Optophones and Musical Print
In 1912, British physicist Edmund Fournier d’Albe built a device that he called the optophone, which converted light into tones. The first model—“the exploring optophone”—was meant to be a travel aid; it converted light into a sound of analogous intensity. A subsequent model, “the reading optophone,” scanned print using lamp-light separated into beams by a perforated disk. The pattern of light reflected back from a given character triggered a corresponding set of tones in a telephone receiver. d’Albe initially worked with 8 beams, producing 8 tones based on a diatonic scale. He settled on 5 notes: lower G, and then middle C, D, E and G. (Sol, do, re, mi, sol.) The optophone became known as a “musical print” machine. It was popularized by Mary Jameson, a blind student who achieved reading speeds of 60 words per minute.
In the field of media studies, the optophone has become renowned through its imaginary repurposings by a number of modernist artists. For one thing, the optophone finds brief mention in Finnegan’s Wake. In turn, Marshall McLuhan credited James Joyce’s novel for being a new medium, turning text into sound. In “New Media as Political Forms,” McLuhan says that Joyce’s own “optophone principle” releases us from “the metallic and rectilinear embrace of the printed page.” More familiar within media studies today, Dada artist Raoul Hausmann patented (London 1935), but did not successfully build, an optophone presumably inspired by d’Albe’s model, which he hoped would be employed in audiovisual performances. This optophone was meant to convert sound into light as well as the reverse. It was part of a broader contemporary impulse to produce color music and synaesthetic art. Hausmann also wrote optophonetic poetry, based on the sounds and rhythms of “pure phonemes” and non-linguistic noises. In response, Francis Picabia painted two optophone portraits in 1921 and 22. Optophone I, below, is composed of lines that might be sound waves, with a pattern that disorders vision.
Theorists have repeatedly located Hausmann’s device at the origin of new media. Authors in the Audiovisuology, Media Archaeology, and Beyond Art: A Third Culture anthologies credit Hausmann’s optophone with bringing-into-being cybernetics, digitization, the CD-ROM, audiovisual experiments in video art, and “primitive computers.” It seems to have escaped notice that d’Albe also used the optophone to create electrical music. In his book, The Moon Element, he writes:
d’Albe’s device is typically portrayed as a historical cul-de-sac, with few users and no real technical influence. Yet optophones continued to be designed for blind people throughout the twentieth century; at least one model has users even today. Musical print machines, or “direct translators,” co-existed with more complex OCR-devices—optical character recognizers that converted printed words into synthetic speech. Both types of reading machine contributed to today’s procedures for scanning and document digitization. Arguably, reading optophones intervened more profoundly into the order of print than did Hausmann’s synaesthetic machine: they not only translated between the senses, they introduced a new symbolic system by which to read. Like braille, later vibrating models proposed that the skin could also read.
In December 1922, the Optophone was brought to the United States from the United Kingdom for a demonstration before a number of educators who worked with blind children; only two schools ordered the device. Reading machine development accelerated in the U.S. around World War II. In his position as chair of the National Defense Research Committee, Vannevar Bush established a Committee on Sensory Devices in 1944, largely for the purpose of rehabilitating blind soldiers. The other options for reading—braille and Talking Books—were relatively scarce and had a high cost of production. Reading machines promised to give blind readers access to magazines and ephemeral print (recipes, signs, mail), which was arguably more important than access to books.
At RCA (Radio Corporation of America), the television innovator Vladimir Zworykin became involved with this project. Zworykin had visited Fournier d’Albe in London in the 19-teens and seen a demonstration of the optophone. Working with Les Flory and Winthrop Pike, Zworykin built an initial machine known as the A-2 that operated on the same principles, but used a different mechanism for scanning—an electric stylus, which was publicized as “the first pen that reads.” Following the trail of citations for RCA’s “Reading Aid for the Blind” patent (US 2420716A, filed 1944), it is clear that the “pen” became an aid in domains far afield from blindness. It was repurposed as an optical probe for measuring the oxygen content of blood (1958); an “optical system for facsimile scanners” (1972); and, in a patent awarded to Burroughs Corporation in 1964, a light gun. This gun, in turn, found its way into the handheld controls for the first home video game system, produced by Sanders Associates.
The A-2 optophone was tested on three blind research subjects, including ham radio enthusiast Joe Piechowski, who was more of a technical collaborator. According to the reports RCA submitted to the CSD, these readers were able to correlate the “chirping” or “tweeting” sounds of the machine with letters “at random with about eighty percent accuracy” after 60 hours of practice. Close spacing on a printed page made it difficult to differentiate between letters; readers also had difficulty moving the stylus at a steady pace and in a straight line. Piechowski achieved reading speeds of 20 words per minute, which RCA deemed too slow.
Attempts were made to incorporate “human factors” and create a more efficient tonal code, to reduce reading time as well as learning time and confusion between letters. One alternate auditory display was known as the compressed optophone. Rather than generate multiple tones or chords for a single printed letter, which was highly redundant and confusing to the ear, the compressed version identified only certain features of a printed letter: such as the presence of an ascender or descender. Below is a comparison between the tones of the original optophone and the compressed version, recorded by physicist Patrick Nye in 1965. The following eight lower case letters make up the source material: f, i, k, j, p, q, r, z.
Original record in the author’s possession. With thanks to Elaine Nye, who generously tracked down two of her personal copies at the author’s request. The second copy is now held at Haskins Laboratories.
Because of the seeming limitations of tonal reading, RCA engineers re-directed their research to add character recognition to the scanning process. This was controversial, direct translators like the optophone being perceived as too difficult because they required blind people to do something akin to learning to read print—learning a symbolic tonal or tactile code. At an earlier moment, braille had been critiqued on similar grounds; many in the blind community have argued that mainstream anxieties about braille sprang from its symbolic difference. Speed, moreover, is relative. Reading machine users protested that direct translators like the optophone were inexpensive to build and already available—why wait for the refinement of OCR and synthetic speech? Nevertheless, between November 1946 and May 1947, Zworykin, Flory, and Pike worked on a prototype “letter reading machine,” today widely considered to be the first successful example of optical character recognition (OCR). Before reliable synthetic speech, this device spelled out words letter by letter using tape recordings. The Letter-Reader was too massive and expensive for personal use, however. It also had an operating speed of 20 words per minute—thus it was hardly an improvement over the A-2 translator.
Haskins Laboratories, another affiliate of the Committee on Sensory Devices, began working on the reading machine problem around the same time, ultimately completing an enormous amount of research into synthetic speech and—as argued by Donald Shankweiler and Carol Fowler—the “speech code” itself. In the 1940s, before workable text-to-speech, researchers at Haskins wanted to determine whether tones or artificial phonemes (“speech-like speech”) were easier to read by ear. They developed a “machine dialect of English,” named wuhzi: “a transliteration of written English which preserved the phonetic patterns of the words.” An example can be played below. The eight source words are: With, Will, Were, From, Been, Have, This, That.
Original record in the author’s possession. From Patrick Nye, “An Investigation of Audio Outputs for a Reading Machine” (1965). With thanks to Elaine Nye.
Based on the results of tests with several human subjects, the Haskins researchers concluded that aural reading via speech-like sounds was necessarily faster than reading musical tones. Like the RCA engineers, they felt that a requirement of these machines should be a fast rate of reading. Minimally, they felt that reading speed should keep pace with rapid speech, at about 200 words per minute.
Funded by the Veterans Administration, members of Mauch Laboratories in Ohio worked on both musical optophones and spelled-speech recognition machines from the 1950s into the 1970s. One of their many devices, the Visotactor, was a direct-translator with vibro-tactile output for four fingers. Another, the Visotoner, was a portable nine-channel optophone. All of the Mauch machines were tested by Harvey Lauer, a technology transfer specialist for the Veterans Administration for over thirty years, himself blind. Below is an excerpt from a Visotoner demonstration, recorded by Lauer in 1971.
Visotoner demonstration. Original 7” open reel tape in author’s possession. With thanks to Harvey Lauer for sharing items from his impressive collection and for collaborating with the author over many years.
Later on the same tape, Lauer discusses using the Visotoner to read mail, identify currency, check over his own typing, and read printed charts or graphics. He achieved reading speeds of 40 words per minute with the device. Lauer has also told me that he prefers the sound of the Visotoner to that of other optophone models—he compares its sound to Debussy, or the music for dream sequences in films.
Mauch also developed a spelled speech OCR machine called the Cognodictor, which was similar to the RCA model but made use of synthetic speech. In the recording below, Lauer demonstrates this device by reading a print-out about IBM fonts. He simultaneously reads the document with the Visotoner, which reveals glitches in the Cognodictor’s spelling.
Original 7” open reel tape in the author’s possession. With thanks to Harvey Lauer.
In 1972, at the request of Lauer and other blind reading machine users, Mauch assembled a stereo-optophone with ten channels, called the Stereotoner. This device was distributed through the VA but never marketed, and most of the documentation exists in audio format, specifically in sets of training tapes that were made for blinded veterans who were the test subjects. Some promotional materials, such as the short video below, were recorded for sighted audiences—presumably teachers, rehabilitation specialists, or funding agencies.
Video courtesy of Harvey Lauer.
Mary Jameson corresponded with Lauer about the stereotoner, via tape and braille, in the 1970s. In the braille letter pictured below she comments, “I think that stereotoner signals are the clearest I have heard.”
In 1973, with the marketing of the Kurzweil Reader, funding for direct translation optophones ceased. The Kurzweil Reader was advertised as the first machine capable of multi-font OCR; it was made up of a digital computer and flatbed scanner and it could recognize a relatively large number of typefaces. Kurzweil recalls in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines that this technology quickly transferred to Lexis-Nexis as a way to retrieve information from scanned documents. As Lauer explained to me, the abandonment of optophones was a serious problem for people with print disabilities: the Kurzweil Readers were expensive ($10,000-$50,000 each); early models were not portable and were mostly purchased by libraries. Despite being advertised as omnifont readers, they could not in fact recognize most printed material. The very fact of captchas speaks to the continued failures of perfect character recognition by machines. And, as the “familiarization tapes” distributed to blind readers indicate, the early synthetic speech interface was not transparent—training was required to use the Kurzweil machines.
Original cassette in the author’s possession.
Lauer always felt that the ideal reading machine should have both talking OCR and direct-translation capabilities, the latter being used to get a sense of the non-text items on a printed page, or to “preview material and read unusual and degraded print.” Yet the long history of the optophone demonstrates that certain styles of decoding have been more easily naturalized than others—and symbols have increasingly been favored if they bear a close relation to conventional print or speech. Finally, as computers became widely available, the focus for blind readers shifted, as Lauer puts it, “from reading print to gaining access to computers.” Today, many electronic documents continue to be produced without OCR, and thus cannot be translated by screen readers; graphical displays and videos are largely inaccessible; and portable scanners are far from universal, leaving most “ephemeral” print still unreadable.
Mara Mills is an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, working at the intersection of disability studies and media studies. She is currently completing a book titled On the Phone: Deafness and Communication Engineering. Articles from this project can be found in Social Text, differences, the IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, and The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. Her second book project, Print Disability and New Reading Formats, examines the reformatting of print over the course of the past century by blind and other print disabled readers, with a focus on Talking Books and electronic reading machines. This research is supported by NSF Award #1354297.


