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You hear a lot about antioxidants these days. Many people like to taut their benefits. But what are they? How do they work? Where do they come from? Should you be including them in your diet? What is an antioxidant? Here's the dictionary definition: That's pretty clear, right? You take antioxidants, and you won't be damaged by oxidizing agents, whatever that means. Let's dive a little deeper. According to eatwell.org, "our bodies are battlegrounds against infection and diseases. Normal body functions such as breathing or physical activity and other lifestyle habits such as smoking produce substances called free radicals that attack healthy cells. When these healthy cells are weakened, they are more susceptible to cardiovascular disease and certain types of cancers. Antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E and carotenoids, which include beta-carotene, lycopene and lutein, help protect healthy cells from damage caused by free radicals." So it seems like if we want to know more about antioxidants, we need to know more about free radicals. And we're not talking James Dean here. What is a free radical? According to rice.edu, free radicals are atoms or groups of atoms with an odd (unpaired) number of electrons and can be formed when oxygen interacts with certain molecules. Once formed these highly reactive radicals can start a chain reaction, like dominoes. Their chief danger comes from the damage they can do when they react with important cellular components such as DNA, or the cell membrane. Cells may function poorly or die if this occurs. Some free radicals arise normally during metabolism. Sometimes the body's immune system?s cells purposefully create them to neutralize viruses and bacteria. However, environmental factors such as pollution, radiation, cigarette smoke and herbicides can also spawn free radicals. Check out the graphic below for some sources of free radicals. One other surprising source of free radicals is exercise. Exercise, because it requires increased oxygen consumption, also increases the production of free radicals. So what you need to know is that free radicals come from internal and external sources and that they are unstable. Generally, free radicals attack the nearest stable molecule, "stealing" its electron. When the "attacked" molecule loses its electron, it becomes a free radical itself, beginning a chain reaction. Once the process is started, it can cascade, finally resulting in the disruption of a living cell. How do these disruptions surface in our bodies? Free radicals disturb the action of cellular DNA, which directs key cellular activities. Cells with damaged DNA stagnate and are prone to developing cancer and growths. This kind of damage also accelerates the aging process, directly causing wrinkles and age spots and severely taxing the immune system. Other diseases such as heart disease, atherosclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, inflammatory joint disease and degenerative eye disease to name a few are also attributed to free radicals (source: purenewyou.com). Antioxidants to the rescue Sounds pretty bad, all of these free radicals roaming our bodies causing cell damage and disease. How can they be stopped? That's where antioxidants come in. Antioxidants neutralize free radicals by donating one of their own electrons, ending the electron-"stealing" reaction. The antioxidant nutrients themselves don't become free radicals by donating an electron because they are stable in either form They act as scavengers, helping to prevent cell and tissue damage that could lead to cellular damage and disease (source: healthchecksystems.com). Doesn't that sound wonderful? These altruistic antioxidants donate their electrons to disable the menacing free radicals. How do I get my hands (or body) on these wonder nutrients? Sources of antioxidants The table below shows 20 common foods that are great sources of antioxidants (source: WebMD). You'll notice that we're talking about beans, fruits and vegetables in this list. Another plug for healthy eating! What about antioxidant supplements? Do I really need to eat all of this healthy food? In a word, yes. Most sources I looked at gave the same story - all of the supplements and foods that have been enriched with antioxidants can interfere with the normal metabolism of nutrients within the body, primarily because they contain a high concentration of antioxidants. So stick to natural sources for best results. Too good to be true? If you've read this far, great! Now you'll hear the deeper, darker side of the story, why free radical's aren't so bad and how antioxidants aren't always so great. I mentioned earlier that exercise produces more free radicals. For this reason, it was suggested that athletes take antioxidant supplements in the form of Vitamins C and E. But studies over the past 10 years on rats have shown that free radicals, when produced through exercise, actually had jump-started a process that over time would allow the rats’ muscles to adapt to exercise. Suppressing the production of free radicals had, they concluded, prevented the ‘‘activation of important signaling pathways’’ and altered the muscles’ ability to adapt to exercise. As a result, they wrote, ‘‘the practice of taking antioxidants’’ to ward off the presumed free-radical damage caused by exercise ‘‘may have to be re-evaluated.’’ (source: nytimes.com) These results were also verified in human tests, to the point where although supplements didn't physically harm athletes, their own antioxidant defense systems weren't as strong and their insulin response was weaker. Can free radicals be beneficial to our health? Scientists agree that overall their role is destructive, and contribute to skin wrinkling, cancer progression and neurodegenerative diseases (source: Discovery.com). But in an interesting study published in PLoS Biology, worms that were treated with a free-radical-producing herbicide actually lived longer than normal worms. What's more, when the longer-lived mutant worms were given antioxidants, the effects were reversed, and the worms had a conventional worm lifespan. The finding flies in the face of the idea that antioxidants battle the effects of aging. According to study author Siegfried Hekimi of McGill University in Montreal and others, what is emerging from this and other experiments is a view of free radicals -- or, more precisely, reactive oxygen species -- as a normal part of the body's stress response, with beneficial effects at certain (low) levels. Hekimi and others point out that part of exercise's benefit may be because exercise causes mild increases in the levels of reactive oxygen species that are actually good for us. Can antioxidants be bad for our health? While antioxidants confer many benefits, taking too much of one or a few antioxidants at once or taking high doses over a long period can lead to problems. A meta-analysis of studies done by Cleveland Clinic found that beta-carotene supplements raised the risk of mortality significantly and slightly raised the risk of cardiovascular disease (source: livestrong.com). Another well-studied antioxidant that may cause harm when consumed in excess is vitamin E. According to the Office of Dietary Supplements, doses above 150 IU per day began to raise the risk of death, with the risk rising along with the dose. Doses of 50 to 400 IU per day have been linked to an increased risk of hemorrhagic stroke. Also on a side note, when my son was going through chemotherapy for a cancerous tumor, we were told not to give him any antioxidant-containing food. Why? Because the point of chemotherapy is to destroy cells, much like free radicals do. So antioxidants would combat the effects of chemotherapy. What about reducing sources of free radicals? With all of the emphasis on how great antioxidants are in combating the evil free radicals, it seems like we are missing one key point. There are many sources of free radicals, like UV rays from the Sun, air pollution, radiation, smoking and inflammation caused by eating poorly. Although it's great to increase your intake of fruits and vegetables containing antioxidants, it is just as important to try and reduce sources of free radicals (rather than combat them with antioxidants). It is silly to smoke a cigarette and then eat some blueberries to combat its effects. So wear sunscreen, try not to breath pollution, and avoid poor food choices that cause inflammation (like sugar and refined carbohydrates). And yes, exercise. The body is an amazing machine. It has brilliant defense mechanisms against disease that can help you as long as you treat it correctly. Once again, my friends, it comes down to eating right and exercising. No pill or enhanced food can make you healthy if you're not willing to treat your body right. Subscribe to my email list: Search my Site: High Tech Weight Loss 40 Best Weight Loss Tips 5 Keys for Losing Weight Where's My Six Pack? The Spartacus Workout Are You Ready to Change? 45 Min Upper Body Blast How to Lose Fat You'll Be Glad You Started What Your Fat Looks Like Full Body Workout
Deductive vs Inductive Reasoning - Arizona State University Deductive vs. Inductive Reasoning Objectives Use a Venn diagram to determine the validity of an argument. Complete a pattern with the most likely possible next item. Explain a general rule or pattern given a word and letter pairing. Vocabulary Deductive reasoning Inductive reasoning Venn diagram Syllogism Valid/invalid argument Reasoning: the drawing of inferences or conclusions from known or assumed facts Deductive reasoning: the application of a general statement to a specific instance Inductive reasoning: the application of specific instances to form a general conclusion Classify the argument as deductive or inductive: 1. I ate a chili dog at Joes and got indigestion. 2. I ate a chili dog at Rubys and got indigestion. Therefore, chili dogs give me indigestion. Classify the argument as deductive or inductive: 1. All spicy foods give me indigestion. 2. Chili dogs are spicy food. Therefore, chili dogs give me indigestion. Syllogism: an argument composed of two statements or premises followed by a conclusion Valid: an argument if valid if the conclusion of the argument is guaranteed to follow from the premises Invalid: an argument is invalid if there is at least one instance where the conclusion does not follow from the premises Draw a Venn diagram to determine if the argument is valid or invalid: 1. No one who can afford health insurance is unemployed. 2. All politicians can afford health insurance. Therefore, no politician is unemployed. Draw a Venn diagram to determine if the argument is valid or invalid: 1. All homeless people are unemployed. 2. Roseanne is not a homeless person. Therefore, Roseanne is not unemployed. Draw a Venn diagram to determine if the argument is valid or invalid: 1. All doctors are men. 2. My mother is a doctor. Therefore, my mother is a man. What is the most likely next number: 1, 2, 4, 7, ____ 4, 7, 10, 1, _____ 31, 28, 31, 30, _____ What is the most likely next term: O, T, T, F, ____ T, F, S, S, _____ Determine the rule for assigning the letter to each word: addition difference product n e t divisor r fraction Determine the rule for assigning the letter to each word: exponen difference product quotien t t The insertion moves towards the origin. Muscle Type based on fascicle arrangement Prime mover—muscle with the major responsibility for a certain movement. Muscles that are normally trained during weight training. Antagonist—muscle that opposes or reverses a prime mover Synergist—muscle that... OPTIONS FOR NOELLE HACKETT Options Continued ESMA RISK RATING - What is yours? 2015 Finance Act- Main changes AVC Account- Pensions on line Facility PowerPoint Presentation PowerPoint Presentation The events of 2008 still fresh in our memories! 1st week in... APNIC Status Report IEPG Minneapolis, March 1999 Overview Services and Activities Membership Member services Technical services New Policy Documents APNIC Allocation/Assignment Policies RIR IPv6 Policies Recent Developments (1) Secretariat Relocation Started Feb 1998, completed Aug 1998 Capacity Building Systems, Services,... The English Martyrs ST ROBERT SOUTHWALL Accused of treason - sentenced to death. Hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn on 20th February 20, 1595. The English Martyrs ST ROBERT SOUTHWALL "The Pearl of York": Born as Margaret Middleton (York, c.... I'm going to ask you to start scribbling down your stakeholders on post it notes. You can either work on this in teams around Business Areas or Policy Areas, or you can do it individually or you can do it... Forces of Change : Destructive Forces Forces that wear away the Earth are destructive forces. "Image courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center." Astronaut Photography of Earth - Display Record ISS015-E-6477 34 Mechanical Water Erosion... Ready to download the document? Go ahead and hit continue!
The early use of antibiotics for ‘at risk’ children with influenza Children with a long-term medical condition or disability who develop flu or flu-like illness are at greater risk of becoming unwell from further infections than otherwise healthy children. The ARCHIE study wishes to see if giving the antibiotic co-amoxiclav to these children within 5 days of them becoming ill with flu or influenza-like illness might: - Help stop them from developing bacterial infections and becoming more unwell. - Help them get better more quickly. - Affect how well antibiotics work against similar infections in future. WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT Flu (influenza) and flu-like symptoms are among the commonest reasons why parents bring their children to see a general practitioner (GP) during winter. Flu vaccination helps protect children against some types (strains) of flu but other types of flu and viruses similar to flu can still cause flu or flu-like illness. The flu virus damages the linings of the throat and lungs. This makes children feel more unwell and increases the risk of bacterial infections including ear infections and pneumonia. ARCHIE is a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial. BENEFITS TO THE PATIENTS AND NHS The findings of the ARCHIE Study will help us work out whether giving antibiotics to children with a long-term medical condition or disability early on when they have flu or flu-like illness is worthwhile. Giving antibiotics to children who do not need them may change the types of bacteria we find in their nose and throat and affect how well similar antibiotics work against infections in the future. Our findings may also help the government plan how to use antibiotics during future flu epidemics or pandemics (which is when lots of people get flu all at once). Double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial whose primary objective is to determine whether treatment with a 5-day course of co-amoxiclav early during an influenza/ILI episode in at risk children reduces the likelihood of re-consultation due to clinical deterioration. ‘At risk’ children are defined as children with underlying medical conditions or risk factors associated with an increased likelihood of developing influenza/ILI-related complications. Influenza/ILI is well recognised as a predisposing factor for secondary complications, including bacterial infections, which may result in children consulting a clinician more than once during the same illness episode due to clinical deterioration. Influenza and influenza-like illness (ILI) in children create a considerable burden on NHS resources each winter. An effective, evidence-based policy on antibiotic use in at risk children during influenza season is needed to ensure that national antibiotic stockpiles are used in the most clinically appropriate and cost-effective way. This trial will determine whether early treatment with the antibiotic co-amoxiclav reduces the likelihood of re-consultation due to clinical deterioration in at risk children who present with influenza/ILI in primary care. \|Study Design:\|\|Double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial\| \|Sponsor:\|\|University of Oxford\| \|Chief Investigator:\|\|Dr Kay Wang, University of Oxford\| \|Ethical approval:\|\|EudraCT Number: 2013-002822-21\|
As in most other parts of Gaul, the villa at Loupian was a rural farm, despite the presence of residential buildings. It supplied food for the inhabitants of the estate and even those of the owner's familia, with its urban lifestyle. The other aspect of production was more speculative, focusing on large and small markets in the city, province and empire. The success of these investments to earn extra income depended on a mixed farming approach based on grains and legumes, to which were added large-scale undertakings such as wine-growing. The rational exploitation of the estate was based on a system of fallowing and light draught ploughing that was common in Antiquity. The discovery of plant and animal remains during excavations at Loupian, along with elements of farming, tools and production equipment allowed researchers to propose an identification of the primary crops, to estimate their respective share and to pinpoint their location in the vicinity of the villa. Wooded hills and uncultivated areas, where holm oak was abundant, supplied fuel for both everyday needs and crafts. The lagoon provided food for the villa as well as products that could be sold, such as oysters, which urban populations enjoyed, and salt, which was vital for ancient economies.
Parkinson's disease is a progressive disorder of the central nervous system that affects more than 1.5 million people in the U.S. The frequency of the disease is considerably higher in the over-60 age group, even though there is an alarming increase of the disease among individuals of younger age. Parkinson's disease is caused by the degeneration of the pigmented neurons in the substantia nigra, a small region in the brain stem just above the spinal cord. Cells within the substantia nigra produce and release a chemical called dopamine that controls movement and balance, and is essential to the proper functioning of the central nervous system. In Parkinson's disease, these cells degenerate and, therefore, can no longer produce adequate dopamine. When this occurs, neurons elsewhere in the brain are no longer well regulated and do not behave in a normal manner. Parkinson's disease causes motor (movement) and nonmotor symptoms. Clinically, the disease is characterized by a decrease in spontaneous movements, gait difficulty, postural instability, rigidity and tremor. Nonmotor symptoms include diminished sense of smell, low voice volume, painful foot cramps, sleep disturbance, and depression. While there are no treatments currently that conclusively slow the disease, there are a large number of drugs available to treat symptoms, as well as several forms of surgery and numerous nonpharmacological (non-drug) approaches. Administration of the drug Levodopa has been the standard treatment for Parkinson's disease. American Parkinson Disease Association: The American Parkinson Disease Association, Inc., founded in 1961, has sought to "Ease the Burden and Find the Cure" for this disease through research, patient and family support, and education. Its education program provides information and resources to individuals with Parkinson's disease, their families, friends, doctors and other medical professionals, and enhances public education and awareness of the disease. The association sponsors 65 chapters and more than 250 affiliated support groups, which provide education, counseling, assistance and referrals throughout the U.S.
What is the neural tube? The neural tube is a tube-shaped structure that forms during early pregnancy. The neural tube encloses your baby’s spinal cord and brain. The neural tube usually closes 15 to 28 days after conception, often before a woman even knows that she’s pregnant. Failure of the neural tube to close along its entire length leads to a neural tube defect at the open location. What are neural tube defects? Neural tube defects occur because of failure of the neural tube to fully fuse. This leads to damage and poor formation of the baby’s spinal cord and brain. A baby born with a neural tube defect usually has 1 of 3 problems: - Anencephaly is the absence of a major part of the brain, skull and scalp. - Encephalocele is a protrusion (bulging) of brain tissue and/or its covering membranes through a defect in the skull. - Spina bifida is when the vertebrae (bones of the spine) that cover the spinal cord have one or more openings. This causes exposure and/or protrusion of nerve tissue and its coverings. People with spina bifida have various degrees of nerve damage. What causes neural tube defects? The causes of neural tube defects are uncertain. Neural tube defects are most likely caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Factors that increase the risk of your baby developing a neural tube defect include not enough folic acid before and during the first 3 months of pregnancy, the use of certain medicines (for example, some epilepsy medications), maternal diabetes and genetic factors. Can neural tube defects be prevented? The risk of having a baby with a neural tube defect can be reduced significantly. Ensuring you get enough folic acid while you are pregnant is the best way to prevent a neural tube defect in your baby. In fact, taking folic acid supplements can reduce the risk of neural tube defects in your baby by up to 70%. Folic acid (also known as folate or vitamin B9) is in dark green vegetables, some fruits and legumes. Since 2009, it has become mandatory in Australia for all bread making flour to be fortified with folic acid. It is recommended that all women of childbearing age get at least 0.4mg of folic acid per day. If you are planning a pregnancy, it is recommended that you take a folic acid supplement of 0.4mg at least 1 month before and 3 months after conception. If you are at increased risk of having a baby with a neural tube defect (for example, if there is a history of neural tube defect in your family), a higher daily dose of 5mg is recommended. You can get folic acid supplements over the counter at your local pharmacy. How are neural tube defects diagnosed? Neural tube defects can be diagnosed during your pregnancy. In the second trimester of your pregnancy, you can do a prenatal screening blood test called the second-trimester maternal serum screening test. This test helps to identify women who may have an increased risk of having a baby with neural tube defects. On its own, this test cannot diagnose neural tube defects. It gives an estimate of the chance that a pregnancy may be affected by such condition. The test may be performed between weeks 14 and 20 of your pregnancy. If a high risk screening result is found on this test or a during routine ultrasound, your doctor may offer the option to have diagnostic testing. An ultrasound is often used to track the growth and development of your baby during pregnancy. Most cases of neural tube defects can be diagnosed by a doctor who specialises in fetal ultrasound using ultrasound between weeks 18 and 20 of pregnancy. Women with an increased risk of having a baby with neural tube defects may be offered a vaginal ultrasound at 11 weeks of pregnancy. What will happen if my baby has a neural tube defect? Who can I discuss test results with? If your baby is diagnosed with a neural tube defect during pregnancy, you and your partner will be referred to a specialised medical team for further assessment, information and counselling. You will meet with doctors and other health professionals who specialise in pregnancies affected by physical conditions such as this. They can explain to you the likely medical outcomes and treatment options available for your baby. You and your partner may wish to discuss with the medical team whether to continue with your pregnancy or not. Your healthcare team are there to support you and provide relevant information to help you make this very personal decision. Speak to a maternal child health nurse Call Pregnancy, Birth and Baby to speak to a maternal child health nurse on 1800 882 436 or video call. Available 7am to midnight (AET), 7 days a week. Learn more here about the development and quality assurance of healthdirect content. Last reviewed: June 2022
The renaissance, the reformation and the in reference to specific examples of painting, sculpture and compare and contrast renaissance art in italy. How do medieval and renaissance art differ a: in contrast, the renaissance period emphasized secularism michelangelo was an italian painter,. Renaissance art and architecture, painting, means rebirth and is the french translation of the italian rinascita a early renaissance sculpture. Renaissance art lesson plans and pupils focus on the beginning of the northern renaissance, art, they will compare and contrast the renaissance to. Painters in the renaissance employed several different techniques to create works here are a few of the most important techniques and materials that were available to them. Italian renaissance art masters to be found in many centers and in all the major fields painting, sculpture, survey of northern italian painting,. Â northern vs southern renaissance the northern difference between orthern and southern difference-between-orthern-and-southern-renaissance. Baroque art vs renaissance art is one of the most interesting subjects to discuss during history lessons aside from showcasing artistic talent and creativity,. Start studying art history ch 18 of an impact on northern european architecture and sculpture in compare and contrast the renaissance in northern. Renaissance sculpture in bronze and and supreme artistry which saw him imprisoned for looting and, by contrast, finnan, italian-renaissance-art. Suggested student objectives swbat compare and contrast italian renissance and the development of humanist ideas in northern europe describe major achievements in literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture in the 16th century europe. Sample essay exam essay i did northern renaissance and humanrightsdefenceorg/indexphp/compare-and-contrast-essay-introduction italian renaissance art.Compare and contrast italian renaissance painting and sculpture to the northern renaissance painting and sculpture. It also focuses on the glorious works of painting, sculpture, compare and contrast the arts of the italian renaissance, northern renaissance art and. Two salient examples of this is to compare famous italian renaissance’s the northern renaissance painting is a both northern and italian renaissance,. Renaissance (1400-1520) mannerism oblique, emphasizes on contrast and depth, bernini's painterly sculpture. Information and analysis of leonardo da vinci's masterpiece portrait of the italian renaissance, the mona lisa contrast between renaissance painting sculpture. Italian renaissance art's affect on today's culture art renaissance italy compare contrast of drawing accompanied by sculpture, painting and. Venetian painting in the early renaissance greater contact with northern europe now introduced them to the new technology of oil painting, italian artists. This was in sharp contrast to the rest into a history of italian painting, sculpture and of renaissance painting in northern italy a. Compare and contrast renaissance and reformation compare and contrast the italian renaissance with the northern renaissance. The northern renaissance is the renaissance in northern europe before 1450 italian renaissance humanism northern renaissance painting has the sculpture. The northern renaissance: list of artists and index to where their art can be viewed at art museums worldwide. Northern renaissance art was influenced more by religious typically northern in his approach to painting, the lessons of the italian renaissance. Renaissance art in italy (chapter 16) than the italian renaissance technique and style in northern renaissance art artist: van eyck. Italian renaissance art effects of the renaissance on painting and sculpture in northern europe, the renaissance was characterized by. Italian vs northern renaissance : italian renaissance: northern renaissance: subject matter: classical mythology, religious scenes.Download
Over the last two hundred years, we have altered our rivers irreversibly. We have directed water away from rivers and built thousands of dams, weirs and pumps on them. We have turned their natural flow cycles upside down, sending lots of cold water through their channels in summer and cutting off winter floods. For river inhabitants, it’s as if they have already experienced a hundred years of climate change. The truth is, there’s little chance of Australian rivers returning to their original flows. We can however make sure that our rivers have the water they need to reach and maintain ecological health. More than just water in rivers An environmental flow regime is not simply the amount of water that flows through a river system. It’s the whole pattern of flows – from how long it lasts, to how frequently it flows and how large it is. Environmental flows are vital to supporting the river’s ecological processes. High flows provide triggers for fish breeding and supply water for fish passage, so that they are able to move up and down rivers to appropriate habitat. They also keep estuaries open and provide recreational opportunities. Low flows in summer maintain fish refuges and connect habitats. Spring floods regenerate wetlands and floodplains and replenish the river channel. Environmental flows also impact on the shape of our rivers and affect the condition of wildlife habitat. They enable pools and billabongs to be linked to channels. They flood wetlands and maintain their ecosystem function. Without environmental flows, water quality can suffer. While environmental flows are vital for a healthy river environment, it’s important to remember two things: - The environmental flow regimes recommended by scientists are usually the bare minimum the river needs to remain healthy. Optimum environmental flows are generally much higher and do not come under consideration. - An environmental flow is only one part of a bigger picture. The total riverine environment, including riparian vegetation, instream habitat, salinity, water quality and other issues such as climate change, are important factors that impact on our rivers. Our environment needed a voice Our work in healthy rivers began with a recognition that the rivers in our state were under threat. We knew that someone needed to speak up for water for rivers. We became that voice. And we’re campaigning for formal flow entitlements for our rivers and streams. Returning water to the environment – how should we do it? Environmental Flows: Murray Darling, Murray Darling Basin Commission. Take me there
Stanislaus II, 1732–98, last king of Poland (1764–95). He was born Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. His mother was a member of the powerful Czartoryski family, which furthered Stanislaus's career. He was (1756–58) Polish ambassador to St. Petersburg, where he became a lover of Czarina Catherine II. Catherine, with Frederick II of Prussia, secured Stanislaus's election to the Polish throne after the death of Augustus III. Russian influence thus became paramount in Poland; the Russian ambassador at Warsaw virtually ruled the land. In 1768 anti-Russian members of the Polish nobility united (see Bar, Confederation of) and in 1770 declared Stanislaus deposed. The rebellion was crushed by the Russians, and in 1772, Russia, Prussia, and Austria took vast territories from Poland in the first Polish partition (see Poland, partitions of). Although Stanislaus largely owed his throne to foreign powers, he sincerely sought to bulwark the decaying Polish state by internal reforms. In 1773 a national commission began the complete reorganization of Polish education. In 1791 the diet adopted the May Constitution, which abolished the liberum veto, a procedure that enabled a deputy to dissolve the diet and annul its previous decisions; strengthened the central administration; and opened public offices to the burgher class. The peasants' lot was ameliorated; serfdom, however, was not abolished. The throne, after the death of Stanislaus, was to be hereditary in the electoral branch of the house of Saxony. Russia, seeing its hold on Poland threatened, fostered the creation (1792) of the Confederation of Targovica, which sought to restore the old constitution. Russian troops, soon joined by Prussian forces, again invaded Poland. Stanislaus halted military resistance and, seeking a reconciliation with Russia, joined the Confederation of Targovica. The second Polish partition (1793) was the result. It left a truncated kingdom and made Stanislaus a vassal of Russia. The national uprising of 1794, led by Kosciusko, was defeated by Russian and Prussian troops, and in 1795 the third partition completed the liquidation of Poland. Stanislaus, who had taken no firm stand in 1794, abdicated at Grodno and went to live in Russia. Although weak in politics, he was a generous patron of art, science, and—especially—literature. See study by A. N. Bain (1909, repr. 1970).
A short report and a long report are two main forms of report categorization based on the length and procedure of the report. The mean of any report, whether long or short is to be clear so that the information that is projected to be accepted on is easily understood. Difference between Short and long reports A short report is generally called an informal report while a long report is usually referred to as a formal report. Long reports present a range and an in-depth view of a problem or idea. It also requires lots of studies and is much more widespread. For a short report, it is suitable to write it in a letter or memo format, but for a long report, it must be written in a very prearranged style. Although short and long reports are common in many respects, still some differences exist between them. Some of their differences are highlighted below: - Need for introductory elements: Short reports need a little introductory element - Dominance of order: Usually shorter reports begin directly with conclusions and recommendations. - Writing style: the Writing style is Rat personal in than reports - Need for Coherence plan: Coherence plan is less important in short report. - Personal Relation: In short report personal relationship may exist between the writer and reader. - The degree of formality: Short reports are informal in nature. - Nature of problem: It is written for routine and recurring problems. - Length: Short report writing is usually completed in a page or two. As the name implies, a short report is very short in length. - Reader: A short report is regularly written for someone within’ the organization. It is used when the reader’s time is very limited and the full feature of the subject is not needed. - Writing: Short reports follow deductive writing styles. It highlights facts and particular recommendations. It avoids analysis and inclusion of underneath information. - Need for introductory elements: Ling reports contain some introductory elements in sequences. - The dominance of order: Long report begins with prefatory contents highlighting the problem statement, objectives, scope, methods followed, etc. - Writing style: In a long report, the writing style is formal and impersonal. - Need for Coherence plan: Well-designed coherence plan is very important. - Personal Relation: Personal relationship is unlikely to exist between the writer and reader. - The degree of formality: Long reports are usually formal in nature. - Nature of problem: A Long report is suitable for Complex and non-recurring problems. - Length: A long report is not at all possible to be completed in a page or two. A long report usually includes some particular pages (e.g. prefatory page) that do not appear in short reports. - Reader: A long report is written for someone within the organization or outside the organization. - Writing: A long report on the other hand, after analyzing and interpreting the draws conclusion and makes recommendations. Short reports being informal do not necessitate comprehensive preparation and enclose varieties of formats. A long report being formal needs careful planning before it is written because preparation focuses on your reader(s).
The first stamp The emergence of a stamp The payment of postal services in the general public was relatively complicated at the beginning. The payment was purchased somewhere by recipient, elsewhere by sender or else both half. The problem was also in determining the amount. It depended on the weight of the shipment, the distance of the addressee and the number of boundaries that had consignment exceed. In England the fees were paied in half and businesses and merchants complained about the slowness and excessive amount of mail. Thus they began to write messages for multiple destinations on one sheet of paper on which the addressee cut off communication, which belonged to him, and the rest transmited to the other recipient. It was because they had to pay for every single sheet of paper, therefore the envelope and also the letter embedded in it. This is also the reason why the use of envelopes was rising very slowly. Therefore the illegal transport services was created in industrialized and populated areas. The first attempts to pay postage in advance were mostly unsuccessful. For the first ancestor of a stickable stamps can be considered so called "Billet de port paye". It was acknowledgment of payment a postage, which was fastened to the letter before throwing it to the mailbox. Renouard de Villayer introduced it in Paris between 1653 and 1660. It was possible to attach this paid acknowledgemet to the letter blank, it was a sort of letter-paid response. In 1680 Robert Murray founded a private city post office in London, which had a single postage (one penny) for shipments weighing up to one pound (454 g) in the territory of United Kingdom. It was called "penny post". William Dockwra took the introduction of it. He introduced a special triangular stamp, showing that the consignment was paid in advance. The first experiments of stamps It is known several attempts to introduce postage stamps (in Sweden 1823, in the Austrian province of Lombardy-Illyrian 1835), but so far unsuccessful. Former rural teacher Rowlandd Hill, later the general postmaster of Great Britain, found himself on one of his journeys in a small Irish town and noticed that a postman had delivered a letter to a young girl. This girl sadly turned this letter from her groom in hands and then gave it back to the postman. Hill wanted to give her a shilling to pay for postage, but the girl thanking refused his help. Then she confided him that she learned all about her groom from signs on the envelope without having to pay for shipping. This incident allegedly led Hill to the idea of postal reformation. On the 6th of January in 1837 Hill issued a pamphlet entitled "Postal reformation: its importance and feasibility" .A fee of one penny for a letter weighing up to 0.5 ounce (about 14 g) regardless distance, where the letter conveys, was suggested there (therefore it was a rapid reduction of postage in the UK). This fee shall be levied from the sender using pieces of paper as large as it could be stamped by postmark and bearing a gum on the back for sticking it throug moistening to the letter. This is the oldest description of the stamp, which was called mailing label (Post Office Label). After many meetings and debates Hill's proposal was presented to Queen Victoria for signature and on the 10th of January 1840 the reformation entered into force. The first stamp According to Hill's view, it was necessary to print pieces of paper with strong drawing, whose forgery would be as difficult as banknotes. The newspaper "Times" announced a competition for the best design of a stamp. This competition has brought several hundred proposals, but the result does not satisfy neither the jury nor the Hill. Finally, the model for the black onepenny stamp has become a medal with a portrait of Queen Victoria, whose creator was William Wyona. Grafik copied the Queen's portrait for engravers of the first stamps, which were Charles and Frederic Heath. Print tasked a London firm Perkins, Bacon and Petch, which was engaged in printing of securities. At that time it was used the most widely used method - steelprinting from engraving. The printer had to overcome a number of difficulties (forms of printing, paper, paint and coating gum on paper). The black onepenny stamp went on sale on the 1st of May 1840 (however officially it was not given in circulation until May 6) and a journal entry of Rowland Hill from the first day in May was: I got up at eight in the morning. The first stamps were issued today in London for the population. Fearful of confusion at the post office! A few days later it was put up for sale a twopenny blue stamp, whose printing plate was made directly from the original plate onepenny stamp. The stamps were issued in sheets of 240 stamps (20 horizontal rows of 12 stamps), which thus became one pound. The signs have not mentioned name of the issuing state. Stamps weren't serrated and paper, on which they were printed, was provided by transparencies in the form of small crown. The Queen ordered that her portrait on stamps can't be change, and so until 1900 Queen Victoria didn't aged on these stamps. The exceptions were some stamps of self-governing colonies (Canada, Newfoundland and New South Wales), issued at the end of the 90s of the 19th century, where the queen was depicted as an old woman with a widow's veil. The first issue of stamps is also related to the emergence of one of the greatest philatelic rarities. The first stamps were sent on time to all post offices in England, and so few of them received also the postmaster in Bath. Either from ignorance or negligence he stuck the first stamp from the sheet to the letter already on the 2nd of May (so before the official release), stamped it and sent. The letter is preserved. 05. 08. 2014
Synonymy is the semantic relation of sameness . When two words have the same meaning s, we say that they are synonymous . While this is true, simply defining synonymy as sameness is rather unenlightening. Many linguist s prefer instead to define it as being "words whose similarities are greater than their differences". While this is a much looser definition, it serves to highlight the fact that it is the difference s in similar words that makes them interesting. How different can two words be and still be synonymous? Are there types of difference that break synonymy? Are there different kinds of synonymous pairings? In general, we can break synonymy down into three categories, varying by degree. - Absolute Synonymy Two words are defined as being absolutely synonymous if they are are equinormal for all contexts. This means that for every context where Word A is perfectly acceptable, Word B is as well. Similarly, whenever Word A seems a bit strange or out of place, Word B must be equally out of place. In practice, almost no such pairs exist in normal language. Here are some examples that highlight the difficulty in finding words which are absolutely synonymous: Little Billy was so brave at the dentist's today. Little Billy was so courageous at the dentist's today. She was quite calm just a few minutes ago. She was quite placid just a few minutes ago. Inevitably it seems, we can find contexts where one of the words seems slightly inappropriate or slightly out of place, though JudyT points out that furze and gorse may be asbolutely synonymous. In general, Absolute Synonymy is only really useful as a conceptual reference point. - Propositional Synonymy Two words are propositionally synonymous if they can be used in any truth functional expression and not change the value of the sentence. Sally took the can from the box. Sally took the tin from the box. Alex plays the violin. Alex plays the fiddle. In a sentence like "Alex plays the fiddle in the orchestra" the use of 'fiddle' (a word which in this context typically is only used by professionals) preserves the truth value for the sentence and so is appropriate for propositional synonymy. Differences in propositional synonymy typically are either of style, field of discourse, or in expressive meaning. In "the patient broke his shin" and "the patient broke his fibula", the difference comes from the field of discourse. Essentially every synonymous word pairing that is neither of the two above. While the distinction between propositional synonymy and near synonymy is clear at least in theory, the line between near synonymy and non-synonymy is very difficult to draw formally. Fortunately, speakers seem to know intuitively whether terms are synonymous, even though we cannot formulate a specific definition. See also: Meronymy, Hyponymy. Cruse, Alan, Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000. Thanks to JudyT for setting me straight about a few things!
My review of the John Quincy Adams diaries generated some discussion of Adams’ characterization of the Three-Fifths Clause and his bold predictions about the direction the slavery struggle would take. Before responding to those welcome inquiries, it might be best to review the clause itself, since it is so often misunderstood. The persistent canard that the original Constitution regarded blacks as only “three-fifths human” must be refuted with the same persistence. A look at the text clears up the worst of the misconceptions. The clause sets the rule for representation in the House, basing it upon a formula (the “federal ratio”) for calculating the respective populations of the states. The first thing to note is that all those counted are referred to as “persons.” However, “free Persons” and “all other Persons” (that is, slaves) are not tallied equally. Free persons are counted without regard to sex, age, race, or class. Women and men, girls and boys, blacks and whites, whether indentured servants or not, are counted in full. According to the first census of 1790, 8 percent of the black population were free, a percentage that slowly ticked up to 10 percent by 1860. All these free black persons figured in the rule of representation on the same terms as whites. The discrimination made by the text is not race-based but condition-based. Of course, it is true that by this point in the nation’s history, all slaves were black—or at least they were so called, regardless of the actual degree of (involuntary) race mixing—even if not all blacks were slaves. The real question, then, becomes: why were black slaves discounted by two-fifths? Here, a moment’s reflection on the strategies of the pro-and anti-slavery delegates to the Constitutional Convention provides the answer. Which group wanted slaves to count in full? Pro-slavery delegates wanted slaves to be fully counted since they wanted to boost their pro-slavery contingent in Congress. Those delegates who were most anti-slavery held that slaves should not be counted at all in the rule of representation. It mocked the very principle of representation to think that the human chattels of the slaveholders should be used to place more slaveholders in government. The battle between these positions (which involved other permutations about the role of wealth and the respective productivity of free and slave labor) yielded the compromise of counting slaves fractionally. Paul Seaton brought up Robert Goldwin’s fine 1971 essay, “Why Blacks, Women, and Jews Are Not Mentioned in the Constitution.” In showing that “the three-fifths clause had nothing at all to do with measuring the human worth of blacks” but was instead solely about “voting power in Congress,” Goldwin spelled out the concrete effects of the compromise. If slaves had been wholly excluded from the count, as anti-slavery forces wanted, the slave states would have had 41 percent of the seats in the House. If slaves had been counted on a par with free inhabitants, as the pro-slavery forces wanted, the slave states would have been at 50 percent. The Three-Fifths Compromise put them at 47 percent. The conclusion drawn by Goldwin was that the resulting Southern influence was “not negligible, but still a minority likely to be outvoted on slavery issues.” In view of these statistics, Paul wonders whether Adams was incorrect in claiming that “this slave representation has governed the Union.” After all, the other side, led by John C. Calhoun, complained just as bitterly about a growing Northern ascendency. Keep in mind that, since the apportionment of seats in the House followed the census returns, there was nothing fixed or guaranteed about the relative weight of North and South other than the rule for tallying up the population. And even that could be amended. The legislature of Massachusetts in fact made three attempts (in 1804, 1815, and 1843) to circulate a proposed constitutional amendment that would have based representation solely on free inhabitants. It was roundly rejected by the other states. At the time of the Founding, it was expected that population growth would occur quickly in the South and Southwest. As luck (or the natural superiority of free labor) would have it, the North and Northwest expanded more rapidly, with the result that, even with the Three-Fifths Clause, the House of Representatives was generally the least pro-slavery part of the federal government. Measures like the 1819 Tallmadge Amendment (excluding slavery from Missouri) and the 1846 Wilmot Proviso (banning slavery in all the territory gained from Mexico) passed the House, but never got through the Senate (where a rough equality between free and slaves states prevailed). Nonetheless, the effects of the slave bonus were felt. As Abraham Lincoln pointed out, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was carried by those 20 additional slave-state representatives in the House. His Peoria speech showed in mathematical detail the manifest unfairness by which every white man in South Carolina had double the voting power of every white man in the North. Maine, with more than twice as many free inhabitants as South Carolina, yet had exactly the same number of House members. Moreover, the institutional effects of the Three-Fifths Clause were not limited to that body, but extended to the Electoral College, and thus spread throughout the executive and judicial branches (through the President’s appointment power). By some calculations, it was the bounty of the slave representation that secured Jefferson’s election in 1800, with profound and perhaps incalculable consequences. Certainly, it is true that, over time, the federal system skewed slaveward. Just as pernicious was that some of the Southern states adopted the three-fifths rule for their state legislatures. (Louisiana went further, counting slaves in full.) Slave populations were often distributed very unevenly across counties—think of the situation in Virginia, with slave-dense plantations in the east and almost no slaves in the west (today’s West Virginia). As a result, non-slaveholding “poor” whites, despite their majority status within these states, lost political power to the oligarchic minority of slaveholders. Yet, when Adams traces so many rippling, ill effects to the Three-Fifths Clause, his argument is not exclusively numerical. Perhaps more fundamentally, it is psychological. According to Adams, slavery “taints the very sources of moral principle,” perverting both reason and sentiment. The slaveholders display “pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom. . . . They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee’s manners, because he has no habits of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs.” The Three-Fifths Clause compounds this tyrannical tendency by giving official recognition to the master’s arrogation: “masters are privileged with nearly a double share of representation.” For Adams, the Bible foretold the result: “Benjamin portioned above his brethren has ravined as a wolf. In the morning he has devoured the prey, and at night he has divided the spoil.” Thus Missouri, after gaining statehood in 1820 with slavery intact, immediately grasped for more by drafting a new state constitution that banned free blacks from the state—a measure “directly repugnant to the rights reserved to every citizen of the Union in the Constitution of the United States.” In his diary entry for November 29, 1820, Adams argued that Massachusetts would be justified in retaliating by declaring the white citizens of Missouri “aliens within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, not entitled to claim or enjoy within the same any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States.” Massachusetts might also refuse to return fugitive slaves to Missouri claimants. “All which I would do,” Adams says, “not to violate, but to redeem from violation, the Constitution of the United States.” If that article of the Missouri constitution were permitted to stand, it would change the terms of the federal compact—change its terms by robbing thousands of citizens of their rights—and what citizens, the poor, the unfortunate, the helpless, already cursed by the mere color of their skin, already doomed . . . to drudge in the lowest offices of society . . . this barbarous article deprives them of the little remnant of right yet left them—their rights as citizens and as men. The habit of domestic despotism was spilling over into the public sphere: “The slave-drivers, as usual, whenever this topic is brought up, bluster and bully, talk of the white slaves of the Eastern States, and the dissolution of the Union, and oceans of blood; and the Northern men, as usual, pocket all this hectoring, sit down in quiet, and submit to the slave-scourging republicanism of the planters.” Because of his own fears for the Union, Adams came around to favoring the Missouri compromise, even though it wasn’t a true compromise since “the serviles have the substance and the liberals the shadow.” But he worried about that choice, confessing to his diary that it might have been “a wiser as well as a bolder course [for the free states] to have persisted in the restriction upon Missouri.” If the conflict were indeed irrepressible, then time only allowed the disorder to grow. Fred Baumann inquired as to the details of Adams’ prophecy. If the Union fell apart, did he expect slavery to remain intact in a separate Southern confederation? In a number of entries, Adams sketched his vision of the likeliest scenario. Never did he think an amicable divorce between the free and slave states was possible. Dissolution would bring civil war (between the sections) and servile war (slave insurrections and race war in the South—to see why, imagine what would happen once an alliance of free states refused to return fugitive slaves: widespread desertions by slaves, leading to much harsher treatment, triggering slave rebellions). Adams was convinced that the death of slavery would follow. While fully granting that under normal circumstances the federal government had no authority over slavery in the existing slave states, Adams also hypothesized that in time of civil or servile war, slaves could be freed by federal action on grounds of military necessity. Here is another visionary passage, not as famous as the one that recounts his conversation with John C. Calhoun, but equally spine-tingling in its accuracy: If slavery be the destined sword in the hand of the destroying angel which is to sever the ties of this Union, the same sword will cut in sunder the bonds of slavery itself. . . . It seems to me that its result must be the extirpation of slavery from this whole continent; and, calamitous and desolating as this course of events in its progress must be, so glorious would be its final issue, that, as God shall judge me, I dare not say that it is not to be desired. Glimmers of the 1865 Second Inaugural. For these calculations, Goldwin relied on William Wiecek who in turn relied on Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765-1820 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p. 180. As Christopher Wolfe points out in his comment appended to my review, there is dispute among the historians about the systemic effects of the Three-Fifths Clause. For details on some of the competing numbers-crunching scenarios see Garry Wills’s “Negro President”: Jefferson and the Slave Power (2003), Don E. Fehrenbacher’s The Slaveholding Republic (2001), and Lance Banning’s review of Wills, entitled “Three-Fifths Historian,” in the Fall 2004 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. See the landmark new book by Forrest A. Nabors, From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction.
