text:
For the third and the last post of the Interview with Brand-new Librarians series, I interviewed Laura O'Brien. Laura graduated from Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science in May, 2009. Laura had completed her eight months' of job search for the first professional librarian position a week before the ALA 2010 Midwinter where I met her first-time. She is now a Research and Instruction Librarian at Wellesley College and tweets as @niathena. I wanted to find out how she continued to stay optimistic and persistent throughout her job search since eight months after graduation can be a very challenging and trying time to endure to any job-seeking MLS graduate.
In the interview below, Laura shares her experience in a tough job market and explains how she utilized her previous work experience in the for-profit education industry to her best advantage. She advises LIS students be strategic about their learning and take responsibility for their own development as professionals and says "even a long job search (and one with certain detours) can be successful, so keep at it—the right thing will come along if you're prepared.â€
1. Who are you and what do you do?
My name is Laura O'Brien, and since February 2010 I've been employed at Wellesley College, just outside Boston, as a Research and Instruction Librarian.
Before I entered the academic library world, I was part of the (gasp!) for-profit education industry. I ran a K – 16 tutoring center for two and a half years, and collaborated with the founder of the company to build a successful in-school tutoring program. That experience developed my language for instruction and inspired me to explore librarianship as a means of developing creative and effective ways to teach critical thinking skills.
2. When did you get your MLS, when did you start your first professional librarian position, how long did the job search take, and how did you prepare yourself for it?
I received my MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in May 2009. I pursued my degree full-time over two years, while working initially one, then two part-time academic reference and instruction positions, gaining valuable experience in information literacy instruction and research assistance with a variety of student groups, including first-generation college students, adult students, and ESL students.
As a post-grad I knew I needed to stay active to give myself more opportunities to develop my skills and establish myself as a professional and attractive candidate to potential employers. I sought out as many useful professional development opportunities as possible, even if I had to pay my own way to attend a conference I was interested in. Fortunately, many regional or statewide professional organizations have quality programming for a lower fee than ALA, and many reduce rates even further for student members. I also joined non-library professional organizations related to my technology and academic interests, and volunteered as an instructor with ESL adult learners.
When the time came to start my job search, hiring freezes and "depending on funding†positions were an unfortunate fact of the academic job market. While I was lucky enough to continue on at one of my pre-professional positions, I encountered many discouraging setbacks in the hunt for professional employment. There was, for example, the memorable instance where a previously offered job vanished into thin air. It goes without saying—that was an exceedingly trying week. There was validation of a kind (if not the kind that came with a salary) in knowing that I'd done everything right. I stayed motivated and redoubled my efforts. In hindsight, the rescinded job offer was a blessing in disguise as in January 2010 I was offered an even more exciting opportunity with Wellesley College, eight months after earning my MLS.
3. How did you do your job search? What were some of the things that worked and didn't? What was the greatest challenge?
To keep my job search focused, I created a list of criteria I'd built for the position I was looking for–much like a job posting, this list of criteria broke down into Required and Desirable categories. This was really helpful for evaluating prospects from the list of open positions scrolling through my RSS feed reader.
Throughout the week I drafted application materials and followed up with a once-a-week meeting with a friend (who had worked in academia, but was not a librarian). This was a second or third pair of eyes to review each cover letter, but it was also a precious motivational tool, allowing me to take weekly stock of progress and evaluate my job search objectively.
In my experience, sending a template cover letter and unedited resume or CV was worse than a waste of time. Instead, I kept a file of my previous applications, with notes on each application's progress. (I also saved the job posting in a separate file, since institutions sometimes take a posting down once they have reached the late interview or job offer stage with candidates.) This gave me a library of material to work from when customizing a cover letter for a particular position. I suspect that most search committees—at least, search committees at institutions I would want to work for—can smell the lack of effort and interest shown by a boilerplate application.
The Career Education Center at my LIS program offered workshops for the librarian job hunt, resume/CV and cover letter review, and most useful of all, mock interviews. Since this was my first foray into the academic hiring process, I took advantage of all of these, but mock interviews were key, particularly before the dreaded phone intervie w. It's difficult to attain a level of comfort when answering tough questions with three to eight people in a conference room on the other end of a phone line, but practice, and feedback from a career counselor, does wonders.
Despite the length of my job search, I feel as though it was objectively pretty successful. I achieved about a 40% response rate on my applications, my phone interviews netted me a second round interview 2/3 of the time, and I received several job offers that I was able to choose from for the best fit.
4. Is your work as the professional librarian what you expected and prepared yourself for while you were in the MLS program? Otherwise, what would you have done differently if you knew?
I knew that my interests lay in reference and information literacy before starting my MLS. I did informational interviewing with academic librarians and started working as soon as possible in academic libraries to get a good grasp of what classes, technologies, and skills would be the most helpful to me in a professional position.
Beyond the core curriculum, I took reference courses in fields of study outside my own academic background (which was in English literature and history), technology courses, and an instruction course that gave me experience in lesson and program planning in a library setting. I really encourage LIS students to be strategic about their learning and take responsibility for their own development as professionals.
The work I do today—planning instruction at the classroom and the program level, implementing instructional technologies, building relationships with and supporting the research of students and faculty—is very much what I'd prepared myself for as an MLS candidate. I would have loved the opportunity to branch out further in my classwork to explore more technologies and types of librarianship such as special collections, since these are areas I work closely with at Wellesley. However, one of the great things about my position is that collaboration and learning are strongly encouraged, so I have the opportunity to participate in projects that expand my knowledge.
5. Any advice for many MLS students who will be soon graduating and looking for their first professional librarian position?
Don't hesitate to call yourself and the work you do "professionalâ€. Just because your work experience took place prior to obtaining your degree doesn't make it any less valuable or any less a representation of how you can contribute to a potential employer.
Don't discount non-library work experience. It can be what makes you unique and desirable. For me, the key was to make it clear to employers how my skills as an administrator and educator in a for-profit industry could and did transfer to fulfill their needs. That being said, if you plan to work in libraries (or information technology or any related field) the job search will be considerably easier if you have work experiences in those areas prior to graduation.
Finally, even a long job search (and one with certain detours) can be successful, so keep at it—the right thing will come along if you're prepared.


text:
Subway touts itself as having healthier choices than other fast food chains, but that may not necessarily be true. Also, apixaban in Afib and diffusion tensor imaging in stroke.
Subway as Unhealthy as McDonald's
Despite their commercials to the contrary, the Subway fast food chain menu may not be much healthier than the McDonald's menu, according to a study in Journal of Adolescent Health.
Meals that teens and young adults (ages 12 to 21) typically bought at McDonald's contained an average of 1,038 calories, while at Subway, the calorie count in the average purchase was 955, reported Lenard Lesser, MD, of UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, and colleagues.
There was no significant difference between the two and participants ate too many calories at both restaurants, researchers said, referring to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendation of no more than 850 calories in school lunches.
The average calories per sandwich purchased were 784 at Subway versus 572 at McDonald's. The sodium content at both restaurants was three times higher than the IOM recommended daily dose: 2,149 mg at Subway versus 1,829 mg at McDonald's.
Apixaban Effect Constant
The treatment effect of the oral anticoagulant apixaban (Eliquis) to prevent stroke in atrial fibrillation patients was constant across a broad range of patient and country international normalized ratios (INR), a subanalysis of the ARISTOTLE trial found.
In the lowest and highest quartiles of time in therapeutic range (TTR) among countries, hazard ratios for clinical outcomes were:
- Stroke or systemic embolism -- 0.73 (95% CI 0.53 to 1.00) and 0.88 (95% CI 0.57 to 1.35, P interaction = 0.078)
- Mortality -- 0.91 (95% CI 0.74 to 1.13) and 0.91 (95% CI 0.71 to 1.16, P interaction = 0.34)
- Major bleeding -- 0.50 (95% CI 0.36 to 0.70) and 0.75 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.97, P interaction = 0.095)
Similar results were seen at different levels of predicted individual patient TTR:
- Lowest quartiles -- HR 0.70 (95% CI 0.52 to 0.94)
- Highest quartiles -- HR 0.87 (95% CI 0.57 to 1.33)
The interaction with continuous individual patient TTR was P=0.060, according to Lars Wallentin, MD, of Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, and colleagues.
The study was published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Congenital Heart Defects Spawn New Mutations
Patients with congenital heart disease are seven times more likely to have unique genetic mutations not inherited from parents than the average population, researchers found.
Many of these mutations occur in genes that can modify a group of histones -- proteins that can regulate the expression of key developmental genes, including those involved in heart development, according to Richard P. Lifton, MD, PhD, of Yale University School of Medicine, and colleagues.
Collectively, these de novo mutations contribute to around 10% of severe congenital heart disease cases, they wrote in the journal Nature.
Researchers reached these results by comparing the incidence of de novo mutations in 362 severe congenital heart disease cases and 264 controls.
High-Tech Imaging Predicts Stroke Deficit
Among various MRI measures, a sophisticated imaging of axonal damage in the corticospinal tract was the only independent predictor of long-term motor outcome, researchers found.
In 70 patients with middle cerebral artery stroke, researchers evaluated the clinical severity, infarct volume, location of corticospinal tract damage on diffusion tensor tractography, and ratios of fractional anisotropy between affected and unaffected sides of the corticospinal tract at the pons.
Only the ratios of fractional anisotropy correlated with the degree of motor deficit at 2 years, and it was the only independent predictor of long-term motor outcome at 30 days, according to Josep Puig, MD, Girona Biomedical Research Institute in Girona, Spain, and colleagues.
However, the usefulness of the ratios of fractional anisotropy as a surrogate must be validated further, researcher wrote in the study published online in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Skip to Main Content
Licensing & CE
About Us
How Do I...?