Feminist Majority supports ratification of the following international treaties:
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
The CRC was adopted by the UN in 1989, and is one of the most widely received conventions. The CRC has been accepted by 192 countries. The U.S. may soon be the only country in the world not to ratify this convention.
End Racial Discrimination
International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD)
The CERD entered into force in 1969 and commits State parties to change their laws and policies to end racial discrimination that violates individual human rights on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic original and descent. The United States ratified CERD in 1994 but rejected the components that included effect and intent in deciding discrimination cases.
The Convention on the Prohibition, Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction (The Ottawa Treaty)
Five years after the 1992 founding of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, over 143 countries met in Ottawa, Canada and signed a ban on anti-personnel mines. The United States has still not signed the treaty.
In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol legally bound industrialized countries by 2010 to reduce their collective emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5.2% compared to 1990 levels. One hundred eighty-seven (187) countries have signed the treaty, but the United States ( the largest producer of greenhouse gases) has not.
Establishing International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court (ICC)
The International Criminal Court (ICC) As of July 2012, 194 countries had signed the ICC, including the United States, and 98 countries had ratified the ICC. However, on May 2, 2002 the United States stated that it did not intend to be bound by its signature to the ICC and that is has no intention to ratify it. President Clinton signed the ICC, and President Bush and the Republican-led Senate refuse to ratify it.
The ICC conducts trials of individuals accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity when there is no other recourse for justice.
The ICC identifies gender crimes and the crime of apartheid as crimes against humanity. Article 7 of the Statute presents clear language that defines rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity as gender crimes.
International Labor Organization (ILO) Conventions
As of 2004, the United States only ratified 14 of the 162 active ILO Conventions. In addition, the United States has only signed two out of eight conventions that the ILO describes as fundamental to the human rights of workers.
The ILO Committee of Experts, in 2002, stated that the United States was not in compliance with one of the few conventions it had ratified: Convention 105, The Abolition of Forced Labor Convention that the United States ratified in 1991.
International Bill of Rights
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)
The ICESCR requires states to promote and protect a wide range of social, economic and cultural rights, including the right to health, to an adequate standard of living, to education, and to social protection. It is often referred to as the “International Bill of Rights.”
The United States has yet to accept the ICESCR despite the fact that is has been approved by 160 countries.
Migrant Workers’ Rights
International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (MWC)
The MWC was presented for ratification in December 1990 and went into force July 1, 2003. It protects migrant workers and their families from abuse and inhumane treatment in the countries where they work. To date, 40 countries have ratified it. No industrialized country has signed the convention.
Ratified by the United States but with restrictions.


Programming Robots with ROS is published by O'Reilly Media in December 2015. This book has 446 pages in English, ISBN-13 978-1449323899.
Want to develop novel robot applications, but don’t know how to write a mapping or object recognition system? You’re certainly not alone, but you’re not without help. By combining real-world examples with valuable knowledge from the Robot Operating System (ROS) community, this practical book provides a set of motivating recipes for solving specific robotics use cases.
Ideal for wide range of robot enthusiasts, from students in robotics clubs to professional robotics scientists and engineers, each recipe describes a complete solution using ROS open source libraries and tools. You’ll not only learn how to complete the task described in the recipe, but also how to configure and recombine the components for other tasks. All recipes include Python code.
No robot hardware is required to get started, just experience with Python and Linux. This book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students in introductory robotics courses.


'This site proves that hunter-gatherers were
capable of complex art and organised religion, something no-one
As for the temple's exact purpose, Schmidt gestures
at a new discovery: a carving of a boar, and ducks flying into nets.
'I think Gobekli Tepe celebrates the chase, the hunter-gatherer
lifestyle. And why not? This life was rich and leisured, it gave
them time enough to become accomplished sculptors.'
So why did the hunters of Gobekli give up their
Schmidt indicates the arid brown hilltops. 'Gathering
together for religion meant that they needed to feed more people. So
they started cultivating the wild grasses.' But this switch to
agriculture put pressure on the landscape; trees were cut down, the
herds of game were dispersed. What was once a land of paradise became
Schmidt explains that this switch took place around
8000 BC. Coincidentally, the temple of Gobekli Tepe was deliberately
covered with earth around this time. Unfortunately, we may never know
why the hunter-gatherers buried their 'temple in Eden'.
Perhaps they were grieving for their lost innocence.
What is unquestionable is the discoveries made in Gobekli Tepe, in
the last few weeks, are some of the most exciting made anywhere in
half a century. Schmidt shows me some workmen scraping earth from
a rock relief. It is marvellously detailed: it shows scorpions,
water-birds, and river life.
I suddenly realise that I am the first person other than
an archaeologist to see it in 10,000 years.


WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued the following report about Hurricane Irene. Irene was the first hurricane to hit the United States since Hurricane Ike struck Texas in September 2008. Irene was the first storm to threaten the New York City area since Hurricane Gloria in September 1985. On Saturday, Aug. 27, Irene’s hurricane force winds extended outward up to 90 miles from the center and tropical storm force winds extended outward up to 290 miles.
Irene was similar in size to Hurricane Katrina nearly six years ago to the date. Katrina’s hurricane force winds extended outward about 104 miles with tropical storm force winds felt outward 230 miles.
River flooding records were broken in 26 rivers. New Jersey (8), New York (14), Vermont (4).
40 people have died as a result of the storm. (media reports)
About 3.5 million customers were without power, that’s about 9 million people (media reports)
80 million people within 200 miles of storm track (source: CIESEN, Columbia University)
49 million people within 100 miles of storm track (source: CIESEN, Columbia University)
2.3 million people were under mandatory evacuation orders. One million in New Jersey, 315,000 in Maryland, 300,000 in North Carolina, 200,000 in Virginia, 100,000 in Delaware, and 300,000 people in New York City.
10,000 flights canceled for August 27—28. SWF, JFK, LGA, PHL, ISP and EWR airports were closed.
Numerous roads are closed in New Jersey and PA due to flooding and downed limbs, including portions of I—78, I—80, I—287 and I—95. 140 roads closed in MD due to downed trees and 46 due to flooding.
The New York Mass Transit Authority (MTA) stopped subway, bus, and Long Island Rail Road, and Metro—North Railroad services were shut down. NJ Transit and Path trains also ceased operations. Amtrak canceled all service on the Northeast corridor.
Hurricane Irene will be the 10th billion dollar disaster in 2011. This 10th U.S. billion—dollar disasterofficially breaks the annual record dating back to 1980.


DAILY CURRENT EVENTS CIVILS360
October 6, 2017
India disputes ILO’s modern slavery report
- The government has written to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) challenging a recent study on “modern slavery” conducted by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation (WFF) on behalf of the global body. The report does not mention India.
- The Labour Ministry shot off a strong letter to the ILO regarding its report titled ‘Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage 2017.’ The report, released on September 19, does not contain any India-specific findings, barring a mention that 17,000 people were interviewed for the survey.
- The letter follows a missive from the Intelligence Bureau (IB) to the government about documentation by multiple international organisations on slavery in India that can hurt India’s image and exports.
- In a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office and Labour Ministry, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) mentioned the following reports — the 2016 United Nations Special Rapporteur Report on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences, the 2015 ILO Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations on Forced Labour, the 2016 Global Slavery Index 2016 and ILO-WFF joint report of 2017.
Snow leopard photographed in Arunachal
- Scientists have obtained the first evidence of the elusive snow leopard in Arunachal Pradesh.The presence of the species outside a protected areas highlights the importance of community support for conservation as well as landscape-scale planning, says World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF-India), which conducted the camera trap study. The camera-trapping, part of a State-wide survey initiated in March 2017 by WWF-India in collaboration with the Arunachal Pradesh Environment and Forest Department, focused on unexplored snow leopard habitats.
- With only a small fraction of snow leopard habitats falling in the two protected areas (the Dibang Biosphere Reserve and Namdapha National Park) in the State, scientists tapped into the knowledge of locals — including herders and former hunters — to understand the current distribution of snow leopards and other mammals. Over 80% of the respondents confirmed the presence of snow leopards in their area.
- The research team deployed camera traps in select areas to document the species and obtained the photograph of a snow leopard in the Community Conserved Area (CCA).
- In 2004, WWF-India introduced the concept of CCAs in the State to empower local communities to become active decision-makers and implement conservation initiatives.
- Local communities in these CCAs form committees to undertake wildlife monitoring, patrolling and community-based tourism activities.
- Arunachal Pradesh is one of the 22 priority landscapes of the Global Snow Leopard Ecosystem Protection Program and while locals and researchers knew that there were snow leopards in the area, scientists had not been able to get photographs thus far.
Govt. to hold talks with Nagas today
- The decision to create seven new districts in Manipur, which led to massive protests and blockade of national highways linking the State, will be reviewed at a tripartite meeting called by the Union Home Ministry for Friday in Senapati district, an official said.
- The representatives of the United Naga Council (UNC) and the Central and State governments will attend the meeting.
- The UNC, the apex political body of the Nagas residing in the hill districts of Manipur, staged protests after the districts were created, alleging that the measure would bifurcate the ancestral land of the Nagas. It demanded that the meeting be held in Senapati, its headquarters, and not in Imphal. It also demanded that the Centre send its representative to the meeting.
- In 2016, the organisation imposed an economic blockade for 139 days on National Highway-2 (Imphal-Dimapur) and National Highway-37 (Imphal-Jiribam), the lifelines of the landlocked Manipur. The blockade was withdrawn in March after the BJP came to power in the State and assured the UNC that its demands would be considered, the official said.
SC to hear freedom of speech issue
- The Supreme Court on Thursday referred to a five-judge Constitution Bench several issues such as whether a public functionary or a Minister could claim freedom of speech while expressing views on sensitive matters which were under investigation.


