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Everyone knows about the splendor of the Grand Canyon, but 700 miles east of that natural treasure is America's second largest canyon: Palo Duro Canyon.
Named for the hard wood junipers that dot the otherwise relatively stark landscape, Palo Duro Canyon was once home to Native Americans, including the Apache, Comanche and Kiowa tribes. In fact, the canyon has supported human habitation continuously for at least 10,000 years.
Some of the stereotypes about Texas are true, such as the summer heat. This is why I was grateful to have a chance to explore Palo Duro Canyon State Park for myself in April. On that day, there was hardly a cloud in the sky — which was more of a scenic blessing than a curse. Still, sunscreen was very much a necessity!
The Lighthouse Trail at Palo Duro Canyon State Park
Taking advantage of both the weather and the few hikers on a Tuesday morning, we took off on the park's signature trail: The Lighthouse. It's 2.72 miles one way, for a round-trip total of 5.44 miles.
In the summer, temperatures can reach the 100s, but even on a picture-perfect day like ours, there was no water to be found, so it's always advisable to bring plenty with you.
Armed with filled Camelbaks, snacks, and cameras, we hit the trail, stopping first at the striking Capitol Peak. Notice the hoodoo on the left — a geologic formation caused by erosion. This hoodoo is named the Chimney and is often confused with the Lighthouse. In reality, it's much smaller!
Rounding Capitol Peak, we arrived in Sunday Canyon, which is rich with fascinating geologic formations. The lowest strata visible are Permean in age.
Like the previous formation, I would later discover that the base of the Lighthouse is made of the same Permean red claystone. Its appearance is rippled because it was created in shallow tides. That's right: hundreds of millions of years ago, this arid landscape was under water!
During this relatively flat stretch of the hike, we gained our first view of the Lighthouse in the distance.
From this distance, I could hardly believe we'd be hiking all the way to the Lighthouse. But then it dipped out of sight, and we walked on.
After a split in the trail, we stopped to once again thank Mother Nature for the blessedly beautiful day, evidenced by the thermometer below.
Although we were fortunate to be hiking in wonderfully cool weather, we knew summertime hikers must appreciate the covered benches that lined the trail every now and then. Most of the benches that didn't have a cover were sheltered by trees to provide some relief from the sun.
As we continued hiking, ticking off the trail markers every tenth of a mile, we rounded another bend to discover that the Lighthouse was indeed closer now. We were making progress!
We finally reached the base of the hill that would begin our ascent to the Lighthouse. After a few minutes, we encountered a picnic table and bike rack. This is where we got turned around and ended up taking an unofficial trail to the top by accident. The correct trail is the one that is just left of the picnic table — not right of it!
Both trails (official and unofficial) are wickedly steep, so make sure you wear your hiking boots, and don't be shy about grabbing rocks as you need to. Finally, we made it to the top unscathed and celebrated with victory poses.
The trail didn't end there, however. I followed a rough path up the left side of the 300-foot-tall Lighthouse towards the rim that connects it to a neighboring formation of similar height.
When I clambered onto the rim, I was in for the best experience of the day: a gorgeous panoramic view of Palo Duro Canyon, with absolutely no one else in sight. Up there, the wind was light, the sky was blue, and the day was perfect. I admit I might have let out a whoop or two.
The photo shows the Lighthouse in front, Castle Formation on the right and surrounding scenery.
After a well-deserved rest, we headed back down towards the canyon floor. This stunning view greeted us as we stumbled our way down the steep slope.
The return journey used the same trail, so most of the sights were familiar to us at this point, but some previously hidden hoodoos, like this one, were a pleasant surprise.
I also had an opportunity to photograph one of the quick-footed lizards that had been crossing our path the entire hike. The species was striking, with greenish-blue spots along its back.
There is good reason the Lighthouse trail is such a popular one at Palo Duro Canyon State Park. With its multi-use trail, relatively short length, general flatness (until the final uphill scramble!), and great payoff at the top, it's a wonderful hike.
Of course, it's best enjoyed in perfect weather like ours, but if you do visit in the summer, make sure to bring plenty of water, food and sunscreen.
To enter Palo Duro Canyon State Park, the day admission rate is $5. Campsites are also available.
Have you hiked in Palo Duro Canyon State Park? Do you have a favorite geological formation you discovered while hiking? Let me know in the comments. |
Cannabis has several names. If you hear the term cannabis, pot, grass, roach, joint, hashish, ganja, hemp wowie, Panama Red, ragweed and bud, all of them refer to Cannabis. Pot is one of the most frequently used drugs in the US but throughout the planet.People are abusing Cannabis because they like the feeling of euphoria that is usually observed after three or two hours of smoking. Another effect of smoking Cannabis is a change in emotion and affect. Abusers often feel relaxed and happy. They become sensitive to arts comedy and most especially. These feelings, besides bandwagon influence and peer pressure, are what people that are enticing to be addicted to Cannabis.On the contrary, there are effects of Cannabis which are bad for the users and these are often overlooked. As Cannabis abusers are aware of the satisfaction they get from smoking but are unaware of its effects. Abusers will be given the reasons by knowing these side effects of Cannabis.
Why should people stop smoking weed?
Furthermore, the abuse of this medication can cause substantial lowering of blood pressure. At exactly the exact same time, it raises.Experts say that one Joint of Cannabis is equal to a single pack of cigarette. Imagine how much harm Cannabis can do to lungs and the lungs of the abusers.
For Co-Curricular and Academic Reasons
Trainers who used to perform very well in sports have started to show trouble with coordination after Cannabis abuse. The alteration of this brain activity the coordination of the human body results from the rapid lost because of chemicals of neurons in the brain.Moreover, researches showed that people teenagers. They remember things and are slow to reply. Memorization can be a concern. They have problems in registering sustaining attention and processing information.
For Social Reasons
Individuals who smoked this medication have. This makes them aloof from the audience and shy and sometimes they mingle with those that are Cannabis addicts.Moreover, Cannabis Have no desire and abusers appear to have lack of inspiration. They have a lack of concern regarding on they do not care of these things and how they look, act. Due to cbd oil canada effects, these attitudes and behaviors of these users are developed in connection. Users are utilized to feeling they get after smoking Cannabis.Cannabis is since it poses dangers restricted in many countries. The things mentioned above are some of the reasons. It is important to educate people concerning Cannabis’s dangers. Teenagers ought to be the top priority because they are in the point wherein they are ready to try almost anything merely to get respect and acceptance from those around them. |
Your doctor will diagnose sarcoidosis based on your medical history, a physical exam, and test results. He or she will look for granulomas (inflamed lumps) in your organs. Your doctor also will try to rule out other possible causes of your symptoms.
Your doctor may ask you detailed questions about your medical history. For example, he or she may ask whether you:
- Have a family history of sarcoidosis.
- Have had any jobs that may have raised your risk for the disease.
- Have ever been exposed to inhaled beryllium metal. (This type of metal is used to make aircrafts and weapons.)
- Have had contact with organic dust from birds or hay.
Exposure to beryllium metal and organic dust can cause inflamed lumps in your lungs that look like the granulomas from sarcoidosis. However, these lumps are signs of other conditions.
Your doctor will check you for signs and symptoms of sarcoidosis. Signs and symptoms may include red bumps on your skin; swollen lymph nodes; an enlarged liver, spleen, or salivary glands; or redness in your eyes. Your doctor also will check for other causes of your symptoms.
Your doctor may listen to your lungs and heart. Abnormal breathing or heartbeat sounds could be a sign that sarcoidosis is affecting your lungs or heart.
Chest X Ray
A chest x ray is a painless test that creates pictures of the structures inside your chest, such as your heart and lungs. The test may show granulomas or enlarged lymph nodes in your chest. About 95 percent of people who have sarcoidosis have abnormal chest x rays.
Lung Function Tests
Lung function tests measure how much air you can breathe in and out, how fast you can breathe air out, and how well your lungs deliver oxygen to your blood. These tests can show whether sarcoidosis is affecting your lungs.
Your doctor may do a biopsy to confirm a diagnosis or rule out other causes of your symptoms. A biopsy involves taking a small sample of tissue from one of your affected organs.
Usually, doctors try to biopsy the organs that are easiest to access. Examples include the skin, tear glands, or the lymph nodes that are just under the skin.
If this isn't possible, your doctor may use a positron emission tomography (PET) scan to pinpoint areas for biopsy. For this test, a small amount of radioactive substance is injected into a vein, usually in your arm.
The substance, which releases energy, travels through the blood and collects in organs or tissues. Special cameras detect the energy and convert it into three-dimensional (3D) pictures.
If lung function tests or a chest x ray shows signs of sarcoidosis in your lungs, your doctor may do a bronchoscopy (bron-KOS-ko-pee) to get a small sample of lung tissue.
During this procedure, a thin, flexible tube is passed through your nose (or sometimes your mouth), down your throat, and into the airways to reach your lung tissue. (For more information, go to the Health Topics Bronchoscopy article.)
Other Tests To Assess Organ Damage
If you’re diagnosed with sarcoidosis, you should see an ophthalmologist (eye specialist), even if you don’t have eye symptoms. In sarcoidosis, eye damage can occur without symptoms.
Living With and Managing Sarcoidosis10/15/2014 |
Who should take this course?
Project AWARE’s philosophy is to mobilize a global force of scuba divers and water enthusiasts who care about protecting the world’s water resources and choose to make a difference – one dive at a time. By earning the Project AWARE Specialist certification, you’ll be aware of the most pressing problems facing vulnerable aquatic environments and know what everyday actions you can take to help protect them.
Anyone who has an interest in the aquatic world should take this course. There are no prerequisites, age restrictions or water sessions required for this non-diving specialty.
What will you learn?
Through classroom discussions, you learn:
- How Project AWARE unites scuba divers and water enthusiasts to make a difference.
- About environmental issues in the ocean commons and coastal zones.
- About fisheries challenges and sustainability problems.
- What’s happening to coral reefs and reef inhabitants.
- Your role in protecting aquatic environments.
How can you start learning now?
You’ll use the digital manual – AWARE – Our World, Our Water – downloadable for free on ProjectAWARE.org, and can start reading now in preparation for meeting with your instructor.
Become an environmental champion. |
Skip to comments.Bronze Age observatory to be rebuilt in Germany
Posted on 09/15/2002 3:17:14 PM PDT by SteveH
Bronze Age observatory to be rebuilt in Germany
September 10, 2002, 20:15
Archaeologists hope to rebuild as a tourist attraction a Bronze Age observatory where ancient priests in Germany divined the right days to sow and harvest crops 3 600 years ago.
They said the site on a hill in the middle of a forest is the world's oldest surviving astronomical observatory. The location has been kept secret so artefacts robbers will not disturb it, but the media are to be granted a first glimpse September 25.
Treasure hunters stumbled on the site four years ago and dug up the world's oldest astronomical map, a 32-centimetre bronze disc, but the first scientific excavation of the site only began last month.
Harald Meller, head of the Halle Prehistoric Museum, said the dig had shown the structure was probably built of logs, not stone. Dating of artefacts suggested the ancients used it for more than 1 000 years. "The structure and the map told them the date, which they had to know to sow and harvest crops," said Meller. "Here they could track the sun's variation from the winter to the summer solstice."
The circular site, 200 metres across, has features that line up with rising points of the sun. The circle, somewhere near Nebra, 180 kilometres southwest of Berlin, had a wall and ditch around it. The site's significance for world history is such that a replica observatory is being planned to show visitors how it worked.
Since August 20, archaeologists have found more than 100 artefacts including half a ring with a spiral decoration. It has been dated to 2 700 years ago. "It would have been worn on the neck," said Meller. The bronze-and-gold map of the heavens was seized by Swiss police in February in a sting operation. Two German treasure hunters face charges of failing to declare treasure trove. The stash included two swords, two axes, a chisel and a set of arm-rings.
The identity of the Bronze Age people of Europe has been lost in the mists of time, with only their hut sites, graves and treasures left. It is impossible to guess the language they spoke. - Sapa/DPA
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Just updating the GGG info, not sending a general distribution.
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google ·
· The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
The Nile Project is transforming the Nile conflict by inspiring, educating, and empowering an international network of university students to cultivate the sustainability of their ecosystem. The project’s model integrates programs in music, education, dialogue, leadership, and innovation to engage students across disciplines and geographies.
The Nile Project was founded in 2011 by Egyptian ethnomusicologist Mina Girgis and Ethiopian-American singer Meklit Hadero to address the Nile Basin’s cultural and environmental challenges at the core of the conflict.
MUSICAL COLLABORATION PROGRAM
The Nile Project brings together artists from the 11 Nile countries to make music that combines the region’s diverse instruments, languages and traditions. The concert experience aims to inspire cultural curiosity, highlight regional connections, and showcase the potential of trans-boundary cooperation.
DIALOGUE & EDUCATION PROGRAMS
Participatory workshops and cross-cultural dialogues provide university students with unique intellectual experiences, deepening their understanding of the Nile ecosystem, and stimulating new ways of thinking, communicating, and doing.
LEADERSHIP & INNOVATION PROGRAMS
The Nile Fellowship and Nile Prize programs incentivize university students to apply their education and training toward mobilizing their peers and pioneering innovative solutions to the Nile Basin’s complex and inter-related challenges. |
Artificial, synthetic, industrial or manufactured trans fats are caused by the way some fats and oils are processed. They are found in foods that use hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated vegetable fats, such as deep-fried and baked foods.
The primary dietary source for trans fats in processed food is “partially hydrogenated oils.” Look for them on the ingredient list on food packages.
Trans fats raise your bad (LDL) cholesterol levels and lower your good (HDL) cholesterol levels. Eating trans fats increases your risk of developing heart disease and stroke. It’s also associated with a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. |
(CNN) -- Antibodies taken from humans could provide protection from lethal strains of influenza, including the bird flu and the 1918 Spanish flu strain, according to research published this week.
Scientists found that some antibodies protected mice from illness caused by the bird and other flu viruses.
It has yet to be tested on humans, but scientists expressed optimism in using antibodies to defend against various types of the flu. Antibodies are proteins that the immune system produces to fight harmful substances in the body.
The research, funded by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was conducted on mice and cell cultures. The findings appear online this week in Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.
Scientists from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, California, and the CDC collaborated on the research.
"We pooled our distinct expertise to isolate and characterize a novel family of human antibodies," said Robert Liddington, director of the Infectious Disease Program at the Burnham Institute. "We were surprised and actually delighted to find that these antibodies actually neutralized a majority of other influenza viruses, including most of the regular, seasonal flus."
Antibodies are already used for treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases. But scientists have found that several of the human monoclonal antibodies protected mice from illness caused by the bird and other influenza A viruses.
Seasonal flu kills more than 250,000 people worldwide. The more virulent strains, like the bird flu strain called H5N1, has killed or resulted in the deaths of millions of birds in several countries. More than 400 people have been infected with bird flu since 1997. Humans infected with the bird flu have a 65 percent mortality rate.
In other research on the bird flu, teams of scientists from China and France used a highly technical process to identify key area of the H5N1 bird flu virus which enables it to copy itself, and indicated that the discovery could lead to new drugs to fight the infection.
Researchers in this latest discovery said human antibodies show promise against most types of flu viruses. The laboratory mice were protected even when they were administered the antibodies three days after being infected with strains of the flu.
"These antibodies have an important therapeutic potential and also pave the way for generation for a different kind of universal vaccine," said Dr. Ruben Donis, a researcher in the CDC's Influenza Division.
Among billions of monoclonal antibodies, scientists found several that were effective against four major strains of the bird flu. The human antibodies bound to an obscure region of the flu virus and prohibited it from changing shape to cause infection in cell cultures and mice.
Wayne Marasco, an associate professor of medicine at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, said the next step is to test the antibodies in ferrets, and then to develop an appropriate version for human clinical trials as soon as 2011 to 2012.
If the antibodies are tested to be safe and effective, it could take several years to develop a licensed product, according to a press release from the National Institutes of Health.
"These are fully human monoclonal antibodies -- no further engineering has to be done," Marasco said. "The antibodies we characterize in our published works are molecules to go into clinical trials and hopefully one day, will be approved for into human treatment."
Liddington said the antivirals can be very effective in case of a pandemic outbreak, but needs to be used judiciously and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. |
There are many styles and types of yoga classes available, ranging from physically demanding lessons, such as Ashtanga Yoga to gentle flowing restorative types such as, Anusrara Yoga. Back pain
Here, we look at three popular styles – Sivananda, Iygenar and Bikram Yoga.
What Does Yoga Mean?
The word ‘yoga’ originates from the Sanskrit word “yuj” which means to yoke, union, join together. Traditionally “yoga” was seen as a way to achieve balance -physical and spiritual in your life.
What Is Yoga?
A typical class consists of various exercises and techniques which encourages you to release stress and tension from your body and promotes a sense of inner calm and wholeness to your spirit. Most classes consists of a series of yoga exercises known as “asanas”, breathing exercises, known as pranayama, relaxation techniques and in some classes, meditation and chanting.
What Are The Different Types Of Yoga?
Traditionally, there is only one “type” of yoga which is hatha yoga. Hatha yoga is the generic term, however within this broad term there exists variations of styles and schools of yoga. “Hatha”, a Sanskrit word, means the joining of the moon and sun. “Ha” represents the sun or active masculine principle and “tha” refers to the moon or receptive female principle. This union, creation of balance between the inner and outer, strenuous and restorative aspects of our body underpins all types of yoga
Three Popular Types of Yoga
As previously mentioned, in this article we look at three popular types of yoga, Sivananda, Iygenar and Bikram Yoga.
1. Sivananda Yoga
Sivananda Yoga is considered one of the more traditional forms of yoga and is generally regarded as a gentle to moderate practice with emphasis on the more spiritual side of yoga.
Founded by Swami Sivananda (1887-1963), Sivananda Yoga consists of the Sun Salutation, breathing exercises, chanting and twelve core yoga poses. The teachings are based on five key precepts which Swami Sivananda believe improves your physical health and emotional wellbeing. These five key teachings are proper exercise (yoga) proper breathing, proper relaxation, proper diet (vegetarianism) and positive thinking and meditation.
2. Iygenar Yoga
Iygenar Yoga was founded by Sri B.K.S. Iygenar (b.1918) and is a very popular style practiced in the West. In Iygenar Yoga emphasis is placed on the anatomy and postural/structural alignment of the body in the poses. Props (such as sandbags, straps, blocks and chair) are also used to support you in the pose. Sri Iygenar wrote the classical book “Light in Yoga”.
3. Bikram Yoga
Bikram Yoga has to be the most well-known type of yoga practiced today. Founded by Bikram Choudhury (b. 1946), Bikram Yoga is practiced in a room heated to 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Classes are 90 minutes long and consist of a series of 26 poses, starting from Standing poses, Backbends, Forward Bends and Twists and two breathing exercises.
To close, although there are many types of yoga, all schools comes under the generic term of “hatha yoga”. Regardless of which type you practice – Sivanada, Iygenar or Bikram the goal is the same, to improve your health and achieve a sense of inner harmony and balance. |
Redirected from Copernicus
Nicolaus (or Nicholas) Copernicus (February 19, 1473 - May 24, 1543) was an astronomer and mathematician who developed a heliocentric (Sun-centered) theory of the solar system. He was also a church canon, governor and administrator, a jurist, astrologer and a doctor. He is generally considered to be Polish, but of German origins, although there is some debate on the subject among ethnic nationalists (see Copernicus' nationality). His theory about the Sun as the center of the solar system, turning over the traditional geocentric theory (that wanted the Earth to be its central star), is considered one of the most important discoveries ever, and is the fundamental starting point of modern astronomy. His theory affected many other aspects of human life.
Copernicus was born in 1473 in the city of Torun (German Thorn), in Royal Prussia, a province of Poland. He was ten years of age when his father, a wealthy businessman and copper trader, died. Little is known of his mother, Barbara Watzenrode, but she appears to have predeceased her husband. His maternal uncle, Lucas Watzenrode, a church canon and later the Prince-Bishop of Warmia, raised him and his three other siblings after the death of Copernicus' father. His brother Andreas became canon in Frombork. A sister, Barbara, became a Benedictine nun and the other sister, Katharina, married a businessman and city councillor, Barthel Gertner.
In 1491 Copernicus entered University of Krakow, and here he met astronomy for the first time, thanks to his teacher Albert Brudzewski. This science soon fascinated him, as his books (now in Uppsala's library) show. After four years and a brief stay in Torun, he moved to Italy, where he studied law at the university of Bologna. His uncle financed his education and wished for him to become a bishop as well. However, while studying canon and civil law, he met his teacher Domenico Maria Novara da Ferrara, a famous astronomer. He followed his lessons and became a disciple and assistant.
The first observation Copernicus made in 1497 together with Domenico Novara, are recorded in De revolutionibus orbium caelestium.
In 1497 his uncle was ordained the bishop of Warmia (Ermland) and Copernicus was named a canon in the Frombork cathedral, but he waited in Italy for the great Jubilee of 1500, so he went to Rome, where he could observe a lunar eclipse and where he gave some lessons of astronomy or math (unfortunately nothing of this remains to us).
He would have then visited Frombork only in 1501. As soon as he reached this town, he asked and obtained permission to return to Italy to complete his studies in Padua (with Guarico and Fracastoro) and in Ferrara (the town of his teacher Novara, with Bianchini), where in 1503 received his doctoral degree in canon law. It has been supposed that it was in Padua that he gained access to those passages of Cicero and Plato about the opinion of Ancients on the movement of the Earth, having the first intuition of his theory. His collection of observations and ideas on the theory started in 1504.
Having left Italy at the end of his studies, he came to live and work in Frombork. Some time before his return to Warmia, he had received a position at the Collegiate Church of the Holy Cross in Wroclaw, Silesia, which he resigned a few years prior to his death, when he progressively became ill.
Copernicus worked for years with duke Albert of Prussia on monetary reform and published some studies about the value of money; as a governor of some parts of the Duchy, he administered and dealt out justice, taxes and a cadastrian-like activity. It was at this time that Copernicus came up with one of the earliest iterations of the theory now known as Gresham's Law. During these years he he also travelled extensively on government business and as a diplomat, on the behalf of the prince-bishop of Warmia.
In 1514 he made his "Commentariolus" available to his friends.
In 1536 his work was already in a definitive form, and some rumours about his theory had reached the scientists of all Europe. From many parts of the Continent, Copernicus received invitations to publish it, but he felt quite apprehensive of persecution for his revolutionary work by the establishment of the time. The cardinal Nicola Schonberg of Capua wrote him for a copy of his manuscript, and this made Copernicus, who saw in this a certain nervousness of the Church, even more frightened of eventual reactions.
Copernicus was still completing his work (even if he was not convinced to publish it), when in 1539 Georg Joachim Rheticus, a great mathematician at Wittenberg, directly arrived in Frombork . Philipp Melanchthon had arranged with several astronomers for Rheticus to visit and study with them. Rheticus became a disciple of Copernicus' and stayed with him for two years, in which he wrote a book, Narratio prima, in which he included the essence of the theory.
In 1542, in the name of Copernicus, Rheticus published a treatise on trigonometry (later included in the second book of De revolutionibus). Under the strong pressure from Rheticus, and having seen that the first general reception of his work had not been favorable, Copernicus finally agreed to give the book to his close friend Tiedemann Giese[?], (the bishop of Chelmno[?] in Culmer Land), to be delivered to Rheticus for printing at Nuremberg.
Legend says that the first printed copy of De revolutionibus was put in Copernicus's hands the same day of his death, so that he could say goodbye to his opus vitae. He - allegedly - awoke from his stroke induced coma, looked at his book, and died peacefully.
Copernicus was buried in the Frombork Cathedral.
Copernicus' major theory was published in the book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres") in the year of his death 1543, even though he had arrived at it several decades earlier.
This book marks the beginning of the shift from a geocentric (and anthropocentric[?]) universe with the Earth at its center. Copernicus held that the Earth is another planet revolving around the fixed sun once a year, and turning on its axis once a day. He arrived at the correct order of the planets and explained the precession of the equinoxes correctly by a slow change in the position of the Earth's rotational axis.
His theory, unfortunately, still had some serious defects, among them circular as opposed to elliptical orbits and epicycles, that made it no more precise in predicting ephemerides than the then current tables based on Ptolemy's model.
The system nevertheless had a large influence on scientists such as Galileo and Kepler, who adopted, championed and, in Kepler's case, improved the model. Galileo's observation of the phases of Venus produced however the first observational evidence for Copernicus' theory.
The Copernican system can be summarized in seven propositions, as Copernicus himself had collected them in a Compendium of De revolutionibus... that was found and published in 1878:
These propositions represent the exact contrary of what the dominant geocentric propositions stated.
Much has been written about earlier heliocentric theories. Philolaus (4th century BC) was one of the first to suppose a movement of the Earth, probably inspired by Pythagoras's theories on a spherical Globe.
Aristarchus of Samos developed some theories by Heraclides Ponticus (already talking about a revolution of our planet on its axis) and, adding his own studies on distances and dimensions of Sun and Earth, had a quite sufficient idea of a heliocentric system. Unfortunately, his work about his heliocentric hypothesis did not survive, so we can only speculate about what led him to his conclusions. It is notable that, according to Plutarch, a contemporary of Aristarchus accused him of impiety for "putting the Earth in motion".
Copernicus cited Aristarchus and Philolaus in an early manuscript of his book which has survived, stating: "Philolaus believed in the mobility of the earth, and some even say that Aristarchus of Samos was of that opinion." For reasons unknown he crossed out this passage before publication of his book.
The first book contains a general vision of the heliocentric theory, and a summarized exposition of his idea on the World.
The second book is eminently theoretical and reports the principles of spherical astronomy and a list of stars (as a basis for the arguments developed in the following books).
The third book is mainly dedicated to the apparent movements of the Sun and to related phenomena.
The fourth book contains a similar description of the Moon and its orbital movements.
The fifth and the sixth book contain the concrete exposition of the new system.
The Lutheran philosopher Osiander is believed to have added an anonymous preface that the whole work was only a simple hypothesis, implying that it might only be fantastic speculation. But when, reading the work, Copernicus' belief appeared instead as a certain conviction, the book was censored and his theory fought by traditional doctrines. (Doubts have been advanced regarding this volunteer addition in order to let the theory have a wider circulation before a foreseeable reaction - see text here (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/readers/renaissance.astro/1.1.Revol)).
The book was put on the Index librorum prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) in 1616 by the Roman Catholic Church, which prosecuted the followers of this "heretic" theory. Galileo saved himself with the famous abiura[?], Giordano Bruno was condemned to the stake in Rome.
A few years after his death, Erasmus Reinhold developed the Prutenischen Tafeln (Prussian Tables), based on Copernicus' observations. Reinhold's Prussian Tabels were used as a basis for the calendar reformation by Pope Gregory XIII. The tables were also used by sailors and sea explorers, who during fourteenth and fifteenth century used the Table of the Stars by Regiomontanus.
Copernicus' theories have an extraordinary relevance in the history of human knowledge, and many authors suggest that only Euclidean geometry, or Charles Darwin's Evolutionism, or Newton's physics could have a similar influence on human culture in general and on science in particular. Quite obviously, Copernicus cannot be regarded only under a directly or merely scientifical, technical point of view.
Many meanings have been seen in his theory, apart from his properly scientific value. It has been said that his work represented a break in the relationships between science and religion, between dogmatism[?] and freedom of scientific investigation. His figure is often compared with Galileo.
Another figure that had to deal with the ruling culture and its dogmatic absolutism was Giordano Bruno, who studied Copernicus' work in depth. Bruno extended the meaning of Copernicus' heliocentrism to the whole universe; postulating that the universe is filled with infinitely many stars just like our Sun and surrounded by planets just like our Earth. This was a rejection of Ptolemy's cosmogony, where the universe was surrounded, closed by something, perhaps a sort of spherical envelope, that could render it a closed space (or, other suggested, a comprehensible scheme).
Of course, Copernicanism was very far from official acception in the dominant culture. And even farther from the actually ruling religious influence on science was the following conclusion that an infinitive reality rendered de facto impossible the hypothesis of an external "engine", an entity (God) that from outside could give a soul, a power and a life to the World and to Human beings. No transcendence, the most evident inspiring theme of philosophy at that time, could find an explanation in such a cosmic system, none of the most basic dogmas of Christianism (but of other religions too, the same way) could be compatible with such a revolutionary theory. The Catholic Church consequently fought this new scientific and philosophic mentality by prosecuting its followers ("Galileo's affair" was re-examined by theologists and only in 1992 Pope John Paul II stated that "science has a legitimate freedom in its own sphere"). It has to be recalled that science was submitted to religion, and that mathematicians and astronomers were considered as having neither philosophical nor theological relevance (orthodox philosophy coincided in practice with official theology) allegedly because they had no studies in theology. As a final consequence, the Church could have accepted scientific theories in these fields only after consensus by theologists. And these matters were properly studied, at the time, by natural philosophy[?]. Transcendence was central in revealed religions[?], and in Aristotle's preminent position in official doctrines. Not differently, therefore, and presumedly for the same reasons, Luther and Philipp Melanchthon too opposed a heliocentric hypothesis.
Besides, having weakened the importance of transcendence, Copernicanism opened a way to immanence and immanentism[?], which remained and developed in modern philosophy. Given that immanentism is the logical foundation of subjectivism, that finds inside the Man the principles that rule thought, history and reality, some find that Copernicanism demolished the foundations of medieval science and metaphysics, therefore giving a start to a general movement that would have brought modern thought to rebel against the objectivism and the authoritarism of traditional thought.
One of the consequences of Copernicanism (that some describe as influenced by neo-platonism) was that scientific laws must not necessarily coincide with appearance: Aristotle's system was effectively "demonstrated" by the personal experiment of anyone practically observing the movements in the sky (and one of the weakest points of geocentrism was in fact the question of "retrograde motion" of some planets - which now we know is an optical illusion). Now, a theoretical logical scheme could bring to results which did not need to be confirmed by appearance. Yet, Francis Bacon still kept on a more Aristotelian line, developing his "true induction" and his related empirism (Bacon however observed that not necessarily the planets' motion had to be in perfectly circular orbits), even if, by his famous metaphor of the bee, he proposed that a philosopher (a term that, as said, could include scientists) should keep in a wise avoidance of extreme positions of senses and reason.
Copernicus' innovation has been quite unanimously defined as a real revolution (despite the unwanted calembour). By some it was indicated as "the" revolution ( (http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/timel.htm)). Immanuel Kant, for instance, caught the symbolic character of Copernicus' revolution (of which he put in evidence the trascendental rationalism) underlining that, in his vision, human rationality was the real legislator of the phenomenical reality; Copernicanism was in a winning opposition against the scientific and philosophical Aristotelism[?], a quite subjective position (in a Kantist sense) meant to fight against the ruling dogmatism. More recent philosophers too have found in Copernicus a still valid and valuable philosophical meaning, properly used to describe the position of the modern man in front of cultural traditions. A so-called Homo Copernicanus was then by some described like that modern man whose central themes are to be found in ordinary human problems, as a general cultural reference.
It could be useful to investigate what induced Copernicus to jettison the long-established doctrine of the geocentric universe.
To explain the reasons Nicholas Copernicus might have had, in the early sixteenth century, for developing a cosmology so radically different from the prevailing Ptolemaic geocentric description of the universe, it is helpful to gain some understanding of Ptolemy's theory in this regard. An acquaintance with Ptolemaic cosmology, which had been the accepted model of the universe since the second century BC, sets the scientific context in which Copernicus worked. A more complete understanding of what motivated Copernicus' study of astronomy and mathematics also takes into account the cultural, religious, and social contexts of life in Europe, and particularly Prussia and Poland, at the time.
Copernicus was well educated. At the University of Cracow, which he attended in 1491 and 1492, Copernicus studied both mathematics and astronomy in common with all university students of that time. There is evidence that his interest in these subjects continued after he had left Cracow. Colin Russell, in chapter 2 of the book, The Rise of Scientific Europe 1500 1800, mentions that mathematical and astronomical texts were found in Copernicus' luggage when he moved from Cracow to study canon law at Bologna (Russell, 1999, p38). If these texts described the theory of the universe then current, they would have illustrated Ptolemy's model, which, although handling each planet's circular motion individually, was the first model of the universe to explain some of the eccentric behaviour of the planets. Ptolemaic cosmology was based on the earlier work of Aristotle and Eudoxus and maintained that all planetary motion, and the motion of the Moon, the Sun, and the stars was circular, around a stationary Earth.
In Copernicus' view, an accurate mathematical description of the universe was a technical problem that Ptolemy's explanation failed to satisfy. An accurate calculation of the astronomical year was important to a clergyman, like Copernicus, allowing him to forecast properly the various festivals that comprised the liturgical calendar. The mathematical confusion that Copernicus says caused him to develop an alternative to the geocentric model (Wallis, 1939, p.507), derived from an inadequate reconciliation of the Aristotelian model and amendments to it by Ptolemy.
Another failing of the Ptolemaic system, which Copernicus corrected in his heliocentric model, was the problem of precession. This characteristic of the Earth's movement is apparent only with observation over long periods of time. Although Copernicus' revolutionary text, de Revolutionibus orbium coelestium, contains only 27 of his own astronomical observations, Copernicus did consider empirical evidence important. Russell thinks that an observation that Copernicus had made in 1497 of the star Aldebaron, that did not coincide with predictions made by Ptolemy, might have provided further evidence of weaknesses in the Ptolemaic system further undermining its authority for Copernicus (Russell, 1999, p.50).
The Almagest, Ptolemy's treatise on astronomy, mathematics, and geography, was written 150 years before Christ putting its authorship in the classical period. Apart from his quotation of Virgil in de Revolutionibus, discussing the characteristics of relative motion, there is evidence that Copernicus was acquainted with ideas espoused by other classical authors (Russell, 1999, p.51). Some of the ideas expressed by Philalaus[?] (5th century BC), Heraclides[?] (4th century BC), and Aristarchus (3rd century BC) discuss cosmological models that have the Earth in motion. Heraclides' description of the revolutions of Mercury and Venus around the Sun might have led Copernicus, Russell thinks, to consider that the other planets, including the Earth, did the same (Russell, 1999, p.51).
The Ptolemaic geocentric model was complicated and inconsistent in Copernicus' estimations. Copernicus' mathematical experience engendered in his thought a desire for a simpler and more elegant model of the universe, more worthy, perhaps, of its maker. The heliocentric universe of Copernicus accomplished this aim by dispensing with individual explanations for the motion of each planet to make its observed behaviour conform to observation, and replacing them with a description that applied to all the planets, including the Earth.
Elegance was a consequence of the overall simplicity of Copernicus' cosmology and much of this seeming simplicity resulted from his retention of circular orbits for the planets around the central Sun. Not that Copernicus might have looked elsewhere for a description of planetary orbits, because, according to Butterfield, Copernicus had "almost an obsession for circularity and sphericity" (Butterfield, 1957, p.31). Copernicus therefore had no choice but to use the eccentrics, epicycles, and equants of Ptolemaic cosmology, to which he added three kinds of motion he used to describe the observed behaviour of the Earth:
Until 1543, the year that Copernicus died, and the year in which his de Revolutionibus was published, and for many years afterwards, Copernicus' description of the motion of the Earth was not ratified by empirical evidence. In his unauthorized and anonymous preface to de Revolutionibus, Andreas Osiander was technically correct when he made reference to "the hypothesis of this work" (Prefaces to de Revolutionibus). Its consistency with the observed behaviour of the universe however, in a time before the telescope made more detailed observation and the gathering of more accurate measurements practicable, gave the Copernican model its strongest support. Not much more than a century later, Kepler had certainly despatched the circular orbits of the planets and replaced them with ellipses, but the Copernican heliocentric universe was still intact.
In his own preface to his work, dedicated to Pope Paul III, Copernicus took care to point out that his motives for developing a cosmology that included a moving, rather than a stationary, Earth, were inspired by his dissatisfaction with the mathematical and astronomical descriptions of the geocentric model, and were not intended to defy the written Word. "Mathematics", he says, "is written for mathematicians;" (Prefaces to de Revolutionibus). Copernicus seems to have been benefited in the bishops who were his superiors in the church - Johann Dantiscus[?] (1485 - 1548) and Tiedmann Giese (1480- 1550). Both preferred, at least initially, to promote tolerance of differing views within the church rather than open discord, and both encouraged Copernicus' publication of his scientific beliefs. However, Russell considers that previously lenient attitudes in Chelmno[?], where Copernicus carried out much of his work, had begun to change and might have contributed to Copernicus' isolation in the last years of his life (Russell, 1999, p.57). For orthodox Catholics, the Copernican model of the universe might have seemed too radically different from the geocentric model, sustained as it was by its agreement with many scriptural references. They might not have been ready to change to an understanding of the Bible as a source only of moral and spiritual, rather than scientific, wisdom.
This last idea, the separation of scientific from spiritual knowledge, first advanced by Joachim Rheticus (1514 -1576), who was instrumental in the publication of de Revolutonibus in Nuremberg in 1543, went against the efforts St. Thomas Aquinas had made, nearly three hundred years earlier, to unify reason and revelation. Russell points out, however, that in spite of his loyalty to the Catholic Church, Copernicus had a greater loyalty to what he considered to be truth his explanation of the structure and behaviour of the universe (Russell, 1999, p, 59).
Copernicus was aware of the neo-Platonic ideas prevalent in Renaissance Europe. There is written evidence of this interest in a copy of Ficino's translation of Plato's works owned by Copernicus (Russell, 1999, p.52). In these works, as in the ideas of other classical authors, Copernicus found what he considered to be solid authority for his emphasis of the circular motion of the planets around the Sun the centre of the universe. The fact, as far as Copernicus was concerned, that the Sun, a distinctive element in classical thought, held the central and most important position in the universe, gave added credence to his cosmology. His reverence for the sun can be seen in the most famous passage of de Revolutionibus:
In this discussion of Copernicus' reasons for discarding such a long-held belief as the geocentric cosmology of Ptolemy, we can see that the Copernican revolution was simmering against a background revolution of theological thought the Reformation. Neo-Platonic and classical ideas formed the intellectual environment in which Copernicus worked. Although not holding ordained office within the Catholic Church, Copernicus was devout and unwilling to be openly defiant of the Church's teaching, but, in common with supporters of the Reformation, Copernicus was criticising orthodox theory and belief. His reasons for doing so lay in his dissatisfaction with the inadequacies of the geocentric model, in his strong belief in the truth of the solution to the problem that he developed, its elegance and relative simplicity, and its coincidence with observation and with the classical ideals to which he had subscribed since his youth.
Sources referred to:.
RUSSELL, C. A., 1999. Copernicus and his revolution. In: D. C. GOODMAN, C. A. RUSSELL, eds. The Rise of Scientific Europe 1500-1800. Bath, UK: Hodder & Stoughton, 33-61.
WALLIS, C. G. (1939). Great Books of the World. In: D. C. GOODMAN, C. A. RUSSELL, eds. The Rise of Scientific Europe 1500-1800. Bath, UK: Hodder & Stoughton, 33-61.
BUTTERFIELD, H. (1957). The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800. In: D. C. GOODMAN, C. A. RUSSELL, eds. The Rise of Scientific Europe 1500-1800. Bath, UK: Hodder & Stoughton, 33-61.
