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by Robert A. Stern, PhD and Travis White, PhD
Purpose: Evaluates an individual's planning, foresight, and organisational abilities
Age: 18yrs +
Time: 20-25 minutes
One of the tests that make up the NAB Executive Functions Module, the NAB Mazes Test now is available as an independent assessment. The NAB Mazes Test measures planning and foresight--aspects of executive function that are frequently impaired in patients with frontal lobe dysfunction. The measure quickly assesses planning and organisational skills through maze-tracking tasks that traditionally have been found to be sensitive to frontal lobe lesions.
Consists of seven mazes that become progressively more difficult, allowing you to score the mazes based on completeness and completion time.
A detailed Record Form guides you through the measure, making it quick, efficient, and easily portable.
Equivalent parallel forms allow for ease of retesting and reduce the likelihood of practice effects. | <urn:uuid:a2a1dec8-bb52-4fc9-878d-40979d3ddfd5> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://www.annarbor.co.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=416_249_334 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578582584.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20190422195208-20190422221208-00135.warc.gz | en | 0.926454 | 196 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Imperial powers are well known for their divide and rule policies. Britain in acquiring and dissolving its empire split Iraq and Kuwait and created Jordan and Gulf kingdoms. It split the Pashtuns by the Durand line between India and Afghanistan and subsequently hived off the two wings of Pakistan from India. France divided Syria and Lebanon. Russia in its conquering phase took over Azerbaijan splitting Azerbaijanis between Iran and its conquests. It also acquired its Southern Muslim population of South Caucasus from the shrinking Turkic Ottoman empire. Its artificial boundaries between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan left mixed populations in those republics amongst themselves and Afghanistan. The breakup of the Soviet Union left economic deprivation, autocratic and corrupt authoritarian rulers and rising Islamic insurgencies.
The US and Pakistan promoted, nurtured, financed and armed Islamic militants to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Pakistan also applied the same strategy in Kashmir and Punjab against India. The US invasion of Iraq made the centuries old covert Sunni Shia schism into an overt festering wound. The US created demons of mujahideen and Al Qaeda were the match that detonated the Iraqi gunpowder piled up by the US. US support for Iranian regime change has worsened terrorism in Iranian provinces of Baluchistan, Kurdistan and Khuzistan. Now the US is facing a devastating, unwinnable and costly insurgency from its devil’s spawn.
It would be unfair to blame only the imperial powers. The military, autocratic as well as democratically elected governments of south, central and west Asia have implemented such corrupt, inept and foolish policies and indulged in neglect of the poor and minorities, while neighboring states have promoted or turned a blind eye towards terror. Pakistan’s use of the Taliban to gain strategic depth in Afghanistan and harass India, has now brought it to ruin as its terrorists have turned against the mother state. There are insurgencies in the provinces of Baluchistan, Northwest Frontier, FATA and even Sindh and Punjab.
Sri Lanka’s discriminatory economic and linguistic policies favoring the Sinhalese majority led to the Tamil insurgency, just overcome after decades at ruinous economic cost and persistent Tamil alienation. India initially looked on the Sri Lankan Tamil insurgency with benign neglect because of the ethnic ties of the Tamils to its own state of Tamilnadu. A foolish Rajiv Gandhi with delusions of grandeur sent in the Indian army as a police force and eventually paid the ultimate price due to a Tamil woman suicide bomber.
The Indian state with its shamelessly corrupt leaders and politicians and captured by vested interests to become a predator state, has been unable to provide public services, honest and good governance, healthcare, education, electricity, infrastructure and even safe potable water to nearly half its citizens. Thus insurgencies have occurred in the northeastern states, Punjab and Kashmir, fueled by Pakistan in the last two. Now it faces a Maoist insurgency in West Bengal, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, constituting nearly a third of its territory and half of its states and territories. In addition neighboring Nepal has been taken over by Maoists, China claims the state of Arunachal, Pakistan claims the state of Jammu Kashmir. Bangladesh supports Islamic extremism and illegal migration into India and faces inundation by rising seas due to global warming.
Myanmar is ruled by a military junta which imprisons its elected leader. It faces an insurgency at the Thai border and provides a refuge for Assamese ULFA fighting India. Thailand faces an Islamic insurgency in the South as do parts of Indonesia. Iran faces a Sunni Baluchi rebellion in the south and a Kurdish insurgency on the northwest along its border with Iraq. Even China has serious problems with Tibet and Sinkiang. High handed military suppression of deprived and backward minorities invariably inflames insurgencies when the government fails to fulfill its civic obligations.
It is worse when foreign troops unable to speak the local language, who do not know or respect the culture and customs of the local population and rule via puppets lusting for power and money, with the collaboration of warlords or drug barons. This is why additional thousands of American troops in Afghanistan without providing jobs and economic benefits or uprooting bribery and corruption by police and government officials, is destined to fail and will only add to loss of American blood and treasure. The American people facing unemployment, foreclosures and an economy lying flat on its back will not have the patience, perseverance or appetite for a decade of slugging it out in Afghanistan and India should think twice before adopting a policy of bombing insurgents by planes or drones. | <urn:uuid:01bcb3ed-fc1b-40b8-838f-2a9a505c5b44> | CC-MAIN-2019-13 | https://www.boloji.com/articles/5622/the-afghanistanization-of-south-west-central-asia | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-13/segments/1552912203529.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20190324230359-20190325012359-00041.warc.gz | en | 0.949868 | 943 | 2.671875 | 3 |
Sore Throat (cont.)
There is no sure way to prevent a sore throat. To help reduce your risk:
- Drink enough fluids to prevent dehydration.
- Wash your hands often, especially when you are around people who are sick.
- Identify and avoid irritants, such as smoke, fumes, or yelling, that cause a sore throat.
- Do not smoke or use other tobacco products and avoid exposure to secondhand smoke. For more information, see the topic Quitting Smoking.
- Avoid contact with people who have strep throat.
- If you have mononucleosis, do not share eating or drinking utensils to prevent spreading the virus to others. A brief kiss on the lips is not likely to spread mono; it is spread when saliva from an infected person enters another person's mouth.
Preparing For Your Appointment
To prepare for your appointment, see the topic Making the Most of Your Appointment.
You can help your doctor diagnose and treat your condition by being ready to answer the following questions:
- When did your throat symptoms begin?
- Do you have a fever? Describe your fever pattern.
- Do other family members, friends, or coworkers have similar complaints?
- Do you have other symptoms associated with the sore throat, such as a head cold?
- What makes the pain worse?
- Have you had your tonsils removed?
- Have you been diagnosed with strep throat in the past? How long ago? Was it found during a doctor visit, with a rapid strep test or with a throat culture? How was it treated?
- What immunizations have you had?
- What home treatment have you tried? Did it help?
- What prescription and nonprescription medicines have you tried? Did they help?
- Do you have any health risks? | <urn:uuid:b0f7de86-e2e6-45d3-a415-7103f71fb3de> | CC-MAIN-2014-35 | http://www.emedicinehealth.com/sore_throat-health/page3_em.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-35/segments/1409535920849.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20140909042706-00051-ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946403 | 382 | 3.359375 | 3 |
Once again homeopathy is in the news. In fact it hardly ever seems to be out of it. It is certainly a subject that elicits much passion from both those who support it and those who believe it to be quackery.
However, it is not surprising that homeopathy (i.e. treating an illness with low doses of a material that – in a healthy individual – would produce symptoms similar to those of the disease being treated) rapidly caught on after its introduction by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1790’s when one considers medical practice at the time. Western medicine in the 18th Century, for example, made great use of toe curling practices such as bloodletting and purging, as well as administering complex mixtures, such as Venice treacle – a concoction of 64 substances including opium, myrrh, and viper flesh. Such treatments frequently worsened a patient’s symptoms, sometimes proving fatal. So it is easy to see why homeopathy, with its use of ultralow doses of the treatment material, became so popular so quickly, despite the fact that a clinical trial performed as early as 1835 showed that homeopathy as a method of treatment was wholly ineffective.
A more interesting question is what is the reason for the popularity of homeopathy now? After all, modern science does not support the scientific claims made by its supporters as to how homeopathy works. Indeed for homeopathy to work as claimed, we would have to completely revise our understanding of science. Any scientific evidence claiming to support homeopathy has either been shown to be flawed or not repeatable under controlled conditions. Furthermore, systematic reviews of modern clinical trials have supported the first early clinical trial showing that homeopathy has no more clinical effect than a placebo.
Is homeopathy’s popularity due to a distrust of modern medicines as has been recently suggested by the Chief Medical Officer for England who has just called for an independent review of the safety and efficacy of medicines? Or it is that patients are worried about the side effects associated with medicines, preferring what they perceive to be a safer approach; after all homeopathic preparations have not unsurprisingly no known toxic effects in over 200 years of use? Whatever the reason, as an evidence-based profession, why do we continue to sell homeopathic preparations in our pharmacies when the evidence shows that they do not work?
The public have a right to expect pharmacists and other health professionals to be open and honest about the effectiveness and limitations of treatments. Surely it is now the time for pharmacists to cast homeopathy from the shelves and focus on scientifically based treatments backed by clear clinical evidence.
Read the Royal Pharmaceutical Society Homeopathic and herbal products quick reference guide. | <urn:uuid:6103b469-eaf5-4e29-bc84-9e5855625534> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | http://blog.rpharms.com/england/2015/06/17/homeopathy-should-pharmacists-be-selling-homeopathic-products/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084886794.24/warc/CC-MAIN-20180117023532-20180117043532-00422.warc.gz | en | 0.971848 | 554 | 2.546875 | 3 |
As time continues to flow, change is inevitable. Cities can disappear if they cannot keep up with change like people. Despite the changes of the cities within time, it is still possible to discover them in forms reflected in the artworks. Le Havre, the second largest port city in France has a really different appearance from its vision in Monet’s ‘Impression’ table now. But, it is still a living city having new shapes and experiences as the time passes.
Le Havre is a harbor city built in the place where Seine River meets with the English Channel. Le Havre means cranny in French. And, it has been the cranny of many people within time. It is not a natural harbor. It was built exactly 500 years ago, in 1517, during the period of King François I. The city was destroyed in the Second World War and was rebuilt with usage of huge amounts of concrete and steel. Because of its building style it does not look like the architectural texture of other French cities. It looks like the capitals of old socialist countries with its wide streets, tram stops, and vast parks streets crossing each other vertically rather than art-smelling cities of France. Le Havre, the second biggest port of France after Marseille, has been still living in the 1950s. Since it reflects the modern architectural feature of that period, it has been taken under protection by UNESCO.
The buildings in Le Havre were mostly designed by the famous architect Auguste Perret. The ones, who favor the coolness of the communist structures, like Le Havre. On the other hand, for others who admire Renaissance art and architecture, this old city is just a block of steel and concrete.
Le Havre has a very large beach, covered with huge pebbles. At this long beach, you can breathe clean air and walk to the sea lighthouse which stands the edge of the breakwater.
St. Joseph Church is one of the icons of the city. This old church was built in the form of a gigantic sea lantern. The old warehouse has been repaired and transformed into shopping centers which seem friendly. Another characteristic of this city is that the impressionist movement, which is regarded as one of the most important turning points of art history, was born here.
Preparing to celebrate the 500th anniversary of its foundation, Le Havre is worth a visit even to see the Modern Art Museum, where masterpieces of the Impressionist movement are exhibited. You can also see the retrospective display of Monet‘s master Eugene Boudin in Le Havle. The rising sun on the harbor as it found life in the ‘Impression’ painting of Monet is worth to see this 500 year old young city. | <urn:uuid:d76778a1-8079-4028-916a-5e0d2a2955c8> | CC-MAIN-2017-26 | https://financehealthlaw.com/feeling-le-havre/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-26/segments/1498128320040.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20170623082050-20170623102050-00258.warc.gz | en | 0.972791 | 564 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Communication and Culture | Media Theory (Topic: Cyberpublics)
C410 | 31300 | Gershon, I.
MW, 1:00 PM-2:15 PM, C2 100
Instructor: Ilana Gershon
Office: C2 215
This course looks at how new media has changed what it means to
speak in public.
Every new medium allows people to address others in new ways, and
often to fashion audiences in new ways. Traditionally this is
source of wonder and anxiety for Euro-Americans, who often spend a
tremendous amount of time analyzing the communicative politics of
dissemination in their daily lives (for example, asking “what does
it mean that she posted the message on my Facebook wall instead of
sending me a text?”). In this course, we look at the quotidian
issues surrounding public speech in new media. How do people
establish appropriate behavior in new media? How do people respond
to new possibilities for deceptive behavior? How do ideas of what
counts as public and private change when there are changes in how
communication can circulate? And, lastly, why do scholars believe
public speech and democracy are so intertwined? | <urn:uuid:fb32bfba-3238-47b9-b341-bee2c37f8a90> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/blfal11/cmcl/cmcl_c410_31300.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424610.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20170723202459-20170723222459-00381.warc.gz | en | 0.888275 | 258 | 2.59375 | 3 |
Network Intrusion Detection Systems
Network Intrusion Detection Systems: The Complete Guide
Network intrusion detection systems (NIDSs) are computer software capable of identifying and reporting various network problems – namely, those related to cybersecurity and data protection. While the broad concept of intrusion detection has existed for decades, in recent years, NIDSs have risen to additional prominence as a means of keeping networks safe from ever-evolving malicious activity, such as sophisticated data breaches and malware attacks.
Read on for an in-depth look at NIDSs, including the technology’s various uses and benefits, practical forms, and potential considerations for the future.
What Is A Network Intrusion Detection System?
NIDSs are an important component of modern cybersecurity infrastructure that help protect computer networks from unauthorized accesses, data breaches, and other nefarious actions.
But, specifically, what is an NIDS? In essence, NIDS systems are software applications that monitor network traffic and alert system administrators when they detect suspicious or abnormal behavior that could indicate an intrusion. NIDSs work by analyzing network packets in real-time and comparing them to a database of known attack signatures – or patterns of behavior associated with known cyber attacks. If a packet matches a known signature, the NIDS generates an alert to initiate an appropriate response, such as blocking the offending IP address or shutting down the affected system.
Additionally, many NIDSs also use behavioral analysis techniques that can identify abnormal traffic patterns, such as unusually high network activity or repeated attempts to access a particular resource. These techniques can be particularly useful in detecting so-called “zero-day” attacks, which are previously unknown exploits currently absent from a signature database.
NIDS systems have become essential because cyber threats constantly change to combat equally progressive data protection measures. Moreover, with the rise of cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other advanced technologies, there are more opportunities for attackers to exploit vulnerabilities in network infrastructure. A single breach can have catastrophic consequences for a corporation, including the theft of sensitive data, the disruption of critical services, and the compromise of entire networks.
By providing real-time detection and alerting capabilities, NIDSs can help organizations respond quickly and effectively to potential security breaches. They also play an important role in compliance with industry regulations and standards, such as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Benefits of Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs)
NIDSs provide multiple benefits rooted in network safety, integrity, and stability. These offerings include:
Real-Time Threat Detection
One of the primary benefits of NIDSs is their high-level, real-time detection of potential security breaches. This capability allows system administrators to respond quickly and effectively to minimize breach damage and prevent further attacks. By alerting administrators to potential breaches, NIDS can help organizations identify and isolate affected systems, implement patches or other security measures, and prevent further damage.
Compliance With Industry Standards
Many industries have specific regulations and standards that require organizations to implement security measures – such as an NIDS – to protect sensitive data. For example, the aforementioned PCI DSS requires organizations that process credit card transactions to implement intrusion detection systems to protect against data breaches. NIDSs are one of several ways organizations remain compliant in this manner.
Cost-Effective Security Solution
Compared to other security measures, such as hiring additional security personnel or implementing physical security measures, NIDSs are a relatively cost-effective solution. In most cases, NIDSs can provide continuous monitoring and threat detection without the need for additional personnel or resources.
Protection Against Zero-Day Attacks
Zero-day attacks are previously unknown exploits not yet listed in an organization’s signature database. NIDSs that use behavioral analysis techniques can detect abnormal traffic patterns that may indicate a zero-day attack, allowing organizations to take immediate action to mitigate the damage.
NIDS systems provide organizations with greater visibility into their network traffic, allowing them to pinpoint potential security risks and optimize network performance. By analyzing network traffic, NIDS can highlight bottlenecks, monitor bandwidth usage, and detect potential security threats.
Another notable trait of NIDSs is their scalability, which allows them to meet the needs of organizations of nearly all sizes. Organizations can deploy an NIDS on individual systems or across entire networks, providing continuous monitoring and threat detection.
Organizations can also centrally manage their NIDSs, giving administrators a single interface for monitoring and responding to potential security threats. This trait can simplify the management of security policies and improve the overall efficiency of incident response.
Reduced False Positives
NIDS that use behavioral analysis techniques can reduce the number of false positives generated by signature-based detection systems. By analyzing network traffic patterns and behavior, NIDS can identify and alert administrators to potential security threats that might go unnoticed by signature-based detection alone.
In providing continuous monitoring and threat detection, NIDSs help organizations avoid potential security threats. With the constantly evolving nature of cyber threats, continuous monitoring is essential for maintaining the security and integrity of computer networks.
Different Types of Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs)
There are several prominent NIDS types, each offering unique characteristics and benefits to an organization’s network. These categories include, but are not limited to:
Signature-based NIDSs compare network traffic against a database of known attack signatures. When a signature matches the incoming traffic, the NIDS alerts system administrators.
Similarly, an anomaly-based NIDS works by establishing a baseline of normal network traffic and comparing current traffic to that baseline. Any traffic that deviates from the established baseline is flagged as anomalous and triggers an alert.
This type of NIDS focuses on monitoring specific network protocols, such as hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), file transfer protocol (FTP), or secure shell (SSH). Like their counterparts, protocol-based NIDSs can identify traffic that is not compliant with their set protocol, such as an FTP connection that is attempting to use a non-standard port or protocol.
Hybrid NIDSs combine signature-based and anomaly-based detection methods; they leverage the strengths of both methods to provide a more comprehensive detection system. Hybrid NIDS are effective at detecting known and unknown attacks while minimizing false positives.
Organizations often install host-based NIDSs on individual hosts or servers rather than on a network. Host-based NIDSs can detect attacks that are not visible at the network level, such as attacks that target specific software vulnerabilities. These systems are also useful for protecting individual hosts or servers and see use in conjunction with network-based NIDSs for comprehensive protection.
How Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs) Are Used
Organizations typically deploy NIDSs as an additional layer of security to complement other security measures, such as firewalls, anti-virus software, and access controls. Therefore, when it comes to introducing NIDSs into existing networks, administrators typically follow a series of well-established steps to ensure seamless integration and effective operation.
First, organizations must identify the areas of their network that require NIDS coverage; they typically accomplish this by conducting a thorough risk assessment, which involves identifying the types of assets, data, and network segments that require protection. Once these areas are known, organizations can proceed to selecting and configuring the appropriate NIDS software.
The next step involves configuring the NIDS software to work with the existing network infrastructure. This step usually entails setting up monitoring interfaces, such as network taps or span ports, to capture network traffic and direct it to the NIDS sensors for analysis. Organizations must also configure the NIDS sensors to analyze network traffic and detect potential intrusions based on pre-defined rules and policies.
Once the organization has successfully configured the NIDS software, it must test the system to ensure proper integration. Administrators should facilitate several assessments confirming this compatibility, including connectivity tests, stress tests, and intrusion detection tests. The organization might also conduct penetration testing to simulate real-world attack scenarios and identify weaknesses in the NIDS.
Following testing, administrators must ensure regular maintenance of the NIDS system to keep it up-to-date, functional, and safe. Auditing, in this sense, involves reviewing and updating the system’s rules and policies to keep pace with new threats and vulnerabilities – as well as monitoring the system for alerts and responding promptly to any detected intrusions or anomalies.
Potential Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDSs)
While they sport numerous benefits, modern NIDSs are still vulnerable to a range of potential threats, including evasion techniques that hackers and cybercriminals use to bypass detection. Such methods include, but are not limited to:
One of the most common ways hackers attack NIDSs is by encrypting their traffic. Encrypted traffic appears as an unintelligible stream of data to an NIDS, making it difficult to analyze. If the NIDS cannot decrypt and analyze encrypted traffic, a hacker could potentially use this method to evade detection.
Polymorphic malware is a type of malware that changes its code on each iteration, making it difficult for traditional signature-based detection methods to identify. If a hacker can create or obtain polymorphic malware, they may be able to bypass NIDSs that rely on signature-based detection.
Protocol tunneling is the process of encapsulating one protocol inside another. For example, a hacker might encapsulate a malicious payload inside an innocuous protocol like HTTP. If the NIDS fails to detect and analyze the inner protocol, the malicious payload may seamlessly reach its target.
If a hacker can evade detection, they can exploit vulnerabilities in an organization’s network and steal sensitive data. It is important, therefore, that organizations have a strong IDS that can detect and respond to potential threats in real-time. By leveraging multiple detection techniques, and monitoring logs, organizations can improve their security posture and protect against ever-changing breaches.
In today’s rapidly expanding digital environment, cyber threats have grown to become both widespread and increasingly complex. In turn, to protect the data and overall integrity of their networks, organizations must ensure that their digital infrastructure is equally expansive and layered. An NIDS is an effective way to manage network traffic, bolster cybersecurity, and ultimately keep an organization’s personnel and data safe. If your organization is in need of such a digital transformation, consider NIDS integration today. Reach out to our team for questions or more information! https://www.thundercattech.com/contact-us/ | <urn:uuid:fc81bc1b-5f9c-46c8-92be-7bd1a14f5664> | CC-MAIN-2024-10 | https://www.thundercattech.com/resources/blogs/network-intrusion-detection-systems/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2024-10/segments/1707947474843.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20240229134901-20240229164901-00349.warc.gz | en | 0.918938 | 2,187 | 2.984375 | 3 |
A black–and–white picture of Annie Webb Blanton hangs in the conference room of the Annie’s List office in Central Austin. In 1918, Blanton ran for State Superintendent for Public Instruction. When she won, becoming the first woman elected to statewide office in Texas, women were still being barred from voting in general elections, having only recently won the right to vote in primary elections.
A century later, women are still working to earn equal representation in Texas. Of the 181 seats in the Texas Legislature, women hold 37, representing 20.4 percent of the seats (compared to a national average of 25.4 percent). Only three of the state’s 38 seats in the 114th U.S. Congress are filled by women. But the underrepresentation of women in politics is not just a problem in Texas—nationally, women hold only 19.3 percent of seats in the House of Representatives and just 23 percent of seats in the Senate. Twelve percent of governors across the country are women.
It is also not just a problem for Texas. “The underrepresentation of women in U.S. politics does serious damage to the legitimacy of our democratic institutions,” wrote Judith Warner in a 2017 report for the Center for American Progress. And numerous studies have found that women make more effective lawmakers: Women introduce more legislation than men do and bring more money to their home districts—9 percent more, according to the American Journal of Political Science. They tend to be more bipartisan and collaborative than men, co-sponsoring more legislation with members of the opposite party.
Now, an unprecedented number of women are on the ballot in elections across the United States. In Texas, the number of women running for the state Legislature has increased by 55 percent since 2016, according to Annie’s List, up from 42 women running in 2016 to 65 in 2018.
“People are starting to realize that no one is going to do this work for us. We have to step up and engage,” says Royce Brooks, the executive director of Annie’s List, which was founded in 2003 to elect progressive women to state and local offices in Texas. “The number of endorsed candidates we have on the ballot in November is a record number for us.”
Although the so-called “pink wave” has surged in both parties, it is primarily a movement of the Democratic Party. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, three times as many Democratic women are running for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives as Republican women, and 50 percent more Democratic women are running for the U.S. Senate compared to their GOP counterparts.
“When you have women in office, not only do they prioritize the issues that affect women and children, but they also consider the impact any bill will have on women,” says Kimberly Caldwell, programs director at Annie’s List. “You see legislation and it’s like, a woman was not in the room for that decision.”
“If you want to make a difference in your community, if you want things to change, then you have to get into electoral politics,” Brooks says.
Increasingly, women are. Here are six female candidates in Central Texas who have never held public office—and yet they’ve stepped up to run for it in 2018.
Austin City Council, District 9
On Jan. 5, 2017, Danielle Skidmore was listening to the radio at her desk at work when she heard Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick unveil the so-called “bathroom bill,” which would have restricted which bathrooms transgender people could use in public buildings. “I was so angry that I got up from my desk and drove to the Capitol and walked right into the press room and stood 15 feet away from him,” says Skidmore, who is a transgender woman. “It was a surreal moment of recognition—I am being targeted.” It would take her nearly a year to decide to run for office, but in that moment, she realized, “We have to stand up and fight back. Whether it’s the trans community or the immigrant community or people of color, we need more representation in our government at all levels,” she says.
If Skidmore wins her race for Austin’s District 9, she would be the first openly transgender woman elected to public office in Texas. She might also be the first transportation engineer to serve on City Council. “Austin is a really wonderful place to live, but there have been these intractable problems that I’ve struggled with for the 24 years I’ve been here,” Skidmore says. “Transportation is a key one. It’s harder and harder to move throughout the city. We have to go big on public transportation, and we need leadership that will advocate for that.”
Skidmore has had plenty of practice as an advocate for her 17-year-old special needs son, Peter, who is in a wheelchair. “I think about the challenges we’ve had accessing the city … in terms of how we move about the city, but also in terms of housing accessibility,” she says. “We’ve gotten pretty good at solving puzzles for Peter. In my professional career, I solve puzzles in transportation engineering. I saw that I could do those things for Austin more generally.”
In addition to increasing mobility, Skidmore says a robust public transportation system would contribute to the city’s affordability. “Central Austin will always be expensive, but if you can live in a more affordable part of Austin and still access the things that make Austin wonderful, then we can materially help people’s lives,” she says. “As the city grows, we can’t call ourselves sustainable if we’re still entirely dependent on cars. We have failed in that regard.”
U.S. House of Representatives, District 31
If you are a woman serving in a combat unit in the U. S. armed forces today, it is because of MJ Hegar. After three tours in Afghanistan as a combat search and rescue pilot—during which she was shot down by enemy fire and earned a Purple Heart for defending her patients and crew in armed combat—Hegar returned home to Texas only to learn that many positions in the military weren’t open to her as a woman under the Ground Combat Exclusion Policy. (In 2012, women were ineligible to serve in 238,000 positions, about a fifth of the armed forces.) So Hegar, alongside three other female combat veterans, sued the Department of Defense, charging that the exclusion of women from military positions was unconstitutional. In 2013, that policy was repealed by a unanimous recommendation from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The time she spent in D.C. lobbying Congress made an impact on Hegar. Door after door was closed on her because she wasn’t a campaign donor, or because she didn’t have any influence to offer. “Inside a congressional office, I had someone say to me, ‘I agree, it’s probably the best thing for the military, but you don’t have anything to offer my boss in return in terms of political capital,’” she says. That answer wasn’t good enough for her. “We deserve and need better representation,” she says. She just didn’t think it would be her.
Then, in June 2017, she was awake at 3 a.m. comforting her 6-month-old son. “I was saying, ‘I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you,’” she says. “A light bulb went off that 20 years from now, I think [my kids] are going to ask me what I was doing during this period in our history, and I have to be able to tell them, ‘I was fighting for you and for our future, and for this country that I am so in love with.’”
Hegar would like to see a wave of veterans from both parties running for office. “The people who send our men and women in uniform into combat should understand that there are certainly things worth fighting for. But also, [they should understand] the very high and heavy cost of war. I would say there are more people that don’t understand that,” she says, adding that veterans can help heal the partisan gridlock that plagues Washington. “We in the military are adept at working together with people who we disagree with and recognizing that they are not our enemy.”
Texas House of Representatives, District 45
In early February 2017, Erin Zwiener wanted to know her representative’s position on SB4, the state’s controversial law that would have cracked down on “sanctuary cities.” A fifth-generation Texan, she had recently moved to Driftwood with her husband and was planning to write another book—she’d already published a picture book for children. But she couldn’t get answers from Jason Isaac, who represented Texas’ 45th district. Finally, late one evening, Isaac responded to her queries, called her a troll, and blocked her from his Facebook page. “I just went, ‘This is not how our elected officials should behave,’” she says. She looked to see who was running against him, thinking she could help. No one was running—in fact, no Democrat had run to represent the district since 2012. “I looked at myself and said I think I have the skills and willingness to do this,” she says.
She says the state Legislature has “an impact on everything. They are the bridge between local government and the federal government.” The state Legislature will also control redistricting after the 2020 census, which impacts state and federal elections. “Texas is very effectively gerrymandered,” Zwiener says. “When the Democrats were in charge of Texas, they did it just as badly. Which is why I feel so committed to independent redistricting. Voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.”
Running as a first-time candidate offers distinct challenges for women, she says. “One of the big early struggles of my campaign—it took me a solid three to four months to figure out—was, what am I supposed to wear?” Zwiener says. “You have to get pretty firm in yourself before you’re too public a candidate because you meet a lot of people who want to tell you what sort of candidate to be.”
Since May 2017, Zwiener and campaign volunteers have knocked on more than 10,000 doors across Hays and Blanco counties. “It fundamentally changes people’s perspective if they’ve met a candidate,” she says. “There are a lot of people who feel forgotten and like they don’t matter. So many people in Texas just don’t have the hope that their vote will change anything. We have to give people hope.”
Austin City Council, District 1
Ask Natasha Harper-Madison why she decided to run for City Council, and she’ll tell you about growing up on the East Side (“We were trash bag kids, highly transient and very poor,” she says) and how she always knew that she was going to “transcend cyclical poverty and become a badass startup founder and make a bunch of money.” She did just that, starting a cleaning company when she was 19 years old, the first in a series of successful businesses. She married a firefighter, and together they had four children.
On a Monday in September 2014, Harper-Madison was on the verge of launching her biggest venture yet when she went to the doctor with a numb finger that had turned purple. She was diagnosed with lupus—and then she asked the doctor to examine a mass in her armpit. “On Friday I was diagnosed with breast cancer,” she says. “That shifted everything. I said, ‘My life is going to be joyful, it’s going to be purposeful, I am going to leave a legacy these kids can be proud of.’”
She quit her startup, drove her dust-covered Prius to the East Austin housing projects where she’d grown up, and started asking, “What do you need?”
That question became her guiding force. Within a month, she had founded East Austin Advocates to help people mitigate shortages of all kinds. In 2016, she launched Take5toVote and hosted a series of voter information clinics. “Forty percent of the people we polled said they’d never [voted] because they were embarrassed. They didn’t know what to expect,” she says. “We got people who had never voted—people who felt disenfranchised, excluded from this process—to go vote.” The following year she joined the East 12th Street Merchants Association and later became board president.
“The more I learned, the more I realized, I need to go to City Hall. There’s nothing that gets done without effective, practical policy in place,” she says. Harper-Madison’s youngest daughter Magnolia, who is 8, once asked her, “Mama, what will Austin look like in 2080?” she says. “It makes me wonder! What is it that we can do in 2018 that will make Austin in 2080 the best city it can be? We need to plant those heirloom seeds now and tend them.”
Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts
In the fall of 2017, Joi Chevalier watched and waited as Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar remained silent when Congress initially removed funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program in its 2018 appropriations bill. More than 400,000 Texas children benefit from the federally funded, state-managed program. “If you don’t bring those funds in, we’re talking about 400,000 kids in the state that are uninsured,” she says. “I think the comptroller has to be a voice for people, a voice for citizens. It’s got to tie dollars to outcomes—what happens when you don’t insure [almost] half a million children? It is the one agency that knows exactly who is going to be affected by any gain or loss,” she says.
After years of participating in the Democratic Party behind the scenes, Chevalier decided it was her turn to speak up. A comptroller doesn’t legislate but manages the state’s annual budget. In Texas, that includes more than $215 billion of state-generated and federal pass-through funds. “Basically, it is the state’s wallet,” says Chevalier. It’s a position with low visibility but high impact, one that Chevalier understands well. After earning a master’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, Chevalier spent nearly two decades as an e-commerce product manager and marketing director for startups and Fortune 50 companies. In 2015, she founded The Cook’s Nook, the city’s first culinary incubator for food entrepreneurs. Still, she says, she’s often asked to trot out her credentials. “It’s tougher for women than men. There’s this inherent skepticism of, do you know how to run anything? We’re always having to pull out our bona fides to prove we do,” she says.
Chevalier credits her mother, who raised her as a single parent, for teaching her about “being ready when the opportunity presents itself,” she says. “One day last December, an opportunity presented itself. When this call comes, you have to make a choice. If not you, who?”
U.S. House of Representatives, District 25
Julie Oliver has driven more than 40,000 miles since she started campaigning in November 2017. She spent most of her career in healthcare finance, eventually becoming division controller at St. David’s Healthcare. “Understanding the complexities of how our health care system is financed and who is served by it—and who is not—is something that is near and dear to my heart,” she says. Her son, who is 21, started life in the neonatal intensive care unit; when he was 6 years old, he was diagnosed with a heart condition. “I call him the walking pre-existing condition,” Oliver says. When Congress convened last summer to repeal the Affordable Care Act, she decided she needed to do something. “I have to step in, because they clearly don’t know what they are doing,” she says. “Millions of people benefit from having health care coverage through the ACA. Although it’s an imperfect system, our entire health care industry is imperfect.”
So Oliver got in her car and started driving across her district, which spans from Wimberley to Burleson, knocking on doors. “I say, ‘Hi, I’m Julie. I want to be your next representative. May I share my story with you?’ You see people soften. When people let down their guards, you hear these amazing stories. We forget how resilient we are, because we don’t share it.”
Often, when she knocks on doors, Oliver shares her own story—how when she was 17 years old, she dropped out of high school, ran away from home, and became pregnant. “We lived in poverty and there wasn’t a lot [my mom] could do, but she said, ‘Julie, you have to get an education,’” Oliver says. She went home and had her daughter the week before her high school graduation. With the help of government programs, she went to college and eventually finished law school at the University of Texas at Austin. “We know that the outcome and outlook for a 17-year-old high school dropout that gets pregnant is not favorable,” she says. “This would look very different if I wasn’t able to have the government support I had. It lifted me and my mother out of poverty.”
She says her guiding force as a first-time candidate has been connecting with people in her district. “Because I was a first-time candidate and I didn’t really know what to do, I said, ‘I’ve got to meet people, I’ve got to meet voters,’” she says. “Not knowing what to do served me well. I don’t want to lose that.”
Update: As of October 2018, three times as many Democratic women were running for seats in the U.S. House of Representatives as Republican women, and 50 percent more Democratic women were running for the U.S. Senate compared to their GOP counterparts. | <urn:uuid:acae808d-5398-4174-b387-99d06586ad5c> | CC-MAIN-2020-40 | https://www.austinmonthly.com/see-jane-run/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-40/segments/1600400274441.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20200927085848-20200927115848-00569.warc.gz | en | 0.98105 | 4,042 | 3.25 | 3 |
Types of Hernias
This type of hernia may be categorized as direct or indirect. They are the generally more common in males than females, and account for 75 percent of all abdominal-wall hernias.
Indirect inguinal hernias are the most common hernias in both men and women. They result from a widening of a natural hole that allows for the passage of the spermatic cord (men) or the round ligament (women). There is a genetic predisposition to these hernias. They tend to open up with increases in abdominal pressure.
Sometimes, inguinal hernias are hard to palpate on exam, i.e., there is no visible or palpable bulge or “impulse.” There may still be a hernia there. These are called occult or hidden hernias. We see them more often among women.
Direct inguinal hernias occur in older patients and is a result of weakening of the tissues, specifically the transversalis fascia.
These are rare hernias that are more often seen among women. They tend to be small and are the most likely hernias to cause incarceration or strangulation, i.e., trapping of intestine. In fact, 1/3 of all femoral hernias are repaired as emergencies and may include intestinal surgery.
We check all women for femoral hernias. Also, we recommend all known femoral hernias be repaired. Watchful waiting is discouraged.
These are even rarer hernias. They are very hard to diagnose, too. We see these typically in thin elderly women and they are often only found incidentally on imaging. They may cause pain in the lower groin, up in the perineum, especially with internal rotation of the hip. Though rare, we have experience in diagnosis and repairing these hernias using laparoscopic or robotic-assisted techniques.
This nomenclature is a catch-all phrase for all abdominal wall hernias, but not groin hernias.
Umbilical hernias are the most common type of ventral hernia. It is a reopening of the site of the umbilical cord.
Found just 1/2 inch above the belly button or halfway between the belly button and lower chest bone, or xiphoid. Most of these do not cause pain.
These are rare. They occur on the left or right side of the lower abdomen, about two finger breadths below the belly button level. Most people do not know they have one until it causes pain or intestine is stuck in it. We often use laparoscopic or robotic-assisted technique to repair these.
Even rarer hernias are the flank or back hernias. These include the Petit or Grynfeltt hernias. Because of our niche in hernias, we have experience in repairing these hernias.
These are hernias that occur at the site of an incision. All abdominal and flank incisions are prone to hernia development. Whether a hernia occurs is based on the surgical technique to close the incision and risk factors for hernia formation.
One under-appreciated risk factor for incisional hernia is a wound infection. Wound infections prevent healing and thus incisional hernias have a higher chance of occurring.
Sports Hernia, Athletic Pubalgia, Inguinal Disruption Injury
A rose by any other name… The term Sports Hernia is a misnomer. It is not a true hernia. This is why we prefer to use Inguinal Disruption Injury. These are tears of the muscle or fascia of their bony insertion in the inguinal region. Tears can be from the rectus muscle off the pubic bone, the adductor muscle off the pubic bone, or a combination. They are painful, but usually not debilitating.
These tears typically occur in athletes or others who have disproportionately large strong muscles of the rectus or thighs. Some have an imbalance of strong muscles, such as large quads but not as strong hamstrings. When these are engaged and overstretched, they are at risk for tearing off their insertion sites. We see this with hockey players and soccer players.
It is incorrect to call a non-palpable inguinal hernia a sports hernia. These are occult or hidden hernias and they are true hernias. They are often anatomically an indirect inguinal hernia. We see these among women more often than with men.
Diastasis means separation. Diastasis recti is a separation between the left and right rectus muscles (your six-pack or abs). There may be a genetic predisposition. It is also seen after pregnancy, especially second baby or with twins/triplets. Diastasis recti is not a true hernia. There is no hole. Thus, closure is not considered necessary for medical reasons.
We recommend surgical closure of diastasis recti if there is also a hernia within the diastasis. We notice that closing the diastasis will improve the outcomes of the hernia repair. We provide our patients with the best cosmetic outcome for their hernia repair. Closure of the diastasis will help reproduce a flatter abdomen.
A tummy tuck or abdominoplasty is the classic closure technique for a rectus diastasis. We offer robotic-assisted laparoscopic diastasis closure which is virtually scar-free. Inquire to see if you are a candidate for this procedure. | <urn:uuid:c3bb704a-1173-44d6-9b41-01734c636e08> | CC-MAIN-2018-47 | http://www.beverlyhillsherniacenter.com/hernia-education/types-of-hernias/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-47/segments/1542039742970.12/warc/CC-MAIN-20181116025123-20181116051123-00373.warc.gz | en | 0.922559 | 1,162 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Walls are but the most visible parts of militarized borders.
The Berlin Wall did not fall; it was demolished, first by hammer-wielding locals, then by state bulldozers, which hauled off the concrete remains. From a distance, it seems reunification happened suddenly. Newsreels from late 1989 show scenes festive, raucous even: young people dancing atop the graffitied barrier; David Hasselhoff singing “I’ve been looking for freedom” in a black leather jacket festooned with flashing lights; East Germans flocking westward on foot or in their tiny “Trabi” cars, which would soon be left abandoned on West German roadsides. Today, tour groups in Berlin are told that the Berlin Wall opened unexpectedly, and because of a mistake by a hapless East German bureaucrat. They are also told that at least 139 people died trying to breach the wall, which was really two walls with dog runs, metal spikes, and armed guards between them. How could the 155-kilometer Berlin Wall and the even deadlier landmine-ridden 1393-kilometer Inner German Border—once among the most fortified barriers in the world—have been so rapidly dismantled?
The narrative of “the fall” of the Berlin Wall belies the tedious work of removing militarized borders. Concrete, brick, and iron are but the most visible parts of such security systems. Landmines, tripwires, grenades, and other unexploded ordnance (UXO) shape postwar landscapes decades after conflicts are declared over and done. They create invisible borders, remnants of conflicts past, and enduring portents of a deadly future.
In the heart of Cold War Europe, the German Interior Border stretched from the Baltic Sea to what was then Czechoslovakia and, over an 18-year period, was fortified by East Germany with an estimated 1.3 million antipersonnel mines. Efforts to remove the weaponry began in the mid-1980s, after East Germany came under criticism from the international community for its brutal Splittermine: tripwire-activated spring-guns primed to maim or kill would-be defectors. In 1984, the East German government agreed to remove the devices in exchange for a substantial loan from West Germany. However, the work of clearing mines in Germany continued well into the 1990s, years after reunification. Today, some 33,000 East German antipersonnel mines remain unaccounted for, presumably swept away by soil and water, carried off by foxes, or activated by wildlife.
In Bomb Children: Life in the Former Battlefields of Laos (2019), Leah Zani argues for approaching what David Henig (2012) dubs “military waste” as a form of area studies that draws attention to “the geographic and cultural formations” war zones create. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we turn an anthropological eye toward how the Cold War’s explosive legacies shape contemporary landscapes. As Jason De León observes of the Sonoran Desert in The Land of Open Graves (2015), entire topographies can be militarized. But with landmines the most dangerous terrain may not appear fatal. In fact, landmines are often placed precisely where one would least expect them—near a creek, under an inviting tree, on a mountain leading to a sacred site.
Holy borders in Cambodia
To reach Cambodia’s Preah Vihear Temple, you take a military jeep up a steep slope. As you ascend, the food and drinks you have brought with you slide backward past your feet. The refreshments are not for you, but a customary kindness for the soldiers who guard the temple, located at a border militarized since the late twentieth century. The conflict that led to the border closure has long since ended, but its traces, and traces of earlier conflicts, remain embedded in the landscape—a deadly palimpsest.
Preah Vihear sits amid the K5 belt, a vast stretch of landmines that enforce the border between contemporary Cambodia and Thailand. At 700 kilometers long and 500 meters wide, with about 3,000 mines per square kilometer, it is the most densely mine-contaminated place in the world.
A long stone pathway takes you up the mountain. Trail lines guide your eyes to the silhouettes of temple tops. The plateau comprises a complex of stone buildings sculpted with giant carvings of flowers and gates etched with a story of gods. Splotches of white and chartreuse lichen emboss stone details. The temple has clean, symmetrical lines with rectangular windows and halls. Wind and cloud mists flow through its entrances, but your movements are limited. Beyond the path you’ll see a fallen sign with skulls and crossbones reading, “Danger!! Mines!!”
Most landmines in Cambodia were laid in the 1980s during the Vietnamese takeover of the country, which came after the defeat of Pol Pot’s Maoist-communist Khmer Rouge during the Cambodian-Vietnamese War (1979–1989). Other munitions are explosive relics of the Vietnam War (which the Vietnamese call “the American War”), when the United States dropped bombs on communist forces. These conflicts are entangled: the US intrusion in Vietnam in the 1960s led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, a genocidal regime responsible for murdering millions of Cambodians in the 1970s. Although Vietnam and Cambodia were initially united, the two communist regimes soon turned against each other, leaving China to mediate. The result was the K5 belt, an invisible wall preventing Khmer Rouge troops from returning to Cambodia via Thailand.
Landmines, which have a lifespan of 100 years, persist longer than their conflicts. They outlive their original uses; they take on different meanings. Today, landmines at Preah Vihear can prevent Thai access to the temple complex and have become part of a border dispute that developed after they were laid. This series of events, and the resultant layers and possibilities of unexploded ordnance, remind us that conflicts do not start and end, but rather nest and beget each other. Unlike concrete walls, landmines cannot be torn down but must be detected and detonated, piece by piece.
Lethal leftovers in Ukraine
Minefields do not hold steady shapes. The durability of landmines and other explosive devices is often matched only by their portability. In her study of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, Eleana Kim (2016) describes how her interlocutors would find aging plastic “toe popper” antipersonnel mines swimming between rice paddies. Explosives, once planted in the landscape, could become “rogue infrastructure” swept away by rain, erosion, or wildlife, reshaping the ways people lived in and used their environment, changing which areas the mines denied. Aging landmines can also be moved by human hands. Like other weapons—guns, grenades, missiles—landmines can be stored during peacetime and then transferred elsewhere when conflict erupts. They can be torn out of the ground, their parts disassembled and jerry-rigged into new explosive configurations. Once the machinery for a militarized border has been produced, a militarized border is always possible.
In the far east of Ukraine, a small pocket of land extends like a crooked finger into Russia. A road bisects the finger, and along that road is a village, Krasna Talivka, once home to a large garden seed farm. Should you go there, adults will recount summers spent scooping the flesh from overripe watermelons so the seeds could be replanted across the Soviet Union. They will recall the pain of losing the state farm during privatization, and how, after Ukrainian independence, they made ends meet as cross-border traders, selling “contraband” (shampoo, laundry detergent, shoes) from Russia in the regional center of Stanytsia Luhanska and the big city of Luhansk.
After the start of the War in Donbas (2014–present) and the shelling of the local border guard by Russian helicopters, the Ukrainian military planted Soviet-era anti-tank mines in fields at both ends of Krasna Talivka and along the regional highway. A pro-Ukrainian militia set up camp in a nearby forest, stringing trees with tripwires and other booby-traps made from spare parts, impeding villagers seeking firewood or mushrooms. Bus services ceased. Krasna Talivka, once Soviet heartland, is now cut off from both Russia and Ukraine: Russia is accessible only via another border crossing, hours away; Luhansk is deep in separatist territory; and Stanytsia Luhanska sits at the “line of contact” between government and separatist forces, surrounded by landmines, unexploded shells, and other hazards left by both sides. Every day, thousands of people, mostly seniors living in separatist-controlled territory, cross a badly damaged bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska to collect their Ukrainian pensions. Last winter, 18 people dropped dead in the queue. Substantial repairs have recently begun, but cannot be completed until all combatants fully disengage and clear the area of UXOs.
Krasna Talivka was spared much of the violence that plagued other parts of Ukraine and, as this article goes to press, the fields in the border-area have been certified mine-free and returned to farmers. Still, military waste continues to impact daily life there and in surrounding communities. As work in agriculture and trading evaporated, dozens of locals went to work in humanitarian mine clearance, usually for the British-American HALO Trust. The salary is good by area standards but the labor is physically and mentally taxing. “De-miners” spend hours on their hands and knees, hand-cutting vegetation that has overgrown pastures and fields and sweeping for explosives they mark and map for the military’s detonation team. Such technical surveys are but one step in a politically charged and bureaucratically complicated mine clearance process.
Walls that won’t fall
Mine clearance experts estimate that a single landmine costs between 3 and 30 US dollars to install and 10 times that amount to remove. But the barriers to removing mines are not only financial. In Ukraine, Cambodia, and many other UXO-affected countries, mine clearance requires armed forces, humanitarian de-mining organizations, and locals to navigate multiple and conflicting interests. To some, landmines offer protection from would-be invaders. To others, landmines create economic distress, separate families, and impose unacceptable risk upon primarily non-combatant populations, especially children.