Above: The Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF).
Since its development in 1947, synchrotron radiation (SR) X-rays have had tremendous applications in many fields, including in physics, material science, the life sciences, and medicine. The bright X-ray beam produced by synchrotron allows for the study of structures at an atomic level and events that occur at literally the speed of light. Initially, SR medical imaging was used to detect the detailed structures of various cancers in the breast, lung, and liver, as well as cerebrovasculature and cardiovasculature ex vivo. In more recent years, several third generation SR facilities have used synchrotron radiation in angiography on live animals, opening a new area of study on the effects of blood flow and microvascular function in vivo in many organ systems. A major advantage is that SR X-rays subject patients to potentially less radiation exposure than conventional X-ray imaging. This article introduces the applications of SR biomedical imaging in small animal disease models at beam line BL13W in the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) in China. We summarize the studies of rodent cerebral vasculature under ischemic or hemorrhagic conditions and the effort in developing absorption-based and phase-sensitive tumor angiography techniques aimed at early detection of micro-vessel growth.
Charged particles emit light when they are accelerated. If electrons are constrained to move in a curved path, they will accelerate toward the inside of the curve and will also radiate what is called synchrotron light. Light source facilities use particle accelerators to generate super-bright, intense beams of electromagnetic radiation. This radiation is referred to as light. The resulting light spectrum is very broad, including invisible X-rays, ultraviolet light, and infrared light.
Accelerator-based synchrotron light was first observed at the General Electric Research Laboratory in the United States in 1947. In the 1960s, it began to be regarded as light with exceptional properties. The light produced from today’s light sources is very bright. In other words, the beam of X-rays or other wavelengths is as thin as a hair and very intense. Just as laser light is much more intense and concentrated than the beam of light generated by a flashlight, so an x-ray beam produced by a synchrotron is a trillion times brighter than the beam produced by a hospital x-ray machine whose x-ray tubes emit light over a wide angle and with high intensity only at particular wavelengths .
Currently, the SSRF biomedical imaging beam line mainly serves for pre-clinical animal studies for models of various diseases. At the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, studies have been performed on 51 volunteer patients for trial studies of coronary arteries angiography.
Introduction to the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF)
SSRF is a third-generation SR light source. SSRF consists of a 150 MeV linear electron accelerator as injector, a booster that can increase the electron energy from 150 MeV to 3.5 GeV in 0.5 second, and a 3.5 GeV electron storage ring with 432 meter circumference. SR emits light with high flux, high brilliance, and wide photon energy range. There are 40 bending magnets, 16 standard straight sections (6.5 meters), and 4 long straight sections (12 meters) along the ring, thus around 50 beam lines could be constructed around the ring. The initial 7 beam lines, which include STXM-BL08U1A, X-ray imaging-BL13W, XAFS-BL14W, diffraction-BL14B, X-ray microprobe-BL15U, SAXS-BL16B, macromolecular crystallography-BL17U, and one branch beamline-BL08U1B X-ray interference lithography, were formally opened to users on May 6, 2009 .
BL13W X-ray Imaging Beam Line
The X-ray imaging beam line takes a 2.0 Tesla hybrid-type wiggler as light source, which is composed of 16 poles and the periodic length is 14 cm, the maximum K-value is 24.8 at minimum gap of 17 mm. A specially designed graphite filter system is utilized to absorb low-energy photons and reduce the heat-load on downstream components such as beryllium window and monochromator. The fixed-exit double crystal monochromator cooled with liquid nitrogen is placed at 28 m away from the source point. Two sets of crystals Si (111) and Si (311) could be interchanged to cover photon energy ranges from 8 KeV to 38 KeV and 38 KeV to 72 KeV, respectively. The beam size is 45 mm (Horizontal)×5 mm (Vertical) at 20 keV.
The SR based X-ray allows biomedical imaging to achieve high contrast, high spatial resolution, and high temporal resolution, as a result of the high intensity, high coherence, quasi-parallel and monochromatic properties of the SR beam. The BL13W at SSRF routinely supports absorption-based imaging, phase-sensitive imaging, microCT (µCT) imaging, and X-ray fluorescence imaging. SR-µCT is a non-destructive technique widely used for visualizing the morphology of samples, and for assessing quantitative information on their three-dimensional geometries and properties, which has found extensive applications in different research fields. The data processing and analysis is critical for SR-µCT experiments. Data processing software PITRE, multi-scale 3D structure characterization models, and a pseudo-global tomography algorithm have been developed at the beam line to improve image quality and computation at efficiency.
SR based X-ray fluorescence CT (XFCT), a complement to transmission based CT, is a stimulated emission tomography modality, which allows to reconstruct elemental distributions on a virtual section across the sample by various algorithms. Yang et al. has established an XFCT system at BL13W, and the ordered-subsets expectation maximization algorithm was introduced into XFCT to speed up the data acquisition and improve the image reconstruction .
Applications of SR Angiography in a Rodent Stroke Model
Cerebral vascular disease is a major cause of death in the world, especially ischemic stroke and intracranial hemorrhage (ICH). SR angiography of rodent cerebral vasculature was first developed by Dr. Kidoguchi and his colleagues in 2006 in the Japanese synchrotron facility Spring-8, Japan. At SSRF in Shanghai, we first performed SR angiography in living mice and rats to study the morphology and functions of intracranial vasculatures in cerebral ischemia, intracranial hemorrhage (ICH), and subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) models. Our data showed that SR angiography can be used to detect intracranial arteries with a diameter of less than 50 μm, which is much higher than magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) and in vivo microscopic computed tomography (Micro-CT).
SR Angiography in Cerebral Ischemia
SR angiography provides a unique tool for monitoring hemodynamic changes and microvascular morphology in the rodent stroke model. Using SR angiography, we modified the mouse and rat intraluminal suture middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model, and for the first time, we monitored the cerebral angiogenesis in vivo in the mouse ischemic stroke model after transgenic treatment .
The suture MCAO model is used worldwide to study cerebral ischemia. However, several complications are associated with this model, including high animal mortality, low ischemia/reperfusion rates in transient MCAO model, and inadequate occlusion. We found that the variations of dysplasia in posterior communication arteries (PcomA) existed in C57BL/6 mice, which could affect the blood supply in the posterior cerebral artery (PCA) area, thus resulting in the high mortality and instability of intraluminal suture permanent MCAO model. According to the result of SR angiograph, we proved that the high mortality of MCAO model in C57BL/6 mice was mainly due to the dysplasia in PcomA. According to this observation, we optimized the silicone coating of an 8-0 suture tip, which reduced the model mortality to zero after permanent MCAO in C57BL/6 mice and produced stable brain infarct volume independent of the patency of PcomAs. We also evaluated the influence of suture properties in rat intraluminal MCAO model. The SR angiography results, together with histology data, proved that silicone coating length can affect the cerebral blood flow and brain infarct volume after MCAO . Using SR angiography, we also found that the suture-induced thrombosis is a critical element of unreperfusion . Our results showed that appropriate heparin management provides a useful approach for improving reproducibility of the reperfusion model in mice.
Gene therapy treatment in experimental stroke is an area pursued by many stroke researchers. We found that heterologous Netrin-1 (NT-1) overexpression in the ipsilateral hemisphere after cerebral ischemia in mice can significantly improve local angiogenesis and functional recovery. Using SR angiography we verified the functional angiogenesis induced by NT-1 treatment in vivo for the first time . We also demonstrated that human endothelial progenitor cells (EPC) can improve angiogenesis in the ischemic area in mice (Data not published). We anticipate that SR angiography can become the standard method to detect the angiogenesis in experimental research.
SR Angiography in ICH and SAH
ICH and SAH are two types of hemorrhagic stroke with the highest mortality rate in humans. ICH and SAH are mainly caused by spontaneous rupture of the cerebral small vessels with vascular abnormalities, such as arteriovenous malformations (AVM) and aneurysms. Various approaches have been tested on animal models; however, most of the methods were histological analysis in vitro which cannot review the vascular structure and function information under physiological status. So, monitoring the hemodynamic and structural evaluation of cerebral vasculatures in vivo after ICH and SAH has remained critical but still formidable in experimental small animal research. Using SR angiography, we studied the vasospasm of the anterior communicating artery (AcomA) and middle cerebral artery (MCA) in two different ICH models in rats generated by injecting autologous blood into the cisterna magna and prechiasmatic cistern. We identified that both MCA and AcomA shrunk the most at day 3 after SAH and that the diameter of anterior cerebral artery (ACA) in the prechiasmatic cistern injection rat was smaller than that in the cisterna magna injection group, but not for MCA.
We also assessed the blood flow changes in arteries that supply the cerebral cortex and striatum in mice after ICH by combining SR angiography and Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI). The results showed that the blood flow in the cortical branches of MCA was significantly decreased at 20 min after blood injection, while recovered after three days. The blood flow in MCA, PCA, and ACA were not changed three days after ICH according to SR angiographic results. Interestingly, the blood flow of lenticulostriate artery (LSA) was significantly increased compared to control group three days after ICH. According to the result above, we concluded that SR angiography provided a novel technique, which could directly evaluate and monitor the structural and functional changes in cerebral vascular in small animal experimental ICH models.
Despite the many advantages of SR angiography, there still remain a number of disadvantages that need to be overcome in the future. Animals could not survive for a long period after SR angiography under the current setting mainly due to radiation injury resulting from the long imaging time required for live imaging. The ionizing radiation injury of brain tissue by SR X-ray is still unclear. The existing data suggests that the tissue tolerance was much lower under SR X-ray compared to conventional X-ray (Data not published). Last but not least, the quantification of vessels using SR angiograph is as big a challenge as in magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) and computed tomographic (CT) angiography.
Application of SR-µCT for tumor angiogenesis
Tumor angiogenesis, the process of new blood vessels sprouting from pre-existing vessels, plays a vital role in cancer growth and development. In vivo imaging of micro-vessels at early stages is an important step in understanding the developing mechanism, early detection, and evaluation of therapeutic effects for tumor diseases. At the BL13W beam line of SSRF, ex vivo and in vivo micro-angiography using SR combined with a high-resolution system has been developed as a powerful tool to study small vessels of tumor diseases. Liu P. et al. investigated physiological features of whole-body mouse microvasculature using barium sulfate as contrast agents for the ﬁrst time . The 3D reconstruction of lung cancer angiogenesis with barium was obtained with the spatial resolution of up to ∼ 10 μm, which was much higher than that of the conventional angiography.
As a new imaging method, X-ray phase-contrast imaging (XPCI) can greatly improve the image quality of soft tissues, particularly at the interface of tissues, where the refractive index changes significantly, with potential in clinical applications. At SSRF, the blood vessels of excised livers were clearly shown using synchrotron X-ray in-line phase-contrast imaging by replacing the blood with physiological saline. Tang et al. introduced microbubbles into tissue, and microbubbles produced a signiﬁcant change in the refractive index and highlighted the lumen of the vessel. This study demonstrated that microbubble-based PCI was a promising method to visualize the mouse renal vasculature and tumor-associated vessels using SR phase contrast imaging at the BL13W beam line of SSRF.
In vivo phase-contrast imaging of blood vessels without a contrast agent is still a big challenge. If the intensity difference could be increased between the vessel wall and other surrounding soft tissues, then in vivo phase-contrast imaging of blood vessels might be achieved. Liu P. et al. developed RGD peptides conjugated magnetite nano cluster probes for high resolution micro-CT imaging of tumor angiogenesis and angiogenic vessels were clearly detected by in vivo micro-CT imaging. It is particularly hopeful to realize in vivo SR phase contrast imaging of blood vessels. Further investigation in the SR phase contrast imaging combined with targeted nanoparticle probes are being performed at the BL13W beam line of SSRF with the aim to visualize vascular diseases in the near future.
Conclusions and Perspectives
SR based X-ray imaging has been well developed and used in research related to cerebrovascular diseases and cancer in BL13W beam line of SSRF. Research has proven that the SR angiography was helpful for studying both ischemic and hemorrhage stroke in living rodent models and in tumor angiography. However, further effort is required in reducing the ionizing radiation injury, decreasing the exposure time, and developing methods for three dimensional vessel density quantification in the future to make the SR angiography more applicable in broader ranges of biomedical imaging. With these developments of SR imaging in SSRF and other SR facilities, we expect to see further applications of SR biomedical imaging in basic and clinical researches, diagnoses, and therapies.
- SSRF (2014) Website.
- Yang Q, Deng B, Lv W, Shen F, Chen R, et al. (2012) Fast and accurate X-ray fluorescence computed tomography imaging with the ordered-subsets expectation maximization algorithm. J Synchrotron Radiat 19: 210-215.
- Lu H, Wang Y, He X, Yuan F, Lin X, et al. (2012) Netrin-1 hyperexpression in mouse brain promotes angiogenesis and long-term neurological recovery after transient focal ischemia. Stroke 43: 838-843.
- Guan Y, Wang Y, Yuan F, Lu H, Ren Y, et al. (2012) Effect of suture properties on stability of middle cerebral artery occlusion evaluated by synchrotron radiation angiography. Stroke 43: 888-891.
- Liu P, Sun J, Zhao J, Liu X, Gu X, et al. (2010) Microvascular imaging using synchrotron radiation. J Synchrotron Radiat 17: 517-521.