Homeowner's Insurance
Catastrophe Savings Accounts
Catastrophe Savings Accounts
Catastrophe savings accounts allow South Carolina residents to prepare for the financial impact of a catastrophic storm and save on South Carolina income taxes.
Catastrophe savings accounts can be established at a state or federally chartered bank. The money can only be held in an interest bearing account.
Income Tax
The money that is placed in a catastrophe savings account and the annual interest earnings are not subject to state income taxation if left in the account or used for qualified catastrophe expenses. However, the amounts cannot be used to reduce federal income.
Withdrawals for any purchase other than a qualified catastrophe expense are treated as ordinary income and taxed accordingly at the state level. Withdrawals are also subject to a 2.5% additional tax unless the withdrawal falls under
one of the
Consult a Tax Professional
Remember, this information only attempts to address the kinds of questions people most frequently ask about catastrophe savings accounts. As with any tax matter, and for specific questions regarding catastrophe savings accounts, including which type, if any, is suitable for your situation and how opening an account would affect your particular tax liability, you should consult a tax professional.
Catastrophe Savings Accounts Brochure
Additional Homeowner's Insurance Coverages
Catastrophe Savings Accounts
Cost of Homeowner's Insurance
Purchasing Home Insurance Knowledge
Types of Coverage in Homeowner's Insurance Policy
Contact Us
File a Complaint
Locate Insurance
Print License
safe home
Fraud Division
Government Websites by
Arrow Left
Arrow Right
Slideshow Left Arrow
Slideshow Right Arrow


text:
George P. Panteleyev Award
The George "Gera" Pavlovich Panteleyev Award is conferred annually on the MIT-WHOI or WHOI Graduate Student in the graduating class for that academic year who best exemplifies the commitment to improving the graduate education experience and graduate student life at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
This award honors the memory of George "Gera" P. Panteleyev. Gera was an MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student actively engaged in his Masters thesis research project as the Chief Scientist of a research cruise on the Ob River in Siberia in June 1995 when he was swept overboard in an accident and lost. His dedication to research in conjunction with improving life for his fellow Russian citizens and his enthusiasm for graduate student life at WHOI were much admired.
The George P. Panteleyev Award consists of a plaque with the recipient's name and the date engraved, and a cash award. Nominations are sought each year from current and graduating Joint Program students, as well as faculty and staff. The award is presented at the annual WHOI Graduate Reception in June and Commencement every 5 years.


text:
WASHINGTON – An environmental effort to make recycling more convenient in the District is having the unintended consequence of increasing crime, says Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier.
As cellphones are made obsolete at astonishing rates in today's consumer climate, a company has come up with a novel way to encourage their proper disposal: They've set up ecoATMs where people can deposit the old phones and make a quick hundred or two. The company then recycles the equipment.
But the fast cash is proving too tempting for thieves, who have increased their efforts at stealing cellphones — outdated or not, Lanier says.
"I'm announcing my new crusade," she said on Thursday while a guest on WTOP's "Ask the Chief" show. "Many of these phones are stolen. This is a problem for me."
EcoATMs work similarly to a cash ATM in that they allow a person to insert their old phone and get up to $250 back, instantly.
Lanier says there are three such devices in the immediate area. A website for the company ecoATM lists up to 10 locations in D.C. and the surrounding suburbs.
"I think this is not a good system here. I'm sure it's increasing the problem," she says.
Cellphone thefts are a serious problem nationwide, making up roughly 40 percent of all robberies in the District, New York and other large American cities, officials say.
Law enforcement has worked aggressively to reduce the numbers. In December, Lanier announced she had teamed with D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray to create a website, brickit.dc.gov, which allows people to contact their cell providers, who in turn will disable a phone reported stolen.
Lanier said the database has been very useful for law enforcement, but the resource doesn't help track stolen phones that are disposed into ecoATMs because those are recycled and can't be tracked.
Lanier did not have specific numbers that point to a rise in thefts, but said she understands 30 to 35 percent of the phones deposited in the boxes are stolen.
Lanier says the company operating the ecoATMs has been cooperative with law enforcement and is working closely to find a solution.
Lanier spoke on a range of topics during her appearance, including her reaction to a recent Human Rights Watch report about sex crimes in the D.C. area, gun violence and the law regarding scalped tickets. The live blog is below.
Follow @WTOP on Twitter.


text:
An official website of the United States government
News Release 2011-97 | July 21, 2011
Share This Page:
WASHINGTON — The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is issuing today an Interim Final Rule with request for comments that republishes regulations issued by the Office of Thrift Supervision that the OCC has authority to promulgate and enforce as of today. The rule is effective today and will be published in the Federal Register on August 9. The comment period will close on October 11.
Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the OCC today assumed responsibility from the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) for the ongoing examination, supervision, and regulation of federal savings associations and rulemaking for all savings associations, state and federal.
This rule renumbers and issues these former OTS regulations as new OCC regulations, with nomenclature and other technical amendments to reflect OCC supervision of federal savings associations. These newly issued OCC regulations will supersede OTS regulations for purposes of OCC supervision of federal savings associations, as provided by the Act.
In order to reduce confusion and to assist the thrift industry, the OCC has preserved where possible in these new rules the OTS's numbering system. For example, 12 CFR part 545 is republished as 12 CFR part 145. The preamble to the interim final rule contains a redesignation table indicating how the newly issued OCC rules correspond to the former OTS rules. OTS regulations in Chapter V of Title 12 that will be unnecessary following the transfer date, or that are superseded by this rulemaking or other provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act, will be repealed at a later date.
Because the Act also transfers OTS functions related to the supervision of state savings associations to the FDIC and savings association holding companies to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Board), the OCC has worked closely with the OTS, FDIC, and the Board to coordinate the republication of these former OTS rules.
This interim final rule is part of a larger OCC review of OCC and OTS regulations to determine what changes are needed for the transition to OCC supervision of federal savings associations. As a continuation of this review, the OCC will consider more comprehensive substantive amendments to these regulations, as appropriate, later this year.
Robert M. Garsson (202) 874-5770


text:
I am making a call with parameters from application "A" to a web application "B". Parameters are in the query string of the URL. They don't need to be hidden. But I want to be sure that nobody can change the parameters. And web application "B" must ensure that the query comes from application "A".
So, I encoded the parameters in AES with CBC. I know that HMAC is best for this kind of situation. But AES with CBC is the only one algo that the 2 applications have in common.
The security of the system relies on the fact that nobody in application "A" can choose arbitrary plaintext to be encrypted (to avoid request with modified parameters). Parameters are not an input for the users.
I would like to know the risk if I use a fixed IV or a predictable IV?
It seems that the risk is a chosen plaintext attack.
With this article:
I understand how chosen plaintext attack can lead to reveal the content of the ciphertext.
But I don't mind if the content of the ciphertext is discovered.
What are the other risks?
Can someone build unauthorized request? CWE-329 says yes. But does that only imply the reusing and adaptaptation of blocks of older messages? Or does the attacker can build his own request with whatever plaintext he wants?
Does the secret key can be discovered? From Wikipedia it seems that chosen plaintext attack can reveal the secret key, but I don't understand how.


text:
There is a lot of exhibition activity happening this weekend, especially in BCAM, where Glenn Ligon: AMERICA ends its run and Ellsworth Kelly: Prints and Paintings begins. The Kelly show gathers 100 examples of Kelly's prints, organized thematically (grids, curves, and contrast), as well as paintings and one sculpture from LACMA's collection. The exhibition is on the second level of BCAM, just across the way from the Glenn Ligon show. In case you missed them, here's a look at some of the blog posts we've done over the course of Glenn Ligon's run:
- Glenn Ligon talked to us twice—first in a quick Q&A, then in a splendid video interview
- A lot of contributors had unique, personal responses to the exhibition, in particular over issues of identity—see entries from Unframed contributors Christine Choi and Hylan Booker, and from our high school interns, who responded to Ligon's work by making their own art.
Glenn Ligon, Rückenfigur, 2009, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the 2010 Collectors Committee, © Glenn Ligon, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
Also closing this weekend is Mural Remix: Sandra de la Loza, one of our Pacific Standard Time exhibitions. De la Loza created a visual "mashup" by creating original works from details of East L.A. murals painted in the 1970s. Previously on Unframed, curator Chon Noriega interviewed de la Loza about the exhibition. (FYI, Saturday's "Mural Remix Tour," which includes stops at LACMA, the Fowler Museum, and the site of artist Willie Herrón's newest mural, is sold out.)
Sandra de la Loza and Joseph Santarromana, Action Portraits (installation view), 2011, © Sandra de la Loza, photo © Museum Associates/LACMA
One last exhibition note: Metropolis II is up and running for its second weekend, now on its regular schedule. The artwork is operational only on Fridays through Sundays, at the following times:
- Fridays: 12:30–1:30 pm; 2:30–3:30 pm; 4:30–5:30 pm; 6:30–7:30 pm
- Weekends: 11:30 am–12:30 pm; 1:30–2:30 pm; 3:30–4:30 pm; 5:30–6:30 pm
In addition to exhibitions, there are also plenty of films to see this weekend. Tonight we hold a special, members-only screening of Oren Moverman's new film Rampart, starring Woody Harrelson, Ice Cube, Steve Buscemi, Sigourney Weaver, and more. The screening, co-presented with the New York Times, is an exclusive benefit for LACMA members and members of LACMA Film Club, Film Independent, and the New York Times Film Club. If you want access to screenings like this one, or priority ticketing for popular events like our Live Reads (February's is already sold out!), join the Film Club.
Saturday and Sunday we're offering a free film series, open to all: Contested Visions in Latin America through Film, in conjunction with the current exhibition Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, which closes next weekend. See yesterday's Unframed post for a full rundown of the films, including trailers.