The end of a conflict does not necessarily make clearance easier. Minefields shift—both physically, as land and water move, and semiotically, as they come to enforce borders or deny territory for different reasons than before. Cambodia’s K5 belt, built to keep out the Khmer Rouge, now lends itself to enforced borders. In Ukraine, the War in Donbas increasingly resembles a frozen conflict. As UXO is cleared in some areas, that which is left in place hardens the “de-facto border” (Bulakh 2018). There is nothing stopping Cambodia or Ukraine, both signatories to the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, from maintaining anti-tank mines, which the convention does not prohibit. Indeed, these frying-pan sized contraptions are deployed in many contemporary conflicts. They will not explode when stepped on, but can and have torn apart tractors, buses, and family cars that unwittingly cross their path, victims of walls they never knew were there.
As we look back on the 30 years since the Cold War was declared over, we would do well to remember that the Berlin Wall was more than a concrete barrier. The narrative of the “fall of the wall” erases years of disarmament along the Inner German Border and it blinds us to the violence that landmines, Cold War-era and otherwise, have prolonged elsewhere. Dismantling militarized borders is a decades-long process—when it happens at all. A militarized wall never plans for peacetime; if one is built, how can we?
Darcie DeAngelo is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the College of Holy Cross. Her current book project, part of University of California Press’s Atelier series 2019 workshop, is Beloved Technologies: On Bombs and Rats in a Cambodian Minefield.
Deborah A. Jones is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. She is preparing a book manuscript, Words to Sow: Language and Violence in Ukraine.
Cite as: DeAngelo, Darcie, and Deborah A. Jones. 2019. “Explosive Landscapes.” Anthropology News website, November 15, 2019. DOI: 10.1111/AN.1312 | <urn:uuid:cab7ce62-af7a-4c46-95f1-5c7ca1220f6b> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://www.anthropology-news.org/articles/explosive-landscapes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296949958.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401094611-20230401124611-00015.warc.gz | en | 0.9422 | 2,702 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Did you know that today is the Earth Day, an annual day that’s designed to mark environmental protection? While consumer protection is our main focus here at Consumer Protection BC, we wanted to share three easy ways you can “green up” your life – saving you money while helping to protect our planet. Happy Earth Day, everyone!
Remember that every drop counts.
There are a number of ways you can conserve water, from taking shorter showers to installing low-flow faucets. Outside of your home, consider planting native species of plants that are drought tolerant. Being water conscious helps preserve our Earth’s resources and can lead to big savings when it comes to your water and electricity bills.
Opt for cloth
From grocery bags to kitchen towels, it’s easy to make the switch from disposable to cloth. As a bonus, some grocery stores will even give you a nominal credit if you bring in your own bags!
The next time you need to run an errand or plan to meet a friend for coffee, consider whether you really need to take the car. Walking will reduce your fuel costs and you can stop to smell the flowers.
We’d love to hear how you’re planning to mark Earth Day – please let us know in the comments below! | <urn:uuid:d7cfdf57-b026-4fd7-aa6d-db1b4944d7a7> | CC-MAIN-2019-47 | https://www.consumerprotectionbc.ca/2013/04/earth_day/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-47/segments/1573496668772.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20191116231644-20191117015644-00494.warc.gz | en | 0.927828 | 266 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Plato was a student of the philosopher, Socrates.
He was from a very rich family and he was alive from 427 BC to 354 BC.
Plato was a student of Socrates who was a great teacher and philosopher.
Socrates was usually the main person that Plato would write about when he wrote books.
As Plato was growing up, he was excited about academics.
He chose to become strong in philosophy and that is where he met Socrates.
Since Socrates was a philosopher, he would try to find out if what people said was logical or if it was illogical.
Sometimes people would become angry with Socrates and so people would argue with Plato because he was his student.
Socrates would talk to his students and would teach them about politic and facts of life.
He would have Plato and other students come up with different theories to solve problems and the teachings of Socrates would later become important in Plato’s writings.
What Important Things Did Plato Do?
Plato was a very important person from Ancient Greece.
He helped to found the first university that was called the Academy.
At this school, he had students focus on who they were and wanted people to learn about human nature.
Plato wrote many different books about ideas and sometimes he would write books that would disagree with other teachings that people wrote.
Plato also wrote books that had people talking in them and so the books were fun to read.
Sometimes Socrates was the main person in Plato’s books and some people wonder if Socrates really said the things in Plato’s books or if Plato just used him as a character to make his ideas seem important.
One of the most famous books that Plato wrote was called “The Republic.”
This book was written from what Socrates said and it included the Socratic Method which is an argument that is used it prove people wrong.
“The Republic,” was a book where characters discussed what justice was and how justice would bring happiness.
Socrates is one of the main characters again and talked about his life and how life can be unfair.
The last book that Plato wrote was called “The Laws” and it was the longest book he wrote.
Some other books that he wrote were:
Plato began to write, and he came up with a style called “the dialogue.”
This is the style that he used in many of his writings where people would “talk” back and forth to each other.
This allowed Plato to show both sides of the argument and would allow him to introduce new ideas.
One of the most important dialogues that Plato wrote was called “The Apology” and it was when Socrates was defending himself before he was sentenced to death.
One thing that Plato believed was that if someone was given the kingship, they should have to be a philosopher first.
He believed that every true king would be a philosopher, or they weren’t smart enough to be king.
Plato was a philosopher and he was also a mathematician.
He was very smart and is known for being a teacher and a write.
Plato was said to make Western philosophy.
Plato grew up in Athens during Ancient Greek times.
Most people don’t know a lot about Plato because a lot was not written about his life, but it is known that he was from a rich family and he had a sister and two brothers.
Since he was rich, Plato would have been taught by the best teachers in the city-state.
He was taught classes such as math, gymnastics, music, philosophy and more.
Plato died when he was 80 years old, but no one really knows how or why.
Most people think that he died while he was sleeping.
Plato was very important, and his writings told a lot of thing to universities about philosophy and life.
His writings have been studied for more than 2000 years.
Facts About Plato:
- Some believe that Plato’s real name was Aristocles.
- Plato means wide.
- Plato was related to the poet and lawmaker, Solon.
- Greece offered Plato to be one of the “Thirty Tyrants,” after the Peloponnesian War, but he said no.
- Plato was influenced by Pythagoras.
- Plato traveled to places such as Egypt, North Africa, Italy and other regions.
- Some believe that Plato served in the Athenian army.
- Plato was a boy during the Peloponnesian War.
- Aristotle was one of Plato’s students.
What Did You Learn?
- Who was Plato? Plato was a famous philosopher that was alive during Ancient Greek times.
- Who was Plato a student of? Plato was the student of Socrates.
- What was Plato known for? Plato was known for writing books and for believing in philosophical things.
- What did Plato believe about the Philosopher-King? Plato believed that a king could only be a good king if he was a philosopher first.
- What war was Plato alive during? Plato was alive during the Peloponnesian War. | <urn:uuid:50934311-d0d3-4f3e-ba9c-aff12bc54869> | CC-MAIN-2021-31 | https://www.historyforkids.net/plato.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-31/segments/1627046154408.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20210802234539-20210803024539-00688.warc.gz | en | 0.99359 | 1,072 | 3.984375 | 4 |
Welcome to PhysLink.com - Your physics and astronomy online portal. Stay a while! Check out our extensive library of educational and reference materials. Also, check out our fun section!
Does the temperature of a football (or baseball, soccer ball, etc) affect how far it will travel when kicked/hit?
Asked by: Drew Klipp
Temperature can affect a couple of different variables in a ball to alter the distance it will travel from an impact. For inflated balls, the temperature can change the air pressure inside the ball giving an over inflated effect if it was warmed, or and under inflated effect if it was cold. (Have you ever tried dribbling a basketball without enough air in it?) The amount of air pressure then is directly proportional to the temperature of the air inside.
For solid core balls, like baseballs, golf balls etc… temperature has a similar effect on the ball but the mechanics are a bit different. Here the characteristics of the material inside the ball are responsible for the bounciness of the ball.
A ball’s bounciness is dependent on the elasticity of its constructed materials. The property of elasticity allows the ball to retain kinetic energy during a collision by having the ability to flex without breaking and then return to its original shape. This measure of a material’s elasticity is called its coefficient of restitution.
An object with a low coefficient of restitution will lose a great deal of its kinetic energy in a collision through breaking or deforming, or through the generation of sound or heat. Compare the kinetic energy transmission through steel balls suspended on strings as they bounce back and forth in an example of a high coefficient of restitution. Now consider a lump of clay or a piece of glass in a collision, both materials having very low restitutional values – they simply do not transfer energy well because they are not as elastic.
How does all this tie back into the temperature of materials? Temperature can also affect elasticity – the colder a material gets, the less elastic it can be. Under cold conditions, the material can actually become more of an 'energy sink' – absorbing energy rather than transferring it.
Both inflated and solid core balls rely on the principle of coefficient of restitution. A warmed, (over inflated) ball is more elastic than a cold, (under inflated) ball just as a solid core ball that is warm has more elasticity than an identical ball that is cold.
Answered by: Stephen Portz, Technology Teacher, Space Coast Middle School, FL
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Teacher: “True or False? The Declaration of Independence was written in Philadelphia.”
Student: “False. It was written in ink.”
Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?
On the bottom.
Why did the British soldiers wear red coat?
So they could hide in the tomatoes.
What did one flag say to the other flag?
Nothing. It just waved.
What’s red, white, blue, and ugly?
The Revolutionary Warthog.
How was the good at the Fourth of July picnic?
The hot dogs were bad, but the brats were the wurst!
Why did Paul Revere ride from Boston to Lexington?
Because the horse was too heavy to carry.
What was General Washington’s favorite tree?
What’s red, white, blue, and green?
A patriotic pickle.
Why is the Liberty Bell like a dropped Easter egg?
They’re both cracked.
What is Uncle Sam’s favorite snack?
What’s red, white, blue and green?
A seasick Uncle Sam!
Why did the duck say, “Bang”?
He was a fire-quacker.
What happened as a result of the Stamp Act?
The Americans licked the British.
What kind of tea did the American colonists thirst for?
What did King George think of the American colonist?
He thought they were revolting!
How did American colonists’ dogs protest against England?
The Boston Flea Party.
What do you call an American revolutionary who draws cartoons?
Father William, the old priest, made it a practice to visit the parish school one day a week. He walked into the 4th grade class, where the children were studying the states, and asked them how many states they could name. They came up with about 40 names.
Father William jokingly told them that in his day students knew the names of all the states. One lad raised his hand and said, Yes sir, but in those days there were only 13 states.
4th of July Facts:
The 4th of July was not declared a national holiday until 1941.
When the United States became a country in 1776, there were approximately 2.5 million people living in the country. This Fourth of July 2013, the population is around 313.2 million.
The youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence was 26-year-old Edward Rutledge. The oldest signer was Benjamin Franklin. He was 70. Most of the signers were in their 30s and 40s.
The American flag was adopted on June 14, 1777. | <urn:uuid:747fc55e-6e37-4ec9-9e78-12d96ecd62a6> | CC-MAIN-2019-18 | https://academictips.org/funny-jokes/fourth-of-july-jokes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-18/segments/1555578678807.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20190425014322-20190425040322-00485.warc.gz | en | 0.981809 | 562 | 2.875 | 3 |
Political Studies Department
Democratic Theory and Practice
First Semester 2013
Potential Class Test Questions
You are encouraged to prepare for this examination collectively, using whatever information you find relevant (e.g. class notes, readings, the library, throw the dice, etc…). At the same time, we will attach a great deal of weight to the originality of your answers (e.g. making insights, or using examples different to those we used in class).
On Wednesday 20 March, you will have forty-five (45) minutes to answer some of the questions listed below. Your answers will be evaluated on completeness, conciseness, organization and originality. Good luck!
Part I. Identification
In at most one paragraph, define and discuss the significance or relevance of the following (using examples to illustrate your points). Answer six of the following items.
(You will be given 10 choices, of which you will have to answer 5)
1. Procedural Vs. Substantive Definitions of Democracy
2. Minimalist Vs Maximalist Definitions of Democracy
3. Procedural Prerequisite Vs. Behavioural Outcome Definitions of Democracy 4. Validity and Reliability
6. Type of Data and Levels of Precision
7. Freedom House Index of Political Freedom
8. Przeworski / Cheibub Index of Autocracy/Democracy
9. Transition to Democracy
10. Legitimation Crisis
11. Hurting Stalemate
12. Liberalizing Vs. Democratizing Reforms
13. The Third Wave of Democratization
14. Positive Conjunctures of Democratization
15. The 1974 Portuguese Coup
16. The Unsolved Dilemmas of the Demos Kratia
Part II. Essay
Answer one of the following questions. Be as complete as possible, and give examples to illustrate your arguments.
(You will be given four and must answer one).
1. What do we know about the way in which countries transitioned to democracy in the latter 20th century? What are the key variables to consider in comparing...
Please join StudyMode to read the full document | <urn:uuid:07d78803-ab87-4674-9003-2d417ce2b982> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | http://www.studymode.com/course-notes/Democratic-Theory-And-Practice-1697048.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125945143.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20180421110245-20180421130245-00578.warc.gz | en | 0.843563 | 443 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Storm drains are pieces of infrastructure that collect rainwater to prevent it from flooding properties and streets. Water travels through the grill into an underground pipe network that transports it to nearby waterways.
Sometimes, however, catch basins and storm drains require repair. Cracked or collapsed storm drain pipes might leak water into the surrounding soil. If there is a heavy rainstorm, they may not be able to transport water away in sufficient volumes to waterways to protect roads and private property from flooding.
DeBuck Construction has vast experience in catch basin and storm drain repair. In this article, we outline our processes and what you can expect when you choose our services.
Catch Basin And Storm Drain Repair
While people use the terms “catch basin,” “storm drains,” and “storm sewers” interchangeably in everyday speech, they are, in fact, different things.
The catch basin is the funnel-shaped piece of concrete that collects and channels water towards the grate that covers the drain. You usually find catch basins by roadsides and parking lots to keep them free from flooding. They can appear around the edges of buildings in certain locations, as well. Thus, they are a specific part of the storm drain sewer system – not the whole thing.
Catch basins regularly require repair. Over time, water can seep into a pocket of space between the drain’s concrete and the earth below. This water freezes and expands during winter, pushing the catch basin upwards and pushing down on the soil below. Once it thaws, the basin sinks into the newly-formed void, making it appear sunken – a process that often leads to cracking.
Sometimes, problems occur lower down in the storm drain. For instance, the drain’s concrete lining can fail. This will cause the drain body to sink into the ground, bringing surrounding asphalt with it. Wear and tear can also lead to pipe collapse, blocking water flow.
Here, we will discuss the typical repair process for a heavily damaged catch basin and storm drain combo. Please note, though, that sometimes only the catch basin requires repair.
Step 1: Saw Cut The Concrete Around The Catch Basin
The first step is to excavate the damaged material from the storm drain. The repair starts by marking out the area to be cut using spray paint and then using either a handheld or walk-behind saw to cut through the pavement.
Step 2: Excavate Existing Asphalt
Once workers complete the cut, the asphalt (or other material around the drain) is ready for excavation. Usually, contractors use a digger to remove the surface layer, avoiding most of the manual work. However, they may need to use a pickaxe to remove additional surface material to allow the digger bucket to get in underneath the material to scoop it out.
Most properties have two stages of asphalt – a base layer and a top layer. Often, elements of both layers require excavation. Contractors take all waste material for disposal.
Step 3: Remove The Catch Basin Lid And Frame
Storm drains have a catch basin lid and frame, including the grate and the structure that supports it. Once contractors remove the surrounding asphalt, they will remove these components, either by hand or using a loader, ready for reinstallation later on.
Step 4: Excavate The Old Riser Rings Down To The Cast Concrete
If the old riser rings are degraded, contractors will then excavate them to facilitate repair. Usually, this step involves removing all of the blocks down to the cast concrete, several feet below the surface, and then removing the surrounding clay and muck to make room for the new installation.
At this stage, contractors will also roughly clean the top of the cast concrete to make it easier to install new riser rings. Rocks and debris can cause riser rings to become wobbly or sit unevenly in the cavity. Cleaning the base allows them to sit flush, improving the stability of the drain.
Step 5: Install New Riser Rings
Once contractors remove all the debris, the next step is to install the new riser rings in the hole left by the excavation.
In some ways, this is the trickiest part of the process. Workers have to install enough concrete to push the drain to the surface, but not so much that it protrudes and causes water to pool.
If workers are using precast riser rings, they will usually fill the hole in increments, installing the optimal number to create a basin-shaped indentation that collects the water.
Step 6: Reinstall The Catch Basin Lid And Frame
The next step is to reinstall the catch basin lid and frame on top of the riser rings (or cast concrete). Again, workers can either do this by hand or use a digger.
Step 7: Reconstruct The Base Around The Riser Rings
After that, we reconstruct the base around the riser rings. In general, contractors will not use previously-excavated clay and muck to fill the void and cover the entire excavated area. Instead, they will add new aggregate – a mixture of sand, crushed rock, and gravel.
The material is usually quite loose, so contractors will use a compactor to ensure that it doesn’t settle later.
Step 8: Reapply The Asphalt Or Concrete
The final step is to lay down layers of asphalt or pour the concrete. Asphalt requires compacting so that the new layers are level with the surrounding pavement. Concrete requires smoothing over after pouring to ensure a flat finish.
Choosing A Catch Basin And Storm Drain Repair Specialist
How long it takes to repair storm drains depends on the extent of the damage and who you choose to repair it.
DeBuck Construction has tremendous experience in residential concrete services. We perform catch basin and storm drain repair quickly. Our impressive array of experience in both asphalt and concrete makes us the ideal choice. Contact us today to benefit from our expertise | <urn:uuid:0dda397e-086d-4179-82da-71422b3fa2b9> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://blog.debuckconstruction.com/how-catch-basins-and-storm-drain-repair-is-done/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337529.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004215917-20221005005917-00010.warc.gz | en | 0.910929 | 1,230 | 2.609375 | 3 |
字幕列表 影片播放 列印英文字幕 Hi everybody! Today I'm going to make a really easy, simple, delicious and healthy recipe. Made with sweet potato. In Korean: "goguma." it's called goguma-mallaengi. It's a kind of snack. Really natural snack because all we need is sweet potato. Sweet potato and water and boil. If I don't count water as a cooking ingredient there is only one ingredient. Have I ever made any recipe with only one ingredient? I don't think so. This is Korean's traditional snack. Natural. Very natural. And no oil is added. And really healthy. Everybody knows that sweet potato is good for your body. When I was young, during the winter vacation I went to my grandmother's house on my father's side, at the south sea. She grew a lot of sweet potato and then she kept this in her room. During the wintertime, the nights are really longer than the days And sometimes we just took one out, peeled, and ate. It tastes like a chestnut. But mostly the reason my grandmother kept the sweet potato like that is to cook in meals. This is 6 pounds of sweet potatoes. I bought 3 different colors. Korean sweet potato, inside is creamy and a little white, and purple color sweet potato. And also usual orange Western style sweet potato. I'm going to steam these sweet potatoes so I'm boiling water, around 2 inches deep. And then let's wash. This is purple. Purple sweet potato. Pretty, isn't it? This is Korean sweet potato. Inside is a little creamy white. This is orange color, just usual. This is orange color. My water is boiling right now. This is a steamer basket. I will just add this and then put all my sweet potatoes in. And I will add this... I'm going to steam this until this sweet potato is fully cooked. So maybe... 30 minutes over medium high heat. The cooking time depends on how big the sweet potato is. Really big one is 1 hour. This one is a little smaller and thinner, I'm going to cook 30 minutes. After 30 minutes I will see if this is fully cooked or not. With what? This one, my wooden skewer. If this goes through easily then that means it's cooked. If this is not going smooth and still something is inside, it's not cooked yet and I'm going to cook longer, 10 or 20 minutes longer So let's start with 30 minutes. And it already started! 30 minutes passed. Let's see if this guy is well cooked. I will choose the thickest one. You see, not yet cooked. In the middle, it's stuck. So I'm going to cook 20 more minutes. So it should be well cooked in 20 minutes. So in total 50 minutes - five zero! (laughs) I'm going to transfer my potato here. And then I need to slice and dry. Now, can I touch this or not? Tell me? I know you guys say: "Please, don't touch!" It's too hot!" Yes I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait 5 minutes and then I will put it on my cutting board. I'm going to peel off the skin. So this is Korean sweet potato. By the way, you guys can eat just right now, right away. See? And this is my dehydrator. Sun drying is really good my grandmother didn't have this kind of machine. She dried this in the nice, hot, sunny weather. And then dried this. She harvested hot peppers and dried in the yard. This sweet potato is the same, but I can't do this, I'm living in an apartment and the problem with drying outside is that a lot of flies are coming I don't want to be in that kind of situation. So this is just a wet paper towel. I'm going to wash sometimes while I'm doing this. And slice this. Slice this like that and then put it on the basket. This is the usual, Western style sweet potato How pretty is the orange color inside! This is purple color. It's not very hot now. Like this, peel off. So this thickness is around a quarter inch to one third inch, one centimeter. This is the last one. Lid. I'm going to dry this until this is really hard and dried. And make it really jelly looking. 8 to 12 hours it should be dried. See you soon! Hi everybody! It's time to harvest our goguma-mallaengi. it took 12 hours. Around 4 or 5 hours later, I turned them over and then in total, 12 hours they dried. And it's nice! Nice nicely done. I'm so excited . Let's see together! Isn't it pretty? The color is really darker than before. Nice. This is not very hard. You can bend, like this. Perfect jelly. Nice So let's put it there, really colorful. I bought this dehydrator a long time ago. When I lived in Canada. And then when I moved to New York, I brought this. Last year around Christmastime, I made a lot. I gave this as a Christmas gift to people. And they loved, loved it. Because this is an all-natural snack And pretty! When you taste it, also surprised because so tasty. These days they maybe produce a better quality dehydrator. But still this guy is working very well! I cannot throw it away. So this is like my friend, my kitchen friend. So if you want to buy this, everywhere you can buy, even Amazon. Today we made goguma-mallaengi Traditional Korean snack, sweet potato snack. Let's taste. Mmm! It tastes sweet, chewy like hard jelly. The more you chew the more sweet potato flavor comes out Surprisingly very filling. Between meals it's going to be a good snack. Perfect snack. I like to share this with my special guest today. Probably he will love love it. Can you guess? Who he is? You never, right? You can never guess! I like to take one piece to him. You guys remember this? My other video, when I made a three-color sandwich, this is my daughter's dog. He already noticed I have something delicious in my hand. See? Ok! Give me hand, give me hand. Ohh! Good! I love goguma-mallaengi, he loved goguma-mallaengi! What kind of food can be shared between the human and pet? He loves this. Here you go! Ok! Not excited? He's looking for some secret place to eat. Usually with some kind of good snack he takes it to his own secret place and then eating. (laughs) Today we made Korean sweet potato snack. Goguma-mallaengi Enjoy my recipe! See you next time! Bye! | <urn:uuid:31b9cd77-b921-472d-92b2-1fdc97e328aa> | CC-MAIN-2021-21 | https://tw.voicetube.com/v3/videos/105967 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-21/segments/1620243991921.61/warc/CC-MAIN-20210516232554-20210517022554-00138.warc.gz | en | 0.967 | 1,454 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The New York City Department of Education clearly states what they are looking for in a teacher:
“We are committed to hiring only the most highly qualified and dedicated teachers to work with our students. We look for candidates who are strong communicators, use data to make informed decisions, have deep subject matter expertise, and are deeply committed to student achievement.”
To determine if you are the type of teacher they want, they request you to write two essays: one seeks information on you as a teacher and one seeks information on you as a person. Below are examples of the questions used and comments on what to consider as you compose your answer.
Essay Question 1
It is the third month of the new school year and you have just finished a week-long unit of study that covered key grade-level standards for your students. Prior to teaching the unit, you invested significant time and effort into preparing lessons, activities, and supporting materials. However, over 50% of your students failed the end-of-unit test you administered at the end of the week. To keep up with the pacing calendar, you are expected to move on to a new topic the following week. Please describe what next steps you will take to address this situation.
This is a question that requires you to apply many of the educational theories and best teaching practices you have learned at Hunter. As you read the question, the first thing you should have noticed is the fact that half of your class failed the end-of-unit test, and therefore lack the prior knowledge needed to move on to the next unit of study. This is a learning bottleneck that teachers often face.
The first point to consider is whether or not there is alignment between the assessment given and the material taught. It would be essential for you to look at the items that were not passed and ask yourself a number of questions such as:
• How much time did I spend on this item?
• In what way did I present the information on this item?
• Did I pre-assess students to know where they were “at” before teaching the concept?
• Did I consider all learning styles when presenting the information?
• Did I make accommodations for all learning styles?
Did I use multiple presentation styles to assure there was a connection between all parts to the whole?
Your response needs to portray your knowledge and expertise in various areas, such as:
• differentiated instruction with awareness of and accommodations for the varying needs in your class (i.e., ELL or Special Education students);
• a learning environment that organizes the room and structures lessons to maximize learning and minimize confusion and disruption;
• clear learning objectives;
• use of graphic organizers;
• use of learning centers.
Your students’ lack of prior knowledge can be addressed by reinforcing needed information from the prior unit and linking that information with the new content you will be presenting. For example, a semantic representation could be created using a mapping tool application (i.e. Inspiration) that could visually link the content relationships of the two units. As you introduce new content in the lessons, reinforcements of what you taught in the prior unit would be embedded. These reinforcements could include:
• having students refer to notes they took in the last unit to answer a question in a homework assignment;
• providing students with interactive website(s) that reinforce understanding of the learning standard(s) associated with the content of the unit;
• organizing activities that require the use of knowledge from the prior unit to meaningfully apply the new information. Since it is a 50:50 ratio, each group would be comprised of half who passed and half who did not pass.
Essay Question 2
The New York City Department of Education is a diverse and dynamic system of 1,450 schools. The principals who lead these schools are searching for great teachers to meet the needs of their students. What are the THREE most important qualities you would want a principal to recognize in you as a potential staff member? Please focus on personal and professional qualities, talents, or experiences unique to you and provide examples and other evidence to support these. As you search for a place to teach, what are the top THREE characteristics you are looking for in a school?
This question is related to what you wrote for the “Objective” and “Skills and Interests” sections of your resume. The fact that you have completed a Hunter School of Education Program clearly defines you as an exceptional teacher. You need to extend this to show how you will link what you learned at Hunter with you as a person. Are you a team player? Are you flexible, able to work with others, innovative, creative on your feet, a self directed learner? Today’s teachers must be self aware of their own strengths and challenges and committed to continual learning. Be sure to emphasize those skills.
• if you have an interest in language, travel and visiting other cultures, discuss how you will bring this love of other cultures into lessons and activities;
• if you have an interest in technology, discuss how you will meaningfully engage children with interactive lessons and activities that are linked to specific content learning standards;
• if you have a background as a professional in another field discuss how you will bring real world applications to classroom curriculum;
• if you have expertise in a particular subject (i.e. your major) discuss how you will use this as a teacher;
• if your personal background or experiences have given you particular insight into working with students, describe this;
• if you gained expertise and experience through your student teaching, describe what you gained;
• try to be specific, rather than giving broad generalities (i.e. I love children) that could apply to anyone.
Madurai-based Aravind Eye Care hospitals are known all over the world for their philanthropic work in the fiercely commercial world of healthcare. They hold the world record of conducting over 4 million eye surgeries, a majority of them done at cheap cost, or free of charge. Chairman P. Nalperumalsamy, a Padmashri, has been the leading light of this institution for long, so much so in 2010, Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. In a relaxed interview with Arindam Mukherjee, the 73-year-old group patriarch stresses that the government needs to tighten control over private sector educational institutions while simultaneously strengthening public sector colleges. Excerpts:
What is wrong with the education system we follow today in the country?
The general education system is focused only on examinations rather than training students for the future and really testing their knowledge. Because of this, students are forced to take tests that show only their retention powers, not their actual capacity or knowledge. So engineers today cannot do actual work in technology and doctors do not go to people who need their services.
Is the problem with the system or the approach towards education as a whole?
Today, students are completely professionally-oriented and they take examinations for the same rather than to gain knowledge, or do research in the subject. In our colleges, we have infrastructure and good faculty, but there is no motivation to do research. Even in the field of medicine, no one is motivated to do research because everything is so examination and job-oriented.
But that is also a requirement of today’s times.
Yes, but not at the cost of real learning. India’s education system looks at commercial gains only and students are trained to look at their monetary future. The curriculum is also built around clearing an exam and getting into particular professions. Learning is not a priority.
So who is at fault for this mess?
Those regulating and those making policies are equally responsible. If the system has deteriorated to this level where learning has been substituted by a race to clear an examination, regulators and policymakers are to blame for not acting on time to correct this anomaly. It’s also not enough to have rules and regulations, it is important how they are implemented. Government bodies are not controlling institutions. That should become a priority. Also, for good institutions that are promoting real learning, there should be no interference.
Is the present practice of allowing the private sector indiscriminately into education the right approach?
Most educational engineering and medical colleges owned by the government are not equipped in terms of infrastructure and faculty and their quality has been suffering. The better government institutions cannot accommodate the vast number of students who are seeking to get into them. So the need for the private sector comes in. They are filling the gap.
But private sector institutions also charge very high fees.
Yes, many of the private institutions take advantage of the situation and charge high fees. There are very good students in rural areas but they can’t afford good education today.
In some states, the government does regulate fees, including your state (Tamil Nadu).
Yes, but instead of concentrating on just the private sector institutions, the government should strengthen and improve the quality of the government educational institutions. Once that is done, quality education will become affordable and everyone would be willing to join them. Now the standard of these institutions, barring a few leading ones, has gone down so much that no one wants to go there. Everyone is going to private sector colleges, even at a much higher cost.
What’s the solution? How can we put the system in order?
One way to do this is through public-private partnership. It has succeeded in many sectors, so why not in education? The private sector can develop the institutions and provide infrastructure and the government can build the curriculum and run them. In fact, policymakers, professionals and the public should come together with an aim to build good educational institutions. It is good to have as many universities as possible, because many students do not get an opportunity to get into good colleges. But the government should have a strict control on every aspect, like infrastructure, faculty, facilities and curriculum, right from the time they are set up. There should be a periodic accreditation system where once every two years institutions seek accreditation and the regulatory bodies check if all norms are being followed, for it’s often seen that once a sanction comes through, institutions openly flout norms.
Corruption is rampant at institutions as well as regulatory bodies.
Yes, and seats are today sold for a lot of money. This is because private institutions spend a lot of money to set up infrastructure and they try to get that back in any way—scrupulous and unscrupulous. This is something that needs to be totally weeded out.
There is a big debate on the combined engineering examinations. Is that a healthy idea?
It is a good proposal and should be extended to the medical colleges too. Without the entrance exams, many rural students cannot get in because those from the big cities have the advantage of coaching and scoring high marks. With a common exam, everyone will be on an equal footing.
Your institution, Aravind Eye Care Group, has set examples of fair play and stands out in this system with values and principles. How do you continue to do that?
We have set our own standards and we select purely on merit. Our tuition fees are not enhanced to suit our needs and we provide value-based education. We ensure that adequate facilities like infrastructure and faculty are available before we start a course. We cannot forget that students sacrifice a lot to come to learn. And we do periodic evaluation.
Is there anything you want to tell today’s students?
They must remember that college education is the basic foundation. It’s the only place they will get to learn. Once they are outside, they will have to practise what they learnt here...they will not get a chance to learn outside. So they should seize the opportunity, make the most of it. | <urn:uuid:c5b6c47f-bd74-4df2-81b4-552d25466eb2> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://hnnxj.mysteria.cz/207-job-oriented-education-essay-questions.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676589932.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20180717222930-20180718002930-00542.warc.gz | en | 0.964444 | 2,430 | 2.703125 | 3 |
What is Criminal Law?
What is a criminal law you may ask?
Criminal law is the branch of law that mainly deals with criminal crime. This law includes the definition of crimes as well as their nature, the rights of the incriminated, and the nature of the criminal method.
Criminal law definition refers to a body of rules and regulation which apply to criminal activities. In cases where a person fails to adhere to the specific criminal law, she or he commits a crime by breaking the statute. Criminal law is far different from civil; this is because penalties or fines in criminal law involved the forfeiture of a person’s rights and detainment. On the other hand, civil law relates to the decree of legal controversy and involves financial damages.
There are lots of speculations and premises why criminal law system exists. Neither theory is dispositive or exclusive. The central presumptions for criminal law take account of: to discourage crime, to change the perpetrator, to avoid future crimes and to give payback and vengeance for the criminal act.
Kinds of Criminal Laws Explained
There are two kinds of criminal laws: felonies and misdemeanour. A misdemeanour is a crime which can be regarded as a lower level offence, and this includes traffic offences, petty thefts, and minor assaults. Furthermore, in many states, the fine for this kind of criminal law usually is one year or less.
On the contrary, felony crimes take account of serious offences like murder, dealing drugs, manslaughter, robbery, rape as well as arson. One can say that for every state in the United States, felony crimes carry a fine of 1 year or more, and it depends on the specific nature of the offence as well as the rule where these types of crimes were committed. Furthermore, each state has a diverse body of criminal laws that differ from one state to another. Also, there are federal law statutes that apply to each state in the United States.
Criminal Law Statutes Parts
All criminal law statutes or act have two different parts. First is the mens rea that is the mental condition that one should possess when committing a criminal offence. Like for instance, if one commits murder, it’s essential that the party committing this crime planned to engage in the act. Mens rea is the intention of committing the crime.
Actus reus is the second part of the criminal law statutes. Actus reus refers to the actions taken by the criminal. Like for instance, in a drug-dealing act, to charge perpetrator, he or she should sell the items. That is the action needed for the criminal law actus reus to exist.
Criminal Law and Criminal Code
In the US, a criminal law comes from the English common law, has been modified in some respect to American conditions. In multiple states of the United States, the common law of crime has been revoked by legislation. The impact of such acts is that no one might be attempted for any crimes which aren’t specified in the state’s statutory regulation. But even when these States the principle of common law keep on exerting influence as the criminal acts are frequently merely a codification of the common law, and the provisions are construed by reference to the universal decree. In the remaining US states, trials for common law crimes not stated in statutes do occur most of the time. In some States, criminal code or penalties are just collections of individual terms with a bit of effort done to narrate the parts to the entire or to describe or apply any hypothesis of direct by penal measures.
Criminal Law Definition: The Mental Element
Even if some of the legal systems recognise the significance of the mens rea or guilty mind, the criminal statutes haven’t always spelt out precisely what’s meant by this perception. Model Penal Code has tried to explain the understanding by minimising the array of mental conditions to four. The guilt credited to an individual who acts knowingly, purposely, recklessly, negligently as well as rarely. In general, these terms match to those utilised in Anglo-American courts. In combination or singly, they appear mostly enough to cope with most of the guilt mind issues. They have been adopted or in substance through a mainstream of states and in the US and spell out and rationalise significant elements in the substantive criminal law. Under the Penal Code and in various states, a lot of crimes need a showing of “intentionally,” “knowingly,” or “irresponsible.” Negligent behaviour to support a conviction just when the description of the offence in question includes it.
Criminal Law Procedure
Here are the steps followed in a criminal case:
Arrest: This is the first step in the criminal law process, wherein in a certain small period, the law enforcer will either file a case against you or order your release.
Charge: If one is found guilty of an offence, she or he will need to make an appearance in court for indictment. All the charges against an individual are made public, and the perpetrator is given the opportunity to file a petition (guilty or otherwise). The arbiter will then announce the date of trial if one files a not guilty petition.
Plea Bargain: You might enter a plea bargain with the prosecuting party while waiting for the trial. This plea bargain is a process wherein the incriminated pleads guilty to an offence of a lower degree to get a light sentence.
Criminal Law: Ignorance and Mistakes
In many states all over the world, criminal law recognises that an individual who acts in unawareness of his or her deed shouldn’t be held responsible. Thus, a person that takes and carries away the belongings of another individual, believing them to be her or his own, doesn’t commit larceny, this is because he or she lacks the intention to steal. But, ignorance of the law, is usually held not to defend the perpetrator, it’s no excuse that he or she was not aware of his or her deed was prohibited by criminal law. The proposal backs this policy that criminal activities might be recognised as destructive and morally wrong by any sensible adult.
However, the matter isn’t so evident, if the act isn’t unsafe or immoral. A
A considerable body of belief and judgment would allow mistakes of criminal law to be declared in defence of charges and fines in such cases, mostly if the defendant has in good faith made reasonable efforts to find out what the criminal law is. | <urn:uuid:81a3a645-637f-4889-99bb-b3b81ebde7f1> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | http://businesslaws.org/what-is-criminal-law-definition/?share=google-plus-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232258439.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20190525184948-20190525210948-00141.warc.gz | en | 0.954788 | 1,344 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Views:450 Author:Auril Publish Time: 2021-01-20 Origin:www.downtheroadbrewery.com
After the wort is boiled and poured into the whirlpool tank and separated the hop lees and the hot coagulum, the following treatments should be carried out quickly:
(1) Cool down quickly to make the wort temperature meet the requirements of yeast inoculation.
(2) Ventilation operation is performed after the wort is cooled. Only after the yeast has absorbed sufficient oxygen, can it synthesize the sterols and unsaturated fatty acids necessary for its reproduction.
(3) Precipitate and separate the heat concretion and cold concretion in the wort to ensure the normal progress of fermentation and the desired beer quality.
Wort cooling is a physical change process, which is not complicated in theory. However, due to the separation of heat concretion and cold concretion, reasonable wort oxygenation and strict hygiene requirements is actually quite complicated in the cooling process in production .
Since yeast can only be fermented at low temperature, hot wort must be cooled to the fermentation temperature required before inoculation. Using a plate heat exchanger can quickly cool the wort to the inoculation temperature of the yeast. Long-term slow cooling will increase the chance of harmful microorganisms in the beer. Therefore, rapid cooling is very important.
The most commonly used wort cooler in beer brewery is a plate heat exchanger, which has high heat exchange efficiency and has been widely used in actual production. The plate heat exchanger is a new type of closed cooling equipment, which is made of stainless steel and consists of many grooved plates with grooves on both sides. Two pieces are used as a basic unit. Wort and cooling water flow through these grooves plated alternately.
Through the plate heat exchanger, the wort temperature can drop from 95-98℃ to 6-8℃. The medium is cooled city water or other refrigerants. The specific working method is: wort and coolant move in the form of turbulent flow through the pump, follow the grooves on both sides of the groove plate to flow in the opposite direction, and proceed the heat exchange.
Wort cooling has one-stage cooling method and two-stage cooling method.
(1) One stage cooling
Firstly, the brewing water is cooled to 3°C~4°C(commonly known as ice water) by direct ammonia cooling method, and then the water is heat exchanged with the hot wort in the plate heat exchanger. When the wort is cooled to the fermentation temperature, the ice water is heated to about 75°C~80°C, and the water can be directly used as the wash water.
(2) Two-stage cooling
The two-stage plate heat exchanger is composed of a front and a back section, and an intermediate plate is installed between the two sections.Cold water is used for the front cooling and refrigerant (such as glycol or alcohol solution) is used for the second cooling.The water temperature of the front cooling section should be below 20°C, and the wort temperature should be reduced to 40°C~50°C after the front cooling.The refrigerant temperature at the second cooling is 3C~-4°C. After the second cooling, the temperature of wort should be reduced to the fermentation temperature.The water after heat exchange in the front section can be used as feeding water.
Because the logarithmic mean temperature difference of heat exchange between cold and hot media is smaller than that of two-stage cooling, the heat exchange area should be 45% larger than that of two-stage cooling.
If you want to know more information of beer brewing,welcome to contact me freely. | <urn:uuid:18491dc4-bf19-4209-9359-4e952fb356b3> | CC-MAIN-2021-10 | https://www.downtheroadbrewery.com/wort-cooling-method.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-10/segments/1614178358798.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20210227084805-20210227114805-00555.warc.gz | en | 0.927352 | 792 | 2.828125 | 3 |
Giant tortoises, the iconic image of the Galapagos and emblem of the Galapagos National Park Service, were the theme and focus of the day today. It was another early morning for us as we were up and out on the zodiacs by 7:30 to ride over to the town of Puerto Ayora in Santa Cruz. Our itinerary had us spending the entire day on the second largest island in the Galapagos to see giant tortoises, learn about the conservation efforts, and also find out how people of the Galapagos live.
A short walk from the docks took us to the national park’s offices and to the famed Charles Darwin Research Station (CDRS). Our naturalist this morning was Ximena, who took us around the research and conservation facility to explain how introduced animals such as goats and rats are threatening the survival of the endemic and native species of the Galapagos, and what humans are doing now to bring the islands back to the way they were thousands of years ago . We saw a lot of baby tortoises being cared for (they’ll eventually be repatriated to their native islands) and rescued adult tortoises (they will live out their days at the research center as they are no long capable of fending for themselves). And we visited “Lonesome George.”
No one is quite sure of El Solitario George‘s exact age but the staff at CDRS have picked a birthday for him and this December, he’ll celebrate his 103rd. He is described by the Guiness Book of Records as “the rarest living creature,” as he is the very last one of the giant saddleback (saddleback = galapagos in Spanish) tortoises in the world. When George was found on Pinta Island in 1971 he was alone, malnourished, and completely surrounded by goats. Scientists removed him from his native environment because there was no real chance of George surviving there. Since then they’ve introduced two female tortoises from the island of Isabela for him (subspecies, not quite like George), but Ximena told us that it took George 12 years to barely acknowledge the two females, and all efforts for them to mate have failed so far. Some believe there may be others like George who have been smuggled out of Ecuador and living somewhere in Europe, but for now George is all alone in the world.
The population of Galapagos tortoises declined (there are several species that are now completely extinct) not only because of introduced animals but also because they were used for meat, water, and oil by the early explorers, buccaneers, pirates, and whalers. Giant tortoises can live with little food or water for up to a year, which made it perfect for long sea voyages. Sailors gathered and took as many tortoises as possible, especially the females who were smaller and easier to collect (during their nesting season they could be found on the beach laying eggs). Charles Darwin himself wrote that when he came to the Galapagos, he and his crew lived solely on tortoise meat… Now the conservation efforts are firmly in place and researchers and scientists are committed to saving the Galapagos tortoises, and continuing Lonesome George’s line.
Once we finished our visit at CDRS, we were free to walk through the town. It was a surprise for me to find out that humans live in the Galapagos and even a bigger surprise to find such a large population (~18,000 on Santa Cruz Island). Not only is Santa Cruz home to CDRS and the national park service (where all the naturalists study and get certified), but to Jason, the American transplant and naturalist who lives there with his family. In fact, one of the options today was to visit the school where Jason’s 8 year old son attends. Another option was go mountain biking, but we decided to go to a sugarcane press and then do a quick 1 mile walk to a hilltop restaurant for lunch. We strolled the quiet main street of Santa Cruz with the port and the ocean to our left, stopping at souvenir shops along the way and watching brown pelicans fighting for scraps by the fishermen. I mailed a few postcards (with real postage unlike from Post Office Bay yesterday) and then joined the others for our afternoon activities.
Our stop at a sugarcane press was short but fun- we tasted locally made cheese with pure sugarcane molasses (apparently a typical Christmas time treat), tried 120 proof sugarcane alcohol (agua-ardiente), drank freshly squeezed sugarcane juice, and had a small cup of Galapagos coffee. After lunch, we continued up into the highlands to visit two huge sinkholes (elevation 2,000 feet) created by volcanic activities. Called Los Gemelos, they were surrounded by a forest of scalesia trees and wrapped in a blanket of dense fog. It felt as if we were in the completely different world from where we started off just a few hours ago. This area has one of the rarest and most endangered ecosystems in the archipelago, with ferns, moss, orchids, and a number of interesting bird species. It reminded me of the cloud forests of Costa Rica. We had to put on extra layers to keep ourselves warm and dry, but it was so green and lush- I could only imagine what it’d be like during the rainy/hot season here. No matter what I tried, the scale and the beauty of the place could not be captured by a photo…
Our last stop on Santa Cruz Island was a private property, a farm at the heart of the annual giant tortoise migratory route where we could observe giant tortoises roaming around in their natural habitat. There were everywhere we looked; in the bushes, under trees, in a muddy pond, up on the hill. I loved watching them stick their heads in the mud, stretching their necks out to chomp on vegetation, and “running.” One of them actually charged at me. It happened so fast that I couldn’t get out of the way. I thought I could hear my heart thumping when he stopped just a few feet away from me. I looked straight into his eyes. It was amazing.
After a full day I was ready to skip a meal (gasp!) and just go to bed, but dragging my feet to dinner was all worth it. We were fortunate this evening to be joined by Karen and Bill from National Geographic, who had us laughing all throughout dinner. It was really great fun talking to Karen about her experience and career as photographer for National Geographic, and Bill about how special editions of National Geographic come together. It’s always fascinating and inspiring to talk to those who are not only good at what they do but are also passionate about their life’s work. As we finished our dinner some musicians from Santa Cruz came into the dining room to play for us, and we were invited to the lounge to hear them and watch the local dancers, but I really couldn’t do it. What another great day…
Highlights & animals seen: Lonesome George, huge sinkholes, giant tortoises in their natural habitat, dinner with Karen and Bill from National Geographic
06:00: Yoga on the Sky Deck
07:30: Dry landing, walk to the Charles Darwin Research Station
10:30: After the CDRS visit and walk through town to meet at “the Rock”
11:00: Depart for a sugar cane press tour
12:30: Lunch at “Altair” in the highlands
02:00: Options for hiking around Los Gemelos, farm visit to see more giant tortoises
06:00: Last zodiac returns to the ship
18:45: Cocktails and briefing | <urn:uuid:1f4b1bba-cfec-4272-96a5-8143e5aa0be9> | CC-MAIN-2017-30 | https://dreamgolive.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/galapagos-day-4-santa-cruz/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-30/segments/1500549424586.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20170723182550-20170723202550-00487.warc.gz | en | 0.978926 | 1,644 | 2.71875 | 3 |
The killing of our offspring is far worse than genocide.
The word “genocide” is rooted in the Shoah. A Polish Jew named Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) first used it in 1944 as a way to describe the systematic murder of European Jewry by the National Socialists.
Lemkin’s concept of the slaughter of a people — although greatly informed by the Armenian Genocide during the First World War — later underpinned the prosecution of Nazi wartime officials at Nuremberg in the early postwar period. The Shoah, indeed genocide in general, is a crime so heinous and big that it a new term was required to name it.
Even today, although we know that “genocide” means the attempt to erase an ethnic, racial, religious, or other group from the face of the earth, we struggle to understand the viciousness of those who carried out the Shoah, the most hateful genocide. By the same measure, we struggle to understand those who, since then, have continued to seek the extermination of their fellow human beings.
In this, we share an affinity with Raphael Lemkin. What is often forgotten about Lemkin is that he spent his life after World War II trying to come to grips with the scope of the crime he had uncovered.
