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Metadata Report for BODC Series Reference Number 1016859
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Narrative Documents
Sea-Bird Dissolved Oxygen Sensor SBE 43 and SBE 43F
The SBE 43 is a dissolved oxygen sensor designed for marine applications. It incorporates a high-performance Clark polarographic membrane with a pump that continuously plumbs water through it, preventing algal growth and the development of anoxic conditions when the sensor is taking measurements.
Two configurations are available: SBE 43 produces a voltage output and can be incorporated with any Sea-Bird CTD that accepts input from a 0-5 volt auxiliary sensor, while the SBE 43F produces a frequency output and can be integrated with an SBE 52-MP (Moored Profiler CTD) or used for OEM applications. The specifications below are common to both.
|Plastic or titanium
0.5 mil- fast response, typical for profile applications
1 mil- slower response, typical for moored applications
|Depth rating
600 m (plastic) or 7000 m (titanium)
10500 m titanium housing available on request
|Measurement range
|120% of surface saturation
|Initial accuracy
|2% of saturation
|Typical stability
|0.5% per 1000 h
Further details can be found in the manufacturer's specification sheet.
Oceans 2025 Cruise D346 CTD instrument description
CTD unit and auxiliary sensors
The CTD system used on cruise D346 was a NOC 24-way stainless steel frame system consisting of a Sea-Bird 911 plus, with a Sea-Bird 32 carousel. The CTD frame was equipped with 20L Niskin bottles. In addition the CTD was fitted with a number of scientific sensors as detailed in the table below. During the cruise various problems with sensors required them to be replaced on the CTD frame (see Section 1 of the D346 cruise report). The table below shows which sensors were attached to the CTD frame and on which casts.
|Serial Number
|Last calibration date
|SBE 911+ deck unit
|SBE 32 carousel
|Primary Temperature SBE-03P
|6 October 2009
|Secondary Temperature SBE-03P
|25 August 2009
|Secondary Temperature SBE-03P
|08 May 2009
|Primary Conductivity SBE-04C
|5 October 2009
|Primary Conductivity SBE-04C
|25 June 2009
|Primary Conductivity SBE-04C
|8 May 2009
|Secondary Conductivity SBE-04C
|10 September 2009
|Secondary Conductivity SBE-04C
|05 October 2009
|Dissolved oxygen sensor SBE-43
|22 April 2009
|Dissolved oxygen sensor SBE-43
|17 October 2008
|20 October 2008
|Benthos PSA-916T Altimeter
|Chelsea Aquatracka Fluorometer
|28 May 2009
|Chelsea Alphatracka Transmissometer
|28 May 2008
|RDI 300kHz Workhorse LADCP (aluminium cased)
|26 May 2009
|RDI 300kHz Workhorse LADCP (titanium cased)
|19 November 2009
|RDI 300kHz Workhorse LADCP (titanium cased)
|19 November 2009
Sea-Bird Electronics SBE 911 and SBE 917 series CTD profilers
The SBE 911 and SBE 917 series of conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) units are used to collect hydrographic profiles, including temperature, conductivity and pressure as standard. Each profiler consists of an underwater unit and deck unit or SEARAM. Auxiliary sensors, such as fluorometers, dissolved oxygen sensors and transmissometers, and carousel water samplers are commonly added to the underwater unit.
Underwater unit
The CTD underwater unit (SBE 9 or SBE 9 plus) comprises a protective cage (usually with a carousel water sampler), including a main pressure housing containing power supplies, acquisition electronics, telemetry circuitry, and a suite of modular sensors. The original SBE 9 incorporated Sea-Bird's standard modular SBE 3 temperature sensor and SBE 4 conductivity sensor, and a Paroscientific Digiquartz pressure sensor. The conductivity cell was connected to a pump-fed plastic tubing circuit that could include auxiliary sensors. Each SBE 9 unit was custom built to individual specification. The SBE 9 was replaced in 1997 by an off-the-shelf version, termed the SBE 9 plus, that incorporated the SBE 3 plus (or SBE 3P) temperature sensor, SBE 4C conductivity sensor and a Paroscientific Digiquartz pressure sensor. Sensors could be connected to a pump-fed plastic tubing circuit or stand-alone.
Temperature, conductivity and pressure sensors
The conductivity, temperature, and pressure sensors supplied with Sea-Bird CTD systems have outputs in the form of variable frequencies, which are measured using high-speed parallel counters. The resulting count totals are converted to numeric representations of the original frequencies, which bear a direct relationship to temperature, conductivity or pressure. Sampling frequencies for these sensors are typically set at 24 Hz.
The temperature sensing element is a glass-coated thermistor bead, pressure-protected inside a stainless steel tube, while the conductivity sensing element is a cylindrical, flow-through, borosilicate glass cell with three internal platinum electrodes. Thermistor resistance or conductivity cell resistance, respectively, is the controlling element in an optimized Wien Bridge oscillator circuit, which produces a frequency output that can be converted to a temperature or conductivity reading. These sensors are available with depth ratings of 6800 m (aluminium housing) or 10500 m (titanium housing). The Paroscientific Digiquartz pressure sensor comprises a quartz crystal resonator that responds to pressure-induced stress, and temperature is measured for thermal compensation of the calculated pressure.
Additional sensors
Optional sensors for dissolved oxygen, pH, light transmission, fluorescence and others do not require the very high levels of resolution needed in the primary CTD channels, nor do these sensors generally offer variable frequency outputs. Accordingly, signals from the auxiliary sensors are acquired using a conventional voltage-input multiplexed A/D converter (optional). Some Sea-Bird CTDs use a strain gauge pressure sensor (Senso-Metrics) in which case their pressure output data is in the same form as that from the auxiliary sensors as described above.
Deck unit or SEARAM
Each underwater unit is connected to a power supply and data logging system: the SBE 11 (or SBE 11 plus) deck unit allows real-time interfacing between the deck and the underwater unit via a conductive wire, while the submersible SBE 17 (or SBE 17 plus) SEARAM plugs directly into the underwater unit and data are downloaded on recovery of the CTD. The combination of SBE 9 and SBE 17 or SBE 11 are termed SBE 917 or SBE 911, respectively, while the combinations of SBE 9 plus and SBE 17 plus or SBE 11 plus are termed SBE 917 plus or SBE 911 plus.
Specifications for the SBE 9 plus underwater unit are listed below:
|Initial accuracy
|Resolution at 24 Hz
|Response time
|-5 to 35°C
|0.065 sec
|0 to 7 S m-1
|0.0003 S m-1
|0.00004 S m-1
|0.065 sec (pumped)
|0 to full scale (1400, 2000, 4200, 6800 or 10500 m)
|0.015% of full scale
|0.001% of full scale
|0.015 sec
Further details can be found in the manufacturer's specification sheet.
Aquatracka fluorometer
The Chelsea Instruments Aquatracka is a logarithmic response fluorometer. It uses a pulsed (5.5 Hz) xenon light source discharging between 320 and 800 nm through a blue filter with a peak transmission of 420 nm and a bandwidth at half maximum of 100 nm. A red filter with sharp cut off, 10% transmission at 664 nm and 678 nm, is used to pass chlorophyll-a fluorescence to the sample photodiode.
The instrument may be deployed either in a through-flow tank, on a CTD frame or moored with a data logging package.
Further details can be found in the manufacturer's specification sheet.
Chelsea Technologies Group ALPHAtracka and ALPHAtracka II transmissometers
The Chelsea Technologies Group ALPHAtracka (the Mark I) and its successor, the ALPHAtracka II (the Mark II), are both accurate (< 0.3 % fullscale) transmissometers that measure the beam attenuation coefficient at 660 nm. Green (565 nm), yellow (590 nm) and blue (470 nm) wavelength variants are available on special order.
The instrument consists of a Transmitter/Reference Assembly and a Detector Assembly aligned and spaced apart by an open support frame. The housing and frame are both manufactured in titanium and are pressure rated to 6000 m depth.
The Transmitter/Reference housing is sealed by an end cap. Inside the housing an LED light source emits a collimated beam through a sealed window. The Detector housing is also sealed by an end cap. A signal photodiode is placed behind a sealed window to receive the collimated beam from the Transmitter.
The primary difference between the ALPHAtracka and ALPHAtracka II is that the Alphatracka II is implemented with surface-mount technology; this has enabled a much smaller diameter pressure housing to be used while retaining exactly the same optical train as in the Mark I. Data from the Mark II version are thus fully compatible with that already obtained with the Mark I. The performance of the Mark II is further enhanced by two electronic developments from Chelsea Technologies Group - firstly, all items are locked in a signal nulling loop of near infinite gain and, secondly, the signal output linearity is inherently defined by digital circuitry only.
Among other advantages noted above, these features ensure that the optical intensity of the Mark II, indicated by the output voltage, is accurately represented by a straight line interpolation between a reading near full-scale under known conditions and a zero reading when blanked off.
For optimum measurements in a wide range of environmental conditions, the Mark I and Mark II are available in 5 cm, 10 cm and 25 cm path length versions. Output is default factory set to 2.5 volts but can be adjusted to 5 volts on request.