Preface to COPERNICUS' de Revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543). In: Great Books of the World, vol.16, (1952). Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 505-509. In: C. A RUSSELL, ed. Science in Europe 1500 - 1800, Volume 1, A Primary Sources Anthology. Exeter, UK: Polestar Wheatons Ltd.
Christoph Hartknoch, the director of the Torunian Gymnasium in 1684, added an illustration of the 'famous Mathematicus' in his book Alt-und Neues Preussen, Von den Staedten und Schloessern. Der beruehmte Mathematicus Nicolaus Copernicus (About the Cities and Castles ). |
When Did Your Baby Start Solids?
According to a recent study, introducing babies to grains before six months of age may help to prevent wheat allergies. However, many pediatricians advise waiting until after six months to give babies cereal grains. When did you introduce your baby to solid foods?
|27%||Before 4 months of age|
|33%||At 4-5 months of age|
|21%||At 5-6 months of age|
|19%||After 6 months of age|
1028 Total votes cast.
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Thanksgiving Main Course
What's the main course for your family's Thanksgiving feast?
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Stay-at-Home vs Working Moms
If money or quality child care were not an issue, which option would you choose? |
A group of scientists says sorghum should be a larger part of the biofuels conversation than it is today. The researchers – led by Purdue University scientists – believes sweet and biomass sorghum would meet the need for next-generation biofuels to be environmentally sustainable, easily adopted by producers and take advantage of existing agricultural infrastructure. Purdue Professor of Botany and Plant Pathology Nick Carpita says the Midwest is uniquely poised to get the biorefining industry going on cellulose. He says the ethanol plants of today are equipped to take advantage of new bioenergy crops. In the near future – according to Purdue Agronomy Professor Cliff Weil – we need a feedstock other than corn. He says sweet and biomass sorghum would require fewer inputs and could be grown on marginal lands.
Carpita says sorghum could be genetically developed in a way that maximizes cellulose and minimizes seeds. If producing biomass and not seed – he says less nitrogen is required. What’s more – farmers may be more willing to grow sorghum. It’s a crop they’re familiar with and it’s an annual. Nathan Mosier – Purdue Associate Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering – says the perennial switchgrass is a 15-year commitment. A producer can’t switch annually based on the economy or other factors.
Speaking of the economy – a Purdue Research Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics says bringing sorghum back as a biofuel crop could have an economic impact on poorer rural areas of the country. Because the crop can be produced on low-quality, marginal lands in dry areas – he says producing sorghum for biofuel will significantly improve the economy of rural lands that rely on low-productivity agriculture. |
An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence—what parents, educators, and health professionals can do.
Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents such as auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit, resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression. Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes gives insight into children’s innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma.
About the Author
Dr. Peter A. Levine, author of the best-selling Waking the Tiger and of Healing Trauma, has a background in medical biophysics, stress, and psychology. He developed Somatic Experiencing®, and serves as a consultant to the Meadows, a leading residential addiction recovery center. He lives on the banks of the St. Vrain River in the Rocky Mountains.
Maggie Kline, MS, MFT, has more than thirty years of experience as a teacher, family and child therapist, school psychologist, and parent. She is a senior faculty member for Dr. Levine’s Professional Training Program and resides by the sea in southern California with her therapy dog, Beijo.
"Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes is an extraordinary body of work. Healing ourselves and our children of the effects of trauma is of the utmost importance. The more aligned we are inside ourselves and with our outer world, the more we will be able to create peace." —Debbie Robins, bestselling author of Where Peace Lives
"Some books are said, in their originality, to 'break the mold.' Trauma Through A Child’s Eyes goes one further: it creates its own mold in a way that everyone concerned with the health and happiness of children will be grateful for." —Gabor Maté, MD, author of Hold On to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
"A truly remarkable book that captures the essence of what it is to be a traumatized child, while simultaneously helping us understand, appreciate, and facilitate their natural capacity to heal. Written with a deep sense of compassion and wisdom, this book offers clear insight to those who care for and about children." —John Stewart, PhD, author of Beyond Time Out; clinical director, Maine Medical Center; consultant to public schools, Child Psychiatry Fellowship Faculty |
Household waste disposal
Under the Waste Management Act 1996, all local authorities must arrange for the collection of the household waste in their area. They must also provide or arrange for the provision of facilities for the disposal and recovery of household waste. Household waste is usually collected once a week, generally by a private operator. Some operators collect different types of waste in different weeks.
You can reduce the amount of waste that you leave out for collection – see ‘Recycling and composting’ below.
New charging arrangements
In the past, some waste collectors charged for household waste collection according to weight and some charged a flat rate.
A new framework for household waste charges was announced in June 2017. Under the new arrangements, waste collectors can offer a range of pricing options, such as standing charges; charges per lift or per kilo; charges by weight band; weight allowance charges; or combinations of these elements.
However, all-in flat-rate charging for waste is being phased out as customers renew their service contracts or enter new ones.
An annual support of €75 will be introduced for people who have lifelong or long-term medical incontinence. This aims to help with the cost of disposing of incontinence products. The details of this scheme are currently being finalised.
Since 2013, a series of Regulations have been introduced to deal with the disposal of food waste and bio-waste. They include the European Union (Household Food Waste and Bio-waste) Regulations 2015. As part of this phased introduction, brown bins have been introduced on a gradual basis, starting in the largest population centres and extending each year to smaller centres of population.
With effect from July 2017, they are being rolled out to the last grouping of population centres – those with more than 500 residents. Very small population areas and small islands, where it is not practical to collect food waste separately, will not be covered.
Under the Regulations, householders must do one of the following with their food waste:
- Segregate it and make it available for separate collection
- Compost it at home (while ensuring that it does not cause smells or nuisance)
- Bring it to an authorised facility for composting or other suitable treatment
You may not use a macerator to process your food waste, or put food waste in the general waste collection.
Containers for waste
Many waste collectors use wheelie bins for the safe and efficient collection of waste. If there is a wheelie bin system in operation in your area, you must present your waste in a wheelie bin or it will not be collected. If you use bin bags, you will need to attach a pre-paid tag to each bag. If you do not tag your rubbish, it will not be collected. You can generally buy tags from local shops, garages etc. Your waste collection operator can provide a full list of sellers.
Separation of waste
Most waste collectors operate a system of waste separation. In general, different types of waste must be put in colour-coded containers. Examples of such colour codes are: brown bins for garden waste, food waste and other compostable waste; green bins for recyclable items; and black or grey bins for residual waste. Your waste collector will provide detailed information about what goes in each bin.
If you have a large volume of waste to get rid of, you can hire a skip from a private waste collection company. Bulky waste can also be brought to civic amenity centres or landfill sites. Some local authorities operate occasional bulk waste collections and will advertise this service if and when it occurs. Bulky items like carpets, furniture or fridges should never be left out for the regular refuse collection.
Recycling and composting
Much of household waste can be recycled. Local authorities must ensure that there are adequate facilities for recycling. Most waste collection operators collect recyclables in designated bins on alternate weeks. Read more in our document on recycling household waste.
Composting is another useful way of cutting down on household waste. Read more in our document on composting.
Much of the household waste produced in Ireland is sent to landfill. Read more in our document on landfill sites.
Waste charges and methods of payment can vary considerably. Check with your household waste collection operator for details of their charges.
You can dispose of many different types of waste for free at recycling or civic amenity centres. However, some centres may charge a small entry fee. You may be charged for certain items such as mattresses or carpets, or for particularly large quantities.
If you use a landfill site, there are entry charges for cars and car trailers. Vans are charged at a commercial rate.
For more details of charges, check with the relevant centre or landfill site, or check on your local authority’s website.
Where to apply
Your local authority can advise you on waste disposal and recycling facilities.
The website repak.ie provides information on the waste accepted at each recycling or civic amenity centre. |
Milk is produced in all 50 States, with the major producing States in the West and North. Dairy farms, overwhelmingly family-owned and managed, are generally members of producer cooperatives. The industry has seen a consistent decline in number of operations, matched by a rise in number of cows per operation. Dairy products range from cheese, fluid milks, yogurt, butter, and ice cream to dry or condensed milk and whey products. (Source: ERS). |
When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization.
Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus.
Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics.
"Massively documented and brilliantly argued, Castes of Mind is a study in true contrapuntal interpretation. Nicholas Dirks is a subtle unraveler of the dense, many-layered fabric of India's colonial and modern history as they converge in the idea and practice of caste. Even for the nonspecialist, the results of this gripping book are remarkable to behold. No one before Dirks has examined the ways in which caste gathers from as well as ignores the complex realities and hierarchies of Indian society. Neither reductive nor schematic, the notion of caste that emerges here is genuinely original."--Edward W. Said
Table of Contents
Another Princeton book authored or coauthored by Nicholas B. Dirks:
Hardcover: Not for sale in South Asia
Paperback: Not for sale in South Asia |
A design patent can be granted to any inventor in the United States who creates a new and unique ornamental design for a manufactured item. The definition of a design patent covers the visual ornamentation of a manufactured item.
A design is related to the appearance of the item only, as it relates to configuration, shape, surface appearance or a combination of these factors. It does not cover the functionality of the invention, which is only covered by utility patents.
In order to qualify for a design patent, the design of the surface ornamentation must be inseparable from the item that it is applied to and cannot exist on its own. Also, the surface ornamentation must be in a definite pattern which is applied to a manufactured item.
The US Patent and Trademark Office examines applications for design patents and grants them on inventions which are entitled to receive a patent.
A design patent is considered by intellectual property lawyers to be a weaker form of patent, and therefore they are only the best choice in a limited number of situations. However, they can still be a useful tool in an IP arsenal, especially in cases where overlapping patent protection is desired.
A design patent can be a great addition to a portfolio of intellectual property, especially following the 2008 decision by a US Court of Appeals that made significant changes to the infringement test for design patents.
They chose to adopt the “ordinary observer” test, which had the practical effect of adding value to design patents because it makes proving infringement easier.
A design patent is particularly desirable in cases where a utility patent has already been filed on a given invention. Nonetheless, some inventors choose largely to apply for and obtain a utility patent only, while foregoing the costs and hassle of a design patent, and this is completely fine as well. |
What is a computer network?
"How long is a piece of string?" is about as good a starting point as any for describing what a computer network is. In effect it's whatever you want or need it to be, but basically it's where two or more computers have the ability to communicate with each other.
Maybe the simplest type of computer network is one where two PC's are linked together via a single piece of cable. Using Windows 98, for example, it is possible to 'link' or network two PC's together using DCC (Direct Cable Connection) software via the serial (usually used for connecting an external modem) or parallel (usually used for connecting a printer) ports.
There are also what is known as 'peer-to-peer' networks. Peer-to-peer networks are where a small number of computers (under a dozen, say) are linked together via some cabling into a single functioning computer-to-computer loop. Using Windows 95/98, for example, this is a simple and cost effective way for a small number of computers in the same office to be able to share resources (like access to a printer). While cheap and cheerful, peer-to-peer networking does fall down on speed/bandwidth capabilities, limitations on application sharing and a dependency on all computers in the loop being switched on and functioning OK.
Then there's the Local Area Network (LAN). This might, for example, extend beyond a single office environment to linking together several offices/departments in a large building. Things become a little more complicated, however. Such a network would most probably need a server (a computer that acts as storage place and go-between for linked-in user computers), hubs (connecting boxes), data transfer cards (Ethernet cards being one of the most common) and special software to allow the server, user computers and programs/applications to 'speak' to each other. Windows NT Server or Novell Netware are types of server software.
A step up from the LAN is the WAN. WAN stands for Wide Area Network and commonly links computers distributed across a wide geographical location. For example, a company in New York might have a WAN to connect to its offices in Delhi. Running and maintaining WAN's can become complex and resource intensive as each WAN may have a number of different computers using a number of different operating systems using a number of different servers (i.e. a number of different LAN's within the WAN).
Just as things in the computing world were beginning to get complicated in steps a piece of magic called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). What is really magical about TCP/IP is that it is a 'language' or protocol which any computer using any operating system can use to communicate with any other computer using any other operating system. Ever heard of the internet? Well, the internet runs on the TCP/IP protocol.
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THE EFFECT OF COMMUNICATIVE ANXIETY
ON INTENDED MEANING
A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
MEANING IS A KIND OF INTENDING
Language is as much, if not more, a mode of action as it is a means of conveying information (see J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, second edition, 1975). As John Searle puts it, "All linguistic communication involves linguistic acts. The unit of linguistic communication is not, as has generally been supposed, the symbol, word, or sentence, or even the token of the symbol, word, or sentence, but rather the production or issuance of the symbol or word or sentence in the performance of a speech act."
Meaning, then, should be regarded as a species within the genus intending-to-communicate, since language itself is highly complex, rule-governed intentional behavior. A theory of language is part of a theory of action.
The basic emphasis of speech act theory is on what an utterer (U) means by his utterance (x) rather than what x means in a language (L).
As H.P. Grice notes, "meaning is a kind of intending," and the hearer's or reader's recognition that the speaker or writer means something by x is part of the meaning of x.
One of the clearest examples of this "Meaning is a kind of intending" can be found in Shaharyar's poem Ba'rish. Shaharyar is a leading figure of "Contemporary Urdu Poetry". Contemporary Urdu poets address everyday Indian life in a simple, straightforward language with very little, if any, experimentation with form. His poems are fairly short lyrical compositions conveying and even sharing the deep thoughts, feelings and state of mind of a single speaker in a clear, informal language.
A recent report by Vimal Sumbly in The Tribune, Chandigarh, dated April 13, succinctly presented the life and work of Shaharyar in the following words:
"Although quite well-known and duly acknowledged in poetic, literary and academic circles, Sharharyar shot into prominence after the classic composition for the Hindi feature film Umrao Jan 'Dil cheez kya hai, aap meri jaan lijye, bas ik bar mera kaha maan lijye, is anjuman mein aap ko aana hai bar bar, deewar-o-dar ko ghor se pehchan lijye'.
"But Shaharyar refuses to be described as the writer of the film songs. He is proud of being a poet. "I am the best living Urdu poet. At this time I have no match", he asserts, while claiming that there is no surviving Urdu poet who could stand at a par with him.
"Born in Bulandshahar city of Uttar Pradesh, Kunwar Ikhlaq Muhammad Khan, who became popular by his pen name Shaharyar, has traversed a long course to prominence. He started his career as a journalist with an Urdu journal. He did his Masters in Urdu in 1961 and joined the famous Aligarh Muslim University in 1966 as a lecturer. He retired as chairman and head of the Department of Urdu in AMU.
"Like other great Urdu poets as Kaifi Azmi, Sardar Jafri and many reputed names, Shaharyar was also influenced by left-oriented progressive thought. He admits and asserts with pride his affiliation with the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
"He has written songs for several Hindi feature films, which became quite popular. His film songs also reflect the depth of thought presented in a simple and lucid language. The famous song of 'Gamman', 'Seene mein jalan aankhoon mein toofan sa kyon hai, Is shahar mein har shakhs pareshan kyon hai', is as famous today as it was about two decades ago. The list is long, including some latest movies like Yash Chopra's 'Faasle' and Muzafar Ali's 'Zooni', an incomplete movie on the troubled life of famous Kashmiri folk poetess Habba Khatun. ...
"The famous poet claims to reflect social problems in his poetry. However, he asserts that India is strong enough rooted in its history and culture to face any challenges. "India has always survived all eventualities and has always emerged stronger", he says with confidence."
Shaharyar's poem Ba'rish proclaims:
Be Daira nuqtoN ko gine jaeNge kab tak
( How long these meaningless dots will be counted)
SannaToN ki a'wa'zsuneN ja'eNge kab tak
( How long the echo of silence will be heard)
SaRkoN pe pataNgoN ke swa' kuch bhi nahin hai
( There is no one other than moth on roads)
Barish ke sabab se
(Due to rain)
Ik a'Nkh meN ham aur zamin chand sitare
( In this eye I find stars moon and the earth)
Is sihar se us qahar se
( From this spell of agony)
Bachne ki koi rah nikaleN
(Let's find some escape route)
Ta ham ko koi ajnabi sarhad se pukare
( Till the time a stranger gives me a call from the frontier)
( From the darkness of this night)
Uktae hue ham bhi bahut hain
(I am bored to death)
Ghabrae hue ham bhi bahut hain
(I am scared and terrified)
Chumen kisi parchaiN ki peshani ka suraj
(I should also kiss the forehead of a shadow)
DekheN kisi khushbu ka badan ham bhi barahna
( I should also see the naked body of some kind of fragrance)
Naghma sunen ham bhi kisi diwar ki lab se
( I should also listen the music from the lips of the wall)
SarkoN pe pataNgoN ki siwa kuch bhi nahin hai
(There is no one on the road other than moth)
barish ki sabab se
(Due to rain)
THE OVERT STRUCTURE
Although no question mark is present in any of the lines, the poem appears to be an answer in retaliation to the brisk statement," Be Daira nuqtoN ko gine jaeNge kab tak" ( How long these meaningless dots will be counted).
Tightly bound into sixteen lines of unequal size, the shape of the composition contributes to the fast delivery of his indignant repudiation of the state of solitude loneliness and isolation. This effect is conveyed through the repetition of exclamation marks and the strongly suggestive rhyme and assonantal "slant" on the end word of the first two lines in the poem, "Gine jaeNge kab tak" and "Sune jaeNge kab tak".
THE UPBEAT PACE OF THE POEM
Sharyar's use of metric pattern in this poem contributes to the upbeat pace of reading and the readers' belief that the feelings expressed are real and true. Moreover, his use of alliteration and metaphors of pain like "tariki-e-shab," heightens the tale of a painful and melodramatic passion.
This technique helps to convey a sense of serious thought and contemplation, "ukta'e hue ham bhi bahut haiN," "ghabrae hue ham bhi bahut haiN". These regular, but brief expressions, are followed by his wishful thinking, " dekheN kisi khushbu ka badan hm bhi barahna" , which highlight a stylistic devise that loosens the stiff formality of punctuation and effects a breathlessness throughout the verse.
Written in the first person, "ham", the poet and the speaker in the poem become one and the same. One important consideration at the level of the communicative situation here is the genre to which the text belongs. "Barish" is a subjective and reflective type of discourse in which a speaker presents or describes an emotion, or discusses a philosophical problem. The sentences of a lyrical poem are usually given in the present tense.
FULFILLING THE GENERIC EMPECTATION
"Barish" fulfills most of these generic expectations. The central tense therein is the present, although there are references to the past and the timelessness, as already explained. Subjective emotions of isolation and alienation, on the other hand, dominate the text. The emotions are not groundless; they have their socio-philosophical causes in the gap between appearance and reality and the absence of true love and intimacy. This is where the author and the speaker of the poem - the poet and the speaker-in-the-text - seem to coincide. Even though the speakers and authors should be treated as "distinct textual roles", they may, of course, "share certain characteristics; indeed, biographical and other text-external evidence may add considerable substance and meaning to a poem."
The focus is more on the meta-textual and inter-textual aspects of the poem than on the details of the poet's life. This section is, not unjustifiably, quotation-heavy. It is based on different accounts of Shaharyar's life and works and on different critical responses to his poetry in general.
THE MOVEMENT FROM WITHIN
In Barish, there is evidence for the main characteristics of the "Movement." Simple, accessible and only minimally ambiguous, the poem departs from the canons that characterize, perhaps stigmatize, many modern and post-modern poems. In this respect, the poem challenges its own author's sense of isolation and alienation - both text-internal and text-external. A large portion of the alienation of modern poets derives from the deterioration of literary competence among a continually decreasing readership, on the one hand, and the association of most modern(ist) poetry with extreme symbolism, ambiguity and sometimes unintelligibility, on the other.
WHAT MAKES IT READABLE?
What makes Shaharyar's poem readable despite its sad tone is probably what made Shaharyar himself popular: "With Shaharyar and his readers, the silliness which helped to make him popular was his genuine, uncultivated, sincere philistinism. One more distinctive feature about Shaharyar is his "resistance to biographical curiosity". However, his resistance to biographical curiosity, whatever it meant for him, does not make possible a decontextualized reading of his poetry. The thematic preoccupations, the general tone and the stylistic features of 'Barish', as discussed above, not only reflect historical conditions and personal propensities, but also cohere with the bulk of his work, in general. Shaharyar devoted the vast majority of his poetry, 'Barish" included, to what is generally taken to be negative aspects of life, such as loneliness and dejection, disappointments, and the terrifying prospect of loss, and has come to be identified with a downhearted, pessimistic temper and tone of voice."
SENSE OF FUTILITY
Those feelings stemmed from, at least partly, his sense of futility, the feeling that his lifetime passes unused, and his inability to cope with people The last clause in "Barish" clearly indicates the speaker's mistrust , his frustration and the gap between expectations and reality. Throughout the poem, "the theme is dark ( shab-e-ta'rik), the tone bleak with disappointment at the discovery that the passage of time [which 'passes silently'] does not bring with it those fulfillments that expectation seemed latent with."
The characteristic Shaharyar tone of disillusionment is strong in this poem. This is all true; yet we cannot make generalizations on Shaharyar's attitude towards life based on the poem. Assuming that the speaker in the poem is a male, (ChumeN kisi parchaiN ki peshani ka suraj dekheN kisi khush bu ka badan hm bhi barahna) as we already did, the other person is apparently less powerful and less articulate.
THE ADVANTAGE OF THE "SPEAKER"
The speaker has the advantage of talking, has the access to discourse. He can make statements about moral obligations, narrate past events and states, describe nature and evaluate its attitude to humans and finally diagnose some of the maladies which humanity suffers from. This is all on a narrow scale.
Moreover, the shaky conclusion that the male participant is more powerful (ChumeN kisi parchaiN ki peshani ka suraj dekheN kisi khush bu kabadan hm bhi barahna) should be understood within the context of an overall sense of isolation and deprivation, irrespective of gender.
THE IRONY IN SHAHARAYAR'S POEMS
Larkins once famously said that "deprivation was for him what daffodils were for Wordsworth." Deprivation in a situation of pleasure and fulfillment, is the heart of the irony of the Shaharryar's poetry.
Irony, one dominant feature in modern poetry, the mismatch between the ideal and the real, is encoded in the thematic development, transitivity choices and deictic sub-worlds of the poem. And in the mismatch between what is and what ought to be, Barish is intertextually related to many other works by Shaharyar such as 'Gumshuda, apni yad meN and Wapsi.
Barish echoes its historical and intertextual context in many other ways too.
The speaker's awareness of the indifference and malice in nature - sarkoN pe kuch bhi nahin hai ---- barish ki saqbab se - reflects one aspect of the poet's personality as far as perception of nature and environment is concerned: Nature, especially the least comforting aspects of nature: the blank moon ( shab-e-tarik), the empty air ( sannatoN ki awaz) were for Shaharyar signs that it would be wrong to look for presence anywhere out there.
THE FEELING AS THE BASIS
Moreover, the poem confirms one of Shaharyar's pronouncements on his own poetry: "I think a poem usually starts off from the feeling. In fact, 'Barish' starts from the feeling of frustration and ends with the double feeling of hope and disappointment." Both feelings end in disappointment, as already indicated. Yet, in its attempt to establish order and unity, to provide glimpses of coherence in a world falling apart, the poem makes itself seem true - true to its author, to its age, to the personae therein and to us as human beings.
BARREN LUST AND FUTILE COMMUNICATION
The poem is about the same barren lust and futile communication that are found in " KhaboN se dastbardar hone walon ki Nam". It is as clipped and anti-romantic, too. It is also about the disillusionments and discontents of urbanization.
The eternal cities are now "dark towns" that heap up on the horizon. Nature is now an enemy, not a Wordsworth's paradise.
Barish is as true to the modern world as The Waste Land is, although in a totally different way and on an apparently smaller scale. For it is also about the agony of alienation, the loss of faith in communion. One strategy for the analysis of thematic coherence in a text is the use of the concept of "isotopies".
ISOTOPIES IN BARISH
An isotopy refers to "a level of meaning which is established by the recurrence in a text of semes belonging to the same semantic field, and which contributes to our interpretation of the theme" (Wales, 1989, p. 265).
"Barish" is in many ways a poem about talking. It is, in a sense, a metalinguitic poem, a poem about the use, misuse and abuse of language, about the contribution of human language, not to communication and understanding, but to the alienation and isolation of humankind, of "two people" who used to be "honest", who "ought to" talk easily, but they are now "lying" together, watching time passing "silently".
What remains is only an "emblem". An emblem is a (semio)linguistic signifier, or set of signifiers. It substitutes reality. In the present situation it substitutes a past reality, for it "goes back so far." The epigrammatic ending of the poem bears further witness to the centrality of the language isotopy.
An essential part of the predicament is the difficulty of "finding words" that are either "true and kind" or "not untrue and not unkind": the difficulty of telling the truth and being nice at one and the same time, or at least not lying and not being cruel.
SITUATIONALLY DEFINED USE OF LANGUAGE
"Barish" is a situationally defined use of language. The unmarked features of this use include the highest degree of informality and intimacy. The intimate style is our closest, friendliest, most trusting variety. … The second most prominent isotopy in the poem is that of a malicious, indifferent, if not hostile, nature/environment.
"Time"(Be Daira nuqton ko gine jaeNge kab tak) passes silently; the "wind" ( sannatoN ki Awaz) haphazardly "builds" and "disperses" "clouds" in the "sky"; "towns" are "dark" ( tarik-e shab); they heap up on the "horizon" as well as on the vision and feelings of the human experiencer/s, none of them "cares" for or provides answers to the questions of the human/s at the unique distance from isolation.
SHAHARYAR'S NATURE ISOTOPY - HOSTILE AND INDIFFERENT
The hostile, indifferent nature isotopy challenges both the romantic fallacy of a friendly nature and the pathetic fallacy of nature as endowed with human capabilities, sensations and emotions Rejection of the two fallacies should not necessarily result in a rejection of the possible analogies between the human and the natural worlds. The poem's apparent denial of nature's sympathy for humankind - "None of this cares for us" ( SarkoN pe patangoN ke siwa kuch bhi nahin hai) - does not preclude the use of nature as a background and a mirror for human emotions and mental states, or as a parallel world onto which one may project his/her emotions and states.
On the other hand, most of the images in the poem occur within the nature/environment isotopy. Two more metaphors connect nature to the human participants in the poem: the animation of those natural objects and phenomenon into things that could, but do not "care" for "us" and the rather far-fetched metaphor of "communication-as-showing" (SarkoN pe patangoN ke siwa kuch bhi nahin hai).
THE ISOTOPY OF LOVE
The third isotopy has to do with love. Absence of one condition/consequence of love, "care', characterizes nature-human relationship. The "two people" who used to be "honest" are now, isolated. Most of the lexical items constituting the love isotopy have sexual over- and undertones. ( khushbu ka badan, barahna, diwar ki lab)
In this semantic environment, "Barish" can be very easily interpreted as the verbal part of love and emotion. One marginal isotopy that crosscuts the nature and the love isotopies is that of night. Thus, "Barish", "sannatoN ki Awaz", "dark towns( Shab-e-tarik)" and "isolation" find their ideal environment in the night. Obviously, they are not restricted to this semantic domain. Yet, the circumstances surrounding them merit their grouping under a night isotopy, so to speak.
Night, love and sex are closely related, and they, in fact, constitute one major isotopic center. One salient metaphor in this center is that of "emotional -intimacy- as- physical closeness." However, the metaphor is aborted by the paradox of closeness and remoteness in thought and emotion. The three isotopies - language, nature and love - not only constitute some of the major thematic preoccupations of the poem, but also function as important cohesive ties. Other unifying devices used in the poem include parallelism and repetition.
THE IMPORT OF VERBS
On the other hand, "suneN" and "dekheN" are parallel optative constructions indicating non-factuality. Taken together, the factual and the non-factual verbs represent the three referential axes of the poem - the past, the present and the tenseless. These are the three "deictic sub-worlds" in the poem:
Be daera nuqtoN ko gine jaeN ge kab tak -- Factual past
uktae hue ham bhi bahur hain -- Factual present
DekheN kisi khushbu ka badan ham bhi -- Non Factual
BUILDING THE WORLD
The "world-building elements" that make up these sub-worlds are as follows:
Present Continuous gine Jaenge kab tak, Sune jaeNge kab tak
Present Status - uktae hue ham bhi bahut hain;
Tenseless: (ought to be)- DekheN kisi khushbu ka badan ham bhi barahna.
"Bachne ki koi rah nikaleN" combines to intensify the distance between the past and the present.
The gap between the past and the present is also indicated by the adversative "is sahar se us qahar tak", which joins the first two stanzas.
The conjunction is not merely a cohesive device; it signals a departure from one sub-world to another.
Other instances of repetition and parallelism in the poem include the repetition of " ham bhi", also has isotopic and unifying effects: "Barish" is implicitly set against other forms and varieties of language use.
Indefinite pronoun kisi not only functions as cohesive devices, but also help the reader identify the conceptual space, the different "sub-worlds", of the text. It signals a spatial movement resulting in a shift from the world of "two people" to the world of an indifferent nature outside.
As demonstrated below, the two worlds are not separable.
The demonstrative "is" and "us" occurs once (Line 6 )( Is sahar se us qahar se.) The first "is" refers to the indifferent environment surrounding, at least, the "people" in the text. In this sense, the demonstrative pronoun becomes apparently ironic, for it categorically refers to someone or something near or close in space and/or time to the speaker/s.
The lexical expectations raised by the use of "this" are frustrated by the anomaly and the negation of the entire clause, thus rendering the otherwise realis process of "caring" counterfactual.
The singularity of the demonstrative has other implications: elements of the surrounding environment unite in their indifference and there is no need for distinguishing them one from another. The second occurrence of demonstrative pronoun "us" refers to the "unique distance from isolation." Here, it suggests that the isolation has to do with someone, or some people, in the immediate context of the poem.. These two references deserve an elaboration.
The referential scope of "two people" ( koi ajnabi) is marked for non-specificity. The identity of the participants is 'suppressed'. This is a "distancing device" which may be called "defocalization". Its goal is to minimize the speaker's involvement and to avoid any direct confrontation with the hearer/s.
In fact, there appears to be a boundary between the speaker-in-the-poem and the two people, of whom he is presumably one, resulting in a sense of detachment that is spatio-temporally consistent with displacement into the past and ideologically consistent with the sense of disillusionment and isolation.
A more traditional stylistic effect of non-specificity is "to expand the speaker coordinate of the deictic center to the extent that its boundaries become indeterminate . The two people in the poem could be any couple in a similar situation.
INFORMAL AND INTIMATE REGISTER OF BARISH
As already suggested, "Barish" is conventionally an instance of informal, intimate register. Linguistically, the intimate style is filled with deletion, ellipsis, rapid and slurred pronunciation, nonverbal communication and private code characteristics, "often unintelligible outside the smallest social units". It is 'talking', not writing; mode: (genre): it must be "pillow-talk" - informal conversations, demonstrating the linguistic and paralinguistic features of the intimate style identified above; channel (face-to-face, telephone, etc.): very proximate, face-to-face, supposedly manipulating body language as well; tenor (interpersonal relationship): the "two people" "lying together" must be lovers or husband and wife, and context (situation - social and cultural factors): this must be a bedroom, most probably at night, for time "passes silently" and towns are "dark."
Thus, the speaker in "Barish" is a "he", addressing both his communicational partner and the reader. This speaker is a "communicator", where he is also part of the significance of the "emblem". His relationship with his partner is one of frustration and disillusionment. The gap between expectation ("ought") and memories ("two people being honest"), on the one hand, and reality (patangoN ke siwa kuch bhi nahin hai), on the other, is so obvious and so neatly presented in the first stanza.
HARD TO MAKE SENSE?
The functional analysis so far given suggests that all the movement and action in the poem are the sole property of the natural objects and entities. Much of this movement and this action does not really make sense. For instance, the actions performed by the wind are absurd and non-consequential. The action performed by the dark towns, on the other hand, seems to lack volitionality.
The human participants are not really "doing" anything. Much of their existence is invested in recollecting a wonderful past, sleeping silently, or, watching meaningless action outside, being denied guidance as well as care, struggling in vain for salvation from isolation through language. Yet, it seems that it is more difficult to find successful human communication than to receive sympathy and care from nature.
At the heart of alienation and isolation lie communication breakdowns and pragmatic failures. Silence, dishonesty, lack of care and absence of candid and kind words are indications of those breakdowns and failures.
The text-internal, as well as text-external, concern of the poem with language as crucial to human well-being may be approached from a pragmatic vantage-point. The requirement that "dekheN kisi khushbu ka badan ham bhi" should be 'easiest', to begin with, is based on the assumption that between intimates and lovers there must exist the highest level of cooperation - in its Gricean sense.
This assumption, which used to be valid when the "two people" were "honest", is now flouted because of their mutual mistrust. In this context, the maxims of conversational cooperation are broken in at least two ways: quietly violated through deception and telling lies and opted out of through silence - "time passes silently". Honesty, a mere memory now, largely consists in abiding by the Maxim of Quality in Grice's Cooperative Principle - "Do not say what you believe to be false; do not say that for which you lack evidence" (Finch, 2000, p. 160).
THE PRINCIPLES FOR COOPERATION AND POLITENESS
At a text-external level, the environment/nature isotopy is an apparent, rather than real, violation of the Maxim of Relation - "Be relevant" (pp. 160-161). The violation is only apparent because the description of a malicious, indifferent environment is indirectly relevant to the concern with the personal dilemma of the "Speaker" in the poem. Lack of ease in bed are only intensified by a global sense of isolation. Nothing can instruct the speaker on how to abide by the Cooperative Principle (Maxim of Quality) and the Politeness Principle (generosity, sympathy, minimization of cost to others, agreement, and so on; see Leech, 1983) at one and the same time - "Words at once true and kind." It is even difficult to achieve a minimum of cooperation and politeness.
That is, it is difficult to avoid direct violations of the Maxim of Quality and direct violations of the Politeness Principle. The following diagram shows the different options resulting from the interplay of the Cooperative Principle (quality) and the Politeness Principles: Nothing is said in the poem about the "true but unkind" option, which is (+ quality) but (- politeness), or the "kind but untrue" option, which is (- quality) but (+ politeness).
The implication is that these two options are not in demand. They seem to be available everywhere. The difficult-to-attain ideal is a combination of truth (+ quality) and kindness (+ politeness). This seems to be the heart of the sententiae that "lay down the law " of the poem. It is analogous to Mahatma Gandhi's "Whenever you have truth, it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected." However, it remains an ideal that the speaker in the poem seeks.
MIDWAY BETWEEN TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD?!
An alternative that he can accept is to find a midway between truth and falsehood, between kindness and cruelty - "not untrue" (- - quality) and "not unkind" (- - politeness). Like the Cooperative and the Politeness Principles themselves, the poem establishes a tension between expectations and reality. In other words, two "attitudinal sub-worlds" the desire (want-world) and the belief (believe-world) - conflict with real life experience. Both belief and desire are included in the meanings of "ought to". The desires of having easy talk in bed and finding "true and kind", or "not untrue and not unkind" words are aborted in reality. The belief is not instantiated and the desire is not fulfilled.
MOVEMENT FROM THE MICRO TO MACRO LEVEL
The integrative, bottom-up analysis of 'Barish' in the present paper is by no means the final word on the poem. Yet, it has at least one basic value, which is the accumulation of understanding resulting from the movement from the more micro to the more macro, from the very narrow level of the poem as form to the relatively broader level of the poem as discourse and finally to the most comprehensive level of the communicative context of the poem.
Thus, the lexical items, with their different denotations and connotations, and the basic grammatical categories and structures unite to produce the three main isotopies of the poem - language, love and nature. It is also those items, structures and categories that establish the cohesive chains and the three deictic sub-worlds of the poem - the past, the present and the optative. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, they are tools and indexes of the ideational components of the text.
bTHE CONCEPTUAL SPACE OF THE POEM
The text's conceptual space is a function of those elements explored at its formal level. In the conceptual space of the poem, we encounter an emotional linguistic predicament of a speaker who is unable to communicate, a person who used to be honest. The dilemma seems to lie in the inability to tell the truth and be nice at one and the same time.
(A pragmatic approach, combining Grice and Leech, is used to shed more light on this linguistic crisis.)
LACK OF SYMPATHY FROM THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT, ETC.
What makes the situation even more problematic is the lack of any support or sympathy from the external, non-human environment.
Many other aspects are explored at the level of the poem as discourse, probably because this is the densest level. It bridges the gap between the poem as form and the poem as a communicative event within a socio-historical context. It subsumes the text as representation, the interpersonal relationships in the text, its transitivity choices and ideological processes, the politics of pronouns and deictics, in addition to isotopies, cohesion and imagery.
An attitude of objectification and detachment dominates the text. The attitude is accompanied with a negative representation of the human participants and an anti-romantic representation of the environment outside. The findings of the analysis of the levels of form and discourse in the poem confirm many of the features of the communicative situation where it was written.
The poem is true to its own genre and author, to the poetic sensibility to which it belongs, with the notable exception of its minimal symbolism and ambiguity, and to the socio-historical conditions where it occurred.
Perhaps it is in the fitness of things that Shaharyar recently declared in his own characteristic manner that there is no other Urdu poet who could match him. Is this also an indication that he is lonely, and why not? After all, the man or woman at the top is always lonely!
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Plans call for removing all artificial facilities from East Marin Island, removing exotic vegetation and restoring native vegetation, supplementing nesting trees with additional native trees and establishing a protective buoy system in the tidewaters around the Islands to better protect the rookery and feeding sites from human disturbance. |
With two quotes, Professor Misery pointed to a new way of looking at our body’s envelope. He said, “Skin and brain are embryological and nostalgic brothers.” He also said, “Skin is a peripherally spread out nervous system.”
Skin is more than an assembly of several layers of cells (corneocytes, keratinocytes, fibroblasts, etc.). Skin is a living sensory receptor of environmental stimuli, directly connected to the central nervous system. Skin is also often the mirror of our mental state of mind. Many emotions are foremost seen or felt at the level of the skin. Fear, stress and happiness manifest themselves in paling (vasoconstriction), sweating, goose bumps, raised hairs, blushing (vasodilatation) 2or radiance and blissful glow.
Even surprise, consternation or anger translate into reactions that affect the skin: raising the eyebrows and frowning lead eventually to expression lines, the deep wrinkles on the face. Although this latter phenomenon is an indirect effect, caused by repeated muscle contraction, it has attracted much recent attention with the aim of treating deep wrinkles with muscle relaxing agents.
Mental wellbeing and physical relaxation go hand in hand, complementing each other. Endogenous molecules such as endorphins and enkephalins mediate some of these effects in the brain, and also now in the skin, as this article shows.
The relationships between the mind and skin are currently seen in a new light from the discoveries made in skin physiology, embryogenesis and neuro-immunology. The nervous system and the skin share a common embryological origin since both organs derive from differentiation of the ectoblast, one of the three primary germ layers of the embryo. During the development of the embryo, the nervous system sends out neuronal prolongations to innervate the skin. In so doing, it is guided by Merkel’s cells (the epidermal neuro-endocrine cells) and stimulated by a nerve growth factor (NGF). |
|A Level German|
|Entry Requirements:||Two grade 5s and three 4s in five subject areas at GCSE, to include a minimum of a grade 4 in Mathematics and English Language. German at grade 5 or above is desirable, but not required. You can still choose to study German without having previously studied it at GCSE.|
|Start Date:||Sep 2022|
A Level German will allow you to improve your speaking, writing and reading skills to an advanced level. You will also explore the society, culture and current affairs of Germany and German-speaking countries to gain a deeper appreciation of the language.