The 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was an important part of Lemkin’s legacy, to be sure. But Lemkin seemed to understand that the political machinery of the world was lagging far behind the ingenuity which humans were deploying in terrorising one another. There is just too much industrial-scale murder in the world for any political institution to contain. (This is especially true since governments themselves are almost always the authors of genocides.)
And “genocide” can be applied retroactively, too. Today one often hears the term used to describe the campaigns carried out against native peoples in North and South America, or even the putting to the sword of Carthaginians by Roman invaders in 146 BC. Lemkin didn’t include either of these under the category of genocide, or any of the other examples from history of one people’s massacring another, but he did understand that wherever there are weak and vulnerable people, there will always be those who will try to prey upon them.
It was with Raphael Lemkin and his extraordinarily brave and prescient work in mind that I listened recently to a speech given by Shoah survivor Vera Sharav. Speaking on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the enacting of the Nuremberg Code (against forced human experimentation of any kind), Sharav issued this clarion warning:
The real viral disease that infected Nazi Germany is Eugenics. Eugenics is the elitist ideology at the root of all genocides. [… Eugenicists] legitimize discrimination, apartheid, sterilization, euthanasia, and genocide. The Nazis called it “ethnic cleansing” — for the protection of the gene pool.
Medicine was perverted from its healing mission & was weaponized. First, it was to control reproduction through forced sterilization; then it was to eliminate those deemed to be “sub-human” — Untermenschen.
The first victims of medical murder were 1,000 German disabled infants and toddlers. This murderous operation was expanded to an estimated 10,000 children up to age 17. The next victims were the mentally ill; they were followed by the elderly in nursing homes. All of these human beings were condemned as “worthless eaters”.
[… D]esignated hospitals became killing stations where various extermination methods were tested — including Zy[k]lon B — the gas that was used in the death camps.
Sharav was speaking about the current covid- and vaccine-related conscience crisis in the world, but I think much of what she said can be understood to apply to a very different kind of dehumanisation campaign: abortion. At the same time, Sharav’s powerful words highlighted for me an unease that I have increasingly been feeling over the extension of the word “genocide” to describe abortion, the biggest and most sustained slaughter in all the dark annals of human history.
Abortion, bigger than genocide, aimed at the human race itself
According to the Guttmacher Institute, roughly 121 million unintended pregnancies occurred worldwide each year between 2015 and 2019. Of these unintended pregnancies, 61 percent ended in abortion. This translates to 73 million abortions per year, and implies that in 13 years, there are 1 billion abortions. Another article from The Lancet in 2016, which is much more statistical, suggests that there are 1 billion abortions every 20 years, globally.
That means, in the 50 years since countries began legalising abortion, at least 2 billion preborn children (and, yes, sometimes just-born infants) have been dismembered by abortionists.
Some call this mass killing a genocide, but I am not so sure. What makes this different from the Shoah and other genocides is not a question of numbers. The dignity of human beings cannot be tallied up in numerals and tables. What makes the slaughter of the children different is the intent behind it.
Genocide is the deliberate targeting of a group because of some characteristic — real or imagined — which that group embodies and which the genocidal party would destroy. Jew, Armenian, kulak, Tutsi, intellectual, bourgeois, landlord — these and countless other attributes have been used as markers for those whom the genocidal seek to eliminate.
Abortion is not quite like this. True, in India, China, and many other places where male children are preferred over females, daughters are killed off in the womb at much higher rates than sons. “Gendercide” is the name often used to describe this targeted culling of a certain group of people. And in many countries around the world, Down Syndrome babies, and babies with other congenital conditions, have virtually disappeared. They have almost all been killed in utero, another example showing the deep eugenicist influence in the abortion trade.
But the above examples, while heart-breaking, remain the exception. In general, abortion is not performed because the child in the womb is female, or disabled, or of a certain ethnic group, or a member of a certain religious or social category. In general, babies are aborted because they are human beings, and young human beings are burdens which adult human beings do not wish to bear. The rationale behind abortion is humanity itself.
I do not know if even Raphael Lemkin saw this deeply into the genocidal abyss. I do not know if even Vera Sharav, Shoah survivor and tireless human rights campaigner, can frame in words the darkness which has erased perhaps two billion of our brothers and sisters from the human race, and done so for no reason but that they are human.
In struggling to fix a name to this unthinkable reality, I have begun to think of it as “sapiens eradication,” the attempt — soul by soul, mother by child — to do away with Homo sapiens in our entirety. This is not genocide. This is not killing this group, or that. This is the termination of our whole human family. The world waits for a new Raphael Lemkin to tell us what this horror is. Perhaps in naming it we will finally, as we do now with genocide, and in the name of all humanity, be able to mount a campaign against it. | <urn:uuid:1f7887e8-3711-450d-918e-15edebae5109> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://drrichswier.com/2022/09/16/the-abyss-beyond-genocide-eradication-of-humanity-itself/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030335362.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20220929163117-20220929193117-00629.warc.gz | en | 0.962181 | 1,563 | 2.734375 | 3 |
I asked artist Emily Bryant the story behind her stunning invasive species art -- see what she said about her work below. To learn more (and snag some prints of your own!) visit her Etsy shop.
About Invasive Species Art
Invasive species are species that are introduced purposely or accidentally to an area they do not inhabit naturally and damage local ecosystems by out-competing the species that are native to the area. Most invasive plant species are pulled by hand and burned or treated with herbicides. While working with the invasive plant strike team at Cleveland Metroparks, Emily explored ways to incorporate the plants into art that could be used to educate the public on the dangers of spreading non-native species. This resulted in the creation of Bryant's invasive species collages, which are made from leaves, stems, and flowers from invasive plants that she collects, presses, and adheres with plant-based glue. The collages feature different invasive species, commonly insects, that are making a negative impact on local ecosystems.
Emily Bryant was born and raised near Cleveland, Ohio. Drawing animals from a young age, her fascination with wildlife led her to pursue degrees in Sustainability and Studio Art. While completing her education at Baldwin Wallace University, Bryant began to explore how sustainability could be incorporated into art. Using sustainable materials, such as invasive plant material and packaging waste, Bryant produces art with environmental messages and hopes to inspire others to explore and conserve the natural world.
Image credit: Emily Bryant | <urn:uuid:ab316450-f713-4293-a002-c9110899d652> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | http://www.invasivespeciesinitiative.com/emily-blair-invasive-art | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376825098.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20181213193633-20181213215133-00424.warc.gz | en | 0.957247 | 298 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Every child experiencing bedwetting that I have ever worked with has had one dream: to be able to have sleepovers with their friends.
But the extent of bedwetting (enuresis) goes way beyond just not being able to sleep at a friend’s house, or having to change the bed sheets each night. Many parents express feelings of shame, embarrassment, and worry about their children having anxiety and low self-esteem. In many cases, this can also affect the child’s social life and school performance.
From the perspective of Chinese medicine diagnosis, most of the children suffering from bedwetting have some variation of a kidney deficiency or weakness. This type of pattern is common in children who may have developmental problems that can range from very mild to severe, may have dark circles under the eyes, tend to have a weak constitution, and even experience deep fears and anxiety. However, each individual child is different and the root cause of their bedwetting will be assessed at the first session.
Bedwetting is a disorder that can be treated successfully with acupuncture, and this treatment can help a child have a dry night’s sleep after as few as three to five sessions. In some cases it might take longer, but I have also seen how one single session can offer dramatic changes that allow the child to stay dry at night.
Children and needles may not seem like a good combination, therefore many parents would not even consider acupuncture as a way of helping their child to resolve enuresis. However, I have found that many children actually enjoy getting acupuncture, and on the rare occasion when a child is still wary of letting me put needles in them (even though acupuncture needles are very thin), there are also non-needle tools that I can use in my clinic.
When I use needles on younger children, I make them feel as comfortable as possible. I call the needles “butterfly kisses,” because the finger I use to tap the needle in has a big butterfly attached to it and it hides the needles from view. When I use non-needle techniques such as electroacupuncture, I call it the “tickle machine.”
Children are quick to heal and usually require fewer treatments than adults. Children are also naturally curious, and while they might feel some fear (usually the parents are more afraid than the child), they love exploring new things, being shown how things work, and being explained how acupuncture could help them. | <urn:uuid:a55defde-1c8c-4a68-94e7-4e77392277f8> | CC-MAIN-2017-34 | http://damianacorca.com/archive/acupuncture-the-best-bedwetting-solution/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-34/segments/1502886107490.42/warc/CC-MAIN-20170821041654-20170821061654-00062.warc.gz | en | 0.972193 | 506 | 2.640625 | 3 |
Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) is one of the biggest occupational health problems facing the UK. It was reported that 19,000 cases of NIHL were caused or made worse by work between 2009/10 and 2011/12 .
Despite NIHL being 100 per cent preventable, new cases are frequently reported in manufacturing, construction, extraction, energy and water supply industries, highlighting that it is a problem that still needs to be tackled.
As part of its commitment to safety, Arco, the UK’s leading supplier of safety equipment and products, has developed an Expert Guide designed to provide guidance on managing and preventing hearing loss in the workplace. This guide goes hand in hand with Arco’s comprehensive range of noise detection and hearing protection products to help businesses keep employees safe at work, including ear plugs, ear muffs, high-noise communication systems and validation solutions.
Sally Clayton, Hearing Product and Procurement Manager at Arco explained, “Whilst noise induced hearing loss is permanent and irreversible, it is also preventable. It is a gradual process that can take between 10 and 20 years to surface and sadly by that time, it is often too late to reverse.
“Whilst ensuring employees are adequately protected, there are also several things businesses can do to limit the number of people exposed to high levels of noise, including adopting working hours to restrict noisy activities to certain periods of the day and reducing the need for noisy assembly practices by fabricating off-site where possible. After these preventative measures have been taken, protective equipment will help to protect from the residual risks.”
Annie Berrisford, Engineer Operations and Sponsorship for the BLOODHOUND SSC Project, explained how high-noise communication systems are integral to her working environment, “This year the BLOODHOUND SSC Project has been doing key testing of the hybrid rocket system at Newquay. This involved testing the rocket and its power unit – a Cosworth formula one engine. We were working in a very harsh noise environment – involving running the Cosworth engine at full revs – 18,000rpm, for the tests as well as for warm up. The nature of this testing meant we needed good communications within the building as well as externally over a range of up to 300 metres. The Sensear Headsets provided by Arco worked extremely well within this aggressive environment. Our highly experienced team (who have worked in F1 motorsport and aerospace) have all commented on the success of the headsets.”
To help businesses, Arco’s training division, Arco Training and Consultancy, has partnered with Cirrus Research PLC, noise measuring experts, to provide the three-day Noise Assessment and Principles of Application course. The course has been specifically designed for people who have responsibility for undertaking noise surveys and/or are considering buying noise measuring equipment and covers noise for a diverse range of industries.
For further information on the Expert Guide, Arco products or training, contact your local sales office or visit one of the 41 trade counters located across the UK. | <urn:uuid:7efedbf5-7dea-44a6-802b-522b67ffbec3> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.ppe.org/arco-offers-sound-advice-on-workplace-hearing-loss/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585371612531.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20200406004220-20200406034720-00436.warc.gz | en | 0.962792 | 634 | 2.6875 | 3 |
French Realist/Impressionist Painter and Sculptor, 1834-1917
French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor, pastellist, photographer and collector. He was a founder-member of the Impressionist group and the leader within it of the Realist tendency. He organized several of the group exhibitions, but after 1886 he showed his works very rarely and largely withdrew from the Parisian art world. As he was sufficiently wealthy, he was not constricted by the need to sell his work, and even his late pieces retain a vigour and a power to shock that is lacking in the contemporary productions of his Impressionist colleagues. Related Paintings of Edgar Degas :. | Curtain call | Woman and chrysanthemum | Study of a Horse from the Parthenon Frieze | Henri de Gas et sa niece Lucy | Houses on Cliffs |
Related Artists:Miguel Cabrera
(1695-1768) was an indigenous Zapotec painter during the Viceroyalty of New Spain, today's Mexico. During his lifetime, he was recognized as the greatest painter in all of New Spain.
He was born in Antequera, today's Oaxaca, Oaxaca, and moved to Mexico City in 1719. He may have studied under the Rodreguez Juerez brothers or Jose de Ibarra.
Cabrera was a favorite painter of the Archbishop and of the Jesuit order, which earned him many commissions. His work was influenced by Bartolome Esteban Murillo and the French painting of his time.
While Miguel is most famous for his Casta paintings and his portrait of the poet Sor Juana, he also executed one of the first portraits of St. Juan Diego. In 1752 he was permitted access to the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe to make three copies: one for Archbishop Jose Manuel Rubio y Salinas, one for the Pope, and a third to use as a model for further copies. In 1756 he created an important early study of the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Maravilla americana y conjunto de raras maravillas observadas con la direccien de las reglas del arte de la pintura
The essential purpose of Maravilla Americana was to affirm the 1666 opinions of the witnesses who swore that the image of the Virgin was of a miraculous nature. However, he also elaborated a novel opinion: the image was crafted with a unique variety of techniques. He contended that the Virgin's face and hands were painted in oil paint, while her tunic, mandorla, and the cherub at her feet were all painted in egg tempera. Finally, her mantle was executed in gouache. He observed that the golden rays emanating from the Virgin seemed to be of dust that was woven into the very fabric of the canvas, which he asserted was of "a coarse weave of certain threads which we vulgarly call pita," a cloth woven from palm fibers.
In 1753, he founded the second Academy of Painting in Mexico City and served as its director.
CUYCK VAN MYEROP, Frans
Flemish painter (b. ca. 1640, Brugge, d. 1689, Gent)Victor Prouve | <urn:uuid:4c114bcf-7b5b-4f93-97af-ac754ac1bacb> | CC-MAIN-2018-05 | http://www.edgardegasgallery.org/painting-degas-Apres%20Le%20Bain-44992.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-05/segments/1516084889677.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20180120162254-20180120182254-00740.warc.gz | en | 0.981215 | 686 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Mitral stenosis is an abnormal narrowing of the mitral valve, which is one of the heart valves. This "tight" valve obstructs the flow of blood within the heart.
What is going on in the body?
The human heart has 4 chambers. In the normal heart, the mitral valve helps control blood flow between 2 of these chambers, the left atrium and the left ventricle. In mitral stenosis, the valve does not open enough to allow proper blood flow into the left ventricle, the heart's primary pumping chamber. This abnormal blood flow can cause changes and damage to the heart and lungs.
What are the causes and risks of the condition?
Most cases of mitral stenosis are due to the long-term consequences of rheumatic fever. Rheumatic fever can occur after group A streptococcal infections of the throat that are not treated with antibiotics. If this infection is not treated adequately with antibiotics, mitral stenosis may occur years later.
Rare causes of mitral stenosis include:
- congenital heart disease, (valve defects present at birth)
- inflammation of the mitral valve from various illnesses
The risks of mitral stenosis are related to the "tightness" of the valve. A person with mitral stenosis may live a lifetime with no problems. However, a person with severe mitral stenosis is at increased risk of permanent heart damage. Arrhythmias, (irregular heartbeats) can occur and lead to blood clots.
What can be done to prevent the condition?
In children with certain throat infections, proper antibiotic treatment can prevent this condition. Other causes are not usually preventable.
How is the condition diagnosed?
A healthcare provider to suspect this condition from the patient's history if symptoms followed an episode of strep infection. A heart murmur can often be heard with a stethoscope. A heart tracing, or ECG, and chest x-ray may show certain abnormalities. Special x-ray tests, such as a cardiac catheterization, can determine the severity of the condition and help guide treatment.
Long Term Effects
What are the long-term effects of the condition?
Long-term effects depend on the tightness of the valve. A person with mild mitral stenosis may have no long-term effects. A person with severe mitral stenosis may have serious heart and lung complications, including irregular heartbeats, blood clots, and permanent heart damage.
What are the risks to others?
Mitral stenosis is not contagious and poses no risk to others. However, the infection that causes rheumatic fever, the most common cause of mitral stenosis, is contagious.
What are the treatments for the condition?
A person with no symptoms or heart problems may be advised to take antibiotics before surgery or dental work. In general, treatment depends on the severity of the condition and which problems have occurred. Heart medications may be used to slow the heart or treat irregular heartbeats. Medications used to prevent blood clots may be used in a person with arrhythmias.
A person who continues to have symptoms despite medical therapy may have heart valve surgery to fix the valve or replace it with an artificial one. In some cases, the valve can be opened in a cardiac catheterization laboratory. The cardiologist uses a special type of balloon to force open the narrowed leaflets of the mitral valve and thereby avoid open heart surgery.
What are the side effects of the treatments?
A person treated with medication may have side effects related to the medications used. All surgery carries a risk of bleeding, infection, and reactions to the anesthesia medication. Valve repair may need to be repeated or in time may require valve replacement. A person with an artificial valve may require medication to prevent blood clots, for life in some cases. A biomechanical (tissue) heart valve is subject to wear and tear and may need replacement after years of use. A mechanical heart valve can last indefinitely, but requires a person to take a blood thinning medication for the rest of his or her life.
What happens after treatment for the condition?
In many cases, treatment does not end. The person usually returns to normal activity after recovery from surgery. Medications to prevent blood clots and treat abnormal heartbeats may be needed. A person with a biomechanical valve, or who has had his or her natural valve opened in the catheterization lab, may need to take a blood thinner for only a few months.
How is the condition monitored?
Regular visits to the healthcare provider are often advised. Repeat testing, such as an ultrasound of the heart known as an echocardiogram, may be done to make sure the valve is stable. Medications for abnormal heartbeats and blood clots need to be monitored as well.
Merck Manual, 1999
Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment, 1996
Harrison's Principals in Internal Medicine, 1991 | <urn:uuid:9c50ae23-58d6-4df1-b24c-5665601aa6b6> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://www.activeforever.com/articlelist-all/a-mitral-stenosis | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936470419.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074110-00228-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923229 | 1,030 | 3.421875 | 3 |
Raising a Compassionate Child
We love our child unconditionally, to the ends of the earth and beyond, so we go that extra mile to make sure that they are happy, content and safe. This is natural, normal and being a human parent. We want our child to be happy and healthy, to be smart, well liked, and successful as an adult. We teach them to read and talk, put puzzles together, eat with utensils and learn to go to the bathroom all by themselves. As a parent, we also need to teach our child to have compassion.
Our child is not born with an innate propensity to have compassion. The capacity is there, but we have to foster it as parents. It starts with the relationship you have with your child. We need to model that continuously throughout their lives. A child needs to know security and love, to be understood and accepted even when a rule is broken. Modeling unconditional love can be hard sometimes, but a child needs to know that no matter what, they are loved.
When our child knows and feels our compassion for them, we now need to be able to show it to others. A parent needs to show the child how to feel for others, whether it be visiting a loved one in the hospital and holding the person’s hand or offering to carry a bag of groceries for an elderly person. Any way that you can demonstrate how to care for others in front of your child will help them to become compassionate people. They will do what you do, and in time understand what it really means.
In order to even better understand compassion, it’s good to talk to you child about what it really means. Ask them what they think another child is feeling and what they can do to help. The child begins to fully understand feelings of others and what it may take to help someone. This will help them in the future with their friendships, relationships with loved ones, and everyone they come in contact with. They will be more happy, well-liked and successful than you ever could have imagined because you taught them to be compassionate people. | <urn:uuid:30eeccc9-9216-41fc-9bd6-7a602497b9d1> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://blog.babyfirsttv.com/2013/03/raising-a-compassionate-child/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281353.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00500-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980172 | 432 | 2.71875 | 3 |
Few insects cause the psychological reaction that bed bugs do. This truly resilient and impressive insect nearly vanished from western countries after the invention of synthetic pesticides. As most people are acutely aware, bed bugs are not only back, but armed with multiple pesticide resistance mechanisms making control difficult, and highly specialized. The simple way to understand pesticide resistance is ” if bed bugs weren’t resistant, we wouldn’t have a bed bug problem”!
Bed Bugs belong to a family of insects called Cimicidae. Of the approximately 100 species within this group, almost all are parasites of bats and birds. In fact, it is not un-common for people in more rural areas of Vancouver Island, where bat populations are perhaps higher, to call pest control companies with what they think is a bed bug, when in fact it is a bat bug (most commonly Cimex pilosellus). All “cimicids” are obligate hematophagous insects, their only food source is blood.
The bed bug life cycle is called Gradual Metamorphosis, or hemimetabolous. Eggs hatch into juvenile bed bugs, or nymphs, that look similar to adult bed bugs, but much smaller and lack sexual maturity. Prior to becoming and adult there are 5 developmental stages, or instars, where between each stage they must shed their exoskeleton to grow. Cast skins are called exuvia, and are a crucial piece of evidence when inspecting recent or new infestations. A blood meal must be obtained for bed bugs to develop from one instar to the next. Modern female bed bugs typically lay between 1-3 eggs per day once fertilized. Eggs typically hatch in 10-14 days depending on temperature. Blood meals are required for continued egg production.
Population Dynamics: bed bug infestations can grow very quickly if left without intervention. Theoretically, if one female lays 2 eggs per day, that would be 60 bed bugs in 30 days, at various stages of development. Once multiple fertilized females are present, the population can grow dramatically. If 20 fertilized females were present, laying an average of 2 eggs per day, that would be 600! new bed bugs in 30 days. This highlights the necessity for early and effective intervention.
Nanaimo Pest Control is a leader in bed bug management. We have extensive experience with all types of infestations ranging from minor recent introductions, to full scale building infestations! | <urn:uuid:34d19e7f-d0ef-4ab7-a762-3380c4ce465d> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | http://nanaimopestcontrol.com/about-bed-bugs/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195525009.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20190717021428-20190717043428-00299.warc.gz | en | 0.944838 | 508 | 3.625 | 4 |
Gestational diabetes fasting glucose
Glucose is the main source of energy for our bodies, non can live without it.
Gestational diabetes fasting glucose level is a golden point to treat gestational DM.
Although, if glucose levels increased above normal during pregnancy this will harm on the mother and her baby.
So, it’s important to keep the normal fasting blood sugar in pregnancy
So, we will discuss some notes about gestational diabetes fasting glucose, and what can increase its level?
Gestational diabetes fasting glucose, why the high level?
Did you eat something earlier in the evening?
Well, if you eat too many carbs in the evening meal or snacks before sleeping, this can cause high blood glucose fasting level in the early morning.
As a result, your body releases insulin and spend the whole night in decreasing glucose level in the blood.
And don’t forget that your gastrointestinal tract activity is depressed during the night which will slow down glucose absorption into the bloodstream.
All of these may contribute to the high fasting glucose level.
Hydration levels and its effect on gestational diabetes fasting glucose
Dehydration can cause a high blood sugar level as water helps in flushing excess sugar from the blood.
So, it’s important to drink a lot of water, especially before bedtime.
Your body consumes glucose for its energy and it’s important to have extra energy supply of glucose to be able to wake up.
So, in early morning hours (hence the dawn) usually between 3 am and 8 am your body starts to release diabetogenic hormones (cortisol, glucagon, and growth hormone) that cause blood sugar levels to rise.
This occurs in all people either diabetic or not, but in diabetics, there is not enough insulin to process this sugar rush in the blood
So, high gestational DM fasting glucose level occurs in the morning.
Somogyi effect (rebound hyperglycemia)
If your blood sugar drops too low in the night while you are sleeping, the body responds by increasing glucose release by the liver to save you from the drop in blood sugar.
But in someone who has diabetes, the liver releases more amount of sugar than needed which causes high blood sugar in the morning (Somogyi effect).
Normal glucose levels in the blood
Fasting blood glucose (before meals) is 4.0-5.5 mmol/L.
postprandial glucose (2 hours after a meal) 5.5-7 mmol/L.
these levels are the most recommended by WHO so, the question is how can we control gestational diabetes fasting glucose levels?
- Go for a walk after evening meal as exercise increase glucose uptake by the cells and decreases blood glucose level.
- Eat fewer carbs in the evening meal but it’s still important to eat carbs to avoid ketosis so, you shouldn’t cut it down completely.
- Eating a bedtime snack which is high in protein and natural fat can benefit as well
- Eating lighter breakfast to avoid the dawn phenomenon.
- Apple cider vinegar can lower fasting glucose levels by 4%-6%.
- Gestational diabetes fasting glucose level should be controlled through eating a healthy diet low in carbs, doing exercise, and drinking a lot of water.
- Avoid eating too much food at bedtime.
- If you have to eat in the evening we recommend protein and healthy fat.
- Remember that’s for your health and your baby as well. | <urn:uuid:6a5ea8da-cba7-4804-a134-ec0c2b36321c> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://en.diabetesnewshound.com/gestational-diabetes-fasting-glucose/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038069133.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20210412175257-20210412205257-00611.warc.gz | en | 0.911767 | 732 | 2.59375 | 3 |
For immediate release: Monday 22 July 2019
A mini-heatwave in Britain this week means it could feel as hot as 111F (44 C) due to soaring temperatures arrive accompanied by sticky humid air. Public Health England (PHE) has issued a level-2 ‘alert and readiness’. Dr Andy Whittamore, Clinical Lead at Asthma UK and a practising GP, says:
“A toxic cocktail of hot humid weather and rising pollen levels this week could be extremely hazardous for the 5.4 million people in the UK with asthma, triggering deadly asthma attacks. Hot air and hay fever can cause people’s airways to narrow, leaving them struggling to breathe, with symptoms like coughing, wheezing, a tight chest and breathlessness. Hot weather can also increase the amount of pollutants, pollen and mould in the air which can trigger asthma symptoms.
“If you are worried about the weather or hay fever affecting your asthma, make sure you take your hay fever medicines, carry your blue reliever inhaler at all times and keep taking your regular preventer as prescribed by your doctor. We’d advise you to drink lots of water to prevent dehydration and plan any outdoor activities for earlier in the day when the air quality tends to be better and follow our top tips at www.asthma.org.uk/pollen.” | <urn:uuid:f673836b-00f9-43ce-9828-d8a9a00ffd07> | CC-MAIN-2020-16 | https://www.asthma.org.uk/about/media/news/statement-toxic-cocktail-of-hot-humid-weather-and-rising-pollen-levels-could-trigger-deadly-asthma-attacks-warns-charity/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-16/segments/1585370504930.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20200331212647-20200401002647-00114.warc.gz | en | 0.943972 | 283 | 2.875 | 3 |
An individual has been described by a neighbor as follows: “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful but with little interest in people or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure […], and a passion for detail.” Is Steve more likely to be a librarian or a farmer? (Kahnemann, Daniel, 2011, “Thinking, fast and slow” Introduction Chapter)
What is your answer to this question?
Many people would answer “Librarian!” without considering the other option – just as I did before I heard about Bayesian Rationality and the Representativeness Bias. And as you probably would have answered, had I asked you. To put it in Daniel Kahneman’s words: Our mind might lead us automatically to a wrong answer. But many people are still ignoring the fact that our minds can fool us with ingrained biases. Many call it a trick – or manipulation. As many of us will agree, it is easier to spot the mistakes of others than one’s own and the denial of our own biases is called the ‘bias blind spot’.
As Psychology Today states, “Research also shows that we have a “bias blind spot.” Research by Emily Pronin, a psychologist at Princeton University, and colleagues, has found that people rate themselves as less susceptible to a variety of biases than others. These include things like the hindsight bias (the tendency to think we knew it all along more so after we know the outcome of something. See any poker player losing a hand and then saying they knew what you had as evidence of this), the planning fallacy (tendency to underestimate how long things will take) and the self-serving bias (tendency for all people to think they are better than average).”
The dangerous thing with the bias blind spot is that this bias goes hand in hand with the confirmation bias, the tendency to agree with research supporting and to deny research challenging our own view of the world. Furthermore, we tend to gratefully take credit for success but deny responsibility for failure (see self-enhancing and self-protective bias).
The bias blind spot has a great impact on judgements and decision-making. A judge could think a gift of a friend-attorney would never affect his ability to judge the next case properly. However, when asked about his peers, the same judge would argue that a gift would unconsciously manipulate others into partiality. Another possible impact is denial of biases altogether. Research has shown that the bias blind spot occurs unrelated to intelligence and self-esteem. The bad news is that people with a high bias blind spot are concurrently less likely to learn the ability to manage their biases through de-biasing techniques.
Confronting someone with his behavior impacted by bias might not lead to improvements and rather damage your rapport with your friend or client. Consider carefully leading him to self-reflection rather than lecturing on the latest scientific evidence.
To defend yourself against your own bias blind spot think twice about the impacts of biases on your decision-making and judgement. Always keep your eyes open. Go through de-biasing training and use your full mental capacity when it counts.
Thus, the decisive question is: Are you still denying your biases – or have you become an avid follower of our de-biasing techniques? | <urn:uuid:82d4ac5f-9274-4b2f-abd2-aafe98f1b2fe> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://www.rationalthinktank.com/2017/07/16/30in30-unveil-your-blind-eyes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679100327.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20231202042052-20231202072052-00459.warc.gz | en | 0.972799 | 706 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Vincent's Word Studies, by Marvin R. Vincent, , at sacred-texts.com
Lit., on. The book or roll lay upon the open hand.
A Book (βιβλίον)
See on Mat 19:7; see on Mar 10:4; see on Luk 4:17. Compare Eze 2:9; Jer 36:2; Zac 5:1, Zac 5:2.
Within and on the back side (ἔσωθεν καὶ ὄπισθεν)
Compare Eze 2:10. Indicating the completeness of the divine counsels contained in the book. Rolls written on both sides were called opistographi. Pliny the younger says that his uncle, the elder Pliny, left him an hundred and sixty commentaries, most minutely written, and written on the back, by which this number is multiplied. Juvenal, inveighing against the poetasters who are declaiming their rubbish on all sides, says: "Shall that one then have recited to me his comedies, and this his elegies with impunity? Shall huge 'Telephus' with impunity have consumed a whole day; or - with the margin to the end of the book already filled - 'Orestes,' written on the very back, and yet not concluded?" (i., 3-6).
Only here in the New Testament. The preposition κατά denotes sealed down. So Rev., close sealed. The roll is wound round a staff and fastened down to it with the seven seals. The unrolling of the parchment is nowhere indicated in the vision. Commentators have puzzled themselves to explain the arrangement of the seals, so as to admit of the unrolling of a portion with the opening of each seal. Dsterdieck remarks that, With an incomparably more beautiful and powerful representation, the contents of the roll are successively symbolized by the vision which follows upon the opening of each seal. "The contents of the book leap forth in plastic symbols from the loosened seal." Milligan explains the seven seals as one seal, comparing the seven churches and the seven spirits as signifying one church and one spirit, and doubts if the number seven has here any mystical meaning. Others, as Alford, claim that the completeness of the divine purposes is indicated by the perfect number seven.
Either as being of higher rank, or with reference to the great voice.
As in Joh 1:27. Morally entitled.
Under the earth
To look (βλέπειν)
See on Joh 1:29. To take a single look at the contents.
I wept (ἔκλαιον)
Audible weeping. See on Luk 6:21.
Of the elders (ἐκ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων)
Strictly, from among the elders.
See Gen 49:9.
The Root of David
See on Nazarene, Mat 2:23.
Hath prevailed (ἐνίκησεν)
In the midst of
Not on the throne, but perhaps in the space in the center of which is the throne, and which is surrounded by the twenty-four elders.
A Lamb (ἀρνίον)
The diminutive, very frequent in Revelation, and once in the Gospel of John (Joh 21:15). Nowhere else in the New Testament. Compare Isa 53:7; Joh 1:29, Joh 1:36. Christ had just been spoken of as a lion. He now appears as a lamb. Some interpreters emphasize the idea of gentleness, others that of sacrifice.
The verb indicates violence, butchery. See on Jo1 3:12. It is also the sacrificial word. Exo 12:6.
Rev., more correctly, standing. Though slaughtered the lamb stands. Christ, though slain, is risen and living.
Seven horns and seven eyes
See remarks on the Apocalyptic imagery, Rev 1:16. The horn is the emblem of might. See Sa1 2:10; Kg1 22:11; Psa 112:9; Dan 7:7, Dan 7:20 sqq.; Luk 1:69. Compare Mat 28:18. The eyes represent the discerning Spirit of God in its operation upon all created things.
Sent forth (ἀπεσταλμένα)
See on Mar 3:14.
Lit., hath taken. The perfect, alternating with the aorist, is graphic.
Had taken (ἔλαβεν)
Lit., took. The aorist is resumed.
Every one of them harps (ἕκαστος κιθάρας)
Rev., less clumsily, having each one a harp. Each one, that is, of the elders. Κιθάρα harp signifies an instrument unlike our harp as ordinarily constructed. Rather a lute or guitar, to which latter word kithara is etymologically related. Anciently of a triangular shape, with seven strings, afterwards increased to eleven. Josephus says it had ten, and was played with a plectrum or small piece of ivory.
Only in Revelation. The word vial, used commonly of a small bottle, gives a wrong picture here. The φιάλη was a broad, flat vessel, used for boiling liquids, sometimes as a cinerary urn, and for drinking, or pouring libations. Also of the shallow cup, usually without a foot, in which libations were drawn out of the mixer. Herodotus says that at Plataea the Spartan Helots were bidden by Pausanias to bring together the booty of the Persian camp, and that they found "many golden mixers and bowls (φιάλας), and other ἐκπώματα (drinking-vessels)" (ix., 30). From its broad, flat shape Ἄρεος φιάλη bowl of Mars was a comic metaphor for a shield. It was also used for sunken work in a ceiling. In the Septuagint the word is frequently used for bowls or basons. See Num 7:13, Num 7:19, Num 7:25, Num 7:31, Num 7:37, Num 7:43, etc.; Kg1 7:50; Zac 9:15. Here, censers, though several different words of the Septuagint and New Testament are rendered censer; as θυΐ́σκη, Kg1 7:50; θυμιατήριον, Ch2 26:19; Eze 8:11; Heb 9:4; λιβανωτὸν, Rev 8:3. Θυΐ́σκη however is the golden incense-cup or spoon to receive the frankincense which was lighted with coals from the brazen altar, and offered on the golden altar before the veil. The imagery is from the tabernacle and temple service.
The directions for the composition of the incense for the tabernacle-worship, are given Exo 30:37, Exo 30:38.
For incense as the symbol of prayer, see Lev 16:12, Lev 16:13; Psa 141:2. See on Luk 1:9. Edersheim, describing the offering of incense in the temple, says: "As the President gave the word of command which marked that 'the time of incense had come,' the whole multitude of the people without withdrew from the inner court and fell down before the Lord, spreading their hands in silent prayer. It is this most solemn period, when, throughout the vast temple-buildings, deep silence rested on the worshipping multitude, while within the sanctuary itself the priest laid the incense on the golden altar, and the cloud of odors rose up before the Lord, which serves as the image of heavenly things in Revelation (Rev 8:1, Rev 8:3, Rev 8:4). The prayers offered by priests and people at this part of the service are recorded by tradition as follows: 'True it is that Thou art Jehovah, our God and the God of our fathers; our King and the King of our fathers; our Savior and the Rock of our salvation; our Help and our Deliverer. Thy name is from everlasting, and there is no God beside Thee. A new song did they that were delivered sing to Thy name by the seashore. Together did all praise and own Thee as King, and say, 'Jehovah shall reign who saveth Israel.'" Compare "the Song of Moses," Rev 15:3, and "a new song," Rev 5:9.
Present tense, denoting the continuous, unceasing worship of heaven, or possibly, as describing their "office generally rather than the mere one particular case of its exercise" (Alford).
Lit., purchase, as Rev. See Joh 4:8; Joh 6:5.
Omit us and supply men, as Rev.
With Thy blood (ἐν τῷ αἵματί σου)
Lit., "in Thy blood." The preposition in is used Hebraistically of the price; the value of the thing purchased being contained in the price.
Rev., tribe. Often in the New Testament of the twelve tribes of Israel.
People, nation (λαοῦ, ἔθνους)
See on Pe1 2:9.
Read αὐτοὺς them.
Read, βασιλείαν a kingdom. See on Rev 1:6.
We shall reign (βασιλεύσομεν)
Read βασιλεύουσιν they reign. Their reigning is not future, but present.
Ten thousand times ten thousand (μυρίαδες μυρίαδων)
Lit., ten thousands of ten thousands. Compare Psa 68:17; Dan 8:10. Μυριάς, whence the English myriad, means the number ten thousand. So, literally, Act 19:19, ἀργυρίου μυριάδας πέντε fifty-thousand pieces of silver; lit., five ten-thousands. In the plural used for an unlimited number. See Luk 12:1; Act 21:20; Heb 12:22; Jde 1:14.
Χιλιάς, a collective term like, μυριάς, meaning the number one thousand, is almost invariably used with men in Revelation. See Rev 7:4; Rev 11:13. Only once with a material object (Rev 21:16). With inferior objects χίλιοι a thousand is used. See Rev 11:3; Rev 12:6. These words are the theme of Alford's noble hymn -
"Ten thousand times ten thousand
In sparkling raiment bright,
The armies of the ransomed saints
Throng up the steeps of light:
'Tis finished, all is finished,
Their fight with death and sin;
Fling open wide the golden gates,
And let the victors in."
Rev., "the power." Compare the ascription in Rev 4:11, on which see note, and notice that each separate particular there has the article, while here it is attached only to the first, the power, the one article including all the particulars, as if they formed but one word. On the doxologies, see on Rev 1:6.
Not limited to spiritual riches, but denoting the fulness of every gift of God. Jam 1:17; Act 17:25. Only here in a doxology.
See on the kindred word εὐλογητὸς blessed, Pe1 1:3.
See Ti1 4:4; Jam 1:18. From κτίζω to found. A thing founded or created Rev., created thing. See on Joh 1:3.
In the sea (ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης)
More accurately, "on the sea," as Rev. Not ships, but creatures of the sea which have come up from its depths to the surface.
Blessing (ἡ εὐλογία)
Rev. rightly "the blessing." All the particulars of the following ascription have the article.
Originally a valuing by which the price is fixed, hence the price itself, the thing priced, and so, generally, honor. See on Act 28:10.
Power (τὸ κράτος)
Rev., the dominion. For the different words for power, see on Pe2 2:11.
Four and twenty
In silent adoration.
Him that liveth forever and ever | <urn:uuid:fdd92ec7-1192-4597-a926-c08fc273f3ad> | CC-MAIN-2015-32 | http://sacred-texts.com/bib/cmt/vws/rev005.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-32/segments/1438042987171.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20150728002307-00065-ip-10-236-191-2.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.908169 | 2,904 | 3.15625 | 3 |
As the popular adage says, no one is an island. An adult cannot survive on their own. Humans are hardwired to communicate and connect with another person. Without social interactions, they may suffer from mental health problems, including depression.
Isolation is deadly. The negative impact of loneliness is frequently witnessed among seniors who often have no friends or are far away from family members.
But, the problem does not exist in one certain age group. Teenagers can feel lonely, too, and it can affect their mental health. And, children need interaction to grow into healthy and happy adults.
A Pandemic of Loneliness
However, because of the pandemic, children have to stay at home. They received their lessons via the screen of a laptop or a tablet. Even important events in their lives, such as their or a peer’s birthday, are celebrated in the confines of their living room.
This has been tough for a lot of young people. Preschool or daycare center, for many kids, is not just a place to learn, but an opportunity to interact with others who are in the same age group. No matter how much time parents devote to their kids, they still need and yearn for the attention and friendship of others.
And, unfortunately, not a lot of parents realize the importance of maintaining social interactions for their kids, especially during shelter-at-home orders. After all, households have a lot of things to worry about on top of the pandemic such as the economic downturn that caused millions of people to lose their jobs, the higher cost of goods, and the challenges of homeschooling.
There is no data that provides a look at the impact of loneliness among kids during the pandemic. However, it has to be assumed that it exists for the sake of the children who do not get the opportunity to socialize.
Loneliness among children can lead to low self-esteem which will prevent them from participating in school or at home and robbing them of chances to learn skills that they will need as they grow older.
Loneliness can have lasting impacts, too. Its consequences can haunt them as they mature into an adult and enter the workforce.
What can a parent do to help connect their children to their peers during the pandemic?
Support Meaningful Interactions Through Video Games
The internet made it possible to maintain relationships despite the distance. The World Health Organization made an effort to change the term “social distancing” to “physical distancing” to communicate the need for people to remain connected throughout the pandemic.
While parents have been eschewing the reliance of young people on screens, nowadays, technology is a gateway to many wonderful things, including education and, of course, communicating with friends and loved ones.
For children, however, it may take the form of video games. While adults can talk for hours on FaceTime, children might prefer playing Minecraft with their friends. Many online video games have their own communication platforms that allow players to team up and reach a common goal. It is a great way for kids to make friends or sustain the friendships they already have despite the distance.
Experts agree that, during the pandemic, it is okay that children are spending more time staring at a screen. If they are interacting with other people they age, then their screen time is time well-spent.
Parents Should Spend Time with Each Child
It is also important for parents who are taking care of multiple children at home to spend time with each one. While it is great that families can bond under lockdown, having one-on-one time makes a child feel more connected with their parents. It helps ease feelings of loneliness at home.
The social connection between child and parent is built during childhood, and it will have positive effects on their well-being later on. Children feel supported, especially during a traumatic event such as the current public health crisis.
Conduct Window or Drive-By Visits
Seeing another person on-screen can still feel impersonal. Some children may crave in-person meetups. Play-dates are still a no-no, but children can see their peers albeit at a safe distance through a window and drive-by visit.
During a window visit, the homeowner does not go inside nor invite the visitor in. They stand in front of each other, usually with a window or a door in between them, and say their hellos.
In a drive-by visit, the visitor does not leave their vehicle, or they stand across the street. The other person stands by their home’s door and waves. Either option is not ideal, but it is a way for children to see their friends without risking their health and safety.
COVID-19 should not cause relationships to deteriorate. Instead, it should bring everyone closer (metaphorically) as we all go through this stressful and anxiety-inducing period. | <urn:uuid:3f2d3dbe-9806-4c54-a273-f5f983d2acce> | CC-MAIN-2022-05 | https://www.typingadventure.com/loneliness-among-kids-during-covid-19-how-to-help-them-maintain-social-interactions-despite-lockdowns/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-05/segments/1642320304876.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20220125220353-20220126010353-00681.warc.gz | en | 0.974128 | 1,005 | 3.59375 | 4 |
The starter motor is an electric motor that rotates your engine in order to allow the spark and fuel injection systems to begin the engine's operation under its own power. Typically, the starter is a large electric motor and stator coil mounted to the bottom (generally to one side) of the vehicle's transmission bell housing where it connects to the engine itself. The starter has gears which mesh with a large flywheel gear on the back side of the engine, which turns the central crank shaft. Because this is a lot of physical weight and friction to overcome, starter motors are generally powerful, high-speed motors and use an ignition coil to ramp up their power before engaging.
How Starters Work
Starter motors of various types have been in use almost since the combustion engine was invented. Starting a typical automotive or aircraft engine by conventional, physical means (turning a crank or propeller, in most cases) was an inconvenient, dangerous, and physically demanding job. The first electric starter to appear on an automobile was in 1896 on an Arnold and became standard on Cadillac models in 1912. They were standard on nearly all automobiles sold by 1920. Chrysler added the key switch we're familiar with today in 1949, before which starters were usually button-activated.
The starter operates as part of the engine's starter circuit or ignition circuit. It is supplied power from its ignition coil (starter solenoid), which receives power from the vehicle's battery and amps it up to give it in a sudden burst to the starter. The starter itself is a powerful electric motor, either of permanent-magnet or series-parallel wound type. The amount of power fed to it would easily burn it out after a few minutes of operation, but allows it to safely crank very hard for a few seconds at a time.
In most vehicles, current from the solenoid that powers the starter also simultaneously engages a lever that releases the drive pinion, meshing the pinion with the starter ring gear on the flywheel of the engine. When the engine is running, this pinion is disconnected, allowing the gear to turn freely without affecting the engine's operation or the starter itself. In some engine configurations, specifically various forms of hybrid systems, the starter motor is used as a power generator when the engine is running, converting the spinning flywheel energy into electricity to feed electrical systems or batteries on the car. The Toyota Hybrid Synergy Drive system operates in this way.
Problems with Starters
Typically, the problems associated with starter motors and starting the vehicle are not the motor itself failing, but one of the electrical components or physical gears having failure. Often, the solenoid will become resistant or lose a connection and become incapable of powering the starter with sufficient force. Sometimes, the pinion gear fails and the starter cannot connect to the flywheel to turn over the engine. Rarely does the starter itself physically fail before the vehicle's life span is up. | <urn:uuid:8ce88978-1a09-45b9-9ec1-86d43486b48c> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://parts.olathetoyota.com/starter-motors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038469494.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20210418073623-20210418103623-00463.warc.gz | en | 0.95483 | 595 | 3.625 | 4 |
Two years after climate negotiators abandoned the quixotic quest for a one-size-fits-all, top-down climate accord and instead began constructing one in accordance with the realities of the world, the Paris Patchwork Climate Accord is a reality.
The Accord reaffirms the 2 Degrees Celsius target and sets an ambition of keeping global emissions from rising more than 1.5 Degrees Celsius, and prominently stresses the need to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
Although the acronym REDD does not appear, deforestation and forests are mentioned throughout, and Article 5 explicitly states:
Parties are encouraged to take action to implement and support, including through results-based payments, the existing framework as set out in related guidance and decisions already agreed under the Convention for: policy approaches and positive incentives for activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries; and alternative policy approaches, such as joint mitigation and adaptation approaches for the integral and sustainable management of forests, while reaffirming the importance of incentivizing, as appropriate, non-carbon benefits associated with such approaches.
Regarding international offsets, Article 6 explicitly states:
The use of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes to achieve nationally determined contributions under this Agreement shall be voluntary and authorized by participating Parties.
Article 6 essentially says that countries can cooperate among themselves to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change, they can even transfer emission-reductions among themselves to do so, but they have to make sure they follow rigorous accounting procedures agreed to under the UNFCCC. The article also makes it clear that, if a country transfers allowances to another country, it loses the right to apply those emission-reductions to its own cap. (In other words, it can’t double-count.)
In addition to the bottom-up, multilateral approach, the United Nations will also create a centralized mechanism that countries can participate in. This will be rules-based and overseen by the United Nations, with a share of proceeds to go to least-developed countries.
Groups such as the REDD+ Safeguards Working Group (RSWG) had several issues with the last draft text regarding its mention, or lack thereof, of ecosystem integrity. But this group is at least relatively satisfied with new language within the final version. “The Paris Agreement embraces forests for the first time in the history of climate negotiations,” RSWG said in a statement.
The language on sinks and reservoirs in the text’s preamble highlights the active role that ecosystems play in climate change mitigation activities, said Lisa Schindler Murray, a Policy Advisor at The Nature Conservancy (TNC).
This type of language refers back to the Convention, Schindler explained, which had originally noted the importance of ecosystems in mitigating climate change. Ecosystems aren’t mentioned specifically in article 5, the portion of the text focused on forests, but there is language instructing parties to embrace the larger forest ecosystem.
“Parties are encouraged to take action to implement and support…the existing framework as set out in related guidance and decisions already agreed under the Convention,” the text reads, which is a reference to the Convention’s initial language on ecosystems. The RSWG said this is the text necessary to incorporate the needed safeguards that promotes non-carbon benefits like biodiversity in forest protection efforts as well as protecting local, forest and indigenous communities.