Further details about the Mark II instrument are available from the Chelsea Technologies Group ALPHAtrackaII specification sheet.
Oceans 2025 Cruise D346 BODC CTD data processing
The data arrived at BODC in 137 MSTAR format files representing the CTD casts conducted during cruise D346. The data contained in the files are the downcast data averaged to a 2db pressure grid. The casts were reformatted to BODC's internal netCDF format. The following table shows the mapping of variables within the MSTAR files to appropriate BODC parameter codes:
|Originator's variable
|Originator's description
|BODC parameter code
|Pressure exerted by the water column
|Manufacturer's calibration applied.
|Temperature of the water column by CTD
This parameter represents the first choice sensor data, which was collected from the secondary temperature sensor for casts 1-49 and the primary temperature sensor for casts 50-135, 200 and 202.
|Temperature of the water column by CTD (primary sensor)
Data not transferred for casts 50-135, 200 and 202 as these data were deemed to be the first choice sensor data and have been duplicated in the temp channel.
|Temperature of the water column by CTD (secondary sensor)
Data not transferred for casts 1-49 as these data were deemed to be the first choice sensor data and have been duplicated in the temp channel.
|Electrical conductivity of the water column
Calibrated by data originator with discrete salinity samples.This parameter represents the first choice sensor data, which was collected from the secondary conductivity sensor for casts 1-49 and the primary conductivity sensor for casts 50-135, 200 and 202.
|Electrical conductivity of the water column (Primary sensor)
Data not transferred for casts 50-135, 200 and 202 as these data were deemed to be the first choice sensor data and have been duplicated in the cond channel
|Electrical conductivity of the water column (Secondary sensor)
Data not transferred for casts 1-49 as these data were deemed to be the first choice sensor data and have been duplicated in the cond channel.
|Practical salinity of the water column
|Calculated by data originator using calibrated conductivity.
This parameter represents the first choice sensor data, which was derived from data collected from the secondary conductivity sensor for casts 1-49 and the primary conductivity sensor for casts 50-135, 200 and 202.
|Practical salinity of the water column (Primary sensor data)
|Calculated by data originator using uncalibrated conductivity.
Data not transferred for casts 50-135, 200 and 202 as these data were deemed to be the first choice data and have been duplicated in the psal channel
|Practical salinity of the water column (Secondary sensor data)
|Calculated by data originator using uncalibrated conductivity.
Data not transferred for casts 1-49 as these data were deemed to be the first choice data and have been duplicated in the psal channel
|Concentration of oxygen per unit volume of the water body.
|Unit conversion applied during transfer.
Calibrated by data originator using discrete oxygen samples.
|Concentration of chlorophyll-a per unit volume of the water body
|No unit conversion is necessary as µg/l are equivalent to mg/m3
|Transmittance per length of water body
|Potential temperature of the water column
|Not transferred
|Potential temperature of the water column (Primary sensor)
|Not transferred
|Potential temperature of the water column (Secondary sensor)
|Not transferred
|Depth below surface converted from pressure using UNESCO algorithm
|Not transferred
|Depth below surface by altimeter
|Not transferred
|Time in seconds since the origin defined in the metadata field data_time_origin
|Not transferred
The reformatted data were visualised using the in-house EDSERPLO software. Suspect data were marked by adding an appropriate quality control flag, and missing data marked by setting both the data to an appropriate value and setting the quality control flag. In addition any data outside of the allocated range for each parameter have been flagged as null and values set to absent data value for that parameter.
Detailed metadata and documentation were compiled and linked to the data.
Oceans 2025 Cruise D346 Originator's CTD data processing
Sampling Strategy
A total of 137 CTD casts were performed during the cruise which aimed to attempt to calculate the transport of water and its constituents along a latitude of 24°N, completing a section across the Atlantic from North America to Africa, beginning and ending at the edge of the continental shelf. Of the 137 CTD stations occupied, 2 (Casts 200 and 202) were bottle blank stations run for the CFC team, so the principle data collected along the 24°N section comprised of 135 stations. In addition a number of instruments were mounted onto the CTD frame including an LADCP, fluorometer, transmissometer and a dissolved oxygen sensor. Instruments not pressure rated below 6000m were removed for the duration of the deeper casts (Casts 64-69 and 200). Some data for certain parameters are, therefore, unavailable for deeper casts. The chronological order of the casts were as follows: 1-64, 200, 65-100, 202, 101-135.
Data Processing
Raw CTD data were transferred from the Sea-Bird deck unit to a LINUX machine via Sea-Bird software. The binary files are converted using Sea-Bird processing software (SBE Data Processing v7.19). ALIGNCTD was run to advance the oxygen measurements by 5 seconds, ensuring the calculations of dissolved oxygen concentration are made using measurements from the same parcel of water. CELLTM was run to minimise salinity spiking in steep vertical gradients applying two constants; the thermal anomaly amplitude alpha=0.03 and thermal anomaly time constant 1/ß=7. The ASCII files were converted to MSTAR format, averaging 24Hz data to 1Hz data, and calculating salinity and potential temperature in addition to recording the first choice conductivity-temperature sensor pair for each station.
A correction for downcast-upcast sensor hysteresis was made during the MSTAR processing, applying an algorithm provided by Sea-Bird for oxygen concentration values measured by the SBE 43 sensor.
The algorithm used was as follows:
Oxnewconc = {(Oxygenconc (i) + (Oxnewconc (i-1) x C x D))-(Oxygenconc (i-1) x C)}/D
where D = 1 + H1 x (exponential(P(i)/H2)-1) and C = exponential(-1 x (Time(i)-Time(i-1))/H3)
and i = indexing variable, P = pressure (db), Time = time (seconds), H1 = amplitude of hysteresis correction function (-0.028 for the first oxygen sensor and 0.037 for the second), H2 = function constant (5000 for both oxygen sensors), H3 = time constant for hysteresis (2500 for the first and 1450 for the second oxygen sensor).
In addition a number of minor spurious features were identified in the oxygen and conductivity channels, including spikes associated with CTD telemetry failures and spikes at the beginning and end of a cast where bad start and end scan numbers were chosen. Such problems were resolved during processing by adjusting the start and end scan numbers of files to omit bad data or by removing spikes using a median de-spiking routine.
Further details of this processing routine can be found in the D346 cruise report.
Field Calibrations
Upcast conductivity from the first choice sensor was calibrated against conductivity derived from bottle samples. The final calibration ratios applied to the secondary, second primary and third primary conductivity sensors were 0.9999719, 1.0000574 and 1.0000285, respectively. In addition bottle-CTD conductivity residuals showed some structure against pressure believed to be related to sensor performance. Calibrations were, therefore, applied by correcting conductivity values using an additive factor decided by a pressure lookup table. This table was created for each sensor by calculating median offset in pressure bins. Application of the calibration ratios and pressure corrections reduced rms offset of salinity offset from 0.00128, 0.00238 and 0.00202 to 0.00073, 0.00119 and 0.00064 for the secondary, second primary and third primary conductivity sensors, respectively.
Following the hysteresis correction applied to the oxygen data, upcast oxygen concentrations for each sensor were calibrated against oxygen concentrations derived from bottle samples. For the first oxygen sensor, bottle and CTD oxygen showed a clear linear relationship. Subsequently a multiplicative correction factor, calculated as the median ratio between bottle and CTD oxygen, was applied. This was calculated and applied in bulk for stations 1-22. For stations 23-36 the correction was calculated and applied on a station by station basis to account for the gradual degradation in sensor performance over this period. For the second oxygen sensor, bottle oxygen and CTD oxygen concentration offset was typically > 10µmol/kg, however, a linear relationship was less obvious. Bottle-CTD offset was reduced to ±2µmol/kg by applying a combined second order pressure and first order temperature dependent offset to all data with a potential temperature <7.5°C with the pressure-temperature offset function calculated using a least-squares approach. For data with potential temperature >7.5°C, a simple offset of 7µmol/kg was added.
Project Information
Rapid Climate Change (RAPID) Programme
Rapid Climate Change (RAPID) is a £20 million, six-year (2001-2007) programme of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The programme aims to improve our ability to quantify the probability and magnitude of future rapid change in climate, with a main (but not exclusive) focus on the role of the Atlantic Ocean's Thermohaline Circulation.
Scientific Objectives
- To establish a pre-operational prototype system to continuously observe the strength and structure of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC).
- To support long-term direct observations of water, heat, salt, and ice transports at critical locations in the northern North Atlantic, to quantify the atmospheric and other (e.g. river run-off, ice sheet discharge) forcing of these transports, and to perform process studies of ocean mixing at northern high latitudes.
- To construct well-calibrated and time-resolved palaeo data records of past climate change, including error estimates, with a particular emphasis on the quantification of the timing and magnitude of rapid change at annual to centennial time-scales.
- To develop and use high-resolution physical models to synthesise observational data.
