almost-perfect one, again scraped from Google Images: That strongly linear, nearly 45 degree angle is just what we want to see. Here’s a bad one, demonstrating the “fat tails” phenomenon – that is, too many observations clustered at the extremes relative to the mean: Usually the rule is that unless you’ve got a really clear break from a straightish 45 degree angle, you’re probably alright. When the going gets tough, seek help from a statistician. OK, so 2000 words into this thing, we’ve checked out four assumptions. Are we good? Well, not so fast. We need to check a few diagnostic measures, or what my stats instructor used to call “the laundry list.” This is a matter of investigating influence. When we run an analysis like regression, we’re banking on the aggregate power of all of our observations to help us make responsible observations and inferences. We never want to rely too heavily on individual or small numbers of observations because that increases the influence of error in our analysis. Diagnostic measures in regression typically involve using statistical procedures to look for influential observations that have too much sway over our analysis. The first thing to say about outliers is that you want a systematic reason for eliminating them. There are entire books about the identification and elimination of outliers, and I’m not qualified to say what the best method is in any given situation. But you never want to toss an observation simply because it would help your analysis. When you’ve got that one data point that’s dragging your line out of significance, it’s tempting to get rid of it, but you want to analyze that observation for a methodology-internal justification for eliminating it. On the other hand, sometimes you have the opposite situation: your purported effect is really the product of a single or small number of influential outliers that have dragged the line in your favor (that is, to a p-value you like). Then, of course, the temptation is simply to not mention the outlier and publish anyway. Especially if a tenure review is in your future… Some examples of influential observation diagnostics in regression include examining leverage, or outliers in your predictors that have a great deal of influence on your overall model; Cook’s Distance, which tells you how different your model will be if you delete a given observation; DFBetas, which tells you how a given predictor observation influences on a particular parameter estimate; and more. Most modern statistical packages like SAS or R have commands for checking diagnostic measures like these. While offering numbers would be nice, I would mostly like it if researchers reassured readers that they had run diagnostic measures for regression and found acceptable results. Just let me know: I looked for outliers and influential observations and things came back fairly clean. Regression is just one part of a large number of techniques and applications that are happening in data journalism right now. But essentially any statistical techniques are going to involve checking assumptions and diagnostic measures. A typical ANOVA, for example, the categorical equivalent of regression, will involve checking some of the same assumptions. In the era of the internet, there is no reason not to provide a link to a brief, simple rundown of what quality controls were pursued in your analysis. None of these things are foolproof. Sums of squares are spooky things; we get weird results as we add and remove predictors from our models. Individual predictors are strongly significant by themselves but not when added together; models are significant with no individual predictors significant; individual predictors are highly significant without model significance; the order you put your predictors in changes everything; and so on. It’s fascinating and complicated. We’re always at the mercy of how responsible and careful researchers are. But by sharing information, we raise the odds that what we’re looking at is a real effect. This might all sound like an impossibly high bar to clear. There are so many ways things can go wrong. And it’s true that, in general, I worry that people today are too credulous towards statistical arguments, which are often advanced without sufficient qualifications. There are some questions where statistics more often mislead than illuminate. But there is a lot we can and do know. We know that age is highly predictive of height in children but not in adults; we know that there is a relationship between SAT scores and freshman year GPA; we know point differential is a better predictor of future win-loss record than past win-loss record. We can learn lots of things, but we always do it better together. So I think that academic researchers and data journalists should share their work to a greater degree than they do now. That requires a certain compromise. After all, it’s scary to have tons of strangers looking over your shoulder. So I propose that we get more skeptical and critical on our statistical arguments as a media and readership, but more forgiving of individual researchers who are, after all, only human. That strikes me as a good bargain. And one I’m willing to make myself, so please email me to point out the mistakes I’ve inevitably made in this post. correlation: neither everything nor nothing via Overthinking One thing that everyone on the internet knows, about statistics, is this: correlation does not imply causation. It’s a stock phrase, a bauble constantly polished and passed off in internet debate. And it’s not wrong, at least not on its face. But I worry that the denial of the importance of correlation is a bigger impediment to human knowledge and understanding than belief in specious relationships between correlation and causation. First, you should read two pieces on the “correlation does not imply causation” phenomenon, which has gone from a somewhat arcane notion common to research methods classes to a full-fledged meme. This piece by Greg Laden is absolute required reading on correlation and causation and how to think about both. Second, this piece by Daniel Engber does good work talking about how “correlation does not imply causation” became an overused and unhelpful piece of internet lingo. As Laden points out, the question is really this: what does “imply” mean? The people who employ “correlation does not imply causation” as a kind of argumentative trump card are typically using “imply” in a way that nobody actually means, which is as synonymous with “prove.” That’s pretty far from what we usually mean by “implies”! In fact, using the typical meaning of implication, correlation sometimes implies causation, in the sense that it provides evidence for a causal relationship. In careful, rigorously conducted research, a strong correlation can offer some evidence of causation, if that correlation is embedded in a theoretical argument for how that causative relationship works. If nothing else, correlation is often the first stage in identifying relationships of interest that we might then investigate in more rigorous ways, if we can. A few things I’d like people to think about. There are specific reasons that an assertion of causation from correlation data might be incorrect. There is a vast literature of research methodology, across just about every research field you can imagine. Correlation-causation fallacies have been investigated and understood for a long time. Among the potential dangers is the confounding variable, where an unknown variable is driving the change in two other variables, making them appear to influence one another. This gives us the famous drownings-and-ice cream correlation – as drownings go up, so do ice cream sales. The confounding variable, of course, is temperature.1 There are all sorts of nasty little interpretation problems in the literature. These dangers are real. But in order to have understanding, we have to actually investigate why a particular relationship is spurious. Just saying “correlation does not imply causation” doesn’t do anything to actually improve our understanding. Explore why, if you want to be useful. Use the phrase as the beginning of a conversation, not a talisman. Correlation evidence can be essential when it is difficult or impossible to investigate a causative mechanism. Cigarette smoking causes cancer. We know that. We know it because of many, many rigorous and careful studies have established that connection. It might surprise you to know that the large majority of our evidence demonstrating that relationship comes from correlation studies, rather than experiments. Why? Well, as my statistics instructor used to say – here, let’s prove cigarette smoking causes cancer. We’ll round up some infants, and we’ll divide them into experimental and control groups, and we’ll expose the experimental group to tobacco smoke, and in a few years, we’ll have proven a causal relationship. Sound like a good idea to you? Me neither. We knew that cigarettes were contributing to lung cancer long before we identified what was actually happening in the human body, and we have correlational studies to thank for that. Blinded randomized controlled experimental studies are the gold standard, but they are rare precisely because they are hard, sometimes impossible. To refuse to take anything else as meaningful evidence is nihilism, not skepticism. Sometimes what we care about is association. Consider relationships which we believe to be strong but in which we are unlikely to ever identify a specific causal mechanism. I have on my desk a raft of research showing a strong correlation between parental income and student performance on various educational metrics. It’s a relationship we find in a variety of locations, across a variety of ages, and through a variety of different research contexts. This is important research, it has stakes; it helps us to understand the power of structural advantage and contributes to political critique of our supposedly meritocratic social systems. Suppose I was prohibited from asserting that this correlation proved anything because I couldn’t prove causation. My question is this: how could I find a specific causal mechanism? The relationship is likely very complex, and in some cases, not subject to external observation by researchers at all. To refuse to consider this relationship in our knowledge making or our policy decisions because of an overly skeptical attitude towards correlational data would be profoundly misguided. Of course there’s limitations and restrictions we need to keep in mind – the relationship is consistent but not universal, its effect is different for different parts of the income scale, it varies with a variety of factors. It’s not a complete or simple story. But I’m still perfectly willing to say that poverty is associated with poor educational performance. That’s the only reasonable conclusion from the data. That association matters, even if we can’t find a specific causal mechanism. Correlation is a statistical relationship. Causation is a judgement call. I frequently find that people seem to believe that there is some sort of mathematical proof of causation that a high correlation does not merit, some number that can be spit out by statistical packages that says “here’s causation.” But causation is always a matter of the informed judgment of the research community. Controlled experiments are the gold standard in that regard, but there are controlled experiments that can’t prove causation and other research methods that have established causation to the satisfaction of most members of a discipline. Human beings have the benefit of human reasoning. One of my frustrations with the “correlation does not imply causation” line is that it’s often deployed in instances where no one is asserting that we’ve adequately proved causation. I sometimes feel as though people are trying to protect us from mistakes of reasoning that no one would actually fall victim to. In an (overall excellent) piece for the Times, Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis write, “A big data analysis might reveal, for instance, that from 2006 to 2011 the United States murder rate was well correlated with the market share of Internet Explorer: Both went down sharply. But it’s hard to imagine there is any causal relationship between the two.” That’s true – it is hard to imagine! So hard to imagine that I don’t think anyone would have that problem. I get the point that it’s a deliberately exaggerated example, and I also fully recognize that there are some correlation-causation assumptions that are tempting but wrong. But I think that, when people state the dangers of drawing specious relationships, they sometimes act as if we’re all dummies. No one will look at these correlations and think they’re describing real causal relationships because no one is that senseless. So why are we so afraid of that potential bad reasoning? Those disagreeing with conclusions drawn from correlational data have a burden of proof too. This is the thing, for me, more than anything. It’s fine to dispute a suggestion of causation drawn from correlation data. Just recognize that you have to actually make the case. Different people can have responsible, reasonable disagreements about statistical inferences. Both sides have to present evidence and make a rational argument drawn from theory. “Correlation does not imply causation” is the beginning of discussion, not the end. I consider myself on the skeptical side when it comes to Big Data, at least in certain applications. As someone who is frequently frustrated by hype and woowoo, I’m firmly in the camp that says we need skepticism ingrained in how we think and write about statistical inquiry. I personally do think that many of the claims about Big Data applications are overblown, and I also think that the notion that we’ll ever be post-theory or purely empirical are dangerously misguided. But there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. While we should maintain a healthy criticism of them, new ventures dedicated to researched, data-driven writing should be greeted as a welcome development. What we need, I think, is to contribute to a communal understanding of research methods and statistics, including healthy skepticism, and there’s reason for optimism in that regard. Reasonable skepticism, not unthinking rejection; a critical utilization, not a thoughtless embrace. norm referencing, criterion referencing, and ed policy I want to talk a bit about a distinction between different types of educational testing/assessment and how they interface with some basic questions we have about education policy. The two concepts are norm referencing and criterion referencing. Criterion Referencing Why do we perform tests? What are their purpose? One common reason is to ensure that people are able to perform some sort of an essential task. Take a driver’s test. The point is to make sure that people who are on the roads possess certain minimal abilities to safely pilot a car, based on social standards of competence that are written into policy. While we might understand that some people are better or worse drivers than others, we’re not really interested in using a driver’s test to say who is adequate, who is good, and who is excellent. Rather we just want to know: do you meet this minimal threshold? The name for that kind of test is a criterion referenced test. We have some criterion (or criteria) and we check and see if the people taking the test fulfill them. Sometimes we want these tests to be fairly generous; society couldn’t function, in many locales, if a majority of competent adults couldn’t pass a driver’s test. On the other hand, we probably want the benchmarks for, say, running a nuclear reactor to be fairly strict. The social costs would here be higher for a test that was too lenient rather than too strict. In either case, though, our interest is not in discriminating between different individuals to a fine level of gradation, particularly for those who are clearly good enough or clearly not. Rather we just want to know: is the test taker competent to perform the real-world task? Norm Referencing Criterion referencing depends on, well, the existence of a criterion. That is, there has to be some sort of benchmark or goal that the test taker will either reach or not. What would it mean to have a criterion referenced test for, say, college readiness? We can certainly imagine a set benchmark for being prepared for college, and we’d probably like to think that there’s some minimal level of preparation that’s required for any college-bound student. But in a broader sense we are probably aware that there is no one set criterion that would work given the large range of schools and students that “college readiness” reflects. What’s more, we also know that colleges are profoundly interested in relative readiness; elite colleges spend vast amounts of money attracting the most highly-qualified students to campus. For that we need to use tests like the SAT and ACT which are not oriented around fulfilling a given criterion but for creating a scale of test-takers and being able to discriminate between different students in exacting detail. We need, that is, norm referenced tests. When we say “norm” here we mean in comparison to others, to an average and to quintiles, and in particular to the normal distribution. I don’t want to get too into the weeds on that big topic, for those who aren’t already versed in it. Suffice to say for now that the normal distribution is a very common distribution of observed values for all sorts of naturally-occurring phenomenon that have a finite range (that is, a beginning and an ending) and which are affected by multiple variables. The ideal normal distribution looks like this: The big center line in there is the mean, median, and mode – that it, the arithmetic average, the line that divides one half of the data from the other, and the observation that occurs most. As you can see, in a true normal distribution the observations fall in very particular patterns relative to the average. In particular, the further away we go from the average, the less likely we are to find observations, again in predictable quantitative relationships. When we talk about something changing relative to a standard deviation, using that statistic (actually a measure of spread) as a measure of distance or extremity, we’re doing so in relation to the normal distribution. Tests like the SAT and ACT, GRE, IQ tests, and all manner of other tests used for the purpose of screening applicants for some finite number of slots use norm referencing. Why? Again, think about what we’re trying to accomplish with norm referencing. I want to give a test to be able to say that test taker X is better than test taker Y but worse than test take Z. But we also want to be able to say where they each fall relative to the mass of data. Norm referencing allows us to make meaningful statements about how someone will perform relative to others, and this in turn gives us information about how to, for example, select people for our scarce admissions slots at an exclusive college. As Glenn Fulcher puts it in his (excellent) book Practical Language Testing: As we move away from the mean the scores in the distribution become more extreme, and so less common. It is very rare for test takers to get all items correct, just as it is very rare for them to get all items incorrect. But there are a few in every large group who do exceptionally well, or exceptionally poorly. The curve of normal distribution tells us what the probability is that a test taker could have got the score they have, given the place of the score in a particular distribution. And this is why we can say that a score is ‘exceptional’ or ‘in the top 10 per cent’, or ‘just a little better than average. (Incidentally, it’s a very common feature of various types of educational, intelligence, and language testing that scores become less meaningful as the move towards the extremes. That is, a 10 point difference on a well-validated IQ test means a lot when it comes to the difference between a 95 and a 105, but it means much less when it comes to a difference between 25 and 35 or 165 and 175. Why? In part because outliers are rare, by their nature, which means we have less data to validate that range of our scale. Also, practically speaking there are floors and ceilings. Someone who gets a 20 on the TOEFL ibt and someone who gets a 30 share one most important thing: they’re functionally unable to communicate in English. This is also why you shouldn’t trust anyone who tells you they have an IQ over, say, 150 or so. The scale just doesn’t mean anything up that high.) How do we get these pretty normal distributions? That’s the work of test development, and part of why it can be a seriously difficult and expensive undertaking. The nature of numbers (and the central limit theorem) help, but ultimately the big testing companies have to spend a ton of time and money getting a distribution as close to normal as possible – and whatever else their flaws, organizations like ETS do that very well. Either way, it’s essential to say that the normal distribution does not arrange itself like magic in tests. It has to be produced with careful work. The Question of Grades Thinking about these two paradigms can help us think through some questions. Here’s a simple one: are grades norm referenced or criterion referenced? The answer is surely both and neither, but I think it’s useful to consider the dynamics here for a minute. In one sense, grades are clearly criterion referenced, in that they are meant to reflect a given student’s mastery of the given course’s subject matter. And we aren’t likely to say that only X% of students in a class should pass or fail according to a model distribution; rather, we think we should pass everyone who demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and competencies a class is designed to instill. And we have little reason to think that grades are actually normally distributed between students in the average class. Yet, in another sense, we clearly think of grades as norm referenced. When we talk about grade inflation, we are often speaking in terms of norm referencing, complaining that we’re losing the ability to discriminate between different levels of ability. Grades are used to compare different students from remarkably different educational contexts in the college admissions process. And sometimes, we “curve a test,” meaning adjusting a test to better match the normal distribution – which does not, contrary to undergraduate presumption, necessarily help the people who took the test. There’s an intuitive sense that grades should match a fairness distribution that, while not normal around the natural mean (you wouldn’t want the average grade to be a 50, I trust), still essentially replicates normality in that both very high and very low grades should be rare. In practice, this is not often the case. A’s, in my experience, outnumber F’s. In grad school a perpetual concern was the very high average grade of freshman composition, something like a B+. And the downwards pressure on that average was largely the product of students who stopped coming to class and thus got F’s, meaning that the average grade of students who actually completed the course was probably very high indeed. Is this a problem? I guess it depends on your point of view. If we were trying to meaningfully discriminate between different students based on their freshman comp grades, then certainly – but I’m not sure if we’d want to do that. On the other hand, it might be that freshman comp is a class that we think most students might naturally be expected to do well; it isn’t written anywhere that the criterion for success be at a particularly high level. Certainly the major departments wouldn’t like too many students failing that Gen Ed, given that they’d then have to fill valuable schedule space when they retook it. The question, though, is whether those grades actually reflect a meaningful meeting of the given benchmarks – fulfilling the criterion. I’m of the opinion that the answer is often “no” when it comes to freshman comp, meaning that the average grades are probably too high no matter what. I don’t have any grand insight here, and I think most people are able to meaningfully think about grades in a way that reflects both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced interests. But I do think that these dynamics are important to think about. As I’ve been saying lately, I think that there are some basic aspects of education and education policy that we simply haven’t thought through adequately, and we all could benefit from going back to the basics and pulling apart what we think we want. selection bias: a parable To return to this blog’s favorite theme, how selection bias dictates educational outcomes, let me tell you a true story about a real public university in a large public system. (Not my school, for the record.) Let’s call it University X. University X, like most, has an Education department. Like at most universities, University X’s Education majors largely plan on becoming teachers in the public school system of that state. Unfortunately, like at many schools across the country, University X’s Education department has poor metrics – low graduation rate, discouraging post-graduation employment and income measures, poor performance on assessments of student learning relative to same-school peers. (The reasons for this dynamic are complex and outside of the scope of this post.) The biggest problem, though, is this: far too many of University X’s graduates from the Education program go on to fail the test that the state mandates as part of teacher accreditation. This means that they are effectively barred from their chosen profession. Worse, going to another state to work as a public teacher is often not feasible, as accreditation standards will sometimes require them to take a year or more of classes in that state’s system post-graduation to become accredited. So you end up with a lot of students with degrees designed to get them into a profession they can’t get into, and eventually the powers that be looked askance. So what did University X’s Education department do? Their move was ingenious, really: they required students applying to the major to take a practice version of the accreditation test, one built from using real questions on the real test and otherwise identical to the real thing. They then only accepted into the major those students who scored above benchmarks on the test. And the problem, in a few years, was solved! They saw their graduates succeed on the accreditation test at vastly higher rates. Unfortunately, they also saw their number of majors decline precipitously, which in turn put them in a tough spot with the administration of University X, who used declining enrollment as a reason to cut their funding. Now here’s the question for all of you: was introducing the screening mechanism of the practice accreditation test a cynical ploy to artificially boost their metrics? Or by preventing students from entering a program designed to lead to a job they ultimately couldn’t get, were they doing the only moral thing? lots of fields have p-value problems, not just psychology journalists, beware the gambler’s fallacy One persistent way that human beings misrepresent the world is through the gambler’s fallacy, and there’s a kind of implied gambler’s fallacy that works its way into journalism quite often. It’s hugely important to anyone who cares about research and journalism about research. The gambler’s fallacy is when you expect a certain periodicity in outcomes when you have no reason to expect it. That is, you look at events that happened in the recent past, and say “that is an unusually high/low number of times for that event to happen, so therefore what will follow is an unusually low/high number of times for it to happen.” The classic case is roulette: you’re walking along the casino floor, and you see the electronic sign showing that a roulette table has hit black 10 times in a row. You know the odds of this are very small, so you rush over to place a bet on red. But of course that’s not justified: the table doesn’t “know” it has come up black 10 times in a row. You’ve still got the same (bad) odds of hitting red, 47.4%. You’re still playing with the same house edge. A coin that’s just come up heads 50 times in a row has the same odds of being heads again as being tails again. The expectation that non-periodic random events are governed by some sort of god of reciprocal probabilities is the source of tons of bad human reasoning – and journalism is absolutely stuffed with it. You see it any time people point out that a particular event hasn’t happened in a long time, so therefore we’ve got an increased chance of it happening in the future. Perhaps the classic case of this was Kathryn Schulz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, much-celebrated New Yorker article on the potential mega-earthquake in the Pacific northwest. This piece was a sensation when it appeared, thanks to its prominent placement in a popular publication, the deftness of Schulz’s prose, and the artful construction of her story – but also because of the gambler’s fallacy. At the time I heard about the article constantly, from a lot of smart, educated people, and it was all based on the idea that we were “overdue” for a huge earthquake in that region. People I know were considering selling their homes. Rational adults started stockpiling canned goods. The really big one was overdue. Was Schulz responsible for this idea? After publication, she would go on to be dismissive of the idea that she had created the impression that we were overdue for such an earthquake. She wrote in a followup to the original article, Are we overdue for the Cascadia earthquake? How did people get the idea that we were overdue? The original: By saying that there is a “two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle,” Schulz implied a regular periodicity. The definition of a cycle, after all, is “a series of events that are regularly repeated in the same order.” That simply isn’t how a recurrence interval functions, as Schulz would go on to clarify in her followup – which of course got vastly less attention. I appreciate that, in her followup, Schulz was more rigorous and specific, referring to an expert’s explanation, but it takes serious chutzpah to have written the preceding paragraph and then to later act as though there’s no reason your readers thought the next quake was “overdue.” The closest thing to a clarifying statement in the original article is as follows: If we bother to explain that first sentence thoroughly, we can see it’s a remarkable to-be-sure statement – she is obliquely admitting that since there is no regular periodicity to a recurrence interval, there is no sense in which that “two-hundred-and-forty-three-year cycle” is actually a cycle. It’s just an average. Yes, the “really big one” could hit the Pacific northwest tomorrow – and if it did, it still wouldn’t imply that we’ve been overdue, as her later comments acknowledge. The earthquake might also happen 500 years from now. That’s not a quibble; it’s the root of the very panic she set off by publishing the piece. But by immediately leaping from such an under-explained discussion of what a recurrence interval is and isn’t to the irrelevant and vague assertion about “the scale of the problem,” Schulz ensured that her readers would misunderstand in the most sensationalistic way possible. However well crafted her story was, it left people getting a very basic fact wrong, and was thus bad science writing. I don’t think Schulz was being dishonest, but this was a major problem with a piece that received almost universal praise. I just read another good example of an implied gambler’s fallacy in a comprehensively irresponsible Gizmodo piece on supposed future pandemics. I am tempted to just fisk the whole thing, but I’ll spare you. For our immediate interests let’s just look at how a gambler’s fallacy can work by implication. George Dvorsky: Experts say it’s not a matter of if, but when a global scale pandemic will wipe out millions of people…. Throughout history, pathogens have wiped out scores of humans. During the 20th century, there were three global-scale influenza outbreaks, the worst of which killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people, or about 3 to 5 percent of the global population. The HIV virus, which went pandemic in the 1980s, has infected about 70 million people, killing 35 million. Those specific experts are not named or quoted, so we’ll have to take Dvorsky’s word for it. But note the implication here: because we’ve had pandemics in the past that killed significant percentages of the population, we are likely to have more in the future. An-epidemic-is-upon-us stories are a dime a dozen in contemporary news media, given their obvious ability to drive clicks. Common to these pieces are the implication that we are overdue for another epidemic because epidemics used to happen regularly in the past. But of course, conditions change, and there’s few fields where conditions have changed more in the recent past than infectious diseases. Dvorsky implies that they have changed for the worse: Sure, those are concerns. But since he’s specifically set us up to expect more pandemics by referencing those in the early 20th century, maybe we should take a somewhat broader perspective and look at how infectious diseases have changed in the past 100 years. Let’s check with the CDC. The most salient change, when it comes to infectious, has been the astonishing progress of modern medicine. We have a methodology for fighting infectious disease that has saved hundreds of millions of lives. Unsurprisingly, the diseases that keep getting nominated as the source of the next great pandemic keep failing to spread at expected rates. Dvorsky names diseases likes SARs (global cases since 2004: zero) and Ebola (for which we just discovered a very promising vaccine), not seeming to realize that these are examples of victories for the control of infectious disease, as tragic as the loss of life has been. The actual greatest threats to human health remain what they have been for some time, the deeply unsexy threats of smoking, heart disease, and obesity. Does the dramatically lower rate of deaths from infectious disease mean a pandemic is impossible? Of course not. But “this happened often in the past, and it hasn’t happened recently, so….” is fallacious reasoning. And you see it in all sorts of domains of journalism. “This winter hasn’t seen a lot of snow so far, so you know February will be rough.” “There hasn’t been a murder in Chicago in weeks, and police are on their toes for the inevitable violence to come.” “The candidate has been riding a crest of good polling numbers, but analysts expect he’s due for a swoon.” None of these are sound reasoning, even though they seem superficially correct based on our intuitions about the world. It’s something journalists in particular should watch out for. why selection bias is the most powerful force in education Quantitative Verbal Total Connecticut 450 480 930 Mississippi 530 550 1080 Is this a reasonable course of action?
Tuesday, January 13, 2015 The Writer is a Time Lord: Compressing Time Through Summary The writer who deftly uses SCENE and SUMMARY becomes the Time Lord of her fictional worlds. Summary allows the writer to compress and expand time, while scene occurs in a fixed time frame. Nature is also a Time Lord Midnight sunsets in Iceland; Photos by Sara Blake Johnson While a scene occurs in "real" time, summary can cover a long period of time in a few words. Typically a scene will “show,” while summary will “tell” as it races through time. As writers we’re often told to show, not tell, but telling (summary) is also an important skill. Why use summary? Sometimes the reader needs to understand more about a character, her background, motive, or emotional state or even the history of the setting. Sometimes an overview is needed. Some stories demand leaps of time: this can be from one season to another season or skipping over several decades. Summary can alter the pacing of the novel. Summary can also be used to delay or even stop time, making it motionless. Though counterintuitive, summary can intensify emotion. An insertion of summary, which uses backstory or another event, provides the reader with another view of the character. A summary is not in the moment, and sometimes it combines many moments. In film, a similar technique is montage. Montage of Geese in different seasons in Germany Photos by Sarah Blake Johnson Many films use montage, little snippets or selections of related images or action to show passage of time or change of character. Juxtaposed together, these images become something greater. We can also create a written montage by use of summary. We use summary when the reader needs information, but doesn’t need to experience the event play by play like in a scene. Summary explains efficiently. How do we use summary? It is critical to use vivid, concrete, sensory details. Summary does not mean bland. (A general, “boring” summary is better left out.) Summary can be as short as a sentence. It also can be quite long, several pages even, though with children’s books a long summary may lose the readers’ attention. The great Italian writer, Italo Calvino, said his personal motto was “hurry slowly.” Though he wasn’t necessarily applying “hurry slowly” to the technique of summary, that concept will strengthen our writing. When to use summary? We use summary when there are many important events and not all the events are needed in full to tell the story. This means we need to know which scenes are most important. Basically, if nothing happens, but the info is necessary, don’t use a scene. Use summary instead. When not to use: We don’t use summary for key scenes or for actions and choices that significantly alter the character’s life or the plot. Don’t use it for any critical turning point, any moment of significance, or crisis scenes. All these moments need to be fully realized. Summary often creates emotional distance—so don’t use it when the reader needs to be close and emotionally involved, and don’t use it when conflict or confrontation are in the scene. As with any writing advice, this isn’t always true. An example of an emotional summary is below. And please don’t use summary when the story demands a live action scene. For example, in a romance novel readers expect to see/experience the kiss. The reader does not want to be told, “They kissed last night.” That’s a way to get the book thrown across the room. Where do we use summary? One typical pattern in many books is a summary, followed by a scene. Also, summary can follow scene. Summary is useful for pacing. Scene after scene without summary does not give the reader time to rest or digest what has happened. Summary allows for a gentle pause. Summary can be inserted in the middle of a scene, but if so should probably be short. What can you do if you have too many scenes and you’ve decided that some aren’t needed in scene format? Write a summary of the scene in as few (or as many words) as it takes and attach that summary before or after the associated scene. We can also use summary to delay action and create suspense. In this regard, it is a powerful pacing tool. 1 – Summary of Past Events/Action: This is a common type of summary and a way to condense a needed flashback. This example summary occurs right after Death holds out his hand to Keturah. “And then into my mind came a memory of Hatti Pennyworth’s son, who was dragged by a horse and should have died, but lived. And Jershun South, who went to sleep for two weeks and awoke one day as if he’d slept but a night. And what about my own cousin, who once ate a mushroom that killed big men? Though he was young, he survived. Death often sadly surprised us, but sometimes he gladly surprised us, too.” Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt 2 – Less is More Summary: It is easy to overwrite and give too much information. This example of a summary shows how a few words can summarize a situation and how summary can pace the narrative. This summary appears at the Beginning of Part 2: “The ship sank. It made a sound like a monstrous metallic burp. Things bubbled at the surface and then vanished. Everything was screaming: the sea, the wind, my heart. From the lifeboat I saw something in the water.” Following this summary the story moves into a scene of Pi’s interactions with Richard Parker, the tiger. The Life of Pi by Yann Martel 3 – Summary of Repetitive Action: This summary shows repeated action over time, a useful technique for skipping over weeks or months. “Mostly, I missed Mal. I’d written to him every week, care of our regiment, but I hadn’t heard anything back. I knew the post could be unreliable and that his unit might have moved on from the Fold or might even be in West Ravka, but I still hoped that I would hear from him soon. . . . Every night, as I climbed the stairs to my room after another pointless, painful day, I would imagine the letter that might be waiting for me on my dressing table, and my steps would quicken. But the days passed, and no letter came.” Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo 4 – Summary for Emotional Impact: This example is of a summary that has greater emotional impact than if written as a scene. “We drove and ate, music booming and the road going straight, straight, straight, no signs, no stops, just fields and hills forever. Sometimes he looked away from the road just to smile at me. Maybe he was feeling like I was–that the day was enough under the candy-blue sky, the wind swooping into the car and taking parts of us away with it, swirling me and Wilder into the whole big moving world.” Dangerous by Shannon Hale 5 – Summary of Details and Non-Critical Events: This example takes a day of normal, uninteresting events and makes them interesting by summary. This is a transition summary that incorporates the character’s emotions and is an example of a summary that provides pacing. “Dini spends lots of time riffling through Maddie’s bookshelves and watching Dolly videos, and then some time just sort of staring into the middle distance. As it turns out, the slow pace of the day is almost a relief after the frantic excitement of the day before.” The Problem of Being Slightly Heroic by Uma Krishnaswami Be a Time Lord photo by Sarah Blake Johnson Janet Burroway, in Writing Fiction, calls summary the “mortar of the story.” A story without summary would become too long and an epic of a thousand pages or more. Writing is an art, and so the writer chooses where to use summary through intuition and common sense. As a writer, you are the Time Lord of your world. You can choose when to either play for hours in the sandbox of scene and when to compress time through the use of summary. 1. Take a scene and summarize it in 3-4 sentences. 2. Choose a book or print up a chapter of one of your stories. Highlight all the sections of summary. What types of summary did you highlight? Are they connective summaries appearing between scenes? Or are they in the middle of scenes? Should any of these summaries be scenes? Are these effective, vivid summaries? I also published this article at Through the Tollbooth. No comments:
Statues of Mary and the Religious Wars 22 Nov Street corner shrine, Antwerp My mother was very devoted to the Virgin Mary, and I believe her mother was also. So it pleased me when we entered Antwerp, to see so many street corner shrines to the Virgin. Even the cathedral in Antwerp – the Onze Lieve Vrouwekathedral –is dedicated to the Blessed Mother. I wondered why Mary was so important here. It is, like most religious tales, a long story. In the first half of the 16th Century, Antwerp was the richest city in Europe and the center of the entire international economy. Hundreds of ships would pass the city in the Scheldt River, and 2,000 carts entered Antwerp each week. At the height of the spice trade, Portuguese ships unloaded cargos of cinnamon and pepper here. Yet the city did not have its own long-distance merchant fleet, and the oligarchy of banker-aristocrats who governed Antwerp were forbidden to engage in trade. As a result, foreigners controlled much of the business. Antwerp was a real international city, with merchants and traders from Venice, Spain and Portugal. What’s more, Antwerp had a policy of tolerance which attracted a large orthodox Jewish community (still very much in evidence and employed largely in the diamond trade). But Antwerp’s golden age — which lasted less than a hundred years — was destroyed by religious wars. Philip II inherited both Spain and the Low Countries when his father, Charles V, died in 1555. Phillip, a religious fanatic, viewed the reformist stirrings in the Low Countries with horror, and his ongoing efforts to control the religious lives of his subjects brought war and pestilence to the region for decades. Street corner shrine, Antwerp Protestantism had taken root in Antwerp early on, and the city seethed with discontent as Philip’s plans became clear. In 1566, priests carried an image of the Virgin Mary through the streets and insisted that everyone should bend the knee as they passed. Protestants, of course, do not honor Mary as Catholics do, and the order was abhorrent to large parts of the population. The parade passed peacefully, but afterwards the city’s Protestant guildsmen and their apprentices smashed the inside of the cathedral to pieces – the most extreme example of the “iconoclastic fury” that swept through the region. Philip responded by sending in an army of occupation and building a brand new citadel to house them. Nine years later, this garrison, unpaid and unfed, surrounded by the “heretical” wealth of the city, mutinied. They stormed Antwerp at dawn on November 4, 1576, and ran riot for three days, plundering public buildings and private mansions and slaughtering some 8,000 inhabitants in the “Spanish fury.” More outrages followed. Philip’s soldiers were driven out after the massacre, but they were back in 1585 laying siege to the city for seven months. They succeeded in taking Antwerp, and the city was incorporated into the (Catholic) Spanish Netherlands. Protestants were given two years to leave town, and a flood of skilled workers poured north into the relative safety of Holland, further weakening Antwerp’s economy. Amsterdam quickly become the new center of trade. Another shrine The street corner shrines to Mary are charming, but they reminded me of the stories of Jews in Spain who were forced to convert to Catholicism (the alternative was being burnt at the stake) at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, afraid of Jewish influence in Seville, asked the Pope for permission to start an Inquisition in Spain. I have read food historians who believe that Spain changed the traditional Easter dinner from lamb to ham to ensure that Conversos, as the baptized but unbelieving Jews were known, were following the laws of their new faith, If the Jews would eat pork, surely they had given up the ways of their fathers. But many Jews were concerned that eating the ham might not be enough to save them; after all, dinner took place indoors, in private. And so the Jews would hang hams in front of their houses, just to be on the safe side, in case any of the Inquisitors should pass their way. I wonder how many statues of Mary in Antwerp were put in position for similar purposes. Death's Head, exterior of the Cathedral ofOur Lady, Antwerp Leave a comment Posted by on November 22, 2009 in Uncategorized Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s %d bloggers like this:
Skip to main content Future Development Is smoking more harmful than AIDS? Wolfgang Fengler and Katharina Fenz Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor, was a notorious chain smoker. So much so that he was known to light up in non-smoking areas and while on live television. Yet he lived to be 96 years old, remaining an active public figure until the end and writing some 13 books after he turned 70. Did smoking, which he obviously enjoyed so much, not hurt him? Schmidt, and others like him, feed a common belief that you can lead an unhealthy life and still live to a ripe old age. Winston Churchill, when asked about the secret of his longevity, famously quipped, “No sports, just whisky and cigars,” to the great delight of generations of bon vivants. However, those who believe that they can safely follow Schmidt’s and Churchill’s examples make a fundamental mistake called selection bias—they are looking at a subset of people who lived a long life against the odds rather than the many others who passed away before their golden years. Since there are many more elderly people alive today than ever before in human history, you’re also more likely to find cases that enjoy longevity. You will also find elderly folks in Somalia or the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I’m sure you would agree that moving there is probably not a good idea. Thanks to the Global Burden of Disease database developed by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), we can now calculate the statistical impact of health status and risks. Building on the demographic platform, we have mapped the impact of several health variables that can be applied to every person in the world. We can estimate, on average, how many years of life a smoker will lose and how many years they would gain by avoiding the habit. And we can compare the results with (or combine them to) the outcomes of other risks or conditions, such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, diabetes, or hepatitis. Years of life lost or gained depend on how long you can expect to live in the first place, as well as on the quality of the health system in the country in which you live, as well as your gender. Here are illustrative results, some of which came as a surprise to the two authors of this blog, a 24-year-old Austrian woman and a 46-year-old German man: • If you don’t get treatment, HIV/AIDS kills you quickly, while smoking is slowly fatal. This is why AIDS has a more dramatic effect, no matter the country, because statistically you lose more life years if you die young. • As expected, the impact of HIV/AIDS is much more profound in poor countries, not just because it is more common but also because access to treatment is less systematic. A 24-year-old Kenyan woman, on average, would lose 28.2 years of life because of HIV/AIDS; in Austria, the same woman would lose 18.1 years. • However, if you are over 40 years old and live in a developed economy you can expect to lose more life years from smoking than from contracting HIV/AIDS. For example, a 46-year-old German man would lose 11.5 years from smoking and 8.3 years from AIDS. Figure 1: Life expectancy of a 24-year-old Austrian woman Global_20170327_Life Expectancy Austria Source: authors’ calculations based on and IHME Figure 2: Life expectancy of a 46-year-old German man Global_20170327_Life Expectancy Germany Source: authors’ calculations based on and IHME Of course we never know how long we will actually live, how medicine will evolve, and where we will ultimately be living. But those who believe their lifestyle doesn’t matter should think twice. The extra satisfaction you get today by indulging in habits such as smoking comes at a higher price than you think—precious additional years you could spend with your grandchildren or writing the memoirs of a long and well-lived life. For archived content, visit » Get daily updates from Brookings
Minimizing Operating Costs in VOC Abatement Equipment Untitled Document As governmental regulations of environmental emissions become more restrictive, the average concentration of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC's) has decreased as more and more dilute point source air streams are being targeted for emission control systems. To the plant manager, this translates into more VOC abatement equipment with higher operating costs. Companies around the world are struggling to reduce their operating expenses while remaining in compliance. This a difficult feat in areas where utilities such as natural gas and electricity are expensive. As a leading pollution control solution provider, Dürr Environmental has been continually challenged to develop the tools necessary to offer unique ways to reduce operating costs for new and existing systems around the world. Air emission control systems can either recover or destroy hydrocarbons. If reuse is possible in a manufacturer's process, recovery is preferred as means to minimize operational costs. Much of the time, however, the only recovery value may be as a fuel source; the recovered hydrocarbons are eventually destroyed by an oxidation process where their latent heat is used as part or all of the heat required for oxidation and destruction. Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers (RTOs) Regenerative Thermal Oxidation technology is the most common oxidation technology employed in the United States, and is rapidly gaining acceptance world-wide. The RTO has the advantage over other oxidation technology choices of having the highest thermal efficiency available. This makes an RTO particularly attractive for high volume, low concentration (HVLC) air streams. VOC destruction in an RTO is achieved by heating the airstream to a temperature, typically 1400°F to 1800°F, where the hydrocarbons spontaneously react with the available oxygen. An RTO uses heat exchangers to recover and reuse heat from the oxidation process as available energy for preheating the incoming airstream. The regenerative heat exchanger consists of two, or more, containers of ceramic media, referred to as regenerators. One regenerator absorbs and stores heat from the outgoing clean hot gas stream and the other regenerator delivers stored heat to the incoming polluted gas stream. When the regenerator storing heat starts to become saturated, and the other heat source regenerator becomes depleted, a series of valves redirects the airflow so the roles of the regenerators are reversed. RTOs are a well-proven technology, but are being called on to become more efficient than ever, to reduce operating costs to even lower levels than have traditionally been seen. Dürr Environmental has met that challenge by developing improvements in heat transfer media, alternative oxidation technology and fuel usage optimization techniques. Heat Transfer Media Traditionally, the heat transfer beds of an RTO are composed of ceramic saddles, randomly packed into an insulated chamber. The airflow through the saddles is forced to make many changes in direction and velocity. Due to the turbulent nature of the airflow, the pressure drop across the bed increases with the square of the airflow. Dürr 's investigations into the fundamental principles of RTO operation led to the development and application of a structured heat transfer media. These investigations indicated that a heat transfer media having straight airflow passages of constant cross-section offer significantly improved performance over traditional saddles by providing more laminar airflow characteristics. The improved performance can be seen in a lower pressure drop across the packed beds of an RTO. Structured packing is a ceramic monolithic block, composed of silica alumna ceramic. Each block is approximately 12' tall, 6' wide and 6' long, and has hundreds of parallel passages , each approximately 1/8' square, extending from top to bottom. It's physical and performance characteristics allow for a higher airflow velocity through a packed bed, resulting in a more compact RTO which is attractive to land-locked plants that may not have the normal space required for an RTO. This higher bed velocity also allows for a unique solution to plants that have existing RTO equipment that may require additional airstream treatment capacity. Increased flow in a traditional saddle packed bed requires an exponential increase in pressure drop and motor horsepower, quickly overloading existing handling capacity. Replacement of an existing saddle bed with ceramic monolith can not only reduce the pressure drop for existing capacity, but also provide almost a 40% increase in incoming airflow capacity with the existing motor and fan, while providing better thermal performance, lowering the natural gas consumption of the RTO. Regenerative Catalytic Oxidation (RCO) RCO's are a recent hybrid VOC abatement technology that is gaining acceptance in plants where energy cost are high and the hours of operation are long. An RCO combines the benefits of an RTO with the benefits of catalysis. By adding a precious metal catalyst to the combustion chamber of an RTO system, the catalyst provides hydrocarbon conversion at a much lower operating temperature than an RTO, typically 600°F to 1000°F, which thereby reduces the auxiliary fuel requirements. The precious metal catalyst, like all catalysts, is a substance which accelerates the rate of a chemical reaction, i.e. oxidation, without the catalyst or the substance being consumed. Another benefit of a precious metal catalyst is its ability to eliminate not only VOCs, but also secondary products, notably CO and NOx. In addition, a precious metal-based catalyst is much more resistant to poisoning and fouling than base metal catalysts. Like structured packing, converting an existing RTO to an RCO is possible, and often beneficial depending on the operating and energy consumption conditions in the plant. Adding a layer of proprietary precious metal catalyst on top of the ceramic media in the RTO's combustion chamber will allow the combustion chamber operating temperature to be lowered to roughly 800°F. In large air volume systems, this fuel savings can be significant. The proprietary catalyst in Dürr systems is impregnated in the ceramic media of choice, either saddles or structured packing. In some instances, an RCO system may not be a beneficial choice. These exceptions result from either the presence of a stream that contains organometallic or inhibiting compounds that will cause degradation of catalyst performance. Each VOC stream needs to be examined to ensure there are no catalyst poisons such as silicon, phosphorus, arsenic or other heavy metals. In addition, the catalyst performance could be masked or fouled by particulate in the air stream. However, the catalyst can be recharged relatively easily. It is important to discuss the properties of individual air streams before making any decisions on the applicability of catalyst in an RCO, but for many, the potential for operating cost savings is large. Natural Gas Injection (NGI) Typically a natural gas burner system is used to provide the energy required to make-up the neat that is not recovered by a regenerative oxidizer (around 5% of the energy required to reach setpoint). An incoming airstream with a high enough concentration of hydrocarbons, would provide enough energy from auto-ignition of the hydrocarbons for the oxidation process to be self-sustaining, i.e. require no burner operation for make-up energy. Natural Gas Injection (NGI) is a means of artificially creating a self-sustaining condition in an airstream with a low concentration of hydrocarbons. A natural gas burner system is provided and utilized for system pre-heat. Once the heat exchange media is saturated and hot enough to elevate the airstream above autoignition levels, the burner and combustion blower is turned off, and natural gas or methane is safely injected into the incoming airstream, enriching it to the concentration levels necessary for self-sustaining operation. NGI actually improves the thermal efficiency of an RTO because it eliminates the requirement for combustion air being introduced, and thereby mitigates the mass imbalance in airflow between the regenerator bed that is on inlet and the bed that is on outlet. In commercial application, NGI improves an RTO's thermal efficiency by approximately 1% or more overall. Another advantage to NGI is an improvement in NOx emissions from an RTO. The burner is the single biggest contributor of NOx to the exhaust stream of an RTO, due to the high flame temperatures. Eliminating the burner from operating significantly decreases the NOx levels seen in operating RTOs. Due to the lower combustion temperatures of an RCO, NGI is not a tool that is utilized in conjunction with catalyst. However, many existing systems could see a decrease in operating fuel usage, by a simple, low cost retrofit that would install a Natural Gas Injection system to the RTO, especially those airstreams not conducive to catalyst usage. Rotary Concentrators Rotary concentrators are an adsorption technology commonly applied to very dilute airstreams with relatively low hydrocarbon concentrations. Rotary adsorbers can be used to concentrate the emissions into smaller airstreams with much higher concentrations (by a factor of 10 or more) that can be handled by an oxidation device such as an RTO much more economically. The hydrocarbon-laden air passes through the rotary adsorption unit where the hydrocarbons are adsorbed onto zeolite or carbon media. The large volume of incoming air, now purified by the adsorption process, is exhausted to atmosphere. The hydrocarbons which were adsorbed are then continuously removed by desorption with a higher-temperature, low-volume airstream. This high concentration desorption air is delivered to an oxidation device for destruction. Concentration of hydrocarbons into a smaller airstream is a significant benefit to operating costs to a destruction device. By decreasing the airflow, the device is inherently smaller and less costly to purchase. By increasing the concentration, the auxiliary fuel benefit of the hydrocarbons is increased, in many cases, almost to the level of self-sustaining operation, where the customer's natural gas requirements are virtually eliminated. Traditionally, concentrators were applied and justified on very large airstream volumes, but recent commercial applications have been on airstreams of 30,000 SCFM and smaller. Applying the Right Solution It is quite clear that no one solution can be applied universally to all VOC abatement scenarios. The ideology of 'One Size Fits All' is false and potentially costly. In choosing the right technology, it is important to examine the both the process and the airstream constituents to be abated. A careful review of current and future regulations, along with local site considerations, i.e. utility costs, space constraints and local regulations, should be used to select the appropriate solution to the end user's problem. Customer comments No comments were found for Minimizing Operating Costs in VOC Abatement Equipment. Be the first to comment!
How Australia can lead on climate change Australia is not irrelevant to global climate change efforts, a new report shows, with our combined coal and gas export emissions projected to more than double between now and 2030 at a time when we are pursuing a 'clean energy future'. Since 1992, the international community has been trying to avoid dangerous climate change through the negotiation of a 'grand bargain' within the UN climate framework. In that time, there have been many 'action plans', 'road maps' and 'decisions', meanwhile global energy emissions have soared by 50 per cent. There is no end in sight. The best-case scenario, based on last year's 'Durban Roadmap', is that a new agreement will come into effect from 2020 entailing emissions cuts for some countries sometime after that. This would be far too little, far too late to avoid catastrophic warming: global emissions must peak and begin to decline before 2020 if the world is to stay within the '2 degrees budget' (and even that would be risky). Trajectories consistent with a two degree carbon budget (source). In other words, the UN negotiations will not result in global peak emissions within the 'critical decade'. 'It is clear', note the editors of the world's preeminent scientific journal, Nature, 'that the science of climate change and the politics of climate change, now inhabit parallel worlds'. Australia, too, is operating in a parallel world. Having introduced a carbon price that it claims will usher in a 'Clean Energy Future', the Labor government, along with Liberal/National governments in the resource-rich Australian states, is aggressively supporting a massive program of investment in new coal mines, coal seam gas wells, pipes and ports. These projects will see Australia export a staggering amount of highly emissions-intensive coal and gas during and well beyond the critical decade. Based on analysis by the Federal Government's resource economics bureau, Australia's combined coal and gas export emissions (which are already twice Australia's 'domestic' emissions) are projected to more than double between now and 2030. In 2030, Australia's combined (domestic and export) emissions from fossil fuels (2.2 gigatonnnes) would equate to 11 per cent of the world's 2 degree carbon budget in that year (20 gigatonnes – see first graph above). This data, which is presented in a new report from climate solutions think tank Beyond Zero Emissions, Laggard to Leader, shows that Australia's actions are not 'irrelevant' to global climate change efforts: we are materially worsening the chances of achieving the emissions cuts that are necessary if the world is to have any chance of avoiding runaway climate change. In the second half of our report, we show how Australia can lead the world to zero-carbon prosperity. Australia's central position in the global coal and gas trade and its world class renewable energy resources mean Australia is one of only a handful of nations with the influence and capabilities to make renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels. While the UN negotiations remain deadlocked, the report calls for a new way of thinking about international climate cooperation. 'Cooperative Decarbonisation' is a practical, problem-solving approach to the decarbonisation of the global economy within the timeframe necessary to restore a safe climate. Instead of merely complying with arbitrary emissions targets hollowed out by loopholes and undermined by accounting tricks, Cooperative Decarbonisation is much more pragmatic. Put simply, each country must phase down to zero or very near zero the greenhouse gas emissions associated with every economic and social process over which it has control or influence, acting unilaterally and through international cooperation in small groups focused on particular problems and solutions associated with climate change. Australia can lead this process. Specifically, the report calls for two sets of Australian actions. The first relates to fossil fuels. The report shows that less than one eighth of the world's remaining recoverable fossil fuel reserves (which contain 3.5 trillion tonnes worth of potential carbon dioxide emissions) can be burned if we are to remain within a two degree warming budget. Australia should use its market power in global coal and LNG markets to start building a norm of 'non-exploitation' of fossil fuel resources and to foster cooperation on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. Specifically, Australia should: Impose a moratorium on new Australian coal and gas developments to send a clear signal to world leaders and investors about the necessity of a fossil fuel phase-down. Leverage the attention received from its moratorium to convene immediate negotiations among coal and gas importers and exporters on the terms of a fossil fuel phase-out and renewable energy ramp-up, taking into account international equity considerations. Support these efforts by commissioning a high level, independent panel of experts to make the case for a fossil fuel phase-out on climate, public health, security, social, and environmental grounds, just as Australia did for nuclear weapons elimination in the early 1990s with the establishment of the Canberra Commission on Nuclear Weapons. The second set of actions relates to renewable energy. An advanced economy that enjoys among the world's brightest sun, Australia holds the key to the most important climate change solutions. In addition to solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind, the critical technology for decarbonising the world's energy system is Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) with storage. This technology, operating today in other countries, produces 24 hour energy from the power of the sun and provides the best commercially-available technology option for replacing fossil fuels for 'on demand', zero carbon, grid-connected energy. Laggard to Leader calls for Australia to: Roll-out more than 40GW of CST throughout Australia over the next ten years, starting now, along the lines recommended in the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan (which showed in comprehensive detail that such a roll-out is technically achievable and economically affordable). Establish a system of feed-in tariffs and other proven policy mechanisms to leverage total public and private investment of $37 billion per year (over ten years) to support this level of deployment of CST and other renewable technologies. Contribute $3 billion per annum to renewable technology research, development and demonstration, cooperating with other countries wherever possible. These strategic investments, the report argues, would have a profound effect on the global cost of CST. Germany has shown that, through targeted renewable energy deployment policies, one leading country, assisted by a handful of 'followers', can catalyse rapid cost reductions in renewable energy technologies. Germany has installed around 30GW of solar PV (around 30-40 per cent of the world's total accumulated PV installation), causing PV prices to fall an incredible 65 per cent over the last six years. The International Energy Agency expects that the widespread deployment of CST would have a similar effect on CST prices. With Australia leading the way through the actions we recommend, it is reasonable to expect that CST could become cost-competitive with fossil fuel energy within this 'critical decade' on climate change. The US and other countries are already beginning to deploy CST, but it's early days: Australia could establish itself as the world's CST powerhouse while cooperating with other countries to virtually guarantee that it becomes the cheapest form of 'on demand' (or 'baseload') energy. The report argues that not only can Australia lead the world, it should. The case for Australia to undertake these climate leadership actions rests on a combination of ethical and national interest grounds. Whereas Australia's coal and gas boom greatly raises the probability of dangerous climate change and hollows out the non-mining economy that employs 98 per cent of the Australian workforce, establishing a leadership position in the global clean tech economy would ensure a more prosperous and equitable 'one speed' economy while greatly improving the chances of avoiding devastating climate impacts. Fergus Green is co-author of Laggard to Leader: How Australia can Lead the World to Zero Carbon Prosperity. He will be launching the report in Brisbane on Thursday. Part one of this post here.