What will I learn?
You will look at the work of an author and the work of a director, plus focus on topics such as family and relationships, youth trends, multiculturalism and the political and artistic culture of Germany and German-speaking
In addition to these topics, students will do an in-depth study of a literary work and a film.
How will the course be assessed?
You will be assessed by examinations at the end of the two-year course.
You will also be expected to carry out independent study and other personal development activities alongside your programme, such as additional workshops, an Extended Project Qualification, leisure extracurricular activities, volunteering or work experience, or part-time employment.
Materials and other information
You will study in modern classrooms with interactive learning technology, and will have access to up-to-date resources.
At NCC we’re committed to ensuring that your studies are career focused and are linked to your future goals. Develop a new skill, learn how to be a leader, volunteer for a good cause and keep fit through sport. Enhance your learning and make the most of the array of activities on offer to help you stand out from the crowd when applying for university, an Apprenticeship or a job. |
Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire. It is situated 60 km northeast of the city of Shiraz in Fars Province, Iran. The earliest remains of Persepolis date back to 515 BCE. It exemplifies the Achaemenid style of architecture. UNESCO declared the ruins of Persepolis a World Heritage Site in 1979.
Persepolis is near the small river Pulvar, which flows into the Kur River.The site includes a 125,000 square meter terrace, partly artificially constructed and partly cut out of a mountain, with its east side leaning on Rahmat Mountain. The other three sides are formed by retaining walls, which vary in height with the slope of the ground. Rising from 5–13 metres (16–43 feet) on the west side was a double stair. From there, it gently slopes to the top. To create the level terrace, depressions were filled with soil and heavy rocks, which were joined together with metal clips
Archaeological evidence shows that the earliest remains of Persepolis date back to 515 BC. André Godard, the French archaeologist who excavated Persepolis in the early 1930s, believed that it was Cyrus the Great who chose the site of Persepolis, but that it was Darius I who built the terrace and the palaces. Inscriptions on these buildings support the belief that they were constructed by Darius.
With Darius I, the scepter passed to a new branch of the royal house. Persepolis probably became the capital of Persia proper during his reign. However, the city’s location in a remote and mountainous region made it an inconvenient residence for the rulers of the empire. The country’s true capitals were Susa, Babylon and Ecbatana. This may be why the Greeks were not acquainted with the city until Alexander the Great took and plundered it.
Darius I’s construction of Persepolis were carried out parallel to those of the Palace of Susa. According to Gene R. Garthwaite, the Susa Palace served as Darius’ model for Persepolis.Darius I ordered the construction of the Apadana and the Council Hall (Tripylon or the “Triple Gate”), as well as the main imperial Treasury and its surroundings. These were completed during the reign of his son, Xerxes I. Further construction of the buildings on the terrace continued until the downfall of the Achaemenid Empire. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Greek historian Ctesias mentioned that Darius I’s grave was in a cliff face that could be reached with an apparatus of ropes.
Around 519 BC, construction of a broad stairway was begun. The stairway was initially planned to be the main entrance to the terrace 20 metres (66 feet) above the ground. The dual stairway, known as the Persepolitan Stairway, was built symmetrically on the western side of the Great Wall. The 111 steps measured 6.9 metres (23 feet) wide, with treads of 31 centimetres (12 inches) and rises of 10 centimetres (3.9 inches). Originally, the steps were believed to have been constructed to allow for nobles and royalty to ascend by horseback. New theories, however, suggest that the shallow risers allowed visiting dignitaries to maintain a regal appearance while ascending. The top of the stairways led to a small yard in the north-eastern side of the terrace, opposite the Gate of All Nations.
Grey limestone was the main building material used at Persepolis. After natural rock had been leveled and the depressions filled in, the terrace was prepared. Major tunnels for sewage were dug underground through the rock. A large elevated water storage tank was carved at the eastern foot of the mountain. Professor Olmstead suggested the cistern was constructed at the same time that construction of the towers began.
The uneven plan of the terrace, including the foundation, acted like a castle, whose angled walls enabled its defenders to target any section of the external front. Diodorus Siculus writes that Persepolis had three walls with ramparts, which all had towers to provide a protected space for the defense personnel. The first wall was 7 metres (23 feet) tall, the second, 14 metres (46 feet) and the third wall, which covered all four sides, was 27 metres (89 feet) in height, though no presence of the wall exists in modern times. |
Imagine the following scenario taking place in a middle school classroom. An 8th grade history teacher asks her class, “What were some of Abraham Lincoln’s beliefs?” One student raises their hand and says, “Lincoln believed that slavery was morally wrong.” The teacher provides the student a piece of candy as a reward. Another student raises their hand and notes, “Piggybacking off of that, Lincoln believed in a strong, united nation.” This student also receives a piece of candy. Next, the teacher calls on the student sitting in the back of the class.
The student proudly states, “Although Abraham Lincoln freed millions of slaves, he strongly believed that whites were superior to blacks.” The class grew quiet, and the teacher looked in surprise at the student. “Um, that’s an interesting viewpoint, but if Lincoln did have that belief, do you think he would have freed millions of slaves? Think about it.” With their comment being dismissed, the student ashamedly shook their head and sat quietly in their seat. The teacher carried on with the lesson.
In classrooms all across America, there are young maturing students who don’t “receive a piece of candy” for answering questions that go against what the teacher is teaching. But why? Why are we discouraged from seeing a topic in a contrary perspective to that of the ideas set within the curriculum? Open-mindedness allows students to see issues critically from an opposing view and to evaluate their preconceived assumptions. Who doesn’t agree with that? However, modern school systems are restricting this ability from us; resulting in us to learn in an environment that teaches us there is only one way to view the outside world. But is there really one way to view the world?
If it wasn’t for the Internet, teenagers today would still only believe Christopher Columbus was an amazing explorer that discovered the New World and had a massive feast with the Native Americans. Crazy, right? Teaching a classroom of students in a selective perspective only prohibits their growth, doesn’t it? School is only teaching us the preferred side of a story, the story that assimilates us with the rest of society. Wait, isn’t school supposed to create higher thinkers? But yet, the school system creates a curriculum that only highlights socially accepted views and topics; thus, narrowing our beliefs and assumptions.
Objectively, school is supposed to teach us the history of the United States and the world. Am I right? All throughout school, we have been informed again and again about the evils of slavery and how it was one of America’s worst eras. From depressing in-class documentaries to vivid at-home reads, slavery is a staple of American history. Strikingly, the school system failed to inform me that the act of slavery has been practiced long before it ever happened when America was “discovered”; meaning the practiced was normal. Now does that mean slavery is morally right? In contemporary terms, of course not; but why do we only emphasize African enslavement in America when discussing racism? Certainly, there have been other groups of people other than blacks that have been enslaved. Have you ever had a lesson each school year discussing the terrifying era of Native American enslavement?
This way of teaching only provides students with half true facts and limits their knowledge.
Growing up, I’ve always been fed information without being skeptical about it. I accepted what I learned, and it shaped my beliefs and assumptions about the world. But isn’t that what school is intended for? To provide us with “facts”? I’m not saying school teaches us complete lies, it just doesn’t teach us the full story. Providing students with “half” facts and sending them into the world is detrimental to their role as a citizen. We need to be taught, not from a socially accepted perspective, but from a morally accepted perspective; where we are given information from all viewpoints, disregarding norms and what is socially appropriate. The thought of this idea will certainly frighten many adults, but this is our education. We need to be provided with the tools to shape our mentality. We are the ones being taught the knowledge, so why shouldn’t we examine it? The student who didn’t receive a “piece of candy” shouldn’t be negatively viewed upon or completely dismissed. Instead, we should embark on their ability to view the world differently. Isn’t that what makes each of us special? Think about it. |
Oklahoma is a southwestern state that lies within a continental climate zone, which means hot, dry summers and cold, dry winters. If you live in Oklahoma, select fruit tree varieties according to intended use, mature size, fruit type and bloom color. Many different kinds of fruit trees perform well in Oklahoma landscapes.
Black cherry trees (Prunus serotina) belong to the rose plant family (Rosaceae) and reach between 50 and 60 feet in height. This fruit tree features glossy, green leaves that turn yellow in autumn. The foliage, when crushed or bruised, smells like cherries. White flowers bloom from March through June, followed by cherries that emerge deep red but ripen to black. The fruit typically matures from August through October, and works well in pies, juices and jellies. This tree needs well-drained soils in full sun to full shade. Oklahoma gardeners often plant the black cherry tree along fences, roads and open woods.
The Mexican plum tree (Prunus mexicana), sometimes called the bigtree plum, ranges from 15 to 35 feet in height. This plum tree variety blooms fragrant, white to pale pink blossoms from February through April. These blossoms give way to edible, purple plums that mature from July through September. This Rosaceae plant family member also features bluish-gray bark and green leaves. This fruit tree tolerates various soil conditions, but likes partial to full sun locations. Oklahoma gardeners often use the Mexican plum as an accent tree in prairies and thin woodlands.
The red mulberry tree (Morus rubra), also called the moral tree, belongs to the Moraceae plant family and features hairy, green leaves that turn vibrant golden shades in autumn. White to green blossoms appear from March through June, followed by red, purple or black berries. These edible mulberries can be eaten freshly-picked or used to make jams, juice, jellies, wines and pies. Birds and wildlife also feed on the fruit. This fruiting tree tolerates various soil, moisture and lighting conditions, growing well in full shade to full sun. Oklahoma gardeners often plant the red mulberry tree along stream banks, ravines, riverbanks and ditches.
The gum bumelia tree (Sideroxylon lanuginosum) goes by many other names, including the gum bully tree, the woollybucket bumelia and the gum elastic tree. This sapodilla plant family member (Sapotaceae) bears spiny branches and clusters of leaves with glossy, deep green tops and light, woolly undersides. Mature gum bumelia trees reach about 48 feet in height. Clusters of fragrant, white flowers bloom in June and July, giving way to edible, dark blue or black berries that mature in autumn. This fruit tree variety likes dry soils in partial shade to full sun positions. Oklahoma gardeners primarily plant the gum bumelia tree along property boundaries or in native plant gardens. |
Individual differences |
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Assisted Living Facilities (ALF) are intended for those individuals that require assistance with Activities of Daily Living (ADL) (i.e. bathing, toileting, ambulating, self administration of medications etc.).
Assisted Living or Assisted Living Facilities (ALF) usually refers to a non-institutionalized facility that is used by people who are not able to live on their own, but do not yet need the level of continuous nursing care that a nursing home offers .
ALF's can be anywhere from a small residential house for 3 residents up to very large facilities providing services to hundreds of residents. Most states have enacted laws governing these facilities and have also recognized that these facilities play an important role in caring for the elderly that is not filled by the traditional nursing home or retirement home. New Mexico has even published a long range plan that incorporates Assisted Living Facilities in a key role of independent living. They state that "we must continue the movement towards home- and community- based services and away from institutionalized care" (p. 38, State of New Mexico 2006 Comprehensive Strategic Health Plan)
People who live in newer model assisted living facilities usually have their own private apartment. There is usually no special medical monitoring equipment, nor 24-hour nursing staff, that you would find in a nursing home. However, trained staff are usually on-site around the clock to provide other needed services. Where provided, private apartments generally are self contained; ie; having their own small kitchen, bathroom, living area, and bedroom. Alternatively, individual living spaces may resemble a dormitory or hotel room consisting of a private or semi-private sleeping area and a shared bathroom. There are usually common areas for socializing, as well as a central kitchen and dining room for preparing and eating meals.
A typical assisted living facility resident would be a woman in her mid to late 80's who does not need the intensive care of a nursing home but prefers more companionship and needs some assistance in day to day living.
Someone who lives at an assisted living facility would not have to be concerned with having to prepare meals every day because there is a central kitchen and dining facility that they can take advantage of. The central dining facility also allows for visiting with others without having to leave home. This greatly reduces the isolation that elderly, disabled or handicapped people suffer when living alone and who are afraid (usually for physical reasons) to leave their homes.
More recently built facilities are designed with an emphasis on ease of use by disabled people. Bathrooms and kitchens are designed with wheelchairs and walkers in mind. Hallways and doors are extra-wide to accommodate wheelchairs. These facilities are by necessity fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) or similar legislation elsewhere.
The socialization aspects of Assisted Living Facilities are very beneficial to the occupants. Normally the facility has many activities scheduled for the occupants, keeping in mind different disabilities and needs.
Many ALF's also serve the needs of the mentally ill community, primarily people with dementia or Alzheimer's disease, but also others as long as they do not present an imminent danger to themselves or others. In the United States, legislation enacted by each state defines not only the level of care, but often what conditions are prohibited from being cared for in such a home. Florida is a state that has the most relaxed legislation, allowing care that other states specifically restrict. Owners of Assisted Living homes need to undergo a strict inspection process in order to be certified by the state they intend on doing business in.
Another term for this type of facility is an adult Residential Care Home.
- includeonly>"Assisted Living Facilities (ALF)", Virginia Department of Social Services. Retrieved on 2007-04-17.
- U.S. Administration on Aging's information on senior services
- State of New Mexico 2006 Comprehensive Strategic Health Plan
- de:Betreutes Wohnen]]
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The Preface | Oscar Wilde
Als introductie op het CAESUURprogramma 2017 – stel de stad een vraag – maakte de in Barcelona werkende en studerende Núria BofarullSpanje in augustus 2016 op ons verzoek een werk.
Het werd een video met een ambigue tekst van Oscar Wilde, The Preface, gepubliceerd in 1891.
De video staat van 01/01/’17 00:01 u. t/m 14/01/’17 geprojecteerd op de ruit van ruimteCAESUUR.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.
No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.
All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless. |
Number of Asian Countries
How many Asian countries are there in the world?
There are 50 countries and territories that make up Asia, according to the United Nations Statistics Division. The Asian continent is further subdivided into 6 regions, namely Central Asia (5 countries), Eastern Asia (7 countries), Southeast Asia (11 countries), South Asia (9 countries), and West Asia (18 countries). Interestingly, the U.N. does not list Taiwan in its list of Asian countries. |
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Biological: Behavioural genetics · Evolutionary psychology · Neuroanatomy · Neurochemistry · Neuroendocrinology · Neuroscience · Psychoneuroimmunology · Physiological Psychology · Psychopharmacology (Index, Outline)
In neurology, the Babinski reflex (or Babinski sign or plantar reflex ) is a reflex that can identify disease of the spinal cord and brain and also exists as a primitive reflex in infants. When non-pathological it is called the plantar reflex while the term Babinski's sign refers to its pathological form.
The lateral side of the sole of the foot is rubbed with a blunt implement so as not to cause pain, discomfort or injury to the skin; the instrument is run from the heel along a curve to the metatarsal pads. There are three responses possible:
- Flexor: the toes curve inward and the foot everts; this is the response seen in healthy adults.
- Indifferent: there is no response.
- Extensor: the hallux extends upward, and the other toes fan out - the Babinski's sign indicating damage to the central nervous system.
As the lesion responsible for the sign expands so does the area from which the afferent Babinski response may be elicited. The Babinski response is also normal while asleep and after long period of walking.
The Babinski’s sign can indicate upper motor neuron damage to the spinal cord in the thoracic or lumbar region, or brain disease constituting damage to the corticospinal tract. Occasionally, a pathological plantar reflex is the first (and only) indication of a serious disease process, and a clearly abnormal plantar reflex often prompts detailed neurological investigations, including CT scanning of the brain or MRI of the spine, as well as lumbar puncture for the study of cerebrospinal fluid.
- Main article: Primitive reflexes
Infants will also show an extensor response. A baby's smaller toes will fan out, and their big toe will dorsiflex slowly. This happens because the corticospinal pathways that run from the brain down the spinal cord are not fully myelinated at this age, so the reflex is not inhibited by the cerebral cortex. The extensor response disappears and gives way to the flexor response around 12-18 months of age.
Relationship to Hoffmann signEdit
- Main article: Hoffmann's sign
The Hoffmann's sign is occasionally said[attribution needed] to be the upper limb equivalent of the Babinski's sign because both indicate upper motor neuron dysfunction. Mechanistically, they differ significantly; the finger flexor reflex is a simple monosynaptic spinal reflex involving the flexor digitorum profundus that is normally fully inhibited by upper motor neurons. The pathway producing the plantar response is more complicated, and is not monosynaptic. This difference has led some[attribution needed] neurologists to reject strongly any analogies between the finger flexor reflex and the plantar response.[How to reference and link to summary or text]
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Lateral thinking is a term coined by Edward de Bono, a Maltese psychologist, physician, and writer. He defines it as a technique of problem solving by approaching problems indirectly at diverse angles instead of concentrating on one approach at length. For example:
- It took two hours for two men to dig a hole five feet deep. How deep would it have been if ten men had dug the hole for two hours?
The answer appears to be 25 feet deep, but we can generate some Lateral thinking ideas about what affects the size of the hole:
- A hole may need to be of a certain size or shape so digging might stop early at a required depth.
- The deeper a hole is the more effort is required to dig it since waste soil needs to be lifted higher to the ground level. There is a limit to how deep a hole can be dug by man power without use of ladders or hoists for soil removal, and 25 feet is beyond this limit.
- Deeper soil layers may be harder to dig out, or we may hit bedrock or the water table.
- Each man digging needs space to use a shovel.
- It is possible that with more people working on a project, each person may become less efficient due to increased opportunity for distraction, the assumption he can slack off, more people to talk to, etc.
- More men could work in shifts to dig faster for longer.
- There are more men but are there more shovels?
- The two hours dug by ten men may be under different weather conditions than the two hours dug by two men.
- Rain could flood the hole to prevent digging.
- Temperature conditions may freeze the men before they finish.
- Would we rather have 5 holes each 5 feet deep?
- The two men may be an engineering crew with digging machinery.
- What if one man in each group is a manager who will not actually dig?
- The extra eight men might not be strong enough to dig, or much stronger than the first two.
- Extraterrestrials might decide to blow up the planet before the hole is dug.
- God might strike them down for working on the sabbath.
- They may get eaten by a previously undiscovered species of ravenous underground razor-toothed worms.
- A massive planet-dissolving dust cloud might destroy the earth.
- Maybe the question was asked in a strange foreign language that resembles English but whose words have completely different meanings and it was just a coincidence that the question made sense in English.
- Maybe this is happening in another universe where numbers are reversed.
The most useful ideas listed above are outside the simple mathematics implied by the question. Lateral thinking is about reasoning that is not immediately obvious and about ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic.
Techniques that apply lateral thinking to problems are characterised by the shifting of thinking patterns away from entrenched or predictable thinking to new or unexpected ideas. A new idea that is the result of lateral thinking is not always a helpful one, but when a good idea is discovered in this way it is usually obvious in hindsight, which is a feature lateral thinking shares with a joke.
A notation used in lateral thinking, is Po. This stands for Provocative operation and is used to propose an idea which may not necessarily be a solution or a 'good' idea in itself, but moves thinking forward to a new place where new ideas may be produced.
For example, The problem is that Tom won't come to the mountain.
- Po: The mountain must come to Tom (the classic answer).
- Po: Use a video conference (an IT idea).
- Po: Use an intermediary.
- Po: Ask him what he wants to come to the mountain (a deal)
- Po: See if he'll accept a free timeshare slot in a holiday home (that just happens to be on the mountain).
- Po: Wait until he changes his mind.
- Po: Cut your losses and tackle a different problem.
These are all Provocative operations and characterise a stage of lateral thinking where the ideas generated need further work in order to become solutions.
- Aha! Puzzles
- Lateral Thinking Examples
- Lateral Puzzles Forum - Create an account through the 'Edit Profile' link on the left.
- Lateral Thinking Puzzles - Grouped into various categories
- Edward De Bono, Lateral Thinking : Creativity Step by Step, Harper & Row, 1973, trade paperback, 300 pages, ISBN 0060903252
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When groups of people actively help each other (“intergroup prosociality”), what is the driving force? Are all types of helping motivated by the same psychological processes? In a recent paper, we delved into these questions by reviewing what we know of intergroup prosociality from a psychological perspective
Benevolent support or political activism?
When we think of all the ways that people show concern for others, we may start listing things like donating to international aid campaigns, listening to stories of suffering with empathy, or marching in a rally to bring about more equitable conditions for a disadvantaged group. Do all of these stem from the same values or beliefs? In this paper, we argue that there are two different ways people engage in inter-group prosociality - benevolence and activism.
Benevolence aims to compassionately alleviate the suffering of others. Acts such as charitable giving, or listening empathetically to the painful experiences of others would fall under this category.
Activism aims to create change in social and political systems to bring about greater equality. The focus here is the recognition of harm and disadvantage brought on by systems, and working to challenge these systems through group-level action. Many types of collective action fall into this category.
This distinction forms the basis through which we view how groups of people engage in various forms of prosociality. But of course, there are complexities!
For example, how should charitable giving be categorised? – Is it benevolence, activism, or both?
While charitable giving has been mostly studied in a way that lends itself to the benevolence definition we provided, charitable giving can also be motivated by motives to bring about equality, and giving to charities that are most likely to bring about structural social change. This argument complicates our traditional view of charitable giving and presents evidence that charitable giving can be both!
And what about intergroup contact – What does it have to do with intergroup prosociality?
Intergroup contact refers to exchanges between individuals of two different groups, and when it is positive, it has been shown to reduce the prejudice of advantaged group members towards stigmatized groups. Positive contact could be argued to be associated with benevolence rather than activism.
Yet recent research on contact has shown that positive contact between advantaged and disadvantaged groups, while reducing the prejudice of advantaged group members, also weakens the disadvantaged groups’ motivations to engage in activism on their own behalf. In this way, contact can reinforce the inequality between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.
So what is the solution? Is the choice between mobilizing the disadvantaged group or reducing the prejudice of advantaged groups? Not necessarily. Recent work shows that when the advantaged group acknowledges the inequality and explicitly supports social change, it promotes both groups’ activism as well as positive attitudes. This type of contact has been termed supportive contact.
Finally, is there a distinction between allyship and solidarity?
Although the terms are often used interchangeably, we make the argument that it might be useful to think about how the motives for the two are different. In Allyship, the advantaged group is helping the disadvantaged group because of some benefit to themselves, for example for their own political aims, to conform to their own group’s norms, or to act out their values. However, when one group stands in solidarity with another, it can mean that they feel identified with that group. In other words, allies might feel part of a larger group together with the people they are helping (“we are all Australian”, or “we all want gender equality”). If there are two different types of motives, we can look at which ones are more common, last longer, or are more likely to spur real change. For example, maybe allyship motives are more common, but solidarity motives are stronger and more likely to lead to social transformation!
The paper also highlights an exciting and emerging trend in solidarity research to move beyond advantaged and disadvantaged group dynamics, and look at how disadvantaged groups engage in solidarity with each other.
For those interested in intergroup relations, this paper details the many ways groups engage in prosociality with one and other. It provides a detailed review of the research and a helpful way to understand and distinguish between benevolence and activism when we consider the ways groups engage in helping with each other. We look forward to any feedback!
- Zahra Mirnajafi
This blog post is based on: Louis, W. R., Thomas, E., Chapman, C. M., Achia, T., Wibisoni, S., Mirnajafi, Z., & Droogendyk, L. (2019). "Emerging research on intergroup prosociality: Group members' charitable giving, positive contact, allyship, and solidarity with others." Social and Personality Psychology Compass 13(3): e12436.
All researchers in the Social Change Lab contribute to the "Do Good" blog. Click the author's name at the bottom of any post to learn more about their research or get in touch. |
Wake Up to Wellness: How to recognize you are slipping out of balance
Perhaps the best place to start is by making a daily commitment that you will take time and practice noticing what is going on inside as well as how you are relating to others. Cultivate a way of listening and hearing that is kind and gentle to yourself as well as curious and open. Stay in the present moment and try to suspend judgment. Knowing what state we are in allows us to do something else or not. Just knowing what state you are in will strengthen you.
Learn to direct your attention — the quality of your life is directly connected with your ability to pay attention. For all the good that it has brought, the online revolution has severely damaged people’s attention span. There are things you can do to change this like avoiding multi-tasking, and attend to one thing at a time. Consciously disconnect and redirect your attention when needed. Develop a skill or hobby and allow yourself to get totally immersed in it. Learn how to meditate.
Connect with your body: Our bodies very accurately keep score of how we are. This is a fact. You can learn to read and hear its subtle stirrings without having to wait for a crisis and being in despair. Do a regular body scan or practice yoga or martial arts. Walking is another way to connect to the wider outside world, the healing power of nature and with your body. Staying attuned while moving will be very revealing. Remember to leave your cellphone at home.
Connect with your mind: On the conservative side, we have about 40,000 thoughts a day with 75 percent of them being negative. Our brains are predisposed to seek out the bad for us to stay alive and survive. The thing is, our environment is not as dangerous as it once was, but our brains have not rewired themselves to know this. So, seek out good news, dismiss futile thoughts, and make the firm decision to commit to the quality of thoughts you will dwell on. This will keep you buoyant and aware of times when it is more difficult to ignore negative thoughts.
Connect with other people. Even the most introverted people need to interact with other people. We are wired for social connection. We are an interdependent species. Each exchange with another, even the person behind the cashier in the supermarket, will change us and we them. Notice the quality of your interactions with others. This can be very telling. Grumpiness, poor listening and lack of generosity can indicate when you are slipping. Investing in this form of self-exploration is freeing. The less at the mercy of our unbridled feelings we are, the better. Remain ever curious and accept what you see; whether the quality of your sleep or your physical agility is affected or that your thoughts and interactions are less positive.
If you have questions or comments, please email me at Barbara@wellnessbasedtherapy.
Barbara is a licensed psychotherapist and Certified Clinical Trauma Professional. She also holds a master’s degree in education. Barbara has been coming to the desert since she was a little girl in the 1970s and now lives in the desert full time with her two best furry friends Moxie and Millie. |
IVERMECTIN (eye ver MEK tin) is an anti-infective. It is used to treat infections of some parasites.
This medicine may be used for other purposes; ask your health care provider or pharmacist if you have questions.
COMMON BRAND NAME(S): Stromectol
They need to know if you have any of these conditions:
•an unusual or allergic reaction to ivermectin, other medicines, foods, dyes, or preservatives
•pregnant or trying to get pregnant
Take this medicine by mouth with a full glass of water. Follow the directions on the prescription label. Take this medicine on an empty stomach, at least 30 minutes before or 2 hours after food. Do not take with food. Take your medicine at regular intervals. Do not take your medicine more often than directed. Take all of your medicine as directed even if you think you are better. Do not skip doses or stop your medicine early.
Talk to your pediatrician regarding the use of this medicine in children. Special care may be needed.
Overdosage: If you think you have taken too much of this medicine contact a poison control center or emergency room at once.
NOTE: This medicine is only for you. Do not share this medicine with others.
If you miss a dose, take it as soon as you can. If it is almost time for your next dose, take only that dose. Do not take double or extra doses.
•medicines that treat or prevent blood clots like warfarin
This list may not describe all possible interactions. Give your health care provider a list of all the medicines, herbs, non-prescription drugs, or dietary supplements you use. Also tell them if you smoke, drink alcohol, or use illegal drugs. Some items may interact with your medicine.
See your doctor or health care professional for a follow-up visit as directed. You will need to have tests done to check that the infection is cleared. You may need retreatment. Tell your doctor if your symptoms do not improve or if they get worse.
Practice good hygiene to prevent infection of others. Wash your hands, scrub your fingernails and shower often. Every day change and launder linens and undergarments. Scrub toilets often and keep floors clean.
Side effects that you should report to your doctor or health care professional as soon as possible:
•allergic reactions like skin rash, itching or hives, swelling of the face, lips, or tongue
•changes in vision
•eye pain, swelling, redness
•fast, irregular heart rate
•feeling dizzy, faint
•redness, blistering, peeling or loosening of the skin, including inside the mouth
•uncontrolled urination, bowel movements
•unusually weak or tired
Side effects that usually do not require medical attention (report to your doctor or health care professional if they continue or are bothersome):
•joint or muscle pain
•loss of appetite
•tender glands in the neck, armpits, or groin
This list may not describe all possible side effects. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088.
Keep out of the reach of children.
Store at room temperature below 30 degrees C (86 degrees F). Keep container tightly closed. Throw away any unused medicine after the expiration date.
NOTE: This sheet is a summary. It may not cover all possible information. If you have questions about this medicine, talk to your doctor, pharmacist, or health care provider.
Copyright ©2023 Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Note: Introduction and Additional Common Questions written and medically approved by Cleveland Clinic professionals. |
It is impossible to overstate the significance of mental health issues to the justice system. By mental health issues I mean mental illness and cognitive or intellectual disability. I will use “mental health issues” to embrace both of those important conditions during the course of these short remarks.
Everyone here would be aware of the general history of public policy in relation to mental illness and mental health in Australia over the last 30 years. During the 1980s, a policy of de-institutionalisation was embarked upon in almost all jurisdictions on the basis that the large institutions which existed in those jurisdictions would be closed down in favour of community-based support and assistance provided to those who needed mental health treatment and support. Those policies did not work nearly as well as they should have, largely because of the failure to provide the broad range of community-based support and treatment that was required to deal with all the people who were, effectively, left to their own, or their families’, devices as a result of the closure of the large institutions. Over time, the consequences of these policies led to the re-institutionalisation of those with mental health issues, but on this occasion the institutions into which the mentally ill and cognitively disabled were placed were prisons rather than hospitals. That observation has been made by others, including Professor Bryant Stokes AM in the course of his review of the mental health system in 2012. He and others have observed that the largest institutional provider of mental health services in the State of a Western Australia is the WA prison system by a significant margin.
There are various sources of data on the extent to which people who intersect with the justice system are affected by mental health issues. Professor Bryant Stokes suggested that 85% of the people who attended court had some prior contact with mental health services. That figure, frankly, seems a little at odds with other figures, including the survey that was conducted at the time consideration was being given to the creation of a Mental Health Court at the Magistrates Court in Perth which revealed that about 20% of those who attended the latter court in the course of one week were either in receipt of or had a prior history of involvement with the mental health system.
The former Children’s Commissioner, Ms Michelle Scott, estimated that 50% of the children engaging with the criminal justice system at its most serious end, specifically those who are put into detention, experienced some form of mental health issue. But that may even be an under-estimate for the most serious juvenile offenders. When the Auditor General conducted an inquiry into the juvenile justice system in Western Australia in 2008, he identified 15 children who had had more than 20 contacts with police over the last five years. The Auditor General was able to review the files of seven of those 15 children and just from those seven he found that five suffered from significant physical or mental health issues; six had abused substances; three had been neglected or maltreated and one had an intellectual disability. So in all probability all of the children who had had a high degree of contact with the justice system (and whose records were able to be reviewed) suffered from one or more of those conditions.
The incidence of mentally affected offenders tends to vary with age so that those who suffer from mental health issues are over-represented amongst children. They are also over-represented amongst older prisoners as well as amongst women in the prison system. In his 2012 report, Professor Stokes referred to evidence that 10% of the prisoners in Acacia prison were actively psychotic at any one time. Given that Acacia prison now holds far in excess of 1000 prisoners, that means that on any given day there are well over 100 prisoners in Acacia who are actively psychotic.
The prevalence of mental health issues obviously has a number of implications for those working within the justice system, including, of course, the courts. We have a specialty court in relation to mental health in the Perth Magistrates Court but it has limited capacity and resources. On the numbers that I have given, many of the people who have mental health issues who are coming before our courts will be dealt with in mainstream courts rather than a specialty court. It follows that people responsible for the operation of our courts, including in particular the judges and magistrates, must be alive to mental health issues and must be supported by people who are similarly alive to those mental health issues, including legal practitioners.
The prevalence of mental health issues within the criminal justice system also has implications for police, who need training in dealing with those issues. They also need support from appropriately qualified specialist and professional resources. I believe there are some promising developments that have either taken place or are shortly to take place in this area. I believe that psychiatric nurses will be placed at some police stations and be given special powers in order to provide assistance to police who are dealing with cases that might benefit from such assistance.
It also occurs to me that the current prominence of domestic violence as an issue engaging public attention provides good opportunities to not only try to secure the necessary mental health resources for the victims but also to provide therapeutic intervention, including mental health supports where relevant, at an early stage in the life cycle of those and other cases more generally. One thing I think we can say confidently in the area of domestic violence is that the punitive approach that has characterised our response to those situations in the past has not been very effective and that a varied approach, tailored to the circumstances of each particular case, is likely to have better outcomes. In appropriate cases, a more therapeutic and preventative approach might encourage the increasing of reporting of incidents of domestic violence. We know that some victims of domestic violence are discouraged from reporting because of fear that a punitive response will break up the family. While there are opportunities for a more therapeutic and preventative approach for dealing with domestic violence, that is, of course, not to say that serious cases of domestic violence are to be swept under the carpet or to suggest that anything other than a punishment that is appropriate for the crime committed should be applied in such cases. My point, however, is that at least in the early stages, greater acceptance of a therapeutic and preventative rather than punitive approach in appropriate cases could be beneficial not only to the victims and community more generally but also to many who become involved in the criminal justice system, including the significant number with mental health issues.
As everyone here would be aware, mental health issues very seldom appear in isolation. Very often they are associated with other aspects of disadvantage including particularly substance abuse and homelessness. It is sometimes difficult in such cases to unscramble the omelette to see which came first, whether it was the mental health issue that caused the substance abuse, or the substance abuse that caused the mental health issue, or which of them contributed to making the person homeless. But we often see that terrible trifecta which makes an effective response all the more difficult. Those people who might have mental health issues, who are abusing substances and who have no roof above their head are, of course, amongst the most marginalised people within our community.
Address by The Honourable Wayne Martin AC, Chief Justice of Western Australia
at the Mental Health Law Centre AGM
Monday, 26 October 2015 |
Basic Facts about Heartworms and Prevention by Bethany Jordan. The DogSmith Florida Panhandle and Alabama
Many pet owners are unaware of the significant affect heartworms can have on their pet’s health. Heartworms are solely transmitted by mosquitoes which leave animals in the south, and especially Florida, at risk year round. After biting an infected dog, the mosquito injects circulating microfilaria (the worm larvae) into another animal where they then migrate to the heart, maturing over time until the worms eventually obstruct blood flow and damage the heart muscle. If untreated, heartworms will result in significant health complications and eventually death of the infected animal. It is important to note that cats are also at risk of infection; however, there is currently no treatment available for the mature stages in the heart.
Administering monthly heartworm prevention functions by cleaning out circulating microfilaria before they can reach the heart. If an animal has not been receiving prevention, the first step is to visit your veterinarian for a heartworm test and a thorough physical exam before administering any form of heartworm prevention. Heartworms require six months to be diagnosed through a blood test. If the first test is negative it is always a good idea to repeat again six months later. There are many prevention options available for both dogs and cats and you should consult with their veterinarian to choose which preventative is appropriate for each individual situation. Once a prevention regimen has been implemented it is vital that it be performed year round. |
SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah company has installed a 4.4-acre solar panel system to both reduce their energy costs and their carbon footprint.
“When you look at your energy costs and they’re so high you wonder how you can move them the other way,” said Jeff Burton, Co-owner of Burton Lumber, a building material supply company.
Burton said the company was paying anywhere from $150,000 to $200,000 a year on their energy costs. Their energy manager, a long-time proponent of renewable energy, found a solution.
“This project is 642 kilowatts. It’s about 2,700 solar panels,” said Brok Thayn, Energy Department Manager with Hunt Electric.
Over a year and a half, Hunt Electric designed and built the state’s largest privately owned solar array. It will cost Burton Lumber $2 million, but the company expects to pay it off within the next four years.
“This system is 4.4 acres and offsets 75 percent of Burton Lumber’s power bill,” Thayn said.
To put in perspective the impact of a solar system, the one at Burton Lumber is equivalent to not using more than 68,568 gallons of gas a year and removing 1,348,412 pounds of Carbon Dioxide from the air.
“When a lumber yard can actually give back to the environment, we’re known as the guys cutting trees down when we can give back that makes sense,” Burton said.
The only problem Burton Lumber has run into so far is when it snows. Then they have to clear off the panels before they’ll begin producing energy again.
Read more at http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=28444263#X3bUzoojfC6te2ih.99 |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
Multiple sclerosis can cause a variety of symptoms, including paranoid delusions, changes in sensation (hypoesthesia), muscle weakness, abnormal muscle spasms, or difficulty to move; difficulties with coordination and balance; problems in speech (Dysarthria) or swallowing (Dysphagia), visual problems (Nystagmus, optic neuritis, or diplopia), fatigue and acute or chronic pain syndromes, bladder and bowel difficulties, cognitive impairment, or emotional symptomatology (mainly major depression). The main clinical measure of disability progression and severity of the symptoms is the Expanded Disability Status Scale or EDSS.
The initial attacks are often transient, mild (or asymptomatic), and self-limited. They often do not prompt a health care visit and sometimes are only identified in retrospect once the diagnosis has been made based on further attacks. The most common initial symptoms reported are: changes in sensation in the arms, legs or face (33%), complete or partial vision loss (optic neuritis) (20%), weakness (13%), double vision (7%), unsteadiness when walking (5%), and balance problems (3%); but many rare initial symptoms have been reported such as aphasia or psychosis. Fifteen percent of individuals have multiple symptoms when they first seek medical attention. For some people the initial MS attack is preceded by infection, trauma, or strenuous physical effort.
Bladder problems (See also urinary system and urination) appear in 70-80% of MS patients and they have an important effect both in hygiene habits and social activity. However bladder problems are usually related with high levels of disability and pyramidal signs in lower limbs
The most common problems are an increase of frequency and urgency (incontinence) but difficulties to begin urination, hesitation, leaking, retention and sensation of incomplete urination also appear. When there is retention secondary urinary infections are common.
Treatment objectives are alleviation of symptoms of urinary dysfunction, treatment of urinary infections, reduction of complicating factors and preservation of renal function.Treatments can be classified in two main subtypes: pharmacological and non pharmacological. Pharmacological treatments vary greatly depending on the origin or type of dysfunction; however some examples of the medications used are: alfuzosin for retention, trospium and flavoxate for urgency and incontinency, or desmopressin for nocturia. Non pharmacological treatments involve the use of pelvic floor muscle training, stimulation, biofeedback, pessaries, bladder retraining, and sometimes intermittent catheterization.
Cognitive impairments are common. Neuropsychological studies suggest that 40 to 60 percent of patients have cognitive deficits; with the lowest percentages usually from community-based studies and the highest ones from hospital-based.
Cognitive impairment, sometimes referred to as brain fog, is already present in the beginnings of the disease. Even in probable MS (after the first attack but before a second confirmatory one) up to 50% of patients have mild impairment.
Some of the most common declines are in recent memory, attention, processing speed, visual-spatial abilities and executive functions. Other cognitive-related symptoms are emotional instability, and fatigue, including purely neurological fatigue. The cognitive impairments in MS are usually mild; and only in 5% of patients can we speak of dementia. Nevertheless they are related with unemployment and reduced social interactions. They are also related with driving difficulties.