On Dec. 4, 2020, President Donald Trump signed into law the bipartisan-backed Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2020. By its terms, the new law applies solely to federal government agencies, but its downstream consequences are likely to reach further, impacting devices procured by the federal government and—likely, eventually—consumer devices.
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are in widespread use, most visibly by consumers of new smart home devices. The new law defines IoT devices as those devices that:
Interact with the physical world
Have a network interface for transmitting or receiving information via the internet
Are not conventional information technology devices such as smartphones or laptops and cannot function as a component of another device such as a processor
Despite having a highly technical definition, IoT devices are common and becoming increasingly so. You probably even have several in your home or office, with many wireless devices—like refrigerators, smart speakers, networked printers, security systems and locks—satisfying this definition of an IoT device.
Though perhaps less visible than consumer adoption of IoT devices, the federal government’s use of IoT devices is increasing and, given the federal government’s significant size and buying power, impacting the market in meaningful ways. For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uses sensors that transmit data regarding weather conditions. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uses autonomous surveillance towers that detect and identify items of interest at the border. NASA even uses spacesuits that monitor and transmit data regarding astronauts’ vital signs. Although these items often serve more sophisticated functions than IoT devices purchased and used by consumers, many of the underlying technologies are similar or even identical.
Despite, or perhaps because of, their growing adoption, IoT devices are generally viewed as being more vulnerable to cyberattacks and subject to abuse as part of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
The IoT Cybersecurity Improvement Act seeks to reduce those risks, at least among IoT devices procured by the federal government. To achieve this goal, the new law:
Tasks the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with developing, publishing and updating security standards for IoT devices
Requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to review each federal agency’s information security policies to ensure they comply with the standards NIST promulgates for IoT devices
Prohibits federal agencies from procuring any devices that fail to comply with NIST’s standards
Although NIST’s standards are not yet drafted and, even when they are, will not impose any direct requirements on the private sector, it is important for all device manufacturers and sellers to pay close attention to developments. The sheer size and scope of the federal government’s buying power may result in private sector businesses adopting the eventual NIST standards to ensure they can sell devices to the government. Similarly, the eventual NIST standards may provide a possible baseline for private sector businesses to satisfy and bring themselves into compliance with state IoT security laws that require “reasonable security features.”


EX 4th sem Digital Electronics Logic Design I syllabus RGTU/RGPV EX-403 Digital Electronics Logic Design I syllabus
Alphanumeric codes – ASCII code and EBCDIC codes, Hollerith code, concept of parity, complement r’s & (r-1)’s, subtraction with complements, signed Binary numbers, Error Detecting & Correcting codes. Basic Theorems & Properties of Boolean Algebra: AND, OR, NOT operators, laws of Boolean Algebra, Demorgon’s theorem, Boolean expression & logic diagram. Negative logic, Alternate logic gate representation (concept of bubbled gates) canonical and standard Forms (Minterms & Maxterms), sum of minterms & product of maxterms, conversion between canonical forms. Truth table & maps, 2,3,4,5 and 6 variable maps, Solving digital problems using Maps, Don’t care conditions, Tabular minimization. Sum of product & product of sum reduction, Exclusive OR & Exclusive NOR circuits, Parity generator & checkers.
Unit II Combinational Circuits : Design procedure, Adders (half and Full), subtractor (half and full) code convertors, Analysis of design, Universal building blocks, Implementation of any logic circuit with only NAND gates or with only NOR gates, Binary serial adder, parallel adder, serial/parallel adder, look ahead carry generator, BCD adder, Binary multiplier, Magnitude comparator, Decoder, Demultiplexer, Encoders, priority encoder, Multiplexers & implementation of combinational logic diagram, HDL for combinational circuit.
Unit III Sequential Logic Circuit : Latches, SR latch with NAND & NOR gates, D latch, edge triggered flip flop, J-K flip flop, T flip flop, Master slave flip flop, Analysis of clocked sequential circuit, state table, state diagram, state reduction state equations, state assignments, flip flop excitation table & characteristic equations, Design procedure for sequential circuits, Design with state reduction, Applications of flip flop.
Unit IV Registers and Counters : Asynchronous and Synchronous counter, counters with MOD numbers, Down counter, UP/DOWN counter, propagation delay in ripple counter, programmable counter, Pre-settable counter, BCD counter, cascading, counter applications, Decoding in counter, Decoding glitches, Ring Counter, Johnson counter, Rotate left & Rotate right counter, Registers – Buffer, Shift left, shift right, shift left/Right registers, parallel in parallel out, serial in serial out, parallel in serial out, serial in parallel out registers.
Unit V Random Access Memory, Timing waveform, Memory Decoding, Internal Construction, Coincident decoding, Address multiplexing, Read only memory – Combinational circuit implementation, Type of ROMs, combinational PLDs, Programmable Logic Array (PLA), Programmable Array Logic (PAL), sequential programmable device. Analog to digital conversion – Ramp type, dual slope, integration, successive approximation, parallel conversion, parallel/ serial conversion, convertor specifications, Digital to Analog convertors – Binary weighted & R/2R D to A convertors.
RGTU/RGPV EX-403 Digital Electronics Logic Design I References:
1. Mano; Digital design; Pearson Education Asia
2. Thomas Blakeslee; Digital Design with standard MSI and LSI; Wiley Interscience
3. Jain RP; Modern digital electronics; TMH
4. -M.Mano; Digital logic & Computer Design; PHI
5. Tocci ; Digital Systems Principle & applications; Pearson Education Asia
6. Gothmann; Digital Electronics; PHI
7. R.H.Gour; Digital Electronics and Micro Computer - (Dhanpat Rai)
8. –Malvino, Leech; Digital Principles and applications –(TMH)
9. Floyad; Digital Fundamentals (UBS)
10. Nripendra N. Biswas; Logic Design Theory (PHI)
11. D.C. Green; Digital Electronics (Pearson Education Asia)
RGTU/RGPV EX-403 Digital Electronics Logic Design I List of Experiments (Expandable):
1. Verification of all the logic gates.
2. Design of BCD to Excess-3 code converter.
3. Implementation of NAND & NOR as Universal gate.
4. Design of RS, JK, T& D Flip flop.
5. Multiplexer /Demultipexer based boolean function
6. Design of combinational circuit for the
(i) Half adder
(ii) Full adder
(iii) Half subtractor
(iv) Full subtractor
7. Design various A-D & D-A convertors.
NOTE- - All experiments (wherever applicable) should be performed through the following steps.
circuit should be simulated using Simulation S/W (TINA-V7/ PSPICE/ Labview/ CIRCUIT MAKER etc.).
Step 3: The designed/drafted circuit should be tested on the bread board and compare the results with
the simulated results.