Print Friendly and PDF only search Why both the Spanish and the Catalan governments think they come out reinforced from the referendum clash Regardless of the term used to categorize yesterday’s events, the scenes of police brutality against peaceful crowds shocked Catalonian and Spanish societies, as they did the rest of the world. Both Spanish and Catalonian governments have contributed significantly to the escalation of the confrontation. The Spanish government and, notably, the Christian-Democratic party, have not budged from the defence of the status quo and have only proposed a de-politicized solution to the ‘Catalonian issue’, via an arguably partisan use of the legal system. On the other hand, the Catalonian government, and especially the main governing party, have used nationalism politically to cover up a number of internal scandals. According to the Catalonian public polling agency, only 15% of Catalonians wanted independence in 2008. But during the last regional elections, 47.8% of them voted for parties that promised a disconnect from the Spanish State. How has this situation come about? We can trace the roots of this conflict back to 2003, when a tripartite leftist coalition came into power in Catalonia. One of the most important points of their governing pact was updating the ‘Estatut’, the law that regulates the relations between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. This initiative was welcomed by the Spanish Socialist party, which promised to accept the proposal to come from Catalonia when the Spanish Socialist party won the elections. In 2006, the new Estatut was approved both by the Spanish and Catalonian parliaments. It was also supported by Catalonian society in a regional referendum. This new law provided more financial and political independence to the region and referred to Catalonia in its preamble as a “nation”. The PP challenged the Estatut in the constitutional court, which was made up of a majority of conservative judges. Four years later, on June 28, 2010, the Constitutional Court resolved that most of the Estatut was unconstitutional and that the reference to Catalonia as a nation in the preamble was legal but held no juridical significance. This created widespread outrage and a massive demonstration took place in Barcelona. This situation was used by CiU (Catalonia’s main governing party), which had returned to power in Catalonia after the 2010 regional elections, to divert attention from several corruption scandals in their party as well as the budget cuts they were implementing. They considered ‘austerity’ to be an unfair tax system that took money from Catalonia in favour of poorer regions in other parts of Spain. The aim of the CiU seemed to be to make a controlled use of nationalism until they could go back to ‘business as usual’. The majority of the party has never been in favour of separating from Spain and this radicalization of the nationalist discourse effectively led to an internal split within the party. However, the nationalist discourse got out of hand when civil society organizations took over. They managed to radicalize it and mobilize massive numbers of people on key dates, especially the ‘Diada’, the day of Catalonia, on September 11. Regional elections took place in 2012 and the governing coalition of CiU and ERC (a leftist party which has always supported separation) agreed to organize a referendum on self-determination, negotiated with the central administration. Seen as the opposition to the Christian-Democratic Spanish government, they finally decided unilaterally to hold a referendum in 2014. Given the political tension that this generated at the time, the original idea of a referendum was then downgraded to a non-binding consultation. Unlike today, at that time, there were no reactions aimed at preventing this mobilization but most people against independence did not participate. Finally, 2.4 million people (out of 7.5 million Catalonians) voted during the mobilization, the result being 75% in favour of independence. In 2015 the Catalonian government called for regional elections and presented them as a plebiscite for independence. If a majority of voters supported separatist parties, the Catalonian parliament would unilaterally declare independence. Pro-independence parties won the majority of the seats but ‘only’ obtained 47.8% of the votes. Given these results, the newly formed government promised to hold a referendum on independence before the end of the legislature. In the beginning they attempted to negotiate with the central government, who turned a deaf ear. Finally, the Catalonian government decided to hold a referendum unilaterally. This referendum has been declared illegal both by the Spanish Constitutional Court and the Catalonian High Court of Justice. It has also been severely obstructed by the actions of the police, who have confiscated over 9 million ballots, a number of ballot boxes and censuses. Some of the reactions during these last few days (police detentions and sanctions to high-level employees of the Catalonian government, numerous website shut downs, raids on the headquarters of pro-independence parties and NGOs, prohibition of talks about the right to self-determination organized all around Spain…) have been seen by many progressive groups that did not support independence as episodes of exaggerated and illegitimate repression. The Spanish government has been accused of acting in an authoritarian manner, limiting the rights of freedom of speech, assembly and demonstration. Consequently, many groups beyond Catalonian separatists framed Sunday’s events as a defence of democratic rights, rather than a vote on a referendum of self-determination. Yesterday evening protests despising police brutality and showing solidarity with Catalonians filled the squares of all main Spanish towns, bringing back memories of the 15M/Indignados’ times. So, what now? The central government has successfully prevented the implementation of a referendum with minimum democratic warranties, both from a legal and political perspective. Legally, under threat of the Spanish police closing many polling stations, the Catalonian government has allowed citizens to vote in any polling station, instead of just in the one where they are registered. To avoid people from voting multiple times, the census was supposed to be controlled electronically but the system failed during the vote count. Moreover, this permission contradicts the law passed by the Catalonian parliament regulating this referendum. Politically, only those in favour of independence have carried out a campaign and it seems that a significant number of people against separation stayed at home. Hence, the results are unlikely to reflect anything close to the real opinion of the Catalonian people. Nevertheless, the episodes of police violence that appeared in all international media outlets gave the Catalonian government the international legitimacy it was lacking during the period before October 1. These images may foster international support for a new referendum, this time based on a consensus between both administrations. It seems that the events of October 1 are going to deepen the conflict even further. Spanish PM, Mariano Rajoy, has spoken at a press conference defending the “firmness and serenity” of the Spanish police. Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, has also made a public statement showing his determination to implement the results of the referendum. This situation will just continue the partisan use of the conflict from both parties, consolidating their supporters on each side. The PP will be seen as the sole guarantor of Spanish unity, receiving substantial social backing in the central regions of Spain. On the other hand, the support for pro-independence parties will go beyond separatism and be considered a reaction against repression by the Spanish government and the conservative values that it represents. To add to this division a protest against Catalonian independence took place in Madrid the day before the referendum, in which relevant figures of the PP, such as Esperanza Aguirre, former minister of education and former president of the region of Madrid, participated. Protesters displayed fascist salutes and sang ‘Cara al Sol’, the anthem of ‘FE de las JONS’, a fascist party that contributed to the military uprising that led to the Spanish civil war and Franco’s dictatorship. These actions saw no reaction from police forces. Hence, this increased polarization is expected to reaffirm both administrations’ positions and lead to a deepening of the conflict. About the author Felipe G. Santos is a doctoral researcher at the School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations, Central European University. His interests lie in the fields of social movements, housing and urban policy, as well as multi-methods methodology for the social sciences. His PhD dissertation, focuses on how activists take care of each other and how care practices influence processes of mobilization, included fieldwork in Barcelona with the Platform of People Affected by Evictions (PAH). Felipe is also a Junior Research Fellow at the Polányi Centre at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Koszeg, Hungary. We encourage anyone to comment, please consult the oD commenting guidelines if you have any questions.
Dismiss Notice Join Physics Forums Today! Speedometer working principle 1. Jul 4, 2017 #1 I'm wondering how does speedometer work. To be specific lets talk about car speedometer. I googled it and found out that there are different kind of speedometers, but not quite understood it's working principle. My question is not about how it shows us speed (Mechanically with arrow or electronically with digits - well if it does matters...), but how it calculates. 2. jcsd 3. Jul 4, 2017 #2 User Avatar Science Advisor Homework Helper The process starts with the gearbox. There is a fixed relationship between the output rpm of the gearbox and the speed of the car. The relationship depends on any gearing in the transmission and things like the diameter of the wheels. The point is the output rpm of the gearbox can be used as a proxy for the speed of the car because of this "fixed" relationship. The old mechanical type work as follows: An output from the gear box spins a magnet inside the speedo next to a metal cup/disc. This causes eddy currents to flow in the metal cup and the cup tries to spin around with the magnet. However the cup is restrained by a small spring that stretches and eventually stops the cup rotating. The faster the magnet spins the further the cup is dragged around and the further the spring is stretched. A pointer is connected to the cup and indicates the speed on a dial. The "calculation" is actually done when the car and speedo is designed. I think changing the diameter of the wheels usually causes the speedo to read incorrectly (but perhaps the spring in the speedo can be adjusted on some?). The modern digital type (probably) use either an optical or hall effect (magnetic) device to generate an electrical pulse each time the shaft from/in the gearbox rotates. These pulses are counted by a microprocessor that calculates the speed. The program "knows" the relationship between the number of pulses per min and the vehicle speed. If you change the diameter of the wheels the car dealer can usually reprogram the speedometer to correct the error that would otherwise be caused. 4. Jul 4, 2017 #3 So, here is the thing what I can't understand: I have rpm, size of the wheel and I can calculate speed (it's school physics); but what if my car's wheels slips cause of mud, ice or my car is in the air for some reason. It seems more like we have some fancy tachometer than speedometer. Maybe I understood incorrectly what you said.... 5. Jul 4, 2017 #4 User Avatar Science Advisor Homework Helper If the wheels on your car slip/skid then the speedo reads incorrectly. Fortunately that doesn't happen very frequently and when it does you don't normally care exactly how fast you are going. 6. Jul 4, 2017 #5 Well thank you than. I thought there was no error in such situations. So I've gone thinking how it was fixed. I had different ideas (which were not very easy to be applied). And again, thanks )) 7. Jul 4, 2017 #6 User Avatar Science Advisor Homework Helper When testing cars they sometimes fit a 5th wheel to the back. This wheel usually looks a bit like a bicycle wheel. It gives an accurate speed reading because it's not used to accelerate or brake the car so is less likely to slip. Have something to add? Draft saved Draft deleted Similar Discussions: Speedometer working principle 1. Pump down principle (Replies: 2)
Carl Sagan on Flatland and Multiple Dimensions Let's ignore for a second Einstein's fourth dimension of time. Is it possible to imagine a fourth dimension of space, separate from left-right, front-back and up-down? What would it look like? What direction could we point to? To answer such a question, we could do what 1800's English writer Edwin Abbott did, both as a thought experiment on multiple dimensions, as well as a criticism of social hierarchy in Victorian England, in his famous novella Flatland (which you can also read for free here): start imagining what it would be like to add a single dimension to a world with fewer dimensions than our own, then take that sort of logic and apply it to our own world and see what kind of results you might be able to deduce. Carl Sagan shows us how to do this, and then shows us what a representation of a tesseract (a fourth-dimensional 'cube' like the one shown above) would look like. Were you struck by the fact that a single apple looked like at least four separate objects at the same time? I'll post a video soon showing a possible solution to the problem of the endurance of a self over time through a similar process. Stay tuned. Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger... Embed this blog on your site
What is Dance: Sixteen One Sentence Answers by New York based choreographers Sixteen New York based choreographers answer the question "what is dance?" They then all order no-whip soy macciatos. Tajna Tanovic: What is Dance? Turned inside out, I dance alone or with someone, for someone or myself. Tell a story without words, paint a picture with my body ... reflecting the... George Jackson: What is Dance? "Why didn't you give my child anything to dance?" she hissed, "there was not one dance step in that role!" Caitlin Trainor: What is Dance? I am not sure if I can put a tag on what dance is exactly, not sure that I can pinpoint what makes sense on a stage... CJ Holm: What is Dance? Three answers: Dance is the process of translating interior forces into external vectors. Dance is a single moment when the dancers move, the audience moves in response, and then... Must Read - Advertisement -
Coprophagy; Dogs will eat nearly anything including their own feces, as disgusting as this may sound this gross habit is very common among dogs. Medically known as “coprophagy”, from the Greek word “kopros” (dung) and “phagos” (one that eats), this is a normal thing that dogs do once in a while. Yes, this is an uncomfortable subject. But you need to realize that sometimes coprophagy is a natural and normal activity for dogs. As an example, newborn puppies have not yet learned to get rid of their feces by themselves, therefore the mother dog licks these to stimulate peeing and defecation, after which the mother dog licks them again to clean them up. If and when adult dogs eat their own feces, it is a different story. When your pet eats their own stool it may be an indication of loneliness or boredom, although in some occasion, miscues in housebreaking can lead to your dog eating stool because he learned that when there is a stool near him he sometimes gets punished so in turn, the dog eats his feces. On the contrary coprophagy does not present any problem for dogs, as long as the stools that he is eating do not contain any parasite eggs. It’s a major aesthetic problem for owners though. You can break and interrupt this unlikely habit by reducing the dog’s boredom or loneliness: Provide him more attention and use, different toys so he does not need to play with similar old pet toys constantly, and feed him more often. Prevention may be the only sure cure. Pick up your pooch’s feces right after he defecates, or muzzle a coprophagic dog when walking in public places. When you should call the Vet? In spite of training, your dog doesn’t cooperate and continues to eat his stool, it is advisable to visit your veterinarian. There might be an actual reason for a dog’s coprophagy. A belly filled with earthworms or any other unwanted organisms could take advantage of your dog’s body, robbing him of significant nutrition, and he may be eating whatever he is able to find to compensate for this. There could also be a dietary deficiency in the diet. Adding brewer’s yeast to his food will boost his consumption of B-vitamins. Pumpkin or raw carrot will prove to add fiber to his diet and help him feel full. In some instances, fixing the issue is really simple by switching or adding your dog’s food with increased body fat, fiber, or protein. A veterinarian can suggest the best brand that is more appropriate to your dog’s nutritional needs. About the Author Based in Toronto Canada, Animal Rights Advocate and Relentless Volunteer! Author Archive Page for Barks sake Please spread the word :)
Avoiding Variable Errors Avoiding Variable Errors One of the most common errors in VBA procedures is to declare a variable and then later misspell the name. For example, suppose I had entered the following statement in the GrossMargin procedure from Listing 3.1: totlExpenses = Application.Sum(Range("Expenses")) Here, totlExpenses is a misspelling of the variable named totalExpenses. VBA supports implicit declarations, which means that if it sees a name it doesn't recognize, it assumes that the name belongs to a new variable. In this case, VBA would assume that totlExpenses is a new variable, proceed normally, and calculate the wrong answer for the function. To avoid this problem, you can tell VBA to generate an error whenever it comes across a name that hasn't been declared explicitly with a Dim statement. There are two ways to do this: • For an individual module, enter the following statement at the top of the module: Option Explicit • To force VBA to add this statement automatically to all your modules, in the Visual Basic Editor, select Tools, Options, display the Editor tab in the Options dialog box that appears, and activate the Require Variable Declaration check box. Activating the Require Variable Declaration check box forces VBA to add the Option Explicit statement at the beginning of each new module. However, it doesn't add this statement to any existing modules; you need to do that by hand. Python SQL Java php Perl game development web development internet *nix graphics hardware telecommunications C++ Flash Active Directory Windows
Wednesday, February 6, 2008 Do not be ashamed of your poverty unless you got it dishonestly.” - Anon. According to those who should know, humanity began in Africa about five point five million years ago when varieties of Australopithecus separated from their monkey cousins. Through gradual gradation, we moved from that lowly beginning to what we call ourselves today - Homo sapiens, (supposedly thinking beings). A new species of the human genus has evolved. Future researchers will again place its birthplace in Africa and time at circa the late 20th and early 21st century. Morphologically, physically, genetically, mentally and intellectually the IMF-SAPIEN is the equal of the HOMO-SAPIEN. In fact, future anthropologists will have big-time difficulties distinguishing the two species. What, then, are the characteristics of the IMF-SAPIEN that made it a distinct species? We have to go beyond the physical sciences in order to recognize an IMF-SAPIEN. Neither biology, nor geology, nor anthropology, nor archaeology, nor chemistry will help us. Only in behavior does an IMF-SAPIEN differ from a HOMO-SAPIEN. Only by studying their behaviors can we make a distinction between the two species. We thus move away from the domain of physiology and enter the province of psychology. How, then, do we properly recognize an IMF-SAPIEN? Many features distinguish the IMF-SAPIENS from other species of the human genus. Below we list some of the easily recognizable traits of IMF-SAPIENism, though not necessarily in any specific order: The most significant trait is that the IMF-SAPIEN is a colonial being. A colonial would be an adequate description of one under colonial domination, but an IMF-SAPIEN goes way-way beyond that. For starters, a colonial subject always harbors the HOPE of gaining his (we are not being sexist here) freedom. IMF-SAPIENS on the other hand has abandoned all hope of salvation. Our unfortunate cousin does not believe himself capable of self-redemption. In fact, an IMF-SAPIEN appears satisfied with his lowly, colonial, lot. With child-like helplessness, he’s waiting for others to come and rescue him. Your average Homo Sapien knows that it’s stupid to be nice to those who do not know how to appreciate the gesture, never mind to reciprocate it, not so with an IMF-SAPIEN. He keeps giving even when his generosity is used to lampoon him. He would rather starve than allow a stranger to go hungry. Centuries of ingratitude has not dulled his sense of mis-guided altruism An IMF-SAPIEN sits on vast wealth whilst living in wretched poverty. Few will contest the fact that Africa is the world’s most resources-rich continent. How then do we explain the strange phenomena of our continent being the worlds’ beggar and the world’s basket case? How do we explain why Africans are the world’s most malnourished, the worst clothed and the most poorly housed people on earth? We need not mention the simple truth that we are the worst educated and the most badly informed. How do we explain the strange phenomenon that makes Africans the lowliest of the world’s lowly wherever we live? Why are our pictures always adorning UN pamphlets on hunger and starvation? The IMF-SAPIEN has long stopped thinking. He has long abandoned efforts to solve his own problem. He has left his salvation and redemption to others. He has folded up his arms in abandonment and has left it for others to analyze and proffer solutions to his problems. This can be the only explanation we have for the uncountable NGOs, institutions and Think Tanks Westerners have set up to maintain their stranglehold on our lives. Or where is it possible to breath nowadays in Africa without a Western NGO telling us how to do it? The IMF-SAPIEN is ravaged by poverty to the point of intellectual inertia. He accepts without protest when others insulted him with their mis-analyses of his problems. He believes when told that his problems are lack of democracy (he should have questioned why his situation hasn’t improved after over two decades of democratic experimentation). He accepted without murmur that his problem stemmed from the corruption of his government (he should have asked how the Americans’, Italians’, Chinese, and Japanese’ economies are booming in spite of their frequent corruption scandals). He receives it solemnly when told that ‘bad governance’ is his major palaver; it never occurred to our unlucky cousin to ask what the nebulous term is supposed to infer? Our IMF-SAPIEN cousin believes that over-population is at the root cause of his destitution (he should have questioned why that is not a problem in say, Holland, where about nineteen million human beings crammed themselves into a real-estate of forty-thousand square kilometers versus Sudan where a land-mass of two point five million square kilometers is populated by only about twenty-two million people. And that Angolans eleven million people have over one million square kilometers in contrast to the almost eighty million Germans who share about three-hundred and fifty-six thousand square kilometers.) Oh yes, an IMF-SAPIEN loves titles and nothing pleases him more than to hold political office. Whether or not it is a political office totally bereft of any real power or authority, the IMF-SAPIEN is contented to hold his sham office. He loves aplomb and pageantry to no end. To make his day, give him a small piece of real estate, throw in a flag, an anthem, and equip some rag-tag band of ruffians with museum pieces and call it a national army, our strange cousin will find nothing ironic in celebrating his sham independence. Adorning himself with all the brass and epaulets money can buy, he will be seen vibrating with joy on ‘Liberation day!’ Everyone the IMF-SAPIEN invites to his house is having the best time of their lives, whilst he continues to exist in grinding poverty and mendicancy: This is among the most obvious signs of IMF-SAPIENism. Any society largely populated by IMF-SAPIEN is immediately recognizable by the fact that the aboriginals are always at the bottom rung of the economic ladder. As pointed to, supra, the IMF-SAPIEN sits on vast natural wealth but does not benefit from them in any tangible way. It is thus left for foreigners to exploit these resources for their own benefits. The IMF-SAPIEN lives in rat-infested, mosquito overwhelmed and vermin-plagued hovels in slum and ghost towns (a ghost town is a ghetto inside a ghetto); the foreigners live in walled mansions in ‘exclusive’ suburbs. The IMF-SAPIEN crammed himself (44 sitting, 99 standing - apologies to Fela Anikulapo-Kuti), into ancient jalopies (trotro in Ghana; molue in Nigeria) whilst the foreigner tool around his towns in the latest designer high-tech cars. What is also easily apparent to visitors is the fact that almost all the foreigners are having the best times of their lives, whilst the IMF-SAPIENS wallow in abject poverty. Or has anyone ever seen a European, Arab or Asia living in any of our numerous shantytowns, ghettoes and ghost towns? An IMF-SAPIEN does not grow what he eats: Present-day keen observers and future archeologists will notice this unique feature of the IMF-SAPIENS immediately. This being is easily recognizable by his eating habits. His foods consist of imported items: British mad cow beef, expired Australian poultry products, European foot and mouth diseased pig feet (yuk!), expired Dutch and Swiss milk products have become staple food of our unfortunate cousin. Our strange cousin believes himself civilized by the numbers of ‘Fast (junk) Food’ outlets in his land! Strangely our cousin, who has absolutely no conception of time, likes to eat at fast food joints! IMF-SAPIEN does not eat what he grows: Like almost all other colonial-subjects, the labor of the IMF-SAPIEN is not employed in producing food for himself and his family. No. His heavy muscles are engaged in producing what they tell him is cash crop. (If IMF-SAPIEN is capable of asking questions, he should have asked where the cash is, that he had employed his labor in producing over the years). Our weird cousin hates his culture: As Apostle Paul said in his Epistle to the Ghanaians 20:05, ‘By their taste for foreign culture, ye shall know them.’ A society populated by IMF-SAPIENS must be a miniature (actually a caricature) of the metropolitan (dominating) power. The IMF-SAPIEN has lost touch with his roots and most of his energies are employed in running away as fast as possible from his cultural roots. Not only would an IMF-SAPIEN not speak his language but also, in speaking a foreign language, he must use foreign tones, mannerisms, inflections etc, etc. A properly evolved IMF-SAPIEN would rather die than bear his traditional name. The IMF-Sapiens’s mannerism consists entirely of mimicking other cultures. Anything foreign is OK for the IMF-SAPIEN as long as it does not remind him of his own culture or traditions. You can easily know when you get to a society of properly-evolved IMF-SAPIENS - Just listen to the leader talking to his people. A well evolved IMF-SAPIEN society is the only place on earth where the rulers are addressing the ruled in a foreign language! In these societies, no one sees anything wrong or ironic in societies where leaders are talking to the led in a foreign language! Let us now consider the structures of the society inhabited by IMF-SAPIENS, albeit briefly. The most notable feature of this society are structures (political, economic, social, sociological and psychological) erected that have no traditional or cultural base. The political and economic institutions of IMF-Sapiens’s society are based on alien, imported structures. IMF-SAPIENS has long abandoned their traditional systems of governance and economic activities. Their system of social organization is imported in its entirety. What’s baffling is that the IMF-SAPIEN failed to grasp why these structures, which he badly-misunderstood, are failing him. As mentioned supra, the IMF-SAPIEN is running away from his roots as fast as possible, we find him junketing from one foreign country to the other seeking solutions to his local problem. Those who pretend to be helping him are swarming his land with their unemployed and unemployable youth, thereby solving their own unemployment problems at the expense of our unfortunate cousin. We thus find the peculiar situation whereby those who created the problems are proffering the solutions. This happens only in a thoroughly evolved IMF-SOCIETY. In the sphere of spirituality, the IMF-SAPIEN is a lost soul. Religion has been properly defined as the deification of the ancestors. Every society creates its own religion and creates its own gods in its own image. Not so for our peculiar and wonderful cousin. As Apostle Paul warned in his Epistle to the Nigerians 20:05, “By their worship of foreign gods, ye shall know them.” With alacrity, our strange cousin made a bonfire of the images of his gods. With stunning speed, he adorned his temples with the images of other people’s gods. How else to explain the burning by Africans of the wooden images of their own gods, only to replace them with the plastic images of a blond, blue-eyed European nailed to a cross in obvious agony? No properly-evolved IMF-Sapien finds anything ironic in adorning his walls with the picture of a Caucasian Jesus the Christ! Nothing makes our cousin giddier than imitating the religious rituals of other people. Our cousin is at his best elements when he can recite off his head the ‘holy books’ of other people religions. The leaders of IMF-SAPIEN societies love titles, ceremonies and speech making, though not necessarily in that order. The sight of the maximum leader spewing rhetorical verbiage on the television and the radios and the newspapers daily confronts a visitor to any IMF-SAPIEN’s society. In these societies, the leader is the state and the state is the leader. The only other personage competing with the maximum leader for coverage is invariably the numero uno’s wife. Go and ask Mevrouw Kibaki in Kenya. Leaders of IMF-SAPIEN societies are simply beyond irony. The opulent live-styles enjoyed by these leaders bear no relationship whatsoever to the poverty suffer by the masses of the people they are leading. This is the only explanation we can adduce for the nauseating sight of well-fed African leaders, resplendent in the best attires money can buy, annually meeting and pontificating about their people’s suffering. No comments: Wise saying:
Beadle, George Wells genetics genes eye biochemical (1903–89) US geneticist: pioneer of biochemical genetics. Born on a farm at Wahoo, NE, Beadle first planned to return there after graduation, but became an enthusiast for genetics and was persuaded to work for a doctorate at Cornell on maize genetics. In 1935 he worked with B Ephrussi in Paris on the genetics of eye-colour in the fruit fly Drosophila ; as a result of this work, ingeniously transplanting eye buds in the larvae, they suspected that genes in some way controlled the production of the eye pigment. When he returned to the USA, to a job at Stanford, he met the microbiologist E L Tatum (1909–75), and in 1940 they decided to use the pink bread fungus Neurospora crassa for a study of biochemical genetics. It grew easily, reproduced quickly and has an adult stage which is haploid (only one set of chromosomes) so that all mutant genes show their phenotypic expression. ( Drosophila , like other higher organisms, has two genes for every character, so dominant genes can mask recessives). Beadle and Tatum exposed Neurospora to X-rays to produce mutations and then examined the mutant strains to find their ability or inability to synthesize a nutrient needed for their own growth. They concluded that the function of a gene is to control production of a specific enzyme; they did not know that had reached the ‘one-gene-one-enzyme’ idea 30 years earlier by studying human metabolic disease. The value of their work was in providing an experimental method that allowed biochemical genetics to develop. It did so speedily, and their central idea remains unchallenged. More precisely, we would now say that one functional unit of DNA controls the synthesis of one peptide chain. Beadle, Tatum and shared a Nobel Prize in 1958. Bean, L. L. - Overview, Personal Life, Career Details, Chronology: L. L. Bean, Inc. [next] User Comments Hide my email completely instead? Cancel or
remain hidden See: elude Mentioned in ? References in classic literature ? It was decided that no time should now be lost before attempting to put our plan of escape to the test, as I could not hope to remain hidden from the Sagoths long, nor could I forever carry that bale of skins about upon my head without arousing suspicion. Why so long dost thou remain hidden "in shady leaves of destiny"? Darkness was coming, and at Bradley's suggestion they decided to remain hidden here until after dark and then to ascend to the roof and reconnoiter. With the coming of the sun they saw they had stumbled upon a place where they might remain hidden from the Wieroos for a long time and also one that they could defend against these winged creatures, since the trees would shield them from an attack from above and also hamper the movements of the creatures should they attempt to follow them into the wood. We shall remain hidden here and give an account of ourselves to these gentlemen when they appear. Surely there are potential locations on Earth that have sufficiently low erosion rates and/or remain hidden to our resolution. Mishani's narrative plumbs human psychology and the secrets that try to remain hidden in a tale of investigation. Half of our roadside drains remain hidden under overgrown verges allowing constant flowing water on the roadway. There are 166,000 young carers in England, but we believe this figure is just the tip of the iceberg - many more children remain hidden from view and are slipping through the net, undetected by support services. Experts said whereas the ill effects of binge drinking were immediately apparent, the health risks of a few glasses of wine each night could remain hidden for 20 years. Together those statistics show that this is a problem which should not and cannot remain hidden.
Three Urban Alternatives to Christianity Image: Robert Abbott Sengstacke / Getty Saviour's Day celebrations at International Ampitheatre, Chicago, Illinois, February 27, 1966. The arrival of millions of African Americans to the industrial North from the agrarian South over the course of the 20th century had more than just an economic and cultural effect. While many migrants joined churches in their new cities, helping to build key institutions that would ground their communities, others found the message of organized religion lacking. Some left for Islam and off-shoots of Judaism and African spiritualism. Many found a home in urban folk religious movements. These sects often spoke directly to the plight of African American workers, most of whom had left Jim Crow only to find segregated Northern cities, racist labor unions, and race riots. These sects often preached that Christianity was the “white man’s religion” and offered a non-Christian and non-white centered paradigm for black people to liberate themselves from their oppression. Today many Christians, especially those who live outside the city, may be unfamiliar with the history and context of those sects, which exist today predominantly in the inner city. Here’s three of the most common sects: the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), Nation of Islam (NoI), and Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI). Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) The MSTA first began in the early 20th century under the guidance of Noble Drew Ali. Born in 1886, Ali was outraged by the treatment of black people during the Jim Crow era. He channeled this frustration into an attempt to provide a broader religious identity for black people. Ali became obsessed with the idea that salvation for black people lay in their discovery of their true origin—descendants of the ancient Moabites. (In the Bible, Moabites are the descendants of an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughter.) In today’s terms: Moors or, in this case, Moorish Americans. One actualized their Moorish identity by paying monthly organizational dues. Over the course of Ali’s lifetime, MSTA gained the most traction in the inner city, growing to nearly 30,000 followers. Drew believed he was a prophet of Allah (other prophets included Jesus, Buddha, and Confucius), although the MSTA has no affiliation with orthodox Islam. Its teachings are found in the Holy Koran of the MSTA, a 60-page booklet with no resemblance to the Qur’an of Islam. The book contains “secret lessons” about the missing years of Jesus. Half of the book is plagiarized from The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ, the second half from Unto Thee I Grant. Notably, both books are written by white people. The Nation of Islam (NoI) MSTA continued after Ali’s death in 1929, but it was soon overshadowed by another black religious group. In 1930, a clothing salesman named Wallace D. Fard appeared in the ghetto of Detroit with a message of liberation for black people marginalized by Northern whites. The early years of NOI appealed to the defiance of African Americans against white supremacy by identifying white America as a race of devils who could not be trusted. There was no salvation for the black man in a religion that historically had failed to provide justice for people of color in this country, early leaders taught. This wrong would be righted at Armageddon where the white man would be conquered by the black man. Fard believed that by educating previously “downtrodden and defenseless” black people about God and themselves they would be able to experience “self-independence.” Part of knowing themselves was knowing their history: Blacks were descendants of the tribe of Shabazz, preached Fard, a lost people who were from the Lost Nation of Asia that had been slaves for over three centuries. Fard assumed the name Wallace F. Muhammad and claimed that he was divine and the long-awaited savior of the black man and woman. Subscribe to CT and get one year free. View this article in Reader Mode Christianity Today Three Urban Alternatives to Christianity
Betelgeuse shocker Betelgeuse shocker Betelgeuse shocker Bad Astronomy The entire universe in blog form Nov. 19 2008 7:12 PM Betelgeuse shocker Distance crushes perspective. Objects hurtle through space at mind-numbing speeds, some moving so quickly they could cross the United States in just seconds; yet, due to their distance, we could wait thousands of years to be able to perceive their motion at all. Unless, that is, they leave behind some tell-tale sign of their rapid movement. Space is not empty, and a star plowing through this ethereally thin gas at dozens of kilometers per second reveals itself. The gas gets compressed ahead of the star, and flows around it in graceful arcs. Like water flowing around the bow of a ship, such a formation is called a bow shock. Phil Plait Phil Plait This shock wave can be invisible to the unaided eye, but when we train infrared telescopes on them they leap out of the picture. Behold the bow shock of Betelgeuse: Infrared image showing Betelgeuse’s bow shock This picture was taken by the Japanese satellite observatory Akari. It's a composite of images taken at 65 (blue in the image), 90 (green) and 140 (red) microns. These are well beyond the human eye's capacity to see; our sensitivity is about 0.3 to 0.7 microns. Betegeuse is a red supergiant about 400 600 light years away (in the linked article, it's mistakenly listed as 200 light years). As the superstar plows through the gas between stars (the interstellar medium, as we pros in the know like to call it), the gas forms a bow shock about three light years across. It's not the physical star itself doing the compressing, it's actually Betelgeuse's stellar wind. Like our own Sun's solar wind, Betelgeuse blows off a stream of particles, but it's far denser. The expanding gas is what's slamming into the interstellar medium and forming this beautiful structure. I have never seen anything like this from Betelgeuse, and it's incredible. The shape of the bow shock makes Betelgeuse's direction of motion obvious enough. The star is moving about 30 km/sec across the gas, and the wind is expanding at about another 17 km/sec, so the collision is actually pretty fast on human scales, but relatively weak for such events (sometimes objects are ramming through gas at hundreds of km/sec). Besides being a pretty picture, there's science to be had here. Examining data like this can tell us how thick the matter is between stars near Betelgeuse, and how it behaves when smacked by an expanding star's wind. One day, Betelgeuse will explode, going supernova, and the matter from the explosion will expand and slam into the already-ejected material at a large fraction of the speed of light. Understanding that material before the star explodes helps us understand what happens after it explodes, and that in turn teaches us a lot about the way stars are born, live out their lives, and die. Considering we owe our existence to such supernovae -- they created the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones -- I think that's a field worthy of study. At that distance, when it blows up it only be a pretty light in the sky, and won't be able to harm the Earth at all. See Chapter 3, "The Stellar Fury of Supernovae" in my book Death from the Skies!
Stephen Hawkinsg’s Reaching the Nearest Star System with Stephen Hawkinsg’s Breakthrough Starshot It is indeed very hard to keep Stephen Hawking away from limelight. He, along with his esteemed colleagues has recently launched massive $100 million project in relation to exploration of space which he has named as Breakthrough Starshot having the objective of reaching the nearest system of star called Alpha Alpha Centauri which may take a span of 20 years. Stephen Hawking along with Russian millionaire who is also a scientist and philanthropist, Yuri Milner disclosed what Breakthrough Starshot project is all about and what its major objectives are. Yuri Milner discussed that this project is all about exploring life in the universe, apart from the planet Earth. Its main objective is to discover places in the outer space that could support and benefit the human race. Stephen Hawking believes that the divide between the nearest star system and the Earth can be transcended by the humans and that is what Breakthrough Starshot project is all about. According to him, the nearest system of star, Alpha Centauri could be reached by mankind with use of light beams and lightest and smallest spacecraft that is ever built like nanocraft which is called Starchip. Amazinly, the Starchip, which is even smaller than an iPhone could take 20 years to reach the nearest star system. New York Times has revealed that the nearest star system Alpha Centauri is 4.37 light-years away from Earth. According to Milner, this spacecraft could take his entire life-time to be completely built, considering its lift off and return to the Earth. He further added that he will be content by just witnessing the lift of this spacecraft from the Earth. Both the scientists have estimated that in order to complete the project, it may take $5 to $10 billion. Hawking ended up by adding that his team is committed to materialize the next great cosmos because being humans, our nature is to fly. Rating: 5.0. From 1 vote. Please wait...
Sphinx Wine Restaurant » The building was built at the end of the 19th century, and its journey through time is closely related to the history of Oia itself. It is located at the area of “Sideras” in Oia, a neighbourhood where local rich ship owners and captains built their houses, today known as the famous “Captain Houses”. On the other side of the village, crews and farmers used to live in cave houses. Through their travels around the world, captains, being impressed and influenced by international architecture, tried to imitate different styles, and created a unique one of their own. The facade of the buildings were austere, with window and door frames made by the local red stone “pori”. The shape of the ceilings was in a monastery dome style, mainly influenced by Venetian architecture. Through the years, the building was used as: End of 19th century: Sea Captain’s residence Between the two world wars: Junior school of Oia village During World War II: Distillery After World War II till 1960’s: Darzentas family bought the building and used it as a part of their big sock factory. Since then, the factory moved to Athens and the building remained closed slowly turing into ruins. In 1995, the building, among thirty six ones in Oia, was characterised by the Greek Municipality of Culture as an historically protected monument, due to its unique Italian style and renaissance architecture. In 2007, our company bought it, and a few years later its reconstruction began based on the traditional building techniques. A special thank you to engineer Aggelos Argiros and constructor Tasos Karras, whose knowledge helped give the building its initial form. The photo below shows an example of the previous state and the final result. Sphinx Wine Restaurant
Anna's Hummingbird is 10 to 11 cm (3.9 to 4.3 in) long. It has a bronze-green back, a pale grey chest and belly, and green flanks. Its bill is long, straight and slender. The adult male has an iridescent crimson-red crown and throat, and a dark, slightly forked tail. Anna's is the only North American hummingbird species with a red crown. Females and juveniles have a green crown, a grey throat with some red markings, a grey chest and belly, and a dark, rounded tail with white tips on the outer feathers. Habitat and Distribution Anna's Hummingbirds are found along the western coast of North America, from southern Canada to northern Baja California, and inland to southern Arizona. They tend to be permanent residents within their range, and are very territorial. Their breeding habitat is open-wooded or shrubby areas and mountain meadows along the Pacific coast from British Columbia to Arizona. These birds feed on nectar from flowers using a long extendable tongue, and tree sap. They also consume small insects caught in flight. The breeding season is from mid December to late June. The female bird builds a large nest in a shrub or tree, or in vines or on wires. The nest is round, 3.8-to-5.1-cm diameter. It is built of very small twigs, lichen and other mosses, and often lined with downy feathers or animal hair. The nest materials are bound together with spider silk or other sticky material. Calls and Songs The song is thin and squeaky.
Literary EssayBook: Their Eyes Were Watching GodAuthor:Zora Neale Hurston Essay by abdulbHigh School, 11th gradeA, May 2010 download word file, 8 pages 0.0 Downloaded 110 times Since humans were created and sent down to Earth by God, he sent everyone with different abilities, minds, unique identities but most importantly a heritage and SKIN COLOR. SKIN COLOR one of the unique attributes in our society and passed down for many generations. Just like names are given at birth our SKIN COLOR is determined by someone greater than ourselves - GOD. Skin color was a very big issue back in the days, especially for blacks. Even now racism still occurs in events around the world. People with extraordinary abilities have limited success and knowledge because of racism. In the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God skin color and white characteristics, or white features affect how characters are treated in their community. In the time of segregation and the Jim Crow Laws, and slavery white people were seen as superior to blacks. Predominately blacks were controlled by whites just like Nanny was controlled by Mistis and her Master. When Nanny gave birth to a child, her baby had many characteristics of a white child. When Nanny was questioned by her Mistis on why her baby looked like a white child. Nanny replies, " 'Ah don't know nothin' but what Ah'm told tuh do, 'cause Ah aint nothin' but uh nigger and uh slave" (17). Nanny was in a situation where she was going to get hurt both ways, either by the Mistis or the Master (mistis husband) if she spoke the truth. Nanny was obviously raped by her Master and the child belonged to him because she was a slave. Black people during slavery were constantly under orders by their masters. Nanny was doing the same thing, she couldn't deny her Master from having sex with her because she had no power or say in the matter. As...
Hunting in Loxahatchee Refuge: The Reason it is Justified alligatorHaving balance in the environment is the key to a well-functioning world. In Florida, the people have to find a balance in living with the American alligator population that has been steadily growing over the years. One way that the state has decided to balance out the population is to establish a season for hunting the alligators. Since 1988 hunting alligators has been legal; and today the cost of a permit for an instate resident to hunt is $272 with others having to pay $1,002. Recently, despite some people strongly protesting the decision, the state has approved to offer licenses to eleven hunters so that they may hunt for alligators in the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge. Despite the negative reaction that activist have towards the decision, this is a good way to combat the fast growing population. In the beginning, the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge was established to protect a number of endangered species. The refuge preserves the Northern Everglades in Florida and stretches across 143,874 acres. The once endangered American alligator, calls this place home and since being housed the population has flourished. The population has grown so much that it has become a concern for the people who visit the refuge to fish and see the other animals. About 2,000 to 3,000 alligators live in the reserve, and visitors have reported that the alligators are not afraid of humans at all. There have even been reports of the alligators swimming right up to the visitors’ boats and take their fish right off the line. To control the population living in the refuge, the state has approved licenses for hunting at the refuge for the first time. More than 1,000 people entered the lottery to receive one out of eleven permits. The permits allow hunters to kill only two alligators and to hunt from Friday August 15 until the end of season hunting on November 1ST. The people who are protesting at the refuge argue that killing the alligators to control the population is immoral. Instead they suggest that the alligators should be given medication to slow down the ability to reproduce. They also state that opening up the Loxahatchee refuge for hunting is not for population control but for the enjoyment of a cruel hobby. Despite their passion for the alligators there position on the issue is wrong. Not hunting the alligators makes the ones which reside on the refuge more dangerous to humans. Because the refuge has never been hunted in, the alligators that live there do not fear humans at all. In a news report by NBC in Palm Beach, Newton Cook, executive director of the United Water fowlers of Florida stated “As someone who hunts and fishes on the refuge, I can tell you the alligators are thick and unfortunately aggressive”. Experts have cautioned that because of this the alligators would be more likely to attack people. The size of the alligators on the refuge are also a concern. Normally American alligators grow to be about 8 feet long. However, on the refuge the alligators have been reported to be about 12 feet long and some are even larger than that. Having alligators that are not only larger than normal but also more aggressive is extremely dangerous. To continue, their proposal to use medication as the solution does not seem feasible. To provide the animals with the medication needed would cost both time and money. The protestors have not thought about who would pay for the medication or who would administer the medication to the dangerous creatures. By allowing people to hunt, the population is controlled and mouths are being fed. The hunters are not just hunting for sport, but for food and income. One permit holder said that none of the animal will be wasted. The meat would be barbecued and the skin would be used for other purposes. While some plan on eating it themselves others plan on selling some of the meat. Alligator ribs sell for about 18 dollars in Florida which could allow for the hunters to collect some revenue for their efforts. Also, allowing a small number of hunters into the refuge keeps the population in check without causing a big disturbance. As previously mentioned only eleven hunter actually hold a permit and they are only allowed to kill two alligators. Tony Young , the head of the Wildlife Commission stated that the population of American alligators is large and sustainable enough to allow hunters to go into the Loxahatchee refuge. In an article by the Sun Sentinel the project leader for the refuge, Rolf Olson, said that, “with 134 counted in a single canal, that the loss of 22 would have no impact”. In the same article a Florida police officer also shared his belief that allowing hunters is good for the protection of general public. With head officials providing the information that proves the alligators are no longer endangers and saying that the loss of twenty-two will not damage the population, I do not see the problem with opening up the refuge to the eleven selected hunters. Hunting being done on the refuge is also being strictly regulated. To ensure that the permitted hunters are not disrespecting the refuge and that the alligators are not being tortured, only approved hunting utensils can be used. Harpoons, rod-and-reels, snares, gigs and crossbows are the only things that the hunters are allowed to use to catch the alligators. Once caught, they hunters must immediately use a bang stick to kill the alligator. A bang stick is a rod which shoots out a desired caliber bullet or shotgun shell directly into the brain of the alligator causing immediate death. Having these rules implemented shows that hunting on the refuge will not be like hunting alligators publicly ―where you are allowed to shoot them with pistols which do not always cause instant death. Also, the hunters will only be able to hunt at night so that they do not disturb the other activities that occur in the refuge during the day. Hunting at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge will be organized and humane. In closing, allowing eleven people to hunt in the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge should not be looked down upon. Allowing the hunters to hunt twenty-two alligators keeps the population at bay and the public safe. It also ensures that the animals will be killed properly so that they do not have to suffer. There are no negatives that effects that have been proposed if hunting at the refuge is allowed. Opening it up for permitted hunters only reaps positive results. Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s %d bloggers like this:
“Physics is the most fundamental of the experimental sciences, as it seeks to explain the universe itself from the very smallest particles—currently accepted as quarks, which may be truly fundamental—to the vast distances between galaxies… Despite the exciting and extraordinary development of ideas throughout the history of physics, certain aspects have remained unchanged. Observations remain essential to the very core of physics, sometimes requiring a leap of imagination to decide what to look for. Models are developed to try to understand observations, and these themselves can become theories that attempt to explain the observations. Theories are not always directly derived from observations but often need to be created. These acts of creation can be compared to those in great art, literature and music, but differ in one aspect that is unique to science: the predictions of these theories or ideas must be tested by careful experimentation. Without these tests, a theory cannot be quantified. A general or concise statement about how nature behaves, if found to be experimentally valid over a wide range of observed phenomena, is called a law or a principle… The scientific processes carried out by the most eminent scientists in the past are the same ones followed by working physicists today and, crucially, are also accessible to students in schools. Early in the development of science, physicists were both theoreticians and experimenters (natural philosophers). The body of scientific knowledge has grown in size and complexity, and the tools and skills of theoretical and experimental physicists have become so specialized that it is difficult (if not impossible) to be highly proficient in both areas. While students should be aware of this, they should also know that the free and rapid interplay of theoretical ideas and experimental results in the public scientific literature maintains the crucial links between these fields. At the school level, both theory and experiments should be undertaken by all students. They should complement one another naturally, as they do in the wider scientific community. The Diploma Programme physics course allows students to develop traditional practical skills and techniques and increase their abilities in the use of mathematics, which is the language of physics. It also allows students to develop interpersonal and digital communication skills which are essential in the modern scientific endeavor and are important life-enhancing, transferable skills in their own right.” — Physics Guide, p 12. Physics Guide
The Chicken Experiment That Shook the World In 1948, a scientist fed chicks a tiny dose of a new antibiotic, setting off a cascade of consequences — from drug resistance to factory farming. In all the arguments that erupted afterward, everyone agreed on this: The chickens gained weight. In 1942, a new antibiotic called penicillin saved the lives of more than 100 victims of a Boston fire. Drug companies raced to develop their own versions. It was Christmas Day, 1948. The streets of Pearl River, New York, a small town 20 miles northwest of Manhattan on the New Jersey border, were very quiet, and the halls of Lederle Laboratories even more so. There was a skeleton crew at the 500-acre campus: the minimum necessary number of laboratory staff nipping in and out to monitor equipment and make sure the experimental animals were fed. This article is excerpted from Maryn McKenna’s new book, “Big Chicken: The Incredible Story of How Antibiotics Created Modern Agriculture and Changed the Way the World Eats,” published by National Geographic. Thomas Jukes did not plan to spend much time there himself. He had told his lab assistant to take the holiday off. All he needed was to slip into the animal colony, corner the 133 juvenile chickens that made up his experiment, and weigh them. He expected that it would not take long. He probably did not expect to change the world. Jukes was British, slender and dark-haired, with alert eyes behind oversized glasses: an energetic self-made man who had left home at age 17, emigrated to Canada, and worked on a farm and in factories in Detroit to amass enough money for college. He had earned a degree at Ontario Agriculture College — sleeping, at one point, on a cot in the poultry building — and a Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Toronto’s medical school, studying the immune systems of chickens and ducks. In 1933, he took a postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, Berkeley, and wound up at its College of Agriculture, where he accomplished notable work, identifying which vitamins had to be added to chicken feed to allow birds to thrive on a manufactured diet. In the 1930s, that was a crucial question. Until World War I, almost every farmer had kept a few hens to produce eggs and had eaten the hens when they stopped laying. Now, though, chicken meat and eggs were becoming a crop, a farm’s reason for being. Instead of a few at a time, chickens were being raised by the thousands, and instead of wandering around a barnyard, they were sequestered indoors, unable to reach the grains and grubs they would have scratched up from the ground. They needed synthetic nutrition, and the poultry industry needed a parallel industry of experts to supply it. Jukes became one of those experts, and Lederle, the company that recruited him from California with the promise of a lab and staff, was becoming a leader in poultry science. Lederle was not an agricultural company; it was a pharmaceutical company, one of the first manufacturers of antibiotics. Jukes joined the company in 1942, the year the new drug called penicillin saved the lives of more than 100 victims of the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire in Boston by preventing infections from taking hold in severe burns. That was enough proof of the power of this mold-based antibiotic for the U.S. government to invest in its production and send millions of doses out onto the battlefields of World War II, saving untold thousands with a speed that seemed miraculous. An undated portrait of the scientist Thomas Jukes, who fed chickens Aureomycin to see if they’d grow. Visual by Journal of Nutrition Penicillin’s success ignited a hunger for additional antibiotics — and for the profit these new drugs could bring. Pharmaceutical companies sent sterile sample tubes around the world, begging missionaries and soldiers to spoon up and send home any mold or dirt that looked promising. Lederle’s chief pathologist, Benjamin Duggar, asked a former colleague at the University of Missouri to send him random scoops of dirt from the campus. One tube, dug from a field where the agricultural school grew varieties of forage grass, contained a bacterium that exuded a golden-yellow chemical. In tests, the compound killed a wide array of disease bacteria — more than penicillin could manage, and different ones from those that streptomycin could kill. American Cyanamid Company, Lederle’s parent corporation, jubilantly filed for a patent in February 1948. In a nod to the compound’s color— and maybe to the income he hoped would flow from it — Duggar dubbed the fungus Streptomyces aureofaciens, “gold-making.” He called the compound Aureomycin. Later it would be known as chlortetracycline, the first of the entire family of tetracycline drugs. Jukes was not part of Lederle’s antibiotic effort; he had been hired to work on nutrition. But he was still interested in what chickens needed to eat to thrive in confinement — and by an accident of history, that question was more important than ever. World War II had spurred such demand for protein that chicken production almost tripled. But when the war ended, the poultry market collapsed and producers struggled for ways to cut costs. En masse, they switched their birds’ diet from vitamin-rich fishmeal to much cheaper soybeans. Chickens did not do well on soybeans, though. They grew slowly; their eggs did not hatch. Even when vitamins were added to their feed, as Jukes had learned to do in his first job, the birds did not thrive. People talked about adding a nutritious boost, an “animal protein factor.” Love Undark? Sign up for our newsletter! Then Merck & Company, a Lederle rival, discovered that the brewing process for making its own antibiotic, streptomycin, produced a compound that made chickens do better, even when they were fed the small amounts of protein now present in conventional feed. Merck’s scientists identified the byproduct as vitamin B12. Jukes wondered if Lederle’s Aureomycin, a distant relative of the bacteria species the Merck scientists used, could perform the same trick. That was what brought him to his office on Christmas morning, on a mild, dry day with just a dusting of snow. A few weeks earlier, he had set up an experiment to test whether Lederle possessed an animal protein factor of its own. Today he would find out. He had chosen a small group of 6-month-old hens and roosters from the birds the company raised to use in research. He fed them a specially mixed diet, low in nutrients so the chicks would be feeble; that way, it would be easier to distinguish the effect of any additives. When the hens laid eggs, he hatched the chicks in an incubator, divided them into groups of 12, and sequestered one dozen to keep as a control group. Those birds got the same deficient diet as their parents. The other groups got different doses of supplements; one of those groups was fed tiny portions of the mash, or growth medium, that Aureomycin had been brewed in. Christmas was the 25th day since the chicks had hatched. (Most of the control group had died.) One by one, Jukes weighed them all, painstakingly recording the numbers, then looked at his results. And looked again. The birds that had gotten the highest dose of Aureomycin were the heaviest in the room. They weighed almost 10 ounces — a third more than the chicks receiving Merck’s B12. Jukes wondered if Lederle’s Aureomycin could promote growth in newly hatched chicks. That was what brought him to his office on Christmas morning, 1948. The chicks had gotten to that weight with the help of 60 grams of the mash containing a trace amount of Aureomycin. Sixty grams is 2 ounces: the weight of a handful of pennies, two slices of bread, an egg. Yet that tiny weight would exert enough force to alter the entire structure of agriculture — and affect land use, labor relations, international trade, animal welfare, and the diet of most of the world. As further experiments confirmed Aureomycin’s “growth-promoting” effect, Jukes began passing samples to scientists he knew at state agricultural colleges throughout the United States and asked them to conduct experiments of their own. His colleagues were astounded: They reported back that small doses not only cured a bloody diarrhea that would have killed young pigs, but also tripled their rate of growth and boosted the weight of turkey chicks, called poults. Word got around. So many researchers asked for Aureomycin residue that Jukes ran through the Pearl River plant’s fermentation byproducts faster than they were being made. He resorted to plundering the company dump for any discarded fermentation vessels, including reused glass Coke bottles, that might contain a few precious grams of drug. Farmers began clamoring for it too. Demand was so intense that a senator from Nebraska sent an official complaint that the farmers in neighboring Iowa were getting more of the product than his own constituents. Vice President Alben Barkley requested and received a load to feed to livestock on his family’s Kentucky farm. As a pharmaceutical manufacturer, Lederle had to report any new drug and any new use of a drug to the Food and Drug Administration. It had done that when Aureomycin was first achieved, registering it appropriately as a human medication. But when it came to animal feed, the company was cagey, calling it a vitamin supplement. (A 1949 patent application for Aureomycin in animal feed, describing it as a drug and not a “source of vitamin B12,” proves it knew better.) Jukes and his colleague E.L. Robert Stokstad did not publicly acknowledge how their discovery worked until April 1950, at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. A New York Times reporter happened to be covering the conference. The following morning, his story trumpeted the news on the front page: “‘Wonder Drug’ Aureomycin Found to Spur Growth 50%.” In a 1956 ad, Lederle boasted that its Acronizing process — dunking raw meat into an antibiotic solution — “brings you chicken at its very peak of taste and flavor.” The story contained a clue as to why Aureomycin had become so popular: It was cheap. “Five pounds of an unpurified product, selling at 30 to 40 cents a pound, when added to a whole ton of animal feed . . . ‘has increased the rate of growth of hogs by as much as 50 per cent,’” it said. And it ended by declaring, with a boldness that would turn out to be overconfident: “No undesirable side effects have been observed.” In retrospect, such statements sound startling. But they make sense in the context of the time. Antibiotics were new, and the world was in love with them. There was a reason they were called miracle drugs. Before penicillin, minor cuts and scrapes often burgeoned into infections so serious they required amputations. Three out of every 10 pneumonia patients died; so did nine women out of every 1,000 who gave birth. (That was in the cleanest hospitals; often the death toll was higher.) Untreated ear infections ravaged children’s hearing. One out of every six soldiers wounded on the battlefield died there, and huge numbers contracted syphilis and gonorrhea that left them disabled, arthritic, or blind. The relief of being freed from that burden sparked a joyous overreaction. Penicillin was not only dispensed to patients in hospitals; manufacturers tossed it into ointments, throat lozenges, gum, toothpaste, inhalable powders, even lipstick. Anyone could buy penicillin over the counter in a pharmacy; prescriptions were not required until 1951 (and even then only because overuse was provoking allergies). There was no understanding yet that antibiotics work only against bacterial diseases, not viruses. It seemed only smart to take the new drugs for any ailment — foolish, in fact, not to. Yet from the early days of the antibiotic era, there had been rumblings of concern about how long their effectiveness would last. In 1945, a few months before receiving the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering penicillin, the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming warned against its use in too small doses, “so that, instead of clearing up the infection, the microbes are educated to resist penicillin.” “In such a case,” he went on, “the thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope this evil can be averted.” Fleming was prescient, and unheeded. By 1947, a hospital in London was experiencing an outbreak of staph infections that did not respond to penicillin. By 1953, the same resistant bug sparked an epidemic in Australia, and in 1955 it crossed to the United States, infecting more than 5,000 mothers who had given birth in hospitals near Seattle and their newborns too. Those illnesses marked the start of the lethal game of leapfrog that organisms and antibiotics have engaged in ever since. Researchers direct a drug against them; they evolve a defense against it; other researchers produce a new drug; bacteria evolve a defense again. The antibiotic doses being given to animals for growth promotion could not strictly be considered “too small,” but only because the animals were healthy and did not require a dose of any size. But the amounts being given were minuscule. Lederle veterinarians warned that the company’s new product would encourage antibiotic resistance, but they were overruled by its corporate parent, American Cyanamid. “Competition was right on our heels,” Jukes said three decades later. The FDA took a similar attitude, accepting drug companies’ assertions that growth promoters were safe. In 1951, with no advance public notice and without holding a hearing, it approved Aureomycin and five other antibiotics for use in animal feed. The administrator of the Federal Security Administration, which oversaw the FDA at the time, said it “would be against public interest to delay.” Even as antibiotics were catching on as growth promoters in animals, researchers began to wonder whether they would do the same for humans. Between 1950 and 1955, experimenters fed routine doses of antibiotics to small groups of premature babies. Other researchers concocted other human trials that are unnerving by modern ethical standards. Antibiotics were given to people who had no capacity to consent, including developmentally disabled children held in a eugenics institution in Florida and undernourished poor children in Guatemala and Kenya. Fortunately for the subjects, none of the trials reported adverse effects, and in all of them the growth promoters worked. All of the recipients, adults and children, put on muscle, and the children grew taller as well. Those results made researchers even more confident that antibiotics in animals had no negative effects, and that led in turn to the drugs’ most out-there use: keeping food from going bad. In several countries, led by the United States, experimenters added antibiotics to the cold-water tanks in which fish were held on fishing boats and to the ice on which fish were stored in processing plants. They washed spinach in a streptomycin solution after harvesting. They painted the drugs on the outside of cuts of meat and mixed them into ground beef. (Such practices did not last long, but a Lederle process called Acronizing —dunking raw chicken and fish into an antibiotic solution — persisted for a decade.) The experiments led to a kind of category creep for Aureomycin. The drug that had first been used only to make animals grow faster began to be used to protect them from diseases as well. This required a larger dose. Lederle salesmen began to tell farmers that they should give chickens not 10 grams of Aureomycin per ton of feed but up to 200 grams, a 20-fold increase. The FDA blessed the practice in April 1953, extending approval of Aureomycin from just growth promotion to prevention as well—once more without any advance notice and without a public hearing. An undated postcard showing Lederle Laboratories, where Aureomycin was discovered. Visual courtesy of New City Library postcard collection This was huge — and not just for Lederle, which could instantly count on bigger sales. It gave farmers permission to use antibiotics far more freely, insulating unscrupulous or inexperienced or careless producers from the consequences of bad farming practices. They could squeeze animals in more tightly, clean their barns less frequently, scrimp on nutrition, turn a blind eye to pests — and know they were protected against the diseases that would otherwise have resulted, because the antibiotic doses protected their livestock from the start. The decision opened the door to industrial-scale production and the animal welfare abuses it would one day be accused of. And though it would take years before anyone put the pieces together, it would increase antibiotic resistance as well. (Using antibiotics to promote growth in animals did not end in this country until 2017. Preventive use is still allowed.) To the end of his life — he died in 1999, at 93 — Jukes championed his invention and refused to acknowledge any downside. That may have been possessiveness, or arrogance, or just cussedness: He seems to have taken pleasure in defying received wisdom. He derided regulation of dangerous food additives and called organic food a “myth.” He opposed federal action that prevented beef cattle from getting the estrogen compound DES, even though it was known to cause cancer in the daughters of women who were given it in pregnancy. He directed special rage at the ban on the pesticide DDT and the hugely influential 1962 book “Silent Spring,” which provoked it. He railed that the federal government had caved to “that segment of society represented by the antivivisectionists, anti-fluoridationists, and organic farmers.” In a parody published in the journal Chemical Week, he mocked its author, Rachel Carson, as a writer of “science fiction horror stories.” Writing for both scientific journals and newspapers — his zestful polemics appeared, among other places, in Science, Nature, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and The New York Times — Jukes dismissed any concerns about livestock antibiotics and the concentrated confinement farms they would create. “The use of antibiotics for farm animals does not present a hazard to public health,” he declared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1970. Appearing at the New York Academy of Sciences in 1971, he asked: “Do we have so many cattle, pigs, and chickens that we ignore the need for feeding them by the most economical means? I do not think so.” And later: “The urban public has been encouraged by the animal-rights movement to believe that animals ‘feel better’ when they have more space for roaming. But how do we know this is true? Humans voluntarily jam themselves together to watch sports or in social gatherings. The larger and denser the crowd, the more successful the event.” He wrote that in 1992, at age 86. It may have been his last public word on the subject. Maryn McKenna is a freelancer focused on public health, global health, and food policy, and a senior fellow of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University. A former Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT, she delivered a TED Talk, “What do we do when antibiotics don’t work anymore?,” that has been viewed more than 1.5 million times. See What Others Are Saying 4 comments / Join the Discussion Jukes was right about Rachel Carson. Carson comes up with illogical conclusions based upon studies that never were able to tie the thinning eggshells to predatory birds. In fact Carson’s book has caused more death than Hitler with the resurgence of Malaria due to the banning of DDT. Go pick up your cheques boys, thanks….. The chemical and drug industry. They speak (an obvious) truth and you respond with silly ad hominim attacks. Do you leftists ever actually think before you spew nonsense? Join the discussion
In 1932, Australia Declared War On Emus—And Lost The Great Emu War in Western Australia was a bizarre and futile effort. Here is a sentence that is at once absurd yet unsurprising: in 1932, Australia declared war on emus. This is not an early April Fool’s joke; the above video shows the very real Great Emu War of Western Australia, in which soldiers with machine guns were deployed to fight off the flightless birds. What did the emus do to deserve armed combat? Western Australian farmers had been facing hard times with their crops following the Great Depression, and their difficulties increased tenfold with the arrival of some 20,000 emus migrating inland during their breeding season. The farmers relayed their concerns to the government, which called upon a deputation of ex-soldiers from the first World War, who requested the use of machine guns to fight off the emus. The ensuing Emu War has been summarized thusly by ornithologist D.L. Serventy: The machine-gunners’ dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the combat area after about a month. Every day we track down a Video Wonder: an audiovisual offering that delights, inspires, and entertains. Have you encountered a video we should feature? Email [email protected].