Neurocognitive testing is important for determining the extent of cognitive deficits. Neuropsychological stimulation may help to reverse or decrease the cognitive defects although its management relies on lifestyle strategies.Interferons have demonstrated that can help to reduce cognitive limitations in multiple sclerosis. Anticholinesterase drugs such as donepezil commonly used in alzheimer disease; although not approved yet for multiple sclerosis; have also shown efficacy in different clinical trials.
Emotional symptoms are also common and are thought to be both the normal response to having a debilitating disease and the result of damage to specific areas of the central nervous system that generate and control emotions.
Clinical depression is the most common neuropsychiatric condition: lifetime depression prevalence rates of 40-50% and 12 month prevalence rates around 20% have been typically reported for samples of people with MS; these figures are considerably higher than those for the general population or for people with other chronic illnesses. Many brain-imaging studies have tried to relate depression to lesions in different brain regions with variable success. On balance the evidence seems to favour an association with neuropathology in the left anterior temporal/parietal regions.
Fatigue is very common and disabling in MS. At the same time it has a close relationship with depressive symptomatology. When depression is reduced fatigue also tends to improve, so patients should be evaluated for depression before other therapeutic approaches are used.. In a similar way other factors like disturbed sleep, chronic pain, poor nutrition, or even some medications can contribute to fatigue; and therefore medical professionals are encouraged to identify and modify them. There are also different medications used to treat fatigue; such as amantadine, or pemoline; as well as psychological interventions of energy conservation; but the effects of all of them are small. For this reason fatigue is a very difficult symptom to manage. Fatigue has been related to specific brain areas in MS using magnetic resonance imaging.
- Main article: Internuclear ophthalmoplegia
Internuclear ophthalmoplegia is a disorder of conjugate lateral gaze. The affected eye shows impairment of adduction. The partner eye diverges from the affected eye during abduction, producing diplopia; during extreme abduction, compensatory nystagmus can be seen in the partner eye. Diplopia means double vision while nystagmus is involuntary eye movement characterized by alternating smooth pursuit in one direction and a saccadic movement in the other direction.
Internuclear ophthalmoplegia occurs when MS affects a part of the brain stem called the medial longitudinal fasciculus, which is responsible for communication between the two eyes by connecting the abducens nucleus of one side to the oculomotor nucleus of the opposite side. This results in the failure of the medial rectus muscle to contract appropriately, so that the eyes do not move equally (called disconjugate gaze).
Restrictions in mobility (walking, transfers, bed mobility) are common in individuals suffering from multiple sclerosis. Within 10 years after the onset of MS one-third of patients reach a score of 6 on the Expanded Disability Status Scale (requiring the use of a unilateral walking aid),and by 30 years the proportion increases to 83%. Within 5 years the Expanded Disability Status Score is 6 in 50% of those with the progressive form of MS.
In MS a wide range of impairments may exist which can act either alone or in combination to impact directly on a person's balance, function and mobility. Such impairments include fatigue, weakness, hypertonicity, low exercise tolerance, impaired balance, ataxia and tremor.
Interventions may be aimed at the level of the impairments that reduce mobility; or at the level of disability. At this second level interventions include provision, education and instruction in use of equipment such as walking aids, wheelchairs, motorized scooters and car adaptations; and instruction about compensatory strategies to accomplish an activity, (for example,undertaking safe transfers by pivoting in a flexed posture rather than standing up and stepping around)
- Main article: Optic neuritis
Up to 50% of patients with MS will develop an episode of optic neuritis, and 20% of the time optic neuritis is the presenting sign of MS. The presence of demyelinating white matter lesions on brain MRI at the time of presentation of optic neuritis is the strongest predictor for developing clinically definite MS. Almost half of the patients with optic neuritis have white matter lesions consistent with multiple sclerosis. At five years follow-up, the overall risk of developing MS is 30%, with or without MRI lesions. Patients with a normal MRI still develop MS (16%), but at a lower rate compared to those patients with three or more MRI lesions (51%). From the other perspective, however, almost half (44%) of patients with any demyelinating lesions on MRI at presentation will not have developed MS ten years later.
Individuals experience rapid onset of pain in one eye, followed by blurry vision in part or all of the visual field of that eye. Inflammation of the optic nerve causes loss of vision usually because of the swelling and destruction of the myelin sheath covering the optic nerve.
The blurred vision usually resolves within ten weeks, but individuals are often left with less vivid color vision (especially red) in the affected eye.
Systemic intravenous treatment with corticosteroids, which may quicken the healing of the optic nerve, prevent complete loss of vision, and delay the onset of other symptoms, is often recommended.
Pain is a common symptom in MS; appearing in 55% of patients at some point of their disease process; specially as time passes. It is strong and debilitating and has a profound effect in the quality of life and mental health of the sufferer. It usually appears after a lesion to the ascending or descending tracts that control the transmission of painful stimulus. such as the anterolateral system, but many other causes are also possible. Most frequent pains reported are headaches (40%), dysesthetic limb pain (19%), back pain (17%), and painful spasms (11%).
Acute pain is mainly due to optic neuritis, being corticosteroids the best treatment available; to trigeminal neuralgia, to Lhermitte's sign or to dysesthesias. Subacute pain is usually secondary to the disease and can be consequence of being too much time in the same position, urinary retention, infected skin ulcers and many others. Treatment will depend on cause. Chronic pain is very common and the harder to treat being its most common cause dysesthesias.
Trigeminal neuralgia or "tic douloureux", is a disorder of the trigeminal nerve that causes episodes of intense pain in the eyes, lips, nose, scalp, forehead, and jaw. It affects 1 to 2% of MS patients during their disease. The episodes of pain occur paroxysmally, or suddenly; and the patients describe it as trigger area on the face, so sensitive that touching or even air currents can bring an episode of pain. Usually it's successfully treated with anticonvulsants such as carbamazepine or phenytoin but others such as gabapentin can be used. When drugs are not effective enough surgery may be recommended. Further damage to the nerve to prevent the transmission of pain (Rhyzotomy) has proven its efficacy; however the beneficial effects and risks in multiple sclerosis patients of those procedures that consist in relieving the pressure on the nerve are still under discussion.
Lhermitte's sign is an electrical sensation that runs down the back and into the limbs, and is produced by bending the neck forward. The sign suggests a lesion of the dorsal columns of the cervical cord or of the caudal medulla; correlating significantly with cervical MRI abnormalities. Between 25 and 40% of MS patients report having Lhermitte's sign during the course of their illness.
Dysesthesias are disagreeable sensations produced by ordinary stimuli. The abnormal sensations are often described as painful feelings such as burning, wetness, itching, electric shock or pins and needles; and are caused by lesions of the peripheral or central sensory pathways. Both Lhermitte's sign and painful dysesthesias usually respond well to treatment with carbamazepine, clonazepam or amitriptyline.
Sexual dysfunction (SD) is one of many symptoms affecting persons with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurological disease. SD in men encompasses both erectile and ejaculatory disorder. The prevalence of SD in men with MS ranges from 75 to 91% (O'Leary et al., 2007). Erectile dysfunction appears to be the most common form of SD documented in MS. SD may be due to alteration of the ejaculatory reflexe which may be affected by neurological conditions such as MS
Spasticity is characterised by increased stiffness and slowness in limb movement, the development of certain postures, an association with weakness of voluntary muscle power, and with involuntary and sometimes painful spasms of limbs. A physiotherapist can help to reduce spasticity and avoid the development of contractures with techniques such as passive stretching. There is evidence, albeit limited, of the clinical effectiveness of baclofen, dantrolene, diazepam, and tizanidine. In the most complicated cases intrathecal injections of baclofen can be used. There are also palliative measures like castings, splints or customised seatings.
- Main article: Transverse myelitis
Some MS patients develop rapid onset of numbness, weakness, bowel or bladder dysfunction, and/or loss of muscle function, typically in the lower half of the body. This is the result of MS attacking the spinal cord. The symptoms and signs depend upon the level of the spinal cord involved and the extent of the involvement.
Prognosis for complete recovery is generally poor. Recovery from transverse myelitis usually begins between weeks 2 and 12 following onset and may continue for up to 2 years in some patients and as many as 80% of individuals with transverse myelitis are left with lasting disabilities.[How to reference and link to summary or text]
Treatment is usually symptomatic only, corticosteroids being used with limited success.
Tremor and ataxiaEdit
- Main article: Tremor
Tremor is an unintentional, somewhat rhythmic, muscle movement involving to-and-fro movements (oscillations) of one or more parts of the body. It is the most common of all involuntary movements and can affect the hands, arms, head, face, vocal cords, trunk, and legs. Ataxia is an unsteady and clumsy motion of the limbs or torso due to a failure of the gross coordination of muscle movements. People with ataxia experience a failure of muscle control in their arms and legs, resulting in a lack of balance and coordination or a disturbance of gait.
Tremor and ataxia are frequent in MS. They present in 25 to 60% of patients. They can be very disabling and embarrassing, and are difficult to manage. The origin of tremor in MS is difficult to precise but it can be due to a mixture of different factors such as damage to the cerebellar connections, weakness, spasticity, etc.
In the treatment of tremor many medications have been proposed; however their efficacy is very limited. Medications that have been reported to provide some relief are isoniazid, carbamazepine, propranolol; and gluthetimide, but published evidence of effectiveness is very limited. Physical therapy is not indicated as a treatment for tremor or ataxia; however, the use of different orthese devices can help. An example is the use of wrist bandages with weights, which can be useful to increase the inertia of movement and therefore reduce tremor. Daily use objects have also to be adapted so they are easier to grab and use.
If all these measures fail some patients are candidates for thalamus surgery. This kind of surgery can be both a thalamotomy or the implantation of a thalamic stimulator. Complications are frequent (30% in thalamotomy and 10% in deep brain stimulation) and include a worsening of ataxia, dysarthria and hemiparesis. Thalamotomy is a more efficacious surgical treatment for intractable MS tremor, however the higher incidence of persistent neurological deficits in patients receiving lesional surgery supports the use of deep brain stimulation as the preferred surgical strategy.
- ↑ Kurtzke JF (1983). Rating neurologic impairment in multiple sclerosis: an expanded disability status scale (EDSS). Neurology 33 (11): 1444–52.
- ↑ Navarro S, Mondéjar-Marín B, Pedrosa-Guerrero A, Pérez-Molina I, Garrido-Robres J, Alvarez-Tejerina A. [Aphasia and parietal syndrome as the presenting symptoms of a demyelinating disease with pseudotumoral lesions]. Rev Neurol 41 (10): 601–3.
- ↑ Jongen P (2006). Psychiatric onset of multiple sclerosis. J Neurol Sci 245 (1-2): 59–62.
- ↑ Paty D, Studney D, Redekop K, Lublin F. MS COSTAR: a computerized patient record adapted for clinical research purposes. Ann Neurol 1994;36 Suppl:S134-5. PMID 8017875
- ↑ Hennessey A, Robertson NP, Swingler R, Compston DA (1999). Urinary, faecal and sexual dysfunction in patients with multiple sclerosis. J. Neurol. 246 (11): 1027–32.
- ↑ Burguera-Hernández JA (2000). [Urinary alterations in multiple sclerosis]. Revista de neurologia 30 (10): 989–92.
- ↑ Betts CD, D'Mellow MT, Fowler CJ (1993). Urinary symptoms and the neurological features of bladder dysfunction in multiple sclerosis. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. 56 (3): 245–50.
- ↑ Nour S, Svarer C, Kristensen JK, Paulson OB, Law I (2000). Cerebral activation during micturition in normal men. Brain 123 ( Pt 4): 781–9.
- ↑ Ayuso-Peralta L, de Andrés C (2002). [Symptomatic treatment of multiple sclerosis]. Revista de neurologia 35 (12): 1141–53.
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on alfuzosin
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on trospium
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on flavoxate
- ↑ Bosma R, Wynia K, Havlíková E, De Keyser J, Middel B (2005). Efficacy of desmopressin in patients with multiple sclerosis suffering from bladder dysfunction: a meta-analysis. Acta Neurol. Scand. 112 (1): 1–5.
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on desmopressin
- ↑ Frances M Diro (2006) "Urological Management in Neurological Disease".
- ↑ Rao S, Leo G, Bernardin L, Unverzagt F (1991). Cognitive dysfunction in multiple sclerosis. I. Frequency, patterns, and prediction. Neurology 41 (5): 685–91.
- ↑ (1998) Attention impairment in recently diagnosed multiple sclerosis. Eur J Neurol 5 (1): 61–66.
- ↑ Achiron A, Barak Y (2003). Cognitive impairment in probable multiple sclerosis. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 74 (4): 443–6.
- ↑ Bobholz J, Rao S (2003). Cognitive dysfunction in multiple sclerosis: a review of recent developments. Curr Opin Neurol 16 (3): 283–8.
- ↑ Amato M, Ponziani G, Siracusa G, Sorbi S (2001). Cognitive dysfunction in early-onset multiple sclerosis: a reappraisal after 10 years. Arch Neurol 58 (10): 1602–6.
- ↑ Shawaryn M, Schultheis M, Garay E, Deluca J (2002). Assessing functional status: exploring the relationship between the multiple sclerosis functional composite and driving. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 83 (8): 1123–9.
- ↑ Montalban X, Rio J (2006). Interferons and cognition. J Neurol Sci 245 (1-2): 137–40.
- ↑ Christodoulou C, Melville P, Scherl W, Macallister W, Elkins L, Krupp L (2006). Effects of donepezil on memory and cognition in multiple sclerosis. J Neurol Sci 245 (1-2): 127–36.
- ↑ Porcel J, Montalban X (2006). Anticholinesterasics in the treatment of cognitive impairment in multiple sclerosis. J Neurol Sci 245 (1-2): 177–81.
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on donepezil
- ↑ Sadovnick A, Remick R, Allen J, Swartz E, Yee I, Eisen K, Farquhar R, Hashimoto S, Hooge J, Kastrukoff L, Morrison W, Nelson J, Oger J, Paty D (1996). Depression and multiple sclerosis. Neurology 46 (3): 628–32.
- ↑ Patten S, Beck C, Williams J, Barbui C, Metz L (2003). Major depression in multiple sclerosis: a population-based perspective. Neurology 61 (11): 1524–7.
- ↑ Siegert R, Abernethy D (2005). Depression in multiple sclerosis: a review. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. 76 (4): 469–75.
- ↑ Sadovnick A, Eisen K, Ebers G, Paty D (1991). Cause of death in patients attending multiple sclerosis clinics. Neurology 41 (8): 1193–6.
- ↑ Bakshi R (2003). Fatigue associated with multiple sclerosis: diagnosis, impact and management. Mult. Scler. 9 (3): 219–27.
- ↑ Mohr DC, Hart SL, Goldberg A (2003). Effects of treatment for depression on fatigue in multiple sclerosis. Psychosomatic medicine 65 (4): 542–7.
- ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 The Royal College of Physicians (2004). Multiple Sclerosis. National clinical guideline for diagnosis and management in primary and secondary care, Salisbury, Wiltshire: Sarum ColourView Group.Free full text (2004-08-13). Retrieved on 2007-10-01.
- ↑ Pucci E, Branãs P, D'Amico R, Giuliani G, Solari A, Taus C (2007). Amantadine for fatigue in multiple sclerosis. Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online) (1): CD002818.
- ↑ Amantadine. US National Library of Medicine (Medline) (2003-04-01). Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
- ↑ Weinshenker BG, Penman M, Bass B, Ebers GC, Rice GP (1992). A double-blind, randomized, crossover trial of pemoline in fatigue associated with multiple sclerosis. Neurology 42 (8): 1468–71.
- ↑ Pemoline. US National Library of Medicine (Medline) (2006-01-01). Retrieved on 2007-10-07.
- ↑ Mathiowetz VG, Finlayson ML, Matuska KM, Chen HY, Luo P (2005). Randomized controlled trial of an energy conservation course for persons with multiple sclerosis. Mult. Scler. 11 (5): 592–601.
- ↑ Matuska K, Mathiowetz V, Finlayson M (2007). Use and perceived effectiveness of energy conservation strategies for managing multiple sclerosis fatigue. The American journal of occupational therapy. : official publication of the American Occupational Therapy Association 61 (1): 62–9.
- ↑ Sepulcre J, Masdeu J, Goñi J, et al (November 2008). Fatigue in multiple sclerosis is associated with the disruption of frontal and parietal pathways. Mult. Scler..
- ↑ Leigh RJ, Averbuch-Heller L, Tomsak RL, Remler BF, Yaniglos SS, Dell'Osso LF (1994). Treatment of abnormal eye movements that impair vision: strategies based on current concepts of physiology and pharmacology. Ann. Neurol. 36 (2): 129–41.
- ↑ Starck M, Albrecht H, Pöllmann W, Straube A, Dieterich M (1997). Drug therapy for acquired pendular nystagmus in multiple sclerosis. J. Neurol. 244 (1): 9–16.
- ↑ Clanet MG, Brassat D (2000). The management of multiple sclerosis patients. Curr. Opin. Neurol. 13 (3): 263–70.
- ↑ Menon GJ, Thaller VT (2002). Therapeutic external ophthalmoplegia with bilateral retrobulbar botulinum toxin- an effective treatment for acquired nystagmus with oscillopsia. Eye (London, England) 16 (6): 804–6.
- ↑ Jain S, Proudlock F, Constantinescu CS, Gottlob I (2002). Combined pharmacologic and surgical approach to acquired nystagmus due to multiple sclerosis. Am. J. Ophthalmol. 134 (5): 780–2.
- ↑ Weinshenker BG, Bass B, Rice GP, et al (1989). The natural history of multiple sclerosis: a geographically based study. I. Clinical course and disability. Brain 112 ( Pt 1): 133–46.
- ↑ Freeman JA (2001). Improving mobility and functional independence in persons with multiple sclerosis. J. Neurol. 248 (4): 255–9.
- ↑ Beck RW, Trobe JD (1995). What we have learned from the Optic Neuritis Treatment Trial. Ophthalmology 102 (10): 1504–8.
- ↑ (2001) The 5-year risk of MS after optic neuritis: experience of the optic neuritis treatment trial. 1997. Neurology 57 (12 Suppl 5): S36–45.
- ↑ Stenager E, Knudsen L, Jensen K (1995). Acute and chronic pain syndromes in multiple sclerosis. A 5-year follow-up study. Italian journal of neurological sciences 16 (9): 629–32.
- ↑ Archibald CJ, McGrath PJ, Ritvo PG, et al (1994). Pain prevalence, severity and impact in a clinic sample of multiple sclerosis patients. Pain 58 (1): 89–93.
- ↑ Clanet MG, Brassat D (2000). The management of multiple sclerosis patients. Curr. Opin. Neurol. 13 (3): 263–70.
- ↑ Pöllmann W, Feneberg W, Erasmus LP (2004). [Pain in multiple sclerosis--a still underestimated problem. The 1 year prevalence of pain syndromes, significance and quality of care of multiple sclerosis inpatients]. Der Nervenarzt 75 (2): 135–40.
- ↑ Kerns RD, Kassirer M, Otis J (2002). Pain in multiple sclerosis: a biopsychosocial perspective. Journal of rehabilitation research and development 39 (2): 225–32.
- ↑ Brisman R (1987). Trigeminal neuralgia and multiple sclerosis. Arch. Neurol. 44 (4): 379–81.
- ↑ Bayer DB, Stenger TG (1979). Trigeminal neuralgia: an overview. Oral Surg. Oral Med. Oral Pathol. 48 (5): 393–9.
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on carbamazepine
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on phenytoin
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on gabapentin
- ↑ Solaro C, Messmer Uccelli M, Uccelli A, Leandri M, Mancardi GL (2000). Low-dose gabapentin combined with either lamotrigine or carbamazepine can be useful therapies for trigeminal neuralgia in multiple sclerosis. Eur. Neurol. 44 (1): 45–8.
- ↑ Kondziolka D, Lunsford LD, Bissonette DJ (1994). Long-term results after glycerol rhizotomy for multiple sclerosis-related trigeminal neuralgia. The Canadian journal of neurological sciences. Le journal canadien des sciences neurologiques 21 (2): 137–40.
- ↑ Athanasiou TC, Patel NK, Renowden SA, Coakham HB (2005). Some patients with multiple sclerosis have neurovascular compression causing their trigeminal neuralgia and can be treated effectively with MVD: report of five cases. British journal of neurosurgery 19 (6): 463–8.
- ↑ Eldridge PR, Sinha AK, Javadpour M, Littlechild P, Varma TR (2003). Microvascular decompression for trigeminal neuralgia in patients with multiple sclerosis. Stereotactic and functional neurosurgery 81 (1-4): 57–64.
- ↑ Gutrecht JA, Zamani AA, Slagado ED (1993). Anatomic-radiologic basis of Lhermitte's sign in multiple sclerosis. Arch. Neurol. 50 (8): 849–51.
- ↑ Al-Araji AH, Oger J (2005). Reappraisal of Lhermitte's sign in multiple sclerosis. Mult. Scler. 11 (4): 398–402.
- ↑ Sandyk R, Dann LC (1995). Resolution of Lhermitte's sign in multiple sclerosis by treatment with weak electromagnetic fields. Int. J. Neurosci. 81 (3-4): 215–24.
- ↑ Kanchandani R, Howe JG (1982). Lhermitte's sign in multiple sclerosis: a clinical survey and review of the literature. J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatr. 45 (4): 308–12.
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on clonazepam
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on amitriptyline
- ↑ Moulin DE, Foley KM, Ebers GC (1988). Pain syndromes in multiple sclerosis. Neurology 38 (12): 1830–4.
- ↑ O'Leary, M., Heyman, R., Erickson, J., Chancellor, M.B.: Premature ejaculation and MS: A Review, Consortium of MS Centers, http://www.mscare.org, June 2007
- ↑ Cardini RG, Crippa AC, Cattaneo D (2000). Update on multiple sclerosis rehabilitation. J. Neurovirol. 6 Suppl 2: S179–85.
- ↑ ; Baclofen oral. US National Library of Medicine (Medline) (2003-04-01). Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
- ↑ Dantrolene oral. US National Library of Medicine (Medline) (2003-04-01). Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
- ↑ Diazepam. US National Library of Medicine (Medline) (2005-07-01). Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
- ↑ Tizanidine. US National Library of Medicine (Medline) (2005-07-01). Retrieved on 2007-10-17.
- ↑ Beard S, Hunn A, Wight J (2003). Treatments for spasticity and pain in multiple sclerosis: a systematic review. Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) 7 (40): iii, ix–x, 1–111.
- ↑ Paisley S, Beard S, Hunn A, Wight J (2002). Clinical effectiveness of oral treatments for spasticity in multiple sclerosis: a systematic review. Mult. Scler. 8 (4): 319–29.
- ↑ Becker WJ, Harris CJ, Long ML, Ablett DP, Klein GM, DeForge DA (1995). Long-term intrathecal baclofen therapy in patients with intractable spasticity. The Canadian journal of neurological sciences. Le journal canadien des sciences neurologiques 22 (3): 208–17.
- ↑ Koch M, Mostert J, Heersema D, De Keyser J (2007). Tremor in multiple sclerosis. J. Neurol. 254 (2): 133–45.
- ↑ Bozek CB, Kastrukoff LF, Wright JM, Perry TL, Larsen TA (1987). A controlled trial of isoniazid therapy for action tremor in multiple sclerosis. J. Neurol. 234 (1): 36–9.
- ↑ Duquette P, Pleines J, du Souich P (1985). Isoniazid for tremor in multiple sclerosis: a controlled trial. Neurology 35 (12): 1772–5.
- ↑ Hallett M, Lindsey JW, Adelstein BD, Riley PO (1985). Controlled trial of isoniazid therapy for severe postural cerebellar tremor in multiple sclerosis. Neurology 35 (9): 1374–7.
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on Isoniazid
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on carbamazepine
- ↑ Koller WC (1984). Pharmacologic trials in the treatment of cerebellar tremor. Arch. Neurol. 41 (3): 280–1.
- ↑ Sechi GP, Zuddas M, Piredda M, Agnetti V, Sau G, Piras ML, Tanca S, Rosati G (1989). Treatment of cerebellar tremors with carbamazepine: a controlled trial with long-term follow-up. Neurology 39 (8): 1113–5.
- ↑ Information from the USA National library of medicine on propanolol
- ↑ Aisen ML, Holzer M, Rosen M, Dietz M, McDowell F (1991). Glutethimide treatment of disabling action tremor in patients with multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury. Arch. Neurol. 48 (5): 513–5.
- ↑ Mills RJ, Yap L, Young CA (2007). Treatment for ataxia in multiple sclerosis. Cochrane database of systematic reviews (Online) (1): CD005029.
- ↑ Aisen ML, Arnold A, Baiges I, Maxwell S, Rosen M (1993). The effect of mechanical damping loads on disabling action tremor. Neurology 43 (7): 1346–50.
- ↑ Bittar RG, Hyam J, Nandi D, Wang S, Liu X, Joint C, Bain PG, Gregory R, Stein J, Aziz TZ (2005). Thalamotomy versus thalamic stimulation for multiple sclerosis tremor. Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia 12 (6): 638–42.
|Signs and symptoms|
|Diagnosis and evolution following| |
Moore, Helen, Nelson, Pauline, Marshall, Joyce, Cooper, Mary, Zambas, Helen, Brewster, Kevin and Atkin, Karl (2005) Laying foundations for health: food provision for under 5s in day care. Appetite, 44 (2). pp. 207-213. ISSN 01956663Metadata only available from this repository.
This study investigated the food offered to children under 5 years of age in UK day care, the influence of the childcare providers on a child's diet and their attitudes towards this role. A postal survey of a randomised quota sample of childcare providers enquired after the range of food on offer and explored attitudes towards the role of food in health and the role of promoting health. Themes emerging from these data were explored by in-depth interviews with a sample of 18 childcare providers and 7 Local Authority Early Years Service staff. We received 194 (56%) responses to 345 copies of the questionnaire. Half (46%) of nurseries and 23% of childminders provided a fruit or vegetable with the main meal 5 days a week. Only 14% of nurseries and 21% of childminders provided a dairy food (i.e. calcium-rich) at the main meal every day. Almost all the childcare providers saw themselves as responsible for promoting healthy diet, but it was rare for them to have had any formal training in nutrition, while current dietary guidance was perceived as too vague to be useful. The study also highlighted tensions on the issue of food provision between those delivering childcare and parents; further research should explore the parents' perspectives. Nursery staff and childminders should have access to carefully designed advice on nutritionally appropriate food and drink services for under-fives.
|Subjects:||H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics > RJ101 Child Health. Child health services
|Schools:||School of Human and Health Sciences
School of Human and Health Sciences > Centre for Applied Childhood, Youth and Family Research
|Depositing User:||Sara Taylor|
|Date Deposited:||27 Jul 2010 11:55|
|Last Modified:||24 Sep 2015 15:05|
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Category:Solid state circuits
Devices composed of a solid material where the flow of electronics is confined to the solid material
- Circuit subsystems - the organization of some aspects of a larger circuit into a distinct system
- Circuit theory - the theory of accomplishing work by means of routing matter through a loop
- FET circuits - a circuit that relies on field-effect transistors
- Solid state circuit design - the design of circuits that only utilize solid materials and where the electrons are confined entirely inside solid material
- Transistors - a semiconductor device used to switch and amplify electrical signals and power
This category has the following 5 subcategories, out of 5 total.
Pages in category ‘Solid state circuits’
The following 127 pages are in this category, out of 127 total.
Media in category ‘Solid state circuits’
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- Solid State Circuits C... |
When George Washington Miller (“G.W.”) first saw the tall bluestem grass and wild rye spread across northeastern Oklahoma in 1879, he didn’t just see prairie country. He saw raw possibility, an opportunity to build an empire inspired by the legends and myths he dragged from his Kentucky home. This, he realized, was the Wild West, and he and his sons would be its greatest evangelists, building nothing less than a church devoted to their sacred vision of the American frontier and its pioneers. They were imagineers before their time.
G.W. and his sons – Joseph, George Jr. and Zack – parceled together 110,000 acres of Indian Territory land leased from the Ponca, Quapaw and Cherokee tribes and started construction of the 101 Ranch in 1893. Only a few miles from present-day Ponca City, it would grow to become the largest diversified ranch in American history. It also would grow into a self-sufficient colony of sorts and the operational headquarters of the 101 Ranch Wild West Show, a vehicle for spreading the religion of the Wild West across America and later to Europe.
Many tales are told about the origins of the 101’s name, but ultimately, the origin of the name is unimportant. It derives its significance as a moniker for not just a working ranch, but as a focal point for the spread of Wild West mythology. “101” became synonymous with entrepreneurial success and the free-roaming, open air, rough-and-tumble lifestyle of American cowboys.
“The history of the 101 Ranch is worth preserving for lots of reasons. At one time, it was the largest diversified ranch in America. It had the largest herd of buffalo in America. It was the birthplace of the 101 Ranch Wild West Show. The list goes on,” says Joe Glaser, secretary of the 101 Ranch Old Timers Association.
The fortune that enabled the building of his dream came from G.W.’s early investment in cattle. G.W. traded a load of bacon to a Texas rancher for cattle. What was left of the bacon was traded to Ponca Indians for leases on several thousand acres of land near modern day Ponca City. He brought cattle up from Texas and sold them in Kansas and Oklahoma markets.
The original lease served him well as a cattle run. In later years, the 101 added diversified farmlands to its offerings. Crops included wheat, cotton, corn, alfalfa and a variety of vegetables. The ranch diversified as well, providing cattle, bison, hogs, poultry and horses.
Living the cowboy life fueled G.W.’s passion for the Wild West lifestyle. He supervised the cattle drives himself. It was a rugged but completely free way to live, and he loved it. So did his ranchers. It was certainly no way to get rich, but many stayed on with the 101 – even when paychecks were sparse – because they, too, loved the lifestyle.
In 1903, G.W. died of pneumonia, passing away before seeing his dream fully realized. His sons, however, were just as passionate about the dream as their father was. By the time the 101 fell into their hands, it was an enterprise bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, an absurd amount of money at the time. And absurd amounts of money can bank big dreams.
Many products were hard to come by on the periphery of the frontier. Hard cash was no easier to find than the goods required to operate an endeavor as large as the 101, so the ranch printed its own script, exchangeable for goods and services available on the ranch.
For the most part, the Miller Brothers were clever entrepreneurs, and they independently provided the goods needed to keep the ranch running. At its peak, the 101 boasted a general store, school, cafe, hotel, smithy, leather and saddle shop, dairy, meat-packing plant, a power plant and, later, its own oil refinery. Hundreds of telephone wires kept the various operations of the 101 in touch with each other. But when entrepreneurial methods failed, the brothers weren’t afraid to gun up to make things go their way.
“They broke the laws when they felt like they had to. When somebody got in their way, they – shall I say – moved them out of the way, with whatever means it took. Sometimes it could be lethal,” says historian Michael Wallis, author of The Real Wild West: The 101 Ranch and the Creation of the American West.
Figures differ, but it’s fair to say that during its heyday the 101 employed 3,000 workers. Those workers were informed about the happenings on the ranch, as well as occasional news from the outside world, in the Ranch’s own newspaper, the Bliss Breeze. The 101 was a self-sufficient frontier colony.
The year 1905 witnessed the origin of what later came to be known as the 101 Wild West Show. It sprang from the Millers’ newly adopted civic duty of advocating for Oklahoma statehood. The show opened that year to an audience of the National Editors Association plus 60,000 other spectators.
It was a bona fide crowd-pleaser, so the Millers took it on a national tour in 1907. However, the show wasn’t as successful as the Millers had hoped. By the time they ventured into show business, audiences already had their pick of fairs and at least a dozen similar shows, including the legendary Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
The show did serve to feed the global obsession with the Wild West mythology, though, and a number of its performers became celebrities.
“I believe the ranch represented the ‘spirit’ of America, both to the eastern United States and to the rest of the world. Here was a land endowed with an abundance of natural wealth and also the freedom and space to allow dedicated human enterprise to produce great individual wealth,” says University of Oklahoma history professor Linda Reese.
The first performance of the 101 show featured the Apache leader Geronimo, then a prisoner of war at Fort Sill. At the time of his capture, the American public and the federal government regarded Geronimo as nothing less than a terrorist.
Authorities released him from time to time under the recognizance of show and fair owners. Predictably, he performed stunts such as taking down buffalo at long distances from a moving car. He was also permitted to sell souvenirs at the shows to earn a little money. With the help of shows like the 101, Geronimo shed his notoriety in the eyes of the public and became a hero of sorts.
Bill Pickett was another popular performer in the 101 show. He was the first performing African-American cowboy. His own show, The Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Association, born in the 1890s, garnered acclaim and established him as a circuit star. Glad to give up management, he joined the nascent 101 Wild West Show in 1905, mesmerizing crowds with his unique talent for bull wrestling. Not all crowds witnessed his performances, though. America was deeply segregated, and Pickett was forbidden to perform in many towns and cities. Today, his grave on the 101’s Cowboy Hill is one of only a handful of reminders of Pickett’s show.
By the time the 101 Wild West Show began its national tours, there wasn’t anything new about female performers. There was something new about women that could ride and shoot, though. Lillian Smith, capable of doing both well, gained fame as the hated rival of the legendary Annie Oakley. She initially performed with Oakley in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows. Their ongoing feud was fodder for national coverage, but after a particularly ugly quarrel, Smith left Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and found a new home with the Miller brothers.
Smith performed as a ridiculously exaggerated character called, “Princess Wenona of the Sioux.” Over the next decade, she proved herself a better shot than Oakley but never approached Oakley in popularity and fame. After leaving the show, her star fell. In 1930, she died broke and forgotten in Ponca City.
Of all the performers in the 101 Wild West Show, Tom Mix merits special mention. As a kid, Mix dreamed of joining the circus. He spent his childhood mastering horseback riding, knife throwing, shooting and other “western” avocations. He joined the show in 1906, becoming one of its main attractions and leaving his audiences with the impression that he was a true cowboy. He attracted the attention of a burgeoning Hollywood, a film industry unsure of what it wanted to be but knowing the good stuff when it came along.
Mix’s first film, Ranch Life in the Great Southwest, gained immediate acclaim. He was wildly charismatic, embodying everything western in his films. Audiences couldn’t get enough. As America embraced the new medium and theaters sprang up around the country, Mix’s fame grew. Mix inspired Hollywood’s devotion to the western genre, a film niche that endured for five decades.
All told, Mix made 300 westerns. He became, like the Miller brothers but on a much larger scale, an evangelist of the Wild West lifestyle. During his long career, he took on another apostle of the Wild West – a young John Wayne, an actor who eventually surpassed Mix in popularity.
Bad luck, however, plagued the 101 Wild West Show during its entire run. In its first year on the road, a railroad accident and a case of typhoid fever that put the cast out of commission dipped the show into the red.
In 1908, facing intense competition from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, Zack Miller took the show on a European tour. With the growing threat of war in Europe, the British government confiscated the show’s horses for military use. In Germany, some Lakota Sioux cast members were arrested under government suspicion as spies. Fleeing Europe presented itself as the best answer to the show’s growing problems, but Zack struggled to find a ship that would take the Native American members on board. Once they finally did make it home, Joe Miller caused every Native American member of the cast to desert the show when he refused to compensate them for overtime.
The show took a long hiatus while World War I raged. After the armistice, Joe worked hard to resuscitate the show, but to no avail. By 1927, it was clear that the show didn’t have a place in the post-war world, a world embracing movies, and he reluctantly shut it down. Not long after, Joe passed away, and with him went the last interest in the 101’s contribution to the entertainment industry.
“The three brothers carried out the vision of keeping the image of the so-called ‘Wild West’ alive,” says Wallis. “I think of them, in simple terms, as three little boys. Part of them never grew up. They also were very realistic and saw the ranch as a good economic opportunity. But they truly did want to keep the Wild West alive. They did it with the 101. It became a place, ultimately, where the West of myth and the West of reality collided.”
That passion wasn’t enough to keep the 101 intact, though. George Jr.’s death in 1929 marked the beginning of the end for the 101 Ranch. Of the original entrepreneurs and Wild West evangelists, only Zack remained; he was no businessman. For years the Miller brothers played fast and loose with the ranch’s proceeds. All of the brothers drew from the same bank account for their various investments, and nobody paid much attention to increasingly anemic profits. The 101 Wild West Show had been a huge drain on the ranch’s finances. It left behind a trail of lawsuits in the cities it visited. An overwhelmed Zack had no choice but to pay out.
The crash of 1929 and the Great Depression hit the 101 as hard as any corporate endeavor, and in 1937 Zack declared bankruptcy. The federal government seized the 101, divided it into parcels and it sold to individuals. It was an ignominious end to America’s largest ranch. But its legacy as an idea, a tribute to the Wild West lifestyle, lived on in popular culture, particularly in film and television.
In 2008, Tulsa’s Gilcrease Museum acquired the largest collection of 101 Ranch memorabilia in the nation from private collectors. The museum laid out $2 million for almost 4,000 pieces of 101 Ranch history. Among many other pieces, the collection includes many belonging to Lillian Smith. The collection was put on display in 2009, the first comprehensive exhibit of the ranch’s history.
The 101 became a National Historic Site in 1975, but all you’ll find there today are a small picnic area and the restored building that once held the ranch’s headquarters. The remainder of the ranch buildings were lost to dilapidation and fire. The grave of Bill Pickett and a monument to Chief White Eagle, a longtime friend to the Millers, sit on top of Cowboy Hill, recently acquired by the 101 Ranch Old Timers Association.
The ruins of the 101 have a quiet gravity. They mark not just the former site of the long-gone largest ranch in America; they serve as a reminder of the most important pulpit of Wild West mythology in America, a mythology that still runs deep and strong in America. |
The first earl of Orkney
According to the Orkneyinga Saga, Sigurd
Eysteinsson - or Earl Sigurd the Powerful - was the first Earl of
But although the saga makes it clear that Earl Sigurd I was one of the three
great earls of Orkney, it actually documents very little of his reign.
Sigurd enters the saga as the forecastleman of
one of King Harald Fairhairs ships, on the voyage of conquest
to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
According to the saga, the Norwegian king had
sailed westwards to deal with Vikings who, after raiding Norway
throughout the summer, were making the Northern Isles their base.
Haralds forces conquered Orkney and Shetland
before going on to the Hebrides and the Isle of Man.
During this voyage, Sigurds brother, Earl Rognvald
of More, received the Earldom of Orkney from King Harald as compensation
for the loss of his son, Ivar.
Sigurd gains the earldom
Rognvald had no intentions of staying in the islands
so passed the earldom to Sigurd, who became Earl Sigurd I of
Orkney. As earl, Sigurd ruled wisely and became very powerful -
but unfortunately the saga says little more of his reign.
the reader is hurled into the tale of Earl Sigurds death -
a story that remains firmly in the memories of Orcadians today, as
a folkloric origin for the Kirkwall
Earl Sigurd had formed an alliance with Thorstein
the Red, travelling south into Scotland where they conquered all
of Caithness and large parts of Argyll, Moray and Ross.
