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A Look At Brazil's Big Dreamer, Architect Oscar Niemeyer There are a number of ways to leave a legacy. Some people have kids. Some become president. Or you can build unforgettable buildings that define the landscape. Throughout his 104 years, architect Oscar Niemeyer defied the rules and even cheated death for a long while, working well into his last years. He died Wednesday of a respiratory infection and received a fitting tribute in this obituary in The New York Times. Design was in Niemeyer's blood. He was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1907 to a graphic artist, his father. After working with the legendary Swiss architect Le Corbusier, the commissions flowed. Niemeyer's biggest task, starting in 1956, was effectively to design Brasilia from the ground up when it was chosen as Brazil's new capital in the country's interior. He was the chief architect responsible for many public buildings — a unique opportunity to determine the look and feel of an entire city in just a few years. He broke all of the molds, lived and breathed outside the proverbial box and eschewed the expectations he had inherited. Politically, he was aligned with the far left, which complicated his career at times, especially during years of military dictatorship in Brazil and during the Cold War. Philosophically, Niemeyer defied the axiom of contemporary modernists that "form follows function." As Niemeyer put it: "Form follows beauty." In a 2005 interview in the New York Times Magazine, Niemeyer said, "The ultimate task of the architect is to dream. Otherwise nothing happens." And in Niemeyer's dreams, beauty was found in curved lines. Creativity flows from bending the straight lines of authority. Those ideas, in addition to his buildings and sculptures, are Niemeyer's legacy.

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HUEHUETENANGO, Guatemala — Events here during the much-awaited end of the Oxlajuj Baktun, a 5,129-year period in the long Mayan calendar, provide a clear reflection of the divisions and challenges faced by Mayan communities today. The media exploited inaccurate apocalyptic rumors the Maya never predicted, the government and business sectors viewed it as an opportunity to gain economically through tourism, and progressive groups like the Consejo del Pueblo Maya del Occidente seized the opportunity “to strengthen ancestral wisdom and never-ending search for balance” while vindicating what seem like never-ending struggles for justice, inclusion, and self-determination. Official government-sponsored activities began on Dec. 20th in Huehuetenango’s central park. According to a United Nations Development Program report from 2011, Huehuetenango has an indigenous Mayan population of 64 percent — equivalent to about 725,000 people — of which 85 percent live in poverty. See how the people of Huehuetenango marked the ending of Oxlajuj Baktun in the photo essay below by James Rodríguez. To view the photo essay, click on the first image below. All images are reproduced courtesy of James Rodríguez, whose work can be viewed at MiMundo.org.

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Figure left: A composite of Leonid meteor images recorded by a CCD camera onboard the MSX satellite. Right: the distribution of meteor magnitudes derived from these records. Third figure on the page shows one CCD frame from the narrow angle camera with one Leonid meteor just above the airglow. METEOR SHOWER FROM SPACE The view from space offers a unique perspective on meteors. In a recent issue of Earth, Moon and Planets, Peter Jenniskens and David Nugent at NASA Ames Research Center, Ed Tedesco at TerraSystems, Inc., and Jayant Murthy at the Johns Hopkins University report on the first observations of a Leonid meteor shower from space. Space based observations are uniquely suited for spectroscopy of meteors at wavelengths that are inaccessible from the ground. Space based observations are also capable of monitoring a large surface area for influx of bright Leonid fireballs. The 1997 Leonid shower was rich in such bright meteors and numerous detections were made. The image to the right is a composite of some of the 29 meteors filmed during a 48 minute period at the peak of the 1997 Leonid shower. The star background is the constellation of Aries, which gives a sense of scale. The images were taken with the UVISI instrument onboard the Midcourse Space Experiment satellite (MSX). MSX is a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization project. The Johns Hopkins Univeristy Applied Physics Laboratory developed, integrated, and operated MSX and the Ultraviolet and Visible Imagers and Spectrographic Imagers (UVISI) instrument that was used for the observations. The satellite was programmed to watch the limb of the Earth, where the rate of meteor detections is expected to be highest, because the largest surface area is covered in a single field of view. In some of the narrow field images it is clearly seen that the fast Leonid meteors ablated above the layer of the airglow at about 87 km altitude, where most other meteors ablate. Meteors that are seen below the airglow layer are in fact closer to the satellite. Meteors in the background are significantly dimmed and do not show the gradual rise in intensity that is clear in other images. This made it possible to determine uniquely the distance to all meteors and measure their absolute brightness, defined as the meteor's brightness if it was at 100 km distance. The observations were analysed to determine the rate of bright meteors incident on the Earth at the time of the shower. The limiting absolute magnitude for limb observations of Leonid meteors was measured at Mv = -1.5 magn. The Leonid shower magntiude population index was measured at N(m+1)/N(m) = 1.6ÿý0.2 down to Mv = -7 magn., with no sign of an upper mass cut-off (Full paper - PDF).

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Turabian citation style On this page - Parenthetical references - Reference List - General guidelines - Works cited - Examples - Book, Single Author - Book, Two Authors - Book, More than Three Authors - Institution or Organization as Author - Editor or Compiler as Author - Author's Work Contained in Collected Works - Edition Other than First - Component Part by One Author in a Work by Another - Secondary Source of Quotation - Article in a Journal - Article in a Magazine or Newspaper - Online Journal Article - Book Review in a Journal - Thesis or Dissertation - Web Sites - Films and Videorecordings - Works of Art Reproduced in Books The purpose of this guide is to provide students with a basic introduction to citation style for social sciences term papers. It is based on the 7th edition of Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). Two forms of citation are permitted by Turabian, the traditional method of footnotes with a bibliography and the now generally favoured method of parenthetical references with a reference list at the end of the paper. This guide follows the parenthetical reference method. Titles of works cited may be italicized or underlined. This guide uses italics for titles. PDF version of this guide In the parenthetical reference system recommended in this guide, authors' names, date of publication and page number(s) are given in parentheses within the running text or at the end of block quotations, and correspond to a list of works cited which is placed at the end of the paper. - Parenthetical reference following a quotation (example): - The color blue became more prominent in the eighteenth century (Pastoureau 2001, 124). - Parenthetical reference within a sentence (example): - While one school claims that "material culture may be the most objective source of information we have concerning America’s past" (Deetz 1996, 259), others disagree. - Parenthetical reference when the author is mentioned in the sentence (example): - Chang then describes the occupation of Nanking in great detail (1997, 159-67). Reference List - General guidelines This list is arranged alphabetically by author's last names and chronologically within lists of works by a single author. It can be called "References," "Works Cited," or "Literature Cited." The following sets of examples illustrate parenthetical-reference (PR) forms and corresponding reference-list (RL) entries. Further samples are found in the Turabian Manual, Chapter 18. Book, Single Author |PR:||(Franklin 1985, 54)| Franklin, John Hope. 1985. George Washington Williams: A biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Book, Two Authors |PR:||(Lynd and Lynd 1929, 67)| Lynd, Robert, and Helen Lynd. 1929. Middletown: A study in American culture. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. More than Three Authors |PR:||(Greenberger et al. 1974, 50)| Greenberger, Martin, Julius Aronofsky, James L. McKenney, and William F. Massey, eds. 1974. Networks for research and education: Sharing of computer and information resources nationwide. Cambridge: MIT Press. Institution or Organization as "Author" |PR:||(American Library Association 1978, 25)| American Library Association, Young Adult Services Division, Services Statement Development Committee. 1978. Directions for library service to young adults. Chicago: American Library Association. Editor or Compiler as "Author" |PR:||(von Halberg 1984, 225)| von Halberg, Robert, ed. 1984. Canons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Author's Work Contained in Collected Works |PR:||(Coleridge 1884, 18)| Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. 1884. The complete works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by W.G.T. Shedd. Vol.1, Aids to reflection. New York: Harper and Bros. Edition Other than First |PR:||(Daniels 2002, 84)| Daniels, Roger. 2002. Coming to America: A history of immigration and ethnicity in American life. 2nd ed. New York: Harper Perennial. Component Part by One Author in a Work by Another |PR:||(Beech 1982, 115)| Beech, Mary Higdon. 1982. The domestic realm in the lives of Hindu women in Calcutta. In Separate worlds: Studies of purdah in South Asia, ed. Hanna Papanek and Gail Minault, 110-138. Delhi: Chanakya. Secondary Source of Quotation Barthes, Roland. 1968. "La mort de l'auteur" (The death of the author). Manteia, vol. 5. Translated by Stephen Heath in Image/music/text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977, 147. Quoted in Wayne C. Booth. Critical understanding: The powers and limits of pluralism, 372-373, n. 9. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Article in a Journal |PR:||(Jackson 1979, 180)| Jackson, Richard. 1979. Running down the up-escalator: Regional inequality in Papua New Guinea. Australian Geographer 14 (May): 175-84. Article in a Magazine or Newspaper |PR:||(Weber 1985, 42)| Weber, Bruce. 1985. The myth maker: The creative mind of novelist E.L. Doctorow. New York Times Magazine, 20 October, 42. Online Journal Article McFarland, Daniel A.2004. Resistance as social drama: A study of change-oriented encounters. American Journal of Sociology 109, no.6 (May) http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/ajs.html (accessed May 3, 2006). Book Review in a Journal |PR:||(Frankfather 1985, 524)| Frankfather, Dwight. 1985. Review of The disabled state, by Deborah A. Stone. In Social Service Review 59 (September): 523-25. Thesis or Dissertation |PR:||(Artioli 1985, 10)| Artioli, Gilberto. 1985. Structural studies of the water molecules and hydrogen bonding in zeolites. Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. |PR:||(Hamilton Public Library Board 2012)| Hamilton Public Library Board 2012. Strategic Priorities, 2012-2016: Freedom to Discover. Hamilton Public Library. http://www.hpl.ca/articles/strategic-priorities-2012-2016 (accessed April 2016). Films and Videorecordings Perlman, Itzak. 1985. Itzak Perlman: In my case music. Produced and directed by Tony DeNonno. 10 min. DeNonno Pix. Videocassette. Works of Art Reproduced in Books |PR:||(Nast 1967, plate 52)| Nast, Thomas. 1967. The Tammany tiger loose: "What are you going to do about it." Cartoon. Harper's Weekly, 11 November 1871. As reproduced in J. Chal Vinson, Thomas Nast: Political cartoonist, plate 52. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press.

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Rehabilitation nurses help individuals affected by chronic illness or physical disability to achieve their greatest potential, adapt to their disabilities and work toward productive, independent lives. They take a holistic approach to meeting patients' medical, vocational, educational, environmental, and spiritual needs. Rehabilitation nurses begin to work with individuals and their families soon after the onset of a disabling injury or chronic illness. They continue to provide support in the form of patient and family education and empower these individuals when they go home or return to work or school. The rehabilitation nurse often teaches patients and their caregivers how to access systems and resources. Rehabilitation nurses base their practice on rehabilitative and restorative principles by: - Managing complex medical issues - Collaborating with the rehabilitation team - Providing ongoing patient/caregiver education - Setting goals for maximal independence - Establishing plans of care to maintain optimal wellness

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Please Note: This is a new edition of a previously announced text. This landmark volume provides a broad-based, comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of current knowledge and research into second language teaching and learning. All authors are leading authorities in their areas of expertise. The chapters, all completely new for Volume 2, are organized in eight thematic sections: *Social Contexts in Research on Second Language Teaching and Learning *Second Language Research Methods *Second Language Research and Applied Linguistics *Research in Second Language Processes and Development *Methods and Instruction in Second Language Teaching *Second Language Assessment *Ideology, Identity, Culture, and Critical Pedagogy in Second Language Teaching and Learning *Language Planning and Policy. Changes in Volume 2: *Captures new and ongoing developments, research, and trends in the field *Surveys prominent areas of research that were not covered in Volume 1 *Includes new authors from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America to broaden the Handbook’s international scope. Volume 2 is an essential resource for researchers, faculty, teachers, and students in MA-TESL and applied linguistics programs, as well as curriculum and material developers.

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Following the successful format of Learning Perl, each chapter in the book is designed to be small enough to be read in just an hour or two, ending with a series of exercises to help you practice what you've learned. To use the book, you just need to be familiar with the material in Learning Perl and have ambition to go further. Perl is a different language to different people. It is a quick scripting tool for some, and a fully-featured object-oriented language for others. It is used for everything from performing quick global replacements on text files, to crunching huge, complex sets of scientific data that take weeks to process. Perl is what you make of it. But regardless of what you use Perl for, this book helps you do it more effectively, efficiently, and elegantly. Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules is about learning to use Perl as a programming language, and not just a scripting language. This is the book that separates the Perl dabbler from the Perl programmer.

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Many health-conscious Americans, in an effort to improve their eating habits, have switched to eating tofu in place of meat or eggs. The soy industry would have you believe that this is a smart move for your heart health, but in reality processed soy, which includes tofu, is not a health food. You are much better off eating organic eggs, grass-fed meat and raw dairy products than you are eating processed soy. “Unlike in Asia where people eat small amounts of whole soybean products, western food processors separate the soybean into two golden commodities–protein and oil. There’s nothing safe or natural about this,” Dr. Daniel says. “Today’s high-tech processing methods not only fail to remove the anti-nutrients and toxins that are naturally present in soybeans but leave toxic and carcinogenic residues created by the high temperatures, high pressure, alkali and acid baths and petroleum solvents,” she continues. The worst of the worst when it comes to soy products are the fractionated products like soy protein isolate and hydrolyzed plant protein, as all processed soy contains phytates that block mineral absorption and trypsin inhibitors that block proper digestion. Tofu is one step up because it’s a whole soy product, but it still contains the anti-nutrients mentioned above. Health Problems Linked to Soy Among the many health problems linked to a high-soy diet are: • Premature puberty and other developmental problems in babies, children and adolescents • Brain damage • Reproductive disorders • Soy allergies Meanwhile, studies reviewed by Dr. Daniel and colleagues have found that soy does not reliably lower cholesterol, and in fact raises homocysteine levels in many people, which has been found to increase your risk of heart disease, stroke, and birth defects. In fact, according to Dr. Daniel, soy can increase your risk of heart disease. As a result, she and other experts have sent a 65-page petition to the FDA asking them to retract the “soy prevents heart disease” health claim that they approved back in 1999, and let’s hope they do the right thing and comply. It’s very important to know also that children and babies, who are still developing, are particularly vulnerable to soy’s hormone-mimicking effects. A Lancet study showed that the daily exposure to estrogen-imitating chemicals for infants who consume soy formulas was 6-11 times higher than adults consuming soy foods. And the blood concentration of these hormones was 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than estrogen in the blood. An infant exclusively fed soy formula receives the estrogenic equivalent (based on body weight) of up to five birth control pills per day. So please do not feed your baby soy infant formula, or your toddler soy foods (if you can’t breastfeed and are looking for a formula alternative, here’s a recipe for a healthy homemade infant formula). The effects are so potent that even pregnant women should avoid eating soy products for the safety of their unborn child. And there’s more: • Soybeans are high in natural toxins, also known as antinutrients. This includes a large quantity of inhibitors that deter the enzymes needed for protein digestion. Further, these enzyme inhibitors are not entirely disabled during ordinary cooking. The result is extensive gastric distress and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake, which can result in dangerous pancreatic impairments and cancer. • Soybeans contain hemaglutinins, which cause red blood cells to clump together. Soybeans also have growth-depressant substances, and while these substances are reduced in processing, they are not completely eliminated. • Soy contains goitrogens, which can frequently lead to depressed thyroid function. • Most soybeans (over 80%) are genetically modified, and they contain one of the highest levels of pesticide contamination of all foods. • Soybeans are very high in phytates, which prevent the absorption of minerals including calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc, all of which are co-factors for optimal biochemistry in your body. The Are Some Ways to Safely Enjoy Soy There are a few types of soy that are healthy, and all of them are fermented. After a long fermentation process, the phytic acid and antinutrient levels of the soybeans are reduced, and their beneficial properties — such as the creation of natural probiotics — become available to your digestive system. It also greatly reduces the levels of dangerous isoflavones, which are similar to estrogen in their chemical structure, and can interfere with the action of your own estrogen production. So if you enjoy soy and want to eat it without damaging your health — and in fact gain health benefits — the following are all healthy options: 1. Natto, fermented soybeans with a sticky texture and strong, cheese-like flavor. It’s loaded with nattokinase, a very powerful blood thinner. Natto is actually a food I eat regularly, as it is the highest source of vitamin K2 on the planet and has a very powerful beneficial bacteria, bacillus subtilis. It can usually be found in any Asian grocery store. 2. Tempeh, a fermented soybean cake with a firm texture and nutty, mushroom-like flavor. 3. Miso, a fermented soybean paste with a salty, buttery texture (commonly used in miso soup). 4. Soy sauce: traditionally, soy sauce is made by fermenting soybeans, salt and enzymes, however be wary because many varieties on the market are made artificially using a chemical process. Remember, though, that all processed soy products — soy milk, soy burgers, soy cheese, soy energy bars, soy ice cream, soy protein powders, etc. — are not health foods. And to truly avoid all types of damaging soy products, you need to avoid processed foods as the vast majority of them contain soy ingredients. “The best — and maybe the only — way to completely avoid soy in the food supply is to buy whole foods and prepare them ourselves,” Dr. Daniel says. “For those who prefer to buy readymade and packaged products, I offer a free Special Report, “Where the Soys Are,” on my Web site. It lists the many “aliases” that soy might be hiding under in ingredient lists — words like “bouillon,” “natural flavor” and “textured plant protein.” The basics of healthy eating — unprocessed, fermented, and fresh foods are ideal, while processed foods should be avoided — apply to soy as well, so stick to these tenets and you’ll be on the right track.

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Those who oppose charter schools, as well as those who say they don’t but really do, have argued that charter schools have not lived up to their promise of being “laboratories of innovation.” The truth is that innovation is one of six purposes of charter schools, as outlined in the law (§ 115C?238.29A). The six purposes are as follows: - Improve student learning; - Increase learning opportunities for all students, with special emphasis on expanded learning experiences for students who are identified as at risk of academic failure or academically gifted; - Encourage the use of different and innovative teaching methods; - Create new professional opportunities for teachers, including the opportunities to be responsible for the learning program at the school site; - Provide parents and students with expanded choices in the types of educational opportunities that are available within the public school system; and - Hold the schools established under this Part accountable for meeting measurable student achievement results, and provide the schools with a method to change from rule?based to performance?based accountability systems. Advocates and opponents of charter schools disagree about whether charter schools have done a good job meeting these goals. For example, opponents of charter schools point to research by Helen Ladd and Robert Bifulco, which showed that charter school performance struggled between 1996 and 2002. Among other concerns, charter advocates rightly criticize this research on grounds that it is 2011. Others have maintained that the effort to raise the 100-school cap on charters is an attempt to “weaken” or “abandon” public schools and create a “private, unaccountable system.” Of course, the charter school law is pretty clear about this. First, the law states, “it is the determination of the General Assembly that charter schools are public schools and that the employees of charter schools are public school employees” (§ 115C?238.29F. (e)). The frequent characterization of charter schools as “private” schools is an attempt to prey on the general public’s misunderstanding of the charter school concept. Once citizens begin to believe that charter schools are private schools, it is easy to assert that they are unaccountable to the public. Shame, shame, shame. Second, charter accountability is not only outlined in the “purpose” section above, but in addition to participation in the state testing program, charter schools are subject to following accountability measures: - The school is subject to the financial audits, the audit procedures, and the audit requirements adopted by the State Board of Education for charter schools. These audit requirements may include the requirements of the School Budget and Fiscal Control Act. - The school shall comply with the reporting requirements established by the State Board of Education in the Uniform Education Reporting System. - The school shall report at least annually to the chartering entity and the State Board of Education the information required by the chartering entity or the State Board. (§ 115C?238.29F (f)) Of course, closure is the ultimate accountability measure. District schools never have to worry about the threat of permanent closure, only the occasional slap on the wrist.

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- Digital Programs Passover textiles include specially designed covers for the matzah (Heb. The holdings of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life include approximately four thousand postcards dating from the l A "Scroll of Esther" (Heb. A "Torah binder" is a Jewish ceremonial textile used to keep a Torah (Hebrew Bible) scroll closed tightly when it is no The painting by Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800-1882), portraying an imagined meeting among scholars Mo The Haggadah (Heb. הגדה, "narrative;" pl. Objects documenting the sphere of personal and family rituals in the global Jewish diaspora constitute a prominent aspect of the museum holdings of The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Many objects in The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life document the social interactions among Jewish and host communities throughout Central and South-East Asia, the Middle East, North Afri Since its inception, The Magnes Collection has focused on documenting the public sphere of Jewish ritual.

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To paraphrase the patriotic song “We Are Coming, Father Abraham,” by February 1863, the war-weary Maine veterans manning the nation’s ramparts from Virginia to Louisiana could “look across the hilltops that meet the southern sky,” where “long moving lines of rising dust your vision may descry.” Those dust clouds were kicked up by the reinforcements coming to help the veterans of Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Murfreesboro — and these reinforcements meant business. From the Louisiana bayous to the Sea Islands of the Southeastern coast to the Virginia Piedmont, former slaves were joining newly authorized black regiments. And these slaves-turned-warriors intended to give their former masters “the cold steel” of the Army’s standard-issue 17-inch bayonet. Although black officers capably led the earliest regiments formed in Louisiana, the inbred attitude of white supremacy — prevalent among whites North and South— swiftly mandated that only white officers lead black regiments. So many such regiments would form that Maine men applied in droves for commissions in them. “Lawson G. Ireland was 2nd Lieut. Of Co. E, 11th Maine Regt when I was in command of said regt,” Brig. Gen. John C. Caldwell wrote from “Headquarters Caldwell’s Brigade” at Falmouth, Va. on Monday, Feb. 23, 1863. The letter likely went to Maine Gov. Abner Coburn. Born in Vermont, Caldwell had relocated to Maine in the mid-1850s. He served as the principal or “headmaster” at Washington Academy in East Machias, but the war called. Caldwell commanded the 11th Maine Infantry when that regiment mustered at Augusta in November 1861. Although a brigade commander by February 1863, he had not forgotten his men who demonstrated leadership qualities. Ireland “was always prompt & faithful in the performance of his duties,” Caldwell wrote “and I take great pleasure in recommending him for the position of captain in one of the Regts of Blacks to be raised by the Government.” Bangor grocer F.M. Sabine concurred in a March 12 addendum to Caldwell’s letter. “I have known Lieut Ireland ten or twelve years, and believing him to be a capable and patriotic man, I would earnestly recommend him for the position he desires,” Sabine wrote. Caldwell also lobbied for another former comrade on Feb. 23. “Alphonso Patten was 1st Sergt of Co. K, 11th Maine Regt when I was in command of said Regt,” Caldwell penned a familiar passage. “He was prompt & efficient & of great courage & efficiency. “I think him abundantly qualified for the position of Capt. in one of the Regts of Blacks to be raised by the Government,” Caldwell concluded. Taking his cue from Caldwell, Patten wrote Coburn on Tuesday, March 3. “Being well acquainted with the infantry drill, as well as the Bayonet-exercise, having served in the capasity [sic] of Orderly Sergt. for nearly a year in the 11th ME.,” Patten described his military experience. “I take the liberty of asking a commission either as Capt? or Lieut? in some one of the colored Regts,” he wrote. “Enclosed you will find a letter from Genl Caldwell, formaly [sic] Col. of the 11th.” Writing to Coburn from St. Helena Island, S.C. on Tuesday, Feb. 24, Maine surgeon Nathan F. Blunt reported “that Maj. W[inslow]. P. Spofford of [the] 11th Regt. is desirous of getting the command of a Regt. of Blacks. In Blunt’s “opinion, after an acquaintance [with Spofford] in camp and field, of several months, he is well qualified for the position which he seeks both as a man, and an officer,” Blunt wrote. “And while I should regret to lose his influence for good in this Regt, perhaps the good of the service would be better promoted by giving him full command of a new regiment as he wishes.” Meanwhile, a 12th Maine Infantry officer had already evaluated fledgling black regiments, as “the following extract of a letter to Mr. Samuel Dickey (Dicker) of Orono from his son” revealed in the Monday, Dec. 15, 1862 Bangor Daily Whig and Courier. Writing from Camp Parapet in Louisiana on Thursday, Nov. 13, 1862, Corp. John A. Dicker reported that “the [black] 1st Louisiana regiment is … now away on the expedition. Sergeant Hill and Corporal (Marcena C.) Gray, from our company, have lieutenants’ commissions in that regiment. “The [black] 2nd Louisiana regiment is in this brigade,” he wrote. “It is a good-looking regiment, with full ranks. Two full companies of cavalry have been mustered … and from twelve to fifteen hundred [black soldiers] have enlisted in our Northern regiments.” Dicker had studied the new recruits’ military potential. “These black regiments are composed of smart men, and I believe just as good men to fight as we have” in the 12th Maine and other state regiments, he told his father. “They learn quick, and take pride in doing their duty well. They are as brave as any white men. “Indeed, the only trouble with these regiments will be, they will show the rebels no quarter if they get [them] into their hands,” Dicker explained. “They understand their position well, and know that, if they be taken, instant death would be their fate.” Responding to the outrage and fear of facing escaped slaves in combat, Southern leaders ordered that captured black soldiers be enslaved immediately. Many local military leaders claimed their men would execute white officers captured while leading black troops. Such atrocities did occur; Ireland, Patten, and Spofford knew the possible death sentences awaiting them if they transferred to a black regiment. Discussing the black Louisiana soldiers, Dicker informed his father that “they have taken up arms to free themselves, and it is freedom or death with them now. “Will not such men fight?” he asked. “We shall see.” Fight the black troops would, beginning at Port Hudson, La. on Wednesday, May 27, 1863. Union regiments gallantly, but uselessly charged Confederate entrenchments. Still led by black officers, the black soldiers of the 1st and 3rd Louisiana Native Guards charged three times and lost almost 200 men. The Union’s newest soldiers did not break the Confederate defenses that day, but neither did the attacking white regiments. And “across the hilltops that meet the northern sky,” Union veterans could descry more “long moving lines of rising dust” as winter passed into spring 1863. Black Northerners were joining the fight, too, including black Mainers from the Midcoast. The cavalry was on the way, “coming [for] our union to restore.”

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Step 2: Specify the intended outcomes and begin working on the evaluation plan. In this section of your plan, you will focus on what you are trying to accomplish with the activity and begin thinking about how you will evaluate the activity to determine whether it had the intended outcomes. Too often, professional development planning focuses mostly on the learning activities. The plans do not reflect or build on a clear vision of outcomes, as reflected in changes in teacher performance and student learning. When this happens, it is difficult to determine whether the activity was really successful or whether it is necessary to provide additional or different kinds of support to teachers. Later, in Step 4, you will be asked to complete the plan for evaluating the activity. Keep in mind that a good evaluation will look for evidence that each of the outcomes that you specify here, including outcomes for teachers and for students, have been or are being met. Therefore, it is important to begin thinking about specific indicators that you will use to determine whether the outcomes have been met. If you are planning a series of activities that will last for several months or longer, it may be a good idea to set some interim benchmarks that you can use to help determine if the activities are on track. For example, you may want to set some benchmarks for teacher learning or for practicing new skills that will occur before full implementation and use. Later, if these benchmarks are not met or if they are not met on the schedule you project, you can alter your plans and schedule for later activities. In addition, you can make plans for alternative activities that will help participants meet the early benchmarks. Reaching early benchmarks to assess progress may be especially useful in planning effective follow up. Setting benchmarks and gauging progress in meeting them increases the likelihood that the activity that you are planning will achieve the intended outcomes. In addition, if the benchmarks are met, there will be occasions to celebrate early successes. You may also discover that reporting progress against early benchmarks helps in communications with funders and others whose support is important to your work. Use this chart to list the intended outcomes for the activity. You should include outcomes for participants as well as student outcomes that will result from participants’ application of new knowledge and skills in their schools and classrooms. The outcomes for teachers should be defined in terms of measurable and/or observable changes in knowledge and skills as well as changes in practice. The outcomes for students should be described in terms of specific measurable and/or observable indicators of student learning. As appropriate, you should also indicate which student subgroups you expect to achieve these outcomes. Finally, you should also indicate when you expect each of the outcomes to be achieved. As appropriate, list any benchmarks that you have established to gauge progress toward the teacher and student outcomes and indicate when you expect the benchmarks to be reached. Planning Tip 5: Student outcomes are important, but think carefully about the indicators. (NEXT PAGE) (PREVIOUS PAGE)

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Step 4.3 . Specify your plan for reporting on the evaluation results. As you think about the evaluation plan, it is important to think about the evaluation results and who will use them. For example, principals and other school leaders will be interested in learning about the extent to which the professional development appears to have paid off in terms of improved instruction and student outcomes. Central office staff and others will be interested in progress on improvement initiatives and the results for students. Finally, don’t forget that evaluation results can be helpful in meeting reporting requirements and garnering support for professional development from external sources Briefly describe the plan for reporting the evaluation results. (How will the results be presented? Will the results be accompanied by recommendations? Who will be the primary audience for the report?) (NEXT PAGE) (PREVIOUS PAGE)

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What Is Environmental Education? Environmental Education promotes environmental literacy and the development of the skills needed for life-long learning. Environmental Education refers to education efforts that increase public awareness, concern, and knowledge about environmental issues and provides the critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills needed to make informed and responsible decisions about the environment in all its complexity. Environmental Education promotes interdisciplinary integration of subject matter, problem-and issues-based learning experiences, and both cooperative and independent learning opportunities. The Belgrade Charter, adopted by the United Nations, provides a widely accepted goal statement for Environmental Education: The goal of environmental education is to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems, and which has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations, and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones. The Tbilisi Declaration followed the Belgrade Charter and established these objectives for environmental education: To foster clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social, political, and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas; To provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and skills needed to protect and improve the environment; To create new patterns of behavior of individuals, groups and society as a whole towards the environment. EE In Maryland Schools Video featuring Kennard Elementary School Queen Anne's County Public Schools Check out the new BayBackpack, the source for bay education resources for teachers! From NOAA's Chesapeake Bay Program Nature & the Environment Primary resources from the Library of Congress Climate Change Kit from EPA & Global Change Research Program. Free, online resources for 11 biomes. Instructional modules for high school students from NOAA.

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When Carly McCullar, 32, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as an adult, she wanted to improve her social and communication skills before heading into the next stage of her life. Never having received such help before, she volunteered to participate in a unique treatment program: virtual reality. Sitting at a computer that tracked her facial expressions, the game tested her social cognition and provided feedback, McCullar played through various realistic scenarios, including a job interview, a confrontation with a loud neighbor and even dating. The program, a collaborative effort from gaming technology experts and health researchers at the Center for BrainHealth at the University of Texas at Dallas, simulates everyday experiences and social situations that are typically difficult for those with autism or anxiety disorders. And it's just one example in a growing trend in which video games are forms of therapy. "The program starts to not feel like a game ... It feels real," McCullar tells Mashable. "You know it is an alternate reality, but you feel the same emotions you would feel in the actual situation you are practicing." That's the program's purpose: The immersive experience allows users to train their responses and handle certain scenarios to prepare for everyday life. In McCullar's case, her confusion transformed into emotional connection. The "social mistakes" she made in the game, she explains, made her rethink actual conversations and situations. "No matter where individuals fall on the autism spectrum, those diagnosed often struggle to succeed in a world based on human interdependence," says Dr. Sandra Bond Chapman, founder and chief director of the Center for BrainHealth. Chapman says the Center for BrainHealth began using a virtual reality platform more than seven years ago to see how leveraging technology in a safe, controlled environment could induce brain, cognitive, social and real-life changes. Tandra Allen, M.S., head of virtual reality training programs at the Center for BrainHealth, says video games also make it easier to tailor situations to specific patients to increase the scope of treatment. "The virtual training is meant to offer a program when there is often a gap in traditional therapy, at a critical time in development ... as well as provide high-level cognitive training that can continue to foster independent growth and living," she says. Designed for people between eight and 40 years old who are developing their frontal lobe reasoning, the Center for BrainHealth currently administers 10 hours of gameplay over the course of five or six weeks. Two years after completing the program, McCullar is now an elementary school teacher in the Dallas area, and says she has much more confidence. "When you don't know what friendship is or what it means, it is hard to understand its importance," she says. "[Now] I am planning my wedding to the love of my life, and I have made real friends, long-lasting friends whom I know I will maintain relationships with." The research team is partnering with Yale University's Child Study Center to test the feasibility of providing the research-based training program to young adults across the country. Games, especially analog games, aren't new to psychology and psychiatry — role playing and psychodrama, for instance, have long been used to help doctors and patients better pinpoint issues, and psychologists often employ board games in family and child therapy. As gaming technology grows more advanced, so does the use of video games in pyschotherapy — and many researchers are starting to give it the necessary attention. It's due, in part, to the high entertainment value of electronic games. In fact, 51% of U.S. households own a dedicated game console, according to the Entertainment Software Association, and those that do own an average of two. Experts believe this presents a great opportunity to tap into that widespread interest to benefit mental health, especially with children. According to clinical and child psychologists Drew Messer and Brian Moyer, co-directors of Electronic Gaming Therapy, Inc., we can actually trace the use of video games in therapy back to the 1980s, when home video games were first introduced. Some mental health professionals developed games specifically for therapy, while others used commercial, off-the-shelf games, such as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. Both types of games helped doctors establish relationships with patients, or even soothed their anxiety in the waiting room. Playmancer was specifically designed to help people with impulse-related disorders, such as bulimia and compulsive gambling. Messer and Moyer do the same today, just with newer titles, including Minecraft, Mario Kart, Nintendo Land, Halo and Portal 2 (which researchers recently found is excellent in improving cognitive skills). "For younger kids, a lot of it is motivational ... You can [also] set up conditions within a game so a child gets frustrated," Messer tells Mashable. "That's a wonderful opportunity to ask, 'How are you feeling?'" Moyer adds that they often work with higher functioning kids on the autism spectrum, for whom cooperative, multiplayer games work especially well. "Sometimes [it] can be as simple as building family relationships and interpersonal skills," he says. "Getting kids together ... with family members or in groups playing different games [can help us see] how they cooperate, how they compete, how they send appropriate signals to each other." In the future, we can expect using virtual technology for mental health purposes to become easier, and even more readily available. But the field requires further study — researchers are still finding out what works, and for whom. Dr. Amit Etkin, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford Health Care, isn't officially prescribing games as therapy yet, but he does give interested patients a list of games he's testing — with caveats about not having attained adequate results just yet. Stanford has been working with Lumosity and MyBrainSolutions to address depression, which Etkin says involves impairments in thinking — specifically the ability to hold and manipulate information in your mind — and emotion, specifically negative emotional biases even in interpreting neutral information. "In general, these games look much like tests we run in the lab, but are challenging and adaptive, so that participants continue to 'work against resistance,' to use an exercise analogy," Etkin tells Mashable. The paper containing results of these tests is currently being reviewed, so Etkin can't offer specific findings. However, he does say the participants enjoyed the study: "The results are very promising, and fit the idea of needing to target abnormal brain circuits to see clinical change." The success in these games may lie in how they can complement existing treatments. For example, Etkin says traditional psychotherapy might be more efficient after a patient's cognition and biases have improved. "[These games] have tremendous promise, though as a parallel route, where it is something that people can do at home — getting around issues like stigma associated with mental illness and coming to a psychiatrist for treatment — and places where it is hard to get into treatment," Etkin says. Right now, no such games have specific Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations for therapy treatment (the FDA has a special division that approves medical devices), though Etkin mentions one company is pursuing approval for schizophrenia. However, since many games are available commercially to begin with, it's unlikely that the FDA would require regulations. "It is up to the discretion of each doctor, but the relationship between availability of the training games and knowing what actually works, versus what is just wasting time, is very loose and definitely not well-enough developed yet," Etkin says. As researchers continue working to figure that out, they'll further unlock the potential of using video games for therapeutic purposes. Until then, Chapman is hopeful. "We now know that the brain changes in social engagement and that the virtual reality environment is a viable platform for treatment," she says. "There really are limitless possibilities.” Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

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Library Home || Full Table of Contents || Suggest a Link || Library Help |Three circles are given. How many circles can be constructed tangent to all three? How are they constructed? This lesson includes ten applets, to cover all of the special cases. Some of them are very complex.| |Levels:||High School (9-12), College| |Resource Types:||Geometer's Sketchpad| |Math Topics:||Conic Sections and Circles, Constructions| © 1994- The Math Forum at NCTM. All rights reserved.

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They're using simultaneous equations. and solving for each of the 's. Guys, I've looked in a few places to try and get an understanding of this, and I'm pretty confused to be perfectly honest. From what I can understand for vectors to be linear dependent, they have to be able to be put in a linear combination. I'm having trouble how to work out how to put vectors into a linear combination. For instance on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linearly They show 3 vectors as being independent, but the total of 4 vectors being dependent, I can understand the 4 vector case as in R^3 can only have 3 vectors being independent of each other. However I don't understand how the determine that the first 3 vectors are independent They show a linear combination of They give a description of why this is a linear combination but I don't seem to follow that either. Would be very grateful for a explanation of the going on here. Thanks

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[SOLVED] How to find the sample size? Hello, this question seems rather simple but for some reason I can't see what to use to solve it. Question : We want to do a study to determine the proportion of urban owners that have more than 1 computer. I need to find the sample size to be certain at 99% that the estimation will be at most 3% of the real proportion. A friend of mine suggested to use where n is the sample size, the value of Z, p the proportion and c the margin error. So for my problem: n = = 1849 My 3 questions: a) Is it the right formula? if so where does it come from? b) Why do we use p=0.5 when we have no clue what the proportion is going to be? c) Why do we take the value of Z as a bilateral test (hence the instead of )?

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CAGR and Why are Square Roots Taken? I am working on a couple of calucalations for a colleague that wants to arrive at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) for a time-series of investment data: Total Return (adding 1 to each period's % return and then multiplying them all together to get a Total Return 1.xxxx and the final CAGR calculation which takes the nth root of the Total Return (nth root being the number of % return periods) and subtracting 1. I understand mechanically how to do the problem, but I don't understand for Total Return what the formula means: why do I add 1 to each return and then multiply them sequentially - what does that do/mean as "Total Return"? Then, for the CAGR calculation, why is the nth root being taken? In other words, and not only for this problem, why is the nth root or square root used - what does it ulimately do to the output of any problem? Thanks for helping with my conceptual understanding! Total Return / CAGR example Here is an example I found: hp 12c (platinum) - Calculating a Compound Annual Growth Rate : HP Calculator : Educalc.net Start with $1,000. In year one you get a 20% return ($1,200 at year end). In year two you go up another 10% ($1,320 at end of year two), down 15% in year three ($1,122), and up 30% in year four ($1,458.60 ending amount). Multiply the returns for each year to get the total return. 1.20 * 1.10 * 0.85 * 1.30 = 1.4586 (or 45.86%) Now, all we need is the CAGR. For two years we took the square root. For three years, you would take the cube root. For four years, that's the... quad root or something? I just use my trusty spreadsheet to do these calculations. Spreadsheets and some calculators take roots by using the inverse of the root as an exponent, so a square root is 1/2, a cube root is 1/3, etc. In this example, that's: 1.4586^(1/4), or 1.4586^0.25, which equals 1.099. 1.099 - 1= 0.099, or 9.9%.

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You are multiplying both sides of the equation by a^2b^2 so in your second line you should have =a^2b^2 instead of =1 The quadratic ax^2+bx+c=0 has repeated roots if b^2-4ac=0 so apply this to your quadratic. Yes you ar on the right track but to get from line 1 to line 2 you were multiplying throughout by a^2b^2. So instead of =1 you should have =a^2b^2 ax^2+bx+c=0 has repeated roots if b^2-4ac=0 so apply this to your corrected equation. OK, here goes: a = (b2 - m2a2) b = 2mca2 c = (a2b2 - c2) For repeated roots, b2 = 4ac 4m2c2a2 = 4.(b2 - m2a2)(a2b2 - c2) If I try to simplify and solve this equation, I don't get the result b2 - 4ac = 0 If I simply ignore the constants a,b & c, I get the equation x2+2x+1 = 0, for which I get the roots (x+1) & (x+1) Is this correct? a = (b2 - m2a2) b = -2mca2 c = (- a2c2 - a2b2) b2 = 4ac 4m2c2a4 = 4.(b2 - m2a2).(-a2c2 - a2b2) 4m2c2a4 = 4[ -a2b2c2 + m2a4c2 - a2b4 + m2a4b2] The two sides are not equal. We get 4m2c2a4 on both sides, but what to do with the other terms? That 1 in your second line should be a^2b^2 (You were in the process of multiplying both sides by a^2b^2 So line should read (b^2-a^2m^2)x^2-2a^2mcx-a^2(b^2+c^2)=0 Now ax^2+bx+c=0 has repeated roots if b^2-4ac=0 So in our equation want (2a^2mc)^2+4(b^2-a^2m^2)a^2(b^2+c^2)=0 That 1 in your second line should be (You were in the process of multiplying both sides by So line should read Now has repeated roots if So in our equation want I have carried out the correction of multiplying RHS also by and started with the corrected equation, which can be rewritten as I have carried out the multiplication as you have said. Incidentally, the equation should be because the term "C" is negative. which I have correctly done. How does all this relate to the original equation ? Edit: Whether the term is negative or positive, it does not matter since there are uncancelled terms on the RHS. This is correct. Now multiply out brackets. There will be an a^2 which can be cancelled out of every term (since right hand side=0) You should also see among the terms a^2m^2c^2-a^2m^2c^2, so these go. Now you should see that there is b^2 which can be cancelled. Should now have b^2+c^2-a^2m^2=0 Now replace c and m by what we let them stand for at the beginning.

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Jim Braithwait pulls into the driveway of a landowner who had complained of deer eating his crops. “I hope you brought your checkbook,” quips the landowner, as Braithwait exits his truck. “Your deer are destroying my sweet corn!” This type of welcome is not uncommon for Braithwait. He’s a wildlife damage biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation, and reducing or eliminating wildlife damage issues is his specialty. He accompanies the frustrated landowner to the 7-acre sweet corn patch and explains that the state’s deer do not “belong” to the Department of Conservation, but to each individual of the state. Compensation for damage would not be a wise use of taxpayers’ dollars because it would not solve the problem. Surveying the damage, it becomes clear that raccoons are the corn-eating culprits—not deer. Braithwait explains the differences in deer versus raccoon damage and recommends that a low-strung electric fence be installed. The fence is fairly inexpensive compared to the potential profits from the sweet corn. Missouri is blessed with an abundance of wildlife, and most citizens enjoy interacting with it, whether by hunting, photographing or simply watching. That blessing, however, can become a curse when the animals we normally enjoy become a nuisance or cause damage to our personal property. Emotions may run the gamut from aggravation to outright anger when a nuisance turns to damage. Knowing what to do about it can be equally frustrating. Wildlife complaints fall into the nuisance animal category when an animal comes in conflict with a person’s view of when and where that animal should be. General assistance is available by calling local Conservation offices. Personnel there can provide valuable information and resources for alleviating particular problems. Brochures are also available on our Website. Conservation agents are specially trained and experienced in handling more complicated nuisance issues. The most common approaches for controlling nuisance wildlife include removal of the attraction, exclusion and removal of the animal. For example, simple solutions for a nuisance raccoon might include removing attractants such as garbage or pet food, repairing or filling openings around structures and/or trapping (with a cage-type live trap) and removing the offending animal. Sporting goods stores, lawn and garden supply stores and farm equipment supply stores often carry nuisance control equipment. The Wildlife Code of Missouri allows for property owners to control nuisance wildlife that cause damage. When wildlife conflicts become more than a nuisance and involve property damages and financial losses, special steps must be taken. Damage may depend on the individual’s perception. A groundhog digging under the porch or feeding on flowers may constitute damage from one point of view. Others may view that as a minor issue compared to a coyote that has developed a taste for calves or an otter that has discovered a smorgasbord in a commercial hatchery pond. Private Land Services Division is responsible for the Wildlife Damage Management Program, which assists Missourians with substantial damage and financial losses due to wildlife. The program is staffed by six wildlife damage biologists and a central office supervisor who are specialists in identifying and alleviating wildlife damage issues. The program depends on a variety of methods, including habitat management, animal husbandry, repellents, traps and scare tactics, as well as lethal control tactics. Wildlife damage problems are not new to Missouri. In 1923, Missouri hired six government trappers to remove problem animals. Most of the damage complaints received during this time period centered on the growing coyote population in Missouri. The idea was to refer trappers to individuals suffering predation problems to trap and eliminate the offending animals. This approach proved to be too time consuming, and the trappers could not respond to complaints in a timely manner. An extension-type predator control program began in 1945, employing two predator control agents. These agents traveled throughout the state training landowners on how to remove offending predators. This approach proved much more effective because landowners could trap predators on their own as soon as they caused damage. The special training also allowed landowners to prevent future losses. Today the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Wildlife Damage Management program continues to use the extension service approach. The state is divided into three urban districts (Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield) and three rural districts (north, south and central) to best serve citizens. The role and duties of the wildlife damage biologist have changed over the years. Once known simply as “state trappers,” they now lead public conservation programs, conduct training for Department employees, assist with special projects and act as media contacts, in addition to training landowners and trapping nuisance wildlife. Coyotes still account for some of the damage complaints that biologists receive. However, since wildlife populations in general have increased over the years, several other species have been added to the list. Otters, beavers, geese, deer and even bears now challenge the skills of wildlife damage biologists. “Otters adapted to Missouri’s landscape much better than originally thought,” says Braithwait, based in Camdenton. “When a group of otters finds a hatchery pond, the losses can be extensive.” Setting Conibear-type traps or underwater snares can be very effective when specific travel lanes can be identified. Shooting otters, where safe, can also eliminate the problem. A non-lethal method available to pond owners is placing a low-set electric fence around the pond perimeter. This fencing can be an economical approach for protecting fish stocking investments. “Otters move around a lot,” says Braithwait. “You have to get right on otter damage before it’s too late.” Identifying otter sign is the key to early detection of otter damage. Otters will pull fish up on the bank to feed and leave the skeleton when finished. Otters also love crayfish. Consequently, their scat (feces) will normally contain large quantities of crayfish shells. Beavers are another aquatic animal that frequently cause damage. Most complaints involve trees being chewed or cut down. After all, that is what beavers do. However, if those trees cost several hundred dollars and were planted for shade or aesthetics, then something must be done. Most control methods used for otters are also effective for beavers. To protect individual trees, property owners can wrap tree trunks with wire or plastic piping at least four feet high. More serious problems occur when beavers clog city water supply outlets or dam water drainage systems, causing crop fields to flood. Usually, a short training session and initial trap setting with city employees or the landowner rectifies these problems. Coyotes continue to cause occasional problems for farmers trying to raise cattle or sheep. Losses can get serious if the offending animal is not identified and stopped in a timely manner. “Cattle farmers keep pretty close track of their calf crop,” says Scott McWilliams, biologist, West Plains. “After losing a calf or two, they’re anxious to catch the coyote.” Very often though, the culprit is not a coyote at all, but free-running domestic dogs. Biologists can distinguish between coyote damage and damage caused by dogs. The ability to accurately interpret animal sign becomes extremely important in these cases. If the culprit is in fact a coyote, it is caught by snare or foothold trap. Snares are inexpensive, easy to set and very effective. A special permit is required to set snares and can only be issued by a wildlife damage biologist. Research shows that livestock predation by coyotes is usually the work of one individual animal. By targeting and killing the offending coyote, the predation stops and no further animals must be trapped. Managing Missouri’s white-tailed deer population is one of the Department’s greatest challenges. Although hunters may be largely satisfied with the condition of Missouri’s deer herd, others are not so quick to applaud this abundant resource. Most folks accept and can tolerate a certain amount of damage caused by deer. Crop farmers, landscapers and gardeners all expect and anticipate some losses due to natural causes, such as wildlife, insects and different types of weather events. However, when losses are excessive, then control methods may be in order. Wildlife damage biologists often handle deer damage issues whether the complaint involves a lawn and garden or an 80-acre soybean field. “For lawn plantings and gardens, property owners may try electric fencing, repellents or scare tactics to discourage deer,” says Wendy Sangster, biologist, Kansas City. “These tactics usually keep the damage to an acceptable level or can eliminate it altogether.” In rural areas where crop damage can be a problem, biologists often initiate a hunting program that targets does. “Reducing the doe herd is the key to controlling whitetail deer numbers in a given area. Deer seasons and permits are liberal now, especially for landowners,” says Daryl Damron, biologist, Moberly. “Many landowners have significantly reduced their crop damage losses by maintaining an active deer harvest program during the established seasons.” When crop damage is excessive or deer numbers can’t be controlled through regular hunting seasons, then a special restricted permit may be issued by a conservation agent to reduce deer numbers. Another species that has found great success in Missouri is the giant Canada goose. Once thought to have been eliminated from the state, this bird is now a very common sight—too common, according to some. “Canada geese make up the bulk of my calls in the spring and early summer,” says Tom Meister, biologist, St. Louis. “People all over St. Louis complain about the droppings on sidewalks, playgrounds and beach areas. Some nesting pairs of geese can even become aggressive and chase people who get too close to a nest. It’s just unacceptable if you are trying to run a business and the geese are chasing your customers.” “Geese are attracted to bodies of water that have trimmed, green grass and a gentle slope to the water’s edge,” says Meister. “Most towns and municipalities have inadvertently created the perfect situation for geese when they constructed golf courses and city parks.” Advance planning during construction can help keep geese from being attracted to a lake in the first place. But if geese are already creating a problem, there is still hope. “Goose control techniques must be carried out consistently over time to have the desired effects,” says Sangster. “No single technique may work on its own. A well-executed abatement program implementing several techniques, including habitat manipulation, chemical control, harassment (including trained dogs), and egg and nest destruction, is critical to controlling giant Canada geese. If these techniques fail, a roundup and removal may be recommended.” A special permit is required to disturb eggs and nests or kill the geese out of season. Black bears are becoming more common in Missouri and human conflict is inevitable. We receive several bear complaints each year. Bears get into trash dumpsters and they damage beehives. Less common for black bears is to prey on livestock. “Bears are highly responsive to harassment techniques and electric fences,” says James Dixon, biologist, Springfield. “Most problems can be corrected by keeping food items out of reach and stringing electric fence around whatever you don’t want the bears getting into.” Black bears are usually not aggressive but can be attracted to unnatural food sources like trash receptacles, campgrounds and even bird feeders. Keeping a clean camp and using trash containers with good, secure lids will prevent most problems. “Black bears, as a rule, generally don’t cause problems,” says McWilliams. “Most of the bears that I deal with get into trouble when they are being fed. By feeding a bear, people may be unknowingly contributing to its death if it becomes a nuisance and has to be destroyed. Remember, ‘A fed bear is a dead bear.’” Wildlife damage biologists may have to trap and relocate a bear if harassment techniques don’t work. Mountain lions always cause quite a stir and are the subject of many coffee shop conversations. The Department receives dozens of mountain lion sighting reports monthly but has only been able to confirm the presence of seven free-roaming mountain lions in Missouri over the last 10 years. Where these mountain lions came from also makes for interesting discussions. Since there are no fences around the state, nothing is stopping a wild mountain lion from wandering into Missouri from an existing population outside of the state. The nearest known populations of mountain lions occur in Colorado, South Dakota and Texas. Another possibility is that captive mountain lions are occasionally released or are escaping captivity. Missouri requires a special permit to possess a mountain lion and strict confinement standards must be met. There are currently about 30 people in the state who have a permit to keep them, and an unknown number of people may possess them illegally. One thing is sure—the Department has not reintroduced mountain lions. The Missouri Department of Conservation (or any other state or federal agency) has never released, bought, sold, traded, tagged, radio collared or microchipped any mountain lions in Missouri, nor do we have any plans to do so in the future. In response to the few cats that have been confirmed and the number of reports that are generated, the wildlife damage biologists have been trained to detect and analyze mountain lion sign and damage. “One thing that I learned about mountain lions is that if one is in the area, it will leave sign and plenty of it,” says Braithwait, who has trained in both Wyoming and Florida. Most on-site investigations verify that coyotes, foxes, bobcats, deer and dogs are often mistakenly identified as mountain lions. With some tolerance, common sense and a little help, most of us can weather the minor inconveniences that wildlife may cause and more thoroughly enjoy the benefits that it offers. Missouri’s Wildlife Damage Management program, and the capable staff that keep it running, will help ensure that your experiences with wildlife are positive ones. Editor in Chief - Ara Clark Managing Editor - Nichole LeClair Art Director - Cliff White Artist - Dave Besenger Artist - Mark Raithel Photographer - Jim Rathert Writer/editor - Tom Cwynar Staff Writer - Jim Low Designer - Susan Fine Circulation - Laura Scheuler

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The H5N1 virus has killed roughly 60 percent of humans infected, a mortality rate which is orders of magnitude higher than that of seasonal influenza virus. Many victims of the former fall heir to acute respiratory distress syndrome—the inability to breathe. Now researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the University of South Alabama show that the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus, but not seasonal influenza viruses, can target the cells of human lung tissue, where they replicate fast and efficiently, and induce inflammation, which correlates with H5N1-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome that is observed in humans. The research is published in the January Journal of Virology. “The pulmonary endothelium is strategically located within the lung and its function and structural integrity are essential for adequate pulmonary function,” says coauthor Terrence Tumpey of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We compared the infection rate of different subtype influenza viruses in human lung endothelial cells, and assessed the host response to infection,” he says. “We found that the H5N1 virus, but not common seasonal influenza viruses, can target human pulmonary endothelial cells.” There, the viruses replicate rapidly, creating an overwhelming inflammatory cytokine response, essentially causing an immune response so powerful that it kills the pulmonary endothelial cells, results which Tumpey says correlate with the H5N1-induced acute respiratory distress syndrome that is observed in humans where the production of cytokines, immune system compounds, has been detected in lung endothelial cells. The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 is thought to have resulted in a similarly high influx of inflammatory cells and profound vascular leakage in the lower respiratory tract, often precipitating the same acute respiratory distress syndrome seen in H5N1 influenza cases. That pandemic, estimated to have sickened 350 million, killing roughly 50 million, had a mortality rate of approximately 14 percent—far less than that of H5N1, but still shockingly high. “Although the mechanism of H5N1 pathogenesis is not entirely known, our research identified one virulent factor, the cleavage site of the viral surface glycoprotein hemagglutinin, which we found to be critical for the production of infectious progeny H5N1 virus in pulmonary endothelial cells,” says Tumpey. Other unknown virulence factors undoubtedly exist, and require further study, he says. “Treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs has been proposed as a therapeutic option for patients infected with H5N1 viruses,” says Tumpey. “The development of new, more targeted therapies for H5N1 disease along with combination antiviral drug treatment could be an effective approach in reducing acute lung injury and mortality caused by H5N1 virus.” Explore further: Annual childhood flu vaccines may interfere with development of crossresistance H. Zeng, et al., 2011. Human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cells support productive replication of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses: possible involvement in the pathogenesis of human H5N1 virus infection. J. Virol. 86:667-678.