1 Answer \| Add Yours The hangings at Salem, Massachusetts in the early 1690's were created by a perfect storm that had been forming for years in the New England colonies, going back a couple of decades to what came to be called King Philip's War. The tribal leader of this conflict was actually named Metacom, and he presided over hundreds of Native American attacks on New England settlements in an attempt to drive the colonists out. The reasons for Native American anger toward the colonies are well-known and included the spread of infectious disease that was destroying their people, as well as competition for resources. By 1675, over half of the settlements in New England had been attacked by one or more Native American tribes. The aftermath of the attacks, and fear of more attacks created widespread fear and paranoia associated with the Native Americans, and this was the atmosphere in the colonies that gave birth to the witch hunt in Salem. Traumatized and fearful of more violence at the hands of Native Americans, Puritan New Englanders' religious beliefs, which were characterized by a strong fear of the devil, and a corresponding belief in and fear of witchcraft, began to intertwine with the Native American situation. This interconnection probably had its roots in King Philip's War, when some Puritan leaders, desperate to recruit young men to fight the natives, began espousing the idea that the devil and/or witches were connected with the violent attacks on their settlements by Native Americans. When combining the trauma of conflict with the Indians with the pervasive fear of an omnipresent devil and/or witches manifesting their evil--and then suggesting that the devil, the witches and the Indians were all part of a single great entity--the atmosphere of fear was ripe to create paranoia and hysteria, lying dormant until someone or something brought it to the surface. In Salem, that catalyst came in the hysterical fits that afflicted several community residents, and that some believe now may have been seizures caused by an allergen in the food supply. We’ve answered 333,351 questions. We can answer yours, too.Ask a question
Reactions: Understanding the Zika virus The World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared the spread of the Zika virus a global public health emergency. Assistant Professor in Mennonite College of Nursing and public health expert Carla Pohl explains the virus and the potential threat. The WHO declared the Zika virus outbreak a global emergency, mainly because there are so many cases of children being affected. The declaration of a global emergency allows for more resources to fund the creation of a vaccine and treatments for the virus. The Zika virus has grabbed headlines due to the significant increase in the number of children born with small heads (microcephaly) in Brazil and other South American countries. There have been confirmed cases in the United States. To most people, the virus isn’t dangerous. However, if you’re pregnant or trying to get pregnant, don’t travel to countries with the Zika virus. It’s not worth the risk. The virus has spread so quickly because our bodies don’t have antibodies to fight the virus and are not immune to the Zika virus. Once someone contracts it, their odds of getting it again should decrease because their body will have some immunity after being infected. When a person gets over the virus, they should be symptom-free, but the CDC can’t really say for certain. There are still unanswered questions about possible long-term effects. Florida’s declaration of a public health emergency is in response to 10 cases of illness from people who traveled to Central and South America. The emergency makes funds available for controlling the mosquitos. I would recommend taking more precautions in southern states where there is standing water such as the bayous, swamps, and warmer temperatures. Some of the recommendations the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has made if you are traveling to a country where the virus has been reported include: - Covering exposed skin - Use insect repellent on adults and children over 2 years of age (all insect repellent in the U.S. is EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) approved for use in pregnancy) - Use permethrin-treated clothing - Stay in air conditioned rooms and use mosquito netting for sleeping Information about the Zika outbreak will continue to dominate social media as more cases are found and health officials respond to health needs. My best advice, don’t panic and don’t read social media – things can get really blown up because people will come up with conspiracy theories. Find your information from reliable sources such as the CDC (cdc.gov), the World Health Organization (www.who.int), or the Pan American Health Organization (paho.org). Find additional information and updates on travel restrictions.
So where does all this litter come from? There are many sources, but the top four, consistently, are shipping, sewage, fishing and the public. Most of it is preventable, yet levels of debris are increasing every year. Results of Marine Conservation Society surveys indicate that there are, on average, nearly 2,000 items of litter per kilometre on Britain’s beaches. Beach litter is at its highest levels since records began – it has almost doubled in the last 15 years and rose by 6% between 2009 and 2010. Litter can cause huge problems in the marine environment. Not only is it an eyesore, it can harm marine wildlife and beach visitors too. Beachgoers can be injured by items of marine debris and can become ill from swimming in seawater contaminated with sewage. Shellfish grown in sewage-contaminated water can cause food poisoning to consumers due to a build-up of toxins in their tissues. Marine debris costs local authorities thousands of pounds every year in lost tourism revenue and cleanup costs, and the fishing industry also loses out when their gear becomes fouled by debris and catches are contaminated. Marine litter kills more than one million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals every year through ingestion and entanglement. Discarded fishing nets cause problems through ‘ghost fishing’, whereby marine life continues to be caught by nets left behind in the sea. The animals cannot escape and suffer slow deaths whilst trapped. The nets also pose a threat to divers, who can become entangled and trapped in them. A recent story from Honolulu has highlighted the dangers of debris after nine Hawaiian monk seals were rescued from fishing nets and other marine debris, which they had become entangled in. One of the seals was a female pup caught up in an 800lb mess of buoys, fishing nets and clothes baskets. Marine animals often mistake litter, such a plastic bags and balloons, for food. A recent study has shown that plastic is rapidly becoming a significant "food" item for fishes living in the northern Pacific Ocean. Turtles are particularly susceptible to ingesting plastic, as they frequently mistake floating plastic bags for jellyfish, their main food source. The plastic bags block their stomachs, frequently leading to death through starvation. Seabirds also ingest floating plastic litter, mistaking it for food – over 90% of fulmars found dead around the North Sea have plastic in their stomachs. A study by Scottish scientists has also found that 83% of Langoustines, also known as Scampi or Norway lobster, have indigestible plastic fibres in their stomachs, usually in the form of clogging balls. In fact, plastics account for more than half of all litter items found on UK beaches and the number of plastic items found annually has increased by 135% since 1994. They are a particular problem because they persist in the marine environment for hundreds if not thousands of years. Every single piece of plastic ever made still exists today. Eventually, plastic breaks down into microscopic particles or ‘snow’, which may be consumed by filter feeding animals such as barnacles. Pollutants can also be attracted to the surface of plastics, posing a previously unrecognised threat to marine animals once ingested. These pollutants may be passed up through the food chain by bioaccumulation to fish, and ultimately to human consumers. The toxic substances released by plastics as they break down can also effect the growth and development of marine animals. Plastics can accumulate in the marine environment across large areas and there are known trash vortexes in each of the five major ocean gyres. The North Atlantic Garbage patch was originally documented in 1972 and is estimated to be hundreds of kilometers wide, with a density of more than 200,000 items of debris per square kilometer. The existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was predicted by researchers in 1988 and it was subsequently discovered in 1997. It is frequently referred to as an exceptional example of marine pollution but mostly consists of tiny plastic particles that are invisible to the naked eye; more like a "plastic soup". It is consequently difficult to estimate the size of the patch, but it is believed to range somewhere between 700,000 to 15,000,000 square kilometers in size. Researchers say that it is, “growing exponentially and threatening to become one of the greatest ecological disasters of our time”. It is estimated that 80% of the debris originates from land-based sources, and the remaining 20% from shipping. The Indian Ocean Garbage Patch, discovered in 2010, does not appear as one continuous field of debris. Researchers from the 5 Gyres Project are currently investigating this garbage patch, along with those in the South Atlantic and South Pacific. So what can we do about all this debris in our oceans and on our beaches? At a local level, you can make sure you don’t leave litter behind on the beach and don’t drop it in the street, don’t flush litter down the loo, and don’t take part in events such as balloon releases. You can reduce the amount of waste you produce, reuse items and recycle as much as you can. You could even create your own art installation! You can support charities that work towards acheiving cleaner seas, such as the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), through membership or fundraising. You can get involved with local beach cleans – the MCS uses data from beach cleans around the UK to target litter at source, at local, national and international levels. Their Beachwatch Big Weekend takes place over the third weekend in September each year and coincides with Project AWARE’s ‘International Cleanup Day’. If you dive, you can take part in the Project AWARE ‘Dive Against Debris’ campaign. To tackle the issue of marine debris on a larger scale, the MCS wants: - Government to formulate coherent marine litter action plans. - Industry to improve water treatment storage capacity and combined sewer overflows to reduce the discharge of untreated sewage and sewage related litter to rivers and the sea during heavy rainfall. - The public to reduce their use of plastic packaging, and reuse and recycle wherever possible. First steps can be as simple as avoiding plastic shopping bags, bottled drinking water and over packaged goods. So next time you’re at the beach, take a good look around you. If you want to preserve that idyllic seaside experience for future generations and ensure our seas stay fit and healthy, make sure you don’t add to the already huge problem of marine debris in our environment. On a national level, more effective legislation and enforcement of litter laws is needed. But every piece of litter has an owner – every single person can make a difference and has a responsibility not to drop litter or flush it down the toilet. Remember: bag it and bin it; don't flush it! Beach litter categories 5 Gyres Project Marine Conservation Society
Blood in poo: Causes and diagnosis Blood in poo diagnosis continued... After looking at your medical history and doing a physical examination, your GP may arrange tests to determine the cause of bleeding. Tests may include: Endoscopy. A procedure that involves inserting an endoscope, or flexible tube with a small camera on the end, through the mouth and down the oesophagus to the stomach and duodenum. The doctor can use this to look for the source of bleeding. Endoscopy can also be used to collect small tissue samples for examination under a microscope ( biopsy). Colonoscopy. A procedure where the scope is inserted through the rectum to view the colon. As with an endoscopy, colonoscopy can be used to collect tissue samples to biopsy. Enteroscopy. A procedure similar to endoscopy and colonoscopy used to examine the small intestine. In some cases this involves swallowing a capsule with a tiny camera inside that transmits images to a video monitor as it passes through the digestive tract. Barium X-ray ( barium enema). A procedure that uses a contrast material called barium to make the digestive tract show up on an X-ray. The barium may either be swallowed or inserted into the rectum. Radionuclide imaging. A procedure that involves injecting small amounts of radioactive material into a vein and then using a special camera to see images of blood flow in the digestive tract to detect where bleeding is happening. Angiography. A procedure that involves injecting a special dye into a vein that makes blood vessels visible on an X-ray or computerised tomography (CT) scan. The procedure detects bleeding as dye leaks out of blood vessels at the bleeding site. Laparotomy. A surgical procedure in which the doctor opens and examines the abdomen. This may be necessary if other tests fail to identify the cause of bleeding. Doctors also request laboratory tests when there is blood in stools. These tests may look for clotting problems, anaemia and the presence of H. pylori infection. A person with blood in the poo may be unaware of bleeding and have reported no symptoms. On the other hand, they may also have abdominal pain, vomiting, weakness, difficulty breathing, diarrhoea, palpitations, fainting and weight loss depending on the cause, location, duration and severity of the bleeding. Blood in poo treatments A doctor may use one of several techniques to stop acute bleeding. Often an endoscopy is used to inject chemicals into the site of bleeding, treat the bleeding site with an electric current or laser, or apply a band or clip to close the bleeding vessel. If endoscopy does not control bleeding, the doctor may use angiography to inject drugs into the blood vessels to control bleeding. Beyond stopping the immediate bleeding, if necessary, treatment involves addressing the cause of bleeding to keep it from returning. Treatment varies depending on the cause and may include medicines such as antibiotics to treat H. pylori or anti-inflammatory drugs to treat colitis, or surgery to remove polyps or the parts of the colon damaged by cancer, diverticulitis or inflammatory bowel disease. It may include cream and suppositories to treat haemorrhoids, for example. In many cases, however, treatment involves simple things you can do on your own. These include eating a high- fibre diet to relieve constipation that can cause and aggravate haemorrhoids and anal fissures, and sitting in warm or salt baths to relieve fissure symptoms. Your doctor will prescribe or recommend treatment based on the diagnosis.
HOMO: See Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital. HSAB: See Hard and Soft Acids and Bases theory. Half angle: In a right cone, the angle between the edge of the cone and its perpendicular axis. Half-Reaction: The reaction describing the reduction of a given species and balanced by electrons, protons, hydroxide ions and water molecules. Half-cell: An electric cell, from which reduction potentials may be measured, is considered to be made up of two half cells, one for each of the redox couples. Hamiltonian: The operator that gives the total energy of a system when applied to the wavefunction. This is a mathematical expression describing all the energetic interactions in a given system. As such, it is the sum of the operators for the kinetic energy and the potential energy. Hard and Soft Acids and Bases theory: Hard acids are those which form strong bonds to first row elements, and soft acids form strong bonds to lower group elements. Hard bases react with hard acids, and soft bases react with soft acids. Hard: Part of the hard/soft classification system for elements (and to a certain extent, functional groups) – an element will be considered ‘hard’ if it is small and non-polarisable e.g. O, F and N. Hard elements will have an affinity for other hard elements, or functional groups although these classifications are really only guidelines. Harmonic motion: Motion in which the moving body experiences a force towards some position that is proportional to its displacement from that position. Harmonic oscillator: A system that oscillates within a parabolic potential energy curve. Hartree-Fock Orbitals: These are the variationally optimized, lowest energy orbitals for a given system. These depend on the set of basis orbitals. Heat: Transfer of energy occurs in the form of heat when the transfer involves a disorderly or chaotic motion of particles. Hess’ Law: States that the standard enthalpy of an overall reaction is equal to the sum of the standard enthalpies of the processes into which the reaction may be divided. An alternative statement is that the standard enthalpy change accompanying a reaction is independent of the route taken by the reaction. The law arises because enthalpy is a state function. Hetero-aromatic: An aromatic ring containing a heteroatom – e.g. pyridine, furan. See aromatic. Heteroatom: In the context of organic chemistry, a heteroatom is an atom other than carbon. Heterogeneous: In a different state to. Hexagonal Close Packed Array: An array of close packed spheres which stack in hexagonal unit cells. Highest Occupied Molecular Orbital: The molecular orbital which contains an electron, and whose energy is the highest of the occupies orbitals. Homogeneous Magnetic Field: A magnetic field that has the same strength everywhere in space. Homogeneous: In the same state as. Huckel’s Rule: This is a rule for determining whether or not a compound is aromatic by counting the number of electrons in a cyclic system. If the number is equal to 4n + 2 (where n is an integer), the molecule is aromatic. Hund’s Rule: This states that when there is a choice of occupation of orbitals of the same energy, the electrons occupy those orbitals so as to maximize the number of electrons with parallel spin. Hybrid Orbital: Theoretical orbitals that do not really exist, but are the result of a mathematical operation on the formation of molecular orbitals from atomic orbitals. The hybrids are generally called sp (when carbon triple bonds – forms a linear shape), sp2 (when carbon double bonds – forms a trigonal planar shape), sp3 (when carbon single bonds – a tetrahedral shape). Hybridization: The process of constructive and destructive overlap between different regions of orbital wavefunctions that causes them to produce equivalent hybrid orbitals of a new shape and size. Hydration Energy: The reaction enthalpy for the dissolution of a compound into aqueous solution. Hydride: The H– ion. Hydrogen Bonding: Hydrogen bonding occurs when a hydrogen atom is attached to an electronegative atom (e.g. N,O,F). The bond between the two is clearly therefore polarised, and another atom with a lone pair can form a bond to this positively charged hydrogen atom. When this occurs between two separate molecules, this is called intermolecular hydrogen bonding. Hydrogen Bond: This is a largely electrostatic interaction described as “the interaction between an H atom bound to an electronegative element and another electronegative element which has lone pairs of electrons”. Hydrogenation: A method of reduction whereby hydrogen is added to a substrate directly from gaseous hydrogen. Hydrolysis: Reaction with water. Hyperconjugation: The interaction of alkyl groups with unsaturated systems, it indicates C-H conjugation. This effect was introduced to account for the ease of certain elimination reactions. Hypervalent: An atom which has more bonds, and hence more electrons in its valence shell, than would be allowed by the octet rule is said to be hypervalent.
999. Why are any materials transparent? — MZ, Peligna, Italy Because light is an electromagnetic wave, it is emitted and absorbed by electric charges. For an electric charge to emit light it must move—in fact, the charge must accelerate. For an electric charge to absorb light it must also move—it must also accelerate. However, there are many materials that do not have mobile electric charges. For example, while all electric insulators have electric charges in them, those electric charges can't move long distances. The electric charges in many electric insulators can't even move enough to absorb light and the light simply passes right through them. They are transparent.
October 15, 2009—Data released this week by researchers who spent three months this spring measuring ice on the Arctic Ocean suggests that the North Pole could be largely open sea in summer within a decade—and ice free by 2029. © 2009 National Geographic (AP) Data released this week by a team of explorers who trekked through the Arctic for three months this spring shows the North Pole will be an open sea during the summer months within 20 years. The Catlin Arctic Survey team, led by explorer Pen Hadow, measured the thickness of the ice as they sledged and hiked through the northern part of the Beaufort Sea in the geographic north Pole. Their findings show that most of the ice in the region is first-year ice that is only around six feet deep and will melt next summer. The region has traditionally contained thicker multi-year ice which does not melt as rapidly. The results come as negotiators prepare to meet in Copenhagen in December to draft a global climate pact. SOUNDBITE: (English) Peter Wadhams, University of Cambridge Polar Ocean Physics Group: "The conclusions from this work and from other measurements that have been done, and from new models, are that the summer ice will disappear within twenty to thirty years, and a lot of it will be gone within next ten years. It will retreat to a fairly small area north of Greenland within about a decade and then the rest of the ice will disappear during the following decade." SOUNDBITE: (English) Martin Sommerkorn, WWF Arctic Program: "These results are significant because they highlight the urgency. They highlight how and important aspect of the climate system is actually much more vulnerable to climate change than we thought." Sommerkorn noted that the Arctic sea holds a central position in the earth's climate system, and loss of Arctic ice could impact the climate of regions way beyond the Arctic itself. Potential consequences include flooding affecting a quarter of the world's population, significant increases in greenhouse gas emissions from massive carbon pools, as well as extreme global weather changes. Global warming has raised the stakes in the scramble for sovereignty in the Arctic because shrinking polar ice could someday open resource development and new shipping lanes. The rapid ice melting has raised speculation that the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could one day become a regular shipping lane.
30 Second Mysteries for Kids Students will use critical thinking and deductive reasoning skills to gain clues to solve a mystery. Students will listen and respond to unfamiliar stories by understanding the stated cause and effect, making different types of inferences, and offering predictions based on conclusions from situational contexts. Students will use fluency enhancing strategies while reading and answering questions. See how well you or your team can follow the clues to crack the case to solve the mystery! The solution may only be revealed by the detective-like Giant Mystery Decoder. Want to try one? THE VANISHING MAN “One man’s image has inspired many songs, stories and poems. Some have even traveled record-breaking distances to visit him. For as long as anyone can remember, people have seen him every night. However, he only shows himself from a distance; when people get close, he disappears.” Who is this man, and what part of him are people able to see? 1) He is surrounded by stars, but he’s not an actor. 2) Some people think that he has an unlimited supply of green cheese. 3) He shows himself when it gets dark. 4) People first visited his home in 1969. Yes, he is the Man in the Moon! The scoring guide shows the number of points awarded depending on how many clues were revealed including the title of the mystery and the case. If you guessed in three clues plus title and case, you move ahead 2 points. One player on the other team acts as case reader and will not participate in solving the mystery. Spooky reading voices are encouraged. After the mystery is read, the other team must try to solve it, while keeping the decoder. When they have a guess, the decoder is handed to the reader to reveal the answer. If the team solved the mystery hearing only the title and case, the reader shows everyone the answer and clicks 5 points ahead on the decoder. If not, play moves to the other team to solve with the first clue revealed. Play continues back and forth between teams until one of them solves the mystery or the card is finished. If the mystery is not solved, the reader reveals the solution to all players and neither team gets points. You can also play with 2 players, where one player is the reader and the other the guesser receiving the clues without the back and forth of turns on one case. An alternate to the students reading the cases is for the speech pathologist to read to both teams and determine how many points are earned for solving a case. Additional points can be given for teamwork, asking for repetition of parts of the case or clues, and making sure the whole team agrees on the guesses before handing the decoder to the reader. Where to Buy >>> www.areyougame.com/30secondmysteries
The World Health Organisation has raised its global alert level, signalling the swine flu virus is spreading from human to human in community outbreaks. The threat of a global flu pandemic is growing. We take a look at how flu viruses change, leading to pandemics. Swine influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza virus that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza in pigs. The classical swine flu virus (an influenza type A H1N1 virus) was first isolated from a pig in 1930. The genetic make-up of influenza viruses A and B can and does change in two ways: a slight change known as antigenic drift and dramatic changes known as antigenic shift. Both result in new virus strains. Like antigens of many other viruses, the surface proteins of flu viruses change periodically. These changes circumvent human antibodies and complicate vaccine development. 1. Small changes in the flu virus (antigenic drift) Influenza A and B are classified by two surface antigens, haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). These antigens are continually undergoing slight changes through what is technically known as antigenic drift. This is due to random copying errors in the viruses' genetic material during replication. Persons with antibodies stimulated either by previous infection or vaccination are not protected from infection with new strains of the flu virus. So despite a previous bout of flu, every year, but definitely every 3 years, the A and B viruses have changed sufficiently that they are no longer properly recognised by our immune systems, and one can be re-infected, with all the symptoms of flu again. This is why there are regular epidemics of winter flu. 2. Drastic changes in the flu virus (antigenic shift) At irregular intervals of ten years or more, there is a drastic change in the influenza A virus when it replaces one of its genes with a new gene from a bird influenza virus. This is technically known as "antigenic shift". Thus, when a gene of a bird influenza virus lands up in a human influenza virus, no human has appropriate immunity to this altered influenza A. The altered influenza A virus can be regarded as a "new" and very potent virus. A pandemic - a worldwide epidemic - of influenza will most probably follow. The twentieth century saw pandemics of influenza A (as a result of antigenic shift) in: - 1918, known as the Spanish flu even though it originated from Boston (Look at a map to show the spread of the epidemic in South Africa), - 1957 (Asian flu), - 1968 (Hong Kong flu), - 1976/77 (Russian flu - the strain that caused this pandemic was identical to the one that circulated in the 1950's, and this pandemic primarily affected people younger than 25 years who had not been exposed to the 1950's flu virus), and - 1997 (Sydney flu). Researchers have recently determined that the very virulent flu virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic, was a H1N1 (where H1= hemagglutinin1, N1= neuraminidase1, two surface antigens) influenza virus. Virologists are still baffled why it caused such a severe pandemic - this remains a mystery. The closest known strain was Swine Iowa 30 - the pig flu virus isolated in 1930. Farmers in 1918 discovered that something was making their pigs very sick. Every autumn thereafter the American hog population got severe flu. The virus probably came to people from pigs, not from birds. But research showed that the human viruses and the pig flu of 1930 may share a common avian ancestor. This suggests that sometime before 1918, a bird virus could have entered the pig population and, through reassortment, produced the pathogenic 1918 flu virus known to man. This is how new pandemics will start: when parts of a bird virus get incorporated into a human virus, directly from a bird or via a pig. The close proximity of humans, birds and pigs may enhance the possibility for this mixing of virus genes of different species. A recent scare of a potential new killer virus Small wonder that in 1997 Hong Kong doctors became frantic when they discovered that a 3-year old boy died from a pure avian virus against which most humans have no defense. It was a H5N1 avian virus, not readily transmittable, but if it reassorted with a common human strain it could have produced a new human influenza virus easily transmittable and very lethal. In the end this avian virus infected 18 people and killed six, but luckily it did not lead to the birth of a new human influenza virus strain. This incident followed after 6 800 chickens died six months earlier on three farms in Hong Kong's rural territories, showing that this strain was deadly in birds. This time it was not the start of a new epidemic. The outbreak highlighted the success of the surveillance network. It also showed how dangerously mutable influenza viruses can be, and that they can be as deadly as Ebola or other killer viruses. It is impossible to predict when the next pandemic will occur, but most scientists believe it is 100% certain that there will be one sometime. In 1918, when transportation was still by rail and boat and painfully slow, the pandemic circled the globe in a matter of months. Travelling by jet, a new killer virus could circle the globe in 4 days, not 4 months as in 1918. Flu pandemics then and now \|\|What could happen \|Primary mode of transportation \|\|Troop ship, railroad \|Time for virus to circle globe \|\|Gauze masks, disinfectants \|\|Vaccines (yet to be developed) \|\|Bed rest, aspirin \|\|Some antiviral drugs Save the Pigs! Sources: AP, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Reviewed (2006) by Dr Jane Yeats MBChB, BSc(Med)(Hons)Biochem, FCPathSA(Virology).
Are you having trouble with end moment assignment? Facing difficulty in solving the provided question? Seek earthquake homework help from the team of myassignmenthelp.net and get answers to assignment related queries within short time duration. Define earthquake. What are the causes of earthquake? Earthquake is a natural disaster that is caused due to release of energy in the form of seismic wave. The outer surface of the earth has thin, large and rigid plates that move relatively to one another called tectonic plates. These plates are always in slow motion and get stuck at ends due to friction. But when the stress at the end overcomes this friction; energy is released in the form of waves termed as seismic wave resulting in earthquake. These waves then travel from crust to the earth surface thus producing shaking effect. Therefore, earthquake is caused by the sudden release of stress in the form of vibration or wave that builds up at the margin of tectonic plates or along a fault resulting in movement of opposing tectonic plate past one another. Hypocenter: A point within the earth from where the earthquake begins or the point from where the earthquake rupture starts. Epicenter: The point that lies vertically above the hypocenter is called epicenter. Fault: The thin zone of cracked rock that separates blocks of the earth’s crust. Seismic waves: The waves that are generated when the stress is released from the edges of the tectonic plate causing shaking effect are called seismic waves. These waves are categorized into two main type; body waves and surface waves. Body waves are again distinguished into two categories: P waves also called Primary waves and S waves also called secondary waves. - P waves are the fastest among the three and are called compressional waves. These waves cause shaking movement in the direction of the propagation. Also this wave travel through solid as well as liquid materials. - S waves are slower than P waves and are called shear waves. These waves cause shaking movement perpendicularly in the direction of the propagation. Also these wave don’t travel through liquid. The motion of surface waves is limited to the area near the ground. These waves are again categorized into two types: Love wave and Rayleigh wave. - Love waves: These waves cause side to side movement in the ground horizontally and at right angle to the direction of the propagation. - Rayleigh waves: These waves move horizontally as well as vertically in vertical plane in the direction of propagation. This is just an overview of the topic. If you are requiring in-depth and well-arranged information on topics and sub-topics of earthquake, contact the tutors at myassignmenthelp.net and get civil engineering assignment help to simplify the lengthy and time-consuming task. Effects of earthquake Earthquake causes heavy loss of life and property. The areas near the epicenter are highly effected. Also, areas of loose sediment experience intense shaking than that of the solid bedrock. Therefore, the effects of earthquake depends on the area and the intensity of earthquake. - Damage to the man-made constructions like: buildings, roads, bridges, dams etc. - Fire is caused by the broken electrical wires and gas lines. - Leaking of chemicals. - Radioactivity caused by the damage of nuclear plants. - Flood, landslide, tsunami, liquefaction are all the results of earthquake. - Deaths and injuries due to collapsing buildings and other man-made structures. Getting earthquake homework help is no more a difficult job. Everything is at your fingertips. Just contact the tutors and writing experts and ask for assignment help on earthquake and you will be directed to the further procedures. How to measure earthquake? The power of an earthquake is measured by an instrument called seismometer. It identifies the vibrations caused by an earthquake and hence a seismograph is generated to study these vibration. Likewise, the magnitude of earthquake is measured using different methods; the Richter scale, the moment magnitude scale and the Mercalli scale. Though Richter scale is the most common method of measuring an earthquake but recently to measure larger earthquake moment magnitude scale is used. - Richter scale was developed by Charles F. Richter that is based on formula of amplitude of largest wave recorded in seismometer and the distance between earthquake and seismometer. - Moment Magnitude scale is based on the total moment (product of distance a fault moved and the force that is required to move It) release of the earthquake. - Mercalli scale uses observations from people who experienced the earthquake to estimate its intensity. Earthquake education in civil Engineering Civil Engineers work in construction of buildings, monuments, roads, dams etc. Therefore, the education on earthquake is of importance to Civil Engineers so that they can build structures that becomes resistant to the high Intensity seismic waves. The aim of Civil Engineers specialized in the area of earthquake is to conduct a detail study on this natural disaster and design structures that are safe under seismic effects. Therefore, earthquake engineers studies and researches every possible effect that can be caused by earthquake at particular location and hence design every part of the building carefully with their innovation and research based knowledge that in turn helps in protecting life and property. Assistance provided to students by myassignmenthelp.net Students studying Civil Engineering, more specifically Earthquake Engineering are always in the verge of shaping our life in effective way. For this they conduct researches and design ideas applying their knowledge, creativity and innovation. But assignment can sometimes be hurdle some for them. In case when you are not really prepared to write lengthy and time-taking assignment, you can seek the help of tutors at myassignmenthelp.net. They are professionals having years of experience in this field. They can perfectly write your civil engineering assignment on the topic of earthquake. 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Complex data type Complex number arithmetic A complex variable or value is usually represented as a pair of floating point numbers. Languages that support a complex data type usually provide special syntax for building such values, and extend the basic arithmetic operations ('+', '−', '×', '÷') to act on them. These operations are usually translated by the compiler into a sequence of floating-point machine instructions or into library calls. Those languages may also provide support for other operations, such as formatting, equality testing, etc. As in mathematics, those languages often interpret a floating-point value as equivalent to a complex value with a zero imaginary part. - The FORTRAN COMPLEX type - The C99 standard of the C programming language includes complex data types and complex math functions in the standard library header - The C++ standard library provides a complextemplate class as well as complex math functions in the - The Go programming language has built-in types complex64(each component is 32-bit float) and complex128(each component is 64-bit float) - The Perl core module Math::Complex provides support for complex numbers - Python provides the built-in complextype. Imaginary number literals can be specified by appending a "j". Complex math functions are provided in the standard library module - Ruby provides a Complex class in the standard library module complex - OCaml supports complex numbers with the standard library module Complex - Haskell supports complex numbers with the standard library module Data.Complex (previously called Complex) - Mercury provides complex numbers with full operator overloading support in the extras distribution, using libcomplex_numbers. - Java does not have a standard complex number class, but there exist a number of incompatible free implementations of a complex number class: - The Apache Commons Math library provides complex numbers for Java with its Complex class - The JScience library has a Complex number class - The JAS library allows the use of complex numbers. - Netlib has a complex number class for Java - javafastcomplex also adds complex number support for Java - jcomplexnumber is a project on implementation of complex number in Java - JLinAlg includes complex numbers with arbitrary precision. - Common Lisp: The ANSI Common Lisp standard supports complex numbers of floats, rationals and arbitrary precision integers. Its basic mathematical functions are defined for complex numbers, where applicable. For example the square root of -1 is a complex number: ? (sqrt -1) #C(0 1) ; the result of (sqrt -1) - Scheme: Complex numbers and functions (e.g. sin) are included in the language specification. Their implementation is however optional in the R5RS standard, while in R6RS is mandatory. - The .NET Framework provides System.Numerics.Complex since version 4.0. - The smart BASIC for iOS naturally supports complex numbers in notation a + bi. Any variable, math operation or function can accept both real and complex numbers as arguments and return real or complex numbers depending on result. For example the square root of -4 is a complex number: PRINT SQRT(-4) 2i COMPLEX data type was provided in FORTRAN IV. - IBM Informix Database Design and Implementation Guide - Flash 8 Documentation - Python v2.6.5 documentation - A guide to Fortran IV programming Daniel D. McCracken - 1972 - 288 pages. "The capability provided by Fortran complex operations is a great savings in programming effort in certain problems. "
Mexican food may have changed surprisingly little over the last millennium. Some really old spice. I'm Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update. If you could travel back in time to the Mexico of a thousand years ago, the food would probably have a familiar kick to it. This according to archaeo-botanist Linda Perry of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. She and her colleagues discovered well-preserved scraps of domesticated chili peppers in an ancient Mexican shelter cave. The peppers date back five to fifteen hundred years. Perry was struck by the variety: ten different kinds of peppers in all, including seven in a single location. Because you're not going to be growing seven different kinds of peppers if you're not making some really interesting food. What's more, she says the peppers appear to have been used in both fresh and dried forms—providing a broad spectrum of spices that could fuel dishes similar to today's Mexican specialties. I'm Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society. Making Sense of the Research When you think of ancient food, you probably ... well, chances are you don't think about ancient food very much. But you probably wouldn't think it would be much like the food we eat today. This research suggests that Mexican food may be one of the world's oldest surviving cuisines, and that its basic elements may be traced back thousands of years. The ancient peppers—122 specimens in all—were found in a cave in Oaxaca, a region that remains influential in Mexican cooking today. The caves were used for shelter and storage by the ancient Zapotec people over the course of an entire millennium. The peppers there were by no means the oldest cultivated chili peppers ever found; Perry and her colleagues have found fossilized chili starch in Ecuador that dates back over 6,000 years. In this case, it's not the age of the peppers that matters most, but the fact that many different kinds of ancient cultivated chilis have been found in a single location. The peppers were actually discovered over forty years ago, but they were passed on to Perry only very recently. By closely examining the starch grains in the peppers, Perry was able to confirm that they were farmed, not wild, varieties, and to sort out the different varieties. She also found some whole stems, which were probably ripped from fresh peppers right in the cave, and torn-up fragments, which may have been dried, flaked peppers brought in from another location. As Perry notes, you wouldn't bother to keep so many different kinds of peppers in one place unless you needed them—most likely, for a variety of recipes that required slightly different flavors. The fact that other Mexican food staples were also found in the cave, including corn, beans, and squash, supports the possibility that these recipes were not so different from those of today. Of course, this doesn't mean that recipes haven't changed over time. But the basic elements of this popular cuisine appear to have all been there 1,500 years ago, and chances are, they were put to similar uses. Now try and answer these questions: - What's significant about this finding? - Why is it important to note that the chili peppers were cultivated (farmed)? - How might her conclusions have differed if only one kind of chili pepper had been found in the cave? - How much can you infer about a cuisine from its ingredients? Give reasons for your answer. You may want to check out the July 27, 2007, Science Update Podcast to hear further information about this Science Update and the other programs for that week. This podcast's topics include: how fetuses breathe inside the womb, rats that help out other rats, ancient chili peppers found in Mexico, why we yawn, and the surprising forms alien life might take For other tastes of food archaeology, read the National Geographic News articles 4,000-Year-Old Noodles Found in China and Ancient Fig Find May Push Back Birth of Agriculture. Read about a modern-day chef's experiments with ancient recipes in The Trouble with Blood, published in Archaeology, the journal of the Archaeological Institute of America.
In this lesson students measure angles in order to maximize distance Author: R. Vance Wood, Hurricane High School, Hurricane, UT Grade Level/Subject: (9-12), Math or Science This lesson is one which I have used with the class; however, it will work equally as well as homework or extra credit assignment. In addition to teaching, I am also a track coach and this activity is of particular help to my athletes in seeing what they should do to maximize their performance. This activity is a great deal of fun in the spring of the year when the students want to get outside to enjoy the great outdoors and the water. Purpose: To find the optimum angle to achieve the greatest distance. Garden hose with nozzle attached Activities and Procedures: Attach the garden hose to a tap and adjust the flow of water to a constant pressure.Starting at an angle of 0 degrees to the ground, measure and record the distance the stream travels in the horizontal direction along the ground. Repeat this process at 20, 30, 45, 60, and 75 degrees. Questions and Conclusions: - Which angle allowed you to achieve the maximum distance? - Can you think of a method to determine the maximum height the water achieved at the optimum angle? Briefly describe your method. - Draw the approximate path the water followed in it's flight. What is the shape of the path? - If you were to increase the pressure on the water in the hose, what effect would it have on the angle you would use to achieve maximum distance at the new pressure? - Do you think that a shot put or a javelin would need to be thrown at some angle different than the water to achieve maximum distance? Home \|\| The Math Library \|\| Quick Reference \|\| Search \|\| Help
Vitamin D is a fat-soluble and is used in every part of the body. Like calcium, it builds bones and teeth and keeps them strong. A vitamin D deficiency can occur when usual intake is lower than recommended levels over time, exposure to sunlight is limited, the kidneys cannot convert vitamin D to its active form, or absorption of vitamin D from the digestive tract is inadequate. Only a few foods naturally have vitamin D. The best source is fatty fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel. Beef liver, cheese, egg yoke and mushrooms provide smaller amounts. Many foods are fortified with vitamin D. Milk, Yogurt, cheese Orange juice fortified with vitamin D Ready to eat fortified cereal Fortified Rice milk Fortified Almond milk Fish oil, cod liver Most people can meet some of their vitamin D needs through exposure to the sunlight. It is important to remember sun protection factor of 8 or more appears to block vitamin D producing UV rays. So on must balance the need of proper sun protection and meeting vitamin D needs. Ask your health provider for information on buying Vitamin D supplements. Vitamin D requirements cannot be met by human milk alone. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends 400 IU of vitamin D per day for breastfed infants.
Acid sulfate soils Water and soil quality can be seriously affected by exposing or disturbing acid sulfate soils. This section provides access to information that may assist in the management of Acid Sulfate Soils. Aquatic ecosystems toolkit Aquatic ecosystems are collectively the wet parts of the environment. They can be rivers, streams, swamps, lakes, estuaries, marine systems, and underground aquifers. The Aquatic Ecosystems Toolkit has been prepared to assist map and classify aquatic ecosystems including the identification of high ecological value aquatic ecosystems. Improving Water Information Improving Water Information provides additional funding to the Bureau of Meteorology to accurately monitor, assess and forecast the availability, condition and use of our water resources. National Water Knowledge and Research Platform The Council of Australian Governments (COAG) agreed to the development of a National Water Knowledge and Research Platform. The purpose of the Platform is to allow for key decisions on water policy, management and use in Australia to be based on best available and continuously improving knowledge and information. Northern Australia Water Futures Assessment The objective of the Northern Australia Water Futures Assessment is to provide an enduring knowledge base to inform decisions about development of northern Australia's water resources. Sustainable Yields project Via the Sustainable Yields project, the Australian Government has commissioned the CSIRO to undertake assessments to provide robust estimates of current and future water availability in the Murray-Darling Basin and as well as Tasmania, Western Australia and northern Australia. The results of these assessments will provide the science to help underpin the sustainable planning and management of water resources. Water education resources The Water education resources provides classroom material for teachers. The Toolkit provides links to a wealth of web-based resources about water issues which can be searched by the Australian School Curriculum 'key concepts'.
Early effects of drought include wilting or discoloration of foliage, shedding of leaves or needles, and reduction in growth. As drought stress continues, plants become more susceptible to disease and insect issues to which they would normally be resistant. Pests like borer beetles and canker fungi are often only found attacking stressed trees. Avoiding drought stress for woody plants requires multiple tactics. Irrigating plants is essential in these conditions. Mulching the root zone with fresh wood chips will help to retain irrigation or natural moisture in the soil, and it will help to regulate extreme soil temperatures. Application of potassium phosphite is also beneficial. Research has shown that this treatment increases plant tolerance to environmental stresses such as drought, and also improves resistance against some secondary stress-related disease issues. View more tips
The Planet Mercury, newly revealed Tuesday 19th July, 2016 Our speaker was Prof David Rothery who is a Professor of Planetary Geosciences at the Open University. He has appeared on numerous occasions on the BBC's "Sky at Night" programme and was a science consultant on the second series of "Stargazing Live". He has authored a number of introductory books such as "Moons" and "Planets" as well as a couple of Teach Yourself books on geology. He is currently the UK Lead Scientist on MIXS (Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer), which is the only UK Principal Investigator instrument on BepiColombo, the European Space Agency mission to Mercury to be launched in January 2017. He began his talk, "Mercury: new views of the Sun's innermost planet", by saying that Mercury can be a tricky planet to observe and is best placed in the Spring. Close up pictures of its cratered surface resemble those of the Moon but it is actually quite different. One major difference is that the Moon has a small iron core whereas Mercury has a surprisingly large central iron core for its size, approaching half of its volume. The latest research suggests that when the Solar System was still in the process of forming the planets and objects we see today a larger body hit Mercury head on. This would explain how most of the material surrounding the core was removed but the small planet was still able to hold on to certain volatile elements such as potassium, sodium, chlorine and sulphur. Another strange characteristic of Mercury is its day length compared to its year. It rotates on its axis exactly three times for every two orbits around the Sun with a day lasting 59 Earth days and its year 88 Earth days. So this means that an observer on Mercury would see the Sun come to a halt in the sky and then appear to move backwards before resuming its slow sweep across the sky. The BepiColombo mission is a collaboration between the European Space Agency and the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA). Two orbiting spacecraft (one Japanese and one European) are to be ferried to the planet on a carrier spacecraft known as the Mercury Transfer Module or MTM. This carrier spacecraft will be powered by an ion engine which is a highly efficient low thrust propulsion system that creates thrust by ejecting ions out backwards, effectively pushing the craft forwards. Assuming a successful launch, the two piggybacked spacecraft will begin orbiting Mercury in December 2024 after one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus and then five flybys of Mercury. This rather circuitous route is necessary as it is surprisingly tricky to reach a stable orbit around Mercury where the Sun's strong gravitational pull actually makes it difficult to slow down any spacecraft. Prof Rothery said that he is looking forward to the returned data solving some of the unanswered questions surrounding the smallest planet in the Solar System. The last spacecraft to visit Mercury from 2011 to 2015 was NASA's Messenger orbiter which showed that Mercury's magnetic field was lop-sided being three times stronger in the northern hemisphere. This article was written for the club news column of the Stratford Herald. The actual lecture explained the subject at a deeper level.
iguanidArticle Free Pass iguanid, any of about 700 species of lizards in more than 40 genera that constitute the family Iguanidae. Iguanids are found throughout the Americas from southern Canada to the tip of South America. The only exceptions are one genus (Brachylophus) in Fiji and other Pacific islands and two genera (Oplurus and Chalarodon) in Madagascar. The family includes the common iguana (Iguana) of the American tropics, the marine iguana (Amblyrhynchus) of the Galapagos Islands, and the common genus Anolis with more than 200 species. About 10 genera of iguanids are found in the United States, where they are by far the most conspicuous lizards of the American Southwest. Iguanids are made up of eight subfamilies: Corytophaninae, Crotaphytinae, Hoplocercinae, Iguaninae, Oplurinae, Phrynosomatinae, Polychrotinae, and Tropidurinae. Some authorities have elevated each of these subfamilies to the family level. Iguanids are also related to the Agamidae and the chameleons of the Eastern Hemisphere. Most iguanids have small scales and a large dewlap, or loose fold of skin, situated beneath the head and neck. In many species, a crest on the back and tail is composed of narrow, elongate scales that gradually diminish in size toward the tail. The tongue is short and cannot be projected out. Most predatory iguanid species sit and await their prey, which are typically arthropods, before making a short dash to capture them. What made you want to look up iguanid?
Open document below is an essay on ratification of the constitution from anti essays, your source for research papers, essays, and term paper examples. The ratification the ratification, or adoption, of the constitution took place between september of 1787 and july of 1788 the federal convention, which. Observing constitution day governor george clinton expressed these antifederalist concerns in several published newspaper essays during the ratification. People opposed to the ratification of the constitution were the main arguments in favor of ratifying the constitution were stated in a series of essays. Ratification is a principal's approval of an act of its agent where the agent lacked authority to legally bind the principal ratification defines the international. Free ratification papers, essays, and research papers these results are sorted by most relevant first (ranked search) you may also sort these by color rating or essay length. Article vii: ratification essays the ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this constitution between. View and download ratification essays examples also discover topics, titles, outlines, thesis statements, and conclusions for your ratification essay. Ratification of the constitution essay they also believed that a newly strengthened country with less problems overall was only a ratification related essays. The federalist papers a the essays had an immediate impact on the ratification what follow are quotations from several essays in the federalist papers. Many debated over the ratification of the us constitution ratifying the constitution pessoni2 the major arguments in the debate over the popular essays. What were the essays written to urge essays essays written to urge constitution ratification written to defend the ratification of the to urge the ratification of the us constitution was the 17,000 years ago is 15,000bc 85 essays supporting ratification constitution subscribe to this rss feed. Read ratification essays and research papers view and download complete sample ratification essays, instructions, works cited pages, and more. Free essay: the ratification debate federalists vs anti-federalists people had many different opinions on the ratification of the constitution + popular essays. Ratification of the us constitution the great debate anonymously published a series of essays known as the federalist papers under the pseudonym publius. This lesson introduces students to the vigorous debates surrounding the ratification of the constitution that took place in the state conventions. Start studying constitutional scavenger hunt learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards essays urging ratification during ny ratification debates. I believe this problem stems from our education system students are taught as many adjectives as possible to make their essays better essay on corruption effect all i know is that if i told ms white that i read that much in a day she would be like: okay now write a 1000 word essay on itdissertation proposal introduction wording francis. Read this american history essay and over 88,000 other research documents the ratification of the constitution the ratification of the constitution in 1787, the constitution was created to replace the articles of confederation, because it. Essays on ratification the ratification is one of the most popular assignments among students' documents if you are stuck with writing or missing ideas. During the struggle for ratification, the federalists and antifederalists engaged in a great newspaper and pamphlet debate over the proposed constitution. The framers of the constitution clearly supported it’s ratification while the states debated the ratification of the constitution was related essays. The ratification of the constitution in 1787, the constitution was created to replace the articles of confederation, because it was felt that the articles weren't sufficient for running the country.