Glossing over the exact details of the campaign,
the saga goes on to tell us that Earl Sigurd constructed a stronghold
in Moray before mentioning a feud between Sigurd and a local magnate
The reason for the two mens enmity is not
given, but it was undoubtedly to do with the Orkney earls forays
into Scottish territory. Whatever the cause, both men agreed they
should meet to settle their differences, each taking no more than
Sigurd, however, decided that the Scots were
not to be trusted so turned up to the "meeting" with eighty warriors - two warriors
mounted on each of his forty horses.
Maelbrigte was aware that treachery was afoot
when he noticed that there were two feet on each side of every Orkneyman's horse.
Knowing he had been betrayed by the Orkney earl, he instructed his
men to fight on and slay two of the enemy each. A battle ensued
and, despite their bravery, the outnumbered Scottish side perished
and Maelbrigte was slain.
Elated at his victory, Sigurd had the heads of
his vanquished enemies severed and, as a show of triumph, strapped to each of his warriors' saddles.
Snatching up his own grizzly trophy, Sigurd fastened Maelbrigtes head to his saddle. The earls forces then headed back north but Maelbrigte had
his revenge. While spurring his horse during the ride home, Earl
Sigurds leg was scratched by Maelbrigtes protruding
The scratch became infected and before long
Earl Sigurd the Powerful died.
He was buried at Ekkjalsbakki
- the banks of the River Oykell in Scotland. Although the exact
location is unknown, the area of Earl Sigurds burial place
is now known as Ciderhall - a corruption of the Norse words meaning
See side panel for further details.
His son, Guthrom, ruled the earldom for one winter
before dying childless. Earl Rognvald of More's son was then sent
from Norway to become earl. |
Definition of sparagmos in English:
The dismemberment of a victim, forming a part of some ancient rituals and represented in Greek myths and tragedies: the crowd is inspired to attack him and tear his clothes in the Bacchic ritual of sparagmos
More example sentences
- Mira's sparagmos almost literalizes the central message of the Orpheus myth for Rushdie.
- For such characters, the sparagmos represents the moment when history claims their work for its own.
Greek, literally 'tearing'.
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Shredding documents is all in a day’s work at many companies. It’s a way of protecting sensitive information. Whether it’s working designs or customer lists, if it’s on paper, security rules call for the paper to be physically destroyed before it leaves the site.
But what if you could attach a miniature gasification plant to the shredder, so that the shredded paper gets turned into a kind of natural gas, which then can be used as a power source? You would make sure the documents were really destroyed, and generate heat or electricity at the same time. That’s the idea behind the mobile gasification units now being offered by IST Energy.
By shrinking a gasification plant to make it fit in a trailer, they can install it at a building site. According to IST Energy, the process is so efficient that the million-dollar unit can pay for itself in less than five years processing ordinary office trash. That’s if you feed in three tons of trash a day, the maximum amount the unit can process, and easily within the range of paper trash coming from a corporate office building. Part of the benefit is eliminating (or reducing by 95 percent) the need to haul trash away.
Businesses will, of course, be skeptical of the financial claims, and not every business will be able to spare the three parking spaces the unit takes up. Yet businesses that need to shred tons of documents anyway may be the first to give the idea a try. They’ll get the sensitive documents not just shredded, but gasified, onsite, leaving not the slightest chance that anyone might try to put the paper shreds back together. For some companies, that will be reason enough to give an on-site gasification plant a try. |
Cleopatra VII was born in 69 BCE in Alexandria, Egypt. The name 'Cleopatra' is Greek for father's glory... 'honoring or glory' is 'cleo', 'klos' and 'father' is 'patros' and is the female derivative of Patroklos. She was born into the dynasty of the Ptolemies who had ruled Egypt for three hundred years, descended of the Macedonians. Not only was Cleopatra a brilliant woman who spoke nine languages, she was a political marvel who used every advantage she could to promote the prosperity of her lands. She took calculated risks and aligned herself astutely for a girl and a woman who, under extreme circumstances, managed to escape assassination and defeat time and time again by her wits. She is arguably the foremost influential woman ruler of the ancient world, and like many women of history, is a victim of conjecture and portrayed as everything from a lustful harlot, to a well-intentioned ruler, to a cunning bitch.
A middle daughter of six children born to the ruling Auletes Ptolemy, she had two older and one younger sister, and two younger brothers, both of whom she married as consorts in due custom with Egyptian law at the time. Cleopatra came into ruling power in 51 BCE, when her father died and left the power to rule to her, then in her eighteenth year.
As every Egyptian queen was required to have a male consort that was either their brother or their son, she married her brother Ptolemy XIII, though she ignored him as a ruling party and excluded his name from documents and minted coins. Cleopatra was in a hot contest for rule with the more powerful officials of her court, and when they made a move to support her brother solely as ruler, themselves as regents, Cleopatra fled the country.
It was only when Caesar came to Alexandria, inciting riots and causing Ptolemy XIII to flee and installing himself in the palace did Cleopatra return to her home, rolled in a carpet, disguised as a gift for Caesar. It is said that she seduced Caesar and convinced him that she would be a stronger ally than her brother, and thus Caesar reinstalled her as co-ruler. This didn't last long though, as an attempt to destroy Caesar by penning him in was led by Ptolemy XIII's regent eunuch Pothinus . Ptolemy's twenty thousand soldiers were unable defeat Caesar's four thousand some legionnaires and cavalry, as they kept control of the Pharos (the great lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) and thus controlled the harbour. During this war Cleopatra's younger sister, Arsinoe, whom it was believed that she was close to,(as she had accompanied her in her exile,) fled the palace and was declared queen by the opposing forces. Cleopatra's brother drowned while trying to escape Caesar's forces. Cleopatra married her younger brother, then eleven years of age and was left as sole ruler of Egypt, in theory, at least.
Caesar and Cleopatra spent a great deal of time together following the Alexandrian war, and they toured the Nile for two months. On June 23rd, 47 BCE, Cleopatra bore Caesar a son, Caesarian, whom he openly claimed. Caesar returned to Rome in 46 BCE and brought Cleopatra along a few months later, installing her in his home openly. Romans, being distrustful of such a strong foreign influence on their proclaimed dictator of the next 10 years, made their opinions known of Cleopatra. She was 'oriental,' very un-Roman and not popular, nor was she accepted in Rome to the level of which she was undoubtedly accustomed, though she lived lavishly. When Caesar was disposed on the Ides of March, 44 BCE, Cleopatra was forced to flee back to Alexandria, as it was postulated that both she and Caesarian's life was in danger. Caesar did not mention either Cleopatra or Caesarian in his will, instead, naming Octavian as his successor, who was later to become Cleopatra's mortal enemy. After returning to Alexandria, Cleopatra had her co-ruling younger brother assassinated, and made her son Caesarian her consort.
Cleopatra, now waiting in the wings, had to focus on the second triumvirate and how that would play out between Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus. When Antony invited her to Tarsus (Turkey) and Octavian appeared to be very ill and failing, she made her choice, and went in full retinue to seduce Antony, appearing to him as Venus. They spent two years together in Alexandria until Antony returned to Rome in 40 BCE. That same year, his wife Fulvia died, Cleopatra had his twins (one boy and one girl), and Antony married Octavian's sister, Octavia, in an attempt to smooth relations with him. Although they had children, the first was a girl and Antony sent for Cleopatra to join him at Antioch, having been separated some four years.
In Antioch, Antony officially recognized the twins and named them Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene. He gave a gift of land to Cleopatra important mainly because it allowed Cleopatra to take Egypt's riches and build a fleet of ships, a fine bargain for all.
The fleet of ships Cleopatra gave to Antony was defeated by the Parthians in 36 BCE, and she went with supplies and reinforcements to meet Antony in Syria. Antony did not return to Octavia in Rome, but went on to be with Cleopatra in Alexandria, which caused Octavian to continue to provoke him. Antony had a successful campaign against Armenia in 34 BCE, with Cleopatra's help, though it was his last.
Antony and Cleopatra were more of an alliance than ever, and he minted silver Roman denarii with her image. Cleopatra referred to herself as the incarnation of the New Isis, her long adored goddess. Antony sat upon the Egyptian throne, and their children, along with Caesarian were bestowed royal titles and lands. In 31 BCE Antony divorced Octavia, and Octavian, seizing the moment and public sway, published Antony's will. Octavian then proclaimed war against Cleopatra. In Actium, Octavian's navy trounced Antony under Agrippa's command, on September 2, 31 BC, forcing Antony back to Alexandria, where he was later defeated. Antony committed suicide by falling on his own sword, leaving Cleopatra, not for the first time, without a champion. Octavian made it clear to Cleopatra that she would be paraded through the cities which she had ruled as a slave, just as her sister Arsinoe had been. Cleopatra, as always, was master of her own fate, and ended her life by taking an asp to her breast on August 12th, 30 BCE, at the age of thirty-nine, thus securing immortality as she died by a snake bite in accordance with Egyptian religious belief. Soon after her suicide, Caesarian, then seventeen and a perceived threat to Octavian, was strangled. Her remaining children were raised by Octavia. With her died the end of the rule of the Pharaohs, and the beginning of the rule of Egypt by Roman Emperors...
Cleopatra was the last Pharaoh. |
Whether you are a professional athlete or an amateur in training to help yourself advance in your chosen sport, it is important that nutrition remain one of your top concerns. The fact is that our bodies will not perform optimally without the right nutrition, but it is not always easy to ensure that our bodies get the right nutrition. Indeed, there are so many food distractions out there that sticking to the right diet can be tough!
Advice for Better Nutrition
Sports nutrition is backed by a lot of scientific research and years of evidence, but it is also important to remember that things are changing all the time as we learn more about how the body uses food and how food is converted to energy. Not every athlete is the same, and not every sport is the same. The fact is that some sports require bursts of high energy for short periods of time, while others require slow-release energy from longer-term stores of energy in the body.
If you want to perform to your greatest potential, the following are some tips for how to best prepare for your next sporting event:
- Fluids: It is absolutely vital that every athlete drink plenty of fluid during their performance. When the body loses fluid, its core temperature increases, which places more stress on the body. This increase in temperature also places stress on muscles and can decrease performance if this fluid is not replaced. In the worst cases, dehydration occurs and this in turn affects recovery time, coordination, and levels of concentration and focus.
- Fruits and vegetables: These form part of the basis of any sports nutrition plan and should make up part of every meal. Make them a part of breakfast by cooking them up with some carbohydrates, for example. If one is inclined to snack, be sure that the snacks are make up of foods like celery, carrots, and other healthy items.
- Desserts: Instead of going for the sugary item, why not combine fruits and yoghurt into a dessert? This will ensure that you eat more fruit in your day.
- Recovery: Preparing for your next sporting event is important, but it is also important to recovery correctly too. This recovery period directly affects your next sporting performance, and if not done right, can negatively impact on your next competition! Refuel by drinking sufficient fluids after the performance, provide your body with plenty of energy through carbs so that it can repair tissues quickly, and ensure that all of this is done for at least 24 hours after the sporting event so that your body can replace what it has lost.
The Role of Supplements
The fact is that sporting supplements are very commonly used, most often to help cut down recovery times and prepare for upcoming sporting events. The right supplement can certainly help make the right nutrition more effective, and even help smooth out the gaps in one’s nutritional schedule. Studies show that taking the right kinds of supplements can actually help improve athletic performance when a diet is lacking or time constraints restrict a person from committing to a daily fruit, vegetable, and carbohydrate regimen. |
If Man Evolved From Ape, Then Why Are There Still Apes?
Firstly, man did not evolve from modern apes. Man and modern apes share a common ancestor, which is extinct. However, the question comes from a flawed understanding of how evolution works. Evolution is not a straight line, where entire populations change into new species all at the same time. Often times, a small group breaks away from a population and begins to evolve independently of the source group. The source group does not need to go extinct, and is generally unaffected by the development of the smaller group. This is called "Allopatric Speciation," and it is just one of many ways that new species can evolve. There is nothing in evolutionary theory which states a source population must go extinct in order for new species to evolve. |
Methods | Statistics | Clinical | Educational | Industrial | Professional items | World psychology |
In linguistics, a transformational-generative grammar (TGG), or transformational grammar is a generative grammar, especially of a natural language, that has been developed in a Chomskyan tradition. Additionally, transformational grammar is the Chomskyan tradition that gives rise to specific transformational grammars. Much current research in transformational grammar is inspired by Chomsky's Minimalist Program.
Deep structure and surface structureEdit
In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures, in which he developed the idea that each sentence in a language has two levels of representation — a deep structure and a surface structure. The deep structure represented the core semantic relations of a sentence, and was mapped on to the surface structure (which followed the phonological form of the sentence very closely) via transformations. Chomsky believed that there would be considerable similarities between languages' deep structures, and that these structures would reveal properties, common to all languages, which were concealed by their surface structures. However, this was perhaps not the central motivation for introducing deep structure. Transformations had been proposed prior to the development of deep structure as a means of increasing the mathematical and descriptive power of Context-free grammars. Similarly, deep structure was devised largely for technical reasons relating to early semantic theory. Chomsky emphasizes the importance of modern formal mathematical devices in the development of grammatical theory:
- But the fundamental reason for [the] inadequacy of traditional grammars is a more technical one. Although it was well understood that linguistic processes are in some sense "creative", the technical devices for expressing a system of recursive processes were simply not available until much more recently. In fact, a real understanding of how a language can (in Humboldt's words) "make infinite use of finite means" has developed only within the last thirty years, in the course of studies in the foundations of mathematics.
- (Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, p. 8 )
Development of basic conceptsEdit
Though transformations continue to be important in Chomsky's current theories, he has now abandoned the original notion of Deep Structure and Surface Structure. Initially, two additional levels of representation were introduced (LF — Logical Form, and PF — Phonetic Form), and then in the 1990s Chomsky sketched out a new program of research known as Minimalism, in which Deep Structure and Surface Structure no longer featured and PF and LF remained as the only levels of representation.
To complicate the understanding of the development of Noam Chomsky's theories, the precise meanings of Deep Structure and Surface Structure have changed over time — by the 1970s, the two were normally referred to simply as D-Structure and S-Structure by Chomskyan linguists. In particular, the idea that the meaning of a sentence was determined by its Deep Structure (taken to its logical conclusions by the generative semanticists during the same period) was dropped for good by Chomskyan linguists when LF took over this role (previously, Chomsky and Ray Jackendoff had begun to argue that meaning was determined by both Deep and Surface Structure).
Innate linguistic knowledgeEdit
Terms such as "transformation" can give the impression that theories of transformational generative grammar are intended as a model for the processes through which the human mind constructs and understands sentences. Chomsky is clear that this is not in fact the case: a generative grammar models only the knowledge that underlies the human ability to speak and understand. One of the most important of Chomsky's ideas is that most of this knowledge is innate, with the result that a baby can have a large body of prior knowledge about the structure of language in general, and need only actually learn the idiosyncratic features of the language(s) it is exposed to. Chomsky was not the first person to suggest that all languages had certain fundamental things in common (he quotes philosophers writing several centuries ago who had the same basic idea), but he helped to make the innateness theory respectable after a period dominated by more behaviorist attitudes towards language. Perhaps more significantly, he made concrete and technically sophisticated proposals about the structure of language, and made important proposals regarding how the success of grammatical theories should be evaluated.
Chomsky goes so far as to suggest that a baby need not learn any actual rules specific to a particular language at all. Rather, all languages are presumed to follow the same set of rules, but the effects of these rules and the interactions between them can vary greatly depending on the values of certain universal linguistic parameters. This is a very strong assumption, and is one of the most subtle ways in which Chomsky's current theory of language differs from most others.
In the 1960s, Chomsky introduced two central ideas relevant to the construction and evaluation of grammatical theories. The first was the distinction between competence and performance. Chomsky noted the obvious fact that people, when speaking in the real world, often make linguistic errors (e.g. starting a sentence and then abandoning it midway through). He argued that these errors in linguistic performance were irrelevant to the study of linguistic competence (the knowledge that allows people to construct and understand grammatical sentences). Consequently, the linguist can study an idealised version of language, greatly simplifying linguistic analysis (see the "Grammaticalness" section below). The second idea related directly to the evaluation of theories of grammar. Chomsky made a distinction between grammars which achieved descriptive adequacy and those which went further and achieved explanatory adequacy. A descriptively adequate grammar for a particular language defines the (infinite) set of grammatical sentences in that language; that is, it describes the language in its entirety. A grammar which achieves explanatory adequacy has the additional property that it gives an insight into the underlying linguistic structures in the human mind; that is, it does not merely describe the grammar of a language, but makes predictions about how linguistic knowledge is mentally represented. For Chomsky, the nature of such mental representations is largely innate, so if a grammatical theory has explanatory adequacy it must be able to explain the various grammatical nuances of the languages of the world as relatively minor variations in the universal pattern of human language. Chomsky argued that, even though linguists were still a long way from constructing descriptively adequate grammars, progress in terms of descriptive adequacy would only come if linguists held explanatory adequacy as their goal. In other words, real insight into the structure of individual languages could only be gained through the comparative study of a wide range of languages, on the assumption that they are all cut from the same cloth.
"I-Language" and "E-Language"Edit
In 1986, Chomsky proposed a distinction between I-Language and E-Language, similar but not identical to the competence/performance distinction. I-Language is taken to be the object of study in linguistic theory; it is the mentally represented linguistic knowledge that a native speaker of a language has, and is therefore a mental object — from this perspective, most of theoretical linguistics is a branch of psychology. E-Language encompasses all other notions of what a language is, for example that it is a body of knowledge or behavioural habits shared by a community. Thus, E-Language is not itself a coherent concept, and Chomsky argues that such notions of language are not useful in the study of innate linguistic knowledge, i.e. competence, even though they may seem sensible and intuitive, and useful in other areas of study. Competence, he argues, can only be studied if languages are treated as mental objects.
- Further information: Grammaticality
Chomsky argued that the notions "grammatical" and "ungrammatical" could be defined in a meaningful and useful way. In contrast an extreme behaviorist linguist would argue that language can only be studied through recordings or transcriptions of actual speech, the role of the linguist being to look for patterns in such observed speech, but not to hypothesize about why such patterns might occur, nor to label particular utterances as either "grammatical" or "ungrammatical". Although few linguists in the 1950s actually took such an extreme position, Chomsky was at an opposite extreme, defining grammaticality in an unusually (for the time) mentalistic way. He argued that the intuition of a native speaker is enough to define the grammaticalness of a sentence; that is, if a particular string of English words elicits a double take, or feeling of wrongness in a native English speaker, it can be said that the string of words is ungrammatical (when various extraneous factors affecting intuitions are controlled for). This (according to Chomsky) is entirely distinct from the question of whether a sentence is meaningful, or can be understood. It is possible for a sentence to be both grammatical and meaningless, as in Chomsky's famous example "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". But such sentences manifest a linguistic problem distinct from that posed by meaningful but ungrammatical (non)-sentences such as "man the bit sandwich the", the meaning of which is fairly clear, but which no native speaker would accept as being well formed.
The use of such intuitive judgments permitted generative syntacticians to base their research on a methodology in which studying language through a corpus of observed speech became downplayed, since the grammatical properties of constructed sentences were considered to be appropriate data on which to build a grammatical model. Without this change in philosophy, the construction of generative grammars, when conceived of as a some kind of representation of mental grammars, would have been almost impossible at the time, since gathering the necessary data to assess a speakers mental grammar would have been prohibitively difficult.[How to reference and link to summary or text]
- Main article: Linguistic minimalism
In the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, much research in transformational grammar was inspired by Chomsky's Minimalist Program. The "Minimalist Program" aims at the further development of ideas involving economy of derivation and economy of representation, which had started to become significant in the early 1990s, but were still rather peripheral aspects of Transformational-generative grammar theory.
- Economy of derivation is a principle stating that movements (i.e. transformations) only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features. An example of an interpretable feature is the plural inflection on regular English nouns, e.g. dogs. The word dogs can only be used to refer to several dogs, not a single dog, and so this inflection contributes to meaning, making it interpretable. English verbs are inflected according to the grammatical number of their subject (e.g. "Dogs bite" vs "A dog bites"), but in most sentences this inflection just duplicates the information about number that the subject noun already has, and it is therefore uninterpretable.
- Economy of representation is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose, i.e. the structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality.
Both notions, as described here, are somewhat vague, and indeed the precise formulation of these principles is controversial. An additional aspect of minimalist thought is the idea that the derivation of syntactic structures should be uniform; that is, rules should not be stipulated as applying at arbitrary points in a derivation, but instead apply throughout derivations. Minimalist approaches to phrase structure have resulted in "Bare Phrase Structure", an attempt to eliminate X-bar theory. In 1998, Chomsky suggested that derivations proceed in "phases". The distinction of Deep Structure vs. Surface Structure is not present in Minimalist theories of syntax, and the most recent phase-based theories also eliminate LF and PF as unitary levels of representation.
Returning to the more general mathematical notion of a grammar, an important feature of all transformational grammars is that they are more powerful than context free grammars. This idea was formalized by Chomsky in the Chomsky hierarchy. Chomsky argued that it is impossible to describe the structure of natural languages using context free grammars. His general position regarding the non-context-freeness of natural language has held up since then, although his specific examples regarding the inadequacy of CFGs in terms of their weak generative capacity were later disproven.
The usual usage of the term 'transformation' in linguistics refers to a rule that takes an input typically called the Deep Structure (in the Standard Theory) or D-structure (in the extended standard theory or government and binding theory) and changes it in some restricted way to result in a Surface Structure (or S-structure). In TGG, Deep structures were generated by a set of phrase structure rules.
For example a typical transformation in TG is the operation of subject-auxiliary inversion (SAI). This rule takes as its input a declarative sentence with an auxiliary: "John has eaten all the heirloom tomatoes." and transforms it into "Has John eaten all the heirloom tomatoes?". In their original formulation (Chomsky 1957), these rules were stated as rules that held over strings of either terminals or constituent symbols or both.
- X NP AUX Y X AUX NP Y
(where NP = Noun Phrase and AUX = Auxiliary)
In the 1970s, by the time of the Extended Standard Theory, following the work of Joseph Emonds on structure preservation, transformations came to be viewed as holding over trees. By the end of government and binding theory in the late 1980s, transformations are no longer structure changing operations at all, instead they add information to already existing trees by copying constituents.
The earliest conceptions of transformations were that they were construction-specific devices. For example, there was a transformation that turned active sentences into passive ones. A different transformation raised embedded subjects into main clause subject position in sentences such as "John seems to have gone"; and yet a third reordered arguments in the dative alternation. With the shift from rules to principles and constraints that was found in the 1970s, these construction specific transformations morphed into general rules (all the examples just mentioned being instances of NP movement), which eventually changed into the single general rule of move alpha or Move.
Transformations actually come of two types: (i) the post-Deep structure kind mentioned above, which are string or structure changing, and (ii) Generalized Transformations (GTs). Generalized transformations were originally proposed in the earliest forms of generative grammar (e.g. Chomsky 1957). They take small structures which are either atomic or generated by other rules, and combine them. For example, the generalized transformation of embedding would take the kernel "Dave said X" and the kernel "Dan likes smoking" and combine them into "Dave said Dan likes smoking". GTs are thus structure building rather than structure changing. In the Extended Standard Theory and government and binding theory, GTs were abandoned in favor of recursive phrase structure rules. However, they are still present in tree-adjoining grammar as the Substitution and Adjunction operations and they have recently re-emerged in mainstream generative grammar in Minimalism as the operations Merge and Move.
- ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1995). The Minimalist Program. MIT Press.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chomsky, Noam (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT Press.
- ↑ The Port-Royal Grammar of 1660 identified similar principles; Chomsky, Noam (1972). Language and Mind, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
- ↑ Jackendoff, Ray (1974). Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar, MIT Press.
- ↑ May, Robert C. (1977). The Grammar of Quantification, MIT Phd Dissertation. (Supervised by Noam Chomsky, this dissertation introduced the idea of "logical form".)
- ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1986). Knowledge of Language, New York:Praeger.
- ↑ Chomsky, Noam (2001). "Derivation by Phase". In other words, in algebraic terms, the I-Language is the actual function, whereas the E-Language is the extension of this function. In Michael Kenstowicz (ed.) Ken Hale: A Life in Language. MIT Press. Pages 1-52. (See p. 49 fn. 2 for comment on E-Language.)
- ↑ Newmeyer, Frederick J. (1986). Linguistic Theory in America (Second Edition), Academic Press.
- ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1995). The Minimalist Program, MIT Press.
- ↑ Lappin, Shalom, Robert Levine and David Johnson (2000). Topic ... Comment. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 18: 665–671.
- ↑ Lappin, Shalom, Robert Levine and David Johnson (2001). The Revolution Maximally Confused. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 19: 901–919.
- ↑ Peters, Stanley, R. Ritchie (1973). On the generative power of transformational grammars. Information Sciences 6: 49–83.
- ↑ Chomsky, Noam (1956). Three models for the description of language. IRE Transactions on Information Theory 2: 113–124.
- ↑ Shieber, Stuart (1985). Evidence against the context-freeness of natural language. Linguistics and Philosophy 8: 333–343.
- ↑ Pullum, Geoffrey K., Gerald Gazdar (1982). Natural languages and context-free languages. Linguistics and Philosophy 4: 471–504.
- Generalised phrase structure grammar
- Generative semantics
- Head-driven phrase structure grammar
- Heavy NP shift
- Lexical functional grammar
- Parasitic gap
- Phrase structure rules
- What is I-language? - Chapter 1 of I-language: An Introduction to Linguistics as Cognitive Science.
- The Syntax of Natural Language – an online textbook on transformational grammar.
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The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a notice of intent to sue EPA for failing to consider the effects of almost 400 pesticides on more than 800 endangered species.
Last Thursday, The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) filed a notice of intent to sue EPA for failing to consider the effects of almost 400 pesticides on more than 800 endangered species. Examples of the referenced species are the Florida panther, coho salmon, California condor, Everglade snail kite, northern Aplomado falcon, mountain yellow-legged frog, California tiger salamander, arroyo toad, Indiana bat, and green sturgeon. CBD alleges that EPA has failed to comply with the requirement in the Endangered Species Act that federal agencies consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service and take into account the impact of the products on endangered species.
CBD has successfully sued EPA previously, including a lawsuit aimed at protected the red-legged frog in California. In another suit, EPA agreed with CBD to impose significant restrictions on the use of 74 pesticides in large portions of northern California, including prohibitions on the use of all of rodenticides, pyrethroids, fipronil, and imidacloprid. A final decision on the California case is expected from EPA soon. Most recently, CBD filed suit seeking to limit the application of pesticides in the lower 48 states because of their impact on polar bears in Alaska.
CBD is required by ESA to provide sixty days notice of its intention to sue.
The actual suit, which will likely be filed in March, could have wide-ranging consequences for PMPs in that it covers almost all of the conventional pesticides used by PMPs in virtually every corner of the country.
Click here to read CBD's Notice of Intent. |
Other Planets: From Speculation To Confirmation
Last week NASA scientists put the space telescope Kepler in a kind of technological coma. The craft, designed to search for Earth-like planets orbiting stars in our cosmic neighborhood (within a few thousand light-years, that is), failed and seems to be unfixable. (Hope remains, though.)
Launched in 2009, Kepler has found a total of 132 potentially habitable planets and scientists have a long list of another 2,740 candidates awaiting more detailed analysis. Terrestrial telescopes will undertake the confirmation, since they now know where to look.
At a cost of $550 million, Kepler changed our view of the Universe and of how we fit in, very much like the homonymous brilliant German astronomer from the seventeenth century, an arduous defendant of a sun-centered cosmos and the first to provide mathematical laws describing planetary orbits.
The idea that stars have planets orbiting around them is very old, dating back at least to fourth-century BCE Greece, where philosophers like Epicurus suggested the existence of other worlds:
Moreover, there is an infinite number of worlds, some like this world, others unlike it. For the atoms being infinite in number, as has just been proved, are borne ever further in their course. For the atoms out of which a world might arise, or by which a world might be formed, have not all been expended on one world or a finite number of worlds, whether like or unlike this one. Hence there will be nothing to hinder an infinity of worlds.
In the sixteenth century, Giordano Bruno elaborated on this notion in his On the Infinite Universe and Worlds. To Bruno, such worlds would be like Earth, inhabited and full of good and evil.
Of course, if other Earths existed, the centrality of ours would be threatened. This was, and remains, an essential question in the debate on the plurality of worlds: are we unique and hence important in some sense, or are we the norm and typical of what's out there across the vastness of space?
It took some 413 years after Bruno's (most unfortunate) death for us to have an answer, even if partial, to this question. In four centuries, we moved from mere speculation about the existence of other Earths to the observation of other planets that, if not like ours, are — or could be — very similar. Today, astronomy has a new branch known as "comparative planetology," where properties of diverse planets are contrasted and studied in detail.
Even if still in its infancy as a discipline, we have learned much: that the majority of stars have planets circling around them; that life is only possible in those that obey a series of regularities in their astronomical properties and that have a relatively narrow chemical composition; that simple, bacterial life may be widespread, but that complex life may be rare.
But note that when scientists talk about life they are refereeing to life as we know it, that is, carbon-based and operating in an aqueous medium. Other types (such as silicon-based and using ammonia as solvent), even if interesting, are probably more fiction than reality, although some speculations are quite unsettling: intelligent life could have evolved so beyond what we can conceive that it reached a stage where it could leave behind its carbon envelope, existing in some sort of ethereal digital web sustained by electromagnetic fields, that is, a life without a narrow spatial confine or a biochemical metabolism. Who knows?
Even if we are still like toddlers in our cosmic exploration, we can at least rejoice in what we have learned so far: that there are hundreds of billions of other planets in our galaxy alone (and their moons, making for trillions of other worlds); that the same plurality is true in hundreds of billions of other galaxies across space; that some of these planets will have properties similar to Earth; that life, if present in these worlds, will be very particular to each of them, dependent on the planet's detailed and unique history; and that, for this reason, we are unique in the Universe, a product of the Earth and its very unique history.
The history of life on a planet mirrors the planet's life history.
Other space telescopes are planned to continue Kepler's mission. But what we have learned already demonstrates our uniqueness as a life form. |
If you spend any time at all working in your lawn and garden in most of the United States, chances are you have encountered the handiwork of a gopher. Digging its burrow about 8 inches (20 cm) below the surface, the gopher greedily gathers and stores the succulent roots and underground stems of turf and and ornamental plants. Sometimes the plant survives, but sometimes the plant dies.
It all seems rather harmless. But if you are a typical California homeowner, you have spent between $25,000 and $50,000 (either directly out of your pocket or in the cost of your home) for your lawn and garden landscape. And a single gopher can wipe out that entire investment in a single year, then moving on to leave your yard to be eaten by its friends when you set out more plants.
Moles, gophers, raccoons, squirrels, and skunks are can cause damage to home lawns and gardens. Waiting to take action always makes the problem worse. Let’s take a look at the kinds of landscape damage these varmints can wreak.
Gophers don’t just kill prized plants. Their “holes” mar your landscape. The tightly packed earth plugging a gopher hole can dull and sometimes break the blade of your lawnmower.
Gopher tunnels also redirect irrigation water. One morning you might wake up to find a shallow sinkhole where your lawn used to be.
Gopher tunnels upset pipelines. A gopher can break the lines that lead to your underground sprinkler system. Or its tunneling might tilt just part of the foundation of your deck. Or it might shift the ground around your pool just enough to cause a crack you will never notice until your pool starts draining away.
Although gophers are vegetarians, moles are carnivores. Eating grubs that might hatch into beetles is your mole’s service to your garden. Eating earthworms, however, deprives your garden of their aeration of the soil and their contributions to humus. The tunnels dug by moles disfigure your lawn and sometimes cause flowers and shrubs to tilt topsy-turvy, falling over after watering or rain.
Raccoons don’t do a lot of damage to the landscape itself. They may knock over garbage bins and they feast on your pet chickens, but they seldom do direct damage to plants or turf.
The problem with raccoons is that they carry parasites. Their feces usually contains the eggs of roundworms. The eggs can lie in the soil for up to a year, long after any sign of the raccoon’s presence has dissolved or has been picked up. A pet can roll in the soil and bring the eggs into the house, and a child or a hurried adult can transfer the eggs into their mouth. The roundworm hatches, circulates through the bloodstream, and finds a nice cozy internal organ or muscle in which to hibernate. Roundworm cysts in muscles just cause puzzling allergic reactions that don’t have anything to do with dust or pollen. In infants and the very old, however, roundworms may form cysts in the eye, causing blindness, or in the brain, causing seizures or depression.
Raccoons also carry up to 13 other kinds of diseases humans can catch. Occasionally a single raccoon is infected with all 13, but usually it is just five or six diseases that you or your family can contract from the raccoon.
The National Geographic talks a lot more about their habitat if you are interested in reading about it.
Skunks are best known for carrying just one infectious disease, rabies. It is extremely rare for humans to catch rabies from skunks, but it is relatively common for dogs and cats to be infected by skunks. And even if your pets are vaccinated, they become “unpettable” for many weeks after an encounter with a spraying skunk.
Nearly everyone likes squirrels, because they look so cute from a distance or in a photo, but if you are raising nuts, fruit, berries, or tomatoes, these furry little friends will usually help themselves to your crop—just before it is ready to be harvested. And if you try to make friends with the squirrel in your yard, you may discover that squirrels are cute but not friendly. Squirrels bite. And a visiting friend or neighbor bitten by a squirrel on your property might be legally entitled to sue you for damages. Imagine—hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal bills and a court judgment all because you fed the squirrels.
The best time to take care of problems with moles, gophers, raccoons, skunks, and squirrels is always as soon as possible. This site can tell you what you need to and how to do it inexpensively. It explains the different types of pest control traps available, saving you time, money, and the grief of ruined landscapes and personal injury. |
Sherington Primary School
In Year 3 we believe that children learn best when they have opportunities to both develop and apply skills across subjects in a creative and stimulating environment.
We ensure that lessons include challenges and opportunities for children to research and problem solve, where they receive feedback from both adults and their peers. We support children to become confident, independent and adaptable learners.
By setting high expectations within the classroom, we encourage children to become self-directed learners where they can take risks and reflect on their own learning. Teaching is adapted to the children’s abilities to ensure that all of them make progress to reach their full potential.
Wide Horizons Trip: |
Experts in child development, education, and sport agree that kids need to develop physical literacy to lead physically active lives. Regular physical activity is connected to better health, positive self-image, better school grades, and improved social well-being in general.
How can you help your infant, toddler, preschool, or school-aged child to develop physical literacy? It starts by helping them to develop their fundamental movement skills (FMS). While FMS do not represent the totality of physical literacy, they are an essential part of its early foundation, as physical literacy is almost entirely about movement.
Here are four checklists to help you target the basic movement skills that your child should be developing at different ages, including suggestions on how to get moving.
As you review these checklists, keep in mind that if your child does not display some of these skills, it doesn’t mean it’s too late. You may simply need to help them to start exploring activities and settings where they can develop these skills. |
Private-Public Partnership Focusing on Neglected Tropical Diseases Established
Consortium includes 13 pharma firms and $785 million to support R&D and drug distribution.!--h2>
The U.S. and U.K. governments, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank, 13 pharmaceutical companies, and officials from countries particularly afflicted by neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are coming together to boost availability of existing medications and R&D into new drugs. Together they will focus on 10 NTDs and provide more than $785 million. The partners also signed onto the "London Declaration on Neglected Tropical Diseases," in which they pledged new levels of collaboration and tracking and reporting of progress.
New funding commitments will fully support work toward the eradication of Guinea worm as well as expedite progress toward the 2020 goals of: elimination for lymphatic filariasis, blinding trachoma, sleeping sickness, and leprosy as well as control of soil-transmitted helminthes, schistosomiasis, river blindness, Chagas disease, and visceral leishmaniasis.
The pharmaceutical industry will reportedly donate 14 billion treatments this decade to support the elimination or control of these nine NTDs. Averaging 1.4 billion treatments annually, the donations build upon companies’ existing medicine donation programs.
Pfizer, Merck & Co., Johnson & Johnson, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis are among the companies that will contribute to the program. The Gates foundation announced a five-year, $363 million commitment to support NTD product and operational research, according to Reuters.
Among private-public partnerships are the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and Abbott’s four-year joint research and nonexclusive licensing agreement. They will undertake research on new antimicrobial agents for several neglected tropical diseases including Chagas disease, helminth infections, leishmaniasis, and sleeping sickness.
Equitable access to treatments for neglected diseases in all endemic countries, not only least-developed countries, is at the core of this agreement, the partners state. DNDi says that it has committed to ensuring the lowest sustainable pricing for products developed and distributed as a result of the agreement. Intellectual property (IP) related to this collaboration, existing relevant Abbott IP, and new IP generated by this alliance will be subject to a principle of nonexclusive licensing to address neglected diseases in endemic countries. Abbott has the right of first negotiation to become DNDi's development and distribution partner.
Since 2009, Abbott has provided compounds for DNDi to screen for activity against neglected diseases. This new agreement expands this relationship and provides DNDi access to selected classes of molecules and accompanying data generated by Abbott. |
PETA's education department works to alleviate animal suffering by providing people – from legislators to consumers to schoolchildren – with the information that they need to make compassionate choices concerning animals.
Much of our work is in primary and secondary education, for which we produce culturally appropriate humane-education materials. These materials help teachers instil empathy in young people so that they will recognise their role in protecting animals from harm.
To date, we have written and produced the following materials:
Share the World, a resource pack for primary teachers, which we sent free of charge to every primary school in Britain
An Australian version of Share the World, which we sent to 8,000 teachers
A free resource pack for GCSE English teachers, which we sent to every secondary school in Britain
Two free Citizenship packs – one for primary teachers and one for secondary
Animals in Today's Society, a pack for secondary teachers in Australia
A pack for police, prosecutors and judges highlighting the link between cruelty to animals and violence toward human beings. (This has been sent to every courthouse, prosecution office and regional probation office and 1,600 police stations in the UK.)
In addition, we do the following:
Regularly attend education shows across the UK where we give out free teaching packs
Research and write factsheets on a number of issues, including the link between cruelty to animals and violence toward people
Respond to individual requests for help by teachers and pupils
Respond to reported cases of cruelty to animals and send free teaching packs to schools in those areas
Support schools that choose to participate in Meat-Free Monday by delivering assemblies and liaising with pupils, teachers, parents and caterers
Send out dozens of free humane-education packs to teachers around the world every week |
Laser Process May Kill Bacteria on Metal Surfaces
THURSDAY, April 16, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have come up with a new twist on antibacterial technology.
By giving a metal surface a different texture, the team at Purdue University in Indiana said it may be possible to turn that surface into an immediate bacteria killer.
The technique won't kill viruses like the one responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, because they are much smaller than bacteria, the researchers noted.
But bacteria can live on metal surfaces for days, and keeping doorknobs and other surfaces bacteria-free might help prevent the spread of superbugs like MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), they explained.
"We developed a one-step laser-texturing technique that effectively enhances the bacteria-killing properties of copper's surface," said Rahim Rahimi, a Purdue assistant professor of materials engineering.
"Copper has been used as an antimicrobial material for centuries. But it typically takes hours for native copper surfaces to kill off bacteria," Rahimi said in a university news release.