Sunday is a great day to enjoy lots of free activities, including the Contested Visions films, art-making activities during Andell Family Sunday—inspired by the upcoming Chinese New Year !—and a free concert by the Chamber Ensembles from the Crossroads School perform Beethoven, Ravel, and Brahms. (These events are free but admission to the galleries is still regular price.)
Scott Tennent


text:
The Haviland Premium Pool Filter Hose is specifically made for pool filter connections and is perfect for new equipment sets or to replace worn out filter hoses. Heavy duty molded construction makes this filter hose a strong and durable connection hose. The Pool Filter Hoses are resistant to harsh pool water environments, chemicals and ultra violet rays. Haviland's exclusive design provides amazing flow, and each hose is designed to be surprisingly light in your hand.
Pool Filter Hose 'LengthFeatures:
1 1/2" Diameter X 4 ft., 6ft., & 8ft.
Soft durometer EVA cuffs welded to hose for leak-proof connections
Protection against ultra violet rays
Resistant to harsh pool chemicals
Black color to blend with most pumps and filters..


text:
D-Lib MagazineMay/June 2012 Implementing DOIs for Research Data
Natasha Simons AbstractResearch is increasingly collaborative and global in nature, and efforts to manage the vast amounts of research data generated daily require global solutions. The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) system provides a means of persistent identification of research data collections and datasets that is global, standardised and widely used. The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) partnered with DataCite to offer a DOI minting service. At Griffith University, implementing DOIs raised governance questions common to other institutions that encouraged discussion and collaboration. IntroductionHuge volumes of research data, largely born digital and enabled by vast advances in computing power, are being generated worldwide. The world's most powerful telescope, the Square Kilometre Array, will generate computer data in a single day that is equivalent to the amount generated by the whole world in a single year [1]. CERN's Large Hadron Collider, built to help scientists answer key unresolved questions in particle physics, will produce roughly 15 petabytes of data annually which is enough to fill more than 1.7 million dual-layer DVDs a year [2]. It is predicted that "the volume of data generated in research and by scientific instruments will soon dwarf all the technical and scientific data collected in the history of research" [3]. 'Big data' and the 'data deluge' affects all academic disciplines from science to the humanities and brings enormous opportunities for research along with difficult challenges in data storage and management. Research institutions are faced with the immensely difficult task of finding ways to store and manage data in a format that facilitates discoverability, accessibility, and re-use. Data that is richly described, organised, integrated and connected allows the data to be more easily discovered by other researchers who may pose new questions to be answered, raise larger issues to be investigated, and identify data landscapes to be explored [4]. "Access to data enables system-level science, expands the instruments and products of research to new communities, and advances solutions to complex human problems" [5]. Growing culture of data citationTraditionally, knowledge derived from research is shared in the form of a publication such as a journal article. However, the data used to produce the research publication is effectively lost to poor archival practice and only a very small proportion of the original data is made available in conventional journals. The result is unnecessary duplication of effort through re-creation of existing data, and an inability to verify results or re-purpose the data [6]. The vision of open access to data is to make it accessible and usable to anyone, anytime, anywhere, and for any purpose. Publicly available data is associated with a significant increase in citations irrespective of journal impact factor, date of publication, and country of origin [7]. As part of a global effort to improve access to research data, there is growing impetus for an international culture of data citation using the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) System. "Data citation refers to the practice of providing a reference to data in the same way as researchers routinely provide a bibliographic reference to printed resources." [8] DataCite is a global not-for-profit organisation formed in London in December 2009 that is facilitating the growing culture of data citation for scientific content. A key aim of DataCite [9] is to "increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scholarly record" [10] and they work with organisations that hold data to provide persistent identifiers in the form of DOIs. The DOI systemThe DOI® system provides a framework for persistent identification, managing intellectual content, managing metadata, facilitating commerce and linking customers with content. DOI names are an implementation of the Handle System for persistent identifiers and seamlessly transport the user from one interface to another without requiring specific software. Information about a digital object may change over time, including where to find it and who owns it, but its DOI will not change. A DOI is made up of alphanumeric characters and must be unique. It consists of a prefix and a suffix separated with a forward slash. The prefix always begins with '10' as this distinguishes it from other implementations of the Handle System, and then states the registrant code designating the creating organisation or publisher that is registering the DOI. The suffix identifies the individual work and is also known as the 'item id'. It is assigned by the publisher/owner of the DOI. The system evolved from the publishing industry and solidified in 1998 with the founding of the International DOI Foundation (IDF), an open membership consortium. A DOI Registration Agency infrastructure provides ongoing support and maintains quality and accuracy of DOI names. Agencies are appointed by the IDF to provide service, quality assurance and overall integrity of the DOI system [11]. CrossRef [12], a consortium of around 3,000 publishers, is one of many IDF Registration Agencies. In addition to the International DOI Foundation (IDF) and Registration Agencies structure, DOIs differ from other persistent identifiers in that they require a minimal amount of metadata to be provided at the point of obtaining each DOI. They also require a commitment from the provider to maintain the URL associated with the DOI. In the context of research data, this requires the provider of the data to maintain access to, and preservation of, the data persistently over time. The "DOI has emerged as the most widely used standard for digital resources in the publication world" [13]. The DOI is an ISO International Standard and over 55 million DOI names have been assigned by DOI system Registration Agencies in the US, Australasia, and Europe [14]. In December 2010, only one year after its formation, DataCite had registered over one million DOI names for research data material [15]. ANDS "Cite My Data" serviceAs part of a broad strategy to achieve its goals, the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) [16] joined DataCite and in 2011 launched a Cite My Data [17] service to offer minting of DOIs to Australian research institutions. ANDS is leading the creation of the 'Australian Research Data Commons', a cohesive Australian collection of research resources. The Commons will produce a richer data environment that will make better use of Australia's research outputs and enable researchers to easily publish, discover, access and use data. The Cite My Data machine-to-machine service is offered free of charge to ANDS-partners and facilitates the minting of DOIs for research data collections and datasets using DataCite as the DOI Registration Agency. An ANDS-partner institution, Griffith University ranks among Australia's top-10 research universities and is placed in the top 500 Academic Ranking of World Universities [18]. Funding from ANDS and internal sources has assisted Griffith to facilitate capture, discovery and re-use of the data produced by its researchers. The process has involved infrastructure development including a research data repository and the Griffith Hub, a metadata store solution with a semantic web implementation and a discovery layer [19]. In addition to local discovery portals, Griffith's research data collections and datasets are exposed via the ANDS Research Data Australia [20] service and the National Library of Australia's Trove [21] service. Implementing DOIsThe ANDS Cite My Data service provided Griffith University with a first-time opportunity to mint DOIs. The eResearch Services team within Scholarly Information and Research, Division of Information Services, are responsible for management of research data collections at the institution and volunteered to participate in the trial and production implementation. The scope included investigating the use of DOIs, their application to the Griffith collection, the benefits, implementation issues and workflows. It became clear early in the trial of the Cite My Data service that implementing DOIs would be technically simple but required the resolution of a number of difficult governance questions. These included:
These questions are relevant to other institutions and a broad, open and collaborative approach is proving beneficial for resolution. In late 2011 ANDS organised a Data Citation workshop [22] featuring a range of presenters including the DOI expert Jan Brase, chair of the International DOI Foundation and Manager of DataCite. The DOI governance questions raised at Griffith were discussed and ANDS made responses available via their website [23]. Answers to governance questions have been further progressed through collaborative, open discussion with other institutions implementing DOIs and a Griffith University Guide to Minting DOIs has been drafted. DOIs and collaborative researchIt is increasingly the case that research is the result of collaboration between researchers across institutions and across state and international borders. Therefore it's necessary to provide guidelines for who, in a collaborative research project, mints the DOI for a data collection or dataset. While it is technically feasible to mint different DOIs for one data collection shared between institutions, each with a different landing page, this runs against the grain of the DOI system. Where more than one institution stores the same data collection, and each have their own landing page for that collection, only one DOI should be minted for the collection. Each institution then refers, in the metadata record about the collection, to the same DOI. However, there is no formal agreement between Australian research institutions that can provide guidance on this question. The solution may need to be resolved between researchers working on the collaborative project or between research data administrators at respective institutions. Considerations might include:
VersioningMaterial such as data collections and datasets are subject to change in version, scope and content over time. If a DOI is minted and assigned to a research data collection that is later changed (updated, revised, expanded) then a new DOI will need to be issued for the later version of the material. Otherwise a data citation may point to an incorrect version of the research data. This raises a technical issue. The relatedIdentifier metadata element within the DataCite Metadata Schema [24] can be used to link versions to each other. However, there are only five mandatory metadata elements required to mint a DOI through DataCite. Implementing technical support for the full DataCite Schema will enable the provision of richer metadata such as versioning. The Schema is also subject to further changes via the activities of the DataCite Metadata Working Group, of which ANDS is a member. Additionally, consideration will need to be given to alerting users to the existence of different versions of the data collection, the differences between each version and their respective DOI. DOIs and other persistent identifiersPersistent identifiers are not a new concept and Griffith supports a range of these including Handles, ANDS-issued persistent identifiers, National Library of Australia identifiers and local institutional identifiers. These identifiers apply to different types of material including research publications, research data and records about researchers themselves. In this mesh of persistent identifiers, what type of material do DOIs apply to and what is the advantage of using a DOI over another persistent identifier such as a Handle? To assist institutions in deciding when to apply a DOI, a 'Persistent Identifiers Decision Tree' [25] was produced by ANDS. The Tree suggests a DOI should be applied when: the data will be exposed and forms part of the scholarly record; the data can be kept persistent; and the minimum DataCite metadata schema requirements [26] can be met. In deciding whether to assign a DOI to research data, additional questions may include: does the institution have the authority to expose and manage the research data? What happens to the data, and the DOI, when a researcher moves from one institution to another? What 'grey literature', such as theses and unpublished discussion papers, should be issued with a DOI? DOIs are intended to be persistent, and to ensure research data becomes a citeable part of the scholarly record, a DOI issued for a data collection requires persistent support of the data. However, guaranteeing access to data over an indefinite period of time is problematic for research institutions. Digital storage requirements are ever-increasing, exponentially in some academic disciplines, along with associated storage costs. Research institutions are faced with the task of finding secure storage for large volumes of new data while maintaining storage of older digital data. GranularityOne of the benefits of the DOI system is that DOIs can be assigned at any level of granularity. For example, a DOI can be assigned to a data collection and also to each item within the data collection, e.g. a collection of digital film and each film within the collection. In deciding what level of granularity to apply a DOI to, consideration may be given to the expectations of data users. Is the material at a more granular level within each data collection likely to be cited? Does the material at an item level meet basic DOI requirements in terms of access, persistence and metadata? Storage and displayRather than pointing directly to a digital dataset, the DOIs minted by Griffith will point to a landing page in the Griffith Research Hub. The landing page contains relevant metadata that describes the digital object it links to and includes information about access rights and restrictions. In future it will also contain the preferred citation. The DOI will be stored in Griffith systems and will be displayed in the Research Hub and other discovery portals such as the Griffith Data Repository and Griffith Research Online. Importantly, the DOIs minted by Griffith will be included in the feed to collection records provided to the ANDS Research Data Australia service, the premier discovery service for Australian research data collections. Approaches and workflowsThere are a number of research data projects in 2012 at Australian institutions that involve the implementation of DOIs and a collaborative, open discussion between people working on some of these projects has begun. Two distinct approaches and subsequent workflows have emerged from these discussions. One approach is to develop an interface for researchers that allows them to mint or place a mediated request for a DOI name for their data collection. Another approach is to mint DOIs for data collections that have already been curated and are maintained by research data administrators. The latter doesn't require liaison with researchers though it will be important to communicate the DOI concept and its use in data citation. The two different approaches require different workflows and communication strategies though it is likely that as DOI implementation develops, an institution will support both workflows. Collaboration and information sharing between institutions implementing DOIs is expected to continue and there has been an informal agreement to make technical scripts available as open source. Citation trackingA method of tracking citation metrics will be required to evaluate the success of DOIs as a tool for research data citation. DataCite has created a central metadata repository and allow Thomson Reuters to crawl the repository so that the metadata appears in the Web of Science. DataCite and CrossRef are also exploring the possibility for publishers to search the metadata repository and identify relations from datasets to their articles [27]. In 2011 BGI launched the GigaScience Journal [28] as a 'big data' open-access open-data database [29]. A DOI can be assigned upon data submission to the journal to allow discovery, citing and citation tracking. ConclusionAt Griffith University, implementing DOIs has raised governance questions common to other institutions that encouraged discussion and collaboration. In so doing, it has resulted in a new approach to a complex area. Further open and collaborative discussion will be important in the wider adoption of DOIs for research data collections by Australian research institutions. Notes[1] Role, A., Phillips, C. (2011). Managing a Data Mountain. Stories of Australian Science. [2] European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), The Large Hadron Collider. [3] Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), The Data Deluge. [4] Australian National Data Service (ANDS), About ANDS. [5] Faniel, I.M., Zimmerman, A. (2011). Beyond the Data Deluge: A research agenda for large scale data sharing and re-use. The International Journal of Digital Curation, 6(1): 59. [6] Brase, J. (2009). DataCite A global registration agency for research data. COINFO '09 Proceedings of the 2009 Fourth International Conference on Cooperation and Promotion of Information Resources in Science and Technology: 257-261. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/COINFO.2009.66 [7] Piwowar, H.A., Day, R.S., Fridsma, D.B. (2007) Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate. PLoS ONE 2(3): e308. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000308 [8] Australian National Data Service (ANDS), Data Citation Resources. [10] DataCite, What is DataCite. [11] Wang, J. (2007). Digital Object Identifiers and Their Use in Libraries. Serials Review 33 (3): 161-164. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.serrev.2007.05.006 [13] Brase, J. (2009). DataCite A global registration agency for research data. COINFO '09 Proceedings of the 2009 Fourth International Conference on Cooperation and Promotion of Information Resources in Science and Technology: 258. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/COINFO.2009.66 [14] The International DOI Foundation, The DOI System. [16] Australian National Data Service. [17] Australian National Data Service (ANDS), Cite My Data Service. [18] Griffith University, Griffith News. [19] Wolski, M., Richardson, J., Rebollo, R. (2011). Building an Institutional Discovery Layer for Virtual Research Collections. D-Lib Magazine, 17 (5-6). http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/may2011-wolski [20] Australian National Data Service (ANDS), Research Data Australia. [21] National Library of Australia, Trove. [22] Australian National Data Service (ANDS), Data Citation Workshop. [23] Australian National Data Service (ANDS), DOI Questions and Answers. [24] Starr, J. (2011). isCitedBy: a Metadata Scheme for DataCite. D-Lib Magazine, 17 (1-2). http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1045/january2011-starr [25] ANDS, Data Citation Resources. [26] DataCite, Metadata Schema Repository. [29] Davies, Kevin (2011). BGI launches new Big Data Journal: GigaScience. BioIT World Magazine, September-October. About the Author


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
NASA mulls nuclear Moon reactor
Fission of the future
I see the moon/The moon sees me/Down through the leaves of the old oak tree/Please the the light that shines on me/Be home to fission surface power technology
The Moon is terrific as far as desolate orbiting rocks go, but by all accounts it's rather lacking in the nuclear power generator department. Which is a shame because that means NASA needs to build one itself to juice up any future lunar outposts.
Indeed, America's space agency wants to outsource its lunar R&D operations some 384,403km above the Earth by 2020 – but it has no plans to be lighting torches and taking cold showers when it gets there. The goal is to spread civilization to the stars, after all.
Solar power will undoubtedly play a role in providing energy to astronaut and robotic foil alike, but the final decision on a primary power supply is still open for consideration. After all, the Moon is really just a warm-up to booking passage to more exotic locales such as Mars, where sunlight on the surface may not always be so accommodating.
"Our goal is to build a technology demonstration unit with all the major components of a fission surface power system and conduct non-nuclear, integrated system testing in a ground-based space simulation facility," said Lee Mason, head investigator for the test at NASA's Glenn Center in Cleveland. "Our long-term goal is to demonstrate technical readiness early in the next decade, when NASA is expected to decide on the type of power system to be used on the lunar surface."
NASA engineers are exploring the possibility of nuclear fission as a choice for rugged planet-side colonization. The agency reckons a fission surface power system on the moon has the potential to generate a steady 40 kilowatts of electric power – enough for about eight houses on Earth.
Nuclear fission 101 refresher course: Such a system works by splitting uranium atoms in a reactor to generate heat, which is then converted into electric power. Because a lunar outpost reactor would only need to be designed for a small audience in mind, NASA says they could squeeze it into something as small as an office trash can and not require those large concrete cooling towers iconic on terrestrial nuclear power plants.
Glenn has already contracted two different types of power conversion units, which will hopefully be able to convert heat into electrical power efficiently. NASA is leaving the actual atom-splitting fiddling for a later date.
The first design is by Sunpower Inc, of Athens Ohio. It's described as using two opposed piston engines coupled to alternators that produce 6 kilowatts each (for a total of 12 kilowatts). The second contract by Barber Nichols Inc., of Arvada Colorado, is developing a closed Brayton cycle engine that uses a high speed turbine and compressor coupled to a rotary alternator, that also generates 12 kilowatts of power.
Artist's concept of a fission surface power system, courtesy NASA.
NASA said testing the power conversion units will be an important part of determining if fission surface power is a viable option for moving the moon to the nuclear age.
After one year, NASA will select one of the contractors to build a prototype power converter. The unit will be hooked to a heat rejection system being developed by Glenn at NASA – which will also be providing the space simulation facility. (Moon-landing conspiracy theorists, start your engines.)
Meanwhile, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama is working on a non-nuclear reactor simulator that uses liquid metal coolant as the heat source for the demonstration.
Testing is expected to take place at the Glenn facility in 2012 or 2013. ®


text:
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A right-to-work law is on the books in Michigan, a mainstay of organized labor, but those considering opting out of paying union dues will have to wait months or years to do so.
The law, which lets workers choose not to pay to the unions that bargain on their behalf, applies to labor contracts that are extended or renewed starting Thursday — meaning many employees will not be affected until existing collective bargaining agreements end.
"I've got a long way to go until I can exercise my right," said Terry Bowman, 47, who works on the line at a Ford Motor Co. plant in Ypsilanti. Contracts between unions and Detroit automakers are effective until September 2015.
Bowman, who founded a group called Union Conservatives, said he is leaning toward ending his membership in the United Auto Workers — of which he has been a member since 1996 — unless it drops its "political agenda." He said there are many more blue-collar people like him, but they are scared to publicly support right-to-work because of pressure from union leaders after the law won quick approval in December from the GOP-led Legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.
Though Bowman does not expect a "mass exodus," he said some unions could lose a quarter of their membership.
Michigan, the 24th right-to-work state, has the nation's seventh-highest percentage of unionized workers. Peer pressure and tradition may go a long way to keep the larger, more established unions intact. The UAW, for example, has been intertwined in Michigan's culture of manufacturing cars and trucks for 77 years.