The Aylesbury Duck One of the reasons Aylesbury is famous around the globe Whenever Aylesbury is mentioned, what often first springs to mind is the famous breed of duck that originated in the town. The Aylesbury Duck is thought to have evolved during the early years of the 18th Century, the result of selective breeding of the common duck which was usually brown or grey in colour, but occasionally white. Breeders were aware that London dealers preferred white plumage, as the feathers were popular for quilt filling, and the pale pink skin of a plucked white bird was considered more attractive than the yellow skin of coloured ducks. History of the Aylesbury Duck Historically Aylesbury Ducks were walked from the Vale of Aylesbury to London, a distance of some 40 miles. The drovers would often stop for the night at inns along the way where the birds were kept in large enclosed yards. Each morning, they would be driven through a cold tarry solution in a shallow ditch followed by a layer of sawdust, which provided the birds with a set of crude shoes to protect their feet on the road to London. Throughout the 19th Century the main market for duck meat was provided by the wealthy people of London, and by 1839 the ducks could be transported by rail. J K Fowler, writing in 1850, said "oftentimes in the spring, in one night, a ton weight of ducklings from six to eight weeks old are taken by rail from Aylesbury and the villages round to the metropolis." As the popularity of the famous Aylesbury Duck grew, visitors flocked from far and wide to buy the local delicacy from the town's fat stock markets. During these years, almost everyone who lived in the 'Duck End' of Aylesbury bred the Aylesbury Duck. It became a poor, crowded part of town, with the residents living in cramped unsanitary conditions. The ducks were reared inside the already damp cottages, and the young ducklings were sometimes taken to bed to keep them warm. However, by about 1850 the number of establishments breeding the ducks began to decline. The introduction of new sanitary regulations made duck rearing in cottages difficult, and the soil quality in Aylesbury deteriorated to such an extent, following many years of duck raising that it caused an outbreak of 'Duck Fever'. In 1873 the Peking Duck was brought to Britain from China, and the Aylesbury breed was frequently crossed with it. As a result, the pure breed began to disappear and by the Second World War ducking in and around Aylesbury had almost vanished. The Aylesbury Duck today Recent years have seen efforts on the part of breeders to re-establish the Aylesbury Duck, and they have become popular once more as an exhibition bird. According to Lewis Wright in the 1880's, the Aylesbury Duck should be of the purest white with a bill set well up on the skull and the beak almost in a line from the top of the head to the tip, and of a delicate flesh colour. It is this distinctive pinkish white colour of the beak that is so important in establishing if the bird is a pure Aylesbury breed. Every bird needs grit to break up food and make it more digestible, and the Aylesbury duck was given a special type of grit found not far from Aylesbury. It was due to this grit that the characteristic flesh coloured bill developed. Where to see the Aylesbury Duck If you just want to look try the large duck pond in front of St Mary's Church in Haddenham, a large village in the southern tip of Aylesbury Vale. Rate this page:
What Butterflies Can Teach Us About the Mind/Body Connection: A Shrinks Guide to Listening to Your Gut. Originally posted on Hey Sigmund We all know the expression “butterflies in my stomach” and we all tend to agree on what that feeling signifies for us at a psychological level. We use this expression to describe feeling nervous, anxious, or excited. But did you know that the butterflies you feel in your “stomach” are actually representative of a complex and mutually reciprocal relationship between your brain and your gut? There has been a growing understanding and exploration by psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians and researchers about the role our gut bacteria plays on our mood—most notably the experience of anxiety. The statistics on anxiety are staggering and trending north each passing year. Consider these stats: According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (and NIMH) anxiety is the most common mental illness in America today. An estimated 40 million adults (18 and older) or 18 percent of the population endorse symptoms of anxiety (not to mention one out of eight children). Treatment of anxiety accounts for one-third of the $148 billion dollars spent annually on mental illnesses in America. In other words, we spend $42 billion a year on treatment of anxiety disorders in America. Women are 60 percent more likely to develop an anxiety disorder than our male counterparts. These numbers are terrifying to me as a clinician, a woman and a mother. The symbiotic relationship between our gut health and how we feel is a hot topic of discussion and research. Scientists, physicians, and mental health practitioners are increasingly aware of the important relationship between the balance of “critters” in our gut and how we experience our brain, mood and emotions. So, before we begin to discuss what we can do to optimize this important relationship, let’s explore the underlying processes. From a holistic vantage point our gut is known as the “second brain” and there are structural/anatomical reasons for this reference. The “second brain,” known scientifically as the enteric nervous system, consists of sheaths of neurons located in the walls of our gut. We refer to these sheaths as the vagus nerve and it runs from our esophagus to our anus, roughly nine meters long. Did you know that: -The bacteria, fungi and viruses that make up your body’s microflora outnumber your body’s cells by 10 to 1. -95 percent of the body’s serotonin supply is found in our bowels. -The vagus nerve contains 100 million neurons, which is more neurons than the spinal cord or peripheral nervous system hold. -There are over 100 trillion bacterial cells contained within the gut. -Our gut sends far more information to our brain than the other way around. When the precarious balance of bacteria in our gut becomes disturbed we often experience symptoms associated with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and other gastrointestinal related disorders. These symptoms are likely to start out as complaints of bloating, gas, constipation or diarrhea. When this occurs the domino effect of issues becomes inevitable and thus begins the cascading symptom patterns that plague tens of millions of Americans struggling with GI related disorders.u Due to the interconnectedness of our brain and enteric nervous system, via the vagus nerve, once our gut bacteria is out of whack, we are vulnerable to a pattern of emotional discomfort, usually marked by increasing episodes of anxiety and depression. How does our gut bacteria become so unbalanced? Here are a few of the many ways in which we accidentally (and sometimes unavoidably) contribute to this pattern of disturbance: -Excessive and unmanaged stress -Too much use of antibiotics -Prolonged use of steroids -Intestinal infections -High sugar; low fiber diet (in other words, Standard American Diet (SAD)) -Regular consumption of alcohol If you are reading this blog and you find yourself relating to this content, I encourage you to seek out professional help to better understand what these symptoms mean for your unique constitution. There is a bourgeoning area of interest and research exploring use of probiotics to treat a wide variety of mental illnesses. Pharmaceutical companies are attempting to create a new line of psychiatric medications referred to as Psychobiotics, but this field of research is still in its infancy. There is a growing body of research that is exploring strain specific probiotics to help mitigate acute symptoms of anxiety. For example, in clinical trials involving the study of mice, Bifidobacterium longum and Lactobacillus Rhamnosus have shown to help normalize anxiety-like behavior. There are also a growing number of small human studies exploring the efficacy of using probiotics to combat anxiety symptoms. The preliminary data from these small studies echo the success from the rat-based research. In one study, 22 men reported feeling “less stress” after taking the strain specific probiotic for a month. Additionally, their lab results revealed lower levels of the stress hormone, cortisol while under duress. Both of these strains appear to work on the GABA receptors, an inhibitory neurotransmitter involved in the regulation of acute anxiety. GABA is the receptor influenced when you take a benzodiazepine such as Xanax or Ativan. My emphasis within my clinical practice is to encourage my patient’s to explore the ways in which they can participate in healing their own bodies through the careful understanding of what their symptoms are telling them about their own unique emotional and physical constitution. Through seeking to find solutions that are rooted in personal empowerment, we start to shift our relationship to accountability, responsibility and personal growth. So, that being said, there is a lot we can do right from the comfort of our own home to start the process of realigning the balance of our gut flora. As you can imagine, most of it involves cleaning up our diet, being mindful of the relationship between food and mood, exploring our habits and patterns, and better metabolizing our emotions. Below are action steps you can take in an effort to begin the process of healing your gut, mind and brain: It generally takes a minimum of 90 days for these suggestions to be effective: - Eliminate sugars: The “fake” sugars. We are not talking about eliminating whole fruits. Rather, cutting out the baked goods, cookies, ice cream, and store bought sugary products that wreak havoc on the bacteria in our gut and lead to cyclical patterns of emotional and physical cravings. - Eliminate all simple starches and reduce intake of even complex starches. The goal is to reduce the amount of yeast producing foods we consume. - Reduce or stop drinking alcohol for the 90-day period. If this is difficult for you to do, observe the nature that “relationship.” - Add in fermented and living foods. Please try to avoid store bought yogurts even though they are considered fermented. These products are loaded with sugars and often end up exacerbating imbalance. -Consume copious amounts of veggies. Attempt to eat 6-9 cups of vegetables per day. Avoid use of store bought dressings etc., which are loaded with sugar and preservatives. - Consume foods high in Omega-3 fatty acids (walnuts, salmon, flax, some types of squash, etc.). - Aim to consume local and organic sources of animal protein. Doing so will reduce your ingestion of unwanted antibiotics and feed based chemicals. - Discuss with your practitioner if the use of a probiotic or prebiotic will benefit your unique situation. A probiotic introduces specific strains of good bacteria, while a prebiotic introduces carbohydrates that serve as food the bacteria already present in your gut. - Exercise. More days than not. Enough to sweat. The goal is to find joy in it. But if you hate it, that’s okay. Do it anyway. - Drink mostly water. - Work with a skilled psychologist or mental health professional to metabolize past trauma, identify faulty thought patterns, and implement mindfulness- based skills to better manage your central nervous system. - Implement a daily mindfulness/meditation practice. The goal is observe your mind, not to clear it or control your thoughts. Simple observation and balanced breathing. This is a restful and restorative way to calm the central nervous system and recalibrate the vagus nerve. Mindfulness based relaxation has a myriad of benefits and has been shown to participate in changing neural pathways of emotional and physical pain. I suggest starting with a ten minute morning practice and increase it to twenty minutes once you feel the “mindfulness muscle” is more robust. xploring the relationship between our mood and our gut bacteria reveals an interconnected relationship between the mind, brain, and body, via the enteric nervous system and vagus nerve. This relationship is the foundation of why it is critical to address your emotional discomfort from a holistic and integrated approach to your wellness. The good news is that because we now know and understand that there is a connection between the mind and body, we have the knowledge and tools to make immediate changes that will yield profound, albeit subtle results in how we feel. The better we understand and participate in our own sense of wellness and empowerment the more likely we are to embark on change that starts from within.
Inches of waste from a coal ash pit found floating on the surface of the Neuse River at Duke Energy's H.F. Lee power plant upstream of Goldsboro, North Carolina, following record flooding from Hurricane Matthew: 1 Tons of exposed coal ash at the Lee plant: more than 1 million Number of days that the Lee plant's ash pits, which contain toxic metals including arsenic and thallium, were submerged by Matthew's floodwaters: more than 7 Days before the Waterkeeper Alliance announced the spill that Duke Energy issued a press release saying it found only "minor erosion" of the Lee ash pit and claimed that "the amount of material displaced would not even fill the bed of an average pickup truck": 3 Days after the Waterkeeper Alliance's announcement that Duke Energy tried to downplay the spill by saying that the waste was a byproduct of burning coal called "cenospheres," which the company claims are "inert" but which scientific experts say can be toxic: 1 Under North Carolina's coal ash management law, year in which Duke Energy is scheduled to excavate the coal ash at the Lee plant due to flooding risks: 2028 Number of farm animals killed in the flooding in North Carolina, with their carcasses and waste from inundated industrial barns swept into the floodwaters: millions Number of North Carolina's hog lagoons — massive open pits that store the animals' fecal waste, which can contain heavy metals, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and other pathogens — that were inundated, with floodwaters spreading the waste into the environment, according to state regulators: 10 to 12 North Carolina's rank among pork-producing states, with the industry concentrated in the flood-prone coastal plain: 2 Number of times more likely people of color are than non-Hispanic whites to live within three miles of an industrial hog operation in North Carolina: 1.52 Gallons of raw sewage, which can contain pathogens, heavy metals, pharmaceuticals and hormone disrupters, that spilled into Hannah Creek, a tributary of the Neuse, in the largest of several Matthew-related sewage spills from the wastewater treatment plant in Benson, North Carolina: 3 million Number of Matthew-related sewage spills reported just in the city of Jacksonville, Florida: 70 Before Matthew, number of floods and severe storms causing at least $1 billion in losses in the U.S. so far this year: 12 Number of those catastrophic floods that occurred inland as a result of heavy rain: 4 Of those four catastrophic inland floods, percent that occurred in the South: 100 Factor by which that breaks the previous record of catastrophic floods dating back to 1980: 2 (Click on figure to go to source.)
Sign in to follow this What on earth is this function doing? Recommended Posts Hi guys. I'm reading a book and even though its a simple example, this example stuck out at me. I have no clue what its doing. I'm sure its something stupid I'm missing but I just don't get whats going on here in this function: bool powOfTwo(int num) return !(num & (num - 1)); Ok you put in an integer but I don't understand the whole ! infront of the return statement (and why on earth its returning what it is returning. I'm sure I'm missing something stupid here but I've never seen anything written like this. Can someone please explain what is going on here? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites A number that is a power of 2 (in binary) takes the form: 2 = 10 4 = 100 8 = 1000 16 = 10000 32 = 100000 So, if num is a power of 2, num-1 will always be of the binary form: 2-1 = 1 4-1 = 11 8-1 = 111 And, for powers of 2, num & (num-1) always = 0. E.g., 10 & 1, 1000 & 111. !(num & (num-1)) asks the question "Is (num & (num-1))==0?" which will be true for powers of 2. Actually, the "question" is "Invert the answer to Is (num & (num-1))!=0?" For all other numbers (num & (num-1)) will have some bit set and Is (num & (num-1))==0? is always false. EDIT: changed the question from is(...)==1 to is(...)!=0. [Edited by - Buckeye on February 21, 2010 9:15:07 AM] Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Are you familiar with the bitwise operations? In binary, a number that is a power of two will only have one bit set. Let us take 8 as an example, in binary 8 is 1000. Subtracting 1 from that yields 7, or 0111. The bitwise-and operator will only fill in bits in the result with a 1 when the two operand bits at the same position are 1. & 0111 = 0000 The logical-not operator is quite simple, it returns "true" if the value is 0, and "false" otherwise (in C like languages anyway). Here the value passed to logical-not is 0, so it evalutes "true". 8 is a power of two, after all, and our function verifies this. It should be easy to see that for any value where only one bit is set, this test will true, as all that really changes is the location of the one in the value. Let us examine a non power of two, 6. The binary representation us 0110. Subtracting one from that is 5, or 0101. Let us bitwise-and these together: & 0101 = 0100 This value is non-zero, so the logical-not operator will evaluate it as false, which is then returned from the function. It should be relatively easy to convince yourself that for any binary value with two or more bits set, that subtracting one from it will yield a value with only the lower bits changed. The upper bits will not be affected. There will always be at least one common bit between N and N - 1 when n is not a power of two, bitwise-and will set that bit in the result and logical-not will return false because the value it is passed is not 0. A similar observation in decimal is to note that subtracting one from any value that isn't a power of 10 won't affect the upper digits. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Thanks guys for the responses :D I'm going on 6 hours of sleep total in 6 days so I'm borderline delerious. I'll re-read everything that was posted in the morning after a long night of sleep. I've been playing in Objective-C for a year and a half and just now hopping back into C++. I forgot all about bitwise operators because I never use them and most books gloss over them. There is a description, but they never provide a use for them. I thought the & was some weirdly placed reference operator. Anyway thank you guys for the responses and I'll be sure to read everything tomorrow more in depth. Now I'm off to bed :D Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Thank you guys for the detailed explanations :) They make perfect sense now. Now I've gotta start brushing up on my C++ since I'm finished with a lot of my math and physics classes and now back to programming :D Share this post Link to post Share on other sites Create an account or sign in to comment You need to be a member in order to leave a comment Create an account Register a new account Sign in Already have an account? Sign in here. Sign In Now Sign in to follow this
11 responses to “Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” 1. Discussion question 5: Rousseau says humans come from a “state of nature”, which is similar (to an extent) to John Locke’s political views, who stated there was a state of nature where humans existed in “perfect equality and freedom”. This state was governed by “the Law of Nature”, which is guided by no written rules, but moral principle. Locke explains that humans left the state of nature and entered a “state of war” when some humans began to make claims for authority, as there was no real government. This is where Rousseau differs a bit, because he explains humans left the state “the instant one man needed help from another” (p.116). The consequences of this include equality disappearing and things like slavery taking it’s place. But, both men agree on some level that it was a social interaction that began the demise of man. This is interesting because I’ve always thought humans to be very social creatures, and Aristotle said that man, by nature, is a “political animal” because he is a social creature. This is relevant to the question of public esteem becoming to more prized than self esteem, as this would be another consequence of the beginning of social interactions. In today’s age this is only more relevant. We thrive in social contexts, and you could argue that Millennials in particular have become obsessed with the public’s opinion of themselves. With the creation of cell phones, texting, social media, etc. we’ve built an empire of communication – when there wasn’t even language in Rousseau’s state of nature. So, are humans naturally social and political creatures like Aristotle suggests, or did we only come to be that way because we decided to leave the state of nature? Was it inevitable we left, or is there a possibility that we’ve just brought our fate upon ourselves? 1. I really really enjoyed reading your comment Jenna, and I find my thoughts on Rousseau are similar to yours. The subtle differences between the opinions of Rousseau and Locke are vital to their individual viewpoints, even though they are rather similar overall. In addition, I believe there is one more key philosopher that comes into play here: Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes, the original pessimist and curmudgeon, had some unique opinions about human nature and society that can be likened to Rousseau’s opinions in interesting ways. I don’t think their views are all that different necessarily, that is to say, on a very few number of specific topics. For example, Rousseau suggests that the original (also known as natural) man was entirely solitary rather than social, and to this extent he agrees with the state of nature as depicted by Hobbes. However, in contrast to Hobbes’ view that the life of natural man in this condition must have been “poor, nasty, brutish and short,” Rousseau claims that, despite their solitary predisposition, natural man lived a life that was healthy, happy, good, and free. It was the vices of men, dating back to the formation of societies, that brought an end to this blissful existence. One of these vices, as you said, was the transition from the need for self-approval to the approval of others, a vice that remains difficult to escape to this day. The development of social media has created platforms on which we can consistently beg the approval of our peers at any time, anywhere. Would Rousseau be dismayed with this growth of a vice he considered most evil? I believe he would, though it makes for a fascinating development in human nature. I’d love to hear his thoughts on the matter. 2. Discussion question 1: One of the core differences between this text and others we have read was the emphasis on science and on empirical evidence. Rousseau actually bothers to give us evidence for his claims. While his philosophy is undeniably intriguing I would like to delve into the science of his philosophy, namely in the state of nature. While I do not claim to be smarter than Jean-Jacques Rousseau (that’s for future generations to decide) I do have the distinct advantage of having access to 238 more years of scientific knowledge than him. Yet, as far as I know he’s more or less correct mostly, and even when he is not his instincts are remarkable. Rousseau came just before Darwin and would likely spit on the ground in disgust if he was told that he shares a common ancestor with chimpanzees (or Englishmen, for that matter). This timing is unfortunate because much of his work is better understood next to natural selection. A few of his key points can basically be chalked up as Darwinian. His idea of self-love is completely in line with the theory of natural selection, as well as his idea of compassion. (This can seem counter intuitive to some. Isn’t evolution survival of the fittest? Well, humans were at once tribal. When tribesman were kind to each other their tribes flourished more than those that squabble.) However, this also deals a blow to his “self-improvement” argument. We can see that all creatures are slowly progressing and humans are not unique in this regard. Dr. Crawford mentioned how Rousseau’s inability to explain the origins of language without alien causality would have dealt a huge blow to his theory of the “natural man” back in his time. Yet, we see that Rousseau was entirely correct; nobody has an earthly idea of how language came to be. It’s a complete mystery. And back in Rousseau’s day it was perfectly reasonably to deem whatever is unknown as the work of the Creator. However, one should note that it is likely that his chicken-or-the-egg scenario is probably false. As we can see from gorillas who can speak sign language, a creature can have the capacity to think deeply enough to understand language before they actually use it socially. Free will is an interesting point because up until quite recently almost everyone would have agreed with him. However, modern neuroscientists have recently stumbled upon the fact that we may not actually have free will and that our minds simply react instinctively to things. Our unconscious minds collect and analyze data then make decisions before our conscious minds even know what is happening, therefore we do not have free will. (Here’s a rather long, in-depth explanation if anyone cares: https://youtu.be/iRIcbsRXQ0o) Basically, Rousseau’s arguments are more or less rooted in some kind of science, which mostly hold up today. His ideas of self-love and compassion give us a pretty good picture of natural man. However, his idea of humans being unique in having the faculties of free will and self-improvement is not true. This does not deal a heavy blow to his argument. It merely illustrates that humans are not as unique as Rousseau thinks they are. 1. Okay I really wanted to reply to your comment after reading all of this post Zach, and I guess it is simply because you do bring up evolution and thanks to my Archeology 140 class, I am learning quite a bit about. There was a lot, like millions of years of evolution before we even began to walk on two feet and had the spares thumbs on our feet reduced to just toes. And just due to this fact, I realized that when Rousseau brings up humans being in a natural state it’s like extremely difficult to pinpoint where exactly that is. So I am just going to assume that is when we were in our caveman stage? Maybe? The problem here is that if we are reduced to that level of cognition, then the human itself cannot really understand what the pure form he is actually in, which is what I believe Rousseau wants. He wants you to understand that you are in the natural state. So maybe instead of pulling a throwback Throwback Thursday all the way to the days of cave writings and grunts, we only go as far as humans really started to colonize and communicate with one another. I believe that Rousseau was looking at the human state of mind at a point in its time where it could understand the ideas of self-love, compassion, free will, and self-improvement. If we go too far back, we would not as humans be able to comprehend what these “forms” (PLATO FOR YA) really are. The scientific study you brought up about free will is very interesting though. It’s tough to think about. To wrap your head around the fact of whether you have free will or not. Like, I would believe I have the free will to chose to walk or bike to class, but my mind would have already come up with that answer. It reminds me of time travel and maybe my brain can time travel that would be neat. Back to Rousseau though, he does give a good idea of what man might have once been. For him to go off of studies of animals and his own instinct is very amazing in itself. And I do agree with you that humans were not as unique as he believed. We evolved, and no other animals did not evolve like us, but some of the traits that we do have are not only unique to ourselves. Other animals do have feelings, we aren’t the only ones who love. That is not unique. On another note, if you were curious, there are a few different points on that. There is a protein in a chicken’s ovaries that is needed for the eggshell to form in general, and since this protein is only found in chicken ovaries, it is assumed that the egg came first. But for there to be that egg, there needs to be that chicken that lays that egg. So to get to that chicken, we go back to evolution. It’s theorized that chickens evolved from something long ago (T-rex maybe) and after each outcome, the product slowly became more chicken like until we have the chickens we see today. Now chickens were only really domesticated 7,000 years ago, so we are looking at a longish evolution line for a bird. But if we theorize that this chicken did evolve from a T-rex, we are going back quite a long ways a way. Anyway rant over about that lovely topic. 3. Just a thought: I want to open a bit of discussion on one of a quote (below) and its implications and present the current state of society from a conflict theorist perspective – where Marx, among others, suggest that society is built in a way that the rich can stay in power, and the poor can be continually oppressed by the rich. The concept of class conflict and especially the idea that the capitalist society reproduces the class structure in each generation is a dominant concept in the field and I think that what Rosseau says mirrors a section within the development of conflict theory. Primarily, the phrase “public esteem acquired a price” emphasizes one of Max Weber’s 3 dimensions of stratification. Weber suggested that Class, Status and Party are the three dimensions that stratify the poor from the rich. Rosseau, in the quote above, seems to address these three dimensions. Class and Status for example, are often related to each other as the respect someone gets as a result of their skills may often lead to them being able to use these skills to gain property or wealth. Party is defined as the ability of people to achieve goals despite resistance from others, or more specifically the ability to shift the conscience of others which can, as we have seen in capitalist societies have led to both positive and negative consequences. The use of an asyndeton in conjunction with hyperboles in “…sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most skillful…” emphasizes what Rosseau later points out is the “first step towards inequality and vice” which coincides with Weber’s argument. One interpretation that may arise from reading this quote can be that no one should be better than anyone at anything lest they use their skills for their benefit and inequality is born. Particularly, the concept of ‘Party’ from Weber’s dimensions (the ability to shift public conscience) has often led to negative consequences. Although I understand that there are often mixed results (think Stalin and the industrial revolution but also the cult of personality), the idea that one man should have the ability to change what others think based on “public esteem” especially with attributes like being “the handsomest” or “the strongest” calls into question whether these attributes should have this power in the first place. To pull a brief real world example, many actors have become directors – this isn’t exactly a rise or fall in power of any kind, but to some extent their status as an actor allowed for an easier transition into directing. I think you can argue in multiple ways, but to take the extremes of the spectrum: in the cases that it didn’t work out, one could assume that it would be because they didn’t have sufficient experience or time as a director whereas in the cases that it did, that it was because of their status as an actor that allowed them the connections to directors which subsequently led them to an increased exposure to film-making, perhaps leading to them eventually becoming a good director. A more extensive discussion may reveal more! (Think: in an ideal world what would happen if no one was better than another? Is there a middleground in this spectrum and how does it reinforce or deviate from the claims of conflict theorist?) 4. Discussion question 5: I find Rousseau’s points here fascinating, and after using them to explain how Rousseau paints our society as being unhappy in my essay, I understand them with much greater pertinence to the way we live today. Humans began looking outside of themselves for satisfaction due to the forced interdependence that crafts such as agriculture and metal-working require. A farmer working alongside another farmer will inevitably compare themselves to each other and seek to acquire advantages. Additionally, a farmer may compare himself to a iron-worker as they exchange resources essential for survival, questioning each other’s relative worth to the functioning of the society. We see this nowadays as people working in a company compete for promotions and people working in different fields such as the sciences, humanities, business sector argue over the relevance of their occupation. The continuous comparisons that we make also excites long-term desires that leave us perpetually unsatisfied. We not only set life goals, but also life dreams. We may be somewhat satisfied with our careers or our education, but we always know that there is someone better than us in some way: smarter, richer, faster, more famous, and this can only serve to dampen our confidence in our personal lives. We see ourselves when we look at others, wondering ‘what if I was in his/her shoes?’ and ‘would that make me happier or not?’ We look at our reflection in the mirror, wondering ‘what will people see when they look at me?’ Rousseau talks about perfectabilité, which exemplifies this trend, our desire for more when we can content ourselves with less. So why can’t we stop comparing ourselves to others and spare ourselves the stress and anxiety? In today’s society, this is extremely difficult, leaning dangerously close to impossible New brands of cars, smartphones and clothing fly off the shelves and the factories, leaving us all the more aware if we cannot keep up. Our test scores are calculated numerically on a convenient scale as to facilitate easy comparison. We are fascinated by statistics, how much of the world is like us, how much of it is different, better or worse. Most of the world has become irreversibly social, and therefore I think Rousseau’s claims are equally as effective when applied to today’s situation instead of the 18th century. 5. Discussion question 6: Talk about anything else related to Rousseau!!! What I want to briefly talk about is corruption. I think especially now, in this day and age, corruption is closely related to that of nature. And in Rousseau’s discourse, corruption plays a prominent theme. I feel like Rousseau describes corruption as this soul-sucking dementor (you know what I’m talking about if you read the Harry Potter series!), who gets in the way of truly seeing the real nature of man. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for human development. But when the Enlightenment came about – a European intellectual movement that got people to really focus on individuality instead of tradition, corruption became a part of the individual as well as society as a whole. This is not just a mental/personal process, but definitely a political one. What I mean by that is how a political society is built on a lie. It’s a way for the rich to solidify their elevated status, power, and influence over the blinded poor. It is used to exploit those who thought that having a political society would actually protect their freedom and rights. Well, not really. Despite Rousseau commenting on how corruption is the notion of amour propre (self-love) and how it really takes a hold of one’s original condition, it is obvious that Rousseau has been sucked into this state, too. It is evident that he seeks validation from other human beings, that he loses empathy and pity for other beings, and that he’s really unhappy with life. What’s interesting is that his analysis really does stand the test of time! Like, we all do still seek validation from others…maybe it’s natural for us to do so? In our current day and age, with all these social media platforms e.g. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc, it’s made it so much more accessible to show the world what we’re doing when in actuality, none of us really give a damn about what someone else is doing yet we still have that urge to need to update our lives for the world to see! Crazy, innit? Putting the tangent aside, I really do believe that despite him commenting on how far society has come about with human nature, I do think he’s analyzing himself in a way. I mean, after all, he’s living in that era. He’s an example of what he’s critiquing on. Leave a Reply
Synthesis of Cadmium Sulfide Nanoparticles The procedure shown here was adapted by Paul Hansen and George Lisensky from Kurt Winkelmann, Thomas Noviello, and Steven Brooks, "Preparation of CdS Nanoparticles by First-Year Undergraduates," J. Chem. Educ. (2007) 84, 709-710, which was based on M. L. Curri, A. Agostiano, L. Manna, M. D. Monica, M. Catalano, L. Chiavarone, V. Spagnolo and M. Lugarà, J. Phys. Chem. B, (2000) 104, 8391-8397. Micelle formation is essential for the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and complicated lipids within the human body. The use of reverse micelles or "water-in-oil" microemulsions is a simple and successful experiment that provides an effective way to introduce nanotechnology and surfactant chemistry to students in the general chemistry laboratory. • Wear eye protection • Chemical gloves recommended Step 1. Test the reagents by adding a drop of aqueous Cd+2 to a drop of aqueous S-2. A yellow color should appear if the Na2S solution is good. If the mixture remains clear, remake the Na2S solution. Step 2. In a cuvet, add an equal amount of aqueous 0.012 M Cd+2 and aqueous 0.012 M S-2. Record your observations and immediately obtain the visible absorption spectrum (before the solution becomes too opaque.) Discard the solution in an appropriate waste container. Step 3. Add 0.20 g hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide to a test tube. Add a stir bar. Clamp over a magnetic stirrer. Step 4. Add 4.0 mL heptane and 1.0 mL pentanol to the hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide. Stir to give a suspension. Step 5. Transfer half the suspension to a second tube. Stir both solutions to maintain the suspension. Step 6. To one test tube, add 0.1 mL (3 drops) of 0.012 M CdCl2. The solution will clear as hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide micelles containing CdCl2 form. To the second test tube, add 0.1 mL (3 drops) of 0.012 M Na2S. The solution will clear as hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide micelles containing Na2S form. Step 7. Join the two solutions and mix. Record the visible absorption spectrum in a glass cuvet. Discard the solution in an appropriate waste container. CAUTION: Avoid physical contact with cadmium chloride and cadmium sulfide as both are carcinogens. Stock Solutions for hundreds of batches • 0.012 M CdCl2: Dissolve 0.110 g in 50 mL distilled water. This solution keeps for months. • 0.012 M Na2S.9H2O: Dissolve 0.144 g in 50 mL distilled water. This solution does not keep well. • Hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (Aldrich 855820 Cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) • Heptane • pentanol • Two test tubes, ring stand, test tube clamps • Plastic dropper • Two 1/4" magnetic stir bars, magnetic stirrer • Cuvet and visible absorption spectrometer 1. Is the initial product from mixing aqueous cadmium ion with aqueous sulfide ion nanosize? Why do you need to take the spectrum quickly? 2. Is the band gap energy of the CdS nanoparticles larger or smaller than that of bulk CdS? 3. What is your estimated size for the CdS nanoparticles? Eg = h c / λ h = 6.626x10-34 J s c = 2.998x108 m/s e = 1.602x10-19 C ε0 = 8.854x10-12 C2/N/m2 m0 = 9.110x10-31 kg λbulk = 512 nm ε = 5.7 me* = 0.19 mh* = 0.80 λbulk = 709 nm ε = 10.6 me* = 0.13 mh* = 0.45 λbulk = 365 nm ε = 8.66 me* = 0.24 mh* = 0.59 The effective mass model suggests - What is the diameter of the nanoparticles? YouTube Link:
The Most Famous Cemetery Poem Thomas Grey Thomas Grey Without a doubt Thomas Grey’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is the most renowned cemetery poem ever committed to paper. Grey, the most important English language poet of the 18th century, was born in Cornhill, London on December 26, 1716. In addition to being a poet Grey was also a letter writer, classical scholar and a professor at Cambridge University. He graduated from Eton College. In 1747 he penned another famous poem, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, that tells of how much he enjoyed his experience there. The last two lines are among the most quoted in the English language. “Where ignorance is bliss, Tis folly to be wise.” Despite his fame, Grey was one of the least productive poets in history. He published only 13 poems that totaled less than 1000 lines in total. The reason seems to be that Grey was extremely self-critical and highly afraid of failure. During the 18th century writing poems about cemeteries became very popular and he joined with Oliver Goldsmith, William Cowper and Christopher Smart as one of the “Graveyard Poets.” All of these gentlemen wrote about death, finality and mortality. Thomas Grey tomb St. Giles Church Grey began working on Elegy in the graveyard of St Giles Church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1742. Over the next eight years he worked on it in fits and starts, finally finishing in 1750 and it was published in 1751. It remains one of the most quoted poems in the English language. Grey died on July 30, 1771. Fittingly, he is buried in the churchyard in Stoke Poges beside his mother. A monument near the church is inscribed with the poem. This wonderful poem follows. Do yourself a favor and take a quiet minute to read and ponder over this literary work of art. Elegy written in a Country Churchyard THE Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow’r The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wand’ring near her secret bow’r, Molest her ancient solitary reign. Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap, Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn, The swallow twitt’ring from the straw-built shed, The cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire’s return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke: How jocund did they drive their team afield! How bow’d the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, Awaits alike th’ inevitable hour: The paths of glory lead but to the grave. Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the fault, If Memory o’er their Tomb no Trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust, Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of death? Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page Rich with the spoils of time did ne’er unroll; Chill Penury repress’d their noble rage, And froze the genial current of the soul. Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood. Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land, And read their history in a nation’s eyes, Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone Their glowing virtues, but their crimes confined; Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame. Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray; Along the cool sequester’d vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d, Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist to die. For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling’ring look behind? On some fond breast the parting soul relies, Some pious drops the closing eye requires; Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries, Ev’n in our Ashes live their wonted Fires. For thee, who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead, Dost in these lines their artless tale relate; If chance, by lonely contemplation led, Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say, ‘Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn Brushing with hasty steps the dews away To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. ‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, His listless length at noontide would he stretch, And pore upon the brook that babbles by. ‘Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn, Mutt’ring his wayward fancies he would rove, Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love. ‘One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill, Along the heath and near his fav’rite tree; Another came; nor yet beside the rill, Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he; ‘The next with dirges due in sad array Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne. Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn:’ Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark’d him for her own. Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, Heav’n did a recompense as largely send: He gave to Mis’ry all he had, a tear, No farther seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose,) The bosom of his Father and his God.
The consequences for deer of ingesting oilseed rape (Brassica napus): feeding experiments with roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and red deer (Cervus elaphus) *Mrs A. M. Sibbald In two experiments, in the growing season March–May, freshly harvested double-low oilseed rape (Brassica napus) plants were fed ad libitum to penned roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) and red deer (Cervus elaphus). In Experiment 1, oilseed rape was fed to five roe and 12 red deer as 60% of their daily dry matter (DM) intake for four weeks, after a two-week dietary change-over period. The rest of the diet comprised cattle-rearing pellets (33%) and freshly cut heather (Calluna vulgaris) plants (7%). In Experiment 2, oilseed rape was fed to seven roe and eight red deer as 100% of the diet for up to six weeks, after a two-week change-over period. In both experiments, Heinz bodies were found in roe deer blood 2–3 weeks after the start of the change-over period, with a fall in mean packed cell volume (PCV) and blood glutathione (GSH) concentration. In Experiment 2, after 5–8 days of feeding on 100% oilseed rape, four roe deer showed signs of inappetance and were changed to a diet of 80% oilseed rape. At the same time, the other three roe deer had very low PCV (< 60% of normal values) and oilseed rape feeding was discontinued for those animals. The red deer showed no symptoms of haemolytic damage nor any change in blood GSH concentration in either experiment, but showed a gradual fall in PCV in Experiment 2. No other ill-effects were observed in any of the animals. Intakes of oilseed rape (gDM/kg0–75/day) were lower for the roe deer than the red deer in both experiments. The severity of haemolytic anaemia in the roe deer was related to the proportion of oilseed rape in the diet, rather than the amount ingested. It was concluded that the health of roe deer ingesting oilseed rape may be affected if other foods are not available.
You are currently browsing articles tagged radius. Introduction to Walk Like a Sloth: lessons in ground sloth locomotion compassGetting Oriented The lower arms of mammals have two bones–the radius on the thumb side and the ulna on the little finger side. The narrow end of the radius (also called the head) is the proximal or near end. If it looks like a small wheel, it is! The wheel turns in the radial notch of the ulna. Note that the articulating surface on the head of the radius covers about 75° of a circle; this wheel covers about 180° on the human radius, indicating more flexibility in humans than in Megalonyx. The large end is the wrist end; it has a small rough bump where a tendon anchors it to a corresponding spot on the end of the ulna. The shaft of the radius is notably triangular with a prominent interosseous crest (literally “between bones”) anchoring the muscles used to turn the paws up and down. SLOTH RADIUS, left, view from front HUMAN FOREARM (left), view from back HUMAN FOREARM (left), view from back (Clipart courtesy FCIT) HUMAN FOREARM (left), view from front (Clipart courtesy FCIT) keyKey points #1 Front claws wouldn’t be much good for pulling down branches and stripping bark from trees if sloths couldn’t turn them in the direction they needed to reach and grasp things. As in humans, and unlike most other animals, the radius and ulna of a sloth’s lower arms are separated by a space for the muscles used to rotate the radius and turn its paws. The bones are solidly fused in runners like horses and gazelles. #2 Note the bowing or curvature of the radius. Take a second look at the ulna. It is curved also, but in the opposite direction. The more curved these two bones are, and the wider the distance between them, the greater the power the muscles that turn the radius can generate. (Aiello and Dean, 1990) Compare the rugosity with the human radius. The sloth had one powerful lower arm! addedinfoAdditional information In three-toed sloths the area of the brain (cerebral cortex) devoted to controlling the forearm and paw is considerably larger than that for any of the other body part. This supports the theory ground sloths had the brain power in to coordinate the bones and muscles needed for fine-manipulation of the forearms. (Saraiva and Magalhaes-Castro, 1975) Additional evidence suggesting superior paw control comes from the sloth’s face. Megalonyx is notable for spoutits lack of significant cranial (i.e. head and jaw) development anterior to (in front of) its front teeth (caniniforms). Other sloths had large mandibular spouts—long and/or wide flexible lips and tongues for gathering food but Megalonyx had the smallest spout of all the sloths in its family. (Vizcaíno, 2009) Most of the manipulation ability the sloth needed for foraging came from its paws, with a little help from its tongue and lips. The radius is the bone most people break when they say they’ve suffered a broken “wrist.” It is one of the most common fractures, affecting 600,000 people per year in the United States, usually occurring about one (1) inch from the distal (far) end after falling on an outstretched arm. (Smith, 2013) thingstodoThings to do Move-like-a sloth. Hold your arm out palm down (thumb at 9 o’clock) your radius is the bone on the inside of your arm—the thumb side. Feel your elbow—that’s the end of the ulna—starting at the elbow and running down the outside of your arm toward your little finger. Now while still holding your elbow turn your hand palm sideways (thumb at 12:00)—your elbow didn’t move—it’s well locked down on the humerus or upper arm, but your radius is now on top. Muscles located on the ulna pulled on the radius and turned it, and with it your hand. Sloths probably couldn’t move their hands/paws any further, but you can—keep holding your elbow and turn your hand palm up hand positions(thumb at 3:00)—your elbow still didn’t move, but the radius is on the outside now—magic! Sloths could shake hands with you, or motion you to have a seat (palm down), but they couldn’t hitch hike (because that requires holding their hands thumb out), ask for a handout (“gimme”), do a chin-up with palms in, or make a number of rude gestures with their palms facing in. Try some different hand gestures. Which ones can’t a sloth do? Is that a big handicap or can you figure out a different way of doing the same thing?prone hand Flex Your Muscles Hold your right hand out, palm down in the prone position. Place your other hand in the crook of your right arm and now turn your arm clockwise until it’s in the supine position (remember “supine” by thinking about holding a bowl of soup). Can you feel a deep muscle flexing as you rotate your arm? That’s the biceps brachii muscle. Cep is Greek for “head,” and bi for “two.” The biceps has two heads or sites of origination on the scapula. The tendon of the muscle is attached to the biceps tuberosity on the radius. It is wrapped around the proximal radius in the prone position. When the muscle contracts it untwists the radius by pulling the tubersity back to facing forward. Note: the biceps serves a dual function by also flexing the elbow as in when you “make a muscle” with your arm. Math Fun Archaeologists studying the remains of ancient people sometimes try to estimate their stature (height) from the partial skeletons that they often find. This can provide important clues about their diet and general health. Sometimes the archaeologists only find a radius. One formula they use is: Height = 3.8 × Radius length (in inches) + 31.3 ± 2 inches. Find a partner and measure each other’s radii (plural of radius, pronounced ray-dee-eye) by making a bicep muscle and measuring the inside of your arm from the crook of the elbow to the base of thumb. Do the math and compare the result to your actual height. Discuss—who came close (within 2 inches)? Was the formula a better predictor for boys or girls? Generally archaeologists don’t like using arm bones to make height estimates-leg bones are better predictors, but sometimes a radius is all they have. (Bass, 1971) Just for fun, measure the sloth’s radius. What does it predict for its height using the human formula? [19 1/4 in. translates to a estimate of 8 ft. 8 in ± 2 in. Not as tall as the ulna predicted, but still in the right range!] The Jefferson Puzzle This is one of the bones Thomas Jefferson had available to try to figure out what kind of animal a sloth was. See the claw for a description of this activity. thinkaboutThings to think about Think about digging, or pulling down branches or ripping the bark off a tree. [Mimic the motions] Is the sloth’s inability to turn its paws palm up a serious handicap or not? Is there anything important you can do that a sloth couldn’t by positioning its arm and paw in a different way? Think about the word “radius.” Like many scientific words it comes from Latin and means “ray” or a spoke on the wheel of a chariot. Can you think of related words that also indicate a circle or sphere? [How about radial, radiate, radiant, radiation.] futureFuture research The seriousness of a fractured radius and the differences between the sexes and different ages makes this bone one of the most researched in the human body. Sloth scientists will be paying close attention to any diagnostic breakthroughs and applying any findings to fossils, and vice versa. It wouldn’t be the first time medicine has adopted techniques discovered by sloth researchers. Doctors developed many of their techniques for diagnosing and analyzing osteoporosis by studying sloth bones from La Brea. (Oxnard (1993) Because the fossils were rare and valuable, scientists couldn’t just cut them open, so they developed non-invasive ways of analyzing the fossils (e.g. X-rays, CT scans). Eventually they tried the same techniques on humans, making it possible today for doctors to diagnose the bone disease much earlier. If the ulna is about reaching then the radius is about turning and manipulating the hand. Having a long reach wasn’t enough for Megalonyx to forage effectively, it also needed to get the food into its mouth. Without the long prehensile predental spout of other sloths, Megalonyx relied on better paw flexibility and eye-hand (paw) coordination. Arms may seem a odd place to look for evidence of locomotion but many anthropologists believe our manipulation ability evolved hand-in-hand with bipedalism. Could this be true in sloths too? Oxnard, C. E. 1993. Bone and bones, architecture and stress, fossils and osteoporosis. Journal of Biomechanics 26, Supplement 1: 63-79. Saraiva, P. E. S. and Magalhaes-Castro, B. 1975. Sensory and motor representation in the cerebral cortex of the three-toed sloth (Bradypus tridactylus). Brain Research 90: 181-193. Smith, S. 2013. Wrist Blog. http://www.wristsupportbraces.com/wrist-blog/index.php/category/radius-fracture/ Vizcaíno, S. F. 2009. The teeth of the “toothless”: novelties and key innovations in the evolution of xenarthrans (Mammalia, Xenarthra). Paleobiology 35: 343-366. Tags: , ,
Tuesday, January 26, 2016 Every Day is Important Occasionally I would have a student who needed to miss my class because of some other event taking place during the school day; a guest speaker, a pep rally, an AP test, extra help in another class, ... all sorts of reasons. Being the good student that she is, she would come to me a day or two before the event to find out what she is missing and to be aware of lesson and/or assignment for that day. This never bothered me. I never considered my class to be the center of universe; and I knew that school offered my students a range of experiences and I wanted them to have these experiences. What DID bother me is when the student would ask, "Are we doing anything important on that day?" Of course I always responded, "We always do something important." But this question (also) always made me think of my students' perceptions of my class. Unfortunately, I think they viewed a "test day" as an important day. Students would sometimes try to reschedule their other event if they were going to miss a test (sometimes not). But, I think, that students also perceived the basic lesson day as a less important day; perhaps as just a typical day. These days are viewed as the days that can be missed without any penalty--you can make up the work; you won't fall behind in any way. It is this perception of less-important days that leads some students to skip school for a day. It leads parents and families to take their children out of school for a day or more for a family vacation or for baseball tryouts or for a scouting trip. How do we convince students that every school day is important? As teachers, we know that the time we have with students in class is valuable time. Often, we struggle to complete everything that needs to be completed in a school year (or in a course). But how do we help students to understand that what goes on in class cannot be easily replicated or made-up outside of class? It is for this reason that I would always begin teaching on the very first day of school. I didn't want my students to go home on the first day of school and say, "We didn't do anything in school today. All we did in every class was introduce ourselves (six times)." It is for this reason that every time we had an early-closing day or a late-openning day, I would always make the best use of the time I had with my students. Why come to school if every teacher were to say, "We only have short periods today due to ________ so we are just going to do nothing in class."? Every day of school is an important day. Every class, every minute in class. Teachers should not ever give their students any reason to believe that any class is a waste of time or is unnecessary. School is important. Learning is important. Every day counts. We have to show our students that this is true by our actions in class. We want students who want to go to school every day, because every day of school is important. Wednesday, January 20, 2016 Higher Rates of Women in Engineering Are we doing enough to encourage girls to pursue careers in Engineering? It isn't enough (anymore) to say that there are more women in Engineering today then there were 10 and 20 and 30 years ago. The numbers of women in Engineering in these past years was so low that (one would hope) those numbers have gone up. But recently, the percentage of females earning bachelor degrees in engineering has stubbornly remained only steady. Lots of data suggest that the number of female engineers should be increasing. More high school women are taking Statistics, Calculus, and Physics. More women than men have been enrolled in college since 1978. Women have been earning more college degrees than men since 1981. And the prospects for jobs in engineering is growing. Opportunities abound; so if you're a middle or high school teacher or principal, or you're a parent of girl, be sure they get the message that they can do anything. Don't feed the stereotype that says men are engineers. Help them to be proud of their abilities and to pursue their dreams. We need more women to be engineers. Public Schools and Choice Teach100 blog
Samson Tractor Was GM's Response to Fordson General Motors Corp introduced Samson tractors to compete with Ford's Fordson 1920 Samson Model M A 1920 Samson Model M, shown at a Buckeye Farm Antiques Club show in Wapakoneta, Ohio. This tractor was intended to directly compete with the Fordson. It sold for $650, complete. Sam Moore Content Tools William C. Durant is generally given credit for creating, in September 1908, the car and truck building giant we know as General Motors Corp. Not everyone knows that Mr. Durant, and General Motors, took a brief and disastrous fling at building farm tractors during the late teens and early ’20s. During 1915, rumors flew in agricultural circles that Henry Ford would soon introduce a small farm tractor for $250 or less. The Ford Motor Co. hotly denied those rumors, but in 1917 the mass-produced Fordson was introduced. The first 7,000 machines were sold to Great Britain to aid in the war effort, but the Fordson became available to American farmers in 1918 and was an immediate success. The little Fordson soon outsold the previous leader, the International Harvester Co.’s Titan 10-20, because the Titan cost about $1,000, while the Fordson came in at $885, fully equipped. Henry had widely missed his target price of $250, but the Fordson was still about the cheapest tractor on the market. Billy Durant, at that time chairman and chief stockholder of GM, saw the popular Fordson tractor as a challenge. Ford had already grabbed a major share of the car market, and the same thing seemed about to happen to farm tractors. Durant determined to go head-to-head with Ford, and bought out the Samson Tractor Works, Stockton, Calif. Samson began building tractors about 1913, and its Samson Sieve-Grip tractor, introduced in 1914, was the most successful model. Offered in 6-12 and 10-25 versions, the machine was named for its open-faced wheels, which worked fine in the soft peat land around Stockton, and in light soils, but were less than satisfactory in sticky clay. The clay collected inside the wheel and accumulated until each wheel became a solid ball of mud and would hardly turn. In spite of that, the one-cylinder 6-12 became very popular because of its light weight and low center of gravity. In 1918, GM bought a factory in Janesville, Wis., and incorporated the Janesville Machine Co. to build the GMC Samson tractor. GMC put a four-cylinder 4-3/4-by-6-inch engine in the Sieve-Grip, rated it a 12-25 horsepower, and put it on the market at $1,750. Obviously, the $1,750 Sieve-Grip was no competition to the $885 Fordson, so GM announced, in late 1918, that a new Samson Model M, with a price tag of $650, would be its answer to Ford. The Model M boasted a GMC four-cylinder engine of 4-1/2-inch bore and 5-inch stroke that turned out 9.32 drawbar horsepower when tested at Nebraska. The $650 price included platform, fenders, governor, belt pulley and power take off, all of which were extra-cost items on the Fordson. Pictures show the Model M resembled the Fordson, although the M looks higher and has a slightly longer wheelbase. The Samson Model M sold well, and produced small profits for GM, although they couldn't begin to offset the losses incurred on their other tractor, the Samson Model D Iron Horse. In the late teens, motor cultivators were very popular, and Durant decided to jump into that market. GM bought the rights to the Jim Dandy motor cultivator, one of many being built at that time. The Samson Model D Iron Horse was announced in January 1919, and GM built them by the thousands. This little (1,900 pounds) machine cost $450, and was powered by a Chevrolet 3-11/16-by-4 engine that transmitted power to all four wheels through belts and pulleys. There was an independent clutch control for each side, and the machine was steered by levers to which reins could be attached, allowing the tractor to be driven from a pulled implement, just like a team of horses. The design was faulty in that the machine would upset easily, and there were many mechanical failures. Those problems, combined with the severe recession of 1921 and the fact that motor cultivators fell into disfavor, left GM with thousands of unsold Iron Horses. In 1922 the General left farm equipment business to Ford and the others, and converted the Janesville facility to a Chevrolet assembly plant. An interesting footnote to the General Motors tractor story is a photo I've seen of what is supposed to be a prototype 1946 Chevrolet tractor. At the end of World War II, GM supposedly asked a Mr. Nutter, who was one of their engineers, to build a farm tractor. Nutter was given a 2-ton Chevrolet truck chassis and engine as the basis for his machine. The tractor had a 216-cubic-inch, six-cylinder engine, a four-speed transmission, and a two-speed rear end. The picture shows a typical tricycle-type tractor of the late 1940s that looks a little like a Gibson. Nothing more is known of this machine, so GM must have decided not to take the plunge a second time, leaving us to wonder what might have happened if they had. FC
Here, in order of appearance, are the 27 Class A tall ships (160 feet or longer) taking part in Operation Sail 2000 on the Fourth of July. Escorting them will be 27 Class B ships (100 to 159 feet), followed by more than 95 Class C vessels (less than 100 feet) and Coast Guard vessels. The pa rade order and berths for public viewing are subject to change. The Class A ships represent 19 nations and, in their histories, a wide variety of seagoing purposes. Among the Class B vessels are replicas of the Amistad, a ship seized in 1839 by slaves it carried; the Half Moon, in which Henry Hudson discovered the river now bearing his name; and Providence, a fighting sloop commanded by John Paul Jones during the Revolutionary War. 1. EAGLE, United States: This white steel-hulled bark, the host vessel for Operation Sail, is the United States' most famous tall ship. Built as a school ship in 1936 at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, Germany, the ship was acquired by the United States as part of war reparations and commissioned for the training of Coast Guard cadets in 1946. The Eagle has three sister ships, including Germany's Gorch Fock (No. 21 in the Parade of Sail). The three steel decks are covered with teak; the figurehead is a golden eagle. Crew: 212. Length: 295 feet. 2. DANMARK, Denmark: This white steel-hulled, full-rigged training ship, built in 1932, visited the New York World's Fair in 1939 and was in Florida when Germany invaded Denmark. During World War II, the captain offered the Danmark's services to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Coast Guard used the ship for training, leading to its decision to acquire the Eagle after the Danmark sailed home in 1945 and was recommissioned as a merchant marine school ship. The figurehead is a gilded sea god. Crew: 99. Length: 253 feet. 3. POGORIA, Poland: A barkentine built in Gdynia in 1980, Pogoria carries a broad blue stripe the length of its sides and foresails adorned with the symbol of Poland's Iron Shackle Fraternity. It has sailed around the world and can log 200 sea miles in a day. Crew: 50. Length: 154 feet. Continue reading the main story 4. NIAGARA, United States: One of two brigs built in Erie, Pa., during the War of 1812 to oppose the British in the Great Lakes, the Niagara was part of a fleet of nine small ships that defeated the British squadron and captured six British vessels near Put-in-Bay, Ohio, in September 1813. Scuttled in 1820, raised in 1913 and restored over many years, the ship was relaunched at Erie in 1988, on the battle's 175th anniversary. Crew: 42. Length: 198 feet. 5. GUAYAS, Ecuador: This bark is one of four sister ships built in Bilbao, Spain, by Astilleros y Talleres Celaya for the navies of Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico and Ecuador. On its maiden voyage in 1978, it sailed all the way around South America, navigating both the Straits of Magellan and the Panama Canal. The Guayas is named for the first steamship built in South Amer ica. Crew: 104. Length: 258 feet. 6. ROSE, United States: This full-rigged ship, built in 1970 in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia, is a replica of a British frigate that patrolled the American colonies in 1775 and was part of the fleet that attacked New York in 1776. The new Rose is the largest active wooden tall ship in the world, logging thousands of sea miles a year as a training ship for mariners and civilians. Crew: 57. Length: 179 feet. 7. SAGRES, Portugal: Easily identified by the large red crosses on the main and foresails, this three-masted steel barkentine was built for the German Navy in 1937. It was damaged in World War II, taken by the United States and then passed on to Brazil and renamed the Guanabara. In 1961, the ship went to the Portuguese, who, like the Brazilians, use it for training. The Sagres has taken part in every Operation Sail. Crew: 165. Length: 294 feet. 8. OOSTERSCHELDE, Netherlands: Built in Rotterdam, its current home port, and launched in 1918, this three-masted topsail schooner transported cargo around Europe, Africa and the Mediterranean. It became a motor vessel in 1930 and remained so, under Danish and Swedish ownership, until 1988, when it was brought home and restored. The Oosterschelde is the last representative of the large fleet of Dutch schooners from the early 20th century. Crew: 38 Length: 164 feet. 9. KALMAR NYCKEL, United States: Built in 1997 in Wilmington, Del., this Dutch pinnace is a replica of the vessel that, under Peter Minuit, brought the first Swedish settlers (as well as Germans, Finns and Dutch) to the Delaware Bay area in 1638. The ship returned three times to support what became the first European settlement in the Delaware Valley. Later it served in the Swedish Navy and was lost off the city of Kalmar in the late 17th century. Crew: 25 Length: 162 feet. 10. EUROPA, Netherlands: Built in Germany in 1911, this historic bark was totally restored, with notably fine accommodations, in Amsterdam from 1988 to 1994. It is now a sail training vessel and regularly joins cruising events worldwide. Crew: 64. Length: 185 feet. This three-masted barkentine, built in 1883, is believed to be the oldest and largest wood-hulled square-rigger still putting out to sea. It was built in Portugal with timber from trees said to have been planted in the 15th century for Prince Henry the Navigator, and much of the oak and shipbuilding pine in the hull is original. Last of the Portuguese sail fishing fleet, the Gazela harvested cod on the Grand Banks until 1969. It is now owned by the Port of History Museum in Philadelphia. Crew: 35. Length: 178 feet. 12. KAIWO MARU, Japan: This four-masted bark was built in Japan in 1989 to replace an earlier Kaiwo Maru that trained merchant marine cadets for more than 50 years. It is owned by the Institute for Sea Training of Japan's Ministry of Transport and now trains civilians and cadets. The name means King of the Sea. Crew: 141. Length: 361 feet. 13. CISNE BRANCO, Brazil: A full-rigged ship, the Cisne Branco was built in the Netherlands and delivered to the Brazilian Navy in late 1999 to serve as a training vessel, the largest built to date. The hull color matches the name, which means White Swan. Crew: 88. Length: 249 feet 14. CAPIT'AN MIRANDA, Uruguay: This three-masted staysail schooner was built in Matagorda, Uruguay, in 1930 as a cargo carrier. After World War II, it operated as a power vessel with the rig removed. In the 1960's, it was a research vessel for the Uruguayan Navy, and in 1978 it was refitted with a rig developed for racing yachts in the 1920's. Crew: 95. Length: 209 feet. 15. ESMERALDA, Chile: This four-masted barkentine, built in Spain in 1952, is sister to Juan Sebastian de Elcano (No. 22 in the Parade of Sail), although their rigs differ slightly. Both vessels are reminiscent of the four-masted cargo schooners launched in the early 20th century for the United States coastal trade. The deck layout includes a very long forecastle and a navigating bridge amidships. The Esmeralda is now a training ship for the Chilean Navy. The steel hull is white; the figurehead is an Andean condor. Crew: 338. Length: 371 feet. 16. SIM'ON BOL'IVAR, Venezuela: This Spanish-built, three-masted bark, launched in 1980, is named for the hero of the revolutions that won independence from Spain for six Latin American nations. The figurehead, symbolizing Liberty, shows a woman draped in Bol'ivar's flag and holding a sword. The ship is a navy training vessel, with false gun ports painted in black on the white steel hull. Crew: 180. Length: 270 feet. 17. DAR MLODZIEZY, Poland: This full-rigged ship, built in 1982, is Poland's principal sail-training vessel. It can carry more sail than any other tall ship except the Wavertree (No. 27 in the Parade of Sail). The name means The Gift of Youth. Crew: 152. Length: 357 feet. 18. LIBERTAD, Argentina: This full-rigged training vessel of the Argentine Navy, built in La Plata in 1962, is one of the world's largest and fastest sailing-school ships. It has a white steel hull, a flush deck with a pilothouse forward of the main mast, a wide bridge and an exhaust funnel between the main and mizzen masts. The Libertad has participated in every Operation Sail. Crew: 320. Length: 345 feet. 19. DEWARUCI, Indonesia: This German-built barkentine, the Indonesian Navy's training vessel, comes to New York by way of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic; to return home, it will take the Panama Canal and then cross the Pacific Ocean. Named for a Hindu sea god in ''The Mahabarata,'' it represents a nation that still boasts a fleet of sailing cargo schooners. Crew: 152. Length: 191 feet. This full-rigged ship, built in Italy in 1931, is prized for its elegant interior, especially the captain's cabin, and has quarters for more than 500. It is one of the largest vessels in Operation Sail and, at 52 feet, the widest. The high-sided design is patterned after an 18th-century frigate with two gun decks, but the hull is steel and the ship carries no guns. It is the sail-training ship of the Italian Naval Academy. Crew: 480. Length: 331 feet. 21. GORCH FOCK, Germany: This steel bark, named for a German poet killed while serving as a World War I seaman, was built in 1958 as a training ship for the West German Navy by the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, which also produced the Eagle and two other sister ships. It has square-rigged fore and main masts and a fore-and-aft rigged mizzenmast with topsail. Crew: 225. Length: 293 feet. This four-masted topsail schooner, built in Bilbao and sister ship to Esmeralda (No. 15 in the Parade of Sail), is named for the commander of the only galleon that returned from Magellan's expedition in 1522. It has been a training ship for the Spanish navy for most of its 59 years and has circumnavigated the globe six times. Crew: 315. Length: 371 feet. 23. GLORIA, Colombia: This three-masted bark, built in 1968 in Spain, is the smallest and oldest of four sister ships, including Guayas (No. 5 in the Parade of Sail) and the Sim'on Bol'ivar (No. 16). It is the sail-training vessel of the Colombian Naval Academy. The Gloria has a white steel hull with a rounded stern, an enclosed pilothouse and a winged figurehead. Crew: 160. Length: 249 feet. 24. EENDRACHT, Netherlands: This three-masted gaff schooner, built in Gorinchem in 1989, is operated by the Sailing School Foundation in the Hague. It is a fast ship: in a wind force of 17 to 20 knots, with six- to eight-foot waves, it has easily sailed at 14 knots. Crew: 56. Length: 194 feet. 25. BLUENOSE II, Canada: This gaff-rigged schooner was built in 1963 from the same plans, and by the same Lunenberg builder, as the original Bluenose, a Nova Scotia fishing schooner and racer known as the Queen of the North Atlantic in the 1920's and 30's. Bluenose, an old nickname for Nova Scotians, refers to a locally grown blue-skinned potato. Crew: 18 Length: 161 feet. 26. PICTON CASTLE, New Zealand: Built in England in 1928, this white-hulled, square-rigged bark visits Operation Sail 2000 before setting off on an 18-month voyage around the world in November, with the officers and a carefully selected crew of 34. Home port is Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. Crew: 47. Length: 176 feet. 27. WAVERTREE, United States: One of the last large wrought-iron sailing ships built, the Wavertree is the largest still afloat. Built in 1885 in Southampton, England, for the India trade, the ship eventually hauled cargo all over the world. In 1968 it was bought by the South Street Seaport Museum, where restoration is in progress. The Wavertree draws only 11 feet -- very little for so large a ship -- and can carry more sail than any other ship in Operation Sail 2000, though in its present state it will probably parade under courses fore and aft, and topsails. Crew: 55. Length: 325 feet. Continue reading the main story
Ecosystem approach Uit Kust Wiki Ga naar: navigatie, zoeken Definition of ecosystem approach: The ecosystem approach is a strategy for the integrated management of land, water and living resources that promotes conservation and sustainable use in an equitable way.It is based on the application of appropriate scientific methodologies focused on levels of biological organization which encompass the essential processes, functions and interactions among organisms and their environment. It recognizes that humans, with their cultural diversity, are an integral component of ecosystems. [1] This is the common definition for ecosystem approach, other definitions can be discussed in the article 1. Convention on Biological Diversity: September 3 2009
I increase dosage to treat Herpes Zoster when I feel it coming on. The most common side effects of acyclovir treatment for genital herpes include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Most infections produce no symptoms or mild symptoms such as sore throats, colds and flu-like illnesses. Valacyclovir is used to treat cold sores in children who are at least 12 years old, and to treat chickenpox in children who are at least 2 years old. Can I Give Shingles to Someone Else After I’m Vaccinated? The herpes simplex virus can cause cold sores on the lips and around the mouth or genital lesions. This pain can sometimes last for months after the rash has healed. Emotional stress can cause recurrences of other herpes viruses, and the CDC is investigating whether it can spark shingles as well. It does not cure shingles, cold sores, or genital herpes, but it does help the sores to heal more quickly, and it relieves pain and discomfort. Birth control pills can increase a woman’s inflammatory response, similar to what is seen in pregnancy, causing gums to be redder and swollen and to bleed more easily. It is typically the cause of cold sores around the mouth. An attack of shingles comes from a reactivation of the same varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox. Herpes zoster (commonly known as shingles) is caused by the same virus that causes chickenpox. Shingles is caused by the varicella-zoster virus (VZV), the same virus that causes varicella or chickenpox in 95 percent of Americans by age 18. I got one of these yesterday morning for the first time 6 years and was completely unprepared, but willing to try anything new, because Abreva is a joke. Although other species of Herpes can cause chicken pox, shingles, encaphilitis and other illnesses, there is no need to worry that a cold sore is a precursor to other illnesses in your child. HSV type 2 primarily causes genital infections. Cold sores and genital herpes is caused by herpes simplex virus, while the Shingles is caused by herpes zoster virus. Discover the risks associated with vaccines and disease. Neither virus can be completely cured, but there are antiviral treatments that can be used to help the body fight the infection and push the virus back into a dormant state. Researchers have discovered how the cold sore virus hides in the body, which may be the key to a permanent cure. The chicken pox virus (varicella-zoster virus) and herpes simplex virus type 1 remain dormant in the nerves and can reactivate causing localized shingles or cold sores respectively. It’s not the only infection that stays with us chickenpox, glandular fever and many other infections also hide in the body. If the virus damages a nerve, you may have pain, numbness, or tingling for months or even years after the rash is healed. HSV-1 and HSV-2 lesions look the same and can only be distinguished by laboratory testing. Shingles is painful blistering rash caused by the reawakening of the chicken pox (varicella) virus from dormancy. For best results, use raw or local organic honey. Shingles is most common in people over age 60, or in those with weakened immune systems. Cleft lip or palate. If you forgot to take your dose in time, please do it as soon as you remember. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen (for example, Advil or Motrin), naproxen (for example, Aleve), or piroxicam (for example, Feldene). When the rash finally shows up, it starts as groups of pimples on one side of the body or face. A temporary weakness in immunity (the body’s ability to fight infection) may allow the virus to multiply and move along nerve fibers toward the skin. Like with other vaccines, the varicella vaccine comes with the risk of adverse reaction, injury, and death. Patients with weakened immune systems are especially prone to Pneumocystis pneumonia, but specific antibiotic medications are very effective in preventing it. Treatment consists of frequent warm compresses and massage to unblock the gland. There is some evidence that acyclovir and other antiviral drugs slow reproduction of the virus in the nerve cells but this is effective only to varying degrees and is not curative. Shingles is caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus, the same virus that causes chickenpox. People will experience the virus differently; some may only experience symptoms once or twice a year whereas others may experience numerous outbreaks every year. Fortunately, in 2011, the FDA approved the shingles vaccine for people ages 50 and older. Symptoms include swollen gums which bleed easily and fluid filled blisters on the gums, tongue and pharynx. HSV causes sores around the mouth and in the genital area. While in this inactive state, you will not experience any symptoms from the varicella zoster virus. Until there is, I’m afraid I cannot see the point of this connection being raised repeatedly as it is just yet another source of worry.