In the long run men hit only what they aim at.
|Table of Contents|
Neptune Introduction |
Animations of Neptune
Views of Neptune
Rings of Neptune
Neptune Moon Summary
|Satellites of Neptune|
Naiad, Nereid, Proteus,
Neptune Science Summary |
Neptune Exploration Chronology
Neptune Image/Animation Gallery
Neptune's Ring System |
The first two thirds of Neptune is composed of a mixture of molten rock, water, liquid ammonia and methane. The outer third is a mixture of heated gases comprised of hydrogen, helium, water and methane. Methane gives Neptune its blue cloud color.
Neptune is a dynamic planet with several large, dark spots reminiscent of Jupiter's hurricane-like storms. The largest spot, known as the Great Dark Spot, is about the size of the earth and is similar to the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. Voyager revealed a small, irregularly shaped, eastward-moving cloud scooting around Neptune every 16 hours or so. This scooter as it has been dubbed could be a plume rising above a deeper cloud deck.
Long bright clouds, similar to cirrus clouds on Earth, were seen high in Neptune's atmosphere. At low northern latitudes, Voyager captured images of cloud streaks casting their shadows on cloud decks below.
The strongest winds on any planet were measured on Neptune. Most of the winds there blow westward, opposite to the rotation of the planet. Near the Great Dark Spot, winds blow up to 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) an hour.
Neptune has a set of four rings which are narrow and very faint. The rings are made up of dust particles thought to have been made by tiny meteorites smashing into Neptune's moons. From ground based telescopes the rings appear to be arcs but from Voyager 2 the arcs turned out to be bright spots or clumps in the ring system. The exact cause of the bright clumps is unknown.
The magnetic field of Neptune, like that of Uranus, is highly tilted at 47 degrees from the rotation axis and offset at least 0.55 radii (about 13,500 kilometers or 8,500 miles) from the physical center. Comparing the magnetic fields of the two planets, scientists think the extreme orientation may be characteristic of flows in the interior of the planet and not the result of that planet's sideways orientation or of any possible field reversals at either planet.
|Discovered by||Johann Gotfried Galle|
|Date of discovery||September 23, 1846|
|Mass (Earth = 1)||1.7135e+01|
|Equatorial radius (km)||24,746|
|Equatorial radius (Earth = 1)||3.8799e+00|
|Mean density (gm/cm^3)||1.64|
|Mean distance from the Sun (km)||4,504,300,000|
|Mean distance from the Sun (Earth = 1)||30.0611|
|Rotational period (hours)||16.11|
|Orbital period (years)||164.79|
|Mean orbital velocity (km/sec)||5.45|
|Tilt of axis (degrees)||29.56|
|Orbital inclination (degrees)||1.774|
|Equatorial surface gravity (m/sec^2)||11.0|
|Equatorial escape velocity (km/sec)||23.50|
|Visual geometric albedo||0.41|
|Mean cloud temperature||-193 to -153°C|
|Atmospheric pressure (bars)||1-3|
This picture of Neptune was taken by Voyager 2 on August 20, 1989. One of the great cloud features, dubbed the Great Dark Spot by Voyager scientists, can be seen toward the center of the image. It is at a latitude of 22 degrees south and circuits Neptune every 18.3 hours. The bright clouds to the south and east of the Great Dark Spot constantly change their appearances in periods as short as four hours. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)
The Interior of Neptune
Our knowledge of the internal structure of Neptune is inferred from the planet's radius, mass, period of rotation, the shape of its gravitational field and the behavior of hydrogen, helium, and water at high pressure. This cut-away view shows Neptune composed of an outer envelope of molecular hydrogen, helium and methane roughly the mass of one to two Earths. Below this region Neptune appears to be composed of a mantle rich in water, methane, ammonia, and other elements. These elements are under high temperatures and pressures deep within the planet. The mantle is equivalent to 10 to 15 earth masses. Neptune's core is composed of rock and ice, and is likely no more than one Earth mass. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)
HST Observes Triton and Neptune
This mosaic combines an almost true-color picture of Neptune taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Wide Field Planetary Camera (WFPC), with a picture of Triton taken with the HST's Faint Object Camera. Although faint, the image of Triton vaguely shows a brighter equatorial region. The south pole is to the lower left.
The picture of Neptune shows a bright cloud feature at the south pole, near the bottom of the image. Bright cloud bands can be seen at 30S and 60S latitude.
The northern hemisphere also includes a bright cloud band centered near
30° N latitude.
(Courtesy of Ted Stryk)
HST Observations of Neptune
These almost true-color pictures of Neptune were constructed from HST/WFPC2 images taken in blue (467-nm), green (588-nm), and red (673-nm) spectral filters. There is a bright cloud feature at the south pole, near the bottom right of the image. Bright cloud bands can be seen at 30S and 60S latitude. The northern hemisphere also includes a bright cloud band centered near 30° N latitude. The second picture was compiled from images taken after the planet had rotated about 180 degrees of longitude (about 9 hours later) to show the opposite hemisphere.
One feature that is conspicuous by its absence is the storm system
known as the Great Dark Spot.
The second smaller dark spot, DS2, that
was seen during the Voyager-2 encounter was also missing. The absence
of these dark spots was one of the biggest surprises of this program.
These dramatic changes in the large-scale storm systems and
planet-encircling clouds bands on Neptune are not yet completely
understood, but they emphasize the dynamic nature of this planet's
atmosphere, and the need for further monitoring.
HST Observes High Altitude Clouds
These three images were taken on October 10, October 18 and November 2, 1994, when Neptune was 4.5 billion kilometers from Earth. Building on Voyager's initial discoveries, Hubble has revealed that Neptune has a remarkably dynamic atmosphere that changes over just a few days. The temperature difference between Neptune's strong internal heat source and its frigid cloud tops (-162° Celcius or -260° Fahrenheit) might trigger instabilities in the atmosphere that drive these large-scale weather changes. The pink features are high-altitude methane ice crystal clouds.
HST Finds New Dark Spot
In June 1994, the Hubble telescope revealed that the Great Dark Spot found by Voyager 2 was missing. This new image taken on November 2, shows that a new spot near the limb of the planet has formed. Like its predecessor, the new spot has high altitude clouds along its edge, caused by gasses that have been pushed to higher altitudes where they cool to form methane ice crystal clouds. The dark spot may be a zone of clear gas that is a window to a cloud deck lower in the atmosphere.
This image shows bands of sunlit cirrus-like clouds in Neptune's northern hemisphere. These clouds cast shadows on the blue cloud deck 35 miles below. The white streaky clouds are from 48 to 160 kilometers (30 to 100 miles) wide and extend for thousands of miles. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)
This Voyager 2 image has been processed by computers so that both the clouds' structure in the dark regions near the pole and the bright clouds east of the Great Dark Spot are visible. Small trails of clouds trending east to west and large-scale structure east of the Great Dark Spot all suggest that waves are present in the atmosphere and play a large role in the type of clouds that are visible. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)
Great Dark Spot
Feathery white clouds fill the boundary between the dark and light blue regions on the Great Dark Spot. The pinwheel shape of both the dark boundary and the white cirrus suggests that the storm system rotates counterclockwise. Periodic small scale patterns in the white cloud, possibly waves, are short lived and do not persist from one Neptunian rotation to the next. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)
Change In The Great Dark Spot
The bright cirrus-like clouds of Neptune change rapidly, often forming and dissipating over periods of several to tens of hours. In this sequence spanning two rotations of Neptune (about 36 hours) Voyager 2 observed cloud evolution in the region around the Great Dark Spot at an effective resolution of about 100 kilometers (62 miles) per pixel. The surprisingly rapid changes which occur over the 18 hours separating each panel shows that in this region Neptune's weather is perhaps as dynamic and variable as that of the Earth. However, the scale is immense by our standards. The Earth and the Great Dark Spot are of similar size and in Neptune's frigid atmosphere, where temperatures are as low as 55 degrees Kelvin (-360 F), the cirrus clouds are composed of frozen methane rather than Earth's crystals of water ice. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)
High Resolution Crescent Image of Neptune
This high resolution crescent image of Neptune was taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft on on August 31, 1989. A circular storm pattern can be seen on the limb of the planet. (Copyright 2001 by Calvin J. Hamilton)
This Voyager 2 image shows a beautiful dual-crescent view of Neptune and Triton. The image, acquired on August 31, 1989, is a parting tribute of the Voyager mission. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)
Small Dark Spot
This image shows the Small Dark Spot, which is south of the Great Dark Spot. The small spot is thought to be a storm in Neptune's atmosphere, perhaps similar to Jupiter's Great Red Spot. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)
These two 591-second exposures of the rings of Neptune were taken by Voyager 2 on August 26, 1989 from a distance of 280,000 kilometers (174,000 miles). The two main rings are clearly visible and appear complete over the region imaged. Also visible in this image is the inner faint ring at about 42,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) from the center of Neptune, and the faint band which extends smoothly from the 53,000 kilometer (33,000 miles) ring to roughly halfway between the two bright rings. The bright glare in the center is due to over-exposure of the crescent of Neptune. Numerous bright stars are evident in the background. Both rings are continuous. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)
This portion of one of Neptune's rings appears to be twisted. Scientists believe it looks this way because the original material in the rings was in clumps that formed streaks as the material orbited Neptune. The motion of the spacecraft added to the twisted appearance by causing a slight smearing in the image. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)
The following table is a summary of the rings of Neptune.
|1989N3R||41,900 km||15 km||?||?||low|
|1989N2R||53,200 km||15 km||?||?||low|
|1989N4R||53,200 km||5,800 km||?||?||low|
|1989N1R||62,930 km||< 50 km||?||?||low|
*The distance is measured from the planet center to the start of the ring.
The following table summarizes the radius, mass, distance from the planet center, discoverer and the date of discovery of each of the moons of Neptune:


Environment & Public Health: Taking and Passing the REHS Exam
The NJ REHS Licensing Exam is comprised of 100 multiple-choice questions that assess your knowledge of diverse topics, including:
- Public health administration
- Communicable disease
- Food protection and safety
- Water and wastewater
- Vectors, pests, and weeds
- Potable water
- Air quality and noise pollution
- Swimming pools and recreational facilities
- New Jersey statutes and rules
- Hazardous materials
To earn an REHS license, you must score at least 70% on the licensing exam. Most people (75-80%) pass the exam on the first try, but the passing rate varies depending on the individuals, their backgrounds, and the amount of time and effort they put into preparing for the exam.
To help you prepare for the exam, Rutgers OCPE offers an NJ REHS Licensing Exam Review Course.
What if I don’t pass the licensing exam on the first try?


Solar battery storage is a device that stores energy generated by a solar system for later use, such as during power outages. It is often used at night or during times of high energy demand. The cost of these systems is decreasing in the market. Pairing a solar battery storage system with solar panels is a cost-effective and smart investment. This blog will discuss the benefits of having a storage battery system.
Solar battery storage refers to a system that stores energy generated by solar panels for later use, primarily during power outages or periods of high energy demand. The cost of these systems is becoming more affordable. Combining a solar battery storage system with solar panels is a cost-effective and wise investment.
Invest in a home battery to lower your electricity bills and prevent unexpected charges
A home battery is a one-time investment that can significantly reduce the consumption charge portion of your electricity bill. If your roof has enough capacity and a large enough solar system, you may be able to eliminate the consumption charge. Additionally, monitoring your household's electricity consumption throughout the day can help you stay aware of your usage habits and prevent high bills. By being mindful of your consumption, you can take control of your electricity costs and avoid bill shock.
Achieve greater energy independence by investing in batteries
Some people prefer not to rely on grid electricity for their daily needs. Batteries are a great option for those individuals. While solar panels are beneficial, they have the limitation that the energy they produce must be used in real-time or sent back to the grid. Batteries allow you to control your energy consumption and store produced energy for later use. Some battery storage systems even provide backup power during grid outages. Using your own stored solar battery energy can provide a sense of satisfaction and self-sufficiency.
Reduce potential losses by installing a solar battery as you transition away from a state-sponsored feed-in tariff program
Households that have left such programs may experience a decrease in the value of excess solar energy they export to the grid. A solar battery can assist in limiting this loss by controlling the amount of energy sent to the grid.
Reduce your impact on the environment by installing a solar battery system
The type of electricity generated in your area can vary, with some regions relying on coal-fired generation and others on hydropower. By generating and storing your energy, you can decrease your carbon footprint.
Benefit financially by trading the energy stored in your solar battery on the grid
The rapid growth of the solar home battery storage industry has caught the attention of electricity companies and retailers, who are looking for ways to use batteries to lower wholesale electricity prices. By exporting stored energy to the grid at peak times, you may be able to earn premium rates for your energy, potentially offsetting the cost of your battery investment and even making you a profitable energy trader.
Make a lasting impression on those around you by installing a solar battery storage system in your home
This cutting-edge technology will set you apart from others and demonstrate your commitment to energy conservation and solar electricity generation. Share your knowledge and experiences with your friends and family, and even inspire them to consider installing their battery storage. Upgrade your home with the latest technology and impress your friends and colleagues.
Contribute to shaping the grid of the future by installing a solar battery storage system
The increasing popularity and adoption of battery storage are expected to greatly impact the way people around the world manage electricity generation and distribution. As more households generate and store their energy, they will play a key role in determining the future of the grid. By installing a battery storage system, you can be a part of this shift and help shape the future of energy.
Choosing to install a solar battery system in your home is a smart decision that offers many benefits
Now is a great time to invest in a system as prices are currently low. If you're still unsure about whether to purchase solar battery storage, consider the advantages it provides and the benefits it can bring to your household. The importance of having one will become clear.
And if you need additional consultation regarding battery type, our agents will gladly help. You can reach out via email@example.com or check our website and fill out the inquiry.


If you’ve ever wondered what a smile predicts, a study at UC Berkeley sheds a little light on the subject. Researchers went through an old high school yearbook and looked at…you guessed it…smiles. They established measures of health and success over a 30 year period. Remarkably, by measuring smiles, they were able to predict how long the subjects’ marriages lasted, how they would score on surveys of well-being and happiness, and how well they inspired others. The broadest smiles consistently predicted the highest measures in all of the above.
When you look in the mirror and feel good about your teeth, you’ll smile more. And when you smile more you simply feel better. Yes, there’s research on that too! It turns out that the physical act of smiling fires neurons in your brain associated with happiness, and when you share your smile with others, a similar effect occurs in their brains. The win-win act of smiling carries many implications in every aspect of your life.
Math and Your Teeth
A lot goes into a superb smile, and your teeth play a central role. At City Smiles, we concern ourselves with the intricate details of exceptional teeth. For example, you might be surprised to find there’s a distinct ratio of width to length for front teeth that looks best. If teeth violate this value, teeth may look too square or short. We may find that just adding a fraction of length to your front incisors may change the entire appearance of your smile. Many other details such as angulation, rotation, and thickness are just part of what we analyze to improve your smile.
People often list tooth color as the most important factor in evaluating their smile. Any shift in the tone and brightness of your teeth can be dramatic. Many people don’t realize how much color our teeth absorb over time; but altering the color may be a simple solution that instantly boosts your confidence, or complements any other treatment. Here’s a quick screening test for you: look in the mirror and compare the whites of your eyes with your teeth. Unless you’re coming off a night of no sleep, the two areas should look roughly the same. Many people find that the whites of their eyes look much lighter than their yellowed teeth.
What about the effect of one misplaced tooth, like a pointed canine that sits too far forward? Since the human eye appreciates harmony, even a single stray tooth can disrupt the appearance of an otherwise decent smile. Solutions to establish a balance between teeth are a critical part of cosmetic dentistry’s focus.
Let’s Create Harmony
At City Smiles, the details of your smile matter to us. With Dr. Hill’s experience and training in cosmetic dentistry, you can leave those details up to us. We’ll evaluate the big picture and everything that creates it and help you find the smile of your dreams. Call (314) 375-5353 in downtown St. Louis, (314) 678-7876 in Clayton or email us to learn more.


From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level : Read the attached story
Mains level : Awareness about antenatal care and breastfeeding
- The Taj Mahal has become one of the only three UNESCO Heritage Sites to have a breastfeeding room for women.
Breastfeeding room in Taj
- In a country like India, breastfeeding has a lot of social stigma attached to it.
- It is often seen as disgusting or even embarrassing.
- This initiative aims at removing the social stigma regarding breastfeeding and helping new mothers to get the freedom to breastfeed in public without being forced to cover-up.
- The main objective continues to be normalizing public breastfeeding.
- The breastfeeding room will also be introduced in other monuments including the Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri.
Why such move?
- India accounts for one-fifth of neonatal deaths.
- Over 20 percent neonatal deaths can be prevented if the child is breastfed.
- Various factors come into play when the question comes to why less than 55 percent babies are breastfed in the country.
- Aside from poor health of the mother, lack of time and the convenience of formula milk, one of the biggest hindrances when it comes to breastfeeding is the taboo attached to it.
- There have been various instances internationally where women have been asked to exit the premises or even “take their business in the washroom” for breastfeeding in public.
- However, initiatives like the one taken in the Taj Mahal, are actively working towards removing the taboo and stigma related to breastfeeding and to normalize something as simple as a mother feeding her child.