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People at high risk of cancer of the bowel and womb due to a genetic condition will receive a more accurate diagnosis as a result of a new model developed by a team of international scientists. A scientist from the University's Institute of Medical Genetics, School of Medicine, is part of an international research team who have developed this new way of identifying people at high risk of cancer. The research, published in the journal Nature Genetics, focuses on the genes responsible for Lynch Syndrome - an inherited, familial condition that increases the risk of bowel, womb and other cancers, especially at a young age. About 5% of bowel and womb cancers are thought to be due to Lynch Syndrome. The model essentially turns previously uninterpretable DNA data into usable knowledge with a direct clinical benefit. It means doctors worldwide can now access new information and give patients a truer picture of their familial risk. "In the UK, bowel cancer kills about 16,000 people each year, and womb cancer - the commonest gynaecological cancer - about 2,000 women a year, with Wales having the highest rate," according to Dr Ian Frayling, School of Medicine, member of the International Society for Gastrointestinal Hereditary Tumours (InSiGHT) which organised the research. "What we have been able to do is effectively refine genetic information in the InSiGHT database and provide a more accurate answer of the risk of getting cancer," he added. Patients who currently have genetic testing for Lynch Syndrome are often told they have 'variants of uncertain significance' which is an inconclusive result. People are left in a kind of genetic limbo, unsure of whether they face a high risk of cancer, or whether their family members are also at risk. "As a result of this work, doctors will now be able to say much more confidently whether those patients have Lynch Syndrome, and therefore whether they are at a higher risk of cancer," according to Dr Frayling. "This will help to save more lives, because by giving a definite answer to more patients, they will be able to access the specialist screening that they need. "It will also save NHS resources and be safer, because we will be able to reassure people that they are not at risk and so don't need the extra screening. As a result of this, colleagues and the families they care for all over the UK are now benefitting, and we are working on incorporating this into the UK Guidelines on testing for Lynch Syndrome," he adds. Explore further: Scientists prove regular aspirin intake halves cancer risk

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Project 1: Genomic Sunlight Dosimeters for Melanoma Prevention Douglas Brach, PhD, Deepak Narayan, MD, Michael Krauthammer, MD/PhD, Co-Leaders Detecting melanoma early leads to a nearly 100% cure rate, but diagnosing it at an advanced stage results in less than 20% survival. The power of early diagnosis has made it the major approach to preventing death from melanoma. Yet there is little evidence that large public skin cancer screenings prevent melanoma deaths. Focusing on people at greatest risk would be possible with an early predictor of risk that helps the primary care physician identify patients who should be followed by a dermatologist. This preventive test needs to measure both aspects of melanoma risk: genetic risk and sun-exposure risk. Project 1 focus is on sun-exposure risk because most people with Fitzpatrick Type I skin do not get melanoma. Yet UV exposure is usually ascertained by patient recollections rather than by objective biological indicators of past sun exposure. To overcome this critical barrier to assessing personal UV exposure and thus melanoma risk, we propose to couple two new technologies with Next-Gen sequencing to create genomic surrogate biomarkers of long-term sun exposure. One dosimeter takes advantage of the accumulation of DNA photoproducts in special regions of the genome; the other incorporates our knowledge about clonal expansion of cells in skin. We then evaluate these genomic dosimeter readings in skin for association with melanoma. The Specific Aims are: Aim 1: Map human genomic regions that are UV damage hotspots or DNA repair slowspots. Aim 2: Quantitate rare UV-mutated genes in skin in vivo. Aim 3: Use genomic regions sensitive to UV photoproducts and mutations as dosimeters to correlate cumulative sunlight exposure in normal skin to risk for melanoma. These studies establish ways to objectively ascertain exposure to cancer risk using modern measurement technologies. Project 2: The PD-1/B7-H1 Pathway and Melanoma Immunity Lieping Chen, PhD, and Mario Sznol, MD, Co-Leaders Multiple factors in the cancer microenvironment down-regulate tumor immunity and promote tumor progression. In melanoma, one of the dominant mechanisms is the induction of co-inhibitory receptors on tumor-specific T cells and expression of corresponding co-inhibitory ligands by tumor or other cells within tumor stroma, leading to complete or partial loss of T-cell effector functions. Amplified co-inhibitory interactions in the cancer microenvironment impede not only immune tumor surveillance, but also therapeutic immune interventions that may explain the failure of approaches aimed at stimulation of T cells, including tumor antigen-based vaccination and T cell stimulatory cytokines. A prime example of the co-inhibitory interactions is the B7-H1 (PD-L1)/PD-1 pathway. Preclinical and clinical studies support B7-H1 as an important co-inhibitory molecule in the down-regulation of immune responses in the melanoma microenvironment and blockade of the B7-H1/PD-1 pathway as one of the most promising approaches for the treatment of melanoma. The specific aims are: Aim 1: to assess the association between B7-H1/PD-1 expression in human melanoma microenvironment with clinical response to anti-PD-1 therapy Aim 2: to study effector mechanisms of the B7-H1/PD-1 blockade in augmenting anti-melanoma immunity and in melanoma regression; Aim 3: to maximize melanoma therapeutic immunity by mechanism-based combinatory approaches. Our studies should have direct impact for current development of B7-H1/PD-1 blockade as a novel and promising approach for melanoma therapy. Project 3: Molecular Diversity of Melanomas and Response to Targeted Therapy Ruth Halaban, PhD, Harriet Kluger, MD, Titus J. Boggon, PhD, Co-Leaders The new treatment opportunities and the remarkable heterogeneity of melanoma tumors require better profiling of tumor sub-types to achieve efficient selection of patients for targeted therapies. We will focus on responses to BRAF inhibitors (BRAFi) such as PLX4032/RG7204/ Vemurafenib and GSK2118436. The studies will include novel kinase inhibitors developed by Plexxikon to overcome the “paradoxical effect” of BRAFi (i.e., stimulation of cells with wild type BRAF), termed “paradox breakers” (PLX-PB). We will assess the characteristics of tumors poorly responsive to BRAFi compared to those with durable response, relapsing over a year after treatment. The major translational outcome of this work is classification of melanomas by phospho-proteomic/genomic/gene expression aberrations that show an association between treatment and response that will lead to development of assays for selection of patients for targeted therapies. In addition, the project will facilitate clinical trials of novel BRAFV600 kinase inhibitors. Aim 1: To correlate phospho-proteomic, genomic and gene expression aberrations with resistance to BRAFi. Aim 2: To perform functional analyses on the best markers associated with treatment response employing melanoma cells in culture. Aim 3: To conduct a Phase I clinical trial with next-generation “paradox-breakers” (PB) BRAFi developed by Plexxikon Inc. Project 4: The RAC1 Pathways as a Target for Melanoma Therapy Joseph Schlessinger, PhD, Ruth Halaban, PhD, Titus J. Boggon, PhH, Harriet Kluger, MD, Co-Leaders In order to discover new targets for therapy, we sequenced the coding regions of ~100 melanomas and identified a large number of somatic mutations and inherited Single Nucleotide Variants (SNVs). One of the most important findings of this effort is the identification of the “RAC1 signaling pathway” as a potential new target for melanoma therapy. The analysis revealed a recurrent, UV signature activating mutation in this RHO family of small GTPases, RAC^P29S, in ~9% of sun-exposed melanomas. In addition, the sequencing data revealed mutations in upstream regulators and downstream effectors of RAC1 pathway in a large numbers of melanoma tumors. Functional studies demonstrated an important role in proliferation and migration of not only mutant but also melanoma cells that that do not harbor the P29S mutation. The data suggest that pharmacological inhibition of RAC1 or its critical effector(s) can be applied for development of new therapies for melanoma patients. The general goals of this project are to determine the frequency and prognostic significance of RAC^P29S mutation in sun exposed melanocytic lesions, and to identify downstream effectors of RAC1 most likely to be druggable targets in this pathway. The specific aims are: Aim 1: To determine the frequency of RAC1P29S mutation and RAC1 expression levels in a large cohort of melanocytic lesions and correlate with pathological features and tumor progression. Aim 2: To elucidate the downstream targets of activated RAC1 in melanomas. Aim 3: To identify small-molecule inhibitors of PAK kinases, the RAC1 effectors. These studies are likely to provide new opportunities for drug discovery for melanomas and possibly other cancers that can facilitate patient-tailored targeted therapy.

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Missoula's Biomimicry Institute sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie, where retinal scans open sliding silver doors into a crisp laboratory. In the institute's online database, "Ask Nature," you'll find descriptions of anti-counterfeiting technologies and water filtration membranes from places such as the University of Cambridge Nanophotonics Center and The Aquaporin Company. It all sounds so high-tech—and in many ways, it is. But the Biomimicry Institute, a nonprofit organization that employs 16 people, and has an annual budget of $1.4 million, is actually more of a back-to-nature enterprise, quite literally. Its philosophy holds that nature has been evolving designs for 3.8 billion years, and humans could learn a thing or two from them. "All organisms on the planet today are exquisitely designed because they have continued to adapt better and better to their environment," says the Biomimicry Institute's executive director, Bryony Schwan. "Rather than reinventing the wheel, we should be looking to nature for solutions." Nature serving as a model for human invention isn't exactly new; designers from Leonardo da Vinci to Alexander Graham Bell have turned to nature for inspiration for everything from flying machines to telephones. The speaker in a cell phone is patterned after the inside of the human ear. The principal mechanism of a chainsaw is patterned after the way beetle larvae chew logs. The Biomimicry Institute has simply taken this phenomenon and made it into a philosophy. Rather than looking at nature occasionally, Schwan says, the institute aims "to develop this into a practice where we have a really deep understanding of how to look to nature for solutions...I think that in many ways we've sort of forgotten how to do this." Stevensville resident Janine Benyus, a writer and biologist, coined the term "biomimicry" in the 1990s. In her 1997 book Biomimicry: Innovations Inspired by Nature, Benyus refines the concept, offering examples of how humans can design technologies by looking to the ways nature creates structural forms, does chemistry, and establishes efficient ecosystems. Biomimicry isn't just about design, however; it's about designing with intent: to make the world a better and more efficient and harmonious place for all its inhabitants. In that sense, it has an ethical basis that you won't necessarily find in the mindset of some inventors and engineers. Similarly, the precepts of biomimicry can seem counter-intuitive, at least at first, because we've become so accustomed to setting technology in opposition to nature. Biomimicry aims to change that, using the institute to propagate its ideas in mainstream education and industrial practices. The institute's open-air office, in a sustainable building just off the Hip Strip, feels more Missoula-laidback than high-tech, as you might expect. What you might not expect is that this small-but-growing, six-year-old organization has become the driving force for cutting-edge, worldwide programs that might one day change the way we design the world—and the world itself. Kingfishers to carpet Japan's electric bullet train had to be redesigned when it turned out that its 200 mile-per-hour speed was creating sonic booms in populated areas when it emerged from tunnels. The new designer happened to be a birder. At a birding meeting, he noticed that the kingfisher could gracefully dive from medium density air into medium density water without disrupting the water's surface much. "He looked at the shape of the kingfisher's beak," says Schwan. "He did some modeling around that and applied it to the engineering of the bullet train. They not only solved the sonic boom problem but it made the train 10 percent faster and it used 15 percent less fuel." The bullet train is a graphic example of the way mimicking a form in nature can naturally leads to efficiencies. Other companies are still more deliberate about the environmental ethic of biomimicry. Columbia Forest Products in Oregon, for instance, wanted to find a less toxic process for manufacturing composite wood. Composite boards are typically put together with petroleum-based, waterproof glues and treated in high heat using formaldehyde indoors. The company ended up working with a chemist who used blue mussels as inspiration. The mussels stick to rocks and other matter in the ocean with a natural adhesive. "Here you have a little organism that stick itself to rocks," says Schwan. "Talk about waterproof! Their glue is made in ambient seawater temperature. The company was able to look at the recipe the mussels were using and mimic that." One of the more unusual examples of a biomimetic company is Interface, a carpet tile manufacturer in Georgia. Carpet tile is supposed to be an environmental and cost-saving alternative to wall-to-wall carpet. You get a hole in your carpet tile and all you have to do is tear up one and replace it with another. The problem, the company was finding, is that the tile replacement never quite matched the original—color batches always vary a little in shade, and it's hard to find a new tile that will perfectly match a patterned carpet. Customers would often end up tearing up all the tiles and replacing them. Interface contacted the Biomimicry group, and some of its staff flew out to Georgia. Instead of sitting around a table to discuss solutions, the biomimicry staff took the carpet designers into a forest to study its floor. They picked up twigs and moved them around. They looked at the way that, no matter how much you change things, there's a seamlessness to the design. Why was that? "It was because it has this mixture of patterning," says Sam Stier, the director of public education and conservation at the Biomimicry Institute. "It's semi-chaotic. It doesn't just have one color palette, it has a bunch of different colors that are more or less randomly distributed." The carpet designers went back to their tile manufacturing machines and randomized their patterns. They used a wider variety of colors, too, so that matching dye lots no longer mattered. The new carpet tile line, Entropy, was a hit with customers, Stier says. That would have been a satisfying outcome in itself, but in fact Interface, the carpet company, was inspired to go further, Stier notes, setting a goal of having no negative environmental impact by 2020. "One of the ways they're pursing that is that they now take discarded carpet from other manufacturers and reprocess it into their carpet tile," Stier says. "They recycle the nylon, they recycle the backing and keep it out of the landfill—and that's sort of mimicking nature at the whole system level." Burrs to spider webs In 1941, Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral returned from a hunting trip in the Alps to discover his dog was covered in burrs. Curious about the seeds' tenacious grasp, he put one under the microscope and saw that its design was simple and perfect: the hundreds of tiny hooks and loops gave it the ability to grab hold of fur and clothing under all kinds of circumstances. De Mestral realized there was potential there for a design never explored by humans before. It took him years to figure out the engineering. But eventually, using loops of nylon, he turned the idea into Velcro. "The cockle burr has to disperse its seeds to a mammal passing by at any direction, at any speed, under any weather conditions," says Stier. "It can't ask the deer to slow down while it carefully hooks onto its fur. And Velcro has its unique attributes because of the environmental conditions that those burrs had to evolve in to survive." Stier often uses the Velcro example for young kids. Over the past few years, he's worked with organizations like the Montana Natural History Museum to develop K-12 material for schools interested in incorporating biomimicry. He's also helped create an online course for teachers, which is accredited in Montana, New York and Wyoming, and has been used by about 100 teachers across the country so far. Last year, Stier launched a youth challenge program in which students compete to devise technologies inspired by nature. Students at a Minnesota middle school came up with an idea for a self-warming boot modeled after the way blood circulates through a wolf's paw when it walks through snow. One of Stier's favorite submissions was from a 9-year-old boy who studied how human architecture can learn from the way spider webs are built in triangular segments. "He did it by stretching fishing line and applying force until the strings broke," Stier explains. "At the moment they broke he'd record how much pressure was being exerted." Ultimately, the student showed that the way spiders assemble webs is much stronger than the ways humans tend to build. Other ideas for biomimicry education have come from outside. In 2008, Missoula singer-songwriter Amy Martin approached the institute about making an album based on biomimicry. She put together a group of kids dubbed the Coyote Choir and wrangled several well-known artists, including Brandi Carlile, Bruce Cockburn, Dar Williams, Ani Difranco and Grammy-winning children's songwriter Bill Harley. The album, Ask the Planet, with songs such as "Keep Our Cool," "No Such Thing As Garbage" and "I Want to be Like a Tree," conveys biomimicry to children, and there are also downloadable teachers' notes for each track. After it won three Parents' Choice Awards in 2009, the Biomimicry Institute was contacted by a teacher in Massachusetts whose students used the album to create a musical. The Biomimicry Institute also works on less formal education projects. In Missoula, for example, Stier partnered with the Montana Natural History Museum to create four trail signs along the Clark Fork River that talk about organisms in the river habitat and ways they could inspire design. One, titled "How can bull trout teach us to design wind turbines," compares the way fish use water eddies for swimming upstream to energy potential in wind eddies. Recently, the Monterey Bay Aquarium called Stier to help them solve a problem. They'd received a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fund a climate change program, and they were struggling with how to pull it off without a gloom-and-doom tone. "They were worried because people come to the aquarium to have fun, not to hear about climate change," says Stier. But then they discovered biomimicry—which led the aquarium to develop the program "From Whales to Windmills: Inventions Inspired by the Sea." Alison Barratt, an aquarium spokesperson, says that one segment details "how the design of the humpback pectoral flippers inspired people to make different types of wind turbines...People come to see how amazing nature is, how evolution has shaped animals to do different things and how inventors have been inspired. People are learning about those technologies but in a way that's not an in-your-face climate message, but just really getting people to think how we can do things differently." A couple of years ago, Stier got a call from a former Los Angeles comedy club owner, Chip Romer, who had become alarmed by the quality of California's public schools. Romer had sold his club and started three Waldorf-inspired charter schools in Sonoma County. Now he wanted to create a high school that was carbon neutral. Everything seemed fine until he woke up in the middle of the night in a panic about chemistry. "He realized they were going to be doing chemistry with Bunsen burners—as we all do," says Stier, "He said, 'Is there any way to do high school chemistry at ambient temperatures?' "I just laughed," Stier recalls. "I told him, 'It's a good question, but nobody else is asking that.'" In the industrial world, chemistry is done at high temperatures, using fossil fuels and, often, toxic chemicals. Concrete, for instance, accounts for 5 to 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. It's made through open pit mining of limestone that's cooked at 1,400 degrees centigrade to change the atomic structure so that it's reactive with water. Classrooms full of budding chemists learn the ropes with such processes as their main—and usually only—model. "We use petroleum to cook everything—every human material in this room is cooked," Stier says, speaking in a conference room at the institute. He points to a solar panel: "We think of solar panels as a clean energy but, in fact, the manufacturing of the panel takes a lot of heat and emits a lot of carbon dioxide." But organisms in the natural world do chemistry all the time in ambient temperatures. Trees form leaves in 72-degree weather. The mother of pearl on the inside of an abalone shell is formed in similar temperatures, with just the ocean as its pressure range, and the result, says Stier, is "twice as strong as any industrial ceramic that humans can produce...Organisms had to evolve methods of doing their chemistry at low temperatures because they're doing all their chemistry next to their bodies." Stier started searching for people who were doing green chemistry and found some companies and universities developing technologies that way. One, the Calera Corporation, makes concrete using the same process that corals use to build their skeletons in the ocean. "We thought it would be cool if we could do that in a high school lab," Stier says. "We literally came into this room and brought a bunch of jars and chemicals and we started to play around with them. And we figured it out." Stier has been working on fine-tuning that process with Big Sky High School teacher Dave Jones. A few weeks ago they spent several hours on it, playing around with the ingredients, adding calcium chloride to raise PH levels. Dona Boggs, a biology professor at UM, has been volunteering a large chunk of her time to tailor the lab so that undergrad chemistry students can use it. In April, on Earth Day, Stier flew to The Lovett School in Atlanta, Ga. to talk to 600 kids in an auditorium about biomimicry. He was nervous: He envisioned it as one big room full of 600 versions of his high school self. He wondered if he'd get tomatoes thrown at him. But Stier told the students about how nature-inspired design and chemistry work, and what its conservation implications are, and was surprised that the room was fairly quiet—and that afterward there were so many questions that he could barely get out of the lobby, he says. That also made a lot of sense to him. "In high school, they're hearing about all these intense environmental issues that we have. And it's kind of scary. Biomimicry is very exciting and hopeful and I think they just really need that." Stier remembers what it was like when he first learned about biomimicry. He'd gotten his master's degree at UM in forestry, in a joint program with the Peace Corps. For four years he lived in the Philippines studying flying foxes and working as an environmental educator, and when he returned to Missoula he wasn't sure what to do next. He consulted for several organizations and started working toward his PhD. But he says he missed working in "the real world." In 2006 his wife showed him a job opening at the Biomimicry Institute. "I didn't know what biomimicry was," he says. "The application was terrible. It was, like, 10 essay questions. I said, 'Forget it.'" But the same week he heard about the job, Janine Benyus was giving a presentation at the Urey Lecture Hall. So Stier went. "It was the best talk I'd ever seen," he says. "It just turned everything that I thought upside down. I thought that humans pretty much could not live sustainably and that technology and nature were necessarily at odds with one another. I went back that evening and wrote the whole application and got the job." There's an allure to biomimicry. Its proponents describe their experience with it as almost a spiritual conversion. Stier, however, is quick to point out that it's not about drinking the Kool-Aid. "We don't try to overstate the value of nature-inspired design," he says. "It's a tool in your toolbox. It's just a source of good ideas. Some people will say, 'Oh, wait a second, it's not like nature's perfect. Evolution is not about making the best design, it's about making a design that's good enough.' And that's sort of meant as a criticism. But in my mind that's really one of the efficiencies of nature: it doesn't try to go beyond what's necessary to do what it needs to do." Butterflies and painters Last year, Raul de Villafranca, a professor at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, took a group of textile students to the rainforest to spend the night. The Mexico City university, which is affiliated with the Biomimicry Institute, was on a mission to design an insulating quilt as part of a challenge proposed by Bozeman company Pacific Outdoor Equipment. "With this challenge in mind, he had them experience what it's like to sleep in a sleeping bag," says Megan Schuknecht, the Biomimicry Institute's director of University Education and Relations. "Most of them were from Mexico City, they'd never been camping, and so it was exciting: They looked to the environment they were in to solve this challenge." Results of the 2010 POE challenge haven't been announced yet, but universities like the one in Mexico City have taken biomimicry challenges seriously. In 2009, several worked together for eight weeks to come up with a tent inspired by the nests tent worms make. POE displayed the tent in its 2010 catalog. The Institute's third student challenge comes this fall—and this year, the winner will get at least 5,000 dollars, and the institute is hoping to help the winners figure out how to market their product. Entrants must create a biomimetic design for energy efficiency. It's the first challenge that's open to any student anywhere in the world, rather than just the institute's affiliates and fellows. That means University of Montana students are now in the running. "I'm hoping that UM students will participate," Schuknecht says, adding that since the Biomimicry Institute is in Missoula, "they'll have easier access to us." Schuknecht works with university faculty and administrators across North America, helping them to incorporate biomimicry into their curricula. Seven of those participating universities are developing degree programs in biomimicry. She also works with biomimicry fellows who use biomimicry in their classes although they don't have institutional resources or funding. One of the challenges of incorporating biomimicry in universities is language. Biomimicry students must be able to understand design terms as well as terms of biology. "Even if you have the support to put together an interdisciplinary class, what we find is that the language issue is critical," Schuknecht says. "Even after a couple of years of biology, you have such a specialized language in that discipline—and the same with designers. That's a bridge all of our educators address: What is the most critical language that each group needs to learn in order to do that collaborative work?" The language issue is also addressed in the Institute's online database, Ask Nature (www.asknature.org). There you can search for a function in nature, like creating color or collecting water. From that search you can find descriptions of various organisms—say, butterflies, or lipids—that create color or collect water. The database also lists, by function, products from manufacturers all over the world with designs that mimic nature. That it's organized and searchable by function is significant, since most naturalist information online and in print is organized by species or landscape. But Ask Nature is still heavy on the science, so the Biomimicry Institute is revamping it to make it just as accessible to designers, in conjunction with AutoDesk, the software company that creates high-end modeling programs for architects and engineers. Biomimicry students are learning to strip away their preconceptions and see nature anew. At the Ontario College of Art & Design, in Toronto, which is also affiliated with the Biomimicry Institute, professors Carl Hastrich and Bruce Hinds train students to ignore their generic visions and draw exactly what they see in nature—the lines and the shadows, say, rather than their idealized notion of a tree or a leaf. In biomimicry, god and design breakthroughs are in the details. In some ways this is a step back to the future. Of necessity, naturalists such as Audubon spent a good part of their careers drawing and painting the fruits of their research and observation. "All naturalists used to draw," says Schuknecht. "They didn't have the fancy tools they do today, so they had to write and draw and paint what they saw. I think that we've lost something in that sequestration of science in one silo and art in another silo." Though biomimicry is often embraced—sometimes quite feverishly—Schuknecht says it's not always easy to get engineering programs on board with all its aspects. Bio-inspired design has a sexiness in the engineering world, but that doesn't mean it's always done with the intent of solving human challenges in sustainable ways. "Often those program might be designing cool robots that are inspired by how some organism in the natural world works. Afterward they might think of some application, like using the robot to search for earthquake victims in collapsed buildings—but it's sort of an afterthought. It's not designing with intent. And that's what biomimicry is: It's asking up front what you want your design to do. We encourage students to work on greater challenges that matter to humanity rather than niche needs." Like the origins of Velcro, the story of Floating Islands International begins with a dog. In 2000, Bruce Kania was out playing with his dog, Rufus, near an irrigation ditch that runs through Billings and ends at the Yellowstone River near Shepard. Rufus jumped in the ditch and came out red, coated from an algae bloom. Kania was horrified. But he was also intrigued. Algae flourishes because there are so many nutrients in water, but it tends to suck up oxygen and smother all other life. "This water was loaded with nutrients," he says. "One would think that those nutrients were moving through the food web. Boy, it would be incredibly productive out here if that were the case. But it wasn't. The water was almost dead." Kania had an epiphany. He'd lived in Montana since 1976, and his life had always revolved around healthy water. While attending college in Wisconsin he ran a recreation tabloid and was a fishing guide in the state's northern waters. He needed to take his clients to the best fishing spots, and he began to notice that wherever the record-breaking fish were, there were also naturally occurring floating islands. It wasn't until the day Rufus turned red that he started to connect the dots. Why were the waters near Shepard so much less productive than the ones in upper Wisconsin? And were the islands a missing link? He had an inkling they were. He consulted with Janine Benyus, the Biomimicry Institute's guiding light, and, over the years, with staff from the institute. He worked with engineers, plant specialists and Montana State University's bio-film program. Ultimately, a team of experts used the floating peat bogs in Wisconsin as a model to construct floating structures made from post-consumer materials like recycled plastic bottles. The fibers of the islands grew bio-film but still let water flow through. And bacteria on the island, which the island used to grow plants, also consumed unwanted nutrients. Kania and the team patented the biomimicry water-cleaning technology as BioHaven floating islands. "We're biomimicking how nature does it," Kania says. "Our bombs-and-bullets approach, the idea of just killing algae because it's getting in the way, is a failed system. That's not how it's done. Once you do that you're also killing, for example, the bio-film producing microbes that could out-compete the algae in the first place if they're given the opportunity to do so." At Fish Fry Lake in Shepard, Kania put the islands to the test. The six-and-a-half-acre pond is between 25 and 30 feet deep. The top six feet of the water was full of nutrients and would warm to 88 degrees. Below that, the water was devoid of oxygen. With floating islands, say Kania, the water has cleared. "We're not just sustaining trout, we're sustaining Yellowstone Cutthroat trout, which are perhaps the pinnacle trout in terms of demand for high water quality. Yesterday we had seven little brothers and sisters with their bigs out here and they caught over 70 fish in the space of a hot Sunday afternoon." Now David Mumford, public works director for Billings, is testing floating islands with sewer lagoons to see if they'll reduce nitrogen and phosphorous. "It has been showing substantial improvements," Mumford says. Mumford has also tried floating islands with storm drains, though those are proving to be tricky because of inconsistent water flow. And he's given Kania's company, Floating Island International, access to Billings' wastewater facility to test its technology. "Dave has been a champion of what we're doing," says Kania. "He's been fundamental to some very key research." That's just Billings. Floating Island International now has eight licensed companies, including one in China and one in New Zealand, and 4,000 islands in waters all over the world. It's built a 39,800 -square-foot floating island for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And Kania's not close to being finished. That saying that once you launch a boat it begins to sink? Once you launch an island, it begins to grow. "We have islands in the ocean, islands in brackish water and lots of islands in fresh water," he says. "One day people will be growing their own islands to live on. The islands will not only be digesting the waste from the people who live on them, but cleaning up the waste associated with previous human activity—like the 390 dead zones currently in oceans around the world. We think we're at the beginning of what will become a new way of relating to our aquatic environment."

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Skip over navigation Myths and Legends A weekly day for rest and prayer, Saturday for the Jews, Sunday for the Christians. An important Christian religious ceremony such as baptism or Holy Communion. 1. Giving something that you think will please a god e.g. an offering of a killed animal. 2. Giving up something that you value, so that something good may happen. 3. A thing sacrificed. A holy or very good person. Make sacred or holy. 1. A safe place or refuge. 2. A sacred place or part of the church where the alter stands. To do with the Devil. A woodland god with a mans body and goats ears tail and legs from Greek myths. A member of a people who came from Europe and settled in parts of England in the 5th and 6th centuries. A platform on which criminals are executed. To question things, not believe easily. A wicked or dishonest person. 1. A person who made copies of writings before printing was invented 2. A religious scholar in biblical times 1. Something holding two parts together. 2. Close something by sticking two parts together. 3. Conclude a deal. 4. Close an opening. A meeting at which people try to make contact with the spirits of dead people. A soldier guarding something. A farm labourer who worked for a landowner in the middle ages and who was not allowed to leave. A county the rural areas of England. E2B® and E2BN® are registered trade marks and trading names of East of England Broadband Network (Company Registration No. 04649057)

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The Fires of 1831: Fayetteville and Raleigh in Flames by Scott A. Miskimon Originally published as "North Carolina's Fiery Test." News & Observer, May 29, 2006: 17A. Updated 7/2010. Copyright of the author. “FAYETTEVILLE IS NO MORE!” Thus began an account of the fire that swept through Fayetteville and utterly destroyed it in May 1831. But that conflagration was not the only major fire that spring in North Carolina. Three weeks later another devastating blaze hit Raleigh, one that almost changed the course of North Carolina history. On Sunday morning, May 29, 1831, the people of Fayetteville flocked to their churches for worship. Shortly after noon, after the sermons of Henry Rowland and his fellow ministers had ended, their congregations streamed out of their churches, only to find that a fire had begun in the center of town. It had started in a kitchen at a house on the northwest corner of Market Square. Immediately, townsfolk battled the blaze and thought they would soon have it under control, but the flames escaped and went on to ravage nearby buildings. The wind gusted and blew burning embers on the roof of the old State House, where the General Assembly once met and North Carolina had adopted the U.S. Constitution. In minutes the old State House was engulfed in flames. The fire jumped from wooden roof to wooden roof, and the light pine buildings were like tinder as the flames raced from the center of town. Fayetteville’s fire engine could not cope with the blaze and after only a few minutes it was abandoned and then destroyed. Water buckets and blankets were employed, but to little effect. As the fire swept north on Green Street, it crossed the creek, consumed a new bridge, and then devoured the Episcopal church. The fire moved east on Person Street, and pastor Rowland watched in horror as it hit his church: “The tall steeple of the Presbyterian church seemed a pyramid of fire; for a while it stood firm, soon the bell descended with a crash—the steeple trembled, tottered and fell.” The Catholic chapel was next, and all the churches in town, except for the Methodist church, were destroyed. Residents removed valuables from their homes and carried them away to safety, only to find the fire had followed them. They moved their belongings again and again, but the relentless flames pursued them until, overwhelmed by exhaustion, they abandoned and lost what they had desperately tried to save. The sick were pulled out of houses and left in the streets, while parents and children frantically sought each other amid the noise and confusion. Gunpowder was the only thing that would save Fayetteville. The roar of the fire was punctuated by thunderous explosions as the townsfolk blew up their homes and shops to deprive the flames of fuel. Finally, after a four-hour inferno, the fire abated. More than six hundred private buildings burned that afternoon, including nearly every house, 105 stores, a school, two banks and two hotels. Where once a thriving city stood, fire left only stacks of tottering chimneys and crumbling walls. Many were injured, but amazingly, no one died. The sick had no medicine, for the fire destroyed all of it, along with the medicine shops. That night, residents huddled together on the outskirts of town and slept the first of many nights in the open air. Although the people of Fayetteville had lost everything they owned that day, and were largely uninsured, they were thankful no one died and that the fire had not been in the winter. Henry Rowland immediately sent a dispatch describing the disaster that had befallen Fayetteville, and news of the catastrophe quickly spread. Private contributions poured in from all over the country. Merchants in New York extended credit to local businesses, and closer to home, those in Raleigh and Wilmington quickly came to the aid of the suffering people of Fayetteville. More than $100,000 was raised and distributed to those in need. Thanks to donations from outside of North Carolina, Pastor Rowland rebuilt his Presbyterian church far more quickly than he imagined he would. A newly cast bell adorned the new church, and upon its dedication the next year, Pastor Rowland gave a fitting sermon based on the Old Testament prophecy “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than the glory of the former.” In the immediate aftermath of Fayetteville’s destruction, state government turned its attention to protecting the State House in Raleigh. That building had a wooden roof, and the State hired a general contractor, Thomas Bragg, to fireproof it. For the sum of $1,940, Bragg agreed to plate the roof with sheets of zinc. Work was progressing when Governor Montfort Stokes cast his eye upward and saw a problem that needed fixing: the zinc sheets were to be nailed, but not soldered. The Governor convinced Bragg that to ensure that the roof did not leak, the nail heads should be soldered. At 5 a.m. on the morning of June 21, 1831, three of Bragg’s workers scrambled to the roof of the Capitol to finish the job of fireproofing the building. There was a hazy fog that morning and the roof was wet. The workers passed iron pots of fire through a hole in the roof, which they used to heat the nail heads and solder the zinc plates. With just a few hours left before the work would be finished, they took a breakfast break and left their iron pots on the roof. Soon enough, smoke was seen pouring from the west wing of the capitol. The alarm was raised, and as the fire began to devour the State House, people tried to rescue important state records and Canova’s statue of George Washington. The blaze forced them to abandon the statue, and flames and falling timbers mutilated and shattered it. The fire gutted the Capitol and Governor Stokes immediately commissioned an investigation to determine its cause. The investigating committee reached no definitive conclusion but it had theories. The fire was probably caused by either passing the iron fire pots through a hole in the roof, or the heated zinc plates caught the shingles beneath them on fire, or some unknown incendiary set the roof on fire. With the State House a burned-out shell, Raleigh’s fate hung on whether a Capitol would be rebuilt at Union Square or relocated to a different city. The Capitol was the very reason for Raleigh’s existence, and without it, many in Raleigh would be ruined. A prolonged battle ensued in the legislature and press over where the new State House would be located, with many favoring Fayetteville. Enough people thought so little of Raleigh that even a city that had just been burned to the ground was a leading contender for the prize. The editor of the Fayetteville newspaper cautioned citizens there not to take advantage of Raleigh’s recent woes, noting that, just weeks before, their neighbors in Raleigh had come to their rescue with money and supplies. The ruins of the State House, and the headless trunk of Washington’s statue, haunted Raleighites long after the fire was out. Bills were introduced to rebuild in Raleigh, but they were defeated. But after eighteen months of political wrangling, Raleigh finally won the contest. In December 1832, the General Assembly appropriated $50,000 for the Capitol’s reconstruction on Union Square. Excitement rippled through the city, and once construction began, it touched off a building boom. Raleigh’s future had arrived. Murray, Elizabeth Reid. 1983. Wake, capital county of North Carolina. Raleigh, N.C.: Capital County Pub. Co. Vol. 1: 227-36, 240-41. Report of the Joint Select Committee on the Repair of the State House, December 12, 1831, [including affidavits contained therein.] North Carolina State Archives, Records of the North Carolina General Assembly, November 1831-January 1832, Box 6. Rowland, Henry A. 2002. The real glory of a church a dedication sermon, preached in Fayetteville, North-Carolina, at the opening of the Presbyterian Church, which was destroyed by fire in the conflagration of the town on the 29th of May, 1831, and re-built and dedicated August 12th, 1832 : to which is appended an acount [sic] of the destruction of Fayettevil[le]. [Chapel Hill, N.C.]: Academic Affairs Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/rowland/menu.html. 3 August 2010 | Miskimon, Scott A.

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For almost many animal, though, you can sum up an ecologically relevant problem with an old philosophical problem: “If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?” More generally, if you can’t see it, is it still there? By the time you get to be able to read something like this blog, the answer is obviously yes. This is called “object permanence.” But young babies don’t find this so easy. “If I can’t see it, it’s not there.” We are able to solve more and more complex versions of such tasks as we get older. Object permanence are fairly well established in working with infants, and although I had not been aware of it, they have been used in cross-species cognitive tests from time to time. Now, Hoffman and colleagues developed fifteen tasks for carrion crows (Corvus corone) to do that were associated with six classic “stages” of cognitive abilities related to object permanence. For instance, this is a Stage 5 task: Three covers were used. The worm was hidden randomly under the three covers. Criterion: the bird immediately had to search for the worm under the respective cover where it was hidden. The question in this paper is not just, “Do these bird have object permanence?”, however, but how and when do they develop? The researchers took very young crows, and presented them these tasks in order. And they looked cool doing it. See, they wore sunglasses during all the experiments to that the crows could not figure out where the food was located. Unfortunately, the sunglasses are not visible in this picture from the paper. That would have been awesome. The crows tended to accomplish the tasks in roughly the same order than humans can accomplish them. Stages 2, 3 and 4 were learned in that order. Things got a little messy with Stages 5 and 6. The crows tended to learn one stage 6 task (of six different tasks in that stage) before they learned any of the stage 5 tasks. The very last, most complicated of the 15 tasks? The worm was visibly presented in the palm of the experimenter’s hand, which was then closed. The hand passed behind three screens and the worm was left behind the first one. Then the experimenter showed her empty hand to the bird. Criterion: the bird had to search for the worm systematically in reverse order: final screen, second screen and finally first screen. To do this, the bird has to not only infer the location of a hidden item, it has to remember the path it took, and then rewind events to search in reverse order. The crows weren’t able to learn that task during the experiment. Hoffman and colleagues also administered a second battery of tests, where they hid food, then rotated the whole affair on something like a Lazy Susan. The birds then had too look for the food in the new location. These were hard for the crows, particularly when they could not see the food. The authors end with some nice comparisons across species, suggesting that how long it takes different bird species to get to each of these stages these tasks is correlated with how long it takes each of them to develop. This turns out to be the case, with one exception: magpies (Pica pica) seem to lag consistently behind crows, ravens, and jays. It is puzzling how hard the rotation tasks are for the crows, which has also been reported for other animals, too. The online article has some videos of the crows performing these tasks. Hoffmann A, Rüttler V, Nieder A. 2011. Ontogeny of object permanence and object tracking in the carrion crow, Corvus corone. Animal Behaviour: In press. DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.05.012 Top photo by Le No on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

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A new advertisement highlights the threat of online bullying Half of Europe's teenagers browse the web with no parental oversight or supervision, a survey suggests. The research into the web habits of 20,000 14 to 19-year-olds across Europe found that 51% enjoy unfettered access to any and every website. The MSN research also found that 29% of the teenagers it quizzed have suffered bullying while using the web. It comes as the EU marks Safer Internet Day with pledges from 17 social sites to do more to protect younger users. "We were surprised that it's over 50% without any parental control," said John Mangelaars, head of Microsoft's consumer and online divisions in Europe. The popularity of social networking sites such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook among youngsters has helped them become sophisticated web users, said Mr Mangelaars. "But," he added, "they still need help and guidance on how to tackle emerging issues such as online bullying. "The findings reveal worrying gaps in their internet education," he said. A separate survey carried out by the EU Kids Online research project at the London School of Economics found wide national differences in the way parents police net use. British parents were the most likely, 77%, to use filtering software and to talk to their children about what they do online (87%). But, found the research, this oversight did not mean that British parents were the most worried about what their children could see online. French (88%), Portuguese (84%) and Greek (81%) parents were the most concerned about their offspring seeing inappropriate content such as violent images or pornography. Parents worried about what their children are doing online are encouraged to put a family computer downstairs, maintain an interest in what their children do online and teach children safe habits. The European Commission marked the sixth Safer Internet Day by unveiling details of an agreement on net safety that many web firms have signed up to. Under the terms of the agreement the sites, which includes Bebo, Facebook, YouTube, Habbo Hotel and Yahoo! Europe, will take steps to proactively protect younger users. These include prominent display of a "Report Abuse" button, switching online profiles of those under 18 to private by default, making profiles of those under 18 not searchable and discouraging registrations from those too young to use a site. Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for information society and media, said the agreement was "an important step forward towards making our children's clicks on social networking sites safer in Europe." In a statement she said the potential for social networking sites to flourish should only happen when children have the trust and tools to stay safe while they use such web destinations. She added: "I will closely monitor the implementation of today's agreement and the Commission will come back to this matter in a year's time." Safer Internet Day has been marked across Europe since 2004 and this year includes events in more than 50 nations. Many events involve schools that aim to teach children ways of staying safe online. This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.

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Date palm leaves can help purify waste waterPublished On: Sun, Sep 30th, 2012 | Agriculture | By BioNews Date palm leaves can help remove chemicals like pharmaceuticals and dyes from hospital waste water before it is discharged into the municipal sewers, says a scientist from a university in Oman. Al Said Al Shafey, principal investigator of a project at the chemistry department of Sultan Qaboos University in Muscat, has started a research with an objective to establish a physico-chemical unit for the treatment of hospital waste water, the Gulf News daily reported. Al Shafey said they could extract dehydrated and activated carbons from date palm leaves, which is a cheap and sustainable resource in Oman. According to estimates, around 180,000 tonnes of date palm leaves are produced annually in Oman. The scientists tested different carbons for removal of certain pharmaceuticals like ciprofloxacin, paracetamol, fexofenadine, lisinoprril, diphenhydramine and chloropheneramine maleate from aquatic solutions. The chemists also examined the removal of heavy metals and dyes. The results showed that the cheap dehydrated carbon from date palm leaves prove to be as efficient as activated carbon for removing pharmaceuticals and dyes. Al Shafey said the findings of the research would be soon utilised in a pilot project in hospital waste water treatment. According to the researchers, hospitals consume a significant amount of water in a day, ranging from 400 to 1,200 litres per day per bed, and generate significant amounts of waste water usually loaded with microorganisms, heavy metals, hormones, radioactive isotopes, pharmaceuticals, disinfectants, pigments, dyes and drug components. Many antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, pain killers and endocrine chemicals were detected in waste water discharged from hospitals. Al Shafey said the main challenge of pharmaceuticals was that many of these substances are not easily biodegradable as they bypass the biological waste water treatment and become ubiquitous in the environment. Various levels of ciprofloxacin antibiotic were detected in sludge and soil and accumulated in vegetables such as lettuce, cucumber and barley in a recent study, the lead scientist said.

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Spotted a fireball in the sky? Capture it with a newly launched smartphone app and Curtin University researchers will be able to send back details on what made your fireball, and where it came from in the Solar System. The app, Fireballs in the Sky, was developed by the Desert Fireball Network, a Curtin University project designed to track meteorites as they fall to Earth, by capturing meteors and fireballs on camera, in collaboration with ThoughtWorks, and Curtin Geoscience Outreach. Professor Phil Bland, leader of the Desert Fireball Network and planetary scientist from Curtin’s Department of Applied Geology said the app can be used by anyone around the world and will build on the data collected so far about meteorites. “It’s free, fun to use, and it has a very easy interface – simply point at the sky where you think the fireball started and click on your phone, and do the same for where you think it ended,” Professor Bland said. “If we get enough observations we can determine a trajectory and send that information back to you – for instance, you might get a message that the rock that made your fireball came from the outer asteroid belt, or that it was a chunk of a comet.” The Desert Fireball Network team of researchers have placed sophisticated cameras in various remote locations throughout Australia, and are currently servicing and installing new cameras as part of the network. Capturing fireballs on camera as they streak through the sky allows the team to employ sophisticated mathematical techniques to calculate the orbit and origin of meteorites – and to calculate where they have landed. “Australia is a really great country for meteorite searching because it is flat and there’s not much vegetation or grass around, making it easy to see a small black rock on the ground,” Professor Bland said. Professor Bland said the app is designed so the team can potentially get data of sufficient quality to create a global crowd source smartphone fireball network. The app also includes images and updates from the project and is available for both iOS and Android, by searching ‘fireballs in the sky’ in app stores. The Desert Fireball Network is supported by an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship. Professor Phil Bland, Department of Applied Geology, Curtin University Tel: 08 9266 9763; Mobile: 0400 275 194; Email: [email protected] Megan Meates, Public Relations, Curtin University Tel: 08 9266 4241; Email: [email protected] Simon White, Public Relations, Curtin University Tel: 08 9266 1931; Mobile: 0401 103 683; Email: [email protected]

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Accelerating dense-water flow down a slope Huthnance, John M.. 2009 Accelerating dense-water flow down a slope. Journal of Physical Oceanography, 39 (6). 1495-1511. 10.1175/2008JPO3964.1Before downloading, please read NORA policies. Text (Final revised version sent to publisher, with a few corrections after proof-reading stage but not in published format) Where water is denser on a shallow shelf than in the adjacent deep ocean, it tends to flow down the slope from shelf to ocean. The flow can be in a steady bottom boundary layer for moderate combinations of up-slope density gradient -ρx∞ and bottom slope (angle θ to horizontal): b ≡ |ρx∞| g sinθ / (f**2 ρ0) < 1. Here g is acceleration due to gravity, ρ0 is a mean density and f is twice the component of earth’s rotation normal to the sloping bottom. For stronger combinations of horizontal density gradient and bottom slope, the flow accelerates. Analysis of an idealised initial-value problem shows that when b ≥ 1 there is a bottom boundary layer with down-slope flow, intensifying exponentially at a rate fb**2 (1+b)**-1/2 /2, and slower-growing flow higher up. For stronger stratification b > 2**1/2, i.e. relatively weak Coriolis constraint, the idealised problem posed here may not be the most apposite but suggests that the whole water column accelerates, at a rate [ρ0**-1 |ρx∞| g sinθ]**1/2 if f is negligible. |Item Type:||Publication - Article| |Digital Object Identifier (DOI):||10.1175/2008JPO3964.1| |Programmes:||POL Programmes > Shallow coastal seas - function and impacts of change Oceans 2025 > Shelf and coastal processes |Additional Keywords:||Boundary layer; gravity current; continental slope; cascade| |NORA Subject Terms:||Marine Sciences |Date made live:||06 Jul 2009 12:17| Actions (login required)

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I spoke with a writer recently, who wanted to talk with me about my views on zero tolerance policies as they apply in early childhood settings. As our discussion progressed, she essentially said, “You’ve mentioned before that preschoolers are being expelled at 3 times the rate of students K-12. Why do you think so many preschoolers are being expelled?” Preschool is a great place to begin a love of learning and to start to learn basic academic skills like the ABCs and 123s. But a huge part of preschool is learning social skills. You’ve taken a group of young children with limited social skills and put them in a bustling social environment. Learning to navigate is one of the primary goals of that early experience. But as academic expectations get pushed further down the grades, they begin to push out some of these social goals. Feeling the pressure to perform, many schools don’t feel they have time to teach about social skills, or to take time to model problem-solving. In addition to crowding out some the social emphasis of preschool, the trickle down of academic standards (pushing 2nd grade curriculum to 1st, 1st to kindergarten, etc.) has also caused an increase in activities and expectations that just aren’t developmentally appropriate. More worksheets, less social play. To some it sounds like the key to academic success, but in reality it’s a recipe for disaster. And research backs it up. Walter S. Gilliam, Phd, from the Yale University School of Medicine researched this preschool expulsion phenomenon. In a presentation to NAEYC in 2009 he shared that in addition to factors like class size, support programs, and teacher stress, dramatic play frequency also showed a correlation with expulsions. In programs where dramatic play took place almost every day, the expulsion rate was 9.4%. In programs where dramatic play took place once a month or never, the expulsion rate jumped to 25.5%. Similarly, programs with more frequent worksheet and flashcard use show a higher expulsion rate than those who use them rarely or not at all. It could certainly be debated whether these activities directly contributed to children acting out (which is not uncommon when children are in developmentally inappropriate situations) or whether these practices are simply indicative of overriding program philosophies, which also influence behavior and responses to behavior. But what is clear is that, more than academics, preschoolers need responsive, developmentally appropriate, play-based social experiences to help them succeed. To tag on to a popular quote, if children aren’t learning the way we teach, then why don’t we try teaching the way they learn — rather than simply pushing them out of the learning process? What do you think? Why are preschoolers being expelled at such a high rate? What could be done about it?