Plan of the fortification of Tecki on the Tumen River. Terki was a fortress of Asiatic Russia, under the government of Caucasus, situated on the Tumenka (one of the branches of the Terek). Terki remained of great importance until the Persian conquests, where it ceased to be a frontier town and was razed at the peace of 1763. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Tsardom of Russia built several fortifications throughout the course of several campaigns in the Northern Caucuses. During this time, the first Terka was built, later taken over by the still independent Cossacks. In 1577, groups of Volga Cossacks settled in the Terek basin and Voevoda Novosiltsev. They later built the second Terka on the Terek, marking the start of the Terek Cossacks. An isolated group of Cossacks on the Terek River became an established settlement on the Don River by around 1550. Astrakhan was conquered in 1556, giving Russia a base at the north end of the Caspian Sea. They soon made an alliance with Kabardia and built a fort at the mouth of the Sunzha River. In the late 16th century, several Terek Cossack campaigns were carried out against the Ottoman Empire, leading the Sultan to complain to Ivan the Terrible. In 1589, the first outpost on the Sunzha was built and a permanent Terka, later known as Tersky Gorodok, was built on the lower Terek. During the Russo-Persian War (1651-53), Persian subjects fought Cossacks on the Sunzha River. In 1688, Stenka Razin raided the Caspian coast. During the second Russo-Persian War (1722-23), Peter the Great conquered the west and south shore of the Caspian, however the land was soon returned when Persia grew stronger. In 1775, after a Russian explorer had died in captivity, Catherine sent a punitive expedition which briefly captured Derbent. During the Persian Expedition of 1796, Russia again conquered the west coast of the Caspian, but the expedition was withdrawn when Catherine died. Underlying all of this was the slow and steady expansion of Russian population southward from its original heartland in Muscovy. By around 1800, Russia was in a position to push soldiers and colonists into the Caucasus region. Beautifully coloured. From Mallet's monumental Description de l' Univers, first published in Paris in 1683, perhaps the greatest work of its kind in the 17th Century. Alain Mannesson Mallet (1630-1706) was a French mapmaker and engineer who served in the armies of Louis XIV. After rising through the ranks, Mallet was appointed as Inspector of Fortifications, a job which also required mathematical skills and which made him a competent military engineer. Eventually, he joined the court of Louis XIV at Versailles, where he taught math and focused on writing. Mallet is best known for his Description de L’Univers, first published in 1683, in five volumes. A wide-ranging geographical work, the Description included textual descriptions of the countries of the world, as well as maps of the celestial sky and the ancient and modern worlds. The Description continued to be published until the early eighteenth century. He also published a work in three volumes on warfare (1684) and a primer on geometry (1702).
The King site is a mid-sixteenth-century aboriginal town located on the Coosa River in western Floyd County in northwest Georgia. Shorter University in Rome, covers a little more than five acres and is bounded by a defensive ditch and palisade. A plaza occupied the center of the town and contained at least two public buildings: structure 17, measuring fifteen meters square and filled with benches, probably functioned as a meeting house; structure 16, the smaller of the two, is of unknown function. South of these buildings, in the exact center of the town, is a large posthole that probably held a post measuring almost one meter in diameter and six to ten meters in height. The habitation zone contained two types of domestic structures: square, semi-subterranean houses with peaked roofs and earth-embanked walls; and rectangular corn cribs elevated two meters or so above ground. The former were domestic residences utilized during the cooler months of the year. The latter were used for storage of foodstuffs and provided a shaded space for domestic activities during the summer months. Household members were buried beneath both types of structures and in the outdoor space surrounding them. Ten adult males were interred beneath the floor of the meeting house. The King site was first occupied at some time during the first half of the sixteenth century with the construction of half a dozen or so domestic structures. Within a decade additional households appeared, and the town was formally laid out with its defensive perimeter, plaza, and habitation zone. The town existed in this form for twenty to thirty years and then was abandoned. During its existence it was probably visited by members of the Hernando de Soto (1540) and/or Tristan de Luna (1560) expeditions. Iron tools and a sword were interred with a small number of burials. The iron tools were probably obtained in trade from the Spanish, while the sword may have been obtained by other means. Whether the town's abandonment was a result of Spanish contact is not known.
Healthy Eating for Children - Changing Your Family's Eating Habits means eating a variety of foods from all food groups. It means choosing fewer foods that have lots of fats and sugar. But it does not mean that your child cannot eat desserts or other treats now and then. With a little planning, you can create a structure that gives your child (and you) the freedom to make healthy eating choices. Think of this as planning not just for the kids but for everyone in your family. Getting started with your young child - At meals, serve milk. (Children under 12 months of age should not drink cow's milk.) Most children need whole milk between 1 and 2 years of age. But your doctor may recommend 2% milk if your child is overweight or if there is a family history of obesity, high blood pressure, or heart disease. Over the age of 2, serve fat-free or low-fat milk. - When trying new foods at a meal, be sure to also include a food that your child likes. Don't be discouraged if it takes several tries before your child actually eats a new food. It may take as many as 15 times or more before your child will try a new food. - Juice does not have the valuable fiber that whole fruit has. Unless the label says the drink has only 100% juice, beware that many fruit drinks are just water, a little juice flavoring, and a lot of added sugar. If you must give juice, water it down. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises no more than 4 fl oz (120 mL) to 6 fl oz (180 mL) of 100% fruit juice a day for children 1 to 6 years old.2 This means ½ cup to ¾ cup. Juice isn't recommended for babies 0 to 6 months.
Begin the class by introducing the term combinations. Ask students to explain what a combination is. Guide students to a mathematical definition of combinations. Next, ask students to brainstorm different types of combinations. Students may suggest some of the following: - ice cream cones - menu combinations - safe or padlock combinations In today's lesson, students will explore combinations involving shirt and short outfits. Distribute the Shorts and Shirts Activity Sheet to each student. Students will be coloring outfits to determine the total number of combinations possible. Shorts and Shirts Activity Sheet Give each student eight crayons in the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue, orange, brown, black, and purple. Review the problem by reading it with the students: Each shirt must be a solid color, either yellow, orange, blue or red. Each pair of shorts must be a solid color, either brown, black, green, or purple. How many different outfits can be made? No two outfits should be the same. Guide students to predict how many different outfits can be colored. They should record their predictions on the activity sheet. (Note: Some students may predict 8 outfits by adding 4 shorts and 4 shirts. Other students may predict 16 outfits by multiplying 4 shorts and 4 Allow enough time for students to color their combinations on the activity sheet. Place students in pairs to compare their results. As a class, discuss the results. Students should have the following 16 correct combinations: Yellow shirt, Brown shorts - Yellow shirt, Black shorts - Yellow shirt, Green shorts - Yellow shirt, Purple shorts - Orange shirt, Brown shorts - Orange shirt, Black shorts - Orange shirt, Green shorts - Orange shirt, Purple shorts - Blue shirt, Brown shorts - Blue shirt, Black shorts - Blue shirt, Green shorts - Blue shirt, Purple shorts - Red shirt, Brown shorts - Red shirt, Black shorts - Red shirt, Green shorts - Red shirt, Purple shorts Ask students to compare their predictions to the correct total number of combinations. Students who made the correct predictions could share their reasoning with the class. In addition to the organized list shown above, students may also make a table or a tree diagram to solve this problem. Ask students to think about a general rule or pattern for determining the total number of combinations. Students should see that they could have multiplied the number of shirts possible (4) by the total number of shorts possible (4) to get a correct total number of 16 combinations. As appropriate, tell students that this is an example of the counting principle. You may wish to give additional examples of the counting principle. You may also ask students to use the Bobbie Bear interactive. Students can pick an outfit for Bobbie Bear and customize the outfit similar to the one on the activity sheet. Marcy Cook. "IDEAS: Combinations." The Arithmetic Teacher. 36, 1 (September 1988) 31-36. 1. What if six colors are used for shirts? [There would be twenty-four outfits.] 2. What if eight colors are used for shorts and eight for shirts? [Solution: Sixty-four outfits could be colored.] 3. Move on to the next lesson, Ice Cream Cones. Questions for Students 1. How did your prediction compare to your actual answer? How do you explain this? [Student responses will vary depending upon their predictions and how close they are to the actual answer. Students who made incorrect predictions should be able to now explain how to find the actual number.] 2. Which method would be more efficient for finding the total number of outfits: multiplying, drawing a tree diagram, or making a table? [Students should respond by saying multiplying, because that will be the quickest way to determine a count.] 3. Which method would be more useful for identifying the different combinations (outfits) possible: multiplying, drawing a tree diagram, or making a table? [Students should respond by saying either a tree diagram or making a table, because these two methods list the possibilities (whereas multiplying simply gives you a count).] 4. In your own words, what is the counting principle? [Answers will vary. Sample student answer: It is a way to figure out the total number of possible combinations that can be made.]
Journalists educate the public about events and issues and how they affect their lives. They spend much of their time interviewing expert sources, searching public records and other sources for information, and sometimes visiting the scene where a crime or other newsworthy occurrence took place. After they've thoroughly researched the subject, they use what they uncovered to write an article or create a piece for radio, television or the Internet. Before journalists can write about a subject, they must first gather information. They usually conduct several interviews with people involved in or having knowledge of the subject. They may also go to the scene of an event, such as a crime or an accident, to interview witnesses or law enforcement officers and to document what they see. In addition, they often search public records or other databases to find information and statistics to back up their stories. Researching a story is often similar to conducting an investigation, and journalists must sometimes ask difficult questions. They may have to invest a lot of time tracking down information and people relevant to the story. Working With People Even though a news article bears a single journalist's byline, the process requires significant collaboration. How good a journalist's story is often depends on how adept he is at communicating and working with others. For example, journalists take instruction from their editors regarding what angle to approach when writing a story, how long the story should be and whom to interview. They also need strong people and communication skills so they can persuade sources to talk to them. Journalists frequently approach people they don't know, whether when reporting from the scene or calling to request an interview. If they're uncomfortable around strangers, they'll make others uncomfortable as well, making it less likely that people will want to be interviewed. In addition to serving the public interest, journalists must also follow the law, especially regarding the confidentiality and privacy of the people they interview or write about. For example, while journalists often tape record their interviews to ensure accuracy, federal and state laws generally make it illegal to record a conversation without the permission of the other party. In this case, journalists must tell their sources they're recording the interview before it begins. Journalists must also understand the laws regarding libel and invasion of privacy. If a journalist is careless when reporting criminal allegations against a person, for example, he could face a defamation lawsuit if the accusations are proved untrue. Some aspects of a journalist's job are not subject to any kind of law but are just as important. Journalists must strive to present an accurate, well-balanced explanation of the stories they cover. For example, they have an obligation to present all sides of an issue, and to conduct extensive research and talk to several sources knowledgeable about the subject. If they present only popular opinion, or if they conduct minimal research without fully exploring the subject, they don't give readers and viewers the information they need to understand the implications of the event or issue. Journalists must also be honest with the people they interview, telling them before talking to them what the article is about and that they plan to quote them in the piece. - Hemera Technologies/PhotoObjects.net/Getty Images
Three-dimensional printing has been used to make everything from pizza to prostheses, and now researchers are working on using the emerging technology to fabricate hearts, kidneys, and other vital human organs. That would be very big news, as the number of people who desperately need an organ transplant far outstrips the number of donor organs available. On average, about 21 Americans die every day because a needed organ was unavailable. What exactly is the promise of 3D printing organs and tissues, or "bioprinting?" How does the technology work, and when might it start saving lives? For answers to these and other questions, HuffPost Science reached out to Dr. Anthony Atala (right), director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine and a world-renowned expert in the field, to find out. See below for a lightly edited version of the Q & A. Can 3D printing end the shortage of organs? 3D printing is not magic. It is simply a way to scale up the current processes we use to engineer organs in the laboratory. Our team has successfully engineered bladders, cartilage, skin, urine tubes and vaginas that have been implanted in patients. Our goal is produce organ structures such as these with 3D printing to make the engineering process more precise and reproducible. The ultimate goal of regenerative medicine -– regardless of the way the organs are engineered -- is to help solve the shortage of donor organs. How might 3D-printed organs compare to donor organs? Our goal is to engineer organs using a patient’s own cells. With this approach, there would be no issues with rejection, and patients wouldn’t have to take the powerful anti-rejection drugs that are now required. This is certainly one advantage of customized organs. What's the actual process by which organs would be "printed?" A first step in organ engineering –- whether it involves 3D printing or other methods –- is to get a biopsy of the organ that needs to be replaced. From this biopsy, certain cells with regenerative potential are isolated and multiplied. These cells are then mixed with a liquid material that provides oxygen and other nutrients to keep them alive. This mixture is placed in a printer cartridge. A separate printer cartridge is filled with a biomaterial that will be printed into the organ- or tissue-shaped structure. The structure is designed on a computer using a patient’s medical scans. When happens when you press the "print" button? When the “print” button is pushed, the printer builds the structure layer by layer and embeds cells into each layer. When cells are provided the right mixture of nutrients and growth factors –- and placed in the right environment -- they know what to do and perform their functions. For some structures, two or more types of cells may be required. (Story continues below image.) A 3-D printer at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine at work on a kidney prototype. What challenges are you facing? Scientists have successfully engineered three categories of organs: flat structures such as skin; tubular structures such as urine tubes and blood vessels; and hollow structures such as the bladder. The most complex organs are solid structures such as the kidney, liver, and pancreas. Some of the challenges we face with these organs are learning to grow the billions of cells required for these organs, as well as learning how to best supply the new organs with oxygen until they integrate with the body. We are exploring a variety of options that include printing oxygen-generating materials into the structures; printing micro-channels that can maximize the diffusion of nutrients and oxygen from nearby tissues; and printing blood vessels into the structures. How many years away are we from printing complex organs like the heart and kidney? Science is unpredictable, so it is impossible to make predictions. But I think we can safely say that the timeframe required to routinely print and implant complex organs is decades, rather than years. What are some recent breakthroughs that have brought us closer to making 3D printed organs a reality? We are continuing to refine our printers to increase printing resolution and learning how to keep the printing process from damaging cells. In addition, we are making advances in identifying which biomaterials work best for specific structures. And, we are great making strides printing with multiple cells types and controlling placement of cells. What are the next steps? One relatively new bioprinting project, funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, aims to print mini hearts, livers, blood vessels, and lung on a chip system. Called a “Body on a Chip,” this project has the potential to test new drugs more accurately and perhaps eliminate the need for testing in animals. The immediate goal is to test effects on the body of biological weapons and to develop antidotes. To learn more about regenerative medicine and Dr. Atala's vision for 3D printing organs, check out his 2011 TEDTalk below.
What is Ozone?Read all about good ozone, bad ozone here. How it all started In the late 1920s, chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (cloro-floro-carbons) or CFCs, were invented. These chemicals were not poisonous and didn't harm fabrics, plants or people. Companies thought they were great and used them in refrigerators, air conditioners, styrofoam packaging, and spray cans. From the 1920s to the 1970s, billions of CFC molecules were released into the air. In the 1970s, scientists began to wonder what might happen to all those CFCs after they had been in the air for a while. They eventually learned that CFCs could float past the troposphere up into the stratosphere where UV rays would break them down. The chemicals that make up CFCs, mainly chlorine and fluorine, would float around the stratosphere, breaking up ozone molecules. This was bad, because scientists knew that ozone in the stratosphere protects the Earth from too many UV rays. Fixing the problem In 1979, many countries, including the U.S., banned CFCs from being made or used. This was a big step toward fixing the problem. Today, no spray cans contain CFCs. Other chemicals are gradually replacing the CFCs in air conditioners. But the CFCs already in the atmosphere can take up to 50 years to reach the stratosphere. Once there, they hang around in the stratosphere for many years, doing damage. Also, the products that still contain CFCs need to be treated with care. One example of this is a car air conditioner. When the air conditioner breaks, or the car is taken to a junkyard, the CFCs need to be carefully taken out and recycled or stored so that they don't leak into the air. Scientists originally predicted that the ozone layer would be the thinnest around 2008, then start recovering. But new research shows that other air pollution problems are slowing down the ozone layer's ability to rebound. What you can do
The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (February 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Orthodoxy (from Greek ορθοδοξία, orthodoxía – "right opinion") is adherence to correct or accepted creeds, especially in religion. In the Christian sense the term means "conforming to the Christian faith as represented in the creeds of the early Church." The first seven Ecumenical Councils were held between the years of 325 and 787 with the aim of formalizing accepted doctrines. In some English speaking countries, Jews who adhere to all the traditions and commandments of the Torah are often called Orthodox Jews, though the term "orthodox" historically first described Christian beliefs. Orthodoxy in ChristianityEdit In classical Christian usage, the term orthodox refers to the set of doctrines which were believed by the early Christians. A series of ecumenical councils, also known as the First seven Ecumenical Councils, were held over a period of several centuries to try to formalize these doctrines. The most significant of these early decisions was that between the Homoousian doctrine of Athanasius and Eustathius (which became Trinitarianism) and the Heteroousian doctrine of Arius and Eusebius (called Arianism). The Homoousian doctrine, which defined Jesus as both God and man with the hypostatic union of the 451 Council of Chalcedon, won out in the Church and was referred to as orthodoxy in most Christian contexts, since this was the viewpoint of the majority. (The minority nontrinitarian Christians object to this terminology). Following the 1054 Great Schism, both the Western and Eastern Churches continued to consider themselves uniquely orthodox and catholic. Over time, the Western Church gradually identified with the "Catholic" label, and people of Western Europe gradually associated the "Orthodox" label with the Eastern Church (in some languages the "Catholic" label is not necessarily identified with the Western Church). This was in note of the fact that both Catholic and Orthodox were in use as ecclesiastical adjectives as early as the 2nd and 4th centuries respectively. Today the two largest "Orthodox" Christian communions are the Eastern Orthodox Church (often simply "Orthodoxy" or "Eastern Orthodoxy") and Oriental Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy in JudaismEdit Orthodox Judaism is the approach to religious Judaism which subscribes to a tradition of mass revelation and adheres to the interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Tannaim and Amoraim. Orthodox Judaism is split into various different movements and factions. They have different ways of interpreting and following the laws and traditions of Judaism, and include movements such as Modern Orthodox Judaism (אורתודוקסיה מודרנית) and Ultra-Orthodox or Haredi Judaism (יהדות חרדית). Orthodox Judaism is distinct from Conservative Judaism. Orthodoxy in IslamEdit Orthodoxy in HinduismEdit Outside the context of religion, the term "orthodoxy" is often used to refer to any commonly held belief or set of beliefs in some field, in particular when these tenets, possibly referred to as "dogmas", are being challenged. In this sense, the term has a mildly pejorative connotation. Orthodoxy is also used within daily life as well as politics and religion. A new but commonly strange way of solving a complication could be referred to as 'unorthodox' while a common and 'normal' way of solving a complication would be referred to as 'orthodox'. Among various "orthodoxies" in distinctive fields, most common terms are: - Political orthodoxy, - Social orthodoxy, - Economic orthodoxy, - Scientific orthodoxy, - Artistic orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is opposed to heterodoxy ("other teaching") or heresy. People who deviate from orthodoxy by professing a doctrine considered to be false are called heretics, while those who, perhaps without professing heretical beliefs, break from the perceived main body of believers are called schismatics. The term employed sometimes depends on the aspect most in view: if one is addressing corporate unity, the emphasis may be on schism; if one is addressing doctrinal coherence, the emphasis may be on heresy. A deviation lighter than heresy is commonly called error, in the sense of not being grave enough to cause total estrangement, while yet seriously affecting communion. Sometimes error is also used to cover both full heresies and minor errors. The concept of orthodoxy is prevalent in many forms of organized monotheism. However, orthodox belief is not usually overly emphasized in polytheistic or animist religions, in which there is often little or no concept of dogma, and varied interpretations of doctrine and theology are tolerated and sometimes even encouraged within certain contexts. Syncretism, for example, plays a much wider role in non-monotheistic (and particularly, non-scriptural) religion. The prevailing governing norm within polytheism is often orthopraxy ("right practice") rather than the "right belief" of orthodoxy. - Chalcedonian Christianity - Chalcedonian Definition - Eastern Christianity - Four Marks of the Church - Heresy in Christianity - Nicene Christianity - Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed - Orthodoxy (book) - Protestant movements: - Proto-orthodox Christianity - Rule of Faith - John B. Henderson: The Construction of Orthodoxy and Heresy: Neo-Confucian, Islamic, Jewish, and Early Christian Patterns, SUNY Press 1998. - Harper, Douglas. "orthodoxy". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2016-01-27. - orthodox. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. Dictionary definition (accessed: March 03, 2008). - Robert M. Wills (2013). Taking Caesar Out of Jesus: Uncovering the Lost Relevance of Jesus. Xlibris Corporation. p. 246. ISBN 1-4931-0810-7. - Liddell & Scott; Code of Justinian Archived July 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.: "We direct that all Catholic churches, throughout the entire world, shall be placed under the control of the orthodox bishops who have embraced the Nicene Creed." - Jostein Ådna (editor), The Formation of the Early Church (Mohr Siebeck 2005 ISBN 978-316148561-9), p. 342
Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum According to the Worldwatch Institute, in 1998 alone, severe weather caused more than 30,000 deaths and close to $90 billion in damage. Hurricanes ravaged coastlines, tornadoes plowed through the United States with record force, and rain battered crops and left millions of people homeless worldwide. What causes such severe weather? Can we prepare ourselves for these disasters? Powerful storms such as thunderstorms, hurricanes, and tornadoes are generated when warm, light air rises quickly into higher, colder levels in an unstable updraft that can reach over 100 miles per hour. Each type of storm forms under specific conditions; hurricanes occur over moisture-rich oceans and coastlines, for example. They draw their energy from warm ocean waters. Understanding the conditions that give rise to powerful storms is the key to preparing for their devastating effects. Thunder and lightning At any given moment, there are an estimated 2,000 thunderstorms in progress over Earth's surface. These storms can vary from relatively mild rainstorms to very damaging storms that feature hail and high wind. Thunderstorms form when warm air rises from Earth's surface and moves upwards quickly into the colder levels of the atmosphere. If conditions are right, tornadoes can form from this rapid updraft. Normally, however, the result is rain, wind, lightning, and thunder. Without lightning, there would be no "thunder" in "thunderstorm." Thunder is the noise lightning makes as it travels through the air. Lightning occurs during all thunderstorms (though not every time it rains). During a storm, it strikes Earth 100 times each second. More than just a dazzling light show, lightning causes billions of dollars in damage each year. Lightning forms when updrafts of air carry water droplets, which have a charge, upward to heights where some freeze into ice and snow particles. They form a cloud. As these particles begin to fall back to Earth, charges within the cloud become mixed. The differences in charge are released as lightning. You'll normally hear the sound of lightning a few moments after you see the sky light up. Light travels faster than sound, so if you are at a distance from the storm, lightning and thunder may seem oddly disconnected. Spinning air: Tornadoes and hurricanes Both tornadoes and hurricanes are spinning columns of air capable of causing great damage. There are important differences between these two powerful storms, however. Tornadoes are more localized and typically found on land, while hurricanes can cover vast areas and draw their power from the warm tropical oceans. Tornadoes range from only a few feet to one mile in diameter and are short in duration (normally only a few minutes long). Though these storms are localized, they can be extremely violent. The wind speed inside a tornado's funnel can exceed 200 miles per hour, enough to turn everyday objects into deadly projectiles. Tornadoes occur all over the world, at every time of the year, but they are most common in the summertime in the midwestern United States. This region's propensity for tornadoes has earned it the name Tornado Alley. Tornadoes form from thunderstorms, though not all thunderstorms generate tornadoes. An unstable column of warm air rising within cumulus clouds can start to rotate because of changing wind directions at or near the ground. These updrafts alter the air's rotation from horizontal to vertical, creating conditions in which a funnel can develop. If conditions are right and the funnel forms, it can extend to the ground, forming a tornado. All thunderstorms are capable of producing tornadoes, but detection is still a difficult task. Weather forecasters can identify the cloud features and conditions that normally precede these storms, and they know where they are most likely to occur. However, predicting the exact time, location, and intensity of tornadoes is still very difficult. Tornadoes threaten areas the size of towns or counties, but hurricanes play themselves out on a much larger stage. These large storms can last for days or weeks and cover thousands of miles of territory. Hurricanes draw their strength from the warm tropical waters of the ocean. Unlike tornadoes, they lose their power source when they leave the ocean. Once on land, they gradually dissipate. How do hurricanes form? Why are they so dangerous? Find out more in "Eye of the Storm: Inside a Hurricane."" "Weather" is inspired by programs from
Alzheimer’s disease disrupts critical metabolic processes that keep neurons healthy. These disruptions cause nerve cells in the brain to stop working, lose connections with other nerve cells, and finally die. The destruction and death of nerve cells causes the memory failure, personality changes, problems in carrying out daily activities, and other features of the disease. The brains of people with AD have an abundance of two abnormal structures—amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles—that are made of misfolded proteins (see "Protein Misfolding" for more information). This is especially true in certain regions of the brain that are important in memory. The third main feature of AD is the loss of connections between cells. This leads to diminished cell function and cell death. Amyloid plaques are found in the spaces between the brain’s nerve cells. They were first described by Dr. Alois Alzheimer in 1906. Plaques consist of largely insoluble deposits of an apparently toxic protein peptide, or fragment, called beta-amyloid. We now know that some people develop some plaques in their brain tissue as they age. However, the AD brain has many more plaques in particular brain regions. We still do not know whether amyloid plaques themselves cause AD or whether they are a by-product of the AD process. We do know that genetic mutations can increase production of beta-amyloid and can cause rare, inherited forms of AD (see "Genes and Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease" for more on inherited AD). To view a video showing what happens to the brain in AD, go to www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/ADvideo. Amyloid precursor protein (APP), the starting point for amyloid plaques, is one of many proteins associated with the cell membrane, the barrier that encloses the cell. As it is being made inside the cell, APP becomes embedded in the membrane, like a toothpick stuck through the skin of an orange (Figure 1). In a number of cell compartments, including the outermost cell membrane, specific enzymes snip, or cleave, APP into discrete fragments. In 1999 and 2000, scientists identified the enzymes responsible for cleaving APP. These enzymes are called alpha-secretase, beta-secretase, and gamma-secretase. In a major breakthrough, scientists then discovered that, depending on which enzyme is involved and the segment of APP where the cleaving occurs, APP processing can follow one of two pathways that have very different consequences for the cell. In the benign pathway, alpha-secretase cleaves the APP molecule within the portion that has the potential to become beta-amyloid. This eliminates the production of the beta-amyloid peptide and the potential for plaque buildup. The cleavage releases from the neuron a fragment called sAPPα, which has beneficial properties, such as promoting neuronal growth and survival. The remaining APP fragment, still tethered in the neuron’s membrane, is then cleaved by gamma-secretase at the end of the beta-amyloid segment. The smaller of the resulting fragments also is released into the space outside the neuron, while the larger fragment remains within the neuron and interacts with factors in the nucleus (Figure 2). In the harmful pathway, beta-secretase first cleaves the APP molecule at one end of the beta-amyloid peptide, releasing sAPPβ from the cell (Figure 3). Gamma-secretase then cuts the resulting APP fragment, still tethered in the neuron’s membrane, at the other end of the beta-amyloid peptide. Following the cleavages at each end, the beta-amyloid peptide is released into the space outside the neuron and begins to stick to other beta-amyloid peptides (Figure 4). These small, soluble aggregates of two, three, four, or even up to a dozen beta-amyloid peptides are called oligomers. Specific sizes of oligomers may be responsible for reacting with receptors on neighboring cells and synapses, affecting their ability to function. It is likely that some oligomers are cleared from the brain. Those that cannot be cleared clump together with more beta-amyloid peptides. As the process continues, oligomers grow larger, becoming entities called protofibrils and fibrils. Eventually, other proteins and cellular material are added, and these increasingly insoluble entities combine to become the well-known plaques that are characteristic of AD. For many years, scientists thought that plaques might cause all of the damage to neurons that is seen in AD. However, that concept has evolved greatly in the past few years. Many scientists now think that oligomers may be a major culprit. Many scientists also think that plaques actually may be a late-stage attempt by the brain to get this harmful beta-amyloid away from neurons. The second hallmark of AD, also described by Dr. Alzheimer, is neurofibrillary tangles. Tangles are abnormal collections of twisted protein threads found inside nerve cells. The chief component of tangles is a protein called tau. Healthy neurons are internally supported in part by structures called microtubules, which help transport nutrients and other cellular components, such as neurotransmitter-containing vesicles, from the cell body down the axon. Tau, which usually has a certain number of phosphate molecules attached to it, binds to microtubules and appears to stabilize them. In AD, an abnormally large number of additional phosphate molecules attach to tau. As a result of this “hyperphosphorylation,” tau disengages from the microtubules and begins to come together with other tau threads. These tau threads form structures called paired helical filaments, which can become enmeshed with one another, forming tangles within the cell. The microtubules can disintegrate in the process, collapsing the neuron’s internal transport network. This collapse damages the ability of neurons to communicate with each other. Loss of Connection The third major feature of AD is the gradual loss of connections between neurons. Neurons live to communicate with each other, and this vital function takes place at the synapse. Since the 1980s, new knowledge about plaques and tangles has provided important insights into their possible damage to synapses and on the development of AD. The AD process not only inhibits communication between neurons but can also damage neurons to the point that they cannot function properly and eventually die. As neurons die throughout the brain, affected regions begin to shrink in a process called brain atrophy. By the final stage of AD, damage is widespread, and brain tissue has shrunk significantly. Fecha de publicación: Septiembre 2008 Última actualización: Noviembre 8, 2011
Syncope, commonly known as fainting, refers to a sudden loss of consciousness, followed by a rapid and complete recovery. If you have symptoms of dizziness or lightheadedness, without loss of consciousness, this is called presyncope. Syncope should not be confused with sudden cardiac arrest. A person with sudden cardiac arrest also loses consciousness suddenly but will die without immediate medical attention. A person with syncope recovers quickly, almost always without treatment. However, injuries can occur during a syncopal episode and recurrent episodes can be frightening. Moreover, in patients with heart problems, syncope may be a warning sign that sudden cardiac arrest is about to occur. There are other reasons that a person may pass out, such as low blood sugar, hyperventilation, or seizures. It is important to determine the cause of syncope so that it can be prevented or treated in the future. Frequency — Syncope is surprisingly common. About one-third of people have a syncopal episode at some point in their life. In most cases, syncope is not a sign of a life-threatening problem, although some people with syncope have a serious underlying medical condition. In non-elderly people, over 75 percent of cases of syncope are not associated with an underlying medical problem. Risks — A person who suddenly and unexpectedly loses consciousness can be injured. Up to 35 percent of people who have syncope injure themselves; elderly people are more likely to be injured during a syncopal attack. (See 'Safety issues' below.) Because of the risk of injury and the potential for serious underlying disease, any person who has a syncopal episode should seek medical attention. To remain conscious, a supply of oxygen-rich blood must be pumped to the brain without interruption. If the brain is deprived of this blood supply, even for a brief period, loss of consciousness (passing out) will occur. A number of medical conditions can cause syncope. Some of the most common are listed here. Vasovagal syncope — One of the most common types of syncope is called vasovagal syncope or neurocardiogenic syncope. A variety of conditions can trigger vasovagal syncope, including physical or psychological stress, dehydration, bleeding, or pain. The heart rate slows dramatically and the blood vessels in the body expand, causing blood to pool in the legs, resulting in low blood pressure (hypotension). This causes a decrease in blood flow to the brain. In some cases, vasovagal syncope is triggered by an emotional response to a stimulus, such as fear of injury, heat exposure, the sight of blood, or extreme pain. In other cases, it is caused by abnormal nervous system responses to activities such as urinating, having a bowel movement, coughing, or swallowing. In still other cases, no trigger can be identified. In most cases of vasovagal syncope, you have some warning that you are near fainting. These signs include dizziness, nausea, pale skin, "tunnel-like" vision, and profuse sweating. After the episode, symptoms may continue because of continued low blood pressure. Some people feel extremely tired. Heart rhythm problems — A number of disturbances in the rate and/or rhythm of the heart can cause syncope. These disturbances are called arrhythmias. The heart includes an area of specialized cells in the upper right chamber of the heart (right atrium) called the sinus node (figure 1). These cells send a series of regular electrical impulses to the atria that regulate the heart's rhythm and pace. These impulses travel in an organized way along conduction tissues within the heart muscle and then spread along smaller fibers that go to each muscle cell of the heart. The impulses cause the heart muscle cells to contract in an organized and regular way, generating an effective pumping of blood to all areas of the body. Syncope can occur because of problems at several places in this system. The problems may be due to primary heart rhythm problems, underlying heart disease, or use of a medication. The following are common rhythm problems that cause syncope. Sinus bradycardia — Bradycardia means a slow heart rate. In sinus bradycardia, the heart rate is slower than normal. A dramatically slowed heart rate can decrease the blood supply to the brain. Sometimes, sinus bradycardia occurs because of an abnormality in the sinus node itself. This is called sick sinus syndrome. In other cases, the slowed firing of the sinus node is due to medications. In still others, problems with the nerves that lead to the heart muscle and regulate the sinus node rate are to blame. For syncope to occur due to this problem, the heart usually stops for several seconds. This is known as asystole. Heart block — Sometimes, part of the conduction system between the sinus node and the rest of the heart becomes blocked, preventing the normal flow of electrical impulses. If the electrical signal from the sinus node fails to get through the entire conduction pathway, the heartbeat can be interrupted. If the interruption is significant and the heart rate is too slow, it can impair blood flow to the brain. Ventricular tachycardia — Tachycardia is a fast heart rate. The ventricles are the heart's main pumping chambers (figure 2). Ventricular tachycardia (VT) occurs when muscle in the ventricles send out their own rapid electrical impulses, taking over the rhythm normally controlled by the sinus node. The heartbeat that results from these abnormal impulses is also abnormal, and often fails to pump blood in an adequate way. The heart is racing but does not pump effectively, so blood flow to the brain may be decreased. Most people with syncope due to VT have underlying heart disease, most commonly coronary heart disease. Treatment of people with syncope caused by VT usually includes an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator. (See 'Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator' below.) Supraventricular tachycardia — Rapid heartbeats can originate above the ventricles (supraventricular tachyarrhythmias). This is not commonly associated with syncope, unless the heart rate is very rapid. Blockage of blood flow from the heart — Any problem with the structure of the heart that interferes with the flow of blood can cause syncope. The two most common causes of outflow obstruction are hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and aortic stenosis. ●Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy – Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is an inherited condition in which the areas of the left ventricular muscle walls are thickened. In some cases, the condition can interfere with blood flow out from the left ventricle and can cause syncope. More information about hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, including treatment recommendations, is available separately. (See "Patient information: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (Beyond the Basics)".) ●Aortic stenosis – The left ventricle normally pumps blood through the aortic valve into the body's largest artery, the aorta, to supply blood to the body (figure 2). The aortic valve closes while the left ventricle fills with blood and opens when the ventricle contracts and pumps blood into the aorta. When severe, aortic stenosis can reduce blood flow through the valve, and to the brain and the rest of the body. Treatment of syncope caused by aortic stenosis often includes aortic valve replacement surgery. (See "Indications for valve replacement in aortic stenosis in adults".) Orthostatic hypotension — Hypotension means low blood pressure. Orthostatic hypotension refers to low blood pressure that occurs when a person stands or sits up. This causes an inadequate amount of blood to the brain, leading to syncope. Causes of orthostatic hypotension include the following. ●Blood or fluid loss – Sometimes there is not enough blood in the body to ensure adequate flow to the brain when sitting or standing up. Low blood volume can be caused by blood loss or severe dehydration. ●Medications – Certain medications can interfere with the normal mechanisms that maintain blood pressure. Examples include some antidepressants, certain blood pressure or heart medicines, or medicines containing opiates, such as morphine. ●Illnesses that affect the nervous system – A number of illnesses can affect the specialized branch of the nervous system that helps maintain blood pressure (the autonomic nervous system). Examples are Parkinson disease, diabetes mellitus, the Shy-Drager syndrome, and amyloidosis. ●Alcohol – Drinking alcohol can cause blood vessels to expand, causing blood pressure to fall and syncope to occur. ●Carotid sinus hypersensitivity – Carotid sinus hypersensitivity is a condition in which reflexes lead to a slow heart rate and/or enlargement of blood vessels. This may be triggered by pressure on the carotid arteries (the main artery in the neck), and can lead to low blood pressure and syncope. Other causes — Less common causes of syncope include a heart attack, cardiac tumor, or blood clot in the arteries supplying the lungs. There are three main ways to identify the causes of syncope: the medical history, the physical examination, and cardiac testing. A medical history and physical examination are recommended for anyone who has had syncope. Some people will also require cardiac testing. Medical history — Gathering as much information as possible about events that occurred before, during, and after a syncopal episode can be helpful in determining the possible cause of syncope. As an example, vasovagal syncope is suspected in a person who has warning signs of nausea or sweating. In contrast, a sudden loss of consciousness with no warning is more likely to be due to a heart rhythm problem. A person who has syncope during exertion is more likely to have an obstruction to blood flow (aortic stenosis or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy) or ventricular tachycardia as a cause. Information about current medications and pre-existing medical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, or psychiatric illness can help pinpoint the cause of syncope. If the person has abnormal body movements while unconscious and requires a long time to recover consciousness, the person may have had a seizure and not a true syncopal episode. Physical examination — The clinician will measure your heart rate and blood pressure to help determine if a rhythm disturbance or low blood pressure caused the syncope. You may be asked to sit or stand while the blood pressure is measured to test for orthostatic hypotension. The clinician will listen to your heart for abnormal sounds that can be present in conditions such as aortic stenosis. You may have a test for blood in the stool to evaluate for blood loss, which could result in syncopal episodes. If the cause of the syncope is not readily apparent, the clinician may perform special maneuvers to test your response. As an example, you may be asked to bear down as if having a bowel movement; abnormal heart sounds that occur in response to this maneuver can point to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The clinician may firmly massage your carotid artery (located in the neck) while your heart rate is closely monitored with an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG). The heart's response to this maneuver can give clues to a possible diagnosis. Testing — A number of medical tests are available to help determine the cause of the syncope. However, testing is not always required. Electrocardiogram — Most patients who have had an episode of syncope will have an ECG. An ECG can be performed in a clinician's office and takes only a few minutes. Sticky pads are placed on your chest, abdomen, arm, and leg, and are connected to a recording device with long, thin cables. This is not painful and there is no risk of electric shock with an ECG. The ECG provides a picture of the electrical activity passing through the heart muscle. A normal ECG does not necessarily mean that syncope is not caused by a heart rhythm problem. Heart rhythm problems are often brief, come and go, and may not be present at the moment when the ECG is performed. Rhythm monitoring — Heart rhythm monitoring may be recommended to diagnose rhythm problems that come and go and have not been detected with a routine ECG. This monitoring may be done at home or in the hospital. ●Holter monitor – You may be asked to wear a monitoring device, called a Holter monitor, for 24 or 48 hours while performing normal daily activities at home. The device is connected to several long thin cables that are attached to your chest with sticky pads (similar to an ECG). The cables connect to a small, portable machine that can be attached to a belt or strap that is carried over the shoulder (figure 3). However, this type of monitoring has limited use and provides a diagnosis in only about 2 to 3 percent of people with syncope. If you do not experience a syncopal episode while wearing the Holter monitor, the test may need to be repeated, or an alternate form of long-term monitoring may be recommended. ●Event recorder – An event recorder may be recommended to capture rhythm problems associated with a syncopal episode. The advantages of an event recorder compared to a Holter monitor are its small size and the ability to monitor for abnormal rhythms for longer periods of time (usually one to two months). Some devices require you to activate the recorder when you feel symptoms of a syncopal episode. However, if you lose consciousness and another person is not available to assist with the recording, the opportunity to "capture" the event on the monitor may be lost (figure 4). ●Intermittent loop recorders – Intermittent loop recorders were developed to capture rhythm problems that occur before the device is activated. When you activate the monitoring device after regaining consciousness, the ECG recordings from the previous few minutes are retrieved and stored for analysis at a later time. An implantable loop recorder (ILR) provides a way to monitor rhythms over an extended period of time (eg, 18 to 24 months). The ILR is implanted under the skin on the upper left chest area. It stores events automatically according to programmed criteria, or can be activated by the patient. The ILR may be most useful if your symptoms are infrequent and an arrhythmia is suspected, but other forms of testing are negative or inconclusive. Echocardiogram — An echocardiogram is useful for identifying underlying structural heart disease such as hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or significant aortic stenosis. These findings alone do not conclusively establish the specific cause for syncope. An echocardiogram uses ultrasound (sound waves) to obtain detailed pictures of your heart as it beats. A technician presses a transducer (wand) against your chest and abdomen. The transducer is attached to a recording device and monitor. You are awake during the procedure. An echocardiogram does not use radiation. Upright tilt table test — This test is often done in healthy patients who have syncope. You lie on a flat table and are tilted at various angles while your heart rate and blood pressure are monitored closely (figure 5). Your response to the change in position can sometimes give clues about the cause of syncope. Electrophysiology study — An electrophysiology study (EPS) may be performed if you have heart disease or if a rhythm problem is suspected. Most people undergo EPS in a hospital setting. You will be given a sedative before the procedure but may be awake during testing. The physician uses a local anesthetic to numb a small area over a blood vessel, usually in the groin, and then threads small wires through the blood vessels into the heart using x-ray (fluoroscopic) guidance. Once in the heart, precise measurements of the heart's electrical function can be obtained. Exercise testing — In some people, especially those with a history of syncope during exertion, an exercise test is useful. Your blood pressure, heart rate, and rhythm are monitored while exercising on a treadmill or bicycle. Electroencephalogram — An electroencephalogram (EEG) involves the measurement of electrical activity in the brain. It can be performed in a provider's office or in a hospital, and generally takes about one hour. Multiple electrodes (small, flat metal discs) will be attached to your head and face with a sticky paste. The electrodes are connected to a recording device with long, thin wires. You must lie still and avoid speaking during the test. An EEG is frequently obtained in people with syncope, but is rarely useful. It can be helpful if you have syncope and seizure-like activity. Treatment of syncope is based upon the underlying cause. The goal of treatment is to prevent recurrences or more serious problems. Vasovagal syncope treatment — Vasovagal syncope can usually be treated by learning to take precautions to avoid potential triggers and minimize the potential risk of harm. For example, if you faint while blood is being drawn, you may be instructed to lie down during the procedure. If you have a feeling that you will pass out during any activity, you should immediately lie down and elevate your legs. Counter-pressure maneuvers — Counter-pressure maneuvers such as tensing your arms with clenched fists, leg pumping, and leg-crossing may stop a vasovagal syncopal episode, or at least delay it long enough that you can lie down with the feet elevated. Such maneuvers include: ●Leg crossing while tensing the leg, abdominal, and buttock muscles. ●Hand gripping, which involves gripping a rubber ball or similar object as hard as possible. ●Arm tensing, which involves gripping one hand with the other while simultaneously moving both arms away from the body. Medications — People with a heart rhythm problem may be started on medication to control the rhythm. People with orthostatic hypotension may benefit from increasing the amount of blood fluid volume. Fludrocortisone (Florinef) is one medicine that is used to increase blood volume. Midodrine is a medication that constricts blood vessels that may be used in combination with fludrocortisone. Pacemakers — A pacemaker is a small device that is implanted under your skin. Wires from the device are threaded to the heart where they emit impulses that help regulate the heartbeat. Pacemakers are often recommended if you have syncope caused by sinus bradycardia, carotid sinus hypersensitivity, or heart block. (See "Patient information: Pacemakers (Beyond the Basics)".) Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator — In some people with serious, life-threatening ventricular arrhythmias (such as ventricular tachycardia) that cause syncope, a device called an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) is used. The device is surgically implanted under the skin in your chest, similar to a pacemaker. It can sense when a life-threatening ventricular arrhythmia is occurring and administer an electric shock to correct the problem and potentially prevent the person from dying. (See "Patient information: Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (Beyond the Basics)".) Orthostatic training — In people with orthostatic hypotension and certain types of vasovagal syncope, orthostatic training may be useful to prevent syncope. Techniques are designed to decrease pooling of blood in the extremities, which can allow the blood pressure to drop when you stand. Methods to decrease this problem include the following: ●Use of elastic compression stockings, which are worn on the feet and lower legs ●Contraction of the leg muscles before and while standing ●Rising to stand slowly and in stages Passing out while driving or other activities can potentially harm both the patient and those around him/her. As a result, driving restrictions are sometimes recommended for certain people with syncope. This generally includes people who have a history of syncope that occurs without warning or known cause. Driving restrictions are governed by state or local laws. WHERE TO GET MORE INFORMATION Your healthcare provider is the best source of information for questions and concerns related to your medical problem. This article will be updated as needed on our web site (www.uptodate.com/patients). Related topics for patients, as well as selected articles written for healthcare professionals, are also available. Some of the most relevant are listed below. Patient level information — UpToDate offers two types of patient education materials. The Basics — The Basics patient education pieces answer the four or five key questions a patient might have about a given condition. These articles are best for patients who want a general overview and who prefer short, easy-to-read materials. Patient information: Syncope (fainting) (The Basics) Patient information: Pacemakers (The Basics) Patient information: Orthostatic hypotension (The Basics) Patient information: Bradycardia (The Basics) Patient information: Sick sinus syndrome (The Basics) Patient information: Atrial flutter (The Basics) Patient information: Aortic dissection (The Basics) Patient information: Time to stop driving? (The Basics) Patient information: Vagal maneuvers and their responses (The Basics) Patient information: Long QT syndrome (The Basics) Beyond the Basics — Beyond the Basics patient education pieces are longer, more sophisticated, and more detailed. These articles are best for patients who want in-depth information and are comfortable with some medical jargon. Patient information: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (Beyond the Basics) Patient information: Pacemakers (Beyond the Basics) Patient information: Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (Beyond the Basics) Professional level information — Professional level articles are designed to keep doctors and other health professionals up-to-date on the latest medical findings. These articles are thorough, long, and complex, and they contain multiple references to the research on which they are based. Professional level articles are best for people who are comfortable with a lot of medical terminology and who want to read the same materials their doctors are reading. Approach to the adult patient with syncope in the emergency department Carotid sinus hypersensitivity Evaluation of syncope in adults Management of syncope in adults Nonepileptic paroxysmal disorders in adolescents and adults Pathogenesis and etiology of syncope Upright tilt table testing in the evaluation of syncope Indications for valve replacement in aortic stenosis in adults The following organizations also provide reliable health information. ●National Library of Medicine ●National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ●American Heart Association
The present continuous tense is formed with to be (is/am/are) and verb-ing. We use it to talk about: A. The on-going or progressing event in the present or happening at the moment of speaking. Examples: - I’m just leaving work. I’ll be home in an hour. Please be quiet. The children are sleeping B. For something which we think is temporary: - Fatih is at university. He’s studying literature. I’m working in UGM for the next two weeks. C. For something which is new and contrasts with a previous state: - These days most people are using WA or LINE instead of writing letters. - Many youngsters nowadays are expressing their thought with Vlog D. Showing that something is changing or developing: - The children are growing quickly. - The climate is changing rapidly. - Your English is improving. E. We use the present continuous tense to talk about the future - Mary is going to a new school next term. - What are you doing next week? She, He, It, Ali ——> is + Ving They, We, You ——> are + Ving I —————–> am + Ving
SOME birds fly more like fighter planes than conventional aircraft, which is why they can make impressively sharp turns when diving for prey. The wings of a conventional plane push air downwards, and the reaction to this force is what creates lift. Until now, scientists thought that birds' wings generated lift in the same way. Insects, by contrast, are known to use a more complicated mechanism: they rotate their wing tips as they flap. This sets up vortices on the leading edge of the wing that increases the wing's effective thickness and hence its lift. Some fighter aircraft have wings designed to generate similar vortices. Now it turns out that birds' wings create vortices too. When John Videler and Elize Stamhuis of the University of Groningen and David Povel of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands placed the stiffened wing of a dead common swift in a water tunnel ... To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.