The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index that is calculated and released every year by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The Human Development Index (HDI) determines the average achievement of a country in key human development dimensions: a long and healthy life, decent standard of living, and mean years of schooling and expected years of schooling (education).
Key Points for UPSC Prelims
It is a composite index consisting of life expectancy, education, and per capita income as parameters.
When a country has a higher life span, good educational quality, and high levels of income, then its Human Development Index will rise.
HDI was developed in the year 1990 by a Pakistani economist Mahbub ul Haq and is used to measure a country’s development.
In 2010, the UNDP introduced Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI). The IHDI measures a country’s average achievements in health, education, and income and how those achievements are distributed among the country’s population.
Human Development Index 2020
The Human Development Index 2020 has been topped by Norway, followed by Ireland.
India has been ranked 131st on the index of 189 countries and has dropped by two places from the previous year rankings where it was ranked 129th.
However, India would move up eight places in the ranking if the Index was adjusted to assess the planetary pressures caused by each nation’s development.
This year, UNDP has introduced a new metric to check the impact caused by each country’s per-capita carbon emissions and its material footprint.
China has been ranked 85th on the index while Pakistan is at rank 154.
As per the index, the gross national income per capita of India decreased to $6,681 in the year 2019 from $6,829 in 2018 on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis.
The 2020 Human Development Index also marks the 30th anniversary of the report.


To realise the highest level of satisfaction in performance, riding comfort, safety, and eco-friendly driving, our goal is to continually advance our technological capability to produce tyres that perform optimally under all conditions.
Safety: Driver peace of mind with protective technology
The most important thing to protect a driver’s safety is the friction between the tyre and road surface. Through this frictional force, the tyre can prevent the vehicle from sliding. The tyres braking performance is also an important factor directly related to the safety of the driver. The tyre’s performance can also be enhanced through the tyres materials, its firmness, shape, and the pattern design imprinted on the surface which comes in direct contact with the road.
Weather particularly affects the sliding and braking performance of tyres. When a car is racing down a wet road and the tyre grooves cannot adequately disperse water, hydroplaning occurs, making it difficult to control the vehicle.
When hydroplaning occurs, a water layer forms between the road surface and the tyre, preventing contact with the pavement, which can lead to a highly dangerous situation. A tyres reaction to wet roads is dependent on three aspects: the proportion of rubber in the tyre, the groove pattern on the tyre, and the contact contour of the tyre.
When mixing in rubber, the interaction between the two main materials, silica and rubber, is maximised so that the tyre draws water particles into the grooves on the tyre’s surface. This allows water to be dispersed on the road and the tyre to stay in contact with the road surface.
Hankook is continuously developing tyres that maintain an optimal grip force through research in groove patterns and contact contours. The company is continuously searching for ways to protect the driver and passengers on wet roads and has developed technologies such as Stone Ejection Technology, which prevents small pebbles and stones from burrowing into grooves by creating a step-like layer on the groove of the tyre pattern. Hankook also utilises Dynamic Profile Control Technology, which analyses and recreates the shape of the tyre to minimise shape changes while driving at high speeds.
Hankook uses a variety of simulation tests to verify how tyres react to water on the road. We are also equipped with hydroplaning test sections on straight and curved tracks at our G’Trac proving grounds.
The main factor in tyre safety on snow-covered roads is tyre rubber compounding and silica, which is used for our winter tyres. This prevents sliding on wet surfaces and reduces rolling resistance. In addition, rubber for winter tyres is mixed in special proportions so that tyres can maintain flexibility even at -7 degrees Celsius, without solidifying.
On winter tyres, a zigzag pattern called kerf maximises the friction between the tyre and snow, enhancing safety and improving car handling. The traditional kerf for tyres is two-dimensional, but Hankook added another vertical shape producing a 3-Dimemsional groove pattern. This 3D kerf improves tyre performance on not only snow or ice covered roads, but also on wet or dry roads which has a positive effect on the friction, braking and grip of the tyre.


The crisis in Darfur, in western Sudan, has led to some of the worst human rights abuses imaginable, including systematic and widespread murder, rape, abduction and forced displacement. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have died as a result of both deliberate and indiscriminate attacks, and more than 2 million civilians have been forced to flee from their homes. The situation on the ground has been plagued with renewed violence, Janjawid attacks, and aerial bombing by the Government of Sudan's military. Currently, the Government of Sudan is resisting the UN Security Council-mandated peacekeeping operation that is desperately needed.
Amnesty representatives have met with UN, U.S. and European officials to call for their vigorous action and have pressed the governments of Chad and Sudan directly. Amnesty's global membership has also organized letter-writing campaigns and demonstrations to draw attention to the crisis.
The international community must, at long last, put a stop to these atrocities and bring relief to those who have survived but continue to suffer. Join the growing movement of citizens worldwide who are taking action for Darfur.
Satellite imagery updates are no longer being housed on this site. Please visit us at http://www.amnestyusa.org/sudan to access up-to-date background information, research, and action opportunities.


