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Primary producers, or autotrophs, make up the first trophic level of all food webs. Autotrophs are organisms that produce their own energy from inorganic substances, such as carbon dioxide and water. The primary producers of many food webs are green plants.Continue Reading Only 10 percent of the energy of the first trophic level is transferred to the next; therefore, a mere 10 percent of the energy produced by primary producers is passed on to primary consumers, or organisms that consume the primary producers. Because only a small amount of the original energy produced is retained by the primary consumers, many more primary producers must exist to support a smaller number of primary consumers. The best-known producers are green plants. They take in energy from the sun to combine carbon dioxide and water into glucose, a sugar used as energy in many organisms. This process is called photosynthesis. Other autotrophs use the energy in sulfur- or nitrogen-containing compounds instead of sunlight to power their energy-producing process. These autotrophs, called chemoautotrophs, make their own energy through chemosynthesis. Chemoautotrophs are usually the producers in hostile environments, such as in deep sea vents and hot springs that contain more unconventional food webs. Bacteria are the chemoautotrophs in these locations. Some of these bacteria cannot survive in the presence of oxygen, so they live where oxygen is absent.Learn more about Environmental Science
Our Sun goes through cycles of activity on average every 11 years. At the height of a cycle, the Sun is a busy place, with flares, eruptions and sunspots. At its lowest point, the Sun is quiet. That quiet period usually lasts for about 300 days, but the last solar minimum stretched for 780 days from 2008 to 2010. Scientists have proposed plenty of explanations for the lengthy solar minimum, but it's remained somewhat of a solar mystery. Now scientists report in Nature that changes in the flow of plasma within the Sun were responsible for the lack of sunspots. "The Sun contains huge rivers of plasma similar to Earth's ocean currents," says Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo, a visiting research fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Those plasma rivers affect solar activity in ways we're just beginning to understand." The astrophysicists created a computer simulation of the Sun and ran it through 210 solar cycles, varying the speed of the plasma as it cycled between the equator and the poles. They found that if the plasma was moving quickly in the first half of the solar cycle but more slowly in the latter half, the result was an extended minimum and a weak magnetic field, also a feature of the last solar minimum. There might be one small problem with the model, though: it may match the last solar minimum, but it doesn't match up with what's going on with the Sun right now. “The Sun will ultimately tell us how to resolve this conflict because only it knows what the next cycle will bring,” NASA solar physicist Madhulika Guhathakurta told Wired Science.
Dengue remains a public health problem in most if tropical countries especially in Asia, Africa and South America despite the efforts to stop and mitigate the impact of epidemics. It is a dynamic systemic infectious disease. The infection can be asymptomatic or show with a broad clinical spectrum that includes serious and non-serious ways of expression. After incubation, the disease begins abruptly and goes through three phases: The febrile, critical, and recovery stage. Dengue needs to be addressed as a single disease with different clinical presentations ranging from benign conditions to severe clinical courses and outcomes that may lead to death. - Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection. - The infection causes flu-like illness, and occasionally develops into a potentially lethal complication called severe dengue. - The global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades. - About half of the world’s population is now at risk. - Dengue is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide, mostly in urban and semi-urban areas. - Severe dengue is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in some Asian and Latin American countries. - There is no specific treatment for dengue/ severe dengue, but early detection and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates below 1%. - Dengue prevention and control solely depends on effective vector control measures. Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease that has rapidly spread in all regions of WHO in recent years. Dengue virus is transmitted by female mosquitoes mainly of the species Aedes aegypti and, to a lesser extent, A. albopictus. The disease is widespread throughout the tropics, with local variations in risk influenced by rainfall, temperature and unplanned rapid urbanization. Severe dengue (also known as Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever) was first recognized in the 1950s during dengue epidemics in the Philippines and Thailand. Today, severe dengue affects most Asian and Latin American countries and has become a leading cause of hospitalization and death among children in these regions. There are 4 distinct, but closely related, serotypes of the virus that cause dengue (DEN-1, DEN-2, DEN-3 and DEN-4). Recovery from infection by one provides lifelong immunity against that particular serotype. However, cross-immunity to the other serotypes after recovery is only partial and temporary. Subsequent infections by other serotypes increase the risk of developing severe dengue. Global burden of dengue1 The incidence of dengue has grown dramatically around the world in recent decades. The actual numbers of dengue cases are underreported and many cases are misclassified. One recent estimate indicates 390 million dengue infections per year (95% credible interval 284–528 million), of which 96 million (67–136 million) manifest clinically (with any severity of disease).1 Another study, of the prevalence of dengue, estimates that 3900 million people, in 128 countries, are at risk of infection with dengue viruses.2 Member States in 3 WHO regions regularly report the annual number of cases. In 2010, nearly 2.4 million cases were reported. Although the full global burden of the disease is uncertain, the initiation of activities to record all dengue cases partly explains the sharp increase in the number of cases reported in recent years. Other features of the disease include its epidemiological patterns, including hyper-endemicity of multiple dengue virus serotypes in many countries and the alarming impact on both human health and the global and national economies. Before 1970, only 9 countries had experienced severe dengue epidemics. The disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries in the WHO regions of Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific. The America, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions are the most seriously affected. Cases across the Americas, South-East Asia and Western Pacific exceeded 1.2 million in 2008 and over 3 million in 2013 (based on official data submitted by Member States). Recently the number of reported cases has continued to increase. In 2013, 2.35 million cases of dengue were reported in the Americas alone, of which 37 687 cases were of severe dengue. Not only is the number of cases increasing as the disease spreads to new areas, but explosive outbreaks are occurring. The threat of a possible outbreak of dengue fever now exists in Europe and local transmission of dengue was reported for the first time in France and Croatia in 2010 and imported cases were detected in 3 other European countries. In 2012, an outbreak of dengue on the Madeira Islands of Portugal resulted in over 2000 cases and imported cases were detected in mainland Portugal and 10 other countries in Europe. In 2013, cases have occurred in Florida (United States of America) and Yunnan province of China. Dengue also continues to affect several South American countries, notably Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico. In Asia, Singapore has reported an increase in cases after a lapse of several years and outbreaks have also been reported in Laos. In 2014, trends indicate increases in the number of cases in the People’s Republic of China, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Malaysia and Vanuatu, with Dengue Type 3 (DEN 3) affecting the Pacific Island countries after a lapse of over 10 years. Dengue was also reported in Japan after a lapse of over 70 years. In 2015 an increase in the number of cases was reported in Brazil and several neighboring countries. The Pacific island countries of Fiji, Tonga and French Polynesia have continued to record cases. An estimated 500 000 people with severe dengue require hospitalization each year, a large proportion of whom are children. About 2.5% of those affected die. The Aedes aegypti mosquito is the primary vector of dengue. The virus is transmitted to humans through the bites of infected female mosquitoes. After virus incubation for 4–10 days, an infected mosquito is capable of transmitting the virus for the rest of its life. Infected humans are the main carriers and multipliers of the virus, serving as a source of the virus for uninfected mosquitoes. Patients who are already infected with the dengue virus can transmit the infection (for 4–5 days; maximum 12) via Aedes mosquitoes after their first symptoms appear. The Aedes aegypti mosquito lives in urban habitats and breeds mostly in man-made containers. Unlike other mosquitoes Ae. aegypti is a day-time feeder; its peak biting periods are early in the morning and in the evening before dusk. Female Ae. Aegypti bites multiple people during each feeding period. Aedes albopictus, a secondary dengue vector in Asia, has spread to North America and Europe largely due to the international trade in used tires (a breeding habitat) and other goods (e.g. lucky bamboo). Ae. albopictus is highly adaptive and, therefore, can survive in cooler temperate regions of Europe. Its spread is due to its tolerance to temperatures below freezing, hibernation, and ability to shelter in microhabitats. Dengue and severe dengue Available from: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs117/en/. Accessed at January 14, 2016. Brady OJ, Gething PW, Bhatt S, Messina JP, Brownstein JS, Hoen AG et al. Refining the global spatial limits of dengue virus transmission by evidence-based consensus. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2012;6:e1760. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0001760.
French Pronunciation Teacher Resources Find French Pronunciation educational lesson plans and worksheets Showing 121 - 144 of 201 resources The Teacher Directs: The Experience of Movement in Literature Experience movement in literature. High schoolers are introduced to new vocabulary related to drama and theatre. In groups, they use a piece of literature and develop their own skit to act out in front of the class. As a class, they are... 9th - 12th Using Quantitative Measures to Describe Your Community Scholars use Microsoft Excel to analyze data about their community and present the data in quantitative measurements. They will compose a survey and collect data about their community. Next, they insert the data into graphs and charts... 5th - 6th Critical Thinking About Terminology Related to Islam and Muslims Twelfth graders distinguish between terminology related to Islam and Muslims. They explain how regions are defined and the types and organization of regional systems. They identify human and physical changes in regions and the factors...
How and why dinosaurs went extinct has been debated for a long time. Most paleontologists have settled on the asteroid impact theory. Because of the huge disruption that this space object made, the earth’s climate changed. Massive forest fires and dust clouds cooled the planet, causing everything larger than a crocodile to die off. Moreover the asteroid left a layer of iridium, a rare element from space, which covered the extinction boundary. However, there are a few who claim that the dinosaurs were under stress already. The asteroid only hastened the demise of this weakened group of animals. Fossil records show that fewer types of dinosaurs were living at the time of the asteroid’s impact. Furthermore, the ecological niches formed by the new flowering plants were not being exploited by dinosaurs. Moreover, one group of paleontologists analyzed a general pattern of dinosaur evolution. As a rule, dinosaurs did not diversity to fill various specialized niches. What brought these animals to prominence was the Triassic-Jurassic Extinction Event. Dinosaurs took the role of disaster taxa and proliferated, crowding out other taxa. Another theory that scientists often present is extensive volcanic activity. As India separated from Madagascar, volcanoes in India became extremely active. Forming the massive Deccan Traps in India, these volcanoes spewed forth dust and sulfuric ash that poisoned the air and water. This could have placed extreme stress on the dinosaurs by destroying their environment. Another reason for the demise of the dinosaurs could be disease. According to this theory, insects rapidly expanded to fill the niche presented by the new flowering plants. Many of these insects carry diseases that were fatal to some dinosaurs. Therefore diseases further weakened the dinosaurs. The problem with many of these theories is that they fail to explain the demise of the marine and flying reptiles that occurred at the same time. Also frogs and salamanders, known to be sensitive to toxic changes, managed to survive to the present day. In addition, these theories seem to focus on the larger dinosaurs, and neglect what may have happened to the smaller ones. Some of the smaller ones may have evolved into birds, which exist today. The evidence in the fossil record is that the climate became colder, and the sea level dropped. Ice caps formed in Antarctica. What caused this dramatic change seems to be the impact of the asteroid. This asteroid strike raised enough dust and ash to bring about such a sudden change. The result was the extinction of so many different kinds of animals. Haines, Tim and Paul Chambers, “The Complete Guide to Prehistoric Life”, Firefly: Ontario, 2006. Little, Richard, “Dinosaurs, Dunes, and Drifting Continents: the Geohistory of the Connecticut Valley”, self-published, Hartford, CT, 1986. Scott, Michon, “Strange Science: The Rocky Road to Modern Paleontology and Biology”, 2011, http://www.strangescience.net/, Strauss, Bob, “Dinosaurs at About.com”, About.com, 2011, http://dinosaurs.about.com/, Various, “Prehistoric Life”, Dorling Kindersley: New York, 2009. ----, “What Killed the Dinosaurs”, PBS.org, 2001, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/extinction/dinosaurs/index.html,
1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Thule THULE, the Greek and Roman name for the most northerly known land in the north Atlantic. The first to use the name was the Greek navigator Pytheas (about 300 B.C. probably). He calls it the most northerly of the British Isles and says that he reached it after six days' sail from Britain: it was inhabited, but produced little; corn grew there sparingly and ripened ill; in summer the nights were long and bright. This account of his travels is lost save for fragments, and the few surviving fragments do not determine where his Thule was, but Müllenhoff is probably right in thinking it was the Shetlands. The Faeroes, Iceland and Norway have also been suggested, but are for various reasons much less likely. After Pytheas, the name is used loosely for the farthest north. Thus Agricola's fleet in A.D. 84 sailing up the east coast of Scotland is said to have espied but not to have reached Thule ("dispecta est Thule") but the phrase is merely literary. The actual point meant may be the Orkneys or the Shetlands, or even some fragment of Scotland seen across the water. In some later writers (Procopius, &c.) Thule seems sometimes used to denote Scandinavia. The phrase "ultimate Thule" is commonly used to denote the farthest limit possible. - (F. J. H.)
Sentences are individual statements which are able to convey complete ideas or thoughts as a self-contained unit. These can be simple sentences containing two parts - a subject (a noun or pronoun) and a predicate (a verb) or more complex structures which contain other elements such as adverbs (words used to describe nouns) or more than one subject or action which is being described. It is important that sentences are constructed in a way which allows the reader to follow its meaning easily; simplicity often dictates that it is best to emphasise only one piece of information or point in each sentence which allows the reader to follow a train of thought more easily. Each sentence in a paragraph should move in a reasoned fashion from one to another, constructing a logical proposition. A mistake that is often made in writing essays is making sentences too complicated which leads to the reader being unable to follow any line of argument. < Previous: An essay - function and purpose Next: Punctuation >
Alberta's soil scientists formed a Soil Classification Working Group in 1998. They organized information on the Canadian province's different soil types according to soil properties. Establishing 10 distinctive soil types within four larger soil categories, they created a map of the different soils across Alberta to help farmers and gardeners evaluate their own soil before planting. One soil type, vertisols, exists only in a small area of southern Alberta's Drumheller Valley. Alberta's chernozemic soils are prevalent through its grasslands. Each of the four kinds of chernozemic soils is contains a different amount of organic material and moisture. Brown chernozemic soil is the driest, with 3 to 4 percent organic material in its 4-to-6-inch brown surface layer. Slightly moister is dark brown chernozemic soil, at 4 to 6 percent organic matter in about 5 to 6-1/2 inches of surface. The two chernozemic soils highest in moisture are black and dark gray, both with from 5 to 8 inches of surface soil and 6 to 10 percent organic matter. Dark gray soil predominates in areas where the grasslands yield to forests. Those spots usually have shorter growing seasons than areas with black soil. Dark gray chernozemics combined with create to dark gray luvisols create a fifth soil type in Alberta's Peace River Parklands. Luvisolic soils develop in the cool conditions of Alberta's western foothills' natural forests. They are the result of organic forest vegetation accumulating more quickly than it breaks down. The organic layer, not far above the water table, ranges from 16 inches to more than 5-feet thick. Clearing the forests for cultivation mixes the organic matter into the soil, accounting for its deep gray color. Luvisolics account for three other soil types when they encounter the organic or cryosolic soils of northern Alberta or the brunisols of the Rockies. Brunisolic soils prevail at Alberta's well-drained higher elevations along the Rocky Mountains' eastern slope, and in the province's northeastern corner. Their dark brown or black organic surface layers vary from less than 1 to more than 8 inches. Because they're in areas with short growing seasons, brunisolic soils are largely uncultivated. Cryosolic soils, found mainly in the subarctic regions of northwestern and north central Alberta, are permanently frozen less than 3 feet from their surface, says Alberta Heritage. They are unsuitable for cultivation. Vertisolic soils, according to the University of Idaho, have high concentrations of clay. They retain moisture and swell during wet weather, and shrink to the point of cracking in drought. They account for less than 2-4/10 percent of global soils.
What is a standardized test? A standardized test is an objective test that is given and scored in a uniform manner. • Standardized tests are developed by educational testing experts. They are carefully constructed and items are selected after trials for appropriateness and difficulty, to make sure the results are accurate and meaningful. • All students who take the same version of a standardized test will have the same conditions and the same amount of time to complete the test. • Standardized tests usually assess student skills and knowledge on a broad level and may test all multiple areas at the same time.
Everyone has heard of the Star of Bethlehem, but nobody seems to know much about it. Was it a one-off? And why were the Magi prepared to follow it for hundreds of miles to chart its course? The Nebra Sky Disc In other words, how much did the people of the Bible know about astronomy? The answer is that they were not really aware of astronomy as we know it. The Israelites’ view of the universe was that what you see is what is there. There were no theories about what might cause the movement of the stars, or what there might be that could not be seen. The Bible gave a picture of an orderly cosmos, huge and awe-inspiring, but completely under the control of the laws ﬁxed by God. Within it, the stars were innumerable, but God had counted and named them all (lsaiah 40:26). We can safely assume that Jewish scholars had absorbed some of the knowledge of Egyptian and Babylonian astronomy. But this does not seem to have affected the biblical view of the stars and planets. There are references in the Bible to the stars, but they were never seen as having any mythological life of their own – as they were in other countries. What knowledge the Israelites had comes from data on agriculture, meteorology and calendrical matters. The Nebra disk, constructed about 3,600 years ago. It shows a sun or full moon, a lunar crescent, and stars, including a cluster interpreted as the Pleiades What stars are mentioned in the Bible? The Bible calls all luminous heavenly bodies, with the exceptions of the sun and the moon, stars. But they are only noted because they show the greatness of God who had created them and alone could count them or direct their courses (Genesis 1:16; Psalms 8:3; 136:9; l47:4; Amos 5:8; Job 9:7; Jeremiah 31 :35). The stars mentioned in the Bible are The Bear in Job 9:9 and the “Bear and its children“ in Job 38:32. Apparently these refer to the seven prominent stars of Ursa Major Mazarot in Job 38:32: lt is not certain what this term meant. lt might mean all the constellations of the heavens as in 2 Kings 23:5, or the twelve Zodiacal signs The Pleiades called Kema and Ksil in Hebrew, Amos 5:8; Job 9:9: a group of seven stars in the constellation Taurus, not far from Orion. The group is not very bright but it can be seen in Palestine just before dawn on a spring morning. For this reason. the power of awakening growth in spring has been ascribed to it – see the story of Bathsheba. Orion, the “Hunter” in Job 9:9; 38:3, Amos 5:8. This is the biggest constellation in the southern skies, containing such brilliant stars as Betelgeuse and Rigel. See Paul waxing lyrical about the stars in 1 Corinthians 15:41. “Chambers of the South” (Job 9:9): The exact reference is not known. although the phrase may refer to the stars that appear above the horizon to travellers going southward along the caravan route to Arabia. One of the stars of the Southern Cross is visible at Eilat, the southernmost point in Israel. The Babylonians had no notion of a South Pole, and Job may be referring to this idea. Kaiwan in Amos 5:26 possibly refers to Saturn or to the planet Mercury. Day Star, son of Dawn in Isaiah 14:12 is mentioned as Venus in the Septuagint and Vulgate, as this planet appears at dawn. Some scholars believe, however, that the name refers to the moon crescent which appears in the morning towards the end of the lunar month. Did Bible people know about astronomy? As early as the fourth century BC, the Chaldeans made exact astronomical observations and knew the course of the stars, especially the planets. They could calculate the time of the appearance of the new moon and predict solar and lunar eclipses. Babylonian astronomy was interested mainly in meteorology, and their concept of the universe was basically mythological. The Greeks took over the Babylonian notion that the stars were gods, and Greek mythological names for the stars are used to this day. Above: some of the constellations, as the Greeks saw them Biblical concept of the Universe The Israelite picture of the universe drew heavily on the discoveries of the Babylonians and other neighbouring nations. But the Babylonians saw the world as wider and older than did the writers of the Bible. The Bible sees a universe with the earth at its centre. This universe was divided into three: the vault of the heavens, containing the sun, the moon and the stars the earth beneath the waters under the earth (Exodus 20:4) and those above the heavens which are the source of rain. In the Bible, there seems to be no great distance between heaven and earth. Without much effort, birds ﬂy into the vault of heaven. The heavens are seen as superimposed vaults (Deuteronomy 10:14; 1 Kings 8:27; Psalms 148:4) in the highest of which God holds court. The sun and the moon follow their courses through the heavens independently, while the stars are directed by the divine will (Psalms 147:4; Isaiah 40:26; Judges 5:20). What did the universe look like for them? The vault of the sky covered the earth, supported by a circular range of mountains (Job 26:10-11) The earth itself either rested directly on the surrounding waters, or was supported on columns rising up from the depths to support heavens and earth alike (l Samuel 2:8; Psalms 75:3; Job 9:6). Against this, there is the statement in Job 26:7 to the effect that the earth “hangs upon nothing”. The diagram below explains this idea. You have to remember that the biblical picture was based on observation, but it also had a poetic and mythical idea. Worship of the stars Israel’s neighbours worshipped the stars, but Israel did not. The Deuteronomist warned the Israelites against this, and Isaiah II said: ‘Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name.’ (40:26) Stars played little or no part in Israelite life. Were the stars Angels? It is possible that stars identiﬁed with gods in pagan myths were transmuted into angels (see Isaiah 40:26 or Job 38:7 where ‘the morning stars rejoiced’ at the creation). In later books of the Bible, the course of the stars and their effect on human destiny became the subjects of speculation. Chapters 72-82 of Enoch are an imaginary reckoning of the movements of the sun and the moon, which tells us much about the author of Enoch, but little about current knowledge of astronomy. What about the Apocalypse? Of much greater signiﬁcance in Enoch and other apocalyptic writings including the New Testament, is the conviction that the entire world would ultimately be consumed by ﬁre. Ezra speaks of a period of silence following the catastrophe, after which a new earth would be created. The visions are echoed in the New Testament apocalypse (Book of Revelation), where John of Patmos refers to the ﬁnal battle of Armageddon (19:19-21), the Last Judgment (20:11-15), and the vision of a new universe (21:1-8).
Children are born with the need and desire to connect with those around them. When teachers and practitioners and parents and caregivers establish positive relationships with children from birth through the early years and value their diverse cultures and languages, children feel safe and secure, laying the foundation for healthy social and emotional development. This process affects how children experience the world, express themselves, manage their emotions, and establish positive relationships with others. Social and emotional development involves several interrelated areas of development, including social interaction, emotional awareness, and self-regulation. Below are examples of important aspects of social and emotional development for young children. Social interaction focuses on the relationships we share with others, including relationships with adults and peers. As children develop socially, they learn to take turns, help their friends, play together, and cooperate with others. Emotional awareness includes the ability to recognize and understand our own feelings and actions and those of other people, and how our own feelings and actions affect ourselves and others. Self-regulation is the ability to express thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in socially appropriate ways. Learning to calm down when angry or excited and persisting at difficult tasks are examples of self-regulation. Download the handout for examples of key social and emotional milestones at various ages. The tips represent developmental milestones for most children at each given age. Remember, every child develops at her own pace and has diverse learning needs and approaches. Tuning in and being aware of your child’s specific needs and where they are developmentally can help you adjust your environment and daily activities.
Shortness of breath is a state where you start gasping for air, need extra effort to breathe, and the air you take in is just inadequate despite your excessive effort to breathe. You will develop short and rapid breathing that will interfere with your routine or well-being. Shortness of breath varies in intensity and severity. Some are mild that you do not need Ventolin by DoctoronCall. A more severe form may require you to seek help from the emergency department of a hospital. The examples of conditions that have shortness of breath are asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), allergic reactions, heart disease, and many more. Shortness of breath can take place for a short duration or in a more serious form may take place for a longer duration. Shortness of breath has a direct effect on your capabilities of inhaling and exhaling air or breathing. You may face difficulties in breathing and you will need extra effort to inhale some air. You will start to become conscious of your breathing and that will worsen your condition. As shortness of breath interferes with your breathing, they may lead to respiratory failure. Respiratory failure is when your breathing fails to take in enough oxygen to meet your body’s demand and also fails to wash out the carbon dioxide. As a result, your body will be at a state of low oxygen but high carbon dioxide. Respiratory failure is a life-threatening and emergency condition that needs immediate medical attention and intervention. Treating the underlying causes and secure the airway will be the main objective. Shortness of breath is usually caused by respiratory disease. The main and most common cause is asthma. Asthma is a chronic condition that usually starts early in life and diagnosis is often made around 7-12years of age. Asthma has no absolute cure which means individuals with asthma are always at risk of developing both symptoms and subsequently developing any complications if not treated. Prevention is better than cure. That phrase is the key to maintain your health and in dealing with asthma. Asthma patients must avoid all the identified triggers to prevent them from developing any sudden asthma attack. The triggers for an asthma attack are pet dander, pollen, dust, smokes from cigarette or vehicle, some fruits or food, and airway infections. Asthma patients must always come for a follow-up and medical check-up accordingly. This is important as treating asthma is different from other diseases as doctors might need to increase or reduce the doses of the drug. Doctors also need to decide whether to add or reduce the drugs taken by a patient. What helps doctors to decide? They will decide based on the asthmatic control which patients should record every day in what known as an asthma diary. Other factors are the patients’ well-being, findings upon physical examination and results from any test conducted. Asthma can be treated at home with the given medications. Medications like Ventolin by DoctoronCall help relieve chest tightness and prevent respiratory failure. If you are an asthmatic patient, make sure you always keep your medications at home or within reach. You can’t afford to run out of stock as that may lead to death.
The author of Beowulf uses literary devices such as symbolism, hyperbole, and personification to help characterize and reveal Beowulf’s identity. By his acts of courage, bravery, and arrogance, he became a great hero. In Beowulf, the author uses symbolism to reveal Beowulf’s character because when Beowulf arrived in Herot, he felt like he was at home and Hrothgar couldn’t thank him enough for traveling far to help him defeat Grendel. The reason Beowulf would feel that Herot seems like home is because his father, Edgetho, went to war with the Wulfing Tribe, after killing one of their warriors, with Hrothgar fighting at his side after he seeked help from Hrothgar at his court which would make Beowulf feel like he owes Hrothgar a whole lot. Herot is a sign of symbolism because a “heorot hall” is also known as a mead hall. “Heorot” means hart and a hart is a male deer which get hunted by men and other predators over and over again which overall means Herot is intended to be attacked by Grendel numerous times. The author also uses hyperbole to reveal and characterize Beowulf. “His mind was flooded with fear” (Beowulf 51) is an example of hyperbole because it’s describing that Beowulf is having fearful thoughts that are taking over his mind and using “flooded” is exaggerating the fact. The reason it’s exaggerating the fact is that when something or somewhere is “flooded” it means it’s over flowed or too full. Hyperbole helps reveal Beowulf’s identity by showing that not only is he courageous and strong, he also has a side of him where is he scared and doubtful. Lastly, the author uses alliteration to characterize and reveal the identity of Beowulf. “Herot trembled, wonderfully built to withstand the blows, the struggling great bodies beating at its beautiful walls; shaped and fastened with iron, inside and out, artfully worked, the building stood firm. Its benches rattled, fell to the floor, gold-covering boards grating as Grendel and Beowulf battled across them. ” (Beowulf 52) Alliteration is used to reveal and characterize Beowulf by showing that even as strong as the author made him seem, even he couldn’t tear Herot down with the battle between him and Grendel. He is strong to destroy what’s inside the mead-hall but isn’t strong enough to destroy all of Herot because only flames can completely destroy it. The way the author of Beowulf reveals and characterizes his identity is by using different sorts of literary devices. Out of the many literary devices he used, symbolism, hyperbole and alliteration were the devices that most helped reveal and characterize Beowulf’s character.
In May 1611, Sir Thomas Dale arrived in Virginia with instructions from the London Company to find a secure and healthy area to establish a new town and principal seat for the colony. In September 1611, Sir Thomas Dale moved up the James River to establish Henricus, the colony’s second settlement. By the Woodland Period (1000 B.C. – A.D. 1600), major changes were taking place in the lives of local Native Americans. Most importantly, agriculture first appeared and gradually became increasingly important. Plants cultivated included corn, beans, squash, pumpkins and gourds. Because an agricultural way of life produces far more food, semi-permanent villages, occasionally containing as many as several hundred persons, appeared for the first time. In A.D 1607, the Native Americans living in the area near today’s Henricus Historical Park were known as the Arrohateck and numbered perhaps 250. Captain John Smith’s famous 1612 Map of Virginia shows one major village and five smaller settlements situated on both sides of the James River. The Arrohateck were one of over 30 groups in the Powhatan Chiefdom whose population exceeded 13,000 and occupied most of coastal Virginia. According to early accounts written by the English, the paramount chief Powhatan inherited six to nine groups along the James River and York River basins, including the Arrohateck. He acquired the remaining portions of the chiefdom through warfare or threat of warfare during the late 1500s and early 1600s. By 1607, the Powhatan Chiefdom had developed into one of the most complex societies then existing in the Middle Atlantic region of North America. One of the original groups, the Arrohateck undoubtedly occupied a privileged position. They were named for their head chief, Arrohateck, who met the English during their initial exploration of the James River in 1607 and who was described as treating the English with much courtesy. Sir Thomas Dale was an experienced officer, having served as a captain in the Netherlands. He had been knighted at Richmond (England) on June 19, 1606, as Sir Thomas Dale of Surrey. With the help of friends, Dale was appointed High Marshall of the colony. As High Marshall, Dale was responsible for enforcing the laws, determining punishment and leading military expeditions. As Commander, Dale was also responsible for overseeing the construction and defense of the city. Men were assigned specific tasks. While some cleared the land, others began construction of the palisades and buildings, while still others kept vigil over hostile Native Americans. He already had “timber, pales, posts and railes” prepared “for the present impaling this new Towne to secure himself and men from the malice and trechery of the Indians.” Henricus stood “upon a neck of very high land, three parts thereof environed with the main River.” As a defensive measure, Dale erected a long fence known as a pale across the narrow end of the neck of land to make it an island. Powhatan’s skilled bowman harassed the Englishmen as the fort and palisades took shape, sending arrows over the walls. Dale confidently expected that the new town would replace Jamestown as the principal seat of the colony. The location upriver provided security from possible Spanish attack (Britain was hostile with Spain at this time); and the high bluffs provided a healthier environment than the swamps of Jamestown. The introduction of private land ownership, instituted by Sir Dale, drastically altered the development of Henricus. By 1616 it is believed that approximately 50 persons were all that remained within the Citie walls. Others also established their own private farms along the James River. As the colonists began to prosper, their increased numbers and aggressive expansion further strained the relationship between the English and the Native Americans. On March 22, 1622, Opechancanough, Powhatan’s younger brother and successor, led a raid against English settlements up and down the James River. During this uprising, the Citie of Henricus was destroyed. Although Opechancanough did not succeed in driving the English from the area, some of the settlements were abandoned, including portions of Henricus. Subsequent efforts to reestablish the town of Henricus failed. In May 1625, more than three years after the devastating attack, only 22 inhabitants were reported residing in ten “dwelling-houses” at Henricus. In 1637, fifteen years after the uprising, the site was included in a 2,000 acre tract patented by William Farrar. Because it was owned by William Farrar, Sr., the peninsula became known as Farrar’s Island. Named Matoaka upon her birth in the 1590’s, Pocahontas (her tribal nickname) was reportedly one of Chief Powhatan’s favorite children. She first captured the attention of the English when she and other Native American children began visiting Jamestown in 1607. John Smith was intrigued by the presence of this young lady, and described her as playful, spirited and smarter than the other children. Later, Pocahontas was credited for saving Smith from death at the hands of her father. Captured by Captain Samual Argall in 1613, Pocahontas was initially taken to Jamestown. Sir Thomas Gates was fearful of reprisal from Powhatan, and turned her over to Sir Thomas Dale at Henricus. Dale instructed Reverend Alexander Whitaker to care for Pocahontas and instruct her in the ways of Christianity. While living at Henricus she converted to Christianity, was baptized and took the Christian name Rebecca. She met and was courted by John Rolfe, whom she married in April 1614. After their marriage, Powhatan signed a peace treaty with the English settlers which lasted until March 22, 1622. In 1616, Pocahontas traveled to England with her husband and infant son Thomas. While there she contracted an illness, possibly tuberculosis or smallpox, and died at the age of 22. She remains buried in Gravesend, England. On April 21, 1781, British General Benedict Arnold surprised the Virginia Navy at Osborne’s Landing in the old river channel by Farrar’s Island (the site of today’s Henricus Historical Park). Though the American fleet consisted of approximately 20 ships, they were no match for the cannon fire from the river banks on Farrar’s Island. It soon became apparent to James Maxwell, the American commander, that the Americans could not remain where they were and expect to survive the onslaught. He ordered a retreat. Those vessels that could not be moved were set afire. As the British continued to fire upon the American ships, some crew members tried to escape in boats, while others jumped overboard in an attempt to swim to the opposite shore of the James River. Without any ships of their own to pursue the escaping vessels, the British had to content themselves with the nine ships they either sank or captured. Listed among those vessels lost at Osborne’s Landing were the flagship Tempest and the lesser ships Apollo, Jefferson, and American Fabious. The hulls of several of these are believed to remain in the silt on the river bottom. General Benjamin Butler devised a plan to build a canal at Henricus. Construction began in August 1864. Federal soldiers at Dutch Gap (mostly from black regiments) faced continuous fire from Confederate sharpshooters and artillery. With bullets whistling and shells exploding over their heads, their job was increasingly hazardous. These soldiers also succumbed to fever and disease requiring an ever-ready flow of replacements. By mid-November 1864, the canal was two-thirds finished. Manpower alone had removed 15,000 cubic yards of soil in addition to that removed by steam dredge. The bulkhead proved difficult to destroy. Six tons of gunpowder was placed throughout its carefully dug channels. On New Year’s Day, 1865, General Butler and his staff assembled at the site of Dutch Gap Canal to watch the explosion. Twelve minutes before 4 p.m. the fuses were lit. Amidst a thunderous roar, the bulkhead blew up and earth was sent flying almost 100 feet into the air, ultimately falling back into the gap and foiling the canal project. Ironically, the explosion gave Confederate gunners a better view of their targets! The project was temporarily abandoned as other Federal military gains in the area negated the need for the canal. Two weeks after the explosion, pressure from heavy rains that had been swelling the James River forced a 10-foot gap through the remaining part of the bulkhead. This opened the Dutch Gap Canal for limited use to small vessels. The James River flows differently today than when the Citie of Henricus was founded. Sir Thomas Dale began to transform the land at Henricus in 1611 when he employed a Dutch fortification technique to dig a ditch, or moat, and construct a paled fence behind the ditch to protect the Citie. The land masses on either side of the ditch became known as Dale’s Dutch Gap. The river at Dutch Gap again made history during the Revolutionary War when Benedict Arnold, then a General in the British Army, captured or sank the Virginia Navy at a site known as Osborne’s Landing. In August 1864, Federal troops under General Benjamin Butler began the arduous job of digging a canal to divert the river from Confederate cannons firing on the Union troops from Farrar’s Island. After Butler’s failed attempt to divert the river’s course during the Civil War, the James River returned to commercial and private use. In 1870 the United States government appropriated funds for improvements to the James River and the Dutch Gap Canal. In 1870, the river was sufficiently diverted and widened to allow the steamship Sylvester to travel up to the Port of Richmond. Later, in 1930, the river underwent further improvements to straighten its course. At that time, the Dutch Gap Canal was extended to where the Dominion Virginia Power plant is today. This work, completed in November 1933, provided a more efficient waterway. It eliminated another large loop in the river and created Hatchers Island to the north. These two channels significantly reduced the navigable length of the James River. Beacons and a Light Keeper’s house were installed in the 1870s to protect ships traveling upriver. Today, portions of the brick foundation and chimney still remain at Henricus Historical Park as a reminder of the James River’s importance to travel and commerce throughout the ages. Today, this vast river offers, in addition to commercial traffic, many recreational opportunities for the casual visitor. Dutch Gap Boat Landing, located a mile from Henricus Historical Park, is accessible to the public and is the perfect boat launch. The floating boat dock at Henricus and the lagoons in the Dutch Gap Conservation Area provide wonderful fishing opportunities. The serene and beautiful riverside trails along the James in Dutch Gap provide a lovely view for nature enthusiasts, walkers and bikers.