- To apply a hierarchy of modelling approaches to understand the processes that connect changes in ocean convection and its atmospheric forcing to the large-scale transports relevant to the modulation of climate.
- To understand, using model experimentation and data (palaeo and present day), the atmosphere's response to large changes in Atlantic northward heat transport, in particular changes in storm tracks, storm frequency, storm strengths, and energy and moisture transports.
- To use both instrumental and palaeo data for the quantitative testing of models' abilities to reproduce climate variability and rapid changes on annual to centennial time-scales. To explore the extent to which these data can provide direct information about the thermohaline circulation (THC) and other possible rapid changes in the climate system and their impact.
- To quantify the probability and magnitude of potential future rapid climate change, and the uncertainties in these estimates.
Overall 38 projects have been funded by the RAPID programme. These include 4 which focus on Monitoring the Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), and 5 international projects jointly funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Research Council of Norway and NERC.
The RAPID effort to design a system to continuously monitor the strength and structure of the North Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is being matched by comparative funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) for collaborative projects reviewed jointly with the NERC proposals. Three projects were funded by NSF.
A proportion of RAPID funding as been made available for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) as part of NERC's Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI). The SBRI aims to stimulate innovation in the economy by encouraging more high-tech small firms to start up or to develop new research capacities. As a result 4 projects have been funded.
Monitoring the Meridional Overturning Circulation at 26.5N (RAPIDMOC)
Scientific Rationale
There is a northward transport of heat throughout the Atlantic, reaching a maximum of 1.3PW (25% of the global heat flux) around 24.5°N. The heat transport is a balance of the northward flux of a warm Gulf Stream, and a southward flux of cooler thermocline and cold North Atlantic Deep Water that is known as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC). As a consequence of the MOC northwest Europe enjoys a mild climate for its latitude: however abrupt rearrangement of the Atlantic Circulation has been shown in climate models and in palaeoclimate records to be responsible for a cooling of European climate of between 5-10°C. A principal objective of the RAPID programme is the development of a pre-operational prototype system that will continuously observe the strength and structure of the MOC. An initiative has been formed to fulfill this objective and consists of three interlinked projects:
- A mooring array spanning the Atlantic at 26.5°N to measure the southward branch of the MOC (Hirschi et al., 2003 and Baehr et al., 2004).
- Additional moorings deployed in the western boundary along 26.5°N (by Prof. Bill Johns, University of Miami) to resolve transport in the Deep Western Boundary Current (Bryden et al., 2005). These moorings allow surface-to-bottom density profiles along the western boundary, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and eastern boundary to be observed. As a result, the transatlantic pressure gradient can be continuously measured.
- Monitoring of the northward branch of the MOC using submarine telephone cables in the Florida Straits (Baringer et al., 2001) led by Dr Molly Baringer (NOAA/AOML/PHOD).
The entire monitoring array system created by the three projects will be recovered and redeployed annually until 2008 under RAPID funding. From 2008 until 2014 the array will continue to be serviced annually under RAPID-WATCH funding.
The array will be focussed on three regions, the Eastern Boundary (EB), the Mid Atlantic Ridge (MAR) and the Western Boundary (WB). The geographical extent of these regions are as follows:
- Eastern Boundary (EB) array defined as a box with the south-east corner at 23.5°N, 25.5°W and the north-west corner at 29.0°N, 12.0°W
- Mid Atlantic Ridge (MAR) array defined as a box with the south-east corner at 23.0°N, 52.1°W and the north-west corner at 26.5°N, 40.0°W
- Western Boundary (WB) array defined as a box with the south-east corner at 26.0°N, 77.5°W and the north-west corner at 27.5°N, 69.5°W
Baehr, J., Hirschi, J., Beismann, J.O. and Marotzke, J. (2004) Monitoring the meridional overturning circulation in the North Atlantic: A model-based array design study. Journal of Marine Research, Volume 62, No 3, pp 283-312.
Baringer, M.O'N. and Larsen, J.C. (2001) Sixteen years of Florida Current transport at 27N Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 28, No 16, pp3179-3182
Bryden, H.L., Johns, W.E. and Saunders, P.M. (2005) Deep Western Boundary Current East of Abaco: Mean structure and transport. Journal of Marine Research, Volume 63, No 1, pp 35-57.
Hirschi, J., Baehr, J., Marotzke J., Stark J., Cunningham S.A. and Beismann J.O. (2003) A monitoring design for the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 30, No 7, article number 1413 (DOI 10.1029/2002GL016776)
Oceans 2025 - The NERC Marine Centres' Strategic Research Programme 2007-2012
Who funds the programme?
The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funds the Oceans 2025 programme, which was originally planned in the context of NERC's 2002-2007 strategy and later realigned to NERC's subsequent strategy (Next Generation Science for Planet Earth; NERC 2007).
Who is involved in the programme?
The Oceans 2025 programme was designed by and is to be implemented through seven leading UK marine centres. The marine centres work together in coordination and are also supported by cooperation and input from government bodies, universities and other partners. The seven marine centres are:
- National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS)
- Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML)
- Marine Biological Association (MBA)
- Sir Alister Hardy Foundation for Marine Science (SAHFOS)
- Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL)
- Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS)
- Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU)
Oceans2025 provides funding to three national marine facilities, which provide services to the wider UK marine community, in addition to the Oceans 2025 community. These facilities are:
- British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), hosted at POL
- Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL), hosted at POL
- Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa (CCAP), hosted at SAMS
The NERC-run Strategic Ocean Funding Initiative (SOFI) provides additional support to the programme by funding additional research projects and studentships that closely complement the Oceans 2025 programme, primarily through universities.
What is the programme about?
Oceans 2025 sets out to address some key challenges that face the UK as a result of a changing marine environment. The research funded through the programme sets out to increase understanding of the size, nature and impacts of these changes, with the aim to:
- improve knowledge of how the seas behave, not just now but in the future;
- help assess what that might mean for the Earth system and for society;
- assist in developing sustainable solutions for the management of marine resources for future generations;
- enhance the research capabilities and facilities available for UK marine science.
In order to address these aims there are nine science themes supported by the Oceans 2025 programme:
- Climate, circulation and sea level (Theme 1)
- Marine biogeochemical cycles (Theme 2)
- Shelf and coastal processes (Theme 3)
- Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (Theme 4)
- Continental margins and deep ocean (Theme 5)
- Sustainable marine resources (Theme 6)
- Technology development (Theme 8)
- Next generation ocean prediction (Theme 9)
- Integration of sustained observations in the marine environment (Theme 10)
In the original programme proposal there was a theme on health and human impacts (Theme 7). The elements of this Theme have subsequently been included in Themes 3 and 9.
When is the programme active?
The programme started in April 2007 with funding for 5 years.
Brief summary of the programme fieldwork/data
Programme fieldwork and data collection are to be achieved through:
- physical, biological and chemical parameters sampling throughout the North and South Atlantic during collaborative research cruises aboard NERC's research vessels RRS Discovery, RRS James Cook and RRS James Clark Ross;
- the Continuous Plankton Recorder being deployed by SAHFOS in the North Atlantic and North Pacific on 'ships of opportunity';
- physical parameters measured and relayed in near real-time by fixed moorings and ARGO floats;
- coastal and shelf sea observatory data (Liverpool Bay Coastal Observatory (LBCO) and Western Channel Observatory (WCO)) using the RV Prince Madog and RV Quest.
The data is to be fed into models for validation and future projections. Greater detail can be found in the Theme documents.
RAPID- Will the Atlantic Thermohaline Circulation Halt? (RAPID-WATCH)
RAPID-WATCH (2007-2014) is a continuation programme of the Natural Environment Research Council's (NERC) Rapid Climate Change (RAPID) programme. It aims to deliver a robust and scientifically credible assessment of the risk to the climate of UK and Europe arising from a rapid change in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC). The programme will also assess the need for a long-term observing system that could detect major MOC changes, narrow uncertainty in projections of future change, and possibly be the start of an 'early warning' prediction system.
The effort to design a system to continuously monitor the strength and structure of the North Atlantic MOC is being matched by comparative funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) for the existing collaborations started during RAPID for the observational arrays.
Scientific Objectives
- To deliver a decade-long time series (2004-2014) of calibrated and quality-controlled measurements of the Atlantic MOC from the RAPID-WATCH arrays.
- To exploit the data from the RAPID-WATCH arrays and elsewhere to determine and interpret recent changes in the Atlantic MOC, assess the risk of rapid climate change, and investigate the potential for predictions of the MOC and its impacts on climate.
This work will be carried out in collaboration with the Hadley Centre in the UK and through international partnerships.
Mooring Arrays
The RAPID-WATCH arrays are the existing 26°N MOC observing system array (RAPIDMOC) and the WAVE array that monitors the Deep Western Boundary Current. The data from these arrays will work towards meeting the first scientific objective.
The RAPIDMOC array consists of moorings focused in three geographical regions (sub-arrays) along 26.5° N: Eastern Boundary, Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Western Boundary. The Western Boundary sub-array has moorings managed by both the UK and US scientists. The other sub-arrays are solely led by the UK scientists. The lead PI is Dr Stuart Cunningham of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, UK.