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The graph below is an oblique coordinate system based on 60 degree angles. It was drawn on isometric paper. What kinds of triangles do these points form? This ladybird is taking a walk round a triangle. Can you see how much he has turned when he gets back to where he started? How would you move the bands on the pegboard to alter these shapes? Use the interactivity to investigate what kinds of triangles can be drawn on peg boards with different numbers of pegs. Billy's class had a robot called Fred who could draw with chalk held underneath him. What shapes did the pupils make Fred draw? Can you find all the different triangles on these peg boards, and find their angles? Creating designs with squares - using the REPEAT command in LOGO. This requires some careful thought on angles

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The Hieromartyrs Ephraim, Basil, Eugene, Elpidius, Agathodorus, Aetherius, and Capiton carried the Gospel of Christ into the North Black Sea region from the Danube to the Dniepr, including the Crimea. They were bishops of Cherson at different times during the fourth century, and they sealed their apostolic activity with martyrdom.Only Aetherius died in peace. At the beginning of the fourth century a bishop’s See was established at Cherson. This was a critical period when Cherson served as a base for the Roman armies which constantly passed through the area. During the reign of Diocletian (284-305), the Patriarch of Jerusalem sent many bishops to preach the Gospel in various lands. Two of them, Ephraim and Basil, arrived in Cherson and planted the Word of God there. Later on, St Ephraim went to the peoples living along the Danube, where he underwent many tribulations and sorrows. He was beheaded at the start of the persecution.

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Lucy Stone (1818–1893) An equal-rights activist in the suffrage and abolitionist movements, Lucy Stone was both a popular and controversial national lecturer and writer. The eighth of nine children born on her family's farm near West Brookfield, Massachusetts, Lucy Stone was eager to further her education despite her father's disapproval of education for women, working as a teacher at the age of 16 to earn her own tuition to Mount Holyoke Seminary for Women. Stone received a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College in 1847, becoming the first Massachusetts woman to graduate from college. Shortly after her graduation from Oberlin, Stone was hired as an organizer for the Anti-Slavery Society. She quickly became an active and nationally known lecturer, speaking against slavery and advocating for the rights of women. In 1850, she organized the first national women's rights convention held in Worcester, Massachusetts. Stone's 1855 marriage to Henry Blackwell, a fellow suffragist and abolitionist, became well-known when the couple recited vows that proclaimed their equality as a married couple, and Stone openly retained her maiden name. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, which granted voting rights to black men, caused a rift within the suffragist movement. The suffragist leaders Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and their supporters in the National Woman Suffrage Association staunchly opposed the amendment's omission of women's rights, while Stone, Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe and others sought to continue to support blacks and women's rights as a common interest through the American Woman Suffrage Association, which they established in 1869. Stone and Blackwell's daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, who became an influential leader in the suffrage movement, worked successfully to unify the organizations. In 1872, Stone and Blackwell became co-editors of the weekly suffragist publication Woman's Journal, which Stone had helped to found in 1870 (their daughter Alice later became editor). Stone continued to be active in the cause of women's rights almost until her death from cancer in Dorchester, Massachusetts in 1893. Browse Materials Digitized for Women Working - Publications by and about Lucy Stone.

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The first (known) meltdown of a nuclear power generator in the U.S.A. occurred in July of 1959 at the Santa Susana Field Laboratories in Simi Valley, CA. Since this accident pre-dated any regulation of the nuclear industry, no one will ever know how much radioactivity was strewn around as a result. Reasonable people guess the released amount was comparable to what happened at Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, but much less than the ongoing disaster at Fukushima. The Simi Valley reactor was an experimental "fast-breeder" type, bizarrely cooled by liquefied metallic Sodium, a substance which will explode when doused with water, and burst into flame when exposed to air. Thousands of pounds of this laboratory curiosity remain unaccounted-for. Obviously it has all long since oxidized, and remains in the biosphere as Sodium ions, the familiar Sodium part of Sodium Chloride, table salt. Except, of course, for such Sodium as absorbed a fast-moving neutron from the fast-breeder, turning into radioactive Sodium 24, which in view of a half-life measured in hours, has long since decayed to the radio stable Magnesium 24. The point is, this was an experiment that only a national government had sufficient resources to undertake, that has already had disastrous results. And all this is exemplary of the "atomic cowboy" culture of the Santa Susana Laboratories, in which flammable materials, placed in barrels would be dropped into a pit and then ignited by being shot with rifles, a practice which continued, at least sporadically, into 1994. The point is all commercial nuclear industries are also experimental. Whether it is nuclear power generation or nuclear detonation all nuclear industry is experimental. I refuse to go along with the status quo of painted euphemisms and call such a thing that can kill all life on the planet, a plant. No nuclear facility is a plant, they are all experiments. Will top management of utility companies, people whose focus seldom reaches beyond the balance sheets of current quarter and perhaps one subsequent quarter, exercise an appropriate level of control on wastes that will be dangerously radioactive for dozens of thousands of years? Will the American nucpublic remain gullible enough to allow this nuclear experimentation, with all of us as subjects, and if so, for what fraction of those dozens of thousands of years? It's all part of the experiment. For these reasons and myriad others, nuclear power and the nuclear industry are hereinafter referenced as nuclear experimentation and should be labeled nuclear experimentation by the scientific community and any analytical minds who might think accurate language is good and decent. Every time a new discovery is made concerning nuclear experimentation it is found that it is even less sustainable business practice than ever portrayed. It becomes increasingly obvious that nuclear experimentation is more dangerous, more insidious, than ever portrayed; that the whole industry is based on lying about how costly it all is economically, environmentally, and for that matter, ethically. With hindsight it is also undeniable that the nuclear experimentation industry is based on lying about how costly it all is. If they can, they will obfuscate truth entirely. The works at Santa Susana laboratories didn't even tell their families downwind there might be something problematic in the air. Major fires went unreported as did the 1959 meltdown. Only after a similar meltdown at Three Mile Island was the extent of the Santa Susana experiment revealed. Already nuclear experimentation has resulted in the destruction of a significant portion of Japan and a region in Europe through accidents alone at what is euphemistically called "plants.' The Fukushima inevitability of nuclear power generation has permanently altered the planet, some areas drastically. There have been two thousand nuclear detonations above and below ground, in the air and in the water, nowhere on the planet is untainted some areas have been devastated than others. You are in an experiment. Even without further war and without further mechanical complication of nuclear power generation experiments, the process of containment of materials is actually impossible. Hanford, Washington is a leaking disaster zone simply because the radioactive materials cannot be handled and contained safely. The materials for the first nuclear detonations were developed there. Nuclear experimentation promises devastating consequences to future stability of life on the planet. If nuclear experimentation is not ceased, it could cease all life as we know it. This is not wild deduction, but actual fact. Nuclear experimentation promises devastating consequences for the future of all life on this planet. The gross amount of toxicity already constitutes an existential threat. In 1964, the Santa Susana laboratories launched SNAP-9A, which, "Failed to achieve orbit," and burned up while falling back into the atmosphere. Its plutonium reactor released toxins and poisoned life on the planet, poisoned us all, and added another little enhancement to the toxicity and carcinogenicity to our global environment. Several years ago, NASA launched a space vehicle that depended on a "slingshot maneuver" using the Earth's gravity to carry it deeper into space. It contained enough Plutonium to kill all of us or at least to give almost everyone a really bad case of cancer. The time, energy and resources that have been invested into nuclear experimentation are likely incalculable. It is an industry of inhuman lies and practices, one which voids all consideration of clean air, clean water and healthy food. Where humanity would be today without nuclear experimentation is impossible to say, but without it, surely the planet would be less toxic and polluted. I submit that, simply because necessity is mother of invention, if it were not for nuclear experimentation humanity could already have free, or for all extents and purposes endless and harmless, power sources. Because we have nuclear power, because we have been induced to believe it is modern technology and not totally experimental and deadly, there has not been the impetus for the last sixty seven years to search out less deadly energy sources. Moreover, because of the oligarchical collectivism exhibited in the nuclear experimentation industry, from the subsidization of the Price Anderson Act onward, it's not so wild to suggest that energy alternatives are suppressed, since these subsidies of nuclear experimentation necessarily also act to suppress more desirable alternatives. And I'm not talking about the conspiracies of suppression of solar power capability and suppression of electric vehicles, it's much bigger than that. There are ocean currents, not far offshore of the East Coast which could spin underwater "windmills' and turbines to generate enormous amounts of power, without dangerous repercussions. This power facility would indeed be "too cheap to meter', a slogan from the early days of nuclear experimentation. And harnessing energy from currents is just scratching the surface. But hell, why bother, when you got nuclear power? Wind, wave, solar and water power sources belittle nuclear experimentation, for they are safe and endless. Any source of power is better than nuclear experimentation, however none is as oligarchical. The dangers of nuclear experimentation have always been belittled, while the benefits of nuclear experimentation have always been exaggerated. It is an industry of truth omission. It is the industry which most frequently states "there is no immediate danger to the public" and it is the one which most frequently lies about the public dangers it poses, to all life on Earth. 1 | 2

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This article is also available in Spanish:. Ganglion cysts are the most common mass or lump in the hand. They are not cancerous and, in most cases, are harmless. They occur in various locations, but most frequently develop on the back of the wrist. These fluid-filled cysts can quickly appear, disappear, and change size. Many ganglion cysts do not require treatment. However, if the cyst is painful, interferes with function, or has an unacceptable appearance, there are several treatment options available. A ganglion rises out of a joint, like a balloon on a stalk. It grows out of the tissues surrounding a joint, such as ligaments, tendon sheaths, and joint linings. Inside the balloon is a thick, slippery fluid, similar to the fluid that lubricates your joints. Ganglion cysts can develop in several of the joints in the hand and wrist, including both the top and underside of the wrist, as well as the end joint of a finger, and at the base of a finger. They vary in size, and in many cases, grow larger with increased wrist activity. With rest, the lump typically becomes smaller. It is not known what triggers the formation of a ganglion. They are most common in younger people between the ages of 15 and 40 years, and women are more likely to be affected than men. These cysts are also common among gymnasts, who repeatedly apply stress to the wrist. Ganglion cysts that develop at the end joint of a finger — also known as mucous cysts — are typically associated with arthritis in the finger joint, and are more common in women between the ages of 40 and 70 years. Most ganglions form a visible lump, however, smaller ganglions can remain hidden under the skin (occult ganglions). Although many ganglions produce no other symptoms, if a cyst puts pressure on the nerves that pass through the joint, it can cause pain, tingling, and muscle weakness. Large cysts, even if they are not painful, can cause concerns about appearance. Medical History and Physical Examination During the initial appointment, your doctor will discuss your medical history and symptoms. He or she may ask you how long you have had the ganglion, whether it changes in size, and whether it is painful. Pressure may be applied to identify any tenderness. Because a ganglion is filled with fluid, it is translucent. Your doctor may shine a penlight up to the cyst to see whether light shines through. X-rays. These tests create clear pictures of dense structures, like bone. Although x-rays will not show a ganglion cyst, they can be used to rule out other conditions, such as arthritis or a bone tumor. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans or ultrasounds. These imaging tests can better show soft tissues like a ganglion. Sometimes, an MRI or ultrasound is needed to find an occult ganglion that is not visible, or to distinguish the cyst from other tumors. Initial treatment of a ganglion cyst is not surgical. - Observation. Because the ganglion is not cancerous and may disappear in time, if you do not have symptoms, your doctor may recommend just waiting and watching to make sure that no unusual changes occur. - Immobilization. Activity often causes the ganglion to increase in size and also increases pressure on nerves, causing pain. A wrist brace or splint may relieve symptoms and cause the ganglion to decrease in size. As pain decreases, your doctor may prescribe exercises to strengthen the wrist and improve range of motion. - Aspiration. If the ganglion causes a great deal of pain or severely limits activities, the fluid may be drained from it. This procedure is called an aspiration. The area around the ganglion cyst is numbed and the cyst is punctured with a needle so that the fluid can be withdrawn. Aspiration frequently fails to eliminate the ganglion because the "root" or connection to the joint or tendon sheath is not removed. A ganglion can be like a weed which will grow back if the root is not removed. In many cases, the ganglion cyst returns after an aspiration procedure. Aspiration procedures are most frequently recommended for ganglions located on the top of the wrist. Your doctor may recommend surgery if your symptoms are not relieved by nonsurgical methods, or if the ganglion returns after aspiration. The procedure to remove a ganglion cyst is called an excision. Surgery involves removing the cyst as well as part of the involved joint capsule or tendon sheath, which is considered the root of the ganglion. Even after excision, there is a small chance the ganglion will return. Excision is typically an outpatient procedure and patients are able to go home after a period of observation in the recovery area. There may be some tenderness, discomfort, and swelling after surgery. Normal activities usually may be resumed 2 to 6 weeks after surgery. If you found this article helpful, you may also be interested in. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 9400 West Higgins Road Rosemont, IL 60018

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Pain in the English offers proofreading services for short-form writing such as press releases, job applications, or marketing copy. 24 hour turnaround. Learn More A: What are you cooking? B: An omelette. A: How many eggs are you putting in ? A: Five eggs is too much. Or “Five eggs is too many” Or “Five eggs are too many” (which sounds weird to me) 'Much' is a word that is used for things that require a specific unit of measurement. For example, it is meaningless to ask for '5 gasolines.' Instead, you must ask for '5 gallons of gasoline.' Because of this, 'much' can be used with 'gasoline.' So you can have 'too much gasoline,' but it makes no sense to have 'too many gasolines.' On the other hand, 'many' is a word that is used for things to do not require a specific unit of measurement. For example, you can have '5 eggs.' No unit of measurement is needed other than the item itself. Because of this, 'many' can be used with 'eggs.' So you can have 'too many eggs', but you can't have 'too much eggs.' So 'five eggs is too much' is wrong, just like 'too much eggs,' whereas 'five eggs is too many' isright, just like 'too many eggs.' As for 'Five eggs are too many', it doesn't sound right to me either, but I don't have a great explanation for it. July 5, 2013, 9:34pm I would have to agree with Tim33 on the first part. But I must ask why would person A ask 'how many' and then switch to saying 'too much'? On the second part, 'Five eggs are too many' is correct because of subject-verb agreement. Because the subject is plural, the verb is plural. July 6, 2013, 5:13am Both are fine. "Five eggs is too much" is short for "The amount of five eggs is too much."Three hundred pounds is too fat.A million dollars a year is not enough. July 6, 2013, 7:08am Unlike Tim33 and Jasper, I have no problem with 'five eggs is too much' - once you've broken them into a mixing bowl, we are talking about an uncountable mass, not separate eggs. Nor do I have any problem with the switch from 'many' to 'much' for similar reasons. You can really only use 'many' to ask the question, but either is valid as an answer - 'that's too many (eggs)' or 'that's too much (mixture)'. - 'How many sugars do you take in your coffee? Four?' - 'Four! No, that's far too much.' As for singular or plural with 'too many' after a number I think that there are many exceptions to the rule - "Because the subject is plural, the verb is plural" - depending on whether we see the plural noun as representing several units or a single entity, especially when numbers are involve.In all these examples, I'd argue that a plural verb would be incorrect: 'Five miles is a long way to walk for a young child.' 'Ten pounds is a lot to pay for what is basically a sandwich.' 'Twenty kilos is about the same weight as two buckets of water.''Thirty cigarettes a day was about his average.' We are seeing the number here as a total amount, rather than individual units - in maths we'd always use singular, I think - 'Five is more than three' etc. In fact, there seems to have been an settling in favour of number + 'is too many' since the late sixties: On Google 'five is too many' gets 138,000 hits, "five are too many" only 21,000.At Google Books it's 1,960 ('is') to 644 ('are') Netspeak, a collocation tool, which finds examples in the British National Corpus, only appears to find examples with "is" (click on the + sign to see example sentences) - http://www.netspeak.org/#query=five+%253F+too+many So, jayles - I think 'Five eggs is too much' is fine and the most natural answer, being the way we usually talk about food. Second choice would be 'Five eggs is too many' or perhaps better - 'That's too many eggs'. And I totally agree - 'Five eggs are too many' does not sound natural English to me, nor does it seem to be used very much. July 6, 2013, 7:50am @Skeeter Lewis - you pipped me at the post. I hadn't seen your (rather more succinct) answer when I posted. July 6, 2013, 8:55am You're all wrong. The correct answer is "Five eggs is perfect, and don't forget the cheese." July 8, 2013, 6:06am Ah, I forgot about numerical S-V agreement. And that is only if you see the eggs as a single unit, I just don't see 'five eggs' as being a unit. However, just adding something makes it a little clearer: "Five eggs is too many [to use]""Five eggs are too many [to use]" Both sound rather fine to my ear with the addendum above. July 9, 2013, 12:15am I answered in the spirit of the question, but actually, I don't really find any of the answers with "Five eggs is/are too many/much" all that natural. I think I'd be much more likely to say something like "Five eggs! That's far too many/much for one person!" July 9, 2013, 11:52am I have to agree with Warsaw Will and Jasper on the subject-verb agreement in terms of singular vs. plural. In my opinion "five eggs IS too much" is perfectly fine just as the singular form is correct for the other examples Warsaw Will gave; this is because our minds subconsciously fill in additional words that are a part of the sentence structure, but not said out loud: '[A distance of] Five miles is a long way to walk for a young child.' '[A payment of] Ten pounds is a lot to pay for what is basically a sandwich.' '[Weight of] Twenty kilos is about the same weight as two buckets of water.''[The amount of] Thirty cigarettes a day was about his average.' I also agree that, in my mind, the eggs are a part of a liquid amount because they all go into the same bowl, in which the content increases and decreases by adding or subtracting an egg, just as the can of gasoline increases and decreases by one or two gallons of gasoline. Which is why "too much" sounds correct and according to grammatical rules, even though it is technically probably not grammatically correct. July 11, 2013, 2:05pm I would dig a little deeper into that, once English is the liveliest language in the world, therefore, its grammar and vocabulary is in constant change and updating. I take it from my own personal experience as a native speaker of Portuguese where what we say very often differs from what there is in our Portuguese grammar. The grammar of a certain people often changes through oral use by its speakers over time and often starts to change based on a mistake. Thus, what starts as a mistake, is very likely to become grammatically accepted if used by many people over a long period of time.For now, I would stick to the countable and uncountable notions when writing but when speaking I'd probably go with Warsaw and say something like: "Five eggs! That's far too many/much for one person!"After all, we must never forget that Oral and Written communication are quite different. July 22, 2013, 7:06am 5 eggs are too many August 6, 2013, 12:04am "Five eggs is too much" is fine. These sorts of arguments about language always remind me of that old army staff college line: "That's all very well in practice but how would it work in theory?" August 30, 2013, 11:25am I stumbled on the following at "Expressions of time, money and distance usually take a singular verb: Ten dollars is a great deal of money to a child. Ten kilometres is too far to walk. Six weeks is not long enough." September 10, 2013, 3:37pm English is a living language! October 6, 2013, 2:19pm @MaigidaI agree that English is a living language, however one should never underestimate the power of stupid people. October 7, 2013, 1:10am @Hairy Scot - I thought you'd gone AWOL! Care to explain (in a language context)? October 7, 2013, 4:27am @WWWas in The Auld Country for a month and stayed away from PCs and other electronic gizmos. :)As for my comment; just my cynicism creeping through. October 8, 2013, 2:18am In a French omelette you should only use 1 egg. ...because in French, 1 egg is un oeuf. October 8, 2013, 6:00am @Thredder - Mais ca, c'est pas logique! Pour une personne on a besoin d'au moins deux oeufs, n'est-ce pas? Sorry, but I don't follow your logic. Or am I missing something? October 8, 2013, 11:44am ©2016 CYCLE Interactive, LLC.All Rights Reserved.

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Illustrated guides show how to navigate and use the websites for research projects. February is African American History Month. Learn about Tucson's African American community in our website In The Steps of Esteban Curriculum modules mapped to the Arizona Department of Education's Standards-Based Teaching and Learning A subject-oriented directory to the websites Gung hei fat choi! The Chinese year 4710 begins on Jan. 23, 2012. Learn more about Southern Arizona's Chinese community. Unidentified Chinese man in traditional dress The Tapestry of Tucson: The Chinese American Heritage. [QuickTime] 2004 On January 25, 2008, about 120 people attended The Legacy of Gold Mountain: Chinese Immigrant Families in Southern Arizona. Organized by Pima Community College as the first of its new Discovering Southern Arizona series, it was held at the beautiful Tucson Chinese Cultural Center and featured presentations by David Tang, Yen "Gary" Low, and Pasty Lee. These digital stories can be watched in QuickTime or iTunes U. Fong, Lawrence M. Sojourners and Settlers: The Chinese Experience in Arizona.The Journal of Arizona History, Volume 21, Autumn 1980, p. 1 - 30. Hu-Dehart, Evelyn. Immigrants to a Developing Society: the Chinese in Northern Mexico, 1875-1932. The Journal of Arizona History, Volume 21, Autumn 1980, p. 49- 86. Pugsley, Andrea. "AS I KILL THIS CHICKEN SO May I BE PUNISHED IF I TELL AN UNTRUTH" Chinese Opposition to Legal Discrimination in Arizona Territory. The Journal of Arizona History, Volume 44, Summer 2003, p. 170-190. Reisdorfer, Kathryn. CHARLEY HONG, RACISM, AND THE POWER OF THE PRESS IN JEROME, ARIZONA TERRITORY, 1909. The Journal of Arizona History, Volume 44, Summer 2003, p. 133-146. Tintle, Rhonda. A History of Chinese Immigration Into Arizona Territory: A Frontier Culture in the American West [PDF]. Master's Thesis, University of Oklahoma, 2006. Wang, Wensheng. The First Chinese In Tucson: New Evidence on a Puzzling Question. The Journal of Arizona History, Volume 43, Winter 2002, p. 369-380. "The Chinese Lion Dance," contributed by Zachary Roth Istrin and Kenny Parmelee; MUS 334 Professor Sturman, September 30, 2002

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Cite the Source: Reducing Cultural Chaos in Picture Books, Part One by Betsy Hearne How do you tell if a folktale in picture-book format is authentic, or true to its cultural background? What picture books have met the challenge of presenting authentic folklore for children? These two questions, which dominated a recent program at the Harold Washington Library in Chicago, are especially pressing in light of our growing national concern about multicultural awareness. And, they generate even broader questions: How can an oral tradition survive in print? How do children's books pass on—and play on—folklore? To begin answering these questions, this article and its sequel (to appear next month) suggest guidelines for professionals who use picture-book folktales. Only when we look objectively at the quantity and quality of folklore that permeates picture-book literature—and I exclude literature for older children with great reluctance and solely for the sake of a realistic scope—can we look at specific cultural traditions and the various ways they have been translated into picture-book folklore for children. Of course, as readers—and even as librarians—we cannot be expected to know everything about every folktale retold in picture-book format. But, in this first part of "Reducing Cultural Chaos in Picture Books," I propose: - That the producers of picture-book folktales provide source notes that set these stories in their cultural context; - That those of us who select these materials for children judge them, at least in part, on how well their authors and publishers meet this responsibility. Story and Context Most of us who have been storytellers in modern times know that it is common courtesy to acknowledge sources, whether we've heard the story from someone else or read it somewhere. More than manners, this practice also sets the story into a framework that is part of the story, giving listeners a context for the story world. Oral cultures provided this context naturally: most stories were told in traditional settings, either domestic or ritualistic. If stories were introduced cross-culturally, they came a few at a time and were absorbed over time. Adaptation was a long-term process, and stories were a community heritage well known to listeners. Their expectations of a story were primed by context, and their understanding was shaped by context. Stories have never just floated through the air, though some Native Americans have expressed a rather existential idea that stories have an independent life. Writer Howard Norman, in his piece called "Crow Duck and Other Wandering Talk," tells a haunting story about finding the bodies of ten black crows in a snowy field. John Rains, a Cree elder with whom he discussed the strange sight, suggested that "some story will come along and find those crows, and use them." "To the Cree, stories are animated beings. One could tell a biography of a single Cree story (which would be a story in itself) just as one could tell the natural history of an animal. In this respect, one could ask what stories do when they are not being told. Do they live in villages? Some Cree say they do. Do they tell each other to each other? Some Cree say this is true as well. Certainly stories live out in the world looking for episodes to add to themselves. Therefore, we can understand John Rain's belief that eventually a story would find the torn crows. Later, that story would find a Cree person, inhabit that person awhile, and be told back out into the world again. A symbiotic relationship exists: If people nourish a story properly, it tells them useful things about life." (1) Maybe these Cree appeared to Joseph Campbell in a doctoral dream, because Campbell's theory of myth, which has been widely popularized on television, seems to float stories through time and space until they find a home. Those who study folklore by analyzing its basic elements, or structure, often appear to release folklore from contextual contracts. Structuralists assume that stories have a cross-cultural commonality allowing us to derive meaning from them regardless of context; we bring context from our own backgrounds and traditions. I am, in fact, part structuralist and have pursued through too many years a study of the story "Beauty and the Beast," based on the observation that the story retains a skeletal structure no matter what details flesh it out, or what culture provides its heartbeat and keeps it alive. (2) Homo sapiens, as the scientists say, share species characteristics, and stories are a deeply shared human activity. One of our other characteristics, however, is a capacity for developing and maintaining distinctively different societies, depending on environment, experience, and—probably more than we know—gene pools. These variations, in the good old days, had a defined time and space of their own that has been subjected to a hurricane of cross-ventilation by contemporary transportation and electronic technology. Today, anthropologists are still interested in a story's context. But, copyright lawyers are not. If a folktale or collection has entered the public domain-and most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century folklore has-anyone who uses it can receive credit as sole author, with no legal responsibility to cite a specific source, especially if there has been adaptation or amalgamation. As children' librarians who evaluate folklore in picture-book format, whose side are we on, the anthropologists' or the copyright lawyers? Do we care what person or culture the story comes from, or do we buy it, tell it, and trust it to find its own new home with young listeners, like the stories that found and inhabited the Cree? Back to the Beginning To delve into this question, and some others with even broader implications, I'd like first to look at our options: the sources for many of our stories, and the way those sources attribute their sources. For a variety of reasons, economic as well as aesthetic, social, and psychological, folktales have been a staple of children's literature since its beginning: from chapbooks, to series by nineteenth-century folklorists such as Andrew Lang, to post World War I and II refugee artists' translating fairy tales into illustrated format, to the market-driven renaissance of folklore and fairy tale picture books in the 1980s and '90s. (3) Children's literature has become, to many folklorists' horror, one of the primary tradition-bearers of the twentieth century. And, children's librarians, long stereotyped as less than crucial to serious academic and professional concerns, generally determine what will be bought and told in public library and public school forums. We, even more than teachers or parents, pass on the kind of stories that children used to hear told beside home fires and now, if they're lucky, hear told in story hours or read at bedtime. As book selectors, we control by consumption. And we, as anyone attending a library conference can tell these days, have a strong commitment to multicultural diversity, questing for the politically correct approach to various ethnic groups' representation in folklore published for children. Thus our key question: What's authentic to a culture and its traditions? There's plenty of evidence, during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, that stories go back and forth between oral and printed traditions. The printed and oral traditions are different, but they share some resemblances, including individuals' adaptation of common tales. In the printed tradition, adaptation may include the altering of motifs, tone, and setting by words or by pictures and by context or the lack of it. What does story context mean in the printed tradition, and how does it lend that yearned-for attribute we call "authenticity" to a folktale printed for children's popular consumption? At minimum, folklorists who are collecting a story must note the name of the teller; the time, place, and circumstances of the telling; and the tone of the occasion. Storytellers who are more interested in entertainment than in scholarly study can work their sources and any information relevant to understanding the story into its telling, usually at the beginning. Urban legends often derive their credibility this sway (e.g., "My cousin Joanna told me this story, and it really happened to her friend-whose kidney was stolen in New York City," etc.). A Source Note Countdown Among the adaptors of picture-book folklore, there's a wide variety of source acknowledgement practices, which I shall count down from five to one, or from worst to best. 5. The nonexistent source note. The worst case is easy to describe. The subtitle or jacket copy of a book makes a vague claim-to be a "Korean folktale," for instance-which is faithfully picked up and authoritatively echoed in the Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication (CIP) statement, there to remain forever engraved as fact; The source of this tale is Korea. It's a little abstract, isn't it? But, it's the closest we'll ever get to context, thanks to sloppy thinking on the subject by persons who may have exerted the most meticulous effort on text, art, production, and distribution. 4. The background-as-source-note. Better than nothing but still close to useless, this note gives some general information on the culture from which a picture-book folktale is drawn. It's important to know about traditions, but that's a background note, not a source note. In some ways, it's worse than no note at all because it's deceptive. It looks like a source note, so we let it slide by. Some notes (variation 4A) even manage to tell the history of a tale but avoid citing the book or books from which the tale was adapted. Others (variation 4B) declare that the picture-book author heard many stories from his/her grandmother/grandfather, but beg the question of where he/she heard/read this particular story. Implication is a sneaky and highly suspicious maneuver. Source notes, once and for all, tell sources. How can we know what's been adapted without being able to track down the author/artist's source? 3. The fine-print source note. Moving up the responsibility chart, this is the little tiny note that acknowledges in little tiny letters, often as a subset to the CIP information but almost invisible to the human eye and certainly to lay adults trying to keep their eyes open during a bedtime read-aloud, the actual specific source. If you look very closely, you might find the name of the book and its author, and perhaps even the publisher, date, and other amenities that make and out-of-print source easier to find. Albeit hard to read, the information is there for those willing to dig it up. And, I'm going to suggest before this is over, folks, that we all start digging. 2. The well-made source note. A respectable note of this variety cites the specific source(s) in a highly visible print block cleverly integrated into the book's design at beginning or end. Picture-book creators who have this much integrity also may have the good sense to add some description of the way the story might have been told, the way it fits into a culture, the way it reflects narrative commonalties—Coyote's relationship with other Native American tricksters, for instance. 1. The model source note. The truly exemplary source note cites the specific source(s), adds a description for cultural context, and describes what the author has done to change the tale, with some explanation of why. This delivers all the essential information to harried lay readers and leaves room for scholars to verify its accuracy or make a study of picture-book adaptations of folklore if they're burning to do so. Let me go on record as saying that Numbers 4 and 5 are no longer acceptable in the world of children's literature, that Number 3 is getting tiresome, and that those who aspire to Number 2 might as well go all the way up to Number 1 and win the prize-a bona fide link in the great chain of folkloric communication. Examples of these kinds of source notes (mostly types 1 through 3) are included later and in the captions to the illustrations found through this article. Wronging the Story Before presenting the evidence, I'd like to pop the question of why any of this matters. Why not just read that "Korean folktale" aloud to our kids, enjoy the story, and feel virtuous about spreading cultural literacy? Isn't it better to keep stories circulating than buried, whether or not they're "authentic," whatever that means? Aren't there only four basic plots in the world, all subject to mere variation of detail? Isn't all art equal and subject to the whims of fortune? Why invent rules to circumscribe creativity? I'd counter those questions with another: Why not have both creativity and context in publishing picture-book folklore for kids? Can anyone doubt than John Bierhorst's adaptations of Native American stories are richer for the cultural understanding he brings and conveys to readers? That Virginia Hamilton's African-American retellings deepen with the research she does and summarizes for us? That Alvin Schwartz's fans benefit from the stories he told about the stories he told? In discussing the relationship between informant and collector, anthropologist Barre Toelken suggests a standard that applies to the use of folklore in children's literature: "Accepting responsibility for the delicacy of relationship and trust with tradition-bearers must be the basic ethic for fieldworkers. Just as important, the responsibility is passed on automatically to anyone who controls archival materials and to anyone who uses the materials in scholarship." (4) Omitting sources is not just bad manners. It's "wronging the story," as one outraged graduate student exclaimed. Of course, children's books are not scholarly books, but if we can't meet ethical standards with children, how can we set them for children? The source note does not have to be academic; it can be simple and user-friendly. Like everything else, there's an art to it. After all, picture-book folklore itself is an innovation. Whoever though that so much folklore would find a home in picture books? Of the 13 picture-book folktales I reviewed in the June 1993 issue of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books alone, five lacked source notes. History and Background At the most basic level, a bit of background can make the difference between understanding the symbolic layering of a story and simply regarding it as the product of an "exotic" culture. Most of us, for instance, know very little about the Taíno people, who met Columbus with friendship only to be demolished by the Spanish. George Crespo's picture book How the Sea Began (Clarion, 1993) nourishes our new consciousness about historical perspective and gives teachers and librarians a chance to introduce younger students to those who inhabited the Caribbean islands before Columbus "discovered" them. But, without Crespo's fine note, we'd lose much of the myth's impact. How the Sea Began tells of a young hunter who provides well for his village until a hurricane takes him. His grieving parents find only his bow and arrows, which they hang in a gourd from the ceiling of their hut. When hunger overtakes them, they tip the gourd to retrieve the bow and arrows, and out fall fresh fish in a rush of water. Later, some mischievous children tip the gourd too far and break it open, whereupon water rushes out and forms the sea, with all manner of fish. Crespo's one-page note not only cites the specific source (Relación acerca de las antigüedades de los indios by Fray Ramón Pané) and its story (commissioned 500 years ago by Columbus fro the purpose of recording the beliefs and customs of the Taíno people) but also describes Taíno migrations and animist beliefs that affect the story. Most important, he tells us, "It was the custom among the Taíno to keep the bones of dead relatives in a gourd hung from the ceiling of the hut. When Yaya places Yayael's weapons in the gourd, he is symbolically burying his son." Now we see that the myth is more than a quaint pourquoi tale about the ocean's deriving from a magical bow and arrow. The bow and arrow are bones. The myth suggests that out of death comes life, that from our children-even those how have been tragically killed, even those who are greedy or mischievous-springs an eternal life force. Without information on the burial custom, we would have been cheated of the implications that make a story enduring enough to grow with a child's experience and understanding. Sometimes inconsistencies in background information and source citation are striking. In the same season from the same publisher come two picture-book Jack tales. One has an exemplary note relating the author's Appalachian background, his specific printed source, and the changes he's made in the story. The other has no note at all, even though the story seems to come from the same set of popular collections: The Jack Tales (Houghton, 1943) and Grandfather Tales (Houghton, 1948), edited by Richard Chase. If No Note didn't get it from Richard Chase, who did he hear it from? Why not tell us? Richard Chase attributed The Jack Tales up front on the title page to "R.M. Ward and his kindred in the Beech Mountain section of Western North Carolina and by other descendants of Council Harmon (1803-1896)." Knowledge can only deepen our reading and listening, especially of stories that grow from unfamiliar traditions. Those willing to invest in some background exploration of a tale will bring more to its retelling or illustration and shouldn't hesitate to share what they've learned. Ironically, most of the old printed sources are already in the public domain, so there's no permission or money at stake. Perhaps we've simply succumbed to the cult of the individual writer/artist in wanting to see our own names in print, without the supporting cast of millions who have carried the folktale tradition for centuries. The Burden of Responsibility So far, I have placed the burden of context on the adaptor, illustrator, and publisher. But there are other responsible parties here, including the reviewer and the consumer, especially the professional librarian. It's up to us, if we're going to recommend, read aloud, or tell picture-book folktales, to check them out carefully. Without Eric Kimmel's note on the source and adaptation of Bearhead (Holiday, 1991), I could not have compared it to the earlier Russian version. (5) Making the effort to do that took a lot of extra time as a reviewer, but is also told me a lot about cultural differences and the leap from Russian folktale to U.S. picture book. Heavy adaptation, even the creation of a composite tale from different versions or fragments, is acceptable if we have the information to evaluate it. It's important that we start taking those measurements into consideration. That's not to say that source notes should take precedence over text and art, but in the overall balance of selection, source notes should be one element that counts. An entertaining male Cinderella variant features the hero threatened by a fat woman who wants to cook him and eat him gives no indication anywhere in the book as to where the story came from, or when. The book jacket calls it an African folktale. The figures, costumes, and settings appear, in a generic kind of way, to be African. All my alarm bells are ringing. The fat woman is not giant, ogre, or witch, but a plain ordinary villager. Are we talking cannibals here? Or did the adaptor just add or exaggerate that bit because he though it was funny? This consideration might weigh more or less heavily in a decision to purchase, depending on the book's other qualities, but it must with something in the evaluation of picture-book folklore. Respecting the Tradition A librarian may not reject a great picture-book folktale with fine illustrations just because it's missing a source note. But, it's time to declare that part of a great picture-book folktale is the source note, that context is important to text. And, when the picture-book folktale is borderline in quality of art and text, the issue of source citation can balance the decision positively or negatively. "To be human is to be in a story," says Paula Fox in her introduction to Amzat and His Brothers (Orchard, 1993), three tales passed on to her by an Italian immigrant living in New York City. In retelling his Bremen Town Musicians variant, "Mezgalten," Fox elaborates with her own inimitable flair: "No sooner had the tiny rooster led his friends into the house than he felt chicken feathers around his feet. 'I don't care for these feathers,' he said. 'They make me wonder where the chickens have gone.'" Whether this bit of sly dialogue belongs to Mr. Vecchi or Ms. Fox is less important than Fox's acknowledgement of Vecchi's role in passing the stories on and her description of the pre-World War II village setting that provided an earlier home for them. She has become part of a tradition by respecting it. So can we all. - Norman, Howard. "Crow Ducks and Other Wandering Talk" from The Language of the Birds: Tales, Texts and Poems of Interspecies Communication. Ed. By David M. Guss. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985. Pp. 18-19. - Hearne, Betsy. Beauty and the Beast: Visions and Revisions of an Old Tale. Chicago: University of chicago Press, 1989. - ————. "Booking the Brothers Grimm: Art, Adaptations, and Economics" in The Brothers Grimm and Folktale. Ed by James M McGlathery. Urbana: U. of Illinois Press, 1988. - Toelken, Barre. The Dynamics of Folklore. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. P. 293. - The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, December 1991, pp. 81-83. —School Library Journal, July 1993 (pp. 22-27). Used by permission.

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Ballet from an Opera Box Hilaire-Germain-Edgar Degas, French, 1834 - 1917 The setting for this pastel is the Palais Garnier Opéra House, where you can still attend performances today. The Palais Garnier is famous for its opulent and luxurious interior. However, instead of focusing on this richly ornamented space, Edgar Degas concentrates on the colorful dancers, the theatrical lighting, and the audience's overwhelming visual experience. A finely dressed woman rests her arm on a balcony railing and looks over her shoulder to watch the performance from a box seat above the stage. A dancer in a bright yellow and orange costume is taking a bow. Degas portrays the spectacle from a disorienting point of view, cutting off the central figures with other figures or with the edges of the picture frame. He loved using pastel because he could scribble lines but also use his fingers to smudge broad areas of color-the pastel was soft and malleable and it did not dry hard like paint. Today the word "pastel" is often associated with pale shades of colors, but Degas liked to use strong vibrant hues to capture the effects of light and shadow.

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Made by Tucker Factory, Philadelphia, 1826 - 1831 Tucker Factory was among the first successful porcelain manufactories in the United States. Following on other short-lived successes in New York City and New Jersey, William Ellis Tucker established his porcelain manufactory in Philadelphia in 1826 at Center Square, the site of Philadelphia’s current City Hall. William Tucker died in 1830, and thereafter his brother Thomas Tucker oversaw the day-to-day operations and design, while investors, in particular Judge Joseph Hemphill and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, were able to provides the funds necessary to produce the high-quality porcelain that rivaled popular English, French, German, and Italian porcelain of the same date. The factory closed in 1838. The Philadelphia Museum of Art has the largest Tucker porcelain collection in the world, with over 500 pieces. The objects range from monumental vases and complete dinner sets to small, personal mementoes of the Tucker family and Thomas Tucker’s coveted pattern and recipe books recording factory production from 1832 to 1838.

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Locke on Essences and Kinds David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Jack Alan Reynolds Learn more about PhilPapers Given Locke’s views on primary and secondary qualities, it seems he is committed to there being real underlying properties in objects, the arrangement and disposition of which underlies and produces the observed properties of that object. It might be natural to think that these primary qualities provide a general system for classifying objects into classes: that we could delineate the real kinds of objects in nature by looking at what their real primary qualities were. A list of the particular qualities of some object would define that object perfectly precisely; by looking at which properties were shared or divergent between this object and others, we group the object with others in the same kind. These real kinds in nature can play several important theoretical roles. They can support real scientific understanding, including inductive inferences (iof things are of the same real kind, then observed properties of one support the inference to unobserved properties of the other); they can form the basis for our judgements about the powers and capacities of particular objects, based on the what other things of that type can do; and these real kinds can provide the meanings for general terms: the thought being that the meanings of class names are empty without real classes to which they correspond |Keywords||No keywords specified (fix it)| |Categories||categorize this paper)| Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server Configure custom proxy (use this if your affiliation does not provide a proxy) |Through your library|| References found in this work BETA No references found. Citations of this work BETA No citations found. Similar books and articles Jan-Erik Jones (2010). Locke on Real Essences, Intelligibility and Natural Kinds. Journal of Philosophical Research 35:147-172. Lisa Downing (2001). The Uses of Mechanism: Corpuscularianism in Drafts a and B of Locke's Essay. In William Newman, John Murdoch & Cristoph Lüthy (eds.), Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscularian Matter Theory. E.J. Brill 515-534. Michael Jacovides (2007). Locke on the Propria of Body. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 15 (3):485 – 511. Dan Kaufman (2007). Locke on Individuation and the Corpuscular Basis of Kinds. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (3):499-534. Andrew Chignell (2011). Real Repugnance and Our Ignorance of Things-in-Themselves: A Lockean Problem in Kant and Hegel. Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen Idealismus 7:135-159. Lionel Shapiro (2010). Two Kinds of Intentionality in Locke. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 91 (4):554-586. Peter Byrne (1993). Book Reviews. [REVIEW] British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (1):90-91. Samuel C. Rickless (1997). Locke on Primary and Secondary Qualities. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 78 (3):297-319. Robert A. Wilson (2016). Primary and Secondary Qualities. In Matthew Stuart (ed.), A Companion to Locke. Blackwell 193-211. Nigel Leary (2009). How Essentialists Misunderstand Locke. History of Philosophy Quarterly 26 (3):273-292. Christopher Hughes Conn (2002). Locke on Natural Kinds and Essential Properties. Journal of Philosophical Research 27:475-497. Cynthia Macdonald (1998). Tropes and Other Things. In Stephen Laurence & Cynthia Macdonald (eds.), Contemporary Readings in the Foundations of Metaphysics. Blackwell David Palmer (1976). Boyle's Corpuscular Hypothesis and Locke's Primary-Secondary Quality Distinction. Philosophical Studies 29 (3):181 - 189. Added to index2010-11-27 Total downloads316 ( #6,346 of 1,796,159 ) Recent downloads (6 months)44 ( #19,985 of 1,796,159 ) How can I increase my downloads?

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Details observed in Saturn's south polar region demonstrate that this area is far from featureless. Lighter colored clouds dot the entire region, which is dominated by a central, sharply-defined circular feature. Movie sequences in which these features are captured and followed will allow wind speeds in the polar region to be measured. This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft's narrow angle camera on May 20, 2004, from a distance of 22 million kilometers (13.7 million miles) from Saturn through a filter centered at 750 nanometers. The image scale is 131 kilometers (81 miles) per pixel. Contrast in the image was enhanced and magnified to aid visibility. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado. For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.

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NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer Mission celebrates its sixth anniversary studying galaxies beyond our Milky Way through its sensitive ultraviolet telescope, the only such far-ultraviolet detector in space. The mission studies the shape, brightness, size and distance of distant galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic history, giving scientists a wealth of data to help us better understand the origins of the universe. One such object is pictured here, the galaxy NGC598, more commonly known as M33. This image is a blend of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer's M33 image and another taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. M33, one of our closest galactic neighbors, is about 2.9 million light-years away in the constellation Triangulum, part of what's known as our Local Group of galaxies. Together, the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and Spitzer can see a broad spectrum of sky. Spitzer, for example, can detect mid-infrared radiation from dust that has absorbed young stars' ultraviolet light. That's something the Galaxy Evolution Explorer cannot see. This combined image shows in amazing detail the beautiful and complicated interlacing of the heated dust and young stars. In some regions of M33, dust gathers where there is very little far-ultraviolet light, suggesting that the young stars are obscured or that stars farther away are heating the dust. In some of the outer regions of the galaxy, just the opposite is true: There are plenty of young stars and very little dust. Far-ultraviolet light from young stars glimmers blue, near-ultraviolet light from intermediate age stars glows green, and dust rich in organic molecules burns red. This image is a 3-band composite including far infrared as red. The California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, Calif., leads the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and is responsible for science operations and data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena, manages the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. South Korea and France are the mission's international partners. For information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, go to: http://www.galex.caltech.edu.

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Learn More About Medicines in Development for Rare Diseases Medicines in Development for Rare Diseases Rare diseases, taken together, aren’t "rare" at all. In fact, according to the National Institutes of Health, 25-30 million Americans have one of the nearly 7,000 diseases that are officially deemed “rare” because alone they each affect fewer than 200,000 people. Sometimes, only a few hundred Americans are known to have a particular rare disease. Moreover, the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 provided incentives, for example a longer period of marketing exclusivity, for drugs that are not expected to recoup their development costs or that are targeted at diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people. Under the Orphan Drug Act, 2,313 medicines have been designated orphan drugs by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as of January 24, 2011. These medicines are in all stages of development and some will eventually gain approval. Over the last few years, new medicines have been approved for Pompe disease, which causes among other symptoms an engorged heart. Other recently approved treatments are for rare cancers and myelodysplastic syndromes, which are pre-leukemia diseases affecting blood marrow. Other examples include a medicine in development for epidermolysis bullosa, a group of inherited disorders where skin blisters develop in response to minor trauma, and one for Friedreich’s ataxia, a genetic disease that causes degenerative nerve damage in children. With continued innovation, we hope that one day, whenever the question is asked, “How can we help them?” there always will be an encouraging answer.

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It's one of the most serious decisions a pregnant woman makes: whether to have amniocentesis during her pregnancy to look for birth defects and chromosomal abnormalities such as Down syndrome. The procedure, in which a small amount of amniotic fluid is extracted from the womb using a needle, carries with it a risk of miscarriage. Because the probability of abnormalities increases as women age, it has long been common practice for women older than 35 to undergo amniocentesis. But a group of Canadian doctors and geneticists is challenging that approach. In an opinion paper published today in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Canada, the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada recommends that maternal age should only factor into a decision about amniocentesis when a woman is over 40. In other words, 40 is the new 35 when it comes to being labelled a high-risk pregnancy.To continue reading click here

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Some historical events from 1944: January 1944: The British, during WW2, launched an attack on Monte Cassino, Italy. The seige of Lenningrad, in the USSR, by the Germans ended after over two years. Allied forces landed at Anzio, Italy. February 1944: The Pay As You Earn (PAYE) tax was introduced in Britain. April 1944: The income tax system 'Pay As You Earn', devised by Cornelius Gregg, was introduced. May 1944: Hitler gave permission for German forces to withdraw from the USSR. The Allies captured Monte Cassini, Italy. An assassination attempt was made on Hitler by his own officers. June 1944: Allied forces entered the Italian city of Rome. The invasion of Normandy, D-Day, by allied forces began. The first V1 rocket fell on England during World War 2. The first flying bomb was dropped on London, UK. Iceland became an independent republic. July 1944: The Russian city of Minsk was recaptured from the Germans. A German officer attempted to assassinate Hitler with a bomb. American marines captured the western Pacific island of Guam. August 1944: PLUTO, pipe line under the ocean, began operating beneath the English Channel, supplying gasoline to Allied forces in France. PLUTO, pipe line under the ocean, began operating beneath the English Channel, supplying gasoline to Allied forces in France. Allied forces landed in the south of France; Marseilles was captured. September 1944: The first German V2 flying bombs fell on Britain. Blackout regulations were lifted in Britain. Allied paratroops landed at Arnhem, Holland. Near the end of World War 2, the Red Army entered Yugoslavia. November 1944: Franklin D.Roosevelt created a record by being elected for a fourth term as President. The Home Guard,affectionately called 'Dads Army', was disbanded. The lights of Piccadilly, the Strand, and Fleet Street were switched back on after five years of blackout. In a storage cavern beneath Staffordshire, 4,000 tons of explosives exploded. The explosion was heard 100 miles away in London.