An aeroplane has 30 rows of seats, with each row having 6 seats. A stewardess says that the plane is 85% full on today’s flight to Spain. a) How many seats are empty on today’s flight? A one way ticket to Spain with ‘CheapyJet’ costs £210. b) How much money could the airline have made if they had sold all of the empty seats on today’s flight? This video is a typical ‘mix’ question that could appear on a foundation GCSE paper. It requires basic arithmetic coupled with an understanding of percentage calculations. It is worth reminding students that even if parts of this question can’t be answered, that at least completing part of a question will gain some marks. At least one mark would be given just for calculating the number of seats on the aircraft. Teachers could extend the learning by considering: - On the return journey, two thirds of these empty seats were filled with passengers. How many empty seats were available on the return journey? - How much money would the airline have made if all seats were sold?
Basics first. Children’s brain functions are still developing. There is a wide margin for what is normal and healthy. There could be distinct variations between individual children. Let’s begin to understand a variety of brain functions across several domains or dimensions. You can develop an eye for what they are, from basic description of each of these functions. I think it is important to grasp these concepts as children do not voluntarily act up and may not have perfected the function. They may even be strong in one area, yet weak in another. Just like how coins can be stacked differently if every one has a dollar amount, children can have normal intelligence with variations across these brain functions. They are also called neurocognitive functions by scientists. - Executive Function: Organization, Planning, Flexibility, Problem Solving - Working Memory: Ability to hold on line, information for a very short time to accomplish the work at hand (Math, shopping lists) - Impulse Control or Response Inhibition - Verbal Memory: Remembering things that were heard - Emotion Recognition - Emotion Processing - Emotion Regulation - Perspective Taking and Empathy There is more than what meets the eye in each of the above functions. I will describe each of these, how to recognize them, and find ways to help children in future posts.
Affiliations: 6Go to article Pinpointing the processes behind precise pointing © Busakorn Pongparnit/Moment/Getty Target practice with deceptive glasses has revealed that humans learn precise movements by combining two distinct mental processes. Precise movements can be learned by repetition, but the processes by which the brain learns them are unclear. A team, including researchers from Tokyo Medical and Dental University, asked participants to touch a spot on a screen several times, and then repeat the exercise while wearing glasses that shifted their vision to the right. With the glasses, everybody initially touched points to the right of the spot but gradually learned to touch the correct point by compensating. In combination with a computational model, this experiment revealed that people combine two thought processes: prediction of the sensory outcomes of a movement, and prediction of movements that will generate a particular sensory outcome. Patients with cerebellar disorders, which affect movement and balance, had impaired learning ability in the experiment, suggesting that it could be useful for diagnosing cerebellar degeneration. - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115, 7428–7433 (2018). doi: 10.1073/pnas.1716489115
Any allergy can be considered as an immune response to a foreign matter that does not have harmful effects to the body. The substances that causes allergy is called as allergens. They may be certain food items, pollens, or pet dander. The body itself has the power to fight against any harmful pathogens or foreign body. Depending upon the nature of allergen, body response varies in the form of symptoms like inflammatory changes, sudden onset of repeated sneezing, rashes or hives in the body etc. On an average around 10-30% individuals in the world are affected by the allergic conditions. Most common type of allergy is Allergic rhinitis, Asthma and food allergies. COMMON TYPES OF ALLERGIES Allergic rhinitis is the most common form of allergy and happens due to aeroallergens. This may happen due to indoor allergens, like pet dander, dust or mites. Seasonal variations can lead to seasonal allergic rhinitis. This may be due to pollens, grasses etc. The common symptoms include: - Running nose - Severe Sneezing - Irritation in the nose, ears and throat - Itching in the eyes and throat Asthma is an immune compromised situation which is a result of inflammation in the airways which leads to narrowing of the airways. Asthma can happen along with allergic rhinitis. Aggressive exercise also leads to asthmatic attack. Common symptoms include: - Shortness of breath - Severe cough Conjunctivitis refers to allergic eyes, where there is an inflammation of the tissue layers that covers the surface of eye ball and the surface beneath eyelid. The general symptoms are: - Redness in the eyes - Pain in the eyes - Itching or Irritation in the eyes - Watery eyes - Swelling in the membrane of the eyeballs Eczema (atopic dermatitis) Eczema is an allergic reaction that is exhibited over the skin surface. The inflammatory changes that occur in the body results in rashes over the skin. Common symptoms of Eczema include: - Dry skin - Common sites where eczema occurs are – face, pit of the elbow and knees, arm pit etc. In severe cases it can occur in the scalp or any parts of the body. Urticaria are the skin rashes that looks red in color, raised over the surface, itchy and can occur to any part of the body. The condition is also called as hives. Acute hives are often as result of allergic reaction to food or medication. In younger adults it may occur as a part of viral infections also. Contact with the pets can also leads to hive. Urticaria are characterized by - Raised rashes over the skin - Itching with high intensity - Swelling (particularly over the areas of face, feet, stomach, hands and lips) According to Ayurveda, allergies are considered as a doshic reaction to specific allergens, such as pollen, dust, chemicals on a rug, ragweed, or any strong chemical smell. These allergic reactions can be classified as per the dosha predominance. Vata predominant Allergies: These allergies are characterized by bloating of the stomach, gastric discomfort, or even intestinal colic. Vata allergies may lead to sudden wheezing, sneezing, headache, ringing in the ears, or insomnia. For example, few individuals when exposed to dust or pollen, suddenly gets attack of wheezing. This happens due to the narrowing of the brachial tree due to afflicted vayu dosha. The patient may experience insomnia and other vata imbalances also. Pitta dosha predominant Allergies: Pitta dosha is already present under the skin. If the person comes in contact with an allergen, such as chemicals, ragweed, or certain synthetic fibers, then the pitta penetrates through the capillaries due to its hot and sharp qualities and creates itching in the skin, rashes, hives, urticaria, allergic dermatitis, eczema etc. Patients also exhibits pitta aggravated reactions. Kapha dosha related Allergies: Most of the times Kapha predominant allergies are experienced during the spring season, when plants and trees shed their pollen into their atmosphere. When these are inhaled, they enter into the nasal passage, and in some people it causes irritation in the mucous membrane leading to allergic rhinitis, fever, cold, congestion, sinus infection or even asthma. In order to treat the allergies effectively, first we need to identify the predominant dosha. In most of the cases, the Prakruti (body constitution) predicts your allergy proneness. A person with pitta predominant nature is most likely to have pitta allergic reactions, especially when the vikruti (vitiated condition) of the system shows a pitta imbalance. Other factors like diet, environmental conditions, and emotional factors can lead to allergies.
Denisovan remains were discovered in 2008 and human evolution experts have become fascinated with the group that went extinct around 50,000 years ago. One of the biggest questions had been over their appearance, with no full sketches of the Denisovan drawn up. But now a team of researchers have produced reconstructions of our long-lost relatives. Who were the Denisovans? Around 100,000 years ago there were several different groups of humans including modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans. "In many ways, Denisovans resembled Neanderthals but in some traits they resembled us and in others they were unique," said Prof Liran Carmel, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Denisovans are thought to have been based in Siberia and eastern Asia. Scientists have found evidence that the Denisovans lived at high altitudes in Tibet, passing on a gene that helps modern people cope at similar elevations. It is not yet known why they disappeared. They only came to the attention of the world after archaeologists investigated remains in a cave in Siberia little over a decade ago. So far, the only Denisovan remains discovered are three teeth, a pinky bone and a lower jaw. About 5% of the ancestry of people from Oceania can be traced to Denisovans, according to studies. What do the new reconstructions tell us? The reconstructions - based on complex DNA analysis of Denisovans, Neanderthals, Chimpanzees and humans - show that the Denisovan skull was probably wider than that of us or Neanderthals. They also appeared to have no chin. The experts predict many Denisovan traits that are similar to that of Neanderthals including a sloping forehead, long face and large pelvis, and others that are unique among humans, like a large dental arch. Prof Carmel told the BBC he was delighted to find that some of their predictions had been confirmed by the discovery of a Denisovan jawbone by separate researchers. "The jawbone was reported and we were very excited to see how it matched. It was kind of an independent confirmation of our method," he said. The reconstructions were just the start in Denisovan research, Prof Carmel said. "They were humans very similar to us so pointing out the differences between us is critical to understand what makes us human and what might have led to the way we adapted to the world," he said.
What’s Going on Inside the Brain Of A Curious Child? How does a sunset work? We love to look at them, but Jolanda Blackwell wanted her 8th graders to really think about them, to wonder and question. So Blackwell, who teaches science at Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior High in Davis, Calif., had her students watch a video of a sunset on YouTube as part of a physics lesson on motion. “I asked them: ‘So what’s moving? And why?’” Blackwell says. The students had a lot of ideas. Some thought the sun was moving, others, of course, knew that a sunset is the result of the earth spinning around on its axis. Once she got the discussion going, the questions came rapid-fire. “My biggest challenge usually is trying to keep them patient,” she says. “They just have so many burning questions.” Students asking questions and then exploring the answers. That’s something any good teacher lives for. And at the heart of it all is curiosity. Blackwell, like many others teachers, understands that when kids are curious, they’re much more likely to stay engaged. But why? What, exactly, is curiosity and how does it work? A study published in the October issue of the journal Neuron, suggests that the brain’s chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us better learn and retain information. Our Brains On Curiosity “In any given day, we encounter a barrage of new information,” says Charan Ranganath, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, and one of the researchers behind the study. “But even people with really good memory will remember only a small fraction of what happened two days ago.” Ranganath was curious to know why we retain some information and forget other things. So he and his colleagues rounded up 19 volunteers and asked them to review more than 100 trivia questions. Questions such as, “What does the term ‘dinosaur’ actually mean?” and “What Beatles single lasted longest on the charts, at 19 weeks?” Participants rated each question in terms of how curious they were about the answer. Next, everyone reviewed the questions — and their answers — while the researchers monitored their brain activity using an MRI machine. When the participants’ curiosity was piqued, the parts of their brains that regulate pleasure and reward lit up. Curious minds also showed increased activity in the hippocampus, which is involved in the creation of memories. “There’s this basic circuit in the brain that energizes people to go out and get things that are intrinsically rewarding,” Ranganath explains. This circuit lights up when we get money, or candy. It also lights up when we’re curious. When the circuit is activated, our brains release a chemical called dopamine which gives us a high. “The dopamine also seems to play a role in enhancing the connections between cells that are involved in learning.” Indeed, when the researchers later tested participants on what they learned, those who were more curious were more likely to remember the right answers. Curiosity Helps Us Learn Boring Stuff, Too There was one more twist in Ranganath’s study: Throughout the experiment, the researchers flashed photos of random faces, without giving the participants any explanation as to why. Those whose curiosity was already piqued were also the best at remembering these faces. The researchers were surprised to learn that curious brains are better at learning not only about the subject at hand, but also other stuff — even incidental, boring information. “Say you’re watching the Breaking Bad finale,” Ranganath explains. If you’re a huge fan of the show, you’re certainly really curious to know what happens to its main character, Walter White. “You’ll undoubtedly remember what happens in the finale,” he says, but you might also remember what you ate before watching the episode, and what you did right after. This is a phenomenon teachers can use to their advantage in the classroom, says Evie Malaia, an assistant professor at the Southwest Center for Mind, Brain and Education at the University of Texas at Arlington. “Say a kid wants to be an astronaut,” she says. “Well, how do you link that goal with learning multiplication tables?” A teacher may choose to ask her class an interesting word problem that involves space exploration, Malaia says. At the end of the class, students may remember the answer to the word problem, but they’ll also remember how they found the answer through multiplication. “This way kids basically get into the driver’s seat,” Malaia says. “They feel especially good if they discover something, if they construct knowledge themselves.” Teachers have been using this technique instinctively for years, she adds, and now the science is backing that up. “Curiosity really is one of the very intense and very basic impulses in humans. We should base education on this behavior.” What We Still Don’t Know There’s a lot scientists still don’t understand about curiosity. “There’s only a handful of studies on curiosity,” Ranganath says. “It’s very hard to study.” Researchers don’t know, for example, why exactly we get such a high off of learning, through Ranganath says it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. “We might have a basic drive in our brain to fight uncertainty,” he says. The more we know about the world, the more likely we are to survive its many perils. Scientists are also trying to figure out how long the effects of curiosity last — if a kid’s curiosity is piqued at the beginning of the school day, will she be good at absorbing knowledge all day long? Or will she lose interest? What Ranganath wants to know most is why some people seem naturally more curious than others. Lots of factors, including stress, aging and certain drugs can affect dopamine processing in the brain, he says. Genetic factors may also influence how inquisitive we are. “If we could figure these things out, it would have a huge impact. We could help those who may just seem bored.” Ranganath says. Blackwell, the science teacher in California, says she doesn’t have to deal with that problem too often. She says her students love exploring the mysterious unknowns in science: What happens when a car crashes? Why does one car get more beat up than the other? Why do some people look more like their aunt than their mom? How do rainbows work? “I tell my kids there’s no dumb questions,” Blackwell says. “That’s science: Asking questions and seeking answers.” Copyright 2014 NPR.
This Mathematics unit addresses the concept of measuring, comparing and ordering length using informal units. It consists of 5 lessons of approximately 60 minutes duration. The sequence of lessons and suggested time frames should be regarded as a guide only; teachers should pace lessons in accordance with the individual learning needs of their class. An assessment task for monitoring student understanding of the unit objectives is included and will require an additional lesson. This unit plan includes the following resources: - To measure and compare lengths of objects using informal units. - To measure, compare and order height using informal units. - To apply knowledge and understanding of length to a real-world context. - To revise and consolidate the concept of length. Prior to commencing the unit, create a measurement display in your classroom. Display teaching resources in the classroom that will stimulate the students’ interest and assist in their learning. For examples of teaching resources to display in your classroom, browse the Length collection on the Teach Starter website. Some of the resources which accompany this unit plan will need to be prepared prior to teaching. For this reason, it is advised that teachers browse through all lessons before commencing the unit. Common Core Curriculum alignment Order three objects by length; compare the lengths of two objects indirectly by using a third object. Express the length of an object as a whole number of length units, by laying multiple copies of a shorter object (the length unit) end to end; understand that the length measurement of an object is the number of same-size length units that span it wi... Measure the length of an object twice, using length units of different lengths for the two measurements; describe how the two measurements relate to the size of the unit chosen.
Americium, a silvery-white, synthetic element, is created during nuclear reactions of heavy elements. The element and its isotopes have very few but important uses including smoke detectors found in nearly all buildings and the potential to power future space missions. Americium is a highly radioactive element that can be dangerous when handled incorrectly and can cause severe illnesses. Since it is not found naturally in the environment, there is very little chance that humans and animals would be affected by the element unless they are in very close proximity to plutonium-based nuclear reactors. Just the facts - Atomic number (number of protons in the nucleus): 95 - Atomic symbol (on the periodic table of elements): Am - Atomic weight (average mass of the atom): 243 - Density: 7.91 ounces per cubic inch (13.69 grams per cubic cm) - Phase at room temperature: solid - Melting point: 2,149 degrees Fahrenheit (1,176 degrees Celsius) - Boiling point: 3,652 F (2,011 C) - Number of natural isotopes (atoms of the same element with a different number of neutrons): 0. There are at least 19 radioactive isotopes created in a lab. - Most common isotopes: Am-241 (negligible percent of natural abundance), Am-243 (negligible percent of natural abundance) Glenn Seaborg, Albert Ghiorso, Ralph James and Tom Morgan discovered americium, as well as curium, in 1944 during their work at the wartime Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago (now known as Argonne National Laboratory), according to a 2008 article in the Bulletin for the History of Chemistry by Keith Costecka, an American chemist and environmental scientist. The researchers produced the synthetic element by bombarding plutonium-239 with neutrons to create plutonium-240, and then again to create plutonium-241. The plutonium-241 then decayed to americium-241. Americium is the third synthetic transuranic element and the fourth to be discovered. The discoveries of americium and curium were announced in late 1945 by Seaborg on the live radio show Quiz Kids, according to a 2017 Nature article by Ben Still, a British scientist and author. The announcement was meant to have occurred five days later at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society. The element was named by researchers for the country that discovered it as well as a mirror to neighboring lanthanide element number, europium. Americium was very difficult to isolate from curium and the process took over a year, according to Peter van der Krogt, a Dutch historian. The researchers nicknamed the elements pandemonium and delirium and even suggested that those names should become the elements' official names. Despite the researchers suggestions, the elements were given the names americium, after the continent of discovery and following the example of europium, and curium named for scientists Marie and Pierre Curie. The first substantial enough amount of americium that could be visibly studied was created in 1951, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. - According to 1986 article published in Radiochemistry and Nuclear Chemistry by Norman Edelstein and Lester Morss, American researchers, americium is one of 15 actinide metals. Actinide elements range from atomic numbers 89 (actinium) through 103 (lawrencium). These elements are all radioactive with an unusual range of physical properties. - The primarily isotopes are americium-241 and americium-243, which have half-lives of about 433 years and 7370 years, respectively, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry. - According to Lenntech, americium most likely occurs naturally in incredibly trace amounts in uranium minerals due to nuclear reactions. Past concentrations of americium may have been higher when local concentrations of uranium were higher and produced more nuclear reactions. - Americium is primarily produced in nuclear reactors via the bombardment of plutonium with neutrons, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry. - Americium is a portable source of gamma-rays and alpha particles for a variety of medical and industrial uses such as radiography and spectroscopy, helping to create flat glass by gauging its thickness. - According to the World Nuclear Association, smoke detectors that use americium are popular in homes and are sensitive to the presence of smoke or heat. These smoke detectors are relatively inexpensive and are sensitive to a wide range of fire conditions. The isotope americium-241 is used in these detectors as americium dioxide (AmO2). - The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that americium-241 dust can cause certain cancers and can be swallowed, absorbed through a wound, or inhaled. The element tends to concentrate itself in the bones, liver, and muscles. Due to the longevity of the isotope, americium-241 can stay in the body for decades. Due to its rarity and radioactivity, the uses for americium are few. One such use for americium that is currently being researched is in batteries, specifically "space batteries." Research conducted by the United Kingdom's National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), in conjunction with the European Space Agency (ESA), has shown promising results for obtaining the materials needed to build the americium-241 powered batteries. Researchers at the NNL were successfully able to design a method and successfully isolate americium-241 from plutonium. Further studies are currently being completed to examine the impacts that a larger-scale americium processing plant would have on the environment, as well as how to keep workers at such a plant safe. The long-term plan put forth by NNL would work to create a larger quantity of americium that can be used in the batteries. In a 2008 article presented at a European Space Power Conference, K. Stephenson and T. Blancquaert, scientists at ESA based in the Netherlands, said that plutonium has been the favored fuel source due to its high power output and 88-year half-life. The isotope of plutonium that is required for such space missions is very expensive with an extremely limited supply and with restrictive regulations. Americium-241, on the other hand, only has about a quarter of the power output that plutonium has, but it has a longer half-life (433 years), more easily produced, and can potentially bring cost and weight down by about a third. Another group of scientists in Israel is conducting tests on batteries powered by americium-242, according to a 2008 article presented at the Congress of Nuclear Societies by M. Kurtzhand, et al., a group of Israeli nuclear engineers. The researchers said that americium-242 has a high power output, and, according to an article published on The Future of Things about the project, could power the International Space Station for up to 80 days. The battery powered by americium-242 faces some difficulties due to americium-242 being more difficult to produce than americium-241, but the isotope leads to ideal battery properties such as the ability to be made incredibly thin (about one micron) and with no moving parts leading to a robust and reliable power source.
Black History Month is a time to learn about and celebrate all of the African-American men who have made contributions to society. America is lucky to have had so many people contribute to its greatness as these black men have. Start your Black History Month education off right by reading about six black men who have made their mark on history: 1. Clarence Thomas (b. 1948) is an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. After attending serminary in the late ’60s, Thomas received his juris doctorate in 1974 from Yale Law School. His early legal career took him to the office of Missouri’s attorney general, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and private practice. He first stepped into judicial robes in 1990 as a Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. After only a year in that position, President Bush nominated him to his current position. As a Supreme Court associate justice, Thomas has voted in ways to minimize government’s interference in the lives of its citizenry. During his first 10 years on the bench, Thomas noted in opinions that a defendant’s background is irrelevant to his crime and that not everyone of a certain races has the same politics. His decisions have helped break down barriers and preconceived notions of other judges, bringing light to the fact that all people are different and yet should be treated the same. 2. Frederick Douglass (b. 1817, d. 1895) was a slave who escaped that oppressive life to become an abolitionist speaker and the first black man to hold a high rank in the U.S. government. Douglass fled a Maryland plantation for the North in 1838. He got married, changed his name and moved to New Bedford, Mass., where he became outspoken in his abolitionist views. As he became more popular as a speaker, Douglass’s speeches began appearing in print. He used the money he was paid for his lectures to head the Rochester station of the Underground Railroad and to help fugitive slaves start their new lives. In 1847, Douglass published the North Star, a four-page paper produced in Rochester that had an anti-slavery and pro-women’s right bent. The paper was printed weekly until 1863. 3. Benjamin Banneker (b. 1731, d. 1806) was the first black scientist. For most of his life, Banneker was a tobacco farmer in Maryland with a love of learning. Although his formal education was short, he enjoyed reading and taught himself astronomy at age 58. Banneker soon was able to determine future solar and lunar eclipses, which he wrote about for five years in an annual “Benjamin Banneker’s Almanac.” Banneker had a key eye for how machines worked. He once drew the inside of a watch and recreated it from wood. The clock kept accurate time for more than 40 years. Near the end of his life, he was one of the first people to survey the “Federal District,” now called Washington, D.C. He also began to write Thomas Jefferson to urge him to end slavery. 4. George Washington Carver (b. 1860, d. 1943) was a famous agricultural scientist whose work led to the discovery of more than 300 products that could be made from peanuts. After a tumultuous childhood that involved being kidnapped for ransom, Carver graduted from high school and was the first black man to enroll at Simpson College in Iowa. He later received a master’s of science in agricultural science in 1896, which he put to good use teaching Southern farmers how to rotate crops so that their soil would remain nutrient-rich and usable for generations to come. However, the farmers he was trying to who he was marketing his ideas did not think the other crops he suggested were as profitable as cotton. Carver eventually convinced them that sweet potatoes, peas and peanuts were versatile products that could be widely used. In 1923, the scientist won the Springarm Award. The coveted honor is bestowed upon worthy black people by the National Association for Colored People. 5. Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong (b. 1900, d. 1971) was a great American jazz musician. The New Orleans-born Armstrong first learned to play cornet at a reform school. As a teenager, he spent time in clubs listening to jazz musicians. One of them gave him a cornet, which he treasured and played as often as possible. For two years, he played it in bars in the Storyville neighborhood. Two years later, he spread his wings and joined a St. Louis band. He jumped around various bands for years, even playing for his wife’s band for a time. In 1925, Armstrong made the first recording of his music under his own name, and he started gaining popularity and his own orchestra. He recorded his first international hit, his version of “Hello Dolly,” in 1963, and followed it with the widely adored “What a Wonderful World” five years later. Over the years, Armstrong faced racism as his popularity rose, but he handled it with grace and kept his stellar career moving in the right direction. 6. Bill Cosby (b. 1937) is a gifted entertainer who was the first black man to star in a major television show. However, the start of his life wasn’t so funny. Cosby was born in Philadelphia to a poor couple in the projects. He showed great promise academically, but was distracted by sports. After four years in the Navy, he got a GED and enrolled at Temple University. During his sophomore year, Cosby started telling jokes at a coffeehouse called the Cellar. The low-paying job got him bigger opportunities until he finally got an agent in 1962. Not long after, he started recording comedy albums and doing comedy tours in Las Vegas, San Francisco and Chicago. Cosby’s career in TV started in 1962 as an undercover CIA agent on “I Spy.” Four years later, he had his own show — “The Bill Cosby Show.” However, the show floundered, and his career hit a rough patch. After two decades of hard times on TV, he finally hit the airwaves again in his famous “The Cosby Show.” The show ran from 1984 to 1992, and was considered a major hit that portrayed African Americans in a completely different light. Cosby still is active as a comedian and as an outspoken critic of negative portrayals of black people on television shows. He was honored again in 2002 as a receipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Staff, Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. African Americans. Staff, Clarence Thomas. Supreme Court History. Staff, Frederick Douglass Index. African Americans. Staff, Frederick Douglass. PBS. Staff, Benjamin Banneker. African Americans. Staff, Benjamin Banneker’s life. Progress. Staff, George Washington Carver. African Americans. Staff, About George Washington Carver. Iowa State University Library. Staff, Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong. African Americans. Staff, Presidential Medal of Freedom Receipient Bill Cosby. Medal of Freedom.
Federal-style architecture is the name for the classicizing architecture built in the newly founded United States between c. 1780 and 1830, and particularly from 1785 to 1815. This style shares its name with its era, the Federalist Era. The name Federal style is also used in association with furniture design in the United States of the same time period. The style broadly corresponds to the classicism of Biedermeier style in the German-speaking lands, Regency architecture in Britain and to the French Empire style. In the early American republic, the founding generation consciously chose to associate the nation with the ancient democracies of Greece and the republican values of Rome. Grecian aspirations informed the Greek Revival, lasting into the 1850s. Using Roman architectural vocabulary, the Federal style applied to the balanced and symmetrical version of Georgian architecture that had been practiced in the American colonies' new motifs of neoclassical architecture as it was epitomized in Britain by Robert Adam, who published his designs in 1792. American Federal architecture typically uses plain surfaces with attenuated detail, usually isolated in panels, tablets, and friezes. It also had a flatter, smoother façade and rarely used pilasters. It was most influenced by the interpretation of ancient Roman architecture, fashionable after the unearthing of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The bald eagle was a common symbol used in this style, with the ellipse a frequent architectural motif. The classicizing manner of constructions and town planning undertaken by the federal government was expressed in federal projects of lighthouses, harbor buildings, and hospitals. It can be seen in the rationalizing, urbanistic layout of L'Enfant Plan of Washington and in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 in New York. The historic eastern part of Bleecker Street in New York, between Broadway and the Bowery, is home to Federal-style row houses at 7 to 13 and 21 to 25 Bleecker Street. The classicizing style of Federal architecture can especially be seen in the quintessential New England meeting house, with their lofty and complex towers by architects such as Lavius Fillmore and Asher Benjamin. This American neoclassical high style was the idiom of America's first professional architects, such as Charles Bulfinch and Minard Lafever. Robert Adam and James Adam were leading influences through their books. In Salem, Massachusetts, there are numerous examples of American colonial architecture and Federal architecture in two historic districts: Chestnut Street District, which is part of the Samuel McIntire Historic District containing 407 buildings, and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, consisting of 12 historic structures and about 9 acres (4 ha) of land along the waterfront.
To figure out where magma gathers in the earth’s crust and for how long, Vanderbilt University volcanologist Guilherme Gualda and his students traveled to their most active cluster: the Taupo Volcanic Zone of New Zealand, where some of the biggest eruptions of the last 2 million years occurred — seven in a period between 350,000 and 240,000 years ago. After studying layers of pumice visible in road cuts and other outcrops, measuring the amount of crystals in the samples and using thermodynamic models, they determined that magma moved closer to the surface with each successive eruption. The project fits into Gualda’s ongoing work studying supereruptions — how the magma systems that feed them are built and how the Earth reacts to repeated input of magma over short periods of time. “As the system resets, the deposits become shallower,” said Gualda, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences. “The crust is getting warmer and weaker, so magma can lodge itself at shallower levels.” What’s more, the dynamic nature of the Taupo Volcanic Zone’s crust made it more likely for the magma to erupt than be stored in the crust. The more frequent, smaller eruptions, which each produced 50 to 150 cubic kilometers of magma, likely prevented a supereruption. Supereruptions produce more than 450 cubic kilometers of magma and they affect the earth’s climate for years following the eruption. “You have magma sitting there that’s crystal-poor, melt-rich for few decades, maybe 100 years, and then it erupts,” Gualda said. “Then another magma body is established, but we don’t know how gradually that body assembles. It’s a period in which you’re increasing the amount of melt in the crust.” The question that remains is how long it look for these crystal-rich magma bodies to assemble between eruptions. It could be thousands of years, Gualda said, but he believes it’s shorter than that. Guilherme A. R. Gualda, Darren M. Gravley, Michelle Connor, Brooke Hollmann, Ayla S. Pamukcu, Florence Bégué, Mark S. Ghiorso, Chad D. Deering. Climbing the crustal ladder: Magma storage-depth evolution during a volcanic flare-up. Science Advances, 2018; 4 (10): eaap7567 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aap7567 Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Vanderbilt University.
How Do Silicon Solar Cells Work? The basic component of a solar cell is pure silicon, which has been used as an electrical component for decades. Silicon solar panels are often referred to as '1st generation' panels, as the silicon solar cell technology gained ground already in the 1950s. Currently, over 90% of the current solar cell market is based on silicon. Pure crystalline silicon is a poor conductor of electricity as it is a semiconductor material at its core. To address this issue, the silicon in a solar cell has impurities—meaning that other atoms are purposefully mixed in with the silicon atoms in order to improve silicon’s ability to capture the sun’s energy and convert it into electricity. For instance, an atom of gallium has one less electron than an atom of silicon, while an arsenic atom has one electron more. When arsenic atoms are put in between lots of silicon atoms, there will be extra electrons in the structure; so an electron-rich layer will be created. When using gallium atoms instead, there will be a lack of electrons, meaning that an electron-poor layer will be produced. In a solar cell, the layers are positioned next to each other and that way an electric field is created. When the sunlight hits the solar cell, the energy stimulates electrons that leave holes behind. These migrate to the electrodes in the cell because of the presence of the electric field. In this way, electricity is generated. What Are Silicon Solar Cells Used For? Back in the days, silicon solar panels used to be rather expensive, as very high-quality silicon was required for creating them. Also, the procedure of purification of silicone before interfering it with gallium and arsenic atoms used to be time-consuming and costly. Fortunately, the development of technology soon allowed the use of cheaper and lower quality silicon. As a result, silicon solar cells are now more affordable, especially with the support of government subsidies. The Limitations of Silicon Solar Cells Silicon panels are not ideal for transportation since they are quite fragile and rigid. Another complication is that the parts are still fairly expensive, in comparison to some of the alternative options in the solar technology field. Read more: Photovoltaics Types of Silicon Solar Cells Monocrystalline Solar Cells Monocrystalline solar cells, also called "single crystalline" cells are easily identified by their dark black colour. Monocrystalline solar cells are made from a very pure type of silicon, which makes them the most efficient material for converting sunlight into electricity. In addition, monocrystalline solar cells are also the most space-efficient. Another advantage of monocrystalline cells is that they last the longest of all types - many manufacturers offer warranties of up to 25 years on these types of photovoltaic systems. All these superior benefits come with a hefty price tag – in fact, monocrystalline cells are the most expensive option, mostly because the four sided cutting process results in wasting a lot of silicon, sometimes more than half. The cheaper alternatives for consumers would be polycrystalline- or film cells. Polycrystalline Solar Cells Polycrystalline solar cells, also known as polysilicon and multi-silicon cells, were the first solar cells presented to the industry, in the beginning of the 1980s. Polycrystalline cells do not undergo the cutting process used for monocrystalline cells. Instead, the silicon is melted and poured into a square mould, hence the square shape of polycrystalline. This makes polycrystalline solar cells much more affordable, as hardly any silicon is wasted during the manufacturing process. On the minus side, they are less efficient and require more space than single crystalline cells, due to the fact that the purity level is lower in polycrystalline cells. Another disadvantage is that polycrystalline has lower heat tolerance than monocrystalline, meaning that they are unable to function as efficiently in high temperatures. Amorphous Solar Cells The word 'amorphous' literally means shapeless. The silicon is not structured or crystallised on a molecular level as many other types of silicon-based solar cells are. In the past, amorphous solar cells were used for smaller-scale applications, such as pocket calculators, because their power output was relatively low. However, by stacking several amorphous solar cells on top of each other, their performance increased significantly (up to 8%). Amorphous silicon solar panels are a powerful and emerging line of photovoltaic systems that differ from crystalline silicon cells in terms of their output, structure, and manufacture. The material costs are reduced since amorphous silicon only requires about 1% of the silicon that would have been used to produce a crystalline-silicon based solar cell. The development process of amorphous silicon solar panels has made them more flexible and lightweight, which makes the transportation and installation of the panels less risky. A flexible thin-film module renders amorphous solar cells suitable even for curved surfaces. One of the drawbacks is the lower efficiency rate of amorphous thin-film solar cells. However, the technology is new, and efficiency rates are thought to increase with technological breakthroughs in the near future. Read more: Solar Panel Guide
Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental disorder that can affect a person’s ability to communicate and relate to others. Children with autism differ from each other, so a method that works with one child may not work with another. But there are some basic guidelines when helping children with autism succeed: Use Clear, Concise Language Autistic children think concretely. Sayings like, “it’s a piece of cake” instead of “it’s easy” are often lost on them. They will be left wondering why you are talking about cake when there isn’t any around. Use clear, concise language to convey what you want the child to do. For example, “Time to put your toys away. It’s time for lunch.” Remember to make sure you have their attention before giving instructions. Not everyone is used to being around and interacting with children with autism. For those new to the experience, it can be stressful. But no matter how stressed or frustrated you are, don’t get impatient with them. Getting impatient when something doesn’t go the way you want and using sarcasm will not only reinforce unwanted behavior, but make the child stressed as well. Consistency is the key. By keeping to a clear, consistent schedule, there will be less stress for both the child and you. If a change occurs in the schedule, let them know before the change happens. It will allow them time to prepare themselves for the new activity. Don’t Take Meltdowns Personally Children with autism may occasionally have a meltdown or behave inappropriately. Don’t take it personally. Remember that they are not throwing a tantrum to “get attention.” A meltdown differs from a tantrum in that they are not trying to manipulate the situation to be in their favor. Often, meltdowns or aggressive behavior happen when the child feels overstimulated or frustrated that they cannot communicate what they want. Take the time to learn what the child does and does not like. What calms them down? What makes them anxious or scared? Give Visual Instructions Children with autism are often visual thinkers. They have to see something to understand it. When explaining something, give a visual example. For example, in arts and crafts, show them what the final product will look like. It will give them a clear sense of when something is finished. Instead of asking them what they want during snack time, show them the choices. Remember to not give too many choices at once, as it can be overwhelming. Don’t Isolate Them If you have a child with autism, don’t isolate them. Children with autism do need occasional alone time to help them cope and calm down. However, excluding them altogether won’t help them learn how to interact with others, can damage their self esteem, and promote discrimination among children without autism. Include the child in activities, but recognize when it starts becoming too overwhelming for them. Build a Peer Support System Building a peer support system with children without autism can help a child with autism learn good social skills, and they will have a partner to help them with daily activities. By pairing an autistic and non-autistic child together, both will learn how to interact with each other, leading to positive exchanges and experiences.