The WAVE array consists of one line of moorings off Halifax, Nova Scotia. The line will be serviced in partnership with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO), Halifax, Canada. The lead PI is Dr Chris Hughes of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory, Liverpool, UK.
All arrays will be serviced (recovered and redeployed) either on an annual or biennial basis using Research Vessels from the UK, US and Canada.
Modelling Projects
The second scientific objective will be addressed through numerical modelling studies designed to answer four questions:
- How can we exploit data from the RAPID-WATCH arrays to obtain estimates of the MOC and related variables?
- What do the observations from the RAPID-WATCH arrays and other sources tell us about the nature and causes of recent changes in the Atlantic Ocean?
- What are the implications of RAPID-WATCH array data and other recent observations for estimates of the risk due to rapid change in the MOC?
- Could we use RAPID-WATCH and other observations to help predict future changes in the MOC and climate?
Oceans 2025 Theme 1, Work Package 1.2: Atlantic Circulation and Transports
This Work Package is run by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) and aims to establish whether the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is slowing down, and to relate this to changes in regional storage of heat, freshwater and carbon.
More detailed information on this Work Package is available at pages 8 - 10 of the official Oceans 2025 Theme 1 document: Oceans 2025 Theme 1
Weblink: http://www.oceans2025.org/
Oceans 2025 Theme 10, Sustained Observation Activity 3: Monitoring the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
The Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) is the key component of ocean circulation in the Atlantic responding to climate change. Under the NERC directed programme Rapid Climate Change (RAPID) two arrays of instruments have been positioned in the ocean to monitor the MOC, one at 26.5 °N to capture the southward flow at depth, and the Western Atlantic Variability Experiment (WAVE) array across the Canadian-US continental slope, closer to the presumed source variations. Sustained Observation Activity (SO) 3 will continue these measurements to observe the strength and structure of the MOC, working closely with Oceans 2025 Theme 1 and the RAPID-WATCH directed programme.
There are two elements to this SO activity. SO 3.1. relates to the E-W mooring array in the mid-North Atlantic at 26.5 °N while SO 3.2. is concerned with the Western Atlantic array between Cape Cod and the Grand Banks.
Aims and Purpose of SO 3.1.
- The purpose of the observing system is to measure and understand the current state and variability of the MOC. The results will help assess the risks of rapid climate change from a slow down in the MOC, by providing the necessary data for coupled climate models to predict future climate. This work will be carried out by the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS).
Aims and Purpose of SO 3.2.
- The overall aim is to maintain and service the WAVE monitoring array, to measure changes in the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation along the western boundary of the North Atlantic. This array complements the NOC 26.5 °N meridional section by providing information from north of the Gulf Stream, closer to the presumed source of variations in MOC. This work will be supported by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory (POL).
More detailed information on this Work Package is available at pages 11 - 14 of the official Oceans 2025 Theme 10 document: Oceans 2025 Theme 10
Weblink: http://www.oceans2025.org/
Data Activity or Cruise Information
|Cruise Name
|Departure Date
|Arrival Date
|Principal Scientist(s)
|Brian A King (National Oceanography Centre, Southampton)
|RRS Discovery
Complete Cruise Metadata Report is available here
Fixed Station Information
No Fixed Station Information held for the Series
BODC Quality Control Flags
The following single character qualifying flags may be associated with one or more individual parameters with a data cycle:
|Below detection limit
|In excess of quoted value
|Taxonomic flag for affinis (aff.)
|Beginning of CTD Down/Up Cast
|Taxonomic flag for confer (cf.)
|Thermometric depth
|End of CTD Down/Up Cast
|Non-taxonomic biological characteristic uncertainty
|Extrapolated value
|Taxonomic flag for single species (sp.)
|Improbable value - unknown quality control source
|Improbable value - originator's quality control
|Improbable value - BODC quality control
|Null value
|Improbable value - user quality control
|Replacement value
|Estimated value
|Interpolated value
|Control value
|Excessive difference
SeaDataNet Quality Control Flags
The following single character qualifying flags may be associated with one or more individual parameters with a data cycle:
|no quality control
|good value
|probably good value
|probably bad value
|bad value
|changed value
|value below detection
|value in excess
|interpolated value
|missing value
|value phenomenon uncertain
|value below limit of quantification


text:
You've been tagged (again). :) Feel free to ignore if you're too busy. http://newyorktraveler.blogspot.com/2008/02/crazy-8s-meme.html
Happy Valentine's Day to you and John! I hope you had a romantic day after the bus driving was over :)
I'm way late, but hope you had a nice Valentine's Day.xo
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
Major Section: PROGRAMMING
Append, which takes two or more arguments, expects all the
arguments except perhaps the last to be true (null-terminated)
lists. It returns the result of concatenating all the elements of
all the given lists into a single list. Actually, in ACL2
is a macro that expands into calls of the binary function
Append is a Common Lisp function. See any Common Lisp
documentation for more information.


text:
Synopsis:"The Paranormal Activity franchise continues with this third outing from Paramount Pictures. Oren Peli and Jason Blum return to produce the highly secretive feature, with Catfish's directing duo of Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman taking on the helming duties."
Disc Details
Disc Type: DVD, Region 2
Release: 27 February 2012
Country: United Kingdom
No. of Discs: 1
Certificate: 15
Special Features
- Scare Montage
- Dennis' Commercial
The cynics will argue that this paranormal franchise that captures supernatural things on camera is getting a little long in the tooth and predictable but that all depends on what scares you, and it still has a certain authenticity to its cinematic style that wills you into believing what you are witnessing. The latest to take up the Paranormal Activity directing mantel is Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, whose take on Oren Pelis story involves the same premise, but stirs more initial interest because its the prequel to demonic events as we know them, and will hopefully give some insight into how it all started.
In film three set in 1988, young sisters Katie (Chloe Csengery) and Kristi Rey (Jessica Tyler Brown) come into contact with an invisible entity that resides in their home, with Kristi Rey first befriending an invisible playmate called Toby. But as she refuses to be party to his games any long, the supernatural occurrences in the house get more sinister.
The last two films had adults dealing with the haunting. In this film its an entire family fight kids and all, with elements of Poltergeist to it, in Kristi Reys link and ability to communicate with the unseen, minus talking to noisy TV screens. It even shows the not-so-innocent results of playing the Bloody Mary game, feeding on a small childs ultimate fear. In a sense, its the children who do battle this time. Apart from that, expect much the same fast-forwarded time sequences and static camera situations positioned around the house to capture whats going on, with the tense waiting period in between. In fact, what still makes this filming style effective is how we adjust our own vision to play detective and see any changes in the frame, rather than the inevitable big scares it sets you up for.
In Paranormal Activity 3, however, our camera angle takes on a new position as devised by man of the house and wedding videographer Dennis (played by Christopher Nicholas Smith) on the remnants of a household electric fan. This allows Joost and Schulman to introduce a split-screen effect between the living/dining area and the kitchen, cultivating the added anxiety of not knowing what will appear in front of the lens when the camera/fan contraption moves from left-to-right, or one room scene to the next. Its highly effective in a now you see it, now you dont scenario, and adds the film-makers own visual touch.
As for finding the answers weve all wanted to know since Pelis first film and grown-up Katies evil alter ego, the Joost and Schulman version goes into Occult territory, like some kind of reality TV, The Wicker Man episode. Sadly, it still leaves frustrating questions unanswered as to the supernatural forces origins, merely transferring the occurrences to another location.
As for DVD extras, there is nothing else to further explain the domestic haunting, merely a series of idiotic pranks by Dennis/Smith called Lost Tapes designed to scare the hell out of mom Julie, played by Lauren Bittner, and a cheesy self-promotional wedding video advertising Denniss business. It appears Joost and Schulman have joined the covenant of Paranormal Activity silence, and taken the secret of how the demonic presence first arose to their own graves, possibly to keep the franchises mystery alive plus not kill off any chance of another investigation captured on tape in a fourth film.
Paranormal Activity 3 is out on 27 February on Blu-ray and DVD Triple Play.


text:
You may prefer to find out on your own whether you have been infected
with the
hepatitis C virus.
You can buy a home test called a Home Access Hepatitis C Check kit,
which you can find in most drugstores. The kit contains a sharp instrument
(lancet) that you use to draw a small amount of blood from your
You place the sample on a piece of collection paper and mail it in a
prepaid envelope to a lab for testing. After 10 days, you can call a toll-free
number and receive your results using your confidential identification
If the test shows you have hepatitis C, it is important to make an
appointment with your doctor to discuss the results. The home test only looks
for hepatitis C
antibodies, which indicate that you have been exposed
to the virus in the past. The test does not tell you if you currently have an
infection. Your doctor can order another test that looks for hepatitis C virus
RNA. This test can tell if you have an active
infection now.