“It includes a system to report on how those safeguards are addressed and respected. This sets a precedent for protecting rights in all climate actions, and for the protection of natural forests,” the organization said.
Andrew Deutz, TNC’s Director of International Government Relations commented on this topic, saying, “the agreement also includes essential provisions to enhance accountability, environmental integrity, and scaled-up financing for poor countries.”
Ecosystems’ mention in the text is something that has shifted significantly throughout the COP and now can be found in the preamble as well as the adaptation section.
Please see our Reprint Guidelines for details on republishing our articles. | <urn:uuid:4535e456-55ec-41e1-b123-babd1fadf73a> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/final-draft-of-paris-accord-imminent/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917122174.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031202-00351-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.939675 | 859 | 3.265625 | 3 |
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Coenzyme Q10 InformationCoenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is a compound found naturally in the energy-producing center of the cell known as the mitochondria. CoQ10 is involved in the making of an important molecule known as ATP. ATP serves as the cell's major energy source and drives a number of biological processes including muscle contraction and the production of protein. CoQ10 also works as an antioxidant.
Antioxidants are substances that scavenge free radicals, damaging compounds in the body that alter cell membranes, tamper with DNA, and even cause cell death. Free radicals are believed to contribute to the aging process as well as the development of a number of health problems including heart disease and cancer. Antioxidants such as CoQ10 can neutralize free radicals and may reduce or even help prevent some of the damage they cause.
Coenzyme Q10's benefits are due to the following two attributes. First, Co-Q10 is an important fat-soluble antioxidant that is uniquely able to protect the cells' energy producing machinery, known as mitochondria, from free radical damage. Second, coenzyme Q10 is necessary for the production of energy in all cells of the body. Even though coenzyme Q10 occurs in the cells of all plants and animals, dietary sources do not provide adequate levels of this nutrient.
Coenzyme Q10 Benefits
- Most important application for Co-Q10 is in the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease and related disorders that involve the heart, including atherosclerosis.
- Reduces the frequency of angina episodes and strengthens the heart muscle and increases quality of life and survivability in those with congestive heart failure
- Coenzyme Q10 has also been shown to decrease blood pressure in patients with high blood pressure
- Doctors have used Co-Q10 to treat breast cancer and support health in patients receiving chemotherapy
- Of potential benefit to diabetics is the fact that Co-Q10 may enhance insulin production
- Co-Q10 has also been used with favorable results to treat symptoms of muscular dystrophy and gum disease, both of which are linked to Co-Q10 deficiency
- Patients with Parkinsonís disease may benefit from Co-Q10 supplementation
- Obesity may also be linked to a deficiency of Co-Q10
- Co-Q10 has been associated with an increase in sperm count,improved sperm motility and improved rates of fertilization.
- Also of important note is the fact that Co-Q10 may protect against the side effects of drugs such as beta-blockers and some antipsychotics.
- Levels of CoQ10 tend to be lower in people with high cholesterol compared to healthy individuals of the same age. In addition, certain cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins (such as atorvastatin, cerivastatin, lovastatin, pravastatin, simvastatin) appear to deplete natural levels of CoQ10 in the body
- CoQ10 may help prevent heart damage caused by certain chemotherapy drugs (namely adriamycin or other athracycline medications).
Coenzyme Q10 NotesThe Dietary Supplements Information Bureau recommends a daily dosage of 30-300 mg of CoQ10 for optimal results. Coenzyme Q10 appears to be generally safe with no significant side effects, except occasional stomach upset.
Coenzyme Q10 Products
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| 30 softgels, 50 mg || $29.99 || $17.95 || More info ||Discontinued|
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| 100 caps, 30 mg || $37.94 || $22.95 || More info ||Discontinued|
| 60 caps, 60 mg || $39.94 || $23.95 || More info ||Discontinued|
| 60 softgels, 60 mg || $39.94 || $23.95 || More info |
| 30 softgels, 100 mg || $34.94 || $20.95 || More info |
| 30 caps || $13.99 || $8.95 || More info |
| 30 caps || $20.00 || $11.95 || More info |
| 60 caps || $38.00 || $23.95 || More info | | <urn:uuid:58f08512-d156-4fa8-af91-70b3eb06af58> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | http://www.vitamin-provider.com/coenzyme-q10.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131300472.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172140-00218-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.88718 | 1,191 | 3.40625 | 3 |
Git QuickStart -- Team Collaboration
This article will introduce how Git is used in daily collaboration scenarios. Before reading, please make sure that you have a basic understanding of Git and master the common command usage.
Git is a handy version management tool. How we use it depends on the scene of team collaboration. Many arguments about its usage deviate from the collaboration model of each team, which makes it seems a bit awkward.
Generally speaking, the main difference between scenarios is the size of the team. The key issues faced by two people co-developing a project and two hundred people jointly developing a project are naturally different. The following will assume that we are developing the back-end of a web project. Let ‘s starting from simple scenarios, gradually meeting questions and come up with feasible solutions.
If you are developing a project with your own, you can freely choose the development method. The most direct way is to develop the
master branch. When you think the function is completed, give a tag to the commit for CI/CD.
As the project expands, several collaborators are participating at the same time, and you find that your development process will affect each other. For example, you have modified the routing part, but you are still in the stage of fixing bugs, and then, your collaborators always Unintentionally triggering this kind of problem caused the page it developed crashed. So you started to explore more suitable ways of collaboration.
It is recommended to use the well-known Github flow.
There is a branch called
master in the project, assuming that we need to develop a document function, then we need to create a new
feature/document branch from the
master branch, and merge it into the
master branch after development.
Before the development of the document function is completed, assuming that we find that there is an important payment problem that needs to be fixed, then we can create a new
fix/ pay or
feature/pay from the
master branch, and merge it into
master after the fix is completed.
If the function division is reasonable, then it is not necessary to have the commit on the
fix/pay branch and the
feature/document branch at the same time. Even if it is needed, we can use merge, rebase, cherry-pick, which are similar but different.
When we pull the contents of the
masterbranch on the
feature/documentbranch, it means we think that “the function branch needs to obtain other newly added functions in this time”. The advantages and disadvantages are as follows:
Advantages: The operation is simple, and the existing
feature/documentbranch will get a new node.
Disadvantages: Additional merge nodes will be added. If there are three branches at the same time, after merging one branch to the master, a merge point will be added to each of the other two branches.
We can also choose to rebase the
origin/master, which means we recognize that “additional features exist as an infrastructure for the features being developed.” The advantages and disadvantages are as follows:
Advantages: The existing
feature/documentbranch will not add a merge node, the branch looks very clear and concise.
feature/documenthas been pushed to the remote and then rebased, then the local
origin/feature/documentare no longer considered as the same branch. The push operation will be rejected unless the push is forced, but this will make other collaborators on the branch also affected by the changes in the branch.
To circumvent this shortcoming, there is a way to only take the rebase operation when merging the completed branches, and delete the remote branch immediately after the rebase is completed.
We can also choose to cherry-pick all the contents of the
fix/paybranch on the
Assuming that the
fix/paybranch was merged into the
masterbranch and the squash operation was performed, then directly cherry-pick the node after the squash.
The advantages and disadvantages are as follows:
Advantages: The existing
feature/documentbranch will not add a merge node.
Disadvantages: The cherry-pick nodes will appear repeatedly in the merged branch in the future.
As the size of the project increases, you may want the project to be automatically integrated and deployed. You only need to set it to the current
origin/master branch, which is very convenient.
In most small teams, this model can work very well. The next thing to mention is the product of a specific scenario – when facing some unique needs, we often choose to make some changes to the process, and may also introduce additional complexity. In short, we don’t have to stick to one solution, just read the following scenarios and understand the solution to the problem.
The size of the team continues to expand, and you are more cautious about changes in the production environment. After discussion, you have built a pre-release environment and a test environment.
However, it is troublesome that CI/CD is processed for a certain branch, and your
master branch is bound to the production environment, and a separate branch is created for the pre-release environment and the test environment.
Perhaps some collaborators suggested that we can dynamically create a
Beta/test_featA_featB_timestamp branch each time the test environment is used, and hand this process over to the CI/CD tool.
It sounds good until you find that you need to resolve branch conflicts every time, so you start to look for more elegant solutions.
Maybe someone will propose at this time that we can add a
Dev branch, and whenever we need to go online, merge the code of the
Dev branch into
master. Although it increases the cost of maintaining the branch, you are more at ease when developing.
It has also been suggested whether the branch strategy of
Release can be adopted. A new
Release/version_code branch can be established after each version is released, which can be directly modified on the eve of the release to avoid repeated merge branches. Maybe the traditional project development team will take this strategy.
The team is getting bigger and bigger, you start to explore, can you use the same branching strategies in a larger dimension?
Regarding past strategies, maybe you will choose Git flow and use
ReleaseBranch, emergency fixes use
hotfix, and may also regulate the use of
rebase and other supplementary regulations.
Back at the beginning of this article, when we use Git as version management and collaboration tool, we might as well accept the limitations brought by it and other tools such as CI/CD, and choose the strategy which is suitable for the team.
- Github flow(https://guides.github.com/introduction/flow/)
- Git flow(https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/gitflow-workflow)
- The trend of the “develop” branch going away(https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/312022/the-trend-of-the-develop-branch-going-away)
- What is CI/CD?(https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/devops/what-is-ci-cd) | <urn:uuid:37c5a77b-7da2-42a3-a19b-f08e2e670503> | CC-MAIN-2021-04 | https://symeonchen.com/2020/06/02/git-quick-start-team-collaboration/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-04/segments/1610703512342.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20210117112618-20210117142618-00606.warc.gz | en | 0.944443 | 1,528 | 2.75 | 3 |
Many children and adolescents have mental health problems that interfere with their normal development and daily life activities. Some mental health problems are mild, while others are more severe. Some mental health problems last for only short periods of time, while others, potentially, last a lifetime.
Listed in the directory below are some mental health disorders that may occur in growing children, for which we have provided a brief overview.
If you cannot find the information in which you are interested, please visit the Pediatrics Online Resources page in this Web site for an Internet/World Wide Web address that may contain additional information on that topic. | <urn:uuid:752f8ba7-b6f4-4592-830d-04818a12a607> | CC-MAIN-2016-40 | http://www.nyhq.org/diw/content.asp?pageid=P04133 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738662321.82/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173742-00056-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937735 | 122 | 2.875 | 3 |
I probably wouldn’t have noticed the mollusc hibernaculum if my bootlace hadn’t come undone. Crouching down to shelter from the wind behind a dry-stone wall while I retied it, I discovered scores of overwintering garden snails (Cornu aspersum), wedged in the crevices between the rocks.
Each snail was glued to the sandstone by its epiphragm, a layer of solidified mucus, sealing it within its helical shell for the winter, while its metabolism barely ticked over. The innermost animals were lodged deep in the wall, with no room to manoeuvre, so when spring’s wake-up arrives it will surely be a case of first in, last out.
This collective mollusc hibernation occurs in our garden after the first frosts, when old clay flower pots behind the greenhouse become packed with snails. In summer these gastropods roam at night and have a homing instinct towards temporary daytime shelters at dawn, but perhaps, in winter, there is some kind of chemical aggregation signal that makes them huddle together in such numbers. It’s certainly a convenience when it comes to reducing the snail population to manageable proportions, before they have a chance to consume too many tender young seedlings in spring.
Over two decades of winters, we must have collected and relocated hundreds of these sleeping molluscs to a local woodland, but the garden snail population at the end of each year seems undiminished. That’s probably due to the efficiency of snail sex.
None is solely male, merely serving to donate genes. They are all hermaphrodite and, after mutual exchange of sperm, both partners can lay up to 80 eggs, six times during the summer. Our annual search and relocation exercise is an environmentally friendly defence for the vegetable garden, without resorting to agrochemical warfare.
Come April, the patterns that appear on the lower panes of glass in the greenhouse provide early warning of sleeping snails that we didn’t find. Each uses its radula, a dart-shaped tongue coated in chitinous teeth, to rasp off the bright green algae, moving its head from side to side as it glides across the glass. The etched feeding trails of dart-shaped tongue impressions create an abstract pattern of remarkable beauty. | <urn:uuid:7e94fc45-971a-4098-bb73-454702a7b98e> | CC-MAIN-2019-04 | https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/03/country-diary-stumbling-across-the-snails-winter-shelter | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-04/segments/1547583662124.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20190119034320-20190119060320-00173.warc.gz | en | 0.95362 | 490 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Chervill, Stellate Shepard's Needle
stellata is found in Israel on a single site in the Negev
Highlands – the Lots
cisterns and was collected
there in the 1980s by Avinoam Danin and Aaron Liston. Is common in the high
Hermon in the montane transition forest zone at altitudes of 1400 meters and above
(scattered to rare at altitudes of 1000-1400 meters ) and also in the tragacanth vegetation at altitudes of 1800
meters and above.
stellata grows on sunlit rocky or stony slopes in the Artemisia
sieberi plant association in the desert as well as in the deciduous montane
transition forest and in the tragacanth vegetation.
Scandix stellata is a polymorphic
species. The Flora Palaestina notes that several varieties have been described,
although intermediate forms were found between them and therefore they are not recognized
as distinct taxa (Zohary, 1972). It differs from other Scandix species
by its desert habitat and its divided bracts. In the past, it was described in
the genus Scandicium and as the species S. pinnatifida (Zohary,
The distribution pattern
of S. stellata in our region is distinctly fragmented: the Southern
Sinai populations, the site in the Negev Highlands and the large Hermon
populations are clearly disjunct. This suggests a relictual distribution from
Pleistocene periods that were cooler and rainier, at which time there was a
continuous geographic distribution from Mount Hermon to Southern Sinai.
For more on the genus
Scandix and additional Scandix species – see S. palaestina and S. australis.
In Israel Scandix stellata grows at a
single, isolated site, geographically cut off from the concentrations found on
Mount Hermon and in the Southern Sinai mountains. There is insufficient information
regarding its annual appearance and long-term population size trends. The site
is included in the Negev Highlands Reserve. It is not globally endangered. S. stellata is included in the Red Book of Cyprus
Flora (Tsintides et al 2007), where it is found at five sites at altitudes of
900-1600 m on the Troodos Mountains in the center of the island. It is threatened
at both sites due by road development.
Efforts should be
made once again to locate the Lots cisterns population, monitor it and examine
the appearance rates of new plants each year. A thorough survey of the high
places in the Negev Highlands Reserve should be conducted in a wet year to
locate additional populations.
Scandix stellata grows in the
Mediterranean Basin in Spain, Morocco, Southern France, the Balkans, the
Crimean Peninsula, the Middle Eastern mountains, Trans-Caspia (east of the
Caspian Sea) and east to Turkistan and Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia. In our
region, S. stellata is found in Syria,
Lebanon and Jordan. Large relictual populations are also known from the Southern
S. stellata inhabits diverse habitats throughout
the world: Mediterranean shrubland, transition zone scrublands, tragacanth vegetation,
semi-desert and traditionally cultivated agricultural fields. In our region,
the species is limited to high altitudes; in Turkey it grows at altitudes of 300-2200
meters (Hedge and Lamond, 1972).
stellata is an
extremely rare annual plant that grows at a single site in the high Negev
Highlands. Belongs to a group of species that are characteristic of the
biogeographic link between the Hermon, the Negev Highlands and the Southern
Sinai mountains, hence the significance of its conservation.
Hegde, I.C. and Lamond, J.M. 1972. Scandix in Flora of Turkey (ed. Ds, P.H. vol. 4. Pp. 329-330.
Current Occupancy Map
|Classification||On the endangered species list|
|Chorotype||Irano - Turanian|
|Conservation Site||Lots cisterns|
|IUCN category||DD EW EX LC CR EN VU NT| | <urn:uuid:d1c1faf0-f156-4799-a49b-f26c09e29596> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://redlist.parks.org.il/en/plants/detail/Scandix%20stellata/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296950030.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20230401125552-20230401155552-00201.warc.gz | en | 0.893083 | 1,071 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Catastrophic Injury Attorneys
Contact Us For Next Steps
Brain Injuries, Spinal Cord Injuries, Burn Injuries, Amputations
Catastrophic injuries, whether spinal, brain, burn, or amputation, are devastating and permanent in nature. They can have an enormous impact on the lives of the victims and their families. Catastrophic injuries often require long periods of hospitalization and specialized medical care (medication, surgery, therapy, accessible homes), often for the rest of the person’s life. The medical costs involved with the treatment of a catastrophic injury can be staggering, and the future earning potential of the victim can be greatly reduced or lost entirely.
Catastrophic injuries can be the result of many types of incidents, which include, but are not limited to:
- auto accidents
- truck accidents
- motorcycle accidents
- cycling accidents
- defective products
- medical malpractice
- sports and recreational activities
- workplace accidents
Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI): According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 1.7 million people sustain a traumatic brain injury in the United States each year. Of those individuals, about 52,000 die, 275,000 are hospitalized, and 1.365 million are treated and released from an emergency department. TBIs are often the result of slips and falls, auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, sports-related activities, or violence/assaults. A TBI can include a focal injury (confined to small area) or a diffuse injury (affecting a large area of the brain).
Spinal Cord Injury: According to the National Institute for Health, there are an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 spinal cord injuries every year in the United States. Spinal cord injuries often are the result of auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, slips and falls, defective products, sports and recreational activities, or workplace accidents. Spinal cord injuries can include paralysis, paraplegia, and quadriplegia.
Burns: According to the Journal of Burn Care & Rehabilitation (Journal of Burn Care & Rehabilitation, May/June 1992), approximately 2.4 million burn injuries are reported each year in the United States. Approximately 650,000 of the injuries are treated by medical professionals, and 75,000 are hospitalized. Of those hospitalized, 20,000 have major burns involving at least 25% of their total body surface. Between 8,000 and 12,000 of patients with burns die, and approximately one million will sustain substantial or permanent disabilities resulting from their burn injury. Burns are often the result of heat exposure to fire, steam, tar, or hot liquids. They can also be the result of chemical burns, thermal burns, auto accidents, and defective products.
Amputations: According to the National Institute for Health, in 2007, there were approximately 1.7 million people with limb loss in the United States (excluding fingers and toes). There are more than 185,000 new amputations performed each year in this country. Amputations are often the result of auto accidents, motorcycle accidents, defective products, and medical malpractice.
If you or a loved one needs an attorney who understands the physical and emotional pain that victims of brain, spinal, amputation, or burn injuries suffer, and if you would like to learn more about your legal rights, please contact Baker & Zimmerman here, call (954) 509-1900, or call toll free at (800) 886-LAWS. Our experienced catastrophic injury and personal injury law firm offers free consultations and charges you only if we win your case. | <urn:uuid:c0014b0a-4ca0-4b20-85fe-f305e5667543> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.bakerzimmerman.com/catastrophic-injuries | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510267075.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011747-00433-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940581 | 739 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Claude Lanzmann, one of the greatest filmmakers ever, died Thursday in Paris, at the age of ninety-two. His 1985 film “Shoah,” the crucial cinematic confrontation with the Holocaust (a word that Lanzmann hated), changed the history of cinema with its absolute absence of archival footage, with its incarnation of history in the present tense as a first-hand, first-person act of political engagement. It changed political history with its journalistic revelations and its moral insights. But Lanzmann’s creation of “Shoah,” though the product of a lifelong inspiration, was the result of a series of accidents. Every life is so, but Lanzmann’s encounters with chance were particularly forthright and defiant. He challenged life to bring it on from a very early age, and from an early age he had a clear and pugnacious idea of what life was bringing on—death. Rather than fleeing or hiding from death, he faced it down, as if he could fight his enemy better by keeping it in view and close at hand.
The first words of his 2009 autobiography, “The Patagonian Hare,” are “The guillotine”; the first chapter is devoted to the litany of victims and executioners whose stories have occupied his life and filled his imagination, and the story of his life involves bold action and dangerous adventure that long preceded—and are inseparable from—his work as a filmmaker. As a teen-ager in Nazi-occupied France, he was active in the Resistance; as a Jewish person, he lived with the moment-to-moment knowledge that the Gestapo could haul him off. (His father prepared him and his siblings for the possibility with elaborate and fearsome drills to avoid capture.) As a teacher of philosophy in postwar Berlin—while still in his early twenties—he snuck into East Germany to pursue his own journalistic investigation (it was published, in Le Monde, in 1951): “As soon as one decides to break the law, everything actually becomes relatively easy. Let’s just say that I was sometimes very afraid and always very lucky.”
Lanzmann had published another report from Germany in Les Temps Modernes, the journal founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir; he joined them as an editor. He and de Beauvoir became a couple, living together from 1952 to 1959. Whereas Sartre’s existentialism faced the immanence of death in life as a theoretical but absolute conundrum that confounded logic and morality, Lanzmann was an existentialist in action, whose philosophical education had the extra dimension of practical defiance of death—of the validation of life by a relentless challenge to, and temporary victory over, death. His sense of politics was similarly conditioned by a practical approach to power; though he admired Sartre’s book “Anti-Semite and Jew,” he repudiated the notion of persecution and victimhood as the defining Jewish trait—and this idea proved to be the one that energized “Shoah.” (It also energized his devotion to Israel, which he first visited in 1952 and about which he made two films.)
Lanzmann was prosecuted in 1960 for his public opposition to France’s war in Algeria. He travelled widely, wrote for a variety of publications (including popular ones, such as Elle), was on the rewrite desk at the French equivalent of a tabloid, and did some television journalism—all the while pursuing a varied range of intrepid and even reckless adventures that made for a grand and novelistic off-the-radar contrast with his minor, though admirable, public activities. (I discussed the story of Lanzmann’s life and work when the English translation of “The Patagonian Hare” came out, in 2012.)
In effect, Lanzmann was secretly famous, and that secrecy—the contrast between his vast vitality (both intellectual and physical) and his modest (though substantial) public achievements—sparked what turned out to be his enduring work. In his journalism and his political activities, he was engaged with the horrors of the century, but he was running yet another risk, one that seemed oddly large for someone of his intellect, energy, and ability: a virtual nonexistence in the public sphere, a cipherhood in history. He was of history but he wasn’t yet part of it, and his way into history proved to be, in itself, yet another of the defining forces of the times: the cinema.
Lanzmann was saved by the movies. He wasn’t a movie buff, a cinephile, or a critic; he had no special cinematic aspirations. For Lanzmann, as for many other great filmmakers, the technical art was a readymade substitute for all other arts, the art that became accessible by the fact that it required little craft, but, rather, technique—the camera did most of the work and seemed to be open from both ends, simultaneously recording what took place in front of the lens and the ideas that motivated him behind it. He made “Shoah” nearly by accident; after finishing a documentary about Israel, he was approached by an Israeli official with a commission to make a movie about the Holocaust from the Jewish point of view. It was supposed to be a standard-length movie that would be made in a few years; it turned out to be a nine-and-a-half-hour movie that took a dozen years to complete.
He said that the film’s subject was death, that he made the film in order to evoke what couldn’t be shown—namely, death in the gas chambers of Treblinka, Auschwitz, Chelmno, and the other Nazi death camps. “Shoah,” though based on assiduous, arduous, and sometimes very risky journalistic investigation (notably, in his surreptitious recording in West Germany of former concentration-camp officials, which led both to his severe beating by Germans and to legal charges by the German government) is a work of imagination. His interviews, which he edited together with his filming of the places (mainly in Poland) where the camps were and their vestiges are, put the Holocaust into the present tense, and make the bearing of witness both the incarnation of death and the enduring act of resistance to death.
Survival is the other great subject of “Shoah”; Lanzmann’s interviews include former members of the Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto and members of the Sonderkommando, Jewish captives in Auschwitz who were forced, on pain of death, to prepare other Jewish captives for murder—cutting their hair, leading them into the gas chamber, and then removing their corpses. It’s an act of profound and shattering moral insight that Lanzmann places these survivors of Nazi terror side by side. Survival was, for Lanzmann, an act of resistance, and members of the Sonderkommando are present in the film as the closest witnesses, the ultimate resisters, of death itself.
“Shoah” placed Lanzmann at the center of modern history. He confronted his moral burden and tragic conscience in the books that he wrote (in addition to his autobiography, there’s a wonderful collection of his shorter pieces, “The Tomb of the Divine Diver”), and in his subsequent films—most notably, “The Last of the Unjust,” from 2012.
Lanzmann’s virtual existence, as the maker of a film that quickly proved historic, transformed his actual existence—he became a sudden and crucial public figure whose frequent statements, interviews, and engagements were themselves a part of the history of his times. He bore that mantle solemnly, sternly, combatively. To meet Lanzmann, as I did on several occasions, was to encounter an awe-inspiring presence: he had a severe bearing, a fierce gaze, and a blunt manner, all of which enveloped a deep streak of joy and generosity—his love of life emerged in his ardor for personal connection. His four-part work, “The Four Sisters,” based on interviews with four women for “Shoah,” was shown at the New York Film Festival last fall, and he came to New York to introduce it. His trip wasn’t easy; he was ninety-one and had put himself on the line for the movie, for the women in it, for the experience that it embodies—including his own, in the making of it. That film, too, is the story of survival against all odds. But every story of survival ultimately has the same ending. | <urn:uuid:7d243c6d-fdb0-4dd6-8516-b0b64d402097> | CC-MAIN-2020-10 | https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/claude-lanzmann-changed-the-history-of-filmmaking-with-shoah | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-10/segments/1581875144498.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20200220005045-20200220035045-00117.warc.gz | en | 0.982639 | 1,831 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Last Friday we engaged in a fascinating math lesson in the fourth grade. Students used a math manipulative/construction tool called INTOOBA. They each had a turn to build a structure and then gave directions to their partner to build it without using any visual cues. It was so interesting to watch this learning unfold.
One of my co-teachers and I modeled how it would work. At times I would step outside my role with my partner and share my thinking and my process out loud. “Do you notice how I’m touching the structure as I go? It’s helping me keep track of what I’ve told Ms. Rogers to do since I can’t see her progress.” “Watch my hand. I’m putting it on top of this connector to help me figure out what direction to tell her to turn and how far.” Demonstrating also gave me empathy what my students would experience as they did it. I could refer back to my modeling if I needed to when I talked with partners.
I saw students adeptly give directions, and I saw students be less specific, for example, saying that it should “look like a laser.” Sometimes the errors came from the way the direction was given, and other times one occurred because of the way that the listener interpreted the directions. I got insight into who has a visual thinking strength and how students communicate their spatial sense. I could see how students handled frustration and who had persistence to push through their challenges. I also noted students who needed a little scaffolding in this lesson and gave it to them as needed. I watched fascinating strategies unfold, for example, one student figured out which direction in the classroom was north and directed her partner to make the rod point north.
Additionally, one of my goals was to provide a different sort of math experience. Unfortunately, it’s true that by 4th grade some students have already decided that they don’t like math. I feel a deep responsibility to show students the many faces of math. It was gratifying to hear students exclaim that this math was actually fun. When students wrote in their math journals to respond to the reflection questions, many replied that they learned that math was also about communicating or that math didn’t always have to be about numbers. This feels like a good first step on our 4th grade journey into math explorations.
I love having the opportunity to sit back and watch how students tackle a task. I think it’s important to be a “watcher of learners” and to carefully observe what tools students are using and which ones they’re ready for next. I need to remember to create multiple opportunities to informally assess their skills in this way throughout the entire school year. | <urn:uuid:820e63bd-15a1-4943-bd0b-544d54ca776e> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | https://passionateteacherblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/math-its-not-always-about-numbers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247503844.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20190221091728-20190221113728-00116.warc.gz | en | 0.980262 | 573 | 2.96875 | 3 |
When is daylight saving time 2022? What to know about changing your clocks in Missouri
Missourians, get ready to change your clocks and lose an hour of sleep.
This spring's daylight saving time — the twice-yearly tradition of "springing forward" or "falling back" — is right around the corner. Here's what you need to know about the time change in Missouri.
When is daylight saving time 2022?
Daylight saving time starts on Sunday, March 13. Clocks spring forward at 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. CT that day.
You'll get your extra hour of sleep back when daylight saving time officially concludes at 2 a.m. CT on Sunday, Nov. 6.
Why was daylight saving time created?
The U.S. Department of Transportation says that daylight saving time conserves energy. When the sun sets later, it's presumed that people will stay out longer and spend more time outside. Theoretically, that leads to less electricity for lights and appliances.
Benjamin Franklin proposed the idea in 1784 after noticing people burning candles through the night but sleeping past dawn. However, the first national daylight saving time, set forth in a measure known as Standard Time Act, occurred in 1918 as a way to save fuel.
It took on its modern form in 1966 when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act into law.
Which states don't observe daylight saving time?
There are two: Arizona and Hawaii.
After Arizona observed daylight saving time in 1978, an exemption statute was enacted one year later. Under the Uniform Time Act, Hawaii opted out of the law, too. Hawaii's location — which has limited differences between summer and winter daylight hours — was the main factor.
Adam Hensley is a digital producer with the USA Today Network. You can follow him on Twitter @A_Hens83 or reach him at [email protected]. | <urn:uuid:f16d833a-b92b-4135-bc65-8e250d973950> | CC-MAIN-2022-21 | https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/missouri/2022/03/11/daylight-savings-time-2022-when-missouri-history-states-observe/7004258001/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-21/segments/1652662545090.44/warc/CC-MAIN-20220522063657-20220522093657-00292.warc.gz | en | 0.951989 | 400 | 2.734375 | 3 |
Carvalho L. M. V., C. Jones, A. E. Silva, B. Liebmann and P. L. Silva Dias (June 2011): The South American Monsoon System and the 1970s climate transition. Int. J. Climatol., 31 (8), 1248-1256. doi:10.1002/joc.2147Full text not available from this repository.
The South American Monsoon System (SAMS) is characterised by intense convective activity and precipitation during austral summer. This study investigates changes in the onset, demise and duration of SAMS during 1948–2008. The results show a significant change in these characteristics in the early 1970s. Onset becomes steadily earlier from 1948 to early 1970s and has occurred earlier than 23–27 October after 1972–1973. Demise dates have remained later than 21–25 April after the mid-to-late 1970s. SAMS duration shows a statistical changepoint in the summer of 1971–1972 such that the mean duration was ∼170 days (1948–1972) and 195 days (1972–1982). Vertically integrated moisture flux is used to diagnose changes in mean state and reveal statistically significant increases over South America after 1971–1972. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society
|Divisions:||Physical Sciences Division| | <urn:uuid:ffba46d6-1adc-4202-85f9-386be7902292> | CC-MAIN-2014-49 | http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/pubs/616/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-49/segments/1416400380355.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20141119123300-00083-ip-10-235-23-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.87338 | 274 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Hundreds of people have backed petitions against the fluoridation of water supplies in a city badly hit by tooth decay.
Campaigners say they oppose “forced medication” in Hull and claim studies implicate fluoride in serious illnesses including an increase in tumours and cancers.
Online petitions to Hull Council and East Riding Council, which will also be consulted, have gained nearly 300 signatures. Organiser Patrick Holdsworth, said: “Why should I be forced to drink a dangerous chemical? Fluoridation is forced medication with no concern for the dose administered or the level of sensitivity to fluoride toxicity of individuals drinking the water.” Research suggests 43.4 per cent of five-year-olds in Hull have tooth decay.
The British Dental Association said Birmingham, which introduced fluoridation half a century ago, saw child tooth decay fall by almost half in the first six years.
Scientific advisor Professor Damien Walmsley said despite “scaremongering” there was no evidence fluoride harmed health, citing a review last year by Public Health England which found no difference between fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas in rates of hip fracture, osteosarcoma (a form of bone cancer) and cancers overall. | <urn:uuid:060773af-76bd-47b1-adfb-0edbfea2ab43> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | http://fluoridealert.org/news/petitions-get-their-teeth-into-fluoride/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676590901.10/warc/CC-MAIN-20180719125339-20180719145339-00423.warc.gz | en | 0.952574 | 250 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Evolutionary Applications, doi:10.1111/j.1752-4571.2010.00132.x.
Perennial grain crops do not exist because they could not have evolved under the original set of conditions; however, they can be deliberately developed today through artificial phenotypic and genotypic selection.
In the course of their evolution, the angiosperms have radiated into most known plant forms and life histories. Their adaptation to a recently created habitat, the crop field, produced a novel form: the plant that allocates an unprecedented 30–60% of its net productivity to sexual structures. Long-lived trees, shrubs and vines of this form evolved, as did annual herbs. Perennial herb forms with increased allocation to asexual reproduction evolved, but there are no examples of perennial herbs with high sexual effort. We suggest that sowing seed into annually tilled fields favored shorter-lived herbs because of trade-offs between first-year seed production and relative growth rate and/or persistence. By propagating cuttings, people quickly domesticated tuber crops and large woody plants. Perennial herbs were too small to be efficiently propagated by cuttings, and the association between longevity, allogamy and genetic load made rapid domestication by sexual cycles unlikely. Perennial grain crops do not exist because they could not have evolved under the original set of conditions; however, they can be deliberately developed today through artificial phenotypic and genotypic selection.
This paper is now available online through Wiley Online Library. | <urn:uuid:b2cc5d3e-27aa-425f-aeda-52c242ba9a3e> | CC-MAIN-2016-40 | https://landinstitute.org/library-post/missing-domesticated-plant-forms-can-artificial-selection-fill-the-gap | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-40/segments/1474738659753.31/warc/CC-MAIN-20160924173739-00174-ip-10-143-35-109.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959072 | 319 | 3.859375 | 4 |
Researchers at the Austrian Academy of Sciences used stem cells to grow “primitive human brain tissue.” The scientists intend to use the tissue to study the early development of organs and medical disorders. The tissue could provide a much more useful and informative way to conduct research on the human brain; formerly, scientists conducted such research using the brain tissue of mice. A mouse’s brain does not provide an adequate model for the study of the human brain because there are vast differences in the way the brains of the two species develop. In addition, the scientists suggested that the primitive human brain tissue will allow researchers to avoid some animal experimentation.
Read more here. | <urn:uuid:e5ffe44d-2a42-4408-b615-1f4a27cb1b4d> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | https://hofstrabioethics.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/scientists-grow-primitive-human-brain-tissue-using-stem-cells/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948512054.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20171211014442-20171211034442-00484.warc.gz | en | 0.935245 | 133 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Did you know that you can reduce your impact on the environment by replacing dairy milk with soy milk?
The water footprint of a product is the amount of freshwater required to produce it.
A 2011 study found that that the water footprint of 1 litre of dairy milk produced in the UK is 540 litres. In comparison, the water footprint of 1 litre of soy milk produced in Belgium is 297 litres. (N.B. The UK is largely self-sufficient in milk. Alpro, a leading soy milk brand in the UK has a factory in Belgium).
The carbon footprint of a product is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted during its life cycle – from agriculture, through processing and packaging, distribution, use and disposal.
British dairy milk from Tesco has a carbon footprint of between 1.2-1.5 kg CO2 emissions per litre (0.7-0.9 kg CO2 emissions per pint) depending on the type of milk (skimmed milk has a lower carbon footprint than whole milk). In comparison, Tesco own-brand soy milk has a carbon footprint of between 0.8-0.9kg CO2 emissions per litre (N.B. Tesco does not disclose which country its soy beans are sourced from).
Rest assured that both Tesco and Alpro soy milk do not contribute to deforestation to grow soy beans in the Amazon. Interestingly, Alpro mainly sources soy beans from France, and is committed to carbon neutrality by 2020.
If you can’t wait until 2020 and prefer a local plant milk alternative, try ‘Good Hemp’. This hemp milk is grown in Devon and is herbicide and pesticide-free.
Other carbon footprint considerations
- Storage: fresh milk requires refrigerated transportation and storage in supermarkets. On the other hand, long life soy milk doesn’t require refrigeration, which means that the energy needed to refrigerate the product is being saved.
- Packaging: Dairy milk tends to be packaged in HDPE plastic bottles which are commonly collected by kerbside recycling schemes. Soy milk tends to be packaged in Tetra Pak containers which aren’t always collected – find out if your council can collect Tetra Pak here.
Did you know?
- This study suggests that 14 calories of energy are required to produce 1 calorie of milk protein on a conventional farm. In comparison just 0.75 calories of energy are required to produce 1 calorie of soymilk protein.
- The average cow emits 100kg of methane every year. Methane is a greenhouse gas with an effect 23 times greater than carbon dioxide, so this is equivalent to 2300kg CO2 emissions per year.
- Dairy milk has a lower carbon footprint than beef because you get more milk out of each cow over its lifetime than beef. Cheese has a higher carbon footprint than dairy milk due to the intensive production process of cheese-making – It takes 10 units of milk to make 1 unit of cheese. | <urn:uuid:aed371af-5ba7-4d41-9fad-c4edc5e0ee27> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | https://crueltyfreelife.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/sustainability-of-dairy-milk-vs-soy-milk/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131298177.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172138-00253-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92591 | 607 | 2.828125 | 3 |
They say you think about it every seven seconds. Without it, the world would be desolate, save for the few organisms that can reproduce asexually. Sex is at the center of all life, so why is it so taboo? Why can’t we talk about it in public? Why is HBO the only channel that dares to show a boob? Why are young people, particularly girls, shamed and ostracized for wanting sex? Man’s biological desire and Evangelical sexual repression have been in constant and sometimes violent contention throughout written history. Countless works of literature, including the Bible, aim to make a judgement on the sinfulness or purity of sex. One influential and global example of this is the modern Vampire. Though this creature of the night had innocent folkloric origins, the contemporary Vampire is a metaphor covertly promoting sexual conservatism.
In fiction and folk tales, Vampires have existed in some form or another for almost as long as humans. Before they became a metaphor against human sexuality, the pre-vampire was invented with the intent to scare and entertain. Monsters such as the Lamashtu of Mesopotamia, Manananggal of the Philippines, and Mullo of Romania where created as folk tales, passed on for generations (Molina). These creations of the imagination did not aim to make a social statement. Their qualities were much more gruesome than seductive. The Lamashtu, for example, was described as having “the head of a lion, and the body of a donkey” (Molina). This creature obviously shares no similarities or connection with sex, even symbolically. These tales were as sensational in their time as “Twilight” was a number of years ago, despite their lack of allegorical meaning. In Romania, the story of corpses reanimating to take a snack break upon the living was so popular, the Queen began to push legislation forbidding grave tampering (Molina). Though these old folktales did not yet make a political statement, they were a global sensation, allowing their image to be taken by authors around the world all the while adapting and changing as the phenomena spread around the world.
Although the dawn of the contemporary Vampire can’t be pinpointed to one work of literature, many late nineteenth century works can be credited with some of the most revolutionary changes to the creature. Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula was among the first to create the metaphor between the mythical creature and sex. In his book, Vampires are seductive, so much so that while humans fear them, their deepest instincts fixate them on the creatures. Being bitten by a Vampire was impure, and would change you forever. These qualities along with others are shared with Victorian ideas of sex. One could not want sex, in spite of their instinctual desires, and participating in the act would change you by either poisoning your purity or leaving you with a sexually transmitted disease. Furthermore, more similarities such as the penetration of the bite and the trading of fluids draw sex and Vampirism even closer. The leading creature of the night, Count Dracula, also shared qualities with an individual who has a sexually transmitted infection, particularly one similar to Syphilis. The common symptoms of Syphilis and other severe STDs can usually be characterized by pale, almost translucent skin, dark nail beds, and elongated teeth because of the receding of the gums; these traits, now commonly known characteristics of the Vampire, make their first appearance in Dracula. Given that vampirism is a metaphor for sexual activity, how are we to be certain Stoker is critical of sexuality? Aside from the connection to sexually transmitted diseases, Stoker’s unique version of the Vampire is particularly unholy. For example, the modern vampire’s aversion to crucifixes was invented with the pages ofDracula (Molina). Aside from this and Dracula’s seductive yet sickly demeanor, sex and Vampires are shown to be similarly destructive in stories like Carmilla, which predates Dracula by 26 years. Carmilla used vampires as a metaphor for lesbianism, and it is implied that the violent death of the titular character is punishment for her sexuality (Meslow). After Carmilla andDracula, the path of the vampire has not wavered away from sexual metaphor, but instead refocused its target audience.
The seductive creature of the night has refocused its attention to young adults- particularly young women. This audience is also the target of purity rings, virginity sermons, and other religious and moral efforts to curtail teen sexuality. This is no coincidence. Stephanie Meyer, a devout Mormon and first time author, wrote the novel “Twilight” with the very same metaphor asDracula. Just like in Dracula, the vampire in Twilight seduces and romances a pure and innocent young girl. The vampire, Edward, knows it is “wrong” to bite his human romantic interest, but his instinctual desires provide an immense temptation for him. The parallel here is that young men know it is “wrong” to have sex, but their instinctual desires drive them to think and act against this notion of purity. Furthermore, in another undisguised similarity, Meyer included in her novel that infecting a human with vampirism was not morally wrong in one circumstance. That being the very circumstance that dispels the religious impurity and sinfulness of sex; Edward can infact morally bite Bella if, and only if, they are married. Despite these overt similarities, there are those who disagree with the idea that Twilight was a negative interpretation of sexuality. Scott Meslow argues that the novel goes against the past trend of vampiric conservatism. He claims that Twilight “[uses] the vampire not to push the limits of human sexuality, but to scale them back” (Meslow). His defense is that Edward and Bella’s relationship is not sexual, in contrast with the seduction and explicitly sexual nature of past vampire literature. However, the couple’s chastity is not a hint that Meyer did not intend to draw the metaphor, but rather a result of it. The relationship between sex and marriage is essential to the creation of the allegory. Instead of showing that sex or vampirism before marriage will have disastrous consequences, like in Dracula, Meyer shows that sex or vampirism is okay after marriage. Both are strategies to deter sex before marriage, just with different angles. The young women who are the most likely to read this book will almost certainly have heard Meyer’s message of abstinence before, but what makes Twilight unique is that the audience doesn’t know it’s being preached to. While some of the girls reading the novel may have attended a sermon or listened to their parent’s lectures on purity, Twilight creates an exemplary scenario that reaches them like no other method by showing them that romantic, devoted, handsome young men will love them if they retain their purity until marriage. This message is evident in Twilight regardless of one’s own position on the issue.
While changes have certainly occurred in the meaning of the vampire, the allegory that vampires have become is not inherently harmful to society. Personal religious and moral aversion to sex alone is not harmful. However, the point at which valuing your own personal chastity becomes judgement and damnation upon others is disruptive and antiquated. Educating young people about the dangers of unsafe sex is certainly a great cause, but making teens hate themselves for their natural desires is too far. If we teach boys and girls to value their health and well being instead of their purity, who knows, there may just be a vampire who will love a girl even if she’s already been bitten. | <urn:uuid:ceb8df14-1bf7-4865-885f-f17c9a341ac8> | CC-MAIN-2017-51 | http://digital-kiss.com/twilight-and-the-sexual-revolution/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-51/segments/1512948587496.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20171216084601-20171216110601-00010.warc.gz | en | 0.960992 | 1,590 | 2.703125 | 3 |
For people with chronic diseases such as arthritis and diabetes, “Why me?” is a common question. Now, scientists think they may have an answer. Researchers say they’ve located chemical tags — or genetic modifiers — that can turn certain genes on and off.
What Is It?
In a recent study, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden looked at patients with rheumatoid arthritis (an autoimmune disease), but their work might also apply to people suffering from other chronic conditions such as type II diabetes and heart problems. Researchers compared 354 newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis patients and 337 healthy people and examined the white blood cells in both groups. They were looking for differences in the participants’ DNA, specifically chemical tags that could turn genes on and off.
Turns out just having a gene that increases the risk for rheumatoid arthritis doesn’t seal a person’s biological fate. Researchers found that all the patients with rheumatoid arthritis in the study had four specific tags, or DNA methyls, on one cluster of genes that affects the immune response and the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis. The tags were like a green light for the disease genes: Even though some patients in the healthy group had genes for rheumatoid arthritis, they didn’t develop the disease, presumably because they didn’t have those four specific tags.
Why It Matters
The study is one example of epigenetics, a field of research that studies how genetic modifications can influence the risk for certain diseases. Epigenetic researchers have known about the importance of genetic tags for a while, but they still aren’t sure exactly how these tags end up on our DNA. Scientists suspect some tags aren’t just the cause of diseases, but that they’re actually caused by diseases. Other tags are probably the result of environmental factors (such as diet, stress, and toxins) or certain medications.
Recently, a lot of research in the field has focused on the ways DNA methylation can affect the progression of rheumatoid arthritis Regulation of DNA Methylation in Rheumatoid Arthritis Synoviocytes. Nakano, K., Boyle, D.L., Firestein, G.S. Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology, University of California San Diego School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA. Journal of Immunology 2012. New advances of DNA methylation and histone modifications in rheumatoid arthritis, with special emphasis on MeCP2. Miao, C.G., Yang, Y.Y., He, X., et al. School of Food and Drug, Anhui Science and Technology University, Bengbu, China. Cellular Signaling 2012. Epigenetics in rheumatoid arthritis. Trenkmann, M., Brock, M., Ospelt, C., et al. Center of Experimental Rheumatology and Zurich Center for Integrative Human Physiology (ZIHP), University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. Clinical Reviews in Allergy and Immunology 2010 Aug;39(1):10-9.. But this study was unique in that researchers were able to figure out which tags contributed to the growth of the disease and which ones only appeared after the arthritis had already developed.
No one’s saying the results of this study are going to lead directly to a cure for rheumatoid arthritis or any other disease. Nor is it likely that researchers will be able to know with 100 percent accuracy who’s going to develop these health problems. But this research is a great step toward being able to predict which people are at risk for certain diseases and, ultimately, trying to prevent them.
Would you want to know if you have the tags that increase your risk for certain diseases? Let us know in the comments below or tweet the author at @ShanaDLebowitz. | <urn:uuid:0d6e7708-6495-4d45-9414-82a89b285047> | CC-MAIN-2019-09 | https://greatist.com/health/epigenetics-arthritis-diseases-genes-012113 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-09/segments/1550247481832.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20190217091542-20190217113542-00291.warc.gz | en | 0.921144 | 811 | 3.0625 | 3 |
Bill of Rights
Electric cooperative utilities are unique in that they are owned and controlled by the consumers they serve. In an evolving restructuring of the entire electric industry, electric cooperatives are vigorously pursuing policies that will protect the individual and economic interests of all consumers; included among these interests are:
1. The right to have access to reliable, affordable and safe electric power.
The availability of reliable, affordable and safe electric power is a necessity for life issue, as well as an important factor that drives the country's economic engine. Consumers have a right to expect reliable, affordable, and safe electric power. Consumers have a right to expect uniform standards of electric power across the country as they travel or move. Each sector of the electric utility industry is different: each is structured differently, financed differently and, aside from the provision of electric service, organized for different purposes. All electric utilities receive federal assistance and the form of federal assistance is different for each sector. In an era of competition, consumers should expect to have many choices. However, all energy providers should have the obligation to provide reliable, affordable and safe electric power. The obligation of lawmakers is to recognize the differences among electric utilities and to treat them differently in legislation.