Rutherford (unit) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search The rutherford (symbol Rd) is a non-SI unit of radioactive decay. It is defined as the activity of a quantity of radioactive material in which one million nuclei decay per second. It is therefore equivalent to one megabecquerel, and one becquerel equals one microrutherford. One rutherford is equivalent to 2.703 × 10−5 curie. The unit was introduced in 1946.[1] It was named after British/New Zealand physicist and Nobel laureate Lord Ernest Rutherford (Nobel Prize in 1908),[2] who was an early leader in the study of atomic nucleus disintegrations. After the becquerel was introduced in 1975[3] as the SI unit for activity, the rutherford became obsolete, and it is no longer commonly used. Radiation related quantities[edit] Radiation related quantities view talk edit Quantity Name Symbol Unit Year SI Quantity becquerel Bq s−1 1974 SI rutherford Rd 106s−1 1946 1,000,000 Bq Exposure (X) röntgen R esu / 0.001293g of air 1928 2.58×10−4 C/kg Absorbed dose (D) Erg erg·g−1 1950 1.0×10−4 Gy rad rad 100 erg·g−1 1953 0.010 Gy gray Gy J·kg−1 1974 SI Dose equivalent (H) röntgen equivalent man rem 100 erg·g−1 1971 0.010 Sv sievert Sv J·kg−1×WR 1977 SI 1. ^ Lind, SC (1946), "New units for the measurement of radioactivity", Science, 103 (2687): 761–762, PMID 17836457, doi:10.1126/science.103.2687.761-a. 2. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908". 3. ^ Harder, D (1976), "[The new radiologic units of measurement gray and becquerel (author's translation from the German original)]", Röntgen-Blätter, 29 (1): 49–52, PMID 1251122.
Java bytecode Java’s Magic: The Bytecode The key that allows Java to solve both the security and the portability problems just described is that the output of a Java compiler is not executable code. Rather, it is bytecode. Bytecode is a highly optimized set of instructions designed to be executed by the Java run-time system, which is called the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). In essence, the original JVM was designed as an interpreter for bytecode. This may come as a bit of a surprise since many modern languages are designed to be compiled into executable code because of performance concerns. However, the fact that a Java program is executed by the JVM helps solve the major problems associated with web-based programs. Here is why. Translating a Java program into bytecode makes it much easier to run a program in a wide variety of environments because only the JVM needs to be implemented for each platform. Once the run-time package exists for a given system, any Java program can run on it. Remember, although the details of the JVM will differ from platform to platform, all understand the same Java bytecode. If a Java program were compiled to native code, then different versions of the same program would have to exist for each type of CPU connected to the Internet. This is, of course, not a feasible solution. Thus, the execution of bytecode by the JVM is the easiest way to create truly portable programs. The fact that a Java program is executed by the JVM also helps to make it secure. Because the JVM is in control, it can contain the program and prevent it from generating restrictions that exist in the Java language. In general, when a program is compiled to an intermediate form and then interpreted by a virtual machine, it runs slower than it would run if compiled to executable code. However, with Java, the differential between the two is not so great. Because bytecode has been highly optimized, the use of bytecode enables the JVM to execute programs much faster than you might expect. Although Java was designed as an interpreted language, there is nothing about Java that prevents on-the-fly compilation of bytecode into native code in order to boost performance. For this reason, Sun began supplying its HotSpot technology not long after Java’s initial release. HotSpot provides a Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler for bytecode. When a JIT compiler is part of the JVM, selected portions of bytecode are compiled into executable code in real time, on a piece-by-piece, demand basis. It is important to understand that it is not practical to compile an entire Java program into executable code all at once, because Java performs various run-time checks that can be done only at run time. Instead, a JIT compiler compiles code as it is needed, during execution. Furthermore, not all sequences of bytecode are compiled—only those that will benefit from compilation. The remaining code is simply interpreted. However, the just-in-time approach still yields a significant performance boost. Even when dynamic compilation is applied to bytecode, the portability and safety features still apply, because the JVM is still in charge of the execution environment. Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s
A wry view of life for the world-weary The Meaning Of Life – Part Forty One Of Forty Two How do birds sleep? I must admit a certain fascination with our feathered friends. I admire their beauty, their ability to fly and their song. I’m even corned that our constant invasion of their natural habitat is reducing their numbers to critical levels. But there is much I don’t know about them including when, if and how they sleep. A common misconception is that they all retire to their cosy nests when the sun goes down, have a bit of a chirrup and then settle down for a good night’s sleep. The principal purpose of a nest is to have somewhere to rear their young and mature birds will only sleep there if it is particularly cold and only to keep their brood warm. If you think about it you can understand why. The nest will pretty soon be full of droppings, undigested food and, perhaps, the carcass of one or more of the chicks that didn’t make it. Not the place you would want to go to to catch up on some zeds. The principal for a bird that wants to take a nap is that they are a sitting duck for predators. For smaller birds this means that they cannot sleep on the ground as cats or other ground-based hunters will get them and they can’t sleep in branches as owls and hawks will easily get them. So their place of choice for a night’s repose is deep inside a bush which is why you can’t see them. Some birds’ physical features dictate where they can sleep. Wading birds, ducks and the like have webbed feet which means that they cannot perch on trees or bushes. They are also slow and cumbersome taking off which means that they cannot sleep on the ground safely. Their place of choice is the water and they have evolved sensory powers to detect vibrations in the water to protect them from surprise attacks by predators. Evolution is a wonderful thing and one of the neatest tricks birds have developed is that they can switch off one half of their brain. Our brain is in two parts conjoined by a bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum. What we see with our left eye is processed by the left side of our brain while the images from the right eye are processed by the right side. For birds it is different. The left eye sends signals to the right side of the brain and vice versa. To get a good night’s sleep they can close one eye and switch off one part of the brain. They can do this at will so if they are sleeping in a large flock, the birds in the centre will sleep with both eyes closed and their brain completely shut off whereas those in the outer reaches of the flock will sleep with one eye closed and one part of the brain switched off. The other trick that nature has bestowed on those birds which are categorised as passerines, sparrows, warblers and the like, is special flexor tendons. When they settle on a branch the tendons lock automatically on to the branch and provided that they have bent their legs, they are locked into position securely all night. So now we know! Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s %d bloggers like this:
9/11 Changed the International Building Code U.S. Architects Face Rigorous New Rules WTC Anatomy of a Disaster, North Tower Impact, presentation slide of wing tips in contact with building, horizontal angle -4.3 degrees, vertical angle -6.2 degrees, and roll -20.7 degrees Anatomy of a Disaster, an April 2003 Computer-Generated Presentation by Structural Engineers, Explaining the Angles and Roll of the Plane Entering the North Tower. Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images (cropped) Before September 11, 2001, building codes in the United States focused on structural stability and routine fire safety. Buildings like the World Trade Center Twin Towers were considered safe because they could withstand hurricane-force winds and even the impact of a small plane. They were over-built to not fall down. A typical fire did not spread beyond a few floors, so skyscrapers weren't required to provide multiple escape routes for speedy evacuation of the entire building. Using fewer stairways and slim, lightweight construction materials, architects could design skyscrapers that were slender, elegant, and amazingly tall. International Building Code® Rules and regulations that outline good and safe construction, fire safety, plumbing, electrical, and energy are generally "codified," which means they become law. These codes are administered and enforced regionally or locally. Across the United States, states and localities "adopt" model codes—a set of best practices building standards that have been created by a council of independent experts. Most states adopt and modify standard codes, such as the International Building Code (IBC) and the International Fire Code.® On January 1, 2003, New York State adopted the International Building Codes, "...which are widely used throughout the country, provide a greater level of consistency and allow us to keep pace with emerging technology in today’s fast paced construction industry," writes the NYS Division of Code Enforcement. Up until then, New York State was one of the few states who wrote and maintained their own codes, independent of standard model codes. Construction codes (e.g., building, fire, electrical codes) are legislated by individual states and localities in the United States. Local building codes, such as the New York City Code, can be more stringent (i.e., more strict) than state codes, but local codes cannot be less stringent than state codes. Building codes in New York City have existed since the city was called New Amsterdam in the 17th century. When the first skyscrapers were being built at the turn of the 20th century, it was the building code that enforced architects to design buildings that would allow sunshine onto the street, which is why many of the old skyscrapers are "stepped," with tiers and cut-outs at the top. Building Codes are dynamic documents—they change when circumstances change. After September 11, 2001 After two aircraft struck and brought down the Twin Towers in New York City, teams of architects and engineers studied why the Towers fell and then came up with ways to make future skyscrapers safer. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) compiled their findings in a hefty report. New York City, which suffered the most catastrophic losses on 9/11/01, took the lead passing legislation to save lives in the event of another terrorist attack. In 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomburg signed Local Law 26 (PDF), which required tall buildings to incorporate improved sprinkler systems, better exit signs, an additional stairway, and other features to help people exit quickly during emergencies. Nationally, change came more slowly. Some people worried that more demanding building code laws would make it difficult, if not impossible, to construct record-breaking skyscrapers. They wondered whether architects would be able to design beautiful, slender skyscrapers with enough stairways or elevators to meet the new safety regulations. Critics also charged that new, more rigid safety requirements would increase construction costs. At one point the General Services Administration (GSA), a federal agency that manages government property, estimated that the expense of installing additional stairways would outweigh the safety benefits. Building Code Changes By 2009, the push for new construction standards won out, bringing sweeping changes to the International Building Code and the International Fire Code, which serve as the basis for building and fire regulations across the United States. The International Code Council (ICC) approved additional changes for 2012. Every three years, the IBC is updated. Some of the new safety requirements for buildings included additional stairways and more space between stairways; stronger walls in stairwells and elevator shafts; reinforced elevators for emergency use; stricter standards for construction materials; better fire-proofing; backup water sources for the sprinkler system; glow-in-the-dark exit signs; and radio amplifiers for emergency communications. The End of Elegance? In 1974, the City of Los Angeles passed an ordinance requiring helipads atop all commercial high-rises. Firefighters thought it was a good idea. Developers and architects felt the flat-top requirements stifled a creative skyline. In 2014 the local regulation was rescinded. Architects face difficult challenges as they grapple with more demanding fire and safety codes. In New York City, disputes over the design of "Freedom Tower" became legendary. As safety concerns mounted, the original concept posed by architect Daniel Libeskind morphed into a less fanciful skyscraper designed and then re-designed by architect David Childs. The final design for One World Trade Center resolved many complaints. New concrete materials and construction techniques have made it possible to incorporate fire-safety features with open floor plans and transparent glass walls. Still, some fans of the original Freedom Tower design say that Childs sacrificed art for the sake of an impossible-to-achieve notion of security. Others say the new 1 WTC is everything it should be. The New Normal: Architecture, Safety, and Sustainability So, what is the future for skyscrapers? Do the new safety laws mean shorter, fatter buildings? Absolutely not. Completed in 2010, the Burj Khalifa in the United Arab Emirates shattered world records for building height. Yet, while it rises a whopping 2,717 feet (828 meters), the skyscraper incorporates multiple evacuation lifts, super-high-speed elevators, thick concrete reinforcement in the stairways, and many other safety features. Of course, a building as tall as Burj Khalifa poses other problems. The maintenance costs are astronomical and the demands on natural resources extreme.These shortfalls point out the real challenge that every designer faces. One World Trade Center stands near where the destroyed Twin Towers once stood, replacing office space but never taking the place of memories—the National 9/11 Memorial is now where the Twin Towers stood. A number of safety, security, and green building features have been incorporated into the design and construction of the new 1 WTC, design details that may have been missing in the original buildings. For example, safety systems now exceed the requirements of the New York City Building Code; elevators are housed in a protected central building core; protected tenant collection points are on each floor; a dedicated staircase for firefighters and extra-wide pressurized staircases are part of the design; sprinklers, emergency risers, and communication systems are concrete-protected; the building is the most environmentally sustainable project of its size in the world, attaining a LEED Gold Certification; the building's energy performance exceeds code requirements by 20 percent, cooling systems use reclaimed rainwater, and waste steam helps generate electricity. The Bottom Line Designing buildings has always meant working within rules. In addition to fire codes and safety laws, modern-day construction must meet established standards for environmental protection, energy efficiency, and universal accessibility. Local zoning ordinances impose additional restrictions that can affect anything from paint colors to architectural style. And then, of course, successful buildings also respond to the demands of the landscape and the needs of the client and the community. As new rules are added to the already complex web of regulations and restrictions, architects and engineers are doing what they have always done so well—innovate. Ask about the building / fire codes / standards in other countries, and watch the horizon for the tallest buildings in the world. When you look at the Skyscraper Center's 100 Future Tallest Buildings in the World, you see a list of unbelievable engineering feats that have been completed. You also see the fanciful dreams of developers. The proposed 202-floor Sky City in Changsha, China was never built. The 100-story Post Office Redevelopment Tower in Chicago will not be built. "Chicago was built by people with big ideas," says Chicago journalist Joe Cahill. "But big ideas aren't enough. The builders who made lasting marks on Chicago's skyline knew how to separate the fanciful from the feasible and get things done." It seems we are in a new world, redefining what is feasible. Learn More
Tuesday, 13 October 2009 The 'programming for scientists' link montage Image via Wikipedia Continuing our theme of gathering together useful stuff for the scientists-programmer we present a list of interesting, useful, informative and possibly fun links. Enjoy! Musicians practice, sportsmen practice, ninjas practice. Software engineers should practice as well. CodeKata provides practice sessions to strengthen your programming muscles. Software Carpentry Software Carpentry is an intensive introduction to basic software development practices for scientists and engineers. Project Euler Speed, size and dependability of programming languages A quantitative analysis of 33 programming languages based on the The Computer Language Benchmarks Game 7+1 tips for naming variables Tips for creating good variable names The "C is Efficient" Language Fallacy An explanation of why C++ isn't the best choice for mathematical/scientific programming data analysis and data visualization based on Python programming language List of free programming books on the web One of the great things about the web is that it allows people to make available free programming books. Programmers' top 10 sentences and finally, a list of sentences that should resonate with any programmer... Reblog this post [with Zemanta] 1 comment: 1. This blog is really useful. Finding good material to build up a course in bioinformatics isn't an easy task and these tips are a real relief !!! Just keep the pace and the good work !!! I'll spread the word !
Sunday, 28 October 2012 The Etymology of the Names of the World’s Airports The bad weather of recent winters, coupled with the infamous dust cloud of the Icelandic volcano, has made the world's international airports headline news. Lists of the delayed and cancelled flights contained a list of perplexing names of unknown etymologies. Hence the following explains those names, their meanings and origins. Although some require no explanation, such as John Lennon at Liverpool which is named after arguably the city's most famous son. Heathrow, the world's busiest airport, has its earliest surviving record from the early fifteen century, where it appears as La Hetherewe. These are from Old English haeth raew and 'the row of houses on or near a heath'. With equally inauspicious beginnings comes Gatwick 'the farm specialising in goats', with Stansted describing 'the stony place'. European airports include Charles de Gaulle outside Paris is named after the general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II, founded the Fifth Republic in 1958 and became its first president the following year, a position he held for ten years. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the word order is Dutch, is named for the company which owns this, and several other, airports. Frankfurt takes the name of the city, original speaking of 'the ford of the Franks'. Munich takes its name from Old High German munih 'monk', reminding us the city was built on the site of a Benedictine monastery. Madrid-Barajas Airport takes the Spanish capital together with the name of the adjacent district. Madrid takes its name from the Moorish fort of Marjit which is thought to refer to 'the place of abundant water'. Barajas may also refer to water, for although the meaning remains uncertain it may be from baiae 'watering place' or alternatively varalia 'a fenced area'. Zurich is a modern representation of its Latin name, Turicum coming from Celtic dur with a Latin suffix and describing its location on the shore of a large lake. Copenhagen's airport takes the name of the Danish capital city, itself a reference to its important port. The name comes from the Danish kiopman 'the merchants' harbour'. The city of Vienna is synonymous with the River Danube, no surprise to find both names share a common origin. Danube comes from Celtic vedunia meaning 'trees', those which grow along the shores, while the city was influenced by the Roman name for the settlement Vindobona. Barcelona is said to have been named after its founder in 230BC, the Carthiginian general Hamilcar Barca. From the Irish dubh linn 'the black lake' comes the name of its capital city of Dublin and its main airport. Brussels also has a 'watery' name, it was originally recorded as Bruoc-sella meaning 'the settlement in the marshes', that being on an island in the marshes of the River Senne, a tributary of the River Scheldt. Palma de Mallorca features the Spanish version of its old Roman name, itself speaking of 'the great island'. Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport takes the name of one of the most giften men of all time, his name chosen for him having designed a prototype helicopter and a winged flying machine, while the town of Fiumicino has a name meaning 'little river'. Ataturk International Airport was named in 1980 to honour Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder and first president of the Republic of Turkey. Antalya Airport serves the increasingly busy Turkish holiday resorts on the Mediterranean coastline. Its name is traditionally held to be a result of the Pergamum king Attalos II sending his men out to find 'heaven on earth', the Greek name for the place. Dubai's airport gets its name from the place, itself of disputed origins. The confusion comes from the language of origin, not the word which is agreed is daba. If this be a Persian word it would be 'creep', a reference to the very slow movement of the tidal Dubai Creek, or if of Arabic beginnings it would mean 'locust'. It does occur that the name for the locust could easily have been borrowed from Persian, the swarms would appear to 'creep' across the land as a mass, if not individually. Hence while the word is not disupted the understanding requires examination. Hong Kong comes from the Cantonese hiangkiang which translates to 'fragrant harbour'. Its airport is known locally as Chep Lap Kok, the name of the island which was extended with land reclaimed from the sea to house the new airport when its predecessor of Kai Tak closed. Chep Lap Kok is named after a local fish, the red tripletail perch, although whether it alludes to the shape of the island or that such were caught here is uncertain. Singapore Changi Airport is operated by, and named after, the Changi Airport Group. The city's name is from Sanskrit singa pura or 'lion town', this is unusual for lions are not indigenous to this area and hence is probably used to convey a message of 'strength'. Thailand's Suavamabhumi Airport is from Sanskrit, with suvarna bhumi meaning 'the gold land'. Japan's Narita International Airport is a place name with a very complex history, especially considering it is effectively not yet fifty years old. With the coming of the Olympic Games in 1964, the authorities felt the traditional naming of houses and streets would be far too confusing for the foreign influx and so instituted a very rigid system which proved none too popular. Two existing names, Narimune and Tabata, were combined to form the new district name of Narita. Narimune is held to come from the eldest of three brothers of the Nakano family who went away to become samurais, while Tabata dates from at least the sixteenth century and describes 'the edge of the paddy field'. What was once named after the late president Chiang Kai-shek was renamed in 2006. Presently Taoyuan International Airport takes the name of the county, itself referring to the 'garden of peaches' for the many peach blossoms once found here. In Malaysia the Kuala Lumpur International Airport is named from the capital city and comes from Malay kuala lumpur 'the muddy estuary', a good description of its location at the mouth of the River Kelang. Over to North America where the John F. Kennedy International Airport, previously unofficially known as Idlewild after the local golf course, was named to honour the fourth president of the USA to be assassinated. Miami takes the name of the city and resort, the original name of which was Mayaimi from the native Tequesta language for 'big water'. This may have referred to Lake Okeechobee, the largest in the southern USA, or to the marshes of the Everglades. Chicago's O'Hare Airport was originally known as Orchard Depot Airport, hence the code ORD is still used for identification purposes. It was renamed in 1949 to honour the World War II flying ace Lieutenant Commander Edward 'Butch' O'Hare of the US Navy. He was awarded the Medal of Honor following his leading of the first ever fighter attack to be launched from an aircraft carrier during hours of darkness. Washington DC's airport is named after Dulles, Virginia. Dulles is not the official name of the city, correctly known as Sterling, but is considered an acceptable alternative considering Dulles is known internationally while, by comparison, Sterling is almost unknown. The name was chosen for the airport to commemorate former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who had died just a month before and who was known for voicing his like of flying. Toronto Pearson International Airport is both the largest and busiest in Canada. Toronto was the Native American Iroquois name from toron-to-hen meaning 'the timber in the water'. Lester B. Pearson (1897-1972) was the fourteenth Canadian prime minister and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in resolving the Suez Crisis Note how many of the airports still bear the name of the city, although this is becoming less common as individuals are honoured and events commemorated. 1 comment: 1. I am trying to compile a list of fact checking and general research sources. Any suggestions? Also, I have a hypothetical question. If you were editing or writing a historical novel where a character refers to someone leaving Moscow's "international airport" in 1942 and wanted to check to see when it came into use in Russia, how would you check that? When did the term "international airport" come in to use? In the US, we refer to any airport that can originate overseas flights as an international airport, no matter how small.
Monday, March 16, 2009 During just the 20th century, world population grew from 1.65 billion to over 6 billion The San Andreas Fault, which runs north-south, is slipping at a rate of about 2 inches per year causing the city of Los Angeles to move toward the city of San Francisco -- scientists predict that within 15 million years, these two cities will merge At the end of the 20th century, 90% of data on Africa was stored in Europe and the U.S. It took radio broadcasts 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million; it took television 13 years to reach an audience that large and the Internet just 4 years Globally, for every one dollar spent on development assistance to the poorest nations, ten dollars are spent on military budgets Currently, 2 bullets exist for every person on Earth and 1 gun for every 10 people In Ireland, consumers used 1.2 billion plastic bags a year (316 per person) until 2002, when a plastic bag consumption tax was enacted that reduced use by 90% -- as a result, about 18 million liters of petroleum have been saved Introduced just 25 years ago, more than 1 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide each year -- these petroleum-based products do not biodegrade, they photodegrade by breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic bits contaminating soil and waterways around the world Number of alcoholics worldwide, as estimated by the World Health Organization: 76.3 million U.S. Population: --15 to 64 years (66%) --under 15 years (21%) --over 64 years (13%) Decibels -- Sound 180 -- Rocket launching pad 140 -- Jet plane 140 -- Gunshot blast 130 -- Pain threshold 120 -- Discomfort 120 -- Automobile horn 90 -- Subway/Metro 80 -- Noisy restaurant 75 -- Busy automobile traffic 66 -- Normal conversation 50 -- Average home 30 -- Whisper About 147 million people (2.5% of world population) consumes marijuana each year -- people in nearly every country admit to using marijuana at some point in their lives Thousands of years ago, the Ancient Persians thought the Earth was flat and conceived of it as a stone tablet -- they later postulated that it might be an egg since all life came from it -- shortly after this formulation, they returned to believing the Earth was flat since no one had slid off the egg's surface In 1462, Pope Pius II declared that baptized Africans should not be enslaved French philosopher Voltaire predicted that within 100 years of his lifetime Christianity would be obsolete -- 50 years after his death, the Geneva Bible Society began using Voltaire's former printing press and publishing house to produce Bibles The first six months of our calendar have 181 days, while the last six months have 184 days -- on July 2 at Noon, you are exactly halfway through the year Proportionally and compared to other primates, human males have massive genitalia • Richard Feyman was a physicist and part of the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb -- his hobby was picking locks • Jack Parsons co-founded the Jet Propulsion Laboratory despite having no formal education -- in his spare time he practiced magic and claimed he was the Anti-Christ -- he died by accidentally blowing himself up during a lab experiment in his home in 1952 • Nikola Tesla, credited with the invention of the wireless radio and the AC generator that kick-started the electrical age, was born in 1856 during a violent lightning storm • Albert Einstein did not speak until the age of 3 and did not speak fluently until age 9, by which time his parents feared he was mentally retarded -- he never memorized his home telephone number or learned to drive a car, and after age 30 refused to wear socks ever again • Dr. Kellogg declared sexual desire was an illness and invented corn flakes as a treatment and remedy in the 1930s-- the initial lack of flavor of his invention made his product unpopular and only after adding flavor did Kellogg's Corn Flakes become a leading cereal brand • Born and raised in Germany's Castle Frankenstein, 17th century alchemist Johann Dippel became noted as the inventor of Prussian Blue, one of the first synthetic chemical dyes -- he became even more famous for his endless search for immortality and rumors of his experiments on corpses -- he was the inspiration for Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" • Charles Richter, the American scientist who developed the Richter Scale to measure the strength of earthquakes, was an avid nudist, which ultimately led to his divorce once his wife realized she could not dissuade his insistence on frequent nude parties at their home and his unwillingness to wear clothing unless in public In a recent study, crickets on the Atkins diet were found to be exceptionally persistent in seeking a sexual mate, and began calling for a mate at a younger age than is typical -- they also died much sooner than normal after expending so much of their energy seeking sexual partners -- this was only true for the males, however, and the females, who also called for sex as frequently as the males did not die any sooner than is typical for a cricket 75% of commercial fishing catch will be used to feed people -- the remaining 25% is used to make products such as glue, soap, lip sticks, and fertilizer A recent study revealed that over 80% of millionaires drive pre-owned cars Number of millionaires globally: more than 7 million (most are Americans - 1 out of 3) The praying mantis is the only insect that can turn its head You have a greater chance of being infected with flesh-eating virus than being struck by lightning -- unless you are living in Cuba The more than 4,600 species of mammals represent 0.3% of animals in the world Summer on Uranus lasts 21 years, and so does winter In 1653, New York City had one lawyer, Adriaan van der Donck Your likelihood of being shot and killed during a bank robbery is highest if you are the robber Scientists recently discovered that Florida, USA and Hudson Bay in Canada are getting about 1 inch closer every 36 years The average bra is designed for 180 days of use Besides the genitals and breasts, the inner nose of the human is the only other body part that routinely swells during sex Six 8-studded Lego pieces can be combined into 102,981,500 different configurations 33 nipples are visible in Madonna's music video for the song "Vogue" In the time it took you to read this sentence, five babies were born When folding their arms across their chest, 7 out of 10 people cross their left arm over their right The "You Are Here" arrow on a map or directory is called an "ideolocator" Soldiers from every country salute with their right hand Ants stretch when they wake up from sleep Your nose takes up 7% of your face FEEDYOURHEAD on Facebook
This is what we’ll look like in the year 2100 if we don’t fight against climate change now The U.S. Global Change Research Programme has given us insight into what humans will look like in the future. Spoiler alert: it’s not a pretty picture For those who still aren’t taking climate change seriously, here’s yet another reason: an increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to between 540-960 parts per million (ppm) could make us all obese. And we’re currently at 400 ppm. This has been confirmed in a study carried out by the U.S. Global Change Research Programme, which NASA beamed down to Earth with this explanatory video: ‘Rising CO2 will alter the relative proportions of major macronutrients in many crops by increasing carbohydrate content (starch and sugars) while at the same time decreasing protein content. This could have unhealthy effects on human metabolism and body mass.’ By the year 2100, this would lead to overweight and obese populations with diets overloaded with calories and carbohydrates and deficient in vitamins and essential minerals. ‘The nutritional value of agriculturally important food crops, such as wheat and rice, will decrease as rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to reduce the concentrations of protein and essential minerals in most plant species.’ In other words, we could fall victim to what is known as a ‘silent famine’, which has nothing to do with the amount of food you ingest, but rather the quality of this food. The studio has shown that an increase in CO2 levels will lead to a reduction, most probably across all plant life, in concentrations of micro and macro nutrients like vitamin A, iron, iodine, zinc, calcium, magnesium, copper, sulphur, phosphorous and nitrogen. This, in turn, would bring about an increased risk of malnutrition in the guise of a more rotund population; an underlying cause which could easily go unnoticed. The studio points out that this kind of deficiency ‘constitutes one of the world’s leading health risk factors and adversely affects metabolism, the immune system, cognitive development and maturation, particularly in children. In addition, micronutrient deficiency can exacerbate the effects of diseases.’ Today's PlayGround Videonews:
02 Oct Night terrors night terrors Introduction. Many children experience nightmares and night terrors, but most grow out of them. They don't cause any long-term psychological harm to your child. Adults may recall a dream fragment they had during the sleep terrors. Also, nightmares generally occur in the last half of the night, while sleep terrors occur in the. Night terrors are a form of sleep disorder in which a person partially awakens from sleep in a state of terror. They seem to be a little more common among boys. In some cases, therapy is helpful. They can also occur after taking certain types of medication, such as antidepressants. It is rare for night terrors to persist beyond the age of Night Terrors is a new breed of immersive entertainment. What's the difference between nightmares and night terrors? What should I do if my child has them? Kilar sagt:
The Badminton Bible All original content copyright © Mike Hopley In-to-out net spin basics Home > Shots > Forecourt > Net shots > Straight > Spin > In to out To get started with in-to-out spin, we’ll use a simple technique where you push the racket towards the net post. Looks like you need a subscription for this one! Join now or log in Start inside the line of the shuttle When you are not playing spin, you just take the racket directly to the shuttle. To create the spin, that preparation must be changed. The racket should start inside the line of the shuttle. It’s almost like bringing your racket to a different shuttle before starting the stroke. Push to the post From that starting position, create the spin by pushing the racket sideways and a little bit forwards. You need some forwards movement to make the shuttle go over the net. Think about pushing your racket towards the net post. For the backhand spin, I recommend using a backhand grip, or maybe a little bit towards thumb grip — but not all the way. Using a full thumb grip will restrict your arm too much. For the forehand spin, use a partial panhandle. Bend back the wrist and allow the racket butt to come away from the palm, so that the racket head points forwards a bit. In both cases, we’re choosing a grip that allows us to take the shuttle early. Many players take the shuttle lower when they play spin, and this is often due to the grip they are using. Start with a bent elbow Make sure your elbow is slightly bent when you start the stroke. Especially with the forehand spin, many players start with a straight arm. Bending the elbow is what lets you push through the shuttle.
What Are the Causes of Sore Muscles? (Image: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/7/8916916_66e7d2d5a8.jpg, http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3360/3201929825_a787051796.jpg, http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3047/3066818003_3bca554337.jpg, http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3114/2635265116_2ac74bd10f.jpg) Strength training is a great weight to maintain a proper weight. However, many people begin a strength training regimen only to be frustrated by tired, sore muscles. Many people give up strength training because of the muscle soreness, but having knowledge about muscle soreness can actually help you continue with your health goals. Muscle Basics When you engage your muscle in strenuous activity like weight lifting, you are actually tearing your muscle fibers. These muscle fibers rip and shred along the whole muscle. The muscle fibers will grow back larger and thicker, increasing your muscle size and strength. What causes muscle soreness? What causes muscle soreness? Muscle Soreness Most people believe that lactic acid causes muscle soreness because that was the findings of scientists many years ago. Lactic acid is the culprit for immediate muscle soreness. When you are lifting weights, for example, the muscle you are working will burn, and it will eventually feel fatigued. The burning sensation comes from the lactic acid being flushed into your muscle. However, muscle soreness that sets in 24 to 48 hours after a workout is not due to lactic acid. Instead, this pain comes from sacs of fluid that rest upon your nerve endings. Because the muscles have been torn, they immediately begin the process of repair. These sacs of fluid form to protect the muscle, and the pressure on your nerves causes your muscle pain. Muscle soreness usually lasts no more than seven days. If your muscles are sore for more than a week, you should see a doctor. First-time weight lifters almost always suffer from severe muscle soreness. However, it helps to know that muscle soreness will decrease the more you work out. Don't let muscle soreness discourage you from continuing to exercise. Don't give up. Don't give up. To relieve muscle soreness, apply a muscle rub like Icy Hot. Light massage also helps alleviate muscle soreness. An over-the-counter pain medication such as ibuprofen can also decrease muscle pain. Some athletes even claim that ice baths relieve muscle soreness. Always consult a physician before engaging in an exercise program, and make sure you learn the proper techniques to weight lifting before you begin a regimen. This will decrease injury. If you do have muscle soreness, avoid using the sore muscle group as much as possible. You should alternate body parts when working out so that muscles will have time to repair. Muscle soreness can be painful. Muscle soreness can be painful. Related Searches Promoted By Zergnet You May Also Like Related Searches Check It Out This Is the Beauty Routine of a Yelp Sales Manager Submit Your Work!
1 2 Previous Next 15 Replies Latest reply on Aug 11, 2012 6:25 AM by user_14586677 Sampling data Hello ALL I was working onUART and just started with SPI.... In all the communication protocols, the data is sampledi.e in UART it is either 8x or 16x. i want to know 1. How does the component decide wheteher the received data is 1 or 0( is there something like out of 8 samples maximum occurance of high voltage is decided as 1) 2. What if due to noise interference during sampling wrong values are sampled. 3. the devices are far apart and connecting the common ground is not possible...and differential data is sent.....how will the device at the other end point take this voltage level .... what will the scenario at the input of diff amp if present for amplifying data and sending to sampler.. • 1. Re: Sampling data In every datasheet for a component is a short description how it is working and how it has to be used. I2C is not designed to transmit over longer distances or not using an open collector output. Longer distances are bridged easily with RS232 or if all fails with a TTY current-loop interface. Sampling of signals is usually done at a clock edge to give the signal time to settle. • 2. Re: Sampling data RS232 is NOT a long distance transmission scheme. See URL summary of serial schemes. Excluding LVDS. There is an excellent chart in this reference showing capabilities of various serial PHY solutions. As far as oversampling algorithm, my curiosity is up as to how many samples, what sequence, how many bit samples are used to determine a bits validity. I have a question into Exar on this, they more or less are the industry leaders in this area. Last, regarding differential receivers, as long as all common mode limitations are met the receiver only cares about the differntial voltage. Said another way, they do not respond to DC or common mode ground potential differences, within their spec range. So ohmic drops are solved, ignored, by a differential receiver. Regards, Dana. • 3. Re: Sampling data Here is the response I got from Exar - The only bit that is validated is the start bit. The RX pin should idle high. When there is transition low, then the internal state machine starts. To validate the start bit, the RX pin must be low on the 4th baud clock (middle of the start bit). Once it has been validated, then the data will be sampled after every 8 clocks until the stop bit has been sampled. Ideally, each bit will be sampled during the middle of the bit. Once the stop bit has been sampled, then the UART receiver will wait until there's another start bit (or transition to low). If the RX pin is high on the 4th baud clock, then the UART assumes it was noise on the RX input and waits for a valid start bit. Regards, Dana. • 4. Re: Sampling data Dana: are you referring to RS 232 or SPI with regards to sampling of data? This is interesting, I was not aware that either used a clock that is so much faster than the data rate...but I guess it makes sense to do it that way to allow adequate set-up times. • 5. Re: Sampling data Current loops can achive long distances, but speed severly compromised due to L and C. And complience of the I generator key limitation. Regards, Dana. • 6. Re: Sampling data For longer distant, better use differential signal type such as RS-485 or RS-422. • 7. Re: Sampling data I was referring to RS232 UARTs. Regards, Dana. • 8. Re: Sampling data @porcine, I was referring to UARTs in general,. typo for me to say RS232 UART as RS232 is a PHY specification, RS232 does not care if a UART is driving it or a watermelon. Regards, Dana. • 9. Re: Sampling data Hey i have another question .... for long distance transmisson (say 2 lines are used for communication - CLK and data) due to wire capacitance the signal rise and fall slowly(assume no amplifiers in between and reproducers) ,,,, if such is the case how would be the data sampling... how is the data considered... • 10. Re: Sampling data "Long" is a relatively uncertain expression, when I compared I2C and RS232 capabilities Dana insisted that the latter is not designed for "Long" distances and gave a link to an article where RS232 could span 12m, which I would consider to be "very long". Besides getting knowledge about data transmission the question: is: Hari, do you have a special problem in mind you'd like to solve? What is the distance you are talking about, what are the data-rates needed (eather direction), what are the cable restrictions etc. And for more knowledge: ask Mrs. Google (or Wikipedia) for the "OSI model" which will give you something at hand to classify your problems and finding solutions. BTW: Hari, I cannot identify your picture, try to ger a better one with better resolution. Is it a dog? • 11. Re: Sampling data Hey BOB I am not particular about about the length neither i am in any project(i completed the project...i sent you right!!!!), out of curiosity i am asking these question.... You are big guys...you will be knowing...... Google gives lots of stuff....which can be both true and not true ...since you guys have hands on experience you guys are the right men to clarify doubts.. • 12. Re: Sampling data And you want to change my profile pic.... i will do that so that i can be seen...... And why did you say that ...was my profile picture was a dog ???? hey i will not copy you man..... i will have my own identity.....not to be worried.... • 13. Re: Sampling data As a matter of fact, my forum-picture is a cat! • 14. Re: Sampling data It is largley because of cable capacitance and ohmic drop, skews (like in LVDS), that challenge transceivers to recover degraded digital signals. This is a subject that fills many ap notes and comm books. Yes, RS232 is "long" if being compared to SPI, LVDS, I2C, "short" compared to RS485, fiber, wireless...... In fact RS232 can transmit .0000001 baud over incredibly "long" distances. So can a telegraph key. Regards, Dana. 1 2 Previous Next
Close X California Penal Code Sections §§ 236 and 237(a): False Imprisonment: False imprisonment What is false imprisonment? False imprisonment occurs when you unlawfully deprive another person of his or her personal liberty. In that respect, it is similar to California Penal Code § 207 kidnapping. But kidnapping requires that you move the person. Where someone is merely held or restrained against that person's will, the crime is false imprisonment. Types of false imprisonment: California recognizes three basic categories of false imprisonment: 1. Misdemeanor false imprisonment; 2. Felony false imprisonment; and 3. False imprisonment of a hostage. In each case, the prosecutor must prove that: 1. You intentionally and unlawfully restrained, detained or confined someone, and 2. Doing so made that person stay or go somewhere against that person's will. You make someone stay or go against his/her will if he/she does not consent to the act. A person consents when he/she acts freely and voluntarily and knows the nature of the act. Examples of false imprisonment: • You prevent someone from leaving by grabbing that person's arm; • You lock someone in a bedroom; • You tie someone to a chair. Note, however, that if the person consented to any of these acts, it wouldn't be false imprisonment. This might happen if: • You were restraining someone during a self-defense class; • You were running a commercial “escape room” game; • You were engaging in consensual bondage. Misdemeanor or felony false imprisonment? Absent actual or threatened violence, false imprisonment is a usually a misdemeanor under California Penal Code §237. False imprisonment becomes a felony under California Penal Code § 236 PC, however, if you restrain, detain or confine someone by: • violence, • menace, • fraud, or • deceit. For purposes of false imprisonment, “violence” means physical force greater than that reasonably necessary to restrain someone. Menace, on the other hand, is the verbal or physical threat of harm. Such threats may be express – such as a statement -- or implied – for example, a gun tucked into someone's waistband. False imprisonment by fraud or deceit consists of curtailing someone else's liberty by lying to them. The fraud or deceit must be intentional. For instance, if you tell a co-worker to stay in his office due to a bomb threat, believing it to be true, you haven't committed false imprisonment even if you are mistaken. But if you are purposely lying about such a threat, you may be guilty of false imprisonment. False imprisonment of a hostage -- Penal Code § 210.5 False imprisonment1 If you use violence or menace to falsely imprison someone for the purpose of protecting yourself from arrest, you commit false imprisonment of a hostage under Penal Code § 210.5. In order to prove one guilty of false imprisonment of a hostage the prosecutor must show that: 1. You faced a threat or risk of imminent arrest; 2. You restrained, confined or detained another person by force or by a threat to use force; 3. You intended to protect yourself against the threat of imminent arrest by restraining the other person; 4. You made the other person stay or go somewhere against that person's will; AND 5. You either substantially increased the risk of physical or psychological harm to that person or you intended to use that person as a shield. Penalties for California False Imprisonment: Misdemeanor false imprisonment is punishable by: • A fine of up to $1,000, and/or • Up to 1 year in county jail. Basic felony false imprisonment can be punished by: *Up to 1 year in county jail, or • 16 months, or 2 or 3 years in county jail. However, certain types of victims carry an increased penalty for felony false imprisonment as follows: False imprisonment of an elder or dependent adult: If the victim of felony false imprisonment is an elder or dependent adult, California Penal Code §368(f) provides a penalty of: • 2, 3 or 4 years in county jail. An elder is any person who is 65 years of age or older. A dependent adult is any person between the ages of 18 and 64 with certain specified physical or mental limitations. False imprisonment of a hostage: False imprisonment of a hostage is punishable by: • 3, 5 or 8 years in county jai;. False imprisonment for purposes of forced labor or human trafficking: If you deprive someone of personal liberty with the intent to obtain forced labor or services, you are guilty of human trafficking. If convicted, you face up to: • 5, 8 or 12 years in California state prison, and • Up to a $500,000 fine. If the forced labor involves sex work or prostitution, the potential penalty increases to: • 8, 14 or 20 years in California state prison, and • Up to a $500,000 fine. And, finally, if the forced sex work involves a minor child, you face: • 15 years to life in California state prison, and • Up to a $500,000 fine. And in all cases of human trafficking or forced labor, you face increased penalties and fines if: • It is a second or subsequent trafficking offense, or • The crime causes great bodily injury to the victim. The court may also fine you an additional amount of up to $1,000,000 if the offense is particularly serious or involves a large amount of money. Can I legally restrain my child? 992738 childabusestockimage 1447702098 623 160x120 Parents have the right to discipline and/or protect their children by depriving them of their liberty if the punishment is reasonable. However, a parent who confines his or her child with the intent to endanger the health and safety of the child or for an unlawful purpose can be prosecuted for false imprisonment. Whether you are guilty depends on: 1. your intent in confining or restraining the child, and 2. the reasonableness of the restraint or confinement. Defenses to False Imprisonment: As should be apparent, specific defenses to false imprisonment charges are highly dependent on the facts of the case. However, common defenses include: • The alleged victim was free to go. • The alleged victim consented to the detention. • You did not use unreasonable force in restraining the victim. • Your verbal “threat” was clearly a joke. • You obviously had no ability to carry out your threat. • You were reasonably disciplining your child. • There was no risk of imminent arrest, so the victim was not a hostage. • You committed the crime under duress. • Your actions were committed in the alleged victim's best interest (for example, to keep her from harming herself). • There was police misconduct during your arrest or the investigation. Related Charges: California Penal Code Section 245(a)(1), Assault with a Deadly Weapon California Penal Code Section12022.7, Assault with Great Bodily Injury California Penal Code Section 242, Simple Battery California Penal Code Section 243(e)(1), Domestic Battery California Penal Code Section 273.5, Corporal Injury to Spouse or Cohabitant California Penal Code Section 368, Elder Abuse California Penal Code Section 422, Criminal Threat We can help! The criminal defense attorneys at Kann California Defense Group know how scary it can be to face charges of false imprisonment. We also know how difficult false imprisonment can be to prove. If you or someone you know has been charged with false imprisonment, we will fight for your freedom. A strong defense lawyer can often get charges reduced to a lesser charge, and sometimes dismissed entirely. Don't let a charge of false imprisonment deprive you of your rights. We represent clients in Ventura, Santa Clarita, Los Angeles, Encino, Pasadena, Van Nuys, Glendale, and many other Southern California cities. Contact us today for a free consultation to find out how we can fight for you. Call us Penal Code § 368(g). Penal Code § 368(h). Penal Code § 236.1(a). Penal Code § 236.1(b). Penal Code § 236.1(b). See Penal Code § 236.4. Kann California Defense Group The Law Offices of Daniel E. Kann Call for a free consultation. (888) 744-7730
Breath of fresh air Three neighbours have developed a device that could potentially improve, and in some cases save, the lives of people who suffer from breathing disorders and rely on bottled oxygen. The fluid flow sensor device, Oxymon, monitors the supply of bottled oxygen to a patient, plus their respiratory rate. It fits to a standard cannula-type mask and uses sensitive monitors to measure, display and record pressure entering and leaving it. Cannula-type masks fit over the ears, and have two tubes that feed oxygen into the nose. Retired engineer David Jones from Hassocks, East Sussex, was inspired to produce Oxymon after his wife Heather died in 2006 after suffering from complications brought on by her treatment for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Jones approached his neighbour, Noel Poncelet, an electronics engineer, to bring his idea to fruition. A third neighbour, Dr James Graham, helped arrange a clinical trial. The three have formed Oxymon to bring the device to market. ‘When people are breathing oxygen, there is a little backpressure,’ said Poncelet. ‘Oxymon takes a reading from one pipe from the bottle to the cannula mask and it monitors this backpressure. This detects when the bottle is turned on and off, and the rate at which the pressure goes up or down.’ Pressure detection in Oxymon is achieved using a piezoelectric pressure-sensing device. The rate of change indicates whether the bottle is running low as opposed to simply being turned off, and a sudden high backpressure could indicate a blockage, such as if the pipe developed a kink or became squashed. An indicator in the other pipe monitors the small changes in pressure in the patient’s nose during breathing. ‘Between the two measurements, you can detect whether the bottle is on and whether the patient is breathing from it, the rate they’re breathing at, and a number of other measurements,’ said Poncelet. ‘Potentially you can detect risks such as the mask becoming dislodged, or if the oxygen isn’t being taken in.’ Oxymon is attached to the head of an oxygen bottle, and a T-piece connects the pipes before running off into the mask, so it takes readings without interrupting the flow. It does not have a conventional on/off switch, but wakes up every few seconds to see if there is pressure to monitor. It then goes into sleep mode to save battery life. It has an audible buzzer if a dangerous situation is detected, plus a number of coloured LEDs for feedback on factors such as oxygen supply and breathing rate. There is also an LCD which shows a bar that pulses up and down in synchronisation with breathing, an indication of low oxygen supply and whether breathing rate is normal or fast. Display options can be controlled through Oxymon’s software. The prototype is about 10cm on each side and 4cm deep, but at the next phase the developers hope to bring it down to the size of a mobile phone. The team made it using specialist sensors which are sensitive enough to measure small changes, but will not be damaged by excessive backpressure if a pipe is obstructed. ‘After the breadboard version, we did a search on the web for local industries that would do the production of it, and we found Optisense in Horsham, which produces small production quantities of instrumentation equipment,’ said Poncelet. ‘The company produced the prototype we have now, sourced the components and revamped the design using the best available components. It also wrote the software and to date has built 40 prototypes.’ As a GP, Graham pointed out to the team that he had difficulty telling whether patients who were prescribed oxygen were following his advice when using it at home, so on his suggestion, the device includes a recording facility. ‘It logs the time and date of when the oxygen bottle was switched on, when breathing was detected, when it was turned off and any alarm situations,’ said Poncelet. ‘This can then be downloaded to a laptop or PC and analysed so the doctor can see whether the patient achieved the recommended usage — something that has never been obtained before.’ An initial clinical trial is underway at a Brighton hospital under the supervision of Prof Mark Jackson, a consultant in respiratory medicine. The Oxymon partners have applied for European and US patents, and have received attention from a variety of manufacturers interested in licensing the product. Berenice Baker
As Written Hari OM We are now undertaking basic technical discourse on Vedanta. The text forming the basis of these posts is 'Kindle Life'. Please do reread previous posts using the labels 'Workings-days' or 'Kindle Life'. Ch. 28 गायत्री मन्त्र /gaayatrii maantra (cont'd). There are many parts of daily life which can be ordered according to shruti, (truly, Sanskrit literature is the most comprehensive manual for living you could ever find!), but of course daily worship, called सन्ध्या कर्म /sandhyaa karma, is given most attention. One of the prayers which are prescribed and not to be missed, is the repetition of the Great Gaayatrii Mantra. Image result for manusmriti the body is purified by water the mind is purified by truth knowledge, practice and spirit are purified by intellect and knowledge. Historically, it was used to keep the mind 'tidy' after the ravages of daily living and the random unawareness of sleep. One of the great scriptures, the मनुस्मृति /ManusmRti, says " the early dawn by doing this japa standing, one ends all sins committed during the night and by doing the japa in the evening while sitting, one ends one's sins committed during the day." Sin, here, means the agitations created in our mental life by our own negative actions and the tendency to repeat the same. Such 'habits' leave impressions on the mind and these become sealed as vaasanas - the internal tendencies carried from life to life. After that period in history, the importance of Gaayatrii grew somewhat and came to hold the importance it currently has; 'importance' in the sense that it was raised on a pedestal and some ritualistic behaviours grew around it - this is a thing which happens in many spiritual matters; they are brought down, given material importance instead, without there really being any supporting evidence in the scriptures that this is required. It demonstrates that mankind requires a level of ritual in order to feel that s/he is performing worship - making worship a separate thing from daily living. This fall into materialistic spirituality was also when other things got twisted and misconstrued; such as the social divisions. In this case, there came about an idea that the Gaayatrii was not to be chanted without the जनौ /janau (holy thread worn on the body of the Brahmins… ie that only this strata of society were permitted to chant it). This is also when the Pranava (OM) and the व्याहृताः /vyaahRtis (other sacred tones/words) were added to the chanting. Thus we find ॐ भूर् भुवः स्वः /OM bhuur, bhuvaH svaH, giving a fourth paada to the mantra. Sometimes, also, an additional OM is added before the mantra proper. This was, as explained last week, in order to permit the eight syllables, if the end syllable is held as one and not split inti 'ni' and 'am'. There are two sandhyaas in a day. The word means the blending of and night, therefore, dawn and dusk. In the ancient literature we do not find any importance given to midday worship. The Rsis appear only to insist upon morning and evening prayer. The concept of midday worship, then, may well have been adopted from practices observed by the Islamic faith, which encroached quite early in Indian history. In terms of the morning and evening, it is generally advised that the most 'auspicious' times (those times when the body mind and intellect are most likely to reap the best benefit) is between 4:30 and 5 am (which is referred to as /Brahma-muhuurta) and later, between 6 and 7 pm. ManusmRti is, again, very helpful in its direction. Image result for gayatri mudras in sandhyavandanam"After getting up from bed, after answering the calls of nature, purifying yourself competely, disallowing the mind to wander hither and tither, sincerely perform the morning japa standing on your feet and repeating the mantra very slowly. Perform this morning worship till the sun rises above the horizon and for the evening worship, do the japa till the stars emerge." (ManuS. 2/101) In those early days, this sandhyaa karma was not as elaborate as it has tended to become since the days of सूत्राः आगमाः /suutras and aagamas (commentaries and doctrines = man's interpretations and assumptions). The original instruction was to chant the mantra at dawn standing in water and facing the sun, holding water in the folded palms and at then end of each recitation, that water is to be offered to the Lord - ie allowed to run from the hands. As this happens, the sadhaka utters /asaavaadityo Brahma (this sun is Brahman) and makes a circular stepping motion around his or herself as reverence to the Lord Sun/Brahman, who is nothing but the Self within us. Generally, the Gaayatrii is chanted a minimum of ten times; however, according to one's faith, convenience and devotion, it may be chanted any number of times - a classic and auspicious number is the 108 of a sacred mala. If you find that you have time space for only one Gaayatrii practice in a day, then make it the morning. The mind and the body are the sources of our activity in the world; mind and body have likes, dislikes, emotions, lusts, cravings and so on. They bring out from us a host of animal instincts which can conquer and destroy the spiritual essence within us - the Brahman, the Sun within us. The essential brillinace of the human intellect becomes clouded by this onslaught… the Gaayatrii japa pours oil on these stormy waters and acts as a filter, permitting the intellect to understand it can rise above all the nonsense. SELF focus, not self focus is the purpose of this practice. Some more on the history and background to this mantra next week, after which there will be instruction in practice. Image result for om No comments: Post a Comment Hari OM
Synchronous Learning Synchronous learning refers to a learning event in which a group of students are engaging in learning at the same time. Synchronous learning can be viewed as a part of hybrid course. Online sessions held regularly can serve as a great example of synchronous learning. This approach helps avoid a huge amount of drop-outs and keep up morale. Opposite to it is asynchronous learning.