The National Curriculum is a set of subjects and standards used by primary and secondary schools so children learn the same things. It covers what subjects are taught and the standards children should reach in each subject. Every state-funded school must offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based and which: The National Curriculum forms one part of the school curriculum, which comprises all learning and other experiences that each school plans for its pupils. The National Curriculum for five to 11 year olds is made up of blocks of years, known as key stages: Formal assessment takes place at the end of each Key Stage (Years 2 and 6). A phonics screening check takes place in Year 1. In addition, schools are advised to teach personal, social, health and economic education (PSHE) and citizenship, together with at least one modern foreign language. Pupils are closely monitored throughout the school year to ensure that they make progress from whatever their starting point. PLEASE CLICK ON THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM SUBJECT LINKS BELOW FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON THE KS1 and KS2 NATIONAL CURRICULUM
With a dizzying array of news about plastics lately, it’s hard to figure out what options are best for handling plastic waste. A large portion of the world does not recycle plastic waste, and countries that do are struggling to make the process cost-effective enough to make sense. Much debate exists about the best way to handle waste. Below are some of the options currently available, as well as technologies that are being developed. Incineration/ Waste to Energy What it is: Plastic (and other) waste is burned at high temperatures. Plastic is made from fossil fuels, which create a lot of heat when burned. In some instances, this heat is captured and used to heat buildings. In some facilities, the heat captured can power generators and create electricity. The negatives to this include large upfront costs to build the facilities, and the potential to emit pollutants, such as dioxins, acid gases and heavy metals into the atmosphere. What it is: Melting plastic at very high temperatures (>700 degrees C) with a controlled, near-absence of Oxygen, creating a gas mixture called syngas (synthetic gas) that can be used to power turbines. The downside is that the process is a lot more expensive than natural gas, so the plants aren’t cost effective. What it is: Plastics are shredded and melted, in a process similar to gasification, however because the plastic is shredded, lower temperatures and less oxygen is used. The result is the heat breaking plastic polymers down into smaller hydrocarbons, which can be refined and turned into diesel fuel. An advantage to pyrolysis is that the process works on films, pouches and multi-layer materials, which have been a challenge to typical recycling processes. The process is still relatively new, and not scaled up yet, so the costs are still higher than creating diesel fuel from fossil fuels. What it is: The process of using enzymes to breakdown plastic is still in its infancy. In 2016, a group of Japanese researchers discovered a bacterium that grows on PET and partially feeds on it. The bacterium possesses two special enzymes: MHETase and PETase, which are able to digest PET plastic polymers. The use of these enzymes has not been scaled up to be effective enough to handle the amount of waste produced each year, but holds some promise for the future. What it is: Plastics such as PET are considered polymers, or large molecules made of monomers, which are essentially like building blocks. In chemical recycling, polymers are broken down to their original monomer form, and these monomers can be re-polymerized and remade into new plastic materials. Chemical recycling offers a good alternative for materials that are typically hard to mechanically recycle, such as items that contain food residue.
Haploid is the term used when a cell has half the usual number of chromosomes. A normal eukaryotic gamete organism is composed of diploid cells, one set of chromosomes from each parent. However, after meiosis, the number of chromosomes in gametes is halved. That is the haploid condition. In humans, the diploid number of chromosomes is 46 (2x23). The number in haploid cells (sperm and ovum) is 23. Some types of animals are haploid, such as male Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps). This is a special genetic system called haplodiploidy Some plants and animals are polyploid, with more than two sets of chromosomes. For example, one species of wheat is hexaploid, with six sets of chromosomes, although other species of wheat have only two sets. Because so many organisms are diploid, it can become confusing whether haploid refers to one set of chromosomes or more than one. T can be used; it means one set of chromosomes.
The term decision making means - the process of deciding about something important, especially in a group of people or in an organisation. In addition to the different procedures involved in making decisions, groups can also have different decision rules. A decision rule is the way the group makes a choice or reaches a decision which can be as important as the decisions themselves. There are no perfect decision-making rules all can lead to situations where either no decisions are made or the decisions are inconsistent. The three most useful decision rules and their advantages and disadvantages are set out in the table below. 1. Decision by majority rule: Requires support from more than 50% of the members of the group. Commonly achieved by voting or less commonly by polling (going around the room and asking each person to say where they stand). 2. Decision by consensus rule: Requires that a majority approve a given course of action but that the minority agree to go along with it. May be used selectively (e.g. to carry out a major building programme). 3. Decision by unanimous decision rule: Requires everyone to agree on a given course of action. Dissatisfied people might use words such as 'dictatorship' if conflict arises and they feel excluded from decision-making. This results in there being no real commitment to the course of action chosen, which can lead to problems when a decision is implemented. Difficulties in decision-making Why do difficulties arise? There are times when groups find it difficult to make decisions during a meeting. Some reasons for this include: - lack of philosophy, goal or a clear plan - inadequate leadership - the processes for decision-making are not clear - conflicting loyalties or a clash of interests - interpersonal conflict - people feel unable to freely express differences - cultural insensitivity - hidden agendas - fear of potential consequences - people think it will take too long or it can't be done at all. Managing conflict in a group Conflict might arise within a group because of personal differences, ideological differences, misunderstandings or miscommunication. Rather than trying to avoid or suppress conflict and disagreement, take the opportunity to debate issues to more easily understand and resolve them. There is no single right way to resolve conflict that may arise during meetings, but some key elements should be observed: - allow enough time to deal with conflict - define the issue in terms that are clear, neutral and acceptable to all parties in conflict - have at least one person give special attention to the process, someone impartial or uninvolved - use reflective listening to explore the issues: summarise what you think is being said at regular intervals - have parties to the conflict identify their points of view and what their ideal solutions would be. It is often useful to pre-empt hostile conflict arising during a meeting. Try some of these techniques: - set ground rules for the meeting - agree on goals - agree on a plan - be clear about the way that decisions will be made (e.g. by consensus) - offer the freedom to express feelings safely (i.e. without fear of attack or abuse) - ensure feedback is constructive - define the issues - group the options in broad categories - rank ideas (e.g. each person chooses their three most favoured options) - break into small groups to re-examine remaining ideas, and report back to the full meeting - brainstorm solutions by listing possible ways of dealing with the matter - try out an idea then evaluate it - suspend judgement / withhold opinions until more information has been obtained - agree to abide by a majority vote - agree to differ. Mediation is a process of resolving conflict that can be used when the level of conflict within the group is beyond the group's own ability to resolve it. In these circumstances, its useful to bring in a neutral third party to mediate (i.e. a mediator). Use an experienced mediator - mediation requires a high level of skill and could come from outside your organisation. Their role is to clarify the source of the dispute, facilitate the group identifying solutions for themselves, and establish a course of action when a particular solution is identified. The mediator should not inflict their own point-of-view on the group. Hui Māori are another instance of a formal meeting. Below is an example of how a hui on a marae may be organised. However, it is important to note that there are other ways of conducting hui Māori on and off the marae. This is dealt with briefly in the Flexibility of Hui Māori section. Example of a hui held on a marae Māori hui on marae are governed by the protocol (kawa) of the marae. These may differ depending on the iwi concerned. A meeting on a marae may be organised in the following way: - pōwhiri and mihi (greetings) from tāngata whenua - mihi whakahoki (response) from those attending or visiting (manuhiri). The protocols governing who may speak and the order of speeches are dictated by the kawa of the tāngata whenua (or at the discretion of the tāngata whenua, another kawa may be adopted for example in heavy rain, the guests may be called straight into the house). Speeches of tāngata whenua and manuhiri generally include acknowledgement of meeting house and tīpuna (ancestors), ngā mate (deceased), then the mountain, river, chiefs and tribe of the speaker. - speeches are usually followed by a supporting waiata (song) from the speaker's supporters - the last manuhiri speaker lays down the koha (gift) at the conclusion of their speech - tāngata whenua invite those people present to harirū (shake hands/hongi/kiss) - after the harirū, food is shared. This represents cleansing of the visiting party so they become noa (ordinary) and part of tāngata whenua - the meeting business is usually preceded by a karakia (prayer or ritual chant) - the take (the reason for the meeting) is introduced - the kaupapa (procedure or format) is decided - speakers stand and address the gathering. They have the right to be heard uninterrupted - decision-making is usually by consensus, though there may be a vote at the end of discussion to formalise a decision - poroporoaki (farewell) when closure is reached by tying up any loose knots and reconfirming mutual ties - the hui ends with a karakia. Note: Hui held in venues other than marae may be run along similar lines. Flexibility of hui Māori In the book Kōrero Tahi: Talking Together, Joan Metge illustrates alternative procedures for conducting hui Māori that can be adapted to different situations from small group discussions to conference-type settings. According to Metge, the tikanga (rules) governing discussion at hui Māori are not hard-and-fast directives (though the inexperienced are tempted to treat them as such). They are flexible guidelines that both encourage and require modification according to different circumstances e.g. whether the hui is being held on or off a marae complex or whether visitors are present or not. Despite this flexibility, Metge mentions five rules of basic importance at hui Māori: - the use of physical space to express and mediate social relationships - the making of a distinction between tāngata whenua (people of the land) and manuhiri (visitors) - the framing of discussion with karakia (prayer) and with ceremonials of greeting and farewell - the vesting of responsibility for the management of discussion in participants as a group - the appropriate use of one, two or three distinct modes of discussion. An example of flexibility One of the examples Metge uses to illustrate how hui Māori can be adapted, is the pōwhiri. This is the welcoming ceremony designed to introduce individuals and groups to each other to reduce feelings of strangeness, anxiety or hostility, so that everyone feels comfortable enough to engage in discussion. Metge advocates that in a marae setting, rather than the speeches being entirely or mainly in Māori, organisers of the hui could consider providing English translations or summaries of the speeches either during or after the pōwhiri. This used to be common on marae and in such situations as the Māori Land Court sittings where Pakeha were present. However, this practice has fallen out of favour in a drive to extend the use of te reo Māori (Māori language). For venues other than marae, a welcoming ceremony could be designed that uses the English language but also recognises the status of Māori as an official language and the presence of speakers of other languages. For example, the Māori language could be used to begin and end the ceremony with karanga (call of welcome) and karakia (prayer) and again in the first speech and in waiata. Then speakers from minority groups could be invited to use their own languages in speeches and songs, provided they explain the content in English. Such adaptations are possible throughout other parts of the hui (refer to Kōrero Tahi: Talking Together for further details).
Since the great ocean crossing of Columbus in 1492, Europeans had been settling in what they called the New World, at the expense of the indigenous populations. The Portuguese began this by setting up sugar plantations in Brazil and having these worked by slaves brought across from Africa. This policy was adopted by all the European colonial powers. Together, in some two hundred years they transported over twelve million Africans in the transatlantic slave trade. The Dutch themselves transported more than 550,000 of these slaves. Some artists recorded their miserable lot in a drawing. The Dutch slave trade started in 1621 with the establishment of the Dutch West India Company (WIC). WIC ships were originally sent out as privateers and to wage war on the Spanish-Portuguese fleet. In 1628, admiral Piet Hein captured the Spanish silver fleet and in 1638 the Portuguese lost Saint George d’el Mina in modern-day Ghana to the WIC. In addition, parts of Brazil were occupied (1624-1654) and in 1665 the Republic’s claim to colonial rights over the so-called Wild Coast (Surinam, Berbice, Essequibo-Demarary), and the Antillean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saint Martin, Sint Eustatius and Saba was recognised. The Dutch became important players in the Atlantic area as a colonial power and slave traders. Up until 1730, the WIC held a monopoly on the slave trade. Subsequently, the Middelburg Commercial Company (established in 1720) grew into the biggest Dutch slave trader with various auction houses in Rotterdam and Amsterdam to compete with the WIC. In around 1770, the Dutch slave trade reached its zenith, transporting some six thousand slaves each year. In following years these numbers quickly decreased. Being a slave meant being forced to work and having no say in where, with whom and how you would live. The African slaves and their descendants who were born in slavery, worked on plantations growing sugar, coffee, cocoa, cotton and tobacco. They worked in the salt ponds of Curaçao or waited on their masters. Not all slaves accepted their lot. Particularly in Surinam, people escaped from slavery by running away. They settled in the jungle and established their own communities alongside those of the Indians. These fugitive slaves were referred to as Maroons or Bush Negroes. In addition, there were constant small and large slave uprisings on plantations and in the towns. The largest slave uprising took place on in 1795 on Curaçao under the leadership of Tula, who, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution and the success of the slave uprising in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), demanded freedom. Tula, however, paid for his freedom with his life. At the end of the eighteenth century outrage against the slave trade was growing. This was true in the Netherlands too, even though discussions were often dominated by the interests of slave owners. Under pressure from the English the slave trade was prohibited in 1814. In the Netherlands, the abolition of slave labour and slavery did not follow until 1 July 1863, making it one of the very last countries in Europe to emancipate its slaves.
Mammals in our midst; jaws faster than the blink of an eye; how birds see the world In a large-scale, four-year study, scientists from several U.S. institutions discovered that a surprising variety of wild mammals thrive near humans in two major metropolitan areas: Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina. Working with hundreds of volunteers, the researchers deployed more than 1,400 motion-triggered cameras in a range of habitats in both cities—from backyards to large nature preserves—moving them every three weeks to new locations, so sampling took place continuously year-round. “In terms of how many species used them, there wasn’t a significant difference in mammal populations between suburban areas and wild areas, and that surprised us,” says North Carolina State University researcher Arielle Parsons. While many images showed common creatures such as white-tailed deer, some captured unexpected species, including bobcats (above, in Arizona). In all, the cameras photographed 19 mammal species in the two areas. “This is the first time we’ve had the camera trap’s perspective to really compare wild to suburban sites,” the researchers write in eLife. Dracula ants are named for their habit of feeding on the blood of their young. They also, according to a team of U.S. entomologists, can execute the fastest known movement by an animal appendage. Using high-speed cameras under laboratory conditions, the scientists found that one tropical Dracula species, Mystrium camillae (above), snaps its mandibles at speeds exceeding 200 miles per hour—5,000 times faster than the blink of an eye. “The ants use this motion to smack other arthropods,” says University of Illinois entomologist Andrew Suarez. The force of the action, the team reports in Royal Society Open Science, is so great that it can stun or kill prey, which the ants then feed to larvae in their nest. Researchers from Sweden’s Lund University have successfully imitated how birds see colors in the wild. Like people, birds’ color vision is based on three primary hues: red, green and blue. However, avian animals also make use of ultraviolet light, which enables them to view the world very differently than do humans. To recreate how birds see their environment, the scientists built an innovative camera equipped with special filters. They discovered that in situations where humans only see green (above left), for example, birds can see contrasts in dense foliage (above right). “No one knew about this until this study,” coauthor Dan-Eric Nilsson reports in the journal Nature Communications. To birds, the upper sides of leaves appear much lighter in ultraviolet. From below, the leaves look dark. This visual three-dimensional structure in dense foliage, the scientists found, enables the animals to navigate and find food more easily. “We may have the notion that what we see is the reality, but it’s a highly human reality,” says Nilsson. Animals such as birds, he notes, live in different realities. Meet five species that felt the impacts of climate change-fueled disasters in the United States this past year.Read the Story President and CEO Collin O’Mara reveals in a TEDx Talk why it is essential to connect our children and future generations with wildlife and the outdoors—and how doing so is good for our health, economy, and environment.Watch Now What's on deck with the National Wildlife Federation? Check out our scheduled events—we just might be coming to a city near you!See Events Place your order today for the themed box that delivers everything you need to create family memories while discovering nature and wildlife.Learn More More than one-third of U.S. fish and wildlife species are at risk of extinction in the coming decades. We're on the ground in seven regions across the country, collaborating with 52 state and territory affiliates to reverse the crisis and ensure wildlife thrive.
This GCSE Physics quiz about waves looks at reflection and refraction. Reflection occurs when any wave reaches a boundary between two different media. The amount of reflection depends on the nature of the medium that the wave is hitting. At GCSE, you will have studied this only for light waves, but what you have learnt about light reflection is equally applicable to any wave. All waves follow the laws of reflection, so make sure you revise them well. In the exam, stay calm if you come across a question that asks you about the reflection of water waves, earthquake waves, radio waves or sound waves. Simply pretend they are light waves and that should help you find the answer. OK, lets think about light waves now. When light hits an opaque surface, some of the energy it carries is reflected and some is absorbed. Smooth shiny surfaces reflect the most and you can see an image in them. Rough surfaces tend to scatter the light in all directions and no image is formed. Dark surfaces reflect less than light surfaces as they absorb more of the energy of the light wave. But what happens if the light hits a transparent surface? The answer is that a small amount is reflected but the rest travels into the transparent object. If the light hits the surface at an angle of incidence of 0° (in other words, travelling along the normal) it will continue in a straight line. If it hits at an angle of incidence of between 0° and an angle called the critical angle, it will change direction (bend). This is what we call refraction. We say the light has been refracted. Just to complicate matters, if it hits the surface at the critical angle, it will travel along the surface and if the angle of incidence is greater than the critical angle, it will reflect. Phew, that's a lot more to remember than with reflection! Refraction happens because light travels at different speeds in different media. When it enters a more dense medium, it slows down and bends towards the normal. If it enters a less dense medium, it speeds up and bends away from the normal. The amount of bending is predictable and depends on a property of a transparent object known as the refractive index. The refractive index can be calculated in two ways by carrying out some experiments. The first is to measure the critical angle of the medium. To do this, the angle of incidence of a light ray is changed to find the exact point that it neither reflects nor refracts. The refractive index is then calculated as being the reciprocal of the sine of the critical angle. The alternative method is to use several different angles of incidence and measure the corresponding angle of refraction. Dividing the sine of the angle of incidence by the sine of the angle of refraction gives the value of the refractive index.
Phonics Provision at Stirchley Primary School Phonics is the knowledge of how the alphabetic sounds work and how these sounds are combined to correspond to the spoken word. Our aim at Stirchley is to enable children to start learning phonic knowledge and skills by the age of five, with the expectation that they will become fluent readers, having secured word building and recognition skills by the end of Key Stage One. We want to ensure that our children apply phonic knowledge as their first approach to reading and spelling, even though all words do not conform to regular phonic patterns, with the ultimate goal being ‘automatic and effortless reading and writing’. The materials used to deliver phonics at Stirchley are: Letters and Sounds Top 10 Reading Tips 1. Choose a quiet time Set aside a quiet time with no distractions. Ten to fifteen minutes is usually long enough. 2. Make reading enjoyable Make reading an enjoyable experience. Sit with your child. Try not to pressurise if he or she is reluctant. If your child loses interest then do something else. 3. Maintain the flow If your child mispronounces a word do not interrupt immediately. Instead allow opportunity for self-correction. It is better to tell a child some unknown words to maintain the flow rather than insisting on trying to build them all up from the sounds of the letters. If your child does try to 'sound out' words, encourage the use of letter sounds rather than 'alphabet names'. 4. Be positive If your child says something nearly right to start with that is fine. Don't say 'No. That's wrong,' but 'Let's read it together' and point to the words as you say them. Boost your child's confidence with constant praise for even the smallest achievement. 5. Success is the key Parents anxious for a child to progress can mistakenly give a child a book that is too difficult. This can have the opposite effect to the one they are wanting. Remember 'Nothing succeeds like success'. Until your child has built up his or her confidence, it is better to keep to easier books. Struggling with a book with many unknown words is pointless. Flow is lost, text cannot be understood and children can easily become reluctant readers. 6. Visit the Library Encourage your child to use the public library regularly. 7. Regular practice Try to read with your child on most school days. 'Little and often' is best. Teachers have limited time to help your child with reading. Your child will most likely have a reading diary from school. Try to communicate regularly with positive comments and any concerns. Your child will then know that you are interested in their progress and that you value reading. 9. Talk about the books There is more to being a good reader than just being able to read the words accurately. Just as important is being able to understand what has been read. Always talk to your child about the book; about the pictures, the characters, how they think the story will end, their favourite part. You will then be able to see how well they have understood and you will help them to develop good comprehension skills. 10. Variety is important Remember children need to experience a variety of reading materials eg. picture books, hard backs, comics, magazines, poems, and information books.
We spent this week in reading enjoying some children's literature - basic? Maybe. But serious fun. And a great way to introduce and review some important concepts that we'll need to use later in the year as we dive into novels. We covered plot maps and reviewed all of the different parts of a plot (hook, problem, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, conclusion). We practiced labeling the parts of the different stories on the plot map, and then moved on to characterization. Ask your student about direct and indirect characterization - they should be able to tell you that direct characterization is when the author specifically tells you about the character, and indirect characterization is when we have to put different clues together to infer what the character is like. Looking ahead to next week, we're starting our first unit in Social Studies: Early Human Civilizations. In reading, we will continue discussing characterization and move on to the real theme of the year: What is a hero? We'll start by reading a few articles on the topic and then work our way into several projects, culminating with a viewing of the first Harry Potter film and a project to lead us into our first novel study. It's going to be a great year, and I'm glad you'll be along for the journey!
Soil holds a significant number of nutrients that plants use for healthy growth. Good quality soil of the right porosity, strength and stability is important if farmers are going to get good, healthy and nutrient-rich crops. The structure must be stable in order to get the correct balance of air and water, as well as the right combination of aggregates to hold it together. However, during flooding, severe wind or under poor farming practices, soil is eroded to the extent that it's no longer the nutrient-rich substance needed by plants. Soil erosion doesn't just impact food production either. It can destroy habitats and biodiversity on land and in water. The movement of soil can also disturb matters off-farm, causing road damage, disrupting utility supplies and causing human health concerns with poor, dusty air quality. While soil erosion has improved significantly across the country, South Australia still considers it the highest priority threat to agricultural lands. Causes of soil erosion Soil erosion is a natural process, but a combination of weather conditions and farming practices increases the rate at which it occurs, making it a serious concern. Weather like rain, flooding, drought and wind naturally cause soil to move over time. However changing land management techniques have disrupted natural levels of soil movement and heightened erosion. Plants of all sizes play a key role in holding soil together, maintaining its structure and physical condition. As humans remove these plants and expose the ground beneath, the risk of weather conditions directly affecting soil placement increases. Over-grazing animals on a land parcel can also contribute, as they wear away the soil and eat the plants responsible for holding it together. Dramatic climate events, while beyond the control of human beings, are capable of affecting soil erosion. Serious drought conditions, as have been reported over recent years in areas of Australia, leaves land dry and dusty – and more easily moved by wind or water. Moreover, these sorts of conditions predominantly affect the top layer of soil, which is considered the most fertile section. Preventing soil erosion Soil takes thousands of years to build up, but is wiped away very quickly without proper protection. In one experiment cited by the Australian Government, a farm without adequate protection lost 22 tonnes of soil per hectare, whereas neighbouring farms with better prevention schemes lost much less and maintained better nutrient levels. Preventative measures in themselves are nothing new, with some programmes having begun as early as the 1950s. However, it's important that brokers understand how farmers can protect their investment today, alongside the right insurance policy. Protecting land from soil erosion involves considering how the land is used, if it can be better protected from the elements and controlling soil movement before it becomes an issue. 1) Protective surface cover The risk of erosion is significantly reduced with as little as 30 per cent ground cover, according to the Queensland Government. Plants provide a crucial source of cover by placing a protective layer of leaves and foliage between the elements and the soil. They also maintain soil structure with their root systems, and help to slow the speed with which water runs off the land. During harvest season, farmers can protect their soil with very little effort by leaving the stalks, leaves and other parts of the crop that fall to the ground. Together, these excess plant parts provide surface cover which adds a significant layer of protection to the top soil. 2) Less disruptive tillage practices The process of preparing land for planting is known as tillage. Traditionally the practice involves turning over the soil so it's ready for new seeds. New practices, such as sowing seeds in narrow slots, reduce soil disturbance and leaves more residue on the surface to protect against weather conditions. At the other end of the season, farmers can practice 'stubble retention', which involves increasing the height at which crops are cut, to offer more protection to soil after harvesting. 3) Redirecting rain water Planning irrigation so that water and soil is kept within a paddock can help to reduce soil loss by around 80 per cent, according to the same Queensland Government advice. By channeling runoff around the farm with contour banks and filter strips, you slow down the speed of flow as well as how much soil is depleted or deposited elsewhere. It's not just farmland that's protected by good irrigation practices, as it also prevents excess runoff spilling into rivers and waterways or onto roads. 4) Land management Changing grazing practices, such as moving animals between paddocks regularly, gives land a chance to recover and limits the impact animals have on soil erosion. Some farmers undertake clay spreading to strengthen soil and make it more difficult to erode. Meanwhile, they might also use trees as windbreaks in heavily affected areas. Developments in technology now enable farmers to improve soil management by monitoring conditions and land practices to provide long-term recommendations. As an insurance broker, having this knowledge is invaluable. Understanding the challenges your farmers face allows you to think laterally about how you can help them manage their risks and protect their business. Take a look at our brokers page for further information about what Primacy Underwriting offer.
Autistic Spectrum Disorder Autism is a pervasive development disorder and since the 1980’s the idea of a ‘spectrum of autistic disorders’ has been widely acknowledged. The causes of autism are complex and it is unlikely that there is a single cause, but rather a set of triggers involving biological/medical, psychological and behavioural factors. There appears to be a strong genetic link. Psychological assessments can be helpful but they cannot be used to confirm or deny a diagnosis of ASD. The diagnosis is medical and is made by recognising patters or behaviour from early life where the impairments of social interaction, communication and development of imagination are crucial. This is known as the “Triad of Impairments’. At one end of the spectrum will be a normally intelligent child with mild autism, and at the other end will be the child with profound learning difficulties and severe autism. The estimated prevalence of ASD is 6:1000 and it affects four times as many boys as girls. What are the main characteristics? Social Interaction The child will have an inability to empathise with others and will find it difficult to understand the feelings and/or behaviour of others. They may appear withdrawn and make little attempt to make friends, often being described as ‘aloof’. Sometimes their behaviour is odd – using inappropriate greetings, touching or being aggressive. Children with ASD have difficulties understanding and interpreting social situations and may become distressed or confused. Communication This includes a difficulty in making sense of and using both verbal and non-verbal communication such as eye contact, facial expression, gesture and body language. Some children never develop speech; others experience a significant language delay and when they do begin to use language it is often repetitive and/or learned phrases from things such as television cartoons or adverts. In contrast, some children appear to have good expressive language but still have difficulties in understanding and tend to interpret literally. Thought and Imagination An impairment in thought and imagination affects every area of thinking, language and behaviour. In Early Years settings an impairment in play and imaginative activities is often noticeable. Children may become fixated by a particular toy, especially one that spins and shines. They may develop repetitive and/or obsessive interests and are often more interested in objects than people. Changes in routine can cause distress because ASD children are dependant upon routine to make sense of their environment. In addition to the ‘triad of impairments’ children with ASD may experience any number of the following: - Hand flapping, rocking or spinning - Sensitivity to noise, smell, taste, touch or visual stimuli - Erratic sleeping patterns - Unusual sleeping habits - Self injury - Aggressive behaviour - A strange gait or posture – often walking on tip-toes - Irrational fears or phobias
Steven and Chayse were making towers with DUPLO. They decided to join their towers together to make a ‘giant tower’. They thought the tower was taller than me. I said, “Let’s measure.” When they measured, I was taller than the tower. They wanted to add to the tower until it became taller than me. We used words like measure, tall, short, taller, shorter and compare. It is important to use correct mathematical terms with children to promote their vocabulary development.
The consonantal sounds "w" and "v" The sounds denoted by the letters "w" and "v" in the English alphabet are very often confused by foreign language learners of English. However, it is very important to know and practise the correct pronunciation of these two sounds so that listeners do not confuse words that sound very similar. Take for example the words "worry" and "very". They can be easily confused when their beginning sound is mispronounced. The sound "w" The IPA symbol that represents the sound of the letter "w" is [w]. To learn the correct pronunciation of this sound, you need to know its characteristics: - When pronouncing it, the lips are put forward and rounded. - The back part of the tongue is raised towards the soft tissue at the back of the roof of the mouth. - The vocal cords vibrate during the articulation. - Air is only allowed to escape through the mouth. - The air is directed along the centre of the tongue. These characteristics may seem very hard to follow. Therefore, you need to know that the first two features are the most important ones: - You need to put your lips forward and round them, and - you need to put the back of your tongue against the back of the roof of your mouth. To practise the sound, speak the following words out loud several times: when, while, weather, worm, which, word, warm, winter, woman, week, awaiting, awake, award. You may listen to the audio file below if you like. The sound "v" The IPA symbol that represents the sound of the letter "v" is [v]. To learn the correct pronunciation of this sound, and to differentiate it from [w], you need to know its characteristics as well: - Air flows through a narrow channel at the place of articulation. You can test this by pronouncing the sound and holding one hand in front of your mouth. - It is articulated using the lower lips and the upper teeth: the lower lips are slightly put behind or against the upper teeth. - Its phonation is "voiced". That means that you let your vocal cords vibrate when pronouncing it. Notice: This sound is the same sound that differentiates the preposition "of" from the adverb "off". To read more about the pronunciation of these two words, click here. In contrast to the [w] sound, the lips are not rounded. The lower lips are slightly put behind or against the upper teeth. Also, you let air flow through your mouth when pronouncing [v]. To practise the pronunciation of the [v] sound, speak the following words out loud several times: very, vary, various, variety, vibration, voice, village, video, vampire. Then listen to the audio file.
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas geologists have synthesized the mineral dolomite at a low temperature without the aid of microorganisms — a feat that scientists have been trying to accomplish for almost a century. Announced in a paper published today in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), this work will eventually provide researchers with more accurate tools for understanding climate change and give geologists better methods for finding new sources of petroleum, said Jennifer Roberts, associate professor of geology and lead author of the paper. This research also represents a major step forward in solving what geologists call The Dolomite Problem. In their research, Roberts and her team were able to grow dolomite at a temperature of 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) in their laboratory in an abiotic environment. Abiotic means that while organic material was present, it was not actively reproducing. The KU researchers were able to show that a certain kind of coating on organic matter, known as a carboxylated surface, acts as a catalyst to create dolomite. Previously, researchers had only been able to produce dolomite at temperatures of 80 to 250 degrees Celsius (176 to 482 degrees Fahrenheit), or had used live microorganisms to help synthesize the mineral. Dolomite is a carbonate mineral commonly found in sedimentary rock. The mineral plays key roles in both the economy and science. Dolomite forms major hydrocarbon reservoir rocks, holding large parts of the world’s petroleum reserves, in areas such as the Middle East and Kansas. The mineral also serves as a proxy enabling scientists to interpret the chemistry of ancient fluids and to estimate temperatures on Earth millions of years ago. Understanding the climate of the geologic past enables scientists to create climate change models. “Understanding where and how dolomite forms allows petroleum geologists to create predictive models so they can better locate hydrocarbon reservoirs,” Roberts said. “Better understanding the formation of dolomite also enables us to calibrate models that will help us figure out climate change in the future.” Understanding the formation of dolomite will also solve a mystery that has long baffled geologists. Researchers have been able to determine that while the mineral formed abundantly in the geologic past, it seldom is discovered to be forming today, and then only at temperatures above 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). “There was a whole lot of dolomite formed in the ancient, and not much of it formed in the modern,” Roberts said. “That flies in the face of one of the basic tenets of how we operate as geologists, which is that the present is the key to the past. In other words, we believe that the geologic processes that work in the present also worked in the past.” The KU research has helped solve one of the major aspects of The Dolomite Problem, Roberts said, by unlocking the mechanism that allows dolomite to form in open spaces in rocks at a low temperature. Future phases of the research will focus on other parts of this problem. Joining Roberts in the paper are Paul Kenward, a KU doctoral student at the time of this study and now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia; David Fowle, associate professor of geology; Robert Goldstein, associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Merrill W. Haas Distinguished Professor of Geology; Luis González, chair of the Department of Geology and professor of geology; and David Moore, of KU’s Microscopy and Analytical Imaging Laboratory. The Department of Geology is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The College encourages learning without boundaries in its more than 50 departments, programs and centers. Through innovative research and teaching, the College emphasizes interdisciplinary education, global awareness and experiential learning. The College is KU's broadest, most diverse academic unit.