2. The right to join together to establish and operate a consumer-owned, not-for-profit electric utility. Current consumer protection depends on government regulation, local service territories, and voluntary cooperation among thousands of utility systems with local service obligations. If that system is to be replaced with competition, where "big dogs eat first," where utility systems are allowed to become huge combines remote from local consumers, and where energy providers are free to choose the customer class that provides them the most profit, consumers must have a way to protect themselves. All electric consumers must have the right to join together to establish and operate a consumer-owned electric system to provide themselves with electricity according to their own needs.
3. The right of consumer-owned, not-for-profit systems to be treated fairly and recognized as a unique form of business. Electric cooperatives (co-ops) are independently-owned business enterprises incorporated under the laws of the state in which they operate. Electric cooperatives are owned and controlled by the consumers they serve. The co-op difference resides in consumer ownership and control. Thus, for co-ops to be treated fairly by government regulation, they must be recognized as a unique form of business, different from investor-owned or community-owned systems. As recognized by the federal courts, since the consumer owns the cooperative, there is no motive for the cooperative to mislead, cheat, overcharge, or act in any way that is not in the consumer-owners' interests.
4. The right to elect representatives to manage their consumer-owned form of business to best meet their needs. Electric cooperative consumers (members) participate in the operation of the co-op by electing a board of directors from among its co-op consumers to establish the co-op's basic policies, goals and strategies, as well as to determine the rates and types of service(s) they wish to receive. In a competitive environment, consumer-owned and controlled cooperatives will be a more important discipline in the marketplace and a more important force for innovation as long as local ownership, local control and local autonomy are not abridged through unnecessary government regulation.
5. The individual right to privacy that assures information about consumers will not be released without their prior express consent. Historically, consumer-owned cooperatives have advocated levels of information disclosure beyond industry standards but necessary for judging the performance of utility systems. Recently, however, discussions on energy policy have included the idea that utility systems should be required to collect and divulge extraordinary consumer-specific information. Consumers should have the right to determine how information collected about them is used. Consumer-owned cooperatives should not be required to collect or to divulge consumer-specific information.
6. The right to determine the scope of energy services to be furnished through their consumer-owned, not-for-profit utilities. In a competitive environment, consumer-owned cooperatives, with their local ownership, local control and local autonomy provide a fast, efficient and flexible way for consumers to address their needs.
7. The right to use consumer-owned not-for-profit utilities to provide additional services that meet the needs of their consumers and communities. All electric consumers must have the right to join together to establish and operate a consumer-owned electric system, if they so choose. In addition, consumers must retain the right to use their cooperative as a means to meet their needs and expectations over time.
8. The right to work in cooperation with other consumer-owned entities with common goals. Consumer-owned cooperatives should be able to work together to provide a countervailing balance of power in the marketplace to the huge investor-owned combines that are likely to result from deregulation. Consumer-owned cooperatives should be able to work together to provide an open window into the operation of a competitive electric market for all consumers. Consumer-owned, not-for-profit cooperatives should be able to work together to provide a "yardstick" by which all consumers can measure the performance of the market and market participants.
This Electric Energy Consumer Bill of Rights was overwhelmingly approved by the membership of NRECA at its 57th Annual Meeting in March 1999. | <urn:uuid:733d5825-c682-4c67-953d-37a613ae4a90> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://westcentralelectric.coop/content/bill-rights | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676590127.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20180718095959-20180718115959-00096.warc.gz | en | 0.964405 | 1,086 | 3.03125 | 3 |
|Varanasi is one of the oldest living cities in the world. Many names have been given to Varanasi, though its recently revived official appellation is mentioned in the Mahabharata and in the Jataka tales of Buddhism. It probably derives from the two rivers that flank the city, the Varana to the north and the Asi to the south.. Many still use the anglicized forms of Banaras or Benares, while pilgrims refer to Kash, first used three thousand years ago to describe the kingdom and the city outside which the Buddha preached his first sermon; the "City of Light" is also called Kashika, "the shining one", referring to the light of Shiva. Another epithet, Avimukta, meaning "Never Forsaken", refers to the city that Shiva never deserted, or that one should never leave. Further alternatives include Anandavana, the "forest of bliss", and Rudravasa, the place where Shiva (Rudra) resides.
Varanasi’s associations with Shiva extend to the beginning of time: legends relate how, after his marriage to Parvati, Shiva left his Himalayan abode and came to reside in Kashi with all the gods in attendance. Temporarily banished during the rule of the great king Divodasa, Shiva sent Brahma and Vishnu as his emissaries, but ultimately returned to his rightful abode protected by his loyal attendants Kalabhairav and Dandapani. Over 350 gods and goddesses, including a protective ring of Ganeshaa form a mandala or sacred pattern with Shiva Vishwanatha at its centre.
Each name carries an additional meaning in terms of the sacred symbolism of the city, with each defining a progressively decreasing arc starting and ending on the west bank of the Ganges. While the boundary of Kashi is delimited by the circular Panchakroshi Road, Varanasi is the main city, extending from Asi Ghat and circling around to the confluence of the Ganges and the Varana. Yet a smaller area, defined as Avimukta, starts at Kedara Ghat in the south and ends at Trilochana Ghat. Most important of all is Antargriha, the "Inner Sanctum" around the Vishwanatha Temple, which encompasses Dashashwamedha Ghat, Surya Kund, the lingam of Bharabhuta, and Manikarnika Ghat. Another, later, interpretation suggests three sectors of khandas in the form of Shiva’s trident, each centered around a temple – Omkara to the north, Vishvanatha in the centre and Kendra to the south.
A city which, since it is both an exalted place of pilgrimage and an idealize centre of faith, has been likened to Jerusalem and Mecca.According to the historians, the city was founded some ten centuries before the birth of Christ. The city is mentioned in Holy Scriptures like 'Vamana Purana', Buddhist texts and in the epic 'Mahabharata'.Mark Twain,the English author and literature,who was enthralled by the legend and sanctity of Banaras,once wrote:"Banaras is older than history,older than tradition,older even than legend and looks twice as old as all of them put together."
Varanasi's prominence in Hindu mythology is virtually unrivaled. For the devout Hindu the city has always had a special place, besides being a pilgrimage centre,it is considered especially auspicious to die here, ensuring an instant route to heaven. The revered and ancient city Varanasi is the religious centre of the world of Hindus. A city where the past and present, eternity and continuity coexist.
The city of Banaras is situated on the west bank of the holiest of all Indian rivers, the Ganga or Ganges. The relationship between the sacred river and the city is the essence of Varanasi - 'the land of sacred light'. The Ganga is believed to have flown from heaven to wash away the worldly sins of the human race of mortal's .The life and activities in the city centre around the holy river. Life on the banks of the Ganga begins before dawn when thousands of pilgrims - men, women and children - come down to the river to wait for the rising sun when immersion in the sacred river will cleanse them of their sufferings and wash their sins away.
Along the water's edge, there are the burning ghats. The most sacred one is Manikarnika, associated with Goddess Parvati, Lord Shiva's wife. The major shrine is the Vishwanath Temple the abode of Lord Shiva, the most important of the trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara, the Lords of this universe. Around this temple evolved the spiritual identity of Varanasi .The holy city within Banaras is thus called, Kashi, the luminous one or the city of the light.
It is beside the holy waters of the Ganga that the activities for which Banaras is held sacred are performed. Everyday thousands of residents and pilgrims bathe, offer prayers to the elements, to the rising sun, and to their dead ancestors who have been carried away by these waters. What draws people to the river is an ingrained belief that these waters can absolve the sins of many generations.
Everyone has their own way of celebrating the ritual contact with the holy Ganga: some bathe; other dip themselves entirely into the water once, thrice or any number of times; some drink the water; other make water offerings to the sun; while others fill their pots with holy water to take back to their homes to perform rituals and purification.The offerings to the sacred waters vary. Pilgrims give flowers, fruits, lamps and their respectful prayers. On festival days and religious occasions the riverside is thick with their colorful bobbing up and down on the waters.
The land around Banaras is also held sacred since Shiva is believed to have lived here.There are thousands of temples at Benaras dedicated to different gods and goddesses, particularly to the deities of good fortune and prosperity-and to the sun and the planets. The most important are those that honor the diverse manifestations and attributes of Shiva.The major shrine at Banaras is the Vishvanatha Temple, devoted to Shiva, the Lord of the Universe.
The appearance of the pillar of light is said to have occurred at the site of Vishvanatha Temple. The holy city within Banaras is thus called Kashi "The Luminous One' or the 'City of Light'. Light in Hindu philosophy has great meaning for it exemplifies the wisdom that destroys the darkness of ignorance. Sin and evil are understood to be the acts of ignorance. When wisdom is acquired, evil will disappear. Sin cannot be washed away by water or prayer but only by wisdom. Immorality is also reached through wisdom and understanding. So the City of Light is the City of Eternal Wisdom as well. To die in the city beside the river of life is to die with a promise of redemption, a promise to be liberated from the endless cycle of life and death and reincarnation, and to gain moksha or eternal absolution. So for centuries thousands of people have come to Banaras to die and thousands have brought the ashes of the dead here to immerse them in the holy waters.
Banaras has always been associated with philosophy and wisdom. A place of learning for many years, the Banaras Hindu University carries on this tradition. The University campus, to the south of the city, was built at the beginning of this century. Pundit Madan Mohan Malviya was instrumental in founding it. On campus is the Bharat Kala Bhavan Museum, which originated from the private collection of Rai Krishnadasa.
The Banaras region was administered by Hindu rulers for several hundred years until the 17th century, when it fell into the hands of the Mughals. As was the practice many buildings of the previous rulers and the religious structures of the Hindu and Buddhists were demolished during the wars of the conquest.
In Banaras we find many places where a temple once stood and where now mosque or some other structure stands. However, there is a little known farman, or royal decree, in the Bharat Kala Bhavan museum, which claims that Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal ruler, ordered his administrators to abstain from destroying any more temples. In succeeding years as Banaras continued to grow, the temples that were destroyed, were rebuilt or relocated.
Since Banaras is a pilgrimage centre, revered and honored throughout India, pilgrims come from all parts of the country to visit it. Some travel 2,000 kilometers to bathe in the Ganga and to honor their dead. Earlier pilgrims used to walk to Banaras on foot, and along the way visited other pilgrimages.The antiquity of Banaras is known not just by the archeological remains but by the diverse and varied literature of India
The inflow of pilgrims developed Banaras as a trade centre. Besides traders, crafts people also settled in Banaras. Today the city is renowned for its silk weavers, who prepare the finest types of woven silk fabrics. A Banaras silk sari or shawl is traditionally a single colored textile with motifs and patterns woven in gold or silver threads. The technique is intricate, the procedure complex and demands great expertise .As the warp and the weft are interwoven on the loom, small ,often minute shuttles with gold thread are introduced to form the motif. When the design of the motif is completed, a knot is made and the gold thread cut. The weaving continues until the next design. The smaller the motif or the more intricate the design, the more complex the weaving skills required.
Silk weaving in Banaras is a cottage industry and in many areas of the city, especially the Muslim quarters, one can see looms at work all day . Entire families are involved, Children often pick up the art from the elders at an early age. There are shops in Banaras, and throughout India, that sell these fine silk fabrics.
Area: 73.89 sq. km.
Population : 1322248 (1991 census)
Altitude : 80.71 mtrs. Above sea level
Season: October – March
Clothing: Summer - Cottons; Winters - Woolens
Language: Hindi and English
Festivals: Shivratri, Dussehra, Ganga Festival, Bharat Milap, Dhrupad Mela, Hanumat Jayanti, Nakkatyya Chetganj, Nag Nathaiya Panch Kroshi Parikrama.
Local Transport : Buses, Cycle-rickshaws, Auto-rickshaws
STD Code : 0542
Places to visit
River Front ( Ghats)
The great river banks at Varanasi, built high with eighteenth and nineteenth-century pavilions and palaces, temples and terraces, are lined with an endless chain of stone steps – the ghats – progressing along the whole of the waterfront, altering in appearance with the dramatic seasonal fluctuations of the river level. Each of the hundred ghats, big and small, is marked by a lingam, and occupies its own special place in the religious geography of the city. Some have crumbled over the years, others continue to thrive, with early-morning bathers, Brahmin priests offering puja, and people practicing meditation and yoga. Hindus puja, and people practicing meditation and yoga. Hindus regard the Ganges as amrita, the elixir of life, which brings purity to the living and salvation to the dead; sceptical outsiders tend to focus on all-persuasive and extreme lack of hygiene. Ashes to the dead, emissions from open drains and the left-overs from religious rites float by the devout as they go about their bathing and ceremonial cleansing.
For centuries, pilgrims have traced the perimeter of the city by a ritual circumambulation , paying homage to shrines on the way. Among the most popular routes is the Panchatirthi Yatra, which takes in the Pancha, (five) Trithi (crossing) of Asi, Dashashwamedha, Adi Keshva, Panchganga and finally Manikarnika. To gain merit or appease the gods, the devotee, accompanied by a panda (priest), recites a sankalpa (statement of intent) and performs a ritual at each stage of the journey. For the casual visitor, however the easiest way to see the is to follow a south-north sequence either by boat or on foot.
Asi Ghat to Kedara Ghat
At the clay-banked Asi Ghat, the southernmost in the sacred city, at the confluence of the Asi and the Ganges, pilgrims bathe prior to worshipping at a huge lingam under a peepal tree. Another lingam visited is that of Asisangameshvara, the "Lord of the Confluence of the Asi", in a small marble temple just off the ghat. Traditionally, pilgrims continued to Lolarka Kund, the Trembling Sun", a rectangular tank fifteen metres blow ground level, approached by steep steps. Now almost abandoned, except during the Lolarka Mela fair (Aug/Sept), when thousands come to propitiate the gods and pray for the birth of a son, Lolarka Kund is among Varanasi’s earliest sites, one of only two remaining Sun sites linked with the origins of Hinduism. Equated with the twelve adityas or divisions of the sun, which predate the great deities of Modern Hinduism, it was attracting bathers in the days of the Buddha.
Much of the adjacent Tulsi Ghat – originally Lolarka Ghat, but renamed in the honor of the poet Tulsidas, who lived nearby in the sixteenth century – has crumbled. Continuing north, above Shivala Ghat, hanuman Ghat is the site of a new temple built by the ghat’s large south Indian community. Considered by many to be the birth place of the fifteenth-century Vaishnavite saint Vallabha, who was instrumental in in the resurgence of the worship of Krishna, the ghat also features a striking image of Ruru, the dog Bhairava, a ferocious and early form of Shiva.
Named for a legendary king said to have almost lost everything in a fit of self-abnegation, Harishchandra Ghat, one of the Varanasi’s two cremation of burning ghats, is easily recognizable from the smoke of its funeral pyres.
Further north, the busy Kendra Ghat is ignored by pilgrims on the Panchatirthi Yatra. Above its steps, a red-and-white-striped temple houses the Kedareshvara lingam, an outcrop of black rock shot through with a vein of white. Mythologically related to Kedarnath in the Himalayas, Kedara and its ghat become a hive of activity during the sacred month of Sravana (July/Aug), the month of the rains.
Chauki Ghat to Chaumsathi Ghat
Northwards along the river, Chauki Ghat is distinguished by an enormous tree that shelters small stones shrines to the nagas, water-snake deities, while at the unmistakable Dhobi (Laundrymen’s) Ghat clothes are still rhythmically pulverized in the pursuit of purity. Past smaller ghats such as Mansarovar Ghat, named after the holy lake in Tibet, and Narada Ghat, honoring the divine musician and sage, lies Chaumsathi Ghat, where impressive stone steps lead up to the small temple of the Chaumsathi (64) Yoginis. Images of Kali and Durga in its inner sanctum represent a stage in the emergence of the great goddess as a single representation of a number of female divinities. Overlooking the ghats here is Peshwa Amrit Rao’s majestic sandstone haveli (mansion), built in 1807 and currently used for religious ceremonies and occasionally, as an auditorium for concerts.
Dashashwamedha Ghat, the second and business of the five tirthas on the Panchatirthi Yatra, lies past the plain, flat-roofed building that houses the shrine of Shitala. Extremely popular, even in the rainy season when devotees have to wade to the temple or take a boat, Shitala represents both both benign and malevolent aspects – ease and succor as well as disease, particularly smallpox.
Dashashwamedha is Varanasi’s most popular and accessible bathing ghat, with rows of pandas sitting on wooden platforms under bamboo umbrellas, masseurs plying their trade and boatmen jostling for custom. Its name, "ten horse sacrifices", derives from a complex series of sacrifices performed by Brahma to test King Divodasa: Shiva and Parvati were sure the king’s resolve would fail, and he would be compelled to leave Kashi, thereby allowing them to return to their city. However, the sacrifices were so perfect that Brahma established the Brahmeshvara lingam here. Since that time, Dashashwamedha has become one of the most celebrated tirthas on earth, where pilgrims can reap the benefits of the huge sacrifice merely by bathing.
Man Mandir Ghat to Lalita Ghat
Man Mandir Ghat is known primarily for its magnificent eighteenth-century observatory, equipped with ornate window casings, and built for the Maharajah of Jaipur. Pilgrims pay homage to the important lingam of Someshvara, the lord of the moon, alongside, before crossing Tripurabhairavi Ghat to Mir Ghat and the New Vishwanatha Temple, built by conservative Brahmins who claimed that the main Vishwanatha lingam was rendered impure when Harijans (untouchables) entered the sanctum in 1956. Mir Ghat also has a shrine to Vaishalakshi, the Wide-eyed Goddess, on an important pitha – a site marking the place where various parts of the disintegrating body of Shakti fell as it was carried by the grief-stricken Shiva. Also here is the Dharma Kupa, the Well of Dharma, surrounded by subsidiary shrines and the lingam over all the dead of the world – except here in Varanasi.
Immediately to the north is Lalita Ghat, renowned for its ganga Keshava shrine to Vishnu and the Nepali Temple, a typical Kathmandu-style wooden temple which houses an image of Pashupateshvara – Shiva’s manifestation at Pashupatinath, in the Mathmandu Valley – and sports a small selection of erotic carvings.
North of Lalita lies Varanasi’s preeminent cremation ground, Manikarnika Ghat. Such grounds are usually held to be inauspicious, and located on the fringes of cities, but the entire city of Shiva is regarded as Mahashmashana, the Great Cremation Ground for the corpse of the entire universe. The ghat is perpetually crowded with funeral parties, as well as the Doms, its Untouchable guardians, busy and pre-occupied with facilitating final release for those lucky enough to pass away here. Seeing bodies being cremated so publicly has always exerted a great fascination for visitors to the city, but photography is strictly taboo; even having a camera visible may be constructed as intent, and provoke hostility.
Lying at the centre of the five tirthas, manikarnika Ghat symbolizes both creation and destruction, epitomized by the juxtaposition of the sacred well of Manikarnika Kund, said to have been dug by Vishnu at the time of creation, and the hot, sandy ash-infused soil of cremation grounds where time comes to an end. In Hindu mythology, Manikarnika Kund predates the arrival of the Ganga and has its source deep in the Himalayas. Vishnu cared the kund with his discus, and filled it with perspiration from his exertions in creating the world, at the behest of Shiva. When Shiva quivered with delighted, his earning fell into this pool, which as manikarnika – "Jeweled Earring" – became the first tirthas in the world. Every yea, after the floodwaters of the river have receded to leave the pool caked in alluvial deposits, the kund is re-dug. Its surroundings are cleaned and painted with brightly coloured folk art, which depicts the presiding goddess, Manikarnika Devi, inviting pilgrims to bathe and worship at its small Vishnu shrine, and at the paduka (footprint) of Vishnu set in marble on the embankment of the ghat. The most important of the lingams is the remains of Tarakeshvara, Shiva as Lord of Taraka mantra, a "prayer of the crossing" recited at death.
Strictly speaking, Manikarnika is the name given to the kund and to the ghat, while the constantly busy cremation ground is Jalasi Ghat, dominated by a dark smoke-stained temple built by Queen Ahalya Bai Holkar of Indore in the eighteenth century.
Bordering Manikarnika to the north is the picturesque Scindia Ghat, with its titled Shiva temple lying partially submerged in the river, having fallen in as a result of the sheer weight of the ghat’s construction around 150 years ago. Above the ghat, several of Kashi’s most influential shrines are hidden within the tight maze of alleyways of the area known as Siddha Kshetra (the field of Fulfillment). Vireshvara, the Lord of all Heroes, is especially propitiated in prayer for a son; the Lord of Fire, Agni, was supposed to have been born here.
Panchganga Ghat to Adi Keshva Ghat
Beyond Lakshmanbala Ghat, with its commanding views of the river. Lies one of the most dramatic and controversial ghats, Panchganga Ghat, dominated by Varanasi’s largest riverside building, the great mosque of Alamgir, known locally as Beni Madhav-ka-Darera. With its minarets now much shortened, the mosque stands on the ruins of what must have been one of the city’s greatest temples, Bindu Madhava, a huge Vishnu temple that extended from Panchganga to Rama Ghat before it was destroyed by Aurangzeb and replaced by an impressive mosque. Panchganga also bears testimony to more favorable Hindu-Muslim relations, being the site of the initiation of the medieval saint of the Sufi-Sant tradition, Kabir, the son of a humble Muslim weaver who is venerated by Hindus and Muslims alike. Along the river front lies a curious array of three-sided cells, submerged during the rainy season, some with lingams, others with images of Vishnu, and some empty and used for meditation or yoga. One of these is a shrine to the Five (panch) Rivers (ganga) which, according to legend, have their confluence here: the two symbolic rivulets of Dhutapapa (Cleansed of Sin) and the Kirana (Sun’s Ray), which join the mythical confluence of the Yamuna and the Yamuna and the Sarasvati with the Ganga.
Above Trilochana Ghat, further north, is the holy ancient lingam of the Three (tri) Eye (lochana) Shiva. Beyond it, the river bypasses some of Varanasi’s oldest precincts, now predominantly Muslim in character; the ghats themselves gradually become less impressive and are usually of the kaccha (clay-banked) variety.
At Adi Keshava Ghat (the "Original Vishnu"), on the outskirts of the city, the Varana flows into the Ganga. Unapproachable during the rainy season, when it is completely submerged, it marks the place where Vishnu first landed as an emissary of Shiva, and stands on the original site of the city before it spread southwards; around Adi Keshva are a number of Ganesha shrine.
The Old City at the heart of Varanasi, between Dashashwamedha Ghat and Godaulia to the south and west and Manikarnika Ghat on the river to the north, lies Vishwanatha Khanda, sometimes referred to as the Old City. The whole area rewards exploration, with numerous shrines and lingams tucked into every corner, and buzzing with the activity of pilgrims, pandas and stalls selling offerings to the faithful.
Approached through a maze of narrow alleys and the Vishwanatha Gali (or Lane), the temple complex of Vishwanatha or Visheshwara, the "Lord of All", is popularly known as the Golden Temple, due to the massive gold plating on its shikhara (spire). Inside the compound - which is hidden behind a wall, and entered through an unassuming doorway - is one of India's most important shivalingams, made of smooth black stone and seated in a solid silver plinth, as well as shrines to the wrathful protectors Mahakala and Dandapani, and the lingam of Avimukteshvara, the Lord of the Unforsaken, which predates Vishwanatha and once held much greater significance. The current temple was built in 1777 by Queen Ahalya Bai Holkar of Indore, and is closed to non-Hindus, who have to make do with glimpses from adjacent buildings.
Vishwanatha's history has been fraught Sacked by successive Muslim rulers, the temple was repeatedly rebuilt, until the grand edifice begun in 1585 by Todar Mal, a courtier of the tolerant Moghul Akbar, was finally destroyed by Aurangzeb. On its foundations, guarded by armed police to protect it from Hindu fanatics, stands the Jnana Vapi Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Aurangzeb. Its simple white domes tower over the Jnana Vapi (Wisdom Well), immediately north, housed in an open arcaded hall built in 1828, where Shiva cooled his lingam after the construction of Vishwanatha. Covered by a grate to prevent people jumping in, in search of instant moksha, and covered with a cloth to stop coins being thrown in, only the presiding Brahmins have access to its waters, considered to be liquid knowledge.
Pilgrims offer their sankalpa or statement of intent here, before commencing the Panchatirthi Yatra. Slightly north, across the main road, the thirteenth-century Razia's Mosque stands atop the ruins of a still earlier Vishwanatha temple, destroyed under the Sultanate.
Close by, the temple of Annapurna Bhavani is dedicated to the supreme Shakti ("She, the Being of Plenteous Food"), the queen and divine mother also known in this benevolent form as Mother of the Three Worlds. As the provider of sustenance, she carries a cooking pot rather than the fearsome weapons borne by her horrific forms Durga and Kali a subsidiary shrine opened only three days a year houses a solid gold image of Annapurna. Nearby is a stunning image, faced in silver against a black surround, of Shani or Saturn. Anyone whose fortunes fall under his shadow is stricken with bad luck - a fate devotees try to escape by worshipping here on Saturdays.
The Kashi Vishwanath Temple
Also known as the Golden Temple, it is dedicated to Lord Shiva, the presiding deity of the city. Varanasi is said to be the point at which the first jyotirlinga, the fiery pillar of light by which Shiva manifested his supremacy over other gods, broke through the earth’s crust and flared towards the heavens. More than the Ghats and even the Ganga, the Shivalinga installed in the temple remains the devotional focus of Varanasi. Entry restricted for foreigners.
The nearest airport is Babatpur, 22 km from Varanasi and 30 Km from Sarnath. Direct flight for Varanasi are available from Delhi, Agra, Khajurao, Calcutta, Mumbai, Lucknow and Bhuvaneshwar airport.
Varanasi and Mughal Sarai (one of the main railway stations of Varanasi) are the important rail junctions, with train connections to all major cities of India. Some important trains are : Rajdhani Exp ( Hawrah - Mughal Sarai - New Delhi); Toofan Exp ( Howrah - Mughal Sarai - Delhi); North East Superfast Exp ( Delhi - Mughal Sarai Guwahati) ; Magadh Exp ( Delhi - Mughal Sarai Patna) ; Mahanagari Exp ( Varanasi - Mumbai ) ; Pawan Exp ( Varanasi - Mumbai ) ; Sabarmati Exp ( Varanasi - Ahmedabad) ; Ganga Kaveri Exp ( Varanasi - Chennai) ; Poorwa Exp ( Howrah - Varanasi - Delhi) Himgiri Exp ( Jammu - Varanasi - Howrah ) ; Sealdah Exp ( Varanasi - Jammu Tawi).
Varanasi, on NH 2 from Calcutta to Delhi, NHZ to Kanya Kumari and NH 29 to Gorakhpur is well connected to the rest of the country by good motorable roads. some of the major road distances are : Agra - 565 km, Allahabad - 128 km, Bhopal - 791 km, Bodhgaya - 240 km, Kanpur - 330 km, Khajuraho - 405 km, Lucknow - 286, Patna - 246 km, Sarnath - 10 Km.
UP Tourism Accommodation
- Hotel Taj Ganges, Nadesar Palace Grounds, Cantt.
- Hotel Varanasi Ashok ( ITDC) , The Mall, Cantt.
- Hotel Clarks Varanasi, The Mall, Cantt.
- Hotel Hindustan International, C-12/3, Maldahia.
- Hotel De Paris, The Mall, Cantt.
- Hotel Diamond, Bhelupur.
- Hotel ideal Tops, The Mall.
- Hotel Pallavi International, Hathwa Market, Chetganj.
- Hotel Ganges View, Assi Ghat.
- Hotel India, 59 Patel Nagar, Cantt.
- Hotel Malti, V.M Road
- Radiant YMCA Tourist Hostel, 28 A, Sampoornanand Nagar, Mahmoorganj Sigra road.
Tourist Bungalow, Parade Kothi, Opp. Cantt Railway Station.
- Varanasi ‘ s various restaurants serve a variety of cuisine continental, Chinese, Indian and of course, the traditional Mughlai.
- Mandarin Restaurant, Lahurabir.
- Shahi Restaurant, near Rathyatra Crossing.
- Yelchico Bar & Restaurant, Godaulia.
- Amrapali, D-58/9 Varanasi.
- Ashiyana Restaurant, Varuna Bridge, Clark Road.
- Hilarious Restaurant, 20/51, Clark Road, Varuna Bridge.
- Temple Restaurant/Gangotri Restaurant, Dashashwamedha Road.
- Haveli Restaurant, The Mall, Cantt.
Varanasi is famous for its silk weaving, and Banarasi silks are a part of every girl’s wedding trousseau. Banaras Brocades are prized the world over. Brassware, copperware, wooden and clay toys and exquisite gold jewelry are some of the other craft the city is famous for. The hand - knotted carpets of Mirzapur and musical instruments are among the other shopping attractions. Banaras is also famous for its ‘ Langda Aam’, a variety of mangoes available in the summer. Betel leaf is also a specialty. The main shopping areas are Chowk, Vishwanath Gali, Thatheri bazaar, Lahurabir, Godoulia , Dashswamedh Gali and Golghar.
With hustlers and rickshaw drivers keen to drag tourists into shops offering commission, shopping in Varanasi can be a nightmare but its worth seeking out the city's rich Silk weaving and brasswork. The best areas to browse are the Thatheri Bazaar (for brass), Jnana Vapi and the Vishwanatha Gall with its Temple Bazaar (for silk brocade and jewelry). State run emporia in Godaulia, lahurabir and the Chowk - the three Handlooms outlets at Lahurabir, Nadesar and Neechi Bag, and Mahatex in Godaulia - of fixed prices and assured quality. Housed in a former palace opposite the Taj Hotel, Cantt, the CIE has a large and impressive selection but, despite its official-sounding name, is outrageously expensive Kashmiri-run chain aimed exclusively at the fivestar market.
Sales pitches tend to become more aggressive when it comes to silk, and you need be wary of the hard-sell. Qazi Sadullahpura, near Chhavi Mahal Cinema, lies at the heart of a fascinating Muslim neighborhood devoted to the production of silk. Upica, the government-run emporium has the advantage of fixed prices, with outlets at Godaulia opposite the Taj Hotel, Cantt. Handloom House, D64/132K Sigra, another government sponsored chain, is the best and safest place to buy silk with a modern showroom although the sales staff appear disorganized. For tailoring, try Paraslakshmi Exports, Chandrika Colony Sigra (ph: 361496), a silk business providing a good and prompt service; they'll deliver to your hotel, and also offer ready-made waistcoats and boxer shorts.
Post & Telegraph
- State Bank of India, Cantt, Banaras Hindu University.
- Indian Overseas Bank, Lahurabir.
- Bank of Baroda, Godoulia.
- Canara Bank, Nichibagh.
- Andhra Bank, Godoulia.
- Allahabad Bank, Nadesar and Chowk.
- Central Bank of India, Chowk.
- The Banaras State Bank, Luxa.
Vishweshwar Ganj. pH : (0542)331398
- Shiv Prasad Gupta Hospital, Kabir Chaura. pH:(0542)333723
- Sir Sundar Lal Hospital B.H.U. pH :(0542)312542-45
- Rajkiya Hospital, Shivpur . pH : (0542)382226
- Hindu Seva Sadan , Chowk . pH : (0542)352143
- Mata Anand Mai Hospital, Bhadaini. pH : (0542)310592
- Ram Krishna Mission Hospital, Luxa. pH : (0542)321727
- Marwari Hospital , Godoulia. pH : (0542)321456
- Cancer Institute, N.E. Railway Lahartara. pH : (0542)425338
- UP Government Tourist Office, Parade Kothi, Cantt.
- UP Government Tourist Information Counter, Cantt. Railway Station, Varanasi, Near Enquiry Office, Main Hall.
- Government of India Tourist Office, 15 B The Mall, Cantt, Varanasi.
- Government of India Tourist Information Counter, Babatpur Airport.
- Bihar State Tourist Office, Englishiya Market, Sher Shah Suri Marg, Cantt.
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Bachelor of Science (BS) in Computer Science (CS)If you enjoy problem solving, logic, math and the challenge of improving what computers can accomplish, then consider a degree in computer science.
This Degree Offers:
- Broad-based training in programming languages (C++) and a variety of traditional and specialized computer science subjects, following Association for Computing Machinery recommendations
- Flexibility to concentrate on scientific computing or software engineering
- An excellent foundation for graduate school and high earning potential after college
Areas of Concentration:
- Computing Theory - examines the theoretical foundations of computer science, including language design, algorithm analysis and computability. This concentration is recommended for students who will pursue graduate work in Computer Science.The undergraduate Computer Science - Computing Theory program is accredited by the Computing Accreditation Commission (CAC) of ABET.
- Game Development - this concentration prepares students to develop software and applications for the gaming industry.
- Software Engineering - prepares students for a more practical implementation of computer science skills, establishing a foundation to develop software and applications for consumers and industry.
- Applications programming
- Software development/engineering
- Computer forensics, artificial intelligence, and related areas
- Game development
Our Computer Science program prepares students to:
- Use Christian principles in evaluating issues and making ethical decisions
- Demonstrate broad, integrated knowledge in core technology areas related to Computer Science
- Exhibit critical thinking, communication, leadership, and career development appropriate for effectiveness and advancement in the field of Computer Science
Our Computer Science graduates will be equipped with:
- An ability to apply knowledge of computing and mathematics appropriate to the discipline
- An ability to analyze a problem, and identify and define the computing requirements appropriate to its solution
- An ability to design, implement, and evaluate a computer-based system, process, component, or program to meet desired needs
- An ability to function effectively on teams to accomplish a common goal
- An understanding of professional, ethical, legal, security and social issues and responsibilities
- An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences
- An ability to analyze the local and global impact of computing on individuals, organizations, and society
- Recognition of the need for and an ability to engage in continuing professional development
- An ability to use current techniques, skills, and tools necessary for computing practice.
- An ability to apply mathematical foundations, algorithmic principles, and computer science theory in the modeling and design of computer-based systems in a way that demonstrates comprehension of the tradeoffs involved in design choices.
- An ability to apply design and development principles in the construction of software systems of varying complexity.
Related Student Activities:
The SITC also offers a minor in Computer Science (18 hrs). | <urn:uuid:b9ddc33d-7256-4354-8870-b186784ad523> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.acu.edu/academics/sitc/majors/cs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397695.90/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00117-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.888496 | 560 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Another Dardanelles Epic
Dragging on for 25 years, the war over Crete fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Venice offers the original evidence that “there is no passing the Dardanelles!”.
The year 2005 marked the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli campaign, which constitutes a modern epic in its own right. Second and third generation offspring of the French, British, New Zealand and Australian soldiers who fought here against the Turks came together again in 2005, as they do every year, at the Dardanelles to honor their forebears in a noble gesture of friendship.
This 1915 war, which saw the loss of hundreds of thousands of men on both sides, also produced an epic hero in the figure of Mustafa Kemal, the youthful commander of the Turkish troops in their battle against superior enemy forces. But another Dardanelles epic was written almost 350 years ago in the longest war in Ottoman history, the war for Crete, fought from 1644 to 1669 against the Republic of Venice.
ISTANBUL UNDER THREAT
It was one of Sultan Murad IV’s greatest aims to conquer the island of Crete with its strategic position in the Mediterranean Sea. But he died in 1640 short of realizing that aim. Under popular pressure, his brother Ibrahim who succeeded him mounted a campaign against Crete four years later. Overrunning Crete within a short time, the Ottoman forces won a great victory in the first phase of the war, spreading throughout the entire Mediterranean. The fortresses of Khania and Resmo were captured, but there was one place where the Ottoman army got bogged down: the Fortress of Candia. The Republic of Venice in turn moved quickly so as not to forfeit this, its last shred of territory in Crete, to the Ottomans. To cut off supplies of food and munitions to the island, they laid siege to Istanbul and, in the initial phase of the hostilities, captured the islands of Bozcaada (Tenedos) and Limni (Lemnos) which lie close to Çanakkale on the Dardanelles. Immediately afterwards they blocked the straits. This posed a great danger for the people of Istanbul, who could even have starved to death since Istanbul’s grain supply through Syria and Egypt was interrupted.
As if all this were not enough, the Ottoman Empire was also being rocked from within. Sultan Ibrahim was deposed and murdered and succeeded by his son Sultan Mehmed IV, who was still a child. Besides the empire’s financial woes, uprisings had also begun in Anatolia; and the weakness of the Ottoman fleet only exacerbated the empire’s plight. Sultan Mehmed IV’s mother, Hatice Turhan, brought Köprülü Mehmed Pasha to the grand vizierate in order to rectify the situation. It was the supreme ambition of this grand vizier, who had the staunch backing of the populace, to lift the Venetian blockade of the Dardanelles. But for this he first had to strengthen the fleet and the empire’s finances. The fleet was launched in record time. The time was now at hand to write a Dardanelles epic.
BLACK MEHMED’S SHELL
The Ottoman fleet set sail from Istanbul for the Dardanelles in 1657 but was unsuccessful in its first skirmish with the Venetians, who had increased the number of their ships. Köprülü Mehmed Pasha, who was commanding the fleet, followed the battles with astonishment. Finding the wind unfavorable, some of the Ottoman ships had cast anchor in the open sea off Kumburun where they were exposed to enemy attack. The admiral of the Venetian fleet went on the offensive in hopes of exploiting the situation to secure a victory. But a shell fired by a bold gunner by the name of Black Mehmed was to alter the outcome of the entire battle; the shell hit the gunpowder depot of the admiral’s ship, which quickly sank to the bottom of the sea. Although the Venetians tried to remount the attack, their morale was shattered and they failed. And so the Venetian blockade of the Dardanelles came to an end. Meanwhile the Ottomans went into action again at Bozcaada and Limni. All that remained was to annex Crete to the Ottoman territories, and this was accomplished after Köprülü Mehmed Pasha’s death by his son, Fazıl Ahmed Pasha, exactly 12 years on from the victory in the Dardanelles. In a virtual Crusade, French, Maltese and Papal forces aided Venice, while England provided indirect support to the Ottomans. This protracted war, which sorely strained Ottoman resources, finally ended in 1669 with the capture of Candia Fortress following a three-year siege.
THE ‘OFFICIAL’ DOCUMENTS
Let us now acquaint readers with the two fortresses that played such a key role in the Ottoman victory in the 17th century battle for the Dardanelles, Seddülbahir and Kumkale, both built by Köprülü Mehmed Pasha. Seddülbahir was constructed in 1659 after the Venetians had set fire to the Ottoman fleet in the harbor at Morto and captured the islands of Bozcaada and Limni. While this fortress was being built, opposite it, on the Anatolian shore, Kumkale was also being erected. Let us hasten to add that these two fortresses played a major role in beating back the enemy in the 1915 battle for Gallipoli as well.
All the illustrations that accompany this article were made in the 17th century and included in a two-volume Istanbul album by an anonymous Istanbul commercial artist. In this album, which was commissioned to a local artist at the behest of the Italian ambassador Soranzo, are, besides scenes from the Dardanelles battle and the situation of the Venetian Embassy in Istanbul at the time of that battle, 19 portraits of the sultans, and depictions of buildings, monuments and scenes of everyday life in Istanbul. The German professor Franz Taeschner, whose valuable studies on Turkish history and culture are well known, bought the first volume of the album from a family in 1910 and published a lithograph copy of it in 1924. Here, however, only four of the 55 pictures are in color, the rest being in black and white. The original of this album was in all probability destroyed in the bombardment of Berlin during the Second World War. As for the other volume, it passed from the hands of Emmanuele Cigogna to the Museo Civico Correr at Venice along with other rare books and manuscripts. The epics of the conquest of Crete in the 17th century and of the Gallipoli campaign, whose 90th anniversary we just left behind, both go to prove one thing: There is no passing the Dardanelles! | <urn:uuid:1c1c1b49-28f4-4bd3-a7d8-9e3d3a1aac52> | CC-MAIN-2015-48 | http://www.turkishairlines.com/en-cy/skylife/makaleler/2006/january/bir-baska-canakkale-destani | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-48/segments/1448398464253.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20151124205424-00159-ip-10-71-132-137.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967976 | 1,484 | 2.921875 | 3 |
|Phylogeography and population structure of European sea bass in the north-east Atlantic|In: Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. Academic Press: London. ISSN 0024-4066, more
Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758) [WoRMS]; Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758) [WoRMS]; Marine
molecular markers; migration; connectivity; sex-biased dispersal –Dicentrarchus labrax
|Authors|| || Top |
- Coscia, I.
- Mariani, S., more
The European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax represents a historically and commercially valuable species in the north-east Atlantic, although the demographic history and the patterns of geographical structure of the species in the north-east Atlantic remain poorly understood. The present study investigates the population genetic structure of sea bass in north-western European waters, employing different genetic markers [a portion of the mitochondrial (mt)DNA control region and 13 nuclear microsatellites] aiming to unravel demographic history and population connectivity. The results obtained show a previously unrecognized pattern of population divergence at mtDNA, with three strikingly different lineages identified. Extant sea bass populations, including the Mediterranean lineage, derive from an Atlantic ancestor. A much increased number of nuclear microsatellite loci (comparatively to previous studies) still fail to detect biologically meaningful patterns of spatial genetic structuring in the North Atlantic. Past Pleistocene glacial and interglacial events and some degree of female philopatry might be at the basis of the current geographical separation of the Atlantic lineages that has been identified. Signatures of sudden demographic expansions are more evident in the most recent mitochondrial lineages, and their slight, yet significant, geographical segregation leads to the hypothesis that present-day spawning grounds for European sea bass may still to some extent be linked to their most recent glacial refugia. | <urn:uuid:3580e109-f052-4c95-9076-9585711002ec> | CC-MAIN-2015-14 | http://www.vliz.be/en/imis?module=ref&refid=208254 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-14/segments/1427131298015.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20150323172138-00254-ip-10-168-14-71.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.871969 | 407 | 2.78125 | 3 |
Behavior Problems Higher in Children With Composite FillingsHealthy Living, Healthy Pregnancy, Baby & Child
Composite fillings dangerous for children? A new study published in the Journal Pediatrics suggests so and is sure to have parents scrambling to figure out how to best deal with their children’s cavities.
Savvy parents have known for some time to avoid silver fillings given that mercury, a potent neurotoxin, is one of the key materials used to make them.
Now, examination of over 500 children over a five year period has indicated that even some white composite fillings are problematic to children’s neurology.
The likely culprit? BPA.
Many Composite Fillings Contain BPA
Many white composite fillings contain bisGMA, a synthetic material containing bispenol-A, more commonly known as BPA.
BPA is a well known hormone disrupting chemical linked to all manner of health problems in children and adults alike.
In this new study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and the New England Research Institutes, researchers suggest that composite fillings containing BPA degrade over time from chewing, thereby releasing ever increasing amounts of the chemical.
Children With BPA Composite Fillings Have More Behavior Problems
The most shocking aspect of this report is that children with silver (mercury) fillings displayed FEWER behavioral problems at the 5 year checkup than children with composite fillings!
In fact, researchers noted that children with silver fillings did not appear to suffer ill health effects at all, while those with BPA containing composite fillings were more likely to suffer from impaired psychosocial function such as depression, anxiety, and other forms of social stress.
The bottom line?
Be sure to query your dentist thoroughly before allowing any composite material to be put into your child’s mouth to be sure it is made of BPA free materials.
In addition, never allow sealants to be used on your child’s teeth as these contain BPA as well!
Holistic oriented dentists are already well aware of the potential problems with composite fillings as they test each individual patient for sensitivity using either blood tests or kinesiology to various filling materials before selecting the appropriate one that is the most benign for that patient’s particular biology.
Avoid Composite Fillings and Amalgams With Diet
Better yet, avoid cavities in the first place through Traditional Diet. Traditional cultures rarely suffered from tooth decay as noted by researcher Dr. Weston A. Price, with liberal consumption of sacred foods containing Vitamins A/D/K2 by growing children the notable reason why.
The number one whole food supplement containing A/D/K2 for avoiding and even reversing cavities? Fermented cod liver oil and butter oil each and every day!
If despite your best efforts, you do discover that your child has a cavity, learn to reverse the decay and avoid getting the tooth filled with the dietary guidelines outlined in the must have book Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities With Nutrition, by Rami Nagel.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
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The people that use them won’t train without them, and those that don’t either don’t care or are under the impression that they are of little use as a tool to improve your training. The truth is they can be both, it depends on the person using it and what they understand about Heart Rate Monitors and training.
A heart rate monitor does just that, it tells you what your pulse rate is. If you don’t understand what to do with that information then it won’t be much use as a training aid. If you understand how your body works and what the data a heart rate monitor is telling you, and what you can do with that information, then a heart rate monitor becomes a very useful training tool that you won’t want to train without.
This is a crash course on the heart and oxygen and how using a heart rate monitor can have a positive impact on your training.
Our cardio vascular system delivers oxygen to our muscles which then uses that oxygen to burn fuels (blood sugar, or glucose, and fats) to create energy. When you train hard you consume more oxygen, more fuel, and then with sufficient recovery time and nutrition, your body adapts by getting stronger, faster, bigger, etc. Your heart also adapts by getting stronger and more efficient and your muscles adapt by becoming better at extracting and using oxygen to burn fuels. The harder you train, the more you body adapts, and the more progress you make. But there are limits and that’s where a heart rate monitor comes in.
The standard method for measuring our oxygen consumption in liters per minute is called VO2. Research has shown that activity below 55% of your VO2 maximum generates no additional aerobic gains. Above 55% of your VO2 Max. and you are sufficiently over-loading your cardio vascular system to stimulate improvement. There is also an upper limit. If you train beyond your VO2 maximum the work becomes extremely uncomfortable, then in a short period of time movement will become seriously impaired or impossible, and death can ensue. There is also as sweet spot, or a heart rate range that is optimal and that range depends on your training goals.
There are charts and formula’s that will help you find your target hart rate range but these are not necessarily precise for every human being. They are a good approximation but each person must consider their health, physical condition, cardio vascular condition, experience, and most importantly, should see a health care provider to ensure you are healthy enough to do intense workouts.
To determine your precise VO2 max you will need to visit a facility that does that kind of testing. Short of that, you can use the chart below to approximate your numbers or use the formula: 220 – your age = Your maximum heart rate (beats per minute)
Once you are cleared by a health care provider to do intense training, a heart rate monitor is a very useful tool to tell you if you should push a little harder, or back it off to a safer, more comfortable, and productive pace. As you continue training, and if you record your heart rate after each training session, the data from the heart rate monitor will give an indication of your progress. There are many apps out there to aid in recording your training data. If you use a heart rate monitor you should consider one that is compatible with the app you choose.
A heart rate monitor can also indicate other problems you may need to address. If you are dehydrated, overtrained, sick, or perhaps experiencing some medical issues, your heart rate may be higher than normal, or erratic while training.
A heart rate monitor can be a very useful tool when you know how to use it by setting your training goals, working within your pre-determined heart rate zone, and use the data to evaluate your progress. | <urn:uuid:2d23d746-aee8-401e-bd65-4c35a7d89271> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://goodladunscripted.com/2016/08/04/heart-rate-monitors-tools-or-toys/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224648911.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20230603000901-20230603030901-00265.warc.gz | en | 0.936363 | 801 | 2.65625 | 3 |
Some diseases just have a bad name. But even when their commonly known labels glorify Nazi doctors or slander certain ethnic groups, old habits are hard to change, experts say.
Medical conditions, viruses and even personality quirks have long been named after places, famous athletes, pioneering doctors and literary giants.