Back to the Breathe Easy Program Frequently Asked Questions About Ectopic Heartbeats (Premature Ventricular Contractions) These are questions and answers about ectopic heartbeats in general, about the different types of ectopic beat, the symptoms and causes of ectopic heartbeat and things that can be done to help get rid of ectopic heartbeats. To see real questions from people just like you and my answers, click this link What are other names for ectopic heartbeats? Premature ventricular contractions Irregular heartbeat Missed beats Extra beats What are Ectopic Heartbeats? Commonly known as PVC’s, ectopic heartbeats are beats that have their origins in the ventricles of the heart rather than from the sinoatrial (SA) node. PVCs are termed premature because they are triggered before the normal heartbeat occurs. How is the heart supposed to work? The heart is built like the old stereotypical English house – two up, two down. The two upstairs chambers are called the Atria (plural of atrium). The two downstairs chambers are called the ventricles. The two upper atria receive blood from the veins and lungs and deliver it to the lower ventricles. The ventricles accept blood from the atria and deliver it to the lungs and to the rest of the body. The low-oxygen venous (from the veins) blood arrives in the right atrium and is then passed to the right ventricle. From there it is pumped to the lungs for enrichment with oxygen. From the lungs, the blood enters the left atrium and is passed to the left ventricle where it is pumped back to the body through the arteries. The timing for the heartbeat comes from an area in the right atrium called the sinoatrial (SA) node. This initiates an electrical impulse that causes the heart to beat. It first activates the atria to beat then crosses to the ventricles over a bridge called the atrio-ventricular (AV) node and then causes the ventricles to beat. What happens during an ectopic heartbeat? An electrical impulse originates in the ventricle causing the ventricle to contract before the impulse from the SA node arrives. All of the heart muscle is inherently rhythmic, which means that any part of it can produce electrical signals. Under normal circumstances, the only signal comes from the SA node. The ventricle starts to beat before the signal from the atrium crosses the AV node bridge, but is only a portion of the way through the beat as the second signal arrives, causing an incomplete and inefficient beat to occur. People with this condition report a feeling that the heart stops briefly before resuming with a “bang”. This condition is sometimes known as extra beats because two (incomplete) beats occur. After the incomplete beat, the heart resets itself and the resuming beat is usually stronger than usual, causing the feeling of a “bang”. The course of events is: Normal beat – incomplete beats – pause to reset – stronger beat – normal beat What are the symptoms of ectopic heartbeat? Depending upon the severity of symptoms, these can vary from none at all, in which case the problem is only usually picked up during testing for other complaints, to distressing palpitations in chest and sometimes in the neck. The palpitation feeling is due to the more forceful heartbeat following an ectopic beat How common are ectopic heartbeats? They are quite common. There are many people who have ectopic heartbeats and suffer no symptoms. Ectopic heartbeats are more common as we get older, in people with hypertension (high blood pressure) and in people with various heart diseases. Ectopic beats can also occur in young, fit & healthy individuals who don’t suffer from heart diseases or high blood pressure. What are some of the causes of Ectopic heartbeats? In the course of emailing many people who buy this course, I have found that stress in one form or another is the single highest common factor in otherwise healthy people who suffer from ectopics. According to western medicine, other contributing factors are thought to be hypertension (high blood pressure), being overweight, overindulgence in alcoholic or caffeine containing drinks, drug use – especially cocaine and low blood levels of potassium and magnesium. There are a number of heart disease related causes but as they are outside the scope of the Breathe Easy Program, we will just acknowledge that these exist. Can I get more than one ectopic beat at a time? Yes, there are instances where ectopic beats occur every second beat (bigeminy, pronounced bi-gem-i-ny), two consecutive ectopic beats (Couplets), or three consecutive ectopic beats (triplets). When frequent ectopic beats occur, they can on some occasions cause dizziness. This is due to the reduced ability of the heart to pump blood around the body. People who experience more than three consecutive ectopic beats in a row have what is known as ventricular tachycardia. When prolonged, ventricular tachycardia can result in low blood flow, low blood pressure, and fainting. In some instances, ventricular tachycardia can also develop into ventricular fibrillation, which is a fatal heart rhythm (see below). This occurs mainly in people who suffer from heart disease. Are there any health risks associated with ectopic heartbeats? Ectopic heartbeats in healthy individuals without high blood pressure or heart diseases do not pose any health risks. This is why your doctor or cardiologist will tell you to just live with it. Ectopic beats in people who also suffer from some heart disease run the risk of developing ventricular tachycardia, this is why it is important to get a diagnosis from a cardiologist. Ventricular tachycardia can develop into ventricular fibrillation, which if untreated, can be fatal. The Breathe Easy Program is not recommended for people who suffer from underlying heart disease. What medications are used for ectopic heartbeats? If you do not suffer from underlying heart disease, most doctors will not prescribe medications for your ectopic heartbeat. If heart disease is present, medications will be given to treat the disease itself and to prevent ventricular tachycardia. Some medications are described below: Anti-arrhythmia medications These medications are given to help stabilize and reduce ectopic heartbeats. The aim is to prevent ventricular tachycardias and subsequent ventricular fibrillations. Beta-blockers are one such medication. There is little evidence that controlling ectopic heartbeatss with such medications prevent ventricular tachycardias and ventricular fibrillations. Some anti-arrhythmia medications can actually be the cause of abnormal heart rhythms in some people. Please discuss this with your doctor. Beta blockers Again, we include Beta blockers but of a different type. There are a number of types of beta blocker on the pharmacy shelf. The types given for heart attack reduce the action of adrenaline and relieve muscular stresses on the heart. They also slow down the heart rate and they decrease the force of heart contractions, giving the heart a rest. Through this, they limit the damage to the heart during a heart attack. Beta blockers also come with a number of potential side effects. These are listed as abnormally slow heart rate, increased wheezing in asthmatics and they can bring on heart failure in people with significant heart muscle damage. What is Cardiac Ablation and can it help me? When the heart's electrical system goes awry as explained above, one course of action is to destroy the bit of heart tissue that is causing the problem. Ablation is a relatively non-invasive surgical technique that involves feeding a catheter into a blood vessel and guiding it to the heart. In the heart, electrodes at the end of the catheter take electrical measurements to find the exact location of the problem. Once found, the tissue causing the stray signals can be destroyed by exciting the tip of the catheter with an electrical current. This technique is used to control a number of serious problems as well as ectopic heartbeats in people who don't want to take drugs because of potential side effects or where the drugs are ineffective. This sounds like a wonderful way of overcoming ectopic heartbeats but you should remember that to effect this, a part of the heart tissue needs to be destroyed. For people with life threatening issues, this is not of much concern but for otherwise healthy people, this should be given a lot of thought. Also, a number of people who buy the Breathe Easy Program have already tried ablation but have found that whilst the ablation was initially successful, another part of the heart starts playing up and the ectopic beats start again. This process is not 100% effective and you should discuss this with your doctor. Back to the Breathe Easy Program
Choosing Islam IslamInTheNews Islam In The News What's New What's New Live Chat Multimedia Multimedia Agnomens in the Qur'an All praise is due and belongs to Allah. May His peace and blessings be upon Prophet Muhammad, and his households and his companions. There are many agnomens mentioned in the Glorious Qur'an to confirm habits or states of the addressees. These given agnomens show the important of the addressees as regards their habits. In this article we will mention the most famous of these agnomens, with a brief clarification of their meanings: 1 . Abu Lahab, (Father of the flame). He was prophet Muhammad's paternal uncle. He is condemned in Surah al-Massad/Lahab, for being an enemy to Islam. 2 . Isra'eel: Israel refers to the name of Prophet Yaqoub (peace be upon him). In the Qur'an it refers to Banu Israel (children/descendants of Israel). According to Quran and Islam Israel means 'the servant of Allah (Abdullah)'. This name was given to prophet Yaqoub (Jacob ) because of his dedication and belief in Allah, the Exalted. He got this name when he said 'I surrender to you my Creator'. 3 . Al-Masi'h: It is a nickname given to Jesus, and is derived from the root "MSH". According to Ibn Abbas, Jesus was given this name because he touched various ill people and cured them by the permission of Allah. (See Tafseer al-Qurtubi, IV/89). The expression in verse 49 of the chapter Aal-i-Imran, "I heal those born blind, and the lepers and I quicken the dead by Allah's leave" supports the view of Ibn Abbas. Some scholars state that Masih means spotlessly clean and it indicates that Jesus is free from sins. (See Tafseer at-Tabari, IV/35.) The statement in verse 19 of the chapter of Maryam, قَالَ إِنَّمَا أَنَا رَسُولُ رَبِّكِ لِأَهَبَ لَكِ غُلَامًا زَكِيًّا “The angel said to Maryam, ‘I am only a messenger from thy Lord (to announce) to thee the gift of a holy son’ " denotes this meaning. There are some scholars who say that this word derives from the same root as ‘musamaha’ (tolerance) and it denotes tolerance, if it is taken into consideration that Jesus relieved some hard decrees that were present in the Old Testament and legitimized some forbidden things (see Tafseer az-Zamakhshari, I/365). 4 . Ilyas: It is a nickname given to Idrees as said by some scholars. It was reported by Ibn Abi Hatim that Ibn Mas'ood (may Allah be pleased on him) said: Ilyas is Idrees and Israeel is Yaqoub. 5 . Dhul-Kifl: It literally means "possessor of something, or giving a double requital or portion". Some scholars said it is a nickname for Ilyas, while some others said it is for Al-Yasa'. It was also reported that it is Yusha'. Allah says: وَاذْكُرْ إِسْمَاعِيلَ وَالْيَسَعَ وَذَا الْكِفْلِ ۖ وَكُلٌّ مِّنَ الْأَخْيَارِ " And commemorate Isma´il, Elisha, and Dhul-Kifl: Each of them was of the Company of the Good." (Q38: 48). It is obvious from his being mentioned and praised in the Glorious Quran along with those other prophets that Dhul - Kifl was also a prophet. However, some of the Quranic commentators assumed that he was not a prophet but that he was righteous and strictly just. Ibn Jarir narrated that he was not a prophet but he was a righteous man. He supported his people to suffice their needs and administered justice among them. That is why he was called Dhul-Kifl. 6 . Dhul-Qarnayn: Dhul-Qarnayn is a nickname. The word lexically means "the owner of two qarns". Its basic meanings are horn and century. It also means the forelock of a man, the ear lock of a woman, the side of the sun disk and the leader of a nation. Some Quranic commentators say he was given the nickname because he had two locks of hair on his head and according to others, because he had two horns decorated with jewels on his head. It is unanimously agreed that this person was given the name Dhul-Qarnayn because he ruled the east and west of the earth. The strongest evidence showing that Dhul-Qarnayn was from Yemen is the fact that names starting with Dhi and Dhu are common in Yemen. Although the name Dhul-Qarnayn is mentioned in the Quran, it is disputable whether he was a prophet or not. 7. Nuh: It is a nickname of prophet Nuh (peace be upon him). Nuh literally means "frequent devotion" It is given to prophet Nuh (peace be upon him) due to his frequent devotion and worship to Allah. 8 . Fir'aun (Pharaoh): It is a title for the rulers of the Coptic nation. That is the ruler of the coptics. The most famous of them being the one mentioned in the Qur'an in several places in the stories of the Isrealites. comments Print Send Comments Add Comment : Name: Email: Comment Title: Country: Copyright 2009 © The Message of Islam all rights reserved
John Lennon John Lennon and Paul McCartney's First Band Young Paul McCartney rocking out on stage at The Cavern Club in 1961. As his emotional life was in turmoil following his mother's death, one of the few things that teenage John Lennon had left to cling to was his music. It was becoming increasingly apparent that he was simply wasting his own and everyone else's time at art college, and that he had neither the qualifications nor the application to hold down a job that would provide him with financial security. Making music was what he enjoyed most, and it was now beginning to dawn on him that this would probably be his only route to some sort of success. Paul McCartney, for his part, also appeared to be taken in by this idea. An academically bright boy who had, until now, always excelled at school, he too began "sagging off" (cutting class). This was not only in order to make lunchtime rehearsal sessions at the art college, but also so that he and John could go back to the McCartney home in Allerton. There, during the afternoons while Paul's father was out, the pair indulged in their favorite pastimes: songwriting and discussing girls. Musically, Paul was easily the more accomplished of the two, capable of playing more instruments and writing songs of his own. John, on the other hand, was the original. Whereas other British performers at the time -- including Paul -- tended to imitate many of the characteristics of their favorite American artists, often singing with a pseudo-American accent, John's approach was all his. His strong, raw voice was made for rock 'n' roll, and while he utilized some of the vocal mannerisms of Buddy Holly, his pronunciation was clearly English. He wasn't interested in sounding like other people, but just in being himself. The way in which he ripped his way through songs was true to his character: no frills, no nonsense. Although John had the greater talent for lyrics and Paul had a broader musical range, there were no strict ground rules in their collaboration. During the first years of their partnership, they would often work together when writing words and tunes, and although in some cases one or the other person had contributed far more to a particular song, they agreed early on to always share the credit. Although by 1964 they were rarely composing side by side, "Lennon-McCartney" continued to appear under each title until the Beatles split in 1969. Regardless, the identity of the person singing the lead vocal provided an easy clue as to who originated each song. Among John's first compositions were "Winston's Walk," which was never recorded; "Hello Little Girl," which was later recorded by the Fourmost; and "The One After 909," which was recorded by the Beatles in 1963 (unreleased) and 1969 (released on the Let It Be album). His lyrics at first tended to be of the "blue moon in June" variety -- simple love poems that rhymed neatly. But as his confidence grew and he began to experiment more, the word structures became more intricate and the subject matter less familiar. Soon a noticeable difference of style emerged between the two young composers: Whereas Paul tended to construct little stories, John concentrated on writing in the first person and expressing his own emotions. It was John who was experiencing the joys or pains of love, and who would use his songwriting to relate, much later on, his political views, his experiments with drugs, and numerous other incidents that took place in his life. And while Paul's songs were usually upbeat and optimistic, John's could often be probing and cynical. "I was always like that, you know," he asserted during his 1980 interview with Playboy's David Sheff. "I was like that before the Beatles and after the Beatles. I always asked why people did things and why society was like it was. I didn't just accept it for what it was apparently doing. I always looked below the surface." Whereas in America during the 1950s artists such as Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Sam Cooke, and Buddy Holly wrote a lot of the material that they performed, the situation was not the same in Britain. There, the stars of the day usually recorded either songs that had been penned by specialist composers, or "cover" versions of American hits. It was, therefore, highly unusual for two English schoolboys to be compiling their own catalogue of songs which they, themselves, could perform. Furthermore, they didn't produce simple carbon copies of the sounds that they heard from across the Atlantic. Instead, they assimilated various American melodic styles and rhythms and put their own beat-oriented slant on them. To the by-now 16-year-old Paul McCartney, John was someone to secretly admire; a hard-rocking Teddy boy, two years his elder, and a potentially dangerous influence who (as Paul's father had warned him) could get him "into trouble." Naturally, Paul was eager to hang out with a guy like this! To John, on the other hand, Paul was a baby-faced, wide-eyed smoothie, who was gracious and hard working. On the surface, not his type at all, but John was nothing if not sharp. He immediately recognized that Paul's qualities could be extremely beneficial, both to him and to his group. Paul's musical talent would be of great value, his will to succeed would inspire John to write and the band to improve, and his pretty looks would charm the girls. So, as he had done before, John had teamed up with someone who was not much like him, but who complemented him perfectly. Well aware of what he needed and what he himself had to offer, he formed his closest relationships with people who could both play on his strengths and make up for his weaknesses. This was the case with Paul; his girlfriend Cynthia Powell; and, just as remarkably, Stuart Sutcliffe, a small, shy, Scottish-born artist whose incredible talent had taken the college by storm. Sutcliffe's introvert personality, vulnerable on the surface but extremely strong underneath, contrasted greatly with the extrovert John, who was always able to attract a crowd around him, and whose hard outer appearance concealed a soft center. Both had very sharp minds, however, and they saw qualities in each other that they respected and desired. John's mean and moody appearance was largely a pose, used for specific effect, but with Stuart it was natural. He didn't need to do much to attract the girls; his looks saw to that, as did an artistic ability which had the college instructors predicting future greatness. The fact that he led a bohemian lifestyle -- living in a run-down room with a shared toilet in a large Georgian house -- only added to the air of mystique around him, and to John's fascination. This was the heyday of the "beat generation," of unorthodox young poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and of the beatniks who read their works and spent long hours analyzing them. Unlike the traditional rhymes, these writings dealt with stream-of-consciousness, whereby the poets put the various unrelated thoughts that came tumbling out of their heads straight onto paper in verse form. John, whose own love for wordplay was as strong as ever, was absorbed by all this. He and Stuart, together with college friends Bill Harry and Rod Murray, would stay up late into the night, drinking and talking about the new poetry. Inspired by these sessions, as well as the thought of spending more time with Cynthia and less with his strict Aunt Mimi Smith, John duly informed his aunt that he was moving out of her house and into Stuart's place in Gambier Terrace, situated conveniently around the corner from the college. In a later interview with author George Tremlett, Mimi recalled John telling her, "I feel like a baby living at home." before tactfully adding. "Anyhow, I can't stand your food!" This was all that Mimi needed to hear. She let John pack his bags and gave him his full college grant money. For now, the Teddy boy would become a beatnik. Within four weeks, however, all the money that was supposed to last him three months had been spent, and the flat that he was sharing with Stu and Rod Murray was in complete chaos, with clothes, paints, and garbage spread all over the floor around the mattresses that were being used in lieu of beds. By the middle of winter it was so cold, and they were all so broke, that, so the legend goes, they were reduced to burning in the middle of the room what furniture they had in order to keep warm. Having left Mimi's in a mood of supreme confidence, boasting that he would be surviving quite happily on a diet of Chinese takeout food -- "bamboo shoots and things" -- John suddenly reappeared at her house with his tail firmly between his legs. Too proud to admit, however, that things hadn't gone exactly to plan, he tried to give the impression that this was just a friendly visit, and asked casually "Don't I get a cup of tea, then?" Mimi went along with his little act, and quietly continued cooking the dinner that she was preparing for herself. This was just too much! Not having eaten for days, John couldn't resist the smell of steak and mushrooms that was wafting above his head, and so he suddenly burst into the kitchen and shouted at her: "I'll have you know, woman, I'm starving!" Mimi gave him dinner and allowed him to stay the night. The next morning, with extra money from her in his pocket, John set off once again for the mayhem of Gambier Terrace and further adventure.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 Alternative Rock Returns to Its Roots Alternative Rock Returns to Its Roots: Although it did not become popular until the 1990s, alternative rock (alt-rock) was an established musical genre by the 1980s. Alt-rock's roots, however, date back to both the psychedelic and hard rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s. For example, bands such as Led Zeppelin and The Who are considered precursors to alt-rock, especially given their edgy styles. Yet perhaps the most intriguing aspect of alternative rock is its overwhelming emphasis on simplicity. On the surface, that last statement may seem like a contradiction since "overwhelming" and "simplicity" are not terms that generally go together. But the fact remains, alt-rock bands often consist of only two (or three) members; a guitarist and a drummer. The vocals can be a shared duty while a bass line might be added during the recording process. Nevertheless, by the 2000s, many alt-rock bands had drifted toward pop rock or pop punk. As a result, there are very few alt-rock bands today that seek to rediscover the genre's true roots. Wednesday, September 1, 2010 Foucault and Rehabilitation Foucault and Rehabilitation: When French critical theorist Michel Foucault published Discipline and Punish in 1975, he reinvigorated the philosophical debate concerning criminal justice systems. Prior to Foucault's work, it was generally assumed that criminals and criminality were the products of failing liberal democracies and that only through measures of austerity could crime be controlled. But after a critical examination of the history and theory surrounding Western penal codes, Foucault concludes that the primacy of individual choice still supersedes the shortcomings of any criminal justice system. That is, just as criminals choose to perform illegal acts, or acts that detract from the public good, so too can those criminals choose to be rehabilitated. Having been influenced by Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals (1887) and Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon (1785), Foucault argues that in most penal systems the prosecution possesses more rights than the defendant. In effect, the power of knowledge in criminal procedure is the supreme privilege of the prosecution. And like any process, there are always unintended consequences. Yet they can be mitigated by emphasizing the innate self-worth of the person behind the criminal. And through measures of rehabilitation, some criminals can ultimately rejoin society and avoid recidivism.
Woodworm is not akin to a termite infestation, and is easily treatable, however it must be effectively and efficiently eradicated. In severe cases, damage can be extensive, resulting in full timber replacement, especially in flooring where both the joists and boards may need to be replaced. Infestations in areas including, under floors and in lofts, may go unnoticed, resulting in long term damage and expenses. For the majority of cases, treatment will involve replacing a few timbers and spraying with an approved insecticide. Woodworm generally infests damp wood throughout the countryside. In the drier conditions within a property, the speed of the damage is slower but lasts longer. If the timber becomes moist, this will give the woodworm opportunity to thrive. Damper areas of the property such as under floors, in the roof and garages are places woodworm particularly attack. Poor ventilation and moisture producing areas, for example kitchens and bathrooms, can all contribute to the ideal living conditions of woodworm. The female lays her eggs in old flight holes which increases the success rate of development and allows each generation to firmly establish itself. Wood is hydroscopic, meaning it can absorb moisture from the air. Previously dry timber can quickly become attractive to infestation. Finding woodworm is not always easy, as they are often concealed in small flight holes. Woodworm typically find sapwood more palatable than heartwood. The former represents the more recent growth in a tree and contains more sugars and nutrients that the older heartwood. It is less dene and contains fewer toxins. If you think you have found woodworm get in touch for free advice. It is usually treatable with minimum hassle, and colourless water based chemicals. It may not be as expensive as you initially feared. Woodworm can be found almost anywhere. However it may favour the damper areas such as around the loft hatch and along the eaves. From my own experience it will emerge in all timbers eventually, hence the necessity for a full treatment. Because of the inaccessibility of the area, underneath flooring can harbour a long lived and unnoticed infestation. Floor boards may look pristine on top while being thoroughly peppered with exit holes on the underside. The structural failure may suddenly become dramatically apparent when part of the floor gives way under pressure from above. Look for occasional flight holes and spongy movement when walking across the surfaces. This is a common area of infestation, as the timbers in garage roofs are often moister and very accessible to beetle attack. As in all infestations, yellow sawdust frass (woodworm waste) may be observed streaked on timbers. Visually this is first observed lying as a layer of dust on items stored in the garage. It stands out on black items, and the car windscreen!
Resources: 10 Mistakes that Most People Make Importance Of Genetic Testing Genetic testing is also known as DNA testing that is carried out to identify any changes in the genes and allow determination of bloodlines. This test is very crucial because it will rule out and confirm a genetic condition that is suspected in an individual determining whether it may be passed on again to other people or not. The diseases known to human kind are genetic c because they have something to do with genes, genes are the one that determines many activities that will take place in your body including the ability to fend off infections and how you the body processes drugs and nutrients. The methods used in genetic testing include chromosomal genetic test, biochemical test and finally molecular genetic test. Biochemical testing test studies the activity level of proteins because any abnormality in them can indicate a change in the DNA that will result in a genetic disorder. The chromosomal test is where the chromosome or long DNA lengths are analyzed to see if there is a large genetic change that causes a genetic disorder. Molecular test mainly studies short lengths of the DNA but not long lengths to identify variations. It is advisable to do genetic testing because it comes with many advantages. This tests are used in screening newborn children by either using a hearing exam or drops of blood to determine diseases which when untreated may cause irreparable damage to the baby and even cause deaths. Genetic testing will also help you to qualify for clinical trials because many clinical trials for experimental treatments require having a positive genetic test in order to qualify. Without genetic testing your insurance may not be able to pay for you the cost of screening or doing surgeries. 5 Uses For Tips Genetic testing leads to cures and creation of medicine, this is because as more people test, the more information is shared which will eventually reach the researchers and scientists who will work hard to get a cure. Therefore, these tests are very important to the health sectors because medicines will be available in plenty and resistant diseases will be dealt with effectively within a very short period. This will make people live happily and go on with their day to day activities without fear because disease that seemed like a life sentence to them will be treated and a cure will be available. Finally genetic testing will save your life and peoples life who may include your family because you will be able to get different treatment options that are lifesaving.The Ultimate Guide to Options
Try Our Apps The Best Internet Slang [fahyt] /faɪt/ a battle or combat. any contest or struggle: a fight for recovery from an illness. an angry argument or disagreement: Whenever we discuss politics, we end up in a fight. Boxing. a bout or contest. a pillow fight; a water fight. ability, will, or inclination to fight: There was no fight left in him. verb (used without object), fought, fighting. He fought bravely against despair. verb (used with object), fought, fighting. to contend with in battle or combat; war against: England fought Germany. to contend with or against in any manner: to fight despair; to fight the passage of a bill. to make (one's way) by fighting or striving. fight it out, to fight until a decision is reached: Let them fight it out among themselves. fight shy of. shy1 (def 12). fight with windmills. tilt1 (def 18). Origin of fight before 900; (v.) Middle English fi(g)hten, Old English fe(o)htan (cognate with German fechten); (noun) Middle English fi(g)ht, Old English feohte, (ge)feoht, derivative of the v. base Related forms fightable, adjective fightability, noun fightingly, adverb outfight, verb (used with object), outfought, outfighting. prefight, adjective refight, verb, refought, refighting. unfightable, adjective 1, 2. encounter, engagement, affray, fray, action, skirmish, melee; scuffle, tussle, row, riot. Synonym Study 1, 2. Fight, combat, conflict, contest denote a struggle of some kind. Fight connotes a hand-to-hand struggle for supremacy, literally or in a figurative sense. Combat suggests an armed encounter, as in war. Conflict implies a bodily, mental, or moral struggle caused by opposing views, beliefs, etc. Contest applies to either a friendly or a hostile struggle for a definite prize or aim. Unabridged Cite This Source Examples from the Web for fight Contemporary Examples Historical Examples • Now he was about to go out into the great world, and fight his own way. Brave and Bold Horatio Alger • It caused them to fight for the sole possession of this Paradise upon Earth. Ancient Man Hendrik Willem van Loon • Are you—do you mean you're going to fight the other man, too? Way of the Lawless Max Brand • These were not the men to endure privations and fight their country's battles. Life in London Edwin Hodder British Dictionary definitions for fight verb fights, fighting, fought to oppose or struggle against (an enemy) in battle to oppose or struggle against (a person, thing, cause, etc) in any manner (transitive) to engage in or carry on (a battle, contest, etc) when intr often foll by for. to uphold or maintain (a cause, ideal, etc) by fighting or struggling: to fight for freedom (transitive) to make or achieve (a way) by fighting (intransitive) (boxing) 1. to box, as for a living 2. to use aggressive rough tactics to engage (another or others) in combat fight it out, to contend or struggle until a decisive result is obtained fight shy of, to keep aloof from a battle, struggle, or physical combat a quarrel, dispute, or contest resistance (esp in the phrase to put up a fight) the desire to take part in physical combat (esp in the phrase to show fight) a boxing match See also fight back, fight off Derived Forms fighting, noun, adjective Word Origin Old English feohtan; related to Old Frisian fiuchta, Old Saxon, Old High German fehtan to fight Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition Cite This Source Word Origin and History for fight Old English feohtan "to fight" (class III strong verb; past tense feaht, past participle fohten), from Proto-Germanic fekhtanan (cf. Old High German fehtan, German fechten, Middle Dutch and Dutch vechten, Old Frisian fiuhta "to fight"), from PIE pek- "to pluck out" (wool or hair), apparently with a notion of "pulling roughly" (cf. Greek pekein "to comb, shear," pekos "fleece, wool;" Persian pashm "wool, down," Latin pectere "to comb," Sanskrit paksman- "eyebrows, hair"). Spelling substitution of -gh- for a "hard H" sound was a Middle English scribal habit, especially before -t-. In some late Old English examples, the middle consonant was represented by a yogh. To fight back "resist" is recorded from 1890. Old English feohte, gefeoht "a fight;" see fight (v.). Cf. Old Frisian fiucht, Old Saxon fehta, Dutch gevecht, Old High German gifeht, German Gefecht. Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper Cite This Source Slang definitions & phrases for fight A party; struggle: the cocktail fights attended by the old man (1891+) Related Terms cat fight, dogfight, you can't fight city hall Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers. Cite This Source Idioms and Phrases with fight The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Cite This Source Word of the Day Difficulty index for fight All English speakers likely know this word Word Value for fight Scrabble Words With Friends Nearby words for fight
Vector Graphics and Animation Formats about \| archive [ 2006-February-21 21:38 ] Most computer graphics are stored and distributed in a raster format, such as the standard JPEG and PNG formats. These formats are great for photographs or scans, but bad for computer generated art. This is very noticeable if you zoom in on a PNG image of a graph, or text. The result is big blocky pixels, instead of a smooth line. Vector graphics are an alternate approach where you describe how to draw the desired image, rather than specifying what the resulting pixel values are. Generally this takes up less space, since a single draw command will set the value for many pixels. Perhaps the largest benefit is that it can be rescaled, since the computer can redraw the image at any size. Unfortunately, vector graphics are also much more complex than raster graphics, since essentially they are a very specialized program. Today, there is an unfortunate lack of consensus on standard vector graphics formats. This is extremely annoying, and I hope that the industry sorts it out soon. This post describes the sorry state of the modern vector graphics landscape. In the dark ages of vector graphics, Postscript was created by Adobe. It is now the defacto standard for print output. Unfortunately, Postscript is a pretty complex standard, and it doesn't help that it is a complete programming language (for example, there is a web server written in Postscript). Adobe realized that it was too complex, and annoyingly depended on external fonts, so they created PDF. PDF has been very successful and is widely used for distributing electronic documents. It can also be used for graphics of any size, which can then be embedded in other documents. Unfortunately, despite PDF being a relatively open standard, very few applications support it. An exception is that nearly all applications on Mac OS X have excellent support for PDF, since it has been part of the operating system for a long time. Back in the dark ages of the web, only raster graphics were supported. FutureWave/Macromeda stepped up and created a plug-in for vector graphics and animation that has been wildly successful. Flash now includes multimedia playback and recording capabilities, a programming language based on JavaScript, and the ability to communicate over the network. However, if we ignore those extra features and focus on Flash as a vector graphics format, there is a lot to like. There is a widely deployed player, a robust and popular editor, and a fair number bit of third party tools for creating Flash files. Unfortunately, there is one huge problem: Flash is not an open standard. Adobe's licensing agreement for the Flash file format specification clearly states that third parties may not import Flash, they can only export it. There are a variety of open source tools that input and output Flash, but until I am informed otherwise by either by Adobe or a lawyer, this is a legal grey area. For example, imagine what would happen if Microsoft decided to make a tool that imported Flash files. Would they owe Adobe a licencing fee? Would Adobe sue? The answer is unclear, and this means that Flash is useless in my mind. Scalable Vector Graphics The newest format for vector graphics is Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an XML-based standard from the W3C. Some web browsers are finally beginning to support SVG, so it may start to gain popularity. Unfortunately, it is a massive standard (719 pages), which means that implementing it is very complicated. For example, Mozilla Firefox supports SVG starting with its 1.5 release, but it only supports a subset. The development team has a detailed description of the SVG features not supported by Firefox 1.5, and a discussion about why they don't implement everything. In my opinion, using XML does not make sense for graphics. It makes sense for data that needs to be consumed by programs, where XML's flexibility and standard parsers make life easier for developers. However, in the case of SVG, I think that this makes things more difficult. For example, SVG does not actually use XML to describe curves, instead it defines its own text-based language. Even worse, SVG can be combined with Cascading Style Sheets, another horrendously complicated standard. I do not think that SVG is without merit. For example, Inkscape uses it as its internal format. This makes sense, as it uses XML's ability to add extra attributes and elements to describe higher-level Inkscape objects, while still retaining compatability, such as it is, with other SVG applications. However, I still think that it is far more complex than necessary. Despite these issues, not all is lost in the vector graphics world. The biggest cause for hope is that the major platforms (Java, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows), all now support high-quality vector graphics based on the Postscript model. Java has Java2D, Mac OS X has Quartz, Linux has Cairo, and finally, Windows has Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, aka Avalon). Since all platforms now have graphics APIs that are more or less equivalent, what we need is a very simple file format to enable programs to exchange high-quality vector graphics. I hate to propose yet another vector graphics format, but I think that is exactly what I am doing. If someone were to create a very simple and open format for vector graphics, I think it might be useful. I certainly would be using it. An alternative approach would be for the core platforms to support for one of the two existing open standards: PDF or SVG. Mac OS X already provides excellent PDF import and export capabilities, so if the other platforms could provide similar functionality, that would solve part of my problem. However, I am always a fan of simple technology. I expect that the industry will eventually gravitate towards a single standard. I just hope it happens sooner rather than later.
10/12/2012 09:28 am ET Updated Mar 26, 2013 The Golden Age of Islam There was a Golden Age to Islam once -- a Muslim Renaissance so magnificent, famous, cosmopolitan and cerebral that it's borders didn't always bleed. While some European archaeologists refuse to believe the hype -- not having excavated enough pottery shards -- this era unequivocally produced some of the most enlightened thinkers throughout the Islamic Diaspora. Between the ninth and 13th centuries, the libraries in Baghdad (Bait al-Hikma), Damascus (al-Zahiriyah), Timbuktu (Sankoré), Cordoba (Royal Mosque) and Cairo (Dar al-Hikmah) contained more books, manuscripts and literature than in the entire Greek world. Thanks to China passing along the art of papermaking and the translating skills of travelers, these newborn Islamic scholars went on to become polymaths. They studied spherical trigonometry, agriculture, physics, medicine and science, using astrolabes to measure the altitude of stars while setting up sophisticated astronomical observatories. While Europe was dwindling away from the Dark Ages and the Church was busying itself replacing science with superstition, these Islamic scholars were setting up psychiatric hospitals, correcting Ptolemy, determining the circumference of the Earth while Rhazes produced sulfuric acid and could distinguish whether you had smallpox, chicken pox or measles. Abulcasis was a gynecologist/dentist and Egyptian patients could refill their pharmacy prescriptions at the Qalawun Hospital in Cairo, a facility that offered American liberal's much sought after universal health care. Aristotle, the Greek "master of those who know" was at the top of Averroes and Avicenna's reading list, while some Islamic philosophy paradoxically bordered on secular humanist thought -- with literacy rates that would put the modern day Muslim World to shame. Speaking of literature, two and a half words: Sinbad and Ali-Baba. They became known throughout history as the "Father's of Algebra" with a little help from Diophantus, Aryabhatta, Archimedes, Baudhayana, Hippocrates, Chang Tshang and the Rhind Papyrus (I'm not going to enter that debate in this article), but indeed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg can thank al-Khwarizmi for his employment of the word "algorithm." Some even hypothesize that the Golden Age of Islam may have been more favorable to women. There are reports of numerous female scholars in Moorish Spain, and philosophers such as Averroes of Cordoba were openly honest about the inequities between men and women as outlined in the Hadith, Quran and auxiliary Sunnah. Contrasted with today, this type of rhetoric would have surely got him issued a fatwa alongside Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Rushdie. He continued to share his illuminating insight about Islam's failed dealings with women, "Our society allows no scope for the development of women's talent. They're destined exclusively to childbirth and care of children and this state of servility has destroyed their capacity for larger matters. It's thus we see no women endowed with moral virtues, they live their lives like vegetables, devoted to their husbands. From this stems the misery that pervades our cities." Averroes pièce de résistance, "The Incoherence of the Incoherence," paid tribute to the Greek peripatetics of the Ancient World and made a plea to the Arabic World for a reconciliation of philosophy and theology, sophisticatedly broadening his horizons by incorporating Neoplatonism with the teachings of Malik ibn Anas for his ultimate understanding of the universe. So renowned was he, that Dante and his charming tour guide Virgil later discovered him in Limbo where he could live out his days on green pastures with his first circle of hell comrades, Plato and Aristotle. Unfortunately, Averroes peers including the fundamentalist thinker al-Ghazali, who rebuked and discarded the works of any non-Muslim (kafir), tended to be at the writing vanguard of encouraging caliphs to strip women of comprehensive human rights. Shamefully, barbarism has always found a way to dismantle even the greatest of societies (ask the Visigoths). While Christians crusaded against the Spanish Moors, about 2,500 miles South East, Hulagu Khan and his genocidal horde of sociopaths claiming to be Buddhist swept in and closed out Baghdad's free thinking utopia. Regrettably for intellectualism, the Mongols had a predilection for burning libraries; subsequently the Enlightenment movements had to wait that much longer to figure out Jesus wasn't an original story. But more importantly, the Arab World would be left with one book to read and re-read and re-read for what would seem time eternity. In the 13th century, Islam should have made its graceful exit; instead, it survived to become a nation of hermeneutists who would have nothing remotely scholarly to debate for the coming centuries besides whether "flogging" a woman to death should be considered the same thing as "stoning" her to death, and how much dhimmi taxes should be raised at the next lunar month. The Golden Age had officially departed to it's 72 virgins. As Europe entered its own 16th century Renaissance, the Arab World reverted back to the mind sophistication level of their seventh century illiterate warring caliphates who only accepted instruction from divine sources, courtesy of hearing voices from Allah via the Archangel Gabriel via Muhammad, once emerged from a cave in Bedouin attire. In fact, I have been unable to locate one Quranic passage that encourages secular (ilmanniyya) education outside of scripture. Most of the quotes attributed to Muhammad such as "the ink of the scholar is more precious than the blood of the martyr" came from the Hadiths of al-Suyuti, al-Bar and al-Jawzi, which were a collection of post-Muhammad proverbs and narratives written by men who wanted to add their two cents even after the prophet clearly said of the Quran, "Nothing have we omitted from the Book." Subsequently it makes sense that aside from Ba'athists, there are few Mullahs or imams in the Arabic world in favor of the separation of din (religion) and dawlah (state). The disciplines of science, philosophy, gender studies and history are mitigating factors for those who clutch steadfast to archaic religious tradition, which is why for the most part believers in developed countries have a tendency to interpret primordial texts a little less literally. Orthodox Jews, who have access to The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, are less likely to live out the tale of Jonah jumping into the mouth of Shamu trying to repent sins of eating shellfish (Shout out to "Blue Planet: Sounds of the Sea"). Conversely, men and women in American Muslim communities are excelling quickly through the ranks of higher education, the Nation of Islam has been transformative in the black community and although there are more accusation of Orientalism than honest dialogue about their brethren 6,000 miles away, there is an understanding that Islamic law must be subservient to the U.S Constitution, a living text that allows for modification and revision, unlike the Quran. As is evident, Islam -- much like the Judeo-Christian religion -- can only attempt tolerance and co-existence while parallel to a liberal arts education and a secular system of jurisprudence, without which there is an inevitable clashing of civilizations. Unfortunately, in the same regions that once flourished almost 1,000 years ago, we are witnessing the calamitous affects of the Mongol invasion and Christian Crusades. The Muslim world continues to invest only 0.2 percent of their GDP on science, research and development. There are a mere 500 universities in the entire Islamic Diaspora, while not a single higher education facility has been featured in the Top 100 Ranking Universities of the World due to the curriculum focusing more heavily on Surah Al-Fajr than Einstein's Law of Relativity. Since 1901, only two muslims have ever been awarded the Nobel Prize in Science (perhaps more if Scandinavian committees counted the chivalrous chemists concocting poison gas elixirs to throw in the schools for girls). The current literacy rates for males in Islamic communities are dismal, ranging from 43 percent in Afghanistan, 58 percent in Pakistan and 70 percent in Egypt to 30-40 percent throughout Mali, Senegal and Guinea. For female literacy rates you can often take these paltry numbers and divide them by two. These statistics are heart breaking for a girl like myself who once found insight into my own life through the analytical writings of the legendary brown philosophers of the Middle Ages. In light of the rampant violence, gender disparity and blind indoctrination at the expense of intellectual advancement pervasive throughout the Middle East and Africa, I find myself romanticizing the Golden Age, hoping at some point in the distant future that type of luminosity might return to the Muslim World. Islamic Inventions Islamic Inventions
• picture • picture PRI's Environmental News Magazine Animal Update Air Date: Week of April 27, 2001 stream/download this segment as an MP3 file VILLIGER: Blind mole rats are furry little rodents that spend their entire lives in elaborate subterranean dwellings. How they navigate these complicated tunnel systems has long been a mystery. They have no eyes so they can't see, and their hearing isn't great, either. Now, researchers say mole rats rely on the Earth's magnetic field to orient themselves. Scientists set the mole rats up in a lab where the direction and strength of the magnetic field around them could be altered. The rodents consistently built their sleeping nest and stored their food in whichever location corresponded to magnetic south. The blind mole rats also use magnetic field cues while learning how to run a maze. When researchers flipped magnetic north and south, the confused mole rats lost their bearings. Now scientists are trying to figure out the location of their magnetic sensors and how they work. That's this week's animal update. I'm Maggie Villiger. CURWOOD: And you're listening to Living on Earth. (Music up and under: Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, "Cup of Dreams") Living on Earth wants to hear from you! P.O. Box 990007 Prudential Station Boston, MA, USA 02199 Telephone: 1-617-287-4121 E-mail: comments@loe.org Donate to Living on Earth!