Because strings are lists, we can use list functions on them. > "Hello " ++ "world" "Hello world" >let list = [1, 2, 3, 4] > print list [1,2,3,4] > : list <interactive>:23:1: Non type-variable argument in the constraint: Num [t] (Use FlexibleContexts to permit this) When checking that ‘it’ has the inferred type it :: forall t. (Num t, Num [t]) => [[t]] > 5 : list [5,1,2,3,4] Ranges are a way of making lists that are arithmetic sequences of elements that can be enumerated. Numbers can be enumerated. One, two, three, four, etc. Characters can also be enumerated. The alphabet is an enumeration of characters from A to Z. Names can’t be enumerated. What comes after “John”? > [1 .. 20] [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20] > [2, 4 .. 20] [2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20] cycle takes a list and cycles it into an infinite list. If you just try to display the result, it will go on forever so you have to slice it off somewhere. > take 10 (cycle [1,2,3]) [1,2,3,1,2,3,1,2,3,1] > take 12 (cycle "LOL ") "LOL LOL LOL " repeat takes an element and produces an infinite list of just that element. It’s like cycling a list with only one element. > take 10 (repeat 5) [5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5] replicate function if you want some number of the same element in a list. > replicate 10 5 [5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5] > [1,2] [1,2] > [1,2,] <interactive>:12:6: parse error on input ‘]’ There’s a special type, () , that acts as a tuple of zero elements. This type has only one value, which is also written () . Both the type and the value are usually pronounced “unit.” If you are familiar with C, () is somewhat similar to void. > :type fst fst :: (a, b) -> a > :type snd snd :: (a, b) -> b The list [1,2,3] in Haskell is actually shorthand for the list 1:(2:(3:)), where is the empty list and : is the infix operator that adds its first argument to the front of its second argument (a list). (: and are like Lisp’s cons and nil, respectively.) Since : is right associative, we can also write this list as 1:2:3:.
QINGDAO, China, April 6 (UPI) -- Engineers and materials scientists have made solar panels increasingly efficient, but the technology still requires the cooperation of the weather. Currently, slow-moving rain fronts spell bad news for solar power generation -- but not for a new prototype solar cell developed by a team of Chinese scientists. By coating a solar cell in a thin layer of graphene, researchers have empowered the technology to turn raindrops into electricity. Graphene is prized by materials scientists for its wide variety of benefits, one of them being conductivity. The one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms allows a plethora of electrons to move freely across its surface. In water solutions, graphene binds positively charged ions with its electrons -- a process known as the Lewis acid-base interaction. Because raindrops contain salts, which dissociate into ions, precipitation and graphene make an ideal electricity-producing pair. The rain's positively charged ions -- including sodium, calcium, and ammonium ions -- adhere to the graphene surface and form a double layer with the graphene's electrons. The double layer is known as a pseudocapacitor, and the potential energy difference between the two layers is strong enough to generate an electric current. Researchers described the new technology in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
Stirring and Dissolving Rate Date: December 2006 How does stirring affect the rate sugar dissolves in water? An engineer would be slightly better suited to answer this question, but I have worked with many engineers to transfer small chemical reactions into large production facilities so I can probably do justice here :) There are many of types of stirring, believe it or not, but I will only describe two common forms--using a magnetic stirbar and using mechanical/overhead stirring via a rotating paddle. There are three main reasons why stirring could affect the rate of dissolution. For our initial system, let's use a beaker with, let's say, a half inch layer of sugar on the bottom and filled most of the rest of the way with fresh, room temperature water. With no stirring that layer of sugar is just going to sit on the bottom. If you look very closely at the interface between liquid and solid, you can actually see some of the sugar dissolving. There will be fluid veins of different densities and will reflect light at slightly different angles (see fluid dynamics for more information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_dynamics). Left alone, diffusion alone is left to make the solution uniform and since sugar water is denser than pure water, diffusion also has to overcome gravity. Stirring increases the rate of diffusion and will increase the rate of dissolution. Another important factor is surface area. The top of a thick layer of sugar has moderate to decent access to the water that is doing the dissolving, but the bottom of that layer either does not have access to water at all or quickly becomes saturated and no further dissolution can occur. This is because the rate of diffusion in and out of the solid sugar layer will be extremely slow. Stirring drastically increases the available surface area of sugar to water. Note that the total surface area of sugar at any point in time is constant, it is the surface area that is exposed to fresh water that is important. The third thing is the type of stirring, which usually revolves around the type of vessel being used. Beakers and round bottom flasks commonly used in a chemical lab generally call for magnetic stirbars. The stirbars are simply a small, usually cylindrical piece of magnetic metal (like iron) coated in Teflon so that the stirbar is inert and does not react with your experiment. These stirbars sit at the bottom of the flask, which is placed upon a stir plate. The stir plate is simply a rotating blade with magnets on the ends, which in turn causes your stirbar to rotate and stir the fluid. Since the stirbar is sitting on the bottom, stirring against the surface of the vessel, sugar will get ground up by passing between the stirbar and the vessel's surface. When the sugar gets ground up, you increase the surface area to volume ratio of the particles, which will greatly increase the rate of dissolution (due to points one and two). Let's also think of sugar sitting at the bottom of a 2L soda bottle. The bottom of the bottle is not uniform and a stirbar would be of little value here since there is no uniform surface for it to effectively stir on. Here, a paddle attached to a shaft and connected to a motor would be useful (as would shaking). The paddle can rotate at different speeds, it can be different shapes and sizes, and each of those things affects how well mixing occurs. On small scale the blade is usually called a paddle, whereas on large scale it is called a propeller. Stirring rates using motors are generally measured in RPM, but it is important to note that at a constant RPM, the longer a propeller is, the faster the tip of the propeller is going. On industrial scale the tip of the propeller can easily exceed 100 MPH. Depending on the shape of the propeller, there can be a grinding effect similar to that of a magnetic stirbar, but in general it is minimal and shouldn't be counted upon to increase surface area to aid dissolution. There is a lot of science behind mixing that I won't get into since your question was aimed at dissolving rates instead of mixing, but I wanted to give you a taste of how involve mixing can be. Stirring increases the rate of solution of all substances, not just sugar. This is because the dissolved molecules are carried away from the solid by the stirring action. Although this is a general trend, how effective stirring is quantitatively cannot be predicted by any theory I am aware of. Any soluble crystal dissolves in water quickly until the water it touches Then it slows down and waits for this water to be moved away and replaced with new under-saturated water, at which time it dissolves So the dissolution rate tends to be proportional to the replacement rate, which is similar to the stirring rate. Sometimes it might be possible that when flames heat the bottom of the sufficient convection occurs to dissolve sugar in reasonable time without deliberate stirring. If the heating is done very slowly, the sugar grains on the bottom would make a sugar-rich solution layer near the bottom. Sugar-water being lots heavier than pure water, it would resist rising when Then it could take days or weeks to finish dissolving, because the remaining sugar crystals will stop dissolving until they feel some less-rich water around them. Molecular diffusion from bottom to top gets the job done eventually, but it can be very slow. Stirring would be really essential then. To eliminate this extreme rate uncertainty, stirring is always part of the recipe. There are two general types of controls that affect the formation of solutions: thermodynamic and kinetic. Thermodynamic factors involve properties of the solute and the solvent. For example, because of the different type of interaction that water makes with itself and the way oil interacts with itself - the two do not dissolve with each other. On the other hand, salt and water have similar interaction types and so they can form solutions. If two molecules pass the thermodynamic factors, that is, if the thermodynamic factors indicate that they can dissolve with each other, then kinetic factors can take effect. Kinetic factors control the speed on how two substances dissolve into each other. For example, you may have noticed that a lump of sugar takes longer to dissolve than fine granulated sugar. In general, kinetic factors speed up the formation of a solution by making the molecules touch each other more efficiently. The more the molecules touch each other, the more they can interact, and form the necessary intermolecular connections that are necessary to form solutions. As such, stirring helps speed up the formation of solutions by allowing the molecules to touch each other more often (by moving the molecules around) and form the intermolecular connections necessary to form solutions. Greg (Roberto Gregorius) Click here to return to the Chemistry Archives Update: June 2012
The Mongols came from the dry steppes, and were a fierce and powerful nomadic people. They were divided into clans that were ruled by khans, or chiefs. One khan conquered his fellow clans and rose above them all to create a massive empire. He was known by the title Genghis Khan or "Universal Leader". He made the Mongols a strong fighting force, and then set out as a smart military leader to conquer much of Asia. Soon, Genghis Khan had an empire, built brutally, but it made peace throughout Asia. After Genghis died, the empire was split into 4 sections ruled by his heirs. This time became known as Pax Maongolia. Some of Khan's heirs included Kublai Khan, Batu Khan and Hulegu Khan. Click below for more information on Genghis Khan. Kublai Khan was a ruler of the Mongol empire, but he also conquered China. Kublai Khan moved his capital from Mongolia to a new city in China. The new capital was located near what is now the city of Beijing, which is the modern capital of China. The Chinese disliked the Mongol rule because they saw them as uncivilized, however Kublai tried to make the adjustment as seamless as possible, by allowing them to keep their own traditions and even adopting some of them as his own. He also gave his rule over a China a dynasty name: The Yuan dynasty. During this Dynasty trade increased, as did the spread of inventions, knowledge, new materials, religions, etc. Click these two buttons for some more information about the Yuan Dynasty.
If you have ever seen branching corals spreading their arms out like tree limbs, you can see why early scientists thought corals were plants. But these tiny, soft-bodied creatures are carnivores, despite being sessile, or fixed to one spot. Like their relatives, the jellyfish and the sea anemone in the Cnidaria phylum, each individual coral, or polyp, has barbed, stinging cells called nematocysts it can extend to capture prey like zooplankton or small fish. Although those early scientists got it wrong, it's easy to understand their mistake. Coral almost could be considered half-plant because of the zooxanthellae (pronounced zoo-zan-thelly) algae that live just inside each polyp's cell walls. The zooxanthellae supplies the polyp with the byproducts of photosynthesis, which the polyp turns into proteins, fats and carbohydrates. In turn, the polyp shelters the zooxanthellae and provides the carbon, nitrates and phosphates the algae need for photosynthesis. Up to 90 percent of the energy produced by zooxanthellae's photosynthesis is transferred to the coral host [source: NOAA]. This mutually beneficial arrangement is called symbiosis. Coral polyps also use the energy supplied by their symbiotic algae to produce calcium carbonate, or limestone. They secrete the limestone from their base, creating a protective skeleton and a hollow chamber called a cup. The polyps retreat into their cup to hide when predators come looking for them. Polyps rarely exist alone. They usually join other polyps to form a larger colony that acts as a single organism. While the individual minuscule polyps grow to 1 millimeter to 3 millimeters on average, colonies can weigh tons. Even a single branching coral comprises thousands of individual polyps. Over hundreds or thousands of years, these colonies may connect to form a reef. Reefs grow in one of two ways. One way is to periodically add on to their limestone base. They simply secrete more calcium carbonate under and around their current cup, creating the framework of the reef and causing it to grow both upwards and outwards. They also grow by reproducing. Corals may reproduce either asexually, by dividing and producing identical clones, or sexually, by sending out eggs or sperm. Either way, new coral polyps settle towards the ocean bottom until they find a hard substrate to call home, either combining with a pre-existing coral colony or starting one of their own. In addition to being connected at their bases, coral polyps link to one another laterally by a thin tissue called the coenosarc. The coenosarcs and the polyps form the visible living part of the reef, while the limestone base forms the non-living part. On the next page, you'll learn more about the structure of a coral reef and find out what conditions they need to survive. You'll also get a look at the different kinds of reefs.
Abstract and Keywords The crisis experienced by the British Empire during the 1760s and 1770s has been linked to the decentralized nature of the empire built by the English on the far shores of the Atlantic world in the seventeenth century. The Crown, unwilling to pay the full costs of colonization, granted charters to corporations and proprietors. After delegating so much authority to the colonists, it was unable to unilaterally dictate how the empire was to be governed. For the most part, it was the colonial elites who were able to negotiate their relationship with the imperial center. This de facto decentralization did not sit well with royal officials, who wanted a more politically centralized empire and thought that colonies existed mainly for the mother country's economic benefit. To implement this contrasting vision, Parliament passed a series of Navigation Acts designed to confine colonial trade to English possessions and English-flagged vessels. In America, the debate over the Stamp Act of 1765 gave rise to a radically different view of the relationship between the mother country and its colonies. Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription. If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.
This activity comes with a condensed version of Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address (1801). The students are then asked to analyze specific excerpts from the address and to put them in common language. Lastly, students are prompted (using a RAFT) to write their own inaugural address. This activity is fully aligned to the Common Core Standards (RH6-8.2, RH9-10.2, and RH11-12.2). The difficulty can be adjusted accordingly for each grade level. This activity is ready to print and to use! Enjoy!
Introduction to MongoDB What is MongoDB? MongoDB is an open source, document-oriented, NoSQL database system. One of its main features is that it allows us to save our structures or documents in BSON format (a specification similar to JSON). These types of databases arise from a great demand for databases that can work with massive data more efficiently. MongoDB is Schema Less which allows documents to have different structures without affecting their operation, something we cannot do with relational database tables. SQL vs NoSQL Terminology In MongoDB, the equivalent of relational database tables will be collections. Collections group documents, which would correspond to rows in the relational model. – The databases: They are the physical containers for the collections. Each database has its own file in the file system of our computer or server. – Collections: They are groups of documents. They are equivalent to tables in relational databases (only that collections can store documents with many different formats, instead of being subject to a fixed schema). Tables store records (rows), while collections store documents. – Documents: They are records within the collections. These documents are made up of key-value pairs and are stored in BSON format which is a binary representation of JSON-based maps. Type of data – Strings: They are used to store texts. – Numbers: Numeric values made up of digits (with or without a decimal point), for example, Doubles, Integers, 64-bit Integers, and Decimals. – Boolean: True or false information (true or false). – Date: They are used to save dates. – Null: refers to a null or empty value. – Undefined: indicates a data that has not been defined. – Arrays: Arrays or lists of any other type of data, including other lists. Advantages of NoSQL Compared to relational databases, NoSQL databases are more scalable and offer higher performance; In addition, his data model addresses several issues that the relational model misses: – Large volumes of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data that are constantly changing. – Agile development sprints, rapid iteration of schematics and frequent code generation. – Flexible and easy to use object-oriented programming. – Geographically distributed scale-out architecture, rather than a monolithic architecture. Clients for MongoDB In addition to the server, we must have clients to interact with the database. We can use any of the following options: – Mongo Shell, MongoDB interactive shell. With the installation of MongoDB and its tools, we can access its interactive console and perform our first interactions with MongoDB. – MongoDBCompass, based on a graphical interface. It is an interactive tool to query, optimize and analyze your data in MongoDB. – Studio3T Free, friendlier than the console, with a text editor where you can write a sequence of instructions and launch them against the server. First steps in the console The first thing we must do is open the terminal and launch the following command: Now we are ready to execute certain operations against the database. List all the databases we have. Create a new database or switch to an existing database. We use the `use` command, followed by the name of the database we want to put in it. Verify the database currently in use, that is, to know in which database I am positioned. Delete a database. 1. First we list all the databases. 2. We use the `use` command to switch to the database we want. 3. We verify with the `db` command that we are in the correct database. 4. If it’s the one you want to drop and you’re sure, type the `db.dropDatabase()` command. Although it is often said that NoSQL databases are narrow in scope, MongoDB can be used in many of the projects we develop today. Any application that needs to store semi-structured data can use MongoDB. This is the case of typical CRUD applications or many of the current web developments. In my case, I have used MongoDB in personal projects such as creating online stores, creating applications, in systems with large amounts of documents and especially in those that need scalability, since MongoDB is especially useful in environments that require scalability and You don’t have so many limitations when it comes to climbing. Thanks to its simple replication options, we will obtain a system that scales horizontally and without too many problems, and we will even benefit from greater readability and speed. MongoDB gives us the flexibility to decide the best design according to our convenience, and it will allow us to implement more agile work systems. Of course, it is important to take into account that although MongoDB collections do not require a defined schema, we should try to create one so that we can follow it ourselves. In this way, we will improve the performance of our application. Over the years, MongoDB has become a trusted solution for many companies looking for a powerful and highly scalable NoSQL database. But MongoDB is much more than a traditional document-based database and has some great capabilities that set it apart from other DBMSs, for example, as enterprise applications scale and resource demands increase, problems can arise. to ensure the availability and reliability of services. MongoDB’s load balancing and sharing process distributes large data sets across multiple virtual machines simultaneously, while still maintaining acceptable read and write performance. One of MongoDB’s biggest advantages over other databases is its ability to handle ad hoc queries that don’t require predefined schemas. MongoDB databases use a query language similar to SQL databases, making it extremely accessible for both beginning and advanced developers. This accessibility facilitates the insertion, consultation, classification, update and Export your data with common helper methods and simple shell commands.
Every year from September 15 to October 15, the United States observes National Hispanic Heritage Month, a time marked to celebrate the many contributions made by Hispanic Americans who have shaped and strengthened this nation. This National Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrate with your students and get them reflecting deeply on the cultural contributions of Latinx artists and musicians through history. These two great new activities from ABC-CLIO’s The American Mosaic: The Latino American Experience database are available open access through October 15th: - The Chicano Mural Movement In this activity, students will learn about the characteristics of Chicano murals and analyze three murals to identify those characteristics. Next, they’ll create their own artwork, using some of the elements common to murals of the Chicano movement. - Latinos in Rock and Roll In this activity, students will learn about the influence of Latino musicians on rock and roll music. Then they’ll design a poster summarizing how these musicians' Latino heritage added to and changed the broad range of styles that encompass rock and roll. ABC-CLIO and EBSCO celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month while recognizing the critical importance of integrating Latinx history and culture into the curriculum all year long. To learn more about equitable history education, download a free poster from ABC-CLIO. To integrate diverse perspectives into every unit, every day, consider adding ABC-CLIO’s The Latino American Experience to your library collection. Recognized by Tech & Learning as a 2021 “Best Tool for Back to School” for helping schools develop and implement culturally relevant curriculum, ABC-CLIO’s The Latino American Experience powers student research into the heritage and cultures of the diverse Latino peoples of the United States. Featuring thousands of articles by Latino scholars and a rich collection of multimedia primary sources, the database explores topics ranging from civil rights to pop culture, and from the arts to the issues shaping the modern Latino American experience — including immigration reform, media portrayals, and voting access and influence.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626), a 17th century English philosopher, was the first individual to suggest a universal methodology for science. Bacon believed that scientific method required an inductive process of inquiry. Karl Popper later refuted this idea in the 20th century. Popper suggested that science could only be done using a deductive methodology. The next topic (3b) examines Karl Popper's recommended methodology for doing science more closely. Science is simply a way of acquiring knowledge about nature and the Universe. To practice science, one must follow a specific universal methodology. The central theme of this methodology is the testing of hypotheses. A hypothesis can be defined as a proposal intended to explain certain facts or observations that has not been formally tested. The overall goal of science is to better comprehend the world around us. Various fields of study, like physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and the earth sciences, have used science exclusively to expand their knowledge base. Science allows its practitioners to acquire knowledge using techniques that are both neutral and unbiased. The broadest, most inclusive goal of science is to understand (see Figure 3a-1). Understanding involves two interconnected processes: explanation and confirmation. Explanation is perhaps the most important basic goal of understanding. Explanation consists of explaining reality with a system of hypotheses, theories, and laws. Explanation may also relate observed phenomena to a system of empirical formulas, or link them to mechanisms that are hierarchically structured at both higher and lower levels of function. A theory can be defined as a collection of logical ideas that are used to explain something. The process of testing, refining, and re-testing hypotheses constructs theories. The nature of this confirmation process suggests that theories are rarely static.. \|Figure 3a-1: Relationship between reality, theory, and understanding in science. This model suggests that we develop scientific theories to explain phenomena found in reality. Once a theory is established, it must be confirmed by re-examining reality to find contrary data. If contrary data is found, the theory is modified to include this new information and the confirmation process begins again. The process of validating theories is endless process because we can never assume that we have considered all possibilities.\| Figure 3a-2: Facilitating tools involved explanation and confirmation. Explanation has two important secondary components: idealization and unification (see Figure 3a-2). Idealization may be considered to be the condensation of a body of empirical fact into a simple statement. In the process of condensation, some detail must be omitted and the processes and phenomenon abstracted. Idealization may also involve isolating the phenomenon from other aspects of the system of interest. A second aspect of explanation is the unification of apparently unrelated phenomena in the same abstract or ideal system of concepts. Another minor goal of science is the confirmation of constructed models or theories associated with understanding. Confirmation is accomplished through hypothesis testing, prediction, and by running experiments. The next topic (3b) examines these aspects of science in greater detail.
The world of music is a magical realm that has the power to touch our hearts and souls in profound ways. For children, this enchanting world can be a source of not just joy and entertainment but also a powerful tool for building self-esteem and confidence. In this blog, we will explore the remarkable ways in which music can boost self-esteem in children, providing them with valuable life skills that will serve them well into adulthood. The Power of Melody From the lullabies that soothe infants to the catchy tunes that captivate young minds, melody plays a pivotal role in a child's musical journey. Melodies have a unique ability to evoke emotions and stimulate the brain. They can offer a sense of comfort, security, and happiness, all of which are essential for developing a healthy self-esteem. When children are exposed to melodies from an early age, they learn to connect with their emotions and express themselves through music. Singing along to their favorite songs, whether it's a nursery rhyme or a pop hit, helps children develop a sense of accomplishment and self-worth. It shows them that they are capable of creating something beautiful, boosting their self-esteem in the process. Confidence Through Expression Music provides children with a safe and creative outlet for self-expression. Whether it's playing an instrument, singing, or dancing, engaging in musical activities encourages them to communicate their thoughts and feelings in a non-verbal manner. This can be particularly beneficial for children who may struggle with verbal communication or shyness. Through music, children can find their voice and express their individuality. This newfound ability to communicate effectively can boost their self-confidence, as they realize they have a unique way of expressing themselves that others appreciate and enjoy. Learning Discipline and Perseverance Learning to play a musical instrument requires discipline and dedication. Children who take up instruments like the piano, violin, or guitar learn the importance of practice and perseverance. As they overcome challenges and make progress, they gain a sense of achievement that bolsters their self-esteem. The process of mastering a musical skill teaches children valuable life lessons about setting goals, working hard, and seeing the fruits of their labor. These experiences can boost their self-confidence not only in music but in all aspects of their lives. Building Social Skills Music often involves collaboration with others, whether it's singing in a choir, playing in a band, or participating in group music classes. These collaborative experiences teach children how to work as a team, listen to others, and contribute their unique talents. Such interactions enhance their social skills and help them feel valued as part of a group, further boosting their self-esteem. Music has the power to comfort, inspire, and uplift. When children face challenges or difficult emotions, turning to music can provide solace and strength. Learning to appreciate and create music can help children develop emotional resilience, allowing them to cope with adversity and build confidence in their ability to overcome obstacles. Melodies of confidence resonate through the lives of children, nurturing their self-esteem and providing them with a strong foundation for personal growth. Whether it's through the joy of singing, the discipline of instrumental practice, or the camaraderie of group performances, music plays a vital role in shaping children into confident, well-rounded individuals. As parents and educators, we can encourage and support children in their musical journey, knowing that the benefits go far beyond the stage or the practice room. By embracing the melodies of confidence, we empower the next generation to believe in themselves, express their feelings, and face life's challenges with resilience and grace. Explore the Joy of Music with Napa School of Music! Are you ready to embark on a musical journey with your little one? Join us at Napa School of Music, where we offer a vibrant and engaging music program tailored for children aged 18 months to 5 years old. Ignite their passion for music early! Nurture their creativity and cognitive development! Foster a lifelong love for the arts! Our expert instructors create a fun and interactive environment where your child can explore the world of music through play, singing, dancing, and instrument exploration. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to watch your child flourish and grow through the power of music! Enroll now and unlock the endless possibilities of your child's musical potential. Call us at 707-252-4040 or visit our website: www.napaschoolofmusic.com to secure your child's spot today! Let the melodies begin!
Throughout history, antisemitism has been a problem for Jews. Historically, there was animosity towards Jews, as they were seen as the primary enemy. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Jews began to experience unprecedented success. Eventually, their presence began to transform surrounding cultures. However, negative stereotypes about Jews remained embedded in many cultures. These stereotypes can be unconsciously internalized and become part of the fabric of society. Antisemitism is a form of racism. It is a denial of the right of self-determination to Jewish people. It also involves spreading conspiracy theories about the Jewish world domination and applying double standards. It also involves religious teachings that promote the killing of Jews. Antisemitism is a problem that affects all people. Some of the most well-known examples of antisemitism include the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and the hostage-taking of a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. Antisemitism is also a problem that has surfaced in western Europe. In Europe, all fatal attacks against Jews have been carried out by extremists. Antisemitism also has been a problem in the United States, where it has been a part of right-wing, neo-Nazi groups. Some of these groups, such as the National Alliance and the American Free Press, are active SPLC designated hate groups. However, there are other groups, such as the Anti-Defamation League, that work to fight antisemitism and help others to learn about Jewish culture. These organizations also have educational online programs for students. The IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism was created to help people understand the concept of antisemitism. It is a non-legally binding definition of the term. It was developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and adopted by the IHRA in 2016. It was also adopted by the Department of State in 2010. It is used by the U.S. government as guidance when it determines whether or not antisemitism is taking place. There are a variety of groups that advocate antisemitism, but the far-right and far-left are the two most prominent. The far-left is often accused of being pro-Zionism. However, a study published by the American Jewish Committee found that over one third of Jews identify the extreme right as a major threat. However, the tactics and ideology of these groups remain relatively stagnant. The far-left is also known for supporting extremist groups. This is alarming because these groups often use antisemitic tropes to attack Jews. In some instances, these groups claim that Israel is “ethnic cleansing” and “new Nazis”. It is also common for these groups to deny the Holocaust. However, it is important to note that there are many forms of antisemitism, which is why it is important to educate people about the various forms. It is also important to learn how to recognize antisemitism when it occurs. Many people may not be aware of antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories, which may lead to them harboring hostility toward Jews. Antisemitism should be a part of everyone’s education.
Music theory beginners are lucky. Learning music theory is a journey that can be lots of fun, and very useful. But it can be difficult when you're just starting out. So where should you start? -AT THE BEGINNING!!- As simple as this sounds, most people don't do it. Here's why: They start reading, and they think, "Oh, well I already know this, I'll just go ahead and learn something more useful." And because of that, they don't get a solid music theory foundation. If you start at the beginning and study the basics, you can get that solid foundation and learn the next steps MUCH faster than the people who didn't. This gives you an advantage over the other music theory beginners, and gets you out there learning music and getting the gigs, a lot faster. Take a look at the Music Theory Basics page. This will give you an overview of basic articles and the main elements of music theory. Not the fine and sometimes confusing details, just the essentials. The first article you should look at is the Music Alphabet . This gives you a firm foundation in the music notation systems and pre-develops a sense how scales will work. This article will show you how useful learning the alphabet can be. It's as easy as A-B-C! Next, it's Scales ! Scales give you a sense of order and directionality. Also because scales are one of the essentials of music, this article will show you real life examples, not just redundant theory routines. Then, take a look at Reading Music. Even if you don't plan on sight reading sheet music for your particular style of music, it is equivalent to being able to read written language: learning to talk doesn't require reading, but getting through everyday life (street signs, emails, this website you're reading, etc.) is nearly impossible without it. For music theory beginners, reading music helps you better understand how notes work together and how you can use them. Looking for something specific related to music theory? Try searching for it! Hopefully this gives you some idea of where you should start if you are looking to learn more about music theory. Remember, even if you know it, start at the beginning. You may run across something you had never seen before, or read something that makes sense in a way that it didn't before. Return from Music Theory Beginners to Homepage Hope this helps! Practice hard and let me know if you have any questions!
During early February, the sunrise point and the sunset point move rapidly northward. The sun’s daily arc across the sky is higher and longer. Simultaneously, nighttime shortens. Daylight and nighttime are balanced at the equinox. The start of Spring occurs on March 19, 2020, when their lengths are equal. Recently, though I have been considering another equal-time event. That is, the length of daylight and the length of darkness – the time after the end of evening twilight and the beginning of the next morning’s twilight. Twilight occurs when the atmosphere is illuminated by the sun when our central star is below the horizon. Immediately after sunset, the sky is bright, especially in the western sky. It continues to darken until the sky’s illumination ends. This takes about 90 minutes, longer during the summer months as seen from the mid-latitudes. This reverses in the morning until sunrise. So a 24-hour cycle has three phases, daylight, twilight, and darkness. Traditionally, twilight and darkness together make night. At the mid-latitudes, the length of daylight and darkness are equal at about 10.5 hours. At my latitude, this occurs on February 11, 2020, with 10 hours, 26 minutes of daylight and the same length for darkness.
The world’s first domesticated animals, sheep are non-predatory herbivores that typically live in flocks. These gentle creatures have an average lifespan of about 10-12 years. A young sheep under the age of one year old is called a lamb. Historians believe that man first domesticated sheep to be used as a food source around 10,000 BC. Today sheep serve as a major source of meat, wool and milk to many people around the world. In addition, soft sheep skins can be used to make clothing and other goods, while sheep’s milk serves as the foundation for a variety of cheeses, including feta, Roquefort and ricotta. Although the sheep population has declined significantly in recent years, there are still an estimated one billion sheep in the world. With many different breeds of sheep across the globe, these grazing animals come in a range of sizes and colors. Besides the domesticated sheep species, there are several distinct species of wild sheep. In general, sheep measure between four and six feet in length and stand two to four feet tall at the shoulder. As adults, female sheep, called ewes, weigh around 100 to 220 pounds, while male sheep, called rams, can weigh well over 300 pounds. At birth, most lambs weigh between five and 10 pounds. Wild sheep live in many parts of the world, usually in mountainous areas. Like cattle, goats, camels, giraffes and antelopes, sheep have cloven hooves. The shape of their hooves provides even weight distribution, enabling sheep to maintain their balance when they climb mountains and navigate uneven terrain. Some sheep need very little water, which makes them well-suited to arid desert climates. Because they are social animals, sheep do not like being separated from the flock. Sheep are a food source for many predators, and solitary sheep are much more susceptible to attack. Since sheep tend to follow the older members of the flock wherever they lead, they are fairly easy to herd. Because of the docile nature of sheep, in some parts of the world, the job of sheep-herding is often assigned to children. Sheep are ruminants, which means that they have multi-chambered stomachs that aid in their digestion of tough grasses, grains and vegetation. They are also cud chewers, a term that refers to animals that chew their food twice. When they first consume food, sheep chew it only enough to provide moisture before swallowing. Once the food breaks down in the stomach and forms a soft cud, the sheep regurgitates the food to be chewed a second time. During her first pregnancy, a young ewe is likely to carry a single lamb. Between the ages of three and six, ewes tend to carry larger litters. Twins and triplets are common, but multiple births can be harder on the ewe than single pregnancies. The gestation period lasts about five months. When ewes give birth, the process is called “lambing.” At birth, lambs are covered with a soft coat of wool. Newborn lambs are able to stand independently almost immediately after birth. In the first few weeks of life, lambs derive all their nourishment from their mother’s milk. If allowed to wean naturally, a lamb may nurse for up to six months. However, domesticated lambs are often separated from their mothers and weaned at a much earlier age. Premature weaning and separation can cause significant stress to both the lamb and the ewe. Depending on their breed and gender, some lambs are born with horn buds, which grow into a full-sized set of horns as the animal matures. In some breeds, both male and female sheep grow horns, while in others only the rams develop them. Every spring, a growth ring appears on the sheep’s horns. Counting the rings is a good indicator of the animal’s age.
Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) are a popular flowering plant, especially during the winter holidays, known for their striking red and green foliage. However, many people are surprised to learn that poinsettia flowers are not actually flowers in the traditional sense. Rather, they are curious-looking structures called cyathia that consist of a single female flower and many male flowers, along with yellow bulbous glands that vaguely resemble mouths. Cyathia are unique to the Euphorbia family of plants, which includes the poinsettia, as well as many other species of succulent and cactus-like plants. Unlike traditional flowers, cyathia lack petals and sepals. instead, they have a cup-shaped structure, called an involucre, that surrounds the reproductive parts of the flower. In the case of poinsettias, the involucre is bright red and has several yellow glands located around the rim. These glands secrete a sweet nectar that attracts pollinators, such as bees and wasps. The male flowers, which are located on small stalks inside the involucre, produce pollen that is dispersed by the visiting insects. The female flower, located at the center of the involucre, has a long, curved style that extends upward, above the male flowers, in order to receive pollen. Interestingly, the colorful red “petals” that we associate with poinsettias are not actually petals at all. They are modified leaves, called bracts, that surround the cyathia. The bracts are usually red, but can also be white, pink, or variegated, depending on the cultivar. Despite their unique reproductive structures, poinsettias are still able to produce viable seeds. However, because they are often grown as ornamental plants, they are typically propagated vegetatively, through stem cuttings or tissue culture. In conclusion, poinsettias are fascinating plants that have curious-looking reproductive structures called cyathia, which consist of a single female flower and many male flowers, along with yellow bulbous glands that resemble mouths. While poinsettias are not true flowers, they are still able to attract pollinators and produce viable seeds. so, the next time you see a poinsettia, take a closer look at its unusual floral structures and appreciate the beauty of this unique plant.
New missions selected by NASA could answer some of the deepest questions scientists have about our universe. NASA is about to embark on two missions in the hopes of unlocking some of the deepest secrets our universe has and more information on how our solar system was formed. The missions, dubbed Lucy and Psyche, involve using unmanned robotic craft to explore asteroids, which are essentially time capsules back to 10 million years after the sun was born. Lucy will take a trip to the Trojan asteroids of Jupiter. That mission will launch in October 2021. Scientists think these asteroids have bene around since the beginning of the solar system and before Jupiter began its orbit. That first stop won’t happen until 2025, however, with examinations of more Trojans from 2027 to 2033. Psyche will visit an ancient, giant metal asteroid spanning 130 miles. It is made of iron and nickel and could be part of an early planet that may have been as large as Mars. The Psyche mission, which launches in October 2023, could help us understand how planets and other masses break up and form cores, mantles and crusts. “Lucy will visit a target-rich environment of Jupiter’s mysterious Trojan asteroids, while Psyche will study a unique metal asteroid that’s never been visited before,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is what Discovery Program missions are all about – boldly going to places we’ve never been to enable groundbreaking science.” “This is a unique opportunity,” said Harold F. Levison, principal investigator of the Lucy mission from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “Because the Trojans are remnants of the primordial material that formed the outer planets, they hold vital clues to deciphering the history of the solar system. Lucy, like the human fossil for which it is named, will revolutionize the understanding of our origins.”
Image from medicalnewstoday.com The human brain is complex. Despite advances in neuroscience and brain imaging, much of how the brain functions remains a mystery. This vast uncertainty may be one reason many misconceptions about how the brain works persist in popular culture. For example, one common myth is that humans only use 10% of our brains. The origins of this myth can be traced back to the early 1900s. Psychologist and philosopher, William James, wrote a book in 1908 in which he claimed that humans only use a small part of our mental resources. This theory was backed up only by observation and anecdotes, without any scientific evidence to support the claim. However, the idea that humans have untapped brain potential was popularized and has become the topic of many motivational speeches, self-help books, and Hollywood movies. However, using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), scientists and doctors can see which parts of the brain are activated during different tasks. The fMRI scans show that even during simple and routine tasks like talking, walking, or listening to music, people use almost every region of their brain. In addition to conscious tasks, the brain is responsible for performing many functions that you might not be aware of, such as coordinating movement and balance, regulating your body temperature, and making sure your organs are functioning. So even when you think you are doing nothing, you are using far more than 10% of your brain to control things like your heart rate or breathing. In fact, in a 24-hour period, you have likely activated every region of your brain. While it’s exciting to think that we could tap into unused portions of our brain to expand our intelligence or creativity, we have no evidence to think that there are any unused portions. On the bright side, our brains are working harder than we might think to keep us functioning!
Individualize Learning for Every Student Traditional classrooms use a one-fit-for-all approach to learning. This approach, however, does not consider the individual strengths and learning styles of students, which can make it more challenging for some students to be academically successful. Personalized learning customizes learning processes for each individual student, equipping students with skills that can help them use their strengths to improve learning. But, many teachers ask us “How can I individualize and personalize learning for every student online?” Don’t worry teachers, you can individualize and create a unique learning experience for every student (no matter where they are being taught) in a number of ways. The following 6 examples can be used whether teachers and students are in an actual school classroom or online from home. Students collaborate with teachers to set goals and objectives based on their interests and preferences. Throughout the year, teachers encourage students to prioritize and reflect on their process of goal attainment and make adjustments as needed. Teachers encourage students to choose their own activities with which to express their learning. For example, instead of writing a 500-word essay, students might choose to make a poster. By giving students this freedom, teachers help them discover and strengthen their interests. Teachers individualize by allowing for a certain degree of flexibility in the sequence of learning, adding challenges gradually. Teachers also plan for out-of-classroom learning opportunities and using digital learning in classrooms. Pace of learning: Students could advance through the learning process at their own pace. For example, some students might require more time to learn a concept while others may quickly pick it up. When the pace of learning is individualized for every student they become more confident in their abilities and can gain mastery more easily enabling them to quickly proceed to subsequent learning. Teachers tailor instructions, adjust challenges and incorporate accommodations (including technology) based on individual requirements. Creating specific rubrics and criteria for evaluating both individual learning and group activities that every student engages can be easily done with auto-grading within an LMS such as Google Classroom. The information collected from these assessments helps teachers to further modify or personalize instruction and content. Benefits of Individualized Learning By personalizing learning for every student, teachers can: - Promote learning anytime, anywhere. - Create relevant and meaningful learning experiences for students using technology and online learning tools. - Help motivate students and engage them in tasks that interest them. - Encourage goal setting, active student participation, mastery of concepts, self-reflection and academic achievements. - Enhance student responsibility and accountability towards learning as learning opportunities are created based on individual strengths, preferences and interests. - Help students develop self-regulated learning strategies and behaviors and become self-reliant learners. - Help students learn at their own pace, without fear of being left behind. - Promote interactive and collaborative learning within classrooms. - Use assessments to evaluate skills and direct learning towards goal attainment. By incorporating individualized learning for every student in the classroom, teachers create experiences that capitalize on interests, preferences and strengths. This helps to equalize opportunities for students and helps each student attain their maximum learning potential while gainingn academic success. It also helps teachers reach all students and encourage self-reliance and self-motivation among students. Examine more benefits to a personalized learning approach in the online continuing education PD course for teachers: Student-centered Learning. August 2020 Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in July 2015 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. About the Author Ellen Paxton is a respected expert in education and best known as the Chief Learning Officer of Professional Learning Board. As a two-time National Board Certified Teacher, Ellen has successfully published and customized online professional development courses and Learning Management Systems for 20 years to help teachers meet their state continuing education renewal credit requirements. Through ProfessionalLearningBoard.com, RenewaTeachingLicense.com, and ConnectedPD.com, Ellen has established solutions and maintained partnerships with several accredited universities, higher education institutions, teachers’ unions and state Departments of Education while setting strategic direction that makes a difference and overseeing implementation of popular online PD for schools.