The H1N1 influenza that sparked a worldwide pandemic in 2009 was initially called Mexican swine flu, while Pickwickian syndrome is another name for obesity hypoventilation syndrome, based on a fat character in a Charles Dickens novel.
The most recent affliction to make headlines is Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, which has killed 58 of the 130 people infected since 2012.
The illness has been found in Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.
Its name initially referred to Saudi Arabia, because an Egyptian scientist first identified it in a Saudi patient.
But, according to Ron Fouchier, a leading scientist at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands where the analysis was done, Saudi officials "were not pleased."
"We then renamed the virus isolate HCoV-EMC for human coronavirus Erasmus MC, to take away any sensitivities," he told AFP.
But Fouchier said Saudi leaders were not pleased by the new name either, so he and other investigators convened, discussed and agreed unanimously on a new name: MERS-CoV.
The World Health Organization approved the name in May, but added: "WHO generally prefers that virus names do not refer to the region or place of the initial detection."
With no central regulatory body for names, diseases and conditions can end up with multiple or contentious labels.
"Where there's disagreement, it can get messy," said Stephanie Morrison, an expert with the Genetics Home Reference at the US National Library of Medicine.
Some inappropriate names have quickly disappeared.
HIV/AIDS was once referred to as 4-H disease, referring to Haitians, homosexuals, haemophiliacs and heroin. Another name that was introduced in 1982 but soon vanished was GRID, for Gay-related immunodeficiency.
No longer are diseases regularly named after their discoverers, but many persist, like Alzheimer's disease (after a German psychiatrist) and Tourette's syndrome (after a French neurologist).
Naming conditions after geographic places has created memorable descriptors -- but which tend to offend.
The naming of a new drug-resistant superbug in 2009 after New Delhi sparked outcry in India, where medical experts and parliamentarians said the name cast the city as a dirty place.
The enzyme was named New Delhi metallo-lactamase-1, or NDM-1, and its related gene blaNDM-1, after it was found in an Indian man who had settled in Sweden but became ill on a visit to India in 2007.
The superbug has since been found around the world, noted Ajai Singh, a doctor in Mumbai who has likened the label to "name calling."
He proposed creating an international commission for creating medical monikers -- but it has not happened.
And "the name NDM-1 continues to be widely used. Habits die hard, even with scientists," he told AFP in an email.
Even when the scientific community agrees that a name should change, as in the case of a rare neurological defect named Hallervorden-Spatz disease after the Nazi doctors who first described it, the process can take decades.
"I don't want the disease to have anything to do with them," said Patty Wood, whose daughter Kimbi, now 27, was diagnosed at age three when she gradually lost the ability to walk and talk.
When Wood learned that Julius Hallervorden and his boss Hugo Spatz did their research on the brains of exterminated children, she changed the name of the advocacy group she founded to the Neurodegeneration with Brain Iron Accumulation (NBIA) Disorders Association and urged doctors to change their habits as well.
That was 10 years ago.
Yet "there are still some doctors outside of the United States that give a diagnosis of Hallervorden-Spatz," said Wood, mentioning families in South America and India.
A study out last year said use of the term Hallervorden-Spatz has declined by about half since the 1990s, which researcher Michael Shevell of McGill University described as "an unconscious collective decision by the neurologic community to 'do the right thing.'
Other names spring from less controversial sources. For instance, Irish doctors recently suggested naming the death-bed habit of grasping at bedclothes as "Henry V sign."
The description is seen in Shakespeare's Henry V, in which Mistress Quickly describes the nearing death of Falstaff, saying she saw him "fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends.'"
Fergus Shanahan, chair of the department of medicine at University College Cork, said the name worked "because most people know Shakespeare to some degree."
"It is a kind of shorthand description for something that is quite complex but also very common." | <urn:uuid:4be5e3ff-aa09-423b-aa91-53c7a48ada95> | CC-MAIN-2015-11 | http://usa.news.net/article/536808/Social+Affairs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-11/segments/1424936463637.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20150226074103-00081-ip-10-28-5-156.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966116 | 1,069 | 2.90625 | 3 |
The history of baseball comes vividly to life in this fascinating coloring book that tells the story of America's favorite sport through ready-to-color pictures and biographical sketches of 45 great players. Fans of all ages will delight in the authenticity and detail of these finely drawn line illustrations that portray a galaxy of twentieth-century baseball stars in action on the diamond.
Among the players are early heroes like Cy Young, John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, and Ty Cobb; legendary stars such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, and Jackie Robinson; and talented contemporaries: Tom Seaver, Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose, and more. Each illustration is accompanied by a caption that presents the career highlights and major claims to fame of each of these illustrious "boys of summer."
|Availability||Usually ships in 24 to 48 hours|
|Author/Editor||E. Lisle Reedstrom|
|Grade level||3 - 8 (ages 8 - 14)|
|Dimensions||8 1/4 x 11| | <urn:uuid:dc7dfb21-f58e-4b42-921d-3156a987ad78> | CC-MAIN-2017-04 | http://store.doverpublications.com/0486267482.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-04/segments/1484560281659.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20170116095121-00081-ip-10-171-10-70.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.82539 | 215 | 2.53125 | 3 |
The city of Ribeira Brava is the city that constitutes the seat of the Ribeira Brava Municipality in the island of, Cape Verde. The name Ribeira Brava is portuguese for "rough streams". It takes its name from several ‘rough’ streams or floods that occur yearly in the Ribeira Brava valey as rain water from the surrounding mountains violently pours down into the dry river-bed. This name however shares a historical link to the municipality of Ribeira Brava, in the the Portuguese Autonomous Region of Madeira which shares similar geological resemblance.
The city is sandwiched between two mountains, Monte Fora to the north and Caleijão mountains to the south, while under the shadow of the imposing Mountain of Monte Gordo in the west. The streets and buildings of Ribeira Brava stretches hundreds of metres within the valley. Though only officialy elevated to the status of a city in 2010, Ribeira Brava serves as the center of business and trade for the surrounding areas from the beginning of its founding, in the 17th Century . Its population is 4,982. It was one of the oldest towns in Cape Verde and was for many years the seat of the Roman Catholic Church in the islands. The city has a colonial look with Portuguese style buildings, charming parks and gardens, small winding streets, and steep hills with stunning views. Ribeira Brava is linked with roads to Tarrafal de São Nicolau on the southwestern part of the island, south to its nearest port Campo and to the eastern half of the island as well. The city was founded in the sixteenth century after locals settled here to escape continuous pirate attacks by the likes of Sir Francis Drake. Ribeira Brava is famous for being the bedrock of Cape Verdean intellect in the 19th century as there you find the famous Seminário Liceu São José which for many years was the center of higher education in the archipelago. | <urn:uuid:680ea4a9-9c7a-484d-bfc7-01d31e3c24ff> | CC-MAIN-2016-50 | http://www.touristlink.com/cape-verde/ribeira-brava-cape-verde/overview.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-50/segments/1480698542828.27/warc/CC-MAIN-20161202170902-00424-ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964472 | 415 | 2.8125 | 3 |
Using tiny snippets of DNA as “barcodes,” researchers have developed a new technique for rapidly screening the ability of nanoparticles to selectively deliver therapeutic genes to specific organs of the body. The technique could accelerate the development and use of gene therapies for such killers as heart disease, cancer and Parkinson’s disease.
Genetic therapies, such as those made from DNA or RNA, are hard to deliver into the right cells in the body. For the past 20 years, scientists have been developing nanoparticles made from a broad range of materials and adding compounds such as cholesterol to help carry these therapeutic agents into cells. But the rapid development of nanoparticle carriers has run into a major bottleneck: the nanoparticles have to be tested, first in cell culture, before a very small number of nanoparticles is tested in animals. With millions of possible combinations, identifying the optimal nanoparticle to target each organ was highly inefficient.
Using DNA strands just 58 nucleotides long, researchers from the University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new testing technique that skips the cell culture testing altogether – and could allow hundreds of different types of nanoparticles to be tested simultaneously in just a handful of animals.
The original research was done in the laboratories of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, and Daniel Anderson, the Samuel A. Goldsmith Professor of Applied Biology, at MIT. Supported by the National Institutes of Health, the research was reported February 6 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We want to understand at a very high level what factors affecting nanoparticle delivery are important,” said James Dahlman, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, one of Langer’s former graduate students, lead author on the study, and one of the paper’s corresponding authors. “This new technique not only allows us to understand what factors are important, but also how disease factors affect the process.”
To prepare nanoparticles for testing, the researchers insert a snippet of DNA that is assigned to each type of nanoparticle. The nanoparticles are then injected into mice, whose organs are then examined for presence of the barcodes. By using the same technologies scientists use to sequence the genome, many nanoparticles can be tested simultaneously, each identified by its unique DNA barcode.
Researchers are interested not only in which nanoparticles deliver the therapeutics most effectively, but also which can deliver them selectively to specific organs. Therapeutics targeted to tumors, for example, should be delivered only to the tumor and not to surrounding tissues. Therapeutics for heart disease likewise should selectively accumulate in the heart.
While much of the study was devoted to demonstrating control strategies, the researchers did test how 30 different particles were distributed in eight different tissues of an animal model. This nanoparticle targeting ‘heat map’ showed that some particles were not taken up at all, while others entered multiple organs. The testing included nanoparticles previously shown to selectivity enter the lungs and liver, and the results of the new technique were consistent with what was already known about those nanoparticles.
The single-strand DNA barcode sequences are about the same size as antisense oligonucleotides, microRNA and siRNA being developed for possible therapeutic uses. Other gene-based therapeutics are larger, and additional research would be needed to determine if the technique could be used with them. In the research reported this week, the nanoparticles were not used to deliver active therapeutics, though that would be a near-term next step.
“In future work, we are hoping to make a thousand particles and instead of evaluating them three at a time, we would hope to test a few hundred simultaneously,” Dahlman said. “Nanoparticles can be very complicated because for every biomaterial available, you could make several hundred nanoparticles of different sizes and with different components added.”
Once promising nanoparticles are identified with the screening, they would be subjected to additional testing to verify their ability to deliver therapeutics. In addition to accelerating the screening, the new technique may require fewer animals – perhaps no more than three for each set of nanoparticles tested.
There are a few caveats with the technique. To avoid the possibility of nanoparticles merging, only structures that are stable in aqueous environments can be tested. Only nontoxic nanoparticles can be screened, and researchers must control for potential inflammation generated by the inserted DNA.
In Langer and Anderson’s laboratory, Dahlman worked with Kevin Kauffman, who remains at MIT, and Eric Wang, now an assistant professor the University of Florida. Other co-authors of the paper included Yiping Xing, Taylor Shaw, Faryal Mir and Chloe Dlott, all of whom are at MIT.
“Nucleic acid therapies hold considerable promise for treating a range of serious diseases,” said Dahlman. “We hope this technique will be used widely in the field, and that it will ultimately bring more clarity to how these drugs affect cells – and how we can get them to the right locations in the body.”
CITATION: James E. Dahlman, et al., “Barcoded nanoparticles for high throughput in vivo discovery of targeted therapeutics.” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017). http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/02/01/1620874114
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0181 USA
Media Relations Assistance: John Toon (404-894-6986) ([email protected]) or Ben Brumfield (404-385-1933) ([email protected]).
Writer: John Toon | <urn:uuid:78548b24-b39e-4874-bac5-28588fb645aa> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://rh.gatech.edu/news/587048/dna-barcoding-allows-rapid-testing-nanoparticles-therapeutic-delivery?qt-latest_popular_archive_sidebar=0 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104249664.70/warc/CC-MAIN-20220703195118-20220703225118-00111.warc.gz | en | 0.939378 | 1,224 | 3.5 | 4 |
Defines values for hardware and software flow control protocols used in serial communication. The values are used by Handshake property on the SerialDevice object.
public enum SerialHandshake
No protocol is used for the handshake.
When the port is receiving data and if the read buffer is full, the Request-to-Send (RTS) line is set to false. When buffer is available, the line is set to true. When the serial port is transmitting data, CTS line is set to false and the port does not send data until there is room in the write buffer.
Both RequestToSend and XOnXOff controls are used for flow control.
The serial port sends an Xoff control to inform the sender to stop sending data. When ready, the port sends an Xon control to inform he sender that the port is now ready to receive data. | <urn:uuid:639ab857-8af0-4695-b0cf-5c01b9ecc770> | CC-MAIN-2022-27 | https://docs.nanoframework.net/api/Windows.Devices.SerialCommunication.SerialHandshake.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-27/segments/1656104244535.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20220703134535-20220703164535-00556.warc.gz | en | 0.750844 | 255 | 2.546875 | 3 |
By Desiree Fields (University of Sheffield), Matt Finn (University of Exeter), and Yvonne Oates (Cornwall College)
As an undergraduate just starting out at university, you already have loads of writing experience, but university requires some new and different writing skills. Perhaps the most fundamental difference is that your task will often be to use your writing not only to demonstrate that you can find relevant information and report it back, but that you can use the information you find to offer new insights and raise critical questions. In other words, you will be producing knowledge yourself by drawing on existing research. At university you will likely write more, and more often, than at school, and you will have to work more independently. This entails developing the ability to self-direct your writing, from breaking down the essay question to searching the academic literature, planning your essay, and organizing your time to write (and edit, proofread, and polish, plus prepare a reference list or bibliography).
Here, we offer some strategies to ‘level up’ your writing for university. Becoming a stronger writer is important for practical reasons: employers desire workers who can communicate effectively and think critically, and postgraduate opportunities will hinge to a large extent on the same skill set. But strengthening your writing will also help you become a more articulate person, one who knows what they think and how to say it effectively.
Developing your ideas
Whereas lecturers want students to develop original arguments based on academic literature, in their essays students often rely too heavily on reporting what the literature says, with little of their own voice coming across. It can be tempting to try and sound ‘academic’ but it is often better to write in a straightforward way, using short sentences and aiming to be as clear as possible. To develop your ideas and write essays that show more independent thought, we recommend taking some time to try to answer the essay question in one sentence before you even start reading, reviewing your notes, or researching it further. This can be the kernel of your argument and help you identify where there are gaps in your knowledge or understanding (and therefore where you need to read more). Starting with what you already know (or think you know), rather than going straight to what other people have said can support you in finding your own voice. Once you have written a sentence in response to the essay question and developed a plan for what you need to read to build up your argument, come back to your sentence after each text you read: what do you need to add or change? We should caution that ‘confirmation bias’ is a potential limitation of this strategy; that is you run the risk of only reading texts that support or confirm your initial thinking. However reading should change how you think. If your argument does not change after reading, you probably want to seek out some texts that explicitly challenge your argument. After all, acknowledging alternative views is a crucial way of strengthening our own arguments.
Plagiarism refers to using someone else’s work—not only their words, but also their ideas—without properly attributing it to them. Most undergraduates are fearful of committing plagiarism, yet many of them will in fact do so, often inadvertently rather than as an act of deliberate deception. The consequences of plagiarism can be severe both in terms of official penalties that affect your marks and in terms of the respect lecturers accord your future work. A recent study at the University of Otago found that while university policies frame plagiarism in moral and legal terms of dishonesty and intellectual property, students were often confused about what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it. The skills needed to avoid plagiarism include proper referencing and the ability to paraphrase the work of others, both of which take practice and will grow stronger as you become more familiar with your discipline and with reading academic texts and preparing academic writing. In other words, avoiding plagiarism is not simply about what happens (or does not happen) on the pages you submit, it is bound up in the broader process of becoming a geographer. Academic writing is about producing knowledge, and knowledge is not created ‘from scratch’. Instead, it is about how you combine the ideas of others to raise new questions or create insights of your own. As an author, you should therefore be able to trace the lineage of your work back to the ideas and authors that inspired your own thinking.
Writing can be a challenge and, given the other priorities you will have at university, it is easy to think, ‘just get it done’. However, writing, and writing well, can be very rewarding and many students find their understanding of an issue increases not just through listening to lectures or their own reading but as they write. To write clearly you need to think clearly so allow yourself the time to work through the challenges of how to order your thoughts and how things fit together. Everyone, including academics, can learn how to write more effectively and there are a wealth of underused books and resources available to you about how to improve your writing. The promise of writing is that over time and with practice it will allow you to know yourself and the world around you better as your thinking develops but also to know how to communicate in an engaged, informed and persuasive way. | <urn:uuid:2a7995ab-d12f-45d1-b847-b2ba61232894> | CC-MAIN-2023-14 | https://teachingfocusedgeesnetwork.wordpress.com/2016/09/14/level-up-writing-strategies-for-new-undergraduates/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-14/segments/1679296945372.38/warc/CC-MAIN-20230325191930-20230325221930-00579.warc.gz | en | 0.961968 | 1,081 | 2.84375 | 3 |
One of the major and milestone resolutions you should be planning to make is producing your own clean electricity at home. Most people today find renewable or solar energy a noble investment since the price of wind turbines has reduced. Australia has been ranked ninth worldwide with an accumulated solar capacity of about 5.8GW. In 2016, more new solar photovoltaic panels were added in Australia leading to a solar power surge increment of about 900 megawatts, according to Sydney Morning Herald’s post. Long-term investments such as installing solar panel systems should be done after one has evaluated some aspects. Besides the price, anyone planning to depend on solar power Western Australia has today should consider:
Quality of solar panel
Everything you see has been manufactured using a certain technique. The way the solar panels function depends on certain aspects such as the materials that make them and the way they are manufactured. Different solar panel manufacturers produce different solar panels. This makes the solar panels differ in efficiency, price, and quality. The higher the quality the more costly a solar panel becomes. However, it’s good to note that price is not the only aspect you can use to assess the quality of a solar panel.
Energy efficiency has something to do with the amount of light a solar panel can receive and eventually convert it into electrical energy. It would also have something to do with the amount of power your solar panel system would generate. Solar power’s innovations make electricity more affordable, reliable and sustainable. In fact, solar technology is a better electricity power source compared to coal whose emissions sometimes pollute the environment. However, before you opt to go for the biggest solar panel, first assess your energy needs and get a solar panel system that matches them. This is how you ensure you have efficient solar power Western Australia or your region has to offer that isn’t costly for you.
When most manufacturers are advertising their solar products to buyers, durability is one of the aspects they emphasize on. Some manufacturers give a warranty of about 25 years while others insist that warranty remains as long as the company is in operation. Manufacturers who know their solar panels are not of good quality give a short warranty. Never use price as a quality determiner when looking for the best solar panels Australia has to offer. Price could be misleading if you are not careful.
Solar cells come in different types and they have varying efficiencies. There are polycrystalline, monocrystalline and amorphous solar panels. Crystalline solar panels are usually smaller than the amorphous solar panels in terms of wattage. Most Australians believe that even if wind and solar energy would be slightly expensive, it’s the best since it’s not a risk to the climate changes. Climate change can be a critical threat to national interests and it can pose international challenges. Most solar power installation experts would advise you on the best solar cell type to install based on the solar power WA has today you need.
With such information, it would be hard for you to be stuck in your solar panel installation process. You would be able to call in some experts in solar power Western Australia has today to your home to assess your energy needs first before the installation begins. Again, you would be able to choose the right solar panels from the many that look similar in the market. Visit our website at http://sunterra.com.au/ | <urn:uuid:8b1ea7cd-f903-4539-901a-894e431b74e1> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | https://paputravel.com/factors-installing-solar-power-first-consider/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579250613416.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20200123191130-20200123220130-00356.warc.gz | en | 0.956988 | 687 | 2.625 | 3 |
When learning to play a sport, practices should mirror the conditions of the game as much as possible (e.g., either a modified form of the game or the parent game depending on the previous experiences of the students) and provide students with maximum opportunities to actively engage in the activity (Launder, 2001). Team coaches can direct team members to warm up by practicing the individual techniques of shooting, passing, trapping, serving, and so on.
The focus of the team practice then shifts to developing both technique and tactics by having teams engage in small-sided scrimmages. For example, you can set up practice tasks such that students can develop tactical awareness by having games with uneven sides (e.g., 3v1, 3v2, 4v3). Those same games can be used to focus on teams learning to maintain possession (possession games) or scoring (go-for-goal games) (Launder, 2001). You can organize these so that they flow continuously rather than experience the multiple stop–starts so typical of drill-based technique practice, thus optimizing the time spent in actual practice.
Whenever possible, the practice tasks in the guided-practice format should be designed such that they can be used later on at the team level once teams conduct their own team practices. You can help team coaches develop more focused team practices by providing them with team practice cards. They can then use these cards to organize their team practices. As shown in figure 2.2, team practice cards provide the necessary information for team coaches to organize a modified game, including game rules, suggested variations, scoring rules, and possible questions that they (or you) could ask team members during short breaks in the action.
The practice cards are based in part on the Launder’s (2001) concept of shaping play. Teachers can shape game play by arranging game conditions so that they encourage students to use certain techniques and tactics. For example, in pickleball or tennis, students could play a cross-court versus down-the-line game. One player would earn a bonus point when a winner was scored using a cross-court shot, while the opposing player would earn the bonus point if a shot down the line was used. Thus, game play skills are developed by deliberately modifying any combination of game rules. By using this game-oriented approach to practice, students practice not only the various strokes, but they also decide when the particular shot is best used. Team practice cards should be supplied to teams in their team binders at the outset of the season. You will find several examples of such practice cards in the online resource. As you gain more experience with using a game-based approach to teaching games, you will be able to develop your own practice games.
The free throwers vs. rebounders game example in basketball (see figure 2.3) shows how players are encouraged to practice multiple techniques and tactical moves. Such games provide an excellent opportunity for you to assist team coaches in getting their players to consider how and where they move to create the advantage over the opposing team as well as how and where to pass. Obviously the defense gets ample chances to hone guarding and communication skills.
A variation of the team practice card that could be used with students who have more experience or are more advanced is the use of action fantasy games (see figure 2.4). Launder (2001) introduced the concept of using action fantasy games to enhance play. Using the names of real athletes and teams, you create actual game scenarios that students enact. For example, in a basketball season, you might provide an NBA finals game 7 scenario in which the Los Angeles Lakers are down by four points against the Cleveland Cavaliers with 1:30 left on the clock. A team splits up into two subteams that represent the Lakers and the Cavaliers. The team coach presents the scenario (with any additional rules) to both teams. Each team gets 30 seconds to determine how to approach this game situation, and then the scenario is played out. The scenario could be repeated following another brief time-out during which each team discusses any possible adjustments.
With a little creativity, you can create an endless array of game scenarios that give students the opportunity to come up with their own way of solving the problem presented. For example, in a court game such as tennis or pickleball, you could have Venus and Serena Williams face Kim Clijsters and Ana Ivanovic in a doubles match. Depending on which duo is ahead in the scenario, each needs to approach the game’s situation differently. Notice again how this affords increased involvement by students in how they learn to play the game—within this games-based context, both technical and tactical moves are practiced. Not only do students practice their dribbling, shooting, passing, rebounding, and catching, but they also practice defending, moving off the ball, supporting the ball handler, and making decisions on whether to shoot, drive to the basket, or focus on maintaining possession.
This games-based approach to practicing techniques and tactics has important benefits. First, it affords students the opportunity to engage in game play more often, which generally is more motivating to students. Second, students likely will reach higher levels of physical activity compared with the more static drill-based practice of isolated techniques that is so pervasive in most physical education lessons. And third, the intensity of the physical activity is likely higher during modified games. Especially given students’ natural physical activity patterns, they will welcome brief time-outs during which their team coach (or you) can address aspects of game play by way of a short question–answer discussion. | <urn:uuid:dd1c65d8-5c22-4fcf-ae47-c02ec9127f59> | CC-MAIN-2017-09 | http://www.humankinetics.com/excerpts/excerpts/setting-up-team-practices-that-address-both-techniques-and-tactics | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-09/segments/1487501170521.30/warc/CC-MAIN-20170219104610-00569-ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960317 | 1,142 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Retinopathy of prematurityRetrolental fibroplasia; ROP
Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) is abnormal blood vessel development in the retina of the eye. It occurs in infants that are born too early (premature).
A premature infant is a baby born before 37 completed weeks of gestation (more than 3 weeks before the due date).Read Article Now Book Mark Article
The blood vessels of the retina (in the back of the eye) begin to develop about 3 months into pregnancy. In most cases, they are fully developed at the time of normal birth. The eyes may not develop properly if a baby is born very early. The vessels may stop growing or grow abnormally from the retina into the back of the eye. Because the vessels are fragile, they can leak and cause bleeding in the eye.
Scar tissue may develop and pull the retina loose from the inner surface of the eye (retinal detachment). In severe cases, this can result in vision loss.
In the past, the use of too much oxygen in treating premature babies caused vessels to grow abnormally. Better methods are now available for monitoring oxygen. As a result, the problem has become less common, especially in developed countries. However, there is still uncertainty about the right level of oxygen for premature babies at different ages. Researchers are studying other factors besides oxygen which appear to influence the risk of ROP.
Today, the risk of developing ROP depends on the degree of prematurity. Smaller babies with more medical problems are at higher risk.
Almost all babies who are born before 30 weeks or weigh less than 3 pounds (1500 grams or 1.5 kilograms) at birth are screened for the condition. Some high-risk babies who weigh 3 to 4.5 pounds (1.5 to 2 kilograms) or who are born after 30 weeks should also be screened.
In addition to prematurity, other risk factors may include:
- Brief stop in breathing (apnea)
- Heart disease
- High carbon dioxide (CO2) in the blood
- Low blood acidity (pH)
- Low blood oxygen
- Respiratory distress
- Slow heart rate (bradycardia)
The rate of ROP in most premature infants has gone down greatly in developed countries over the past few decades due to better care in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). However, more babies born very early are now able to survive, and these very premature infants are at the highest risk for ROP.
The blood vessel changes cannot be seen with the naked eye. An eye exam by an ophthalmologist is needed to reveal such problems.
There are five stages of ROP:
- Stage I: There is mildly abnormal blood vessel growth.
- Stage II: Blood vessel growth is moderately abnormal.
- Stage III: Blood vessel growth is severely abnormal.
- Stage IV: Blood vessel growth is severely abnormal and there is a partially detached retina.
- Stage V: There is a total retinal detachment.
An infant with ROP may also be classified as having "plus disease" if the abnormal blood vessels match pictures used to diagnose the condition.
Symptoms of severe ROP include:
- Abnormal eye movements
- Crossed eyes
- Severe nearsightedness
- White-looking pupils (leukocoria)
Exams and Tests
Babies who are born before 30 weeks, weigh less than 1,500 grams (about 3 pounds or 1.5 kilograms) at birth, or are high risk for other reasons should have retinal exams.
In most cases, the first exam should be within 4 to 9 weeks after birth, depending on the baby's gestational age.
- Babies born at 27 weeks or later most often have their exam at 4 weeks of age.
- Those born earlier most often have exams later.
Follow-up exams are based on the results of the first exam. Babies do not need another exam if the blood vessels in both retinas have completed normal development.
Parents should know what follow-up eye exams are needed before the baby leaves the nursery.
Early treatment has been shown to improve a baby's chances for normal vision. Treatment should start within 72 hours of the eye exam.
Some babies with "plus disease" need immediate treatment.
- Laser therapy (photocoagulation) may be used to prevent complications of advanced ROP.
- The laser stops the abnormal blood vessels from growing.
- The treatment can be done in the nursery using portable equipment. To work well, it must be done before the retina develops scarring or detaches from the rest of the eye.
- Other treatments, such as injecting an antibody that blocks VEG-F (a blood vessel growth factor) into the eye, are still being studied.
Surgery is needed if the retina detaches. Surgery does not always result in good vision.
Most infants with severe vision loss related to ROP have other problems related to early birth. They will need many different treatments.
About 1 out of 10 infants with early changes will develop more severe retinal disease. Severe ROP may lead to major vision problems or blindness. The key factor in the outcome is early detection and treatment.
Complications may include severe nearsightedness or blindness.
The best way to prevent this condition is to take steps to avoid premature birth. Preventing other problems of prematurity may also help prevent ROP.
Fierson WM; American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Ophthalmology; American Academy of Ophthalmology; American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus; American Association of Certified Orthoptists. Screening examination of premature infants for retinopathy of prematurity. Pediatrics. 2018;142(6):e20183061. Pediatrics. 2019;143(3):2018-3810. PMID: 30824604 pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30824604/.
Olitsky SE, Marsh JD. Disorders of the retina and vitreous. In: Kliegman RM, St. Geme JW, Blum NJ, Shah SS, Tasker RC, Wilson KM, eds. Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics. 21st ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2020:chap 648.
Sun Y, Hellström A, Smith LEH. Retinopathy of prematurity. In: Martin RJ, Fanaroff AA, Walsh MC, eds. Fanaroff and Martin's Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. 11th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2020:chap 96.
Thanos A, Drenser KA, Capone AC. Retinopathy of prematurity. In: Yanoff M, Duker JS, eds. Ophthalmology. 5th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2019:chap 6.21.
Review Date: 4/14/2021
Reviewed By: Charles I. Schwartz, MD, FAAP, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, General Pediatrician at PennCare for Kids, Phoenixville, PA. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team. | <urn:uuid:8194fefc-c3a1-49fe-953d-0672a5044c18> | CC-MAIN-2021-49 | https://ssl.adam.com/content.aspx?productid=117&isarticlelink=false&pid=1&gid=001618&site=slu.adam.com&login=SLUC3551 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-49/segments/1637964363312.79/warc/CC-MAIN-20211206194128-20211206224128-00092.warc.gz | en | 0.910371 | 1,574 | 3.28125 | 3 |
A three-day event began in Istanbul on Thursday to mark the 100th anniversary of women’s involvement in the country’s universities – at a time when more women work in academia here than in the U.S. or U.K.
The 'Times Higher Education Report 2013' says that Turkey's academic representation of women at universities is 47.5 percent; this number falls to 35.9 percent for the United States and 34.6 percent for the U.K.
In Turkey, over 56,000 women are currently working in different levels of academia, compared to more than 76,700 men.
This is according to the organizers of today’s symposium, which claims that representation is just the first step to equality.
Curator of the Women's Museum Istanbul, Meral Akkent says: "Equality cannot be provided only with representation. It is also important where these women academics are represented.
“The statistics panel in our exhibition (as part of the symposium) points out at which academic levels women are not represented," she adds.
When asked what progress Turkish women have made in universities after 100 years, Akkent quotes the memoirs of a male student from the last century.
"When Inas Darulfunun (the Girl's University of the Ottoman Empire) was closed due to the economic crisis after the First World War and when co-ed education had started, some of the male professors had openly proclaimed that they did not take the girl students seriously, a boy called Macit Gokberk from those classes recalls," she says.
However, although the country became one of the last nations to allow women to take institutionalized university courses, in 1914, the TES report's gender equality rates show that Turkey has not become 'not the least.'
The first Muslim girls' university, Inas Darulfunun, was established in 1914 in Istanbul with departments for literature, mathematics and science.
U.S. women were allowed to register in universities in 1833. The U.K. followed suit 16 years later.
Inas Darulfunun offered courses in Istanbul's Beyazit district, taught by the same teachers but at different times and separately from male students.
Before then, girls had to wait for many years to be taught in institutionalized schools or universities.
The Ottoman education system had used the 'madrasa' system until 1838.
After this period, the Ottomans switched to the Westernized model, where all parts of the education system were separated into certain institutions. Primary schools called 'iptidaiyah', and 'rushtiyah', meaning secondary schools, were established in 1839 but again teaching boys only, says Professor Ali Arslan, head of the History Department of Istanbul University.
In 1845, the idea of building the 'Darulfunun' for males, the first institutionalized university of the Ottoman period – today's Istanbul University – came about, but would be not realized for another 24 years.
However in 1858, the first rustiyahs were opened for girls, who came from co-ed primary schools and had now the chance to gain a secondary school diploma, but still none were able to attend a high school or university, Arslan notes.
The situation started to change when Darulfunun was permanently opened by the Ottoman Emperor Abdulhamit II in 1900, and when high schools for girls were opened too.
'Darulmuallimat', which opened in 1870 to teach girls at high-school level to become teachers for the lower girls schools, was quite active, with 20 graduates in its first year – the first female officials in Turkish education history, Arslan says.
Towards the end of 1920 and the beginning of 1921, co-ed education was legalized by the Ottoman Empire.
"Inas Darulfunun is actually a symbol school of higher education for girls. It is the biggest step of the Committee of Union and Progress took directly for the sake of girls' education, which became the model for countries where girls were not allowed to get a university education," Professor Arslan says.
"There was a huge gap between the number of entering students and graduating ones as the education was quite heavy in Inas Darulfunun.
“When considering this, a married woman's chance of attending courses and graduating was low. Therefore, the regulations of the university did not allow married women to enter," Arslan says.
One hundred years later, and organized by Sabanci University Gender and Women's Studies Forum and Women's Museum Istanbul, today’s symposium will address this milestone anniversary of Turkish women at university with international discussions on further developing policies on providing gender equality.
An exhibition as part of the symposium will also be held at Consulate General of Greece in Istanbul until December 21, introducing Turkish women activists who contributed to women's education throughout the foundation of Inas Darulfunun.
AALast Mod: 06 Kasım 2014, 16:57 | <urn:uuid:82cf5756-3e09-4026-b66c-1c285e85163e> | CC-MAIN-2018-51 | https://www.worldbulletin.net/turkey/istanbul-marks-100th-year-of-turkish-women-in-academia-h147889.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-51/segments/1544376829568.86/warc/CC-MAIN-20181218184418-20181218210418-00433.warc.gz | en | 0.9738 | 1,041 | 2.9375 | 3 |
Number of cycle rickshaws in India
Division of Trauma, Hannover Health Class, Hannover, Germany
Obtained 2013 Apr 23; Accepted 2013 Apr 24.
This will be an open-access article distributed in regards to the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, which allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in just about any medium, offered the original tasks are properly mentioned.
In metropolitan Asia, cycle rickshaws are a substantial mode of transport. Specific numbers are hard to have, but it is determined there are 2 million or higher rickshaws on your way. Taken collectively, pattern rickshaws account for 6-8 billion traveler kilometer/year. Current research analyzed the workload of pattern rickshaw pullers. The detectives determined that pulling the pattern rickshaw is heavy to extremely heavy, that also corresponds to the subjective assessment for the individuals. As known from other countries, pedestrians, cyclists, as well as other (motorized) two-wheeled automobile users would be the most endangered road users to sustain accidents and corresponding really serious injuries and demise.[, ] stated this, rickshaw pullers and rickshaw people have to be classified into this “high-risk” group. So far, bit is known about damage pattern and traits of period rickshaw pullers or people.
The study available presents brand new information of 84 clients, of associated with a roadway traffic accident pertaining to cycle rickshaws. A predominance of teenagers had been obvious with a peak between 20 years and three decades old. Crash characteristics had been differentiated between single and multiple automobile crashes. Interestingly, overturned automobiles had been predominant inside group. The writers discovered an overload for the rickshaw in 28.5percent which most likely plays a role in that style of accidents with period rickshaws. In case there is multiple vehicle crashes, the majority included crashes with big cars like trucks. During hospital stay, three customers died from traumatic brain injury. | <urn:uuid:95aaabf0-39c6-4eae-97fb-ba832c4757ac> | CC-MAIN-2019-22 | http://rickshaw.mobi/CycleRickshaw/post276 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-22/segments/1558232254889.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20190519141556-20190519163556-00175.warc.gz | en | 0.946179 | 418 | 2.578125 | 3 |
A future in which your hamburger is grown from animal cells in a lab is rapidly approaching. The idea is that by culturing meat in a vat, you not only cut down on animal slaughter but greatly reduce emissions, on account of cattle taking a lot of energy to raise and butcher and ship. That's not to mention their digestive systems venting a significant amount of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere.
That’s the idea, anyway. The problem is that there’s very little data to back up the assumption that in vitro or cultured meat, as it’s also known, would be better for the environment than cattle. Scientists know the impact of that cattle; in the US, animal agriculture is responsible for around 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. But we hit a snag with quantifying the impact of wide-scale production of in vitro meat, because it, um, doesn’t exist yet.
But that’s not stopping scientists from modeling the potential emissions of an eventually mature lab-grown meat industry. Today in the journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, researchers explore an interesting wrinkle: Not all greenhouse gases are created equal.
Raising cattle involves CO2 and methane (along with lots of grain and water), whereas cultured meat wouldn’t traffic in much methane. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so on the surface that sounds like a win for cultured meat. But it disappears from the atmosphere far faster than CO2—in 12 years versus thousands of years for CO2. So if large-scale cultured meat production starts pumping out a whole lot of CO2, that’s going to be particularly problematic on large timescales. “Energy-intensive forms of cultured production could be quite an extreme case, where you're basically swapping methane—because cattle emit a lot of methane—for potentially fossil fuel carbon dioxide,” says study lead author John Lynch, an environmental scientist at the University of Oxford.
To build their models, the researchers looked at prior quantifications of greenhouse gas emissions from meat production, specifically cattle. (They chose cows because the animals are particularly emissions-happy among livestock.) They then asked: Looking forward 1,000 years, what might the emissions of cultured meat look like compared with traditional cattle raising?
Like any model, this came with assumptions. For one, researchers assumed humanity wouldn’t decarbonize energy production in that time period—meaning we’d still be burning fossil fuels to power the plants that produce in vitro meat. Also, the lab-grown meat industry doesn’t really exist yet, beyond a few largely experimental labs. That’d be companies like Just, which is working on chorizo, and Finless Foods, which is working on fish. “There’s a lot of uncertainty in what real-life cultured meat production looks like, so we put a range of the currently proposed footprints in the climate model,” says Lynch.
In the short term, lab-grown meat could lead to less warming, because it doesn’t spew that methane like real cows. But in the long term, the trend flips.
What they found was a major discrepancy in the effects of CO2 and methane. In the short term, lab-grown meat could lead to less warming, because it doesn’t spew that extremely potent methane like real cows. But in the long term, the trend flips—lab-grown meat could result in more warming than cows because it’s using up energy and spewing CO2. (Part of the reason the researchers used a huge timescale of 1,000 years in their modeling was to observe the differences in CO2 versus methane emissions over time.) If you suddenly stopped raising cattle, the methane emissions would dissipate rather quickly. But if you scaled up cultured meat production and then suddenly stopped, the CO2 would persist for millennia.
This, though, is loaded with caveats. The cattle industry emits its fair share of CO2 in addition to methane. And theoretically, instead of having to ship meat great distances from feedlots and processing facilities to consumers, you could just build in vitro meat facilities where the people are, which would cut down on transportation emissions. The study didn’t consider that. Also, the researchers are assuming meat consumption remains steady, and that we don’t switch to renewable energy production. But it’s safe to assume that these cultured meat companies, whose pitch to consumers is that their product cuts emissions, will power their facilities with renewable energy like solar. That and, again, the researchers are using estimates of emissions from an industry that hasn’t yet figured out how to culture meat at scale.
“It's modeling systems that don't yet exist,” says Alison Van Eenennaam, an animal geneticist at the University of California at Davis. “The thing that it still misses to me is that cows make more than hamburgers.”
Like, a lot more. Various parts of a cow make leather, gelatin, and pet food. Manufacturers use fat to make candles, lubricants, and even explosives. And of course, there’s the milk. “So I think it's too simplistic of a modeling to say cows just produce hamburgers,” adds Van Eenennaam. The cultured meat industry may take a share of the hamburger market, but it can’t touch the spectrum of other products that come from cows.
Looking ahead dozens or even hundreds of years, it’s unlikely that lab-grown meat will totally replace traditional meat. In the developing world in particular, cows are so much more than food—they’re laborers and they’re currency. In the industrialized world, you’ll still have consumers who want that premium steak. Plus, these cultured meat companies still have work to do: They need to replicate not only the taste and mouthfeel and smell of beef, but the protein-packed nutrition of the stuff as well.
What science will need is a so-called “life cycle analysis” of cultured meat to show just how efficient it really is. “The trouble is you can't do one until you've got a system running,” according to Van Eenennaam. “So it's this chicken and egg kind of scenario, in terms of ‘This is what we estimate.’”
Nevertheless, researchers can still begin to probe what the industry might look like. Sure, environmental impact estimates come with a whole lot of uncertainty. “Yet these estimates help us understand what could be in terms of a range of possible future scenarios,” says Arizona State University engineer Carolyn Mattick, who has studied the industry. “From there, we can decide what should be in terms of both meat production and carbon intensity of energy sources.”
What's more, the promises of lab-grown meat go beyond emissions. It’s estimated the technology would use 82 percent to 98 percent less water and 90 percent less land, according to David Welch, director of science and technology at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit that promotes lab-grown meat. “If you imagine that significant a reduction in land use, you can focus on CO2 sequestration, but also the species loss reversal and reforestation,” says Welch. “Clean meat provides very significant improvements in other areas of the environment besides emissions.”
Again, those figures have yet to be borne out, because the clean-meat industry doesn’t so much exist yet. That data will come in due time, but for now, your burger will be grown on the ground, not in a vat.
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- 📩 Get even more of our inside scoops with our weekly Backchannel newsletter | <urn:uuid:ec6f32fb-15ef-47da-b149-c6ac8cb5c0cf> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | https://www.wired.com/story/the-confounding-climate-science-of-lab-grown-meat/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195526210.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20190719095313-20190719121313-00050.warc.gz | en | 0.945576 | 1,713 | 3.8125 | 4 |
Education in Sweden is mandatory for all children between age 7 and age 16. Between ages 6/7 and 15/16, children attend compulsory comprehensive school (grundskola), divided in three stages. The vast majority of schools in Sweden are municipally run, but there are also autonomous and publicly funded schools, known as "independent schools". The education in independent schools has many objectives in common with the municipal school, but it can have an orientation that differs from that of the municipal schools. A handful of boarding schools, known as "private schools", are funded by privately paid tuition.
The Swedish School Planalso highly encourages an individualistic education in which each student has their specific needs met. The students are also encouraged not only to participate in student councils but also to actually form the education they desire together with their teachers, choosing which books to read and how to balance practice with theory depending on which the individual student finds most enjoyable to learn from. | <urn:uuid:d6a72b38-0d75-4599-8327-319bd5012626> | CC-MAIN-2019-30 | http://studyabroad.mk/univ_country.asp?Country=Sweden&sf=Education | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-30/segments/1563195525046.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20190717041500-20190717063500-00539.warc.gz | en | 0.982012 | 191 | 3.40625 | 3 |
ἔκλαιον [eklaion] , imperfect tense: I was weeping. John evidently understood the significance of the scroll and the great need to open it and to read its contents. From this we understand overwhelming sadness attends any future which continues apart from redemption. For the horrors of sin, sickness, murder, death and the warping of all things God intended for good would continue unabated for unending millennia if it were not for the cross of Christ. If God had not sent His Sonat His own initiativemankind would have forever and completely remained lost. Locked within an eternity of generations darkened by depravity and pain, there would have been forever no hope. Aside from the cross, the history of man is one long testimony of inability to overcome the ravages of sin.
John knew by that Spirit in which he was, what that sealed book meant. He knew that if no one was found worthy and able to take it from the hand of God, and to break its seals, that all the promises of the prophets, and all the hopes of the saints, and all the preintimations of a redeemed world, must fail.1
W. A. Criswell explains why John wept: [Johns tears] represent the tears of all Gods people through all the centuries. Those tears of the Apostle John are the tears of Adam and Eve, driven out of the Garden of Eden, as they bowed over the first grave, as they watered the dust of the ground with their tears over the silent, still form of their son, Abel. Those are the tears of the children of Israel in bondage as they cried unto God in their affliction and slavery. They are the tears of Gods elect through the centuries as they cried unto heaven. They are the sobs and tears that have been wrung from the heart and soul of Gods people as they looked on their silent dead, as they stand beside their open graves, as they experience in the trials and sufferings of life, heartaches and disappointments indescribable. Such is the curse that sin has laid upon Gods beautiful creation; and this is the damnation of the hand of him who holds it, that usurper, that interloper, that intruder, that alien, that stranger, that dragon, that serpent, that Satan-devil. And I wept audibly, for the failure to find a Redeemer meant that this earth in its curse is consigned forever to death. It meant that death, sin, damnation and hell should reign forever and ever and the sovereignty of Gods earth should remain forever in the hands of Satan [Expository Sermons on Revelation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1969), 3:69-70]2Thankfully, man was not left abandoned to a history of self-perpetuated depravity. For history is HIS storyHistory, then, has its center in Jesus Christ and its goal is his triumphant reign over all the powers of the world.3
1 J. A. Seiss, The Apocalypse: Lectures on the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1966), 114.
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An international team led by research scientist Essam Heggy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, recently traveled to northern Kuwait to map the depth and extent of aquifers in arid environments using an airborne sounding radar prototype. The 40-megahertz, low-frequency sounding radar was provided by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena; and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France. Heggy’s team was joined by personnel from the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR), Kuwait City.
Mapping Subsurface Aquifers by Helicopter
For two weeks, the team flew a helicopter equipped with the radar on 12 low-altitude passes (1,000 feet, or 305 meters) over two well-known freshwater aquifers, probing the desert subsurface down to the water table at depths ranging from 66 to 213 feet (20 to 65 meters). The researchers successfully demonstrated that the radar could locate subsurface aquifers, probe variations in the depth of the water table, and identify locations where water flowed into and out of the aquifers.
“This demonstration is a critical first step that will hopefully lead to large-scale mapping of aquifers, not only improving our ability to quantify groundwater processes, but also helping water managers drill more accurately,” said Muhammad Al-Rashed, director of KISR’s Division of Water Resources.
How Radar Sounding Works
The radar is sensitive to changes in electrical characteristics of subsurface rock, sediments and water- saturated soils. Water-saturated zones are highly reflective and mirror the low-frequency radar signal. The returned radar echoes explored the thick mixture of gravel, sand and silt that covers most of Kuwait’s northern desert and lies above its water table.
The team created high-resolution cross sections of the subsurface, showing variations in the fresh groundwater table in the two aquifers studied. The radar results were validated with ground measurements performed by KISR.
“This research will help scientists better understand Earth’s fossil aquifer systems, the approximate number, occurrence and distribution of which remain largely unknown,” said Heggy. “Much of the evidence for climate change in Earth’s deserts lies beneath the surface and is reflected in its groundwater. By mapping desert aquifers with this technology, we can detect layers deposited by ancient geological processes and trace back paleoclimatic conditions that existed thousands of years ago, when many of today’s deserts were wet.”
Climate Change Data from Desert Regions
Mars Water-Mapping Technology
Conditions in Kuwait Support Mapping
Mapping Aquifers in Hyper-Arid Regions
“Results of this study pave the way for potential airborne mapping of aquifers in hyper-arid regions such as the Sahara and Arabian Peninsula, and can be applied to design concepts for a possible future satellite mission to map Earth’s desert aquifers,” said Craig Dobson, program officer for Geodetic Imaging and Airborne Instrument Technology Transition programs at NASA Headquarters, Washington. The work is a pathfinder for the Orbiting Arid Subsurface and Ice Sheet Sounder (OASIS), a NASA spacecraft mission concept designed to map shallow aquifers in Earth’s most arid desert regions and measure ice sheet volume, thickness, basal topography and discharge rates.
The study was co-funded by the California Institute of Technology’s Keck Institute for Space Studies and KISR. The Kuwaiti Police Air Force provided technical support for the flight tests.