The US Supreme Court has a number of powers. These include the power to declare acts of Congress, the executive or state legislatures unconstitutional through the power of judicial review. The supreme court justices are also given the power to interpret the constitution when making decisions, again, through their power of judicial review. It is arguable that it is essential for the supreme court to have such powers in order to allow the American democracy to flourish. However, there is much evidence to suggest that the supreme court holds too much power for an unelected body, thus hindering democracy. The ambiguity of the constitution means that there is much room …show more content… Furthermore, the power of the Supreme Court is actually very limited due to the checks and balances system set up by the founding fathers. Congress has the power of impeachment. This means that should any of the justices overstep their power, or cause corruption, Congress can impeach them. In 1968 Associate Justice Abe Fortas resigned just before facing certain impeachment. Although impeachment is very rare, the constant threat of impeachment ensures that justices are simply interpreting the constitution rather than acting in their own interest which preserves a democracy. There are also checks by the president on the supreme court. The president has the power to nominate the justices and therefore has the power to influence the philosophy of the supreme court. There has been an evident change in the philosophy of the court between 1968 and 2008. The court has moved from being mostly appointed by Democratic presidents like Roosevelt and Kennedy to a more Conservative court appointed by Republican presidents like Raegan and Bush. Obama replaced Conservative Souter with Liberal Sotomayor in 2009. This check is good for a democracy because it means that the philosophy of the court is likely to reflect the philosophy of the president
Context: You teach subjects where realistic applications of concepts are not always obvious or may be too complex for students. Problem & Forces: You need engaging examples that contain important elements of a concept or problem but minimize distractions. Patterns like EIA Learning Cycles, Solution Before Example, and Mission Impossible develop abstract concepts from examples. A Model with Authentic Data can motivate students, but can also discourage them if it is too complicated, or involves concepts that are unfamiliar or distracting. A Model with Synthetic Data focus on the relevant characteristics, but may seem unrealistic or boring to students. Solution & Consequences: Therefore, use a game or puzzle that captures the essence of the problem as the model for EIA (Explore, Invent, Apply) Learning Cycles. Questions will guide students to explore the game or puzzle and notice things that an expert would see, and then to invent their own understanding of the concept, which they then apply. This will take more time than a lecture or reading about the concepts, but an appropriate game or puzzle can help students to understand concepts apply them more effectively in the future. Thus, this approach can be more engaging than a Model with Synthetic Data and more manageable than a Model with Authentic Data. Discussion: A Game or Puzzle can be familiar, interesting, or engaging for students – a Colorful Analogy. If they try to play the game or solve the puzzle themselves, it may be easier for them to consider effective strategies or to apply the same concepts in other contexts, including later models in the same activity. Use a Game or Puzzle when it captures key elements of the concept being developed, particularly when a more realistic example might be too complicated or distracting, at least at first. Avoid games or puzzles with too much extraneous information. It might help to have several models with successively more complex versions. Consider that students have different cultural contexts, and may not be equally familiar with a given Game or Puzzle, even if you consider it an Acquaintance Example. Thus, describe it in enough detail to be clear to someone unfamiliar with it. Examples: The left figure shows a game that is part of a POGIL activity on design tradeoffs and algorithm analysis used early (often the first day) in an intro CS course to introduce students to several important CS concepts. The right figure shows a puzzle that is part of a POGIL activity on search strategies. Questions guide student teams to explore the possible moves, representations for those moves, a tree of accessible states for the puzzle, and different strategies to search that tree (depth first, breadth first, best first, etc.). The same activity uses several other puzzles (e.g. magic square, eight Queens) to apply concepts in other contexts, and to invent related concepts. Hi-Lo is a child’s number guessing game with simple rules. An 8-puzzle has a 3x3 board with 8 tiles and 1 space. The goal is to move one tile at a time (up down, left or right) until the tiles form a familiar picture or sequence. Figure : Sample Models – Game (left) and Puzzle (right). - D: How many moves are possible from ? Prompts students to study the rules. - D: Play the game with your team, and write down any questions or concerns. Prompts students to study and become familiar with the rules before answering later questions. - C: Describe or show a sequence of moves starting from . Guides students to use their understanding of the rules, which might help to develop a new concept. - C,V: What would happen if ? Prompts students to apply concepts in other contexts. Author: Clif Kussmaul Publication: C Kussmaul. 2016. Patterns in classroom activities for Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL). HILLSIDE Proc. of Conf. on Pattern Lang. of Prog. 23 (October 2016).
Fall offers great opportunities for learning and playing with math. The CORNY MATH booklet assists children with counting, estimation, prediction, and “non-standard” measuring skills (along with a few drawing/writing/pre-writing activities). CORNY MATH – CORNY FACTS Materials needed: One Printable Corny Facts Booklet (per child/small group), a Paper Bag, Super Wikki Stix, Field Corn to Shell, Markers or Crayons, and a Tray or Table for Counting the Corn Kernels. To begin: Secretly place the field corn in a paper bag and fold it closed. Play “20 Questions” with the children to see if the children can guess what “mystery” item is inside the closed bag. Designate someone to make tally marks to keep track of how many questions the children ask before identifying what item is inside the bag. Have the children write the number of questions asked on the line provided in the booklet. Pages 3 and 4 of the booklet ask the children to use Wikki Stix as a “non-standard” measuring tool. Pre-cut several different lengths of Super Wikki Stix for use in estimating the length and diameter of an ear of corn. Acquiring estimation skills for measurement is a challenging concept for kids! The children must make a good guess to find the length of Wikki Stix that would approximately measure the field corn. Discuss with the children how to make good predictions by measuring some other items at home or in the classroom with Wikki Stix. Our kids measured the size of different playground balls with Wikki Stix for perspective. We found the balls were LARGER than the ears of corn. It would follow that the ears of corn would take LESS Wikki Stix for measuring than the balls did – our prediction was CORRECT! Have the children measure their ears of corn and complete the questions on the pages of the booklet! Counting Kernels by 10’s We shelled the corn and counted the kernels into groups of ten. Have the children count the groups and write the sum on the blank line provided in the booklet. For younger children, have the children count by 1’s, 2’s, or 5’s. Discuss with the children what they might make or do with the corn kernels. Some of our children chose to take the kernels home to feed to the squirrels. Other children made flower art with the corn kernels. What will your children do with their kernels of corn? Help younger children write down ideas in the booklet (or they can simply draw a picture in the blank space provided). Pre-writing Activity: the last page of the booklet is a pre-writing activity for younger children. Have the children use Super Wikki Stix to make different line paths for the squirrel to get to the ear of corn. Older children may wish to make a maze design and use Wikki Stix to complete the path through the maze! The Corny Facts Booklet is a fun way to incorporate harvest explorations into your classroom or home! We hope your kids enjoy it as much as ours do! For Harvest Crafts for Kids to Make (or give), visit the Wikki Stix Blog! For MORE Fall Theme or Wikki Stix Activities, visit the The Preschool Toolbox Blog!
Anti-Bullying for Parents Working together to stop all forms of bullying – A Parents’ Guide ‘The repetitive intentional hurting of one person by an individual or group where the relationship involves an imbalance of power. Bullying can be carried out, physically, verbally, emotionally or in cyber space (Anti Bullying Alliance).’ 1. Bullying related to race, religion or culture 2. Bullying related to special educational needs or disability 3. Bullying related to appearance or health conditions 4. Bullying related to sexual orientation – homophobic abuse 5. Bullying of young carers, children in care or due to home circumstances 6. Sexist or sexual bullying Here is a list of common symptoms: - Unwilling to go to school - Unwilling to play out with his/her usual friends - Refusing to travel on the school bus, requesting a lift in the car instead - Feeling ill in the mornings - Crying themselves to sleep at night, having nightmares, wetting the bed - Having unexplained injuries - Becoming withdrawn, anxious, distressed and lacking in confidence - Refusing to talk about worries - Becoming aggressive or starting to bully others, at home or elsewhere - Doing poorly at school - Being frightened to walk home from school - Change in normal routines Sometimes though, these symptoms can be a sign of other concerns rather than bullying. It is often easier to determine what bullying is by understanding what bullying is not. Bullying is not: - Accidental contact in corridors or during sport - Friends falling out (initially) - Not being invited to a party or to take part in an event Cyber-bullying is the use of digital communication tools such as email, mobile phones, blogging or social networking sites (e.g. Facebook) to deliberately hurt an individual by making threats, spreading rumours. This includes forwarding or posting information that someone else has sent you. Hacking into another person’s personal storage area and corrupting or deleting work could also be considered cyber-bullying. - Be aware, your child may as likely cyber-bully as be a target of cyber-bullying. - Be alert to your child seeming upset after using the internet or their mobile phone. This might involve subtle comments or changes in relationships with friends. They might be unwilling to talk or be secretive about their online activities and mobile phone use. - Talk with your children and understand the ways in which they are using the internet and their mobile phone. - Use the tools on the service and turn on in-built internet safety features. - Remind your child not to retaliate. - Keep the evidence of offending emails, text messages or online conversations. - Report cyber-bullying: Contact the school if it involves another pupil, so that they can support those affected and take action, if appropriate. Contact the service provider. If the cyber-bullying is serious and a potential criminal offence has been committed, you should consider contacting the police Whether your child has talked to you about the bullying or whether you have noticed changes in their behaviour that have alerted you to a problem, it is important to remember what an emotionally-charged problem bullying is. Your child may feel embarrassed that they have become the victim of bullying. They may feel ashamed that they cannot deal with it alone. Feelings of guilt may lead to them unfairly examining their own behaviour but overall the bullying will leave them upset, distressed and feeling alone. As a parent/carer it is likely that you too will have mixed feelings about the bullying. It is common to feel angry that, especially in the school setting, your child has been experiencing bullying whilst in the care of other adults. It can be upsetting to know that your child has been traumatised at the hand of others while you were not there to protect them. It is important to look after your own emotional well-being as well as your child’s. “Your child’s unhappiness makes you unhappy, your child’s fear makes you afraid” Jenny Alexander “Tell a teacher, ignore them, avoid unsupervised areas, make new friends” are not real options for a child whose self esteem has been damaged. Sometimes asking a child to do such things is setting them up for failure and their failure will make them and you feel more frustrated. Loss of self confidence, low self esteem, anxiety to achieve and distress are the effects the person who bullies is looking for. When he/she can no longer produce this in your child then they will move on. Victims of bullying need to develop psychological self-defence to protect self-image and to handle high levels of anger and fear. YOU ARE YOUR CHILD’S MOST VALUABLE RESOURCE Older children are generally less willing to tell anyone they are being bullied as they tend to feel that they should be able to sort it out on their own. - Fear of reprisals - Lack of awareness – it’s just part of my life - Resignation – a child may start to think they are being picked on because there is actually something wrong with them - Denial – don’t fuss, keep quiet and the problem will disappear - Fears of parents’ reaction - Fear that they won’t be believed or taken seriously - Fear that the matter will be taken out of their hands - Fear of criticism for getting into such a bad situation and/or not being able to sort it out for themselves. - Being offered advice they cannot take, e.g. ignore it - Fear that parents will get upset and angry - Feel the child’s emotions – empathise don’t sympathise - Have patience - Create a time and place suitable to talk – make yourself available - Help your child to feel safe to talk - Give them your full attention - DON’T make a joke of it - DON’T disbelieve, belittle or patronise - Listen for clues - Believe the child - Acknowledge their feelings - Refrain from judging or belittling - Focus on the child’s feelings and emotions - Encouraging your child to talk will mean that your child will no longer have to treat the bullying like a secret. Secrets attract guilt and shame. It will also enable your child to release pent up emotions – that may evolve into an explosion demonstrated in your child’s behaviour. - Keep the dialogue open. - Praise your child for managing to talk to you about it - Congratulate yourself on being able to help your child All students have the right to enjoy their learning and free time at school in a safe environment, free from fear. We are a ‘telling’ school. Students should support each other by reporting all instances of harassment. Incidents will be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly. Support is available to those involved in incidents of harassment both for the victim and the bully. This could include peer-mentoring or regular appointments with their tutor, or Head of House. This could also mean students being referred to Student Support. The student who is bullying should receive a warning and a possible sanction. If the bullying happens again, depending upon how serious it is, an Internal or External Exclusion will be considered. Understandably, if your child is being bullied, as a parent you might want the bully immediately excluded or permanently removed from the school. It is important to remember that the school takes a stepped approach, depending on the severity, in a bid to resolve the situation.
Overall Goal: to ask questions about what we do in general and respond to them - Students can talk about what they do in general. - Students can ask "yes" or "no" questions. - Students can ask questions with an interrogative. - Students can use basic prepositions. - Students can talk about how often they do something. - Conjugating AR Verbs - Creating questions with an inverted subject and verb - Creating a T-Chart to see the pattern of regular verbs. - Comparing the relationship between nouns and actions - Using Prepositions at the beginning of questions - Adverbs of Frequency - How to form a basic adverb - How to describe how often we do something.
Anemia is a condition that is sometimes found in young children. It can make your child feel cranky, tired, and weak. Though these symptoms may worry you, most cases of anemia are easily treated. This brochure explains the different types of anemia and its causes, symptoms, and treatments. What is anemia? Anemia is a condition that occurs when there are not enough red blood cells or hemoglobin to carry oxygen to the other cells in the body. The body's cells need oxygen to survive. Your child may become anemic for any of the following reasons: Her body does not produce enough red blood cells. Her body destroys or loses (through bleeding) too many red blood cells. There is not enough hemoglobin in her red blood cells. Hemoglobin is a special pigment that makes it possible for the red blood cells to carry oxygen to all the cells of the body, and to carry waste material (carbon dioxide) away. Types of anemia Iron-deficiency anemia is the most common type of anemia in young children. It is caused by a lack of iron in the diet. The body needs iron to produce hemoglobin. If there is too little iron, there will not be enough hemoglobin in the red blood cells. Infants who are given cow's milk too early (before 1 year of age) often develop anemia because there is very little iron in cow's milk. Also, it is hard for young infants to digest cow's milk. Cow's milk can irritate a young infant's bowel and cause slight bleeding. This bleeding lowers the number of red blood cells, and can result in anemia. A lack of other nutrients in the diet can also cause anemia. Too little folic acid can lead to anemia, though this is very rare. It is most often seen in children fed on goat's milk, which contains very little folic acid. Rarely, too little vitamin B12, vitamin E, or copper can also cause anemia. Blood loss can also cause anemia. Blood loss can be caused by illness or injury. In rare cases, the blood does not clot properly. This can cause a newborn infant to bleed heavily from his circumcision or a minor injury. Because newborns often lack vitamin K, which helps the blood clot, infants generally get a vitamin K injection right after birth. Hemolytic anemia occurs when the red blood cells are easily destroyed. Sickle-cell anemia, a very severe hemolytic anemia, is most common in children of African heritage. Sickle-cell anemia is caused by an abnormal hemoglobin. Children with sickle-cell anemia may suffer many “crises” or periods of great pain, and need to be hospitalized. Thalassemia, another hemolytic anemia, is most common in children of Mediterranean or East Asian origin. If you have a history of sickle-cell anemia or thalassemia in your family, make sure you tell your pediatrician so that your child is tested for it. Signs and symptoms of anemia Anemia causes the following signs and symptoms: Pale, gray, or “ashy” skin (also, the lining of the eyelids and the nail beds may look less pink than normal) Children with severe anemia may have the following additional signs and symptoms: Shortness of breath Rapid heart rate Swollen hands and feet Also, a newborn with hemolytic anemia may become jaundiced (turn yellow), although many newborns are mildly jaundiced and do not become anemic. Children who lack iron in their diets may also eat strange things such as ice, dirt, clay, and cornstarch. This behavior is called “pica.” It is not harmful unless your child eats something toxic, such as lead paint chips. Usually the pica stops after the anemia is treated and as the child grows older. If your child shows any of these symptoms or signs, see your pediatrician. A simple blood count can diagnose anemia in most cases. Treatment for anemia Since there are so many different types of anemia, it is very important to identify the cause before beginning any treatment. Do not try to treat your child with vitamins, iron, or other nutrients or over-the-counter medications unless your pediatrician recommends it. This is important because such treatment may mask the real cause of the problem. This could delay a proper diagnosis. If the anemia is due to a lack of iron, your child will be given an iron-containing medication. This comes in a drop form for infants, and liquid or tablet forms for older children. Your pediatrician will determine how long your child should take the iron medication by checking her blood regularly. Do not stop giving the medication until your pediatrician tells you it is no longer needed. Iron medications are extremely poisonous if too much is taken. Iron is one of the most common causes of poisoning in children under 5 years of age. Keep this and all medication out of the reach of small children. Following are a few tips concerning iron medication: Do not give iron with milk. Milk blocks the absorption of iron. Vitamin C increases iron absorption. You might want to follow the dose of iron with a glass of orange juice. Liquid iron can turn the teeth a grayish-black color. Have your child swallow it quickly and then rinse her mouth with water. You also may want to brush your child's teeth after every dose of iron. Tooth-staining by iron looks bad, but it is not permanent. Iron can cause the stools to become a dark black color. Do not be worried by this change. Iron-deficiency anemia and other nutritional anemias can be prevented easily. Make sure your child is eating a well-balanced diet by following these suggestions: Do not give your baby cow's milk until he is over 12 months old. If your child is breast-fed, give him foods with added iron, such as cereal, when you begin feeding him solid foods. Before then, he will get enough iron from the breast milk. However, feeding him solid foods with too little iron will decrease the amount of iron he gets from the milk. If you formula-feed your baby, give him formula with added iron. Make sure your older child eats a well-balanced diet with foods that contain iron. Many grains and cereals have added iron (check labels to be sure). Other good sources of iron include egg yolks, red meat, potatoes, tomatoes, molasses, and raisins. Also, to increase the iron in your family's diet, use the fruit pulp in juices, and cook potatoes with the skins on. With proper treatment, your child's anemia should improve quickly. Be sure to contact your pediatrician if you think your child might be anemic.
As the national capital, Washington, D.C. always has carried special meaning—representing both the federal government and the United States as a whole. No matter how Americans might feel about the state of the nation at any given time, they typically respect and revere the city—visiting on vacations and school trips by the millions each year. Many might be surprised to learn, therefore, that at one particularly precarious point in the city’s history during the War of 1812, Congress seriously debated abandoning the site and moving the capital to another location. Rooted in the ideological and regional disputes of the time, the moment highlighted the deep symbolic value Americans placed on Washington long before it evolved into a showplace of American culture, learning, and history as well as a stage for marches, protests, and rallies. Disputes over the physical form and development of what would become Washington, D.C. began almost immediately after President George Washington chose the site for the city in 1791, with opposing political camps hoping that the new capital might be molded to reflect their particular visions for the new nation. Two major political parties had congealed in Congress during Washington’s administration: the Federalist Party, which envisioned a strong federal government at the helm of an increasingly powerful American nation, and the Democratic-Republicans (also referred to as the Republicans or Jeffersonians, after their leader Thomas Jefferson), who believed in a smaller and weaker national government, one lacking both the power and the funds to tyrannize Americans as the British government had prior to the Revolution. George Washington never belonged to either of these parties, but his political beliefs leaned toward those of the Federalists—and the architect he chose to plan the new capital, the French-born Revolutionary War veteran Pierre Charles L’Enfant, delivered a grand and impressive city plan that reflected a Federalist perspective on U.S. power, prestige, and government authority. L’Enfant’s design placed the President’s Mansion and the Capitol Building atop existing hills, allowing each to loom over sections of the city. It featured long, uncommonly wide avenues, emphasizing the breadth and grandeur of the cityscape. It called for individual states to erect “statues, columns, obelisks, or any other ornaments” to commemorate Revolutionary War heroes. And, in terms of sheer size, L’Enfant’s capital dwarfed the footprints of other American cities, spreading across an area more than six times the 1.5 square miles at the southern tip of Manhattan that made up New York in 1800. Unfortunately for the Federalists, the infant republic lacked the means to build on such a grand scale. In 1800, President John Adams and Congress moved into half-finished and just barely functional versions of the White House and Capitol Building. Summing up the state of the capital, Connecticut Congressman John Cotton Smith remarked that “instead of recognizing the avenues and streets, portrayed on the plan of the city, not one was visible, unless we except a road with two buildings on each side of it, called the New Jersey Avenue. The Pennsylvania Avenue, leading, as laid down on paper, from the Capitol to the Presidential Mansion, was then nearly the whole distance a deep morass, covered with alder bushes.” After Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans swept to power in the election of 1800, they followed through on their small-government convictions and left responsibility for further construction and development of the enormous city to the local residents. Over the next three decades, Jeffersonians confined federal government support for projects in the city almost exclusively to the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol. Calls for assistance from the locals, whose tiny tax base could not begin to support management and development of a city the size of Washington, went largely unheeded. It was this context into which British troops marched during the War of 1812, which had started when the United States attacked British Canada in the hopes of resolving ongoing disputes with the British Empire over interference with Native Americans, and over British naval policies that affected the United States during the Napoleonic Wars. But in August 1814, after easily defeating American soldiers and militiamen at Bladensburg, Maryland, British marines captured the otherwise undefended American capital. Happily repaying the Americans for the burning of the Canadian capital of York (now Toronto) earlier in the war, British troops set fire to the public buildings in Washington. The White House, the Capitol Building, the executive office buildings, and the Navy Yard all burned. Although their homes and private businesses had been spared by a summer storm that prevented the fires from spreading, weary Washington residents suddenly found themselves facing another—possibly even greater—threat to their livelihoods. Almost immediately, members of the House of Representatives, who had been burned out of their chambers, began debating the removal of the federal government from the District of Columbia. On September 26th, meeting in the largest building still standing in Washington, a converted hotel that housed the Patent Office and the U.S. Post Office, Congress began to debate the future of the capital. Congressman Jonathan Fisk, a Democratic-Republican from New York, first proposed the formation of a committee to “inquire into the expediency of removing the Seat of Government.” Largely hailing from the Northern states, proponents of removal argued that Washington had been proven insufficiently defensible and that a safer location should be found for the government. They also decried the inconveniences of cramming themselves together in too small a building and the indignity of what one member referred to as “making laws among ruins.” These latter complaints might have been remedied by temporary relocation of the government while the Capitol Building was reconstructed. But supporters of Washington feared that, once out of the District, Congress might never choose to return. These fears must have been exacerbated when advocates for removal raised longstanding complaints about Washington that stemmed from both its lack of development and from its location in the South, several days’ travel beyond the Northern cities that housed most of America’s banking and financial interests. Congressman Fisk noted, for example, that Congress would benefit from being “where they could have better opportunity to call into action the resources of the nation.” Defenders of the Potomac capital asked what message departure would send to the American people and to their British enemies. Would they double the victory already won by the British by abandoning the site of their capital altogether? Would they leave behind the local residents of the District, many of whom had invested in land and businesses there? And what precedent would be set if the capital were moved? Nathaniel Macon, a Democratic-Republican from North Carolina, warned that, “if the Seat of Government was once set on wheels, there was no saying where it would stop.” Was Congress prepared to perpetually fight over the location of the capital? On October 15, after three weeks of debate and two successful procedural votes to continue discussion of the motion, the issue was settled when the House voted 83 to 74 against removal. While views on the proper size of the city and the government’s role in its development had long been party battles, the subject of removal proved to be more tied to regional geography. Not surprisingly, Congressional delegations from those states nearest to the District, including Southern states, voted most overwhelmingly against removal, while congressmen from the North favored it. Delegations from states west of the Appalachians largely split their votes. For their part, local residents banded together during and after this close call in Congress to ensure that the government remained in Washington. Even as the House debated removal, District banks offered $500,000 in credit to Congress to fund reconstruction, and the following February, Congress took them up on their offer. Also, recognizing that the cramped accommodations at the former Patent Office upset Congress, local residents formed a joint stock company which eventually spent $25,000—several hundred thousand dollars in today’s terms—to construct a temporary meeting place for Congress. Over the four years that Congress met in what came to be called the Old Brick Capitol, from 1815 to 1819, the federal government paid the Company a mere $6,600 in rent. Although the locals didn’t come close to recouping their investment, their actions helped to reaffirm the District as the permanent home for the government. With the removal bill defeated and the reconstruction of the public buildings begun, Congress closed for good the question of the location of the capital city. National politicians, local residents, and all Americans now could return to debating every other aspect of the city’s form, function, and funding. By the 1830s, Jacksonian Era politicians had begun to leave behind the Jeffersonian insistence that the District fend for itself on matters of funding and development. And over the next two centuries, the city not only grew into but also, in many ways, lived up to and even surpassed the grand plans laid down by Washington and L’Enfant. Primary Editor: Eryn Brown \| Secondary Editor: Lisa Margonelli
Mothers and babies 26 September 2007Add to My Folder Explore the different ways animals produce and care for their offspring Finding out about how animals produce offspring slots easily into topics on life processes or animal variation and classification. Children need to be taught that reproduction is a life process common to humans and other animals, as well as how to make and use keys, identify animals and assign them to groups. Moreover, the unusual circumstances surrounding reproduction in a variety of species will appeal to children and make for some interesting discussion and sorting activities. Animals can be broadly divided between those that produce live offspring – mammals, and those that lay eggs – amphibians, fish, birds, reptiles and invertebrates. Within these categories, of course, lies a fascinating – and seemingly endless – amount of variation, giving scope to a range of investigations that could include parental relationships and gestation and incubation periods. It is entirely possible to cover reproduction at this level without going into any detail about copulation, but do be prepared to deal with forthright questions and to check your school’s sex education policy if in doubt. Use the A1 poster ‘Animal offspring’ as an introduction to the topic and challenge the children to find other unusual – or bizarre – reproduction strategies through their own research. Essential facts: Mammals - Koalas belong to a group of pouched animals called marsupials. Some, kangaroos for example, have pouches that open upward, but koalas’ open toward their hind legs. This adaptation has arisen because, although they now live in trees, their prehistoric ancestors burrowed in the ground and a backward facing pouch meant that the young were not showered in dirt. - When born, the tiny koala joey crawls inside its mother’s pouch where it will drink milk and grow. After six months, it begins to venture out, returning to the pouch to sleep. Once it has grown too large, the mother transports the joey on her back. It cannot survive independently until it is about one year old. - Female sea otters have a gestation period of between four and five months and a pup will spend the first eight months of life with its mother. To prevent it from slipping underwater, the pup’s fur traps a large amount of air. While the mothers dive for food, pups are left bobbing about on the surface, wrapped in seaweed. Pups begin to learn how to swim when they are around four weeks old. - Did you know? Following 28 days of in utero development, the female duck-billed Platypus lays two eggs. After ten days of external incubation, the young hatch out and for three to four months feed on milk that seeps through pores in their mother’s skin. Scholastic Resource Bank: Primary - join today! - Over 6,000 primary activities, lesson ideas and resources - Perfect for anyone working with children from 5 to 11 years old - Unlimited access from just £1.25 per month Already a member? Sign in below. You need to be signed in to place a review.
The term derives from the greek works xylo, meaning wood, and graphia, meaning writing. This technique consists of creating cuts and incisions in a wooden plate. Xylography originally emerged in China, where the first stamps were made stamped on paper in the VIII century AD. In Europe, the first xylographic stamps were created in the XIV century. Being that it is a relief print technique, in the 15th century it became the primary method to illustrate the first stamped books at the time, as the technique allowed the wooden matrix in the typographic forms which allowed for both text and image to be simultaneously stamped. Depending on the type of wood used for the xylography, softer or harder, will also depend the engraving procedure. For a softer type of wood, gouges and knives are preferred, whereas for a harder wood, burins will be the most efficient. Once stamped, the differences of the effects are significant. One of the characteristics of this technique that sets it apart from chalcography is the fact that, where the incision is made a white will be created, and where the wood is left untouched there will be a black. The chiaroscuro is achieved through a balance of white and black, but greys cannot be created.
In the 17th Century, shipbuilders had to balance the requirement for a heavy armament against sailing qualities. Ships were also the homes of many men so space had to be found for their accommodation, stores and provisions. One of the most fundamental principles dictating the design of a British warship, however, was that it had to be built to survive for as long as possible. By the middle of the century, all British warships carried most of their armaments at their sides. The weight of the armament itself was one of the key factors determining the dimensions of the ship and the size and nature of the timbers used in her construction. The batteries alone weighed between 130 and 165 tons, with the ships also carrying the weight of shot that these batteries could deliver, based on the traditional allocation of forty rounds’ worth of powder and shot to each ship. These weights increased through the course of the period, both reflecting and causing the increase in the sizes of warships of all rates. Notably, the objective to carry as many guns as possible often caused the ships to sit uncomfortably low in the water. Ships were often referred to by their number of complete gundecks, with the largest ships in the fleet having three gundecks, medium-sized ships having two, and the smallest warships having just one. The hold, containing storerooms for provisions, was located above the ‘floor’ of the ship and, from about the third quarter of the century onwards, the beams above this were planked over and became known as the orlop deck. This contained more storerooms, some cabins, the surgeon’s cockpit and the cable tiers. The main powder magazine was located under the gunner’s storeroom in the bows. The next deck was the gundeck, above which was the upper deck on a two-decker (a three-decker would have had a middle deck as well). The upper deck contained several structures, including a forecastle that contained the cook’s hearth and a lengthy quarterdeck for the ship’s officers.
The east to west or vice versa. The The photograph “Last Rail – Transcontinental Railroad, 1869” taken by the American photographer, Andrew J. Russell presents officers laying the last rail during construction of the Union Pacific Railroad marking a significant year and change for 19th century America. The first Transcontinental Railroad later became known as the Overland Route and was produced using primarily Irish labor along with Civil War veterans. This photo was taken to document and memorialize the building of such a monumental railway. This specific railroad is one of the largest railway companies in the world, and the second largest railroad in the United States. It’s a freight hauling railroad that operates over a route of 32,100 miles through 23 states, west of Chicago and New Orleans. After the Civil War, the United States was in need of a way to connect the east to the west via transportation, not only for commerce but to shorten the time and money it took for one to get from the east to west or vice versa. The railroad allowed for faster travel, in the past travel would be long and dangerous, relying on horses to pull wagons to get from place to place, with the new railways a person would be able to travel across the United States in only 10 days. While there were still dangers during the use of the railroad from avalanches, explosions, and exhaustion, the Transcontinental Railroad helped expand the nation’s communication, businesses, travel, and the construction of new towns, a major factor in the industrialization of America. It also aided in the economic development of the West and increased the demand in iron, steel, locomotives, and similar products. This railway was produced under the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, an act approved by Abraham Lincoln, as a war measure to ensure the preservation of the Union. It provided both the Union Pacific and Central Pacific with large loans for the construction of the railroad. For every mile, the railway was constructed on the United Sates government rewarded the company land and money. The Central Pacific Railroad Company began building in Sacramento and continued across the Sierra Nevada while the Union Pacific Railroad began building from Omaha, Nebraska westward for them to meet in the middle. It completed its construction in 1869 and connected both rail lines at Promontory Summit in Utah after being worked on for 6 years. A major negative impact the construction of this railroad had on the nation was the mass genocide of Native Americans who were forced to abandon their land to make way for the construction of the railroad. Laborers who worked on the railroad began hunting buffalo into near extinction, which cause Natives to be left without their primary food supply, forcing them into starvation. This photograph helps us understand this historical moment by showing us the type of fashion they wore at the time, the people involved, and the design of the railway and train. It exudes a patriotic attitude, really encompassing the spirit of the reconstruction era by the construction of a railway that ensures the safety of the Union. By preparing for the Union’s safety, this is showcasing America’s preparation to ensure the Union is a permanent aspect to the United States.
The largest source of carbon dioxide emissions globally is the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas in power plants, automobiles and industrial facilities. Carbon dioxide is the major driver of global warming. Although carbon dioxide is produced naturally by volcanoes, the decay of dead plant matter and natural forest fires, almost all of these sources of carbon dioxide are balanced by the Earth's natural systems. Growing plants and the oceans absorb and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so that it can not affect the global climate. It is the addition of billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, that is overpowering these natural processes. This results in the continued buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and causes significant global changes to occur. We are currently pumping over 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. The average person in the world today releases more than 11 kilograms (25 pounds) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each day. The average American emits almost five times this amount, producing about 55 kilograms (125 pounds) of carbon dioxide every day. If we do not make significant changes to the way we use and produce energy, global temperatures could increase by another 1.9 C to 3.9 C (3.5 F to 7 F) by the middle of this century. This may seem insignificant but this is the largest increase in temperature in the last 1000 years and it is occurring more rapidly than almost any other warming period in history. This increase in global temperatures is likely to result in a series of catastrophic changes across the globe, including worse droughts, stronger hurricanes, the flooding of low-lying areas by rising sea levels, the extinction of many species and a major disruption in the global production of food.
Study skills series Index study system Here is a method of studying that gives you an accurate perception of how well you know the material, and forces you to think about it, rather than just look over Review your notes and readings frequently, so the material is "fresh" As you're reading your text or reviewing your notes, write down questions about the material. teaching the course. What questions would you ask on the exam? Keep track of any terms you need to know Try the index card system: - Write each question or term on the back of an - On the front of each index card, write an answer or an explanation for the question or term on the back. Use your notes and text for a reference, but put the answer or explanation in your own words whenever possible - Shuffle the index cards so you can't figure out any answers based on their location in the deck - Look at the card on the top of the deck: Try to answer the question or explain the term. If you know it, great! Put it on the bottom of the deck. If you don't know it, look at the answer, and put it a few cards down in the deck (so you'll come back to it soon) - Proceed through the deck of cards until you know all of the information - Carry your cards with you everywhere. advantage of little pockets of time. Test yourself while you're waiting on line, riding the bus, etc. - If you think you know an answer, put it into words, you probably don't know it well enough. Explaining the information is a good way to be sure that you It's also a good way to prevent test anxiety - Test yourself someplace where nobody can see you and recite the answers out loud. That's the best way to be sure that you can explain them - Study with a friend from your class. can share ideas and help each other out with concepts. You can use each other to make sure that you're explaining your
When someone refers to the genome, they often mean all of the information contained within an individual's DNA. In fact, your genome actually refers to all of your DNA plus the proteins required to read and maintain it, as well as the many particles that help store and give shape to your DNA. Think of the entire genome as a library, and DNA as a genome encyclopedia. The information in your genome encyclopedia is organized into about 21,000 gene chapters which are located within 23 chromosome volumes. Each individual has two nearly identical copies of each chromosome volume, one copy from each parent. All of the entries in your genome encyclopedia are written in a special language—the DNA code. The DNA alphabet has only four letters, A, C, T, and G, representing the four different chemical bases. In total, each person has more than three billion DNA letters in each set of their 23 chromosomes. Although it may appear to be one long string of DNA letters, by studying the DNA code, researchers have learned that it also contains a complicated system of punctuation. Special codes signal when the DNA letters are part of a gene. Three letter combinations of DNA refer to specific amino acids. Within a gene, the amino acids provide instructions that can be read by special substances in the body to determine what type of protein needs to be made. The order of all these DNA letters is called your genome sequence. When someone refers to your genome sequence, they mean the unique combination of DNA sequences from chromosome 1 through your sex chromosomes (XX or XY). Although we have two copies of each chromosome set, we only report one complete sequence. This is because most of the DNA sequence is the same between the two chromosome sets. Whenever there are differences, this is noted in the person's one, combined genome sequence. One person's genome sequence is very similar to another's. In fact, more than 99% of the human genome sequence is common to all people. This makes sense because we are all the same species (humans), and our bodies tend to have similar features (for example, two arms, two eyes, ten toes) and work in similar manners. Since the genome sequence is more than three billion DNA letters, there is still a lot of room within that 1% difference for variations to exist from person to person. No two people are genetically identical (identical twins being the exception). It is these "differences" that make you, well, you. A survey found that 54 percent of American adults are unfamiliar with the benefits of genomic testing. By continuing to bring awareness to genomics, we can show the world how it is one of the most transformational forces of our time.Read Article The Illumina Foundation and Discovery Education partnered to create DNA Decoded to inspire teachers to unlock the power of genomics and impact the future of their students.Read Article Find definitions for key terms and illustrations of important concepts in next-generation sequencing.Learn More Resources to help you bring genomics into the classroom in dynamic and exciting ways to inspire the next generation—whether you’re an educator or a learner.Learn More These resources cover key topics in next-generation sequencing designed for beginners. Learn the basics of NGS and find tips for getting started.Learn More Each gene contains a set of instructions for the body. Sometimes, a change in a gene can lead to an inherited disease.Learn More Depending on where they are located, changes in your DNA bases may or may not alter how a gene functions.Learn More
Today, ‘bastard’ is used as an insult, or to describe children born to non-marital unions. Being born to unmarried parents is largely free of the kind of stigma and legal incapacities once attached to it in Western cultures, but it still has echoes of shame and sin. The disparagement of children born outside of marriage is often presumed to be a legacy of medieval Christian Europe, with its emphasis on compliance with Catholic marriage law. Yet prior to the 13th century, legitimate marriage or its absence was not the key factor in determining quality of birth. Instead, what mattered was the social status of the parents – of the mother as well as of the father. Being born to the right parents, regardless of whether they were married according to the strictures of the Church, made a child seem more worthy of inheriting parents’ lands, properties and titles. Consider, for example, the case of William the Bastard, more commonly known as William the Conqueror. Born to Robert, Duke of Normandy and Herleva, a woman clearly not his wife, William was nevertheless recognised by his father as his heir. Despite his youth and questionable birth, William managed to conquer and rule first Normandy and then England, and to pass his kingdom and titles on to his children. Why then was William called ‘the Bastard’? Writing about William in the 12th century, the chronicler Orderic Vitalis called him ‘nothus’, an Ancient Greek term used to indicate birth to anything other than two Athenian citizens. What might Orderic have meant by this? The only elaboration he offered suggests a concern not with William’s mother’s marital status but rather with his maternal lineage. During William’s siege of Alençon in the 1050s, as Orderic wrote, the people gathered on the battlements taunted William not because his father hadn’t married his mother, but over his mother Herleva’s paternity, as the daughter of either a tanner or an undertaker. In other words, they objected not to his birth out of wedlock, but to his mother’s poor lineage. That sense of what made a birth illegitimate, what made a child a ‘bastard’, matches the definition of nothus often found in early medieval sources. As one late-11th-century chronicler declared, the French called William ‘bastard’ because of his mixed parentage: he bore both noble and ignoble blood, ‘obliquo sanguine’. William’s social advancement, despite his dubious birth, is not unique. Kings before and after him, and even queens, successfully inherited and reigned despite allegations of illegitimacy. There are many cases in which the children of illegal marriages, including even the children of monks and nuns, inherited noble and royal title throughout the 12th century. Children born to a high-status couple could inherit from those parents, even if their union violated contemporary prohibitions on marrying close kin, marrying those already married to other living spouses, or marrying those sworn to celibacy. As such, the ideal of legitimate kingship as defined by legitimate birth, and legitimate birth as determined by a legitimate marriage between the parents, took hold only slowly and inconsistently in medieval Europe. It’s not until the late 12th century that evidence for the exclusion of children from succession on the grounds of illegitimate birth first appears. ‘Bastard’, as we now understand it, began to emerge here. Importantly, this shift in the meaning and implications of illegitimacy did not arise as an imposition of Church doctrine. Instead, ordinary litigants began exploiting bits of Church doctrine to suit their own ends. Perhaps the earliest signs of this can be found in the annals of English legal history, with the Anstey case of the 1160s. This might have been the first time an individual was barred from inheriting because her parents had married illegally. And it happened not because the Church intervened, but because one clever plaintiff figured out how to exploit some scraps of theological doctrine. After that time, more and more plaintiffs began to do the same. For example, towards the end of the 12th century, a regent countess of Champagne rushed to make use of an allegation of illegitimate birth against her nieces, in an effort to secure her son’s succession. Daughters could inherit in this region, and so these sisters did have a claim to the county once ruled by their late father. But the regent countess denounced the sisters as the product of an illegal marriage and therefore not legitimate heirs of their father. The strategy worked in that both daughters did eventually renounce their claims to the county, but not without first obtaining a great deal of money, enough to make them both extremely wealthy. As this suggests, the papacy had a far more passive role than is often imagined. As bastardy began to acquire its modern meaning, in the early 13th century, it remained the case that the papacy focused on the regulation of illicit unions rather than the exclusion from succession or inheritance of those born to illicit unions. Hatred of illicit sex did trump dynastic politics on occasion. Hatred of the children born to such unions did not. There is very little evidence to suggest that an interest in keeping illegitimate children from inheriting noble or royal title outweighed political or practical considerations in the same way that the policing of illegal marriages sometimes did. Understanding the changing meanings of bastardy helps us to arrive at a clearer picture of the workings and priorities of medieval society before the 13th century. Society then did not operate subject to rigid Christian canon law rules. Instead, it measured the value of its leaders based on their claims to celebrated ancestry, and the power attached to that kind of legitimacy. To be sure, marrying legitimately certainly received a good deal of lip service throughout the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, in this pre-13th-century world, the most intense attention was paid not to the formation of legitimate marriages, but to the lineage and respectability of mothers. Only beginning in the second half of the 12th century did birth outside of lawful marriage begin to render a child illegitimate, a ‘bastard’, and as such potentially ineligible to inherit noble or royal title. Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230 (2017) by Sara McDougall is out now through Oxford University Press.