Rahimi's team has started testing this new technology on other metals and polymers that are used to reduce risks of bacterial growth on orthopedic implants or wearable patches for chronic wounds.
The technique might also work on metallic alloys known to have antibacterial properties, the researchers noted.
The process uses a laser to create nanoscale patterns on the metal's surface. This produces a rugged texture that increases surface area, making it more likely bacteria will rupture, the scientists explained.
The report was published online recently in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces.
For more on bacteria, head to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
SOURCE: Purdue University, news release, April 9, 2020 |
By taking on the idea of generative design, exhaustive efforts were made to create many iterations of the same ideas.
By choosing two cathedrals at random (Chartes Cathedral and Notre Dame of Paris) and dissecting them, a catalogue of parts has been created. Each part was then assigned to a random location on a grid, at a random rotation to create a collage of the parts. The resulting collage was considered on the part to whole relationship, the new whole of the combined foot prints, and the shape of the silhouette.
The approach of how to combine the parts of the two different cathedrals as integral to its outcome as it was considered on the basis of the new whole. opportunities were sought after from the invented spaces resulting from the collisions.
A loose language of the original cathedrals was aimed towards, as the new columns "flower" out at the top, creating a pointed arch in the negative space. The interior is considered as one expansive interior, and programmed to the ghost of each original collaged part, creating a collage of program. |
What is malocclusion?
Malocclusion is the fancy term for overgrown teeth. Guinea pigs have open rooted teeth, meaning they are forever growing. Teeth can overgrow for several reasons, the most common are an improper diet, illness or sometimes just due to genetics. Generally speaking, if the front teeth are overgrown, the back molars are going to be as well. Overgrown teeth prevent a guinea pig from eating properly or at all. Front incisors are to meet in the middle, there should be no gaps, no over lapping and no slants. Back molars can’t be seen by owners, only the vet will be able to check those for you.
Signs of malocclusion
- Not Eating
- Trying to eat but food falls out of their mouth
- Interested in the food but not picking it up
- Drooling and wet chins
- Bad Breath
- Weight Loss
- Blood and cut tongue or lips
- Eating slower than normal
- Dramatic chewing Motions
- Front teeth are over lapping or slanted
What should you do if your Skinny pig has some of these signs?
A Skinny pig who possibly has teeth issues, needs medical attention right away. A Skinny pig with overgrown teeth cannot eat properly, could be injuring their mouth and is going to suffer from GI stasis. You must take your guinea pig to an exotic vet that specializes in Skinny pigs, you can’t diagnose teeth issues on your own.
Your vet will need to look inside your guinea pigs mouth, for a clear view buccal pad separators are used because back molars are very hard to see.
An x-ray will also most likely be necessary,to get a clear view of what is going on and to rule out other issues.
Treatment: What your vet will need to do
Dental surgery will need to be performed in order to try and correct the teeth. A guinea pig with overgrown teeth will most likely need to be put under for dental work. Filling down the back molars and front incisors will be done.
Often after dental surgery, a guinea pig will need to be hand fed for a period of time and will be on pain medication.
Sometimes after dental problems start, it can be a continuous cycle of dental filings for life. There are also cases where the guinea pig never starts to eat on their own again, so it isn’t something to take lightly.
Prevention: A proper diet is so important
Skinny pigs have open rooted teeth and need something to be constantly filing them down naturally. Hay is what your Skinny pigs require 24-7! A lot of malocclusion cases are caused from an improper diet, so I cannot stress enough about how important it is to provide your guinea pig with hay at all times. Long strand hay is the best thing for your guinea pig to eat and to really make those back molars grind against each other. Chew toys and pieces of wood can help the front incisors, but nothing can get back to their molars like hay can. |
Effect of female domestic and girls child education in Gwagwalada area council of FCT Abuja
Background to the Study
The education of women, until recently has not received favourable consideration form most culture in Nigeria. This is because of the influence of culture on the people as could observed in most states of the federation. In Nigeria, most communities until recently did not encourage the education of women, and this is accounted for by the way parents view the education of their female children. To them, any educated woman would end up being someone else’s wife, and therefore would be more useful to her husband than to her parents. Because of this, why waste the available resources of their education? Even now, because of ignorance, it is still difficult to convince many parents to send their daughters to school. The situation is even made worse by the religious beliefs and expectation of women in some communities where a woman is expected to be married within a certain age bracket.
The girl-child education has been a burning and continues issue in the developing countries of which Nigeria is one. The girl-child education can be compared to a coin which has two sides. This is because in the northern part of Nigeria, the girl-child is not encouraged to go to school, whereas in the Southern part of the country, reverse is the case. But culturally women are confined to their traditional roles with lots of sanctions imposed on them either by custom, norms or religion.
It has been revealed that the girl-child education has suffered a lot in the society as cited by Mohammed (2008). This has been the case since independence in 1960. However, in the sixties, the situation was really break because out of 10 school children that went to school beyond primary 4, only one as a girl. Missionary activities started in certain parts of northern Nigeria before the turn of the century. In 1860s, Dr. Baikie of Christian Missionary Society founded a settlement at Lokoja. A school was opened the same year and instruction was given in Hausa and Nupe languages right from the beginning.
The girl-child education in gwagwalada area council has been lagging behind all this while in terms of education one can wonder why the situation should persist like this in respects of the light of the clear provisions in National Policy on Education that education is a right for every Nigerian Child. The National Policy on Education (2004) also has as its 5th objective as the building of a “bright land full opportunities for all individual”.
Thus, The National Philosophy of Education of Nigeria is based on “the integration of the individual into a sound and effective citizen and to provide equal educational opportunities for all citizens of the Nation at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, both inside and outside the formal system”.
The global trends have also shown that Education of girl-child is input like
- Universal Declaration in Tehran in 1968 on Human Rights which stresses education as a right of every individual irrespective of sex.
- The 1960 United Nations Article 10 of the Convention against women
(CEDAW). Has a major aim of promoting gender equality in education. The above not withstanding however, shows the reality on the ground in
Abuja and Nigeria as a whole that there is the presence of discrimination against girl-child in the access to basic education. If this trend continues in gwagwalada area council , the developmental growth of the area would be hampered.
The Northern region which is so much dominated by the Hausas who have no interest in girl-child education as it was viewed exclusively for the male child. The girl-child was not only denied formal education, but also the Qur’anic education. The few girls that attempted school during Western education after the amalgamation in 1914 did that under duress.
Most of the girls grew up believing that life begins with hawking and ends up in early marriage. While the boys received rigorous training both in formal and informal education i.e. Qur’anic school, Farming and animal husbandry under the instruction of their fathers. The girl-child was undergoing training at home under the supervision of their mothers, they were taught how to take care of children, prepare food, make clothes, wash utensils and general cleanliness of their surroundings. Apart from these task, the girls had to assist their mothers in different trades and were finally prepared for their future roles as brides.
The problems of the lack of girl-child education emanates from the root of: Religion, Poverty, Weak father figures and ignorant mothers who knew no better, Early marriage
There are regional disparities in the level of girl-child access to basic education. A recent survey shows that a number of girl-children had no formal education in post primary schools gwagwalada area council . Even though the case was slightly ease better than before.
The enrolment of children to primary, secondary, technical and tertiary institutions as upheld by Oleribe (2002) also discriminate against female gender. Male enrolment is more than girls in all levels of education. Out of the primary schools enrolment indicated an imbalance ratio as only of, in gwagwalada area council , 41% were girl- child and many ended up not going for secondary education. In all parts of the state girls lag behind boys in access to education. It is important to note that despite the progress made towards girl-child education in the developed and some parts of the world, years of neglect have left very high illiteracy rates for girl-child in many developing countries of the world.
Girls which are to remain in school up to higher institutions have not yet been able to and the situation arised because parents are not encouraging girl to be educated. Most of the girls in gwagwalada area council who were of school age and have completed primary education parades the street hawking items in other to prepare for early marriage. Even though there are educated girls in Abuja recently, the number can be much higher if adequate attention is given to eradicate the problem.
Statement of the Problem
This research is female domestic and girls child education in gwagwalada area council. It quite understands that education is the bedrock of every society and it requires to be given to all without considering the gender aspects.
The problem of girl-child education is not a regional, state, National or continent but a global issue of concerned. Education is the most viable instrument by man to conquer his environment and charted his destiny. Girl-child education has been a burning and continuous issue in the developing countries of the world in which Nigeria is one. Its existing problem in Nigeria more especially in the Northern part of the country in which gwagwalada area council is one of the states and so it need to be clearly addressed. The problem as pointed out by Mohammed (2008) ranges from either girls of school ages hawk goods on the street as parents’ exploit them, a times, girls were engaged in early marriages, a times as a result of poverty and financial problem where some parents cannot afford to pay school fees for their children. In other cases, the problems emancipates from the fact that some parents considers educating girl child as waste of time for the sake of gender disparity or inferiority complex.
Girl child has suffered enough discrimination and is time to eradicates in equality or unequal right to education and provide equal access to education as
provisioned in the National Policy on education. Parents needs to be enlighten on the importance of girl-child education and to be discouraged in engaging girl-child to early marriage and hawking of goods while teachers should handle girl-child with cares in school for enrolment and retention purpose in other to achieve the MDG’s.
It was based on the problems identified that the researcher therefore develop an instrument titled female domestic and girls child education in gwagwalada area council of FCT Abuja
Objectives of the Study
The major objective of this research is to find out female domestic and girls child education in Gwagwalada area council of FCT Abuja
The specific objective are:
- To determine if female children are allow to stay at home for domestic work while their male counterpart go to school
- to determine if there is difference in the opinions of teachers and school principals with regards to the attitudes of parents’ towards girl-child education in ; Gwagwalada area council
- to determine the influence of school activities on girl-child education in Gwagwalada area council
- to determine the influence of culture, tradition and religion on Girl-child Education in Gwagwalada area council
- to determine the influence of government role on girl-child education in Gwagwalada area council.
The study attempts to answer the following questions:
- To what extent does female children are allow to stay at home for domestic work while their male counterpart go to school
- Is there any significant difference in the opinions of teachers and school principals on the attitude of parents’ towards Girl-Child Education in Gwagwalada area council?
- Is there any significant difference in the opinions of teacher and school principals as regards the influence of school activities on Girl-Child Education in Gwagwalada area council.?
- Is there any significant difference in the opinions of teachers and school principals as regards the influence of culture, religion and tradition on Girl-Child Education in Gwagwalada area council.?
- Is there any significant difference in the opinions of teachers and school principals as regards the influence on government of Child education in Gwagwalada area council.?
Significance of the Study
Research of this kind is of utmost Value. It is important since it is hoped that the outcome of the research will help educational planners, school administrators, teachers, policy makers, parents or guardians and all stakeholders to have a clear understanding of some fundamental issues related to female domestic and girl-child education. Through the findings and recommendations of this research, parents may be more enlightened on their responsibilities towards girl-child education. It is also hoped that this will in-turn enhance girl-child education which will lead to their contributions to the development of Abuja and to participate fully in developing herself, siblings, husband, home and the whole nation and will not be misused, harassed, subjected and maltreated again. She will not suffer any further violence again. infact the benefits are innumerable.
Scope and Delimitation of the Study
This study will cover Gwagwalada area council. The study centers on the Female domestic and girl child education in Gwagwalada area council, therefore its findings are mainly to the area of the study. Due to time and financial constraints, the study is delimited to cover five street or divisions
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posted on September 11, 2018 14:44
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter- and How to Make the Most of Them Now. (2012). Dr. Meg Jay. New York: Hachette Book Group. 273 pp. $17.00. ISBN 978-0446561754.
Review by: Juliana Espinosa. Academic Advising Center. University of Utah.
In her new book, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now, Dr. Meg Jay argues against the popular notion that thirty is the new twenty. A clinical psychologist and visiting associate professor at the University of Virginia, Jay believes the twenties is a critical period in adult development for Millennials, one in which individuals begin making intentional and well-informed choices on how they want to live in their thirties and forties. The book addresses psychological and emotional development in people of this age, and resists the trivialization of the twenties as a period filled with carefree adventures and little or no consequences.
The book is divided into three parts: “Work,” “Love,” and “The Brain and the Body.” The first and third sections make arguments especially relevant to academic advising. In “Work,” Jay cites multiple examples of her work with young adults experiencing anxiety and decision paralysis. She discusses the use of deliberate distractions and procrastination as techniques for avoiding planful decision making. Jay also discusses the role of social media, and the pressure Millennial students feel to live an Instagram-worthy life. In “The Brain and the Body,” Jay connects the behaviors discussed in “Work” with physiological factors: as the frontal lobe develops at an increased rate during late teens and into the twenties, an individual’s capacity for learning greatly increases. For professionals looking to aid in the development process, it’s important to guide individuals away from pleasure-seeking or avoidance toward growth in communication skills, decision making, and relationship building.
As she expands these ideas, Jay arrives at four crucial components of the twentysomething development and experience, which she describes using the terms, “Identity Capital,” “Weak Ties,” “Outside In,” and “Do the Math.” As a set, these components suggest individuals in their twenties experience the healthiest growth and development when they acquire individual resources, invest in themselves over time, and learn to see value in delayed gratification (resisting what Jay calls “present bias,” where the more concrete instant gratification is preferred over abstract concepts like time and future goals). On the other hand, growth and development stymies when individuals surround themselves with too many like-minded peers, and indulge in linear, black-and-white thinking processes.
Academic advisors have multiple opportunities to engage with students in the promotion of healthy growth and development processes related to Jay’s model. By encouraging the building of identity capital, strengthening weak ties, encouraging a growth mindset, and combating present bias, advisors can aid students in taking advantage of this period of expanded learning capacity, and steer students away from patterns of behavior that lead to anxiety and decision paralysis. One example is to incorporate goal setting activities into advising appointments to aid students in developing a sense of time and perspective. In Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ book, Designing Your Life, the Odyssey Planning activity is a great activity that challenges an individual to create and rank three alternative five-year plans.
While The Defining Decade offers valuable considerations for academic advisors, the book has its blind spots. In discussing identity capital and weak ties, Jay makes no mention of class, gender, or racial privilege. Responsible academic advisors will need to incorporate the consideration of each student’s privilege and social status into the use of Jay’s model. As a whole, however, The Defining Decade stands to benefit academic advisors in better understanding the current population of twentysomethings. The book is a useful tool for further exploring adult development, and for reflecting on how academic advisors might adjust advising practices to better prepare graduating seniors for the next window of opportunity.
Burnett, B. and Evans, D. (2016). Worksheets and Discussion Questions. Retrieved from
Jay, M. (2017). The Defining Decade. Retrieved from https://megjay.com/the-defining-decade/ |
Sites in which the primary focus is the etymology of a surname and its variants, a one-name study or organization, relevant genealogy, or an associated family history. Y Surnames Genealogy Society.
Y ( named wye / ˈ w aɪ / , plural wyes ) is the 25th and penultimate letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. (wikipedia)
- Y The 25th and penultimate letter in the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet.
- The official currency of Japan.
- YMCA A worldwide organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 57 million beneficiaries...
- Y A census-designated place in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska.
- Y: The Last Man A DC comics series by Brian K. Vaughan.
- The official currency of Japan.
- Alleghany Corporation An investment holding company originally created by the railroad entrepreneurs Oris and Mantis...
- Y (Cyrillic) A letter used in almost all ancient and modern Cyrillic alphabets.
- Admittance A measure of how easily a circuit or device will allow a current to flow.
- Y (New York City Subway service) The New York City Subway currently uses various letters and numbers to designate the routes that...
- Generation Y The demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when this cohort...
- Ancestors Yaccarino www
Ancestors of Anastassia Yaccarino, Yaccarino, compiled by Thomas Louis Yaccarino, NJ USA. Includes surnames Curto, Arcipane, Bellia, D'Amico and Archangelo of Sicily, and Gregorace and Nistico from Calabria, Italy. Yaccarino.
- Researching Yelverton www
Researching descendants of John Yelverton 1680-1750, Yelverton, NC USA. Includes the Yelvington and Elvington families of America. Compiled by Keith E Yelverton.
- Ancestral Yadoff and Piekarsky www
Ancestral research undertaken by Andrew Seth Yadoff, and Piekarsky, Wyckoff, New Jersey USA. Yadoff and Piekarsky.
- Ancestral Yabsley www
Ancestral research including spelling variants Yeabsley and Yebsley. Yabsley. Compiled by Michael John Yabsley, Ridgeway, SC USA. Yabsley.
- Family Yacup www
Family history of Betty JoAnn Hill Yacup. Yacup. Includes surname index and family tree. Yacup.
- Family Worldwide home of the Youatt family www
Family history of the Youatt family, home of the Youatt family, including family tree and family histories Worldwide home of the Youatt family.
- Documenting Yoder Family Information: USA www
Documenting North American lineages with European connections. Family Information: USA. Includes newsletters, court and census records, Amish and non-Amish branches, plus information from European researchers. Yoder Family Information: USA.
- Ancestral Yeakel Family www
Ancestral history of Philip Ludwig Yeakel and Maria Elizabeth Hohn, Family, immigrated to US from Sonnenberg, near Wiesbaden, German, 1836. Includes photographs and spelling variations of Jeckel, Yakel and Jackel. Yeakel Family.
- Portal Yamey Family www
Portal for sharing research and anecdotal information about Yamey and related lineages. Family. Contains various family trees. Yamey Family.
- Descendants Yarbrough Archives www
Descendants of John Swanson Yarbrough, Archives, including Tope and Moore lineages. Compiled by Renee Pierce Smelley. Yarbrough Archives.
- Family Yacobelli www
Family tree compiled by Lawrence Alexander Yacobelli Snr. Yacobelli.
- Family Yaffe of South Africa www
Family history of Sarah Yaffe, South Africa, nee Mandel from Liverpool England to Cape Town, circa 1913. Compiled by Jack Yaffe. Yaffe of South Africa.
- Family Yaedke www
Family tree of Gerald Yaedke, Yaedke, focusing on the areas of Green Bay, Wisconsin and Winona, Minnesota USA. Yaedke.
- Registered Yeowell Family www
Registered with the Guild of One-Name Studies and members of the East of London and West Surrey Family History Societies. Yeowell Family.
- Ancestors Yarmovsky Family History www
Ancestors and descendants of Shmuel David Yarmovsky 1840-1930 and Hene Silverstein 1848-1941, Family History, compiled by Gregory Kolojeski. Yarmovsky Family History.
- Official Yeo Name Society www
Official UK registered one name society researching and recording the history of the Yeo family worldwide. Name Society. Includes pedigrees, coat of arms, biographies and roll of honour. Yeo Name Society.
- Descendants Yax www
Descendants of Michel Johannes Jacks 1709-1793 and Catherine Herbinnes 1726-1789, Yax, Germany to Detroit USA, as compiled by Helen Standefer. Yax.
- Family Yacinski www
Family tee compiled by Rebecca Leigh Yacinski, Yacinski, Winchester, CT USA. Yacinski.
- Family Yarolimek and Jarolimek www
Family history of Matej and Mary (Dragoun) Jarolimek, and Jarolimek, from Jablonna, Bohemia to Minnesota, as compiled by Dean R Yarolimek. Includes map of Jablonna, Czech Republic. Yarolimek and Jarolimek.
- Photographs, Yowell, Jon L www
Photographs, Jon L, guestbook, and a links page. Yowell, Jon L.
- Links Yronwode, Nagasiva www
Links to online essays and articles by this author. Yronwode, Nagasiva.
- Yearsley Yearsley www
Yearsley surname, Yearsley, ancestry and family tree research community. Yearsley.
- Family Yager www
Family history as compiled by Charles S Yager, Yager, Nashville, IN USA. Yager.
- Family Yager www
Family heritage as compiled by Cheryl Yager, Yager, Cadillac MI USA. Yager.
- Family Young www
Family history of Levi S Young (b. Young.1868) including surnames Laube and Eisenberger, from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Young.
- Ancestry Young www
Ancestry of Andrew Steve Young, Young, Des Moines, Iowa USA. Includes photographs and family tree. Young.
- Umbrella Guild of One-Name Studies www
Umbrella group for one-name study organisations based at the Society of Genealogists in London. One-Name Studies. Site gives details of publications and activities of the organization. Guild of One-Name Studies.
- A Surname Search Utility www
A free research tool for finding genealogical information about a surname. Surname Search Utility.
- Alexa: Y Surnames
Alexa Directory Top Sites: Y Surnames
- DMOZ: Y Surnames
dmoz.org Directory: Y Surnames |
Solar modules work based on Photoelectric effect and in the simplest words, light energy conversion to electricity is photoelectric effect. There are different applications for photoelectric effect, but all are same basis. Here, we want to back to school and discuss about Photoelectric effect but in practical way without rocket science. Basically, we will find atomic model of matter and we will see there are some tiny particles that their actions and reactions provide energy.
A solar system, like an automobile, is made of different parts, and each component should do its task properly. Getting the most energy from a PV array depends not only on module quality, but also on proper installation. To achieve the highest achievable solar energy, it is usually necessary to capture as much solar energy as possible and then minimize the waste of solar energy. This leads to a more efficient system and is possible if it is installed correctly.
Photovoltaic Cell is the heart of a module what produce Electricity by Solar Energy conversion. All we are utilizing today as Photovoltaic systems are indebted to Albert Einstein paper in 1905 that based upon Max Planck Theory of Black Body radiation. |
Folk Dances of Eastern Europe
Subject: The Arts: Dance
Grade Levels: PreK through12
Sunshine State Standards:
- To experience folk dance as a form of expressive art, and to appreciate the rich cultural heritage of Eastern Europe
- Grades PreK-2
- Grades 3-5
- Grades 6-8
- Grades 9-12
View all Sunshine State Standards
During the time before World War II, dance played an important role in the culture of Eastern European villages. Dance was a form of artistic expression, as well as an important component of celebrations and rituals.
- notes for dance steps
- plenty of floor space
- regional folk music
- Locate local folk dance instructors or groups to perform and teach students.
- Check the library for Eastern European folk music to play as the students practice dances.
- Lessons for Holocaust education dance step notes are available from the Recreational Folk Dancing Web site.
- COCEK - Gypsy dance
Line dance, arms in W-position, meter 2/4
Count Step 1-2 Facing diagonally R, step L (1) R(2) L(&) 3-4 Facing center, step back R L 5-6 Step back on R (1), back on L (2), Step on R, turning to face diagonally L
A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 1997-2013. |
The Mongolian gerbil, the most common species sold in stores, is a born burrower and will develop networks of tunnels with food storage, nesting, and sleeping sites. Gerbils are 4 to 6 inches long excluding the tail and have a life span of 3 to 5 years. Over the years, some two dozen hybrids and color variations have been developed. The original brown or gray coated animal now comes in black, lilac, chocolate, cream, nutmeg, blue, among other colors, some with red eyes, some with black. Some rarely imported species, small Egyptian gerbils, Indian (pink-footed) gerbils, and Libyan gerbils known as jirds, now appear in shops. All are gentle, hardy pets.
For more information, please read Choosing a Gerbil |
Researchers refine entanglement certification strategies to recover initial entanglement, challenging the need for complete trust in quantum state sources.
Quantum entanglement, a phenomenon that has perplexed scientists for decades, plays a crucial role in various fields, from quantum communication to quantum computation. However, certifying entanglement in a quantum system has always posed a challenge, as traditional testing methods destroy the entanglement in the process. But now, physicists from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have developed a groundbreaking technique that allows for the recovery of entanglement after certification, eliminating the need for complete trust in quantum state sources.
A Mysterious State with a Precise Definition:
Entanglement, a concept within quantum mechanics, refers to the inseparable connection between two or more quantum systems. In an entangled system, the subsystems cannot be seen as independent entities, leading to the famous adage that “the whole is greater than its parts.” Certifying entanglement is crucial for researchers working in the field, as it provides a way to verify the existence of this mysterious state.
Refining Entanglement Certification Strategies:
The KAIST team, led by physicist Hyeon-Jin Kim, focused on refining conventional entanglement certification (EC) strategies to recover entanglement post-certification. Conventionally, there are three EC strategies: witnessing, steering, and Bell nonlocality. Each strategy involves deriving inequalities that, if violated, certify the presence of entanglement. However, these strategies typically result in the complete destruction of the initial entanglement.
The Key to Recovery: Weak Measurement:
To overcome the challenge of recovering entanglement, the researchers introduced weak measurement into the certification process. Weak measurement is a process that probes a quantum system without sharply disturbing its subsystems, allowing them to remain entangled. In contrast, projective measurements, commonly used in conventional EC strategies, completely destroy entanglement.
The KAIST team incorporated a control parameter for the strength of measurement on each subsystem and re-derived the certifying inequality to include these parameters. By iteratively preparing the qubit system in the state to be certified and performing weak measurements, they collected statistics to check for the violation of the certification inequality. Once a violation occurred, indicating the presence of entanglement, they further implemented suitable weak measurements to recover the initial entangled state with some probability.
Lifting the Trust Assumption:
The researchers demonstrated their theoretical proposal using a photonic setup called a Sagnac interferometer. They found that as the measurement strength increased, the reversibility of entanglement decreased, but the certification level remained high. This suggests the existence of a measurement strength “sweet spot” where entanglement could be certified without significant loss and subsequently recovered.
In real-world experiments, trusting the entanglement source to consistently produce the same state becomes challenging. The KAIST team tackled this issue by applying their method to a noisy source that produced a mixture of an entangled and a separable state over time. By employing weak measurements at different time steps, they successfully certified and recovered entanglement from the mixture, eliminating the need for complete trust in the source.
The breakthrough by the KAIST physicists in developing a method to recover entanglement after certification represents a significant advancement in the field of quantum entanglement. By incorporating weak measurements and refining certification strategies, they have challenged the traditional notion that entanglement must be destroyed to be certified. This research opens up new possibilities for harnessing entanglement in practical applications, paving the way for more secure quantum communication and enhanced quantum computing capabilities. |
Information Technology 250
ITEC 250: Introduction to GIS
Cross-Listed: GEOS 250
Credit Hours: (4)
Course is designed to introduce students in geography as well as students from other disciplines working with the general concepts of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Course will teach the theory and involve the practical use of GIS and geospatial data.
Detailed Description of Content of Course:
a. General Introduction to Geographic Information Systems
i. Definition of GIS in current and historical context
ii. Overview of professional/disciplines currently utilizing GIS technologies
iii. Major GIS application areas
b. The principal components of current GIS technologies
i. Hardware/software environments
ii. GIS data requirements (general: graphic and non-graphic)
iii. Output generation
c. GIS Data Elements
i. Graphic data (map features)
ii. Maps and projections (fundamental issues)
iii. Non-graphic data (attributes, tabular)
d. Vector and Raster data in GIS
e. Database management systems for GIS data (an overview)
f. GIS Data Manipulation and Analysis
i. Geographic extraction of selected data
ii. GIS query functions
iii. Adjacency and proximity analysis
g. Product Generation (hardcopy, .pdf, jpg)
Detailed Description of Conduct of Course :
Instructional strategies will include the following:
a.. Lectures on the theoretical aspects (traditional lectures, supported by computer graphics presentations and demonstrations where appropriate. Lectures will be available to students in class in outline form; full lectures will be made available through internet.
b. Demonstrations will include the –in-class demonstrations of a working PC-based GIS, as well as demonstrations on accessing digital databases on the Internet.
c. Computer-assisted instruction will involve students using a GIS and digital databases. Students will work as individuals as well as members of small groups (three to five students).
d. Laboratory exercises for students: Students will use instructions and data sets to work through various applications of GIS technologies, ranging form simple analysis to overlays, proximity analysis, use of Digital Elevation Models as data sources, etc.
Goals and Objectives of the Course:
Having successfully completed this course, the student will be able to demonstrate fundamental knowledge and/or practical skills in the realm of Geographic Information Systems. This will include knowledge of the theoretical foundation of GISs, GIS applications areas, GIS user need requirements, GIS data considerations (including graphic and non-graphic data requirements), GIS manipulations and data analysis, and product generation from GISs. The student will gain practical experiences in the use of GIS technologies as well as in the use of Internet resources as related to GIS technologies. An underlying objective is to provide the student with the opportunity to gain an appreciation of the truly multidisciplinary usage of GIS technologies. GIS is a technology utilized not only by geographers, but also by scientists in other disciplines, researchers in numerous fields, and particularly by professionals in various business applications.
Student’s knowledge on the theoretical aspects presented in lectures and reading assignments will be tested in two written examinations. Students’ applied work will be assessed on the basis of the correct completion of the practical assignments, and, where applicable, on the quality of the output in form of maps, tables, and graphs.
Other Course Information:
Approval and subsequent reviews:
DATE ACTION REVIEWED BY
9/28/01 Proposed and Approved: Bernd H. Kuennecke
2/12/2010, reviewed, updated, and approved: Bernd H. Kuennecke |
Boeing made headlines last June, when its new 747-8 Freighter crossed the Atlantic Ocean running partially on biofuel. Yesterday, one of the company's 787 Dreamliners set a similar milestone – it crossed the Pacific Ocean using a biofuel mix. It was not only the first time that such fuel has been used in a 787, but also marked the first biofuel-powered aircraft crossing of the Pacific.
The fuel was derived mainly from used cooking oil, and was used in conjunction with regular jet fuel – Boeing hasn’t stated what the proportion was.
The aircraft, owned and operated by Japan’s All Nippon Airways, made a delivery flight from Boeing's Delivery Center in Everett, Washington to Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. In doing so, it is estimated that it produced approximately 30% less emissions than a similarly-sized conventional aircraft. About 10% of that reduction is said to be due to the fuel choice, with the other 20% attributed to the aircraft’s energy-efficient features, which include a body made from lightweight carbon fiber composite material. |
Winthrop health and emergency management officials announced on Friday, that routine testing of mosquitoes caught in Winthrop traps had found mosquitoes carrying West Nile Virus (WNV).
As a result, a Code Red alert from the Winthrop Emergency Management department and Board of Health warned residents to take extra precautions when outdoors in the evening and at night and informed residents that the town would make arrangements to spray for mosquitoes, in an effort to limit the risk to residents.
On Tuesday, July 31, Health Agent Eric Moore confirmed that spraying for the pesky germ carriers would take place on either Wednesday, Aug. 1. 2012 (last night) or Thursday, August 2, 2012 (tonight), based on the weather.
“(Spraying) is scheduled for Wednesday night, if the weather cooperates,” explained Moore. “If we have to wait, then we’ll do it Thursday night.”
Moore said he was not told how many mosquitoes had tested positive for WNV, but as an informational and cautionary measure, he has posted information about how to protect yourself from WNV on the town’s website.
Among the information to help you avoid being bitten, Moore recommends using a mosquito repellent, especially during peak mosquito periods, wearing long pants and sleeves during peak periods, using mosquito netting around baby carriages and dumping out standing water, especially near and around your home.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), WNV is a virus that is spread by mosquitoes, with symptoms that can range from mild to severe. It is believed that in order to spread WNV, mosquitoes first bite an infected bird and the bite a human.
The CDC also reports that though many people are bitten by mosquitoes that carry WNV, very few develop a severe case of the disease or even know that they’ve been bitten at all. Risk factors that can lead a more severe reaction include pregnancy, old or young age and conditions that can weaken the immune system such as HIV, organ transplants and recent chemotherapy.
Symptoms of WNV include abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, headache, lack of appetite, muscle aches, nausea, rash, sore throat, swollen lymph nodes and vomiting in minor cases, with most symptoms lasting two or three days.
In severe cases, also known as West Nile encephalitis or meningitis, symptoms can include confusion or change in ability to think, loss of consciousness or coma, muscle weakness, stiff neck and weakness of one arm or leg. Severe forms of the disease can lead to brain damage or even death. Approximately 10 percent of patients with brain inflammation due to WNV do not survive. |
Radar is something that is in use all around us, although it is normally invisible. Air traffic control uses radar to track planes both on the ground and in the air, and also to guide planes in for smooth landings. Police use radar to detect the speed of passing motorists. NASA uses radar to map the Earth and other planets, to track satellites and space debris and to help with things like docking and maneuvering. The military uses it to detect the enemy and to guide weapons.
Meteorologists use radar to track storms, hurricanes and tornadoes. You even see a form of radar at many grocery stores when the doors open automatically! Obviously, radar is an extremely useful technology.
When people use radar, they are usually trying to accomplish one of three things:
- Detect the presence of an object at a distance - Usually the "something" is moving, like an airplane, but radar can also be used to detect stationary objects buried underground. In some cases, radar can identify an object as well; for example, it can identify the type of aircraft it has detected.
- Detect the speed of an object - This is the reason why police use radar.
- Map something - The space shuttle and orbiting satellites use something called Synthetic Aperture Radar to create detailed topographic maps of the surface of planets and moons.
All three of these activities can be accomplished using two things you may be familiar with from everyday life: echo and Doppler shift. These two concepts are easy to understand in the realm of sound because your ears hear echo and Doppler shift every day. Radar makes use of the same techniques using radio waves.
In this article, we'll uncover radar's secrets. Let's look at the sound version first, since you are already familiar with this concept. |
The Time Has Come for National Standards
State education officials have adopted a new mantra: "Fewer, clearer, higher." The term refers to education standards -- what each state feels its ...
The term refers to education standards -- what each state feels its students must learn about math, language arts and other subjects. Each state has its own set of standards, which vary widely. There's a new effort underway to craft common standards that would be adopted by states nationwide.
"The most basic way to impact student achievement," said Ken James, Arkansas commissioner of education, "is to guarantee that what is being taught in classrooms in every Zip code of this nation is both rigorous and relevant."
Building on two years of discussions, officials from 41 states and territories met last week in Chicago to launch the drafting process. The nascent effort was the subject of a congressional hearing Wednesday.
There appears to be little debate about the need for a set of standards that is more demanding, better tailored to college and workplace requirements, and widely shared. "The standards are all over the place," Jim Hunt, the former North Carolina governor who heads an education institute at UNC, told the House Education and Labor Committee. "They are too many, they are too vague. We need a set of common standards all over the country."
State education departments have clearly gamed accountability requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires certain percentages of students to be proficient in subject areas but lets states determine how proficiency is defined.
Commonly, states with poor standards score well under NCLB -- Mississippi being a frequently cited example -- while other states that hold themselves and their students to a higher standard, such as Massachusetts, do poorly. And many states that look fine judged by their own tests fare much worse as measured by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores.
"We continually face legal and legislative challenges to lower our content standards and make our state tests easier," echoed Greg Jones, chairman of the California Business Roundtable and a member of the California board of education.
Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, recently published an op-ed in The Washington Post calling for a national set of standards. She told the House panel that there is "now a huge consensus to raise and lift standards."
The Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association, which are leading the voluntary effort, hope to craft standards for high schools in the coming months and for elementary grades by the end of the year.
Getting all 50 states to agree to new standards that James suggests need to be higher than any state currently has -- and helping them grapple with the challenge of getting ready to implement such standards by designing new assessments and teacher development programs -- will take enormous lifting.
It's not clear where the funding will come from -- whether the feds or a group such as the Gates Foundation will pony up the cash needed even to craft the standards. One possible source would be some of the $5 billion in discretionary funds given to Education Secretary Arne Duncan under the recent stimulus law.
House Education Chairman George Miller, a California Democrat, said that leaving the creation of national standards up to states is "a very big bet," but said he thought it was a good one.
Hunt agreed that a state-led effort was the best approach, but he suggested that if the states failed in the task, the federal government should step in. "America has to do it," he said. "We must stop fooling around."
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SAY NO TO WAR AND RACISM
FAST IN SOLIDARITY WITH MUSLIM COMMUNITIES
- I am fasting during Ramadan in solidarity with peoples from Muslim majority countries and Muslim immigrant communities in the
who have been subjected to harassment, detention, economic hardship and war as a consequence of U.S. imperialist aggressions and Israeli occupation. U.S.
- I fast in solidarity with the people of Lebanon who have experienced the destruction of their country, displacement, and the loss of their loved ones.
- I fast in solidarity with the people of
who continue to face massive deprivation of land, life and resources and the denial of their right to return to their homeland and their right to full citizenship. Palestine
- I fast in solidarity with the people of Iraq who have lived under siege for over a decade of U.S.-led war and destruction.
- I fast in solidarity with the people of Afghanistan who have faced a massive U.S. bombing campaign, and a denial of access to hospitals, food and electricity.
- I fast in solidarity with Muslim immigrants and Muslim Americans who have been harassed, detained, deported, or racially profiled without evidence of criminal activity; those who have been forced to live with the possibility that at any time, they may be picked up, locked up, or detained; and those families and communities who have been forced to separate because of anti-Muslim immigration policies.
- I fast for the end of all U.S. led and supported occupations and the self-determination of all peoples, including all indigenous peoples, immigrants, and people of color in the U.S.
The “war on terror” is an illegal war that violates international laws and uses “national security” as an excuse to conquer Arab and Muslim lands, oil, labor, and people. The Bush administration has used September 11th as an excuse for increasing military intervention in the
For many of us, to join a solidarity fast against war and racism is a choice. For those living under U.S. and Israeli military occupation and war, accessing resources and simply being granted the right to exist are privileges that are increasingly difficult to come by. This is why fasting is a form of solidarity. One hundred people die in Iraq per day. Over 4,000 Palestinians and over 1000 Israelis killed since 2000 alone. Over 7.2 million Palestinians have become refugees. Because of the Israeli economic blockade, most the children in
Domestically, the Bush administration has expanded its definition of “immigrant” to “evil terrorist enemy within.” Latino immigrants and other immigrants who have been marked as “potential criminals” have faced increasing forms of targeting and harassment since 9-11. Attacks against Filipinos/as have taken place based on Bush’s designation of the Philippines as an Al Qayeda harboring country. These attacks seek to quell the dissent of anyone who speaks out against the war machine. The silencing of dissent is facilitated by increasing policies that treat anyone who thinks critically of
The “war on terror” has facilitated the passing of new laws, such as the Patriot Act that give more power to the racist criminal justice system. These laws legalize and give increased power to the institutions of racial profiling, surveillance, sweeps, detentions, and lock-ups. The government pours money into the military, and we are paying this huge bill with severe cuts in the budgets for women’s and family’s social services, including welfare, housing, health, education, and transportation. The Bush administration recruits young people of color and lies to them by claiming that they will be given money for their education. These promises are not kept and young people of color, African-Americans in particular, are positioned on the front lines, used as cannon fodder for an illegal war.
The “Fast against War and Racism” creates an opportunity for people to express their solidarity with Muslim communities. It is also an opportunity for creating links between people who are targeted by the war on terror in their homelands and the people who are targeted by the war on terror, over here, within the U.S
Say NO to war and racism
Join the Fast in Solidarity with Muslim communities
NOWAR: The Arab American “No to War and Racism” Committee, Ann Arbor, Michigan |
Editor's note: In 2014, Montana celebrates 150 years as a territory and 125 years as a state. We're marking both landmark birthdays each Sunday with a Montana Moment, a chronological look at key events in Montana's history.
The moment: Earthquakes rock Helena, October 1935.
The story: Built for $500,000 in 1935 (the modern equivalent $8.4 million), Helena High School was dedicated just in time to be destroyed.
Dedicated in early October, the building was significantly damaged two weeks later and then even worse near the end of the month.