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Carcinogenic flame retardants were supposed to be gone by now, but, like endocrine-disrupting plasticizers, they persist
A dangerous flame retardant known as "Tris" has reappeared in products designed for babies and young children, among them car seats, changing table pads, portable crib mattresses, high chair seats, and nursing pillows. (Tris, once used in children's sleepwear, was removed from these products in the 1970s, after it was identified as a carcinogen and a mutagen, a compound that causes genetic mutation.) Also found in these products, according to the same recent study, which appeared in Environmental Science & Technology, is another flame retardant, pentaBDE. This compound was banned in Europe in 2004, when its U.S. manufacturers voluntarily discontinued it after it was found to be environmentally persistent, bioaccumulative, and to adversely affect thyroid function and neurological development.
The study also identified new compounds whose ingredients include some of the older toxic substances—and it found all of these and other flame retardants in 80 percent of the 101 infant and children's products tested. That these chemicals, associated with adverse health impacts including cancer and endocrine disruption, are so widespread raises serious questions about the U.S. system of chemicals management and how we evaluate product safety.
With the potential health hazards of widely used synthetic chemicals coming under increasing scrutiny, and with a growing call from medical and scientific professionals for policies that protect children from such hazards, the question of what takes the place of a threatening chemical has become increasingly important. It also prompts questions about whether it is better to substitute another chemical for the one posing problems or to redesign a product so it can achieve its desired performance, perhaps without such chemicals.
The brominated and chlorinated flame retardants (BFRs and CFRs) found in these children's products offer one cautionary example. Another group of chemicals known as phthalates, used to increase the flexibility of one of the world's most widely used plastics, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), offers another. Together, these compounds account for the vast majority of all plastics additives used worldwide.
In the case of the flame retardants used in upholstery foams, carpet backings, textiles, and hard plastic appliances and other products since the 1970s, new compounds introduced to replace the hazardous ones have in fact resembled their predecessors. The result, despite "early warnings and periodic reminders about the problematic properties of these chemicals" is a "continuing pattern of unfortunate substitution," wrote Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Toxicology Program, and Ake Bergman, professor of environmental chemistry at Stockholm University, in Environmental Health Perspectives in October. They were introducing a statement of concern about BFRs and CFRs signed by nearly 150 scientists from 22 countries.
While cushions and electronics can function without flame retardants, PVC cannot work without plasticizers. Phthalates—oily, colorless liquids based on benzene chemistry—have been the plasticizers of choice since PVC was commercialized in the early 20th century. Without phthalates, PVC would be brittle and of limited use. In some bendable PVC products, phthalates can make up as much as 40 to 50 percent of the finished plastic—and in 2008, nearly 540 billion pounds of PVC were produced worldwide.
Phthalates are also used in other vinyl-based products, to create thin and flexible films (they've been used in nail polish and other cosmetics), as lubricants (hence their use in lotions), as solvents, and to extend the life of fragrances, among many other applications. They are found in everything from food packaging to insect repellant to bath and teething toys. Some phthalates have been shown in animal studies to cause birth defects, and a number of popular phthalates have been identified as endocrine disrupters that interfere with male reproductive development. Concerned, Europe restricted use of about half a dozen phthalates in 2008, and the U.S. restricted them in products intended for use by children under age 12. Similar regulations exist elsewhere, including Canada, Japan, and Taiwan. On May 4, the French National assembly voted to ban phthalates altogether, based on concerns about endocrine disruption.
Like the BFR and CFR flame retardants, phthalates are released from the materials to which they're added. That phthalates could migrate from PVC has been known since the 1960s, when the Air Force found that this could cause problems on spacecraft and phthalates were detected leeching from plastic tubing used in blood transfusion and dairy equipment. We can take phthalates into our bodies by breathing them, ingesting them, and by absorbing them through our skin. A study published in March of this year found that when people eliminated certain packaged foods from their diets, levels of the corresponding phthalates in their urine dropped by more than 50 percent.
So with growing concerns about phthalates and increasing restrictions on their use, a search is on for alternatives—ideally non-toxic compounds that will not migrate out of the plastics. But PVC itself, even without the phthalates, raises questions about product safety. While it may be possible to find a non-toxic plasticizer, vinyl chloride, the main ingredient of PVC, is a human carcinogen that also causes liver and nerve damage. PVC also poses hazards when burned, as incomplete combustion can result in dioxins, also carcinogenic compounds. In April, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed increasing emissions standards for plants that produce PVC, citing inhalation risks to people who live in communities where these manufacturing facilities are located. There are currently 17 such plants in the U.S., mostly in Louisiana and Texas.
Together these flame retardants and plasticizers raise profound questions about how we think about designing new materials and the wisdom—from an environmental health perspective—of regulating chemicals one at a time rather than by examining their characteristics and behavior. They also point to the need to look at a product's entire lifecycle when considering its health impacts. There are many arguments to be made about the costs and benefits of using these materials, and moving away from such widely and long-used materials presents many challenges. Yet as Paul Anastas and John Warner, often considered to be the founders of green chemistry, point out, there is no reason a molecule must be hazardous to perform a particular task. To solve the kinds of problems posed by materials like PVC, we need, as Anastas has said, "to design into our technologies the consequences to human health and the environment." | <urn:uuid:8797154b-cb19-4102-806a-5f834297f457> | CC-MAIN-2015-35 | http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/06/the-toxins-in-baby-products-and-almost-everywhere-else/239811/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-35/segments/1440645335509.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20150827031535-00117-ip-10-171-96-226.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965337 | 1,370 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Published version: Nearly forthcoming in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
The Reverse Stroop Effect
Send correspondence and requests to: [email protected]
Frank H. Durgin
Department of Psychology
500 College Avenue
Swarthmore, PA 19081
phone: (610) 328-8678
fax: (610) 328-7814
In classic Stroop interference, manual or oral identification of sensory colors presented as incongruent color words is delayed relative to simple color naming. In the experiment reported here, this effect was shown to all but disappear when the response was simply to point to a matching patch of color. Conversely, strong Reverse Stroop interference occurred with the pointing task. That is, when the sensory color of a color word was incongruent with that word, responses to color words were delayed by an average of 69 msec relative to a word presented in gray. Thus, incongruently-colored words interfere strongly with pointing to a color patch named by the words, but little interference from incongruent color words is found when the goal is to match the color of the word. These results suggest that Stroop effects arise from response compatibility of irrelevant information rather than automatic processing or habit strength.
The Reverse Stroop Effect
The Stroop Effect is one of the easiest and most powerful effects to demonstrate in a classroom, but not the easiest to explain. Nearly every Introductory Psychology book provides a demonstration of the phenomenon: that it is difficult to name the ink color in which different color words are printed. But what is the proper explanation? Perhaps the weakest hypothesis concerning Stroop interference is that "words are processed faster than are colors." It is true that reading words is faster than naming colors, but this seems to be a matter of response compatibility, rather then perceptual speed. After all, the words require no translation (Virzi & Egeth, 1985). In trying to emphasize that the interference effect depends on greater response compatibility between printed and spoken words, however, one risks suggesting the automaticity account (see Besner, Stolz, & Boutilier, 1997, for a recent critique) which suggests that color words interfere with color naming because they are automatically processed.
The present experiment was designed to put both the speed theory and the automaticity theory to rest, if only for a little while, by using the simple non-verbal response of pointing to the appropriate color in a visual array. This will be shown to completely reverse the direction of interference, and thus to produce a Reverse Stroop effect where sensory colors interfere with identifying color words. No one thinks pointing to colors is automatic, although, like naming, pointing can be construed as a simple deictic act (literally, indexical). Nonetheless, the perceptual grouping of matched colors in an array (target and response) seems so likely to be a sufficient guide for pointing (just as the printed word maps easily to the internal array of possible verbal responses), that the symmetry of this task with the traditional task seems quite good. Here, it can be argued, the response is suited to the sensory information, rather than to the verbal.
In the traditional Stroop effect (Stroop, 1935; see MacLeod, 1991 for a review), naming the print color of a word is delayed if the word itself is a color word which names a different color (e.g., responding "red" to the word "blue" displayed in red letters is slower than responding "red" to a red patch of color). Conversely, very little reverse Stroop interference is found when reading a color-word printed in a conflicting color (i.e., responding "blue" in the above example). One promising account of Stroop interference supposes that it is due to response competition, which, when the response is verbal, gives verbal inputs a privileged position (e.g., Fitts & Posner, 1967; MacLeod, 1991; Treisman & Fearnley, 1969). Although it is well established that Stroop interference is still obtained (though reduced) when manual, key-press responses are given (e.g., Keele, 1972; Pritchatt, 1968), these kinds of task may involve implicit verbal coding at the response-selection stage.
At least two prior experiments have attempted to eliminate Stroop interference by the use of color matching. Pritchatt (1968) showed a reduction in interference by a kind of matching task, but little reversal. McClain (1983) reported elimination of Stroop interference using colored buttons, but did not investigate Reverse Stroop interference. In both cases, colored patches were placed on or near buttons that were to be used as responses. Conversely, Besner et al. (e.g., 1997) have routinely studied normal Stroop interference using color-marked buttons.
Treisman and Fearnley (1969) showed that making same/different judgments about pairs of Stroop-like stimuli showed interference only then the comparison was between different modes (verbal and visual) rather than within the same modes (but, cf. Morton and Chambers, 1973). They did not demonstrate a response type for which visual information had a positive advantage, however. Indeed, Egeth, Blecker, and Kamlet (1969) showed that such comparisons were disrupted when the verbal information embedded in the stimuli (namely "DIFF" or "SAME") conflicted with the response itself. These kinds of findings have been used by some to support a "translational" account of Stroop interference (Virzi & Egeth, 1985). In a translational account, the argument is made that the target information must be translated into the appropriate classification modality (e.g., verbal), whereas the distracting information is already presented in that form. If two items share a modality, no translation is require to match them.
Flowers (1975) demonstrated a strong Reverse Stroop effect in a left-right two-alternative sequential word-to-color matching task. A word ("red" or "green") was presented on a colored background, and then, after a blank delay, one side of the screen would turn green, the other red. The subjects had to indicate which side matched the word. Here, again, although only two responses were possible, the response locations varied from trial to trial so that immediate perceptual information always formed the basis for response (in conjunction with verbal information presented moments before). Flowers demonstrated that this effect was clearly modulated by sensory similarity of interfering colors to the target colors. He did not investigate the influence of this paradigm on normal Stroop interference, however, and his task differs from traditional tasks in having a delayed, binary response. Flowers, Warner, and Polansky (1979), however, did perform a direct test of response compatibility with a numerosity analog of the Stroop task, and found reversal of the direction of interference when the response was to tap out the number of items rather than to respond verbally. (The stimuli in this case were collections of single digits, such as three twos, to which it was easier to say "two", but to tap thrice, as it turned out.)
The present paper reports a new kind of manual task which almost completely eliminates the traditional Stroop interference and produces strong color-based interference when the task is to identify the words (Reverse Stroop). The task is to point to a color by moving a mouse cursor to a patch of color corresponding to the desired response. This task is formally similar to a manual key-press inasmuch as pointing acts like naming. But pointing does so by referring to a perceptual entity (the color patch) rather than a mental category (via a categorical response).
The principal findings of the present experiment are that Stroop interference in responding to the sensory color of a conflicting color word can be eliminated and that Reverse Stroop interference (interference with responding to the color named by the word) demonstrated with a pointing procedure in which the responses are color patches. In the Stroop (Color) condition of this experiment, participants were required to respond to the color that the target word was printed in, ignoring the word itself (which named a different color). In the Reverse Stroop (Word) condition, participants were to respond to the color named by the word, ignoring its incongruent physical color. In both cases the response was to move a mouse cursor to a patch of color on the computer screen. Neutral (no-conflict) versions of each condition were also performed. Insofar as the demands of the pointing task lend themselves to the direct use of color rather than verbal information, response-competition theory predicts a strong Reverse Stroop effect when participants are required to respond to the verbal information and to disregard the perceptually salient color match. Simply put, pointing to a matching color can be accomplished without ever internally labeling the color. Pointing to a named color, on the other hand, would seem to require either categorical identification of the surrounding color patches or translation of the word into a visual code. If distracting information represents a possible response, then response competition may ensue when the distracter-based response would be in conflict with the correct response.
As a further consideration, the locations of the response colors were randomly altered from trial to trial for half of the participants to ensure dependence on visual guidance rather than on memory. In terms of information acquisition, fixed target locations ought logically to be faster, but if memory for fixed locations tends to foster a counterproductive dependence on response categorization (e.g., as may occur with manual key-presses) the opposite result could hold for the Color condition of the present task.
Participants. Forty Swarthmore undergraduate students participated in exchange for payment or partial fulfillment of a course requirement. Ten were assigned to each of four experimental conditions. Two additional students were excluded for failure to follow instructions.
Figure 1. Display configuration to scale with a key to actual display colors (left). Target word was presented in gray (neutral condition) or in a conflicting color (incongruent condition), which was matched to one of four square patches at corners of display. Color locations shown are those used in the fixed-location conditions of the Experiment. The central fixation square, which was only visible prior to the appearance of the target word, was about half the linear size of the "u" in "blue" shown here. Note that actual color patches rather than textures were used in experiment (right) -- and no color key was necessary.
The Task. On each trial of the experiment, students had to move a mouse cursor to a location (see Figure 1) which corresponded in color to the color of a word on the screen or to the color which the word named.
Design. Four between-participant conditions were included representing the combination of Task, which was either to identify the Color of the word or the color the Word named, and Color Location of the response patches, which were either Fixed or were Variable from trial to trial. Participants were assigned at random to one of the four conditions and each received two sessions of neutral trials as well as two sessions of incongruent trials in ABBA (or BAAB) order, so that interference effects could be measured within individuals by comparing sessions. For the Word tasks, the neutral stimuli were color words presented in medium gray. For the Color tasks, the neutral stimuli were furniture words ("desk", "lamp", "table", "chair") presented in color. Whether the neutral or incongruent condition came first was varied systematically between subjects.
Twelve distinct incongruent target stimuli were created by the factorial combination of four color words ("red", "yellow", "blue", and "green"), with each of the three colors incongruent with that word. A session consisted of 12 blocks of 12 trials each with stimulus order randomized within each block. The first two blocks of each session were considered warm-up and were not analyzed. In the Variable Color-Location conditions, the locations of the four color patches were chosen pseudo-randomly on each trial by the computer. In the Fixed Color-Location conditions the color positions were consistently as shown in Figure 1. In the neutral Color conditions, the furniture words replaced the color words, and thus were each paired with only three of the remaining colors.
Stimuli and response. The words were presented in 72-point Geneva lowercase letters against a black background at the center of a high-resolution Macintosh Display (28 pixels/cm) viewed, without restraint, at a distance of about 50 cm. The colors used, specified as 8-bit RGB values, were red (255,0,0), green (0,170,51), blue (68,68,255), yellow (255,255,0), and, for the neutral color, gray (170,170,170). A white square outline, 2 pixels wide, with an internal width of 400 pixels (16 deg of visual angle) defined the active portion of the display. The colored response patches were 100 pixels square and were placed at the inside corners of the white square, as depicted in Figure 1.
Each trial began with the square white outline around the display region, and a white square fixation mark, 20 pixels across, at its center. In the Fixed Color-Location condition, the four response color-squares were also present. The student initiated the trial by clicking the mouse on the fixation square. This action caused the fixation square and the mouse cursor to disappear, so as not to mask the word. (The mouse cursor later reappeared as soon as the student moved the mouse outside the region defined by the fixation square.) After a delay of 500 ms, the stimulus word appeared and remained on the screen until response. In the Variable Color-Location condition, the colored response patches appeared simultaneously with the word. Response latency was defined as the time at which the mouse-cursors tip entered one of the four colored response regions. A ballistic motion which passed the cursor through the color patch was therefore sufficient. A physical movement of the mouse by about 3 cm along the table surface sufficed to reach any patch. A beep for incorrect responses provided feedback.
Median response latencies were computed for correct-response trials in each session for each participant. Average median response times (RTs), as well as mean error rates (number of errors per 120-trial session), are shown in Figure 2 for incongruent and neutral trials for each experimental task.
Figure 2. Averages of median reaction times as a function of Task (identify Word or Color), Color Locations (Fixed or Arbitrary), and presence of incongruent information (Neutral or Incongruent). Error bars represent standard errors of the mean. Parenthetical values report error frequencies for the various conditions.
A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on the RT data with Task (Word or Color) and Color Location (Fixed or Random) as between-subject variables and Irrelevant Dimension (Neutral or Incongruent) and Block (First or Second) as within-subject variables. As is evident from Figure 2, overall latencies in the Word task conditions (654 ms) are substantially longer than those in the Color matching conditions (526 ms) [F(1,36) = 61.1, p < .001], consistent with the less natural mapping from words to directional selection of colored patched. Incongruent trials were also slower, overall, than neutral trials [F(1,36) = 41.7, p< .001]. Crucially, however, because there was an interaction between Irrelevant Dimension and Task [F(1,36) = 24.7, p < .001], separate RT analyses were carried out for each Task. Note that this interaction indicates greater interference for the Word task than for the Color task, as is evident in Figure 2.
RTs were shorter in the second block (585) than in the first (597) [F(1,36) = 7.5, p < .01], and a reliable interaction of Block and Irrelevant Dimension indicated that this improvement was greater for incongruent than for neutral trials [F(1,36) = 9.3, p < .01]. However these order effects, which are consistent with practice, are not relevant to our main questions and will not be considered further.
When the same ANOVA was applied to error scores, the same patterns of findings emerged: Overall errors were higher in the Word condition (2.1 per session) than in the Color condition (1.0) [F(1,36) = 7.5, p < .01], and there were more errors for incongruent trials (2.0) than for neutral trials (1.1) [F(1,36) = 23.9, p < .001]. There was also an interaction between Irrelevant Dimension and Task [F(1,36 = 9.5, p < .01], indicating greater interference effects for the word task, and so error analyses were also conducted separately for each task. There was no reliable effect of Block on error rates [F(1,36) = 2.2, p > 0.1].
Word Matching Task When the color-matching data were excluded from the analysis, the mean RT for incongruent trials (689 msec) was much longer than that for neutral trials (620 msec) [F(1, 18) = 37.2, p <.0001]. Similarly, there were more errors for incongruent trials (2.9) than for neutral trials (1.3) [F(1,18) = 24.5, p < .0001]. There was no evidence of effects of Color Location in either analysis, nor did Color Location interact reliably with any other factors. In summary, strong Reverse Stroop interference effects have been demonstrated in both response times and in error rates.
Color-Matching Task. In contrast to the results of the Word task, very little Stroop interference is evident in the pointing task when the response is to the color in which the word is displayed. For the RT analysis, incongruent trials (531 msec) were, indeed, slower than congruent trials (522 msec) [F(1,18) = 4.6, p < .05]. However, this difference (9 msec) is much smaller than that for the Word task (79 msec), as was indicated by the interaction in the main analysis above. Moreover, the error rates for the incongruent trials did not differ reliably from neutral trials for this task [F(1,18) = 2.3, p > .10]. Again, the interaction in the main error analysis indicates that interference was greater in the Word task than in the Color task. Although some Stroop interference remains, it is clear that it is inconsequential relative to the Reverse Stroop effects.
Rather surprisingly, responses in the Random Color Location condition (504 msec) were faster than those in the Fixed Color Location condition (550 msec) [F(1,18) = 11.6, p < .01]. It might be that fixed response locations facilitated categorical encoding of responses as a strategy, and it might be that this was actually counterproductive in the matching task, which can be handled by perceptual color grouping more rapidly. However, in further experiments, not reported here, this particular difference has not arisen reliably (whereas the others do). Moreover, the effects of Irrelevant Dimension did not vary as a function of Color Location [F(1,18) = 1.8, n.s], so I will not dwell on this further.
The results reported here indicate that using a pointing task can produce strong Reverse Stroop interference while nearly eliminating traditional Stroop interference. It is worth noting that, insofar as the Fixed Color Location conditions are analogous to traditional Stroop paradigms with fixed responses for each color item, it is impressive that these conditions are so effective at reversing the traditional direction of Stroop interference.
The present findings support the response-compatibility/response-competition model of Stroop interference, and are thus consistent with similar findings for numerosity (Flowers et al., 1979). They are also compatible with translational accounts (e.g., Virzi & Egeth, 1985). When responses are matched to visually guided action, visual, rather than verbal responses are faster, and conflicting visual information is more strongly disruptive of responding to verbal information than vice versa.
Accounts of Stroop interference which depend on the purported automaticity of verbal processing of text, on the other hand, are difficult to adapt to the present results. Although a common response to a word is to read it, pointing to matching colors is not plausibly an automatic response, or even a normal response. There is nonetheless clear Reverse Stroop interference in the pointing task. Insofar as the Reverse Stroop parallels the traditional Stroop, the automaticity account fails for both. This is bad news for models of Stroop performance that presume a basis for the effect in automaticity or strength of association (e.g., Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990).
Researchers using sorting-task variants of the Stroop effect, in which the stimulus itself was removed to one of several bins, have previously suggested that active manipulation reduces Stroop interference (Chmiel, 1984; Martin, 1981; Taylor & Clive, 1983; Tecce & Happ, 1964) particularly when colored labels are used for the sorting bins (Chmiel, 1984). However, reversals (i.e., strong Reverse Stroop effects) may not have been as evident because sorting tasks maintain an emphasis on conceptual categorization. The present task might be regarded as a single-trial-analyzable version of a sorting task, but the analogy to sorting is actually no stronger than that of naming to sorting. Moreover, the pointing task employed here may succeed because it avoids any dependence on explicit categorization. Scanning tasks (Uleman & Reeves, 1978) have shown suggestive reversal results, but these have departed substantially from any structural similarity to the traditional Stroop.
The nearest predecessor of the present effect is probably the work of Flowers (1975), discussed earlier, in which a Reverse Stroop effect was demonstrated. He used keypress responses on the left or right side to a word presented on a colored background. Following the word, the two colors used, red and green were presented randomly to the left and right, and the keypress was to correspond to the side of the color that matched the word. The variable location of response locations was used to delay response by a variable interval in that experiment, but may also have served to disadvantage categorical responding in favor of visually-guided action (perhaps guided by implicit apparent motion). Flowers did not investigate the traditional direction of the Stroop effect, because he did not have subjects respond to the perceived colors. Moreover, his task departs from most traditional Stroop tasks in having only a binary response set (cf., also, Treisman & Fearnley, 1969). Apart from Flowers et al.s (1979) investigation of response compatibility in the numerosity analog of Stroop interference, the present results stand as a unique demonstration of the symmetry of interference that the stimulus matching results of Treisman and Fearnley (1969), for example, suggested ought to be possible.
In conclusion, the data presented here show that Reverse Stroop interference, the interference of colors with the response to color words, is quite strong in a color-matching pointing task for which normal Stroop interference is minimized. Unlike manual key-pressing, which has traditionally failed to eliminate strong Stroop interference, pointing, even to a fixed set of locations, appears to be resistant to covert verbal labeling. These data are clearly consistent with accounts which stress the importance of response compatibility and consequent response competition in Stroop interference effects.
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This work was supported by a Swarthmore Faculty Research Grant and by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Thanks to Evoni Story and to Richa Jain for running the experimental participants. Thanks also to Derek Besner, John Flowers, Joel Lachter, Neill Trammell, John Wixted, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts. | <urn:uuid:43479176-7f5f-4bb6-80a2-beaab20da1be> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/fdurgin1/ReverseStroop/PBRStroop.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1405997883905.99/warc/CC-MAIN-20140722025803-00227-ip-10-33-131-23.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934095 | 5,737 | 2.84375 | 3 |
IQ scores are on a decline, reversing a trend that saw scores rising at a steady rate during the 20th century, according to a new study.
Researchers from the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research in Norway studied the IQ scores of about 730,000 Norwegian men born between 1962 and 1991. They found that scores grew by nearly three percentage points every decade for people born between 1962 and 1975. But among those born after 1975, scores fell.
The cause of the IQ decline is due to environmental factors, and not genetics, said Ole Rogeburg, a senior research fellow at Ragnar Frisch Centre and co-author of the study on IQ scores, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
“It’s not that dumb people are having more kids than smart people, to put it crudely,” Rogeburg told CNN. “It’s something to do with the environment, because we’re seeing the same differences within families.”
Environmental factors include differences in the way young people are educated, increases in time spent online, changes in nutrition and less reading overall.
The downward trend is a reversal of the Flynn effect, a term that describes the vast improvement of IQ scores in many parts of the world throughout the 20th century. According to the study, the Flynn effect peaked in the mid-1970s and has declined in the decades since.
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- Column: What Happened When My Entire Family Came Out | <urn:uuid:eb579885-9a76-4df8-bf23-8e519ecc8379> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://time.com/5311672/iq-scores-decline-environment/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337516.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20221004152839-20221004182839-00693.warc.gz | en | 0.932308 | 432 | 2.6875 | 3 |
The P/390 is basically an IBM mainframe system adapted to run on a personal computer. A P/390 comes on a single card that contains a System/390 instruction set, allowing operating systems such as OS/390, MVS, VM, and VSE, to be installed. The P/390 makes it possible to develop, test, and run application programs written for the mainframe on a smaller, more economical machine. After testing, programs that require mainframe capability can be moved to the mainframe. A common use of the P/390 today is for 2000 analysis and testing. The P/390 is sold as part of a PC workstation that also comes with an OS/2 operating system. The entire product is called the IBM PC Server System/390. The MVS and OS/390 operating systems require 128 megabyes of RAM. VM and VSE will install with 32 megabytes.
An R/390 is the P/390-PCI card installed on IBM's RS/6000 server. Both products are sold both as development environments and as economical approaches for companies with older mainframe systems to move their legacy applications to a new production environment. | <urn:uuid:6b485698-7bfe-44d2-81a7-1299c0b9f868> | CC-MAIN-2015-22 | http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/definition/P-390 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2015-22/segments/1432207929230.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20150521113209-00324-ip-10-180-206-219.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959059 | 239 | 2.59375 | 3 |
At St Peter’s Primary school, North Somerset, we have long been looking into ways in which we can try to reduce teacher workload. We began our journey by reading the teacher workload review group paper 'Eliminating unnecessary workload around planning and teaching resources' and agreed with many of its principles.
As a large school, we support our teachers to plan collaboratively in year groups, placing planning at the heart of our teaching.
We agreed that teachers do not need to produce daily plans and that planning should not be done to please outside organisations.
As teachers we have all spent hours scouring the internet for resources and the report made us consider the value in this and the quality of the resources that we were using in school.
In September 2015, we had launched the year with our ‘Excellence Project’. We primarily used it to introduce our new school pedagogy –'Excellence as Standard' – to staff, students and parents.
We had used world-class research, from Dylan William, John Hattie and Gordon Stobart of how children learn best and developed our own pedagogy to support our pupils’ learning.
Like most schools, we taught maths and English in the mornings and foundation subjects in the afternoons.
This meant we were ‘flitting’ from one subject to the next and, although we have a strong curriculum, we saw that we were not getting the same quality of work from the children as we had done during our excellence project.
Changing between subjects each afternoon also made it difficult for some children to remember what they had been learning the last time they did that subject.
Foundation subjects seemed to lack depth and continuity, along with accurate assessment of pupils’ learning.
Teachers also found planning for foundation subjects time consuming. They would plan for a series of, for example, history lessons over the half term, with little opportunity for formative assessment to be acted upon.
Changing the way we plan and teach
Given the success of our Excellence Project, we suggested that, instead of teaching 5+ different subjects during the week in afternoons, that teachers ‘block teach’ foundation subjects over a week or fortnight.
This would allow them to teach in depth, ensuring formative assessment in every lesson was strong – and could be acted upon with better opportunities for pupils to produce work of greater quality.
Positive Outcomes of our changes- less workload, better results
- Increased amounts of collaborative planning leading to an overall reduction in the total amount of time teachers spend planning.
- Higher quality outcomes from children with time to work ‘at depth’ during the week More continuity in learning for pupils – the opportunity to become ‘experts’ over the week.
- Opportunities for extended writing across the curriculum.
- Stronger formative assessment that can be acted upon immediately.
- Better quality teaching in subjects across the curriculum.
- Fantastic CPD for our staff through the maths hub
- Access to text books helps reduce teacher workload for planning.
Our teachers tell us:
Block teaching foundation subjects really enables children to learn more deeply and discover a real love of learning for a specific topic. Focusing on one subject for a block of time enables children to acquire more knowledge and skills and get really enthusiastic about each topic.
It means that we don't scratch the surface but can identify any prior knowledge and extend this on to make learning fun and embed high quality knowledge.
It is clear to see progress happening! The children are also able to produce quality pieces of writing, knowledgeable science experiments to really show off what they have learnt and also apply skills learnt in English and maths.
It has also supported planning as we teachers are focusing on specific subjects each term which is much more manageable.
We are pleased with the positive impact that this format of planning is having for the year groups who are using it – but we know this is just the start of our journey and we can do more to reduce teacher workload. Over the next year we are looking to do this by:
- Introducing this form of planning across the school
- Write termly plans in this format for every year group for teachers to use each year
- Share these with our Key Stage 3 colleagues so they have a clear understanding of our children’s learning and aid transition to secondary school.
To see our film explaining Excellence as Standard and the Excellence as Standard Pedagogy Poster please click here. | <urn:uuid:556ded85-76da-4e53-89be-d446c83422d2> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://teaching.blog.gov.uk/2017/10/19/doing-fewer-things-in-greater-depth-how-we-reduced-teacher-workload-by-restructuring-our-approach-to-planning/?replytocom=526 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267159570.46/warc/CC-MAIN-20180923173457-20180923193857-00480.warc.gz | en | 0.964489 | 916 | 2.90625 | 3 |
If you are from India, you would recall that in the good old days there used to be a hawker who would not sell anything but rather would take your old clothes and exchange them for steel utensils, new clothes, or some other daily use items.
You can term it a barter system and Indian homemakers used to have a gala time showcasing their negotiation skills.
In some places, we can still spot them, but unfortunately, the steel utensils are replaced with plastic wares. (like the one lady in the picture we spotted in Udaipur, Rajasthan)
It was an excellent system where old clothes were refurbished & restored and sold in other markets (circular economy).
These days many of these clothes, bags, plastic, and electronic items are made, consumed, and then thrown out in landfills (linear economy).
What is the difference between Circular Economy and Linear Economy?
Let us take the example of the device on which you are reading this, your cell phone, laptop, or tablet – which contains copper, lead, zinc, mercury, arsenic, and many other raw materials that are excavated from the earth’s surface.
Imagine, if human beings keep mining and manufacturing these electronic devices and consumers just toss these devices in the landfills after every few years.
Can all the raw materials last forever? Sure, it will get exhausted sooner or later. Unless we find alternatives, our future generations will not have mobile phones. This is Linear Economy.
Another option is to start giving back, whenever we want to change our mobile phone or laptop, instead of throwing it out – we give it to someone, resell it, or give it for recycling. Manufacturers can retrieve the raw materials (copper, lead, zinc, etc.) from the old device and use them to make a new device. This is a Circular Economy
Linear Economy is taking the resources -> making the product -> throwing the product ⬇️.
While the Circular economy is about restoring, reusing, repurposing, and recycling 🔄.
If you apply the same logic to say the furniture in your room or the clothes which you are wearing. In the linear model, once you think of a replacement for your items, they will be thrown in a landfill while in the case of a circular economy, they can be reused, repurposed, or restored.
Why should we go for a Circular Economy?
Over the last few decades with increasing industrialization, consumerism, unlimited choices, fast fashion, and high disposable incomes – the prevailing mindset has been to buy items and throw them.
Current industrial processes are characterized by a linear system where you take resources from nature to make things, sell them to consumers who use them, and dump them when use is over.
In producing and discarding resources, we create by-products like carbon dioxide and methane, which have huge environmental repercussions –
- New raw materials need to be extracted every time a product needs to be developed. Like zinc, copper, etc in the case of an electronic device or a tree that needs to be chopped for wooden furniture. In addition, we would need energy, water, packaging (plastic), transportation, and other resources.
- The items which are thrown in the landfills – pollute the surroundings & air, take up a vast amount of land, and the harmful chemicals from the litter percolate underground which further contaminates the soil and water
A circular economy limits the impact of the linear economy by ensuring that resources remain in the system for a longer period of time. The materials remain in use more than once thereby reducing the extraction of new raw materials and waste minimization.
- The same zinc, copper, etc. can be used to make a second phone or probably many more phones.
- The wood of the wooden dining table can be used to make four side tables and other furniture from the repurposed sawdust.
- The tee shirt can be upcycled as a carrying bag.
Earth resources are limited, hence a model which is dominated by production, consumption, and disposal is untenable. Moreover, with climate change impacts due to pollution and waste, it becomes imperative that we switch toward a circular economy.
While some leakage will happen from the circular economy as well, considering not everything can be reused and it might not be resource-effective. Hence it cannot be an ‘either’ and ‘or’ case, but a slow transition.
Here are some of the circular economy companies in India transforming waste into valuable products. | <urn:uuid:65eff06c-a921-4b5e-9965-5b5a3e30f994> | CC-MAIN-2023-23 | https://changestarted.com/circular-economy-why-is-it-better-than-linear-economy/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-23/segments/1685224653608.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20230607042751-20230607072751-00292.warc.gz | en | 0.935649 | 970 | 3.140625 | 3 |
This month I dove into the Harvard EdX course CS50x, Introduction to Computer Science (with a deadline of December 31, so there's time to join me!). Week 0 included the introduction to the concepts of binary and ASCII as well as the program Scratch. Scratch was developed by MIT to provide an opportunity to dabble in computer programming and be able to create a story, game, or animation with the use of blocks of programming code. Blocks only fit together if they are logically appropriate to do so. The CS50 course showed some great examples and you can view the code behind any of the public projects on the Scratch website for inspiration or to figure out how to do something.
At this point there are over 4.5 million projects on the Scratch website. A couple of them are mine. My first program was Game of Catch between Scratch the cat and a dinosaur.
It wasn't interactive, so in version 2 of my program I created the possibility to move the characters around. Using keyboard commands you can move the cat and dinosaur around the screen, but only if they are not holding the ball.
Once I got to the interactive stage, I let my kids "play" the game. Of course they were VERY excited to do this, which led me to my next programming idea. My daughter is learning her letters, so I decided to make a game that would allow her to learn and practice.
The Toddler Alphabet Game is aesthetically very basic. It's repetitive (just what a 20-month old needs). When the space bar is pressed a letter is shown and read, then it waits for the input of a matching letter from the keyboard. At the time that I'm posting this, my program is a little buggy, so I may work further to try to find and fix the problem, but I'm pleased with how well it does work and with the coding process I had to go through to get the results I wanted. Specifically, I'm pleased as how much I was able to clean up my code. I figure I spent about 15 hours on the program and it was riveting. I hope I'm as excited about learning some C as I move into Week 1 of the course. | <urn:uuid:ae09c118-e027-4bdf-9e35-fdb2253e3a56> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.sarahgoerquilts.com/tag/scratch/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439738777.54/warc/CC-MAIN-20200811115957-20200811145957-00135.warc.gz | en | 0.975995 | 451 | 2.703125 | 3 |
Comparison of different concentration methods for the detection of hepatitis A virus and calicivirus from bottled natural mineral waters
Publication: Research - peer-review › Journal article – Annual report year: 2010
To evaluate the efficiency of different recovery methods of viral RNA from bottled water, a comparison was made of 2 positively and 2 negatively charged membranes that were used for absorbing and releasing HAV virus particles during the filtration of viral spiked bottled water. All the 4 membranes, regardless of charge and pore size, had low level viral recovery. The results show that a considerable number of the virus particles passed through the pores of the membranes instead of being trapped by the electrostatic charges. Two different procedures were then compared using 1.5 L polyethylene bottles spiked with 10-fold serial dilutions of HAV and FCV. The first procedure included an ultrafiltration-based method followed by MiniMag RNA extraction, and the second an ultracentrifugation-based method followed by RNA extraction using QIAamp® viral RNA mini kit. The ultracentrifugation-based method resulted in a better recovery of HAV and FCV when compared to the ultrafiltration-based method.
|Citations||Web of Science® Times Cited: 16|
- Ultrafiltration, Concentration methods, Bottled water, Calicivirus, Hepatitis A, Ultracentrifugation, Real Time-PCR | <urn:uuid:8c306a2e-d96c-4b33-ba2d-1f6b11b82d23> | CC-MAIN-2014-52 | http://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/comparison-of-different-concentration-methods-for-the-detection-of-hepatitis-a-virus-and-calicivirus-from-bottled-natural-mineral-waters(290084ca-2e66-40c8-875e-bb887297a42f).html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-52/segments/1419447548611.3/warc/CC-MAIN-20141224185908-00077-ip-10-231-17-201.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.899569 | 296 | 2.5625 | 3 |
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Computer animation is a general term for a kind of visual digital display technology that simulates moving objects on-screen. Modern forms of computer animation evolved from more primitive computer graphics over the last few decades, as huge advances in computer technology led to much more sophisticated imaging methods. Modern computer animation can achieve dazzling results with three-dimensional figures acting against a three-dimensional background. As a result, it has largely revolutionized the film industry by reducing the costs associated with setting up physical film sets, hiring extras and gathering props. Now, many of these physical assets can be simulated using computer animation.
The simplest and earliest forms of computer animation simply moved objects around on a screen in what's called two-dimensional computer graphics animation. These kinds of technology are still common, for example, in animated GIF files. Early 64-bit computer systems could achieve these kinds of animation, which gradually developed into more sophisticated forms where pre-drawn images were juxtaposed on moving backgrounds to simulate an elaborate animation reel.
Today's computer animation, also called computer-generated imagery (CGI) animation, uses three-dimensional methods involving digitally produced pieces placed onto a conceptual "skeleton" or other framework. CGI may refer to static or animated content, whereas computer animation specifically refers to displays of objects in motion. | <urn:uuid:a61812ea-14e2-4ddf-a244-f92d7fe3236e> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://www.techopedia.com/definition/102/computer-animation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439739347.81/warc/CC-MAIN-20200814160701-20200814190701-00363.warc.gz | en | 0.945655 | 292 | 3.921875 | 4 |
Villages brightened from 2001 (L) to 2011 (R). Images: Burlig & Preonas / NOAA
Electrification is associated with a seemingly endless list of social and economic goods. Nations that use more power tend to have increased income levels and educational attainment and lower risk of infant mortality, to name but a few. So I was baffled to stumble across a pair of economic analyses on electrification in India and Kenya, posted last month, that cast serious doubt on what has long assumed to be a causal link between the glow of electricity and rural development.
“It is difficult to find evidence in the data that electrification is dramatically transforming rural India,” concludes Fiona Burlig, a fourth-year UC Berkeley doctoral student in agricultural and resource economics who coauthored the India study. “In the medium term, rural electrification just doesn’t appear to be a silver bullet for development.” Continue reading →
Air France and KLM agreed to test a dozen AirPods from spring 2009 but still await delivery from MDI
Indian carmaker Tata Motors is voicing concerns about the range and durability of the compressed-air powered minicar technology that I critically analyzed for IEEE Spectrum this month (see “Deflating the Air Car”). Tata Motors invested in French air car developer Motor Development International (MDI) in early 2007, but yesterday Mumbai-based news source DNA reported that Tata sees ongoing issues with MDI’s technology.
Tata already sells vehicles that run on gasoline, compressed natural gas, and liquid petroleum gas and is launching a battery-powered sedan in Europe. However, Tata Motors’ vice-president for engineering systems S Ravishankar apparently told DNA Money that the company’s efforts to add air-powered cars to its fleet are hung up by range limitations:
“Air is not a fuel, it is just an energy carrier. So a tank full of air does not have the same energy as a tank full of CNG. Any vehicle using only compressed air to run would face problems of range.”
When asked whether this means that “the ‘Air Car’ project [is] off?,” Ravishankar declined to comment. Instead, Ravishankar added that excessive cooling of the air car’s pneumatic engine is also presenting a challenge. Continue reading → | <urn:uuid:33ea116d-eae1-40e8-ab60-c5753f7cb9f8> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | https://carbonnation.info/tag/uc-berkeley/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917121216.64/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031201-00424-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938282 | 490 | 2.515625 | 3 |
It's Dwarf Crenicichla Time!Author: Radek Bednarczuk
When most people think of South American cichlids, they think of the popular discus, angelfish, apistos, and eartheaters, but the vast waters of the Amazon are also home to other interesting and colorful cichlids, such as those in the genus Crenicichla. These are usually seen by hobbyists as aggressive, large, and unsuitable for a community tank, but some of their smaller cousins are actually ideal for community tanks.
With over 100 species and still growing, the genus Crenicichla was divided into various groups. Dwarf Crenicichla—species that do not exceed 12 to 14 cm (4¾ to 5½ inches) in length—have been placed in the wallacii group. Some of the species in this group are Crenicichla urosema Kullander 1990, C. virgatula Ploeg 1991, C. heckeli Ploeg 1989, C. wallacii Regan 1905, and the most popular ones, C. compressiceps Ploeg 1986, C. notophthalmus Regan 1913, and C. regani Ploeg 1989. There are also many interesting species that have not been scientifically described, which can be found more and more often in the aquarium trade.
The group is characterized not only by their small size, but also by the fact that the females usually possess ringed, eye-like black dots on their dorsal fins. These cichlids inhabit the waters of South America, which, depending on the species, can be still or rapidly flowing. Found in still waters are C. notophthalmus(which lives around the Rio Negro) and C. regani (which inhabits the Rio Trombetas). The latter, rheophilic (fast-water-loving) group includes, for example, C. compressiceps (which inhabits the Rio Tocantins drainage), Crenicichla heckeli, and C. urosema.
The Dwarf Crenicichla Aquarium
Although these cichlids are small in size, keep in mind that they are territorial fish that become quite aggressive during the mating season, and the males of some species have rather large territories. There is also significant intraspecific aggression among these cichlids.
The minimum tank length for a few young, sexually immature specimens is 100 cm (40 inches), and its width should be 50 to 60 cm (20 to 25 inches). The height is not as important, as these fish spend the better part of the day close to the bottom of the aquarium.
One way to limit the aggression between specimens is to only keep one or two mated pairs from one species. These fish can be kept with eartheaters, catfish, and larger cichlids, and you can keep them with other dwarf cichlids, but make sure they are too large for the Crenicichla to eat.
Theaquarium should include numerous hiding places in the form of driftwood, stones, leaves, or ceramic pipes. These hideouts can become potential spawning sites as well as places where the fish lurk for most of the day.
The substrate should consist of sand or small stones. This somewhat minimalist, austere decor of the aquarium can be enlivened with live plants—Microsorum attached to wood or stones, Echinodorus, and Cryptocoryne would all be suitable, as well as other plants well adapted to the physical and chemical parameters of the water.
The lighting of the tank should not be too bright because that could frighten the fish and make them shy. The temperature should be around 28°C (83°F), and the pH will depend on the species being kept. Usually the pH will fall in the range of 5.5 to 6 for C. notophthalmus and 6.5 to 7 for the more tolerant C. regani. The water hardness should be around 5 to 10 dGH.
Many aquarists keep dwarf Crenicichla at a pH close to 7, a general hardness of 10 to 13 dGH, and a temperature of 26° to 27°C (79° to 80°F). Under such circumstances, even slightly decreasing the pH and hardness, raising the temperature to 29° to 30°C (84° to 86°F), and adding tannins should stimulate these cichlids to breed.
A key factor to maintaining these fish in excellent health is very good biological filtration and aeration, as well as ideal sanitary conditions in the tank. Weekly water changes should be performed using water with the same physical and chemical parameters as the water already in the tank. Neglect can cause increased susceptibility to bacterial infections and shorten their lifespan. These fish can reach at least four to six years of age if conditions are good.
The Crenicichla that inhabit fast-flowing streams should have the opportunity to enjoy a brisk water current in the aquarium, which can be provided by an internal filter equipped with a diffuser directed at a stone or a piece of wood. In contrast, the species that live in still, quiet waters should not be subjected to a strong current in the aquarium, as that could cause them discomfort.
While it is commonly believed that Crenicichla need live food and live food only, this is not the whole truth. It is naturally difficult to acclimate the wild-caught specimens to dry food, but most of the species reproduce in captivity, and there is no trouble feeding captive-bred fish dry foods that sink to the bottom.
The species in this genus are usually typical predators that prey on other fish, and their elongated bodies and wide, long, massive snouts show the adaptation to this lifestyle. However, some species feed on insects, such as C. compressiceps. Good foods for all Crenicichla would be frozen krill, glassworms, bloodworms, and adult Artemia.
A good method to provide variety in their daily menu is a mixture that can be prepared at home by grinding the following ingredients: shrimp, marine fish fillets, spinach, and a small addition of green peas.
If you want to use live food, you can breed livebearers. Some hobbyists simply place a net or slotted breeder in the Crenicichla tank and put a few livebearer females inside. Eventually they will give birth to their young, which in turn serve as an excellent food source for the cichlids. It is a good method to encourage a chosen pair to spawn, as well as a food source during long absences. It can also work for fish that cannot be weaned onto dry food.
Since you need a mated pair before you can breed the fish, there are two ways to obtain one—they can be bought from a trusted breeder, or you can buy a few young fish and wait for them to pair off on their own. When buying a few young fish and allowing them to pair off naturally, it is best to separate the mated pairs into an aquarium of their own when they form.
The next step is stimulating the pair to spawn. Begin by lowering the pH and hardness, raising the temperature, and performing one large water change in the amount of 50 to 60 percent. Some people change the water every few days.
A good way to obtain excellent water for spawning purposes is to use RO-filtered water enriched with mineral salts available in the aquarium trade. It is also worthwhile to feed the pair daily with large amounts of live food.
Hiding places are an important element in the breeding tank, preferably ceramic pipes in which the eggs will be laid. If an external filter is used, its inlet should be covered with a sponge so the young are not accidentally sucked in. It is also good to add tannins to the water, which will protect the eggs from fungus.
As typical among cichlids, the spawning is preceded by spectacular courtship rituals: The male will display to the female, spread his fins, etc. Courtship can last for a few days, and the female will then occupy one of the hiding places (such as a ceramic pipe), scrupulously clean its walls, and then lay eggs (often attaching them to the ceiling), which are then fertilized by the male.
After the spawning is over the female tends the eggs, fanning them and picking out the eggs that have gone white, while the male protects the territory (the cave with the spawn inside) and chases other fish away. After three to five days, depending on the temperature, the larvae will hatch. In a week, after the yolk sac is absorbed, they can be given freshly hatched Artemia and microworms. The parents care diligently for the growing fry, and brood care can last for a few weeks, or even longer.