Like all professions, bookbinding has its own specialized vocabulary. What do you think bookbinders mean when they say they are “forwarding” a book? Are they pushing it in front of them? Are they sending to on to another recipient? Not likely. After a book is sewn together, it needs to be put between boards, and then the boards need to be covered with cloth or leather. Forwarding is this process of boarding and covering a book. Here are the steps that Bateman’s Orchidaceae went through as it was forwarded: - Rounding and backing—After sewing, the book needed to “rounded” and “backed.” These are more technical bookbinding terms. “Rounding” is the process of forming the back of the book into an arch, which strengthens the book and helps the back keep its shape. The back is rounded with hands and a hammer as it lies flat on a table. After rounding, the book was put into a press between backing irons. Backing irons are special wooden panels topped with slanted, metal surfaces that facilitate the process of “backing,” or using a hammer to knock the edges of the book’s back down about 90 degrees. The boards fit into the space created by this process. - Lining—After being shaped, the back of the Bateman book was “lined,” which means that cotton cloth and then paper were glued to its back. Linings stiffen and strengthen the back of the book. The cotton cloth was left extending about an inch beyond the back on either side to form a hinge. - Boarding—Boards were next attached to the book using the cotton hinges and the tapes that the sections were sewn on (see previous blog). Book boards are similar to cardboard, but they are made of a higher quality paper pulp that is less acidic. - Covering—Books can be covered with many different kinds of materials. In the past, leather and parchment were often used. At the beginning of the 19th century, a material known as buckram became a common covering material. Buckram was developed around 1825 by a bookbinder named Archibald Leighton, who took mass-produced cotton cloth and stiffened it with a starch size, making an affordable alternative to animal skins. Today, buckram is generally made with a synthetic size. We decided to cover Bateman with a buckram cloth rather than leather because cloth tends to be stronger and more durable than leather. The cloth was folded around the book and glued down; then the edges of the cloth were folded around the boards, glued and trimmed; and finally, a piece of paper called a “pastedown” was adhered on top of the cloth edges. We weren’t quite done. After our book was rounded, backed, boarded and covered, it still had to be “finished,” our last technical term. In bookbinding, “finishing” is the process of decorating and labeling a book. We weren’t interested in adding any elaborate decoration to Bateman’s binding, since most users would be more interested in what was on the inside, not the outside, of the book; but we did want to add labels with the title and author’s name. We made labels by first cutting rectangles of thin, black goat leather and gluing them on the spine. To add simple decoration and words to the leather labels we used traditional tools and materials—gold leaf, typeholders and palettes. Typeholders do exactly what their name suggests—they hold the brass letters that spell out the title and author. Typeholders are set in wooden handles for use. Palettes are pieces of brass or bronze that leave impressions of lines or other decoration. They are set in wooden handles also. All of these tools were first heated up on a hot plate. Then we used them to pick up several layers of gold leaf and pushed them onto the leather labels, leaving gold behind in the form of letters, lines or decoration. Excess gold was cleaned off. Bateman is Done! After finishing (hard as it is to believe), the long process of conserving and restoring Bateman’s Orchidaceae of Mexico and Guatemala was done. This treatment has been time consuming but necessary to preserve this rare and important work for future users. It will now be put in environmentally-controlled storage and when next taken out for scholars to use, it will be safe to handle. Come see Bateman’s Orchidaceae for yourself at the Garden’s Science Open House at the Bayer Center on Saturday, March 14 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. See you there!
The Treaty of Versailles is the name given to the document stipulating the peace terms imposed on Germany by the Allied victors of the First World War. Canada had separate representation at the conference where the treaty was negotiated, marking an important stage in the gradual movement toward Canadian independence from Great Britain. The peace terms of 28 June 1919, handed to Germany after the First World War, were drawn up at the Paris Peace Conference and signed near the French capital at Versailles. The treaty broke up and redistributed the German Empire and required substantial reparation payments from it. The treaty contributed to German resentment in the period following the war. In the 1930s Adolf Hitler systematically undid the treaty. Canada Asserts Itself on the World Stage Canada had little impact on the final shape of the treaty, but Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden led a successful and historic fight for separate Dominion representation at the peace conference, and separate signatures on the treaty. He believed passionately that Canada, with 60,000 war dead, had paid the price of such recognition. This increased Canada's prestige and the opportunities for making its views known. However, when it came to signing the treaty, the British prime minister did so for the entire empire, the Dominions included [Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa]. This reduced the importance of their hard-won individual signatures — which appeared on the document, but in indented version: the names of their countries appearing under that of the British Empire. Canada's involvement reflected the ambiguity of its position in the world. Canada remained subordinate to Britain, in fact and in the perception of other nations, but her emerging international personality had been recognized. The treaty also made provision for a League of Nations, where Canada would have its own membership, providing another vehicle for the advancement of the country’s national status.
What is an Electric Circuit? In the simplest terms, an electric circuit is a pathway for an electric current to flow from one point to another. From a high level, every circuit has three basic components: A voltage source introduces energy into a circuit via a potential difference between its positive (+) and negative (–) terminals. Voltage sources can be AC or DC–the main difference being how the current flows. AC sources produce voltages that vary sinusoidally, i.e. the current reverses direction periodically. Examples are power from the grid or generators. On the other hand, DC sources produce current that flows in one direction. Batteries are a source of DC voltage. A conductive path (aka a conductor) provides a medium for current flow through a circuit. These components have a very low resistance to current, e.g., copper wires, lead solder, or metallic traces on a printed circuit board (PCB). Conductors also help link other components together to achieve a single function. A load is any device that consumes power in a circuit. It can be anything from a light-emitting diode (LED) to a motor or siren. During a short circuit, the load is the conductor itself which generates heat, dissipating electric power. Electronic components on a breadboard. Image credit: Pixabay. Electric Circuit Analysis: Types of Components An electronic component is an element within an electronic circuit that affects the flow of current or electromagnetic fields. Many modern circuits comprise passive, active, and electromechanical components. Passive components are elements that consume electric power without introducing any net energy into a circuit. Common examples are resistors, capacitors, and inductors. Active components control the flow of current in electric circuits. These elements may amplify current, inject it into a circuit, or produce a power gain. Transistors, thyristors, and triode vacuum tubes are all active components. Electromechanical components are components that utilize electric current or voltage in a circuit to perform a mechanical function, e.g., DC motors or relays. In the case of electromechanical solenoids, voltage is used to actuate a set of mechanical contacts by varying the inductance in its coil. Electric Circuit Analysis: Circuit Parameters Current and voltage are the most essential parameters of electric circuits. Similarly, resistance, inductance, and capacitance are vital attributes of electronic components. Electric current is the flow of electrons through a circuit. The unit of measurement for current is Ampere (A). As we discussed earlier, the current can be AC or DC. We can find the value of current flowing through a circuit using Ohm’s law which states that the current between any two points is proportional to the potential difference between them. The equation is I = V/R (Where I is current, V is voltage, and R is resistance). Practically, we can obtain the value of current in a circuit using a digital multimeter. Kirchhoff’s Current Law (KCL) for Electric Circuits According to Kirchhoff’s current law, an electric current always flows in loops around a circuit, i.e. it starts and ends at the same point. Also, the value of current entering the circuit is the same as that leaving the circuit (1). Similarly, the sum of all the currents entering and leaving the circuit per time is zero (2). We can express these statements mathematically using these equations: IIN = IOUT ---------------------------- (1) IIN + (-IOUT) ---------------------------- (2) Voltage (V) sometimes referred to as Electromotive force (E) is the potential difference between any two points in an electric circuit. The unit of measurement is the Volt. Like a current, the voltage can be AC or DC. Voltage can also be derived from Ohm’s Law using the formula V = IR (Where V is voltage, I is current, and R is resistance). Passive components. Image Credit: Pixabay Kirchhoff’s Voltage Law (KVL) for Electric Circuits According to Kirchhoff’s voltage law, the sum of voltages around closed circuits is always zero, i.e., ΣV = 0. We can express this mathematically as: V1 + V2 + V3 + ……Vn = 0 ---------------------------- (3) Resistance is the attribute of a component to resist the flow of electric current through a circuit. The unit of measurement is Ohms (Greek symbol: Ω). According to Ohm’s Law, the resistance of a conductor is the ratio of voltage (V) flowing across it to the current (I) flowing through it. Mathematically, R = V/I (Where R is resistance, V is voltage, and I is current). Every component (except superconductors) offers varying levels of resistance. However, resistors are designed especially for that purpose. They are two-terminal, passive components having varying resistances. Some resistor types are marked with color codes to indicate the resistances and tolerance they offer. Inductance is the tendency for a magnetic field to be induced in a conductor when an electric current flows through it. The strength of this induced magnetic field is proportional to the magnitude of the current. The unit of measurement for inductance is Henrys (H), named after Joseph Henry, the American scientist that discovered it. Inductors, aka chokes or coils, are simple passive components that can store up energy in magnetic form when electric current flows through them. They consist of a conductor wound into a coil which generates a magnetic field in the opposite direction when an electric current is applied. We can calculate the inductance in an electric circuit using the formula: L = V/(di/dt) (Where L is the inductance, V is the potential difference across the coil, and di/dt is the rate of change of current in A/s). Capacitance is the ability of a circuit element to store an electric charge when a potential difference exists between its terminals. The unit of capacitance is the Farad, named after Michael Faraday, the scientist that discovered electromagnetic induction. To determine the capacitance of a component in an electric circuit, we can use the formula: C = Q/V (Where C is the capacitance in coulombs, Q is the charge, and V is the potential difference). So far, we have attempted to cover some of the most essential aspects of electric circuit theory. Today, electronic systems are becoming increasingly complex as more elements are integrated into component-dense substrates. Nonetheless, the basic principles underpinning them remain unchanged.
In the Sensorial area of the classroom color boxes can be found. They are a part of the visual exercises of the sensorial materials. These include three boxes with lids containing color tablets. The first box contains a pair of the primary colors. The second box contains a pair of primary colors, secondary colors, and also the colors pink, brown, black, gray, and white. The third box contains 63 tablets with seven shades of nine colors. The boxes are presented in order form the first to the third. The color tablets help a child to develop visual perception and discrimination of colors. Other skills such as concentration, fine motor, and pincer grip control are also developed. A child will match the color tablets with the first two boxes and as they progress to the third, they will then grade the colors from darkest to the lightest shade of a particular color. Extensions can be used with the color tablets as well such as grading colors in the shape of a sun. These are a beautiful materials and much enjoyed by the children. These lessons are found in: (C) Weeks 6-10$25.00
The idea of a function is to assign a set of code, and possibly variables, known as parameters, to a single bit of text. You can think of it a lot like why you choose to write and save a program, rather than writing out the entire program every time you want to execute it. To begin a function, the keyword 'def' is used to notify python of the impending function definition, which is what def stands for. From there, you type out the name you want to call your function. It is important to choose a unique name, and also one that wont conflict with any other functions you might be using. For example, you wouldn't want to go calling your function print. def example(): print('this code will run') z = 3 + 9 print(z) Here we've called our function example. After the name of the function, you specify any parameters of that function within the parenthesis parameters act as variables within the function, they are not necessary to create a function, so first let's just do this without any parameters. Now if we just run this, we see nothing happens. We have to actually call this function to execute, because all we've done so far is just define the function and what it does. To run it, you can either type out the function in the console like so: This is notably a very basic function. We can put all types of code into a function. We can put if statements in there, run other functions in them, all sorts of things. Also, we can begin to learn how to use function parameters and then later function parameter defaults.
Home > Geometric reasoning > Activities > Dissected proof Before beginning this activity it is advisable to review the concept of similarity. Students should be familiar with proving that triangles are similar and using the proportion statements. One good way to prepare is to try a simple similarity problem. Prepare a set of cards for Proving Pythagoras' theorem for each pair of students. The cards hold either one line of the proof or a reason. Each student also receives a half-page which has the enunciation of Pythagoras' theorem and the necessary diagrams. Students then use similarity to prove Pythagoras' theorem. Provide individual feedback to the students and check that the lines of their reasoning are correct. If students experience difficulty you could suggest that they: - separate the lines of data from the reasons - focus on proving $\triangle$ABC and $\triangle$ADC similar first - arrange the algebraic pieces in order. When the students have produced a correct Pythagoras' similarity proof, they return the cards and then write the proof without the aid of the pieces. This activity can be made into a permanent resource for the faculty: - Copy each set of solution pieces onto coloured cardboard. Having each set on a different colour of card will aid in sorting the pieces when they become separated. - Laminate the page of proof lines and then cut the pieces out. - Store each set in a small plastic bag and then store the class set in a larger container. - Include a master copy of the diagram page and a copy of the solution in the container.
After the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem following the First Crusade, pilgrims flooded to the newly freed Holy Land, but the situation was far from stable and the secular authorities were unable to guarantee the safety of pilgrims who ventured out upon the dangerous roads from Jerusalem to other pilgrimage sites such as Jericho and Nazareth. In 1115 Hugues de Payens, a Burgundian knight, and Sir Godfrey de St. Adhemar, a Flemish knight, decided to join forces and form a band of sworn brothers dedicated to protecting pilgrims. They soon recruited seven other knights, all men like themselves – stranded in the Holy Land without wealth or land, and allegedly so poor that Payens and St. Adhemar had only one horse between them. In 1118 the King of Jerusalem gave them the stables of what was believed to have been the palace (or temple) of King Solomon for their quarters, and from this they took their name, “The Poor Knights of Christ of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem” – a name was soon shortened to the Knights Templar. At the same time, or shortly afterwards, these nine knights took monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience before the Patriarch of Jerusalem. The Knights Templar rapidly attracted new recruits – and powerful patrons -- highlighting the extent to which the concept of knights dedicated to the service of God touched a chord in men at this time. But the concept of fighting monks was revolutionary. Even the crusades had not sanctioned the bearing of arms by men dedicated to the Church; the crusades had only allowed secular men to serve the interests of the Church. What the Knights Templar proposed was to allow men of God to also be fighting men. Recognizing the need for guidance and official sanction, Payens approached the Pope, and not only was his new kind of monastic order recognized, it was enthusiastically praised. Bernard of Clairvaux, the most influential churchman of his age (credited with founding 70 new Cistercian monasteries), agreed to write the Templars’ Rule. Not surprisingly, he fashioned the Templar Rule on that of the Cistercians; more unusual, however, was that he also wrote a treatise in praise of the Knights Templar, the De Laude Novae Militiae (In Praise of the New Knighthood), in which he contrasted the virtuous Templars with the vain, greedy, and (senselessly) violent secular knights of the age. According to De Laude Novae Militiae, the Knights Templar were disciplined, humble, and sober. Thus, “impudent words, senseless occupations, immoderate language, whispering, or even suppressed giggling are unknown. They have a horror of chess and dice; they hate hunting; they don’t even enjoy the flight of the falcon. They despise mimes, jugglers, storytellers, dirty songs, performances of buffoons – all these they regard as vanities and inane follies.” The documented initiation ceremonies – in contrast to the fabricated accusations of King Philip IV’s paid informers tasked with discrediting the Order two centuries later – were simple and sober professions of Catholic orthodoxy and vows to obey the officers of the Order, to remain chaste, to own no property, and to protect the Holy Land and Christians.” (See Hopkins, p. 90.) The Templars were an instant success (by medieval standards), and their resources increased exponentially over the next decades. They soon controlled properties in virtually every kingdom of Christendom, from Sicily to Ireland, but particularly in France, England, and Portugal. The Order also rapidly developed a sophisticated hierarchy and structure. The bulk of the Order’s members were lay brothers: men who worked the fields of Templar landholdings and served as skilled laborers, from blacksmiths to stone masons, in the fortresses of Outremer. Furthermore, although only men already knighted, i.e., men from the landed class, could become Knights Templar, men of lesser birth could be men-at-arms, just as in any other army of the age. In contrast to the usual pattern, however, these men were not foot soldiers or archers but mounted fighting men, armed with sword and lance and called “sergeants.” While the knights were allowed four horses and two squires, the sergeants appear to have been allowed two horses and one squire. These squires, incidentally, were not members of the Order, and not bound by monastic vows nor compelled to fight. Last but not least, as enthusiasm for the Holy Land waned in the West, the Templars came to rely more and more on auxiliary troops raised in the Holy Land itself: men of Armenian, Greek, Arab, or mixed descent, called “Turcopoles.” The Templars also had their own priests and clerks. But manpower is only half the equation. Fighting men, particularly monks who had renounced all wealth and owned nothing, had to be clothed, equipped, mounted, armed, and fed at the expense of the Order. The great castles in the Holy Land – absolutely crucial to the defense of the Christian kingdoms – had to be built, maintained, and provisioned. The cost of equipping even one knight was substantial, the cost of keeping a castle enormous; the costs of maintaining thousands of knights in the field and dozens of castles in defensible condition were astronomical. It would not have been possible without the huge estates donated to the Templars in the West. The Templars’ extensive properties in Western Europe provided the Order with recruits, remounts, and above all, financial resources. They also created a network through which the Templars could influence secular leaders. Furthermore, the extensive network of Templar “commanderies,” combined with the Templars’ reputation for incorruptibility and prowess at arms, enabled the Templars to move money (then still exclusively in the form of gold and silver) across great distances. Furthermore, the Templar network made it possible for someone to deposit money at one commandery and withdraw it from another with a kind of “letter of credit” – a service unknown before the Templars. Because of their own wealth and the funds deposited with them, the Templars were soon in a position to provide substantial loans, and are on record as having lent money to the Kings of both England and France. Because of their reputation as being scrupulously honest yet financially astute, they were also often employed as tax collectors and financial advisors by ruling monarchs, from Richard I of England to Philip IV of France. Yet the Knights Templar would not have attracted these riches or enjoyed such prestige if they had not delivered impressive military accomplishments in the Holy Land. The ethos of the Knights Templar called on knights to fight to the death for the Holy Land, to defend any Christian molested by Muslims, never to retreat unless the odds were greater than 3 to 1, and to refuse ransom if captured. Such attitudes clearly set the Templars apart from secular knights of the period. A hundred years after their founding and a hundred years before their demise, the Bishop of Acre wrote in his History of Jerusalem that the Templars were: “Lions in war, mild as lambs at home; in the field fierce knights, in church like hermits or monks; unyielding and savage to the enemies of Christ, benevolent and mild to Christians.” More important, the vow of obedience enabled disciplined fighting – a rarity in the Middle Ages, when most men were proud to fight as individuals, conscious of their own glory and gain. In contrast, a Templar who acted on his own was subject to severe disciplinary measures, including imprisonment or degradation for a year. There are many accounts of the Templars forming the shock troops during the advance and the rear guard during the retreat on crusades, of Templars defending the most difficult salient in a siege, and of Templar sorties to rescue fellow Christians in distress. At the height of their power, the Templars controlled a chain of mighty castles from La Roche de Roussel, north of Antioch, to Gaza, as well as a powerful fleet. The Knights Templar suffered a fatal blow, however, when Jerusalem was lost to Saladin in 1187. Although the consequences were not immediately apparent, the loss of Jerusalem – and the failure of all subsequent crusades to regain permanent control – slowly eroded the faith in Christian victory and, ultimately, the interest in fighting for the Holy Land. As the territory controlled by Christians shrank, so did the resources of the local barons. Soon, sufficient resources could not be raised in the Holy Land to finance its defense. This meant that the defense of the remaining Christian outposts fell increasingly to the militant orders, the Templars and Hospitallers, who could still draw on the profits of their extensive holdings in the West. But these resources proved insufficient in face of the huge cost of maintaining their establishment in the Holy Land as enthusiasm for fighting for the Holy Land waned. Throughout the second half of the 13th century, the crusader territories were lost, castle by castle and city by city, mostly as a result of the defenders having insufficient manpower to maintain their garrisons. When the last Templar stronghold in the Holy Land, the Temple at Acre, fell to the Saracens in 1292, some 20,000 Templars had given their lives for the Holy Land. The Knights Templar transferred their headquarters to Cyprus after losing their last foothold in Palestine, but they had lost their raison d’être. That would have been crippling in itself, perhaps, but what proved fatal was that they retained their apparent wealth. King Philip IV, whose coffers were again empty, decided to confiscate the Templar “treasure” – meaning their entire property. To justify this move, Philip accused the Templars of various crimes, including devil worship, blasphemy, corruption, and sodomy. Without warning, on the night of Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of the French crown simultaneously broke into Templar commanderies across France and seized all the Templars and their property. While most of the men arrested were lay brothers and sergeants (since most knights who had survived the fall of Acre were on Cyprus), Philip IV made sure he would also seize the senior officers of the Temple by inviting them to Paris “for consultations” in advance of his strike. All those arrested, including the very men King Philip had treated as friends and advisors only days before, were subjected to brutal torture until they confessed to the catalog of crimes the French King had concocted. There is no evidence whatsoever that the Templars were in any way heretical in their beliefs. Furthermore, although Philip persuaded the Pope to order a general investigation of the Templars, in countries where torture was not extensively employed (such as England, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Cyprus), the Templars were found innocent. Meanwhile, in France, Templars who retracted the confessions torn from them under torture were burned at the stake as “relapsed heretics.” Tragically, the Pope at the time lived in terror of King Philip IV, who had deposed his predecessor with accusations almost identical to those leveled against the Templars. He preferred to sacrifice the Templars rather than risk confrontation with King Philip. Thus, although the evidence against the Order was clearly fabricated and the Pope could not find sufficient grounds to condemn the Order, he disbanded it in 1312. The last Master and Marshal of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charney respectively, were burned at the stake for retracting their confessions, in the presence of King Philip, on March 18, 1314. Not until 2007 did the Vatican officially declare the Templars’ innocence based on the evidence still in the Papal archives. Barber, Malcolm. The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple. Cambridge University Press, 1994. Hopkins, Andrea. Knights: The Complete Story of the Age of Chivalry, From Historical Fact to Tales of Romance and Poetry. Collins & Brown Ltd, 1990. Howarth, Stephan. The Knights Templar. Barnes and Noble Books, 1982. Pernoud, Regine. The Templars: Knights of Christ. Ignatius Press, 2009. Robinson, John J., Dungeon, Fire and Sword: The Knights Templar in the Crusades, Michael O’Mara Books Ltd., The events leading upto the Battle of Hattin and the aftermath including the fall of Jerusalem are the subject of: Defender of Jerusalem
What would a Tree say? The Basic Idea Encourage good speaking and listening skills and fostering the imagination to interview a tree! Talk about how old trees are and how long they have lived. Imagine what a tree could tell you if it could talk! Get children to interview a tree to find out what stories it has to tell. Children to think of a set of questions they would want to ask the tree to find out more. A friend stands behind the tree to answer the questions. They have to use their imagination to think of interesting answers to the questions. How to take it even further or make it more challenging Use this as an opportunity to teach question marks. Use it as a stimulus for creative writing.
Classroom Instruction: Questions and Answers - Why do TWI programs strictly separate the two languages for instruction? Is there research to support this practice? - How long does it usually take students to start understanding and then start speaking in their second language? Does the rate vary by native language and program model? - How do you encourage students to use the language of instruction, particularly when it is the partner language? How do you get students to take risks when they are speaking in their second language? - How do you know when to correct a child’s error and when to let it go? How do you try to prevent the errors? - How do you determine if a child is experiencing a language delay? What do you do in that case? - What teaching strategies are effective for promoting language development? - How does putting students in bilingual pairs (one native speaker and one second language learner) provide opportunities for language development for both students? - How do you challenge native speakers while keeping the language level manageable for second language learners? - How do you help students perform at grade level in the content areas when they are learning through their second language, particularly when they are at low levels of proficiency in that language? - Are there instructional materials and assessment strategies for use in the content areas that take into account different stages of language learning? - What are the differences in instructional approach and sequencing in English and Spanish language arts? Does this vary by program model and grade level? - How much coordination should there be in literacy instruction across the two languages? Does this vary by program model or grade level? - What literacy skills transfer across English and Spanish and which need to be taught explicitly in each language? - Are there standards for Spanish language arts? Should they be different for L1 and L2 learners? - What characteristics are important when choosing basal readers and other curricular materials for Spanish literacy instruction in TWI programs? - What literacy skills are taught through the content areas and what are taught through language arts lessons? - How do you teach a classroom of students with varying levels of literacy and reading readiness? - Are any special supports given to students while they are developing literacy skills in their second language as opposed to their first? - How do you distinguish between language proficiency and content knowledge when assessing student performance in the content areas? - What Spanish and English oral language assessments are used in TWI programs? What information do they offer about native speakers and second language learners? Should the same assessments be used for first and second language speakers? - What is an ideal battery of assessments that a TWI program should use to monitor student performance over time? - How can teachers promote positive cross-cultural attitudes and behaviors among students? - How can teachers incorporate a multicultural perspective into instruction? - What are some good resources for multicultural instruction? Supporting Special Student Populations - How are students with special learning needs identified? - How can teachers support students with special learning needs in the TWI program? - How are special education services integrated with the TWI program? - How can teachers support new students who enter the program in the upper elementary grades and do not have grade-level language skills in one or both program languages? How can teachers help them to participate in activities that require grade-level language skills? - How can the programs support students whose native language is not one or both of the program languages (i.e., third language speakers)? - On what basis are children retained in TWI programs? What if a student is only having trouble in one language? How can you be sure that students are retained for academic difficulties and not limited second language proficiency? - How can preservice teachers be prepared to teach in a TWI setting? What information and skills do they need in order to be effective in TWI programs? - What are some useful and appropriate supports for new TWI immersion teachers? - What are some useful strategies that team teachers can use to communicate student progress and coordinate lesson planning? What does teaming look like in a TWI setting?
Nature curiosity: What happens to the animals during a prescribed burn? At this time of year, the sight of smoke in the distance is quite common, often the result of prescribed burns being conducted throughout the area to strengthen natural habitats for wildlife. Seeing these fires up close can beg the question: What about the animals? How are they faring in these fires? While fire may seem dangerous and destructive to wildlife, many species — both plants and animals — need fire to maintain healthy habitats, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Prescribed burning restores and strengthens natural plant communities in a number of ways. It reduces the competition between weedy species and native species and encourages better establishment of the native vegetation which slowly displaces the weeds. The process also returns nutrients to the soil, making them readily available for the next generation of vegetation growth. Many of our area's native plant species — prairie grasses and wildflowers — have deep root systems underground that are not affected by fire. In addition, many of our native trees have adaptations such as thick bark to protect them from damage from fire. The animals may seem most vulnerable to the flames in a prescribed burn, but the burns are planned in a way to minimize danger. Burn sites are often divided into smaller plots with some land left unburned, providing a place for wildlife to go. In addition, prescribed burns are typically planned so they do not coincide with mating and nesting seasons. Within the Forest Preserve District, burns are scheduled between mid-October and mid-April, when more animals are dormant and not at risk of injury from fire. Very few injuries or mortalities occur during burns, with most animals able to escape the danger. Deer, coyotes and many other mammals can run from the flames, while birds can simply fly away. Other animals, such as mice, snakes and lizards, can burrow underground to escape fire, the North Carolina State University Extension reports. In addition, many insects are underground during a prescribed burn, although some, particularly those typically found on plant matter, may be consumed as part of a prescribed burn. Some people believe this loss of insect life, particularly disease-carrying bugs like mosquitoes and ticks, is a benefit of prescribed burning, but the reality is nearly all plants and animals are vital parts of a healthy ecosystem. Nuisance insects are an important food source for other animals, for example. The "good news," at least for the ecosystem at large, is that studies have shown the decrease in tick populations after a controlled burn may be short-lived, with populations rebounding soon after a fire, according to the Quality Deer Management Association. While most animals are not burned or injured during a controlled burn, the people conducting the burn do routinely walk the burned area looking for injured animals. And through the years, burn strategies have evolved to better protect wildlife from injury or death. Overall, prescribed burns are designed to protect the animals living within the terrain. And animal populations as a whole remain steady during and after prescribed fire events and even wildfires, the Fish and Wildlife Service reports. This big-picture perspective is important, because the fire is designed to improve their habitat. In fact, allowing areas to go unburned can be more detrimental to the health of animal and plant populations. For a before-and-after look at a prescribed burn at Braidwood Dunes and Savanna Nature Preserve, click here. For more information about prescribed burning, visit the District's prescribed burning page.