Neighboring Indiana enacted a right-to-work law in February 2012. The early results: Union membership declined to 9.1 percent of the workforce last year from 11.3 percent in 2011, according to federal statistics — a loss of 56,000 people. Most of Indiana's unions have not yet seen a big drop-off in membership, but many contracts are still in place from before the law took effect.
The declines may indicate more of a national trend, as membership across the U.S. has shrunk to its lowest levels since at least the 1930s — a paltry 6.6 percent in the private sector. In Michigan, union membership dropped to 16.6 percent from 17.5 percent a year earlier, a decline of 42,000.
"The labor movement has done a lot of great things for our country. It's not about being anti-union in my view. It's about being pro-worker," said Snyder, who contends more companies will consider moving to or expanding in Michigan because of the right-to-work law.
Staunch union members say the law has very little to do with economic development and is more about union-busting for political reasons.
"It's clear to me that right-to-work is not at all for labor," said Steven Strahle, a University of Michigan nurse in Ann Arbor.
He said there is no way he will leave his union, which he has been a part of since 1999. He said he previously worked as a nurse in a non-unionized workplace and worries the law will depress wages and benefits for the working class.
Having a union contract helped his "ability to be an advocate for your patient without any type of retribution, having a voice to provide the quality care that you want to give to your patient every day," said Strahle, 50.
He participated in a small, silent protest at the state Capitol on Thursday, 3 ½ months after thousands of chanting, whistle-blowing demonstrators thronged the building on the day right-to-work received final passage in the Legislature.
Union organizers asked people statewide to wear red to protest the law. Dozens did so at a morning rally outside the Detroit Athletic Club, where Snyder spoke at a "Pancakes & Politics" event.
Toting a "Snyder (equals) Snake" sign, 52-year-old Detroit resident Dwight Jarrett called on the governor to repeal the law.
"If he doesn't do the right thing, we'll make sure he's out in 2014," he said.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed to strike down the law. Legal challenges in neighboring Indiana have been unsuccessful. Snyder said Thursday that right-to-work is "done" and "over with."
Legal action also has been taken regarding the recent approval or consideration of lengthy contracts for employees of some of Michigan's public universities and school districts that will allow unions to keep collecting dues long after the right-to-work law is in effect. In response, House Republicans have initially approved budgets cutting state aid to schools and local governments that sign contracts that, in some cases, are 10 years long. Snyder and Senate leaders appear less open to the tactic.
The law cannot be overturned directly in a referendum, yet unions could decide to back a 2014 ballot measure that effectively overturns it. The law's backers expect that a ballot initiative is coming to coincide with the re-election bids of Snyder and GOP legislators next year.
"In all candor, March 28th is just another day leading up to the real showdown that will take place in November 2014," said Scott Hagerstrom, director of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity-Michigan.
"Michigan could be big labor's last stand. If right-to-work can stand in Michigan, it can stand anywhere," he said.


text:
Repeat after me, "Ice Cream (or food/drink of your choice) is NOT the miracle cure for (insert current life problem here)." Come on- say it with me, "Ice cream is NOT the miracle cure for a bad day." Okay, now let's try this one, "I do not need to eat Breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 6pm if I'm not hungry at those times." And one more for good measure, "If (insert spouse/friend/etc. name here) is eating pizza, I do not need to eat pizza too." Now, how do you feel about the things you just said? What's going on between those ears of yours? (I understand that some of you may not often experience 'action' in that region – but now would be a good time to go ahead and put on the old thinking cap.)
I want you to think about everything you ate yesterday. And I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME you had something in your mouth that you chewed and/or swallowed (get your heads out of the gutter). I'm not just talking about the food that you put on your plate but also those two bites of your child's breakfast, that mindless munching while you were making dinner, and that piece of chocolate from your co-workers candy dish – no 'convenient amnesia' here. BE HONEST! Now, for each time that you ate something, WHY did you eat it? Were you hungry? Bored? Was it a clock-based decision? Or did you just do it because everyone else was doing it or because it was just there?
I'd be willing to bet that at least 50% of the time you ate or drank something yesterday, you weren't PHYSICALLY hungry. I know, you're all – "Uh, yes I was hungry…" Okay, fair. I can't actually KNOW what you were feeling, BUT I'm guessing in most of the situations when you 'thought' you were hungry if your choice had been celery instead of chocolate or tofu instead of steak; that hunger would've got up and walked right on out the door. Am I right??
Okay, so if you're not truly experiencing a physiological NEED for food, but still feel hungry – the question is – What kind of 'hungry' are you? Yeah, mind blown, right? There is more than one kind of hungry and understanding the differences between the types is kind of a big deal. So let's break these bad boys down.
Physical Hunger:
This one is like Coke – "It's The Real Thing." (Okay, bad comparison – but just go with it.) When you're physically hungry your body truly needs food. Your stomach is growling, your blood sugar is tanking, you have a hard time concentrating and damn-it, a stalk or two of celery is sounding pretty tasty. (I'm talking about PLAIN celery – not a vessel for almond butter – don't even try to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about…) Yep, physical hunger is your body's way of telling you it needs nutrients and energy. If this is what you're feeling- EAT!!!
Nutritional Hunger: (The "I'm hungry all the time" Hunger)
No, this is NOT the same as physical hunger- so don't go getting the two confused. Think about the times when you eat (or used to eat) a less then optimal diet (enter Taco Bell, Cheetos, Chips Ahoy, Fruit Loops, etc.). You'd eat, feel 'full' and then like 15-60 minutes later – HOLY HUNGRY – It's the "Chinese Food Phenomenon". Sadly, a good portion of the food that we eat (or used to eat) is far from nutrient dense (sorry guys, there isn't a lick of fruit in those tasty colorful Loops), and our body NEEDS nutrients. If the foods you're eating are processed, refined, sugar and carb laden shit sandwiches then your body's need for real nutrition will never be satisfied. It's a vicious cycle – eat cruddy food – don't get the nutrients your body needs – don't feel satisfied – eat more cruddy food and so on… This folks is how obesity has become an epidemic.
Hormonal Hunger: (Ladies, you know what I'm talking about…)
Chocolate, brownies, cake, chips… You know that feeling you get after you eat a meal – the one where you think you're still a little "hungry" and you just need something sweet? Yeah, that one. I'm guessing you know it well and for some of us there may be 'times of the month' when it's a little more prevalent than we would like. It's those mid-afternoon cravings, that 'drive for dessert' – even when you know darn well you shouldn't still be hungry. These cravings are often 'fed' by caving to the sugar/carb demons – those bad boys mess with our brain chemicals and hormones. The good news is, the longer you resist the urge to cave to the cravings the fewer and farther between they'll be. Feed your body good food and your hormones will be much better behaved!
Emotional Hunger
Are you sad, lonely, stressed, tired, grumpy, feeling 'empty'? Let's go back to the first line of this miniature novel; – REPEAT AFTER ME, "Ice Cream (or food of your choice) is not the miracle cure for (insert problem here)." We live in a culture that turns to food to fix EVERYTHING. Our lives revolve around eating. Food is everywhere and food is something that many of us associate with happiness and/or comfort – so it totally makes sense that we eat when we're tired, bored, sad, angry, stressed, lonely… Instead of dealing with the deeper issues we run to 'instant gratification' because we want to feel better. And it works – for a VERY short time. Yeah, the ice cream tastes great- but is it actually fixing anything and how are you going to feel when it's gone? Believe it or not food will not mend a broken heart, make your sadness stop, or solve your problems. In fact, we often end up feeling even worse after we self-medicate with sugar and junk foods. Food is not a cure, it may be a Band-Aid but it's one of those really cheap ones that you have to replace every15 minutes. If chocolate could solve the world's problems it would be a better place, but until then deal with the reasons you want to eat and life will be much sweeter.
Hunger By Association
So, you're at a restaurant with a group of friends having dinner. You all had a great meal – steak, bacon-wrapped asparagus and roasted sweet potatoes. You're completely satisfied – that is until – everyone else starts ordering dessert. Suddenly, the food in your stomach miraculously rearranged itself and made room for a slice of chocolate cake. Yep, you're definitely hungry again – but only for dessert – celery need not apply… How and why does that happen? We might be completely satisfied – full, even – but when we see someone else eating something desirable we find ourselves hungry for some of the good stuff too. It's a classic case of hunger by association. We 'think' we're hungry and we justify eating something because the people that we're with are eating it. It's like peer pressure with no application of the actual 'pressure' needed.
Practical Hunger
Our lives are busy, right? We are constantly going from one meeting, practice, or event to another and lots of times our schedule and eating just don't jive. How many times have you been in a situation like this – You get off work at 4 pm and you're headed to the gym. You're not hungry but you eat something 'just in case'. Or maybe you've got an appointment at 11:30 am and you're not sure how long it's going to take, so even though it's only 10:30 and you just ate breakfast two hours ago, you have lunch – just to cover yourself. I think it's safe to say we've all done this on several occasions (like at least twice a week…). We eat when we aren't hungry to prevent ourselves from –wait for it – getting hungry! For some reason being truly, physically hungry (see above for the definition) is not something we're very comfortable with. I promise you though – you can go a lot longer without food then you think (like DAYS, people) and really, physical hunger is a good thing sometimes.
Taste Hunger
Two words – dessert table. What kind of picture do you have in your mind right now? Is it an EPIC collection of all things chocolate, caramel, cheesecake and ice cream? Is your mouth watering just thinking about it? How many times have you been at a party, someone's home or a restaurant buffet where there are so many things that look amazingly delicious and regardless of how long it's been since you've eaten – you've definitely got some serious tasting to do. It's another situation where we eat because the food is there – not necessarily because we need or even want it. It looks good and it's staring at you, begging you to take a bite (really it's not, but you've been there – you know what I'm talking about). How can you resist?