Travel Medicine • Medical Author: • Medical Editor: Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD woman with abdominal pain Travelers should see a physician before leaving for a trip if • they are going to developing countries, • they have chronic diseases that could be affected by travel, Quick Guide25 Ways to Stay Well Abroad in Pictures 25 Ways to Stay Well Abroad in Pictures Healthcare When Traveling Abroad Traveler's diarrhea Protective measures may help prevent or shorten the duration of traveler's diarrhea. All travelers should wash their hands often and understand basic food and water precautions (see "What is safe to eat and drink while traveling?"). However, it has been shown that even well-informed travelers often choose to eat foods that pose an increased risk of traveler's diarrhea. Therefore, travelers at risk should carry in their first-aid kit an antimotility agent such as loperamide (Imodium; Kaopectate II; Imodium A-D; Maalox Anti-Diarrheal Caplets; Pepto Diarrhea Cont) and start taking it if they get symptoms. Bismuth subsalicylate (Pepto-Bismol) is also helpful. Because bacteria are developing resistance to many antibiotics, many older antibiotics do not work, and those prescribed currently may not be effective in the future. Antibiotics also have risks of their own and do not protect against viruses or parasites; therefore, routine prophylactic antibiotics are not recommended for most travelers. However, many physicians recommend that travelers carry along an antibiotic to take in case they get diarrhea. Fluoroquinolones, such as ciprofloxacin, levofloxacin, ofloxacin, or norfloxacin, are the most commonly prescribed antibiotic; azithromycin (Zithromax, Zmax) or rifaximin (Xifaxan) are alternatives. If an antimotility agent (a drug that reduces gastrointestinal motility) and an antibiotic are started at the first sign of diarrhea, symptoms may be shortened to only a few hours instead of a few days. Physicians might prescribe daily antibiotics or daily bismuth subsalicylate to prevent diarrhea in people who are immunosuppressed, or when the purpose of a trip would be severely impacted if it were interrupted by diarrhea. This is not needed for most travelers, and bismuth subsalicylate may cause adverse effects in doses required for protection. Pregnant women and children need special advice because many of these drugs are not appropriate for them. Affected people should stay well hydrated with beverages that are sealed, treated with chlorine, boiled, or are otherwise known to be purified; in most cases, commercial sports drinks are adequate, but very sugary drinks can worsen diarrhea. If antibiotics are prescribed, fill the prescription before travel; if you must buy drugs during a trip to an area of the world with few drug regulations, avoid counterfeits by using a licensed pharmacy, asking the pharmacist about the ingredients, and checking the packaging for poor print quality or odd appearance; drugs should be in the manufacturer's original packaging if at all possible. Quick Guide25 Ways to Stay Well Abroad in Pictures 25 Ways to Stay Well Abroad in Pictures Meningitis and encephalitis There are several causes of meningitis, an infection of the lining and fluid around the brain and spinal cord. Encephalitis means that the brain tissue itself is also infected. There are serious types of meningitis and encephalitis that are associated with travel and can be prevented. Meningococcal meningitis is one of the most serious types associated with travel to certain areas. The cause is a bacterium called Neisseria meningitidis. The disease can be quite severe or even fatal. The infection is spread from person to person by close contact through coughing or sneezing or other respiratory means. Meningococcal meningitis occurs at low rates throughout the world, including the United States. However, some countries have high rates of disease and pose a special risk to travelers. This includes many countries in the "meningitis belt" of sub-Saharan Africa. Saudi Arabia has experienced outbreaks when pilgrims travel to religious sites. There are two effective vaccines to prevent meningitis. The choice of vaccine depends on the age of the patient. The vaccines are synthetic (meaning that they do not contain live infectious agents). They should not be given to people who have previously had a neurological illness called Guillain-Barré syndrome. Meningitis immunizations are now routinely recommended for adolescents and college freshmen in the United States. It is also recommended for travelers who are going to areas that have high rates of infection. Vaccination is required for pilgrims to religious sites in Saudi Arabia, and proof of vaccination (preferably an International Certificate of Vaccination) will be required at the border. The vaccination is effective for three to five years (depending on which of the two vaccines is given), after which revaccination may be recommended for travelers who travel to areas with high rates of infection. There are several kinds of viral encephalitis that occur in various areas of the world, such as Japanese encephalitis virus, which are spread by mosquito bites. They are fortunately rare, and most viral encephalitis is prevented by avoiding mosquito bites (see the section on insect precautions). Japanese encephalitis virus is preventable by vaccine, and a doctor or travel clinic can advise if you will need it. Meningitis and encephalitis caused by parasites (amoebae) is also a concern for travelers. Harmless amoebae are common in freshwater and plumbing all over the world. Naegleria fowleri prefers hot springs, lakes, rivers, or any warm freshwater that is untreated for human use; it may grow in pipes and hot water tanks of homes and buildings as chlorine dissipates. If affected water with enough Naegleria is inhaled, it may cause severe meningoencephalitis; death occurs in 97%-99% of cases. This type of meningitis is hard to diagnose, children are often affected, and effective treatment is still being studied. Prevention is very easy. If bathing in hot springs or bodies of fresh water with unknown chlorination during hot seasons, keep the head above water, hold the nose shut, or use nose clips. Avoid getting bath or hose water up the nose. If you rinse your sinuses, or practice religious nasal cleansing, tap water is safe if boiled for at least one minute and left to cool. Other options include using chemical disinfectants, filters with an absolute pore size 1 micron or less, and distilled or sterile water. Drinking affected water cannot transmit Naegleria, and it cannot live in saltwater. Yellow fever Yellow fever virus is a rare cause of illness in U.S. travelers, but it can be serious, and some countries require proof of vaccination before border entry. It is caused by a virus that attacks the liver. Symptoms start within three to five days of infection. In many people, the disease is mild and goes away. About 15% of people will develop severe disease with liver failure, and up to half will die. Yellow fever is spread by the bite of a mosquito. Yellow fever occurs in areas of sub-Saharan Africa, Central America, and South America. Not all countries in these areas have yellow fever. Even within a country, some areas may have yellow fever while others do not. There is a very effective vaccine available to prevent yellow fever. It contains a live virus that has been modified ("attenuated") to make it safer. Vaccine side effects are usually mild. Rarely (a few cases per million doses), the vaccine virus can spread and cause severe disease. Infants under 6 months old, and people with weak immune systems (for example, people with certain chronic diseases, and some people with HIV infection or cancer) should not receive the live vaccine. These people should consult with a doctor before traveling to an area where yellow fever occurs. For people 60 or over and pregnant or breastfeeding women, a doctor should carefully review the risks and benefits of the vaccine. Vaccination is generally recommended for travelers who will be exposed to yellow fever with the above exceptions. The vaccine may be required for entry into some countries. Check the CDC web site to see if vaccination is required for your trip. If you get vaccinated, you should receive an International Certificate of Vaccination, signed and validated with the center's stamp where the vaccine was given. If you cannot be vaccinated, a medical waiver can be given. Take the certificate and any waivers with you on your trip. You may need it to enter your destination country or get back home. This certificate is valid for 10 years, and some countries are starting to accept it as valid for life. Yellow fever vaccine is only given at authorized U.S. yellow fever vaccine clinics, so you will need to check well in advance. CDC can help you find a place to get yellow fever vaccine ( The first line of defense against illness transmitted by insects is prevention of bites (see "What can I do to avoid insect bites?"). Hepatitis A Hepatitis A is spread when human waste is mistakenly ingested. Even a small amount can cause disease, such as might occur by shaking hands with someone with contaminated hands and then touching the mouth. Food preparers have transmitted disease by mistakenly contaminating food. It is also possible to get hepatitis A through sexual contact or contaminated needles or blood. Hepatitis A occurs throughout the world but is more common in developing countries. There is an effective vaccine that is quite good at preventing hepatitis A. If you are traveling to a developing country, your doctor will probably recommend vaccination. In a few cases, if you will be traveling before the vaccine has time to take effect, your doctor might recommend a more temporary measure called gamma globulin instead of or in addition to the vaccine. Remember to follow food and water precautions (see "What is safe to eat and drink while traveling?"). The vaccine also requires a second dose six to 12 months later for full protection (or two or three more doses if combined with hepatitis B vaccine), so you will to follow up with your doctor after coming home. However, hepatitis A vaccine is protective for at least 25 years. Quick Guide25 Ways to Stay Well Abroad in Pictures 25 Ways to Stay Well Abroad in Pictures Typhoid fever Typhoid fever is an infection caused by a bacterium called Salmonella typhi. Most people who get sick develop a headache, a very high fever (up to 103 F or 104 F), and fatigue. Nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea, or constipation may also occur. The disease spreads when infected human waste contaminates food or water or is otherwise ingested. Some people are able to carry the bacteria inside their body for a very long time ("carriers"), even after symptoms have disappeared. Carriers can get it again or spread it to other people. People who get sick may be given antibiotics by their doctor. In addition to the antibiotics, people should make sure they always wash their hands after toileting and before cooking, so that they don't spread the disease to anyone else. Some occupations require proof that you no longer carry any typhoid bacteria before you may go back to work; a doctor may perform several cultures of your stool before clearing you for work. Typhoid fever occurs in many areas around the world, especially Asia, Africa, and South America. A vaccine is available to reduce the risk of getting typhoid, and it lasts several years. Ask a doctor or local public-health department about typhoid vaccination before you travel. Food and water precautions (see "What is safe to eat and drink while traveling?") also reduce the risk of disease. The saying "Boil it, cook it, peel it, or forget it!" helps you remember how to prevent becoming sick with typhoid fever (and many other infections) while traveling. Polio is a viral illness that can lead to severe neuromuscular problems. Polio is spread from person to person. Infected oral secretions and feces can cause disease. Many people have no symptoms, but some have neurological problems such as weakness and paralysis. Symptoms are especially severe if they involve the breathing muscles. Some people are left with permanent neurological disabilities such as paralysis of limbs or breathing muscles. Thanks to a global public-health campaign, many countries no longer have polio. A few countries in Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East still have outbreaks. The list of infected countries is constantly changing, as some countries successfully eliminate the infection and others become reinfected. If there is international spread from a country within 12 months, the World Health Organization (WHO) may declare a public-health emergency and issue updated vaccine requirements for travelers staying in those countries longer than four weeks. Proof of vaccination on an International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis may be required before leaving. Check the CDC web site ( for an update to see if your itinerary includes any of these countries. The inactivated polio vaccine is recommended if the traveler is going to an area where polio is still occurring. Unless special circumstances arise as above, a single lifetime booster dose in adulthood is sufficient if the traveler has received the usual vaccine series in childhood. If the traveler has not been fully vaccinated in the past (has not received all doses at recommended times), more doses may be needed. Cholera is an infection caused by bacteria (Vibrio cholerae) that look like curved rods when viewed under the microscope. The bacteria attach to the lining of the intestines and secrete a toxin. The cholera toxin can causes the cells in the intestines to pour out life-threatening amounts of fluid. The excess water loss can lead to watery diarrhea, so severe that it is difficult to keep the body hydrated. The term "rice water" is often used to describe this diarrhea because of the appearance of small white flecks of mucus in liquid. Cholera is most common in areas that have poor sanitation, with faulty sewage systems or contaminated drinking water. Asia, Africa, and Latin America have been affected for several decades. Cholera can be prevented by using proper sanitation and sewage treatment. Boiling, filtering, or chlorinating water can help to prevent the spread of cholera. Treatment is mainly oral rehydration with simple electrolyte solutions. There is no vaccine for cholera that is approved in the United States. Following food and water precautions is the first line of defense (see "What is safe to eat and drink while traveling?"). Cholera is very rare in recreational travelers, but travelers providing humanitarian aid to underdeveloped areas, or areas were sanitation and water supply is disrupted by disaster, should be aware of the risk of cholera. Basic knowledge of hand hygiene, infection control measures, and correct sanitation procedures can avoid inadvertent spread of infections and keep aid workers healthy and able to help. Many viral infections can be spread by biting insects such as ticks or mosquitoes. These include serious infections like hemorrhagic fevers, viral infections that cause high fever, and bleeding. While epidemics have been rare, Ebola virus has spread in an unprecedented way in recent years, in certain areas of Africa and beyond. Ebola has been associated with eating wild-caught bats, monkeys, and other animals. Most travelers do not encounter these types of viral hemorrhagic fevers. Dengue fever occurs throughout the world in tropical areas. Symptoms of dengue fever are high fever, severe headache and joint pain, and a drop in blood pressure; occasionally, bleeding (hemorrhage) can occur in people who are reinfected. Chikungunya fever is native to Africa and Asia but has rapidly spread into the Caribbean in the same areas as dengue. Spread by the same mosquitoes, it causes high fever, severe joint pain, and may be indistinguishable from dengue; fever resolves after a few days. Severe joint pain may last for several weeks, but it leaves no permanent joint damage. The key to preventing these infections is to follow insect precautions (see "What can I do to avoid insect bites?"). Sexually transmitted diseases remain common and can be acquired anywhere in the world. HIV is a risk everywhere and remains incurable. Gonorrhea, chlamydia, and syphilis remain common. The only sure way to prevent disease is to abstain from sexual intercourse. Correct use of condoms will reduce risk as well as unintended pregnancy. HPV vaccines now available will reduce the risk of acquiring infection with the human papillomavirus virus that causes genital warts and cervical cancer. Parasites occur in most areas of the world but are especially common in tropical and subtropical regions. Some are spread by eating contaminated food (see "What is safe to eat and drink while traveling?"), while others are spread by direct contact with infected water or soil. Most travelers do not get parasitic infections, but those who are going into rural areas of developing countries should ask their doctors about parasites they might encounter. Infectious-disease outbreaks occur periodically, and officials may recommend additional precautions. Examples have included outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalitis (mad cow disease) or severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Travelers should check the CDC web site to obtain health and risk information specific to their destination country. CDC also has specific advice for special groups and situations ( What is safe to eat and drink while traveling? • Alcohol (beer, wine) is usually safe. • Avoid street vendor food. • Avoid salsas and salads made with raw ingredients. • Avoid unpasteurized dairy products. What can I do to avoid insect bites? • Wear light, protective clothing. • Use mosquito nets or window screens if they are available. • Your kit should be packed in your carry-on luggage. • Prescription medications that you take at home • Over-the-counter medicines to treat minor illnesses (heartburn, headache, head cold, mild diarrhea, motion sickness, travel sickness) • Sunscreen, lotion to use to treat sunburn • Insect repellents • Alcohol based sanitizer with over 60% ethanol content • Bandages, tape, thermometer, and tweezers • Other items according to your itinerary. Adventure travelers who are far from medical help will need to consider additional items such as water purification tablets, commercial suture/syringe kits to be used by local health-care provider (ask your doctor for a letter on letterhead stationary prescribing its use), and other necessities. • Condoms, especially if there is a chance you may have sex with new partners What are the medical concerns with jet lag? What if I have a medical condition or a chronic disease? What if I'm traveling while pregnant? Pregnant women should consult with their obstetrician before travel. If available, a consultation with a travel medicine clinic is also recommended. Live vaccines are usually avoided in pregnancy. An up to date flu shot is safe and important, because flu can be very serious in pregnancy, and flu circulates at different times throughout the world. Some medications must also be avoided. This may put pregnant women at higher risk for getting sick in a foreign country. Blood clots are also more likely during pregnancy, especially with prolonged immobility and air travel. Pregnant women should also be aware that the quality of obstetrical care in foreign countries varies considerably. It is best to have the name of a reputable clinic or hospital on hand. Women in the third trimester should consider delaying travel until after delivery. Check with your health-insurance provider in advance to determine what is covered in the destination country. You may want to purchase medical travel insurance with evacuation services (See "Travel Health Insurance & Medical Evacuation Insurance"). Diarrhea, some types of hepatitis, and malaria can be especially severe in pregnant women. Follow food, water, and insect precautions. Avoid areas with malaria if at all possible, and take medications as directed. What about traveling with children? Children should be up to date on all routine vaccinations including those for mumps, measles, rubella, polio, hepatitis B, tetanus, diphtheria, and varicella (chickenpox/shingles). Some vaccinations and medications are not recommended for children. This means that the risk or severity of certain diseases is increased in children. Diarrhea is more common in children because so much ends up in their mouths. Children can quickly become dehydrated. Make sure that your child drinks plenty of fluids. Consider adding an oral rehydration solution to your medical kit. Children are attracted to animals and are more likely to get bitten. Bite wounds may become infected or transmit rabies. Keep children away from animals. Newborns and infants are at special risk because they are easily dehydrated and many vaccines and medications are contraindicated in this age group. Breastfeeding will help reduce the risk of diarrhea. There are limited options for malaria prevention in infants. Around the world, malaria remains one of the major causes of death in children. Travel health insurance & medical evacuation insurance Most health insurance policies have very limited coverage outside the home country, and your portion of the cost may be much more than it would be at home. Some may not cover travel-related care at all, or not cover emergencies related to high-risk activities. You may also be more comfortable with familiar health care in familiar surroundings, and being seriously ill away from home and family may can add an unanticipated and heavy financial burden, as well as psychological stress. Furthermore, most care will require up front cash or credit payment or not accept health insurance. If you have a chronic disease, immune deficiency, or are pregnant in the third trimester, it may be especially beneficial, but anyone traveling outside the continental U.S. may wish to consider purchasing short-term travel health or medical evacuation insurance. This type of coverage is usually inexpensive compared to the cost of an unexpected health emergency. Most out of country health emergencies are related to motor-vehicle accidents and trauma, rather than health issues. The U.S. Department of State can provide information on health care and medical emergencies when traveling abroad (http://www. Travel safety and health alerts Keep current on travel warnings and alerts related to crime, civil unrest, or terrorism by checking with the U.S. State Department for current travel alerts and warnings ( Enrolling in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP) with the U.S. Bureau of Consular Affairs Register your itinerary and contact information with the U.S. Consulate office at your destination ( Where can I find additional information? • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a web site that can give you details about travel-related illnesses and precautions specific to individual countries: To contact the CDC by phone, call 877-FYI-TRIP. • CDC has a Find a Clinic web page to help you find a travel clinic: • CDC also has a web page to help you find a travel clinic that is also an authorized U.S. yellow fever vaccine center: Subscribe to MedicineNet's General Health Newsletter Reviewed on 10/26/2016 Health Solutions From Our Sponsors
Achieving gender equality is not that simple Essay by esszed99High School, 10th grade February 2005 download word file, 2 pages 3.5 2 reviews Downloaded 72 times "I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman." These were the words uttered by the influential Australian singer/ songwriter Helen Reddy in 1972. Although over 30 years old, this songs lyrics raise imperative issues about women's right and about the capacity and ability of women to excel. Helen Reddy, I am sorry to break this to you, but achieving gender equality is not as simple as women all over knowing that they are 'strong", that they are 'invincible' or that they are in fact 'women' because our views don't necessarily reflect the views of the rest of society. The ideals of this particular song have yet to have a significant effect on the global society; men and women still not having attained equality and women being generally disadvantaged in most aspects of society. If only it was this simple. If only one person had the ability to change the way humanity thinks; if only one person could write a song that had the power to abolish gender inequality forever. If only. Unfortunately for us, nothing in life is this simple, particularly the achievement of equality. It is very well known that since the beginning of time, women have been fighting for equality because, lets face it, the systematic oppression of women in Australia and all over the world is a noticeable and tragic fact of history. I personally believe that the denial of equality to one-half of the world's population is an offence to human dignity. On no grounds can inequality on any kind be justified. It is not wrong however to say that women have made progress and advancements throughout time, but total equality is still a myth and still does not exist. Some fundamental steps taken in Australia towards equality between men and women include the...
Doing Businesses The Right Way Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence: A Quick Introduction Machine learning is a specialty in computing that seeks to aid computers to learn without the need for the computers to be programmed. In 1958, machine learning terminology was created. The two main fields of artificial intelligence, namely pattern recognition and computational learning are extensively used in this field. It explores the study as well as the construction of algorithms which can learn and also make predictions depending on the available data. Basically, machine learning focuses on learning through computer use. There are minor dissimilarities between machine learning and computational statistics despite the fact that the two are closely related. Internet of things is basically the connectivity of the physical devices that we use on a daily basis. Smart devices and electronics in a building are some of the things that constitute an IOT. The main focus for IOT is to create connections between devices in order to simply sharing of data. The devices that are included for data sharing must have a protocol that can be used to control their access. This therefore brings about opportunities for direct integration of the physical world into computer based systems, thus increasing accuracy, efficiency, and other economic benefits. Prospects are that in the near coming years more and more devices will be added to the IOT all around the world. The 10 Best Resources For Consultants Artificial intelligence is the kind of intelligence that is showcased by machines which are different from animal and human’s natural intelligence. It usually involves the simulation of functions that can only be performed by human such as recognition and learning. Such learning can involve a machine learning and understanding human speech, competing in high-level games such as chess with humans, simulations in military training and others like taking part in autonomous cars. The Key Elements of Great Businesses All these three fields in computer science are closely related. There is interdependence to efficient results at work. This is why there is no way artificial intelligence is going to work without machine learning and internet of things. The three fields are now being researched widely since they are causing technological advancements in a big buzz. This is especially because of how they can be essential in predicting crimes and accidents. They are also very important as they have enabled optimized productivity in the many industries out there. We currently have plenty of firms that are offering consulting services in these three areas. This has also been as the need for automation in all the industries in the market. This has therefore created a need for all industries to adapt to the three fields since it is the only way that technology is advancing to. The only key to surviving the market is companies adapting to the changes brought about by the three fields.
Tower of Babel In a lot of ways, the Old and New Testament mirror each other… there seems to be a parallel but inverse reintroduction to this idea of languages confused and people divided talked about within the story of the Tower of Babel. For those unfamiliar with the story, take a look at Genesis 11:1-9 before continuing on. Now jumping ahead many, many centuries: in Acts 2, there is the account of the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended so that when the gospel message was preached, each person present heard it in his or her own tongue (and even dialect!). I find this incredibly fascinating, because the background to the tower of babel (even though it took place roughly 130 years prior to this story) was of judgment on the whole earth in the form of a flood that wiped out all living creatures, except those in the ark (and interestingly enough, the ark was open until God Himself closed the door). Then over a century later, the people were still in one place, trying to make a name for themselves by building a tower to reach the heavens. I bring this up because prior to the day of Pentecost, Jesus bore the wrath of God, signifying that He took on Himself the promise of the judgment to come. Not following? Check out Amos 8:8-9. Earthquakes, darkness at midday, etc… This text is prophetically speaking of the tribulation described in Revelation, but now look at the crucifixion scene in the gospels: rocks splitting, the sun going black for three hours in the middle of the day, etc… the idea here is that when Christ bore God’s wrath, He was taking our judgment that would come in the future (so we who place our trust in Him would have no judgment to bear), and it’s even illustrated in how the earth itself responded to the ensuing judgment. Coming back to the day of Pentecost and the Spirit coming down (the Spirit, who is described in the epistles as the bond of peace and the one who unites us as one people), He descended on that day so that by the work of God all present were united as one people, understanding that gospel message of Christ’s suffering and resurrection on our behalf. Consider the great hymn to Christ in Philippians 2… after the crucifixion (history’s most astonishingly humble and beautiful act worked on behalf of sinful man by the Holy and Glorious Son of God), the Father “has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Man is short-sighted, but God takes the long-view, and that’s why the point of God dispersing the people in Genesis was to reunite them, but this time under His name, not their own. He had something better for them than building a great name for themselves and then someday inevitably dying in their sinful state outside of Eden. His plan was (and is) to redeem and restore them, so that He would be known not only as Creator, but Savior as well. 5 thoughts on “Tower of Babel 1. I like how your account of the story of Babel takes mentions neither the arguments given by the people themselves or of God. The people were not trying to make a name for themselves. That was a means to the ends of staying together. Similarly, God did not want them to stay together and thus split them up by means of making it so they could not communicate with each others. Why did God not want them to stay together? This was because of the fact that otherwise nothing would be impossible for them. That is the only reason given and you don’t mention it once, except in quoting the passage. Man wanted to stay together and God split them up because they otherwise would be able to accomplish anything. Is this description of the story not true? Yes you are adding in other things from various other stories to flesh it out. But your analysis doesn’t mesh with the story as it is. You also have to make a few deletions it seems. Also, God apparently wasn’t interested in being a Savior, because that term is meaningless if you caused the thing you’re saving them from. As you mention, God wanted to be the immediate cause of their unity, though. God is not interested in their unity, so He cannot ‘save’ them from disunity. He is only interested in being the cause of it. 1. Man has the capabilities of being ‘self-sufficient’ (and you are right, this is a great proof text for that), but if read within the entire context of the Bible it seems clear that this isn’t the point of this story. Even if God didn’t cause them to be divided and left humanity on their own so they were able to accomplish the impossible (like curing cancer, cloning humans, and I don’t even know… whatever ‘impossible’ means), there would still be one glaring issue: sin and death. God isn’t Savior because He caused disunity in order to bring unity. He’s Savior because He accomplished for us the truly impossible: salvation from sin. That’s the point. And what is sin? It’s not breaking the ten commandments (though it includes that). It’s not even not loving God and your neighbors (though it includes that as well). Sin is building your life on anything other than God. So if I find my identity in how well I keep the law, then guess what, I’m damned. If I find my identity on how much time I spend in my closet praying to God, then guess what, I’m damned. And if I find my identity in how much I do for my fellow man, no matter how good the intentions are, I’m still damned, damned, damned. Good works damn you, but God’s work saves. 2. 1) Come peter. Make a single clear case. You have a story about ppl explicitly wanting to stay together and then God scatters them. You said: “the point of God dispersing the people in Genesis was to reunite them, but this time under His name, not their own”. You cannot be a “savior” of a problem you cause. Introducing a whole different topic that has nothing to do with unity (“there would STILL be one glaring issue: sin and death”), is just a diversion. Fine, that is another problem that He may have acted in such a Savior capacity. But it is just that, another problem. If sin is another issue still present if they are ‘doing the impossible’ and sin is the thing that really matters, then why did God disunite them physically? Being united under their own name would not lessen the weight of sin or the approach of death. It would not lead to an unity in one or another identity. They’d have stayed together and cured cancer, but the problem would still be there. Together, God instead would simply continue to show them what they lack and how to find it in Him. 2) Plus, I don’t understand how the narrative works really in your version. He disunited them physically. Yet reunites them in name. However, the language/cultural barrier has been the biggest barrier in terms of spreading the Gospels and forming a unified identity in the Church. With one language wouldn’t have mistranslation. We wouldn’t have to waste time learning languages before missionary trips. The global discussion of the Church would move freely and include every voice. And so on. Also, I’m imagine a single language around the globe. Wouldn’t Christians still be united under the identity of Christ in such a world just as easily? Maybe more easily since they share a single Bible? And if there were a single language, wouldn’t we still form varying alternative identities. The US has one language but it isn’t homogenous in the least in terms of religions and other identities. 2) So, you’re still not addressing “and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them”. Why does this play such a huge role in God’s justification? 3) You know already that I am competely aware of the “saved by Grace and not by Works” such. You know I have preached this to others already, as well. You can assume I know the stock Sunday School answers. What I am intrerested in is “which God?” But that is another discussion. Also, James 2:24 “You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone”, Matt 19:17 “but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments”, James 2:17 “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead” and the whole parable of Matthew 25:31-46 seem to disagree with your simplistic analysis. Yes, “but faith is needed before works, or only works that are inspired by faith”. I’m aware. However, to continue the discussion, I like the the parable the most because the sheep and goats did not understand. They had helped without knowing. They did Good without seeing Jesus in it. On judgment day I will have fed the hungry and Christ will know I have done my best concerning ‘faith’ and found it in what I have found it in. You place so much on the cognitive aspect, the Which God? question, and feel so certain in the answer you were raised with. you have boiled all of salvation into worshiping the one God you just so happen to have your entire social network embedded in and conveniently now do not have to search out other religions (while still condemning them for not searching your out to the utmost). If “unity in identity” behind one particular God is so infinitely important to you, can you really say you have tried? Can you really stand before whatever lays beyond and say that you have followed your love and longing to know God as He is and not what happenstance has given you? I like the metaphor of the apple here. I’m sure you think your “fruit” is “sweet”. But you simply can’t tell me the apple is the sweetest of all fruits if it is all you’ve ever really tasted. Matthew 7:15-20 for this whole last bit. 1. I think we just need to agree to disagree on this, because the way I see you quoting scripture (which I know you don’t even believe) is done in similar fashion to a man using the back end of a hammer to turn in twelve-inch screws – granted, it can be used to do that, but it was intended for a much greater purpose. And at the same time, everything I’m saying is looked at as inconsistent, illogical, incoherent, and utterly foolish to you, so rather than taking the time to respond with how each of the verses you’ve used are misunderstood and that the points you’re drawing are out of context, let’s just call it a day. This is not to say that you’re a waste of time, because I don’t mean that at all, and I trust that you’re not thinking that of me either (by the amount of time and length of responses you’ve given), but truthfully, we can both come to a consensus on the fact that neither of us are going to budge on this. Let God be the judge. Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s
Sign Up for the BETTER newsletter You have been successfully added to our newsletter. 6 Myths About Carbs That Are Preventing You From Losing Weight A doughnut, whole-wheat bread and an apple are all carbohydrates. All carbs are not created equal.Mike Kemp / Rubberball/Getty Images Let our news meet your inbox. The minute a beach vacation, a high school reunion or a friend’s wedding pops up on the calendar, we immediately wage war on carbohydrates. No bagels No pasta. Definitely no potatoes. But is banishing carbs really the best plan of attack to slim down, tone up and feel your best? Not to mention, where do carbs come into play when it comes to our overall health? And why have they become the scapegoat for our muffin top? “People love to say things like ‘I am on a low-carb diet’ or ‘I'm not eating carbs right now.’ Typically, they're referring to pasta and bread, but what many don't know is that dairy, fruit and vegetables have naturally occurring carbohydrates!” says Courtney Ferreira, RD, owner of Real Food Court nutrition consulting. “If you are eating broccoli, you are eating carbs.” So before you ban every carbohydrate from the menu — know the facts. Carbohydrates are a actually a macronutrient (along with protein and fat) and they play a very vital role to your overall health, productivity and yes, your weight-loss success. “It’s really important for people to understand that the body’s preferred source of fuel for most everyday activity is carbohydrate. And your brain and red blood cells rely on carbohydrate almost exclusively for fuel,” says Susan Bowerman, MS, RD, CSSD, director of Worldwide Nutrition Education and Training at Herbalife Nutrition. “So following a very low-carbohydrate diet can really shortchange your physical and mental performance; you cut down (or out) so many healthy foods … and that limits your intake of many important vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and fiber that are critically important to good health.” The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that 45 to 65 percent of the calories we eat come from carbs. Since it makes up such a large chunk of our diet, it's worth it to school yourself on the myths that are misinforming how you consume this important nutrient. MYTH: Banning carbs means giving up bread and pasta Fact: Yes … but it would also mean nixing fruits, vegetables and whole grains Yes, that plate of steamed veggies you ate for lunch contained carbs. “Carbohydrates vary widely in terms of their nutrient density, so everything from a green bean, which is a good source of fiber, protein [and other vitamins and minerals] to a slice of white bread, which does not offer much other than carbohydrates, is considered a carbohydrate,” says Pegah Jalali, MS, RD, CDN, an NYC-based pediatric dietitian. Instead of saying, ‘I can't eat that,’ ask, what is a source of carbs that will provide me with more nutrition? She recommends that people move away from the obsession with banning all carbs and focus on the types of food they’re eating. “If you are eating mostly fruits and vegetables, then it is fine if your diet is high in carbohydrates,” says Jalali. “On the flip side, if your diet is high in carbohydrates, but you are eating mostly processed foods like packaged breads, cookies and chips then that is a completely different diet.” Ferreira advises her clients to think about the different foods that contain carbohydrates on a spectrum. On one side are the foods you can eat in unlimited quantities — nutrient-dense, fiber-rich and whole-food carb sources like green veggies and fruit. Towards the middle are nutrient-dense, but also carbohydrate-dense, foods such as white potatoes, that should be balanced out with those at the ‘eat as much as you can’ end, she says. On the other end of the spectrum are foods like breads and pasta. "While these still have a place in the diet, they require balancing out in order to create a diet that provides nutrients we need," says Ferreira "I really urge people to start looking at carbs in this new way. Instead of saying, ‘I can't eat that,’ [ask] what is a source of carbs that will provide me with more nutrition?” Myth: All carbs are created equal Fact: There are simple and complex carbohydrates “The main reason [carbs get a bad rap] is that when people think ‘carbs’ they think ‘starch’, like white rice, pasta, potatoes or white bread,” says Bowerman. “While many refined carbs don’t offer up much nutritionally, there are lots of ‘good carbs’ — healthy foods that provide carbohydrates your body absolutely needs every day to function properly.” In actuality there are three types of carbohydrates: fiber, sugar and starch. Where things get confusing is when we look at specific foods, which can contain different types of carbohydrates. They can either be labeled simple or complex based on their chemical makeup. Complex carbs “contain a complex chain of sugars as well as some fiber, protein and/or healthy fats, vitamins and minerals,” says Rebecca Lewis, registered dietitian at HelloFresh. “The presence of fiber, protein and fats is important because it slows digestion, prevents a spike in our blood-sugar levels, and helps us to feel full and satisfied for longer (i.e. curbs cravings).” That’s why carbohydrate-containing foods like starchy vegetables, legumes and whole grains are included in many healthy diet plans. Follow the 10:1 rule: Choose foods where for every 10 grams of carbs, there is 1 gram of fiber. The simple carbs, often found in processed foods and drinks, are easier for the body to break down, meaning they don’t keep you full as long and can lead to erratic blood sugar levels. That’s not to say that simple carbs are always bad for us. “Simple carbohydrates are found in fruits, veggies and dairy — all of which are healthy choices as they also contain good stuff like vitamins, minerals, and fiber,” says Lewis. “However, simple carbs are also found in less healthy foods like refined grains, processed snacks, sweets, soda and juice, which lack extra nutrients. These foods are very quickly digested, which can cause swings in our blood sugar levels and often leave us hungry for more.” The trick is to look for foods that have a more robust nutritional profile. That apple may have simple carbs, but it also contains a hefty dose of fiber to slow down the digestion of the sugars. Supplementing pasta with fiber-rich veggies helps slow the breakdown of sugars in the body. Getty Images / This content is subject to copyright. Myth: Carbs are fattening Fact: It’s not the carbs making you fat, it’s the sugar and calories “Anything is fattening if you eat too much of it, and not all carbohydrate-containing foods have the same calorie density,” says Bowerman. “This myth persists because many people who eat a lot of refined carbs and sugar do lose weight when they cut back on these foods. But it isn’t because they’ve cut out all of the carbs, it’s because they have cut out a lot of the calorie-dense foods.” Research actually shows that while low-carb eaters tend to lose more weight at first, after one year, that weight loss levels out and is no different than those who eat a low-fat (moderate carb) diet. That being said, when it comes to carbohydrate-containing foods and weight gain, sugar and excess calories tend to be the culprit. “Really the secret behind carbohydrates is to identify and limit the amount of added sugar in your carbohydrate sources; highlight whole foods like fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains; and pay attention to portion sizing carbohydrates along with your protein and fat sources,” says Amanda Markie, MS, RDN, LD, Outpatient Dietitian at UM Baltimore Washington Medical Center. “Sugar can be found naturally in foods like fruits and milk products, as well as being more concentrated into your processed foods like sodas, candy or baked goods,” explains Markie. So you want to ensure that you’re choosing sources of carbohydrates that have this naturally-occurring sugar. “Also look for higher dietary fiber with a lower amount of added sugar, which you can identify if it is one of the first ingredients on the ingredients list,” says Markie. “Limit those foods that have sugar within the first two to three ingredients." And just because you’re choosing the higher-fiber, low-sugar options doesn’t mean you can eat them in unlimited qualities: portions matter. “Four cups of quinoa will make anyone gain weight. The quantity is the key strategy,” said Monica Auslander, MS, RDN, the founder of Essence Nutrition. “For example, I'll eat steel cut oatmeal, but only 1/3 cup a day. I'll eat beans, but only 1/2 cup at a time. I'm a petite person and not an athlete, so I can't afford to have three slices of Ezekiel bread for breakfast, a sweet potato at lunch, and three cups of quinoa at dinner.” Myth: Carbohydrates spike your blood sugar Fact: The right carbs stabilize blood-sugar levels for sustained energy A 2014 study published in the Nutrition Journal found that participants who ate a high-carbohydrate, high-fiber, vegan diet (they got 80 percent of their calories from carbs) actually saw a drop in average blood sugar, plus lost weight and had significant improvements in blood pressure. Plus, that glucose that our bodies gleans from digestible carb is needed for the functioning of multiple organs, including the brain. So that sugar in the blood stream isn’t just okay — it’s necessary. The problem is when they are released all at once in high doses. “One thing that we must all remember is that carbohydrates are essential to fuel your brain, boost our energy and maintain our metabolism. The key is to eat the right kinds of food that contain carbohydrates,” says Meghan Daw, RD, LDN, from Fresh Thyme Farmers Market. “These foods contain carbohydrates that are more complex, meaning they contain fiber and other nutrients that take time to digest and allow a slow release of sugar into the body. This slow release does increase blood sugar levels over time but not all at once, preventing some unwanted blood sugar level spikes and symptoms that come along with those spikes.” MYTH: You can determine whats carbs are healthy by using the Glycemic Index Fact: Not always ... you also need to use common sense. The Glycemic Index is a system that rank foods based on how much a certain portion increases blood sugar when compared to pure glucose. "One major setback [to the use of the Glycemic Index when choosing what carbohydrates are best] is that this index measures the body’s response when the carbohydrate is eaten without other foods, but how often are we eating a carbohydrate at a meal on its own?" says Markie. You may have a baked potato for dinner, but there's a good chance it's accompanied by a piece of salmon and some veggies. "Having these foods together can change the speed of digestion and your body’s response," says Markie. The Glycemic Index can be a guide in determining which foods are the better choices, she adds. Those lower on the scale may be higher in fiber, which slows digestion. But you need to use common sense to make the final judgement. "There are other cases in which the Glycemic Index does not direct the consumer toward the most healthful choice," says Markie. "For example, a soda has a Glycemic Index of 63, while raisins have a Glycemic Index of 64, however that does not mean raisins and soda have the same nutritional value." It's a tool you can use, but it should be one tool out of many, as it doesn't take into account the other nutritional values of the food, she adds. Myth: You should look for net carbs on the nutrition label Fact: The source of those carbs matter At the end of the day, all carbs are not created equal. So blindly counting net carbs isn’t the best way to establish a healthy diet. But food labels in their current state can be tricky to decode. “Reading labels will provide you with the quantity of carbohydrate that is in the food, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you about the quality,” says Bowerman. “For example, I have patients who don’t drink milk because of the carbohydrate content, but the carbohydrate in milk is not added, it’s simply the natural sugar (lactose). But it’s hard to tell from a label which carbs are natural and which are added, and unless you read the ingredients list as well, you won’t know the source of the carbohydrate.” For most packaged items, a high fiber count can be a good sign that a food is a healthy choice. Lewis recommends following the “10:1 rule: Choose foods where for every 10 grams of carbs, there is 1 gram of fiber.” However, Bowerman caveats that manufacturers can also add fiber to products afterwards, so you should check the ingredients list for a whole food source to ensure the fiber is naturally occurring. Luckily, deciphering the label is about to get a bit easier. The new food label to be implemented in July 2018 will specifically call out how much of the total sugar in a food is added, making it easier to distinguish between the unhealthy sugars you’ll find in many processed foods and the natural-occurring sugar in whole foods like fruit and milk. Until then, you can’t go wrong by choosing whole-food sources of carbohydrates that only have one ingredient — themselves! Let our news meet your inbox. MORE FROM better
American Flags Store Deeth NV 89823 Made in the USA American Flags around Deeth NV 89823 Who created the American Flag? Exactly what does the American Flag represent? Why is the American Flag essential to American society? Where can I get American Flags? Who created the American Flag? Photo via Wikimedia Commons What does the American Flag represent? The flag first flew over thirteen states along the Atlantic seaboard, with a population of some three million individuals. Today it flies over fifty states, extending throughout the continent, and also over great islands of the 2 oceans; as well as millions owe it loyalty. The flag consists of 13 alternate red and also white horizontal stripes standing for the initial thirteen British colonies that proclaimed independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and also came to be the very first states in the US. A blue rectangle in the canton shows 50 small, white stars standing for each state. The stars are set up in 9 horizontal rows offset of each other. This blue location of the flag is called the Union. The symbolism of the Flag, as quoted from Washington: “We take the stars from Heaven, the red from our mother country, dividing it by white red stripes, hence showing that we have divided from her, as well as the white red stripes shall decrease to posterity representing Liberty.” It incarnates for all the human race the spirit of liberty as well as the marvelous ideal of human liberty; not the freedom of unrestraint or the freedom of license, but an one-of-a-kind principle of equal opportunity forever, freedom and the search of joy, protected by the stern as well as lofty principles of obligation, of integrity and of justice, and possible by obedience to self-imposed legislations. It symbolizes the essence of patriotism. Its spirit is the spirit of the American nation. Its history is the background of the American individuals. Decorated on its folds in letters of living light are the names as well as fame of our brave dead, the Fathers of the Republic that committed after its altars their lives, their treasures and their spiritual honor. Twice told tales of nationwide honor as well as splendor cluster thickly about it. Ever victorious, it has actually emerged triumphant from 8 excellent national conflicts. It flew at Saratog, at Yorktown, at Palo Alto, at Gettysburg, at Manila bay, at Chateau-Thierry, at Iwo Jima. It demonstrates to the tremendous expansion of our nationwide borders, the growth of our natural deposits, and also the fantastic structure of our people. It forecasts the triumph of prominent federal government, of public and also spiritual freedom as well as of nationwide righteousness throughout the world. Why is the American Flag important to American community? The American flag is extremely important because it represents the independent government as defined under the United States Constitution. Add to that, it additionally stands for the history, beliefs and also values of its people. As a democratic country, its individuals stick to critical values such as liberty, justice and equal rights. Furthermore, the flag likewise represents the various successes of the nation as well as the satisfaction of its individuals. This national symbol advises individuals, not only in the Nevada state, but throughout the entire USA concerning the different essential aspects of the Declaration of Independence. It is a complex icon, which stands for the liberty and legal rights of Americans. Floating from the soaring peak of American optimism, it is a sign of withstanding hope. It is the indicator made visible of the solid spirit that has brought liberty and also success to individuals of America. It is the flag of all us alike. Let us accord it honor and also loyalty. Where can I purchase American Flags? You possibly already discovered this, however there are a great deal of locations where you could get American flags. It is vital to note that the flag you’re going to buy should be “Made in USA. There are numerous sellers whose flags are classified as made in China, and flying a China-made American flag simply doesn’t make any sense, does it? Based upon stats, Americans invest over 5.3 million dollars on imported flags yearly – the majority of which are made in China. Possibly much more befuddling is that during 2001, in the wave of nationalism that washed over America after 9/11, Americans bought $52 million US dollars in imported flags. The flag needs to represent the blood, sweat, and tears of American people who brought this nation into existence, not our debt to China and the fatality of the American production sector. The flag symbolizes nationwide independence and prominent sovereignty. It is not the flag of a ruling family or royal house, however of the millions free individuals welded right into a country, one and also inseparable, united not only by community of interest, yet by essential unity of belief and objective; a country identified for the clear individual conception of its citizens alike of their obligations and also their benefits, their responsibilities and also their rights. So have a little pride, cough up a couple more dollars, as well as purchase an American flag made by Americans in the United States. Deeth ZIP codes we serve: 89823
30 June 2016 Zika: The Emerging Epidemic by Donald G. McNeil Summary from Goodreads: Until recently, Zika—once considered a mild disease—was hardly a cause for global panic. But as early as August 2015, doctors in northeast Brazil began to notice a trend: many mothers who had recently experienced symptoms of the Zika virus were giving birth to babies with microcephaly, a serious disorder characterized by unusually small heads and brain damage. By early 2016, Zika was making headlines as evidence mounted—and eventually confirmed—that microcephaly is caused by the virus, which can be contracted through mosquito bites or sexually transmitted. The first death on American soil, in February 2016, was confirmed in Puerto Rico in April. The first case of microcephaly in Puerto Rico was confirmed on May 13, 2016. The virus has been known to be transmitted by the Aedes aegypti or Yellow Fever mosquito, but now Aedes albopictus, the Asian Tiger mosquito, has been found to carry it as well, which means it might affect regions as far north as New England and the Great Lakes. Right now, at least 298 million people in the Americas live in areas “conducive to Zika transmission,” according to a recent study. Over the next year, more than 5 million babies will be born. In Zika: The Emerging Epidemic, Donald G. McNeil Jr. sets the facts straight in a fascinating exploration of Zika’s origins, how it’s spreading, the race for a cure, and what we can do to protect ourselves now. "The chapter titled Delaying Pregnancy is so paternalistic I want to set it on fire." From a strict compiling of information and reportage, this is a pretty good book. However, there are some information gaps he doesn't address. What are the age and gender breakdown of known Zika cases (or if there are sero-surveys, those as well)? If those numbers are not known, why not? What is the symptomology of Zika in infants (bc if adults are getting bitten you know children of all ages are getting mosquito bites)? Is that information available? Where the book breaks down is in a late chapter titled "Delaying Pregnancy". He lays out a paternalistic diatribe against the CDC and other agencies for not strictly recommending women avoid getting pregnant if they live in Zika-prone areas. And then he makes a "not all men" statement. I almost ripped those pages out of the book. He even quotes a respected ID physician who says everyone should just watch TV for six months. Crass, dudes, really crass. Guess what, guys? A statement that says WOMEN shouldn't get pregnant really ignores a lot of larger social issues. There are no health alerts that tell men they should be actively discussing the possibility of pregnancy with their heterosexual partners and why they should be equally responsible for providing birth control or understanding the wish for abstinence. And now that there is evidence coming out that Zika can be transmitted sexually (and sometimes for months after acute symptoms have cleared up), all sexual partners need to be talking about condom use for STD prevention, not just for pregnancy prevention in heterosexual couples (this should just be good sexual education anyway...). The last chapter "The Future" has a sum up that touches on the 2009 swine flu media panic but ignores the 2014 Ebola panic. It then closes with a sad case story about a woman who lost her pregnancy (and nearly died) during the 2009 swine flu epidemic and asks us all to be empathic. What? Try more objectivity, less opinion. Dear FTC: I received a copy of this book for review from the publisher. 28 June 2016 The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz Summary from Goodreads: From the internationally celebrated author of the Original Sinners series comes a brand-new tale of betrayal, revenge and a family scandal that bore a 150-year-old mystery In the small hours of a Louisville morning, Paris unspools the lurid tale of Tamara Maddox, heiress to the distillery that became an empire. But the family tree is rooted in tainted soil and has borne rotten fruit. Theirs is a legacy of wealth and power, but also of lies, secrets and sins of omission. The Maddoxes have bourbon in their blood—and blood in their bourbon. Why Paris wants the bottle of Red Thread remains a secret until the truth of her identity is at last revealed, and the century-old vengeance Tamara vowed against her family can finally be completed. An actual Goodreads status update I made while reading The Bourbon Thief: "Ho, that took a left then a few switchbacks, a right and finally that left I was expecting. Well played, Tiffany." Tiffany Reisz couldn't write a boring book if she tried. Southern Gothic plus crazy relatives plus social justice plus a drop of Scheherazade. And bourbon. And a dash of historical fiction set both pre-Civil War and in the 1980s. Reisz uses her frame story of Paris and Cooper and a night-long story to perfection. I could hardly put this down, even to get work done during the day. The plotting is just right - every time I thought I could predict where the story was going I was completely surprised. So fun! Now, for those who are regular readers of Tiffany Reisz and are used to books like The Original Sinners series, this isn't an erotic novel. There is a fair amount of enthusiastic sex, especially at the beginning, but it isn't written as a play-by-play and there aren't BDSM elements. However, there is some squickiness, much expected with Southern Gothics. Dear FTC: I received a DRC of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss. 21 June 2016 How Not to Fall by Emily Foster Summary from Goodreads: In her witty and breathtakingly sexy novel, Emily Foster introduces a story of lust, friendship, and other unpredictable experiments. . . Data, research, scientific formulae--Annabelle Coffey is completely at ease with all of them. Men, not so much. But that's all going to change after she asks Dr. Charles Douglas, the postdoctoral fellow in her lab, to have sex with her. Charles is not only beautiful, he is also adorably awkward, British, brilliant, and nice. What are the odds he'd turn her down? Very high, as it happens. Something to do with that whole student/teacher/ethics thing. But in a few weeks, Annie will graduate. As soon as she does, the unlikely friendship that's developing between them can turn physical--just until Annie leaves for graduate school. Yet nothing could have prepared either Annie or Charles for chemistry like this, or for what happens when a simple exercise in mutual pleasure turns into something as exhilarating and infernally complicated as love. I don't read very many contemporary romances and even fewer New Adult romances (historicals are my jam). However. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a Smart Bitches podcast where the sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski was talking about her book Come as You Are (which is EXCELLENT, of course, go read it) and women's sexual health, and oh yes, by the way her New Adult contemporary coming out in June, How Not to Fall, under the pseudonym Emily Foster. Which was written partly as a counter to the problematic aspects regarding consent and sexual experiences in the 50 Shades series. Whose main character is a super-smart neuroscience Indiana University undergrad who is going to the MD/PhD program at MIT. Who is also a dancer. Who has decided that before she graduates and leaves Bloomington she is going to proposition the smoking hot, adorkable, English postdoc in her lab. This. Book. Is. SO. GOOD. Annie is one of the smartest, sweetest, strongest, and most vulnerable heroines I have ever come across. She's vulnerable precisely because she gives of herself wholeheartedly, whether it is her research or her dancing or her heart. The book is narrated entirely from Annie's perspective, in the first person, and she's such a fascinating character. (I identify with Annie so much for various reasons I won't go into here, but if you think she seems a bit much I can attest to the fact that she is basically me and this is the story of my junior/senior year of college with a few alterations.) The absolute best, best part of this book is the wonderful exploration of the sexual relationship (and the intertwining personal feelings) between Annie and Charles. Although Charles is the one who clearly has all the sexual experience - that Annie would like to benefit from - he is explicit in demanding that Annie must give him consent for any activity they undertake. He is firm in abiding by the letter of the University rules about relationships between students and supervisors. He takes Annie climbing at the gym (I had never thought of that as a sexy activity but whoa). Everything is extremely sex-positive and consent-positive and Annie trusts him implicitly. And that is how Charles breaks her heart - he holds himself back from her. Emily Foster has a gift. I have never ugly-cried over a romance novel and this one made me do just that - this is raw and sweet and honest and too real. And Jesus, did that ending just twist the knife. This is possibly the most-real relationship I have ever read in a romance. And even though the sex is spectacular, even though I'd really like to know if Charles has a real-life counterpart, the nuts and bolts making up this couple are outstanding. And then there's all the science stuff and neurobiology and dancing and Wodehouse and the rest of this book is basically one giant epic nerd purr. I tweeted Emily BECAUSE FEELINGS. And she told me there's a sequel!!!!! So all is not lost! We'll get more Annie and Charles (and, apparently, Charles's perspective as well for some chapters)! How Not to Fall is out June 28, next Tuesday - you know you want this!! Dear FTC: I received a DRC of this book via NetGalley. 14 June 2016 Florence Foster Jenkins: The Life of the World's Worst Opera Singer by Darryl W. Bullock Summary from Goodreads: "Probably the most complete and absolute lack of talent ever publicly displayed." —Life Magazine Madame Jenkins couldn't carry a tune in a bucket: despite that, in 1944 at the age of 76, she played Carnegie Hall to a capacity audience and had celebrity fans by the score. Her infamous 1940s recordings are still highly-prized today. In his well-researched and thoroughly entertaining biography, Darryl W. Bullock tells of Florence Foster Jenkins meteoric rise to success and the man who stood beside her, through every sharp note. Florence was ridiculed for her poor control of timing, pitch, and tone, and terrible pronunciation of foreign lyrics, but the sheer entertainment value of her caterwauling packed out theatres around the United States, with the 'singer' firmly convinced of her own talent, partly thanks to the devoted attention for her husband and manager St Clair Bayfield. Her story is one of triumph in the face of adversity, courage, conviction and of the belief that with dedication and commitment a true artist can achieve anything. *Note: This is not the movie tie-in book, which can be found here and which I have not read. I knew of Florence Foster Jenkins back when I was still singing (read: before I ruined my voice in college). My voice teacher brought her up whenever she thought my singing was too "wooden" - Madame had a terrible voice, but so was very entertaining. But I had never actually heard a recording of her voice. Florence Foster Jenkins came out to somewhere between "good" and "ok." The actual book construction feels a little uneven and jumps around which gives the biography a "soapy" feel (he quotes the wretchedly bitchy Simon Doonan - in a soundbite that should just die and I'm not going to repeat it here - who wasn't even born when Madame died in 1944). However, what Bullock did do was evoke a lot of sympathy for his subject. Florence Foster Jenkins was a moneyed Society lady who clearly LOVED classical music, had once been a talented classical pianist, and had the wherewithal to indulge her passion despite (or because of) her lack of voice. You can still purchase Madame's recordings (just search "Florence Foster Jenkins" on iTunes and it appears they are being reissues on vinyl/CD). I can only take listening to the iTunes samples because it's just too awful. The recordings were made when she was in her 60s/70s and if she ever had a decent voice it is long gone. It's too cruel to laugh at her for merely being an eccentric elderly lady. Dear FTC: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher at Book Expo America. 12 June 2016 Constellation by Adrien Bosc (transl. Willard Wood) Summary from Goodreads: This best-selling debut novel from one of France’s most exciting young writers is based on the true story of the 1949 disappearance of Air France’s Lockheed Constellation and its famous passengers On October 27, 1949, Air France’s new plane, the Constellation, launched by the extravagant Howard Hughes, welcomed thirty-eight passengers aboard. On October 28, no longer responding to air traffic controllers, the plane disappeared while trying to land on the island of Santa Maria, in the Azores. No one survived. The question Adrien Bosc’s novel asks is not so much how, but why? What were the series of tiny incidents that, in sequence, propelled the plane toward Redondo Mountain? And who were the passengers? As we recognize Marcel Cerdan, the famous boxer and lover of Edith Piaf, and we remember the musical prodigy Ginette Neveu, whose tattered violin would be found years later, the author ties together their destinies: “Hear the dead, write their small legend, and offer to these thirty-eight men and women, like so many constellations, a life and a story.” Constellation was the book that I almost grabbed straight out the publishing rep's hands during the Book Club Speed Dating event at BEA. The Venn diagram was almost a circle.... It is a lovely, spare, and almost plotless novel. Bosc created a meditation not only on why this particular airplane crashed but what incremental mistakes led to the crash and who lost their lives. He also went beyond the crash itself to look at those lives tangentially connected with the flight and strange intersections of fate. I felt the novel was a little autobiographical, too, but who was commenting: the author or a fictional first-person narrator? This translation is excellent. Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book during an event at Book Expo America. 10 June 2016 Blackass by A. Igoni Barrett Summary from Goodreads: Furo Wariboko, a young Nigerian, awakes the morning before a job interview to find that he's been transformed into a white man. In this condition he plunges into the bustle of Lagos to make his fortune. With his red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, it seems he's been completely changed. Well, almost. There is the matter of his family, his accent, his name. Oh, and his black ass. Furo must quickly learn to navigate a world made unfamiliar and deal with those who would use him for their own purposes. Taken in by a young woman called Syreeta and pursued by a writer named Igoni, Furo lands his first-ever job, adopts a new name, and soon finds himself evolving in unanticipated ways. A. Igoni Barrett's Blackass is a fierce comic satire that touches on everything from race to social media while at the same time questioning the values society places on us simply by virtue of the way we look. As he did in Love Is Power, or Something Like That, Barrett brilliantly depicts life in contemporary Nigeria and details the double-dealing and code-switching that are implicit in everyday business. But it's Furo's search for an identity--one deeper than skin--that leads to the final unraveling of his own carefully constructed story. I was really looking forward to Blackass and, unfortunately, I wanted to like it more than I did. Primarily, I think the disappointment is due to the likelihood that this book fell at the wrong time for me. I just wasn't in the mood to read it. I really liked the writing, in particular the idea of using themes from Kafka's Metamorphosis to look at race and culture in contemporary Nigeria, but something just wasn't clicking for me. Perhaps I was expecting more biting satire (it is pitched as a "fierce comic satire" and I wasn't getting a particularly fierce vibe) or I was missing some social cues (although Lagos and the culture of the city didn't feel any more "alien" to me than Teju Cole's or Johwor Ile's Lagos) or if I just didn't have the patience for this right now. Furo just made me feel frustrated, particularly at the end of the book. Which, now that I think more on it, is actually a feeling that I have when thinking about Gregor Samsa and his less savory predicament. Hmmm. I'd like to revisit Blackass in the future, to see if it reads better at a different time. Barrett does have an excellent style so I'll definitely keep an eye out for his next book. Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book from Graywolf Press. 07 June 2016 Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter Summary from Goodreads: In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness. In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This self-described sentimental bird is attracted to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him. As weeks turn to months and physical pain of loss gives way to memories, this little unit of three begin to heal. In this extraordinary debut - part novella, part polyphonic fable, part essay on grief, Max Porter's compassion and bravura style combine to dazzling effect. Full of unexpected humour and profound emotional truth, Grief is the Thing with Feathers marks the arrival of a thrilling new talent. Grief is the Thing With Feathers basically destroyed me, so I'll try and write something coherent. Because this book is amazing. A small family is devastated after the sudden death of their mother/wife. One evening Crow - the trickster bird of myth - appears on their doorstep and says that he will stay until he is no longer needed. Until the family has worked through their grief. So Crow helps put the children to bed and makes their school lunches and fights of evil characters who try to impersonate the dead mother. This book is beautiful, mind-bending, and heartbreaking. The narrative is shared out between the father, Crow, and the two boys. The grief on the page is raw and sharp and just heart-wrenching. I cannot do justice to Porter's writing by writing about it. So here's a snap of one page: I did not break until about page 92. Grief is the Thing With Feathers is out now from Graywolf Press. Dear FTC: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher. Bonus Points to the person at Graywolf who sent out the packages because there were crow-sized footprints on the envelope: 02 June 2016 Duke of Sin by Elizabeth Hoyt (Maiden Lane #10) Summary from Goodreads: Devastatingly handsome. Vain. Unscrupulous. Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery, is the man London whispers about in boudoirs and back alleys. A notorious rake and blackmailer, Montgomery has returned from exile, intent on seeking revenge on those who have wronged him. But what he finds in his own bedroom may lay waste to all his plans. Born a bastard, housekeeper Bridget Crumb is clever, bold, and fiercely loyal. When her aristocratic mother becomes the target of extortion, Bridget joins the Duke of Montgomery's household to search for the incriminating evidence-and uncovers something far more dangerous. Astonished by the deceptively prim-and surprisingly witty-domestic spy in his chambers, Montgomery is intrigued. And try as she might, Bridget can't resist the slyly charming duke. Now as the two begin their treacherous game of cat and mouse, they soon realize that they both have secrets-and neither may be as nefarious-or as innocent-as they appear . . . In previous Maiden Lane installments, the Duke of Montgomery has been largely an enigma. A brilliant, bloodthirsty, and amoral enigma. He shot the villain (for fun, more or less) in Darling Beast but then turned around and had the heroine of Dearest Rogue kidnapped to get back at her brother. In his own book, Val is hiding out in his own house, a wanted man, until he works a rather dishonest scheme - blackmail. He is a bored cat, playing with his prey before skewering it with his claws. One of his prey being his new, mysterious - and extremely efficient - housekeeper, Bridget Crumb (Hands up - who remembers Mrs. Crumb from Lord of Darkness?). Bridget started working for the duke in the previous book Sweetest Scoundrel .... and also for several aristocratic ladies who are also victims of Val's bored schemes. When Val catches Bridget snooping through his bedroom, the game of cat and mouse begins. There are spies, and counterspies, and murder, and another kidnapping, and an actual cult. This romance is one wild ride from London to York and back again. I have been looking forward to Duke of Sin because I wanted to see what Hoyt would do with a character who has been a) enigmatic and b) the villainous antagonist in several previous books (redemption arcs are a thing that can work really well cf. The Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas). Now, there is no way to make Val "nice" - he can't just fall in love and then decide to have a normal moral/psychological code, that wouldn't work because Val is sociopathic, occasionally murderous, and power-mad (riffing off the old "mad, bad, and dangerous to know" Byron trope). So Hoyt made Val emotionally damaged, really messed up, to the point that Bridget does the only thing that could possibly save him: love him for himself because he has dug himself a really deep trench of "basically, he should be in jail" (in my opinion, some of the previous heroes need to punch him harder and many more times). There's also really nice textual handoffs for the upcoming novella Once Upon a Moonlit Night and the next full novel Duke of Pleasure (which is the Duke of Kyle's book and I want it now) that don't get in the way of this story. So go out and get your hands on Duke of Sin and get ready to relish Val's exploits. (And yes, I realize that certain plot points in this book might be super squicky for some readers. I think they work well in this specific instance.) Dear FTC: I received a digital advance copy of this book from Netgalley. 01 June 2016 Wrapping up #smashyourstack: How'd you do? All right, books down! #SmashYourStack is officially done! Thanks to my co-host Andi and to everyone who participated. Be sure to add your wrap-up post in the Linky below (try to get those in in the next few weeks). How did I do? Well, I read some books....(shocker, I know): Books I owned before May: Headstrong by Rachel Swaby American Gods by Neil Gaiman Hot as Hades by Alisha Rai The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson Your Song Changed My Life by Bob Boilen Sweetest Scoundrel by Elizabeth Hoyt These Vicious Masks by Tarun Shanker and Kelly Zekas How to Be a Victorian by Ruth Goodman Books I didn't own before May (library, review copy, etc): The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante (library) Rapture: Poems by Sjohnna McCray (review copy) Grief is the Thing With Feathers by Max Porter (review copy) Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye (library) Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (ARC from BEA, I couldn't help myself, y'all) Tribe by Sebastian Junger (BEA Adult Author Breakfast) Approval Junkie by Faith Salie (BEA Adult Author Breakfast) The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead's Town by Amos Tutola (library) Eight books I previously owned, eight books acquired in May (wherever they came from). It was a close thing, but I did hit 50%. Just barely. I blame BEA. Haha. I've got a few reviews to write now. Thanks everyone and happy reading!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 The Q-Factor The Q factor for Physics The Wikipedia defines : The Q factor or quality factor compares the time constant for decay of an oscillating physical system's amplitude to its oscillation period. Equivalently, it compares the frequency at which a system oscillates to the rate at which it dissipates its energy. A higher Q indicates a lower rate of energy dissipation relative to the oscillation frequency. For example, a pendulum suspended from a high-quality bearing, oscillating in air, would have a high Q, while a pendulum immersed in oil would have a low one. The Q factor is particularly useful in determining the qualitative behavior of a system. For example, a system with Q less than or equal to 1/2 cannot be described as oscillating at all, instead the system is said to be in an overdamped (Q < q =" 1/2)"> 1/2, the system's amplitude oscillates, while simultaneously decaying exponentially. This regime is referred to as underdamped. The Q factor for Indian Politics The Wickedopedia defines : The Q factor or the Quattrocchi factor compares the time constant for decay of an oscillating Indian political system's amplitude to its swinging periods. A higher Q indicates lower rate of political energy dissipation relative to the parliamentarian hungama frequency. For example, when the skeletons at the Congress closet start rattling, the parliament would have a high Q factor. While when the closet is well guarded by CBI (Central Bureau of Indulgence), the Q factor would be a low one. The Q factor is particularly useful in determining the qualitative behavior of a political system. For example, a regime that tends to undermine the Q factor to vanshing values, cannot be described as vacillating at all, instead the government is called an overthumped Congress government. However, if Q goes on higher values, the benches in the parliament shake, while simultaneously creaking and cracking exponentially, that opposition is definitely an underhumped non-Congress one. Tuesday, February 13, 2007 Can You Feel The Love Tonite ? Tomorrow is Feb 14-th a day marked on the calender with a Nerolac shade of mera-wallah pink to celebrate the love and other contagious viruses in the air - for tommorow's the Valentine's Day. After a trend-analysis of previous few years graph that showed no ups-and-downs, the predictions are that we will be witnessing these incidents across our nation : 1. The cupid at Hallmark will have its arrow aimed right on target at the growing purchasing power of emerging Indian middle class. 2. Tommorrow will record the highest sales of roses, greeting cards, soft toys and multiplex tickets all at pricest of prices. 3. The left out singles will hide inside the deepest dungeons just after declaring the futility of this date as a commercial ploy by the multinational gift-selling corporations. 4. There would be a steep rise in liquor sale to quench the thirsty Devdas-es who've lost their Paro-s to circumstances beyond their control. 5. Shiv Sena and Bajrang Dal will let out fumes of anger at the moral degradation of traditional Indian values. As usual they have decided not to sit idle and let their energys spent in the worthwhile cause of maintaining the neighbourhood's Basanti's Izzat-N-Abru in a brand new showroom condition. In case you missed out the last years agenda or the years before that, here is the re-freshed/re-phrased plan of action for this year: We request young couples not to visit parks and restaurants or organize parties on Valentine's Day. Those who do not listen to us will be beaten up," Ved Prakash Sachchan, the convener of the militant Hindu group Bajrang Dal, told The Associated Press in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. "In the name of Valentine's Day, there is an attempt to westernize Indian culture and we will not allow this to happen," he added. Hindu activists also have put up billboards across Lucknow asking young lovers not to hold hands in public. Traditional Indian society does not approve of public displays of affection between the sexes, including hand-holding and kissing. Another Hindu hardline organization, the Shiv Sena, has said it will photograph couples caught in supposed compromising positions and hand over the pictures to their parents. Volunteers will stake out public parks, cinemas and shopping malls to "keep an eye on young people," Vijay Tiwari of the Shiv Sena said. Certain things will never change, although I might find myself growing from 16 to 32. And in this 16 years, BSE might have rose and fall unpredictably, but the Bajrangis and Sainiks have always lived upto my expectations. Thanks to their tireless efforts to warn me that today is when the firangi St. Valentines wishes to corrupt an innocent Indian like me, tonight I am feeling again like my 16 year old wide-eyed avatar - who earnestly longed to be corrupted just by holding hands and kissing in public. I am quite liking the way I'm feeling young at heart. And all those well-wishers spamming my inbox with on online prescriptions for promised Fountain of Youth - you can now go to cyber-hell. As a token of gratitude towards my militant Hindu brothers, I am now determined to give a befitting reply to all those spammers. How about sending each of them a mail with a subject-line of "Jai Bajrangbali" and a body-text of "Hanuman Chalisa" typed in Monotype Corsiva font size of 48 ? Monday, February 12, 2007 A Bullet for a Bullet According to this Reuters report the U.N. is pretty serious in its business of supervision of arms agreement between the Maoists and Nepalese government. As a part of the exercise, the U.N officials are visiting the Maoist camps to evaluate the sanitory conditions. Being a member of tissue wiping Western society, Ian Martin, the represntative of the U.N. secretary general, had found the standards quite unsatisfactory. Which is not surprising as he's quite alien to the concept of answering the nature's call amidst nature. But what intrigues me is not his apathy towards the Indian sub-continental practice of the shortest route to human waste recycling. Rather the interesting part of the news is the way that this particular arms agreement is being carried out. The arms will be locked in containers watched by U.N. monitors. The Maoists will keep the keys, and the army will also store an equal number of weapons before the election set for June. I'm imagining the clerk in charge of maintaining the stocks at the army warehouse asking his supervisor, "Could you approve this purchase order for new kookris. At the last count we fell short by twenty-three pieces against the Maoists' stocks." The proverbial expression of "a bullet for a bullet" suddenly makes much more sense !! Wednesday, February 07, 2007 Naseem: The Morning Breeze [cross-posted at PassionForCinema.com] With the release of Parzania and the surrounding controversies I'm reminded of another movie that dealt with the same subject. Dadaji, yeh ashmaan neela kyun hain Kyun ki mere ko peela raang pasand nahin, toh maine ise neela rang se paint kiya This is one of those several memorable dialogue exchanges that characterize the Syed Mirza’s 1995 film Naseem. The story is about a typical Muslim middle-class family at the back-drop of communal tension prior to the Babri Masjid demolition. The movie follows their day-to-day life about a few months before the Dec 6-th events takes place. The initial few reels are spent on strong character built-up based upon the interaction between the two of the main actors. Naseem, played by Mayuri Kango, is a teenage girl who needs answer to a thousand questions. The Grand-pa, played by Kaifi Aazmi, who is living his last few days amongst his memories. As the tremor of the events at Ayodhya casts its shadows, a simple teenage girl goes through the confusion of trying to understand it all. The brilliance of this movie lays in the amazing simplicity with which director handles the whole script. Nowhere in the movie we have flashing scenes of ravaging communal riots, nor we have high-pitched melodramatic dialouge sparked between the actors. Yet it strongly brings out the terror and anger in the eyes of an average Muslim guy, as the writings on the wall becomes clearer. The different blends of the reactions to this communal tension are aptly given dimension by the different members of the family. While on one end, lies Kaifi Aazmi’s representation of old-school of tolerance, on the other end lies the elder brother’s (played by Salim Shah) hot-headedness that wants eye-for-an-eye revenge. And in between is torned the mom and dad (played by Uttara Baokar and Khulbhusan Kharbanda) who play the indecisive passive roles in the whole chain of events surrounding their daily lives. The whole spectrum is brought forth through the eyes of the teenager Naseem, superbly under acted by a de-glamorized Mayuri Kango. The movie ends with the death of the grand-father’s death on 6-th of Dec, the very day that history will remember for an entirely different reason. Perhaps the death signifies the end of the tolerance of an earlier generation that is steadfastly loosing its value amongst the turbulent times. Sadly this was a last movie for all the three: Syed Mirza as a director, Kaifi Aazmi as an actor and perhaps Mayuri Kango in a lead role. In his last effort of simple yet touching story telling technique involving real life characters, Syed Mirza does leave a mark on his viewer. And maybe simplicity is the sole reason that makes this mark special to last for a lifetime. And therein lays the success of any creativity and its creator.