ByHealthwise StaffPrimary Medical ReviewerE. Gregory Thompson, MD - Internal MedicineAdam Husney, MD - Family MedicineSpecialist Medical ReviewerW. Thomas London, MD - Hepatology
Current as ofMarch 3, 2017
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Current as of:
March 3, 2017
Healthwise Staff
Medical Review:
E. Gregory Thompson, MD - Internal Medicine & Adam Husney, MD - Family Medicine & W. Thomas London, MD - Hepatology
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Last modified on: 8 September 2017


text:
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text:
On "Good Morning America" today you saw former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. discussing the controversy surrounding a decision to build an Islamic center and mosque near the site of the World Trade Center terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
In his book, "More Davids Than Goliaths: A Political Education," Ford writes about politics in America.
Read an excerpt of the book below and then head to the "GMA" Library to find more good reads.
'More Davids Than Goliaths'
The Apprentice
This is Harold Ford, Jr., and I'm campaigning for my daddy for Congress. If you want a better house to live in, better schools to go to, and lower cookie prices, vote for my daddy." I made my first political ad when I was four years old. It was 1974, and my father was running for Congress. My mom propped me up on a brown folding table at the back of my dad's campaign headquarters and I spoke into a microphone attached to a cassette recorder.
I did it in one take.
Politics was ingrained in me early. It was part of me in the best of ways. For my entire life, I've met and heard people, especially other politicians, talk about how they started early in politics by handing out leaflets, brochures, and so on. My start in politics was equally honest -- a commercial for my dad on his first congressional campaign. In a lot of ways, politics was -- and remains -- a part of my genetic makeup, and, for that matter, so was my party identification. I learned to be a Democrat the old-fashioned way: I was told that I was going to be one by my father and mother.
The campaign headquarters was a comfortable setting for me. I was there almost every day. My folks would pick me up at preschool and take me to the headquarters, where I delighted in the hustle and bustle and the steady inrush and outrush of staff and volunteers. For as long as I can remember, I've loved being around people.
As a kid, I always felt comfortable around adults. I didn't necessarily prefer adults over my peers, but sitting with, listening to, and talking in front of adults never really bothered me or made me nervous. I wasn't overconfident or anything like that. But I wasn't lacking confidence—I get that from both my mom and my dad. Nor was I different from other kids my age in that I enjoyed and played sports. It was more that I wanted to be a part of the conversation—I wanted to help in any way I could. I felt a particular but unarticulated closeness to the politics surrounding me—perhaps because it was my family involved and my dad's name on the ballot.
A few days after I made the ad, I heard it on the radio. I was sitting between my parents in the car. My mother smiled. My father grinned. I remember, at a precocious moment, thinking at the time, "I enjoy talking, and I really enjoy talking about campaigning." Although I didn't appreciate what exactly my dad was going to do to get people better homes and kids better schools, I knew he was going to try.
After the ad, I started going to more and more campaign events with my parents. It isn't uncommon for politicians to introduce their families or even to ask their families to join them onstage while they are speaking. And my dad would often do that. He would sometimes allow me to introduce him, and I often repeated my line from the radio ad. The cookie line was my favorite line in the introduction—my mother drafted that line. When introducing my dad, I always committed the additional lines to memory. I never used notes or read from a prepared text—even to this day, I don't use prepared remarks. I will sometimes refer to notes, but never a written speech. I don't use prepared remarks primarily because I find them hard to read with passion, sincerity, and force.
I remember speaking at one of my father's congressional prayer breakfasts in Memphis when I was seven. My dad's speaker that year was his congressional colleague and my parents' longtime friend Andrew Young. I helped introduce Congressman Young. I reminded the audience how much a role model Congressman Young was to people of all ages, especially for aspiring politicians like me. Prior to the speech, I remember going with my dad and some other politicians to meet with Congressman Young in his hotel in downtown Memphis. I sat at the dining room table in the hotel with Congressman Young and my dad as they discussed politics. I was just absorbing. My dad's focus was always people, especially hardworking poor people. My dad was listening closely to Congressman Young talk about how he and Maynard Jackson had built a black-white coalition in Atlanta premised on propelling black elected officials into high political offices and growing business opportunities for the entire Atlanta business community, including minority businesses. Memphis's persistent and pernicious occupation with race had prevented us from electing an African American mayor and widening sustainable business opportunities and growth to black businesses in the city. My dad's belief was that a racially diverse and successful Memphis business community was essential to better political and social cohesion in Memphis. One of the keys to realizing that dream was for the Memphis political landscape to become more racially and politically diverse first. Atlanta was a model for Memphis.
One of the things I learned from my dad at an early age about politics was never to allow jealousy, envy, or pettiness to get in the way of learning from a political peer. My dad inspired and taught a lot of politicians, younger and older, but he never shied away from learning himself. Andrew Young and Maynard Jackson are two southern politicians whom my dad respected and learned from.
Growing up in a political household seemed normal because it's all I knew. There were three basic givens in the house for Jake, Isaac, and me. We had to do our homework every night, we had to go to church every Sunday (and oftentimes Sunday school), and we worked on political campaigns for my dad and my uncles.
'More Davids Than Goliaths'
There was only one of those I genuinely enjoyed and relished—campaigning. Don't get me wrong, my parents didn't force us to campaign, but it was expected. And my brothers loved it as well. But with all the expectations placed on us to campaign, there were not concurrent expectations for us to enter politics. My parents would have been as pleased or satisfied if any of us had elected to become a doctor, a teacher, a journalist, a scientist, a cop, or a lawyer—wherever our desires and abilities led us, they would have been fine with. Having said that, I don't remember a time when politics, public service, and campaigns didn't excite and drive me. Even after my parents moved us to Washington in 1979 during my dad's third term in Congress, I very much looked forward to returning to Memphis in the summers, especially election summers, to join the campaign. The work for me was primarily grassroots—bumper stickering cars at shopping centers, putting up yard signs, and handing out campaign literature. The older I got, the more responsibility I was given. Eventually, I managed my dad's campaigns and was responsible for more of the organizational aspects of the campaigns. I wrote the text of the literature, spoke on my dad's behalf, organized fund-raising, and planned big events. But the grassroots work for me never stopped—even after he'd served ten terms in the Congress, my dad's commitment to grass-roots campaigning never waned. We would always start and finish the day shaking hands, slapping on bumper stickers, and taking pictures with constituents at shopping centers, grocery stores, malls, and busy intersections. My passion for and comfort with retail politics developed honestly. It might even be genetic.
Every Sunday morning we had a ritual in the house. The arrangement was very straightforward—if you ate breakfast, you went to church. I ate every Sunday morning. My mother would fry chicken, boil rice, and bake biscuits almost every Sunday. Even my Jewish friends who would sleep over would be required to go to church with us in Washington if they had breakfast. Although my family never disavowed our membership at our home church in Memphis (Mt. Moriah-East Baptist Church, which is where my brothers and I were baptized by Reverend Melvin Charles Smith), we were visiting members at two churches in Washington: New Bethel Baptist, pastured by Reverend Walter Fauntroy, who was also Washington, D.C.'s delegate to Congress, and Metropolitan Baptist, pastured by Reverend H. Beecher Hicks. Initially, I was more comfortable in church in Memphis, but as we attended more and more services in D.C., I grew to love New Bethel and Metropolitan. Reverend Fauntroy was as good a gospel singer in the pulpit as he was a pastor.
On the campaign trail in 1996 during my first run for Congress, I'd often ask young parents where they attended church. I was often surprised by their answers, which can be best paraphrased as "I go to New Salem, but I can't get my kids to go." Or, "I attend Olive Grove Baptist, but I can't get my kids to go." I was surprised, if not shocked, to hear this because when I was growing up, kids didn't have decision-making authority like that in any home that I knew of. Although eating breakfast was what triggered the requirement to go to church in my house, I always knew that even if I didn't eat breakfast, I was still going to church. In short, there was no opt-out provision in the Ford household.
Sometimes we even had to go to church during the week.
When my parents were attending political and social events in the evenings, they would leave my brothers and me with one of the most wonderful families I've ever known, the Ingrams. The Ingram girls, Lori and Debra, were our primary babysitters. Their mother, Mrs. Ingram, was the moral pillar of the household, and she insisted that everyone accompany her to Lambert Church of God in Christ on Wednesday nights. We knew that if we went to the Ingrams' on a Wednesday night, we would be going to church. It didn't occur to us to argue. Wednesday night church wasn't ideal, since we had just gone to church three days earlier and were due again in church four days later. However, Wednesday night church was bearable because the choir sang well at Lambert, and the pastor's sermon was not as long on Wednesday as it was on Sunday. Although, Church of God in Christ sermons were always longer.
On Sunday, the thought of after-church dinner eased some of the pain of sitting through services.
The Ford family convened for Sunday dinner at my dad's parents' home on Golf Club Circle. Newton Jackson, or "N.J." as everyone called him, and Vera Ford—we called her Grandma Vera—were the patriarch and matriarch of this sprawling Ford family. N.J. and Vera had fifteen children between them, and twelve had survived—eight boys and four girls. I had so many cousins that I sometimes lost track. Every Sunday meal felt like a family reunion. During election season, there were always politicians joining us for dinner—some elected and others aspiring. Anyone running for governor, senator—even president with Jimmy Carter—made his or her way to South Memphis to have dinner at my grandparents' home after church. It wasn't uncommon for forty to be seated for dinner on a Sunday evening.