Habit or Learned Hunger: (Eating by the clock)
Breakfast at 7am, lunch at 12pm and dinner at 6pm – you can set your watch by it. Or maybe you're a member of the "if I don't eat every two hours my muscles are going to shrivel up and my metabolism is going to wind up in the toilet" camp. And does going to the movies or watching TV without a snack just feel wrong? Hunger and more exactly, when we should be hungry' is learned. We're conditioned from a very young age (like toddlerdom) to eat at certain times. Think for a minute how babies operate. They're on their own clock – they truly do eat when they're PHYSICALLY hungry (hence the 2am feedings) and stop when they're satisfied. It's not until our parents start making us eat breakfast when we get up, lunch at noon, and dinner at six that we start becoming 'hungry' at those times. And we also start to make subconscious associations between eating and certain activities – snacks when watching TV, or mid-afternoon, pizza on Friday night, etc. We can train our bodies to become hungry on demand and we totally tune out our true hunger cues. It's not natural.
Try sitting down at the end of the day and writing down everything you ate (yes, even those potato chip crumbs you found between the couch cushions) and then determine what kind of hunger it was. Make it your goal to really tune into your natural hunger/fullness cues – listen to your body and its physical needs. If you're physically hungry for lunch at 10 am – EAT, don't ignore it by waiting until noon because that's lunch time. Or if you're not physically hungry for lunch at 'lunchtime' – wait and eat when you are hungry.
Your body is pretty damn smart. It knows what it needs and when it needs it. We get into trouble when we try to take control. It's time to stop playing these "Hunger Games".
What kind of Hungry are you?


text:
'Smart' fridges stay cool by talking to each other
(PhysOrg.com) -- 'Smart' fridges that run on renewable electricity and are capable of negotiating the most energy efficient way to keep food cold have been developed by researchers from CSIRO's Energy Transformed Flagship.
CSIRO's Intelligent Energy team have developed a fridge capable of maintaining its average temperature while regulating its power consumption from renewable-energy generators, such as solar panels (photovoltaics) or wind turbines.
CSIRO Engineer, Sam West, says the smart fridges work as a network of distributed fridges, each fitted with control technology that allows them to communicate with each other via a network to share and store the energy provided by renewable-power generators.
"The fridges are designed to talk to each other, negotiating when it's a good time to consume electricity and when it's better not to," Mr West says. "These scheduling decisions improve the quality of electricity produced by renewables and can help increase renewable uptake in the energy market."
During the day, for example, supplies of electricity generated from photovoltaics can be interrupted by cloud cover resulting in periods of variable power supply.
"These fluctuations are bad for the electricity grid," Mr West says. "Rapid variations in electricity flow can destabilise the grid and result in blackouts and other unwanted side-effects, but your fridge can help smooth out these fluctuations if it turns on and off at the right time.
"The fridges work together to decide when to cool down, and thus consume power, based on how much surplus power will be available. They are able to anticipate power shortages and change their running schedules accordingly to use as little power as possible during these times. In short, the fridges are working cooperatively to use the available power supply efficiently."
The fridges can also be used to store energy.
"The surplus electricity produced by solar panels can be used to lower the fridge temperature a few degrees more than necessary to create a thermal energy store which will keep the fridge's contents cold during the night," Mr West says. "Another benefit is that by reducing the amount of electricity required during peak-demand periods, we can avoid the need to build more network infrastructure such as new power stations.
"Using less electricity is always preferable to generating more and is the simplest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Refrigeration can be very energy intensive but by harnessing renewable power this technology offers a low-emission solution to keeping food and other perishables cold."
CSIRO is currently seeking commercial partners to further develop the technology.
Provided by CSIRO


text:
Are you sure you want to leave this page?
This page provides information about our contract. You will find vendor information, instructions for obtaining quotes or placing orders, warranty information, our return policies and much more!
View ITS EPL Interactive >
The following agencies are authorized to purchase under this contract: This ITS EPL may be used in the acquisition of two-way radios and accessories by Mississippi agencies, universities, community/junior colleges and governing authorities (cities, counties and school districts).
Icom America values the partnerships we have with our Authorized Resellers and feel confident that you will enjoy working with them as much as we do!
For more information on Two-Way Radio EPL 3744, please visit the ITS EPL Interactive website. List of Authorized Resellers
To obtain a quote or place an order from Icom America, please contact the Government Customer Service Team at (425) 450-6090 or email@example.com. The Government Customer Service Department is open 7 a.m. through 5 p.m. Pacific Time, Monday through Friday. Any of our Government Customer Service Specialists can assist with quotes, order entry or other customer service related issues such as returns, order tracking, etc.
To obtain a quote or place an order from an Authorized Icom Dealer, please contact the contact person listed under Authorized Dealers/Resellers.
If the products were purchased directly from Icom America, please contact the Government Customer Service Team at (425) 450-6090 or firstname.lastname@example.com.
A return authorization number is required on all returns and all items being returned must be in the new condition. If the equipment being returned is not in new condition, a minimum 20% restocking fee may be applied.
If the products were purchased directly from an Authorized Icom Dealer/Reseller under this contract, please contact the person listed under Authorized Dealers/Resellers and they will assist you in the return process.


text:
- basketry
/bas"ki tree, bah"ski-/, n.1. baskets collectively; basketwork.2. the art or process of making baskets.[1850-55; BASKET + -RY]
* * *
Art and craft of making containers and other objects from interwoven flexible fibres such as grasses, twigs, bamboo, and rushes.It is primarily a functional rather than a decorative art. The type of basketry in a given geographic region is determined by the type of vegetation available there. Numerous Asian, African, Oceanic, and Native American cultures have excelled in basketry.* * *
Introductionart and craft of making interwoven objects, usually containers, from flexible vegetable fibres, such as twigs, grasses, osiers, bamboo, and rushes, or from plastic or other synthetic materials. The containers made by this method are called baskets.The Babylonian god Marduk "plaited a wicker hurdle on the surface of the waters. He created dust and spread it on the hurdle." Thus ancient Mesopotamian myth describes the creation of the earth using a reed mat. Many other creation myths place basketry among the first of the arts given to humans. The Dogon of West Africa tell how their first ancestor received a square-bottomed basket with a round mouth like those still used there in the 20th century. This basket, upended, served him as a model on which to erect a world system with a circular base representing the sun and a square terrace representing the sky.Like the decorative motifs of any other art form, the geometric, stylized shapes may represent natural or supernatural objects, such as the snakes and pigeon eyes of Borneo, and the kachina (deified ancestral spirit), clouds, and rainbows of the Hopi Indians of Arizona. The fact that these motifs are given a name, however, does not always mean that they have symbolic significance or express religious ideas.Sometimes symbolism is associated with the basket itself. Among the Guayaki Indians of eastern Paraguay, for example, it is identified with the female. The men are hunters, the women are bearers as they wander through the forest; when a woman dies, her last burden basket is ritually burned and thus dies with her.Though it would appear that basketry might best be defined as the art or craft of making baskets, the fact is that the name is one of those the limits of which seem increasingly imprecise the more one tries to grasp it. The category basket may include receptacles made of interwoven, rather rigid material, but it may also include pliant sacks made of a mesh indistinguishable from netting—or garments or pieces of furniture made of the same materials and using the same processes as classical basketmaking. In fact, neither function nor appearance nor material nor mode of construction are of themselves sufficient to delimit the field of what common sense nevertheless recognizes as basketry.In this discussion the word is taken to mean a handmade assemblage of vegetable fibres that is relatively large and rigid, so as to make a continuous surface, usually (but not exclusively) a receptacle. The consistency of the materials used distinguishes basketry, which is handmade, from weaving, in which the flexibility of the threads requires the use of an apparatus to put tension on the warp, the lengthwise threads. What basketry has in common with weaving is that both are means of assembling separate fibres by twisting them together in various ways.Materials and techniquesThere is no region in the world, except in the northernmost and southernmost parts, where people do not have at their disposal materials—such as twigs, roots, canes, and grasses—that lend themselves to the construction of baskets. The variety and quality of materials available in a particular region bears on the relative importance of basketry in a culture and on the types of basketry produced by the culture. Rainy, tropical zones, for example, have palms and large leaves that require plaiting techniques different from those required for the grass stalks that predominate in the dry, subtropical savanna regions or for the roots and stalks found in cold temperate zones. The interrelationship between materials and methods of construction might in part explain why the principal types of basketry are distributed in large areas that perhaps correspond to climatic zones as much as to cultural groups: the predominance of sewed coiling, for example, in the African savannas and in the arid zones of southern Eurasia and of North America; of spiral coiling and twining in temperate regions; and of various forms of plaiting in hot regions. There is also a connection between the materials used and the function of the basket, which determines whether rigid or soft materials—either as found in nature or specially prepared—are used. In East Asia, for example, twined basketry fashioned out of thin, narrow strips (called laths) of bamboo is effective for such objects as cages and fish traps that require solid partitions with openings at regular intervals. Soft and rigid fibres are often used together: the rigid fibres provide the shape of the object and soft ones act as a binder to hold the shape.Finally, materials are chosen with a view toward achieving certain aesthetic goals; conversely, these aesthetic goals are limited by the materials available to the basket maker. The effects most commonly sought in a finished product are delicacy and regularity of the threads; a smooth, glossy surface or a dull, rough surface; and colour, whether natural or dyed. Striking effects can be achieved from the contrast between threads that are light and dark, broad and narrow, dull and shiny—contrasts that complement either the regularity or the decorative motifs obtained by the intricate work of plaiting.Despite