Black history or African-American history is the history of the American population of black African descent, from the colonial period to the present. It was a narrow specialty until the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s made it a high priority for historical research and teaching. It is now one of the largest fields of American history. The history is one of struggle against slavery, segregation, racism and second class citizenship. Historians debate whether to emphasize radical protest, as typified by W.E.B. DuBois, or upward striving through the system, as preached by Booker T. Washington. The 2008 election of Barack Obama as president has been hailed as the culmination of the black struggle for political equality. see also Slavery Africans first arrived in 1619, when a Dutch ship sold 19 blacks as indentured servants (not slaves) to Englishmen at Jamestown, Virginia. In all, about 10-12 million Africans were transported to Western Hemisphere. The vast majority of these people came from that stretch of the West African coast extending from present-day Senegal to Angola; a small percentage came from Madagascar and East Africa. Only 3% (about 300,000) went to the American colonies. The vast majority went to the West Indies, where they died quickly. Demographic conditions were highly favorable in the American colonies, with less disease, more food, good medical care, and lighter work loads. Coming as they did from such an extensive area in Africa, they were not of one physical or cultural type. Significant differences existed among them, but they shared a general set of characteristics. They were tall and had dark skin, tight woolly hair, full lips, broad noses, and limited facial and body hair. Gomez (1998) suggests that Africans, upon arriving in America, were dispersed along ethnic and cultural lines. While they eventually dropped their African ethnic identities, they retained some of their original cultures. For example, runaway-slave advertisements sometimes identified the slaves by their ethnic roots ("Dinah, an Ebo wench that speaks very good English"). Historians have disagreed as to whether slavery in colonial Virginia was made politically and psychologically acceptable by an inherent racism among white Europeans, or if slavery emerged as a result of economic factors and racism developed as a consequence of it. The consensus is that the enslavement of Africans was due to economic requirements for labor, to the inability of Africans to resist slavery, and to European beliefs that Africans were an inferior branch of humanity, suited by their characteristics and circumstances to be lifelong slaves. At first the Africans in the South were outnumbered by white indentured servants, who came voluntarily from Britain. They avoided the plantations. With the vast amount of good land and the shortage of laborers, plantation owners turned to lifetime slaves who worked for their keep but were not paid wages and could not easily escape. Slaves had some legal rights (it was a crime to kill a slave, and whites were hung for it.) Generally the slaves developed their own family system, religion and customs in the slave quarters with little interference from owners, who were only interested in work outputs. By 1700 there were 25,000 slaves in the American colonies, about 10% of the population. A few had come from Africa but most came from the West Indies (especially Barbados), or, increasingly, were native born. Their legal status was now clear: they were slaves for life and so were the children of slave mothers. They could be sold, or freed, and a few ran away. Slowly a free black population emerged, concentrated in port cities along the Atlantic coast from Charleston to Boston. Slaves in the cities and towns had many more privileges, but the great majority of slaves lived on southern tobacco or rice plantations, usually in groups of 20 or more. The most serious slave rebellion was the Stono Uprising, in September 1739 in South Carolina. The colony had about 56,000 slaves, who outnumbered whites 2:1. About 150 slaves rose up, and seizing guns and ammunition, murdered twenty whites, and headed for Spanish Florida. The local militia soon intercepted and killed most of them. All the American colonies had slavery, but it was usually the form of personal servants in the North (where 2% of the people were slaves), and field hands in plantations in the South (where 25% were slaves.) Revolution and early republic: 1775-1840 The Declaration of Independence of 1776 said that all men are born free. Acting on that principle, all the northern states abolished slavery between 1776 and 1805—these were the first places in the world where the government abolished slavery. (Britain abolished slavery in the 1830s.) However, with the cotton gin in the 1790s, slavery became highly profitable in the South and was not abolished. Indeed, it expanded rapidly due to demographic growth. In 1808 it became illegal to buy or sell slaves from abroad, but inside the U.S. South the trade was legal and flourished. By 1800 most slaves had become Christians. However few followed the Episcopal or Presbyterian affiliations of most masters; rather by the 1830s most had become Baptists or Methodists, but with a distinctive difference. Genovese (1974) identified the key features of the black version of Christianity as its raucous emotionalism, an absence of a sense of original sin or depravity, an emphasis on the role of Moses (who at times rivaled in importance Jesus), and an uneasy commingling with magic and conjuring. Genovese argued religion was increasingly central to the lives and self-identity of the slaves. "The religion practiced in the quarters gave the slaves the one thing they absolutely had to have if they were to resist. . . . It fired them with a sense of their own worth before God and man." The free black population in the South grew rapidly during 1771–1815, from 28,000 in 1790 to 186,000 in 1860 in the South Atlantic states alone. Before the American Revolution the increase in the free black population was due mainly to local emancipations, natural population increase, and migration from rural areas. During and after the Revolution, however, there were additional ways to become free, including petitions and lawsuits, the 1782 manumission act, self-purchase, purchase by already free blacks, and individual emancipation. Fear of free blacks in an age of black revolts, however, prompted whites to impose restrictions on manumission and migration and ultimately to revert to the colonial-era policy of expelling free blacks from Virginia. Formal laws and informal customs created innumerable obstacles to the socioeconomic advance of the free blacks in the South. Laws prohibited free blacks from some activities and occupations and restricted their participation in others. Racism and terrorism by whites also made advancement difficult. Despite these disadvantages, the free black population fared rather well, with much better nutrition than people back in Europe or Africa. They grew nearly as tall as white Americans and towered over contemporary Europeans. Frederick Douglass born as Frederick Baily, was raised as a slave. He escaped to Massachusetts at age 20 and changed his name to Frederick Douglass in order to conceal himself from slave catchers. He was a member of the Republican Party. He developed marvelous debating and oratory skills to expose the injustices of slavery by reading the book The Columbian Orator, which he started to read around age 12. William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the abolitionist Liberator Newspaper, hired him. see also Slavery Age of abolition, 1840-1877 The Quakers, as well as Evangelical churches in the U.S. and Britain, led the battle for abolition of slavery. The abolition movement in the U.S. was highly visible and extremely controversial, but it was never large—with fewer than 50,000 activists at most, about half of them free blacks living in the North. Over 1 million slaves were moved from the older seaboard slave states, with their declining economies to the rich cotton states of the southwest; many others were sold and moved locally. Berlin (2003) argues that this "Second Middle Passage" - shredded the planters' paternalist pretenses in the eyes of black people and prodded slaves and free people of color to create a host of oppositional ideologies and institutions that better accounted for the realities of endless deportations, expulsions and flights that continually remade their world. - See also: American Civil War homefront The political and constitutional debate among whites led to the secession of the Deep South and to the Civil War in 1861. The new Republican Party saw slavery as an evil that had to be eventually put on the road to extinction. In the war, however, abolition became a tool to Union victory, as strategized by Abraham Lincoln. The point was that slavery was a main prop of the rebellion, and to win the war it had to be eliminated. Emancipation would have the effect of energizing Confederates who feared a race war, but it would also energize Northerners who saw it as a moral cause, and would help keep Europe from supporting the rebels. At the beginning of the war some Union commanders thought they were supposed to return escaped slaves to their masters. By 1862, when it became clear that this would be a long war, the question of what to do about slavery became more general. The Southern economy and military effort depended on slave labor. It began to seem unreasonable to protect slavery while blockading Southern commerce and destroying Southern production. As one Congressman put it, the slaves "cannot be neutral. As laborers, if not as soldiers, they will be allies of the rebels, or of the Union." The same Congressman—and his fellow Radical Republicans—put pressure on Lincoln to rapidly emancipate the slaves, whereas Conservative Republicans came to accept gradual, compensated emancipation and colonization. In 1861 Lincoln expressed the fear that premature attempts at emancipation would mean the loss of the border states, and that "to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game." At first Lincoln reversed attempts at emancipation by Secretary of War Simon Cameron and Generals John C. Fremont (in Missouri) and David Hunter (in the South Carolina Sea Islands) in order to keep the loyalty of the border states and the War Democrats. Lincoln then tried to persuade the border states to accept his plan of gradual, compensated emancipation and voluntary colonization, while warning them that stronger measures would be needed if the moderate approach was rejected. Only the District of Columbia accepted Lincoln's gradual plan, and Lincoln issued his final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1 of 1863. In his letter to Hodges, Lincoln explained his belief that "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong … And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling ... I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." The Emancipation Proclamation, announced in September 1862 and The Radical Republican put intense political pressure on Lincoln to use emancipation as a weapon. The problem was that he needed first to shore up pro-Union support in key border states, especially Kentucky. Only after it was safe could he act, and then he needed a military victory first. Lincoln thrilled the anti-slavery forces by announcing the Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862; the official proclamation came on January 1, 1863, and it had the effect of freeing most of the 4 million slaves. It also greatly reduced the Confederacy's hope of getting aid from Britain or France. Lincoln's moderate approach succeeded in getting border states, War Democrats and emancipated slaves fighting on the same side for the Union. The Union-controlled border states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia) were not covered by the Emancipation Proclamation. All abolished slavery on their own, except Kentucky. The great majority of the 4 million slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, as Union armies moved South. To handle this problem Lincoln proposed the a constitutional amendment. The 13th amendment, passed by Congress in February 1865 and ratified by the states in December 1865, finally freed the remaining 40,000 slaves in Kentucky. - See also: Reconstruction Across the South Republican parties were formed by African Americans. Black people were the original Republicans in the South. The Republican Party in Texas was founded on the 4th of July 1867 in Houston, Texas by 150 African Americans and 20 whites. Two of the first three statewide Republican chairman were African American. The first 42 Black legislators elected in Texas were all Republican. The first 112 Black legislators elected in Mississippi were all Republican. The first 190 Black legislators elected in South Carolina were all Republicans. The first 41 Black legislators in Georgia were Republicans. The first 127 Black legislators in Louisiana were Republicans. Age of Jim Crow, 1877-1954 - See also: Jim Crow Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) was the dominant political and educational leader of the African-American community 1890–1915. He is most famous for his inspiring autobiography, Up from Slavery, his leadership of black conservative business and religious leaders, his founding of Tuskeegee Institute as a college for technical training, and his emphasis on self-help and education as the cure for poverty and the second class status of blacks in America. In his "Atlanta Compromise" of 1895 Washington reluctantly accepted Jim Crow, segregation and disfranchisement in return for black freedom in economic, religious and cultural affairs. Washington was highly popular among top white leaders and most blacks, but his approach was attacked after 1909 as too conservative by W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP. The most dramatic demographic change came after 1940, as most backs left the rural South—some for nearby southern cities, and most headed to large cities in the North and West. In the decade of the 1940s 1.6 million left the South; in the 1950s, 1.5 million, and in the 1960s 1.4 million. By 1970 there were very few back farmers left. Politically it was a movement from a white dominated rural South where few blacks could vote or speak out, to a pluralistic political environment where northern central cities were controlled by liberals and their allies in the labor unions. Age of Civil Rights, 1954 to present - See also: Black Americans, history and religion In 1955 blacks in Montgomery, Alabama undertook a boycott of the segregated city buses and chose a local pastor Martin Luther King as their leader, and Rosa Parks as a symbolic actor. Drawing on Gandhi's teachings, King directed a nonviolent boycott designed both to end an injustice and to redeem his white adversaries through love. Love, he said, not only avoided the internal violence of the spirit but also severed the external chain of hatred that only produced more hatred. Somebody, he argued, must be willing to break this chain so that "the beloved community" could be restored and true brotherhood could begin. In November 1956, the boycotters had won a resounding moral victory when the United States Supreme Court nullified the Alabama laws that enforced segregated buses. The Montgomery protest captured the imagination of the world over and marked the beginning of a southern black civil rights movement that rocked the Jim Crow South to its foundations. King, with extraordinary oratorical powers and rich religious imagery, emerged as the most inspiring new moral voice in civil rights. In August 1957 King and 115 other black leaders met in Montgomery and formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), with King as leader. Working through southern churches, the SCLC enlisted the religious black community in the freedom struggle by expanding "the Montgomery way" across the South. Vice President Richard Nixon invited King to Washington, D.C., for a meeting on 13 June 1957. This meeting, described by Bayard Rustin as a “summit conference,” marked national recognition of King's role in the civil rights movement (Rustin, 13 June 1957). Seeking support for a voter registration initiative in the South, King appealed to Nixon to urge Republicans in Congress to pass the 1957 Civil Rights Act and to visit the South to express support for civil rights. Optimistic about Nixon's commitment to improving race relations in the United States, King told Nixon, “How deeply grateful all people of goodwill are to you for your assiduous labor and dauntless courage in seeking to make the civil rights bill a reality.” Sen. John Kennedy voted against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which created the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. In 1960 southern black college and high school students launched the sit-in movement, forming the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Through 1961 and 1962 civil rights leaders pressured the John F. Kennedy administration to support a tough civil rights bill, seeking a sort of second Emancipation Proclamation that would employ federal power to wipe out segregation just as Lincoln's 1863 decree had abolished slavery. Kennedy, basically conservative and unwilling to offend his base of Southern white voters, refused to act. Civil rights groups thereupon launched multiple mass demonstrations throughout the South. King and the SCLC staff would single out some notoriously segregated city with officials who tolerated violence; mobilize the local blacks with songs, Bible readings, and rousing oratory; and then lead them on protest marches conspicuous for their nonviolent spirit and moral purpose. Then the marchers escalated their demands—even fill up the jails—until they brought about a moment of "creative tension," when white authorities would either agree to negotiate or resort to violence. If violence broke out it would humiliate the moderate whites and redouble national pressures from church and activists for federal intervention. So far there was no violence on the part of blacks, but they were growing more and more frustrated and angry, with militants like Malcolm X calling for more extreme measures. Nonviolent confrontation failed politically in Albany, Georgia, in 1962, where white authorities were equally nonviolent. In 1963 it succeeded in Birmingham, Alabama, where Police Commissioner Eugene ("Bull") Connor turned fire-hoses and police dogs on the marchers—in full view of reporters and television cameras. The civil rights activists thus exposed racist hatred to the scorn of national and world opinion. Jailed during the demonstrations, King wrote his classic "Letter from Birmingham Jail," the most influential and eloquent expression of the goals and philosophy of the civil rights movement. King's great speech, "I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, August 28, 1963, galvanized the movement, putting forth a goal of an integrated color-blind society. President Lyndon Johnson, a long-time supporter of civil rights, had replaced Kennedy and he seized the moment to mobilize a majority coalition of northern Democrats, Republicans, white churches, and white labor unions to break a Democrat filibuster and pass 1964 Civil Rights Act, which desegregated public facilities. Overnight Jim Crow vanished, with little protest or violence. However, within days of the passage of the powerful new law, rioting broke out in black ghettos, as the civil rights leadership discovered it could not control the angry masses. Nor could it control the radical students in SNCC and like-minded groups who were moving rapidly to the left, rejecting alliances with whites, discarding the goal of integration and demanding instead black separatism and "Black Power." Brown vs. Board of Education - See also: Brown vs. Board of Education "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group…Any language in contrary to this finding is rejected. We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” - Main article: Southern Manifesto "This unwarranted exercise of power by the Court, contrary to the Constitution, is creating chaos and confusion in the States principally affected. It is destroying the amicable relations between the white and Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been heretofore friendship and understanding....We commend the motives of those States which have declared the intention to resist forced integration by any lawful means." One of the first challenges to Brown v. Board of Education was when Democrat Gov. Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to prevent African-American students from enrolling at Little Rock Central High School. Central High was an all-white school. Faubus ordered the troops to "accomplish the mission of maintaining or restoring law and order and to preserve the peace, health, safety and security of the citizens." A force of 289 soldiers was assembled. The commander told nine black students, 6 girls and 3 boys ages 15–17 years old who were attempting to enter the school, to return home. The standoff continued for three weeks. Little Rock Democrat mayor Woodrow Wilson Mann appealed to President Eisenhower to help end the deadlock. Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne Division to federalized the entire 10,000-member Arkansas National Guard. The students were allowed to enroll. Faubus was re-elected in 1958 with 82.5% of the vote over a Republican challenger. Faubus ordered the closure of four public high schools that year, preventing both black and white students from attending school while seeking a two and a half year delay on de-segregation until January 1961 in Federal Court when there would be a possibility of a Democratic president. 1957 Civil Rights ActRepublican Attorney General Herbert Brownell originally proposed the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Democrat Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had Judiciary chairman Sen. James Eastland drastically water-down the House version, removing stringent voting protection clauses. The bill passed 285–126 in the House with Republicans providing the majority of votes 167–19 and Democrats 118–107. It then passed 72–18 in the Senate, with Republicans again supplying the majority of votes, 43–0 and Democrats voting 29–18. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who later ran for president, voted against it. It was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875. Johnson told Sen. Richard Russell, "These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference. For if we don't move at all, then their allies will line up against us and there'll be no way of stopping them, we'll lose the filibuster and there'll be no way of putting a brake on all sorts of wild legislation. It'll be Reconstruction all over again." 1963 March on Washington Malcolm X described the events leading up to the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech: It was the grass roots out there in the street. It scared the white man to death, scared the white power structure in Washington, D.C. to death. I was there. When they found that this black steamroller was going to come down on the capital, they called in [Roy] Wilkins, they called in [A. Philip] Randolph, they called in these national Negro leaders that you respect and told them, ‘Call it off.’ [President] Kennedy said, ‘Look, you all are letting this thing go too far.’ And Old Tom said, ‘Boss, I can’t stop it, because I didn’t start it.’ I’m telling you what they said. They said, ‘I’m not even in it, much less at the head of it.’ They said, ‘These Negroes are doing things on their own. They’re running ahead of us.’ And that old shrewd fox, he said, ‘If you all aren’t in it, I’ll put you in it. I’ll put you at the head of it. I’ll endorse it. I’ll welcome it. I’ll help it. I’ll join it.’… Once they formed (the Council for United Civil Rights Leadership) with the white man over it, he promised them and gave them $800,000 to split up among the Big Six; and told them that after the march was over they’d give them $700,000 more. A million and a half dollars—split up between leaders that you have been following, going to jail for, crying crocodile tears for. And they’re nothing but Frank James and Jesse James and the what-do-you-call-’em brothers.As soon as they got the setup organized, the white man made available to them top public-relations experts; opened the news media across the country at their disposal, which then began to project these Big Six as the leaders of the march. Originally they weren’t even in the march. 1964 Civil Rights Act13th Amendment, 14th Amendment, 15th Amendment, Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and first passed anti-lynching legislation in 1922, which Democrats killed by filibusters. The Democratic party's gradual reversal on civil rights culminated with President Lyndon B. Johnson finally signing the bi-partisan Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he called "the N***r Bill." In lobbying fellow Democrats for the bill, Johnson said, \|"I'll have them nggrs voting Democratic for two hundred years."\| "Let me tell you one thing, nggr. As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your gddmn name. So no matter what you are called, nggr, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a gdd*mn piece of furniture."welfare programs. Both African Americans and racist Democrats opposed Republican to maintain fiscal and budgetary sanity. The coalition gave cover to bigoted Democrats to hide their racism, while accusing Republicans who wanted to balance the budget of prejudice. Malcolm X described it this way: \|"The white Liberal differs from the white Conservative only in one way; the Liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical, than the Conservative. Both want power, but the White Liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negro's friend and benefactor and by winning the friendship and support of the Negro, the White Liberal is able to use the Negro as a pawn or a weapon in this political football game, that is constantly raging, between the White Liberals and the White Conservatives. The American Negro is nothing, but a political "football game" that is constantly raging between the white liberals and white conservatives.\| Democrat Governor George Wallace won the South in 1968 in a three-way contest, but the South continued to reject Yankee liberals (Humphrey in 1968, McGovern in 1972, Mondale in 1984, Dukakis in 1988, Kerry in 2004). At the state and local level, the Republicans made slow but steady gains. As racism in the South declined, Republicans in the South increased. 1964 Democratic Convention: Mississippi Freedom Party The Mississippi Freedom Party was organized by African Americans to challenge the establishment Democratic Party, which allowed participation only by whites. The party ran a slate of delegates with close to 80,000 people casting ballots. The party hoped to replace the Regular Democrats as the official Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. At the convention the party challenged the Regular Democrats' right to be seated, claiming that the Regular Democrats were illegally elected in a segregated process that violated both party regulations and federal law. The Equal Protection Clause had been on the books for nearly 100 years already. The Democratic Party referred the challenge to the credentials committee, which televised its proceedings and allowed the nation to see and hear the moving testimony of several delegates and the retaliation inflicted on them by Democrats for attempting to vote. After that, most observers and pundits thought the credentials committee were ready to unseat the Regular Democrats and seat the Freedom Party delegates in their place. But some Democrats from other states threatened to leave the convention and bolt the party if the Regular Democrats were unseated. President Johnson wanted a united convention and feared losing support. To ensure his victory in November, Johnson maneuvered to prevent the Mississippi Freedom Democrats from replacing the all-white Regular Democrats. Two future Democrat Presidential nominees, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, denied Blacks equal protection and made a mockery of the civil rights movement. Johnson held a private meeting with Humphrey, Mondale, Roy Wilkins, Andrew Young, United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther and Martin Luther King Jr. A plan was hatched to offer the Freedom Democrats two non-voting At-Large seats with observer status, rather than replace the all-white delegation which had been undemocratically and illegally elected. Johnson arrogated to himself the right to pick which two, and Johnson chose one white and one black. Johnson dispatched Humphrey and Mondale and ordered them to make sure that “that illiterate woman," Fannie Lou Hamer would never be a delegate. Dr. King protested and was told by Reuther to shut up. The offer was rejected, but Humphrey and Mondale remained powerhouse liberals in the Democratic party for another 20 years. Biden Amendment of 1975 Democrats fought school desgregation with the Southern Manifesto; they fought it with the Little Rock Crisis of 1957; they filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act; and they fought black integration with the Biden Amendment of 1975. In 1972 Black parents filed a desegregation lawsuit in Massachusetts, the only state Republican President Richard Nixon did not win re-election in. The NAACP argued the case. According to Politico, nowhere did the sentiment of people opposed to desegregation play out more dramatically than in Boston. In mid 1974, a federal judge found that 20 years after Brown v. Board, Boston officials deliberately kept the schools segregated, and that the city must integrate at once. He drew up a busing plan. Black students from Roxbury would attend South Boston High School, while Irish Americans from Southie would board buses to Roxbury. The first buses rolled through Boston in September 1974—and racial violence engulfed the city. White mobs hurled bricks at school buses with terrified black children inside. Then, on October 7, a Haitian immigrant was beaten savagely by a white mob in South Boston. In the coming months, the list of casualties would grow. The city became a cauldron of racial hatred. Each year after passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act up until 1977, the Democratic controlled House passed at least one new law designed to restrain school integration—often in the guise of anti-busing legislation. Until 1974, the Senate rejected those bills. But as white resistance to busing escalated in many cities across the country, the House Democrats anti-busing majority began to pull more Democratic senators to their side.In 1975, Sen. Joseph Biden, later vice-president and President Obama's token segregationist, proposed an amendment that gutted Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which enabled the federal government to cut off funding to school districts that refused to integrate. Politico writes of the whole sordid affair, Biden morphed into a leading anti-busing crusader—all the while continuing to insist that he supported the goal of school desegregation, he only opposed busing as the means to achieve that end. This stance, which many of Biden’s liberal and moderate colleagues also held, was clever but disingenuous. It enabled Biden to choose votes over principles, while acting as if he was not doing so....In a seminal moment, the Senate thus turned against desegregation. The Senate had supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act and 1968 Fair Housing Act....the Senate remained the last bastion for those who supported strong integration policies. Biden stormed that bastion... A Boston NAACP leader said, “An anti-busing amendment is an anti-desegregation amendment, and an anti-desegregation amendment is an anti-black amendment.” Republican Sen. Edward Brooke, the first black senator ever to be directly elected, called Biden's amendment “the greatest symbolic defeat for civil rights since 1964.” Brooke accused Biden of leading an assault on integration.During a Democratic party presidential primary debate before the 2020 presidential election, California senator Kamala Harris confronted then frontrunner former VP Joe Biden over his role in repealing sections of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that restored funding to schools refusing to integrate with Blacks after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation order. The Biden Amendment, originally written by segregationist Democrat Sen. James Eastland, but with Biden's name on it with few modifications, restored federal funding for schools that refused to comply with court ordered desegregation and busing. Harris told MSNBC's Chris Matthews: If those segregationists would have had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate, and I certainly would not be a serious candidate for President of the United States. ... Barack Obama would not have been in a position to appoint Joe Biden Vice President of the United States. So the consequences of their actions were very real, and on the shoulders of the history of our country of really a very bad, awful, dark, dangerous, and lethal time. Justice Clarence Thomas appointment In 1991, Republican President George H.W. Bush appointed an African American, Clarence Thomas, to the Supreme Court to replace the retiring Justice Thurgood Marshall. Racist Democrats were outraged that a conservative Black, who refused to pledge to uphold Roe v. Wade which legalized the murder of millions of unborn Blacks, would become a role model for Black youth. Anita Hill, a lesbian staffer who worked for Thomas was pushed forward, against her will, to testify publicly about unverified comments she made to FBI background investigators alleging sexual harassment in the work place, essentially jokes circulating among office employees. Hill's name was illegally leaked by Senate Democrat staffers and Chairman Joseph Biden then subpoenaed Hill, compelling her to testify in public under oath in an effort to derail the nomination and permanently scar Thomas. In an unprecedented step, Biden delayed the final vote and held extended public hearings. Hill worked for Thomas at the Dept. of Education, and when Thomas left the Dept. of Education to work at the EEOC, Thomas invited her to come along and she followed. Hill never reported the alleged sexual harassment. After nationally televised hearings consisting largely of a discussion of African American body parts, Thomas was confirmed by the U.S. Senate with a majority of Americans in public opinion polls believing Thomas over Hill. A fringe minority of partisan gay rights activists, feminists, liberals, and mainstream media journalist are said to have believed Hill. The New Jim Crow In the 1990s the Democratic Party revived itself, in part by distancing itself from Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition. Jackson was the first African-American to win a major party primary in 1988. Blacks were getting a little too uppity in the eyes of the Clintons and Democratic party leadership. Every year for twelve years, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who both always had at least one house of Congress controlled by Democrats, asked in their State of the Union addresses for Congress to create Enterprise Zones - special tax breaks for start-ups and businesses to relocate to blighted areas, predominantly black, inner-city urban areas - to create jobs and deliver services. Democrats didn't want Republicans to be seen as helping blacks. However, in President Clinton's first 100 days, with a Democrat House and Senate, Democrats finally delivered Enterprise Zones after making African Americans wait 12 years to finally participate in the prosperity begun in the 1980s. Bill Clinton attacked Nancy Reagan's anti-drug "Just Say No" campaign as "twelve years of neglect" and ratcheted up deaths caused by illegal drug use from 10,000 per year to 70,000. The Republican Party took control of both the House of Representatives and the United States Senate after the 1994 midterm election. In the wake of the Central Park jogger attack, Jos Biden boasted as one of his greatest legislative achievements passage of the 1994 Crime bill which locked up 10% of the Black adult male population of the United States.When President George H.W. Bush asked for a record increase in funding to fight the War on Drugs, Biden told a TV interviewer "In a nutshell, the President's plan does not include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, enough prosecutors to convict them, enough judges to sentence them or enough prison cells to put them away for a long time." Biden, Ted Kennedy, and Strom Thurmond worked on proposals that raised maximum penalties, removed a directive requiring the US Sentencing Commission to take into account prison capacity, and created the cabinet-level “drug czar” position. In 1984, they passed the Comprehensive Crime Control Act, which, among other things, abolished parole, imposed a less generous cap on “good time” sentence reductions, and allowed the Sentencing Commission to issue more punitive guidelines. Biden bragged on the Senate floor that it was under his and Thurmond's leadership that Congress passed a law sending anyone caught with a rock of cocaine the size of a quarter to jail for a minimum of five years - the notoriously racist hundred-to-one sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. In the same speech Biden took credit for civil asset forfeiture and seizure laws, and demanded to know why Papa Bush hadn't sentenced more drug dealers to life in prison or exercise the death penalty once Congress had given him that power. Biden's version of a new crime bill added more than forty crimes that would be eligible for the death penalty. Biden boasted “we do everything but hang people for jaywalking.” The NAACP and other groups lobbied against the bill. Although the 1991 crime bill was defeated by Republicans, the 1994 Biden/Clinton crime bill was passed. Under the 1994 Biden Crime Bill, more than 250,000 African Americans were imprisoned in the United States than under President Reagan, Both Hillary Clinton and Joseph Biden took credit for mass incarceration. Cumulatively since the Clinton's passed the Biden Crime Bill, 2.5 million adult black males—more than 10% of the population—were incarcerated, splitting up black families. Barack Obama, Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton led the Million Man March on Washington to protest. By 2001, the United States had the highest rate of incarceration in the world. Human Rights Watch reported that in seven states, African Americans constituted 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders even though they were no more likely than whites to use or sell illegal drugs. Prison admissions for drug offenses reached a level in 2000 for African Americans more than 26 times the level they had been under Ronald Reagan. Biden's "social planning" had proven effective.The Leftist Jacobin magazine summed up Biden's record: "It’s not as if Biden didn’t know what he was doing.... He just didn’t care. Biden had made a calculated decision that the elections he would win were worth the damage he inflicted.... But even if Biden has subsequently learned the error of his ways, the rank cynicism and callousness involved in his two-decade-long championing of carceral policies should be more than enough to give anyone pause about his qualities as a leader, let alone a progressive one." By the 21st century blacks made major gains in sports, entertainment and politics. George W. Bush appointed the first two blacks to head the cabinet, secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. In a stunning upset, a man with no connection to American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton for the Democratic party nomination for president in 2008, then defeated Republican John McCain McCain hailed Obama's win: I've always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Senator Obama believes that, too. But we both recognize that though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation's reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound. A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth. Own your power. Your power is not to just vote Democrat for the rest of our lives. That’s not the power...‘We’re moving these factories to America, and that’s how it’s going to be’... Our goal is to bring the manufacturing back to America... bring it back stateside and to present jobs for people back here.” West decried Democratic policies that have brainwashed black Americans into a cycle of self-destruction and lamented how Democrats have brainwashed black Americans into voting for them with promises of food stamps and abortion. In Kentucky, voters overwhelmingly rejected the Democrats' racist agenda, electing the state's first black Attorney General and first Republican in 70 years, Daniel Cameron. Four years earlier, Kentucky voters elected conservative Republican Jenean Hampton as the state's first black statewide elected official, and the Republican governor they elected, Matt Bevin, had adopted four children from Ethiopia. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who lied about her Native American heritage to steal affirmative action preferences from qualified minorities, dropped a truth bomb in the 2020 New Hampshire presidential debate: I’m glad to stand on this stage with my fellow Democrats who talk about how important the black community is, at least at election time. Year after year after year, election after election after election, Democrats go to people in the black community and say “Boy, we really care about these issues. Racism is terrible, we all want to do something,” and then somehow the problem just seems to keep getting worse. In Boston, Massachusetts Progressive fascists defaced the 54th Regiment Memorial to black soldiers in the Civil War as Antifa protests moved through the city. A website dedicated to the memorial, which stands at the top of a hill on the Boston Common, explains: The most acclaimed piece of sculpture on Boston Common is the Robert Gould Shaw and Massachusetts 54th Regiment Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens; a memorial to that group of men who were among the first African Americans to fight in the Civil War. The monument portrays Shaw and his men marching down Beacon Street past the State House on May 28, 1863 as they left Boston on their way to South Carolina, Shaw erect on his horse, the men marching alongside. - The monument, which commemorates black lives dedicated and sacrificed to the struggle against slavery, was defaced with profane anti-police graffiti, as well as tributes to George Floyd. The story of the 54th was immortalized in the Hollywood movie Glory, for which Denzel Washington received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The story of the 54th was immortalized in the Hollywood movie Glory, for which Denzel Washington received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. 2020 Presidential election - See also: 2020 Presidential election Kanye West declared his candidacy for President on July 4, 2020. West is pro-life, stating "Planned Parenthood's have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the devil's work." West entered the race after Democrat nominee Joe Biden's racist "you ain't black" comment. West said, "that is a form of racism and white supremacy and white control, to say that all black people need to be Democrat, and to assume that me running is me splitting the vote. All of that information is being charged up on social media platforms by Democrats. And Democrats used to tell me the same. Democrats have threatened me. The reason why this is, the first day I registered to vote is because I was scared. I was told that if I voted on Trump, my music career would be over. I was threatened into being in one party. I was threatened as a celebrity into being in one party. I was threatened as a black man into the Democratic Party. And that's what the Democrats are doing emotionally to my people, threatening them to the point where this white man can tell a black man. "if you don't vote for me you're not black." The history of slavery has always been a major research topic for white scholars, but they generally focused on the political and constitutional themes until the 1950s, generally ignoring the black slaves themselves. During Reconstruction and the late 19th century, blacks became major actors in the South. The Dunning School of white scholars generally cast the blacks as pawns of white Carpetbaggers but W.E.B. Dubois, a black historian, and Ulrich B. Phillips, a white historian, studied the African-American experience in depth. Indeed, Phillips set the main topics of inquiry that still guide the analysis of slave economics. In the black community, in the first half of the 20th century Carter G. Woodson was the major scholar studying and promoting the black historical experience. Woodson insisted that the study of African descendants be scholarly sound, creative, restorative, and, most important, directly relevant to the black community. He popularized black history with a variety of innovative strategies and vehicles, including Association for the Study of Negro Life outreach activities, Negro History Month (now Black History Month, in February), and a popular black history magazine. Woodson democratized, legitimized, and popularized black history. Benjamin Quarles (1904–96) and John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) provided a bridge between the work of historians in black schools such as Woodson, and the black history that is now well established in mainline universities. Quarles grew up in Boston, attended Shaw University as an undergraduate, and received a graduate degree at the University of Wisconsin. He began in 1953 teaching at Morgan State College in Baltimore, where he stayed, despite a lucrative offer from Johns Hopkins. Franklin taught at Brooklyn College and had a major impact when he was a professor at the elite University of Chicago, 1964–83. Black history always sought out black agency—even slaves had a certain amount of control over their lives. The assumptions was that slaves were passive and did not rebel was debated in the 1950s and rejected. Many of the white scholars were former Communists or members of the far left, and they looked for violent rebellion. They found few such rebellions, but much unrest. Herbert Gutman and Leon Litwack showed that in reconstruction how former slaves fought to keep their families together and struggled against tremendous odds to define themselves as free people. Robert Fogel, a former Communist who moved to the right, enraged the left when he used quantitative methods to show that the housing, food, clothing and living conditions of the slaves were reasonably favorable. He was awarded the Nobel prize in Economics for his work. Today proponents of black history argue that it promotes diversity, develops self-esteem, and corrects myths and stereotypes. Opponents, including Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Oscar Handlin, complain that such curricula are dishonest, divisive, and lack academic credibility and rigor. Knowledge of black history Black history took a remarkable turn toward erasure in the early 1900s with the publication of Woodrow Wilson's A History Of the American People, which does not mention any Black heroes going back to the Founding. Wilson was regarded in academia as a great scholar and his work became a modern re-founding of the historical field. This is why the only major figures known to Black America are post 1900 and for the most part focused from 1960s. The history of America has been gutted ever since. Surveys of 11th and 12th grade students and adults in 2005 show that American schools have made them very well informed about black history. Both groups were asked to name ten famous Americans, excluding presidents. Of the students, the three highest names were blacks: 67% named Martin Luther King, 60% Rosa Parks, and 44% Harriet Tubman. Among adults, King was 2nd (at 36%) and Parks was tied for 4th with 30%, while Tubman tied for 10th place with Henry Ford, at 16%. When distinguished historians were asked in 2006 to name the most prominent Americans, Parks and Tubman did not make the top 100. - Earle, Jonathan, and Malcolm Swanston. The Routledge Atlas of African American History (2000) excerpt and text search - Finkelman, Paul, ed. Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass (3 vol 2006) - Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred Moss, From Slavery to Freedom. A History of African Americans, (2001), standard textbook; first edition in 1947 excerpt and text search - Litwack, Leon, and August Meier. Black Leaders of the 19th Century. (1988) - Franklin, John Hope, and August Meier, eds. Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century. (1982), short biographies by scholars. - Harris, William H. The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the Civil War. (1982). online edition - Hine, Darlene Clark, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Elsa Barkley Brown, eds. Black Women in America - An Historical Encyclopedia, (2005) excerpt and text search - Hine, Darlene Clark, et al. The African-American Odyssey (2 vol, 4th ed. 2007) textbook excerpt and text search vol 1 - Holt, Thomas C. ed. Major Problems in African-American History: From Freedom to "Freedom Now," 1865-1990s (2000) reader in primary and secondary sources - Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of African America: From the Civil War to the Millennium (2002), well-balanced survey - Kelley, Robin D. G., and Earl Lewis, eds. To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans. (2000). 672pp; 10 long essays by leading scholars online edition, leftist emphasis - Lowery, Charles D. and John F. Marszalek, eds. Encyclopedia of African-American Civil Rights: From Emancipation to the Present (1992) online edition - Mandle, Jay R. Not Slave, Not Free: The African American Economic Experience since the Civil War (1992) online edition - Painter, Nell Irvin. Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. (2006), 480 pp survey; leftist emphasis - Palmer, Colin A. ed. Encyclopedia Of African American Culture And History: The Black Experience In The Americas (6 vol. 2005) - Salzman, Jack, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West, eds. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. (5 vol. 1996). - Smallwood, Arwin D The Atlas of African-American History and Politics: From the Slave Trade to Modern Times (1997) Slave era pre 1860 - Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (2000) ACLS E-book - Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (2nd ed. 1979) excerpt and text search - Fogel, Robert. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, (2 vol, 1974). (with Stanley Engerman), highly controversial quantitative study by a conservative - Fogel, Robert. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery, (2 vol, 1989). - Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), highly influential study of slavery excerpt and text search, by a former Communist who is now a prominent conservative - Gomez, Michael. Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998) 384pp excerpt and text search - Horton, James Oliver, and Lois E. Horton. Slavery and the Making of America (2006), well-balanced survey - Horton, James Oliver. In hope of liberty: culture, community, and protest among northern free Blacks, 1700-1860 (1998) ACLS E-book - Kolchin, Peter. American Slavery, 1619-1877 (wnd ed. 2003), a short survey excerpt and text search - Kulikoff, Allan. Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680 - 1800 (1986) - Miller, Randall M., and John David Smith, eds. Dictionary of Afro-Amerian Slavery (1988) - Rothman, Adam. Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South. (2005). 282 pp. excerpt and text search - Sobel, Mechal. The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (1987). - White, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South, (2nd ed. 1999) excerpt and text search - Wood, Peter H. Black majority: Negroes in colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (1975) ACLS E-book Emancipation and Reconstruction Era: 1860-1890 - Boles, John B. Black Southerners, 1619–1869. (1983) - Butchart, Ronald E. Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Reconstruction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875 (1980) onlineedition - Cimbala, Paul A. and Trefousse, Hans L. (eds.) The Freedmen's Bureau: Reconstructing the American South After the Civil War. 2005. - Click, Patricia C. Time Full of Trial: The Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, 1862-1867 (2001) online edition - Crouch, Barry. The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Texans (1992) - Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. "The Freedmen's Bureau" (1901) by leading black scholar online edition - Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 (1935) - Durrill, Wayne K. "Political Legitimacy and Local Courts: 'Politicks at Such a Rage' in a Southern Community during Reconstruction" in Journal of Southern History, Vol. 70 #3, 2004 pp 577–617 online edition - Foner Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988), the standard history of Reconstruction. - Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (1977) - Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003), 1865-1950 ACLS E-book - Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985) - Kolchin, Peter. First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction 1972. - Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. 1979, - Oubre, Claude F. Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership 1978. - Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War'. (1953) by leading African American historian - Rabinowitz, Howard N. Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (1978) - Ransom, Roger L. Conflict and Compromise. (1989), econometric history - Richardson, Joe M. Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 (1986). - Rodrigue, John C. "Labor Militancy and Black Grassroots Political Mobilization in the Louisiana Sugar Region, 1865-1868" in Journal of Southern History, Vol. 67 #1, 2001 pp 115–45; online edition also in JSTOR - Schwalm, Leslie A. "'Sweet Dreams of Freedom': Freedwomen's Reconstruction of Life and Labor in Lowcountry South Carolina," Journal of Women's History, Vol. 9 #1, 1997 pp 9–32 online edition - Span, Christopher M. "'I Must Learn Now or Not at All': Social and Cultural Capital in the Educational Initiatives of Formerly Enslaved African Americans in Mississippi, 1862-1869," The Journal of African American History, 2002 pp 196–222 online edition - Williamson, Joel. After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina during Reconstruction, 1861-1877 1965. Jim Crow Era: 1877-1954 - Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (1988) online edition - Bayor, Ronald H. Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (1996) - Bond, Horace Mann. “The Extent and Character of Separate Schools in the United States.” Journal of Negro Education 4(July 1935):321–27. in JSTOR - Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ed Booker T. Washington and Black Progress: Up from Slavery 100 Years Later (2003) - Bullock, Henry Allen. A History of Negro Education in the South: From 1619 to the Present (1967) ACLS E-book - Cartwright, Joseph H. The Triumph of Jim Crow: Tennessee Race Relations in the 1880s (1976) - Dailey, Jane, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, and Bryant Simon, eds. Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights (2000), essays by scholars on impact of Jim Crow on black communities online edition - Gaines, Kevin. Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (1996). online edition - Gatewood, Jr., Willard B. Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880-1920 (2000) - Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender and Jim Crow Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920 (1996) online edition; also excerpt and text search - Gosnell, Harold F. Negro politicians: the rise of Negro politics in Chicago, (1935, 1967) ACLS E-book - Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (2003), 1865-1950 ACLS E-book; also excerpt and text search - Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985) - Harlan. Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1900 (1972) the standard biography, vol 1 - Harlan. Louis R. Booker T. Washington: The Wizard of Tuskegee 1901-1915 (1983), the standard scholarly biography vol 2 online edition vol 2 - Harlan. Louis R. Booker T. Washington in Perspective: Essays of Louis R. Harlan (1988) online edition - Harlan. Louis R. "The Secret Life of Booker T. Washington." Journal of Southern History 37#3 (1971). pp 393–416 Documents Booker T. Washington's secret financing and directing of litigation against segregation and disfranchisement. in JSTOR - McMurry, Linda O. George Washington Carver, Scientist and Symbol (1982) online edition - Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family from Slavery to the Present (1985) excerpt and text search - Lemann, Nicholas. The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America (1992) excerpt and text search - Lewis, David Levering. W. E. B. DuBois, 1868-1919: Biography of a Race (2 vol 1993, 2000). excerpt and text search vol 1, winner of Pulitzer Prize; W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963 (2000) excerpt and text search vol 2 - Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (1998) excerpt and text search - Logan, Rayford. The Betrayal of the Negro: From Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson (Originally Published as: The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir: 1877-1901) (1970) excerpt and text search - McMillen, Neil R. Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow. (1989). excerpt and text search - Meier, August. Negro Thought in America, 1880-1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (1963), - Meier, August. "Toward a Reinterpretation of Booker T. Washington." 23 Journal of Southern History 22#2 (1957) in JSTOR - Myrdal, Gunnar. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). Highly influential and detailed analysis of the Jim Crow system in operation. excerpt and text search - Norrell, Robert J. Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (2009), new, favorable scholarly biography - Norrell, Robert J. "Booker T. Washington: Understanding the Wizard of Tuskegee" New Coalition News & Views Summer 2004 online edition - Sterner, Richard. The Negro's share: a study of income, consumption, housing, and public assistance (1943), statistical analysis of 1930s ACLS E-book - Walker, Juliet E. K. Encyclopedia of African American Business History (1999) online edition - Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow (3d ed., 1974), in ACLS E-books - Woodward, C. Vann. Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (1951) ACLS E-book - Wintz, Cary D. African American Political Thought, 1890-1930: Washington, Du Bois, Garvey, and Randolph (1996) online edition Civil Rights Era: 1954 - present - Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63 (1989) excerpt and text search; Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 (1999) excerpt and text search; At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (2007) - Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981) - Cashman, Sean Dennis. African-Americans and the Quest for Civil Rights, 1900-1990 (1991) - Collier-Thomas, Bettye, and V.P. Franklin. Sisters in the Struggle : African-American Women in the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement (2001) excerpt and text search - Eagles, Charles, ed. The Civil Rights Movement in America (1986), 200pp; 12 short essays by scholars and text search - Farley, Reynolds, and William H. Frey. "The Segregation of Whites from Blacks During the 1980s: Small Steps Toward a More Integrated Society," American Sociological Review, Vol. 59, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 23–45 heavily statistical; in JSTOR - Fredrickson, George M. Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (2nd ed. 1996)excerpt and text search - Garrow, David. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., And The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (1989) excerpt and text search - Goldman, Peter. The Death and Life of Malcolm X, (2nd ed. 1979) - Graham, Hugh Davis. The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy, 1960-1972 (1990) - Harris, Fredrick C. "Something Within: Religion as a Mobilizer of African-American Political Activism," The Journal of Politics, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Feb., 1994), pp. 42–68 in JSTOR - Horne, Gerald. '"'Myth' and the Making of 'Malcolm X'", The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 440–450 in JSTOR - Kluger, Richard. Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality, (1975) excerpt and text search - Ling, Peter J. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2002) excerpt and text search - Meier, August, and Elliot Rudwick. CORE (1975). - Sitkoff, Harvard. The Struggle for Black Equality (1981). - Walton, Hanes, and Robert C. Smith. American Politics and the African American Quest for Universal Freedom (3rd ed 2005) excerpt and text search - Williams, Juan, and Julian Bond. Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (1988) excerpt and text search - Wolters, Raymond. The Burden of Brown: Thirty Years of Desegration (1984) excerpt and text search Historiography and teaching - Arnesen, Eric. "Up From Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History," Reviews in American History 26#1 March 1998, pp. 146–174 in Project Muse - Dagbovie, Pero. The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene (2007) excerpt and text search - Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo. "Exploring a Century of Historical Scholarship on Booker T. Washington." Journal of African American History 2007 92(2): 239–264. Issn: 1548-1867 Fulltext: Ebsco - Dorsey, Allison. "Black History Is American History: Teaching African American History in the Twenty-first Century." Journal of American History 2007 93(4): 1171–1177. Issn: 0021-8723 Fulltext: History Cooperative - Ernest, John. "Liberation Historiography: African-American Historians before the Civil War," American Literary History 14#3, Fall 2002, pp. 413–443 in Project Muse - Eyerman, Ron. Cultural Trauma: Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity (2002) argues that slavery emerged as a central element of the collective identity of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era. - Fields, Barbara J. "Ideology and Race in American History," in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, eds., Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honor of C. Vann Woodward (1982) - Franklin, John Hope. "Afro-American History: State of the Art," Journal of American History (June 1988): 163–173. in JSTOR - Goggin, Jacqueline. Carter G. Woodson: A Life in Black History (1993) - Hall, Stephen Gilroy. "'To Give a Faithful Account of the Race': History and Historical Consciousness in the African-American Community, 1827-1915." PhD disseratation, Ohio State U. 1999. 470 pp. DAI 2000 60(8): 3084-A. DA9941339 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses - Harris, Robert L., "Coming of Age: The Transformation of Afro-American Historiography," Journal of Negro History 57 (1982): 107–121. in JSTOR - Harris, Robert L., Jr. "The Flowering of Afro-American History." American Historical Review 1987 92(5): 1150–1161. Issn: 0002-8762 in Jstor - Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks, "African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 17 (1992): 251–274. - Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. Afro-American History: Past, Present, and Future. (1986). - Hine, Darlene Clark. Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (1994) excerpt and text search - Hornsby Jr., Alton, et al. eds. A Companion to African American History. (2005). 580 pp. 31 long essays by experts covering African and diasporic connections in the context of the transatlantic slave trade; colonial and antebellum African, European, and indigenous relations; processes of cultural exchange; war and emancipation; post-emancipation community and institution building; intersections of class and gender; migration; and struggles for civil rights. ISBN 0-631-23066-1 - McMillen, Neil R. "Up from Jim Crow: Black History Enters the Profession's Mainstream." Reviews in American History 1987 15(4): 543–549. Issn: 0048-7511 in Jstor - Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick. Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915-1980 (1986) - Nelson, Hasker. Listening For Our Past: A Lay Guide To African American Oral History Interviewing (2000) excerpt and text search - Quarles, Benjamin. Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography (1988). - Rabinowitz, Howard N. "More Than the Woodward Thesis: Assessing The Strange Career of Jim Crow", Journal of American History 75 (Dec. 1988): 842–56. in JSTOR - Reidy, Joseph P. "Slave Emancipation Through the Prism of Archives Records" (1997) online - Roper, John Herbert. U. B. Phillips: A Southern Mind (1984), on the white historian of slavery - Trotter, Joe W. "African-American History: Origins, Development, and Current State of the Field," OAH Magazine of History 7#4 Summer 1993 online edition - Wright, William D. Black History and Black Identity: A Call for a New Historiography (2002), proposes new racial and ethnic terminology and classifications for the study of black people and history. excerpt and text search - Aptheker, Herbert, ed. A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States. (7 vol 1951-1994), by a prominent Communist - Berlin, Ira, ed. Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (1995) - Bracey, John H., and Manisha Sinha, eds. African American Mosaic: A Documentary History from the Slave Trade to the Twenty-First Century, (2 vol 2004) - Chafe, William Henry, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad, eds. Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (2003) excerpt and text search - Finkenbine, Roy E. Sources of the African-American Past: Primary Sources in American History (2nd Edition) (2003) - Hampton, Henry, and Steve Fayer, eds. Voices of Freedom (1990), oral histories of civil rights movement - King, Martin Luther. I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World, (1992) excerpt and text search - King, Martin Luther. Why We Can't Wait (1963; 2000) - King, Martin Luther. The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Volume VI: Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948-March 1963 (2007) excerpt and text search - Levy, Peter B. Let Freedom Ring: A Documentary History of the Modern Civil Rights Movement (1992) online edition - Rawick, George P. ed. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (19 vols.), (1972) oral histories with ex-slaves conducted in 1930s by WPA - Sernett, Milton C. African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (1999) excerpt and text search - Washington, Booker T. "The Awakening of the Negro," The Atlantic Monthly, 78 (September, 1896). - Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery: An Autobiography (1901). - The Booker T. Washington Papers University of Illinois Press online version of complete fourteen volume set of all letters to and from Booker T. Washington. - Wright, Kai, ed. The African-American Archive: The History of the Black Experience Through Documents (2001) - Wood (1974) - Eugene Genovese, Roll Jordan Roll (1974) p. 283 - Michael L. Nicholls, "Strangers Setting Among Us: The Sources and Challenge of the Urban Free Black Population of Early Virginia". Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 2000 108(2): 155-179. 0042-6636 in JSTOR - Howard. Bodenhorn, "A Troublesome Caste: Height and Nutrition of Antebellum Virginia's Rural Free Blacks." Journal of Economic History 1999 59(4): 972-996. 0022-0507 in JSTOR - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,p. 49, "Every opportunity I got, I used to read this book." - James MacPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (1988) page 495 - Lincoln's letter to O. H. Browning, Sep 22, 1861 - Lincoln's Letter to A. G. Hodges, April 4, 1864 - It also freed 1,000 or so slaves in Delaware and some lifetime servants in West Virginia, as well as black slaves owned by Indians in Oklahoma. - John F. Kennedy's Southern Strategy, 1956-1960, Guy Paul Land, The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 56, No. 1 (January, 1979), pp. 41-63. - Robert Terrill, "Protest, Prophecy, and Prudence in the Rhetoric of Malcolm X," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4#1 Spring 2001, pp. 25-53 in Project Muse; Akinyele O. Umoja, "The Ballot and the Bullet," Journal of Black Studies 29 (1999): 558-79; Sean Dennis Cashman, African-Americans and the Quest for Civil Rights, 1900-1990 (1991), 184-215. - Edward I. Berry, "Doing Time: King's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail." Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9#1 Spring 2005, pp. 109-131 in Project Muse - Mark Vail, "The 'Integrative' Rhetoric of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' Speech," Rhetoric & Public Affairs 9#1 Spring 2006, pp. 51-78 in Project Muse; Alexandra Alverez, "Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream': The Speech Event as Metaphor," Journal of Black Studies 3 (1998):337–57 - Akinyele O. Umoja, "1964: The Beginning of the End of Nonviolence in the Mississippi Freedom Movement," Radical History Review, Jan 2003; 2003: 201 - 226. online in Duke journals - Caro, Robert, Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Chapter 39 - HR 6127. CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1957. PASSED. YEA SUPPORTS PRESIDENT'S POSITION. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/85-1957/h42 - HR. 6127. CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1957. PASSED. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/85-1957/s75 - Said to Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (D-GA) regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1957. As quoted in Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (1977), by Doris Kearns Goodwin, New York: New American Library, p. 155. - Democratic Party: Disaster for Blacks, by Sy Landy, Socialist Voice No. 20 (Winter 1984). - Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan as quoted in Inside the White House (1996), by Ronald Kessler, New York: Simon and Schuster, p. 33. - Sen. Theodore Bilbo, whom Byrd swore his Klan oath to, said in 1949 on Meet the Press, "Once a Ku Klux, always a Ku Klux." - Civil Rights Filibuster Ended. Art & History Historical Minutes. United States Senate. - "Chicago 1969: Assumed to be natural enemies, these groups united in their calls for economic justice." When Black Panthers aligned with Confederate-flag-wielding, working-class whites, Colette Gaiter, The Conversation, January 8, 2017. - Freedom Ballot in MS ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans - The Mississippi Movement & the MFDP ~ Civil Rights Movement Veterans - Branch, Taylor (1998). Pillar of Fire. Simon & Schuster. - Carmichael, Stokely, and Charles V. Hamilton. Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 90. - Mills, Kay, This Little Light of Mine: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer, (New York: Plume, 1994), p. 5. - 'That little girl was me': Kamala Harris says she was a victim of Biden's anti-busing racial policies, by Ellie Bufkin, Washington Examiner, June 27, 2019. - How a Young Joe Biden Turned Liberals Against Integration, By JASON SOKOL, Politico, August 04, 2015. - Will Black Voters Still Love Biden When They Remember Who He Was?, By Eric Levitz, Intelligencer, Mar. 12, 2019. - From Crisis to Working Majority, Stan Greenberg, The American Prospect 2, no. 7 (September 1991). Republished 24 May 2005 - The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, Naomi Murakawa, Oxford University Press, Jul 10, 2014, p. 141. - The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, Naomi Murakawa. - Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote, Michelle Alexander, The Nation, February 10, 2016 - McCain statement Nov. 4, 2008 - Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, "Making Black History Practical and Popular: Carter G. Woodson, the Proto Black Studies Movement, and the Struggle for Black Liberation." Western Journal of Black Studies 2004 28(2): 372-383. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: Ebsco - Abul Pitre and Ruth Ray, "The Controversy Around Black History." Western Journal of Black Studies 2002 26(3): 149-154. Issn: 0197-4327 Fulltext: Ebsco - Sam Wineburg and Chauncey Monte-Sano, "'Famous Americans': The Changing Pantheon of American Heroes," Journal of American History (March 2008) 94#4 pp. 1186–1202.