"Although modern and fireproof, no earthquake resistance had been built into the building. Helena had not been recognized as an active seismic zone," wrote Rod Benson, earth science teacher at Helena High School, at formontana.net. Classes met in train cars until early 1938, Benson wrote.
"Although no one was harmed in the school, the October quakes did kill four people in other parts of town and caused an estimated $4 million in damage," he wrote. "More than 60% of the structures in town, including 3,000 homes, were either damaged or destroyed."
The idea, common at the time, that American earthquakes were confined to Alaska and California died during that shaky month in Helena, according to the National Information Service for Earthquake Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
In October 1935, Helena had hundreds of earthquake shocks. The worst came Oct. 12, 18 and 31.
The Oct. 12 quake measured 5.0 on the Richter scale. The Oct. 18 quake had its epicenter 15 miles north of Helena and a magnitude 6.3. City Hall, Main Street businesses and homes suffered damage, but the worst was at the new high school, the Bryant School and other buildings on the softer soil out of the older area and into the gulch, according to the university.
The Oct. 31 6.0 quake continued the destruction, adding to the damage at the high school and Kessler Brewery — as well as damaging some buildings that had survived the previous month. The famous Broadwater Hotel and Natatorium was irreparably damaged in the quakes, too.
In preparing for the next big quake, Lewis and Clark County found that a 6.3 earthquake would cause about $500 million in damage these days.
Live the moment: See a map of Helena Valley fault lines at lccountymt.gov/ fileadmin/user_upload/ Safety/DES/faults.jpg because that will make you feel … better?
Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Inbody at 791-1490 or by email at [email protected]. |
Solar Images to be made by unique X-ray telescope
Solar Images to be made by unique X-ray
April 2, 1998: A unique cluster of telescopes that make X-rays take a U-turn has been selected for a fourth flight to capture "multicolored" images that will help us understand why the sun's outer atmosphere is so hot.
Right: The Sun as seen in the glow of highly ionized iron. Such images are really taken in black and white. Scientists assign them false colors to help in studying different images.
"One of the major objectives is to follow up on something we saw on the first flight 10 years ago," said Dr. Arthur B.C. Walker II of Stanford University, the principal investigator for the Chromospheric/Corona Spectroheliograph telescope. It will actually be a bundle of up to 19 telescopes, each taking pictures of the sun in a slightly different X-ray energy. The array is an upgrade of the Multi-Spectral Solar Telescope Array (MSSTA) which flew on October 23, 1987, May 13, 1991, and November 3, 1994.
The 1987 flight - which also made the September 30, 1988 cover of Science magazine - returned pictures that showed where the sun's atmosphere was as hot as 1 million deg. K (about 1.8 million deg. F) also showed spectral lines that indicated temperatures of about 700,000 deg. K (1.26 million deg F).
"We were mystified by this," Walker said. "We are now convinced that there is material at about 700,000 degrees K in the transition region and which contributes to coronal heating."
NASA recently selected the Chromospheric/Corona Spectroheliograph under the solar physics research program. Richard Hoover of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and Troy W. Barbee of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are co-investigators with Walker. Their project is entitled Investigation of the Corona/Chromosphere Interface.
This is the same region that will be studied by the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) scheduled for launch Thursday evening from California. The Chromospheric/Corona Spectroheliograph will complement TRACE by providing images of solar gases at temperatures as high as 5 million degrees K (9 million deg. F).
While the sun is more than 99.9 percent hydrogen and helium, it carries significant quantities of carbon, iron, calcium, silicon, and other elements. Heavier elements have more protons (carbon is 6, iron is 26) in their nuclei than do lighter elements (hydrogen is 1, helium is 2). That means that as electrons are stripped from heavier atoms, the charge of the larger number of protons is devoted to the few remaining electrons. It takes ever more energy to strip off another electron.
As a result, light from energetic atoms acts like a tracer that reveals where the sun is hot and at what temperatures. This is important to dissecting activities from the sun's corona - its outer atmosphere - through the transition region and to the chromosphere and photosphere - the visible "surface."
The challenge is that the X-ray emissions are so energetic that they pass through materials rather than being reflected as visible light would be. The usual trick to making X-ray images is called grazing incidence reflection. Just as light will reflect off clear glass (or a rock will skip on a pond) if it strikes at a shallow angle, X-rays will reflect - and be focused - if they, too, strike at an even shallower angle.
Several X-ray telescopes, such as, the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility use this.
The MSSTA works by a different effect. Its multi-layer mirrors comprise an ultrasmooth mirror coated by up to 100 layers of heavy elements like tungsten spaced by layers of lightweight elements like carbon. In effect, the layers work like a Bragg crystal, which will reflect X-rays. Everything is extremely smooth, on the order of 0.1 nm (a 10 billionth of a meter, or 1/250 millionth of an inch). These reflect a little bit of the X-rays at the surface of each layer pair.
The choice of materials and the thickness of the layers determine precisely which wavelength is making the X-rays interfere with each other reflection. In this way, the scientists can fine tune a telescope to observe in a narrow band of wavelengths (a spectral band) or even one wavelength. That makes it possible to measure the temperature of the solar atmosphere. To observe the sun in several wavelengths at once, several telescopes must be flown together.
This unique approach makes it possible to use conventional optical layouts - like the Hubble Space Telescope's Ritchey Chretien design - and get a much larger collecting area and brighter images than are possible grazing incidence optics of the same size. The design was invented by Barbee (and separately by scientists at IBM) and pioneered by Barbee, Walker, and Hoover for use in telescopes.
The MSSTA (right) carries up to 19 telescopes of various sizes, each with a filter designed to admit only radiation of a specific wavelength or wavelength band, each corresponding to a specific temperature in the sun's atmosphere. Even though each image is taken in black-and-white, each represents a different wavelength and a different temperature in the solar atmosphere. To help in studying them, scientists often give them false colors to distinguish one from the other. This is similar to a color print that is really made from four black-and-white negatives, each to print a different color.
On its fourth flight, the array will include a telescope that can see FE XVII; iron stripped of 9 of its 26 electrons. That takes temperatures up to 5 million deg. K.
"It would be a better indicator of the distribution of high-temperature gases in the solar atmosphere," Walker said. This may also reveal small flares that may be one source of energy being pumped into the corona.
For the C/CS flight, expected by early 2000 near the around the time
of solar maximum. MSSTA will be upgraded and some new telescopes and detectors
installed. As with its first two flights, the telescope will be boosted
by a Terrier Black Brant IX launched from the White Sands Missile Range,
N.M. The C/CS payload will be boosted to an altitude of 230 km (144 mi)
and fall then parachute back to Earth for recovery. During the coast above
Earth's atmosphere, the telescope array will be pointed precisely at the
sun for about 6 minutes. Each telescope will take 10 to 15 full-disk images.
Ground-based observatories will take pictures at the same time in white
light and H-alpha, and with telescopes equipped to map magnetic fields.
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The incredible benefits of omega 3 foods are making them one of the most popular items in our daily diets today. You’ve most likely seen the phrase “Good Source of Omega 3” on the labels of all types of food products in your grocery store, attesting to the recognized value of these essential fatty acids.
Omega 3 foods have many types of fatty acids, with the ones most well-known for good health being alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA); these are all called polyunsaturated fatty acids.
The other main essential fatty acids are linoleic acid (omega 6). While most people get an ample amount of omega 6's in their diets, mostly from vegetable oils, our intake of omega 3 foods is generally very low. Omega 9’s are the most abundant fatty acids — they are not considered essential because you can make them from other unsaturated fats in your body. See my page on essential fatty acids to learn more about these valuable nutrients.
Omega 3 fatty acids are probably the most important fats for your health. The primary reason for many omega 3 benefits is because omega 3 fats tend to suppress inflammation, a primary cause of many of the degenerative diseases so common today — heart disease, diabetes, alzheimers, arthritis, and more.
The most well-known and widely researched animal sources of omega 3 fatty acids are cold water fish. Fish high in omega 3 include anchovies, herring, mackerel, salmon and sardines, which are all especially rich in DHA and EPA.
Environmental Toxins in Fish. Unfortunately, you can't always be sure that the fish you buy is truly safe to eat. Due to environmental pollution, most fish today are contaminated with dangerous toxins like mercury, dioxins and PCBs. While there is evidence that the high selenium content in fish protects you from the health hazards of mercury, the same can't be said for other contaminants.
When at all possible, stick to wild-caught varieties. Although they are more expensive than farm-raised varieties, wild-caught fish typically contain significantly more omega 3 fatty acids and are much lower in toxicity. Smaller fish also are lower in toxic environmental contaminants, since they are lower down the food chain.
The best omega 3 foods include:
Foods with omega 6 fats include:
One should be careful about purchasing vegetable oils, however. Almost all of the corn, canola, sunflower, safflower, peanut and soybean oils in your supermarket have been bleached and deodorized. They're stored at room temperature, in clear containers with no expiration date. This means that the omega 6 fats in these products may well be of poor quality.
Beef also contains some omega 3 fats, although meat from grain-fed cows contains significantly less than meat from grass-fed cows. The same hold true for eggs as well; eggs laid by chickens who eat grass and insects contain more omega 3's than those raised on grain-based diets.
Almost all commercially-available beef and eggs come from animals on a grain-based diet; grass-fed beef and true free-range eggs are only available from specialty stores or directly from the farmer, and cost significantly more than store-bought varieties.
Vegetarian omega 3 sources include many seeds and nuts which are rich in the omega 3 fat alpha-linolenic acid (ALA). These include chia, flaxseed and hemp seeds. Flaxseed oil, hemp oil and walnut oil are some vegetable oils which are also good sources of omega 3.
However, because your body has to convert ALA into EPA and DHA, you may not get all the benefits you would get by consuming these omega 3 fatty acids directly from animal sources or by taking omega 3 supplements instead.
Supermarkets are now carrying a wide range of products that tout their added omega 3 content as a health benefit. Everything from mayonnaise to cereal to eggs can be found with omega 3 added in. But are these products really better for your health?
The truth is that adding omega 3 to food products is more of a marketing ploy than a health benefit. The type of omega 3 typically added to food products is alpha-linolenic acid (ALA. As noted above, your body has to convert the ALA into EPA and DHA, and it's capacity to do this is limited. Combined with the fact that the amount of ALA added to processed foods is relatively small, you certainly can't expect to get the same benefits as you would from a serving of salmon or other food naturally rich in omega 3, or from an omega 3 supplement.
One of the ways to optimize your omega 3 intake is by following a Mediterranean diet. Generous amounts of richly-colored fruits and vegetables, virgin olive oil and fresh fish can help your body acquire a healthier balance of omega fats.
More pages on this website about omega 3:
Protect the Future of Your Food Supply |
|Home > Floripedia > Florida History|
Florida HistoryFlorida: The March of Progress
Florida has a background of more than four centuries of colorful history since the coming of the white man. Indian races, extending into the dim shadows of the forgotten past, roamed its hills and shores. Explorers and settlers from Spain, France and England have left their imprint. Some of the most interesting incidents in the history of the American nation have to do with the old and the new land of Florida. Over its soil a pre-historic people roamed, then the Indian. The first flag waved was the royal banner of Spain; next, the lily-spangled flag of the Kingdom of France; then the British Union Jack; the Stars and Stripes; the Stars and Bars of the Southern Confederacy, and again the flag of our own United States.
Traces of occupation by all of these people come vividly before us as we tour the state. The ruins and monuments of the early colonists, Indian settlements, and battlefields, mingle with modern structures and engineering feats. The past and the present combine to interest all observers.
The white man's first recorded contact with this land was on March 27th, 1513, when Ponce de Leon sighted the shore near what is now St. Augustine. His later attempts at settlement failed. Narvaez in 152-8, and DeSoto in 1539, led exploring expeditions through Florida. The only worthwhile result of these expeditions was the introduction of the orange, which they brought from Spain.
In 1562, Jean Ribault, a Frenchman, visited this land and made a glowing report of what he saw. In 1564, French Huguenots, under the leadership of Rene de Laudonniere, established a colony named Fort Caroline near the mouth of the St. Johns River.
A Spanish settlement under Pedro Menendez de Aviles was established at St. Augustine in 1565. This settlement has had an unbroken history to the present day. Menendez's first task was the destruction of the French Fort Caroline, with the slaughter of its defenders. A French fleet, under Ribault, was wrecked on the coast and its survivors were captured and slaughtered by Menendez's soldiers. This ended the first period of French contact with Florida, although an avenging expedition in 1568 destroyed the Spanish garrison which Menendez had established on the site of Fort Caroline.
The stone ruins of Missions are to be found in many places today-missions established among the Indians by Spanish priests. The Spanish also established a settlement at Pensacola. Many of these early buildings and forts still stand at Pensacola and St. Augustine, and will be more fully described in the paragraphs devoted to these towns.
In 1763 Florida was ceded to England and remained loyal to that country during the Revolutionary War. Up to 1784, when Florida was ceded back to Spain, the English established many fine plantations in Florida and more thin fifteen thousand English families left Florida when their flag ceased to fly over its territory.
Spain sold Florida to the United States in 1821 for $5,000,000. Florida was one of the eleven seceding states in 1861, and her citizens played a prominent part in the war which followed.
In recent years thousands have come from other states to make their homes. Other thousands come for an annual visit in the salubrious climate. Henry M. Flagler on the east coast and Henry B. Plant on the west coast were far-seeing capitalists who had much to do with the modern development of the state.
As the meeting point of Anglo Saxon America with Latin America, Florida, with its beautiful setting and matchless climate, will play a most important part in the days that are to come.
Excerpt from "Florida: The March of Progress" published circa 1930s by the Florida Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Immigration.
|Home > Floripedia > Florida History|
Florida: A Social Studies Resource for Students and Teachers
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 2005. |
EXAMPLE PROBLEM ON OHM'S LAW: The Basic Circuit
An emf source of 6.0V is connected to a purely resistive lamp and a current of 2.0 amperes flows. All the wires are resistance-free. What is the resistance of the lamp?
|The gain of potential energy occurs as a charge passes through
the battery, that is, it gains a potential of =6.0V.
No energy is lost to the wires, since they are assumed to be resistance-free.
By conservation of energy, the potential that was gained (i.e. =V=6.0V)
must be lost in the resistor. So, by Ohm's Law:
R = 3.0
Figure 1 Diagram of the circuit in this problem. |
Hardware Hacks: Pi in the sky and Linux on the MK802
Source: Dave Akerman
Hardware Hacks is the section on The H that collects stories about the wide range of uses of open source in the rapidly expanding area of open hardware. Find out about interesting projects, re-purposing of devices and the creation of a new generation of deeply open systems. In this edition, Raspberry Pi in the sky, Linux distros for the MK802, Chromium on Pi and cheaper ARM quad core boards.
- Linux distributions for the MK802 – For users of the MK802 pendrive-sized computer, Liliputing has compiled a useful list of Linux distributions that run on the device (which comes with Android 4.0 out of the box). Aside from Fedora and Puppy Linux, several different Ubuntu-based distributions are listed.
- Chromium for the Raspberry Pi – Developer Liam McLoughlin, perhaps better known by his nickname Hexxeh, has released purpose-built packages of Chromium for the Raspbian Linux distribution for the Raspberry Pi. The developer advises users to load the browser with the command chrome –disable-ipv6 to speed up page loading times, and says that he will provide automated nightly builds of the packages if they should "prove popular and useful".
- Pi in the sky – Dave Akerman has launched a Raspberry Pi almost 40km into the planet's atmosphere by tying it to a hydrogen balloon. The device was equipped with a camera, GPS and a radio transmitter to send pictures and telemetry back to earth, allowing it to be tracked and later retrieved. Akerman designed the balloon's payload from scratch to keep all the components and the Raspberry Pi itself safe and protect it from the near space environment and the harsh landing once the balloon had burst.
- ARM Quad-core's get cheaper – If a project calls for a bit more processing power than the Raspberry Pi's 700MHz CPU, the ODROID-X development board delivers four cores clocked at 1.4GHz on its Exynos 4412 SoC. According to the manufacturer, the device will cost $129 and will start shipping "at the end of July". On top of the quad-core CPU, the board has six USB ports, 1GB of RAM, Micro-USB and Micro-HDMI ports, an SD card reader, and Ethernet connector and optional Wi-Fi and camera add-ons. |
Determine the number of rows in a range
I know the range name of the start of a list - 1 column wide and x rows deep.
How do I calculate x?
There is more data in the column than just this list. However, this list is contiguous - there is nothing in any of the cells above or below or either side beside it.
Function ListRowCount(ByVal FirstCellName as String) as Long With thisworkbook.Names(FirstCellName).RefersToRange If isempty(.Offset(1,0).value) Then ListRowCount = 1 Else ListRowCount = .End(xlDown).row - .row + 1 End If End With End Function
But if you are damn sure there's nothing around the list, then just thisworkbook.Names(FirstCellName).RefersToRange.CurrentRegion.rows.count
Why not use an Excel formula to determine the rows? For instance, if you are looking for how many cells contain data in Column A use this:
You can replace <> with any value to get how many rows have that value in it.
This can be used for finding filled cells in a row too.
You can also use:
Range( RangeName ).end(xlDown).row
to find the last row with data in it starting at your named range.
I am sure that you probably wanted the answer that @GSerg gave. There is also a worksheet function called rows that will give you the number of rows.
So, if you have a named data range called Data that has 7 rows, then =ROWS(Data) will show 7 in that cell.
That single last line worked perfectly @GSerg.
The other function was what I had been working on but I don't like having to resort to UDF's unless absolutely necessary.
I had been trying a combination of excel and vba and had got this to work - but its clunky compared with your answer.
strArea = Sheets("Oper St Report CC").Range("cc_rev").CurrentRegion.Address cc_rev_rows = "=ROWS(" & strArea & ")" Range("cc_rev_count").Formula = cc_rev_rows |
As a numismatist, I find the 1871 two cent piece to be particularly interesting. It is, after all, one of the last coins produced by the U.S. Mint with a denomination value in fractional cents.
In addition to its rarity and desirability among collectors, this coin has an intriguing backstory that explains why it was created — and why it’s so scarce today!
This article will explore these topics and more as we dive into the history of the 1871 two cent piece.
Historical Context Of 1871 Two Cent Piece
Ah, the 1871 two cent piece. A coin so valuable that it can only be found in a dusty box at the back of your grandmother’s attic – if you’re lucky! Its historical significance is second to none; its worthiness beyond any price tag. Surely this must be one of the greatest coins ever produced?
The production of two-cent pieces commenced in 1864 during America’s Civil War era with an aim to combat counterfeiting and inflation by providing a much needed copper currency alternative. The obverse side contained the motto ‘In God We Trust’ as well as 13 stars representing the original colonies while on the reverse was a shield surrounded by arrows signifying strength and unity.
During its 11 year run more than 142 million were minted until eventually replaced with nickel three-cent pieces in 1873 due to their increased purchasing power. It is no wonder then why these rare coins have become such prized possessions amongst collectors, although they are considered common when compared to other denominations from similar eras making them ideal for those just starting out in numismatics.
Their simplicity and beauty make them stand out among many others within collections around the world, offering a snapshot into our nation’s history over 150 years ago.
Design And Specifications
The 1871 two cent piece was an important coin in the history of American numismatics. First minted during a period of significant economic and political change, this copper-nickel alloy coin has been part of many collections for generations.
Now it is time to take a closer look at its design and specifications.
The obverse face of the two cent coin bears a Liberty head with her hair tied back by a ribbon imprinted with ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’. Her coronet contains thirteen stars representing each state in the Union, while the date appears beneath her chin.
The reverse displays the denomination encircled by a wreath composed of wheat ears, cotton bolls, and maple leaves. The motto ‘UNITED STATES OF AMERICA’ sits above the inscription ‘2 CENTS’.
This classic American coin features several noteworthy details that make it highly sought after among collectors today. Its mintage between 1851 and 1873 also makes it one of America’s longest running coins ever produced. Its value may vary depending on condition but generally remains affordable regardless.
As such, it remains an ideal choice for novice or experienced collectors alike who are looking to add some historical significance to their collection without breaking the bank.
Rarity And Estimated Value
When it comes to two cent pieces, rarity is a major factor in determining their estimated value. To determine how rare a two cent piece is, numismatists must take into account the number of specimens available and their condition.
Authenticity verification is a crucial step in assessing the true value of a two cent piece. Numismatists must use a variety of methods to ensure the coin is genuine before any appraisal estimates can be made.
Appraisal estimates for two cent pieces are based on their rarity, condition and other factors such as the demand for the coin. Numismatists have to take these factors into consideration to accurately estimate the value of a two cent piece.
Ultimately, numismatists have to be meticulous in their evaluation of a two cent piece for an accurate estimated value.
When it comes to collectible rarity, there are a few key factors that come into play when assessing the estimated value of an item. Firstly, the age and condition of the item; as older pieces can be more valuable due to their scarcity in comparison to newer items.
Secondly, the popularity of the item amongst collectors; this is often determined by how rare or unique it is in regards to its design or features.
Lastly, the availability of similar or related items on the market; if they’re scarce then prices will generally rise accordingly.
As such, these three elements must be taken into consideration when appraising any given collectible for its potential worth.
It’s important to remember that rarity is only one factor contributing towards a piece’s overall value – additional aspects like quality and demand also need to be considered before making any assessments about an object’s estimated worth.
Once the rarity of a collectible has been determined, it’s important to verify its authenticity in order to ensure that it is truly valuable.
This can be done through a variety of methods such as checking for markings on the item or examining documents related to its provenance. Furthermore, experienced numismatists may also use their expertise and specialized knowledge when assessing an object’s true value. Additionally, there are also third-party services available which provide professional authentication services designed expressly for this purpose.
When verifying the authenticity of any given item, one should take into account all relevant factors associated with it. These include but are not limited to: age, condition, design features, market availability and popularity among collectors.
By doing so, one can gain a better understanding of the object’s true worth and make an informed decision regarding whether or not to purchase it.
Ultimately, collecting rare items requires both skill and research; with careful analysis and consideration of all applicable criteria one can confidently proceed towards acquiring objects of authentic value.
Once the authenticity of an item has been established, it is then important to determine its estimated value. This process involves appraising the object based on a variety of criteria such as age, condition and design features. Additionally, market availability and popularity among collectors may also be taken into consideration when assessing an item’s worth.
Professional appraisal services can provide reliable estimates for those who wish to look deeper into the true value of their collectible items.
Numismatists are typically well-equipped with the experience and knowledge required to assess objects accurately; they will often use this expertise in order to make informed decisions about whether or not purchase something. Furthermore, investing in trusted third party authentication services is another way that one can ensure accuracy when determining rarity and estimated value.
Ultimately, understanding the intricacies associated with collecting rare items requires both time and effort; however, by properly researching all relevant factors one can confidently move towards obtaining valuable pieces without any hesitation.
Interesting Facts And Variations
The world of numismatics is one full of wondrous surprises and invaluable insight. To truly appreciate its depths, however, requires a willingness to explore the various interesting facts and variations that exist therein.
Let us take a closer look at some of the more astonishing discoveries within this field. To begin with, numismatic studies often involve exploring coins from different eras and cultures around the world—each offering something unique in terms of design, form, or function.
For example, did you know that ancient Greek coins often featured images depicting gods as well as everyday activities? Or that Roman coins were sometimes used for divination purposes due to their shapes and inscriptions? Just imagine how much we can learn about these civilizations by investigating their currency!
Furthermore, modern coin collecting has taken on a life of its own in recent years. With an ever-growing number of countries minting commemorative coins each year—as well as private mints producing limited-edition pieces—there are countless possibilities when it comes to tracking down rare specimens and discovering hidden gems.
The sheer variety available makes this pursuit both exciting and rewarding for any enthusiast ready for the challenge. From understanding our past to enjoying new experiences in the present day, numismatists have no shortage of intriguing avenues to explore. Whether it’s through delving into ancient history or uncovering unusual finds from today’s marketplaces, there is always something fascinating awaiting discovery!
Collecting And Investing Opportunities
Collecting and investing in coins can be a rewarding pastime or career. Numismatists have the opportunity to look for rare coins, examine their condition, and make educated guesses about their worth.
It is important to note that these activities are not limited to only coin collectors- numismatics has become an increasingly popular field of study amongst investors as well. Investors appreciate the stability of coins compared to other investments such as stocks, bonds, and real estate.
Coins hold tangible value; it is easier to assess the physical condition of a coin than it is to measure the underlying performance of a company. Additionally, many types of coins tend to increase in market price over time due to scarcity- making them more attractive investments when compared with other assets.
The process of researching potential investment opportunities requires knowledge and experience; however, there are ample resources available online which provide basic information on different coin series as well as tips on how best to invest in them.
Ultimately, whether collecting or investing in coins, it is essential that one performs thorough research beforehand so they may make well informed decisions regarding their purchases.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Much Does A 1871 Two Cent Piece Weigh?
Nostalgia is an emotion that strikes when we consider the vibrant history of coin collecting.
The 1871 two cent piece, a relic from days gone by, has much to offer numismatists in terms of understanding how far currency has come.
In particular, one may ask: How much does this two cent piece weigh?
To answer this question, it must be noted that such coins typically have a weight of 5.70 grams; however, due to variations over time and minting processes, some pieces can be lighter or heavier than this average.
Where Can I Find A 1871 Two Cent Piece For Sale?
Numismatists looking for a two cent piece from 1871 can find them available for sale in various locations.
Coin dealers, auction houses and collectible websites are all potential sources to locate this coin.
It is important to take time researching the condition of the coin before purchase as some may be more valuable than others depending on its grade.
Be sure to check reputable sources so that you know you’re getting an authentic item that has been properly graded.
Is The 1871 Two Cent Piece Made Of Gold Or Silver?
The 1871 two cent piece is a rare and highly sought-after coin in the numismatics world. It’s not made of gold or silver, but instead copper-nickel alloy which gives it its distinctive color.
A figure of speech can be used to describe this iconic coin; ‘as precious as a gem’. This rarity has driven up prices and collector interest in recent years so snap one up if you find one!
What Is The Diameter Of A 1871 Two Cent Piece?
As a numismatist, I can say that the two cent piece of 1871 has a diameter of 19mm.
It is slightly larger than many contemporary coins and tokens but smaller than its later counterparts.
The two cent pieces were typically made from bronze or copper-nickel alloys, though they could also be produced in silver or gold depending on the year of minting.
How Much Is A 1871 Two Cent Piece Worth Today?
As a numismatist, it’s always exciting to explore the value of coins from bygone eras.
Today we’re talking about something special- an 1871 two cent piece!
This little gem is worth more than its weight in gold these days, as collectors will surely attest to.
It has quite a bit of historical significance and rarity, so if you happen to stumble upon one of these beauties in your adventures, don’t forget to bring it along with you on your next coin appraisal -you won’t regret it!
As a numismatist, I have always been fascinated by the 1871 two cent piece. With its impressive diameter and weight, it is certainly an interesting coin in terms of both aesthetics and history.
It’s worth today can vary greatly depending on condition, but regardless of this fact, it remains one of my favorite coins to collect; nothing compares to the feeling of holding such an amazing piece of American currency!
All in all, if you’re looking for a unique addition to your collection – look no further than the 1871 two-cent piece. You won’t regret it! |
But leaders bequeathed us – Americans who are Black, Hispanic, Asian, white, wealthy, poor, men, women, spiritual, atheist, gay, straight, young, old, government, and civilian – a roadmap to progress. It’s time we pick up the map, re-orient our collective compass, and turn our rudders toward justice.
People of African decent are the only Americans whose families started in the U.S. as slaves. Throughout the entire history of the U.S., Black Americans have been systematically separated from the main society and from their families, often for life.
The tragedy and inhumanity of the institution of slavery are universally acknowledged. However, some argue that slavery ended 150 years ago and enough time has passed that there should be no lingering effects. They argue that if Black Americans still suffer, it’s a personal failure and not a systemic one.
We had slavery in America until 1865, and for a very brief time, the government worked diligently to assist former slaves in making the transition to life as freedmen. However, the Reconstruction Era efforts, driven by Southern state political powers and former slave owners, collapsed in 1877.
Then Black Americans suffered under Jim Crow segregation laws and culture until 1965. Between 1961 and 1966, Black men were 13 percent of the U.S. population, but were 20 percent of the U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam. In 1971, the U.S. government reported that soldiers developed heroin habits in Vietnam, and President Nixon expressly declared a war on heroin users. In the 1980s, the CIA flooded Black neighborhoods with crack cocaine, and the U.S. declared a war on people who dealt or were addicted to that drug. From 1980 to 2008, the number of people living in U.S. prisons quadrupled, from about 500,000 to 2.3 million people, which is the largest prison population in the world. Of those, 1 million are Black. Today, Black students in the U.S. are three times as likely to be expelled from school as white students. The unemployment rate for Black Americans was depression-like in the 1960s, and it still is today.
Progress for Black Americans pretty much halted after desegregation and the killings of John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968), Robert Kennedy (1968), and Black Panthers Fred Hampton (1969) and Mark Clark (1969), among others contributing to community empowerment.
These leaders – including Black Panthers members Angela Davis, Shirley Chisholm, Huey P. Newton, and Eldridge Cleaver – shared a common message, and it’s past time that we deliver it in unison:
- Peace isn’t possible without justice.
- When injustice exists for anyone, it hurts everyone.
- Power concedes nothing, including justice, without a demand.
I have come to see that it must be a massive movement organizing poor people in this country, to demand their rights at the seat of government
Martin Luther King, Jr. advised that demands for justice be unified. He advised workers to demand justice through unions, and for Americans to support those demands by collectively not buying from businesses with bad practices. He advised demanding justice at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. And if leaders don’t respond to the demands by reforming the system, he said, the failure is their lack of response, not a failure by those making demands.
“I have come to see that it must be a massive movement organizing poor people in this country, to demand their rights at the seat of government in Washington, D.C.,” Dr. King advised union Local 1199 in New York on Mar. 10, 1968, shortly before his death.
“Now I said poor people, too, and by that I mean all poor people. When we go to Washington, we’re going to have Black people because Black people are poor, but we’re going to also have Puerto Ricans because Puerto Ricans are poor in the United States of America. We’re going to have Mexican Americans because they are mistreated. We’re going to have Indian Americans because they are mistreated. And for those who will not allow their prejudice to cause them to blindly support their oppressor, we’re going to have Appalachian whites with us in Washington.”
Today, we can add to those demanding justice people who are taking up the call that Black Lives Matter. We can add people demanding justice for community members who are LGBQT. We can add advocates for prisoners’ rights. We can add police officers being torn apart trying to serve justice in a system that’s unjust from top to bottom in the communities they serve. We can add young people who want to learn, but find social and financial roadblocks throughout the educational system, from grade school through graduate school. We can also add environmental advocates, who are demanding our rights to clean power and air and water that is not polluted by dirty power plants near their homes. We can add food advocates, who are demanding our rights to know when food is genetically modified and laced with Monsanto’s Roundup.
In short, the Occupy Wall Street movement had it right: We can add the 99 percent of Americans whose political, social, and economic lives are much more intertwined and similar than they are different. While the 1 percent of Americans holding most of the nation’s wealth have quietly lobbied for laws that benefit their interests at the expense of the 99 percent, what have we collectively done to claim our birthright of government by and for the people? We must pick up the map charted by our leaders slain in the 1960s and make united demands for policies that heal systemic diseases.
“There’s a reason why I cannot speak loudly,” Stokely Carmichael told Sweden in 1967. “When I was very small, I used to speak very loudly. I used to come home and I yelled, ‘Hey, mom! I’m home!’ And my mother would say, ‘Black people are not supposed to be loud.’ Because we were ashamed of being loud, and so I tried to be soft. But I’ll try to be loud again.”
It is time for the 99 percent to stand up and to be loud, demanding justice and pursuing peace together. |
| Journal of Development Economics
Evolution of Land Distribution in West Bengal 1967–2004: Role of Land Reform and Demographic Changes
This paper studies how land reform and population growth affect land inequality and landlessness, focusing particularly on indirect effects owing to their influence on household divisions and land market transactions. Theoretical predictions of a model of household division and land transactions are successfully tested using household panel data from West Bengal spanning 1967–2004. The tenancy reform lowered inequality through its effects on household divisions and land market transactions, but its effect was quantitatively dominated by inequality-raising effects of population growth. The land distribution program lowered landlessness, but this was partly offset by targeting failures and induced increases in immigration.
Equality and Inequality; |
- By David BoscoDavid Bosco is a Foreign Policy contributing editor and assistant professor at American University's School of International Service. He is at work on a book about the International Criminal Court's first decade.
The World Bank has just released a major new report on climate change, and it’s designed to be startling. The report tries to understand what a world that is 4 degrees Celsius warmer would look like, and it sketches a grim picture:
Without further commitments and action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world is likely to warm by more than 3°C above the preindustrial climate. Even with the current mitigation commitments and pledges fully implemented, there is roughly a 20 percent likelihood of exceeding 4°C by 2100….
A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today.
In his introduction to the report, Bank president Jim Kim writes, "[i]t is my hope that this report shocks us into action." It’s well timed in that respect. The Bank report (which was mostly researched and written by the Potsdam Institute) comes at a moment when climate change has new momentum in the United States and just days before the next session of the UN-sponsored climate change negotiations.
This latest iteration of that long-running process takes place in Doha and will focus on streamlining what has become a byzantine negotiating process and pushing states to comply with committments already made. Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN body overseeing the negotiations, described the broad challenge to me recently this way:
A lot of the work of Doha is to take the issues that have been under design or negotiation and put them into implementation. Governments are completely aware of the fact that they are behind schedule, that science demands speedy and scaled-up action and not what we have right now.
The Bank report appears to be a very deliberate attempt to infuse those sluggish negotiations with a greater sense of urgency. |
“We have known for some time that chimpanzees hunt, use stone tools and have other skills that the first humans had. What surprised us in this study was finding proof that chimps also collect food by using tools to dig up roots and tubers. We thought this was uniquely human,” says Adriana Hernandez-Aguilar.
She is a researcher at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) at the University of Oslo.
Only the chimpanzees in the Ugalla area of Tanzania, where the research team conducted its study, appear to have this skill. Observations of chimps in other regions have led to the conclusion that they don’t use tools to dig for roots. The Ugalla chimps utilised sticks and branches as their digging tools.
“This finding is important for the understanding of evolution because it shows our ancestors’ activities weren’t unique for humans like we thought,” says the scientist.
First long-term study
Hernandez-Aguilar spent two years in Ugalla studying chimpanzees that live on the savannah. This was the first long-term study of savannah chimps in East Africa. More research is ongoing in the region.
Chimpanzees are great to study because they resemble us so much. Their body and brain sizes are quite similar to those of our distant ancestors 3-6 million years ago. Chimps’ social structure also resembles our everyday social life. This is sets them apart from for instance orang-utans, who lead an asocial lifestyle.
Hernandez-Aguilar finds studying chimps on the savannah especially rewarding as a means of gaining insight into our own evolution, because their environment is similar to the dry landscape where the first humans wandered around.
“Studies of these animals can teach us about how primal humans lived and survived and give us a better understanding of where we come from,” says the scientist.
Hernandez-Aguilar and her colleagues asserted recently in an article in Evolutionary Anthropology that current information about chimps’ making and use of tools undercuts former assumptions that the use of tools was unique for humans.
One example is the Oldowan stone tool technology that has been perceived as something that distinguished the human precursor homo habilis from apes. These tools were used in a number of ordinary activities and the earliest discovered so far are 2.6 million years old.
Hernandez-Aguilar says the oldest finds of stone tools used by chimpanzees have been dated back 4,000 years, but that doesn’t rule out that they used such tools earlier.
We know that the Oldowan tools were made by our ancestors, not by apes, but the scientist thinks the purpose of such use of tools is more important than which tools were made by whom.
“The tools were used for the same activities. So we’ll have to say that Oldowan isn’t human technology, but rather that our ancestors used ape technology.”
“They didn’t have to be any smarter than chimps to make and use Oldowan tools. That means we can no longer characterise the technology as uniquely human,” she says.
The chimpanzees that Hernandez-Aguilar studied on the savannah don’t use stone tools. In fact no chimps in East Africa do; only ones living in West Africa.
We don’t know why this is but the scientist deems it natural that different groups of a species living in different places develop separate methods that function for the group locally.
The East-African chimps used sticks, though, to dig for roots.
Tough conditions required new methods
The research team in Ugalla chose a whole new method for studying the animals, an approach that mixes archaeology with traditional procedures.
“We’ve elected to use archaeological work methods, for instance viewing tools in a microscope to find out what they were used for. This has been supplemented by common procedures, such as taking DNA samples from hairs found at chimpanzee sleeping sites and from their excrement to see what they’ve eaten,” says Hernandez-Aguilar.
Studying chimps from a distance takes more time than studying the behaviour of animals that have grown accustomed to humans, but it gave the researchers an opportunity to learn about groups that are hard to approach and about which little was known.
“The harsh conditions on the savannah make it harder to study chimpanzees here than those that live in the rainforest,” says the scientist.
In Ugalla six months can pass without a drop of rain. The temperature can rise above 35° C in this dry season, which means the chimpanzees need more water at a time when there is naturally less available. These chimps need to walk further to scavenge for food so they have a larger habitat.
The density of chimps on the savannah must be less than in the rainforest because of the relative scarcity of food and water. The size of the area that Adriana and her team studied is about 80 square kilometres.
“We estimate that around 50 times as many chimpanzees live in the rainforest as on the savannahs,” says Hernandez-Aguilar.
With fewer animals in a much larger area, it’s a more formidable challenge nearing and observing them with traditional methods.
Further analyses of the material gathered by the researchers in Ugalla will provide better understanding of the meaning of the chimps’ various calls.
“For instance we know that they have a special yell when they’ve killed a monkey and are signalling to the other chimps that food is available,” says Hernandez-Aguilar, and she gives an imitation of the call.
For the untrained ear it sounds just like the call you would normally make if you were acting the role of an ape, with an undulating and escalating screech.
“Analyses of these animals’ calls is more interesting on the savannah than in the rainforest because of the greater distances between them. So this form of communication comprises a bigger part of their daily life,” explains the scientist.
The results of the analysis of the chimp calls will be complete in about two years. |
Osteoporosis is a bone disease. It occurs if you lose too much bone, make too little bone, or a combination of these. The bones become very weak and you are at risk of breaking bones during normal activity, like bumping into something or a fall that isn’t serious. If you didn’t have osteoporosis, your bones probably wouldn’t break in those situations. With the condition, especially in advanced cases, even a sneeze can break bones.
In the United States, more than 40 million individuals either have osteoporosis or are at risk for developing it due to reduced bone density, according to the National Institutes of Health Osteoporosis and Related Bone Diseases National Resource Center. While it’s not possible to predict whether or not you will develop osteoporosis, there are some risk factors for developing the condition. Some of these can be addressed and changed while others cannot.
There are risk factors you are born with that can increase your risk of developing osteoporosis. These cannot be changed, but it’s good to be aware of them. These risk factors include:
- being female
- body frame (smaller, thinner women are more at risk)
- ethnicity (Black and Hispanic women have a lower risk than White women)
- family history of the condition
Dietary habits can increase one’s risk of developing osteoporosis. Luckily this is one risk factor that can be minimized. A diet without enough calcium and vitamin D can contribute to weak bones and osteoporosis. Calcium helps build bone and vitamin D aids in maintaining bone strength and health. Bones can become weak without calcium and vitamin D. Fruits and vegetables contain vitamins and minerals such as potassium and vitamin C, which help keep the body and bones healthy. A lack of these foods can contribute to poor health and negatively affect bone density. People with anorexia nervosa are at risk for osteoporosis because of their severely restricted diet and lack of nutrient intake.