an appearance of almost infinite variety, the techniques of basketry can be grouped into several general types according to how the elements making up the foundation (the standards, which are analogous to the warp of cloth) are arranged and how the moving element (the thread) holds the standards by intertwining among them (seefigure—>).Coiled constructionThe distinctive feature of this type of basketry is its foundation, which is made up of a single element, or standard, that is wound in a continuous spiral around itself. The coils are kept in place by the thread, the work being done stitch by stitch and coil by coil. Variations within this type are defined by the method of sewing, as well as by the nature of the coil, which largely determines the type of stitch.Spiral coilingThe most common form is spiral coiling, in which the nature of the standard introduces two main subvariations: when it is solid, made up of a single whole stem, the thread must squeeze the two coils together binding each to the preceding one (giving a diagonal, or twilled, effect); with a double or triple standard the thread catches in each stitch one of the standards of the preceding coil. Many other variations of spiral coiling are possible. Distribution of this type of basketry construction extends in a band across northern Eurasia and into northwest North America; it is also found in the southern Pacific region (China and Melanesia) and, infrequently, in Africa (Rhodesia).Sewed coilingSewed coiling has a foundation of multiple elements—a bundle of fine fibres. Sewing is done with a needle or an awl, which binds each coil to the preceding one by piercing it through with the thread. The appearance varies according to whether the thread conceals the foundation or not (bee-skep variety) or goes through the centre of the corresponding stitch on the preceding coil (split stitch, or furcate). This sewed type of coiled ware has a very wide distribution: it is almost the exclusive form in many regions of North and West Africa; it existed in ancient Egypt and occurs today in Arabia and throughout the Mediterranean basin as far as western Europe; it also occurs in North America, in India, and sporadically in the Asiatic Pacific. A variety of sewed coiling, made from a long braid sewed in a spiral, has been found throughout North Africa since ancient Egyptian times.Half-hitch and knotted coilingIn half-hitch coiling, the thread forms half hitches (simple knots) holding the coils in place, the standard serving only as a support. There is a relationship between half-hitch coiling and the half-hitch net (without a foundation), the distribution of which is much more extensive. The half-hitch type of basketry appears to be limited to Australia, Tasmania, Tierra del Fuego in South America, and Pygmy territory in Africa. In knotted coiling, the thread forms knots around two successive rows of standards; many varieties can be noted in the Congo, in Indonesia, and among the Basket Makers, an ancient culture of the plateau area of southwestern United States, centred in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah.The half-hitch and knotted-coiling types of basketry each have a single element variety in which there is no foundation, the thread forming a spiral by itself analogous to the movement of the foundation in the usual type. An openwork variety of the single element half hitch (called cycloid coiling) comes from the Malay area; and knotted single-element basketry, from Tierra del Fuego and New Guinea.Noncoiled constructionCompared to the coiled techniques, all other types of basketry have a certain unity of construction: the standards form a foundation that is set up when the work is begun and that predetermines the shape and dimensions of the finished article. Nevertheless, if one considers the part played by the standards and the threads, respectively, most noncoiled basketry can be divided into three main groups.Wattle constructionA single layer of rigid, passive, parallel standards is held together by flexible threads in one of three ways, each representing a different subtype. (1) The bound, or wrapped, type, which is not very elaborate, has a widespread distribution, being used for burden baskets in the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, for poultry cages in different parts of Africa and the Near East, and for small crude baskets in Tierra del Fuego. (2) In the twined type, the threads are twisted in twos or threes, two or three strands twining around the standards and enclosing them. The twining may be close or openwork or may combine tight standards and spaced threads. Close twining mainly occurs in three zones: Central Africa, Australia, and western North America, where there are a number of variations such as twilled and braided twining and zigzag or honeycomb twining. The openwork subtype is found almost universally because it provides a perfect solution to the problem of maintaining rigid standards with even spacing for fish traps and hurdles (portable panels used for enclosing land or livestock). Using spaced threads, this subtype is also used for flexible basketry among the Ainu of northern Japan (arts, East Asian) and the Kuril Islands and sporadically throughout the northern Pacific. (3) The woven type (see photograph—>), sometimes termed wickerwork, is made of stiff standards interwoven with flexible threads. It is the type most commonly found in European and African basketry and is found sporadically in North and South America and in Near and Far Eastern Asia.Lattice constructionIn lattice construction a frame made of two or three layers of passive standards is bound together by wrapping the intersections with a thread. The ways of intertwining hardly vary at all and the commonest is also the simplest: the threads are wrapped in a spiral around two layers of standards. This method is widely used throughout the world in making strong, fairly rigid objects for daily use: partitions for dwellings, baskets to be carried on the back, cages, and fish traps (with a Mediterranean variety composed of three layers of standards and a knotted thread). The same method, moreover, can be adapted for decorative purposes, with threads—often of different colours—to form a variety of motifs similar to embroidery. This kind of lattice construction appears mainly among the Makah Indians of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and in Central and East Africa.Matting or plaited constructionStandards and threads are indistinguishable in matting or plaited construction; they are either parallel and perpendicular to the edge (straight basketry) or oblique (diagonal basketry) (see photograph—>). Such basketry is closest to textile weaving. The materials used are almost always woven, using the whole gamut of weaving techniques (check, twill, satin, and innumerable decorative combinations). Depending on the material and on the technique used, this type of construction lends itself to a wide variety of forms, in particular to the finest tiny boxes and to the most artistic large plane surfaces. It is widely distributed but seems particularly well adapted to the natural resources and to the kind of life found in intertropical areas. The regions where it is most common are different from, and complementary with, those specializing in coiled and twined ware; that is, eastern and southeastern Asia (from Japan to Malaysia and Indonesia), tropical America, and the island of Madagascar off the east coast of Africa.One variety of matting or plaited work consists of three or four layers of elements, which are in some cases completely woven and in others form an intermediate stage between woven and lattice basketry. The intermediate type (with two layered elements, one woven) is known as hexagonal openwork and is the technique most common in openwork basketry using flat elements. It has a very wide distribution: from Europe to Japan, southern Asia, Central Africa, and the tropical Americas. A closely woven fabric in three layers, forming a six-pointed star design, is found on a small scale in Indonesia and Malaysia.Decorative devicesClearly, a variety of decorative possibilities arise from the actual work of constructing basketry. These, combined with the possible contrasts of colour and texture, would seem to provide extensive decorative possibilities. Each particular type of basketry, however, imposes certain limitations, which may lead to convergent effects: hexagonal openwork, for example, forms the same pattern the world over, just as twilled weaving forms the same chevrons (vertical or horizontal). Each type, also, allows a certain range of freedom in the decoration within the basic restrictions imposed by the rigidity of the interlaced threads, which tends to impose geometric designs or at least to geometrize the motifs. In general, the two main types of basketry—plaited and coiled—lend themselves to two different kinds of decoration. Coiled basketry lends itself to radiating designs, generally star- or flower-shaped compositions or whirling designs sweeping from the centre to the outer edge. Plaited basketry, whether diagonal or straight, lends itself to over-all compositions of horizontal stripes and, in the detail, to intertwined shapes that result from the way two series of threads, usually in contrasting colours, appear alternately on the surface of the basket.Other art forms have been influenced ornamentally by basketry's plaited shapes and characteristic motifs. Because of their intrinsic decorative value—and not because the medium dictates it—these shapes and motifs have been reproduced in such materials as wood, metal, and clay. Some notable examples are the interlacing decorations carved on wood in the Central African Congo; basketry motifs engraved into metalwork and set off with inlayed silver by Frankish artisans in the Merovingian period (6th to 8th century); and osier patterns (molded basketwork designs) developed in 18th-century Europe to decorate porcelain.UsesHousehold basketry objects consist primarily of receptacles for preparing and serving food and vary widely in dimension, shape, and watertightness. Baskets are used the world over for serving dry food, such as fruit and bread, and they are also used as plates and bowls. Sometimes—if made waterproof by a special coating or by particularly close plaiting—they are used as containers for liquids. Such receptacles are found in various parts of Europe and Africa (Chad, Rwanda, Ethiopia) and among several groups of North American Indians. By dropping hot stones into the liquid, the Hupa Indians of northwestern California even boil water or food in baskets.Openwork, which is permeable and can be made with mesh of various sizes, is used for such utensils as sieves, strainers, and filters. Such basketry objects are used in the most primitive cultures as well as in the most modern (the tea strainers used in Japan, for example). The flexibility of work done on the diagonal is put to particularly ingenious use by the Africans in beer making and, above all, by Amazonian Indians in extracting the toxic juices from manioc (cassava) pulp (a long basketwork cylinder is pulled down at the bottom by ballasting and, as it gets longer, compresses the pulp with which it had previously been filled).Finally, basketry plays an important part as storage containers. For personal possessions, there are baskets, boxes, and cases of all kinds—nested boxes from Madagascar, for example, which are made in a graduated series so that they fit snugly one within another, or caskets with multiple compartments from Indonesia. For provisions, there are baskets in various sizes that can be hung up out of the reach of predators, and there are baskets so large that they are used as granaries. In The Sudan in Africa, as in southern Europe, these are usually raised off the ground on a platform and sheltered by a large roof or stored in the house, particularly in Mediterranean regions; for preserving cereals they are sometimes caulked with clay.Some of these granaries are not far from being houses. Basketry used in house construction, however, usually consists of separately made elements that are later assembled; partitions of varying degrees of rigidity used as walls or to fence in an enclosure; roofs