The Nobel Prize for peacemakers is given to people or organizations that help repair, mend, heal and in general fix, some of the terrible tears that humans make in the fabric of our human society. This mending process was called Tikun by Rabbi Isaac Luria, a 16th century Kabalist, whose philosophy of Timtsum; creation leading to Shevirat HaKalim -broken vessels and a fragmented universe which requires constant fixing, is a favorite of cosmologists. Now more evidence of the ongoing universality of Shevirat HaKalim-nature’s breakdown and repair comes from a 2015 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry; Tomas Lindahl. Scientists had long assumed that DNA was inherently stable. Lindahl’s work showed otherwise, revealing that there were hundreds to thousands of injuries to the genome everyday. Our genetic code was constantly being damaged and broken apart (Shevirat HaKalim). While studying the properties of DNA, Lindahl found, somewhat to his surprise, that DNA is constantly damaged, and that cannot be avoided, so that means DNA has to be repaired all the time -Tikun. Lindahl began looking for signs of the enzymes that were tasked with these repairs. He discovered that the molecular machinery in the cell is hard at work constantly fixing the damage suffered by the delicate DNA molecule. This mechanism, called base excision repair, is able to identify mistakes in the code, pull out the offending piece and replace it with the proper one. Luria said the same thing about the cosmic world 450 years ago, although he was primarily interested in the moral aspects of our human world. Here on Planet Earth, human beings, especially Jews, were the agents responsible for Tikun: the process of constantly doing Mitsvot, which help to fix, mend, repair and heal the terrible fractures in our society’s world. Luria’s basic system is: Shevirat HaKalim, which refers to why the entire world is, by the very nature of its original creation; cracked, fragmented and broken. This is not the result or Adam’s original sin (Paul). Nor is it the result of human activities that are possible because of God’s gift of self conscious free will to humans. (Yetzer HaTov and Yetzer HaRa). The rabbis of the Midrash had already decided that free will demanded both Yetzer HaTov and Yetzer HaRa—selfish rivalry and generous co-operation. The whole of creation, according to Rabbi Isaac Luria, is fractured because it must be. At the beginning of creation, only the total harmony of God’s willful presence existed. When God decided to create space-time and fill it with energy and matter, and to also evolve a multiplicity of conscious and self-conscious life forms; it was necessary to make room for these new tiny wills, who would be separate from their Creator’s will, to exist,. Thus, God contracted the Divine willful presence-Tsimtsum into a point of singularity. Then God radiated and inflated ten Sefirot-vessels in space-time. Had each Sefirah emerged from the preceding Sefirah intact, the universe would have been perfect. But as the universe cooled and expanded the ten vessels were each increasingly unable to contain the super powerful Divine energy. The lower vessels broke open, split asunder, and all the holy sparks that were within scattered as seeds; like the sand on the sea shore and the stars in the heavens. Those holy sparks fell everywhere, in every star, on every planet, and in greater concentrations on those planets where self conscious life forms would evolve. That is why creatures in the image of God evolved — to gather the holy sparks together, no matter where they are hidden, and elevate these holy sparks; and thus help mend the tears in the fabric of each inhabited world, and ultimately of creation itself. Thus, when enough holy sparks have been gathered by each species created in God’s image, the broken vessels will be restored, and Tikun Olam, the repair of the world, awaited for so long, will finally be complete. The goal and purpose of all intelligent creatures in our presently fractured universe is to restore by “the end of days” the unity and wholeness that existed before creation.
DELTA home The families of flowering plants L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz Davidiaceae Takht. ~ Cornaceae, Nyssaceae. Habit and leaf form. Trees. Leaves deciduous; alternate; simple. Lamina entire; broadly ovate; pinnately veined; cross-venulate; cordate. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins dentate. General anatomy. Plants without ‘crystal sand’. Leaf anatomy. The leaf lamina dorsiventral. Hairs present; exclusively glandular (and no 2-armed hairs present). The mesophyll containing crystals. The crystals exclusively solitary-prismatic (only in the spongy mesophyll). Main veins embedded. Minor leaf veins without phloem transfer cells. Axial (stem, wood) anatomy. Cork cambium present; initially superficial. Internal phloem absent. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring. The vessel end-walls scalariform. The parenchyma apotracheal. ‘Included’ phloem absent. Reproductive type, pollination. Plants andromonoecious. Female flowers with staminodes (‘the female-fertile flowers with few to many small staminodes inserted halway up the ovary’ (Airy Shaw 1973)). Gynoecium of male flowers absent. Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in heads. Inflorescences terminal; dense, terminal, pedunculate, globular capitula, each with many scarcely distinct male flowers and a single, obliquely terminal hermaphrodite (or female?) one; with involucral bracts (each capitulum subtended by a pair of large, unequal, drooping, white, petaloid bracts); pseudanthial. Perianth vestigial (perhaps, in the hermaphrodite flowers), or absent (the male flowers consisting of stamens only, the female more or less limited to an ovary and stamens (plus staminodes?)). Androecium in male flowers, 5–6. Androecial members free of one another. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens (in male flowers), or including staminodes (in the terminal, hermaphrodite flower, according to Airy Shaw). Stamens 5–6; filantherous (the filaments long). Anthers dehiscing via longitudinal slits; tetrasporangiate; unappendaged. Pollen grains aperturate; 3 aperturate; colporate. Gynoecium 6–10 carpelled. The pistil 6–9 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; synovarious to synstylovarious; inferior. Ovary 6–9 locular. Epigynous disk absent. Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1 (columnar, exceeding the androecium). Stigmas 6–10 (‘the style with 6–10 branches’); dry type; non-papillate; Group II type. Placentation axile. Ovules 1 per locule; pendulous; epitropous; with ventral raphe; anatropous; unitegmic; more or less crassinucellate. Endothelium differentiated. Endosperm formation cellular. Fruit fleshy; indehiscent; a drupe (pear-shaped, about 3.5 cm long, with granular mesocarp). The drupes with one stone (endocarp bony, longitudinally sulcate, 3–5 locular). Seeds endospermic. Endosperm oily. Embryo well differentiated (rather large). Cotyledons 2. Embryo straight. Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar. Physiology, phytochemistry. Not cyanogenic. Verbascosides not detected. Arbutin absent. Iridoids detected; ‘Route I’ type (+seco). Saponins/sapogenins present and absent. Proanthocyanidins absent. Flavonols present; kaempferol and quercetin. Ellagic acid present. Geography, cytology. Holarctic. Temperate. China. N = 21. Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Tenuinucelli (?). Dahlgren’s Superorder Corniflorae; Cornales. Cronquist’s Subclass Rosidae; Cornales. APG 3 core angiosperms; core eudicot; Superorder Asteranae; Order Cornales (as a synonym of Cornaceae). Species 1. Genera 1; only genus, Davidia. General remarks. See Eyde (1988). Differing from Cornaceae sensu stricto (q.v.) in numerous characters involving perianth, gynoecium, ovules and seed, Davidia exemplifies the well known difficulties in distributing certain Dicot families between Dahlgren’s Araliiflorae and Corniflorae. It is equally hard to assign them with confidence to the higher level groupings Crassinucelli and Tenuinucelli, although the latter evidently represent a major divergence in the Dicot line of descent (cf.Young and Watson 1970, Chase et al. 1993). Illustrations. • Davidia involucrata: Hook. Ic. Pl. Pl. 1961. • Davidia (Chittenden). • Technical details: Davidia (Hutchinson).
0084. The professor decided to try running the fall class with no grades. She knew this would run afoul of school policy. A. Deviance can be a warning signal. B. By rejecting the deviant behavior a community re-emphasizes what is considered "right" and "NORMAL" behavior. C. Tolerance and care for deviant can lead to group solidarity. D. Deviance can give a community or group members chance to examine own behavior and re-affirm common values. E. Deviance can be a way that groups test new ways of doing things — innovation. NEXT: 56
Stretching Your Food Dollar The Healthy Way When choosing foods for optimal nutrition, pick food items that are as close to their natural state as possible. The best choice is fresh, organic foods, but anything that can reduce the amount of cooking or chemicals in your food will be good for your body. Keeping your digestive system regular and functioning properly will lead to greater weight loss and a lower overall body weight in general. Drink plenty of water, eat the recommended amount of fiber and take probiotics to keep the digestive tract healthy. Make sure that you get enough Vitamin-A in your diet. The fat-soluble vitamin aids skin repair. Deficiencies can cause dry, cracked, flaky, infected skin. Foods high in Vitamin-A include spinach, carrots, liver and apricots. Try to avoid artificial Vitamin-A supplements. Taking excessive amounts of the vitamin can have harmful effects. Create your very own fruit smoothies. The smoothies purchased at stores or stands are often loaded with calories. When making something homemade, its nutritional value is all in your control. It is also much simpler to add to your diet. Include fresh or frozen fruit, skim milk and Greek yogurt for a delicious smoothie. Try to get more calcium and vitamin C into your body. Calcium helps your bones to become stronger and a you get older, bones tend to become more brittle. Calcium will help reverse that. Vitamin C can help fight off infections and colds by helping your white blood cells. A great nutritional tip is to make sure you're eating enough carbohydrates. A lot of fad diets vilify carbohydrates and advise that you should cut down on them. Carbohydrates are very important to our bodies because without them, our thinking becomes impaired and we won't have much energy. Try to keep your snacks prepared and in a spot that you can easily get to them. When you buy your snacks, such as fruits and vegetables, cut them up and store them in containers. This will give your snack the convenience of a prepackaged snack. Instead of grabbing for a quick bag of chips, you will already have quick fruits and veggies on hand. Unless you are diabetic, avoid eating two to three hours before you go to bed. Do something to take your mind off food like putting away leftovers, washing the dishes, or cleaning your teeth. Finish your evening with a nice cup of herbal tea. will help you to relax and get to sleep. Baked foods are much better than fried when analyzing nutritional value. Baked foods are generally better for your body and come with a much lower count of calories, oils and carbohydrates. Also, you will feel a lot more energetic during the day if you consume quality baked foods on a daily basis. Always carry healthy snacks around with you. That is a good idea because most of the time people cheat on diets because healthier options are not available to them at the time. Keeping nuts, dried fruits, sugar free candy and sliced vegetables around will satisfy any cravings you get. Eat lots of vegetables every day. is collagen good for you urban , the lettuce leaf on your hamburger or the carrot you chew as a snack - all count. Definitely include dark green leaf vegetables and legumes, as they are excellent sources of different vitamins and minerals. Go easy with dressings, toppings, butter and mayonnaise because they have a high fat content. Believe it or not, salad is not always your best bet when it comes to dining out. Fast food restaurants and chain eateries often offer up side salads that reach into the thousand calorie range - and that's before you add dressing and croutons. If you are at a restaurant and the salad still looks like your best bet, ask your waiter to bring out the dressing on the side. This ensures that you will not be forced into consuming an unnecessarily generous amount of dressing. Better yet, opt for fat-free dressings. Salad is a perfect way to eat right. Salads are not just lettuce with some dressing. You can make marvelous salads with greens, veggies, fruits, nuts, cold meats, pasta, grains and more. Use your imagination. Salads can be cold or hot, and they make a great, filling main dish. There are many excellent, healthy salad dressing recipes you can try. Include unique salad ingredients that you haven't tried in the past. Put in some nuts or berries, or mix in a little peanut butter! Do whatever it takes to make your salad taste delicious while still being nutritious. Always make breakfast a part of your day. Your body has gone without fuel for the entire night, and skipping breakfast is like pressing down the gas pedal on a car with an empty gas tank. Make sure your breakfast includes protein and the right amount of carbs to give you enough fuel to start your day right. 13 Easy Hair Care Tips to Treat Dry and Damaged Curls If dealing with dry and damaged straight hair is difficult, treating damaged curly hair is also a herculean task. After all the heat styling, colouring and exposure to pollution, curls lose their sheen and strength even more. Make sure to use sharp scissors or it will lead to even more damage. 13 Easy Hair Care Tips to Treat Dry and Damaged Curls When dining out, you should choose to eat meats that are not breaded or fried. These foods will be loaded with grease and fats. A healthier alternative is to choose meats that are grilled, broiled or baked. Just about any meat can be cooked in the healthier way and it will taste much better too. Cut down on red meat by serving more seafood. You may love red meat, but eating it every day is not in your best interest when it comes to nutrition. Focusing more on serving grilled fish, clams or tuna is a great way to cut down on calories, while still having meals that contain protein. While fried foods may be packed with lots of flavor, they also have a ton of things in them that are not good for you, like fat and calories. Trying collagen benefits northrop and baking them instead, but make sure to add lots of herbs and spices so you will not miss the fact that it is not fried. By utilizing the tips you've read, you'll definitely be able to work towards proper nutrition. When you make healthy life changes, you'll look and feel better, and you'll continue to eat healthy foods. Leave a Reply
Wednesday, January 8, 2014 Gene Therapy for Cancer Gene therapy for cancer Being one of the potent killers of mankind; cancer has no known, completely effective cure. Although treatments aimed at managing cancer and reducing mortality have been around for some time and have improved over the years; till now, the best prescription for cancer cure is early detection, something that is left to wild chance, because most cancers are asymptomatic. This calls for preventive screening, but this is neither foolproof nor riskless. The new line of approach One approach that could offer new hope for cancer treatment is gene therapy. It is not a generalized set of medicines or treatments; rather, it is a new approach that looks at the treatment of cancer in a different way altogether. What is it? Gene therapy can be defined as a set of records and databases with which to identify treatments specific to the individual's genetic setup. In order to understand this approach, one has to get a basic understanding of how cancer cells work. Cancer usually starts with a single cell. It then grows within the body by multiplying. This multiplication is done by a process called mutation, during which it not only divides indefinitely; it also renders the immune system powerless in stopping it. This is because it is so similar to the healthy genes that the immune system cannot distinguish between it and healthy genes. A set of records Understanding the similarity between the malignant and healthy genes is the key to stopping the growth of cancer cells, because it helps understand many aspects about the mutation, such as how it is likely to grow, how it responds to various treatments, and so on. Gene therapy aids this process significantly by compiling and matching the patient's gene records. These records help doctors prescribe the right kind of treatment, based on a study of the gene records. This is likely to make treatment more targeted and specific and more importantly, effective. It prevents the patient from being subjected to generalized treatments that are often harsh and come with many side effects. Targeted treatment Scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have identified two genes that are what may be termed rogue genes in that they prevent treatment from working. Spotting these two genes is an important premise to coming out with tailor-made, effective treatments. This can be carried out with a simple toolkit. Multi-pronged approach In patients undergoing this line of detection; genetic material such as DNA or RNA, which improve the body's ability to fight malignant cells, are injected into the body through a number of approaches. One of these is to inject these DNA so that they target at the malignant cells and destroy them in a process being labeled 'suicide genes', meaning making the malignant cells destroy themselves. One other approach is to inject DNA or RNA on healthy genes to make them stronger and resistant to future attacks. Yet another is to make existent cancer cells stronger and more sensitive to chemotherapy, thus drastically improving the success rate of treatments like chemo. Bright promise It may be a while before people afflicted by cancer can receive the full benefits of this line of treatment, because most of these are in the trial stages and will require approvals and need to be weighed for risk-benefit analyses. Yet, that a new and revolutionary line of treatment is on the horizon cannot be denied.
University of Manchester (UM) researchers have found that a graphene membrane, which is impermeable to all gases and liquids, can easily allow protons to pass through it. The discovery could revolutionize fuel cells and other hydrogen-based technologies because they require a barrier that only allow protons – hydrogen atoms stripped off their electrons – to pass through. Protons Passing Through a Membrane in an Artists Rendering. Image Credit: The University of Manchester. Click image for the largest view. In something of a reach they team notes graphene membranes could be used to sieve hydrogen gas out of the atmosphere, where it is present in minute quantities, creating the possibility of electric generators fueled by an atmosphere component that would otherwise most likely fly off into space. The team’s paper has been published in the journal Nature. On background, the one atom thick graphene material, renown for its barrier properties, has a number of uses in applications such as corrosion-proof coatings and impermeable packaging, was first isolated and explored in 2004 by a team at UM. The graphene membrane is good stuff. For example, it been suggested that it takes the lifetime of the universe for hydrogen, the smallest of all atoms, to pierce a graphene monolayer. We’ll see someday. But for now a group led by Sir Andre Geim tested whether protons are also repelled by graphene. The team fully expected that protons would be blocked, as existing theory predicted as little proton permeation as it would be for hydrogen. Its a good thing they team checked. In spite of the pessimistic prognosis, the researchers found that protons pass through the ultra-thin crystals surprisingly easily, especially at elevated temperatures and if the films were covered with catalytic nanoparticles such as platinum. The discovery makes monolayers of graphene, and its sister material boron nitride, attractive for possible uses as proton-conducting membranes, which are at the heart of modern fuel cell technology. Fuel cells use oxygen and hydrogen as a fuel and convert the input chemical energy directly into electricity. Without membranes that allow an exclusive flow of protons but prevent other species to pass through, this technology would not exist. Despite being well-established, fuel-cell technology requires much more improvement in upfront coast and replacement to make it more widely used. One of the major problems is a fuel crossover through the existing proton membranes, which reduces their efficiency and durability. The UM research suggests that the use of graphene or monolayer boron nitride can allow the existing membranes to become thinner and more efficient, with less fuel crossover and poisoning. This can boost competitiveness of fuel cells. The UM team also demonstrated that their one atom thick membranes can be used to extract hydrogen from a humid atmosphere. They hypothesize that such harvesting can be combined together with fuel cells to create a mobile electric generator that is fuelled simply by the hydrogen present in air. Marcelo Lozada-Hidalgo, a PhD student and corresponding author of this paper, said: “When you know how it should work, it is a very simple setup. You put a hydrogen-containing gas on one side, apply small electric current and collect pure hydrogen on the other side. This hydrogen can then be burned in a fuel cell. We worked with small membranes, and the achieved flow of hydrogen is of course tiny so far. But this is the initial stage of discovery, and the paper is to make experts aware of the existing prospects. To build up and test hydrogen harvesters will require much further effort.” Dr Sheng Hu, a postdoctoral researcher and the first author in this work, added: “It looks extremely simple and equally promising. Because graphene can be produced these days in square meter sheets, we hope that it will find its way to commercial fuel cells sooner rather than later.” Its pretty impressive news right of the start. The paper abstract includes study of hexagonal boron nitride that passes the protons quite well at room temperature. As temperatures climb the graphene monolayer takes over the lead. Both benefit from catalysts added to there surfaces. That leaves the question of all the possible catalysts. Some folks are gong to be really busy because this technology offers a lot of potential. 1 Comment so far 1. Kunkiw Lee on May 9, 2017 3:00 PM I am glad much. I will learn more by your kindness. Thank you. Name (required) Email (required) Speak your mind
Monday, April 15, 2013 More About Constructible Numbers and Figures This series of posts deals with determining which geometric figures are "constructible", that is, can be formed using only a compass and straightedge. The set of constructible real numbers, or those numbers whose absolute value is equal to the length of a line segment constructible with compass and straightedge, has already been shown to be of the type called a field. In addition, this field contains all of the rational numbers. But what others, if any, does it contain? It may be noted that the circle has not featured in any of the constructions thus far. In fact, by use of a circle, one can construct a segment whose length is the (positive) square root of that of a given segment. The construction is illustrated below. A segment of length a1/2 is constructed by first drawing segments of length 1 and a on end (1). Then, a circle is drawn with the combined segment (of length 1 + a) as a diameter (2). Finally, a perpendicular is erected from the diameter at the point of intersection of the two segments to the circle, and two other segments are drawn connecting the point of intersection of the perpendicular and the circle to the endpoints of the diameter (3). The resulting figure has three triangles, the largest partitioned into the two smaller by the perpendicular. One need only observe that the large triangle is a right triangle, as one of its angles subtends a semicircular arc, and since this large triangle shares a side and an angle with each of the two smaller right triangles, it is similar to each. The two smaller right triangles are then also perpendicular to each other, and so the ratio of 1 to the length of the perpendicular must be equivalent to the ratio of the same length to a. The length of the perpendicular is thus the square root of a. Thus the field of constructible numbers includes any number that can be derived from a finite sequence of additions, subtractions, multiplications, divisions, and square roots from the unit length 1. In fact, these are all of the constructible numbers. To see this, note first that the construction of segments in the plane involves only the intersections of lines and/or circles. The general equation for a line is ax + by = c, a linear equation, and the general equation for a circle is (x - h)2 + (y - k)2 = r2. It is clear that in solving for the intersection of these two types of functions, the highest degree one could encounter for the intersection points to satisfy is 2, i.e., a quadratic. Finally, by the quadratic formula and the distance formula, which each involve only square roots, the most general type of number one can construct can be seen to be one involving nested square roots, a conclusion in agreement with the previous result. To illustrate the power of this new concept, we know turn to some applications. First, we relate our result to the geometric construction problems posed at the beginning of this series of posts: Example 1: The problem of "squaring the circle" was shown to require the constructibility of the length π1/2. This condition is equivalent to the constructibility of π and is therefore impossible, as π is what is called a transcendental irrational number; there is no polynomial with integer (or rational, by extension) coefficients with π as a root. Example 2: "Doubling the cube" was shown to require the constructibility of a segment of length 21/3. This problem is impossible as well, because though there is a polynomial with this number as a root, namely x3 - 2 = 0, this polynomial is of degree 3, not 2, and cannot be factored in any way to reduce its degree. Please note that even though a number such as 21/4 is the root of the degree 4 polynomial x4 - 2 = 0, the substitution y = x2 reduces it to two polynomials of degree 2, and this number is thus constructible. Example 3: To illustrate the applicability of this concept to figures that actually are constructible, consider the equilateral triangle. Since all three sides are of the same (arbitrary) length, the ability to draw an equilateral triangle depends on its angles, all of which are 60°. To equate the construction of an angle to the construction of a segment, we use trigonometry: The above figure illustrates that the constructbility of the angle 60° is equivalent to that of the segments of lengths cos(60°) = 1/2 and sin(60°) = 31/2/2. If they are given, a right triangle can be drawn with legs of these lengths, thereby giving the angle. Since 31/2/2 involves only a square root, it is constructible, and 1/2 obviously is. Thus the equilateral triangle can be drawn with compass and straightedge as well. The problem of constructibility played a greater role in ancient times than it does today. The standards that constitute "existence" for a mathematical object, though still debated, are much looser than in the time of the Ancient Greek mathematicians. For example, we now accept cubic curves, for example, as perfectly reasonable mathematical objects, even though they cannot be constructed with compass and straightedge (in fact, an arbitary point on one of these curves may not be constructible). The problem now mainly serves as a mathematical curiosity, and as an example of how one can calculate the power, in this case the constructing power, of certain systems in mathematics. Sources: A First Course in Abstract Algebra by John B. Fraleigh, Constructible Number on Wikipedia Fahad Naseer said... John Lepsky said... I don't believe that this field contains all of the rational numbers... but thank's for post.. Louis said... Consider any rational number p/q, where p and q are (we shall assume positive) integers. Copying our unit length, 1, respectively p and q times yields segments of lengths p and q. Using the division procedure outlined in the first post,, one can construct a segment of length p/q, so the field does contain all rational numbers.
14/21: Lung alveolar#80302-2.6 Lung alveolar#80302-2.6 Transmission electron microscope image of a thin section cut through the alveolar sac region of the lung(mouse). The alveolar cell shown has vesicles which contain surfactant, a macroaggregate of phosolipids and proteins which help with breathing. The surfactant is released by exocytosis and forms a thin monolayer on the wall of the alveoli. This layer can't be seen in a TEM image, because no fixative adequately preserves it, but it can be seen inside the surfactant vesicles in the cytoplasm. This layer helps to reduce surface tension, thereby preventing collapse of the alveoli during exhalation and reduces the energy needed during inhalation. The capillaries contain red blood cells. The capillary lining consists of long, thin endothelial cells, connected by tight junctions. Louisa Howard, Michael Binder mammalian, TEM, lung, capillary, blood cell
Sunday, March 23, 2014 Effective Java Notes Creating and Destroying Objects Item 1: Consider static factory methods instead of constructors. i. Can have descriptive names, unlike constructors. ii. Not required to create new object, each time they are called. iii. Can return any subtype of their return type. iv. Reduce the verbosity of creating parameterized types. (Obviated by diamond in Java 7). i. Classes with only static factory methods without non-private constructors cannot be sub-classed. ii. Not readily distinguishable from other static methods. Follow conventional names like valueOf, of, getInstance, newInstance, getType, and newType. Item 2: Consider a builder when faced with many constructor parameters. Consider creation of a class with a number of optional parameters. There are two traditional approaches for this task. The first involves telescoping constructors. They are succinct, but hard to read and follow as the number of parameters increase. The second approach is to use the Javabeans pattern of a nullary constructor followed by a series of setter methods being called. This has three disadvantages, namely: i. Excessively verbose ii. Since construction is now spread across several calls, construction is in a inconsistent state in between. iii. Object cannot be made immutable anymore. To overcome the disadvantages of both the approaches above, we should use the Builder pattern with the following three steps. i. The client calls a factory to get a builder object first. ii. Then all setter methods are called on this builder object to set each optional parameter in a fluent fashion. iii. Finally the client calls the parameter-less build() method on the builder to get an immutable instance. Note that this simulates the optional parameter setting available in Python. Item 3: Enforce the singleton property with a private constructor or an enum type. Making a class a singleton can make it hard to test its clients as it is not possible to substitute a mock implementation for a singleton unless it implements an interface to serve as its type. There have two traditional approaches for declaring a singleton. In both, we rely on a private constructor and exporting a public static member. i. In the first approach, the member is a final field accessed directly as className.fieldName. ii. In the second approach, the member is obtained through a static factory. Given that modern JVM would inline the call to the static factory, the two approaches are equally efficient. The second approach however is more amenable to change to say threadlocal behavior rather than singleton. The traditional approaches above suffer from two deficiencies. i. A priviledged client can reflectively invoke the private constructor with the aid of setAccessible method. So you must ensure that the constructor throws an exception if a second instance is created. ii. To make the class serializable, it is not sufficient to merely state “implements Serializable”. Declare all instance fields transient and provide a readResolve() method returning the same instance each time. The “best way to implement a singleton” property is use a single-element enum. This solves the serialization problem for free. Item 4: Enforce non-instantiability with a private constructor For utility classes, it is desirable to enforce non-instantiability. Marking it as abstract allows the creation of a subclass that can be instantiated. So it is preferable to put in a private constructor. To prevent a method within the class from calling the constructor, throw an assertion error inside the private constructor. Item 5: Avoid creating unnecessary objects. Since you can always re-use immutable objects, prefer String s = “dummy” to String s = new String(“dummy”); Boolean.valueOf(String) is preferable to Boolean(String) constructor. Prefer static factories to enable re-use. Use static initializers to set mutable objects that would not be changed later. Item 6: Eliminate obsolete object references. Memory leaks in garbage-collected languages caused by unintentional object retentions are insidious. Null-ing out object references should be the exception rather than the norm. Whenever a class manages its own memory, be alert for memory leaks. If the desired lifetime of a cache is determined by external references to the key, consider using a WeakHashMap. Another common source of memory leaks is listeners and other callbacks. If you have an API where clients can register themselves and do not de-register themselves, then you have a potential for a memory leak. Use a heap profiler to catch memory leaks. Item 7: Avoid finalizers Finalizers are unpredicatable, dangerous and generally unnecessary. Do not do anything time critical in a finalizer as the JVM does not guarantee when a finalizer would be called. Do not depend on a finalizer to update critical persistent state as the JVM does not guarantee that a finalizer would be called. There is a severe performance penalty for using finalizers. Provide an explicit termination method and ask clients to invoke it. Use this in conjunction with try-finally blocks. The finalizer can act as a safety net in case the owner forgets to call the explicit termination method. In this case, the finalizer must log a warning if it finds that the resource has not yet been terminated. If you need to associate a finalizer with a public, non-final class, then use a finalizer guardian, so that finalization can take place even if a subclass finalizer fails to invoke super.finalize(). Methods Common to All Objects Item 8: Obey the general contract when overriding equals. Do not override equals if any of the following conditions apply: i. Each instance of the class in inherently unique. ii. You don’t care whether the class provides a logical equality test. iii. A superclass has overridden equals and the super class behavior is appropriate for this class as well. iv. The class is private or package-private and you are certain that its equals method will never be invoked. The equals method must be reflexive, symmetric, transitive, consistent. It should return false on being passed a null argument. There is no way to extend an instantiable class and add a value component while preserving the equals contract. Do not write an equals method that depends on unreliable resources. A simple recipe for equals method is as follows i. Use the == operator to check if the argument is a reference to this object. ii. Use the instanceof operator to check if the argument has the correct type. iii. Cast the argument to the correct type. iv. For each significant field in the class, check if that field of the argument matches the corresponding field of the object. Don’t substitute another type for Object in the equals declaration. Item 9: Always override hashCode when you override equals. Equal objects must have equal hashcodes. Hence you must override hashcode in every class that overrides equals. The text also provides a rudimentary approach to writing a hashCode method; but within RiskFocus code, we have been using Apache library’s HashCodeBuilder. Item 10: Always override toString. Providing a good toString implementation makes your class pleasant to use. When practical, the toString method should return all of the interesting information contained in the object. Document the format of your toString representation or mention that clients should not rely on the format remaining unchanged. Provide programmatic access to all the information contained in the value returned by toString. Item 11: Override clone judiciously. Cloneable represents a highly atypical use of an interface. If a class implements Cloneable, we are modifying the behavior of a protected method (ie clone) on a superclass (ie Object). If you override the clone method in a non-final class, then you should return an object obtained by invoking super.clone. A class that implements Cloneable is expected to provide a public clone method. In order to make a class cloneable, it may be necessary to remove final modifiers from some fields. Make sure you do a deep copy of your mutable fields. A final approach to object copying is to provide a copy constructor or copy factory. Item 12: Consider implementing Comparable. The Comparable interface has a sole method named compareTo. Implementing Comparable allows operating your class within the ambit of many Collections in a useful manner. Try to make your compareTo consistent with equals. There is no way to extend an instantiable class with a value component while preserving the compareTo contract. Use and instead of the signs < and >. Remember if A is a large positive int and B is a large negative int, then A-B would overflow and return a negative integer. Classes and Interfaces Item 13: Minimize the accessibility of classes and interfaces. Make each class or member as inaccessible as possible. Instance fields should never be public. Classes with public mutable fields are not thread-safe. Never have a static final array as public since non-empty arrays are always mutable. Either clone the array or use Collections.unmodifiableList(Arrays.asList()) method. Item 14: In public classes, use accessor methods not public fields. Provide accessor(getter) and mutator(setter) methods for all public classes. For private or package-private, you may or may not provide accessors/mutators. Item 15: Minimize mutability. To make a class immutable, follow the following five rules i. Do not provide any methods to change the object’s state. ii. Ensure that the class cannot be extended – consider putting a static factory instead of a public constructor. iii. Make all fields final. iv. Make all fields private. v. Ensure exclusive access to any mutable components received in constructor through defensive copying. In the imperative or procedural approach, one provides methods to alter the state of the object. In the functional approach, methods return the result of applying a function to their operand without modifying it. Immutable objects are simple and thread-safe. Share freely and cache frequently used instances. Immutable objects are great building blocks for other objects. They are good for keys in maps. The disadvantage lies in the creation of a new object for each distinct value. Consider providing a method covering complicated sequences on operations on your immutable object. Then internally you can convert to a mutable object, make the transformations and finally create the new immutable object just once. Lazy initialization should be used in hashCode computation here. Limit the mutability of classes as far as possible. Make every field final unless there is a reason to make it non-final. Item 16: Favor composition over inheritance. Inheritance violates encapsulation. Have a wrapper class if need be that holds the class intended earlier as base class and forwards requests to it. Compare this with the decorator pattern. Since the wrapped object does not know of its wrapper, a reference to itself would elude the wrapper. This is called the SELF problem and precludes the use of the wrapper mechanism in many callback scenarios. Class B should extend class A iff B is an A. Item 17: Design and document for inheritance or else prohibit it. The class must document its self-use of overridable methods. Preferably, write private helper methods and completely eliminate the use of public/protected overridable methods. You must provide hooks into the class’s internal workings in the form of judiciously chosen protected methods. The only way to test a class designed for inheritance is to write at least three subclasses and test. Constructors (as well as clone and readObject) methods must not invoke overridable methods. Implementing Cloneable and Serializable places considerable burden on developers subclassing the given class. Prohibit subclassing in classes not designed for inheritance. Item 18: Prefer interfaces to abstract classes. Interfaces are usually the best way to implement a type. Their advantages are as follows: i. Existing classes can easily be retrofitted to implement a new interface. ii. Interfaces are ideal for defining mixins. Mixin is a type that a class can implement in addition to its primary type to show that it can provide additional behaviour. iii. Interfaces allow the construction of non-hierarchial type frameworks. If you use abstract classes, you risk a combinatorial explosion of classes to take care of each choice. iv. Interfaces enable safe, powerful functionality enhancements via the wrapper class idiom. Provide a skeletal implementation class to go with each non-trivial interface that you export. Check the Adapter pattern in GoF book using an anonymous inner class to convert an int array to an Integer list. The class implementing an interface can forward invocations of interface methods to a contained instance of a private inner class that extends the skeletal implementation. This technique is called simulated multiple inheritance. Abstract classes have one advantage over interfaces in that they are easier to evolve. In general, once an interface is published, it is not possible to change it any more. Item 19: Use interfaces only to define types. To avoid writing out the constants, some programmers put in their constants in interfaces. This is the so-called constant interface anti-pattern. Instead place them in a utility class and use the static import feature. Item 20: Prefer class hierarchies to tagged classes. One sometimes sees a class whose instances come in two or more flavors. These are handled by multiple switch statements and by having data corresponding to each flavor within the same class. Such classes are called tagged classes. These are verbose, error-prone and inefficient. Replace with an abstract class with the two flavors constituting separate subclasses. Item 21: Use function objects to represent strategies. A state-less class with only one method can represent a function object. The functionality of function-pointers is replicated via the Strategy interface in Java. Declare an interface to represent a strategy and a class that implements this interface for each concrete strategy. If the strategy is used once, use an anonymous inner class. Else put it as a private static member in a class and export via a static final field whose type is the Strategy interface. Item 22: Favor static member classes over non-static. A nested class (a class defined inside another class) is classified into static member, non-static member, anonymous and local classes. Static member classes are used as public helper classes. If you declare a member class that does not require access to an enclosing instance, always put the static modifier. Anonymous classes are used in function objects, process objects, and in static factory methods. Local classes are used in place of anonymous classes, if the class instantiation is done from multiple locations. Item 23: Don't use raw types in new code. For details on generics, see the online tutorial by Langer and read the book by Naftalin & Wadler. When you write just "List", you have opted out of generic type checking. In contrast, a List specifies that you intend to allow any object to be inserted into the list. The difference is not just academic; you can pass a List to a parameter that expects List, but not to a parameter that expects List. Suppose the element is unknown and does not matter. Even then do not use raw types. Instead use the wildcard ? as in List. You cannot put any element other than null into a Collection. Since generic type information is erased at run-time, there are two places where raw types must be used. i. Use raw types in class literals, such as List.class. ii. Use raw types while using the instanceOf operator. To reiterate, Set is a parametrized type representing a set that can contain objects of any type. Set is a wildcard type representing a set that can contain only objects of unknown type. Set is a raw type, which opts out of the generic type system. The first two are safe; the third is not. Item 24: Eliminate unchecked warnings. Eliminate every unchecked warning you can. If you cannot eliminate a warning and are convinced that your code is actually type-safe, then suppress the warning and add a comment proving your assumption. Always use the SuppressWarnings annotation on the smallest scope possible. It is illegal to put a SuppressWarnings annotation on a return statement. Create a local variable to hold the return value and annotate that with the SuppressWarning annotation. Item 25: Prefer lists to arrays. Arrays are covariant, i.e. if Sub is a subtype of Super, then Sub[] is also a subtype of Super[]. This leads to run-time errors if one is not careful. Object[] arr = new Long[1] ; arr[0] = "dummyString"; This code above throws an ArrayStoreException. Generics are invariant; so problems like the one above are caught at compile-time itself. Arrays are reified; ie they know and enforce their element types at runtime. Generics in contrast are implemented by erasure for reasons of Java code migration compatibility. An implication of this is that arrays and generics do not mix well. As an example, new List[], new E[] are illegal expressions. Technically, we say that List, List and E are non-reifiable since their run-time representation carries less information than their compile-time representation. The only parametrized types that are reifiable are unbounded wildcard types, such as List and Map. There are two mistakes with the code given at the bottom of Page 121. In the for-loop, you should have snapshot and not list. It is then that you would get the internal locking. Secondly, prior to Java 1.5, there was no for-each loop. So the code claimed to be written in pre-Java 1.5 code should have the old-style iterator. To remove errors/warnings coming about by mixing arrays and generics, consider replacing arrays with lists. Item 26: Favor generic types. You cannot create a Stack, but can create a Stack. Java does not support lists natively; so some generic types such as ArrayList must be implemented atop arrays. Item 27: Favor generic methods. Remember that the order in which the set's elements are printed out is implementation-dependent. To ease writing of parametrized type instance creation code, the author recommends a static factory. We get the same benefit by invoking Lists or other appropriate class from org.apache.commons. or library. Recursive type bound refers to code like "T extends Comparable". This refers to all types that can be compared to another instance of their own type. Item 28: Use bounded wildcards to increase API flexibility. A type does not extend itself; yet it is a subtype of itself. A common mnemonic is PECS or producer-extends, consumer-super. Do not use wildcard types as return types. It would force clients also to use wildcard code. If a user of a class has to think about wildcard types, there is probably something wrong with the class's API. When invoking a method, you might have to something explicitly mention the type parameter. Example, Union.union(integers, doubles). Comparables and comparators are always consumers in the PECS scheme. Hence, you should always use Comparable over Comparable. The same holds true for Comparator as well. If a type parameter appears only once in a method declaration, replace it with a wildcard. Consider the case of swapping two elements in a list. If the list element is declared as a List, then you can get the element out of the list; but you cannot put it back. To circumvent this problem, have a private helper method for wildcard capture. This private helper is a generic method that would deduce the type of the generics being passed in. See Pg 140 for an example. Item 29: Consider type-safe heterogenous containers. Given Class type as an input argument to a method, the method can return type.cast(someMap.get(type)). The someMap is defined as a Map, Object>. Such a map is called a type-safe heterogenous container. When a class literal is passed among methods to communicate both compile-time and runtime type information, it is called a type token. The use of type.cast above is called dynamic casting. If you are using either third-party code or legacy code that you suspect of not using generics, consider wrapping your collections with Collection.checked methods. Example would be Set setOfInts = new HashSet(); setOfInts = Collections.checkedSet(setOfInts, Integer.class); Now even if someone copied a reference of setOfInts to a plain Set-instance, they would not be able to insert non-integer items into it. Enums and Annotations Item 30: Use enums instead of int constants. Using int/string to simulate enums is called the int/string enum pattern. It is always a bad idea. int enums are compile-time constants; and it is not very helpful to have numbers printed out while debugging. In other languages like C/C++, enums are essentially int values. But in Java, they are full-fledged classes. Look at Langer's FAQ to understand Enum>. Enum types provide compile-time type safety. Each type has its own namespace. To associate data with enum constants, declare instance fields and write a constructor that takes the data and stores it in the fields. If you want to associate a different behavior with each instance, then declare an abstract method in the enum type, and then override it with a conreate method for each constant in a constant-specific class body. Such methods are called constant-specific method implementation. Consider including a from-string method on your enum types. Enums should not switch on their values to share code. Instead use the strategy enum method. Switches on enums are good for augmenting external enums with constant-specific behaviour. Item 31: Use instance fields instead of ordinals. Never derive a value associated with an enum from its ordinal; store it in an instance field. Ordinal would change if you re-order your instances or include additional ones in the middle. Item 32: Use EnumSet instead of bit fields. The EnumSet class can efficiently represent sets of values drawn from a single enum type. Use EnumSet.of(YourEnumName.A, YourEnumName.B). Just because an enumerated type is used in sets, there is no reason to represent it in bit fields. If you wrap it in Collections.unmodifiableSet, it would become immutable but would entail a discernible performance cost. Item 33: Use EnumMap instead of ordinal indexing. Instead of using ordinal(), use an EnumMap or a nested EnumMap. Item 34: Emulate extensible enums with interfaces. Have your enum type implement an interface. You can emulate an extensible enum by making the new enum also implement the same interface. & InterfaceName> refers to a type that is both an enum-type as well as implementing an interface. To access the enumConstants from a class-name, use the getEnumConstants() method. Item 35: Prefer annotations to naming patterns. Annotations often need meta-annotations like @Retention and @Target. A marker annotation has no parameters. Item 36: Consistently use the override annotation. You should use the Override annotation on every method declaration you believe to override a superclass declaration. Item 37: Use marker interfaces to define types. If you want to define a type that that does not have any new methods associated with it, then use a marker interface. If you want to mark program elements other than classes/interfaces, or allow for the possibility of adding more information to the marker in the future, or fit the marker into a framework making heavy use of annotations, then use a marker annotation. Item 38: Check parameters for validity. At the start of methods, check parameters for validity. For public methods, document the exceptions thrown using the @throws javadoc tag. The exception would typically be an IllegalArgumentException, IndexOutOfBoundsException or NullPointerException. For non-public methods, check parameters using a series of assertions. Unlike normal validity checks, asserts throw an AssertionError if they fail. Further, they have no cost and no effect unless you enable them by passing -ea to the java interpreter. In constructors in particular, one must always check the validity of the parameters passed. Item 39: Make defensive copies when needed. You must program defensively, with the assumption that the clients of your class will do their best to destroy its invariants. If you want to create an immutable class, make sure to make a defensive coy of each mutable parameter in the constructor and set it then only to the field declared as final. Defensive copies are made before checking the validity of parameters and further, the validity check is performed on the copies rather than the originals. This protects the class against changes to the parameters from another thread during the window of vulnerability between the time of parameters being checked and parameters being copied. Violating this principle leads to the so-called TOCTOU or time-of-check/time-of-use attack. Do not use the clone method to make a defensive copy of a parameter whose type is subclassable by untrusted parties. In your accessors, return defensive copies of mutable internal fields. You can use clone here however. To avoid thinking about defensive copying, consider using immutable objects whereever possible. Item 40: Design method signatures carefully. Choose method names carefully. Follow naming convention of package over general naming convention picked up elsewhere. Don't go overboard in providing convenience methods. Avoid long parameter lists, especially if they are identically typed. To ameliorate the problem, there are three ways: i. Break up method into multiple methods. ii. Create helper classes to hold groups of parameters. iii. Adapt the Builder pattern from object construction to method invocation. For parameter types, favor interfaces over classes. Prefer two-element enum types to boolean parameters. Item 41: Use overloading judiciously. The choice of which overloading to invoke is made at compile time. Selection among overloaded methods is static, while selection among overridden methods is dynamic. Never export two overloadings with the same number of parameters. Do not overload a method with varargs. For constructors, the option of not overloading is often not present. There, consider using static factories. In the List implementation, there are two overloading of the remove method. remove(int i) removes the element from position i. remove(E e) removes the element e of type E with which the generic List was instantiated. Now when E is Integer (ie boxed version of int), there is possibility of confusion. remove((Integer) i) and remove(i) behave differently for int i. In the String class, valueOf(char[]) and valueOf(Object) do completely different things. This is a mistake in design. Item 42: Use varargs judiciously. Varargs or variable arity methods were added to Java in release 1.5. If your method requires a minimum of one argument, use "int arg1, int.. args" instead of "int.. args". Dont retrofit every method that has a final array parameter;use varargs only when a call really operates on a variable-length sequence of values. Note that varargs has a performance penalty as it causes internally an array allocation and initialization. Item 43: Return empty arrays or collections, not nulls. To return an array, use "return someList.toArray(new Type[])". To return an empty list, use Collections.emptyList(). There is no reason ever to return null from an array or collection-valued method instead of returning an empty array or collection. Returning null forces the client of the code to separately check for the null. Item 44: Write doc comments for all exposed API elements. To document your API properly, you must precede every exported class, interface, constructor, method and field declaration with a doc comment. The doc comment for a method must state what a method does, not how it does it. Mention pre-conditions, post-conditions, and side-effects. Describe thread-safety of the class as well. Use @param, @return and @throws tags. You can use HTML tags in your comment. Use @code instead of because it eliminates the need to escape HTML metacharacters. The first sentence of each doc comment becomes the summary description of the element. No two members or constructors should have the same summary description. When documenting a generic type or method, be sure to document all type parameters. When documenting an enum type, be sure to document the constants as well as the type and all public methods. When documenting an annotation type, be sure to document any members as well as the type itself. General Programming Item 45: Minimize the scope of local variables. The most powerful technique for minimizing the scope of a local variable is to declare it where it is first used. Nearly every local variable initializer should contain an initializer. Prefer for loop to whie loops. Keep methods small and focussed. Item 46: Prefer for-each loops to traditional for loops. The traditional for loop using an iterator should be used only for filtering (remove list elements), transforming (replacing list elements) and parallel iteration (traversing multiple collections). For any group of elements, consider implementing Iterable. Item 47: Know and use the libraries. For example, if you want a random number, use Random.nextInt() rather than trying to cook up a pseudo-random generator. Every programmer must know the contents of three packages - java.lang, java.util and Within java.util, the Collections framework and concurrent subpackage are of particular importance. Item 48: Avoid float and double if exact answers are required. The float and double types are particularly ill-suited for monetary calculations. Use BigDecimal, int or long instead. float cannot represent any negative power of 10 correctly. Item 49: Prefer primitive types to boxed primitives. There are three differences between the primitives and the boxed primitives. i. Primitives only have their values, boxed primitives have their identities distinct from values. ii. Boxed primitive have only non-functional value - null. iii. Primitives are generally time and space efficient as compared to boxed primitives. Applying the == operator to boxed primitives is almost always wrong. When you mix primitives and boxed primitives in a single operation, the boxed primitives is auto-unboxed. Beware of throwing an accidental NullPointerException in this auto-unboxing. Item 50: Avoid strings where other types are more appropriate. Strings are more cumbersome, less flexible, slower and error-prone than other types, if they are used inappropriately. Do not use strings in place of primitive types, enums and aggregate types. Capability refers to an unforgeable key, such as the key used internally in ThreadLocal to store your object against each thread. Strings should not be used for capabilities. Item 51: Beware the performance of string concatenation. Since strings are immutable, concatenating two strings requires the contents of both strings to be copied. This implies that using the string concatenation operator repeatedly to concatenate n strings requires time quadratic in n. Use the unsynchronized StringBuilder instead. StringBuffer is now deprecated. Use character arrays, if need be. Item 52: Refer to objects by their interfaces. If appropriate interface types exist, then parameters, return values, variables, and fields should all be declared using interface types. There are three scenarios in which you would not use an interface. i. For Value classes like String, Random, there is no interface. ii. For Class-based framework, use the base class as there may be no interface available. iii. If the class (for eg LinkedHashMap) provides methods not found in the interface, then use the class instead of the interface. Item 53: Prefer interfaces to reflection. There are three disadvantages of using reflection. i. You lose the benefits of compile-time type checking. ii. Code required for reflection is clumsy and verbose. iii. Performance suffers. As a rule, objects should not be accessed reflectively in normal applications in runtime. Exceptions to the rule include class browsers, object inspectors, code analysis tools, interpretive embedded systems, and remote procedure call systems. For many programs that must use a class that is unavailable at compile-time, there exists at compile time an appropriate interface or superclass by which to refer to the class. If so, you can create instances reflectively, and access them normally via their interface or superclass. Item 54: Use native methods judiciously. The Java Native Interface (JNI) allows Java applications to call native methods, which are special methods written in native programming languages like C or C++. It is rarely advisable to use native methods for performance reasons. The use of native methods has the following disadvantages: i. Native languages are not safe from memory corruption. ii. Applications are now more difficult to debug. iii. Performance cost is present in going into and out of native code. iv. Writing the glue code is tedious to write and read. Item 55: Optimize judiciously. Strive to write good programs rather than fast ones. Strive to avoid design decisions that would limit performance. Consider the performance consequences of your API design decisions. For example i. Making a public type mutable entails a lot of defensive copying. ii. Using inheritance in a public class where composition should have been used places artificial limits on the performance of the subclass. iii. Using concrete implementations instead of interfaces can prevent you from taking advantages of future improvements to the library. It is a very bad idea to warp an API to achieve good performance. Measure performance before and after each optimization. It is extremely important to run a profiler to understand which part of the code is slow. Java does not have a strong performance model. Performance varies greatly across JVMs. Item 56: Adhere to generally accepted naming conventions See Java Language Specification Section 6.8 or see Pg 237 of the text. They are important to follow but too numerous to list here. Item 57: Use exceptions only for exceptional conditions. Do not use for ordinary control flow. Placing code inside try-catch block inhibits JVM optimizations. If you have a state-dependent method, then use either a distinguished return value (such as null) or a state-testing method instead of choosing to use exceptions for control flow. Item 58: Use checked exceptions for recoverable conditions and runtime exceptions for programming errors. Besides checked and unchecked exceptions, there is a category of Error that can be thrown. There is a strong convention against using it outside of the JVM. So do not create any subclasses of Error. Instead sub-class RuntimeException. While it is possible to define other categories of throwable objects, do not do so. Item 59: Avoid unnecessary use of checked exceptions. Instead of invocation with a checked exception, try having an invocation with a state-testing method followed by an unchecked exception. Item 60: Favor the use of standard exceptions. There are three reasons for favoring standard exceptions, namely i. It makes the API easier to learn and use. ii. It makes the API easier to read later. iii. Fewer exception classes imply a smaller memory footprint and less time spent loading classes. Use IllegalArgumentException when you are passed