My grandfather was always there to greet us when we arrived, still in our church suits and clip-on ties. A regal man with soft gray hair, he'd say, "Come to Granddaddy," and reach into his pocket for a dollar's worth of quarters. On any given Sunday, there were a dozen or more kids running around the house; during the holidays, there were more. My grandfather spent much of the evening surrounded by jostling groups of grandkids.
My grandmother and aunt Joyce—and sometimes my mother, who is quite a cook herself—handled the cooking responsibilities. They cooked huge, delicious dinners: turkey, fried chicken, spaghetti, sweet potatoes, string beans, collard greens, squash, cabbage, candied yams (still my favorite—thankfully, my wife and mother-in-law make them for me now), sliced tomatoes, dressing, rolls, and corn bread. It wasn't the best dinner if one was trying to diet, but it was some kind of good.
'More Davids Than Goliaths'
N.J. sat at the head of the table and led the conversations. He would tuck his big white cloth napkin into his collar to keep sweet potatoes and collard greens off his shirt and tie. He said grace only after Vera sat down next to him and received his thanks for preparing the meal. It didn't matter how powerful the politicians at the table were; they all waited for my grandmother. My grandfather stood before she took her seat. When politicians and candidates came to N.J.'s home for Sunday dinners, he grilled, dazzled, and charmed them all at once. N.J.'s influence was local, but his political interests were broader than Memphis and Tennessee. His involvement and leadership in the national association of black funeral directors provided him a large and substantive business platform to discuss politics. My grandfather didn't hesitate to ask politicians about their families and personal lives while also measuring their political beliefs and agendas against his own.
I sat at the kids' table in the kitchen along with my brothers and a dozen or so cousins. (When I was elected to Congress, I finally got to sit at the adults' table.) When we finished eating, long before the adults, we would pile into a guest bedroom in the house and watch Hee Haw, a Southern favorite. I loved spending time with my cousins. My uncles Joe and John and my aunts Ophelia and Joyce came to dinner with their children almost every Sunday. Aunt Joyce's daughters, Bilene, Pam, Vicki, and Jeannie, and Aunt Ophelia's daughter, Sophia, were like sisters to my brothers and me. My father's older siblings lived in New York and California, and they came with their kids on holidays and during the summer. Smart and sophisticated, my out-of-town cousins were great role models for the younger cousins. I remember when my cousin Lewis accepted a football scholarship to Stanford. My cousin Teresa graduated from Harvard Business School, and another cousin, Debbie, graduated from Harvard Law School. Debbie's sister, Shelly, graduated from Columbia School of Journalism. It was the first time I'd heard of these schools. Most of my dad's family, including my dad, were graduates of Tennessee State University in Nashville, a prestigious and historically black school. My father's educational journey continued at mortuary school in Nashville and later at Howard University's School of Ford Business. My dad entered Howard's program shortly after we moved to Washington in 1979. It was clear to me that my mother wanted her boys to follow the college paths of their out-of-town cousins.
In December 1863, two slaves named Jackson and Essex Geeter escaped from a Mississippi plantation. The men were brothers. They made their way to a Union Army camp in La Grange, Tennessee, where they enlisted. For the next two years, they served with distinction; Essex rose to the rank of corporal. After being honorably discharged in 1866, they settled in southwest Shelby County—now South Memphis—and bought property. By the time Essex decided to run for a seat on the county school board many years later, he had become a widely respected member of the community. He won the seat and initiated my family's tradition of public service.
Essex's brother Jackson also prospered. When he passed away in the summer of 1920, his widow, Sallie Geeter, deeded land to Shelby County for the establishment of an elementary school. Geeter School, which still stands, has educated thousands of kids from South Memphis, including my father and his siblings.
Albert Ford, another former slave some years older than Essex and Jackson, settled near the Geeters in Shelby County. Albert's son, Newton F. Ford, ran for a seat on the Shelby County Court at the same time Essex Geeter ran for a seat on the county school board. On August 2, 1888, they both won their races.
The Geeter and Ford families were formally united when Newton's son, Lewie C. Ford, married Ophelia Edna Geeter, daughter of Jackson and Sallie Geeter. Ophelia gave birth to my grandfather, Newton Jackson Ford (N.J.).
N.J. carried on the family tradition of public service. Although he lost a bid for the Tennessee state legislature in 1965, he was elected as a delegate to the Tennessee Constitutional Convention in 1977. It was an influential position in Tennessee politics. N.J.'s public service wasn't limited to running for and serving in public office. He helped fund children's education and sports programs and was an active supporter of the Boy Scouts of America. He was a lifetime member of the NAACP. As the founder and owner of a successful funeral home in South Memphis, he considered it his duty to give back to the community. I remember looking through photo albums dedicated to N.J.'s philanthropic work; in many of the photos, he was being honored for his contributions to local causes and organizations.
Although my grandmother Vera Ford never ran for or was appointed to any office, she was a dynamic political force. She was voted Tennessee Mother of the Year and continually honored by the state for her service to her community.
November 4, 1974, was a historic night for the Ford family. My father won his congressional seat, and two of my uncles, John and Emmitt, prevailed in their respective races for state senate and state house. It was the first time in American history that three brothers had been on the same ballot on the same day and all won.
My father became the first African American elected to Congress from Tennessee. He was the first—and is still the only—African American Democrat to unseat an incumbent Republican congressman, and he won despite the fact that the federal government had not required Tennessee to redraw congressional districts after the 1970 census to guarantee minority representation. The district was predominantly white.
Fortunately for my father, his opponent, Dan Kuykendall, had lost touch with the voters. Although Kuykendall had been in office for several terms, he fell victim to a strong anti- Republican political current fueled by Watergate and a young, dynamic, tireless, and fearless challenger—my dad.
'More Davids Than Goliaths'
Presumably to deny my father both publicity and equal status, Kuykendall refused to debate him throughout the campaign. Kuykendall believed that sharing a platform with Harold Ford was beneath him. He never imagined that a state representative with a big afro from South Memphis could beat him.
My father was undaunted. He campaigned and campaigned. He accepted every invitation he received to attend candidate forums and debates, even when Kuykendall refused to show. When Kuykendall was a no-show to debates, my father would bring a briefcase and place it in front of the chair or podium where Kuykendall was supposed to sit or stand. After my father finished answering a question, he would look at the stand-in briefcase and proceed to give Kuykendall's answer, which he derived from Kuykendall's voting record. So, when the questions in a debate turned to health care, he pulled out several documents proving Kuykendall's slavish support of the pharmaceutical industry over the needs of senior citizens and working people.
My dad outworked and outcampaigned Kuykendall. He had no choice because history and demographics were not on his side. On Election Day, my dad and his team gathered in their war room. To count votes, he largely relied on two people, Osbie Howard and Frank Banks. They remain great friends today. I don't remember much about that campaign, but I'll never forget Osbie and Frank constantly putting up numbers on a Memphis precinct map in the war room. My dad had a volunteer or a staffer at every polling place in the district, and as soon as the polls closed and the votes were counted, the staffer or volunteer would collect the numbers off the voting machines and call. (The actual ballots were then physically transported to the Elections Commission office for certification.)
The counting was slow, but my dad, Frank, and Osbie had built a prediction model based on turnout and win-loss margin in specific precincts. Early on, it became clear that my dad was overperforming in his base areas. The trend continued, and finally, late that night, Frank and Osbie said, "Harold, we think you've won it. We think you won this race by fewer than 500 votes."
Not long after Frank and Osbie's declaration, the local media began reporting that my dad was losing decisively, by nearly 5,000 votes. News of an impending Kuykendall victory was spreading. Kuykendall started doing interviews suggesting that he had won.
Frank and Osbie saw the media reports. My dad insisted that they recheck their numbers. "There's no way. That's not plausible. Unless we're missing something and our numbers are completely off." So they did the math again. They reached the same conclusion: My dad had won by roughly 500 votes. The local news declared Kuykendall the winner based on the final results from the Elections Commission. My father decided that the only way to reconcile Frank and Osbie's numbers—and his own belief that he had won—with the Elections Commission's final numbers was to go down to the Elections Commission headquarters and demand a recount.
What happened then transformed politics in Memphis and introduced the city and the region to a new era of public service. "I have reason to believe these numbers are not accurate," my dad said at the commission, "and I want to contest them." He was told flatly that the race was over, he had lost, and he would get no recount. When he argued, he was met with racial epithets. "You niggers go home," someone said. "You lost."