How people react–both psychologically and physically–can have implications for a person’s health and well-being, including how well they age.For some, stressors are viewed as challenges to overcome, whereas others may see them as threats and give up or shut down when faced with a stressful situation.Everyone experiences stress, but how a person responds varies. Cindy Bergeman, a Notre Dame professor of psychology and associate vice president for research, is currently conducting a 10-year study based on how different people respond to stress, why they react the way they do, and the different ways people cope. From interviews to medical exams, the research team is looking to better understand how stress can affect someone over both a short and a long period of time and what the best coping strategies are in order to remain resilient against stress. “When a zebra on the savannah is being hunted by a lion, the zebra’s blood pressure rises, its body begins moving glucose to the muscles, and breathing increases, all in order to achieve peak performance. This primal survival response is caused by stress,” Bergeman said. “People have the same physical reaction to stress, but in today’s world stressors don’t require a fight or flee response. The body’s reaction, however, is the same, even if stressors come from work pressures, complicated relationships, or financial problems.”When people are chronically stressed, these physical responses become detrimental to the human body. For example, continuous high blood pressure can lead to hypertension and a constant increase of glucose levels can cause diabetes. Bergeman’s study is taking a comprehensive approach that uses both daily and yearly assessments as well as quantitative and qualitative data. By collecting information over a longer period of time, her lab is working to understand the varying effects of daily stressors as well as one-time, stressful events. “What goes on in our day-to-day life is really important, but it may not affect a person’s health for 10 or 15 years,” Bergeman said. “My lab is looking broadly at the lifespan, because it may not be the major life events–like the loss of a loved one–that really get to you. Instead, it may be the daily hassles, time pressures, and bad relationships that in the end have the most detrimental impact on health. Currently, we are in the final year of the study and we are hoping to extend it for another five years to get a broader picture of the impact stress has during a lifetime.” Bergeman will be discussing her research on the relationship between stress, resiliency, and the impact on health and well-being as a part of the University of Notre Dame’s Saturday Scholar Series. The series, hosted by the College of Arts and Letters, features intimate discussions with Notre Dame faculty. Members of the public are welcome to attend Bergeman’s presentation at 4 p.m. Sept. 17 in the Snite Museum’s Annenberg Auditorium. Originally published at research.nd.edu. Originally published by Brandi Klingerman at research.nd.edu on September 16, 2016.
Measuring Your Risk: The main measures that indicate you have risk or have reduced risk are blood pressure, cholesterol levels, triglyceride levels, and homocysteine level. Let’s look at each one separately. 1. Your blood pressure. This is measured as, for example, 120/76 mmHg. The top figure is the systolic blood pressure, the bottom figure the diastolic blood pressure. It’s the bottom figure—your diastolic blood pressure—that’s the most important figure. If your blood pressure is above 140/90, you have a much greater risk of heart disease. In fact, roughly every 10 point increase above 76 doubles your risk of death from cardiovascular disease. 2. Your cholesterol level. This is broken down into your total cholesterol, your LDL (“bad”) cholesterol and your HDL (“good”) cholesterol. You want to have a low LDL cholesterol (ideally below 100 mg/dL), a high HDL cholesterol (ideally above 60 mg/dL), and a total cholesterol of not less than 150 mg/dL and not more than 200 mg/dL. As a rough indicator, with every 50 point increase in your total cholesterol above 200mg/dL, you double your risk of death from cardiovascular disease. With every 50 mg/dL increase in LDL, you double your risk, and with every 20 mg/dL decrease in HDL below 60 mg/dL, you double your risk. 3. Your triglyceride level. This reflects the level of fats in your blood stream and is raised by eating high fat/high sugar diets, or by excessive alcohol. Your trigylceride level should be below 89 mg/dL. As a rough indicator, every 50 mg/dL increase doubles your risk. 4. Your homocysteine level. This is measured in, for example, 6 mmol/l. You want to have a score below 6. As a rough indicator, with every 5 point increase above 6 mmol/l you double your risk of death from cardiovascular disease. There are other important measures such as your platelet adhesion index and your fibrinogen levels, which measure the stickiness of your blood; lipoprotein (a) level, which is a highly significant risk factor; and C-reactive protein level, which indicates inflammation in the arteries. Make sure that your doctor measures all of these important risk factors as well. How Good Are Heart Medications? There are several categories of heart medications, each designed to address one of the major categories I listed above. They include statin drugs, which are designed to lower LDL cholesterol; thiazides, which are diuretics designed to lower blood pressure; beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, angiotensin II receptor antagonists, calcium channel blockers, and nitrovasodilators, all of which are designed to lower blood pressure; and blood thinning drugs, such as warfarin (coumadin) and aspirin. If you are currently taking heart medication, simply look at the details about your drug to find out which category it falls into. Then read below to learn a bit more about what you are taking. Statin Drugs - Overall, statin medication can be expected to lower LDL cholesterol concentration by an average of 68 mg/dL if taken for several years. Research shows that statins can reduce your risk of a heart attack by about 60 percent and your risk of stroke by 17 percent.(1) However, the risk reduction in minimal in the first year of use. The downside is that statins lower LDL cholesterol by blocking an enzyme that makes mevalonate, a precursor to both cholesterol and co-enzyme Q10 (CoQ10). CoQ10 is vital to heart health, and deficiency has been associated with fatigue, muscle weakness and soreness, and heart failure. Because statin drugs block production of CoQ10, they also lead to CoQ10 deficiency, a fact that has been well established in human trials. Therefore, long-term statin use can very dangerous. Just how serious these problems are is somewhat unknown. The major trials of statin drugs excluded those with class 3 and 4 heart failure, thus avoiding the chances of seeing an increase in death from congestive heart failure from statin medication.(2) Other symptoms associated with statins include dizziness, headache, extreme fatigue, swelling of the ankles, muscle aches, fatigue, and suppressed immunity. Additionally, statins can be dangerous if taken with high levels of long-acting (time-release) vitamin B3 (niacin). Thiazides, Beta-Blockers, and Calcium Channel Blockers - All these categories of drugs produce similar reductions in blood pressure, averaging a 5.5 point drop with standard drug doses. Unlike statins however, the reduction happens quickly. Beta-blocker drugs counter our normal stress response, which raises blood pressure. The greatest possible reduction in risk occurs from using combinations of these blood pressure-lowering drugs in low dose combination, in some cases, reducing deaths from stroke and heart disease by half.(3) On the downside, negative side effects are common—especially for beta-blockers—and include extreme fatigue, confusion, sleep disturbances, dizziness, sexual dysfunction, gastrointestinal complaints, and vivid dreams. And the higher the dose, the worse the side effects. Much older people, pregnant women, and individuals with renal or thyroid disease should be especially cautious about taking beta-blockers, and use the lowest dose possible to get their blood pressure under control. Like statin drugs, beta-blockers also deplete CoQ10. Just be sure that you don’t stop taking your beta-blockers cold turkey, as this could precipitate angina, high blood pressure, or even a heart attack. Heparin, Warfarin (Coumadin,) and Aspirin - These drugs are often recommended if you have a blood clotting problem or have had a heart attack or stroke. Warfarin is particularly effective if you’ve had an embolic stroke, an extensive heart attack, or have mechanical heart valves. Aspirin is less effective for preventing clots and strokes, particularly in women and those over 75. The major side effect of these drugs is excessive bleeding, such as eye and brain hemorrhages, blood in the urine, and bleeding gums. Warfarin can also cause weakness, cold sensations, itchy skin, fever, and abdominal discomfort. And aspirin has its own can of worms. It causes gastrointestinal bleeding and should be avoided if you have gut problems, a history of hemorrhagic stroke, bleeding ulcers, hemorrhoids, or ...... 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It can be easily observed that some people are more sensitive than others. Researchers define sensitive people as those who are more strongly affected by what they experience. This can include how one is influenced by the physical environment but also social relationships, work conditions and upbringing, to give just some examples. Although everyone is sensitive to an extent, research has shown that people tend to fall into three different groups along a spectrum of sensitivity with about 30% classed as low, 40% as medium and 30% as high in sensitivity. Importantly, although highly sensitive people are more likely to struggle under stressful circumstances, they are also especially receptive to positive and supportive experiences. Those who are low in sensitivity, on the other hand, tend to be more resilient when facing adversity but also benefit less from positive experiences. Several psychological theories have been developed to describe such differences in sensitivity. The leading theories have recently been summarised into the overarching concept of Environmental Sensitivity, which integrates existing terms such as the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), Orchids and Dandelions, and Differential Susceptibility. According to the theory of Environmental Sensitivity, people differ in their ability to perceive and process information about their environment due to neurobiological differences in their brain, which is partially explained by genetic differences. Although this means sensitivity has a genetic basis, research has shown that it is equally shaped by people’s environment and experiences across their lives. Sensitivity can be easily and reliably measured with a range of short questionnaires that have been developed and validated by researchers. After more than 20 years of academic research, it is clear that sensitivity is an established, recognised and empirically verified human trait. However, while we have gained much from research to-date, more investigation is needed. Additional work on key areas such as the neurobiological mechanisms underlying the trait, the existence of gender, cultural and other differences, and its role in the development of psychological disorders, to mention just a few, will help us to understand sensitivity more fully. Frequently asked questions Sensitivity is a basic human trait and describes the ability to perceive and process information about the environment. Sensitivity consists of two basic components. Firstly, the perception of sensory input from the environment such as sound, smell, taste, and touch. Secondly, the cognitive processing of the perceived information about the environment, such as thinking deeply about and reflecting on experiences. Although everyone is sensitive to some extent, some people are more sensitive than others. Research shows that highly sensitive people are more negatively affected by adversity but also benefit particularly strongly from positive experiences. Simply put, sensitive people are those who are more strongly influenced by what they experience. The fact that similar differences in sensitivity have been observed in many other species, for example, in dogs, fish and birds, suggests that sensitivity has a biological basis and was conserved over the course of evolution due to its important role for adaption to the environment. Indeed, sensitivity in humans has been associated with neurobiological differences in the brain as well as genetic factors.
Mechanical Properties of Solids Class 11 Notes Physics Chapter 9 • Inter molecular Force In a solid, atoms and molecules are arranged in such a way that each molecule is acted upon by the forces due to the neighbouring molecules. These forces are known as inter molecular forces. The property of the body to regain its original configuration (length, volume or shape) when the deforming forces are removed, is called elasticity. • The change in the shape or size of a body when external forces act on it is determined by the forces between its atoms or molecules. These short range atomic forces are called elastic forces. • Perfectly elastic body A body which regains its original configuration immediately and completely after the removal of deforming force from it, is called perfectly elastic body. Quartz and phospher bronze are the examples of nearly perfectly elastic bodies. The inability of a body to return to its original size and shape even on removal of the deforming force is called plasticity and such a body is called a plastic body. Stress is defined as the ratio of the internal force F, produced when the substance is deformed, to the area A over which this force acts. In equilibrium, this force is equal in magnitude to the externally applied force. In other words, • Stress is of two types: (i) Normal stress: It is defined as the restoring force per unit area perpendicular to the surface of the body. Normal stress is of two types: tensile stress and compressive stress. (ii) Tangential stress: When the elastic restoring force or deforming force acts parallel to the surface area, the stress is called tangential stress. It is defined as the ratio of the change in size or shape to the original size or shape. It has no dimensions, it is just a number. Strain is of three types: (i) Longitudinal strain: If the deforming force produces a change in length alone, the strain produced in the body is called longitudinal strain or tensile strain. It is given as: (ii) Volumetric strain: If the deforming force produces a change in volume alone, the strain produced in the body is called volumetric strain. It is given as: (iii) Shear strain: The angle tilt caused in the body due to tangential stress expressed is called shear strain. It is given as: • The maximum stress to which the body can regain its original status on the removal of the deforming force is called elastic limit. • Hooke’s Law Hooke’s law states that, within elastic limits, the ratio of stress to the corresponding strain produced is a constant. This constant is called the modulus of elasticity. Thus • Stress Strain Curve Stress strain curves are useful to understand the tensile strength of a given material. The given figure shows a stress-strain curve of a given metal. • The curve from O to A is linear. In this region Hooke’s Proportional limit law is obeyed. • In the region from A to 6 stress and strain are not . proportional. Still, the body regains its original dimension, once the load is removed. • Point B in the curve is yield point or elastic limit and the corresponding stress is known as yield strength of the material. • The curve beyond B shows the region of plastic deformation. • The point D on the curve shows the tensile strength of the material. Beyond this point, additional strain leads to fracture, in the given material. • Young’s Modulus For a solid, in the form of a wire or a thin rod, Young’s modulus of elasticity within elastic limit is defined as the ratio of longitudinal stress to longitudinal strain. It is given as: • Bulk Modulus Within elastic limit the bulk modulus is defined as the ratio of longitudinal stress and volumetric strain. It is given as: – ve indicates that the volume variation and pressure variation always negate each other. • Reciprocal of bulk modulus is commonly referred to as the “compressibility”. It is defined as the fractional change in volume per unit change in pressure. • Shear Modulus or Modulus of Rigidity It is defined as the ratio of the tangential stress to the shear strain. Modulus of rigidity is given by • Poisson’s Ratio The ratio of change in diameter (ΔD) to the original diameter (D) is called lateral strain. The ratio of change in length (Δl) to the original length (l) is called longitudinal strain. The ratio of lateral strain to the longitudinal strain is called Poisson’s ratio. • Elastic Fatigue It is the property of an elastic body by virtue of which its behaviour becomes less elastic under the action of repeated alternating deforming forces. • Relations between Elastic Moduli For isotropic materials (i.e., materials having the same properties in all directions), only two of the three elastic constants are independent. For example, Young’s modulus can be expressed in terms of the bulk and shear moduli. • Breaking Stress The ultimate tensile strength of a material is the stress required to break a wire or a rod by pulling on it. The breaking stress of the material is the maximum stress which a material can withstand. Beyond this point breakage occurs. Hence, the elastic potential energy of a wire (energy density) is equal to half the product of its stress and strain. • IMPORTANT TABLES
This The Prison Break \| Think Like A Coder, Ep 1 video also includes: Break free from monotonous lessons. An engaging video introduces the computer coding series and describes the ongoing context. Robots have taken over, and the hero needs to escape from prison and save the world by solving a set of clues. Pupils learn about basic computer coding, specifically about for loops, while loops, and until loops. - Have scholars use index cards to simulate code blocks and arrange the cards in order to model their programs - This is the first of 10 episodes in the Think Like a Coder series - No previous knowledge of computer coding is necessary - Provides a list of resources for additional study - Contains interesting graphics and animations - Resource does not include an actual computer coding activity
Does a tsunami have a warning? Tsunami Warning – A tsunami warning is issued when a tsunami with the potential to generate widespread inundation is imminent, expected, or occurring. Warnings alert the public that dangerous coastal flooding accompanied by powerful currents is possible and may continue for several hours after initial arrival. How much warning is there in tsunami? Experts believe that a receding ocean may give people as much as five minutes’ warning to evacuate the area. Remember that a tsunami is a series of waves and that the first wave may not be the most dangerous. The danger from a tsunami can last for several hours after the arrival of the first wave. How can you predict a tsunami is coming? Tsunamis are detected and measured by coastal tide gages and by tsunami buoys in the deep ocean. The tide gages measure the tsunami wave directly. In the deep ocean, sensors on the ocean floor detect the pressure signature of tsunami waves as they pass by. What is the tsunami warning system and how does it function? It is made up of a network of seismic-monitoring stations and sea-level gauges. These detect earthquakes and abnormal changes in sea level and help scientists decide whether a tsunami has been triggered by an earthquake. If so, warnings go out to many countries and regions in the Pacific. What to do if a tsunami is coming? Move immediately to higher ground, DO NOT wait for a tsunami warning to be announced. Stay away from rivers and streams that lead to the ocean as you would stay away from the beach and ocean if there is a tsunami. Do tsunamis happen without warning? While most tsunamis have seismic precursors that allow for some form of warning, an unfortunate chain of factors led to Saturday’s catastrophic impact, experts say. The tsunami, which happened between Java and Sumatra islands, was caused by the Anak Krakatau, an active volcano that has been erupting since June.
Hydrotherapy is the use of water to facilitate healing and movement and to enable patients to achieve therapy goals. The properties of water provide an environment for treatment options that might otherwise be difficult or impossible to provide with land-based interventions. For example, in a pool, a patient can be placed in nonweight-bearing positions—supine, prone, or sitting—with the use of buoyant devices. Movement and exercise of the upper and lower extremities can be facilitated in these positions by the effects of buoyancy. The aquatic environment created by water can serve as resistance to exercise to facilitate muscle strengthening. Historically, hydrotherapy was delivered in metal tubs of water agitated by an attached electric motor (commonly known as whirlpools) or by immersion in larger pools of water (e.g., swimming pools). Today the use of whirlpools, particularly for treating wounds, has decreased because of infection concerns and the resources and expense required for their use. Newer techniques that deliver a pressurized stream of water to wounds and incorporate suction, such as pulsed lavage with suction (PLWS) devices, have mostly replaced whirlpools for wound care. Pool therapy, or aquatic therapy, has become increasingly popular in rehabilitation programs. Other methods of hydrotherapy, such as contrast baths, have limited support in the research literature for effectiveness. PHYSICAL PROPERTIES OF WATER An understanding of water’s static and dynamic properties as they apply to immersion and exercise is important to appropriately and effectively use hydrotherapy for therapeutic interventions. This section will discuss the physical properties of water, including buoyancy, drag forces viscosity, hydrostatic pressure, hydrodynamics, thermodynamics, physiological effects, and mechanics. One of the most important properties of water is buoyancy. Archimedes’ principle states that “the buoyant force on a body immersed in a fluid is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by that object.”1 A body or body part immersed in water will experience this buoyant force, which reduces the force of gravity on the body and, thus, decreases weight-bearing on the lower part of the body. A person immersed in water up to the neck will have about 10% of the body weight-bearing on the lower body; immersion up to the xiphoid process will bear about 33% body weight on the lower body; and immersion up to the anterior superior iliac spines will bear about 50% body weight on the lower extremities.2 Exercise of the extremities can be assisted by buoyancy. A person standing in water up to the neck can raise an extremity with the assistance of buoyancy. Buoyancy can also resist movement, such as an extremity moving downward against the force of buoyancy (Fig. 5-1). Resistance exercises for strengthening can be performed against the force of buoyancy. For example, a patient rehabilitating from surgical repair of the rotator cuff muscles of the shoulder can use the buoyant force of water ...
This information is provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center (GARD). Precocious puberty is when a person’s sexual and physical traits develop and mature earlier than normal. Normal puberty typically begins between ages 10 and 14 for girls, and ages 12 and 16 for boys. The start of puberty depends on various factors such as family history, nutrition and gender. The cause of precocious puberty is not always known. Some cases of precocious puberty are due to conditions that cause changes in the body’s release of hormones. Treatment involves medications that can stop the release of sexual hormones. For more information, visit GARD.
If you wish to assign students a color, have several pieces of different colored construction paper ready for the students. The traditional colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) work best. - Tell the students they are going to pretend to be white light. Have the students stand in a straight line. Have them arrange themselves so they are in the same order as the colors of the rainbow (ROY G. BIV) based on the color of their shirt (if you have uniforms in your school or a poor variety of shirt colors present, you can give each student a sheet of colored construction paper and have them line up by the color of their paper). - Tell the students that all colors of light travel at the same speed. Therefore, when they start walking, they all must walk at the same speed. - Tell the students that light can be thought of as a wave and that different colors of light have different wavelengths. Therefore, they will all take different step lengths. - Tell the students that the students representing blue light will take small steps since blue has a short wavelength. Students wearing green will take medium-sized steps and students wearing red will take long steps. Other colors should be adjusted accordingly. - Have all the students walk toward you at the same speed. Tell them to observe the other “colors” as they walk. Tell them that white light is made up of all the colors, so they are pretending to be white light. - Have the students return to the starting point. Stand 10 feet or so from the students. Tell them you are a filter and you are only going to let through a certain color of light (you might wish to choose the color that is most popular that day). Have the students walk toward you. Everyone who is not the same color as the filter has to stop when they reach you. Tell the students this is what a colored filter does. It stops all colors of light except one. NOTE: If you are, for example, a red filter and two students are wearing slightly different shades of red shirts, let them both pass. Tell the students that filters usually let though a small range of colors and not just one color. - Now tell the students they are going to learn the difference between laser light and normal light. Tell the students that they will now all be the same color so they will take the same size steps and walk at the same speed. Have the students stand in a line and start walking toward you at the same speed taking the same size steps. Tell them not to worry about being in step with the person next to them. This exercise simulates monochromatic (single color) light that is not coherent. - Next, tell the students to line up and walk toward you taking steps of the same size. This time, however, tell them they all have to be in step. Tell the students this simulates laser light and is called coherent. All the light is “in step.” Scientists would say the light has a constant phase relationship. In coherent light, all the individual photons act as one wave.
Learning about History helps children develop a coherent knowledge and understanding of Britain’s past and that of the wider world. At Queen Edith we aim to inspire children’s curiosity by bringing History to life through cross-curricular topic work, role play, handling of artefacts and school trips. Children learn important skills such as questioning perceptively, thinking critically and searching for evidence to support their reasoning. History helps pupils to understand the complexity of people’s lives, the process of change, the diversity of societies and relationships between different groups, as well as their own identity and the challenges of their time. We aim to: - Provide children with an experience of history, which is both valid and stimulating - Encourage a lively and questioning approach, which will enable children to enjoy their learning - Enable children to understand how they themselves fit into the pattern of past and present in Britain and the world Children in the Foundation stage will follow the Early Learning Goals, in which ‘History’ is covered in the Understanding of the World area of learning. From Year 1 to Year 6 All children will follow the National Curriculum programmes of study, which are divided into Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. These are then divided into areas of knowledge, skills and understanding. The table below shows when History is taught at Queen Edith and the topics within which it appears. \|Y1\|\|History of toys: Changes within living memory: Look at contemporary toys and study toys parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents may have played with. Look at similarities and differences and identify changes in materials and technology. Set up a toy museum.\|\|Castles: Discover the castles around the British Isles. Find out about the most splendid castles and their locations around the UK, exploring their different architecture.\| \|Y2\|\|The Body Machine: Finding out about significant individuals e.g. Florence Nightingale\|\|Fire and Ice: Historical periods within (just!) and beyond living memory: the Great Fire of London, Carlos Gatti, Shackleton\|\|Around the World :Historical explorers, inventors & crusaders, e.g. Captain Cook and the Wright brothers\| \|Y3\|\|Ancient Greeks: A study of Greek life and achievements, and their influence on the Western world\|\|Pirates: A history of seafaring and pirates\|\|Stone Age to Iron Age: Changes in Britain during this period, including Iron Age hill forts such as Wandlebury\| \|Y4\|\|Explorers:\|\|The Romans: The Roman Empire and its impact on Britain. Invasion, conquest and resistance\|\|Travel to the Golden Age: Early Islamic civilisation, including a study of Baghdad c. AD 900. A non-European society providing contrast with British history\| \|Y5\|\|Ancient Egyptians: Investigating what it was like to live in Egypt during the time of mummies, ancient gods and pyramids. Children will also take part in an Ancient Egyptian Day.\|\|Anglo Saxons and Vikings: Investigating what it was like to live in Britain between the Stone Age and Iron Age. As part of this, the children will go on an educational visit to West Stow where they will experience what life was like in an Anglo-Saxon village.\| \|Y6\|\|World War 2: and the impact on Britain. Investigating the poignant events throughout the war and how life in Britain changed during and after the end of the war.\|\|Cambridge University: A walking tour, the history and some of its famous alumni.\| The History curriculum as outlined above is often taught in a cross curricular way. For example, the Greek topic in Year 3 will make meaningful links to other areas of the curriculum such as Art, DT, English and Science. For more information please click on the link to view our History Policy on our Policies page. Examples Of Learning Year 1 looked at the history of toys and enjoyed playing with them. Year 3 enjoyed their Ancient Greeks topic by visiting a cast museum and building their own temple. Year 4 went to the Scott Polar museum and dressed up in survival gear for the Arctic! Year 5 held an Egyptian Day in school and even mummified their friends! Year 6 have enjoyed a themed day for World War 2, a trip to Duxford Imperial War Museum and a visit to Cambridge town centre for our local history study.