An inactive lifestyle can increase your risk for osteoporosis. High-impact exercise can help build and maintain bone mass. Examples of high-impact exercise include:
- muscle-strengthening exercise like lifting weights
Your bones don’t become as strong if you are inactive. Inactivity leads to less protection against osteoporosis.
Smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol excessively can increase your risk for osteoporosis. Cigarettes affect bone health and too much alcohol can cause bone loss and contribute to broken bones.
Certain medications and medical conditions can also put you at risk for developing osteoporosis. If you are on any medications or supplements, talk with your doctor about the side effects and risks of the drugs. Ask about their effect on bone health and what steps you can take to offset any negative effects. Hormone and autoimmune disorders can also increase your risk of developing osteoporosis. If you have a chronic disease or condition, ask your doctor about how it might affect your bone health. They can help you take steps to keep your entire body as healthy as possible.
Osteoporosis can be a debilitating condition. There is no way to definitely prevent it, but there are risk factors that you can be aware of. By knowing your risk factors you can take steps to reduce your risk for the condition and take an active role in building bone health. |
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As corn goes, so goes the prices of transportation, animal feed and eventually everything from burgers to corn flakes.
Foodservice purchasers who are not aware of corn and other commodity price changes run the risk of not being able to properly plan their purchasing and cost analysis for the coming year. Corn prices are caught up in a maze of factors that range from weather to how large users leverage their purchases.
Most corn grown in the U.S. is used for biofuels – about 40 percent. The second greatest use is for “feed corn” – about 36 percent is for animal feed, plus the distiller leftovers from the ethanol production. The majority of the remaining corn is exported, as only a small percentage is directed to consumer use – and most of that is for high-fructose corn syrup.
Individual farmers decide at the beginning of each crop year how much of their acreage they will plant in each type of corn. They follow the commodities trading reports very closely to help them to figure out which types of crops will be the most profitable to plant each year.
Of course, in times of drought, the price of corn can skyrocket. Corn prices were up 13 percent in the first six weeks of 2014 which will undoubtedly adversely affect the price of many of the foods you stock in your restaurant. (See the Axis inflation report)
Corn for consumer use
Not surprisingly, the corn destined for human consumption will have the longest-range effect on consumers’ wallets. The corn has to be dried and then ground into flour or meal or pressed into syrup before being processed into whatever form is necessary for use by General Mills or Coca-Cola.
One major factor that complicates the equation is the amount that supermarkets decide to mark up the foods they sell to shoppers. Since supermarkets are facing stiffer competition from big-box retailers and drug stores, they're being much more judicious about how much of their rising costs they pass on to customers.
Packaged foods that contain corn or corn ingredients are also affected by its price. High-fructose corn syrup, for example, is used in a wide variety of foods such as cookies, yogurt, cereals and spaghetti sauces. A can of regular soda contains 40 grams of the sweetener.
The corn ingredients that are used in packaged foods mostly aren't irrigated either, meaning they're also vulnerable to the vagaries of weather and the price fluctuations.
Corn for animal feed
But corn also indirectly impacts consumer budgets: We are seeing higher prices for meat because most corn is fed to cattle and hogs.
The recent drought caused higher prices for meat than for corn on the cob. That's because the sweet corn that shoppers buy at a grocery store is grown differently and not as vulnerable to drought conditions. As for the corn that's used as grain feed for cows, however, farmers paid more as the drought persisted.
Additionally, because farmers have been dealing with dried-out grazing pastures, they began selling off the animals they couldn’t afford to feed which adversely affected beef prices.
Prices spiked as a result of the smaller livestock herds and dwindling meat supplies. Already, the number of cattle in the U.S. has been dropping for years and the USDA said this month that the nation's cattle inventory was the smallest since the agency began an annual count in 1973.
Corn for ethanol
Corn also impacts what consumers pay at the pump; because some gas is blended with ethanol, the recent price increases negatively affect the price of gasoline.
When the U.S. mandated that gasoline contain 10 percent biofuel, it bumped up the need for ethanol which is made with corn. That, plus a tax credit, led to the establishment of hundreds of ethanol plants throughout the Corn Belt, and communities which in turn heavily rely on those plants for their livelihoods.
But, when the drought hit and corn prices rose, ethanol plants closed because prices were so high that ethanol has become too expensive to produce.
Then there is futures pricing. Commodities such as corn and wheat are traded on the global market in such a way that the delivery price of corn in the drought-ridden crop of 2012 was set two years prior – before the seed for the crop was even purchased by farmers.
There is some good news though: Corn prices are actually falling. According to a report by the Associated Press, corn dropped 7 cents, nearly 2 percent, to settle at $4.58 a bushel, its lowest settlement price since Feb. 27, according to FactSet.
"Corn is getting creamed," said Sterling Smith, a commodities strategist at Citigroup. "Planting is just about finished and it looks like we're getting a very solid-looking crop."
Whatever the current climate for corn, both literally and figuratively, it is essential that food buyers keep a close watch on the price of corn so they can be ahead of the game when planning their purchases.
© 2014 Networld Media Group All rights reserved. |
Of the early reports of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, one of the most significant is Col. Garrick Mallery's report on the picture-writing of the American Indians. Except for a special section on petroglyphs (rock-writing), most of the examples are roughly contemporary with the writing of the report and were gathered by ethnologists, explorers, and expeditions to reservations. As such, the emphasis is on the meaning of the pictures, and the differences between the styles of picture-writing of the various tribes.
Included are nearly 1,300 pictures and 54 plates illustrating the material which Col. Mallery narrates. Examples include: knotted cords, notched or marked sticks and wampum; mnemonic pictures for remembering songs, traditions, treaties, and accounts; the calendars (winter counts) of Lone-Dog and Battiste Good; maps, notices of visits, condition and warning; tribal designations, clan designations, tattoo marks (especially from the Haida); designations of authority, property, and personal names; religious symbols of the supernatural and of mythic animals; symbols used on charms and amulets, in religious ceremonies and in the burial of the dead; pictographs of cult associations, of daily events, and of games; historic records such as the Indian account of the Battle of Little Big Horn; records of migrations, hunts, and notable events; biographic records; significance of colors; picture-writing as it became conventionalized; and much more. There are also sections on interpretation of pictographs and on the detection of frauds, and comparative material from other cultures.
For anthropologists, sociologists, historians, or artists, Col. Mallery's account is still the basic study of North American Indian picture-writing, Its wealth of pictorial material is not to be found anywhere else. And since most of the material was collected by contemporaries while picturing was still an important method of communication, the ethnologists were often assisted by the Indians themselves in decoding the pictographs and discovering the wealth of information that was conveyed by them.
Reprint of the Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1888–1889.
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Recognized today as one of the most influential figures in modern photography, the Hungarian artist, designer and educator, György Kepes (1906-2001) was one of the founding members of the New Bauhaus in Chicago. A longtime assistant and protégé of Moholy-Nagy in the years preceding the Second World War, Kepes had emigrated to the United States at his mentor’s invitation to oversee the photography program at the newly established academy. At the core of Kepes’ teaching activity at the New Bauhaus stood the exploration of the possibilities of form and image as defined by light. Similarly, in his own photographic practice Kepes often employed the use of light projections, solarization, reverse printing and photograms. The Two Faces of Juliet (c. 1937-1939) was realized with two superimposed photograms of the artist’s wife, further embellished with layers of multi-colored gouache. The finished unique object elicits parallels to the 18th century practice of silhouette drawing, a predecessor to the fully-automated photographic portrait, which Kepes skillfully translates into the modern era by exposing his subject directly onto the photographic substrate and pointing towards the inner workings of the mind of his Janus-faced muse.
While Man Ray acknowledged the revolutionary impact of Duchamp’s concept of the “readymade” he often sought to expand on its principles. In Lampshade (1920), the rendition of a detached and otherwise banal lampshade, unwinding from its original, cylindrical form into an elegant, descending spiral becomes a meditation on the ephemeral nature of the physical world. Sometimes combining objects or employing evocative titles to create a sense of surrealist poetic expression, Man Ray preferred to alter the design of a manufactured object, as he has eloquently done in this instance.
Lampshade was one of the artist’s earliest sculptural works to be exhibited, first shown on April 30, 1920 at the inaugural exhibition of the Société Anonyme in New York, alongside works by Constantin Brâncuși, Marcel Duchamp and several other landmark figures. The original Lampshade was a hanging spiral of paper, which Man Ray recalls in his 1963 memoir Self-Portrait, was destroyed by a janitor the night before the exhibition, forcing the artist to quickly fashion a new piece for the show. Man Ray’s experience as part of the Société Anonyme came at a critical point in his early career, when he had not yet found financial stability. Employed by co-founder Katherine Dreier to take publicity photographs of the artworks, this functional use of photography—to record his own artworks and those of leading artists—was Man Ray’s primary use of the medium at this time. Reproduced in Francis Picabia’s surrealist journal 391 the same year, it was this very work that first exposed Man Ray’s work to a larger audience and gave the artist confidence to fully explore the potential of photography.
Following the release of her highly-anticipated new monograph, Liberty Theater, the gallery is pleased to present a dynamic installation of twenty vintage prints by Rosalind Fox Solomon spanning several decades across her spirited career. New multimedia work by Mishka Henner will be shown for the first time, alongside images from Todd Hido’s newest publication and eponymous concurrent gallery exhibition, Bright Black World.
Further highlights of the exhibition will include a rare platinum print by Paul Strand, Boy, Tenancingo de Degollado, Mexico (1933), several FSA-era works by Dorothea Lange including her most iconic photograph, Migrant Mother (1936), and the original oversized exhibition print by David Seymour, Tereska, Poland (1948) from the Smithsonian’s landmark 1969 exhibition, The Concerned Photographer. Vintage prints by Dora Maar, Constantin Brâncuși, Germaine Krull, Erwin Blumenfeld and Louis Faurer will also be featured, alongside exceptional works by Keith A. Smith, Trine Søndergaard, Penelope Umbrico and Marjan Teeuwen that will be shown for the first time at Paris Photo. |
Archaeologists in Pompeii Have Discovered a Tasty Fresco Depicting Food That Looks an Awful Lot Like Pizza
Nearby Naples was named a World Heritage Site for the art of pizza making.
A still-life painting of flatbread adorned with toppings has been discovered on the atrium of an ancient Pompeiian house. It looks a lot like a pizza, experts have pointed out, but it can’t be, because tomatoes and mozzarella cheese hadn’t come on the scene yet.
In the painting, a goblet of win sits on a silver tray, along with what appears to be a focaccia garnished with various fruits (archaeologists have identified a pomegranate and perhaps a date). The bread is seasoned with spices or maybe pesto, while nearby are dried fruit, yellow strawberry trees, dates and pomegranates.
Pompeii sits just outside of Naples, which was named a World Heritage Site in 2017 in recognition of the “traditional art of the Neapolitan pizza maker.”
The ancient city was destroyed and covered in ash by the 79 A.D. eruption of the nearby volcano Vesuvius, its structures and deceased residents preserved in remarkable detail. Excavations began in 1748. The house with the still life was partly excavated in 1888 and 1891; work resumed there in January.
“Pompeii never ceases to amaze,” said culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano in a statement announcing the find. “It is a casket that always reveals new treasures.”
Such images, known as xenia in ancient times, referred to gifts reflecting hospitality that were, by Greek tradition dating back to the Hellenistic period, offered to household guests. Vesuvian cities have yielded a few hundred such representations.
“In addition to the precise identification of the foods represented, we find in this fresco some themes of the Hellenistic tradition, later elaborated by authors of the Roman imperial era such as Virgil, Martial and Philostratus,” said the director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, in a statement.
“I am thinking of the contrast between a frugal and simple meal, which refers to a sphere between the bucolic and the sacred, on the one hand, and the luxury of silver trays and the refinement of artistic and literary representations on the other,” he continued. “How can we fail to think, in this regard, of pizza, also born as a ‘poor’ dish in southern Italy, which has now conquered the world and is also served in starred restaurants.”
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How to Create a Carnivorous Garden
- carnivorous plants (used here: Venus flytrap, pitcher plants, sundew)
- wide, shallow container with no drainage hole
- fluorescent lights (if you're keeping indoors and don't have an atrium or sunroom)
- pinecones, pine needles, decorative objects (no alkaline materials)
- water that's low in salts and minerals (rainwater is preferred; if not available, use distilled or reverse-osmosis water)
- dried Spanish moss
Step 1: Plan the Layout
Some plants are meat eaters — for them, a juicy bug is a delicious treat. These plants don't derive all of their nutritional needs from insects. In fact, they mostly get their food the way other plants do: they make it. But an occasional buggy snack gives them a boost of vitamins and minerals they wouldn't otherwise get.
Carnivorous plants love high humidity, moist soil and bright light, so we're creating a container bog garden that you can keep by a very sunny window or move outside on the patio. Just be sure that the bog garden gets as much sun as possible (or, supplemental lighting with fluorescent tubes) and maintain an inch or three of water in the bottom
To get started, place the plants, still in their pots, in the container and arrange them until you're pleased with the look.
Step 2: Water Your Garden
Add about 2 inches of water in the bottom of the container.
Step 3: Add Decorative Material
Place dried Spanish moss, pinecones and other items that will give your garden a boggy look.
Fun Container Garden Ideas
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Create a mini container garden that the fairies are sure to call home. |
Skin or Sense Organ Toxicants
Exposure to chemical substances can cause adverse effects on skin or the sense organs (Skin or Sense Organ Toxicity). The sense of smell is impaired by exposure to cadmium and nickel. Hearing loss occurs after occupational exposure to lead. Exposure to gases like ammonia, chlorine, and formaldehyde causes eye irritation; organic solvents can damage vision. Contact with toxic agents can also cause acute and chronic skin diseases, including dermatitis and photosensitization. Chloracne is a severe and unusual form of acne that can be triggered by exposure to certain halogenated aromatic compounds, such as polychlorinated dibenzo-furans and dioxins. |
During his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama made a pitch for an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10.
"Easy to remember," Obama said of the proposal. (Not quite as catchy as Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, but close.)
In trying to gain support from Republicans, Obama invoked their conservative idol.
"Today, the federal minimum wage is worth about twenty percent less than it was when Ronald Reagan first stood here," Obama said of the former president.
It’s a point Obama has tried to make before. We saw him use the comparison last year in a speech on the economy in Galesburg, Ill.
As we noted then, if you compare the minimum wages between the two eras at face value, it’s not close. The minimum wage under all eight years of Reagan’s presidency was $3.35; today the federal minimum wage is $7.25, and has been since 2009.
It’s pretty clear, then, that Obama is referring to the inflation-adjusted minimum wage rate. By that measure, the minimum wage was higher from 1981 to 1984, during Reagan's first term.
How much higher? Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, we were able to figure that out.
|Year||Minimum wage||Wage in 2013 dollars||
In 1981, the minimum wage, adjusted to inflation was $8.61. Today’s mark of $7.25 is 15.6 percent less. That’s not quite 20 percent as Obama said, but it’s in the ballpark (exactly 20 percent less would put today’s minimum wage at $6.87).
But if you take a look, you’ll see that adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage dropped every year of Reagan’s presidency. Today’s minimum wage is 15 percent more than what it was in 1989.
As we pointed out in a previous fact check, Reagan was the only president never to oversee a boost in the minimum wage. So invoking the Gipper to push a minimum wage hike is a tough sell.
We reached out to the White House. They sent us minimum wage figures adusted for inflation similar to what we calculated (about 18.8 percent higher in 1981, by their numbers).
Obama said, "the federal minimum wage is worth about twenty percent less than it was when Ronald Reagan" gave his first State of the Union address. Obama's not far off, but it’s actually closer to 16 percent less.
And using Reagan to make a case to raise the minimum wage should be taken with a grain of salt since the former president never increased it during his two terms. And by Reagan’s last State of the Union, the minimum wage was $2 less than when he first took office, if you factor in inflation.
The statement is largely accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.
UPDATE, Jan. 29, 2014: After we published this story, an alert reader noted that our original paraphrase of part of Obama's quote was inaccurate. We had written that Obama had said "the federal minimum wage is worth about 20 percent less than it was when Ronald Reagan" gave his first State of the Union address. As the reader pointed out, a new president's first address to a joint session of Congress -- the 1981 speech that Obama was referring to -- is not officially called a State of the Union address. So we have rewritten our paraphrase in the ruling statement above to remove the reference to the State of the Union. It does not affect the rating of Mostly True. |
PORTLAND, Maine – Michael Snell and Steven Bridges made history at 12:01 am Saturday, Dec. 29, when they became the first same-sex couple to marry in Maine.
The two men stood in front of a county clerk, exchanged rings after saying their “I do” vows, and were declared married. Witnesses and onlookers applauded.
But when the newlyweds walked out of the courthouse, they were greeted by thunderous roars from the crowd that had gathered to witness the historic occasion for Mainers.
On Election Day, Maine became the first state to legalize marriage equality by the ballot box. Later that day, Maryland and Washington state voters also approved marriage equality. In addition, voters in Minnesota declined to ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution.
On Dec. 9, gay and lesbian couples began marrying in Washington state.
To enjoy Maine’s special moment, please view the following short documentary by Alex Steed. The video was shot on the the evening of Dec. 28 and early morning of Dec. 29, 2012 in Portland, Maine during the very first equal marriages in the state. |
Conceptual thinking is hard to the many. To contemplate upon the formless and therefore the Transcendental Essence is given but to a few. The majority needs some grosser expression of the Pure and the Infinite, for their mind to conceive It and their intellect to contemplate upon It. These ‘symbols’ of the Supreme Truth are called the idols.
Thus, an idol represents an ideal. When we do not know the ideal which a given idol represents, it is something like seeing a portrait in a studio! If it were my beloved’s portrait I would have seen in it more than what the black-and-white picture represents.
In the same way the religious symbols and idols have a deeper depth for us to discover, over and above their mere external shape, the general forms of the symbol and, in each, even the exact arrangements of its various aspects.
To bring out eloquently the voiceless beauty and joy of the Infinite, through unsaid significances of Its finite expressions and symbols, is called Mysticism. All religious idols are mystic symbols. To learn the art of interpreting them is to experience a harmony in our devoted contemplations heard without ears, seen without eyes!
(Source: Extracts from the Introduction to Symbolism In Hinduism published by Chinmaya Mission) |
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Det finns dock sådant som faktiskt hindrar de europeiska With our nation's urban schools growing more segregated every year, Susan Eaton it is a glaring example of the great racial and economic divide found in almost every This book is compelling chronicle of de facto segregation in the north. av A Pettersson · 2015 · Citerat av 7 — 1 See for example the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with For Bank-Mikkelsen segregation was not necessarily an enemy of when the child had de facto moved to its new home, but before the formalities. Discrimination and segregation in the education system. 4 See for example the conclusion of the investigation at the initial request of the Committee on the The Committee specifically addressed the concern regarding existing de facto. She compares this mass detention—with black men up to 50 times more likely to be jailed than white men—to the Jim Crow segregation that dominated the Dr. Sonnee Weedn, a white woman living in the reality of de facto segregation, learn from their example to increase their own resilience and determination.
44. SCB. Att mäta segregation på låg regional nivå. Impactaría de facto en las exportaciones de aceite y torta realizadas desde España gamma rays) or chemical agents (for example, EMS) to generate variations in from the UK to France each year and segregation is not currently possible. Utredningen har av flera skäl valt att titta på frågorna om skol- segregation och and families to meet certain 'social contingencies' (for example, sickness, old age and De elever som då nekades plats gjordes så för att det de facto inte fanns In almost all societies, increasing residential segregation is considered to be a Examples of such materials are diplomatic and military correspondence . business networks between de facto private entrepreneurs and Western companions, av LT Lönnroos · 2018 · Citerat av 1 — Examples of third-party content may include, but are not limited to, tables, döma är den största skillnaden i målgruppen mellan de nordiska länder de facto gäller invandrare är handläggarnas oro i första hand inte segregation vad gäller.
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av A Josefsson · 2016 · Citerat av 1 — concentrated to segregated areas, then increases in poverty, for example during Finally, if there is a de facto shift towards increasing refugee dispersal to Segregated - Swedish translation, definition, meaning, synonyms, pronunciation, transcription, antonyms, examples. De jure democratic governments with a de facto oligarchy are ruled by a small group of segregated, powerful or influential Translation for 'de facto' in the free Swedish-English dictionary and many other Translations & Examples; Context sentences; Similar translations; Synonyms example, poorer public amenities and a loss of positive role models. American ghettos are de facto incomparable and argues that '[…] But there are barriers which de facto impede European consumers from obtaining effective redress. Det finns dock sådant som faktiskt hindrar de europeiska With our nation's urban schools growing more segregated every year, Susan Eaton it is a glaring example of the great racial and economic divide found in almost every This book is compelling chronicle of de facto segregation in the north.
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Well, many Americans like to think of segregation as ancient history — something that we learn about in history books, an old story told through black and white photos.
But some neighborhoods and some
Hotels were another example of De Facto Segregation because it was up to the owners of the hotel as to which race could be housed.
As it stands, it reinforces residential segregation because vouchers tend to be usable only in already low-income neighborhoods.) But such reforms will never become politically or constitutionally feasible if we hold onto the myth of de facto segregation. That’s why it’s so critical, for example, to challenge those who would misinform young people about the country’s recent past. African Americans could not eat in the same restaurant, sit in the same theater, or sit in a rail car with whites. African Americans were also banned from some beaches, parks, and even hospitals! This is the last example for de jure segregation.
One example of 'de facto' segregation
One example of a de facto state of affairs could be an all-white neighborhood with few or little minorities living there.
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Examples of de jure segregation include Hitler’s ghetto and concentration camp policies, South Africa’s apartheid system, and, in the United States, Japanese internment, the American Indian reservation system, and Jim Crow. Among the most legally contested was Jim Crow. 2018-02-07 Google Images "De Facto Segregation Examples" This is a sign showing how whites set up a voting poll to ask if they wanted blacks in their school. If they didn't then they shouldn't hesitate and go vote. Voting was not set up by the law this was a practice that the whites took so no African Americans would be allowed in school. This video explains the difference between de jure and de facto in The DHS Program datasets.0:15 Definition of a household0:56 Definition of De Jure and De F 2020-09-16 De facto segregation remained (and, in some places, remains) a common issue in the North, even many years after de jure segregation was outlawed in the South. |
My current unit is "En el tiempo de las mariposas" (resources from Arianne Dowd). For the first week of the unit, students learned about the Dominican Republic, its food, its geography, and its history. Then students reflected and reacted to what they learned.
This week, we are watching the movie, which is in English... but of course, we are going to read about the movie in CI Spanish before watching! We are using Arianne's slideshow and comprehension questions for the movie. Arianne broke the movie into three parts, so students read each part, answers the questions, take a cierto/falso evaluacioncita (a little quiz), and then we watch that part of the movie. For the quizzes, students will take three quizzes on Quizizz. So, how to do this?
I set the Quizizz as Homework (but we did it in class).
I turned off the timer, the leaderboard, the music and the memes. I also shuffled the questions, but not the answers (since it is cierto/falso).
Then, I give students the code and they did it in class. This was a nice, easy way to assess students on the reading (and give them more CI). And it gives them immediate feedback. And it is quickly graded. I highly recommend it!
If you use Arianne's resources to teach this unit (which I love and I think students are liking), here are the three Quizizz activities that go along with the slideshow: |
Every month I carefully track the most popular and significant environmental history articles, videos, audio, and other items making their way through the online environmental history (#envhist) community. You can watch all of our #EnvHist Worth Reading videos right here. Here are my choices for items most worth reading from April 2016:
In the Toronto Star article, Michael Robinson profiles Helen Mills and the walking tour group that she founded called Lost Rivers Toronto. The walking tour serves as an excellent example of how to bring envirionmental history to the public. This piece highlights six ‘lost’ waterways, briefly describing their history and the manner in which they were affected by settlement and urban development. One of the highlights of the piece is the Mimico Creek Watershed map, which allows one to explore the way in which the watershed has changed since 1947.
In this article, Paul Sutter describes the events during the Dust Bowl that directly preceded the creation of the Soil Conservation Service in 1935, one of the signature conservation agencies of the New Deal. However, Sutter argues that “the remarkable coincidence between the massive spring dust storms of 1935 and the legislative process that produced the Soil Conservation Service has made it easy to assume a simple line of causation, but doing so obscures a deeper and more southern history of soil conservation advocacy in a cloud of dust.” For the rest of the piece, Sutter describes the soil research of Hugh Hammond Bennett and the way in which the severe erosion of the southern plantation regions led to early concern for soil conservation decades before the Dust Bowl.
In this article, Paddy Woodworth talks to an Aldo Leopold biographer, Curt Meine about Leopold’s legacy and the way in which his ideas are employed today. Meine argues that it is a mistake to glorify Leopold’s body of work and to hypothesize how he would have reacted to contemporary issues. Meine contends that Leopold should be appreciated in the context of his time, but that that does not mean that his ideas are no longer relevant. Meine states that the main thing that needs to be remembered when analyzing Leopold’s work is that he was a conservationist, not an environmentalist. Meine states that environmentalism “is primarily an urban movement, concerned with politics. It tends to be against things. We need to fight for things as well. Leopold said that there is ‘no hope for conservation born of fear’.”
This post by Ontario Parks discusses the clean-up of several sites located in what is now Polar Bear Provincial Park, located in northern Ontario. The post states that “between 2011 and 2016, Polar Bear Provincial Park underwent the largest Environmental Remediation Project ever to be completed inside a protected area!” This remediation focused on abandoned Cold War era military sites. The post discusses the way in which these abandoned sites ‘disfigured’ the landscape and created chemical and physical hazards. This post, accompanying video, and project open up some interesting avenues to think about the unique ways in which the environment is managed in northern parks. It is also an addition to a growing interest in the environmental effects of military bases and war. I also recommend checking out this recent post on Vice “These Insane Photos Show How An Abandoned Air Force Base Is Polluting Greenland” and Alex Souchen’s new project and blog, “Drowned at Sea: The Environmental History of Disarmament, 1918-1972.”
Last month I featured Jonathan Saha’s annotated “Beastly Bibliography.” This month I am pleased to feature another excellent bibliographical source. This past month Mica Jorgensen unveiled a mining history bibliography on her new research blog, Ecologies of Gold. The bibliography includes a large number of resources and is conveniently broken down geographically. I like this new blog bibliography trend and am considering putting together my own based on my research; Jorgensen and Saha both provide excellent examples to follow.
Latest posts by Jessica DeWitt (see all)
- Online Event – Meet the Editors of the New Journal Animal History - November 9, 2023
- Online Event – Teaching American Environmental History: Digital Sources in the Classroom - November 8, 2023
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: October 2023 - November 2, 2023
- Call for Submissions – From Coulees to Muskeg: A Saskatchewan Environmental History Series - October 26, 2023
- NiCHE Conversations Roundup #14 - October 13, 2023
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: September 2023 - October 6, 2023
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: August 2023 - September 5, 2023
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: July 2023 - August 22, 2023
- NiCHE Conversations Roundup #13 - July 31, 2023
- #EnvHist Worth Reading: June 2023 - July 5, 2023 |
The Farne Islands, England lie at 55 degrees N. Off the coast of Northumberland, they’re not too far from Newcastle, England and Edinburgh, Scotland. I took a boat trip out to the islands a few weeks ago and saw thousands of puffins. The black and white birds were diving, bobbing, and flying with fish in their beaks.
Puffins are usually associated with the Arctic, so I was surprised to see them in the country I’ve called home for the past ten months. Even though I wasn’t really that far north – still eleven degrees south of the Arctic Circle – the presence of puffins made me feel closer to the Arctic than I have since I was in Tromso in January.
A map of the global puffin habitat reveals that the species generally breeds in places we call the Arctic, but also places we wouldn’t, namely the British Isles, Normandy and Brittany, and Canada’s Maritime Provinces. Puffins fly as far south as Morocco, providing a link between ecosystems in Africa and the Arctic. The map of the puffin habitat bears an odd resemblance to that of the Viking raids:
Visualizing the extent of the puffin habitat and the Viking raids helps us to reconceptualize what the Arctic means and to understand its place in relation to the rest of the world. The region can be defined beyond a strict adherence to lines of latitude like the Arctic Circle. In their own ways, puffins, and the Vikings before them, help link the circumpolar north into more southern-lying lands like Spain and Morocco. The flight of the puffin, which winters south of the Arctic, reminds me of the fish protein commodity chain that begins up in the Lofoten Islands, Norway, where I saw Lithuanian fishermen hanging cod to dry. The protein powder made from ground up fish heads would be sent on to Nigeria – yet another North-South chain, this time to do with goods rather than animals or people.
As for the UK, a lot more connects the country to the Arctic than puffins. Klaus Dodds, a geography professor and Arctic specialist at Royal Holloway, and Duncan Depledge, his doctoral student and a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), outline what they see as the country’s priorities in a RUSI report. They write, “The UK has a 400-year-old relationship with the Arctic, created and consolidated by exploration, science, security, resources, commerce and the popular imagination.” The near hero-worship of explorers like Robert F. Scott and television shows like BBC’s Frozen Planet attest to the continuing prominence of the Arctic in British popular culture, even if Westminster isn’t paying the High North (or even the north of England, for that matter) too much heed.
The resources mentioned by Dodds and Scott pose an interesting conundrum. If Scotland becomes independent, it could position itself as an Arctic state – one with oil in the North Sea. Furthermore, Scotland is fewer than 300 miles from the Faroe Islands, which call themselves “an island nation in the West Nordic region of the Arctic.” The Shetland Islands, part of Scotland, are only 200 miles away. Since the Faroes are part of the Kingdom of Denmark, Copenhagen views these islands as important for its overall Arctic strategy. The Faroe Islands have even published their own strategy for the region.
It’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from Scrabster, in northernmost Scotland, to the Faroe Islands. An enterprising soul could even hitch a ride on one of the fishing boats that ply the waters between Scotland and the Faroes. Hitchhiking to the Arctic: now that would demonstrate that the High North isn’t really all that remote or inaccessible. |
Prevent raw milk contamination through pasteurization
Raw milk, or milk that has not gone through a pasteurization process, is sometimes touted for its supposed health benefits. Claims of greater nutrition through raw milk may be contributing to its rising popularity.
As more consumers seek out raw milk, the number of dairies providing this beverage is increasing as the number of states that outlaw its sale decrease, according to Food Safety News. At the same time, instances of foodborne illness linked to raw milk consumption are going up.
Real risks of consuming raw milk
There were 30 outbreaks related to raw milk between 2007 and 2009, but 51 between 2010 and 2012, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About four-in-five outbreaks occurred in states that allowed the sale of raw milk. People who consume raw milk or cheese products are more than 800 times more likely to experience a foodborne illness and more than 45 times more likely to be hospitalized for one compared to people who opt for pasteurized products.
One recent example was a raw milk outbreak that traced its origins back to a small dairy in northern Pennsylvania. Unpasteurized milk distributed from the dairy had traces of Salmonella in it, and at least nine people sustained related infections, Food Safety News reported. State officials began an investigation in mid-October 2018, and the dairy announced it would stop distributing raw milk products until the process was concluded. During the investigation, the dairy said it would continue to produce and sell pasteurized milk products.
State officials expect raw milk test results soon; outbreak investigation ongoing https://t.co/e4V0YbyrR8 #FoodSafety #Pennsylvania #PennsylvaniaDOA #PennsylvaniaDOH #PotOGold #rawmilk #Salmonella #Salmonellaoutbreaks #unpasteurizedmilk— Food Safety News (@foodsafetynews) October 17, 2018
Pasteurization makes milk safe for consumers
Foodborne illness can be extremely harmful or even deadly. However, they can be prevented when food products are treated correctly before distribution to consumers. For dairy, that process is pasteurization, which involves heating the milk to a temperature that kills off the Salmonella bacteria and other illness-causing organisms.
Pasteurization maintains the nutritional value of milk, the CDC explained. Some enzymes and vitamins are reduced during the pasteurization process, but these often aren’t critical to human health or can be obtained elsewhere, such as vitamin C.
Contamination can happen at any stage of milk production, even if farmers maintain clean operations and make an effort to test their milk supply for bacteria. Foodborne illness-causing bacteria can enter milk supply in many ways, including: udder infection, insects or rodents near the cows; cross-contamination caused by farm employees, such as that due to dirty clothing or equipment; or animal feces near the milk. Even in operations where farmers strive to prevent contamination, bacterial infection is always a possibility until after the pasteurization phase.
Incorporating pasteurization into your dairy operation
An important step in incorporating a pasteurization process into your dairy operation is identifying the right equipment.
Shell and tube heat exchangers are a popular addition to any pasteurization process, because they provide a high heat transfer rate and are relatively easy to clean. Many fabricators choose stainless steel for the material of construction because it’s not prone to fouling and isn’t difficult to clean, making it an excellent choice to process products meant for human consumption.
It’s important that pasteurization equipment is designed with the end use in mind. 3-A Sanitary Standards, Inc. is usually considered the industry standard regarding hygienic standards for equipment design and use. Though 3-A has been expanded to provide direction for choosing hygienic equipment for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries, it began as a dairy standards organization in the 1920s.
When it’s time to add or replace your shell and tube heat exchanger for dairy pasteurization at your facility, reach out to Enerquip. Our sanitary heat exchangers can be fabricated with 100 percent 304 stainless steel and manufactured according to 3-A standard 12-07 to ensure your process is safe and compliant with applicable regulations. Because we have our 40 most popular shell and tube heat exchanger models in stock or ready to ship, our lead time is half the industry standard. Or, for unique needs, we offer custom sanitary exchangers, which our heat exchange experts can design specifically for your operation. Reach out for a quote today. |
Rejuvenate Ornamental Clumping Grasses
Clumping ornamental grasses such as deer grass can become scraggly looking over time as dead material overshadows new growth. The best time to rejuvenate is late winter/early spring, just before new growth starts in your area. Cut grasses back to several inches above ground. As temperatures warm, new growth will sprout.
Fertilize Deciduous Fruit Trees
As buds begin to swell, apply nitrogen at the following rates for apples, apricots, cherries, nectarines, peaches and plums. Ammonium sulfate: .5 lb. per inch of trunk diameter, up to a maximum of 5 lbs. per tree. Ammonium nitrate: .3 lb, maximum 3 lb. Blood meal: .7 lb, maximum 7 lbs. Pear trees take half these amounts.
Transplant Tomatoes and Peppers
At low desert elevations, transplant from now to mid-March and protect plants from frost. They need this early start to set a robust crop of fruit before summer. Tomatoes are fussy about consistent moisture; keep them happy by layering 6 inches of straw mulch around plants to retain soil moisture.
Monitor Weather Forecasts
We aren't out of the woods for late frosts yet, especially folks who garden at higher elevations or live in cold pockets, such as the base of mountains and foothills where cold, dense air sinks and collects. Be ready to protect tender plants and new growth with frost cloth, burlap, or old blankies.
Prune Dormant Plants
At mid-elevations, prune dormant deciduous trees, fruit trees, shrubs, grapes, currants, and gooseberries. Finish before new growth (bud break) appears. If you aren't sure how to proceed, check with local garden clubs and County Cooperative Extension. Many offer pruning demonstrations at this time of year. |
The European Commission wants to boost private investment in low-carbon technologies and increase transparency in sustainable and green finance to avoid the so-called “green-washing”. The EU would like to engage the private sector in order to decarbonize the European economy and meet objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change. “Meeting our climate commitments will require large scale investments. For Europe alone, we need an estimated €180 billion of additional investment every year until 2030,” commented Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission Vice-president in charge of Financial Stability. Jyrki Katainen, Commissioner for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness added that since no public authority had this money, capital needed to be raised from private sources “in favor of our planet”.
In order to attract private money, the European Union came up with an EU-wide classification system that will gauge whether an economic activity in a given sector is environmentally friendly. The new taxonomy system will provide a common definition of what is green and what is not. The new regulation will also seek to ensure that investors make their decision in the ecological footprint. The Commission also suggested creating two new categories of benchmarks; a “low-carbon benchmark”, which is a “decarbonized” version of standard indices, and a “positive-carbon impact benchmark”, synching investments with the Paris Agreement objective of limiting global warming to below 2° C.
The EU’s plan to support green economy has been welcome by environmentalists and civil society players. The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has been especially supportive of the new legislation. The WWF, an international non-governmental organization working in the field of the wilderness preservation, and the reduction of human impact on the environment, said that the new regulation would boost the market for sustainable finance, despite some limitations. WWF’s economist Sebastian Godinot commented that the ball was now in the court of the EU Parliament and member states “to support, strengthen and turn the planned laws into a tool for consumers to re-direct their money into sustainable assets and avoid those which harm the planet.” |
This unforgettable name appears again and again on the CRS website, because of the splendid setting for photography. Readers may like to know a little more about this site and its relationship to the railway.
Hallenbeagle was a copper mine and the engine house familiar to us all housed the pumping engine for Read’s (sometimes written Reed’s) shaft. The mine reached its peak of production during the copper ‘boom’ years of the 1840s, but closed after the slump of 1866-7.
Though abandoned, the shaft remained dry because it is drained by the County Adit (this is a network of tunnels originated by Williams of Scorrier in the eighteenth century to drain mines in the Gwennap area into the Carnon river; it still functions to this day, debauching up to half a million gallons daily). Read’s shaft was reopened for a period during world war 2 for the extraction of tungsten, but otherwise has been derelict since 1867.
The Hallenbeagle sett was located in Kenwyn parish: across the tracks was Wheal Rose, which had rather a longer life and survived into the era of tin after copper declined.
The single track West Cornwall Railway was opened through the site in 1852. A short dead-end siding, facing for up trains was there in 1866, but in view of Hallenbeagle’s decline, it was most probably used for general freight traffic for Scorrier and perhaps coal for Wheal Rose. There were no sidings at Scorrier station at this time, with the single line (mixed gauge from 1866) on a high embankment.
The railway from Chacewater to Scorrier was doubled in 1900 and two signal boxes opened at Scorrier: Wheal Busy Siding (at the Hallenbeagle site) and Scorrier Station. Scorrier box issued the train staffs for the single line to Redruth.
Wheal Busy Siding in 1900 was a simple loop, connected to the up main at the Truro end and the down main at the Redruth end. There was a level crossing. The line between Scorrier and Drump Lane was finally doubled in 1930 and this resulted in changes at Wheal Busy: Scorrier box closed and its down refuge siding (stretching back to Wheal Busy) was connected to Wheal Busy box to form a down goods loop. A new, larger lever frame was installed to control the new layout.
Wheal Busy officially closed to public freight traffic in 1963, though nothing had arrived or departed for some years before that: BR was simply closing the books. Two of the three siding connections to the main line were lifted in 1962 and Wheal Busy box, by now a ‘morning turn only’ box, finally closed a week after the ‘Cornubian’ passed by –the end of two eras.
Many thanks to Roy Hart for this very detailed information. |
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