Researchers used supercomputers to create millennia of simulated earthquakes in Southern California, then studied what hazard these quakes might create. By Lauren Milideo, Ph.D., science writer (@lwritesscience) Citation: Milideo, L., 2021, Supercomputer creates over 700,000 years of simulated earthquakes, Temblor, http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.158 Researchers cannot foretell exactly when an earthquake will hit, but new research that harnesses the power of supercomputers accounts for the specific characteristics of the region’s faults, helping seismologists to better understand what hazards might exist in Southern California. Rare events are hard to forecast Large earthquakes are infrequent, and we simply haven’t seen such quakes on most California faults, says Kevin Milner, a computer scientist at the Southern California Earthquake Center and lead author on the new study. The fact that most faults in California have not hosted a large damaging earthquake since modern records have been kept, says Milner, leaves researchers “to infer what types of earthquakes we think are possible on those faults.” This uncertainty creates challenges for hazard assessment and planning. Traditional hazard assessment is empirically based, Milner says. This means that what scientists know about earthquakes comes from what can be observed and extrapolated from data from past events. But, Milner says, empirical models rely on data from seismically active zones around the world. They aren’t location specific and may therefore overestimate or underestimate an area’s hazard due to variables specific to its faults and geology. The researchers note some past studies used combinations of empirical and physics-based models — those that instead rely on an understanding of physical processes — and consider both region-specific information and general data. Milner and colleagues took a new approach, he says: they used solely physics-based methods throughout their model. These calculations required tremendous computing power, and the team turned to two of the world’s largest supercomputers to get them done. The first step — creating 714,516 years of simulated earthquakes — took about four days to run on over 3,500 processors within Frontera, at Texas Advanced Computing Center, says Milner. The second step — simulating the ground motions resulting from all those earthquakes — ran on Summit, located at the Department of Energy’s Oakridge National Laboratory, and took a similar amount of time, Milner says. The researchers did not reach specific conclusions regarding changes to hazard plans, Milner says, citing the need for further research. The study does show that, using a physics-based approach, not only can researchers create simulated quakes, but they can use these quakes to model the associated ground motions that inform hazard planning. Their results are consistent with empirical methods, suggesting that the new model is yielding valid results, Milner says. “The fact that we can actually even be speaking to the ground motions now is a whole new terrain to be playing on, and it’s pretty exciting,” says study coauthor Bruce Shaw, an earthquake scientist at Columbia University. The study’s novelty lies in part in bringing together “two methods that were previously not combined,” says Alice Gabriel, professor of earthquake physics and geophysics at Munich University, who was not involved with the research. The team is “doing something really on the furthest edge that not just they, but we, can go to, as a computational seismology community,” says postdoc Marta Pienkowska of ETH Zurich’s Department of Earth Sciences, who was not involved in the research. An important step The research team acknowledges that far more work is needed before this research can begin informing or changing hazard assessment. “This was an important step, a proof of concept showing that this type of model can work [and that it] can produce ground motions that are consistent with our best empirical models,” says Milner, “and now it’s time to really dig in and vet it and build in more of our uncertainties.” These uncertainties include fault geometries, which are not well-defined far below the surface, says Milner. Comparing the ground-motion results from physics-based and empirical models allows scientists to see where hazard estimates might need to change, to accommodate either more or less potential hazard at various locations, says Shaw. “It’s a tool to start exploring these questions in a way that can help us be more efficient in how we use our finite precious resources,” he says. The research shows “that such large-scale modelling could contribute to seismic hazard assessment,” says Pienkowska. Shaw says this research may be useful in other places like New Zealand, where a shallow subduction zone affects surrounding faults – a situation not reflected in the current array of empirically based ground motion models, and therefore perhaps not accurately predicted by them. Well-studied earthquake-prone regions such as Italy and Iceland might also benefit from this type of physics-based seismic modeling, as would developing countries and other locations where data are lacking and current empirical models may not apply very well, says Gabriel. “It’s really cool to see geoscientists … use these big machines to advance earthquake preparedness,” says Gabriel. Milner, K. R., Shaw, B. E., Goulet, C. A., Richards‐Dinger, K. B., Callaghan, S., Jordan, T. H., … & Field, E. H. (2020). Toward Physics‐Based Nonergodic PSHA: A Prototype Fully Deterministic Seismic Hazard Model for Southern California. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America. https://doi.org/10.1785/0120200216 - Desarrollo de nuevos modelos paramétricos de seguros por terremoto para el Caribe y Centroamérica - March 29, 2023 - Developing new parametric insurance models for Caribbean and Central American countries - March 29, 2023 - Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and landslides: How Aotearoa New Zealand manages a medley of hazards - March 22, 2023
A huge neutrino observatory buried deep in the ice of Antarctica has discovered only the second extra-galactic source of the elusive particles ever found. In results published last week in Science, the IceCube collaboration reports the detection of neutrinos from an “active galaxy” called NGC 1068, located some 47 million light-years from Earth. How to spot a neutrino Neutrinos are very shy fundamental particles that often don’t interact with anything else. When they were first detected in the 1950s, physicists soon realized that they would in some ways be ideal for astronomy. Because neutrinos so rarely have anything to do with other particles, they can travel unhindered through the universe. However, their shyness also makes them difficult to detect. Catching enough to be useful requires a very large detector. That’s where IceCube comes in. Over seven summers, from 2005 to 2011, scientists at the US Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station drilled 86 holes in the ice with a hot water drill. Each hole is nearly 2.5 kilometers deep, about 60 centimeters wide and contains 60 basketball-sized light detectors attached to a long cable. How does this help us detect neutrinos? Sometimes a neutrino hits a proton or neutron in the ice near a detector. The collision produces a much heavier particle called a muon, traveling so fast that it emits a blue glow, which light detectors can pick up. By measuring when this light arrives at different detectors, the direction the muons (and neutrinos) are coming from can be calculated. Looking at the particle energies, it turns out that most of the neutrinos detected by IceCube are created in the Earth’s atmosphere. However, a small fraction of neutrinos come from outer space. In 2022, thousands of neutrinos from somewhere in the distant universe have been identified. Where do neutrinos come from? They seem to come fairly evenly from all directions, with no obvious bright spots appearing. That means there must be plenty of neutrino sources out there. But what are these sources? There are many candidates, exotic-sounding objects like active galaxies, quasars, blazars, and gamma-ray bursts. In 2018, IceCube announced the discovery of the first identified high-energy neutrino emitter: a blazar, which is a special type of galaxy that shoots a jet of high-energy particles towards Earth. Known as TXS 0506+056, the blazar was identified after IceCube saw a single high-energy neutrino and sent an urgent Astronomer Telegram. Other telescopes rushed to take a look at TXS 0506+056 and found that it was also emitting a lot of gamma rays at the same time. This makes sense, because we think blazars work by boosting protons to extreme speeds, and these high-energy protons then interact with other gases and radiation to produce both gamma rays and neutrinos. An active galaxy The blazar was the first extra-galactic source ever discovered. In this new study, IceCube has identified the second. IceCube scientists re-examined the first decade of data they had collected, applying sophisticated new methods to obtain more accurate measurements of neutrino directions and energy. As a result, an already interesting bright spot in the neutrino background glow has become sharper. About 80 neutrinos came from a fairly nearby and well-studied galaxy called NGC 1068 (also known as M77, as it is the 77th entry in the famous 18th century catalog of interesting astronomical objects created by the astronomer French Charles Messier). Located about 47 million light-years from Earth, NGC 1068 is a known “active galaxy,” a galaxy with an extremely bright core. It’s about 100 times closer than blazar TXS 0506+056, and its angle to us means that gamma rays from its core are obscured from our view by dust. However, the neutrinos are happily hurtling through the dust and into space. This new discovery will provide a wealth of information to astrophysicists and astronomers about what exactly is going on inside NGC 1068. There are already hundreds of papers trying to explain how the inner core of the galaxy works, and the new IceCube data adds neutrino information that will help refine these models. This article is republished from The conversation under Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Image Credit: NASA / ESA / A. van der Hoeven #Antarctic #neutrino #telescope #detected #signal #core #nearby #active #galaxy
The standard definition of scoliosis is a curve of the spinal column to the left or right side of the body, dextroscoliosis is a specific term meaning scoliosis of the spine with a curvature of the spine to the right. Dextro is derived from the latin word dexter which means “on the right side”. The opposite meaning is levo, which is to the left side. Dextroscoliosis can be diagnosed in both children and adults, and may be caused from idiopathic scoliosis, trauma to the spinal column, degenerative spinal diseases, or neuromuscular diseases. Dextroscoliosis is considered the lesser of two evils, compared to levoscoliosis, as the heart is less affected by the right curvature of the spine. This doesn’t mean dextroscoliosis is any milder as it still can cause significant pain and discomfort. Additionally, it can affect the internal organs like the lungs, kidneys, liver, etc. due to the deformation of the ribcage on the right side. To confirm diagnoses of dextroscoliosis one must seek professional advice from a chiropractor or medical doctor who will perform structural tests along with an X-Ray, which will help in the determining the type of scoliosis, severity and the proper treatment path. Different forms of dextroscoliosis refer to the region of the spine, most commonly the thoracic (middle and upper back) and the lumbar (lower back) areas. A thoracic dextroscoliosis means that region of the spine is curved to the right. Since the ribs attach to the thoracic spine the ribcage will deform as compensation from the curvature. In the lumbar spine, a dextroscoliosis can be called a dextroconvex scoliosis, lumbar dextroscoliosis or dextroscoliosis of the lumbar spine. Again, all of these terms refer a curvature to the right. Another term commonly used is mild dextroscoliosis which generally means a slight curve to right at about 10 degrees or more. When patients hear the word “mild”, one may think the diagnosis is insignificant, however it is important to realize that all large (severe) curvatures start out as small (mild) ones. Patients should consult with their chiropractor or medical doctor on potential treatments and follow up schedule to monitor the scoliosis.
Finding the area of a Parallelogram math quiz Finding the area of a Parallelogram math quiz, Parallelogram area calculation and formula for students in fourth grade, fifth grade and sixth grade. An important question is: How is the area of a slanted parallelogram found? There is a formula which students can use to this effect (finding the area of a slanted parallelogram). In this exercise, several images of figures are presented and children are expected to use the formula to find the area of each one of them. Once the students can find the correct answer, they have to type this answer in the space provided and submit to see if they got it right or wrong. These students have to keep practicing so that they can be able to effortlessly solve all the problems in this quiz. There is also a printable section where the kids can get more familiar with this geometry related quiz. This quiz is for students in 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th grades.
What Do Butterflies Eat In The Tropical Rainforest? The tropical rainforest is home to many unique and fascinating creatures, including the iconic butterfly. Butterflies are beautiful, delicate insects that are essential pollinators for plants in the rainforest ecosystem. But what do these graceful creatures eat? This article dives into the diet of butterflies living in a tropical rainforest environment, exploring their food sources and how they feed on them. With this information, we can gain a better understanding of how butterflies play an important role in maintaining balance within the rainforest and its surrounding ecosystems. What Do Butterflies Eat In The Tropical Rainforest? Butterflies in the tropical rainforest have varied diets, and can feed on both plants and animals. They are important pollinators for many plant species, helping them to reproduce. Here is a look at some of the food sources that butterflies utilize: Nectar is one of the primary food sources for butterflies in the tropical rainforest. Nectar can be found in flowers of different shapes and colors, which helps attract butterflies to their desired food source. As they drink nectar from these flowers, butterflies also help pollinate them by transferring pollen between flowers as they move around searching for nectar. Many butterfly species in tropical rainforests take advantage of ripe fruit pulp as a source of nutrition during certain times of year when there may not be enough nectar or other resources available. This helps sustain populations through periods where nectar availability is low, since it provides an alternative energy source until more reliable sources become available again. Some butterfly species also supplement their diet with insects such as ants, aphids, and caterpillars. These insects provide essential nutrients like protein that are not found in flower nectars or fruits alone. Butterflies can catch small insects while fluttering around the forest canopy looking for other food sources like ripe fruit or open flowers with plenty of nectar inside them. Certain butterfly species will sip on tree sap that has oozed out from wounds made by birds or other animals. Some species even have special organs called proboscises that allow them to reach into crevices and extract this valuable resource without causing any harm to the trees themselves. Another unique but lesser-known aspect of a butterfly’s diet consists mainly of minerals obtained from mud puddles scattered throughout the forest floor. By drinking up muddy water from these areas, butterflies gain access to trace elements such as iron and calcium which are essential for their health and well-being. Are There Butterflies In The Tropical Rainforest? Yes, there are butterflies in the tropical rainforest. Butterflies are some of the most beautiful and diverse creatures found in this unique ecosystem. They come in a variety of sizes and colors and can be seen fluttering around all day long. The tropical rainforest is home to many different species of butterflies, including swallowtails, monarchs, skippers, blues and whites. These colorful creatures help to pollinate flowers and other plants as they feed on their nectar. They also play an important role in maintaining the health of the forest by helping spread pollen from one flower to another so that new plants can grow. Butterflies also provide food for birds, lizards, amphibians and even bats! In addition to these important roles that butterflies have in the rainforest ecosystem, they are also visually stunning creatures that can bring joy to any observer who takes a moment to pause and appreciate them. So if you ever find yourself deep within a tropical rainforest take some time out of your exploration journey to search for these amazing insects and enjoy their beauty while taking part in nature’s grand design! What Does Butterfly Do At The Rainforest? Butterflies play a vital role in the rainforest ecosystem. They are pollinators, helping to spread pollen from plant to plant and aiding in the production of fruits, nuts and seeds. They also provide food for other animals such as birds, bats and lizards. Butterflies feed on nectar from flowers and use their long proboscis to drink from even the smallest of flower blooms. As they flutter around in the rainforest canopy they help pollinate plants which would otherwise not be able to reproduce without them. Their bright colors attract other insects such as bees who then help with further pollination. Butterflies also lay eggs on different types of host plants which can later become caterpillars or larvae that will feed off these plants until they undergo metamorphosis into adult butterflies themselves. In addition to being important pollinators, butterflies are also beautiful additions to any rainforest landscape, adding color and life wherever they go. By spending time among butterfly populations one can truly appreciate how vital these creatures are for maintaining healthy wildlife habitats throughout the world’s forests. What Butterfly Lives In The Jungle? The most common butterfly found in the jungle is called the Blue Morpho Butterfly. This species of butterfly lives in tropical regions, including jungles and rain forests, as well as areas with moist climates. It has a large wingspan of up to 8 inches, and its vibrant blue colored wings make it very distinctive from other butterflies. The underside of its wings are often brown or dull orange so that when it rests on tree trunks or leaves it can blend in more easily. The Blue Morpho Butterfly is an active flyer that moves rapidly throughout the canopy level of the jungle, where they feed mainly on fruit juices and flower nectar. During mating season they congregate around mud puddles to get minerals and salts which help them produce eggs for reproduction. They also commonly rest among vegetation during midday while waiting out the heat of the day before continuing their search for food later in the afternoon. Due to their striking coloring and size, this species of butterfly has become popular amongst collectors all over the world who seek out specimens for display in museums or private collections. While much research is still being done to understand these beautiful creatures better, one thing remains certain: if you’re looking for a glimpse into nature’s beauty then you need look no further than a Blue Morpho Butterfly perched atop a leafy branch deep within a lush jungle setting! What Layer Of The Rainforest Are Butterflies? Butterflies are found in many different layers of the rainforest. They can be seen near the top of the canopy as well as other lower levels, depending on their species and particular habits. The most common layer for butterflies to inhabit is the canopy layer, which is located at the top of the forest and consists mainly of tall trees with broad leaves that form a roof-like covering over much of the forest below. This area provides plenty of food sources for butterflies, such as nectar from flowers or sap from trees. Additionally, this part of the rainforest is generally warm and humid due to its location near both direct sunlight and moist air coming off nearby bodies of water, making it an ideal habitat for butterfly species like monarchs, swallowtails, fritillaries, and more. In addition to residing in the canopy layer, some butterfly species also live in lower layers of the rainforest such as shrublands or even grasslands close by. These areas provide a slightly cooler environment than that found at canopy level where they may find food sources like flowering plants or rotting fruits still clinging to branches higher up in trees. Furthermore, these environments often have fewer predators present than those found closer to ground level so butterflies can move around safely without being disturbed too much by larger creatures looking for an easy meal. What Eats Butterflies In The Amazon Rainforest? The Amazon rainforest is home to many species of animals, and butterflies are certainly no exception. But what eats them? Fortunately, there is a wide variety of predators that feed on these delicate creatures in the Amazon. One group of animals that preys on butterflies in the Amazon rainforest are birds. Some common examples include hummingbirds, jacamars, trogons, flycatchers, and even toucans. These birds use their beaks and claws to capture butterflies as they flutter through the air or rest on leaves. Additionally, some species of owls have been known to feed on large moths which can sometimes resemble small butterflies in size and colouration. Additionally, several kinds of lizards also eat butterflies in the Amazon rainforest. Anoles (or “American chameleons”) are particularly fond of snatching up these delicacies from foliage or open spaces near rivers or streams. Other reptiles like geckos may also opportunistically take advantage of an easy meal if they encounter a butterfly while out hunting for other prey items such as insects or spiders. Finally, mammals such as bats and monkeys will occasionally snack on larger varieties of butterfly too! The long-tongued bat is one example – it uses its long tongue to sip nectar from flowers during the day – but it will often swoop down to snatch up unsuspecting moths or other types of insect at night time! Monkeys may also feast upon certain types of butterflies when they’re feeling peckish while raiding fruits around the forest floor. In conclusion then, there are plenty of different predators that enjoy munching on tasty morsels like butterflies in the Amazon rainforest! From birds and lizards all the way up to bats and primates – this diverse ecosystem provides food for a variety of hungry critters! In conclusion, butterflies in the tropical rainforest have a wide range of food sources to choose from. They feed on nectar from flowers, sap from trees and other plants, overripe fruit, fungi, rotting animal matter, and minerals like mud and sand. Butterflies also play an important role in pollination which helps promote healthy growth of vegetation in the rainforest ecosystem. Their presence is essential for keeping the entire system in balance so it can continue to thrive. Alexander is the owner of AnimalQnA. He is a pet lover. He has created this blog to share some of his knowledge on different kinds of pets.
Long ago, as prescribed by the Hebrew scriptures, Jewish worship revolved around the Temple in Jerusalem. For a thousand years, the Temple was a hub for offering sacrifices of all sorts (peace offerings, thanksgiving offerings, atonement offerings and more) every day of the year. On the three annual pilgrimage festivals — Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot — all Israel was invited to ascend to Jerusalem to offer special sacrifices and celebrate. The Temple also served as an important administrative center of the Jewish people. All this came to a screeching halt in 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed in a devastating war with the Romans. In its wake, rabbinic Judaism (the Judaism practiced by virtually all Jews today) and its central text, the Talmud, laid the foundation for Jewish ritual and worship in a world without the Temple. Though the Temple is long gone, it is far from forgotten. The construction of the Temple is described in great detail in the Hebrew Bible, and its practices are meticulously documented and parsed in the Talmud. An entire annual holiday — Tisha B’Av — is given over to mourning its absence from Jewish life. And a piece of the Temple — the western retaining wall of the platform on which it stood, called the Kotel or Western Wall — is today one of the holiest sites for Jews. Even though remembering the Temple remains a central part of Jewish practice today, it can be difficult to grasp just how central the Temple was to ancient Jewish life. Here are 12 facts that help illustrate what the ancient Temple was really like, and what it has meant to Jews throughout history. 1. There were actually two Temples on the same spot The first Temple, built by King Solomon in approximately 1000 BCE, was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. When the Persians conquered the Babylonians almost a century later, they agreed to let the Jewish leaders who had been taken into exile return to the land of Israel where they would rebuild the Temple. This Second Temple stood for hundreds more years, then was thoroughly renovated and expanded by Herod the Great in the last few decades before the beginning of the Common Era. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. According to Jewish tradition, both Temples were destroyed on the ninth day of the month of Av. Tisha B’Av (literally: Ninth of Av) commemorates the destruction of both Temples, as well as other disasters in Jewish history, both ancient and modern. 2. The Temple was built on a mountain that goes by many names Jerusalem is in the hill country. The Temple was situated on one particular rise that goes by many names in the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah never identifies the mountain, but simply talks about “the place God will choose to rest His name” (e.g. Deuteronomy 12). The specific mountain is identified in Isaiah and the Book of Psalms as Mount Zion (e.g. Isaiah 60:14, Psalms 125:1). The biblical Book of Chronicles, however, calls it Mount Moriah (2 Chronicles 3:1). Micah 4:1 refers to it generically as Har Beit Adonai — meaning “The Mount of the House of the Lord.” Jeremiah 26:18 shortens this to Har HaBayit, “The Mountain of the House,” commonly translated as the Temple Mount. This last name, Temple Mount, is used frequently in the Mishnah and Talmud and other rabbinic literature. 3. The Temple stood on the spot where the world began According to the Talmud, on the top of Mount Moriah is a foundation stone from which God created the whole world (Yoma 54b). This same foundation stone later lay under the Holy of Holies, the most sacred room of the Temple. Ancient interpreters also believed that more than a millennium before the Temple was built, the stone was the site of the Binding of Isaac. 4. The exact location of the Temple is still debated today The Temple definitely stood on the Temple Mount — that has always been an agreed fact and has been confirmed by archaeologists. However, where exactly it stood is a matter of debate. Some believe that it was in the exact location of the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine (highly recognizable on the Jerusalem skyline) which houses the foundation stone. Another view agrees with a statement in the Talmud (Berakhot 54a) which says it was aligned with the Eastern Gate, which would place it slightly north of the Dome of the Rock. There is also a theory that it was situated slightly east of the Dome of the Rock. 5. After the First Temple was destroyed, the priests returned the keys to God Taanit 29a describes a remarkable scene that took place as the First Temple was being destroyed by the Babylonians: When the Temple was destroyed for the first time, many groups of young priests gathered together with the Temple keys in their hands. And they ascended to the roof of the Sanctuary and said before God: Master of the Universe, since we did not merit to be faithful treasurers, and the Temple is being destroyed, let the Temple keys be handed to You. (Taanit 29a) The priests’ final act of divine service was to throw the keys up to heaven, where a divine hand reached out of the clouds to catch them. Then the priests threw themselves into the flames consuming the Temple. 6. The Temple was enormous Picturing something the size of a synagogue? Not even close. In the first century, when Herod renovated the Temple, he began by building a retaining wall around the Temple Mount and then constructing a platform over the top, turning the mount into a four-sided plateau 37 acres in area. Pictured: A 1:50 scaled model of the Second Temple and the Old City as it is believed to have looked in 66 CE. The model is located at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. The Temple complex itself contained a series of courtyards surrounding the central room, the Holy of Holies, which was only entered once a year, on Yom Kippur, by the high priest. In addition to the large courtyards and Holy of Holies, the Temple complex contained many other storage and administrative rooms, plus numerous ritual baths for purification. The whole system was fed by an aqueduct that brought water from 10 kilometers away, and it was protected by high walls and a series of gates. To get a sense of the scale, consider that the Kotel, the famous Western Wall that is a central Jewish holy site, is what remains of just a piece of the western side of the retaining wall built around the Temple Mount. 7. The Temple was messy — and smelly The primary purpose of the Temple and its staff (the priests and Levites) was to offer sacrifices to God. It was open for business 365 days a year. Many of these sacrifices were animals that were brought live into the Temple and slaughtered in the courtyard before some or all of their flesh and/or blood was offered on the altar. On pilgrimage festivals, all of Israel came from near and far to offer sacrifices. As a result, the courtyard of the Temple ran almost constantly with animal blood, while the smell of sacrifices on the fire probably pervaded most of Jerusalem. (The smell was largely the point — that fragrant smoke is what went up to God.) Some sacrificial blood was carefully collected and sprinkled on the altar as part of the ritual. Much of it, however, was rinsed away via channels that were built into the floor and conducted it out to the nearby Kidron River. The water of this river, enriched by this blood, was sold to farmers as fertilizer (Mishnah Yoma 5:6). Despite this impressive ancient plumbing system, the Temple stones required regular deep cleaning. Mishnah Middot chapter 3 indicates that there was also a schedule for whitewashing the stones of the Temple, as well as the altar and ramp leading up to it. 8. The Second Temple was missing a few key items In Tractate Yoma of the Babylonian Talmud, the Gemara lists significant items in the First Temple that were not in the Second Temple: The Ark of the Covenant, and the Ark cover upon it, and the cherubs that were on the cover; fire; and the Divine Presence; and the Divine Spirit; and the urim v’tummim (the stones in the high priest’s breastplate). (Yoma 21b) Some of the most religiously charged items in the First Temple were apparently already lost to history in the time of the Second Temple. Whereas the first Holy of Holies contained the Ark of the Covenant that housed the Ten Commandments Moses had brought down from Sinai (both pairs: the one he smashed when he discovered the Golden Calf and its replacement), the second Holy of Holies stood empty. Likewise, the special stones the high priest used for divination purposes (urim v’tummim). Even God’s presence, this text suggests, which literally dwelt in the First Temple, was absent from the second. There is a rabbinic legend (Shekalim 16) that the Ark of the Covenant was not destroyed with the First Temple, but secreted away beneath one of the flagstones in the floor of the Temple. When a priest accidentally discovered it and tried to tell others, God smote him before he could get the words out. Clearly, it was meant to stay hidden. 9. The Temple was a party zone Think Jewish Temple worship was all serious business? Not at all. Joy was an integral aspect of Jewish worship. On Sukkot in particular, the Temple became the site of a carnival that, according to the Talmud, was unlike anything else around: One who did not see the festival of water-drawing never saw celebration in his days. (Sukkah 51a) The Talmud continues describing Simchat Beit Hashoevah, the water-drawing festival. During this nighttime celebration, golden candelabras hoisted onto poles burned so brightly they illuminated the entire city. The festival featured dancing, juggling, singing and a full orchestra of Levite musicians. 10. Synagogues are designed to mirror the Temple Since it was destroyed for the second time in 70 CE, Jews have not been able to worship at the Temple. But elements of the Temple ritual are brought into Jewish practice, including in the architecture of the synagogue. The ark of the synagogue, which houses the Torah scrolls, mirrors both the Ark of the Covenant that held the original Ten Commandments and also the Holy of Holies, the chamber where it was stored — which was also screened by a curtain. The ner tamid, or eternal light, that hangs above the ark recalls the fire of the altar. And in synagogues where men and women sit separately, the women’s section is called the ezrat nashim, the courtyard of the women, as was the area of the Temple permitted to women. As the synagogue mirrors the Temple, the prayers said inside it are explicitly linked to the sacrifices. In particular, the three traditional recitations of the Amidah each day — Shacharit (morning), Mincha (afternoon), and Maariv (evening) — parallel the sacrifices offered at those times in the Temple. 11. Real Temple treasures might still be in the Vatican The Arch of Titus, a first-century monument built to celebrate the destruction of Jerusalem, depicts the Romans marching back to Rome after having destroyed the Second Temple. Their hands are full of treasure, including vessels of gold and silver and the famous seven-branched menorah made entirely of pure gold that was lit at all times in the Temple. Though these treasures have never been recovered, some speculate they may remain locked in the vaults of the Vatican. 12. Jews don’t agree about whether a Third Temple should be built For thousands of years, Jews have mourned the destruction of the Temple on Tisha B’Av and prayed for its reconstruction. But it has never happened, even now that a Jewish state exists in the land of Israel. There are many reasons for this. First, the Temple Mount is under Muslim authority and home to a sacred Islamic shrine, the Dome of the Rock. A Temple could not be built on that spot without destroying it. Second, not all Jews believe God has granted them authority to rebuild the Temple. Many hold that only God will build it. Third, Judaism has flourished for thousands of years without a Temple. Since the rabbis say that Torah study and prayer can replace Temple service, there is less urgency to bring back a Temple. And many Jews agree with Maimonides that sacrifices are no longer the best way to worship God. Early leaders in the Reform movement even named their houses of worship temples to signify they had abandoned the traditional Jewish longing to rebuild the Temple. There are, however, a minority of Jews who are preparing to build a Third Temple, by studying Temple worship practices and constructing implements to be used in the Temple when it is rebuilt.
Canada is home to a small variety of freshwater (land-based) and marine turtles, which are part of the reptilian family of the animal kingdom. Although the majority of Canada’s freshwater turtles inhabit Southern Ontario turtles can be found along the southern borders of most of Canada’s provinces. In contrast, among the marine turtles that visit Canada’s shores none nest here. According to the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) , a group of experts that assess the status of species in Canada, a number of Canada’s turtles are endangered or threatened. The most dangerous threat to turtles is humans. - The biggest threat to turtles is man, either through poaching or through encroachment into habitats by roads. - Female turtles prefer to lay their eggs in mud, sand, or dirt areas; thus often can be found along roadsides or ditches from May to July where these conditions are easy to find. - In the spring and fall land-based turtles can travel up to several hundred meters to reach nesting grounds. - Different species of turtles can be active during different times of the day, but most often you will see them in the morning and late afternoon. - The leatherback turtle (one of Canada’s marine turtles) is the largest reptile in the world reaching up to 2.5 m in length and 550 kg in weight. - Because turtles have a very long maturation period, several years up to 20 years, many do not live long enough to reproduce. - Turtles can live between 20 to over 75 years long. - Many turtles have soft shells and many turtles cannot retract inside their shells. Both land-based and marine turtles are vulnerable to a number of natural and human threats, with many of the world’s turtles on various endangered species’ lists. As adults, land-based animals can be preyed upon by animals such as large cats, foxes, minks, raccoons, and coyotes. Similarly, adult marine turtles can be preyed upon by sharks, octopi, or other large marine animals. However, the hard and large shell of adult turtles offers substantial protection as it is difficult for predators to penetrate, thus most adult turtles have few natural predators. Furthermore, many freshwater turtles are able to retract their head and limbs into their shell, or fold their head to the side under their shell for added protection. In contrast, turtles are most at danger during their incubation period inside the egg or as a hatchling. Larger prey will often eat the eggs or catch the hatchlings as they make their way to the water. The largest threat to turtles, however, is humans. Turtles are often poached for their meat or for their eggs, the latter a delicacy in many Asian regions. Turtles are also increasingly threatened by human activity and intrusion into turtle habitats. Roads in particular represent a serious threat to land-based turtles. In Canada, turtles will often traverse roads to move to and from nesting areas, usually during the months of May and October. Additionally, female turtles often prefer the dirt, gravel, or sandy areas next to roads as a place to make their nests and lay their eggs. Both freshwater and marine turtles are threatened by human activities in the water such as becoming entangled in or injured from fishing gear or by pollution floating in the oceans such as discarded garbage. Did you know? The sex of many turtles is determined by the temperature during the incubation period. Cooler temperatures generally produce males and warmer temperatures generally produce females. Turtles range in colour but typically have variations of dark green, olive, or brown shells. Their shells and their body are often marked with lines or patches of brighter colours such as yellow, orange, and red. The plastron is typically lighter in colour and often has markings or colour patterns that can aid in distinguishing different species of turtles. Most land-based turtles, particularly those that enjoy basking in the sun are active during daylight hours, typically moving around during the early morning and late afternoon. In contrast, many turtles that spend the majority of their time in water or are susceptible to dehydration, such as the stinkpot turtle, are nocturnal and can be found moving during the late evening when temperature have cooled. As such people may come across turtles at any time day or night. Since marine turtles spend almost their entire lives in water, they have adapted to resting periodically throughout the day while floating at the water’s surface. All turtles produce offspring by laying eggs, including female marine turtles which return to beaches to lay their eggs. Eggs typically incubate between 45 and 90 days before baby turtles (hatchlings) break out of the shell and then often spend several more days crawling out of their nest. Different turtles nest at different times, but the range in Canada is usually between the months of May to July. Female turtles usually bury their eggs in mud, sand, or dirt by hollowing out an area, laying the eggs, and then covering the eggs with the unearthed ground. For this reason, it is not uncommon to see female freshwater turtles searching for good nesting spots alongside roads and in ditches, where there is often more dirt than vegetation. Different species of turtles lay different numbers of eggs, ranging from a few eggs to a couple hundred. However, the survival rate of eggs and hatchlings is very low, between 1 in 100 to 1 in 1000 for some turtle species. Furthermore, many turtles only lay eggs every two to three years. Once hatched, most turtles require many years to reach maturity before they are able to breed. This can be anywhere from several years to over 20 years before becoming an adult. The majority of Canada’s land-based turtles are found in the warmer southern regions of Ontario and Quebec; however, turtles can be found in all provinces with the exception of Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, or the three northern territories. These turtles prefer wetland areas, ponds, muskegs, slow-moving rivers and streams, or shallow lakes. During the winter, some freshwater turtles hibernate underwater often in the mud underneath while others choose other water source areas, such as fens. During the summer, many of these turtles, particularly those which primarily live in the water can remain underwater for several days at a time. Turtles are exothermic meaning that they are not able to generate their own body heat and must rely on the environment to regulate their temperature. For this reason, turtles typically live in warmer climates. Turtles in Canada have been able to adapt and many turtles can be found ‘basking’ in the sun. The exception is turtles which dehydrate quickly, such as the stinkpot turtle which remains under water for the majority of its time. Whether a land-based or a marine turtle, all turtles breathe air and cannot survive indefinitely underwater. Once hatched, male marine turtles almost never return to land and spend their lives living in the ocean. Females return to land, usually sandy beaches, only to nest and lay eggs. Marine turtles often migrate between warmer (nesting) climates, such as the Caribbean and cooler (foraging) climates, such as Canada; however, it can be difficult to track their actual migratory paths between these destination points. There are approximately 300 species of turtles worldwide, thus turtles can vary greatly in appearance and size. Generally, however, they are easily recognizable by their typically hard upper shell of horn-like scales, or carapace, and their lower shell, the plastron, which can range in size. These two shells cover the majority of the turtle’s body, excluding its limbs, tail, and head, which extend from the shell. A turtle’s shell is part of their body that extends from the turtle’s ribs and joined to their backbone thus it cannot be removed. Not all turtles have hard shells. Some turtles, such as the leatherback turtle which visits Canada’s Atlantic and Pacific coastlines or the spiny softshell turtle found in southern Ontario and Quebec, have leathery skin for a carapace instead of the hard scales found on most turtles. Land-based turtles in Canada range in size between 8 and 25 cm and marine turtles may be as large as 2.5 m, which includes the largest turtle, the leatherback. Adult turtles range in weight from a couple hundred grams up to 1.5 kg, while marine turtles such as the leatherback reach average weights of up to 550 kg. A turtle’s short limbs and rather rigid body force them to move slowly on land; however, many turtles can be quite active in water and swim rather quickly. In safer environments, turtles generally have long life spans, living anywhere from 20 to over 75 years old. However, it has been difficult for researchers to study the life span of numerous species of turtles and therefore many ages are approximate. All turtles are omnivores, that is, they eat both meat and vegetation. Due to their inability to move quickly freshwater turtles in Canada usually feed on dead animals such as fish, worms, snails, insects, frogs, and minnows but will also eat plants, particularly aquatic vegetation. The diet of marine turtles depends on the species. For instance, leatherbacks typically eat jellyfish, while the loggerhead turtle, a turtle found along Canada’s Atlantic coastline, will eat a wide number of ocean dwellers such as smaller vertebrates, sponges, anemones, coral, star fish, sea cucumbers as well as vegetation such as algae or other marine plants. Turtles do not have teeth but instead use their hard ‘beaks’ and bony jaws to trap and, for some turtles that have very sharp jaws, to chew food. Due to the inability to chew food, other turtles such as painted or leatherback turtles must eat their food in the water where they can use the water to help grasp and swallow their food. To learn more about some of Canada’s specific turtle species, clink on the link below or go to our Downloadable Resources page to download these and other resources. - Blanding’s turtle (Emydoidea blandingi) - Eastern musk or stinkpot turtle (Sternotherus odoratus) - Painted turtle (Chrysemys picta) Canadian Geographic. “Blanding’s Turtle.” Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “Leatherback Turtle.” Nature Conservancy Canada. Nova Scotia’s Blanding’s Turtles: Conservation and Recovery. Ontario Nature. “Reptiles and Amphibians of Ontario.” Parks Canada. “Species at Risk.” The Canadian Biodiversity Website. “Turtles.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. “Turtle.” The Science Behind Algonquin’ Animals. “Painted Turtles.”