There are many advantages to using sign language with young children: it reduces frustration, stimulates language development, addresses multiple learning styles, and recent research even suggests it can reduce symptoms of ADHD! But for your programs, you just need to know two benefits: it makes your programs instantly participative, and it’s FUN! Here are six super ways to get started using sign language in your program; for more great ideas, see Try Your Hand at This!: Easy Ways to Incorporate Sign Language Into Your Programs by Kathy MacMillan (Scarecrow Press, 2005). 1) Teach a Seasonal Sign: The Sign for Snow (This rhyme teaches how to say SNOW in American Sign Language.) When the weather is cold and the icy wind blows And you feel a shiver right down to your toes. Wiggle your fingers from the sky to the ground. That’s the sign for SNOW you have found! 2) Take a poll without losing your mind: Teach the children the signs for YES and NO. Then ask yes/no questions about the story you are reading (“Do you think the fox will catch the sheep this time?”) and invite the children to respond using only their signs. It’s a quick and easy way to get children to participate without making a lot of noise. 3) Spice up a song or rhyme that doesn’t have built-in actions: There’s nothing worse than putting on music and then just standing around to it. Use American Sign Language to create participative movement. For example, you could teach the kids signs for farm animals to make an old favorite like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” instantly hands-on! 4) Play a color game: Extend a flannelboard rhyme into a fun interactive game with this activity. This can be used with any flannelboard that has items of different colors (Five Little Leaves, Five Funny Clowns, etc.). Teach the children the signs for the colors, then invite them to look carefully at the objects. Count to three, then have them close their eyes. Remove one of the objects. Then have the children open their eyes and identify which object is gone, using only their signs. Confirm which object was taken away by showing where it was on the flannelboard. Repeat until all the objects are gone. This activity is appropriate for toddlers and up, and enhances visual acuity, attention, and memory – all important pre-reading skills. 5) Use signs for group management: Sometimes a sign can get kids’ attention in a way no nagging reminder can! Introduce the signs below by signing them along with the words on the first few reminders, then let your voice fall away and do only the sign. Kids will get the message (and you may find them using these signs to police each other!) Even elementary and middle school age students will respond to signed prompts without complaining and eye-rolling. Try it! 6) Use signs for a story refrain: Teach the kids a few simple signs that they can repeat throughout the story. This will give them something active to do as they say the words, and will keep them engaged by stimulating multiple senses. For example, when reading Karma Wilson’s The Cow Loves Cookies (Simon and Schuster, 2010), ask children to sign the refrain with you each time. In these difficult economic times, libraries are finding it necessary to stretch their budgets, while trying to offer more services to the community. Often the library becomes the new “community center” in neighborhoods when families find their disposable income limited. This is a perfect opportunity to bring new people into the library and introduce them to all the fabulous services the library has to offer. So how does the library continue to provide new programs for the community, while managing its own budget? Partnering with the community. Businesses and other community organizations are also concerned about their budgets, so partnering with the library benefits everyone. Here are some simple techniques to make it happen: 1) Bring in the schools: Most libraries book talk at their local schools. In return, ask the school’s media specialists, art teachers, etc., what programs they could offer at your library. Teachers often need a community outreach project for their yearly review and this is an easy way for them to fill that requirement. Some ideas for perfect partnership programs include: book discussion clubs, an art class, a reading celebration night, where media specialists and librarians work together to offer activities around a theme (Caldecott awards, summer kick-off, local or state book awards, etc.). 2) Partner with local scout groups: These groups earn many badges and awards, and often use the library as a resource. In return, ask if they would like to offer a program for the community. A princess tea? A storytime? A craft program? A matchbox truck convoy? A clean-up day? 3) Ask for resources: Suppose you have a great idea for a program, but do not have money for the supplies or refreshments. Ask local stores or major distributors for donations of specific materials – it’s often much easier to get a donation of fifty rolls of duct tape for your duct tape wallet program, say, than a cash donation. In return, offer a thank-you in your publicity brochure and at the program. 4) Go outdoors with nature centers or parks: Offer storytelling or storytime services to the park, and ask if they’d be willing to do a program for you. Many parks have rescued animals, or offer craft programs, which make a welcome addition to a library lineup. Again, offer a thank-you in your publicity brochure and allow them to publicize their own events while they are offering a program. 5) Bring in local businesses for programs: Local businesses of all types have services they provide; it never hurts to ask if they can offer a program. The local waste management company can present a recycling program, a beauty shop can discuss make-up tips for prom season, fitness clubs can offer a sample class for tots, youth or adults, local martial arts groups often have demo teams, and more. The key is to think outside the box. The library offers visibility and free publicity for these businesses. 6) Grow your local garden of presenters: Master gardeners, local cooperative extension sites, and garden stores are amazing resources for classes. Program topics can range from local pests and growing vegetables to beautifying your landscape. If your library has space, you can ask them to start a demonstration garden where the entire community can become involved and come together. Sure, you know all about using rhythm sticks to tap out rhythms, but consider these creative uses for the old storytime standby: 1) Spider Legs: Hold your sticks vertically to make spider legs, and sing “The Spider Went Over the Mountain”. Kids love to make their spider sticks walk! 2) Magic Wands: Pass out one stick to each child and invite them to help you cast a spell! Let the children take turns using their wands to make their friends jump, turn, bounce, and sit! 3) Giant Pencils: This exercise is great for promoting gross motor skills and early literacy! Give one stick to each child and let them draw shapes in the air, or write specific letters or numbers. 4) Windshield Wipers: Give 2 sticks to each child and chant the rhyme below as your “windshield wipers” keep the rain away. This activity is a great tie-in to rain or transportation themed programs. Windshield Wipers Rhyme It’s a rainy day and down the street we go. It’s only raining a little bit, so the wipers are going slow. It’s starting to rain more now, but it’s not a disaster. We know what we need to do: make the wipers go faster! Oh no, it’s really pouring now, we hope that it won’t last. Let’s turn those windshield wipers up, and they’ll go fast fast fast! The rain is slacking off again, we’re not sad to see it go. We’ll turn those windshield wipers down, and they’ll go back to slow. Oh, look, is that the sun I see? And here comes one last drop. The rain has stopped now, yessiree, and we turn our wipers OFF! 5) Olympic Torches: Give each child one stick, and stage your own Olympic relay across the room! Use an orange scarf for the flame, and have each child pass it along with his or her rhythm stick to “light” the next torch. (Make sure you play Olympic music to complete the experience!) Make your own marching band! Have the children hold their rhythm sticks like flutes as they march around the room. 7) Clock Hands: Hold one stick in each hand. Review where the numbers on the clock fall, and then call out times. The children should move their clock hands to the appropriate positions. (For older children, call out things like “dinnertime” and “bedtime” and have them supply the times!) Ribbons and streamers are fun to incorporate into storytime and can be used in a variety of ways, all of which promote development of gross motor skills. You can use sturdy pre-made ribbons from a school and library supply company (our favorites are Lakeshore Learning’s Wrist Ribbons, which are just the right size for young children), or you can make your own using lengths of ribbon tied to dowel rods. For a less sturdy take-away streamer, tape a length of crêpe streamer to a straw. Here are some ideas for using your streamers in storytime: 1. Share an ancient tradition: The Ribbon Dance is a two thousand year old Chinese folk dance. Dancers use long ribbons attached to sticks to represent clouds and are supposed to bring rain and plentiful crops. Invite the children to move their ribbons in different ways as you show the sun, rain, wind, and clouds. 2. Catch a Wave: Ribbons and streamers make wonderful waves. Make waves to your favorite Beach Boys tune, or go under the sea with a Calypso rhythm. Invite the children to stand in two rows, waving their streamers up high. Let the children take turns “swimming” between the rows so they feel they are under the sea! 3. Make a Rainbow: Pass out streamers in a rainbow of colors. Wave them above your head when practicing your colors, singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, or during a book when a rainbow is mentioned. Or share the rhyme below to reinforce color knowledge. If your streamer is red, wave it over your head! If your streamer is blue, shake it by your shoe! If your stream is yellow, wave it at a fellow! If your streamer is green, shake it while you lean! If your streamer is pink, shake it however you think! 4. Share a Star: Sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” as you gently wave your streamers to show the shimmering starlight, or share the shooting star rhyme below: There once was a star who lived up in the sky (wave streamer above head) He twinkled and twinkled at all who came by (move streamer in small movements to represent twinkling) He twinkled left and he twinkled right (move streamer left, then right) He twinkled through the day and he twinkled through the night (continue twinkling) He twinkled down at the earth and he twinkled at me (point streamer down and keep twinkling) Until he decided Earth was where he wanted to be. So one day he twinkled as brightly as could be (move streamer in large back and forth movements) And became a shooting star who came down…to..me! (slowly make streamer descend to the ground) 5. Race a Rocket: Mark off a “course” on the floor using plastic cones or masking tape. Let the children take turns becoming “rockets” with the streamers as the fire coming out of their engines, as they skip or dance along the course. Rocket Song (to the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel”) (Name) is blasting off into space In a big red rocket First we count and then we blast off (5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Blast off!) (slowly raise streamer during countdown) ROAR! Goes the rocket. (go along course with streamer behind you) 6. Fly a Kite: Play “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” from Mary Poppins and pretend your streamer is a kite in the sky. 7. Share a Shape: Use your streamer to create shapes in the air as you sing this song. Shape Song (to the tune of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”) Can you draw a square, draw a square? Oh can you draw a square, draw a square? Draw a line and then three more They are all the same for sure Oh can you draw a square, draw a square? Can you draw a circle, draw a circle. Oh, can you draw a circle, draw a circle? A circle is round With no corners to be found Oh, can you draw a circle, draw a circle? Can you draw a triangle, draw a triangle? Oh, can you draw a triangle, draw a triangle? Make one side and then make two, Then make a third, that’s all you do, Oh, can you draw a triangle, draw a triangle? 8. Write a Word: Use the streamer to write words or letters in the air. Encourage the children to make their letters as large as possible. This activity encourages letter knowledge, gross motor skills, and prewriting skills. As you lead the letters, describe exactly how to move the streamer to create them. For example: “Let’s make a letter A. We start at the top, then make a slanted line down to the bottom. Now back up to the top, and make a slanted line going the other way. Now make a little bridge to connect the lines. We made an A!” We presented this puzzler to our newsletter readers. Here are their responses: “We just recently started offering non-registered storytimes, and to my surprise, I love it! I was very hesitant to give up the idea of knowing how many people to expect, but now I have found that with a little planning, I can make just about any number of people work. Parents love being able to drop in without worrying about pre-registering.” -Katie R. “In order to make programs more accessible to all, we don’t register programs that staff offer. If an outside presenter requests a registered program, we are happy to accommodate. Otherwise we try to estimate the number of supplies we need for the program. We are generally over-optimistic, having more than enough supplies for everyone, and we find we can always use left over items for another program.” -Sue H. “Registering children’s programs that require specific supplies and those with a more complicated project are a must. In these financially tight times, registering allows us to purchase exactly what we need and assign the appropriate number of staff to a program.” -Mary Q. “My library offers a mix of registered and non-registered programs, and I must admit I prefer registration. I think the parents who come to registered programs are more likely to make a commitment to attending. It’s too easy, with non-registered programs, for them to say they will come and then not do it.” -Maryann B. “I like to keep registration only for programs that need a lot of supplies (such as our science programs for middle schoolers) or programs that might overflow our room. Otherwise registration is such a waste of staff time. If a person shows up to storytime and there is space, we will let them come in. So why bother to preregister?” -Valarianna P. Kathy and Christine say: Registered programs and drop-in programs both have their benefits. Registered programs help the presenter plan activities more effectively, especially when crafts or other materials are involved. Having a limited number, particularly in baby and toddler programs, can make for a more enriching experience for the children and parents. And some activities simply can’t be done with an extra large group. On the other hand, drop-in programs convey an open-door attitude to patrons and cut down on staff busywork (after all, taking registrations and waiting lists, making confirmation calls, and just managing the registration can be quite a chore!). To decide whether to make a program registered or drop-in, consider: - Is space an issue? - Do you need to know numbers in order to plan for specific activities or materials? - Do you expect an overflow crowd? - Do you need to limit your numbers in order to provide a developmentally appropriate program? When planning for a non-registered program, maintain maximum flexibility by: - keeping crafts simple – or doing away with them entirely. Consider using coloring sheets or other easy-to-reproduce crafts instead of more complicated projects. - having a plan B (and C, and D…). Think about how you can adapt your materials if you should end up with a group much larger, or much smaller, than your average. Be ready to shift gears midprogram if necessary. - making sure your storytime books and materials stand up to the needs of a large group. If a flannelboard’s pieces are too tiny, consider redoing them as large stick puppets, or use live props instead. - using action songs or wiggle rhymes to help your group vent its energy and refocus its attention periodically throughout the program. - collaborating with other staff. We know of one enterprising librarian who, faced with an unexpectedly huge crowd at a storytime, quickly worked out a plan with another staff member to divide the group in half. One half colored in the children’s department under the supervision of the other staff member while the other half attended storytime with the programmer, then the groups switched. 1) Use yourself as a flannelboard: Put on an apron with pockets to hold the flannel pieces and tell a story on your belly. 2) Use a story-appropriate object instead of a board: Telling a story about cooking or food? Use a pot, flat pan or spatula with magnetized pieces. How about a metal music stand for a music-related story? Repurpose an old pet carrier or aquarium to help you tell an animal story. You could even raid your local junkyard for part of an old car to use for a transportation-related story! 3) Group storytelling: Create pockets on the bottom of a freestanding flannelboard and fill them with a variety of pieces from your favorite flannelboards. Let each child have a turn to pull a piece out and add it to the board and telling part of a story. For example: Child 1 pulls out a dog and says one sentence about the dog, then Child 2 pulls out a sun and says a sentence about the sun that relates to the first… The dog went out to play, and the sun was shining… 4) Flannelboard hide and seek: Hide flannel pieces (apple, balloon, car…) around the room, then give each child a letter of the alphabet and ask him or her to find the item that starts with that letter. If you want to work on counting, have each child find a certain number of items around the room. 5) Make your own flannelboard: Pass out a carpet square and a set of simple pieces to each child so the children can tell the story along with you. (This is especially great for tangrams, an ancient puzzle/storytelling form from Asia! Find easy tangram patterns here.) 6) Color match: Make multiple pieces of a flannelboard in different colors. Pass the pieces out to each child and ask them to come up and place their pieces on the board when you call their color. Some suggestions to use with this idea: - “The Little Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe”: cut simple child shapes to pass out (There was an old lady who lived in a shoe, and she had so many green children she didn’t know what to do…) - “Baa Baa Black Sheep”: cut sheep shapes to pass out and repeat the song several times, replacing “black” with other colors - “The Wheels on the Bus”: pass out animal shapes and sing the song with various animal sounds (The cows on the bus say moo, moo, moo…) 7) Mix and match forms: Try using a flannelboard to preview a book, or to have the children help you retell a book after reading. Sing a song like “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly”, then use the flannelboard to review the story/song sequence with the children. Doing so reinforces narrative and sequencing, which are important pre-reading skills 8) Play a memory game: After telling a story, song, or rhyme with the flannelboard, play a visual memory game. Ask the children to close their eyes, then take one item away. Tell the children to open their eyes, and see if they can identify which item is missing. (Once they do, place the item back on the board to show where it was.) Repeat until all the items are gone. You can even take this activity one step further by teaching Spanish, American Sign Language, or other vocabulary for the flannelboard items, and asking the children to identify the missing item using their new vocabulary. Nursery rhymes help children develop important pre-reading skills, such as phonemic awareness, and make language fun! Here are nine fun, interactive ideas to present nursery rhymes in storytimes: Read Over the Moon by Rachel Vail. (New York: Orchard, 1998.) This story is a clever twist on the classic nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle Diddle”. A frustrated director can’t get his cow to understand how to go OVER the moon. The story emphasizes prepositions in a fun way. After reading the story, make a large paper moon and have volunteers help you act out the various ways the cow interacts with the moon. Then, for a surprise, use the “Magic Door to Books” trick found in Carolyn Feller Bauer’s Leading Kids to Books Through Magic (American Library Association, 1996) to walk through your moon. Review the prepositions in the book at the end. 2) The Little Spider: A Nursery Rhyme from the Philippines: Every culture around the world has nursery rhymes. Many of the themes of nursery rhymes are similar across different cultures. Share this rhyme from the Philippines with children and ask them if it reminds them of one that they know. The little spider, the little spider (wiggle index finger) Climbed up the branch (move index finger up opposite arm) The rain came down (wiggle fingers down) Pushed it away. (show spider falling) The sun came up (hold arms in circle over head) It dried the branch. The little spider is always happy. (make index finger hop up arm again) Learn how to share this rhyme using American Sign Language in this free video featuring Kathy MacMillan. For more terrific nursery rhymes from around the world, see http://itsasmallworld.co.nz/index.php. 3) Hickory Dickory Dock: Give each child two rhythm sticks and have them hold them like clock hands to show the time in each verse of the rhyme. Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse ran up the clock, the clock struck 1, the mouse ran down Hickory Dickory Dock! …the clock struck 2, the mouse said “Boo!” …the clock struck 3, the mouse said, “Whee!” …the clock struck 4, the mouse said, “More!” …the clock struck 5, the mouse did the hand jive. …the clock struck 6, the mouse did magic tricks, …the clock struck 7, the mouse said, “This is heaven!” …the clock struck 8, the mouse cried, “I’m late!” …the clock struck 9, the mouse said, “Fine!” …the clock struck 10, the mouse said, “Again!” …the clock struck 11, the mouse said, “Still heaven!” …the clock struck 12, the mouse said, “Swell!” 4) Little Miss Muffet: Try a traditional nursery rhyme silly style! Alter the last words of the rhyme, making sure to act very seriously, as though you think these are the correct words. The kids will love correcting you! Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, eating her…macaroni and cheese Along came a…dinosaur And sat down beside her And ask her to go to the library! 5) Jack Be Nimble: Set an unlit candle in the middle of the floor. (A large pillar candle works well for this activity.) Recite the rhyme together, then invite the children to take turns coming for-ward and jumping over the candlestick as everyone says the rhyme, replacing “Jack” with each child’s name. This activity is popular with babies through preschool. (Parents can lift babies over the candlestick.) _____ be nimble, _______ be quick. Jack jump over the candlestick! Learn how to share this rhyme using American Sign Language in this free video featuring Kathy MacMillan. 6) This Little Piggy: Make this traditional rhyme interactive by having the children suggest new destinations and foods for the piggies. Write their suggestions on a board or flipchart, then have everyone recite the new rhymes together. This is a great tie-in for nursery rhyme, community helper or “in my town” storytimes. This little piggy went to the zoo, This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had ice cream, And this little piggy had none. And this little piggy went “Wee! Wee! Wee!” all the way home. 7) The Grand Old Duke of York: Give each child a pair of rhythm sticks and tap out the rhythm of the song as you sing, moving the sticks up and down as the soldiers do. The grand old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men He marched them up to the top of the hill, And he marched them down again. And when they were up, they were up, And when they were down, they were down, And when they were only half-way up, They were neither up nor down. 8) Wee Willie Winkie: In your baby program, pass out large pom-poms to the parents. Invite them to use the pom-poms as puppets to act out this classic nursery rhyme, making the pom-pom race up and down baby’s arms and tap gently on their foreheads: Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town, Upstairs and downstairs in his nightgown, Tapping at the window and crying through the lock, Are all the children in their beds, it’s past eight o’clock? 9) Jack and Jill: This interactive craft is a great way to act out this favorite nursery rhyme. - Print out the craft templates here. - Cut a slit in the “Up the Hill” sheet along the dotted line. - Color Jack and Jill, then cut them out. - Glue Jack and Jill to the craft sticks. - Poke the sticks through the slit in the worksheet to act out the rhyme! We posed this question to our readers: Song, dance, or hello rhyme, how do you open your storytime? “I always start my Story Times with what I call the “Name Game” We clap every child’s name out three times. Beginning with my name first, “Mrs. Brady, Mrs. Brady, Mrs. Brady” Syllable by Syllable that would be four claps each time. This is to introduce children to phonetics AND a great way for us to learn each other’s names. For older children I ask them if they can tell me how many syllables they have in their name. When there are only a few children I’ll include the adults too. The children love hearing their names clapped out loud.” -Irene B. “I like to start off my story times with a song. My song of choice is “Shake Your Sillies Out” by the Wiggles. After the children enter the room and sit on the floor, I welcome them and ask if any of them are feeling silly, them I ask them to stand up because we have to shake those sillies out. We use a lot of energy shaking them out and after the song we sit down for a story or two before we move on to the next movement activity.” -Craig P. Kathy and Christine say: - Make storytime a welcoming place, different from the rest of the library. Playing music as the children enter the storytime room is one way to create a welcoming atmosphere. Even if you are doing storytime out in the middle of the library, create a special “space” for storytime by ringing a bell, striking a chime, or giving some other special signal that storytime is starting. - A hello song is a wonderful way to open your storytime. Greeting each child by name to a simple tune allows you to make eye contact with each child in turn and provide them a special welcome to storytime. (See our book, Storytime Magic, for lots of suggestions for hello and goodbye songs!) - Don’t underestimate the power of bursting into song! If you have a noisy or restless group, starting out singing is a great way to get their attention fast. They’ll be wondering what you’re going to do next! - If flashy theatrics are not for you, then take it to the other extreme: Quietly and deliberately, as if you don’t even notice the kids are there, sit in a chair, pull out a book, and examine the front. Chances are that some of the kids will notice, wonder what you are doing, and hush the others. Once they have settled, softly begin to chant or sing, and invite them to join you. - Get a sidekick. Choose a favorite puppet or stuffed animal to help you greet the children. We posed this question to our newsletter readers: With math and science benchmarks playing an ever-more important role in early childhood education, librarians are often expected to incorporate these concepts in conscious way into storytimes. How do you incorporate meaningful math and science concepts into your storytime activities? “Introduce simple graphing…..when doing colors, have bags of M and M’s available. Have a simple graph with the colors listed available (we have one we found online sometime back). Have participants count the numbers of each color and record on the graph. Or do this in front of the whole group and have small bags for participants to eat. Graph other things….do you like red, yellow, or green apples? Do you like snow or not? What Easter/Halloweencandy is your favorite?” -Barbara S. “I started a monthly program that is history or science based for kids 7 to 14. We offer programs for babies, preschool kids and teens but there was nothing for the in-between ages. The mummy program has been the biggest hit so far. There was a slideshow of actual mummies and artifacts, an online game that showed how Egyptians embalmed their dead, and the kids got to dissect a mummy that I made. I have kids that talk to me about it months later.” -Elizabeth L. Kathy and Christine say: Incorporating math and science into your regular storytimes is easier than you think! Here are some simple ideas: - Invite children to count the objects placed on the flannelboard. With preschoolers, pose simple math problems, such as, “If I take away one apple, how many will be left?” Use the tangible objects to make the math come alive. - Graph the objects. Create columns of like objects then count them. Ask the children which object had the most? - When doing crafts, count how many objects you’re gluing on or how many colors you’re using. - You have to count your storytime attendees for your statistics, so why not make it part of the program? Invite the kids to count along with you as you count attendees. For family programs, count how many kids and how many adults, then ask the kids to compare the numbers – were there more children or adults? Write the number on a whiteboard or chalkboard so children can connect the written and spoken forms of the numbers. - In a color storytime, discuss the primary colors and how to mix them to create secondary colors. - In a weather storytime, practice blowing bubbles or scarves and discuss wind and what makes a windy day. Is it snowing? Talk about what the temperature needs to be to snow. We posed this puzzler to our readers: You’ve got your books and props all ready, your craft all set up…and only two children show up for storytime. And they’re too shy to shake their sillies out all alone. “I’d not be disappointed at all. I used to do a separate storytime with two special needs children and it was my favorite. We actually sat in a cozy place on the floor in my office, just big enough for the three of us, making it our special place. Always capitalize on the moment – you can do the story and then repeat it again, using dramatic play, and retelling. One of the little boys did not speak at all in class, but we know he did speak occasionally at home. I gave him props to help tell the story, by holding the puppet himself, or copying hand motions. My delight came about six weeks later when he began to talk with me. It was indeed our special place and time together. My advice: “seize the moment” and tell the small audience how lucky they are to get their own special story, just for them and then, make it happen! Children really like to think they are being treated special, and you get to make it so!” -The Li’berry Fairy in Atlanta “Being at a public library in a small community, sometimes this does happen, especially in the winter months when people don’t want to deal with the bad roads. When it does happen and we only have two or three small children I still do the program I planned, but adjust it in the following ways. I sit on the floor in front of the children instead of the small chair I usually sit on. I find that they are less intimidated and will interact more. I still do the songs I planned, but accept the fact that I may be the only one doing the actions. I joke with the moms that I am “performing” for them and tell them that is ok because even if their children aren’t actually up doing the movements they are still listening and may do them at home. As far as crafts I don’t feel a smaller group affects this except that you are able to help them more and they can have more time to do the craft. The main point to remember is to have humor in the situation and relish the one on one time you can have with each child that you may not get when you have twenty or more little ones wanting your attention.” -Tammy S. “I start with asking parents to join me in doing a finger rhyme like “Grandma’s Glasses”. I read a short story and follow with another finger rhyme, like “Five Little Monkeys” using hand puppets. By now they’re loosened up enough to ask everyone to stand and I hand out egg shakers and put on some dance music.” -Irene K. Kathy and Christine say: This reminds us of the story of the city preacher who prepared a big fancy church service for his first visit to a small country church. When it was time for the service to start, one lone farmer was sitting in the church. “Well,” said the preacher, “it’s just you and me. Should we go ahead and have the service or not?” The wizened old farmer looked at him thoughtfully and said, “When I take a load of hay out to the fields, and only one of my flock shows up, I still feed that one.” The preacher beamed at him, and proceeded to give him the whole service – every verse of every song, the whole sermon, footnotes and all – everything. Then the preacher went to the back door to shake the old farmer’s hand as he left the church. “Well,” said the preacher, “what did you think?” The old timer looked thoughtfully at the preacher and said, “Well, when I take a load of hay out to the field and only one of my flock shows up, I still feed that one – but I don’t feed him the whole load!” - The key to making super-small programs work is flexibility. Be willing to scale back your program plan and adapt it to the kids in front of you. - Don’t be surprised if kids are slow to warm up without the comfort of a group. Give them time to feel comfortable with you by cheerfully forging ahead with stories or songs without calling attention to their shyness. Once they are ready, they will join in. - Take the time to ask the child or children what he or she likes and talk about how this connects to the story. - Consider a choose-your-own-storytime. Rather than proceeding with storytime as planned, lay out the materials you planned to use and let the children decide which activity they want to do next. - Let the kids take part in the stories by holding the puppets, turning the pages of the book, or sitting close to the flannelboard and putting up the pieces.
Although the beaches of New England are well known to the millions of Americans who flock to them each summer, these sedimentary systems have been, until very recently, shrouded in a geological mystery. Prior to the recent publication of a Marine Geology article by NE CASC Principal Investigator Jon Woodruff and his collaborators, the factors governing the extent of beach slope--or which beaches descend gradually to the sea and which ones end abruptly in a steep drop-of--were largely unknown. The findings from Woodruff's study, which decisively unravel this mystery, are critically important for understanding how New England’s beaches will respond to the impacts of climate change, particularly rising sea levels and increased storm activity. Many of New England’s beaches are composed of a mixture of sand and small stones. More precisely, the grain sizes on these beaches are “bi-modal” – composed of very large pieces of gravel, from 10 to 64 millimeters, and medium-to-coarse sand, from .25 to 1 millimeter, but with very little in between. As researchers have long known, grain size is one of the crucial determinants of a beach’s slope. As grain size becomes smaller, its pitch becomes more gradual--up to a point. “The relationship between grain size and slope falls apart for coarser-grained beaches,” says Woodruff. Though many New England beaches are typically made up of coarse-grained particles, they still slope gradually to the water’s edge. Until now, no one knew why. “Past researchers have always focused on either the mean or median grain size,” says Woodruff. It’s a method that works well for finer-grained beaches. But in a bi-modal, New England beach, the median grain size falls right in that gap between 1 and 10 millimeters. To unravel the mystery surrounding the New England beach slope, Woodruff and his team took over 1,000 samples from 18 beaches in Massachusetts from which they assembled the largest, publicly available dataset on these areas. Relying on this comprehensive data, Woodruff’s team discovered that in bi-modal beaches, it’s only the finer-grained sand that determines a beach’s slope. “That smaller handful of sand grains,” says Woodruff, “is why beachgoers have a place to sunbathe in New England.” This new research, which was conducted in partnership with the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management and supported by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in addition to NE CASC, has far-reaching implications. “Understanding how beach sand grain size influences the makeup of our beaches is critical for making projections as to how beaches will respond to storms and sea-level rise,” says Woodruff. “Especially given the attempts to preserve beaches from erosion, which cost many millions of dollars every year, we need to know what determines the shape and defining grain size characteristics of these beaches.” This article was adapted from the UMass Amherst website.
A wave of earthquake tremors over the last few months have moved parts of Washington state and Vancouver Island westward. They’ve been called “silent earthquakes," slow slip or deep tremors and can take months to play out; one just wrapped up that began in April. They occur when the oceanic and continental tectonic plates quietly slip past each other deep in the Earth. These silent quakes weren't known to researchers 20 years ago. They were discovered in Japan, which has a similar geological structure to the northwest coast of the U.S. and southwestern Canada. That same structure expected to result in a magnitude nine earthquake and tsunami off the coast, much like what killed some 16,000 people in Japan in 2011. The recent tremor event began May 8 slightly north of previous tremors, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network. These tremors are plotted out as swarms move up and down the coast with no shaking felt. Yet they are large earthquakes, releasing enough energy to equal a magnitude 6.8. The "lock zone," where the plates are stuck together, have the potential to form enough pressure to break and create big coastal earthquakes and tsunamis estimated at magnitude 9. Discussions have renewed to learn how big the lock zone is, and how much closer is it to the major population centers of Seattle, Tacoma, Everett, Portland, Vancouver, B.C. The shaking for these locations could be even worse further east and closer to population centers than first thought. If proven, the theory could lead to changes in building codes and emergency preparation. “This is something we have discussed in the past but is worth revisiting and rethinking,” said University of Washington Seismologist Ken Creager speaking of the theory that the western edge of the tremor could mark the eastern side of the lock zone. “We have a number of ways of estimating where it is, but they don’t all give the same answer,” said Creager. “This is one of several possibilities, and I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s the most likely one.” The last time the Cascadia Subduction Zone went off and caused a major earthquake was in 1700. It created a tsunami so big it was recorded in Japan.
Can photosynthesis be measured over large areas? Scientists find a way A research team led by geoscientists from Brown University and the Marine Biological Laboratory has provided some crucial ground-truth for a method of measuring plant photosynthesis on a global scale from low-Earth orbit. The researchers have shown that chlorophyll fluorescence, a faint glow produced by plant leaves as a byproduct of photosynthesis, is a strong proxy for photosynthetic activity in the canopy of a deciduous forest. That glow can be detected by orbiting satellites and could be used to monitor global photosynthetic activity in real time. "We show that fluorescence is tightly coupled to photosynthesis, capturing both daily and seasonal fluctuations," said Xi Yang, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown and the study's lead author. "This is the first time anyone has linked fluorescence to photosynthesis over a long time scale in a deciduous forest and validated orbital measurements of fluorescence with ground-based measurements." The findings are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Yang led the work as a graduate student in the Brown-Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) graduate program, working with Brown geoscientist Jack Mustard and MBL associate scientist Jianwu (Jim) Tang. Catching photons on the rebound When plants photosynthesize, chlorophyll molecules in leaves absorb photons from sunlight. The plant then converts the energy from those photons into sugar and other carbohydrates using carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere as a carbon source. But not all the photons absorbed by chlorophyll are for photosynthesis. Around 1 percent of them are re-emitted as lower energy photons, which creates the faint glow known as fluorescence. The glow isn't visible to the naked eye, but a few years ago scientists from NASA and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency found that spectrometers aboard climate satellites could detect fluorescence coming from croplands and forest canopies. That raised the possibility of measuring photosynthesis on a global scale. Currently, the gold standard for measuring photosynthesis involves directly measuring the exchange of carbon dioxide gas between plants and the air directly around them. The technique, called eddy covariance, relies on tower-mounted detectors that can only monitor an area of a few square kilometers. Even with hundreds of towers around the world, eddy covariance can still only provide a patchwork of data. That's part of the reason scientists have looked to orbital instruments to get a broader view of photosynthesis. Scientists are just beginning to measure the extent to which orbital measurements of fluorescence correlate to ground-based measurements of photosynthesis. A few studies have shown fluorescence to be a good proxy over cropland, but there hadn't been any studies looking at the link to a forest canopy over an extended period. This latest study fills that gap. For the study, the researchers made use of the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts. Over the course of a full summer, they compared photosynthesis measurements from the forest's eddy covariance tower with fluorescence data taken with a tower-mounted spectrometer above the forest. The readings from the ground-based spectrometer were then compared to readings from an orbital instrument aboard the European Space Agency's GOME-2 satellite. The study showed that fluorescence measurements from both the ground-based spectrometer and the satellite were tightly correlated to photosynthesis as measured by eddy covariance, capturing both day-to-day fluctuations and fluctuations that occurred over the course of the summer. "The findings help to establish an empirical link between fluorescence and photosynthesis and help to validate the satellite product with ground-based observations," Yang said. The fact that fluorescence appears to capture daily fluctuations of photosynthesis gives it an advantage over other remote sensing methods. One current method uses an index of greenness as a proxy for plant production. But greenness can sometimes lag well behind plant stress, Yang said, so fluorescence could be a much better way of getting real-time data. "Measuring fluorescence is the hottest topic in remote sensing today. It is transforming how we measure photosynthesis on local to global scales," said Jack Mustard, professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences and a fellow in the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. "This work is fundamental in linking the signature of photosynthesis from leaf to orbit."
ProfessorElvisZap teaches you about the laws of logarithms. When x is positive, meaning 0<x. x times y equals y times x. This is the commutative property. x times (y times z) equals (x times y) times z. This is the associative property. x times 1 equals x. This is the multiplicative property. x times x to the power of -1 equals 1. This is the multiplicative inverse property. You can use these properties with addition: a+b=b+a, (a+b)+c=a+(b+c), a+0=a and a+(-a)=0. A logarithm is a homomorphism. Follow the rest of the instructions to get a more in depth look at the laws of logarithms. Start your career in Graphic Design with the WonderHowTo's Beginners’s Guide to Photoshop Course
One of the most commonly diagnosed internal parasites in pets is a microscopic, single-celled organism called Giardia. It is also the most frequently diagnosed internal parasite in humans. Giardia infections occur worldwide in most domestic animals, birds and man. Unfortunately, cross-infection can occur between all species. The Giardia organism lives in the tissue of the small intestine, where it multiplies. Transmission occurs by the fecal-oral route (ingestion of the cysts shed in the stool), or by drinking contaminated water (especially from mountain streams, standing water and toilets). Animals may also contract the disease by ingesting another animal’s feces or bird droppings. Colorado has more reported cases of Giardia than any other state. A Giardia infection may result in a range of symptoms, ranging from inapparent infection to diarrhea, vomiting, decreased appetite and weight loss. Feces may appear watery, poorly formed, pale and contain mucus or blood. There may be a period of five to 14 days from exposure to the parasite to the development of symptoms. Factors that may increase the numbers of cysts in the intestine include: environmental stresses (i.e. boarding, travel, changes in the household, etc.), dietary changes and concurrent illness, or weakened immune status. Increased parasite numbers may lead to the development of worsening symptoms. It is not possible to identify animals infected with the disease without a fecal examination. Since shedding of the infective cysts is intermittent, multiple fecal exams may be necessary. In addition, a more accurate test to check for antigens in the stool against the Giardia parasite is now available. Giardia is treated with oral medication. Routine deworming medications do not treat Giardia. A medication commonly used is metronidazole or flagyl, in tablet form. This medication is usually given orally twice daily for seven to 10 days. Another stool sample should be examined within two weeks of completion of the medication to see if the Giardia cysts are still present. Your veterinarian may recommend another medication called fenbendazole or panacur. This medication is a powder which is added to the animal’s food once daily for three to seven days. Occasionally, the parasite may be resistant to medical therapy and the animal may become a carrier, shedding cysts in the feces intermittently. Because Giardia is a zoonotic disease (potentially transmissible to humans), is it very important to take precautions to minimize this risk. Wash your hand thoroughly after handling your pet or its stool and clean-up/dispose of feces frequently to decrease the volume in the environment. Be particularly aware of the risk of small children becoming infected by handling stool and placing their hands in their mouths. It is difficult to become infected with normal handling of your pet, i.e. playing, grooming, sleeping in close contact, etc.; however, routine cleanliness precautions are recommended. If your pet has been diagnosed with a Giardia infection, it is important to monitor the stool closely following the diagnosis and to give all medications exactly as directed. Follow up with a stool check to ensure the parasite has been cleared from your pet, and schedule fecal examination checks once to twice yearly as recommended by your veterinarian and the Companion Animal Parasite Control Council. Dr. Debra Singleton is a veterinarian practicing in northern Colorado. She is a graduate of Colorado State University specializing in the treatment of dogs, cats and exotic animals. You can find her at facebook.com/debsdvm or email her at [email protected].
A rip current forms when part of a longshore current is drawn away from the coast – perpendicular to the beach. Courtesy of NOAA Currents at the Coast Ocean waves often move towards a beach at an angle. This moves water along the coast in a longshore current. Longshore currents grow stronger when the waves come towards the beach at a large angle. The currents also are stronger if the waves are very large, and if the beach has a steep slope. Longshore currents move sand along the beach, eroding it from some areas and depositing it in other areas. This process is called longshore drift and it is able to, over time, move entire islands in the direction of the current. Places with longshore drift need new maps made as the shape of the coastline changes over time. Longshore currents can carry more than just sand. They can carry people too. Thus, these currents can be very dangerous for people swimming in the ocean. Rip currents that carry swimmers into deep water form when part of a longshore current moves away from the beach. This happens usually where there is a change in the shape of the seafloor. The water in a rip current moves fast - at one to two feet per second and some are as fast as eight feet per second. If a person swimming is caught in a rip current, they will be swept far from shore. But because rip currents only happen in small areas, usually not more than 25 meters (80 feet) wide, swimming parallel to the shore should get the person out of the current. Last modified September 19, 2008 by Lisa Gardiner. Shop Windows to the Universe Science Store! The Spring 2010 issue of The Earth Scientist , focuses on the ocean, including articles on polar research, coral reefs, ocean acidification, and climate. Includes a gorgeous full color poster! You might also be interested in: If you sneeze into a pile of dust, the little particles fly everywhere. But if you sneeze into a pile of rocks, they will stay put. It takes more force than a sneeze to move those rocks. Winds and water...more When water or wind loses energy and slows down, sediment can no longer be carried in it. The particles fall through the water or air and form a blanket of sediment on the bottom of a river, a lake, ocean,...more The water at the ocean surface is moved primarily by winds that blow in certain patterns because of the Earth’s spin and the Coriolis Effect. Winds are able to move the top 400 meters of the ocean creating...more An aquifer is the name for a layer of rock which is capable of holding a large amount of water. Some layers are better at holding water than others, for example a layer of sandstone can hold a good deal...more Carbonate is a name for rocks and minerals which contain a molecule made of both carbon and oxygen known as CO32-. (CO32- is also known as the molecule carbonate). Limestone is an example of a calcium...more The deep ocean waters are under pressure and are much colder than layers of the ocean which are closer to the surface. Dissolved carbon dioxide seems to be absent from the deep ocean water and as a result...more One process which transfers water from the ground back to the atmosphere is evaporation. Evaporation is when water passes from a liquid phase to a gas phase. Rates of evaporation of water depend on things...more
Cape Ann Milkweed and Monarch Habitat, Eastern Point The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering adding Monarchs as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. A one-year review is underway to monitor the butterfly’s status. Since the 1990s the population has plummeted from about one billion to approximately 35 million. That may seem like a substantial number, but the Monarchs need stronger numbers to be resilient to other threats such as harsh weather. The reason for the decline is primarily because of loss of milkweed habitat in the agricultural heartland of the United States. With the development of Monsanto’s Roundup and Roundup Ready (glyphosate resistant) seed, farmers are now able to spray glyphosate directly on their corn, soybean, and sorghum crops. Roundup also destroys milkweed. Secondly, with the push for ethanol, farmers have begun to plant corn on conservation land. If the Fish and Wildlife Service determines that the Monarchs are threatened, they will set aside land for milkweed. You can read more about the the Monarch Butterfly Endangered Species Act here: You can learn more about the Monarch migration and the loss of Monarch habitat from Professor Tom Emmel here ~
How Are Cavities Treated? Tooth decay causes cavities. If you have pain in your teeth, and your doctor diagnoses it as a cavity, then you'll need to get treatment. Read on to understand what causes cavities and how they are treated. What Causes Cavities? Tooth decay occurs when foods rich in carbohydrates such as cereal, bread, soda, milk, cake, fruit or candy, remain on your teeth. Food debris comes into contact with mouth bacteria that convert it into acid. The bacteria in your mouth and food debris, saliva and acid are combined to form plaque that clings to your teeth. Plaque contains acids that dissolve your tooth's enamel to leave holes known as cavities. How Do Dentists Determine Whether You Have Cavities? When you go for a dental check-up, your dentist will examine your teeth to check for soft spots. Your dentist may also use X-rays to probe the areas between your teeth. If you have been experiencing a toothache when you drink or eat sweet things, it means that you have a cavity. In some cases, cavities appear as holes or pits in your teeth. How Is A Cavity Treated? Your dentist will offer treatment for your cavity depending on how bad it is. In most cases, dentists remove the portion of the tooth that has decayed using a drill. The hole will be covered with a filling composed of gold, porcelain, resin or silver alloy. Patients rarely experience an allergic reaction to fillings. If you have tooth decay that can break your tooth, your dentist will use a crown to fix the cavity. A crown is an artificial material that resembles a tooth and is used to hold a delicate tooth together. A crown is, at times, used for restoring a broken tooth. For example, if you do not have many teeth left and your tooth has been sealed with a large filling, a crown may be used to offer support to the tooth. The pulp in your tooth helps you sense heat and cold. When the nerve inside your tooth breaks down, bacteria can multiply inside the pulp. An infected pulp results in an abscessed tooth that causes foul breath, severe pain and swollen glands. If your pulp (the inside part of your tooth) is infected by a cavity, your dentist may have to remove the pulp using a procedure known as a root canal. A root canal procedure is mainly performed by an endodontist. Your endodontist will first conduct an x-ray to check for an infection in your tooth. Your endodontist will drill through your tooth and get rid of the pulp. He/she will then clean the treated area. The tooth will be sealed using a crown. If you're experience toothaches or suspect you have a cavity, contact a local dental clinic like Woodvale Dental Surgery so you can get it treated as soon as possible.
Engineering Economics: Financial Management for Engineers, taken in Spring 2019. Brian P. Cozzarin - Homework 5% - Tutorial quiz 5% - Programming assignment 20 + 5% - Midterm 30% - Final 40% introduction to finance 8 Principles of Finance - 1: Buy assets that add value; avoid buying assets that don’t add value. - 2: Cash is king. - 3: The time dimension of financial decisions is important. - 4: Know how to compute the cost of financial alternatives. - 5: Minimize the cost of financing. - 6: Take risk into account. - 7: Markets are efficient and deal well with information. - 8: Diversification is important. 5 Rules for Finance Modeling - 1: Put important variables in one place. Critical parameters == value drivers. - 2: Don’t hardcode numbers - 3: No blank columns - 4: No auto-jump cells - 5: GetFormula to spreadsheet time value of money Opportunity cost of capital/money in the space of time: what you could’ve done with the money in that space of time. i.e. in interest, different stocks… Lock the reference with $Col$Row, or How to compare different opportunities? Calculate the NPV and IRR of investments. where is the number of periods. At higher interest rates, the curve is steeper. - Beginning of year: interest is not applied - End of year: interest is applied FV(rate, number of periods, equal payment per term [optional], -present value) note that present value is negative. Present value: if you are promised money in the future, how much is it worth today? Taking inflation into account Note that present value and future value are mirror images. As interest rate increases, present value decreases. i.e. present value at 6% is higher than present value with 35%. See formula. On Excel, PV computes present value or series of constant payment (annuity stream, ex lottery payouts), all payments are equal. Make negative so that the PV function produces a positive answer. - Type 0: end-of-period payments - Type 1: beginning-of-period payments On Excel, NPV computes the present value, not the net present value. This present value is for unequal payments over time, use PV for constant or equal payments over time. Payments on flat loan payments. Repays a constant amount over the term, resulting into the total of the loan. Use Excel’s PMT to compute loan payments. Parameters needed: rate , number of periods , principal value or loan total Note that is a negative number so that the PMT returns a positive payment. i.e Saving for an amount 3 methods: - 1: trial and error - 2: goal seek - 3: Excel’s PMT function Goal Seek computes X. measures to evaluate investment opportunities Whether to undertake a single investment?: - 1: determine if the IRR of the project > the initial investment. - 2: calculate whether the net present value NVP > 0 - 1: A over B if . NPV and IRR sometimes give conflicting conclusions. When there is a conflict, use NPV. Why? Hence prefer NPV compared to IRR. Caveat using the NPV as criterion: they need to have the same lifespan. Net present value: NPV of a series of future cash flows is the present value of the cash flow, minus the initial investment required In other words: whether or not it’s worth spending the initial investment, depending of whether the net present value taking time into account is positive. Investment is worthwhile if: Internal rate of return, to evaluate new projects (i.e. getting a new computer? starting a new training program?) Represents the discount rate that we obtain if the investment’s NPV is 0. Equivalent to percentage gain. Excel’s IRR: plotting NPV and seeing when the curve crosses the x-axis (x-intercept) is the IRR percentage. IRR(values per year) Equivalent annual cash flows IRR is where the NPV crosses the x-axis. i.e. should you build a bridge with a toll?? yes or no, just make an IRR analysis
In 1838, Sultan Muhsin Bin Fadl of the state of Lahej ceded 194 km² (75 sq. miles) including Aden to the British. On 19 January 1839, the British East India Company landed Royal Marines at Aden to occupy the territory and stop attacks by pirates against British shipping to India. It then became an important trading hub between British India and the Red Sea, and following the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, it became a coaling station for ships en route to India. Aden was ruled as part of British India until 1937, when the city of Aden became the Colony of Aden. The Aden hinterland and Hadhramaut to the east formed the remainder of what would become South Yemen and was not administered directly by Aden but were tied to Britain by treaties of protection with local rulers of traditional polities that, together, became known as the Aden Protectorate. Economic development was largely centered in Aden, and while the city flourished, the states of the Aden Protectorate stagnated. In 1963, Aden and much of the Protectorate were joined to form the Federation of South Arabia with the remaining states that declined to join, mainly in Hadhramaut, forming the separate Protectorate of South Arabia. Both of these polities were still tied to Britain with promises of total independence in 1968. Two nationalist groups, the Front for the Liberation of Occupied South Yemen (FLOSY) and the National Liberation Front (NLF), began an armed struggle known as the Aden Emergency on 14 October 1963 against British control and, with the temporary closure of the Suez Canal in 1967, the British began to withdraw. One faction, NLF, was invited to the Geneva Talks to sign the independence agreement with the British. However, Britain - who during its occupation of Aden signed several treaties of protection with the local sheikhdoms and emirates of the Federation of South Arabia - excluded them in the talks and thus the agreement stated "...the handover of the territory of South Arabia to the (Yemeni) NLF...". Southern Yemen became independent as the People's Republic of Southern Yemen on 30 November 1967, and the National Liberation Front consolidated its control in the country. In June 1969, a radical Marxist wing of the NLF gained power and on 1 December 1970, reorganized the country into the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY). Subsequently, all political parties were amalgamated into the National Liberation Front, renamed the Yemeni Socialist Party, which became the only legal party. The People's Democratic Republic of Yemen established close ties with the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Cuba, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. East Germany's constitution of 1968 even served as a kind of blueprint for the PDRY's first constitution. The major communist powers assisted in the building of the PDRY's armed forces. Strong support from Moscow resulted in Soviet naval forces gaining access to naval facilities in South Yemen. Disputes with North Yemen The Arabian peninsula in 1914 Unlike the early decades of East Germany and West Germany, North Korea and South Korea, or North Vietnam and South Vietnam, North Yemen (YAR) and South Yemen (PDRY) remained relatively friendly, though relations were often strained. Fighting broke out in 1972, and a short-lived, small proxy border conflict was resolved with negotiations, where it was declared unification would eventually occur. However, these plans were put on hold in 1979, as the PDRY funded Red rebels in the YAR, and war was only prevented by an Arab League intervention. The goal of unity was reaffirmed by the northern and southern heads of state during a summit meeting in Kuwait in March 1979. In 1980, PDRY president Abdul Fattah Ismail resigned and went into exile in Moscow, having lost the confidence of his sponsors in the USSR. His successor, Ali Nasir Muhammad, took a less interventionist stance toward both North Yemen and neighbouring Oman. On January 13, 1986, a violent struggle began in Aden between Ali Nasir's supporters and supporters of the returned Ismail, who wanted power back. Fighting, known as the South Yemen Civil War, lasted for more than a month and resulted in thousands of casualties, Ali Nasir's ouster, and Ismail's death. Some 60,000 people, including the deposed Ali Nasir, fled to the YAR. Ali Salim al-Beidh, an ally of Ismail who had succeeded in escaping the attack on pro-Ismail members of the Politburo, then became General Secretary of the Yemeni Socialist Party. Reforms and attempts for unification Against the background of the perestroika in the USSR, the main backer of the PDRY, political reforms were started in the late 1980s. Political prisoners were released, political parties were formed and the system of justice was reckoned to be more equitable than in the North. In May 1988, the YAR and PDRY governments came to an understanding that considerably reduced tensions including agreement to renew discussions concerning unification, to establish a joint oil exploration area along their undefined border, to demilitarize the border, and to allow Yemenis unrestricted border passage on the basis of only a national identification card. In 1990, the parties reached a full agreement on joint governing of Yemen, and the countries were effectively merged as Yemen.
The subject of poo is one that is hard to take seriously. At its mention, people usually either go red with embarrassment or head in the other direction and start belting out poop jokes left, right and center. What we don’t realize, however, is that examining our own poop and the poop of our ancestors can provide valuable indicators of our health and what we can do to improve it. By analyzing fossilized human poo, otherwise known as coprolites, researchers have done just that. During the process of examining poop from our paleolithic ancestors, scientists have found that early humans had a diet rich in fiber. And the source of this fiber? Plants. It has been estimated that the amount of plants consumed by our distant relatives was similar to certain present-day non-Western cultures, such as rural China and Africa. The evolution of the human digestive system So why are these findings of significance? For starters, they provide strong evidence to support the theory that ancient human diets were predominantly plant-based. Indeed, certain paleo poops containing an overwhelming majority of plant remains date much further back in history than the advent of stone tools used for butchering animals. This suggests that plants comprised the staples of our diet long before meat-eating came into play — slightly at odds with our popular conception of the average caveman sitting around a fire eating a great haunch of dripping meat. By mapping the absorptive mucosa gut area in relation to functional body size of early humans, researchers are able to determine whether they were predominantly frugivorous or folivorous. Frugivores are animals designed to primarily consume fruit, while folivores are better accustomed to eating and digesting leaves. Based on these guidelines, humans can be considered to be predominantly frugivorous, meaning that while greens and meat are still important, fruits comprise the largest proportion of our nutritive needs. Plants: why we need to eat more of them In the study of evolution, one thing is certain: Change is a very slow process. As a species, we cannot suddenly jump from thriving on a predominantly plant-based diet to thriving on a diet comprised mostly of processed foods and grains. And yet, in the United States and other Western countries, that is exactly what has happened. Since the industrial revolution and the advent of mass production, our consumption of whole fruits and vegetables has rapidly declined, such that the average American diet provides less than 20 grams of fiber per day. This is compared to estimates of paleolithic fiber intake, which was up to 100 grams per day. That’s a drastic reduction in daily dietary fiber. The results of this diet shift are all too apparent. Obesity is now widespread throughout Western countries, and subsequent disease and autoimmune illness has skyrocketed. This is unsurprising, considering that it is assumed that the body’s mechanism for controlling appetite has evolved based on how many plants, and thus fiber, we eat. With an average reduction in daily fiber intake of around 500 percent, our appetites have become insatiable, as our bodies have not been able to recognize what is food and what isn’t. Alternatively, in the rural areas of China and Africa, for example, many of the the chronic diseases that plague modern-day Western countries are almost unheard of. This is likely due, at least in part, to the far greater role plants play in their diets. Similar to our paleolithic ancestors, their daily fiber intake is close to 100 grams per day, meaning they eat less, gain more nutrition from what they do eat and are less likely to become overweight or suffer from other forms of illness or disease. The message is simple: Eat a more natural diet and reap the benefits. Still not convinced that eating more plants is worth it? Read on to find out how eating more fruit and vegetables can drastically lower your risk of stroke. Liivi is an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach and is training to become a doula. She inspires women to find peace and personal power by taking control of health and fertility naturally. Liivi‘s passion is ancestral nutrition and primal lifestyle design. She and her partner Will live between Toronto, Canada and Queenstown, New Zealand.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the chief advantages of nuclear energy are its energy density and its lack of emissions. A single kilogram of uranium can produce almost 900,000 times as much energy as the same volume of oil, all without producing any air pollution or greenhouse gas emissions. Nuclear power stations also require considerably less space than most forms of renewable energy. Another major advantage nuclear has over most renewable technologies is that like fossil fuel power generation, nuclear power is controllable. Wind and solar energy plants are dependent on the wind and the sun, and when those forces are not present, energy production drops off. A nuclear plant can raise and lower its output throughout the day to adjust to electricity demands. While accidents at nuclear plants can be extremely dangerous, new thorium reactor designs offer considerable safety advantages over old pressurized reactors, automatically shutting down in the case of emergency or power loss. Nuclear plants do produce waste as part of the energy generation process, and this waste can be toxic. However, modern reactor designs produce considerably less waste than older models, and some reactors can even process decades-old nuclear waste and reuse much of it as fuel.
NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced a new "tsunami wave" from the sun as it sails through interstellar space. Such waves are what led scientists to the conclusion, in the fall of 2013, that Voyager had indeed left our sun's bubble, entering a new frontier. "Normally, interstellar space is like a quiet lake," said Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, the mission's project scientist since 1972. "But when our sun has a burst, it sends a shock wave outward that reaches Voyager about a year later. The wave causes the plasma surrounding the spacecraft to sing." Data from this newest tsunami wave generated by our sun confirm that Voyager is in interstellar space -- a region between the stars filled with a thin soup of charged particles, also known as plasma. The mission has not left the solar system -- it has yet to reach a final halo of comets surrounding our sun -- but it broke through the wind-blown bubble, or heliosphere, encasing our sun. Voyager is the farthest human-made probe from Earth, and the first to enter the vast sea between stars. "All is not quiet around Voyager," said Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, the principal investigator of the plasma wave instrument on Voyager, which collected the definitive evidence that Voyager 1 had left the sun's heliosphere. "We're excited to analyze these new data. So far, we can say that it confirms we are in interstellar space." Our sun goes through periods of increased activity, where it explosively ejects material from its surface, flinging it outward. These events, called coronal mass ejections, generate shock, or pressure, waves. Three such waves have reached Voyager 1 since it entered interstellar space in 2012. The first was too small to be noticed when it occurred and was only discovered later, but the second was clearly registered by the spacecraft's cosmic ray instrument in March of 2013. Cosmic rays are energetic charged particles that come from nearby stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The sun's shock waves push these particles around like buoys in a tsunami. Data from the cosmic ray instrument tell researchers that a shock wave from the sun has hit. Meanwhile, another instrument on Voyager registers the shock waves, too. The plasma wave instrument can detect oscillations of the plasma electrons. "The tsunami wave rings the plasma like a bell," said Stone. "While the plasma wave instrument lets us measure the frequency of this ringing, the cosmic ray instrument reveals what struck the bell -- the shock wave from the sun." This ringing of the plasma bell is what led to the key evidence showing Voyager had entered interstellar space. Because denser plasma oscillates faster, the team was able to figure out the density of the plasma. In 2013, thanks to the second tsunami wave, the team acquired evidence that Voyager had been flying for more than a year through plasma that was 40 times denser than measured before -- a telltale indicator of interstellar space. Why is it denser out there? The sun's winds blow a bubble around it, pushing out against denser matter from other stars. Now, the team has new readings from a third wave from the sun, first registered in March of this year. These data show that the density of the plasma is similar to what was measured previously, confirming the spacecraft is in interstellar space. Thanks to our sun's rumblings, Voyager has the opportunity to listen to the singing of interstellar space -- an otherwise silent place. Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft and is expected to enter interstellar space in a few years. JPL, a division of Caltech, built and operates the twin Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers Interstellar Mission is a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. NASA's Deep Space Network, managed by JPL, is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. The spacecraft's nuclear batteries were provided by the Department of Energy. For more information on the Voyager mission, visit: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov Media ContactWhitney Clavin (818) 354-4673 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Maxicours vous propose de decouvrir un extrait de quelques cours de Anglais LV1. Pour proposer un accompagnement scolaire de qualite en Anglais LV1, toutes nos ressources pédagogiques ont été conçues spécifiquement pour Internet par des enseignants de l'Education nationale en collaboration avec notre équipe éditoriale. - 1. Summary - 2. Keywords - 3. Vocabulary Braveheart refers to William Wallace, the courageous Scottish who fought against the English in the 13th century. In 1286, Alexander III of Scotland died and with him the dynasty of Canmore who had been reigning in the country for about 200 years. His granddaughter Margaret was his only heir but, as she was only four years old, a regency was set up. Unfortunately, the little girl fell sick soon afterwards and died. So, two men demanded to rule over Scotland: Robert the Bruce and John Balliol. As the Scots did not know whom to choose, they asked Edward I, the king of England, to settle the matter. He chose John Balliol because he knew perfectly well that he was easier to manipulate than Robert the Bruce. Indeed, as soon as Balliol’s reign began, Edward I treated him as his vassal. Even a weak king like Balliol could not accept those conditions, and in 1295 he rebelled against Edward I and signed the ‘Auld Alliance’ with France and Norway. Now their common enemy was England. In fact Edward I expected and hoped for this
The new year has barely begun, and already it has been a good one for exoplanets. In a previous update, it was reported that the Kepler space telescope has added hundreds of exoplanet candidates to its rapidly growing list. That is exciting enough, but another new study now, similar to other ones, estimates that there are billions of other planets in our galaxy alone. According to John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and coauthor of the study, “There are at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy, just our galaxy. That’s mind-boggling.” The study suggests that planets are a normal part of star formation. In terms of numbers, there is at least one planet per star. The study was conducted by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology, who analyzed the five known planets orbiting the star Kepler-32 which are thought to be representative of the vast majority of exoplanets. The Kepler-32 system is a type known as an M-dwarf system, the most common in the galaxy. The stars in those systems are smaller and cooler than our Sun and the planets in those systems tend to orbit closer in to their stars, like a smaller, scaled-down version of our own solar system. In that sense, our solar system is kind of an oddball, but when both the stars’ size and planetary orbits are smaller, that means many of those planets could still orbit within their stars’ habitable zones, where liquid water could exist on their surfaces. All of the five known planets orbiting Kepler-32 are smaller worlds, ranging from 0.8 to 2.7 times the radii of Earth. The new study has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Carl Sagan would be proud… This article was first published on Examiner.com.
\|Part of a series of articles on\| \|Solid state nanoelectronics\| Nanophotonics or Nano-optics is the study of the behavior of light on the nanometer scale, and of the interaction of nanometer-scale objects with light. It is a branch of optics, optical engineering, electrical engineering, and nanotechnology. It often (but not exclusively) involves metallic components, which can transport and focus light via surface plasmon polaritons. Normal optical components, like lenses and microscopes, generally cannot normally focus light to nanometer (deep subwavelength) scales, because of the diffraction limit (Rayleigh criterion). Nevertheless, it is possible to squeeze light into a nanometer scale using other techniques like, for example, surface plasmons, localized surface plasmons around nanoscale metal objects, and the nanoscale apertures and nanoscale sharp tips used in near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) and photoassisted scanning tunnelling microscopy. Nanophotonics researchers pursue a very wide variety of goals, in fields ranging from biochemistry to electrical engineering. A few of these goals are summarized below. Optoelectronics and microelectronics - Photodetectors: If light can be squeezed into a small volume, it can be absorbed and detected by a small detector. Small detectors tend have a variety of desirable properties including low noise, high speed, and low voltage and power. - Lasers: Very small lasers have various desirable properties for optical communication including low threshold current (which helps power efficiency) and fast modulation (which means more data transmission). Very small lasers require subwavelength optical cavities. An example is spasers, the surface plasmon version of lasers. - Photolithography: Integrated circuits are made using photolithography, i.e. exposure to light. In order to make very small transistors, the light needs to be focused into extremely sharp images. Using various techniques such as immersion lithography and phase-shifting photomasks, it has indeed been possible to make images much finer than the wavelength—for example, drawing 30 nm lines using 193 nm light. Plasmonic techniques have also been proposed for this application. - Heat-assisted magnetic recording: This is a nanophotonic approach to increasing the amount of data that a magnetic disk drive can store. It requires a laser to heat a tiny, subwavelength area of the magnetic material before writing data. The magnetic write-head would have metal optical components to concentrate light at the right location. - Miniaturization in optoelectronics: The miniaturization of transistors in integrated circuits has improved their speed and cost. However, optoelectronic circuits can only be miniaturized if the optical components are shrunk along with the electronic components. This is relevant for on-chip optical communication (i.e. passing information from one part of a microchip to another by sending light through optical waveguides, instead of changing the voltage on a wire). - Solar cells often work best when the light is absorbed very close to the surface, both because electrons near the surface have a better chance of being collected, and because the device can be made thinner, which reduces cost. Researchers have investigated a variety of nanophotonic techniques to intensify light in the optimal locations within a solar cell. - Using nanophotonics to create high peak intensities: If a given amount of light energy is squeezed into a smaller and smaller volume ("hot-spot"), the intensity in the hot-spot gets larger and larger. This is especially helpful in nonlinear optics; an example is surface enhanced Raman scattering. It also allows sensitive spectroscopy measurements of even single molecules located in the hot-spot, unlike traditional spectroscopy methods which take an average over millions or billions of molecules. - Superlens: One goal of nanophotonics is to construct a so-called "superlens", which would use metamaterials (see below) or other techniques to create images that are more accurate than the diffraction limit (deep subwavelength). - Near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM or SNOM): This is a quite different nanophotonic technique that accomplishes the same goal of taking images with resolution far smaller than the wavelength. It involves raster-scanning a very sharp tip or very small aperture over the surface to be imaged. - Near-field microscopy: This refers more generally to any technique using the near-field (see below) to achieve nanoscale, subwavelength resolution. For example, dual polarisation interferometry has picometer resolution in the vertical plane above the waveguide surface. Plasmons and metal optics Metals are an effective way to confine light to far below the wavelength. This was originally used in radio and microwave engineering, where metal antennas and waveguides may be hundreds of times smaller than the free-space wavelength. For a similar reason, visible light can be confined to the nano-scale via nano-sized metal structures, such as nano-sized structures, tips, gaps, etc. This effect is somewhat analogous to a lightning rod, where the field concentrates at the tip. This effect is fundamentally based on the fact that the permittivity of the metal is very large and negative. At very high frequencies (near and above the plasma frequency, usually ultraviolet), the permittivity of a metal is not so large, and the metal stops being useful for concentrating fields. Many nano-optics designs look like common microwave or radiowave circuits, but shrunk down by a factor of 100,000 or more. After all, radiowaves, microwaves, and visible light are all electromagnetic radiation; they differ only in frequency. So other things equal, a microwave circuit shrunk down by a factor of 100,000 will behave the same way but at 100,000 times higher frequency. For example, researchers have made nano-optical Yagi-Uda antennas following essentially the same design as used for radio Yagi-Uda antennas. Metallic parallel-plate waveguides (striplines), lumped-constant circuit elements such as inductance and capacitance (at visible light frequencies, the values of the latter being of the order of femtohenries and attofarads, respectively), and impedance-matching of dipole antennas to transmission lines, all familiar techniques at microwave frequencies, are some current areas of nanophotonics development. That said, there are a number of very important differences between nano-optics and scaled-down microwave circuits. For example, at optical frequency, metals behave much less like ideal conductors, and also exhibit interesting plasmon-related effects like kinetic inductance and surface plasmon resonance. Likewise, optical fields interact with semiconductors in a fundamentally different way than microwaves do. When light is emitted by such an object, the light with very high spatial frequency forms an evanescent wave, which only exists in the near field (very close to the object, within a wavelength or two) and disappears in the far field. This is the origin of the diffraction limit, which says that when a lens images an object, the subwavelength information is blurred out. Nano-photonics is primarily concerned with the near-field evanescent waves. For example, a superlens (mentioned above) would prevent the decay of the evanescent wave, allowing higher-resolution imaging. Metamaterials are artificial materials engineered to have properties that may not be found in nature. They are created by fabricating an array of structures much smaller than a wavelength. The small (nano) size of the structures is important: That way, light interacts with them as if they made up a uniform, continuous medium, rather than scattering off the individual structures. - Photonics Spectra Journal - Hewakuruppu, Y., et al., Plasmonic “ pump – probe ” method to study semi-transparent nanofluids, Applied Optics, 52(24):6041-6050 - Assefa, Solomon; Xia, Fengnian; Vlasov, Yurii A. (2010). "Reinventing germanium avalanche photodetector for nanophotonic on-chip optical interconnects". Nature 464 (7285): 80–4. Bibcode:2010Natur.464...80A. doi:10.1038/nature08813. PMID 20203606. - "Research Discovery By Ethiopian Scientist At IBM at Tadias Magazine". Tadias.com. Retrieved 2010-03-15. - "Avalanche photodetector breaks speed record". physicsworld.com. Retrieved 2010-03-15. - Themistoklis P. H. Sidiropoulos, Robert Röder, Sebastian Geburt, Ortwin Hess, Stefan A. Maier, Carsten Ronning, Rupert F. Oulton (2014). "Ultrafast plasmonic nanowire lasers near the surface plasmon frequency". Nature Physics. Bibcode:2014NatPh..10..870S. doi:10.1038/nphys3103. Press release - Hand, Aaron. "High-Index Lenses Push Immersion Beyond 32 nm". - Liang Pan et al. (2011). "Maskless Plasmonic Lithography at 22 nm Resolution". Scientific Reports. Bibcode:2011NatSR...1E.175P. doi:10.1038/srep00175. - "IBM Research \| IBM Research \| Silicon Integrated Nanophotonics". Domino.research.ibm.com. 2010-03-04. Retrieved 2010-03-15. - Vivian E. Ferry, Jeremy N. Munday, Harry A. Atwater (2010-11). "Design Considerations for Plasmonic Photovoltaics". Advanced Materials 22 (43): 4794–4808. doi:10.1002/adma.201000488. Check date values in: - "Enhancing single-molecule fluorescence with nanophotonics", DOI: 10.1016/j.febslet.2014.06.016 - R. Zhang, Y. Zhang, Z. C. Dong, S. Jiang, C. Zhang, L. G. Chen, L. Zhang, Y. Liao, J. Aizpurua, Y. Luo, J. L. Yang, J. G. Hou (6 June 2013). "Chemical mapping of a single molecule by plasmon-enhanced Raman scattering". Nature 498: 82–86. Bibcode:2013Natur.498...82Z. doi:10.1038/nature12151. - Daniel Dregely, Richard Taubert, Jens Dorfmüller, Ralf Vogelgesang, Klaus Kern, Harald Giessen. "3D optical Yagi–Uda nanoantenna array". Nature Communications 2 (267). Bibcode:2011NatCo...2E.267D. doi:10.1038/ncomms1268. - ePIXnet Nanostructuring Platform for Photonic Integration - Optically induced mass transport in near fields - “Photonics Breakthrough for Silicon Chips: Light can exert enough force to flip switches on a silicon chip,” by Hong X. Tang, IEEE Spectrum, October 2009 - Nanophotonics, nano-optics and nanospectroscopy A. J. Meixner (Ed.) Thematic Series in the Open Access Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology
Research around the concept of “flow” in teenagers again points to the need for engagement and motivation. Technology literacy is a relatively new initiative in 21st century schools. Ironically, many students tend to have more knowledge about various forms of technology than do their teachers. This is because so many students typically enjoy their digital gadgets and use them frequently for socializing, so they are well-versed in how to use technology. Teachers need to harness these existing interests and skills, and redirect them for use within a technology curriculum. Technology in education is very important and changing faster than many districts can keep up with it. Because of that, it is very tempting to dive in and purchase those laptops, tablets or other devices. However, this is really one area where taking time to learn about the market and studying what the future may offer will pay off. The face of education has changed drastically in the 21st century, particularly as education embraces the age of technology and incorporates elements of technology within K-12 schools. This is necessary to equip and prepare students with the technological literacy they will need in college and beyond, throughout life, as global citizens. Among the newest form of technology to implement within the curriculum is mobile technology, which includes such devices as digital tablets, smartphones, iPads, iPods, e-readers and other types of electronic gadgets. Most students are more prepared for technology in the classroom than parents and teachers may realize. In fact, even students from kindergarten to grade 5 or 6 are often ready for high-tech classrooms before their teachers are prepared to integrate that technology. Principals, teachers, and parents need to evaluate and understand if and when students are prepared for new technology in the classroom. At least five signs indicate students are ready for high-tech classrooms. As the age of technology marches on through the 21st century, it has changed the face of education and created new ways to both teach and learn. Technology integration in the classroom is a major initiative to develop technological literacy in K-12 students in order to prepare them for life beyond school. The acronym BYOD, which stands for Bring Your Own Device, has become a recognized term andstrategy for technology use and integration in 21st century schools. However, administrators and principals should first assess the technological skills and knowledge of their teachers. Secondly, they should carefullyconsider the purposes of upgrading and integrating technology. Over the past two school years, use of Chromebooks at BEYOND Technology Education (BTE) client schools across the U.S. has increased by 20%. The cost is often times half of traditional mobile solutions. These schools are transforming from single computer labs to mobile environments with technology-rich curriculum. Saint Joachim Catholic School in Costa Mesa, Calif. is one example of a school that has successfully moved its students, teachers and parent community into a 21st century learning environment using Chromebooks and BTE’s four-year School-Wide Integration Model (SWIMGrid).
*Top of Form Please refer to the Pennsylvania Standards Aligned System website: (http://www.pdesas.org/module/sas/curriculumframework/SocialStudiesCF.aspx) for information on the Pennsylvania Curriculum Framework for Social Studies. You will find much of the information about PA Academic Standards, essential questions, vocabulary, assessments, etc. by navigating through the various components of the Curriculum Framework. LESSON / UNIT TITLE: The Indian Removal Act Teacher Name(s): Dave Heller, Elizabeth Segraves, Beth Baker School District: Williamsport Area School District, Muncy School District Building: Williamsport High School, Muncy High School Grade Level: 11th Subject: American History Time Required: 2 days Lesson/Unit Summary (2-3 sentence synopsis): Students will use multiple perspectives and teacher led discussion to evaluate the impact of the Indian Removal Act. Essential Questions for Lesson Why was the Indian Removal Act a controversial issue? Pennsylvania Academic Standards Addressed in Lesson/Unit (Include standards numbers and standards statements.) 8.3.12. A: Evaluate the role groups and individuals from the U.S. played in the social, political, cultural, and economic development of the world. 8.3.12. B: Evaluate the impact of historical documents, artifacts, and places in U.S. history which are critical to world history. 8.3.12. C: Evaluate how continuity and change in U.S. history are interrelated with the world. Belief systems and religions Commerce and industry Politics and government Physical and human geography 8.3.12. D: Evaluate how conflict and cooperation among groups and organizations in the U.S. have influenced the growth and development of the world. Ethnicity and race Students will develop an understanding of the Indian Removal Act by using multiple Students will draw a conclusion and defend their position on the Indian Removal Act. Vocabulary/Key Terms for Lesson Indian Removal Act “Trail of Tears” Historical Background for Teachers / Research Narrative The Indian Removal Act Andrew Jackson first came to the attention of America as the General who led American forces at the Battle for New Orleans during the War of 1812. This victory solidified his identify as an American hero. He would continue his military career past this war and also help America gain Florida from Spain. As President, Andrew Jackson was the first of the elected Presidents to be widely chosen by popular vote and to also not be from a founding family. During his term, he sought to act as the direct representative of the common man who had helped place him in office. In 1824, some state political factions rallied around Jackson; by 1828 enough had joined "Old Hickory" to win numerous state elections and control of the Federal administration in Washington. The rise of Jackson to power also ushered in a new age of political parties: Jacksonian Democrats & Whigs. The Whig party developed specifically as an opposition party to Jackson, meaning there was one party rule for a while. During his time in office, Jackson, unlike previous Presidents, did not defer to Congress in policy-making, but used his power of the veto and his party leadership to assume command. The greatest party battle centered around the Second Bank of the United States, a private corporation but virtually a Government-sponsored monopoly. When Jackson appeared hostile toward it, the Bank threw its power against him. Jackson would win this battle when he vetoed the second charter of the national bank. Despite this victory over the national bank, Jackson had other problems to face. Sectional division in the Untied States was growing. South Carolina was angry over the tariffs placed on imported goods and tried to nullify this law passed by the federal government. In response, Jackson ordered armed forces to Charleston. Violence seemed imminent until the government negotiated a compromise: tariffs were lowered and South Carolina dropped the nullification issue. With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, thoughts of Native American removal became a very real possibility for the policy makers of the U.S. government. It appeared that the Purchase had given the government endless amounts of land, more than could ever possibly be put to use. President Thomas Jefferson initiated discussion over whether portions of this land could be used to solve what some viewed as the "Indian problem"—Native Americans were occupying land that many European Americans believed could be put to better use. Jefferson proposed that unincorporated land west of the Mississippi River be exchanged for the more sought-after land occupied by Native Americans in the east. Debates over the removal of Native Americans grew more intense as the nineteenth century progressed and culminated in the passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act (4 Stat. 411). In the act Congress authorized President Andrew Jackson to begin the process of removal. Allocated $500,000, Jackson vigorously pursued his plan and in 1835 was able to announce that removal was complete or near completion. The majority of Native Americans had been removed to regions west of the Mississippi. The Indian Removal Act stood at the intersection of numerous debates among European Americans over the fate of American Indians. Appleby, et al. “Jacksonian America.” American Vision. Columbus: McGraw/Glencoe, 2010. pg 222-229. “The Age of Jackson.” U.S. History: Pre-Columbian to the New Millennium. 20 September 2011. www.ushistory.org/us/24.asp “Andrew Jackson.” The Whitehouse.gov. 20 September 2011. www.whitehouse.gov/about/presidents/andrewjackson “Unit 6: The Early Republic.” Cicero: History Beyond the Textbook. 17 September 2011. http://www2.cicerohistory.com/Cicero/navigate/uc/uid6.do Instructional Prodedures and Activities Bellringer: Collins Writing. In 5+ lines describe what you think the relationship was like between Native American tribes and the American government in the early to mid- 1800’s. How did you come to this conclusion? Introduce the Indian Removal Act. Have students complete ARTIST graphic organizer. 3. Geography Application On a map of the United States have students identify Georgia, Mississippi River, Oklahoma Territory. Discuss distance and means of travel used during that time period. 4. Multiple Perspectives Use the Indian Removal Act document to complete center grey box Source 1: President Jackson (speech). Have students analyze and answer questions on this perspective individually or groups. Source 2: Jeremiah Evart (pdf). Have students analyze and answer questions on this perspective individually or groups. Ask students to draw a conclusion about the Indian Removal Act, and have be able to defend their position. 5. Written reflection/writing assignment Suggested Strategies for Differentiating Instruction Honors level students can complete the Indian Removal Act ARTIST graphic organizer for homework (previous day) Discuss multiple perspectives in steps (i.e., Source 1 and discuss, Source 2 and discuss) Shorten/chunk reading to student reading level Pair students in analyzing documents/perspectives Additional vocabulary terms can be added Assignment – students are not assigned roles for reflection Assessment of Student Learning (Formative and Summative) Checking for understanding throughout lesson Evaluate responses to “think/pair/share: discussions during the lesson Student completion of ARTIST graphic organizer Based on the information provided and discussed in class, students will be assigned a stance to take on the Indian Removal Act (for removal, against removal, or native perspective). Information from the class resources should be used to help create the assignment. Students will then create an advertisement for their point of view that will include: Title: Slogan that gets their point across Visual: An image that helps sell their message Message: Three points that support their point of view and explain what should be done Warning: One big “what if” statement that explains what will happen if your actions are not The assignment will be assessed using a rubric based on these criteria. Materials and Resources (Include text, supplementary resources, primary source documents, websites, handouts, charts, maps, etc.) Included Supporting Resources: Primary source documents Indian Removal Act (www.cicerohistory.com, 2010.) Andrew Jackson, Good, Evil, and the Presidency, published by PBS. Source: Jeremiah Evarts, The Removal of the Indians . . . and An Exhibition of the Advancement of the Southern Tribes, in Civilization and Christianity (Boston: Peirce and Williams, 1830), 63. ARTIST Graphic Organizer (www.cicerohistory.com, 2010.) Indian Removal Act background information sheet Multiple Perspectives assignment sheet and rubric Author(s) of Unit/Lesson Plan Elizabeth Segraves, Williamsport Area School District, Williamsport Area High School David Heller, Williamsport Area School District, Williamsport Area High School Beth Baker, Muncy School District, Muncy Junior-Senior High School Bottom of Form
Type 1 diabetes is considered an autoimmune disease. With an autoimmune disease, your immune system – which helps protect your body from getting sick – is engaged in too little or too much activity. In Type 1 diabetes, beta cells, which are a kind of cell in the pancreas that produces insulin, are destroyed. Our bodies use insulin to take the sugar from carbohydrates we eat and create fuel. With Type 1 diabetes, your body does not produce insulin, and that's why you need to use insulin as part of your treatment. The notion is understandable. Blood sugar levels are high in diabetes, so a common idea has held that eating sugar somehow triggers the disease process. However, the major diabetes organizations take a different view. The American Diabetes Association1 and Diabetes UK2 have labelled this notion a “myth,” as has the Joslin Diabetes Center,3 which wrote, “Diabetes is not caused by eating too much sugar.” These and other organizations have worked to educate people about the causes of diabetes and the role that foods play in the disease process. Information on mortality rates for type 1 diabetes mellitus is difficult to ascertain without complete national registers of childhood diabetes, although age-specific mortality is probably double that of the general population. [35, 36] Children aged 1-4 years are particularly at risk and may die due to DKA at the time of diagnosis. Adolescents are also a high-risk group. Most deaths result from delayed diagnosis or neglected treatment and subsequent cerebral edema during treatment for DKA, although untreated hypoglycemia also causes some deaths. Unexplained death during sleep may also occur and appears more likely to affect young males. Knowledge is power. A certified diabetes educator can provide you with diabetes self-management education. They specialize in diabetes and can help you learn about complicated or easier things. For example, they can help you set up your glucose meter, teach you about how your medicines work, or help you put together a meal plan. You can meet with them one on one or in group setting. Reduce Your Carbohydrate Intake: One of the most important components involved in a diabetes diet is knowing how to eat a modified carbohydrate diet. Carbohydrates are the nutrient that impacts blood sugars the most. Carbohydrates are found in starches, fruit, some vegetables like potatoes, sweets, and grains. Eating the right kinds of carbohydrate in the right quantities can help you manage your weight and your blood sugars. Knowing how to identify and count carbohydrates is very important in managing diabetes. Eating a consistent carbohydrate diet is ideal because it can help you body regulate blood sugars. Fasting glucose test This test involves giving a blood sample after you have fasted for eight hours. (18) If you have a fasting blood sugar level of less than 100 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dl), your blood sugar levels are normal. But if you have one from 100 to 125 mg/dl, you have prediabetes, and if you have 126 mg/dl on two separate occasions, you have diabetes. (17) Diabetes Forum App Find support, ask questions and share your experiences with 281,823 members of the diabetes community. Recipe App Delicious diabetes recipes, updated every Monday. Filter recipes by carbs, calories and time to cook. Low Carb Program Join 250,000 people on the award-winning education program for people with type 2 diabetes, prediabetes and obesity. Hypo Awareness Program The first comprehensive, free and open to all online step-by-step guide to improving hypo awareness. DiabetesPA Your diabetes personal assistant. Monitor every aspect of your diabetes. Simple, practical, free. George P Chrousos, MD, FAAP, MACP, MACE, FRCP(London) is a member of the following medical societies: American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Physicians, American Pediatric Society, American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians, Endocrine Society, Pediatric Endocrine Society, Society for Pediatric Research, American College of Endocrinology Does having type 2 diabetes affect life expectancy? While continued improvements in therapies and care for type 2 diabetes may be helping patients live longer, the unfortunate reality is that type 2 diabetes has been shown to decrease life expectancy by up to ten years, according to Diabetes UK. There is still much to be done to ensure that all patients have access to appropriate healthcare and treatments to live a happier and healthier life with type 2 diabetes. Hypoglycemic reactions are promptly treated by giving carbohydrates (orange juice, hard candy, honey, or any sugary food); if necessary, subcutaneous or intramuscular glucagon or intravenous dextrose (if the patient is not conscious) is administered. Hyperglycemic crises are treated initially with prescribed intravenous fluids and insulin and later with potassium replacement based on laboratory values. 5. Signs and symptoms ofhyperglycemiaandhypoglycemia, and measures to take when they occur. (See accompanying table.) It is important for patients to become familiar with specific signs that are unique to themselves. Each person responds differently and may exhibit symptoms different from those experienced by others. It should be noted that the signs and symptoms may vary even within one individual. Thus it is vital that the person understand all reactions that could occur. When there is doubt, a simple blood glucose reading will determine the actions that should be taken. How to use basal insulin: Benefits, types, and dosage Basal, or background, insulin helps regulate blood sugar levels in people diagnosed with diabetes. It keeps glucose levels steady throughout the day and night. It is taken as injections, once a day or more often. The type of insulin and number of daily injections varies. Find out more about the options available. Read now Type 2 diabetes is a condition of blood sugar dysregulation. In general blood sugar is too high, but it also can be too low. This can happen if you take medications then skip a meal. Blood sugar also can rise very quickly after a high glycemic index meal, and then fall a few hours later, plummeting into hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). The signs and symptoms of hypoglycemia can include The pain of diabetic nerve damage may respond to traditional treatments with certain medications such as gabapentin (Neurontin), phenytoin (Dilantin), and carbamazepine (Tegretol) that are traditionally used in the treatment of seizure disorders. Amitriptyline (Elavil, Endep) and desipramine (Norpraminine) are medications that are traditionally used for depression. While many of these medications are not indicated specifically for the treatment of diabetes related nerve pain, they are used by physicians commonly. Sequelae. The long-term consequences of diabetes mellitus can involve both large and small blood vessels throughout the body. That in large vessels is usually seen in the coronary arteries, cerebral arteries, and arteries of the lower extremities and can eventually lead to myocardial infarction, stroke, or gangrene of the feet and legs. atherosclerosis is far more likely to occur in persons of any age who have diabetes than it is in other people. This predisposition is not clearly understood. Some believe that diabetics inherit the tendency to develop severe atherosclerosis as well as an aberration in glucose metabolism, and that the two are not necessarily related. There is strong evidence to substantiate the claim that optimal control will mitigate the effects of diabetes on the microvasculature, particularly in the young and middle-aged who are at greatest risk for developing complications involving the arterioles. Pathologic changes in the small blood vessels serving the kidney lead to nephrosclerosis, pyelonephritis, and other disorders that eventually result in renal failure. Many of the deaths of persons with type 1 diabetes are caused by renal failure. Older people may have a difficult time adding exercise to their daily life, particularly if they have not been active or if they have a disorder that limits their movement, such as arthritis. However, they may be able to add exercise to their usual routine. For example, they can walk instead of drive or climb the stairs instead of take the elevator. Also, many community organizations offer exercise programs designed for older people. Random blood sugar test. A blood sample will be taken at a random time. Blood sugar values are expressed in milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) or millimoles per liter (mmol/L). Regardless of when you last ate, a random blood sugar level of 200 mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L) or higher suggests diabetes, especially when coupled with any of the signs and symptoms of diabetes, such as frequent urination and extreme thirst. In the exchange system, foods are divided into six food groups (starch, meat, vegetable, fruit, milk, and fat) and the patient is taught to select items from each food group as ordered. Items in each group may be exchanged for each other in specified portions. The patient should avoid concentrated sweets and should increase fiber in the diet. Special dietetic foods are not necessary. Patient teaching should emphasize that a diabetic diet is a healthy diet that all members of the family can follow. A: There are two scenarios to consider here, pregnant patients who have diabetes and pregnant patients who have gestational diabetes. Gestational diabetes describes hyperglycemia discovered during pregnancy. This hyperglycemia often corrects itself after pregnancy, but women who experience gestational diabetes are at higher for developing type-2 diabetes later in life when compared to women who experience no hyperglycemia during pregnancy. Regardless of the type of diabetes a pregnant patient has, her physician will closely monitor her disease and its response to therapy. Proper glucose control is important not only for the health of the mother, but also her developing child. The good news is that prevention plays an important role in warding off these complications. By maintaining tight control of your blood glucose—and getting it as close to normal as possible—you’ll help your body function in the way that it would if you did not have diabetes. Tight control helps you decrease the chances that your body will experience complications from elevated glucose levels. Diabetes mellitus type 2 (also known as type 2 diabetes) is a long-term metabolic disorder that is characterized by high blood sugar, insulin resistance, and relative lack of insulin. Common symptoms include increased thirst, frequent urination, and unexplained weight loss. Symptoms may also include increased hunger, feeling tired, and sores that do not heal. Often symptoms come on slowly. Long-term complications from high blood sugar include heart disease, strokes, diabetic retinopathy which can result in blindness, kidney failure, and poor blood flow in the limbs which may lead to amputations. The sudden onset of hyperosmolar hyperglycemic state may occur; however, ketoacidosis is uncommon. Nerve damage from diabetes is called diabetic neuropathy and is also caused by disease of small blood vessels. In essence, the blood flow to the nerves is limited, leaving the nerves without blood flow, and they get damaged or die as a result (a term known as ischemia). Symptoms of diabetic nerve damage include numbness, burning, and aching of the feet and lower extremities. When the nerve disease causes a complete loss of sensation in the feet, patients may not be aware of injuries to the feet, and fail to properly protect them. Shoes or other protection should be worn as much as possible. Seemingly minor skin injuries should be attended to promptly to avoid serious infections. Because of poor blood circulation, diabetic foot injuries may not heal. Sometimes, minor foot injuries can lead to serious infection, ulcers, and even gangrene, necessitating surgical amputation of toes, feet, and other infected parts. From a dental perspective, pregnancy leads to hormonal changes that increase the mother’s risk of developing gingivitis and gingival lesions called pregnancy tumors (see Right). Not surprisingly, poor glycemic control further adds to this risk. Therefore, it is imperative that if you become pregnant, you should promptly see your dentist. He or she will work with you to ensure that your dental self-care regimen is maximized to prevent or control your dental disease. Additional Resources on Diabetes and Oral Health National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research www.nidcr.nih.gov American Diabetes Association www.diabetes.org American Dental Association www.dental.org American Academy of Periodontology www.perio.org The Diabetes Monitor www.diabetesmonitor.com David Mendosa www.mendosa.com Diatribe www.diatribe.us The information contained in this monograph is for educational purposes only. This information is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you have or suspect you may have a health concern, consult your professional health care provider. Reliance on any information provided in this monograph is solely at your own risk. Examples of simple or refined carbohydrates, on the other hand, exist in various forms — from the sucrose in the table sugar you use to bake cookies, to the various kinds of added sugar in packaged snacks, fruit drinks, soda, and cereal. Simple carbohydrates are natural components of many fresh foods, too, such as the lactose in milk and the fructose in fruits, and therefore, a healthy, well-balanced diet will always contain these types of sugars. Inhalable insulin has been developed. The original products were withdrawn due to side effects. Afrezza, under development by the pharmaceuticals company MannKind Corporation, was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for general sale in June 2014. An advantage to inhaled insulin is that it may be more convenient and easy to use. Type 2 diabetes: Type 2 diabetes affects the way the body uses insulin. While the body still makes insulin, unlike in type I, the cells in the body do not respond to it as effectively as they once did. This is the most common type of diabetes, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and it has strong links with obesity. Rates of diabetes in 1985 were estimated at 30 million, increasing to 135 million in 1995 and 217 million in 2005. This increase is believed to be primarily due to the global population aging, a decrease in exercise, and increasing rates of obesity. The five countries with the greatest number of people with diabetes as of 2000 are India having 31.7 million, China 20.8 million, the United States 17.7 million, Indonesia 8.4 million, and Japan 6.8 million. It is recognized as a global epidemic by the World Health Organization.
What is PCOS (Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome) PCOS is a common health problem which affects one in 10 women of childbearing age. It is caused by an imbalance of reproductive hormones. As part of a healthy menstrual cycle, the ovaries make the egg that is released each month but with PCOS, the egg may not develop as it should or it may not be released during ovulation as it should be. Because of this, a woman suffering from PCOS may miss the regular menstrual cycle and irregular periods can lead to: Infertility (inability to get pregnant). In fact, PCOS is one of the most common causes of female infertility. Development of cysts (small fluid-filled sacs) in the ovaries The exact cause of PCOS is unknown, but it is considered a hormonal problem. Hormones involved in PCOS include: Androgens: Androgens (“Male Hormones”) are produced in all females, but there are often higher levels of androgens in women with PCOS. Excess androgens are produced by ovaries and are responsible for many PCOS symptoms including acne, unwanted hair, thinning hair, and irregular periods. Insulin: Insulin allows the body to absorb glucose (blood sugar) into the cells for energy. In women with PCOS, the body becomes unresponsive to insulin as it should be. This leads to elevated blood glucose levels and causes the body to make more insulin.Too much insulin can cause the body to make more androgens. Progesterone: Progesterone is a steroidal hormone which is involved in the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, embryogenesis of humans and species. This hormone is essential because it is a precursor to aldosterone and cortisol, which are essential for life. It is a precursor to all the steroid hormones, including estrogens and testosterone. Progesterone works to synergize the actions of estradiol in the female organs, especially in pregnancy. It is necessary for proper uterine and breast development and function. In PCOS, there is a lack of progesterone which contributes to irregular periods and menstrual cramps. Symptoms of PCOS: 1. Irregular Menstrual Cycle 2. Hirsutism: Excessive Facial Hair Growth. 4. Thinning of hair or hair loss on the scalp 5. Weight Gain 6. Darkening of Skin, particularly along neck creases, in the groin, and underneath breasts. 7. Skin Tags, which are small excess flaps of skin in the armpits or neck area. Why Weight Loss is Important in PCOS: PCOS is a condition in which there is no cure available, one thing which one can do is to manage the symptoms of PCOS. For this, Doctor & Nutritionist both have to work on a treatment plan based on symptoms, plans for children, and risk for long-term health problems such as diabetes and heart disease. If a woman is not seeking to become pregnant, hormonal birth control (most often birth control pills) is a standard treatment. Birth control pills regulate periods and improve excess hair growth and acne by lowering androgen levels and protect the endometrium (inner lining of the uterus) against abnormal cell growth. A large number of research studies have shown that even a weight loss of 5-10 kg or 5-10 percent of initial body weight have following benefits on a woman suffering from PCOS: - reduce insulin resistance by about 50% - restore ovulation - regulate menstrual cycles - reduce pregnancy complications - improve fertility - improve health during pregnancy - improve the health of a child during pregnancy - improve emotional health (self-esteem, anxiety, depression) - reduce risk factors for diabetes and heart disease Weight Loss is very important in PCOS as excess levels of testosterone is linked to higher rates of insulin resistance, which causes more deposition of fat, especially around the abdomen. And when a woman with PCOS, starts gaining weight, it further increases insulin resistance, which again promotes the production of testosterone, so it’s a kind of vicious cycle, that may lead to Diabetes. Diet In PCOS Diet for PCOS patient should not be hight in refined cereal as it will increase insulin resistance. One must include high protein food like chicken, dals, paneer etc. So that it should give satiety and one must not feel frequent hunger pangs. One must include foods that are rich in phytoestrogens to balance the hormone production like soya, flaxseeds, fenugreek, barley etc. Exercise, especially of the pelvic region, is important for PCOS so that fat should not get deposited in the abdominal region. One must do the brisk walk, jogging for 30 minutes and stretching for 15 minutes. If you are trying to lose weight while suffering from PCOS, watch weight loss tips for PCOS by Shikha Sharma (Doctor). For Personalised PCOS Management Plans, you can always call Dr Shikha’s NutriHealth at 011-46666000. You can also chat with our experts here.
Description & Habitat The Gyrafalcon is known as the largest falcon in the world residing in the arctic and subarctic regions of the northern hemisphere. This large, broad-chested bird of prey can be identified by a range of colors from white to dark gray and black. It also has long, pointed wings capable of diving at fast speeds to catch prey. Overall, the size of this bird lies between a hawk and a Peregrine Falcon. Taking all factors into account, the Gyrafalcon is one of the most intimating and powerful birds of prey in the world and is known as the official bird of Canada's Northwest Territories. Food & Hunting For the most part, the Gyrfalcon preys on ptarmigan, however it is known this bird of prey eats many other species including ducks, fulmars, jaegers, gulls, sparrows, redpolls, buntings, Short-eared owls and hawks. The Gyrfalcon also preys on mammals including hares and voles. A male Gyrfalcon exhibits the four approaches listed below to pursue prey: - Exhausting prey by chasing it over long distances - Forcing prey out of cover by hovering and making short stoops - Hovering low to the ground and surprising prey - Strike prey, typically birds, at astonishing speeds to break breast bone driving it to the ground Most Gyrfalcons refrain from building their own nests and usually exploit nests built by other species including the Golden Eagle and Raven. When away from their nest, these raptors are known to bathe in runoff water and also exhibit playful behavior full of aerial displays with rolls and dives. As stated, Gyrfalcons usually eat small birds however, when rescued they usually are fed thawed frozen chicks and other small mammals particularly frozen rodents.
Conservationists tend to focus on safeguarding species that are ecologically or economically beneficial, limited in number or suffering severe population decline. But are they leaving out other important values? A team of researchers in the United Kingdom suggests that some species play vital roles in human culture, and conservation efforts ought to expand to protect these as well. “Different species bring different things to the table, have different functions or are different in other respects we might value,” said Matthew Hiron, lead author on the paper published in Scientific Reports. It looked specifically at farmland birds and their value based on a range of criteria. “The focus of this study was to quantify that different species of birds are culturally valuable,” Hiron said. “How many species in a community are important from different societal perspectives? Are the same species important for different values?” A landscape ecologist with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Hiron and his team scored 38 farmland bird species according to various criteria of value, such as rarity, population decline and their economic significance due to pest control and other services they perform. But the researchers also ranked the birds’ cultural status based on the number of times they appeared in poetry by searching more than a million poems. “Biodiversity has a greater role the more values you look at,” Hiron said. “Different species were important for different values.” While the stone-curlew (Burhinus oedicnemus) came out on top in terms of rarity and the turtle dove (Streptopelia turtur) in terms of decline, the chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) ended up first for economic contributions and the crow (Corvus spp.) for cultural mentions. Conservationists often aren’t interested in common species, Hiron said, but they provide important services, including pollination, and many are declining. But they also hold cultural importance that ought to be taken into consideration, he said. “Cultural ecosystem services are so important to motivate conservation,” Hiron said. “At the same time, they’re hard to quantify. Our job as ecologists is to quantify these things, take them to policymakers and say these species are important for this.” \|Julia John is a science writer at The Wildlife Society. Contact her at [email protected] with any questions or comments about her article.\| Share your thoughts on this article, and others, on our Facebook and Twitter pages.
African countries need to increase co-operation over conservation if birds and other wildlife are to be protected in an era of climate change, according to a new continental-scale study. An international research team has established a new conservation index of protected areas in Africa, to show how conservationists might deal with climate change and the shuffling distributions of wildlife that it will cause. One third of Important Bird Areas to undergo upheaval Birds are a key indicator for conservationists because they respond quickly to climate change and are relatively easily monitored. The research team used climate change projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to show how African bird species will fare in 803 Important Bird Areas (IBAs), if climate change continues as predicted. Climate change impacts on African birds over the next 100 years were simulated for each of the IBAs, to identify which areas could be expected to sustain which bird species. The research, funded by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and published in the journal Conservation Biology, suggests that hundreds of bird species in Africa will become emigrants, leaving one part of the continent for another in search of food and suitable habitat. It is predicted that one third of the IBAs will undergo significant upheaval this century, in terms of the species that live there, due to climate change. Gap in current conservation network The study shows that there are substantial geographical gaps in the current conservation network and that international cooperation is essential to protect bird species. “There are large areas of Africa lacking protected status and many of these areas are predicted to be critically important for bird conservation in the future. We need to be ready to protect remnant populations of birds while also preparing for new colonists.” Team leader, Dr Stephen Willis, Durham University. The new index is designed to assist governments across the world to protect wildlife and help species as climate change forces them to move to new areas. It should also offer policy-makers essential information to allow them to manage and adapt habitats in coming decades. “The bird map of Africa is set to change dramatically and we need conservation policies that see the bigger picture,” said Dr Willis. To read more, see the Conservation International article. Explore ARKive’s African birds. Alex Royan, ARKive Species Text Author
Nine more crisis areas for biodiversity Threatened 'hotspots' harbour half the world's plant species. A four-year project by nearly 400 ecologists has produced a reanalysis of global biodiversity that reveals which regions are the most important, and the most threatened. The effort, coordinated by the non-profit organization Conservation International, adds 9 biodiversity hotspots to the 25 originally recognized in 20001. A hotspot is a region with 1,500 unique, or endemic, plant species (equivalent to 0.5% of the global total) that has lost at least 70% of its original habitat owing to, for example, deforestation or invasive species. The 34 hotspots house three-quarters of the world's most threatened mammals, birds, and amphibians. About half of all plants and 42% of land vertebrates are found only in these regions. The combined area of the hotspots was once equivalent to Russia plus Australia; now it is slightly larger than India. "The greatest concentration of biodiversity occurs in those countries that can least afford to pay for its conservation," says Brooks. "It is clear that there has to be some global response to conserving biodiversity worldwide." Tool for all As well as a tool for policy-makers, Brooks hopes that the book will improve communication between agencies. The revised hotspot boundaries now match those of the 825 ecoregions defined by the WWF, the global conservation organization. These ecoregions divide the world's land into areas containing distinct sets of species. The unified approach will help conservation groups prioritize their efforts. The raw data compiled by the researchers, showing each region's biodiversity and the threats that face it, will be available to the public, via an online database listing the species indigenous to each hotspot. The nine new hotspots include the mountains of central Asia and the east Melanesian islands. Some, such as the Himalaya region, were previously subdivisions of identified hotspots. Another addition was the deserts of the Horn of Africa. "This was the most surprising of them," says Brooks. The region hosts more endemic plant species than researchers had suspected. This hotspot is centered to the east of the Ethiopian Highlands and is one of only two spots that are entirely arid. The region covers 579,000 square miles, and contains 2,500 endemic plants. The region is known for its trees, which provide some of the Horn of Africa's most famous commodities, including frankincense, myrrh and cinnabar. Overgrazing, uncontrolled hunting and other human activities threaten the rich plant, reptile, and bird diversity of this area. Only 5% of the Horn's original habitat is in pristine condition. - Meyers N., et al. Nature 403, 853 - 858 (2000). User Tools [+] Expand If you need help or have a question please use the links below to help resolve your problem.

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