The ballots, it turned out, were still being transported and unloaded in a garage behind the building. A cleaning woman on swing shift, who happened to be passing by, told my father about the tremendous activity in the garage. My dad walked over to the area where the cleaning lady had been and began poking around, inspecting trucks and ballot boxes. He soon noticed several stacks of sealed boxes and realized that the boxes contained ballots from several of the largest black precincts in the city. My dad was unsure of the status of the ballots. Meaning, he couldn't verify if they had been counted yet and were a part of the final tally. He was suspicious because the boxes containing the ballots were sealed. After a few minutes of not being able to get a credible answer from anyone in the garage about the ballots, my dad was convinced—the Memphis political power structure was trying to steal the election from him.
"We've done the math ourselves very carefully," he said, "based on official tallies from the precincts, and here we are being told that we've lost and can't get a recount—yet we've got sealed boxes of ballots sitting here at the Elections Commission. We're not going home until those ballots are counted," my dad told the press.
It wasn't long before the election commissioners appeared and publicly conceded that my father had won. They declared him the victor before they had even counted all the ballots in question.
Kuykendall was on a local TV news show declaring his victory when he was passed a note saying that in fact my dad had won the race. He walked off the air without a word. He never bothered to congratulate his opponent.
The commissioners were never held accountable for attempting to steal the race. No one was indicted and no one was reprimanded for any infraction or violation. They claimed that they had simply overlooked a few boxes of ballots. No serious mistakes, they said, had been made.
In the end, my dad won by a margin of 532 votes. Frank and Osbie had been off by 32 votes.
Excerpted from MORE DAVIDS THAN GOLIATHS Copyright (c) 2010 by Harold Ford, Jr. Published by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission.


text:
Knowledge is power. Perhaps that's why so much time and energy go into scientific and other types of research. There are studies verifying the links between smoking and heart disease or diabetes and fatty foods. We nod our heads and say, "That makes sense."
Then you have the studies linking things together that just make you scratch your head. Like winning an Oscar and living longer. Or listening to country music and committing suicide (well, maybe that makes sense). These are just a few of the off-the-wall connections some of the world's best and brightest have dedicated their lives to uncovering.
Yet, they don't crack the top 10 bizarre connections revealed by studies. Read on to see what does.
Throwing a little extra change to the waiter, delivery boy, taxi driver, grocery store bagger, moving man or masseuse is supposed to be a sign of generosity. A 2012 study out of Harvard University, however, shows that countries with higher levels of tipping also tend to have more political corruption. The study's authors say that the correlation may be explained by a simple principle of free market economics: There's no such thing as a free lunch. Heavy tippers, just like people who use bribes to open political and business doors, expect the gratuities will get them something in the future [source: Torafson, et al].
The study authors said the link is strongest for those whose tipping has a "prospective orientation (to obtain advantageous service in the future)" rather than a "retrospective orientation (to reward advantageous service in the past)."
Actress Christina Hendricks has become a modern icon of full-figured beauty since coming on the scene as Joan Harris, the voluptuous secretary-turned-business partner on TV's "Mad Men." And her character's rise in the business world might have had some help from genes. Research shows that curvy women are more intelligent than their thinner sisters.
In a 2007 study of 16,000 women and girls, researchers at the Universities of Pittsburgh and California found that women whose waists were roughly 70 percent of the diameter of their hips outscored women with higher waist-to-hip (WHR) ratios on cognitive tests. The study's authors claim that this strange phenomenon may be caused by higher levels of Omega-3 fatty acids, which are typically stored around the hips and also contribute to brain growth [sources: BBC, Childs].
Experts point out that the difference in cognitive abilities between the two groups is very small: 3.6 to 7 percent. And of course, many women's WHR ratios change as they get older without any decrease in intelligence [source: Childs].
Rather than hips, maybe liquor is the missing link to intelligence. According to studies on alcohol consumption in the U.S. and U.K. (spanning 55 years!), smarter folks are more likely to enjoy getting hammered. Researchers found that teenagers with an IQ of 125 (labeled "very bright") were likely to drink more than twice as many beers in an average night during adulthood as those with an IQ of 75 or less (labeled "very dull") [sources: Mueller, Kanazawa].
The very bright also engaged in binge drinking about every other month, while the very dull engaged in binge drinking less than once a year. Binge drinking was defined by the study as consuming five or more drinks in a row. So why would this be? One researcher says that consuming alcohol (including binge drinking) is evolutionarily novel, and more intelligent people tend to engage in evolutionarily novel behaviors (behaviors humans were not biologically destined to do). Therefore, brighter people are apparently likelier to do this not-very-bright thing [sources: Kanazawa].
Maybe intellectual salvation actually lies in your hands. According to a 2007 study published in the British Journal of Psychology, there's a link between the ratio of the length of a person's index to ring finger and their performance on the SAT exam. The study found that boys with higher ring-to-index finger ratios tended to perform better on the test's math section than their peers, while girls with a lower ratio generally had better verbal scores [sources: Live Science, University of Bath].
The correlation tracks back to hormone exposure in the womb. Higher levels of testosterone lead to both a longer ring finger compared to the index finger and higher math skills. Higher levels of estrogen mean a shorter ring finger compared to the index finger as well as higher verbal ability [sources: Live Science, University of Bath]. A related study showed that male academics in science tended to have very little difference in digital ratio, which meant they had almost equal levels of testosterone and estrogen -- thus possessing both verbal and numeracy skills [source: Curtis].
Many people don't like shots. The idea of having a sharp object jammed into your arm -- or elsewhere -- can be less than comforting. Yet there are plenty of good reasons to grin and bear it, like wanting to remain free of nasty health conditions like the measles and dengue fever. But the flu vaccination has another nice benefit: It may help your heart.
Medical researchers say that getting annual flu shots can cut the risk of heart attack and stroke by more than 50 percent in people who've already had at least one heart attack. Some experts surmise that the vaccine helps protect "vulnerable plaque" in the body from flu-caused inflammation that can later cause cardiac problems. Others say the flu virus's side effects -- coughing, low blood pressure -- can put strain on the heart and cause cardiac distress. Major health groups recommend heart disease patients get the flu vaccine [source: Hellmich].
Can't shake those pesky hiccups? Try a massage. No, not a back rub. Something, er, lower down. Doctors at the Bnai Zion Medical Center in Haifa, Israel say they cured a 60-year-old patient's persistent hiccups with digital rectal massage. When the problem re-arose, they went back to the well and were able to massage the hiccups right out of his system again [source: Odeh, et al].
So how did that work? Hiccupping is caused by spasms from cranial nerves called the vagus and phrenic nerves, which stimulate the area around the diaphragm. These nerves also send and receive signals from the thorax, gut and GI tract. So, if you have spasms in these nerves, stimulation from a finger up the rectum (which as you might guess is a sensitive area) might help. The vagus nerve, in particular, has a lot of innervation in the rectum [source: Scicurious]. Though the scientists recommend this treatment to others, no large-scale study has been done and this is probably one study that will have difficulty recruiting subjects.
The ability to control one's bladder isn't just handy in all situations like when facing a malfunctioning commode or a stalled subway ride. It's also apparently a way of life. Greater levels of bladder control result in an increasing ability to resist the urge to spend money, say a group of academics in Norway. "Inhibitory spillover" refers to the idea that one's ability to control one type of urge -- like having to pee -- can carry over to other aspects of life, including thriftiness [source: Tuk, et al].
In other words, if the thought of a liquid substance spilling makes you want to run to the nearest restroom, you may be a compulsive spender.
Only 5 percent of humans are ambidextrous -- that is, able to use both hands equally well to perform everyday activities [source: Jabr]. Being both-handed is a nice skill to have, whether it's on a baseball diamond or working at one of those German beer halls where the staff is required to carry no less than 17 mugs at a time. But according to a study out of Montclair State University in New Jersey, the gift of ambidexterity may also come with a significant weakness.
By playing classical music and asking subjects to think happy, sad or nervous thoughts, a researcher found that ambidextrous subjects were much more prone to emotional manipulation than their right-handed peers. People in the former group were more likely to shift emotions on command, while right-handers were less malleable. It's believed that the correlation stems from how brains are organized. Ambidextrous people have larger corpus callosums – the structure that links the two halves of the brain. The increased communication between the two hemispheres apparently means both greater flexibility of the hands and greater suggestibility of the emotions [source: Jabr].
The longer your work commute, the less likely you are to be politically engaged. Researchers say this connection isn't simply a matter of having less time to devote to politics, but instead possibly the stress associated with long commutes. Many people who spend hours a day slogging to and from the office are simply mentally and emotionally drained, leaving them with little or nothing in the tank for civic involvement [source: Inskeep].
Money may also play a factor. The 2013 study concluded that the effects of commuting on political engagement decrease as the subject's income rises. For the "very wealthy" the researchers even found that longer commutes actually meant more civic commitment [source: Inskeep].
Here's one we really didn't see coming: Ethicists steal more than people outside the field. At least that was the surprising conclusion drawn by a philosophy professor in California whose research showed that contemporary ethics texts mainly borrowed from libraries by academics in the field were about 50 percent more likely to go missing than other books [source: Schwitzgebel].