an argument whose value is inappropriate. Use IllegalStateException when you the caller attempted to use an object before it was properly initialized. Use a NullPointerException when a caller passes null for a parameter for which null values are prohibited. Use IndexOutOfBoundsException on receiving an out-of-range value for a parameter representing an index into a sequence. Use ConcurrentModificationException if an object designed for use b a single thread (or with external synchronization) is being concurrently modified. Use UnSupportedOperationException if an object does not support an attempted operation. Item 61 Throw exceptions appropriate to the abstraction. Higher layers should catch lower-level exceptions and, in their place, throw exceptions that can be explained in terms of the higher-level abstraction. This is called exception translation. Exception Chaining involving catching a lower-level exception and then encapsulate it inside a higher-level exception that is then thrown. Most exceptions have chaining-aware constructor; but if they don't, then use the Throwable interface's initCause method. Item 62 Document all exceptions thrown by each method. Always declare checked exceptions individually and document precisely the conditions under which each is thrown using the @throws Javadoc tag. Do not take the shortcut out by marking your method as "throws Exception". Specify the particular exceptions that you expect. A well-documented list of unchecked exceptions a method can throw acts as a list of preconditions for its successful execution. It is important that you do this for all interfaces; this specifies their general contract. Do not use the 'throws' keyword to include unchecked exception in the method declaration. Use only the @throws Javadoc for them. Item 63 Include failure-capture information in detail messages. Printing out the stack trace of an exception prints out its toString representation which in turn consists of the exception-class name along with its detail message. So ensure that the detail message of an exception contains the values of all the parameters and fields that contributed to the exception in the first place. Do not include unnecessary prose in exceptions. Instead of a string constructor, it would have been better if Java had constructor for exceptions which required users to fill in all the required information for its detail message. It is rare that the programmer would want programmatic access to the details of an unchecked exception. Item 64 Strive for failure atomicity. Failure Atomicity refers to a property of a method that ensures that a failed invocation of it would always leave objects in the state they were prior to the method invocation. Failure atomicity is not achievable (eg in some ConcurrentModificationException cases) or desirable in a very small minority of cases. In all other scenarios, strive for it. Failure atomicity is guaranteed if the object you send is immutable. For mutable arguments passed to a method, failure atomcity is ensured by four approaches: i. Check parameters for validity at start of method itself. ii. Check parameters for validity before making any change to the object. iii. Write recovery code to return object to original state on encountering an error. iv. Make a temporary copy of the object received; operate on it and copy back to the original object only if you are successful. Item 65 Don't ignore exceptions. At the least, put in a comment in the catch block that explains your reason for ignoring the exception thrown. Item 66: Synchronize access to shared mutable data. Synchronized keyword combines the functionality of mutual exclusion and the volatile keyword. Not only does synchronization prevent a thread from observing an object in an inconsistent state, it also ensures that each thread entering the block sees the effects of all previous modifications. You cannot avoid synchronization just because you are dealing with atomic data. Atomic merely guarantees that a thread would not see an arbitrary value when reading the field; it does not guarantee that a value written by one thread would be visible to another. Do not use Thread.stop() method. If you are using a Boolean variable to signal to another thread to stop, then mark it as volatile. Else the hoisting optimization by some VMs would result in a liveness failure. You must synchronize both read and write methods. Confine mutable data to a single thread as far as possible. Item 67: Avoid excessive synchronization. To avoid deadlock and safety failures, never cede control to the client within a synchronized method or block. If your array is traversed frequently, but modified rarely, then consider using a CopyOnWriteArrayList. Do as little work as possible inside a synchronized block. Item 68: Prefer executors and tasks to threads. Be familiar with the java.util.Concurrent framework. The Executor framework is a flexible interface-based task execution facility. See java.util.concurrent.Executors. For a lightly loaded server, use CachedThreadPool. For a heavily loaded server, use FixedThreadPool. The notion of thread combines the unit of work with the mechanism for executing it. Now the unit of work is called a task. The mechanism for executing it is in the executor service. The tasks are either Runnable or Callable (which is Runnable with a return value). Read Goetz’s Java Concurrency in Practice. Item 69: Prefer concurrency utilities to wait and notify. Given the difficulty of using wait and notify correctly, you should always use the higher-level concurrency utilities instead. It is impossible to exclude concurrent activity from a concurrent collection; and hence locking it would merely serve to slow down the program. Use ConcurrentHashMap in preference to Collections.synchronizedMap or HashTable. BlockingQueue has a method called take which removes and returns the head element from a queue and blocks if the queue is empty. This features enables it to be used in producer-consumer (or work) queues. Synchronizers enable threads to wait for another another. Examples include CountDownLatch, Semaphore, CyclicBarrier, and Exchanger. For interval timing, always use System.nanoTime in preference to System.currentTImeMillis. Always use the wait loop idiom to invoke the wait method; never invoke it outside of a loop. Item 70: Document thread safety. The presence of synchronized modifier in a method declaration is an implementation detail, not a part of its exported API. One cannot conclude on its basis that the method is thread-safe. There are 5 levels of thread-safety. i. immutable like String, Long and BigInteger. ii. unconditionally thread-safe like Random and ConcurrentHashMap. They have internally enough synchronization that they can be used without external synchronization. iii. conditionally thread-safe wherein certain methods need synchronization. Example is collection returned by Collections.synchronized wrappers whose iterators need synchronization. iv. not thread-safe like ArrayList. Clients here must surround each method invocation with synchronization. v. thread-hostile. If a class modifies internally its static members without synchronization, then do not use the class in multithreaded applications. If an object represents a view on another object, you must synchronize on the backing object to prevent its direct modification. If you have a public lock, you expose yourself to a denial of service attack by a client who holds on to the lock for long. To prevent this, have a private final lock object and synchronize on it. This private lock idiom is to used only on unconditionally thread-safe classes. The private lock idiom is useful for classes designed for inheritance. Item 71: Use lazy initialization judiciously. Under most circumstances, normal initialization is preferable to lazy initialization. If you use lazy initialization to break an initialization circularity, use a synchronized accessor. Here, put the synchronized modifier before the accessor. Inside the method, check if the field is null, and if so, call the initializing method. If you need to use lazy initialization for performance reasons on a static field, then use the so-called lazy initialization holder class idiom. In the definition of the static final variable, equate it to the initializing method. If you need to use lazy initialization for performance reasons on an instance field, then use the so-called double check idiom. First check if the field is null. If not, return the value you have. If it is null, synchronize on object; again check for null and if found to be null, initialize. The instance field should be declared as volatile. If you can tolerate repeated initialization, then remove the second check from the double-check idiom. This is called the single-check idiom. If you further do not care if each thread recalculates the value, then remove the volatile modifier from the single-check idiom. This is then called the racy single-check idiom. This is used internally by the String class to cache their hash codes. Item 72: Don't depend on the thread scheduler. Programs relying on the thread scheduler would be non-portable. Threads should not run if they are not doing useful work. Threads should not busy-wait. Do not fix bugs by calling Thread.yield. It has no testable semantics. Do not fix bugs by changing thread priorities. Item 73: Avoid thread groups. They are a deprecated feature of the language. Use thread pool executors instead. Item 74: Implement Serializable judiciously. Implementing Serializable decreases the flexibility to change the class's implementation after release. Have a custom serialized form. Have your own stream-unique identifiers, also referrred to as serial version UIDs. Implementing Serializable enables an extra-linguistic mechanism for creating objects - creating a security hole. Implementing Serializable increaes the testing burden since on every new release, you must try to deserialize with older versions of the class and then test its semantics. Think long and hard before implementing Serializable. Classes designed for inheritance must rarely implement Serializable. On a non-serializable class designed for inheritance, provide a nullary constructor. Inner classes should not implement Serializable; static classes can. Item 75: Consider using a custom serialized form. Accept the default serialized form only if the actual representation of object contains only logical state. Even if you accept the default form, provide a readObject method. Using the default serialized form has four disadvantages: i. It ties the exported API to the internal representation permanently. ii. It can consume excessive space. iii. It can consume excessive time. iv. It can cause stack overflows. Even if all fields are transient, do not dispense with the defaultWriteObject and defaultReadObject invocation. Declare a field as non-transient iff it is part of the logical state of the object. You must impose any sychronization on object serialization that you apply on other methods reading the entire state of the object. Declare an explicit serial version UID. Item 76: Write readObject methods defensively. Defensively copy mutable components of immutable classes and check for invariants in your readObject method. Think of readObject like a public constructor; do not invoke any overridable methods in the class. Do not use the writeUnshared and readUnshared methods. Item 77: For instance control, prefer enum types to readResolve. For a singleton class implementing Serializable, declare all fields as transient and put in a readResolve method to return the one true reference. Prefer the enum singleton to the class-based approach for security reasons. Item 78: Consider serialization proxies instead of serialized instances. If performance is not a big concern, use the the serialization proxy pattern. Make both your class and its proxy class implement Serializable. In the writeReplace method of your main class, return a proxy object constructed from itself. In the readObject method of the proxy class, return the main class object. In both cases, use the public constructors of the classes involved. Further block the readObject method of the proxy class by making it throw a exception whenever invoked. No comments:
Lango wheel trap Lango wheel trap Other views of this artifact: Accession Number: Uganda Sudan Northern Uganda [Unyoro] Cultural Group: Date Made: By 1920 Plant Thorn , Plant Fibre , Wood Plant Bent , Bound Diam = 218 mm, Th = 24.5 mm; Diam wheel frame = 205 mm, W spike base = 7 mm, diam spike body = 3 to 4 mm, W fibre strips = 10 to 15 mm [RTS 30/6/2004]. 165.8 g Local Name: Other Owners: Donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum by Charles Delme-Radcliffe, via the British Museum, on November 1920. Delme-Radcliffe may also have been the collector; he served in the military in Uganda from 1898 and was the British Commisioner for delimitation of the Field Collector: Charles Delme-Radcliffe PRM Source: Charles Delme-Radcliffe per British Museum Donated November 1920 Collected Date: By 1920 Wheel trap, of a type usually used in conjunction with a noose. This is circular and is made from two wooden rods, each bent into a loop of similar diameter to form the framework of the wheel. These rings were then placed together, and a series of over 100 mimosa thorns passed through the gap between the rings, their broader, roughly finished and irregularly shaped ends left protruding from the outside edge, and their sharp pointed tips meeting at or near the centre of the object, where they overlap one another. This forms the hub of the trap, which would break when trodden on by an animal, to leave its hoof trapped by the surviving spikes and held by the noose that would have accompanied this object. The wheel framework was secured by winding flat strips of reddish brown plant fibre, possibly palm or banana, around the two rings. Each of these strips was split just above each spoke, usually into two parts, with the ends produced then passing around each spike to secure both it and the surrounding frame. The wheel is largely complete, but several thorns have broken at their tips, bodies, or bases. The fibre binding is a reddish brown colour (Pantone 470C), while the spikes are a lighter yellowish cream (Pantone 7506C). The wheel has an overall diameter of 218 mm, and is 24.5 mm thick; the circular frame has a diameter of 205 mm, while each spike measures around 7 mm across its base, and has a body diameter of 3 to 4 mm. The fibre binding strips range from 10 to 15 mm in width, and the wheel trap weighs 165.8 grams overall. Probably collected by Charles Delme-Radcliffe while serving in Uganda, sometime between 1898 and 1904 ( Who Was Who, 2001). Donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum by him, via the British Museum, on November 1920. The object is said to have come from 'Shuli country', north of Unyoro, and was used for catching 'smaller' game animals. Driberg describes this type of trap as follows: "The commonest snare is the otaich, which is constructed of the long sharp thorns of the acacia or of thin pointed sticks.... It is strongly made with a double row of thorns, and is placed in a game run over a small hole which has been dug out to fit it, and is operated in conjunction with a cord, one end of which forms a noose placed under the thorns, the other end being fastened to a hidden log. The animal on getting its foot in tightens the noose, and as it is irritated by the thorns tightens it still more, the log preventing it from going any distance and leaving a trail which is easily followed" (J.H. Driberg, 1923, The Lango, pp 118-119). K.G. Lindblom did a study of wheel traps, which are used by a number of Sudanese groups, including the Nuer, Lango, Acholi, Bari and Baggara, for catching antelopes, but also larger animals such as giraffe and rhinoceros - with the size of the animal determining the size of the trap (K.G. Lindblom, 1928, The Spiked Wheel-trap and its Distribution, Statens Etnografiska Museum, Smärre Meddelanden 5). For a similar wheel trap, see 1920.61.1, also attributed to the Lango. The ends of the thorns are much more roughly finished on this example than on 1920.61.1. Rachael Sparks 28/8/2005. Primary Documentation: Accession Book Entry [VI, p. 193] - 1920 [pencil insert] 61 [end insert] DELME RADCLIFFE Nov[ember]. [pencil insert] 1-2 [end insert] - [ 1 of] 2 circular traps, ring-shaped & set with mimosa thorns, for trapping the smaller game-animals. Set over a small pit in the ground; the animals treading on the trap have their legs caught and held by the thorns. LANGO, N. OF UNYORO (SHULI COUNTRY), E. CENT[RAL]. AFRICA. Received through the British Museum. Old Pitt Rivers Museum label - Leg-trap for smaller game-animals. LANGO, N. OF UNYORO (SHULI country), collected by Delmé Radcliffe. Pres. by him, 1920 [Oval label with metal ring, tied to object; RTS 17/6/2004]. Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council Help \| About \| Bibliography
The Berens and Pigeon Rivers Last update=10 April, 95 The Berens and Pigeon Rivers both NE flow out of Family Lake in Eastern Manitoba. They are remote rivers, accessible by float plane. They are big rivers, flowing through swampy muskeg and Canadian Shield, emptying into Lake Winnipeg. The Hudson Bay Company used to have a fur trading post at the mouth of the Berens river. Governor Berens was head of the post. At that time, the Berens River was called the Pigeon River. When the river was renamed in the honour of Governor Berens, the name Pigeon River was transferred to the next river towards the south. Brother Frederick Leach, O.M.I. (Order of Mary Immaculate), was an Oblate missionary who spent much of his life (1892-1982) at Berens River. In his book "60 Years with Indians and Settlers on Lake Winnipeg", he says he finds it puzzling that the name of the Berens River in the Saulteaux language means "Pigeon River". The Berens is a big river, with many waterfalls and rapids. The majority of the rapids and falls must be portaged. The Pigeon is an even bigger river, with a mini-canyon, many big falls, and many big runnable rapids. A spray cover is recommended for open canoes. Like all rivers in Manitoba, water levels and flow rates vary greatly from year to year. There are long flat water stretches between most of the rapids. Following is an excerpt from the article Paddling the Pigeon, taken from the MRCA Newsletter, volume 7, number 1, winter 1994. "Except for the first day, the paddling was mostly falls and rapids. The water flow was always huge, even when the river split into two or three channels. The current was everywhere very strong. Six-foot high rooster tails would froth and foam, surging up to 12 feet, before subsiding back to six. We ran one set of rapids where there was a whirlpool off to one side. The water flow rate was around 70 m3 per second on this trip, which is slightly below average. Bucky told of a trip he did when the flow was over 100. On that trip, one canoe dumped in these rapids and got caught in the whirlpool. (The paddlers were washed out.) The current stood the canoe on end in the whirlpool. Suddenly the river spit the canoe out, straight up into the air. It fell down again, back into the whirlpool, where it went round and round, again leaping up into the air. Eventually it got washed out." "The fourth day was overcast and warm, perfect mosquito weather. We came into the swamp. For 24Km, the river flowed in big S-turns, with flat swampland and willows on either side. A long dreary paddle brought us to Sturgeon Falls. The river splits into 2 channels here. On river right is a substantial set of rocky falls. That evening I tried swimming in the rapids and boils below the falls, and got washed a long way out from shore. The channel on river left is one of the most impressive sights I have ever seen. There are rapids above the falls, and at first it looks like they might be runnable. Further scouting shows that after the rapids the water crashes over a big precipice. There is an island in the middle of the falls, with a big rock face on it. The water coming over the falls tries with all its might to wipe out the island as the water hits the rock face straight on. But the rock face parts the water into two. Half turns right and half left, and descends seething to either side." "So we paddled through the opening in the trees which forms the mouth of the Pigeon River into Lake Winnipeg. It was a warm, sunny afternoon. We headed north for Flathead Point, just a dim shadow on the infinite horizon from where we were. The waves on the Lake were fairly big, but paddlable. As we paddled out, the cries of thousands of terns and gulls came to greet us, as they circled over us crying whenever we approached the skerries where they nest." The settlement of the Berens River Indian Reserve is at the mouth of the Berens. Irving Hallowell, an anthropologist from Philadelphia, spent many summers among the Indians at Berens during the 20's and 30's. His books The Role of Conjuring in Saulteaux Society and The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba make very interesting reading, especially the parts about conjuring and the shaking tent ceremony. Nowadays there is a hotel at the Berens River settlement. Rafting trips on the Pigeon can be organized through them, telephone = (204) 382-2379. Icon101 Berens River, July, 94 Icon102 Berens River, July, 94 Icon103 Berens River, July, 94 Icon104 Detail of previous photo Icon105 Mini-Canyon, Pigeon River, July, 93 Go back to Bill Kocay's River Running Pages.
Technical characteristics The longbow Yew needs to be seasoned and dried slowly. It needs to be split rather than sawn in order to follow the grain of the wood. The back of the bow is the part which is closest to the outside of the tree (ie. sapwood). Other woods can be sawn, but care is still needed to follow the grain. Apart from the traditional Yew, bowyers now combine woods such as Hickory, Piquia, Greenheart, Osage, Lancewood/Dagame (Lemonwood), Elm, Ash, Mulberry, Maple, Snakewood, Juniper, Walnut, Oak and others. Cross-section of the Longbow The cross-section width to depth ratio = 5/8 th. To be classified as a longbow, the bow must as tall as the archer with straight ends, wider at the arrow plate than any other spot on the top limb. Its cross-section must be "D" shaped, with a minimum width to depth ratio of 5/8th. Arrow rests are not allowed, nor are sight marks of any kind. The arrow must lay over the top of the forefinger for shooting. As in the past, the longbow requires regular practice in order to remain proficient in its use.To ensure that the bow limbs are well balanced, the bow needs to be tillered (working the bow down evenly to reach the required draw weight at the required draw length). Longer bows are easier to shoot but have a slower/weaker cast. The bracing height of a longbow is an inside measurement from the belly of the bow to the string.It should be the equivalent of 1/12th of the length of the bow, measured from stringnock to stringnock. Therefore the bracing height of a 75 inch bow is 6 1/4 inch (right photo). A rough measure given by the "fistmele" (left photo). arrows3The three fingered or Mediterranean arrow loose. The index finger rests on the arrow. The middle and ring finger are fractionally below the arrow to avoid squeezing it. The arrow is placed and loosed over the hand /forefinger. The hand is placed so that the arrow rests on/above the leather of the grip on the bow.
Counter Culture Only available on StudyMode • Download(s) : 119 • Published : May 2, 2002 Open Document Text Preview The Counter Culture Life in America has been molded by many factors including those of the hippie movement in the Sixties. With the development of new technology, a war against Communism, and an internal war against racial injustice, a change in America was sure to happen. As the children of the baby boom became young adults, they found far more discontent with the world around them. This lead to a subculture labeled as hippies, that as time went one merged into a mass society all its own. These people were upset about a war in Vietnam, skeptical of the present government and its associated authority, and searching for a place to free themselves from society's current norms, bringing the style they are known for today. "Eve of destruction; no satisfactionand a third motif went rippling through the baby-boom culture: adhesive love" (Gitlin 200). The freedom they found came with the help of drugs. Marijuana evolved from its "black and Hispanic, jazz-minded enclaves to the outlying zones of the white middle class young" (Gitlin 200). This new drug allowed a person to open their mind to new understandings and philosophies. But it wasn't just marijuana that opened the minds of the youth; a new drug known as LSD came into existence: Depending on who was doing the talking, [LSD] is an intellectual tool to explore psychic inner space,' a new source of kicks for thrill seekers, the sacramental substance of a far-out mystical movement- or the latest and most frightening addiction to the list of mind drugs now available in the pill society being fashioned by pharmacology (Clark 59). With politicians and law enforcement officers looking on the drug as a danger to society, many expert chemists "set up underground laboratories and fabricated potent and pure LSDkept their prices down, gave out plenty of free samples, and fancied themselves dispensers of miracles at the service of a new age" (Gitlin 214). It wasn't just the youth in America who was using these drugs. A... tracking img
Great Critical Thinkers Only available on StudyMode • Download(s) : 89 • Published : October 8, 2012 Open Document Text Preview Immanuel Kant 1724 – 1804 Kant was the last influential philosopher of the modern Europe. He became famous for his theory of knowledge during the Enlightenment. Kan’ts thought was very influential in Germany during his life, moving philosophy beyond debate between nationalists and empiricists. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 1869 - 1948 Ghandi was the pre-eminent political and spiritual leader of india during the the Indian independence battle with Britain. He pioneered Satyagraha , resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, a philosophy firmly founded upon ahimsa, or total nonviolence! This concept helped India to gain independence, and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.He is officially honoured in India as the Father of the Nation!. Was cruelly assassinated during his daily meditation. Sigmund Freud 1856 - 1939 Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the defense mechanism of repression,and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis for treating psychopotology.He was early neurological researcher into cerebral function. Freud’s work remains influential in clinical approaches, and in the humanities and social sciences. He is considered one of the most outstanding thinkers of the first half of 20th century, in terms of originality and intellectual influence. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve wozniak with Steve jobs and Ronald Wayne.Their inventions and machines are credited with contributing significantly to the personal computer revolution of the 1970’s. Edwin Hubble changed the way we see our universe! By demonstrating the existence of galaxies other than our own, the milky way. He is also famous for his Hubble LAW, and helped establish that the universe is expanding. Critical thinking qualities : 1. realistic 2. facts, apply them... tracking img
Is the "Extinct" Thylacine Still Alive? By , Columnist From the Smithsonian Institution archives. It’s not supposed to exist these days but people claim to spot it so often that the thylacine has been called the world’s “most common extinct animal”. The thylacine was always something of a contrary beast. Also known as the Tasmanian wolf because of its generally wolf-like appearance, and the Tasmanian tiger because of the brown stripes in its fur, it was actually neither a wolf nor a tiger but a marsupial. It lived in three separate locations: on mainland Australia and on the islands of Tasmania and New Guinea. Preferring to hide during the day, it would emerge after dark to hunt kangaroos, wallabies, and wombats, as well as birds and other small creatures. Able to endure long periods when food was scarce, it seemed to be a natural survivor, but by the late 1920s sightings of thylacines in the wild had become extremely rare. The last known thylacine died in captivity 75 years ago this week, and for the half century that followed the species was classified as endangered. When no conclusive evidence for its continued existence had been found by 1982 the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the species extinct, and the Tasmanian Government followed suit in 1986. Officially, thylacines survived longest on Tasmania, south of the Australian mainland. During the early 19th century the species was forced to share this island with European farmers who began to settle there in growing numbers. As the farmers increasingly blamed thylacines for attacking their sheep and other livestock, bounty schemes were set up to tackle the predators. Relentless persecution by farmers and hunters - probably combined with other factors such as habitat erosion, disease, and competition with wild dogs introduced by the settlers - devastated the thylacine population. On 6 May 1930, a farmer named Wilf Batty shot an animal that had been killing his poultry, and in doing so earned himself the dubious distinction of being the final man known to have killed a thylacine in the wild. What would prove to be the last known thylacine was captured in 1933 and sent to Tasmania’s Hobart Zoo. This animal later came to be known as “Benjamin” although, ever a source of contrariness, there are arguments over whether this thylacine was ever known by that name while alive, and even over whether Benjamin was male or female! Benjamin features in what is believed to be the last motion footage of a thylacine, taken in 1933 by the Australian naturalist David Fleay: While Fleay was setting up his photographic equipment in the animal’s enclosure Benjamin padded silently around to his rear. Before the naturalist realised he was in any danger, Benjamin gave him a sharp bite on the buttocks, leaving a scar that Fleay carried with pride for the rest of his life. Benjamin died on 7 September 1936, having been locked out of his (or her) shelter overnight and left exposed to the elements during a particularly severe winter. A decade later, Fleay led an expedition to Tasmania’s west coast region, hoping to find evidence that thylacines still survived in the wild. He failed to capture a live specimen - the only evidence that would have conclusively proved the thylacine’s continued existence- but he did find tracks that could have been made by the animal, and samples of hair and scat that analysis indicated came from a thylacine. Fleay also collected anecdotal evidence from people who claimed to have spotted thylacines. Such reports continue to this day. Some are highly credible, such as that made on 9 March 1982 by Hans Naarding, a researcher with the Tasmanian National Parks and Wildlife Service. Naarding had taken a nap after parking his Land Rover in a remote forested area of north-west Tasmania, and when he awoke at around 2 a.m. he used his spotlight to scan his surroundings. “As I swept the light beam around,” he reported afterwards, “it came to rest on a large thylacine, standing side-on some six to seven metres distant.” Naarding’s camera was out of reach and so he decided to examine the animal carefully before risking scaring it away. He later said: “It was an adult male in excellent condition with 12 stripes on a sandy coat. Eye reflection was pale yellow. It moved only once, opening its jaw and showing its teeth.” After several minutes of close observation Naarding reached for his camera but the movement disturbed the animal and it disappeared into the undergrowth before he could take a photograph. Naarding’s sighting led to an intensive government-funded search, but no conclusive evidence was found. Not that the lack of proof stopped reports of sightings. According to evidence compiled by researchers Buck and Joan Emberg there have been some 360 post-extinction sightings of thylacines in Tasmania. The Embergs also report 269 sightings on the Australian mainland, most frequently around southern Victoria. Other estimates are even higher: the Australian Rare Fauna Research Association states that it has more than 3,800 reported sightings from the mainland on file. Some researchers feel that, if the thylacine does still survive, then the most likely location is within the inaccessible and yet-to-be fully explored jungles in the west of the island of New Guinea, to the north of Australia. Fossil evidence shows that the thylacine did once live on this island, albeit a few thousand years ago, and people living there talk about an elusive creature they call the dobsegna. Their description of the creature closely matches that of the thylacine and in the early 1990s researcher Ned Terry travelled to the island’s Baliem Valley where he showed pictures of the thylacine to locals who claimed to have seen the dobsegna. They identified the pictures as showing the creature they had seen. Bolstered by all the reported sightings, many people are reluctant to give up hope. This apparently includes CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), who currently list the thylacine only as “possibly extinct”. Realistically, many reports are likely to be misidentifications of feral dogs or other animals but I hope there are still living thylacines out there somewhere. If there are then let’s pray we’ll eventually be able to document their survival without doing further harm to this remarkable creature. Share this story About the author James Clark is a freelance writer based in deepest, darkest south London, UK. His latest book, "Haunted Lambeth", exploring ghosts and legends from the London Borough of Lambeth, is due out in February 2013. View Profile Visit Website More from James Related Tags Connect With TMR Recent Writers View all writers » September 2017 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Treat the Heart With the Gut gut health Story at-a-glance - • Your gut bacteria can transform choline (found in meat and eggs) and other dietary nutrients into trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) • TMAO is thought to encourage fatty plaque deposits to form within arteries (atherosclerosis), and therefore, the more TMAO you have in your blood the greater your risk of heart disease might be • By targeting gut microbes, mice produced less TMAO even when fed a choline-rich diet; they also had fewer signs of atherosclerosis By Dr. Mercola It's becoming relatively common knowledge that your health is not just about your body, but rather is the result of its symbiotic relationship with 100 trillion bacteria and other microorganisms. Your microbiome is unique to you, like a fingerprint, and represents a combination of lifestyle factors, genetics, environment, and more. Your gut microbiome influences your immune responses and nervous system functioning, and plays a role in the development of a number of diseases, including obesity, cancer and heart disease. In the latter case, research has emerged that bacteria in your gut may play an integral role in the formation of fatty deposits on your arteries, leading to atherosclerosis (hardening of your arteries). Perhaps even more remarkable, now researchers have also figured out a way to stop the process. Targeting Gut Microbes to Prevent Heart Disease Research by physician Stanley Hazen of the Cleveland Clinic and colleagues has shown that certain bacteria in your gut can transform choline (found in meat and eggs) and other dietary nutrients into trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), which slows the breakdown of cholesterol. The higher your TMAO levels become, the more fatty plaques may collect in your arteries, which may promote atherosclerosis and other heart problems. As The Atlantic recently reported, Dr. Hazen's colleague Zeneng Wang discovered that the chemical 3,3-dimethyl-1-butanol (DMB) prevents gut microbes from turning choline into trimethylamine (TMA), thereby lowering the risk of heart problems.1,2 DMB is a choline-like compound that works by "gumming up" the enzymes required by the bacteria to digest choline, which stops TMA production. According to The Atlantic:3 "It takes two to TMAO: Bacteria first transform choline into TMA, before an enzyme from the host animal changes TMA into TMAO. At first, Hazen's team tried to prevent the second part of this chain by blocking the animal enzyme. They succeeded, lowering TMAO levels in mice and making them resistant to atherosclerosis. But there was just one problem: disabling the enzyme leads to a build-up of TMA, which doesn't harm the heart but does smell of rotting fish." By targeting gut microbes with DMB, the mice, which were bred to be vulnerable to atherosclerosis, produced less TMAO even when fed a choline-rich diet. They also had fewer signs of the condition. As written in Cell:4 "The present studies suggest that targeting gut microbial production of TMA specifically and non-lethal microbial inhibitors in general may serve as a potential therapeutic approach for the treatment of cardiometabolic diseases." Your Gut Microbes Might Be One Reason Why Eating Red Meat Is Linked to Heart Disease Your gut bacteria can also metabolize L-carnitine, a substance found in red meat, eggs, and other foods, and in so doing produce TMAO. Interestingly, people with diets high in L-carnitine, i.e. meat eaters, had a gut microbe composition that was more prone to forming TMAO, while vegetarians and vegans did not. Even after consuming large amounts of L-carnitine in a steak or supplement, the vegetarians and vegans in the study did not produce significant amounts of TMAO. Does this mean that you should avoid meat and L-carnitine? I believe the answer is a resounding no. The science is very clear that L-carnitine is required to shuttle fatty acids into the mitochondria to burn them as fuel. It is an important mitochondrial nutrient and I personally take a supplement because I don't eat much red meat. However I believe healthy non-CAFO red meat can be an important part of a healthy diet. One just does not want to consume it in excess that almost everyone does. Anything over 3-4 ounces. and 2 ounces for people under140 pounds, is far too much protein and will raise mTOR levels. If you are a vegetarian, or someone that has a mitochondrial dysfunction disease then I strongly believe that you should be on a supplement of L-carnitine, not acetylcarnitine, simple plain L-carnitine. However, Dr. Hazen and colleagues believe that eating red meat alters your gut flora in a way that predisposes your body toward TMAO production, and subsequently, heart disease.5 I suspect this research is flawed as they never really carefully examined the quantity or quality of meat being consumed. CAFO meat should be avoided for reasons previously discussed and excessive meat consumption, In my view, excessive meat, especially CAFO meat, will not only contribute to heart disease, but cancer, obesity, diabetes and neurodegenerative diseases. U.S Military Using Gut Microbes to Stave Off Disease and More Rice University synthetic biologist Jeff Tabor received a three-year grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) to research how gut microbes may be used to support health on the battlefront. Synthetic biology involves genetically engineering microorganisms, making it highly controversial. Tabor's work involves a genetically engineered E. coli cell that is capable of sensing certain chemical disturbances. The ultimate goal is that the cells would then "fire off a battery of molecules to neutralize [the disturbances]."6 The cells would be designed to only survive a matter of hours in your gut, carrying out their intended purpose and then dying off naturally. To date, his research in mice has been related to obesity and other metabolic issues. When mice were fed the modified E. coli cells, the "sensors" were activated, which means the targeted chemicals were successfully located. The research is only in the beginning stages, but plans are underway to produce GE cells that would carry up to a dozen sensors and be capable of producing targeted drugs on the spot, including highly-targeted antibiotics that target bacterial chemicals linked to obesity, inflammation, and more.7 Manipulating gut bacteria with "synthetic probiotics" might one day be used to treat diabetes, autoimmune disorders, cancer, neurological disorders, obesity, and more. The U.S. military is hoping that tweaking the microbiome might also help the armed forces stay healthy in the face of extreme conditions, stress, disruptions to circadian rhythm (like living on a submarine), and sleep loss. Scientific American reported:8 " … [T]he Navy may find creative ways to deploy these synthetic probiotics not just to avoid obesity and its attendant problems but to quickly shift body weight and metabolism as necessary, Tabor suggests. 'Imagine you have a team of marines going from a temperate environment, say, at sea level, to a really cold environment, like up on top of a mountain, in a short period of time. You want them to be able to put on some fat quickly to be more robust in the cold environment.' The solution? A dose of yogurt laced with synthetic probiotics that change warfighters' metabolism to increase fat for a couple of weeks — and after that another dose to take it off when they return to sea level." The Microbiome Is a 'Key Regulator' of Your Brain and Behavior Your microbiome affects your heart, your weight, and, yes, also your brain and behavior. So-called germ-free mice, which have no microbiome to speak of, have altered behavior and brain function. In a study by Dr. John Cryan, a neuropharmacologist from the University College Cork in Ireland, mice without microbes in their intestines are unable to recognize other mice around them. Dr. Cryan believes microbes may communicate with the brain and help us be social, which in turn allows the microbes to spread to others.9 In addition, mice lacking gut bacteria have been found to engage in "high-risk behavior," and this altered behavior was accompanied by neurochemical changes in the mouse brain.10 Dr. Cryan believes beneficial microbes could one day be used to treat mental health problems in humans. He dubbed the compounds "psychobiotics." He told Scientific American, "That dietary treatments could be used as either adjunct or sole therapy for mood disorders is not beyond the realm of possibility."11 In one notable study by Dr. Cryan and colleagues, the probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus had a marked effect on GABA levels — an inhibitory neurotransmitter that is significantly involved in regulating many physiological and psychological processes — in certain brain regions and lowered the stress-induced hormone corticosterone, resulting in reduced anxiety- and depression-related behavior.12 Further, researchers have discovered that the absence or presence of gut microorganisms during infancy permanently alters gene expression. Through gene profiling, they were able to discern that absence of gut bacteria altered genes and signaling pathways involved in learning, memory, and motor control. This suggests that gut bacteria are closely tied to early brain development and subsequent behavior. These behavioral changes could be reversed as long as the mice were exposed to normal microorganisms early in life. But, once the germ-free mice had reached adulthood, colonizing them with bacteria did not influence their behavior.13 As reported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Record:14 "Cryan has identified several 'critical windows' for gut microbiota development and in which it might be most possible to transform them: early life, adolescence and old age. But, 'on the whole, it's the early-life period that's instrumental for informing the microbiome composition, which informs our immune system and may shape aspects of brain development as well,' he said." This is one strong argument for having a vaginal birth as opposed to a C-section (if you have the option), as your baby is "seeded" with microbes as it goes through the birth canal. Breastfeeding further encourages a healthy microbiome in early life, and once your baby is ready for soft foods, you can easily provide abundant probiotics in the form of fermented foods. However, even though early life is a crucial time for developing a healthy microbiome, you can make favorable changes all throughout your life. How to Nourish Your Microbiome Your microbiome is vulnerable to your diet and lifestyle and can be harmed by: Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary (and when you do take them, make sure to reseed your gut with fermented foods and/or a probiotic supplement) Conventionally raised meats and other animal products, as CAFO animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics, plus genetically engineered grains, which have also been implicated in the destruction of gut flora Processed foods (as the excessive sugars, along with otherwise "dead" nutrients, feed pathogenic bacteria) Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water Antibacterial soap Agricultural chemicals In addition to avoiding the harmful aspects above, reseeding your gut with beneficial bacteria is essential for maintaining proper balance and achieving optimal physical and mental health. In light of this, here are my recommendations for optimizing your gut bacteria. • Fermented foods are the best route to optimal gut health, as long as you eat the traditionally made, unpasteurized versions. • Healthy choices include lassi (an Indian yoghurt drink, traditionally enjoyed before dinner), fermented grass-fed organic milk such as kefir, various pickled fermentations of cabbage, turnips, eggplant, cucumbers, onions, squash, and carrots, and natto (fermented soy). Fermented vegetables, in particular, are an excellent way to supply beneficial bacteria back into your gut. As an added bonus, they can also a great source of vitamin K2 if you ferment your own using the proper starter culture. We had samples of high-quality, fermented organic vegetables made with our specific starter culture tested, and a typical serving (about two to three ounces) contained not only 10 trillion beneficial bacteria, but it also had 500 mcg of vitamin K2, which we now know is a vital co-nutrient to both vitamin D and calcium. Most high-quality probiotics supplements will only supply you with a fraction of the beneficial bacteria found in such homemade fermented veggies, so it's your most economical route to optimal gut health as well. • Probiotic supplement. Although I'm not a major proponent of taking many supplements (as I believe the majority of your nutrients need to come from food), probiotics is an exception if you don't eat fermented foods on a regular basis. Post your comment
Forest Restoration and Cleansing the Environment A major point of concern for many people in the past couple of decades has been the degradation and destruction of the world’s forests. Trees play a vital role in the ecosystems and balance of the planet, yet in places like Brazil, logging is sometimes the only means of gaining subsistence and is a big industry and source of jobs. When countries are faced with the harsh choice between making people find new employment when there is none or banning logging, the issue takes on a different perspective, but only emphasizes the great importance that some kind of solution be found. Logging in the Brazilian rainforest (credit: Scientific American) I stumbled across this article the other week about this nonprofit group called Archangel Ancient Tree Archive who are trying to collect genetic material from species of tree which are rapidly disappearing. They then want to clone those trees and replant the forests around the world. Sounds a little unattainable right? But they’re having some moderate success, at least in the areas of gaining tree genes and successfully cloning the trees. What they are having greater trouble with is convincing people to replant these specific trees. You may ask what is so great about these particular trees. The giant redwoods and sequoias and other mega-trees are actually very essential to keeping carbon dioxide and other pollutants out of the air. One of these trees does the work of hundreds of other trees in retaining pollutants. Old growth forests are central to cleansing the environment, yet we stupid blundering humans have destroyed almost all of them. “Finding genetically superior trees has been challenging, but group leaders acknowledge their biggest hurdle may be selling the public on the urgency of restoring the world’s ancient forests.” They can be planted in any number of places, from college campuses to office parks to Central Park, but the most ideal places are those that favor a long life and adequate room for the tree to grow. But most people don’t see the value in planting one of these trees–as the article points out, many of the people who do plant trees are in the business of growing, selling, replanting, and then growing more as fast as possible. Why should we care? Well, I think most of us would like to live on a healthy planet while we’re here. I doubt we’d really appreciate breathing in pollution on a daily basis, and in some countries that is exactly what happens. But why should that be the case when this problem can be fixed with a little time and effort? Also, we as pagans should be especially interested in the death of forests across the world–our ties to nature are (perhaps) stronger than the ties of non-pagans to the natural world since we tend to see the magic and the beauty in nature a little more easily because of our beliefs. [I realize that’s something of a generalization, but it is true that the majority of pagans have some kind of reverence for nature.] Original article here. 2 responses to “Forest Restoration and Cleansing the Environment 1. Pingback: Buildings, Farms, Lumber And Replanting Trees \| Lee's Rambling Blog 2. I’d definitely say that we as pagans have a closer tie to the Earth, and perhaps even more directly to trees. Forests have always been considered a place of magick, and older forests have often been known as places of old craft. Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s
Life must mean life The 2016 AQA Religious Studies Morality paper had a question asking students whether criminals who receive a life sentence should stay in prison for their whole life. Students exam answers gave both points of view and then arrived at a conclusion which showed the students’ point of view. Well today in the news European judges have agreed that British courts can give prison sentences which say ‘life means life’ for the most disgusting crimes, such as mass murder. Life should mean life – it protects the rest of the society from a dangerous criminal; a harsh sentence will deter other from committing a similar crime; it is retribution for the victim and victim’s family that the criminal loses their freedom forever; the Christian ideas of an eye for eye, tooth for tooth from the Old Testament implies an evil act should be met with a hard punishment. Criminals should be released eventually – there should be the opportunity for reform; some Christians think that only God will judge our sins like in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats; Christians believe that Jesus taught forgiveness by dying on the cross so everyone’s sins are forgiven; “forgive them father for they know not what they do” is a key quote from the Bible which shows that people are sinful due to their free will and so should be forgiven (which Lauren Hill sang about); and the old favourite from the Parable of the Good Samaritan “love thy neighbour”! 3 thoughts on “Life must mean life 1. I think that it simply wrong to kill another human being, and there should never be any excuse for this kind of action. The victim did have a family who loved him/her and so the criminal has to forever live with the guilt of the pain they’ve caused to the loved ones of the victim. I think that the true punishment that the criminal will have to live for, for the rest of their lives, is the guilt they will forever feel and never forget. 2. I disagree with this piece as although the criminal did a bad thing such as murder we should not kill them for it. I believe this because the government says do not kill another human so why should they do it to someone who has; it is being hypocritical. Also if you find out you killed the wrong person in the future there is no way to turn back the clock and allow them the freedom and justice they deserve. However I do believe for most other crimes their punishment should reflect what they have done. 3. This is a great piece because it shows clearly that people should get what they deserve such as community service for vandalism or death row for mass murder Leave a Reply You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change ) Twitter picture Facebook photo Google+ photo Connecting to %s
List of science books From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search The List of science books is mainly got from: • Printing and the Mind of Man: a descriptive catalogue illustrating the impact of print on the evolution of western civilisation during five centuries. Compiled by John Carter and Percy H. Muir. Karl Pressler, München (Munich) 1983. The list here does not notice mathematics or technology, although these subjects are related to science. The list[change \| change source] 1st century AD / 15th century[change \| change source] 1. Gaius Plinius Secundus (Pliny the Elder, 23–79 AD) Historia naturalis. Venice, 1469. Pliny's Natural History is an encyclopedia of the scientific and technical knowledge of the ancient world. 16th century[change \| change source] 1. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. Nuremberg, 1543. The first step to modern science. 2. Conrad Gessner (1516–1565) Historiae animalium. 5 vols, Zurich 1551–57. An encyclopedia of animals, illustrated by woodcuts. 17th century[change \| change source] 1. Wiliam Gilbert (1544–1603) De magnete. London 1600. First to propose that the Earth was one large magnet. 2. Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) Astronomia nova. Heidelberg 1609. The laws of planetary motion. 3. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) 1. Siderius nuncius. Venice 1610. Discovery of 'new worlds' with the telescope. 2. Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo, Tolemaico et Copernicano. Florence, 1632. The famous 'dialogue between two world systems'. 3. Discorsi et demonstrazioni mathematiche. Leiden 1638. Includes mathematics of motion in support of his previous work. 4. William Harvey (1578–1657) Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. Frankfurt 1628. Proof of the circulation of blood; fundamental to physiology and medicine. 5. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) 1. The sceptical chymist. London 1661. The foundation of chemistry. 2. New experimental physico-mechanical touching the air. 2nd ed, Oxford 1662. Boyle's law. 6. Robert Hooke (1635–1703) Micrographia. London 1665. The microscope and what he saw in it, illustrated. 7. Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686) De solido. Florence 1669. Clear recognition of the organic origin of fossils, and first attempt to show sections of geological strata. 8. Isaac Newton (1642–1727) Philosophae naturalis principia mathematica. London, 1687. Mathematical physics, gravity, laws of motion. 9. Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) Arcana naturae detecta. Delft, 1696. Made many lenses and microscopes, with which he made many discoveries. Discovered microorganisms, and was the first to name some bacteria. 10. Edward Tyson (1650–1708) Orang-Outang; or the anatomy of a pygmie compared to that of a monkey, an ape, and a man. London 1699. The earliest important work in comparative anatomy. He showed that between monkey and man stood the anthropoid apes. The 'pygmie' was a chimpanzee, evidently a juvenile. 18th century[change \| change source] 1. Edmund Halley (1656–1742) A synopsis of the anatomy of comets. London, 1705. A famous study of comets. 2. Stephen Hales (1677–1761) Statical essays containing vegetable staticks &c. 2 vols, London, 1731–33. Ground-breaking work on the movement of water and sap in plants. 3. Carl Linnaeus, or Linné (1707–78) Systema naturae. Leiden, 1735. Originator of the binomial system of classification of living things. All species he knew about were given both a general (genus) and a specific name, such as Homo sapiens. The names were given in Latin, and so avoided a problem with local names. 4. Georges Louis le Clerc, Comte de Buffon (1707–88) Histoire naturelle, general et particuliere. 44 vols, Paris 1749–1804. 5. Frederick William Herschel (1738–1822) Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, and several planetary satellites. He worked out what the Milky Way was, and discovered binary stars. His catalogue of binary stars was expanded further by his son, John Herschel. 1. On the proper motion of the Sun and Solar system. London, 1783. 2. Catalogue of 500 new nebulae, nebulous stars, planetary nebulae, and clusters of stars; with remarks on the construction of the heavens. London, 1802. Announces discovery of double stars. 3. Account of the changes that have happened, during the last twenty-five years, in the relative situation of double-stars; with an investigation of the cause to which they are owing. London, 1903. Confirms the discovery of double stars. 6. Antoine Lavoisier (1743–94) Traité élémentaire de chimie. 2 vols, Paris, 1789. First modern textbook of chemistry. Lavoisier understood the difference between elements and compounds, and put an end to alchemy. 7. James Hutton (1726–97) Theory of the Earth, with proofs and illustrations. 2 vols, Edinburgh 1795; vol 3 London 1899. Uniformitarianism applied to geology: processes seen today have acted in the past. Small changes over long periods of time lead to great transformations. A foundation-stone of geology. 8. Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) Traité de méchanique céleste. 5 vols, Paris 1799–1825. Fundamental work on applied mathematics and astronomy. Includes celestial mechanics applied to the solar system. Laplace was the originator of a number of mathematical techniques, and the author of the nebular hypothesis of how the solar system arose. He showed the solar system would be long-lasting because of its dynamic stability. 19th century[change \| change source] 1. John Dalton (1766–1844) A new system of chemical philosophy. London: part I 1808, part II 1810; volume 2, part I 1827. Dalton's atomic theory. 2. Lamarck (1744–1829) Philosophie Zoologique. 2 vols, Paris 1809. First coherent statement of evolution (though not quite as now), and a theory (incorrect) as to how it happened. One of Darwin's most important precursors. 3. William Smith (1769–1839) A geological map of England and Wales, with part of Scotland. London 1815. Founder of stratigraphy and geological mapping. 4. Michael Faraday (1791–1867) Experimental researches in electricity. 3 vols, London 1839, 1844, 1855. Faraday, a blacksmith's son, became the greatest experimental physicist of the nineteenth cencury. 5. Justus Liebig (1803–1873) Dawn of organic chemistry. Liebig 'invented' the chemical laboratory. 1. Die Organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie. Brunswick 1840. (Organic chemistry in its application to agriculture and physiology); and 2. Die Organische Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Physiologie und Pathologie. Brunswick 1842. (Organic chemistry in its application to physiology and pathology). 6. Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) 1. Voyages aux Régions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent fait en 1799–1804. Describes the geography and natural history of South America. 2. Kosmos: Entwurf einer Physischen Weltbeschreibung 4 vols, Stuttgart & Tübingen 1845–62. A fifth volume was published from his notes. The work is a summary of all that was known of the natural sciences of his day and, by 1852, 80,000 copies had been sold. 7. Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and the theory of evolution: 1. with Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913): On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, London 1858. 2. Charles Darwin On the origin of species by means of natural selection. London 1859. 3. Charles Darwin The Descent of Man, and selection in relation to sex. London, 1871. 20th century[change \| change source] 1. Albert Einstein (1879–1955) Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie. Leipzig 1916. (Foundations of the general theory of relativity) and its popular version Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie, gemeinverständlich (On the special and general theory of relativity: a popular account) Braunschweig 1917. The greatest work in physics since Newton. Journal publication of the ideas came first. 2. Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection 1930; 1950. A building-block of the modern evolutionary synthesis.
Foods You Should Strictly Avoid If You Have Kidney Stones By: Archana Mukherji We all must have heard about kidney stones. But do we all know what it actually is? Well, a kidney stone is a hard mass that forms from crystals in the urine. The natural chemicals in the urine usually stop the kidney stones from forming, in most people. When these natural chemicals are disturbed, such stones are formed. It is very essential to follow an appropriate diet when you are suffering from kidney stones. foods bad for kidney stones Many people suffer from kidney stones but are not aware of the same in the initial stages. Only when the stones grow in size and they experience symptoms such as abdominal pain and problems in urinating, do they realize that they have a kidney stone. Dealing with kidney stones is really painful; however, can be completely treated with appropriate medication and proper intake of food, as suggested by the doctor. Though the type of kidney stone might vary from person to person, there are certain foods that you might have to avoid, no matter what type of stone you have. In this article, we will specifically focus on the foods that should be strictly avoided when you have kidney stones. Foods To Be Avoided If You Have Kidney Stones: 1. Spinach: Spinach is rich in oxalate and it combines with calcium to form calcium oxalate crystals while urine is produced by the kidneys. These calcium oxalate crystals are called kidney stones. Therefore, if you eat more spinach when you are suffering from such stones, it will only end up aggravating the situation. 2. Tomatoes: This is yet another oxalate-rich food. This vegetable adds a lot of taste to your dishes and is also high in nutrients. However, since tomatoes are rich in oxalate, it can worsen your kidney stone situation, Therefore, the recommendation is to remove the seeds and use the tomato pulp only. 3. Seafood: Doctors recommend patients suffering from kidney stones to avoid the intake of seafood, meat and other protein-rich foods, since they are rich in certain compounds called purines. When the purine levels in the body become high, it increases the production of uric acid, thereby leading to kidney stones. 4. Sodium Or Salt: People suffering from kidney stones should cut down on their sodium intake considerably. High sodium intake will only worsen the situation. It is advisable to restrict the sodium intake to 2500 milligrams per day. Some of the foods that contain high amounts of sodium and should be strictly avoided if you have a kidney stone are chips, dried fish, pickles, packaged sauces, ketchup and chutneys, salted butter, salted nuts, cheese, canned vegetables, savoury snacks, peanuts and any kind of packaged food. 5. Chocolates: If you are suffering from kidney stones, doctors would strictly advise you to avoid chocolates because they are rich in oxalates. It is still fine to consume a small piece of it once a week if you are really craving for it and have a sweet tooth. If possible it is better that you avoid and replace your craving with something else. 6. Tea: Most of us start our day with a cup of hot tea and it also has its own health benefits. This is fine for normal people; however, if you are suffering from kidney stones, this can be very harmful. Tea consumption can only aggravate and increase the size of the stone for people who have this problem. Kidney Infection prevention with Natural Remedies; Check out here \| Boldsky 7. Other Foods: Legumes, beetroots, sweet potatoes, guavas, peanuts and seed grains also contain high amounts of oxalate and their consumption should be strictly monitored. Read more about: foods, kidney Please Wait while comments are loading... Subscribe Newsletter

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