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Individual differences | Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology | A model organism is a species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological and psychological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the organism model will provide insight into the workings of other organisms. This is possible because fundamental biological principles such as metabolic, regulatory, and developmental pathways, and the genes that code for them, are conserved through evolution. Often, model organisms are chosen on the basis that they are amenable to experimental manipulation. This usually will include characteristics such as; short life-cycle, techniques for genetic manipulation (inbred strains, stem cell lines, and transfection systems), and non-specialist living requirements. Sometimes, the genome arrangement facilitates the sequencing of the model organism's genome, for example, by being very compact or having a low proportion of junk DNA. When researchers look for an organism to use in their studies, they look for several traits. Common among these are size, generation time, accessibility, manipulation, genetics, conservation of mechanisms, and potential economic benefit. As comparative molecular biology has become more common, some researchers have sought model organisms that represent assorted lineages of life. Important model organisms in psychologyEdit - Arbacia punctulata, the purple-spined sea urchin, classical subject of embryological studies - Caenorhabditis elegans, a nematode, usually called C. elegans - an excellent model for understanding the genetic control of development and physiology. C. elegans was the first multicellular organism whose genome was completely sequenced - Drosophila, usually the species Drosophila melanogaster - a kind of fruit fly, famous as the subject of genetics experiments by Thomas Hunt Morgan and others. Easily raised in lab, rapid generations, mutations easily induced, many observable mutations. Recently, Drosophila has been used for neuropharmacological research. (Molecular genetics, Population genetics, Developmental biology). - Euprymna scolopes, the Hawaiian bobtail squid, model for animal-bacterial symbiosis, bioluminescent vibrios. - Hydra, a Cnidaria, is the model organism to understand the evolution of bilaterian body plans. - Loligo pealei, a squid, subject of studies of nerve function because of its giant axon (nearly 1 mm diameter, roughly a thousand times larger than typical mammalian axons) - Stomatogastric ganglion, arthropods digestive systems are a model for motor pattern generation seen in all repetitive motions - Tribolium castaneum, the flour beetle - a small, easily kept darkling beetle used especially in behavioural ecology experiments. - Dog (Canis lupus familiaris) - an important respiratory and cardiovascular model - Cavius porcellus, the guinea pig - Mouse (Mus musculus) - the classic model vertebrate. Many inbred strains exist, as well as lines selected for particular traits, often of medical interest, e.g. body size, obesity, muscularity. (Quantitative genetics, Molecular evolution, Genomics) - Takifugu rubipres, a pufferfish - has a small genome with little junk DNA - Oryzias latipes, Medaka (the Japanese ricefish) is an important model in developmental biology, and has the advantage of being much sturdier than the traditional Zebrafish. - Rat (Rattus norvegicus) - particularly useful as a toxicology model; also particularly useful as a neurological model and source of primary cell cultures, owing to the larger size of organs and suborganellar structures relative to the mouse. (Molecular evolution, Genomics)' - Xenopus laevis, the African clawed toad, also used in development because of its large cells, esp. egg cells. - Zebrafish (Brachydanio rerio), a freshwater fish, has a nearly transparent body which provides unique visual access to the animal's internal anatomy throughout its life. Zebrafish are used to study development, toxicology and toxicopathology, specific gene function and roles of signaling pathways. Model organisms used for specific research objectivesEdit Sexual selection and sexual conflictEdit - Callusobruchus maculatus, the bruchid beetle - Chorthippus parallelus, the meadow grasshopper - Coelopidae - seaweed flies - Diopsidae - stalk-eyed flies - Drosophila spp. - fruit flies - Gryllus bimaculatus, the field cricket - Scathofaga stercoraria, the yellow dung fly - Animal model - Conditional gene knockout - Ensembl genome database of model organisms - Gene knockout - Gene knockdown - Gene knockin - Gene silencing - Knockout mouse - ↑ Riddle, Donald L.; Blumenthal, Thomas; Meyer, Barbara J.; and Priess, James R. (Eds.). (1997). C. ELEGANS II. Woodbury, NY: Cold Spring Harbor Press. ISBN 0-87969-532-3. Full text available on-line. - ↑ Manev H, Dimitrijevic N, Dzitoyeva S. (2003). Techniques: fruit flies as models for neuropharmacological research.. Trends Pharmacol. Sci. 24 (1): 41-43. - ↑ Spitsbergen J.M. and Kent M.L. (2003). The state of the art of the zebrafish model for toxicology and toxicologic pathology research--advantages and current limitations. Toxicol Pathol. 31 (Supplement), 62-87. PubMed Abstract Link => PMID 12597434. - Wellcome Trust description of model organisms - WWW Virtual Library guide to several model organism resource lists - The Generic Model Organism Database project |Major Model Organisms in Psychology studies (Please edit)| |Monkey | Dog | | Rat | Mouse| |This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).|

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Individual differences | Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology | William Labov (Template:IPA-en, Template:Respell; born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist, widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology" of sociolinguistics. He is employed as a professor in the linguistics department of the University of Pennsylvania, and pursues research in sociolinguistics, language change, and dialectology. Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, he studied at Harvard (1948) and worked as an industrial chemist (1949-61) before turning to linguistics. For his MA thesis (1963) he completed a study of change in the dialect of Martha's Vineyard, which was presented before the Linguistic Society of America to great acclaim. Labov took his PhD (1964) at Columbia University studying under Uriel Weinreich. He taught at Columbia (1964-70) before becoming a professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania (1971), and then became director of the university's Linguistics Laboratory (1977). The methods he used to collect data for his study of the varieties of English spoken in New York City, published as The Social Stratification of English in New York City (1966), have been influential in social dialectology. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, his studies of the linguistic features of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) were also influential: he argued that AAVE should not be stigmatized as substandard but respected as a variety of English with its own grammatical rules. He has also pursued research in referential indeterminacy, and he is noted for his seminal studies of the way ordinary people structure narrative stories of their own lives. More recently he has studied changes in the phonology of English as spoken in the United States today, and studied the origins and patterns of chain shifts of vowels (one sound replacing a second, replacing a third, in a complete chain). He finds two major divergent chain shifts taking place today: a Southern Shift (in Appalachia and southern coastal regions) and a Northern Cities Shift affecting a region from Madison, Wisconsin east to Utica, New York, as well as several minor chain shifts in smaller regions. Among Labov's well-known students are John Baugh, Penelope Eckert, Gregory Guy, Beatrice Lavandera, John Myhill, Geoffrey Nunberg, Peter Patrick, Shana Poplack, John Rickford, Deborah Schiffrin, Malcah Yaeger-Dror. Labov's works include Language in the Inner City: Studies in Black English Vernacular (1972), Sociolinguistic Patterns (1972), Principles of Linguistic Change (vol.I Internal Factors, 1994; vol.II Social Factors, 2001), and, together with Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg, The Atlas of North American English (2006). - ↑ Gordon, Matthew J. (2006). Interview with William Labov. Journal of English Linguistics 34: 332–51. - ↑ E.g., in the opening chapter of The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (ed. Chambers et al., Blackwell 2002), J.K. Chambers writes that "variationist sociolinguistics had its effective beginnings only in 1963, the year in which William Labov presented the first sociolinguistic research report"; the dedication page of the Handbook says that Labov's "ideas imbue every page". - ↑ Trask, R. L. (1997). A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics, 124, London: Arnold. - William Labov's home page - Interview with William Labov - Journal of English Linguistics interview - NPR story "American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift" |This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).|

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This page has been accessed since 28 May 1996. How advertising works requires a definition of what advertising is. One definition of advertising is: "Advertising is the nonpersonal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media."(Bovee, 1992, p. 7) So much for academic doubletalk. Now let's take this statement apart and see what it means. First, what is "nonpersonal"? There are two basic ways to sell anything: personally and nonpersonally. Personal selling requires the seller and the buyer to get together. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. The first advantage is time: the seller has time to discuss in detail everything about the product. The buyer has time to ask questions, get answers, examine evidence for or against purchase. A second advantage of personal selling is that the seller can see you. The person rhe's selling to. Rhe can see your face, see how the sales message is getting across. If you yawn or your eyes shift away, you're obviously bored, and the seller can change approach. Rhe can also see if you're hooked, see what features or benefits have your attention, and emphasize them to close the sale. Finally, the seller can easily locate potential buyers. If you enter a store, you probably have an interest in something that store sells. Street vendors and door-to-door sellers can simply shout at possibilities, like the Hyde Park ( Disadvantages do exist. Personal selling is, naturally enough, expensive, since it is labor-intensive and deals with only one buyer at a time. Just imagine trying to sell chewing gum or guitar picks one-on-one; it would cost a dollar a stick or pick. In addition, its advantage of time is also a disadvantage. Personal selling is time-consuming. Selling a stereo or a car can take days, and major computer and airplane sales can take years. Nonetheless, although personal selling results in more rejections than sales, and can be nerve-racking, frustrating and ego destroying for the salesperson, when the salesperson is good it is more directed and successful than advertising. From the above, it appears that personal selling is much better than advertising, which is nonpersonal. This is true. Advertising has none of the advantages of personal selling: there is very little time in which to present the sales message, there is no way to know just who the customer is or how rhe is responding to the message, the message cannot be changed in mid-course to suit the customer's reactions. Then why bother with advertising? Because its advantages exactly replace the disadvantages of personal selling, and can emulate some of the advantages. First let's look at the latter. First, advertising has, comparatively speaking, all the time in the world. Unlike personal selling, the sales message and its presentation does not have to be created on the spot with the customer watching. It can be created in as many ways as the writer can conceive, be rewritten, tested, modified, injected with every trick and appeal known to affect consumers. (Some of the latter is the content of this book.) Second, although advertisers may not see the individual customer, nor be able to modify the sales message according to that individual's reactions at the time, it does have research about customers. The research can identify potential customers, find what message elements might influence them, and figure out how best to get that message to them. Although the research is meaningless when applied to any particular individual, it is effective when applied to large groups of customers. Third, and perhaps of most importance, advertising can be far cheaper per potential customer than personal selling. Personal selling is extremely labor-intensive, dealing with one customer at a time. Advertising deals with hundreds, thousands, or millions of customers at a time, reducing the cost per customer to mere pennies. In fact, advertising costs are determined in part using a formula to determine, not cost per potential customer, but cost per thousand potential customers. Thus, it appears that advertising is a good idea as a sales tool. For small ticket items, such as chewing gum and guitar picks, advertising is cost effective to do the entire selling job. For large ticket items, such as cars and computers, advertising can do a large part of the selling job, and personal selling is used to complete and close the sale. Advertising is nonpersonal, but effective. Communication means not only speech or pictures, but any way one person can pass information, ideas or feelings to another. Thus communication uses all of the senses: smell, touch, taste, sound and sight. Of the five, only two are really useful in advertising -- sound and sight. Smell is an extremely strong form of communication. However, when it comes to advertising, it is not very useful. A smell can immediately evoke memories. Remember times when you've smelled something and what memories came to your mind. The smell could be a perfume or aftershave that reminds you of Sheila or George. It could be popcorn, newly mown grass, char-broiling steak, or roses. Any smell can conjure up a memory for you. However, that is smell's greatest problem for advertising. Although a smell can evoke a memory, everyone's memories are different. For example, the smell of hay in a cow barn always reminds me of my grandfather's farm in The point is, the effect of using smell in advertising cannot be controlled by the advertiser. Although many people smell the same things, what they associate with those smells varies with each person. Without some control, smell is a very weak form of communication for advertising. Touch has a limitation that makes it of little use to advertising -- the customer has to come in actual contact with the item to be touched. Thus the item must actually exist and be put in a medium that can carry it. This puts touch more in the realm of personal selling than advertising. It is possible to use touch for a limited number of products. For example, samples of cloth or paper can be bound into magazines. The potential customer can thus feel percale or the texture of corduroy, tell through touch the difference between slick magazine stock, embossing, Classic Laid or 100% rag paper. However, for the majority of products touch is useless for advertising. Taste is probably the least useful communication channel available to advertising. Like touch, taste requires the potential customer to come in actual physical contact with the product. However, taste is even more limited than touch. There are few products other than food for which taste is a major selling point, and there is virtually no medium in which an ad can be placed that people are likely to lick; I'm sure few people are going to lick a magazine page or the TV screen, nor get much sense of what the product tastes like from them. It is possible to use direct mail, sending samples to homes, but that is an expensive way to advertise. Thus, taste is much more effective in personal selling, such as sampling foods in supermarkets or in door-to-door sales. The remaining two senses, sound and sight, are the most effective and easily used channels of communication available to advertising. For these reasons virtually all advertising relies on them. Sound is extremely useful for advertising. It can be used in a variety of media, from radio and television to the new technology of binding micro-sound chips in magazines to present 20-second sales messages. It is also capable of presenting words and "theatre of the mind." Words, the method by which humans communicate their ideas and feelings, are presented by sound, by speaking aloud. Through the use of words it is possible to deliver logical arguments, discuss pros and cons, and evoke emotions. More, through the use of sound it is possible to create what is called "the theatre of the mind." What this means is that sound can conjure in the listener's mind images and actions that don't necessarily exist. For example, if you want to create before the mind's eye the image of a party, you need merely use the sound effects of people talking and laughing, the tinkle of glasses and ice, perhaps music in the background. Even easier, tape record a party and play it back. To evoke images of a soft spring day the sounds of a breeze rustling leaves, the chirrup of insects, the soft call of birds is sufficient. The listener's mind will take those sounds, combine them, make sense of them, and create an image suited to their individual taste. For example, a beer commercial may play the sounds of a bar in the background, and the listener may imagine themselves in their own favorite bar, and perhaps ordering that brand of beer. Thus sound, in the forms of words and effects, are quite useful to the advertiser in affecting a listener. Sight is arguably the most useful of the communication channels available to the advertiser. Through sight it is possible to use both words and images effectively. Words do not have to be spoken to be understood. They can be printed, as well. Although it is difficult to put in written words the emotional impact possible in spoken words, with their inflections and subtle sound cues, nevertheless written words are unsurpassed for getting across and explaining complex ideas or arguments. There is an additional factor in sight that makes it excellent for advertising. The old cliché, "A picture is worth a thousand words," is correct. Think how long it takes to describe something as opposed to showing a picture of it. No matter how many words you use, some details will be left out that are visible at a glance. Thus sight can quickly and concisely show a customer what the advertiser wants rher to see, be it a product or how buying the product can benefit rher. In addition, the mind does not have to consciously recognize what the eye sees for it to have an effect on the subconscious. An advertiser can put many inconspicuous details into a picture that will affect a customer on the subconscious level. For example, a drop of water on a rose petal may not consciously register ("I see there's a drop of water on this rose"), but will unconsciously leave an impression of freshness and delicacy. A small child looking upward into the camera, unsmiling and eyes wide, gives an impression of sadness and vulnerability, not shortness. The five forms of human communication can be used to send any message to potential customers. However, not all five are equal. Smell, touch and taste are of little use, but sound and sight are of great value and effectiveness. Information is defined as knowledge, facts or news. However, you should bear in mind that one person's information is another person's scam, particularly when advertisers talk about their products. Information comes in many forms. It can be complete or incomplete. It can be biased or deceptive. Complete information is telling someone everything there is to know about something: what it is, what it looks like, how it works, what its benefits and drawbacks are. However, to provide complete information about anything is time consuming and difficult. For example, to tell all about a car would require its appearance, manufacture and manufacturer, what percentage of parts are made in which countries, cost of upkeep, mileage (city and highway), cost (basic and with any and all combination of options), sales and excise taxes per state, preparation costs, insurance costs per state and locale, ride characteristics (noise by db interior and exterior, ergs required for steering and braking, relative comfort of seats, length of reach required to use controls, degrees of lean when cornering), acceleration, braking distance at many different speeds, etc.. All of this would require a documentary, not a commercial. Complete information is impossible to provide in an ad. Thus, for advertising, information must of necessity be incomplete, not discussing everything there is to know about the subject. In advertising, what appears is everything the writer thinks the customer needs to know about the product in order to make a decision about the product. That information will generally be about how the product can benefit the customer. There is, of course, the concept of affirmative disclosure. This concept requires an advertiser to provide customers with any information that could materially affect their purchase decision. Lewis A. Engman, FTC Chair in 1974, said: "Sometimes the consumer is provided not with information he wants but only with the information the seller wants him to have. Sellers, for instance, are not inclined to advertise negative aspects their products even though those aspects may be of primary concern to the consumer, particularly if they involve considerations of health or safety . . .” The Federal Trade Commission deals with such omissions by demanding affirmative disclosure of such information, and backs up their demands with the force of law. Bias is being partial towards something, feeling that something is better or worse than other things. Biased information about a product is that which emphasizes what is good and ignores what is bad about it. In advertising this is not only normal, but necessary. Of course an advertiser is biased toward rher own product and against the competition: selling rher product is the way rhe makes rher money, and rher competition's sales reduces that income. Thus any advertising will use words and images that show how good rher product is and/or how poor rher competition's is. This is biased information, but recognized and accepted by industry, regulators and consumers -- it is called puffery, the legitimate exaggeration of advertising claims to overcome natural consumer skepticism. However, sometimes the biased information goes beyond legitimate puffery and slips into deception, the deliberate use of misleading words and images. In other words, deceptive information is lying to the customer about the qualities of a product. Such deception is illegal, and the FTC requires the advertiser to cease and desist and, in some instance, to do corrective advertising to repair any damage. ". . . paid for . . . " is pretty straightforward. If an ad is created and placed in the media, the costs of creation and time or space in the media must be paid for. This is a major area in which advertising departs from public relations. PR seeks to place information about companies and/or products in the media without having to pay for the time or space. PR creates news releases and sends them to news media in hopes they will be run. Often PR departments produce events that will be covered by news media and thus receive space or time. There is no guarantee that the media will run any of the PR material. Advertising doesn't have that problem. If time or space is bought in the media, the ads (as long as they follow the guidelines set down for good taste, legal products and services, etc.) will appear. The drawback is that ads are clearly designed to extol the virtues of products and companies, and any ad is perceived by consumers as at least partly puffery. PR pieces are usually not so perceived. "Persuasive" stands to reason as part of the definition of advertising. The basic purpose of advertising is to identify and differentiate one product from another in order to persuade the consumer to buy that product in preference to another. The purpose of this book is to discuss some basic elements of persuasion. PRODUCTS, SERVICES OR IDEAS Products, services or ideas are the things that advertisers want consumers to buy (in the case of ideas, "buy" means accept or agree with as well as lay out hard, cold cash). However, there is more involved in products or services than simply items for purchase. (During the following discussion, "products" will mean products, services and ideas unless otherwise noted.) A product is not merely its function. It is actually a bundle of values, what the product means to the consumer. That bundle may contain the product's function, but also the social, psychological, economic or whatever other values are important to the consumer. For example, let's look at a car. If the function of a car, transportation, is all that is important, then manufacturers would need only build motorized boxes on wheels, and consumers would be happy with them. Such is obviously not the case: the number of models and types of cars is huge, and if consumers didn't demand the variety it wouldn't exist. Consumers must find factors other than mere transportation just as, if not more important. Perhaps the value is social. The type of car a person drives is often indicative of that person's social status. A clunker shows a lower status than a Rolls Royce. A sports car shows that a person is (or wishes to be perceived as) more socially active and fun-loving than a person in a sedan or station wagon. The type of car can even indicate which social grouping a person wants to be considered a part of: in the 1980s Volvos and BMWs were the car for Yuppies. Perhaps the value is psychological. Some cars may make a person feel safer, or sexier, or give them self-esteem or enjoyment. Since the purpose of this book is to discuss psychological values and how to appeal to them, I'll go no further at this point. Perhaps the value is economic. Some cars may be cheaper to run, give better mileage, carry more people or cargo, cause less damage to the environment. The above four values, functional, social, psychological and economic, can stand alone. However, for most consumers, the values are bundled together in varying proportions. How closely a product approximates an individual's proportion of values will often determine whether rhe will buy that product or not. Companies, through research, try to determine what values consumers want in their products, and then advertise to show how their product satisfies the customers' bundle of values better than competitors' products. To do this, the company must differentiate their product from competitors. There are three basic differentiations: perceptible, imperceptible, and induced. Perceptible differences are those that actually exist that make one product obviously different from others of the same kind. The difference may in color or size or shape or brand name or some other way. In any case, the consumer can easily see that this car or couch or camera is different from other cars or couches or cameras. Perceptible differences allow a person to make an instant identification of one product as opposed to another. Imperceptible differences are those that actually exist between one product and others, but are not obvious. For example, there are imperceptible but profound differences between CP/M, MS-DOS and Apple and MacIntosh computers. You can't simply look at a computer and tell which it is; machines can and usually do look alike. And yet buying either precludes being able to use software designed for the other. The same applied to Beta and VHS format VCRs. Although both are designed to do the same thing, there are differences between them that are imperceptible on the surface but preclude using the same tapes in both. There are other differences besides the size of the cassette: the machines use totally different ways of recording and playing back tapes. Beta records and plays back diagonally across the tape, VHS records vertically. Such a difference may seem small, but it means that anything recorded on Beta cannot be played back on VHS, and vice versa. Also, Beta's system used more tape per instant and thus had an advantage in the amount of information per inch of tape, meaning a better sound and picture but less available time. However, VHS overcomes its deficit by improved electronics and better processing of what information it gets per inch of tape. In addition, VHS (read RCA) managed to corner the market on rental tapes of movies (a major use of VCRs) and VHS has virtually killed off Beta (read Sony). All the differences between Beta and VHS are imperceptible: they are also crucial. For many products, there is no actual substantive difference between one and another. For many brands of cigarettes, beer, cleansers and soaps, rice, over-the-counter health products, etc., etc., ad nauseam, there is essentially no difference between one brand and another. These products are called parity products. For these products, the only way to differentiate one from another is to induce that difference, to persuade people that there actually is some difference, and that difference is important to them. These differences are created through advertising, not through any inherent difference in the products, and that creation often uses the appeals and methods discussed in the bulk of this book. Another approach is to project an image on a parity product. Marlboro is rugged male, Virginia Slims is independent female, Benson & Hedges is intellectual, Camel is cool and sophisticated. That there is no real difference between one brand of cigarette and another is beside the point. The point is, if you want the image you must use the product. This image approach is so successful that a manly man wouldn't be caught dead (no pun intended) smoking Virginia Slims or Benson & Hedges -- he'd feel like a sissy wimp (or rather, that is what he thinks his friends would think he was). Parity products have the greatest difficulty differentiating one from another. They must rely on creating a trivial or even nonexistent difference in the bundle of values their target audience might find important to their purchase decision. However, if and once that difference is firmly established in the target audience's perception, a company can often rely on habit, brand loyalty and/or cognitive dissonance to get repeat business. Identified sponsors means whoever is putting out the ad tells the audience who they are. There are two reasons for this: first, it's a legal requirement, and second, it makes good sense. Legally, a sponsor must identify rherself as the sponsor of an ad. This prevents the audience from getting a misleading idea about the ad or its contents. For example, many ads that appear in newspapers look like news articles: same typeface, appearance, use of columns, etc.. If the ad is not identified as such, the audience could perceive it as news about a product, rather than an attempt to persuade the audience to buy it. Case in point: what looks like a news article discusses a weight-loss plan. In journalistic style it talks about the safety, efficacy, and reasonable price of the product. A reasonable person might perceive the "article" as having been written by a reporter who had investigated weight-loss programs and decided to objectively discuss this particular one. Such a perception is misleading, and illegal. Since it is an ad, somewhere on it there must appear the word "advertisement" to ensure the audience does not think it is an objective reporting of news. Second, it makes good sense for a sponsor to identify rherself in the ad. If the sponsor doesn't, it is possible for the audience to believe the ad is for a competitor's product, thus wasting all the time, creativity and money that went into making and placing the ad. The various media are the non-personal (remember that?) channels of communication that people have invented and used and continue to use. These include newspapers, magazines, radio, television, billboards, transit cards, sandwich boards, skywriting, posters, anything that aids communicating in a non-personal way ideas from one person or group to another person or group. They do not include people talking to each other: first, talking is personal and advertising is non-personal; and second, there is no way to use people talking to each other for advertising--word-of-mouth is not an advertising medium, since you can't control what is said. (The best you could do is start a rumor, which will undoubtedly distort the message in the telling, and is more the province of the PR department.) Thus, to repeat (in case you've forgotten by now), "Advertising is the nonpersonal communication of information usually paid for and usually persuasive in nature about products, services or ideas by identified sponsors through the various media." You can reach me by e-mail at: [email protected] This page was created by Richard F. Taflinger, so all the errors, bad links, and lack of style are his fault. Copyright © 1996 Richard This page is subject to fair use policies, and may not be copied or whole or in part with the express written permission of the author [email protected].

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Yom Kippur 5768: "Truth and Love" Rabbi Menachem Creditor Congregation Netivot Shalom We begin with questions: What is faith? Can we have absolute faith in any source? Who has the right to judge the past? Given what we know about the transmission of the Torah and of tradition in general, and given the difficulty so many of us have with the question of absolute authority, how can we know what has truly happened and should our behaviors and decisions be based upon any tradition at all?? What is true? All words are human. We recite every Pesach that God’s outstretched arm brought us out of Egypt. Since it is a core Jewish belief that God has neither hands nor arms, such a description is an expression of God's power – a metaphor – and not a conception of God in physical form. Metaphor is rampant in the Torah. God has a heart. God is pleased. God gets angry. The literal Hebrew idiom for God’s anger is that "God's nose flared." But these are metaphors, analogies to our human experience. God is always more than our language can contain, even biblical language. Words are human constructions, meant to convey meaning. But every word, and every human method of communication, is burdened by multiple meanings and by the limitations of the speaker. To say that God’s Will is contained in a text is to limit God’s Will. And to restrict God to words is to create an idol, perhaps no different than the Golden Calf. Human beings gave God’s Self-revelation form. God’s Presence in revelation is not the question. The subjectivity of the words that result from this holy encounter is. What is the relationship between God’s Truth and the words of the Torah? And what command might be connected to this subjective human formula? I took my first class in Theology during my first undergraduate year at the Jewish Theological Seminary. I entered with a faith in God’s Word as recorded in the Five Books of Moses. The new ideas and approaches to Torah I learned in with Rabbi Neil Gillman’s class shattered my faith, and left me deeply confused and doubtful. This was my question: “If the Torah isn’t God’s Word, then what of the tradition I follow which is based upon the words of the Torah? “ The things that had made sense to me because they were based on God’s Will now had no foundation. If our entire tradition is human interpretation how is it Ultimately True? And, for me, this is the beginning of faith. The world we live in is ambiguous. One of my deepest inspirations, Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, posed this situation: “There is a large, strong person with a deadly instrument in their hand. Nearby is a small, weak person. Should the large person use the deadly instrument on the small person?” And we answer with a thunderous “No! That’s immoral! Of course not!” - Except that the situation is a bris, the larger person is a mohel, and the small person is an eight-day-old boy. That which might seem clear seldom is. The founder of American Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Solomon Schechter, taught, “[There is] only One who knows the exact truth about the great mystery. But we may indicate our doubt about one doctrine by putting by its side another, which we may affirm to be not more absolutely true, but more probable. This seems to have been the attitude, too, of the compilers of the ancient Rabbinic literature, the most conflicting views ... were embodied. Nor did the Synagogue, in general feel called upon to decide between these views… Thus Judaism has no fixed doctrines on the subject. It refused a hearing to no theory for fear that it should contain some germ of truth, but on the same ground, it accepted none to the exclusion of the others. (Studies in Judaism, pp.213-214)” Judaism, according to Schechter, made room for conflicting visions of Truth because it was understood that the best we can do is hit a probable “truth.” The religious system Schechter discusses, and the one we choose, is one path towards Truth. In a sense, “Truth” (capital ‘T’) is reached by many paths, each with its own “truth” (lower-case). Our religious perspective recognizes shades of gray in the passageways to God. There do exist people who see this world as black and white, where the definitions of “evil” and “good” are clear. Some strap bombs to their bodies and kill, only to be considered holy by their community and criminal by another. Some read their holy writings literally and cause pain to others “in the name of God.” In either case, those who believe that the world contains objective rules and boundaries are typically unaware of their own subjective starting points, and are clearly in violation of French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas’ paradigm of authentic interpretation, which includes the requirement of not living “in a vacuum, as if in a private universe, but [rather] engaged and open to “the life of the city,” to the present tense, to life shared with others (as quoted in Rabbi Steven Greenberg’s important book ‘Wrestling with God and Men,’ p. 21).” And so, paradoxically, the only truth is subjectivity. Perhaps the only way to be on a true path to God is to acknowledge that it is not the only one. But where does that leave the individual seeking God? How can I encounter God? And why, if my path is not the only legitimate path, should I remain on this one? There will be no satisfying answer to this question. A significant part of my path is my childhood love-affair with Shabbat and Jewish music. Despite my passion for the river of Jewish Spirituality, I’ve found it hard to explain. Though it might sound exclusive, I believe it really comes down to “If you’ve tasted the joy of a soulful Friday Night, you understand. And if you haven’t, you don’t.” A truth is, perhaps my answers will only make sense to me. Why be Jewish when there are other legitimate paths to God? How could I be anything else?! Why would I be anything else?! Jewish tradition is rich, and it guides me on a path of goodness and justice. How could I step away from it? It’s such an integral part of my identity, that if I were to walk away from it, I’d be walking away from myself. Perhaps that is the problem with a liberal ideology. My intensive Jewish childhood experience stabilized me during my first stages of doubt and questioning. But I am the exception to the rule in our current Jewish world. Very few adult Jews look back to an immersive Jewish experience that viscerally bonds them to Judaism. I am a rabbi. It would seem to make sense, from a pragmatic standpoint, that I should want to reduce the ambiguity in people’s lives in order to perpetuate a connection to Jewish life without throwing them into confusion. The typical connection is tremulous enough that I don’t need to exacerbate it by challenging the very traditional assumptions that give tenuously connected Jews a sense of comfort and belonging. But that’s not how I see it. I’m interested in lighting fires in people souls so that they feel freer with every step towards God. The Indigo Girls said it right in their “Power of Two” when they say, “The closer I’m bound in love to you/ The closer I am to free.” I’m in love with God. That’s why I’m a Jew. I want to share what I see as the most real, the most intensely meaningful, experience in this world: God. And if I don’t challenge the things I see as obstacles to seriously connecting with God, I’m keeping that love to myself. Through my years of study with Rabbi Gillman, I learned that his loving embrace was as compelling as his classroom teaching. And through this combination of love and honesty, I’ve found comfort and conviction in my choice to lead a spiritual life. I encountered a compelling call to question that faith and I choose to embrace that challenge as I live my life towards God. So who was Aaron? Tradition suggests many answers. None of them are exclusively correct. Searching for the Truth about Aaron is like searching for the Truth about God: It’s unattainable. But on the other hand, we learn that “Rabbi Chanin taught, ‘You may not hold back your words because of anyone. Further, witnesses should know against whom they are giving evidence, before whom they are giving evidence and who will hold them accountable in the event of false evidence. ... Judges should also know whom it is they are judging, before whom they are judging, and who will call them to account if they pervert justice. ...The judge only has that which [she] sees with [her] own eyes. (Bavli, Sanhedrin 6b)” We can neither claim that we have the Truth nor may we forget the responsibility we have to use the holy subjectivity of our eyes. Who was Aaron? We learn that Aaron “loved peace and pursued peace, loved his fellow creatures, and brought them close to Torah. (Mishnah Avot 1:12)” That’s the truth about Aaron I choose to believe. Rabbi Gillman calls the subjective truths that form the underpinnings of our lives “myths.” Though that word might hurt the sensitive religious ear, the very term that makes acceptance difficult has a vital role in religious development. Gillman writes in his ‘Problematics of Myth’: “What makes a myth "true"? Clearly not because it corresponds to the facts, simply because we have no independent perception of those facts to compare it with. We cannot escape our humanness. But one myth may do a better job of integrating what we do perceive to be the data of experience; it accounts more adequately for more of what we perceive. For Jews, that myth is canonized in Torah. Myths are singularly tenacious. They also enjoy a certain "plasticity"; they can be reshaped to account for apparently discordant data. (Jews call that process midrash.) Finally, religious myths are existentially true; we make them true for us, they become true when we embrace them and live them.” I believe that existence is ambiguous. Judaism is a deeply powerful way of making us aware of and fulfilled participants in this reality. God is waiting for us to create – and to journey on – the path. Professor Omid Safi, commenting on the sacred Sufi text “The Path of Love,” suggests that the Sufis saw ambiguity and paradox as tools for breaking through the human tendency to concretize religion and lose the power of seeking and encountering God. "Love," writes one of the Sufi masters quoted by Safi, "is a sweetness, but its inner reality is bewilderment." Being in love is seldom about simplicity. I find love compelling. May this be a year of overwhelming love, a spiritual yearning that leads to comfort, holiness and health for us and our world.

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Majlis Research Center compared Islamic declaration of human rights with the universal declaration of human rights. According to the Public Relations Office of MRC, there are many commonalities between Islamic declaration of human rights and the universal declaration of human rights and the right to life have been raised by both of them and human dignity have been also considered, the Office of Legal Studies said. Also, the right to education and rights of freedom have been considered basic rights and government and society are responsible for the enjoyment of these rights. According to the report, there are radical differences among principles, objectives, scope, and sanctions of these two systems so that its legal results can be observed in human rights documents. Human rights in Islam is not only much more (tens times) comprehensive than human rights in the west based on the principles, scope, and legal effects but also there are a number of shortcomings and defects in the west even to the animal rights based on three aspects, the report adds. , HUman Rights

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In Part 1, we talked about author voice and how to peel away layers of our identity to get to the juicy stuff. To dig deep and find the voices in all of us. Today we’ll tackle character voice. So how do we make our protagonist’s voice grab our readers by the throat? We mold their voice through their: • Words: What your characters say, the expressions they use, differentiates them from others. JUST LIKE IN REAL LIFE. I’m a thirty-something, middle class woman. How I speak is vastly different from a poor, male teenager from the Bronx. Your characters should not sound like you, they should sound like themselves. • Thoughts: What does your protagonist think about? I think about my kids and spending quality time with my husband. I worry about juggling family life and work. I yearn for success in my career, for spiritual fulfillment in whatever form that takes. Our boy from the Bronx thinks about school, the hot girl with pink sneakers in biology class, or basketball practice. He worries about dodging the bullies on the corner and having enough money for lunch. He yearns for graduation, for basketball to carry him out of his run-down home, to have all the things he doesn’t have. Tailor your character’s thoughts to their unique situation, not your own. • Actions: How does your protagonist react in certain situations or settings, or to others? Consider their history. If Jane survived abuse and is an adult woman trying to find herself, she may be skittish around men. Or maybe Jane’s angry as hell and burns things and has lots of piercings. The cool thing is, you get to decide how your character reacts, but it’s important to keep those reactions consistent and true to the personality you’ve contrived for them. • World View: How does your protagonist view the world? They may have come from a crappy, hard-knock background, but maybe they’re a warrior, a survivor. They see life’s letdowns as a challenge—something to conquer and they go after it. Life is a game of chess and they’re going to play and win. Or maybe they’re the victim of their own destinies. They complain and whine and want everyone to feel sorry for them, to lavish them with attention because their life has been so hard. Life is out to get them, everything turns out bad for them because they deserve it. The way a character views life, how they understand (or don’t) the people around them, and how they choose to confront them, feeds their voice. Let’s look at an example of voice done well. This is an excerpt lifted from Jennifer Donnelly’s YA novel, REVOLUTION: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, deejay. Like Cooper van Epp. Standing in his room—the entire fifth floor of a Hicks Street brownstone—trying to beat-match John Lee Hooker with some piece of trip-hop horror. On twenty thousand dollars’ worth of equipment he doesn’t know how to use. “This is the blues, man!” he crows. “It’s Memphis mod.” He pauses to pour himself his second scotch of the morning. “It’s like then and now. Brooklyn and Beale Street all at once. It’s like hanging at a house party with John Lee. Smoking Kents and drinking bourbon for breakfast. All that’s missing, all we need—” “—are hunger, disease, and a total lack of economic opportunity,” I say. Cooper pushes his porkpie back on his head and brays laughter. He’s wearing a wifebeater and an old suit vest. He’s seventeen, white as cream and twice as rich, trying to look like a bluesman from the Mississippi Delta. He doesn’t. He looks like Norton from The Honeymooners. This piece is less than two hundred words in length, yet the voice grabs you instantly. The author is skilled at packing important character details in a very short space. Immediately we get a strong sense of the protagonist’s voice: the teen has an acerbic sense of humor and she’s well-educated. She’s living in New York and her friend is a rich, wannabe musician who has little sense of the real world outside of his privileged walls. Or maybe our protagonist is just angry. Donnelly is a master of voice. As the novel continues you feel yourself living inside of the protagonist’s head. Andy’s (protag) pain becomes your own, you yearn along with her. The author accomplishes this through what we’ve listed above: authentic character words, thoughts, actions, and world view. Need a little help fine-tuning your character’s voices? Try a couple of exercises. 1.Study books with alternating points of view. This enables you to see quickly how unique each character’s voice is within the same novel. I recommend THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern or THE RUINS OF LACE by Iris Anthony. For romance fans I’d say try LORD OF SCOUNDRELS by Loretta Chase. All of these authors alternate character voice as the chapter changes and what’s more, their characters are vastly different from each other. They do an excellent job of making each of them “sound” different. 2. Write a journal entry for each of your POV characters. What do they reveal to you? How is their language different from your own? From one another? This is a great way to immerse yourself into the character’s mind, and ultimately to bring out their voice. How about you—how do you ensure your characters’ voices are authentic and unique? Pat Haggerty joins us on Wednesday, talking about “Idea Planning and Story Capture with Scapple” Bio:Heather Webb writes historical fiction, but reads about anything. As a freelance editor, she spends oodles of time helping writers find their voice and hone their skills–something she adores. She may often be found Twittering helpful links, or on her blog sharing writing advice and author interviews for readers. She is thrilled to be a contributor to this excellent community at RomanceUniversity.org! When not writing, Heather ogles cookbooks and chases her beloved gremlins. You may even catch her gobbling the odd bonbon. She lives in a small town in New England with her family, close enough to city hop, but far enough away to hear the frogs chirp at night. She can be found at her blog, Between the Sheets (http://www.HeatherWebb.net), or Twitter @msheatherwebb (http://twitter.com/msheatherwebb). Heather’s debut novel, BECOMING JOSEPHINE, will be published by Plume/Penguin in 2014. - Creating Likable Characters by Heather Webb - It’s All in the Voice by Heather Webb - The Story is in the Eye of the Beholder: Choosing the Best Point of View (Part 1) Heather Webb - Character Motivation Part Two—Discerning Motivation, Actions, Goals with Heather Webb - Editor Heather Webb – Making Characters Unforgettable a.k.a. Character Arc

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The Sons of Noah "The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.)These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the earth...Genesis 9 By MATT CRENSON AP National Writer Joseph Anton Koch (1768 - 1839) Jul 1, 2006 (AP)— Whoever it was probably lived a few thousand years ago, somewhere in East Asia. Taiwan, Malaysia and Siberia all are likely locations. He or she did nothing more remarkable than be born, live, have children and die. Yet this was the ancestor of every person now living on Earth, the last person in history whose family tree branches out to touch all 6.5 billion people on the planet today. That means everybody on Earth descends from somebody who was around as recently as the reign of Tutankhamen, maybe even during the Golden Age of ancient Greece. There's even a chance that our last shared ancestor lived at the time of Christ. "It's a mathematical certainty that that person existed," said Steve Olson, whose 2002 book "Mapping Human History" traces the history of the species since its origins in Africa more than 100,000 years ago. It is human nature to wonder about our ancestors who they were, where they lived, what they were like. People trace their genealogy, collect antiques and visit historical sites hoping to capture just a glimpse of those who came before, to locate themselves in the sweep of history and position themselves in the web of human existence. But few people realize just how intricately that web connects them not just to people living on the planet today, but to everyone who ever lived. With the help of a statistician, a computer scientist and a supercomputer, Olson has calculated just how interconnected the human family tree is. You would have to go back in time only 2,000 to 5,000 years and probably on the low side of that range to find somebody who could count every person alive today as a descendant. Furthermore, Olson and his colleagues have found that if you go back a little farther about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago everybody living today has exactly the same set of ancestors. In other words, every person who was alive at that time is either an ancestor to all 6 billion people living today, or their line died out and they have no remaining descendants. That revelation is "especially startling," statistician Jotun Hein of England's Oxford University wrote in a commentary on the research published by the journal Nature. "Had you entered any village on Earth in around 3,000 B.C., the first person you would have met would probably be your ancestor," Hein marveled. It also means that all of us have ancestors of every color and creed. Every Palestinian suicide bomber has Jews in his past. Every Sunni Muslim in Iraq is descended from at least one Shiite. And every Klansman's family has African roots. It's simple math. Every person has two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grandparents. Keep doubling back through the generations 16, 32, 64, 128 and within a few hundred years you have thousands of ancestors. It's nothing more than exponential growth combined with the facts of life. By the 15th century you've got a million ancestors. By the 13th you've got a billion. Sometime around the 9th century just 40 generations ago the number tops a trillion. But wait. How could anybody much less everybody alive today have had a trillion ancestors living during the 9th century? The answer is, they didn't. Imagine there was a man living 1,200 years ago whose daughter was your mother's 36th great-grandmother, and whose son was your father's 36th great-grandfather. That would put him on two branches on your family tree, one on your mother's side and one on your father's. In fact, most of the people who lived 1,200 years ago appear not twice, but thousands of times on our family trees, because there were only 200 million people on Earth back then. Simple division a trillion divided by 200 million shows that on average each person back then would appear 5,000 times on the family tree of every single individual living today. But things are never average. Many of the people who were alive in the year 800 never had children; they don't appear on anybody's family tree. Meanwhile, more prolific members of society would show up many more than 5,000 times on a lot of people's trees. Keep going back in time, and there are fewer and fewer people available to put on more and more branches of the 6.5 billion family trees of people living today. It is mathematically inevitable that at some point, there will be a person who appears at least once on everybody's tree. But don't stop there; keep going back. As the number of potential ancestors dwindles and the number of branches explodes there comes a time when every single person on Earth is an ancestor to all of us, except the ones who never had children or whose lines eventually died out. And it wasn't all that long ago. When you walk through an exhibit of Ancient Egyptian art from the time of the pyramids, everything there was very likely created by one of your ancestors every statue, every hieroglyph, every gold necklace. If there is a mummy lying in the center of the room, that person was almost certainly your ancestor, too. It means when Muslims, Jews or Christians claim to be children of Abraham, they are all bound to be right. "No matter the languages we speak or the color of our skin, we share ancestors who planted rice on the banks of the Yangtze, who first domesticated horses on the steppes of the Ukraine, who hunted giant sloths in the forests of North and South America, and who labored to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu," Olson and his colleagues wrote in the journal Nature. These are some of artifacts writer and editor Steve Olson uses to trace his family's genealogy and create a family tree, pictured March 13, 2006, at Olson's home in Bethesda, Md. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)Click and Drag Photo to resize. Plugging the planet's current population into his equation, he came up with just over 32 generations, or about 900 years. Chang knew that answer was wrong because it relied on some common, but inaccurate, assumptions that population geneticists often use to simplify difficult mathematical problems. For example, his analysis pretended that Earth's population has always been what it is today. It also assumed that individuals choose their mates randomly. And each generation had to reproduce all at once. Chang's calculations essentially treated the world like one big meet market where any given guy was equally likely to pair up with any woman, whether she lived in the next village or halfway around the world. Chang was fully aware of the inaccuracy people have to select their partners from the pool of individuals they have actually met, unless they are entering into an arranged marriage. But even then, they are much more likely to mate with partners who live nearby. And that means that geography can't be ignored if you are going to determine the relatedness of the world's population. A few years later Chang was contacted by Olson, who had started thinking about the world's interrelatedness while writing his book. They started corresponding by e-mail, and soon included in their deliberations Douglas Rohde, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist and computer expert who now works for Google. The researchers knew they would have to account for geography to get a better picture of how the family tree converges as it reaches deeper into the past. They decided to build a massive computer simulation that would essentially re-enact the history of humanity as people were born, moved from one place to another, reproduced and died. Rohde created a program that put an initial population on a map of the world at some date in the past, ranging from 7,000 to 20,000 years ago. Then the program allowed those initial inhabitants to go about their business. He allowed them to expand in number according to accepted estimates of past population growth, but had to cap the expansion at 55 million people due to computing limitations. Although unrealistic in some respects 55 million is a lot less than the 6.5 billion people who actually live on Earth today he found through trial and error that the limitation did not significantly change the outcome with regard to common ancestry. The model also had to allow for migration based on what historians, anthropologists and archaeologists know about how frequently past populations moved both within and between continents. Rohde, Chang and Olson chose a range of migration rates, from a low level where almost nobody left their native home to a much higher one where up to 20 percent of the population reproduced in a town other than the one where they were born, and one person in 400 moved to a foreign country. Allowing very little migration, Rohde's simulation produced a date of about 5,000 B.C. for humanity's most recent common ancestor. Assuming a higher, but still realistic, migration rate produced a shockingly recent date of around 1 A.D. Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

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Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), federal and state governments are setting up and running health insurance marketplaces for individuals, families and businesses to purchase quality health insurance. To check if your state is running its own health insurance marketplace, or if you should use the federal health insurance marketplace, visit HealthCare.gov. Low-income individuals and families can purchase cheaper insurance through the health insurance marketplaces than if they purchase it on their own. In addition to low-cost options, for some there may also be free options available. The primary goal of the ACA is to get Americans insured. Cost of insurance is one of the biggest obstacles preventing people from getting insured. The marketplaces are designed to be able to offer quality insurance plans to the uninsured at lower costs, including those in the lowest income brackets. Community Health Centers Government and privately subsidized community health centers throughout the country allow visitors access to some medical care at low or no cost. Even without health insurance, some health services are available. Some of these services include prenatal care, baby shots, prescription drugs, general primary care and even specialized care for some more serious conditions including substance abuse and HIV/AIDS. Community health centers offering the above health care and more at low or no cost based on an individual or family’s income can be found through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Medicaid is a government system of health insurance for people requiring financial assistance. Although Medicaid is a federal program, eligibility is determined state by state. Most states cover adults with children below certain income levels, as well as other groups including pregnant women and the disabled. Under the ACA, Medicaid significantly expanded. Now almost everyone under 65 with a family income up to 133 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (about $30,500 for a family of four in 2012) will qualify. To learn more about Medicaid in a specific states, visit HealthCare.gov. The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) CHIP is a federal program administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that provides matching funds to states for health insurance for children. CHIP provides low-cost health insurance to children in families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. CHIP eligibility differs slightly by state with some states also extending CHIP to parents and pregnant women. In most states, CHIP covers routine checkups, immunizations, doctor visits, prescriptions and emergency services. To learn about CHIP eligibility, visit InsureKidsNow.gov. Alternatively, fill out the health insurance marketplace application. At the end, those qualifying for CHIP will be offered it as an enrollment option. Lower Monthly Premiums Lower monthly premiums on health insurance purchased through the marketplace are available for people in lower income brackets. The amount of savings is based on an individual or family’s income level. For example, in 2013 savings kick in for individuals who earn up to $45,960 per year and families of four who earn up to $94,200 per year. To find out more about getting lower monthly premiums, visit HealthCare.gov. Lower Out-Of-Pocket Costs Lower out-of-pocket costs including deductibles and co-payments are available for health insurance purchased through the marketplace for people in lower income brackets. The amount of savings is based on an individual or family’s income level. For example, in 2013 savings kick in for individuals who earn up to $28,725 per year and families of four who earn up to $48,825 per year. To find out more about getting lower out-of-pocket costs, visit HealthCare.gov. Medicare is the government system of health insurance for people 65 or older. Medicare has two main parts: Part A and Part B. Medicare Part A is commonly referred to as hospital insurance. It covers expenses like inpatient care and nursing facilities. In some cases, it can cover home care. Most people who are 65 and older who have worked and paid taxes for at least 10 years, or have a spouse who worked and paid taxes for at least 10 years, don’t pay for Medicare Part A. Medicare Part B is non-hospital insurance and covers expenses like doctor visits and medical supplies. It is supplemental insurance, the base premium of which is just over $100 per month for most people. Medicare Part C and Medicare Part D are two other forms of supplemental insurance available to people 65 and older. Cost is based on levels of coverage and income. To learn more and find out if you are eligible for Medicare, visit Medicare.gov.

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It should come as no surprise that college is expensive. Nonetheless, there are several financial aid programs aimed at making college affordable for all families. Simply put, financial aid is money available to help you and/or your parents to pay for college. To be sure, students and parents are always considered to be the primary source of funds and are expected to contribute a certain amount of money. Below you will find a general overview of college financial aid. For more specific information please see the links at the bottom of the page. There are three main forms of financial aid: 1. Grants/Scholarships: Both grants and scholarships, commonly referred to as “gift aid,” provide money that does not need to be paid back. These awards are usually need-based or merit-based. A common prerequisite to receive these awards is to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). 2. Loans: Loans provide you with money for college but this is money that has to be paid back with interest. The most common loans for students are Stafford and Perkins loans. These loans both carry interest rates that are lower than a loan from a bank. Both also offer in-school deferment and a grace period. The most common loan for parents is the PLUS loan. 3. Work-study: A federally funded program that allows students to earn financial funding through part-time work. Determining Financial Need A student’s financial need is the difference between the standard Cost of Attendance (COA) of a college/university and theeExpected Family Contribution (EFC). The COA usually varies from school to school, but the EFC stays the same. COA – EFC = Financial Need The COA at the University of Washington-Seattle for the 2010-2011 academic school year for a resident student not living with his/her parents was $19,138. Tuition & Fees——————$8,701 Total cost————————$22,042 (COA) If a student’s EFC was $5,000 then their financial need would be $17,042. COA – EFC = Financial Need $22,042- $5,000 = $17,042 In sum, this example shows that the cost of attending the UW-Seattle is $22,042 per year. The FAFSA and/or the school has determined that your family needs to contribute $5,000 toward these college costs. This leaves the student with $17,042 in financial need. In order to help cover the remaining $17,042 the student would be looking for a combination of scholarships, grants, loans, and work-study. The $5,000 EFC in the previous example is enough to concern any student or parent about the cost of college. Add to that the $14,138 in financial need and you are likely to experience “sticker shock,” a general feeling that college costs are way too high and out of reach. Before you convince yourself of this phenomenon, consider the following: there is a difference, a significant one in many cases, between the “sticker price” of college (i.e. the COA) and the net price (i.e. what the average student actually pays for college). In keeping with the above example the “sticker price” for the UW-Seattle would be $22,042. Now let’s factor in financial aid: Sticker price – financial aid = net price $22,042 – $14,000 = $8,042 In this example, the student would still need to come up with $8,042. Notice, however, that this is significantly less than the $22,042 listed as the COA. To be sure, this example does include a $4,500 loan that has to be repaid. Also, please note that this is an example of a financial aid package. Every student will be offered a different financial aid package based on their family’s financial profile, the school they are attending, and their academic standing. Some might include more loans, others might not include work study, and some might include more grants. As you can see, financial aid can be a complex and dynamic process. I’ve sought to give you a general overview, but undoubtedly you have some additional questions. Please refer to the links below for additional information. As always, you are more than welcome to make an appointment with our Career Specialist or one of the counselors to further discuss this topic.