British nationalism became the driving force of British politics and culture during the reign of the Protestant monarch, Elizabeth I. Her rivalry with Catholic Spain, and other Catholic powers of Europe, including the Papacy, made the masses in her island nation realize, probably for the first time, that they were a distinct people, that they were not just Christians, that they were British Christians, and that the Catholics of mainland Europe were their enemies. When the British united to defend their island nation against the invasion of the Catholic powers, they developed a sense of their unique history and culture. When England defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, British nationalism came of age. This nationalistic spirit had consequences which went far beyond the war with Catholic Europe. Nationalism would eventually inspire the British to orchestrate the Industrial Revolution, build a Navy that would rule the sea, and conquer the world’s biggest imperialist empire which would climax with Pax Britannica. Shakespeare has written about people from all over the world—Cleopatra of Egypt, Caesar and Antony of Rome, Hamlet of Denmark, and Othello, the Moorish general of Venice. In 1595, when he wrote Richard II, he was probably influenced by the spirit of nationalism that was flowing through England after the success of the British Navy against the Spanish Armada. This play has his most famous nationalistic lines, spoken by the character John of Gaunt: “This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-Paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands— This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” Such intense nationalist sentiment was unknown in British literature before the reign of Elizabeth I. A century earlier Thomas More had written the book called Utopia, but he did not present Britain as the utopian paradise. More’s utopia is located on an imaginary island. Post a Comment
Progressing Towards Mental Calculations No matter how hard we try to keep it pressure free. Sometimes kids just get overwhelmed by one or two senses doing all the work. Children are very tactile and this comfort to touch and manipulate the rods is hard to give up. Mental Calculations is an important skill that we are often eager for students to gain quickly. The ability to manipulate numbers in the mind doesn't come in a day though and it can be a most trying to wait for that day to come. I never really understood the steps that lead towards mental calculations. I always thought it was just something that happened with lots of drill. I have learned it doesn't have to be this painful drill but there is a practical progression. Caleb Gattegno understood the best movement towards mental calculation lies in reducing the number of senses used over time. Cuisenaire Rods provide number sense that engage the senses of touch, sight and the hearing. The student handles the rods and moves them about. They see the rods and how they relate to each other. The task based activities given verbally to students engage auditory skills. Cuisenaire rods truly make learning an experience that engages the senses. Eliminating the Tactile To move towards mental manipulation of numbers, Gattegno suggests a progression from touch, sight, and hearing to sight and hearing to lastly just hearing. The first sense to be eliminated is touch. Providing tasks that eliminate touch would include: - Without touching the rods, what rod is missing from the staircase? - Without touching the rods, what single rod would you need to make the purple train the length of the orange rod? - Without touching the rods, what single rod is missing from the rods before you? Of course, it is very hard at first to make this leap without lots of opportunity to manipulate the rods. It also depends on the strength of the student's auditory skills, too, and there is nothing more pressure filled for a child than being dependent on their auditory and sight skills in a task based activity. A Better Reception Games have a nice way of lightening the learning environment cultivating a better reception by the student. There is nothing like an old classic game to make the whole process more joyful which brings me to a great freebie that I created to make the progression towards mental calculations a little easier. "Guess My Equation?" The nature of the game is to provide 2 dimensional visual of the rods and the students ask yes or no questions to help them find their opponents chosen equation. In this way, the sense of touch is eliminated. In a playful game of deduction, the students strengthen their auditory and visual skills in an environment that is less threatening and more joyful. There are 3 stages of the activities in my full Guess the Equation game. The first stage is two trains with one being a single rod train and the other a variety of rods the same length as the single rod train. You will find part of the first stage in the freebie available below. This stage provides a clear comparative using single rod trains. This makes it easier for their eyes to make distinctions as well as develop a low level number sense. The second stage is also two trains with both trains being the same length but differ in the color and number of rods. This stage removes that easy comparison of single rod trains and forces the student to look carefully developing a higher level of number sense. The third stage is merely one single train of varying lengths and color rods. Downsizing to a single train of varied rods and lengths,the student is engaging their visual skills more and developing a higher level of number sense. Each stage is designed to help the student to strengthen their number sense awareness. Without the ability to touch the rods, the students are forced to be more attentive to length and number of rods before them. This is also most certainly an exercise in auditory skills as the students also have to listen carefully to their opponent's questions while using their sight to determine the answer to their opponent's question. Removing the sight of the rods all together is the next stage towards mental calculations. Gattegno does this by moving to letters that are representative of the rods. In time, this will bring the student to mentally visualizing the rods to complete tasks provided by the teacher. Rush through this and you will find a student frustrated and overwhelmed. It really is a sensory issue. Auditory and Visual skills should be developed and strengthened before moving towards the final stages. Look to the next version of "Guess the Equation?" to eliminate the visual of the rods and to only provide the visual of letters. You know my favorite part of this game. No adult supervision required. This is a great game to take on the road too. The kids will have fun playing it over and over with so many boards to choose from in the full bundle. Remember, learning is a process that is best begun with all the senses with a progression towards the ultimate sense, the mind. Want to try this game out for FREE? Of course, you do! Just sign up below to my mailing list and get it in your inbox. Ready to buy the full set of 36 game boards? You can purchase it at my storeHERE.
Historical Context for Luke/John by Unknown The four canonical gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—were all composed within the Roman Empire between 70 and 110 C.E (± five to ten years) as biographies of Jesus of Nazareth. Written a generation after the death of Jesus (ca. 30 C.E), none of the four gospel writers were eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus. Our earliest extant sources of information about Jesus of Nazareth and his teachings remain the letters of the apostle Paul. While all four gospels narrate the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth (Christos, or Christ in English, is Greek word for “anointed one,” a translation of the Hebrew word for messiah) they present their accounts with different emphases and styles. Mark, Matthew, and Luke are classified together as the Synoptic Gospels or Synoptics, owing to the fact that they share similar content and narrative structure (in some cases the same stories appear in all three texts word for word). All three texts recount the events of the life of Jesus from roughly the same perspective (from the Greek noun synopsisor “a seeing all together” or “general view”). Mark, the earliest gospel, was likely written just after the destruction of the second Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E, and was known by both Matthew and Luke when they undertook the task of producing their own narratives. The Gospel According to Luke, written in roughly 85 C.E. (± five to ten years), most likely during the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian, is known in its earliest form from extensive papyri fragments dating to the early or middle of the third century. The Gospel of John, dated between 80 and 110 C.E. is first attested in a highly fragmentary papyrus, dated to 125-150 C.E. The oldest extant full-text versions of the entire New Testament are found in the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, both manuscripts from the fourth-century (the former is believed to be slightly older). Although the author of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles, a historical narrative of the travels and ministries of prominent followers of Jesus, neither manuscript preserves Luke-Acts as a single textual unit. Many scholars contend that the two texts were originally fused, only to be separated as the canon of the New Testament took shape. The inclusion of multiple gospels within the canon foreground the two disparate halves of the Lucan text, necessitating their separation and rearrangement for canonical coherence. While most scholars no longer hold that the same author wrote the Gospel of John and three Johannine Epistles, their thematic and stylistic similarities suggest that the texts were written by persons from the same community. The Fourth Gospel is often described as a Hellenistic Gospel. The text’s dualistic vision of humanity (light and darkness/truth and falsity), its cosmological speculation about truth and light, and its appeal to the figure of the Word, have antecedents in Greek philosophical and religious thought. Some scholars hold the influence of Palestinian Judaism and even Gnosticism to be equally important to the study of the text. The Gospel’s author, a native Greek speaker, who likely lived in or around Palestine, is believed to have composed his text from a number of sources circulating within his community, emphasizing the signs, sayings, and Passion of Jesus. Indeed, the text stands apart from the Synoptics not only for the material it omits (note, for example, that no mention is made of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, the virginity of Mary, his temptation in the wilderness, or even his baptism by John the Baptist), but also for its distinct characterization of material the two hold in common. In John’s Gospel, even though Jesus performs far fewer miracles, those he does undertake are performed openly and with great spectacle. Jesus heals privately in the Synoptics, while in John he does so publicly. Jesus’ method of teaching in John is also distinct. He does not speak in parables, nor does he discuss the imminent arrival of the kingdom of heaven. The emphasis is, instead, placed upon his status as the messenger sent from God. Both Luke and John, as two of the four canonical gospels, become critical texts in early Christian history, the development of Christian theology, and what would ultimately become the Church. Countless Christian authors in antiquity appealed to the authoritative words of Luke and John to advance theological arguments, to combat their Jewish, pagan, or heretical opponents, and to articulate a Christian narrative of the universe and the events of history. From the second to the fifth centuries C.E. theological debates about the nature of Christ’s identity as both man and God—what theologians call Christology—dominated much of Christian discourse throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. In asking how Christ could be both man and God, theologians from all across the Roman Empire frequently turn to the Prologue of the Gospel of John, which famously narrates how the Word of God (the Greek nounLogos means word), the agent of creation, “became flesh and lived among us” (Jn. 1:14). The impact of John’s formulation in the prologue, linking the Word of God, the Son of God, and Jesus Christ, on the theological and ecclesiastical development of Christianity cannot be understated. Writers such as Augustine of Hippo and Origen of Alexandria, among others, explicitly draw upon the language of Christ as Logos not only to advance particular formulations about the dualistic human/divine nature of Jesus Christ/Son of God, but also to articulate how the Son’s manifestation as the Word of God relates to and ultimately fulfills Jewish Scripture. The precise meaning of the evangelists’ words, however, was subject to much debate among Christians throughout antiquity. Despite mutual agreement among Christians about the authoritative status of each of the canonical Gospels, extant commentaries and treatises on the Gospels of John and Luke make it abundantly clear that during the first five centuries of the Common Era the meaning of these texts was highly controversial and subject to intense scrutiny. The sheer variety of opinions available in ancient Christian texts about the Gospels should caution against the view that any particular verse in either Luke or John possesses only one interpretation. The Gospels were and continue to be repositories of interpretative debate and contestation. Written by Todd Berzon, Department of Religion, Columbia University Bovon, François. Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1-9:50. Hermenia Series. Edited by Helmut Koester. Translated by Christine M. Thomas. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002 Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday, 1997 Brown, Raymond E. The Community of the Beloved Disciple. New York: Paulist, 1979 Edwards, Mark J. John. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004 Ehrman, Bart D., and Bruce M. Metzger. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. Fourth Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005
By Chris Fogwill, Chris Turney, and Zoë Thomas \| – Rising global temperatures and warming ocean waters are causing one of the world’s coldest places to melt. While we know that human activity is causing climate change and driving rapid changes in Antarctica, the potential impacts that a warmer world would have on this region remain uncertain. Our new research might be able to provide some insight into what effect a warmer world would have in Antarctica, by looking at what happened more than 129,000 years ago. We found that the mass melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was a major cause of high sea levels during a period known as the Last Interglacial (129,000-116,000 years ago). The extreme ice loss caused more than three metres of average global sea level rise – and worryingly, it took less than 2˚C of ocean warming for it to occur. To conduct our research, we travelled to an area on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and drilled into so-called blue ice areas to reconstruct the glacial history of this ice sheet. Blue ice areas are areas of ancient ice which have been brought to the surface by fierce, high-density winds, called katabatic winds. When these winds blow over mountains, they remove the top layer of snow and erode the exposed ice. As the ice is removed by the wind, ancient ice is brought to the surface, which offers insight into the ice sheet’s history. While most Antarctic researchers drill deep into the ice to extract their samples, we were able to use a technique called horizontal ice core analysis. As you travel closer to the mountains of the ice sheet, the ice that been brought to the surface by these winds progressively gets older. We then were able to take surface samples on a straight, horizontal line across the blue ice area to reconstruct what happened to the ice sheet in the past. Our team took many measurements. We first looked at the fine layers of volcanic ash in the ice to pinpoint when the mass melting took place. Alarmingly, the results showed that most ice loss happened at the start of Last Interglacial warming, some 129,000 years ago – showing how sensitive the Antarctic is to higher temperatures. We think it’s likely this melting started well before the ocean warmed by 2˚C. This is concerning to us today, as ocean temperatures continue to increase, and the West Antarctic is already melting. We also measured temperature-sensitive water molecules across the blue ice area. These isotopes revealed a large shift in temperatures, highlighting a major gap in our record at the start of the Last Interglacial. This indicates a period of sustained ice loss over thousands of years. This period of missing ice coincides with extreme sea level rise, suggesting rapid ice melt from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. DNA testing of ancient microbes preserved in the ice revealed an abundance of methane-consuming bacteria. Their presence suggests that the release of methane gases from sediments under the ice sheet may have also played a role in accelerating the warming process. The West Antarctic ice sheet can tell us a lot about the effect of warming ocean temperatures because it rests on the seabed. It’s surrounded by large areas of floating ice, called ice shelves, that protect the central part of the sheet. As warmer ocean water travels into cavities beneath the ice shelves, ice melts from below, thinning the shelves and making the central sheet highly vulnerable to warming ocean temperatures. This process is currently being researched on the West Antarctic Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier”. Using data from our fieldwork, we ran model simulations to investigate how warming might affect the floating ice shelves. These ice shelves protect the ice sheets and help slow the flow of ice off the continent. Our results suggest a 3.8 metre sea level rise during the first thousand years of a 2˚C warmer ocean. Most of the modelled sea level rise occurred after the loss of the ice shelves, which collapsed within the first two hundred years of higher temperatures. These findings are worrying – especially if persistent high sea surface temperatures could prompt the larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet to melt, driving global sea levels even higher. But our findings suggest the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may be close to a tipping point. Only a small temperature increase could trigger abrupt ice sheet melt and a multi-metre rise in global sea levels. At the moment, research suggests that global sea levels could rise between 45-82cm over the next century. However, it’s thought that Antarctica will only contribute around 5cm of this – most of this sea level rise will be caused by warmer ocean waters and the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. But based on our findings, Antarctica’s contribution could be much greater than anticipated. Despite 197 countries committing under the Paris agreement to restricting global warming to 2˚C by the end of this century, our findings show that even minor increases in temperature could have far-reaching impacts. Chris Fogwill, Professor of Glaciology and Palaeoclimatology, Keele University; Chris Turney, Professor of Earth Science and Climate Change, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, UNSW, and Zoë Thomas, ARC DECRA Fellow, UNSW This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Bonus video added by Informed Comment: Sky Australia News: “Antarctica hits hottest temperature on record”
Religious Education (RE) We want children to make sense of a range of religious and non-religious beliefs, so that - Identify, describe, explain and analyse beliefs and concepts in the context of living religions - Use appropriate vocabulary - Explain how and why these beliefs are understood in different ways, by individuals and within communities - Recognise how and why sources of authority (e.g. texts, teachings, traditions, leaders) are used, expressed and interpreted in different ways, developing skills of interpretation We want children to understand the impact and significance of religious and non-religious beliefs, so that they can: - Examine and explain how and why people express their beliefs in diverse ways - Recognise and account for ways in which people put their beliefs into action in diverse ways, in their everyday lives, within their communities and in the wider world - Appreciate and appraise the significance of different ways of life and ways of expressing meaning We want children to make connections between religious and non-religious beliefs, concepts, practices and ideas studied, so that they can: - Evaluate, reflect on and enquire into key concepts and questions studied, responding thoughtfully and creatively, giving good reasons for their responses - Challenge the ideas studied, and allow the ideas studied to challenge their own thinking, articulating beliefs, values and commitments clearly in response - Discern possible connections between the ideas studied and their own ways of understanding the world, expressing their critical responses and personal reflections with increasing clarity and understanding Since September 2021 the school has used the new Cornwall agreed syllabus 2020-2025.The curriculum begins with programs of study in EYFS and continues in phases to the end of key Stage 2. Teaching of each unit uses the three strands, which are outlined in the Syllabus and illustrated in the diagram. These are : Making sense of beliefs Understanding the impact Children will know about the religions and beliefs of people in local, national and global contexts. Children will know about the similarities and differences between different world religions, common themes as well as individual characteristics. Children will have an appreciation of diversity and develop tolerance and respect for the beliefs of others. This will enable them to participate positively in society. Teachers will assess and report on outcomes in RE against the learning objectives from the curriculum. Progress and attainment are assessed by our school's lead for the subject and triangulated with pupil voice and lesson observations as well as scrutiny of outcomes. “RE teaches us about Religions around the world; it helps us know how to treat people with different religions to us.” Y6 Pupil “We learn RE because if we came across someone with a different religion we would understand their beliefs and not offend them.” Y6 Pupil “It makes me feel good learning about what other people believe; I am interested in this.” Y6 Pupil “I remember making apple crumble, when we were learning about harvest .” Y2 Pupil “We went to the Church and learnt lots about the items there. I found out about the font!" Y2 Pupil
In 3100 B.C and Mesopotamians at 5000 B.C (1). The Nile river was a key place for the start of the Ancient Egyptian empire. Egyptians themselves were located near lower Egypt closeby the Nile Delta. They then slowly moved up around upper egypt. With clear fertile and rich soil, agriculture was most efficient and made the Ancient Egyptians very rich. Mesopotamians also had their own rivers known as the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers which were rich in soil for farming. Mesopotamians were located around Zagros Mountains and located inside the Persian gulf. Mesopotamians were Mediterraneans. Egyptians and the Mesopotamians were very alike. Equal rights between men and women existed in both of the empires societies. (2). This is important because the demographics of females were not small in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia. Also, the religion of both empires were polytheistic (Meaning “many gods”) (2). Because the gods controlled Egypt and Mesopotamia through land and power, people dedicated a large portion of their time to the gods. An example is that temples The most significant factor that influenced the development of Egypt and Mesopotamia was the difference in location between the two civilizations, which influenced many different aspects of everyday life and culture. Egypt and Mesopotamia were both located next to rivers, but the distinctions between the rivers greatly impacted the two societies. The two civilizations were located in two very different areas geography-wise, which affected the chances of foreign invaders attacking. The location of the two civilizations also affected their religious beliefs. Known as one of the earliest civilizations, Mesopotamia and Egypt both share set amounts of similarities along with a share of striking distinctions. Environmentally, these two civilizations were formed in similar surroundings, yet their weather patterns show distinctions. Politically, both governments derived from a monarch, yet their laws and punishments distinguished the two’s court systems. Economically, they both shared prosperous success in similar manners. Socially, although the two lands followed a hierarchy, the value of women contrasted. Culturally, they both believed in a higher order of creation; however, their views of them were polar opposites. Intellectually, these two societies developed skilled abilities and creations that When it comes to politics, things aren't so different. Both Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt connected religion to their Government. Its laws had control over all people. The Mesopotamians and ancient Egyptians would pay their taxes to the government with goods and hard labor. The Ancient civilizations all have many similarities and differences between them. They all were remarkable civilizations that were very successful in their own ways. Each civilization added to life as we see it today. Out of the four Ancient civilizations, I chose to compare Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia. There are many things that I can compare and contrast; but I am going to focus on the geography, political, religious, and cultural structure. The setting is around 3000 BCE, surrounded on all sides by vast, arid deserts, steep cliffs, and extensive bodies of water. And, in these massive deserts civilization exists; there are grand, shining empires, pillars of humanity. Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia, both known as cradles of civilization, were hosts to some of the greatest ancient kingdoms of mankind. These empires shared a number of common practices due to similar geographical settings, but likewise they were different in their structure, customs, and views. The ancient civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia shared many similarities; however Egypt was more prosperous economically, established a superior, unwavering political structure, and possessed more unified and content religious views. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were two of the greatest civilizations in human history. Both had enormous cultural and scientific advances that will always have an impact on our way of life. Although different in many ways, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia kept many key similarities. Understand the comparison between these two civilizations highlights the origins of the origins of our most basic social, political and cultural systems. One of the cultures of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia developed into successful civilizations is by their water sources. In document 1, the river Nile in Egypt flooded every year, which gave the land around it soft fertile ground, great for planting crops. Most people lived near the river. In document 2, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which was also called the Fertile Crescent, provided food, transportation, and plants. They were especially populated since the area had deserts and mountains. Another reason is their rulers. As stated in document 3, the ancient Egyptian looked at their ruler, the pharaoh, as one of their gods in a human form, serving them well and deciding what’s best for the country. Quoting document 4, the people of Mesopotamia With governmental machinery that brought political and social order to their territories, effective political and military power enabled them to build regional empires and expand their authority to neighboring people. Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were two great civilizations among the earliest to emerge in the Middle east and North Africa. Both made significant contributions in areas such as mathematics, medicine, agriculture, astronomy, technology, architecture, art and writing. They had differences as well, including their political structures. Most importantly is that Egyptians were under a centralized government, and the Mesopotamians had self-controlled city state governments. The ancient civilizations of the Ancient Egypt, as well as the great Mesopotamia, are the world’s greatest civilization as recorded by history. The civilization was highly facilitated by rivers which cut across their land. The Euphrates, Nile, as well as Tigris, constantly moving along the river banks which in turn resulted in the adjoining land is extremely fertile (Backman). This led to flourishment and development of Ur and Eriku cities in Mesopotamia as well as the city of Thebes in Egypt (Backman). The Nile was very significant in Ancient Egypt as it made invasion by enemies impossible due to its marshy deltas (Backman). On the other hand, Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia differed fundamentally in many aspects more specifically in how their societies were structured, cultural orientation, religion, technological experiences, literature, and art among other things (Backman). This paper will center on examining these differences as well as similarities between these two regions as well as what they communicate concerning the circumstances that people from these two regions faced. The location of a civilization is crucial for agriculture and security. While Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India consisted of rivers, Egypt’s was the most profitable. In Mesopotamia, the Tigris and Euphrates River would harmfully flood the valleys creating a need for irrigation systems. Similarly, the Harappans often encountered floods until walls were built. In Egypt, the water flowed the banks from the Nile River replenishing the land with fertilized soil. As a result, the Egyptians had a stable supply of wheat and barley while the supplies of other civilizations were unsteady. Moreover, the Egyptians had natural Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia present a valuable area of historical research. They are of great importance mostly because of their ethnic kinship (Watson, 2017). In such case, comparison and contrast essay is very promising as causal relationships can be formed based on a mutual starting point. This comparison-contrast essay focuses on differences and similarities in these societies’ economic, political and cultural life in order to make further implications regarding the circumstances the peoples of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia faced. Thousands of years ago, in separate river valleys, two large settlements met the requirements needed to become two of the four first civilizations, and Egypt and Mesopotamia were formed. They were similar, as they both met the criteria to become a civilization, but they were also different, because geographic factors affected their lives differently. Three reasons why the society, government, and culture of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were similar and different are: first, while both civilizations were located in a river valley, geographic conditions made sustaining society in Mesopotamia more difficult than in Ancient Egypt. Second, Mesopotamia and Egypt had effective bureaucracies, but the many sustained invasions throughout Ancient Mesopotamian history made the state less stable than Egypt. Lastly, although both religions were polytheistic, unpredictable war and flooding made Mesopotamian culture pessimistic, while Egyptian culture reflected Egypt’s stability. While describing the cultural among the people of Mesopotamia and Egypt, I learned the differences and similarities in culture. The birth of Mesopotamian Civilization began in c. 3000 B.C.E., in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of Southwest Asia. Mesopotamia is a Greek word and it means ‘between the rivers.’ In contrast, the birth of Egyptian Civilization began in c. 3100 B.C.E., in a valley of the Nile River in Northeastern Africa. Egypt is a Greek word and it means ‘House of the Spirit of Ptah.’ Since there are several categories in the cultures of the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians, I decided to narrows it to three categories: Religion, Writing, and Geography. The three categories will present the basis to compare cultural differences and similarities. I have chosen to discuss the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Both have many significant similarities and differences. I would like to compare some important points in four common categories. I will compare and contrast the geography and its impact, the political structure of each society, the importance of their existing class structures and finally the role of women in these dynamic civilizations.
The DAYS Function in Excel is a Date/Time function that is used for calculating the number of days between two dates. The DAYS function was introduced in MS Excel 2013. Its purpose is to provide the days between two dates. Prior to this, we used End date-Start date. =DAYS (end_date, start_date) The function requires two arguments: Start_date and End_date. They are the two dates between which we wish to calculate the number of days. How to use the DAYS Function in Excel? It is a built-in function that can be used as a worksheet function in Excel. Let’s take an example. We are given the two dates below: So here we would use the formula =DAYS(C5,B5) Using the formula above, we would get the result below: Examples of the DAYS Function in Excel To understand the uses of the DAYS function, let’s consider a few examples: Let’s assume we have entered dates that are not in order. In that scenario, we can use the DAYS function as follows. Using the data below, when we use DAYS, we would get a negative value. In such a scenario, the DAYS function can be used along with ABS function as shown below: We will get the result below: Using the ABS function, the result will always be a positive number regardless of the order in which dates are entered as parameters in the DAYS function. Let’s assume we have a business that provides debtors a 90-day credit period. As an analyst, we have been given information about the day on which customer entered into a contract and we need to calculate and see if 90 days have been completed or not as of today. The data is given as below: Let’s see how DAYS function can be used: First, we shall use the TODAY function to find out the date as of today. After that, in column D, we will use the DAYS Function and find out how much time has passed since the goods were sold to the customers. Let’s see how the DAYS function works in different scenarios. The function helps to create more complex calculations with dynamic variables. Let’s see how using the data provided below. Now we are given the data in column B to Column D. We need to look up for the date given in A2 and also calculate the number of days from 3/12/2013. In this scenario, we can calculate using the formula =DAYS(VLOOKUP(A2,B2:D4,1, FALSE),B2) as shown below: The above formula would look up for December 3, 2015, in the array of data and then calculate the number of days from December 3, 2013,. Things to remember about the DAYS Function When both arguments are numbers, the DAYS function will use Enddate-Startdate for calculating the number of days between both dates as shown below. Remember that Excel converts each date into a number and then does the calculations. Excel accepts dates from 1900 to 10000 years. If we wish to see the dates, the above numbers pertain to: When any one of the arguments is text, the argument is treated as DATEVALUE(date_text). In this scenario, it will return an integer date instead of a time component. The #NUM! error would occur when the numerical value given for a date argument is outside the range of valid dates. For example: The #VALUE! error is returned when one of the date arguments is a string that is not described as a valid date. The #NAME? error is returned when the syntax used in the formula is incorrect. Thanks for reading CFI’s guide to important Excel functions! By taking the time to learn and master these functions, you’ll significantly speed up your financial analysis. To learn more, check out these additional CFI resources:
Language Conflict Assignment \| Top Universities Explain a conflict that you are aware of that centers around language(hint:almost all conflict centers around language）and explore where the breakdown occurs and the consequences.To get started you can ask yourself the following questions:Did the speaker/author make bad rhetorical choices? Was the speaker imagining something that they didn’t do a good enough job of asking the audience to imagine? Was the distance between the speaker and the audience too far? Did the author anticipate objections of a clearly defined audience? (These are examples to get you thinking-don’t limit yourself to these ideas.) Your job is not simply to report what went wrong, but rather to explore, analyze and explain it, and finally be able to make an arguable claim about the consequences. You should be prepared to explain and give examples and cite at least two authors that we’ve read so far in class. You may use any other research that you would like to, but you must at very least cite from two of our authors. authors：1.What Writing Is ——Stephen King ( 2. Writing for an Audience ——Linda Flower 3. How Does Language Shape the Way We Think? Have a clearly defined and specific language conflict Make a clear and arguable claim about it Cite from two of the authors we’ve read so far Minimum 4 pages Follow either APA or MLA format Follow either APA or MLA citation rules Get English homework help today
This article originally appeared on www.sciencedaily.com, February 19, 2015. Much of the damage that ultraviolet radiation (UV) does to skin occurs hours after sun exposure, a team of Yale-led researchers concluded in a study that was published online February 19 by the journal Science. Exposure to UV light from the sun or from tanning beds can damage the DNA in melanocytes, the cells that make the melanin that gives skin its color. This damage is a major cause of skin cancer, the most common form of cancer in the United States. In the past, experts believed that melanin protected the skin by blocking harmful UV light. But there was also evidence from studies suggesting that melanin was associated with skin cell damage. In the current study, Douglas E. Brash, clinical professor of therapeutic radiology and dermatology at Yale School of Medical, and his co-authors first exposed mouse and human melanocyte cells to radiation from a UV lamp. The radiation caused a type of DNA damage known as a cyclobutane dimer (CPD), in which two DNA "letters" attach and bend the DNA, preventing the information it contains from being read correctly. To the researchers' surprise, the melanocytes not only generated CPDs immediately but continued to do so hours after UV exposure ended. Cells without melanin generated CPDs only during the UV exposure. This finding showed that melanin had both carcinogenic and protective effects. "If you look inside adult skin, melanin does protect against CPDs. It does act as a shield," said Brash, also a member of Yale Cancer Center. "But it is doing both good and bad things." The researchers next tested the extent of damage that occurred after sun exposure by preventing normal DNA repair in mouse samples. They found that half of the CPDs in melanocytes were "dark CPDs"—CPDs created in the dark. In searching for an explanation of these results, Sanjay Premi, associate research scientist in the Brash laboratory, discovered that the UV light activated two enzymes that combined to "excite" an electron in melanin. The energy generated from this process—known as chemiexcitation—was transferred to DNA in the dark, creating the same DNA damage that sunlight caused in daytime. Chemiexcitation has previously been seen only in lower plants and animals. While noting that news of the carcinogenic effect of melanin is disconcerting, the researchers also pointed to a ray of hope: The slowness of chemiexcitation may allow time for new preventive tools, such as an "evening-after" sunscreen designed to block the energy transfer.
Earlier definitions of gender-based violence (GBV) centered on violence against women. It was defined as any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life. Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is an ugly sore in the face of our country. It has taken many lives, not only of men and women, but those of innocent children as well, who have no fault of their own and have no stake in the violence. Violence against women during elections (VAWDE) is any harm or threat of harm committed against women with intent or impact of interfering with their free and equal participation in the electoral process. The United Nations (UN) defines gender-based violence (GBV) is defined as any act of physical, sexual, economic or psychological harm or suffering, including threats of such acts, coercion, or arbitrary deprivations of liberty, perpetrated against a person based on gender differences between males and females, whether in public or private life. Gender-based violence (GBV) is widely acknowledged as a public health and human rights issue. It has its roots in gender inequality, social norms that tolerate violence, and gender stereotypes that perpetuate violent cycles with women and girls being affected the most. The Covid-19 pandemic brought a lot of activities to a halt as governments worldwide – including Kenya – put measures in place to curb the spread of the virus. Some of the measures included lockdowns as people were encouraged to stay at home when necessary. Employers also started downsizing, sending many employees back home to reduce interactions. Sexual and Gender-based violence (SGBV) is violence directed at someone based on their gender or sex and often brings about physical, sexual, and psychological harm. It can constitute any harmful behaviors against family members or partners, including rape, assault, physical abuse or forced prostitution.
The Substring method is used to grab characters from a string of text. For example, suppose you were testing an email address. You want to test the last four characters to see they are .com. You can use Substring to return just those four characters, and see what's in them. (You can also use IndexOf to achieve the same result.) Substring has this syntax: the_word.Substring( start_position ) So the word you want to grab characters from goes first, followed by the Substring method. In between the round brackets, you have to tell C# where in the word to start grabbing characters from. But Substring can also take a second parameter: the_word.Substring( start_position, num_of_chars_to_grab ) The second parameter is how many characters you want to grab. If you leave this out, C# will grab all the characters to the end of your word. Here's some code to try, with a new button: We're using Substring with two parameters (5, 4). But since we're grabbing to the end of the word, we could have left out the , 4 at the end. To test it out, change the email@example.com to firstname.lastname@example.org. Run your programme and you should see "Bad Email Address". Change it back and the email address will be OK. Use Substring to check that an email address ends in .co.uk. For the email address to check, use email@example.com. Answer to Exercise M
Yes, there are some definite rules about this, but first we should give a warning. These pictures are just a way of suggesting some information about the atoms. The atoms themselves are not put together in anything like the way the picture suggests, or even any way that can be pictured at all. We have some other answers discussing a little bit of these quantum mysteries. Of course, the total number of electrons in an atom will be the same as the number of protons in the nucleus, so that the atom is The rings for the electrons can be used to suggest how many electrons there are with different amounts of energy. The inner rings represent electrons with low energy, tightly stuck in the atom. I don't know what type of pictures your book favors, but they may also use separate rings to represent electrons which are in different types of states around the nucleus, even when those states have almost the same The innermost ring can have one or two electrons in it. If that fills up, the next batch can have up to eight electrons in it. Depending on the taste of the illustrator, those may be shown as one ring of two and one of six, or as one ring of eight, since six of those states have a different 'shape' than the other two. I'm not sure how far up you need to go, but the ring picture starts to get messy if you go much farther. There's reason for the electrons being shown in pairs. There can be at most one electron in any state. That's why they can't all pile into the low-energy states. However, each state is determined not just by how the electron is distributed in space but also by an internal property called 'spin'. You can put two electrons in the same spatial state so long as they have opposite spin. That's where the pairs come (published on 10/22/2007)
What Are MLA Parenthetical Citations? Parenthetical citations are references within an essay that take the reader to the Works Cited page at the end of the paper where bibliographic information is supplied for sources used to write the essay. Parenthetical citations let the reader know where another's words, facts, or ideas were borrowed and give the author of the borrowed material credit. You must provide parenthetical references for all direct quotations, paraphrases, and summaries in your paper. According to MLA guidelines, you must provide both the name(s) of the author(s) as well as the page number(s) of the source from which the information is borrowed. (In the case of an Internet source, no page number is given.) If you introduce the borrowed material in your text with the names of the author(s), then you need only put the page number in parentheses at the end of the borrowed material. With Author in Text (This is the preferred way of paraphrasing a complete work.) In Animal Farm, George Orwell proves that human nature and diversity prevent people from being equal and happy, or at least equally happy. Without Author in Text Animal Farm proves that human nature and diversity prevent people from being equal and happy, or at least equally happy (Orwell). NOTE: Do not offer page numbers when citing complete works, articles in alphabetized encyclopedias, single-paged articles, and unpaginated sources. One Author: Citing Part of a Work Voltaire's character Candide is startled upon learning that this man did not own "an enormous and splendid property," but rather a mere twenty acres that he cultivates with his children (76). Without Author in Text Candide is startled upon learning that this man did not own "an enormous and splendid property," but rather a mere twenty acres that he cultivates with his children (Voltaire 76). Wimsett and Brooks note the power of Tolstoy’s "walloping caricatures of metropolitan fashionable culture" (464). Give the first author's last name as it appears in the Works Cited section followed by et al. (meaning "and others"). It took the combined forces of the Americans, Europeans, and Japanese to break the rebel siege of Peking in 1900 (Lopes, et al. 362). Statistics indicate that drinking water can make up 20 percent of a person's total exposure to lead ("Information" 572). The thesis of the Land Records Management Program’s report is that economic success depends on our ability to improve large-scale training as quickly as possible (14). The first time you refer to a source, it's generally considered a good idea to introduce the borrowed material with the full name(s) of the author(s). You may include credentials to stress the source's authority. When paraphrasing and summarizing, make certain readers can tell where your ideas stop and the borrowed material begins. You can avoid problems by introducing paraphrases or summaries with the name(s) of the author(s). Do not use "p." or "pp." to indicate page numbers. Do not use any punctuation to separate the name from the page number inside a parenthetical Note that the period follows the parenthetical reference. Quotations of more than four typed lines are handled differently than shorter quotes. Instead of quotation marks, long quotations are set off from the text, and the entire quote, which is still double-spaced, indented 10 spaces from the left hand margin. In this case, the parenthetical reference goes outside of the final period.