Drawing on our extensive expertise in aircraft design, materials, propulsion, environmental issues and industrial management, this course will equip you with a solid science and engineering base and the broader aviation knowledge vital for pilots in the 21st century.
You’ll benefit from the training facilities and expertise of a professional flying school as you undertake ten hours of flight training, achieve the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) ground exam requirements for the Private Pilot’s Licence (PPL) and develop the knowledge you need for commercial pilot ground exams. At the same time, you’ll gain a strong science and engineering base with modules on topics like aviation engineering materials. You’ll also put this knowledge into the context of the aviation industry today and in the future.
You’ll be taught be expert academics and experienced professionals, allowing you to develop the knowledge and professional skills to succeed in the aviation industry.
You’ll have access to our engine laboratories and state-of-the-art flight simulators, including an Airbus A320 airliner cockpit simulator. If you want to take commercial-level instrument training, you’ll also benefit from the use of our CAA approved, complex twin-engine FNPTII aircraft simulator.
You’ll be introduced to the key science and engineering principles that underlie aviation studies in Year 1, when you’ll also develop the theoretical knowledge you need for the Private Pilot’s Licence (PPL) – you can meet the CAA’s ground exam requirements as part of your studies. During this year and the following summer you’ll also spend ten hours in the air, working towards your PPL.
Optional modules will also give you the chance to explore related areas such as process chemistry, management or the broader context of surface and air transport in an evolving economy and society.
Year 2 will incorporate the theoretical knowledge to prepare you for the CAA commercial pilot ground examinations. You’ll also learn more about how airlines and airports operate, their economic importance and the practical challenges that arise from commercial, technical, regulatory and political constraints.
In your final year you’ll learn more about vital issues of safety and reliability in aviation, as well as the health and security issues that affect different elements of the industry. You’ll also deepen your understanding of aerodynamics, aircraft design and construction, and work on a team technology project to apply your knowledge to a specific problem in aviation.
Every year of the course gives you hands-on experience of project work. This gives you the opportunity to explore your subject further as well as developing valuable skills in problem solving, communication and teamwork.
Find out more about our Projects
These are typical modules/components studied and may change from time to time. Read more in our Terms and conditions.
- Technical Skills and Applications 20 credits
- Aviation Engineering Materials 10 credits
- Theoretical Knowledge for the Private Pilots Licence 20 credits
- Aviation Engineering Science 20 credits
- Introduction to Aviation 20 credits
- Mathematical Techniques 1 10 credits
- Foundation Mathematics 10 credits
- Fundamentals of Process Chemistry 10 credits
- Foundation Engineering Physics 10 credits
- Introduction to Management 10 credits
- Introduction to Surface and Air Transport 10 credits
- Aircraft 1 20 credits
- Aviation Health and Safety 20 credits
- Advanced Pilot Theory 40 credits
- Airline and Airport Operations 20 credits
- Mathematical Techniques 2 20 credits
- Aircraft 2 20 credits
- Aviation Safety and Reliability 30 credits
- Aviation Technology Team Project 30 credits
- Aviation Futures 40 credits
Broadening your academic horizons
At Leeds we want you to benefit from the depth and breadth of the University's expertise, to prepare you for success in an ever-changing and challenging world. On this course you broaden your learning through core and/or optional modules. Find out more on the Broadening webpages.
Learning and teaching
You’ll study among academics who are leaders in their field – staff have conducted research for organisations such as NASA, the US Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the US Air Force. Our research leads directly into our teaching, meaning you’ll hear about the very latest developments in your studies.
You’ll benefit from our integrated style of teaching and learning, using methods such as lab classes, project work, lectures, tutorials, example classes and group activities, allowing you to gain first-hand experience of applying your knowledge to real-life situations. Together they will equip you with in-depth knowledge and key practical skills that will put you in a good position to compete in science and technology-related careers. Our close links with industry also mean that you have direct contact with industry and potential employers from an early stage in your course.
Our personal tutorial system will provide academic and pastoral support. You will have a designated member of staff as personal tutor throughout your studies at Leeds. You will have weekly academic tutorials with your tutor throughout your first year, in your tutor group (of typically 5 students), as well as one-to-one meetings twice per semester.
Most modules are assessed by more than one component. These components can include written examinations held at the end of each year, in-class and online tests, example sheets, assignments, and coursework in the form of reports, projects, presentations and posters.
Flying skills are assessed formally in line with civil aviation practices and requirements. We give individual feedback so you can improve your skills.
Entry requirements, fees and applying
A-level: AAA including Mathematics or Physics.
Where an A-Level Science subject is taken, we require a pass in the practical science element, alongside the achievement of the A-Level at the stated grade.
GCSE: English Language at grade C or above, or an appropriate English language qualification.
Access to HE Diploma
Pass 60 credits overall with 45 credits at Level 3, 30 credits with Distinction (including Mathematics) and the remaining 15 credits with Merit or above.
D*DD including an appropriate amount of level 3 Mathematics or Physics.
D3, D3, D3 including Mathematics.
35 overall (18 higher, including 5 points at higher level in Mathematics or Physics).
Irish Highers (Leaving Certificate)
A1A1A2A2A2A2 including Mathematics and English.
Scottish Highers / Advanced Highers
AAAAA overall (AAA at advanced level including Mathematics or Physics).
Advanced Diploma: A with an appropriate amount of Mathematics or Physics.
Read more about UK and Republic of Ireland accepted qualifications or contact the Schools Undergraduate Admissions Team.
Were committed to identifying the best possible applicants, regardless of personal circumstances or background.
Access to Leeds is an alternative admissions scheme which accepts applications from individuals who might be from low income households, in the first generation of their immediate family to apply to higher education, or have had their studies disrupted.
Find out more about Access to Leeds and alternative admissions.
If you do not have the formal qualifications for immediate entry to one of our degrees, you may be able to progress through a foundation year. We offer a BSc Studies in Science for students without a science background at A-level and anInterdisciplinary Science Foundation Year for applicants who meet specific widening participation criteria.
We accept a range of international equivalent qualifications.
If you have the ability to study for a degree but don’t have the qualifications to enter directly to level one, you might consider studying a foundation year. We have formal links with the following foundation year programmes:
If you are applying from an alternative foundation year provider, please contact our admissions team to find out if your qualification is suitable for entry to our courses.
English language requirementsIELTS 6.0 overall, with no less than 5.5 in any component. For other English qualifications, read English language equivalent qualifications.
International students who do not meet the English language requirements for the programme may be able to study an English for Academic Purposes pre-sessional course with a progression route to the degree programme. For information and entry requirements, read Pre-sessional programmes.
How to apply
Apply to this course through UCAS. The institution code for the University of Leeds is L23. Check the deadline for applications on the UCAS website.
International students apply through UCAS in the same way as UK/EU students. Our network of international representatives can help you with your application. If youre unsure about the application process, contact the admissions team for help.
Read about visas, immigration and other information in International students. We recommend that international students apply as early as possible to ensure that they have time to apply for their visa.
Suitable applicants will be invited to an applicant day, which gives you the opportunity to meet our students, academic staff and admissions staff, and find out more about your course. You’ll take part in a practical engineering activity, followed by a school and campus tour. The tour of the school’s facilities includes interactive demonstrations of student activities.
We like to interview applicants before making an offer, so the applicant day will also include a group interview with one of our academics. This will give you the chance to discuss your application in more detail, check that it’s the right course for you and your career plans, have your questions answered and find out more about studying at Leeds.
UK/EU: See fees section below
International: £19,750 (per year)
For UK and non-UK EU full-time students starting in 2017, the fee for 2017/18 will be £9,250.
The fee may increase in future years of your course in line with inflation, and as permitted by law. For example, the increase of 2.8% for 2017/18 was based on the government’s forecast for the RPI-X measure of inflation.
The UK government has confirmed that non-UK EU students starting in 2017 will have home fee status and be eligible for UK government student loans for the duration of their course. Read the full government statement
If you take a study abroad or work placement year, youll pay a reduced tuition fee during this period. For more information, see Study abroad and work placement tuition fees and loans.
Read more about paying fees and charges.
The School of Chemical and Process Engineering offer a range of scholarships for Home, EU and International students.
Find out more about our Scholarships
Many of our students see this course as the first step towards gaining a Commercial Pilot's Licence (CPL). However, airports and airlines offer an extensive range of other opportunities and you’ll be well placed to launch a career in a wide variety of aviation-related areas.
These could include airport operations and management, air traffic control, non-airline commercial flight operations, flying instruction, technical sales and marketing in aviation related industries. Some students have also been successful in obtaining RAF sponsorship.
Graduates have gone on to work as first and second officers for airlines such as Qatar Airlines, Aer Lingus, British Airways, Ryanair, Flybe and Cathay Pacific, as well as in administrative and management roles at airports such as Gatwick. Others have launched careers in the RAF and the British Army, or worked as project managers or data analysts among other roles for manufacturers such as Airbus and Navtech.
You’ll have access to our dedicated Employability team, located centrally in our Employability Suite, who will provide you with specialist face-to-face support and advice to help you find relevant work experience, internships and year-in-industry placements, as well as graduate positions.
You’ll benefit from timetabled employability sessions, ongoing support during internships and placements, and presentations and workshops delivered by employers. The team also works closely with the University’s Careers Centre, which is one of the largest in the country.
Find out more about careers support and employability
Study abroad and work placements
On this course you have the opportunity to apply to spend time abroad, usually as an extra academic year. The University has partnerships with more than 400 universities worldwide and popular destinations for our students include Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Africa and Latin America.
Find out more at the Study Abroad website.
With the help and support of our faculty Employability Team, you can choose to undertake an industrial placement year at one of the 100+ companies that we work with. If you decide to undertake a placement year this will extend your period of study by 12 months and, on successful completion, you will be awarded the ‘industrial’ variant in your degree title to demonstrate your added experience to future employers.
Find out more about work placements
This course offers you the chance to undertake flight training at private pilot level, provided by a flying school at an airfield near Leeds, and ground instruction at commercial level.
Private Pilot Training
Your course fees include ten hours of private pilot flight training over Year 1 and the following summer, including aircraft hire, flight instructor fees, flying club membership and ground transport between campus and the training location. Private Pilot Licence (PPL) theory and ground examinations are included in Year 1.
If you’re considered ready to fly solo, you’ll need to produce a valid UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Class 2 medical certificate to complete your training – we can facilitate you taking the required medical examination if you haven’t already done so.
Commercial Pilot Ground Instruction
This is incorporated into Year 2 and includes instruction by a CAA-accredited ground instructor, as well as access to study materials for the Air Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) ground school if you need them. You’ll have access to a suitable flight simulator for no extra cost.
Please note that the CAA ATPL ground examinations are for an external qualification which is beyond the University’s control. If you choose to sit these examinations, you will be responsible for any CAA mandated revision short course and exam fees. You will also need to have completed your PPL.


Voter intimidation, a tactic used by White Americans to keep African Americans from voting during the time of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, is now being used by a new political party that goes by a very familiar name, The New Black Panther Party. The original Black Panther Party has denied any affiliation with this group for good reason. This New Black Panther Party has a new, racist political agenda targeted at White Americans for what seems to be payback of treatment to African Americans before and during the Civil Rights Movement.
The most recent of events for this New Black Panther Party involves voter intimidation outside a polling place in Philadelphia during the 2008 Presidential election. Three members of this party, dressed in what Washington Post is calling “paramilitary uniforms,” assembled outside this polling station to verbally and visually intimidate voters. Their uniforms consisted primarily of black articles of clothing, black boots, black berets, and all other things black to maximize visual intimidation. To add to this visual tactic, one of the members at the time was carrying, out in the open, a police issue type nightstick, seemingly to violently attack voters as they approached the polls. Fortunately this night stick was never used; however, racially offensive comments were constant during this exhibition of the New Black Panther Party.
This voter intimidation tactic interferes with the Voting Rights Act of 1965. While the New Black Panther Party was not directly interfering with the registering and voting of candidates by White citizens, the verbal insults and visual intimidation make voters more than uncomfortable when trying to cast their ballots at the polls.
Legal action has been taken to enforce the Voting Rights Act and to show this pseudo-black supremacy party that such force to the point of hate crimes will not be tolerated within our judicial system. However, as of July 30, 2009 the case was dropped and lawyers working on the case were told to discontinue further work.
It is unfortunate to see this case dropped as this New Black Panther Party seeks to deface the true purpose of the original Black Panther Party. This new racial supremacy group using the name of the courageous organization that once made individuals proud to be African American insults both the African American culture and insults the judicial system that brought an end to segregation. What negative impacts might the New Black Panther Party have on the connotations the original Black Panther Party worked hard to put into the history books? What processes, if not judicially based, could be put in motion to stop this militant group from continuing activity?


People can clearly see the activities related to Pongal celebration, once the chill in the air heralds the festive occasion of Pongal. The festival is celebrated on January 14 th every year and is also one of the longest celebrations in the Tamil calendar, spread over four days. As part of age-old belief and in the hope that the month of `Thai' will usher in good fortunes, people go agog with joy.
The festival of Pongal is held dear particularly by the farming community as it marks the end of harvesting season. The markets start receiving stacks of sugarcanes, turmeric saplings and a horde of farm produces. The run-up to Pongal is as exciting as celebrating the occasion that is believed to ring in prosperity.
Pongal is also celebrated as a thanksgiving festival for various Hindu deities. The festivities begin with `Bhogi' and the first day is considered to be a prelude to the celebrations that follow. `Bhogi' is observed as a thanksgiving occasion to Lord `Indra', the God of Heavens. The next day is the `Pongal' day, which is celebrated to pay respects to `Surya', the Sun God. It is the day of a new beginning and makes people go for joyful celebrations. As a mark of respect to the cattle, the farmer's best friends, the third day of Pongal festival is celebrated as `Maattu Pongal'. `Kaanum Pongal' marks the end of the four-day celebrations.
People generally go for sightseeing, shopping and exchanging pleasantries with relatives and friends. The farmers, during this point of time, are generally flushed with money having sold their produce. On all the four days during Pongal festival, people make it a point to visit temples and invoke the blessings of the God for a good and prosperous beginning to the year.
In the midst of all the cheer and celebration, the cynosure of all eyes is the traditional sport of valour -- the `jallikattu' (bull-fight). The valor of the youth goes on test at the `jallikattu'. The objective of the sport is to wrest the bounty, which is put in a cloth and tied to the horns of the bulls. Unlike in Spain the matador here does not kill the bull. In the past, the valiant youth were chosen as grooms for village damsels. With all its unique features and many hued celebrations, Pongal brings lots of happiness and joy in the family.