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Please go through below info posted by SCHEMAS AND FUNCTIONS In, functions provide the high-level logic for payroll calculations. Functions perform general processing u2013 such as calculating payroll taxes on a given set of wages, reading wagetypes from specific infotypes, calculating benefits premiums, and storing the results of the payroll calculation. There are dozens of functions in SAP payroll, some are country-specific and others are not. Each function is defined and documented via transaction PE04; you can also view the function documentation via transaction PDSY in releases 4.5 and greater, or with report RPDSYS00 in earlier versions. In SAP HR terms, a payroll function is not the same as. A payroll function does consist of ABAP code, but it is not executed in the same way an ABAP function would be. Payroll functions are executed within a schema by the payroll driver program (letu2019s assume RPCALCU0). A schema is just a collection of functions executed in a specific order u2013 each one passing its results on to the next. Schemas are always created and edited via transaction PE01, but are actually stored as a collection of rows in tables T52C0 (SAP standard schemas) and T52C1 (customer-created schemas and modified SAP-standard schemas). The payroll driver reads the lines in T52C0/T52C1 and executes the functions one by one. So how do we make the leap from a payroll function stored in a table tocode to get the work done? In transaction PE04 you can see the ABAP code associated with every function. The function name in the schema correlates to an ABAP form u2013 for to the ABAP form u2018fuwpbpu2019; to form u2018fuustaxu2019. So when the payroll driver is executing the schema, it takes the function name from the current row in schema, puts an u2018fuu2019 on the beginning of the name, and then does a u2018performu2019 statement on it. Itu2019s a very simple and elegant design. SCHEMAS AND FUNCTIONS In SAP Payroll, functions provide the high-level logic for payroll calculations. Functions perform general processing u2013 such as calculating payroll taxes on a given set of wages, reading wagetypes from specific infotypes, calculating benefits premiums, and storing the results of the payroll calculation. There are dozens of functions in SAP payroll, some are country-specific and others are not. Each function is defined and documented via transaction PE04; you can also view the function documentation via transaction PDSY in releases 4.5 and greater, or with report RPDSYS00 in earlier versions. In SAP HR terms, a payroll function is not the same as an ABAP function. A payroll function does consist of ABAP code, but it is not executed in the same way an ABAP function would be. Payroll functions are executed within a schema by the payroll driver program (letu2019s assume RPCALCU0). A schema is just a collection of functions executed in a specific order u2013 each one passing its results on to the next.are always created and edited via transaction PE01, but are actually stored as a collection of rows in tables T52C0 (SAP standard schemas) and (customer-created schemas and modified SAP-standard schemas). The payroll driver reads the lines in T52C0/T52C1 and executes the functions one by one. So how do we make the leap from a payroll function stored in a table to the execution of ABAP code to get the work done? In transaction PE04 you can seeassociated with every function. The function name in the schema correlates to an ABAP form u2013 for example payroll function WPBP maps to the ABAP form u2018fuwpbpu2019; function USTAX maps to form u2018fuustaxu2019. So when the payroll driver is executing the schema, it takes the function name from the current row in schema, puts an u2018fuu2019 on the beginning of the name, and then does a u2018performu2019 statement on it. Itu2019s a very simple and elegant design. In a broad sense, a wagetype simply holds a piece of data u2013 a rate, number, and/or amount. But more specifically, a wagetype has dozens of attributes that control how it is manipulated and processed. In the end though, it ends up as an object in the payroll results database that stores a rate, number, and/or amount. The most typical use of a wagetype is to store the amounts of earnings, deductions and taxes in an employeeu2019s paycheck. A personu2019s base pay is stored in a wagetype, the amount of their United Way deduction is stored in a wagetype, and their taxable wages & taxes are stored in wagetypes. Wagetypes, as the primary data element for employee paychecks, are also mapped to FI/CO accounts to record the debits and credits resulting from the paycheck and reported on the W-2 and other tax forms. Wagetypes can also be used to store statistical data u2013 such as the number of hours worked in a pay period, the average weekly wages for the past six months, or the amount of wages eligible for a profit sharing calculation. Wagetype attributes are stored in several tables, but the central table is T512W. Much more time will be spent on various aspects of T512W. There are three categories of wagetypes u2013 model, technical, and user. Model wagetypes are delivered by SAP for customers to use as guidelines for creating their own wagetypes. They always start with a letter and SAP may add, delete or update them in system upgrades or HRSPu2019s. Technical wagetypes always start with the u2018/u2019 symbol, and are delivered by SAP. They are intended for very specific standard processing in payroll, and while you can modify them, SAP may also update them during upgrades or HRSPu2019s. So if you ever (I mean EVER) change a technical wagetype, check it after each upgrade or HRSP to make sure it still has the attributes you want. And never delete a technical wagetype. User wagetypes always start with a number u2013 and these are wagetypes that SAP does not change during upgrades & HRSPu2019s. OK, SAP rarely changes them in upgrades and HRSPu2019s. User wagetypes are for all the company-specific payroll payments and deductions. RULES AND OPERATIONS A long-time client of ours once created a screen-saver message that stated u2018Payroll Rules!u2019. Those of us who were experienced SAP Payroll analysts or consultants immediately saw the double meaning, and corny humor, in that message. Rules contain the most basic logic used in SAP Payroll. Where a schema is a collection of functions, a rule is a collection of operations. An operation is a very basic piece of logic that is used, mostly, to manipulate wagetypes. For example, operation MULTI multiplies the number and rate fields of a wagetype to determine the amount to pay an employee. Operation OUTWP retrieves specific data about an employee so that another operation can make a decision on how to process it. For example, if the work contract on infotype 1 is UA then do u2018xu2019, if it is UB then do u2018yu2019, otherwise do u2018zu2019. Operations can also be viewed in transactions PE04 and PDSY, and are edited with transaction PE02. Where a functionu2019s ABAP equivalent form starts with u2018fuu2019, an operationu2019s ABAP form starts with u2018opu2019. For example, operation MULTI would have an ABAP form u2018opmultiu2019. Rules, like schemas, are stored in a table u2013 rules are stored in T52C5. The more senior SAP consultants who have been working with computer systems for many years often find similarities between payroll rules and programming mainframe computers in Assembly language. While there is nothing fancy about operations, when used correctly together they can be very powerful. Hopefully weu2019ve presented a good but brief overview that makes sense. In our next SAP Payroll Technical Basics article we will get into more detail on the common functions used in SAPu2019s payroll schema. Central Functions in the Payroll Schema Previously we presented an overview of the foundation of payroll processing - the basic structure of schemas, rules, function and operations. Now let's take a look at the major functions in the payroll schema. Functions can have up to four parameters, and usually the SAP documentation does a good job telling you what each parameter does. Documentation for functions and operations can be found via transactions PDSY or PE04. COPY This is the same as 'include' in ABAP and other programming languages. COPY just inserts the schema contained in parameter 1 when payroll is executed. Good programming style and good schema configuration style are basically the same - put commonly used logic in an 'include' so that it can be used in several places and to improve readability. BLOCK As of release 4.0 the schema log is organized in a collapsible tree structure. BLOCK BEG starts a node and BLOCK END ends the node. Everything between BEG and END is contained within the node. BLOCK BEG/END can be nested several levels deep. Again, place the BLOCK BEG/END functions appropriately to make the log easy to read. IF/ELSE/ENDIF There are two ways to specify the true/false condition for an IF function. SAP has several built-in conditions that you can use in parameter 2 (IF NAMC in schema U000). You can also specify a custom rule in parameter 1, and in the rule perform whatever logic you want. In the rule you use operation SCOND to set the true/false switch for the IF function. Pxxxx The payroll driver & schema read and process data from many infotypes. The common way of doing this is with infotype-specific functions - named as 'P' and the four-digit infotype number. So, P0014 reads and processes data from infotype 14, P0168 processes life insurance plans from infotype 168 and P2010 reads in additional payments from infotype 2010. Many of these functions, but not all, allow you to futher refine the processing with a payroll rule. Schema UAP0, for example, shows that P0014 is processed futher by rule U011. Function P0168 is one of those that does not use a rule (in some older releases it does) - you specify options in parameter 1 instead (see schema UBE1). Some infotypes are used in payroll, but do not have a Pxxx function. Examples include infotypes 207, 208, 209 and 210 which are all read and processed in the main tax function USTAX. Infotypes 0, 1, 7, and 8 are processed by function WPBP. PIT PIT is an acronym for Process Input Table, and is one of the most used and most powerful functions in payroll. When wagetypes are read into payroll by the Pxxx functions, they are stored in an internal table called IT - Input Table. PIT loops through that table and applies logic contained in rules. So for each wagetype in the IT, it will apply the logic from a rule. The goal of PIT is to move wagetypes out of the IT and into the RT - Results Table. Most often, the rules called by PIT will change some attributes of the wagetype and then transfer it from the IT to the RT. The wagetype can also be left in the IT and even moved to other tables. We'll cover those possibilities when we reiew how operations work. A good example of PIT is in schema UAL0 - PIT X023. When the payroll driver gets to this point in the schema, PIT will look at each wagetype in the IT, and rule X023 tells it to do certain things depending on the wagetype's value in processing class 20. Values 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and B will move the wagetype to the RT, while values 1, 7, and 8 leave it in the IT. Value 2 has no operation, essentially eliminating the wagetype from the IT. PRT PRT is short for Process Results Table. Although most wagetype processing happens via PIT, there are several occasions where you want to process the wagetypes that have already been transferred to the Results Table (RT). PRT work much the same as PIT, looping through the RT and applying logic from a rule. In schema UTX0, PRT is used to process tax wagetypes that are already in the RT. Function UTX0 (US tax function) returns its wagetypes directly to the RT, so any processing on tax wagetypes has to be done with a PRT function. ACTIO The ACTIO function processes a payroll rule, but it does not loop through a wagetype table. Instead it can loop over the different workplace/basic pay records and process the rule for each one. For example, suppose the employee had two infotype 1 records for the current pay period. ACTIO would have two records to loop through. Schema UTX0 again has a good example of ACTIO using rule UWH1 to calculate the number of working hours in the pay period. Commonly Used Operations in SAP Payroll Previously we presented an overview of the foundation of payroll processing and information on the central functions in the payroll schema. So you know the structure of payroll processing and the major functions - now we will look at payroll operations, where most of the real work gets done. This subject area is very large and we are only scratching the surface here. Like functions, documentation for operations can be found via transactions PDSY or PE04. Operations can be placed in two broad groups - those that make decisions and those that manipulate wagetypes. Some of them fit into both groups. Working with wagetypes in a rule is sort of like working with internal tables in ABAP. The function that called the rule (PIT, PRT, P0014 or whatever) loops through the table, placing each row, one at a time, in a 'header' space. You work with the wagetype in that header space, and when finished add it back to the table. MULTI, DIVID These operations let you multiply two fields of a wagetype and store it in a third. The fields you can work with are AMT, RTE and NUM. MULTI RNA would multiply the rate by the number and store the result in the amount field. DIVID ANA would divide the amount field by the number and store it back in the amount field. NUM, RTE and AMT These are very basic and powerful operations that manipulate the content of their respective fields. The F1 help documentation is very useful since there are so many ways to use these operations. On a basic level, you set values like NUM=1 or AMT=2.50 - though that it is bad practice to do this. Use constants instead - create a constant in T511K called ZNUM and then do NUM=KZNUM (set number field to the constant ZNUM). Since constants are date-effective and rules are not, this will give you more flexibility when the number has to change. You can set the field of the wagetype in the header equal to the corresponding field of another wagetype - AMT=E9XXX sets the amount equal to the amount field of wagetype 9XXX in the RT. AMT< 9XXX sets the amount field to 9XXX in the IT only if it is less than what is already in the amount field (takes the minimum of the two values). Finally, you can use arithmetic on the values. RTE100 multiplies the contents of the rate field by 100 and stores it back in the rate field. AMTKZNUM multiplies the amount by whatever is in constant ZNUM. ADDWT So by now we've set the values of our wagetype using MULTI, DIVID, AMT, RTE and NUM. ADDWT transfers the wagetype in the header to some other table - enabling us to save all that work before the next wagetype goes to the header. The basic idea is that you transfer the wagetype to another table, with or without changing the wagetype number. ADDWTE* adds the wagetype to the RT without changing the wagetype number. ADDWTE9XXX transfers it to the RT and renames it to 9XXX. Again, the F1 help documentation will tell you all the tables that you can transfer to. ELIMI and RESET Splits are attributes of wagetypes that link them to some other table in payroll. Sometimes you have to remove certain splits when doing work in a rule - that's what ELIMI does (ELIMInate splits). After you eliminate splits on a wagetype, within the same rule you can restore them with RESET. Generally you should avoid eliminating splits - it can lead to problems in pro-ration and reporting. So use with caution and test your work well. FILLF This simple operation resets the value of a wagetype field. For example, FILLF A resets the amount back to what it was when the rule was first called. So, here's how you would put these all together to calculate a deduction that is fixed percentage of base pay (there are several ways to do this, here's just one). Let's assume base pay is in the IT, the percentage is stored as a whole number in constant ZNUM, and you've made a rule that has a section for wagetype **** and for base pay, '0BAS' in this case. The deduction will be 4XXX. So in the schema we will do a PIT on rule Z001: PIT Z001. In the rule: Wagetype ****: ADDWT * (if it's not 0BAS we just want to pass it on without changing it) Wagetype 0BAS: ADDWT *, NUM=KZNUM, MULTI ANA, AMT/-100, ADDWT 4XXX (pass 0BAS on to the output table so we don't lose it, set the number field equal to constant ZNUM, multiply the number by the amount, divide the amount by -100 since we store the percentage as a whole number and we want deductions to be negative, and store the result as wagetype 4XXX) Many times we only want to take action if certain conditions exist - for example we only want to calculate deduction 4XXX for certain types of employees. For these cases, decision operations let us choose when to take that action. Decisions put their results into what is called the variable key - think of this like a case statement with wildcards. If I put the company code in the variable key, then the line that has 1234 will execute for company code 1234, 2*** will execute for any company that begins with 2, and **** will execute for companies that match neither. OUTWP This operation lets us make decisions based on various data elements in the WPBP table in payroll - roughly the infotype 0 and 1 data. There are many elements to look at, via the F1 help documentation. As an example, you could look at the company code via OUTWPCOMPY - this puts the contents of the company code field into the variable key. VAKEY Like OUTWP this places certain data in the variable key - see the F1 help documentation for all the possibilities. NUM, RTE and AMT Here they are again, as decisions. If I say AMT?0, it will compare the value in the amount field to zero and return either >, <, or =. Or you could compare it to a constant or another wagetype using the same concepts mentioned above. VWTCL This operation returns the value of a certain processing class for the current wagetype. For example, VWTCL 93 places in the variable key the value of processing class 93. Rule X023 is a good example of how processing class values are used. In our previous example we calculated deduction 4XXX for every person who had base pay wagetype 0BAS. Using OUTWP you could decide to calculate it only for people in certain personnel areas/subareas, or for certain employee subgroups for example. Let's say that you only want to calculate it when someone has entered wagetype 4XXX in infotype 14 or 15. Assume here that the wagetype is entered in the infotype with something required in the number field. Here are the steps you could do: Wagetype 0BAS:*, NUM= 4XXX, do a decision on NUM?0 and if = then do nothing, otherwise (the * condition) do NUM=KZNUM, MULTI ANA, AMT/-100, ADDWT 4XXX. Depending on how your wagetype splits are setup at this point, you might want to ELIMI R just before NUM=4XXX and RESET R before ADDWT 4XXX. As mentioned earlier, this is just a scratch on the surface. When configuring payroll you can not focus exclusively on just one piece of the puzzle - understanding how all the pieces are related will lead to the best configuration. There are many ways you can combine functions, operations, processing classes, and constants. SAP has created a powerful and flexible configuration model for payroll. When used correctly it gets a lot of work done well, but when done incorrectly it leads to confusion and instability. So test and document your configuration well! There are lots of threads available online Below are some threads Payroll schema is step by step process integration of many functions & pcr's available for different countries, initially you check the standard schema & their Functions & operations docs in PE04, Run payroll for one employee & then check the Payroll log then you can find out the process of schema & how it is working. You can't find all data of schema in one document.

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The statutory registers comprise the official records of births, marriages and deaths in Scotland from 1 January 1855 when civil registration replaced the old system of registration by parishes of the Established Church (Church of Scotland). From 1855, registration became compulsory, regardless of religious denomination, and followed a standard format for each record type. More information was required in order to register an event, particularly at the start of the new system. 1855 birth records were very detailed and are a boon to the family historian. In addition to details about the child (date, place and time of birth, full name, sex), the parents' names (including maiden surname of mother), father's occupation, name of informant and relationship to child, an 1855 birth certificate also contains information on siblings, the ages and birthplaces of both parents, their usual residence and the date and place of their marriage. Such detail proved difficult to sustain and entries were modified from 1856. Information on siblings was removed, as were ages and birthplaces of parents and date and place of parents' marriage. In birth certificates since 1861 however, the date and place of the parents' marriage was reinstated. Example of an 1855 births image See Images for a detailed breakdown of the information you can expect to find on statutory birth entries in any given year. Statutory Births Index The statutory births index contains entries from the indexes to the civil registers of births for all Scotland, from 1855 until 2014. The index does not include: - the full date of the event because only the year was captured when the indexes were compiled, although the full date is present on register entries themselves. -the parents' names, but these are present on register entries themselves. Images of Statutory Births Images of statutory births from 1855 to 1915 are available to view on this site. A digital image is a scan of the microfiche copy of the original register page containing the entry in which you are interested. It therefore contains the same information you would normally see when looking at the actual record. Images are Crown copyright; however, they are not official copies. If you wish to have a certified, legally admissible copy of the specific register entry in which you are interested, you will need to order an extract. See Extract Orders Example of a statutory births image You may occasionally come across records with a note in the left margin 'RCE' or 'Reg. Cor. Ent.' followed by a volume number, page number and date. RCE stands for Register of Corrected Entries, or, from 1965, Register of Corrections,Etc. If, after an entry in a register had been completed, an error was discovered or some other amendment was required as a result of new information, the original entry could not be altered. Instead, each registrar kept a register of corrected entries in which such amendments were written, originally after they had been approved by a sheriff. Corrections might be to name, residence, identity, or as a result of a sheriff's finding in a paternity case, with the father's name being added as directed by the sheriff, or as a result of an illegitimate child being legitimised by its parents' subsequent marriage. When an extract certificate is issued of an entry to which an RCE relates, the extract must reflect the amendments recorded in the RCE. Images of RCEs are now available here on ScotlandsPeople. Please read the help on RCEs before viewing them. The following is an example of an RCE relating to a name change in a birth entry: Birth entry showing RCE reference in left margin Use the information from a statutory births entry to further your search. The parents' names, and date and place of marriage details (1855 entries and those from 1861 onwards) can help you to find the parent's marriage. Bear in mind that parents did not have to prove the date of their marriage prior to registering the birth of a child, therefore it is not unusual for the date of marriage to be incorrect, either by accident or by design e.g. to conceal an illegitimacy. Use the addresses shown to confirm census details, and to track the family in the earlier census returns. The Minor Records The minor records comprise records of births, deaths and marriages of Scottish persons outside Scotland. The following indexes to births in the minor records are available on this site: Air Register (from 1948) records births on UK registered aircraft anywhere in the world, where it appears that one of the childs parents was usually resident in Scotland. Consular Returns (from 1914) comprise registrations of birth by British consuls relating to persons of Scottish descent or birth. Foreign Returns (1860-1965) Register of Births in Foreign Countries, which comprises births of children of Scottish parentage, based on evidence submitted by the parents and due consideration of such evidence. High Commission Returns (from 1964) relate to the returns of children born of Scottish descent in certain Commonwealth countries. Marine Register (from 1855) records births on British-registered merchant vessels at sea, where it appears that one of the child's parents was usually resident in Scotland. Service Returns (from 1881) include Army Returns of births of Scottish persons at military stations abroad (1881-1959) and Service Departments Registers (from 1959) incorporating births outside the United Kingdom of children of Scottish residents serving in or employed by HM forces. To search the minor records indexes for births, go to the statutory births search form and select Minor Records from the Counties/City/Minor Records drop-down list. The screen will refresh with the available minor records displayed in the District drop-down list. Images of Minor Record births are available here on ScotlandsPeople up to 1913. For index entries after 1913, you may wish to order an extract to see the full details of the register entry. See Extracts for more information. The following sample images illustrate the type of information found in the Minor Records:

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Its a scarlet tanager kind of yearWritten by George Ellison - font size decrease font size increase font size “The scarlet tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves. You can hardly believe that a living creature can wear such colors.” — Henry David Thoreau This seems to be a scarlet tanager kind of year. I’ve been seeing and hearing them at my house, along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and in the Great Smokies. No bird in our region is more striking. Jet black wings on a trim red almost luminescent body, the male is impossible to overlook. And it’s easy to recognize by both song and call. I almost never encounter the summer tanager (whose entire body is rosy red) in Western North Carolina, but the scarlet tanager is encountered every year — to a greater or lesser extent — during the breeding season (mid-April to mid-October) in mature woodlands (especially slopes with pine and oak) between 2,000 and 5,000 feet in elevation. The bird winters in northwestern South America, where it enjoys the company of various tropical tanagers that do not migrate. Keep in mind that the female doesn’t resemble her mate except in shape. She is olive-green or yellow-orange in color. Also keep in mind there is a variant form (morph) of the male tanager that is orange rather than scarlet in color. I suspect this variant is the result of something peculiar in its diet. My first and only encounter with an orange scarlet tananger was in the Lake Junaluska area several years ago. The call note used by both the male and female is a distinctive “chip-burr … chip-burr.” The male’s song is not pretty. He sounds like a robin with a sore throat; that is, the notes in the song are hoarse and raspy. When gathering nesting material, the female sometimes sings a shorter “whisper” song in response to the male’s louder song. Males in adjacent territories often engage in combative counter-singing and will, as a last resort, go beak-to-beak. On our property, a creek sometimes serves as a boundary — the line drawn in the sand, as it were. The males sing defiantly at one another across the water and sometimes make forays into enemy territory. Meanwhile, the female is busy incubating her eggs. When not squabbling with a nearby male, her mate brings food.

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Back in August I posted a picture of a Pisidium, a tiny clam (family Sphaeriidae) that was about 2 mm long. And now here is something from the opposite end of the size spectrum: Tridacna gigas, the largest known extant mollusk species. The shells of this species can grow up to 1.5 meters in length. The pen provides a scale. This particular specimen sits in the elevator lobby on the 3rd floor of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. It is an area normally closed to the public, and because of that nobody gets to see it except the people who work there. I was there last Tuesday working in the mollusk library, which is also on the 3rd floor. While waiting for the elevator on my way down I snapped this picture for all to see. More information on Tridacna gigas: Animal Diversity Web

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Today there is more conservation in agriculture than ever before. More American farmers are choosing environmentally responsible management, protecting the land and improving the efficiency of their operations while adding to their bottom line. The 2004 National Crop Residue Management Survey (Survey), recently, confirms that 41 percent of all cropland is under a conservation-tillage system, meaning that farmers leave the stubble or residue from the previous crop to cover at least one-third of the soil's surface after planting. No-till, the most environmentally friendly production system, is used to the greatest extent, covering 62.4 million acres in 2004. By leaving the crop residue and reducing or eliminating tillage trips, farmers protect the soil from water and wind erosion, conserve moisture, reduce runoff, improve wildlife habitat, and limit output of labor, fuel and machinery. The Survey, last completed in 2002 and coordinated by the Conservation Technology Information Center (CTIC) in partnership with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, is a biennial survey of tillage systems used in the U.S. With a no-till system, most of the soil is undisturbed, and seeds are placed into the soil with minimal soil and residue disturbance. The Survey reports that no-till acres increased 7.1 million acres to 62.4 million, up from 55.3 million acres in 2002. That means no-till is used on almost 23 percent of all cropland in the country, up from 20 percent in 2002 and 17.5 percent in 2000. Bob Rawlings has been using no-till on his Georgia farm for many years. For him, no-till is the only way to grow corn, cotton, peanuts and even watermelons while improving the soil biology. “One needs to understand how important soil biology is in order to improve one's dirt. And the soil biology can't function properly when one plows,” Rawlings says. “God put a cover on every productive acre in the world, and we shouldn't leave the soil naked.” Dan Towery, NRCS natural resources specialist who organizes data collection from each county in the U.S. says, “This Survey documents the fact that farmers are able to increase soil productivity, protect the environment and, at the same time, make a profit. With conservation-tillage being used on 113 million acres, up nearly 10 million acres from 2002, we know that more farmers than ever before are using conservation.” The Survey not only provides a snapshot of tillage usage for a year, it also tracks trends in adoption of conservation-tillage over time. Larry Clemens, Midwest agricultural team leader with The Nature Conservancy, is encouraged with the growing number of acres managed with conservation in mind. For example, a Nature Conservancy priority watershed in northern Indiana reported 80 percent no-till soybeans (18 percent higher than the state average) and 55 percent no-till corn (36 percent higher than the state average) in 2004. No-till, he says, is part of a system of farm management practices that improves the soil, which means better crops. It also enables the soil to better act like a sponge and reduce runoff from cropland. “By using no-till, farmers are in effect creating a better sponge out of their soil. Over time the soil holds more water. So with less runoff from cropland, the nearby rivers and streams have better water quality and better habitat for aquatic species. Plus, increased soil organic matter improves nutrient and water-holding capacity for crops,” says Clemens. The greatest increase in no-till acres occurred in South Dakota — over 2 million acres of no-till have been added since 2000. The reason, says Dwayne Beck of Dakota Lakes Research Farm, is economics. No-till systems with diverse crop rotations are economically superior to conventional farming in South Dakota. This is especially true in dry years because not tilling the ground saves valuable soil moisture. “No-till has become the competitive edge here. Farmers have figured out the best crop rotation and pesticide program, and they are out-competing the conventional tillers for the land,” says Beck. For more information about the 2004 National Crop Residue Management Survey, contact CTIC at (765) 494-9555 or go to www.ctic.purdue.edu. The Conservation Technology Information Center, based in West Lafayette, Ind., is a trusted, credible source of technology and information about improving soil quality.

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From: Planetary Science Institute Posted: Saturday, February 16, 2013 Feb. 15, 2013, Tucson, Ariz. -- NASA's longstanding Cassini mission to Saturn continues to provide scientists with exciting new insights on moons Titan and Enceladus as well as the planet's striking rings, Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Amanda R. Hendrix reported at a conference today. "Cassini, our emissary in the Saturn system since 2004, and the only spacecraft in orbit in the outer solar system, is still going strong," said Hendrix, who spoke today on "The Organic Lakes of Titan and Other Moons of Saturn" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston. "Cassini's longevity allows the study of seasonal variations, along with temporal variations on a variety of scales - and its suite of 12 instruments is making complementary measurements, providing insight into different aspects of various scientific discoveries," Hendrix, an investigator on the Cassini mission, said. These areas of study include Titan's lakes: composition, depth and seasonal variability; Titan's weather patterns; the interior structure of Titan; Enceladus' startling plume activity; surprises on the other moons, such as Iapetus, Dione and Mimas; and Saturn's bizarre collection of small moons. Cassini will remain in orbit around Saturn until September 2017. The spacecraft began increasing its orbital inclination again last year, allowing for prime viewing of the magnificent rings, as well as the high latitudes of the planet and Titan. The first glimpses of Titan's surface were provided by the Huygens probe, launched as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission. The probe was released in late 2004 and made its way through the hazy atmosphere of Titan to the surface in January 2005. Images of Titan's surface - including its amazing lakes, dunes and river channels - continue to be returned by Cassini's radar instrument, along with the imaging camera and the infrared mapping spectrometer. The remaining instruments in Cassini's payload study the atmosphere, and its seasonal variations, while the radio science antenna makes measurements of Titan's interior structure and its subsurface ocean. "When Cassini arrived at Saturn, it was winter in the northern hemisphere of Titan, roughly like January on Earth. Now it's the equivalent of May on Titan, so spring in the north. And we're seeing significant variations on Titan that are the result of this seasonal transition," Hendrix said. Such changes include the rain at low latitudes causing surface changes, and atmospheric variations such as haze layer changes and polar vortex evolution. "By continuing to observe and study Titan, we can put together the pieces of the puzzle of its methane-based hydrological cycle." Enceladus and its active south polar plume also continue to amaze, as it steadily ejects vapor and fine ice particles into the Saturn system. In Hendrix's talk, she reviewed a summary of results from Enceladus and some of Saturn's other intriguing moons. Amanda R. Hendrix Mark V. Sykes // end //

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Lumbar spinal stenosis is a condition where the spaces in the spinal canal of the lower back have become obstructed or narrowed leading to pressure being placed on the spinal nerves and the spinal cord. Compression of blood vessels, and problems with the intervertebral discs, spinal ligaments, and other important tissues and structures can also be both the cause and effect of spinal stenosis. Lumbar spinal stenosis is an extremely common condition suffered by many with symptoms ranging from mild, occasional aching in the back or the buttocks, to acute shooting pain down into the feet, numbness, weakness, mobility problems, bowel and bladder incontinence, and paralysis. Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Surgery lumbar spinal stenosis treatment largely depends on the degree of narrowing in the spinal canal and the cause of that pathology. Stenosis may be due to a disc herniation, rupture, or bulging disc, in which case traction, endoscopic discectomy, or open traditional discectomy may be indicated. Developments in both surgical technique and hardware mean that patients may also be able to have an artificial disc replacement in order to preserve movement in the spine. Traditionally, the removal of an intervertebral disc has meant that the spine needed extra support through fusion surgery, which increases the risk of complication over more minimally invasive procedures. Fusion surgery in itself may, however, be indicated, as this can restore the correct alignment of the spine and prevent spinal curvature or slippage from putting pressure on the spinal nerves or cord. Foraminotomy for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis If stenosis is a result of osteophyte growth (bone spurs) in the foramina where the spinal nerve roots exit the spine then a foraminotomy is the most likely treatment. Some people may have congenitally narrow foramina making lumbar spinal stenosis more likely. A foraminotomy involves the use of a burr, or small surgical saw, to shave off the outer edge of the foramen and decompress the spinal nerves. This can have the effect of almost instantly relieving the symptoms of lumbar spinal stenosis, although some residual numbness, weakness, and pain is usual as the nerve heals. For those with a longer history of nerve compression the pain may never subside as permanent damage has occurred. X-Stop for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Lumbar spinal stenosis and sciatica can be treated in some cases through a procedure performed under a local anesthetic where a device called the X-Stop is inserted between the spinous processes at the back of the spine. This device restores intervertebral height and can give patients the same type of relief from nerve compression when standing that they may feel when bending forward. The back surgery is minimally invasive and can effectively remove or postpone the need for more invasive procedures such as discectomy, laminectomy or spinal fusion. Laminectomy, Laminotomy, and Laminoplasty for Spine Decompression Laminectomy, laminotomy, and laminoplasty are all procedures aiming at decompressing the back and relieving pressure on the spinal nerves and spinal cord. If disc herniation or osteophyte growth is reducing space in the spinal canal then the excision of a portion of the thick bony structure (lamina) covering the back of the spine can effectively decompress the back. A laminotomy is where a small window is cut into the back bone for decompression, a laminectomy involves the removal of a large portion of the back bone and often requires spinal fusion afterwards, and a laminoplasty creates a hinged effect in the back bone in order to increase the space without compromising spinal stability. The degree of spinal stenosis and the presence of narrowing at one or more levels will determine which of these procedures is the most appropriate. Conservative and Alternative Treatments for Lumbar Spinal Stenosis Of course, back surgery is not the only option for treating lumbar spinal stenosis, with many patients finding a significant degree of relief when using conservative treatments or alternative therapies. NSAIDs are frequently used to manage pain and inflammation, although they do have some serious potential side effects particularly when used long-term. Other analgesics may help, as can muscle relaxants, and alternative remedies to reduce inflammation and pain. Some patients have selective nerve root blocks as both part of the treatment for their lumbar stenosis and part of the diagnosis itself. These injections use a steroid medication to reduce inflammation around the nerve at the level thought to be causing the pain. A local anaesthetic is usually injected at the same time and this can provide instant relief from the symptoms of lumbar stenosis. If the pain does not dissipate then it is likely that a different vertebral level is responsible for the symptoms of back pain and a further nerve root block is indicated to establish the origin of the pain. Physical Therapy Treatment Physical therapy may help patients avoid activities which exacerbate pain and the strengthening of the core muscles can often help correct postural problems which may be responsible for the stenosis in the first place. Back exercises for sciatica, and specific exercises to help with disc herniation or disc bulging can reduce pain and discomfort and ensure that the muscles of the spine do not become tight or atrophy through disuse. Inversion tables and traction devices can help to relax and realign the spine, but the latter may cause painful muscle spasms for some. Ice packs can help take down inflammation, and heat packs may relieve tired muscles – although inappropriate use of cryotherapy or thermotherapy may exacerbate a condition. Never apply heat to an acute injury, for example. Many patients also find that the Alexander Technique can help them address postural issues related to their lumbar stenosis, and that the use of ergonomic furniture and work devices also helps. Engaging in regular, appropriate, physical activity is also beneficial and should be discussed with a qualified professional who is aware of the patient’s medical history. Low impact exercise is usually recommended, such as swimming, walking, or marching on a mini trampoline. Patients often effectively treat their lumbar spinal stenosis using acupuncture and acupressure as this can affect the way the body perceives pain signals. Chiropractic techniques and orthopaedic manipulation may be of help for some patients, but those with more progressed stenosis may find that this treatment is inadvisable as it presents certain risks. With a huge number of people suffering from lumbar spinal stenosis, and stenosis of the neck and mid-back, it is hardly surprising that so many treatment options are available. Whichever course of action a sufferer takes, it is usually a case of simple trial and error to work out the therapy most effective for each individual.

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More and more data collected in organizations is in an encoded format, essentially a binary classification of data. These can be images, audio files, video, or even common formats like Word and Excel files. This data contains lots of important data, but the formatting must be stripped out in order for users to effectively search this data.This presentation starts with a discussion of the three types of data in SQL Server to set the framework. It demos and explains: - structured data - semi-structured data - unstructured data The talk then looks at how unstructured data is stored in SQL Server, specifically briefly looking at Filestream and Filetable.There is a short discussion of full text search, with a look at the changes in SQL Server 2012 before moving on to the iFilter interfaces which are used to search the binary data while ignoring the encoding. There are demos of the basics of CONTAINS and FREETEXT searches, along with some of the more advanced options, like customizable NEAR and weighting of search terms.The talk finishes with a short look at the new semantic search feature in SQL Server 2012.

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ST. LOUIS (KMOX) – A new local study finds it would be a good thing for mothers to try to lose some weight between babies. Saint Louis University researcher Dr. Sarah Hopkins says the time between pregnancies is a golden window for obese women to lose weight. “Women who lost weight between their pregnancies had a lower risk of having a large baby in the subsequent pregnancy which is a good thing because large babies have an increased risk of becoming overweight in their childhood,” she explained. “Losing weight between pregnancies helps the mother get the child off to a health start to life.” Large babies are more likely to have low blood sugar and jaundice soon after birth. The population-based study looked at the records of more than 10,000 Missouri women who delivered their first two babies between 1998 and 2005.

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Since I decided to blog this research five years ago, one recurrent theme has been my attempts to understand the largest class of prehistoric buildings Class Ei. This includes Durrington Walls, the Sanctuary, Mount Pleasant, Stonehenge, and Woodhenge, the latter being the most interesting as a result of its non-circular plan. When, as a result of Tim Darvill’s 1996 paper, , I first considered Class Ei buildings, I was initially very sceptical of their scale; I had been working on IA roundhouses where there were clear engineering limits, and these appeared to break my rules for timber structures. Against this, I began the compilation of a list of characteristics that indicated they were buildings. While the technical insight that resolved this dilemma probably came from studying the engineering of earlier Longhouses, ultimately, progress comes from breaking down your preconceptions by building models that don’t work. I took the unusual step of actually publishing some the models that had not worked in order to demonstrate why it was necessary to create a more complex solution. It is harder than you might imagine to deduce from the evidence, rather than simply impose ideas on it. '...when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' Sherlock Holmes – The Blanched Soldier, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, 1927 The availability of Google SketchUp - a free 3D CAD light application, has transformed the prospects for my research and given it new direction and impetus. In short it allows me to create a three dimensional model/drawing composed of layers I can turn on an off, each of which might contain a single component or a whole section of the structure, and these can be then viewed in any combination. - At this stage, I am creating a complete set of components for each main layer, which allows for the creation of considerable variation. - Colour /texture is important both to convey the notion of wood and to differentiate different layers and types of components. - For the model to work, thickness matters; squared timber is assumed for the horizontal ‘elements’ at a nominal section of 6” /15cm. - Taper is also important, certainly for posts. - Another key decision is roof pitch;I have gone for 3:4:5 or about 53°.

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I am trying to install and test a development server on my Windows 7 laptop following this tutorial. However when I ran the script on the browser as: I only got: Does anyone have any pointers for fixing this? closed as not a real question by random♦ Jul 28 '11 at 13:35 It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, visit the help center.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question. You basically need to tell Apache to, instead of sending the text of So it sounds like things messed up where you had to add your PHP interpreter as a handler. Did you perform step 5 of your tutorial correctly? Also, if I'm not mistaken, newer versions of Apache don't use PHP is probably not installed correctly or you haven't installed apache with php support. Are you building all this from source? Right now you have a php file which, when navigated to, doesn't display results. Instead it displays it's code just like if it was a simple text file. This is cause by PHP not being able to parse the file and interpret it as code. Therefore your browser sees it as text and displays it as such. The comment below (by horatio) outlines what specifically needs to be present for PHP and Apache to work nicely together. Installing PHP isn't the only thing needed, you need to modify apache's config file to tell it how to handle .php files.

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Milwaukee is the largest city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin, the 30th most populous city in the United States, and 39th most populous region in the United States. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County and is located on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan. According to 2010 census data, the City of Milwaukee has a population of 594,833. Milwaukee is the main cultural and economic center of the Milwaukee–Racine–Waukesha Metropolitan Area with a population of 2,025,898 as of 2010. The first Europeans to pass through the area were French missionaries and fur traders. In 1818, the French-Canadian explorer Solomon Juneau settled in the area, and in 1846 Juneau's town combined with two neighboring towns to incorporate as the City of Milwaukee. Large numbers of German and other immigrants helped increase the city's population during the 1840s and the following decades. Known for its brewing traditions, major new additions to the city include the Milwaukee Riverwalk, the Wisconsin Center, Miller Park, an internationally renowned addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and Pier Wisconsin, as well as major renovations to the U.S. Cellular Arena. In addition, many new skyscrapers, condos, lofts and apartments have been constructed in neighborhoods on and near the lakefront and riverbanks.

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The push for development in northern Australia is gathering momentum, with the government recently releasing a draft of its Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to help finance large projects. The development of northern Australia will crucially depend on harnessing the north’s abundant available water resources. Over the next five years the government will develop plans to manage these water resources. However we have to get these plans right from the start to ensure the north’s waters are developed sustainably. To do so, we can start by looking south. Full steam ahead In June 2015, the federal government released its long-awaited northern Australia White Paper. Among commitments to agriculture in northern Australia, the white paper targets more efficient use of water resources across the north. Over 60% of Australia’s total surface water runoff occurs north of the Tropic of Capricorn. A 2014 CSIRO review indicates that this could potentially support up to 1.4 million hectares of irrigated land, increasing Australia’s irrigated area by 50%. Reaching this potential, however, would come at the financial and environmental cost of around 90 new dams and many weirs and other infrastructure. The white paper promises sustainable development, but the problem is the timeframe. The paper commits, over the next two years, to assessment of the water resources in the initial priority catchments, and within five years, to the development of water resource plans. These plans will include a cap on water use, and a water market to trade water allocations. But the paper is silent on what we know about northern ecosystems and how water infrastructure might affect them, and makes no allowance for climate change. Learning from the south There is much to be learned from the current implementation of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, which will result in upgrades to existing water plans in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. The past 20 years have seen almost continual reform in Murray-Darling, demonstrating how hard it is to achieve sustainability when water resources are over-used. Australia is currently spending over A$13 billion to restore the Murray-Darling Basin catchments to something approaching the minimum needed to maintain the ecological health of the system. Avoiding this will avoid a major overhaul in the future and provide investor confidence. Managing this risk to wildlife Northern Australia is home to 301 nationally threatened species, as well as the iconic Great Barrier Reef, already under threat. In 2004 one of us (Barry) looked at environmental risks of new irrigation schemes then proposed for the north. He identified four factors for sustainable irrigation, including urgently better understanding the north’s freshwater ecosystems, and developing a risk-based approach to making decisions on infrastructure. Over the past decade we’ve considerably improved our knowledge of northern ecosystems, for example the Ord river system in Western Australia, Kakadu and the Daly river in Norther Territory, and the Mitchell, Burdekin and other coastal rivers and wetlands in Queensland. Although we know more, this knowledge needs to be synthesised before it can be used for planning. We still don’t know exactly how irrigation projects might affect these ecosystems. To deal with this we suggest adopting an ecological risk-based approach to planning. It is trite, but true, that one needs to know the risks before one can set about managing them. Ecological risk assessments assist in identifying the risks, assessing their relative importance, and identifying possible ways to mitigate the risks. This sort of process is a basic component of the requirements for plans being developed as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Dealing with dams The White Paper clearly sees new on-stream dams as part of increasing water use in northern Australia. From the start, plans need to include environmental flow: sufficient water at the appropriate frequency and duration to support ecosystems. As well as a cap, this might mean creating legal rights for water held in the storage for the environment. One of the intractable problems caused by dams in southern Australia has been seasonal flow inversion. River flows are higher in summer and lower in winter than the ecosystem needs. In the north, flow inversion may occur with higher flows occurring in the dry season rather than in summer when the bulk of the rainfall occurs. To avoid this, new water infrastructure in the north could be built off stream. This system is currently used in the Queensland section of the Murray-Darling Basin. But, unless planned for at the outset, these alternatives are extremely difficult to retrofit to an existing system. Figuring out the sustainable level of water extraction for an aquatic ecosystem depends on considerable technical work (hydrological, ecological and modelling). This technical work needs to be guided by a clear set of objectives for each development, including the value the community (including Indigenous Australians) places on the local ecosystems. The water market The Murray-Darling Basin demonstrates that water markets are a highly efficient means for ensuring that the available water resource is effectively used. Additionally, the water market is also an efficient means for recovering water for the environment (although the overall process remains costly), and can also increase efficiency of environmental water management. But to make the most of the opportunities created by water markets, the environment needs the institutional capacity to enter the market. In the south, the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder owns and manages large volumes of water across the Murray-Darling Basin. At the state level, the Victorian Environmental Water Holder has also proved effective at streamlining decision-making and using the market to manage its holdings. If environmental water in the north is to be managed efficiently in the context of a future water market, establishing a legal entity with the capacity to hold water, enter contracts and make decisions will be an essential piece of the puzzle. The White Paper is a bold vision for developing northern Australia. Australia has learned many lessons about sustainable water allocation the hard way, at the cost of a great deal of time, money and ecosystem degradation. We need to apply these lessons from the south to the north. Failing to adequately invest in new water resource development plans in northern Australia is effectively planning to fail. And we should know better.

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The mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero With A Thousand Faces which inspired George Lucas to make the Star Wars movies. Campbell often talked about the need for a new world mythology. This issue came up in a fascinating article in yesterday’s New York Times called a “A Grand Bargain Over Evolution” by Robert Wright. It discusses how “religion and science are actually compatible” because “evolutionary psychologists have developed a plausible account of the moral sense.” The part of the article that reminded me of Campbell is below. Then that is followed by quotes from him that are very similar. He died in 1987, so his remarks were very prophetic. Here is the NY Times quote: “Clearly, this evolutionary narrative could fit into a theology with some classic elements: a divinely imparted purpose that involves a struggle toward the good, a struggle that even leads to a kind of climax of history. Such a theology could actually abet the good, increase the chances of a happy ending. A more evolved religion could do what religion has often done in the past: use an awe-inspiring story to foster social cohesion — except this time on a global scale. Of course, religion doesn’t have a monopoly on awe and inspiration. The story that science tells, the story of nature, is awesome, and some people get plenty of inspiration from it, without needing the religious kind. What’s more, science has its own role to play in knitting the world together. The scientific enterprise has long been on the frontiers of international community, fostering an inclusive, cosmopolitan ethic — the kind of ethic that any religion worthy of this moment in history must also foster.” Now what Campbell had to say. From page 112 of the book An Open Life: Joseph Campbell In Conversation With Michael Toms. Michael Toms often interviewed Campbell at KQED in San Francisco for the radio program New Dimensions. Here they discussed social fragmentation. The following two paragraphs are from Campbell. “And there's going to be [social fragmentation] for a long time. Unfortunately, many of the new mystically motivated movements are reactionary against other peoples. We have this "Power" and that "Power" and the other "Power." These are delaying actions. People are afraid to move into the free fall of a totally new way of looking at others. So the new mythology to come must be a global mythology, and it's got to solve the problem of the in-group by showing that there's no out-group. We're all members of a society of the planet, not of one particular place, and the fact that the three main religions of the Western world-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-can't live together in Beruit is a refutation of all three in terms of their value for the contemporary world. They're monstrous! We must begin to realize that each is saying in his own language what the other is trying to say in his. There must be brotherhood and cooperation. Because unless that comes, we're going to blow ourselves to smithereens. Every single one of the old horizon-bound mythologies reserved love for the in-group, and aggression and denigration were reserved for the out-group. Now, something's got to break that. And when we see that picture of our planet taken from the moon, the question arises: What are we going to do with our aggression? How is it going to be absorbed into love and transmuted from gross matter to gold? I think teaching "I-thou" relationships, rather than the "I-it" relationships, which [theologian Martin] Buber spoke about, is the first step. The teaching of humanity rather than the teaching of in-group appreciations is what's important.” I think that Campbell clearly talked about the same thing as what Robert Wright did in the Times article. He mentioned narrative and awe-inspiring story as something that could foster social cohesion. This is the mythology that Campbell discussed. If you are wondering why an economist is discussing this, click on the link above which explains the name of this blog. It has to with entrepreneurs being like heroes from mythology. Campbell thought so, too and you can read about that at Joseph Campbell on Entrepreneurship

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This morning President Obama released a draft proposal calling for federal regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, with a focus on carbon emissions from existing power plants. In this historic move, the President has shown that the United States is prepared to take meaningful steps to fight global warming. This decision comes after clear and compelling guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, but the legal path that led to today’s announcement is just part of the story. Decisions made in corporate boardrooms, on Wall Street and on Main Streets across the United States give us confidence that the business sector has never been better prepared than we are today to step up to the challenge of climate change. According to the Sustainable Energy in America Factbook from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the country’s total annual energy consumption in 2013 was 5.0% below when the Supreme Court made its landmark climate ruling back in 2007. This long-term trend was in part prompted by the economic downturn of 2008-2009. But even as economic growth has returned, energy use is not growing at a commensurate rate, and today our economy is more energy-efficient than ever before. Over this same period, the Bloomberg Factbook report tells us that use of lower and zero carbon energy sources has grown, while coal and oil have experienced significant declines. Natural gas production and consumption hit an all time high in 2013, and 94 percent of all new electric power capacity built in the United States since 1997 has come in the form of natural gas plants or renewable energy facilities. The report also found that natural gas prices and renewable electricity generation costs hit all-time lows in 2013. This allowed renewable energy in some places to under price conventional options. Prices of solar modules have rapidly declined, down 80 percent since 2008. The benefits of these lower costs often flow to consumers. Another recent report, commissioned by the Advanced Energy Economy, points to 40 emerging technologies that are already changing the US electric power system while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The technology sectors reviewed range from building and industrial efficiency to power generation and grid management and represents a nearly $170 billion annual domestic market, and a $1.1 trillion global market, about the same as the global pharmaceuticals’ sector. Deploying these technologies even more widely will not just help states meet new greenhouse gas standards, it will also modernize the country’s electric power system, making it more resilient, reliable and efficient. For some companies, there will be export opportunities around the world by capitalizing on the rapidly growing advanced energy sector. The proposed rule opens the door for a long-overdue, nationwide discussion about how to balance our need for reliable, affordable power with the growing risk we face due to climate change. Jacobson is president of the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, a coalition of companies and trade associations from the energy efficiency, natural gas and renewable energy sectors, and also includes independent electric power producers, investor-owned utilities, public power, commercial end-users and project developers and service providers for environmental markets.

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- Simon Chate - Contact Simon So, how exactly does the voice work? Well, as we inhale, the diaphragm muscle contracts causing the lungs to expand and air to be drawn into the lungs. As we exhale, the diaphragm will relax and move upward reducing the size of the lungs and causing air to be expelled from the lungs. This exhaled breath is then forced out along the trachea, and through the vocal folds, which are capable of vibrating at an incredibly fast rate. For voice to exist at all, the vocal folds must vibrate and it is at this point that the vibration of the vocal folds, coupled with the power of the exhaling breath gives rise to the creation of vocal sound. This sound is then shaped by the manipulation of the various structures along the vocal tract, such as the position of the tongue, and the larynx, etc. The articulators are the cheeks, tongue, teeth and lips and they all contribute to vocal articulation, whereas the sinus, chest, laryngeal and pharyngeal cavities all act as resonating chambers for the voice. It is through the repetition of exercises, designed specifically to strengthen the larynx and the diaphragm, that the voice is trained. The singer is able to control the muscles in the diaphragm and the vocal tract resulting in increased quality of vocal tone and more power of vocal projection. The Vocal Folds Sound occurs as a result of vibration. This is true throughout all of Nature and is evident in a myriad of different forms. The human voice is no exception. We have all heard of the term “vocal chords”. Current pedagogy, however, describes them as Vocal Folds, due to the malleable nature of their ligament-like structure. The vocal folds attach to the front of the larynx at the Adam’s Apple (or thyroid cartilage) - and at the rear of the larynx, via the arytenoids, to the crycoid cartilage. Here the folds can come together and move apart, allowing for breathing and sound production. The primary function of the larynx is to protect the airways and stop food entering into the lungs. The larynx itself is protected in the neck by an increase in muscle, cartilage and bone. The provision of sound is a secondary function of the vocal folds. The vocal and vestibular folds close during the acts of swallowing, coughing, excreting, giving birth and when pushing or lifting heavy objects etc. This closing is called constriction. As we can see here, the vocal folds are suspended over the open space of the trachea, where they act as a sort of portal, through which all the air that comes into and goes out from the body must pass. We can also see the vestibular or false vocal folds which sit just above the delicate vocal folds, protecting them from damage through strain and swallowing. This is where constriction of the voice and the optimum retraction of false folds occurs. While humans are able to last weeks or more without food, and days or more without water, we can only last a brief few minutes without oxygen from the air. The Lungs and the Diaphragm Breath is crucial to the fundamental workings of the voice. Without breath there would be nothing to power the voice, or even to ensure that the vibration of the vocal folds can be heard. Quite simply, the voice cannot exist without the breath. The Thoracic Diaphragm is a trampoline-like dome-shaped muscle stretched across the abdominal cavity, separating the organs of the chest cavity from those in the lower abdominal cavity. The movement of this muscle allows the lungs to expand and contract during the process of breathing. The commonly heard phrase “Singing from the diaphragm” means that by expanding the abdomen during inhalation, increasing the rate of contraction in the diaphragm and taking more air into the lungs, the singer is able to provide more power, through increased breath support, and control through strengthening of the diaphragm muscle. The Sinus Cavities What follows is a Flash Movie designed to inform the viewer about the intricacies of the sinus cavities. These cavities are found within the bone structure of the face, where they act as acoustic resonating chambers, adding higher frequencies and increasing the brightness and vitality of the sound. The Sinus cavities are spaces in the skull which have various purposes such as airflow, drainage, etc. Another important purpose of these cavities is to act as resonators for the voice. For a detailed look at the Sinuses and how they work, click on the picture below and check out Piper’s page of this great Flash Movie.

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Program will focus on load duration curves and land-use analysis tool COLLEGE STATION — The Texas Water Resources Institute and Texas A&M University department of biological and agricultural engineering will present a watershed modeling workshop May 7-8 at the Horticulture/Forest Science Building on the Texas A&M campus in College Station. The institute is part of Texas A&M AgriLife Research, the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences – all part of the Texas A&M University System. The workshop will include hands-on instruction regarding load duration curves and the Spatially Explicit Load Enrichment Calculation Tool, or SELECT, said coordinators. Sessions will be in Lab 125 of the building, from 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m. on May 7 and from 9 a.m.–4:15 p.m. on May 8. Load duration curves give a graphical representation of stream flow and pollutant loading so real data can be compared to a stream’s maximum allowable load, noted institute professionals. SELECT provides a spatially explicit analysis of land use, land cover, animals, humans and other variables in watersheds to help assess actual and potential sources of bacteria. “This two-day class is for individuals developing watershed protection plans and total maximum daily loads to estimate pollution sources and loads to rivers,” said Dr. Kevin Wagner, associate director of the Texas Water Resources Institute. During the workshop, associate professor Dr. R. Karthikeyan and research associate Kyna Borel, both of the biological and agricultural engineering department at Texas A&M, will provide lectures on the use of load duration curves to assess pollutant loads. They also will instruct on the use of SELECT to target priority areas for implementing pollutant remediation measures. “Participants will also gain hands-on experience in the use of these tools,” Wagner said. “The course will include discussions on gathering data to populate these models and how modeling is critically linked with watershed-based planning efforts.” Registration is $100 and includes refreshments, course materials and a certificate of completion. One Texas Water Resources Institute continuing education unit will be provided upon course completion. For more information about watershed modeling, go to http://select.tamu.edu/. For more information or to register for the workshop, go to http://watershedplanning.tamu.edu/training/.