By Dr. Katherine Vaughn Few symptoms cause as much confusion and concern as fevers do. Why do Fevers Occur? A fever is a resetting of the body’s thermostat to a higher temperature. This usually occurs in response to an infection, although other conditions can cause fever as well. Fever is an indicator that the immune system is working. What is a Fever? We all tend to think of 98.6 as a “normal” temperature, and anything above as a fever. In fact, temperature varies from person to person, and will also fluctuate by about a degree in any given person over the course of a day. We typically run about a degree lower in the morning compared to the evening. A temperature of over 100.4 is considered a fever. How should a Temperature Be Taken? Rectal temperature is considered the “gold standard”, and it’s most important to obtain in this way in an infant under 3 months of age. An axillary or ear (tympanic) temperature can be obtained in older infants and children. Forehead and pacifier thermometers are not as reliable a measure of temperature. When Do I Worry About a Fever? Always notify your doctor if an infant 3 months of age or younger has a rectal temp of over 100.4. The fever itself isn’t harmful, but babies this age can be quite ill without showing other signs, and will likely need to be seen. For children over 3 months of age, it’s less likely they will be seriously ill and not have other signs and symptoms. A child’s behavior and activity level are more important clues to the severity of illness. A 6 month old who is playing and happy with a temperature of 103 would be less concerning than a 9 month old with a 101 temp who is listless and lethargic. A fever has to be quite high (generally felt to be greater than 106) for the fever itself to be harmful. Other symptoms, such as rash, trouble breathing, lethargy, or other indications of a sick-looking child should prompt a call to your physician or visit to the ER. Fevers over 104 degrees, or any fever lasting more than 3 days should prompt a call to your physician to help assess for the need for a visit. When Should a Fever Be Treated? The main reason to treat a fever is for comfort. A happy child with a fever does not have to be treated. However, as temperatures rise over 101, many children become uncomfortable, with headache, body aches, increased heart rate, etc. Treatment can be with acetominophen or ibuprofen at the appropriate doses. Never give your child aspirin for fever. It has been linked to a condition called Reyes’ syndrome. Lukewarm sponge baths can also be used, as well as offering plenty of fluids. Don’t worry if your child doesn’t want to eat much for a few days, as long as they’re drinking. Avoid alcohol sponging (it will raise the temperature) or cold water baths (increases discomfort). Take Home Message In a child under 3 months of age, call your doctor for any temperature over 100.4 . In older children, you can feel more comfortable evaluating the child, giving medicine to bring the fever down if they are uncomfortable, and calling the doctor if you’re concerned about how they are looking or acting. Important disclaimer: The information on pkids.org is for educational purposes only and should not be considered to be medical advice. It is not meant to replace the advice of the physician who cares for your child. All medical advice and information should be considered to be incomplete without a physical exam, which is not possible without a visit to your doctor. In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened. Harold S. Kushner
A Lightweight Skeleton The fact that a pelican approximately 5 feet long weighing nearly 20 pounds has a skeleton weighing only 23 ounces indicates how perfectly a birds skeleton is adapted to its capacity for flight. The reason the skeleton is so lightweight is that many bones in a bird's skeleton are hallow. The hollow bones are honeycombed with air spaces and strengthened by crisscrossing struts. The number of hollow bones varies from species to species, though large gliding and soaring birds tend to have the most. In general, the more efficient fliers seem to have more bones that are hollow. A bird's streamlining for flight is perhaps best exemplified in the evolution of the skull, which is composed mainly of thin, hollow bones. A bird's skull is extremely light in proportion to the rest of its body due to elimination of a heavy jaw, jaw muscles, and teeth; the job of chewing has largely replaced by the gizzard. The skull usually represents less than 1 percent of a bird's total body weight. Although a present-day bird has fewer bones than its ancestors, its skeleton is strong enough for flight due to fusion of many of its bones. Forming rigid girders and platforms, fusion together for rigidity, and others are not, allowing for mobility. Vertebrae in the lower back are joined, as are the bones of the hip girdle, forming a light but strong plate that rests on the thigh bones and supports the bird when it is on the ground. Overlapping projections (similar to cartilage) near the backbone, called the uncinate processes, add strength to the rib cage. Formed by fusion of the collarbones at their base, the wishbone offers structural support for the wings. In flying birds the breast bone is fused to a deep keel (a longitudinal ridge of bone) that provides an anchor for the powerful flight muscles. Generally, the deeper the keel the more powerful the flight. In contrast to the rigidity of a bird's skeleton, the neck is extremely mobile. This allows the bird to see danger from any direction, catch prey, and preen its feathers, Flexibility is increased by the large number of neck vertebrae, which range from about from 11 to 25. In comparison, mammals -- even the giraffe -- have only 7 vertebrae.
Videos, worksheets, games and acivities to help Algebra students learn about direct variation or direct proportion. We often use the term direct variation to describe a form of dependence of one variable on another. An equation that makes a line and crosses the origin is a form of direct variation, where the magnitude of x increases or decreases directly as y increases or decreases. Direct variation and inverse variation are used often in science when modeling activity, such as speed or velocity. Direct Variation Applications Learn what it means for variables to vary directly. Examples of direct variation We welcome your feedback, comments and questions about this site - please submit your feedback via our Feedback page.
A new model of ice volume change developed by Boston University researchers Maureen Raymo and Lorraine Lisiecki proposes a reason for this discrepancy. Like other models, it is consistent with traditional Milankovitch theory – which holds that the three cyclical changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun (obliquity, precession, and eccentricity) influence the severity of seasons and high latitude temperatures over time. However, the new model differs from earlier ones in that it allows for a much more dynamic Antarctic ice sheet. According to the researchers, from 3 million years ago to about 0.8 million years ago, Northern Hemisphere ice volume appears to have varied mostly with the 41,000 year period of obliquity – the periodic shift in the direction or tilt of Earth's axis. However, summer insolation (incoming solar radiation), which is widely believed to be the major influence on high-latitude climate and ice volume change, is typically dominated by the 23,000 year precessional period – the slow "wobble" of the Earth on its axis. "Because summer insolation is controlled by precession, and summer heating controls ice sheet mass balance, it is difficult to understand why the ice volume record is dominated by the obliquity frequency," said Dr. Raymo. "It's not a complete mismatch, but the precession frequency we think should be strong in geological records is not." The new model proposes that during this time, ice volume changes occurred in both the Northern Hemisphere and Antarctica, each controlled by different amounts of local summer insolation paced by precession. "The reason the frequency is not observable in records is because ice volume change occurred at both poles, but out of phase with each other. When ice was growing in the Northern Hemisphere, it was melting in the Southern," said Raymo. The team believes scientists have been operating under the assumption that Antarctica has been exceptionally stable for 3 million years and very difficult to change climatically. "We don't tend to think of ice volume in that region as varying significantly, even on geologic time scales," said Raymo. "However, only a modest change in Antarctic ice mass is required to "cancel" a much larger Northern ice volume signal." Records used to measure the ice volume, such as sea levels, integrate the whole world. According to Raymo, the new model demonstrates that while the precession frequency is actually strong in ice volume changes at each pole, in geologic records Northern and Southern hemisphere ice volume trends act to cancel each other out at this frequency. The paper, which was published online today and will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Science, proposes that the Antarctic ice sheet is more dynamic and far more capable of change than previously believed. "If our theory holds true, it is a cause for concern with regard to climate changes not associated with orbital patterns as well," said Raymo. Founded in 1839, Boston University is an internationally recognized institution of higher education and research. With more than 30,000 students, it is the fourth largest independent university in the United States. BU contains 17 colleges and schools along with a number of multi-disciplinary centers and institutes which are central to the school's research and teaching mission. Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Feb 2009 Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.
Visualization built by Greg Shirah and Tom Bridgman, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio. Caption by Mike Carlowicz You've seen the pattern in science class when you laid bits of iron around a bar magnet. The invisible force field around the magnet becomes suddenly visible when the iron filings fall into line. The iron-cored Earth behaves like a great magnet, and scientists have spent a century exploring its shape and structure. The visualization above shows the magnetic field around Earth—the magnetosphere—as it might look from space. This view is conceptual, but based on real science observations that have been made since the beginning of the Space Age. The orange and blue lines depict the opposite north and south polarity of Earth's field lines. The field lines are not actually visible, but they can be detected by sensors that count atomic particles—charged protons and electrons moving in the space around Earth. Unlike the symmetrical pattern of the iron filings and magnet, the magnetosphere is pushed in on the side facing the Sun and stretched out in the Earth's shadow. This is caused by the solar wind, a stream of high-speed particles flowing out from the Sun and carrying the signature of its own magnetic field. Like the ozone layer, the magnetosphere is important to life on Earth because it protects us from most of the harmful radiation and hot plasma from the Sun, deflecting it into space. The magnetic field is constantly buffeted by our nearest star's emissions, which can lead to electrical currents flowing in the space around Earth—currents that can disrupt radio transmissions and damage satellites in a phenomenon known as space weather. They can also produce beautiful auroras. - Carlowicz, M. and R.E. Lopez (2002) Storms from the Sun: The Emerging Science of Space Weather. Accessed April 22, 2011. - NASA (n.d.) Storms from the Sun poster. Accessed April 22, 2011. - NASA (n.d.) The Exploration of Earth's Magnetosphere. Accessed April 22, 2011. - Windows to the Universe (n.d.) The Earth's Magnetic Field. Accessed April 22, 2011. This image originally appeared on the Earth Observatory. Click here to view the full, original record.
Calculating the Acceleration of an Object in Simple Harmonic Motion In physics, you can calculate the acceleration of an object in simple harmonic motion as it moves in a circle; all you need to know is the object’s path radius and angular velocity. You can find the displacement of an object undergoing simple harmonic motion with the equation and you can find the object’s velocity with the equation But you have another factor to account for when describing an object in simple harmonic motion: its acceleration at any particular point. How do you figure it out? No sweat. When an object is going around in a circle, the acceleration is the centripetal acceleration, which is (that is, the angular velocity in the direction of the [constant] axis of rotation). And because r = A — the amplitude — you get the following equation: This equation represents the relationship between centripetal acceleration, a, and angular velocity, To go from a reference circle to simple harmonic motion, you take the component of the acceleration in one dimension — the y direction here — which looks like this: The negative sign indicates that the y component of the acceleration is always directed opposite the displacement (the ball always accelerates toward the equilibrium point). And because where t represents time, you get the following equation for acceleration: Now you have the equation to find the acceleration of an object at any point while it’s moving in simple harmonic motion. For example, say that your phone rings, and you pick it up. You hear Hello? from the earpiece. Hmm, you think. I wonder what the maximum acceleration of the diaphragm in the phone is. The diaphragm (a metal disk that acts like an eardrum) in your phone undergoes a motion very similar to simple harmonic motion, so calculating its acceleration isn’t any problem. Measuring carefully, you note that the amplitude of the diaphragm’s motion is about So far, so good. Human speech is in the 1.0-kilohertz (1,000 hertz) frequency range, so you have the frequency, And you know that the maximum acceleration equals the following: You get a value of about 3,950 meters per second2. That seems like a large acceleration, and indeed it is; it’s about 403 times the magnitude of the acceleration due to gravity! Wow, you say. That’s an incredible acceleration to pack into such a small piece of hardware. What? says the impatient person on the phone. Are you doing physics again?
"Chocolate Chip Cookies for Lunch!" In order for children to learn to read and spell words, they need to understand that a phoneme represented by more than one letter and that each letter can represent phonemes. This lesson will help children recognize what we call digraphs (two letters that make only one sound). An easy digraph to start with is ch = /ch/. Children will learn to recognize spelling and reading words that contain the digraph in them. They will know that c and h together make the chalkboard, chalk, dry-erase boards and markers for the students, letterboxes and letters for each student, list of real and pseudo words chat, chimp, rach, tich, lunch, chick, check), Choco-Louie books,chocolate chip cookies for each student, and letterboxes and needed letters (c,h,o,p,i,n,r,l,u,a,m,e,s,t,c) for the 1. To begin this lesson, I will begin by the sounds that c and h makes respectively. Then I will explain that when we put the two letters together it different sound like /ch/. "Today we are going to learn that when you put the letter c and the letter h together it makes the sound /ch/. We are going to talk about the way our mouths move when we say /ch/. Watch my mouth as I say chain. Can everyone make that sound with me? Very good!" 2. I will then write the words chad, chunk, and much on the board. I will read the words to the students and then have the students read the words with me. Next, I will read the words more slowly, dramatizing the /ch/ sound. I will circle the ch in each word as we read it. Then I will have the students read the words again with the digraph circled and have then dramatize the 3. Next I will write a tongue twister on the board. "Charlie chews his chocolate in his chair." I will have each student write this sentence on their boards and as we read it /ch/) they will circle the digraph in each word. After reading them out loud and providing appropriate time, I will call on students to come to the board and digraph in front of the class. 4. Next I will do a Letterbox Lesson. "I want everyone to get out their letterboxes and put three boxes showing." I will then pass out the letters they will need and tell them to put their letters on the side. I will then model for them how to do a letterbox word (they will already be familiar with this, but hurts). "If I want to spell chip in my letterboxes, I will think /ch/ - /iiii/ - /p/, and place the make each sound in a different box." I will demonstrate this on the overhead projector. I will explain why the c and the h are taped together. "Why did I tape the c and h together? That's right, because they make one sound, so they go in one box, very good." Next I will slowly give them the words and have them complete the each word. Words will be: (3) chop, chin, rich; (4) lunch, champ, chest; (5) crunch. "Great job class, you have all done very well spelling these words. Now I'm going to put them on the overhead and we are going to read them together." I will spell the words one at a time and have the students read them. 5. For the reading portion of the lesson I will pass out the books Choco-Louie to the class. Book talk: Louie loves chocolate and he is challenged that he can't go a week without having some. Do you think he can do it? I will then pass out one chocolate chip cookie per child (no allergies I presume). I will then read the book aloud as the students follow along and have the students raise up their each time they hear the /ch/ sound. I will wrap up the lesson by giving each child a list of real words. "I am going to give everyone a list of words I printed out. Some of them are real and some of them are fake words. Don't let that bother you, just break the words up into sounds and I'm going to walk around and you read them." (chal, chat, chimp, rach, tich, lunch, chick, check) I will let them practice reading the words aloud while I come by listen to each student read the words while pointing to each Eldredge, J. Lloyd. Teaching Decoding in Holistic Classrooms. Prentice-Hall. 1995. pp. Murray, Bruce A. and Theresa Letterbox Lesson: A Hands-on Approach for Teaching Decoding." The Reading Teacher. Vol. 52, No. 6. March 1999. pp. 664-650. – "Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies" by Tamara Hill http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/guides/roddambr.html– "Ch, Ch, Chocolate" by Melissa Click here to go back to Beginnings!
June 2009 Archives Superposition means putting one thing on top of another. Nature does it all the time, but it is only in the past thousand years or so that we have worked out how to exploit it. Ibn Sina, an 11th-century Persian better known in the West as Avicenna, understood how Nature piles younger sediment on top of older, and Leonardo came very close. The first person to articulate the Principle of Superposition clearly, though, was a 17th-century Dane, Steno: In any pile of sediment, the youngest is on top and the oldest is on the bottom. It is an idea so blindingly obvious as to sound stupid, but for a long time the obviousness blinded us to its potential: depth in the pile is equivalent to time before the date of the top. With patience and hard work, there is a historical record waiting there for us to decode. There are exceptions that prove the rule. For example folding can overturn the layers. Little beasts that live just under the sea floor can blur the layers by burrowing. In glaciers, where the accumulating snow is a sediment just as much as the mud on the sea floor, the main problems are flow, which stretches and squeezes the layers, and refreezing of meltwater, which mixes this year's accumulation with that of earlier years. A satisfactory solution is to drill at the summit of an ice sheet, where there is no melting and the flow rate is negligible. The payoff has been invaluable. Ice cores give us our most detailed picture of the Earth's history over the past million years. We have barely begun to unravel the story. The wealth of incident in the story is so rich that it is hard to know how to pick and choose, but a recent technical advance by Elizabeth Thomas and colleagues makes a good start. They cut slices just 2 millimetres thick from a 4.5-metre section of a core from the interior of the Greenland Ice Sheet. This section, 2070 metres beneath the surface, is estimated to represent the years from 36,401 to 36,169 BC - at a rate of 7 to 11 samples per year. The assignment of calendar years is a bit dodgy. The dates could be out by more than 1400 years. But the relative error, from bottom to top of the section, is only about three years, and the march of the seasons all those years ago can be seen distinctly in the varying concentrations of dissolved ions. We also learn interesting facts such as that 36,263 BC was a rather dry year, while 36,262 BC was so-so and 36,261 BC rather snowy. There is more to this work than minute detail. It tells the story of the transition from a full glacial state to the warm climatic stage DO-8. The last ice age is peppered with these DO or Dansgaard-Oeschger events, warmer episodes that lasted 1000-1500 years and began abruptly. The authors are properly cautious about interpretation. Their aim was more to show what attention to detail can uncover than to write the last word about the transition to DO-8. But they do suggest that the transition lasted just 21 years, during which snowfall increased by a half and temperature rose by 11.4 °C. This last number calls for particular caution. It needs to be seen in context, because it probably represents a local rather than a global change, and there are some technical complications to be sorted out. But at face value it implies warming at 0.5°C per year, a hundred times faster than the global warming of the 20th century and ten times faster than some extreme predictions for the 21st century. Dansgaard-Oeschger transitions are not like the warming that is about to happen this century. For one thing, they are almost certainly not due to increases in greenhouse-gas concentrations, at least not primarily. They are more probably related to abrupt changes in the circulation of the north Atlantic Ocean. But they do share the attribute of abruptness with our near future, and that makes them intensely interesting. Avicenna and Leonardo would have understood why. With the climate conference in Copenhagen in December seen by many as the make-or-break event, the EU position is relatively clear- a 20% by 2020 cut in emissions (from 1990 levels), unless a good global agreement can be reached, when the target would be raised to 30%. The UK is amongst the leaders in pushing for high targets. The Budget in April set what was claimed as the world's first carbon budget, as required by the new Climate Change Act, with a legally binding 34% reduction in emissions by 2020. The government said it will 'increase the level of ambition of carbon budgets once a satisfactory global deal on climate change is reached'. Longer term, there is a firm commitment to an 80% cut by 2050. While welcome, all that will mean very little if the US and China don't come up with decent targets. The good news from the USA is that, after years of denial under Bush, the US government now sees greenhouse emissions as a major issue: the Environmental Protection Agency is now regulating them. And progress is being made on national targets. Against strong opposition, the House of Representatives has just voted 219 to 212 to bind the US to cutting carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 and by 83% by 2050. It also agreed that a national carbon 'cap and trade' system should be established and to a 15% 2020 target for electricity from renewables. However this has still all to be passed by Senate- where opposition is likely to be even stronger. The opposition has already led to watering down of targets. For example, the draft US Clean Energy act called for a 20% cut on 2005 emission levels by 2020, and for the US to get 25% of its electricity from renewables by 2025. The fossil lobby wanted just a 6% cut by 2020 and lower renewable targets. Even so, the emission level now agreed by the House of Representatives (17%) is a significant compromise and the 15% target for electricity from renewables is an even bigger compromise, especially since it seems 12% could be allowed in some regions with poor resources, and energy efficiency gains may be allowed as a substitute for some renewables. In any case, even if finally passed into law through Senate, these are just paper targets. The crucial thing is the proposed new US Carbon trading system - a key element in translating the targets into reality. Indeed, although much was made of the Â£150 billion over ten years that Obama allocated to renewables and other green energy projects earlier this year, as part of the US Economic stimulus package, much of that funding will only materialise if the carbon trading system goes ahead. This may explain why the very large stimulus allocation (around 10 times current support levels) was not fought much by Republicans- they may have been waiting to block it at source by opposing the Carbon trading system. If that is proves to be the case, the fear is that the new proposals won't get through in time for the USA to make a clearly positive contribution at the Copenhagen conference. While this may be a problem, it seems that the simple fact that Obama is now taking the US into climate negotiations has been enough for the Chinese to engage in the process more fruitfully - and that in turn has helped Obama, since one of the main reasons for opposition to the Kyoto protocol in the US was that it didn't apply to newly developing countries like China, whose emissions were expanding rapidly. They have actually recently overtaken the US. But China now seems to be thinking in terms of, if not absolute cuts, then at least a commitment to the reductions in the growth of its rapidly expanding carbon emissions. Su Wei, a leading figure in China's climate change negotiating team, said that officials were considering introducing a national target that would limit emissions relative to economic growth in the country's next 5-year plan from 2011.'China hasn't reached the stage where we can reduce overall emissions, but we can reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity.' i.e. carbon emissions/GNP. Whether an agreement will be reached on that before the Copenhagen conference remains to be seen. The stakes are high- for Obama and for the world. The EU is pushing hard, and, whatever might be happening at home, the USA seems to be bending over backwards to get a global agreement. It has proposed that developing nations like China should not be required to commit to specific emission targets, but should be asked to commit to boosting energy efficiency standards and improving the take-up of renewable energy. And there are positive signs, with talk of China being able to go beyond the current target of getting 15% of all energy from renewables by 2020, to 18% and possibly 20% - on a par with the EU and well ahead of the USA. We may make it yet. Waxman-Markey, a bill "to create clean energy jobs, achieve energy independence, reduce global warming pollution and transition to a clean energy economy" is voted on by end of this week in the House." A lot of attention has highlighted the global warming parts of the bill, and rightly so. In the current draft, the emission reduction target is 17% reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. This is not more than 4% reduction by 1990 level and may be not enough to persuade China, Europe and other world regions to get tougher on their own targets. Also, potentially ineffective offsets can be purchased, hence avoiding emission reduction at the smokestack. However, the bill is surprisingly comprehensive in addressing also large-scale clean energy deployment, sustainable transportation, smart grid advances and transmission issues. All these measures support a transition to a clean energy economy, as the bill claims. In particular, Waxman-Markey holds quite some promise, as it - aims to invest $190 billion into renewable energies - provides grants for transmission infrastructure and requires coordination of electricity transmission planning with the goal of building out the grid to facilitate deployment of renewables (i.e., brings the wind energy of the Mid-West to urban centers) - asks regional electric grid planning to take into account all significant demand-side and supply-side options, including energy efficiency, distributed generation, renewable energy and zero-carbon electricity generation technologies, smart-grid technologies and practices, demand response, electricity storage, voltage regulation technologies, and even more detailed measures. (Thanks to Cathy Kunckel for pointing this out.) And this transition is actually the bottom line. Make it more lucrative to invest in renewable energies than in coal plans, more attractive to move into mixed-use neighborhoods with high-quality public transit than relying on gas-guzzling monsters in ex-urbia. If the bill heads into this directions, it will be a huge success for avoiding disastrous human-made climate change. Currently, utilities have expertise in operating coal plants and know this market. However, when coal plants get a little bit more expensive to operate and renewable energies get a little cheaper to deploy, utilities start to reconsider their investment decisions. And one point the market may switch over to new technologies, like wind, geothermal and concentrated solar power. The current gradual change can accelerate to a switch in the way our energy economy operates. If that happens, weak targets in emission reductions can much more easily be strengthened; the system dynamics have changed and there is less strong interest anymore in coal plants. One of the emergent technologies is wind. It is mature by now, the market is well developed, and in many locations in the US, wind is cost competitive to conventional sources of energy. With more policy attention on the grid infrastructure, a wave of investment into wind energy within the next years can be expected. For example, a study published in PNAS points out that US wind resources, particularly in the central plain states, could supply 16 times more energy than the current total US demand.
In Independence Hall in Philadelphia on February 22, 1861, where he stopped to speak as he traveled to his inauguration as president of the United States, Lincoln asserted that “the sentiment embodied in” the Declaration of Independence had made the American Revolution a source of “hope to the world for all future time.” Lincoln asked: “Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. If it can't be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful.”Other presidents might have saved the American Union, and other movements might have produced forms of representative government in other countries. But Abraham Lincoln helped to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people” as an ideal for all of humanity would “not perish from the earth.” Lincoln preserved both the United States and its political creed: “The theory of our government is universal freedom.”Few biographers and historians have taken Lincoln’s ideas seriously or placed him in the context of major intellectual traditions. In What Lincoln Believed, the most comprehensive study ever written of the thought of America’s most revered president, Michael Lind provides a resource to the public philosophy that guided Lincoln as a statesman and shaped the United States.Although he is often presented as an idealist dedicated to political abstractions, Lincoln was a pragmatic politician with a lifelong interest in science, technology, and economics. Throughout his career he was a disciple of the Kentucky senator Henry Clay, whose “American System” of government support for industrial capitalism Lincoln promoted when he served in the Illinois statehouse, the U.S. Congress, and the White House.Today Lincoln is remembered for his opposition to slavery and his leadership in guiding the Union to victory in the Civil War. But Lincoln’s thinking about these subjects is widely misunderstood. His deep opposition to slavery was rooted in his allegiance to the ideals of the American Revolution. Only late in his life, however, did Lincoln abandon his support for the policy of “colonizing” black Americans abroad, which he derived from Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson. Lincoln and most of his fellow Republicans opposed the extension of slavery outside of the South because they wanted an all-white West, not a racially integrated society.Although the Great Emancipator was not the Great Integrationist, he was the Great Democrat. In an age in which many argued that only whites were capable of republican government, Lincoln insisted on the universality of human rights and the potential for democracy everywhere. In a century in which liberal and democratic revolutions against monarchy and dictatorship in Europe and Latin America repeatedly had failed, Lincoln believed that liberal democracy as a form of government was on trial in the American Civil War. “Our popular government has often been called an experiment,” Lincoln told the U.S. Congress, insisting that the American people had to prove to the world that “when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets.” If the United States fell apart after the losers in an election took up arms, then people everywhere might conclude that democracy inevitably led to anarchy and “government of the people, by the people, for the people” might well “perish from the earth.”“He loved his country partly because it was his own country, but mostly because it was a free country.” What Lincoln said of Henry Clay could be said of him as well. In What Lincoln Believed, Michael Lind shows the enduring relevance of Lincoln’s vision of the United States as a model of liberty and democracy for the world.
What is a Functor? Chances are you've already used a Functor. You probably use it everyday irrespective of the language you use. Paraphrasing Typeclassopedia: "A Functor represent a container of some sort with the ability to apply a function uniformly to every element of that container". Say we had a List of words and we wanted to find out the lengths of each of those words. We would use a List[String], find the length of each String and get a List[Int] in return. In scala we could do something like: We applied the length function to each element of the List "container". What has also happened is that a List[String] has been converted to a List[Int]. We started with a List of words and we end up with a List of word-lengths. Functors operate on type constructors - which are types that need additional types parameters to be constructed. List[T], Map[K, V], Option[T] and Either[L,R] etc are all type constructors as they need one or more types to be constructed. A functor can be defined as: Assuming the F type constructor was List, the above trait could be implemented as: All Functor implementations traverse over the type supplied and apply the function f, to each element within that type. In the case of List, f is applied to each element of the List. We could use the ListFunctor as: This gives us the same results as before, but we've abstracted over the List type constructor and we can covert from List[A] -> List[B] where A and B are any types. Import points to note are: 1. The container remains the same (F or in the above case List) 2. The supplied function f, works on the value contained within the container. As per Typeclassopedia: "fmap applies a function to each element of the container without altering the structure of the container" Let's create our own type constructor to hold a single value. Let's call it Holder: Now let's define a Functor for Holder: Here's how we use it: We converted a Holder[Int] -> Holder[String] by mapping across the value in the Holder. There are 2 Functor laws: 1. mapping with identity over every item in a container has no effect 2. mapping a composition of two functions over any item in a container is the same as mapping the first function and then mapping the second. Let's see if HolderFunctor obeys these 2 laws: Looks like it does obey both laws. :) Why use Functors? So here's the real question: Why use Functors? By defining Functors for each container you are interested in, you could define a single function that fmaps across any container containing any type: Let's try and call it with Holder: Let's create an implicit Functor[Holder]: Let's try and use it with Functor[List]: Let's create an implicit Functor[List]: What if we want to use it with Option? We simply create an implicit Functor[Option]: We can now call fmap with Option: Verifying the laws for Functor[Option]: We could further simplify fmap as: Functor has allowed us to define a single fmap function to map across any container for any value type! :) Here's a listing of the snippets:
Checklist for the Critical Areas of Mathematics-Grades K-5 Classroom Teachers Grades K-5 This document provides support for teachers as they as transition to Common Core Standards. It draws attention to the most critical skills for their grade. If more detailed information is needed, teachers should refer to the Common Core State Standards for a deeper understanding and more detailed information. The CCSS can be found on the ISBE website or at commoncore.org. Suggested Use for these Documents: - Teachers could assess their students on the topics that have been deemed critical areas for their grade (K – 5). These are not all the topics to be taught, but should be emphasized as critical areas for the Math Common Core Standards. - Teachers could use the document to record each child’s progress in the critical areas. - Teachers could use the Checklist as a guide as they modify their instruction to better align to CCSS. Send questions and comments to: The document is in Microsoft Word, so teachers should feel free to modify to best meet their needs. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ Polar Bear Status Report Polar bears are a potentially endangered species living in the circumpolar north. They are animals which know no boundaries. They pad across the ice from Russia to Alaska, from Canada to Greenland and onto Norway's Svalbard archipelago. No adequate census exists on which to base a worldwide population estimate, but biologists use a working figure of 20,000 to 25,000 bears with about sixty percent of those living in Canada. In areas where long-term studies are available, populations are showing signs of stress due to shrinking sea ice. Canada's Western Hudson Bay population has dropped 22% since the early 1980s. The declines have been directly linked to an earlier ice break-up on Hudson Bay. A long-term study of the Southern Beaufort Sea population, which spans the northern coast of Alaska and western Canada, has revealed a decline in cub survival rates and in the weight and skull size of adult males. Such declines were observed in Western Hudson Bay bears prior to the population drop there. Another population listed as declining is Baffin Bay. According to the most recent report from the Polar Bear Specialist Group, the harvest levels from Nunavut when combined with those from Greenland (which were thought to be much lower than they actually are) has resulted in this shared population being in a non-sustainable harvest situation, meaning the population is at great risk of a serious decline. The harvest is thought to be several times above what is sustainable. The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group reclassified the polar bear as a vulnerable species on the IUCN's Red List of Endangered Species at their most recent meeting (Seattle, 2005). They reported that of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, five are declining, five are stable, two are increasing, and seven have insufficient data on which to base a decision. On May 14, 2008, the U.S. Department of the Interior reclassified the polar bear as a Threatened Species under the Endangered Species Act, citing concerns about sea ice loss. Canada and Russia list the polar bear as a "species of concern." Some Native communities in Canada have been reporting increasing numbers of polar bears on land. Traditional hunters believe this indicates an increased population, although the increased presence on land may, in fact, be related to shrinking sea ice and changes in the bears' distribution patterns. Data is needed to understand the change. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service states, "In the declining polar bear population of Canada's Western Hudson Bay, extensive scientific studies have indicated that the increased observation of bears on land is a result of changing distribution patterns and a result of changes in the accessibility of sea ice habitat." Climate change is the main threat to polar bears today. A diminishing ice pack directly affects polar bears, as sea ice is the platform from which they hunt seals. Although the Arctic has experienced warm periods before, the present shrinking of the Arctic's sea ice is rapid and unprecedented. In the 1960s and 1970s, hunting was the major threat to the bears. At the time, polar bears were under such severe survival pressure from hunters that a landmark international accord was reached, despite the tensions and suspicions of the Cold War. The International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears was signed in Oslo, November 15, 1973 by the five nations with polar bear populations: Canada, Denmark (Greenland, Norway, the U.S., and the former U.S.S.R. The polar bear nations agreed to prohibit random, unregulated sport hunting of polar bears and to outlaw hunting the bears from aircraft and icebreakers as had been common practice. The agreement also obliged each nation to protect polar bear denning areas and migration patterns and to conduct research relating to the conservation and management of polar bears. Finally, the nations agreed to share their polar bear research findings with each other. Member scientists of the Polar Bear Specialist Group now meet every three to four years under the auspices of the IUCN World Conservation Union to coordinate their research on polar bears throughout the Arctic. The Oslo agreement was one of the first and most successful international conservation measures enacted in the 20th century. Its legacy continues today, with member scientists from each nation continuing to work together in face new threats to the bears including climate change, pollution, industrial activities, and poaching.
Contrary to their image as knuckle-dragging brutes, the Neanderthals on television play tennis and attend cocktail parties — and sell auto insurance. In reality, these mysterious fellow hominids died out about 30,000 years ago. Today, an international research team is extracting DNA from Neanderthals who were, literally, cavemen. (Their bones were found in Croatian caves.) What can we learn from the DNA of extinct humans? "It can tell us a story about human history," says Webb Miller, Penn State professor of biology and computer science. Miller has been a leader in several major genome sequencing projects, which decipher the genetic code of all the chromosomes of an individual. Comparing the DNA sequences of modern and ancient humans can show us similarities and differences in our basic biology, he notes. It can tell us which prehistoric populations died out completely, and which contributed genes to modern humans. It can even be used to reconstruct the appearance of ancient humans. In 2007, scientists working on a single gene found that some Neanderthals may have had light skin and red hair. As Miller explains, tens of thousands of years ago modern humans may have co-existed with Neanderthals, who were not Homo sapiens like us, but a different species, Homo neanderthalensis. Despite their differences, some say it's likely that a few prehistoric one-night stands occurred during that time. The question is whether they left a lasting impression in the form of genes shared between Neanderthals and modern humans for things like speech, language, and brain development. Genetic information can also tell us about the travel patterns of ancient humans, says Miller. "The genome sequence of a man who lived in Greenland 4,000 years ago was published recently, and that information is being used to trace the movement of human populations." His genome tells us that this individual was part of a wave of people who invaded Greenland from Northeastern Siberia, about 5,000 years ago, Miller says, when it was already populated with people who had arrived over 5,000 years earlier. The data also show that he resembled modern-day Asians, with brown eyes, and dark skin and hair. He may also have been going bald. Getting DNA from ancient humans isn't typically an easy task, Miller says, but the scientists who sequenced the Greenland sample were lucky: they were able to take the DNA from a tuft of hair, which Miller and colleagues have shown to be a particularly good source material. The hair was found in permafrost, which also helped preserve the DNA. The question almost everybody asks about genome mapping, says Miller, is "Can we bring them back? Can we clone these ancient prehumans or extinct animals?" That's definitely not the point of his research. Rather, he says, sequencing genomes from extinct and living individuals can illuminate the diversity in a species and its ancestors. For humans, this information can be valuable for understanding variations in disease susceptibility and response to treatment. For animals, sequence information is used to maintain diversity, for example in captive breeding programs for endangered species. Rather than bringing back humans or animals from extinction, Miller quips, "I'm just trying to keep the ones we've got." He has communicated with the scientists on the Neanderthal genome project, and says they are preparing to publish their results. That means we might know soon if we have anything in common with the guys in the commercials, besides a need for cheap car insurance. Explore further: Actor Johnny Depp immortalized in ancient fossil find
Claudia Goldin introduces her students to the economic aspects of polygamy and fertility through "fun quizzes" that lead students to reevaluate their preconceptions. Before class, the instructor sends out notes to accompany the readings. Then there are short quizzes in class about concepts in the readings. For example, the quiz might include a counterintuitive statement, "As you compare a world in which polygamy is allowed to one where it is not, the gains to women will be greater. What is the reason for this?" and multiple choice answers. The students have two minutes to talk about the question with each other, then they discuss the answer as a class. The objective of this activity is to engage the students in a new topic. See an example of a "fun quiz," see the powerpoint below.

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