made of great basketry cones (in Chad, for example); and, above all, mats, which have numerous uses in the actual construction as well as in the equipping of a house. Probably the oldest evidence of basketry is the mud impressions of woven mats that covered the floors of houses in the Neolithic (c. 7000 BC) village of Jarmo in northern Iraq. Mats were used in ancient Egypt (art and architecture, Egyptian) to cover floors and walls and were also rolled up and unrolled in front of doorways, as is shown by stone replicas decorating the doorways of tombs dating from the Old Kingdom, c. 2686–2160 BC. It is known from paintings that they were made of palm leaves and were decorated with polychrome (multicoloured) stripes, much like the mats found in Africa and the Near East.Two notable examples of modern mats are the pliant ones, made of pandanus leaves, found in southern Asia and Oceania and the tatami, which provide the unit of measurement of the surface area of Japanese dwellings. Just as basketry has been used for making containers and mats, so from ancient times to modern it has been used for making such pieces of furniture as cradles, beds, tables, and various kinds of seats and cabinets.In addition to the use of basketry for skirts and loincloths (particularly common in Oceania), supple diagonal plaiting has even been used to make dresses (dress) (Madagascar). Plaited raincoats exist throughout eastern Asia as well as Portugal. Basketry most frequently is used for shoes (particularly sandals, some of which come close to covering the foot and are plaited in various materials), and, of course, for hats—the conical hat particularly common in eastern Asia, for example, and the skullcaps and brimmed hats found in Africa, the Americas, and much of Europe.To protect head and body against weapons, thick, strong basketry has been used in the form of helmets (helmet) (Africa, the Assam region in India, and Hawaii); armour (for example, armour of coconut palm fibre for protection against weapons made of sharks' teeth by the Micronesia inhabitants of the Gilbert Islands); and shields, for which basketry is eminently suitable because of its lightness. In addition to clothes themselves, there are numerous basketry accessories: small purses, combs, headdresses, necklaces, bracelets, and anklets. In West Africa there are even chains made of fine links and pendants plaited in a beautiful, bright yellow straw in imitation of gold jewelry. Many objects are plaited just for decoration or amusement such as ornaments like those used for Christmas trees or for harvest festivals and scale models and little animal or human figurines that sometimes serve as children's toys.There is often no very clear distinction between accessories and ritual ornaments (ceremonial object), as in the ephemeral headdresses made for initiation rites by the young Masa people in the Cameroon; dance accessories; ornaments for masks (mask), such as the leaf masks that the Bobo of Upper Volta make with materials from the bush.More clearly ritual in nature are the palms (woven into elaborate geometric shapes and liturgical symbols) carried in processions on Palm Sunday by Christians in various Mediterranean regions; some, like those from Elche in Spain, are over six feet (nearly two metres) high and take days to make. In Bali an infinite variety of plaiting techniques are involved in the preparation of ritual offerings, which is a permanent occupation for the women, a hundred of whom may work for a month or two preparing for certain great festivals.Baskets are used throughout the world as snares and fish traps, which allow the catch to enter but not to leave. They are often used in conjunction with a corral (on land) or a weir (an enclosure set in the water), which are themselves made either of pliable nets or panels of basketry. In Africa as well as in eastern Asia a basketry object is used for fishing in shallow water; open at top and bottom, this object is deposited sharply on the bottom of shallow rivers or ponds, and, when a fish is trapped, it is retrieved by putting a hand in through the opening at the top.Basketry is also used in harvesting foodstuffs; for example, in the form of winnowing trays (from whose French name, van, the French word for basketry, vannerie, is derived). One basket, found in the Sahel region south of the Sahara, is swung among wild grasses and in knocking against the stalks collects the grain.Baskets are used as transport receptacles; they are made easier to carry by the addition of handles or straps depending on whether the basket is carried by hand, on a yoke, or on the back. The two-handled palm-leaf basket, common in North Africa and the Middle East, existed in ancient Mesopotamia; in Europe and eastern Asia, the one-handled basket, which comes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and types of plaiting, is common; in Africa, however, where burdens are generally carried on the head, there is no difference between baskets used for transporting goods and those used for storing.Burden baskets are large, deep baskets in which heavy loads can be carried on the back; they are provided either with a headband that goes across the forehead (especially American Indian, southern Asia), or with two straps that go over the shoulders (especially in Southeast Asia and Indonesia). There are three fairly spectacular types of small basketry craft found in regions as far apart as Peru, Ireland, and Mesopotamia: the balsa (boats) of Lake Titicaca, made of reeds and sometimes fitted out with a sail also made of matting; the British coracle, the basketry framework of which is covered with a skin sewn onto the edge; and the gufa of the Tigris, which is round like the coracle and made of plaited reeds caulked with bitumen.Origins and centres of developmentSomething about the prehistoric origins of basketry can be assumed from archaeological evidence. The evidence that does exist from Neolithic times onward has been preserved because of conditions of extreme dryness (Egypt, Peru, southern Spain) or extreme humidity (peat bogs in northern Europe, lake dwellings in Switzerland); because it had been buried in volcanic ash (Oregon); or because, like the mats at Jarmo, it left impressions in the mud or on a pottery base that had originally been molded onto a basketry foundation. More recently, when written and pictorial documentation is available, an activity as humble and banal as basketry is not systematically described but appears only by chance in narratives, inventories, or pictures in which basketry objects figure as accessories.On the evidence available, researchers have concluded that the salient characteristics of basketry are the same today as they were before the 3rd millennium BC. Then, as now, there was a wide variety of types (and a wide distribution of most types): coiled basketry either spiral or sewed, including furcate and sewed braid (mainly in Europe and the Near East as far as the Indus valley); wattlework with twined threads (America, Europe, Egypt) and with woven threads (Jarmo, Peru, Egypt); and plaited construction with twilled weaving (Palestine, Europe).To list the centres of production would almost be to list all human cultural groups. Some regions, however, stand out for the emphasis their inhabitants place on basketry or for the excellence of workmanship there.American Indian (Native American art) basketryIn western North America the art of basketry has attained one of its highest peaks of perfection and has occupied a preeminent place in the equipment of all the groups who practice it. North American Indians are particularly noted for their twined and coiled work. The Chilkat and the Tlingit of the Pacific Northwest are known for the extreme delicacy of their twined basketry; the California Indians, for the excellence of their work with both types; and the Apache and the Hopi and other Pueblo Indians of the southwestern interior of the United States, for coiled basketry remarkable for its bold decoration and delicate technique.Central and South American basketry is similar in materials and plaiting processes. The notable difference lies in the finishes used, and in this the Guyana Indians of northeastern South America excel, using a technique of fine plaiting with a twill pattern.Oceanic (art and architecture, Oceanic) basketryVarious plaiting processes have been highly developed in Oceania, not merely for making utilitarian articles but also for ceremonial items and items designed to enhance prestige, such as finely twined cloaks in New Zealand, statues in Polynesia, masks in New Guinea, and decorated shields in the Solomon Islands. In Oceania, as in southern Asia, there is a vegetal civilization, in which basketry predominates over such arts as metalwork and pottery. Particular mention should be made of the Senoi of the Malay Peninsula and of the Australian Aborigines (Australian Aborigine), whose meagre equipment includes delicate basketry done by the women. The Senoi use various plaiting techniques, and the Australians use tight twining.African (art, African) basketryAfrica presents an almost infinite variety of basket types and uses. In such regions as Chad and Cameroon, basketry is in evidence everywhere—edging the roads, roofing the houses, decorating the people, and providing the greater part of domestic equipment. The delicate twill plaited baskets of the Congo region are notable for their clever patterning. In the central and eastern Sudanese zone the rich decorative effect of the sewed, coiled baskets is derived from the interplay of colours. People living in the lake area of the Great Rift Valley produce elegant coiled and twined basketry of restrained decoration and careful finishing.East Asian basketryPeople of the temperate zones of East Asia produce a variety of work. bamboo occupies a particularly important place both in functional basketry equipment and in aesthetic objects (Japanese (arts, East Asian) flower baskets, for example). The production of decorative objects is one feature that distinguishes East Asian basketry from the primarily utilitarian basketry of the Near East and Africa. Southeast Asia, together with Madagascar, are among the places known for their fine decorative plaiting techniques.European basketryIn Europe almost the whole range of basketry techniques is used, chiefly in making utilitarian objects (receptacles for domestic and carrying purposes and household furniture) but also in making objects primarily for decorative use.Modern basketryEven in the modern industrial world, there seems to be a future for basketry. Because of its flexibility, lightness, permeability, and solidity, it will probably remain unsurpassed for some utilitarian ends; such articles, however, because they are entirely handmade, will gradually become luxury items. As a folk art, on the other hand, basketry needs no investment of money: the essential requirements remain a simple awl, nimble fingers, and patience.Hélène J. BalfetAdditional ReadingH.H. Bobart, Basketwork Through the Ages (1936, reissued 1971); M.L. Lee, Basketry and Related Art (1948); G.M. Crowfoot, "Textiles, Basketry and Mats," in A History of Technology, vol. 1 (1954); Geofrey H.S. Bushnell, "Basketry," Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 2, col. 387–400 (1960); H. Balfet, "La Vannerie, essai de classification," L'Anthropologie (1952; Eng. trans. and preface by M.A. Baumhoff, "Basketry: A Proposed Classification," in Papers on Californian Archaeology, no. 47–49, pp. 1–21, 1957), a detailed explanation of the classifications used in this article and the source of portions adapted for use here with permission of the Archaeological Survey, University of California, Berkeley; O.T. Mason, "Aboriginal American Basketry," Annual Report, 1902 of the U.S. National Museum, pp. 171–548 (1904), a classic work on basketry; H. Munsterberg, The Folk Arts of Japan, ch. 3 (1958); Ed Rossbach, Baskets as Textile Art (1973), on the aesthetics of basket design; Gloria Roth Teleki, The Baskets of Rural America (1957), a history of the origins and techniques of basketry. See also Shereen LaPlantz, Pleated Basketry: The Woven Form (1982); John Rice Irwin, Baskets and Basket Makers in Southern Appalachia (1982).* * *
Universalium. 2010.