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July 9, 2008 > Pennies for Peace Pennies for Peace By Mona Shah The Pennies for Peace Program (P4P) educates American children about the world beyond their experience and how they can make a positive impact on a global scale, one penny at a time. It teaches children the rewards of sharing and working together to bring hope and education opportunities to the children in Pakistan and Afghanistan. A penny in the United States is virtually worthless, but overseas a penny buys a pencil and opens the door to literacy. The best hope for a peaceful and prosperous world lies in the education of all the world's children. Through cross-cultural understanding and a solution-oriented approach, P4P encourages American children, ultimately our future leaders, to be active participants in the creation of global peace. As part of this program, children are asked to donate their pennies to open the door to education for girls in places where a penny will buy a pencil, and where girls to date have been unable to receive any education at all. Dozens of schools throughout the U.S. have been part of this program and it's coming to the Fremont Unified School District as well as Newark and Union City schools in the fall. "The Pennies for Peace project provides our children with the opportunity to learn and appreciate other cultures. At the same time, it shows them that their efforts can make a difference, one penny at a time," explained JoAnn Houk, in charge of the program for AAUW and a member of the Fremont, Union City and Newark Division of the California Retired Teachers Association. For questions about the program, contact Genevieve Angelides at [email protected] or go to [email protected].

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March 12, 2013 > Editorial: Time Out Editorial: Time Out Legislation at all levels of government can be confusing and open to a plethora of interpretations. Elected leaders and commentators are, at times, confronted with the task of trying to discuss and explain provisions of impending laws that are convoluted and even contradictory. In order to compensate for these flaws, many politicians have perfected the art of obfuscation; embellishing one or two relevant facts with excessive and redundant verbiage or hiding ignorance within a flurry of rhetoric. Interested citizens are then required to spend an inordinate amount of time wading through an avalanche of words to discover if there is any substance within. Efficient meetings, especially those exploring controversial topics, should be organized to clearly define the subject and establish logical and persuasive arguments, paving the way toward an informed and rational decision. To do this in a coherent and competent manner, concise presentations are necessary. Prepared individuals and groups understand that when substance prevails, there is no time for rhetoric and filibuster tactics. If many citizens understand that quantity is no equivalent to quality in their presentations to Councils, why is it so hard for some councilmembers to reciprocate? The concept of "time out" is elementary among parents with unruly or disrespectful behavior of their children. A period of quiet reflection can release tension and rein in extraneous and distracting stimuli, allowing reasonable discussion. Sometimes, all that is needed to proceed with a decision is a bit of time for reflection and appreciation of all arguments presented. When decision-makers are forced to organize their thoughts without endless repetition and rhetoric, choices become clearer and positions are defined. Just as the public is limited to a fixed time for their presentations, it may also be instructive for councilmembers to be asked to use their time in the same manner. An interesting concept for councilmembers inclined toward excessive oratory would be to limit their comments for a set time period, maybe 15 minutes. Instead of trading unnecessary, prepared commentary and/or asking irrelevant and duplicative questions of Staff, comment from councilmembers with something to add to the discussion would be welcome while grandstanding and flowery language designed to gain air time and not much else, would not. A timer would prevail unless the Mayor and council decided that more time was not only relevant, but necessary for complete disclosure. In this way, the public could easily understand the primary points of discussion without time-wasting antics. Council meetings could include time elements for each issue. These would be flexible, allowing sufficient public comment and discussion but would create a structural guide for the meeting. Those attending, including councilmembers, would understand, in advance, what was expected to be accomplished and the time allotted. Although imposing such limits on councilmembers might be painful to initiate, relieving the discomfort suffered by the public asked to listen to seemingly endless and meaningless commentary, would be worth it. An easy way to test the need for such limits is to time councilmember statements and list any new ideas and concepts presented. A 20-minute oration to simply agree with what has been previously said, make inane comments or put forward a single simple statement is unacceptable. Some councilmembers already understand this basic principle and should be applauded for their clarity and brevity; others need a time out.

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Zainah Anwar is the founder of Sisters of Islam, which gave rise to a movement and organization known as Musawah. "Musawah" means equality. Ms. Anwar gave a hopeful view of what was happening on the ground. Musawah had a meeting in Kuala Lumpur in February to discuss strategies for making arguments against patriarchal interpretations of Islam. One important area for reform is family law, the topic of the afternoon's first panel. Many Muslim countries have unequal family laws, in provisions dealing with marriage age, consent to marry, grounds for divorce, and custody. A divorced woman, for example, only has custody of male children up to age seven and female children up to age nine; the former husband still has authority over those young children for anything requiring consent by a guardian. Anwar praised new scholarship giving alternative interpretations of the Qur'an and its historical context, for example, by pointing out assertions of women in marriage contracts hundreds of years ago. This movement has achieved some successes, such as family law reform in Morocco, a ban on polygamy in Tunisia, and a domestic violence law in Malaysia. By breaking the monopoly of traditional clerics over the interpretation of religion, women are opening the space for debate.

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The main entrance to the Baradla cave is a landmark. Photo: Sándor Rózsa The GEF Supported project will strengthen protection of globally significant mountain ecosystems in selected Biosphere Reserves of Central and Eastern Europe. This will be achieved through the development of new and innovative management systems with a special focus on tourism-related uses of these sites. Concurrently, awareness raising and capacity building systems will be developed and implemented, to ensure long term sustainable impacts. Tourism model initiatives and activities will be initiated to ensure distribution of returns for conservation purposes as well as to local stakeholders. The overall goal of this project is to promote the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity through the development and implementation of sustainable tourism practices in the 3 participating Biosphere Reserves. The project goal consists of four parts: - Support to the development and implementation of tourism management plans in relation to biodiversity objectives. - Create and strengthen an enabling environment for combining sustainable tourism development and biodiversity conservation. - Support international cooperation among the participating countries, especially with regard to trans-boundary cooperation, to enhance knowledge on tourism and biodiversity. - Facilitate a consultative process with key stakeholders (in the public and private sectors) to ensure their active participation and influence in the development of public policies for sustainable tourism development and management in vulnerable mountain and forest The GEF supported project "Conservation and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity through Sound Tourism Development in Biosphere Reserves in Central and Eastern Europe", focused on sustainable tourism management planning and biodiversity including research about ecology, land use history, tourism impacts and the potential for tourism. Under this project, a number of guidance documents, studies and training materials were produced and translated into local languages and used for training courses. See www.tourism4nature.org for complete and updated information. For More Information on Biodiversity projects related to UNEP and GEF Please Click Here

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Census Shows Continued Change In America's Racial Makeup Asian-Americans were the fastest-growing racial or ethnic group in America, now comprising almost 19 million people, according to data released Thursday by the Census Bureau. And the state with the fastest-growing Asian population? South Dakota. Home to Mount Rushmore, Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little Town on the Prairie," and now Kharka Khapangi — a Bhutanese refugee who moved from the state of Washington to Sioux Falls, S.D., in 2011. "It's easy to find a job here in South Dakota, so people from other states, they are also moving here," Khapangi said. South Dakota's Asian population grew just more than 7 percent last year, to almost 12,000, which may not seem like much compared to the 6 million Asians living in California. But the Census Bureau says it shows just how much the Asian population has grown overall throughout the country to become the nation's fastest-growing racial group. Other minority populations continued to grow as well. The Hispanic population — the country's second-largest racial or ethnic group — grew by 2.2 percent. While most of the growth in the country's Asian population — almost 60 percent — is fueled by international migration, the increase in Hispanic-Americans — is due primarily to natural births. Overall, the Census says the number of people of color in the country grew by 1.9 percent from 2011 to 2012. People of color now compose about 37 percent of the total population. Among children under 5, children of color are almost a majority — 49.9 percent of that age group in 2012. The data released Thursday comes from a set of annual population estimates compiled by the Census Bureau, examining changes in the population between July 2011 and July 2012. Update: As well as the numbers of people of color in the country growing, it's worth highlighting some of the interesting shifts happening within America's minority population as well. Washington, D.C., for example — one of five states or "equivalents" in the US with a majority-minority population — is now evenly divided among blacks and other races. Blacks are now 50.1 percent of the population, down from as high at 71 percent in the 1970s. Thanks to Matt Stiles of NPR's news apps team for the tip. The New York Times highlights another detail captured by the data. "Deaths exceeded births among non-Hispanic white Americans for the first time in at least a century," the Times reports. "The disparity was tiny — only about 12,000 — and was more than made up by a gain of 188,000 as a result of immigration from abroad. But the decrease for the year ending July 1, 2012, coupled with the fact that a majority of births in the United States are now to Hispanic, black and Asian mothers, is further evidence that white Americans will become a minority nationwide within about three decades."

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Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Researchers tag a moose in Minnesota, part of a $1.2 million effort to track down why moose are disappearing in the state. Published at 5:22 p.m. ET: Moose are missing — and the state of Minnesota doesn't want hunters to find them. Minnesota officials banned moose hunting indefinitely on Wednesday because of a dramatic drop in the animal's numbers. The number of moose in the Gopher State has fallen by 52 percent since 2010, for reasons no one can figure out, although the Department of Natural Resources said hunting had nothing to do with it. It cited a variety of possible explanations, including a tick-borne disease and Minnesota's recent unusually hot summers, which moose don't handle well. "The state's moose population has been in decline for years, but never at the precipitous rate documented this winter," said Tom Landwehr, Minnesota's natural resources commissioner. The 2013 hunting season was canceled, and Landwehr said in a statement that his department wouldn't consider opening any future seasons until the moose population recovers. "It's now prudent to control every source of mortality we can as we seek to understand causes of population decline," he said. In an aerial survey in January, state officials calculated that only 2,760 moose were left in Minnesota, down by 35 percent from last year and 52 percent from 2010. In response, the state last month launched what it's calling the largest and most high-tech moose research effort ever, fitting 92 moose in northeastern parts of the state with satellite tracking and data-collection collars designed to help root out the causes of rising moose mortality. The idea is to be able to get to a moose within 24 hours of its death, said Ron Moen, a research associate at the University of Minnesota who is working with the program. "The thing about determining cause of death is that moose bodies are very well insulated with hair, and they are very large," Moen told NBC station KBJR of Duluth. "If you don't get there quick enough, then you have tissue degradation." The state is putting $1.2 million toward the program, but everyday Minnesotans are getting in on the rescue effort, as well. In Edina, a baker named Robin Johnson pledged to donate $1 from every cupcake she sold to the state Wildlife Health Program's Gift Account for Moose. "This beautiful symbol of Minnesota wilderness is being direly threatened," Johnson told NBC station KRII of Chisholm, Minn.

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Beta2-agonists do not reduce inflammation or airway responsiveness but serve as bronchodilators, relaxing and opening constricted airways during an acute asthma attack. They are used alone only for patients with mild and intermittent asthma. Patients with more severe cases should use them in combination with other drugs. In breathing disorders, Ventolin relaxes muscles in the air passages of the lungs. It helps to keep the airways open, making it easier to breathe. Inhaled preparations of Ventolin are fast acting. They can make your breathing easier and relieve bronchospasm within minutes. Always have your inhaler with you in case you need it. Ask your prescriber or nurse for advice on what to do if you have an asthma attack. You can use Ventolin (http://asthma-inhalers-online.com/buy-generic-ventolin-online.html) to prevent asthma attacks caused by triggers such as house dust, pollen, cats, dogs and exercise. When you are having an asthma attack you should use a fast acting preparation of Ventolin as directed by your prescriber. If your normal inhaled dose of Ventolin does not give you the same amount of relief then you should contact your prescriber for more advice. They may want you to have additional treatment. You need to use Ventolin as prescribed in order to get the best results from using it. The pharmacy label will tell you how much you should take. Other information about Ventolin: in certain situations your prescriber may advise you to have a higher dose of your medicine than normal the effects of this medicine usually lasts for up to six hours Do not share your medicine with other people. It may not be suitable for them and may harm them. The pharmacy label on your medicine tells you how much medicine you should have. It also tells you how often you should have your medicine. This is the dose that you and your prescriber have agreed you should have. You should not change the dose of your medicine unless you are told to do so by your prescriber. If you feel that the medicine is making you unwell or you do not think it is working, then talk to your prescriber.

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There’s no question that malware is a hot topic in the tech world, as stories of new hacks and attacks seem to be popping up on a daily basis. All it takes is a quick look at recent news to realize that malware’s presence is strong and appears to be gaining in sophistication. The Sony PlayStation Network breach compromised the privacy of data contained in millions of user accounts, with damages potentially reaching the $2 billion mark. Massachusetts’ state attorney general claimed that approximately one-third of the state’s residents had their personal information compromised in a recent breach. Even security firms have been affected, as RSA stated that cybercriminals may have impacted its two-factor SecurID tokens. While those examples are serious enough, they are just a peek into the increasing malware problem. As groups such as Anonymous become increasingly innovative and malicious with their attack methods and targets and the popularity of the smartphone and social networking arenas grows, malware promises to wreak even more havoc on consumers, corporations, and agencies in the future. Although many hackers practice their mischievous trade in the name of profit, others do so to make a point. AntiSec, a collection of hackers from Anonymous and the former LulzSec group, recently showcased such a motive when they compromised and released information from 70 law enforcement agencies within the United States. Todd Feinman, CEO of Identity Finder, explained the reasoning behind the August attacks: “Apparently, they don't like how various law enforcement agencies operate and they're trying to embarrass and discredit them.” Though the release of information taken from government agencies may be intended for use as a tool for public embarrassment, unintended consequences often arise. As the personal information becomes available, other cybercriminals can use it to commit identity theft. Breaches of data from agencies, businesses, and universities occur on a weekly basis, and Feinman states that anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 records are breached per year. Unfortunately, collateral damage does not appear to be a concern of hacking groups. Feinman noted, “In one online post, AntiSec came right out and said 'we don't care about collateral damage. It will happen and so be it.” As mentioned, the growing popularity of social networking opens up a huge avenue for hackers to exploit. For one reason or another, many internet users trust social networks to safeguard their personal information. By making information such as the names of siblings, parents, pets, plus divulging everyday activities, however, social networking users are giving away valuable information to cyber thieves. Hackers can create phony profiles and make friend requests to get the information they desire, or they can simply view data on profiles that are left open to the public. Having such data offers the potential to guess or reset passwords, which would lead to a compromised account. Program chair of RSA Conferences Dr. Hugh Thompson said, “Password reset questions are so easy to guess now, and tools like Ancestry.com, while not created for this purpose, provide hackers with a war chest of useful information.” The presence of corporate executives or their family members on social networks puts businesses at risk as well. Clever social engineering attacks by hackers can use information derived from a social networking profile to compromise an entire corporation. As the popularity of smartphones grows, so does the potential of hackers using them as an avenue of opportunity. For the time being, major incidents have been avoided due to platform fragmentation. It’s much simpler for cybercriminals to target Windows PCs or websites, and they get a better return on their investment of time and money. That could change, however, as platform-agnostic malware develops. The push towards compatibility across devices, while convenient for users, means that hackers can exploit HTML, XML, and other common traits in a variety of environments to receive a higher bang for their buck. The use of smartphones to make mobile payments presents additional opportunities to hackers. Mark Maiffret, CTO of eEye Digital Security, said: “The forthcoming ubiquity of near-field communication payment technology in smartphones is especially worrisome. Once the U.S. adopts mobile payments in significant numbers, more hackers will focus on these targets.” The thought of attacks via social networks and smartphones is certainly disconcerting, but the possibility of more malicious attacks showcased at the recent Black Hat and Defcon conferences is even scarier. Vulnerabilities in automobiles were discussed that could pop up as the result of a heavier reliance on technology. One presentation showed how hackers could hijack a car by disabling its alarm system and locks and starting it remotely via text messages to any wireless devices on the premises. Anti-lock braking systems, electronic stability controls, radios, airbags, and other devices were also said to carry the risk of being manipulated. Senior VP and GM of McAfee Stuart McClure described the double-edged sword that comes with improved automobile technology: “As more and more functions get embedded in the digital technology of automobiles, the threat of attack and malicious manipulation increases. Many examples of research-based hacks show the potential threats and depth of compromise that expose the consumer. It's one thing to have your email or laptop compromised but having your car hacked could translate to dire risks to your personal safety.” For more on this topic, visit http://www.pcworld.com/article/240970/the_future_of_malware.html | DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. | More Web Hosting Security Articles More By wubayou

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SYDNEY – Australian koalas are being struck down by a version of AIDS, and may soon become extinct! Koalas are being infected by a version of AIDS called KIDS, or Koala Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It strikes more quickly than the human strain, and is leaving koalas open to a number of deadly diseases, including chlamydia. It is believed that the national population of koalas has dropped from 100,000 to 43,000 in only a matter of six years. If the decline continues, koalas could be gone by 2040! See the devastating report below:

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Chris Tisdale is the WeirdThings beat writer covering the latest updates about the coming zombie apocalypse. Some people believe that the coming zombie apocalypse will result from a mutation or manipulation of something that already occurs in nature, typically a virus or other disease, but I say we might not need to look further than the insect world. Take the wasp species Dinocampus coccinellae, for example. Like most parasitic creatures, this insect uses a host organism -in this case, a ladybug- as a living incubator for its eggs. When the larvae are hatched, however, something interesting happens. According to HowStuffWorks: Normally, the host organism mercifully dies at this point, but DC’s ladybug is not so lucky. Not only does it live, but a little behavior modification forces it to hang around and “guard” its parasite-baby as it grows into adulthood beneath its protective bulk. Scientists believe that secretions left by the larva when it bursts out might play a role in reprograming the host. Amazingly, many ladybugs actually survive this process, and resume “normal behavior” when the wasps reach maturity and the zombification wears off. Not only does this study show that zombies do exist in nature, it shows something can survive it. Might come in handy one day.

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Symptoms of stroke occur when blood supply to part of your brain is interrupted. They can occur suddenly and differ depending on the part of the brain that is affected. Multiple symptoms can happen together because the blocked or bleeding blood vessels may supply a large enough area of the brain that includes multiple functions. Anything your brain does may be affected. If you experience any of the symptoms listed below in alone or together, call for emergency medical services right away. The acronym F.A.S.T. may be the easiest way to familiarize yourself with the signs and symptoms of a stroke. According to the American Stroke Association, F.A.S.T. means: - F—Face drooping —Drooping on one side of the face, with or without numbness. Ask the person to smile, it should not be uneven. - A—Arm weakness —Arm weakness with or without numbness. Can the person lift both arms? One arm may drift downward. - S—Speech difficulty —When the person speaks, is it slurred or hard to understand? Ask the person to repeat a simple sentence. Listen for any abnormalities. - T—Time to call for emergency medical services —Call right away if someone shows these signs or symptoms, even if they go away. It is very important to note the time symptoms first appeared and when you called for medical help. Other common symptoms that can occur along with symptoms above include: - Sudden onset of confusion, difficulty swallowing, or difficulty understanding what others are saying - Blurry, dimming, or no vision in one or both eyes - Lightheadedness, falling, or loss of balance - Severe or unusual headache Stroke can cause severe, permanent damage to the brain, or death. Quick medical treatment is important to increase the chance of survival and decrease the amount of damage. The sooner the blood flow is restored the better the outcomes tend to be. Ideally, treatment should be within the first brief hours after symptoms begin. Do not drive yourself or someone else to the hospital. Emergency medical service personnel can increase the chance of survival and decrease injury by giving treatments while on the way to the hospital. - Reviewer: Rimas Lukas, MD - Review Date: 12/2015 - - Update Date: 12/20/2014 -

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Brominated vegetable oil, also known as BVO, contains bromine which is used as a flame retardant in plastics, upholstered furniture, and some clothing for children and is not approved for use in foods in Japan and the European Union. Coca-Cola uses the chemical in Fanta, Fresca and some citrus flavored fountain drinks. The move to remove BVO from drinks originated in a Change.org petition started by a Mississippi teenager Sarah Kavanagh in 2012. Kavanagh petitioned Pepsic to remove BVO from her favorite drink Gatorade. The company relented after the petition garnered momentum and 200,000 people signed it. Kavanagh added Powerade to the petition, which received 59,000 signatures. Coca-Cola dropped BVO from Powerade’s fruit punch and strawberry lemonade flavored drinks in “the last month or two,” according to a spokesman. According to the Mayo Clinic’s website, BVO has been linked to memory loss and skin and nerve problems when consumed in large amounts. BVO is used by beverage makers to help stabilize ingredients in flavored drinks and prevent them from separating. The soft drink giant said it will transition to other ingredients that are found in other beverages and also chewing gum. Coke reiterated that it its drinks are safe, saying “All of our beverages, including those with BVO, are safe and always have been — and comply with all regulations in the countries where they are sold. The safety and quality of our products is our highest priority.” ™ & © 2014 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

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Now Children Need Cholesterol Tests, Too Children today are growing up fast — so fast that they're now being told to have their cholesterol tested before they hit puberty. The new recommendation to test all children for cholesterol at ages 9 to 11 comes from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The goal is to reduce the risk of heart disease in adulthood. But the new recommendation runs counter to the advice of another federally-funded independent panel, which says routine screening isn't needed before age 20. "The more we learn the more we realize that the atherosclerosis process really begins early in life," says Steven Daniels, chair of the panel that wrote the new guidelines, and a pediatric cardiologist who chairs the department of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. The earlier in life cholesterol risk can be identified, the premise goes, the easier to keep it under control. Pediatricians were already supposed to be doing cholesterol tests in children who are obese, have diabetes or have a family history of heart disease. But after studies found that those screening tools weren't catching some grade-schoolers with high cholesterol, the notion of universal screening gained traction. Kids won't like it, because it requires a blood draw, and that means a needle. But the test won't require a special visit; it will be part of regular well child visits. The new guidelines are endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics is publishing them Monday in the journal Pediatrics. But the new recommendation isn't universally endorsed. Some doctors think the call for universal screening is overkill, since only about half of children with high cholesterol will go on to have that problem as adults. And researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that in many children, high levels of LDL cholesterol corrected themselves by the next office visit. A 2007 recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a federally-funded group that sets practice guidelines, says there's not enough evidence to recommend universal screening under age 20. Daniels says that universal screening is intended to find children with very high LDL cholsterol, the "bad" kind, is 190 milligrams of the stuff in each decliter oof blood. Overall, less than 1 percent of children would be candidates for treatment with statin drugs, he says. "I don't think it's likely that there will be overtreatment." More likely is that Mom and Dad will need to get serious about exercise eating healthy. Daniel says: "It gives them a stronger rationale for working hard on making the home the healthiest environment that it could be." Even though statins have an enviable safety record in adults, no studies have been done on the implications of putting children on statins for the rest of their lives. That's why today's recommendation gives some physicians pause.

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|Line 32:||Line 32:| [[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]] [[Category:Arguments for the existence of God]] Revision as of 14:17, 10 December 2008Consciousness is a term used in psychology and philosophy of mind to refer to a number of different phenomena. It can refer to attentiveness or self-awareness, but the sense that has attracted the most interest in recent years is the sense of subjective experience. This sense is sometimes illustrated through such questions as "what is it like to be a bat?" The most basic debate over consciousness in this sense is whether it can be explained in physical terms, or is in principle inexplicable in physical terms. David Chalmers, a leading advocate of the second view, defends his position primarily by appealing to the possibility of a physical duplicate of a person without any of that person's subjective experiences (the zombie argument) or the possibility of a super-scientist who knows everything about the physical aspects of perception but doesn't know what it's like to have a particular experience (the knowledge argument, or "Mary" argument for the name commonly given to the hypothetical super-scientist). John Searle has accused proponents of the physical view of consciousness of simply ignoring our conscious experiences. In response, Daniel Dennett has argued that the anti-physicalist position makes consciousness something utterly mysterious, which our scientific investigations into the brain have inexplicably failed to detect. Against the accusation that he is denying something obvious which we could not be mistaken about, Dennet has said "this is a mysterious doctrine (at least as mysterious as papal infallibility)." In order to make their views comfortable with modern science, many proponents of physically irreducible consciousness endorse a view known as epiphenomenalism, which says that conscious states are caused by the brain but do not themselves cause anything physical. In the view of critics like Dennett, however, this simply contributes to the mysteriousness of the view. Neurological Background Information The organ by which we come about perceiving our world and make sense of it is the brain. The center of cognition in the human brain is the frontal lobe, which is in addition used for executive function - i.e. pulling together information and deciding what to do with it. Sensory perception is located in the parietal and temporal lobes; disorders which afflict this particular area include temporal lobe epilepsy, a noted subject of neurotheology (for more information, read the works of neurotheologists Richard Davidson and Robert Persinger). The limbic system, especially the hypothalamus and amygdala, pull together and react to this information to send it to the frontal lobes. Swedish neuroscientist Bjorn Merker has in addition postulated that the brain stem produces a rudimentary consciousness which includes perception, integration, decision, and action on external stimuli. This perception and cognition and the action of executive function and the hypothalamus combine to create thought. The Argument to God Many theistic apologists have claimed that the existence of non-physical consciousness proves the existence of God. However, this is by no means obvious. In contemporary philosophy, the most prominent defenders of non-physical consciousness are atheists. This is true of both John Searle and David Chalmers. Other examples of nontheistic philosophers who reject the physicalist view of consciousness are Thomas Nagel and Paul Draper. At the popular level this view has been promoted by Sam Harris. What theists need is an argument that consciousness is evidence for the existence of God, but they rarely bother to try to give such an argument. Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro have claimed to present such an argument, but they seem to be stuck in the same confusions as other theists. For example, they talk about "restrict[ing] ourselves... to the explanatory framework of an ideal physics with mass and energy," which misses the point, because this is not the approach taken by philosophers such as Chalmers. Rather, Chalmers postulates something apart something from the physical world connected to it by laws broadly similar to the laws of physics. More broadly, unless one takes the view that the mental could only be related to the physical by constant divine intervention (a position which has not been historically popular), it seems theists and atheists are in the same situation with respect to explaining consciousness. What's needed is an account of how consciousness works, and it doesn't matter if the system was set up by God or is a brute fact about the universe. Assertions that the "brute fact" response is unacceptable will ultimately fall back on the reasoning behind the cosmological and design arguments. If these arguments fail, there is no reason to think the argument from consciousness would do any better, and even if they succeeded, there is no reason to think consciousness would reinforce them. - Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained - David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind - John Searle, The Mystery of Consciousness - Quining Qualia by Daniel C. Dennett - God or Blind Nature? Philosophers Debate the Evidence by Paul Draper

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American Samoa is a group of islands in the South Pacific Ocean that lie about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand and about 100 km east of the island country of Samoa, which is part of the same archipelago. American Samoa is an unincorporated territory of the United States of America. The citizens of American Samoa are US "nationals" and not US "citizens," but they are allowed to travel freely between American Samoa and the US mainland. They are not required to obtain green cards or visas to stay or work in the United States, and they are allowed to serve in the US armed forces (and often do). There are some ways that American Samoa's special status as an unincorporated territory has interesting legal consequences. The US Constitution is not necessarily the supreme law of the land in American Samoa, and Samoan cultural norms, in particular those related to the ownership of property and public displays of religion, actually trump certain well-settled US constitutional rights in American Samoa. The main city is Pago Pago and the smaller Fagatogo is constitutionally designated seat of government. The governor's office is located in the village of Utulei, located on the opposite side of Fagatogo from Pago Pago. Pago Pago (pronounced "Pongo Pongo") - capital city Population 57,496 (July 2008 est.) The islands are frequently referred to as Samoa, which is the name of a separate island, and independent country, that used to be known as Western Samoa, that lies about 100 km west of American Samoa. Also the whole island group, including Samoa, are often identified as the Samoan islands. Settled as early as 1000 BCE by Polynesian navigators, Samoa was reached by European explorers in the 18th century. International rivalries in the latter half of the 19th century were settled by an 1899 treaty in which Germany (later Britain) and the US divided the Samoan archipelago. The US formally occupied its portion, a smaller group of eastern islands with the excellent harbor of Pago Pago in the following year. American Samoa is warm, humid and rainy year-round, but there is a long, wet summer season (October - May) and a slightly cooler and drier season (June - September). Total annual rainfall is 125 inches at the Tafuna airport and 200+ inches in mountainous areas. Such rainfall gave the English writer Somerset Maugham the name for his short story "Rain", based in Pago Pago, which was subsequently turned into a play and movie. 90% of the land in the group of islands is communally owned. Economic activity is strongly linked to the US and the greater part of its foreign trade is with the US. The private sector is dominated by tuna fishing and the tuna processing plants, canned tuna being the primary export. Monetary transfers from the US Government also add substantially to American Samoa's economic well-being. Since the emergence of US influence and control the government of the United States of America has put up resistance to the emergence of local independence movements. In the early 20th century the American Samoa Mau movement was actively suppressed by the U.S. Navy. The Governor of American Samoa is the head of government and exercises executive power. American Samoa is an unincorporated and unorganized territory of the United States, administered by the Office of Insular Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior. Its constitution was ratified in 1966 and came into effect in 1967. In both American Samoa and (independent) Samoa there is traditional village political system common to all of the Samoa Islands, the "fa'amatai" and the "fa'asamoa" interacts across the current international boundaries. The Fa'asamoa represents language and customs, and the Fa'amatai the protocols of the "fono" (council) and the chief system. The Fa'amatai and the Fono take place at all levels of the Samoan body politic, from the family, to the village and include regional and national matters. American Samoa lies outside federal immigration and customs jurisdiction. All visitors (including US citizens) to American Samoa require a passport valid for six months or more, a return ticket or onward ticket and enough funds to support your stay. Passports Not Requiring Visas Entry is allowed for 30 days for tourism with a valid passport and proof of onward travel or local employment. US citizens and citizens of countries under the federal Visa Waiver Program plus Palau, the Marshall Islands, and F.S. Micronesia are allowed visa-free entry. To obtain a business or residence visa or to extend your stay to 60 days, you must visit the Attorney General's office after arrival. Passports Requiring Visas All other international passport holders intending to visit American Samoa for business or holiday are required to apply for an entry visa. To apply for a visa please contact the Attorney General’s Office, phone +1 (684) 633-4163, fax +1 (684) 633-1838 or American Samoa Immigration +1 (684) 633-4203 or +1 (684) 633-4204. At this time there is no email address or online application submission, so you have to get a hold of the Attorney General's or Immigration office by telephone or fax. There is one international airport, Pago Pago International Airport (IATA: PPG), with a runway length of 2,750 m (9,000 ft). This is also referred to as Tafuna Airport (or Tafuna International Airport) and is located at Tafuna 5 km (3 ml) southwest of the central business district of Pago Pago on the island of Tutuila Faleolo International Airport (IATA: APW) also serves as an international gateway to the region. That airport is 40 km (25 mi) west of Apia, the capital of (independent) Samoa. Daily inter-island flights between the Samoas are operated by Inter Island Airways and Polynesian Airlines. Samoa is in the western part of the Samoan islands archipelago. The Faleolo airport in nearby Samoa has wider international connections including Air New Zealand to Auckland in New Zealand, Air Pacific to Honolulu USA and Nadi in Fiji, Inter Island Airways to Ofu, Pago Pago, Tau in American Samoa, Polynesian Airlines to Maota in Samoa and Pago Pago in American Samoa, Tongatapu in Tonga, Polynesian Blue (operated by Pacific Blue) to Auckland in New Zealand, Brisbane and Sydney in Australia. The island of Tutuila has the international seaport of Pago Pago. This port is served by a number of passenger carrying cruise ships and cargo ships. Inter Island Airways is the only airline providing daily domestic air services between Pago Pago and the Manu'a Island of Tau. Fitiuta Airport (IATA: FTI), (FAA:FAQ), 975 x 23 m (3,200 x 75 ft) is a public use airport located in the village of Fiti‘uta on the northeast portion of Ta‘ū island. Tau Airport (IATA: TAV) 661 x 30 m (2,170 x 100 ft) is a privately-owned, private-use airport 2 km (1 mi) southeast of the village of Ta‘ū in the northwest corner of Ta‘ū island. It is not normally utilised for scheduled services. Rose Island (Rose Atoll) and Swains Island do not have an airport. Several car rental facilities are available at or near the Tutuila airport. On Tutuila taxis are available at the airport, and near the market in Fagatogo. The island of Tutuila has good public transportation (frequent, but unscheduled) via “aiga” or “family” buses. For 50 cents to a dollar you can be taken around Pago Pago Harbor, and to the more remote parts of the island. Buses originate and terminate at the market in Fagatogo, the village next to Pago Pago. The roads are generally too narrow and the traffic too busy for bicycles. Hail an aiga bus with a wave of your hand. Many Samoans carry a quarter or two in their ears for bus fare as the wraparound skirts (lavalava) don't have pockets. When you want off, tap the window a few times and the bus will stop and pay the driver by tossing your fare (a quarter up to a dollar depending on the route and distance traveled) onto the dashboard on your way out. A weekly ferry service from Pago Pago to the Manu’a Islands is provided government operated excursion boat. This service travels around Tutuila, calling at the north coast villages of Afono, Vatia and Fagasa. The native language is Samoan, a Polynesian language related to Hawaiian and other Pacific island languages. English is widely spoken, and most people can at least understand it. Most people are bilingual to some degree. Some common words/phrases: Hello - Talofa (tah-low-fah) Please - Fa'amolemole (fah-ah-moh-lay-moh-lay) Thank you - Fa'afetai (fah-ah-feh-tie) American Samoa features a lot of locally run shops and kiosks with products ranging from handmade clothing to traditional wooden weapons. Tutuila has a wide variety of places to eat--from familiar fast food stops to fine restaurants. The outer islands have far less variety. Restaurants offer a variety of cuisines, including American, Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Polynesian. There is hotel-style lodging on all islands except Olosega. The tuna industry is very prominent, but about 30% of the population is unemployed. American Samoa has few health risks of concern for normally healthy persons visiting the islands. There are, however, a significant number of cases of dengue fever each year, spread by mosquitoes, so don't forget your insect repellent (containing DEET). Another common danger, in or near residential areas, are packs of stray dogs. Most dogs, while they may nominally belong to someone, are left to fend and forage for themselves. They are territorial, and will often bite. The most common response by locals is to pretend to bend down and pick up a rock. This will often scare the dogs away because they are used to being abused and hit with thrown rocks. Bring necessary medications with you, for supplies may not be available. Medical care is limited and there is none available on the Manu’a Islands. The LBJ Tropical Medical Center is on Tutuila island in the village of Faga'alu. It was once a highly regarded regional health center; however, it has fallen on hard times. It has staffing problems and only provides marginal (though inexpensive) service. A serious illness or injury will generally be evacuated to a hospital in Hawaii, Fiji, or New Zealand. When traveling in the region, carry some basic medications such as aspirin or paracetamol (acetaminophen/Tylenol), cold capsules, band-aids, sun screen, vitamins, anti-diarrhea pills, and a good insect repellant. In many areas of Tutuila, the tap water is not safe for drinking or washing dishes due to E. coli contamination. Check with the American Samoa Environmental Protection Agency for details or drink bottled water. American Samoa has low crime rates, though it's best to stay where the crowds are while on the beach. While swimming, don't go too far out, as rip tides are common. Except for perhaps a few thousand individuals nearly all inhabitants of American Samoa are indigenous Samoans of Polynesian ancestry. More than any other U.S. or Polynesian peoples, Samoans are oriented toward traditional customs and lifestyles. They closely follow the social customs and hierarchies developed prior to the arrival of the first Europeans in the region. This Samoan way, or fa'asamoa is still deeply ingrained in American Samoa culture. The most apparent character is the Samoan matai system of organization and philosophy. In general, each village is made up of a group of aiga, or extended families, which include as many relatives as can be claimed. Each aiga is headed by a chief, or matai, who represents the family on all matters including the village council, or fono. Matais hold title to all assets of the aigas, or families; they represent and are responsible for law enforcement and punishment of infractions occurring in their villages. The fono consists of the matais of all the aiga associated with the village. The highest chief of the matais of all the village aigas is the highest chief, or the ali’i, and heads the fono. Also, each village has a pulenu’u (somewhat like a police chief or mayor), and one or more talking chiefs, tulafale. Over the centuries, distinct cultural traits emerged that we now call fa'asamoa (fah-ah-SAH-mo-ah). Whether you are a guest or simply passing through a village, please observe these customs as a sign of respect. Follow the Samoan Way:

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Difference between revisions of "Cuba" Revision as of 09:45, 13 October 2013 Cuba is the largest Caribbean island, between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. It lies 145 km (90 miles) south of Key West, Florida, between the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas, to the west of Haiti, east of Mexico and northwest of Jamaica. Since independence in 1902, Cuba had been an American satelite state, the cuban economy was dependant on the American one and the second most important person in the island was American ambassador. During this time, most of the population lived in poverty and social inequalities were large. It was during this time that Cuba was a popular tourist destination for United States citizens, mainly due to Havana's european-like beauty, its high standard of living (Cuba having the largest Latin American middle class per-capita in 1958), and the large number of shows, events, and casinos catering to tourists. During such era more Americans resided in Cuba than Cubans in USA. Many Americans had beach homes during the summer, and rich American companies also owned large factories and land in the island nation. However there were large gaps in wealth and corruption was strife while most porperty was owned by foreigners. In 1952 Fulgencio Batista, a former President and General, robbed a presidential election causing public discontent and political turmoil for the next six years. His authoritarian government together with social inequalities, enormous corruption and the fact that the island was a US satelite culminated in the Cuban Revolution in 1953 to 1959 led by Fidel Castro. However crippled by an embargo by the US and the growing ties witht the USSR turned the revolution into a socialist one, in effect turning Cuba into a communist country. Since the Revolution, Cuba's communist government has outlawed protests against his regime and the island became highly authoritarian. However the revolution also brought positive changes such as practically wiping out illiteracy, a high life expectancy for its citizens, a lower infant mortality rate than in the US, a healthcare and education system that is famous worldwide, practical independence from the United States, an international influence paralel to a world power and the only country that has met WWF's definition of sustainable development, such accomplishments still survived the end of the Cold War. During that time, Fidel Castro became the hero of Latin America as his small country had stood up to the USA and still survived. After 1959 Cuban tourism diminished drastically and was mostly for people within the Soviet block. As a result, many facilities were not renewed until the 1990s, when Cuba lost financial backing from the defunct Soviet Union and opened its doors to foreign tourism and the possession of foreign currency. Now many European, Canadian, and even American visitors come to the island. In the typical tourist regions like Varadero and Holguín many modern 3-star to 5-star hotels are available, while in less popular tourist regions visitors are still able to rent rooms in many Cuban homes (called casas particulares). Since 2009, US citizens with relatives living in Cuba have been allowed to visit Cuba and most Cubans have recently been given the right to travel abroad for up to 24 months under Raul Castro. Due to several long-standing factors (e.g. US embargo against Cuba, bureaucratic ineffectiveness, lack of a market economy, and the loss of Soviet subsidies), today much of the country's infrastructure is desperately in need of repair. In major tourist destinations there will generally be few problems with either power or water, although such outages may occur. Electricity outages have been common in Cuba, except in tourist facilities that have a generator. 2006 was designated the Year of the Energy Revolution in Cuba, and many small generators have been installed in an attempt to avoid blackouts. Since Venezuela began providing Cuba with cheap oil and the refinery in Cienfuegos was relaunched, the energy situation has improved. Many tourist accommodations offer 220V as well as 110V power sources. This is adequate for your power needs and should be enough to accommodate anything you plug in, at least to a reasonable limit. Visa and legal issues A tourist visa card (visa de tarjeta del turista) is necessary for travellers from most nations. This visa, which is really little more than a piece of paper on which you list your vital statistics, costs between 15-25 CUC (or 15-25 Euro), depending on where purchased. It can be purchased at the Airport in Cuba on arrival, however it should be noted that many airlines will require a valid tourist visa card before boarding flights. It is usually valid for 30 days and can be extended once for another 30 days at any immigration office in Cuba (for 25 CUC) - beyond this you would need a flight out of Cuba within the extended visa period. Canadians are the exception, getting 90 days on arrival and can apply for a 90 day extension. Your passport needs to be valid at least six months past the end of your planned return. This little bit of information, is likely to be the most important thing of your entire trip unless you want to be stuck in Cuba. If you live, outside your own birth country, please, confirm that you either have your adopted country's passport, or documents proving your residency in the country where you work at. You must have documentation. More documentation, better. Ensure that there is an actual letterhead on your letter and signed by the employer or your business. You must, have this. Sometimes, the staff issuing your flight ticket (depending how their day has been) will give you an extremely hard time getting your exit ticket, if they do not believe you live in that adopted country. They will also ask you to call your employer, and if you're in different time zones, this can prove an inconvenience. Just save yourself the hassle, more papers, more documents, more good. Don't play the maybe game with Cuba. Do not. From Canada, the tourist card is normally provided on the flight. It can be purchased at Cancun airport (250 MXN) if departing from there, and similar in most other Latin American gateway airports. Please note that if departing the UK and many parts of Europe at least (this may apply to other countries), you will require to have the visa before boarding the plane. Boarding may be denied (this is because the airline will then get a $1,000 fine from the immigration authorities) and airplane ticket lost. In the UK, applying for the visa is a very simple process and can be done by post or in person at the Cuban embassy in London. Please do note that if apply to Cuban Consulate by post, there is a new charge introduced in 2011 which is a £25 for a non-personal transaction. If you cannot go to the Cuban Consulate use VisaCuba () because it will be cheaper. Through them it will cost £20 in total per person. If you apply in person to the Cuban Consulate, you get the visa straight away. It can also be done through online agencies as mentioned before although they may be slightly more expensive (normally £15 + £15 admin fee and additional postage). Regular tourists who renew their 30 day visa are eligible to depart the country (to any destination) and return immediately enjoying a further 60 days (30 days plus a 30 day extension). You are only allowed two consecutive stays in this manner. If you want to stay with friends or family in Cuba you have to go with your intended host within two days after arrival to a migration office and pay 40 CUC for a 30 days family visa. Citizens of Antigua and Barbuda (28 days), Barbados (28 days), Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, CIS (except Ukraine and Uzbekistan), Dominica, Grenada (60 days), Liechtenstein (90 days), Macedonia, Malaysia (90 days), Mongolia, Montenegro (90 days), Namibia, Singapore, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Serbia (90 days), Turkmenistan who can stay 30 days without visa. (The source of the previous sentence is unknown. Aeromexico staff at Cancun airport claim that only citizens of China and Russia need no visa.) It is confirmed. Malaysian citizens do NOT need a visa to Cuba. It is important to note that there is also a departure tax of CUC 25, to be paid in cash when departing Cuba by airplane; this is not required for boat departures. This tax is not well publicised but it is essential to remember it. You will run into significant difficulties if you do not have enough cash to pay this tax when leaving the country. An ATM is available at the airport but these facilities are not as reliable in Cuba as in other places. Cuban customs can be strict, though they sometimes go easy on tourists. To enter Cuba, Cuban citizens residing permanently in another country require a current Cuban passport with the appropriate authorisation. This authorisation is known as "Habilitación" of the passport. To obtain this authorisation the Cuban citizen must be recognised a migrant by the Cuban government. Most Cuban born that are citizens of other countries still need a current authorised Cuban passport to enter Cuba. The Cuban government does not recognise the citizenships that might have been acquired by anyone born in Cuba. This means that all Cuban born are considered to be Cuban citizens even if they have a different citizenship. An exception to this rule are Cubans born that migrated from Cuba before the 1st of January 1971. In this case they can enter Cuba with a non-Cuban passport and the appropriate visa. However, it should be noted that some consulates are known to disregard this exception and for travellers to be forced to acquire a Cuban passport at a significant cost. The Cuban consulate in Sydney, Australia is one that have been reported to be doing this. For more information see the Cuban government's web page "Nación y Immigración" (in Spanish)": http://www.nacionyemigracion.cu/content/consulares/nuevo-procedimiento-de-entrada-al-pa%C3%ADs Jose Martí International Airport outside Havana is the main gateway and is served by major airlines from points in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. There are also regional flights from other Caribbean islands. Cuba's national carrier is Cubana de Aviacion , connecting the island to a handful of destinations in Mexico, South and Central America, Canada and Europe. Flights from Miami to Cuba are offered to authorized American passengers. Try calling Cuba Travel Services (CTS Charters) or Marazul. They offer daily non-stop flights between Miami to Cuba. CTS used to fly Los Angeles to Havana, but has recently cancelled that route. An official taxi to Havana center costs 25 CUC but you can find cheaper (illegal) ones. The cost is roughly 1 CUC per kilometer. There is a new bus service from the Terminal One (domestic flights) to La Habana Centro. So if you arrive in Cuba before 8PM you can ask the taxi driver to bring you there and wait for the bus (1 CUC for the Taxi and a few cents for the bus). There are also regular holiday charter flights to resorts such as Varadero, and these can sometimes be less expensive than those going to Havana. The airports are all fully-air-conditioned and quite modern, compared to other destinations in the Caribbean, offer good medical care in case of problems, and are usually relatively hassle free. Your checked luggage, though, is at great risk. It is increasingly common for your luggage to be opened and anything of value removed. This used to be a problem at Jose Marti International (Havana) only, now it seems to have spread to all airports. Packing valuables in checked luggage is extremely risky - if not foolish. Please note that if you have purchased a oneworld ticket then further flights into America within that year will be disallowed through American Airlines. Santiago de Cuba While Havana, is by far the most popular port of entry, There are also flights available to Antonio Maceo Airport from some of Cuba's nearest Caribbean neighbours, Jamaica, and Haiti. There are also flights from more distant locations, such as Miami, Toronto, Madrid & Paris. Santiago de Cuba is connected with the rest of Cuba by Road and rail connections. There are no regular ferries or boats to Cuba from foreign ports, although some cruise liners do visit. Yachters are expected to anchor at the public marinas. Most ports are closed and tourists are not permitted to walk around them. Private vessels may enter at Marina Hemingway in Havana or Marina Acua in Varadero. There are no visa requirements. Expect to hand out several $10 bills to facilitate your entry. Víazul is Cuba's hard currency bus line and is by far the best choice of public transportation to tour the island. They run comfortable air-conditioned long-distance coaches with washrooms and televisions to most places of interest to tourists. The buses are getting a bit grubby, but they are reliable and punctual. Complete schedules can be found on the Viazul website (the Varadero - Santa Clara - Cienfuegos - Trinidad and return service is missing from the website but runs daily). The buses can be used theoretically by anyone, including Cubans, but in reality, few Cubans can afford the convertible peso fares. Reservations can be made in advance, but are usually unnecessary except at peak travel times. Do not waste your time making an on-line reservation on the website -- that feature rarely works. Refreshments are not served, despite what the website says, but the buses stop for meal breaks at highway restaurants with bad food. (Bring your own food!) The buses are often over air conditioned, so bring along something warm to wear. Note that most westbound buses from Santiago de Cuba run overnight. Astro is the bus line that most Cubans use. Astro recently renewed their fleet with 300 new Chinese coaches that are as comfortable as Viazul (without the washroom). Although the new buses have proven to be unreliable and often break down, they are still better than the old buses that Astro used to run. Astro has a much more extensive network than Viazul, and contrary to popular belief depending upon the vendor and your ability to speak Spanish, especially if your destination is not covered by Viazul, it is possible to purchase tickets. In La Habana routes are covered by newer YuTong Chinese buses throughout the city, and are a welcome respite from the extortionate taxi fares. Each fare costs 0.40 CUP however far one travels. This is particularly useful in getting to the airport, where the official rate is 20-25 CUC from Centro or Vieja via taxi (although patient bargaining can lower this to 15 CUC); any bus to Santiago de Las Vegas such as P-2, P-12 and P-16, which run from Parque Fraternidad next to the Capitolio and anywhere along Avendida de la Indepencia, can take you near the airport to Boyeros (again for 0.40 CUP or 0.02 CUC, a thousandth of what you'd pay for a taxi). From Boyeros outside the Psychiatric Hospital, or a few stops before, or one after, one can walk, flag a taxi down, or if going to Terminal 3 take the 'Connexions' bus. People will be helpful when asking for advice about this whilst on the bus, even without Spanish skills. To reiterate at the time of writing this option will cost you from 0.02GBP as opposed to 20GBP. There are also local provincial buses, consisting of overcrowded old beat-up eastern European buses that may or may not be running but they are very very cheap. Each town will have a "terminal terrestre" where buses or trucks (large pre 1960s vehicles) serve local destinations and usually neighbouring provinces (for example from Santiago you can get to Bayamo or Guantanamo). They are usually quite easy to find - in La Habana it is found in the Lido, in the Marianao (the P-9, P-5 or P-14 will get you close), whilst in Santiago it is found on Calle 4 (along from La Plaza de la Revolucion). It is important to note that queues will be lengthy (it is best to arrive in the early hours of the morning, or alternatively give the chauffeur a tip to allow you to jump the queue) and you should always say that you are a student, as tourists are theoretically forbidden from using this transport. You may occasionally need to pay a little extra by virtue of being a tourist, but this should never be more than 1-2 CUC for long journeys (as opposed to 5-10 CUP for locals). It is also possible to travel between some popular tourist destinations, such as Havana and Varadero, on special tourist minibuses carrying 4-5 people. The cost is a few dollars more but highly recommended if you are not planning to sleep the whole distance - plus you can ask the driver to stop along the way! Alternatively there are some collectivos which might acutally be cheaper than the official bus. The advantages of these collectivos is that they bring you exactly where you want, they can be cheaper and they run and stop for a snack when you want them to. Example Santa Clara - La Habana: Viazul costs 18 CUC and leave at 3:15AM and 5PM, the collectivo costs 40 - 50 CUC (if you fill it up with 4 people it is 10 to 12 CUC each or alternatively you can wait for the driver to look for other passengers). While this transport (like many things in Cuba!) is illegal in theory, remember that the money goes directly to the owner (as opposed to the Cuban government) and the chances of any problems are minimal. Official taxis are pretty expensive for long distances. Between Havana and Viñales, for example, will run about CUC 90-100, although this can work out cheaper than traveling by bus or train if you split the fare between several people. Some recent (Dec 2010) fares include 100 CUC for 4 pax Havana-Trinidad, 50 CUC for 4 pax Santa Clara-Matanzas (this will be more or less depending on your luck, bargaining skills, and willingness to wait for another taxi). If you're up for a little adventure, you can find some enterprising locals willing to (illegally) play "taxi" with their old car for a little less money. Be aware that if they get caught, you will have to get out of the car. Although you will not be in any trouble with the authorities, you may find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no transportation. Taxis are the most convenient way to get around within the big cities. There are several types of taxis, including the official government taxis, the private and potentially unlicensed "yank tanks", and the small three-wheeled coco-taxis. They're fairly abundant and not hard to find - they tend to group in front of large hotels, but it will usually be cheaper to find one elsewhere. Car rental starts from CUC 65 per day (including insurance) plus the cost of a full tank of gasoline. The refundable deposits start around CUC 200. Rental cars are for the most part fairly new, imported European or Asian models. Any traffic tickets received are noted on a rental car sheet and are deducted from your rental deposit. Note that if you are involved in a serious traffic accident involving injury or death, you will be detained in Cuba until the legal process sorts things out, which can take from several months to a year. For this reason, many countries advise their citizens not to rent cars in Cuba. Busier roads and city streets are generally of fair (drivable) quality and should not pose much trouble if due care is exercised, however some quiet rural roads are in need of serious repair. Generally traffic is light, especially away from Havana. Outside of towns and cities traffic is usually very light, with no cars for miles on some rural roads. Be warned - you also share the highways with local salespeople selling cheese, snacks and onions(!), cyclists (sometimes going the wrong way, and at night usually without lights) and horse-drawn vehicles. Also note that the Autopista (the main highway running down the center of the country) is crossed at occasional intervals by railway tracks - take care to slow down before going over to avoid damage to the tires or suspension. Many of these have a stop sign ("PARE" in Spanish) which you should carefully heed - or risk a fine of CUC 30, even if no train is coming. Roads are poorly signposted (and frequently not at all), so if you do plan to do serious driving, it would be well-advised to get a detailed map and ask for directions when not sure. Be aware that many traffic lights, especially in cities, are placed on the FAR corner of the crossing,, not where you are supposed to stop, thus inviting you to stop in the middle of the intersection! Something that you obviously don't want... Also most of them have light as weak as a glow-worm. Expect to encounter checkpoints when traveling in the interior of the country. These usually require you to slow down to 40. Respect this or get fined 10 CUC! Gasoline costs CUC 0.85/Regular, CUC 0.95/Special and 1.10/Super per litre. Tourist rental cars are not supposed to use regular. Hitchhiking and the "Amarillo" The Cuban government's system for facilitating hitchhiking is by far the most economical way for foreigners to travel in Cuba, though a flexible schedule and good Spanish are a must. Known as "El Amarillo" ("the yellow guy") for the yellowy-beige uniforms of its administrators, the system consists of points along main routes where certain vehicles are required to stop and pick up hitchhikers. Amarillo points ("el punto amarillo") along major highways are often full service rest stops for hitchhikers, with water, peso-priced food, and a 24 hour indoor waiting area. Hitchhiking is the only system where you can travel for Cuban prices without paying a tourist premium. Given that transportation is one of a tourist's biggest expenses in Cuba, this can make your money go much further. Tell folks you're a student (not a tourist) to avoid funny looks and price gouging. To use the system within cities, just keep your eyes peeled for a man or woman in a yellow / beige uniform standing along the road near a line of people. Tell the official where you need to go, and wait. To travel long distances, you need to get to the "punto amarillo" on the edge of the city in the direction you're going. Ask a local for help on the best way to do that. Then as you pass through cities, ask what bus or taxi to take to get to the "punto amarillo" on the outgoing road at the opposite extreme of the city. This can be tricky, and it's often worth it to take a local taxi. If you can find a Cuban to accompany you on your journey, their help will be invaluable. In daytime hours, when the amarillo is present, you pay a nominal amount of money (approx. 20 pesos from one city to the next) to the official when you find a ride. The money all goes to the government; drivers don't get any. As a result, it's much easier to travel long distances at night, when the amarillo has gone home and drivers can make some money picking up hitchhikers. Of course, it's always possible to hitchhike just by sticking out your thumb to passing cars, but be prepared to give the driver 20-50 pesos for a long ride. Most of the rides you get will be in the back of large trucks, open to the weather. This is an exciting and beautiful way to travel the Cuban countryside. Though an accident would obviously be very dangerous for passengers, school kids, older adults, and parents with small children use this system every day. Make sure to bring protection against sun and rain and, if traveling at night, wind and cold. The main train line in the country runs between Havana and Santiago de Cuba, with major stops at Santa Clara and Camagüey. Trains also run to other cities such as Cienfuegos, Manzanillo, Morón, Sancti Spiritus, and Pinar del Rio. There is one reliable train in Cuba: the overnight Tren Francés between Havana and Santiago de Cuba, which runs on alternate days. It uses equipment that was formerly operated on the Trans-Europe Express, and donated to Cuba by France a few years ago (hence the name). There are first class and special first class seats on this train (the special seats are better and more expensive), but no sleepers. If only one train in Cuba is running, this will be it. All other trains in Cuba are unreliable. The equipment is often in poor condition, breakdowns are common, and when they occur, you can be stuck for the better part of the day (or night) waiting for a replacement engine. There are no services on the trains, so bring plenty of food and water with you. Trains are frequently cancelled. Some trains offer first class seats (don't expect too much); others have second class seats, which can be very uncomfortable. Schedules are at best optimistic and should always be checked in advance of travel. There are no sleepers on overnight routes. If you are still thinking of taking a train, other than the Tren Francès, you should know that many Cubans prefer to hitchhike than take the train. If you are still determined to take a train, approximate schedules are given under the different city descriptions. Foreigners must pay much higher fares (which is still very cheap) than the locals. Tickets are roughly two-thirds what Viazul charges. Theft is a problem so watch your luggage! The following services can be expected to run (special first class: air-conditioned, reservation required, meals and drinks available; regular first class: more comfortable seats, otherwise like second class): The following services may run (all daily, second class): The fastest and most comfortable way to cover larger distances is on either of the Cuban airlines, Cubana de Aviación , Aero Caribbean or Aerogaviota . They operate on the following routes: Cubana de Aviación operated by Aero Caribbean operated by Global Air (Mexico) Calm roads and beautiful scenery make Cuba an ideal country for biking. You will have to bring your own bike as bikes suitable for trekking are not readily available in Cuba. Do not under any circumstances rent a bike (i.e. el Orbe in Havana) in Cuba as you will get a Chinese junker or something that will leave your backside raw. Roads in most places in Cuba are reasonable, but it may still be a good idea to bring a mountain bike. Mountain bikes are stronger and allow for better driving off-road. Make sure to bring all spare parts you might need along the way, since they will not be available in Cuba. As casas particulares are available even in relatively small towns it is easy to plan an itinerary. Food for on the road can often be obtained locally for cheap Cuban Pesos, but make sure if you travel through more remote areas to carry enough food (and water!). Obtaining bottled water outside the major cities can be a definite problem. Bikers are often met with enthusiasm and interest; when taking a break you will often be approached by curious locals. It is possible to take bikes on a tourbus, like "Viazul", to cover larger distances. You have to arrange a personal agreement with the driver however, who will expect a little bonus in return. It is also possible to take bikes on trains and even to hitch with bikes (wave some convertible pesos to approaching drivers to catch their attention). There are two main island groups to explore along the southern shore of Cuba. Your sailing area from the two main bases, Cienfuegos or Trinidad incorporates the Canarreos Archipelago and the Juventud Islands or Jardines de la Reina Archipelago. Windward Islands . When To Go The best times to go are between December and April, to avoid the horrendous storms and hurricanes before December and the sticky heat of the Cuban summer which can be unbearable for some. This is also the high season so expect a price increase during this period. The official language of Cuba is Spanish, quite similar to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rican Spanish, although the version here is quite different from that spoken in Spain (although quite similar to the one in Canary Islands because many Cubans are descendants of Canarians), Mexico and South America. Cubans tend to swallow the last syllable in a word and generally swallow the 's' sound. There are two currencies circulating in Cuba, Cuban Pesos (CUP) and Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUC). Prior to November 2004 US dollars were in wide circulation on par with the CUC, but the government discontinued that and they are no longer used. CUC is the currency most tourists will use in Cuba. It is how you will pay for hotels, official taxis, entry into museums, meals at restaurants, cigars, rum, etc. Since March 2011, the CUC has been set at par to the USD for exchange calculation (with commission and, in the case of actual USD a penalty - see below). Conversion into CUC can be done at exchange houses (casa de cambio, or cadeca). These are located in many hotels and in other places throughout the cities. CUC are valued at 25 times the value of CUP. Tourists are permitted to import or export a maxiumum of CUP 100 or CUC 200 at any one time. Locals pronounce the currency CUC/CUCs as "kook" or "kooks" CUP are also known as local pesos and are referred to in Spanish as "Moneda Nacional" (National currency). As of Jan 2011, 1 CUC buys 24 CUP and 25 CUP buys 1 CUC. There is a limited range of goods that can be bought for local pesos, and these are transactions carried out in agricultural markets or from street vendors. Fruits, vegetables, fresh juices and snacks from street vendors are among the things CUP can buy. CUP's also buys the local cigars 'tabacos' or 'Nacionales' in local shops. These taste fair, and you get one for 1 CUP, far cheaper than what you have to pay for the exportation brands. Try them, they are OK. If you plan on staying in Havana there are plenty of locations that offer goods in CUP and they are worth checking out. There are even sit down restaurants with food priced in CUP. The food is cheaper and you will be eating with actual Cubans. However the quality of cuisine can be very hit or miss. Because the products that can be purchased with CUP are limited, it is a good idea to change only about CUC 5-10 into CUP at a time, If you are on a budget, finding food vendors in CUP is the best way to go. These will not be aimed at tourists and therefore much cheaper. A street vendor selling donuts for 5 CUP might bump up the price to 1 CUC (roughly five times more) though, so make sure you always have some CUPs on you. The USD is no longer a proxy currency in Cuba, and now incurs a 10% exchange penalty that other foreign currencies are exempt from. Therefore, if you are holding USD, it may be cheaper to convert to another currency (CAD/EUR/GBP), so long as you don't lose more than 10% in the conversion. For the overwhelming majority of travelers, it is completely unnecessary to exchange your money (losing) twice. Check to see if your home currency is accepted at the Banco Metropolitano . Over 75% of Cuba's visitors hold Canadian Dollars, Sterling or Euros which are perfectly acceptable. Mexican Pesos, Swiss Francs, Japanese Yen, Australian Dollars and at least four other currencies are also reportedly converted at major banks in Cuba. If you must change a large sum of home currency for another, make sure to change directly into CUCs, and research exchange rates in advance. For currencies that aren't accepted in Cuba, converting to Euros in your home country will probably be the easiest & cheapest option. Banco Central de Cuba publishes official exchange rates and the official buy/sell rates on its website. If you must buy Canadian Dollars or Euros first, compare retail rates from different forex vendors: the interbank rates cited by online calculators will underestimate your true exchange costs by 5-10%. Most travel transactions and expenses are in 'pesos convertibles' or 'chavitos' (CUC$). The best rates for CUC$ are at the banks or CADECA kiosks, not resorts. There's little difference between the rates offered at Cuban airport kiosks or banks. Consider changing only what you need, because re-conversion will add another exchange cost. Also, be advised that travelers changing money on the street have been defrauded, with fake or local currency. Caveat emptor! Changing a very small sum (USD$ 5.) into 'moneda nacional' (CUP) is useful only for theaters, cinemas, local buses, etc. Most tourists will not ever use the 'moneda nacional' on holiday. Travelers or Backpackers with a low budget can save a lot of money in food expenses if they are willing to compromise on food quality. This is particularly feasible in Havana where there is more street food. Traveler's checks drawn on American banks are not technically valid in Cuba, though many have had success cashing U.S. traveler's checks at major tourist hotels. American Express checks are difficult to cash due to the likelihood that they were purchased with U.S. dollars. For example, Swiss traveler's checks will be accepted, as long as they are in Swiss francs, even if the checks are made "in licence" of an American bank, as long as the real producer of them is non-American. Visa Traveller's cheques are accepted, though the same caveats about being drawn on an American bank apply. It's better to bring cash to Cuba; resorts accept Euros, Canadian dollars, British pounds, Swiss francs and Hong Kong Dollar currencies without any fees. If backpacking or leaving the resort areas, exchange your currency to CUCs, as foreign currency is not accepted by many locals. For U.S. dollars, they will charge a penalty of 10%, so it's better to change to Euros, Canadian dollars or Swiss francs before travelling there. ATMs and Credit cards ATMs are relatively rare in Cuba, with most being in Havana. Most are linked with either to the Visa/Plus interbank systems. U.S.-issued cards will not be accepted. Unlike some national systems, only primary accounts (typically checking) are recognized. Most ATMs will only give a maximum of 40 bills in one transaction, so if they only hold CUC 3 notes, that is a maximum of CUC 120. Even if you find an ATM and meet the above criteria it still may not have sufficient cash for a large withdrawal - if refused, try again and ask for a smaller amount or ask the bank clerks for a cash advance, they can process cash advances. Visa & Mastercard credit cards (of non-US origin) can usually be used, including for cash advances, but places that accept Visa as payment are extremely limited. Credit cards are charged in US dollars plus a 3% commission. The best places to attempt to use a credit/debit card for a cash withdrawal are at the state run Cadecas / Cambios - rather than banks used by Cubans, using the 'red' (company name) ATMs. Canadian debit cards are generally not accepted, although this does vary from card to card. As a rule of thumb: if your debit card has a Visa logo it should work in an ATM, if it has a Visa or Mastercard logo it should work over the counter in a bank. If you were able to make a purchase via internet it may work. If it is a USA bank card it won't work. Many banks will tell you that your debit card will be accepted in Cuba when in fact it will not. Do not rely on ATMs for cash as you may be used to in other countries. Top Tip: Have enough currency or travellers cheques when you enter the country to get by, if necessary. There is a high chance you will not be able to withdraw any cash other than with a credit card,for which you will pay the conversion to "US dollar rate" and then conversion of those US dollars to your local currency at the rate charged by your card (which is usually about 2% more than the posted bank rate). To withdraw cash you will need to present your passport to an employee, and you will be asked where you are staying. The Cadecas are open longer hours than the banks, but the queues are usually much shorter in the banks. Other than for use at ATMs and banks, there are generally no facilities for making payments with plastic in hotels, shops and restaurants, necessitating the use of cash. Banks often close at 3PM, and earlier on the last day of the month. Cadecas (exchange bureaus) may be open longer, especially in hotels. When going to a bank allow enough time as service is usually slow and many people may already be waiting. Foreigners may get preferred treatment in exchange for a small tip. You must bring your passport in case you want to exchange traveler's checks or make a credit card advance, although cash can be changed without a passport. Exchange rates do vary from place to place, and some hotels do give significantly worse exchange rates than the banks. As in any developing country, most of the merchandise available is designed for tourists to take back home. The biggest Cuban exports for tourists are rum, cigars, and coffee, all of which are available at government-owned stores (including the duty free store at the airport) or on the streets. For genuine merchandise, you should pay the official price at the legal stores. Cubans also do well in creating music such as salsa, son, and Afro-Cubano. You can purchase CDs or tapes anywhere, but paying the average cost of 20 CUC assures you of quality. If you are planning to take big quantities (several boxes or more) of cigars with you, be sure you have purchased them officially from an approved shop that gives you proper purchase documentation. Foreign nationals are allowed to export up to 50 cigars (generally 25 to a box) without special permits or receipts, but the export of more requires official receipts. If you buy cigars cheap on streets and you don't have official purchase invoice then your cigars may/will be confiscated. Also, be advised that any purchase of Cuban cigars outside government-approved stores (even in resorts) has the potential to be fake, and that the "cigar factory worker who steals from the factory" does not exist in any appreciable quantities. If you find a "deal" from a street vendor, it's incredibly likely you are getting fakes, some of which may not even be made of tobacco. Always ensure, no matter where you buy, that the Cuban government origin warranty stamp is properly affixed to the cigar box. Americans are no longer allowed to bring Cuban cigars back into the U.S., regardless of their value, if they have an OFAC license, or even if they were given as a gift. It is also illegal for Americans to smoke or buy Cuban cigars anywhere in the world. Officially you'll need permission to export paintings that are larger than 70cm/side. When you buy artwork from approved shop then they'll give you also the required document, that consists of one paper and one stamp that will be glued on back of your painting. Serial numbers on the stamp and paper must match. Cost of the document is about CUC 2-3. In reality, it is possible that no one will be interested in your paintings. Cuba has long been a popular Medical Tourism destination for patients worldwide that seek high quality medical care at low costs. According to the Association of Caribbean States, nearly 20,000 international patients visited Cuba in 2006 for medical care. Cuba is especially attractive to many Latin American and North American patients given its easy proximity and relaxing environment. A wide range of medical treatments are provided including joint replacement, cancer treatment, eye surgery, cosmetic surgery and addictions rehabilitation. Costs are about 60 to 80 percent less than U.S. costs. Being that all restaurants are owned by the government and run by employees, the food in Cuba is notoriously bland. If you are expecting the fiery pepperpot spiciness found on some of the other Caribbean islands, consider that the national dish in Cuba is rice and beans (moros y cristianos). A popular saying goes that the best Cuban food can be found in the United States. Within Cuba, the best food will generally be found in your casa particular or in paladares (locally owned restaurants in private homes). Black beans are a main staple in Cuban households. Cubans eat mainly pork and chicken for meat. Beef and lobster are controlled by the state, and therefore illegal to sell outside of state owned hotels and restaurants, however special lobster lunch/supper offers are plentiful for tourists. You may see turtle on menus in Paladares, but be aware that they are endangered and eating them is illegal. Paladares are plentiful, even in the smaller towns. Seating is often limited, so you may need to arrive when they open, usually around 5 or 6PM. If you are staying in a casa particular ask your host for recommendations, as the quality of the food can vary substantially between paladares. Only eat in ones that have a printed menu with prices, otherwise you are very likely to pay two to three times as much as you should. That said, several have taken to printing two different menus, one with local prices and one with foreigner prices. Eating in paladares is perfectly legal, but be aware that if you are taken there by a Cuban, you may be charged extra in order to cover commission of the person who brought you. A supper will cost around 7 to 10 CUC per person. Eating in state owned hotels and restaurants is significantly more expensive and compares with prices in many first world countries. An average supper with soup, dessert and a glass or two of wine could easily set you back 20 to 30 CUC per person. Note that in these establishments, the vast majority of the employees' income would come from tips (their monthly salary often being less than the cost of one meal), making it a friendly and welcome gesture to tip liberally for good service. In bigger towns you will also find some state-run restaurants which cater mainly to Cubans and accept local currency. Prices are extremely low, but the quality of food, service and ambiance is typically shocking. You may be able to secure better food by offering to pay in CUCs. Still, this may be an option if you are on a really low budget or look for an 'authentic' Cuban experience. If you choose to tip, do so in CUCs as anything else would be an insult to staff. It is difficult to find any restaurants serving breakfast in Cuba outside of resorts; most casas particulares will serve their guests a large breakfast for around 4 CUC per person if requested. However, make sure you get value for money - often you can buy for much less money (in national pesos) the same fruit, coffee bread/omelette etc out in the street that your casa particular owner will want to charge you 4 times more for just to present it to you in a more comfortable fashion. Sometimes if you ask nicely, your casa particular owner may let you use their kitchen to prepare your own food - in fact, they are usually quite accommodating if for instance you have special dietary requirements, or young children etc. A tasty serving of rice, vegetables, plantains, and pork or beef (called a cajita ["little box" in English]) is an attractive and affordable option, and are generally sold for around US$1 out of people's homes. You can also find small street vendors selling a variety of foods, typically sandwiches and pizzas for between 2 and 12 CUP. The quality varies from vendor to vendor so when you find a good one take note. Many of these stores are run from people's living rooms, and buying from them is a good way to help provide some extra income to a Cuban family. While these meals are satisfying and cheap, be warned that long lines are common and the vendors are rarely in any rush to see everyone fed quickly. Havana Chinatown Food in Cuba is quite monotonous and - let's be honest - pretty bad (mainly rice, beans, chicken, sandwiches and pizza, all prepared without much regard to taste or presentation), but check out the small Havana Chinatown a few blocks west of the Capitolio if you are looking for something different. There are a few Chinese themed restaurants there, where the food is neither spectacular nor really authentic, but decent enough if you can't face another serving of rice and beans. Street food can also be a notch better here, try the area around the intersection of Avenida de Italia and Avenue Zanja. Cuban national cocktails include the Cuba Libre (rum and cola) and the Mojito (rum, lime, sugar, mint leaves, club soda and ice). If you request a rum in a small country restaurant do not be surprised if it is only available by the bottle. Havana Club is the national brand and the most popular. Expect to pay $4 for three year old white rum or $8 for seven year old dark rum. Cristal is a light beer and is available in "dollar" stores where Cubans with CUCs and visitors may shop. Cubans prefer the Bucanero Fuerte, which at 5.5% alcohol is a strong (hence the "fuerte") darker beer. Both Cristal and Bucanero are brewed by a joint venture with Labatts of Canada, whose beer is the only Cuban beer sold in CUC. A stronger version, Bucanero Max is also available - primarily available in Havana. There are also smaller brews, not available everywhere, such as Hatuey and Corona del Mar. These are sold in CUP. Note that - similar to restaurants - there are two types of establishments you can go to to drink in Cuba: Western-style CUC bars with near-Western prices, a good selection of quality drinks (and sometimes food), nice decorations, semi-motivated staff and often live music, typically found around tourist hot-spots such as Old Havana and tourist hotels. Here you will mostly meet other tourists, expats and a few Cubans with access to hard currency, but don't expect a 'local' experience. The alternative is to seek out local neighborhood bars where you can choose from a quality, but limited, selection of drinks (mainly locally produced rum by the bottle, beer and soft drinks, very rarely will you be able to get cocktails such as mojitos), cigars of dubious and cigarettes of only slightly better quality, and sometimes snacks. Local bars accept CUPs and are dirt-cheap, although bar keepers will often ask you for CUCs instead - it's up to you to negotiate an acceptable price, but keep in mind that local bar staff are state employees and (literally) paid a pittance. These bars are also a good way to meet locals who may even open up a bit and talk about their lives after a couple of drinks. Local bars are not that hard to find despite typically having no prominent signs displayed outside. Just ask or walk around a local neighborhood and look out for a bare-walled, neon-lit room without any decorations or furniture, save for a bar and a few rickety chairs and tables, sullen staff and depressed/bored/drunk-looking customers, almost always men. Contrary to Cuba's reputation as a music and fun loving nation, local bars are not boisterous affairs - they are quiet, almost subdued, music is rarely played (if at all, it will come from a radio but never be live), and have the charm of third-world railway station waiting rooms. Nonetheless, they make for a fascinating experience (especially if you make the effort to speak to some locals - offering to buy a drink will get a conversation going, no surprise there), and they provide a good insight into what life must be like for ordinary Cubans without access to hard currency. As a foreign visitor, you will be generally welcomed. Discussing politics over a drink is a tricky, and typically lose-lose proposition: speak negatively about the Cuban political system and you may put your Cuban drinking companions into a very difficult position as they may very well be informed on for hanging out with subversive foreigners. If you want to experience something of the real life of Cubans, the best places to stay are casas particulares (private houses licensed to offer lodging services to foreigners). They are cheaper than hotels (average CUC 20/room) and the food (breakfast CUC 3-4, dinner CUC 7-10) is almost always better than you would get in a hotel. Casas particulares are plentiful even in small towns; they are somewhat more expensive in Havana than elsewhere. Note that any service offered by a casa particular other than accommodation, such as driving you to the bus station, will be added to your bill, regardless of whether this is stated up front. Items such as bottled water supplied with your meal will also have a charge. Always make sure that you talk to the owner about what things will cost when you arrive to avoid unpleasant surprises later. These houses are under a lot of restrictions by the government, so make sure that you are staying at a legal "casa". A legal house will have a sticker on the front door (often a blue sign on a white background), you will notice these as you walk past houses. Upon arrival, the houseowner will need to take down your passport details and how long you will be staying for. Some Cubans do offer illegal accommodation and although they are cheaper, the quality of the food and service is generally lower. If found, the Cubans will risk a large fine and it is best to avoid illegal casas completely. If travelling around the island, it is recommended to ask the casa owners if they have friends or family in the city you are going to. There is a network of casas and the family will gladly organise for you to be met by their friends off the bus at your next destination. If travelling by bus, you will be accosted by jineteros (hustlers) trying to lead you to a casa, where they will get a commission and you will be charged the extra. You may wish to arrange your accommodation in advance, either by asking your host to recommend someone or by using a casa particular association (note, however, that the party making the introduction will almost always receive a commission, which you end up paying as it will be included in the accommodation price). Some will let you book accommodation over the internet before your trip, and will go out of their way to arrange accommodation for you while you are there. But to avoid commissions and annoyances, the best thing to do is just walk around by yourself and knock on doors with the distinctive "arrendedor divisa" sign, meaning it is a legal casa particular. They are plentiful, and you'll find one that you like for the price you want to pay (generally 15-20 CUC per room is standard around the island) Most small cities and larger towns have at least one state-run hotel, which is often in a restored colonial building. The prices range from around CUC 25 to CUC 100, depending on what you are getting. Resorts and high-end Havana hotels can be significantly more expensive. Cubans hosting foreigners for free is technically illegal and risk a large fine if caught. Some will bend the rules, but be cautious if you choose to take up the offer (e.g. don't walk out the front door if you see a police car nearby, especially if you look obviously foreign). The University of Havana offers both long and short-term Spanish courses. If you do chose to study at the university, try and see if you can obtain a student "carne" which will enable you to benefit from the same advantages as Cuban students (museums at a 25th of the price, entrance to nightclubs full of mostly Cubans). If you want to take private classes or study Spanish in smaller groups, Babylon Idiomas is offering a wide range of intensive courses for all levels that you can start on any Monday of the year. You can study Spanish in Havana, Trinidad or Santiago de Cuba. Cuban museums are plentiful, frequently open, and usually charge only one or two CUC for admission. You may get a guided tour from one of the staff members; even if you do not speak Spanish, this can be useful. They will generally make you check your bags, and charge a small fee for the privilege of taking pictures inside. The average official salary for Cubans is about US$15 per month. Non-Cubans can only obtain a business/work visa or a work permit through a Cuban business or a foreign business registered in Cuba. Business visas are generally for up to three months. Work permits are renewable annually. Cuba is generally a very safe country; strict and prominent policing, combined with neighborhood-watch-style programs (known as the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, or C.D.R.) are officially there to keep the streets safe from violent crime, however in reality it is a secret police network. Therefore, a certain degree of common-sense and caution is advisable, especially in major cities. Visitors should avoid coming to the attention of the Cuban police and security services. Drug laws can be harsh and their implementation unpredictable. The same may be said about the laws concerning prostitution. The importation, possession or production of pornography is strictly prohibited. It is not uncommon to see a dog jogging on the luggage carousel sniffing arriving luggage, especially when arriving from countries prone to drug-trafficking, so be sure to lock and/or wrap your luggage to avoid any problems in this regard. Tourists are generally advised not to involve themselves in the following three areas: politics, drugs, or pornography/prostitution. It should be noted that there is very little tolerance amongst the authorities for any comments made against the Revolution, Fidel, Che, etc., and an extensive network of informers exist who routinely turn in neighbors who espouse politically undesirable beliefs. As such, it is advisable not to make any such comments. As far as women are concerned, they will receive a lot of attention from men, especially away from the more touristy centre of Havana. Avoiding cleavage and short skirts will lessen the attention, although by no means stop it. Do not get annoyed by the whistles or hissing sounds, as Cuban women often acknowledge and welcome the attention. Acknowledging it too enthusiastically however will probably encourage the men though and is best avoided. A few well established scams exist: Cuba is considered very healthy except for the water; even many Cubans boil their water. That said, some travelers drink untreated water without ill effect. The best solution is bottled water and lots of it, especially for visitors who are not used to the 30+°C/85+°F temperatures. Bottled water (agua de botella) is easily found and costs between .65 and 2 CUC for a 1.5L bottle, depending on the shop. It should be noted that the mineral count (total dissolved solids) of bottled water is quite high compared to elsewhere in the world, so if you are planning to visit Cuba for an extended period of time (e.g. as a student or on work permit), it might be a useful idea to bring a small jug/sports bottle water filter with a few cartridges along to further purify the water. Cuban milk is usually unpasteurized, and can make visitors sick. Additionally, tourists should be wary of vegetables washed in tap water. Despite the warnings, most Cuban food is safe to eat and you do not need to be paranoid. The island is tropical and thus host to a number of diseases. Some recommend an aggressive program of innoculations when planning a trip to Cuba, but most travelers come with little or none. Hepatitis B and tetanus shots are recommended by most travel clinics. Hepatitis B is generally spread by direct blood or sexual contact, the innoculation course requires three injections over several weeks, followed by a blood test to determine if it actually worked; shorter courses are available. (Interestingly, the hepatitis B vaccine is actually produced in Cuba for world-wide use). Generally tetanus immunization is more important, since tetanus is a risk with any wound or cut, especially in a dirty, contaminated wound. HIV/AIDS infection is less than 0.1%, however, as always, you should exercise care and make sure you or your partner wears a condom should you become sexually active while in Cuba. Cuba has one of the highest number of doctors available per capita in the world (around one doctor for every 170 people), making doctors readily accessible throughout most of the island. Your hotel reception should be able to point you to the closest doctor. (So plentiful in fact are doctors in Cuba, that it is not uncommon to see doctors selling paintings, books or other artwork to tourists at the flea market to make money to supplement their meager salaries.) Finding medication is, however, often difficult. It is highly recommended to stock up on over-the-counter medications before heading to Cuba, as pharmacies lack many medications that westerners might expect to find, such as aspirin, ibuprofen and immodium. Do not attempt to import psychoactive drugs into Cuba. Havana also features a clinic (and emergency room) for foreigners, which offers extremely prompt service. Toiletries such as shampoo, conditioner, razors, tampons and condoms are also hard to come across and expensive, so stock up before you leave. Police, Fire and Medical contact numbers The emergency number in Cuba is: 106. Cubans are generally friendly and helpful people. Keep in mind that they make about US$15 a month; if they can help you, they probably will, but they may expect you to return the favor. If you are invited into a Cuban's home for supper, take the invitation. You will really be treated like a guest of honor. It is a great way to get a feel for the culture. Of course, ordinary Cubans are not permitted to host this type of event, but it goes on as a matter of course. One way to help local Cubans is by staying in casas particulares and eating in paladares. While free enterprise is usually banned, several years ago the government began selling expensive licenses to individuals wishing to open up rooms for rent in their houses, or set up a few tables on their porch and cook out of their kitchens. Not only are the licenses very expensive but the fees must be paid monthly regardless of income, leaving those less fortunate the possibility of actually losing money. Not only is it more interesting to stay with locals and eat in their homes, you're actually directly benefiting them in one of the few ways possible. Do not push Cubans into a discussion of political issues, as this could have serious repercussions on you and the person to whom you are talking. Traditionally Cuba is Catholic, but the government has often cracked down on demonstrations of faith. Recently, however, it is less frowned upon since Pope John Paul II's visit, and there are more important issues to deal with. Other religions in Cuba are hybrid religions, mixing elements of Catholicism with others of traditional African religions. The most common one is called "Santería" and their priests can be recognised by the full white regalia with bead necklaces that they wear. Women going through the process to become priests are not allowed (amongst other things) to touch other people, so if your casa owner is distant and dressed all in white, do not be too surprised. There are many museums in Cuba (especially in the Southern cities like Santiago de Cuba) which depict the history and traditions of Santería. In many cities the only way for tourists to access the internet is through the government's communications centers. Look for buildings bearing the name "ETECSA", which stands for Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. ETECSA also has internet stations in some of the larger government hotels and resorts. The connection speed is comparable to analog dial-up speed in Havana or slower in smaller locations, at a cost of 6 CUC / hour. This is payable by purchasing a prepaid scratch card with a PIN code granting you access for one hour. The same card can be used throughout the country at any ETECSA terminal, allowing you to disconnect after your session and use the remaining time on the card further at the next hotel/city you go to. Wi-Fi in hotels and restaurants is certainly uncommon if not non-existent and tourists should not rely on this being available when planning their means of communication. Many will tell you that Skype is unavailable in the country, yet on a recent visit (Nov 2011) it was possible to Skype the UK and Australia, with video, from a hotel lobby using an iPad and the hotel's Wi-Fi. Having internet access at your house is illegal, though illegal connections (usually through a modem set up at a school or workplace) can be obtained for about 30 CUC per month. The country code for Cuba is 53. The emergency number is 116. The information number is 113. GSM cell phones will work in Cuba (900 MHz). Cuba is one of the most expensive countries in which to communicate. Incoming phonecalls to Cuba cost about €1 / minute, even through services like Skype. Outgoing calls from Cuba are similarly expensive, and can be as high as €5 per minute for making international when roaming with your cellphone from overseas. Cellphones can be rented at several stores in Havana, including one in the airport. The rates are 9 CUC per day (6 CUC for the phone and 3 CUC for the SIM card), plus about 36 cents a minute for prepaid cards. If you bring an unlocked GSM phone operating at 900 MHz (or quad-band world phone) you can buy a SIM card for 111 CUC, plus your prepaid minutes. If you're staying two weeks or more it makes sense to bring a cheap phone, buy a SIM card and prepaid minutes, then give the phone to a Cuban friend when you leave. Cellphones are among the most desired items for Cubans (bring a case for the phone too, Cubans are very fussy about keeping their phones scratch-free). You will have to go to a cellphone store with your friend and sign a paper to give the phone to your friend. Don't give your friend an unlimited plan that charges to your credit card! If part of the attraction of going to Cuba for you is stepping outside of the US-dominated global communications order of status updates, likes, pokes, hangouts, tweets, vines and whatnot and enjoying the old-timey feeling of a different kind of country, why not complete the experience by sending your kith and kin an actual physical piece of postal mail? You can buy and send an Aerogram (a piece of stationary that you fold into an envelope and send like that with no extra stamps, used to be very popular worldwide decades ago) to anywhere in the world for as little as 0,60 peso (2007 price). Afraid the Cuban national security state will open and read tourists' mail? Then by all means spend good convertible pesos on slow-as-molasses-in-January dial-up internet to use Facebook, Email, or Skype, no one ever spies on those. Most of the radio stations are available live online . If you're staying at a hotel or casa particular, it's likely there will be a television, and watching Cuban television is a good place to observe Cuba's unique mix of vibrant culture, sports and controversial politics. The Cuban telenovelas are one of the state's key instruments for addressing sexual taboos and educating young people about AIDS, for example. The locally produced cartoons are the most interesting and uniquely Cuban. They range from abstract and artsy to informative to entertaining. The most famous of the genre is the children's program Elpidio Valdés, which chronicles the adventures of a band of rebels in the 19th century revolt against the Spanish. The mix of cartoon slapstick humor and images of violent revolution (dashing revolutionaries stealing rifles, blowing up Spanish forts, and sticking pistols into the mouths of goofy Spanish generals) in a program geared at children is simultaneously delightful and disturbing. There are classes under the heading "Universidad Para Todos" (University for Everybody) with the purpose to teach Cubans subjects like mathematics and grammar through the television. Also one of the channels is called the "Educational Channel" (Canal Educativo), although this uses "educational" in its widest sense, including foreign soap operas and pop concerts.

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Preventing unauthorized access to sensitive data is essential in environments in which multiple users have access to the same physical or network resources. Operating systems (OSs) and individual users must be able to protect files, memory, and configuration settings from unauthorized viewing and modification. OS security includes obvious mechanisms such as accounts, and passwords. However, OS security also includes less-obvious mechanisms for protecting the OS from corruption, preventing less-privileged users from performing actions such as rebooting the computer, and preventing the programs of less-privileged users from adversely affecting the programs of other users or the OS. The stringent requirements of providing robust security influenced the design of Windows NT, which has earned a C2 security rating. This security rating puts NT on par with most UNIX systems. Although you're probably familiar with user accounts, groups, and NT's file and Registry security editors, you might find the way NT implements its logon validation, object protection, and privilege checking a mystery. Yet if you have a basic knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes in NT security, you'll know which security policies you need to install, and you can better protect your systems. To help you gain a basic knowledge of NT security, I'm beginning a two-part look at NT security this month. I'll review what a C2 security rating is and what facilities an OS must include to earn a C2 rating. I'll discuss NT's security identifiers (SIDs), which NT uses to identify users, groups, computers, and domains. Next, I'll present an overview of NT's logon procedure, and I'll discuss local and network (domain) logon. Finally, I'll discuss access tokens. Next month, I'll conclude with a detailed description of object security access validation, client/server impersonation, privileges, and policies. The US Department of Defense (DoD) National Security Agency (NSA) established the National Computer Security Center (NCSC, at http://www.radium.ncsc.mil) in 1981 to help the government, corporations, and home users protect proprietary and personal data stored in computer systems. The NCSC created a range of security ratings, which Table 1 shows, that measure the degree of protection commercial OSs, network components, and trusted applications offer. The NCSC assigned these security ratings in 1983 based on DoD's Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria (TCSEC). The security ratings are commonly known as the "Orange Book." The TCSEC standard consists of levels of trust ratings, in which higher levels of security build on lower levels, adding more rigorous protection requirements. No OS has earned the A1 rating. A few OSs have earned B1, B2, and B3 ratings, including variants of HP's HP-UX (a UNIX system), Digital's Ultrix and SEVMS, Unisys' OS 1100, and Silicon Graphics' IRIX. OSs that have earned the C2 rating include versions of IBM's OS/400 and Digital's OpenVMS. NT 3.5 (Workstation and Server) with Service Pack 3 (SP3) earned the C2 rating in July 1995. Microsoft reportedly submitted NT 4.0 for NCSC evaluation, but the evaluation process usually takes several years and is not complete at press time (Microsoft first submitted NT 3.5 in 1991). Because the security-related components in NT 4.0's architecture are virtually identical to those in NT 3.5's architecture, NT 4.0 will probably meet the C2 requirements. To earn a C2 security rating, an OS must implement the following features: a secure logon facility, discretionary access control, auditing, and object reuse protection. A secure logon facility requires users to enter a unique identifier and password to identify themselves before it will grant them access to the computer. NT uses accounts for user identification and password-based logon for its default authentication mechanism. When an OS implements discretionary access control, it lets all shareable OS resources associate with a block of information that specifies which users can perform operations on the resource. If you've viewed or set NTFS file or directory permissions or you've modified the security settings on Registry keys, you've seen a representation of NT's discretionary access control, which NT organizes as a list. The list elements describe the actions a user can and cannot perform on an object. Auditing capability lets authorized users place watchdogs on resources that monitor and record users' failed or successful attempts to access the resources. The NTFS permission editors and the Registry provide access to NT's implementation of file system and Registry object auditing. All shareable objects in NT can have auditing enabled. But auditing can introduce unwanted overhead, so NT disables it systemwide by default. To have object reuse protection, an OS must prevent users from seeing data that another user has deleted or from accessing memory that another user previously used and released. For example, in some OSs you can create a new file of a certain length and then examine the file's contents to see data that previously occupied the location on the disk allocated to the new file. This data might be sensitive information that another user stored in a file and then deleted. NT prevents this type of security breach by preinitializing file data, memory, and other objects when it allocates them. If you create a file, NT zeros the contents before you can access the file, which prevents you from seeing any data that existed previously in the file's location on the disk. When NT earned its C2 security rating, NCSC also recognized NT as meeting two requirements of B-level security: Trusted Path functionality and Trusted Facility Management functionality. Trusted Path functionality prevents Trojan horse programs from intercepting a user's name and password as the user logs on. NT's Trusted Path functionality exists in the form of its Ctrl+Alt+Del logon-attention sequence. This sequence of keystrokes, the Secure Attention Sequence (SAS), causes an NT logon dialog box to pop up, which initializes a process that helps NT recognize would-be Trojan horses. NT bypasses any Trojan horse that presents a fake logon dialog when a user enters the attention sequence. NT meets the Trusted Facility Management requirement by supporting separate account roles for administrative functions. For instance, NT provides separate accounts for administration (Administrators), user accounts charged with backing up the computer (Backup Operators), and standard users (Users). Microsoft is reportedly working on a B-level version of NT, but the company has not made a public statement about when it might release this version. If you rely on NT's C2 security rating in your security decisions, you must keep in mind two important considerations. First, a C2 security rating is different from a C2 security certification. OSs and programs earn ratings, but individual installations must be certified. This distinction means that most NT installations are not C2 certified, nor would they necessarily want to besecurity needs vary, and too much security can hamper productivity. You can use the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit tool C2Config to help your NT systems meet the requirements for a C2 certification. Second, NT earned its C2 rating as a standalone system, with no networking enabled. If you take your C2Config C2-certified system and attach it to your LAN, your system loses its C2 certification. Securing a network-based system is harder than securing a standalone machine, but if you keep up to date with service packs and security alerts, you can remain close to a C2 certification level. NT uses SIDs rather than names (which might not be unique) to identify entities that perform actions in a system. Users, local and domain groups, local computers, domains, and domain members have SIDs. A SID is a variable-length numeric value that consists of a SID revision number, a 48-bit identifier authority value, and a variable number of 32-bit subauthority or Relative Identifier (RID) values. The authority value identifies the agent that issued the SID, and this agent is typically an NT local system or a domain. Subauthority values identify trustees relative to the issuing authority, and RIDs are simply a way for NT to create unique SIDs from a base SID. Because SIDS are long and NT takes care to generate truly random values within each SID, it is virtually impossible for NT to issue duplicate SIDs on machines or domains anywhere in the world. In text form, each SID carries an S prefix, and hyphens separate its various components. To see the SID representation for any account you are using, run regedit and open the HKEY_USERS key, as Screen 1 shows. This key contains the current user's profile and the default account profile, which is in use when no one is logged on locally. In Screen 1, the SID of the current account is This SID has a revision number of 1, one identifier authority of 5, (which represents the NT security authority), another identifier authority of 21 (which identifies the SID as not built in), three subauthority values, and one RID (1128). This SID is a domain SID, but a local computer on the domain would have a SID with the same revision number, identifier authority value, and number of subauthority values. When you install NT, the NT setup program issues the computer a SID. NT assigns SIDs to local accounts on the computer: Each local-account SID is based on the source computer's SID and has a RID at the end. RIDs for user accounts and groups start at 1000 and increase in increments of 1 for each new user or group. Similarly, NT issues a SID to each newly created NT domain. NT issues to new domain accounts SIDS that are based on the domain SID and have an appended RID (again starting at 1000 and increasing in increments of 1 for each new user or group). The RID in Screen 1 (1128) identifies that SID as the 129th SID the domain issued. NT also defines several built-in local and domain SIDs to represent groups. For example, a SID that identifies all accounts is the Everyone or World SID: S-1-1-0. Another example of a group that a SID can represent is the network group, which is the group that represents users who can log on to a machine from the network. The network-group SID is S-1-5-2. NT issues SIDs that consist of a computer or domain SID with a predefined RID to many predefined accounts and groups. For example, the RID for the administrator account is 500, and the RID for the guest account is 501. A computer's local administrator account, for instance, has the computer SID as its base with the RID of 500 appended to it: S-1-5-21-13124455-12541255-61235125-500. NT implements a secure logon process that takes as input a username and password and returns as output to the OS SIDs that identify the user's account and the groups the account belongs to. In the first step of the secure logon process, NT recognizes the SAS and prompts the user for identification and a password. The winlogon.exe program is responsible for presenting NT's logon dialog boxes. Instead of containing a built-in user interface, Winlogon loads the interface dynamically. This strategy lets third-party vendors implement their logon interfaces. Logon interface packages are known as Graphical Identification and Authentication (GINA) libraries. The default logon interface, which presents the logon dialog box most of us are familiar with, is MSGINA (it's located in winnt\system32\msgina.dll). NT's ability to replace the logon interface lets third-party vendors replace MSGINA with a proprietary GINA. For example, a custom GINA might recognize a voice command instead of Ctrl+Alt+Del as the logon sequence, or it might use a retinal scanning device to identify users. After users identify themselves to a GINA with a username and password, the GINA sends the gathered information to the Local Security Authority Sub System (LSASS, in winnt\system32\lsass.exe) process with a local procedure call (LPC) message. LSASS is the front end for logon authentication in NT. Authentication is the mechanism whereby NT validates the username and password and retrieves the SID information that identifies the user. Reflecting the configurability of Winlogon, LSASS uses a replaceable library as its authentication package. If you look at the Authentication Packages Registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\CONTROL\Lsa, you'll see MSV1_0 listed as the LSASS authenticator. (MSV1_0 is in winnt\system32\msv1_0.dll.) If you have File and Print Services for NetWare (FPNW) or Client Services for NetWare (CSNW), you'll see an authentication package for that as well. LSASS calls MSV1_0 and gives it the username and password. Next, MSV1_0 determines whether the logon attempt is local (onto a workgroup or the local computer) or domain based. MSV1_0 consists of an interface component, a processing component, and a component called Netlogon, which I'll describe shortly. The interface component takes the password and encrypts it. If the logon is local or directed at a domain and the machine the logon is taking place on is a domain controller, the interface component passes the username and password to the processing component. The processing component uses the functions exported by the samsrv.dll library to look in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM, which serves as the local account database on NT, to validate the name and password. Figure 1 illustrates this local validation flow of control. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SAM, which is also known as the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) database, is by default not viewable even from an Administrator account. Consequently, the SAM's content and layout are a mystery to most people. Looking inside the SAM probably won't provide you with any useful information, but if you're like me, you're curious about why NT keeps the SAM so secret. If you change the SAM's security settings (do so only in a nonproduction environment) and open it, you'll see something like Screen 2 on page 66. In Screen 2, you can see the Domains key, which contains all local account information beneath it. If the machine is a domain controller, the Domains key contains domain-account and computer-membership information as well. Under the Account subkey, you'll find information pertaining to non-built-in aliases, accounts, groups, and computers. In Screen 2, you can see three add-on accounts (Administrator, Guest, and Joe) under Account\Users\Names. Three subkeys under Account\Users have numeric names. The keys with numeric names correspond directly to the account names under the Names subkey, and the numeric names of these keys are the account RIDs (e.g., the Administrator account has a RID of 000001F4, which is the hexadecimal representation of 500). For the RID-name keys, you'll find two values, F and V, that contain account description, password policy, password (encrypted), and SID. Of course, all this information is in an undocumented format and will change in NT 5.0 (see the sidebar, "Logon in NT 5.0," page 68). The Builtin subkey is a mirror of the Account subkey, but Builtin also contains information for aliases, groups, and accounts that are built in to NT. Unless you have a nonstandard security setup, you'll find in this subkey only built-in alias information that describes which accounts are members of aliases. For instance, under the Builtin subkey you'll find Administrators, Power Users, Backup Operators, and other aliases. To validate a user logon, MSV1_0 looks up the specified logon account in the SAM and compares the password the user keyed in with what it finds in the SAM. If the information matches, MSV1_0 validates the user, obtains the SIDs of the account and the groups the account belongs to, and returns these SIDs to the interface component, which in turn passes the SIDS back to LSASS. LSASS finally obtains a list of privileges associated with the account and groups. An example privilege is User can reboot the computer. NT stores the privileges lists in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SECURITY. Like the SAM, the security database is thoroughly locked down, but I'll show you what's inside it when I discuss privileges next month. The flow of logon control is different if the user logon is directed at a domain and the user machine is not a domain controller or if the logon is directed at a trusted domain. Figure 2 shows the flow of remote logon control. The MSV1_0 interface component presents the username and encrypted password to the processing component, which gives the username and encrypted password to the Netlogon component. Netlogon (winnt\system32\netlogon.dll) sends the information to MSV1_0 on a server (chosen through a process called discovery) for the domain the logon is targeting; this server also has an instance of MSV1_0 running on it. Netlogon on the target server is listening for network authentication requests. When it receives a request, it hands the information to the processing component of MSV1_0. The processing component performs the same authentication and SID-retrieval steps as for local logons, but it gives the information to Netlogon on the target server, which returns the information to the originating computer's Netlogon. Finally, the originating Netlogon returns its results to the interface component of MSV1_0, which returns the results to LSASS. I've just described interactive logons, in which a user sits at a computer and types in a username and password, but the flow of control is the same for noninteractive logons. For example, when a Win32 service (a daemon process) runs in the context of a specific user account, the service logs on to the computer by using account name and password information, which the service stores with its other configuration parameters. The difference between interactive and noninteractive logons is that an interactive logon results in the creation of an interactive window station, with a desktop GUI that programs can interact with. You can think of noninteractive logons as "headless" logons. If the interface portion of MSV1_0 returns a result to LSASS that confirms a successful logon, LSASS must create an access token. An access token stores all the information MSV1_0 gathered, including the account SID, the group SIDs, the collective privileges, and the account name. An access token is a complete description of a user from the viewpoint of NT security, and NT attaches a copy of the token to all processes that the user executes. For example, when someone performs an interactive logon, Winlogon executes a shell program (in most cases Explorer) and gets the ball rolling by attaching to the shell process the access token that LSASS returned through the GINA. When LSASS creates the first token, the user is officially logged on. If the user starts another program, such as Word, inside Explorer, the process Word is associated with will get a copy of the access token. When LSASS closes the last token belonging to a user, the user is officially logged off. Figure 3 depicts an access token's logical contents. When a process tries to access an object, such as a file, Registry key, named pipe, or even an unnamed synchronization object, the Security Reference Monitor subsystem (discussed in "Windows NT Architecture, Part 1," March 1998) uses the process' access token to determine whether to allow the access. To Be Continued Next month I'll describe the decision-making process the Security Reference Monitor uses when it processes access objects. I'll show you how server processes such as those a file server initiates can temporarily alter their identities to look like a client user through a mechanism known as impersonation. I'll wrap up this two-part look at NT security by discussing privileges and policies in depth.