Does that mean that studying about moral behavior makes one less moral? No, says study author Eric Schwitzgebel, but it might undermine morality when it supports rationalization. "Rationalization may be especially likely when conventional norms and ordinary behavior are both morally good and contrary to self-interest -- as in the case of the return of library books."
"We are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good," Aristotle is believed to have said about the study of philosophy and ethics. Better keep hitting the books. Just remember to return them.
Study Solves Why Drinking Gives You the Munchies
Researchers from Penn State suggest that heavy drinking and 'junk food' cravings go hand in hand. HowStuffWorks looks at the study on the munchies.
Author's Note: 10 Studies Connecting Completely Bizarre Things
The great thing about writing for HowStuffWorks is the seemingly endless array of interesting and obscure topics that I'm asked to delve into in any given assignment. Sure, as a single 30-something man, explaining why families should build traditions wasn't really at the top of my list of things to do. But, I've also learned about false scarcities, insanity, the true history of Thanksgiving, the NSA and miniature drone technology. This time around, it was binge drinking, theft and emotional manipulation. Also: rectal massage. Do not forget the rectal massage.
Related Articles
- BBC. "Curvy women may be a clever bet." Nov. 12, 2007. (Dec. 15, 2013) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7090300.stm
- Blain, Loz. "Study shows finger length can predict SAT scores." Gizmag. May 29, 2007. (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.gizmag.com/go/7317
- Childs, Dan. "Are Curvy Women More Intelligent?" ABC News. Nov. 13, 2007. (Dec. 15, 2013). http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=3859175
- Curtis, Polly. "Finger points to good research skills." The Guardian. Oct. 20, 2004. (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.theguardian.com/education/2004/oct/20/science.highereducation
- Hellmich, Nanci. "Flu vaccine cuts risk of heart attack for some patients." USA Today. Oct. 22, 2013 (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/22/flu-vaccine-heart-attack/3150819/
- Inskeep, Steve. "Study: Commuting Adversely Affects Political Engagement." NPR. Nov. 16, 2013 (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.npr.org/2013/11/19/246085202/study-commuting-adversely-affects-political-engagement
- Jabr, Ferris. "Ambidextrous people easier to influence emotionally" New Scientist. Feb. 21, 2011 (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20156-ambidextrous-people-easier-to-influence-emotionally.html#.Uq5JJ-I7DoY
- Kanazawa, Satoshi. "Why Intelligent People Drink More Alcohol." Psychology Today. Oct. 10, 2010. (Dec. 17, 2013). http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201010/why-intelligent-people-drink-more-alcohol
- Kanazawa, Satoshi. "More Intelligent People Are More Likely to Binge Drink and Get Drunk." Psychology Today. Feb 13, 2011 (Dec. 17, 2013). http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/201102/more-intelligent-people-are-more-likely-binge-drink-and-ge
- Mueller, Ann Tracy. "Infographic: What does your IQ have to do with binge drinking?" Ragan's Health Care Communication News. Aug. 27, 2013 (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.healthcarecommunication.com/PublicRelations/Articles/Infographic_What_does_your_IQ_have_to_do_with_bing_11450.aspx
- Odeh, Majed, Bassan H, Oliven A.. "Termination of intractable hiccups with digital rectal massage" Journal of Internal Medicine. Feb. 1990 (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2299306
- Schwitzgebel, Eric. "Do Ethicists Steal More Books?" Philosophical Psychology. Dec. 11, 2009 (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthicsBooks.htm
- Scicurious. "The new cure for the hiccups? Rectal stimulation." Scientopia. Jan. 28, 2011. http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2011/01/28/friday-weird-science-the-new-cure-for-the-hiccups-rectal-stimulation/
- The Best Masters Degrees Reviews. "Drunken Geniuses." (Dec. 15, 2013) http://www.bestmastersdegrees.com/drunken-geniuses
- Torafson, Thor, Flynn, Francis J., Kupor, Daniella. "Here's a Tip: Prosocial Gratuities Are Linked to Political Corruption." Harvard University. (Dec. 15, 2013) http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:9491448
- Tuk, Mirjam, Trampe, Debra and Warlop, Luk. "Inhibitory spillover: Increased urination urgency facilitates impulse control in unrelated domains." Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. (Dec. 15, 2013)


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[Illinois] weSTEM 2013: The Value of Networking
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Sometimes the key to success is not only what you know but who you know and the relationships that you develop. Networking is a tool that, if used effectively, can make a big difference in your career. Marilyn Tears, an Illinois Grad, and currently a Project Manager at the ExxonMobil Development Company, has experience establishing women's networks in the workplace. She was a founding member of the team that established the Upstream Women's network at ExxonMobil. Marilyn will share her perspective on the value to be gained from networking in various stages of your career based on her over 30 years of working in industry. Her insights on both informal and formal networks, as well as networks in and out of the workplace will inspire you to proactively work towards building connections for yourself.
Ms. Marilyn Tears currently works as a Project Manager for ExxonMobil Development Company, Deepwater Projects. She was active in establishing the ExxonMobil Upstream Women's network and has held several leadership roles for the network. In 2012, she was recognized with the ExxonMobil Upstream Women's Leadership Role Model Award. Ms. Tears obtained her B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1980 and her M.S. in Civil Engineering/Structural Design – Construction Management from the University of Illinois in 1982. She has been an active University of Illinois campus recruiter for ExxonMobil since 1982. Marilyn Tears currently resides in Houston, Texas with her husband of 29 years Nelson Tears. Her husband Nelson is also an ExxonMobil employee. She has 2 daughters who both attend Texas A&M University.
Source for information on this page: weSTEM Illinois
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
Siebel Center, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


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By Jeff Hartsell, The Charleston Post-Courier
July 29, 2013
Citadel quarterback Ben Dupree comes by his Twitter handle — @BossType2 — quite naturally. Growing up, he had a cousin who used to call himself "the boss of the boss." "Because of him, I always wanted to be the boss," said Dupree, who wears No. 2 for the Bulldogs. "Hence, BossType2." No question, Dupree is the boss of The Citadel's triple-option offense as the Bulldogs head into one of their most eagerly anticipated football seasons in years.
With The Citadel coming off a 7-4 season that included upsets of Southern Conference powers Georgia Southern and Appalachian State — and with those teams ineligible for the SoCon title this year as they transition to the FBS level — Bulldogs fans are hoping for a run at the military school's first league title since 1992. If the Bulldogs get there, it will be in large part because of the self-belief of their 5-9, 185-pound quarterback, who never wavered during his difficult first two seasons at The Citadel.
"The thing I love about Ben," said coach Kevin Higgins, "is that he has thick skin. When I was with the Detroit Lions, (head coach) Steve Mariucci used to tell us, 'You have to have thick skin to make it in the NFL.' "Well, Ben does. You can get after him, you can challenge him and he will respond. If you said the same thing to other guys, they might go in the tank or they might sulk. Ben's never done that because he's got that confidence. He never questions whether he's going to make a play or not."
That confidence stems from Dupree's youth in Harrisburg, Pa. Despite his size, Dupree was usually the best athlete on his team in whatever sport he tried. He led his high school basketball team to 32 wins and the state championship game, and guided his football team to a school-record 12 wins. He also ran track and impressed Higgins by dunking a basketball as a 5-7½ point guard. "I played with guys who were as good as me," Dupree said. "But they didn't make it because they messed up off the field. I learned from them, and I think that's what made me who I am now."
Dupree was one of Higgins' first signees in 2010, after the coach made the decision to switch his offense to run-oriented triple-option. Dupree earned the starting QB job as a freshman. But he lost that job by halftime of the season opener against Chowan, with fellow freshman Matt Thompson coming off the bench to throw three touchdown passes in a 56-14 victory. Dupree didn't return to QB until the 10th game of that 3-8 season. He won back the starting job as a sophomore, but the Bulldogs were only marginally better, losing their final three games to finish at 4-7. During those two seasons, the Bulldogs fumbled 79 times in 22 games as they struggled to master the triple-option.
"I had to learn to shrug off a bad play, how to come back the next play and shake it off," he said. "I struggled with that at first, so I feel like I have grown and learned a lot." Dupree showed how much he's learned in the upsets of Georgia Southern and App State last year. He ran for 92 yards and threw a TD pass in the 23-21 win over GSU, and strafed App State for 180 rushing yards and two TDs in a 52-28 win. He finished the season with 839 rushing yards and nine touchdowns, the most yards for a Citadel QB sinced Stanley Myers ran for 859 in 1995.
Higgins wants to squeeze as much as he can out of Dupree in his final season. Dupree has been catching 100 punts a week over the summer and will get first crack at the punt-returner job when practice opens Aug. 5. And with junior Aaron Miller and redshirt freshman Trey White providing depth at quarterback, Dupree could see some snaps at slotback as well.
No matter where Dupree lines up, Higgins is confident he'll make something good happen. "He never questions whether he can make a play or not," Higgins said. "With so many other guys, you have to work through a layer of fear or worry. With Ben, you don't have to do that at all."
That's why he's a BossType.