See the full article on TFH Digital http://www.tfhdigital.com/tfh/201003/#pg71 | <urn:uuid:c8575207-cb22-437f-a611-b585fa283ac1> | CC-MAIN-2016-44 | http://www.tfhmagazine.com/freshwater/feature-articles/its-dwarf-crenicichla-time.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-44/segments/1476988721595.48/warc/CC-MAIN-20161020183841-00229-ip-10-171-6-4.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953058 | 1,890 | 2.796875 | 3 |
The first African-American artist to attain art superstardom, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) created a huge oeuvre of drawings and paintings (Julian Schnabel recalls him once accidentally leaving a portfolio of about 2,000 drawings on a subway car) in the space of just eight years. Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's Junge Wilde movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as -Samo- (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature -Samo.- In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition The Times Square Show; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.show more | <urn:uuid:492c2254-dfa6-4471-99c6-fe9aa1f3f02c> | CC-MAIN-2017-17 | https://www.bookdepository.com/Jean-Michel-Basquiat-Dieter-Burchhart/9783775725934 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-17/segments/1492917121153.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20170423031201-00200-ip-10-145-167-34.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966951 | 387 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Classrooms in the UK are typically over crowded. They are full of students with a range of learning abilities and often teachers have an incredibly stressful job. They have to not only control the excitable beast that is the class, they also have to direct and encourage pupils with a great range of abilities towards goals that they can achieve.
Over the years, many techniques have been used to try and control classrooms. This might have involved a cane across the palm for every child that acted out, it could have been punishment exercises or detention, or perhaps they were given extra attention to ensure that they stayed focused.
Often though, the best way to control a class is to keep them engaged; something which chalky blackboards often fail to do, especially when 21st century teens have super computers in their back pockets.
That’s why one of the biggest revolutions in teaching equipment is underway with the introduction of the Smartboard.
A Smartboard is an interactive white board, which is basically a white board with a projector attached. Think of it like a giant tablet PC and you are almost there.
So why should every classroom have one?
Every teacher who has one will tell you the same thing: they love them. Importantly for the engagement of the class, they are highly interactive. Most people in the UK will remember copying into a jotter from the blackboard, or perhaps working through a dusty work book. Neither of these activities was particularly stimulating and could result in some seriously boring days.
A Smartboard is designed to encourage teachers and students to stand up at the board and either write, draw or move text around, to play with images and interact with games and learning tools for all kinds of subjects.
Importantly, this level of interactivity helps to engage students. For example, the board can be used to show a short video, and then a few seconds later can display a quick quiz, and then a series of images. The speed at which teachers can switch between interesting displays is key as students have no moment to be distracted. Plus the fact that students can come up and use the technology themselves with no training means that they can quickly and easily be a part of every lesson.
Fun for Teachers and Students
Equally important for teachers and students is the fact that using a Smartboard is fun. Teachers have always hated the scratch of the chalk and the dry powdery hands, or the squeak of dry-wipe boards and the smell of the pens. Smartboards allow them to stay clean and actually have fun moving the different types of display around. Pupils love the moving images and the fact they can play games on the board.
While school text books may have limited the way teachers could approach any given subject, as they only had so many books, or because they had no access to materials for alternative lesson plans, Smartboard technology is such that anyone can make a lesson plan, uploaded it to the internet and make it available for any teacher to download. All they need to do is find a lesson plan for the correct subject, download it to their Smartboard and the lesson is ready to go. Banks of images are available too and many other resources that are only a few clicks away from being on the board and ready to go.
The way of the future…
The fact is that once you try teaching with a Smartboard and then go back to a black or white board, you will feel like you are stepping back to the dark ages of teaching. It is a step forward for teaching and will hopefully become the norm for every classroom in the UK in the next few years. Fingers crossed…
Have you used a Smartboard?
Kevin Gallagher is a fan of Smartboards. He feels that it is one of the most important educational resources for modern school teaching and makes most other school equipment like black boards seem like antiques. | <urn:uuid:4448c7f0-6620-4473-aee8-c6a7945f5dc3> | CC-MAIN-2021-17 | https://wellbeing-support.com/4-reasons-why-every-classroom-should-have-a-smartboard/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2021-17/segments/1618038507477.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20210418163541-20210418193541-00474.warc.gz | en | 0.975722 | 787 | 2.84375 | 3 |
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women is a convention and one of the international human rights law adopted by United Nations General Assembly on 18 December 1979 and entered into force 3 September 1981 established to prohibit all discrimination against women and to ensure their human rights and freedom on a basis of equality with men. As of 2017, 189 countries had ratified this Convention, that is, have made promise to realize this Convention. Countries which had not ratified it were Iran, Somalia, South Sudan, Tonga, the United States and Vatican City.
Main Contents[change | change source]
Article 4 Special measures to promote real equality between men and women and to protect mother women is not discrimination.
Article 8 Rights of women to represent their government and take part in the work of international organisation.
Article 9 Rights of women to change nationality and in marriage to an alien, women are not changed automatically changed her nationality according to that of the husband and have equal right as men about the nationality of her child.
Article 10 Abolishing discrimination against women in the field of education;
- a) The same conditions for career and guidance for profession
- b) Access to the same education program, the same tests, and teaching staff
- c) To abolish any stereotype of the role of men and women at all levels and all form of education.
- d) The same chance to get scholarships
- g) The same chance to take part in sports
Article 11 1. To abolish discrimination against women in the field of working
2. To prevent discrimination against women in marriage motherhood, and ensure their right to work, countries have
- a) to prohibit sanction or dismissal because of being pregnant or maternity leave.
- b) to give maternity leave with pay or social benefits without loss of former profession.
- d) to protect pregnant women form harmful works.
Article 12 Abolishing discrimination in the field of health care.
Article 14 Abolishing discrimination in rural areas.
Article 15 Equality of women with men before law, also in civil matters and legal capacity.
- a) The rights to enter into marriage
- b) The same right freely choose a spouse
- c) The same right and responsibility during marriage
- d) The same rights and responsibility as parents
- e) The same rights to decide freely and with responsibility on the number and spacing of their children
- g) The same personal rights as husband and wife, also the right to choose a family name, a profession and work
From Article 19 to 30, about the Committee that watch the realisation of this Convention by countries. The Committee is composed of 23 members elected by countries. They must be "of high moral standing". Countries must submit a national report, at least every four years to the Committee and the Committee submit reports to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
The committee also give suggestion to the countries on matter about the abolition of discrimination against women.
Optional Protocol[change | change source]
This Convention also have the "Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women". It admits women whose human rights written in this Convention are violated to claim to the Committee of the United Nations. Until now, September 2017, 109 countries have ratified it, that is, promised to United Nations to realize it. | <urn:uuid:53123163-c442-4446-9419-a390a37918e9> | CC-MAIN-2019-39 | https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Elimination_of_All_Forms_of_Discrimination_against_Women | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2019-39/segments/1568514574050.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20190920155311-20190920181311-00365.warc.gz | en | 0.947532 | 696 | 3.9375 | 4 |
The founder of the Alpha Delta Phi, Samuel Eells, expressed the principle purpose of the fraternity at its founding at Hamilton College in 1832. It was his intent that “this new association, with a true philosophical spirit, looking to the entire man, develop his whole being- moral, social, and intellectual.” This intent is still alive and prevalent throughout the Bowdoin Chapter today.
In 1841, the Harvard Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi was given the authority to colonize at Bowdoin College. Because Bowdoin had no fraternities, there was some fear that founding such an organization would meet great resistance; instead, the college supported the new organization. On October 16, 1841, Bowdoin student Frederic Gardiner and four friends held the first meeting of the Bowdoin Chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi. Not only was the Bowdoin Chapter the first fraternity at the college, it was also the last chapter of the Alpha Delta Phi to be established in the founder Samuel Eells’s lifetime.
Within the first decade the Bowdoin Chapter initiated its most famous member, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain ’52. Initiated on April 12, 1848, he went on to be a Brigadier General in the Union Army during the Civil War, President of Bowdoin College, and Governor of Maine. General Chamberlain was rediscovered by the nation in Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Killer Angels,” which was later made into the motion picture “Gettysburg.” Ken Burns also featured Chamberlain in his award-winning PBS documentary on the Civil War. Chamberlain’s 20th Maine played a major role in the Union’s success at Gettysburg and Chamberlain was chosen by Union General Ulysses S. Grant to accept Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse. While Governor, he single handedly kept the government of Maine from being overthrown by disputing political foes during a disputed election. As Bowdoin President, he instituted mandatory military drills for students. Gen. Chamberlain said that he had seen too many unprepared young men die in the last generation to let the men of coming generations suffer the same fate. The drills were very unpopular with the students and facility, and the Trustees overruled Chamberlain a few years after he began them. He also expanded the courses of study at Bowdoin to include the social and physical sciences, and explored admitting women to Bowdoin (an idea rejected by the Trustees at the time). Following the war until the end of his life, Chamberlain traveled the country advocating for veterans rights.
In 1898, the Bowdoin Alpha Delta Phi purchased the property at the corner of Potter and Maine Streets in Brunswick to serve as its Chapter House. The house on the property would serve as the home for the Alpha Delts at Bowdoin until 1924. In that year, the old house that was purchased with the land was torn down, and the following year a much larger chapter house was erected in its place, topped with the Greek letters in its wood trim. Forty years afterwards, the chapter continued growing and so the house added an additional dining room, a new library, and new living quarters, assuming its modern appearance.
During the First World War, 116 members of the Bowdoin Chapter served and 6 lost their lives. Two decades later, seven Bowdoin Alpha Delts were lost from the two hundred who served in the Second World War.
In addition to Joshua Chamberlain, the Bowdoin Alpha Delta Phi has initiated many members who would go on to prominent roles in the Bowdoin community. Geoffrey Robert Stanwood ’38 founded the Bowdoin a capella group the Meddiebempsters and was an advisor to several college presidents. Daniel L. Dayton ’49 was a great friend of the college and its hockey team and, after his death; the college hockey arena was renamed in his honor. Roger Howell Jr. ’58, a beloved professor and Bowdoin’s tenth president, was the first American to teach British history at Oxford.
The late sixties and early seventies were a tumultuous time for the nation, and Bowdoin and the Alpha Delta Phi were not spared from the unrest. In 1971, the Bowdoin Chapter was shut down; official sources cite lack of interest and insufficient funds. After four years of dormancy, Peter Emmons ’77 and Larry Halle ’79 and a host of alumni reopened the Bowdoin Chapter as a coeducational fraternity. By 1991, the Alpha Delta Phi International included five coeducational chapters, yet still refused to admit women as full members of the international organization, despite the fact that women were full members at the local level for all five coed chapters. Because women were barred from holding roles in the parent organization, the Bowdoin Chapter was forced to separate from the International Fraternity.
On August 5, 1992, an agreement was met between the coed and single-sex chapters of the Alpha Delta Phi to separate the International Fraternity into the single-sex Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity and the coeducational Alpha Delta Phi Society. On July 14, 1993, the Bowdoin Chapter applied for membership in the Alpha Delta Phi Society, and was accepted on August 27, 1993, as the first expansion chapter of the Society. Many female members of the Alpha Delta Phi Society prefer to be referred to as “Brothers” but this preference is not universal. Among other reasons, most cite that the term “Brother” indicates that the individual has all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities as every other member, regardless of gender, and emphasizes that female members are not “little sisters” like those found at all-male fraternities.
In the 1990s, Alpha Delta Phi stood out among all the fraternities at Bowdoin. The level of alumni-undergraduate interaction was unparalleled anywhere else on campus. We continued in the tradition of the Literary Society founded in 1832 by Samuel Eells. Literature and the pursuits of the mind – morally, socially, and intellectually – could be found in every aspect of the chapter. Our organization continued to help the community, whether through volunteering at Habitat for Humanity or helping sponsor the American Heart Association walk to fight heart disease. In November 1997, the President of Bowdoin College, Robert Edwards, stated that AD stood alone as what he hoped all fraternities at Bowdoin would become — a residence that brings academics into the social life of the College.
In February of 1997, the Bowdoin College Board of Trustees voted to close all fraternities and to ban students from joining any “self-selecting, self-perpetuating” organizations. In place of the fraternity system, the college created residential social organizations to which students are assigned. The college frequently claimed that AD is the model upon which it based the new houses; sadly, the college has neither made room for this “model house” to persist nor sought any input from the Alpha Delta Phi undergraduate or alumni board as to how the college might replicate AD’s success.
Now, as Bowdoin College attempts to redefine its residential life system and the interdependence of students’ intellectual and social lives, Alpha Delta Phi stands out as an example of how, over one hundred and sixty years, an association, with a true philosophical spirit, looking to the entire humanity of the student, can develop his or her being- moral, social, and intellectual. Samuel Eells would expect no less.
– Prepared by Thomas McKessey Clark ’99 | <urn:uuid:e332a47a-c20d-4138-a0ee-18126f65bfb2> | CC-MAIN-2020-05 | http://www.adpsbowdoin.org/chapter-history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-05/segments/1579251802249.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20200129194333-20200129223333-00184.warc.gz | en | 0.971648 | 1,576 | 3.234375 | 3 |
Police officers play a very important role and are a critical piece of the puzzle of a community. They have a job that has to be filled within every modern society. Law enforcement officers help to keep the peace and protect citizens from danger. In most situations, police officers are also role models that many people, particularly young children, look up to and want to imitate. Because of this role and the pressure to be model citizens and the fact that everyone is always watching them, many law enforcement officers feel ashamed about a chemical dependency problem that they may have. This often leads to self-imposed isolation, lack of support, added stress and anxiety, the development of depression and other harmful symptoms of alcoholism that are worsened when one does not have a good support system.
How Common is Police Intoxication?
Research has shown that police alcoholism and drug abuse are much higher than many realize and can be as high or even higher in some areas than that of the general population. This alarming statistic is thought to be largely due to the stressful and at times traumatic life police officers and law enforcement endure day in and day out. Combined with the pressure from the community to never appear weak or to have a bad day and it can quickly become too much to handle without some way to deal with the stress. Unfortunately, many officers work in an environment where co-workers often rely on smoking, drinking, or drugs to deal with stress, so the temptation and peer pressure to start is very high as well.
How to Identify Alcoholism in a Police Officer
Identifying alcoholic behavior in a police officer can be difficult but it is the necessary first step to getting them the help and support they need to break the cycle. Here are some of the common warning signs that can indicate an officer is dealing with their own personal battle with alcoholism:
Many police officers begin drinking as a social opportunity and a way to relax and destress after a hard day on the streets. As the alcohol use continues and intensifies, they will often begin to drink outside of social events and may even hide in a room at home to drink alone and in private. Another warning sign of alcohols-induced isolation is a lack of interest in things they once loved- dropping out of social clubs, avoiding friends, not doing things they used to do, and avoiding family and friends. All of this is done so they can have more time to drink; they may even turn what social interactions they do have into an opportunity to or an excuse to drink.
Another common sign of any alcoholic, including those in law enforcement, is having money issues. Most of the extra money that an alcoholic has will go towards buying alcohol. In some situations, they may even ignore other obligations or cut back on other spending in order to have more money to put to their drinking habit. Since most police officers are paid a decent wage, especially if they have been in the service for a number of years, if an officer is often saying they are short on money or as asking for money or for someone to cover their tab, this may be a sign of a hidden alcohol problem.
Serious alcohol addiction will have a huge impact on the mood, personality, and behavior of the individual. When sober, the officer might become easily agitated, anxious, paranoid, judgmental, or depressed. Once they are able to drink again, they may suddenly shift moods and appear more energized, upbeat, and easy-going. However, some alcoholics have the opposite mood shift and get quiet, reserved, irritated, and annoyed when they are drinking. If you suspect someone is developing a problem with alcohol, keeping an eye on their moods will be one of the first ways you can start to notice that something is wrong.
Contact Quest 2 Recovery For Help
Quest 2 Recovery is a dual diagnosis, substance abuse program in Southern California that offers detoxification and residential inpatient levels of care. We specialize in chemical dependency recovery and have helped everyone from police and law enforcement officials to members of the general public and we can help you too! Call today for more information and to schedule your consultation with our team. | <urn:uuid:143f614e-f192-4638-ba84-a4aeaa45128a> | CC-MAIN-2022-40 | https://quest2recovery.com/blog/how-to-tell-if-you-have-a-drinking-problem-as-a-police-officer/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2022-40/segments/1664030337971.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20221007045521-20221007075521-00242.warc.gz | en | 0.97259 | 844 | 2.609375 | 3 |
If the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate it would mean that the more we go in the past, the slower the speed of expansion must have been. Provided the acceleration was always non-zero and in the same direction, at some point in time in the past, it should have been stationary, and before that the speed should have been in the opposite direction, and the universe should have been contracting. Does this make any sense whatsoever? Assuming it does, and assuming that the point at which it was stationary was during the big bang, would this imply that there was a 'big crunch' before the big bang and possibly what actually initiated it?
FLRW models have two types of solutions. In one type, which requires a large value of the cosmological constant, you get a "big bounce." Such large values of the cosmological constant have been ruled out by observation.
In the other type of solution, which is the type that is consistent with observation, you get a singularity rather than a bounce, and there is never a stationary point or any contraction.
Re "In one type, which requires a large value of the cosmological constant, you get a 'big bounce'". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedmann%E2%80%93Lema%C3%AEtre%E2%80%93Robertson%E2%80%93Walker_metric#Interpretation This says that: "The cosmological constant, on the other hand, causes an acceleration in the expansion of the universe." Therefore this does not seem to allow for a bounce. | <urn:uuid:57cc2dfa-6f92-470e-8acf-d01b0e7e049b> | CC-MAIN-2023-50 | https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/605505/if-the-universe-is-expanding-at-an-accelerated-rate-was-it-stationary-at-some-p | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2023-50/segments/1700679515260.97/warc/CC-MAIN-20231211143258-20231211173258-00007.warc.gz | en | 0.966334 | 334 | 2.5625 | 3 |
What is the difference between Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding?
Briefly, knowledge should lead to understanding. A mature understanding leads to a person with wisdom.
“The knowledge of good and evil” was what Adam and Eve gained by eating the forbidden fruit. That knowledge was harmful to them.
Genesis 2:16-17 (KJV) 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Exodus 31:2-5 (KJV) 2 See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: 3 And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, 4 To devise cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, 5 And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of timber, to work in all manner of workmanship.
(God gave Solomon a good sort of knowledge, but it was not enough to save Solomon from sinning.)
2 Chronicles 1:11-12 (KJV) 11 And God said to Solomon, Because this was in thine heart, and thou hast not asked riches, wealth, or honour, nor the life of thine enemies, neither yet hast asked long life; but hast asked wisdom and knowledge for thyself, that thou mayest judge my people, over whom I have made thee king: 12 Wisdom and knowledge is granted unto thee; and I will give thee riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had that have been before thee, neither shall there any after thee have the like. (David asked for a good sort of knowledge.)
Psalm 119:66 (KJV) Teach me good judgment and knowledge: for I have believed thy commandments.
(Some people choose not to accept a good sort of knowledge.)
Proverbs 1:28-30 (KJV) Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: 29 For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: 30 They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof.
Hosea 4:6 (KJV) My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.
(The time will come when Jesus Christ establishes a righteous government, and then a good sort of knowledge will cover the earth.)
Habakkuk 2:14 (KJV) For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. (There is something bad that is wrongly called “knowledge”.)
1 Timothy 6:20 (KJV) O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: (Quite different is the knowledge of Jesus.)
2 Peter 3:18 (KJV) But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen.
Understanding is good. It should lead to behaviour that pleases God.
Colossians 1:9-10 (KJV) 9 For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God;
In the whole of Proverbs 8 wisdom is personified as a woman. For example:
Proverbs 8:12 (KJV) I wisdom dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge of witty inventions. (Wisdom is to be sought by Christians.)
Colossians 3:16 (KJV) Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.
In the Biblical sense, wisdom is the “ability to judge correctly and to follow the best course of action, based on knowledge and understanding” (Lockyer p. 1103). The Wisdom teachings of the Bible follow from the two great themes of the Ten Commandments and the Greatest Commandments of Jesus : reverence to God, our Creator, and respect for all persons, everywhere.
Customs are not Wisdom
Biblical-era life for the Jews and early Christians was harsh (Ward, pp. 37-118). Slavery was commonplace. Tyrannical rule by outside powers was the norm. Women’s status in society was distinctly second class. Children were disciplined with beatings.
These conditions were often accepted in the Bible as customary for society during those times, but they were not taught as being virtuous or wise. True wisdom is always consistent with the two great wisdom themes of the Bible: reverence to God, our Creator, and respect for all persons, everywhere.
Wisdom is More than Following the Rules
A set of commandments or rules can give us important examples of wisdom, but they are only examples. No set of rules can cover all situations, and it is up to us to generalize the commandments to all cases. Many times, as in this passage from Matthew, Jesus condemned the hypocrisy of those religious leaders who observed the law in its strict, literal sense, but violated its spirit:
Matthew 23:23 (KJV) Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.
Wisdom means always acting according to the spirit of the Commandments and not looking for an ambiguity or omission which we can use to evade their true intent. Wisdom means understanding the consequences of our actions and words before we act or speak. Wisdom means having the knowledge and understanding to recognize the right course of action and having the will and courage to follow it.
Why Follow Wisdom’s Path?
Following the ways of Wisdom helps bring us in harmony with God because these ways are in accordance with His will, as revealed in the Bible, and are pleasing to Him.
The ways of Wisdom also bring us in harmony with other persons because respect for others is the very essence of the Commandments. The wisdom teachings of the Bible are much more than an arbitrarily dictated moral code; they form a prescription for living in peace with the people we interact with daily.
Finally, acting with Wisdom brings us in harmony with ourselves, giving us a sense of self-worth and inner peace. This inner peace is achieved because we are acting in accordance with our consciences and avoiding the shame and guilt of following our baser instincts. (Read Proverbs 3:13-18)
We often fail in our daily struggle to act with wisdom — it does not come easily or naturally. Although it is easier to follow our less-than-wise impulses, the reward for acting with wisdom is great. When we give it our best effort, the payoff in self-esteem and inner peace will compensate us many times over. (www.twopaths.com) | <urn:uuid:eeb613aa-08a0-4fd6-8383-d507faac239c> | CC-MAIN-2018-17 | https://ctapm.wordpress.com/wisdom-knowledge-understanding/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-17/segments/1524125945037.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20180421051736-20180421071736-00210.warc.gz | en | 0.955008 | 1,618 | 2.90625 | 3 |
Some adventures from around the Northeast in February.
Preservation ABCs is a series that will work its way from A to Z, bringing words into conversation that are relevant to historic preservation, whether it’s an idea, feature or vocabulary term. The idea is to help you see preservation everywhere you look and wherever you go. Enjoy! See previous letters.
P is for Place
Place is not a standard vocabulary term that you’ll find in an architectural dictionary or preservation textbook; however, “place” is an often used term in historic preservation.
A place can be a town, a building, a field, a park, a bridge, a crossroads, a mountain range or anything really. When asked what is your favorite place, what’s your answer? Whether ocean, town, building, nature, any place can be special to someone, and it’s likely that every place has a dear meaning to someone. As the National Trust campaign says, “This Place Matters.” Identifying a particular place and appreciating that place allows the intangible ideas of historic preservation to make sense by connecting them with the tangible elements of our past and present. These places are important because they are the basis for everyone to understand significance. Not every place is a historic resource, but every place can be significant in someone’s life. And great places, loved places make for strong communities and a better quality of life.
We also talk about planning concepts such as “third place” – the idea that a third place is somewhere that people feel comfortable and welcome, beyond the home and beyond the office. This can be anywhere, though usually it refers to a restaurant, café or other gathering place (something that can be incorporated into new urbanism ideas).
What does “place” mean to you? What is your favorite place? | <urn:uuid:f70f50a9-7bc5-49a2-a6c0-a1b9557d3e5b> | CC-MAIN-2020-34 | https://preservationinpink.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-34/segments/1596439740423.36/warc/CC-MAIN-20200815005453-20200815035453-00001.warc.gz | en | 0.953662 | 383 | 3.28125 | 3 |
A Book Review of Halal Food: A History by Boğaç Ergene and Febe Armanios
As we fast through the month of Ramadan, we should pause to reflect on our relationship with what we consume. There are many conditions and restrictions during this month: what, when, with whom, how much, and where we eat comprise the dietary contours of fasting Muslims.
As the “State of the Global Islamic Economy Report” states, “In an age of increasing commercialization, the food we consume can be devoid of God’s presence and the reverence for God’s creation that Islam requires. It is this gap that much of the Halal Food sector seeks to fill.” Indeed, this decade promises to be a further unwrapping of the halal revolution, with estimated market size of the halal food and beverage market reaching $1.9 trillion by next year – approximately one-sixth of the global food industry. Some of the names of big players in the industry may surprise us: Nestle, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Burger King, and even KFC stand to gain from launching Shari’ah-compliant food lines—and some of them have already done so.
Halal Food: A History by Febe Armanios and Boğaç Ergene is an excellent read that covers a constellation of food-related topics: medieval recipes for tharid (the sunnah dish consisting of bread pieces in a meat broth), the legal history of halal slaughter, the rise of the faux libation (‘nonalcoholic beer’) movement in the Muslim world, and even the origin of Halal Guys. Overlooking a technical analysis of halal slaughter for a conversation engaging wider audiences, the authors’ gastronomic expertise compels reflection on the ethics of being a halal foodie and the spiritual valence of the halal food industry.
Armanios and Ergene start off by casting doubt on the hygienic hypothesis, which attributed the ancient stigma of pork consumption to pigs’ unsanitary practices, the decay of pork in warm climates, and the parasitic infection known as trichinosis. They point out that proper cooking can prevent pork decay and that there is not a one-to-one correlation between various animals’ cleanliness and permissibility in ancient Jewish law. In fact, the connection between pork consumption and Trichinella was only uncovered in the nineteenth century because the infection has a ten-day incubation period and leads to a stunningly diverse number of symptoms in different patients. As Abdal Hakim Murad notes, the reading of the prohibition on pork in Islam through scientific premises has secular underpinnings. Murad goes on to say that even when we are not fasting in Ramadan, we are undergoing a permanent partial fast from certain foods because Allah commanded us to.
But Halal Food goes beyond the grotesque complexion of swine consumption. One of the most interesting sections in the book is a discussion comparing the rulings on disputed land animals (such as hyenas, lizards, horses, and jerboas) and aquatic animals (including dolphins, lobsters, and crocodiles) across different schools of Islamic thought. Whereas Jahangir, the fourth Mughal emperor, only consumed scaled fish, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 motivated Shi’a clergy to reconsider the prohibition on the Caspian Sea Sturgeon used to make luxurious caviar. They decided that the “few hard, bony scale-like appendages” known as ganoids counted as fish scales, and “in 1983 Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa declaring sturgeon and its caviar halal.”
Today, a food’s halal status depends not just on how an animal was slaughtered but also involves investigating the standards of the certifying agency. While Australia (2.5 percent Muslim population) allows exemptions from stunning for religious slaughter, New Zealand, where Muslims comprise 1 percent of the population, does not. Pre-slaughter stunning is a debated issue among Muslim scholars, and finding out if the halal meat in local supermarkets was optimally slaughtered may not be so easy. Certifying agencies may have different thresholds for what counts as halal slaughter, and a conservative estimate is that there were 150 halal certifiers globally in mid-2015, with 4 different certifiers in New Zealand alone. Notably, the Zabihah website states that as of 2007, “the lamb served in all domestic Outback Steakhouse locations in the United States is imported from New Zealand,” and that the “lamb has received certification of Halal Accreditation from The Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand.”
In a manner consistent with academics concerned about the ties between consumption and the modern economy, Armanios and Ergene draw attention to the rise of halal food as a status symbol. The history of faux libations (nonalcoholic beer) dates back to the Prohibition in the United States, where “near beers” consisting of up to 0.5 percent alcohol by volume were still allowed. Related beverages such as Barbican, Al Andalus, and Boza are popular in the Middle East, which is where 1 out of every 3 dealcoholized beverages are sold and consumed. The branding around these products claim to afford the urban elite a chance “to set themselves apart from rural people” and to aspire for “affluence, a (partly) Westernized lifestyle, modernity, and a general cultural superiority.”
While the fiqhi technicalities of nonalcoholic beer require a separate discussion, the question for Muslims is whether there really is a need or benefit from a ‘halal’ alternative to alcohol. There is certainly no quick substitute in Islam for backbiting or adultery or interest-bearing transactions, but there is general advice in the Quran to remain steadfast in light of temptations. As Allah says, “Oh you who have believed, seek help through patience and prayer. Indeed, Allah is with the patient.”
In light of the controversies surrounding the legal status of animal slaughter, manufacturing standards, and new business forms, the future holds many opportunities for “Muslimpreneurs.” The tayyib (pure) ethos seeks to promote food that is “good” in all senses of the word, a notion that may even attract a large non-Muslim audience. Saffron Road Food produces frozen meals in line with “ethical consumerism,” and 80 percent of its $40 million revenue in 2016 was from customers not solely looking for a halal meal. The Islamic Food and Nutrition Council of America (IFANCA) touts a “Five Star Halal Identification System” ranging from 1 star (if the animal was slaughtered by a Muslim) to 5 stars (no electrical stunning of the animal). A “haloodie” (a food connoisseur abiding by halal prescriptions) can now enjoy halal food fairs, the Zabihah.com app (founded by Shahed Amanullah, a Silicon Valley engineer), and social integration with a “halal twist.” Emerging areas of halal growth include halal gelatin, imported chocolates, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetic lines.
Armanios and Ergene do a wonderful job in covering many issues related to halal production, and the book is a must-read for those invested in remaining faithful to one’s Islam in modernity. It raises important ethical questions: should the tayyib (pure) lifestyle or luxury beverage movement be integral to the halal food industry? Or do these discussions gloss over broader economic issues, such as the plight of the Muslims who comprise half of the global poor and struggle to merely afford food? Perhaps we should not give too much attention to the halal food industry given the number of texts cautioning against meat consumption and gluttony. As Allah says in the Quran, “Eat and drink, but be not excessive.”
Amazon link to the book here. This is not a sponsored post.
- Armanios, Febe, and Boğaç A. Ergene. Halal Food: A History. 2018. Print: 3.
- Ibid., 4.
- Ibid., 110.
- Ibid., 23.
- Armanios, Febe, and Boğaç A. Ergene. Halal Food: A History. 2018. Print: 57-58.
- Ibid., 74.
- Ibid., 122.
- Armanios, Febe, and Boğaç A. Ergene. Halal Food: A History. 2018. Print: 184.
- Ibid., 187.
- Quran, 2:151
- Armanios, Febe, and Boğaç A. Ergene. Halal Food: A History. 2018. Print: 115.
- Ibid., 251.
- Quran, 7:31
Photo Credit: Waldemarus
About the author: Waqas Haque is an editor for Traversing Tradition. He is on leave from medical school to study public health and also obtained an M.Phil. from Cambridge University. He is broadly interested in tafsir, Hanafi fiqh, drug development, and entrepreneurship. He enjoys frequenting the gym, masjid, and halal food establishments. | <urn:uuid:8a05640d-b13d-46fb-890d-477bacab5451> | CC-MAIN-2020-29 | https://traversingtradition.com/2020/05/11/the-halal-food-industry/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2020-29/segments/1593655900335.76/warc/CC-MAIN-20200709131554-20200709161554-00278.warc.gz | en | 0.927776 | 1,974 | 2.515625 | 3 |
- By Brandon Keim |
- Thursday September 12, 2013
For Earth’s first 4 billion years of existence, light and dark followed a predictable 24-hour cycle. Across an ever-increasing amount of Earth’s surface, that’s no longer the case. With the advent of artificial lighting came the ability to transform night — inside buildings, under streetlights and neon signs, and in those vast areas where night’s simply not so dark as it used to be. WIRED talked to Paul Bogard, author of “The End of Night,” about what its loss could mean for humanity.
- By Pete Brook |
- Friday March 23, 2012
Artist Robert Knight’s long-exposure photography visualizes people’s nocturnal movements as they sleep, or don’t, throughout the night. His photo project, Sleepless, consists of ghostly aggregations of subjects tossing and turning. The idea for the series came from his own bout of insomnia after he and his wife became parents.
- By davemosher |
- Tuesday January 10, 2012
Tiger sharks in the Gulf of Mexico are eating migratory land birds. Yet while brightly lit oil rigs may be to blame, there’s not enough data to know. Simply changing the color of oil rig lights, however, may be an effective preventative measure.
- By Alexander George |
- Friday September 2, 2011
New York City’s light pollution leaves the stars invisible to the unassisted eye, making the city feel “like living in a low-ceilinged room,” according to artist Jon Morris. In response, the Brooklyn transplant created Reflecting the Stars, an art installation that re-creates constellations on the surface of the Hudson River. The display, unveiled earlier this […]
- By davemosher |
- Tuesday March 22, 2011
You can help build the best global map of light pollution, the uniquely modern problem that has stolen starlight from most of the urbanized world. From March 22 through April 6, the GLOBE at Night website will collect the public’s measurements of the night sky. Anyone can participate by comparing their local view of specific […] | <urn:uuid:9923c9b2-ae65-48d8-8de7-89c1bf79014e> | CC-MAIN-2014-23 | http://www.wired.com/tag/light-pollution/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2014-23/segments/1406510272940.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20140728011752-00005-ip-10-146-231-18.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941787 | 468 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors
The topic of heteroscedasticity-consistent (HC) standard errors arises in statistics and econometrics in the context of linear regression as well as time series analysis. These are also known as Eicker–Huber–White standard errors (also Huber–White standard errors or White standard errors), to recognize the contributions of Friedhelm Eicker, Peter J. Huber, and Halbert White.
In regression and time-series modelling, basic forms of models make use of the assumption that the errors or disturbances ui have the same variance across all observation points. When this is not the case, the errors are said to be heteroscedastic, or to have heteroscedasticity, and this behaviour will be reflected in the residuals estimated from a fitted model. Heteroscedasticity-consistent standard errors are used to allow the fitting of a model that does contain heteroscedastic residuals. The first such approach was proposed by Huber (1967), and further improved procedures have been produced since for cross-sectional data, time-series data and GARCH estimation.
Assume that we are studying the linear regression model
where X is the vector of explanatory variables and β is a k × 1 column vector of parameters to be estimated.
The ordinary least squares (OLS) estimator is
where denotes the matrix of stacked values observed in the data.
where are regression residuals.
When the assumptions of are violated, the OLS estimator loses its desirable properties. Indeed,
While the OLS point estimator remains unbiased, it is not "best" in the sense of having minimum mean square error, and the OLS variance estimator does not provide a consistent estimate of the variance of the OLS estimates.
For any non-linear model (for instance Logit and Probit models), however, heteroscedasticity has more severe consequences: the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters will be biased (in an unknown direction), as well as inconsistent (unless the likelihood function is modified to correctly take into account the precise form of heteroscedasticity). As pointed out by Greene, “simply computing a robust covariance matrix for an otherwise inconsistent estimator does not give it redemption.”
Eicker's heteroscedasticity-consistent estimator
If the regression errors are independent, but have distinct variances σi2, then which can be estimated with . This provides White's (1980) estimator, often referred to as HCE (heteroscedasticity-consistent estimator):
where as above denotes the matrix of stacked values from the data. The estimator can be derived in terms of the generalized method of moments (GMM).
Note that also often discussed in the literature (including in White's paper itself) is the covariance matrix of the -consistent limiting distribution:
Precisely which covariance matrix is of concern should be a matter of context.
Alternative estimators have been proposed in MacKinnon & White (1985) that correct for unequal variances of regression residuals due to different leverage. Unlike the asymptotic White's estimator, their estimators are unbiased when the data are homoscedastic.
- Generalized least squares
- Generalized estimating equations
- Weighted least squares
- White test — a test for whether heteroscedasticity is present.
- Newey–West estimator
- EViews: EViews version 8 offers three different methods for robust least squares: M-estimation (Huber, 1973), S-estimation (Rousseeuw and Yohai, 1984), and MM-estimation (Yohai 1987).
- MATLAB: See the
hacfunction in the Econometrics toolbox.
- Python: The Statsmodel package offers various robust standard error estimates, see statsmodels.regression.linear_model.RegressionResults for further descriptions
- R: the sandwich package via the
- RATS: robusterrors option is available in many of the regression and optimization commands (linreg, nlls, etc.).
robustoption applicable in many pseudo-likelihood based procedures.
- Kleiber, C.; Zeileis, A. (2006). "Applied Econometrics with R" (PDF). UseR-2006 conference. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 22, 2007.
- Eicker, Friedhelm (1967). "Limit Theorems for Regression with Unequal and Dependent Errors". Proceedings of the Fifth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability. pp. 59–82. MR 0214223. Zbl 0217.51201.
- Huber, Peter J. (1967). "The behavior of maximum likelihood estimates under nonstandard conditions". Proceedings of the Fifth Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability. pp. 221–233. MR 0216620. Zbl 0212.21504.
- White, Halbert (1980). "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity". Econometrica. 48 (4): 817–838. CiteSeerX . doi:10.2307/1912934. JSTOR 1912934. MR 0575027.
- Giles, Dave (May 8, 2013). "Robust Standard Errors for Nonlinear Models". Econometrics Beat.
- Greene, William H. (2012). Econometric Analysis (Seventh ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. pp. 692–693. ISBN 978-0-273-75356-8.
- MacKinnon, James G.; White, Halbert (1985). "Some Heteroskedastic-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimators with Improved Finite Sample Properties". Journal of Econometrics. 29 (3): 305–325. doi:10.1016/0304-4076(85)90158-7.
- "Heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance estimators". Econometrics Toolbox.
- sandwich: Robust Covariance Matrix Estimators
- Kleiber, Christian; Zeileis, Achim (2008). Applied Econometrics with R. New York: Springer. pp. 106–110. ISBN 978-0-387-77316-2.
- See online help for | <urn:uuid:a79b01a9-04d8-45ae-9cd0-7c7e9a300689> | CC-MAIN-2018-39 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteroscedasticity-consistent_standard_errors | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-39/segments/1537267159165.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20180923075529-20180923095929-00105.warc.gz | en | 0.742728 | 1,372 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Today is Ascension Sunday when many Christians celebrate Jesus’ miraculous return to Heaven. It has inspired great Christian art like the Rembrandt painting above and musical masterpieces such as Beethoven’s “Christ on the Mount of Olives.”
If it weren’t for Luke, we’d know almost nothing about the ascension. He gives us a brief description at the end of his Gospel and an extended one at the beginning of the Book of Acts (Luke 24:50-53, Acts 1:9-11). Matthew and John don’t mention the ascension at all, and Mark simply says that Jesus “was taken up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19b). But this verse is in the disputed longer ending that’s not in several of the oldest manuscripts of Mark (Mark 16:9-20). There’s even a difference between the way Luke’s Gospel and the Book of Acts describe the event. The Gospel identifies the location as Bethany; Acts implies that it was on the Mount of Olives “about a Sabbath day’s journey away” from Jerusalem (Acts 1:12). (Why did the disciples leave Jerusalem after Jesus had ordered them not to? Acts 1:4, cf. 1:12). Acts suggests the ascension took place forty days after Jesus was raised from the dead (Acts 1:3); Luke’s Gospel makes no mention of this forty-day period and gives the impression that it took place at the end of the first Easter Day. I hope you won’t let these facts trouble you or cause you to doubt the importance of Jesus’ ascension.
The ascension completed Jesus’ journey from heaven and back again. He descended from heaven to earth and from earth to the grave – down, down, down. Then he ascended from the grave to the earth and back to heaven – up, up, up. The Apostle Paul says, “He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10). In his descent and ascent, Jesus demonstrated the paradoxical truth that “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:11, 18:14). Bernard of Clairvaux said, “Through humility you may ascend to sublimity.” The way up is down!
The ascension can be seen as a metaphor for spiritual progress. Ascent was easy for Jesus because he wasn’t weighed down by sin. It’s difficult for us because our sins weigh us down like an anchor. Jesus floated up to heaven like a helium-filled balloon. We have to climb Mount Everest. Spiritual maturity doesn’t come suddenly and unexpectedly like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. It comes from years and years of hard work, through spiritual disciplines such as prayer, Bible study, spiritual reading, fasting, and Christian service. How will we know when we’ve arrived? When we come to that perfect love of God that casts out fear. Love is the hallmark of spiritual ascent, because God is love (1 John 4:8b). The closer we get to God, the more the love of God is perfected in us. | <urn:uuid:883f9997-7574-4621-9f32-8258b9ed1464> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://jtmoger.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/the-way-up-is-down/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676591575.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20180720080634-20180720100634-00008.warc.gz | en | 0.93469 | 705 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Arsenic has numerous forms, one of which is arsenite. When arsenic is described as harmful, the specific type of arsenic being referred to is arsenite. It is the most common form of arsenic found in drinking water.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ingesting small amounts of arsenite can cause nausea, vomiting, decreased production of red and white blood cells, abnormal heart rhythm, damage to blood vessels, and a “pins and needles” sensation on the hands and feet. Studies indicate that it may also increase the risk of cancer in the liver, bladder, lungs, and skin. Ingesting large amounts of arsenic can be fatal.
Both public and private sources of drinking water are struggling with elevated levels of arsenic in Iowa. Public water supplies routinely test for the element, but health officials are now asking private well owners to do their own tests as well, according to the Des Moines Register.
Five public water systems in Lanesboro, Mallard, Scranton, Gallery Acres West, and South Park were over the limit for arsenic in drinking water. Furthermore, a study conducted by the University of Iowa found that nearly half of the 475 private wells checked between 2006 and 2008 tested positive for arsenic and 8% violated arsenic standards.
The element occurs naturally in Iowa’s soil, where it eventually enters the groundwater. Unfortunately, this groundwater serves as a source of drinking water for 55 percent of Iowans.
“The high levels of arsenic in both public and private sources of drinking water demonstrate the critical need for testing,” states Joseph Frasca, Senior VP at EMSL Analytical, Inc.
“EMSL is one of the few testing laboratories in the country with the speciation capabilities to differentiate between the multiple forms of arsenic, including the dangerous arsenite.”
About EMSL Analytical, Inc.
EMSL Analytical, Inc. is a nationally recognized and locally focused provider of consumer product, environmental, industrial hygiene, food, and materials testing services to professionals and the general public. The company has an extensive list of accreditations from leading organizations, as well as state and federal regulatory bodies. Please visit our website for a complete listing of accreditations. | <urn:uuid:4550bdc7-9ee7-4376-84ba-a7a405a7538f> | CC-MAIN-2017-22 | https://www.environmental-expert.com/news/arsenic-leaches-into-iowa-water-supply-270511 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-22/segments/1495463608659.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20170526105726-20170526125726-00328.warc.gz | en | 0.950661 | 460 | 3.3125 | 3 |
In order to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, you will need to use this formula: F = 9/5C + 32. Therefore, you will need to solve for C or substitute values and solve in that manner. To find Fahrenheit temperature for -20 degrees Celsius, you can just plug it into the formula. Therefore, F = 9/5 (-20) + 32 and F = 28.4. If you were given 59 degrees Fahrenheit you would get: 59 = 9/5C + 32 and this would give you 27 (5/9) = C, after you have plugged the values into the above formula. When you simplify you, you get C = 15. | <urn:uuid:1828dead-5c05-47e2-ab32-410bdeda1dc7> | CC-MAIN-2018-30 | https://math.wonderhowto.com/how-to/convert-fahrenheit-celsius-with-formula-310409/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676590329.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20180718213135-20180718233135-00333.warc.gz | en | 0.886757 | 136 | 3.296875 | 3 |
In 1825, Michael Faraday began a number of experiments in distillation. Among the products which he worked on was crude oil, from which he extracted a gas. Out of mere curiosity, he set it alight and the gas burned. For many years, the benefits of what Faraday called "bicarburet of hydrogen" were unknown. In 1846, A. W. Hoffman isolated the same product, later called benzene, in large quantities by distilling coal. For a long time, benzene could only be extracted from coal; however, with the rise of oil exploitation, its importance increased significantly. From the dawning of the twentieth century, benzene (C6H6), a volatile, colourless and flammable hydrocarbon, saw extraordinary growth in its applications in an abundance of fields. The varied properties of benzene grant it importance industrially and, at the same time, inspire great theoretical interest.
Faraday probably had no idea that his "bicarburet of hydrogen" would long remain an enigma to chemists.
In 1865, to explain the properties of benzene, the German chemist August Kekulé, proposed a hexagonal structure with an atom of carbon and an atom of hydrogen at each corner with alternate double and single bonds between carbon atoms.
Shortly after Kekulé's theory was established, the London Chemical Society proclaimed it to be "the most brilliant piece of scientific production to be found in the whole of Organic Chemistry", because it served as a new imaginative outlook in chemistry.
Benzene is one of the first chemicals in history whose unique properties were studied by chemists.
In 1931, Linus Pauling used quantum physics to propose that benzene contained a hybrid structure.
This innovation suggested that benzene contained delocalized electrons (as shown in the diagram).
Furthermore, this hybridization in benzene makes the molecule more stable than it would be if it had localized bonds.
This extraordinary stability is important in benzene's many chemical applications.
The long battle to discover the true structure of benzene ended in 1931. However, along this path, the study of structural chemistry greatly increased due to these innovations, and at the same time modern chemists were inspired to continue to advance chemical technology to greater lengths.
Prior to World War One, the primary application of benzene was in gasoline blending, because it enhanced the octane number in gasoline. Benzene was also widely used as a solvent by many large scale chemical manufacturers.
In the midst of World War Two, benzene was also employed in the chemical industry.
Today's organic chemistry industry is based almost entirely on chemicals derived from petroleum, of which benzene play a significant role.
Benzene is a precursor to many important chemical intermediates, including drugs, dyes, insecticides and plastics.
The principal commercial uses for benzene, at present, include the manufacture of ethylbenzene, cumene and cyclohexane.
Benzene can be alkylated with ethylene to give ethylbenzene, which can be converted to styrene, producing polystyrene plastics and synthetic rubber.
Hence, these products give us applications in rubbers, paints, panels and toys.
Benzene can also be alkylated with propylene to yield cumene, which is processed to create phenol.
This product can be used to make telephone parts, adhesives and dyes for fabrics, wood or paper.
Hydrogenation of benzene yields cyclohexane, which can be oxidized to forms adipic acid, from which is produced the universally applied fabric of nylon (also in the Chemistry Hall of Fame) and otehr polyamides.
Industrial applications on a smaller scale using benzene intermediates include aniline which is used to make dyes and plastics. Benzene is also commonly chlorinated to yield various chlorobenzenes, put to use in such products as moth flakes, or alkylated to produce alkylbenzenes, used to manufacture various detergent products.
The wonderful innovation of the benzene ring puts any substance possessing it into a very broad organic family known as the aromatic compounds. The number of chemical structures which include the benzene ring are almost immeasurable. Some common items which include the benzene ring range from wood preservatives to Aspirin, the world's best known pain reliever (also in the Chemistry Hall of Fame), to oilf of wintergreen, a commonly used fragrance.
Thus, benzene, the simplest aromatic compound, finds applications in an abundance of fields. Without a doubt, the industrial community relies on benzene to produce commodities utilized in our everyday life, and at the same time benzene provides modern chemists with the inspiration to bring the field of chemistry to new and greater lengths, just as Kekulé and Pauling had accomplished in the past.
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End of file. | <urn:uuid:b064e70b-d211-4e94-b661-2d968d256dd8> | CC-MAIN-2017-13 | http://www.chem.yorku.ca/hall_of_fame/essays97/benzene/benzene.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2017-13/segments/1490218189239.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20170322212949-00386-ip-10-233-31-227.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95191 | 1,030 | 4.15625 | 4 |
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