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Why Not Apologizing Makes You Feel Better To err is human. So is refusing to apologize for those errors. Parents, educators and even public relations flacks have talked at length about the value of coming clean, and there is abundant research on the psychological value of apologizing. But psychologists recently decided to take a new tack: If so many people don't like to do it, there must be psychological value in not apologizing, too. In a recent paper, researchers Tyler G. Okimoto, Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick reported on what they've found happens in people's minds when they refuse to apologize. They find that parents who tell their kids that saying sorry will make them feel better have been telling kids the truth — but not the whole truth. "We do find that apologies do make apologizers feel better, but the interesting thing is that refusals to apologize also make people feel better and, in fact, in some cases it makes them feel better than an apology would have," Okimoto said in an interview. Okimoto surveyed 228 Americans and asked them to remember a time they had done something wrong. Most people remembered relatively trivial offenses, but some remembered serious offenses, including crimes such as theft. The researchers then asked the people whether they had apologized, or made a decision not to apologize even though they knew they were in the wrong. And they also divided the people at random and asked some to compose an email where they apologized for their actions, or compose an email refusing to apologize. In both cases, Okimoto said, refusing to apologize provided psychological benefits — which explains why people are so often reluctant to apologize. The same thing happened when people were asked to imagine doing something wrong, and then imagine apologizing or refusing to apologize. "When you refuse to apologize, it actually makes you feel more empowered," he said. "That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth." Ironically, Okimoto said, people who refused to apologize ended up with boosted feelings of integrity. The researchers are not suggesting that refusing to apologize is a useful life strategy: Okimoto himself said he has little trouble apologizing. The interpersonal benefits of apologizing are huge, and an apology can renew bonds not only between people but also between countries. Okimoto believes the research, in fact, may provide a clue on how best to get people to apologize. Our conventional approach, especially with kids, is to force people to apologize. But if people are reluctant to apologize because apologies make them feel threatened, coercion is unlikely to help — that is, if a sincere apology is hoped for. Support and love, by contrast, may be a more effective way to counter the feelings of threat involved in an apology. The next time junior — or your partner — does something wrong, pass on the stare and try a hug. STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: OK. If you've ever looked after a group of children, chances are you've tried to break up a squabble using the following words: Come on now, just say you're sorry. If your advice was met with stony-faced resistance, you will want to listen to this. NPR's Shankar Vedantam joins us regularly to discuss social science research, including some research on the psychological power of not apologizing. Shankar, welcome back to the program. SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Thanks. INSKEEP: Not sorry to have you here. So what do you mean, not apologizing? What is this about? VEDANTAM: Well, you know, Steve, I almost feel we should warn parents to turn off the radio in case their kids are listening to the next segment, and here's why. INSKEEP: OK. Four minutes, four minutes. OK, go ahead, for those still listening. VEDANTAM: Apologies present us with a puzzle and the puzzle is kids find it hard to do, adults find it hard to do. It's even hard when it's completely rational. So, in the criminal justice system, for example, you have situations where someone is being found guilty and they're awaiting sentencing and the only thing that could reduce the severity of their sentence is if they say I'm sorry. And time and time again, people refuse to apologize. So Tyler Okimoto, who's a researcher at the University of Queensland in Australia, along with his colleagues Michael Wenzel and Kyli Hedrick, they decided to conduct some psychological experiments to understand why people refuse to apologize. Now, parents have been telling their kids for years, look, just say you're sorry. You're going to feel better about yourself. Okimoto finds that parents have been telling their kids the truth, but they haven't been telling their kids the whole truth. Here he is: TYLER OKIMOTO: We do find that apologies do make apologizers feel better, but the interesting thing is that refusals to apologize also makes people feel better and, in fact, in some cases, it makes them feel even better than an apology would have. VEDANTAM: So what he does is he asks a number of people to remember times when they've harmed someone and most people, of course, remember trivial things; domestic quarrels and stuff like that. But some people also remember serious harms they've done. They remember crimes such as theft. And Okimoto does two things. He asked them, did you actually apologize in real life? And then, second, he conducts a laboratory experiment where he asked them to compose an email where they either apologize or they refuse to apologize. And what he finds is that both in real life as well as in the laboratory, refusing to apologize increases your feelings of status and increases your feelings of integrity. INSKEEP: You feel like you have more integrity because you refuse to apologize for something that you know you should apologize for? VEDANTAM: That's exactly right. The human mind is a wonderful thing, Steve. INSKEEP: OK. So what is the conclusion here? We should never apologize for anything. VEDANTAM: Well, actually, there are huge interpersonal costs in not apologizing and not just between individuals, between groups. I mean, think about conflicts that have been stuck for decades because one side can't tell another side, look, we're really sorry about what we did. The value of Okimoto's research is it starts to get a handle on why people find it so hard to apologize. Here he is again: OKIMOTO: When you refuse to apologize, it actually makes you feel more empowered. That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth. INSKEEP: I think I'm getting this because when you apologize, you are putting your fate in someone else's hands. They will accept the apology or not, or respond however they do. When you say I will not apologize, you are still in control. VEDANTAM: Yeah, and I think this research actually reminds me of the value of something that philosophers have been saying for a very long time, which is being able to apologize is not a sign of weakness. It's actually a sign of strength because if you look at the people who find it difficult to apologize, it's people who feel threatened, people who feel an apology would somehow make them extremely vulnerable. INSKEEP: And, of course, if you're a little kid being asked to apologize, you feel vulnerable. You're little to begin with, and it almost suggests that maybe a parent would want to approach that situation a different way. VEDANTAM: Yeah, and not just for kids, but for adults as well, because our first instinct when someone refuses to apologize to do the right thing, our first instinct is to coerce them into an apology, to make them do the right thing. The problem is that only threatens further that sense of not having any control. Okimoto's research, I think, actually mirrors something that we're seeing in a number of other areas of research, which is that one reason people find it difficult to give up biases is that giving up those biases is somehow threatening. And our instinct to force them into doing the right thing, it's an instinct that can work very well in courtroom situations, but if you're actually trying to change people's behavior, love and support might be more effective. INSKEEP: Because if not, people end up giving that apology that they don't really mean. VEDANTAM: They're completely insincere. INSKEEP: Sorr-eee. I'm sorry if you're offended. There are a variety of ways to do that. Well, Shankar, we're not too sorry that you came by. VEDANTAM: Thanks, Steve. INSKEEP: Shankar Vedantam, regularly joins us to talk about social science research. You can follow him on Twitter @HiddenBrain, just as you can follow this program @MorningEdition and @NPRInskeep. (SOUNDBITE OF SONG "SO. CENTRAL RAIN") MICHAEL STIPE: (Singing) Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. INSKEEP: No, we're not. This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Key: "S:" = Show Synset (semantic) relations, "W:" = Show Word (lexical) relations Display options for sense: (gloss) "an example sentence" - S: (n) cartridge holder, cartridge clip, clip, magazine (a metal frame or container holding cartridges; can be inserted into an automatic gun) - S: (n) time, clip (an instance or single occasion for some event) "this time he succeeded"; "he called four times"; "he could do ten at a clip" - S: (n) clip (any of various small fasteners used to hold loose articles together) - S: (n) clip (an article of jewelry that can be clipped onto a hat or dress) - S: (n) clip, clipping, snip (the act of clipping or snipping) - S: (n) clip (a sharp slanting blow) "he gave me a clip on the ear" - S: (v) nip, nip off, clip, snip, snip off (sever or remove by pinching or snipping) "nip off the flowers" - S: (v) trot, jog, clip (run at a moderately swift pace) - S: (v) clip (attach with a clip) "clip the papers together" - S: (v) snip, clip, crop, trim, lop, dress, prune, cut back (cultivate, tend, and cut back the growth of) "dress the plants in the garden" - S: (v) clip, curtail, cut short (terminate or abbreviate before its intended or proper end or its full extent) "My speech was cut short"; "Personal freedom is curtailed in many countries"

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John: "Darling, do you want to go out to the show tonight?"Notice how Laura didn't respond to John's question by saying, "No, I don't want to go out to the show tonight." What she actually said — her locutionary act — was "I'm feeling ill." Laura: "I'm feeling ill." John: "That's ok. You stay there and I'll make soup." An illocutionary act is what a person does in saying something else. Locution is speech. In-locution (in speaking) becomes il-locution through phonetic assimilation. In saying that she feels ill, Laura was telling John that she doesn't want go out. Beyond communicating the state of her health and the answer to John's question, Laura accomplished one more thing through saying "I'm feeling ill." She got John to make her some soup. A perlocutionary act (per-locutionary, through speaking) is focused on the response others have to a speech act. These terms from J.L. Austin's 1962 book How to Do Things with Words are used extensively in philosophical literature today. And in fiction, having a character who is deaf to the illocutionary force of language is always good comedy.

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Hitting The Road Without A Driver The cars we drive have gotten ever more sophisticated. They can just about park themselves; they tell us if we're drifting out of our lane; they can prevent skids. Some even automatically apply the brakes if they sense that a collision is imminent. Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh are developing a car that can do all of those things and more — it can actually drive itself. Imagine that commute to work. The car, developed with General Motors, is by all appearances a normal Cadillac SRX crossover. That's by design, according to Jarrod Snider, the chief engineer on the project. "We're not using really fancy, really expensive devices all over the car," he says. The sensors are integrated into the car, "so when you look at the car you don't see a lot of things hanging off of it." Hidden in the bumper and behind the car's grille are three types of systems that guide the car's decision-making — sensors, lasers and cameras. Snider says the sensors provide input for the car's software, "so when we see an object we can say that's a person or that's a sign or that's a traffic light. ... We can actually do some classification of the object." The car's navigation screen will show and identify pedestrians and bikes, as well as traffic lights and some road signs. It also has thermal imaging, useful to identify objects at night, beyond the range of the car's headlights. In the back of the car, below the floor where the spare tire would normally be, are four computers about the size of Apple's Mac Mini, cooled by an air-conditioning system. Snider says the computers are a development platform and won't be as big or noisy when driverless cars are commercially available. Inside, the car looks pretty normal, too, with one exception — a big red button that sits prominently in the middle of the dashboard. Snider says it's there for when engineers are testing a new system. If something goes wrong, "we can just push that button and that just turns the car back into a stock car, immediately," he says. Surprisingly, a test ride in the autonomous Cadillac occurs not on a closed course, but on busy Route 19, a multilane highway in Cranberry Township, outside Pittsburgh. Snider says township officials have been cooperative and helpful with development of the driverless car, installing special radio transmitters on traffic lights to tell the vehicle when to stop (the car can also "read" the lights with a camera positioned over the windshield). Snider says it's hard to replicate real-world conditions on a closed course. People drive in unpredictable ways; they stop suddenly, change directions; there are pedestrians jaywalking. To put the car in driverless or autonomous mode, Snider simply turns a knob located near the gear shifter. "System starting up," a female-sounding computer voice intones. "Autonomous driving." The car pulls out of the parking lot. Though Snider is behind the wheel, he's not touching it, as the car stops at a stop sign, waits for traffic to clear and then makes a right turn onto the highway. The car is programmed much like a driver programs a GPS for directions. In this case it's heading for a restaurant in a shopping center. We travel about a half-mile down the busy road, the car accelerating, stopping at a red light and moving into a left-hand turn lane, where it waits for a green arrow before proceeding. The drive is not always smooth. The car tends to wait until the last minute before braking and floors it when accelerating to its desired speed. Snider says engineers are working on that, but that it's difficult to precisely re-create the human touch on the gas pedal and brakes. Carnegie Mellon's car is not the only driverless vehicle around. Google has one as well. Raj Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon, predicts that by 2020 the technology needed for driverless cars to travel normal roads will be ready. Though he says it make take a bit longer for the legal system and insurance companies to catch up. "It has to go through the societal process of acceptance, the legal process of laws being in place that allow driverless vehicles on the roads, the insurance aspects of liability, the legal things falling into place," Rajkumar says. The federal government has already begun conducting research with an eye toward establishing standards for driverless vehicles. Three states — California, Nevada and Florida — have passed legislation allowing testing of driverless cars on their roads. RENE MONTAGNE, HOST: Let's head to the streets, where the cars we drive have gotten ever more sophisticated. They can just about park themselves, tell us if we're drifting out of our lane and prevent skids. Now we may have arrived at the final frontier, putting all those things together and more to make cars that drive themselves. The latest prototype has been produced by engineers at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. NPR's Brian Naylor took a spin. BRIAN NAYLOR, BYLINE: The first think you notice about Carnegie Mellon's autonomous car is, well, nothing. Sitting in a parking lot, it looks like any other medium-sized SUV. Jarrod Snider is the project's lead engineer. JARROD SNIDER: This is a 2011 Cadillac SRX, of course heavily modified by us. Most of the sensors are integrated in, you know, the bumpers or somewhere in the car. NAYLOR: Hidden in the bumper and behind the car's grille are three types of systems that guide the car's decision making - sensors, lasers and cameras. SNIDER: So when we see an object we can say that's a person or that's a sign or that's a traffic light, something like that. We can actually do some classification of the object. NAYLOR: We walk around to the back of the car. Snider opens the hatchback and lifts the floor where the spare tire would be. SNIDER: So this is where the main computing happens. Inside here we have four computers. They're all right now doing different tasks, but they're essentially identical hardware. NAYLOR: The computers are small black boxes about the size of dinner plates. The sound is the air conditioning to keep them cool. They won't be this big and noisy when driverless cars are commercially available. And inside the car looks pretty normal too, with one exception. There's a big red button that sits prominently in the middle of the dashboard. SNIDER: That's an emergency stop button. That's basically when we have experimental development code, we're testing something new. If something goes wrong, we can just push that button and that just turns the car back into a stock car immediately. NAYLOR: Somewhat reassured, I climb into the back seat. Snider takes the wheel and Carnegie Mellon Professor Raj Rajkumar rides shotgun as the car's inner voice speaks up. COMPUTER VOICE: System starting up. SNIDER: It tells me that it's starting up. An autonomous ready means that we can now put into auto whenever we want. So it's in manual mode. I can drive like a normal car. I mean it's letting me know that whenever I want the car to take over, it can take over. So I'll go ahead and put into autonomous mode here. VOICE: Autonomous driving. NAYLOR: The car is programmed much like a driver programs a GPS for directions to, say, a restaurant. I assume it's programmed to take us on a spin around a closed test course, but no, that's not where we're going at all. SNIDER: And basically what we've done is we've asked it to take us to a complex down here that has some restaurants and things like that there. So this is simulating that you start at your house and you want it to take you to dinner, something like that. NAYLOR: And I should point out, we're not on a little country lane here. We're on a four-lane, actually a five-lane divided highway in the middle of a busy suburb with traffic lights, with shopping centers and restaurants and quite a lot of traffic. And this car is making the decisions on when to accelerate, when to stop, when to change lanes, all on its own. Snider says it's hard to replicate real world conditions on a closed course. People drive in unpredictable ways. They stop suddenly, change directions. There are pedestrians jay-walking. SNIDER: Given that people can do anything like that, we have to make sure our car is pretty robust and pretty safe and can deal with things that aren't just, you know, the nominal driving that people do. NAYLOR: Carnegie Mellon's autonomous car can detect red lights. It recognizes pedestrians and bicyclists. Still, there are a few glitches to be worked out. VOICE: Changing lane. SNIDER: Sorry. There's a sign up there. It wants to change lanes, but there's a car there that's not allowing it to change lanes. Even though the turn signal is on there (unintelligible) so I think we'll wait for an opportunity and then it will - and then once the traffic is clear... VOICE: Changing lane. NAYLOR: The car also tends to wait until the last minute to brake and floors it when accelerating, but Snider says those things are being worked on. Carnegie Mellon's car was developed in a partnership with GM and it's not the only driverless car around. Google has one as well. Carnegie Mellon Professor Rajkumar predicts that by 2020, seven years from now, the technology needed for driverless cars to travel normal roads will be ready. Though he says it make take a bit longer for the legal system and insurance companies to catch up. RAJ RAJKUMAR: It has to go through the societal process of acceptance, the legal process of laws being in place that allow driverless vehicles on the roads, the insurance aspects of liability, the legal things falling into place. NAYLOR: The federal government has already begun conducting research with an eye toward establishing standards for driverless vehicles. And three states - California, Nevada and Florida - have passed legislation allowing testing of driverless cars on their roads. Brian Naylor, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Affixation is the morphological process whereby an affix is attached to a root or stem. In English, the plural morpheme suffix is added to job, rat, and kiss to form the following forms: Matthews 1991 131 This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. Page content last modified: 18 September 1998 © 2004 SIL International

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Caroline Herschel was the daughter of Isaac Herschel and Anna Ilse Moritzen. She was sister of William Herschel and the aunt of John Herschel. Caroline's father Isaac was an oboist in the Hanovarian Foot Guards and rose to become the bandmaster. Although a man with no formal education, he tried hard to give his four sons and two daughters a good education. His interests in music, philosophy and astronomy led to lively conversations in their home but Caroline's mother disapproved of learning in general and although she reluctantly accepted that her four sons should have some education, she strongly opposed her daughters doing anything other than the household chores. Caroline Herschel's four brothers were all brought up to be musicians while Caroline showed an enthusiasm for knowledge which her father tried to satisfy despite all her mother's efforts to ensure that she did nothing but household tasks. Caroline recalled that her father took her :- ... on a clear frosty night into the street, to make me acquainted with several of the beautiful constellations, after we had been gazing at a comet which was then visible. Caroline could never have thought in her wildest dreams that one day she would make a major contribution to the study of comets. After the French occupation of Hanover in 1757, Isaac was occupied fighting the French and so was not at home. William escaped to England, where he became a music teacher, and Caroline was left under the control of her mother who sent her to learn to knit and otherwise kept her fully occupied with household chores. In 1760 Isaac returned home in poor health and Caroline essentially lived the life of a servant until he died in 1767. The death of her father seems to have made Caroline realise that she had to take some control of her own life and she took lessons in dressmaking and studied to qualify as a governess. However, fitting in the studies while her mother demanded so much work from her proved a great strain. In 1766 William became an organist in Bath and, in 1772, Caroline joined him there. She made this move despite strong protests from her mother who was very unhappy at effectively losing a servant. Caroline had always been very close to her brother William and, after arriving in Bath, she trained as a singer receiving lessons from her brother. William taught Caroline more than musical skills. He had studied mathematics and astronomy in his spare time at the end of a long day after many hours teaching music, reading works such as Maclaurin's Fluxions. Now he began to teach Caroline English and mathematics while he himself became more and more involved with astronomy. Caroline began giving successful singing performances :- As first treble in the Messiah, Judas Macabaeus, etc., she sang at Bath or Bristol sometimes five nights in the week, but declined an engagement for the Birmingham festival, having resolved to appear only where her brother conducted. In addition to her singing, Caroline helped William with his musical activities and looked after him while he spent many hours with his new hobby of constructing telescopes. Slowly Caroline turned more and more towards helping William with his astronomical activities while he continued to teach her algebra, geometry and trigonometry. In particular Caroline studied spherical trigonometry which would be important for reducing astronomical observations. However, she was not interested in mathematics for its own sake, finding only those parts which were useful in applications worth studying. Almost inevitably Caroline's role changed from looking after William to helping him with his scientific activities which soon occupied every available moment. Caroline wrote (see for example ):- Every leisure moment was eagerly snatched at for resuming some work which was in progress, without taking time or changing dress, and many a lace ruffle ... was torn or bespattered by molten pitch. ... I was even obliged to feed him by putting the vitals by bits into his mouth; - this was once the case when at the finishing of a 7 foot mirror he had not left his hands from it for 16 hours ... Astronomy changed from a hobby for William in 1781 when he achieved fame by discovering the planet now named Uranus. King George III gave William a £200 per year salary which was less than generous but sufficient to allow him to become a full-time astronomer. Giving up their musical activities the Herschels moved to Datchet in August 1782 where they remained until June 1785 when they moved again, this time into Clay Hall, near Windsor. It was certainly not without many regrets that Caroline abandoned music and began to take an active part in astronomy. William gave her a telescope with which she began to make observations, in particular searching for comets making methodical sweeps of the sky. Caroline found much less time than she expected to make her own observations as she became fully involved helping William with his astronomical projects. By day Caroline would work on the results obtained by William while observing on the previous night. She carried out the lengthy calculations necessary to reduce William's data with remarkable accuracy. In fact only when William was away from home was Caroline able to spend much time with her own program of research. In April 1786 William and Caroline moved to a new home they called Observatory House which was in Slough and there, on 1 August 1786, Caroline discovered her first comet which was described by some as the "first lady's comet". This discovery brought Caroline a certain degree of fame and articles were written about her. In one such article she is described as (see ):- ... very little, very gentle, very modest, and very ingenuous... while another describes her as:- ... a most excellent, kind-hearted creature... In 1787 King George III gave Caroline a £50 per year salary as assistant to William. In the following year William married Mary Pitt and Caroline's life changed markedly :- Initially Caroline was deeply affected by the marriage, and moved out to lodgings at Upton. She continued to support her brother's work and in making the daily walk to Observatory House, became a well-known figure. Often, with William resting after a long night of observation, the house was kept as quiet as possible during the day. Eventually the relationship between the two ladies - Mary and Caroline - warmed ... Caroline kept a diary into which she had recorded her thoughts, in particular she had recorded her great distress at the change in relationship with her brother and she also recorded her bitterness towards his wife. However, as the relationship between the two ladies improved, Caroline regretted her bitter comments against Mary and she destroyed every page of her diary over this time in her life. In total Caroline discovered eight comets between 1786 and 1797 and she then embarked on a new project of cross-referencing and correcting the star catalogue which had been produced by Flamsteed. In 1798 Caroline submitted to the Royal Society an Index to Flamsteed's Observations of the Fixed Stars together with a list of 560 stars which had been omitted. This publication marked the temporary end of her own researches which she would not begin again until 25 years later after William's death. This period of 25 years was not one which lacked interest for Caroline. She became involved with the education of John Herschel, William and Mary Herschel's son who was born in 1792. John Herschel spent long periods with his aunt during the vacations and was greatly influenced by Caroline. She saw him educated at Cambridge, make a name for himself as a mathematician, become elected to the Royal Society, join his father in research in astronomy and be awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his achievements. Caroline continued to assist William with his observations but her status had greatly improved from the housekeeper she had been in her young days. She was the guest of Maskelyne at the Royal Observatory in 1799 and a guest of members of the Royal Family at various times in 1816, 1817 and 1818. Caroline returned to Hanover after William's death in 1822. In many ways it was a bad decision, made too quickly, which she soon regretted but she was always one to keep a promise whatever the personal consequences so she would never return to England. All her energies had been directed towards helping her brother in his astronomical work during his lifetime but now she turned to help his son John Herschel. Certainly this help was not given in the same way as a personal assistant, but rather now as independent researcher producing a catalogue of nebulae to assist John in his astronomical work. She completed her catalogue of 2500 nebulae and, in 1828, the Royal Astronomical Society awarded her its gold medal for this work. Although Caroline regretted spending her last 25 years in Hanover there were many compensations. She was now a celebrity in the world of science and she was visited by many scientists including Gauss. Her nephew John Herschel, visiting Caroline in June 1832 when she was 83 years old, wrote of her (see for example ):- She runs about the town with me, and skips up her two flights of stairs. In the morning, till eleven or twelve, she is dull and weary, but as the day advances she gains life, and is quite 'fresh and funny' at ten p.m., and sings old rhymes, nay, even dances. Caroline Herschel received many honours for her scientific achievements. Together with Mary Somerville, she was elected to honorary membership of the Royal Society in 1835. They were the first honorary women members. She was also elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1838 and then on her 96th birthday she received a letter :- His Majesty the King of Prussia, in recognition of the valuable service rendered to astronomy by you, as the fellow worker of your immortal brother, wishes to convey to you in his name the Large Gold Medal for science. On her 97th birthday Caroline :- ... entertained the crown prince and princess with great animation for two hours, even singing to them a composition of her brother William. A minor planet was named Lucretia in 1889 in Caroline Lucretia Herschel's honour, a fitting tribute to one who had contributed so much, yet had so little personal ambition that she disliked praise directed towards her lest it detract from her brother William. Article by: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson

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Welcome to "An Introduction to ROOT". Physicists are involved in the business of getting data into files, analyzing it, and then producing histogram plots and fits. This tutorial is aimed to the novice ROOT user as the tool for doing this. Hopefully it will get you into using ROOT quickly even if you have little to no knowledge of C++, the language of ROOT commands. Follow this link to view the slides from the tutorial. The notes often have step by step instructions of how to build the shown image with ROOT. Click here to download the presentation. Download the zip file: Follow this link todownload the zip file with all you need to follow the class on your PC (~5MB). Started with ROOT Follow this link to download or view the "Getting Started" document. This is an excellent, short guide to get you started with ROOT. It is more verbose than the slides and covers much of the same and some additional material. The following formats are also available: MS Word on US-Letter size, MS Word on A4 size, Postscript on US-Letter size, Postscript on A4 size, Zip file with the word version, compressed Postscript version. Go back to the index to see the other offerings. Go to the ROOT System page to get more information about ROOT. Please contact me with suggestions, corrections etc.

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"Writing as a special talent became obsolete in the 19th century. The bottleneck was publishing." That bold statement came from Clay Shirky when I interviewed him for the NeoFiles webzine back in 2002. I never got around to asking him if that was an aesthetic judgment or a statement about economics and social relations. But here's a contrasting viewpoint. Novelist William Burroughs met playwright Samuel Beckett, and after some small talk, Beckett looked directly at Burroughs and said, propitiously, "You're a writer." Burroughs instantly understood that Beckett was welcoming him into a very tiny and exclusive club — that there are only a few writers alive at any one time in human history. Beckett was saying that Burroughs was one of them. Everybody writes. Not everybody is a writer. Or at least, that's what some of us think... Now the web — and its democratizing impact — has spread for over a decade. Over a billion people can deliver their text to a very broad public. It's a fantastic thing which gives a global voice to dissidents in various regions, makes people less lonely by connecting other people with similar interests and problems, ad infinitum. But what does it mean for writers and writing? What does it mean for those who specialize in writing well? I've asked ten professional writers, including Mr. Shirky, to assess the net's impact on writers. Here are their answers to the question... Q: Is the internet good for writers and writing? The short answer is yes, but as I suggest in my new book, META/DATA, we probably need to expand the concept of writing to take into account new forms of online communication as well as emerging styles of digital rhetoric. This means that the educational approach to writing is also becoming more complex, because it's not just one (alphabetically oriented) literacy that informs successful written communication but a few others as well, most notably visual design literacy and computer/networking literacy. As always, RU, you were ahead of the game — think how easy it is to text your name! It helps to know how to write across all media platforms. Not only that, but to become various role-playing personas whose writerly performance plays out in various multi-media languages across these same platforms. The most successful writer-personas now and into the future — at least those interested in "making a living" as you put it — will be those who can take on varying flux personas via the act of writing. (And who isn't into making a living... What's the opposite? Conducting a death ritual for the consumer zombies lost in the greenwash imaginary?) Think of this gem from Italo Calvino. Writing always presupposes the selection of a psychological attitude, a rapport with the world, a tone of voice, a homogeneous set of linguistic tools, the data of experience and the phantoms of the imagination — in a word, a style. The author is an author insofar as he enters into a role the way an actor does and identifies himself with that projection of himself at the moment of writing. The key is to keep writing, imaginatively. As Ron Sukenick once said: "Use your imagination or else someone else will use it for you." What better way to use it than via writing, and the internet is the space where writing is teleported to your distributed audience in waiting, no? Mark Amerika has been the Publisher of Alt-X since it first went online in 1993. He is the producer of the Net-Art Trilogy, Grammatron. His books include META/DATA: A Digital Poetics and In Memoriam to Postmodernism: Essays on the Avant-Pop (coedited with Lance Olsen). He teaches at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In the face of this complex, hydra-headed query I'll simply offer the evidence and narrow perspective of one writer in a moderately grumpy mood: me. I began my career as a freelance writer in 1989, and by the mid-90s was a modestly successful and up-and-coming character who wrote about a wide number of topics for a variety of print publications, both esoteric (Gnosis, Fringeware Review ) and slick (Details, Spin). I got paid pretty good for a youngster—generally much better than I get paid now, when my career sometimes looks more and more like a hobby, but also less driven by external measures of what a “successful” writing career looks like. I cannot blame my shrinking income entirely on the internet. My own career choices have been largely to write about what I want to write about, and my interests are not exactly mainstream. The early to mid-1990s was a very special time in American culture, a strange and giddy Renaissance where esoteric topics freely mixed and matched in a highly sampledelic culture. So I was able to write about outsider matters in a reasonably mainstream context. My first book, Techgnosis, which was about mystic and countercultural currents within media and technological culture, fetched a pretty nice advance. But once the internet bubble really started to swell, leading to the pop and then 9/11, that era passed into a more conservative, celebrity-driven, and niche-oriented culture, a development that relates to the rise of the internet but cannot be laid at its feet. Many of the changes in the book industry and print publications are more obviously related to the rise of the internet. One of the worst developments for me has been the increasing brevity of print pieces, something I do blame largely on the fast-moving, novelty-driven blip culture of the internet and the blogosphere. When I started writing for music magazines, I wrote 2000-plus-word articles about (then) relatively obscure bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. Now I write 125-word reviews for Blender. I don't even try to play the game of penning celebrity-driven profiles in mainstream music mags anymore, where feature lengths have shrunk all around and the topics seem more driven by the publicists. Shrinking space has definitely worked against my job satisfaction. I'm basically an essayist, though I often disguise myself as a critic or a journalist. Either way, it means that I am a long writer guy. I like to develop topics, approach them from different, often contradictory angles, and most of all, I like to polish the shit out of them so that the flow and the prose shine and bedazzle. On and offline, I find the internet-driven pressure to make pieces short, data-dense, and crisply opinionated — as opposed to thoughtful, multi-perspectival, and lyrical — rather oppressive, leading to a certain kind of superficial smugness as well as general submission to the forces of reference over reflection. I do enjoy writing 125-word record reviews though! I also like to read and try to produce really good prose — prose that infuses nonfiction, whether criticism or journalism or essay, with an almost poetic and emotional sensibility that ideally reflects in style and form the content that one is expressing. But nonfiction discourse online is almost entirely driven by Content — which includes not only news and information, but also opinion, that dread and terrible habit that is kinda like canned thought. People have reactions, and yet feel a need to justify them, and so reach for a can of opinion, pop the lid, and spread it all over the bulletin board or the blog. I'm really sick of opinions and of most of what passes for online debate. Even the more artful rhetorical elements of argument and debate are rarely seen amidst the food fights, the generic argumentative “moves,” the poor syntax, and the often lame attempts to bring a “fresh take” to a topic. This is not an encouraging environment from which to speak from the heart or the soul or whatever it is that makes living, breathing prose an actual source of sustenance and spiritual strength. But it's all about adaptation, right? Though I'm still committed to books, I now write more online than off. I've been enjoying myself, although my definition of “making a living” has continued to sink ever farther from anything halfway reasonable. I've enjoyed writing for online pay publications like Slate , but the rates are depressing. As for my own writing at my Techgnosis.com, I'm still struggling to develop traffic in an environment that rewards precisely the kind of writing I don't really do. Some people really love the stuff I write there, but I take a lot of time on my posts and generally don't offer the sort of sharp opinions and super-fresh news and unseen links that tend to draw eyeballs. At the same time, it's been enormously satisfying to find my own way into this vast and open form, and to elude the generic grooves of the blog form and really shape it into a medium for the kind of writing I want to do. (Don't get me wrong—some of my favorite writing and thinking anywhere appears online; BLDGBLOG is just the first that springs to mind.) It's been delicious to explore possibilities in nonfiction writing that all but the most obscure and arty print publications would reject, and to do so in a medium that is bursting with possible readers. I'm not into “private” writing; I write for and with readers in mind, and I think its great how the web allows linkages and alliances with like minds and crews (like 10 Zen Monkeys, or Reality Sandwich, or Boing Boing). And I know that readers who resonate with my stuff now stumble across it along myriad paths. At the same time, I find it tough to keep at bay the online inclinations that in many ways I find corrosive to the type of writing I do — the desire to increase traffic, to post relentlessly, to write shorter and snappier, to obsessively check stats, to plug into the often tedious and ill-thought “debates” that will increase traffic but that too often fall far short of actually thinking about anything. I've met amazing like minds online, and participated in some stellar debates, but frankly that was years ago. Today things seem to be growing rather claustrophobic and increasingly cybernetic. For example, I chose to not have a comments section on Techgnosis.com, because I didn't want to deal with spam. Plus I find most comments sections boring and/or tendentious and/or tough to read for one still invested in proper grammar. I figure that folks who wanted to respond can just send me emails, which they do, and which I have long made it a rule to answer. I'm pleased with my choice, though I also feel the absence of the sort of quick feedback loops of attention that satisfy the desire to make an impact on readers, and that, in an attention economy, have increasingly become the coin of the realm. But that coin—which is certainly not the same thing as actually being read—is a little thin. Especially without some of the old coin in your pocket to back it up. Erik Davis is author of The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape and Techgnosis: Myth, Magic & Mysticism in the Age of Information. He writes for Wired, Bookforum, Village Voice and many other publications. He posts frequently at his website at techgnosis.com Who, exactly, is making a living shoveling prose online? Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds? Jason Kottke? Josh Marshall? To the best of my knowledge, only a vanishingly tiny number of bloggers are able to eke out an existence through their blogging, much less turn a healthy profit. For now, visions of getting rich through self-publishing look a lot like envelope-stuffing for the cognitive elite — or at least for insomniacs with enough time and bandwidth to run their legs to stumps in their electronic hamster wheels, posting and answering comments 24/7. As a venerable hack toiling in the fields of academe, I love the idea of being King of All Media without even wearing pants, which is why I hope that some new-media wonk like Jason Calacanis or Jeff Jarvis finds the Holy Grail of self-winding journalism — i.e., figuring out how to make online writing self-supporting. Meanwhile, the sour smell of fear is in the air. Reporting — especially investigative reporting, the lifeblood of a truly adversarial press — is labor-intensive, money-sucking stuff, yet even The New York Times can't figure out how to charge for its content in the Age of Rip, Burn, and Remix. To be sure, newspapers are hemorrhaging readers to the Web, and fewer and fewer Americans care about current events and the world outside their own skulls. But the other part of the problem is that Generation Download thinks information wants to be free, everywhere and always, even if some ink-stained wretch wept tears of blood to create it. Lawrence Lessig talks a good game, but I still don't understand how people who live and die by their intellectual property survive the obsolescence of copyright and the transition to the gift economy of our dreams. I mean, even John Perry Barlow, bearded evangelist of the coming netopia, seems to have taken shelter in the academy. Yes, we live in the golden age of achingly hip little 'zines like Cabinet and The Believer and I rejoice in that fact, but most of them pay hen corn, if they pay at all. As someone who once survived (albeit barely) as a freelancer, I can say with some authority that the freelance writer is going the way of the Quagga. Well, at least one species of freelance writer: the public intellectual who writes for a well-educated, culturally literate reader whose historical memory doesn't begin with Dawson's Landing . A professor friend of mine, well-known for his/her incisive cultural criticism, just landed a column for PopMatters.com. Now, a column is yeoman's work and it doesn't pay squat. But s/he was happy to get the gig because she wanted to burnish her brand, presumably, and besides, as she noted, "Who does, these days?" (Pay, that is.) The Village Voice's Voice Literary Supplement used to offer the Smartest Kids in the World a forum for long, shaggy screeds; now, newspapers across the country are shuttering their book review sections and the Voice is about the length (and depth) of your average Jack Chick tract and shedding pages by the minute. So those are the grim, pecuniary effects of the net on writers and writing. As for its literary fallout, print editors are being stampeded, goggle-eyed, toward a form of writing that presumes what used to be called, cornily enough, a "screenage" paradigm: short bursts of prose — the shorter the better, to accommodate as much eye candy as possible. Rupert Murdoch just took over The Wall Street Journal, and is already remaking that august journal for blip culture: article lengths are shrinking. Shrewdly, magazines like The New Yorker understand that print fetishists want their print printy — McLuhan would have said Gutenbergian — so they're erring on the side of length, and Dave Eggers and the Cabinet people are emphasizing what print does best: exquisite paper stocks, images so luxuriously reproduced you could lower yourself into them, like a hot bath. Also, information overload and time famine encourage a sort of flat, depthless style, indebted to online blurblets, that's spreading like kudzu across the landscape of American prose. (The English, by contrast, preserve a smarter, more literary voice online, rich in character; not for nothing are Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens two of the web's best stylists.) I can't read people like Malcolm Gladwell, whose bajillion-selling success is no surprise when you consider that he aspires to a sort of in-flight magazine weightlessness, just the sort of thing for anxious middle managers who want it all explained for them in the space of a New York-to-Chicago flight. The English language dies screaming on the pages of Gladwell's books, and between the covers of every other bestseller whose subtitle begins, "How..." Another fit of spleen: This ghastly notion, popularized by Masters of Their Own Domain like Jeff Jarvis, that every piece of writing is a "conversation." It's a no-brainer that writing is a communicative act, and always has been. And I'll eagerly grant the point that composing in a dialogic medium like the net is like typing onstage, in Madison Square Garden, with Metallica laying down a speed metal beat behind you. You're writing on the fly, which is halfway between prose and speech. But the Jarvises of the world forget that not all writing published online is written online. I dearly loathe Jarvis's implication that all writing, online or off, should sound like water-cooler conversation; that content is all that matters; that foppish literati should stop sylphing around and submit to the tyranny of the pyramid lead; and that any mind that can't squeeze its thoughts into bullet points should just die. This is the beige, soul-crushing logic of the PowerPoint mind. What will happen, I wonder, when we have to write for the postage-stamp screen of the iPhone? The age of IM prose is waiting in the wings... Parting thoughts: The net has also open-sourced the cultural criticism business, a signal development that on one hand destratifies cultural hierarchies and makes space for astonishing voices like the people behind bOING bOING and BLDGBLOG and Ballardian. Skimming reader comments on Amazon, I never cease to be amazed by the arcane expertise lurking in the crowd; somebody, somewhere, knows everything about something, no matter how mind-twistingly obscure. But this sea change — and it's an extraordinary one — is counterbalanced by the unhappy fact that off-the-shelf blogware and the comment thread make everyone a critic or, more accurately, make everyone think they're a critic, to a minus effect. We're drowning in yak, and it's getting harder and harder to hear the insightful voices through all the media cacophony. Oscar Wilde would be just another forlorn blogger out on the media asteroid belt in our day, constantly checking his SiteMeter's Average Hits Per Day and Average Visit Length. Also, the Digital Age puts the middlebrow masses on the bleeding edge. Again, a good thing, and a symmetry break with postwar history, when the bobos were the "antennae of the race," as Pound put it, light years ahead of the leadfooted bourgeoisie when it came to emergent trends. Now even obscure subcultures and microtrends tucked into the nooks and crannies of our culture are just a Google search away. Back in the day, a subcultural spelunker could make a living writing about the cultural fringes because it took a kind of pop ethnographer or anthropologist to sleuth them out and make sense of them; it still takes critical wisdom to make sense of them, but sleuthing them out takes only a few clicks. Do I sound bitter? Not at all. But we live in times of chaos and complexity, and the future of writing and reading is deeply uncertain. Reading and writing are solitary activities. The web enables us to write in public and, maybe one day, strike off the shackles of cubicle hell and get rich living by our wits. Sometimes I think we're just about to turn that cultural corner. Then I step onto the New York subway, where most of the car is talking nonstop on cellphones. Time was when people would have occupied their idle hours between the covers of a book. No more. We've turned the psyche inside out, exteriorizing our egos, extruding our selves into public space and filling our inner vacuums with white noise. Mark Dery is the author of The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century. His 1993 essay "Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs" popularized the term "culture jamming" and helped launch the movement. He teaches media criticism and literary journalism in the Department of Journalism at NYU and blogs at markdery.com It's a mixed blessing. If the hardest part of writing is just making yourself sit there and write, and what used to be a typewriter and a blank sheet of paper has been transformed into a magical portal to a zillion fascinating destinations, then the internet can be a giant and addictive distraction. On the other hand, it's a quick and simple way to do research without ever leaving your chair, and that can be a real time-saver. So, on those counts at least — color me ambivalent. Jay Kinney is the author of Hidden Wisdom: A Guide to the Western Inner Traditions (with Richard Smoley), and The Inner West: An Introduction to the Hidden Wisdom of the West. He was the editor of CoEvolution Quarterly and Gnosis magazine. For me as a writer, the internet has become indispensable; if only in terms of researching it saves so much time and energy. Google et al are miraculous. Word processing has changed the nature of editing, and without the dread of typing a whole page again; I can change things as I go along, surrendering to delusions of perfection. I have become as much in awe of Technology as I am of Nature. And although I blog for free, occasional paid assignments have fallen into my lap as a result. Better than lapdancing. Paul Krassner was Publisher/Editor of the legendary satire magazine, The Realist. He started the classic satirical publication The Realist, founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and has written billions and billions of books including his most recent: One Hand Jerking: Reports from an Investigative Satirist. Krassner posts regularly at paulkrassner.com The internet has made research much easier, which is both good and bad. It's good not to be forced to go libraries to fact check and throw together bibliographic references. But it's bad not to be forced to do this, since it diminishes the possibility of accidental discovery. Physically browsing on library stacks and at used bookstores can lead to extraordinary discoveries. One can also discover extraordinary things online, too, but the physical process of doing so is somehow more personally gratifying. The internet has both broadened and limited audiences for books at the same time. People outside urban centers can now find offbeat books that personally intrigue them. But the interest in physical books overall seems diminished by the satiation of curiosity by a simple search on the internet, and the distraction of limitless data smog. The internet has influenced my decision as a publisher to move away from text-only books to ones with a more multimedia quality, with photos, illustrations and sometimes CDs or DVDs. I like the internet and computers for their ability to make writers of nearly everyone. I don't like the internet and computers for their ability to make sloppy and thoughtless writers of nearly everyone. Overall, it's an exciting world. I'm glad to be alive at this time. Adam Parfrey is Publisher with Feral House and Process Media, and author of the classic Apocalypse Culture, among many other books. I'd say that it's great for writing as a cultural behavior, but maybe not for people who made their livings creating text. There's a whole lot more text out there, and only so much time to read all this stuff. People spend a lot of their time reading text on screens, and don't necessarily want to come home and read text on a page after that. Reading a hundred emails is really enough daily reading for anyone. The book industry isn't what it used to be, but I don't blame that on the internet. It's really the fault of media conglomeration. Authors are no longer respected in the same way, books are treated more like magazines with firm expiration dates, and writers who simply write really well don't get deals as quickly as disgraced celebrities or get-rich-quick gurus. This makes it harder for writers to make a living writing. To write professionally means being able to craft sentences and paragraphs and articles and books that communicate as literature. Those who care about such things should rise to the top. But I think many writers — even good ones — will have to accept the fact that books can be loss-leaders or break-even propositions in a highly mediated world where showing up in person generates the most income. Douglas Rushkoff is a noted media critic who has written and hosted two award-winning Frontline documentaries that looked at the influence of corporations on youth culture — The Merchants of Cool and The Persuaders. Recent books include Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business and Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism. He is currently writing a monthly comic book, Testament for Vertigo. He blogs frequently at Rushkoff.com/blog.php Dear Mr. Sirius, I read with some interest your request to comment on whether Herr Gutenberg's new movable type is good for books and for scribes. I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about the newly capable printing press, and though the invention is just 40 years old, I think we can already see some of the outlines of the coming changes. First, your question "is it good for books and for scribes?" seems to assume that what is good for one must be good for the other. Granted, this has been true for the last several centuries, but the printing press has a curious property — it reduces the very scarcity of writing that made scribal effort worthwhile, so I would answer that it is great for books and terrible for scribes. Thanks to the printing press, we are going to see more writing, and more kinds of writing, which is wonderful for the reading public, and even creates new incentives for literacy. Because of these improvements, however, the people who made their living from the previous scarcity of books will be sorely discomfited. In the same way that water is more vital than diamonds but diamonds are more expensive than water, the new abundance caused by the printing press will destroy many of the old professions tied to writing, even as it puts in place new opportunities as yet only dimly with us. Aldus Manutius, in Venice, seems to be creating a market for new kinds of writing that the scribes never dreamt of, and which were impossible given the high cost of paying someone to copy a book by hand. There is one thing the printing press does not change, of course, which is the scarcity of publishing. Taking a fantastical turn, one could imagine a world in which everyone had not only the ability to read and write but to publish as well. In such a world, of course, we would see the same sort of transformation we are seeing now with the printing press, which is to say an explosion in novel forms of writing. Such a change would also create enormous economic hardship for anyone whose living was tied to earlier scarcities. Such a world, as remarkable as it might be, must remain merely imaginative, as the cost of publishing will always be out of reach of even literate citizens. Clay Shirky, Esq. Clay Shirky consults on the rise of decentralized technologies for Nokia, the Library of Congress, and the BBC. He's an adjunct professor in NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), where he teaches a course in "Social Weather," examining ways of understanding group dynamics in online spaces. His writing has appeared in Business 2.0, New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications. The internet has some advantages for writers, which I gladly exploit; it offers some access to new audiences, it offers new venues... But it has even more disadvantages. A recent study suggested that young people read approximately half as much as young people did before the advent of the internet and videogames. While there are enormous bookstores, teeming with books, chain stores and online book dealing now dominate the book trade and it may be that there are fewer booksellers overall. A lot of fine books are published but, on the whole, publishers push for the predictable profit far more than they used to, which means they prefer predictable books. Editors are no longer permitted to make decisions on their own. They must consult marketing departments before buying a book. Book production has become ever more like television production: subordinate to trendiness, and the anxiety of executives. And in my opinion this is partly because a generation intellectually concussed by the impact of the internet and other hyperactive, attention-deficit media, is assumed, probably rightly, to want superficial reading. I know people earnestly involved in producing dramas for iPod download and transmission to iPhones. Obviously, productions of that sort are oriented to small images in easy-to-absorb bites. Episodes are often only a few minutes long. Or even shorter. Broadband drama, produced to be seen on the internet, is also attention-deficit-oriented. I've written for episodic television and have known the frustration of writers told to cut their "one hour" episodes down to 42 minutes, so that more commercials can be crammed in. Losing ten minutes of drama takes a toll on the writing of a one hour show — just imagine the toll taken by being restricted to three-minute episodes. Story development becomes staccato, pointlessly violent (because that translates well to the form), childishly melodramatic, simple minded to the extreme. All this may be an extension of the basic communication format forged by the internet: email, chatrooms, instant messages, board postings, blogs. Email is usually telegraphic in form, compact, and without the literary feel that letters once had; communication in chatrooms is reduced to soundbites that will fit into the little message window and people are impatient in chatrooms, unwilling to wait as a long sentence is formulated; instant messages are even more compressed, superficial, and not even in real English; board postings may be lengthier but if they are, no one reads them. Same goes for blogs. They'd better be short thoughts or — for the most part — few will trouble to read them. The internet is always tugging at you to move on, surf on, check this and that, talk to three people at once. How do you maintain long thoughts, how do you stretch out intellectually, in those conditions? Sometimes at places like The Well, perhaps, people are more thoughtful. But in general, online readers are prone to be attention challenged. Reading at one's computer is, also, not as comfortable as reading a book in an armchair — so besides the distractions, it's simply a drag to spend a lot of time reading a single document online. But people spend a great deal of time and energy online, time and energy which is then not available for that armchair book. Occasionally someone breaks the rules and puts long stories online, as Rudy Rucker has done, admirably well, posting new stories by various writers at flurb.net. But for the most part, the internet is inimical to stretching out, literarily. The genie is out of the bottle, and we cannot go back. But it would be well if people did not misrepresent the literary value of writing for the internet. John Shirley was the original cyberpunk SF writer, but he also writes in other genres including horror. He wrote the original script for The Crow and has written for television including Deep Space Nine, Max Headroom, and Poltergeist: The Legacy. His books include the Eclipse Trilogy, Wetbones, The Other End and his latest — a short story collection Living Shadows: Stories: New & Preowned. He writes lyrics for Blue Oyster Cult. Shirley's own online indulgence is his site Signs of Witness. Concerning the internet, yes, many thoughts. None of them good. The advent of personal computers has been ruinous. Empowering, my ass. Suddenly everyone's a writer. As someone who's been a professional writer my entire life, I now sit for hours every day and answer e-mails. I don't mind if the subject has substance, like this, but the onslaught of e-media, e-spam, e-requests for money, stupid e-jokes, e-advertisements, etc., is painful. I'm chained to a machine. Editors say they simply can't respond to all the e-mails they receive. Telephonic communication was quicker and easier. Used to be I sat at an alphabet keyboard (called typewriters in my day) when I had an assignment or inspiration. Now it's all I do. Go to a library? Why? You can get what you need on the internet. Which means I've been suffering from Acute Cabin Fever since 1999 (when I tragically signed up for internet access). Sure, I could get off my ass and go to a library, but the internet is like heroin. Why take a walk in the park when you can boot up and find beauty behind your eyelids or truth from the MacBook? (Interesting that the term 'boot-up' is junkie-speak.) I only got a word processor in 1990. I used a typewriter until then. My writing was no different before I could instantly re-write. I had to think about what I was going to write before applying fingertip to key. Now I'm terribly careless. I make mistakes that I never made pre-processing. Certainly literature hasn't improved (nor has art, music, film or anything else). Instead of reading Charles Olson or Rimbaud or Melville or Voltaire or Terry Southern, now people spend all day playing with their computers and endless varieties of applications. I hear my friends — all smart — kvelling about some new piece of software. You'd think they'd cured cancer. We're a planet of marks getting our bank accounts skimmed by Bill Gates and Steven Jobs. Gates and Jobs (and yer pal Woz) ought to be disemboweled — yes, on the internet — and their carcasses left to rot on www.disemboweledcyberthieves.com. Furthermore, I get nauseous thinking of the days, weeks, months I've spent on the phone with tech support. All these robber baron geeks are loaded, yet they can't even perfect the goddamn things. The world of LOL and iirc and this hideous perpetual junior high language has not encouraged quality-lit. Have you looked at my former employer the L.A. Weekly lately? It's created by illiterates promoting bad and overpriced music, art, film, etc. There's a glut of so-called writers and if they're 22 and have big tits, many editors will give them work before I get any. It's no coincidence that my payments and assignments for freelancing have diminished in the last 8 years. I was a happy nappy-takin' pappy 'fore the advent of these glorified television sets. Now my eyes hurt at the end of every day from the glow of the monitor. RU, I'm not happy that you — a brilliant man who has kept Yippie spirit alive — promote these contraptions. I didn't even have a phone answering machine until 1988 when I was 33. Everything was better before this glut of machinery entered my life. It's quadrupled my monthly bills and swamps me with useless information. No, it hasn't fired my imagination but, yes, I can't get no satisfaction. Michael Simmons edited the National Lampoon in the ‘80s. He has written for LA Weekly, LA Times, Rolling Stone, High Times, and The Progressive. Currently, he blogs for Huffington Post and he and Tyler Hubby are shooting a documentary on the Yippies The Internet is good for writers for several reasons: What was once a rather clunky process of querying by fax, phone, and snail-mail has been replaced by the mad, near-instantaneous medium of e-mail, where the indolent are more easily sequestered from the industrious. The process is, as it always was, one of long hours, haphazard diets, and rather bizarre forms of self-promotion. But clips are easily linkable. Work can be more readily distributed. And if a writer maintains a blog, there is now a more regular indicator of a writer's thought process. The stakes have risen. Everyone who wishes to survive in this game must operate at some peak and preternatural efficiency. Since the internet is a ragtag, lightning-fast glockenspiel where thoughts, both divine and clumsy, are banged out swifter with mad mallets more than any medium that has preceded it, an editor can get a very good sense of what a writer is good for and how he makes mistakes. While it is true that this great speed has come at the expense of long-form pieces and even months-long reporting, I believe the very limitations of this current system are capable of creating ambition rather than stifling it. If the internet was committing some kind of cultural genocide for any piece of writing that was over twenty pages, why then has the number of books published increased over the past fifteen years? Some of the old-school types, like John Updike, have decried the ancillary and annotated aspects of the Internet, insisting that there is nothing more to talk about than the book. But if a book is a unit transmitting information from one person to another, then why ignore those on the receiving end? For are they not part of this process? Writing has been talked about ever since Johann Gutenberg's great innovation caused many classical works to be disseminated into the public consciousness, and thus spawned the Renaissance. What we are now experiencing may have an altogether different scale, but it is not different in effect. The profusion of written thoughts and emotions is certainly overwhelming, but the true writer is likely to be a skillful and highly selective reader, and thus has many jewels to select from, to be inspired by, to be wowed by, and to otherwise cause the truly ambitious to carry forth with passion and a whip-smart disposition. Edward Champion's work has appeared in The LA Times, Chicago Sun-Times, and Newsday, as well as more disreputable publications. How The Internet Disorganizes Everything When Cory Doctorow Ruled The World David Sedaris Exaggerates For Us All How The iPod Changes Culture Thou Shalt Realize the Bible Kicketh Ass His Bat Segundo podcast — which you can find at his website at edrants.com — has featured interviews with the likes of T.C. Boyle, Brett Easton Elllis, Octavio Butler, John Updike, Richard Dawkins, Amy Sedaris, David Lynch, Martin Amis, and William Gibson.

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